#he's the sole survivor of his village after an attack which is where he gets his aggression towards Doom from

[toastess-with-the-mostess]

VF PIDGANCE FOR THE OTP QUESTIONS GO HAM BESTIE IDC WHICH ONES PICK ANY

YOU FOOL I ALMOST DID ALL OF THEM AND THERE'S NO TIME FOR THAT

3. who compliments the other in front of everyone? Definitely Lance complimenting Pidge nonstop, Pidge is usually super busy in the hangar, but that doesn't stop Lance from being gooey about him

4. Who's more likely to tell a pun and what's the other's reaction to it? No-brainer here, Pidge doesn't stop telling puns just because they're dating, it's his LIVELIHOOD. Lance does sometimes laugh, but mostly he just rolls his eyes at his genius's stupid jokes

7. Who introduces their partner to their family first? How does it go? Lance is an orphan so the only other option is Pidge introducing him to his adoptive family but not as his boyfriend. They met a while back and Pidge's family loved him especially because he was helping keep Pidge safe. Chip also met Lance way back and they get along, but when Lance and Pidge are official he's not very happy about it because he thinks Pidge can do way better (Pidge points out that chip's crush on hunk is similar just in a different font, which chip vehemently denies)

[panharmonium]

this is legitimately one of my top five favorite kakashi scenes.

i love seeing kakashi break the rules in the name of doing the right thing, and this scene especially is particularly satisfying to me, because his moment of defiance here is, to my mind, long overdue.  

one of my eternal frustrations in early naruto is how the leaf village administration gives kakashi the job of caring for a group of super high-needs children and then continually makes that job as difficult for him as possible.  they task him with being solely responsible for the development and well-being of three twelve year-olds - a group that includes naruto (a walking disaster with a god’s power trapped inside his body) and sasuke (a genocide survivor fixated on killing his own brother), BOTH of whom are being hunted by different groups of supercriminals - and then the village keeps getting in kakashi’s way or dropping the ball or actively ordering him to prioritize other things.  

so much of what goes wrong with the kids in this period is the result of other people interfering with kakashi’s work or being negligent or endangering the kids/putting kakashi in impossible positions.  team 7’s first big mission sets the tone for everything that comes after, with someone else’s lie putting kakashi in a situation where he has to single-handedly protect not just the client who deceived him, but the three children who were supposed to be the clients’ other protectors.  and after that, the list just multiplies:

ten anbu operatives can’t manage to protect sasuke’s hospital room from orochimaru’s minions, so kakashi has to do it himself and then whisk sasuke out of the village for a month, leaving naruto in the hands of a substitute and sakura with her parents

genma orders sasuke to chase after gaara when the chunin exams blow up, saying “you’re at chunin level already,” which forces kakashi to immediately dispatch more kids to bring him back, because “ffs NO i do NOT want him out there doing that why the fuck would you tell him to do that?!” 

aoba runs his mouth off about itachi when sasuke is standing RIGHT THERE, instantly undoing all the work kakashi just did to prevent itachi and sasuke from coming anywhere near each other (and thus sending sasuke to that disastrous first encounter, the outcome of which ultimately leads to sasuke’s defection)

jiraiya decides he should let sasuke try to fight itachi himself, “out of respect for the boy’s feelings,” leading to sasuke ending up in a tsukuyomi coma

tsunade orders kakashi to drop his teaching work and leave the village on a mission even though a) he’s just gotten out of his own torture-induced coma and b) sasuke is having a crisis that kakashi is trying to manage

and then when kakashi gets back from that mission and finds out that surprise, all of this meddling has led to a disaster, tsunade tries to order him away AGAIN

but this time - he just says no.

he walks right out of her office.  he turns his back on her.  and there is NOTHING i love more than seeing kakashi embody the philosophy that he’s chosen to adopt as his guiding light: those who break the rules are scum.  but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.

it’s not that he doesn’t understand where tsunade is coming from here.  but he knows she’s wrong.  she’s making her decisions based solely on concerns about the Leaf Village being in a tight spot - feeling like they can’t turn down missions because they’ll appear weak and thus become vulnerable to attack when they’re already operating at half strength.  she sends a group of twelve year-olds to bring sasuke back because supposedly the village can’t spare anyone else, “even if it means letting the sharingan fall into orochimaru’s hands” - but like.  it’s not the sharingan.  it’s a child.  sasuke isn’t just a repository for his hereditary jutsu; he’s not a pair of eyes to be passed around from one wielder to the next.  he’s a human child.  

tsunade doesn’t know sasuke.  she’s new to the situation and doesn’t know enough about it to understand how serious it is.  i don’t even think she was still in the village when the uchiha massacre occurred; the timeline makes it sound like she left long before that.  she doesn’t really understand who sasuke is or how much trouble he’s in - she makes her decision because she feels like her first priority has to be the well-being of the Leaf as a whole, not the individual people who comprise it.  kakashi, though, who a) lives his life by a very different philosophy and b) does understand sasuke’s situation, would not have dealt with the issue like this, and if the village had let him do his job from the beginning, things wouldn’t have gotten to this point in the first place.

kakashi is horrified that tsunade sent a bunch of twelve year-olds out to fight orochimaru’s ninja, and i think he’s also probably angry and/or frustrated about having been ordered out of the village in the first place.  he was dealing with the situation before tsunade sent him away.  he interrupted the fight between sasuke and naruto even though he himself had literally just gotten out of the hospital, and then he continued addressing the issue with sasuke privately (unlike jiraiya’s non-attempt to address it with naruto, when he said he was going to give naruto a talking-to but actually flaked out).  kakashi knew sasuke was struggling, and he was doing all the things a teacher is supposed to do to address it, but then he was ordered away, and even though it was just for two days, it was enough time for everything to go to hell.

if people would just let him do his job - if the administration would let him focus on the task they themselves assigned to him - things would be different.  but everybody wants him to do everything.  they want him to be everywhere.  they want him to protect the nine-tails jinchuriki (who is also kakashi’s dead teacher’s son), and train the last surviving uchiha (which is a task only kakashi and his sharingan can perform), and give equal attention to a third kid, for good measure, and they want him to do it without stepping away from any of his other burdens, all while other people around him constantly frustrate the progress he makes.

so this time, when tsunade tries to send him away, he refuses.  he disobeys her orders and walks out of the room.  he doesn’t care about the rules or what he’s “legally” obligated to do.  he knows what the RIGHT thing to do is, and so he rejects his new mission in favor of rescuing the kids.

i love these moments.  i love when we’re shown so clearly the person kakashi has chosen to be - someone who does what’s right, not just what he’s told.  he made an active choice many years ago to adopt that philosophy, and he’s been living by those new rules ever since.  he's wiser now than he was when he was a child - sometimes you have to break ranks to do the right thing.  sometimes you have to buck the system, even if it means you might face severe personal consequences.

he had one of two choices: either save the mission or his comrades.  of course, according to the law of the village, you cannot abandon a mission.  but to save the life of his comrades, he put the mission on hold.

kakashi may have spent a good chunk of his childhood trying to reject everything the subject of that story stood for, but none of his attempts to harden his heart ever stuck.  he is, in the end, his father’s son.

[as-i-watch]

You better get ready bc its time for

The Straw Hats' Tragic Backstories

Ranked from what i personally consider to be less tragic to most tragic. With pictures!

I accounted not only how scaring their backstories are but also how long they suffered for, balancing the bad and the good times. Be ready

N°9 (Less Tragic): Usopp

Less Tragic is still Tragic. He lost his mom, never knew his father and never felt he fitted in at his hometown where he gain the reputation of problem child. That said, he still had a pretty 'normal' childhood and was a happy and emotionally stable kid, somehow.

N°8: Zoro

Now with Zoro there's the issue there's a lot we (or at least I) dont know. The times he spend at the dojo gave him somewhat of a home but before that he appeared to be a homless orphan maybe? Also then there is Kuina's death which defined so much about him through pain. Beyond that, he grew up in a safe space with people that cared about him.

N°7: Luffy

He never had a parental figure to look up to and he was raised in a way by many people. He's sense of familly lied with Sabo and Ace bc nobody else stayed around long enough (except for Dadan). Similar to Zoro, the 'death' of Sabo defined a lot about him through pain. He ranks above Zoro because he lived to survive and his and his brothers lives were often put in mortal danger.

N°6: Brook

The fact that he had a whole happy life didnt allowed me to rank him very high but at the same time, wandering arround for decades alone, traped in the darknes, souraded only by the dead bodies of his nakama. I couldn't put him last either. Not to mention the lost of his body.

N°5: Franky

Now it's getting real. Franky did have a happy childhood with his found family doing what he loved that is building ships. But, the boats he created were used against him to bring down and arrest his father figure/mentor. In desperation he traid to fight a train to stop it and lost his body in the process. He never saw Tom again.

N°4: Sanji

There are two sides to this. One, so far all we (or at leats I) know of Sanji is from when he was already an apprentice at a kitchen, what's the story before that? Idk but i bet is not happy. Then ofc is the issue that he almost starved to death at the ripe age of 8 and had to carry on with the guilt of costing this pirate-chef his leg and career, who eventually became his mentor/father figure. No wonder he is so closed off emotionally. Thanksfully, after that he seemed to have gronw up without other insidents and he loved it in the Baratie

How are you doing? Sad yet?

Well buckle the fuck in bc we are entering the top three and oh boy

N°3: Chopper

Rejected by everyone since he was born and it only got worse after the ate the devil fruit. He was attacked by his own and also by humans. The only one that showed him love and kindness was Hiluluk, his father figure/mentor, who he ended up killing while trying to find a medicing to save him. All things considered he had some happy times in the middle.

N°2: Nami

She was a happy kid until Arlong came along, murdered her mom infront of her eyes and took her away. Not only she was forced to work and live with Arlong, but she also had the lives of everyone on her village on her shoulders, and she made it so at the age of 8! She lived the next decade terrorized by Arlong, alone, thinking everyone hated her and carrying that weight on her own. Her final snap when she stabs herself on her tattoo cannot be more heartbraking

N°1 (Most Tragic): Robin

There's just, so much to unpack. She lived alone, her mother left her and her adoptive family rejected her. The only solance she found was studying but then the Marine came along. They killed everyone she loved in front of her eyes, they burned her entire island and made her the sole survivor. After that they persecuted her all her life, she was betrayed and sell out more times than she can count probably. She was forced to live in the run, never trusting anyone and never belonging anywhere, which was all she ever wanted.

- Thanksfully they all found happiness later in life having wonderful adventures with the Straw Hats, one big fam -

I hope you liked my post (ಥ‿ಥ)b

[mountain-man-cumeth]

What Went Wrong: An In-Depth Analysis of Muriel's Route

*Youtuber voice*

Below are the opinions of an uneducated individual on what could’ve left the majority of The Arcana audience dissatisfied. I will explore the plot, tropes, themes and morals of the Muriel route and try to explain what may have gone wrong. I will be treating the game as a novel since it's advertised as one.

1. Consistency. If you are unfamiliar with the chekhov's gun; it's a story writing principle that dictates each element you introduce should come into play (foreshadowing). Now let's start with a few story beats that were later abandoned or concluded in an underwhelming manner:

Muriel's blanket

Muriel's magic mark (on his back)

Forest spirit (spirits in general)

Lucio's upbringing

Circumstances of MC's death

Figurines/whittling/charms

Muriel's blanket is teased to be a tapestry, which would tie in with his later fascination with them later on, as it had been the only thing he had left from his past. MC neither sees nor comments on the blanket, we only know it exists thanks to other playthroughs and short stories.

Magic marks are an important point in the game. Every main route emphasises on how it affects the chosen LI. It's reveal is important in a way that it serves as a passage to a new act where the reader explores magic and Arcana pantheon as they are a monumental part of the overall worldbuilding. This exact point applies to the Heart of the Forest and how spirits interact with the world around them as well.

Whittling and Charm making are the only hobbies we get from Muriel's isolated life, their introduction helps the reader humanise the character by giving us a crumb of his everyday life. It's never mentioned again after the scene where MC asks him what he does. He doesn't idly whittle during their journey and charms only come to play in an offhanded reference during reversed ending.

The other two are also ignored but I will touch on Lucio later on.

Why do these matter? A few abandoned plot points don't make or break the story but on a grander level it hinders the audience investment. When we read, we like to think the details we notice will come to play eventually, we like recognizing references that were introduced earlier. I'm sure I don't need to give examples on this one, I don't think anyone will disagree.

2. Themes. Thematic influences this story utilized are all over the place, and it seems to me like it stems from the improper application of certain tropes;

The Hero's Journey

Home Sweet Home

Shell-Shocked Vet

Last of His Kind

etc.

Some of these tropes tackle themes such as;

Slavery

PTSD

Survivor's Guilt

Genocide

I'm not going to try to explain How to Write any of these topics. I'm not remotely qualified. I think it's better if I just give examples from popular media because whether you know how to write it or not, you can still understand when it's written well;

AtLA deals with genocide and survivor's guilt. It's in the name; The Last Airbender. Aang is the sole survivor of a culture he'd only had an opportunity to engage in for a handful of years. He left them with a childish tantrum and now they're gone forever. I can't think of another mainstream series that shows the gruesome reality of war and genocide better than this one.

When Muriel realizes his true heritage and loses Khamgalai is the point of the story where Luke sees his family's farm burned down, Aang goes back to the air temple, Treebeard walks in on the demolished part of the forest. (The inciting incident)

(Could also have been forest spirit’s death but it was too early in the story so I don’t consider it a missed opportunity.)

Up until this point the hero has their doubts, they're going through the motions but they are either underestimating the enemy or they're a passive protagonist. Either way, this is the point where the hero has to take the reins of the story. What purpose does this serve in Muriel's route instead? It simply validates Muriel's beliefs. He's useless, he isn't strong enough. We as the reader need a point to see where the hero takes a step to drive the story forward or whoever takes that step will steal the spotlight, it will be their story. As it is, this is the point where it ceases to be Muriel’s story.

PTSD got the worst end of the deal. Since Dragon Age fandom has a huge overlap with the Arcana I will use Fenris as an example; for those who are unfamiliar with the character, Fenris is an escaped slave. After the sex scene he vividly describes an experience that most people can easily identify as a flashback. The game never tells us that he was abused, it doesn’t show us him having a panic attack but it shows us that whatever transpired between him and the player character clearly triggered an unpleasant memory.

