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reddy05 · 20 days

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Windstorm Wisp (Chapter 1)

Stormterror's Lair stands today as an abandoned relic, but it wasn't always this way. At one point in time, it used to be the bustling city of old Mondstadt. Decarabian, known to be the God of Storms, was the ruler of this nation. He heavily controlled the lives of his subjects; in fact, there wasn't a single thing which he didn't control.

Imagine being a Mondstadter living under his regime. You couldn't live anywhere except the home he assigned to you. If the home didn't suit your needs that was too bad as his decision was final. Everyone had a strict schedule to follow, meaning you had to rise at a designated time and sleep at a specified hour.

Sounds awful, right? It only gets worse. Whenever going to restaurants, there would always be a guard breathing down your neck, forcing you to select the correct spoon from a myriad of options just to eat some damn soup! Cooking at home wasn't any better. You couldn't cook whatever you fancied in your own kitchen. Nope, there were strict meal assignments for each day of the week, covering breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For instance, having steak on a Monday instead of the designated Tuesday was considered an act of treason. The recipes for these meals were an absolute nightmare to decipher. Decarabian's atrocious handwriting combined with his overly elaborate instructions meant most of the meals ended up tasting either bitter or sour. Still, it was slightly better than starving to death, emphasis on slightly.

And let's talk about the job you get. Not the one you choose, but the one you get assigned. The working hours were ridiculously long, and the pay was so terrible that a single Mora had more value than the tin foil coins provided. Any place to hang out, whether publicly or privately, was governed by stringent laws leading to severe penalties for minor infractions. Taverns were by far the worst, which sucked, considering they were the only remotely enjoyable place to gather. They always had long lines,and strict capacity limits meant you might not even get inside. If you did manage to enter, guards patrolling every corner made the atmosphere oppressive. Even a simple sneeze or cough would draw suspicion, and behaving too lively could result in being kicked out of the tavern. Patrons were restricted to two drinks and both were incredibly dry.

Bards could only perform during a specific time, or none at all, and their selection of songs was limited. Creating original songs or poems, or even performing existing ones, was considered treasonous and could land you in the dungeon. Singing, humming, or whistling required a permit, and the effort to obtain one simply wasn’t worth it.

By far, the worst were the laws in etiquette. If you thought the Lawrence Clan were perfectionistic about mannerisms, Decarabian took it to a whole other level. You had to walk, talk, stand, sit, look, and express in a proper way. Even blinking and breathing must conform to strict guidelines. He wielded total authority over people's attire which was often inconsistent. You were either forced to wear clothes ranging from dull and drab to eccentric and colorful. Suffice to say, nobody was happy living in old Mondstadt but there was no point in pushing back. Decarabian's storm barrier wall kept everyone from leaving the city. It was a risk to escape without your limbs getting torn off, and even if you succeeded, the blizzards would freeze you out.

Thankfully, after many years of wishing for change, hope would emerge when the Nameless Bard and his friends appeared, encouraging the people to rise up. Together, they killed Decarabian, bringing both his tower and regime to crumble altogether. The people rejoiced as they were free at last. With the God of Storms dead, a new deity would take his place. Lord Barbatos was his name, and he would be widely known as the God of Freedom. As the age of oppressive storms and unforgiving blizzards ended, the time of freeing winds would come blowing in. Things weren't always perfect. There was a time when the aristocrats started acting much like the old tyrant, but to keep it brief, they also failed.

The new Mondstadt thrives far from its original home, on a small island in the beautiful Cider Lake area. It stands as a radiant beacon of freedom, where the relaxed citizens and proud knights bask in the blessings of an unhurried life. Children can finally go out and play with gleeful abandon. The adults were able to freely gather wherever they liked and chat about whatever they wanted. The air was filled with the aroma of freshly poured wine as people watched the wind dance through the city's windmills.

As for Decarabian's legacy, nobody shed a tear for his downfall. His very name sparked bitterness and resentment among those he controlled, even to this very day. His city stands as a pitiful wasteland, a shattered kingdom without a king. At some point, it would be claimed by a corrupted dragon named Dvalin who became known as Stormterror. Obviously, it would be renamed Stormterror's Lair. However, the dragon eventually departed, leaving the ruins desolate once more.

Today marked the 2,605th anniversary of Mondstadt's freedom from the God of Storms, known to its citizens as the Windblume Festival. There has been debate over whether the festival is a celebration of love or a commemoration of the past. What can be agreed upon is that the word 'Windblume' holds significance because of its connections to the rebellion. While everyone inside the city celebrated, one individual would go to visit the ruins. This individual was none other than Venti, well known to be the carefree bard dressed in green. He usually stayed in the city to hang with good friends and patrons alike.

