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stillness-in-green · 1 year ago

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On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XV - My Villain Academia)

(Skewing away from the wiki arc titles here, because come the eff on; everyone on god's green earth calls this My Villain Academia, not "The Meta Liberation Army Arc.")

At the request of a kind asker, I'm trying something different with footnotes this time; you'll find them at the end of the relevant bullet point, rather than at the bottom of the post. I've also flagged the numbers in purple, though I left the text itself the default color. I hope people find that a little easier to handle than having to scroll all the way to the bottom, have two tabs open, or wait until the end when they've forgotten the context.

Content Warning: Mentions of the KKK, as well as anti-Korean hate crimes/speech in Japan.

The My Villain Academia Arc (Chapters 218-240)

Chapter 218:

Tsuyu’s weakness to cold is noted in-canon, rather than in a volume extra profile.

All of the people featured specifically in the Detnerat commercial are heteromorphs—a four-armed woman, a walrus gent, and a little gelatinous boy. Re-Destro pontificates about how people with these “newer types of bodies” struggled in the new era because they couldn’t find products that would meet their daily needs; mass production was not equipped—could never really be equipped—to handle the endless variety of body shapes and sizes that came about due to the Advent of the Extraordinary. It recollects the mall scene back in Chapter 68—or, even further back, Ojiro’s character sheet and UA’s lack of varied desks—and calls the reader to consider, once again, the sorts of special needs that those with heteromorphic bodies might have, and how difficult it can be to meet those needs. RD says that his company’s ability to rapidly customize and produce unique goods for every customer has made them #1 in their industry (lifestyle goods). Assuming there’s at least some truth to the commercial shpiel—and the newscaster does at least call Detnerat “a big player”—it suggests that plenty of other companies are not so good at the rapid+customizable combination. Of course, not all companies are trying to be all things to all people, but specialization costs money—as do speed and customization, really, and note that nowhere in the commercial is there a talking point about affordability! So mainly what the commercial leaves me wondering is what degree of inconvenience is still felt by heteromorphs, especially those who are somewhat cash-strapped. That strikes me as a particular hazard when it comes to child bullying. Of course, Japanese schools have uniforms, but I wonder how available tailoring and alterations are for students with particular needs? Is there a provided budget for that sort of thing? Financial aid? How much did Ojiro’s parents have to pay for him to have a full set of uniform pants with a hole for his tail in them? How about Shouji getting all his uniform tops made sleeveless? What arrangements had to be made for Shouto’s gym uniform to be fire retardant? Even setting uniforms aside, there are also their social lives outside of school to consider. Kids will absolutely notice when one of their number wears the same clothes all the time, or home-made clothes instead of name brand, or with obvious patchwork and repair. As in real life, it’s at the intersections of more than one type of disadvantage—in this case, a heteromorphic body combined with a low-income family—that problems become more likely.

Here in 218, almost fifty chapters after the first mention of them, we finally get the proper introduction and explanation of the Meta Liberation Army. Of course, they aren’t heteromorph-specific—the closest any of the named commander-types in RD’s inner circle get is Curious, with her bright blue skin and black sclera,[1] though certainly Re-Destro himself has drifted somewhat away from baseline compared to his ancestor. Regardless, their foundational belief is the deregulation of quirks, stemming from a time when any deviation from the norm made meta-humans targets. The compromise society reached—that quirks require a license to use—is restricting enough on those whose abilities are found with a baseline body, but, as I’ve brought up before, it makes life even more potentially fraught for heteromorphs. That kind of thing is basically a pre-written excuse for heroes or police to stop and harass a heteromorph they don’t like the look of! And while the evidence of that kind of bias has been pretty circumstantial thus far, it’s about to get way, way less so. [1] Wacky hair colors being somewhat de rigueur in anime, we’ll give her a pass on the purple hair.

Chapter 220:

Here we finally hit the major leagues: the Creature Rejection Clan, or CRC. The Japanese is igyou haiseki shugi shuudan, with igyou and shuudan being pretty straightforward—igyou is, of course, “heteromorph,” and shuudan is any sort of organized or self-identifying group of people, anything from a family unit to a business organization, even all the way up to a nation. Haiseki shugi is the important bit, with shugi meaning “doctrine; principle” and haiseki meaning “rejection; expulsion; boycott; ostracism.” Thus, “group whose doctrine is the rejection of heteromorphs.”[2] Note that, in the Japanese, the word in the group’s name is heteromorph; they didn’t pick something more insulting or derogatory. They didn’t really need to, since igyou is, as discussed back in the introduction to this piece, plenty derogatory all on its own. So Caleb Cook went with a translation of igyou that would better get that derisiveness-in-the-context-of-a-hate-group across than his choice way back in Chapter 14. Creature Rejection Clan is a fairly localized translation, but Cook was pretty frank in his Twitter thread on the chapter that he was thinking about the KKK when he made the decision. And it’s not an unwarranted comparison! Of course, I wouldn’t think to presume Horikoshi’s that up on the history of racism in the U.S., but combine the cod-religious trappings and the full robes and hoods with an explicit textual description of hate crimes, and it’s an extremely easy parallel to draw. [2] The Japanese also gives the abbreviation of CRC, with the databook eventually coming out and revealing that it really stands for the name they’ve chosen for themselves in English, the Curious Rejection Committee.

That established, it’s notable that Spinner, in describing them, says that they commit hate crimes against “people with heteromorphic quirks”—a nearly word-for-word translation of the Japanese igyou-gata no ningen. This leaves aside the idea I’ve spent so much time talking about, that heteromorph discrimination is aimed broadly at those with heteromorphic bodies, and not only those with the more narrowly defined heteromorphic quirks. Shortly, however, I’ll cover some evidence that Spinner is over-generalizing, or just misinformed.

In the meantime, take note of a few things the CRC guys[3] actually say here, starting with the fact that they call Spinner a lizard. Instantly, a word that was previously a snippy and dismissive little shrug in Dabi’s mouth takes on the weight and ugliness of a slur. Further, they call the League of Villains “sins against nature”—or, in a more literal translation, “impure criminals.” I provide the more literal translation there because it’s more specific. My immediate question of the English translation would be whether the CRC judge the League as being sins against nature simply because of their criminality, or because of their association with Spinner, but the Japanese makes clear that there are two separate labels being flung there: the League are both criminals and impure. This idea of impurity brings in a religious dimension to heteromorphobia, a dimension heightened by the line (dropped by the English translation) in which the CRC accuses the League of invading a sanctuary—in Shinto, shrines have to be kept pure. The CRC calling their hideout a sanctuary, with the added context of, “They have a lizard with them. How disgusting,” thus makes it pretty clear that the impurity is about Spinner’s presence, not just the League’s assorted crimes. This spiritualistic justification for bigotry will later be made even more explicit in Shouji’s flashbacks. [3] With skull masks right there on their hoods! A real, “Are we the baddies?” moment, but given some of the other things we get on them later, it's possible the skulls are meant to contrast what e.g. Spinner or Koda’s skulls might look like: baseline human versus animalistic or “misshapen.” Credit to @codenamesazanka for connecting the dots on that!

Spinner also gives us here the line that I covered back in the terminology section at the beginning:

We’ll go with the official version this time.

So here we have the observation that the word absolutely everyone uses, the word that, as far as we know, academically defines an entire category of quirks, is an unpleasant, even rude word. But what is the alternative? We’re never given one. Indeed, Spinner doesn’t suggest one; he says that the nice thing to do is “avoid” the word instead. In other words, talk around it. See again what I said at the start about all the difficulties baked into that prospect.

Later, we get the first drops of Spinner’s backstory, and hit again on the “lizard” thing, with the note that Spinner’s backwater, stuck-in-the-last-century hometown called him “the lizard freak.” He grew up with it, grew accustomed to it, thought there was nothing he could do to change it—he might even have internalized it somewhat, though clearly by the time Chapter 160 rolled around he was ornery enough about it to complain. It's perhaps also notable that Spinner knows who the CRC are. Though we’ll later find out that their numbers have hugely diminished, he not only recognizes them, he’s not even surprised to see them—unlike many, Spinner knows the CRC never truly went away. (Compare his lack of reaction to, for example, Shouji's unsuspecting classmates, who will later be shocked, just shocked, that this kind of ugliness still exists in their country.) So just to state the obvious here, yes, the presence of active hate groups does irrevocably shift the lens on everything we’ve seen up to this point. You can’t say calling a heteromorph an animal is harmless, a little insensitive at worst, maybe even meant as a cute nickname, when that same language is used by openly violent bigots.

The volume version gives us, at the end of the chapter, further notes on the CRC. It’s full of relevant tidbits, so I’ll provide the text in its entirety:

Once superpowered society grew more stable and less chaotic, this group emerged, based around a lack of acceptance for those with body-altering quirks. They started out with demonstrations and protests but eventually started committing violent hate crimes. Most felt this was taking things too far, so the group saw a sharp decline in membership and a scattering of factions. These days, one faction might only reject people with animal properties, while another focuses its hate on people with irregular heads. These two, among others, have very few members left. The faction that Tomura and the villains attacked was one that stood by the original group's fundamental tenets.

So what is there to gather from this? Let’s break it down a point at a time.

“Once superpowered society grew more stable (...)” If you’ve ever lived through a time of increasing acceptance for a marginalized group, particularly if that acceptance involves measures for legal protections being passed, you’ll recognize what this is. Just to pick a few U.S. examples, the KKK didn’t exist until after the Civil War;[4] proactive federal bans on same-sex marriages didn’t start getting passed/proposed until individual U.S. states started legalizing them and civil unions. When opposition to something is the norm, said opposition often doesn’t start organizing until they see that status quo being threatened; they weren’t organized before because they never imagined they’d need to be! That’s what we see with the CRC: they didn’t formally declare themselves until it started looking like quirks—and especially non-baseline quirks—were going to find legal acceptance. [4] Literally. The last day of the war was May 26, 1865; the date the first Klan was founded was December 24 of the same year. Easily the most vile thing I learned in the process of writing this piece.

“(…) based around a lack of acceptance for those with body-altering quirks.” This is what I was referring to when I said Spinner's characterization of the CRC might be a little bit off: the CRC wasn’t founded because of a hatred for specifically heteromorphic quirks; they were founded because of a hatred for different bodies, a descriptor that could also apply to those with transformation-style quirks! Those, too, are quirks that alter bodies, after all; it’s just possible for people to turn them off, which is not the case for those with heteromorphic quirks. So Spinner was not quite on the mark before. Further, note that the phrase “body-altering quirks” is used here—a phrase that’s similar in meaning and much less othering than igyou. It doesn’t fully cover everything I use “heteromorphic” and “non-baseline” to cover, in that it’s still murky in situations like e.g. Cementoss’s, where his emitter quirk is entirely independent of his oddly shaped head, but it’s still a useful term! Except for the small complication of where it isn’t found: anywhere in the actual story. The fact that Horikoshi uses it in an author’s note, but it comes up nowhere in BNHA proper, puts it in an unclear place as far as in-universe alternatives go. Has it just not come up because Horikoshi hasn’t thought to include it? Or has it not come up because it’s not a phrase people in-universe use?

“They started out with demonstrations and protests but eventually started committing violent hate crimes. Most felt this was taking things too far, so the group saw a sharp decline in membership and a scattering of factions.” Confirmation here of what Spinner said about the CRC and hate crimes, but note what this doesn’t say: that the CRC was outlawed. There are, I suspect, a couple of factors influencing that. o Firstly, while Japan has legal methods to restrict undesirable organizations,[5] making it difficult for them to raise funds or engage in publicity, the country doesn’t actually de facto criminalize membership in such organizations. That distinction is part of the legacy of violent crackdowns on labor groups and protest movements in the first half of the 20th century; people tend to get very loud about anything that whiffs of the government trying to give itself the power to get that heavy-handed again. Assuming that the laws haven’t changed overmuch in HeroAca!Japan, then, I wouldn’t expect membership in the CRC to have been criminalized outright, but the volume extra doesn’t mention any kind of legal repercussions at all. That, I think, may go more to my next point. [5] The relevant laws are aimed mostly at terroristic groups or organized crime. o Secondly, another thing Japan has very, very little of is hate crime legislation. From my research, there are only two laws of any note: a federal law passed in 2016 and widely regarded as toothless thanks to it lacking any criminal provisions targeting offenders,[6] as well as a local ordinance passed in Kawasaki in 2019 that went as far as mandating fines against repeat offenders, among other measures.[7] [6] It required the government to start “implementing measures” to eliminate such speech/behaviors, as well as to “respond to requests for consultation” from victims, but did not directly mandate consequences for offenders. [7] I suspect from some of what I read that Osaka has picked up a similar ordinance, but I didn’t find anything detailing it specifically. Osaka and Kawasaki are home to the largest and second-largest population of Koreans living in Japan. One major thing neither of these measures did, though—and something activists have been pressing for—is to establish standards for considering discriminatory motivations when issuing sentences against those who have committed violent crimes. To pick an example that made the news last year, a man committed arson out of openly admitted hatred for the Koreans he targeted, but nowhere in the trial or discussion of his sentence did the prosecution ever bring up discrimination.[8] [8] https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220829/p2a/00m/0na/015000c Also, it’s worth noting that both of these measures were aimed at ethnic discrimination—speech and behavior targeting people living in Japan while being themselves, or being children of, people of non-Japanese ethnicities. They did not address discrimination based on e.g. religion or sexuality. Folding both of those points together, the image we have of the CRC is of a violent hate group whose existence is regarded as perhaps distasteful and extremist, but not actually illegal. Even what few laws Japan has now wouldn’t have applied to anti-heteromorph discrimination, because, while they may look wildly different from a prototypical Japanese person, heteromorphs still are Japanese, and therefore not protected by a law based solely around ethnic discrimination. Incidentally, the ordinance in Kawasaki laid out a number of specific examples of the kind of behavior it was looking to address, and one of those examples was likening victims to something other than human. I know why that was included in the context of anti-Korean sentiments,[9] but it certainly does shade e.g. Dabi calling Spinner a lizard more harshly to know that there’s legal precedent for categorizing such dehumanizing language as hate speech. [9] An extremely common form of anti-Korean hate speech in Japan is to refer/allude to Koreans as cockroaches.

“These days, one faction might only reject people with animal properties, while another focuses its hate on people with irregular heads.” This is a good echo of the sort of factionalization you see in organized religion, wherein the minutiae of tenets that seem similar to an outside eye are the topic of vicious, vehement inter-group debate. More to the point, however, it provides an excellent illustration of the senselessness of bigotry. They can’t even keep their own discriminatory dogma straight! Probably the second most common complaint about the story’s use of heteromorphobia—after calling it retconned-in bullshit that didn’t exist until Chapter 220—is that it’s illogical, that it makes no sense to judge people because they look a little different in a world where everyone is now a little different from the way we see the world. And I wonder if the people who say that are listening to what they’re saying. “Illogical bias that has no foundation in reality is unrealistic?” What do these people think bigotry is? Racism, sexism, xenophobia, ableism, religious discrimination, all the many different shades of queerphobia: all of these are built on foundations of fear and hate for people who are fundamentally still as human as anyone else, yet they all exist, and have existed, and will go on existing for quite some many years still. Because irrational hatreds are, by definition, irrational. Heteromorphic discrimination is the most realistic societal dynamic in the entire series! That little rant aside, I also want to highlight the first group in the excerpt above—people with animal properties. Check any talk on the theme of, “So you can believe dragons but not black people in fantasy?” and you’ll run into the ways people are much more ready to suspend their disbelief for full-on fantasy than for something that, rightly or wrongly, pings them as incorrect, and it’s easy to imagine animal-associated heteromorphs running into a similar issue: it’s fine for people to just look weird, but looking like an animal, that’s bad and unnatural. A heteromorph who just looks like nothing in particular other than “non-baseline” is not evoking the baggage of animal anthropomorphization and cultural animal symbolism that someone who looks like a bird, a lizard, a dog, an orca, etc. is.