Arcana tries and initially succeeds to do something similar. We see that the character is untrustworthy, sensitive to touch, easily agitated, can’t sleep outside of his perceived safe environment… It introduces us the cause later on and the story has two options, each will drastically change the moral of the story:

Remember these as they will be important later on

Portray Muriel fighting as a bad thing; You can’t fight violence with violence angle or the fact that the villain’s forcing him into a situation where he’ll have to fight again makes the villain all the more intimidating.

Portray Muriel fighting as a good thing; He has the means to defeat the villain and he just needs encouragement. With great power comes great responsibility. By not fighting he willingly condemns everyone to an awful fate and that he is selfish.

I’d like to take a second to explore the 1. Option, I feel like the game may have intended to implement that idea but failed because of the implementation of Morga and choices presented for the player character: Morga is an Old-Soldier, these characters are often push the hero out of their comfort zone in an aggressive way towards complacency, they are a narrative foil to the mentor. For the first option to work the story had to show Khamgalai acting as a mentor and having the protagonists challenge Morga’s teachings(see Ozai-Iroh). As it is, Morga’s actions are never put under scrutiny (narratively) and her death feels hollow as a result. She didn’t sacrifice herself for the heroes due to her guilt, she died because she felt a moment of sympathy for her son which wasn’t explored before, she showed no intention to change nor any doubt.

It is clear the game choose 2. Option, it is a controversial choice given Muriel’s mental condition and the game is acutely aware of this, which is likely why Muriel’s PTSD will get carefully scraped from the story from here on out. (I won’t address other instances where his trauma wasn’t taken into account, I feel like this explanation should cover them as well.)

3. Morals. Every story, whether the author intends it or not, has a moral. The Villain most often acts against that moral and in turn can change the hero's perspective. Morals are not ideals; the morality of Killmonger isn’t that marginalised people should fight for their rights, it is that vengeance is just. Whether it’s right or wrong can be debated but what makes an ideal the moral of the story is in the portrayal. How the narrator depicts the events, how people around the heroes react... all are a part of portrayal.

The story choosing “Muriel fighting is a good thing” earlier puts in the foundation of a moral. The story tells us Muriel has to fight, it’s the right thing to do. He has to be brave for the people he loves.

This choice affects how his past actions will be perceived; now, him escaping the arena to save himself is cowardly, abandoning Morga is cowardly.

The story tells us it wasn’t, but shows us that it was. This is the end of the midpoint of the story, at this point we need to have a good grasp on what we should perceive as wrong or right for us to feel invested. If we zig-zag between the morals we won’t know which actions we should root for. But more than that, the conclusion will not feel cathartic as it will inevitably demonstrate the opposing ideals clashing at its climax.

Villain doesn't necessarily have to be sympathetic and Muriel's route makes no effort to make him as such, but they need to be understandable. What danger does Lucio pose to the status quo, what makes him a compelling villain? Whether he conquers Vesuvia or not doesn’t drastically affect Muriel’s way of life, he’s been in hiding for years. He doesn’t threaten to steal MC’s body, Muriel is not compelled to pick up arms to save his beloved. He wants to protect the people from going through what he’s been through, right? That is what the story wants us to think. But what has he been through? Fighting was his choice, Lucio tricked him into it. Lucio later tricked Morga, his own mother, to save his own hide. This tells us that Lucio is a manipulator, but he doesn’t manipulate his way into Vesuvia, he barges in with deus ex machina monsters. He doesn’t demonstrate his skills as a tactician by making deals with neighbouring kingdoms to get their armies. We don’t know his strengths therefore we don’t know his weaknesses. If he seems to be losing he can just conjure a giant dragon to burn everything down, we just can’t know. That is why the application of deus ex machina is highly taboo, the victories don’t feel earned and defeats feel unfair.

4. Tone. Playing with the genre is not uncommon and a game such as Arcana has many opportunities to do so. It is a romance story, everything else is the back-drop. The tone works best when its overall consistent but tonal changes act as shock for the audience to keep them engaged and keeping one tone indefinitely gets us desensitized. We can’t feel constant misery if we are not made to feel tinges of hope in between. Good examples of dramatic tonal change (that I can think of): Mulan - arriving at the decimated village, La Vita e Bella - the father’s death, M*A*S*H - death of Hawkeye’s friend. Two of these examples are mostly comedy which is why this tonal shift affects us so, it was all fun and games until we are slapped in the face with the war going on. There are no one liners in those scenes, the story takes a moment to show appropriate respect to the dead, it gives its characters time to digest and come to terms with loss. Bad examples are the majority of Marvel movies.

In Muriel’s route there’s never such a thing, Muriel has a panic attack and MC kisses him. This unintentionally tells us, the genre being romance, that the panic attack only served to further MC’s advances. It tells us that he’s never had the control of his life and it’s yet again stripped from him by the decisions of player character. This is not the only instance this happens. The story shoe-horns in multiple cuddle sessions between important plot beats. And it does the exact opposite during a moment where he is having a heart-to-heart with the person he loves by having the ghost of Morga appear to give an ominous warning/advice.

When he runs off during masquerade it’s built up to be an important plot point. Muriel will finally face his past, he’s been running away from it all along, and he will have an opportunity to be accepted back in. MC is supportive but ultimately, it’s meant to be Muriel's moment. But as I mentioned above this is not his story anymore so he’s not given any time to address his problems, instead a ghost appears to tell him what he needs to do, again. Because we need to wrap the story up, we don’t have time.

Remember how I said the 2 Options will be important later on, well here we are at the very end. Upright and reversed.

“Portray Muriel fighting as a bad thing”

This suggests that the triumph of Muriel won’t be through violence. Maybe he will outsmart Lucio in a different way, he won’t play his games anymore. This option suggests that Lucio will not be beaten by his own terms.

“Portray Muriel fighting as a good thing”

This option concludes with Muriel finally overcoming his reservations on violence and doing what's right to save the people he loves. And bringing justice to people who Lucio hurt.

If you are wondering why the upright ending feels random, this is likely why. The ending plays out as if the story was building on the 1st option while we spent chapters upon chapters playing out the 2nd one. It is unearned.

(The reversed ending, being reversed, also uses Option 1 path but in which Muriel can’t achieve his narrative conclusion)

The Coliseum is filled with people who are on their side against Lucio’s shadow goons. Because we can’t have people being on Lucio’s side without addressing the duality of human nature, even though it’s an important part of Muriel’s story. The people who watched and enjoyed Lucio’s bloodsport are no more, they are all new and enlightened offscreen. We completely skipped the part where Vesuvia comes to terms with its own complacency and Muriel simply feels at ease because the crowd is cheering on him now. This is what happens when you give the character a chance to challenge those who have been complicit in his abuse (masquerade scene) and completely skip it to move the story along.

Muriel doesn't get justice, ever. The people only love him now because he's fighting for them instead of his own survival. Morga or her clan doesn't answer for the massacre of Kokhuri, Vesuvia doesn't answer for the sick entertainment they indulged in and Lucio doesn't answer for Muriel's enslavement. It is not even acknowledged, nowhere in the story (except the very end of reversed ending, and even then it almost gets him killed so its clearly the wrong thing to do on his part) is a choice presented where Muriel has an opportunity to get any sort of compensation where he instead chooses to move on.

I don’t intend to straw man anyone but this is a sentiment I’ve seen a lot; “It’s a short story, a dating-sim, what do you expect?”

I expect nothing, I’m simply explaining why some people feel how they feel. It is a short dating-sim but it seems to me like it was aiming to be something more by borrowing elements that were clearly far above their weight range to tease something more and under deliver. It is okay to feel content with the story, and it’s okay to feel let down. If we had a unanimous decision on literature we would never be inclined to write our own stories.

[robbyrobinson]

Villain Review: Emperor Belos (Contains SPOILERS)

Biography

This dark lord's life began roughly hundreds of years before the start of the series. On Earth, Belos was known as Philip Whittebane and lived in Gravesfield, Connecticut, the hometown of Luz Noceda during the 17th century. Around that time, witchcraft was greatly despised and reviled as evil.

Philip lived in a peaceful community alongside his brother until one-day tragedy struck: according to legend, the two brothers were led into the Demon Realm by a witch and were never seen again.

From there, we can speculate on Philip's life in the Demon Realm based on the events of "Hollow Mind" where Luz and Hunter end up going into Belos' mindscape. Going past the self-serving portraits of himself representing his "victory" over wild magic, Luz and Hunter discover his real mindscape.

Through a series of paintings, we have a story-within-a-story. Philip appears to become transformed into some monster resembling the manifestation of palismen souls that exist within his mindscape. His brother embraces him and it seems to cure him. If only for a few moments.

Next, his brother fell in love with a witch and was in the process of introducing her to him. But unbeknownst to him, Philip carried a dagger behind his back and a scuffle culminates in his brother lying lifeless on the ground with the dagger stained with his blood. From there, it could be insinuated that his lover cursed Philip as vengeance.

Philip would find himself alone for quite some time, but through what little that we know of his checkered past, he became aware of a potentially omnipotent being known as the Collector and was searching them out to accomplish his true goal: the complete destruction of all witches and demons that reside on the decaying Titan.

To accomplish this, he invited many witches and demons on his journeys and kept a document of his thoughts in his personal journal. But, surprise surprise. They would all end up dying under mysterious circumstances and he was always the sole survivor. We see him repeat the process again with Luz and Lilith when they use a pool to the past. After getting what he wanted, he has no qualms about leaving them to die, but he gets his nose broken rightfully so.

Making a deal with the Collector, Philip would create "The Day of Unity" as a means to mass genocide the witches of the Boiling Isles with the agreement that he would free the Collector who was trapped in the bones of the Titan.

But his xenophobic hatred of witches and magic would come back to bite him in the ass when the name of "Philip Whittebane" resulted in him being chased out of towns. So, what is a genocidal sociopath to do?

More paintings record his process of becoming Belos from his mask to him covering his ears with a bowl of flesh inside meaning that the bastard self-mutilated his own ears to further look like a witch.

He would then create replicas of his brother called grimwalkers and made them "the Golden Guards" all so he could create a better version of his brother: one who was blindly obedient to him. If not...he killed them and remade them again from scratch. He had done this around 18 times throughout the hundreds of years. He kept himself alive by consuming palismen souls which likely mutated him. Philip was the type of guy who would even carve glyphs into his own skin to allow himself to teleport.

From there, he staged attacks by wild witches, burning a town to the ground in one instance, so he could convince the villagers to join his coven systems claiming that he represented the Titan. When they were given their sigils, it was not as complete as it was now with horrid veins pulsating through their bodies and their eyes glazing over.

Personality

At first, Belos appears to be a calm and collected authoritative figure, but he is highly intolerant of failure as demonstrated with his threats to Lilith about what would happen to her should she fail to catch her sister again.

Despite this, Lilith tells the others that Belos has a heart: he cares for his nephew Hunter, the current Golden Guard, supposedly taking him in after wild magic destroyed their family. In some ways, Belos would seemingly be gentle with his nephew not wanting him to be put in situations that could compromise him. In return, Hunter was loyal to his uncle and would constantly sing his praises.

That was until what we learned in "Hollow Mind." There was never a great plan that the Titan had in store for Hunter: it was just rubbish that Belos would tell him to keep him in line. When Hunter learns the truth, Belos' gentleness with his "nephew" evaporates with him lamenting that he was the most perfect replica of an old friend of his that he'd have to kill for his "betrayal" expressing that Hunter was as expendable as the grimwalkers before him.

With what little we know of his backstory, even if Belos cared for his brother at some point, his "love" ended the moment his brother fell for a witch. If anything, Belos' love (if you can even apply that word) for his brother and the grimwalkers is toxic: he is constantly recreating his brother and killing him in inhumane ways like petrification, burial, and zapping out of existence all so he could make a perfect brother: one that would be completely obedient to him and would never stray from his control again.

Belos' greatest characteristic is his narcissism. While it could be explained away that he became the way he was because of the anti-witchcraft sentiment of the 1600s, Belos is a totally narcissistic sociopath with few redeeming qualities.

Much like any self-righteous, holier than thou antagonists like Judge Claude Frollo, Belos is motivated by a strong conviction to freeing humanity from "evil" by becoming a self-professed witch hunter. His immense ego blinds him to the fact he cannot perceive that purging a race of beings is a bad thing.

But he is, unironically, the largest hypocrite of the series by far: he preaches against the use of wild magic, and it becomes apparent that he despises magic as a whole, but he had sustained himself for hundreds of years by consuming the magic from palismen and carved glyphs into his body to teleport wherever he wanted on the Isles. He creates the coven systems as a means of draining magic to achieve the Day of Unity which would undoubtedly kill the users of magic.

Abilities

As a human, Belos did not perform magic in methods similar to demons and witches who possessed magic bile sacs. Instead, Belos was a practitioner of artificial magic using the glyphs etched on his body to his advantage (but it also comes at the cost of giving him pain).

He is able to summon monsters during his fight with Luz; can use fleshy tendrils and morph them into arms; melt into the floor at demand among other amazing feats.

It should also be noted that he has great technological knowledge for someone who came from the 17th century.

Conclusion

At first, Belos is underwhelming. After all the mystique that came with his character, to have him just be a racist man from the 1600s who wants to kill all witches and demons because he thinks they are evil is disappointing. But at the same time, I feel it works for the show and its message: finding your place and being yourself i.e. accepting who you are. The constant is that people who are "misfits" or "outcasts" do not have to be alone and they have access to friend groups and family. The concept of family is even thrown on its head by showing several unconventional familial settings such as Eda caring for Luz and the latter making Eda her second maternal figure.

In that sense, Belos represents the toxicity of how hard-pressed such conservative beliefs can be. In contrast to accepting individuality and difference, Belos instead rules the Boiling Isles with an iron fist forcing conformity to achieve his self-serving agenda.

So in the end, who was Belos? Starting off as a xenophobic human who was whisked into the Demon Realm, Belos allowed his hatred for witches and all things magic to fuel his narcissistic belief that he is truly the hero of his own story and can even kill his own brother without batting an eye and resurrect him as a homunculus so many times until he is the perfect mindless slave that he desires.

For all his talk about ridding humanity of evil, Belos is ironically the very thing that he wants to destroy.

[narrative-critical-understanding]

Kishimoto’s framing

Kishimoto always tries to frame Konoha and its members in a sympathetic light no matter what. 

