#but for a long time they weren't able to like. show it in a constructive way. and they'd often argue etc

[amelikos]

Sango and Onyx were quite hostile to each other the first time Hamber summoned them to go on a mission together with him all the way back in HZ024.

They were both arguing and didn't really want to be together. Sango didn't want Hamber to bring Onyx with them, and Onyx considered Sango as someone who would get in his way and didn't want her there either. (They turned out to be able to work well together, but they'd often clash because of their approach towards things.)

In fact, they weren't even the first people Hamber wanted to bring on a mission with him in Galar. Hamber asked about Spinel and Agate before considering both Sango and Onyx. They were a default choice, not the first people he would have asked for.

Which is quite interesting compared to Hamber summoning them to go on a mission now.

I think Hamber is asking for them specifically because he doesn't trust Spinel and Agate at the moment. So there is still a bit of a "default choice" angle at play here, but still, they are the first ones who come to his mind as people he can rely on in this situation.

He is also flattering their egos to get them to do what he is asking, but I think he is truthful in his assessment. They weren't really referred to as such before this moment, but this is the writing pointing out why Sango and Onyx are a duo at all. It's because they complement one another. One being rational, the other being bold (which is interesting because that description reminded me of Liko and Roy).

Onyx taking the initiative to say "let's go, Sango" really shows how far they've come too, considering that the first time Hamber asked them to come with him on a mission, they didn't want to be around each other. Now, it feels like they don't mind being with each other (and actually want to be together).

Also, it feels meaningful to me that Onyx calls Sango by her name since we know that giving out his own name and being remembered is something important to him. He gave out his own name to Liko as a show of respect towards her in HZ066 and asked her to remember it. He also called Liko by her name, and up until now, I think Sango and Liko are the only ones he's called by name at all. So, Sango being the only one he regularly calls by name stands out in this aspect because it means he acknowledges her.

And I need to point out that Sango and Onyx haven't argued once in this episode. When Hamber asked them to come with him to Galar in HZ024 and HZ025, they kept throwing words at each other but this time, they didn't.

In fact, they haven't butted heads or argued in a while. Precisely, the last time they did was in HZ046 at the beginning of the Terastal Debut chapter and Clavell told them to cut it out and be courteous to each other. Ever since then, they haven't argued once. I think it really shows how much their school lives impacted them in that way. It feels like they are becoming a bit more honest and more used to each other. They've become proper teammates now.

[bundoesnotcompete]

Reader is an Aeon. Possible oocness with Sunday. Roughly 1900 words. Not proof read. See end for author notes. Edited some more errors on 9/8/24

Many of the humans called you the Aeon of Sleep or Dreams. While you did sleep quite a bit, that is not what your true power was. You were truly the Aeon of Control. Though humanity did not remember the time that you were Control, instead only knowing you as sleep.

Instead of using your powers to control things in the universe, you chose to sleep. Of course, you had created a massive dream world that would put Pencony to absolute shame. You didn't want to be bored like you were in reality. The beings on the planet you slept on had constructed a massive temple around you. It was dull colored, soft on the eyes so it did not glitter in the eternal moonlight.

Sleep was your escape from the boring reality that was the early, isolated stages of humanity and the universe. While the birth of aeons such a Qlipoth and Oroboros did catch your eye, they were dull. They had no fun and so you grew bored again with reality. You decided that the humans needed a bit more fun in their lives in that moment.

So you turned the entire world into a massive dreamscape, your most devout followers helping care for and bring others to the world.

Of course, life got more intresting once Akivili connected your little dreamscape to other worlds. Although you remained sleeping, you kept eyes everywhere. The rise and fall of civilisations, aeons, and everything was getting more intresting. In fact, sleeping made it easier to watch events unfold.

Your followers were soon dubbed "Sleepwatchers" and "Dreamgivers" by many of the other civilisations. Of course you had extremists in your followers, but you paid little attention to them even as they caused havoc. You weren't one to try and play favorites, afterall.

Of course, you did visit many in their sleep. From the smallest child to the occasional aeon. Yaoshi and Aha being your most favorites, they knew how to have fun.

Of course as your cult expanded, you decided that you may need an Emanator to keep things in check. It hadn't taken you long to find a good one to help run the show on your dreaming world. You allowed your first Emanator to become their desired form and run your world. They have been doing so for thousands of years now.

When other Aeons would try to consume you into their path, you wiped them from existence and consumed them. The humans had taken notice to that and knew you were powerful.

You weren't always a pleasent aeon. Often if you grew tired of some of your followers, you would give them good dreams before killing them. It only fueled your extremist though, they craved the dreams you would give them. The feeling of being loved and having good dreams before they were killed deepened their devotion.

Your Emanator had asked to be able to deal with them, but you denied them. You did not have another to fill their place. You reassured them when they protested. Perhaps when another caught your eye you would give them their duty and your Emanator could hunt the extremists down.

You took a more human form when you visited dreams, most were unable to tell that you were an aeon.

Like right now, the man you were talking to in Penacony was unable to tell that you were an aeon. You took the ice cream he handed you and found a spot to observe.

Penacony was impressive considering it was manmade. You could tell the dream had its massive flaws, but the small area that was fully constructed was in good shape. It could take them hundreds to thousands of years to even accomplish what you could do in minutes.

It was here that you spotted him. Sunday.

You would be a liar if you said that he wasn't pretty. While that was part of what caught your eye, the true thing that caught it was his path. Aeons often had the ability to see who or what path someone or something followed. The path of dead or consumed aeons was rare, new followers even rarer. His path was that of Order, but Ena had long been consumed by Xipe.

How did he get onto that path, you wondered.

You began to quietly watch him after that. You often pretended to bump into him occasionally and starting conversation with him. He did not seem to pick up on your godhood and you were alright with that.

For years following you first encounter with him, you managed to grow a sort of friendship with him. Though you never were truly friends, you knew him and he knew you. If he happened to see you and he wasn't busy, he stopped to chat with you or sit somewhere with you. You never got to be true friends with him until he started too seem your company.

You were not great with emotions, but you loved his company. You knew that.

For another year, you two grew close. You got to see Sunday for who he truly was and not who he had to be. He was a bit controlling, but he loved deeply and cared deeply. He only wanted what was best for everyone and everything. He was what humans called a people pleaser, even if he didn't show it. While he did know when to put his foot down and put an end to something, he still wanted the best option for everyone.

The dreamscape of Penacony shifted. You felt it shifting, crumbling, rebuilding. Sunday was up to something. Though he did not show you what it was, you could still see it from your bird's eye view. You wanted to see it in its entirity. So, one day when you were visiting him, you told him you had to return home for awhile.

"I'm needed back at the Dreaming Home. I cannot delay any longer." You had said to him. He seemed disappointed by that but wished you well. That was your final meeting in your human form for awhile.

You watched as Sunday put his plan into place. You understood now why his path was of Order and not of Harmony. You watched as he almost fufilled his dream. As he almost ascended to goodhood. But, he could not do it, for the others would not have it.

The Astral Express Crew fought and defeated him, his own sister fighting against him. While you did not blame them for fighting back, you knew what would happen to him.

You knew this emotion as anger. How dare they touch one of your favorites like he was filth. He only wanted what was best. Did they not see that?

No. You would not allow it.

Pulling Sunday into your own dreamscape wasn't hard. He laid asleep for awhile in the still water- like fluid of your dreamscape. You waited for him to wake. You floated atop your cloud as your hundreds of eyes shifted around the dreamscape. He finally stirred after awhile.

"Where am I?" He thought aloud.

"You finally awake. Sunday, my friend, how are you?" Your hsunting voice echoed thoughout the dreamscape. He stood up and looked around. You could see the caution and weariness quickly growing. You spoke again.

"What is it that you jokingly called me? Your Angel?"

"What is this?" He demanded taking a few steps in a direction. Always so guarded. Perhaps your other form would do? You spawned in your friend-shaped body behind him. Taking a few steps foward, you hugged him from behind.

"I thought you'd know my voice and not be so guarded." You felt him stiffened in your hold and he turned his head to look at you. Shock was quickly coloring his exhausted features. You let go and let him fully turn to you. He opened his mouth and you cut him off before he could question you.

"I am known a the Aeon of Sleep, or Dreams to some. That's how I was able to drag you here, my friend." You took a good at him. He looked rough and worn down. You could see Harmony and Order had abandoned him.

"Look at what they've done to you. Even THEY abandoned you." You cupped his face and faced to his ear wings. "Oh I had been so excited even you were about to ascend. You had such good intentions."

"You were an aeon the whole time?" He asked, face returning to a slightly bewildered neutrality. You returned your hand to your side.

"Of course. Do not think that the me you met was my false self. I do not make friends often, Little Bird."

"Why?" He was quickly being overwhelmed. His soul crushing defeat had ruined his emotional state. He was hurting, you could see that.

"Being friends with you? I was merely curious at first, but i came to enjoy your company. Dragging you here? To offer you something." You shifted slightly, your more human form turning into clouds for a few moments. He looked to you as if saying to go on.

"Join me. Harmony and Order have abandoned you, but I will not. Do not take this as pity. I want you by my side." He did not let the shock slip onto his face this time, but it rippled throughout the dreamscape.

"I am imprisoned by the family. I need to see justice through." Sunday protested weakly.

"Justice for what? Wanting what is best for your people? There are people who have done far worse then you that they need to worry about. I will take you to my planet and there you can decide what you want. You are my friend Sunday." You responded. He saw him debate internally. "They will never welcome you back to Penacony. They do not want you, but I will take you. I want you, not for power, but who you are. It may be hard, but the Dreaming Planet will always welcome you. What say you?"

He deflated but came to a decision.

"I will go with you." You gave him a beaming smile before hugging him. Cradling him as you shifted forms and he left the dreamscape. Yes, you had much work to do.

--------

When the Astral Express caught wind of Sunday's Disappearance, they had all been slightly alarmed. Robin had told them that there was no sign of him or how he escaped.

The express had come up with a theory. There had been an Aeon watching them fight Sunday. Everyone felt it. Perhaps the Aeon had something to do with it?

Stelle informed Robin that they would keep an eye out for him. She thanked Stelle and they left it at that.

The Astral Express was heading for is next destination, The Dreaming Planet of Somnus. They would remain unaware of Sunday's Whereabouts until they entered the City of Sopor. Only then would they find out that he had been chosen as an Emanater of the Aeon of Sleep. Later, the crew discovered that the aeon was actually the suspected lover of Sunday back in Penacony.

Good for him, the crew collectively agreed.

"It would make a good story. The Sleeping God is Actually my Lover?!" March had joked.

Sunday had tried to defend himself from the teasing, but your laughter in his mind had stopped him.

"Yes. A wonderful story. You and I have a good story, my love."

--------

End notes:

I just randomly wrote this snippet. Not used to Sunday's character sorry for the oocness. I just wanted to get this out of my mind. I hope you enjoyed it.

Edited on 9/2/24 i found some errors while rereading

[luvfy0dor]

Ahemm can I request s Fyodor x reader whos also russian but speaks better Japanese then him (i find it funny he's bad at learning Japanese) ♡

“Trust Me, Mine is Better ♡⁠˖” Fyodor Dostoevsky x GN!Reader ੈ✩‧₊˚

Warnings; Google translate Japanese, cursing, not proofread

Description; Fyodors partner is also Russian, but is better with speaking Japanese and learned faster, so his partner helps him out

A/n; I wanna have a study date w him so bad omg 3:

• He'd be a teeny bit passive about it to be honest, but all in all he'd be proud of you. It's not often that he comes across someone who's better than him at anything intellectual.

ೃ⁀➷

Being in Japan with your boyfriend was lovely when he wasn't out being a terrorist. He loved to sight see whenever he left your homeland of Russia, but directions weren't his forte, nor was the Japanese language. You were able to speak it rather fluently though. You didn't have much of an accent to begin with, but however much of an accent you did have immediately disappeared when you opened your mouth to speak Japanese. He couldn't help but feel a little jealousy bubble in his chest when you could fluently speak with a random stranger in the street to ask which way something was, but he hid it well. As a matter of fact, he'd praise you.

"すみません、地下鉄の駅はどこですか?" (where is the subway station?) You asked when you stopped a man in the street, looking for a way home with your boyfriends hand in your own. You could almost feel Fyodors subtle glare gently burning through your skin like corrosives while you listened to the guy pointing you in the right direction. “ありがとう!" (Thank you) You say, giving a small nod of appreciation and leading Fyodor in the direction you were given. "Wow, Moya Lyubov, it's like you get better at speaking Japanese every day. Even your writing improves just as rapidly." The words rolled off his tongue smoothly and you gratefully accepted his compliments, smiling and squeezing his hand. "Thank you, yours does too. It's nice that we're both learning Japanese, so we can help eachother out." You say, looking at the street ahead of you, heading down a flight of stairs to a subway station.

