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hailene · 4 years ago

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Blood Red Running Hood

𝖜𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖜𝖔𝖑𝖋!𝖜𝖔𝖓𝖜𝖔𝖔, 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖍!𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖊𝖗

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 𝟐.𝟑 𝐊

𝒹𝒶𝓇𝓀 𝒶𝓃𝑔𝓈𝓉| 𝓋𝒾𝓁𝓁𝒶𝒾𝓃 𝒶𝓊

The cold foggy morning was sending chills down your spine, the coldness reaching all the way to your flesh, to your bones. It was about to rain, you could tell. But nothing could stop you from going to your granny's house, in order to take care of her like you always said you would.

The thing is granny was dead.

You found her months ago, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, sheets stained. You were horrified, not having seen anything like that before. But back then, a tiny little part of you sighed in relief. Granny was dead. The evil witch you had always been forced to take care of was now dead.

More than that, however, granny was murdered. And as you locked gazes with the murderer minutes after you found your grandmother dead, you body froze. You had heard about werewolves, you knew they existed, but the villagers had always tried their best to protect themselves from such creatures by going on patrols at night, killing anyone and anything that was out of the common. Your village was a small, simple gathering of poor houses. But it was tinted with so much sin and blood that it seemed like the village itself was cursed.

You had heard about werewolves. But you'd never believed you'd actually see one with your eyes. And more than that, you had never thought they would look so... human.

Probably, you would have never been able to tell the man sitting in front of you wasn't exactly human if it hadn't been for the steel-like glint in his eyes. And for the blood smearing at his lips.

For a moment, you were frozen, fear pumping through your veins and making it hard for you to breath. Then, you blacked out.

When you woke up, hours later, you thought you were in heaven. You were sure, absolutely sure that you were dead. But the first thing you saw when you opened your eyes were the steel-like eyes from earlier... except this time, they held some sort of warmth.

You looked around, realizing you were still at granny's, in her bed, with a new mattress, her lifeless body nowhere to be seen. The man sitting on the side of your bed smelled like rain, like mud, like the cold woods and the ashes in the chimney.

"I am Wonwoo," he said.

And you realized the smell was calming you down.

It's been a few months ever since then, a few months ever since you have started lying to everyone around you that you were taking good care of your beloved granny. When, in fact, you were obsessively visiting the small cottage just to meet Wonwoo. Again and again and again.

"What if they find out?" You remember yourself asking in fear one night, between two desperate kisses.

You remember him looking at you with so much love in his eyes that you could feel yourself melting, you remember wanting to pull him closer, closer... even though there was literally nothing between the two of you anymore, physically.

"Then I'll burn the whole damn village down," he answered before starting his hot work on you for the nth time that night.

Just to save you, you knew.

He was driving you insane.

Maybe that was why you couldn't help but come back to him. Again and again and again and...

When you enter the house, you find Wonwoo standing next to the hob, the delicious smell of food tingling your senses. You hum in delight as you close the door and take off your red hood, softly stepping towards the man. You hug him from behind and he lets the pots boil on the hob as he turns around to face you, kissing the top of your head gently. He smelled like rain, like mud, like fire and cold water. He smelled like home.

"I missed you, love," you hear him humming, filling you with warmth.

You haven't had a proper dinner in so long. You didn't have time for that, since you were always busy collecting the mail from the villagers and writing replies in the name of your beloved dead granny. She has always been seen as the wise woman, everybody was asking for advice from her. You knew everybody's secrets, you held way too much power for a little, young, unskillful witch.

But they didn't have to know that.

You occasionally told Laurette, your care-giver, that you'd stay over at your granny's. The woman was obviously glad that she wouldn't have to make sure she gives you any sort of dinner. You didn't quite stand her either. Ever since your parents passed and you and Kai, your younger brother, were given to Laurette to take care of you until you'd be able to take care of yourselves, your life had been a never-ending series of cloudy days. Kai used to be the only one able to cheer you up after a long, tiring day.

But now, Wonwoo could do much more.

A soft whimper escapes your lips as he goes down on you after the dinner, the dim light of the candles painting his skin in godly shades of gold. He was a murderer, an evil, a beast according to the villagers. That's why they didn't have to know about him, they didn't have to know about the two of you.

You had to admit that despite his humanly appearance, his werewolf features were showing sometimes, especially in bed. Sex with him was amazing. He was teasing, rough, but extremely good and even though you could have been scared of the extra-terrestrial strength of his choke-hold, you couldn't help but feel lured in towards him. You were obsessed.

"You should stop coming around for a few days, love," Wonwoo whispers after collapsing next to you.

You knew why. The full moon was coming.

He kisses you softly as you drift away to a sweet sleep. He was gone when you woke up the next morning.

When you returned home that day, you could feel that Laurette's gaze on you was different. Even if you didn't want to pay attention to it, the tiny drop of magic that was running through your veins was making it impossible for you to ignore it. It was almost like you could taste the fear in the atmosphere at home.

"What's wrong, Laurette?" You ask as she passes by your room with a heap of rags in her arms.

She looks at you for a few moments, as if she was surprised that you took notice of her behaviour. Then, she shakes her head, rushing towards the kitchen like she'd seen a ghost. You frown, unable to understand her behaviour. Did something happen while you were with Wonwoo last night? What could it be?

The answer, however, was about to be given to you in the form of Kai hastily waking you up the following night, incomprehensible cries and panicked whispers escaping his lips.

"Hey, hey, what's wrong, baby boy?" You ask while cupping his puffy cheeks, sleep still clouding your judgement.

"Fire, Y/N, they fire," your little brother cries.

You frown confused, rubbing your eyes to wake up.

"What fire, baby?" You ask as Kai starts crying harder. "What are you talking about?"

"They're coming, I've heard they want to burn the witch on a rug, Y/N!" He cries and your blood runs cold.

They can't possibly know, can they?

"Witch, baby boy? What witch?" You ask softly, trying your best to hide the panic.

"I-I think they were talking about y-..." he tries to say but you cover his mouth softly, your limbs already shaking.

"What else did you hear, baby?" You ask, trying to keep your voice steady.

"They w-went to granny's h-house," he cries softly. "One of them wa-was... killed by-"

You didn't need anything more than this.

You get up from your mattress and put some clothes on, helping Kai to dress up as well. You take your blood-red hood and put it on, kneeling next to your brother afterwards.

You could already hear loud voices outside.

"You go to the water wheel and hide there until I come to get you, okay?" You speak, holding him tightly. "If I don't come by dawn, you run and never come back here, okay?"

"B-But, Y/N–"

"Y/N loves you, baby boy, Y/N loves you so much," you whisper as tears come streaming down your face.

Kai starts sobbing too. It breaks you.

"Chin up, baby, okay?" You say, trying to get a hold of yourself. "Just have faith and trust Y/N."

Before your brother can say anything else, you jump out the window.

You run through the night, far away from the angry voices and fire torches. You run through the woods, mindlessly, only having one thought in your mind.

Wonwoo.

Was he okay? Did he kill yet another villager? You were aware of the fact that he was so far from being a saint and that it wasn't the first time he'd kill one of the people in your village, but that only made you love him more. You weren't much of a good character either.

As you reach the cottage in the woods, you realize it was vandalized. The few pieces of poor furniture were broken, pots, candles and papers thrown on the floor. The few remaining potions, herbs and spell books you had stored were all torn open, pulled out from the secret places you thought you had secured them in. It was all a mess, a bloody, ruthless mess and the deep animal scratches on the wall weren't making it any better.

No sign of Wonwoo.

As you look around more carefully, your blood runs cold. You shouldn't have come here.

It was a trap.

"The little witch is here," the man in front of you shouts and you here footsteps coming from the outside.

Before you can turn around and run away, more men enter the cottage, blocking your way, and panic rises from the pit of your stomach, your vision getting blurry. Seconds later, you feel something hard hitting your head from behind, letting you fall in a dark abyss.

Before you open your eyes, you feel warmth, heat. You feel fire. And as you open them, you realize why. Your body was tied to a wooden rug, surrounded by a circle of flames. It was hot, almost unbearably.

"The witch woke up! It's time to burn her back to hell!" You hear someone screaming.

Your eyes meet Laurette's figure and you feel your whole body filling with so much rage that you swore the flames around you started burning brighter. And then you see it, the whole village gathered around you in hateful circles, looking at you as if you killed their families. Maybe you did. But not intentionally.

Rocks and sticks were being thrown at you, curses and words spit in your direction, but nothing that your mind and body could cope with. Your time has arrived, you were getting the fate that you deserved, so now, you could only hope that your brother and your lover were going to be okay.

You are a witch after all. You are evil. And you have been too stupid, too careless to keep on living. You deserve to die. You deserve to be burnt on a rug.

As one of the villagers approaches you with a lit torch, you hear a freezing growl, not that far from where you were. Moments later, the fire surrounding you starts reflecting in different places. You think it's your mind going insane, you think it's your vision getting damaged by fear, by defeat, by the unnerving warmth the flames were attacking you with. But as you hear the growl getting louder and the panicked screams of the villagers running around, you realize something went wrong in their plan.

You can't help but laugh as the villager who was coming towards you starts running for his life, screaming as the grey wolf with fire in his eyes starts chasing him. You couldn't be afraid of the wolves. You couldn't be afraid of Wonwoo.

People slowly disappear, corpses taking their place, the fire slowly starting to take over the whole town. You were surrounded by a realm of flames and you felt like you were on fire yourself, but you were laughing like a maniac, unable to control yourself.

Your curses worked. This God-forsaken village was now burning to fucking ashes.

You feel something or someone untying your wrists and ankles from the wooden rug and as you turn to look next to you, you meet the steel-like gaze of the man you were so in love with. He picks you up from the torture place and rushes out of the fire, running and running until you can actually feel the cold night wind whipping your bare skin.

Wonwoo turns around to look once again at the burning village, the fire contrasting with the dark night in such a sinfully-pleasing way. You adored that.

"It's finally gone," he whispers, your mouth watering at his hoarse voice.

I'll burn the whole damn village down, you remember.

You pull him by his torn shirt and he looks at you, warmth shining in his eyes brighter than that goddamn fire. You kiss him hungrily, tasting the smoke, the blood and the mud on his lips. It was all sweeter than honey, more addicting than any sort of herb you've seen before. This was Wonwoo, the forbidden taste you have always, always been longing for. Now you had it. And in the devil's name, you regretted absolutely nothing.

"The water wheel," you choke out as you pull away, your lips swollen, tinted with blood. "We have to find Kai at the water wheel."

