#because like in the books where she does significantly less damage

[rainybraindays]

I keep seeing things where people are like "it was so nice to see Colin's satisfied little smirk fall when he realized she wasn't going to fall over herself for him anymore" because they seem to think he really only sees Penelope as an ego boost, but like...my guy just found out he hurt one of his best friends feelings? And thats why shes been ignoring him for months? Hes not upset because his ego isn't getting stroked, he's upset because he hurt someone he cares about. Why is it so hard for y'all to grasp

[scrumptiousstuffs]

Only Friends Episode 10 - Redemption

In which we see more character growth (especially Ray), Atom and Boeing are manipulators with a massive grudge and Mew needs to get over his bitterness if he ever wants to make his second chance work

Top & Mew (featuring Boeing)

We start with the most awkward lunch/dinner scene ever. Top being hopeful Mew is there for reconciliation but with Boeing in the picture (and giving sly quip about how Mew is the better version of himself), I can see why Mew is having trouble trusting himself (or Top) ever again.

And we see Boeing capitalising on this matter - he clocks on it and oh boy, he pounces! I must salute Boeing here (and Mond playing him is amazing to see...😚!). We are alluded to Boeing coming every night when Top can't sleep, allowing himself to be essentially an emotional teddy-bear for Top but inside, he is seething with fury. This is the man he dumped Sand for, only for the relationship to implode because Top break it off at the 3 months mark (or less).

And then we have Top basically thinking Boeing is his friendly ex, where he poured his feelings and anguish over his broken relationship with Mew - even admitting to Boeing that for Mew, he can see himself in a long-term relationship.

Mix all of the above with Mew who still feels insecure about himself - and at the back of his mind, I'm sure he is wondering whether he can ever trust Top to not cheat on him again (we see Boeing shrewdly mention this when he met up with Mew to seduce kiss him in the latter's apartment). [Also, what's with the men in this show using plants as a pick up line?]

I'll give it to Top though, he is working hard to prove himself trustworthy for Mew. But it seems Mew is playing a game (with Boeing an eager participant - and I don't think its so much Boeing likes Mew, even though he said he does to Top, but more so he wants revenge on Top for dumping him those many months ago).

I think we can safely say for TopMew to have a fighting chance to salvage their relationship, Mew will need to find somehow to not only forgive Top but also trust in himself.

(Kudos to Book as Mew in this series, I thought his acting has improved significantly compared to his last series; you can see a change in how he behaves as the series progresses, from sweet and openly trusting to somehow close off and almost bitter after the whole Top/Ton revelation).

Nick and Boston (featuring Atom)

If you ask me a few episodes ago whether I thought Boston was redeemable, I will have say no. But after this episode, urghhh.. my 💔 breaks for him.

For all his callousness and arrogance, Boston is honest and holds true to his own code of conducts. He has always been upfront with all his bed partners what they are getting into, which is to never expect a relationship with him. Plus he makes sure all his partners consent before having any sexual encounters. And so, for Atom to manipulate the whole situation and tells his sister the opposite happen - wow that just leads to the group of friends ganging up on Boston. I think we can safely say, the one mistake Boston did was to sleep with his friend's younger brother (and Ray summed it well - "Atom is your friend's brother!")

But the damage is done, and it's easy for Cheum to rally Ray and Mew on her crusade to destroy Boston because they already have past grievances with Ton. Especially Mew, who looks exceptionally smug and satisfied when Cheum slapped Ton and expelled the latter from their friendship group.

Some folks are angry Cheum behaved that way - I will say Cheum is behaving as any older siblings should be. I too will be angry (and ready to commit murder) if my younger sibling insinuate he/she is being sexually blackmail by a close friend.

You can tell, Boston is at his lowest point by now. And we now know he definitely has feelings for Nick (but with an emotional range of a teaspoon, Boston, like most of the boys in this group of friends are terrible at expressing them). So, I think him meeting up with Nick in the store was the former trying to make a connection with the only person in his life right now who doesn't loath him. And wow - the whole subtext conversation between Boston and Nick regarding Boston's screen protector before Boston just casually handing his phone for repair with Nick's photograph as his screensaver 🥹!!!!!

Their heartfelt reunion on the rooftop was raw and emotional to see. It's probably the first time Boston really open up to someone and I'm glad it's with Nick - they are both a bit "loony" with weird/creepy habits, but they both accept their craziness and fell for each other despite them.

(But poor Daddy Dan - I fear he will now be in the sideline with Boston back in the game! Although, that scene in the meeting room between Dan/Nick.....🫠🫣)

Ray and Sand (featuring their respective fathers)

We see the most character growth in Ray this week. It starts with Ray yet again denying he has alcohol dependence, arguing with Sand about going to rehab. However, I think we can safely say Sand is Ray's moral compass and his comfort/safe space. It's only when Sand insinuates he does not want Ray to die that he reluctantly agree to go for rehabilitation/counselling sessions. Even then, he only agreed with a condition - Sand telling his birth father about himself. I suspect Ray wanted Sand to refuse so that he in turn don’t have to go for those sessions. Needless to say, he underestimates how much Sand is willing to go an extra mile for Ray (as viewers, we already know this, Sand is so gone for Ray), where we sees Sand taking the brave step in confessing to his dad (and how poetic it is the dad is called Sun with him having his own Ray of sunshine next to him?). I'm glad Ray stopped Sand from confessing though, instead stating it's enough to show Sand is brave to do it, which in turn makes him brave enough to take the first step (character growth!!!!! we love it!).

So, it must have hurt Ray so deeply when he thought Sand was in cahoots with his own father for money. As we learn by now, Ray loathes himself, and has unfortunately defines himself by how much he is worth to other people. It doesn't help his first encounter with Sand was transactional (with Ray hiring Sand as a drinking buddy). As an outsider looking into at their journey, it's easy for all of us to see how quickly Sand values Ray when he refuses all payments after that once off incident. Ray in his rage and volatile state cannot see pass this.

The whole conversation in Sand's living room was raw and intense - both sides are hurting with jab after jab from Ray insinuating Sand duped him. And with Ray being so angry, it's hard for Sand to get any words in. However, Ray is correct in one aspect - when he angrily pointed out "You want me to stop drinking, but here you are making and selling liquor. You think my life will be better with you, it's just going to hell!." - because it's true, if Sand wants to be the support person for Ray, he will have to make the communal effort to also make Ray's environment as alcohol-free as possible. And I think it dawns on Sand (who despite his maturity is only 22 yrs old himself) when he let out the most heartbreaking scream (who else cried bucket in this scene, cause I did) before breaking the wine jar (I love the symbolism here - Sand is again ready to give up his source of income for Ray)

We ended episode 10 with Ray fully accepting he has major alcohol issue (especially after his own dad finally lifting the lid on what Sand has done for Ray - I can't believe Sand researched all those rehab centres and present his findings to Ray's dad!!! ). I think most of us will agree - that last scene of Ray breaking down, apologising and sobbing to imaginary Sand, knowing he may have lost the one person who believed in him and loves him unconditionally - was as Oscar worthy performance by Khaotung (and all of our collective heart breaks for him 😭😭😭😭).

I have high hopes we will see Sand/Ray reuniting, although with Boeing popping up, it's definitely going to be interesting!

As usual, it's a roller coaster ride from start to finish. I'm impressed with all the actors, but this episode goes to Khaotung who played Ray so masterfully, First who plays Sand with quiet dignity and Neo showing cracks of vulnerability as Ton.

So, is it Saturday yet? (I can't wait to see what shenanigan Boeing is going to stir next)

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 34 – Defekt by Nino Cipri

This is the second book of Cipri’s I’ve read, and I enjoyed it significantly more than Finna. Which still isn’t falling in love with it, if I’m being honest, but I’m not at all annoyed I read this one. The overall impression is kind of like watching the kind of rough pilot to an indescribably cheesy by fun adventure serial? Up to you how harsh a discretion that seems.

The story shares a setting with Finna – as in, it’s set literally in the same story, less than a week after. It follows Derek, a special exempt employee of the suspiciously Ikea-like retail megacorp who started a few weeks before, lives in a shipping crate behind the store’s loading dock, and has no memory of ever leaving store property. After he calls in and takes his very first sick day (a coworker saw him basically collapse while assembling furniture and browbeat him into it), his extremely disappointed manager has him come in late to help the outside team with a ‘special inventory’. The outside turns out to be, well, alternate universe versions of him – variations on the same mould, all mass produced in some of the controlled alternate realities the company’s insourced its production and logistics hubs too. The ‘special inventory’ likewise turns out to be a bug hunt, hunting down and killing all the products that have mutated or come alive due to glitches in their production before they have a chance to escape or damage company property.

The plot goes more or less how you’d expect – the alternate Derek’s are a queer and quirky band of likeable misfits (one might even say a found family!), except for their leader who is a monster convinced that if he’s enough of an abusive hardass to the others corporate will see ow valuable he is. The Defekta turn out to be basically benevolent, and Derek turns out to be defective himself, with literal magic empathy and enhanced senses and an involuntary sort of broadcast telekinesis when he’s dealing with strong emotions (which sounds like literal actual hell to me, for the record).In the end the shitty direct supervisor is trapped in an alternate reality, and everyone else unionizes and holds the store hostage until the company caves to their desired reforms Happy ending for everyone!

I’m not sure if it’s intentional or just an artifact of how Cirpri came up with the idea, but the whole ‘taking place literal days after the last book’ thing very much does make it seem like either this one Midwestern store in particular or possibly the company as a whole is like 90% of the way there to spiralling into a complete metaphysical collapse and possible destroying the world. The one scene with Jules at the start of the book also honestly made me like her more than the entire previous book where she was literally the second most important character and on like every other page.

I do think the kind of absurdist corporate horror setting worked better in this book than the prequel, if only because it was a bit more restrained and picked the one aesthetic/setting to actually develop a bit. Having a little bit more edge helped too. Reagan as the polished-until-she’s-glass always upbeat and friendly corporate upper management definitely worked as a more sinister and threatening figure than absolutely anyone in Finna, at least. I do still think the corporate jargon was like 20% too over the top and obvious to really work as satire or horror and just, well, not really funny enough to work as comedy. But that’s probably just a matter of taste

Speaking of funny – I’m not sure whether the megacorp in this is transparently specifically Ikea instead of something more generic (or, like, Wallmart) – Cipri spent some shitty years working at one, maybe. But given literally everything else about the book’s politics, it is kind of surprising how many times the books go back to the ‘look, this thing’s name is a funny-looking foreign word!’ well for humour. Or, well, ‘humour’.

Derek’s whole character arc from enthusiastically brainwashed retail drone to radicalized monster-whisperer was perhaps a bit abrupt, but it worked for me overall. The rest of the inventory team were all pretty much just archtypes with character designs attached, all basically being exactly what you would expect – the only real ‘reveal’ is that Dirk the supervisor isn’t the longsuffering professional leader trying to wrangle the rest of them and get the job done, he’s just an abusive piece of shit the rest of them actively fantasize about murdering – but none of them are, like, offensive.

The themes are, look, they’re really on the nose. There’s no way around it. Derek is so repressed and out of touch with/incapable of expressing his real emotions that his throat splits open and grows a second mouth that starts psychically broadcasting them. There are multiple conversations where people just explain their characters. There’s an interstitial bit of corporate propaganda between chapters about the risks of employees being radicalized by alternate universes into union organizers shortly before the main characters force the company to give them better treatment by sitting down and threatening to hold the store hostage the night before a big product release. And so on.

Still, I honestly enjoyed the read? Very possible my expectations were just lowered enough enough by the first one that I could just take this as it was, honestly, but still. Largely insubstantial popcorn, but not popcorn I regretted spending a few hours on.

[hey-haven]

Oops I am ranking TWST books (minus book 7 cause I’m not going into it till it’s released in the english version)

I will be making these seperate posts cause I have too much to say, but I will link each on in order from worst to best starting with the worst

6: Book 2

Easily the worst one, Book 2 just does not do Leona any form of Justice. Despite being one of the smarter characters, Leona’s plan simply does not make sense. Like yeah sure injure some of the stronger players so the competition would be easier but then his grand plan with the Diasomnia Dorm is literally unleashing a stampede to idk crush them? Injure them? Kill them???? (Okay maybe not that far). He does this in a public setting that could have easily gotten innocent bystanders hurt. Plus it’s Malleus we’re talking about, a stampede would not have done the kind of damage Leona would have wanted it to. It just feels like for a character who is often written to be a master strategist, his big plan for the competition wasn’t well thought out like at all. It paints Leona as someone who’s all bark and no bite when it comes to his arrogant attitude about his intelligence, which is annoying because HE IS VERY INTELLIGENT AND SHOULD BRAG ABOUT IT! It’s just this ONE book that doesn’t serve him justice on this aspect of his character!

Another issue the book has is that it paints Leona in a really bad light to the point that I strongly disliked him for a while till reading some vignettes and realizing “oh no he’s an interesting character it’s just that the main book really fucked him over”. We have to remember that Leona is a grown man at 20 years old who made it his mission to literally harm teenagers just to win a sports competition, and while I understand the competition itself is a big deal it does not at all justify Leona’s actions (nor does his backstory). That was all BEFORE he overblots where the harm can be somewhat justified under uhhh temporary magical influence of insanity lol. And at the end of the book he straight up goes “I actually am not going to learn and grow from this.” And he does a little after the events of the book good for him, but when the main theme of each book being about growth and healing from past scars, why the fuck immediately backtrack on that theme right in the second book???

AND! Shdgss another thing that annoys me is that shortly after learning what an overblot is and how it works, following that logic that the audience was literally taught; Ruggie should have overblotted. He was the one constantly using his signature spell, he was the one having to hurt himself to get others hurt as well, he was the one who nearly got directly killed by Leona. That stress and overuse of his magic should have lead to an overblot but it didn’t only because Ruggie isn’t the twisted version of Scar, it’s Leona.

The book very much tried to use Ruggie as a red herring making us think he will be the main boss when it was Leona, but it was done so poorly that looking back it doesn’t even make sense with the in universe explanation on the function of overblots. Yana cared more about making a not so surprising twist than actually putting the effort in making that twist make sense. The fact that I ended the book caring significantly more about Ruggie than Leona is a sign that Leona’s character in this book was more of an afterthought.

You can just tell that Yana did not put the amount of thought and care into Book 2 as she did with Books 1, 4, 6, and even 5 despite that one also not being that good either though for completely different reasons. She heavily relied on the story beats of The Lion King to work with Book 2 leading to a messy and rather uninteresting story that actively paints the main character of the book as a less interesting person than what he actually is shown to be in later chapters and vignettes. It’s especially disheartening when you do get to Leona’s backstory and see the potential was right there the whole time, it just was not given any ounce of effort in the execution.

[star-trekkin-across-theuniverse]

Worthy, pt 15

part 1 & 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14

__________

tags: @bolontiku, @rampant-salamander, @darkdragonpheonix , @440mxs-wife,  @castiels-sunflowers, @peekingsunshine, @alexakeyloveloki, @feelmyroarrrr​

word count: 2632

__________

“Does anyone get how creepy that sounds?” It gave me a full-body shudder every time someone said my mother was remarkable. Not because I didn’t agree, but because the word was dripping in innuendo. My mom was incredible, amazing, and a woman ahead of her time. She was absolutely remarkable. But the way it was being said made me want to scream. And I know innuendo is subjective but every time I heard the word I got a mental image of something significantly less remarkable than my mother.

“Her mother is a healer of some renown, Leif,” Thor interjected. “She has forged paths where other women have found it difficult.”

“A healer?” Leif’s face darkened. “So after all this time, he still tries to replace her?”

Thor turned to face me. “Leif’s mother was Loki’s first wife –“

“Sigyn?” I interrupted.

“No. Sigyn came after Mother,” Leif corrected. “Your Midgardian tales do not tell of my mother’s marriage to Loki. I ensured that any record of their union was destroyed in this realm so that his taint would not be on her. The people of Midgard, in a different time, revered her as a god.”

“But Loki was revered as a god as well. Why would it be so terrible to have them associated with one another?” I asked.

“The god of lies with the goddess of healing?” Leif scoffed. There was a puzzle piece in my head that suddenly clicked into place.

“Wait, what?” I gaped. “Your mother is Eir? That goddess of healing?”

“You know Asgard well for a Midgardian,” Leif quirked an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I grew up on this shit. Some people grow up hearing fairy tales. I heard Norse myths,” I shrugged. Leif tilted his head.

“Oh?”

I got up and crossed the living room, careful to avoid the broken glass. I grabbed the mythology book I’d brought back from Seattle and returned to the living room, handing it to Leif. He looked at it and smiled, handing it back right away.

“I know this book,” he chuckled.

“I do too. Inside out and backward,” I admitted. Leif took it again and looked it over, opening and closing it. He sat down on my coffee table so he was facing me, subconsciously rubbing his hands across the smooth cover of the book. I was astonished that the table didn’t collapse under his weight. He was massive and fully armoured. His eyes narrowed and a slow smile spread across his face.

“I know your mother. I signed this for her when she bought it. She was great with child at the time. You, I would imagine.” He flipped to the front page. His eyes flicked across the inscription and his smile grew wider. “Yes. Althea. She was lovely, kind. Wise eyes. You must have been born soon after; she was in that uncomfortable late stage of pregnancy. Stunning though, even as heavy with babe as she was.” He was lost in the memory of my mother, his eyes closed. “I never would have guessed that was my kin within her belly.”

“You mean to tell me you’ve been crawling around Earth for thirty years, writing books and generally being creepy?” I blurted. Thor laughed. He didn’t even try to look chastised when Leif glared at him.