Chapter 223:

Shigaraki refers to Gigantomachia as a gorilla. It’s debatable how much this is of a piece with Dabi calling Spinner “Lizard”—Machia’s only actual animal quirk is Mole, not anything simian, nor is Machia particularly ape-like in anything other than his large size—but it does stand out to me that Spinner, who we know to have strong opinions about animal epithets, just refers to Machia by name or as “the big guy.”

Chapter 224:

Mr. Compress calls Machia “our pet gorilla”; see note above.

Chapter 226:

Curious introduces the idea of quirk counselling, telling us that its goal is to align people to a unified understanding of how the world and society work, but that it’s flawed in that it winds up emphasizing peoples’ differences instead. The advisor at the hospital raid will include quirk counseling in his litany of grievances, so I’ll discuss its possible utilization against heteromorphs more there, but for now, recall that I talked previously about how quirk-based behavioral tics might vary from person to person by comparing Hound Dog with Sansa. With that in mind, it’s not a big reach that some heteromorphs might run into similar problems with quirk counselling.

There are a good number of what appear to be heteromorphs through the Curious fight; whatever the MLA’s core views on quirk supremacy, the organization self-evidently makes ample room for heteromorphs, even if, like e.g. the red panda guy in the crowd jumping Toga inside the noodle joint, they don’t seem to have any other stand-out powers beyond the fur and fangs.

Chapter 229:

Twice notes in his flashback that something about his eyes always rubbed people the wrong way, scared them. We’ll eventually see this same thing with Tenko on the street—a totally normal-looking child, but the look on his face scares people away even more than the blood. And I can’t help but think, “If even a totally baseline person’s eyes can creep people out, how much easier—and more extreme—is that reaction for the more out-there sort of heteromorph?”

Gori makes the tiniest of cameos in Twice’s flashback, playing backup off to the side when we will, in current times, find him having worked his way up to the interrogation chair himself.

Chapter 230:

Geten brings us quirk supremacy via his understanding of the MLA’s goals. It’s hard to say how accurate this is, since the MLA leadership is inconsistent on what exactly their vision of Liberation entails. Whatever it is, it certainly doesn’t seem to dissuade the MLA’s own heteromorphs, though of course there’s a big difference between how e.g. Spinner or Ojiro versus Gang Orca or Mirko would fare in a societal quirk free-for-all. Likewise, the MLA is a cult, so one can’t discount the likelihood of double-think in its members.

Chapter 232:

Re-Destro talks about the state of the country in Destro’s infancy, a period in which metahumans suffered “constant abuse—blatant discrimination.” Merely for speaking out that her child was just like everyone else—that his special power was just a quirk—Destro’s mother was killed by an anti-meta mob. This gives us further evidence of the violence metahumans faced. Of course, in that time, the hate wasn’t distinguishing between types of quirk, but with that being said, an emitter and a transformer can still hide the truth about themselves with far more ease than heteromorphs—recall All Might’s discussion about the early days of quirks back in Chapter 59, in which the panel showing four people with quirks contained only one baseline person. It would be entirely unsurprising for an outsized number of the metahumans killed in those days to be heteromorphs.

Chapter 233:

The confrontation between Trumpet and Spinner gives us Trumpet clucking about Spinner having a weak meta-ability—Gecko lets him cling to walls, and that’s about it. It’s a striking contrast to someone like Mirko or Gang Orca, or even Tsuyu, all of whom have some combination of big power moves and a veritable fleet of sub-abilities. We can see the way Hero Society prizes powerful, flexible quirks in this. Having a strong quirk can help overcome the societal bias about heteromorphs, but if you’re stuck with a weak quirk and a weird face, you lack that metaphorical ticket out.[10] [10] Incidentally, the fandom reflected some of that attitude as well. There was a widespread assumption that Spinner’s quirk would be really useful or situationally powerful, otherwise why would Horikoshi have hidden it for as long as he did? Then, after the reveal, there was a certain amount of complaining that Spinner was useless to the League, and why even bother with him? Sometimes, life imitates art in some very unflattering ways.

Trumpet brings up that Spinner was a recluse, “mocked and pilloried,” and we see Spinner in his hikikomori days. What we’ve gotten on Spinner up to this point suggests that the abuse he endured was mostly verbal, though one can imagine it was pretty rough when he was young enough to be the target of school bullies. There’s a certain amount of temptation to minimize that in comparison to his response: most people who are bullied or targeted by discrimination don’t grow up to become terrorists. But there was, we will eventually find, more visceral stuff going on—and parts of the country that were even worse than Spinner’s hometown.

Spinner spent most of his life trying to fit himself into the world around him; his strongest parallel in the League in this regard is Toga, as they were the two that held themselves back, let the world define what they were and how they should act, right up until they saw something that caused them to snap.[11] Trumpet tries to do much the same to Spinner here (albeit probably less as an intentional psychological attack than Skeptic’s attempts on Twice), but Spinner, like Toga, is long past the point where he would swallow that abuse without fighting back. When you tell someone they are something long enough, they eventually start to believe it—but if you aren’t careful, they’ll start to embrace it, at which point those weaponized words change hands. [11] Shigaraki and Dabi, by contrast, pushed back harder, trying to get the world to accept them and never accepting it when their families (and particularly their fathers) told them to stop. Twice was ejected without getting the chance to try to contort himself into a shape that fit the world, whereas Mr. Compress seems to have been raised to reject his society's accepted norms from the start.

Chapter 234:

We see an image excerpted from Quirks and Us, a children’s book published by Curious’s outfit, that exhorts the reader not to judge people by their quirks. It really, really begs the question, “If this is what’s being said in literature published to coax people towards anti-suppression radicalism, what on Earth is normal society saying?” Regardless of that absolutely wild disparity, though, the fact that there are children’s books being published about quirk bias being wrong suggests that the world very much does have a problem with quirk bias. Indeed, that much has been shown throughout the series, not merely in terms of anti-heteromorph bias, but also the bias against “villain quirks,” as well as the widespread idea that people with weak quirks—or no quirks at all—are weaker people overall, pitiable folk who lack the power to live their fullest lives or pursue their dreams unhindered.[12] People on more than one of these axes of discrimination will, as in real life, be more likely to experience discrimination and violence. [12] Villains like All For One and Geten may say it more loudly, but it’s not only villains who believe it—perfectly good-hearted people like All Might and Midoriya Inko fall into that trap as well.

Chapter 237:

Nothing much to say about Shigaraki’s flashbacks save to note that, if people won’t stop to help a lost and bloodied (and baseline) child, they sure as hell won’t intervene in anti-heteromorph bullying. Recall that Kirishima was accused of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong for trying!

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Thanks as ever for reading along, everyone! How was the new footnote format? Should I keep that up for lengthy meta going forward?

I was kind of expecting to be able to wrap this up (the main canon, at least) in one more post, but I underestimated the amount of writing I'd be doing for the first war arc. For next time, then, I'm looking to cover the Endeavor Agency, Paranormal Liberation War, and Dark Hero Villain Hunt arcs. See you all then!

#bnha #heteromorph discrimination plot #on heteromorphobia #bnha worldbuilding #bnha meta #my writing #creature rejection clan #tw racism #tw hate crime #bnha spinner #iguchi shuuichi #meta liberation army

104 notes · View notes

st4rstudent · 23 hours ago

Note

i feel somewhat responsible for this, even if i’m not the one saying these things. I’m genuinely so sorry.

No need to apologize! It's not one singular person doing it and truth be told I don't think it's a large majority that thinks that (albeit the ones that do are quite vocal). I didn't mean to upset anyone or anything when complaining about it, I was just letting off some steam.

Having a yap session under the cut sorry I feel like rambling under your ask anon.

Admittedly, I do think there are reasonings for people thinking this way. A lot of the focus with Clash has been on the cogs, especially after the 1.3 update. Which I can't say I blame them! Managers were something new and exciting and (from what I can tell) really separated them from the other servers. I don't blame them for wanting to put focus on that because that was their thing. Alongside other things, but majorly when you hear Clash the managers are mentioned in someway shape or form. But as we all know, toons ended up taking the short stick from this. This isn't helped by the gameplay itself, being mainly a fetch-quest deal so you often only talk to npcs once or twice unless if they're repeated ones and the taskline wasn't entirely accessible on the wiki for a while (shoutout to the wiki maintainers. The taskline script is a savior). Which I'm quite excited to see if they deal with this issue with the rewrite. I imagine they will, but anyways. Social media posts would often contain more managers than toons, which I also believe they're starting to fix. And ontop of this, I believe most of the team in the early era of the sever is gone, so there's been some stuff lost in the change. So yeah, dialogue/writing has been kind of rocky. AGAIN- I am completely aware of the rewrite going on and I am not judging them harshly based off of their current state. I'm very appreciative of the fact that they took the time to listen and are focusing on trying to fix it up. And then there's also fandom mischaracterization- especially of the cogs. Forgive me for mentioning mischaracterization because normally I wouldn't really care (I've mischaracterized characters before..especially in my younger years. I think it's just a process of learning an having fun and I hate to limit anyone because of it). With that being said, there's a lot of baby-fying and coddling of the managers. Especially with those who have more 'sympathetic' stories (Misty, Chip, Winston specifically). Don't get me wrong, I like these characters and I can appreciate the story they're trying to tell, but I feel like so many people will hear their dialogue and then misplace their anger. People get mad at Bessie for trying to protect HER lighthouse or at the Elders for trying to keep YOTT safe (lets not forget Winston was there to brainwash toons). Yes, yes technically there would've been better ways to do it but consider this: The toons are scared. Their homes, stores, lives are being taken over by a big corporation that has more resources that they do. They don't have the privilege of waiting, seeing, and gathering. And then people forget that the company has such a huge role in both toons and cogs lives. If you're mad over the mistreatment of Misty or the fact that Winston is still in the dungeon, your anger should be directed at the company who doesn't care. I may be completely wrong in saying this, but I feel like the stories with almost all of the managers is a reflection of the company. The toons are only trying to protect themself and their environments and yet this seems to go forgotten when people start bashing them. And of course, I'd consider myself a toon guy so me saying all this and complaining may come off as "I HATE the cogs and everyone who posts only about them!" and for clarification that's not true. You all know how much I like that little brain thing. The cogs are interesting, their designs are fun, I don't blame people for liking them because I do too. I just wish that the thought process behind so many of these discussions wasn't so cog focused because I believe that this anger at the toons for, RIGHTFULLY, defending themselves helps push this mischaracterization of them as a whole. That they're mean, boring, unlikeable while the opposite is true. Yes there are some, what I'd consider, "filler" dialogue from the shopkeepers. This is just because of the gameplay. But there are some funny and cute moments with them if people would just listen and read.

Which also brings me into another point: people skip the dialogue. I've caught myself doing this before (on my first account. I have 4 accounts total, so I reread the dialogue on like 3 of them). But people will complain about lack of toon personalities while doing this. It's like reading through a comic book, only looking at the drawings, and then complaining because there "isn't a storyline". Luckily, there's been efforts to keep track of the dialogue on the wiki but I doubt a lot of people are going through and reading the entire script. It just feels very disingenuous to criticize the dialogue when you haven't even read it. Likewise, people don't seem to read the blogposts either. This is both from a dialogue aspect and from an update aspect (people continuously asking about hammerspace/mix-and-match under unrelated posts).

#clemask #clemramble #I think I hit some sort of word limit because it wont let me add anymore so im continuing in tags #It kind of feels like people want the toon resistance to be the perfect victim and then get mad when they act accordingly #Fear. Nervousness. Sadness. Helplessness. Anger. etc etc are all valid reactions to their situation #Not every toon needs to be heroic and whimsical. they're scared. their situation is scary if you think about it #they're at the risk of losing their environment and homes.#Obviously the cogs also have their own issues but I always see this brought up when talking about them but the same context #isnt given to the toons when thinking about their characters and communities as a whole #It's kind of weird to me because I feel like even pre-rewrite I know that I can still understand them and justify their actions #and yet people act like clashes (pre rewrite) writing is justifying the cogs when in reality its not #its just showing that cog society (reflection of workplace enviroment) has its own issues. i never saw it as a justification #even with misty. like I never once hated bessie? my opinion of her never changed even after mistys dialogue #bessie did what she had to do because she was scared and wanted to protect herself and others.#id do something similar if a cog (known for taking over towns) suddenly came up to me #PLUS bessie leaves misty alone afterwards. ppl act like she took a shotgun and shot misty dead and it makes me laugh #ANYWAYS SORRY ANON. NO NEED TO APOLOGIZE.#realistically if youre not saying it then i doubt youre contributing #I would say “i wasnt mad” or anything but to be completely transparent with you guys i was Not-Happy when writing that one post #but it's not directed at any single person but rather the idea itself. I'm sure after the rewrite people will chill out #ITS NEVER THIS SERIOUS im beefing over characters named pretty princess sparkles. im aware of how silly this all sounds ok #the clash fandom isnt the only instance of this. ive seen stuff like this in sw before so like. I know this isnt an uncommon thing either #normally id just keep this on a priv or between friends but something kinda snapped yesterday #i think its bc I just KEEP seeing posts like it with those “hot take” posts or whatever and ppl are always so mean about it #i also think some ppl just already dont like toons and look for every. little. thing. to go after them for #like the “youve been drafted line” i refuse to believe people took that line 100% seriously #or maybe this is all wrong and im just a huge toon fan. and in that case i will die on this hill #you will have to pry them out of my cold dead hands before you catch me genuinely bashing them #ok thats clems giant critques and complaints out of the way

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thedinanshiral · 26 days ago

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Evanuris Who's Who -take two-

Take one is here and should be partially discarded now. SPOILERS for absolutely everything, by the way.

I base these entirely on my sixth sense for lore and plain and simple logic, what makes sense to me. I am so set on these BW could come up to my door to tell me i'm wrong and that still wouldn't change my mind. I don't consider datamined text or file names as canon, they're drafts upon drafts piled up and forgotten throughout development, placeholders, etc, they're unreliable. What i do considered to reach this conclusion is the Evanuris lore, what's already been defined throughout the games so far, and vibes. In regards to the pantomime masks in Veilguard and considering the development issues this game had to go through i can't blame the devs for maybe missmatching asset and text on something i'm sure was never a priority in the game (except Mythal's and Fen'Harel's pantomime masks i wouldn't have focused on getting the other right if i were under such pressure).

Here are the pictures with the Evanuris symbols that i've decided to refer to as crowns:

The ones that are 100% confirmed are Elgar'nan, Ghilan'nain and Andruil, who appears in the mural from the comic The Missing, alongside Ghilan'nain. The rest are for now open to interpretation...up to a certain point.

