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butterflydm · 2 years ago

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wot reread: knife of dreams (prologue - chap 11)

spoilers through knife of dreams

1. The opening quote “the sweetness of victory and the bitterness of defeat are alike a knife of dreams” reminds me of an earlier quote “the only thing sadder than a battle won is a battle lost”. It’s definitely a less annoying ‘omg why are you warning us that nothing will happen in this book’ quote than CoT’s was, tho pretty depressing. Still, I don’t dislike being reminded of the pointlessness of war tho.

2. Checking in with Galad! It’s been literal books. Galad notes that his and his companions’ new ranks were won by fighting the Seanchan but now the Whitecloaks have allied with them. Yeah, it’s a disease that’s going around the whole continent. Galad is going to confront the current heads of the Children of the Light on personal business. I really do think maybe Jordan should have made the Seanchan maybe SLIGHTLY LESS like the Shadow so that it doesn’t feel so much like everyone is losing by winning when they chose to ally with them. In order to defeat the Shadow, they are inviting slavery into their homes, and that is going to damage the next age so badly.

3. Galad calls for a Trial Beneath The Light (trial by combat) against Valda for the abuse (and also he believes the murder) of his mother, Morgase. He found out about what happened from Dain (who heard rumors) and Byer (who could confirm it). I really like this whole scene. It feels emotional and personal and yet because Galad is Galad, he is also making certain to do everything legally and ‘by the book’, so his personality holds true as well.

4. Trial by combat is such a silly way to decide if someone is guilty or innocent of a crime but Galad works with what he’s been given and he KNOWS that Valda is guilty as well as knowing that he himself is a great fighter, so I’m good in going with it. We all know Valda wouldn’t sit still for a real trial. As it is, Valda takes the moment that he and Galad have to talk quietly before the fight to taunt Galad about raping his mother and hoping to get to do it again in the future.

5. Galad learned the flame&void from Gareth and Henre (both people he trained with in Caemlyn, before he went to the White Tower, and embraces the void now. Ooo, yeah, the way he’s described feeling here DOES sound very similar to how Rand feels when he’s in the void and the extreme awareness around him that we kinda associate with channeling. I’ve decided I like the headcanon that Galad is a channeling learner. He IS Rand’s half-brother after all. Also like Rand, Galad is absolutely willing to sacrifice his own life to reach his goal.

6. “Valda’s death was not enough. Nothing except Morgase Trakand alive again could be enough.” Oh, sweetheart. This family, torn apart by the stresses of the winds of change as they have been, do love each other so much when push comes to shove and their backs are against the wall (and once Elayne had matured a bit to get over her resentment of Galad).

7. “Will you write releases for the Children who don’t want to help the Seanchan take our lands in the name of man dead more than a thousand years? What about the men who defended the Fortress of Light? Will any release get their chains struck off or make the Seanchan stop working them like animals?” You tell them, Galad! It is such a RELIEF to read someone saying this after Mat’s terrible storyline in CoT. Galad gets a gold star. Also, acknowledgement that it SUCKS under Seanchan rule even for people who aren’t female channelers!

8. We also get official acknowledgement here that the raven is the symbol of both the Shadow and the Seanchan Imperial family, and Galad and his companions use that in order to turn the Whitecloaks away from Aes Sedai hunting and towards the notion that they need to fight on the side of Light for the Last Battle. I have been waiting and waiting for SOMEONE in book to point out at least one of the Shadow/Seanchan similarities because they have been haunting me for BOOKS.

9. “He had to go. It was the right thing to do.” So we officially knock down the first of the standing figures of our ‘what do you do after you end up picking the crowd that would choose to hurt your loved ones?’ parallel (Galad, Gawyn, and Mat are our three contestants) - Galad goes for removing the head of the organization that would hurt the people he loves and subverting its previously evil/misguided purpose into a good purpose. Well done! A+ to Galad. Sadly, since our other two Evil/Misguided Organizations are headed by women and Jordan has a hard time killing women, I don’t think we’ll see Elaida and Tuon get dealt with the same way. Galad shows more genuine leadership in this one scene than Perrin has shown in all his books as “Lord of the Two Rivers”. And he’s nervous about the idea of being seen as a leader too but he doesn’t marry that with mentally insulting the people following him. He doesn’t think less of THEM for wanting to follow him, whereas it feels like Perrin is constantly judging the people who march under his banner.

(and now we have to see if Galad actually successfully follows through on his intentions here)

10. Okay, we are done gushing over Galad (perhaps excessive but, as I said, it’s just such a relief to be reading about characters who are still fighting back against the invasion of their homeland. but apologies to @markantonys - I know he is the Lesser Brother for you, lol). Moving on to Iturale! We can see if his efforts last book bore fruit. His plan was to ally with the Dragonsworn to keep the Seanchan out of Arad Doman. Haha he’s judging the lax discipline of whatever Seanchan commander is in charge of the town/armed camp that he’s spying on right now. This camp is basically a supply camp for the Seanchan expansion and his plan is to take it out. He draws out the main guards and the sul’dam/damane pair with a feinted attack and then takes them out with a ranged attack from a different direction. It is, again, such a relief to be reading about characters who are fighting back against the invasion of their home. And now that the guards are taken care of, he burns down the fucking supply camp for the Seanchan settlers. SUCH a relief to read about people fighting back against the slaver invasion. Cheers to Ituralde. Please continue to make Arad Doman a bulwark to hold against the Seanchan invasion. He has several more bands that are supposed to be conducting similar attacks across the Seanchan forces in Tarabon.

(I really do wish so much that we’d actually gotten to see MAT doing general’ing like this. Sticking Mat in Ebou Dar feels like we got robbed of so much potential plot that was actually related to the ‘power’ that Jordan gave him (the ancient memories that he literally almost DIED to get), just like Perrin keeps getting stuck in plots where wolves and dreaming are barely relevant. Why would you give characters neat magical powers and then barely have the characters USE their powers?)

11. Now we swap sides and are checking in with Suroth. Jordan finally notes openly again that Suroth is a Darkfriend, after coyly avoiding the subject for books (she was the Darkfriend working with Liandrin in TGH). She’s fretting over Tuon’s disappearance, the rebellion of the Atha’an Miere, and the disappearance of Renna and Seta. If Tuon is dead, Suroth knows that she will be horribly punished for it, even if it’s decided that she wasn’t responsible.

12. Liandrin killed Alwhin because Suroth mentioned off-hand that she was annoying to deal with. Suroth notes how easy it is to forget the presence of da’covale and think of yourself as alone when you’re ‘only’ in the presence of slaves, so she had not guarded her tongue around Liandrin properly. Suroth orders Liandrin to go and have herself beaten by one of her other slaves for the crimes of: delaying giving Suroth a message, calling herself ��I” rather than “Liandrin��, daring to meet Suroth’s gaze, daring to question Suroth’s orders, and simply because it pleases Suroth to have her beaten. Amazing how Suroth is actually at her most distasteful when she’s being a Seanchan High Blood rather than when she’s being a Darkfriend.

13. Suroth & everyone else believes that Tylin was killed using the One Power, and Beslan is the new King of Altara. Suroth is annoyed that his servants only offer bows instead of deep prostration. The news that Liandrin had awakened her to receive from one of her generals is about Iturale’s attacks on the camps in Tarabon. 😘😘😘

14. SEVEN major supply camps have been overrun and burned and TWO DOZEN smaller supply camps as well. TWENTY supply caravans have been burned. SEVENTEEN outposts have been wiped out. ELEVEN patrols have vanished. And he’s expecting more reports to come in about others as well. Ituralde, you ANGEL. 😘😘😘😘 Every place was left with the same message by Ituralde’s people (who did their best to avoid civilian casualities) -- Leave Tarabon. 😘😘😘😘

15. We also learn here, off-hand, that there are seven thousand Whitecloak “deserters” - that’s Galad’s work, I bet! 😘 Suroth is in a rage and orders that Ituralde be hunted down by every available force. Honestly, if only Rand had known this was happening. Then HE could have pincered the Seanchan from the east while Ituralde was working from the north, instead of trying to make a truce with the slavers. Anyway, Suroth is considering enslaving all the ‘loyal’ Whitecloaks out of revenge for the desertion of the others. Because it’s so good under Seanchan rule! Suroth’s misery here brings me such joy.

16. Anyway, she now gets a visit from Semirhage. She asks Suroth if she’d like to be Empress. Because she’s Seanchan before she’s a Darkfriend, Suroth cringes at the idea of defying the ‘true’ Empress in such a way. Semirhage breaks the news that she messily murdered the Empress over in Seanchan. Suroth begins crying over the death of the Empress, which baffles Semirhage. Anyway, Semirhage corrects Suroth’s assumption that it was one of Tuon’s siblings that offed the Empress and lets her know that all the rest of the Imperial family is dead too, and half the Imperial Court. Tuon is now the only living member of the Imperial family. Fifty nobles are now contending for the throne and the Empire itself has fallen into pieces (like Artur Hawkwing’s did after he died).

17. It takes Suroth a little bit of time to get over the idea of anyone but a member of the Imperial family killing another member of the Imperial family but she eventually accepts the idea and agrees to kill Tuon so that she can become Empress herself.

18. We switch gears over to Pevara in the White Tower. Honestly every section in the prologue has been a banger so far (and every one better than Mat & Perrin’s storylines in CoT). Actually having characters who care about resisting slavery and the invasion of their home is invigorating. I think I’m going to be disappointed when we drop back into the ‘main’ plotlines, where collaboration is the name of the game lol.

19. We are in a meeting of the Red Ajah and they are talking about the fallout from Dumai’s Wells. The new Highest (they all believe Galina, previous Highest, is dead - which Pevara is relieved about, as Galina was one of the people that Talene knew was also Black Ajah) has received a message from Sashalle, one of Rand’s oathsworn sisters, though since she was one of the ones stilled, her oath to Rand isn’t backed up by the Oath against lying, who writes that she is in charge of most of the sisters in Cairhien. Sashalle blamed everything that happened at Dumai’s Wells firmly on Elaida and she also wrote of the visit of Logain and his Asha’man to the city and confirms that Logain has been Healed of being gentled. She also writes to let them know that she has been healed of being stilled and has sworn an oath to follow the Dragon Reborn until the Last Battle has been fought and, after that, she will submit herself to the White Tower once more. Due to everything they learned here, plus everything else that has happened recently (the huge burst of Power that they believe must have been the Forsaken), they receive permission to go forward with the plan to reach out to the Asha’man to bond them as Warders.

20. After that, Pevara meets with Yukiri on the Black Ajah Hunt business. They are currently feeling like they are at an impass. They were able to discover another Heart of Black Ajah, but the other members are all out of the Tower, possibly with the rebels and they don’t have any new leads. Basically, the Heart structure of the Black Ajah is working as designed to minimize exposure. They also learn from Seaine that what Elaida had ACTUALLY wanted them to hunt out was evidence that Alviarin was in communication with the Dragon Reborn, so their idea of going to the Amrylin Seat gets snuffed out. They can no longer trust that she is not Black Ajah herself.

21. We shift focus to Alviarin, She has learned that Talene disappeared (and thus will not be appearing before the Supreme Council) and suspects this must mean that Talene has been discovered or defected. She suspects Yukiri and Doesine as the ones who discovered the truth about Talene and orders them watched.

22. Ugh, Shaido subplot. Absolutely not. Anyway, Galina is captured by Gaul & Neald and brought to Perrin. He asks her to take a message to Faile and then has them drop her back off near the Shaido encampment. So here is something that I wonder - I wonder if part of the reasons that we got both CoT/KoD and all the main plots felt pointlessly extended out was because there was TOO MUCH PLOT in the two prologues to fit in one book, plus time needed to pass for the prologues. Of course, my solution would have been different from Jordan’s lol.

23. Checking in with Egwene! She’s still in the middle of being taken back to the White Tower, waking up in the carriage on the way there. Egwene notes the mutual hostility between the members of different Ajahs and the stench of garbage in the streets of Tar Valon. Even though Egwene is certain she’s on her way to be executed, she’s determined not to let her captors see her be vulnerable. ...apparently, the ‘defense lawyer’ (Chair of Pardon) for the accused in the trials sometimes faces the same penalty as the actual accused. That is... really fucking weird. I’m gonna blame that one on that Black Ajah.

