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renaerys · 3 years ago

Note

22. for reds 🤡

This is 100% not what you asked for (yet...👀), but I give you part 1 of what we're calling the Weird King AU. I'm turning this into a proper multi-chapter High School fic because I love you and I'd jump on any bandwagon for you.

xxx

Like most young, conventionally attractive Supervillains, Brick had made a bit of a habit of failing upwards. It was pretty easy in a town full of simpering morons content to project their own narrative assumptions onto him, and who was he to crush their dreams when they made his life a little easier?

For example, dating.

“You can tell me, you know.” His cute date, Tracy, sipped her milkshake across from him.

“Tell you what?”

She softened and reached her hand across the table. “Your tragic backstory. I’ll listen without judgment, I promise.”

Brick tried to think of something tragic, but it all seemed pretty underwhelming as far as Supervillain origin stories went. “You mean like how I was born in a toilet?”

She made an oh shape with her lips. “We all have those days where we feel like we were born in a toilet, Brick.”

He’d dated Tracy for three months before she broke up with him out of the blue in tears: sorry she couldn’t fix his baggage, she just wasn’t strong enough to handle all that tortured darkness, but she wished him nothing but health and happiness. Brick deleted her number from his phone and spent twenty whole minutes staring at the toilet in his bathroom, wondering what the lesson here was.

But everything changed when Mojo got out of prison and moved Brick and his brothers back to Townsville, where he enrolled them in the local high school alongside their former arch nemeses, the Powerpuff Girls.

Suddenly, everything Brick did pre-supposed ill intent. These people remembered him as the pest who had graffitied their local monuments and blown up their cars and endangered their children. They held no love for him, and at best they feared him. This was not Citiesville, where he’d been a tall, cold glass of Voss water in a sea of recycled Dasani.

He found himself thinking about his birthing toilet again as he stepped into the cafeteria alone and the conversation quieted down as his new classmates watched him from the safety of their tables. His next moves here were critical. He was no longer at the top of the food chain, but fear and mystery surrounding his origins and character gave him a certain power over his peers.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of social suicide, I will fear no cringe,” he said to himself.

The jocks were out. Capable though he may be, Brick was not much of a team player unless there was a blood contract involved requiring his participation on pain of satanic torture. The drama kids were also a hard pass, not because he thought drama was lame, but because they had barely noticed him walk in, and Brick did not have the energy to deal with people more self-involved than himself. Some of the unaffiliated tables could be safe, but without a good understanding of the nuanced social dynamics in the high school, he could be heading toward irreversible doom, and that was a risk he was not willing to take.

He saw his salvation just ahead. It was the only option, all else being equal. In an environment where he couldn’t be certain of his baseline status and potential for upward mobility, there was greatness to be had only by association and certainty only in the devil he knew.

Brick helped himself to the empty seat directly across from Blossom Utonium to a chorus of gasps and staring.

Blossom did not startle like her table mates had. She watched him critically behind a head full of bangs as she balanced her soup spoon in her hand. “Really.”

Brick unwrapped the burrito he’d purchased in the lunch line and brandished it before him. “Really.”

He took a bite of the burrito. It was not hot enough. The two girls to Blossom’s left whispered to each other about that bad boy and he’s hot, though.

Blossom daintily spooned soup into her mouth without spilling a single drop as she continued to watch Brick for signs of his imminent dark side transformation.

The guy next to Brick was brave enough to ask him what his next class was. Brick had a mouth full of disappointing burrito, so he passed the guy the printout of his class schedule in lieu of answering.

“Wow, all APs, huh? Hey, we’re in U.S. History together next period, nice. I’m Mike Believe, by the way. Brick Jojo, right?”

Brick didn’t answer him immediately on account of the burrito currently occupying his mouth hole, and Mike took it the wrong way.

“Oh, yeah, we all know who you are. Blossom sort of filled us in.” He winced like he’d inadvertently revealed a terrible secret.

Brick swallowed his food and washed it down with a gulp of water. “Saves me some time.”

Mike looked super relieved. “For sure! Hey, I could lend you my notes if you want to catch up. Gershwin’s giving a quiz on the Progressive Era on Friday, and she’s a hard-ass who definitely won’t care that you just transferred…”

Brick chewed on his lunch as Mike continued to talk at him about classes and other vaguely helpful, albeit uninteresting, information. But Mike seemed normal enough, a little chatty but not in an overeager sort of way. Blossom was no longer clocking his every move and seemed to be absorbed in her friend’s latest swim team cheating scandal, until Brick reached for his water bottle and she suddenly laser-focused on his wandering hand.

Her keen attention to him was honestly flattering, if expected. It was in his nature to be noticed, and in this narrow respect she was no different from anyone else whose head he turned. If she chose to feed her interest with the flames of suspicion, then it was no difference to him.

But if she was anything like him—and on a chemical level she was probably the closest to him that a person could get—he suspected it took tremendous effort to hold her full and sustained attention. The world they inhabited was as vapid and mundane as the humans that surrounded them, and even the most gracious of gods grew bored of worship. Which explained all the smiting and fucking and generational curses upon entire households in everything from Greek mythology to the Old Testament.

Brick was pretty deep into a fantasy of Blossom going full Ixion and the Wheel on the swim team when Mike tapped his shoulder. “You ready to go?”

It took him a moment to realize the bell had rung and he had a class to get to—AP U.S. History with Mike, apparently. Brick gathered his tray and his bag and followed Mike. When he looked back at the table, Blossom was already gone.

xxx

That whole first week was painfully boring. No one bullied him, or pranked him, or picked a fight with him, of course. But no one really approached him, either. His brothers were more determined to make an effort. Boomer announced he was trying out for the soccer team because there was no rule saying a Super with extremely well documented ties to active criminals and the forces of Hell couldn’t kick a ball around a field. Butch had gotten himself invited to a midnight screening of Snakes on a Plane in some rich kid’s home movie theater, but only after that same kid had accidentally spilled milk on Butch and burst into tears in front of a cafeteria full of Juniors and Seniors. Brick declined the invitation Butch extended to him. He had that AP U.S. History exam to study for on Friday, anyway.

He shared all of his classes with Blossom. Even in the classes where her assigned seat was behind his and he couldn’t see her, he could feel her lobotomizing stare at the back of his head whenever she glanced up from her notebook. And while Mike’s notes were perfectly adequate and the friendly gesture counted for more than the content (a gesture Brick would not soon forget), there was a far more efficient way to accomplish his goal of murdering the class averages while also taking the edge off his loner doldrums.

“Can I borrow your class notes?”

Blossom rose from her seat and pulled her hair tie out to re-do her extremely long ponytail. She held the elastic between her teeth as she worked. Her teeth were very straight, he noticed. Some pretty nice girl-teeth, generally speaking.

“Which class?”

“All of them.”

He watched her wind the elastic around her hair with quick, adroit fingers. “That’s a lot of notes.”

“You’re the top of every class. No point in asking anyone else.”

She moved toward the hall. He followed her out. “Why would I help you?”

A legitimate question delivered without venom. Unlike her sister Buttercup, who’d “run into” Brick after school on Monday and told him to watch his back, Blossom didn’t have to do anything but maintain a general proximity to make her superiority complex known. Which was the kind of flex he could fuck with.

“Isn’t helping people sort of your mandate?”

They had arrived at her locker, which she opened with enough force to rattle the hinges. “I help the helpless. Are you helpless, Brick?”

Brick smiled at her baiting. Had she ever actually said his name at a normal volume before? It sounded good even in her baseline bitch timbre. “Critically helpless. I’m the new student who transferred in the middle of the semester, and you’re the only person who knows me.”

A couple other students clearly trying to get to the lockers Brick was blocking hovered just out of reach. They whispered to each other, but neither of them actually worked up the courage to ask Brick to move. He ignored them.

Blossom rummaged in her locker for the binder she would need for the next class. “Make friends.”

“Working on it.”

The locker door slammed and she faced him. There was something confrontational in the way she held herself before him that kicked him in the nuts back in time thirteen years to their more uncouth days when all he wanted to do was destroy her so he’d be the only one. Now they were older and wiser and he actually did need her notes to study, so destroying her was not high on his list of priorities.

“You want to be my friend.”

“We have so much in common.”

“So do lions and hyenas.”

“Both are apex predators, so.”

She took a step closer and peered up at him. Brick did not move, although he wondered what was so interesting about his face. She probably just thought he was hot. She was probably as bored as he was. She probably—

“You have lettuce in your teeth.”

Brick pulled back and covered his mouth on instinct. God fucking damnit.

Blossom was already walking away from him by the time he’d picked the food from his teeth. “I’ll expect my notes back in mint condition before first period tomorrow morning.”

Brick pressed a fist against the lockers and quietly fumed. “Dumbass…”

“Um, sorry, but do you mind…?”

The student who’d been waiting for her locker space to clear up had her palms up as if to assuage a feral stray. Brick pushed off the lockers, but his fist left a dent where he’d unleashed some of his impotent self-pity. He looked back at the girl, and she shook her head.

“It’s fine! It, uh, it happens sometimes.” She pointed a couple lockers down to Blossom’s, which was dinged up worse than the others.

Brick stared at Blossom’s locker, and then back at the girl. Her narrow, dark eyes were wide, but not out of fear. She was waiting for something, and like an idiot it took him a moment to catch up. “You’re trying to make me feel better about fucking up your locker.”

She laughed nervously. “I mean, it’s really fine! You just looked so miserable for a second there, and I just thought…”

Great, he was moping so hard he had an audience.

The five minute warning bell rang, and a flood of students rushed past them on their way to fourth period. Brick stepped aside so the girl could get to her locker.

“Hey, you’re the new guy, right?”

The new guy, yeah. How quaint. Except, she was waiting for a response, which wasn’t the absolute worst thing that had happened to him all week.

“Brick,” he said. But of course, she already knew that, and she was just being nice.

“I’m Kim. Kim Chan.”

“Okay.” He didn’t have anything else to say to her, so he decided to get his shit and get to his next class.

“Welcome back to Townsville, Brick.”

Brick shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked off. It didn’t occur to him until later that Kim was the first and only person who had properly welcomed him back home.

#powerpuff girls #powerpuff girls fanfic #blossick #ppg reds #ppg blossom #ppg brick #september fic prompts #weird king au #i have no idea what i will call this yet #but it'll make its way to AO3 and it'll be a Thing #i have to think of themes and shit now #i came here to shit post and here we are with another full on Reds fic

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sleepyowlwrites · 3 years ago

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find the word tag CCLXXIX

I think I play Spiritfarer for 5 or 6 hours today. I had mac n cheese for lunch and dinner. also I had chocolate chocolate chip banana bread. also I had coffee. also I had painkillers. now I have sleepytime tea and this tag. @kaiusvnoir

knife (summon story d0)

Wryn looked down a little to meet Zan’s eyes, and there was more depth there than he’d ever seen before. “We are gaining familiarity. It takes time.”

It seemed to be the closest Wryn could come to saying that they were becoming friends. Secrets and memories could be shared at a later date.

Erin brushed past the both of them without saying anything else and neither he nor Wryn tried to stop her. She was more of a mystery than Wryn sometimes. Zan didn’t really fear for his safety if he inadvertently asked Wryn something uncomfortable. But Erin? She was a knife even just talking about a new case or where they were going to sleep. And she clearly felt no fear in stepping across Wryn’s boundaries if she wanted to know something.

offer (summon story d0)

“Erin can do the summoning. Her protections will keep the shidha from trying anything. I can capture it if it burns any of the glyphs. Shae can demand its name.”

“That did not work the last time we tried.”

“We didn’t offer a human sacrifice last time.”

Zan rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Isn’t ignorance of basic summoning techniques my job? Shidha hate conditional sacrifices when you don’t intend to make a bargain with them. I don’t mind dying for this, but it won’t help to accomplish our goal. It’ll just make the Shidha mad. They can read the glyphs of their summons, you know.”

Wryn acknowledged that information with a small tilt of their head.

quit stop (trans-dimensional ghosts, 2016)

“I heard you were a Time student and someone else also said you were really smart and ahead of your classes and I didn’t want to talk to a senior warlock - you know how they drone on and on - especially a Time one. And I had to come now because Qaz wouldn’t stop yowling. Which is very annoying, because I am not a night person and I’m exhausted.”

Qaz the werecat blinked and Caden swore he rolled his eyes. One paw came up to point at the string connecting the ghost and Terence.

“You know you’ve got a time string attached to you, right?” Caden was still put out by this problem he had no business discussing, but he couldn’t resist discussing it at least a little. He’d never met a time-displaced ghost before.

Terence looked at the string and poked at it. The ghost winced. “Yeah.”

window (summon story d0)

The street narrowed and widened as corners of housing bit into its width, and into Zan, too, when his tired arms kept bumping into edges of wall and window.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see shadows move along windows and rooftops, but there was always movement in the fingers. Rats and dogs kept careful guard of their territory, of intruders who might not belong. Zan had been born in one of the fingers, but he’d been away from them for so long that they no longer felt like home. As he hurried down the bone toward the Pearl, instead of grim nostalgia, he felt only anxiety. The end of the alley was nearing. Nothing jumped out at him before he reached it, thankfully.

He emerged into the square that wasn’t a square, and approached the pool of murky water at its center. An ancient fountain that hadn’t worked in years and had been painted all over with gang signatures loomed over him and Zan avoided looking at the figure’s eyes. They’d been painted too, a gleaming, silvery white that pierced through the darkness with an eerie glow.

shine, dark, drench, sharp. BONUS: slippery, damage. @uraniumwriting @ink-fireplace-coffee @artbyeloquent @nikkywrites @akindofmagictoo OR ANYBODY or nobody

#find the word tag #tag game #searching circle

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years ago

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What if instead of being his dad Wen Ruohan was his grandfather. And one of his sons had sizhui.

also on ao3 because long

Nie Mingjue staggered a little after he stormed off, the adrenaline rush of fury – at Meng Yao’s betrayal, his many betrayals, at Lan Xichen for accepting Meng Yao’s explanations at face value, at himself for not being able to do what he probably should – all fading away into exhaustion and pain.

It was at that point that he acknowledged that, in his anger, he had probably made a mistake by storming off in the first place – even with Baxia in hand, even with Wen Ruohan finally dead, Nie Mingjue really shouldn’t walking around alone in the Sun Palace.

He was injured, and heavily so; any Wen that wanted could probably take him down. A strong wind could probably take him down.

Still, it wasn’t as if his pride would permit him to go back and ask Lan Xichen to leave Meng Yao’s side for long enough to notice that a man he’d called friend for over a decade had been rather brutally tortured for several days and could very much use some medical assistance - apparently, tending to the injuries to Meng Yao’s ego after Nie Mingjue had shouted at him about the fact that he’d murdered people was more important.

So Nie Mingjue kept on going, lifting his sleeve to try to wipe the blood out of his eyes.

It didn’t work very well, mostly because there wasn’t much space left on his sleeve that wasn’t already covered in blood, and it only ended up making it worse.

On a whim, he turned towards the corridor where he knew from experience years before that the Wen clan’s rooms were located, thinking only that he might be able to find a sheet or some spare clothing to use to wipe his face clean.

He found something different.

The Wen cultivator was only a boy, around the same age as Nie Huaisang; his knees shook and his eyes were white all around the edges in his terror. The colors of his robes suggested he was surnamed Wen but of low status, and while there was a sword at his belt, it looked as fresh and unused as Nie Huaisang’s saber.

Instead of wielding it, he was clutching a small child, a year or two old at most, to his chest.

Nie Mingjue stared, and the boy stared back.

“These are the rooms for the main family,” Nie Mingjue said after a moment of silence, and the boy blanched, inadvertently confirming his suspicions. “Whose child is that?”

“Please don’t kill us,” the boy said, lip quivering. “Or don’t – just don’t kill him. A-Yuan didn’t do anything.”

“Whose child is that?” Nie Mingjue repeated. “Wen Xu’s?”

He couldn’t imagine it being Wen Chao’s, though he supposed it was theoretically possible.