*Atrocities happen often. Tsunade towards Pain: “The great nations have suffered, too. I’ve had enough of your accusations!” Yeah, well maybe the three great nations of Stone, Sand and Leaf / Fire at least shouldn’t have used the Rain country as battleground. Konoha even started that war where you lost your younger brother and lover. In the end you came back to be Hokage, didn’t reform anything and only gave that shit response to Pain (Pain: “[...] You think you’re the only ones who matter.[...]”) Cry me a river.*

Example - The murder of Pain’s / Nagato’s parents

Situation: A civilian family is cowering in a corner of their own home in fear of the Konoha ninjas who invaded their country and took over their city. Two Konoha ninjas just broke into their home looking for food to steal because they’re starving. *Looks like they didn’t bring enough provisions for a siege.* They plan to look around for more food after eating the canned food they found. 

The father apparently thinks that the best possible option is to get out and away from the ninjas before they are found. Nagato is scared, but his father tells him not to worry and try not to make any noise. They’re in the process of sneaking out when Nagato accidentally breaks a vase.

Pro Konoha/”Will of Fire” framing: Two Konoha ninjas are hungry. They haven’t eaten for three days. One of them even thinks it has been four days. That’s a further emphasis on how incredibly hungry they are. *Don’t you feel sorry for them?*

The family uses a perceived opportunity to get away from the Konoha ninjas. They sneak towards their door, but Nagato failed to be careful and broke a vase even though his father told him to try not to make any noise. *It’s Nagato’s fault that they got caught or maybe all three of them are at fault. Why couldn’t Nagato be more careful and follow his father’s guideline? Maybe they should have cut his hair appropriately. How can he see properly with the bangs in his eyes?*

Me: Am I supposed to feel sorry for the Konoha ninjas? Well, I don’t. They’re adult soldiers who commit war crimes. They got hungry in the process. Cry me a river.

Why did Kishimoto use that way to make the Konoha ninjas notice them? Why did he choose Nagato to screw up their escape and just after his father tells him to try not to do exactly what he ends up doing? Why did he give Nagato that nonsensical hairstyle? It makes it seem on the surface that being caught is their own fault. This looks like it’s the victims responsibility to react to the situation in a careful and wise way. It takes part of the negative focus away from the perpetrators by indirectly blaming the victims.

To be fair: The family is clearly shown as victims. They’re afraid and don’t want a confrontation. They were ready to abandon their house, their food and their belongings in order to get away from the Konoha ninjas. 

Situation: The Konoha ninjas hear the noice and notice the family, which they immediately consider to be enemy ninjas. Probably because they’re being on edge since they’re on enemy territory that they just took over and also from all the recent and long-lasting fighting. They confront the family with drawn kunais (weapons) and question who they are. The father is desperate and charges at one of them barehanded. One of the ninjas falsely confirms out loud that they are enemies (ninja enemies) because the father charges at them. The father uses his right hand to grab the ninjas left wrist so that he doesn’t get stabbed by him. He stalls the ninja and tells his wife and son to flee. 

The mother tries to get her son to safety and protects him from being stabbed by the other ninja using her body as a shield. She tells him to run and dies. The father is enraged. *Can you blame him?* Then he’s murdered.

The Konoha ninjas realize that the survivor is a kid and that they aren’t ninjas. One of them panics about what to do about this and questions how this could have happened. They’re surprised that they mistook the civilian family for enemies.

Pro Konoha/”Will of Fire” framing: The Konoha ninjas are alerted to their presence because Nagato wasn’t careful. The family sneaked around. That’s even generally seen as suspicious. They don’t say that they’re civilians and they don't say anything at all towards the ninjas for the matter. The father charges at the Konoha ninjas first.

The ninjas misunderstood the situation. They thought that the family is a group of enemy ninjas. They're taken aback and disconcerted and one of them even panics apparently troubled. They had clearly no intention to kill civilians. It's terrible that it happened. How unfortunate. *Poor Nagato and those poor Konoha ninjas. They all now have to live with trauma.*

Me: *Who could possibly be there? Maybe the owners of the house? But no! They assume that all the civilians already fled their homes.* Why is the family drawn to look like they stand in the dark? Notice how the family is at the exact same spot when they sneak out and the light from presumably the kitchen illuminates them. The shadows of the ninjas shouldn’t be that big. The ninjas should be able to see them. They are clearly sparsely clothed, barehanded and don’t have a headband. The father only holds the ninja off. He doesn’t really attack them. 

The mother and son are clearly fleeing. The father even loudly tells them to. The other ninja immediatly goes after them right at Nagato. *How the hell am I supposed to believe that trained ninjas of all people don’t recognize that they’re civilians and one of them even a child?* The mother apparently doesn’t even defend herself. Her right upper arm looks like it’s hanging and she falls to the ground in the next panel. 

She clearly stands in the light, but falls down dead in darkness. How the mother is murdered is barely shown. There's her back and then she falls to the ground still with her back shown to us. The father is murdered off-panel after his face is shown in rage. What a way to obscure their murder at the hands of the Konoha ninja. Sure, the readers know it happened, but there’s a sense of detachment the way it's represented and as such we're to an extent disconnected from them and their experience.

All the while there are three panels dedicated to show the readers that the Konoha ninjas are surprised and one of them even troubled that they apparently murdered civilians of the village they just took over instead of enemy ninjas. The framing suggests to be sympathetic towards the perpetrators. Am I supposed to feel sorry for them that they now have to live with the knowledge that they murdered innocent civilians in their own home in front of their child? Well, I don't. Cry me a river.

To be fair: The Konoha ninjas are clearly shown as the ones in the wrong.

I left out a panel where Nagato is the sole focus. (He does nothing else than what he does in his last panel.)

Conclusion

The Konoha ninjas are shown to be the ones in the wrong, but the framing relieves them from some of the blame placing it instead on the victims or making it look like an unfortunate accident while also showing the Konoha ninjas in a light that apparently is supposed to get the readers to sympathize with them.

[in-somnis-veritas]

Characters

(This is for an AU currently in the works! This is one of the only available posts for it right now, but make sure to drop by the page and follow us to stay up to date! More in-depth info will be released soon about the world of Adrestia)

Name | Age | Race | Status Mod Paragraph

Tommy | 16 | Half-elf | Commoner

Tommy was born and raised in the town of Alnwick, living with his mom for the first few years of his life as his father worked in the capital city of Somritas as a knight. He was raised completely unaware of his status of being a half-elf or the fact that his mother was, in fact, an elf. Now, 16 years old with a dead mother, he continues to live his life believing he’s human--not even showing the telltale signs of being a half-elf because of a pendant he’s worn since he was a toddler. Not that he knows that’s what it does. Loud, rambunctious, mischievous--he always finds the time to harass his friends or flirt with pretty girls who happened to be nearby. Best friends with Tubbo and with a brotherly relationship with Dream, he’s out thriving as an extrovert. Though it’s safe to mention he’s completely banned from the capital city,

Tubbo | 16 | Druid | Knight

Tubbo's entire existence is illegal, pretty much. Born to two druids, he himself is also a druid. When he was 6, his camp was attacked. All of his people were killed. The only survivors were him and his baby brother. After fleeing, they survived on their own for a week. They were soon picked up by another camp, which Tubbo lived in for 9 years. When he was 15, his camp sent him to the city. His brother stayed behind, while Tubbo made the three-day long journey to the city. Soon after his arrival, he became a knight. He has served ever since. Despite being magical, he appears fairly human. The only true way to tell he is a druid is the triskelion tattoo he has, which is just below the crook of his elbow on his right forearm. Within the city, his closest friend is Niki. She was the first one to find out about his magic, and he genuinely trusts her with his life. Outside of the city, his best friend is Tommy. Considering he can't go inside the city, Tubbo usually goes outside the walls to visit. Tommy was the second to find out. Saying he trusts Tommy with his life isn't true, mainly because he would be the one endangering it to begin with.

Dream | 19 | Human | Prince/Royalty

Prince Dream von Galatea the 1st, born August 12th, 1599, is the sole male heir to the well known kingdom, Somritas, in the northern Adrestia region. He is a very respected and competent prince to his royal adversaries and renowned across the land as an excellent warrior. Dream trains almost daily and vigorously, so much so that many outsiders try their hand at challenging him but have yet to beat him. The man greatly idolizes the old “fairy tales” of the human hero saving others from the monstrous non-human races. Though, this then causes the prince to have a bit of a Hero Complex. When a situation involves or pertains to someone he cares for and is emotionally invested in, he’s generally a very impulsive and sensitive man that will end up following his feelings in the heat of the moment rather than his rationalized thoughts. Other than that, however, Dream’s quick at adapting to new situations and thinking on the spot, especially when placed under pressure. To add on, he’s fiercely protective and compassionate to those under his kingdom’s rule and is seen often interacting with the townsfolk in the Town Square, thus his subjects adore the kind prince wholeheartedly. In order to rise to his rightful place as King, he must venture outside the castle walls and vanquish countless magical non-human races, thus proving himself capable to his father. Subsequently along the way, Dream’s close minded beliefs will get upturned as he begins to discover not everything in his kingdom is as fair and just as he once thought. 

George | 20 | Changeling | Upperclass Tailor

George Pruitt is a fairly upper-class tailor born and raised in Somritas. Both of his parents are tailors, and he is one of the most skilled tailors in the city. Many members of royalty favor him and ask specifically sew their clothes for important events. He is Prince Dream's favorite tailor as well. His upbringing was regular and nothing strange happened, but around 14 years old, he started getting signs of magic. He withdrew from people and really only socialized with Dream, which is why they're so close. He tries to seem as human as possible, and hates that he's magical.

Niki | 18 | Human | Commoner

Niki lives in the northern Adrestia region in the kingdom of Somritas as a baker. She owns her own shop where she she sells breads, pastries, cookies, and the like. The unofficial hub of all mysterious strangers, Niki seems to know everyone and everything. While raised on the culture of magical non-humans being bad, her encounters throughout the years change her mind to be more open and welcome to everyone. She makes friends very easily and her shop is one of the most visited in the kingdom.

Techno | 19 | Cursed Human | Prince/Royalty

Technoblade is the prince of the kingdom of Strata, a kingdom in the Adrestia region and one that is allied to the kingdom of Somritas. He was cursed the night before his fifteenth birthday by an unknown intruder in the castle and was shunned by the general public in the kingdom because of his now ‘monstrous’ appearance. He left the kingdom even though the king and queen wanted him to stay and is now searching for someone to undo his curse, which brought him to Somritas. He stays out of the actual kingdom because he would be burned if he ever went inside due to his appearance, so he just camps out in the forest close to it and only goes to the very outskirts of the marketplace and the black market to find someone that can break the curse. Techno is extremely blunt and he’s not afraid to call someone out for being an idiot, but only when he’s comfortable with that person. He hates interaction with people that he doesn’t know and pretty much never talks to anyone unless they talk to him first. He kinda bounces around in different groups of people, but stays with Dream mostly.

Wilbur | 25 | Cursed Human | Outlaw

Wilbur was born in a family that practiced magic. One day, they were caught and the royalty put them up to be executed, but Wilbur able to escape. He would steal things on the streets and retreat to the woods at night. He did this for a couple of years, but when he was 21 he got caught and was scheduled for a public execution. He got one of his eyes removed but was able to escape by setting something on fire as a distraction. He retreated to the forest once again where he practiced witchcraft and lived somewhat peacefully. Then he met Tommy.

Fundy | 20 | Silver dragon-touched human | Traveling Healer

Fundy is a mysterious traveler that works as a healer for money, slipping in and out of towns and leaving little more than a healed patient or two and fleeting memories of him behind. He leaves little opportunity for anyone to get close, and he always carries a wooden fox mask.

Philza | Ealy 30s | Aasimar | Commoner

Phil lives outside of the kingdom, on the edge of a forest with his wife. Aside from tending to his animals and small farm he makes furniture for the more wealthy members of society. He’s an all around kind and genuine normal guy, he’s always willing to lend a helping hand. Sometimes though, when the light hits right, an ethereal glow seems to take form in the shape of a ring above his head. Despite being a regular ol' guy, rumors seem to follow him wherever he goes. Many stories spread about a winged figure slaying beasts either in traps or by their own sword, swooping out of the sky to defend people, leaving nothing left of once feared monsters. Sadly, absolutely none of the rumors are talking about him, couldn’t be. Phil’s just ordinary.

Eret | 20 | Cursed Human | Noble (Court member)

Eret is from a small town on the northern coast of Somritas. They was raised there for the first 17 years of their life surrounded by elves and magic users the entire time. It was a hidden safe haven for elves within the kingdom, a vast majority of its population being the magical creatures. The village was full of so much magic that it ended up causing the humans who lived alongside the elves to become magic sensors, hence why Eret is, well, a magic sensor. They ended up doing something, that something never being disclosed as Eret refuses to explain. It ended up with the high council of elves within the town to be LIVID. They became petty. They cursed him. They made the kid appear magical, ruining Eret’s humanity and forcing them to look similar to an elf with glowing eyes. But it backfired and destroyed their retinas, completely blinding them. So, fueled with the want for revenge, Eret turned on their village and ratted out the magical population. It just so happened to be that they ratted the village out to a royal court member. This gave them a pardon and an audience with the king who gave them an offer. They could help the king as a magic sensor and spy and continue to sniff out the magical congregations or they could burn with the village. Eret chose to stay alive, so they helped the royals torch the village.

[quinntamsin]

*Tosses up her pirate hat as she adjusts the cutlass tied at her waist. Her long captain's coat hang's off her shoulders.* One Piece is a sinfully good soul food of a show for me. I watch it when I'm feeling down and its one of the few Anime to actually make me cry with frustration and rage when I've watched it. i think its in part because of the fantastic level of character diversity and emotion found across the series.

Today it's time to talk about Water Seven and the Saga at Enies Lobby.

It's been later revealed that trans and LGBT characters exist in the series with painful examples early on and then clear evolution of Oda's work as he's progressed. One Piece much like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a series with a unique artstyle that often exists as a clear gate to people liking the story. Honestly, ignoring the art style which creates unique designs for each and every character. You have to face a massive archive of episodes or chapters to catch up.

Now however, I'm going to talk about Water Seven, and it's main villains, CIpher 9. Water Seven as the name suggests is a massive island dedicated to the largest collection of shipwright in the world. it was here that fishman master wright, Tom, constructed the water train and his apprentice Iceberg founded the Galley La company.