The exposition Morrigan does to Rook in the Crossroads when she reveals the path to the fragment of Mythal we can get to aid us later on includes a very interesting detail: Falon'din and Dirthamen are fragments too, of the same spirit. I had already decided their crowns had to be as i assigned them based on the fact they were allegedly twin borthers, so the two parts would make one, but that revelation cemented it. As to which one's which, because Falon'din is the guide of the dead i think the crown that looks more like a staff should be his, whereas the one with empty space in the middle would correspond to Dirthamen as god of secrets. It's more evident on the first picture, but Falon'din's could fit into that empty pace in Dirthamen's. What that original spirit may have been, i can't imagine at the moment, but perhaps it was a spirit that fell during the Titan war, and rejoined the Evanuris as two. Spirit lore is all over the place, but if we go by Solas' words from Inquisition after his friend is killed -and i do take his word on such matters, for obvious reasons- when a spirit dies something else may be born in its place, different but somewhat related, and the memories may not carry on but part of its nature maybe does. What could have been the original nature of a spirit that left Falon'din and Dirthamen in their stead? Not to mention their connection was strong enough that they remained close as brothers, inseparable as twins. This may have been a spirit that refused to go. There's also the likely possibility that it was a case similar to Mythal's, but instead of being scattered in order to preserve part of itself after being stabbed in the back by her own people, whatever the twins original identity was did not, and continued on as two Evanuris instead of one; on account of each taking on different attributes and personalities, however, i'm inclined to think their death was more akin to that of the Wisdom spirit in Inquisition.

Next we have Sylaise and June, i find them particularly interesting due to the fact Solas has had almost nothing to say of them. He had no reservations when it came to dragging Falon'din for his vanity at the temple of Mythal in Inquisition, or add that Andruil was also a goddess of sacrifice. I have long suspected that the reason for Solas' silence regarding this couple may be found in their possible contributions to his rebel cause once upon a time. Sylaise, the Hearth Keeper. Her crown could only be the one shaped like the sun, evoking the idea of warmth and fire. In Arlathan Forest one of the artifacts in the Veil Jumpers' vault is called "Sylaise's Firefly", an oil lamp that when unstable emits "tremendous heat and light" and can even melt stone. This very sun symbol is also adorning the top of the entrance to the Lighthouse, a building that emits a bright light into the sky, a place Solas and his people relied on during their rebellion against the Evanuris.

June, god of the Craft. He was the inventor among them and so he's responsible for much of their technology. He created the eluvians, and the light beams artifacts, possibly the entire lock system they're generally used for, maybe the crystal power cells too. I dare say, anything gold and turquoise comes from him, including the adornments in elvhen architecture -something Sylaise is also credited for and it makes sense they'd work together sometimes-. All Evanuris were flawed in some way or another, and arrogance, vanity and pride were definitely shared traits, yet we've found no records of June being upset Solas took his grand invention and modified it to skip over its main limitation, improving on it considerably with the Vi'Revas in the Crossroads. And that's a constant so far, we have no records of Sylaise and June being against Solas or fighting him before. We know Elgar'nan, Ghilan'nain, Andruil and even Mythal were at odds with Solas, and his opinion of Falon'din implies the same, but there aren't really anything on his relationship with Sylaise, June or Dirthamen, particularly the first two, and that's strange, to say the least. Maybe their biggest sin was remaining silent or falling in line with Elgar'nan and the others, maybe they weren't as strong and couldn't oppose openly.. Now as for why i think June's crown is the one that looks like...whatever that is, is more evident on the second picture, where it is unquestionably similar to that archdemon early concept art from Origins. The archdemon there is Urthemiel, and as Veilguard confirms that was June's dragon thrall. That pretty much seals it to me, this crown belongs to June.

(Please excuse the reflection, i took the photo myself from the Bioware 25th anniversary book. The archdemons being dragons was a later development, and i think it's evident the bottom half of this design was revisited for Ghilan'nain's final look)

And then there are the masks. These "pantomime masks" are linked to mementos in Veilguard. Caitie shared these already, with details about the assets filenames and whatnot, but i think they don't match at all with the Evanuris they're supposed to represent, it's a mess really. Here's what i propose:

Leaving aside Fen'Harel's and Mythal's because they're the most obvious and nobody would argue that, my reasoning for the others is as follows:

Elgar'nan: the horns resemble his crown within the limitations of the mask's triangular design, and he's very vain. His diary entry complaining about his archdemon having shrank somehow and wanting Ghilan'nain to make it bigger tells me enough, his mask would also be the biggest one.

Andruil & Ghilan'nain: doomed yuri i mean, they were together, they're both sad and crying. While they weren't the only item amongst the Evanuris they may have been the most tragic. Ghilan'nain is so affected by Andruil's death she mourned her still and planned to build her a monument.

Falon'din & Dirthamen: their similar shape and size, plus the detail on the forehead does tell me "twins", a shared origin, a set. Add to that the one i think matches Dirthamen has no mouth and all its spaces are empty, matching with his god of secrets identity.

June & Sylaise: i have nearly nothing for them on this. June's details do remind me of a constant element around Veilguard's elvhen designs, this one between the Veil Jumper's hands:

It's everywhere, on top of the ruins of Arlathan Forest and the buildings at the Lighthouse, on top of the teleport points all over the maps, anywhere you look where there's elvhen designs you'll see it. Just add a little tip on the three points and you have June's crown too. As for Sylaise's i do think in this picture the mask is possibly upside-down, but i'm sad to admit i don't have much else to go with here so it's Sylaise's for me because that's the last one left.

Going back to my suspicions that Sylaise and June may have helped Solas in some way, we have the mementos for their masks.

The Way of Peace: In narrative, she is the hearth you leave and return to. The comfort that bookends a journey where everything, especially self, has become unfamiliar.

The Master of Craft: In narrative, he is the means, and the tools by which needs are met or obstacles conquered. His will hides in the actions of others.

The text for Sylaise's pantomime mask reminds me immediately of the Lighthouse and what it must have meant to everyone who found shelter there . The text for June's is intriguing to me, the part "the means and the tools by which needs are met or obstacles conquered" could apply to the Vi'Revas, all the eluvians in the Crossroads, and his other creations being used by the rebellion. But that last sentence, "his will hides in the actions of others", is so odd, it doesn't really spell out "crafting", does it? Sounds to me like someone else may had done something he wished he could do himself.

Unrelated to their symbols, maybe, but i'd like to note that the artifacts in the Veil Jumpers' vault are named after the Evanuris who may have been on more or less friendly terms with Solas, initially. In addition to Sylaise's Firefly, there's also the Tear of June, found in a well (pointing perhaps to a connection between June and water, as so do the eluvians as mirrors and water being natural mirrors, in contraposition to Sylaise's fire, a couple of opposites) and capable of separating things into their constituent elements (including people...). There's also Ghilan'nain's Binding, suspiciously found in the ruins of an unnamed thaig and capable for merging multiple beings into one body; i find it a bit weird the Tear of June and Ghilan'nain's Binding could be used together for some monster-making but on second thought it shouldn't surprise me Ghil would make use of any means available to her, including one of June's inventions. Lastly we have Dirthamen's Guidance, found at the western edge of the White Spire, it causes nearby objects to float high into the air, indefinitely when it's unstable. This one is a bit odd but i can make it make sense if we consider even though in the past there was no Veil dividing the world there were still different realms, there was an above (the Fade) and a below (The Void), with the earth (Titans) in between, and in their mythology Dirthamen is said to have chased his brother into the Fade so perhaps that'd explain why this artifact with his name takes things up.

That's all i have for now, and i hope when we get World of Thedas vol.3 all these are in there and we get some real official canon lore for them but like i said, BW could tell me i'm wrong and i wouldn't change my mind easily. Feel free to disagree, as always, this is what works for me.

#dragon age #veilguard spoilers #Evanuris #June #Sylaise #Evanuris masks

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sammysdewysensitiveeyes · 2 years ago

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The Spyke post

Since actually watching all of X-Men Evolution, I've been meaning to write a post about Evan Daniels, aka Spyke, aka Sir Not Existing in the Comics.

Spyke is a character created for the Evolution cartoon, with no apparent model in the comics, although his powers of manifesting bone "spikes" out of his body are very similar to Marrow's. He's also Storm's nephew.

Look at this adorable little guy:

I commend the writers for adding a new character and actually making him part of the main cast, something that I don't think has really happened since Firestar in Spiderman and His Amazing Friends. (Although maybe people know of other examples that I missed). Morph in TAS was originally there to die, and they were basically a replacement for Thunderbird when the writers realized that killing off the only Native American on a mostly white team wasn't a great look. (And Morph actually was based on a comics character, the obscure and mostly forgotten shape-shifter Changeling.) Harley Quinn was created to be a Joker sidekick in Batman TAS. The Batman cartoon gave her some good character development, and she later blew up and because wildly popular, but that wasn't the original intent.

So, who is Spyke? He's a nice, easy-going and fun-loving teenager, who can get a bit competitive and isn't always super responsible, but he's basically a good kid. He loves to skateboard, and was first set up as a kind of rival to Quicksilver, although that didn't really last. He is also Storm's nephew, which means that he has to deal with a parent-like figure looking over his shoulder on the team. He is also the character who seems the most uncertain about joining a mutant team. In his first appearance, Evan is not an unknown mutant, Storm knows about his powers, and is visiting him to talk to him about joining Xavier's school, while Evan seems to prefer normal teenage high school life. His powers exist, but he doesn't necessarily want them to define his life (although he can't always perfectly control them.)

This uncertainty about being an X-Man seems to be a consistent trait whenever there's an episode focused on Evan - he will be lax about his training or responsibilities, and have to reaffirm his commitment to the team. The problem I have with this is that it's a personality trait that mostly only comes up during a Spyke episode. In other character-focused episodes, Spyke is right there showing up for training or to help in fights. He hangs out with the other characters, jokes with them, shows support. But in "African Storm," the episode where Spyke is nearly kicked off the team for a lack of dedication, he seems to think he has no friends at the school.

I think the writers dropped the ball somewhat with Spyke, and he didn't really get the same kind of development and attention that the other characters got - except in the Spyke episodes, when we are reminded again that he exists. Other characters started getting paired up in cute (often shippable) ways, like Rogue and Cyclops, Kitty and Kurt, Kitty and Lance, etc. But who was Evan's best friend on the team? Who did he hang out with? Did he have a crush on anyone? We don't know, because we mostly didn't see it. If Evan was paired up with anyone, it was either Pietro (in their quickly dropped "rivalry,") or his Auntie O. He'll be there hanging out with the other characters and showing up as part of the team, but we don't get a lot of one-on-one bonding with team-mates. Maybe this was also part of Evan's personality. He seems like a very independent kid who doesn't want to ask for help - and when his powers start mutating beyond his control, so that he can not longer pull his bone spikes back into his body, he tries to handle it himself and doesn't confide in anyone. But it also feels like Spyke frequently being an afterthought in any episode that isn't specifically about him.

I especially had a problem with "African Storm," where Spyke is going to be kicked off the team and sent home because he isn't showing up for danger room practice and his grades aren't great. Beast even suggests to Storm that Evan might be "unreachable," even though Evan was the one who reached out to Beast when Beast was on a rampage, by reciting Shakespeare to him (and I wish writers had done more with that relationship). And throwing Evan out over poor performance (even though he's always showed up for fights and done well when it counts) seems rather unfair when other characters have done much worse. Some of the New Mutant kids were joyriding in the Blackbird and could have killed both themselves and other people on the ground, but they didn't get kicked out. Boom Boom nearly killed Kurt by being careless in a training exercise, ignored her punishment and didn't learn any kind of lesson, and was still told she'd be welcome back any time when she ran off to join the Brotherhood. But Evan's gonna get kicked out for bad grades?

I did like the Spyke storyline when he goes to join the Morlocks, even though it was kind of "putting him on a bus," and took him out of the main cast. The kid who didn't want to be defined by his mutant powers wound up having to leave mainstream society and live underground because his bone spikes mutated out of control, covering his entire body (and making his mutation obvious). Spyke joined the Morlocks in part because he saw a society of mutants that no one was really sticking up for, and wound up becoming their protector. Thankfully, Spyke also gets included in the final season Apocalypse storyline when the X-Men are rounding up everyone for help, and is shown having rejoined the X-Men in the future, so he wasn't completely written off.

I wish we'd gotten Spyke imported into the comics. There was an X-Statix character called Spike with similar powers, who was also a young Black man, but he had a completely different name and background. Also, he was kind of a jerk and was killed off (to be fair, most of X-Statix were kind of jerks, and a lot of them got killed off). I'd rather have actual Evan Daniels, teenage skateboarder, whether he's officially Storm's nephew or not.

Anyway, Spyke is great, and I wish we'd gotten one more "Spyke-cam" episode where we see everything filmed from his perspective. Spyke nowadays would absolutely have a GoPro and be filming skate-boarding videos.

#spyke #evan daniels

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iniziare · 2 months ago

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"hmm," she'd draw out a longer sigh, single finger stretching across the smaller gap between them on the table, gloveless and bare, with nail polish done to match the gold found on her company for the evening. a subtle touch would soon enough follow, but not the hand that seemed to await her company, no, the golden watch and the edge where metal and skin met; "... do you always dress this elegant?"

Loud, perhaps would've been a better word, index slowly following the round shape of the watch there Robin remained seated, other hand propped up under her chin. "Gold, teal, black ; there seems to not be a single color that you can't wear, I'm almost a little envious. During my personal dark and gloomy era, everyone said I came of a little too pale." Then, a lower of her voice, the charmony dove's chin parting with her hand so she could lean across the table a little better, emerald fluttering between his watch and gaze.

"Imagine me with a spray tan," she'd laugh quietly, warmly as hand would soon enough settle onto his, the one that had been waiting beneath the watch. "I think the tan lines would drive me mad, and so, my question still stands ; does the infamous Aventurine always dress this elegantly, or does he have other charming outfits in his wardrobe? Is your night wear also in gold?"

Were enchantment to ever be a person, none other than this little songbird opposite him (much to his chagrin, for not a muscle in him didn't crave for her to be at his side instead, but perhaps that future lay only barely out of his grasp) could claim its existence. So easily would she find herself triumphant, like none other could ever hope to rival, at least not to him. And so he sat, enraptured— oh, he knew that he was little less than that, and she would see proof of such a reality in the way the creases of his eyes deepened at her fiddling by his watch. Will you always be so agonizing with me, little bird?

His black tie hung loose, its knot forgotten and trailing low on his chest, as if evidencing the reality that there was no pretense here. No, it had been foregone some time ago. The collar of his shirt lay undone, its edges parted enough to frame the pale line of his throat as it lay exposed, and unguarded. The sight oh him was a canvas that framed a man who was found perfectly at ease: caught in something akin to disheveled elegance. And so, in that, came a response that abandoned him in a confidence much the same: "What if I dressed just to impress you tonight, Miss Robin?" Last time, this time, and every time? Ss he leaned forward to meet her somewhat in stride, a necklace — a thin, golden chain — gleamed faintly against his skin, catching the dim light around them like a whisper of defiance, before its pendant dipped back in the shadows beneath the undone fabric. Perhaps it was a tease, one unintended, but one nonetheless to rival her own that seemed all but incredibly intended. She always stayed just out of reach of him, even though he ached to grasp at those sly fingers of hers, for it should be his that commit such deeds, such gestures that would allow him to steal a strayed brush of that bare hand, and its softest palm. But he was patient, he was always patient with her, even though the anticipation proved to be a cruel mistress time, and time again. "I'm humbled that you think I would look good in a lavender and orange suit." It came spoken in certain amusement, with every syllable laced, and dripping with a teased gaiety. "Maybe I'll try that for our next date. If you, everyone's favorite dove, promise that you will wear black the next time we meet. I think I'd like to judge for myself, I've never been much for the opinion of the masses." Could she blame him for the shameless confidence? Perhaps he would blame her if she tried to— and then the punishment for such a mortal sin? Mm, he'd see about that one.