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midnight-in-town · 6 years ago

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Rin has been my favorite AnE character since the beginning. Such a sweet guy, and an interesting take on the traditional Idiot Hero. I like Kato's take on several of the Shonen manga archetypes for that matter. What are some of your favorite reconstructions of familiar character types in AnE?

Hey Anon! To be honest, I can’t say I’m that aware of the usual shonen archetypes considering that I read seinen more. :) And I’m not a literary reference, so it’s kinda hard to use the right words too.

That being said, Rin’s a fave too, with Mephisto, Shiro, Shura, Shiemi… and the rest of the cast. xDD So I’ll try to answer you.

For Rin, I like how he doesn’t simply get stronger with each arc, but he grows up on many aspects at once. Sure, first he learnt to control his flames, then he learnt to focus his attacks, and then his sword was broken in ch98 destroying the seals over his power, but otherwise each arc gave Rin other things to focus on.

In fact, I like that it’s not just his nature as a demon that he has to deal with, but also the consequences of that with the people around him. Like, as the story begins, we see Rin as kind of a loner, because he tries to fit in but can’t.

So having friends (and falling for Shiemi) was a really new experience for him, one he’s enjoying but that he still has to learn about sometimes:

And as he’s getting better with that, that’s when the one constant in his life so far…

shatters. Mostly though, I love Rin because he’s… so sweet, as you said.

Initially, he was presented as your usual Shonen hero indeed, especially with his goal to defeat Satan after Shiro’s death, but slowly the whole story moves on from that. That goal of his is less and less mentioned (which is not typical of usual shonen heroes who tend to cling to their goals in my opinion) as Rin is simply going through life and now…

And in my opinion we went from “beating Satan’s ass” to…

…a slight difference I really enjoy, even I’m no fan of Satan (and I want to see him lose).

Similarly for Yukio, who’s as much a main character as Rin is, his angst defies usual levels you have for characters of a similar type and what I love is that it’s really building up throughout the whole story: Shura showed signs of having noticed it before Toudou was introduced, we found out that he was already preoccupied back when Shiro was still alive (ch93), up till his own despair and pure self-loathing got the better of him.

And I really feel for him and his illustration of the “fallen angel” trope. I mean, I’m the first to say it’s easy to roll your eyes and hope that he’ll stop seeing everything in the darkest black, but it’s the slow unravelling to this state through so many arcs that makes it so impressive and seemingly impossible to solve at the moment.

A lot will probably have to happen before he’ll manage to come back.

The thing is, we all knew Yukio was going to break down at some point. He got some sort of a recess with the Aomori arc, but before we eventually reached the anti hero/fallen angel level, we passed by attempted suicide and that gave a whole new tone to the manga (especially since it’s shonen) in my opinion.

I said before that there is a lot of cliché tropes about twins in manga that I don’t really like: the good twin/bad twin trope is one, but by showing us the extent of Yukio’s issues before he completely fell into the abyss, I find that Sensei is avoiding cliché once again.

And both for Yukio and Rin, I like that romance took a more unexpected turn that one could have expected at first, at least in my opinion. :)

Moving onto Mephisto, I love the fact that he’s both literally The Chessmaster…

and incredibly powerful as Samael, but his behavior most of the time doesn’t reflect that.

…Which is usually the case with the clown type (looking at UT in Kuroshitsuji, or Checkerface in KHR, same for the Clowns in TG even if it’s Seinen), so this part isn’t exactly surprising, but it’s more how his true nature was never exactly hidden and yet he can still completely surprise us on many things.

That’s why I really enjoy the theory that he might be the big bad, as far as the twins are concerned, because knowing he’s on Assiah’s side, you tend to think that even if he’s an ass at least he’s on “our” side, when it might be more complicated than that. :)

Plenty of others reasons to appreciate Mephy’s character though, as I shared here. :)

For Shura, it’s mostly a matter of contrast. She’s The Mentor, but she’s not particularly acting responsible otherwise (due to the thing with Hachiro), because her motivations are initially related to her own pet peeve (Shiro).

She’s also without a doubt the hottest girl of the whole series (not a big fan of Iblis and her three eyes personally) and yet her behavior once again doesn’t fit what you’d expect of this kind of characters in other shonen series, again just in my opinion.

She’s not a dignified or proper lady, who bats an eyelash and everyone is wooed, or who behaves coldly/unaffected to others: she used to be a heavy drinker, she’s hardly ever serious, she loves getting on people’s nerves on purpose, etc.

Again, this is related to her issues with Hachiro (and Shiro), but I like that the fact she’s Hot™ (trademarked by Mephisto) doesn’t mean she can’t be powerful, or Rin’s mentor, or getting on people’s nerves, or insulting her superiors, etc.

Just like I enjoy the fact that she can dress scantily (probably because she likes it) and that doesn’t mean she’s a hoe or only about fan service, as we could see Shiro lecture her on the subject, in ch78.

Maybe I’m not explaining super well, but it’s really about Sensei not being too over the top with any character and that shows up in Shura as well:

she’s Rin’s mentor but sometimes she’s at a loss with what to do;

she’ll do anything to protect the twins but she still gets scared by Mephisto’s shenanigans;

she’s older than the boys but she still needed their help with an issue even Shiro couldn’t help her with

after the Aomori arc, she started to act more mature in general because the twins are going to need her, etc.

Again, it’s really a thing for most of the cast, but I like it even more in Shura’s case, because, even with just the way she dresses as an example, she really could have been a shallow character but Sensei managed to weigh in everything properly.

Now, as far as Shiro goes, I love how Sensei deconstructed his character through several flashbacks, slowly shedding his coat of “the perfect dad” he seemed to be after sacrificing himself to save Rin in ch1.

Oh sure, he was a good parent, but not perfect as we can see with Yukio or even Shura and that is something that we needed to make clear, both for the plot but also for the twins’ sake.

Speaking of the plot, I like that Shiro’s a walking mystery very plot-relevant and not just The Hero’s Father Figure Who Died Helplessly. It would have been very easy to make Shiro a symbol Rin was becoming stronger to get revenge for, but it’s about so much more than that.

Because if Shiro is a symbol of anything, it’s about how the Order is full of bullshit and enslaving the pawns that are necessary to them…

…as Mephisto made sure we got right:

Even now that he’s dead, I have doubts about Shiro being free from whatever he’s supposed to owe the Order/Mephisto. So yeah, he’s so much more than the Dead Symbolic Hero or whatever trope he’s supposed to illustrate, in a very tragic way actually, and I love that!

And finally about Shiemi (because I really gotta stop somewhere), what can I say besides the fact that she’s a very surprising one. :D

We’ve been getting many character arcs ever since the beginning and yet it was so unexpected to me when it turned out she was going to have her own and that it’d be so very main plot-relevant. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, since everyone in the main cast gets one, but I still definitely wasn’t envisioning anything at all like the theories about Shemihaza before we hit the current arc!

Other examples of why she’s kept on surprising me throughout the story: the first time we meet her, she’s this helpless and mourning girl who’s been possessed by a demon, then she gets used by Izumo upon trying to make friends. I’m sure you remember that girl.

And yet she saved Paku and then everyone else in Neuhaus’ arc immediately after. Same in the Kyoto arc: she was as pissed and scared as everyone (not counting Izumo) about Rin’s origins, but she was the first who managed to admit how misguided she was when she realized how much he suffered about being different.

What I’m trying to say is that Shiemi constantly surprised me and also other characters in the story (for example), despite the fact that Sensei wrote plainly what her character was about very early on in the story:

So yeah actually she helped Paku, she helped Rin, she helped Izumo, she tried to help Yukio, she saved everyone from being burnt by Rin going Satan 2.0… And now she’s in trouble with the Vatican.

In a way she’s more the typical Shonen Hero than Rin is, when she’s supposed to be the Main Girl, lmao. For example, everyone found out about who Rin was pretty quickly in the story, meanwhile…

…her own identity is more of a secret than Rin being Satan’s son or Mephisto being a high-level demon and something both characters and readers are getting angsty about.

And, as I tried to explain above, Rin’s currently more involved with acknowledging where he comes from and bringing his brother back over having to save the world or denouncing that the Order is probably really no better than the Illuminati.

Even his goal of defeating Satan, which is very Shonen-like, hasn’t been mentioned in a long time now. Meanwhile Shiemi’s character arc directly delves into how shady the Order is as an organization…

and this might indirectly lead us to her having to play a very important role with protecting everyone from Satan/the Illuminati (whether it’s by her will or not).

Of course, Rin’s own journey in the past is showing us many of the Order’s dirty secrets but the point is for Rin to learn about the past so that he can bring Yukio back (what he wants) and possibly defeat Lucifer (what Mephisto wants). When it comes to the state of the world with the opening of the artificial Gehenna gate, for now it’s not exactly Rin’s problem, but it might be more related to Shiemi’s arc if she’s truly related to Shemihaza (because of the Grigoris).

It’s probably badly summarized, but that’s how I see it. xD As I said in the beginning, I’m really not good about precisely describing shonen archetypes, so this may not be making any point. I just like AnE because I find that Sensei does manage to avoid making her characters a bunch of stereotypes easy to read through, in a very realistic way. See below, with Lightning’s example:

Even Arthur, who’s presented as the most stereotypical dude in the whole cast in my opinion, might be hiding his game better than most of us can probably imagine.

That’s what I like the most when it comes to what you were asking about. :) Kato-sensei is an excellent writer because of this amongst other things.

Sorry it took me a little while to answer you Anon, but I had a lot I wanted to write and it was actually very hard to explain. I hope this answered your question at least a little though. Have a nice weekend! ^3^

#ao no exorcist #okumura rin #okumura yukio #fujimoto shiro #mephisto pheles #kirigakure shura #moriyama shiemi #lightning #lewin light #arthur auguste angel #personal #anon #answers #my analysis

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justalittlelitnerd · 5 years ago

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Broken Knight by L.J. Shen

Photo credit to goodreads

After I finished Pretty Reckless in record time and enjoyed it so thoroughly I knew I wanted to read whatever related books L.J. Shen had to offer. While Knight and Luna weren’t overly present in Daria and Penn’s book they were mentioned enough by Daria that it was clear they would make for a good story. Broken Knight didn’t disappoint.

Much like in Pretty Reckless the family dynamics are complex and the books really explore the effect that has on kids especially teenagers. Luna is raised by her father and stepmother and is selectively mute after her mother abandoned her as a toddler. Luna communicates through looks as much as sign language and it was nice to see her friends learn sign language to communicate with her rather than pressing her to talk. On the other end is Knight, who, in addition to dealing with the complex identity issues that often stem from being adopted, is also dealing with his mother’s worsening health and further turns to booze and drugs to cope. He’s always been able to count on Luna who he has always believed is his endgame. Until everything changes.