Set immediately after the Skypeia Saga, Water Seven sees a hard divided in the Strawhats just as they make it away from winning the Davy-Back Challenge from the Foxy Pirates. Both Chopper and Robin have become firmly established in the crew, though Robin herself still holds worry about eventually leaving. Just as they run into Water Seven they ask a Galley La wright to check out the Going Merry (the Caravel they won while defending the village of Syrup from the Black Cat Pirates). This investigate reveals that the Merry has suffered severe unrepeatable damage on her journey across the Eat Blue through the Paradise section of the Grand Line. Now the pirates face a divide as Usop decides to challenge Luffy over his decision to retire the Merry resulting in Usop leaving the crew for most of the Saga.

The Crew also encounters the Frank Family after the family decides to steal a large amount of cash the crew has earned in their adventures. After defeating the Frank Family, Iceberg, who was attacked by a mysterious assailants identifies the missing Nico Robin as one of the attackers. The story itself delves heavily into the back story of both Robin and Frank. Both of which feel completely alone in many respects for what they have done in the past. I'm going to skip my larger summary to discuss these two at length.

Robin is from the now obliterated island of Ohara, a place once known for it's learned people and guild of archeologists. At one point it was discovered that the Archeologists of Ohara could read the mysterious Poneglyphs, ancient records of the Lost Century of the world's history. Reading these glyphs is illegal under the rule of the World Government, who then decide to commit mass genocide by ordering a buster call on the entire island. A Buster Call essentially sends an entire fleet of powerful marine warships who proceed to bombard and blow apart every structure on the island. Any Devil Fruit users among the Officers including at least one Admiral participate in the mass slaughter and erasure of the island's populace and culture.

Robin being the sole survivor is sought by the WG as a loose end who must be eliminated. Anyone who speaks to her and learns what she knows in turn will be eliminated for learning the forbidden knowledge of the Poneglyphs.

Franky on the other hand is an orphan protege of the genius inventor and shipwright Tom. A fishman whose catch phrase "with gusto" inspired people to never give up in the face of depression. When Water Seven itself started to fall apart from a lack of economical prosperity he invented a literal ocean going train so it could gain new wealth and business. Tom himself also possess the blue prints for one of the ancient weapons, Pluton, a WMD capable of destroying the world. He was also the shipwright who crafted the ship for the infamous King of the Pirates, Gol D. Roger!

Franky's entire -existence- after Tom's death occurs because a leader of the WG's secret police, Cipher, decides to use his own experiments to massacre citizens of the town. It is also his possession of the pluton blueprints that will see him captured by CP9.

The Conclusion

If you are a radical at heart that hates corrupt government or you just want to see Luffy beat the shit out of smarmy asshole, this is one of the best early Sagas of One pIece. Water Seven is where all of the damage and confrontation caused by the Strawhats firmly gets them feared BY the World Government and sets the stage for them in the upcoming Thriller Bark Saga. If it weren't for their decision to save Robin and Franky neither would have remained with the crew later on. Nor would it have further cemented Luffy's status as one of the best ally's around.

[gospelofme]

The Bringer of Death

The clash between the two armies had been vicious. Men speared and impaled. Attempts made to pull the Queen off her horse. Those had failed. Her horse was a war horse trained by the finest horseman she knew. Her fighters knew how to work around his hooves, avoiding kicks and bucking. She jabbed at her opponents with her spear, all the while looking for her target. The enemy king lingered back. Of course he did. It began to rain, the droplets of water hitting the plate armor with a pattering sound. It started off steady, but she didn’t care if it intensified.

She slammed the sole of her boot into the faces of those who tried yet again to de-horse her. She looked back up at her target. He glared down at her, his horse shifting under him in a bored manner. She raised her spear high over her head,

“Form up!” She yelled to her men. They formed regimented lines, confusing the enemy to still tried to fight them. Those with shields protected those without by making a shield wall along either sides of the lines. Swords and spears darted out between openings at their attackers. Her men had gone silent, which unnerved the enemy. Then the ground began to tremble, lightly at first, and then more fierce. She could tell by the looks on the faces of the enemy fighters, they were unsure.

The offending king frowned. What was this witch doing? His stallion began to get anxious as the thunder came closer. But something was off about this thunder, it didn’t sound right.

“Wait!” He turned to his advisor, something clicking in his mind.

“You said she had a cavalry called the Wings of Death…”

“Death’s Wings.” His General corrected.

“Then where…”

Realization dawned seconds too late as a cavalry of 60 horsemen and women explode from the forests on either side of the field. 30 on the left. 30 on the right. The offending king watched as they flowed onto the battlefield like a dark wave, running down his fighters. The lead horses had 4 foot long spears attached to their breastplates. The fighters who didn’t run were either impaled and carried off or trampled. He looked back at the dark witch atop her demonic creature. He couldn’t see her face but he knew she was smiling.

And smiling she was. As soon as her cavalry departed, the heavens opened up and rain fell in heavy droplets. Angry dark clouds swirled overhead and strong gusts of wind blew the horsehair plume on her helmet back.

She dismounted, not taking her eyes off her target.

“My Queen?” Her General asked, she knew he preferred her horsed. Not out of fear for her safety, but because it made it easier to see her. He had to remain at her side at all times. Should she fall, he was the next in charge of the battle.

“Time to end this.” She replied quietly. Her General nodded.

Her husband had offered him a peace deal. No lands or people, but he did offer an alliance in battle should that king need it. The enemy had responded by burning a village to ash that night. Her husband had sent the glow of the flames and the smoke from the balcony of their bedchamber.

He had sprinted down the corridor and in moments was armored, horsed, and charging with 30 horsed knights towards the flames. Her Bearer of Mercy rushed to save his people. But he had arrived too late. A day later, her beloved had returned, followed by the few survivors. His golden armor smudged with ash. The setting sun’s rays shining through the blades arranged on his helmet in a sunburst spike design. It gave him a godly appearance, but his shoulders were slumped and his head low. He had wept that evening, she held him, vowing vengeance. They had agreed after discussing with their advisors where to house the survivors.

Now those innocent victims, those 20 of the 30 residents. Those farmers and artisans. Now they would be avenged. The offending king was charging at her finally. She was ready. Her fighters were making quick work of their enemy. She watched the man as he rode towards her, the rain pounded on her armor, nearly drowning out the sound of her pulse in her ears. Adrenaline was speeding through her veins.

The offending king extended his arm, a morning star was held in his hand. The spiked ball on the end swaying. She could see he had a sword as well. She side stepped his steed and ducked his swing at the last minute, slapping his horse’s rear with the end of her spear. The animal startled and swung around, sliding in the mud. Her enemy lost his balance by the horse stumbling and bucking, he fell to the ground. His horse ran. She made a note to look for the animal later, his warhorse would make a nice trophy.

She watched the man get to his feet, which he accomplished faster that she expected. Her General was already engaged in battle with his. She plunged the butt of her spear into the mud and drew the crossed swords on her back. He swung the morning star, she dodged. The wind and rain swirled around them, thunder clapped above as lightening struck a nearby tree top simultaneously. The tree exploded. Wood splinters were flung far and landed around them.

She was highly trained with duel swords and moving in full armor was no issue for her. She had muscle from a lifetime of training. She sacrificed one of her swords to disarm him of the morning star, weapons spiraling off. She drew her spare sword, as did he. Even though he was outmatched weapon-wise, he still put up a vicious fight. His hits landed hard on her armor, but the metal and chainmail did it’s job. She’d have some serious bruising later.

Both fighters were soon covered in mud, her target’s golden metal now brown. She stepped back, her foot sliding. She went down on one knee, her opponent seeing his moment. He swung his sword up, she dropped one sword and grabbed a fallen shield and held it up. The sword slammed on the leather covered metal with a dull clang. Her General heard it and turned to see his Queen needed him. Her sword blade couldn’t find an opening in his armor and the shield was unlikely to withstand anymore hits.

The General’s eyes landed on his Queen’s spear and rushed to grab it. He signaled her with a distinct whistle. She dropped her sword and held her hand out and caught the spear. She saw the enemy king’s eyes widen through the slit in his helmet as she drove her spear tip between his plates and through the chainmail. He didn’t say a word, he just grabbed her shoulder. She let out a war cry, her scream being echoed by her fighters. The enemy succumbed to his wound.

She turned her back on him as he slid down the spear pole slowly, slumping into the mud. She had led her fighters onto the field and now she’d lead them off.

It had been a week since she had seen her beloved. A week to travel here. A battle that had lasted all day, the sun was setting now. It will be over a week back with wounded in tow, but she wasn’t leaving a single one of her fighters on the field. All would be returning. Living, wounded, and dead.

Part 1

Tag list

@jgvfhl @crc-general-orin @halzore @escapedthesarlacc @eyecandyeoz @thatonegreyghost @kungfuslipper @leias-left-hair-bun

[frightfurtabby]

HimiKiyo Week 2021: Day 1- Creeping Darkness

//HimiKiyo Week 2021 is finally here! Took a little bit tonight to finalize edits and come up with a title. Look forward to more each day for the next week~

I’m proud, this is one of my longest singlechapter  fics ever if not the longest

Links to other Platforms:

Amino: https://aminoapps.com/c/danganronpa/page/blog/himikiyo-week-2021-day-1/5B58_R2MsVulaQEnXkXVBzYlGjd3mXnP3Z

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34119466

The seaside village Himiko moved out to was more out of the way  than the usual cities and suburbs. Apparently, her mentor couldn’t come. It was going to be a pain being out in that little house all alone. Who knows, maybe he’d sent another student of his the same kind of message?

To her disappointment there wasn’t anyone else, still not a single other apprentice known to her. She decided that after not doing anything yesterday but unpacking and eating and sleeping she would go over to the shrine marked on the local map. If nothing else she could pray for good luck before really getting down to working. 

The course of this assignment and her whole life changed the moment she saw that strange figure at the offerings box while nobody else was around. They wore a long green kimono with beautiful dark hair almost matching that outfit in length. They looked to be glowing ethereally, with pale white skin akin to a porcelain doll. 

Their hand was in the offerings box. At first she assumed they must be giving their own prayers and as such stayed back so as to not intrude. She noticed then that the figure was taking something *out* of the offerings box and that’s when she wondered if they were a thief. 

“Fret not, these offerings are for me, dear human.” a voice came to her, seeming at first separate from the figure still several feet ahead. Someone addressing a person as “human” and saying it was their offering… She’d never seen a kami before, but that was the sole explanation that made everything make sense about them.

“Then you’re a kami?” she asked, quirking her eyebrow. 

“That I am, I am called Shinguji. This family name refers to residing here, at the True Temple. My given name Korekiyo means just and pure”

“I-it’s a beautiful…” The mage was torn in half between the word ‘name’ and the word ‘place.’ The brook not far behind the pair was babbling audibly and birds were chirping. The water went past the trees and out to the river, which fed it almost directly into the ocean. 

Even if something wicked this way was coming there was nothing yet to taint the natural beauty. She wasn’t sure if it would even be able to with a keeper this pretty.

“A beautiful what?” The spirit gently prodded her with the question. They had noticed her biting her lip in uncertainty.

“Name, your name is pretty. Uhh, and I’m…” she was too flustered to easily find any of the necessary words. 

“You are Yumeno Himiko.”

“So you knew that already?” It was not that surprising in hindsight, but in that moment she was caught off guard, focusing on trying not to be so tense in their presence like she had been up to that point. She worried she was giving off the wrong message.

“I intuited it, but I don’t blame you for being surprised. Most humans think of us Kami as mythology, but I’ve known these old figures, and dealt with many creatures as my neighbors in my centuries of life.”

“In that case then are you able to intuit why I’m here?” The mage tried hard not to sound too much like a schoolgirl talking to her popular crush. 

“I could. It would be easier if you told me. Whatever it is, you seem particularly stressed out by it.” They tilted their head slightly, a very human gesture, and it was clear they were reading deeper. Either humans had gotten it from the ancient gods or vice-versa. One of those things nobody would ever be able to remember the origin of.

It was better to answer the question than get too off track wondering about that. 

“Well, my master who is a magician told me there was something that was going to go wrong here. He gave me the mission to stop it.”

It was Kiyo’s turn to be concerned. 

“Well, I have been given whispers that a nasty yokai is approaching this land. It comes from the far north and wishes to sap power for itself. Very few claiming to be survivors of this have shown up, and we’re all so isolated these days...”

That was a bad sign. 

“Is it because of us?” If her master had worried so much about it then there was no doubt in her mind that this thing would be going after humans if it hadn’t already started.

“Not all of you, but some who are greedy have broken many natural connections and scattered the so-called mythical creatures and spirits away. In a way it’s beautiful, the circle of life even. Although, it is believed perhaps negative energy has attracted this beast from its home and onto its rampaging path.”

A realization hit her. In her research she found that even things that you would not expect to have a soul or a consciousness did at least have the same kind of natural energy as things that did. So objects and anything/everything else with a soul would be susceptible to producing negative energy. 

“So it's a cycle of things feeding into it.”

“Yes. I fear if it gets to a certain point it’ll have enough momentum that there will be no stopping it. So you should think about what you will do to face the possibility.”

Something about those words felt familiar. Even though it was a serious topic, Himiko was comforted. 

“And you need someone like me to stand a chance?”

“The more the merrier, of course. There are things even I may have missed and for that you can be an extra set of eyes and ears. We’re going to train and prepare.”

The rest of that afternoon was spent, at first guided by Kiyo and by the end on her own, getting more used to the area and learning some specific landmarks. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Starting the following day, Himiko started up a routine to come back every day, which would last for several months. Each day she learned new things about the old times that had only ever been guessed about from artifacts. She learned that even Kami had a cutoff point in memory, even if it did happen to be thousands of years stronger than mortals. The only truly omnipotent beings were those that had created earth eons ago, who were as elusive as ever. 

She also trained. Oh, how wonderful it was to train again. And with a more formidable opponent than most people  she would ever encounter normally. After each session she was told more about the species of yokai, and which were more likely to be dangerous foes that needed preparation for.

They would pray and make wishes for having strength and safety at the lucky rock on the path along the brooks. Kiyo allowed Himiko to take and keep a bit of power from it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It happened when she thought it was going to be just another day of what they had been doing. It was not. 

