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mangoisms · 1 year

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i'll be the dangerous ledge (you be the parachute)

━ chapter three: like the world makes sense | read chapter one | read chapter two

━ pairing: tim drake x f!reader

━ word count: 5.3k

━ warnings: mentions of explosion, injury, and death (within the usual canon-typical violence parameters)

━ masterlist

You and Tim continue to hang out.

Through the week, after school lets out, you are often too tired to go and do anything, but this suits Tim fine as the two of you continue to think of movies you like that the other has not seen.

You make him watch Mamma Mia, which he says is ‘okay’ but you think he likes more than he wants to let on. You do what he wants, too, and terribly dated as it is, The Devil Wears Prada is certainly fun enough.

Every time you see him, you learn something new about him. His favorite color is blue. He used to play tennis when he was younger but not anymore. He also used to like photography, but he doesn’t do it much these days. Not because he stopped liking it. He doesn’t say that but you can tell.

You wonder about that, about the things he used to do but no longer does. What does he do now, then? You ask him that, and he says he helps out with WE, with their R&D department, with IT, or wherever they want him. Not always but most of the time.

He doesn’t talk about his parents and he doesn’t talk about Bruce Wayne or his adopted siblings. He’ll talk about Alfred, the butler (not the cat), who was also the one to do his laundry.

You don’t mind. You’re more interested in him, in what makes Tim Tim. And on a lighter note, while you admit to having expected him to be a poor cook, he is actually decent.

“I’m only good at breakfast foods,” he admits to you one evening, having commandeered your kitchen to make breakfast for dinner. “And pasta. I can do pasta. But mostly breakfast.”

Better than most rich boys, you think.

You tell him about yourself, too. How you came here because tuition at Gotham University is dirt-cheap, largely because of the city in which it resides in, but the programs are still good. Good enough for what you wanted — public education with a small dash of child psychology. You worked at one of the elementary schools for two years before landing a job at Gotham Pointe.

“Will you ever leave?” he asks one day, the two of you eating ice cream and watching Zathura. His pick today. “Most do.”

You swirl your Oreo ice cream, the ceramic bowl cold against your palm.

It’s a good question. One your family wonders.

You got the degree. You got the experience, too. And experience in Gotham is gold everywhere else because if you can withstand the kids here, you can handle them anywhere.

With the fine print being that Gotham kids are what? Uncontrollable troublesome kids who will inevitably turn into criminals? Inherently evil? Your kids can annoy the hell out of you on a bad day but they’re your kids. They talk to you, they tell you about their lives, about what they like and don’t like, and they listen to your stories, too, and they show you that while others think living in Gotham is like living in some kind of barren wasteland… there is hope. So easily within reach.

If Gotham was as bad as people tried to make it out to be, no one would be here.

“I don’t think so,” you eventually say, looking at him with a small smile. “I like my job too much to leave. I like living here, too. And the company isn’t so bad, either.”

Tim smiles when you say that. “I would miss you.”

And what a thing to say. What a thing for you to have the privilege of. That someone, not just your kids or Ms. C, would miss you and your presence.

Well, you think. You would miss him, too. Maybe more than you would like to admit.

Friends.

Still hard to quantify or believe.

The city starts to ease into something like spring as mid-March creeps on you. Mornings and nights are still frosty but your breath no longer comes out white and you don’t have to watch out for patches of ice. The time in between is even more comfortable, allowing you to be outside mid-day without a jacket. You’re still in a long-sleeve but it’s a win in your book.

You and Tim keep spending time together. He learns, with the onset of March, that you like baseball and used to play softball when you were a teenager. Semi-seriously, too.

Gotham has its own major league baseball team, too — the Knights. It shares the name with your football team.

The baseball team isn’t any good, but that’s fine with you. Tim prefers their football team, which has the best track record out of all of them.

So, with that, Tim surprises you with tickets to their Opening Day on the last day of March. Well, the tickets are from one of WE’s partners, trying to suck up to him, he says, but it doesn’t matter that much to you since he didn’t technically pay for it.

However, there is something to be said about the buyer’s wealth.

“Look, I’m genuinely not trying to be picky or ungrateful but where, exactly, are the seats?”

“It’s not the Diamond Club, relax.”

“Okay, thank god.”

That would be too much. Mostly because of the notoriety around the seats themselves. Plus, with them being right behind home plate, your faces would most likely be caught on TV and that would be… a mess.

No, the seats are in the second row in front of the Knights’ dugout. Still excellent but not the Diamond Club, thankfully.

Tim comes dressed in jeans, a forest green long sleeve that meshes well with his pale skin and dark hair, and a nondescript ballcap.

“Just a precaution,” he tells you.

But upon arriving at the Knights Stadium up in Otisburg, you book it for the nearest merch stall and grab two black Knights caps — modeled like the iconic LA Dodgers and NY Yankees emblem except with GK — and shove one into his hands while putting yours on backwards. He acquiesces you with a smile and then leads you to concessions, happy to foot the bill, with you happy to let him do it, too.

(Drinks and food are far too expensive for a team that loses more games than it wins. Seriously.)

But like the universe is looking out for you (and the Knights and all of Gotham, really), the Gotham Knights win their Opening Day match against the New York Mets. The first time they’ve ever won an Opening Day game, actually.

Even Tim feels some pride, which is why, you think, after the game, he lets you drag him off to take a picture with the Gotham Knights’ mascot, King Arthur. One of his handlers takes the picture with Tim’s phone.

“Hey,” he says, scrutinizing Tim’s face even as he casually adjusts the bill, pulling it lower over his face. “You seem familiar. Do I know you?”

You panic, because this hasn’t ever happened to you two before, what with how you two mostly spend time inside, but you know you shouldn’t be surprised. Tim is careful to make himself as boring as possible to the tabloids. Even while grocery shopping earlier in February, he had a cap on and made sure to blend in as much as he could.

So, of course, Tim is the one to get out of it.

He looks at you, mock confused, and says something equally as befuddling in… Russian?

You match his look, raising your shoulders, and the handler decides this is not a situation he wants to be in as he shoves the phone into your hands and waves his own, enunciating, “Never mind. Never mind. It’s nothing.”

You and Tim leave them, making sure to look as confused as a pair of Russian tourists with not a lick of English would. It’s only when you are home free of King Arthur and his handler do the two of you break down into a mess of giggles.

“What did you say?” you giggle, nearly stumbling over the curb.

“I said, My publicist is going to kill me.”

You laugh all the way to his car and then on the ride home, too.

(“You know Russian?” you ask at one point, finally realizing that.

“Some,” he says, and you learn he knows a handful of languages like Russian, French, Spanish (the stuffy kind, though).

It’s cool, though he admits it’s from tutoring he had, so you have to make fun of those rich boy tendencies again.)

It’s one of the best days you have in a while.

But you find most of your days shape up to be like that.

Even long ones where the kids refuse to listen to you and lesson plans are thrown way off course. Tim will leave you to it if you need the space but other times, he’ll come over, make breakfast for dinner, and you two will watch some Ice Age and you go to bed in a much better mood.

And while you and Tim continue to hang out, your brother remains in awe of that fact, too.

He has some preconceived notions about who, exactly, Tim Drake is but you shut those down quickly. You know why he thinks like that and it would be a lie to say you didn’t think like that, either, but people are so much more different than they portray themselves. Especially ones like him.

Your brother understands, then, and is happy for you.

Not without a few well-placed jokes, of course.

You should steal his debit card info

i’m not stealing his debit card info

Dude he’s a millionaire it’s like his civic duty to society

Which is fair and you’ve certainly made that joke in regards to… some of the wealthier figures in Gotham before. (You flush thinking about your college friends’ jokes about being Bruce Wayne’s sugar baby. Tim will never find out about that as long as you live, thank you very much.)

Even Tim starts to foot the bill if you get takeout or something. And he says exactly that.

“It’s my civic duty,” he manages to say to you with a completely straight face. (Which is funny because he’s also apparently not straight, much like you.)

But it is true that Tim is decidedly well-off. Most of Bruce Wayne’s children are.

You carefully prod Ms. C and the other teachers and aides about information on them, because the internet can only tell you so much.

They rehash most of the info about Tim you already knew — the drama when he was seventeen with the CEO thing, the engagement thing, and the attempted assassination thing. (So many things.)

Tim is the only middle child, though, out of five.

The eldest of them is Dick Grayson, taken into Bruce Wayne’s care after his parents died. He doesn’t live in Gotham, though. New York, you think, is where he currently resides. Then there is Jason Todd, who is a bit of an odd case, because he ‘died’ when he was fifteen then came back when he was older, but the real story is that Bruce Wayne was, apparently, in so much grief at the thought that he misidentified the body in Ethiopia, meanwhile Jason Todd was still alive but kidnapped. He would be until he escaped and came back to Gotham at nineteen. You have faint memories of that media hellstorm from college but these days, they don’t focus on him much.

Cassandra Wayne, the most shrouded in mystery out of all of them; a cryptic figure that paparazzi only manage to capture every six months. She shows up for the occasional charity gala but most can’t actually find or talk to her. The only trace of her existence is other people saying they saw her.

After her, there is Tim, and then there is Damian Wayne, the youngest of them. A teenager now and a model student at Gotham Academy. The one that economic magazines and tabloids say will one day take over Wayne Enterprises. Damian is also the only of them not adopted. He is, much to Gotham’s collective shock, Bruce Wayne’s biological son. You idly wonder about his mother, though, since he does have black hair like his father, but the brown tone of his skin and hazel green eyes sets him apart from his father’s obviously white ancestry.

And well, there is Bruce Wayne, too.

Starting to go grey, he is less of a playboy these days and more of a fatherly figure. Apparently, he’s on the Parent-Teacher Association for Gotham Academy. It’s an amusing thought.

(It still doesn’t mean the Gotham populace isn’t drooling about him. If anything, the fatherly vibes seem to do something for, ah, certain cohorts. You did at once think he was attractive — really — but after knowing Tim… it just feels a bit odd.)

You are certain your prods for info go unnoticed. And they do. It is… something else that gets Ms. C’s attention.

“You seem more happy these days,” she says offhandedly one morning, the two of you preparing the assignments for the day, as well as the tests the kids had taken last week that are now ready to be handed back.