“I spent most of my writing time in Asgard. Or in other realms, while looking for Loki,” he explained.

“Yeah, what’s with that vendetta?” I understood not liking Loki, simply based on the attacking the earth thing. But Leif was probably a million years old and he was still pissed about something that had obviously happened when he was little.

“Loki betrayed my mother, abandoned us both, took up with a monster and was more concerned with his children by her than what damage he had done in my mother’s life. She lost everything. Except me.” His eyes flashed and I knew I wasn’t really getting the whole story. “It was by the grace of Frigga that we continued to be welcome in court.”

“I didn’t realize,” I apologized. Leif shook his head.

“And how could you? I eliminated any record that tied Mother to him.” Leif’s tone was kind but dismissive.

“Which brings me to this question. If you don’t recognize Loki as your father, why would you recognize me as your sister?” It felt hollow, knowing how much he hated our mutual parent. Leif leaned back on the chair and considered the question.

“You have her eyes. Everyone tells you that, don’t they? But you have his intelligence. Does that frighten you, now that you’ve met him?” Leif ignored my question.

“No. I am more than the genes in my body,” I retorted. Leif nodded.

“As am I. We have more than a father in common. We have our mothers in common too. Raised by healers, the children of the god of lies. I would guess we have a lifetime of common experiences. And we alone of Loki’s progeny have retained that spark that you would call humanity. We are alone, together.” He had obviously felt alone for a long time, and maybe he saw me as company in a tenuous existence. For whatever reason, he was determined to count me as his sibling. “Suppose I buy into this. What does it mean?” I demanded.

“I know not what you ask,” Leif was confused.

“Well, okay, we’re half-siblings. But what does that mean? Are we suddenly going to be having family gatherings? Going to Disneyland? Camping? Weiner roasts in the backyard in June?” I was trying to see the significance of what this new relationship was going to mean, aside from more weirdness. I guess I was asking if it was going to be cool, or if it was going to be awkward like I felt every time Mjolnir flew into my hand. Leif looked stumped.

“I taught my brothers how to fight, keep their armour in repair, charm ladies. I am not sure those are skills you would need,” he began. I laughed.

“Yeah, not a lot of call for me to charm ladies,” I admitted. “Do you have any of Loki’s powers?”

“I did not train any of my magics other than those for healing. And those were a gift from my mother.” He shook his head.

“I can manipulate emotions,” I admitted. “Like, of the people around me.” Leif raised an eyebrow and glanced at Thor.

“It is weak, but it is there. I would imagine it is much more powerfully felt by the Midgardians,” he confirmed. Leif scratched his chin, the stubble making a scratchy sound. I waited for him to say something, although I was not sure what I was hoping for. I think I wanted him to tell me he could teach me better control.

“I cannot help you there, Ella. The only person who could,” he paused and glanced at Thor, “would have been my grandmother. But she was lost when the dark elves attacked Asgard.”

“But now we know that Loki is alive, Leif –“ Thor began. Leif rose and stepped toward him, his face changing from calm to raging in seconds.

“I told you he was not dead! I told you that you should not believe he was gone! I warned you! You thought me mad!” Leif’s interruption was explosive, and Thor sprang to his feet, Mjolnir low at his side.

“That does not change that he nearly died to save me. You are my nephew because he is my brother, do not forget yourself, boy.” Thor’s tone was a cold, dangerous calm. “You are not the only one who had been hurt by him; you do not hold exclusive right to claim damage. Loki is alive. He is the only one who can teach your sister to control the magic she owns. If you are so intent on helping her find her place in the world, finding your father would be a good start.” His fingers curled around Mjolnir and I found myself wanting to melt into the couch, while at the same time, feeling the crackle of energy coming from the hammer.

“Or maybe he could teach me to fight. It’s not something anyone learns here anymore. But if your stupid hammer is going to keep shooting into my hand every time I’m in trouble, maybe I should know how to use it?” I pointed the question at Thor. He shook his head.

“Leif is not worthy, so he cannot teach you to use Mjolnir.” He looked thoughtful. “But perhaps I should spend time giving you lessons.”

“Yeah. Awesome.” I didn’t actually want to learn to use the damn thing. What I really wanted was to go back to the way I was before I’d found that stupid hammer. Just another lucky kid who’d scored an internship at Stark Industries. It was never intended to be a boring or ordinary life, but it was certainly more boring and ordinary than anything that had happened since that moment I’d wrapped my hand around Mjolnir. I was already exhausted. Adding in ‘Norse god training’ was just going to make things worse.

XXX

“So, the screaming, sword-waving psycho is your brother? Not surprising,” Angela commented over her giant, disgusting waffle. I wasn’t even hungry for my eggs, I was so overwhelmed by everything.

“How is that not surprising?”

“Well, your father is a psycho. So it stands to reason the massive Ginger beast is also a psycho,” she shrugged and took a sip of her coffee.

“Massive Ginger beast?” I laughed. I rocked back in my chair. “Yeah, I guess that’s a somewhat accurate description.” The last Angela had seen of him, he’d been charging, sword and shield ready, toward me, screaming in what I’d later learned was the Alltongue, the language of Asgard. I’d understood it in the moment because I was holding Mjolnir. It was all very confusing. Angela looked over my shoulder and dropped her fork.

“Who is that?” She breathed. I’d become accustomed to the way she was always checking out guys. It was actually kind of fun. She had great taste in men, so always was able to find something easy on the eyes to look at, regardless of whether we were in the commissary, shopping, or out for an afternoon in the park. I followed her gaze to the guy she was swooning over and choked on my coffee.

“That would be the massive, psycho, Ginger beast, Ang,” I laughed.

“He cleans up good. Wow.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “Too bad about his dad.”

“That’s my genetics you’re slighting too, Angela!” I protested.

“Yeah, but you’re half-human so it’s okay. I know you’ll be fine. He’s half-god. Or is he all god? He looks all god. How does that work? Are they even gods? Holy shit, you’re half-god!” And Angela’s squirrel-like train of thought derailed.

“Not at all god. Just alien. He’s half two types of alien. I’m half one type. Thor guesses I’ll probably live about a thousand years. Won’t that be fucking awesome?” I was feeling snarky.

“If you get to be around guys that look like that, a thousand years will not be long enough,” she waggled her eyebrows.

“Just to remind you. That’s my brother, so grosso. More gross than Thor, thank you very much.” I made a gagging gesture.

“Yeah, but you were considering Thor last night,” Angela teased. I shook my head.

“No, not really.” I finished my coffee and pushed my plate away. “I need to get back to the lab. Just promise me I can be the maid of honour when you pin Leif down.” I winked and picked up my tray, stopping to drop it off at the garbages. Leif saw me and waved me over. I sighed and headed toward him.

“Ella!” He was entirely too cheery for the morning. “I have spoken with Thor and was hoping we could meet again this afternoon.”

I cringed. I needed a little time to adjust to all these crazy changes. Time away from brothers and uncles and hammers and myth and legend, and time just hanging out with components and screws and tools. I needed to build something to get my brain away from the chaos that was taking over my personal life.

“I –“ I stalled, “uh –“

“She’s busy. There’s an issue with the miniaturization of the quantum beam accelerator I’m working on, and as Ella is an expert in the area, I’m going to be taking up most of her time,” Bruce interrupted, holding two cups of coffee from the Starbucks in the lobby. He handed one to me and nodded with his head for me to follow. I smiled in apology to Leif and trailed behind Bruce out of the lab.

“I’m not an expert in Quantum beam accelerators,” I protested.

“You are becoming an expert in miniaturization though,” he countered. I shrugged.

“That’s arguable. I don’t know if you can even miniaturize a quantum beam accelerator anyhow,” I argued as we stepped onto the elevator, “I would be really difficult to –“ Bruce interrupted me with a kiss.

“I lied. To get you to myself. There’s no issue with anything. I just booked a day off and decided you are playing hooky with me,” he explained. He leaned in to kiss me again and I dodged away.

“Excuse me? You don’t get to swoop in all Captain Kissypants after ignoring me for two weeks!” I protested. “You got all hot and bothered and then ran away. And carefully avoided everything about me for two weeks. Not a word for two weeks, Bruce. You don’t get to all of a sudden reappear, book days off for me and kiss me in the elevator!”

Bruce looked down at his feet, his hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I panicked.”

“I don’t blame you. But you can’t just vanish like that. I mean, you can. It’s your life. But I’m left wondering what the deal is. If you like me, and you want to spend time with me, you have to treat me with more respect than that,” I explained. He sighed and kept looking at his feet.

“Ella, please. I’m sorry. I,” he paused and finally looked at me. “I haven’t felt like this in a long time. I haven’t let myself. Your work is intriguing, and your background is impressive and I saw your CV and thought you would be interesting to work with. And then you arrived and you’re this passionate, brilliant engineer. Your brain is this beautiful puzzle, so you’re interesting. And then you have some sort of magic power that prevents the Other Guy from taking over? You’re too good to be true.”

I laughed despite myself. “I think you’ve met my father? That’s a pretty big minus in my books.”

“And maybe that’s why I panicked. I don’t know. But I’ve been miserable for two weeks. And my work is suffering. And I guess maybe it doesn’t matter. I feel calmer with you. Even when you aren’t deliberately doing it.” He leaned back against the elevator wall. “I figured, book us off for the day, take you out, show you the parts of the city I didn’t break. As an apology for being a jackass.”

“Does that work with other women?” I asked. He looked confused. “Saying their brains are beautiful puzzles?”

“I’ve never tried it on anyone before, but my guess would be no.” One side of his mouth quirked up in a smirk. I sighed and let the resentment go.

“You’re a lucky man, Dr. Banner. I kinda liked it.” I leaned back against the elevator wall beside him. “If you play your cards right, I might even let you kiss me again.”

[honourablejester]

I went back to try the first two Eight Petals Argent books as a warlock this time. I think I’m just going to try out various characters of different classes to feel how they all play. And some impressions so far, of a (fathomless) warlock following immediately on the coattails of a (twilight) cleric.

I can’t tell how much of this is just bad luck compared to the cleric, because I’m also trying different routes through the adventure and different skills just mean different routes in some cases regardless, but the warlock feels significantly less survivable? Though this could also be a factor of a solo adventure where it’s all on you. But while they both have the same hit die and Con, with the warlock I’m worrying about my HP a lot more. A lot a lot more.

(I realise twilight cleric is an unfair comparison there, given Twilight Sanctuary and heal spells, but yeah)

Warlock also feels significantly more specialised. The cleric had tools for more situations. These adventures, to be fair to them, do do their best to vary things up a LOT, so different classes can have places where they shine, but what that does mean is that when you’re playing through the whole thing with just your single character to rely on, there’s areas where you struggle. I feel like I felt that less on the cleric, who could handle most things decently well. On the warlock, say, the lengthy outdoor survival challenge was more of an issue.

Where the warlock does feel significantly better, at least straight out of the gate, is combat. I feel like an attack roll cantrip vs purely save cantrips does make a big difference at low levels? Again, that could just be luck of the dice rolls, but I felt like the warlock’s hits just landed more. Once the cleric got up to third level and had things like spiritual weapon online, she sped up a lot more. The warlock, because I’m playing Fathomless, had functionally a spiritual weapon from day one (though it’s not going to level very well by comparison, I’m aware). They felt like they had more control over combat faster.

Although. Caveat. The warlock feels better in ranged combat, specifically. Once they get up into melee combat, the HP issue starts rearing up again, as well as the lower AC and lack of melee attack options. And, again, I realise that if I’d been comparing, say, a knowledge cleric vs a hexblade warlock, this comparison might also go the other way. My cleric having a rapier and a shield to work with helped her out a lot. Now that I’ve hit 3rd level on the warlock and picked up a melee cantrip via Pact of the Tome, we’ll see if that makes a difference.

The warlock’s higher off-the-bat damage output has helped them a lot, though. With the survivability thing too. In that my cleric almost always wound up having to be in melee, because most things survived long enough to close with her, while my warlock once, very memorably for me, survived by the skin of their fucking teeth a gauntlet of three combats in a row with nothing between them because they killed the third enemy in one hit with a hex-augmented agonising eldritch blast from 45ft away. It did 13 damage, which happened to be exactly as many hp as the enemy had. Which was fantastic, because my warlock had 3 hit points left and no means to get more.

In full melee, though, when I’m in tiny dungeon rooms, I have a dagger. Sometimes a hex-augmented dagger, but still just a dagger. It’s rough. I’m flipflopping on my 2nd level spell because of that too. I feel like going Misty Step, but since I’m fighting alone a lot of the time, or with only a single NPC, it might be worth picking up Darkness to pair with my Devil’s Sight? If I’m in a tiny room and forced into melee, dropping darkness might help balance things my way.

I also ran into an odd tactical thing I hadn’t considered with the Tentacle of the Deeps. You can deploy it, to start, anywhere within 60ft. But you can only move it, afterwards, 30ft per turn. Which did me a lot of good when it missed the first attack and the boss enemy promptly dashed to fucking melee with me 60ft away leaving my tentacle waving uselessly in the breeze for two rounds of trying not to die before it could catch up again. If it does hit it helps itself by dropping their move speed, but if it misses it can find itself left behind. I didn’t run into that issue with the cleric as much because, by luck of the draw, by the time she had spiritual weapon she was often in boss-with-minion fights with bosses who didn’t like to move so much, so she could leave the weapon on the boss while she was in melee with the minions. My warlock, who likes to be significantly more mobile to try and keep at range, and who was deploying the tentacle earlier against bosses designed to be much more mobile, ran into positioning issues the cleric didn’t.

I don’t know, I’m kind of having fun getting to actually play these things and explore the tactical and other differences in the way they play. I didn’t know solo adventures were a thing. The lack of a group around here and my lack of a space at home where I’d have the privacy for video to play online meant I didn’t have any actual experience with this game. It’s a lot of fun actually trying things out.

I’m so tempted to go back to a cleric next time though. A knowledge cleric this time. But. Let’s try things out before I fall immediately into a rut. Might try a rogue, get a non-spellcaster experience. Or a ranger. And I do want to try star druid at some point too.

I’m glad I found these things. I hope the fourth book comes out soon.

[jamsofdeath0]

why pick a fight on this post??

I mean I will. I will fight you about it. but why on this post?

anyways the big thing about Data squad versus the other Digimon series is that it was going for a mildly different demographic. 14 15 16 year olds instead of like 7 8 9 10 year olds. this means a lot of what it does is quite different. not always darker but different and how they do it. even for Digimon standards. cuz just about all of Digimon series are quite different from each other. But with the differing demographic came different in writing styles.

it's got a military theming. and poses the question "what if monsters from another dimension can't be leaking into ours and only chosen ones could fight them?"but without tamer's whole weird fog dimension (?). you know it's a magic status quo no property damage mist.

Data squad starts as an episodic monster of the week but is ultimately about a war between dimensions that happened before any of our protagonists were old enough to understand the concept of genocide or its repercussions they must now live with. often characters insist that both worlds need to be separate. there's a whole episode with Marcus's sister where she almost gets a partner Digimon. and if she does they'll both be effectively conscripted into the government. but both her and the Digimon would both be children. and see isn't it better they're both in their own worlds then conscripted into the government.

We've got 3 coworker teenagers. and a human kid who grew up in the digital world.

Thomas is the straight laced by the books guy. His whole arc is learning that the books aren't very based. and if you wants to protect people he might have to abandon it.

This is in direct opposition to

Marcus the fuck them rules guy. he knows the book is unbased. really wants to fist fight a motherfucker. and is very willing to protect people. he's the kid of someone who inadvertently helped with the whole Digimon genocide thing. his dad didn't really want to help but he ended up helping a bit.

that's where the next character comes in

Keenan the human kid that was raised in the digital world. also a child of the war. but since he was raised by Digimon he like understands is there a point of view more and doesn't really like humans all that much at first. he also in some ways reflects the whole the world should be separate as he reconciles how he feels being in both.

Yoshino is a great voice of reason character. I sort of sensible glue to keep the others from fist fighting each other. not because she'll actually stop them if they start. but because she'll tell them they're being stupid. and then let them make their own decisions.

I'd say overall it has better written characters than frontier, a more concise plot, and significantly better pacing.

as frontier goes on it sort of becomes all the characters but takuya and koju cheerleading. and it's not even just the last fight. a lot of fights boil down to those two characters. Izumi and Junpie never really complete their arcs. And Koji and Kouchi only technically complete theirs. its a bit messy.

This story is also about a war. But more in the vague kids show prophecy there was a war 100,000 Bajillion years ago way. and less the burning down forests children without parents way.

Its tone is not the issue. Neither is its moral about second chances and regrets. Its the pacing. Its no problem when theyre going around sloving one off problems or having episodic adventures. While many are forgettable they arent bad. The issue is closer to the end. The final episodes both drag and feel rushed. Like we didnt really work up to rhe whole end of the world things, and that the fight is taking to long.

And while the characters in Data Squad tie into the narrative the frontier gang are just a gaggle of tropes. One of which is fat phobic. Another of which is Sexist. Weirdly the most sexist iv ever seen Digimon. A generally progressive cartoon. One that often peddled the idea feminity doesn't equate weakness or lesserness. One the had not just well written female characters but well written feminine characters.

all the characters in Data squad actually finish their arcs. the plot is done within it's allotted time to a good pace. the cheerleading is minimal. the writers were clearly going for something succeeded.

also I'm going to say it the animation is better.

and a lot of ways I'd say Data squad is objectively better but which one you enjoy more depends on what you're looking for.

all right you looking for a serious story that explores corruption within government bodies with silly moments. or a silly story about kids on an adventure that can be serious during the big moments.

