#but!! I think I executed my vision fairly well

[sri-rachaa]

Man of the year || Milo Greer

[alevolpe]

Please tell us about Luna (and Artemis)!

Alright!

Luna as I mentioned here was a part of the rebellion group that included Beryl and the 4 kings back in the silver millennium, she was a crucial part of the operation as she was the only one with direct access to the Moon Kingdom and the Queen.

Though let me take it back a second and explain who Luna is. The name Luna isn’t her name per se, but more of a title/position in the royal court that is passed down. The role of a Luna is given to a human woman whose job is to be a caretaker, specifically she’s the caretaker for any reborn senshi.

Say the current Mercury does anything that gets her executed, the new Mercury will be reborn on Earth and it’s Luna’s job to take her from her human parents and raise her til the age where she’s mature enough to be independent.

Additionally, since it happens that a whole life of a Luna can pass by without her even needing to take care of any senshi ( read more on how old the senshis are here, in the comments) she also is entasked with small roles as advisor for the queen and mediator during Earth expeditions, both of these jobs are her responsibility ONLY if it has to do with the senshi.

Our Luna didn’t raise any of the senshi, they are all adults when she is given the title of Luna, despite that Luna still tries to be there for (most of) them like a mother would. She feels for them and understands the terrible situations they’re in. That said she’s not treated well by all of them, really the only ones that treat her nicely and with respect are Mars and Neptune, and in her own way Mercury.

Luna is very passionate, even in her current life, she’s very driven by a sense of justice, while also having a very compassionate heart toward the people she’s supposedly betraying. Though she’s never swayed to think that what she’s doing isn’t right, the people of Earth deserve better and for that, the Moon Kingdom has to fall, even if she knows it means most likely means the death of the senshi and the princess.

She’s eventually discovered and executed, Mars tipping off the Queen to her doings. Mars is a very interesting character in silmil and she’s def the most “lawful good” out them all, but with her future vision, she does what she has to make sure the pieces fall into place for a better future. She knew Luna’s execution was the only opening for such future, so she regrettably did what she had to do. There’s 0 animosity between them, more like a mutual respect and liability. They never talked about such issues openly between each other, but there was always a silent mutual understanding. Mars understood Luna’s actions and Luna’s understood Mars’.

Skipping to the current time, the same Luna that was executed was reincarnated into the body of a cat, my theory is that cats are nimble, low key creatures who are able to fairly easily integrate into society while still not being human and so that’s why the Queen chose such form. She didn’t want Luna to be a human cause she doesn’t need Luna to stick around long, cats live much shorter lives and she only needs Luna to care of the senshi during their ‘transitioning training’ period and then die, having fulfilled her purpose.

All Luna’s memories were erased, only keeping very foggy, but clear goals in her mind. Awaken the senshi, find the princess and stop the evil Dark Kingdom. I like to think Queen Serenity chose this past Luna to reincarnate instead of just getting a fresh new soul because Luna already carried that sort of experienced motherly vibe with her, making it easier the ease the senshi into accepting their new destiny, but also maybe as a sort of taunting punishment. This is your punishment for your betrayal, you’ll unknowingly help defeat the same group you were a part of all those years ago and that empire you tried to destroy, will rise once again, with you knowing no better and dying before even getting to witness it.

As for Artemis, my ideas with him are definitely not as fleshed out. I most often tend to see him as the royal advisor of the Queen, his name also being a title. He really believes the Queen to be a sort of superior being, but he does also have a deeper attachment to her, seeing the more human side to her, which no1 else really gets to see.

He’s a bit more on the cynical side when it comes to the Earth people. Not that he sees them as completely inferior, but he believes people like them need beings like Serenity to mantain peace and order, even if they don’t know better. Humans are inherently selfish and self-destructive, he witnessed it, being a human who grew up on Earth.

He regularly interacted with Venus, being another victim of her manipulations, even if not to the level of Serenity, and holds her to a standard higher than the other senshi, seeing the rest of them as unmotivated and ungrateful of being a part of the court.

Unlike Luna, he retained his memories when he got reincarnated. Lying and withholding information to the true extent of what the senshi, the princess and the kingdom truly entail to the future of the girls and Earth itself, even from Luna.

He believes he’s doing the right thing, that Queen Serenity knew better and that this is how things should be. Though in the back of his mind something doesn’t feel right, he feels hurt and betrayed. Why was he reborn as a cat? He understands why Luna was, but why him, he showed nothing but devotion and loyalty to the Queen. Did he really not mean anything to her or does she really know best and knows that Artemis’ fate is ultimately inconsequential to the rise of the new kingdom?

This conflict within him is a major part of his growth as a character, learning to unwind and truly rethink what being human means through the girls and especially through Mina.

Regarding their relationship, I really do not ship Luna and Artemis. Through the majority of the first arc Luna is left in the dark by him and lead to make decisions that ultimately will cause the girls more harm than good. They are coworkers at best and even after stuff get a lil cleared out, Luna still holds a huge resentment toward him never really gets resolved (in my hc, Luna doesn’t live past the 2nd season, sorry, ik, I love her too).

This is long I know , sorry. LOL, but hopefully it clears some things up and of course all I write int his asks is still a draft, so stuff might change.

[hotwaterandmilk]

No Accounting for Taste

I've never been accused of having "good taste" when it comes to, well, any type of media. However, when it comes anime/manga I find I'm accused of being contrarian or ignoring genuinely "good" titles in favour of "bad" ones fairly often.

While that's not exactly groundless, it doesn't paint the full picture of what I find interesting and why it intrigues me so I thought I'd write about it a little.

I like a lot of popular, agreed upon "good" titles where a masterful artist or team or artists executes a beautiful vision that may not get everything right, but still manages to tick the majority of boxes and leave the audience remembering the experience for years to come (something like Shoujo Kakumei Utena or Cowboy Bebop, for example).

However, these series don't tend to be the ones I obsess about and collect things from and that comes down to the fact that I just love an interesting mess. Something that catches my attention in a unique way despite not having the story weight/talent/etc. to pull it all off.

You know those series with a fantastic concept but terrible execution? Or series with a couple of genuinely fascinating characters and mediocrity across the board otherwise? Yeah, those are what I love.

That doesn't mean I turn my head and ignore these flaws (Akihabara Dennou-gumi for example has a fantastic backdrop of alchemy, but that doesn't excuse the disgusting fanservice or explain piss-poor overall production).

If anything, I find those flaws intriguing in their own right (how does something with so much promise end up failing to stick the landing? Why were these the directions these titles took?) and learning about why they happened can continue to fuel my interest in the titles years after I've first experienced them.

And of course what is "good" and what is "bad" is extremely subjective, not everyone will agree on what the "best" title of all time is no matter how many fans you survey. I think what matters to me at the end of the day is that, for whatever reason, an eclectic assortment of titles have just hit me at the exact right point in my life for me to become engrossed by their eccentricities, flaws, and yes, even their successes.

That's why you'll find me sharing the odd scan from genre-defining titles like Sailor Moon, but when it comes to tearing apart art books and tracking down obscure pieces of stationery, I reserve that kind of dedication for Wedding Peach because it just hit me different 25+ years ago and I still can't shake it (despite the series being what it is).

Anyway, Saturdays are a real brain fog day for me because Friday is when I take my weekly meds so, err, this isn't a particularly articulate examination of my interests or anything. I just got to thinking last night that I find Ryuu-ou Mahoujin more intriguing than GALS! despite the former being a short-lived, break-neck paced mess of a production and the latter being a clearly thought out and popular title from the same author.

I'm also currently re-watching Kamichama Karin and it is such a hot mess of things I can't stand and things that make me genuinely go "what was Koge-Donbo* thinking?" but these flaws compel me to keep pressing play on episode after episode.

I just feel that at the end of the day there's enough room in the world for all of us to enjoy different problematic faves and to highlight successes without pretending failures don't also exist. Every project whether it ends up "good" or "bad" has a team of individuals doing their best on it and I think that's something that resonates with me even if the end product is a total mess.

Sometimes a project veers away from the course it was meant to take and never becomes what it could have been, but those trace elements of brilliance can get noticed by someone who experienced the title at the right time and vibed with the core concepts regardless of the execution.

So creators, take heed, even if the project you work on doesn't end up an iconic series with millions of fans there will always be weirdos like me out there that love the memorable parts of what you did manage to do while also noting the bits you got wrong. Sometimes one person's trash really is someone else's treasure (and yes you'll have to pry Wedding Peach et al. from my cold, dead hands).

[esxvspy]

YTTD THEORY ABOUT THE THIRD MAIN GAME IN THE LOGIC/SHIN ROUTE

(Spoilers obviously if you haven’t played all the way through the game)

So I saw some else have an idea similar to this, but here’s what I think the card roles are going to be then I’ll explain why

Shin - keymaster

Keiji- sage

Sara - sacrifice

Gin - commoner

Ok so shin is 100% going to be the keymaster, that’s easy. I figured he was going to be ever since we saw his key necklace in chapter 2-2. He also quite literally holds the key to their escape/survival. He can either lock Sara and co out, like in chapter 1 and kind of chapter 2, or he can open up like in chapter 2-2. And he needs to choose what he wants to seal the fate of the others.

Sara is also easily the sacrifice. She can either sacrifice the others and earn her life, like we see her almost do in chapter 3-1b w ranmaru. Especially now that joe is not there, this could be the case, the angel of death like keiji says. Or she could be their goddess of victory, and sacrifice herself in order to save the others.

Keiji is probably the wisest out of them. He can see things others can’t with his “detective vision”. He knows way more then he seems to let on, and he’s very good at staying quiet and keeping secrets when needed.

Gin is going to be the commoner then. He’s fairly normal and average at first and just like the commoner card he’s almost always at danger. But he always tries to help when he can and has proven to be useful.

Like I said someone else pointed out the symbolism w this, but I think it’s more then that. If I’m right and these are the cards that they get, then that probably means that Sara and keiji are biting the dust. (Maybe gin too but I hope not 😰.) Sara will be executed just like joe, and this probably means, just by looking at shin’s death in 2-2 and Kai’s “death” (I really don’t believe he’s dead) in chapter 1, then keiji is probably going to do something against what the floormasters want. Like shin’s collar coming off and Kai’s “suicide” (still don’t believe he’s dead). Idk what he’s going to do or how it’s going to be done, but yeah.

This would also line up almost perfectly with the memorandum from 2-2. Assuming gin dies as well, and sole survivor shin, then it fits perfectly.

Anyways that’s my Ted talk of the day

[sohushygrayness]

Project Number: 4: Kitchen Company App

Project type: Epic.

Goal: to design an Application interface that can be used for a business that sells Kitchens.

Planning.

Materials: Microsoft Powerpoint

Time: 6 hours+

Budget: £5.99 (the cost of one month of Microsoft Office).

Learning: PowerPoint, UX Design, UI Design

Research:

Skills: Microsoft Powerpoint, Design Principles

Execution

I start with perhaps a fairly crude blank design. I envision a blank white background with a PowerPoint icon that I find by searching ‘Kitchen’.