“I have a new friend,” you decide to say, because it shouldn’t hurt.

She nods distractedly. “That’s nice. You did seem a bit lonely before.”

Which is funny because she never let on about it. And also because it’s so direct, you don’t know what to say.

“Nothing wrong with it,” she says after a minute. “I like to be alone. But there’s a difference between being alone and being lonely, isn’t there?”

“I suppose so.”

“It’s good, then, that you have someone now.”

“He’s just a friend,” you chuckle, scratching your cheek awkwardly.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t,” she says, finally looking at you, amusement twinkling in her hazel eyes.

“Right.”

“Well… good for you.”

“Thanks.” You smile at her and mean it.

It is good for you.

Really good for you.

Which is why, you suppose, things take a sharp downturn one Thursday evening.

Truthfully, you have no idea how you made it back to Rose Oaks.

Your fingers shake as you try to lock your bike to the rack. It takes you a couple tries to get the lock into place.

You straighten, your body aching as you do, and you limp through the entrance. The doorman does a double-take at the sight of you.

“Have a good night,” you mumble to him, going over to the elevators. You press the button. Your eyes catch the shredded skin on your arm, red and raw. You let your hand drop.

It happened too quickly for you to do anything.

All you know is you’d been biking down Cameron, the sun setting, others starting to make their way home for the day, then there was a boom that rattled the street and buildings and people panicked, because this is Gotham and any unusual activity is dangerous activity and you don’t stick around to play the hero, and if people start running, you start running, too. Doesn’t matter if you don’t know what’s happening, just do it, because it could be the difference between life and death in a world like this.

You know all of this.

But you never stood a chance against the rush.

You barely managed to scrape yourself off the ground, grab your bike, and break free, trying not to think about how you very well could’ve been stampeded to death and that’s not a very fun or dignifying death at all, is it? But it’s Gotham. Death is not fun or dignifying here. It’s miserable and painful and a cautionary tale to those that live to see the next day, just another addition to the fine print of living in this city.

Ding. The doors open. You step in. Your legs feel weak.

“Hold the door!”

Your hand shoots to the panel, holding down the open doors button. Someone rushes in in the next second.

“Hey, thanks for that —” the polite gratitude is swapped out for frantic concern in the next second, your name wrapped up in it.

You blink and find Tim in front of you, eyes wide in concern, hands hovering over you, as if afraid to touch you. It confuses you, because it’s not like you’ve ever shied away from him. If anything, you’re horribly, horribly touch-starved. If he let you, you’d be plastered to his side twenty-four-seven. Or, not twenty-four-seven, but you know. When you two are watching a movie or a TV show and he lets you throw your legs over his lap, you have to be really normal about how he rests his hands on your legs.

(He isn’t even doing anything, it’s just the pressure, the touch, that makes you want to sidle up beside him and never let go.)

Oh. Where did that come from?

He says your name again and you shake your head.

“What?”

“You can let the doors close,” he says softly and you turn and realize you are still pressing the button.

You let it go.

The doors close.

You hadn’t pressed your floor, though, so he does it for you. The elevator starts moving in the next second.

Tim looks carefully at you, concern still clear on his face.

“What happened?” he asks gently.

“I… I got knocked off my bike. It — it was an accident. People were just… panicking. There was…” Your chest tightens, until every breath feels like a struggle and why are you so cold? “An… an explosion. I… I don’t know.”

He realizes something. “Off Cameron?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can I —?” He gestures to your arm.

Strange to ask. Unsettling in a way.

“You… you don’t need to ask.”

He softens at your response and his hand finds your left one, turning your hand up, where your palm is a little scraped up from your spill. Your forearm is worse off, road rash peeling the skin off, exposed and throbbing.

Tim’s fingers are warm against your cool skin, his hands calloused but still soft.

“I’m fine,” you say, though you aren’t sure why.

He looks up at you, the look in his eyes… You have to look away, shaking your head.

“I’m fine,” you say again.

“You’re hurt,” he counters gently. “Let me take care of this. Do you have a first aid kit?”

“It’s old. I don’t… Haven’t used it since I got it a few years ago.”

“Then why don’t we go to my place so we can grab mine?”

“Okay.”

He turns to the panel to press the button for the fifteenth floor.

The elevator pauses at the fourteenth floor but you two stay on.

Tim’s hand holds onto yours, gently, avoiding the scraped skin of your palm. He leads you out, to his apartment. His is bigger, better, than yours. But it just feels more empty when you come inside. Alien in a way you don’t like. You’ve spent a lot of time here but you want your apartment, with the crabitat, your fridge with drawings from the kids, your messy coffee table with tests and assignments that need to be graded, your sometimes clumsily-made pottery pieces on display.

He can tell, you think. Because he lets go of your hand at the door and moves quickly, murmuring for you to give him a second.

He disappears down the hall. Your feet ache from work and your knee and thigh aches from the road rash you sustained there, too, the material of your slacks torn. Because it’s already April and the days are growing warm, you’re in a short-sleeved blouse, which accounts for the scrapes on your arms.

More than that, you want nothing more than to lie down and sleep for the next week.

But no… You have work tomorrow. The thought burns through you, frustration and exhaustion sparking hot in your chest. Your eyes sting and you close them, swallowing down the emotion.

It’s fine. It’s fine. You can handle it.

You will.

Tim returns, then, first aid kit in hand. He pauses for a second, gazing at you, and you turn away first, opening the door. He follows you.

You take the elevator back down.

Soon, you’re stepping into your apartment. The light in the crabitat is the only thing on, glowing in the darkness like a lighthouse on the shore guiding you home. Something inside you unwinds.

Tim turns on the light. You take off your shoes and drop your backpack near the coffee table.

“Take a shower,” he suggests. “Then I’ll patch you up. I’ll be in here, okay? Want me to feed the boys, too?”

You blink, starting to return to yourself. “I… Yeah. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“What is it today? Fresh or canned?”

You blink. “How do you…”

Tim cracks a smile. “I’ve seen you do it a bunch of times, the way you alternate. But I’ve also done my own research. I was curious.”

“Right… um, canned today. They had fresh food yesterday.” You pause, starting to feel this strange creeping feeling inside your chest. You don’t like it, so you try to push it away. “Thanks, Tim.”

His face softens. “Of course.”

You head for your bedroom while he heads for the crabitat.

You pull out a fresh change of clothes, a pair of white linen shorts, heeding your scraped up knee and thigh, then an old high school softball t-shirt.

You have a door to the bathroom in your room, then another door from the living room. You lock both and turn on the shower.

Inside, you finally get a look at yourself. Your breathing stutters as you understand why the doorman was concerned, then why Tim was — is — too. Your cream-colored slacks are smudged with dirt and a few tire tracks from your bike when you fell. The fabric at the knee is torn, too, edges turned red from the blood. More fabric at the side of your thigh is torn, skin scraped and raw. Your pale blue blouse is in a similar state. Your arms are scraped up, rubbed raw from the sidewalk.

You look like a mess.

Hot humiliation bubbles inside you, along with fresh terror as you replay what happened inside your head.

Your eyes burn as you strip. Your scrapes burn even more when you step into the shower, the hot water making them throb, and you finally let your tears fall.

You work to keep your cries silent, though, wary of how noise echoes inside the shower. You don’t want Tim to know. You don’t want him to worry more than he already is.

It takes a while for you to piece yourself back together, but after washing your hair and body with your familiar smelling shampoo and soap, you manage to do it. Your injuries ache, though, especially when the towel brushes against them as you dry off.

Soon, you are reluctantly stepping out of your bedroom and into the living room.

The TV is on, playing season one of Spongebob. Tim, in the kitchen at the stove, turns, smile flitting across his lips.

“Hey, you’re just in time. I hope you didn’t mind me using the kitchen but I figured you hadn’t eaten dinner yet.”

Something spasms inside your chest.

You shake your head.

“Take a seat,” he says. “I’ll bring it over.”

You go to him.

He doesn’t say anything, ladling tomato soup into a bowl cushioned by a potholder. A grilled cheese sandwich sits on a plate on the counter. You pick up the plate, then take the bowl and a spoon as well.

“Water?”

You nod and seeing as you no longer have the hands for it, decide to just let him do it and head over to the couch. Your knee protests as you sit down. Your whole body protests, actually.

Tim brings a glass of water for you, along with a bottle of Tylenol, then sits down.

“You should eat, too,” you say.

“I can eat after.”

“Tim —”

He says your name. You stop. He grabs the first aid kit. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

But you do worry about it. You worry about this, about him making you food, about him putting off his own meal to take care of you, about him taking care of you.

In that moment, you feel terribly, terribly burdensome.

He inspects your hands first so you can eat and deems the scrapes not bad enough to cover, then moves to your leg.

You sip your tomato soup and take bites of the grilled cheese, oddly famished.

“It’s the adrenaline,” he says. You imagine you must’ve looked confused at your own hunger for him to say something.

“Huh?”

“The adrenaline,” he says again. “Coming down from it, you get hungry. And tired.”

You have fuzzy memories of your psych classes. That is true. Also probably why you are still cold.

How does he know that, though?

At your question, he shrugs. “You know how much time I have to myself. I have to do something to occupy it.”

“Maybe you can take up knitting.”

“Nah, I already know how to sew.”

“So, you know how to sew but not do your own laundry?”

He flashes a smile at you. “Exactly.”

You laugh despite yourself.

His smile softens, then he looks back to your knee, grabbing a piece of gauze.

“Aren’t you going to disinfect it?”

“Rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide aren’t great for cleaning cuts, actually. It kills the bacteria but it kills the normal cells, too. You need those to heal. Did you wash it well during the shower?”

You nod.

“So, that works, and we can do something else, too.”

He pushes up from the couch, heading over to the kitchen, riffling through your cabinets. You turn your eyes back to the TV and take a drink of your water. Your fingers itch to change it to the news, to see what happened, to see if there were casualties.

But Tim returns before you can grab the remote.

He has a bowl of soapy water in hand, setting it carefully on the coffee table, then sitting next to you again.

“This might sting,” he warns, dipping one of the pieces of gauze in the water then gently dabbing the edges of the scrape.

It does sting but not as bad as the alcohol might’ve.

“So, how do you know this stuff?” you ask quietly.

“I was clumsy as a kid.”