Digimon Frontier is a really weird mix of dope ideas, interesting characters, and terrible execution.

It's fascinatingly dull. And fascinatingly interesting.

In so many ways it's just a mediocre children's show in a way only Digimon 2020 seems to match. In a way the only thing that really makes it still feel like a Digimon show (outside of the Digimon) is it's willingness to touch upon darker topics others might not. (death, slavery, war, racism) but on the other hand it's hard to say that's anything about these topics you can't get better from a different Digimon series. Maybe, the rascism? If only because it's not a topic Digimon often handles but frankly outside of Izumi I'd say frontier doesn't even handle it all that well.

The concept of kids becoming Digimon is interesting yet mostly unexplored within the narrative outside of Takuya's relationship with the concept.

And yet I enjoy frontier. It's hard to say why outside of simply like long the main characters. I honestly adore Takuya. But again the execution fumbles. Half the characters are relegated to cheerleaders by the end.

It seems just about everything interesting within the show is ruined by faulty writing.

[greenhappyseed]

BnHA Ch. 354 - Review, parallels & comparisons

AFO’s really out here, sky dancing and singing his way through this war. He’s serving us some jazz hands and pointed toe realness, as if on a one-man mission to prove that 7-foot-tall, 200-year-old demon lords got talent.

One more bit of snark and then I’ll be real, I swear:

Best Jeanist is looking more and more like a penis and I can’t—

Oookay, MOVING ON!

We know this chapter is serious because it starts off with a closeup of Hawks’s burn scars. We’ve gotten glimpses before during the Nagant arc, but IMO the art downplayed them. Here, just after Shoto cools off Dabi and Endeavor winds up to face AFO, we get a nice big panel showing them off. The burn scars are something Hawks has in common with Tokoyami and Jiro.

Strategy-wise, I guess breaking the mask is good, but it’s far from perfect. As I’ve pointed out in other posts, AFO survived All Might’s United States of Smash without the mask, and fought for a bit without it, so a broken mask is NOT the end of the fight. It’s just the start, unless AFO is somehow significantly weaker. Unfortunately, as AFO immediately notices, it’s an obvious start. The far more interesting addition is Jiro. Her Earphone Jack quirk can do some real damage to AFO’s infrared/radio wave quirk, plus she can block his ability to feel sounds and vibrations. He can, of course, still sense emotions, but Jiro can make everything else very difficult for AFO.

That said, Jiro’s quirk isn’t her only asset in this battle. There’s also her stealth and her rock n’ roll attitude. Hawks doesn’t know her name. AFO doesn’t either. That means they don’t really know what she can do. AFO tries his usual insults, going for her pride by calling her a “jobber,” meaning she’s only present as a “red shirt” or meaningless kill that acts as a power-up for him. Jiro doesn’t take the insult personally at all, and turns it back around on AFO masterfully. I mean, he is 100% old man ranting at her about some 200 year old comic book she’s never heard of, but I’m still glad she was able to laugh and say OK boomer. The other thing that caught my eye here is AFO saying “gnats” around OFA, and “gnat” was Gigantomachia’s main insult, especially in Ch. 280 (where Jiro is down by Momo). I know AFO loves to see heroes and civilans as bugs for him to squash, but “gnat” is very specifically a Machia thing.

I also really like Tokoyami in the mix. While I enjoy him encouraging Hawks to be better, I’m curious why he was stationed against AFO — I suppose Dark Shadow can go all Ragnarok around AFO to capture him without direct touch? Or maybe there is some bird boys combo move he has with Hawks? I feel like this is less likely because, although Tokoyami says he is capable of teamwork with Hawks, have we ever seen that? I know Tokoyami can do teamwork but can Hawks?? I also liked Tokoyami’s, uhm, reminder to Jiro to stay still. Like yes, Tokoyami is an elite superhero who looks like a bird and is fighting the battle to end it all, but also he’s a 16-year-old guy with a girl wrapped around him. Do you think AFO can sense the teenage awkwardness?

AFO does seem to have a hard time reading Hawks, emotionally. Hawks jokes about them both being crippled, and is ok with being called Nagant’s replacement (that was, after all, how he introduced himself to her). I don’t know if it’s his HPSC training —he expects AFO’s mind games — or his “less than heroic” actions and attitude, but AFO’s insults just don’t stick to Hawks at all. That makes me wonder if something is coming, especially after Hawks seemed surprised that AFO kept the Toya card up his sleeve for over a decade.

That brings us to Endeavor. I wrote about him a bit here, but it’s so stunning to me that he wasn’t prepared for AFO’s provocations. Hawks even tried to pull Endeavor back from thinking about his family by appealing to Endeavor’s “duty” to “take down AFO without delay.” But it doesn’t work. The one time Enji HAS to put his duty before his family and he can’t do it. Being #1, surpassing All Might, proving his mental & physical strength….none of it matters to Enji anymore. Hawks says Enji is living in order to atone, so he cannot make a “clean break” from his family, the implication being that family can be a distraction or something that can be exploited to hurt a hero. At the moment, it’s proving that All Might was right to isolate himself and Enji was right to keep running away from his family, so I’m sure there’s another part to come. The last time Enji became fatalistic and felt it was too late to change things, his family told him it wasn’t and helped him get back on his feet.

I wrote this for my last chapter review, and I think it’s still true in this one:

Through Toya, AFO managed to take the same things from Endeavor [as he did from All Might] — his facial scar, his public image, the joy of reaching #1. Interestingly, All Might countered AFO’s mind games like how Shoto neutralized Dabi. All Might agreed with AFO, saying yes, he had many things to protect. He told AFO to go ahead and expose his secret to the world. He admitted he wasn’t the best teacher. But then All Might used those “weaknesses” to explain that he can’t die here, because there’s still too much for him to do. … Will Endeavor rally and realize there’s still so much for him to do to as a father? Is Endeavor aware of how Shoto brought “down” his other son? Does Endeavor know there’s a chance Toya is healing? Or does he think he caused one son to rip apart the other?

Finally… did AFO’s arm alien consume Enji’s arm or…???? If AFO really thinks wounded heroes are the scariest, why not kill Enji outright here???

[laurelnose]

Very New to your blog and the posts are probably way old but I saw you do Witcher Biology (??) rants sometimes and Id love to hear your take, if you have one, on what monsters (namely "naturally occurring" ones like draconids and insectoids) contribute to the ecosystem if anything and whether or not they should be hunted into extinction. I was discussing it w/ a friend last night after dealing with Iocaste, the last silver basilisk, and now its smthn I'm Invested in

re monster ecosystems: I just figure theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans but because theyve got no natural predators aside from eachother and arent hunted by anything but witchers , monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ? Ive little knowledge on the subject as a whole but the whole thing intrigues me

hi & extremely belated welcome, anon! my apologies for the length of time you’ve been waiting for this answer; I had to think carefully about how I wanted to respond to this ask, because: there’s a lot going on here. also, because I am a disaster, I ended up posting it to ao3 first while I was avoiding tumblr for a spell and then completely forgot to come back. oops. i’m sorry!! This one’s about 5000 words long, which is a lot for tumblr, so reading on AO3 may be preferable.

-

The two main thrusts of your first ask (how do monsters interact with the ecosystem and should they be eradicated from the Continent) are questions of invasion ecology, the study of non-native/invasive species and their effects on the environment. Monsters, having arrived on the Continent about 1200 years ago during the Conjunction of Spheres from entirely alien dimensions, are indeed technically non-native species!

However, invasion ecology is…somewhat controversial, to say the least—there are a lot of invasive species, who have a lot of different & complex impacts, and a lot of different ideas about what we might do about any of this, and it’s basically all arguing all the time, so I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to approach the topic. Not to mention that for reasons I couldn’t initially put my finger on, it seemed wrong to apply theories of invasion ecology to the Witcher monsters. We’ll get into it! There are also a couple of common misconceptions/oversimplifications of how ecology works in your second ask which I want to unpack. Hopefully I pulled this together into something that makes sense, and feel free to ask me for clarification!

Some important background facts:

Species have always been moving to and “invading” new places on their own; humans and globalization have accelerated this process into a Big Problem, as the sheer number of invasive species being introduced all over the globe strains ecosystems already under pressure, but “native ranges” are always shifting, sometimes more dramatically than you might expect. If you go far enough back in time, all species are “non-native”.

Because of this, the very definition of “invasive species” is hotly contested. This is why you’ll hear dozens of terms like introduced species, injurious species, naturalized species, non-native species, etc.; these all have slightly different connotations, but all refer to a species that did not originate in a particular location.

An introduced species is usually classified as “invasive” as opposed to “non-native” or “naturalized” if its presence significantly alters the ecosystem it invades; some people define this more narrowly as a species that causes harm to an ecosystem. “Harm” can take a lot of different forms, as every non-native species interacts differently with the ecosystem they were introduced to.

Aside from various potential impacts to human economic activity, most forms of ecological harm by introduced species involve the decline of native species, by a variety of mechanisms; invaders might eat natives, outcompete them for food, interbreed with them, carry novel pathogens, etc. Invasive species are primarily a threat to biodiversity.

Now, here’s my Hot Take:

The Conjunction of Spheres is analogous to real-life ecological cataclysms such as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, and thus monsters are not invasive species.

The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event saw the extinction of 75% of all species on Earth after the Chicxulub asteroid hit, including the non-avian dinosaurs. The Earth has had several disasters like this, of varying severity—the Great Oxidation Event killed almost literally everything on Earth except for the cyanobacteria who caused it. These cataclysmic extinction events completely upended existing ecosystems, altering habitats beyond recognition and leaving swathes of niches emptied of life that the survivors could evolve to exploit.

The most recent Conjunction of Spheres on the Continent is supposed to have thrown everyone living on the planet at the time into chaos and darkness; it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the interpenetration of multiple spheres caused mass extinction of species living in the pre-Conjunction environment, similar to Chicxulub or the GOE!

But Socks, you might say, evolution works on a massive timescale! It took millions of years to fill the niches left open by Chicxulub, but it’s only been 1200 years since the Conjunction of Spheres! And you are absolutely right*, but the Conjunction of Spheres canonically came pre-loaded with new species. We actually have no proof that any of the animals we see originated on the Continent: if humans are a post-Conjunction phenomenon, why not also dogs? Why not bears? Who’s to say any of those were actually there before-hand? (The elves, I guess, but as they have not, actually, said so, there’s no proof!!)

* FTR, 1200 years is a shockingly short period of time to go from cataclysm that plunged the world into darkness and chaos to functioning medieval-era society considering how long it actually took humanity to build 13 century Europe (horses had been domesticated for at least 3000 years by that time), even if we’re not assuming that most of the ecosystem was destroyed, so, my timeline concerns here are minimal, lmfao. TIMELINE WHAT TIMELINE.

…and actually now that I think about it the three options for the origin of dogs are a) elves or dwarves domesticated them, b) humans brought dogs with them during the Conjunction, or c) dogs have existed for less than 1200 years, and I refuse to accept that dogs are practically a new invention in the witcherverse, wtf.

Anyways: we really have no idea which species are truly “native” to the Continent, or what the physical environment was like prior to the Conjunction. While monsters are not native to the Continent, monsters are also not invasive—there cannot be decline of pre-Conjunction biodiversity or harm to the pre-Conjunction ecosystem because there is no pre-Conjunction ecosystem anymore.

should monsters be hunted to extinction?

So, the thing is, I think we should try to eradicate invasive species from non-native ranges if we can; the biggest problem with that is feasibility, not morality. It’s much more difficult than one might think to eradicate an invasive species once it’s established, and we have to be very careful that the methods we choose don’t have other impacts, but invasive species are a huge threat to the biodiversity of Earth! If monsters are invasive species, then the answer is yes, they should be eradicated from the places they are not native to.

(Notably, on Earth this kind of eradication is not the same thing as extinction; it would be a local extinction, or extirpation, where the species is totally wiped out in the places it invaded but still exists in its native range. This does get way more complicated if the invasive is already extinct in its native range.)

However, I have just outlined a possibility that would make it plausible for monsters not to be invasive species. Let me also outline why I prefer this interpretation. Here is a book conversation between the sorcerer Dorregaray of Vole and Geralt:

“Our world is in equilibrium. The annihilation, the killing, of any creatures that inhabit this world upsets that equilibrium. And a lack of equilibrium brings closer extinction; extinction and the end of the world as we know it. … Every species has its own natural enemies, every one is the natural enemy of other species. That also includes humans. The extermination of the natural enemies of humans, which you dedicate yourself to, and which one can begin to observe, threatens the degeneration of the race.”

“Do you know what, sorcerer?” Geralt said, annoyed. “One day, take yourself to a mother whose child has been devoured by a basilisk, and tell her she ought to be glad, because thanks to that the human race has escaped degeneration. See what she says to you.”

–The Bounds of Reason, ch. 6

This is a, uh, incredibly unsubtle reference to a debate that has been ongoing for decades; Geralt’s stance here is one of the key arguments in opposition to wolf and bear reintroduction. What do we do about large predators that may pose a threat to humans? How do we balance preservation of the ecosystem with the safety of people who have to coexist with these predators?

I can’t fully agree with Geralt, because large predators are integral to the ecosystem, which I value for its own sake and because humans depend on healthy ecosystems. But I can’t fully agree with Dorregaray either, because Geralt is right: human life is valuable and worthy of protecting. This is an issue that India has been running into in the past ten years; as their tiger conservation efforts yield fruit, people become more likely to encounter tigers, and thus more likely to have a bad encounter with a tiger. It’s become a political struggle as rural people who have to actually live with the possibility of a tiger attack come into conflict with urban conservationists who just really want to preserve tigers (& in some incidents, some of those conservationists have been Western, which is a whole additional level of fuckery). The fact is, there isn’t a good answer to this yet! We certainly should not drive tigers, wolves, or any other large predator to extinction, but we also have to figure out a way to keep people safe. It’s something humanity still has to wrestle with.

Under this framing, which CDPR reinforced when they chose to have the Count di Salvaress defend Iocaste as an endangered species while making significant provisions to minimize the damage she could do to human life, there’s far too much baggage attached for me to say yes, monsters should be hunted into extinction. If you’re going to make monsters analogous to wolves, of course I do not think we should get rid of monsters entirely!

And frankly, Geralt doesn’t think so either, despite his hardline stance about monsters that eat humans. Sapkowski isn’t exactly an anti-conservationist; though Dorregaray is shown as out of touch in this passage, at another point the narrative sides with him calling Philippa out on exterminating a species of ermine for her fur collar, and it’s consistently put forth that Geralt’s best quality is that he doesn’t want to perform violence for the sake of it or destroy things without cause, and one of the representations of that is that he refuses to kill endangered species even at cost to himself:

“What should I say about you, who rejects a lucrative proposition every other day? You won’t kill hirikkas, because they’re an endangered species, or mecopterans, because they’re harmless, or night spirits, because they’re sweet, or dragons, because your code forbids it.”

–Eternal Flame, ch. 2

If monsters and other post-Conjunction creatures are invasive species, the nuance in this conversation is flattened, and Geralt’s refusal to kill mecopterans and hirikkas becomes a flaw rather than a virtue. Boring! I also think that one of the strongest themes in the witcherverse is the idea of all monsters being human ills; wraiths are manifestations of hatred, necrophages multiply because of human bloodshed, cursed ones are created out of malice, mages like Alzur and Idarran of Ulivo go out of their way to straight-up create monsters from scratch*, etc. Iocaste attacks humans and takes livestock because the traditional prey of the silver basilisk, roe deer, has been extirpated by human destruction of their habitat. The aeschna in Blood of Elves attacks humans because humans have altered and polluted the flow of the Pontar, hunting the aeschna’s previous food (seals) to extinction. The true monster is the actions of humans. Monsters that appeared unbidden from another dimension into a previously functional ecosystem to invade and cause problems undermines this theme; monsters that are integrated into the ecosystem and subject to the same social and ecological forces as other animals supports it.

* Idarran’s “idr” monsters from Season of Storms absolutely should be eradicated. Did the world not have enough man-eating arthropods, Idarran? Did you really have to mutate horrible new ones and release them in populated areas?? Mages are a scourge, lmfao

Additionally, one of the biggest reasons I felt like I couldn’t actually apply invasion ecology to monsters was that, whether you accept my Conjunction theory as sufficient biological justification for this or not, monsters just don’t really behave like invasive species. It’s hard to explain this because the setting is pretty brief about its ecological details, but aside from the fact that the narrative frames them like just part of the ecosystem of the world, there are never any details like “that type of flower doesn’t exist anymore because giant centipede tunneling destroyed the soil they needed to grow in.” When monsters are the aggressors, their victims are always humans, not the environment or other animals, and again monsters are themselves often treated as victims of human actions.

So I say monsters aren’t invasive species!

Which means that monsters are, regardless of their strange origins, now a part of the Continent’s ecosystem just as much as bears and wolves.

So let’s talk monster ecology.

what do monsters contribute to the ecosystem, if anything?

So, the phrase “contributing to the ecosystem” is actually super loaded, and I want to unpack that before we go anywhere else. Ecosystems are made up of organisms, and organisms interact with and impact ecosystems, but they don’t necessarily contribute to ecosystems! The implication of “contribute” is that it is possible for an organism to not contribute, and it follows from there that some organisms are not useful. This is functionally nonsensical, and also dangerous.