24. When she is delivered to the White Tower, Egwene is surprised to see Nicola there and somehow does NOT leap to the same conclusion that I did, which is that Nicola is obviously the one who betrayed her. Egwene is told that she’ll be birched and she decides that she will do her best to face it like an Aiel and embrace the pain. Nicola apologises for running away and calls Egwene ‘Mother’ before she rushes off. We learn that Leane was also caught and managed to do half of the south harbor entrance, limiting the size of the ships that can get through, at least.

25. Egwene is told that she’s not going to be executed: she’s going to be a novice again. She tells the Mistress of Novices that she is Aes Sedai due to be Amrylin Seat and won’t deny what she is. The plan with Egwene is to leave her dosed mildly with forkroot during the day and shielded at night and lots and lots of corporal punishment. Before she leaves, she tries to warn them about her Dream about the Seanchan attacking the White Tower and says that Leane can back up her being a Dreamer. There’s something I really do want to poke at about the different ways prophecies get used in this series, but I’m going to let it simmer in my brain for a while, I think.

26. Egwene is taken to a novice room for the night. As she goes to sleep, she slips into the in-between world and waits for Siuan’s dreaming light to appear so that she can drop a warning into her dreams. Now that she knows that Elaida isn’t planning to kill her, she’s coming up with new plans on how to continue her work from inside the Tower. “She did not consider herself a prisoner either. She was carrying the battle into the heart of the Tower itself. If she had lips there, she would have smiled.”

27. Over in the rebel encampment, everyone currently thinks that Egwene is dead, because her boat was found overturned, but Siuan has woken up with renewed hope, because Egwene spoke to her in her dreams. Siuan goes first to Egwene’s oathsworn sisters to tell them that Egwene and Leane are alive and captive in the Tower. Sheriam votes that they Travel down to the cells in the Tower and rescue Egwene and Leane immediately but Siuan tells them that’s not what Egwene wants. Lelaine shows up and tells Siuan to talk to her; Siuan relates Egwene’s instructions and adds that Egwene says that they are going to have a meeting of the Hall in the Hall of Servants in TAR the next night, which Lelaine approves of and finds amusing. Lelaine also tells Siuan that if Egwene is killed or stilled by Elaida, then she wants Siuan and Egwene’s people’s aid in becoming the next Amrylin herself.

28. Beonin is worrying about the mystery of the sisters getting murdered by someone using saidin. We learn quite a bit about Beonin here in her internal narration and it’s all fairly interesting and fleshes her out -- she respects and trust her Warder, she has keepsakes of her (now deceased) grandmother and mother to remember them and what she learned from them, and she’s genuinely ANGRY that the Tower managed to miss so many potential channelers with its old policy, She is astonished and amazed at how many more women there were out in the world who COULD become Aes Sedai and never had the chance.

29. As Beonin heads out on her mission, she sees a ghost like other people having been seeing, and she names it the Dark One’s touch on the world. She puts an illusion on herself and hides her ability to channel -- she plans to go talk to Elaida, so she asks her Warder to trust her and wait in the city for her.

30. Elaida kidnapped the former King of Illian and he is very mad about it. She tells him that he should be grateful that she got him out when she did, because the Dragon Reborn now rules Illian. I do think it’s interesting how the Illian dialect seems to be very similar to the way that the Old Tongue is structured. She tells him that she plans to restore him to the throne in Illian (though her original plan was just kidnapping the actual King; she didn’t know that Rand was going to take the throne).

31. Elaida actually IS trying to figure out how to mend the Tower, but she’s often so busy seeing what she wants to see that she doesn’t see what is actually there. She trusts so few people and has such a short temper. The whole Egwene vs Elaida conflict kinda does feel like it mirrors Rand’s internal conflict against the taint and his PTSD, as I think I mentioned... at the start of CoT? Or maybe during my WH re-read? Can’t remember when exactly. But with Egwene standing in for his inner core of self and Elaida representing the damage that the taint & his PTSD have done to that core. The Tower is split, just as Rand is split.

32. Beonin arrives, and she is here to tell all of Salidar and Egwene’s secrets to Elaida. Beonin has been working for Elaida this entire time, deliberately sent to the rebels to sow discord and try to keep them occupied (so Elaida considers her a fairly big failure, considering their current situation). She tells them that Egwene can enter TAR in her sleep and told the rebels not to rescue her. She shows Elaida and Tarna the weave for Traveling and the one for Skimming. She also gives them the names of the ten sisters who were sent back to the Tower to spread the stories about Logain and the Red Ajah.

33. Ah, the first Forsaken meeting since their big failure at the cleansing, I think this is. Moridin has summoned them. We are in Aran’gar’s PoV. Already present: Semirhage, Demandred, Mesaana, Graendal. They are meeting up in TAR. There are eleven chairs present, which Aran’gar finds puzzling, since Asmodean and Sammael are both surely dead, from what she believes. The place in TAR where they are meeting is a memory of Ansaline Gardens, which was destroyed in the third year of the War of Power. Ah, we learn that Aran’gar has been actively spying on Egwene’s dreams. And Aran’gar was able to spy on the Hall of Servants meeting that Egwene had in TAR.

34. Moridin shows up, with Moghedien and ‘Cyndane’ at his heels in their red-and-black livery. Moridin says that Sammael appears to have resurfaced, giving orders to a hundred Fades to bring thousands Trollocs into the Ways. Moridin also tells them that al’Thor belongs to him and none of the rest of them are allowed to hurt him. During the conversation, Aran’gar figures out that Moridin has Moghedien and Cyndane mindtrapped. In contrast to Rand, Moridin tells them to find Perrin and Mat, who they are welcome to kill. It looks like he’s using the same images of them that were used back during the Darkfriend Social in TGH, because it mentions rough country clothes, which neither of them wear these days. Perrin is “tall and wide, with yellow eyes” and Mat is “not quite slender” with a “cheeky grin”. This is the first time these Forsaken have known what Perrin and Mat looked like, it seems, and Semirhage notes that if she’d known earlier, they might already be dead. Aran’gar, however, still plans to kill Rand.

35. When last we checked in with Perrin, he was planning to sell his soul to the Seanchan to work out a deal to save Faile. Let’s see how that’s going!

...soul selling confirmed! Okay, let’s move on to Faile!

36. Faile, who still has her soul, is working on her own plans. Honestly, if Faile’s storyline weren’t surrounded by so much trash, I would probably like it. She herself is definitely getting the chance to shine, being brave but also willing to be patient. Honestly, at this point in the story, Faile deserves so much better than being married to Perrin. Anyway, she is determined to escape before Perrin gets himself killed in an attempt to rescue her.

37. Our first Mat chapter, so let’s do a theme & slavery check-in!

Characters who were previously strongly anti-slavery in WH:

Mat, Setalle Anan, Juilin, Noal, Teslyn, Joline, Edesina, Thom, Beslan

Characters who inexplicably softened their anti-slavery stance in CoT:

Mat (knows sul’dam secret)

Setalle Anan

Noal

Anti-Slavery characters who haven’t changed their stance as far as we know:

Juilin (gold star for Juilin tbh)

Teslyn (knows sul’dam secret)

Joline

Edesina

Thom

Characters who are focused really only on their own personal freedom and not anyone else’s:

Seta & Bethamin (slaves if the Truth Were Known)

Domon (wants to be free to marry Egeanin)

Characters who show signs of growth and change:

Egeanin (knows sul’dam secret)

These characters remain strongly pro-slavery:

Tuon (knows sul’dam secret)

Slaves:

Selucia, and the horde of Seanchan that are out looking for Tuon

Themes that were set up in Winter’s Heart:

the secret of the sul’dam

questioning the empire

the heir to the empire being a dormant marath’damane

These were completely ignored in all of Mat’s chapters except his very last one, in favor of Mat navel-gazing about his marriage prophecy and Tuon reminding us at every possible moment that she’s a slaver and an asshole. Honestly, it kinda feels like that last chapter of Mat’s in CoT is the only one that should have existed at all, because that’s the only one that actually dealt with anything that was set up in Winter’s Heart. And maybe his reaction to the cleansing could have been in a quick cut-scene along with Perrin’s and Elayne & Aviendha’s.

Anyway, let’s see if Knife of Dreams can do any better than CoT with Mat. I know it has a reputation of being better than CoT but... I don’t remember liking it better, especially in Mat’s storyline. But we’ll see!

38. I’m no longer keeping track of plot points that undermine Winter’s Heart, because it feels like we’ve already completely changed the intended story and Mat’s characterization at this point, so there’s no reason to bother. CoT!Mat seemed somewhat weak and self-serving (though he was obviously still uncomfortable with slavery, at least, but a far cry from his visceral disgust in WH) and came across as willing to look the other way while Tuon does her evil deeds. I desperately miss pre-CoT!Mat. Egeanin, Juilin & Amathera, and the three Aes Sedai are really the only people I find worth caring about in Mat’s storyline anymore. Maybe Thom. Oh! Auldra! She’s worth caring about.

39. Nothing worthy of note happens in chapter six.

40. Chapter seven:

Egeanin is officially going by Leilwin Shipless, the name that Mean Girls (tm) Selucia and Tuon gave her last book to be assholes to her. I will call her Leilwin née Egeanin for now, I think.

God, I really hate CoT/KoD!Mat, who is now pretty much the most toxic male character in the series who isn’t an actual Darkfriend*. Which sucks. Only two books ago, he was one of my favorite characters. But almost any time CoT/KoD!Mat is in a scene with a female character, he’s being SUCH an asshole.

If I’m trying to maintain any kind of throughline between books 1-9!Mat and CoT/KoD!Mat, then I could speculate that he’s taking all his anger and frustration out on the Aes Sedai because he feels like he CAN’T take it out on Tuon, because he’s convinced himself that he is required to respect and trust Tuon as his future wife (no matter how little she deserves his respect or trust) or on any of the Seanchan characters, because they are under Tuon’s wing. But that still makes him a massive asshole, so. Yeah.

Anyway, Bethamin channeled and can’t deny it to herself anymore, so at least we are finally engaging with the themes that were brought up in Winter’s Heart. Teslyn just wants to let Bethamin die from channeling sickness and, tbh, can’t blame her for feeling that way. Bethamin was the sul’dam that was trying her hardest to break Teslyn back when she was a damane. Joline and Edesina insist that Bethamin must be taught so that she doesn’t die. Mat does think that this should put an end to worrying about the sul’dam trying to use the a’dam on the Aes Sedai.

I guess we also find out in this chapter that Rand is having sex with Min instead of doing anything useful like checking in on the Black Tower.

*okay, in fairness, he’s not as bad as Masema is or Valda was. But that’s a PRETTY LOW BAR.

41. Chapter eight:

Aludra has invented cannons (ish? fireworks ‘lofting tubes’ that can be aimed) that she has named ‘Dragons’ and even though Mat doesn’t show much spine when it comes to himself with Tuon, he does still understand that she’s the enemy, because when he tells Auldra that he knows the Dragon Reborn (grew up with him), he makes sure to tell her not to whisper a hint of it to the Seanchan. And Aludra is absolutely wanting to be aiming her Dragons at the Seanchan. I’m putting her on the list, on the side of the good guys. And Mat does make it clear that this point that his goal IS still to actually return to Rand’s armies and lands.

I really would have settled for Mat x Aludra. It never would have been a favorite pairing but it would have been so much better than Mat x Tuon.

Leilwin née Egeanin and Domon get married. This must mean she’s been able to work past the block in her mind that was still thinking of him as a slave, which indicates that some strong progress has been happening with her off-screen. Mat bafflingly assumes that Leilwin née Egeanin would take Domon’s last name when she married him. It’s so weird that this is an assumption by someone in the world of WoT; another of the subconscious influences from Jordan’s own RL culture, I suppose. Anyway, she didn’t.

Mat also does not betray to Tuon that he’s a friend of Rand’s when she tries to figure out if he knows the Dragon Reborn, so, again, he does still remember at this point that she’s the enemy. And Mat also realizes that (given what he knows about the political situation) he will probably have to fight Seanchan once he’s back with Rand and he doesn’t seem upset about it, so he hasn’t gone completely dark side on us. Mat also continues to be terrified that his own future wife will enslave him so. Yeah. Charming relationship. /sarcasm (Mat’s genuine worry and the fact that Tuon has the power to enslave people encapsulates why I cannot read any of Tuon’s threats as ‘flirting’; a slaver threatening to enslave someone is NOT flirting; someone who regularly abuses their power threatening to use their power against someone is NOT flirting)

42. chapter nine:

I do appreciate how much it feels like Leilwin née Egeanin is cutting her emotional ties with the Seanchan. I am glad that there actually was growth from the background characters in Mat’s storyline here, even if Tuon and Mat themselves are a waste of time.