You wonder if that clumsiness has much to do with the scars you’ve seen on him. Some on his knuckles, on his arms. He sports fresher ones sometimes. The shadow of a bruise hidden under the hair that falls sharply over his forehead, the occasional cut. He always blames it on his clumsiness and you have no choice but to believe him. What other option is there? He isn’t dating anyone that could be doing that and he hangs out with his friends and siblings sometimes but they wouldn’t do things like that.

Well. You don’t actually know them. But… still.

He finishes cleaning the edges of the scrape, then he applies a little bit of Neosporin and tapes gauze over it. He does the same with the one on the side of your thigh.

Tim works attentively, not even sparing a glance at the TV once. You should know by now, the way he dedicates himself to things like this, how he will listen to you talk about something to do with school or with the crabs or with a movie or TV show. Every iota of his attention and concentration is on you. It flusters you sometimes, to be paid so much attention, but you would be lying if you said you hated it.

Now, with him turning that familiar concentration to taking care of you… you don’t know.

He has to have better things to do than doing this.

“Are you going to work tomorrow?” he asks, gently taping a piece of gauze over the scrape on your arm.

“Most likely.”

He nods wordlessly in acknowledgement and moves back, leaning forward to collect the used pieces of gauze and trash from the tape.

You chew at the inside of your cheek. “It’ll be fine. It’s… it’s fine.”

“Just don’t strain yourself,” he says gently. “Did you want a ride? I don’t —”

“No.”

An awkward silence follows your abrupt denial. You don’t miss the flash of hurt on his face. It stabs you right in the heart. You look away.

“I mean, thank you, Tim, but, um, it’s okay. I’m fine. You don’t have to do that. I get up pretty early in the mornings and… Yeah.”

You stand, your knee — your body, really — protesting but you ignore it, stacking your plate and bowl, then grabbing your empty cup.

“You didn’t have to do all of this,” you continue, dropping them into the sink. “And I appreciate it, really. Thank you. But you don’t have to do any more. So, if you have… other things to do. You know. Go ahead.”

“I have nothing else to do,” he says, surprising you as he appears by your elbow, throwing away the trash from the gauze and the tape. The look on his face is hard to describe. Caught between some cross of disappointment and determination. A part of you shrinks at it. At the thought of disappointing him.

“Let me wash it,” he says, stopping you before you can turn on the faucet. “Give your hands a break. Give yourself a break, okay?”

Some part of you wants to fight it. Wants to say he should try that, too. As if you don’t see how tired he looks sometimes, staying up late to do reports for WE. For whatever reason, he’s working more with them. A few weeks ago, he had to fly to New York. Something about R&D. He returned exhausted from the trip.

But you clamp the impulse. That’s not necessary. It’s not about him. It’s about you. This is… It’s unnecessarily difficult to let yourself be taken care of right now. You have an inkling as to why but the energy needed for that kind of introspection is lost on you. So, you let him take care of the dishes and slink back to the couch, slouching into the cushions, feeling exhaustion tug persistently at you.

Yawning, you pull the blanket hanging over the back of the couch onto your body. The Tylenol you took before has already kicked in and with your hunger satiated and your pains taken care of for the most part, you are ready to go to sleep for the rest of the night.

You fight the impulse, though, sparing a glance at the kitchen.

“Tim.”

“Yeah?”

“You better eat.”

He laughs and your chest warms at the sound.

“Alright,” he says, tossing a smile over his shoulder at you. “I’ll eat.”

You nod and turn back to the TV, picking up the remote and switching to the local news channel.

The poised voice of the GNN news anchor replaces the Spongebob theme song.

Tim pauses in turning on the stove.

“An incident in the Upper West Side tonight, a laundromat off Cameron Avenue went up in flames after a dryer exploded. Miraculously, there were no casualties inside the laundromat, however, the explosion caused much panic on the streets, resulting in at least one person dead from the rush and many others injured. No doubt, people believed it to be some kind of attack, especially with the recent news that the Joker has broken out of Arkham again and police have been unable to track him down —”

You change it back to Spongebob.

A laundromat.

Just a laundromat.

No real danger. No threat of death.

All this… because of the collective anxiety Gothamites hold. You aren’t holding it against them, you’re just…

Tired. Exhausted. That’s what this city does sometimes.

A lot of the time.

You swallow past the uncomfortable tightness in your throat, close your eyes, and let yourself be whisked to sleep, where things are easier, simpler, and you can just… forget. If only for a little while.

━ end notes

1. it was brief but i largely prefer the thought that gotham is not as evil or horrible as people like to make it, or better yet, that the city does stink but people still stay there and they still try to be kind in spite of a horribly corrupt government that is in fact the root of almost all the problems. it's really just the sociologist in me (seriously, that's my minor!)

2. reader briefly mentioned the diamond club, which are typically the seats directly behind home plate and they are crazy expensive. here is the seattle mariners' diamond club prices for reference

3. technically, in canon, i don't believe the knights' have ever mentioned a mascot and what kind. i also admittedly did indulge in letting both the baseball and football team be called the knights but let's ignore that. anyway, i made up the king arthur mascot thing on the fly. couldn't think of anything else knight-related that would work, other than an actual knight. for mlb teams, it isn't always on the nose. like the seattle mariners' mascot is the mariner moose. so, that's why i went with king arthur.

4. dick is not living in gotham or bludhaven anymore and instead in new york because i think he deserves a little (a lot) of space from bruce for his own peace of mind and um general mental health

5. also yeah jason is alive to the public here. i know that is the same in rebirth (i think) but i don't know the details, so if the story behind that is different, that's why, because i also made it up. but it is slightly inspired by this fantastic au on if talia brought jason home after restoring his mind with the lazarus pit, seriously read this, the characterizations are so fantastic; also it's important to me that you all know i am the number one talia truther ever and that shit about him sleeping with her in lost days is blocked from my mind.

ANYWAY. continuing point number five. i have too many thoughts on jason. in my mind and in this, i've changed a lot but that won't Actually be discussed here. there isn't much batfam interaction at all other than these mentions. steph, cass, and duke do appear towards the end (as well as some very very brief appearances by cassie, kon, and bart) but that's really it. it's not very batfam-centric at all, it's more centered around tim and reader.

6. and this is my last one i SWEAR i know the order in which the kids were mentioned in reader's narration was dick, jason, cass, tim, and damian, but if we were going by ages, it's dick, cass, jason, tim, and damian. it is again important to me that cass is a few months older than jason for no reason in particular other than i think it would annoy him and please her.

reblogs are appreciated!

#red robin #dc comics #tim drake x reader #tim drake x y/n #tim drake x you #red robin x reader #red robin x y/n #red robin x you #dc comics x reader #dc comics imagine #tim drake imagine #batfam x you #batfamily x reader #batfam x reader #batfam x y/n

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liesmyth · 2 years

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the locked tomb holiday exchange rec list (part 1)

Some favourites from a first partial skim of works posted for @tlt-holiday-exchange. Find the entire collection HERE

art fills

alecto the first!. Alecto. And she is DONE

Creation. Art of John 1:20, the man who became god and the soul who became a body.

Deities. Alecto, Gideon and Harrow in a life-and-death cycle

Dios Apate. “artwork of jod and his duplicitous sluts (in varying states of sluttery 😳)” Exactly what the summary says but HOTTER.

Hotshot. Gideon raised in Blood of Eden & cousin Pash. Two kids born into a insurgency group ought to know how to shoot a gun, right?

no John what r u drawin of ur friends!!. john is a streamer on twitch, he draws shitty smut of his friends sometimes. there are cows.

Rake In The Lake. The Untitled Goose Game crossover this fandom needed, ft. We Suffer/Juno Zeta and Mercymorn

The Eightfold. Mercymorn/Cristabel, Mercymorn’s ascension to lyctorhood

fic fills

A sucker for suicide bombers. Camilla/Pyrrha/Palamedes, NtN era. Pyrrha finds herself at a different end in another bodysharing throuple. (Rated E)

bodies. Pyrrha folds her arms. “You don’t like it,” she says. “People thinking you’re a working girl.” She laughs, a dark sound. “It’s not that different from being a cav, at the end of the day.” Or: Camilla/Pyrrha in New Rho, rated E.

each note's own appointed ghost. Corona / Ianthe; Ianthe and Coronabeth try out necromancer-cavalier roleplay in bed. Everything you’d expect from the summary and more (wink wink)

Giggle. A day before the disaster a nun spends a day taking care of the children in the Ninth House's daycare. Including one troublesome toddler. (It’s baby Gideon Nav and she’s adorable)

leftovers. Corona POV on Camilla/Palamedes, GtN era. “Coronabeth Tridentarius observes, waits, and wants what she can't have.“ (ft. implied Corona/Ianthe)

Schroedinger's Pussy. Gideon/Harrow, GtN AU. Or: in which Harrow wouldn’t recognize a sex thing if it smacked her in the pussy. Yes, it’s the pussy spanking fic

Super Secret File DO NOT OPEN. Mercymorn and Augustine rob a graveyard, but it's a RPG that John is playing. This fic is high on seven different layers of #meta, and it’s hilarious. What this fandom deserves.

telling dreams apart. Cytherea as Dulcinea seduces Gideon in Canaan House. Rated E ft. the inherent dubcon of identity issues, Cytherea pushes boundaries and has lots of fun! Gideon less so.

THE CORRUPTION OF SILAS OCTAKISERON. Silas/Mercymorn, crack pairing played completely straight. This fic is a delight, Mercymorn is ON POINT, and it frankly changed me as a person.

The Sixth's Temporary Housing Shortage. Camilla/Palamedes, getting each other off while sharing the same body. Or: The real reason Camilla won't let Palamedes peddle mediocre erotica is because he writes it about her.

Vol. 805, No. 4. Juno Zeta / Abigail / Magnus. Academic rivarly! Conference hookups! Witty POV voice! A delightful read

we both go down together. Mercy/John/Augustine immediately post Resurrection. E-rated fic that is NOT afraid to ask: Does it count as consent if it's God? ft. sexy cult shit, horny vibes, unsettling narration, stunning prose. Author... call me

we kill the flame. Palamedes/Cytherea. An alternate take on the confrontation at the end of GtN, ft. hate sex and Palamedes with a beard

[recs part 2] [exchange wrap post]

#tlt fic #fic recs #long post #trust me these are Good #tlt holiday ex 2022 #the locked tomb #tlt

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underlust-but-like-acearo · 1 year

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Yeah, I don't want to make it a big thing but like.. Aside from the obvious things that were wrong with Underlust, as someone on the acearo spectrum and a nonbinary indivual, I do wanna point out the sort of general queerphobia that's attached to Underlust? Obviously there's more nuance to be had, but here's just some things I've been sitting on for a while.