The boy nodded reluctantly. “I wasn’t planning on telling him anything about that,” he offered. “He wouldn’t need to know…”

“That I killed his father?” Nie Mingjue asked, arching his eyebrows, then shook his head, dismissing the entire thing. If a child grew up and wanted revenge for his father, he of all people wouldn’t stop him from trying no matter how little Wen Xu deserved the honor; he could deal with the problem whenever it arose. “I’m not going to kill you. Either of you – what’s your name?”

“Wen Ning – ah, Qionglin. You’re not going to..?”

Nie Mingjue nodded at the sword at his waist. “Tell me, Wen Qionglin. Have you ever used that?”

“Uh, I fly sometimes? Not well, though,” Wen Ning said, looking confused. “What does – oh.”

Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes, feeling like the point had been made.

Wen Ning clearly did not agree, still looking lost and not a little terrified.

“Yes,” Nie Mingjue clarified dryly. “I am not going to kill you. There’s no battle happening right now, so killing you would be the same as killing a civilian, and unlike your sect, we don’t do that. Or anything else, for that matter.”

“Anything else?”

“Wen Xu had neither a wife nor a concubine,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’m making an assumption, but given the child’s age, the timing…and the fact that that child has the look of a Lan.”

Wen Ning winced again and bowed his head. “His mother was taken against her will from the Cloud Recesses after Wen Xu burned it,” he confirmed in a quiet voice. “She – she committed suicide, not long after the birth.”

Nie Mingjue sighed. He’d been right, then; this child was one of the many remnants of war.

He thought, for a moment, of calling Lan Xichen over to tell him that he had a cousin lingering here. Surnamed Wen, of course, and that would be a hard burden for the child to bear growing up, but the child was still Lan blood; Lan Xichen would take him back to Gusu in a heartbeat.

Of course, Lan Xichen was still with Meng Yao – calling one would bring the other. Meng Yao, who had just killed Nie cultivators that Nie Mingjue had known his whole life and blamed him for not understanding why he just had to do it, even though he knew Wen Ruohan would be dead soon, and Lan Xichen, who defended him without a second thought, without giving a chance for Nie Mingjue to explain his grievances, without trusting him to have a reason for his anger…

Meng Yao, who had sent them letters with information – sent Lan Xichen letters with information.

The same information that had led Nie Mingjue into the trap at Yangquan, which had led him to the Sun Palace, where Wen Ruohan couldn’t wait to see him kneeling before his throne, where Meng Yao had used that moment of inattention, focused on Nie Mingjue’s pain, to stab the man in the back –

Where Lan Xichen had come so conveniently quickly after the death was accomplished.

Had Lan Xichen known what Meng Yao was planning? Had he known what he was sending Nie Mingjue into?

Had he known and decided not to tell him?

(Nie Mingjue would have gone willingly, if they’d told him. Being captured as nothing, the torture was nothing, he would bear it all a thousand times over if it meant that he would see Wen Ruohan’s death. But he would have only taken volunteers with him, men prepared to accept death, and not – not as it was.)

For what might be the first time in his life, Nie Mingjue felt a momentary pang of distrust in Lan Xichen’s judgment.

“If you find yourself in need of help with the child, come to my Nie sect,” he finally said, a compromise with himself. He’d normally offer a token of some sort, but he didn’t have any on him; they had all been taken away long ago. “You’re both surnamed Wen, so you’ll probably end up in a prisoner of war camp at first, and then get resettled, but if it ends up being too hard, you can tell them to ask for me…and if I’m not around for whatever reason, ask for Lan Wangji. He’s reasonable and righteous, as well as discreet. He won’t turn you down.”

Wen Ning nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind, Sect Leader. Thank you.”

Nie Mingjue waved a hand at him, nose wrinkling as he felt the blood start dripping down his forehead again. “You should leave first. Get far away from here, before anyone else makes the connection I did.”

Wen Ning began to go, then hesitated. “Do you need medical assistance, Sect Leader Nie? I know a little…”

“I’ve been in Wen Ruohan’s custody since Yangquan,” Nie Mingjue said, and Wen Ning blanched; at least he realized what that meant, even if, somehow, Lan Xichen didn’t. “‘A little’ isn’t going to help.”

“You probably shouldn’t be walking around if you’ve got broken bones,” Wen Ning said anxiously. “Or burns. Or deep cuts. Or, uh –”

“Wen Qionglin.”

“…yes?”

“Take the child and go.”

Eventually Lan Xichen had found him, furious at the apparently belated realization that Nie Mingjue had not gone straight back to his camp for medical help – as if Nie Mingjue would know where their camp was, given that he hadn’t been told anything – but the evidence of his concern helped ease Nie Mingjue’s fears.

He was aware it probably shouldn’t – he still believed there was no reason for those Nie cultivators to die, believed that Meng Yao could have offered to send them away to the Fire Palace the way he had done later when he wanted to preserve Nie Mingjue’s life – but he couldn’t help himself. Between his temper, his position, and his reticent personality, he had many admirers but almost no close friends, and so he treasured the ones he had like gold. The thought of breaking with Lan Xichen left ashes in his mouth.

In fact, if one looked at it a certain way, Lan Xichen might be the only friend he had left – he’d had others, growing up, but they’d become distant after he became Sect Leader, the impossible barrier between them, and even more distant once he’d become war leader, responsible for their lives and deaths. He’d once thought he’d had another true friend in Meng Yao, but that was before he realized how many of their interactions had been staged with a deliberate goal in mind.

Before he realized that Meng Yao had never thought of him as anything other than a stepping stone.

And now Lan Xichen wanted them to become sworn brothers.

Nie Mingjue had been repulsed by the idea when he’d first broached it, only a day or two after the events in the Sun Palace. Becoming Lan Xichen’s sworn brother was nothing, but Meng Yao…? Before, maybe, but now…?

“A-Yao really did think he was doing the right thing,” Lan Xichen said, his eyes full of sincerity, and Nie Mingjue wondered when it’d become ‘A-Yao’. Lan Xichen didn’t even refer to Lan Wangji with such a term, though that might be more due to Lan Wangji being such a stickler for etiquette. “I know you think that he didn’t have to kill them, but he was the one who’d been there so long, who knew Wen Ruohan’s thinking – he couldn’t give up the opportunity we’d created at so much cost.”

The opportunity you created with my flesh and bones, Nie Mingjue wanted to say, but didn’t. He would have agreed if they’d ask, and surely that was the same as having agreed, wasn’t it? It would be petty to hold it against them.

It would be petty to continue feeling hurt.

“And his attack on me at Langya?” he asked, his arms crossed. “After having engaged in the premeditated murder of one of his own superiors?”

“It’s more complicated than just that,” Lan Xichen said. “There were reasons – you can’t look at things as just black and white, Mingjue-xiong.”

Nie Mingjue wasn’t sure how planning to stab your own fellow soldiers in the back in a way designed to disguise their deaths as enemy casualties didn’t fall pretty firmly into the “unmitigated black” category.

Oh, sure, Meng Yao had reasons, he always had reasons! But even if there was abuse, Meng Yao had had other options – if no one at Langya would list, he could have written a letter to Nie Mingjue himself to lay out his grievances; Nie MIngjue had already been acting as the overall commander of the war by then, and even Jin Guangshan’s thick face, pretending he didn’t know who Meng Yao was or that he’d never seen any letter, wouldn’t stand up to a direct conversation.

There were other things Meng Yao could have done, and he pointed them out to Lan Xichen.

“That’s all the more reason you should swear brotherhood with the two of us,” Lan Xichen said, and he was in earnest; he had always been so very earnest. “As the eldest, you would have the opportunity to help teach A-Yao how to walk on the right path, even when he feels he’s trapped. You were such good friends with him in the past – you could be friends again!”

It sounded more like responsibility than opportunity, but in the end Nie Mingjue really had liked Meng Yao once, really had had faith in him, and maybe Lan Xichen was right; maybe there was a good man under there, twisted only by desperate circumstances.

So he did it, gave his good name to a man he wasn’t sure he could trust, and that was just another thing on top of everything else he had to do: there was a war to finish, bodies to bury, the Unclean Realm to rebuild, politics to manage…it was all a mess, and one he had to tackle alone.

It wasn’t until the celebration at Phoenix Mountain that he finally had a chance to put down his burdens, even if only for a little while.

“Meng Yao,” he said, because the name Jin Guangyao felt more like an insult on his tongue. “Can you find someone for me?”

Lan Xichen had asked him to think of things he could ask Meng Yao to do, insisting that it would help mend their relationship for Meng Yao to feel wanted rather than merely scolded.

“Find someone?” Jin Guangyao echoed, turning to look at him. “Of course, da-ge. You need only ask. I’m only surprised – you don’t often ask about people in specific.”

Nie Mingjue supposed that was true.

“You’re helping with the resettlement of the Wen civilians, aren’t you?” he asked.

The Jin sect had volunteered for the work, and it made sense: they were the wealthiest sect, capable of buying up land for the Wens to live on and paying for the wages of the men it would take to keep an eye on them until they could feel certain that they weren’t planning rebellion. It would be good for the Wen civilians to have some land where they could farm, an honest life they could lead, and it was probably better for them to live nearer to the Jin sect, which had suffered much less in the war, than risk anger elsewhere.

“One of them is named Wen Qionglin,” he continued when Jin Guangyao nodded. “Skinny, like you, but taller – maybe half a head. Big eyes.”

“He must be a rare man indeed for da-ge to notice his eyes,” Jin Guangyao teased, though there was some expression Nie Mingjue didn’t recognize in his eyes. It was almost dark, something possessive and angry, but that didn’t make any sense. Perhaps he was only still irritated at how badly his first major event for the Jin sect had gone.

Nie Mingjue had only mentioned the eyes because at the time it’d seemed as if they were wide enough to take up half of his face, the boy as skittish as a rabbit; he shrugged, not wanting to talk about it too much. He’d made a decision based on pain and anger, and he still didn’t know if it had been the right one.

“If you can find him for me, let me know where he is,” he said. “If you can’t, you can’t. It’s fine - I have other places I can look.”

In the end it hadn’t been Jin Guangyao who had found Wen Ning, but Wei Wuxian.

Nie Mingjue only heard about the whole disaster much later on – he’d assumed from Jin Guangyao’s silence that the boy had somehow managed to evade the Jin’s resettlement efforts and had turned to checking elsewhere.

He hadn’t been expecting to find him again as Wei Wuxian’s Ghost General.

That had been a shock, as had finding out about the boy’s identity –

“He’s Wen Qing’s brother,” Jin Guangyao told him, later. “She ran a Supervisory Office in Yiling, caring for prisoners to make sure they stayed alive pending interrogation – torture, really. He assisted her…did you really think he was just a civilian, da-ge? You really shouldn’t let yourself be so easily deceived by an innocent smile.”

– but in the end Nie Mingjue decided that it was still his responsibility to find out what had happened to the little Lan boy.

He went to Yiling.

There was a barrier at the bottom of the Burial Mounds that Nie Mingjue lightly touched with his saber – not enough to actually destroy it, which would cause a backlash, but enough to make the person who put it into place notice. It was little more than a means of knocking, really, but Wei Wuxian stormed down the mountain in an offended fury.

Perhaps Nie Mingjue had come on a bad day.

“You’re not welcome here,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’m not handing over the Stygian Tiger Seal, or the Wens – I want to be left alone.”

“I only –”

“I’ve already separated from the Jiang sect and been condemned by the entire cultivation world; what more do you want?! I’ve had enough. Wen Ning, make sure he leaves.” With that, he turned on his heel and went right back up the mountain, leaving Nie Mingjue blinking.

Wen Ning shuffled forward. His face was flat, seeming almost cruel in its indifference, but Nie Mingjue suspected that was just the stiffness of death. “He won’t come back down,” he said.

“That’s fine,” Nie Mingjue said, still somewhat taken aback by the sheer level of rudeness. “I came here to speak to you, anyway.”

Wen Ning blinked. “…me?”

“I wanted to check up on you,” Nie Mingjue said, feeling abruptly very awkward – Wen Ning had died, after all, and in bad enough circumstances that he’d risen up again as a fierce corpse. He couldn’t even be sure that the fierce corpse, however conscious, was still the Wen Ning he’d been before he died; some rumors suggested it was something else moving the body, some tool or dreadful summons of Wei Wuxian’s. “And the child.”

There was a moment of silence, when Nie Mingjue began to wonder as well, but finally Wen Ning stirred and spoke again.

“…he’s doing all right,” he said, and there was a small smile on his face. “Wei-gongzi took A-Yuan down the mountain to the village recently and he got a whole bunch of toys; he’s been very happy.”

“I’m glad,” Nie Mingjue said, and felt rather stiff himself. “I should have done more for him, the first time we met. I regretted it later, but couldn’t find you.”

“You looked?”

Nie Mingjue nodded. “When I was at the Phoenix Mountain hunt a few months back, I asked my sworn brother to check the Jin resettlement program, as he helps organize it,” he said. “He must have overlooked you somehow – I told him to look for Wen Qionglin; perhaps that was the issue.”

It didn’t seem especially likely, since Jin Guangyao had been able to find out about Wen Ning’s past, but he couldn’t think of any other reason why the normally efficient man would make such an oversight.

Wen Ning was quiet for a long moment, a strange expression on his face. “What are your plans now, Sect Leader Nie?”

Nie Mingjue frowned. “What do you mean?”

“About A-Yuan. His parentage…”

“You said he was fine and happy,” Nie Mingjue pointed out, realizing that Wen Ning was probably worried that he’d insist on the boy returning to the Cloud Recesses. “I’m not…Lan Xichen is very busy with his own concerns, anyway, and if the child is happy, then nothing need change. And Wei-gongzi’s hysterics aside, Yiling is fairly well protected by him at the moment, so this is probably the safest place for him to be.”

The Jins were furious about what had happened; he wouldn’t trust the Wens with them right now. In fact…

“If the Jin sect start making trouble, my earlier offer to care for him is still valid,” he said, and this time he did have a token at his waist that he was able to offer up. “Given your actions during the war, it can no longer extend to you as well – assuming you can even leave Wei-gongzi’s side, anyway.”

“Who told you what I did during the war?” Wen Ning asked. “That sworn brother of yours again? Lianfeng-zun?”

Nie Mingjue nodded. “As I said, I asked him to look for you; he found out in passing about what was done under your sister’s command. I can’t offer succor to someone who helped torture my Nie cultivators, even in the guise of offering medical aid; there would need to be a trial, and passions are still inflamed. Better that you stay here.” There didn’t seem to be anything more to say: he’d found out what he’d wanted. “I’ll take my leave, then.”

Wen Ning slowly nodded. “Come back again sometime, Sect Leader Nie,” he requested, and even seemed sincere about it. “And – stay safe.”

It was a strange farewell, but Nie Mingjue supposed that the remnants of the Wen sect – and a fierce corpse, no less – would be more concerned than most about security and well-being.

“Wei-gongzi,” Wen Ning said, sitting on the floor next to Wei Wuxian’s working bench in the cave. “I have a question.”

“Is this about my sister’s wedding again? I’ve already accepted that I can’t go. You don’t have to keep worrying.”

“Not about that,” Wen Ning said. “Something else.” He hesitated. “I have a friend –”

Wei Wuxian dropped the half-finished compass of evil onto the workbench with a thunk and spun around to look at Wen Ning with a grin. “You have a friend? Go on.”

Wen Ning stared at him, bewildered.

“Everyone knows that asking for advice on behalf of a friend means asking for it for yourself!” Wei Wuxian sai, beaming. “Go on, tell me – do you like someone? Or is it something to do with your body –”

“It really is about a friend!” Wen Ning wailed, hiding his face behind his hands. “Or, well, not a friend. Someone I know. He’s the one with friends – bad friends.”

“Bad friends? What do you mean?”

Wen Ning peeked between his fingers, but Wei Wuxian appeared to have calmed down a bit from his earlier manic glee.

“I think,” he said, thinking very hard about his words before saying them, “that – this person I know, that he’s being manipulated by one, maybe more than one, of his friends. I don’t know why, but…I don’t know. It gives me a weird feeling. Like something bad is going to happen. And I don’t know if I should tell him or if that would only make things worse or…I don’t know.”