Every passage that involves Tuon leaves me with that same gross “what a complete asshole” feeling that I always get from reading PoVs from Valda or from Darkfriends only she doesn’t even need to be a PoV character to make me feel like I’ve been coated in slime. Mat’s apologetics for her to do the trick. Honestly, marrying Mat off to Tuon really does feel like we married Egwene or Nynaeve off to Valda. It’s such a horrific fate.

Mat thinking of Tuon as “more beautiful than ever” during a moment when she is actively enslaving and torturing people is straight-up character assassination for our guy who used to be the person who cared the most about consent and freedom. Mat Cauthon is dead and it’s so depressing. At least he does go and bury the a’dam after this, but this chapter is a fucking horror show. It’s pretty much as disgusting as “Pink Ribbons” back in Winter’s Heart.

And Tuon does break her word to Mat here, no matter how she dances around it. But she’s a liar, a hypocrite, a torturer, and a slaver, so I’m not surprised by that. She also sounds desperate to believe that she can’t have anything in common with the animals that she looks down on. But, again, Jordan had his chance to actually do something with this storyline for her and chose not to, so Tuon will live and die a person who chooses to do evil things. Tuon says here that she can choose not to channel, just as she chooses not to steal or commit murder. She literally is in charge of an invasion force that is murdering countless people across the Westlands and also had two of her siblings assassinated back home iirc. She’s a thief, too, but it’s a spoiler what it is that she steals later on (I mean, apart from the countries and land that her people are stealing as well). But let it be known: she is a thief. She’s all three of the things that she claims here that she isn’t: she’s a murderer, a thief, and capable of channeling. Everything about Tuon’s storyline is so frustrating because she HAD the potential to be an interesting character in WH and the CoT&KoD just go “nope! she’s gonna be The Worst (TM) instead! and she’s gonna drag Mat down along with her!”

She’s also an incredibly whiny brat here, trying to win Mat’s sympathy over the ~mean ladies~ daring to try to ~talk~ to her and annoy her with their existence, acting just like the child that she keeps telling us that she isn’t, only a child with way too much power. Forget Mat; Olver is the character she should be betrothed to, based on how old she ACTS (she reminds me of Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory tbh, only Veruca was, what, like thirteen years old, I think?).

The thing is, I would be fine with Tuon being The Worst (TM) and acting like a thirteen year old entitled brat if Mat (and other characters like Setalle Anan, etc) actually stayed in character and they reacted to her being a brat? But Mat's whole weird thing where he just actively has decided that Slavery Is No Longer Worth Caring About On A Moral Level when that was NOT how he was behaving in WH is just... it makes this entire storyline so bad and out of character. It feels like the narrative (not Mat but the narrative around Mat) just isn’t willing to be honest about what kind of character that Tuon is being written as, and that is so frustrating. Again, it’s the same thing where Tylin was CLEARLY a rapist and yet whenever she and Mat parted ways, all of a sudden the narrative rushed in to reassure us that ACTUALLY Mat likes her just fine and he’s gonna miss her bunches.

Mat finally does admit to himself that Selucia is a slave and not a ladies’ maid. It does not appear to change anything in his behavior.

43. chapter ten:

The fact that Mat continues to ‘court’ Tuon after the horror of chapter nine is... depressing. pre-CoT!Mat truly is dead and gone. I miss Mat so much. I miss him even more in his own chapters than during other people’s. Heterosexuality makes you evil, I guess, is the lesson I feel like we can take from CoT & KoD. (I’m joking. Mostly). Tuon threatens to invade Tar Valon and make it her capital (which would involve enslaving hundreds of women as damane) and he just goes, “oh gosh what a tough little woman.” ??? YOUR SISTER is planning to train as Aes Sedai and you are AWARE of this. TUON WOULD EAGERLY ENSLAVE YOUR SISTER AND FORCE HER TO KISS THE GROUND IN FRONT OF HER FEET. And there is not a single exaggeration in that sentence! You literally just watched Tuon collar people who are JUST LIKE YOUR SISTER and talk about them like they’re not people! You know this isn’t an idle threat on her part! She literally DID it last chapter! Ugh. Jordan screwed up Mat’s character so badly in these two books. Like again, maybe this is supposed to be Mat so deeply in denial that he can’t even access his brain but it’s just... it’s just bad. Again, where is our Shadow Rising energy? Why is Mat a limp dishtowel when it comes to all Tuon-related things?

Leilwin née Egeanin’s character arc is continuing in the background and SHE is growing and changing as a person. She talks to Amathera to try to convince her that she doesn’t need to lower her eyes to anyone and tries to make it clear that she doesn’t see her as escaped property anymore but a person. Very reasonably, Juilin doesn’t trust this change of heart and remains protective of Amathera, who has been through a lot of shit.

Mat re: Juilin - “He disliked any Seanchan, for what they had done to Amathera.” And if you had an ounce of the empathy that Juilin does, you would feel the same. You DID feel the same, back in Winter’s Heart. Fuck, I miss Mat.

*sigh* Leilwin née Egeanin is still punching Domon in the ribs.

Mat reads Moiraine’s letter to Thom and agrees to save her from the Finn. Olver has magic knowledge from Birgitte about the Tower of Ghenjei. How convenient that Birgitte told him all these details. Anyway, handwave ta’veren, etc. Mat does finally tell someone about his encounter with the foxes & snakes -- Thom, Noal, & Olver.

44. Nothing worthy of note happens in chapter eleven.

45. Of the themes that were set up in Winter’s Heart:

the secret of the sul’dam

questioning the empire

the heir to the empire being a dormant marath’damane

We actually do start dealing with some of these themes with Bethamin! Mat is (sadly? hilariously?) basically a side character to the actual meaningful plotline here rather than being an integral part, because he’s way too focused on navel-gazing about his marriage prophecy. But Bethamin, Seta, Joline, Edesina, and Teslyn appear to be having a very interesting plot that is unfortunately mostly happening off-screen, with Mat and Tuon occasionally getting in the way and making things harder for them. And Egeanin is also continuing to question the empire as well, being willing to marry Domon, an idea she had previously struggled with because he was technically her slave and she’s coming to terms with treating Amathera like a person and not a slave as well. And Auldra is doing a sideplot where she is actually helping Rand’s armies. They all have more interesting stories than our actual PoV character has in these chapters.

Honestly, I can envision a much better version of Knife of Dreams where this circus plotline doesn’t involve Mat and Tuon at all. We’d just have a subplot with minor characters of seeing these three Aes Sedai helping the sul’dam break through their conditioning. Would have been roughly 1000000000x better than the plotline that we actually got.

It’s just MIND-BOGGLING that the ONLY purpose that we’ve had for Tuon being marath’damane so far is it enabling her to further abuse and torment the Aes Sedai, because it means she’s able to torture them personally instead of ordering Seta to do it. Was this really the reason that Jordan made her marath’damane - so that she could be an even more hands-on abuser?

Tuon being an asshole (in 60 pages on-screen):

calls Mat ‘Toy’ x39

Has definitely regained every inch of being an asshole High Lady Who Will Be Empress Someday. Circus plotline was pointless. Might as well have had her stay in Ebou Dar and just bought Mat from Tylin as da’covale, honestly. Her character ‘arc’ would be about the same.

There are dozens of minor moments that I’m not listing, but she’s basically an asshole every time she opens her mouth. Mat lets her get away with anything, because he no longer owns a spine, I guess.

She tortures and attempts to enslave some of Mat’s traveling companions because they dare to try to have a conversation with her about wanting a treaty.

She threatens to invade Tar Valon and make it her capital city.

Mat is mentioned by:

Perrin x2

Mat thinks about:

Rand x13

Loial x3

unnecessary scenes:

Perrin’s pointless sidequest (shaido): 1 (15 pages), 1 (14 pages), 1 (16 pages)

Side Character Romantic Drama: 1 (2 pages)

Mat’s pointless sidequest (tuon): 1 (16 pages), 1 (10 pages), 1 (19 pages), 1 (14 pages), 1 (13 pages), 1 (25 pages)

#wot #wot reread #wheel of time #knife of dreams #wot book spoilers #wot spoilers #i miss mat so much #i hate this new mat #new mat sucks #mat cauthon #slaver empress tuon #seanchan warning #but the vast majority of this prologue is actually fantastic #the prologue has rights #perrin and mat don't have rights #faile can have A Right #egwene is great too #anyway i don't think anyone is surprised at this point by how deeply i dislike the seanchan empire #the wheel of time

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a-driftamongopenstars · 3 years ago

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Hey there! Have you written anything involving FOTL masks? Something to the tune of, say, YW & Crow still being separated by Circumstances™ but unknowingly cross paths while wearing masks 👀 (tho... maybe not the Uldren mask LOL)

hi!! :D oh my, this prompt has been sitting in my mind for a while after you sent it, I love it! I hope you like my take on it :) (no Uldren's mask indeed haha!)

frankly the entire time I had that scene from Penelope movie in my mind :D with masks and stuff!

The celebrations of the Festival of the Lost have been in full motion as hunts for the Headless commenced. With a pleasant kind of cheer in the air, the Tower seems to have relaxed. There is anticipation, and there are more smiles to be met.

It is a rainy kind of night, and despite the drizzle, the Guardians are not to be dissuaded from their dancing and food. There are stalls open here and there on a large canopied plaza, and the savoury smells of ramen and other dishes are slowly spreading across the place. There are decorations in every corner and hanging from the canopy poles. There are dancing couples in the middle, there is music, cheer and conversation.

Crow finds himself in that crowd, where it is neither too stifling nor too empty. Every Guardian is masked; some masks are ridiculous, others are perfectly simple and convenient. Crow himself has picked an inconspicuous mask of a shattered Traveler - there is a certain feeling of symbolism about such a choice, he reckoned.

At some point he finds himself swept into a dance by another Guardian with an utterly ridiculous giant pumpkin head as their mask.

Glint must be so elated to see these, Crow thinks to himself, smiling at the thought of his Ghost and his love for stories.

The Guardian that swept him away leads the dance now, and Crow allows it to happen. His feet move to the rhythm, and his ears are filled with loud music. It is liberating, to simply forget of all grudges and pain. For all intents and purposes, he is just another faceless Lightbearer.

Truth be told, Crow misses the anonimity the mask used to provide him.

The Guardian slightly squeezes his hand in the dance, and Crow's attention is swiftly snapped to his dancing partner.

How ridiculous the fate is, how cruel! How could he not recognize this person as his cherished Guardian who he has been avoiding for the attempts to settle his mind about things passed. How could he not recognize the familiar warmth of their hands or their height or even the subtle smell that you learn from a person so close and familiar.

Crow laughs to himself, daring not to speak a word.

And so they dance. Unaware, or, perhaps, aware enough. They dance for a long time, slow and fast. They accidently step on each other's feet and don't apologize, saving their voices for secrecy.

And then the dance is over, and so is the rain, and they part ways in the crowd, fingertips touching and letting go.

Crow knows. The Guardian knows. But that little meeting, an island of peace and oblivion, is enough. Till the next time, unmasked.

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #guardian x crow #yw x crow #the young wolf x crow #the crow #young wolf #the guardian #fanfiction #driftcreates #i'm a little sick right now so i hope there aren't any stupid mistakes in the text :/

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secret-engima · 4 years ago

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So I started RWBY (thanks for that, it’s all from you), and I gotta say I love Yang. So are there any Dragon!Yang rambles you have? What about lunweiss too?

It’s been a while since I enjoyed a show like this, it’s nice

Hi!!! Welcome aboard!! And not to taint your opinions but just- idk I feel obligated to warn you that while I 100% recommend V1-V5, V6 is emotionally hard (and has plot points I am Not Happy With) and V7 is just ... a train wreck. A wonderfully animated, woefully badly written train wreck. And I’ve yet to watch v8 so I have no idea what’s going on THERE beyond Oscar being a Suffering Sunshine Boi.