The biggest thing in my mind was definitely the issue of how morality and sexuality were handled, because this has just always been something so glaringly obvious to me. All the quote on quote "good" characters are less sexual or not sexual at all, and the "bad" characters are overly sexual. Blah blah blah it's not up to the author to tell you what is good and what is bad, be critical... But it has always been very disconcerting to me how the character we're guided to sympathise with, Mettaton, blatantly calls the characters who are more sexual (and also portrayed as kinda unlikeable), "gross". There's a general vibe that sexuality is bad, sexuality is gross, and also that it's not the most real or goodest form of love. It's up to the asexual character to go to through the Underground and snap these goddamn heathens out of their lustful trance! And like wow?? What can I say but yikes.

Also, the issue of libido. Libido being heavily conflated with a lack of restraint and also being presented as something that makes you attracted to everyone all the time? It's not a very flattering image of sexuality, and it's also sorta misinformed. To put it shortly, libido (sexual arousal), sex acts (e.g sex), and sexual attraction (if and who you're attracted to) are different things. All the monsters in Underlust have high libidos, have a lot of sex, and wanna have it with everyone. And the asexual character we got, Frisk, probably was gonna have low or no libido, never have sex, and be sexually attracted to nobody. You had all three or you didn't, which is very reductive to say the least. It's good that asexuals were acknowledged and I love ace Frisk with all my heart.. But this is a very narrow, misguided and unfortunately common way people understand sexuality. High libido and bisexuality aren't intrinsically attached to one another. High libido and allosexuality aren't intrinsically attached to one another. High libido and sexual acts aren't intrinsically attached to one another <- being aroused doesn't make you a jerk that crosses people's boundaries, and being aroused is not always expressed openly by said person. Again, it's all just a very reductionist way to look at sexuality.

Also, this is just a teeny weeny thing, but aging up is a bit complicated of a topic for me. Having a character be of consenting age is important if they're going to be sexualised for obvious reasons, but the complete absence of children from any story featuring or discussing sex can be troublesome in its own right. Making sure kids are educated about sex from a young age and letting them be a part of discussions is important for protecting kids from sexual abuse and ensuring their sexual health. Removing children from the conversation makes them ignorant, it makes them feel ashamed, isolated, and puts them at greater risk of harm. Also, Underlust is just so obviously queer, and I'm sure I don't need to get into a conversation about how some people think that children can't be queer, or think exposing them to queerness is inappropriate. This is all wayyy beyond the scope of the original work, but I think it's important to think about.

And the last thing on my mind doesn't have to do with the au itself actually, but I'm looking towards people in the UTMV fandom. Some of y'all with your shipping are just.. Uhh.. Well. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but being overly sexual or flamboyant does NOT make you feminine. If you think being promiscuous is an inherently feminine trait, you are partaking in the sexism my guy. If you think that a gay ship NEEDS to have someone be assigned 'the guy' and someone be assigned 'the girl', you are partaking in homophobia my guy. And if you think that LUST should be the GIRL in a relationship when paired with someone else, double whammy, that is both sexism AND homophobia!! I'm bonking you on the head, cut that out. (If a gay man wants to call themselves the 'wife' in a relationship, that's their own business, but treating it like that's the standard is not okay.)

Maybe I didn't go over everything as thoroughly as I could have here, but I've been typing for a bit and I'm sure you guys get the picture. If you have commited any of the cardinal sins here (joke), that's okay. I honestly don't think the creator meant to portray this, and I don't think anyone in the fandom has bad intentions, but it's still important to examine our own prejudices and misunderstandings and learn to be better. Just because you did a bad thing or didnt know better before doesn't mean that you're a bad person. Peace and love on planet earth, let's make Underlust best au in the whole world, okay?

#op #underlust but like acearo #underlust #<- hope you guys dont mind putting my little ramble in the tag #ive just never seen this get brought up and want to know im not out of my mind #this makes sense right? im not just seeing things that arent there?#post basically explaining why my lust sans is acearo and why i decided to change frisk back into a minor #cw csa mention #cw sa mention

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ex-textura · 1 year

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Look, I don't want to make you ramble but I want to: I NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT CALEC'S TIEFLING FAMILY 😭 is Milo the youngest? Are the twins a bit creepy like twins are sometimes? BARD MOM? (i love me some female bards) WHO ARE THESE AMAZING BEINGS I WANT DESCRIPTIONS

Oh you always know just want to say 🤭

OKAY! We're doing this, I'm gonna make a cut cause I'm gonna ramble and there's gonna be pics okayletsgo!

First, let's start with some introductions, starting with the parents.

Caelestia Breeland: A tiefling bard from the home of devil summoning, Cheliax. She's beautiful, she knows she's beautiful, and if she has her way she'll be beautiful until the stars burn out. She sings, dances, plays a bunch of instruments and, most importantly, she's a damn fine cook. She loves her kids, and she loves her husband. A lot. So much. Like, think Morticia and Gomez Addams these folks are having kids into their 40s and beyond they LOVE love each other and they don't hide it, much to their kids' chagrin. She's the "fun mom"

Speaking of her husband, Thorin Breeland: Thorin is a human ranger from the frozen Land of the Linnorm Kings. He made his way south looking for adventure, found Breachill and The Call for Heroes which is an event regularly held by the town when the people need adventurers. That's where he met Caelestia and fell in love. She thought he was quaint, he thought she was hot, it was a match made in heaven. She got pregnant with their first child and they got married shortly after at the ripe age of 18 and settled down in the town where they met. That worked out so well for them that they decided to keep it up and had 4 more kids after that. One of his wife's favourite things about him is just how normal and plain he is, which is unfortunate for him because none of his kids seemed to pick up that trait, and Milo is still a little too young to tell.

Speaking of kids, I'll skip the first born(we don't talk about him) and move to the next set. The Twins.

Jules Breeland: Jules is, by trade and passion, a rogue. Her whole life all she's ever wanted to do was disturb shit and look hot doing it and by god she's killing it. She's the only kid other than Calec who inherited their mother's tail and unlike her kid brother she leaned into that, and has trained herself to use it as either a distraction or a slightly clumsier third hand. Her thievery is a great boon while they're adventuring but Thorin has a hell of a time keeping her out of trouble at home. Caelestia doesn't care, she thinks it's good to keep practicing and if her daughter is gonna show up with a beautiful new pearl necklace for her and the guards aren't looking their way then who is she to question her good fortune? She's an absolute disaster lesbian.

Which brings me to, Freya Breeland: Freya looks like the least troublesome of the two sisters but actually that's just a carefully constructed ruse. Freya is a witch, a fire-starter, and an absolute fucking nuisance. She takes after her mother when it comes to her beauty and penchant for using it to her advantage and she lives to tease her kid brother. She wasn't born with the same kind of inherent magic as some of her siblings, so she used her head and reached out to some...less scrupulous benefactors, got herself a magical patron and hasn't looked back since. Her hawk familiar, Apollo, is her closest confidant after her dear sister and while at one point the bird used to try and reign in her chaotic tendencies now he just rolls with it. Despite the chaos, Freya is a genuinely kind and loving person and she'd do anything for her family even though she sometimes shows that by casting curses on them and animating Calec's toys when he was a child and convincing him they were haunted and giving him nightmares for months... but I digress. She took to potion crafting like a moth to flame, and her proudest achievement to date is figuring out the formula for Serum of Sex Shift and crafting it for Jules for her birthday. She's a distinguished member of the Pathfinder Society, like her sister and parents.

We know him, we love him. Calistair Breeland: I won't dwell too much on Cal cause he already gets all the spotlight but his place in the family is special. He adventured with the Breeland Bunch for a bit before Milo was born and then, as the next youngest and least experienced, it became his responsibility to stay home and take after the wean while the rest of the family went on an adventure. He took up a job as a blacksmith apprentice and quickly became lead smith at Quarters while also occasionally doing security on caravan runs and other shorter escorting gigs to keep food on the table while the family was away. He was a flirt and a troublemaker in his youth, a spoiled brat and the kind of pretty boy that knows he can get away with everything. He takes after his mom. Taking care of Milo, though, settled him a little bit and he's finally caught up to his age. He idolized his older brother, the oldest in the family and a Champion of Desna.... the first adventure they went on without Calec, though, his brother never returned from, and there's been a rage boiling inside of him over it ever since.

I don't have a mini for Milo because...it's darn hard to make a kid on heroforge lol. Anyway!

Milo Breeland: Milo is the baby. 8 years old, and Calec's biggest fan. He's smart, cheerful, inquisitive. He spends his days with his nose in books reading tales about heroes just like his family and insists he's going to go on adventures with Calec some day and save people. He looks the most like his father with his red hair and pale skin and big green eyes. The only sign of fiendish blood in him is the sharp incisors that have started to grow in. His mother babies him whenever she's home and seems to favour him, which pisses Calec off for reasons he's not ready to confront yet. Calec, who tbh used to be kind of a whore, won't date anyone anymore unless they're Milo approved and treat the kid with the respect he deserves. Milo adores Rehgar.

And then we have the animals, that I'm gonna breeze through. Ursa and Fenn:

Thorin's animal companions. Ursa is a sweet lady who loves her family, curls up with Milo every chance she gets, and is fiercely, fiercely protective. She likes to eat maybe too much, and snores like a beast. Fenn is a clever wolf (heroforge only had dogs suspend disbelieve and pretend he's massive lol) and younger than Ursa. He favours Calec and the two of them often caused a lot of trouble together when Cal was younger. Now, when they're together, he's Calec's training buddy. Calec can almost keep up with Fenn's speed now, and his goal is to outrun him.