"You sound like you're past simply learning." He says lightheartedly, a small smile on his face. You look over to him and nod. "I mean, I can get around, but I still have so much to learn and that's okay- Fedya, oh my gosh! We could have cute study dates together!! A lot of people do stuff like that in highschool or college, but since we were never together during either of those, we could do, like, a mock-study date." You say, excited by your new, groundbreaking idea. He seems amused by your enthusiasm, wrapping an arm around your shoulder and pulling you closer to him. “I wouldn't mind being taught how to speak and write better as long as it's by you. Other people are much more condescending and teasing." He says. You could only imagine he was referring to Nikolai after watching him show the clown a paper with large Japanese symbols written on the paper, to which Nikolai started giggling and asked him what the fuck it was supposed to be.

Needless to say that was the last time Fyodor turned to Nikolai for constructive criticism, he wrote him off as unhelpful in this manner. Instead he'd only get it from native speakers or people who are, in his eyes, fluent in the language. They could give him real advice. But since you were proposing a study date with him where he could get constructive advice from you and do some more learning of the language in his own way, there was no reason to pass that opportunity up. You both agreed on the next evening after he got home from a DOA meeting, and it was more than pleasant. You both laid in each other's presence, practicing your writing, doing Duolingo lessons here and there, and etc. You eventually got bored, craving your lovers attention instead of knowledge. You leaned over and brushed his hair away from his face before whispering into his ear. “キスしてもいいですか?" His eyebrows furrow and his head turns to face you.

"Can you what?" His words are slightly slurred together with his accent and sleepiness. His lips are pink and clearly chewed with focus and frustration and his eyelids are droopy. "Can I kiss you?" You repeat in English. His eyes widen and he grins, reaching out to cup your face, pulling you in. "You don't have to ask to kiss me, Moya Lyubov." He closes his eyes and lets his lips meet yours, moving them together and rubbing your cheek with his thumb. You entangle your fingers in his hair and part, taking a quick breath of air and resting your forehead against his. "I know, I just figured I'd give you a new phrase in Japanese." He laughs and pulls you into his thin body. "Who else would I need to say it to?" His hands rubbed up and down your back. "No one, but still- just let me be flirty while staying on topic, alright?" You say with a laugh, twirling his hair around your finger. Not to say neither of you learned anything during your study date, but just in case Fyodor didn't, he now knew how to ask to kiss you.

A/n; sorry this post is like an hour later than usual my bad chat ☹️

[partycatty]

bi-han > returning without him

reader is the wife of bi-han but is crushed to find out he sided with shang tsung

notes: womp womp

masterlist <3

•being the long-time wife of bi-han

•kissing him goodbye before he heads out with his brothers on a mission to gain intel on the construction of the soul beacons

•you're a ninja of the lin kuei as well, a more than capable fighter on your own. with no elemental powers but all the strength you'd need. liu kang just did not ask for your aid this time around for reasons unknown.

•tending to your own homely duties as well as being the temporary grandmaster for the lin kuei in your husband's absence though you don't need to do too much as he's already trained them to near perfection.

•so incredibly excited for his return, sure to make your living quarters even more perfect than it was before he left. you find yourself smoothing the sheets down each time you pass by.

•the ninjas utter excitement as well, hoping that quan chi and shang tsung's toying with souls ends soon and things may return to peace.

•but then the portal opens, and you only see your brother-in-laws, one of which bearing a new, thick scar down his face. they look solemn. you know immediately.

•to betray his clan is one thing, but to betray his spouse and brothers... how could he be so evil, when he was the symbol for protection? perhaps, he only sought to protect himself. perhaps you... weren't enough for him, and the thought tears your chest open.

•scream-sobbing in tomas's arms as kuai liang rubs a hand around your back, neither one of them saying much because they're fighting back devastation of their own.

•they partially hold themselves responsible for not being able to stop bi-han from siding with evil, but they also know deep down he was a corrupted leader with malicious intentions, which you turned a blind eye to in hopes that he'd become a better man.

•you sit by the pond with the brothers, staring blankly into the still water. you ask, hoarsely, if he showed any signs of hesitation. you take their silence as a no, which makes your sobs burn your chest.

•you channel this disappointment into anger, and anger into hatred as your punches become harder and kicks swifter. the lin kuei disbands and reforms into the shirai ryu, and the brothers offer you a spot at the top alongside them.

•your life becomes completely engulfed in taking down your husband and those who wish to spread evil. you're hardened. some of the ninjas even say you've become as cold as sub-zero. you would've been proud of this before, but now it feels like the deepest, sharpest insult.

[petrichor-idyllic]

Heyy I would like to make a Minho x fem reader request but it contains slight SA and if you aren't comfortable writing that, it's okay :). So one night the reader isn't able to sleep so she decides to take a walk around the Glade but a boy decided to attack her and threaten her with a kn¡fe to do stuff with him but she manages to break out of his hold and hit him so he can faint (Minho's fighting lessons came handy here ;) ). But she is in shock of what happened and got cut on the hand at the progress so she just goes to Minho's hut to help her (Kind of "I didn't know where else to go" trope) and he takes care of her but also makes sure to banish the piece of shit that tried something on her. Thank you sm <3333333

Damn I'm actually getting requests this is kinda mad lol. I'm so happy that y'all are like my work :))

Also, sorry, this one isn't as long because normally I write multiple scenes in one, but this is really just one long scene.

SAFE PLACE

MASTERLIST | MINHO MASTERLIST

SUMMARY: See above, but I am going to try to not describe the assault very much so there is nothing explicitly violent. This takes place after the direct aftermath of the attempt. Takes place before the arrival of Thomas.

WARNINGS: Themes of sexual assault and references to blood. Nothing explicit. Inappropriate language.

It was meant to be a simple night. You'd always been restless and sleep never came easy to you. It was kind of common knowledge that you're an insomniac, so when you decided to go on a late-night walk earlier, you never expected to end up on Minho's doorstep, blood dripping from your palm, physically shaken.

Another Glader, a Builder called Darren, had come onto you a couple of times, so when he'd tried tonight, you thought nothing of it. That was until there was a knife pressed to your throat.

It's almost a blur. You got away- there's no way you weren't going to put up a fight. A swift knee to the groin, grabbing the knife and headbutting him square in the nose was more than enough damage to sprint away.

Though, in your desperation, you'd grabbed the blade of the knife, causing a deep gnash to spread across the delicate skin of your hands.

You knock again. You know Minho has to be up early in the morning- he has to be up early every morning. Being the Keeper of the Runners is a demanding and hard job to do, and under normal circumstances, you respect this.

But not tonight. Minho is your best friend. He was the one of only boys that treated you like a normal person when you first arrived. Sure, he still made some flirty passes, but whilst the other boys stared and stuttered around you, Minho was smooth and joking. And with Newt and Alby always being caught up in something, you spend most of your evenings with the Runner.

And you trust him.

And you're desperate.

You knock again. "Minho!" A pit forms in your stomach. Darren could easily still be around here, recovering in time to attack again.

"Jesus, you wanna see me that bad?" Minho's playful tone reaches you through the poorly constructed door, but his face pales once he sees you.

Tears threaten to roll down your face as you tremble in front of him, cupping your injured hand in an attempt to nurse it and ease the sharp sting.

"Shuck, what happened?" Minho steps forward and reaches out to you, but you immediately flinch away from his touch.

"Hey, it's me," he pulls his himself back, "you're safe with me, yanno that."

"I didn't know where else to go," you confess, and he visibly softens, his tough guy facade crumbling under your teary eyes. "Can- can I just come in? Please?" You sniff, trying to stay reasonably stable.

"Yeah, yeah, of course," he steps aside, and you brush past, hearing the click of the door behind him.

You've never actually been in his hut before. It's surprisingly nice- homely even. It's simple and clean, only a couple of maps scattered around the room to show that Minho actually lives here.

"Sit down," he gestures towards the bed and you obey, sitting on the edge whilst blood starts to pool in your hand. He rumages through a drawer, pulling out what looks like a make-shift first-aid kit. "I'm no Med-jack, but you can't be bleedin' everywhere."

You attempt to laugh at his poor joke. Concern is written on his face. He's never seen you like this. You're always capable and competitive, always bringing fire to your work and getting shit done.

He sits next you, not close but not too far as he holds his hand out, wanting you to show your injury to him. After a second, you do so.

You hiss slightly as the antibacterial wipes contact the wound, earning a string of mumbled sorrys from your friend. The cut is deep and angry, making you cringe as you look at the state of your own hand.

Minho is incredibly delicate. Something bad has happened, and he can tell- hurting you further is definitely something he doesn't want to do.

He cautiously puts glue strips against your palm. Like he said, Minho is no medical expert, but he's used to getting scraps and scratches out in the Maze, so he is well prepared. Though he's unsure if this will actually stay in place. It looks like it'll need stitches, but you look in no state to be asking Med-jacks for help.

As he cautiously starts to wrap a bandage around your hand, he finally speaks.

"What happened?" His eyes flicker up to meet yours. You'd calmed down a bit now; the feelings of panic having faded into a numbness. Silence settles for a second and he knows better than to push you.

You take a shakey but deep breath. "I couldn't sleep, so I went on a walk- a-and this Builder, Darren, he came up to me," you pause, processing everything like you're starting to understand it yourself, "and he started hitting on me. It was nothing new and I told him I wasn't interested, and I don't really remember what happened next, but..."

"But, what (Y/N)?" It's rare that Minho uses your name. He's nervous himself and rage he's never experienced before has started to bubble in his stomach.

"I don't even know what happened next, I just remember being pinned to a tree with a knife pressed against my throat. He was saying all this shit and told me to be quiet and tried to undo my belt and-"

Minho's knuckles go white as they fall to his sides, fury seeping through his veins. He's in the right mind to go and find this guy right now- but he knows he'll be the one that gets banished for what he'll do to him.

"-and I kneed him in the balls and ran off, I cut my hand escaping." Minho stares at the ground, his gaze fixed on some invisible spot.

After a few seconds pass, you grow concerned, "Minho?"

"I'm going to fucking kill him."

Minho isn't exactly known for being the most level-headed shank around. He's picked a lot of fights in his time and is no stranger to a night in the Slammer. But this? This is different. He looks like he might actually stand by his words.

"You can't do that, man-"

He's on his feet, walking towards the door before you can stop him. "Minho!" You scramble up too, blocking him as he gets to the door. "The shuck are you doing?"

"I've gotta tell Ably, slintheads can't be getting away with this klunk!"

"Alby will be asleep."

"I don't care," he goes to move past you, but you grab his wrist.

"Please, can't this just wait 'till the morning?" You sigh, "I don't wanna think about it right now. Please."

It's his turn to sigh. He doesn't want to make things any worse tonight than they already are. "Okay. Fine. But I'm getting his ass banished- he hurt another Glader. He hurt you- he tried to do worse. I'm not letting that slide."

Minho is murderous. He's protective and angry; something you expected but not to this extent. He's literally going to get Darren killed. Not just get him killed- but make sure of it.

He's right, though. That's the penalty for hurting another Glader. And if everyone else can respect Alby's rules, why can't this Builder?

"I have to tell Alby." He's more definite this time, and you give him a soft nod.

"I know," you fall into another round of quiet and he's heart-broken seeing you like this.

"Can I, uh, can I hug you?" He doesn't want to cause you anymore discomfort, so asking for permission is key. You nod.

He's quick to wrap his muscular arm around you, something you accept easily, burying your face in the crook of his neck.

His comfort and the emotions catching up to you finally cause you to break. A sob shakes you and Minho's grip tightens as you cling to his shirt.

"Hey," he rubs circles on your back, "hey, it's okay."

You can't speak, and you both stand there for a while. His warmth is swallowing, and you've never felt safer. Minho isn't going to let anything bad happen to you.

You're safe with him.

You look you, sniffing, feeling slightly guilty when you see his tear-stained shirt. "Can I stay here? With you? For the night?"

He blinks at you. He was too blinded by his own anger to consider what he was going to do with you. Obviously, you're not going to feel safe going back out there.

"Yeah, yeah, 'course." He steps away, looking around his room, trying to work out the best way to go about this. "I'll uh, I can sleep on the floor and you can take my bed."

"You don't have to do that-"

"Dude," he sends you a sympathetic look, "you've been through a shuckin' lot tonight. I'll take the floor."

You give him a sad smile, choosing to nod in agreement instead of using your words.

Minho stole a pillow and a blanket and you both settled into your sleeping arrangements, but it's clear neither of you are getting any sleep.