And just when he thought that she couldn't possibly be much more agonizing for his eyes, or mind: Imagine me with a spray tan. I think the tan lines would drive me mad. As if he needed any more distraction than the tantalizing close to bare shoulders that had taunted him for an evening in its entirety right before him. Truly, his only restraint, and redemption, could be found in the touch of a hand to his own, one that was promptly rewarded with the briefest caress to her palm with one singular finger. "Maybe, and maybe it isn't." His turn to tease her: "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours, little bird."

Prompt: Unprompted, how dare you kill us like this. // @avaere

#avaere #[ LALALAALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER AVENTURINE FALLING IN EVERY ROOM OF HIS SUITE; BREAKING EVERYTHING . ]#aventurine: robin. [ so she sings; but does she dance? ] avaere.#[ listen listen listen!! LISTEN-- ]#[ /crickets. ]#[ /sudden pterodactyl screeches. ]#[ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-- I'M FINE. ]#[ /sits in corner like angry cat and panda. ]#[ aventurine. ] mr. cavalier gambler: uptight. overcautious. inferiority complex. you've won so much but you're still so afraid of losing.#[ aventurine: ic. ] they see only the straight flush. they don't know the other hand below the table clutching your chips for dear life.

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jesuis-melodrama · 2 years ago

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A doodle of Lila! I was redesigning her outfit a while back and is quite pleased with that I came up with.

This is Lila with the Fox Miraculous. Unlike her canon colour scheme, I have always imagined her as lilac. I've explained in a previous post how Lila's name means purple; hence associations with royalty, luxury, spirituality, and independence. There are two further reasons for a change in palette:

I want to differentiate her from Alya. Lila established herself as the first auxiliary Miraculous hero (even if her Fox Pendant was fake) all the way back in Volpina in S01E26, and although Alya has replaced her since as a true and just hero that actually holds the Fox Miraculous, Alya hasn't quite managed to shake Lila's orange identity from her. The girls are both sneaky foxes, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have individualism. I imagine that Lila would blast onto the scene dressed as the most stereotypical Fox possible – complete with an eyeliner mask, bodystripe suit, and long tail – to fool Paris' resident superheroing duo, but would eventually settle into her own aesthetic.

I want to give Lila's outfit her personality. Orange is nice and all, but it's loud. And it represents optimism, energy, agreeableness; very Alya-esque but not very Lila. Lilac is not only the meaning of Lila's name, but has attributes far more attuned to her: wealth, extravagance, creativity, grandeur. I should also clarify that I do mean for Lila's outfit to be lilac and not pure purple, also to differentiate her from Papillon/Papillombre/Monarch who favours a very heady aubergine in his suit. The lighter shade represents that no matter how confident and mature Lila likes to act, she's still a young girl. And the youthfulness and sensitivity allusion attached to lilac displays that. The flower, lilac, also represents passion and renewal.

There are no purple foxes in nature, regrettably, but there are pure-white ones, a loud cry from their darker-coloured brethren. A defining characteristic of foxes is their usage of their coat as camouflage in their environment when hunting. Rena Furtive canonically has an ice-lilac-camo suit, and check out this adorable picture of an Arctic Fox at a purple sunset!

Here's a picture I drew of Lila awhile ago, wearing OZLANA's SS22 Heart Collection. I always associate her with purple, even back then when I had no idea how to dress her.

Lila didn't have a mask in the previous image because I had completely forgotten to add it. I was thinking in lieu of a feature I deemed more important, her eyes, and I believe Lila wouldn't want some fabric covering her beauty anyway. Eyes are very important to me, windows to the soul, and the way they're shaped can tell an audience a lot about a character. Adrien, for example, has very characteristic and detail-heavy eyes. Each stroke has a story. As Lila is focused on her appearance, she would like to make sure people see in her exactly what she wants them to see.

I do have an idea of what Lila's mask would look like, a Venetian style piece (Lila canonically has a collection of Venetian masks hanging on the wall of her bedroom, representing her two-faceness) combined with the tall bunny-ears of Fox Miraculous Holders. Foxes actually have triangular ears, but I like the height Miraculous fox ears have. Very playful. Here's a rough sketch of Lila with her mask, and what a coloured version of her outfit would look like, along with a somewhat-finalised project.

You may notice I keep switching back and forth between a bow at Lila's bodice, and a bunch of ruffles. This is because I genuinely love Lila's bow motif on her polka-dotted romper:

Such a coquette and feminine detail. I want to add it everywhere, both because it represents her appearance-focused persona and creates a link between her Hero and civilian-self. But if her bow is at the forefront of her hero suit, then where does the Fox Miraculous go? I went back and forth on multiple ideas, I had a style where the Fox Pendant would be tied to Lila's ponytail and would swing like a pendant there. But: 1) that sounds like it'll hurt, and 2) I can't imagine Lila will want her Miraculous attached to a blindspot rather than at her chest where she could see it and most effectively protect it. In the end, I went with the design at the very top of this post. Ruffles, and her Pendant attached to her collar.

You may notice Lila is wearing heels. Really inadvisable for a hero suit, right? But don't let anyone tell Lila to value practicality over style. I associate Lila with Dolce and Gabbana, an Italian brand known for their extravagant floral and gold motifs. It's where all the gold accents on Lila's suit comes from, and where her laced-up boots are birthed. Again, going with the topmost image, her boots are calf-length rather than knee-length. I've decided it shows ease of movement better.

Lila has two tails. I was inspired by this belt from Pinterest, and indeed in my design, Lila's tail isn't attached to her coat but to her waist itself, stemming from an elaborate and bedazzled cummerbund, inspired by – Dolce and Gabbana. The two tails obviously represents her two-facedness, and continues to differentiate her from Alya, whose singular tail paints her as Fox No.1 and displays her authentic nature.

Other than that, here's a little moodboard I've put together representing all the different styles I've taken consideration of while crafting Lila out. I've decided on a band jacket and shorts because while it's comfortable and empirical, it also has an undeniable aura of high fashion and stylishness. Ironically, out of all these outfits, the only one I could find a source for was at the top right-hand corner and she came from, you guessed it, Dolce and Gabbana.

Fun fact: the Internet excessively likes to link butterfly imagery to purple and lilac. I saw so many butterfly-themed objects while researching for this post, and they were gorgeous. I had to resist adding them on, I want space between Lila and Monarch/the Butterfly Miraculous right now, I want to focus on her Fox persona.

Lila wears fingerless gloves. Partially to show off her nails but also so she could use her claws. Unlikes Adrien, Kitty Noir, whose brute force is strong enough that he wears straight-up metal gauntlets, Lila needs gaps in her armour for her claws to work their maximum.

Final details, Volpina's Flûte is canonically much thinner than Rena Rouge's.

While Volpina holds a longer, entirely straight rod, Rena Rouge's has bumps and tapered-out ends. I don't plan on changing Lila's Flûte shape, I like the length and the slimness of it, it suits her very well. Other than adding some colour and accent upgrades (lilac and gold to match her suit) my version of Lila will still be holding the instrument her canonical self does.

#miraculous les aventures de ladybug et chat noir #lila rossi #art

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theprinceandthewitch · 6 months ago

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Okay, time to jump back into the pits of IDV lore...

Character Introduction:

Alice DeRoss had a fulfilling childhood and a happy family. Enlightened and gentle parents, kind and reliable playmates shaped her optimistic and cheerful personality.

However, a tragic accident at the age of six changed everything, the family fell overnight, she was also known as the daughter of misfortune, suffered from hysteria and was sent to the orphanage.

She experienced both mental and physical torture in the orphanage until she was secretly adopted by a medical professor as an experimental subject and brought to Melbourne when she was 14 years old.

With prolonged medication and physical therapy, she gradually regained consciousness, however, it is perhaps more cruel to live soberly in hell than to live unaware in human world.

Luckily, the voice that existed in her memory kept saving her back to the brink of collapse repeatedly. Finally, all this changed her, but did not destroy her.

At the age of 21, Alice escaped back to England and became a social journalist in anonymity, looking for the truth about the tragedy and the disappearance of her playmates.

As an adult, Alice is elegant and intelligent, tough and brave personality, good at observation and disguise, as well as having excellent oratorical talent and analytical ability, unforgettable, able to sharply capture the emotions of others, however, because of pathological reasons, and drug testing at an early age, her sense of fear to be significantly weaker than normal, but also have more than normal endurance.

But even if she overcame the nightmare of the past, but it does not remove it. When alone, Alice de Rose[sic] has a serious cleanliness and obsessive-compulsive disorder, always wears gloves and hates sharp sounds.[3]

----

Oh okay, so Orpheus was basically her guiding light during the time she was being used as a lab rat.... guiding her out of the Underworld, so to speak...

OKAY.

----

A Crumpled Medical Report (2024):

(The back of the paper is covered in sawdust, while the front bears fragmented information written in somewhat juvenile handwriting.) Greetings. It seems I was correct—you found my message. Someone left a pen here—I've hidden it in the crevice between the second window and the iron bars. Perhaps they hoped you'd write something down, as I have. ... Greetings. Yes, I've found them. I'll write down what I remember, then return them to their place. The nurses wouldn't want any extra things lying about the room now, would they? ... I seem to have forgotten something... What a good start—at least I remember that I forgot something. ... They had my favorite chestnut cake this morning. ... No, wasn't breakfast raspberry cake? ... Who are you? ... Someone changed my medication. It must've been the one who left the pen. ... Who are you? ... If you're reading this, then you've guessed correctly... ... Who are you? ... I've discovered Dr. Bourbon's secret. ... Who are you? ... Remember, you've already forgotten "who I am..." ... Who are you? ... That key is in Dr.Bourbon's drawer. ... Who are you? ... They seem to have noticed the issue with the medication, but no matter, we can strike tonight. ... Welcome back, my bravest Nightingale.

----

I'M....

ORPHEUS HELPED HER ESCAPE FROM THE SCIENTISTS?

----

Also, my sleep deprived ass thought this letter was talking about a future event, but it's actually talking about Alice's time at the orphanage.

December 23rd, 1894 Myles (迈尔西) Orphanage

Dear Mr. ▇▇▇,

We’re terribly sorry to inform you that we were unable to approve your request of adoption regarding Alice. However, please believe us when we say that this has nothing to do with adoption fees; instead, it is about ethical considerations - we believe that members of her family, relatives by blood, would be a better fit (I hope you understand what I mean).

Despite this, you may still visit her as a friend, but we would not suggest doing so at the moment. Her current condition is worrisome. Since her arrival, her mental state has been on the border between consciousness and insanity. Any slight irritation will cause her to continuously scream shrilly, and scratching became her only form of communication with others. Even when she is in her more conscious state, she refuses to interact with others, but she can at least act independently. Therefore, we were forced to arrange a room alone. Now, this may sound immoral, but it can guarantee that she will not put anyone in harm’s way - especially, herself. To be frank, when compared to the other children, she already receives extremely special treatment. However, the doting and care the workers provide (Oh, goodness, they all love little Alice so much), and separately assigned room arrangements both require tremendous sums of money (For all I know, there’s been a number of people who have told me in secret that Alice belongs in an asylum and not an orphanage). Of course, “Benevolence treats all people equally” is our orphanage’s goal: we will do our best to ensure her living conditions here, within our current economic situation.

Perhaps, after a while, when her condition is stable, we will contact you for a visit. But, in the meantime, please wait patiently and have faith in us to protect every child that is sent here. We truly hope Alice is able to swiftly recover, and receive - as well as, be able to - enjoy her happy life.

Sincerely,

The Head of Myles (迈尔西) Orphanage

(The word “LIAR” is scrawled onto the letter, in large, capital red letters.)

---

The person who wrote this letter is heavily implied to be Orpheus...

Before everyone gets all up in arms: Orpheus is three years older than Alice... he's not some grown man, lmao

#identity v #everytime i read the lore im like. damn. IDV fans are liars LOL

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alaskanexile · 1 year ago

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A friend of mine came to me a week ago with this peculiar idea of an alt history where the Soviets cloned the M16 instead of adopting the AK-74. She acknowledges the entire premise is silly but it's for fun so who cares. Basically, she was looking for input on what changes they'd make too it.

We went back and forth a fair bit. She did take my input seriously and conceded certain points, namely there was no way the Soviets would keep the bolt release and would want to incorporate the dovetail rail on the side to make use of their preexisting scopes. That being said, there were a fair few she didn't agree with at all so i decided to say fuck it and design both her final design and then my own take.

Her rifle is the TKB-174, the Dzyubenko Proposal from the Tula Arsenal. My take is the TKB-175, the Vendal Proposal from Ishevsk.

In general i feel she was...overly optimistic about the Soviets material realities or willingness to change. I didn't color them because I didn't feel like it, but her 174 variant features full polymer furniture.

In the 70s.

Look, I'm aware of the Soviets use of polymers. i know about the green border guard AKMs, but those were limited and uncommon. If the Soviets were capable of mass production of polymer furniture for their mainline rifles in the 1970s, don't you think the AK-74 would have had it? It wasn't even some kind of trad disinterest in polymer because muh wood. They attempted a program to add as many Bakelite parts to the AK in the 50s or 60s to make it lighter, going so far as to make the dust cover plastic! This ultimately failed of course, Bakelite is fairly fragile, but It's the whole reason the AKM and 74 had Bakelite pistol grips!

So the 175 has wood furniture. The reality is it wouldn't be till the 80s till we'd start seeing mass produced polymer furniture in that lovely plum color.

She made an attempt to maintain the Soviet manual of arms, particularly for reloading, by moving the latch of the AR's T shaped charging handle to the right side. (Soviet reloading technique was to do everything with the right hand.) This feels contrived and like it wouldn't really do much, so i just made the 175 into a weird cludge of an AK into an ARs form factor.

Her lower is aluminum. I don't think the Soviets would bother with aluminum due to cost and not caring much about the weight. So my lower is stamped metal.

Basically, she's conceived a largely straight forward AR-15 clone with some Slavic flair. I've conceived a rifle that's attempting to be as cheap as possible while being an AK with extra steps.

I'm not sure if this was part of a larger project of hers or just a thought experiment, but to make this somewhat useful to me i have made these kind of canon to Følslava.

Within Følslavas lore, these were developed and proposed alongside the AK-74. Dzyubenkos 174 was rejected due to high per unit cost, being too radical a change as well as not wanting to use an American design, and concerns over the Direct impingement gas system in cold climates. Vendals 175 was rejected for just being kind of weird and ugly and not offering anything an AK couldn't do. The timeline proceeded as normal from here with the adoption of the AK-74.

the 174 and 175 were filed away in the arsenals archives and largely forgotten about for a few decades. They would eventually be brought to the publics attention in the 2040s, when a prominent firearms historian and online video maker was granted access to these archives and made a series on these strange curiosities.

#alaskan surplus #setting: Følslava #concept art #digital art #gun art #alt history #firearms design #long post

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wildflower-otome · 2 years ago

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[Translation] Clover no Kuni no Alice: White Calling Light Novel - Chapter 1

Summary

After moving to the Country of Clover, Alice is working as a maid while residing at Hatter Mansion. Worried that Alice will be led astray by the voices of the mysterious doors in the forest, the Prime Minister of Heart Castle, the White Rabbit Peter, persistently invites her everyday, ‘I want you to come to the Castle so we can be together forever.’ At the same time, while meetings are being held at the Tower of Clover, Alice ends up getting dragged into a fight between mafia—!?