I didn't include any info on Calec's older brother because, tbh, I decided I wanted my GM to cover that and I love the mystery xD No one ever speaks about him, they won't talk about what happened, and Calec is starting to think maybe he's going a little bit crazy. Milo was too young to remember him and now after all this time Calec is starting to worry he's imagined everything so I'm keeping the details I do know about him very vague on purpose lol. All he has left is Celeste, his frankly oversized polearm that he crafted through his mourning with the fragment of his brother's starknife that the family brought home, as a reminder that he ever existed at all.

I wanna run a game where everyone plays a member of this family and put them through so much shit ;;

#calistair breeland #breeland bunch #my ocs #age of assholes #bedofherteeth #asks #pathfinder #pathfinder ocs #hey i'm not dead #technically #hello tumblr miss me?#oops

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sometimesrosy · 1 year

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Hey Rosy, I have an ethical question to make. I don’t really like AI generated images, I feel like it’s soulless and a plague in the bookstagram community, for example. I support artists and hate to see so many AI images being spread around with thousands of likes and comments saying “how you depicted xyz is exactly how I imagined it!” while some real artists don’t even get close to those numbers.

But, a few days ago, my boyfriend commented how it would be useful to him to use AI generated images for his DnD campaign, just to idealize the characters and settings better (but would obviously never profit from it). I immediately frowned, but I have to be honest and say that, due to that, I’ve been having the thought that maybe it isn’t so bad to use AI juuuust to create some images for my story characters as well, without ever publishing them anywhere, without ever calling it art. Maybe I’d even use celebrity pictures and modify them with AI to get them elf ears or something, maybe I’d mix a sky with three moons, maybe I wouldn’t even generate a full picture.

I am, to be honest, almost ashamed of having these thoughts when I was (still am) so vocal against AI generated images. What would be your take on this, especially considering you’re an artist yourself?

SUPER timely question. I gotta be honest I'm grappling with it myself.

I don't believe that AI is in inherently bad. I think it's a tool, although there are some unethical things about it.

First of all, it isn't artificial intelligence at all. It takes real creations or performances that are already out there and uses those to synthesize amalgamations. It's not that real people don't do that, being influenced by other artists, they do, but they also put themselves into it.

I have actually seen some really cool stuff that human artists have done using AI generation tools, creating a kind of slick glossy surreal world.

I think someday, AI generators are going to be used like photographic cameras are now. When photographs first came out painters were horrified. Technology taking over what had until then been sacrosanct. Photography didn't take over art. It became it's own art. Sometimes it was just used by the masses to take snapshots for their own personal benefit and some was used by artists to create stunning works of art. Yes?

The problem we're having here is that corporations seem to want to use AI to get rid of human artists, writers, performers, editors, etc. Artists are pains in the ass. Always having opinions, being troublesome and wanting to keep the profits.

It's frankly terrifying, as an artist and writer. Is my job at risk because my clients can just ask Chat GPT to write them a novel?

I have less of a problem with people trying to visualize their own characters in their own book or DnD campaign. That's akin to people taking snapshots of their kids birthday parties. You know? I've used it. Got some ideas for visuals for my alien spaceships... although I've also drawn my own stuff.

If we're talking about turning AI generated images into things to create a profit, I think then we start getting into shaky territory. Those long text AI things are writing novels, right? But they're not paying the fiction authors whose works they scraped to get that.

The Hollywood producers are trying to pay performers one time rates to film them so that they can then create AI performances based upon their performance to use in perpetuity.

Seeing people create AI art for their self published book covers is concerning. First of all, none of the artists whose works were scraped to get those generated images are paid. Most of them didn't agree to their work being used. I think that's copyright infringement. It's stealing.

Second of all, yeah, that's a lot of human artists who are losing work. Not that the self pubbed book covers done for cheap are all that genius anyway. They're a package for marketing, not works of art for the most part, although you can certainly hire an artist for a gorgeous artwork, which is more expensive. In fact, that may be why they want to do it themselves, because they can't find something in their price range that meets their standards.

Thirdly. Using AI generated art looks flashy and impressive, sure. But we're starting to recognize the look and frankly, the images are slippery and slick. They LOOK like AI. They look like the authors are using AI not human art. As we get more familiar with it, that's going to say it's own thing. And it's not professional.

IDK. I'm still struggling with the whole thing. Have I even said anything that makes sense here? I see multiple sides. Most worrisome is coming from corporations and big business. Hollywood. The publishing industry. Journalism.

Least concerning is private people playing with a new toy to make things more fun for their hobbies. I mean yeah sure, would it be better if you paid an artist to create your DnD character profiles or fanart or fantasy maps? Sure ABSOLUTELY. But were you going to do that? Is the AI art taking away from an artist you would have otherwise hired? Chances are it's not.

Like fanfic, you know? If you're going to do it for your own enjoyment that's fine. If you're going to try to make money off of someone else's intellectual property... that's an actual crime, isn't it?

This whole thing is CRAZY and the ideas around it are still developing. I'm open to keep having this discussion.

#AI ethics #ethics #artists and writers

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selenafreshfriendkidoaf · 1 year

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Horoscope April 10

April 10 Planetary Impact Your sign is under the planetary rule of Mars, yet as you were brought into the world in the second Decan, or part, of the sign, you get an aiding of the Sun's planetary power too. Being the planet of confidence, Mars is answerable for your gutsy, vivacious and activity situated characteristics. In a similar light, it is the Sun, the planet of joining, that is connected to your distinction, imagination and essentialness. More so than any of the other Aries Decans, your planetary impact makes you alluring and unique. Individuals are frequently attracted to your energetic and perky character. You utilize this for your potential benefit, as you love being the focal point of consideration. While your assurance permits you to have numerous achievements, the Sun's impact makes you a piece bombastic on occasion. In affection, find an accomplice that shares your carefree ways and assists you with fostering your lowliness to track down satisfaction.

Horoscope April 10 As an Aries brought into the world on April tenth, your character is characterized by desire, force and imagination. While others spend their entire lives battling to find inspiration, this isn't an ideal case for you. You have set extremely exclusive expectations for you and profoundly want achievement. All the more critically, you have the assurance and drive to arrive at your objectives. Your loved ones appreciate your aspiration, however it is your innovativeness that they really appreciate. You utilize your inventive psyche to show your exceptional kind of appeal and your pleasant awareness of what's actually funny.

Fire April 10 Component The matched component of your sign is fire and truth be told, you have the main basic association with fire of all the zodiac signs. Your exceptional association with fire gives your character oneself beginning and starting characteristics of an unconstrained fire. Because of fire, you can be a characteristic chief and you frequently witness a consuming enthusiasm inside your being. As you embrace fire's positive characteristics your enthusiasm will ignite with more prominent strength and you will progress forward with a way to progress. In any case, you ought to know about the restlessness and hastiness that is a typical issue for fire signs.

April 10 Vocation In spite of the fact that choosing a vocation is generally troublesome, your inherent capacities will give you many profession choices to investigate. Your gifts as a pioneer are significant, similar as John Rankle, who was likewise brought into the world on April tenth. You could involve your gifts to lead and motivate others in many fields, including business, training, the executives and organization. Your psychological capacity is prominent, so handles like composition, exploration and science could likewise be a choice. Assuming you are attracted to the universe of amusement, your mystique could bring you into media or film, which was the way of Steven Seagal, one more of your VIP birthday twins.

April 10 Sabian Image The Sabian Image for your birthday is a little kid taking care of birds in winter. In the event that you are confronting a difficulty, or witness challenges for another, you should not disregard the significance of sympathy. With getting it and love, getting through any challenge is conceivable.

Love And Feelings People brought into the world on April tenth convey extraordinary profundity in their imaginative and warm Aries nature, and aren't generally certain how to impart their feelings to those they care about. They could experience difficulty winning the core of the one they love, basically on the grounds that they are uncertain assuming they will be heard and figured out, remaining in their own particular manner with an odd absence of certainty. Their sentiments confound them and cause them to feel defenseless. They need time to dig sufficiently profound to interface with another person, aside from their intuitive and unconstrained nature that needs everything quick and finished with a portion of independence.

Therefore it will not be not difficult to deeply inspire them regardless clutch their affection. Their faculties should be found during the most common way of experiencing passionate feelings for, and this should be possible just from a protected distance from the outset. They should be allowed an opportunity to demonstrate enthusiasm when everything looks good, for no tension functions admirably with their red hot nature and it could make them run away from the area and go to something more relaxed and inauspicious.

April tenth Birthday celebration Present To shock an individual brought into the world on the tenth of April, you really want to fathom their fiery being. They need something from the mysterious world yet in addition grounded, that provides them with the sensation of force they look for in this lifetime. They aren't vain yet need to feel cultivated and found, heard and regarded, and it is genuinely essential to get them a gift they previously showed a proclivity for. On the off chance that you're not in a nearby and personal bond with them get them a book or a pen. A trigger to their composing abilities or their interest is generally welcome in their reality.

Positive Characteristics For April tenth Conceived This is a mysterious Soul prepared to bring the powers of Nature down to planet Earth, murmuring to others and focusing their light on the world. They are strong and profound, consistently prepared to recuperate people around them and permit fate to come its direction.

Negative Characteristics For April tenth Conceived Difficult and struggling with relinquishing the people who characterized their character. Excessively attached to the people who passed on, left them for good, or cut off friendships all through their lifetimes, and envious towards the individuals who have a day to day existence way they wanted.

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rigmarolling · 5 years

Text

Top 5 Things That Will Kill You In the Victorian Era

If you’ve ever spent more than two seconds with me, you know that I live and breathe the fog-choked air of Victorian London. All day. Every day of my life.

See, in many ways, the Victorians were the first version of us--overwhelmed by rapidly-changing technology (and its awful effect on the climate); dealing with incredible wealth gaps; grappling with rising crime and faster travel and out-of-control media and the whole, “God is dead, oh no” thing.

Also, everything was trying to kill you.

Like, literally almost everything.

From your clothes to your doctor to your canned food, here are the top five things that will kill you in the Victorian era.

5. Other Victorians

If the rise of penny dreadfuls (cheap magazines stuffed with horror stories for us morbidly-inclined goth types) was any indication, Victorians loved them some true crime.

And there was no shortage of subject matter to choose from: depending on where you ventured in London, at least, you could be subject to anything from pickpocketing to mugging to violent assault and, of course, murder.