For Venti, the best part of hanging out was getting flat out wasted; in fact, Venti had done just that yesterday. He got "slightly" carried away which created a "minor" incident at Angel's Share. The owner, Diluc, did not appreciate that and 'calmly asked' Venti to refrain from drinking until the grand celebration commenced. Failing to do so meant he would never be able to set foot in the Angel's Share again. Although he found it funny being given orders, especially since he was secretly the God of Freedom, Venti decided to comply anyway. This celebration held much significance to him, and he intended to stay and enjoy celebrating where it all began.

Eventually arriving at the entrance to Stormterror's Lair, he gazes upon the tower. It managed to remain standing, despite having been degraded through the passage of time. He walks across the bridge and then stops and turns to his left. He then jumps off, summoning his wind glider. After gliding down, he eventually lands and keeps walking. He made sure to avoid the Hilichurl camps that were settled nearby. Eventually, he passes through a large, ornate, yet broken down archway. It led him further down between large, jagged stones that slowly revealed a pathway. Venti continued along this path before arriving at a natural pond. Bushes and green grass started peeking through the jutting rocks. At one end of the pond, a large, bent tree stood alone. The landscape was changing with each step he took toward that tree, with cat tails near the edge of the pond and tiny meadow flowers growing around.

Venti smiles and says, "Perfect! Just the spot I've been looking for!"

He hops across several rocks before landing next to the tree. He lays down in a relaxed position, his back against the trunk of the tree. He pulls out his lyre and plays a song that was as soothing as the coming breeze, whisking him away to a time when he was but a wind wisp. The music brings on a happy memory of when he first met his good friend the Nameless Bard as it's the first time he'd heard the song. The two would forge a close friendship to where they had each other's back upon facing Decarabian together. With the aid of Gunnhildr, the Red-haired Warrior, and Amos, they emerged victorious and dismantled the storm barrier. Freedom was finally in their grasp but badly the Nameless Bard would die shortly after, creating what should've been a happy ending into one rather bittersweet.

Venti stops playing his lyre for a moment. His face wears a sad expression as he senses the grievance in his heart. He sighs. It's not fair, he thought. We should've been celebrating our hard-fought freedom together. But alas, it would not come to be. There are countless ways to honor those we hold dear, and for Venti, it was to assume the form of his deceased friend. While this might've been seen as unorthodox, and maybe downright unhealthy, it was his only way of coping with a loss so painful. That isn't to say he was never happy, nor was he always felt alone. But whenever reminiscing on the past, it felt like revisiting a wound with no way of him healing it. And so Venti shakes away these thoughts and resumes playing his lyre, though in a much more somber tune.

Hours go by, and evening comes around as the horizon above turns orange. Venti saw this as a good time for him to start heading back home. Afterall, there was that huge celebration happening at the Angel's Share, and he'd be damned to miss out on the discount drinks being served. Standing up, he stores away his lyre and leaps back across the rocks. Retracing his steps, Venti arrives back where he saw the lake adjacent to the tower.

Suddenly, he spotted a peculiar figure on the stone pathway close to the lake. It looked rather strange to him, and he hadn't recalled seeing it before. Venti leans slightly forward and narrows his eyes squinting at the figure from afar. The figure was sprawled sideways on the ground, about the same size as his lyre and draped in a dark gray cloak. On its back were oddly shaped black wings, similar to a bat. There were two sharp pieces protruding from the top of the hood, resembling sort of a thunderbolt shape, with the ends having a dark-teal color. The bottom of the cloak had pointed edges, with a teal zigzag design slightly above it.

Venti had this suspicious feeling that he knew someone who was also small, dressed in a cloak, and had wings. With arms folding together, he begins tapping the bottom of his lips as he ponders over. Then, he suddenly recalls who this figure reminds him of. Of course! It's him in his old wind wisp form. Wait, then that would also mean… As he connected the dots, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped in sheer disbelief. His shock transforms into an overwhelming sense of joy. A broad smile spread across his face, his eyes lighting up with amazement.

He takes a deep breath and yells, "IT'S AN ACTUAL WIND WISP!"