Act 1 - It began with a white calling

Clack.

As she shut the door behind her, Alice breathed a sigh.

'Sheesh…..Peter's such a pain. Even though I won't change my answer no matter how many times he comes.'

Recalling the White Rabbit who had intruded into the garden at the Hatter Mansion not long before, Alice Liddell dropped her shoulders. Despite the long ears attached to his head, that rabbit never, never listened to what she said. It was a given she'd be fed up.

'Although, I suppose it wouldn't be Peter if he did listen obediently.'

Remembering his back when he left the garden as three of the role holders at the Hatter Mansion returned fire, she shrugged.

'............'

While sighing, she directed a quick glance towards the scenery in the garden that was visible from her window.

The large table she could see below was a favourite item of the Mansion's owner. Likely because it was the daytime period when the skies were still blue, there was no one sitting in the chairs.

She hadn't forgotten. When she had first been invited to the Mansion, it had been that table she had used.

The master of the Mansion was fickle and moody. Especially when it came to tea, he was fussy to the point that he wouldn't listen no matter what was said to him, and yet strangely he continued to use the same table without ever replacing it.

She wasn't sure of the reason why, but to Alice it was almost like a commemorative item, so it made her feel a little happy.

'Now then, time to get ready for work…..being late just because Peter came is inexcusable.'

She moved from the window and walked towards the closet she had been provided with. When she opened it, there was a white maid outfit hanging inside. They were the work clothes that she had been given for her own use during her stay at the Mansion.

As she took out the white outfit, Alice was laughing a little.

'Even though I've got my job, so of course I can't just go live somewhere else…..really, that rabbit doesn't listen to what people say at all. And he's got such long ears too…..Elliot's the same, I wonder if all rabbits are just like that.'

Alice was still a newcomer to the Mansion. Even if her job was but that of an apprentice maid, work was work. She wanted to do a good job of fulfilling her role.

Whilst there might be changes due to the move, those thoughts still remained the same.

'............'

As that particular word came into her mind, Alice frowned a little.

She turned her gaze towards the vast grounds of the Mansion. Beyond it, unable to be seen from Alice's room, lay a green Forest.

The Forest of Doors, that whispered to the lost.

'.....This is the place I belong, isn't it…..?'

As Alice spoke as if to tell herself that, she untied her white apron, and as she put a hand to her blue dress…..stopped moving, as if she had realized something.

'It'd be better if I left this in my room after all…..I don't think it'll get broken, but just in case.'

Something hard, that had been in her pocket. Something that she had grown used to touching, to the point she knew what it was just by feeling the outside.

What she took out from her clothing was a small vial with a heart shaped stopper. Likely because it was made of glass, the contents within were visible.

However, unlike its transparent vessel, the fluid inside was somewhat cloudy.

'.............'

Compared to before, she thought that she no longer gazed at the glass vial quite as often.

But even so—unconsciously, there were times when she would put it into her pocket without thinking. The first time she had looked at this small bottle as she was doing now, had been right at the time she had fallen into this world.

A tall tower that looked down over the Country of Hearts. The one who had been there with her at that place, was that White Rabbit.

'.....Let's stop reminiscing.'

As memories of forcibly being made to drink the bitter medicine came into her mind, Alice shook her head from left to right.

There was no doubt she was better off not remembering unpleasant memories.

She put the item that made a small sploshing noise each time she picked it up, away in her drawer. And, after once more putting a hand to her blue dress, she continued changing into her maid outfit.

She smoothed down her skirt, and tied the large ribbon around her waist. After lastly placing a small hat on her head as the finishing touch, her preparations were complete.

'.....Alright, all done.'

As she checked her reflection in the mirror and nodded, almost as if it had been waiting for Alice to finish changing, the colour of the sky changed.

The sky that should have been bright blue, was now displaying the dark blue of night.

'Now, I'd better get going.'

After lightly fluttering out the voluminous skirt of her maid outfit, the girl headed for the door.

The light that shone in from the window from which she had been looking down onto the garden a moment ago had now become a faint moonlight.

At this point, Alice was no longer surprised at the sudden change that had occurred in the sky just now.

The time periods in this world changed irregularly. It wasn't unusual for night to follow straight after noon. As to be expected, this was a world in which no one knew how long the night would continue on, or if it would completely change in an instant.

That was the kind of world Alice had decided to remain in.

'I'm off.'

Facing the small bottle she had left in the room, Alice spoke those words, then gently closed the door behind her.

In the now empty room, only the shadows of the night quietly spread out.

***

Soft-looking, without a single trace of dirt— a white pure like snow.

A gingham checkered coat scattered with vivid shades of red.

What stood out to her the first time she saw him were those two overly intense colours.

If it were just the colours themselves, it was likely they were not all that unusual, even in reality.

However…..if the one wearing them was an existence impossible in reality, then that was a different matter altogether.

'............'

A rabbit wearing clothes, walking on two legs. Precisely speaking, it wasn't just clothes, he was a rabbit that wore glasses as well, and was even carrying a large pocket watch.

'A rabb-...whaa-!?'

Judging from the long ears growing from its head, and the bushy tail…..at any rate, it seemed that the creature that had appeared in the garden at the Liddell's house where Alice lived was a rabbit, no matter how you looked at it. On top of that, he was running on his hind legs. Not temporarily standing on two legs, but walking on two feet like a human. It was something that was ordinarily impossible.

As she got up despite herself, she grimaced at the sudden pain in her head. It was a headache. It might be due to low blood pressure. Even though she had just gotten up, she felt as if she were about to sink back down to the ground at the feeling of dizziness that enveloped her whole body.

However, Alice quickly determined that this situation was a dream. She once more lay on her side on the ground and decided to close her eyes.

To decide that there was absolutely no way such a creature was real, or that it would appear in her garden, one could say that this was a verdict that was very like her, who was a realist.

(Oh dear, I must have fallen asleep….while I was waiting for my big sister…..)

Her sister, who had gone to the storage room to look for the playing cards, must not have returned yet. Ever since her mother had passed away, all leisure items had fallen into disuse and been put away somewhere in the recesses of the storage room, her sister must surely be having a hard time finding them.

Those had been her thoughts as she closed her eyes, but the unfading sound of light footsteps urged her on.

(That being said…..to dream something like this, I must be pretty tired.)

A dream of a rabbit restlessly running through the garden. She wondered what kind of state of mind she must be in to have caused such a thing. She would have to ask her big sister, who had recently gotten into psychology.

As she opened her eyes just a little, she could see that the creature, who was white all the way down to his short legs, was staring at her for some reason. The vivid red eyes looked a little stern.

‘.....Hey, you there! This is the part where you’re supposed to chase after me, isn’t it!? Why are you ignoring me!? You have to chase after the rabbit, right?’

‘............’

Not only was he wearing clothes and running, this rabbit could talk. The more worked up the rabbit became, the colder the consciousness of the girl lying on her side grew.

Ah, I wish my big sister would hurry up and come back already.

‘.....Zzzzz….’

When she did, she would be able to wake from this dream.

As she tried once again to give into the heaviness of her eyelids, a pitter patter sound echoed from nearby. It seemed as if the rabbit was kicking the ground with its feet as if frustrated. To hear such a comical sound, that had to be a dream for you. More and more, this seemed to be a fairytale-like world that was quite unlike her.

'Hey! You've got a gloomy future ahead if you're gonna be so apathetic while you're still so young!'

Even as the rabbit scolded her, Alice kept her eyes closed.

She had a feeling that if she opened her eyes and met the gaze of this rabbit once more…..something even worse was going to happen. And in times like these, a girl's instincts were never wrong. Alice was still of an age where she could be called a girl, but she had accumulated enough life experience that she was able to tell this much.

However, it did not appear that the annoyed rabbit beside her had noticed her state of mind. It continued to stamp its feet— although she could not see it, from the sound she could tell without a doubt, and— raised its voice.

'Please don't ignore me! Come, you must chase me!'

'...Zz…'

Alice, who had decided to continue to feign sleep until she woke up from this strange dream, purposely continued to ignore the rabbit—then, involuntarily opened her eyes at the sudden feeling of floating that enveloped her.

'..............? Whaaaa-!?'

She let out a yell at the fluffy long things covered in fur.

The muffler-like things that had suddenly appeared in front of her eyes were standing straight up towards the sky, as if firmly supported by something in the center of them.

An animal's ears— that's right, they were the ears of the rabbit that had been agitating her just a moment ago. The size of them was different of course, but she wasn't able to think of any other creature who had such long ears.

'Eeeeehhhh!?'

'Please don't shout in my ears.'

From below the surprised Alice, red eyes looked up at her as if a little troubled. It was the rather well-proportioned face of an intellectual-type looking young man. However, his ears were the long ones of a rabbit.

Deep red eyes that were without a speck of impurity gazed at her fixedly.

The youth with looks of a kind that weren't often seen was carrying her in a sideways position. Perhaps this was what one would call the 'princess carry'. Although, unlike the princesses in picture books, the difference was she didn't have her arms wrapped around his neck.

'............'

For a girl of marriageable age, this might be the sort of situation to make her heart pound despite herself. Unfortunately, the long pure white ears made a complete waste of it all.

'Ah, I'm sorry…..anyway, hurry up and let me down.'

Alice had unthinkingly apologised to the voice that sounded as if he had been inconvenienced.

If she thought about it more, she had suddenly been picked up by a man that she did not know. Of course she would be angry, and despite it not being necessary for her to apologise, she'd ended up doing so somewhat reflexively.

Without taking notice of what Alice had said, the young man continued as before and without preamble…..said something terrifying.

'I shall let you down when we arrive. Alright, here we go.'

His voice as he answered her remained in her memory even now.

Alice had been brought to this mysterious country by force.

No matter how many times she recalled it, her encounter with him had been the absolute worst.

Stolen away as she was taking a nap. Brought to an unknown land.

Made to drink a strange and extremely bitter medicine mouth to mouth.

She had instinctively clenched her fist hard and punched him, and even if she did say so herself, she thought her counterattack back then was only a natural one.

'"Back then"....I must say, I was surprised, myself. I had not thought you would be someone so quick to violence.'

When the time she had come to the Country of Hearts became the topic of conversation, those had been the thoughts expressed by the perpetrator himself.

The first time they had met he had been nothing but a kidnapper to her, but now she had grown to know him a little better.

The name of her kidnapper was Peter White. His alias in this world was 'the White Rabbit.' It was a name that matched his appearance exactly. If one were to say it was easy to understand, then perhaps that was true.

She also knew that the youth with the very handsome face served as Prime Minister at Heart Castle.

At first she had wondered if someone as strange as he was fit for such an important role, but it hadn't taken her long after arriving in this country to realise that there was a difference in her judgements and the values of those around her.

The Prime Minister of Heart Castle was truly both capable and cruel. Apparently, his appearance as he indifferently carried out his government duties, together with his colour tone, gave him a reputation of even being aloof. Although, whenever she saw him as he appeared out of nowhere calling her name, he didn't seem like that way to her at all.

"Alice, I love you. You are the only one I love. I do not care for anyone else…..I am happy so long as you remain in this world."

Because, I love you.

Whenever she heard Peter's confessions of love, she couldn't help but think of a broken record. At any rate, he was persistent in telling her he loved her, like a record going round and round. Even if she tried to question him further, he would say something incomprehensible like 'There are no explanations necessary when it comes to love', and that was always the end of it.

'Ah, Alice, how sweet you are, how lovely. I love you, you're the only one I really love.'

'Yeah yeah…..I know.'

Alice didn't think the words of love that were on repeat and rewind were lies.

The White Rabbit who lived in Heart Castle was obsessed with cleanliness, that was a well known fact in this country. If you were a person he hated, it was likely you would not even be able to get close to him. It wouldn't be unusual to get shot instead.

And not just that…..Alice didn't see what value she had that he would tell a lie just to keep her here. If he thought that simply saying the sweet words 'I love you' were enough to have her remain here, one could say that that was a plan that had already failed.

—I've already had enough of romance.—

Every time she heard Peter tell her he loved her, she was sighing on the inside.

The end of her one and only previous romance had been a fitting one for someone such as her. That was why.

The person Alice had fallen in love with, and the person she had wanted to love her, had had his heart stolen by someone else.

The person he had fallen in love with was perfect, someone with whom she could not even hope to compete.

The memories of her first love were even now deeply ingrained in her mind.

Due to her experiences, she knew that romance was nothing but a waste of energy.

She wanted to become someone independent, who could live on her own without relying on others. She wondered at what point she had come to strongly feel that way.

In that mindset, despite there being no possibility of keeping her here with those sweet words, Peter repeated them again and again.

Almost in place of a greeting, he would smile saying 'I love you', his cold gaze changing to one of great joy as he looked at her.

A stalker-like rabbit man, with whom she had started off on the worst possible terms. Even though there was no way she ought to have been able to become friendly with someone like that….

It had been a certain daytime period—after she had grown used to going to see him after countless repeated visits.

‘Hello there, Peter.’

‘Ah! Alice, you’ve come to see me again! I’m so happy, I love you!’

Each time she visited Heart Castle, the White Rabbit would always pop up as if out of nowhere, his face full of smiles.

She had grown used to this red country with its constant flying bullets, and it was no longer unusual for Peter to invite her to have tea whenever she saw him at the Castle.

Every time she saw him always looking cheerful as he greeted her, Alice thought that she felt happy.

With a beautiful smile, his face expressing his joy, Peter called out her name, ‘Alice, Alice.’

‘These tea leaves are ones her Majesty had brought in from far away. It does not seem she has used any yet, but I think this tea would much rather prefer to be drunk by you instead.’

‘.....Vivaldi will be angry….’

‘Do not worry. After all, even when nothing has happened, she is always in a bad mood anyway. It won’t make any difference at all if she is a little displeased.’

The Prime Minister of Heart Castle, who was spoken of as coldhearted, without fail always came to see her whenever she made her appearance at the Castle.

At those times, he invited her for tea, led her to his room…..he devotedly took care of Alice, who was a guest unfitting for a Prime Minister to entertain in person.

In this world, Alice was a special existence called an ‘Outsider.’ Though she was called special, from her point of view, it wasn’t as if she could use magic or had any special knowledge, but apparently all people that came from an outside world were called thus.

Not just that— the existences known as Outsiders, while powerless and with low combat ability….had the characteristics to be loved by the inhabitants of this world.

“Most people here will come to love you the more you get to know them.”

Smiling smugly, that had been what the sickly looking dream demon had said in the dreams she had had since arriving at the Country of Hearts.

No matter who, it was a given you would feel more sympathetic towards someone the deeper your relationship grew. However, before they came to like you, you might be killed. That was the kind of dangerous world this place was.

However, it seemed there was always an exception to everything.

'............'

Even though they weren't even acquaintances when she had first come to this world, he had behaved favourably towards her from the beginning.

Though Alice didn't know him, he had spoken to her as if he already knew her and—had led her to this world.

Today, the ears of the young man waiting on her were standing straight up, he seemed to be in an extremely good mood. Just like he had when she had first come to this world.

Alice had of course only ever seen what Peter was like when he was with her. She had never seen what his face looked like, or how he acted, when she was not there.

'Right, here you are. Sorry for making you wait.'

'.....Thank you, Peter.'

On the red castle grounds, in the garden where red roses bloomed proudly, red eyes gazed at her happily.

Perhaps it had been these eyes she had been moved by. Alice had come to notice herself that the wariness that she should have had towards the White Rabbit, whom she had sent flying with a punch the first time they met, was gradually fading.