Conservationists talk a lot about “intrinsic value,” which in this context is the idea that we should want to keep species around just because their existence is valuable! Biodiversity is intrinsically valuable. This is important, firstly because I do believe that all species are intrinsically valuable, but also: ecosystems are so enormously complicated that we do not know the full extent of any species or individual organism’s impact, and we can’t predict what the consequences of removing any given species might be. Treating all species as intrinsically valuable is hedging our bets. All organisms affect the ecosystem, because it’s impossible for them not to, and while some species definitely have outsize impact, none of them are “not contributing,” and frankly even if some of them weren’t, it would be the absolute height of human arrogance for us to decide we could tell which ones were useless when we barely even know what most species eat. Mosquitoes are the base of the entire goddamn food chain, and you still get assholes claiming they don’t “contribute anything.” Of course, most people don’t really mean all of these implications when they use the phrase, but I don’t find it useful to talk about what species “contribute,” and avoid using that language if I can!

What I assume you mean by “what do monsters contribute” is a combination of “what roles might monsters play in the ecosystem” and “are monsters actively harmful to the ecosystem, i.e. do they cause loss of biodiversity?”

And this is difficult to answer! As I’ve said, I don’t think monsters are invasive species, and thus don’t harm the ecosystem, though we know that monsters can be harmful to humans. However, when it comes to the role they do play in the ecosystem, there isn’t enough in canon for me to do more than wildly speculate! Also, there are so so many of them, and the role of a hirikka is going to be wildly different from that of a draconid.

Just offhandedly, most of the big predatory monsters can be assumed to fill the same roles as Earth’s big predators, one of the big ones being overpopulation of prey species, which has ramifications throughout the ecosystem. Some of them are canonically ecosystem engineers, or animals that physically alter their environment (think beavers); for instance, shaelmaar and nekker tunneling. Additionally, the big insectoid colonies can’t be relying solely on naturally-occurring caves for their homes; they’ve gotta be constructing some stuff themselves. These tunnels can be repurposed as habitat for other organisms, from giant centipedes to sewant mushrooms. Necrophages, like corpse-eaters in our world, likely limit the spread of diseases from decomposing flesh (and really wouldn’t be as much of an issue if everyone would stop, you know, doing war and mass murder, lmfao). Arachasae use tree trunks and organic plant material to conceal themselves, which is likely contributing to plant reproduction in a few different ways—but the arachasae decorating essay is a different topic that I swear I will finish one day oh my god—

…anyways, feel free to ask about any specific monsters or niches if you’re curious, but if I tried to go into detail with every single potential niche/ecosystem service all of the monsters we know of might fill, we would be here all day!

Let’s talk about a couple specific things you brought up in your second ask.

> theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans

I mean…maybe! That is, yeah, they’ve definitely settled into niches by now, but feeding is way more complicated and interesting than that.

For instance: orcas can eat basically whatever the fuck they want—orcas are fully capable of bringing down everything from fish to seals to gray whales to great white sharks. But they don’t. In the Pacific Northwest, the resident orca pods almost exclusively eat salmon, while the transient pods largely feed on seals. Orcas are kind of an extreme example, but this is something called resource partitioning and it’s a big part of how animals limit competition with one another and what enables lots of predators to coexist in one place!

We see a big fuck-off dragon thing and we assume that it’ll eat anything it can fit in its mouth, and definitely some predators work like that. But just because an animal is technically capable of eating something and deriving nutrition from it doesn’t mean that it will. Silver basilisks made roe deer the staple of their diet before the destruction of beech forests meant they had to turn to humans—which is a pretty specific dietary restriction when there should be multiple species of deer running around, not to mention everything else a draconid could be killing! And given how many types of draconid there are…I have to assume there’s some kind of resource partitioning going on to prevent them all from conflicting with each other! For instance, if basilisks prefer roe deer, maybe forktails prefer wild goats, while wyverns are mostly kleptoparasitic (stealing other predators’ kills).

And of course, not all monsters eat humans at all; harpies steal from and attack humans, so they’re a dangerous nuisance, but they don’t seem to eat them. And in the books Geralt mentions plenty of monsters which are totally harmless.

So yes, there are lots of things monsters could be eating, but it would strongly depend, and there’s a lot of interesting places one can take monster diets! Netflix decided their strigas only eat specific organs, leaving the rest of the body untouche, & I love that for her. More monsters that need a particular kind of nutrition that leads them to take only specific body parts from some kills!

> because theyve got no natural predators aside from each other and arent hunted by anything but witchers, monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ?

Absolutely—invasive species whose populations rapidly increase once they’re away from their natural predators cause the decline of native species, often by eating natives directly or competing with natives for resources. And in fact, even native species who become overpopulated can seriously damage the ecosystem (see: white-tailed deer in the United States, whose overpopulation has such negative ecological effects that some people argue we should classify them as invasive, even though they have definitely been here this whole time).

However, even if we grant that monsters are invasive, it’s a little more complicated than that for a few reasons!

Despite the apparent preponderance of them in the witcher games, most monsters are supposed to be strongly on the decline, like witchers themselves. Geralt’s profession is falling out of necessity; human development of the Continent is going to be the biggest suppressing factor in monster populations in the future. Monster overpopulation is just canonically not a problem in this universe! But even in the scenario where the Inevitable March Of Civilization isn’t threatening monster populations, there are a lot of factors that could and would limit monster populations.

(TL;DR for this next part: yeah I definitely think they’ve figured out their own little circle of life—the term you’re looking for is ecosystem equilibrium, btw!—& I’m going to take the next 1.2k to talk about how.)

For starters, predation is only one among many limiting factors that affect populations & prevent them from ballooning out of control:

food availability: If there’s not enough food, there’s not enough food! It also matters how adaptable the animal’s diet is—silver basilisks moved from deer to humans, but if the eucalyptus went extinct koalas would not switch to eating cycads.

illness and parasites: Some people argue these are more important than direct predation for limiting populations, and I am often inclined to agree. Basically, if a population becomes very dense, illness and parasites spread more quickly, creating a natural limiter on how many animals can live in any one place. The greater susceptibility of some individuals to illness or parasites also winnows down populations. Non-native species often escape a good portion of their native diseases by moving to a new range—however, given how fast bacteria and viruses evolve, 1,200 years is a pretty decent amount of time for new diseases to arise. Also, just going to drop a link to my treatise on monster parasites here. It’s gross, mind the warning at the start of the post.

mate availability: If only a certain percentage of the population is actually able to reproduce, that’ll eventually bring the total number down. RIP Iocaste’s boyfriend 😔

territory/shelter availability: Animals need a certain amount of space and certain types of spaces to survive, and space isn’t infinite! It again depends on how adaptable an animal is; rats find ways to thrive nearly everywhere, but pandas can only live where there’s bamboo. If there’s not enough space to hide from predators, reproduce safely, store food, and avoid adverse weather, the population again limits itself naturally.

natural disasters: Wildfires, drought, flooding, tsunamis, storms, etc. pick off significant portions of wildlife populations. Disasters are sporadic rather than directly linked to population like most of the other factors but these periodic blows to population and the other impacts of fire or flooding are often integral to the ecosystem (see especially: fire regimes and fire ecology.)

Now let’s talk predation & monsters! (Genuinely, I think predation is one of the most interesting things in ecology; people tend to simplify it down to things eat other things, which—yeah, but there’s so much more going on there!)

First, I wouldn’t underestimate the effects of monsters eating other monsters! Even if it’s rare for a draconid to snatch up a nekker and carry it off, the threat of a draconid doing so can have dramatic impacts; researchers found that just playing the sound of dog barks on a beach stopped raccoons from foraging for crabs for over a month after the barking stopped, leading to an increase in crab populations, even though no raccoons ever encountered a dog. This is called the ecosystem of fear (which as a term is metal as hell) and it theorizes that just the fear of predators can lead to chronic stress for prey animals, decreasing reproduction and making them more susceptible to disease. Maybe draconids in Toussaint eat only a few dozen nekkers a year, but that might cause thousands of nekkers to have fewer offspring or fall to disease. When it comes to ecosystems the direct effect is usually only a small part of the story!

Second, when we talk about a species not having natural predators, we’re usually talking about an animal that would have a predator back in its home range—lionfish, for instance, have plenty of predators in their natural range (the Indo-Pacific), but no natural predators in their invasive range (the Caribbean), so invasive lionfish, suddenly freed of a limiting factor, can run amok. However, a great white shark has, aside from orcas (who do not actually eat white sharks, they’re just assholes sometimes) and occasionally other white sharks, more or less no natural predators anywhere once it reaches maturity, and that’s fine! Lack of predation of great white sharks did not cause their populations to explode and consume the ocean. White sharks are limited by other factors.

So: it is possible that wherever draconids originated (and it’s entirely possible that “draconids” came from multiple different places, tbh) there was something bigger that preyed on them, but it’s not unreasonable to assume they were also apex predators in their previous dimension (I mean…look at them), and that adult draconids were never really preyed on by anything else! It isn’t necessarily an issue for there not to be predators of certain monsters on the Continent.

(Though, of course, we also shouldn’t forget that most apex predators are prey when they’re young—baby white sharks are snack-sized for a lot of fishes, and bear cubs and wolf pups are similarly vulnerable. Based on the size of the eggs you see in TW3 draconid nests, a basilisk is hatched around the size of a little dog, which is the perfect size for small, ballsy predators such as wolverines to sneak into a nest and snap them up—predators such as more wolverines or raptors like eagles and hawks might also come directly for the eggs.)

When it comes to smaller monsters such as nekkers, who likely weren’t apex predators in their original dimensions and would thus be subject to that lack of natural predators—there are usually specific reasons why prey species manage to avoid predation in their introduced range. Lionfish confound Caribbean predators because lionfish are covered with huge poisonous spines that Caribbean predators don’t know how to deal with.

Drowners, on the other hand, are basically just man-shaped fish; they don’t have any adaptations or defenses that would really stump a bear or a wolf. Again, bigger monsters are still probably checking the populations of smaller monsters no matter what, but there’s really no reason a bear couldn’t figure out how to eat a drowner! Unless a monster has a unique defense (e.g. scurver spines), is actively distasteful to eat (rotfiends, probably), or is just difficult to take down (nekkers in packs), most of the non-monster predators* on the Continent will have incorporated various monsters into their diet by now, or suppressed monster populations indirectly with the threat of predation or by competing with them for food. It has been over a thousand years, which is nothing evolutionarily but is still a decent period of time for mammals, who pass hunting techniques down to their babies, to figure out how to eat ghouls—especially if we’re considering that the Continent’s mammals may also be a result of the Conjunction and would thus have to have been just as adaptable as the monsters to establish themselves. And I’ve also actually talked before about how wolves specifically might be preying on necrophages!

* For reference, the non-monster predators are, considering the Continent is more or less Europe, most likely lynxes, brown bears/polar bears (in Skellige), wolverines, foxes, badgers, and a variety of large birds of prey.

So—yes, if monsters were truly overpopulating, then that would damage the ecosystem. However, canon tells us they are definitely not doing that, and there are also many factors that would prevent that from happening!

(Though I will say that some of the reasons white-tailed deer are overpopulated are that we got rid of cougars and wolves and human development creates a lot of extra habitat of the type that deer like. Given that we know many of draconids are for sure in significant danger of going extinct, and the trajectory that Europe’s wolf and bear populations followed in real life, it is possible that the Continent will have to contend with an overpopulation of some of the smaller monsters at some point as they continue to try to eradicate the larger predators, both monster and non-monsters—you think the drowner problem is bad now, wait until the bears are gone and city development has tripled the number of sewers. Yet another of those humans-make-monster-problems-worse things I am fond of in the Witcherverse!)

…whew. that was a lot of words. In conclusion: ecology is really cool & there’s a bunch of ways monsters can fit into it!!

[notajinn]

Top 9 Games Played in 2020: Number 1: Bug Fables

Rising from the ashes of the once-great Paper Mario series comes a game I never expected.

A beautiful little game called Bug Fables.

Where It Excels

Bug Fables is thoroughly inspired by the first two Paper Mario games, and it shows. It uses a similar battle system, a Medal system similar to Badges, and even similar paper-like aesthetics. It would be easy to just say "wow, what a ripoff" and brush it aside.

But this is not a copy-paste of Paper Mario. This is clearly designed with love for those games, and for the people who enjoyed them. This is a game that says "yes Paper Mario was good, but how could it be improved?"

So let's talk about what it does differently (and arguably better) instead.

The story does not have the history of the Mario series to build on, so Bug Fables relies on having to be an interesting self-contained world. It does a good job providing lore as you move forward through the early story, and you can find optional Lore Books that give background into things like why some bugs evolved into intelligent beings, and the past conflicts between different groups. As someone who does not like most bugs in-person, they did a good job getting me invested. The tone is often lighthearted, but able to become serious when needed. The world feels more grounded than Mario, so there's a greater sense of danger during darker plot points.

I loved all three main characters (Kabbu the Beetle, Vi the Bee, and Leif the Moth) by the end, though some take longer to become interesting than others. Each of them feels well fleshed out, and get at least one important backstory sidequest.

And while it initially appears to follow the Paper Mario structure of "find the special items in episodic adventures, then go fight the final boss", it actually feels more like a traditional RPG because the story evolves over time.

In battle, you have three full party members. Each of them have their own HP and specials, and can equip individual Medals. You can change the formation of battle to decide who is in the front (more damage but more aggro) or back (less aggro but normal damage). Importantly you can also pass a turn to another party member, which depending on the enemies and formations may be your best option. For example if you have a bunch of flying enemies, you can just pass an extra turn to Vi so she can continue grounding them. There are certain enemy types that can only be reached by certain character's regular attacks, but you can often use a Special to overcome a lack of reach at the cost of SP. There are even combination attacks that take multiple characters' turns in order to deliver especially devastating specials.Each attack and special also have a unique action command that lets you make them better with good button inputs.

Medals are your equipment replacement, and can give you new active or passive abilities, or just raise your stats. However unlike Paper Mario, most the especially powerful Medals (like boosting your attack) are offset with a weakness (lowering your defense). This means you need more strategy than "I'll just equip this attack-boosting Medal." I'd argue there's less active ability Medals in Bug Fables than Paper Mario, but the greater strategy to the passive abilities makes up for it. There’s even strange setups like giving yourself poison but having +1 defense.

There are two EXTREMELY important Medals that Bug Fables copies from Paper Mario, but in a better way. One immediately defeats weak enemies on the field when you touch them. The other prevents enemies from getting a first strike on you. And Bug Fables gives you both of these extremely early with low MP cost. These make backtracking significantly less frustrating. The backtracking was one of the worse parts of the Paper Mario games, so I appreciate this. You also still get a fast movement option after a few chapters.

Quests are very well organized. You'll find a quest board in every town, and can take as many quests at once as you want. There's a quest log in your menu to keep track of them, and it updates as you go through steps of multi-step ones. And often a quest-important NPC will have an exclamation over their head to make them easier to spot. A lot of them have fun interactions and situations, so they’re definitely worth doing. Only one is a particularly long fetch quest with item trading, but it feels like a purposeful parody.

A lot of strengths in this game come from convenience. For example, you can fast travel between towns almost as soon as you unlock a new town. And you have two-item cooking unlocked from very early-game. These were things that felt unnecessarily gated in Paper Mario. Every party member can also scan the enemy to get stats and provide some information, whereas Paper Mario restricted it to one partner. As a bonus, this means you get three unique pieces of dialogue for every enemy depending on who you have initiate the scan.

Dungeons and their puzzles feel much more involved. There is less emphasis on platforming, and more on using your characters abilities like creating ice blocks. It's a step closer to a Zelda dungeon, which is appreciated. Save stones are well-paced enough to not make exploring feel to daunting either.

In terms of design and sound, it's strong for an indie title. They can't quite compare to a big publisher like Nintendo, but the world and characters look pretty good. And there's at least a few songs I still have stuck in my head.

The game also feels much harder than Paper Mario, which is good because I felt those games were too easy. It can be rough early on when you're learning, but fun once you get the hang of it. The game never gets to a point where you just steamroll everything either, so you'll have to continue paying attention for the whole game. I know some people like to overpower enemies, but I think that gets boring.

Where It Falls Short

While I don't like steamrolling enemies, I do like a sense of progression. And Bug Fables has that in many forms, like levels, and field abilities.

But at no point in the story do your standard attacks do more damage. Paper Mario would give you upgraded boots and hammers and you progress for more damage, but you'll keep hitting for your normal 2 damage here outside of Medals or an optional expensive upgrade. I know that in-universe it may have been weird to explain why Kabbu's horn is suddenly stronger, but they managed to give reasons for Vi not to fly despite being a bee for a long time.

There's also a dungeon puzzle near the end of the game that I found annoying. The solution to one section was actually to defeat a particular enemy. Given I was avoiding enemies at this point looking for a puzzle solution, this took longer than I'd like to admit.

You can also optionally get a fourth sort-of-party member, which I only learned about by accident when looking up Medal strategies. However it is not from an official sidequest that appears on the board, and I honestly missed any hints towards it. I was expecting them to show up in the late-game, but as I was getting ready for the final chapter I still didn't have them. Only when I specifically looked up what to do was I able to find them. I don't mind optional party members, but you need a little more guidance than what Bug Fables provided.

My final complaint may be strange, but...the game does not have a cliffhanger ending. It's a self-contained story that resolves everything important. Which means I don't think they can easily get another game out of this. But I'd love to see another similar game by this team.

Maybe if they do a time-skip and follow a different set of characters, it could potentially work.

Final Thoughts

Bug Fables is yet another indie title that proves you don't need to be a big studio to make an incredible game.

If you like classic Paper Mario, or just fun RPGs, I highly recommend giving it a shot.

[slusheeduck]

Binding Resolution

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5]

Chapter 6

              The dungeon is more of a storage room than a dungeon, but everything is significantly less rusted and dilapidated than when you were in there before. The suits of armor seem to silently discuss which of you goes where, unbothered by your or the Prince’s struggles. Eventually, they split up. You’re chucked into the cell, and as you skid onto the floor, you hear the heavy sound of chains and a lock.