There were a few reasons for this:

For one thing, the population in London alone increased by millions in the 19th century, and approximately no one was prepared for that. So, to accommodate the rapidly-booming population, the wealthy folks in charge reached out and lovingly ensured the masses of the disenfranchised poor were taken care of by redistributing resources and education and access to opportunities that improved lives on a both a personal and social level.

Lol, no, I’m totally kidding; they shoved them into slums and tenement buildings and pretended they didn’t exist.

So of course, there was a rise in crime, because if you have five kids and you can’t find gainful employment and your family will starve if you don’t steal that basket of food over there, or that purse that lady left sitting over THERE, what are you going to do? You’re going to steal the food and the purse to survive, Jean Valjean, I understand, I do.

Except the powers that be did NOT understand, and instead routinely espoused the idea that if people were poor, it was because they were morally bankrupt, or inherently bad, somehow, and the “criminal classes,” as they came to be known by the growing Victorian middle and upper-middle classes, were simply considered genetically bad to the bone and therefore undeserving of assistance.

Basically:

So ANYWAY.

Crime was on the rise and there were multiple efforts to stop it with varying degrees of success, but big city usually = big crime, especially when there’s a massive gap between the one percent-ers and THE REST OF US, WASHINGTON.

Ahem.

All that crime? The booming news industry loved it. The press ate it up and then spit it back out in salacious headlines that never even bothered with journalistic objectivity, like this gem:

I mean. Full disclosure: I, too, agree that cutting off a woman’s head, arms, and legs and then burning them is “awful, inhuman, & barbarous” but just...maybe...maybe tone it down? Just a bit?

No? Okay.

See, here’s the thing: crime sells. It always has. And papers went nuts with full illustrated spreads about the latest brutal murders so you could sit in your parlor and get anxiety poops thinking about how the butcher down the street looked at you funny the other day and oh, God, you’re probably next, oh God.

The most famous murderer of the era, was, of course, Jack the Ripper, which was just the orchestral climax of a hideously corrupted society that had bubbled into naught but a festering carbuncle, an ulcer upon the very soul of man, trussed up as a city of industry, but which is merely Salome, dancing with the Lamb’s head upon a platter and sending us all tumbling into a fiery pit.

....Ahem, again.

Some popular ways your fellow Victorians could kill you included: dueling (with swords but usually with revolvers), stabbing, garroting, and, probably the most popular method of the era, poisoning.

Speaking of which...

4. Anything dyed that hip shade of green

In 1775, a guy named Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented a new shade of green, cleverly called Scheele’s green, and it instantly became a hit. Pretty soon, manufacturers and tailors were dyeing everything this color.

Look at it. Bright, airy. Calls to mind a fresh, spring meadow. (What’s that, you ask? Well, before the Industrial Revolution belched out black smoke onto absolutely everything, there were these things called plants and grass and they were all over the place and you could frolic through them and it was very nice for your serotonin levels.)

I mean, listen, this isn’t really my color because anything vaguely yellow-ish makes my already yellow-ish skin look especially jaundiced, but it’s a lovely shade:

Besides using it to create beautiful dresses and tasteful waistcoats, they used it inside book covers:

And it was a super popular wallpaper color:

They had green candles and green cups and green kitchenwares and green paint.

But while Carl Wilhelm Scheele didn’t exactly murder anyone (even though he has three names like every serial killer ever), he sort of, accidentally, indirectly, kinda...did.

Because that springy dye contained every Victorian black widow’s favorite method to dispose of a troublesome husband: arsenic.

Scheele, of course, had no idea--no one did--so I’m fully exonerating him here, but the poison nonetheless started to take its toll.

Reports began to surface of kids getting sicker and sicker and then dying in their green wallpapered rooms; of fashionable ladies rocking those green dresses at balls and then ALSO getting sicker and sicker and breaking out in horrible sores before dying.

They even used this stuff to dye food green, so of course, anybody who tucked into Victorian green eggs and ham also, you know. Died.

And if they DIDN’T die, they got cancer, because if arsenic doesn’t kill you, it will give you cancer. And then kill you.

Eventually, as science advanced and went, “HEYO, there’s literal poison in this stuff,” consumers were like, “Well, shoot, this summer’s hottest beach shade just killed an entire boarding school,” and Scheele’s green finally fell out of favor.

It was, however, used as a pesticide up through the 1930s, so...way to use the...leftovers? I guess?

3. Your canned food

Hey, now that we’re on the topic of deadly chemicals being where they absolutely should not be, let’s talk about canned food.

In the Victorian era, it was the new Hot Thing (next to arsenic green). You mean I can can my food now? Like? Forever? Oh, only for a few months. Okay, cool. Still cool.

Above: Road trip snax.

Food preservation methods had existed long before canned meats and veggies and soups, but canned everything really started to gain traction around the middle of the 19th century, and people were stoked. Remember, the population exploded; people needed new methods of obtaining cheap food that didn’t spoil immediately. So: cans to the rescue!

Recycling hadn’t really been invented, though, so today, archaeologists constantly find giant Victorian trash pits filled with empty cans.

You know what also hadn’t been invented? Consumer health and safety boards.

So guess what was in the tin cans themselves?

No, no, don’t worry, it wasn’t arsenic.

It was lead.

Which, in case you weren’t aware, is also very, very bad for you.

So bad, in fact, that today, scientists are pretty sure lead-lined tins of canned food were partially responsible for the deaths on the disastrous Franklin Expedition, an ultimately futile trip to discover the Northwest Passage lead by Sir John Franklin in 1845. Every single man on board the two ships stranded in the Arctic died, and in the 1980s, when scientists discovered perfectly mummified bodies (GRAPHIC, if you don’t like that sort of thing, but awesome if you do) of some of the sailors, one of the mummies contained insane amounts of lead. They later tested the cans found scattered across the wreck site and whoops, they also contained insane amounts of lead.

Above: Some of the tin cans from the Franklin Expedition, which contained items like salted beef, vegetables, tea, lethal amounts of lead, and Chicken of the Sea.

Granted, other factors contributed to the Franklin deaths, like, you know, being stranded in the Arctic and starving to death, and also tuberculosis, but lead-lined canned food certainly didn’t help things along.

2. Your doctor

Here’s my advice if you’re in the Victorian era and you’re starting to feel sick: do not get sick. Just don’t. Because then that means you’ll have to go to the doctor. Which probably means you will die.

Hospitals in the 19th century were deadly. Often even more deadly than just staying at home, according to Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art. Nobody knew how to treat anything, really, because medical understanding of biology was in its infancy and antibiotics didn’t exist yet, so you were absolutely, definitely going to get some kind of infection the second you stepped foot in a Victorian hospital.

Above: The surgery, where nobody has any idea what they are doing, ever.

Doctors weren’t trying to kill you on purpose--they just didn’t know any better. And it super duper didn’t help that common treatments for everything from the common cold to tuberculosis included taking mercury (which kills you) and blood-letting, (which can also kill you) the tools for which are shown below:

Those might look like fun doodads for your astronomy class at Hogwarts, but they’re actually vials and a really, really sharp needle that pricks you until you bleed out a critically dangerous amount of blood into those vials.

The (ancient) school of thought behind blood-letting was that draining patients of “bad” blood would rebalance their “humours” and get rid of the icky thing that was making them sick. We might laugh at it now, but if you don’t know any better, logically, it makes sense.

Medically, oh my God, it’s the worst.

So if Doc didn’t bleed you to death, he might try surgery--done without anesthesia or antibiotics (until good old Dr. Lister came along--read The Butchering Art!), and then ship you and your amputated stump leg off to the hospital ward where, instead of healing, you’d get wheeled through hallways stained with every bodily fluid imaginable into rooms filled with people coughing up every bodily fluid imaginable, some of which would get into your leg stump, infect it, and then kill you dead.

“But what about medicine?” you ask. “Can’t I just take medicine?”

Sure! Just be aware that it definitely contains morphine and probably contains cocaine, or mercury, or arsenic, or sulfur, or pulverized bits of ancient Egyptian mummies (I am not kidding. True, the latter had started to fall out of favor in the 19th century, but, like. Stop).

Above: Hard drugs, but just for you.

You think I’m joking?

Above: PARTY TIME.

Sometimes, a doctor would just advise that you move to a “more temperate climate” like Rome or Spain if you were feeling chronically ill, which might help you get a tan and COULD help if you had sucky lungs, but eventually, you’d just die anyway, because what you really needed was a strong antibiotic or antiviral medication and the closest you were gonna get was Mrs. Hopplebopple’s Temperance Tonic, which was probably filled with ground up baby bones and just so much heroin.

And don’t even get me started on Victorian surgical tools:

Open wide.

1. Water

There are three rules in this life: don’t watch any Adam Sandler movies except for maybe Anger Management, don’t eat the yellow snow, and do not, ever, for any reason, ever drink water in Victorian England.

That’s because it was about as clean as a Victorian hospital.

Meaning it wasn’t. At all.

Victorian water--of the Thames variety--contained:

Cholera, one of the deadliest killers of the era and bad water’s favorite roommate.

Poop, human and otherwise, because a functioning sewer system? I don’t know her. (At least, not until the 1860s.)

Pee, human and otherwise, because nothing says, “Jolly Old England” like an open trench of piss rolling through the city.

Dead things, like animals, fish (which are animals, so why am I listing them as a separate thing?), and, occasionally, humans.

Chemicals, which spewed forth from the great factories in billowing, bubbling, belching rivers of sludge. (Ha! Omg, yes, I was an English major!)

The Thames was so filthy that Londoners called it “Monster Soup.”

Above: Same.

In 1855, scientist Michael Faraday (who was also kind of hot; tell me I’m wrong), wrote a letter to the Times about the disgusting state of the river:

"Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface, even in water of this kind. ... The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water; it was the same as that which now comes up from the gully-holes in the streets; the whole river was for the time a real sewer."

Tl;dr: “It smelled like ass.”

In fact, it got so bad, so putrid, so horrifically clogged with every disgusting thing your mind and your butthole can possibly conjure up, that it lead to one of my favorite things to read about in the world: The Great Stink of 1858.

Yes, that’s the real name. I did not make that up. History is incredible.

Above: Summer vacation, 1858.