Wei Wuxian nodded, finally looking serious. “Is there a chance that we can drop the ambiguity?” he asked. “I can help better if I know who the people you’re talking about are.”

“It’s a bit sensitive. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble…”

Wei Wuxian looked around the cave pointedly. “I’m pretty sure we’ve offended everyone we could possibly offend already, Wen Ning.”

“…I think Chifeng-zun shouldn’t have sworn brotherhood with Lianfeng-zun and Zewu-jun,” Wen Ning said in a rush.

“I retract my previous statement,” Wei Wuxian said weakly. “What? How do you even – you consider Chifeng-zun a friend?”

“He was very nice the first time we met,” Wen Ning said.

“Chifeng-zun? Nice?”

Wen Ning shrugged.

“Okay,” Wei Wuxian said. “Okay. This is fine. You did in fact find the only three people in the cultivation world that I haven’t crossed yet, but – it’s fine. Okay. Let’s deal with this. What do you mean he’s being manipulated? And what’s wrong with Lan Xichen? He’s the real nice one.”

“I’m not saying he isn’t! It’s Lianfeng-zun that’s the problem, I think.”

“I haven’t heard anything bad about him, other than the fact that he runs whenever Chifeng-zun appears,” Wei Wuxian said. “But then again, rumor doesn’t get you very far, or else we’d be living in a palace of blood and gore right now – emphasis on palace. It’d probably have better washroom facilities than we have.” He sighed and shook his head. “What makes you say what you’re saying?”

“I’m not sure…it’s probably nothing. They didn’t pay any attention to Chifeng-zun when he’d been tortured, letting him walk around where he could’ve been killed, and then they swore brotherhood before his wounds had even scabbed over, and I swear they must have pushed him into it, what with the way he treats Lianfeng-zun...Anyway, then there’s everything that’s been happening with Lianfeng-zun and me - ”

“…you know what, let’s focus to that,” Wei Wuxian said, holding his head as if it hurt. “What has Lianfeng-zun to do with you?”

“Chifeng-zun asked him to look for me, a few months ago, and he deliberately didn’t tell him where I was,” Wen Ning said. “And he also told him a bunch of stuff about what I did during the war that’s really not true – he thought I was involved in torturing people, and I wasn’t, I swear! – and anyway, I don’t know why he’d do that. Sworn brothers shouldn’t lie to each other, should they?”

“Generally speaking, no,” Wei Wuxian said. “Okay, yes, that’s all a bit suspicious; that bit with him exaggerating what you did during the war sure sounds like he’s abusing Chifeng-zun’s trust to isolate us even more. But what’s wrong with Lan Xichen? He’s Lan Zhan’s older brother – I like him.”

Wen Ning nibbled on his lower lip. “It’s not what he did,” he said slowly. “It’s only…okay, let me tell you a story. There was an uncle I liked once. He’d been a guest cultivator, but he married one of my cousins, and he was really nice to me; I used to go over to see him a few times a week. And then one day my sister told me I couldn’t talk to him anymore because he was gone: she’d had him ejected from the sect because she’d found out that he beat his wife.”

Wei Wuxian nodded.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” Wen Ning said. “He was always really nice to me, you know? He’d never raised a hand or behaved badly where I could see. A bunch of other people hadn’t believed it, either, for the same reasons. He behaved well, he had a good reputation, he smiled…my cousin tried to kill herself. That’s how my sister found out, and she believed her. And she was right, too.”

“Lan Xichen is as nice in private as he is in public, though.”

“No, you don’t understand – I don’t think he’s the guest cultivator in the story. I think he’s me. Me and all the other ones that refused to believe what was going on even if we saw the signs, just because we liked him so much. He wouldn’t have gotten away with it for as long as he did if we all hadn’t been willing to defend him.”

“So you think Lianfeng-zun is the one that’s up to something in secret,” Wei Wuxian said slowly, fingers drumming on his leg. “And Lan Xichen is acting, however inadvertently, as his shield…Chifeng-zun would definitely believe whatever Lan Xichen told him. That’s probably how he got captured in Yangquan to begin with, actually; that makes a lot of sense. But what benefit would there be to Lianfeng-zun to manipulating Chifeng-zun into hating you? Hating us?”

He frowned. “Do you think the Jin sect is planning on trying something against us here at Yiling, and Lianfeng-zun is trying to get Chifeng-zun on board? I know the Jin sect wants my Stygian Tiger Seal, while the Nie sect has never much cared about it…this could be serious.”

Wen Ning nodded.

“One question, though. You said he deliberately knew where you were and didn’t tell him – are you sure about that? That’s the key point, at least to me: getting your past in the war wrong, that could be a mistake, and we don’t know if there was some sort of earlier agreement about what happened in the Sun Palace. How do you know Lianfeng-zun knew where you were?”

“He visited,” Wen Ning said, and looked down at his hands, which were clenched so hard that the knuckles were white. “He looked right at me while he was talking to some of the guards. And…”

He trailed off.

“And?”

“And then I died, Wei-gongzi,” Wen Ning said solemnly. “Less than a day later, the guards he was talking to killed me.”

“Not that I’m not always happy to see you, Wei-xiong,” Nie Huaisang said, ignoring the way that he could feel his sect elders a few rooms over bursting into flame in sheer rage without ever realizing why, and also the way his elder brother was going to break both his legs if he ever found out that this was what Nie Huaisang was doing with the role of acting Sect Leader in his absence, “but…why are you here again?”

“To save your brother!” Wei Wuxian said with a grin. “Also possibly to get your thoughts on what a good wedding gift for my sister would be. I can’t decide whether to go with something fancy, heartfelt, or crude.”

“Don’t go with fancy, the Jin sect has all the fancy they need for a lifetime,” Nie Huaisang said at once, because that much he could answer. “And – wait, what was that about saving my brother?”

“Also, I may need to marry Lan Zhan in order to finalize an adoption,” Wei Wuxian said thoughtfully, as if he wasn’t blowing up explosives in Nie Huaisang’s brain with every word. “He doesn’t know about it yet. Do you think you can find someone who can officiate?”

“My brother can do it, he’s technically an elder in the Lan sect by virtue of being sworn brothers with their sect leader,” Nie Huaisang said, mouth moving on automatic. “And – what? Marriage? Adoption? Not know about – also, can we go back to the bit about saving my brother?”

#mdzs #nie mingjue #wen ning #lan xichen #jin guangyao #wei wuxian #nie huaisang #my fic #my fics #lan xichen means well #but being a good friend to one can mean being a bad friend to another #jin guangyao does not mean well #Anonymous #war remnants

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aot-snk-4238 · 4 years ago

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SNK Meta Part 2: Ymir

In my previous post, I talked about my feelings regarding Historia's character this final arc. Now I'm going to talk about Ymir, her relationship with Historia, and my feelings about her send-off.

Was Ymir a good character?

In my eyes, yes. When she was first introduced, it was clear that she had feelings for Historia, making her one of the only canon queer characters in the series (assuming Historia reciprocated those feelings, which I'm pretty sure she did). She also appeared very snarky and cynical, but us readers came to learn later on that there was a much softer, sensitive side to her deep down that Historia would be the first to witness. These revelations, including her backstory, helped flesh out her character in a way that made her very interesting and mysterious for me. I especially loved how sharp and intuitive she was. I'm going to quote the wiki on this part, because I think it does a great job explaining her impressive observant abilities. "Ymir was extremely perceptive and could discern the nature of the people around her with alarming accuracy, such as Historia's martyrdom mentality, Reiner's split personality disorder, and Sasha Blouse's desire to look good in front of her peers by hiding her native accent and developing an extremely formal way of speaking. Due to her experiences and belief in self-pride, she tended to rudely criticize people for being untrue to themselves. Furthermore, Ymir was very reasonable, as she knew what to do during her kidnapping situation and reconsidered her options to accomplish her goals." I also enjoyed her interactions with other characters besides Historia. Take Connie, for example. When he lamented over the possibility of his mother being stuck as a mindless titan, Ymir tried to distract him, albeit not in the most appropriate way (ch. 38).

Connie complained about this behavior later on, but Historia defended her, explaining that she was only trying to stray his thoughts from that traumatic discovery. There were a few more moments between these two that were fun to see as well.

😂😂😂. Ymir's looking at him like, "You ruined it, Connie..."

I love the way she pats him on the head. Knowing how much taller Connie's gotten I don't think she'd be able to do that anymore.

This becomes one of the many times that Connie calls her "ugly" when she's in her titan form. Too bad she couldn't talk very well as a titan or else she probably would have had a smartass remark to throw back at him. It's looking back on scenes like this where I wish we could have gotten more out of these two. You can tell she cared for Connie and I know he also cared in his own way.

We only saw her together with Eren once when Reiner and Bertholdt captured them, but it was very interesting to see their perceptions of each other.

Eren found Ymir to be mysterious and wasn't sure if he could trust her, which isn't surprising considering this was the only time they ever spoke to each other. One detail that he couldn't miss, however, was Ymir's undying determination to protect Historia, a goal they would both come to share later on. Meanwhile, Ymir couldn't trust Eren because she found him to be too reckless and hot-headed.

These were my favorite qualities from Ymir, although to this day I still question the rationality of leaving Historia behind considering the situation she's currently in. Historia herself called her an idiot after reading her goodbye letter. Now that I've covered my reasons for liking Ymir as a character, let's move on to her relationship with Historia.

Ymir and Historia

I've loved these two together since the beginning for their complex and amusing dynamic. On the surface, you had the selfish, confrontational tomboy and the girly, kind and beautiful goddess. But underneath were two young women who were dealt a dirty hand early in their life and lead empty lives as a result until they found each other. Their story arcs throughout the Clash of the Titans arc were beautiful and complimentary, and it's part of the reason why it's actually my favorite story arc in the series. Everything from Ymir seeing through Historia's charade and urging her to live her life with pride to Historia telling Ymir her real name and the two of them fighting side by side in chapter 49 was some of the most empowering moments for me and I will forever cherish those parts of the story.

Ymir's departure

And now the part I've been most excited to talk about! Ymir's glorious, memorable and emotional departure.

Her ending...was not what I expected it to be. She left Historia at the very last second and gave herself away to the enemy because she felt guilty for something that was not her fault. Now as we know, Ymir is selfless at heart and she felt indebted to Reiner and Bertholdt for inadvertently helping her return to her human form after 60 years of wandering the earth as a mindless titan. She also decided that Historia might be safe after all after learning that Eren possessed the coordinate. I understand all of that, but what I don't understand is...well...everything else.

This was Ymir's last real appearance. We see that Ymir has willingly chosen to accompany Reiner and Bertholdt back to Marley to give up her titan powers at the cost of her life. Many people weren't so sure if that was truly the last of her though, because her death was not explicitly confirmed for a long time. We spend the next 33 chapters hoping to get something more, and then this happens...

A glimmer of hope. Finally there's a real chance we'll hear from her again, and it's got a lot of people buzzing with excitement. Sure enough, we finally get to see what's in that letter a few chapters later and are given Ymir's backstory. Here's where the disappointing part comes, though. Ymir makes it clear at the beginning of her letter that she will be dead by the time Historia receives it, meaning that this is the only goodbye they're gonna get. The last time they saw each other, Ymir wasn't even in human form. Instead of a proper goodbye, all we get is a short letter. The anime even tried to fix this by giving us Ymir's backstory earlier, but by doing that, her letter was cut short by a lot. All that was really left was, "Hi babe, sorry I left you like that. Oh well, I'm about to die anyway. Sorry we couldn't get married." And then this happened:

Historia touches Ymir's letter and is suddenly bombarded with visions of Ymir's past, including her chained up and about to be eaten. That is definitely not what happened in the manga and its honestly very confusing to me. How was she able to see all of that just by touching the letter? I get that she has royal blood and was able to access memories when she touched Eren, but Eren is a human who just so happens to possess the founding titan. The letter is just a piece of paper. Also, I'm guessing the last thing Historia saw was Ymir chained up so that there will be no need to bring her up again like Reiner and Porco did in chapter 93. I don't blame the anime team for making that change because I'll be honest, when we saw that one panel of her in her death chamber it felt very out of nowhere and I had a hard time concentrating on the rest of the chapter after that. So here are my main problems with her death:

1. It was off-screen

If I recall correctly, Ymir is the only major character in the series whose death was off-screen. All we got were her final moments, and there wasn't even any dialogue. That part especially bothered me because you can see that Ymir and Porco are looking at each other and Ymir's mouth is slightly open, implying that she's speaking. But what was she saying? You seriously don't mean to tell me that they both just sat there and stared at each other the whole time. She must have had some last words, but for some reason we never got to know what they were. At one point I even thought that Historia and Porco might cross paths at some point and he would be able to give her closure that way but no. No closure, just a last minute goodbye letter and a glimpse of her final moments that I now consider completely useless and unnecessary because we never got more out of it. I mean really, we even got closure and an on-screen death for Marco for crying out loud. Why give him that kind of attention and not Ymir? Not to mention one of the more recent guidebooks. Her character has the diceased sticker and it talks about how she went back to Marley with Reiner and Bert, but that's it. Not even the guidebook makes it clear what happened next. Yeah she died, but did anything else happen before then? That's what I wish we could have gotten more details on like, I don't know....her final words???

2. It was anticlimactic

We didn't get enough focus on Ymir's point of view after leaving Paradis in order for her death to have any kind of lasting emotional impact. As I mentioned above, it just felt out of place and messy. There was nothing memorable about her death either. It was quite simple and boring.

3. It contributed to an ongoing literary issue that has anti-LGBTQ roots

Yep. I'm talking about the infamous Bury Your Gays trope. Now before I go any further, I am not accusing Isayama of being anti-LGBTQ, I'm just shedding some light on something that's been continuously repeated in countless forms of media, not just anime and manga. Truthfully, I hadn't heard about this trope before reading Attack on Titan, but when I did hear about it, it only made Ymir's death even worse for me. I'm not surprised that it exists and I realize that this is a manga where death is inevitable, but keeping both women alive in the end would have certainly been very refreshing. At this point, all I could ask for is that Ymir and Historia get to see each other one last time. Obviously since Ymir is dead it will have to be through other means and I don't care how it's done. It can be in a dream, a vision or through Paths (which I think would work best). Seriously, there's nothing I've been more curious about than how Ymir would react to Hisu's current predicament and what she would say to her. It would just be great for them to have one last conversation face to face because for me, the letter just wasn't enough. Of course I'm hoping for too much, though. We've only got 1-2% of the story remaining, leaving no room for further closure. It's disappointing and frustrating, but no story is perfect. I'm grateful for the content that we did get, but I hope one day I can find a story like this one where the queer characters get to live for once. I'm aware of other shows like Steven Universe, Adventure Time and Yuri on Ice that give them good endings, but those shows are much friendlier towards younger audiences and aren't nearly as dark and grim.

Conclusion

Ymir was a very intriguing character while we had her, but her death was unsatisfactory and only left us with more questions. I am not going to trash Isayama for it, but I will leave this critique here so I can unload all my thoughts for others to read if they wish, or possibly share their own thoughts. We are coming close to the end of the manga, so now would be a great time to reflect on what we read and enjoy what's left of it.

#snk #ymir #snk meta #snk spoilers #snk character analysis #snk manga #snk thoughts

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myfriendscallmecoelophysis · 4 years ago

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God(dess) Help the Outcasts

He lived in a world of duality, Mianite and Dianite, Order and Chaos, Red and Blue, Propriety and Discord. How could he be anything but an Outcast when he chose the forgotten Third God?

Dedicated to Nerf House, @topazgirlygirl, @snowydawn17 and all the rest of the Voice Vibes crew <3 you all

Jordan had been born to a divided family. His Father was a follower of Mianite, his Mother a follower of Dianite. While this wasn’t necessarily the norm, it wasn’t frowned upon either. They lived in a world of duality, Mianite and Dianite, Order and Chaos, Red and Blue, Propriety and Discord. Everyone in their world chose one or the other. Neither were wholly good or wholly evil, just as no single person was good or evil, there were intricacies. However, people tended towards one side or the other, one God or another. In the case of his own family, his Father, a librarian, tended towards order and organization; so he, when he was old enough to choose his path, pledged himself to Mianite. Jordan’s mother on the other hand, an artist, adored spontaneity and was just generally, a disorderly person, her studio a mess of paints and brushes at all times. She had pledged herself to Dianite when it had been her time to choose.