For the sake of ideation, we’ll call this company The Kitchen Company. I don’t have experience of logo design and perhaps i’ll come back to this section. Once the Application opens we then land on the home page. There are many things to be considered at this point. I’ve stuck to a commonly accepted design in which we have the search bar at the top of the application. Then the main section underneath the search bar will be where this company advertises its main idea. Underneath this, I’ve then opted to go with free sections which are as follows: firstly we have a “view your plan“ section. Although this section would work well for somebody who already has a plan, it may not work as well if the customer doesn’t have a plan. So, perhaps for those that don’t have a plan, this could be, the section where the customer can click to start planning their kitchen. Then we have the rate your purchase section and perhaps on the right hand side of that we have a section that will be geared towards cookware. Underneath this we will have our product catalogue.

We then move into what I’m picturing as the planning plan stage of the application and customer journey. My vision for this section is twofold: firstly, for those who haven’t made a purchase we would show them the product range on the top half of the screen and then on the bottom half of the screen we can use a augmented reality to to help customers plan their kitchen. However, if they have already made their plan then this is where they can visualise it in augmented reality. I’m picturing the customer have an ability to make a 3-D holographic of the kitchen at the click of the bottom. We would keep the surge bar at the top of the app, in case the customer needs to type something to find it however I’m still undecided whether this would be needed at this point in the customer journey.

Then we move onto the Contact tab. This is, admittedly the page that I am least unsure of. I would assume that the 2 preferred methods of contacting this company would be the phone and emailing. However, I would personally prefer to have it as only the phone option and perhaps expand on this with an FAQ, maybe a ticketing system? In my mind I’m envisioning perhaps needing to see a picture of an item which may limit us to either email or chat.

Lastly, the final tab will be, I think the profile option. My first initial design here is to have a login or sign-up option. However, would this be appropriate? I am making an assumption here that anybody who has downloaded this app would either use it because of how good the AR technology is within the App or because they already have a Kitchen and want maintenance advice. I still think I should keep it but not restrict some features of the App without an account. 

Reflection: this has been a fun experience. A lot of the initial design has been trialling things and seeing what I think if I was a customer. I will say though that this is yet to be finalised and this is version 1.0 of this design. I will return to it.

Outcome:: N/A

Lessons: 

‘Checkout’ or the purchasing page shouldn’t be its own tab which was what I had in my first initial design.

[crownshattered-arch]

|| SO gonna reconstruct Anne's backstory, so this post is going to explain the new details, as well as explain Adrian, Anne's twin brother (younger twin)~ These things are super open to change, so they might not actually stick in the finished product. A lot of this has to do with how Fontaine works once we know more about it~

Background info!!

To start with, I'm changing their last name. Thinking about something with the root word "Diabolus". Any ideas of what to do with that would be SO appreciated!!

Anne and Adrian are in no way related to Diluc anymore. Their family has no apparent roots to Mondstadt anymore. Yeah, Anne looks a lot like Diluc, but that's just coincidental~ The Diabolus (working name until I change it XDD) family has lived in Fontaine for generations and has been an aristocratic family that is quite close to the Hydro Archon. However, everyone in this family has, for generations, seen Focalors as a joke.

Even though they are high class nobility in Fontaine, this family runs the criminal underworld of information in all of Fontaine...as well as all of Teyvat. That organization is called The Underworld, and Anne is the current head (this hasn't changed). She has branches in every nation with an executive acting as the head, but with the changes to her character, she doesn't need a Fontaine "executive" since she already runs this branch herself. She runs the Fontaine branch as well as the whole Underworld (though I may have Adrian do most of the Fontaine branch stuff...maybe idk)

Info about the twins' family!!

Anne and Adrian are hella close. They've been inseparable from birth. Anne is the older twin and Adrian is younger, and Anne has always been much stronger than Adrian. She was a strong and tough girl who always loved running around and getting into things, but Adrian was rather sickly as a child and couldn't always keep up with his sister. Whenever he couldn't keep up, his mother would keep him company.

As children, Anne was a lot like their mother--brave, strong, and so emotional and free-spirited. By contrast, Adrian was just like their father when their father was a child--quiet, shy, ill-bodied. But the two had each other, and that's all that mattered.

Their mother loved them very much and gave them enough love for both of their parents. However, their father was not a very affectionate parent. He loved his children, but in his own "proper nobility" way. He didn't play with them. He was always working. He was very distant from his children. Anne didn't really like him because of this, even as a young child, but Adrian still wanted to get his attention in any way possible.

I'm not sure when this will take place nor do I know much of the details, but at some point (maybe when they were around 10..?) SOMETHING happens that puts the family in danger. I really don't know the specifics and I would like to bounce my ideas off of someone, but what I want to end up happening is at some point Adrian is with his mother and sees her get brutally murdered right in front of him (like a shot through the head or something, something to really scar him) and I want something to happen later where Anne defends Adrian from a potentially fatal attack, getting her hand deeply cut in the process but also giving Anne her vision. Anne then burns herself with the intensity of her vision (her passion is INCREDIBLY strong and unstable, after all) and Adrian gets his hydro vision shortly after to heal his sister.

So their mom dies and Adrian sees it, and the two get their visions within the span of a few days at most~ But that was a long time ago. It has affected Anne, of course, but it really affected Adrian. He's now terrified of losing anyone else that he loves, so he does whatever he can now to keep his loved ones (especially Anne) safe, even if they don't need it. Even if they don't want it.

At some point fairly recently, their father retired and appointed Anne as the new head of the Underworld and the head of the family itself. She didn't want this, but she didn't want Adrian to be stuck in this role either, so she took it. That much hasn't changed.

In Anne and Adrian's original story, they have a very close connection to Lia (who I made for the same story, actually). I want to keep that connection. So, whenever Lia in her genshin verse fled Snezhnaya, she found the Underworld (either she was told to go there or she happened to find them) and Anne and Adrian kind of took her in for a bit and allowed her to lie low. They would NOT normally do this, so I need to figure out why they would do this for her (they are not a charity here). But in the time they kept Lia hidden, both twins fell in love with her, and Lia didn't return the feelings. They still keep tabs on her in Mondstadt. Anne just wants to make sure she's safe, and Adrian is a bit more...obsessive. (THIS DOESNT ALWAYS APPLY!! If I have a ship with Anne or Adrian that has lasted for a few years before the current story timeline, said twin did not fall in love with Lia. But if they weren't in a relationship when Lia was under their care, they fell for her.)

Info about Adrian himself!!

Hydro, thinking I may make him a bow user... Maybe a catalyst. The only reason I would make him a bow user is because his body is still kind of weak, but if Baizhu can be a catalyst user, so can Adrian XDD

Anne is scary because she's powerful, not just as the head of the Underworld but also because she is crazy strong with her pyro vision. However, Adrian is scary because he is unhinged. He's unpredictable, and if you cross him (or ESPECIALLY his sister) your life is in grave danger. Your only hope is to get on Anne's good side so she can restrain her brother.

Adrian is so loyal to Anne. These twins have a lot of death/grim reaper/devil motifs. So one way you can think about the twins is that Anne is Hades and Adrian is Cerebus. He is like her dog when it comes to work (but she doesn't treat him like a dog, she treats him like her younger brother who she loves so much. But he's very dog-like).

I don't exactly know what Adrian's job in the Underworld is... Maybe he will be Anne's right hand, but I think he will mostly be her most skilled informant. If she needs to personally send someone to get information, she will send her brother...unless she's worried he will make a mess of the situation.

BE CAREFUL WITH ADRIAN. He is totally yandere material. He can be nice at times, but he also highly obsessive when it comes to the people he cares about. The only reason he doesn't make "accidents" for anyone Anne is dating (thus taking his sister away from him in his eyes) is because Anne won't let him. Anyone else, however, he will cling to in an unhealthy manner. This will NOT be romanticized. This is just me exploring what Adrian's trauma has done to his mentality. But do not go into interacting with Adrian and assume he is some nice guy.

Adrian is my one token straight muse XDD I just don't see him being shipped with a guy...maybe this can change, but until then, these siblings only like girls XDD

More TBA..??

[devsgames]

okay okay you got me @pigdeons

This initial thought was brought on from a memory when years ago a rando person online tried to put me on blast for arguing that objective markers are generally a good thing.

Their argument was essentially that "good" games shouldn't have objective markers at all, because it's not "immersive", and essentially that if a game has objective markers it means that the Level Designer failed to make a "good" Level Design because it doesn't lead the player effectively. I think this sentiment is fairly common too; that if a game has "good" level design then it should successfully lead you around a space by default with no assistance, or else the Level Designer has failed.

So first off, I think "good" design is a myth. Generally, I don't believe design is "good" or "bad", and referring to it as such is something that I just fundamentally do not agree with. Rather, I believe that design just has varying levels of success for different types of audiences - it's subjective to who is playing and what methods are used, and this is determined by many factors (culture, psychology, thought process, learning style, etc). Rather, I think the goal of any designer should be to try and cover the widest range of cases possible.

One person might navigate a series of objectives successfully with zero issues without the use of something at all times telling them where to go, while someone else might flounder completely without something holding their hand the whole way. Both of these are valid players who should be catered to, and one doesn't need to implicitly be held to a higher standard on the basis of personal preference or game vision.

I also think that generally in level design, if you're building any kind of objective-based gameplay that isn't a straight hallway with one exit and no distractions where the gameplay is hard scripted to execute in an exact way...well then you're going to lose players.

Someone will always get turned around. Someone will always press the wrong button. Someone will always be too slow. Someone will always forget what they're supposed to do. Someone will always struggle to find the path to get to point B.

Do I wish that players just knew where to go and what to do all the time so we could just build worlds that are implicitly understood? Totally! Unfortunately that's just not how Level Design works, especially not when building a whole game.

At this point in my career I have watched hours of players playing the levels I have made, and I have never seen a group of players - in playtests or in the wild - all have the exact same perfect experience navigating a space of any kind. I've seen people beat levels with no help, blind, first try with no problems at all, as well as players who have to toddle their way meticulously from point to point. Unless your level design is so dirt simple that a mullosk could do it, it simply doesn't happen and you'll always have people who will struggle through it. It's the same in real life - if you sit and watch people on any street corner for any amount of time you're going to see someone at some point or another get lost. It's just how people are.

Hence, there's always people out there that step-by-step influence will be vital for, and objective markers are something that lifts a skill floor up for those people to engage with your game. For some, that moment of confusion could be when they quit, and a guidance tool like markers could be the thing that prevents that.

I also think anyone who says levels should be perfectly navigable with no non-diegetic assistance 1) have almost never built a level before and 2) has never built a level in a context that necessitated actually shipping a game.