Minho's bed smells like him. It's strangely comforting, and it's helping relax you. But that doesn't stop you from tossing and turning. After what must have been an hour, you give up.

"Minho, you awake?"

"Yeah," his voice is groggy and rough, tiredness taking its spot in his mind.

You turn to face him, opening the blankets. "Get in."

He sits up on his hands, using them to level him up. "What? I don't want to-"

"Just get in. Please."

Minho hesitates, but does as you say. Standing up, he slips under the covers with you. Normally, you'd be too embarrassed or anxious to even dare to be so bold, but you need comfort.

Once he's lay down, he opens his mouth to speak but you shuffle closer to him, once again hiding your face in his chest and flopping your arm over him. Minho stills for a second, deciding to keep up the wordless interaction and wraps his arm around you, pulling you closer.

Here is another request for Minho. I love writing for this man and it's a nice change to write something softer, even if it is under some horrendous circumstances. I didn't want to write anything explicit because I think that's unnecessary, but I hope that works here.

"It's gonna be okay, (Y/N)," he mumbles as he soothingly strokes you hair, "I'm gonna look after ya- you're safe here."

Anyway, as always, let me know what you think. Some more light-hearted stuff is on the way soon.

[nostalgebraist]

Am I right in suspecting that GPT-4 is not nearly as great an advance on GPT-3 as GPT-3 was on GPT-2? It seems a much better product, but that product seems to have as its selling point not vastly improved text-prediction, but multi-modality.

No one outside of OpenAI really knows how much of an advance GPT-4 is, or isn't.

When GPT-3 came out, OpenAI was still a research company, like DeepMind.

Before there was a GPT-3 product, there was a GPT-3 paper. And it was a long, serious, academic-style paper. It described, in a lot of detail, how they created and evaluated the model.

The paper was an act of scientific communication. A report on a new experiment written for a research audience, intended primarily to transmit information to that audience. It wanted to show you what they had done, so you could understand it, even if you weren't there at the time. And it wanted to convince you of various claims about the model's properties.

I don't know if they submitted it to any conferences or journals (IIRC I think they did, but only later on?). But if they did, they could have, and it wouldn't seem out of place in those venues.

Now, OpenAI is fully a product company.

As far as I know, they have entirely stopped releasing academic-style papers. The last major one was the DALLE-2 one, I think. (ChatGPT didn't get one.)

What OpenAI does now is make products. The release yesterday was a product release, not a scientific announcement.

In some cases, as with GPT-4, they may accompany their product releases with things that look superficially like scientific papers.

But the GPT-4 "technical report" is not a serious scientific paper. A cynic might categorize it as "advertising."

More charitably, perhaps it's an honest attempt to communicate as much as possible to the world about their new model, given a new set of internally defined constraints motivated by business and/or AI safety concerns. But if so, those constraints mean they can't really say much at all -- not in a way that meets the ordinary standards of evidence for scientific work.

Their report says, right at the start, that it will contain no information about what the model actually is, besides the stuff that would already be obvious:

GPT-4 is a Transformer-style model [33 ] pre-trained to predict the next token in a document, using both publicly available data (such as internet data) and data licensed from third-party providers. [note that this really only says "we trained on some data, not all of which was public" -nost] The model was then fine-tuned using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) [34 ]. Given both the competitive landscape and the safety implications of large-scale models like GPT-4, this report contains no further details about the architecture (including model size), hardware, training compute, dataset construction, training method, or similar.

As Eleuther's Eric Hallahan put it yesterday:

If we read further into the report, we find a number of impressive-looking evaluations.

But they are mostly novel ones, not done before on earlier LMs. The methodology is presented in a spotty and casual manner, clearly not interested in promoting independent reproductions (and possibly even with the intent of discouraging them).

Even the little information that is available in the report is enough to cast serious doubt on the overall trustworthiness of that information. Some of it violates simple common sense:

...and, to the careful independent eye, immediately suggests some very worrying possibilities:

That said -- soon enough, we will be able to interact with this model via an API.

And once that happens, I'm sure independent researchers committed to open source and open information will step in and assess GPT-4 seriously and scientifically -- filling the gap left by OpenAI's increasingly "product-y" communication style.

Just as they've done before. The open source / open information community in this area is very capable, very thoughtful, and very fast. (They're where Stable Diffusion came from, to pick just one well-known example.)

----

When the GPT-3 paper came out, I wrote a post titled "gpt-3: a disappointing paper." I stand by the title, in the specific sense that I meant it, but I was well aware that I was taking a contrarian, almost trollish pose. Most people found the GPT-3 paper far from "disappointing," and I understand why.

But "GPT-4: a disappointing paper" isn't a contrarian pose. It was -- as far as I can see -- the immediate and overwhelming consensus of the ML community.

----

As for the multimodal stuff, uh, time will tell? We can't use it yet, so it's hard to know how good it is.

What they showed off in the live demo felt a lot like what @nostalgebraist-autoresponder has been able to do for years now.

Like, yeah, GPT-4 is better at it, but it's not a fundamentally new advance, it's been possible for a while. And people have done versions of it, eg Flamingo and PaLI and Magma [which Frank uses a version of internally] and CoCa [which I'm planning to use in Frank, once I get a chance to re-tune everything for it].

I do think it's a potentially transformative capability, specifically because it will let the model natively "see" a much larger fraction of the available information on web pages, and thus enable "action transformer" applications a la what Adept is doing.

But again, only time will tell whether these applications are really going to work, and for what, and whether GPT-4 is good enough for that purpose -- and whether you even need it, when other text/image language models are already out there and are being rapidly developed.

[horizon-verizon]

To all the green/Alicent/Aegon/Aemond/Criston stans choosing to follow me of your own free will, make sure you're making the right choice bc you will see stuff that will likely upset you.

No, I do not think Rhaenyra was a whore or that her sexuality somehow makes or breaks her inherent moral character (this is a patriarchal invention that places more power in men over women's behavior bc as long as they have the political and legal advantage over women [as what has happened in many societies for millennia] it compels women to conform their overall behavior towards not even seeming to resemble the man's/larger developed ideas of "slut" rather than develop herself or have her own fun). And if a man can still be a good leader while having sex outside of marriage, if we truly look at woman as equal and inherently equal to men no matter the time period or place, then we should consider the same when women have sex outside of marriage! Reminder: Aegon SA or rapes; Rhanerya never once did that. which goes into my next point...

No, show!Rhaenyra did not SA or really even pressure Criston into sex. I explain why HERE & below from a past ask-post:

No, her first 3 kids were not bastards. "Bastards" only exist in the legal realm to separate a man/lord's and his family's resources/titles to those who carry his "blood". On principle, you shouldn't be accepting the objectification of women that is necessary to this formula, but aside from that, the meaning of bastardy has been subject ot change ust as many social construction, as we se in the Anstey case ands how William the Conqueror's bastardy was more defined as being that his mother was not noble rather than not married to his father. Because bastardry is more a legal phenomena more than anyting, Viserys--who has the only right and power to name anyone as bastard or legitimize them and thus is the final bulwark against the revelation of the boys being not Laenor's kids--was able to accept Rhaenyra's kids as his heir's heirs. Nobles keep secrets all the time for their own conience. Think about Lysa tully and all those rich people of various TV show and movies who cover up both actual harmful crimes as well as just those that would harm their reputation! This is what happens when you have any elite class AND mid-to-very strict social rules of conduct that you may be breaking anyway. And no, noble/royal wives of history weren't all sexually obedient little cupcakes...many had lovers while married and historically, some were even known by their families and husbands. (Check out Eleanor Herman's book Sex with the Queen).

No, Alicent of either thing didn't have any real reason, material reason to think her kids were in danger from Rhaenyra ascending. You can see why under posts tagged "alicent doesnt have any points" as well as this recent thread]

No I do not see Rhaenyra as uniquely "selfish", "'spoiled", etc. I do not make as if she is unacceptably and uniquely evil or the most amoral. That was overall Andal-FM patriarchy, Aenys I, Maegor I, Jaehaerys I, Viserys, and the greens, esp Alicent & Otto. Rhaenyra, of either the shoe or the book, was both trying to do her duty in her marriage as well as find some happiness AND autonomy alongside that. You were not supposed to readopt feudal patriarchal social "values" or prioritize them/social hierarchies over real human happiness, equity, and social harmony. If you have, you don't get ASoIaF!

For fuck sake, some of you like Jon Snow and think he's Azor Ahai! No, he is not legitimate, bc by the time Rhaegar and his generation was alive, polygamy had lost its validity and for any marriage to Lyanna he could have had needed to be reinforced by either force (Maegor) or public declaration or propaganda & deals careful planning (Doctrine of Exceptionalism) something along those lines...which even if we get the story of Rhaegar and Lyanna, we already know no such preparations occurred!

[spoiled-fawn]

John Price; Drop Everything Now.

Part 2

CW: PTSD, Songfic inspired by "Sparks Fly" (Not in a cringe way I promise)

GN!Reader who is a sergeant on TF141. WC: 2,262

AN: I needed to post this before I completely tore it apart (again) and decided to scrap it. LMK if you'd like a part two because I have a good chunk of it but unsure if I'd like to continue this since I want the PTSD to linger and not be just diminished because reader is love of his life (I'd like to at least try to have some realism, rip). This was actually created for a test run of writing PTSD so I am happy to take any constructive criticism or tips for writing it. Hope you enjoy!

Being stationed in the Middle East meant that you weren't used to much besides the hot sun baring down on every activity you did and dust storms that would blow over, which effectively made you shut your mouth to not breathe in the dirt. However, that didn’t mean that Mother Nature would not bless the dry lands with an ounce of rain every once in a while. 

You wouldn’t know about the rain usually unless you were outside training or on a mission when the dark clouds would roll in, giving you a rare break from the sun. Other times, the clouds would cover the stars and moon in the night sky, but you wouldn't be able to tell just what kind of clouds they were. 

And that, unfortunately, is how tonight is going without your knowledge.

The rain was never an issue on base, its greatest hindrance being the lack of vision, the annoyance of getting wet, and the general time it would take to wait it out. However, there was always the unspoken thought of the thunderstorms that could arise. 

You’ve served two years within TF141 as a sergeant, having been recruited and transferred to be on base under Price’s command. Now having some experience under your belt, you’ve seen a thing or two- but nothing compared to your superiors.

From an external point of view and reflection on yourself, it brings a possibility that your mind has yet to realize if the memories are getting trapped within yourself. Your nervous system may have gotten stuck in the past at a few points in time, but while you remain living in the action, your biggest symptom is nightmares and anxiety that you brush off each time.

The same can’t be said for your Captain.

Price, with his two decades of service, has lived through more than you could ever imagine and things he wishes to not recall. He plays the classic tough guy act, brushing his emotions off as something he can deal with when he’s home and not deployed- nor does he want to even believe they are necessary to process, his ways still being a bit old-fashioned.

When you were recruited, his viewpoint shifted a bit. Price wasn’t sure that you would be a good fit within the team, and debated putting you on a platoon further down the branch that he still oversaw from time to time. Yet, during your grace period, he would check up on you- being sure to debrief with you after long days of training exercises or drills that were getting harder and harder. When you had proven your worth to him and the team, an unspoken agreement between you two was formed. You would casually reside in his presence but keep it under the notion of him offering guidance to the rookie. This often resulted in you filling out reports or paperwork on your laptop in his office while he worked at his desk.

Price was not a sharer of his inner turmoil. But, sometimes, you would confide in him and he would allow a sliver of a softer man to peak out in the late hours of the night.

That's how the deeper part of your relationship worked with him. Hard-ass by day, and a mildly reserved man by late night. You’re close with the entirety of the team, but you’ve always had an attraction to Price, classically never trying to show it or verbalize it to anyone. Yet, you had a good hunch that he already knew from your softened behavior towards him when the veil of superior and subordinate came down to friends in the dark glow of his office.

You knew it was a bad idea to ever indulge yourself in having his attention and reciprocating it, but now you over-indulged for the last year and find yourself with a cavity at the sweetness you suck from his words. Your mind is always left in a trance on any touch he unknowingly spoiled you with; a hand to the small of your back, adjusting your elbows if you were using a heavier loadout during training, or a pat on the head after a job well done.

Tonight, the storm rolls in with thunder chasing right behind it. 

It's late in the evening as you stand in the common room, having had dinner late, and washing the dishes while quietly humming to yourself. The subconscious part of your mind notices the flashes of lightning and deep thunder that penetrate the barriers of the base but leaving it as a non-threat. You wash your dinner plate, moving the sponge around, but before you can put the plate down to dry, your phone rings with a call from Price. 

It's not unusual for him to call when he decides he’d like your presence while completing paperwork, yet your eyebrows furrow as you see the time to be later in the night than his usual request.

