#i do wish i had more time for writing

[godbirdart]

very happy that the prose i add to my works resonate with people ;;

i don't have much time for it nowadays, but i greatly enjoy writing poetry and short stories. means a lot that other people enjoy the small snippets as much as they do

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Chat have we discussed drunk chess with cherik cause i just think. That would be the darnedest silliest thing they could do

[beneathsilverstars]

been thinking about the differences between SASASAP and ISAT lately. because looking just at ISAT and the two hats ending, you'd think loop went through the exact same house as our siffrin, but looking at SASASAP, it's different. it's mixed up. it's obviously a condensed prototype.

but. that doesn't have to mean it's a different universe entirely.

maybe that's just what happens after a thousand loops.

the house warped in act 5. siffrin lost their shit and the house got changed and corrupted, far past its baseline king uncanniness. so it wouldn't be too out-of-the-question for it to be able to warp in more subtle ways as well, due to a more subtle breakdown.

like a jpeg uploaded and downloaded a thousand times, siffrin changed, and the loops changed. over a thousand loops of efficiency, the house got more efficient. rooms combining. items moving. data compressing. and of course, run in a changed house, the script changed as well. it did so slowly, one bit at a time, over a thousand loops of zoned-out half-listening – and by the time siffrin would have noticed each difference, they were already used to it. (and in the moments that they did look at a room that was less familiar than it should be and realize that they had no idea where to find the key, well. that's just classic siffrin, isn't it.)

through sheer repetition, siffrin was corrupted, and the loops and the house along with them. all purpose lost, all signals distorted, until finally they couldn't recognize the meaning in any of it. it was all noise and despair.

so they made a wish. and the loop restarted. not just a reboot, but something more complete.

the data was backed up onto a star – a guide, a warning, a reference – and the loops were factory reset. and for the first time in a thousand loops, siffrin woke up to a clear mind and the crisp sound of birdsong.

[matchingbatbites]

For @steddieas-shegoes and the @steddiemicrofic flash challenge! Happy birthday lovely!

Prompt: Birthday | Rating: M | Word count: 290 | CW: Semi-public sex

Sometimes, Steve wonders what people would think if they knew. If they were even aware that he - one of, if not the most popular guy at Hawkins High - was a bold faced liar.

If they knew that he exaggerates about his relationship with parents, that he plays up his King persona - but most importantly, he wonders what would happen if they knew the truth about his animosity with one Eddie Munson.

It started off genuine enough, sure, but he has a hard time pinpointing exactly when it all changed, when it slipped out of his control and landed him in Eddie's bed. 

Not that he's complaining about it.

Even now, as Eddie shoves two fingers into his mouth with a “Shush, baby. We don't want your lovely subjects to know what's going on, do we?”

Steve shakes his head and whimpers as the fingers push deeper, fully aware of the party still raging downstairs, of his fellow students filling his parents’ home. 

He should feel bad about ditching, considering it's his birthday that everyone is there for, but he just can't seem to drum up the guilt with Eddie's dick grinding against his prostate so perfectly.

“Are you sure, Stevie? I know you love it when I get possessive over you. Maybe I should stake my claim in a different way, hm? Maybe I should send the people's beloved birthday boy back downstairs with an ass full of cum.”

Steve whines and pushes his hips back, he's so fucking close. 

“They'd all see the wet spot on your jeans and wonder who got to tap this beautiful ass. Or maybe they already know. What d’you say, should we let everyone know exactly who owns you, pretty thing?”

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[blighted-lights]

someone needs to grab me by my neck and stop me from making a meta post about idw soundwave and the cassettes and about how his insistence that they are equals (or at least some of them are equals) is in direct contradictory with how he actually interacts with them/how their dynamic is written throughout idw. because as much as i do think they are generally a group that cares and relies on each other (minus ratbat, who has 0 reason to gaf about any of them and vice versa), i,,, ough. its messy.

i do not think this is a weird character writing moment, i actually think it's SUPER interesting to think and talk about. but i can't,, i shan't,,, unless ✍️👀

[thirdeyeblue]

“Nine would have treated Martha better than Ten did”

I need to talk about this argument that never seems to stop circulating.