Games that don't use objective markers are often explicitly designed around that premise, and a ton of resources go into ensuring these systems don't need to be added. You'll see immersive sims thrown around a lot as an example of this, and that's because it's fundamentally part of that genre to be "immersive". You'll also notice that they're generally smaller, more focused bites of gameplay compared to the scale of other games, and these small spaces are iterated on way more frequently by way more people. They'll often have you exploring a single building or series of rooms in isolation rather than, say, a whole world. It's because there's SO MUCH work in making a world that directs you well without something explicitly guiding you, and even then these games will fail at it. The sheer amount of resources a Level Designer would need to execute that successfully for a wide number of players is staggering - I personally could never imagine building something without any non-diegetic UI and expecting it to "just work".

But hey, I'm just a Sr. Level Designer, what do I know. :)

As a case study: when I worked at Ubi I was on a project where one of our directors scrapped all the objective markers in the whole game, mid-production. Because the game wasn't fundamentally built for it from the ground up, and it was an open-world game with many objectives intricate enough to be distracting and demanding of the player's attention. It took a year for them to realize the scale and attention such a move would require simply wasn't available with the resources we had, and eventually we re-added all of them. Fun!

I also believe people use 'immersion' as a strawman to disingenuously attack design they simply don't like on the basis of it, and I see that happen a lot with stuff like non-diegetic UI markers.

I mean, to some players "immersion" is not having a HUD while playing, and to other players "immersion" is 'I want to have to press a button to breathe and blink and sleep for 8 hours in game to recover stamina'. Ask someone what makes a game "immersive" and you'll never get the same answer, and this is largely because "immersive" just depends on a player's values and what they like in a game. Therefore, I think it's just a fundamentally weak argument to imply that games shouldn't have markers at all, just because some people aren't "immersed" by them. I mean hell, half the games people tout for not having objective markers still have tons of non-diegetic UI. This is all just stuff I think stems from the wider cultural torrent that is ~video games~ though.

Anyway I'm rambling.

The fundamental idea here is that I think if you can put objective markers to assist you in guiding the player through your game, I think you should because no Level Design will ever be good enough. It's often cheap, easy to do, and frankly helps far more players than it hurts. I think it should be treated like an accessibility tool and control of it should be given to players to choose how much of it they want, where, etc. so that players who need the help get it, rather than have people campaigning to cut them out entirely from games and hoping the level design "just works".

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk :)

My hot take is that objective markers in video game UI is very good and that virtually every video game should have them, and that the pros vastly outweigh the cons.

[adobe-outdesign]

I bother you for a review of the Sobble line, my beloveds?

I see a lot of hate for this line, but honestly, Sobble is pretty cute. An anxious little Pokemon that weaponizes its tears is a fun concept (#relatable), and visually, I like a lot of what's going on with it.

The little chameleon-style mitten hands and feet are nice, the fin on top of the head adds a perfect touch of color, and the little tear markings under the eye are a nice way to hint at the theme when its not actively crying, which in turn is paralleled by the blue circle at the tip of its tail. My only visual nitpick is that the eyes could've stood to have some yellow in them to make them pop.

I gotta admit, however, that it does suffer from a kind of generic body shape. All of the gen 8 starters have the same basic form, and so it feels like the nice visuals of Sobble are held back by an underwhelming and generic execution that make it less memorable than it potentially could have been. It's still perfectly good, just not as memorable as it could've been.

Drizzle gets some points for at least being unique in the line, but it was always my least favorite stage due to, once again, feeling generic—except this time, it doesn't have the strong balanced visuals Sobble has to compensate.

I think part of the problem with Drizzle is a lack of clear focus or direction, which stems from the whole line. Sobble's concept is that it's a timid and fearful chameleon that uses its color-changing abilities to hide, but it evolves into... a super spy (probably because spies are stealthy, which once again ties into the invisibility thing, except Inteleon is more of a basilisk lizard than a chameleon anyway). So Drizzle's left just kind of being emo, I guess to tie back into the sadness thing? I feel like if they just subtly hinted at the spy thing and focused on that from the beginning instead of randomly changing themes, the line would've been more cohesive, and Drizzle here would have more direction.

Visually, putting the bland body shape away, it retains some of Sobble's good elements, like the mitten hands and tear markings. However, the color palette changes randomly here to include green and purple, which go away again as soon as it evolves (the green areas could've easily been yellow, for example). The fin is generic looking and lacks the nice structure and colors of its evo/pre-evo as well. It's not the worst thing, but it's fairly bland.

This might be a hot take, but I actually really like parts of Inteleon's design. Even if the line could've focused on it more, the idea of a spy chameleon with basilisk attributes is pretty cool, and I like some of the biological aspects, like it having nictitating membranes and a sharp, knife-like tail.

I also like the head area. The fin looks cool, the face is properly lizard-ish, I like the expression and the yellow eyelids, and the built in "glider" is neat. It's nice to see it finally get a more distinct shape after two stages of generic round heads. Also, the wetsuit markings are clever for a water-type. Also also, it looks pretty good in motion:

However, I do agree with the general opinion that the body shape is a bit off. First, it's ridiculously thin, almost like an anole or long-tailed grass lizard; it feels like a strong breeze could break its arms. This is also emphasized by things like the long, human-like legs and human hands (lizard hands are more spread out, and don't have joints in the same places as human hands). If it just had more lizardish anatomy—think like Kecleon, Salazzle, Heliolisk—I could see myself liking it a lot more.

I also feel like it could've stood to be a little more chameleon-like, as that's the only reason its a spy to begin with. Nothing wrong with the basilisk elements, but why not give it some cool weird chameleon eyes that look like night-vision goggles, or let it keep the mitten hands? Emphasize that and the stealth and the concept would be a bit clearer.

Also, some small visual nitpicks: The stripe down the tail adds nothing and isn't needed. Also not a huge fan of the white diamond on the stomach as it seems out of place (even if it is supposed to be a suit). Mostly, though, it's just the anatomy that throws me.

The g-max is the best out of the starters on the grounds that it's at least not an item that becomes larger, even if the entire body still hasn't grown much. Also, the concept is pretty fun, with it using its long tail as a sniper tower.

However, I also feel like this doesn't make much sense. First, what does a sniper have to do with spies? Just because they both use guns and are stealthy, I guess? But secondly, this thing is 100 feet tall. Isn't the point of snipers to be unnoticeable? Who is gonna get sniped by this thing because they didn't notice the 100-foot tall lizard tower of death? It's fun on paper, but doesn't hold up when you think about it actually in-battle.

Also, it's weird that the tail starts out spiraling and then suddenly straightens out, especially when the fin curls around. Why not just make the entire thing spiral-shaped? I feel like that would be a lot more natural as opposed to the suddenly perfect straightness going on here.

Anyway, overall: Sobble is cute and has a nice design, but suffers a bit from a generic body shape. Drizzle lacks direction, and Inteleon is pretty cool looking but stand to be more chameleon-ish, both conceptually and visually. The g-max is fun but doesn't really make much sense when you stop to think about it.

In fact, the more I think about it the more I think this might be my fav gen 8 starter—though that isn't saying a lot.

[steveharrington]

Oh yeah I mean. Barb vs Chrissy is very distinct Barb is treated like a normal character introduced fairly naturally over the course of two (?) episodes, I don’t think we even learned her last name until season 2 with her parents (which makes sense. I don’t say my last name often in conversations). Meanwhile season 4 is like. Here’s Chrissy. Cunningham. She’s a brand new character! Here’s everything about her from her interests to her family to her dickish bf to her traumas. Here’s a fun middle school anecdote that doesn’t make sense with the timeline we’ve already established. Then she dies after existing for like, 30 minutes of screen time (most of which she wasn’t in). NONE of that felt natural. And the only characters who had any real reason to care were Jason and to a much lesser extent eddie (maybe max at a stretch. But neither of them really knew her. Her major role in the season was to cause problems for the gang by turning Jason into a secondary antagonist) who were ALSO introduced at the beginning of the season and dead by the end so she’ll basically have no lasting impact on the show. She could show up as a vecna vision and most of the characters would have very little idea who she is

They might try to wring some out bc she was kind of well-received (obviously the duffers rely on fan feedback in the worst way. Kali I will avenge you) but it won’t be earned AT ALL.

Chrissy managed to have a developed personality but ultimately I think she kind of failed the sexy lamp test. Like if Eddie had allegedly stolen and broken Jason’s prized possession the story wouldn’t have changed much she existed SOLELY to die (which is why I think too many people are like. Giving credit for how Chrissy was vs Barb. Barb was an actual minor character Chrissy was a list of traits tortured and killed for real reason, though gender plays a heavy role in how both were written and received. )

hmmm i don’t really agree :/ personally i don’t think chrissy was poorly written/introduced into the show at all, esp within the context of the season. all the things you listed that feel unnatural for us to know about her (her interests, her family, her boyfriend, her traumas) have an inherent place in the story because they matter when unraveling the mystery of vecna. we know about chrissy’s trauma from her mother and her ed because that’s what vecna takes advantage of. it’s showing us this to establish that he targets people who are already struggling with an internal conflict and plays on their fears/traumas. the exact same thing happens to fred! we meet him as fred benson, editor on the newspaper who likes nancy and has this traumatic past involving a car accident for which he feels a lot of guilt. it’s just the way new characters who will soon be vecna’d are introduced this season because it gives context to why they’re vecna’d. if anything, i think chrissy and fred were treated wayyyy better than patrick in terms of humanizing them and giving their trauma screentime. patrick is the Only vecna victim to not have his trauma delved into and explored beyond other characters talking about it.

as for stuff like learning about her relationship with jason and her little backstory with eddie….idk i think that was also fairly well executed and not unlike other character introductions we’ve seen? stranger things loveeees to have two characters recount a past shared experience from long long ago. mike and will at the park, joyce and hopper under the bleachers, jonathan and will as kids playing with legos, robin and steve in click’s class, etc etc so i don’t think chrissy and eddie reminiscing about middle school to find some common ground during an awkward meet-up is that out of place. i know there’s some conjecture about how old chrissy is supposed to be and if that would line up with her and eddie being in middle school at the same time and tbh i don’t know Much about it but she’s wearing an ‘86 necklace which i assumed was her graduating year, making her a senior and eddie two years older than her which isn’t that much of a stretch for them to have been in middle school at the same time

i don’t think chrissy could be replaced with an object to evoke the same reaction out of jason. really if i’m being honest i think jason is almost sympathetic for an st villain (i say almost because the whole spiral into puritanism and the tackling of erica just got. weird.) like……..he is under the very justified impression that eddie killed someone. a body was found in eddie’s house. the body of his girlfriend! i know jason is a shitty guy and very much douche who doesn’t respect women coded, but there’s really nothing in canon that explicitly suggests that he didn’t actually love chrissy. i’ve seen people be like “well he thought she would never do drugs, he didn’t really know her!!” yall eddie was also surprised by her doing drugs. it was clearly her first time buying drugs. no wonder jason wouldn’t think she would do that BUT i digress.

i think st does have trouble writing women sometimes, but i personally think those problems manifest mostly with nancy. i’m not trying to be a duffers apologist but i really didn’t find issue with chrissy’s introduction and characterization and death, mostly because she’s treated the exact same way as fred, a man, and treated better than patrick, a black man

[gravegroves]

It's not that Billy isn't grateful that the bastard sprung him out of the secret government lab he'd woken up in and subsequently spent weeks or maybe months being poked and prodded.