'Do you like it?'

Long ears aside, and the fact that he was a stalker who had kidnapped her, the reason she had ended up seeing him in a positive light…..might just because she had a weakness for good looks.

'Yeah…it's delicious.'

A fragrance and sweetness that reminded her of flowers. Its rich flavour was only to be expected of an item belonging to the Queen, who was known as a great lover of tea.

As Alice nodded, the White Rabbit seemed even happier, his eyes narrowing in delight, but then as if he had suddenly remembered something he asked another question.

'Hey, Alice. I have heard that you visit that forest by yourself…..is that true?'

'.....There you go, saying stuff like a stalker again….'

For some reason, it seemed that this rabbit, who didn't lack for anything when it came to looks, rank or ability, knew a lot about Alice's movements. Apparently, he at times had a unit of soldiers tail her, sending them out to check in on her.

'What are you saying! Truth be told, I want to be with you always, forever!! Without having to leave it to those faceless, just I, myself, always! If something were to happen to you, my beloved…..Aah!'

'Nothing will happen so you don't need to worry.'

She belonged to a territory that adjoined Heart Castle. She couldn't say that she had never been caught up in a gun battle before now, but those had been mostly internal quarrels between members of the Mansion.

‘I think those rules of yours are far more violent. It’s not right to use those good-natured soldiers on something like that.’

‘Something like that!? By that, you mean….aah, you want me to always be by your side….not those soldiers, you want me to always be with you…..that’s it, isn’t it!’

‘...........’

Ah, it was useless after all, no matter what she said to this Rabbit.

Sighing as if exasperated, Alice drank down the rest of her tea. And once she had, Peter immediately poured her a refill. Even though he never listened to what she said, he was a Rabbit that was strangely diligent when it came to things like this.

While breathing a sigh of relief at the flower-like fragrance, she spoke to further press her point.

‘Thank you…..But, you know, you’re the Castle’s Prime Minister, so please don’t throw aside your work so easily.’

‘My work…..There is no way it could ever be as important as you.’

‘............’

Most likely, work didn’t have any particular meaning to the White Rabbit.

However, it was different for Alice.

The work she had been given as her role in the territory in which she was now staying was not something she could take lightly.

‘A role isn’t something to be tossed aside, Peter.’

‘If it means that much to you…..I shall not take breaks from work.’

The White Rabbit nodded his head as if disappointed, but quickly recovered.

‘Then, in exchange, I shall have those faceless stay close to you! Ah, but, relying on the likes of them should something happen is…..in that case, it is not really a situation to be happy about.’

‘.....That’s why I said, stop it with the stalking already��..’

Fed up with a conversation with Peter that never reached a resolution, Alice decided to change the subject.

‘Um….so we were talking about the Forest, weren’t we…..Boris and Pierce are there as well, so it’s not that unusual a thing to do, is it?’

‘....Perhaps….’

Hearing her answer, the White Rabbit slightly cast his eyes downwards. However his reaction wasn’t due to the sudden change of topic.

Nonetheless, this wasn’t the first time she had seen Peter frown like this.

It was an exchange they had repeated countless times before now.

When she had talked about having gone to the Amusement Park, he had lamented, ‘If you go to such a crowded and bacteria-ridden place as that, you’ll get dirty.’ It seemed that to the White Rabbit, everything but himself was covered with germs. He really was a bother.

If she were to tell him she had gone to the Forest just now, there was no doubt his response would be the same. That was what Alice had thought, but contrary to her expectations, he continued on in a subdued tone.

‘I think… that it is best for you not to go to that Forest. No, I do not want you to go.’

Listening to his mysterious words, that sounded almost as if…..he was afraid of something, Alice tilted her head in puzzlement.

'—Why?'

'Within your heart…..there is still hesitation is there not?'

The red eyes were looking at her chest. But, what his piercing gaze was aimed towards was the stubborn, vague thing called a heart, hidden beneath her skin.

There was still a remaining sense of responsibility smoldering away inside Alice, that made her feel that she had to return to her original world. Though she should have already decided that Hatter Mansion was the place where she belonged, even then…..it was the truth that she wasn't quite able to forget that peaceful afternoon where her sister awaited her.

'............'

As she searched for the words to make a response, he slowly shook his head from left to right.

Like he was troubled, or as if anxious…..that was the kind of look he directed towards her.

'Those who are hesitating cannot help but hear the voices of those doors. And—you may never be able to return here once you have gone where they lead you. That is the kind of thing they are.'

'Yeah…..I know.'

She had also heard about the doors in the Forest, as well as the ones in Clover Tower, from the knowledgeable master of the Mansion.

A person would be able to go to the place they most desired if they passed through one of the whispering doors. In exchange…..they would be unable to go to a place they least expected.

She knew that.

Even so, the reason a part of her heart was swayed by the doors' voices…..was because the things she had abandoned had just been too important.

'Alice, I am happy so long as you remain in this world. So I beg of you, please don't go anywhere.'

'.....I won't.'

Perhaps she was slightly slow to answer because she needed a little time to collect her resolve. Or, maybe it was because of the hesitation she couldn't completely erase, she wasn't sure which.

Nodding once more, Alice repeated herself.

'I won't go anywhere.'

'Yes, Alice. If you can become happy in this world…..that is the most important thing to me.'

At last seeing Peter's expression soften, Alice smiled.

Strangely, she did not dislike the gaze that looked at her as if she were something dazzling.

After all, this wasn't romance. This wasn't at all related to something so troublesome.

Because the 'like' he had for her was surely the same as the 'like' she had for him. Because despite the stalker-ish things he said, he had already become an important friend to her.

She didn't feel as if his words of love were to be taken at face value.

Because Peter's love, and the goodwill she felt, ought to be similar things. She wasn't so foolish as to disdain the concern of a friend.

'Sorry for making you worry. And..thank you, Peter.'

'Not at all.'

Being at his side was comfortable. She had ended up realising that.

As if she had returned to that afternoon, as if she were spending time with her older sister…..that comfortable feeling might be what brought Alice to this Castle so frequently.

'Hey, might I have another cup of tea?'

'Of course! As many as you like, with pleasure.'

A happy looking face. The ears that stood straight up were like snow left behind in the tranquil atmosphere. They were of such purity that one would almost hesitate to touch them.

A pure white without a single speck of dirt. The strands of his hair were also the same kind of white.

A White Rabbit that didn't want to be touched by anyone. It was an odd thing that despite being that way, the only one Peter drew close to was herself.

However, being touched by him wasn't an unpleasant feeling for Alice either.

'It's delicious.'

After all, he didn't lie to her. He hid neither his malice nor his good will. She already knew now that even if there were things he kept secret, he would not lie.

'For you to be happy…that is all that I want.'

A peaceful noon time period.

For Alice, going to meet the White Rabbit that awaited her at the red Castle was something irreplaceably precious.

***

The place Alice was staying at was called Hatter Mansion.

The Country of Hearts was divided into three large powers that were constantly battling each other for territory, the Hatter Family was an organization of such vast scale as to make up one of those territories.

The man who was the head of the Mansion was called by his alias, "The Hatter." Blood Dupre. He led the Mafia organization and wore a peculiar hat as if to match his other name. In any case, he was a man who hated both being bored and anything irksome, with a troublemaking personality that enjoyed messing around with those in his vicinity, so long as it amused him.

And then there was the person called his right hand man, “The March Hare”, Elliot March. Though he was likely the one most thrown about by Blood’s whims, he was devoted to his boss, and apparently didn’t see it as any hardship at all. Despite always being busy running around for his work, those around him knew all too well how his face would light up with happiness the moment he set eyes on carrot cake.

At the mansion also lived the violent gatekeepers who would play around with him like they were siblings. Their names were Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. However, publicly, they were more well known by their second name, “The Bloody Twins.” Swinging around axes that were taller than they were without any trouble, they loved violent games, and often invited Alice to play with them on their breaks.

Normally speaking, perhaps one might say they were altogether an excessively eccentric group for Alice, who was nothing more than a powerless young girl, to be living with. If anything, Alice couldn’t help but find it strange that she was allowed to stay with them just because she was an Outsider.

The first place she had visited once she had left the Clock Tower after having been taken to the Country of Hearts by Peter was this Mansion.

Almost about to be sliced to death by the dangerous gatekeepers and on the verge of being shot by a quick-tempered rabbit…..Luckily, due to a suggestion of their capricious Boss, Alice had come to live in the Mansion, where she still continued to stay even now.

Though this was a perilous world of flying bullets, Alice did not shut herself away in the Mansion.

This was likely because even people who were enemies of the Hatter did not involve Alice the Outsider in their territorial disputes.

Having become acquainted with each other, the leaders of the various territories welcomed her visits.

The unsociable Clockmaker and the lost Knight. The owner of the Amusement Park with his nonsensical music and the pink Cheshire Cat. The crimson Queen and—the White Rabbit that had pulled her into this world, also numbered among them.

However, that status quo had changed greatly due to the sudden move.

Alice, who had commenced her work once the uninvited Rabbit had been chased out of the garden, shifted her gaze.

‘............’

What she was looking at was a large window. It reflected herself wearing her white maid outfit. However, what Alice’s eyes were directed towards was beyond the glass.

Even though she knew that it wasn’t there…..she could help but unconsciously search for it.

Before, from this window that was the closest to the highest point of the Mansion, she had been able to see the Clock Tower where the always brusque Clockmaker lived. But now, no matter where she looked, she could no longer see it.

In its place, was land of a deep green and the shadow of a spire that struck up towards the heavens as if to tear through it.

The only thing the two places visibly had in common was an unclouded sky. Although even that might change depending on the fickleness of the shifting time periods.

'............'

In the same way that a clock hand moves, so too does the land. That is what moving meant in this world.

All people and buildings attached to each territory, including the land moved, and the Country also changed in unison with them.

In the previous Country of Hearts, there was Heart Castle, the Hatter Mansion, the Amusement Park, and the Clock Tower.

Now, a vast Forest stretched out where the Amusement Park once was, and in place of the Clock Tower, which had stood at the Country's centre, was the Clover Tower.

'.....I wonder how Julius and Gowland are doing.'

A sense of nostalgia welled up the moment she spoke the names of the friends that were now far away. Both of them had been important people to Alice.

When she had first been brought here by the White Rabbit, she had only ever thought of wanting to wake up, that she now worried over the well-being of this place's inhabitants was a strange thing.

‘Is there something interesting out there, young lady?’

‘! Blood!’

Perhaps because she had been concentrating so hard on the scenery outside, Alice turned around as if surprised by the voice that had suddenly called out to her.

As expected, she saw the shadow of a tall man wearing a black silk hat.

‘It is rare for you to lose focus while working…..did something out of the ordinary happen?’

Slightly tilting his hat, which was decorated with roses, feathers and place cards, the man smiled.

It was the sort of amused, meaningful smile that made you want to fill in the blanks despite yourself.

He was the leader of the Hatter Mansion territory, and also the Boss of the Family. Blood Dupre.

‘.....It’s nothing. I was just looking outside for a little bit.’

Normally, the likes of a maid-in-training would not be allowed to speak like this to the master of the Mansion. However, the person who hated anything tedious didn’t seem at all concerned, and instead vaguely tilted his head.

‘With such a melancholy looking face as that? I thought that perhaps your sweetheart might be out there, but it seems I was mistaken.’

‘Blood!’

She made her voice sound a little stern in response to his teasing, but the man’s amusement showed no signs of abating. His shoulders shaking, he replied with ‘I’m joking!’, but it was ambiguous as to how serious he really was.

A little while later after he had finished laughing to his heart’s content, the Hatter spoke again as if he had remembered something.

‘Now then….you have your break after this, don’t you? I’ve gotten some books that you might like, so you should come read them.’

He didn’t specify where, but the place Blood was talking about, and Alice’s reading room, was none other than his own private room.

A man and a woman together in a closed room might make one imagine there was something untoward going on, but so far they had never once crossed that line.

It was just the two of them in the room. Alice would read her new books, while Blood made progress on his work. Sometimes she would act as her master’s tea drinking companion but….that was all.

It was a distance that was too close for them to be called friends. However, even so, the girl knew well that Blood’s taste in books was similar to her own, so she had never once turned down his invitations.

Although, she couldn’t deny that perhaps because of his earlier teasing, her face looked a little discontented.

‘.....Thank you. Once I’m done here, I’ll take you up on your offer.’

‘Fufufu. Then, come on over during the next time period—Ah, and also-’

As if to detain Alice as she was about to return to her work, Blood brought his face nearer.

‘-’

Their faces were so close they were almost touching.

The scent of roses grew stronger as the deep blue gaze approached her. Whether it came from the roses in his hat, or from the man himself—she didn’t know.

‘It hasn’t been long since the move to the Country of Clover. I’ve spoken to you before about how the land is unstable, haven’t I?’

‘Yes. I remember.’

Right after the move came a period of instability. Countless times before when Alice had gone to visit other territories, the roads had changed, and she had ended up coming out onto places that were different than the ones she had expected.

‘After a while it will stabilise, so until then, please refrain from going out unnecessarily. If something happened to you, I can imagine all too well the uproar Elliot and the Gatekeepers will be in.’

‘Oh, are you not worried for me too, Blood?’

She had asked trying to get back at him, but apparently it had ended in failure.

The smile on the Hatter’s face deepened, and he drew his face in even closer than before. Eyes that seemed to almost suck her up into their depths came directly near to Alice.

‘Of course I worry for you. You are an important young lady to me as well.’

‘-!’

If she moved her lips they would be touching. It was that kind of ambiguous distance.

Nevertheless, deftly letting only their breaths intertwine, Blood whispered.

‘You are already a member of this Mansion, Alice. So that you don’t get lost going somewhere all on your own without I, your master, knowing….please take care.’

‘............’

Having finished saying what he wanted to say, the man at last stepped back. As Alice glared at him as if annoyed at being unable to hide her slightly reddened face, he unexpectedly was not laughing.

‘Though I may say so, you have a lot of friends all over the place…..so I don’t suppose you will be able to stop going out.’

As if troubled, he shrugged his shoulders and continued. She didn’t feel the same overpowering pressure from his behaviour as when he had been directly near.

‘.....You’re right. Hiding away in this Mansion doesn’t suit me.’

That was why Alice was able to continue speaking in her usual tone.

‘I’ve promised everyone too…..And, we don’t know when the next move will be, I’d hate not being able to meet my friends.’

‘My my…..what a difficult young lady.’

Averting her gaze from the man who was smiling bitterly, the girl declared herself.

‘But, the fact that my home is here is for certain. The only place I’ll return to is this Mansion…..I won’t get lost.’

‘.....Is that so. Then, I don’t mind.’

Whether he had given in or she had persuaded him, she wasn’t sure, but after finishing speaking the man leisurely turned his back and began to walk.

Clack clack, with steady steps the white-clad back grew further away.

Making sure from the corner of her eye that it had done so, Alice once more turned her gaze towards the other side of the window.

’That's right, after all, I’ve decided to remain here.’

The words she spoke sounded somehow as if she were telling herself that.

What was reflected in the girl’s field of vision was a Forest of a singular shade of green.

The whispering, enticing Forest of Doors spread out there.

Doors that were like magic, that would take the person who turned the knob to their most preferred place.

However—once you had opened one and passed through, there was no guarantee you would be able to return to the same place.

When she had been in the Country of Hearts, Alice had decided to remain here in the Mansion. Her regrets towards her previous world hadn’t necessarily disappeared, but even so, the place she had thought that she wanted to remain at was this Mansion of dangerous Mafia.