Note: Not a venomous/anti post. There’s more than enough of that across fandom spaces as is, and this is supposed to be a place for ✨sweet, blissful escapism✨

When making this argument, people seem to envision a scenario in which Nine never met Rose.

While I can appreciate a good hypothetical, recognizing Rose's significance to the Doctor (Nine and Ten) is essential to understanding why things with Martha played out the way they did in the first place.

In the third series, the Doctor is grieving. This grief is deliberately threaded into nearly every script, whether spoken aloud or not (and these are just a few examples):

He's burning in Rose’s wake the entire time Martha travels with him, which is why it’s so frequently called upon: It’s 100% deliberate in framing his grief. He grieved as Nine too, of course— having been fresh on the heels of the Time War — but then he met Rose, which changed everything.

Back then, he was still a rude, traumatized pain in the ass, but we watch Rose soften more of those jagged edges with every episode as they grow closer; as he lets his guard down and forms a deep connection with her.

He falls in love (against his better judgment) and it's game over.

And yes: provided S1E1 had been titled 'Martha', one can realistically assume things might have unfolded similarly to how they did with Rose. However, it wouldn’t have been that way just because the Doctor was Nine and “Nine was different” — it would be because he wasn’t already in love with someone else. The same can't be said for the start of S3.

Think of it like this: if Rose AND Martha had been in that cellar — if Nine had taken both of them along with him in S1 — we’d eventually be looking at the most melodramatic love triangle ever, what with him living in close quarters with two brilliant, gorgeous, compassionate young women... But Doctor Who is plenty “soap opera” as is with just one woman in the TARDIS.

(I certainly wouldn’t object to reading that fic, though)

Now, regarding the unrequited elephant in the room…

His inability to be romantic with Martha isn’t because he thinks her lesser, nor is it for lack of compatibility. It isn't because Rose is any better than her. It certainly isn’t just because he’s Ten.

It’s really only for one reason, which can't be denied — and now I’m a broken record:

He is still in love with Rose.

(cut from a tenrosedaily gif)

Nine is Ten, and Ten is only such a mess in S3 because he’s just lost the love of his life. Martha merely got caught in the crosshairs of a volatile Time Lord in mourning, and yes — it sucks. Absolutely.

But it also feels dismissive to chalk Ten and Martha’s relationship up to little more than some sort of mindless dance of pining, jealousy, and toxicity.

Ten trusted Martha with his life over and over again — and hers, with him. He constantly praised her brilliance, happily carting her around time and space with no intention of letting her go. In the BBC’s extended universe of novels/comics/cartoons/etc, there’s so much depth to their relationship: love and trust and trauma and sacrifice. They had their own special bond as mates, their own complexities — so it’s a bummer that it's forever overshadowed by the other things.

I’m not denying that there was a lot of stuff that sucked/was for sure toxic about Ten's S3 behavior, but so many of the things I've seen him catching flak for can be directly attributed to being A Clueless Fucking Alien Idiot (not a trait that’s unique to Ten) — as well as his flat-out obliviousness to Martha’s feelings.

So yes, I agree: if Rose never existed, he would have treated Martha differently as Nine. He also would have treated her differently as Ten. Certainly.

But Rose did exist, and when discussing canon, it matters.

“He tells me that he absolutely, 100% loves Rose... He tells me how my daughter; my wonderful, beautiful, clever little girl saved him from himself before… And he says that’s all because of me! I made her into the Rose Tyler that saved him.”

-Jackie Tyler, Flight Into Hull!