The summer of 1858 was miserably hot in London. And the Thames was miserably clogged with poop, and pee, and chemicals, and dead things, and, uh oh, cholera. During July and August that year, the smell wafting from the river was so offensive that Parliament was actually adjourned because everybody kept throwing up. Cholera devastated the city. The water was killing London.

Faced with either the prospect of living with a city-wide vomit-and-diarrhea smell for the rest of forever OR finally cleaning things up, the government actually did something right and chose the latter. They contracted civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette to overhaul the city’s sewer, to which Bazalgette, pinching his nose, responded, “FINALLY.”

Above: Joesph Bazalgette, savior of the London sewers and purveyor of a truly beautiful mustache.

Bazalgette proceeded to build the London sewer system still in use today. His efforts greatly reduced the number of cholera deaths, cleared the Thames of its Cronenberg-esque muck, and ensured that poop goes where it’s supposed to: way the hell out of HERE and way the hell under THERE.

Water sanitation still had a long way to go, though, which meant you either had to boil your water to kill the bacteria in it, or you could just drink alcohol instead, which was the safer option but which would also leave you very dehydrated and also, if imbibed excessively, would leave you very dead.

So really, you were doomed in some way no matter what you did, and if that isn’t the moral of the entire Victorian story, then I don’t know what is.

#victorian #listory

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plumoh · 3 years

Text

[NatsuYuu] ever here

Rating: G

Word count: 2282

Summary: Natsume Takashi is fifty-two years old when Madara leaves. It's not a spontaneous decision, but it's not a well-thought-out one either.

Note: AO3 link. Originally written in 2018, did some light editing. I will never stop thinking about Madara dealing with Natsume’s eventual death,,

Natsume Takashi is fifty-two years old when Madara leaves.

It's not a spontaneous decision, but it's not a well-thought-out one either. Forty years spent living with a human is nothing more than the blink of an eye for a youkai, but this same span of time is half of a human's life—Madara knows that much, and he curses himself to have let down his guard enough to be lulled into the illusion of safety.

There is no meaning behind that age. It could have been forty-seven, fifty-three, or even sixty. Madara hasn't pondered on it much outside of the fact he can sense life forces flickering, losing their brightness to let darkness consume them. He's seen and sensed that many times, for years and decades, watching the phenomenon unfold with both curiosity and disinterest. Human lives are short and fleeting, nothing worth paying attention to, as they will always disappear sooner than expected.

(Reiko vanished from the town and next thing he knows, she is no more.)

He retreats to the mountains farthest from Yatsuhara. He doesn't tell anyone. He doesn't let anyone know where he is. The peaceful and soothing rustling of the trees' leaves and the river's water help appeasing his heart in a frenzy, and pushing back his swirling thoughts. It's pathetic, in a way, to let himself affected by so little. It's not like it's the first time he's been in contact with a human before—and he still believes that not meddling with their affairs is less troublesome and more beneficial to his sanity.

(He thinks about the mess left by a lonely woman, that a brave boy tried to fix.)

Madara spends his days napping. He finds a new patch of grass to sleep on on a regular basis, right under the sun to keep him warm, and at night he takes walks or watches the starry sky to chase away unpleasant thoughts. He pointedly ignores any scent he recognizes, as they never travel close enough for him to get worried. Not that he's worried about anything, not really, it's just more convenient that way. Being alone is much easier to deal with his own pitiful state than being seen by some fool and having to explain something he doesn't want to think about.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a familiar voice tells him he's running away. He brushes it off.

It has only been forty years, but he's already forgotten how silent life is when he isn't surrounded by idiots and accident-prone kids. He's a great beast, someone who holds power over low-class creatures and who rivals most of the strong youkais. And just for a second, one vulnerable moment, he wonders what good there is to possess such tremendous power if he doesn't have anyone to protect anymore.

Dizzy and perturbed, Madara stops in his tracks, and howls—a cry piercing the sky until it cracks to let untold messages squeeze through.

Human lives are short and fleeting.

***

He doesn't know how much time passes. It can't be more than a handful of years, though, because the scents are the same and the landscape has not yet warped. Nobody reached out to him either, and he doubts that no one is able to track him if they tried hard enough—even if he's escaped to far away mountains, he's not impossible to find. He knows for sure that Misuzu will be smug about finding him, and Hinoe is too stubborn to let him disappear without a word.

Days resemble each other. Madara misses manjuu and dango.

Then one day, the wind carries a different breeze; there is a quality to it that almost spells familiarity, ruffling his fur and sending shivers down his spine. He catches the whiff of a strong smell and overwhelming power, one that gently pushes at him with care, considerate and soft.

Kind and warm.

Madara jolts and scrambles up, mind racing and heart beating too loudly, eyes scanning the area like he's on the lookout for a prey he's waited for weeks, wild and cautious. Only then does he realize this aura isn't alone—and of course it isn't, of course it would come with two other ones that announce trouble.

He does not stare. His eyes do not linger on the gigantic silhouette of Misuzu descending from the sky like an omen, his grin ever plastered on his face, not quite landing (Misuzu never lands) but he lowers his hoof to let his passengers get down. Madara stays still.

“Damn, Madara, if you wanted us to leave you alone that badly, you could have just asked,” Hinoe sighs with fake casualness, as she takes a drag from her pipe, pinning him with a hard glare.

But Madara doesn't listen to her. He's too focused on the second figure stumbling on the ground, like he hasn't alighted from the body of a beast a hundred and a thousand times over, wincing when Hinoe has to put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. Madara can't tear his gaze off him.

“Sensei,” Natsume says, something akin to relief and desperation in his voice, and Madara chokes on his own words, unable to dig into his arsenal of insults to deal with the situation. Instead, Natsume takes a step forward, and another, and another, until he's standing right in front of him. “Were you here all this time?”

His eyes didn't change—that damn kindness is still lurking behind them, the fervor of his own stupid faith shining through it, like he hasn't found any reason to stop believing he could help anyone coming his way. Eyes never lie; eyes are what differentiate the humans from each other.

Natsume's trembling hand tentatively reaches up to stroke his snout and—Madara lets him, lets this light touch wash away his countless worries, and he closes his eyes. If he tries hard enough, he can be transported back to the youthful days of returning names and being wary of any youkai approaching them. He can summon the smell of Touko's tenpura and the tatami of Natsume's bedroom. It is comforting, wrapping him in a blanket of tranquility he wishes could last forever, but when he opens his eyes he sees Natsume's tired but never broken face, features drawn old, his once light hair taking a shade of gray only age can paint.

He releases a breath, tickling Natsume, just like he once did a long time ago, and this time Natsume smiles.

“I missed you, Sensei.”

Natsume keeps his hand on Madara's snout, and if he's pressing a bit harder than usual (when was the last time it happened?), Madara doesn't comment on it. Instead, he lays down, and carefully wraps his tail around Natsume, a silent invitation for him to settle in the white fur. This stretches Natsume's hesitant smile into a full smile as he sits down and starts scratching Madara's chin.

“The Book of Friends is empty now, do you still want it?” he quietly asks.

And Natsume must have felt his jaw clench, because he stops, lowers his hand, and gazes directly into Madara's eyes, waiting, expecting. Madara hates the feeling of helplessness.

“I have no use of a tool stripped of its power,” he croaks out, looking at a point past Natsume.

“...We've talked about it, Sensei.”

“What do you want me to do with the cover of a book?”

“That's up to you. I'm still going to give it to you, so please come home.”

Madara finally, finally meets Natsume's earnest eyes, after trying for so long to avoid reading the emotions in this brittle, human gaze when talking about the Book of Friends. He doesn't know what he expected to find; he probably expected nothing, except for something inherently Natsume in them, warm and affectionate, much like the stupid self he's always been. Natsume is looking at him with the same determined expression he's always worn when he set his mind on doing something. There is also fragility in it, an open wound waiting to be healed. Madara basks in the familiarity it provides him.

He gently knocks Natsume's head with his snout.

“The Book of Friends is exactly the reason why I left, and you cheeky brat has the nerve to come and dump it on me.”

There is no heat in his words, and everybody knows it. They all look at him without judgment, though if he had paid close attention to them, he would have seen pity coloring their faces. He holds Natsume's gaze as best as he can—Natsume assesses him quietly, carefully, like he's expecting Madara to flee again. He won't.

“I keep my promises, you know that,” Natsume chides gently. “No matter how much time passes.”

Natsume's hand comes up again to stroke the fur on his head. The movement is assured, but slow, nothing like it used to be; Madara swallows the uneasiness, the fear, and stops running away.

“How old are you?”

He doesn't register Hinoe shaking her head in the back. All he notices is the way Natsume's smile takes a hue of sadness, his aura enveloping them both in resignation. Madara is certain his own sorrow is seeping through the seams of his fake calm demeanor.

“It's July 1st, today.” There is a brief pensive look on Natsume's face. “I'm turning seventy-seven.”

Twenty-five years is nothing to youkais. They let them fly by without thinking much of it, but for humans it's enough to raise a new generation of people that will become their hope. Madara has a thought for Natsume's descendants, who probably don't even know why their father, their grandfather (great-grandfather?), decides to take a trip to the other side of the mountains, visibly unaccompanied. He realizes with horror he doesn't know for sure that none of them has the ability to see youkai.

“It didn't feel that long to me,” Madara whispers.

“I know. That's why we came to see you. According to Hinoe, you would have slept through a decade if nobody tried to annoy you.”

He knows there is no accusation behind these words, but he can't help bristling, sharply shooting a glare in Hinoe's direction—she waves around her pipe, dismissing his irritation.

Natsume continues. “It's perhaps not my place to say that, but this is how life is, Sensei. Please let this old man have his one selfish request granted.”

He wraps his arms around Madara's neck, burying his face in his fur.

“Come back home.”

Madara is tired. He's tired of fighting all these emotions, all these worries that shouldn't exist (he's a great beast with overwhelming power), all these thoughts that cross his mind and twist his heart. He's tired of pretending and of living with the heavy lead settled in his stomach, putting him into a state of lethargy and incapacitating his ability to think rationally.

So he nuzzles Natsume, bringing his tail closer to completely protect him from anything else that can still happen, and lets out a deep laugh that sounds too watery and shaky to his own ears.

“Idiot.”

It can't be that bad, if Natsume emits a similar laugh, purposefully keeping his face hidden in his fur even if Madara can feel something wet against him.