Before you can even speak into the phone after answering, your ear is polluted with the sound of his ragged breaths; the sound of rain hitting the ground is amplified more than what you hear while being inside. It sends a roll of skin-prickling anxiety down your spine as your eyes widen. “Price?” You ask after a blink, trying to understand what this call could be.

You hear it when he speaks, a tremor in the back of his throat and you can imagine the adrenaline-crazed look on his face. The sound of your name is called from him, and it almost sounds questioning, as if he isn't sure it's you, even though he called.

“I- I don’t know where I am…” He pants out, sounding choked up, trying to swallow air and the lack of saliva in his throat while in the pouring rain.

Drop everything now

Without a second thought, you drop the plate, the clatter of it breaking once hitting the ground echoes in the common room and snaps everyone's attention on you. Not having any need for apologies or reason, your body is already supplying the adrenaline needed to set into a dead sprint out of the common room as you weave past the other bodies to push through the hallway and enter the stairwell with the clamor of the metal doors swinging open.

“John, where are you- tell me what you see.” You call out as your body gets set on autopilot, practically flying down the stairs of the barracks and onto the ground floor moving into the hallways. “Do you see the training yard or do you see a road?” You pant out while pushing to find the exit door of the base.

It's here and now, that you now actively recognize the roll and clap of thunder as if it's taunting you to hurry up and find Price before it does.

But it seems it already has.

Each door, person, and corner you pass feels like a deliberate obstacle, frustrating you as you try to get outside faster.

“I- I see a road and the-” He’s interrupted by a bright flash, a strong shake of thunder following right after, and you hear him grunt in aggravation at the sound he lacks control over. With a call of your name, he makes a quiet plea. “Please, I need you here. Now.” He manages to ground out with a sharp breath, causing you to almost second guess yourself at what he said. 

You bank a hard left, towards the East entrance, finding the door to take you outside towards the main road that leads to the base's entrance. Shouldering the large door, you grit your teeth while taking the metal harshly against yourself, but almost come to a halt when you feel the pouring rain pelt on your body.

Meet me in the pouring rain

“Please.” His voice shakes again through the phone, and the rasp from his panting re-escalates the adrenaline through your body.

It breaks your heart to hear him sound like this as if he’s succumbing to his demons. “John, I’m gonna find you but you need to help me, ok?” You ask as your legs begin to burn from the force that you run through the damp earth with. “-you see the flag pole? ” You bark out while another flash of lightning crosses the sky, closing your eyes as you wince. “Hey- listen to me, focus on me.” You command, praying that he isn’t locked inside his memories.

After a moment, “Y- Yes, I see it. The- the rains comin’ down hard- won't fucking stop.”

The shake in his voice is back; he’s shivering and his irritability is beginning to build up faster as it makes itself evident the longer he stays held within the turmoil of his nervous system.

Running and finally entering the main yard after having had to cut through the detached buildings to make it to the front, you place your free hand over your eyes to try and gain some semblance of visibility while the flashes of lightning aid for a moment.

“Meet me there. It’ll be just you and me, only us.” You pleaded with a hint of firmness, needing to direct him as you move with haste towards the lit flagpole, the light being a beacon through the pelting rain.

While running in the dark and wet ground, you lose footing and slide your foot into loose gravel; your right elbow is now scraped while you clatter to the ground with a “Fuck-” Your voice breaks through the night air, as your yelp of pain staccatos out in the silence between the flash of light and complimenting rumble of thunder. 

In a moment before you can stand up, you hear your name being yelled out, whipping your head up in response. The raw tenacity of his voice through the thrumming of rainfall hits when there is no other force of the storm that can distract either of you.

Your gazes find each other; he looks frozen for a moment, then immediately runs to you.

“John-“ falls past your lips in a cry when you spot him. His fatigues stick to his body, his hair wet and bucket hat long gone. Making his way hurriedly, his body slows with unexpected grace as he helps you to your feet. Almost as if in a hurried frenzy, you latch onto him by his arms, blinking through the falling rain as you look up and search his face. 

The expression he wears, as he makes sure you’re alright, contradicts the voice he had just seconds earlier; his eyebrows furrowed with worry as he checks over you, quickly placing his large hands on your ribs to stand you upright as if you are a toddler who has just taken a tumble.

“Bloody- You alrigh’ sweetheart?” He asks as the warmth of his panting breath fans across your face while pulling you up against him.

“I’m ok, I just slipped from the rain. Thank you.” You speak while still holding him tight, latching onto him. Your heart aches at seeing him care for you no matter where his mind places him, always putting others before himself.

John nods, letting out a small sigh. The feeling of your warmth against his chest brings him back down as he looks over you, trying to blink the anxiety and rain from his eyes. The feeling of his hands, cold and now gentle, glides up to move the wet hair from your eyes. It surprises you for a moment as he stays completely silent besides the tremoring breaths he takes.

At the silence, you let a small huff of laughter escape before closing your eyes and giving a smile in relief at having him in your sight and arms, before fluttering your eyes open to gaze up at him. 

You return the gesture when you move your hand to wipe his hair off of his forehead, the rain having matted it down to his skin. “With me as I’m with you. Always with you, John.” The lull of your voice surprises both of you as it can be heard perfectly in the rain, with no sign of thunder or lightning interrupting your words. 

John cups the base of your skull, looking at the raindrops that fall in small splashes and trails along your face. His eyes dilate when focused on you, the sight of him this close and his icy blue eyes keep steadfast on you, leaving a haunting mark on your memory and heart.

He moves his head down to meet yours; pausing for a moment as if he isn't sure this is real- he isn’t sure that this isn’t a dream and his mind is granting him a wish. Is this a true trick of his mind? This can't be a memory, surely-

He looks as if he’s in pain, so you take the last leap of faith for him.

The new and added warmth of his lips on yours is tender. It contrasts the rough environment of where you stand, the life you both live and the constant battles faced within. Your arms and his alike move to wrap around each other in a harsh and tight embrace.

As the raindrops fall all over both your faces, you feel as if you’re in a movie and the climax has just hit when the lovers are united.

You both are soaking wet, but neither of you seems to mind. He pulls you back into him, deepening the kiss with a determined and desperate force.

Kiss me on the sidewalk

Take away the pain.

[xiaoshengnu]

𝕸𝖞 𝕵𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖞 𝖙𝖔 𝖄𝖔𝖚 (2023)

overview : episode no - 24 | genre - wuxia

yun weishan has only ever known darkness. brought up and honed from a young age to become a spy under the mysterious sect wufeng, she longs for freedom. the drama begins as she is sent on a mission into the gong family, the enemy sect of wufeng. if she succeeds, freedom she gets. surrounded by schemes and treachery with possible death looming on both sides, yun weishan must navigate the dangerous waters of the gong family and her own turbulent emotions towards her target, gong ziyu.

l⃣e⃣ t⃣’ s⃣    b⃣e⃣g⃣i⃣n⃣

YALL THIS DRAMA. THIS DRAMA. this drama was simultaneously the worst and best thing I have experienced in a long time. however, if I could only use one word to describe this drama, it would 100% be stunning. the drama is absolutely stunning. from the music to the costuming to the makeup to the actors- this drama's visuals is quite frankly something never seen before in chinese dramaland- its so dark and brooding and so cool. the plot on the other hand...? let's get into it.

o⃣u⃣t⃣     o⃣ f⃣     t⃣ e⃣ n⃣

𝖕𝖑𝖔𝖙 - 3/10

𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 - 7/10

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖘 - 7/10

𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 - 10/10

𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕘𝕖 - 6.7

o⃣u⃣t⃣    o⃣ f⃣    f⃣ i⃣v⃣ e⃣

𝖍𝖎𝖉𝖉𝖊𝖓 𝖌𝖊𝖒 𝖛𝖆𝖑𝖚𝖊 - 💎💎💎💎💎

[ honestly, this drama is pretty unique I have to give it that much. in every way. the characters? the premise? and the style? I think the visuals alone grants it it's five gem value. ] 

𝖗𝖊𝖜𝖆𝖙𝖈𝖍 𝖛𝖆𝖑𝖚𝖊 - ✨✨✨

[ despite the plot that is quite literally held up by like two stitches, I would probably rewatch it for the characters, but probably not think too deeply about the drama's construction as a whole because honestly- it would frustrate me to no end. ]

‘keep reading’ for detailed review

 𝖕𝖑𝖔𝖙 - 3

okay- hear me out y'all. I know people absolutely LOVE this drama and I am one of them, but I have to admit the logic in this plot sucks ass. like it really sucks ass. recently i heard a youtuber describe the characters as people who thought they were zhen huan but in reality were just a bunch of xia dongchuns and it really made me laugh- and guys... unfortunately, its true. some of the methods that the characters use to scheme and idk "verbally spar" honestly were just so- sigh. so ridiculous.

generally speaking, I felt that the drama didn't really have a "thread" or a central purpose, which I think is mainly a result of the build up to the ending. it failed to answer so many questions and instead made it worse by creating even more. overall, the plot kind of just felt like wading through a gigantic mud marsh with pointless confrontations and plot points popping up everywhere. the scriptwriters gave the drama a super complex framing that they just weren't able to do justice. two powerful sects and two people from completely opposing sides. one is an assassin-spy that initially (?) yearns for freedom and one is the leader of the sect that she is trying to destroy. add to that all the scheming that goes on the gong family. and a lot of childhood trauma. that's a shit-tonne of emotion and plotting to deal with which you can't realistically develop to a good quality within just 24 episodes.

I also got the vibe that the scriptwriters were scared to pin point any of their characters down for the sake of mystery, which honestly instead of making the drama better, really just made it worse. so many characters' motives were constantly doing 180s and big revelations were thrown in without any evidence of it being interlaced with the rest of the drama (I'm looking at you Big Plot Twist At End of Drama). like, the general concept was amazing, show-stopping, fantastic, never seen before, but then came the execution and it all just sort of fell apart.though I did enjoy the plot and watched the show until the end, ultimately I felt that there was honestly just too many frustrating flaws to justify it getting anything higher than 3. I loved the drama all the same though, the concept, the music and cinematography was just insane.

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖘 - 7

ugh all the characters in this show where literally sO COOOLLL. they all had such distinctive characters, styles and personalities, it was amazing. honestly, literally never seen before. their tragic backstories were so so heartbreaking. while plot wasn't fantastic, the drama was pretty good at establishing and handling the characters and their emotional attachments to each other. its kinda funny to me that for a drama which marketed romance as it's main thing, the non-romantic relationships were so much better written. I loved yun weishan and yun que's relationship to their master han yasi and the relationship between xue chongzi and xue gongzi. and omg, gong ziyu's relationship to lady wuji? brought me to tears.

speaking of the romance department; I found it really hard to invest in the ships. while I approved of all the pairings and thought a romantic dynamic between them would be very interesting, it did feel like the storytelling was yet again lacking. I couldn't be sure wether I could really invest and ship the romance between shangguang qian and gong shangjue bcs both their motives were so unclear, and neither of their feelings towards one another were never really explored properly? and while I definitely understood yun weishan's attraction to gong ziyu, I didn't really get why gong ziyu loved her and risked so much for her which made some of his actions seem really silly and hard to stand by. overall, for the romance, i think I liked what it had the potential to be than what we actually got.

𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 - 10

Y'ALLL. time to talk about my absolute FAVOURITE part of this drama. THE PRODUCTION. the colouring, the lighting, the sets, the cinematography?? the makeup? the music? the costume design?? THE COSTUME DESIGN?? its quite obvious that a huge amount of the budget for this drama has simply been poured into the design, like I've seriously never seen a drama shot like this ever before and it was absolutely insane (though they definitely had to cut down on the cast and extras, the whole drama has this weird kind of empty feeling for a manor that is so rich and famous and so tightly guarded, like yun weishan didn't even get a personal handmaiden) I remember seeing the trailers for this show and literally screaming- the drama itself did not disappoint. I would even go as far to say that I would watch this drama completely just for the aesthetics.

𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 - 7

in my personal opinion, no complaints about the acting, it was pretty great. although it's pretty dramatic at times and everyone speaks at the volume of a whisper, at no point in the drama did I get taken out of the show by the acting. esther yu really slayed in her new assassin role which was so fun to watch especially since most of her roles thus far have been rather cutesy and light- and her marital arts scenes ate- in fact all the martial arts scenes ate in my opinion. I think even the side characters did fairly well, it was all very nice. no complaints.

.

.

𝖇𝖔𝖓𝖚𝖘!!

favourite character(s) : 

yue gongzi ( who doesn't love an angsty angsty man? he's literally the definition of that teary wet cat meme and I love that for him ) 

xue chongzi (yet another angsty man- you can see a pattern forming lmao- his arc at the end was literally so heartbreaking. one of my favourite characters from this show fr. )

.