Their families had been surprised when they’d first fallen in love, but wasn’t that how the old saying went? Opposites attract? And when a follower of Order and a follower of Chaos had a son, was it any wonder that he trended towards the middle ground of Balance?

Jordan had never had an answer when the other children in school asked which God he would pick. His town was close to the Capital and was therefore mostly neutral, conversations of who they would follow were frequent. Rarely was there any negativity shown towards either decision, except when Jordan said that he wasn’t sure. They always looked at him strangely, it was normal to have all but chosen by the time you were old enough to understand who the Gods were. You couldn’t pledge yourself officially at the Temples until you were 16, but that didn’t mean most children didn’t already know. He became an outcast, not bullied per say, but mostly ignored, the strange boy who clearly didn’t know himself well enough to know who to worship.

Despite this, he did well in school and between his studies and spending all his free time reading in the library where his Father worked, Jordan was quite clever by the time his final year of schooling came along. He left the school for the last time with the reputation of the outcast still on his shoulders but emotionally no worse for wear because of it.

In all the years spent there, all the time they thought that he didn’t know himself, he’d known it to be the opposite. He knew himself too well. He knew that he would not pledge himself to either God. He would forge a middle path, a Balance between Order and Chaos. If he was alone in his beliefs, so be it, but they would be his.

It was a trader that came from the far flung deserts that got his thoughts turning. He was manning the library for his Father when the trader arrived, dressed in rich blue robes.

“I come to trade with Sir Conway.” The man said, voice accented and gravelly.

Father had warned Jordan of this and had given him instructions and payment for the trader. “He’s not here, but I’m his son. I can help you.” Jordan explained, reaching under the counter to grab the bag of emeralds his Father had left for him. The trader nodded shortly but said nothing, producing a stack of three old books from his bag. The covers were dyed leather, faded and cracked with age, one deep royal blue, one burgundy and one a rich purple color. Three books for 10 emeralds was what his Father had said, so Jordan handed over 10 gleaming polished gemstones. The trader made a pleased sounding grunt and left the library without another word.

Once he was alone again Jordan looked at the books, he could recognize the archaic spelling of Mianite’s name on the spine of the blue book and Dianite’s on the burgundy one, but he’d never seen the name Ianite before. Curiously, he cracked it open and began to read.

As he read, Jordan realized that this Ianite figure had felt the same way he himself did. They were between Order and Chaos, a third option, a third God. But why then had he never heard of them? Why had no one told him that his thoughts were valid? He spent the entirety of the day reading the book, trying to find the answers to his questions.

He learned that Ianite was not a God, but a Goddess. She was the Goddess of Balance, sister to the Gods of Chaos and Order. Her domain was the End, something that shocked Jordan. He knew about the End but no one had been there in centuries according to the stories. Ancient Heroes of the Gods had entered the dimension and conquered it, slaying the beast that defended it. Was that why there was no mention of Ianite? Had conquering her domain in the name of the Overworlders done her some great harm? Caused her to fade from memory? Why would they have done such a thing?

Ianite had been different than the other Gods, he was able to gather as much from reading between the lines of the text. She’d been the least worshipped by the ancient people of this land. Her followers had been cast out for worshipping a Goddess of ‘contradiction’, instead of picking a side, they picked Ianite. Like he himself inadvertently had. But yet, he felt no shame in it.

That book became Jordan’s most important possession. He poured over it’s every word, committing every last scrap of information about Ianite to memory. He scoured other books about the Gods, searching for mentions of Ianite or Balance or the End. It became his life’s goal, he would find the End one day, because it was there that all the secrets of Ianite were.

He moved to the Capital, made a living in the bustling city by doing odd jobs and tasks. All his years of study and reading had given him such a vast wealth of knowledge that he could accomplish almost anything. It was during these jobs that he began to notice the disparity among the people, the different levels of society. He knew the Champions of the Gods lived here, their images and lives exalted by the civilian population, he’d come to recognize their names and faces the same as everyone else despite supporting neither of their Gods. The two men were friends he learned, practically as close as brothers. Jordan wondered, what it might be like to be so close to another person or to a God. He had a name for his beliefs now after all this time, a greater privilege than he’d ever expected when he’d chosen the third path years ago, but nothing more about her. It was also in the city that he realized that he may not be entirely alone in his beliefs.

Every city had it’s lower class, the poor and downtrodden, the Capital was no different. It made pity twist in his stomach to see people pray to their Gods for wealth and glory, while at the same time ignoring the people directly in front of them who needed things as simple as food. He took to giving what extra coin he could spare whenever he saw someone in need because how could he, an Outcast to the Gods, ignore the outcasts of society. Sometimes it was a lot, sometimes only a little, sometimes it was a loaf of bread or an apple. Every time though, no matter what, they were grateful.

One day, after Jordan had given him a loaf of bread and a handful of coins, an older man dressed in little more than rags, said “May Lady Ianite bless you in your kindness.” Jordan was too shaken to reply. He nodded and went on with his job, trying not to notice the knowing look the man gave him at his reaction.

It was that interaction that reminded him of the path he’d set himself upon. He was in a place of fortune, unlike so many that he saw. He could afford the time and effort to learn all he could about Ianite and the part she played in the history of the land. He dove into his research, seeking out books and scrolls and legends, following every lead in hopes that one of them might give him the knowledge he needed.

With each passing day and each new story he learned he felt closer and closer to this Goddess he’d never met. Most people went their whole lives without properly meeting their Gods, only the Champions interacted personally with the Gods, but Jordan felt so connected to Ianite already.

‘Maybe in another time or another life you were her Champion.’ He thought with a wry chuckle while getting ready for bed one night. “Yeah, like I’d ever be a Champion.” He muttered to himself as he blew out the candle in his bedroom.

“Don’t be so sure” A woman said in his dreams.

Days passed the same as they always had. He spent the daylight doing courier work and odd jobs, while the night was spent researching and learning. It was monotonous, until one lead brought him to the local museum. On display they had something unlike anything he’d seen. It looked almost like an enderpearl except it was pale green and blue with a dark streak through the middle that looked almost like a slit pupil.

‘Legend tells us that an Eye of Ender was the key to discovering the entrance to the void world, The End, when the ancient Heroes of the realm ventured forth to conquer it in the name of the Gods.’

This was the link he’d been searching for. After years of effort, he’d discovered the last step. This was how to find the stronghold that protected the portal to The End. Jordan left the museum with a grin on his face and hope in his heart.

It took him days to barter, purchase, or otherwise acquire the resources to create just over a dozen Eyes of Ender. He’d need a dozen alone to open the portal but he figured that if he calculated the trajectories just right, he could find the stronghold itself with less than 5. A week was spent preparing supplies for the journey and getting his affairs in order. Then, one final day was spent cooking and distributing all the perishable food he had throughout the city. He had no idea how long he’d be gone, no use letting things go to waste.

Just before sunrise, he climbed to the highest point in the hills surrounding the Capital. Below, the city was just beginning to wake up, smoke trickling from some of the chimneys, people heading to the fields and the markets. The Temples to Mianite and Dianite, one of either side of the city, were lit in crackling firelight by the enormous ever burning braziers the statues of the Gods themselves held in their hands. Jordan took one last look, imagining what it might be like to have a third temple, a third statue, a third God. Then, he turned away from the city towards the wilderness beyond and threw the Eye of Ender as high as he could.

~~~

He was farther from home than he’d ever been. A few days ago he’d hit the desert and hadn’t that been interesting? All his life he’d thought deserts to be excruciatingly hot, but after days spent in a strangely cold desert, he owed mental apologies to every desert trader he’d ever questioned for wearing such thick, blanket-like garments. He’d nearly frozen the first night, huddling as close as he could to his campfire under the shelter of a large sand dune. He was close though. He had to be. If his calculations were correct he should be within a few hundred blocks of the stronghold. He still had two spare Eyes aside from the dozen he needed to unlock the portal. He could spare one. Sliding his sunglasses back in place in front of his eyes, he looked up towards the sun, throwing the Eye, it drifted and drifted in the direction he’d been travelling but then he noticed something on the horizon as his eyes tracked its path. Was that a tree?

Jordan ran through the sand as fast as his feet could carry him, tripping and stumbling as it filled his boots. It wasn’t just a mirage, he realized as he got closer, it was an oasis, a crystal clear pond surrounded by drooping trees flush with leaves and vines. On the other side of the pond was a crumbling stone structure, a ruin of some long forgotten building, but within it was a staircase that led below the earth. Two small obelisks still stood, flanking the staircase, each made of intricately carved lavender stone and capped with a pyramid of obsidian.

A laugh of astonishment bubbled from his throat as he collapsed to his knees in the sand. He’d made it. After all this time. He’d found the entrance to the stronghold.

That night as he sat by fire, he reread his favorite sections of the purple book his Father had purchased all those years ago. It was worn down from years of use, the spine loose and some of the pages torn, the ink faded in spots. But that didn’t diminish Jordan’s love for it and what it represented. If anything he liked to think that Ianite appreciated the love he’d shown her book after so long.

He fell asleep to the relaxing crackling of his fire with the book open on his chest, thinking about the possibilities of what lay ahead.

“I’m so excited to finally meet you, my Hero.” A woman whispered as he drifted into his dreams.

~~~

When Jordan entered the Stronghold, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect. He wandered the eerily silent halls, lighting the torches on the walls to mark where he’d been so that he was less likely to get lost in the maze-like complex of halls and rooms. There were remnants that someone had been here before him but he’d expected that. The stories told as much. What he hadn’t expected to find were signs that there may have once been an entire civilization beneath the ground. He stumbled upon dozens of empty rooms in all different sizes, fountains, storerooms, two libraries, a prison, and nearly endless hallways and staircases. Had there been people who lived here once long ago?

Finally, after what felt like hours, down a darkened hallway, he saw an otherworldly glow. Jordan rounded a corner and there it was, the portal. It was elevated above a pool of lava, the blocks that made the frame glowing from their own internal illumination. It was the brightest room he’d been in since leaving the light of the sun behind. There were bits of rusted and cracked metal at the top of the staircase that led up to the portal. Whatever it had been, had been destroyed long ago. The portal was made of a strange white stone, capped with filigree patterns the same color as the Eyes of Ender. In the center of each was a rounded indentation of smoothed obsidian.

He gently placed the first Eye of Ender in the closest spot, jumping in surprise at the bizarre, resonant sound that echoed through the room. With each Eye the sound changed in pitch and tone until he got to the final slot. Jordan took a deep breath and inserted the final Eye. There was a crack of energy and a deep thud of a noise, alien and unnatural. Where there had been an empty frame, was now filled in with a warping speckled void unlike anything he’d ever seen in his life. It had appeared from nothing and seemed to go on endlessly even though the logical side of Jordan’s mind knew there was lava beneath it.

This was the moment he’d been waiting for. Ianite’s domain was beyond this remarkable and mystical portal. The answers he’d been looking for his entire life waited for him. And, if nothing else, at least maybe being in her domain would give him a chance that she would hear his prayers.

He closed his eyes and stepped forward in a leap of faith.

When he opened his eyes he was greeted by a bizarre landscape of the same off-white stone of the portal and immense towering columns of obsidian. He could see enderman teleporting about, their lanky, ink dark bodies moving without a single step. He averted his eyes downward out of reflex, confused by the obsidian platform that hovered above the Void. Jordan’s heart stopped in his chest, the Void was a scary story, a warning from parents to children about being cautious how deep into the earth they went. He’d never expected to actually see it in his life. Connecting this platform to the main island was a surprisingly wide path of cobblestone, worn and dirtied with age, but otherwise safe enough looking. This was more evidence that others had been here before him, the path was wide enough to accommodate multiple people at once with a waist high walls lining either side for safety. His thoughts turned back to the book and his thoughts that maybe, once upon a time, she had been worshipped the same way Dianite and Mianite were. There could be a Temple to Ianite somewhere on that island.

Cautiously, Jordan stepped onto the path, pleased that it didn’t crumble or give any indication of failing. With each step he gained confidence and surety, eyes flicking upwards towards the pillars of obsidian, the researcher in him taking in every bit of information he could, above each pillar floated a white crystal, bobbing gently up and down. The stone that made up the island, endstone he mentally dubbed it, had a strange texture under his boots. There was an almost, sandy feeling to it, like the very top layer was loose dust. It made for a slick surface as he ventured deeper into the landmass.

The first thing he noticed was just how many enderman there were, reminding himself to keep his gaze low so he didn’t attract their attention. In the center of the island was a fountain-like structure made of bedrock, something he’d only seen on school trips into the deep mines. Next to the fountain was a monstrous skeleton, the skull of which was larger than Jordan was tall. It looked almost reptilian in nature, with a horned frill and long sharp teeth. The Beast, he realized. The beast the ‘Heroes’ had killed was a dragon, a creature from myth and fairy tales.

As Jordan looked around further, he was beginning to fear that all this had been for nothing. There had to be more here, it couldn’t be just this. There had to be something else, something relating to Ianite.

An enderman teleported across the island. Behind it, Jordan caught a glimpse of the same lavender stone the obelisks at the oasis had been made of. Curiously he walked over to investigate, eyes widening in understanding as it came fully into view. It was a Temple. A decaying and crumbling Temple, but a Temple nonetheless. The roof was mostly caved in, only the front pediment was mildly intact, the lavender stone balancing almost precariously on top of a series of pure white columns, quartz if he had to guess. The walls of the Temple seemed intact enough as entered, wary and wondering.

It was emptier than the Temples dedicated to the other Gods that he’d been in. No pews or places for private prayer, simply a large room filled with the stone remains of the roof. Purple flowers in varieties he’d never seen sprouted up from in between the cracks in the floor, interspersed with flowers he did recognize, lilies of the valley and lavender sprigs. The drooping white lilies were a symbol of returning happiness and the lavender a symbol of feminine elegance, his mother loved painting them both because of it. Moss and vines had somehow found their way in as well, growing uncontrollably up and around the remains of grand columns and archways. But the most eye catching thing was the statue of a woman before an immense and intricate stained glass window, her arms outstretched in a pose of strength and grace. It was her. Ianite.

He approached and without really considering his actions, fell to his knees before her. He’d never prayed to a God before, had never felt that it was his right. But he’d seen others do it all his life, he knew how it traditionally went. He reached into his bag and pulled out a flint and steel, carefully lighting the end of a stick to use as a match. Surrounding the base of the statues were the stump ends of purple candles, melted to almost nothing, wicks blacked to charcoal. He lit those first, one at a time. Next he removed the offerings he’d prepared, it was said that every God had their favored items and the more valuable an item you presented, the greater blessing you would receive. With no knowledge of what she may want, he’d done his best. He laid diamonds and emeralds before her, as many as he could truly spare. But also, he presented the book that had sent him on this journey. He’d memorized every word and while he wasn’t sure what use it might have to her, the idea of offering something so significant to him felt right.

Jordan looked up to her then, the statue. Much like the rest of the Temple, it had seen better days. It was cracked and broken in places, a finger on one hand missing entirely, the hem of her dress ragged and eroded, her face barely more than a hint at an expression, shards of ender pearl where her eyes ought to be. Twin cracks traced down her cheeks like tears. She may have been forgotten, but she still deserved better.

He spread his arms wide, mimicking her pose. He swallowed, hesitant for what he was about to do. The Champions of the Gods were the only ones who were supposed to speak directly to the Gods themselves. The rest of the kingdom spoke only to priests and disciples who relayed the messages, and ‘Godless’ Outcasts like Jordan? Well, the last priest he’d spoken to had laughed him from the Temple because he’d dared insinuate that there was someone besides the two Gods. Still, he’d spent a long time trying to form the words he wanted to say to her. He was not here just for himself, but for all the Godless outcasts that could use the blessing of a Goddess.

I don’t know if you can hear me Or if you’re even there I don’t know if you would listen to a humble prayer

Yes, I know I’m just an outcast I shouldn’t speak to you Still I see your face and wonder Were you once an outcast too?