But out of all the closeted queers in Indiana that could have taken Billy under their wing, Murray goddamn Bauman is probably the last one that should legally be allowed to care for another human being. On the flip side, he may have single-handedly convinced Billy that heaven must be real, if only because Murray has most certainly dragged Billy to some version of hell. A better hell than he'd come from, but hell all the same.

Billy's starting to really hate classical music.

The fact that he's still bedbound doesn't help the situation any. If he could walk he'd smash that damn sound system with his bare hands or just fucking leave. But walking isn't an option while his body tries to heal, so if Murray doesn't soon turn off the 9th repeat of that Bach-Rachmaninov-Mozart bullshit he's blasting throughout the bunker-like structure Billy has been forced to call home for the past two weeks, he's going to strangle himself to death with the IV tube still lodged in his arm. Hopefully he'll shit himself after the fact and Murray will be forced to clean that up too.

"Turn that crap off or take me back to Hawkins you balding piece of shit! At least my dad only beat me!" Billy roars at the water stained concrete ceiling and grits his teeth against the pain when the move pulls on what feels like all the stitches in his body.

Murray glides into his field of vision like an unwashed spectre and throws himself onto the couch opposite the one Billy's lying on, still dressed in that same ratty bathrobe that probably hasn't been on the laundry pile in years, smiling that maniacal smile that Billy is less and less convinced is put-on by the day.

"Self degrading humor to mask the pain. You'll fit in here just fine." Murray sing-songs before getting back up and scuttling his way out of the room like the cockroach he is and into what Billy thinks might be the kitchen. Doesn't exactly know the layout of the hovel they're in, being bed-bound and all that.

The music cuts out and all the muscles in Billy's body slowly unwind as he breathes a sigh of relief.

Murray comes back with a flask of something foreign and pours a generous glass before handing it off to him, either unaware that Billy probably shouldn't be mixing alcohol with the cocktail of drugs he's still on or, more likely, doesn't give a shit. Billy downs it before the man can even open his mouth, too quick to really appreciate how it goes down smoother than water.

"You fucking philistine. That's good Stolichnaya." Murray grins before downing his own helping straight from the bottle.

"You a commie?" Billy asks, such a carbon copy of Neil he can almost feel the man's hand up his ass directing his words like a fucking puppet and he bites his tongue hard enough to hurt. Not that Billy's a big fan of the commies or the government or Neil or anyone really, but he's fairly sure they're the worse guys if this whole situation were a contest.

"Nice ideology, poor execution. No, but I'm gonna teach you how to speak like one Billy-boy!" Murray says, snatching away Billy's empty glass and filling it for him once again. "No one learns Russian well when they're sober though, so drink your heart out. It's gonna be a long year."

Billy stares.

"The fuck am I learning Russian for?"

Murray grins.

"Gotta go save a bigger Bastard than you or I."

"And why the fuck would I do that?"

Murray throws his hands out wide, "For the greater good, Billy. And maybe Steve Harrington will touch your dick about it, who knows."

Drugs really have a way of loosening Billy's tongue as it turns out, and it had taken a good day and a half for the worst of the effects to wear off after Murray had gotten him out. The Bastard hadn't let the opportunity to pry slip by him though, that's for fucking sure.

Billy scowls.

Besides, Steve Harrington doesn't even know that Billy's still alive. No one does. And even if he did… well.

The greater good will have to be enough, he supposes.

[featherymainffins]

Haha yeah, it's been a bit of time!!! I think I'm doing fairly ok, had some trouble with university and also went no-contact with my mother and i have a tattoo now (got it for my birthday lol). How about you, are you doing well : D?

I wouldn't call it impressive but it's pretty fun when it's not infuriating dkshkjdhk. What will be impressive will be the moment I finally manage to play the waltz I composed some time back correctly. I keep fucking it up even though the melody is really easy. Oh that reminds me, I have no idea if I ever posted my new ukulele, whom I call Henry, to Tumblr? I got him for Christmas because I really wanted a wooden ukulele but of course I had to customise it, and I know that I have showed him to people on Discord but unsure about Tumblr because it's possible I deleted before that. And no, it isn't a secret jdkfhkdjf. I've just been modding Baldur's Gate 3 since like early December and at first I was like "I'll just make one single head so that my characters is accurate and then I'll stop." and um yeah I have not yet stopped. I'm mostly making heads both my own and just making pre-existing but unusable heads usable for players (which can be either a nightmare or easy breezy depending on why exactly it isn't usable. Like nightmare nurse heads? A breeze, easy as hell, at least resculpted their ears for all races as to avoid the task being too low effort lol. Oh yeah the textures sucked hell but like the 3d models themselves were fine. On the other hand...Gerringothe Thorm? Awful, no good, a horrifying experience, would do it again but yeah I wouldn't recommend. That is because she is a monster and naturally does not use the same skeleton as humanoid characters nor is her UV map anything close to normal and her textures sucked and Chainner was not available when I was making her meaning I don't even remember how the hell I upscaled those textures but I did and it was a nightmare. So yeah.), but sometimes I also make armour if I have a particular vision. I post some progress stuff and general BG3 modding stuff on my sideblog @featherymuffins-moi (long story but when i started making mods i jokingly wrote moi, meaning me in French, in the author field that mods have and then I forgot to remove it when I decided to publish the mod so ever since then I'm "featherymuffins - moi" on Nexus) if you wanted to take a look but I haven't posted much there, you can see more of my stuff on Nexus, but I also have some stuff that's private for now that I haven't really posted, usually because it isn't really super release-ready yet or because I keep forgetting about it but I can show you some photos of, for example, Wrestling, which is a head/character I made like a week ago and proceeded to make armour for them immediately. I haven't posted Wrestling as a head anywhere yet because...idk...

Yeah, I was just mentioning the Toymaker analysis specifically because that is something I really want to do and I feel kinda bad about how I seem to be incapable of doing it in a decent time frame? Like I feel like the list of my tasks/projects/hobbies keeps getting bigger and never gets any smaller dsfsfsf.

Right, right, right, so I'm actually not sure if I was posting about it before I deleted or if I finished the book only afterwards, but around New Year's I read this book by Stephen King called Dreamcatcher, and uh, it's very difficult to recommend because the ending sucks shit. But if you ignore like 5 sentences that completely ruin everything and pretend they do not exist then it's a good book. So that's what I do. Funnily enough I do not like it for the plot, the plot is in itself fairly unremarkable, but I like the themes present and the execution of them. Like what is actually going on is your typical sci-fi horror stuff and is cool I guess but what I like way more than that is the psyche of the characters and who plays what role in the narrative etc etc. The book is long, has about 700 pages, I do have a PDF if you're interested (I have a physical copy but I'm in the process of analysing my fucked up idiot meow meow and it's a real damn hassle to analyse characters when you have to flip through pages and can't just skip to your highlights you know? So that's why I also have a PDF now.). There are also audiobook versions. I do not know if they're good. I hope they are because I would actually like to listen to one later. I can provide a link to at least one.

And this is getting like real long so I should cut it off but just a bit of info about the character whom I'm like insane about, the only problem is that he's hard to talk about because the themes, they do slap way goddamn harder when you do not expect them. But the total basic gist is: the freak in question is called Mr. Gray and he's an alien from what was an alien hivemind before the rest got absolutely annihilated in a battle, and he's just,,,,he's so everything. You know how that one meme is kinda like "Stop giving me your toughest battles I am not your strongest soldier I am your weakest soldier." or whatever the counter-meme to "God's strongest soldier" was like? Yeah well he's definitely the aliens' weakest soldier. I'm willing to bet the whole hivemind cluster that go to Earth was the race's weakest soldier. They have to be from alien Florida or something. It's also really funny how he like almost always says complete bullshit? Like sometimes it's really funny because he'll be like "Hmmm yes well you see unlike the primitive human race that cannot be considered sentient, we truly think and aren't weighed down by these 'emotions' of yours." and in the next breath he'll be like "We came to Earth because your mom. Lmao." When he doesn't want to answer a question truthfully he'll either just ask you a question or he'll say something that is so clearly either a lie or a straight up shitpost. Alien fungi is funnier than some Tumblr users for real sdkjhsfkss.

But that's just the absolute basic gist that doesn't say anything but if you would like to hear more about the alien I can definitely talk at length about like everything about him including the themes, I just didn't want to talk about him too much in this reblog because it's,,,,so long jksdhskjdhk.

Hey! How have you been? Sorry for disappearing, I deleted my Tumblr for a bit and then I uh forgot to remake it because I was 3D modelling in Blender for 3 months and learning how to code. Long story. I still haven't done the analysis of the Toymaker that I promised back in December. So there is that. But the good news is that I am not currently spending my days 3d modelling all day every day, which does actually make the possibility of me ever doing an analysis much more possible.

Also I might have a book recommendation for you. I have been recommending it to literally everyone around me lol. It has weird little men. Who are fucked up and pathetic but in a bit of a cute way? Depends on what genres of books you like tho. There is also an audiobook version if you prefer that. Oh and a film adaptation but that one...well...it is technically a good adaptation but it also kinda completely glosses over any of the deeper themes. Like yeah the plot is very faithful. No themes present though. Not sure about the quality of the audiobook but I personally want to listen to it later because I want to see what direction they took my favourite freak's voice in.

Anyway, I hope you are doing great!

Ira oh my goodness you're ALIVE!!! 🙈💖💖💖 hello my dear friend, how are you doing? it's been so long!! 🥰 ooh wow, sounds like you've been super busy!! please don't worry at all - real life can always pull us away from our Internet sillies, but i'm so glad you've been doing something so interesting with your time!! 3d modelling in Blender and coding is so impressive - are you working on something specific, or is it a secret? 😉 oh pal, don't worry about the Toymaker analysis at all! if i had a penny for every time i've said i'll do a fandom-related thing and then didn't, i'd be very rich indeed 😂 if the mood strikes you i would be delighted to see it, but don't let fandom fun become another job, you know? :3c ohoho i am very curious about this book recommendation - what is it? 👀 you know i love weird little men!!!! and it's always fun to see what gets other people fixating hahaha i'm so glad you're back buddy!! welcome home, settle in, and i hope to talk to you more soon 🙏💖

[anghraine]

I've talked before about why I'm annoyed by the defensive leap to "things have to be changed for different mediums!" as the go-to response to any criticism of any adaptational changes ever.

The short(ish) version is that a) it's virtually always presented as something critics of the change have never heard before, despite being incessantly repeated about everything, but more importantly, b) the underlying rationale that a specific change is intrinsically good because some change there was required by the medium (or because change in general is required by the medium) strikes me as unreasonable in the extreme.

With regard to the second issue, the statement that adaptations require changes, in part because of differences in medium, can be 100% true without supplying any reasoning whatsoever for why a specific change was a good one. Yet it's far and away the most common response I see—this sort of kneejerk insistence that all changes should be accepted uncritically because in general, changes have to be made at some points. And that's just a weak line of reasoning, IMO, which makes its inescapability all the more irritating.