There was something off in the air. And it wasn’t just the dead trees, those were normal for winter. What wasn’t normal was the small patches of rot in them already, the rot had even spread to the grass and other plants on the ground. There was a trail of it and it reeked of a nasty yokai. A being only interested in death and destruction. 

Even worse was that Kiyo was nowhere to be found. They had made a game plan about that, Himiko was to check somewhere inside the shrine in order to find clues. Inside the prayer chamber proper it was a mess just like it would be in the case of any other type of break in. The rot hadn't set in because the room was blessed and was better able to resist, but there was a distinct trail of slime that showed its movement and the room.

She could picture Kiyo weaving around it and dodging attacks to have a chance to hit back at it. The fight had torn up the screens and the ancient art it depicted, and even punctured holes in the inner walls and flooring. An extra band of beads like one Kiyo would often wear was left behind. The signal was received.

Something wasn’t right, however. A presence that was too strong to be explained by the evil residue. It seemed like what they were working against had minions left behind, for the exact reason that someone like her was in the area and had to be stopped. The question was how many were there?

Five of them came up from either the ground or one of the holes puncturing the walls, one right before her and four circling around, forming seemingly out of the shadows and the goo. They quickly solidified into dark shapes that were much like werewolves, though she recognized among them different animal traits expressed. One even had bunny-esque lop ears. 

Himiko took out her wand and started muttering some spells under her breath, making a broad sweeping motion to keep all at bay. The one closest was pushed back and stumbled in surprise. Trying to charge her led to an acrobatic maneuver: it leapt over onto its back and she whipped out a stage magician-like string of handkerchiefs and pulled it up to start choking the beast out.

They surprisingly weren’t as vicious as she’d imagined from how each of them had shown up. It couldn’t do any of its special moves. Unfortunately, its friends could, and they did. They rushed and she let go for a moment, tripping up one and using its momentum in a way it crashed into the first one before it could recover.  

Swinging off it allowed her to jump up and kick a third before lashing a whip of electricity from her wand, yanking the fourth and gaining momentum by bouncing off it with a drop kick right about where the lungs were.

Watching them struggle, she realized they had once been animal spirits for sure, only to have been corrupted. They weren’t just something conjured by their boss.

Hesitation for even one second almost cost her when one swiped claws, just barely missing her and taking her hat instead. The advantage of being shorter than the monsters was they’d miss like that. And much like the stage magic she pretended to use in daily life, the hat was spring-loaded with some friends for them to play with. A magic box that was shattered by the attack let out doves of magical energy that distracted each as well as a jack-in-the-box dummy that took her place as a target for just long enough to take one out.

Even though the trick had been figured out, she could tell from their expressions changing the exact instant of the realization there wasn’t much the poor things could do when the tide had been turned. The rest of them were dispatched with a quick volley of attack spells. She sprinted out, conjuring another hat loaded with a similar trick from her storage at home, just in case. It was more physically exhausting than mana draining so she borrowed from her reserve to recover breath and catch up sooner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She crossed her fingers that those things weren’t going to be much more of a problem on the way over. The trail grew cold on her about a dozen times already the past 4 days but each time she doubled back to a previous checkpoint, there was another sign she’d accidentally glossed over. Each time something was left in an obscure place: a back alley or a bush only to be dragged out by a cat, occasionally right to her. 

Whether it was an order from Kiyo or someone else, she wasn’t sure, but all the help was appreciated. 

It seemed to be that when it took someone, it had to complete a loop back home. It was much faster than she could follow on foot. So the mage took to various buses and trains when she needed to. 

Himiko hadn’t slept in nearly 24 hours by the 4th night, and all the past nights had been similarly lacking in rest. She’d set alarms to go off within a few hours of very scattered naps so she’d at least run decently when it finally came down to it.

She snuck out of an inn somewhere very rural and very cold in the northern reaches of Hokkaido. She could just feel the cave system nearby was definitely the origin point of the attacker. 

Before she could even begin the climb upwards, an upright, tall figure came barrelling down in her direction, diving from above off of a rock and gliding down gracefully, coughing and panting, falling to their knees after the taxing stunt. That fall easily could have killed a human, plus most people couldn’t fly without magical objects.

“We need to get back up there, hurry!”

“Kiyo!” 

However, before the first shape could speak further they were interrupted from behind Himiko. Just a few feet downhill a second Kiyo was standing. 

“Don’t Himiko! That thing can become other entities!”

The first Kiyo to arrive chuckled and shook their head. “Well, that’s true, clever of you to tell her first.” A deep sigh later,  they continued. “Shame I’ve heard of that little trick before and prepared something for this kind of thing.”

“A double cross is it?” the second Kiyo asked. “It’s quite a claim you have there, being the real me, having planned for your own deception.”

Whichever Kiyo was the real one, it was hard to tell at first. The two auras had been in close proximity so a mage in training would have a hard time pulling apart which was which. Then the first Kiyo cleared their throat again.

“Well then, I have a proposition.” they said, turning their attention back to Himiko. “Yumeno Himiko should be able to ask a question, then see how both of us answer, and she’ll know which of us is real.”

“Of course, after spending so long with me she’s bound to know the real one. I’d be crazy to decline,” the beast said.

Kiyo knew this thing would do anything to avoid being pegged as suspicious. It was a double bind for the beast. The only way this was ending was fighting it. This was part of that plan. Delaying it just a tad until the right time. 

Himiko cleared her throat, glancing between the two one more time before she closed her eyes. It was nerve wracking but as long as it wanted to not out itself, the yokai would never blindside attack her. 

“My question is very simple: What is it that I was training to do?” 

The creature nodded. “Understood. This one is easy. We were going to stop the one who’s taken all those others and stop them from taking enough power for its plan.” It turned to Kiyo, giving a taunting glare. “And before the monster tries any trickery, to be specific, we were practicing your magic and got you a mana boost. It’ll help the new technique not be so taxing on you.”

That was almost entirely correct. Kiyo knew then their suspicion was right and something in the area had been spying and relayed all its gathered information back to prepare this creature for any threats that may spring up. That’s what attacked first, the helpers that Himiko had to fend off to get here.   

“Alright. My turn.” Kiyo remained characteristically calm face to face. “We were training. So I don’t have to repeat what the other me said, I’ll agree. However, there was something missing from that answer.”

“Missing? What, pray tell, did I miss?”

“The mana boost served as a test to see if you were already there. And I felt something that may have been a minion performing recon.” Emphasis on the last word. That was something Kiyo had been anticipating. Before they had been taken, she was given a code word. They only mentioned it to her in a whisper on the day that they felt a presence leave to the north with no other context. ‘Recon’ was that word. 

Eye contact was made, Himiko gave a slight nod to show that she understood and it was off to the races. She went on ahead, up one path leaving the Kiyos behind. It was a signal to the real Korekiyo. And so, the two fought again, much like they had when the faker had invaded the temple and kidnapped them to try and complete the ritual.  

They weaved in and out, sometimes further to one side away from Himiko and her destination when Kiyo was having their way and closer, forcing her to duck and use repulsion spells to avoid being caught up in the scuffle. Kiyo’s attacks looked like needles when they flew at their enemy, so she even gave those attacks a boost. She heard the cries of anger and pain when one managed to hit just the right place.

The yokai was a resilient one though, it would just pluck them right out and fire back energy attacks of their own. One of them hit Kiyo and sent them tumbling back down the mountain some distance, dropping several dozen feet to a thud.

They got back up almost instantly, knowing how much danger the girl ahead was in, and pulled out a pair of scythe to quickly dig into the mountain’s side and climb up to a point where they could launch up and gain enough momentum to catch up right behind that yokai.

Faster than ever, Himiko ran. It seemed being tired was starting to slow both down the further up the mountain the climb went. She dove and rolled right into the cave and the faker caught up, confirming even further that it was the yokai when it dove to try and stop her from entering, the disguise melting away grotesquely. She didn’t even have time to be offended at it ruining and distorting those beautiful features because of how fast it barrelled back into the base.

All she could do was point her wand directly in its face and say the words. Like a bullet, red light with a pointed tip struck right through an already gaping hole that showed the black flame-like matter that was its heart. The evil and corrupt soul was pierced.

It could barely re-shape itself anymore with its wounds. It stared at her with half its true features and half rippling nothingness as the face it wore sloughed off and dissipated like a puddle under sunlight. Even the animal-like maw began falling off, fangs first. 

Then Kiyo wrestled it from behind and wrapped it in chains of light. It was likely already dying. But part of its corrupt nature would linger in this spot if it was not sealed and purified.

“What no! Nooooo”. It started shrieking when the shock of being blindsided had finally worn off and it found itself in chains, being dragged away towards the cave’s inner chamber. It was powerless to do anything but watch these interlopers ruin everything.

“Unfair, unfair, unfaaiiiiir.” Most of the thrashing came in the form of weak kicks. It was truly pitiful for something that had beaten kami before. . 

“What a childish temper tantrum.” Kiyo scoffed at it, only briefly turning a shoulder to pay it any mind as they continued towards the end of the mission. It was so mad, and nipped away trying to bite its captor in spite of there being no chance of succeeding now. . 

Himiko came to a strange spot on the back wall and Kiyo lifted the beast over their shoulders and used its paw to unlock a big room full of artifacts, a bunch of seals on them to keep its victims contained. Many tomes of black magic and scribbles showcased a plot to steal power from all the shrine deities to build a “Domain of Darkness”. In which it plotted to prevent the sun from ever rising above Japan, and the whole planet after long enough, ever again. This would remove power from any being who got magic from natural resources and would kill billions of mortals. 

Himiko looked at the plans and laughed nervously, sweating a bit. 

“So um… you don’t think that this would have worked?” she asked, desperately wanting this to just be the pipe dream of an arrogant monstrosity.

“Absolutely not. I’m by no means the strongest of my kind, and you’re still training. It took prisoners, yes, but this is delusional. We won in part because we were underestimated. That kind of fatal mistake would have doomed this plan eventually.”

A sad whimpering came from it, laying on the ground in defeat.

Himiko was tasked to watch over it while Kiyo performed the unsealing rituals. Each one she spared glances at, admiring them from her spot in the center of the room. She could almost feel a tinge of jealousy among the defeat and anger emanating from their felled foe. It was way more interesting watching Kiyo work and chat with each spirit that was freed. Each time they agreed instantly to help get the rest out, which hastened the process. 

Each one helped before some left to make sure their shrines were fine. The remainder, led by Kiyo, thanked Himiko. Their hands warm around hers. Kiyo felt every little soft spot on her hands and even some slight callusing, presumably from the fighting. Even those bits were lovely. 

“You can go home now. It’s getting late but we need to stay for now. I will return to you with the important news.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Himiko got home first, since that was decided as the meeting place. It was far enough from the shrine that it wouldn’t be immediately obvious if that entity came back for another round. She got on her knees in front of her bed, elbows firmly leaning into the mattress so she could clasp and pray. She was exhausted. 

“Please let it be gone once and for all.” She trusted Kiyo could do that much.

Then she was awoken by footsteps and sat upright to who was joining her. Her door had opened and glowing in the moonlight, Kiyo came in, closing the door behind them. 

“I have seen to it that this chapter is done.” The spirit held a hand to her cheek and gently brushed a long finger across part of her face. “Thank you, your journey has only truly just begun but you can relax for now.”

Himiko was flushed a bright red. 

“I was struck by your beauty from the moment that I walked to your shrine.” Her heart raced. They’d touched a couple times by now but this was the most breathtaking and close. The most intimate. She raised a hand of her own and touched Kiyo’s arm gently.

A soft smile spread on the spirit’s lips. “Oh, I could tell. I could also tell that there was a pull here. Some call I needed to answer for you and it's only become more clear that there was more to it than that.”

Time felt like it slowed down to a stop as the two maintained soft eye contact.

Then they kissed her. A warmth emanated from them, pulsing like a heartbeat. 

“More to it?” she asked, even though the kiss gave her a very good idea of what they were going to tell her next. 

“I love you. And so… I want it to actually be *our* journey.” They heavily emphasized the word indicating that the adventure would be shared. It already was, it had been since the day she came to this place.

“Would it really be okay? For you to leave your shrine I mean. When it comes time for that.” 

“No worries about that, I can find someone for that when that’s necessary.”

[biznichwrites]

Kinktober 12: ABO, Degradation, Collaring, Cock Warning.

And yes. I’m going to make it a point to do all 4. This turned out far longer than I intended, which is why it’s a day late. 

AU where Giyuu is a God of fertility, which someone in the Discord came up with. Thank you for letting me use the idea! 💙

The wolf God sat within his shrine, idly looking through the offerings left during the day by the humans of the village below. It was always the same thing - rice, sake, fried tofu. While he was happy the humans celebrated him, he was also bored of these gifts. A fox spirit came to join him at the altar, sniffing around at food left by the townspeople.

“Same thing as usual, Sabito.” the gods hand rested atop the foxes head, stroking the peach fur. “It’s been a while since we received anything of variety from the humans. Perhaps they are saving for the festival?”

—————————–

The festival was supposed to be fun they said. Make a minor offering to the gods as a whole village they said. Dress nicely for our gods so we may have a plentiful harvest and blessed pregnancies they said.

What lies. The harvest was poor last year and was looking to be just as pitiful, if not worse, this year as well. Of course the villagers panicked, why wouldn’t they? Starvation was looking to be their only option unless they received divine intervention.

Which is how you ended up wrapped in rope and left on a flat stone near the shrine of the wolf God that watched over your small town. You had fought at first but somehow everyone viewed you as a worthy sacrifice, not willing to be one themselves. With a sigh of defeat you curled your body into yourself and accepted your life ended here.

—————————

The wolf demon didn’t leave his temple for the village. How could he? Mating season has begun and he had entered fully into rutt. The humans never seemed to understand, always wanting such big feats without giving something in return.

A bark from his fox companion stirred him from his thoughts. Immediately he could smell the humans near to his shrine. Did they really need to come here? He was nearly at the point of attacking out of rage until a particular scent hit him.

A woman? Usually men were the only ones that came here. Of course she was surrounded by men, but he waited in silence, having Sabito look at the situation and report back to him.

Though it was strange. A human woman hadn’t visited in years. What were they planning?