Martha got the short end of the stick in S3. She came round at the wrong place and time, but that doesn't mean it was all bad. It doesn't mean the Doctor didn’t adore her. It certainly doesn't mean the time they spent together was wasted or worthless. They were brilliant!

Sure, he could be a twat, but let it be known that he was a twat with Rose as well, both as Nine and Ten. I’m sure Tentoo can be plenty infuriating, too. So while I'll defend Ten (and Tentoo) into the ground forever and ever and ever, I'll concede that he's fucked up.

The Doctor is a certified Pain In The Ass. It’s one of the things I love so much about this character — dynamics.

But never forget that Martha was goddamn tough as nails and overcame every bit of it. She moved on with her life, and the Doctor moved on with his. One can only pray that, when they inevitably drag her back onto the show (which feels inevitable if I'm honest), we see at once that she's been living her best life for all these years.

[jajanvm-imbi]

Hey remember when I said that this was the most frustrating thing about being a Helluva Boss enjoyer?

Yeah I was wrong.

The most frustrating thing about being a Helluva Boss enjoyer is explicitly stating multiple times that I like show and then get called an anti and homophobic and media illiterate when I complain about the direction it has taken.

I LIKE the comedy

I LIKE the animation and artstyle

I LIKE the more serious plotlines like the government agents plot and the Cherubs plot

I LIKE the themes of friendship and found family

I even like most of the songs!

And ofc the voice cast slays every time

But just because your show has angst and tears and drama and sad music doesn't automatically make it "good".

Just because your characters are queer doesn't automatically make them good or well written characters

This fandom is so frustrating to deal with when you want to express your more nuanced takes of it

This is probably gonna be the last post I make about this subject and about Helluva Boss in general, this shit is too stupid to deal with

[petricorah]

Sokka was used to the cold.

He’d spent his whole life in it. He was born into frigid and bitter temperatures. He was used to breathing burning crisp air into his lungs, used to walking when he could barely feel his feet, used to sleeping surrounded by ice, and used to the coldness that struck deep into his heart while staring out over the empty tundra. He loved it. Just the feel of winter winds whipping through his hair made his spirits soar, smiling despite the pain of icy gales against his teeth.

And then.

He melted, slowly. Traveling the world had been quite the culture shock, and he had taken some time to adjust to no longer being surrounded by snow, but he grew to love the pleasant lukewarm air and the ability to wear short sleeves. But the firebender was another thing entirely.

Being close to Zuko was as uncomfortable it was so hot. The man’s very skin was a furnace that radiated heat, and somehow, it made Sokka’s own cheeks and chest burn for reasons he didn’t understand for years. But he got used to it. Despite how stubborn he was, Sokka was good at adapting. He was still from the water tribe, after all. Soon, the heat pulsing off of Zuko as they brushed shoulders or fought side by side wasn’t unnatural. It became welcome, especially…

Well. It was purely strategic to put their sleeping bags side by side, because once the campfire died down, laying by Zuko with their shoulders almost touching was the only way to stave off the brisk night air.  

He wasn’t sure when it changed, when the embers of their friendship sparked into something more. They’d travelled the world together, trying to rebuild the world ravaged by the Fire Nation. Zuko refused to stay behind a desk, and Sokka refused to let him go at it alone. And slowly but surely, Sokka forgot what it was like to be cold. What it was like to not have Zuko by his side, to feel his warmth surround him like he was the center of a fire, the comforting lull of heat as he hugged him, that fiery, caring temper, and blazing hot fingers interlaced with his own.

And now, he was back in the Southern Water Tribe.

Alone.

And he has never felt so painfully…cold.

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[tetzoro]

the day the earth stood still is the day i felt your presence leave it, and then every day after that.