              “Release me! Take these off! You’re part of MY house, you stupid tin cans!”

              The suits of armor don’t reply, and you hear metal footsteps go back up the stairs.

              “No, NO! Come back!” The Prince’s voice becomes steadily more frantic. “Let me go! I’ll fix things! Vanessa! VANESSA!”

              You pick yourself up finally, taking a moment to check between two kegs for the shortcut you’d found last time. But the wall’s still in one piece, and you figure it’s going to take a few hundred years of water damage before that passage will show up. For a moment, you simply lean against the wall. You’ve dealt with a lot up to this point—more than probably any of your friends from back home have—but seeing the entirety of Subcon frozen just…

              You really miss home.

             You look up as you hear the clanging of metal hitting the floor, and you run over to the cell wall. From the back corner, you can see the Prince; he’s flailing hard against the manacles that hold him, trying to push against the walls and twist his way out of them. But with the cuffs so high up on his arms and holding him off the ground, it looks like he’s more likely to dislocate his shoulders than anything else. His crown had hit the ground, apparently, and you watch silently as the contract from inside his coat follows. After a bit more struggling, he finally lets himself fall back, head hitting the wall as he lets out a sound somewhere between a sob and a frustrated yell.

              “Stupid, stupid, STUPID!” The words echo against the stone walls. “I should never…what was the point? I try to help you—” He punctuates the word by twisting around to glare at you. “—and all it does is make Vanessa mad at me. And then I try to make it up to her, and she becomes…whatever she is now. I spend my whole life trying to do right by Subcon, only for it to…” He chokes before he can finish the sentence, then shakes his head. “I am through helping anyone! If I survive this, I’m not putting my neck out for a single person ever again!”

              The room grows darker, and in the shadows, you swear you can see something edging toward the Prince’s feet. You know what’s about to happen, and you swallow hard.

Then, very softly, you say, “Sorry.”

              The Prince looks up at you, surprised, and the room gets a little less dark. He sighs, going limp.

              “No, no. You shouldn’t be sorry, kid. You never should’ve been caught up in this.” His head falls back, and he lets out a humorless chuckle. “I really should’ve gotten a jump on that renovation, huh?”

              You lean your forehead against the bars for a moment, then walk over to the opposite corner of your cage and pull out your umbrella. The crown is too far to reach, but you just might be able to get the contract and keep a hold of it. You know it won’t change things, but considering how much the Prince wanted it, you feel like it’s at least something nice you can do before the end.

              You try once, but the angle’s wrong. You try again, and you’re so close. Your arm’s just a little too short, but maybe if you push just a little harder.

              “Leave it, kid.” You can’t see the Prince from this angle, but you can still feel just how sad he is by his voice alone. “It can’t do any good now.”

              You move back to your original corner, looking at him curiously as you point at it, and he shakes his head.

              “It’s a prenup. That’s…it’s a thing people can get before they get married, that spells out who owns what and how things get divvied up after a death or divorce.” He bites his lip. “I love…loved…Vanessa, but she was never going to care about my forest. She hardly even cared about her domain, and once we were married, it’d just be one more area that’d be ignored. So I thought, if I could get her to sign this, I’d be able to keep control over it.” He sighs, going limp in the manacles. “But it’s a moot point now. All because I bought some stupid flowers.” He makes a noise that’s a very sad excuse for a laugh. “I guess I should’ve paid attention when you were bothering me. Now we’re both screwed.” He goes silent for a moment, brow furrowing, then looks up at you. “You…you knew, didn’t you? About the flowers?”

              There’s no point in lying now, so you silently nod.

              “But…how? I mean,  you just showed up here and…” He shakes his head. “Actually, no. No, I don’t want to know. I don’t know how long we’ll be down here, and I’ve read enough to know that that kind of information makes you go crazy. I don’t need that on top of everything else.”

              You figure that’s fair, and you sit down with a sigh. For a moment, the two of you are quiet.

              “Actually, no, it’s gonna bother me too much not to know. Tell me.”

              You look up at him, then scratch your head. You’re not sure how much he knows about Time Pieces, and explaining the whole thing of how future him was going to trick you into contracts, steal your soul, and attempt to murder you before you contractually obligate him into a very one-sided friendship was…probably not going to go well.

              But you still have the storybook, at least. So you dig into your backpack, and a pang goes through you as you see the second Time Piece still sitting there. You could just use it now. Go forward again, and if you clean up the Time Rifts, maybe he won’t remember this. Things will just progress as they did before, but without your crippling failure coloring the scene. Or maybe you could go back and try again…

              But what if you fail again, and make things even worse?

              “Kid? You okay?”

              This is awful. You should have just gone back right away. Because it’s not enough that you failed, but in a way, you were part of this whole thing. You helped turn Vanessa into what she is. You were part of the reason Subcon Forest was frozen. And ultimately, you’re now part of the reason why the Prince becomes Snatcher.

              You rub your eyes, then push the Time Piece aside to pull out the storybook. It won’t help. It might make things worse. But…if you’ve already caused all of this trouble, you might as well let the Prince know what he’s in for. So you take a breath, then scoot over as close as you can to him. You stick the storybook outside of the bars of your cage, then flip through the pages.

              The Prince is silent as you go through the pages, and he stays silent as you close the book and put it back in your backpack.

              “That’s how it ends?” he finally asks. “I just get left down here until…until I’m consumed by darkness or whatever?”

              You nod sadly. The prince stares at you, then sighs and lets his head fall forward. You sigh as well, leaning against the cage. What a horrible ending this is.

              But then you hear something strange. The Prince starts to laugh—really laugh, not anything like the pained chuckles from a few minutes ago. It grows louder and louder, echoing off the stone walls of the basement, and it starts to sound less like the laugh that accompanies a joke and more like a laugh that’s followed by “FOOOOOOOL!!”

              You hop up to your feet, gripping the bars of your cage as the laughing continues, until finally the Prince lets his head fall forward, still chuckling and wearing a smile that is not the least bit reassuring.

              “Well, then,” he says in a low voice that sounds all too familiar, “why put off the inevitable?”

              The shadows that have been lurking by the Prince’s feet spring up, covering every inch of space in the dungeon. You scramble back, trying to avoid them, but you can’t keep your eyes off the Prince. He stays very still as the darkness wraps around him like a cocoon—climbing up and leaving every bit of him shrouded in shadow except for his dark eyes. They fix on you for one moment, then they close. When they open again, all that’s left are two bright yellow lights, followed by a big yellow grin that splits across his face.

              Finally, you force yourself to shut your eyes and back up against the wall. You know this isn’t something you want to see, and you cover your eyes until you hear the manacles clang against the wall. Finally, you peek your eyes open as you hear another laugh.

              And Snatcher grins back at you.

              “Thanks for the inspiration, kiddo. Sounds like you saved me a lot of time,” he says, making his way in front of your cage. His mouth can’t quite stay put, but you notice the grin growing wider. “In fact, I think I owe you some kind of reward for that.”

It’s been a while since you’ve actually been scared of him, but you feel just as nervous as you did when you first ran across him in Subcon Forest. You run to the door of your cell and try to open it, but unsurprisingly, it’s locked. You move back to the center of the room, watching as Snatcher looks over at the contract still on the floor. It floats up and opens, and the words on the page shift and spin. When it stops, you’re looking at a very, very familiar looking contact.

              “Here’s the deal, kid. I said I wanted you to stay, and now here’s your chance!”

              You hesitate, then walk over to look at the contract though the bars.

              Your eternal servitude and residence in Subcon Forest in exchange for getting out of here.

              He hasn’t figured out the soul thing yet, but that’s the least of your worries. You look up at him and shake your head right as you hear a horrible scratching noise from upstairs. You turn to look at the basement door, and your heart races as you see the doorknob start to freeze.

              “It’s your choice, but I’d take it if I were you,” Snatcher says with a dark chuckle. “I know Vanessa better than anyone, and she’s furious with you. And when she’s furious, we both know that bad things happen. So you really ought to sign.”

              You back away, looking up as you hear the door creak open.

              “Better hurry, kiddo!”

              “My prince…”

              There doesn’t seem to be a way out. Except that there is, and now you realize you probably should have taken it sooner. You dig into your backpack and pull out the Time Piece.

              “Is that…you’ve had a Time Piece this whole time?” Snatcher’s smile drops, and he throws himself toward the cage bars, reaching through. “Give it to me!”

              You shake your head. He hasn’t figured out he can go through objects yet, apparently.

              “You don’t know what that can do, kid! Give it here, I can fix things!’ The desperation in Snatcher’s voice catches you off-guard, and you hesitate just one moment too long.

              “What are you doing, my prince?”

              The door opens, and Vanessa’s red eyes flash from the doorway just as Snatcher pushes himself through the bars and lunges at you. You’re out of time.

              So you throw the Time Piece down, and you hope for the best.

~

              “I’m not giving you anything else, kid. Get lost.”

              You’re still shaking from a moment ago, but you’re in a warmly lit hollow tree, staring at a bookshelf. You don’t move a muscle, still catching your breath. It worked. It worked better than it should have, actually, and you’re not sure how you ended up here instead of the basement, but you’ve never cared less about anything in your entire life.

              “Legally, I’m not able to kill you right now. But you really should know that I’ve mentally killed you at least eight times in this visit alone.”

              Your head starts to spin, and you feel woozy. A time jump is still a time jump, after all, and that was a very big jump forward. You should probably lay down, so you do—face first onto the floor.

              “Wait, did it work? And here I thought all those books on the power of positive thinking were a load of crock!”

              You stay put on the floor, keeping your eyes shut. You got out safe, but just hearing Snatcher is enough to remind you of how much you messed up. All that work, and things are still the same.

              You’re not a crier, as a general rule, but you can feel a big sob threatening to come out. But you swallow it down. Crying doesn’t help, and you still have a lot of clean up to do. And a long way to go before you get back home. You push yourself up, rub your eyes, and take a deep breath before heading out of the house.

              “Hey, kid.”

              You stop, swallowing hard, then turn back to look back. Snatcher’s gaze is still fixed on his book, but it doesn’t look like he’s reading. Finally, he looks up at you.

              “Those Time Pieces you’re looking for, a lot of people are trying to get them from you for a chance to fix their lives, right?”

              You nod.

              “Thought so.” He closes his book. “Look, I’ve been around a lot longer that most of those dummies you’ve run into, and I know I’ve done a lot more reading.” He lets out a sigh that sounds somewhere between disappointed and irritated. “You can’t change the past with ‘em. No matter how hard you try, whatever happens is always going to happen.”

              You wait for him to say something else, but he just opens his book again. You sigh, then turn and make your way out.

              “So don’t beat yourself up over it, okay, kiddo?”

              You stop in place as, for one moment, you hear the Prince. You turn back around, but Snatcher is still reading. After a minute, he looks up at you.

              “Weren’t you leaving?” he asks snidely. “Unless you’re planning on dying like a nice kid would, I want you out of my forest.”

              You smile a bit despite yourself, then nod and, for once, leave the forest when he asks. You’ll be back, obviously; there’s a lot of clean up to do to scrub your meddling out of this story. But, for a little bit, you figure it’s okay to keep a friend, even if he’s left in a past you can’t change.  

~

(And then you do Death Wish mode and hate him again.)

Thanks so much for reading! This has been probably the fastest I've ever written a multi-chapter fic, and I'm glad you've joined me for it! Askbox is always open for headcanons and recs and such, but for now I CAN REST.

[houseofzoey]

Characters

Zoey To no one’s surprise, Zoey didn’t do much in this book. And that should be justifiable! She just learned that her mom died, right on the heels of Jack’s death and the complicated separation into a second House of Night. Zoey taking a more passive role in this book should feel natural and be easily sympathized with.

But, like with Awakened, Zoey has always been a very passive character, so this doesn’t feel earned or even different from usual. She complains about and resents her responsibilities just as much as she always has – I’m not even sure I can honestly say she cries more, because she does a lot of that in past books, too. As cold as it sounds, grief comes across as another excuse for Zoey to sulk and moan and refuse to address her problems until they become unavoidable.

And boy did she avoid problems in this book! Or, rather, she avoided easy solutions and obvious paths forward. Nyx sends her a vision of her mother’s spirit entering the Otherworld? Zoey doesn’t contact her Grandma or say much of anything to anyone about it. Zoey sees Stark seemingly possessed via the seer stone, including a moment where it looks like he might attack her? Nope! Not gonna talk about it, try to make sense of it, or make any effort at intervention and preventing future incidents. Zoey knows Aurox is old magic, a servant of Neferet, and generally feels super weird around him? Well, better not look through the seer stone to find out what exactly he is because that sounds stressful and scary!

This is bad enough on its own, but this sort of inaction is supported (even mandated) by other characters. Lenobia, for example, fully supports Zoey choosing not to look through the seer stone at Aurox, and dismisses what Zoey saw with Stark as some sort of residual affect of being in the Otherworld. There’s no push for Zoey to investigate or even really worry about these things – that’s inconvenient and uncomfortable for Zoey, and therefore it’s unfair and unreasonable to expect her to actually do anything.

None of this is meant to be a flaw on Zoey’s part, nor does she ever face real consequences for this sort of inaction or apathy. Zoey failing to accomplish anything isn’t a matter of character development; it’s a plotting technique. The author didn’t want the mystery of Aurox to be resolved until the climax, so Zoey refuses to look at him through the seer stone. But it doesn’t matter if these writing decisions were plot-driven or character-driven – the end result reflects on the character, and it reflects poorly. Which is stupid, because all the author had to do was come up with an actual reason for Zoey not to use the seer stone (maybe every time she has used it has backfired or hurt her in some way), or outside interference that prevents her from using it or prevents it from working when directed at Aurox.

Stevie Rae For the last several books, the central conflict of Stevie Rae’s arc has been her and Rephaim’s relationship, because they’re meant to be enemies and had to keep their relationship secret. Now that Rephaim has been gifted with a human body from Nyx and they no longer have to hide their relationship, her personal conflict is… still centered on Rephaim.

This doesn’t even accomplish anything or create an avenue of growth for her, either. Stevie Rae’s conflict is being sad about Rephaim turning into a bird right before she goes to bed, and being frustrated that he wants to have a real relationship with his father. Both these points become overdone very quickly, and are resolved with no real affect on Stevie Rae’s character. She just sorta… decides not to be upset about Rephaim transforming anymore, and all their arguing about Kalona is for naught because – surprise! – Kalona was a good father deep down this whole time. (We’ll get to that.)

One could argue that these two character conflicts center on Stevie Rae’s protectiveness of Rephaim and fear of losing him now that he’s finally hers. Which… okay. There isn’t much build-up or background for this to make sense with, but it’s not an inherently illogical concern for her to struggle with. The problem is that she 1000% contradicts this when it makes the least sense. Aphrodite has a vision foretelling Rephaim’s death, knows the exact setting and situation in which it will happen, and Stevie Rae steadfastly refuses to listen to this warning and insists that Rephaim still has to accompany them to the ritual out of completely baseless paranoia that he’ll get hurt if he’s left alone in the tunnels.

So far, in this girl-power, matriarchal, feminist fantasy series, two of the most important female leads have absolutely no agency on the plot, and one of them has all her conflict centered around the problems of her boyfriend.

The Twins Actual separate arcs! Sort of.

Shaunee apparently has a tumultuous relationship with her parents, especially her father – but we literally have no hint of this in previous books. She talks about her parents uncritically, including reference to them visiting her, and had no qualms about calling people out for being messed up by bad relationships with their parents (especially Aphrodite).

Erin is suffering the early stages of complete and utter character sabotage. She’s shown as cold, shallow, and unfeeling, but has never (intentionally) been written with these traits previously. She was written with the same traits as Shaunee, who is portrayed in an extremely positive light.

Erin, or course, doesn’t understand Shaunee’s sympathy toward Rephaim and his conflict with his father, and had no idea about Shaunee’s similar familial problems. This creates a rift between them, which could have been interest, but the conflict is given way more weight than it warrants, especially because the Twins have barely been present in the last several books. It just becomes too drawn out and melodramatic, which results in it having no actual emotional impact.

Also, it ends up pointless, at least to the overarching plot of this book. Their falling out has no impact on the reveal ritual or any other aspect of the climax.

Damien Damien still doesn’t have any real role in the plot, personal arc, or any sense of agency within the story. For this book, he was sort of a parallel for Zoey’s grief (though obviously Zoey’s grief was much more profound than his, because she’s Zoey and that’s how the world works). I mean, honestly, it felt like that was his whole purpose – to be tragic.

This series has certainly delved into the trope of Gay Tragedy before – Damien has a terrible relationship with his parents, he was bullied, the last book had a Bury Your Gays subplot, etc. – but it feels extra emphasized now. Previously, Damien was at least allowed to be fabulous and sassy and fashion-savvy about half the time he was being stereotyped, but now the majority of the focus on his sexuality is on how tragic it is that Jack died. It functions as an extension of the Bury Your Gays trope, and it just makes the whole situation worse.

That’s not to say that we aren’t still treated to other gay stereotypes, of course. Damien is, as always, called Queen, and Jack is in the gay section of the Otherworld doing arts and crafts and watching Project Runway. But Jack dying created a void in the series’ staple stereotypes. Rather than let that be, the author decided to fill in the gaps – by having Damien suddenly take on Jack’s traits, such as carrying a “manpurse”, even though that was never part of his character previously All this tells me is that P.C. Cast sees her gay characters as monolithic and interchangeable, which is not a good look for anyone.