That said, I was thinking about this particular argument in the context of something I mostly agreed with, and realized that there is another reason I find it both unsatisfactory and annoying.

The argument is sometimes accompanied by other arguments about how adaptations are fundamentally artistic works in their own rights, anyway, with nothing worthwhile gained by examining their relationships to their sources. However, I don't think these arguments go together particularly well.

The first one, the one I find so deeply annoying (I don't like or agree with the second, but it's not as irritating to me personally), essentially denies the artistry of adaptation. The thing is, if you assume that particular adaptational changes follow automatically and inevitably from the medium, and don't represent actual choices between alternatives, there's no artistry at work. Doing something when you have to do it and have no other real option isn't a meaningful choice, in my opinion—not just morally, but artistically.

Art requires the exercise of judgment. You have to actually make choices to do things in a particular way, when you could have chosen differently. It's your choices as an artist that speak to your artistic vision, and this is true whether we're talking about adaptation or not.

In adaptation in particular, though, keeping something the same as the source material is a choice. Changing something is a choice. These are artistic decisions that could have been made differently, that were made for reasons. Those reasons may or may not be persuasive for other people, and the execution of those choices may or may not be effective in the judgment of others. These are not just direct consequences of medium carried out by automatons.

Art requires vision and vulnerability. Among other things, you constantly have to make choices that depend on your vision for your project, and open you up to criticism in terms of that vision, its connection to the reasoning that culminated in particular choices, and the execution of those choices.

Note: I've said "you" in an implied singular kind of way, but this is true whether we're talking about a single artist, or a large collaborative production like cinematic adaptations. Artistic decisions intrinsically open you up to criticism if they are decisions in any meaningful way, while if your hand is forced to the point that you aren't exercising artistic judgment and choice, then we're not talking about art.

And I get that total fidelity purists can be annoying and equally uncritical of the source material. But you can't fairly argue that adaptations are art and then deny that artistic judgment and decisions are being made.

[thedilucharem]

A Collection of Headcanons - Sparring Edition! (Part 1 of 2)

Overview of the Win-Lose Ratio

Zhongli - 1:0 (read: one to zero)

Childe - 5:3 (wins more than he loses by a large margin)

Diluc - 8:7 (wins more than he loses by not as much of a margin)

Beidou - 1:1 (wins and loses a proportionally equal amount)

Arataki Itto - 2:3 (loses more than he wins by a large margin)

More under the cut!

Zhongli

There was one incident where the other four did try to fight him all at once, but after they couldn't get up by themselves, Zhongli simply told them that it wasn't fair to begin with.

Not because it was four-to-one, but because it would have to be about fifty-to-one for them to have a chance.

Naturally, that ratio is 1-0.

So Zhongli doesn't spar for the simple reason of the fact that even if he went easy on them, he'd beat them all anyway.

"As much as I would enjoy throwing myself at you all and taking delight in your bodies scattering like chaff in the wind, I am freshly retired. I would much rather enjoy the pleasant calm and peace of mind that comes with drinking a cup of osmanthus tea instead."

Childe

Childe treats the spars like a competition as well as opportunities to push himself, and as such he unsurprisingly has the broadest win-lose ratio among everyone else.

A definitive part about his fighting style is that he loves being up close and personal with whoever he's fighting for the thrill of it. Melee most certainly suits him best in that regard.

He enjoys testing himself by using all the weapons he's mastered over the years against his sparring partners.

Sometimes he'll be using just a polearm and on other days, he'll be dual-wielding blades while also throwing projectiles at his opponents.

He treats his wins and losses as improvement and critique so that he can ultimately become better, often implementing them mid-spar to test them out.

Beidou

Beidou is usually the one asking for spars. She can't afford to lose her edge given her profession and it helps that she finds it fun and refreshing.

While Beidou may not be as specialized as her companions and her (assumed) injured eye is some semblance of a disadvantage, she makes up for it with hardened experience and practical application.

She is the first reason why using Visions is banned because apparently, her full-counter does damage beyond the person on the receiving end doing five seconds of airtime.

I think her fighting style is based on hard and heavy hits that are meant to end the fight quickly, as the disadvantage of being blind on one side would become noticeable after a minute or two.

She uses the spars with them as a way to try and figure out how to properly compensate for her eye, as just swinging a big sword around in a limited radius can only do so much.

Diluc

Diluc treats these spars as transactional first, but it very quickly becomes one of his favorite things to do with the others as he considers himself fairly good at it.

His fighting style is versatile as he has demonstrated, agility, strength, and adaptability in the past, but the claymore that he wields would serve as cumbersome against some opponents.

As he has seen a lot more in his life than most others and does vigilantism on the side, he would have a healthy amount of training as well as experience, influencing how he fights them specifically.

Dare I say, he gets a little too into it sometimes, which is why he is the second reason why the use of Visions in the spars as he and everyone in the vicinity had a tendency to burst into flame.

Every loss and concession in his mind's eye is a lesson to be learned and then properly executed on whatever vagabond is on his to-hit list on his nights of patrol.

Arataki Itto

When I say that this dude has the potential to match up with them and even excel them in some instances, I am deadly serious; it'll just take him a little while to get there.

His fighting style is very much 'I hit it until it stops moving' with a combination of 'I'll power my way through it until I collapse' and it works about 60% of the time.

When it comes to more experienced, specialized, and disciplined opponents, though, that 60% becomes a 5%.

His strength is a boon when it comes to critical weaknesses and flaws in his approach, but like I stated before, raw and brute force can only do so much.

His goal is relatively simple: beat all of them soundly and without room for any compromise or debate. If he can do that, he'll be the best, and goddamn it, he is the best (in his mind at least).

Part 2

[nikadoesanart]

“Other Worldly” Ability Users

Since I’ve been seeing a bit of talk of this panel/page (chapter 76, page 12) as of late, I might as well discuss it next!

For reference I read akai-koutei’s translation of the chapter so check it out here if you haven’t already (or to refresh your memory on it).

Also I do mention things from up to chapter 90, Stormbringer and Dead Apple towards the end so keep those spoiler warnings in mind!

Quick summary of the pages leading up to this panel: the fight between Teruko and Sigma is coming to a conclusion and Teruko is trying to convince Sigma to surrender. She claims that he’d have to fight prodigies, going off of Sigma calling himself an ordinary man. She then tells him, “Welcome to our world” and Sigma seems to envision this group of ability users due to her words.

Analysis: why/how is this vision shown

As for why I believe it was Sigma imagining this, it’s mainly due to the panel order. As for how he saw it, I believe that it’s equally likely that he either used his ability at this moment to find out what Teruko meant by “prodigies” and who is a part of this “world”, OR Sigma grouped these people together himself based on information he had received in advance from the likes of Dostoyevsky (ie. ability users to watch out for)

Analysis: the selection of the people in the vision

Teruko, Fyodor, Dazai, Tecchou, Chuuya, Fukuchi, Fitzgerald, and Jouno are all considered to be “of a different world” because of their sheer strength, skill, and/or wit.

Some of these entries should be fairly obvious, given how powerful some of the skills are directly in combat alone (Chuuya, Fukuchi, Fitzgerald Tecchou). Continuing with the capabilities of their skills: Teruko, Fyodor, Dazai and Jouno are included due to how game changing their skills are in a fight. Dazai and Teruko can easily render their opponent powerless with a single touch. The restrictions and capabilities of Fyodor’s ability are currently unknown, but it is hinted that it involves death or fatal injury upon contact. Jouno, the least obvious member of this grouping, has hearing so powerful that he can read people’s heartbeats, and with that read people’s reactions. It wouldn’t be far fetched to believe that he can also predict people’s movements with this (ie. the shifting of their weight or a change in breathing), making him very difficult to outsmart in battle.

In regards to wit and intellect being a factor in this grouping, this really applies to everyone in the group. Maybe not so much chuuya and tecchou, (and possibly teruko too) as they’re more combat oriented and skilled then strategizing. For starters, we know quite well just how good Dazai and Fyodor are at predicting others’ actions, and with that being able to strategize far in advance. Fukuchi is a skilled and trained fighter, and as we learn from his fights we’ve seen so far (up to ch 90 at the time of writing this), he more than knows how to strategize in a fight, as well as with larger decisions. We also have evidence of Dazai, Fyodor, Fukuchi’s, and Fitzgerald’s capabilities of strategizing as leaders. Chuuya must clearly be skilled in this too, seeing as he is an executive, but when it comes to fighting we know that he’s more focused on the combat of the fight than the strategy of it.

Analysis: the people that weren’t included, even though you’d think that they would have been.

→ Akutagawa and Atsushi aren’t a part of this group, despite being considered the “new double black” and Atsushi’s ability being described as one of the strongest that can cut through almost anything → even together, the two of them barely stood a chance against Fukuchi. Even when working together, the infighting and their own self doubt of their own individual capabilities is likely part of what’s keeping them from being in this group. We know that they don’t compare to the likes of Dazai and Fukuchi when it comes to wit/intellect/foresight. It would be interesting to see them fight someone else in the group though, like maybe Chuuya (as in for sparring/training purposes, doesn’t have to be as enemies)? They’ve beat Fitzgerald when working together but on their own, they struggled.

Chuuya get your butt over to Mersault, break out Dazai, and fight Fukuchi with him, please

→ Fukuzawa and Mori aren’t in this group, despite Fukuzawa being able to draw his sword so fast that it can’t be seen and Mori being the one that taught Dazai his strategizing skills. This is likely because their abilities would be considered much less extraordinary by comparison, as Teruko can age anyone and Dazai can nullify abilities for example, which both may not seem combat oriented but they can render their opponents powerless with a single touch vs Fukuzawa having a more simple support ability that only does so much and has specific activation requirements

→ Tachihara also isn’t included despite being a Hunting Dog and his ability having already been revealed by this point. Although we still don’t know the full limitations of his ability as of chapter 90, we do know that he can wield it very skillfully (ie. moving a life size mannequin with convincing realism, being hinted that he could do something about the vampirism). We know that his wit and intellect doesn’t compare to those in the group, as he admitted that he needed Mori’s help with realizing that Fukuchi is an enemy and why (though to be fair, he was under the influence of the writing in the page.

Post @chazukekani’s Stormbringer summaries addition: having Chuuya be included makes even more sense now due to the uniqueness of his ability (without spoiling too much, not only is Chuuya’s ability a god’s power implanted in him, but also how using Corruption is tied to ability singularities)

Post DEAD APPLE novel addition: why was Shibusawa not included in this group? Based on how Ango refers to him, Fyodor, and Dazai as aliens, then shouldn’t he be included too? The government was also keeping Shibu alive and safe because of how unique and valuable his skill is.