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖜 (source mydramalist)

lead actors : esther yu, zhang linghe, lu yuxiao, cheng lei

director : guo jingming, luo luo

screenwriter : guo jingming

[batfleckgifs]

Host: Um I want to uh as we kind of wrap up here I do want to come back to AI. Jerry you mentioned it but you know Ben how did you know uh-earlier you guys weren't here we did a demonstration my colleague, Andrew Sorkin and I recreated ourselves and our voices how do you see it I mean - is it a benefit or is it a real threat? Is it possible that uh - Netflix could say you know we're going to do our own, excuse me James Bond thing out there with a bunch of actors that are completely recreated for this Market or that market I-?

Ben Affleck: A) that's not possible now. B) will it be possible the future? Highly unlikely. C) Uh-Uh Movies will be one of the last things if everything gets replaced to be replaced by ai. AI can write you excellent imit-imitative verse that sounds Elizabethan, it cannot write you Shakespeare. The function of having two actors or three or four actors in a room and the taste to discern and construct that is something that currently entirely eludes ai's capability and I think will for a meaningful period of time. What AI is going to do, is going to disintermediate the more laborious less creative uh and you know Co-more costly aspects of film making that will allow cost to be brought down, that will be lower the barrier to entry that will allow more voices to be heard, that will make it easier to for the people want to make Goodwill huntings to go out and make it. Look AI is a Craftsman at best Craftsman can learn to you know make stickly furniture by sitting down next to somebody and seeing what their technique is and imitating. That's how large video models large language model models basically work a library of vectors of meaning and Transformers that interpret context right but they're just cross-pollinating things that exist. Nothing new is created or-

Host: Not yet.

Ben Affleck: Not yet. Yeah, not yet. And-and really the - in order to do that - look Craftsman is knowing how to work (and) Art Is knowing when to stop. And I think knowing when to stop is going to be a very difficult thing for AI to learn because it's taste and also lack of consistency.lack of controls. lack of quality. AI for for this world of generative video is going to do key things more me-I wouldn't like to being in the visual effects business,they're in trouble, because what cost a lot of money is now going to cost a lot less. And it's going to hammer that space than it already is, um, and maybe it shouldn't take a thousand people to render something but it's not going to replace human beings making films. It may make your background more convincing, it can change the color of your shirt, it can fix mistakes that you've made, it can make it - you know you might be able to get two seasons of House of the Dragon in a year instead of one and if that happens according to macroeconomics in you know, uh ,cultures where there are basically Oligopolies competing what should happen is with the same demand and the same spend is they they should just make more shows which should you know you should have the same spend and now you can just watch more episodes. And eventually AI will allow you to,uh, ask for your own episode of succession where you can say I'll pay $30 and can you make me a 45 minute episode where like Kendall gets the company and runs off and has an affair with Stewie and it'll do it. And it'll be a little janky and a little bit weird but it'll know their Stats it'll know those actors and it will you know Mix-remix it in effect and it will do that. That's the value, in my view, long term of AI for consumers which is eventually - My Hope for AI is that it's an additional Revenue stream that can replace DVD which took 15 to 20% out of the economy of film making which is and-and there should be negotiated rights and-

Host: And that's the key part of it.

Ben Affleck: And the right to say if you want to - because what do people want to make 5 minute 30C Tik Tok videos where they look like The Avengers well great, you can , you know just like you used to be able to buy your Iron Man costume at the store you're going to buy your Iron Man pack and you and your buddies are going to look like Iron Man and Hawkeye like you know on Twitch that's that's what's going to really happen.

[vaalthus]

Convergence Part 1 (spoilers)

*Deep inhale*

*Long exhale*

THE TIME IS NIGH!!!

So to start,

I have to say I was utterly shocked that Jaania chose not sacrifice any more of her forces to buy her more time weave her spell but after giving it some thought it's an action that makes sense for her. As I mentioned in commenting on the Final Steps release, Jaania is finally able to see that our motivations we're always intended to strive for everyone's sake in the best of ways we knew how. As a result, she's hoping we can see and have faith in the good she's trying to bring about through her ascension.

As such, it makes no sense in her eyes to waste the lives of those who have been so loyal to her in helping her reach this moment when there's a chance their lives can be spared by us and they in turn be able to experience the world she seeks to achieve. Though those same troops would have been more than happy to lay down their lives for her so that world is brought to fruition. It's just a pity Jaania didn't give the order to retreat sooner otherwise the last of the Pelekoans might have survived.

What troubles me is the comments like these:

It's no secret to anyone that the last of Jaania's forces were those who were most loyal to her and her vision but what I find troubling here is the inevitable aftermath of these people once this conflict reaches its conclusion. As Hansa, pointed out to us in the Awakened Depths, Jaania became a beacon for those who had a simple wish to be achieved: to be free of any and all magical threats that Lore offers. However, it's not just these soldiers that want that, it's the nobles, the farmers, the little guys that have been supporting the Rose all these years across Greenguard and likely still do, sure that number has definitely taken a dive since the start of Book 3 but I doubt it's still insignificant. All of those people will soon find their dreams and the person who was meant to bring back a sense of uninterrupted peace in their lives is about to be dashed. We can only hope their response to this reality is constructive as opposed to the opposite.

What I've been saying all along folks :3

Miss me with that "we're not so different you and I" speech.

I like to think this is the Hero taking all they've learned about the ability to make choices in the Maleurous saga and is just throwing that much needed wisdom back at Jaania who feels the need to instill order in the world.

This comment is interesting to me because we have seen the Hero effectively try and be everywhere all at once for eveyone's sake, quite almost obsessively I might add, and I feel if Jaania hadn't recently just had a change of heart on her perspective on them, and taken the time to analyze the Hero's deal, she might have been able to more strongly appeal to their need, their desperation, in protecting everyone they can. Not that it would work either way, the Hero's distrust and deep-rooted fear of her, as seen in Fear, showed that getting us on her side was simply not possible.

If she was more predatory, of course, she would have used that aspect against us as every other villain that attacks our psyche has done before. A neat contrast here is what I'm pointing out.

*sigh* Every single new questionable scene with this woman continues to force me to find comfort in the fact that her and the other Magesters too dependent on the Mana Core Fragment will be dead eventually thanks to Roirr's actions. I truly want to believe there's a positive future for the Shapeless Empire that doesn't involve exploiting its citizens through this agreed upon cycle without violence but the rotting hands of the past never want to let go of control easily.

YOU GAVE THEM TRAUMA AND WEREN'T EVEN SORRY!!!

Okay technically this right here is the more sensible reasoning, but I stand by what I said! What I like most in this scene is that we simply reaffirm what we've been trying to tell her since this whole mess started with her organization. Everything we bring up about the harm the Rose has done thus far has been consistent and aren't negated by the fact that Jaania, at heart, wants to do what she believes is best for everyone's sake.

What I love even more however is how she averts her eyes the moment we bring up Akanthus because she knows she can't even reasonably, or delusionally for that matter, deny she has made a grave error in judgement in allowing Akanthus' abuses on, well, basically everyone, and soon everything, in his wake. It's that "Yeah, ya got me there look" that just sends warm feelings down my spine.

Now if you told me at the start of this saga Jaania was going to offer us a bargain to effectively play as the puppeteer god of fate alongside her, I definitely would have called you insane. It's moment I'm sure comes as a complete shock to everyone, it certainly did to me anyway. And honestly why wouldn't it? It's one thing to ask us to stand down and simply allow her to achieve apotheosis but it's a completely different matter to propose to come and play god. But it's one that sadly makes all too much sense.

Jaania has admitted that she has made terrible mistakes and has been too much of an imperfect being in her quest to achieve peace and prosperity for Lore. So better way to accommodate for her ham-fisted actions and judgement so far then to have someone like the Hero to hopefully keep her worse tendencies in check. As opposed to someone like Akanthus or Zadd who would, in all likelihood, make things worse had they been afforded the opportunity. There's another reason I believe she makes this offer but I'll get to that later.

Nothing else to say here beyond epic callback!

Out of all the Hero's moments in this quest, I believe this is where their experiences throughout the Maleurous saga shines through the brightest.

In a way, you could argue that, in spite of the obvious chaos that will come with it, Jaania's plan is to instill an eternal order, a Destiny, upon Lore itself, one in which she will insists never ends as she dictates. Yet the Hero knows the importance of others being able to decide the paths they choose to walk, I'd argue they've known that since Calamity, without some transcendental hand to yank them in another direction against their own will. So they certainly would not agree to be the one to dictate the fate of all those that live on Lore let alone allow someone as misguided as Jaania to do it.

Okay, I think we all knew that the void pearl was too easy a solution to deal with Akanthus and was likely not going to work but there's something absolutely amusing about Hesperrhodos being used a shield to be sent to the Void and then teleport immediately back to Lore without issue since, ya know, Elemental Spirits can just do that at any time. Hell I at least would have thought that thing would have let a monster through or something. The downside to seeing Zvezdana looking completely slack-jawed after these events unfolded is the fact that we still don't have a damned plan to take Akanthus out of commission...so yeah.

I have to say I love this final appeal Jaania gives to the trio of combatants because it shows a few things. First, that she still fails to understand that her organization was really only giving the illusion of peace to all those the dwelt within range of the Rose's reach and even then only really through the lens of normal humans. Second, it displays that she never truly had a proper grasp on the relationship she fostered with those she worked alongside. Lastly, she places too much hope that wanting the same things is not the same as agreeing ideologically how get those things.

Which inevitably leads to one option: Violence

I have waited 12. long. years. for this very moment. 12 years spent waiting since we broke free from that ice cap. 8 years I waited since from the first time we saw her again in Timelines. 7 years since the original Gala and our spat. 4 years since dealing with the second rift and I had a deeper appreciation for her mental state which motivates her.

And now I am finally here to fight Jaania one on one. So, you best believe I fought alone to prove which of us was could beat the other!

The following boss fight that ensues is perhaps one of the best thematic story fights in the entire game at this point, as it should be for the antagonist that is the face for this entire saga. I'm quite pleased that devs designed her to be difficult, hell I'm even glad that couldn't easily soul gambit my way out of this one.

In terms of mechanics, it's everything you could expect, Jaania does everything she can to debuff us and each time she fails and has her health cut down in bulk she commands even more strength to take us down, even attempting to go for the old freeze'em solid trick and when that doesn't draw any purchase thanks to Aegis she relies on her new found soul weaving arts to dispatch us. All the while we deal with the tragic music in the background tugging at the heart strings for a conflict that should have been avoided.

How far we've come since the Doom Amulet was our first real challenge in-game for year, eh?

And can I say how amusing it is that Jaania trapping us in ice is something that could only work once? Aegis apparently always had the means of unfreezing, he simply couldn't due to Draco keeping everyone away from where we were placed. So, with him already being close by to protect our soul from going poof, there's no way he's going to let us get trapped again. Even more amusing is to think about how Jaania is basically using the old ice soul weaver meta to take us on.

But after all of that we prove in the end, with or without aid, to be stronger than Jaania, at least in this exact moment.

It's a pity though that the moment does not last as expected Jaania will not let it end without fighting at her full potential.

This right here is the reason I believe Jaania made her initial proposal to us and why I bring up the Maleurous saga. For me at least, it's easy to see the similarities between Jaania and Notha. Both are exceptionally powerful accomplished mages that desperately sought out to change a world that gave them deep rooted traumas that they wished to change that world so that the suffering they experienced could not continue. However, where Notha wanted to bring about chaos to change the order of the world; Jaania is hellbent on imposing order on the chaos the world of Lore and its magic offers its inhabitants. Furthermore, I suspect, unlike Notha, that Jaania cannot bring herself to reconcile with the trauma magic has placed on her life and the people she cared about. Most defining of all though, which will likely be her downfall, is her need to be in control of everything so that she or anyone else might never hurt again.

Antagonists like Jaania are always left in a hard spot. They seek to rid the world of suffering and conflict forever and while that is a noble desire they fail to realize how unfortunately intrinsic those things are to existence. Thusly they bang their heads on a wall until they're bloodied and broken only for that dream they longed for to dissipate before their very eyes.

And so, her last option is to go full synchronization. I can't guess what happens next here with Jaania. Judging by the increased streaks of white in her hair, her soul is continuing to unravel though I think she's in no worse of a state than Tomix was when he was at the end. I was originally going to say synchronizing with a corrupt spirit created through forbidden magic would spell instant catastrophe for Jaania but then I remembered Aspar was created through the same means, although he was just a fragment, so she might pull off the effect with little issue.