God help the outcasts Hungry from birth Show them the mercy They don't find on Earth God help my people We look to you still God help the outcasts Or nobody will

He wasn’t sure when he’d started crying but he didn’t wipe his tears away, looking into her eyes. He’d never felt so humbled in his life nor felt anything as strongly as he felt now. All his life he’d wondered what it felt like to pray to the Gods and have them supposedly listen. The prayers he’d heard though, had often been selfish. Requests for self-betterment, wealth, fame, glory, love. It made him wonder what kind of Gods Mianite and Dianite must be if their followers prayed so selfishly.

I ask for nothing I can get by But I know so many Less lucky than I

Please help my people The poor and down-trod I thought we all were children of Gods

God help the outcasts Children of Gods

He felt lighter when the words finally left him. Something in his heart had lifted, a weight he’d not realized he’d been carrying. A smile found its way to his lips as he wiped the moisture from his eyes. Jordan bowed his head to Lady Ianite for a moment, even if this had all been for nothing, at least he could return to the Capital with a new sense of purpose. He would spread the word of her existence, tell people of the third option, restore the belief in her. Maybe it would bring her back, maybe not. Either way, he felt she deserved it.

Jordan got to his feet and with a grin said “Alright My Lady, let’s see what I can do about fixing this place up eh? I’m not the best at building but I’ll do what I can.”

He worked through what he thought was the entire day, humming and whistling to himself and occasionally asking questions out loud to Ianite as if she could answer.

“What do you think? Leave all the flowers or just leave certain ones? I personally kind of like them all here, you’ve never probably seen the Temples in the Overworld but they’re kind of lifeless. I think the flowers add a nice touch. Maybe just a path through the center…?”

He stopped to eat, sitting against the inside front wall of the Temple and just looking. It was better already. He’d gotten most of the chunks of the ceiling pulled aside, at least the ones he was strong enough to move, as well as the remnants of the columns and arches. He’d pulled up the dead flowers and plants and lit the torches that lined the walls. Yes, it was looking a lot better than when he’d found it. Still not perfect, he didn’t have the tools or supplies to fix it in its entirety, not yet at least. But he would. Now that he knew where the portal was, he could return to the Overworld and stock up then come back.

He yawned widely. With no sun or moon he had no way to tell just how long he’d been here. If he was this tired, it must’ve been at least a whole day. It certainly wasn’t respectful of him to sleep in here but the alternative was sleeping out in the open surrounded by who knew how many enderman. “You don’t mind do you Milady? Just this once. I promise.” He yawned again, settling back against the wall and letting his eyes slip shut.

As his breathing evened out, every candle on the altar suddenly extinguished in a gust of air. The enderpearl shards in the eyes of the statue began to glow weakly and then with a single graceful step, a woman stepped from the stone. Her hair and dress floated around her as if she was underwater, her entire being mostly transparent. She leaned down to pick up the book that had been left to her, smiling faintly. He’d done so well to get here on his own. With nothing to go on but this book and his own feelings, he’d come to her. She could not think of a single person more deserving in this world of behind her Champion.

The Spirit of Ianite drifted through the Temple, the flowers waving delicately as she passed over them. She came to rest in front of him. His eyes were shut and entirely body relaxed, soft snores leaving him.

“Thank you for all you’ve done. I know you will go on to do a great many more things in my name. I am honored to bless you as my Champion.” She spoke into his dreams.

Ever so gently she wrapped her hand around his left forearm, shutting her eyes to channel her power. Upon his skin, a golden tattoo spiraled into existence. The pattern was varied, eyes and flowers and abstract symbols of balance all flowing together into a single piece of artwork. She felt the connection between them blossom to life like one of the chorus flowers that decorated the Temple. She could feel his mortality like a steady beat in her mind, the reassuring thump thump, thump thump of his heart. Ianite basked in the sensation for a moment, so new but still so welcome. He stirred beneath her touch, his subconscious reacting to their new connection.

She pressed her lips to her fingertips and whispered “I will answer your prayers my Champion. I will visit the others in their dreams as I will visit you. They will know you as my Champion and it is through you that my name will return to the world of mortals.” then with the utmost care, touched her fingertips to his temple to complete the blessing.

Ianite drifted back to her statue, looking back over her shoulder with a fond smile one last time before vanishing.

#mianite #Mianite fanfiction #Captain Sparklez #ianite #Goddess of Outcasts au #Song fic #mianite au #my writing #Nerf House #dianite #the realm of mianite #words words words

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lovestruckay · 5 years ago

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Bad Hobbies

A/N: I made a joke about how Ochako was Kakuzu kin on my Instagram and someone commented how they wanted to read a fanfic of Ochako and Kakuzu bonding over money. I immediately accepted this challenge and now we can all enjoy the garbage fruits of my labor. I can’t believe this is technically my first MHA fanfic, lmao, amazing.

Ochako was a hero. Not to put too fine a point on it either but she was an excellent hero.

With a zero percent casualty rate when she arrived on the scene and with over a thousand missions under her utility belt, she - and the rest of the world - was well aware of her talents. She had long since accomplished her goal, having set up her parents for life in a mansion of a home in Kanazawa and having built a savings account for their retirement which already boasted over five hundred million yen. With her goals accomplished and with a sudden surplus of her own hard earned riches, Ochako had found an interesting hobby to spend her time and money on: gambling.

A hobby that she found herself astoundingly talented at and a hobby that she was careful to keep out of the media’s eye. The last thing she wanted to deal with was the field day the news would have after finding out that the number three hero in Japan giddily broke the law on a weekly basis.

Every weekend, worn down from the constant barrage of missions where her and her once-classmates-now-comrades would protect the city and its people, Ochako would make time to visit her favorite gambling den. Slipping a comfortable yet concealing hoodie over her shoulders and a thick padded envelope of ten thousand yen notes into her front pocket, she snuck out of her own apartment complex.

The trek through the city, one spent dipping between alleyways and cross streets, was one that was traveled much differently than when she was on her patrols. Avoiding the eyes of drunken passersby who might recognize their beloved hero if they stared long enough, she skirted through the crowds like a ghost before finding herself excitedly strutting down a familiar back alley. Stopping in front of a nondescript metal door, she knocked on it nine times.

A slat opened up, revealing a set of orange eyes that stared down at her wordlessly in waiting.

“Bijuu,” she hummed happily to the doorman, the slat closing before the door silently slid open.

“Welcome back,” the giant of a man greeted simply, the smell of cigarette smoke and the sound of jazz emerging from within.

“Good to be back,” she answered, stepping inside and making her way down a short hallway, the door shutting behind her. Tucking her hands into her pocket, she headed down a set of stairs that descended into a dimly lit room made all the more disorienting by the wisps of smoke which hung in the air.

Ochako was grateful when no one bothered to raise their heads, keeping their attention on their games instead as they threw down hundreds of thousands of yen in single sittings. Nearly skipping up to a counter at the edge of the room, she withdrew the envelope from her pocket and set it in front of the teller.

“The usual, please,” she requested politely, the familiar red haired woman giving her a single smirk before exchanging her stack of yen for a stack of multicolored chips.

‘What today, what today?’ she wondered as her gaze drifted across the room before settling onto a game of Hanafuda in a quiet corner of the gambling den, only three people sitting at the table surrounding the dealer. Two of the patrons she recognized immediately, having taken all of their money a handful of times, but the final man she had never met.

As if she would recognize him anyways with his hair and face covered like that.

Deciding to test her luck against the stranger, she made her way across the room to the table. As she approached, one of the patrons threw down his cards with a cuss before nearly toppling his chair as he stood. Brushing passed her with a grumbled warning that her luck might not be good enough for this asshole, Ochako settled herself in the abandoned seat.

Stacking her chips on the table, she glanced over at the masked stranger, finding his attention focused on the dealer. She noticed that the man’s eyes were very similar to Mina’s - the sclera completely black although his irises were green instead of yellow. Any other defining features, however, were concealed behind a mask so similar to the ones Shoji wore even in their adulthood.

Respecting his privacy, she focused her attention onto the game, an unbidden smile spreading across her lips in her excitement as she was given her hand. An excitement that did not abate even as she sat at that table for over a dozen rounds, watching as chips flitted across the table as readily as the cards. It was easy to get lost in the thrill of the game, her attention so focused on the beautifully decorated cards that she hardly noticed the third player abandon the game. Even with the sting of loss sharpening her senses, nothing could beat the rush she felt with each winning hand.

And nothing could beat the feeling of how her heart sang in her chest when she sat at the end of the game with all of the chips on the table neatly piled in her corner.

“Do you want to keep going?” Ochako asked, trying to hold back the excitement in her voice as she addressed the stranger for the first time in the past few hours.

“So you can add more to your small fortune? I’ll be cutting my losses here,” the man returned, aggravation and something else in his tone.

“Ah, that’s a shame,” she answered before realizing how cocky she sounded, reminding her of Bakugo, and quickly tacking on, “Good game though!”

“What’s your name, girl? I’ve never seen you around,” he asked, a dull curiosity in his tone as he appraised her.

“I go by Mochi,” Ochako answered, giving the nickname she had given herself for when she was gambling.

“Mochi, huh?” he repeated, his tone insinuating he saw right through her, “You appear to be a woman who knows the true value of money.”

Ochako reached down to toy with one of the chips piled in front of her before responding thoughtfully, “Well, who wouldn’t? Money decides how you get to live your life. Where you live, how you dress, what food you eat if any, every aspect of how you live your life. It’s the deciding factor on whether or not you get to live a good life.”

“Spoken like someone who knows how it feels to be without,” he commented, an edge of casual cruelty in his voice.

“Sometimes being without is the biggest inspiration you need to do anything you can to keep yourself and the people you care about out of that position,” she returned seriously, her voice sharper than before as she returned the chip to its tower.

“Just what I wanted to hear. Would you happen to be interested in a job, Mochi? It would pay much better than your day job.”

Ochako’s eyes widened in surprise before narrowing, “What do you know about my day job?”

“I know more than enough. If you worked for me, you’d have all the money you could ever need. You’ll be so rich you could dump those winnings of yours down a storm drain and laugh at how insignificant a dent in made for you,” he explained before tacking on in an almost amused tone, “Although I believe you wouldn’t. I get the feeling we’re alike in that way.”

“I’m not looking for work. I’m happy with my day job, thank you,” she bit out, unsure of what kind of mysterious work this equally mysterious gentleman was offering.

Ochako wasn’t an idiot. She knew the kind of people that frequented these dives. She knew that she was sometimes shoulder to shoulder with the villains she would be putting in jail the very next day. While they all respected each others privacy and remained anonymous to each other here, she knew better than to think they were innocent outside of these smokey rooms.

She wasn’t interested in whatever work he had to offer.

“Very well,” the man answered in a disinterested tone as he rose to his feet. When he reached into his pocket, she tensed, although he only removed a business card which glinted red in the dim lighting, “In case you change your mind.”

“Yeah sure, thanks,” Ochako answered, taking the card and shoving it into the pocket of her hoodie to be immediately forgotten. Turning away, she busied herself with gathering her chips and, when she stood to exchange them for cash, the man was already gone.

After collecting her winnings, all neatly packaged in a much thicker envelope than she had arrived with, she exited the smokey building and entered into the crisp night air. With a glance at her phone, she saw it was already nearing three in the morning. Quick and silent on her feet, she retraced her steps back home, avoiding the inebriated eyes of anyone who lingered on the streets.

Flipping on the lights in her apartment as she kicked off her shoes at the door, Ochako yawned widely. Stepping into her kitchen on tired feet, she pulled back her hood before tugging her winnings out of the pocket of her hoodie. As she pulled out the envelope, a black and red business card came fluttering out before landing on the floor face down.

Sighing as she remembered the strange gentleman from the dive, she picked up the card, briefly scanning over the content. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropping as she stared down at the painfully familiar red cloud design. An alarmingly familiar name was printed alongside a single phone number: Kakuzu.

The name of one of the most infamous villains involved with the most notorious criminal organization since the League of Villains: the Akatsuki.

Flopping down onto one of her kitchen chairs, she gazed down at the thick envelope on the table, her winnings suddenly feeling more like a mistake than a victory. She knew that she had inadvertently met a number of villains during her trips to the various gambling dens around the city but the fact that she had not only stumbled across Kakuzu but that he had offered her a job?

Ochako quickly tore apart the business card before tossing the shreds onto the table.

She really needed to find a different hobby…

#ochako #uraraka #ochako uraraka #kakuzu #bnha x naruto crossover #bnha x naruto #mha x naruto crossover #mha x naruto #my fanfiction

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youmightaswell · 5 years ago

Text

Die!

What I did during my pandemic non-vacation

Right before the pandemic hit, my work was slow. My client stable was dwindling and so I set the goal of finally compiling all my personal essays from the last 20 years into a book I'd call "The Unbearable Heaviness of Being". And then, serendipitously a more literal unbearable heaviness of being hit.

Still, one would think a pandemic would be the ideal time to start that book. Maybe even start the "Letters from the Inside" book about my serial killer writing project for the last 10 years, or even my own memoir. I had nothing but time. I had to stay inside anyway. Nothing else was pressing, and I am usually especially creative during times of stress and hardship.

But lo! I am also a procrastinator when it comes to a writing assignment -- even a self-inflicted one.

So over the last three months I found every excuse not to write those long-form pieces. It seems like all I did was bathe, eat, eat some more, and lay around in bed, most often talking to the dog in guise of actually talking to myself. I spent an inordinate amount to time figuring out how to handle my grooming at home now that my external fleet of professionals were no longer available. Day after day I wore sweats or pjs (careful to change from day ones to night ones once the nightly New Year’s Eve-type cheering started, a new type of closing bell.) The one day I felt invigorated and optimistic enough to put on jeans I had to peel them off by mid-day unsure of how I ever wore such a tortuous garment.

I felt comfort when I saw reassuring messages on Instagram -- which along with Facebook and Twitter, I spent an inordinate amount of time on -- saying that it was just fine not to produce anything during this quarantine. That is was an unprecedented time and one that was highly stressful so it is fine to do whatever you want to keep calm and keep on... I did just that, or at least it seemed so. I felt like a sloth, eating carbs and sugar -- things for the last two years I carefully avoided. I texted exes, fought with feral Trump supporters, washed dry-clean only clothes. You know, indulged in the wildest of vices.

The shelter-in-place mandate will come to a close soon. Being in NYC, probably it will take longer than most areas to dissolve, but still the streets are getting a bit more crowded, and people seem to be back in my NYC apartment building, once again, hogging the dryers (which I then have to neurotically wipe down with disinfectant wipes.)

So I initially felt a bit down at what a failure I've been to do something productive during this time.

As a result, I decided to take inventory of my last three months. ***

- I applied for PPP (dealing with Chase bank for two months having to re-apply three different times at their ever-changing directives, only to be told they couldn't verify my income and therefore I was turned down). I applied for EIDL,got $1000 payment and then was told that because inadvertently answered a question wrong -- these applications are super hard--I was denied and now they were only allowing re-applications of agricultural industry workers. Then I applied for freelancer unemployment, twice, only to not be able to get through, not be able to revise my PUA application and am still waiting to hear something, anything. As such with EIDL, PPP, SBA, WHO and all other pandemic-related acronyms, I now have a great fear -- PTSD, if you will -- of acronyms in general. No good can come from them.

- I washed my hands -- and my dog’s paws -- a billion times. I also did way too much laundry because in times of stress and lack of control, my OCD (another scary acronym!) gets rampant and doing finite tasks makes me feel more in charge. I saged my apartment weekly, casting out negative energy and viruses and calling upon all good things to enter instead. The only entrance was made by my super who yelled at me for mentioning him in an article I wrote about my doorman who passed away from Covid-19. Still, I disinfected doorknobs, elevator buttons, and even the container of wipes, multiple times as if trying to free a genie in a bottle, to no avail.

- I tended to all sorts of medical tests for myself and my dog, culminating in standing a long line to get the Covid-19 antibody tests. (Sadly I was negative.)