At the beginning she had been a freeloader, but it was different now.

Her position at the Mansion might just be that of an apprentice maid. It might be a job that anyone could do.

But even so, this Mansion was already home to her.

The master who was not satisfied unless he could be slightly sarcastic about everything, the number 2 who was a carrot fanatic, and the Twins who ran up to her while holding sharp objects.

Each and every one of them, including the maids and servants, were already family to Alice.

‘.....I will always return here.’

While speaking as if to tell herself that.

Since she knew the words that the doors whispered.

The girl’s green eyes didn’t quite leave the window.

#alice in the country of clover #heart no kuni no alice #hnkna #otome game #translation

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redolentgrove · 1 year ago

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*The Giratina approached Loki.* Giratina: Wow, you know, I've seen many faces around here but none that could compare to yours. If you were a gemstone, everyone would want you for their own. I find it truly fascinating the number of universes there are and I have not seen many where Pokémon are centaur-like like yours. You mentioned something about a performance. If I may enquire, what does that entail?

Loki turned to face the Giratina with a casual glance, only just slightly realising once his speech continued, just how actively he had been flirting with her.

Well. This one certainly had a way of introducing himself, didn't he?

The hybrid's face flushed a bright red in response to the gemstone remark, ears perking wildly. Her tail slashed to and fro behind her, betraying what would normally be a more reserved, level-headed reaction. Maybe it was that he had caught her off-guard... or perhaps, even, it was the gemstone remark. She thought back to another very special human in her life, several centuries ago.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What a remarkable Pokemon you are, Jolokia."

She found herself staring at a fair-skinned woman, thin hair with dimming, almost unseeing hazel eyes. A hand gently cupped at her cheek, and the human had a warm, comforting smile on her face; though her body had been wrinkled and spotted with age, it still felt just as familiar to the taur as it ever had. The elder woman continued in her creaking, time-worn voice.

"To think, so many others here in Floaroma never understood what makes you so special. Your gentle nature, your unique shape, a soft, inviting face that seems to seek love and validation..."

The human let out a soft chuckle. "Look at you. I wish I could make out your shape a bit better... these eyes just don't see well anymore. But that peppermint scent is as clear as the day we met... there are things I've forgotten. I think. But your aromas, the feel of your fur... it's like you're still that lost, little Skymintaur that wandered up to me and wormed into my heart."

Loki's eyes watered somewhat as the woman's hand scritched at her cheek. And the speech continued,

"As much as you're a sweet flower... you've also been more than that. They talked about diamonds in the rough... things others overlook because they're flawed. You're not that, Jolokia. All the years, the visits... you remember me. You still consider me your mother. You've brought me so much joy and you've brought this whole family priceless moments. Jolokia... I love you. You're a priceless little gemstone."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The imagery faded almost immediately, though the final words echoed a couple of times in her mind. Loki snapped back to reality, suddenly coming to terms with the fact that she hadn't properly responded to the Giratina's question. She shook her head, wiping a stray teardrop from her left eye.

"H-huh? Oh, uh, thank you... uh, sir?" She seemed a bit distracted, and looked at her surroundings. "I... I'm sorry, just, had a bit on my mind there. I... universes?" She thought back to the invitation. "Ah, right... actually, I'm pretty rare in my own universe. Most of the Pokemon are either standardly-shaped or anthropomorphic. I'm not going to bore you with the genetics and science behind it all... just know that in all honestly, I didn't always look like this, with the centaur-like shape. Nor this particular mix of species... or this gender..."

She tilted her head some. "Oh, the performance... wait, wh- oh!" It clicked now what Singularity had meant. "Oh, you must mean my daughter Bijoux's performance. Yeah, she brought a concert grand harp here; she said she had a really special song to sing that she thought would be really important and go over well with the crowd of legendaries and mythicals. But she still hasn't told me what exactly it's about, just that it might also be relatable for me..."

( @ask-the-royal-absol )

#sinsibgala #singularity giratina #loki leafmintaur #who's that woman?#it is a mystery #maybe ask her about humans after the event :3

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thewhumpcaretaker · 11 months ago

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The Broken Veil: Chapter 3 - Miracle

Image source from Pinterest

Unfortunately, I've had a mental health crisis while writing this story. I'm planning to stop immediately and to post all my existing chapters at once to prevent myself from returning to the project again and again. That's somewhat good for you because it means you get more chapters at once, but it's also a shame because it means we'll only get to chapter seven. It has to be done, though.

To anyone out there dealing with maladaptive daydreaming, limerence, mania, or psychotic symptoms, please know that I'm thinking of you. Take care of yourselves and don't let the fantasy pull you in any deeper than you're comfortable with.

Summary: John Wick has just agreed to kill Gianna D'Antonio, repaying the marker that gave him a life with Helen. However, Helen is trying to contact John from the afterlife, to show him that it is possible to stop the cycle of violence – not by forfeiting his own life, but by creating a fundamental shift in international systems and perhaps even the balance of good and evil in this world. But he doesn’t have to do it alone. She’s coming back.

“Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.” - Catherine Earnshaw, Wuthering Heights

Time is disordered as it touches the border of a timeless land.

He can almost see her, can feel her within reach.

His soul is pressed against the veil, on the brink of crossing. While there is still direction, he pushes towards Helen, single-minded. He is going home to her. They have not been so close since that day in the hospital. His life…she can feel it throb into her as if only the thinnest sheet of fabric divides them.

It’s time for the final stretch. She lets the force of his consciousness guide her towards him. His heartbeat thrumming in terror, his heartbeat soon to be stilled. She can feel the heat of his skin, his yet-unbroken skull, and the sudden pain of breaking. She has skin, she has a skull, she feels the impact of the bullet. The guilt circulating through his veins, falling forever in his stomach, bringing him down. NO.

Inhale. Helen draws back. Exhale. She slams forward into her husband’s body.

Sound, light, sensation. The veil is broken. She has him in her arms.

The floodlights are blinding, the gunshot is deafening, the air against her flesh is a sensory overload. God, it’s so different to be alive. She had almost forgotten.

She has him in her arms, and something has struck her back and fallen harmless to the floor.

Ares stares. On instinct, she fires again and keeps firing. She empties the clip but Helen has died once and cannot die again. It’s not body armor. It can’t be, because Helen is nude. There is only one small blaze of silver on her ring finger.

“John, open your eyes,” she whispers. “We’re not done.”

He looks so innocent, so confused on his knees below her. He looks only upward, respectful of her body, his chin tilted up into her face, his hyperventilating breath shuddering over her naval. “I’ve come home to you.”

“No,” she shakes her head. “I’ve come home to you.” For a moment, she can’t bring herself to turn away from him.

Ares’ backup is stepping out of the shadows, guns trained on Helen.

“Identify yourself,” someone says.

Helen turns, her body frontally exposed to their gaze and they don’t know where to look. His head is still shielded behind her abdomen. She fixes her eyes on Ares. Quietly, “My name is Helen Wick. And you…” she begins advancing, slowly, “You tried to shoot my husband.”

Behind her, John’s eyes range over the ground in a daze, caught by some flicker of light. It’s littered with crushed metal like golden coins. The same shapes he’s seen a thousand times, the same shapes that fell from his clothing earlier. Flattened bullets. It finally registers. Ares tried to shoot him, and she shot Helen. She shot Helen.

John picks up his gun.

***

Another wave of gunfire, but this time, it’s answered by a volley from between the two pale legs that frame John Wick like Roman pillars, and there’s three men down beside Ares. Some begin to flee but Ares orders them to advance. He tries to lunge forward and Helen pushes him back, covering his face. Bullets are slamming into his body, and he’d double over if she weren’t holding him upright, shoving him back down the tunnel away from the gunfire. Her hands are touching him. He’s in physical contact with Helen. The rush of it wrings some strangled sound from his chest. Then a different rush hits again: They shot her, they shot her, kill them all.

He's hurtling down the tunnel to where he stowed the M4, hand in hand with her, firing over his shoulder. He swings her smoothly around a corner, out of sight. She’s protesting but he can’t stand it if she gets hit one more time, it doesn’t matter if she’s bulletproof or not. It’s cocked in his hands and he becomes a storm.

***

John is not aware of how many times Helen saves his life. She walks in his wake, stepping over the dead, her arms open, trying to take up the whole space of the tunnel, breaking into a run when anyone gets too close. The rocks do not cut her bare feet and the bullets do not sting but she doesn’t want to be dragged away from John if someone gets their hands on her, so she keeps moving. She picks up a pistol from one of the fallen and struggles with it, but she’s never done this before and it takes her longer than it should to realize it’s empty. She wonders if this would have been easier if she were still incorporeal, ironically. She could have just slammed into the barrier and what she wanted would have…happened. But now her one power is her body, and she places it between John and the enemy over and over again.

At some point, he runs out of bullets and she watches him throw his gun at a man’s head, then sweep another to the ground and strangle him between his legs. He’s a force of nature. It feels almost like a violation to see this, somehow even more intimate than the time they’ve shared in bed. This is not for her eyes. The sweat plasters his hair against his forehead and he makes low, animal grunts. In the silence of precious moments spent reloading, his panting echoes down the tunnel. She’s desperate to hold him – whether to comfort him or to praise him or to hold him back or to join her hand with his on the trigger, she does not know, but she sees the labor of his body and she wants to be as one with him.

Finally, the shots stop ringing. There’s only his breathing as he still spins in paranoia, checking all directions, ragged waves filling the space from wall to wall with overwhelmingly intimate noise, then gradually slowing. “John.” She approaches him carefully. He has still hardly looked at her yet.

“…Helen?” He stares at her as if for the first time.

“Yes. It’s me.”

Her skin glows angelic in the floodlights. He can barely hear himself speak. “This is impossible.”

“A miracle, maybe.”

His hand moves haltingly toward her shoulder and caresses it. Her touch does not feel distant. Her voice does not come from somewhere impossibly far away. He can smell her scent, that little, warm, animalistic scent that doesn’t even come to him in dreams. He’s speechless. “Are you…what…” He struggles for another long moment. “You were dead.”

“I am dead. But I’m also alive. The veil is broken.”

Again, that strangled sound from inside him, and he throws his bulk against her wordlessly, his head buried in her shoulder. She can feel his face twist up against the side of her neck as he breaks down and just sobs. Her arms pull crushingly tight around his back, fists clenching handfuls of his suitcoat, unwilling to let him go. They stand that way for a long, long time.

“I love you. I love you and you’re gone, you’re-gone,” he gasps, fighting against the hope of what cannot be. His chest is heaving against hers. “I…miss you so much.”

“John.” She lifts his face, which is marbled over with a glaze of blood and water. He half turns away, overwhelmed by the sight of her, but she holds him fast. “I love you so much. I am here.”

She sees something finally register. “God. How?”

“I wish I had answers, but there are no answers on the other side. I just kept trying to get back.”

He sinks against the wall, his eyes ranging over the mass of bodies lining the corridor in horror. “You saw…” He hides his face in his hands and chokes out, “I’m so sorry. You were never, ever supposed to see me like this.”

She drops beside him and pulls him back into her arms. “No. No no no no. You don’t understand. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

When he’s calm enough she pulls back and looks at him with fire in her eyes. “You were right to kill them. I’ve wanted to say this to you for so long, ever since I died, but I couldn’t speak. You’re allowed. You’re allowed to be angry with the people who are caging you in, who are trying to take lives like ours and twist them into a wreckage, who are forcing you to do what you know to be wrong. The fact that people have made you kill your own friends, kill just to be with me, kill just to keep breathing...it's an atrocity.” He’s shaking with tears but she doesn’t even pause for a breath. “They've backstabbed you, treated you like a human weapon, took your childhood, took your peace. It's not your fault. They tried to twist you up in every way they could and STILL you never became a monster underneath, STILL you're tender and uphold your ethics and care so much about people that it scares you. I love that about you. And I love you. I love you so much. That is what I meant to tell you with that damn rose. I wasn’t saying you should pay with your life. I want you to fight back even harder. Don’t do a god damn thing they say.” He presses his face into her shoulder again and wails with anguished joy.

At length, gasping, he lifts his head and manages to speak. “I love you too. I need this, I…you have no idea how much I need to hear that from you. I can’t-I can’t live without you. I fall apart.”

She corrects him gently. “You can, but I don’t want you to have to do it alone. I’m here with you.”

“But I don’t know what to do. What choice did I have, other than completing the job or accepting my fate? I’ll die for not fulfilling the marker. I will be HUNTED, Helen, you don’t understand. Santino will take out a hit on me. The only way that stops is when he’s dead. Then I’ve killed the marker holder and it’s High Table jurisdiction. That’s international, and there will be thousands-”

“Not if you take down the entire High Table.”

For a long time, he just stares. “That’s an army. That’s war.” But he’s almost smiling. She IS smiling.

“You want things to be different. I want to help you make them different. I didn’t understand this when I was alive, but there are things you and I are capable of…there are things that need to change…We’ll talk. But for now we need to keep you safe. We can’t stay here. Are you…okay? How bad are you hurt?”

He just looks at her, struggling to speak. He thought the only person who would ever care to ask him that was dead. She waits. It’s like old times. He always seemed to have trouble starting a sentence, let alone finishing one. “…Nothing that won’t heal.”

“And are you okay? How are you feeling? I’ve given you quite a shock.”

“I…” His vision blurs over with tears again. “I…” At first it seems that this is too difficult a sentence to finish altogether. “I will remember this day for the rest of my life.”

She pulls him up, taking the weight of exhausted muscles and he can’t resist embracing her once again when he’s upright. He starts to give her his suitcoat and she stops him. “No, you need that. I can take any clothes, I just need to be decent for the street.” He starts pulling the jacket unceremoniously off of the nearest corpse. It engulfs both her hands and hangs just below her privates, making her look like a smitten teenager wrapped in her boyfriend’s hoodie. She picks up the body’s handgun. John peeks at her sideways and downright blushes, then insists they take the pants and boots too.

He exhales, still trying to steady himself. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

She kisses his cheek lightly. “Believe it.”

He’s laughing, actually laughing. He feels young again. Waves of giddiness keep washing over him. He takes his wife’s hand in his – his wife’s hand! – and they pick their way through the catacombs towards the clear Italian night. He would skip if he weren’t limping, but instead, each time he stumbles, she takes his weight and keeps him walking. He has never been supported by someone after killing. Never, even when she was alive. He would come home two days later, mostly mended, and she would tend to him then, but the exit from battle itself had always been a long, painful march of shame. It is so humbling to see how she steadies him, waits for him, pauses now and then to hold him again, staving off shock with the warmth of her body, even knowing everything he did. This may be a dream, but he doesn’t care to wake up.

Standing at the mouth of the catacombs, there’s a figure, leaning against a car. Helen can feel John go tense as he recognizes Cassian. The figure’s arm stays at his side, but it’s close to his gun. “Who’s with you, John?”

They’re still hidden in shadow. “First, why are you here?”

“I’m curious why you lied to me.”

“…Felt like getting shot.”

“You got over that pretty quick.”

“Yeah.”

Helen steps forward, the light breaking over her features as she does so. She extends her hand to Cassian. “Helen Wick. Pleased to meet you.”

Cassian doesn’t move. He looks straight at John. “The fuck?”

“Shake hands with my wife.” It’s not a request.

He does. “I apologize for the incredulity. I’ve been told you’re dead.”

“It’s quite alright.” She makes no further explanation.

“For what it’s worth…good for you. Both of you. Love is unlikely in our circumstances. I understand that on a personal level.” He steps up to John. “John, you spared my ward. Someone close to me. She and I both want to know how we can repay you.”