“But the government kept protection’ him anyway because he was a valuable skill user who could counteract a nationwide invasion of skill users.” (p 121 of the Yen Press translation for the Dead Apple novel)

Chapter 76 came out late 2019 so plenty of time after DA released. It could point to Shibu’s canonicity being questionable and (more importantly) there’s also the fact that he’s long dead by this point of the manga, but I don’t know why else he wasn’t included because Asagiri did say in his DA novel afterward that DA has had some influence on the story.

“Chronologically, the story takes place after the second season of the anime—in other words, after the war with the Guild, which puts Dead Apple somewhere between the ninth and tenth volumes of the manga.” . . . “The novel also ended up affecting the main story in numerous ways,” (p 196 of the Yen Press translation for the Dead Apple novel)

That’s it for my analysis of this! I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on why certain people were or were not included in this grouping, as well as feedback on my own reasonings!

[avengersassemble-fics]

Stark Legacy

part 03/?? "you knew?"

previous part // next part

master list

word count 4.3k

It seemed like no matter what, whatever mission involved Sam and Bucky went south. Quickly. What was supposed to be an intel mission involving Wilfred Nagel turned into Zemo murdering him, and then it rained gunfire and explosions.

You had managed to get some information out of him: the CIA had recruited him after HYDRA fell, but after being dusted he was approached by the Power Broker, where he created twenty working serums that Karli now had for herself. It wasn’t good news, but it was something to work with.

And thanks to Zemo, he had a lead on Karli.

You rubbed at your neck as the group walked down a fairly barren street in Riga, Latvia. You were following Zemo’s lead to a place he said would be a safe haven during your time here. You wondered if there was time for a proper meal, or maybe even some rest. You fought back a yawn as you made it to Sam’s side as Zemo started to slow his pace in front of a building.

“We are here,” he stated and began to climb the stoop stairs and open the door. Sam followed behind him, as did you, but stopped when Bucky didn’t follow behind you. You turned back to look at him, and raised a brow,

“You good?” You asked and he pulled his gaze from behind him and to you and nodded.

“I’m fine, I’ll see you guys in a bit,” he replied. Without waiting for a response, Bucky began to head back away from you and you shook your head.

Whatever. A shower was calling your name anyway. You took the stairs by two and caught up with Zemo and Sam as they were entering Zemo’s apartment. You took a look around, it was fairly empty, but your eyes landed on the bathroom off the main room.

“Clothes?” You asked as Zemo was pouring himself a drink.

“Oeznik had our things dropped off,” Zemo simply stated. You looked around the room again and spotted your bag on a chair, and you were quick to grab it and bring it with you into the bathroom. You shut the door, locked it, and were eager to get into a hot shower.

As soon as the water hit your back you sighed happily. You could feel the tender spots the water hit and assumed bruises must be forming, and you tried to focus on something other than what had been happening the last few days. You wondered how the neighbor’s kid was doing, if his dad was doing right with him, and a pang of guilt shot through your heart about Morgan.

You’re selfish.

As soon as the words entered your mind, as if said by another voice, you finished your shower and shut the water off. Wrapping yourself in a towel, you carefully padded over the tile in the bathroom and into the connected room and rustled through your bag for something to wear. You were thankful for some alone time, and for the two men insisting you get the room to yourself while they took the couches, because it allowed you a little bit of peace.

You changed into some jeans and a shirt, but covered it with a black bomber jacket Natasha had given you after admiring one of hers. God that felt like forever ago. As you put some heels boots on, and searched for something in your bag, your fingers grazed what felt like paper. Carefully, you pulled it out and your stomach dropped at the sight.

It was folded in half, but you knew exactly what it was before unraveling it. You swore you had cleaned this bag out months ago, but clearly you were (probably drunkenly) mistaken. The colorful picture was stained along the edge, probably also your fault, but the couple in it was crystal clear.

You fought hard to not think of Steve, and yet here was a painful reminder of what you had and what you lost. You found yourself walking towards the doors that faced the outside, and easily pushed them open to reveal a terrace. The air hit you hard, but it was refreshing because your mind was racing.

You remembered the exact moment the photo was taken. It was early into the relationship, the “bad date” streak seemed to have ended, and everyone decided to go incognito to a county fair that was happening half an hour from the compound. It was a master plan from Nat, Wanda, and yourself, and thankfully everyone agreed to some R&R. It was a flawless plan, if everyone just wore caps and kept their presence on the downlow, no one would even notice.

It worked for the most part, until this photo was taken. As you leaned against the railing and looked down at the photo, you remembered how happy you were. Wanda had taken it, Vision overlooking her shoulder, and almost immediately after a kid recognized Steve. Ever being a gentleman, he agreed to signing something (you couldn’t remember what) and that’s when word spread that the Avengers were there. You rubbed your thumb over Steve’s image, and as much as you wanted to… You just couldn’t bring yourself to crumple the picture and toss it away.

Below, Bucky was making his way back to the apartment, and his mind was running as well. He knew the Dora Milaje would realize what happened with Zemo, but he didn’t expect them to find the group so fast. He needed to tell Sam about it, and as he rounded the corner he slowed his pace when he saw you outside on one of the terraces.

Bucky watched you deep in thought, staring at something in your hand. He could see the conflict in your eyes as they shifted over whatever you were looking at, he could make out your fingers tracing over what you were holding, but then you folded it up and shoved it into your pocket. At that moment you looked out over the buildings, but then realized he had been watching you. You looked him over, and took a step back into the room, and the terrace doors closed. Bucky took a deep breath and headed into the building, climbing the stairs by two until he could hear bickering on the other side of the door.

Yup, he knew this was where he needed to be. Bucky pushed open the door and walked inside, removing his jacket as the door closed behind him.

“And I’m saying that it's none of your business,” Bucky heard you saying as he entered the main room, and tossed his jacket over the couch. He continued to the kitchenette, and poured himself a drink.

“It was just a simple question,” Zemo stated and you huffed at that.

“A simple question is asking me what my favorite color is, not asking me what my reconditioning was like under HYDRA,” you said. Bucky sipped at his drink, and set the glass down at the mention.

“Back off Zemo,” Bucky warned. Sam entered the room at just the right moment, and Bucky shook his head. “The Wakandans are here and they want Zemo. But I bought us some more time.”

“Were you followed?” Sam asked and Bucky downed the rest of his drink, and he wished he could feel the effects even just a little.

“No,” Bucky confirmed, and you crossed your arms in front of you.

“How can you be so sure?” Zemo asked beside you.

“‘Cause I know when I’m being followed,” Bucky said and you narrowed your eyes at him. Don’t say it, don’t say it—

“Unlike some people,” Bucky added and you huffed.

“I heard that,” you confirmed and Bucky smirked at you.

“I wanted you to.”

“It was nice of you to defend me at least,” Zemo poked at the situation. You rolled your eyes at that.

“I don’t think anyone is defending you, you murdered Nagel,” you pointed out, to which Zemo just shrugged.

“Do we really have to litigate what may or may not have happened?” Zemo asked.

“There’s nothing to litigate,” Sam jumped in. “You straight shot the man.”

Bucky felt his phone buzz in his pocket, and pulled it out as the three people around him continued to talk, or borderline argue. He wasn’t prepared to see what the trending news was, and he looked over at Sam.

“Sam,” Bucky cut everyone off. “Karli bombed a GRC supply depot.”

“What?” Sam asked, and Bucky offered his phone to him. “What’s the damage?”

“Eleven injured, three dead. They have a list of demands and are promising more attacks if the demands aren’t met,” Bucky said and Sam read over the words on his own, and sighed.

“She’s getting worse,” Zemo offered his wisdom. “I have the will to complete this mission, but do you?”

“She’s just a kid,” Sam argued back and you shrugged your shoulders.

“Sam, she just bombed a building. I respect their mission, but the execution isn’t right,” you offered and you noticed Bucky nod slightly at your input. Zemo shook his head.

“You’re seeing something that isn’t there, you’re clouded by it. She’s a supremacist,” Zemo pointed out. “The very concept of a super soldier will always trouble people. It’s that warped aspiration toon that led to the Nazis, to Ultron, to the Avengers.”

“The Avengers aren’t Nazis,” you defended. “Karli, the Flag Smashers, they aren’t Nazi’s either. They may be radicalized but there’s gotta be a peaceful way to stop her.”

“She’s right,” Sam agreed. “We can find out where she is, and let me talk to her, let me get through to her.”

“He is the most sound out of all of us,” you agreed. “Between a master manipulator and two ex-HYDRA agents.”

“She will escalate until you kill her,” Zemo disagreed. “Or she kills you.”

“Maybe you’re wrong Zemo,” Bucky argued. “Maybe I should just hand you over to the Wakandans right now.”

“It would be the first thing I agreed with you on during this mission,” you mumbled quietly, but didn’t miss the pointedly look you received from Bucky.

“You would give up your tour guide?” Zemo asked, and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes.

“Don’t tempt us,” Sam interjected. He handed Bucky his phone back and let out a sigh. “Look the sooner we find Karli, the better. We don’t know how close Walker and Hoskins are on our tails.”

You had no luck. Anyone you had come across and questioned about Donya Madani, they looked you over and after a brief moment of recognition, they left without a word. You sighed, and after the allotted time Sam gave, you made your way to the meet point, hoping that the others had better luck than yourself. You shoved your hands into the pockets of your bomber jacket, heeled boots echoing off the walls, and you tried your best to ignore the passersby who stopped to take a second glance at you. You were starting to wonder why in the world Sam and Bucky thought it would be a good idea for you to tag along on this. What did you really offer besides more unwanted attention? You were starting to see what Tony meant when he protected you from so long before the media was informed of your rescue--

You were about to pass an alleyway when Bucky appeared on the street. You stopped for a moment as you both realized you were headed the same way, but after a few seconds you continued on and Bucky joined you by your side. He noticed almost immediately the second glances you were receiving. “Are you alright?”

“Just peachy,” you replied sarcastically. “I’m not assuming you happened to do any better than I did?”

“I got nothing,” Bucky admitted as you both neared the rendezvous point. “With our luck, Zemo is the one who got the meet point.”

“Which means having to convince the Wakandans to give us more time,” you sounded off almost to yourself and Bucky nodded a bit. “I’ll let you in your ever great wisdom handle that.”

“Still working on that,” Bucky mumbled as Sam came into view. Sam took his eyes of Zemo, who was talking to a group of kids, and glanced over at you two finally joining the party.

“Any luck?” Sam asked the two of you.

“No,” you admitted in unison. Bucky and you shared a glance before you shook your head and joined Sam’s side.

“As soon as they recognized who I was they bolted,” you admitted and Sam let out a small hmm. You nodded your head at Zemo who was standing from his seat and about to rejoin the group. “He seems to have all the answers so far.”

“Yeah, don’t remind me,” Sam said below his breath as Zemo got closer. “That little girl, what’d she tell you?”

“The funeral is this afternoon,” Zemo admitted. He looked back at the group of kids, and shared a knowing look with the girl he was talking to. “Let’s not talk here.”