-I binged watched (Dead to Me) and cringe watched (White Lines), valuing a good hate-watch more than quality programming.

- I read about 10 books, a few that have stayed with me in the best way possible, such as "My Dark Vanessa" and "Excavation".

- I listened to the full true-horror podcast "Let's Not Meet" - because sometimes the only way to quell true-horror is with true-horror. Hair of the dog sort of thing.

- I tracked down ARCs (one of the nicer acronyms) of books that will come out later this year so I could read them without any preconceived notions about them.

- I finally watched the backlog of hoarded movies I had borrowed from the NYPL: The best of which was "Giant", a classic 3.5 hour saga.

- I read countless magazines and most things I read were drivel, but then I curated the best essays and realized they all seemingly dealt with food, which makes total sense during a pandemic when we all reverted back into hunter gatherers. “Fuck the Bread. The Bread is Over,” the NYT’s written by restaurant owner/chef of Prune, and the essay by art critic Jerry Saltz about his peculiar eating habits were the best. While they all seemingly dealt with food and eating, they really don't deal with that at all. They definitely appeased my appetite for touching writing.

- And I did some touching writing of my own. I wrote an essay about the death by Covid-19 of my favorite doorman to much notice. It was the article I’ve written that has gotten shared the most online, I think, ever! More importantly, it touched his family in a way that seems significant, his daughter reaching out to me with this message:

- Related: I organized a GoFundMe for the aforementioned late doorman’s family and raised over $7,000 in just one week! I got our whole complex and neighborhood to participate, and I believe it helped us collectively mourn.

- Related, I helped a dear friend with dealing with heartbreaking news that her elderly mother had contracted Covid-19. She called me the night she found out to weigh options. Sadly her mother passed. I had a tree planted in her mother’s honor.

- I signed up with Postcrossing and sent postcards to people all over the world and have gotten a ton back. In times of isolation it helps to feel connected in some way.

- In that same vein, I participated Oregon Humanities’ “Dear Stranger” project - in which one writes a letter to a stranger and sends it to the organization and they exchange it with other stranger’s letter and mail that one to you. Interestingly I wrote my letter on an old map. The letter I got in return was by a female freelance writer of my same age, also written on an old map. More serendipity! More connection without ever leaving the apartment.

- I saw a segment on NY1 talking about how this pandemic and isolation is taking its toll on seniors and one NYC nursing home that was requesting cards and letters to cheer them up. It was the catalyst for me to start a new project I call: “Letters from the Inside... of the Senior Center” - in which I researched and compiled a list of nursing homes around the country who accept letters of cheer to their seniors. I now have a list of about 800 names. I’ve sent about 75 cards/postcards myself so far, and have enlisted friends, neighbors, and others to send cards as well. My goal is to get each senior at least one card or letter.

- I had a milestone birthday with little fanfare. My dog, Biggie, turned three.

- I finally finished annotating each chapter of “Blind Eye,” the best-selling book about serial killer Michael Swango, who I have written to for 10+ years as part of the aforementioned “Letters from the Inside” project I created. I sent him questions on each chapter.

- Related: After 10 long years of corresponding, on my birthday we started what has now turned out to be weekly calls. His prison has finally allowed them. Last call I told him that he has not answered my last few letters. He told me to yell at him, remind him, and push him to get on it. I quipped that it was probably not in my best interest to antagonize someone who murdered 60+ people. True horror, indeed.

- The CNN docu-series about him in which I appear as an expert was postponed but will air later this summer.

- Speaking of true horrors, I had a woman threaten to spit on me when I requested she leash her dog -- who had tried to attack Biggie. (Odd foreshadowing for the recent Amy Cooper debacle.)

- I lost my long-time nurse (I get immuno-therapy infusions twice a month and have for years for an immune disorder) because she was fired by her nursing company. After having to deal with an inadequate string of nurses I lobbied to get my nurse hired at my pharmacy’s nursing division so now she can be my nurse again. She is thrilled she has a job; I am thrilled I have my old friend back each month.

- I feel in love with Cuomo.

***

After sitting down and taking this inventory, I am amazed at how much I have actually done in such a short period of time. It seems insane that I was feeling so bad and slothlike for being so unproductive, when in retrospect, I actually accomplished a lot.

I guess what I can take away from this long stretch of isolation is this: We can’t see how far we are traveling without looking back on our journey. While something -- particularly traumatic or stressful -- is happening, it is easy to feel static, frozen and worse, uncreative. But feelings aren’t facts.

Just because I didn’t write my book, I did lots of creative things with my time. I was tangibly helpful to others without even noticing it when I was doing it. I felt like I was faltering and failing, but in looking back at that list above, I really wasn’t. I may have even excelled.

And now, I think I need to lay down.

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mothermaidenclone-blog · 5 years ago

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Ad Astra or This Movie Was the Brad Pitts

Ad Astra was the worst movie I have paid to see since 2015’s Kill Your Friends, which is my least favourite cinema experience of all time. It was a dry and dreary story about emotionally stunted white men in a bleak and boring capitalist version of space, with jarring and superfluous Christian undertones. The plot and everyone’s motives were so non-existent that Brad Pitt had to narrate the whole thing in a monotone so flat and dead I literally screamed all the way from the cinema to the bus stop when it was over, partly out of a frustration so deep it was non-verbal, but also just to finally hear some pitch variation.

*Ad Astra spoilers follow*

There technically were women in this movie. Lots of women, particularly women of colour, occupied high ranking positions and were addressed by their titles, a touch I think is important and that usually tips the scales in favour of a good review for me. We were graced with Adjutant General Vogel (LisaGay Hamilton), Captain Lu (Freda Foh Shen), Sergeant Romano (Kimmy Shields), Tanya Pincus (Natasha Lyonne) and Lorraine Deavers (Kimberly Elise), as well as several unnamed female personnel (Kayla Adams, Elisa Perry, Sasha Compère and Mallory Low). I would like to particularly highlight Natasha Lyonne’s performance as apparently she was the only actor employed to play a human being and not a replicant. She was on screen for maybe twenty seconds, as is sadly the case with most of these women, but was a glorious breath of fresh air as the only character to simultaneously emote expressively and speak with inflection and enthusiasm. The only one! In a two hour movie!

All of these women appear to be respected and capable members of various illustrious teams, but are always outnumbered by men. There are two male generals alongside Vogel and Deavers is initially outnumbered 4:1 on her space craft by men. Tragically, whenever a team is being picked off, it is always the people of colour who die first. Not only is this obviously racist, it is just a disgusting cliché that we just don’t need to see anymore in movies. Deavers dies first when Roy (Brad Pitt) forcibly invades their vehicle, followed by Franklin Yoshida (Bobby Nish), an Asian man, and Donald Stanford (Loren Dean), a white guy, is the last to go. Roy cradles him in his arms and attempts to save his life. I hope it’s not just me that sees something wrong with the order of events there.

A similar scenario takes place in the lunar chase, which absurdly seems to occur in the same crapy looking buggies as the original moon landing, a confusing visual choice considering we’ve just seen a vast and impressive modern concrete moon base. The film takes the time to introduce us to Willie Levant (Sean Blakemore), a black officer who will be escorting Ray across the moon. As soon as we see he has a photo of his wife and child taped to his tablet screen I knew he was going to die - in the year 2019 I should not be able to predict that a black character is going to die because we saw a family photo. Can we just not anymore? Again, aside from the racism, that’s just shitty writing. I like to think that as a species, if we can conceptualise something as vast and seemingly impossible as solar travel, we can also move beyond basic and derogatory cinematic tropes.

I was most excited by the appearance of Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), a woman of colour who occupies a position of power on Mars and introduces herself assertively using her full name. Also, her whole look was excellent. However, this brief release of serotonin was very short lived as she literally walks Roy down a corridor then is immediately cut off and superseded by a white guy with a man bun. Lantos does return later, but alas, as an exposition machine to give Roy some plot news about his dad. Even as she explains that her parents were murdered by his, Lantos falls victim to the dire, emotionless monotone that I can only assume was forced on the entire cast of this film. Then, she is an actual chauffeur and drives Ray to a manhole so he can continue his dad quest. A character brimming with original potential is presented as nothing more than a device.

The final woman to mention is the first one we see, Roy’s ex-wife Eve (Liv Tyler). We see the blurry, out of focus back of her head in the background of a shot before we see her face, and this is incredibly telling, because that’s all Eve is, the simulacrum of a woman. She could be anybody - so why she is Liv Tyler defies belief, I can only assume they held her loved ones hostage - her story is untold and entirely irrelevant. Again, she is only a device, although this time not for Roy’s forward momentum, but this time seemingly to emphasise that Roy is a total sociopath with no emotions whatsoever. We don’t learn Eve’s name for another twenty minutes, and it is an hour and twenty minutes before we hear her speak. Even then, it’s not a live conversation, because god forbid this film have too many of those, but a voice recording explaining that their relationship is over. I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, but everything she said was so generic I have no memory of it whatsoever. She is presented as a ghost, a blurry image on a screen, a memory fixed in time, not a real person with agency and personality. At the end of the movie we finally see her in real time, and that is when she has made the unfathomable decision to meet Roy for coffee. Even her face in that moment gives no emotion away, perhaps because Tyler had no idea how to act this entirely nonsensical decision. To our knowledge, she would not have seen any change in Roy, only received news that he survived a dangerous space mission, which is apparently enough of a reason to get back with this emotionless egg of a man?

I almost didn’t want to devote words to them, but I think it’s important to address just how dire Roy and his dad H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) are. This is their film, they are the reason that all of these women’s stories are passed over. It is made clear over and over again that both Roy and Clifford believe they are the only people capable of completing their various missions. Roy hijacks a ship and inadvertently kills everyone on board because he thinks that it’s his destiny or whatever to get his dad back, never mind that they were all highly trained space personnel who were arguably better suited to the mission precisely because it wasn’t their dad. Clifford straight up murders his whole crew because they are too “small minded” to fly off further and further into space forever on a mission that has yet yielded absolutely no evidence of their goals. A variety of talented human beings are destroyed because of the entitlement of white men, their delusional and unshakable conviction that they are at the centre of the universe and that no one else could possibly accomplish the lofty goals that kismet apparently calls them to.

The way they speak about themselves and to each other is absolutely psychotic. Roy’s solo musings include, “The flight recorder will tell the story, but history will have to decide,” and “In the end, the son suffers the sins of the father.” Clifford imparts his son with the delightful greeting of, “There was never anything there for me, I never cared for you or your mother or your small ideas.” In addition, they both physically flinch from human contact at various points in the move. Now, I totally understand that we live in a neurodiverse world and that many people experience emotions and social interactions in any number of ways, and that is a beautiful thing that makes our world so interesting to live in. However, that these men both abjectly state that they have no empathy is presented within the context of their megalomaniacal ideals that they must accomplish their god-given quests irregardless of how many people they have to kill along the way. It is a facet of their strangely two-dimensional, arrogant and narcissistic personalities, not one part of many complex features that make a complete and relatable human being.

Roy has to literally say out loud that he is a human being at the end of the movie; “I will rely on those closest to me…I will live and love,” which makes him sound more like a learning AI trying to pass a Turing test than anything else. The music swells as Clifford throws himself towards the surface of Neptune in an orchestral deluge that is unsubtly significant in this very quiet film, as though I’m supposed to start crying and think anything other than, “well thank fuck, it’s about time this murderer dies in the cold vacuum of space, I hope Roy stays spinning and screaming here forever too.” We are supposed to feel sympathy for them as the heroes of this movie, despite the fact that they show no care for anyone else throughout the whole thing and act entirely in their own self interests.

Overall, the women in this film are given about five seconds of potential as they introduce themselves variously as decorated soldiers and otherwise capable personnel, before being shoved to the side, or murdered, for Roy. This is obviously objectionable, but is made so much worse by the fact that Roy is an emotionless, entitled, empathy-less white man who doesn’t care if other people have to die for him to get what he wants. That is what these women are being passed up in favour of. I felt like I was watching a two hour long Voight-Kampff test. Space movies like this should be about what we can achieve if we work together as a species, not about how white men will still be the kings of dreary capitalism, even on the moon. We can do better than this.

And now for some asides:

What the actual fuck was the font at the beginning? I guess a red serif all caps should have alerted me to the fact that I was about to watch a horror movie.

As a lover of space horror, I was absolutely gutted that it was a bad CG angry baboon and not a cool gross alien. Also, what was that scene? “Hmm, we need to get rid of this loser because Brad Pitt is the best at space ships and he needs to be the captain. Uhh…what about…space monkeys? Yeah! Space monkeys on a deserted Norwegian ship. That makes sense.”

Can I just have a film bout those moon pirates fighting space capitalism please? I was more invested in them that anyone else in this garbage movie.

Credit for the Bradd Pitts joke goes to the talented and lovely Ed Cheverton

#ad astra #Film Review #movie review #feminism #sci-fi #scifi #science fiction #brad pitt #liv tyler #tommy lee jones #ruth negga #freda foh shen #lisagay hamilton #natasha lyonne

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sage-nebula · 5 years ago

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Thanks! So they've mentioned a war and Sonic being imprisoned for awhile? Also curious about Shadow's history, as it was alluded he was a villain in the past. And in one of the panels where Sonic was thinking about his infection, it showed outlines in the background suggesting comparable things had happened to him in the past. One seemed to be him turning into a monster, maybe?

So they’ve mentioned a war and Sonic being imprisoned for awhile?

That’s the plot of Sonic Forces. The long and short of it is that the game opens up with Eggman successfully taking over the world and, with the assistance of a jackal named Infinite who had the power of the Phantom Ruby (a gem which allowed him to warp reality), capturing Sonic (though many believed Sonic had died). Sonic was imprisoned and tortured for six months until he managed to escape, and during that time a Resistance was led by Knuckles and Amy against Eggman’s empire. As you can expect, the game ends with Eggman being overthrown (and Infinite being killed, we think).

Also curious about Shadow’s history, as it was alluded he was a villain in the past.

Shadow’s history is … complicated, to say the least, but I will explain it as best I can, haha.

So, fifty years ago, Eggman’s cousin, Maria Robotnik, was suffering from some kind of terminal illness. I think they said it was something along the lines of a degenerating immune system (neuro-immune system?), but the specifics aren’t really gone into very much. As a result of this, their grandfather Dr. Gerald Robotnik, started work on what was known as Project Shadow, a.k.a. the Ultimate Lifeform project. The goal was to create the Ultimate Lifeform, who was immune to all diseases, and then use that DNA to create a cure for Maria’s illness, which otherwise had no cure. Throughout the course of this project, two beings were created: the Biolizard, and the hedgehog we know as Shadow.

Now, I can’t remember if very much was said about the Biolizard’s DNA, only that at the end of Sonic Adventure 2 (the game where Shadow was introduced) it was kinda-sorta believed that the Biolizard may have been the true Ultimate Lifeform. Regardless, Shadow was created with the DNA from an alien known as Black Doom, who as it happens is also evil. But regardless of that, being created from Black Doom’s DNA is, I believe, what makes Shadow the Ultimate Lifeform. Although he has been alive for fifty years (in stasis for most of those years, to be fair), he is only sixteen years old. He’s not immortal (in the sense that he can be killed), but he doesn’t exactly age, either. He is immune to most diseases, and he can use Chaos Control, which allows him to teleport various places. The bracelets he wears on his wrists are inhibitor rings, which keep his power in check, but if he removes those he can also unleash a very powerful Chaos Blast. It takes a lot out of him, though.

Anyway, back when Shadow was created fifty years ago, he formed a very close friendship with Maria. It could be said, truthfully, that she was both his first friend and his only friend at that time. However—and my memory on this is a bit shaky since I haven’t played Sonic Adventure 2 in a long time, so bear with me—during the course of Gerald Robotnik’s research, I believe Project Shadow was defunded by the government, or something along those lines. Gerald was furious, because this of course meant that he wouldn’t be able to create a cure for Maria. So instead he set to work on creating the Eclipse Cannon on Space Colony ARK, which would allow him to decimate planet Earth as revenge, because of course that is the logical next step.