Eager as ever to befriend it, Venti sprints forward while throwing his hands in the air. He feels as the wind brushes through his braids. The wind wisp begins rotating its small form, gradually rising on its tiny feet. As it finally stands, it sways, disoriented and unaware of the bard rapidly approaching from behind. A weary moan escapes from the wind wisp just before Venti scoops it up and squeezes it in a tight, cheerful hug, causing it to let out a surprised "oof!"

Venti's eyes are shut as he excitedly says, "You have no idea how thrilled I am to meet another wind wisp! It's as if fate itself has brought us together, much like how it did with me and my friend!"

The wind wisp grumbles as it struggles to free itself from his tight embrace. Venti doesn’t notice and keeps rambling on.

"Oh, I just can't wait to take you back to Mondstadt! Imagine all the fun things we'll do together! Sipping apple cider by the lakes, pulling a few harmless pranks, and maybe playing a few songs together! Plus, you'll get to see some of my other friends. Their names are… wait, I almost forgot to tell you my name! My name is—"

"LET GO OF ME! I AM NOT A WIND WISP!" The wind wisp abruptly shouted very angrily.

Venti's smile crumbles into pieces, his eyes snapping open in bewilderment. He wasn't sure why but that voice sounded awfully familiar to him. It was surprisingly low with a grandiose tone that had a slight ghastly echo. He looks down at the wind wisps and confusingly asks, "Wait, you're… not a wind wisp?"

"OF COURSE I AM NOT! I AM KING OF GALES, LORD OF THE TOWER, AND ABOVE ALL, THE ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGN GOD OF MONDSTADT!"

Venti repeats the titles with a puzzling look, his voice rising in confusion. "King of Gales? Lord of the Tower? Absolute Sovereign God of Mondstadt!?" It takes no less than a second for Venti to realize who the wind spirit was referring to. In disbelief, he gasps, "D…Decarabian!? It can't be!"

He immediately lets go of the 'wind wisp' from his embrace and worryingly steps back. Landing on its feet, the wind wisp turns around and faces him. It had a dark, mouthless face and beady white eyes that were staring at him angrily. As Venti notices the symbol on its chest, his heart instantly sinks. It was a symbol commonly used by Mondstadt nobles; Eula herself wore one on her hip. Before that, however, it used to be associated with Decarabian during his regime. There was no room left to doubt that this was, in fact, the God of Storms, except now in the form of a wind wisp. Dear goodness… Venti really needed a drink now more than ever.

Venti cries out, "But… that's impossible! You're supposed to be dead!"

Decarabian's voice booms in response, frustration seeping through, "How dare you suppose that I would be dead! Do I look dead to you?!" He raises his head and puffs out his chest, clearly insulted. Despite his efforts to appear kingly, he looks rather silly in his wind wisp form.

"Well, technically, you are alive. No clue as to why or how, but you are... minus the fact that you look different," Venti says, his voice tinged with a mix of curiosity and concern.

"What do you mean that I look different?" Decarabian demands, being quite clueless to the obvious.

"Are you seriously blind?" Venti asks, incredulous.

"As a matter of fact, everything looks like a hideous blur, it is a terrible inconvenience!"

"Oh… That definitely makes a lot of sense. No wonder you didn't recognize me."

Decarabian responds with suspicion, "Am I supposed to know you? You do sound oddly familiar come to think of it."

"Uh, sort of?" Venti answered with a hint of nervous smile. He felt that confessing his identity to the tyrant he had offed would not be the best move. It definitely would've made things awkward, that was for sure.

"If I hadn't known any better, I'd assume you to be a giant swooping me up in their arms."

"Actually, you're—"

Before Venti could explain, he was interrupted by Decarabian, who narrowed his eyes. "Silence. My vision is starting to clear up and it requires focus. Alright… it's getting gradually better. Any moment now and I'll get a better look at you— OH, GOOD HEAVENS! YOU REALLY ARE A GIANT!" he exclaims in a terrified voice.

Decarabian anxiously staggers away from Venti, struck by the stark difference in their sizes. He glanced at his tower and felt a dread of loss finding it to be in ruins. He has no time to dwell on the destruction; worry and confusion cloud his thoughts as he continues to look around his surroundings. The remnants of his city loom larger than he remembers. The once-familiar streets stretch out, vast and intimidating. With each corner he turns, he confronts more devastation, amplifying his sense of dread.

Panicking, he exclaims, "Why is everything so gigantic?!"

"Well… I did mention you looked different, didn’t I?" Venti replies, a twinge of awkwardness fluttering in his chest.

"That explains nothing about how I’ve become small—*horrified gasp* MY BODY! WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME?" he screams, staring down at where his feet should be.