But yes! Headcanons!!!! Also apologies for any spoilers I mention for the show in these? I don’t know where you are in the show and I’ve already talked a lot of spoilers I’m sure XD.

Dragon Yang:

-Yang is excited to go to Beacon actually. Nervous and dreading it, but excited. She’s learned over the two years since returning to Remnant how to manage her strength and limit her lethality, how to hide the worst of her ... odd behaviors. She wants to make new friends, and she’s hoping to see Velvet there (Yang transfers to Velvet’s combat school in this AU and makes friends with her by accident). But she’s also dreading the “living in dorms with strangers” thing.

-Then she learns Ruby is getting to join early and she oscillates between HECK YES SIBLING TEAM HERE WE COME to MY BABY SISTER IS NOT READY FOR THIS. PROTECC. Of course, she’s been training Ruby these last two years too, because she’s afraid of her own strength but she’s more afraid of Ruby being unprepared for the dangers of the world. Ruby will never be a STELLAR hand to hand but she can fight mean and run away and her parkour skills have reached ninja levels even without her Semblance.

-Now she just has to get on the same team as her sister.

-She’s honestly ... highly amused by the initiation exam? Like- yeah sure fling the DRAGON SLAYER off a CLIFF and expect her to be alarmed. Psh.

-She means to track down Ruby and is will on her way to doing so when she runs into Blake first. That’s ... a little annoying. She doesn’t even know this girl’s name (Yang never dragged Ruby off to make friends during the pre-initiation sleepover thing in this AU) but it’s not Blake’s fault so.

-Also, on the note of Blake lemme just sidetrack to point out something interesting in Yang’s mentality. She can tell the moment she smells Blake that Blake is a Faunus.

-She still doesn’t think of her as a Faunus. Because- to Yang, she genuinely doesn’t .... really understand the difference between Faunus and human? To her everyone is human, some of them just have extra bits and more useful senses. And this is a TOTALLY UNCONSCIOUS MENTALITY from back when she was living on Earthland. Because in Earthland, people can look really, really weird (especially in the magic community) and yet they are all still called “humans” and are still treated perfectly normal. Like this girl from canon Fairy Tail show-

That tail and those ears are 100% real, they move and react like actual limbs in the anime, but they weren’t always THERE. When that character was teeny, she looked like a “normal” human, but her magic is feline oriented and so over the years those traits GREW on her. And literally NO ONE BATS AN EYE IN THE SHOW. Not even the people who knew her when she was tiny non-cat human child. She’s far from the only example, but she’s the easiest to think of especially in regards to the Faunus thing.

-So yeah, Yang smells feline traits on Blake and just- doesn’t even react. Doesn’t mention it to anyone because her brain skips right over “cat ears = Faunus” in this world and goes straight to “ah yes, my new 100% nonmagical human teammates. My Sister, Ice Child, and Girl With Decent Hearing Thank Goodness”.

-So while Blake thinks she’s keeping her Faunus traits a secret from her whole team, her partner Yang is just vibing off to the side, perfectly aware that Blake has cat ears but still thinking of her and every other Faunus as regular ol’ humans.

-Yang doesn’t abandon Ruby at the entrance to Beacon either, so Weiss made a ... bad impression on Yang very quickly for yelling at Ruby’s sister for an accident. Yang shut that whole thing down pretty fast, but Ruby was still feeling humiliated and nervous and Weiss was prickly and embarrassed by Yang’s blunt opinions.

-Yeah it’s a good thing they can bond via Nevermore killing because otherwise this team would be way more dysfunctional than it is in the first few days.

-Yang has mixed opinions on Team JNPR. It is painfully clear Jaune has no idea what he’s doing, but frankly she has her hands full with her own team atm and no time to try to gently bully this boy into proper training. She makes a note to do it later. Pyrrha smells lonely and she’s a sweetheart. Nora is wayyyy to prone to getting into Yang’s (and everyone’s) personal space. Ren is nice. He has manners and he smells of tea.

-There’s a scene early on where this guy called Cardin bullies Velvet for her ears by grabbing them and pulling them and I’ve never like how none of the main characters or anyone else try to hELP.

-Ergo, when that scene happens, Yang promptly gets up, twists Cardin’s wrist so that he lets Velvet’s ear go, then picks him up by the back of his shirt and flings him right through the farthest cafeteria window she can aim at from this angle. When his team of fellow bullies take it poorly, she proceeds to throw them through other windows.

-Her only defense when taken to the Headmaster’s office to face down Glynda and a very bemused Ozpin is that 1. at least she didn’t break their jaws or bones like she did the first time she caught someone bullying Velvet, 2. Professor Goodwitch can fix the windows with telekinesis to it’s not like the school was actually damaged and 3. if the Headmaster can fling people off cliffs for initiations, she can fling people through windows for being moronic bullies that needed spanking when they were five and spoiled but never got it.

-Goodwitch is not amused. Ozpin, on the other hand, is highly amused by trying not to show it. Yang can smell it and sense it in his magic tho.

-Yang, later in the dorms, more to herself then anyone, “So Velvet was born with one more pair of ears than most humans have, that’s no reason to be a jerk. I mean come on, he was born with a dumb face but I left him alone until he made the first move.”

-Blake: *vague staticky brain noises of confusion* “She’s ... a Faunus.”

-Yang: Gesundheit.

-Yang meeting Ironwood is gonna be-

-Fun.

-Because she first meets him in v2/v3 when he shows up for the Vytal Festival and brings an army with him and it makes Yang’s instincts SCREECH. This is OZPIN’S territory and this random general man is stomping all over it, bringing his army with him like some kind of power statement and she is immediately ready to Throw Hands with this man on Ozpin’s behalf just out of PRINCIPLE. So when she goes up to visit him at one point and finds Ironwood already there, she ignores the conversation she interrupted by arriving, points at Ironwood and goes, “Is this guy bothering you, Headmaster? Should I through him out the window? Or down the elevator shaft?”

-Ironwood is stunned that a student just- SAYS THAT. Ozpin, who has already gotten to know Yang enough to know that her social default setting is “subtle as a brick that’s been dunked in gasoline and set on fire”, sighs, “I’m fine, Yang. This is General Ironwood from Atlas.”

-Yang clicks her tongue and cracks her knuckles, “I know who he is, he’s the guy who showed up and cluttered up your skies with those rattling junk heaps he calls an army. It’s why I asked if you wanted me to throw him.”

-Ironwood, truly aghast, “Excuse me?”

-(ngl I DO like Ironwood and feel like they did his character dirty in v7 and likely v8 but, especially in v2/v3 he does have a bit of a arrogance problem)

Lunweiss:

-Weiss probably confuses so many people at Beacon. She is a Schnee, so while people are expecting some measure of dignity they are also expecting snobbery or brattiness and instead she’s just- the sweetest, mildest person under her reserve?

-Jaune still has a huge crush on her, she firmly but gently informs him that she’s just not interested. When he is slow to take the hint she gets upset, but that just means she withdraws in on herself.

-Yang, activating her Big Sister instincts: Yo, Jaune. I like you, you’re a good friend. But if you don’t drop it then I’m going to drop kick you off the top of Beacon Tower.

-Jaune: o.o yes ma’am.

-Lunweiss has had ... something of a deprived childhood in both lives. I don’t mean physically, because of course as Oracle and then as Heiress she had the best clothes and finest foods, but just- in the ordinary Teenage Life Experience. Things like video games and board games, carnival food, shopping with friends- she doesn’t have any real experiences like that? So obviously, as soon as Team RWBY realizes this (aka the day they’re lounging around the dorm and Luna asks what “these” are, “these” being Yang’s and Ruby’s collection of video games), they set out to do All The Fun Things with Weiss. Even Blake gets in on it when she comes to the somewhat stunning realization that the life experience even she, the Faunus activist, took for granted, is stuff Weiss has only ever heard of distantly in books and film.

-Weiss, bemusedly attempting to play a video game while Yang and Ruby lean on either shoulder and coach her on the buttons: ...What is the purpose of this?

-Ruby: *initiates lore dump about the video game plot and characters and emotional story beats*

-Yang, yanking Ruby’s hood over her head so she sputters to a stop: To unwind and have fun with friends.

-Weiss: I thought that was what ‘sleepover night’ was for?

-Ruby: People can do more than one ‘fun’ activity, Weiss.

At one point Blake reluctantly takes Weiss book shopping because Ruby, as Team Leader, has organized an entire schedule of “who does what fun thing with Weiss” and this was hers: So this is my favorite book store, the fiction genres are that way, non-fiction is that way, and comics are over there.

Weiss: *looks incredibly, hopelessly lost* Ummmmm

Blake: ... let’s start simple. What kind of books did you read as a kid?

Weiss, a little helplessly: whatever the tutors my father hired deemed proper for my education at the time and whatever books I could sneak out of the library without being caught and told to put them back because they were either “too young” for me, “too old”, or “not proper for a young lady of my standing”. Grandfather had a lot of books that my father put in that latter category and eventually he just- locked the doors to the library entirely and bought a new copy of whatever my teachers or tutors said I needed.

Blake: *listens to this and slowly has an internal crisis that the ‘spoiled’ Schnee heiress has never been allowed to read her own choice of books aka Blake’s favorite childhood activity*

Blake, a little desperately: Are there any books you remember enjoying as a child? Even if they were assigned?

Weiss combs through her memories, decides that’s not productive, and goes all the way back to her Luna lifetime before tentatively admitting: I ... enjoyed reading mythology and other tales set in historical eras with little evidence of being actually true, but entertaining nonetheless, especially since they often had a moral component woven in.

Blake runs that through her internal Weiss Translator: Fairy tales. You like fairy tales. Okay, I can work with that.

#SE asks #florafaunanfandoms asks #Secret Engima Rambles #Dragon Yang verse #One in a Hundred verse #look #rwby is GREAT up until v5 and i recommend it #everything after that is optional #and should be watched with caution #v7 is rwby; the naruto level plot edition #no i will not change my mind

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arsnovacadenza · 4 years ago

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Jean d’Arc Route Summary and Translation Chp.4

Disclaimer: This is an unofficial translation based on my somewhat serviceable Japanese skills with the aid of various kanji dictionaries (and some Google Translate). As I’m doing this mostly for practice, progress will be relatively slow and there might be changes to formatting in the future. Thank you for your patience and understanding

The italicized words in brackets are the comments I made throughout my playthrough.

As promised, here’s my summary and translation of Jean D’Arc’s route in Ikemen Vampire. Obviously, there will be SPOILERS.

Before we jump right into Chp. 4, let me give little bit of context from chapter 3 since I didn't think to translate Jean's route from the very beginning:

Comte called a meeting with other vampires in the mansion to explain their entire situation to MC. So far, they've told her about their vampiric nature and their diet. Aside from Arthur, nobody else drank blood directly from humans. Even so, Napoleon told her to at least have some caution (although he can promise that nobody was going to bite her in the future).

MC asked where Jean was since he wasn't present in the dining room where they held the meeting. Mozart asked her to come along with him to Jean's quarters on the second floor (surprise, surprise, he didn't live in some ominous tower detached from the building).

Mozart point-blank confronted MC about her bite mark, which he guessed was Jean's doing. In case you haven't read up on Chp. 1 spoilers, Jean bit MC on the first night she arrived as a mansion, afterward telling her that she should've been more alert because she WAS living among stronger creatures that COULD potentially prey on her..

(Our boy sure loves to emphasize the monstrous side of vampirism and how it changed him into a predatory creature far detached from his previous human self. There's just so much to talk about here).

MC, of course, is overwhelmed by the whole situation, including Jean's reasoning for biting her. So, she asked Mozart about Jean's possible logic for doing it since they seemed to be close friends.

And that brings us to the beginning of Chapter 4.

MC, of course, was overwhelmed by the whole situation, including Jean's reasoning for biting her. So, she asked Mozart about Jean's possible logic for doing it since they seemed to be close friends.

And that brings us to the beginning of Chapter 4.

Mozart retorted, "To think that I can talk about his feelings on his behalf just because we're friends is a ridiculous assumption."

MC is taken aback by his sharp words, but admitted that he's right anyway.

He continued "In other words, go talk to him yourself and use your head."

And just like that, he opened a door and pushed MC into a room, sending her barreling on the floor. He then closed the door and called out to her from outside, basically saying. "Your misunderstanding of our relationship is wack. Come back after you talk to the guy himself."