[milolunde]

We all know Timmy is Wanda’s mama’s boy but we need to keep in mind he’s still Cosmo’s kid too and that Cosmo would love him just as vehemently as Wanda

[evocatiio]

if chibnall was the one writing this season you lot would be talking VERY differently

[bonefall]

post/734733274896809984/do-you-ever-worry-your-own-writing-might-come-off that makes sense. i was asking because i'm afraid of accidentally writing misogyny myself and i kind of admire what you do

Hmm... I wish I had better advice to give you on this front, but honestly, the only thing I can tell you is to consider the perspective of your female characters.

Women are people. They have thoughts and feelings of their own, so like... just let them have their own arcs. A lot of the worst misogyny in WC comes from the way that the writers just don't care about their girls (or, in the case of tall shadow, actually get undermined and forced to rewrite entire chapters), so they're not curious about their lives, or WHY they feel the way they do or what they want, or any direction for their character arcs.

Turtle Tail as an example. She'll often just end up feeling whatever Gray Wing's plot demands. She's gotta leave when Storm dumps him to make him feel lonely. She shows up again to love him in the next book. Lets her best friend Bumble get dragged back to Tom the Wifebeater, but is sad enough about her death to be "unreasonably angry" with Clear Sky, and then calms down and accept Gray Wing is right all along.

And then she dies, so he can have his very own fridge wife.

In this way, Turtle Tail's just being used to tell Gray Wing's story. They're not interested in why she would turn on Bumble, or god forbid any lingering negative feelings for how she didn't help her, or even resentment towards Clear Sky for killing her or Gray Wing for jumping to his defense. She isn't really going through her own character arc.

She does have personality traits of her own, don't misunderstand my criticism, but as a character she revolves around Gray Wing.

So, zoom out every now and then, and just ask yourself; "Whose story is being told by what I wrote? Do my female characters have goals, wants, and agency, or are they just supporting men? How do their choices impact the narrative?"

But that's already kinda assuming that you already have characters like Turtle Tail who DO have personalities and potential of their own. Here's some super simple and practical advice that helped me;

Tally the genders in your cast. How many are boys, how many are girls, how many are others?

And take stock of how many of those characters are just in the supporting cast, and compare that to the amount you have in the main cast.

If you have a significant imbalance, ESPECIALLY in the main cast, fire the Woman Beam.

It's a really simple trick to just write a male character, and then change its gender while keeping it the same. I promise women are really not fundamentally different from men lmao. You can consider how your in-universe gender roles affect them later, if you'd like, but when you're just starting to wean yourself off a "boy bias" this trick works like a charm.

Also you're not allowed to change the body type of any girl you Woman Beam because I said so. PLEASE allow your girls to have muscles, or be fat, or be old, or have lots of scars. Do NOT do what a cowardly Triple A studio does, where the women all have the same cute or sexy face and curvy body while they're standing next to dwarves, robots, and a gorilla.

Or this shit,

If you do this I will GET you. If you're ever possessed by the dark urge, you will see my face appear in the clouds like Mufasa himself to guide you away from the path of evil.

Anyway, you get better at just making characters girls to begin with as time goes on and you practice it. It's really not as big of a deal as your brain might think it is.

Take a legitimate interest in female characters and try not to disproportionately hit them with parental/romance plots as opposed to the male cast, and you'll be fine. Don't think of them as "SPECIAL WOMEN CHARACTERS" just make a character and then let her be a girl, occasionally checking your tally and doing some critical thinking about their use in the story.

(Also remember I'm not a professional or anything, I'm just trying to give advice)

[lemongogo]

why do i love the conflict more than anything else . the misery . the incompatibility that spreads like oil slick . wanting so desperately for resolution that never comes . hmmm

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Gantober #27 - An Aria For Pigs

[Downfall Timeline, Death, Grief, Mild Description of a Dead Body, Mild Body Horror]

The Hero of Time is nowhere to be found. The princess of a doomed kingdom takes matters into her own hands. As always, Impa follows right behind.

----

You can read it on Archive of Our Own Here!