“Gianna wants to know what I expect from her.”

He stiffens. “I genuinely am grateful to you. But yes, that is the chief reason I’m here. We appreciate what you’ve done. But I hope you understand that she can’t single handedly make the marker go away.”

“I don’t need to be spared by the High Table. I didn’t do it for a debt.”

“Then why? I get it, you have a death wish, but…this puts both of you in danger.”

“I’m not dying. And sure as hell no one is killing Helen. We live on our own terms now.”

He frowns with pity. John will be executed, that’s unavoidable. “Fair enough. You’d better take your head start then. The hit hasn’t been placed yet. Gianna went underground immediately, and we’re about to tell her brother that she’s dead. I don’t know how long it will take him to learn the truth, but some time is better than none. You still have my thanks. If you need to contact me…” He passes John a slip of paper with a phone number. “I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to help. But don’t hesitate to call.”

He nods. “Thank you.”

“Goodnight, Mr. and Mrs. Wick.”

Cassian steps into his car and he’s gone.

Helen twines her arm through his again. “Point the way, John.”

They start to walk. Rome is gold, gold, gold, even at night. Again he says it, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I’ll never be able to say it enough. I thought I could never tell you again.”

“But you did, many times. I was listening.”

“You could hear me?”

She pauses. “I’m trying to figure out how to describe it…I couldn’t hear words at first. I could feel what you felt, from the moment I died. That felt…inviolable. I can still feel it now and I know that it will never be broken. Words emerged over time as I started trying to come back. And images. But it isn’t like seeing and it isn’t like hearing…it’s very strange. It takes so much effort to bring them to the surface.”

“You told me to let go. But you didn’t.”

“Neither did you.”

“I tried. But then…” He falters and his footsteps halt. “Helen, I have something to tell you about the…dog you got for me…”

“I know. She appeared to me when she crossed. Probably looking for someone connected with you. That’s when I knew something was wrong and I couldn’t leave you alone. I guess you could say she sent for help.”

For the fourth time that night, John is sobbing into his wife’s chest.

#john wick #john wick fanfic #john x helen #john wick whumpee #hurt/comfort #angst #emotional whump #dacryphilia #men crying #happy tears #assassin whump #major character undeath #back from the dead #ao3 crosspost #down with the high table

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inkvulture · 2 years ago

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Tagged by the brilliant @rms-writes!

Find the phrase: "I miss you."

Your phrase: "Why now?" (Or any variation)

Forced to accept defeat, Dandy trudges her way back to the castle grounds in tears. She gasps, the cold air like knives in her lungs, guilt and grief and panic ballooning in her until there's no more space in her chest, until she's suffocating. She opens the back gate to the gardens with shaking hands and heads straight for the Silver Oak, the only tree for miles. The only friend for miles. "I-I'm stuck here," She wheezes, collapsing over the roots and pretending they're her father's lap. "I can't get out. What am I gonna do?" Lonineness bit at her heart as the question became not "when" but "if". How could such a simple word be so deeply terrifying? Two letters is all it takes to break someone. What an awful, awful world. "I want to go home." She whispers, squeezing her eyes shut and sending a quiet wish with her tears as they fall to the ground. "I just want to go home." She isn't sure if she's asleep or if she's just defeated, but eventually her heart slows down and the tears stop. The world softens a bit around her, and when she opens her eyes again, she's on the couch in the farmhouse. "Feel better?" Her father asks, coming around the corner from the kitchen. Dandy stares blankly at him. "Dad?" "Ah, well, no. I was able to attach myself to a strong memory of yours." The visage of her father shifts, briefly revealing a dark swirling form. "I hope you don't find it too presumptuous. I was only trying to help." Transfixed by the creature's benevolent presence, Dandy sits up and wipes her face with her sleeve. "Who are you, then?" "My name is Mora. Long ago, I was the ruler of this place. Now my people have forgotten me, and I lie here in my final resting place within the Silver Oak. Your magic has strengthened me somewhat, it seems." "Oh. Yeah, I've always been good with plants." She sniffs. "If I give you more of my magic, can you help me actually get home? I miss my parents and my bed and the family cow. I even miss Sophia." "If enough magic is brought to bear, it is possible that I may break free and assist you." Mora drops the mask of Dandy's father now, becoming instead a sweeping, person-like shape that billows like a drop of ink in water. They settle next to Dandy on the couch. "However, I do not believe that you possess such power. Alas, it is not possible for me to help you in such a way at the moment."

Tag list (no pressure, comment/ask if you want to be added!): @sarah-sandwich-writes , @kmlaney , @primroseprime2019

#idiot hours #if you noticed that the tense changed no you didnt #jk im trying to decide which would be better for the story early so i can roll with it later #writeblr #find the phrase

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savebatsfromscratch · 10 months ago

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We beat a hasty retreat from his lair. (Curtains fanfiction.)

Summary:

Harv gets accused of killing Jessica, but the information provided seemed to point to a different villain in the room.

Notes:

Yeah yeah, this is the basic thing to do. The detective is the villain!!!1! How cringe!1!! I get him though. Also these designs don’t look like the “official” actors, don’t worry about it. This possessed me. I was trying to write Pokemon fic and this happened. (Song title from Unpack Your Adjectives, Schoolhouse Rock.) Cws: Canon typical disrespect of dead people, Different Killer, Police Corruption, Past Murder, Murder Investigation, Homophobia, swearing Words: 2,039

Ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54855373

Harv peaked into the door, watching as Cioffi sorted through papers at the desk that had been set up for him at the start of his investigation. The large man, his hair a wild mane of brown that did not fit his distinguished title, had been all but buried in the new proof that Niki had scrounged up for him. Harv, still not noticed, frowned. He couldn't help but think that Cioffi's behavior around Niki was somewhat suspicious, and even if he hadn't already thought that thought, the bored look in the detective's eyes would have been enough for him.

Despite calling Harv down to be questioned, Cioffi was paying absolutely zero attention to him. He had been called down rather personally, mind you, for whatever reason the questioning downstairs with the other officer, Harv had forgotten her name, had not done the trick. But if it was the case that he had been suspicious for whatever reason, why was Cioffi so unfocused on the world around him? He seemed all but entirely unbothered by the violence that he was currently standing knee deep in.

If Harv was a detective, he might have found that suspicious.

Harv knocked quietly on the open door, causing Cioffi to jump in surprise and frantically reach towards his holster. He quickly spotted Harv, but not before the actor was half convinced that he was already shot.

“Oh my apologies my dear boy!” Cioffi called, his face having snapped back to troubled detective mode, “I got wrapped up in these letters, I can't quite seem to decipher them, please do come in!”

Harv nervously slid into the room, so lost in a sudden rush of terror that he was almost wishing that Randy was there with him. Being an actor, Harv was usually good at hiding his fear, but this time seemed to be shaping out to be an exception. His hands were shaking, thin fingers twitching like twigs in the breeze, and it was all he could do to hope that Cioffi hadn't been paying too much attention.

“Uh,” he said, slowly sitting down in a chair across from Cioffi's desk when the detective motioned for him to do so. (He made sure to hide his hands at his sides.) “Why was I called down here, detective? Just out of pure curiosity,”

He didn't want to say the words on the tip of his tongue. Did Cioffi think that he did it? Harv was pretty sure he was sweating bullets (ironic, considering the circumstances). He couldn't have!

“Well, Harv,” said Cioffi, sighing like this was more disappointing that it was important, “I've uncovered significant evidence that you were off the stage for a portion of Jessica's final moments... in the spotlight, shall I say,“

Harv had no clue how that could be important, wasn't the fact that they had all been on stage what made them suspects? He held tightly to the seat of his hair, stabilizing his shaking hands to the best of his ability.

But if that did point to his guilt, he had no way to refute it, had HAD been off the stage during bows, right as Jessica had collapsed. He had been ordered to throw a bouquet to her, missing his chance to get himself credit for his performance in favor of the actress's already inflated ego. Did that make him a larger suspect than most?

”I notice you've been quiet Harv,“ Cioffi said, his voice a deadly calm that was completely unlike the theater nerd that Harv had seen the man present himself as, ”do you have anything to say to that information?“ He clicked a pen in a way that was almost threatening, and Harv felt a shiver run the entire length of his body. He wondered if he looked pathetic.

”No,“ Harv quickly said, voice shaking like he had just gotten through with a painful run of Thattaway, ”I was just wondering why that was important,“ Cioffi raised an eyebrow and Harv quickly corrected, ”you told us that only someone on stage could have killed Jessica, right?“

Cioffi just stared at him, as if contemplating the best way to lie.

Harv swallowed. ”...right?“

A few more seconds ticked past, neither man moving. (Though Harv was pretty sure that he was the only one struggling to read his opponent.) Somehow, in this office, Cioffi seemed much more threatening.

”Well Harv,“ said Cioffi, placing his pen down onto his documents, ”I have gained sufficient evidence that the murdered may have been someplace in the crowd, and with your history I'm sure that you can see why that makes you a suspect,“

Terror thrown out the window, that comment was mildly offensive, considering Harv had never even contemplated making Jessica late to rehearsal by popping her tires or spilling a drink on her dress or anything like that. Okay. Maybe he had contemplated that, a little bit, but sure never as far as murder!

And besides, where had Cioffi even gotten his evidence? Harv glanced down at the papers, but they were the exact same death threats he had been reading on stage the other day, surely nothing new could have been gained from that!

“What history?” Harv whispered, almost numb, "I promise that I didn't kill her, I swear it,” -before they were even out of his mouth, Harv was already regretting his next words, but somehow they slipped out anyway- “on my life,”

Cioffi chuckled, and the barrel of his gun shone in the light of the office. “That's a heavy statement in a situation like this, do you really mean it?”

“I didn't kill her,”

“Oh?” Cioffi leaned a little closer on the desk, his teeth sparkling like a wild animal's as he stared into Harv's eyes. “I've heard lots of stories about you, you're rather untrustworthy, if they are to be believed,”

Harv felt frozen in his chair as Cioffi leaned back and smiled. Who had said he was untrustworthy?

“Are you wondering who gave me that little tidbit of information?” Cioffi asked, back to smiling calmly, as if this was all some sort of show to him, “I bet I would be if I was in your shoes,”

Harv bit his lip in some sort of effort to suppress a whine or terror. (It didn't work, of course.) He did wonder, but what he really wanted to know was why Cioffi was so convinced he had killed a girl that he could hardly care less about. It wasn't that he wanted this show to keep going, and Cioffi knew that, so why would he kill the problem with it?

“Or maybe you're wondering what other evidence I have against you,” Cioffi said, his cheerful smile twisting into an awful smirk when he saw the look on Harv's face. (How had he read his mind so perfectly?) “You are, aren't you,”

It wasn't a question, but Harv answered anyway.

Or, at least his face did, anyway.

”Well,” Cioffi began, getting the same look in his eye that Aaron used to when he thought of a good way to push the plot along (if Harv had been the detective, he might have thought that was suspicious), “Everyone in this show has reason to have killed Jessica, and you are no exception,”

Harv had already known that, so he let Cioffi continue, even if the detective had paused as if waiting for a retort. ...or applause.

“However...” he continued, sounding almost offended for a split second, “in the light of recent information, there are questions to be asked about people off the stage-,” he still refused to specify what the proof could possibly have been, “-and as far as we know, you were the only member of the cast who was off of the stage during bows,”

Harv sank down slightly, thin arms now shaking just as his hands had been. He had never felt this direct of a feeling of terror before, but he didn't even try to move. He knew that if he left, he might as well have killed Jessica and every other murder in the past month.

“And before you ask about Sasha and his musicians, none of them could have done it because they were actually doing something important at the time of Jessica's collapse,” Cioffi said, sounding pleased with himself again.

Harv bristled, the wavy hair that had flopped into his eyes shaken out of place when he said up straight again. He didn't want to throw people under the bus, but if Cioffi was going to start it, there were lots of other people who had also been absent from the stage at that moment. ”What about Jenny?“ he pointed out, ”I'm not saying she did it, but she had complete control of the stage, and she wasn't there either!“

”The stage manager?“ Cioffi paused as if to think about it, but the pause was short lived, “ I don't think so, she knows too much, she would have found a different time to do if it had been her,”

Harv couldn't help but think that Cioffi sounded oddly like he was making all of this up as he went along. As if he knew much more than he was actually letting on, even more than a detective should know.

“What else then,” Harv managed, throat dry, “what makes me more likely than her?”

“Like I said,” Cioffi said, grinning, “you're untrustworthy,”

Harv stared at him. What was he talking about?

Cioffi frowned, thinking. “Though I guess I got that from someone untrustworthy as well,” he shrugged, now talking fully to himself, ”maybe they're both good suspects then,“

Again, Harv couldn't help but think that Cioffi was acting awfully calm if he really thought that Harv had killed someone. And what did he mean by someone untrustworthy? His informant had been untrustworthy? Why had he listened if he didn't trust them?

This last question ended up voice itself, much to both of their surprise.

”I don't trust you gays,“ Cioffi said, waving his hand like this was completely normal to say, ”Always planning something,“

”Excuse me?!“ Harv started, terror both masked and kicked up to eleven, ”What did you say to me?!“

”Don't bother hiding it,“ Cioffi said, looking surprised, almost as if he thought Harv was offended by being called gay instead of by what he really was reacting to, ”That I have absolute proof of,“

Harv stared at him, vision tinged red with a sudden rage. What kind of thing was that to say to someone? What did that have to do with a murder investigation? How had Cioffi even found out about that?

Cioffi smiled at him, calm, but now visibly hateful, ”You probably don't need my help figuring out who told me you were untrustworthy, then,“ he sneered, ”unless there's multiple people you've been picking from, that would check out,“

Harv's mouth fell open. His hands stopped shaking.

He couldn't believe he was hearing this.

What the fuck?

But despite the mess that his mind was quickly turning into, he had heard Cioffi's words. And he had been right on one thing, he didn't need the detective's help.

Harv felt mildly ill.

Surely Randy hadn't actually/thought Harv would have killed Jessica?

They sat in utter silence for a few seconds, but soon Cioffi's sneer had faded back into a cheerful smile. ”However,“ he said, drawing Harv's attention back to him, ”I am willing to make a deal with you, a deal to keep all of this private,“

Harv stared in numb silence, and Cioffi's smile twisted wider, almost reaching the brown mane of hair that framed his face.

“As long as you don't mess up this show, I'll let you go,”

Harv was in too much shock to register how corrupt of a statement that had been if Cioffi really believed he was the killer. If he had been in any mind to think, he would have even thought it was a little suspicious.

“And you are dismissed Mr. Fremont,”

It was a command.

And Harv listened.

He stood stiffly, swept out of his chair, and walked shakily towards the door.

It was only once he was outside of the office that he began running.

Notes:

Come ON guys. Cioffi is the PERFECT murder! He killed the person who was getting his favorite show bad reviews, and framed the person who was actually giving those reviews! The cast already doesn’t like him, so they wouldn’t question it! He killed Jenny the stage manager because she knew too much, and he was able to tell that the It’s A Business lady killed her husband because he certainly didn’t do that part! Doesn’t anyone hear me???? Also, if anyone knows what show I saw, you do NOT.

#harv fremont #frank cioffi #curtains #Canon typical disrespect of dead people #Different Killer #Police Corruption #Past Murder #Murder Investigation #Homophobia #swearing #my writing #actual post #Randy Dexter #Niki Harris #Jessica Cranshaw

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