She thought about the absurdity of the situation as the sound of Mozart's footsteps grew distant. Suddenly, a shadow fell upon her, and she followed to where it led.

In front of her was a figure gazing at her with empty eyes.

It's Jeanne. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

She stood up and apologized for suddenly barging into his room while averting her eyes from Jean's. Then she continued.

"As I'm going to burden myself upon everyone in this mansion for a month, I thought about paying my respects again." To which Jean only answered. "Is that so."

MC tried to give him an excuse as to why she wanted to go to such lengths just to greet him, which Jean didn't seem to care about. (Boy, he's rude let me tell you.) All the while, she kept thinking about how she'd soon be saying goodbye to everyone in the mansion without coming to terms with this one guy.

As MC fidgeted under his unwavering stare, she suddenly remembered her earlier talk with Mozart. She needed to confront Jean about the biting incident and understand his side of the story.

Piecing together the information she obtained from the morning meeting with everyone else, especially about their mealtimes and regarding Blanc and Rouge, she concluded that he didn't bite her out of starvation.

And she also looked back to Jean's words on that fateful night.

"If you want to return to the safety of your world, you better have a sense of danger."

"Think about how you should act to protect yourself."

(So basically Jean's telling her "If you ain't strong enough you ain't gonna last long, bitch")

But MC decided to press him more, anyway. "Why, on that night, did you bite me? Can you tell me?"

Jean answered, "If I told you the reason why what are you going to do with it?"

(Jean, that is not how you talk to ppl)

An awkward atmosphere hung between them, but Jean continued. "You weren't aware that we're vampires."

"Your wandering aimlessly around the mansion is an eyesore—"

"If you think I'm an eyesore, won't it be better if you're free of my presence?"

"Even if you said I was just an eyesore," she fired at Jean. "You didn't exactly see me as prey, do you?"

And Jean basically just answered, “Quite the carefree woman, aren’t you?”

My arms were pulled, and fingers encased in a white glove tilted up my chin.*

"Regarding that night, it doesn't matter to me however you interpret it," he murmured. "If you think of it as me being kind to you [for giving you a warning about the true nature of this mansion's residents], so be it."

"Don't approach me anymore outside of this, and get out of here this instant."

After Jean gave her the boot, MC broke down and thought about the entire confrontation, her heart racing. However, she managed to collect herself and left Jean’s door. Unbeknownst to her, Mozart had been watching the entire scene from afar. "Alas, it's no use, is it?" he sighed.

“Indeed. It is an impossible feat to unlock Monsieur Jean’s heart, especially for a newcomer like MC”

That surprised Mozart pushed MC into Monsieur Jeanne’s room.

The butler asked Mozart if he was worried about Jean. From the time they first met, Jean had been “rejecting various things, and at the same time absolutely gives up on everything.”

"The reason for that, I don’t know….. That's Jean's way of life. He can do as he pleases."

"But as his friend....it does concern me a little."

“A friendship between beautiful people, how precious!”

(That’s not what you should be focusing on, you idiot).

“Herr Mozart, if you give up, then that’s when everything is truly over.” Sebastian beamed. “Please leave it to me as this mansion’s butler, for I have something in mind.”

Mozart shrugged his shoulders as he gazed at the eccentric butler’s smile.

(This part is more dialogue and screenshot-heavy as I want to avoid misinterpretation as much as possible)

A quiet night descends upon a moonlit church at the foot of a forest, far away from the mansion. Inside, a lone man walks under the moonlight, reflected on the stained glass patterns. He narrowed his orbs*, whose left and right colors are different.

“Master, do forgive me for not paying my respects as of late.” He greeted another man.

“Ah, Will. Have there been any changes lately?”

Will proceeded to tell ??? about a young woman stumbling through the door from another world and into the mansion. He also notified Vlad that the Comte has allowed her to impose on them for a month.

The white-haired man smiled amusedly. “Ah, the most intriguing things do occur, don’t they?”

“But what I can’t comprehend,” Shakespeare frowned. “This woman is seemingly an ordinary human of no virtue.”

“As if an impurity has mixed in with the brilliance of the great men.”

Shakespeare hoped that she wouldn’t be a hindrance to his plans, and I quote: “A creature that only invites tragedies instead of comedies. And I have no use of such mediocre tragedies.”

After some exchange, ??? said, “A creature that only invites tragedies instead of comedies. And I have no use of such mediocre tragedies.”

"Indeed," Shakespeare concurred. "I strive for the finest tragedy with the most exquisite cast."

"The great men who are set to dance on the stage you've set up," His master smirked. "They make the finest marionettes, don't they?"

"That is why, Master, I've decided to join hands with you."

"With you, who carries the same power as the Count....."

"What is it you desire, Will?"

"Can you lend me your power and arrange for a livelier cast?"

"The greater the obstacle they face, the more exceptional the tragedy that ensues."

"I'll think about it," his master replied.

Smiling elegantly, the red-eyed man looked up at the moon. Behind his eyes shone a glint of a power that can move the entire world.

(In KennieJD’s words: “You both deserve each other cause y’all crazy as hell”).

*1: I nearly fell off my chair translating this part

*2: The original kanji says “双降”, which doesn’t come up if you search on any kanji dictionary. I asked Asha about this, and she said it’s a typo on Cybird’s part. It’s supposed to be 双眸, which means ‘a pair of eyes’

I didn't intend this to be this lengthy and dialogue-focused, but I realized that I really enjoy writing lines for bitchy characters. Jean and Vlad's were especially a delight to work with! I couldn’t do much for Shakespeare’s lines tho. I haven't been an English Literature student for two years.

Tagging @hokkaido-fox for now. Let me know if you want to be tagged in upcoming summaries and mini-translations!

Credits to @ashavazesa for her tremendous help with some of the kanji.

#ikemen vampire #ikevam jean #ikevam jeanne d'arc #ikevam jean route #rikevam spoilers #riri tries translating

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theaceace · 5 years ago

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So because I had a few asks about it, I’m going to ramble about some of the scenes I wanted to include in demand an encore and didn’t (for varying reasons) and tag the people that asked instead of answering them all and repeating myself a lot (having said that, if you want even more detail, I am here, shivering with anticipation) Hopefully tumblr doesn’t fuck it up too much :)

@holsmi, @lemon-drops-are-yummy, @eat-sleep-meme-freak-repeat, @alastingconfusion, @jinglelas

(warning - this got long)

Ok so this isn’t in any particular order, let’s go

I was originally going to have more of the first episode actually played through, including Geralt’s reaction to waking up in Filavandrel’s cave and immediately smelling Jaskier’s blood. Jaskier-the-Viper would have known a lot more about the great cleansing than Jaskier-the-bard, considering he y’know lived through it, so there would have been moments of Geralt using that to convince himself that of course this couldn’t be his Jaskier because his Jaskier would never have bought into the human’s shit. And the ‘he’s just a bard’ line? Ooh I was going to lean into that hard. I couldn’t really work the transitions though, and honestly I didn’t want to feel like I was repeating the episode verbatim which was how it was starting to turn out

Renfri was going to have a much part bigger part originally - it was where the idea of Geralt talking to Roach like she’s a horse sometimes and like she’s a person other times originally started. I toyed with the idea of Geralt actually opening up a little bit to Renfri about it, and possibly her trying to use Jaskier’s death at the hands of mages to convince Geralt to kill Stregobor. I did also think about having a mirror of the final fight scene, because I imagine Jaskier’s fighting style to be very similar to Renfri’s, to the point that Geralt actually started to anticipate her movements - only to get stabbed because of course, she’s her own person and however similar her approach to fighting was, there would still be differences. This chapter, though, I decided all of the flashbacks would take place after Geralt met Jaskier again, so it was cut

Triss, oh my god, I had half a scene written with Triss but I couldn’t stop the dialogue feeling clunky and too much like obvious exposition. The plan was to reveal the info we got from Yennefer in the final version more gradually, with a little bit from Triss, a little bit from Mousesack, and Geralt drawing his own conclusions from that. It worked better with the theme of Geralt being a ridiculously unreliable narrator, because let’s be real he would jump to the absolute worst conclusions in a heartbeat, but then I realised Yennefer would not allow other people to be the authority on anything magical in Geralt’s life and would correct him at every turn (how reliable it is, though, is still to be determined :) ). I more-or-less replaced it with the after-potions scene, because I like the idea of Geralt calling for Dandelion when he’s hurt/feverish/not really with it, and I was going to have Triss grill him about it. I’m happy with the final version. Still miss Triss tho

I was in two minds about including anything from ep 4, because on the one hand I wouldn’t really have changed any of the events - except maybe having Mousesack be aware that Geralt used to travel with another witcher and talk it through a bit - but at the same time, the potential for yearning was off the charts

The little song that Jaskier sings at the beginning of ep 5? ‘You all know that this bard, loved ladies from Nilgaard, cause Nilfgaard can kiss my - Geralt!’ That was going to be there for Geralt to obsess over, but I thought people might read too much into it when it’s still just a silly song that he was singing. Again, there was a lot of potential pining with the whole exchange pre-djinn, but I would have changed so little of it overall and I didn’t want to just type out the scene verbatim

I wanted to have a scene of Geralt being in some sort of peril while on a hunt, and Jaskier trying to leap in - because he still had the instincts of a witcher, and when his mind blanked with absolute terror of what might happen to Geralt, he fell back on them without realising. But, of course, the instincts and muscle-memory alone (at that point, at least) wouldn’t have been enough, resulting in Jaskier being pretty seriously injured, and Geralt losing his shit because he couldn’t just let Jaskier die, not again. I still like the idea of this one, although it ran a little close to the whole djinn debacle. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll revisit it (probably not tho)

Originally Geralt and Ciri’s talk on the tower was going to be much more lighthearted, with Geralt telling Ciri stories about the constellations that he learnt from Jaskier, while Jaskier stealthily sat at the foot of the tower listening. They were going to have a bit of a heart-to-heart once Ciri fell asleep, but in the end I felt like I really wanted to address the fact that this whole thing has been really difficult for characters other than Geralt. Yes we like to read about the sad grumpy boi pining, but let’s be real, I don’t know how much time the show will devote to her trauma and I at least wanted to give Ciri the chance to openly grieve.

Yen was going to arrive at fuck-o-clock at night, when Geralt and Jaskier were the only ones up. And also they might have been cuddling a bit. And Jaskier might have grabbed a knife from Geralt’s belt and settled into the old fighting stance they used to use when they needed to protect each other’s backs. I might have had him in a state of panic over the fact that there’s a portal at Kaer Morhen, and desperately trying to hold himself together long enough to face the potential threat, because he has to protect the ones he loves. It might have been related to whatever happened at Gorthur Gvaed. In the end, I went with a lighter version because it had already been a very heavy chapter. This idea is still very close to my heart, though.

#not exactly a writing tag #demand an encore #you asked and I hope I delivered :)

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theclownandtheflame · 5 years ago

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AIGHT FELLAS it's me ya slut writing a Gaius x MC fic so if you don't like Gaius or feel grossed out by the idea of a ship then DON'T READ IT haaaa no seriously don't read it. Also don't shame those who like it. PEACE! 🧚🏻‍♀️

Btw I didn't quite finish it bc idk my imagination gets dry sometimes and stuff. BUT if any of you want me to keep writing, then ask so and I'll do it! I'll do it either way but oh well ksksksks here we go!

Victim, Victim, Monster

A Gaius Augustine x MC drabble/fic

Written by @theclownandtheflame

DISCLAIMER: Some NSFW, slight mentions of PTSD (not romanticized tho!! ew!!)

Characters used &/or mentioned belong to Pixelberry!!! All rights to them even if they take ours on a daily basis

My mother language is Portuguese so please excuse my grammar should it be necessary!

MC's name is Athena because,, :)

Final warning for Gaius' haters: don't. read. below. the line !!!!!!!!

_________________________________________

"Athena, I did terrible things to you. I abducted you. I raided your mind. I tortured your friends. I killed you."

Funny how stating the obvious got him stuck in her mind the whole night. Fragile, the bloodkeeper clutched her pillow and busied herself with happier thoughts. As if there were any at times like these.

They had just escaped the island when its effects fully wore out. She couldn't blame "grandpa" for her restlessness, as much as she wanted to. So much to consider after trekking across the ugly truth and all she could think about was Gaius. Gaius Augustine.