I haven't beta'ed it, it's kind of weird and very Unhallowed Vespers' related, but it's also some weird Impa and Ganondorf and it's also spooky and also Impa almost says fuck. :>

----

It is unknown when or how, or even if, the Hero of Time had died.

Most people left in Hyrule still believe in heroes. They trust that a mythical figure will rise from the ashes of a golden age long since consumed, and put an end to their common misery. They are hylians after all —unused to the idea of coping with despair, its prolonged chafing. Impa can hardly blame them for it. But she knows.

She has known for a long time.

The princess had fidgeted with the idea herself, independently, but had refused to accept it for as long as she could. Denial curdled into obvious delusion until it suffocated her. Impa chose to keep her mouth shut and let her process this on her own terms. The absence of light may be Impa’s domain, but Zelda still clings to its presence, seeking it sometimes beyond reason. At seventeen, Zelda no longer identifies as a princess —princess of what? Her kingdom had been stolen, her lands scorched and torn into crude, uneven parts— and now she hid in dusty clothes Impa pulled from secret crevices near Kakariko. Bandages, daggers and bones. Zelda is now known as Sheik. Why the hell not. They had picked the name together; a title rather than a name, not that anyone still alive would know but Impa. And yet, despite that process of reshaping her identity for protection and safekeeping, the poor girl still knows to embrace her divine role within the fate of the world. So does Impa. This is what she tells the girl, in great detail: everything known about the course of time, godliness, destiny. The rules of the holy land they were born to preserve.

Perhaps this is what had convinced the princess to take the matter into her own blessed hand.

Impa arrives alone at the empty castle. Ganondorf the usurper had destroyed the old one. White stone turned to black, vulgar work. Charred oxygen and the rancidness of unearthed magma; and yet the halls are so cold.

Places Impa used to know were mangled. She had haunted these halls long before they’d been dead; and she expected some measure of longing, some heartache for the perfect gardens of green, for the flowers in bloom and the careless laughter of a content crowd. But the old thing had been obliterated. There is nothing to recognize. As always, its new master cares for dominance and symbols in a way that never once proved anything.

Impa walks through the new meaningless construction at a steady pace. Ignored by monsters, of course. Not only is she quiet, but hardly ever recognized as something worth killing. Fairies ignore her wounds just the same. She walks one step removed from reality. Shadows draping her, always.

As she rises towards the central tower through endless stairways, Impa notices the press of something against the inside of her throat.

She enters a cavernous room, cathedral-like, bathed in sickening sunset-light, and sees her.

Impa walks to the bundle of cloth, slowly. Kneels. She traces the exposed throat. Cold.

Dead.

Zelda had been dead for hours.

Impa takes it in. The off-colored, wax-like sheen of a perfect skin. Blue eyes, pale and glossy. Blonde hair, tangled in a way she thinks needs brushing. Half-open mouth. She had seen so many bodies before, just like this, or worse. Somehow, Impa had never really prepared herself to welcome this one into her memories; even though she had spent so much, so much, so much of her existence shielding the girl’s fragile life from harm. Cupping candlelight between burning fingers. But it is over now. A sheikah knife lays next to the princess, and arrows, and a bow, and Impa doubts the fight, if there had ever been any, had lasted more than a minute.

She breathes in, and out, and closes the girl’s eyes with her thumbs, rolling loose fabric under her chin to keep her lips mended together, soft and asleep. Impa tries to look inward, with idle curiosity. She finds space between her ribs, a newfound clarity to the oxygen she breathes. She presses small hands together across her chest, across the single eye of her people, and thinks: after everything, the sheikahs and Hyrule died together as one.

Everything she ever upheld as meaningful, now tepid on the lush crimson carpet. Belief, mistakes, restraint, self-abandon. Love. Gone. It is over. It is over, and yet Impa cannot process it as defeat. Not her defeat —even though she had categorically failed at everything of import ever devised for her by fate.

The girl’s right hand no longer glows.