Decarabian finds himself not in the divine, regal form he’s accustomed to, but instead in this short, cloaked body. He glances behind himself and notices the wings sprouting from his back. Panic rises as he realizes his arms seem to be missing, even though he can still feel their presence.

Venti shifts uncomfortably, glancing away. "Oh, yeah, uh, that’s part of the whole looking different thing."

Unable to handle the confusion any longer, Decarabian bolts toward the edge of the stone pathway. His legs were stubbier, making him look as if he was hopping. He was too concerned to even notice. Making it to the edge, he glances down and finds his reflection in the lake. Instead of the majestic God of Storms, all he sees is a wind wisp. His eyes widen in disbelief and he gasps in shock. "No... this can't be…!" He begins to tremble as if his entire life was falling apart because of this realization. With a massive exhale, Decarabian yells out a scream that is louder than any storm he has ever conceived.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

The wind would carry the echoes of his scream through the air. It first reaches Wovlendom, where the Dominator of Wolves would awaken in anger. Then it makes its way to the city of Mondstadt, where citizens and knights paused in confusion. Passing through the mountains and into Liyue Harbor, it disrupts the residents including Iron Tongue Tian who was telling a tale about Rex Lapis in front of Zhongli. Across the crashing waves of the ocean, it arrives at the Grand Narukami Shrine in Inazuma, where a pink fox girl would chuckle assuming it was the anguish cries of a defeated deity. Even Ei, who was meditating within the Plane of Euthymia, had to stop upon hearing that faint cry. How the winds carried his scream into her realm would remain a mystery.

Meanwhile, the scream arrives at the Avidya Forest and Sumeru City. Forest rangers and scholars alike were left perplexed. Not even the wisest were able to explain what just happened. When the scream reached Fontaine, Neuvillette noticed Furina hiding under his desk, thinking the world was about to end. Coming to Natlan, where the wars rages endlessly, the scream causes even the fiercest warriors to stop and hear. Moments later, they went on resuming their battles. The scream's final destination would be the tundra lands of Snezhnaya, specifically Zapolyarny Palace. The Tsaritsa felt a running chill down her spine.

Back at Stormterror's Lair, Venti stands awkwardly, watching the scene unfold. It seems a bit dramatic to him, as if being a wind wisp is somehow a terrible fate, a notion he can't agree with. He slowly slides up next to Decarabian, chuckling nervously.

"Wow, it looks like you're handling this a lot better than I am," he replies with slight sarcasm.

The attempt to lighten the mood backfires as Decarabian's eyes flash with frustration at Venti's reflection. At first, their immense size had left him too frightened to notice the braids… until now. With a single, careful glance, all his memories flood back, his entire life unraveling in an instant. From coming into existence beneath the dark clouds descending from the heavens to being slain by the rebels who set his city ablaze. Betrayal and anger swirl within him like a powerful tempest, and it was directed on the Nameless Bard, who he believed was standing beside him. He turns to Venti and says through his gritted teeth, "It's you."

Venti's voice faltered with surprise. "Huh, you just now noticed who I am?"

"Recognize you? Don't be absurd!"

"Oh… for a moment, I thought—"

"I KNOW IT'S YOU! YOU TREACHEROUS, MURDEROUS, NAMELESS BARD!"

"Wait, you've got it all wrong! I'm not the Nameless Bard!"

"Quit trying to fool me! Those braids of yours are unmistakable!"

"My braids…?"

Venti found himself in a situation where he needed to prove his true identity to Decarabian, except he thought, what if maybe… he didn't? What if, let's say, he pretends to be the Nameless Bard and provokes Decarabian? His face lit up with a sly grin as the mischievous idea came to him. After all, what was Decarabian going to do in retaliation, call upon the storms? He can't anymore since he's a wind spirit. In fact, it dawns on Venti that the tables between them have turned, which makes him feel less worried and even more mischievous.

While the idea sounded fun, he began to have some mixed feelings about it. Yes, he did take the form of the Nameless Bard, but it wasn't as if he went around Monstadt shouting, "Hey, everyone! I'm the Nameless Bard!" Truth be told, he had never truly acted like his deceased friend. Venti was always Venti. Except for all the times that he wasn't. Don't forget, he was also Barbatos too.