She heaved a dramatic sigh before changing positions. Now, laying on her back, Athena realized this was probably the best night of sleep she's had in a while. Even if there was, like, absolutely no sleeping involved.

What kept her up wasn't the nightmares this time. Something about their talk, as eerie as it went, helped her conceal the fact his face would haunt her forever. Because, oh, it would.

"You can't sleep, can you?"

The agony, crawling under her skin, hit so deep she could hear his voice at any given time. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she stared at the ceiling, counting sheeps for a change. No nightmares, no daydreams, but absolutely not a hint of tranquility.

"... Athena."

She huffed. If she knew coming to good terms with the enemy would bring him inside her head, she wouldn't have taken the high road. Her lips still tingled from the kiss she pressed to his cheek. The electric warmth shared upon breaking a boundary she would've never have crossed days prior.

If only her friends could see her now. Touching her lips with her fingertips. Thinking fondly of a monster they swore to kill.

"Are you asleep? Do you actually sleep with your eyes open? You are one strange woman."

"Leave, demon!" She hissed, forcing herself up to sit by the edge of the bed. Both hands rubbed at her temples as she whispered words of discouragement, praying to have her brain raided by better thoughts. A psych vampire who can't watch after her own mind was most likely a joke.

Until she glanced towards the door, slowly, blushing deeply at the owner of her inner voices who simply stared back in awe. So it wasn't her imagination playing tricks, huh?

He blinked. Fast.

"... Did you think I—"

"Shut up." She lisped. Her hands continued to cradle her head even as he walked in, eyebrows arched.

"I was hoping you'd be less fussy after our conversation."

Without expecting an invitation, he crossed the distance between them and leaned into the wall across from her.

Surprisingly she didn't budge. Not until her body flinched at the cold breeze that entered freely from the gap he left by keeping the door open.

"Yeah, so was I." The woman closed her eyes and took a deep breath to keep herself from shaking.

Once aware of the situation, Gaius snatched her pillow and tossed it on the door. It slammed closed from the impact, but it wasn't loud enough to startle the others.

"Hey!" She gasped, watching the scene with eyes wide. "Couldn't you just go and close it manually? Like, running for it? You're a powerful vampire, dude."

Entertained by her fright, he smirked.

"I'm also way too comfortable standing right here... dude."

Gaius Augustine was a monster. Is a monster. She couldn't really tell. Decades of cruelty couldn't be wiped out so easily, as Kamilah strongly suggested whenever she mentioned his name. Yet, the way he looked at her with a mixture of sorrow and regret proved it true: Rheya broke him whole.

He stood still, stiffening once their eyes met, and suddenly all she could see was a wounded hound looking for shelter.

"Why are you here?" She asked at last. A simple question that sent him looking for scrappers of answers he couldn't quite provide.

Why was he there, really? Because she's the only one who didn't give him a hard time? Because she knew how his mind worked, and therefore they had a reliable bond?

Because she's the only good thing left of the Rheya he once loved?

He needn't consider any further. That last possibility drained all colors from his face. Staring blankly ahead, his mouth slightly ajar, Gaius ignored her altogether and hurried towards the door.

"Wait!" She called out. Without further ado, Athena leaped to her feet and approached the man to lay a hand on his as it reached for the knob.

The look he gave her was a haunting one. Desperate. He couldn't bear looking at her face without feeling himself break further.

Oh, how the tables have turned.

He was terrified of her.

"I must leave." He blurted out, but his body remained unmoving. The gentle touch he felt on his hand moved on to his cheek, and suddenly he found himself leaning into it.

What the hell, Athena? What are you doing?, She thought. He abducted you, raided your mind, tortured your friends, killed you!

Their eyes met once more, and this time they didn't go astray. They glared at each other's hues while their heads swirmed with questions of where they stood and what they meant.

Victim, victim, monster.

Both experiencing a strong attraction that most likely came to life due to their shared fear:

To lose a purpose without making it right.

Pulling away out of a sudden, Athena turned on her heels and walked in front of a mirror. He followed short after, magnetized, his hands yearning to grasp her hips but resting on his belt instead. His towering figure could be easily seen behind her as a smile crept on her rosy lips.

"What?" He frowned. "What's so amusing to you that clearly isn't to me?"

Biting on her bottom lip, she gestured towards their reflections, believing it would be enough. By the way his lips puckered, it wasn't.

"We're vampires. Yet we can see ourselves on the mirror. Hollywood's fishy, isn't it?"

Sighing sharply not to roll his eyes at her foolishness, he leaned into her to touch the mirror's surface. The way his chest pressed into her back so that his palm could reach the glass made her heartbeats quicken.

The funny look he gave her through a squint was enough to say he heard them loud and clear. And enjoyed being the cause of it.

"You don't believe Vlad's tales, do you? It's outrageous. The man is a buffoon." He quirked an eyebrow. Looking at the mirror at the same time, the two shot each other challenging glares until she burst into laughter.

"Nah. He's not that great, by the way. I don't see the appeal... and I've certainly had better."

Wiggling her eyebrows, Athena fist-bumped the air upon spotting a crimson shade spread on his cheeks. He'd have pulled away to adjust his posture if she hadn't laid her hand upon his.

Her fingers grazed his until curling around them, her touch so gentle he could barely feel it. He closed his eyes when she laid her head back on his shoulder, and his arm slowly slithered around her waist in return.

Humming to herself, Athena shrunk into his arms and cherished the warmth of his hold. Then, the touch of his lips on her ear, of his breath tickling her skin.

"I do see the appeal in this." He growled, softly, making her body shiver from goosebumps. "Of holding you close to me instead of hunting you down. Of saving you instead of dragging you to harm's way."

The hand he had holding on her waist moved up to her breasts, hovering over her cleavage as he reached for a necklace as an excuse to his gestures. Her heart was entirely out of control at this point, beating faster by the minute – but she didn't care. She wanted him to be aware of his effects. Tilting her head, she brushed her lips across his jawline and smirked at the hiss she got in response.

"Well, there is a saying for that, y'know? Make love, not war."

Having distracted him with an array of kisses on his jaw, she reached back around her neck to unclip the necklace and toss it away. He needn't an excuse. Not anymore.

"So which one's gonna be? I'm warning you though, I'm great at waging war."

"You are infuriating." Without further notice, his hands clutched her hips to flip her around.

Once she could face him properly, Athena inched forth to try his lips for the first time, but he made sure to keep her at arm's length. His eyes, dark with lust, studied her frame before locking on her features. It's like he was seeing her for the first time, savoring the sight of something he craved despite unaware.

He took it in without a wish to kill but to touch, appraise, caress. Taste.

"Kiss me." She ordered, her voice but a whisper as his thumbs drew circles around her hips.

"No, Bloodkeeper..." He hummed, his nose brushing hers as he fought the urge to give it in. "I'm not so sure I am worthy of your lips."

Dodging temptation, he pressed a kiss to her cheek instead. A warm reminder that there's still good in this world as much as there could be in him.

"Goodnight, Athena."

She shook her head. He couldn't leave now, not when she found a way around the sharp edges of his heart. However, he was too determined to cut it short before it was too late. Even if something told him they were way past that.

Averting his gaze not to meet her hungry eyes, he planted one last kiss on her forehead and left with haste.

"Great..." She mumbled, more restless than ever. "Now I definitely can't sleep."

-//-

#bloodbound #bloodbound choices #bloodbound book 3 #bloodbound fic #bloodbound drabble #gaius augustine #gaius x mc #yes it is real the cursed ship mwah #bb choices #bb pb #theclownandtheflame : victim victim monster

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advernia · 5 years ago

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push me off a bridge (to catch me as i fall)

a separate post for my ramblings for this fic!! it’s actually the longest thing i’ve written in a while, so i have a lot to ramble about haha;;

prelude

oh man... this started when two of my friends decided to go through edgar’s route at the same time AND also decided to go reacting to every single part of the route through burst texting AT THE SAME TIME, effectively flooding my inbox.... they were fully aware that i was at a seminar and unable to reply... now my inbox is filled with so much edgar screaming i cannot... (゜▽゜;)

screaming aside they were also very willing to read whatever drafts of edgar/mc i had available and this was their favorite!! thanks to them, i decided to finish this omfg... i’m actually so proud that i got this done but tbh it was getting so long that i had half a mind to let go of it already halfway through scene three haha... (;*△*;)

this has uh... some fighting scenes and tbh the first draft had absolutely none of it... this is my first time actually writing long(?) scenes and while i found thinking about them to be fun, putting them into words was some struggle??? like... i've been told that it looks okay but idk it feels clunky to me. oh well ＼| ￣ヘ￣|／

general stuff + war phase, baby!

initially this was only meant to be 3 parts + primarily focused on edgar/mc + with an unnamed mc as usual! but then since it’s an au of kyle’s route, i found myself wanting to flesh out the relationship of edgar & mc when set in a different angle + circumstances rather than just automatically implying attraction...

plus their relationship canonically starts off on the wrong foot in that route & edgar’s fully aware that mc isn’t exactly comfortable around him, so it really doesn’t sit well if i just... put them together, lol. so thus we have five scenes of them getting(?) closer!(???)

in short its a hella slow burn and not gonna lie, when i was writing their scenes i was like f i n a l l y... bless... ಠ ּ͜೦

one of the reasons i like kyle’s route is bc i actually got some feel of an actual war??? idk i think there’s so much plot that u can fill in with it, so i decided going for alternating scenes of the battlefield + med tent. while there's glimpses of the action going on, there’s also the sort of complimenting(???) or offsetting more emotional perspective of what goes on with the medics.

tbh i stared long and hard at the cradle map when formulating some tactics and i gotta say i had a hard time calming myself down bc...

in kyle’s route, the red army has the advantage and have pushed the black army as far back as to their bridge, which means that more or less they’ve occupied central quarter... but what dawned on me was... where the hell did the red army position their encampment from there???

was an encampment even necessary given that they’re like, in a really convenient area????? they probably could’ve settled themselves in some houses but tbh okay maybe it isn’t so noble of the reds to do (imposing themselves n’ stuff) + they have larger numbers so accommodating all of them is a problem but still... where’d they set up camp??? u see, when kyle + mc step out of the med tent it shows the forest bg, so... where??? on the edges of the central quarter area are where u can see them trees??? on the civic center roof?!?!

well... a decent answer is that they could’ve set up several encampments around the area to ensure their hold on the central quarter... it still raises some questions but honestly it makes a lot more sense... but if not and they really decided to camp out like one big happy family all together, then don’t even get me started on the possibility that the camp was stationed somewhere around here:

because doing that doesn’t have a single lick of sense omfg especially tactics-wise haha... that’s like... why would you do that... you’re wasting all your advantages... o h b o y... so you bet when i remembered that mc + loki had to pass by a forest to get back to the encampment + encountered ray & some disciples i was like... u m m... why???? if technically the reds took hold of the whole central quarter area then it actually isn’t necessary to skulk around in the forest?????? yes yes i know safety precautions + avoiding detection but... dood... it’s safer to walk in claimed territory rather than the unstable one ahaha...

plus the thing about the black bridge... uh... it's just said in the route that lancelot handles it through magic and that's all. but when i thought back on it oh my god... what did he do??????? how is he still standing??? how much of his lifespan did he shave off just to salvage that situation??????????? how is the poor boi alive?????????? the whole fucking bridge literally falls apart and that's a whole lot of chaos and people and AHHHHH!?!?!¿¿¿¿ if ur gonna make the bridge collapse (good thing they didn't think of disintegrate) it probably cost the magic tower a hefty amount but get rekt lancelot still saves the fucking day, what a king - he's practically got one foot in the grave already... this dood, seriously ಥ_ಥ

there were other things i noticed in the process of writing this based on the route events but i was like fuck it, let’s think on that another day and leave it as it is (┛ಠДಠ)┛彡┻━┻ ily kyle but oh no my brain started reprocessing the other details of ur route

thinking about all that also made me think of other more stuff, like cradle economy + livelihood haha;; it’s stated in edgar’s route (well... it’s actually pretty obvious in other routes too) that the reds are richer than the blacks, so i went ahead and assumed that the former engages in something more lucrative like mining -> jewerly / raw material / mineral trade, while for the latter something more wholesome like agriculture. idk, it works. even moreso that the reds give off the whole nobility vibe while the blacks are simple and casual. even the bg screens of the red & black streets are polarizing.