Stark Remember the previous book, when Stark’s one point of growth was about embracing his affinity and not letting his fear of his Dark side hold him back from his Goddess-given gift? Well, forget all that! There is one single instance where Stark has his bow at the ready, but he doesn’t actually fire it once in this entire book – not even during the climax, when Aurox shows up in bull form and tries to kill Rephaim. In fact, based on descriptions of that scene, Stark doesn’t even have his bow with him! No, instead he’s using a sword, which he is significantly less skilled with and – oh yeah – cannot instakill someone at range with.

But, as with Zoey and her refusal to use the seer stone, this isn’t meant to be a reflection of Stark’s character or personal conflicts or anything of that sort. It’s just the author finding excuses to prevent quick and simple solutions to the problems she has laid out in the book. It doesn’t matter that this completely contradicts Stark’s growth in the previous book because this isn’t supposed to have anything to do with Stark; he’s collateral damage to the needs of the plot.

He does have another subplot, though, which was introduced in the previous book. Kalona is still using the sliver of soul he gave to Stark to enter into his dreams and manipulate him. He mostly uses this connection to spy on Stark’s dreams and vicariously have sex with Zoey. This is built up as something very dangerous, considering the first scene in the book is Zoey seeing a shadow overtake Stark’s form and make him summon his sword. If Kalona can do that to Stark, then that spells huge trouble for our heroes – especially Zoey, who shares a bed with him and is therefore close to him when he is most vulnerable to being controlled.

But this subplot is just… dropped. Nothing comes of it. Not even the tension and unease it creates between him and Zoey amounts to anything. They have a couple spats, he feels tired and grumpy for a while, and then it’s over with no real consequence.

Rephaim In talking about Stevie Rae, I already talked about Rephaim’s core conflict: wanting his father’s love. It gets repetitive extremely fast, isn’t handled in a very interesting or thoughtful manner, and ultimately ends with this weird feeling that abuse should be forgiven as long as the parent tells their child they love them.

We also get to see Rephaim navigating life as a human for the first time, which is… entirely squandered. We get no culture shock, not displays of oddities or misunderstandings, no struggle with arbitrary rules of the classroom when he attends school for the first time, etc. No, Rephaim adapts flawlessly. The conflict for this portion of the story instead comes from ~*bullying*~. And by bullying, I mean Dallas being mad at Rephaim for winning Stevie Rae’s heart and the two of them fighting over her, because this plotline has not been done to death in this series and is a great girl power message.

Kalona I already explained the pointlessness of his soul-connection to Stark and how unceremoniously that subplot is dropped without consequence, so I won’t get into that too much here.

What’s more important for this book is Kalona’s relationship with Rephaim. Or, more importantly, how much he misses having Rephaim at his side and wishes for him to return. This is framed as nefarious. But Kalona doesn’t actually do anything bad or cruel to this end. He has Nisroc and Maion politely speak with Rephaim and ask him to be a spy, he mopes constantly, and he borrows a cell phone from Shaunee so he can call his son. He even agrees to a truce with Zoey to help her take down Neferet!

None of this feels villainous, but the book also isn’t doing enough work to make him truly sympathetic. For one thing, the whole point of his “redemptive” moment at the end of Awakened was that he gave Rephaim the freedom to make his own choices and pursue his own path. The importance of this moment and its push toward his ultimate redemption is shown by him shedding a single white feather. But if Kalona immediately goes back on his word the next day and starts trying to pressure Rephaim into returning to his side, then what was the point of that? He’s just completely counteracted the small amount of growth he showed in the previous book.

But wait! There’s more! In my final thoughts for Awakened, I also talked about how that scene didn’t even make sense as a redemptive moment because Kalona’s role as a villain was never about him being a bad father; it was about the atrocities he committed against the Cherokee. Well, this book continues that! His big moments at the end are a) him not hitting Nisroc and thanking him for his support and loyalty, and b) apologizing to Rephaim, asserting that he will always be his son, and crying over his body. But having his role as a father be the locus of his change toward good completely dismisses all that he did to the Cherokee, effectively rendering their deaths and suffering unimportant. You can’t make up for crimes against humanity by telling your son you love him.

He also declares himself the new Sword Master of the school and swears a Warrior’s Oath to Thanatos for… some reason. Becoming Sword Master is one thing – he was a Warrior to Nyx and is skilled enough in combat that it’s not unreasonable to say he could pass those skills on to students – but why swear an Oath? Dragon didn’t do that with Neferet, so why should Kalona do that for Thanatos? He barely even knows her and this is not a casual or reversible bond to form.

Aphrodite As with the previous book, Aphrodite doesn’t offer anything to the story except abrasiveness and bigotry. The casual homophobia is there, as always, but now we have the added bonus of ableist ranting! Better yet, it’s clearly done vicariously for the author, given how closely it parallels a similar rant the author posted on her blog months before this book came out.

I mean, I guess she technically also contributes to the plot through her vision, but… Well, no, she doesn’t. She has a vision, everyone makes a big deal about it, and then it’s promptly ignored. The message of the vision was clear: Rephaim should not go to the reveal ritual at Grandma’s farm. But no one heeds this warning, so Rephaim still goes with them. The vision could have been completely omitted and nothing would have changed. Which just makes Aphrodite worse than useless in this book.

Erik There’s literally no reason for Erik to be in this book, and certainly no reason for him to have an entire chapter from his perspective. He Marks a fledgling and she’s red instead of blue. That’s it. That’s all he offers. As soon as that’s done, he vanishes from the book.

And it’s not like Shaylin ends up being super important to the book, either! She’s built up as significant, what with her affinity for True Sight and Kramisha’s latest poem mentioning True Sight, but that turned out to be a very nonsensical misdirect. All Shaylin actually does is state blatantly obvious things about people by reading their auras. She doesn’t even participate in the reveal ritual, despite the poem implying that she’ll be important!

But Shaylin is still a very special character. She was blind, giving us about 2.5 minutes of disability rep before being magically cured when she’s Marked. And of course she’s grateful and this is the greatest thing ever and she never wants to go back to being blind because everyone knows living with a disability must mean abject misery, even though she’s been blind most of her life and should have found it extremely disorienting and disconcerting to suddenly be able to see again. There’s some lip service paid to the idea that Neferet is cruel for saying Shaylin was Marked red because she was “broken” as a human, but it doesn’t really land because the way this whole subplot is constructed seems to agree with her. Shaylin’s blindness isn’t just something that made her different – it’s a hardship that vampyrism freed her from. The fact that there isn’t a convincing alternative explanation (“Erik said the words wrong” doesn’t make any sense) only makes it more believable that, in the logic of this series, Shaylin was broken due to her blindness and her being Marked red is a consequence of that brokenness.

Neferet I consistently wonder if the author ever had a clear idea of what she wanted for Neferet. Obviously she planned for Neferet to be the villain, but to what end? What are Neferet’s goals? What does her ideal future look like? What motivates her? You can have a simplistic or clichéd villain and still tell a good story, but neither of those terms exactly describe Neferet because I don’t know what she’s trying to accomplish or why.

Now, this book does declare her evil plot: to create such chaos and disruption that Nyx herself must intervene, thereby defying her golden rule of free will and non-interference, which will lay the ground work for Neferet to oust Nyx and become a goddess in her own right. But this just doesn’t work. For one thing, where was this desire for chaos in previous books? Even as recently as Tempted, Neferet sought the most ordered possible avenue for power – the High Council. She was using official channels to achieve official power, and she was already calling herself Nyx Incarnate in the process. Then she wanted to start a war with humans as means of destroying the High Council, which would create a power vacuum for her to fill so she could start a war with humans. This didn’t make any sense, because the author didn’t think it through or, like, say it out loud in plain terms, but it was an idea that still clearly involved using power structures to her advantage. Now she just… wants to create general confusion and unrest.

And it’s not even like she creates chaos effectively. Like, I could buy the argument that war is a form of chaos and that pursuing chaos in its own right is a natural extension of that idea, but that’s not even remotely close to what Neferet tries to do in this book. Her idea of chaos is bringing human staff into the House of Night to cause confusion and unrest, and inviting the rogue red fledglings back to classes so they can butt heads with Zoey and co. That’s not chaos; that’s being a mild annoyance!

Neferet is supposed to be intelligent and calculating, but this comes across less and less as the series goes on, and the subplot with Aurox is a prime example of that. She was told in plain terms that Aurox would be flawed because she failed to provide the appropriate sacrifice for his creation. So when Aurox starts to show shortcomings (such as feeling emotions or saving Zoey from a falling branch), Neferet should logically conclude that this is a result of the flaw in his design, right? NOPE! She either ignores it entirely or assumes it’s part of a clever scheme the white bull concocted to help her.

Then there’s the fact that she’s just a really ineffective antagonist, which is only made worse by her reliance on Darkness. Succumbing to the temptation of the power of Darkness was supposed to make her stronger, more formidable, but through most of this book Neferet was consistently unable to do what she wanted because Darkness refused to obey without an appropriate sacrifice. And I mean, like, Darkness refused to do very simple acts, often in contradiction with past events in the series. Neferet can’t request that a branch fall from a tree and crush Zoey because Zoey is a High Priestess and requires an equally powerful sacrifice to kill – even though Neferet killed Shekinah, the High Priestess of High Priestesses, with absolutely no issue. It’s hard to feel intimidated or tense about a villain who just can’t do anything because of the restrictive nature of her powers, especially when you contrast it with the seemingly limitless nature of the heroes’ powers.

Nyx

Why continue giving Zoey visions when she consistently dismisses them/assumes they’re just a weird dream? Would it not be more effective to appear before Zoey in a vision or a dream and just directly, plainly tell her what’s going on? I’ve harped on the ineffectiveness of vague visions and messages before, but it’s especially egregious in Zoey’s case because she so consistently ignores them. Plus, Nyx has appeared and spoken directly to Zoey before, so it’s not like there’s no precedent.

Why trap Zoey and her friends in the circle after they had completed the reveal ritual? Why require a death sacrifice for that ritual? How does this make Nyx any different from the white bull, who also requires death sacrifices for rituals but is upfront about it and won’t allow the ritual to be completed or power to be granted before the sacrifice is made?

If Nyx was trying to tell Zoey she should use the seer stone in the poem Kramisha wrote, why did she reference True Sight? A Seer Stone and True Sight are completely separate things.

Nyx speaks directly through Aphrodite at the ritual when Aurox is attacking Rephaim, but she doesn’t actually help. She just warns them not to break the circle. Why does Nyx have to be the one to intervene and say that – everyone else present, especially Zoey and Thanatos, should know that leaving the circle will ruin everything they’ve done thus far and prevent the reveal ritual from being completed. If Nyx was there to help them, why not grant them some insight or ability to stop Aurox, or at least help him revert to his natural form? Or, better yet, why not make it so they can at least call on their affinities from within the circle to fight Aurox and protect Rephaim?

Nyx thinks religious headscarves are so inherently oppressive that she would use them as punishment by having a sexist, abusive man reincarnate into the body of a Muslim woman. But she lets Rephaim have a human body after years of rape and murder because he loves his girlfriend and said he would be a good boy now. This is completely contradictory, not to mention Islamophobia.

Just like Nyx gives feminine affinities to gay men, she has a whole section of the Otherworld dedicated to being Gay Stereotype Heaven, apparently.

Nyx will show up to forgive Rephaim, but she won’t publicly denounce Neferet, nor will she appear to declare that Neferet is lying when she claims that Aurox is a gift from the Goddess.

[scripttorture]

Ok so I have a character that I want to be captured and held for several months for experimentation. She’s never awake for the experiments but when she is awake she’s chained to the ground by her wrists and blindfolded. She’s also an amputee from both of her mid-calves down on her legs and her prosthetic legs have been taken away so basically all she can do is sit down and lay down. If she was able to stand the chains would be just about long enough for her to stand up straight 1/?

I understand that her recovery would be a very long and difficult process, her shoulders would probably be ruined, her legs would be incredibly weak, and she would probably be bruised all over since she doesn’t have any cushioning under her. But my main problem is that I’m not sure what psychological effects she would experience. Every so often someone will come and speak to her but mostly just to agitate her. I plan on her being far more impulsive and easy to anger after she escaped 2/3But I don’t really know what else she would experience in changes of behaviour. Also wouldn’t the lack of light hitting her eyes for so long also mess up her vision?

-

I will give a more thorough answer because I don’t know how to be brief but there are several masterposts that I think could help you.

 I have two posts on medical testing. This one covers the basics of how medicines are tested. This one covers unethical experimentation.

 If you haven’t already I recommend reading the second one for the discussion of the differences between unethical experimentation and pseudo-scientific torture. From your description this scenario could be either.

 I’d caution against showing torture as reasoned, controlled or directed by logic. Because it isn’t.

 I talk about the long term effects of torture on survivors (and torturers) here. I have a post on the effects of solitary confinement here and I highly recommend Shalev’s sourcebook which is linked as one of the sources at the bottom.

 I don’t know whether a total lack of light would have long term effects on her vision.

 One of the possible physical effects of solitary confinement is worse vision. It’s suggested (though not to my knowledge proven) that this could be due to poor cell conditions and living in low light for prolonged periods.

 However, low light is different to total darkness. I know of at least one historical case where a prisoner was kept in total darkness for months and reported no vision problems afterwards.

 One case does not constitute proof and a lack of reporting does not necessarily mean a lack of symptoms. You might get a better answer from an optician. Once again, I’m not a medical doctor of any kind. And I’d rather be clear about what I don’t know.

 Which I think brings us to the main part of the question: the physical effects the character is likely to suffer from and long term psychological effects of torture and solitary confinement.

 Let’s start off with the physical.

 You haven’t said whether the character’s hands are cuffed behind her or in front of her. I’d suggest in front because that would give her a greater range of movement, allowing her to feed herself and reducing the chance of uh- essentially sudden death.

 Because the character’s movement is already significantly reduced by taking her prosthetics away. Having enough mobility to be able to shuffle and crawl would help prevent some of her muscle mass dying off. This in turn reduces the chance of kidney failure.

 Being able to feed herself more easily reduces the chance of death by starvation, dehydration of malnutrition. She’s imprisoned long enough for this to a be a real concern and generally guards are unlikely to take the time to hand feed every prisoner three times a day.

 Your instincts about the character’s long term injuries are generally pretty good, but depending on the type of cuffs used, the weight of the chains and how she’s handled by guards I think nerve damage at the wrists could be more likely then long term shoulder injuries.

 Essentially there are major nerves close to the skin in the wrists that are vulnerable. Thin cuffs, cuffs that are capable of tightening (ratcheting cuffs) and heavy cuffs/chains are all going to put more pressure on the wrists. Which over those months is going to cause irreparable damage to the nerves resulting in less mobility in the hands.

 Long term loss of fine motor control. Struggling with things like turning the pages of a book or doing up buttons.

 Now if that’s not what you’re going for the easiest solution is to describe the cuffs as wide (perhaps as much as a third of the forearm), made of lighter softer material such as leather and closed in a manner that will not tighten further, such as a buckle.

 None of this would necessarily cause shoulder damage. The pressure, the weight, is unlikely to be resting there for long periods of time and the character would have enough mobility to relieve that.

 Chronic pain in the shoulders (and knees) is certainly possible. But it doesn’t necessarily mean there’d be mobility issues or easily identifiable damage.

 If on the other hand you want the character to have long term damage the shoulders there’s an easy way to do that in this scenario. How are the guards transporting her? Dragging her, with a grip on the arm below the cuffs, would cause bruising and put a lot more pressure on her shoulders. Done repeatedly over time I think that could cause damage to the muscles and ligaments of the shoulder.

 As a final not if you haven’t already I’d suggest looking up the ulcers amputees can get on and around their stumps.

 I think that covers the physical effects, let’s move on to the long term psychological symptoms survivors experience. :)

 We don’t have a way to predict who gets which particular symptoms. We know which symptoms are possible but we don’t really understand why some survivors experience some symptoms and not others. We just know that most people don’t experience every possible symptom and what is broadly possible.

 So my general advice is to approach picking symptoms like an author. Think about what adds the most to your character and story.

 Think about which options can have an interesting impact on the plot, create interesting problems for the character or show the audience something about the character.

 What you’ve got so far is a good starting point. But it is a starting point, it’s one symptom when I think the character is much more likely to have something in the range of 4-6.

 That’s a slightly higher range then I quote on the Common Effects of Torture masterpost because the character is also in solitary confinement, which would make the symptoms of torture worse.

 What you’re describing sounds like the mood swings that are a common symptom in solitary survivors. Like I said, that is a good place to start.

 Given the restraint torture being used, the lack of appropriate bedding and the fact she’s a double amputee I think chronic pain is also incredibly likely. It can also fit very well with severe mood swings in a narrative. It can provide ‘reasons’ for shifts that seem really sudden to other characters making the mood swings seem more understandable and relatable to readers.

 Memory problems are incredibly common in survivors but are rarely portrayed well in fiction. Depending on the kind of story you want to tell memory problems could be a good fit.

 Based on what you’ve said I don’t think memory loss would be a good fit with this story. I think it would be hard to detect and have very little impact on the character and plot.

 Forgetfulness might be a good fit, but given the extent of the impact it can have on a survivor’s life it might effect what the character is capable of later in the story. And it might do it in ways you don’t want.

 Intrusive memories and inaccurate memories could both fit very well with this story. Intrusive memories particularly could be linked to the character’s mood swings and (if you use it) chronic pain.

 Again, this could be used to help the audience understand the character’s anger and her mood swings. It could really help put them in her shoes.

 Hypervigilance, anxiety, social isolation and long term personality change would all fit quite well.