Natsume climbs on his back for old times' sake. And if Madara is flying a bit slower than before, Natsume doesn't say anything. Misuzu and Hinoe follow them close.

This might not be the wisest decision. Many youkais would have chosen to stay away to cut all ties with humans, even though it doesn't erase their memories of them. Madara thinks himself foolish to have gotten so soft and attached to one single human, so he might as well be stupid until the end.

There is no worth living a boring life, when he can create new memories to cherish as they come, and for the after.

Reiko always said that people will regret not going through what they wanted, while they rarely get upset over doing something, even if it was a failure or a mistake. Mulling over her words from forever ago, Madara finds himself agreeing, closing his eyes as he curls up at Natsume's feet, listening to the quiet conversation he's having with someone that is without a doubt his grandchild. There is a different air about that kid, and Madara immediately recognizes potential.

That night, Madara digs through Natsume's belongings, and retrieves the remains of the Book of Friends. The green cover is barely worn, defying time and deterioration. He traces out the kanjis with a paw, and is certain the Book retained some power, though very little. These traces of power persevere, fluttering and placating, in a way that makes it look like they are unable to let go of that realm either. Madara shakes his head at the thought, but he keeps his paw on the Book.

“I'll protect your family.”

Natsume finds him hunched over it, and naturally picks him up, acting on pure instinct.

“Old men should be sleeping,” Madara states flatly.

“Then you should be sleeping too,” Natsume retorts. He casts a quick glance at the Book. “It became a family treasure, I guess.”

“Hmpf. Only you would consider something that put your life in danger as a treasure.”

Natsume looks at him, and Madara knows it's useless to argue further.

Years later, the children of the Natsume household will always find the family cat curled around a green book by the altar. The cat doesn't age, is somehow always able to tell when one of them is in trouble, and only a handful knows the secrets he's keeping.

Madara never leaves again.

#natsuyuu #natsume yuujinchou #natsume takashi #nyanko sensei #madara #jazz hands the pain will never go away #i simply LOVE the relationship between natsume and sensei....#they brought each other so much joy and made life so much easier to live ;;

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nowis-scales · 3 years

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Pre-Verdant Wind Endgame Update

An Update on the ol’ Three Houses Verdant Wind playthrough, since I’ve been neglecting documenting my journey properly for a bit:

• My current placement is Ch.20, so I’m only a few chapters away from the last one. It’s kind of a weird thought because I feel like I just hit the timeskip, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will feel well-paced out. In terms of writing, I’m known for being a bit of a stickler for good flow. It’s why all of my fanfics take so long to update! I have to make sure my flow is perfect.

• The fact that they have been giving background information on characters has been so amazing. Learning that Raphael’s sister’s name was Maya and getting to hear about her has made me irrationally happy.

• Also, just generally, holy shit people sleep on Raphael and Leonie. Raphael often gets shoved to the side, and Leonie is treated like her only trait is liking Jeralt, and for me it all just culminates in the question of “so did you like... not do their support conversations, or...?” Seriously. I think Leonie might be one of my favourites in the game so far, and I adore Raph. He’s so sweet!

• The Flame Emperor reveal for some reason gave me “and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids” vibes. I liked the venom Cherami Leigh had there as Rhea, too. I think I read from someone that in Japanese, Rhea’s actually super calm in that scene. I don’t think I have a preference towards the anger or the calmness, honestly. I think I just liked how smoothly the emotion came across. Plus, I’m a little biased, I’m fond of Cherami as an actress. I haven’t found a performance from her I haven’t enjoyed yet.

• I was really confused as to why Seteth showed up in my house after Chapter 12ish I think? I wasn’t expecting him to just be there after the paralogue, but I definitely wasn’t unhappy. I do like him! I just never use him, because I recruited Bernadetta and Sylvain, so I kinda have a full roster going...

• I was also confused in the Gronder Field fight because I couldn’t see what people meant about Bernie getting set on fire. Then I remembered Bernie wasn’t on the hill because she was with me. I recruited her. Whatever this proves about me, I don’t know.

• I did end up beating Marianne’s paralogue! It actually wasn’t as hard once I levelled her up a bit and classed her to a Holy Knight. The big thing with her in that paralogue seems to be that she needs a decent amount of power and movement to really get by, so that’s what I’d recommend for anyone else playing it. Using rescue will also probably help you out, but I tried to avoid using Flayn there because it’s kinda easy to kill her.

• Admittedly, I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the support system. In some ways, I think it’s better that not everybody has that forced S-Support. Oftentimes we were either squeezing a love confession out of two characters who were unlikely to have one, or characters with decent potential might get snubbed because their connection was less apparent to the writers (and unfortunately that still does happen in the case of same sex S-supports in 3H). Having the conversations only go to a certain point is helpful, but at the same time, the inherent romantic undertones of several of the A-supports do make things feel strange. If it weren’t for the fact that I know characters can have only one partner as their paired ending, I would think lots of them were in a polycule. Nothing wrong with that as long as everyone’s comfortable, but because I know they can only have one person in their ending, I find it pretty jarring.

• I think it was interesting that they went to do the fights for breaking into Enbarr and then taking down Edelgard back-to-back. I’m glad they did, honestly, because while I don’t usually like to do two fights next to each other unless I’m grinding, it doesn’t mess with the suspension of disbelief. It would be stupid to break into Enbarr and then just run right back to the Monastery.

• I have still not completed the randomized quest from just after the timeskip. You know, the one I was yelling about with the weeds? Still haven’t gotten any weeds. I think I might just have to give up on it. It’s hilarious that my luck is so good that it’s actually bad.

• The fact that Byleth is praised for having more of a personality than Corrin is the biggest slice of bullshit I have heard from this fanbase in a long time. Byleth is literally designed to be a silent protagonist with nothing going on with them – they even came up with a story reason for why Byleth is such a blank sack of meat! In the kindest way possible, I don’t think most people realize that they are implementing whatever personality they want onto Byleth. Personally, I don’t find anything relatable about being stoic, calm, and not inclined to anyone (until plot happens, of course). I’ve always been the overly enthusiastic and caring type, with a tendency towards nervousness. Trying to relate to Byleth was like trying to relate to the experiences of a cactus. While I definitely don’t think Corrin is the strongest of the modern FE avatars – that award goes to Robin – they still had some things I could understand and relate to. If you’re not the type of person who loves the cool, “I fight for my friends” types like Ike, though, you’re likely to have a hard time relating to Byleth. If you can manage that type of character, then you’re more likely to have present them with a personality of their own.

• Actually, while we’re on the topic of Byleth getting praised for things Corrin got dragged for, the fact that Corrin is still cited as the character who receives the most “player pandering” is ridiculous too. Do a lot of characters like Corrin? Yeah! But most of them who do are deeply traumatized in a way that inclines them specifically towards Corrin. The Nohr siblings cling to each other due to their abusive childhood, the Hoshido siblings all in some capacity seem to suffer from abandonment issues (oldest) and/or attachment issues (youngest), and the official foursome of retainers have also had some sort of abandonment struggle in their past (forced separation from parents, murdered loved ones). While the cast of Three Houses needs therapy and is traumatized too, there is no reason why the inclination moves towards Byleth. Bernadetta feels safe around them just because. Edelgard is obsessed with them just because. Marianne learns to feel better about herself just because. Why are there so many exceptions for Byleth, and so many just without explanation? I don’t hate Byleth by any means, but these two things make my opinion of them lower than it would be otherwise. It kinda sucks that my image of Byleth is tainted by the fanbase’s hypocrisy, but I know I can’t have everything.

• The gameplay overall for 3H has been pretty fun! I love the addition of the Demonic Beasts, as annoying as they are to fight. There’s a charm to having some of your stronger units working to take on the soldiers blocking the path, meanwhile your army’s more intermediate strikeforce works to keep them safe by bringing down the beast. Once you get the hang of it, gameplay with the new additions is fun. The only thing I don’t use is Divine Pulse, but that’s because I’m on Casual and usually when I want to rewind, I want to just plain start over. So I use the old “turn off and start again” trick.

• Edelgard’s death scene was actually pretty good. I must confess that I went out of my way to avoid Edelgard in the academy phase, as I knew how hard the game was going to hit me with the “she’s obessed with you” thing and I wanted to see how wonky it would feel if I didn’t speak to her much. I was right that it’s incredibly awkward in terms of writing when you haven’t spent the time with her, but surprisingly, her death scene still holds up. Good voice acting, animation, and music. My only beef with it is something they have done in FE before, and it’s something I wish they’d stop. If a character is dying, you either let them have a few last breaths after their last lines or you kill them mid-sentence. It’s probably just a personal nitpick, but hearing them get their last word out without struggle and then immediately die just makes me aware of how badly the directors wanted the whole line to be in there. I can totally understand it but I find it so troublesome in the grand scheme of things that I just can’t.

• I also like that in the fight against Edelgard, they tried to make it ambiguous who had the key. Immediately as it told me that, I decided it was Petra and ended up being right. I was kind of sad to kill her though, to be honest. I don’t know her well, but she’s probably one of the Eagles I like more.

• The fight against the Death Knight at Fort Merceus ended up being surprisingly pretty easy. In fact, while I paved the way for most of my army, Nader ended up making it to the Death Knight just as Claude did. He did most of the damage – I’m not kidding, the Death Knight was down to 1 HP – and then Claude took care of the rest. It was a weird fight. They said impregnable a lot leading up to it.

• I understand why they kill Dimitri off-screen at the Gronder Field fight, but I was admittedly a bit disappointed. Again, Salli Saffoti does a good job doing Hilda’s voice for it, but I would have liked to see it animated. It was also nice to have that little rapport with Dedue! If only we could have allied with the Lions a bit more. Everyone always says Claude and Edelgard have similar goals; however, it’s their methods that differ. Claude seems to align himself a bit closer to Dimitri, so I’m usually a bit confused by the idea that Edelgard and Claude would work together. I was spoiled on enough to know her background and story, and even so, I think that her methodology is just a bit too violent for his tastes. But that’s just my two cents.

Alright. I think that’s about all I can drain out of my brain from the top of my head. With that, I am off to kill the slithers! We’ll see how this goes. Wish me luck!

#koto plays 3h #spoilers fire emblem three houses #spoilers FE3H

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