then i also went over the rest of the chosen thirteen... while the reds show no obvious weapon variety (see: swords), i’d like to believe that they’re taught to be versatile enough no matter what the situation. plus, since they have the funding, i'd like to think they're skilled in magic manipulation, too. meanwhile the black army shows weapon variety, and i’d like to think that it’s because most of their recruits aren’t soldiers in the first place: they’re farmhands / hunters / village people turned soldiers, and it’s actually easier to let them go with what they know first before encouraging them or asking them to learn something new. thus axes and spears and possible unconventional stuff like caltrops.

crimson glory

one of the things i realized was in kyle’s route, mc isn’t exactly so buddy-buddy with the red crew in comparison to other routes. she gets minimal interactions with the four, and zero aside her relationships with the top three are rather... tense.

zero was the other red officer i was initially going to add aside from edgar & kyle, but i added all of them anyway. while they don't appear all together, all of them have scenes together with edgar.

the first edgar & jonah scene shows an obvious contrast - while he's being incredibly critical about it, jonah shows actual concern for the living situations in black army territory. on the other hand, edgar chooses to tease him about it, his joking more or less implying that he isn't that concerned / bothered about it at all. the game touches up on this sometimes, often with edgar commenting on how noble jonah is while jonah shows obvious distaste for edgar's callousness.

still, they work well together. personally i'm amused with a hc of mine that looking at how edgar fights / acts only spurs jonah to act more honorably while for edgar, being exposed to jonah's noble-ness more or less makes him curious to try being honorable from time to time lol. that still doesn't stop anyone from calling him the gentle demon tho ( ⚆ _ ⚆ )

tbh since edgar is obviously sneaky on other routes i wouldn't put it past him to casually pressure lancelot to tell him wtf's going on with this war when he gets the inkling that something's wrong. edgar goes about this subtly not-so-subtly and in the most polite manner possible. lancelot knows him far too well to take bait tho - he makes sure to speak carefully since he's probably knows that edgar's going to pick apart at his words for meanings + implications, so it more or less leaves edgar a bit frustrated since it's clear that lancelot won't tell him much. still, edgar knows when not to cross the line - even he's not so keen on getting on lancelot's bad side.

that aside, i'd like to think that edgar respects lancelot a lot as a person + commander enough that he'd truly risk his life for him on instinct like a true soldier would. while i think i could've done more on writing the gravity of the collapsing bridge scene, i liked the last bit where edgar + zero immediately worried for lancelot.

let's be honest here tho in some way or another all of the reds chosen worry about their king bc bruh... let us in bruh...

the scenes of zero & edgar in the end are also my favorite! it isn’t much, but enjoyed writing their relationship briefly. tbh i think edgar is one of those people under the sleep = most vulnerable = death thinking (no thanks to claudius), so the fact that he allows himself to drift to sleep twice in zero's company is a definite sign of trust. then again, he's injured but still ( ᐛ )و

edgar, idike, kyle

y’know even if this is an edgar/mc thing, i found fleshing out the kyle/mc relationship equally important which i presented in scene three. personally speaking, i’d like to think that if ever kyle didn’t fall in love with mc (on his own route???) he’d still be watching over her anyway since her struggle in the medical field + war reminds him a bit of his younger self after his brother's death.

which is why he doesn't intervene with that one soldier scene - he doesn't coddle her either when she goes into a brief shock. perhaps it's bc he knows so well what she's going through, he decides to let her handle it on her own. this was her experience, not his. and to be fair, she asked to go to the front lines determined but wholly unprepared emotionally. he tried warning her, she wouldn’t listen. now she faces the consequences - how would she go about it?

i decided to slap a name into mc this time to highlight the trust plot: idk if i got it clearly across in the fic, but in times of war + for someone who’s been trained to be suspicious / cautious of everyone like edgar; secrets are a surefire way to catch attention + breed distrust.

tbh he's hella aware that the secret around her name is most likely personal and nothing dangerous, but it's better safe than sorry - by making sure she understands that keeping secrets wouldn't be of any good to her + situation, he gets reassurance that she really is harmless. how bad + seriously she takes it honestly surprises him tho, but then again she's been going through other stuff too so it all piled up.

idike isn’t my in-game name, but it’s the given name i spoke of in this ask, haha! initially scene five has her saying her full name (with surname), but i thought it would be more fitting if i didn’t lol ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

i tried to incorporate a mix of the personalities of edgar’s!mc + kyle’s!mc onto idike, tho at first i was only shooting for the latter - i think it kinda works??? while somewhat composed and determined (kyle’s), she still shows some naivete in her (edgar’s), especially concerning the ways of war + how secrecy & trust work in times of war.

i found emphasizing on her emotional struggle important, since it should be a big blow for her who’s never known the terror of war. the game touches upon on it a bit (tho it's post-med tent scenes) and i wanted to expand on it further since there are so many possible angles to go about it.

the i can’t heal you if you’re dead line sounds like something like shiro emiya might say but lol no i just remembered this p3 manga panel (pg 24) - its been years since i read it and i still love that line and i integrated it here... i was trying to expand that one scene for a while but then i just left it as it is.

in the catharsis scene where idike airs out everything, the fact that edgar fails to empathize with her + focuses more on her emotional state rather than offering actual help (advice maybe, but i honestly doubt he’d do that) reflects that he's still looking at her as an interesting creature and not her as a person. part 5 hints that this may be slowly changing, seeing as he called for her all of a sudden.

... idike probably keeps edgar’s glove as a token of friendship or smth haha ooPSSS i forgot to bring that back ahahaha..... ヘ（。□°）ヘ

ooofff i guess that’s all i have??? a big thank you to whoever read both hot messes™ and by that the fic + commentary itself!!! do feel free to hit the inbox for any comments + questions + more brainstorming + general screaming haha! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

#rundown.txt #the last long fic i wrote was a 6k+ fe:if thing #that was 3 years ago whoooaaaa #apparently i went the extra mile for this one omfg

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originaldanganronpascenarios · 6 years ago

Note

Sdr2 boy’s s/o ends up being executed after killing in self defense

Idk why am I tagging spoilers anymore-

Thank you for requesting angst. A Heartbreaker like this mostly helps me relax lol. But wait I see something... Is it SOMETHING I WILL CRY WHILE WRITING!?

SDR2 Boys whose S/O gets executed after killing in self defense

Slight Spoiler Alert (not in every case) slight ooc for people who tried to kill s/o

Gundham Tanaka

The motive of starving to death made you a bit scared. What you didn't knew that someone was coming after you...

Kazuichi had mixed feelings but he didn't wanted everyone to die... He thought that you whould be easiest target and he planned to strike at night time so you whould be pretty exhausted.

When it was night time you promised to meek up with him. You trusted him as you knew he wouldn't try anything shady.

Kazuichi attacked you but you managed to doge it. He was surprised by how fast you moved despite not eating for two days.

You snatched out his weapon and hit him in the head. You thought it whould just disarm him but you aimed for the wrong spot therefore killing him. You weren't aware of that but you quickly shut door behind you and dashed towards Gundhams room since luckily Kazuichi didn't mess with elevator.

Gundham was worried when he saw you at this hour. You told him the whole story and he was furious.

Next day what you heard was body discovery announcement. Only you and Gundham knew what happened. He wanted to protect you as he was ready to sacrifice himself and everyone else for your sake.

But it's impossible to fight Hajimes logic... You were the blackened. Gundham desperately tried to save you but he knew it wouldn't work. Yet he didn't gave up no matter how many times you told him that it was fine.

After trial was over he hugged you one last time and felt like never letting you go.

And so you were about to be brutally executed right in front of his eyes.

He needed to be held back since normally he whould just jump in and not care about a thing. If he was about to die he whould die he can't let you be there alone.

Of course all his effort went nowhere as he was held back.

Fujuhiko Kuzuryu

As the new motive was presented- despair disease Fujuhiko literally commanded you to be in the motel team even though he felt safe when you were around you couldn't be around diseased ones since if you catched the diease or the one of the sick killed you he wouldn't be able to forgive himself...

You couldn't sleep that night and you saw Hiyoko walking around alone... It was quite shady so you followed her not noticing in what condition her kimono was.

When you went inside there was Mikan trying to kill Hiyoko. You quickly grabbed Hiyokos hand and pulled her towards you. Thanks to that she survived. You yelled at her to run.

You couldn't believe that you saved Hiyoko... Ibuki was there too and she was still moving so Mikan didn't strangle her yet.

It was now fight you vs Mikan you just tired to calm her down and disarm her. She kept changing at you. You managed to make her stay still. Ibuki was still alive and when he saw what was going on (even tho she was sick) ran away.

You wanted to stun her so you can run away but you ended up killing her. There was her blood on your hands. You couldn't believe it...

When the body discovery announcement played Hiyoko was quiet to everyones surprise...

Ibuki doesn't remember anything from when she had the diease...

As the trial started you knew you whould have to say that you did it. You rather die yourself than for everyone else to die. Hiyoko didn't sold you out but she whould later and you know it.

When they seemed to be stuck you told them that you did it. When everyone was shocked Hiyoko told the truth.

Fujuhiko couldn't belive you saved Hiyoko and ended up blackened... After he lost his best friend Peko he can't afford to lose you too!

He tried to say something but it was hard... He couldn't belive that you will die...

He hugged you and you made a promise that he will survive and escape with everyone.

After your execution ended he never stopped thinking about you. He thought that Hiyoko should be the one to die not you! Hell he whould exchange everyone's lives for you.

Hajime Hinata

You and Hajime were very close even though the killing game was going on you decided to not play monokumas game and just live on the islands while thinking about how to escape.

It turned out someone in fact tried to play this sick game.

You went to help prepare the old building for the party. When you saw Nagito cleaning up he was kinda suspicious. You thought you were paranoid so you continued to help. He was too chill to play this game.

You were wrong he got knife out and tried to kill you.

You moved quite fast and he was so impressed. You were ultra scared as he was getting more and more creepy.

He didn't gave up even though you found a way to get the knife out of his hands he kept trying to kill you.

You stabbed him once. Just so he whould stop but he was crazy. Teruteru heard you fighting so he went to investigate and he saw you struggling to run away while Nagito said that you should kill him.

Teruteru ran for help and Hajime was the closest person he ran into.

But when the boys came there was you crying covered in cuts all in blood and in front of you was Nagitos dead body.

Hajime could tell what happened as he ran to you and hugged you when body discovery announcement played.

Everyone gathered and it was obvious who was the culprit...

You told them that he attacked you and you had to defend yourself everyone believed you but you had to get executed anyways.

Hajime tried to fight monokuma. It was just no fair for you to die becouse you defended yourself but monokuma wouldn't listen...

And so you were executed he felt so much despair as he saw your body drop.

Everyone tried to cheer up Hajime after your death and he was determined to end it.

Nekomaru Nidai

Nekomaru allways thought you were strong and he was your support throughout killing game.

You both knew that other one won't kill no matter what... You were wrong.

You never knew you whould have to kill someone but it was on accident! You met up with Gundam in the strawberry tower and you had to fight.

He was very strong so that's why you were extremely surprised to came out as victorious. It was becouse you grabbed a hammer he had with him. You thought it wouldn't kill but you swinged too fast and too strong.

As you left the crime scene it was impossible for you to cover up the crime. Some of Gundhams blood splattered on you.

Not like you wanted to cover up the crime! You wanted to live a bit longer even just on this trial... So you can hear Nekomarus voice one last time.

This broke your heart since everything was pointing at you and Nekomaru siad that it's impossible for you to kill anyone. You teared up as you confessed.

He was too shocked he didn't even vote for you. Nekomaru kept asking you why.

You said that it was in self defense that you wanted to stun him and run away but you ended up killing him.

You and Nekomaru hugged one last time and it was quite long embrace before you got dragged away.

He was too stunned to do something he couldn't belive how weak he felt at that moment.

Kazuichi Souda

You and Kazuichi didn't quite understand new motive being some game... So you just tired to ignore it.

You overheard Hiyoko talking to Mahiru about it. Thinking they whould try to kill someone you tried to investigate it on your own. You followed Hiyoko to the beach house and saw Peko.

You knew fight against her is for you lost. Her plans were now ruined she could have drop it or fight to get her young master out of there. Luckily for you she used the bat instead of her sword so it was less deadly for you.