When Luna decides to attend college all the way across the country (at Vaughn’s insistence) the tenuous threads of their lifelong friendship start to fray before snapping all together when she breaks their unspoken promise. They continue to circle each other, changing in ways that neither expected, wondering if there’s still hope for a future for them.

This book isn’t a true enemies-to-lovers, nor is it a friends-to-lovers, but some sort of gray area that only emerges when a lifelong friendship is destroyed in order to build a relationship from its ashes. The way that Knight and Luna are at the beginning of the book is clearly unsustainable and they were both using each other as crutches. It only makes sense that their friendship needed to be altered entirely for them to come out of it as an actual couple that could last. It really sucks that Luna made the choice she did, but I can see how if she hadn’t, if she had come home and Knight had confessed his feelings, they never would have made it. She never would have spoken and never would’ve grown strong enough to be his equal because their whole friendship was based on him protecting her and the book was heading for a moment when he would need to be taken care of.

Now that I’ve read all three I think this one was my favorite because I loved the setup and the characters and the complexity of Luna and Knight (I also love their names).

Keep reading for my fave quotes!

I didn’t want to kiss her. I wanted to zip open my skin and tuck her into me. Hide her from the world and keep her mine.

I loved her with the ferocity only a non-biological child could feel—hungry, visceral love, only better, because it was dipped in gratitude and awe.

I’d never seen him like this before—a storm within a storm.

I’d thought the memories of Valenciana nicked my heart, but that was nothing compared to the violent rip of it when I looked at Knight, realizing for the first time that he was going to break that piece of my heart he held hostage. Not maliciously, no, and definitely not intentionally. But it didn’t matter. Hit-and-run or struck by lightning—a death was a death. A heartbreak was a heartbreak. Pain was pain.

“Moonshine,” he whispered. “You fill up the empty, dark space—like the moon owns the sky. It is quiet. It is bright. It doesn’t need to be a ball of flame to be noticed. It simply exists. It forever glows.”

There was just one crack in my unshakable, good-natured, billion-dollar smile, and hot-motherfucker-jock stereotype persona. A barely noticeable chip. You could see it from one angle. Only the one. And only when Luna Rexroth entered the room and our eyes met—for exactly the first half-second, before I rearranged my features back into my usual smug grin.

Luna Rexroth was beautiful. Sure. But so were a lot of other girls. Difference was, Luna carried her beauty like it was something borrowed. Carefully yet casually, not making a fuss about it. She wouldn’t stand in line for anyone, anywhere. She’d stand out, glowing with quiet pride.

Up until then, the idea of Luna and me was, well, more of a fact. Roses were red. The sun rose in the east. A seahorse could move its eyes in opposite directions (Moonshine told me that herself), and Luna Rexroth was going to be my girlfriend, then fiancée, then wife.

It wasn’t a secret I’d chop heads and bring down the sun for Luna Rexroth.

Never breaking our gaze, I’d put her hand on my own heart, so she’d know, without a doubt, she wasn’t the only one whose heart had a chunk missing.

But Luna looked like nature. It was like kissing the entire fucking forest from our spot in the treehouse.

She knew that between the stigma and the person laid an open abyss, and in its depth, the truth.

There was some anger in my voice, and it made me furious with her. I tried so hard to accommodate whatever wish she had for us. When she wanted kisses, she got them. When she wanted friendship, she got that, too. What about what I wanted from her? What I needed?

I sometimes wondered what hurt more: Losing someone all of a sudden, like in a plane crash, or losing them piece by piece, like I did Knight. It was like feeling a once-warm body growing cold next to you in bed.

They used the word smitten because batshit crazy wasn’t cute. But everyone knew I was smitten with chicken wings and vintage Tumblr porn, not with Luna. With Luna, I was in fucking everything. Love. Lust. Obsession. Take your pick.

I wanted to tell her: You need to come back. Or maybe we can do the long-distance shit. I don’t care. But you slapped me, and that meant something. It meant that you care. I also wanted to say, I know you don’t believe this could work, but not trying is no longer an option. For four months I’ve wanted to give you this ultimatum, but it felt weird to do it through Skype. But now you’re here, and I’m not letting you go before we sort this shit out. Then I wanted to add, I kissed another girl in front of everyone, and it felt like cheating. And to promise her, It meant nothing. She meant nothing.

He was a dash of the boy who’d give me the entire world, thrown in with a giant, hard man who fought any positive feeling toward me.

Watching Luna kiss Vaughn, or Vaughn kiss Luna, if we’re being technical here, was God’s way of telling me he hated me on a personal, profound, go-fuck-yourself level.

Knight’s saving grace was his eyes. Everything about him was perfect to the T, an all-American superhero who could slide comfortably into Chris Pine’s shoes and give him a run for his money. But his eyes were slightly different colors, one the shade of moss, the other more hazel. He was imperfect, but only if you looked really closely. Too closely for his comfort. Too close for him to ever allow. I could never fall in love with a hundred-percenter…but Knight was a solid 99.99%.

It was like watching a car crash—or your pet Chihuahua standing up on two legs, reading Shakespearean poetry while sipping on black tea.

I’d been so busy on me-me-me island, I never bothered to sail to other territories and check in on her.

His unanswered messages were piled up in a neat corner of my phone’s memory like broken dreams, hung on a clothesline, damp from my tears of guilt.

I climbed up to Luna’s window for the first time in months, a fucked-up Romeo in a story that was definitely a comedic tragedy.

“You only get one life, Luna. One stab at this thing called happiness. Why deprive yourself of things you want just because they weren’t given to you the way you hoped for them to come? Life is like a book, a long chain of scenes threaded together by circumstances and fate. You never know how thick or thin your book is, so you better make the most out of every scene, enjoy each chapter.”

How could I ever have let him slip from my fingers? How could I have given him up? Who even cared? Love is selfish. Love is raw. Love is unfair, and unpredictable, and unstoppable.

It felt stupid to say it in the same way it felt stupid to think it. We were so much more than steady. I was going to marry her. I’d known that with every fiber of my being before I was fully potty trained, for fuck’s sake. I just hadn’t known how to label it back then.

Sometimes I’d climb up the forest’s mountain, look at the nothingness surrounding me, and think—this is it. The end of the world. Right here. Or it was when thunder cracked, and fog descended over the roads, misting the car windows. Or when I concentrated on that thin line between the skyline and the ocean, imagining myself sliding into it and letting it suck me into another dimension.

“‘Don’t be a Rosie. Be a Dean. If you want something, no matter what it is, go for it. Falling in love is rare.’” Luna’s eyes were now on Knight, only Knight, and something in the room shifted. She wasn’t merely speaking the words, she was becoming them. “Don’t give up this precious gift. Chase it. Catch it. Hold it close. Don’t let it go. And if it leaves anyway…” Her eyes clung to Knight, and for the first time—for the very first time since I’d known my own son—there were tears in his eyes. It gut-punched me to the other side of the room. “Fight for it,” Luna finished.

“Always. Whenever. Forever,” he mouthed, his lips still on mine. I decided to complete his sentence, the way I’d imagined it in my head so many years ago. “I choose you.”

#broken knight #l.j. shen #all saints high #luna x knight #knight cole #luna rexroth #high school #hs romance #romance #friends to lover #enemies to lovers #books #quotes #book quotes #book blog #booklr

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murasaki-murasame · 5 years ago

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Since the next batch of mana spiral upgrades should be coming out in the next week or two, I figure now’s probably a good time to go over my predictions for what the first batch of mana spirals for each element might be like, now that we have a good idea of what to expect from them.

This got really long so I’ll put it under a cut.

First off, I think that the adventurers in the first batches of mana spiral upgrades per element will probably be:

Shadow: Nefaria, Curran, Heinwald, OG Cleo, Alex, Audric [maybe], Kleimann, Berserker, and the 3-stars

Water: Xanfried, Laranoa, Lily, OG Elly, OG Celery, Thaniel, Luther, and the 3-stars [except maybe Jakob]

Wind: Hawk, Sylas, Louise, OG Ranzal, Su Fang, Pia, Aeleen, and the 3-stars

Light: Julietta, Lucretia, B-Zardin, OG Luca, Elias, Vixel, Amane, and the 3-stars [except maybe Xiao Lei]

I’m not entirely sure about Lily and Louise since they’re already pretty solid, but I dunno. B-Zardin might be too recent to get buffed but Cassandra was even more recent, lol. And honestly light needs all the buffs it can get, especially when it comes to the non-limited ones.

Botan might have been a special case, but it’d be nice if they include other event units in the mana spiral upgrades as well. Especially since they’ve always been particularly held back by the wonky abilities that event units get. Though I think most of them probably wouldn’t benefit quite as much from a buff as Botan did, since she was already really good.

There’s other units I want to see get buffed, like Annelie and Fritz, but I think other units need the buffs more.

Anyway, let’s break down what changes I think will be made to all of these characters, and what I’d like to see.

Firstly, going by how the flame mana spirals went, we can probably assume that it’ll be the 5-stars and the free story 4-stars who’ll get the most attention put into their upgrades, while the gacha 4-stars and the 3-stars will probably all just have their numbers scaled up across the board, and lots of them will get status afflictions added to their skills. But it’s safe to assume that every single mana spiral unit will get 100% potent status resistance [and off-element resistance units will get their resistances changed to something that actually works for them], and units with any sort of skill prep ability will get it buffed to 100% skill prep + skill charge [aside from unique cases like Naveed].

Either way, this is how I think it’ll go down per element.

SHADOW:

[I’m starting here ‘cause it’ll be the next batch that’ll come out]

As much as I’d love to see my absolute son boy Norwin get a mana spiral upgrade, I think he won’t be in the initial batch since he’s already a pretty solid unit all around. I’d say he’s probably the most well-rounded of the 4-star shadow gacha units, along with Patia.

Orion’s definitely a candidate, but I don’t think they’ll give him an upgrade just yet. Partly because Alex will definitely get one [although they did give both Euden and Karl buffs at the same time], but also because it might really backfire if they give him built-in 100% skill prep since he inflicts blind on his S1, lol. That might lead to some unintended cheese strats, but who knows.

As for the ones who I’m more certain will get buffed, Nefaria’s basically the poster child for ‘absolutely needs a buff’, along with Hawk, but I’m not really certain what I think they’ll do with her. There’s just a lot of fundamental things wrong with her as a unit, and I don’t think that just buffing her stats would be enough. The main thing is just that since blind is such a powerful status affliction, it’s highly resisted by basically every endgame boss, and we haven’t gotten any blind punisher dragons/wyrmprints yet. So a unit like her that’s built around inflicting blind is probably just never going to work because she’ll always be shackled.