 The solitary confinement masterpost has information that also applies to social isolation.

 Long term personality change isn’t very easy to strictly define. It varies widely between individuals. From a writing perspective I think the main thing is trying to balance showing a radical change in the character with making that change understandable to the reader.

 I think you could do that here, especially when you’re using anger and mood swings as your groundwork.

 The NHS website has a pretty good introduction to anxiety disorders here. It also briefly discusses hypervigilance (which it terms hyperarousal) as one of the symptoms of PTSD.

 Both can include physical symptoms like chest pain, heart palpitations and dizziness.

 Wrapping this up, remember that my symptom suggestions are just that: suggestions. If you see something on the symptom list that seems like a better fit for your story or character then use that. You know the story better then I do, you know what fits.

 I hope that helps. :)

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🍍🍎🍇🍐 (murder-popsicle)

@murder-popsicle​

🍍  :    how comfortable is my muse in their body?  how do they feel about their height,  weight,  strength,  and body type?  how important is being attractive to them?

As far as height, weight, muscle mass, and general appearance, Pietro likes his body. He knows he looks good and likes that fact, heh. At least... on a superficial and immediately noticeable level. If one looks deeper, they’ll see literal scars that bother him a great deal. He has a number of scars on his back from punishments he received while at the Hydra lab, and his right hand is scarred from having a pocket knife forced through it when he was around fourteen while trying to steal food, and from the I.V. port Hydra put into the back of it. He’s ashamed of these scars because he thinks they make him look damaged, and if he looks damaged, then he must be damaged. In an AU after he survives the events of Ultron, add ten or eleven bullet wounds into the mix, one of which went right through that same, already damaged hand. Now he’s got scars on his legs, arms, chest... everywhere. It’s... a blow to his ego, certainly. Pietro doesn’t want to look weak, damaged, compromised, etc. Nor does he want to be ugly. He’s an extrovert who loves attention, but the kind of stares and attention he gets from people looking at his scars makes him want to hide. Pietro thrives on attention, so anything that makes him want to hide himself is something that’s going to really bother him.

🍎  :    how stable is my muse’s mental health?  have they been diagnosed with any mental illnesses and  /  or conditions?  do they have any undiagnosed mental illnesses and  /  or conditions?  do they or should they attend therapy?

Hmm... define “stable,” heh. He isn’t prone to nervous breakdowns, losing his mind, becoming delusional, or anything like that... like Wanda is. Wanda is prone to a lot of instability and volatility in her mental state. Pietro... is very stable with the proper support. As long as he has his sister, who is his world, and a support system of people who care about him, his parents or other Avengers or whoever, he’ll be okay. But in an AU where he loses Wanda, or in any AU in which he’s left alone to deal with his own emotional trauma, he falls into depression and suicidal thoughts very easily. So I would say he’s overall not totally stable, but it’s a different kind of instability than his sister’s. Wanda’s I would call volatile, while Pietro’s I would call fragile.

He’s never been formally diagnosed with any mental illnesses, but that’s because Pietro had never really seen any licensed doctors. Early on in his life, his parents took care of him and Wanda with a lot of holistic remedies for things, and mental health was dealt with as a whole rather than trying to tease apart things that might be wrong individually. He does have ADHD, PTSD (from his parents’ deaths, being trapped in rubble, the experiments, and being shot by Ultron), insomnia (partially due to his PTSD but also just because his metabolism is so high powered that it’s hard for him to keep a consistent sleep schedule), fear of abandonment (after his parents’ deaths and being rejected by several foster homes), and emotional co-dependency (on Wanda), but none of these things have ever been diagnosed by a psychologist, so he’s never had any therapy or counseling for them other than what Wanda provides.

🍇  :    how would my muse describe their childhood?  how much has it impacted the person they are now,  or will become as an adult?  around what age did they or will they start to mature,  and why?  do they wish to go back to their days as a child,  or have they embraced adulthood?

Pietro liked his childhood, so he’d say it was really great, but Wanda being assaulted was the one event that marred it significantly. It made him feel like a terrible brother who had let her down, and so that was the root of him being overprotective of her. Also, seeing the way she was treated after and how people with her abilities were treated, it made him want to shield her from anything like that in the future. And that whole mindset really shaped his life right up until his death in Ultron. He lived his life for Wanda 90% of the time, because he loved her more than anyone in the world and that’s what good brothers do. I think Pietro was still very immature right up until Ultron, but I feel like there’s immense potential for him to mature a lot in AUs where he survives. I think forgiving the Avengers (and at least learning to work alongside Tony) would be a major growth point and would help him let go of some of the anger from his past. Seeing Wanda train and go on mission by herself would also teach him that she can protect herself and that it’s okay if he’s not with her all the time. I think he would mature more and start living more of his life for himself if he saw that, but really... there would always be that part of him that would live for Wanda, no matter what.

🍐  :    how intelligent is my muse overall?  are they smarter than the average person,  or less than?  are they primarily self-taught,  or did they acquire most of their knowledge in school?  are they more street smart or book smart?

Pietro is actually very intelligent. He’s not quite as intelligent as Wanda, but he is above average. What holds him back is his ADHD which makes certain topics and skills difficult for him to learn, and his own pride, which tells him that if he can’t earn something as fast as Wanda or he can’t read something fast enough or he can’t focus long enough to learn something, then he must be dumb as a post. So it’s as much a mental block as it is an actual roadblock for him to overcome. Because of this, sitting down with books or listening to people lecture is never going to be the way that Pietro learns the best.

The twins never formally went to public school. They were taught by their parents, and really had an off-the-grid, heavily weighted towards survival and living with nature sort of life rather than being schoolchildren. So they learned much more by experience, getting out into the forest and learning about herbs, how to hunt, which mushrooms are edible, that sort of thing. It was a lot more experience-based, instinctual, and situational learning than just memorization and recall. Pietro learned incredibly well when he’s interested or when it involves a skill he’ll actually use, because then he forgets that he’s learning something and instead feels just like he’s living life. So hands-on, experience-based learning and being self-taught at many things through trial and error is how he learns best, so he is infinitely more street smart than book smart. Wanda is the exact opposite, heh. She learns well either way, but if Pietro is there to try something first, then she’ll hang back and watch him fail five times and learn the right way to do it, haha. Pietro rather, just gets out there and tries it until something clicks, heh.

[yogaposesfortwo]

Digital Detox? Nah. How to Cultivate Digital Wellbeing

When Jess Davis and I were first scheduled to chat, I didn’t get an answer. I knew that she was planning to spend the day in the woods, and figured it was a reception issue. It’s an appropriate issue for Jess to have—as the founder of Folk Rebellion, a media and lifestyle brand advocating for offline living—a lack of cell reception kind of comes with the territory. When I spoke with her a few days later, she gushed about her experience in a Getaway cabin, a new-ish company founded to help city folks develop a personal relationship with the great outdoors. Jess had been running around for the previous couple of weeks, stressed and overworked, and had gotten sick. Jess’s friend and founder of Getaway insisted she come and stay in a cabin, completely off-grid. Unplugging for a few days was just what the doctor ordered—though it came as no surprise to Jess. A former award-winning brand strategist who thrived for 10 years in a fast-paced, tech-heavy world, Jess had a reckoning that while she’d helped to create a world that was digitally connected, the flip side was a sincere disconnection from the actual, tangible world. She founded Folk Rebellion to help others like her develop a sense of digital wellness and a healthy relationship with their devices. WTF is Digital Wellbeing? “Five years ago, digital detoxing was a way to start the conversation,” says Jess, but notes that an absolute approach may not be the healthiest way to go about digital wellness today. The digital revolution isn’t comparable to something like cigarettes, for example, when it comes to being healthy. “Technology is an amazing tool when used appropriately. For me, it’s digital wellbeing,” she says. “The same way you have wellbeing with nutrition and with exercise, I think that the next form of wellbeing is being digitally well. You can’t rush to yoga, have your juice, take your supplements, and be well if you don’t have a healthy relationship with your technology and your devices,” she says. Jess likens the evolution of digital wellness to the seatbelt revolution in the 1980s. Cars were, point blank, unsafe—and auto manufacturers were reluctant to spend the money to revamp their factories. Ralph Nader led the charge to change mindsets: It wasn’t cars that were dangerous, it was the cars without safety precautions. He successfully lobbied for seat belts, airbags, and stop signs. “I’m not saying that the tech is bad and we need to go without it completely,” says Jess, “but if we don’t start adding some stop signs, seat belts, and some age restrictions, there are going to be some negative things that happen.”

The Dangers of Digital Overdose Going through the windshield of a car is a significantly more dramatic deterrent, however, than the threat of a sore thumb. Consequences of digital overuse are much more nuanced, and complicated by the fact that digital dependency is, point blank, a revenue model. The more time we spend online—and the more information we share—the more money companies make. “When you think of addiction you think of drugs,” says Jess. “You think of all of these terrible things that you think, ‘Oh, no. Not me.’ When you find out that people are sitting alone and they can’t get off of their phones for like 13 hours a day or a video game, this is addiction.” Jess should know. Before she left her previous life, she absolutely considered her own dependency an addiction. “The experiences that I had and what’s now being documented is a general sense of dissociation from reality,” she says. “A malaise, a feeling of un-wellness 24/7. Inability to focus, memory loss—which was my number one ailment—which now they call digital dementia. It’s terrifying, but it’s literally called that,” she says. If we don’t start adding some stop signs, seat belts, and some age restrictions, there are going to be some negative things that happen. Overuse can result in myriad consequences. We’re physically rewiring our brains to consume and retain shorter and shorter content, which shortens our attention spans. This can in turn inhibit our ability to be creative and to follow-through with complex tasks. Additionally, there is no shortage of evidence that boredom—space previously unfilled by mindlessly scrolling—spurs innovation. But it’s more than that. “One of the things that they’re finding is the scariest thing to me is that children who studied with an iPad or used and iPad as a learning device from birth till they entered kindergarten versus children who did not,” says Jess. She understands that these can be great learning tools, but when comparing the socialization of these kids, children who used the device were 35 percent less empathetic than the ones who didn’t have it when they entered kindergarten. “What does society look like 35 percent less empathetic?” asks Jess. There’s also the issue of increasing narcissism, which leads to increased rates of depression and isolation. The long-lasting effects of heavy social media use have yet to be determined, but again, there’s no shortage of anecdotal evidence that the negative effects of overuse are damaging at the very least. And Jess suspects that there are potential negative effects on physical health as well—she thinks there could be a correlation between the cortisol released when our phones ding, and increasing stress levels that lead to autoimmune disease. “That’s my hunch, anyway,” she says. Corporate Responsibility Just as the doctor who created Frankenstein was ultimately horrified with his invention, Jess says that many of the bigwigs who helped to create Silicon Valley are aware of its dark side. One group, the Center for Humane Technology (the guy who invented the “Like” button and an original founder of Twitter among its founders) is one organization looking to pull back the reins on the creations they put into the world. What does society look like 35 percent less empathetic? “They’ll go to Google, they’ll go to Apple, and they’ll say: ‘This is how you need to start thinking about making things’,” says Jess. “On the other end of the spectrum is me, and organizations like Folk Rebellion. What we’re really trying to do is to educate the consumer.” Jess says the approach to curbing digital addiction should be three-pronged: Organizations funded by the government (ie: education in public schools), corporations, and personal choices. “I think it really starts on a small scale,” she says. “Homes, small businesses, neighborhoods, families, schools—things like that.” Advice for Kicking Your Addiction The first time Jess purposefully went without her phone for a three-day weekend, she says she was forced to face just how dependent she had become. “I’m an introvert at heart,” she says. “What happened was I kept touching my back pocket when I was being introduced to somebody, and I then had this gross realization that I’m cutting off conversations of people I have just met because I’m uncomfortable and I have this sort of get-out-of-jail-free card in my back pocket,” she says. The first step Jess recommends to digitally detox is to truly get rid of everything. Keep a pen and paper handy, and jot it down every time you think of your phone, touch your pocket, or feel uncomfortable without it. “Then you start to understand your triggers,” says Jess. “Once you have that, you go back to the real world and you have to start to set these boundaries in balance.” Jess only checks her email Monday through Friday, at specified times. She keeps her cell number private. She gave herself the rule that she no longer scrolls while in motion—that includes the subway, while walking, or in a car. “It’s just creating space,” says Jess. “If you can slice off and put these little hatch lines throughout your day of space that you can expand that doesn’t have the digital or the tech in it, that’s where you’re starting to create that better balance of it.” The other thing she’s done is to reintroduce tangible mediums where possible. “I use tech all day—I’m a creator on the computer,” she says, “and so when I don’t have to be working, I go back to the forms that I used to love before these devices kind of consumed everything. I have magazine subscriptions. I actually carry physical books.” Despite that they’re heavier, for Jess, it’s a relationship worth the weight. Bottom line? Technology isn’t the enemy—it can be a powerful tool to connect, which can enhance your relationships and make life easier. Allowing the digitized world to make life too easy, however, is the trap. As yogis know, balance is the key. Author: Lisette Cheresson Source: https://wanderlust.com/journal/digital-detox-uk/ Discover more info about Yoga Poses for Two People here: Yoga Poses for Two Read the full article

[keeroo92]

Savior, Bloodstain, Hellfire, Shadow Ch 6

May 28th, 12:36 am

V

V wakes up with a start, his awareness returning to him instantly. His eyes shoot open to see a faded blue wall and horribly patterned carpet. He doesn’t see you and panics; the last thing he remembers is being dropped by Griffon and sending the bird to get you.

 How did I get here? Did Griffon reach Y/N?

He turns around and the tension leaves his body as he spots you lying on the floor on his other side. You look like you’ve been through hell, fingertips and forearms bloody, dirt caked across your body, tracks of tears lining your cheeks.

 Did Y/N… climb the last ten feet?

The second he thinks it he knows it’s the truth. His stomach roils with guilt and shame, knowing you only had to do it because of him, because of his weakness. He had failed you, again. And you had probably saved his life by bringing him inside. He stands up carefully, leaning heavily on his cane, and looks around to see what he can do to help you. There’s a bathroom to his left, a set of double doors in front of him. He steps to the doors, opening one slowly just in case. He doesn’t hear any demons and opens the door further to look beyond it.

Massive shelves span the cavernous room, full to bursting with books of all shapes and sizes. There’s a desk before him on the right and some computers to the side, groupings of comfortable looking leather sitting chairs scattered around, and posters on the walls showing smiling children reading books encouraging them to "Read!".

 I’m in a library.

Even as Vergil, he had loved libraries. He wanted to peruse the shelves, hands practically itching to feel the spines of the volumes of knowledge, but that would have to wait until you were taken care of. He returns to your side, checking on you briefly. You seem to just be sleeping, so he goes into the bathroom and wets some paper towels. He sits by your side and gently wipes away the dirt and blood as best he can.

 Marginally better.

Next, he summons Griffon, the bird appearing in a burst of black shards and immediately yelling at him.

“V! What the fuck, man? One second, I was headed to grab Y/N, the next POOF! What the hell happened? Is Y/N okay?” he bird asks anxiously, clearly concerned about you.

“I think I lost consciousness. Y/N appears to have climbed the last ten feet and carried me here to safety. I don’t know where she found the strength, but she saved my life,” V replies seriously. “She’s over here, and I need your help. Can you lift her legs while I take her arms? I want to bring her inside the library.”

“Yeah, yeah I can do that. Jeez, she really went through the ringer for ya…” Griffon says, making V’s stomach churn again in shame as the demonic bird takes your ankles in his talons. V lifts your torso, hands gripping under your armpits and the pair of them move together to bring you to one of the sitting chairs V had spotted. They settle your sleeping form into the leather chair easily.

“Griffon, can you go look for her bag? I didn’t see it before,” V asks as he takes a seat beside you in an identical chair. It’s so comfortable he gasps slightly, only then realizing the exhaustion tugging at his limbs, begging him to rest. He roughly pushes it away, ignoring it.

“On it, pal!” the bird caws and flies back to the entryway. In the meantime, V uses more paper towels and washes another fraction of the dirt off you, respectfully avoiding any areas he deems inappropriate to touch without your express consent. His heart is choking him as he imagines what you had to do to get here. He starts to shake, hoping you’ll forgive him for failing you.

“…V?” he hears you mumble.

“I’m here, I’m fine,” he responds gently.

“Damn straight you are. You’re welcome, by the way,” you groan back, not bothering to open your eyes.

“I know, and I cannot thank you enough. You saved my life, and thoroughly risked your own to do it.”

“Heh, guess we’re even then. You saved my life the day we met,” you remind him with a rueful chuckle. It does little to assuage his guilt, but he smiles at you anyway.

“Rest, Y/N. It’s my turn to take care of you now,” he murmurs gently and you settle into the chair, easily falling back into slumber. He hears Griffon returning but his eyes don’t leave your face, still wrestling with his inner turmoil as you rest peacefully after your ordeal.

 What if she had fallen? She could have died, took the risk of dying, for me. Why? Why would a person do that?

“Here’s the bag, Shakespeare,” his summoned friend says, interrupting his musings as he drops your bag at V’s feet. He lands on another chair nearby, his demonic gaze watching you rest.

V reaches down to pick up your bag, grunting slightly as his still-sore body complains loudly. Pulling it into his lap, he starts digging through it. Unfamiliar with the items within, it takes him a long time to find what he thinks are bandages. He also pulls out a bottle of water and a few granola bars, setting them on the table next to you for when you next wake up.

He struggles to unwrap the roll of sticky fiber, mind remembering the way you crafted his cane’s sheath with a small smile. Your hands had been so sure, so practiced. He fills his thoughts with memories of you, all the moments of cunning and strength you’ve shared with him in your travels so far.