Regardless, he hesitated, unsure if he wanted to impersonate someone he had once been so close to and had lost so tragically. That felt like a line he didn't want to cross. However... was Venti really going to let his conscience tell him, the God of Freedom, what to do? Venti followed no one's rules, not even his own. Besides, perhaps the Nameless Bard wouldn't have minded and might even chuckle at seeing the old ex-tyrant being messed around with, if he were here. Just this once, Venti reasons, he will indulge in the charade, intending to reveal the truth later on.

"Alright, you caught me," Venti replies nonchalantly. A playful grin spreads across his face while raising his hands in a carefree gesture of surrender. "I am indeed the Nameless Bard."

"Hah, I knew it! You are going to pay for this!" Decarabian responds triumphantly, satisfied in thinking he had been right. His satisfaction would fade quickly when he notices Venti chuckling to himself. "What's so funny?" he pressed.

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all," Venti replies innocently, though his grin widens. "It's just that I'm no longer an ordinary bard."

"And what do you mean by no longer being an ordinary bard—?"

Decarabian halts in his tracks, watching in astonishment as Venti begins to float off the ground. With a casual raise of his arm, Venti summons a swirling ball of wind that dances beneath his hand, creating a vortex of gusts around him. The force nearly pushes Decarabian off balance, forcing him to steady himself. As he does, awe and horror mingle in his expression, recognizing the display of divine power unfolding before him. His white, beady eyes widen as they meet Venti's, glowing with an ethereal teal light.

"You… you are a god now!?" Decarbian exclaims shockingly.

Venti attempts to maintain a serious demeanor as he declares, "I am Lord Barbatos, the Anemo Archon, and God of Freedom. Therefore, your tyrannical grip over my people is over, has been, and shall be forever!"

Decarabian cries out in disbelief, "Did... Did you just say you're an Archon!?"

Eventually, the swirling gales begin to dissipate, and the ball of wind in Venti's hand shrinks until it disappears. As he lowers his hand slowly, his feet touch the ground as he ceases to float. Approaching slowly, he crouches in front of Decarabian, who is frozen and speechless at this point. A sly grin spreads across Venti's lips as he responds with playful condescension.

"Indeed, I did. Sorry to break it to you, but the seven seats have already been filled. Better luck next time—oh, wait, there won't be another next time, ehe." Venti punctuates it with a cheeky wink.

Decarabian hears that, and immediately, one of his eyes begins to twitch. The news of him becoming a wind wisp, coupled with the fact the bard who caused his demise became a god, wasn't any longer shocking to him but now deeply upsetting. His breathing turns into seething gasps as he struggles to contain his mounting fury. If you were to stack the anger inside him, it would reach Teyvat's horizon, perhaps even surpassing Celestia itself.

Seconds later, he snaps, charging at Venti in a fit of rage. He screams with all his might, as if pouring every ounce of his soul into it. So hellbent on murdering the bard, he remains oblivious to how silly he looks angrily hopping forward.

Venti can't help but giggle, finding it more amusing than threatening.

With graceful ease, he seizes Decarabian by the back of his cloak. It was effortless for him, aided by how weightless the ex-tyrant had become as a wind wisp. However, it does little to quell Decarabian's wrath as he finds himself dangling from Venti's grasp. The humiliation burns deep within him, with every moment of it he despises.

He kicks and grunts in desperation, swinging himself with furious determination. Decarabian yells, "LET GO OF ME THIS INSTANCE! AS YOUR GOD, I DEMAND IT!"

Venti hears the demand and finds it utterly hysterical, especially the part at the end. Neither him nor the Nameless Bard would ever consider Decarabian as their god. Wanting to amplify the effect of his charade, Venti pretends to ponder, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Hmm, let me think…" he muses for several seconds, drawing out the moment before playfully responding, "Nope."

Decarabian takes aback by the rejection of his demand, responding in disbelief, "N... No!?"

Venti nods with a mischievous glint in his eye and replies, "Uh-huh! That's an 'N' followed by an 'O'!"

"That's preposterous! You can't simply deny my orders like that! I'm the God of Storms for crying out loud!"

"Not anymore now that you are a wind wisp. You can't tell me what to do anymore. As a matter of fact, you can't tell anyone what to do!"

Realizing what that meant, Decarabian's response was a horrified, "No…"

"Yes," Venti replies with a more upbeat tone.

"No."

"Yes!"

"No!"

"YES!"

"NO!"

Venti switches it around and says, "No."

Decarabian exclaims without thinking, "Yes!" but instantly realizes his mistake. His eyes wide with desperation to correct himself. "No wait, I meant—"

"Hahha, too slow!"

"AGH! THIS IS HORRIBLE!"