Honestly my first suggestion would just be to retcon her entire kit into being about inflicting poison rather than blind, lol. At least then she’d fit in with the poison meta that’s been steadily developing. But that might be too much of a change to make.

The other big issue with her is that her blind affliction is tied to her using her S2 and then using force-strikes. On top of that taking longer to activate than a blind-inflicting S1 would, bow force-strikes are just completely horrible in every way and need to be changed. The bow force-strike should just be a single big charged shot that you charge and fire like you do with the sword and blade force-strikes. That’d make it a lot faster and more reliable to actually hit anyone with them in the first place.

I think her two main abilities will at least get their numbers bumped up, but I think they should take a cue from Naveed’s mana spiral and add an additional effect to one of them along the lines of ‘While Twilight Arrows is activated, increase strength/crit rate/whatever by x%’. It’d at least be SOMETHING to make her stronger, and it’d help justify tying so much to her S2 and it’s effect.

I’m not entirely sure if Curran and Heinwald will get buffed, but I think they at least need it more than Yaten and Natalie do, and it’d be a bit weird if Nefaria’s the only shadow 5-star to get buffed in the next batch, so I’m including them.

For Curran, I think the defense debuff on his S1 should have a 100% chance of applying, and maybe he could get poison punisher added to it as well. And I think his S2 should have either poison punisher or defense debuff punisher [like DY-Malora] added to it. And I feel like they should change his Last Offense ability to just be Resilient Offense like Cassandra. He doesn’t really have a good way of utilizing that sort of ability like she does, but Last Offense is just kinda useless as it is, lol.

For Heinwald, I think he should inflict poison with his S1, and the cap on it’s heal should either be raised or removed. I also think that the team strength buff on his S2 should be changed to not be limited to a short-range AoE around him, but that goes for everyone who has that sort of ranged team buff, and I doubt Cygames would agree with me on this and change all of them, lol. But either way I want either him or Curran to inflict poison so they can synergize with Lathna. Since Heinwald is another unit with an S2 that activates a named effect like Naveed, I could see him getting a similar sort of unique buff added to his skill prep ability that activates while Abyssal Connection is active. Maybe either a recovery potency buff or something related to strength/skill damage/poison punisher.

Kleimann’s a pretty easy one to assume will get a buff since they seem to specifically be trying to correct the whole Gala Cleo issue, and he’s one of the more accessible shadow wand units. But I don’t think they’ll do a whole lot with him beyond making his stats better, and maybe giving him poison on his S1.

Berserker’s one of those units who really needs a bit of a buff, since he’s just a bit too weak and defense-oriented to work well in the current meta. But I think his buffs will also be pretty simple. They’ll probably raise the chance of the strength debuff on his S1, and maybe add poison to it, and his S2 will probably be changed to give him 15% HP per use, which would at least let him hit the cap in two uses of it rather than three. It’d be nice if they also added a temporary strength buff to it though, since he really doesn’t have a lot of personal DPS. I think they’ll add a flurry effect to his first ability that raises his strength or skill damage when he’s got a certain combo count, and like with Curran I think they should change his Last Offense ability to something else. At least he’d benefit more from Resilient Offense since he’s got some self-healing in his kit. [Also with Monster Hunter Berserker on the way, now would be a nice time to buff his OG version]

If they want to buff Audric, I’m not entirely sure what they could do with him aside from just raising the stats of his skills and stuff. He’d at least benefit a lot from getting 100% potent paralysis res, though. Maybe they’d add some kind of ‘dragon attacks dispel enemy buffs’ effect to his third ability, and poison to his S1, to make him even more like Euden.

The fact that Alex already got her kit adjusted before getting a mana spiral makes me unsure if they’re even going to give her one any time soon, but if they do, I think she’ll probably at least get poison punisher added to her S1, and maybe an added effect to her skill haste ability where using skills or force-strikes partially charges her skills.

I think OG Cleo is basically 100% guaranteed to get a buff, but I’m not entirely sure what they’re gonna do with healers in general when it comes to mana spirals. At least the ones that are specifically focused on healing. She should at least get full skill prep and potent paralysis res, and probably a buffed HP = Defense ability. Other than that, I think that either her S1 or her S2 should have a regen heal effect added to it.

For the 3-stars I think that they’ll just get the same sort of basic stat buffs across the board, and status effects added to some of their skills. I dunno if that’d benefit anyone to the extent of how strong Xania became with her mana spirals, though. Althemia might end up getting poison on both of her skills, but since her skill damage ability if locked behind a Full HP criteria, she might not be quite as good as Xania even then. They should also probably retcon Vida’s stun res into either paralysis res or blind res, and it’d be nice if they added blind cleanse to Edward’s S1.

WATER:

In terms of 5-stars, I think Xanfried is the most likely one to get buffed, with Laranoa at a close second, but I’m not even sure if any of the other ones need a buff, since they’re all pretty solid. Really it’s the 3/4-stars that are more in need of a buff here, lol.

For Xanfried, it seems pretty likely to me that they’ll add freeze to his S1, since it’s literally called Dragon Frostfang. It’d at least be better than giving him bog, and we need more water units that have easy access to freeze. And for his S2 I think it’ll be like with Botan where a team crit rate buff for water units gets added to it. Going by how they buffed Euden, I think they’ll buff his Dragon Claws ability to be 45% strength total, and they’ll add enemy buff dispel to his dragon form attacks. Or they’ll just increase the damage that his dragon attacks do, which would at least help justify his dragon time ability. I’m not sure if this would make him meta for HBH or anything, but I think it’d make him a lot stronger in general.

I’m not super familiar with Laranoa since I don’t have her yet, so basically all I can assume from looking at her kit is that it’ll just get buffed across the board. But it’d be nice if the short-range team buff on her S2 got changed into a normal universal one, at least. I’m not entirely sure if they should add any status effects to her S1. In general I’m really worried about what might happen if they give lots of water units bog on their S1, since that didn’t turn out well for the summer units. Maybe if they were willing to rework bog into something that can be applied regularly throughout the fight without being overpowered it’d work, but since you always want to save it for a specific part of the fight, putting it on a skill is kinda bad.

OG Elly is pretty obviously gonna get a mana spiral sooner or later, but I’m a bit worried they’d make her overpowered, lol. Though on the other hand, it’d be kinda funny if in exchange for letting you upgrade her S1 to a 25% team strength buff, it locks it to only working on water adventurers. That’d help balance her to make her more in line with other buff units, but it’d probably make a lot of people mad, and it’d mess with a lot of rainbow Mercurial Gauntlet team compositions. I think it’d be worth it, though. Also they should just commit to giving her 100% burn res. That on it’s own would probably make her even better for HBH since she wouldn’t need to run a burn res print anymore.

It’d be nice to see OG Celery get a buff if only so she can get to full burn res as well, which would hopefully also make her a much better pick for HBH, but we’ll see. I can’t really think of anything to add to her kit aside from that, other than a crit rate/damage buff on her S2.

I can take or leave Luther, but I feel like he literally never gets used in any content so he really needs some sort of buff. Even if it ends up not helping him much. I’d at least want his debuffs to happen with 100% chance, though maybe they could also move the defense debuff to his S1. And he should at least get Flurry Strength added to his third ability.

I’m very biased on this one but I DESPERATELY want Thaniel to get a mana spiral upgrade that makes him as good as if not better than Jiang Ziya, lol. He at least really needs to get a regen heal added to his S2 to that his heals in HBH aren’t as tight. In a perfect world they’d add full skil prep to one of his abilities but that’d be a bit of a pipe dream. I’m curious to see if they’d add anything to basic recovery potency abilities like what he has, or if those will just get buffed for everyone that has them.

Summer Ranzal also needs a buff but since he’s fairly recent I don’t think he’ll get one just yet. But probably later.

I feel like a whole bunch of 3-stars are gonna get bog or freeze added to their skills, and I really don’t think that’d be quite as useful as what happened with flame. At least when it comes to bog, because of how that whole affliction works and how you want to save it. So that might backfire and make a lot of them even more off-putting to use. Waike’s a good example of this, since even though Joe benefited a fair bit from getting even more burn added to his kit, Waike would just use up all the bog inflictions before the boss gets broken in the first place.

Personally I’m hoping that Jurota will get freeze added to his S1 [since it’s called Avalance Blade, lol], and that doing that along with giving him full potent stun res would help make him better, at least for stuff like Void Agni.

WIND:

Hawk’s basically a carbon copy of Nefaria except he’s a wind unit who inflicts stun, so basically everything I said with her applies to him. Like with Nefaria he suffers from the fact that stun is a very powerful status affliction that I think is fairly heavily resisted by most bosses, and we haven’t gotten any stun punisher dragons or wyrmprints yet to capitalize on it. And the recent banner with Kirsty and Joachim just goes to show that wind is leaning even more heavily into favouring poison as a status effect. So my first guess for him would also be to just make him a poison-inflicting unit, but that seems even less likely than it would be with Nefaria, since basically every single other wind bow in the game is about inflicting poison too, and would do it better than him. They could at least add some sort of effect to one of his abilities where his S2 effect also increases his strength/crit rate/stun punisher, but there’s just a lot of issues inherent to niche status-inflicting bow units.

This might require more of a broad overhaul of the status effect system, but maybe to get around the relative uselessness of a lot of statuses, they could introduce some kind of a mechanic where a boss can be ‘marked’ as having a certain status ailment without suffering any debilitating effects from it, so you can still benefit from punisher abilities. Or maybe they could experiment with adding something like Volk’s plague effect to their kits, so that they can manually increase the boss’ vulnerability to status effects. In general I think there’s a lot of potential for the plague mechanic to address the central issue of how there’s nothing you can do when a boss fully resists a status ailment.

Other than him, I think Sylas is the only wind 5-star who I think 100% needs to get a buff soon. The other ones are all up in the air, with Louise and Wedding Aoi probably being my runner-up choices. Even Lin You’s fallen out of relevance a lot lately, but she’s still very strong. Sylas on the other hand is just super wonky. For one thing I think the strength debuff on his S1 should happen all the time, and it should have a poison punisher effect added to it, but the main issue is just his S2. It’s way too expensive for way too little value. The easiest way to improve it would probably just be to lower it’s SP cost to around 8k so you can use it at around the same frequency as Kirsty or Xanfried’s S2s, but really the whole idea of it being a roulette buff is just fundamentally bad. I’d honestly be happy if they just reworked it into being a flat skill haste and crit rate buff. All of the roulette buffs aren’t really that important when wind already has units like Noelle, Kirsty, and Lowen to provide those sorts of buffs more consistently. So he should probably just focus on more unique buffs. Basically I think his S2 should be more like Laranoa’s.