The walk back to Zemo’s apartment was quicker than last time, Bucky was glancing over his shoulder and looking around for any sign of the Dora Milaje. He huffed when the group entered the building, and came in last when he was sure he wasn’t being followed. “Alright Zemo, tell us everything you got.”

“The funeral is this afternoon,” Zemo replied and you plopped down on the couch and tucked a leg under yourself.

“Alright but where,” you tried to push. “You know the Wakandans are probably lurking outside this place, right?”

“Hmm,” Zemo toyed as he poured himself a drink. “I prefer to keep my leverage.”

Bucky suddenly charged forward and tore the glass from Zemo’s hand, and chucked it at the wall. Sam and you were quick on your feet as Bucky closed the gap between the two. “You wanna see what someone can do with leverage?”

“Take it easy,” Sam warned as he stepped between the two. He nudged Bucky backwards and you stood by his side, and looked him over. He fists were tightened, he had his brows furrowed into a glare, and there was a faint trickle of sweat that ran down his neck. He was angry, and you sort of understood when it came to Zemo. “Don’t engage him Bucky. He’s just gonna extort you.”

“And do that stupid head tilt thing,” you added. Bucky seemed to loosen up and glance at you, and you offered a knowing nod. He let out a small sigh and Zemo removed himself from the situation, and Sam clapped a hand on Bucky’s shoulder.

“I’m gonna make a call, make sure they don’t kill one another,” Sam instructed you. You couldn’t help the grin that formed over your face as Sam walked out the room and you crossed your arms over your chest.

“Well well well, look who’s in charge now,” you teased. Bucky directed his glare at you and you shrugged. “I hate to say it, but you asked for this.”

Bucky scoffed and his head fell back a little, it almost looked like he was fighting back a smile. “For Zemo or for you?”

“Technically both,” you pointed out. Bucky stared at you for a moment before sighing and moving around you to sit on the couch in the room. You looked over at Zemo who was dipping a tea bag into a mug, and you looked over at Bucky and inwardly sighed. You made your way over and sat next to him, which made him sit up a bit more.

“There’s something else going on in that head of yours,” you said quietly. You could see the gears practically turning in his head, his eyes were shifting over the room, and you sat back against the cushions. You weren’t really expecting him to open up to you, given all the tension there had been between you both so far. But when he sat back as well and looked over at you, you were pretty surprised.

“I went and broke the trust of the people who helped me get my mind right,” Bucky stated softly. You blinked at him as he looked you over for a moment. He glanced back at Zemo who was taking a sip of his tea and shook his head before looking back at you. “I just hope it was worth it.”

You thought about it for a second, and Bucky sighed and looked back at the floor. You sucked in a breath and looked down at the pocket you had shoved your photo into earlier that day.

“The things you’ve taken from them don’t make you a bad person,” you recited from what you had been told. Bucky looked over at you and you met his gaze and you shrugged your shoulders. “So when this is all over just… Do something to make it right, Barnes.”

Bucky looked you over, seeing your hands fidgeting in your lap. He knew where the words probably came from, and Bucky felt compelled to ask you something. “Why are you still upset with Steve?”

You froze in place, your eyes shooting up to meet Bucky’s stare. You tilted your head a bit and fought back a laugh… Was he really doing this right now?

“That’s none of your business,” you stated. You stood from your place and started to head back to your designated room, but Bucky decided to follow.

“He was my best friend,” Bucky stated as he walked behind you and you scoffed.

“Oh trust me, no one ever let me forget that,” you said. You spun around to face him and you motioned your hand at him. “What is this? I was trying to be nice and you’re coming at me like this?”

“I’m not coming at you any way,” Bucky argued and took a step closer. “But I want to understand. Steve made it pretty clear when he told me about Peggy that you two just didn’t work out-“

“What?” You asked. Bucky stopped talking as your face fell, and you searched his face for an answer. “What do you mean he told you about Peggy?”

“When they got the stones, he told me about how he saw Peggy,” Bucky explained. When you still didn’t look like you knew what he was talking about, something finally clicked. “You didn’t know.”

“No,” you admitted. Bucky’s stomach folded, and he inwardly cursed that stupid punk, and he found himself taking a step towards you but you quickly looked at him and took a step back. “Wait. Wait a minute… You knew? You knew he wasn’t coming back?”

Bucky’s mouth opened to respond, but the front door opened and closed. The footsteps came closer, and Sam appeared behind Bucky. Sam slowed his steps as he happened upon the two of you staring at one another and he swore if Bucky did something stupid again, he wasn’t going to let him hear the end of it.

“We have eyes in the skies, but we need to get going,” Sam announced. You held Bucky’s gaze for only a few more moments before shaking your head. You moved around Bucky and past Sam, and Zemo was waiting at the door. You threw it open and walked out, only for Zemo to follow. Bucky slowly turned in his spot and looked over at Sam, who motioned at the direction you just left.

“What happened?” Sam asked. Bucky shook his head and started to walk towards Sam.

“Nothing, let’s go find Karli,” Bucky said. As he was about to pass Sam, he grabbed his vibranium arm and stopped Bucky non his tracks.

“What happened, Bucky,” Sam asked again. Bucky sighed and shook his head before looking straight ahead.

“I was wrong about something… Now I gotta make it right.”

John Walker was a bigger piece of work than Bucky was. Sam had asked for ten minutes to talk to Karli, so the rest of the Brady Bunch was waiting in some rickety back warehouse. Walker insisted on getting Zemo handcuffed to some piece of machinery, and he did not stop pacing back and forth since. His partner, Lemar Hoskins, was definitely more collected. Bucky? He was leaning in the door frame and staring at you.

You leaned against the wall and watched Walker pace in front of you. You were fiddling with your fingers, counting from one to ten on them to keep your mind busy. You ignored Bucky’s ever persistent stares, and you watched as Steve’s shield passed back and forth in front you. It was… Weird to see it on someone else’s back. Regardless of how Steve left things. It was just another reminder that he was supposed to be here.

Walker suddenly came to a stop and started towards the door. Bucky straightened himself and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes.

“It hasn’t been ten minutes, John,” Bucky informed him and Walker huffed and backed off. “Just sit tight.”

“Don’t do that,” Walker pressed. “Don’t patronize me.”

“He’s been doing a lot of that recently,” you said. Bucky sent a look your way, not mad or angry, but you shrugged your shoulders. “Sam knows what he’s doing, Walker.”

“I’m sorry why are you here again?” Walker asked and you chuckled.

“No idea,” you replied and pushed yourself off the wall.

“I’m going in,” Walker stated to Bucky and tried to move around him. Bucky stood his ground, and Walker huffed in annoyance.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Bucky said about Sam. Walker shook his head and you came up behind him.

“This is all just so easy for you, isn’t it?” He asked Bucky. You looked back at Hoskins, who was finally coming to offer some kind of assistance. “All that serum running through your veins… Barnes, your partner needs backup in there. Do you really want his blood on your hands?”

“You need to step back, Walker,” you said. Walker turned to face you and you looked him over, but stood your ground. “We didn’t come here to fight, and I’m sure as hell not letting you start one.”

He chuckled a bit and took a step closer to you. It was an act of intimidation, one that didn’t work on you at all. Not after going toe to toe with a psychotic purple titan.

“How do you expect to stop me?” Walker asked. You were ready to reply, but Bucky (of course) had to step in. He grabbed one of Walker’s arms, but Walker pulled it free. “Don’t touch me, Barnes.”

Walker finally pushed past Bucky, and Hoskins was after him trying to get his attention. You huffed, and finally met Bucky’s gaze and shook your head. You pushed past him too, and followed after the two hard headed men through the hallways until you finally managed to catch up.

“Karli Morgenthau, you’re under arrest,” Walker announced as he entered the room. When you finally got a view of the girl who has been the center of this whole mission, you were taken a back. Sure you had seen the footage and a picture here and there, but it was… Almost scary. You certainly had done far worse by her age.

“This is what that was?” Karli snapped at Sam as she took a couple steps back. Bucky finally joined your side and you grimaced as Sam tried to reason with her still.

“No, Karli wait-“ he tried to tell her. But she was not having any part of it.

“You tricked me until help came,” she more so stated and you couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

Walker went to grab Karli, and Bucky moved to stop Lemar, but shit hit the fan quickly. Karli shoved Walker and Sam backwards into a table, and Bucky was quick after Karli. You rushed to Sam’s side and helped him re-steady himself. Sam clapped a hand on your back and motioned in a direction and you both rushed out the room. The place was like a maze, and you were trying to just make heads and tails of it. Sam mostly led the way, heading down some stairs into a darker place, and you heard footsteps incoming. Sam made sure to block you from whatever (or whoever) was coming, but Bucky rounded the corner.

“Shit,” you mumbled. Sam sighed in annoyance as well, and Bucky motioned his arms.

“I lost her,” Bucky stated and you shook your head.

“You guys were definitely right about Walker,” you commented. Just as the words left your lips, the noticeable sound of gunshots echoed in the air. You refocused on the direction Bucky had just come from, and you pushed past the two men. “This way!”

Finally, you were the voice of reason. You lead the way towards where you were very positive the shots had come from. You were nearly running, down stairs and through hallways until you came to a stop at the top of stairs, overlooking what now was Walker and Hoskins standing over a knocked out Zemo. Sam and Bucky moved around you to get closer to the scene, but eventually you did as well.

“What did we miss?” Sam asked.

Walker gave a simplified rundown, finding Zemo after shooting Karli. But one thing you couldn’t pinpoint as you overlooked the belt Karli used to house the remainder of the serums she had was it looked like there was at least one missing. If there were ten serums left… Why did you only count nine vials destroyed on the floor?

- - - - - - - - - -

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[aenaxes]

one to ten

[jesse x gn!reader] there are ten things you remember about jesse.

warnings: tcw s7 spoilers, suggestive themes, mentions of death

w/c: 2.5k

a/n: sorry for the constant parentheticals lol. ishei is a spin on a biblical name/the hebrew name basis for jesse (yishai) as a kind of namesake (surprise, you've now adopted a togrutan).

01. Your first glimpse of beauty in war comes in the form of a clone trooper.

It doesn’t make sense. They all look the same, you groan to Uche, the one other civ enlistee who didn’t waste their breath (or your time) waxing poetic about galactic justice or pining after the out-of-touch idealogues holding rank in the jedi temple and Senate floor.

What’s so different about him? Uche asks, and you don’t have an answer.

You remember sneaking furtive looks from inventory protocol drills to the landing platform, seeing the unnamed soldier step off the dust-beaten hull of a gunship transport with a straight-backed swagger. Even from afar, he demands attention, presence, in ways the men with him cannot.

I don’t know, you mumble. Maybe it’s the tattoo on half his face.

02. You learn the name of this beautiful man when Uche ditches the buddy system to wander off with a trooper in red armor at 79’s.

Shitty friend, comes a voice you’ve heard a hundred times over. You turn your head, ready to shoo away a shiny eager to prove his mettle, but instead you are met with the beautiful soldier and his ridiculous face tattoo in Uche’s seat. He flashes you a grin, raising his brows at you in a way that oozes the same confidence you remember in the landing bay. Can I make it up to you with a drink?