A guttural sound echoes from the depths of the large room, where pillars overcast the surreal gleam in strange moving shadows. Something large and grotesque. A thrill, on the edge between a demonic hiss, a human voice, and something far worse than both.

Impa lets go of the girl and stands. She breathes unburdened. No tension left in her besides the simple mechanics of motion. Taking the blade out of its sheath has nothing to do with self preservation. At most, it feels like a social cue, expected from her by a crowd she can’t see and didn’t really care for.

She walks towards the moving shadows. A quiet pace. No need to rush. Anything about to happen now is but an epilogue.

The darkness itself seems to pulse. Large shapes overlapping, the smell like untouched depths of a cave beyond cracks in the floor, fizzling char, nearly suffocating her. Something gags with labored breathing. A man. A thing . Impa focuses, invoking her perception of truth among the pit of organic tar.

A shape. Human.

Ganondorf, or rather the imprint of him, has one knee to the floor, much like the first time they spoke to each other seven years ago. His face is hidden behind bloodied hands, long hair. Light shudders underneath his fingers: a map of his veins and bones backlit with divine fire. The limits of his flesh aren’t clear anymore. His body blurs, swept away and redefined amid the moving darkness.

“So you won,” Impa says.

A hiccup, hidden behind shaky hands.

“You should have known,” replies a voice, booming and strained and breathless, surrounding her yet pinned to a singular, fragile point. “Y-y-you should have guessed I had. Reclaimed. Courage already.”

The silhouette heaves, each word like a stab wound to himself. The fingers slip; Impa sees the eyes then, the nostrils and mouth, the fine lines embedded in his dark skin.

All of them burning from within.

“W-w-what does it. Feel like.” He groans, trying to look at Impa directly; but there is so much push-and-pull of darkness, pure light, and skin that focusing on the person behind is near impossible. “To know. To know you bowed to your masters. For this.” He tries to laugh, but the voice is too broken, his effort too blinding. “Hyrule. Is. Nothing now. I am…” He gasps. His defiance almost sounds like despair. “I am all that is left.”

A shadow on the walls behind him takes a strange form; hulking, something with claws and tusks and a gaping maw. But the shadow refuses to stay put, refuses to commit yet. The old Hyrule might be dead, but it has yet to be replaced by anything new.

“You still haven’t made your wish,” Impa notes.

Blackened nails ram their points into the flood of light threatening to bubble out of his flesh. “The Triforce is mine ,” he spits out, and Impa watches on as the sad spectacle of Ganondorf’s victory leads her to the only possible conclusion she can draw.

“You’re holding the pieces together by force.” Her breath constricts, half-stuck inside her throat. “The Triforce still wants away from you.”

Ganondorf writhes, his body lined in boiling gold. The cracks of a vase about to shatter. And yet, and yet…

With a groan, the gerudo’s face shifts back together, looking somewhat human through all the searing glow. Enough for Impa to recognize a bloodshot eye. Pupil blown wide.

“I can do it,” he rasps, fractured. “I will make the gods. Obey me.”

Impa can’t help the cruel smile carved across her skin.

“The Goddesses are long gone,” she says. “No one can make them do anything.” Impa watches him struggle some more, grasping for focus to remain enough of a body to reply, or react. A shape lost in a storm of his own making. She cocks her head to the side, curious. “You’re not drawing out the full strength of the Power you secured. Why is that?”

He hurls forward with a spasm —already bestial, already a monster. “I won’t. Debase myself. For their entertainment.” He tries to stand. Fails. “Or for yours.”

“Debasing yourself,” Impa repeats, ears ringing. “You killed a child today.”

She catches the glint of a mean grin among the sizzling chaos. Impa imagines reaching for the usurper, no matter the pain; coiling both hands through the man’s fiery scalp, and pulling the skull apart. The weakened flesh would cede to any kind of pressure. She could do this, and he wouldn’t be capable of stopping her.