Also, Last Recovery is just a really weak ability, so it’d be nice if they could add some sort of extra affect to that, or just change it into something else. Maybe they could make it happen three times per quest rather than just once, and add a permanent 10% defense buff to each use of it, to make it like a tanky version of Resilient Offense. And the health regen effect would help let him get to low health several times in a fight, like Cassandra.

I don’t think much needs to be done with OG Ranzal aside from just making all of his skills and abilities stronger, but I also think that Last Defense sucks, so they should probably change it to something like a Resilient Defense ability where he gets a permanent defense buff each time he gets to low health up to three times.

Aeleen has a fairly basic kit and I don’t think they’d really add much to it aside from maybe poison or poison punisher on her S1. And maybe an additional short buff on her S2.

Pia is basically Aeleen but in far more need of a buff, lol. Her kit’s just so wonky. There’s really not a whole lot that can be done to salvage her unless they add more energy users to the wind roster. At the very least her S2 should give the team two or three energy stacks, on top of maybe another buff to make it more worthwhile, but I dunno if that’d do much to help her.

I’m not sure if they’d bother buffing Su Fang, but if they do, I think they’ll probably add a crit rate buff to his S2, and make his skill damage ability into a 35% one.

There’s not much to say about the wind 3-stars, but I hope they at least give Philia either bog or freeze res. I could see them also adding poison to her skills [and removing the existing paralysis effect from her S2].

LIGHT:

Light’s just in a really weird situation all around where most of their really good units are event limited ones, so I hope that some of the older, non-limited ones get some good buffs. It feels like a lot of light units in general tend to suffer from being defensive in a way that doesn’t really work in the endgame, or from using energy in a lackluster way. So there’s a lot to improve.

Julietta’s a good example of being too defensive for her own good. At the very least, I think her S2 should be a team-wide defense/knockback resistance buff. A purely selfish defensive buff like what she has now is just kinda useless. It’d at least help her trigger strength doublebuffs and whatnot. And to help her DPS overall I think they should probably add either paralysis or a defense debuff to her S1. And like with Sylas I think they should add something to her Last Recovery ability. Maybe make it so that when her S2 effect is in place, she has a passive HP regen, or something like that.

Lucretia’s not super weak or anything but her energy usage is kinda disappointing, so I think they should at least make her S2 into a team-wide energy buff, and maybe buff it to three stacks rather than two. It’d also probably be nice if they added paralysis to her S1 too.

They might skip over B-Zardin but he probably needs a buff even more than Lucretia. He’s just really bad all around. Both of his skills give energy buffs to him and nobody else, so I think at least one of them should be a team-wide energy buff instead, and the debuffs on his S1 should happen 100% of the time. Though I think they should also focus on giving him a good strength or defense debuff, rather than giving him two mediocre ones at the same time. I feel like his Stunning Visage effect really needs to give him some sort of strength buff or something as well. And he’s one of the many units that make me think there should really be some stun punisher dragons/wyrmprints, lol. His first ability is also sorta weak so it’d be nice if they added something to it, but I dunno what.

I think OG Luca will probably get 100% curse res, paralysis punisher on his S1, and paralysis infliction on his S2, and not much else, so hopefully that’d be enough to make him worthwhile. But probably not. I’d also like to see Summer Luca get a buff, but like with Summer Ranzal it’ll probably take a while for him to get a buff too.

Elias is probably the event unit that needs a buff the most. He at least needs to have his S2 give two or three energy stacks, and his S1 should probably inflict paralysis, or have paralysis punisher on it. And his Last Offense ability should be changed to something like Resilient Offense, but it probably won’t be.

I honestly forgot that Felicia existed since her event happened before I started playing the game, lol. But if she gets a buff, I think her S1 should get poison cleanse, she should get full poison res, and full skill prep. I dunno how good that’d make her, necessarily, but still.

And on the topic of 4-star light healers, Vixel really needs a mana spiral upgrade if only just to fix his goddamn useless sleep resistance. Since Felicia is already based around poison resistance and cleanse, I think it’d make sense if he got turned into a curse res unit. Especially since Lucretia and Elias are also curse res. I’m not sure if he’d get curse cleanse added to his S1, but it’d nice. It might invalidate Hildegarde, though. He’s also got a kind of weird and under-tuned S2 that really needs to be buffed. It should at least be two stacks of energy for the team, and I’m really not even sure that the point of the teamwide recovery potency buff is meant to be, other than making his own S1 stronger. It’s not like you’ll be running with more than one healer on a light team 99% of the time, so nobody else would benefit from it. If they want to really lean into the idea of it powering up his S1, maybe they could have it instantly energize him [though not the rest of the team], or have it immediately ready his S1 for use. Something like that. Or they could replace it with a regular team heal. And of course he’d probably get 100% skill prep. Though if he gets curse res, maybe they could replace the recovery potency buff on his S2 with a team defense buff so that he can basically be like a light version of Thaniel, and help people deal with HZD’s opening blast.

I also kinda forgot about Amane since I don’t use her often, but I really think they should lower the SP cost of her S2 a fair bit [sorta like with Sylas], and make the HP buff into a 15% one so that it only takes two uses to hit the cap. She should probably also get a debuff or paralysis punisher or something added to her S1, and she’d benefit a lot from getting full skill prep and skill charge.

I think Xiao Lei’s the only light 3-star that’d really benefit from a mana spiral, but going by how they skipped over Marty they might also skip over her since she also got added post-launch. But if she gets a flat 35% skill damage buff like Xania on top of a stronger crit rate/damage boost on her S2, and maybe paralysis on her S1, she might become super strong.

Anyway, that’s all far too much effort put into thinking about stuff that I’ll probably get proven wrong on soon enough, lol. There’s just a lot of characters who I really want to see get improved, and with how much the flame mana spirals shook things up, I have high hopes for the rest of them.

#murasaki rambles #dragalia lost #I spent far too much time on this so please validate my bad time management decisions :)

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vivifrage · 5 years ago

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Pardon Jaxx Doing a Ramble About Hollow Knight and MCR

(spoilers ahoy!)

OKAY BUT

Seriously, y’all. Mama is such a perfect fit for The Hollow Knight in particular, and the Vessels as a whole? The entire theme about someone who’s been through hell but going unappreciated, losing everyone around them in the process? Hoooooo boy!

I’m gonna put this bad boy under the cut because we are doing a lyrical breakdown, friendos!

Mama, we all go to hell Mama, we all go to hell I'm writing this letter and wishing you well Mama, we all go to hell Oh, well, now Mama, we're all gonna die Mama, we're all gonna die Stop asking me questions, I'd hate to see you cry Mama, we're all gonna die

This part could go two directions. It could be about the Pale King drowning the eggs in the Abyss or whatever, and it could be about The Hollow Knight being imprisoned.

“We’re all going to die,” could be the many, many Vessels, or it could be THK admitting that they’re not hollow and pure. By being imprisoned, they doomed Hallownest; they would never be able to protect it adequately.

“Stop asking me questions,” leans more towards imprisonment, methinks. Poke THK’s facade too much, and it falls apart. Which means all The Pale King’s work is for naught, one definite reason to cry. Now, would that mean Hallownest is, again, doomed, or that PK is going to have to kill more of his children in an attempt to get the ‘right’ one? And no matter what, it would mean PK and WL have been depriving their thinking, willful, ‘living’ child of an actual childhood.

And when we go don't blame us, yeah We'll let the fire just bathe us, yeah You made us, oh, so famous We'll never let you go And when you go don't return to me my love

This strikes me more as the imprisonment. We’ve got them leaving (deployment as far as I can tell in the song’s original context, THK being sealed here), and fire. Which, the Radiance is associated with light/the sun; she’s not the most fire-related, but hey, she and the Nightmare Heart appear to be related anyways! Plus, it’s a trial, it’s the Infection, all contained in them. Plus, you could argue when you release them and fight them, the Infection sure does bathe the battlefield from how much there is.

Now, Lemm mentions there’s really nothing speaking of The Hollow Knight, but they have a statue in the middle of the city, and bugs apparently come to worship at the Black Egg Temple. Now, who do they worship? Radiance, THK, even the Dreamers? Who knows! Could be any. But whatever happened there, PK seems to have made some effort into letting his child be known. Plus, you know, THK is one of the final bosses, the first character to appear on-screen at all...

“We’ll never let you go,” could also go two ways. It could be THK’s adoration of their father - the two could not let each other go and thus THK was no longer pure, if they were pure in the first place. It could also be about the siblings; they’re attracted to you when you go to the Abyss, and the Void definitely left a stain on PK’s mindspace, judging by his throne room, if it didn’t outright kill him.

And, of course, “When you go don’t return to me my love,” is the imprisonment. They’re never supposed to be free. The funny thing here is, the Godseeker endings imply they have the strength to leave the temple, even tangled in their chains. But, for some reason (gameplay-wise an obvious reason but we’re talking story here), they don’t leave otherwise. Their will to keep The Radiance as contained as possible?

Another fun bit: the chorus gets backing vocals, which could well be the other Vessels piping up.

Mama, we're all full of lies Mama, we're meant for the flies And right now they're building a coffin your size Mama, we're all full of lies

THK’s impurity and the fall of Hallownest. They’ve been ‘deceiving’ Hallownest up until they’re sealed, dooming it - the ‘meant for the flies’ and ‘building a coffin your size.’

Well, Mother, what the war did to my legs and to my tongue

THK sure did get real mangled. An arm instead of legs, yes, but also note the tongue; they were not allowed a voice. Even during the Pure Vessel fight, when they try to scream, there’s no sound coming from it, only the soundtrack.

These lines also involve a sort of toadlike, goblin-y voice. The Radiance?

You should've raised a baby girl I should've been a better son

Now, I don’t like gendering THK. But it can be hard to avoid. In this particular instance, I could see the first line going two ways - are they talking about Hornet, the baby girl who the White Lady and Pale King would have been left to raise after Herrah was sealed away, or is THK talking about themself, and how they should have been left out of the Void and raised as a normal god-baby? The implication they’d be a girl for the latter one is interesting; I know I saw someone posit that Myla’s song, when she sings about the (feminine) knight, she could mean a folklore version of THK. Also everyone defaults to calling them a boy when they gender them so I find it fun to shake that up.