——————–

As night fell you were unsure if the God you prayed to was even real. Would he come eat you or would you face a slow death in his rock? What was strange was the fleeting fox, so odd in color. You have heard of red foxes, but never one so… Peach toned. Perhaps it was the changing of coats? Though that didn’t explain how the animal seemed to glow as the sun set.

Your thoughts were interrupted by rustling of clothing in the distance. Even though you couldn’t move your body well, your head functioned well enough to chance a glance at the sound. A man, someone you’d never seen before in your small village, padded from the entrance of the shrine towards you.

As he grew closer it was obvious he was beautiful, even in an otherworldly way. Hair blacker than the night sky, eyes that glittered like gems you had only heard about, eyes that were blue like the sky during the setting sun, skin so pale and unblemished it couldn’t belong to a human. Was this the God you were gifted to? The telltale signs he wasn’t human were the fluffy black ears atop his head, looking eerily similar to the wolves your village feared.

“Sabito, keep watch.” The fox was quick to obey the order, running into the forrest with fluidity that could only be divine. Your eyes looked up at the man, taking in the fact you loved to see a God, even if you didn’t live much longer.

The tremble setting into your body couldn’t be helped, you were terrified after all. Was he going to cut you open? Eat you alive? Make you a bloody sacrifice? Fear only mounted as he hovered over you, caging your already tied body against the rock.

Your body jolted as he pressed his nose to your neck and inhaled deeply. A hum resounded through his body before he continued further, pressing his nose to your hair. What was he doing?

To him you smelled heavenly, so sweet and yet with a feminine musk. His heightened sense of smell during his rut had told him you were female, but he was faced with the need for more. He wondered if the villagers knew you were ovulating or just picked the prettiest girl in the village. Either way, this was the best gift they had given him in centuries. He would be sure to savor you.

Still seeing you tied up didn’t help. It held your clothing tight and accentuated your form, particularly your breasts. Unconsciously his tail flickered around behind him as his face moved to your chest, licking the curve of your breast to feel the bud of your nipple catch on his tongue. Immediately he focused on the peaked nipple, sucking and nibbling it through the fabric of your kimono.

You were so confused. How were you supposed to feel good during a sacrifice? Was this normal? Either way you would take this over death. Bring touched by a handsome man, or rather God, was much preferable to being eaten alive. The decision to enjoy this what it was worth echoed within your head. Those villagers wouldn’t get their way, you wouldn’t die tonight.

The same sat up, a string of saliva connecting him to your breast until it broke. Clawed hands smoothed over your body, mapping your curves before settling along your thighs. The man let out a huff of irritation seeing their had tied your legs together as well. Even to him it was a bit much. With his claws he tore through the ropes, only leaving one around your neck as the sole survivor.

With your arms free you shifted to lay more comfortably under the man as he wasted no time throwing the shredded rope to the side. It was a relief to be able to breathe easily again without the bindings restricting your air intake.

He wasn’t sure if it was his rut or is brain speaking to him, but you were the most beautiful human he had ever laid eyes on. Breeding you was going to be a treat. Once you were clear of the rope, the bits of what was left on the rock and ground around you, he pulled your kimono open to leave you bare beneath him.

Your scent was so much stronger that it left him in a high. His mouth latched to your neck, sucking and licking from the curve along your shoulder to your ear. As he nibbled your earlobe you could hear his heavy breathing, the small grunts and groans he made as he covered on side of you neck with marks of his own. Timidly your hands lifted, tentatively coming to rest along the back of his neck and shoulder.

The soft fur of his wolf ear pressed against your cheek, almost making you laugh at the cuteness of it compared to his lewd actions. Perhaps it was just the tension of death leaving you, but you didn’t mind the turn of events. It all felt so nice, like he fit against you just right. You pet his ears as his face was buried in your neck.

There was a shift in his body language, from being stiff and commanding to something… tender. Soft fur shifted over your legs and you realized it was his tail that happened to be hidden below the layers of his kimono. His lips trailed from your jaw to your lips, sealing his own against yours in a kiss. Soon enough gentle presses of his lips turned into lip biting that devolved to your tongues dancing together.

He pulled back swiftly with a growl, looking down at you with iridescent eyes that glowed in the moonlight. A clawed hand found the rope tied around you neck a tugged, forcing you to follow him off the rock and into the temple. It seemed more alive with him inside of it, or maybe that was just the divinity rolling off of him.

“Giyuu.” He turned to you, tugging your makeshift collar until you were pressed against him. At first you were lost but realized that was his name. What a way to meet a God. A hand tangled in your hair, tugging your head back to leave your neck exposed. A whimper left your throat at the action but you didn’t fight it.

He found himself drowning in the feeling of you, loving how pliable and submissive you were, doing as he wished without a complaint. While holding your head still he pushed your kimono from your frame. A dusting of red covered your cheeks as he exposed your body to his hungry eyes. He wasn’t shy to touch you, his free hand smoothing over your body to grope at the curves your form offered.

He was sure he wanted to keep you. At the very least he can have you there to take care of his physical needs and entertain him through his monotonous days. The God urged you to the floor by tugging your collar and hair backwards and you bent to his will without question. Once on the ground he wasn’t shy about touching you. His fingers took in the curve of your bare breasts, circling his hands around them before pushing his fingers together to pinch your nipples.

It was enthralling how your moaned, how your body trembled and your hips bucked. His focused shifted to your legs and what lied between them, noticing how strong your scent had become. Your body responded so well, like it wanted him to fuck and breed you. As he shifted lower he held your hips, pushing himself between your legs to reveal yourself to him.

A growl echoed in the room. You looked so good he couldn’t contain his excitement. It was just so pretty, your pussy, as well as your thighs, glistening with your slick that threatened to drip from your core. Hands held your thighs open as his tongue ran along the soft flesh, trailing from the inside of your knee to your need.

He knew you needed him, just like he needed you, and pulled the lips of your pussy apart to take you in. So pink, so wet, so delicious. Without a wasted moment his mouth attached to your core, licking and sucking hard. You couldn’t stop your hips from rolling up against his face, but he didn’t seem to mind it as your slick covered his lips and chin. As he licked you his tongue traced over your clit, loving how you squirmed and whimpered for him as your hands buried themselves in his hair.

Every moan falling from your lips motivated him, made him press further to take in your reactions. He knew human women loved the bud above their entrance played with, but he wasn’t prepared for how you rolled your hips into his mouth. With a groan of his own his lips sealed around you clit, sucking tenderly while the tip of his tongue flicked the sensitive tip.

Your thighs closed around his head as you grew closer to your peak, keeping him in place as the coil within your tightened. Still he shifted his movements, pushing his tongue within you to lick at your slick walls. A pitiful cry pulled into way from you as your body trembled and the heat within you grew hotter and hotter before it burst.

“Giyuu!” Such a lewd cry of his name sent his rut into full swing, licking into your cunt without mercy, even after you had cum. Your trembles and shakes had calmed, leaving you so soft and limp. You took in a huge gulp of air, heaving for breath as you laid tirely on the floor before him.

The God shed his clothing, leaving him just as naked as you were. Such a handsome body shouldn’t be allowed, especially such a perfect dick. So thick, long enough to reach the parts within you that cried for attention, such a pretty color. It all renewed your want. He wasted no time wrapping your legs around him and at his urging you locked your feet behind him, leaving your toes brushing against the black fur at the base of his tail.

With your legs as leverage you pressed your core to his length, watching as the tip of his length was exposed between your lower lips while you coated him with your cum. The question of your willingness to mate with him was answered.

“So needy, like a whore…” He loved the blush that turned from pink to red on your cheeks. Still he didn’t give you what you wanted, not fully, deciding to return your teasing. His hips pressed into yours, the head of his dick rubbing against your clit as he rolled his hips, leaving his hands to pinch your nipples again. The yelp of pleasure was so beautiful to his ears, he even tilted them to hear you more clearly. He wanted to listen to it forever.

“Pitiful human… Do you want it?” The sway of his tail gave away his excitement, though his pulsing, flushed cock said just as much. He came to hover over you, his face so close to your own as his hips pressed more snugly to your own.

“Yes, please.” A flick of his ear was your only answer, and despite he aroused expression you could tell he wanted more. “Please, Giyuu, I need you.” Yet he still didn’t fill you, but he looked entertained. With a huff your eyes shut and head rolled back, unable to face him as embarrassment consumed you. “Please fuck me, Giyuu. Please, please, please I need it.”

“As you wish.” One hand slipped behind your head, urging you to look up at him rather than away, the other aligning his cock with your entrance. He wasn’t shy to trace the head of his length over your pussy lips, nudging the tip over your clit, circling your entrance and prodding just enough to make you whine.

“Look at me while I breed you.” At his command your eyes trained to his as his length pushed into you, reaching areas within you that you didn’t know existed. It didn’t leave you with enough time to even consider what he said. Breeding? Was this his mating season? Really all that you could focus on were those deep blue eyes, gazing at you as he bottomed out, making you sigh in pleasure at the full feeling within your core.

“You feel good for a human.” A testing roll on his hips followed and you could feel every ridge and vein on his length. You couldn’t help the quiet moan that slipped from your lips, not that he minded hearing your please. After a few teasing pushes he found a spot that made your legs tremble just so lightly, but it was all he needed to know. Pulling back gently he stroked your clit with the pad of his thumb before snapping his hips hard, abusing the tender spot within you.

“My pitiful, little human likes this? You like being fucked by your God?” The nods answered him, as well as your breathless whimpers. “Do you think you’ve earned my knot?”

The look of pleasure mixed with confusion was delightful for him. He could surprise you and that made things even sweeter. But as it stood you were clenching in him far too tightly to even be able to push his knot in without hurting you. It didn’t deter him though, if anything he redoubled his efforts of pleasing you.

His clawed hands moved your legs from his hips to over his shoulders. Such a minor change had you shaking below him as he pushed in deeper but he wasn’t done yet. He moved over you, laying his forehead against yours while folding you in half to take him in.

“You look so pretty in a breeding press.” The position left his hands free as he rested on his elbows and he planned to use that to his advantage. One hand dove into your hair, wrapping the locks around his fingers and tugging. His free hand slipped under your rope collar to apply pressure, just enough to turn your face a pretty flushed hue of pink. Choked moans graced the air before him but he knew he needed you to cum before he lost his control.

He humped you, fast and deep. He knew he should do more, but the press of the entrance of your womb to the tip of his length called upon his need to mate. It was pleasant to see how much you enjoyed it, how you shook below him as he pressed into spots you never imagined would bring pleasure. Unconsciously your arms circled him, nails digging into the flesh of his shoulder blades as you body clench around him.

“That’s it, be a good brood and cum for me.” He felt your body shift, rolling your hips into his as your moans filled the temple. His hand on your throat tightened as you eyes closed. “Look at me when you cum, whore.”

It was all you needed to be sent into an earth shattering orgasm. His blue eyes were so commanding, his form unyielding as he humped you through your release. The fluttering of your inner muscles was interrupted by a new feeling, alarming as it was pleasurable. Your entrance stretched until it swallowed what was pressed into it,.the process blending pain and pleasure.

“For a human you took an Alpha’s knot so well.” the hand on your throat eased it’s hold, letting you breathe freely as you walls clenched around what you assumed to be his knot. His breathing was ragged and despite being locked within you and buried to your deepest depths he still humped you.

You sounded unreal to yourself, the cries of pleasure so intense you couldn’t imagine feeling such a sensation in your life. The head of his cock was snug against your cervix, the pressure and gentle variations from his humping pushing you to cum again so soon after your last release.

“What a dirty girl, getting off on being bred.” The comment was followed by a deep groan. A hand yanked your head to the side, leaving your neck exposed to him. Just knowing he was in control pushed you to the edge as his lips teased the marks he left along your neck earlier.

“ Just like an omega, so needy and submissive.” With that he bit into your neck, holding you perfectly still as pain washed over you. Despite the pain your climax rushed over you, making your body shake violently below him as you sang broken moans for the God. The fluttering of your walls caused his release as well. Cum painted your insides as his body trembled, but his strong hands held your shaken forms together as the subsiding clenching of your inside eased him through.

His teeth released your neck, leaving a bruise and smears of blood behind. While he knew you were a fucked mess, in a daze and completely exhausted, he couldn’t help but smile down at you. The God kissed the bite mark on your neck, licking any blood off your skin.

“You look so beautiful with my mark on you.” You eyes, as glazed over as they were, looked up to his. Hands smoothed over your hair, still keeping it from the bite to avoid any issues as it healed. Even as you fell asleep and his knot subsided he stayed within you, enjoying your warmth as he laid on you soft body. Tenderly he kissed the bonding mark, smiling as your light twitch during sleep at the contact.

He had to admit, his new mate was the best gift the humans had given him.

[littlemisssquiggles]

sad headcanon for oscar i have,what if he doesn't now his mom or dad what if they died an he never knew them an live with his aunt from his time as a baby tell 14

That’s a possibility I considered as well, anon-chan. Once upon a time, I had this concept of…what if… Oscar had actually met Professor Ozpin as a toddler?

Since back in V5, Hazel hinted that his younger sister---Gretchen Rainart---died tragically under Oz’s tutelage, I concocted this scenario where Oz stepped down temporarily as headmaster of Beacon following the backlash he received as a result of Gretchen’s death; deciding to take a small trip to Mistral to pay his old friend, Leonardo Lionheart a visit and to help take his mind off his most recent failure. 

While on his trip to the kingdom, the train Oz was taking to the kingdom breaks down and is forced to stop following a Grimm attack (similar to the one that pursued the Argus Limited minus the reason being because of the Relic).

So basically Oz finds himself stranded in the middle of Anima far from Mistral Kingdom and by the grace of the Gods, he stumbles into a local village which was being attacked by the Grimm. During the attack, a woman comes screaming for help. Apparently the young woman had lost her little nephew---a toddler no older than four years old---in the scuffle. Immediately, being the former huntsman and warrior that he is, Oz bounds into action to assist this woman in finding her missing nephew.

Long story short, Oz finds the young boy and returns him to his aunt and as it turns out, the young boy is actually a four-year-old Oscar Pine and the woman was his Aunt Em.

The idea I had for this was like yours---in which Oscar’s parents perished after their home collapsed in on them as a result of a storm that overtook their farm. Oscar, who his parents had ensured was stored in a much more secure part of their home, was the only family member from his former household who survived leaving him to be taken in by his widowed aunt who had also lost someone---her husband (Oscar’s Uncle Henry) due to the storm.