I suppose we must simply wait and see what becomes of our troublesome Arch Magus and where the winds will turn for her ambitions.

And of course, there's still this asshole and the doom device.

[llaberration]

Coyne's Chronicles: Shadow Over Yfiria- Chapter 32

Content Warning!

This chapter is darker, and covers some fairly troubling moments and mentalities from the characters. Some of the discussions contained within may be distressing, if you're already in a sensitive or emotional mood it might not help that.

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Coyne grunted as he heaved himself deeper into the structure, barely able to squeeze his skinny frame through some of the narrow gaps and spaces left by the haphazard construction. The only saving grace thus far was that nothing seemed to be actively using the crevices and tunnels to navigate the hive other than him. Whatever way in and out the bog creatures were utilising had to lie below the liquid level of the mire, because these tunnels were not used at all. As far as Coyne could tell from the amount of dust and crumbling stone on the walls of the spaces he was navigating, he was the first living thing to pass through here. That gave him some limited sense of safety in his search, but the increasingly loud sounds echoing through the broken stone crevices were swiftly washing that away.

What he could hear sounded... wet. Wet and slimy and strange. He tried to move as silently as he could, as the noises he was hearing most certainly were not coming from natural dripping and trickling in the cave-like environment. This sounded like large things were moving through liquid somewhere nearby. Occasionally there would be a grunting growling sound, or even a howl, vocalisations that sounded strained and uncomfortable. As though that which made them was not quite able to do so without great effort. Pausing for breath, he let a hand rest quietly over the shape of the egg, running over the incantation in his head that Fez had given him to utilise it. He could probably get away with it now and still expect it to be effective but he needed to be sure. Fez had been clear. With their one and only shot at this, they had to make certain. He had to find the centre of the hive first, no matter how much extra time it took, he had to make sure.

He continued on his way, trying to keep himself firmly focused on the task and not on what was going on in the outside world that now felt so far away. He had to prioritise his feelings right now, and in order to help his friends, his main job was to finish his current task. He felt like he had been in the tunnels for hours when he spotted a glimmer of light ahead, creeping up a crevice in the stonework. He slowed, and crept with delicate care the last few feet to the opening that was releasing a sickly green glow. He spread himself out along the floor to ensure he got the safest position as he peered through what appeared to have once been the corner of a doorframe, into the space below, seeking the source of the light.

His view was somewhat limited by the smallness of the opening, but what it revealed to him was informative enough.

He was over a massive cavern inside the hive, filled with a lake of slime up to what he assumed was ground level. The liquid was thick and green, but transparent, so he could see that it was deep, very deep. He couldn't see the bottom, it merely descended into greenish blackness as far down as the light could penetrate. He could not see the source of the light, even by straining to one side, he could not make out what was generating the green glow, the shattered frame blocking his sight. None of that was what held his attention though. What drew the eye was the many shifting, moving shapes in the slime.

They were... like dragons, in a sense. Between twenty and forty feet long, with four legs, and what seemed to be half-formed or vestigial wing bases. They weren't right though. Their bodies were misshapen, missing parts or entire sides of flesh, showing bone and organ below. Even where the limbs were present on their bodies, they were often too small or twisted to one side in a way that implied the joints weren't in the right place. It almost looked as though the liquid was digesting them, in some places he could see organ material floating all but outside their body cavities. Their bones seemed soft, misshapen, bending in odd positions. One in particular that raised its head above the surface, Coyne saw its lower jaw bending downwards with the weight of its irregular, sharp teeth. But they did not seem to be in pain. The creatures moved lazily around in the liquid, using their weak limbs to propel themselves around little by little, not going anywhere, just shifting.

Straining his angle to try and see more, Coyne realised there was a pile of bones and dusty matter spilling in through an opening in one of the walls down there. At the bottom of the heap, a barely formed shape was picking at the bones. It didn't even yet have back legs, just a spindly front set that lacked feet. It was basically just a neck, shoulders, and a skull-like, skinless head with hollow eye sockets. After watching for a long moment, Coyne realised the thing was trying to build itself out of the pile of plagued parts and bones, and it began to dawn on him why there had been relatively few infected around, at least when he calculated the population of the city, and the amount of wildlife the plague had likely consumed. It wasn't changing and sending out infected with everything that it turned. Most of them had been sent here, for their matter to be repurposed into... whatever these were.

Fake dragons.

Horrible, malformed dragons, from the mind of something vile.

Dragons had created the plague and now the plague had created dragons. That sort of logic was beyond Coyne's capability to reason. But perhaps that was what it had always been designed to do, recreate the creatures that created it, mirror them, and use them to destroy. There were not many land and air predators that could outmatch a dragon so if it did manage to make these constructs viable outside of liquid then its forces could be made unbeatable.

Clearly the infected that it sent out into the land were actually looking to just infect more things to come here for this purpose. No wonder the spread had been so slow. It had been here for a century, preparing for, and then executing this plan. They had entirely misunderstood the goal of the plague. It was still spreading to destroy... it was just coming up with a more dangerous way to do it.

Coyne withdrew from the hole, pausing to consider whether this was the right place to do it. He would prefer to have a larger opening into the space, and he had spotted many holes leading into the chamber that looked larger than the one he had found. He decided to try and locate something a little better. He didn't want to half ass this. Not having come this far. If anything had happened to his friends and he messed up what this had all been for, he'd feel a real fool for the short time they all had left to live at that point.

Heric dove into the lake from a greater height that he normally would have done. The first body of water he had seen from the spot he had taken off, as soon as they were off the bog. He had snatched up the Ancient, and Trevor had caught on quickly, turning back to his portable, human size. As the ground at the edge of the bog had started to rupture with their pursuers, he had grabbed the other mage and taken off, flying at full sprint-speed, turning and rolling in the air to throw off any possible quill shots, but their enemies hadn't had a chance to take aim, and he had flown clear of their range. Once well away, he had carried on without hesitation towards the first lake he could see outside the infected land. He dropped the humans in the shallows, and dove into the centre himself, shaking his body under the water, causing waves on the lake's surface as he twisted and writhed beneath, trying to get rid of anything infectious still on his body and scales.

At the edge of the lake, Alan was doing the same, frantically removing his mask and immersing himself in the water, he splashed about, discarding his boots altogether. Fortunately, the water seemed to dissolve the plagued mud almost immediately, leaving him looking almost as though he had never gone through the bog at all. He surfaced with a gasp, checking himself over thoroughly, and turning in place to see if he could see what the others were doing.

Trevor was sitting in the water silently, holding his knees, not visibly making an effort to clean himself. His long, curly hair was dripping water down his face, and he was staring coldly at the lake in front of him.

“Trevor!” Alan splashed over to the man, giving him a heavy shove to knock him into the water properly. “Get yourself clean! What're you thinking?!”

The druid flailed in surprise, going under the surface for a moment before coming back up, pushing at the man, “Stop that! There's no POINT!”

“No point... what do you...” Alan went still as he saw the druid stand up, reaching to the side of his robe and pulling it open to show an ugly semi-circle of tears and perforations in the man's flesh. “You...” he stared at it, trying to understand as he saw diluted blood dripping from the wound, soaking into the robe material.

“I got bit,” said Trevor, “Not scraped, not clawed, bitten.”

“We might have got to the lake in time... the water might have...”

Trevor dropped his head to the side, giving the mage a cold 'Do you think I'm an idiot?' stare. “If water could cure a bite that good, nobody would ever get infected.”

“But... you... when did?”

“It doesn't matter,” said the druid, closing his robe with a sigh. He had taken the bite in his snake form while freeing Alan, and there was no point making the mage live with that guilt. “It's too late.”

“What if Coyne hatches the egg? That might cure you if you're not turned...”

“It might. Might kill me instead,” he shook his head, overwhelmed, and still processing for himself.

Heric sloshed out of the water beside them suddenly, shaking himself, dousing them, “You both alright?”

“Trevor got bitten...” said Alan, pointing.

Heric stared at the druid for a moment, silent other than the dripping. “I'm... sorry. I have to go back. We lost Iewan... I have to search for him...”

“Can you take us somewhere first?” asked Trevor, “Somewhere high up on route, you don't have to go far... I just want to... watch for Coyne hatching the egg.”

Heric hesitated. He wanted to hurry, he'd have said no, but if Trevor had been bitten, he could hardly refuse. “Alright,” he said, awkwardly. “Fez and I were using a rocky outcropping not far from here to spy on the hive. We'll go there.” He flapped his wings, taking off and grabbing the two gently.

It was a short flight, the dragon was hurrying, his wings beating quickly as he flew rather than obliging the air currents as he usually would. After only a few minutes, he slowed, gliding down to a granite Tor on the top of a hill, and gently set the two down. “I have go go,” he said, “Will you be okay?”

“We'll manage,” said Trevor, “Go, find Iewan.” He watched as the huge blue form took off, then looked around, taking a deep breath of the clean air, enjoying how sweet it smelled after the bog. Throwing his mass of hair out of his eyes, he went to the edge of the tor, looking out at the hive, which stood as imposing as ever at the centre of the dead land. “Nice view,” he commented softly.

“Trevor... why aren't you... doing something?” Alan stood behind him, his shoulders tense and his face pinched with worry. “Shouting? Being angry? You're always angry...”

“Because shouting isn't going to help and...” he hesitated a moment, then just came out with the words on his mind. “I don't think dying will be so bad,” his tone were already a little dry, as though the druid's throat was starting to get a little sore. “Honestly. I could use the peace.”

“Stop it, you're not allowed to die. You're going to be fine. The egg is going to hatch and you're going to be cured,” snipped Alan.

“Or turned to dust. We don't know. It's okay though. At least I got to experience freedom for a little bit, find out a bit more about the world. That there's some good in it that the college hasn't snuffed out.”

“Stop. You're not going to die.”

“It's okay. I'm not upset. We did what we set out to do.” Trevor gave Alan an almost hopeful little smile. “We did that. I mean... all we did was run away but... it gave Coyne a distraction at least.”

“No. It's not okay. You're not allowed to die yet.”

“Oh it's not yet... I estimate I've got about... forty minutes left?” he gave a rough cough. “Maybe an hour or two? I wonder what it'll look like... when the egg hatches. The light,” he looked out over the landscape again, and he gently, carefully set himself down to sit on the edge of the tor.

Alan's breath hitched as he tried to reply, and he had to try a few times to construct the words. “Stop it. I can't. I don't want to hear you talk like that.”

“It's not like you're going to be alone. You have Coyne, Fez...”

“I don't want just them. I want you.”

The druid gave a dry smile, “Look at you. Always Mr Demanding. Got what he wanted as a kid. Well. You can stamp your feet all you like, this isn't something your daddy can buy you out of this time.”

Alan's face pinched in an ugly combination of frustrated tears and sheer irritation. “Stop it. Can't you stop being sarcastic for five seconds, even now?!”

Trevor gave an immense, self-satisfied smile, making his teeth look overly white against his lightly greying skin. “Not a chance. I will leave this world wearing a sneer you wait and see.”

Alan managed a glare, though it was with far more sadness than anger. “You aren't allowed to,” he repeated.

“You can forbid it all you like, but it's not in your hands. So why don't you sit down here on this nice comfortable rock with me, and wait to see what the light looks like?”

“That's what you're going to do?”

“That's what I'm going to do.”

“Just that?”

“What else would you have me do? Cry? Run about screaming? No. I'm already tired, and what will it help? I've weathered enough indignity in my life. Done a lot of trying to save my skin. I'm going to finally enjoy a little peace and quiet while I can. Now. Will you join me?”

Alan gestured wildly for a moment before his hands dropped to his sides, and he fell into a sitting position beside the druid, exhausted and all out of arguments. “If you survive this I'm going to kill you.”

Trevor gave a slightly ghoulish grin, “I don't think that's unreasonable. Make sure it's something dramatic eh?”

“Oh stop that. Can't we just have a serious conversation?”

“Depends. Do you want to talk about what's happening to me? In which case no.”

“What if I agree to talk about something else? Could we have a serious conversation about anything at all?”

Trevor gave a little bit of a snort, “If you won't leave me in peace, sure. What would you like to talk about?”

“Why don't you tell me about something I know nothing about. Why don't you tell me what it's like to be an animal?”

“Wait... really?” The druid looked puzzled. “Why?”

“So I can pretend for a little longer that this... isn't happening?”

“Will it shut you up if I agree?” there wasn't any venom in the words any more, the man seemed genuinely surprised at Alan's persistence.

“I can do that. If you promise to keep talking to me.”

“If that's what it takes,” the druid worked to sit a little more upright, and cleared his dry throat before starting to talk. “Being a rabbit, is the absolute fucking worst, and let me tell you why...”