“I should’ve been a better son,” gets back to the purity issue. They could try and try and try, but they would never be good enough. They would never be what they needed to be. Baby has anxiety and impostor syndrome, huh? The goblin voice/Radiance also returns here; possibly her taunting them with their shortcomings?

If you could coddle the infection They can amputate at once You should've been I could have been a better son

Again, the first bit ties to how mangled they are when we find them. They did coddle the Infection! And it sure did take their arm! But also, and I think this is part of the original context, too, it’s about emotionally cutting off from the child in question. Which, again, could be THK alone, could be the Vessels as a whole.

We also get more lovely guilt from THK at the end there, but what’s the “You should’ve been?” Are they accusing their parents of something? That they should have noticed THK wasn’t pure? Whatever it is, they cut themself off and reiterate the entire thing as their fault.

And the goblin/Radiance comes back for the amputation and ‘better son’ line. Which, considering what she did to them...

She said, "You ain't no son of mine For what you've done. They're gonna find A place for you And just you mind your manners when you go And when you go, don't return to me, my love." That's right

Well, the first line is just a bullseye on the dartboard, isn’t it? The White Lady seemed to be more detached from the Vessels than her husband was; she will claim you as her spawn, eventually, but only in a factual matter in that she helped conceive the Vessels. Those ghost babies aren’t her children any more.

‘A place for you’ and ‘Mind your manners?’ The Black Egg Temple returns! And we also get a peek at all the royalty and nobility The Hollow Knight was raised around. They were a knight, of course they would learn to behave properly, and their parents would be concerned with propriety.

Mama, we all go to hell Mama, we all go to hell It's really quite pleasant Except for the smell Mama, we all go to hell

Oh, there’s some Abyss right there. Possibly the Black Egg Temple again, too. THK did go from one to another, after all, with a brief bout of the Palace/Hallownest in between. Which could get at the two lines in the middle. “It’s really quite pleasant,” well, the Abyss is the Vessels’ birthplace/home. As for “the smell,” I imagine the Infection doesn’t smell like roses. Sunshine, maybe. But mostly disease. The two lines don’t go together as much, unless it’s THK trying to put on a brave face in the temple.

2 - 3 - 4 Mama! Mama! Mama! Oh! Mama! Mama! Mama! Ma...

This one starts a little angry, a little taunting, but it still sounds like a child calling for their mother. And especially at the end, where it turns to one long scream. They’re really just a kid who, despite everything that’s been done to them, wants their parents.

And if you would call me your sweetheart I'd maybe then sing you a song

This switches to “Mama’s” voice. Is it the White Lady and the Pale King loving their child, deep down, and if they had said something their parents would have taken them in as a child/heir and given them the affection, attention, and validation they sought? Or is it more taunting? There is some doubt, there, with the “maybe then;” THK cannot guarantee their parents would love them for who they are.

But there's shit that I've done with this fuck of a gun You would cry out your eyes all along

And we’re back to Gerard. The first line’s not that easy to work with; what did The Hollow Knight do themself that could get that sort of statement? Work with the Knights/PK? Something with the Radiance?

The second, though, normal bugs infected with Void appear to leave black tear stains on their faces. The broken masks in the Abyss display this, Godseeker has Void leak out her eyes, and the lighthouse keeper seems to meet the same fate. So... shoutout to that!

We're damned after all Through fortune and flame we fall And if you can stay then I'll show you the way To return from the ashes you call

And here’s where we get a whole chorus of voices. The Vessels have something to say! Damned to die in the Abyss, coming back as little ghosts (”returning from the ashes”), falling from what could have been life as nobility. And, of course, those siblings sure love to latch onto you whenever you come visit. Don’t know what they mean to show the way to, though.

We all carry on (We all carry on) When our brothers in arms are gone (When our brothers in arms are gone) So raise your glass high For tomorrow we die And return from the ashes you call

The Vessel chorus continues. Which, considering Ghost/the Knight, they certainly carried on after all the other Vessels died, and THK failed in their duty. They will continue. They will do what must be done, because that’s how they can be put to rest again. In Dream No More, all the siblings, Ghost and THK and all the ones in the Abyss, gang up on the Radiance and, once that’s done, they sink into the Abyss again. Their duty is over. They don’t have to linger any more, children that could never grow up.

Which, in the end, they seem to celebrate their deaths, perhaps bitterly but it’s something so clear to them. Are they angry at their parents for killing them and raising them again, only to leave them as restless spirits? Are they cheering Ghost on with their mission and looking forward to the Radiance’s end? Both?

And, at the very end, there’s no lyrics for it, but we hear “Mama” crying. Which, is she the Pale King here? The White Lady? Could very well be both. Both seem to show great regret over what happened; the White Lady bound herself up over it, and the Pale King stole the entire freaking palace away into the dream realm, and you find him dead, the throne room stained, with Void bubbles floating around, and I interpret his dream nail line as being very bitter and regretful.

Mama sent her baby away and now gets to live with regret filling the hole in her heart where they once lived.

#hollow knight #my chemical romance #mcr #Hollow Knight Spoilers

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bladekindeyewear · 6 years ago

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Boots reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 5 - Meat Page 7

==>

Okay, time for Rose and Dirk to talk delicious politics or something.

Heh, customary show-end riots.

Rose, stop causing all of us undue alarm.

Ascending? Is she going to fade out into a concept or something???

Oh shit, Dirk’s doing something similar. Some sort of inevitability once God-Tier is reached or some such.

Dirk has a solution to the problem in the works. That’s... well, Rose already cautioned that that could be ominous. I hope it doesn’t involve decapitation. Or robot bodies, or turning her into an omniscient cueball or something.

==>

Okay, stage play time. I can see a weird-seeming text color choice for Caliborn down below, hm. Time to read down to there...

Ah, the classic finale-callback thumbs down. Nice.

...yeah, reinforcing the point he was trying to make a little less explicitly with his earlier finale of Homestuck that Lord English had really just, sort of, trapped them in this narrative that their ultimate reward would be to escape, realizing it never really mattered too much compared to their own long lives and happiness or something.

==>

Epilogue TWO?????? D:

Okay now it’s, like, Andrew commenting isn’t it.

Oh shit, it DOES suck them up and trap them? Huh. That explains how Jade was dealt with, I’d forgotten. Also because it was one of the huge goddamn unanswered fucking hugepoints that made it seem like a slap in the face when we were told it didn’t matter and-- yeah okay let me just keep reading.

Huh, broken glasses.

And, phew; the ages it takes is from an OUTSIDE perspective. Let’s see what it is from an inside perspective...

==>

Jaaaane!!! :D

Okay let’s read about Janey.

Mhmm, that’s not that surprising... Dirk knew that Karkat was going to run against Jane, but Jane didn’t, even though Dirk was ostensibly “working” for her. There’s definitely a plan here. Maybe it involves Jane and Karkat smooching publicly at the end. ...No, that’s just my wishful imagination talking, isn’t it.

Oh my god she’s screaming into a pillow at hearing she has competition. That’s adorable.

YES, JANE. UNDERESTIMATE KARKAT. YOU WILL FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM LIKE EVERYONE ELSE (though probably platonically). It does upset me that they’ve taken this long to really get acquainted, though; I’ve argued for years that their personalities are naturally compatible as the straight men for all their friends’ bullshit.

In fact, Jane is pretty sure that Karkat Vantas would probably literally burst into flame if too many people happened to look at him at the same time, like a vampire walking out into the sun.

Yes, but he’d get over it. And be a flaming president or something.

In fact, Jane cannot remember a single conversation she’s ever had with him that wasn’t about the economy. She thinks back to one time at John’s eighteenth birthday when Dave engaged her in a rigorous and rather one-sided debate about deregulation and the failure of “neoliberal austerity measures” until Karkat had to come over and put his hands over his roommate’s mouth to make him stop talking.

Oh my FUCKING god, it’s true. Dave’s appropriately liberal in the modern, Krugman-esque, statistically grounded way. Karkat has my vote already.

She’d be happy to accept a graceful, temporary defeat and let Karkat play president for a couple of years. After all, unlike her, he was not immortal.

Hey fuck you. Also, why the FUCK haven’t they used one of the myriad likely ways to extend Karkat’s lifespan basically indefinitely yet??? Heck, JANE could probably do it with Life powers if she crawled back out of her own butt! We already know the Condesce could extend other trolls’ lifespans with weird troll powers so Life powers are almost certainly enough to suffice. >:(

Ohhh, so maybe Jane is just, like... slightly traumatized by trolls? And thus a little tiny bit predisposed against trusting them cause of the Condesce? :(

Interesting how she views her past reliance on / pursuance of Jake as something that made her “weak” specifically.

Okay, I’m getting a slightly uncomfortable vibe that Jane is willing to almost play at seduction with Jake falsely to get his endorsement on--

And she’s willing to do more than that, too.

Okay FUCK, JANE. GET YOURSELF UNDER CONTROL. I’m starting to believe the shittalking the others have given about you! You’d better shape up by the end of this epilogue or what have you.

==>

Okay, trapped John can hear the other three through the walls of their prison or something.

Conversation and musings, conversation and musings.....

Wait, Jade LIVES with Dave and Karkat in that SAME HOUSE and they didn’t even mention it??!?? What is even up with their thing.

Heh, John’s thinking he really could have used a nice kismesis riling him up to better himself. That’s what they’re for, really.

There there, John.

==>

Oh my fucking GOD, Jane rolls with supply side economics??? TAKE. HER. DOWN.

And Jade is just... here? Huh.

Yeah they DEFS weren’t listening.

JADE: especially when JADE: there are much better things we could all be doing with our mouths.....

HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHIT. JADE IS SO INTO EITHER OF THEM THAT THEY CAN’T TAKE IT, CAN THEY. THAT’S FUCKING AMAZING OH MY GOD

Her tail swishes from side to side

SINCE WHEN DOES SHE HAVE A FUCKING TAIL HOW IS THAT SUDDENLY CANON

I’M NOT MAD IM JUST SURPRISED

Wasn’t that something that the ask-responses from Andrew said she canonically DIDN’T have or what the fuck

Since I guess it wasn’t confirmed IN CANON he just decided he liked it enough to offer it here or???? I DON’T KNOW????

Wow why am I all worked up by this all of a sudden. It’s just transferring from her earlier line isn’t it.

three of her bras

Okay no nevermind Andrew’s just fucking with us.

...Even though this can probably still be considered canon. Which only makes how he’s fucking with us work even better, really. I mean, why WOULDN’T he lob this at us on the ten year anniversary and watch us squirm, really. There’s no incentive not to.