Will it be worth my while? you shoot back. (It’s amazing how well you mask the excited tremor in your voice. The wonders of working in a military hierarchy.)

No promises, he shrugs as he flags down the barkeep. But I think you already know your answer.

Then fine, I guess, you fight the smile playing over your lips. And when he closes his eyes and laughs, you think it’s only fitting that your nameless soldier has a laugh as gorgeous as himself.

I’m y/n, you say.

Jesse.

03. You meet this beautiful man again (Jesse, you curl your tongue over his name), and it just so happens that you end up assigned to the same ship as him. You board the Resolute, your civ certification in hand and a drab uniform as your completion gift, and as you claim your quarters aboard the destroyer, a firm tap at your shoulder stops you at your door.

Fancy seeing you here, y/n.

You’re kidding me, you smile. When you turn around, Jesse’s grinning back at you, bucket tucked under one arm, the other propping him up against the hallway wall in the worst attempt to look even remotely flirtatious that you’ve ever seen.

I’m hard to resist, I know, Jesse laughs, and you do your best to muster the most irritated expression possible despite the elation in your chest. I guess 79’s wasn’t enough for you, huh?

Sure, I can’t get enough of me absolutely drinking you under the table, Jesse, you snort.

Okay, okay, I was off my game. But you can’t tell me I’m not a better kisser when I’m tipsy, he shrugs.

I haven’t kissed you sober, you deadpan.

You think I could change that by the end of this tour?

04. You’re in bed with this beautiful man for the nth time this month, and you’ve never been too good with pillowtalk, so you tell him what you have always thought since the day you first saw him. Your fingertips light over his cheeks, you tell him that he is beautiful.

Jesse laughs and leans in to kiss your wrist. Between kisses trailing up your arm, he tells you that he is one face of many; that he is all rough skin and scars; (that there is no beauty in war embodied, cemented in the flesh over and over and over); that you just might have poor taste.

You jab his arm (because fuck you, Jesse, this was supposed to be a romantic moment), and he yelps, cackling. But you’ve successfully stroked his ego, and he thanks you by pulling you down onto his bunk again.

05. You’re in love with this beautiful man.

The revelation is a long time coming and yet somehow the greatest surprise that shocks you awake one morning when Jesse is still asleep in his bunk with one heavy arm draped over your bare hips.

It’s more than simple beauty as you watch him sleep, his lips parted and brow slack. Done away with the bravado and big talk, with the tension lifted from his proud features, Jesse is terrifyingly vulnerable in the way that makes your heart ache (even if he might be drooling just a little bit).

And then the ship alarm blares, and Jesse’s scrambling awake, sleepy apologies and bleary eyes as he shuffles around you to fumble for his armour.

See you in a few, sweetheart, Jesse laughs, locking his vambrace in place before he leans close and presses a quick peck to your cheek. And then he’s gone, breaking into a jog down the hallway as you shrug on his GAR bomber and pull it close over your chin.

You tell yourself that you don’t breathe deep on purpose, that you don’t shiver when you catch Jesse’s scent, standard-issue aftershave and spritzes of the Corellian cologne you’d bought him planetside, saved for the nights you spent over in his quarters.

You’re in love. (Fuck.)

06. You’re in love with this beautiful man.

Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum, he says softly, perched beside you on the stout nose of a laatie. You lift your head from his shoulder, meeting his unreadable gaze (all you know is that it is soft) with a furrowed brow.

When you ask him what it means, Jesse—smooth-talker, sly bastard, a snappy retort always a word away—sputters unintelligibly, forgoing any excuses or mistranslations for sliding down the gunship’s hull and breaking into a run across the dewy grass. And you forget that you haven’t run this fast in months when you take off close at his heels.

Tell me, asshole! you shout, sprinting after him.

Not on your life! he shouts with a grin thrown over his shoulder. But he is slowing, his run pacing down to a jog, then a funny little walk on the heels of his feet as you close his lead and tackle him to the cool grass underfoot.

You feel a bruise blooming over your knees, and you’re fairly certain he’ll have a worse bruise over his tailbone. But all you can do is laugh as Jesse traps you in his arms and wrestles you onto your back under the silver light of the Nemoidian moons. (When was the last time you had laughed so freely?)

And when you catch your breath, vision blurry with the best kind of tears, you look to the wonder in Jesse’s eyes as he kneels above you.

You think he might be in love, too.

07. You’re in love with your beautiful man, and when you call him yours (when he calls you his) between hushed breaths and soft moans, you savor the thrill that rushes up your spine every time.

General Skywalker’s married, Jesse says one night, his voice rumbling under your ear as you lie over his chest.

It’s kind of obvious, you respond, and he laughs.

No—I mean, I knew—we’ve all known. But what if we got married?

You lift your head, and something heavy and warm lurches alive in the spaces between your ribs when you meet Jesse’s eyes. There is no witty playfulness, no heckling rise—only yearning, deep and vast and held with bated breath when he reaches up to touch your cheek.

Just you, me, some peace and quiet. I’d make a hell of a mechanic. And kids, maybe, well, if you want, he says, and with each word, his voice grows softer and softer still until you can just barely make out the last sound that passes his lips.

You could be a realist, cruel and cold, listing some regulation manual clause and the twofold speed at which Jesse would live and love (and die). You could tell him that the chances of you both making it out of this seemingly endless war were slim to none. You could tell him that the grief of losing a husband would fester where the loss of a friend would heal. You could leave.

But normality is so, so sweet—the vague yet enchanting idea of life beyond a war for which your beautiful man was born, a war which has swallowed you whole.

Rules and probabilities be damned, it’s worth the risk.

I’d like that, you whisper, and Jesse’s incredulous, enthralled laugh sweeps you off your feet before he’s kissing you like it’s the first time all over again.

A week later, Fives officiates, Echo bears witness, and they shower you with handfuls of tiny blue flowers scrounged from the flaxen Lothal plains as Jesse kisses you breathless.

(Both of them are dead within the year.)

08. You’re in love with your beautiful man, and you don’t think yourself a fool when all you can wonder is whether he still loves you from behind the mirrored visor of his helmet, one pound of pressure away from two blaster bolts and twin wounds (one for Ahsoka, one for you).

It is not his voice you hear over the labored blare of the ship alarms. It shares the same breath and passes through the same lips, but it is not the cocksure charm in rank or the languorous warmth of leave you have come to call your own.

You’ll be demoted in rank from commander and subject to execution along with the traitors Ahsoka Tano and y/n l/n.

It is not Jesse’s voice. (The last time your full name found home over his tongue, Fives and Echo had been alive.)

And then you watch him fall.

The hangar is a flurry of blaster fire and gunsmoke, and it’s a wonder that through it all, only one shot manages to graze over your leg before Ahsoka hurls you onto the docked y-wing and into the gunner’s seat.

The thrusters rumble to life as you slam your viewport shut, and you hear Rex’s voice crackling over the intraship comm for you to strap in. But all you can do is search frantically for any flash of twin ARC pauldrons and a shock of royal blue in the violent sea of helmets paying forgotten homage. You press your palms to the glass because he was there, he was there, right where Ahsoka spears her lightsabers into the metal, he was there.

The floor drops from beneath your feet, and you tell yourself the smoke and ache in your lungs is from your head connecting hard with the domed viewport glass as you scramble for your controls.

(What goes through a man’s head when he knows he will not wake when he lands?)

09. And then your beautiful man is dead.

You will think later that you were lucky, blessed, even, that you were not the one to pull his mangled body from under the charred belly of a destroyer, but that fact makes uncovering his face no less difficult. The broad ink stretched over his skin does little to hide the blood dried over his brow, bled into glassy eyes unseeing.

Did he feel it when the ship tore apart? You slide his eyes shut. (You do not hear your own wailing.) Was he in pain?

His brother tells you to leave his helmet over his grave because you buried bodies, vessels, ghosts of who they had once been. Jesse was not himself when you ran. Why would you carry a marker of someone you no longer knew, someone who no longer knew you?

There won’t be space for it on the ship (leave the dead with the dead), and you pretend not to hear how young Rex sounds when his voice bows under the loss of everything he’s ever known.

You hang the bloody plastoid back onto its perch.

It feels like the death of a saint, not because Jesse was some paragon of virtue, but because it is cruel, uncaring and unjust and pulled out of your hands into a single divine lie. It’s a wordless eulogy come too soon, and you cannot seem to pull away from the scuff marks and chipped paint at your fingertips.

It’s time to go, Rex says.

We got married, you say.

I know, Rex replies.

I’m not ready, your voice cracks. I didn’t say goodbye.

You feel strong arms pull you close, and if you focus on the sound of the slowly groaning hull before you, you can pretend like you aren’t being pulled apart at the seams, crashed into some cold moon, dirt under your nails, blood on your knees, alone.

I know.

10. Sometimes, you see your beautiful man in fleeting glimpses over his brother’s face. They are only split-second visions blurred by sleep (denial, denial, denial). You see copper skin and a soldier’s eyes, but that is where the familiarity ends and reality begins.

Even if you took away the tattoo arcing over Jesse’s skin and placed them side by side, Rex does not have the slight curve in his nose from a sparring session kicked too high; he does not have the dark freckle just below his chin; he does not have the playful twinkle, the knowing gleam that lit up his eyes whenever he saw you. (Rex only looks to you with shared grief, pity, these days.)

Clone or not, he is not him.

So you sleep.

If only for a glimpse of Jesse, his face blurry and voice warped under the weight of memory (played, rewound, and played again), you treat your precious shifts of sleep when Rex takes the helm as nothing short of speaking to the divine itself. Even if your dreams are more often than not nightmares of staring down a blaster barrel, part of you thinks that it’s worth the shaky hands and uneven breaths as Rex shakes you awake, that you might try to say goodbye.

Tonight, you see him again. But this time, the hangar deck is silent, blasters raised but frozen in place, a snapshot frame of the day a part of you died with him. The script changes. He lowers his blasters, you step forward, and when you reach up to lift his helmet from his shoulders, it is the clearest you have ever seen his face since you laid him to rest.

I’m sorry, his voice floats, settling in the space between your ears, soft and strong. I love you.

Goodbye, Jesse.

And when you wake, for the first time in weeks, your eyes are dry.

You will heal.

—

00. Buir, a soft voice filters down from the top bunk as your ship hums around you.

Ishei, you call, lifting one hand to rub at your eyes. You catch your son’s little horned head peeking over the edge of his bunk, and he scampers down the ladder when you beckon him close.

I can’t sleep, he whispers as he crawls beside you and tucks his arms around your waist. Will you tell me about father?

(Jesse will never know the orphaned Togrutan boy who calls him buir. You wish he did.)

Every night, you laugh softly, gently rubbing between his budding white montrals. Every night, I tell you about Jesse’buir. You don’t tire of the same stories?

You feel Ishei shake his head against your chest. Jesse’buir is my hero! Did he really look just like Rex ba’vodu?

Not at all, you smile. Not at all.