When Coyne finally found the perfect position in a collapsing stone window frame, he was closer to the surface of the liquid, much lower down than before. He also had a somewhat better view of the area. The green glow that illuminated it was actually coming from a tunnel that lead out of the chamber. It was pulsing gently, almost organically, but even when he risked leaning out a little, he couldn't see the source. He wondered if he should continue his search, maybe find out what it was, but he felt that this was as central in the hive that he was going to get without risking getting caught. The elders had said the centre of the hive, and this was the centre. By trying to take more time, he was only causing unnecessary risk.

He moved back a few feet, to conceal himself from the creatures sloshing around in the slime below, and pressed his hands gently to his middle. “I hope you've rested long enough... I wish it could be longer but... this world is in danger and we need you.”

He drew a slow breath, taking in his surroundings for a moment or two longer, making sure he remembered the incantation exactly. It was a strange, otherworldly place. No sound from the outside world made it through to the chamber where the monsters were forming. They splashed about from time to time, letting out their moaning, gurgling cries at each other. He shifted a little in place to peep at the creatures, frowning. Their bodies looked so wrong... In attempting to create life, the plague had succeeded, but giving that life a shape was much harder for it.

He wished he knew that his friends had all managed to escape. If he knew they were safely hiding somewhere waiting, he could focus a lot more easily. But no... he had only his hope they had made it out, and his trust in Fez to protect everyone.

He drew his focus inside, closing his eyes. He had to get this right and stop tormenting himself. He ran over the words the dragon had taught him, practising the pronunciations silently with his mouth. He was unfamiliar with the language, as it was that strange, guttural tongue that the dragons spoke among each other, but Fez had used a little magic to ensure it was precisely correct in his memory. He knew it and he was ready. Drawing a breath, he calmed himself and began to speak. The words were quiet, not wishing to draw attention from the creatures below, reciting his way through a long verse of thick, awkward syllables and forcing his tongue into the difficult shapes required for each sound. When he finished, and ended by calling Ridgar's name as softly as he could, he went still, looking expectantly at himself. Had the dragon not heard him? He blinked as he remembered Fez had told him not to use the nickname for the elder, and fished about for the full, real name. “Oridingeon,” he finished instead, daring to go a little louder. He looked at himself again, a little expectant, raising an eyebrow. He gently drummed a couple of fingers on his belly, as if knocking on a door. At first there was no response, then, as he was starting to worry he had goofed the incantation, he felt a sharp little 'tap.' Initially, he thought it had come from nearby, a stone clacking off the crumbling ceiling or something like that, but when it came again, he realised it was within him. Then he spotted a soft glowing from beneath his shirt. He blinked, lifting it, shocked as he saw the bright outline of the egg, and an even brighter line of a crack down the side of it. It was happening. He huddled close around the thing, bundling his cloak around his body to hide the light until it was ready.

Heric swirled towards the edge of the bog, his good eye searching the ground for any sign of life. He didn't go over the mire itself, still well aware that he did not want a series of quill related piercings. He was troubled by leaving the mages the way he had but his allegiance to Iewan was stronger, and he needed to know what had happened to the man. How he planned to achieve that he wasn't even sure. He was dizzy, and his ears were still ringing from the impact against his head earlier, but he couldn't leave things the way they were.

As he circled, he spotted a small, black shape running across the landscape, just crossing the end of the bog and onto solid ground. It was Fez, the slender shape, even size-shifted like he was, was unmistakeable. However, the reason for his swift movement was a lot more visible.

Thumping after him in an uncoordinated, hump-backed sprint, was one of the creatures. It had clearly been chasing for a while, because most of the muck of the mire had been shaken off. It was only a few feet behind Fez, but did not seem to be gaining any ground, if anything it looked to be following rather than chasing. He growled, circling closer, waiting until he saw they were both firmly off the blanket bog before he moved, angling his wings and tucking them to dive through the sky, front legs extending as he closed in. He spread his wings at the last second to stop himself crashing and just thudded hard into Fez's pursuer instead, knocking it down with a surprised shriek.

Fez spun around to look up at him as the Sea dragon landed properly, dropping his weight onto the creature to hold it still. “Heric wait! It's not what it looks like!”

Heric, who had been preparing to bury his claws in the creature, blinked, raising his head to look at Fez questioningly.

Fez, a little taken back by the bruised, slashed face and damaged eye of his friend, stuttered a little before getting his voice back, “That's not one of them...”

“What are you talking about? LOOK at it.”

“I know, but that's not one of them. It's Iewan.”

“What?” the Sea dragon's eyes narrowed, his claws shifting on the creature's wriggling form. “Explain.”

Coyne grimaced a little at the sensation of something building, even his limited magical sense feeling overwhelmed as he felt this incredible power starting to build. It can't have been more than a few moments, but it felt like a long delay before after a little more more tapping and movement, and the egg finally imploded within him. Coyne had time to stand, draw open his cloak and close his eyes as the most incredible light he had ever seen or felt flooded him. It felt like the sun. Not burning but like lying out on a hot summer day, warm grass behind you, bright sun in front. An incredible sensation of love and healing passed through him in waves, numbing him to all other sounds and sensations. It seemed to go on for hours, and he felt no more fear, no exhaustion or discomfort. He felt whole, and as though he could hug the life out of every living thing on the land for sheer joy. Not just that alone though... he felt a tremendous power, an incredible amount of energy centred within him, as though he could fight a god right now and win.

When it faded, he did actually find himself hugging the rock, holding on for dear life. He blinked slowly back to consciousness. Around him... there was silence. The rocks, once dirty and dark looked... clean, smoother. He peeped out of his crevice, and down below, where there had been a filthy green pit of darkness and vile, suffering aberrations... there was nothing. A pool of absolutely clear water lay below him, settled in a neat bowl of clean, grey stone. A merry little trickling sound drew his eye to the roof, where a small waterfall was pouring down into the centre of the cave, lit by a beam of outside light. It was the most tranquil thing he had ever seen and for a long moment, still flooded with 'love' feelings, he just stared at it.

A moment or two later, his ears woke up, and he became aware of a high mewling sound, and a wriggling in his belly. He gasped, clutching himself, stroking and pressing, “Shhhhh,” he said, “Hush now, it's okay, you're alright, welcome back to the world,” he knew Ridgar didn't have any memories yet, but a soothing tone seemed to help, and the creature nuzzled and pushed at him, still making a high pitched wailing noise. “I know I know, you're hungry huh? I don't have anything for you yet but if you wait a little, I'll get you something,” he leaned out of the crevice, and lowered himself cautiously, looking around for signs of trouble... but the place was empty, devoid of all plague and evil. He dropped onto a stone further down towards the water, looking around. Everything felt so clean now... he needed to get outside and find out whether it had truly worked... but how to do that? He peered into the crystal clear pool of water, seeing that down at the bottom he could see a flicker of light. Perhaps it connected to the outside world? Could he swim down to get out?

He was about to dive into the water when he heard a groan. A low, hollow, pained sound that started as a heavy creaking noise, and slowly built until it was unmistakeably a vocalisation. He frowned, hearing a thudding as something enormous moved, causing dust and small stones to clatter from the roof above them. Sensing a new, unknown danger, the mimic moved swiftly, diving into the water and swimming down with broad, confident strokes. He still felt an incredible power lurking inside him, as though he had been fed the wealth of seven kingdoms in the last four minutes and it had already had time to take effect... he wondered what he could do with this.

But there was no time. As he swam quickly downwards, he heard a much louder vibration through the water, and a massive rock plunged violently past him, followed by a horde more. Something up there was doing a lot of damage to the remaining structure of the hive. What on earth had the magic not managed to cleanse? What was that strong? It had worked last time, at least according to Jintintaska it had... but that had been the retelling of a legendary story. Perhaps there had been more to it? Or worse, this time the plague had had time to grow stronger.

Ignoring the slightly concerned wriggles in his belly, Coyne pushed on faster, not keen on getting hit by a falling rock. He didn't need to breathe but the hatchling inside him did, so being pinned at the bottom of a lake would be problematic.

As he reached the bottom of the space, he saw out into the world through a wide opening, and decided he had been right. There was no sign of the mire and its creatures, what lay outside was a lake, a huge one. Neatly bowl shaped, it looked like the whole blanket bog had been scooped out of the land and replaced with a clean stone basin, filled with almost completely clear water.

He kicked off the bottom and propelled himself out into the expanse of the lake, getting out of range of the falling rocks, and swimming upwards swiftly, eager to get a view of what was going on.

The lake was deep, it took time for him to reach the surface, especially as he was aiming to move outwards from the hive at the same time, gain a little distance from whatever was causing all that noise.

He turned to look back before he surfaced, seeing the ugly shape of the hive extending up from the bed of the lake. Even the purification hadn't been able to make it palatable to look at... it was still a jagged obelisk of broken building parts. It looked a lot cleaner now, but it still stood as a monument to the city that had, at one time, been here. He surfaced with a little care for subtlety, not entirely certain that everything that had been down here was gone. There was no immediate danger above the surface, but time had passed, and evening was starting to dim the sky. From the hive was coming a persistent, now angry groaning roar, and a loud crashing was shaking debris from every side. Coyne began to swim backwards, away from the hive in careful, quiet movements, eyes fixed on the shuddering structure. Whatever was in there, it was furious, and it had been strong enough that the egg had not been enough to kill it.

Wondering what their next possible move might be if they had failed, Coyne continued to back up until he felt something brush his leg. He let out an involuntary yelp, kicking out, and turning to look in the water, but the darkening sky made it hard to be certain what he was seeing.

It was in the brief moment that he was looking down that a massive 'CRACK' sounded out across the landscape, echoing across the surface of the water and causing the mimic's head to snap upwards to look at the hive. His eyes widened as he saw the entire top half of the structure splitting, splintering apart in a hundred different directions, massive chunks of stone and broken building splashing into the water as a truly gargantuan black shape began to rise from the ruins of the broken structure.

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[phywreks]

the end of rain world

written on 10/1/24, lightly edited 10/23

(vague spoilers for the end of the video game rain world)

the ending of rain world has been fucking with me. it’s deconstructed the patch of stability i spent a big chunk of my summer building for myself.

the night i finished rain world, i walked a friend home. she hadn't been doing great- her usual routines for emotional regulation weren't working, her creative work often more frustrating than fulfilling, stuck at a point of being unable to match her skillset to her aesthetic tastes. she talked, i listened, i tried to ask helpful questions, i stumbled over my own words, i lost cohesion. i felt like i'd maybe managed to distract her from a spiral, if only through confusion. we lingered for a while outside her building. we hugged good night.

i felt like i'd failed her. this chance i had to be there for someone important to me, to help them, to offer a lifeline, and all i could think to do was cry and say i’m sorry i can’t give you better advice but i care about you. 

so i quietly sobbed my way home. i stumbled into playing rain world at 3am because i was grasping for more of the kind of meaning and joy and love for its design, grasping for the emotional state playing rain world had come to embody- escaping and spending time with this friend i felt like i'd failed. i finished it. i spent half an hour climbing through tunnels and temples and threw myself into the golden void. the culmination of a journey only possible through acts of random generosity from pebbles, the void worm, this friend. all of this generosity, and the thing it was leading towards was what? suicide? ending the cycle? becoming a big worm and swimming in the void with the other big worms? seeing myself and dozens of my other selves who have all died eventually make it to the end, escape the mortal plane, and leave behind a world destroyed, ravaged, full of suffering?

art reflects us. it shows us, without us realizing, who we are. what we believe. the feelings we stuff away. i get from rain world an indictment of the concept of afterlives. they are a technology, a concept we invented in pursuit of how it might enhance our ability to live in this world here and now. this is all there is. despite this goal of creating a philosophically airtight seal on motivation, a framework that tells us that at all times, the best thing we can do is to continue living and giving everything we have to the world because otherwise there will be nothing that remains of us when we die. 

this framework is not enough. in rain world (this is my understanding of the world of the game after a single playthrough, i’ve certainly got substantial parts of this wrong and am thus filling in the gaps), the ancients live deep spiritual lives which connect themselves to the world and create a desire to protect it, to live in harmony with it. their desire to escape the cycle of death and rebirth which traps all living creatures trumps their desire to make life worth living for those creatures, though. they construct artificial intelligences who require a resource load so intense that it completely transforms all ecosystems on the planet. the surface of the world is now pelted by rainstorms so intense they kill anything not able to find shelter. they move above the clouds, away from the danger, and ramp up their consumption even more.

rain world says that no matter what we say, believe, how we cloak our beliefs, how we justify our actions, we’re still acting without a plan for long term sustainability for those who live here. now.