But she doesn’t need to do this. All she has to do is watch this man torture himself, and pretend this feels like vindication.

“This is my victory,” Ganondorf grunts, squirming inside his rupturing skin. “It’s mine . I-I-I need to rule, as myself. I won’t let them…”

“You don’t want godhood to change you,” Impa concludes. A horrible cough-like laughter shoots out of her throat. She has not laughed like this in over a decade. “Do you even hear yourself? The gods hate you. Everything sacred hates you. Hyrule will never stop resisting your claim. The Triforce will fight you like one fights a disease. Whatever you think you are… They’ve already scraped it clean off. You’re clinging to a corpse.”

He makes a sound, that he must have hoped dismissive instead of agonizing. “I c-can’t. I can’t let them overwrite me.”

“Then stop trying to assemble the Triforce inside your body.”

“No. ”

He had barked this at her, like a child. A pang knocks behind Impa’s armor. She can’t name its cause; if it is simply anger, or a different kind of urge to scream.

“I c-c-can’t let the pieces back out,” He chokes, holding each side of his blinding face. Brute force against cosmic chaos. Somehow , he is still winning. “If I do… If I do...”

“You will be shattered,” Impa says, flatly. “Maybe you should die, then, if you can’t handle it. You should let it kill you.”

He looks at her, his smarting expression almost taken aback. The blade between her teeth had slashed thoughtlessly; the vicious evidence in her words pouring out of her like a fetid sigh, held back for far too long. There are no consequences for her cruelty anymore. She no longer has to pretend she was ever more than a body groomed to inflict pain. Light had been blotted out. And shadows always were her domain.

She allows the blade to drop; slipping from her open fingers and clanging against the muffled floor. One step. Two steps. His gaze fixates on her as she makes her way to the abomination; the warlord who had killed the only girl she had ever loved; the man who had set the ruins of her life on fire, cleansing all that remained until nothing was left . She stands tall, and he crawls.

Impa had never felt more free.

She drives her fingers through his hair —static jolts of fire and thunder and raw pain, and Impa welcomes each sensation with abandon. She yanks him closer to her; he doesn’t yelp, reaches for her wrist when she kneels besides him. His grip, for all its godlike power, is weak, unfocused, completely lost. He fights her as much as he clings to the concreteness of her body. His patheticness, not her grief, is what makes Impa want to cry.

“You wanted this, didn’t you?” she murmurs through her teeth, so close to his deformed pointy ear she could bite off the excess if she wanted to. “Then do it. Go on. Become a god. Rewrite the world. Who cares what you make of it. Who cares what you once wished this would mean to you. Go on. Rip yourself apart, my lord.” He makes a choking sound, an echo of the grief she doesn't feel. He burns so bright against her. Impa stares ahead, right at the wall, at the sunset far behind, as each of her fingers sizzles and chars and fuses with him. “Do it,” she says, as her lungs threaten to collapse. “Do it, you coward, do it. ” Ganondorf’s essence shakes and sputters besides her. She can’t feel her arm anymore as he curls, as tension rises, as something wild and manic wrenches out from her accursed throat. “DO IT.”

Golden light erupts beside her in a shriek. Tears of relief boil right through her waterline.

She doesn’t close her eyes as Ganondorf implodes, blinding her.

Blinding everything.

At last, the Shape arises.

The golden light is weakened now, after the flash. Not mended together, but contained under endless blackened fur. A maw unhinges. More darkness than flesh. Timeless eyes open for the first time, pale and emptied and quieter. The walls of the castle are blown open to a darkened sky. Inky. Alive.

Ashes coat everything.

The Shape looks down at itself. Bones cling to its arm, tangled there, bleached clean off.

With terrible claws, the Shape plucks the skull off its dark fibrils. It is so small inside the palm of its hand. Boar-like eyes, fueled by divine violence and impossible dreams, stare mindlessly at the empty sockets.

The wind howls behind them both.