Unfortunately for him (and Maria, and Shadow), his hopes for revenge were in vain. The government found out about his plan and had their military force, G.U.N., storm Space Colony ARK, killing everyone on board … except Shadow, who was sent to safety by Maria, but including Maria herself. Shadow, trapped in an escape pod, could only watch as Maria was shot down by G.U.N. (and keep in mind, Maria was only about 12 - 14 herself, and had absolutely nothing to do with her grandfather’s plans). Right before this happened, Maria told Shadow was that her final wish was for him to protect the people of Earth—to give them a chance to be happy. Then she died, and Shadow was sent off in the capsule, though presumably at some point accosted by G.U.N. and put into stasis.

In any event, the trauma of seeing his first and only and best friend brutally murdered for literally no reason affected Shadow pretty deeply, including warping his memories of that event. As a result, Shadow remembered the promise he made to Maria being one of revenge, which incidentally is the exact opposite of what she actually wanted, but … he was a traumatized teenager who was then thrown into stasis by those very same soldiers, so you can’t really hold that against him too much. Anyway, fifty years after that event, Eggman (i.e. Gerald’s grandson, Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik) busted Shadow out of containment because he’d heard tell of the “Ultimate Lifeform” and wanted to see that himself. Shadow, seeing Eggman as a useful ally in terms of getting his revenge, agreed to help Eggman so long as Eggman could make it to the Space Colony ARK (I think that was the deal, anyway). Shadow himself went and procured a Chaos Emerald, framing Sonic for the deed along the way (since apparently G.U.N. is so incompetent they cannot tell Sonic or Shadow apart—but then again, neither can Amy later in the game, so), and eventually Shadow and Eggman strike a deal to work together officially. The deal, it should be said, is to gather all seven Chaos Emeralds to power the Eclipse Cannon, which they will then use to explode the planet. (Well, Eggman wants to rule the planet; he doesn’t realize that Shadow wants to explode it when they make the deal.) Unfortunately for them, they were spied on by Rouge the Bat, who followed Eggman to the Space Colony ARK after he tried to steal the Master Emerald (and failed because Knuckles shattered it to prevent it being stolen—mind you, Rouge had been in the process of trying to steal it herself). Rouge pretends to be a simple jewel thief to get in on the action, but in reality she’s a G.U.N. agent investigating the Ultimate Lifeform, a.k.a. Shadow. Neither of them realize it at the time.

All that said, the neat thing about Sonic Adventure 2 is that it initially has two story paths you can play: Hero Path, which lets you play as Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles; and Dark Path, which lets you play as Shadow, Eggman, and Rouge. The ending seems different on each, with Dark Path making it seem as though Shadow and Eggman’s plan will succeed, and Hero Path indicating the opposite. But if you beat both paths, a third path—True Path—opens, which shows you the true ending. The Biolizard is revealed, the plan to explode the planet (and the fact that this is now going to be accomplished by the Biolizard crashing Space Colony ARK into it) is revealed, and more importantly, during a time of quiet, Amy gets a chance to talk to Shadow. She inadvertently reminds him of what Maria truly wanted by talking about how everyone on Earth has different goals, but that ultimately they just want to be happy and deserve that chance. As I said, this unlocks the real memory of what happened that tragic night for Shadow, and he rushes off to go help the others stop the impending disaster so that he can do what Maria wanted. He kicks the Biolizard’s ass (which is his way of proving to himself which of them is truly the Ultimate LIfeform), but when the Biolizard transforms into the Final Hazard and starts to forcibly drag the Space Colony ARK toward Earth, he and Sonic use the Chaos Emeralds to activate their Super Forms to fight it in space. This battle results in Shadow sacrificing himself to finally defeat the Final Hazard once and for all, but also falling all the way to Earth from space in the process, his last thoughts being directed at Maria, telling her that he kept his promise to her. Sonic brings one of Shadow’s inhibitor bracelets back to the ARK and gives it to Rouge, and when everyone else has already left, stays in the room a moment long to deliver one final, “Sayonara, Shadow the Hedgehog.” (Yes, he says “sayonara” in the English version as well, just as Maria did; this is not me being a weeb lol.)

Anyway, Shadow was originally going to be Killed Off For Real there, but because of his immense popularity was revealed to have survived the fall to Earth, albeit he had amnesia as a result. Eggman also created some clones or robots of him as well, and that’s all explained in Sonic Heroes … but it’s not really relevant to the comics right now, lol. The important thing is, Shadow was an antagonist bent on the destruction of the world (and several brutal fights with Sonic, including at least one being intended to the death) in Sonic Adventure 2, but he realized the error of his ways at the end and sacrificed himself (everyone thought permanently) to help protect it. This leads to Sonic saying, in response to Rouge asking if Sonic thought Shadow really was the Ultimate Lifeform, “He was what he was—a brave and heroic hedgehog.” Which is part of why Sonic making his quip about how he didn’t think Shadow cared about innocent people in the most recent comic pretty ehhhh, even if it was a joke.

But yeah, those are the most important deals about Shadow. Note that Maria is still a very sensitive spot for him, to the point where, in a Twitter Takeover where the characters were voiced by their current voice actors in the games, Eggman refused to read a question asking Shadow how Maria was doing, and when Sonic started to read it, his response was, “Dear Shadow, how’s Mariauhhh, oh, oh yikes.” It’s really not a good idea to invoke her name carelessly around him.

And in one of the panels where Sonic was thinking about his infection, it showed outlines in the background suggesting comparable things had happened to him in the past. One seemed to be him turning into a monster, maybe?

That would be the game Sonic Unleashed, where Sonic was turned into a “werehog” at night due to a … curse? Infection? I can’t exactly say for sure since I didn’t play that one, haha, but essentially throughout the game Sonic was himself during the day, and then was a werehog at night, though this was cured / reversed by the end of the game, obviously. I don’t think knowing too much about that particular adventure will be necessary going forward; that was more just a little allusion to game fans to let them know that the events of Unleashed are canon in the comic.

Let me know if there’s anything more you’d like clarified!

#ravivkit

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clairekatswritingcorner · 6 years ago

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Camaraderie

Word Count: 1,207

Summary: Exiled and stranded on the outskirts of the cosmos, a peculiar brand of strangers come upon the disgraced former heir to the Galra Empire. Through their own conviction they end up inadvertently granting him a second chance at the life he’d almost given up on for good.

*Author’s Note*: Kind of short and not as detailed as I would have liked, but I’ve always had the hc that Lotor met the generals in a situation where they were actually the ones that found him. And through their encouragement/support some of his hope for living his life and improving things the way he’d always wished he could was restored. I know he’s a villain and exploited people and he’s not supposed to be a good person blah blah, but then we got examples in the show of him being devastated by Zarkon’s shrewd disregard for life, so…this fic is about nice Lotor I guess lol, not draining the life from people Lotor. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!

When he first found them, the truth was that things were the other way around. He’d never expected to come into contact with anyone out here, much less people that he could potentially form some semblance of a camaraderie with. Growing up in his father’s space faring palace, Lotor wasn’t allowed many opportunities to mingle with the common Galra subjects scattered across the cosmos. Routine check ins with bases, checkpoints, colonies, and the occasional intervention where one such outpost was to be reformed or exterminated had been the basic extent of his exposure. Essentially, the grunt work his father didn’t have the time or interest for often fell to him, presumably as a deterrent against any of the prince’s more liberal sensibilities.

Those sensibilities had contributed to his downfall, facilitated the actions that had brought him all the way out here in the first place. With nowhere to go and no place to return to, he’d been exiled to the vast emptiness of space. He’d wandered so many star systems, explored galaxies and planets he’d only ever heard rumors of before, some that’d even been branded as myths. In some ways, it was a gift, because all he really wanted to do was learn. Learn about new places, the people that inhabited them, their customs and idiosyncrasies. It was a habit he’d been sorely punished for in the past, but now he had nothing to lose. He could do as he pleased, and as lonely as he found himself at times, he figured he’d much rather have the freedom to pursue his life the way he’d always wanted. Almost anything was better than continuing to be crushed into submission under the weight of his father’s imposing and unyielding thumb.

His way of thinking was a damnable offence in the eyes of his father, a mindset that could scarcely be forgiven, if any measure of mercy was granted at all. To a point, he’d tried to conform to that philosophy, to fulfill his father’s demands to the degree that was expected of him. In such a scenario, not even the slightest failure was tolerated, and Lotor had learned how to accept the sting of harsh and harmful criticism the hard way; both mentally and physically. As much as the people that raised and trained him wanted to stamp out the spark of compassion that resided in his soul, every time it seemed like it was close to being snuffed out, something came around to sustain it that much longer. In this case, they were the ones that had reignited the paltry, wounded flame that could barely support itself.

“What are you doing out here?” the one with short, navy hair had asked. “Do you need help?”

Someone offering him help out in the middle of this desolate wasteland he’d gotten lost in? He could ask them the same question, this rag tag group of wanderers that looked to be far more qualified than whatever position they were filling now denoted. Or perhaps they were just working for themselves, hopping from planet to planet looking for pathetic husks like him to rehabilitate. It looked like they didn’t have much more than he did, though…and there was something else that was strangely familiar about them. Strangely comforting.

“Are you all Galra?”

The one that had addressed him grew tense, fists balling up tight. “Why do you want to know?”

Trying to make himself more presentable, Lotor had introduced himself and explained his circumstances. The one he’d been directly addressing all this time, Acxa, kneeled to him when he revealed his now worthless title. Even out here, this rejected royal could still find someone who wanted to be loyal to him, that respected him…he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. She beckoned the rest of her comrades forward, introducing them all in turn, and before he’d really had a chance to process any of this, it appeared that even Kova had taken a liking to one of them. His sole companion on this isolated trek, the furry creature was already trying to make new friends for him. Friends…Lotor had never really known such a thing.

“Even if you’ve been exiled, you’re still the prince. The blood heir to the Galra Empire,” Acxa had defended, her gaze sharp with a conviction that was no doubt just as formidable as her blade. “No one can ever take that away from you.”

She may have been right, but Lotor wasn’t sure he wanted to be emperor…he wasn’t sure if he’d ever truly desired that position. What he was sure of was that he just wanted to help people. He wanted to bring people together, to develop techniques and resources that would enable even dying populations to thrive, a welcome improvement from the decimation of the Altean Empire that his father had spearheaded like a tyrant—no, simply as one. The more he conversed with these strangers, the more he discovered just how closely their own ideals seemed to line up with his. Half Galra that understood the pain of being cast out, of being considered nobodies just by virtue of their existence.

They were skilled strategists and warriors, calculating fighters that could also display kind hearts if need be. They may not have been perfect, or even the most noble people in the world, but Lotor considered himself far from worthy of any such status, either. He had lofty goals and a sympathetic streak that had proven to be his downfall more than once. That had served as a catalyst of destruction for all the settlements that had been forced to suffer as a result of his naïve, meager conviction. Even when he’d tried to disguise his ideals as a ploy for advancement, for exploitation, his father had seen through his rouse and taken the usual measures that he claimed existed to teach the stubborn boy a lesson. The only lesson those situations had really instilled in him was that his father was a despicable dictator that couldn’t be trusted…one day, somehow, Lotor would figure out a way to usurp him. For the good of the cosmos, he knew it was his calling, his duty, his burden to bear.

“Would you help me accomplish this goal? Will you work with me to improve the universe, to thwart the destruction that this cruel Empire has wrought?”

For Acxa, it wasn’t even a question. For the other three, it was a matter of solidarity more than anything else. If one of them swore their life to this cause, then the others would at least see what kind of paths such an opportunity paved for them. For Lotor, it was a sort of second chance. These people had sworn their allegiance to him willingly, looked to him with the expectation that he would one day bring hope and prosperity back to the Empire with a fairness that had essentially been extinct for the duration of Zarkon’s reign. With this new authority in his hands, the prince was determined to do the right thing, and trample all who stood in his path. His was a path of virtue, after all, and these four would surely be the key to helping him attain the position he’d been born for.

#voltron #Voltron legendary defender #prince lotor #lotor (vld)#prince lotor (vld)#acxa #vld acxa #acxa (vld)#vld lotor #vld prince lotor #Voltron fic #Voltron fanfiction #vld #my writing #Claire writes #one shot #sorry for all the repeats idk how to tag anything lmfao #anyway it's short but I like it and I hope you do to #*too

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bloodsbane · 7 years ago

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why else do you ship saigenos so much?

hello. here’s more reasons, also in bullet point form:

both their lives totally change (for the better) when they meet each other.

if you didn’t already know, genos’ whole deal is that his family was killed by a rampaging cyborg and he wants to obtain saitama’s level of strength so he can accomplish his revenge quest. it has been noted, officially, that meeting saitama and living with him has ‘filled an empty spot’ in genos. he has gradually developed from being a reckless teen who only wants to gain saitama’s strength for his revenge into a much more thoughtful, skilled, genuinely heroic person who now strives to understand what true strength really means.

meanwhile saitama is thrown off course with genos’ arrival. it is genos who teaches him about the hero’s association and gets him to join, which causes saitama to think about his hero work differently/more seriously. It is through HA that saitama meets new people and even makes some friends. in a few subtle ways, genos inspires saitama to be reflective about his own position as a hero

they give each other genuine, healthy support

this is most obvious for saitama, because a huge premise (and one of the biggest jokes) of the source material is that saitama is The Strongest Hero Ever... but basically no one knows or understands this. there’s only a small handful of other characters who understand exactly how powerful saitama is, and genos is one of those few. it’s a running theme that saitama gets very little out of fighting monsters, but he also gets almost nothing in terms of respect or thankfulness from the general public, who mostly think he’s some sort of joke or cheater (because a lower-ranked hero can’t possibly be that strong).

genos, on multiple occasions upon realizing that saitama is not only a strong person but a good person (despite all his flaws), repeatedly attempts to convey his devotion to saitama and the fact that no matter what, he would always try to follow saitama and be there for him.

which is gay.

saitama in turn gives genos goals that remind him to slow down and enjoy simple things (which is hard for genos). he worries about having nothing to teach genos, but inadvertently teaches genos a lot of things that don’t have to do with being strong or fighting well, things that help genos be reflective and become a better person. and, especially in the anime adaptation, saitama does give genos a fair amount of positive feedback.

they bring out the humanity in one another

THIS is a pretty big one, and a major aspect of why I enjoy them as a couple, romantic or not. like, thematically, they’re just a really compelling duo? so okay like

saitama talks about how he feels like being too strong is bad, because it’s hard for him to feel anything anymore, and he wonders if he’s lost something essential to being human.

meanwhile, genos - who is completely artificial except for his brain - at first talks like he’s not human anymore at all. in their first meeting at least, he says stuff like ‘when i was fully human’ and stuff like that. i mean, the first time you meet genos he gets torn to shreds and is immediately ready to blow himself up just to take out one monster. he’s seconds from self-destructing when saitama shows up and kills the monster before he can detonate. it’s something he’s gotten better at, gradually, but genos’ obvious disregard for his own well-being is... telling. understandable enough, when so much of you can just get repaired if a fight goes bad.

but they both bring out the best in each other, and lots of ways, remind each other of their humanity. genos goes from lonely revenge-seeking ‘i’m just a gun’ hot-headed teen who just wants more power to... doing various chores around the house in slippers and a cute apron, and bargain-hunting, going to a bathhouse, hanging out with other people.

and saitama gets regular interaction with someone, a person who supports him and helps take care of him and worries about him and tells him that he’s amazing and deserves to be appreciated, which is something saitama might not want but i argue it’s something he really, really needs.

they go grocery shopping together. they go to the beach. they have picnics. they go to the bathhouse together. saitama takes genos to his first (and second) festival outing.

and it’s in the little things too, when you think about it more!! like how genos is the only person saitama could accidentally hurt and it ultimately wouldn’t do much harm (depending). or how genos could never hurt saitama by being too sharp or hot or heavy. genos weights like, a lot??? but saitama can just pick him up. genos can pick saitama up. neither has to worry (so much) about hurting the other physically, which is something neither of them can really experience anymore with most other people.

it’s like................................................. wholesome. and cute. and sweet. and gay. they’re both dorks. wow. wow...