So when Oz meets Young Oscar, he’s been adopted by his Aunt Em who was raising him. Not a theory or even a Pinehead headcanon. Just an idea for a scenario I thought could be cool as maybe an AU concept or something like that.

But that was when I figured it’d be interesting if Oscar was raised by his aunt. For me, my main assumption is that Oscar probably wasn’t living with his aunt for long when we met him back in V4. 

The theory I had was that Oscar probably had only been living on his Aunt’s farm for roughly a few months to probably about a year. I based this deduction off of just how scarce Oscar’s room appeared back in V4. For me, it didn’t give off the vibe of a person whose has been living in that room for years. To me it felt like Oscar has just moved in with his aunt shortly and was still adjusting to this change.

And while he and his aunt might have a good relationship (based off their short exchange of dialogue back in V4), I didn’t get the vibe that Oscar had been raised by this woman. While Oscar may have grown up probably visiting his aunt from time to time, I more felt like he had only started living with her for a while before meeting Oz. That’s my hunch.

However I do think that Oscar’s parents died prior to the main story and I’m sticking to my Pinehead headcanon where they died in a storm that destroyed their family home, leaving Oscar as the sole survivor. 

As part of my theory, I also pegged that Oscar had only lost his folks recently---like the concept I had was that Oscar lost his parents when he was probably 13 years old and he had only been living with his aunt for about year after their death.

That’s how I see it and I’m sticking with that idea.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

[imagines-r-s]

Difficult Missions

 Requests are open

--I also had to repost this because my tumblr glitched and messed up--

Part 2 coming soon...

Requested: no

Summary: you and Poe had gone on plenty of missions together, all successful. Of course it was this one that just had to go wrong. 

WC: 1866

Pairing: Poe Dameron x solo!reader

Being a part of the resistance was risky business. You lost people all the time, no matter who you cared about you couldn’t save everyone. After being in the Resistance for some time, you learn that death and pain don’t discriminate. Your mother, Leia Organa, always tried to protect you from the pain as much as she could. She had already lost your father and your brother. You made sure to protect those you cared about and avoid pain after Ben turned. 

Your main priorities were always your mother, Poe, and BB-8. Your mom wasn’t just your mom, she was also general and was needed in the resistance, Poe was your best friend and you cared about him too much to lose him, and you knew that Poe couldn’t survive without BB-8. 

You always hated when Poe went on missions. You and him had been friends since you joined the Resistance after coming back from training with your Uncle Luke, when since you were forced to come back. You and Poe just had a weird relationship, often more flirtatious than most friendships, but you never acted on anything. 

“I want the two of you to find San Tekka. He’s located on Jakku,” your mother, stated,” he should have the piece of the map that we need to find Luke.” You and Poe gathered your things as your mom gave the briefing on how the mission should go. This was not your first mission with Poe, and you’d assume it wouldn’t be your last.

Once Poe had left the briefing room, your mom stopped you. “y/n, you know there’s a possibility of you seeing Ben. If you do see him, be cautious.” I was afraid she would bring him up, “I will, mom, I promise.” You said your goodbyes and headed to the ship dock. When you got to the ship dock, you saw Poe and BB-8. You loved watching them interact because Poe acted like such a dad. You were so focused on your thoughts that you didn’t realize Poe was calling your name. 

“y/n. y/n, you okay?” You shook off your thoughts, “Yeah, I’m good.”

“You sure? If you’re not sure about this mission, it’s probably not smart for you to go.”

“I feel like you’re just trying to find a way to make sure you get all the credit there, Dameron.”

“Wow, I can’t believe you think that low of me.”

“Let’s go, Dameron,” you said as you walked past him, nudging his shoulder. 

You and Poe got every supply that you needed and you were on your way. You and Poe caught up on the recent missions you had gone on apart from each other and many other things. Once you had landed in Jakku, you sensed as if something bad was about to happen, but you pushed it away and tried to hurry on the mission. 

“I’ll go see San Tekka, can you keep watch?” Poe asked, bringing you back to reality. 

“Yeah, sure. I’ll stay with BB-8.” You watched as BB-8 started to roll himself quickly past you. You weren’t really paying attention until you saw him stop and lookup. The First Order ships were coming close. You needed to get back to Poe and fast. You just hoped he was able to get the map. 

By the time you had gotten back to Poe, you were out of breath from running. “y/n, what is it?” Poe said concerned after seeing your exhausted state. “We’ve got company.”

San Tukka was rushing for us to leave. You wanted to go as soon as you could, otherwise, you’d have to face your brother. Poe and you ran to your X-Wings as quickly as possible, trying to get away from the incoming stormtroopers. Poe and you made an effort to get out as quickly as possible, but as fate had it, it didn’t go that way. Poe and you had just boarded your X-Wings when you looked over to Poe and noticed his ship had been shot at by stormtroopers. “POE!”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me, Princess.” He just had to call me by that stupid nickname, didn’t he? Not important, please proceed. You looked over and saw Poe get out of his X-Wing after shooting the stormtroopers that were right on our tail. “Poe, what are you-?” You could tell he was too far away to here you. Fuck. Dameron, you dumbass. 

You got out of your X-Wing and followed after him. “y/n, stay back. I can’t go, but you can. Stay with BB-8.” You gave him a very confused look, “Poe, I’m not leav-”

“Go before it’s too late. Ren is close and I can’t have you getting stuck here, too. The Resistance needs you and so does the General. So please go with BB-8 and get away.”

“Poe, I can’t leave you!”

“Yes, you can. Now go!”

You didn’t want to leave, but he was right. No one would be able to help him if you weren’t there to help your mother. There had already been too many losses. You started going towards your X-Wing with BB-8, but just as you were about to start your X-Wing, you sensed that Ben was close. You always were able to sense his presence, but now it was much stronger. 

You looked over to where you saw your brother’s infamous TIE-fighter land. There were many stormtroopers attacking the villagers and you wanted to try and protect them the only way that you could. “BB-8, I want you to go as far away as you can for now and please be careful. I still have my tracker on me, so when it’s safe I’ll be able to find you.” 

You saw Poe attacking some stormtroopers that had seen you and him running, so you found a place near him to shoot. “I told you to go, Princess,” you could tell he was annoyed but also glad that you had stayed.  “And I told you I’m not going without you, flyboy.” 

Poe looked over, “If it comes down to it, do you have your lightsaber?” You nodded your head in response, but really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “Alright, let’s do this then.”

Poe was doing good at blasting incoming stormtroopers, and you did your best to defend those who couldn’t help themselves. That’s when you saw that the stormtroopers had already found San Tukka. They dragged him to your brother and you were close enough to hear them talking, but you couldn’t focus, you were too shocked when you saw Ben. 

Ben had changed a lot since your days of training with Luke together. Being twins, you were extremely close, in general, and with the force. After Snoke had tempted him, he begged you to join him, but you knew you couldn’t. You and Luke were the sole survivors of his attack on the Jedi Temple. Your Uncle Luke made sure you were prepared before sending you back to your mom and then isolating himself. He always gave hints of where he might be, so you had an idea of where he could be, but you weren’t sure where this place was. The map was needed to confirm any allegations.

The glow of a red lightsaber is what pulled you from your thoughts. You turned and saw San Tukka be struck and killed by your brother’s lightsaber. You audibly gasped, a little too loud. 

“I knew I sensed you here, y/n.”

“Hello there, Ben.”

“I assume we came here for the same reasons?”

“Yeah, but I’ll actually get what I came here for.” You were about to draw your lightsaber until you sensed someone shooting at Ben, and you knew exactly who it was. I swear I’m the only rational one. Ben used the force to temporarily paralyze Poe; there wasn’t much you could do to retaliate. “Ben, you don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, but I do. I am more powerful than ever and all thanks to the dark side. You’re stuck being a part of something that will never see your full potential or power.” You just shook your head in response, you didn’t know how else to react. “Ben, I just want my brother back.”

“If you join me, you’ll have me back.” 

“You know I can’t do that.” Just as you said that you looked over to see Poe getting knocked down and dragged to Ben by some stormtroopers. You tried hard not to show emotion, knowing that Ben would use it against you. 

Poe kept his cocky front on as he stood in front of Kylo Ren. Then, the stormtroopers knocked his knees in and you saw his front break for a moment. Ben knelt down in front of Poe and you were about to draw your lightsaber. “y/n, if you come closer or try anything, I will hurt him more than I plan to. I can tell by his thoughts that he cares deeply about you, so I might have to take you if he won’t tell me where the map is.”

Poe looked to you and you could tell exactly what he was thinking, “I’m not going to let you get hurt.” You just rolled your eyes, you wanted to do so much, but you couldn’t let him get hurt. Poe and Ben shared glances for a moment, “So, who talks first? I talk first? You talk first?” This dumbass. 

After a very brief conversation between the two, you could tell it wasn’t going to end well. Ben had him searched and then ordered the troopers to take him on board. You couldn’t let that happen, so you went with the natural Solo instinct and drew your lightsaber. “Shouldn’t have done that, y/n.” Just as you drew your lightsaber, he started to force choke Poe. You couldn’t let Poe die because of your stupid decision, so you put it back. “Wise decision.” 

The stormtroopers and Ben turned and started dragging Poe away to which you pulled our your blaster and struck Ben. You hated that you had to, but it was needed. Ben turned back to you, but you didn’t realize Phasma was right by you as she blasted you in the leg. “OW.”

You struggled to get away from the ships in time as Ben was quickly on your tail. “y/n, I assumed you would be smarter.” 

“I’m obviously smarter than you.”

“But I’m smart enough to not let my emotions blind me from what’s important.” Although he was right, you’d never admit anything. You didn’t notice that Ben had pulled his lightsaber out and was trying to start a fight with you. You were able to pull yours out just before he could hit you. “I don’t want to fight you, Ben.” 

“Then, don’t fight it. Just join me.” You struggled to keep up with his quick actions, as your hurt leg was slowing you down. 

“I will never join you.”

“Then, you will suffer the consequences of your choice.” He withdrew his lightsaber, so you thought he was going to leave you, but then he came closer to you and everything went black. 

[pluviophile-imagines]

tell me more about pirate shiggy and why he's the only man i will ever love.

Ok ok I get some wiggle room with this one so.

Shiggy’s found by AFO in the aftermath of an attack by AFO on his home when he was 4 or so—his whole village gets burned and while he’s not the sole survivor, his family is killed and he’s left behind. AFO finds him and takes him in, mostly with the intent to raise a completely loyal underling that he can rely on when he’s fully retired. No, Hes not a good guy. His reasons for taking Shiggy in are entirely selfish and that emotional abuse and manipulation he put Shiggy through in canon still happens. Kurogiri is still his caretaker, though he’s there more of his own volition than in canon.

Where we diverge is that AFO ends up dying essentially pre-canon when Shiggy’s ~17 (he’s 20 in My Lady). So he’s had about 3 years to grow past AFO’s influence, guided by Kurogiri and eventually the rest of the League. Y’all haven’t seen my canon interpretation of Shiggy yet (I do still see him as a romantic and a generally good boyfriend, just clingy and prone to jealous and pretty selfish) but Pirate!Shigs is more… grounded? Emotionally healthy? Because he’s had these three years to grow lmfao. Which is why he’s so patient and soft in the fic; AFO’s influence isn’t keeping him angry and emotionally stunted and he’s left to be the genuinely good leader and considerate person he’s always been under that lol. Obviously still a pirate, but the Jack Sparrow kind with morals and the ability to be absolutely whipped for his kickass wife lmfao.

Speaking of his wife! Let’s jump forward, bc yea he and the reader do eventually get pirate-married and it’s very cute and they’re a real power couple on the water. It probably happens a few years after canon; the reader’s a pretty cynical person and despite Shiggy’s assurances she’s still kinda paranoid he’ll get bored and drop her (he would n e v e r but she worries). And a few years into their marriage they start talking about starting a family!

Not make a kid, cause I like to keep my readers accessible to everyone and there r people who can’t/don’t want to get pregnant, and also bc I personally don’t super like the idea of them bringing a kid into piracy but don’t want them (or just the reader) to retire, sooooo enter the little stowaway (who doesn’t have a name maybe I’ll name her who knows).

She’s an eight year old orphan girl who Kurogiri finds rummaging around their food storage one day at sea. At first they intend to just drop her off at a port but they’ve just cast off and they don’t end up seeing land for a week and in that time the brat ends up endearing herself to both the reader and Shiggy and hey, they’d been talking about starting a family soon sooooo beep boop now they’ve got a daughter (much to Dabi’s eternal suffering, why did he even agree to this he should have vetoed but damn it the reader’s so persuasive sometimes)

And yes, this is partially because I love the idea of Shiggy genuinely becoming the adoptive father he should have had in AFO. He’s very soft and he loves both his girls to the ends of the earth.

[theoestofocs]

thinking about jurgen leitner again

Leitner, who thinks he’s safe, thinks he’s exempt from the rules of horror that govern the world--because why wouldn’t he be? He’s never been subject to them before. He’s a rich white man who’s never needed to work for a living. He’s never had to do anything but watch as his employees, his assistants, do all the lethal work for him, as he cycles through them like matchsticks and they each face death or worse for his little hobby. He didn’t care about them. He thought he was safe, and he had his little collection, and could pretend he was a hero for hoarding them, like Marie Antoinette with her peasant village, all the quaint self-congratulation and none of the fear.

It never occurred to him that his actions had consequences. And what gets me is that they weren’t even the moral consequences, no vengeful relatives of the people he killed in his quest to build the perfect cursed library, no ghost of angry assistants past that came back to haunt their killer. No, it was just the ordinary, aimless destruction that comes for anyone who brushes too close to the entities. Leitner never faced the consequences of his actions, not really. He stole the bones of other people to play some poker with, and all that happened was that he lost the game.

At least we know that Gerry got to beat him up (though the goth himself never knew. He died--and died again--thinking he’d attacked an old man for no reason. There’s no satisfaction in that; just more seemingly-random violence, more unwarranted guilt.)

because really aren’t all the characters in tma just trying to cope with the fact that they’re living in a tragedy? it’s not like they don’t know the genre of their own stories. Not at first, maybe, but they catch on real quick. And for most of them, we watch that change happen.