You took your chance and managed to get her off guard as you somehow threw her across the room she landed pretty badly and you couldn't believe what you did. Yet a lot of luck was on your side.

You ran away to find Kazuichi Ibuki Hajime and Chiaki in the restaurant. You told them about what happened and your fight with Peko. You thought you didn't kill her but it was the exact opposite.

Fujuhiko saw her body and after all of your group joined with body discovery announcement he yelled "Wich of you bastards killed her!?" your eyes widen. She... Died!?

Kazuichi freaked out as he can't let you die. Now everyone knew it was you...

Trial was extremely short and so you were about to die. Kazuichi kept crying as he knew he won't see you again...

He hugged you very closely. You hugged him back and monokuma was done with this whole emotional thing and so you got executed.

He kept yelling your name when he was held back by others.

He wished he could tell you how he loves you just once. To hold you... be close...

Ultimate Imposter

Its whierd that you were together for such short time yet get along so well.

With his skills you knew you can get out of there easily without any blood shatter.

When he announced the party you couldn't stay back and relax so you decided to help out out of your own free will.

Basically you went from market to building with needed supplies. When you were heading back you heard what Nagito and Teruteru were talking about. You were shocked... Nagito wanted to kill someone?

When he left you looked for a knife Nagito hid. You wanted to give it to Twogami and tell him to watch out for Nagito. But you were stopped.

You didn't expect Teruteru to act like this and he told you to give him the knife as he will just leave it in the kitchen. He looked too suspicious for you to follow this order.

And so you started fighting. You ended up killing him. You didn't wanted to but you don't have idea what kind of fate waits for you.

You tried to mess with the crime scene and as you existed the building you couldn't believe what happened.

About 3 hours later body discovery announcement went off...

Twogami thought that he failed as a leader...

You didn't wanted everyone to die but you didn't wanted to go down either.

You were proven to be the culprit. You apologized to everyone but told them what actually happened becouse what Hajime said want entirely the truth.

Twogami then felt guilty for not monitoring preparations for the party...this could have been avoided...

Nagito Komaeda

He was crazy but your crazy. You understood him and loved him deeply. When he got despair disease you wanted to stay with him and went for the hospital team.

You were around his room as allways waiting for information about his condition. But thought it was pointless so you went down to rest- Hajime and Fujuhiko.

Hajime tried to start small conversation but you decided to take a walk.

You saw Mikan walking towards music venue... Wait shouldn't she be at the hospital?

You went inside and she was preparing something. When she noticed you she started acting not like herself. She then tried to attack you with rope she had with her. You quickly went on stage and took the stepladder. You hit her in the head 3 times very hard.

Then you realized that she was dead... You ran away from the venue and went to your cottage since it was getting late.

In the next morning after you were back in the hospital body discovery announcement went off and you now knew you didn't had much time left...

Nagito was cured and you spent all the time with him. He saw you looking kinda down but you didn't stop your investigation.

When the trial started you were ready to tell the truth. But you let yourself live for at least few more minutes.

When the truth was revealed Nagito was surprised his S/O? Was filled with despair to kill poor Mikan? You told what actually happened and if you didn't act you whould end up getting killed.

Nagito forgave you as you hugged him for the first and last time.

He watched your execution and wished it was him there instead of you.

Teruteru Hanamura

You felt like Teruteru was the only person you could get along with. His perverted remarks didn't annoy you.

Before the party was about to begin he seemed kinda off. Poor Teruteru worked whole day in the kitchen... You thought that was the case and you gave him advice: go. And. Rest. He accepted your offer and so he was gone.

You were helping with last preparations and you ran into Nagito placing something under the table.

You asked him if something was gone and if he was looking for anything.

When you saw a knife you could tell what was going... Unlucky for you the door was somehow shut like in some horrors...

Nagito charges at you and you dodged it as you quickly used that moment to grab a knife.

After that you quickly stabbed him but in the wrong place you aimed for. You ended up killing him...

You ran away and went to your cottage so you could change. What will happen to you!?

After Body discovery announcement and investigation class trial began...

When you were being suspected for the first time Teruteru kept arguing saying you couldn't possibly do it.

But when there was no more room left for argue you started apologizing... You apologized so many times and you were crying like crazy.

Teruteru forgave you but he didn't wanted to lose you! He tried to reason with monokuma but it was impossible...

He couldn't look at you die. He looked away tears in his eyes as he sobbed while watching his beloved S/O die slowly and violently...

~Mod Chiaki

#Gundham tanaka #fujuhiko kuzuryu #Hajime Hinata #nekomaru nidai #nagito komaeda #kazuichi souda #ultimate imposter #teruteru hanamura

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matrixwhore · 2 years ago

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Lestat: You feel as if you’re dying, because you are.

this is when i knew i was hooked. this scene is so dark and so funny at the same time. both Jacob and Sam’s performance are so great. the disposal of the bodies and the horrifying reality of Louis not being properly prepared or informed about what it would be to accept this dark gif juxtaposed with the casual air with which Lestat disposes of the priests and fills Louis in on what he’s experiencing its just so good. i loved episode 1. but I think this is when i became obsessed, obsessed.

the high [tower] feeling of becoming an overpowered undead immortal being/companion to be followed by the groan of being an overpowered undead immortal life draining parasite on humanity

Lestat really wanted a partner in crime lol

Lestat: a pair of oak aged cabernet

an early thread of Lestat consuming blood like wine. a little moment here that has a bigger moment later.

Lestat said aht aht! no you won’t go after that hot sailor. and i agree i think he did a disservice to Louis’ transition 😅. definitely doesn’t understand that Louis sitting in hours of connecting with the man’s humanity was not the way. he has not been removed from humanity long enough.

also Lestat, i think, in trying to give Louis a vastly different experience with adapting to vampirism than he had, he loses sight of the fact that Louis is not alone left fending for himself and his survival having to accept that this is how he exists now in the way Lestat was, so overcompensating for his own experience is not going to help Louis. He really should have tried more to understand that Louis was not going to be able to accept killing like he did even tho yes he would eventually have to come to accept this new way of existing.

jacob managing to look so cute and hot and bored, and hungry, and horny and unsettling all behind those dilated contacts. who’s doing it like him?

Louis slurping on that spoon…soo unnecessary 😖

Sir you came all the way to their home, left the bar with two strange men to drink more and speak in private about farm equipment/tractors?? i mean i’m not convinced, but i won’t push the matter.

Lestat: No, you don’t bite the blood, you suck it!

another banger. 😂

Louis getting to a point where he refuses to make clear cut life choices i’ve said before can really be understood when you look at how his choices have come out of and led to so much trauma. He wants so badly to undo accepting the dark gift. he wants to go home, but home is not a place, but a different time and space altogether. one that’s already past. one he’ll never be able to reach again. one before this endless night began. one where Paul is still alive and he can stand to see the sun. only he’s about to face that he can never go back in the most brutal way ever. that he really can no longer stand in the sun and Paul is never coming back and he will always be an immortal monster forever more. [groooaaaaaaaannn]

obsessed with how turned on Lestat is by being shoved across the room!! he really can’t even hide it. he decides he’ll make up for letting louis face the sun without warning by getting naked later and possiblly giving him pleasures of the flesh in the coffin. they left that up to us to decide. i say they fu-

we ask about why tf Lestat wouldn’t have told him about the sun, but I think it falls in line with his strict/harsh approach to teaching his fledglings. like his harsh truth moment with Claudia later. this is his harsh truth moment with Louis. In both cases the boyfriend/husband/partner is burned.

Lestat carrying Louis up the stairs is kinda so cute. it’s a foreshadow that happens in the shadow. but yeah it’s cute with the underscore groan of why he needed to be carried in the first place. nothing exists in any one way. many things can be and are layered and true at the same time

i think lestat does have an awareness that desire and pleasure (he strips down and saunters about seductively) and the appeal of tenderness (“a vampire romance”) would make this easier for Louis. i think he does want Louis to have those experiences while adjusting to all this, but he wants to be the one who gives it and yet isn’t always the best person to give it seeing as how long he’s been removed from the full breath of humanity. so i do think it’s fair to say he let his insecurity about the sailor got in the way of what might have been a better experience for Louis.

and in 2022 Louis states that he felt rushed. though i’m not sure what kind of pace you can take when your survival depends on the life blood of humanity and you’ll die in the light of the sun if it touches you. [groooaaann]

iwtv ep 2 rewatch thoughts

the groan…a sound that comes from the building being at the height that it is makes you wonder if it should be that high. its obviously so loud it cant be ignored and it’s not a nice sound. sure it’s a rare experience to live in a place like that like just that image is rare and beautifully crafted but there’s something off about it that makes the building groan just like that rare work of being the work of Marius with Marius being who he is, which we’re reminded of by all of this being explained by Rashmand. Louis covets the rare experiences in life despite whatever groan comes with it like being a billionaire living in Dubai despite the groan of it being a city built by slave labor and the groan of his sexuality being condemned there and illegal and the groan of his own exploitation of others in the way he exists there (i.e the blood farm, the men who come and offer up their blood for pay). the groan of the excessiveness and extravagance of his meal with Daniel. the groan of fixed roles he insists upon (but does not truly exist as) in between him and Rashmand despite both claiming its for the best there’s a groan of something not being right a lack of true freedom to fully express. (an over correction to the roles of the past. a trauma response to choices made that led to disasters) The groan of Louis apologizing for shedding a single blood tear and calling it losing control. whether it’s his own doing, someone else’s or both he is not free to fully express he is not free to fully be. etc. etc. the rare has a jarring cost every time. like the rare experience of being an immortal vampire and the groan of losing your place in humanity.

this is the episode where Louis is at the height of his undead life/self expression/companionship/career but its always underscored by the groan of what it means to be an immortal monster/fledgling. something he can’t reconcile with. something he can’t ignore. his world has been opened to experience and express the full breath of who he is for better or for worse, but that is underscored with the groan of that freedom to be, being conditional to how he can or can’t live out his roles with his society and his family and the expectations that come with his role as Lestat’s fledgling/companion. it becomes more and more apparent that regardless of the fact that Lestat wanted to free him from all his hats, regardless of the fact that he probably meant it when he said it, he cant free Louis from everything. he never could. and he also actually isn’t able to relinquish control over their lives and the groaaaannnn of the fact that he will demand Louis to once again exist in a box he doesn’t fit/and doesn’t want to fit (strict gendered role). plus the groan of Lestat never understanding and often times disregarding the box Louis can’t escape and in some ways don’t want to leave behind (societal/racial). he enjoys the rare experience of being in a queer interracial relationship, the rare fact that people know but they get away with it because the power and access of wealth, status and being vampires but the groan of the fact that they have to hide elements of the truth to remain under the radar, the groan in the fact that in choosing a life with Lestat and the dark gift he can’t balance his life with his family and is slowly but surely isolated, ostracized and made a scapegoat in their eyes. the groan in the dubcon nature of that choice in the first place. he covets the rare experience of being a successful black-owned business in that time on that particular street and yet the groan of the success of his career being on the backs of the exploitation and labor of poor, disabled, black women. the groan of who he has to do business with and who he the clientele are. the groan, the groan, the groan. truly what is that sound!?

Daniel: Seven? How many courses are there? Fattening me up for the [groan] inevitable end?

the rare coursed meals given to Daniel are an experience of the fine dining that comes with Louis’ elitist lifestyle underscored by the groan of much of what he’s eating being endangered species in the same way he is an endangered human amongst vampires. (groaaan)

the groan of Louis consuming a rare blood type that could be being used as a necessary blood transfusion to save someone’s life but its being hoarded and consumed by a billionaire vampire with access to a private blood farm for his consumption and his consumption only. the groan of exasperation at Louis refusing to acknowledge this personal evil that calls back to what he knew to be true about himself as a human. he is the keeper of knowledge in this exchange leaning into that power he was once denied he is now unbound of his past strict role as the “hysterical wife” (and yet the underscoring groan of not allowing himself to show any emotion at all in all the ways he exists and expresses himself now)

memory being a monster both a rare over powered immortal monster and an endangered human share. the thread to humanity that Louis doesn’t have to fabricate.

i love the music eventually being a touch too loud.

#iwtv ep 2 rewatch #louis du pointe du lac #lestat de lioncourt #sorry if i’m be annoying with the groans but it just makes sense to me #iwtv

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