The look on your face after you’d killed your first demon with nothing but a frying pan. The way you had chosen to stay, even after his warning that you might not survive. How you had trusted him to guide you past the Empusa Queen, steps never faltering as he had signaled you to run. How you had pushed him up that ladder with tickles.

“He sits down with holy fears, and waters the ground with tears: Then humility takes its root, underneath his foot…” he recites thoughtfully.

 Y/N is so much stronger than I will ever have the chance to become. If only I had more time.

He reaches for your arm, about to wrap the sticky bandage over your scraped forearms when Griffon speaks up.

“Uh, V, won’t that stuff hurt?” the bird inquires, stopping his hands as he thinks about it.

“Ah… yes, I suppose it would,” he replies softly.

He sets the bandage down carefully and looks through your bag once more, digging through the tubes of ointment and bottles of fluids to reach a stack of individually wrapped parcels. He reads the label.

“Gauze patch…”

He glances at Griffon and they both shrug. He tears the wrapping off, finding a soft patch of cloth within.

 Much better.

He lays the patch on your scrapes gently, hoping he isn’t making it worse through his clumsy attempts at first aid. He takes up the sticky bandage again and slowly wraps it over the patch, cursing each time it sticks to itself or the patch shifts away from your wound as he pulls the fibers tight. After several minutes, he manages to create a lopsided wrapping, the gauze hopefully still covering the actual wound beneath it. He holds the roll in his hands and tries to tear it by hand to no avail; the fibers are too strong.

“Griffon, if you would…” he says in a resigned tone, and the brazen bird hops over like a crow. He leans close to your poorly wrapped arm and snaps his sharp beak through the bandages.

“You suck at this, V,” he says rudely and V nods, already brutally aware of his shortcomings.

They repeat the entire process on your other scraped forearm, and the second wrapping is slightly less haphazard. Griffon cuts the bandage and V puts the roll to the side.

“I don’t know what else I can do,” he mumbles sadly.

“Then rest, dumbshit,” Griffon tells him, half with caring and half with frustration. V nods, releasing his hold on the beautiful bird, and Griffon dissolves into a cloud of glittering black shards. They rush at him and sink into his skin, marking him with Griffon’s presence. He leans back in the chair beside you with a sigh.

 My failures keep growing. What if I cannot reach Urizen? What if I fail in what matters most?

He falls asleep with that thought into a troubled sleep.

________________

May 28th, 4:27 pm

You awaken slowly, blinking open your crusty eyes with a low moan. You turn your head at the sound of cloth on leather and see V already leaning toward you, a wall made almost entirely of glass behind him letting the sunlight through. A stack of books lies next to him, one in his hands even as his emerald eyes find yours. He smiles at you gently.

“Good afternoon, Y/N. How do you feel?” he asks you kindly.

You take a moment before answering. Assess the damage. Your exhaustion has faded significantly, down to a low current of mild sleepiness. Your limbs are sore all over, muscles not used to climbing screaming at the abuse they endured the night before. Your stomach growls loudly, announcing its emptiness.

You flush slightly as you speak, “Sore and hungry, but better. How about you? You rested at least a little, right?”

You glance meaningfully at the stack of books on the table by his elbow and he has the grace to look embarrassed at your questioning tone. He clears his throat, holding out a granola bar to you. You take it.

“Yes, I rested for a bit. I thought some reading would help rejuvenate my spirit,” he replies.

You raise an eyebrow and unwrap your snack, the first bite of crunchy goodness making your mouth flood. When’s the last time I ate? You can’t remember. You devour the bar in another few bites and accept the water bottle V holds out to you, gulping it down quickly. As you lower the bottle you finally notice the bandages on your forearms, a mediocre but passable effort. You glance at V and he blushes.

“I… dressed your wounds as best I could. I apologize for my clumsy efforts,” he mumbles, looking away from your eyes. You smile, letting out a low chuckle.

“V, why on Earth are you apologizing for taking care of me? Thank you,” you reach out and touch his shoulder as you speak, wanting to feel his skin. His eyes shoot to yours at your touch, holding your gaze as you speak. A smile twitches the corners of his mouth upwards, and he puts his hand atop yours on his shoulder.

“You’re most welcome,” he says softly, emerald gaze seeming to bore into your very soul. The air between you almost crackles with energy.

You look away first, suddenly acutely aware of the dirt and grime covering your body. It looks like V washed some of it off, but he politely didn’t go anywhere near your hips or thighs. You stand, withdrawing your hand from beneath his.

“I’m going to go clean up a bit,” you tell him and walk toward what you think leads to the entryway, easily finding the restrooms near the front door. You duck into the restroom and stare at yourself in the mirror.

Your hair is greasier than you’ve ever seen it, hanging limply around your face. Your shirt, with the bottom inch of its hem missing, is stained brown and red from the dirt and blood covering it. Your bandaged arms aren’t much cleaner. Looking down at your legs, you see more of the same; blood and dirt so thick your skin feels stiff. Your shoes match the rest of you, their previously white fabric now ruined.

The faucet spews water out when you test it and the soap dispensers are full enough. You strip everything off, locking the door almost as an afterthought. You plug the sink and wait for it to fill, adding plenty of soap. You fill a second sink with just water and get started, plunging your filthy clothes into the soapy water and scrubbing at them with what remains of your fingernails until the water turns nearly black. You move your clothes to the other sink, rinsing them as best you can as the first sink drains. You repeat the process a few times, refilling the sinks each time until you’re satisfied.

You wring out your clothing and bring it to the hand dryer mounted on the wall, taking each piece and holding it under the warm jet of air until its dry. It takes quite a long time, especially on your pants and shoes, but eventually you finish.

 Now, for my body.

You fill the sink once again and remove V’s bandages to get the skin underneath scrubbed as well. You take what an old friend would call a “hoe bath”, splashing water against your torso with your hands and scrubbing as best you can. Your arms and legs are easier, able to be brought directly under the running water to scrub and rinse. You pay special attention to your armpits; you sweat through your deodorant ages ago. You use paper towels to dry off and dress, unlocking the door and returning to V feeling like a new person.

He’s still sitting where you left him, reading a think volume that seems to hold yet more poetry. He looks up as you approach, and his eyes widen slightly.

“How on Earth did you manage to get that clean?” he inquires, brow furrowed.

“The bathroom’s got soap, I splashed myself for a while and washed my clothes in the sink.” You tell him, and you glance at his own clothing. The black hides the grime better than your own clothing did but you can tell he’s almost as filthy as you were.

You blush as you continue, “Do you want me to wash your clothes too?”

He turns scarlet, taking a quick glance at the sorry state of his attire.

“I suppose that would be prudent…” he says slowly and you almost laugh at him.

“Alright, come on,” you say, beckoning him to follow you. “But you’re going to help me wash my hair as payment.”

“That seems fair,” he answers you, carefully marking the page he was on and setting the book at the top of the stack. He stands and follows you to the bathrooms.

“Go in there and take off anything you want me to wash. I’ll wait out here and you can hand me your stuff through the door,” you explain, cursing your cheeks for betraying you with a fierce blush.

He blushes too, and you feel a little better knowing he shares your embarrassment as he enters the men’s room. You wait by the door, trying not to imagine him undressing himself and failing spectacularly. You’re trying to imagine what kind of underwear he wears when the door cracks open just enough for a tattooed arm to reach out, holding a stack of fabric. You jump slightly as your inappropriate thoughts are interrupted by the very subject of them.

“Thanks,” you choke out as you take his clothing. His arm retreats without a sound and you stand there for a moment, your brain having to restart itself. You mentally shake yourself and head back into the ladies’ restroom, setting V’s clothes on the counter and filling the sinks yet again. He’s given you his pants and his leather vest, and you immediately picture him waiting in the men's room in nothing but his underwear and sandals and the image both makes you giggle and excites you. You wash the pants easily enough, but the leather makes you pause.

 Doesn’t leather need to be cleaned a certain way? Somehow I doubt commercial hand soap is good for it…

You decide to play it safe and use a wet paper towel to wipe it as clean as you can, not using a drop of soap. A few dry paper towels later and it’s barely damp. You set the vest aside to dry his pants on the vent. Finished, you drain the sinks and bring his clothes to the door of the men’s room and knock, waiting patiently for him to answer the door.

“That was fast,” he says as his arm reaches out blindly. You hook his clothes on his fingers and he withdraws. It takes him a fair amount of time to dress and come out, but when he does he looks almost as clean as the day you met.

 How the hell does his hair stay so damn clean?

Baffled, you set the thought aside for now.

“Shall we wash your hair?” he asks mildly, and you smile, leading him into the ladies’ restroom. He blushes as he enters, as if entering the forbidden area with you embarrasses him.

You stand in front of the sink and bring the water to a comfortable temperature, then lean over carefully until your head is under the flow. V steps forward and starts gently rinsing your hair under the stream, his hands careful. He takes his time and your back starts to ache at leaning like this for so long as he gets a handful of soap, softly massaging it into your scalp. The feeling of his hands rubbing your scalp makes you forget the pain in your back, your mind focusing on the simple pleasure of his touch. He rubs tiny circles on the sides of your head and you let out a low moan of pleasure at the feeling.

His hands falter and you blush heavily, praising your lucky stars that your face is hidden. His fingers start moving again, making smooth strokes and you forget your embarrassment as he begins to rinse the soap away. You see the dirty water swirling at the bottom of the sink and watch it disappear down the drain happily. The suds get fewer and fewer until V pulls away.

“All finished. I’ll get some towels,” he informs you and takes a few steps away. He brings a stack of paper towels over and presses them into your dripping hair, absorbing the worst of the water. You stand up slowly, holding the towels in place, and walk over to the hand dryer. You partially dry your hair, running your fingers through it as you go. Once the dripping stops, you stand up straight again and look at V.

“Thanks for your help,” you warily say, remembering the moan and blushing again.

“It was my pleasure,” he replies with a roguish grin, eyes sparkling in amusement.

You turn your tomato colored face away from him, walking back to where you had last seen your bag. V follows you, taking a seat next to you and resuming his reading. You try to put his presence in the back of your mind, but its difficult. Your eyes are almost drawn to him; he looks so handsome with his nose in a book, brows furrowed and lips parted in concentration, elegant fingers occasionally turning the pages.

Your mind reflects on your interactions and impressions of the man. There’s no denying how physically attracted to him you are, and your deeper connection with the poet has been growing over the last few days considerably. His focus, his determination… the way he almost dances through battles as if there’s no danger of death… you know you never would have been able to get him here without his example. You never would have been able to make that climb for anyone else. The fact that it was him that needed you made all the difference.

 This goes so far beyond the physical now… I think I’m starting to fall for him.

The realization makes your stomach flip, as if merely thinking the words would somehow alert him to the nature of your musings. You glance at him to find he hasn’t moved, still quietly reading the tome in his hands, and your anxiety settles.

It takes you twenty minutes to rewrap your arms, though normally it would only take ten.

You put the bandage roll away and stand. There’s still a little daylight left and you don’t want to waste it.

“Are you ready to go, V?” you ask him.

He almost mournfully closes the book without marking his place, setting it aside to stand. He stretches his long arms and his expression shifts to the focused, determined look he wears most of the time.

“I am,” he replies simply.

The two of you walk out the doors together, both sad to leave the library behind. It had been a nice respite from the chaos, and it felt incredible to be wearing clean clothes again. But as much as you wanted to linger, Urizen was still out there. You take one last look at the shelves of books and turn away, focusing your mind on the task at hand.

Once outside, V flicks his arm to the side and summons Griffon, his tattoos changing from near-black to become almost invisible.

“What’s on the agenda today, folks? More demon murder? More fighting for our lives?” the feathered fiend asks as he appears. He flies a few circles around you and V, stretching his wings happily.

“We need you to scout ahead and check for any demons that are beyond our skills to defeat,” V responds, indicating the direction you intend to travel. Griffon sighs, flaps twice and yells back at the pair of you as he departs.

“If I die it’s all your fault!”

You and V both shake your heads and start walking, following Griffon’s path from ground level. You cross the street and enter a small parking lot, a few lonesome cars still waiting for their drivers to return and claim them. You don’t waste energy talking, focused on traversing as much of the area as you can before what little daylight is left runs out. V seems to be thinking in the same vein, as he doesn’t speak either.

You travel in companionable silence for a short time, crossing the parking lot and walking past a fast food joint before Griffon returns.

“Faithful scout-bird on duty, ready to report!” he calls to you as he lands on V’s outstretched arm. You and V wait for him to continue and he does so almost without skipping a beat.

“It doesn’t look too bad, a couple groups of Caina and Empusa skulking around but no Queens or anything that I can see. Should be a pretty easy run,” he says and starts preening his feathers.

You sigh in relief; you knew another day like yesterday would have been too much to handle.

“Excellent,” V says as he steps forward, casually gesturing at Griffon and the beautiful bird vanishes in a cloud of black shards. You follow soon after him.

The next block is deserted, not a single demon bothers you as you pass a massive furniture store. It isn’t until you enter an industrial area that you spot them ahead, a group of four Empusa slurping at a puddle of what might be human remains. Your stomach churns at the thought, remembering that not everyone had been as lucky as you were and survived.

 This shouldn’t take long.

For a moment you grin at the change within you – the first Empusa you had ever seen had made you quake in fear, and now here you are, about to face four with total calm.

V's arm flicks out and Griffon dives forward in a whirlwind of dark flecks, slashing one Empusa with his talons, and the time for thinking is over. V flicks his arm to the side, bringing Shadow into existence beside him in a cloud of black shards. She roars defiance and leaps forward, slashing her claws against the same demon Griffon attacked. You turn your attention to the next foe, knowing V will clean up after his summoned friends.

You set your sights on the bug-like demon in front and to your right, pulling out the revolver and firing quickly. The single shot misses entirely, and you switch to your hammer and dagger, stashing the gun away in frustration. You dash at the Empusa, slashing furiously with your dagger and bringing your hammer in for a heavy blow to the head and the Empusa dies seconds later. You look around but V has already taken care of the other three, ending the battle before it even seemed to begin.

It isn’t until the streetlights flicker on that you realize how late it’s gotten.

“V, we should look for a place to stop for the night. Keep your eyes peeled,” you say, looking around yourself.

“Let’s continue a bit longer, we’ve almost reached a residential area.” He responds softly, and you nod. An actual bed would be heavenly. You press on, keeping your eyes open for the next threat. It doesn’t take long.

The familiar red webbing appears again as you turn a corner into a gas station. Instead of the usual Caina’s and Empusa’s, however, you’re faced with a trio of lizard like demons. They jump from one foot to the other, hopping forward in an odd loping pattern.

“Y/N, stay back!” V shouts, then snaps his fingers in a high arc and the black of his hair fades away into a stark white. You watch in amazement as a meteor descends onto the demons, striking all three as it hits ground. The meteor’s impact area bubbles, and the ground rises to form a vaguely humanoid shape. It’s huge, and you wonder how you and V can hope to overcome this new foe until he jumps onto its back, sinking his cane into its shoulder and seeming to steer it back into the enemies.

The massive creature swings its club-like fists at the lizards, hitting them repeatedly, and follows up with a well-placed laser. The path of the laser explodes a short time later, and all three enemies vanish into a cloud of black dust as V jumps off the huge creature. It puddles down soon after as the red webbing dissipates.

You stare at V, open mouthed, as his hair fades to black again. Oh, that must be where that… thing comes from. His… hair.

He chuckles lightly, leaning heavily on his cane as he strides over to you.

“What… what was that?” you finally choke out. Griffon flaps over to you, landing on a nearby mailbox as he answers.

“That, girlie, was Nightmare. Pretty cool, eh?” the bird cackles at the look on your face before V points his cane at him, and he vanishes into V’s tattoos with Shadow following soon after.

V nonchalantly points to a nearby building, a hotel if you had to guess. There’s no sign still standing.

“Let’s take a look, perhaps there’s somewhere we can rest in there.” He murmurs quietly. You look closer at him, concerned. He looks exhausted. Summoning Nightmare must be tiring… I hope he doesn’t have to do that too much tomorrow.

You nod, and the two of you proceed into the building. The front door opens easily, and inside you see the markings of a hotel as you’d guessed, the front desk and sitting area of the lobby a dead giveaway. You’re tempted to rest there until you see how much the ceiling has cracked, and you decide a more stable area might be wise. There must be a massive root under the building, as there’s several sections of the ground floor that have shifted by several feet, causing rubble to block the majority of the inner doors. Finally, you find a door that’s been left open, and inside find a tiny room decorated with the boring standard hotel aesthetic of trying not to offend any guests. The comforter on the single bed is drenched in blood, and you try not to think about the fate of the room’s previous occupant as you drag the sodden thing to the hallway, leaving only a top sheet on the bed. There’s no couch anywhere to be seen, and rubble is strewn across the floor. V begins clearing some room off, presumably thinking to sleep on the floor. No, he needs to rest for real, you think before you take his hand, pulling him toward the bed.

"V, you need to rest as badly as I do. Come up here and share the bed with me," you say, blushing furiously. His eyes sparkle with humor as he nods, following you.

"Much appreciated, Y/N," he says, his voice like velvet again. Did he know he was doing that? You flush slightly, and his lips twist into a familiar smirk. Oh. He knows. Dammit.

You slide between the blankets, body celebrating the simple joy of sleeping on an actual bed as V lies down beside you, carefully facing away from you politely. You rest your head on one of the pillows, eyes fluttering shut as V settles in.

"Well... goodnight, V. Sweet dreams," you mumble. You drift off quickly, exhausted from the last two days.