#baneanswers #saigenos #me: im gonna answer this but be short and not ramble #me also: why the fuk u lyin #Anonymous

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tysmiha-witchnotes · 7 years ago

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Tarot Exercise 2.1

The Fool’s Journey - this exercise doesn’t actually require me to do anything except read, but for me it’s easier to retain stuff if i read and then retell it. The Fool’s Journey is essentially the story of the major arcana, and it’s a good way to remember what each card represents. This is based on a Rider-Waite deck, but can be generally applied to any tarot deck.

0) The Fool - The beginning of the Fool’s Journey finds The Fool ready for anything, feeling happy and adventurous but also showing a certain amount of naivety and obliviousness as he unknowingly approaches the edge of a cliff. Because The Fool sits at the number 0, he represents a certain sort of balance between positive and negative, knowing and not knowing. He’s something of a blank slate, but he’s ready to learn and experience.

1) The Magician and 2) The High Priestess - The Fool’s first encounter is with the Magician and the High Priestess, who also represent a type of balance on a grander scale. In a way, together they are the embodiment of polarity. The Magician is the positive side, representing masculine energy, creative ideas and conscious awareness. The High Priestess is the negative side, representing the unconscious mind, unrealized potential and the space for the creative ideas to manifest. The Magician and the High Priestess are the foundations upon which the rest of the world is built.

3) The Empress - Through his travels, the Fool learns to become more aware of his surroundings. The Empress is a mother figure, and the same way a baby recognizes their mother first, so does the Fool. She is warm and loving, caring and nurturing. The Empress represents nature and the senses, and through her the Fool learns about happiness derived from simplicity.

4) The Emperor - After the mother, the Fool meets the father: the Emperor. The Fool learns about structure, patterns and order, and realizes that some rules are necessary for his own well-being. At first, the Fool might be frustrated at the restrictions he encounters, but through The Emperor’s direction he begins to understand why they exist

5) The Hierophant (in some decks referred to as the Grand Master) - When the Fool leaves his parental home and goes out into the rest of the world, he’s exposed to traditions and culture, and his teacher in these things is the Hierophant. The Fool learns about social norms and how to interact with others in society, in a way, learning his place.

6) The Lovers - As he grows, the Fool enters a sort of puberty, experiencing strong desires for sexual union and a relationship. Up until this point, the Fool had not thought much of anyone else, but now he’s interested in sharing his life with someone else and caring for them as he cares for himself. At the same time, sharing his life with another requires him to have a strong foundation of values in order to stay true to himself.

7) The Chariot - In his adulthood, the Fool has developed his own identity and attained self-control. He feels confident and assertive, having accomplished so much so far in his journey. The Chariot card shows the Fool riding high on his self-satisfaction, and the pride he feels is well deserved.

8) Strength - As his journey continues, naturally the Fool will also encounter challenges and hardship that will make him question whether or not it’s worth it to keep going. This is when he must draw on his own Strength in order to develop courage and the motivation to continue. It’s also during these times of challenge that the Fool realizes that the command he wields while riding the Chariot is often best tempered with a softer sort of confidence founded in patience and kindness. This in itself is its own sort of Strength.

9) The Hermit - With the ups and downs of life, the Fool inevitably comes to ask himself what the point of all of this is -- why are we here, and what’s our purpose? The Hermit helps the Fool with some introspection and his search for answers. He teaches the Fool to seek solitude occasionally, to give himself time to reach his own conclusions.

10) The Wheel of Fortune - After spending the necessary time to do some soul searching, the Fool begins to realize that everything is connected, and that the world is an elaborate weave of cycles and patterns -- somewhere in there he may discover his own destiny. Having been alone for so much time, he can look back on his path so far and see everything that led him to this point, and now he is ready to move again.

11) Justice - Now that he has an idea of his place in the universe and what that means to him, the Fool must also learn to take responsibility for the actions he has taken that brought him this far. Only by owning up to his mistakes can he get a fresh start and walk down a more honest path. Justice offers the Fool a simple, yet difficult decision: will he try to make the necessary changes, however hard they may be? Or will he take the path of least resistance and carry on as is, stagnating any possible further growth?

12) The Hanged Man - Whatever decision the Fool makes, he does carry on with a determination to accomplish whatever goals he’s set his sights on. But it doesn’t always work out as planned, and sometimes the struggles that come with perseverance can seem impossible to endure and it will seem like the best option is to quit. At this stage, the Fool becomes the Hanged Man, seemingly tortured and helpless. But a surprising thing happens -- in forfeiting control, somehow things begin to work exactly the way they should. From this, the Fool learns to surrender to the twists and turns of life, and that there is joy to be found in simply experiencing.

13) Death - Having learned this valuable lesson, the Fool makes some major readjustments in his life. He cuts out any old and no longer useful habits and possessions. Things that once brought him happiness no longer hold the import they once did, and while getting rid of these things might be painful, the Fool knows now that this is an essential part of growth. By paring back, he makes room for new, more beautiful things.

14) Temperance - The Fool’s path so far has been a tumultuous one, sometimes joyous and other times unbearably painful, and through these experiences he has learned the value of balance and stability. Through all of his adventures in life, he has finally found the parts that truly matter and combined them to be the best version of himself. He is healthy physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

15) The Devil - Despite his newfound peace, the Fool’s search for knowledge and adventure has not been entirely quenched. In his pursuit, the Fool meets the Devil, and finds himself bound up in material desires. He feels stuck in a rut that he can’t see his way out of, so much so that he may feel like he shouldn’t even bother trying.

16) The Tower - At this point, the only way out of the Devil’s clutches is with some extreme, earth-shattering change. The Tower represents the Fool’s ego, built to protect any inner vulnerabilities but inadvertently acting as a prison, keeping the best parts of himself locked up. As painful and unwanted as it may be, the Tower must come down in order for the Fool to be free.

17) The Star - Having freed himself, and recovering from the changes he’s endured, the Fool is overcome with a sense of tranquility. His soul is unbound and he is full of new potential that overpowers any negativity he felt in the Devil’s captivity. This is the calm after the storm, and the Fool’s heart is wide open.

18) The Moon - In his euphoria, the Fool thinks with his heart more than his mind, and he lacks mental clarity. The Moon reveals the Fool’s innermost dreams -- beautiful fantasies, weird ideas, and deep seated fears alike. Facing all of this is daunting, and the Fool feels suddenly lost in the dark, unsure of what is real.

19) The Sun - As the Fool wanders hopelessly, the Sun rises and offers him the clarity he needs to find his way. It removes any confusion and fear and replaces it with enlightenment and understanding. He is imbued with a new energy and enthusiasm for life, having remembered his purpose and everything he’s capable of.

20) Judgement - The Fool is no longer a fool. He’s traveled so far, experienced victories and been brought down to ashes, his ego destroyed and his innermost self free and limitless in its love and passion for life. He knows now that happiness is at the center of everything good and worthwhile, and with that in mind, he is able to forgive himself and others for mistakes made out of ignorance. And now, Judgement calls on him to evaluate himself as he truly is, and decide what in life is most important to him. Once he has done this, he will be ready to pursue his true destiny.

21) The World - With this card, the Fool returns to his beginnings -- this time, with a more complete understanding of the World. Now that he is at peace with himself and his place, he can interact with the World in a more meaningful and productive way, using his unique abilities to help others and improve his surroundings. Because his motivations are selfless, the World sees to it that all of his efforts are rewarded and that he is successful.

The Fool’s Journey is a never-ending one, though, and soon he will begin again to reach even greater enlightenment.

#personal #tarot

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itstimetowatch · 7 years ago

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Happy Go Lucky

Ah, the trial of Aaron Echolls. I kind of figured that’s what this episode would be about. Packing it in with the season finale would seem like too much for one hour of TV. And since noir stories have to get worse before they get better, I’m going to go way out on a limb here and assume that Aaron’s going to weasel his way out a conviction and we’re going to have to keep putting up with him for the duration of the show.

Keith telling Veronica to keep her cool on the witness stand… meaning Keith will be the one to lose his temper?

I’m not sure why Veronica is trying so hard to keep Gia as a friend, here. Their friendship this season has been mostly about Veronica using her relationship with Gia to get inside the Goodman household whenever it’s been relevant to whatever case she/they were working.

So Angie Dahl is still in contention for the scholarship? Even though she almost certainly bombed out the test over Crime and Punishment (and let me tell you, as someone who studied English in college, that is the last book in the world that you could bullshit your way through the exam). Let me guess, family money smoothed that pothole over?

Speaking of which, why is Veronica so hell-bent on Stanford? Like I get the whole “Get the Fuck Out of Neptune” part of the plan, and I get that it’s a great school, but is she aware of what, or more accurately who is waiting for her there? A bunch of rich kids, many of whom will be every bit the entitled assholes as the ones she’s leaving in her wake.

Holy SHIT! School shooting and the trial and finals in one episode?

And Veronica saves Gia again.

Oh, God, it’s Lucky! Since he knows what’s going on with Woody, that means this situation is going to end with him being killed.

Wallace, what are you going!

Blanks? Well… that’s a relief for those of us who (like me) like our Wallace alive, not so good for Lucky.

Not sure why Lucky would bring blanks. He can’t be so far gone as to think it would accomplish anything or save him. Seems like it would be less contrived to just have his gun jam instead.

Yep, called that one.

So Lucky was a bat boy for the Sharks. That’s almost certainly where he knows Woody from, and where whatever happened to make him hate Woody happened. Woody is almost certainly lying about not knowing him well.

“Mister Goodwood.” Ugh!

I like the look Logan gives the prison phone right before he puts it up to his ear like he’s not quite 100% certain that Aaron’s not somehow going to slither through the line. An abused child never fully stops being an abused child, even when there are six inches of bulletproof glass between them and their abuser.

I’m fairly certain that the DA is going to give Logan immunity from the destruction of evidence charge in exchange for his testimony. Like even if Logan is still employing Cliff as his attorney, I’m fairly sure he could make that deal.

This random kid standing next to Cassidy was the one that inadvertently taped Lynn Echolls’ suicide, right? Why is he back all of a sudden? Is he connected to… anything?

And again, the full extent of Veronica and Gia friendship is Veronica using Gia.

“Kill Incorporation or Else” the world finds out that Woody is a child molester! And he did kill incorporation. The whole thing with the staffer and the booze and the pills. He did that on purpose and blamed Keith knowing that after everything Keith would almost certainly push back. Woody would rather have a reputation as a cheater and a lush than a prison sentence and a place on the sex offender registry.

“The outing of all outings” is now obviously Woody.

The second voice on that audio file is the same voice from Ahoy, Mateys! Which means it’s Marcos Oliveros. I’m assuming the first one is Peter Ferrer. The line “the three of us”, though… Lucky? Someone else?

Why would Lucky edit himself out of the audio file? Was Lucky even smart enough to know how to do that? Lucky’s e-mails are all rambling and incoherent. His videos are all vague threats, like “I know where you live and can get into your home” or “I know your kids’ schedules”. The audio file was a clear threat with a specific goal. The audio file is from someone else. Lucky, though absolutely certain to be one of Woody’s victims, is not one of “the three of us”. Who else is there? The dude with Lynn video? Cassidy? Dick (unlikely, since he hasn’t already appeared in this episode)?

So Veronica is sworn in and then is immediately cross-examined by Aaron’s lawyer? I mean, I get we don’t need to see Veronica recount what was on the videotape since we saw it already, but just leave out the swearing in.

Um, so now Aaron’s lawyer is just testifying himself. This show officially sucks at courtroom and courtroom-adjacent stuff. Please never do this again, Show. You’re usually pretty solid at the mysteries but, my god, are you bad at courtroom drama.

Unless something relevant to anything else comes up I’m going to more-or-less ignore the courtroom scenes from here on out, because this is just absurd. I can’t believe anyone in Neptune ever gets convicted of anything if the prosecutor is this bad at protecting their witnesses.

Leonard Lobo? This is just the episode of random re-appearances from a dozen (or considerably more) episodes ago.

Dammit, Show, stop making me agree with the things that Sheriff Shithead says, especially since I know it’s coming from a place of selfishness. Lamb doesn’t want Terrence to be cleared because then he has to reopen the case and do the actual work of finding out who did it. He’s going to like it a whole lot less when he finds out that all evidence is currently pointing, once again, at one of the most powerful men in the town.

Oh, Cassidy, it’s a good thing you’re so good at business, because you absolutely suck at tutoring.

Mac, on the other hand, is the actual best. (Just don’t get back together with Cassidy.)

Keith’s “Oh no!” as charges out of the office because now has to go save the child molester from his explosive chickens coming home to roost.

What the fuck kind of reaction is that? “Hey, there’s a bomb, maybe lots of them, in your house. Call your family and save them!” “What? That’s crazy it’s over!” If someone told me there was a bomb in my house, I’m gonna fucking believe them and GTFO!

Sorry, Woody, Keith’s been threatened by rich and powerful men much more intimidating than you.

I’m sure Mac would be glad to work things out in a coatroom, but her wanting to do that is how they got where they are today.

Oh! Holy! Fuck!

Cassidy’s issues with sex are because he was molested. He’s smart enough to be able to edit himself out of the audio file. He’s desperate enough to not have to deal with his problems that even if he outs Woody, he still doesn’t want it connecting back to him because toxic masculinity bullshit. I can’t imagine he was a batboy but Woody has a fucking Little League team, and I can easily see Big Dick signing Cassidy up for it to try to “toughen him up” or whatever.

What else? Cassidy was in the limo behind the bus so he would know when to set off the bomb to send it over the cliff. He knows Curly through his dad so he could have acquired bomb materials that way. He killed Peter and Marcos to keep his secret (everyone else was collateral damage) and then put the C4 in the hangar to get Woody busted, but Terrence was blamed instead so he had to switch tactics.

Beaver’s a fucking lunatic! Mac! Run for your life!

The Fitzpatricks and their connection to Kendall are incidental. They really were just nearby because they wanted to get even with Cervando.

That has to be it. No one and nothing else fits like Cassidy.

With all of that presumed to be true then I can’t imagine that he didn’t also get his dad busted for fraud, as well. I mean, if you’re planning multiple murders and outing one abuser, why not get rid of another one as well. He probably plans to quietly put a bullet in Dick’s head after graduation as well.

Good lord, there’s still like eleven minutes of this episode plus all of the next one…

It’s weird to spend fifteen minutes going through all of that about Beaver and then turn the episode back on and they’re still talking about Lucky which now seems like a lifetime ago.

Why, yes, Keith. His ego is exactly that big, and his general disregard for actually doing his job will let Woody get away. I mean, you just handed him pretty solid evidence of child molestation and he’s not moving on it. Why should murder be any different?

But don’t worry, he’s going to get right on the death of Thumper… probably since he can already guess that the perpetrator is going to be from a poor neighborhood.

Aww, Veronica and Wallace are my favorite.

Ditching out on the test to go see the verdict of Aaron’s trial? Veronica’s going to be doubly disappointed. He gets off and she’s going to have mountains of student loans in her future… though to be fair, from the way she was talking she’s probably going to have the student loans anyway. Also, she’s probably just deciding to stay with her friends in Neptune.

(Wait, did she apply to Hearst? She was pretty adamant about not doing that. College applications cost money that Veronica and Keith seemingly don’t have a ton of...)

And Jackie just up and left without even a word to Wallace? So it’s back to Early Season Jackie, then, is it? Whatever, at least she’s gone.

Woody fled? Who would have thought that would happen?

I should go pick some lottery numbers with this kind of hot streak I’m on.

So yeah, I’m 99% certain I worked everything out just then. It’s the only scenario that makes total sense and I can’t think of anyone who could take Beaver’s place at the center of it all. The other scenarios that the show has floated have holes in them. Weevil and Veronica rode up to the scene of the crime so Weevil wouldn’t have been able to time it properly. The Fitzpatricks would have tried again since Liam doesn’t strike me as the type of guy that would just give up on a multi-million dollar payout, just because Plan A went to pot.

As for the episode itself, the courtroom stuff was just awful, everything else was really good.

#veronica mars #season two #episode twenty-one #wallace fennel #keith mars #weevil navarro #cindy mac mckinzie #logan echolls

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