Tim says “the only thing you need to have your life destroyed by this stuff is just bad luck,” and he isn’t wrong. That’s all it is, that’s all any of this is--bad luck for everyone, except a total of maybe three characters. Three people we know of that made it through the end of the world unscathed. Two, really, because I don’t count Annabelle as a survivor, but the Web has shown enough “subtle manipulation” that I’ll count it as an honorary person, at least for now.

Elias, sat up in his tower, is presumably the winner of the apocalypse, though I’d be willing to guess it isn’t as lovely as he expected. Can’t say much about how his story ends, not yet; but over his long, horrible life, there’s no indication that he ever fell victim to the same awful fates he causes for everyone else. And there is, I suppose, a sort of idea that you can protect yourself from suffering by making others suffer first. Jordan Kennedy, Jude Perry, Jon himself; it is, quite literally, a situation of “eat or be eaten.” But--but I’ve said it before in other posts, none of the Avatars are really anything but tragedies themselves. They’re all victims too, same as everyone else. Except for a very, very few. Jonah Magnus, for instance, chose this.

I think so, at least. Perhaps not. But if he did, that’s what sets him apart from everyone else; Jonah chose to cause suffering, because he preferred to end the world than face the single simple truth of his own inevitable end.

And from the moment he made that choice, two hundred years ago, no one else has ever gotten another chance to choose.

I wonder if that’s on purpose. I wonder, is The Magnus Archives meant to be about the fundamental nature of the world? Is the implication of Tim’s statement really that everything is fundamentally cruel and utterly random, and we are all equally subject to the whims of chance? Or is there something else?

Because we know from the manifold clues in-canon that the Web was the one who really orchestrated Jonah’s ritual. From the spider that made Jon cave in the office wall and trigger Jane Prentiss’ attack, to the lighter that started him smoking again and got him out of the office just long enough for Leitner to die, to the table that killed Sasha, to the house on Hill Top Road, to the very first mark Jon received before he even made it through his first decade--it was all the Web. Elias really just set the Mother’s provided victim off on his course as Archivist and let everything else fall where it may. The Web was the one that kept him alive, made sure he had just the right assistants to hurt and be hurt by when he could have been helped the most, and carefully, thoroughly marked him by every entity, from the NotThem to the End.

Maybe Jonah did make a choice. But if he did, it was the last real choice anyone was ever permitted to make. Because there are things that will use every fear and doubt and despair we have, and feed on them until we’re either monsters or we’re dead. And when there’s something so much more powerful than us which sees a puppet it can use to bring itself through, make itself king--what chance do we have to fight it?

(Could it have been Robert Smirke that first gave the Web the idea for a ritual Jonah would put into practice a full two hundred years later? All this time, was Jon the Mother’s puppet, or was it Jonah, after all?)

Either way, the point remains that we are so much less powerful than the forces controlling our every choice, compelling us to compromise and sacrifice until there’s nothing of ourselves left to give. They grind us down to dust, and use the gristle of our flesh to fuel the nameless machine. 

(Jonny did say this story was meant for nine-to-five office workers, didn’t he?)

And so Jurgen is finally confronted with something stronger than himself, and all his hideous weakness is exposed for the world to see. So Jon spends so much time looking over his shoulder that he walks right through the door of Fear itself, never even noticing until it’s far too late. So Tim gives up on the only friend he could still trust to have his own face, furious and heartbroken and letting his last hope shatter as surely as Carlos Vittery’s teacup, marked as it was with the smear of a spider.

There’s really only one character in the entire podcast who has simply never accepted the fact that his life is a tragedy.

It’s not that he doesn’t realize how bad it is. He’s faced as much suffering as everyone else. It’s not that he doesn’t care about everyone who’s died, everything that’s been done to him, every piece of himself he’s lost. He just... refuses to let it make him stop caring.

Georgie sets boundaries, and Melanie forces the universe to let her find a way out. Both of them recognize the fact that no matter what choice they make, there’s a price to pay; so they make the choices that will cost them less. Really, they’re the only two characters that consistently follow the directions you’d typically be yelling at horror movie characters. Georgie would never open that door. (Jon did.)

Tim offered himself up as cannon fodder, Basira set her laser focus solely on survival, Daisy fought tooth and nail against everything (including her own teeth and claws), and Jon searched for answers that were dangled in front of him like a carrot on a stick, but Martin... Martin just cared.

And everyone thought that made him stupid. Not just Jon, though we (rightly) lambaste him for it; everyone did. It was taken as a given. Martin made tea, and gave good hugs, and never really understood what was going on. That was just Martin.

Pictured above is a screenshot of TMA 110, when Basira just comes out and says what everyone else has intimated and assumed in a thousand different phrases up to now. “I know you care. I know you do. But caring isn’t enough. You can’t just stand next to someone with a cup of tea and hope everything’s gonna be all right.”

And Martin’s right, that isn’t fair. She doesn’t know him. Nobody does, and it’s not because Martin hides himself; they just can’t believe he could possibly be the face he shows to the world.

But it is his face. Martin has, quite literally, looked in the face of fear itself five times I can think of off the top of my head, all long before season 5. He got trapped in his apartment and Michael’s hallways and the Lonely, and lost first one friend, then two more, then his only living family and everything else all at once. He was forced to understand exactly how and why his mother hated him, and always had, and always would. He is intimately familiar with the fact that the guy he’s in love with is a grumpy rat man who also happens to be a monster that feeds on trauma. Martin isn’t naive. He just acts like it.

Georgie sets boundaries, and she’s right to, but Martin refuses to accept what she cannot ignore: that sometimes, trying to help will just get you hurt. “Sometimes helping people hurts,” he tells her, and it’s a cruel thing to say, really, but he says it anyway because he cares too much to care about if it hurts. Martin looks at a world that is quite literally a hellscape of apocalyptic suffering, and asks if Jon wants to go for a walk. He lets himself fall into the Lonely because he refuses to stand by and let the inevitable tragedy and horror of their lives change him. He refuses to stop being kind--not just nice, not just as kind as it’s safe to be. To Martin, the common-sense decision in any situation is to choose kindness over safety. To help someone, because his life is not more important to him than theirs.

It’s not a wise way of living, to be sure.To be clear, I don’t recommend it, either.  That’s how you get a martyr complex, and anxiety and depression, and if you’re inclined to try it anyway, I’d like to point out that all three of the above rather interfere with your ability to effectively help out other people. Anyway, maybe this whole deal is why Jon and Martin make such a comfortable match--they both have different flavours of self-sacrificing tendencies.

It’s not wise, and it’s not advisable, and it’s not a good way of living; but it’s not a stupid way of living, either. It’s reckless and dangerous and, speaking from experience, not something that’s possible to keep up forever, no matter how hard you grit your teeth and make yourself keep going. But it’s also not an approach that happens accidentally.

Martin would rather die than stand by and do nothing while others get hurt, and he refuses to assume that people getting hurt is inevitable. He’s patently wrong about the preventability of suffering, and he knows that, but unlike everyone else in the podcast, he refuses to accept it. As long as there’s a chance that him doing something can help someone else, he’ll do it. No matter what it costs.

Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to save a ruined world.

Sometimes, you keep fighting anyway.

[masterweaverx]

Lie Ren may be an understated member of team JNPR, but he’s still a very important part of the group, providing sage advice... when he’s not, uh, you know, bottling everything up. So let’s see what prettyboy has.

For starters, Ren doesn’t wear a lot of armor but he does do a lot of ninjaing so we’ll need to factor that into this build. He’s also called Lie Zen by some parts of the fandom for his special talent. And of course there’s the little thing he does where he just, suddenly, notices stuff? That’s actually kinda nifty. 

Pulling out the point array we’re just going to start by putting 15 in Dexterity, Ren is kind of a flippy guy. Next is Wisdom and Charisma, 14 and 13; he’s quick to pick up on stuff and, yeah, I’m not just calling him prettyboy for no reason. Intelligence is next at 12, Ren has a good level of study to him, and then 10 in Strength after that because he’s not, you know, too incredible in lugging things around. That leave 8 in Constitution, and Ren is a little frail, I’ll admit that, but don’t worry he won’t be pushed down by a breeze.

Variant Humans get two ability points and I’m going to suggest evening out Dexterity and Charisma, 16 and 14. They also get a skill proficiency of their choice, I’d pick Perception because we’re not going to get it anywhere else in this build. And finally, they get a free feat, and there’s no way we’re not taking the Gourmand feat. It gives Ren +1 to his constitution, proficiency with Cook’s Utensils, the ability to check food for poison, and the ability to prepare a meal during a long rest (which helps regenerate hit dice and gives advantage on Constitution saving throws but shut up there’s food).

As for background, I’mma going to go with Hermit. Not that young Ren was a hermit in the traditional sense, but, uh, what else are you going to call the sole survivor of a village? Hermits get proficiency with Medicine, Religion, and the Herbalism Kit. They technically also get the Discovery Feature, which means that Ren should hypothetically know some deep forgotten secret about the nature of Remnant, but... the show doesn’t say he doesn’t know, it’s just not brought up if he does. Maybe the secret is Nora. I have serious theories about that girl...

Right off the bat we are nipping up twelve levels of Kensei Monk, for proficiency in Strength and Dexterity saving throws as well as all simple weapons and Shortswords. Also we get one proficiency with a set of Artisan’s Tools, and Ren’s clothes are too pretty for it to be anything BUT Weaver’s Tools, and two skill proficiencies and you just know we’re picking up Athletics and Acrobatics. The remaining eight levels are going to be college of Swords Bard yes I said Bard which gives us proficiency in Light Armor, not that we’re going to use that, as well as an instrument and a skill. Ren is lord of the dance, so the Performer skill works pretty well, and as for instrument... I honestly have no idea. Maybe a pan flute? Sounds like something young Ren would pick up.

With twelve levels of Monk Ren can really get around. Unarmored Defense gives him an AC of 10+his Dexterity mod+his Wisdom mod, Unarmored Movement not only ups his speed by twenty feet but also lets him run across water and up walls, Slow Fall lets him reduce his falling damage by 60 (what is his landing strategy?), and Evasion means that when he rolls a save to take half damage, he takes half on a failure and none on a success. He’s also got Stillness of Mind, letting him shake off an effect that’s keeping him charmed or frightened, and Purity of Body, making him immune to poison and disease. But not exhaustion, apparently. It doesn’t come up often, but it’s mildly important.

Of course the real draw of the Monk class is the Martial Arts, which means as long as Ren is either using Monk weapons or unarmed strikes, he can roll attack and damage with his Dexterity mod, use 1d8 instead of the usual die on his damage roll, and make an unarmed strike as a bonus action. He also has an Extra Attack every attack action he makes, and his Ki-Empowered Strikes mean his unarmed strikes count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance. And speaking of Ki, he has a total of 12 Ki points that regenerate on a rest, which he can spend to make a Flurry of Blows, engage in Patient Defense, take a Step of the Wind, dramatically Deflect Missles, or whip out a Stunning Strike.

Of course, being a Kensei monk means that Ren gets to pick two Kensei weapons--one melee and one ranged. Like, I don’t know, Scimitars and Hand Crossbows. Not only do these count as Monk Weapons for the above benefits, and as magical weapons for damage resistance, but he can use an Agile Parry to give him +2 to AC every time he makes an unarmed strike as part of an Attack action, and take a bonus action to give his ranged attack 1d4 more damage. If he spends one Ki point he can also deal an extra 1d8 points of damage with his weapon, and he can also use a bonus action to spend Ki points in order to boost his attack and damage rolls with the weapon--making it easier to hit targets and to do damage. And of course, Way of the Brush gives him proficiency with Calligraphy Supplies.

The eight levels of Bard are, admittedly, mostly for spellcasting purposes, but they do come with some perks. Ren can use Bardic Inspiration to give an ally a 1d8 they can use on any roll of theirs in the next ten minutes. He can do this a number of times equal to his Charisma Modifier per rest, and speaking of rest Song of Rest lets him and his friends regain an extra 1d6 hitpoints during a short rest. Jack of All Trades lets Ren add half his proficiency bonus to any skill check he’s not proficient in, and he also gets an Expertise; bumping up his Cook’s Utensils will make him an amazing chef. And of course there’s Countercharm, which gives everyone advantage on saving throws against being charmed or frightened.

A Bard of Swords, meanwhile, gets proficiency in Medium Armor (which we’re not going to be using) and Scimitars (which we’re already proficient in). Also, we can cast spells with them, which is going to be very important for Ren. He gets to pick a fighting style, and Two-Weapon Fighting lets him add his ability modifier to a second attack. And of course there are the Flourishes, which he can spend Bardic Inspiration on; Defensive Flourish, to up his damage and AC, Mobile Flourish, to shove his enemy around, and Slashing Flourish, letting him hit two enemies at once.

This build gives us five Ability Score Improvements to work with, but we’re going to burn one for the Tracker feat. That ups our wisdom by one, lets us cast the Hunter’s Mark spell for free once per long rest, and gives us advantage on checks to track creatures. We’ve still got eight points left to spend, though, so let’s put one in Wisdom and Constitution, evening those out to 16 and 10, two in Charisma to bring it up to 16, and four in Intelligence to also bring it up to 16. That gives us 16 in Dexterity, Wisdom, Charisma, and Intelligence, and 10 each in Strength and Constitution.

At eight levels of Bard, Ren knows eleven Bard spells up to level four, plus three cantrips, and he has 4 first level slots, 3 second level slots, 3 third level slots, and 2 fourth level slots. Most of the spells I selected are built around either noticing things or keeping people from being noticed by the Grim, but there are a couple utility spells in the list.

Cantrips

Blade Ward (Bard)

True Strike (Bard) (Concentration)

Prestidigitation (Bard)

L1 (four slots)

Detect Magic (Bard) (Concentration)

Hunter’s Mark (Tracker feat)

Longstrider (Bard)

L2 (three slots)

Calm Emotions (Bard) (Concentration)

Detect Thoughts (Bard) (Concentration)

Locate Animals or Plants (Bard)

Locate Object (Bard) (Concentration)

Thought Shield (Bard)

Silence (Bard) (Concentration)

L3 (three slots)

Nondetection (Bard)

L4 (two slots)

Freedom of Movement (Bard)

Locate Creature (Bard) (Concentration)

All in all we’ve got a build that can harass the Grimm while the heavy hitters on JNPR work on hitting heavy, then settle in for a brief rest before leading the group toward the next big problem. And hey, Ren’s very good at picking up on problems, even if he’s... not always the best at solving them.

So yeah, that’s Lie Ren.