--oh wait wait never mind reading further these are just bras from different days she threw over the couch. PHEW. I thought for a second that we were dealing with dog anatomy stuff that would REQUIRE multiple bras on her. Jesus. I wonder if Andrew intentionally phrased things so some people would think that for a minute.

JADE: also you know trolls dont actually have two dicks dave thats an offensive stereotype

Pffffff

Wait, is it that Dave and Karkat’s relationship isn’t quite full-hearts sexual and Jade is incessantly shipping them?? :O

because that’d be hilarious too?? --*reads*

YESSSS JADE BEING SUPER STAT WHIZ WITH HER SUPER PARTOMNIDOG SPACE BRAIN YES

The thing about Jade Harley is that she’s not as good at personal things as she is at other things. Like science, or mastering fraymotifs, or kissing, the last of which she has definitely put a lot of levels into over the past few years because, well, what else are you supposed to do with immortal godhood once you hit the age where the dog hormones start kicking into overdrive?

f uck

dog hormones

i’m wheezing

Alright, Jade’s springing a thorough relationship talk on them. That’s cool. Also she’s throwing statistics in there and I LOVE that now that Jade is older we’re reinforcing just how scary science smart she is, I can’t wait to see other people roleplaying her properly because of it too.

...Yeah Jade would definitely date a chess couple

Jade sighs and crawls closer. She takes one of Karkat’s hands in hers.

JADE: i think wed all work good together

AAAAAAAA :D :D :D

JADE: and i think weve been dancing around that for years now JADE: i wanna try dating for real KARKAT: HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED KARKAT: SORRY IF WHAT I’M ABOUT TO SAY TOTALLY BLOWS YOUR MIND KARKAT: DATING A SINGLE PERSON, FOR MORE THAN HALF A SWEEP, FOR REASONS OTHER THAN INITIATING THE CONCUPISCENT EXCHANGE OF FLUIDS?

PFFFFFFFFFFFFF OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS IS PERFECT

Jade being

literally the thirstiest person in this ENTIRE CAST OF CHARACTERS

to the point that everyone’s calling her out on it

in something that’s virtually goddamn canon

holy fucking shit I love everything. I love life. Living in a universe where this hilarious shit happens is fun.

....pFFFF JADE DIDN’T KNOW OBAMA WAS REAL THIS IS AMAZING

Ooh, dueling god-tier powers for petty reasons.

OH NO DICK DRAWINGS ARE LIKELY IMMINENT

THAT OR A CHART

OR BOTH

...yeah her hair would get everywhere, wouldn’t it.

yes make fun of ship names some more

What Jade leaves in her wake is not quite the emotional scorched-earth situation that she was going for, but a few of her needles have definitely gotten under some skin. Dave and Karkat both stare after her, silently caught in their own private rationalization spirals.

So this whole time Jade’s been all “JUST KISS ALREADY” and they’ve been all “what no” and now she’s just laid it all out in the open and left them to it. Yeah that sounds about like what would’ve happened.

Aaaand of course, since this is Dave and Karkat, they just choose to stall some more and play video games. Jade really DOES complete this relationship with her pushing them to accept reality and stop downplaying their own feelings and self-esteem and all. But that’s what I thought would happen BEFORE I even read any epilogue stuff so I’m biased.

==>

Pff, Vriska time.

You’ve now got two bitches of either gender at your side

Vriska, shame! Don’t use that kind of language!!

Yep, this version of her didn’t learn her lesson and is still pretty much completely delusional.

Alright, Real Terezi™ is still flying out in the abyss trying to scoop Vriska out of this jam, cool, cool.

Flailing and spinning, screaming, not being able to see the final event or whatever-- someone save her already we know it’s gonna happen!

JOHN: Emerge from the juju.

Oh. Well, that’s uncomfortably in line with earlier presumably-discredited theories. About John saving Vriska from the black hole the Green Sun left in its wake and all. :|

Yawns too wide and snaps in half? The moment he was dreaming about?

==>

Oh hai Jake. This really IS the perfect time to get to see some attempted-exploitative discomfort between Jane and you. I mean that! The narrative timing is pretty hilarious.

The sunset has turned the head offices of Crockercorp into a shimmering glass monolith—a beacon, if you will, of the future, visible for miles in every direction.

Jane probably likes to think about it that way at least.

Wow, Jane REALLY sounds like she needs to be knocked down a peg or seven.

The whole place is candlelit, and Jane is reclining on her desk, sprawled out like a lounge singer on a grand piano.

OH MY FUCKING GOD JANE STOP BEING A SLIMEBAG!!!! D: D: D:

Thank you, Jake, for coming through and tanking this.

This is not really the kind of conversation you initiate if you’re looking to extract a sexual deal out of someone. It is, however, the kind of conversation that you might have with a childhood friend who has become somewhat emotionally estranged from you.

THANK FUCKING GOD. Jane has been saved from herself for the moment.

Okay I see a whole bunch of paragraphs of black text down below just as these two are likely coming together for a kiss. Uh oh.

...Yep, kiss there. And, uh...

Okay whew, most of it is Jake privately soliloquy-ing to the narrative about the circumstances leading up to this. I can deal with that.

...Oh my god he keeps thinking of Dirk while getting in close to Jane. This is gonna blow up in his face isn’t it.

Reading on....

--Ah, yeah, he just realizes he’s more into Dirk I guess. Ouch. Ouch, Jane.

DIRK: Were you nice to him? JANE: Well, I... DIRK: I told you, you can’t be nice to Jake. JANE: ...

PPFffffffffff

DIRK: Why don’t you leave Jake to me?

Now ain’t that telling?

Ooh, getting down to plot business with Rose.

==>

Back to John. I see a bit that says “Listen” there, is he going to hear Vriska screaming? Or is Terezi going to pick her up? Since, like, I mean she has the jetpack and has been searching for her longer and stuff.

Yep, big ol’ LE tantrum. Though alt!Calliope seems at least as much at fault for the end of the universe as him, if not moreso.

Ah, right, Andrew wanted us to THINK he’d hear Vriska screaming just so he could troll us like that. Makes more sense, anyway.

Huh, the Juju just pops away.

OW. Down a spare Rose, just like that, huh? Probably part of why main Rose knew what the plan was supposed to be for all this.

Ah right, can’t use your Green Sun powers here, Jade.

OW. Another quasi-doomed side-character death.

Yep, you have to make a tough, leaderly decision and let go. :C --Oh crap, you saved her body. Are you gonna put the ring there or what, I’m not sure where that’s going plotways.

Pff, the whole fight going south just due to John losing his glasses... that’s pretty funny from a perspective.

Oh huh, real ghost Tavros gets nuked.

Oh shit, Meenah’s going in! Don’t die, I actually care about this version of you!!

--Ah, thrown out and fate unclear, that’s a bit better than clear death.

Hm, Davepeta vs English round two? I wonder what the purpose of all of this really is, anyway, beyond just a sense that some only implied-wrapped-up things are being actually wrapped up? This whole Meat arc? Is Candy going to be ultimately more important to everyone, as was part of the point, or? Huhhm.

Final Round!!

Hammer buffet!

Slight obligatory feelings allusion via hammer!

Oh no! VORE!!! D:

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < wrow you almost got vored to death

Phew, avoided

Ow, another decapitation. There’s a killing blow and being trapped forever in a black hole for LE to look forward to, though. Weren’t there theories about him being trapped forever at the center of that black hole or whatever? Huh. I mean there WAS the garbage disposal that his metaphorical Jigsaw-head gets stuck in early in the comic after all.

Alright, Davepeta sticks him in there? Cool.

Yeah, you just had to remind us that he’s going to be plunging into his dead sister’s gaping hole, didn’t you? >:|

Davepeta. How they were so unfettered and brave. How they sacrificed themselves by flying right into the black hole like...

Like a fucking piece of garbage, you can almost hear Dave saying. May God rest his soul.

Yup. Closing another callback. Why is it silent, though? Did the black hole stop sucking now that it’s gotten almost everything but John, or is it just his blackout? I mean, is the end of everything just a thing that “happens” (which is still pretty fine, Paradox Space had a pretty good run), or did it just stop, or is it yet to be resolved or re-John-creates-Paradox-Space’s-beginning-because-hes-the-only-thing-left-constituted if he inexplicably doesn’t die from his heroic wounds or? And Terezi definitely didn’t go flying around Paradox Space’s dying remains just to get sucked in too, right? I definitely haven’t seen the whole picture yet I guess.

==>

Alright, back to Rose... actually this post’s getting long so I’ll cut here and keep going in another post.

#Homestuck #Homestuck Epilogue #upd8 #Homestuck Liveblog #bladekindeyewear #BlastYoBoots

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heretichromia · 8 years ago

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The Ringed City - Thoughts

The Ringed City opened up some really great possibilities for lore discussions, and I love it for that. It gave us some answers that I wasn’t expecting to get, and still left a lot of the story open-ended. It was a very Dark Souls-esque end to the series.

But of the possibilities, the one I love the most is that the Abyss only ever came into existence because Gwyn linked the Dark Soul to the fire. Fearing the power of the Pygmies’ Dark Soul, he sealed it inside of them, and as the seal faded, it came out dripping and corrupted. By making the Darksign, he created the one thing he feared most, the exact thing he made the Darksign to prevent.

I also love that this DLC...somewhat validates Kaathe. At least a little. Back in Dark Souls 1, Kaathe seemed like a straight-up liar. He said that the fading of the fire would bring humanity back to how it was meant to be. Meanwhile, after looking at the Artorius of the Abyss DLC, the general reaction was that, no, the Abyss is an awful thing that needs to be contained and that keeping the fire going is perhaps the lesser of two evils. It perpetuates an era of asshole gods, perhaps, but it’s also the only thing keeping that at bay.

That’s something that was challenged very hard by Dark Souls 2 and 3, with the implication that there’s been several ages of Dark, and that no amount of fire or dark ever stopped the rampant growth of the abyss. But The Ringed City puts a different spin on it that I wasn’t expecting. It seems to posit that maybe, just maybe, the Dark Soul wasn't something we should have tried to destroy. That linking the flame by burning humanity only made the Abyss what it was, that the Abyss was the result of profaning the Dark Soul, much like Chaos was the result of profaning the Witch's Greatsoul.

And in the end, what we're doing is following Kaathe once more. He instructs Yuria to tell us to end the wretched cycle, and we do it. We steal the flame, and we steal the Dark Soul itself, and we use it to make a new world because Gwyn completely ruined this one. What Kaathe told us about ending the Age of Fire was wrong, but maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe he actually believed it, that things would be right again when the flame faded. And, like us, seeing the constant rebirth and death of the flame, he realized that this world was done for, and sought a way to make a new one.