i woke up after going to sleep with all of this rolling around in my head, sobbing silently so as to not wake up my two roommates, and spent three hours in bed staring at the atrocities of the world. algorithms designed to rewire your behaviour so they’re the first thing you see in the morning dominate most of us. they curate what you see to maximize the amount of attention you give them. i went to sleep emotionally raw, scared, unsure of my ability to maintain faith that humanity will survive the hell we’re constructing for ourselves out of our home. i woke up confronted with damning evidence that hell must be what we’re searching for. why else would we ruin the climate? escalate the frequency of environmental disaster to the point that towns flood monthly? to the point that millions lose their homes every year? 

reckoning with reality inevitably drives us insane. the only way to remain productive, to climb up in society and gain power, is to conform, in the depths of your soul, to the metrics established by those in power before you. 

massive societal shifts happen not as a reaction to injustice, but as a power move from those just under the top, to put themselves on top.

i don’t want to kill myself. i don’t want to live. i want all of us to be free from the threat of death if we aren’t able to work. i want us to be able to live good lives for the simple fact of our humanity. i want all creatures to be able to live good lives for the simple fact of their existence. i want beauty to flourish. 

wealth accumulation, rent seeking, capitalism, techno-feudalism, whatever you want to call it. it preys on our fulfillment at seeing lines go up. it conveys power to those of us most capable at making lines go up.

a metric can never capture goodness, or beauty. there is no metric which, on its own, is sufficient to allow universal morality to hinge upon its continual increasing. the world, the universe as we live in it and know it, is a constant flux, it breathes: expanding, contracting, always. since i was young, i’ve never believed in a god, but the idea of the expanding and contracting of the universe as analogous to the breathing lungs of a god as being the reality we live has been inescapable.

i have nothing else but this angst, currently. 

everything is insufficient, so far. no process, no belief, all eventually run up against a situation where they prove insufficient at providing an answer, or worse, provide an answer which causes pain. 

from this, do we maintain the path, forever carrying the weight that at any point it may cause us to hurt ourselves or others, or do we jump to a new path? do we trudge through as many disparate paths as possible, hoping that if we’ve devoted ourselves to the construction of wide webs of heuristic knowledge, we’ll be able to find connecting patterns across them all which we can give to others. that we can increase the possibility space of human thought, action, possibility, and reach something better than this?

do we continue to love, despite the fact that sharing our most intimate fears, desires, embarrassments, leaves us necessarily vulnerable to having those secrets break containment in a moment of carelessness on the part of our beloved? 

of course we do. my instinct is to try and justify the act of loving from first principles. i do not want to do that today, so instead i'll just say that we should love to understand each other. we should give ourselves not just to the euphoria of knowing and being known, but also to the inevitability of crushing pains and betrayals, so we may know and comfort others. experience everything, so you may empathize with everyone.

living is not conscious-reminiscence is. i believe this, now. i may not believe this tomorrow. belief is a shaky thing right now. 

i’ve often dreamed of living forever. free from the restrictions of time, i escape into the fantasy of being able to study to my heart’s content. i want to spend my days reading, thinking, writing, and being good to the people in my life. nothing else really matters to me, at this point. even making “good” art is something i’ve sort of given up on. i’ll keep making stuff until i die, but i can’t care if it’s good. i don’t control whether or not it’s good. the process of creation necessitates that my relationship to my own work isolates me from those who experience it. i can never experience it how they can.

i won't live forever. i'll live imperfectly, die imperfectly, and hopefully contribute something to this world in a way which honors the grace i have been given, while doing my best to give that same grace to others.

anyhow, play rain world if you get the chance. it gave me this, it'll give you something Else.

[largesunglasses]

My appointment with my primary went ok. My blood pressure is still kind of borderline high of where she wants it. I told her I'd be down for adding to what I take and she said she wasn't that concerned but wanted to use this other machine. Pretty much the nurse comes in and hooks me up and leaves. It counts down from five minutes then takes my blood pressure three times and gets an average the first one was 105/78 then 95/ I can't remember. Then the nurse came back in as the third one was happening and it got an error. Those numbers were way lower than anything I ever see so we knew we couldn't trust it. My TSH(I think) levels were almost double the high end of the normal range so she upped my levothyroxine. I go back in six weeks to check my thyroid again and recheck the blood pressure. She didn't say anything about my weight which I was dreading especially since I have my period. Oh and I got my flu shot so that was great.

Then later I had a dentist appointment and I thought I only had two cavities to fill but I have four. They did two that were together today. I got there wicked early because I have to pass a few schools and there's always construction going on. I just sat in the car and then went in like 1:48 for my appointment at 2. They had a sign on the door that said be back at 2 so I sat in the lobby then 3 other people showed up. I didn't even think the office had that many chairs but it's a new place for me and I hadn't been in the second room that had like 5 chairs. The lady next to me I could tell was an emergency squeeze in appointment. They didn't come and numb me until 2:35 and didn't start working on me until after 3. It was fine I had nowhere to be and I knew the lady was in pain and heard her say they were leaving for Disney Saturday. The fillings took less time than I thought they would and the dentist was really nice. When she looked at my medical history and saw I was allergic to coconut she asked if it was all coconut and I said yes but I wouldn't die but since so many things have coconut oil in it I always just put it to be cautious. She legit felt bad for me that I can't have it and I agreed because Kmart used to have these toasted coconut marshmallows and I would almost risk my life to have one now. Anyways she was nice the fillings were fast and I was home earlier than I thought I was going to be and it was only $82. I was expecting $200. The root canal next week is about $800 and that's not the crown. I jokingly told the kids they weren't getting Christmas gifts this year and they both said they don't want anything. I wanted a concert again but idk if I'll be able to afford it/find something we all like.

Anyways that was a big long ramble about nothing anyone cares about but it felt good to write it out.

[skye107]

MHA fanfic: bloody love

(constructive criticism welcomed)

Your pov:

You weren't all that surprised when you fell for shoto todoroki, afterall, he's perfect, strong, caring, beautiful, and adorably dense. You'd first noticed how you felt shortly after the sports festival, when he first showed how kind he could truly be, especially when he opened up to you. As his first friend (except izuku), you knew a lot about him, about his upbringing, and honestly, that just made your feelings stronger.

By the time of shoto opening up, you already had friends, Friends who now, were his as well. Izuku, Ochako, Tenya, Tsuyu, momo, and, of course, mina. You however, had somehow remained his closest friend.

You found it hard to understand that, sure, you were one of UA's best first year students, with a powerful quirk that you had good control over, top grades and surprising agility and strength despite your smaller stature. But you never could see it like that, you only saw the weakling that your parents always saw. Due to that, you couldn't understand why anyone would want to be friends with you, especially shoto, incredible as he is. Not that you minded of course, but it only made you worry more about you newly discovered feelings, there is no way he would ever return them, he's perfect, you're not, you never were, so why would he like you?

Your friends hadn't noticed much, you've always been surprisingly good at excuses, telling them you were simply stressed when they asked about how flustered you got, especially around him, or when they asked about how jumpy you've been, and they had no reason to doubt you, why would you lie about this afterall?

So that's how it went, everyday, pretending you don't have these feelings as you admire him from afar, sure it was eating you up inside, sure, you were loosing sleep over this and sure, you got an odd tingle in the back of your throat whenever you thought about him, but nevermind, since shoto wouldn't feel the same anyway, you decided to not bother him with it at all, not too hard, right?

Well that's what you thought, it was more difficult to think that way after you started feeling ill, your throat really aching and you starting to cough, now your lungs were hurting as well, but again, nevermind, it was all worth it.

Until blood started to come out when you coughed, not much at first, so you just assumed it was due to how dry your throat was, but then more and more came out, you searched your symptoms online, but the results weren't really helpful, it could really be anything from pneumonia to lung cancer, so you waited, hoping it would go away, all while still admiring shoto from the background.

Shoto's pov:

Recently, you had been acting weird, you may be able to fool the others with excuses of being stressed, and, more recently, being sick, but shoto saw through ithe knew something was up, he just didn't know what. He had noticed your steadily growing eyebags, he had noticed you loosing weight, he had noticed how much less you were leaving your dorm room, and he was concerned, more so than he would like to admit, his closest friend and secret long time crush was clearly ill, a lot more ill than you would let the others know, he just didn't know what to do about it.

Your pov:

You feel another scratch in the back of your throat, worse than before, you knelt over the bin again, preparing for the blood that would soon come out, you start coughing again, harder and harder, yet, only small splatters of blood are coming out. Something is lodged in your throat, you can feel it, slowly coming up with your coughs, and finally, it comes out, along with a large splash of blood, you sigh in relief, glad the episode finally stopped. You wipe your lips of any remaining blood as you look through the bin, something was in your throat, you need to know what.

You see it, something amongst the blood, you pick it up, examining it before going to rinse off the excess blood... A petal... A foxglove petal with shades of white and red reminding you almost exactly of shoto's hair.

This isn't good, it can't be, sure, you might literally go to a school with all sorts of incredible powers, but coughing up flower petals can only be bad news.

A few days later:

Hanahaki disease, that's the only explanation as to what you have, you've done plenty of research and it makes sense, the blood, the petals, everything lines up perfectly, and, if your research is correct, it's currently at stage three. there are six stages, stage one, where it's just a particularly bad cough, stage two when you start coughing blood, stage three, when you start coughing up flower petals along with the blood, at this stage it starts getting difficult to breathe, stage four, when you start coughing up small leaves and parts of vines along with the blood and petals, by now you can feel the flowers growing in your lungs, stage five when you start coughing up full flowers, this is generally when you get hospitalised, and stage six, when the flowers can be seen simply by opening your mouth, by this stage it is almost impossible to breathe and theres very little to be done anymore.

There is little you can do, you can get a surgery to remove the flowers from your lungs, but that would make you forget all memories of shoto, also causing you to never be able to love again, not to mention that the surgery only has a fifty percent survival rate. You could confess to shoto, and if he reciprocates your feelings, you would be cured, or you could just die.

At night, you start coughing again, badly, so badly that by the end of it there is a small pile of petals and blood in the bin you used. You decide to visit recovery girl, you know she stays late some nights and you pray that tonight is one of those nights. You sneak out of your room, out of the common room, and out the door, completely unaware of the pair of heterochromatic eyes following your movements.

[sporksaber]

I really like the idea of korra running away earlier than she does in the show, but first, I want to talk about how fucked her situation kinda is.

[I'm going only off season 1, I don't like 3 or 4. Just wasnt my thing. I am going to bring up the red lotus stuff tho]

First off, when the white lotus show up to see if she's the avatar they are 100% looking down on her family. They seemed like they disliked being in the southern water tribe at all, and like they were completely dismissive of the idea that the avatar would be there.

Korra is then taken from her parents and confined in a fortress far away from away of the villages (as you can see when she goes on the run with nala and how far away the mountains are) [headcannons further down]. She can only leave with permission and there isn't anywhere for her to go if she wanted to leave.

They bring in bending masters to teach her, and talk up the importance of who she is. She has to stay because it's her duty, just as it's their duty to protect her. She is the avatar, that's her entire being.

Headcanon time

1. The fortress would've taken time to construct, but not long enough that korra could of moved there for training once she got older. This is proven bc the first kidnapping attempt by the red lotus happened 13 years before the events of book 3, so korra would still be 4. So either A) they forced her to go as soon as it was constructed, or B) they convinced Korra it was her duty (it's very easy to manipulate an excited 4 year old) and had her convince her parents to let her go.

2. The white lotus were always very cold to korra. She was a very energetic kid who did not match who they wanted to be and they hated it. And, much like teachers who hated when students got perfect scores despite not paying attention in class, they weren't happy when she excelled at every bending test they threw her way.

3. Sokka and zuko hung around for awhile after she was first discovered and katara was called to be her teacher. Korra really liked them, but they were always kind of off around her. But following sokka's death shortly after the battle with the red lotus, Zuko no longer came by.

4. Katara was an amazing teacher. She had taught hundreds of students and knew just how to cater to Korea's needs. The red lotus didn't like how lenient she was. Eventually, to try and prove that katara was not teaching the right way, they told her to teach korra healing. They didnt think she'd be able to as she'd never shown any spiritual aptitude. But korra still excelled. After that, they decided she didnt need any further water bending training.

^everything above is I think two years old.

A note on number 3, this would've been when korra was 4, so she doesn't really remember it. Nor does she really remember anything before being discovered as the avatar.

I really do think a lot of korra's aggression can be explained by the white lotus basically trying to make her "learn her place" and making her training more and more forceful.

Also, I think korra should have been wierder. Besides maybe some guards, no one around her is her age and she's never had a friend before. Like, they really couldn't have even arranged for her to meet with her cousins? Just completely cut off her interaction with everyone but her teachers, I wouldn't be surprised if the guards weren't actually allowed to talk to her.