It's...kind of unclear just what he wanted that new world to be. It's dark, peaceful. That’s what we know. It’s supposed to be some sort of paradise, and...likely not one for him. I had always assumed that he was up to some sneaky, self-serving end, but...knowing what the Gods did to the Pygmies, to Humanity...it makes sense that what he was doing the whole time was trying to right Gwyn’s wrongs. Restoring the Furtive Pygmy. Destroying the Dark Sign. Ending the age of the Gods for good, because maybe they didn’t deserve the lot they got.

It adds another layer to what the Sable Church’s entire M.O. is. We know they’re a group of Hollows who believe that Hollowing out isn’t akin to death, but becoming what you were always meant to be. And...given what we’ve seen in Dark Souls 3, maybe they aren’t entirely wrong. Especially if you interpret burning Humanity to stoke the flames as feeding the power of the Darksign. Because when the Darksign breaks, so do you, right? Unless there was a way to maintain your humanity after hollowing. Stop feeding the fire; you're perpetuating the cycle that's destroying your race by burning humanity. Let yourself hollow out. Maybe it's not that bad, after all. Maybe it’s the path to self-realization, not self-destruction, that mindless hollows were the ones who fed their humanity to the fire until there was none left.

The DLC puts an excellent spin on something I always took for granted. I thought the series was about moderation. Too much of...what makes us what we are can ruin you. But maybe that's not what the Abyss is. It seems like it's more about denying what you really are, and about how trying to force someone to be something they aren't can have disastrous results.

I don’t know. I haven’t really collected all of my thoughts yet. But...maybe there’s some merit to this line of thinking.

#Dark Souls #Dark Souls 3 #Dark Souls III #The Ringed City #Soulsborne #pretentious prating

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fectless · 6 years ago

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4. Pragmatic: Wolves

It's strange, the way life returns to normal so quickly after Aang's departure.

Well, it's not quite normal.

The distance between Katara and the rest of her tribe is different from before, no longer simply weary and distrustful as it has been since the men went off to fight and took the lurking threat of physical harm with them. No longer does she wish to be accepted by a people who would send a child out into the tundra alone, a people who would blame her for things that are not her fault and wish she had died on that fateful day, years ago. A people blind to kindness and forgiveness because of their fear. Now the distance between them is brittle and cold and sharp-edged, as if they are a pack of arctic wolves fighting off a lone polar bear-dog; worse, a polar bear-dog that they had taken in as a cub and then resented when it grew larger than they, with sharper claws and better skill alone than each of them could even pray for.

Katara finally understands now that she is the polar bear-dog in this situation.

And she has outgrown them, and their petty, frightened small mindedness.

Not that she can do anything about it, at the moment. She wasn't exactly sure whose idea it was, but Katara is tied up in the storehouse with half-empty clay pots and is thus unable to use her bending to free herself. I bet it was Sara, the bender thinks to herself. She never could look at me without glaring or flinching. And she was always watching me. Always. It was kind of creepy and definitely a warning, in hindsight. The last time she was tied up like this, it had been one of the warriors that had never seemed to be a threat. (Since then, Katara had thought she knew that the arctic wolves of the village were more dangerous than the ones outside. Perhaps she'll remember this time.)

(She does know the worst thing about growing up surrounded by wolves, though: they are many to her bear-dog's few, and have more eyes to watch with and sides to pounce from.)

She just wishes she hadn't been jumped from behind; Katara might have been able to bend herself out of the situation if she'd only seen them coming.

But no, she'd been watching Sokka “ready the defenses” and warn the children that warriors don't take “potty breaks.” (And she had always thought that was stupid of him; it wasn't like the Fire Nation was going to stop in the middle of a fight just because someone needed to go, so why shouldn't warriors go pee before a battle? La knows that Sokka took enough potty breaks when he went on “hunting trips.”) And then someone had hit her in the back of the head and she'd woken up in the storehouse.

Her wrists ache as she attempts to loosen her bonds, but she keeps tugging, tugging, tug- the ice beneath her begins to tremble and she topples over, as the pottery shatters and the hanging seal jerky and kelp drop to the ground. In an attempt to righten herself, Katara lands on a jagged piece of what was once a jar. She's bleeding now, but the ropes around her hands have slackened. She slips them off.

The ground continues to rumble and shake as she makes her way out of the hut and the scene before her nearly halts her: a looming monster of dark metal, black clouds billowing into the sky, icy ground giving way as the village wall begins to crumble, a fissure opening up to swallow-

She moves, suddenly, her pulse loud in her ears. Loud enough to drown out everything else.

A fissure is opening up to swallow Takerru. (Distantly, she thinks she must be right about his being a bender. With how unlucky that child is, there's really no other explanation.)

At the last second, she manages to haul him away from the spreading abyss. Her blood begins to stain his clothing, and he has gone limp from shock, but his heartbeat draws her mind back to the fore and she calms down enough to hide him in the tent farthest from the monster bearing down on the village.

Sokka, stubborn fool that he is, is standing upon what remains of the village wall.

She wants to leave him there. To run from the village and turn her back on this useless place. But she remembers, faintly, that he had been loved by her- by their Mother and- “Sokka, move!”

He doesn't listen. (But why would he listen to Katara of all people?) He doesn't move until the packed snow slides away from the monster and red-black, metal-skinned abominations come spewing from the monster's belly. Sokka charges at them.

Katara is truly frozen this time.

She does not register the rest of the village gathering around her, or the pitiful fight that Sokka engages in, or the way that blood has begun to pool under her still-dripping arm.

She is frozen: bones and blood made of ice, a sculpture joined to the ground beneath her. She's not breathing nor does she blink, though her eyes see nothing. (She can't even feel the heartbeats that had been so loud only seconds ago.)

Suddenly, one of the monsters is before her with its hand reaching out and its voice demanding something. Katara cringes away, unable to understand the words spewing from the creature. Katara's mind has conjured up dark eyes and black snow, the scent of burning flesh, and the sounds of malice.

It grabs Gran-Gran.

Katara does not come back into the present, but she reacts to this; her mind adds something new to the nightmare: burned bodies and foul smoke and silence as she bleeds out. No no no, please, Father, no! she, can just barely hear her own thoughts plead. The heartbeats are back, louder than she had ever heard them before, and it feels almost as though she could reach out a hand and touch them. Her whole body flinches.

It's like she wants to help, but- Part of her is just- She's almost-maybe-

(She's going insane.)

“He'd be about this old,” the creature continues, oblivious to her impending breakdown, “Master of all four elements?”

Katara stares blankly at it. (She's still not really there.)

This must frustrate the thing, because it throws Gran-Gran into her. The old woman flinches away from her though, and hides behind her just before the creature lets loose a blast of flame. The children scream.

Katara gasps and her hands jerk. But she still can't control herself and now she's starting to hyperventilate. Her hands are beginning to sting from the cold, especially the bleeding one.

“I know you're hiding him!”

Sokka charges with a roar, stopping the creature from firing at them again by drawing its attention. Within moments, he has lost his weapons, even that stupid boomerang of his, Arash is throwing him a spear and the other young boys are cheering him on. He gets his butt handed to him. And the creature advances threateningly.

This time Katara does manage to get her body to move- sort of. She looks down to see what's stopping her from rushing forward and scowls.

Turns out she has literally frozen her feet to the ground agai- She blanches, missing the way the boomerang has come back.

She's not bleeding anymore. And there is no longer a puddle beneath her hand.

Instead, her blood has frozen onto her fingers, all the way to the second joint of each digit, forming something like a bear-dog's claws. Her eyes widen. She squeaks, a sound covered up by the cheering of the children, and the frozen blood is immediately fluid again, falling into the snow with a quiet sprunch.

Oh no. She looks up again at the sudden silence. Why- Did they see-?

But no, it's only Aang, sliding to a stop on his penguin-sled.

She breathes again. She looks at her hand, surprised to see that it's bleeding again.

Wait. Aang?

Her head snaps up to face him. “Hey, Katara! Hey, Sokka!” And he smiles brightly.

Katara's incredulous, “What?” is drowned out by the sound of her brother's very unenthusiastic reply.

But then the metal-skinned creatures are attempting to attack Aang, and Katara misses her chance to ask again.

He blows several of them away, covers a few more in snow, and finally asks- sounding more serious than she's ever heard from him, “Looking for me?”

The first creature's voice is stunned when it (he?) asks, “You're the airbender? You're the Avatar?” A few of the tribe let out shocked exclamations. The creature (Katara's mind has cleared enough for her to recognize that it's actually a teenaged firebender, a boy with an ugly scar) ignores them, though, saying, “I've spent years preparing for this encounter. Training, meditating,” he sneers, “You're just a child!”

Aang, sweet, naive child that he is, is obviously confused by the statement, for he replies, “You're just a teenager.”

The creature blasts fire at him.

Aang dodges and deflects until some of the bending pushes the fire too close to the tribe. Reflexively, Katara's arm moves, but Gran-Gran grabs her and the children scream, but the fire dissipates on its own. The airbender plants himself between the villager and the firebender.

“If I go with you,” Aang asks, “will you promise to leave everyone alone?”

What?

A tense moment passes between the airbender and the firebenders while Katara struggles to get away from her grandmother, to peel the old woman's hand from her mouth, but the teenager nods (he's the one in charge?) and the other firebenders restrain Aang.

Gran-Gran sags in relief and Katara finally wrests herself free, shouting, “No, Aang, don't do this!” She takes all of three steps before the rest of the village grabs at her and pulls her back.

“Don't worry, Katara.” She can see the way that he has to force his smile not to drop. “I'll be fine.”

(Everyone misses the way that the teenagers glances at her, eyes lingering for a moment on her sluggishly bleeding hand.)

The group of foreigners marches back into the metal monstrosity that the Fire Nation calls a ship. The door closes with a hiss and it sails away.

For the first time in years, Katara can feel tears attempting to fall from her eyes. She doesn't let them. Instead, she closes her eyes and plans.

When the others finally release her, she opens them, praying, Father, please let this work.

Because it doesn't really matter if Aang is the Avatar. It doesn't really matter that he's been taken. He's the only person who had out faith in her for years, the only one who doesn't hate her for being born as a bender besides a woman long dead.

On top of that, she was the one who rescued Aang from the ice; she's responsible for him.

Katara's getting him back.

Father, she prays as she gets to her feet, have mercy on the fools who try to stand in my way.

Because I won't.

#katara #atla #pragmatic #cynical!katara #katara-centric #fanfic

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