"Woah, calm down. It's not that big a deal."

Decarabian stares at Venti intensely. Though he can only express himself through his eyes, his baffled expression is unmistakable.

"Are you kidding me!? This has to be by far the worst thing to ever happen to anyone!"

Venti stops smiling, finding Decarabian's reaction now bordering on plain drama. He responds bluntly, "Uh, no. I can safely tell you that what you're going through can't be the worst. I've known some who've gone through much worse."

(Honorable mentions include Bennett, QiQi, Xiao, Rosaria, Shenhe, Collei, Nahida, Furina, and of course, everyone from Khanrei'ah.)

"But this certainly is the worst thing to happen to me! I had meticulously outlined countless ambitions for my reign as Archon."

"Such as...?"

"Such as commanding everyone to reconstruct my tower to even greater heights! Ordering for there to be golden statues of myself in every major plaza across Mondstadt! Mandating that every meal prepared in the land must be tasted by me first, to ensure only the finest delicacies reach my palate. Oh, and decree that every citizen was to address me with a title of supreme reverence at all times! As for the exact title, um... well, I had two heavily contested options, which I devised myself, naturally. One being the Supreme Archon of the Great Almighty Mondstadt or the Heavenly Divine God Windgales King of Mondstadt!"

Decarabian sounded exceedingly proud of himself, but Venti could only stare back with the most deadpan and unenthused expression imaginable. With unimpressed sarcasm, he says, "Wow… That all sounds wonderful and totally not horrible. I'm sure the people of Mondstadt would have loved it and definitely not hate you even more."

"But then you came along with your rebellion and ruined everything! I'll never get that chance again, all because I've been dead for... wait, how long has it been?"

"Good question. It's been… hm, let me think… ah, about two thousand and six hundred years."

Venti didn't actually need to ponder how much time had passed; he was simply indulging in the amusement of it all. Besides, watching Decarabian visibly tremble in complete frustration, sputtering unintelligible words as if he were choking on them, only added to the entertainment.

"Yeah, you've been dead for quite a while," Venti says while chuckling.

"Thanks to you, you filthy traitor!" Decarabian shoots back with a guttural hiss. "Ugh, I wish to spit at your face, it ought to be what you deserve!"

Tempted though he was, he refrained, stubbornly clinging to the belief that he was still a god of sorts and that it would only further degrade his status. Venti pretends to be hurt by this statement, and replies, "Hey, now that isn't any way to talk to your Archon now, is it?"

"Don't even dare insinuate that you're somehow my Archon! I was supposed to be the one ruling Mondstadt, not you!"

"Oh, come on, I did a decent job as Archon. Besides, I never truly ruled the nation, and I think that decision has allowed Mondstadt to flourish into the wonderful and prosperous nation it is today!" Venti exclaims happily, raising his other hand joyfully to the sky.

"Wonderful!? Prosperous!?" Decarabian screams out in disbelief. He kicks his leg to gesture towards his crumbled city. "Does this look wonderful and prosperous to you?!"

The two watch together in silence as a piece of the main bridge falls off and plunges into the lake. Water splashes high into the air, creating a momentary spectacle before settling into silence once more.

"Oh, this is no longer Mondstadt. We left to build a new one," Venti explains.

"A… A new one? Why didn't you just stay in my city?"

"After your death, the city was pretty much destroyed."

"And no one thought to rebuild it?"

"Nope."

"Gah! This is all your fault!"

"How can it be my fault when it was you who ruled as a tyrant in the first place?"

"A tyrant!? I was never a tyrant!"

Venti asserts with confidence, "Oh, you most definitely were a tyrant. I had assumed you would figure that out when we started rebelling."

"The only thing I figured out was how ungrateful my subjects had become!"

Venti's amusement then vanishes. He stares with a mix of astonishment and disgust to the fact Decarabian learned nothing from being overthrown, revealing pure ignorance. No, this was not something Venti was going to let slide, and he decided to give the ex-tyrant a much-needed reality check.

"Do you seriously think any of us were grateful for being trapped inside your storm barrier? We suffered every day, imprisoned by you!" Venti states, getting slightly more serious.

Decarabian angrily retorts, "Without my storm barrier, Andrius' blizzards would've frozen everyone to death! I saved you all from a far worse fate!"

"The only reason those blizzards plagued us was because of your feud with Andrius. Did you ever think of resolving it with him, for the sake of your people?"

"Why would I ever want to resolve anything with him? He's an animal, and is not worth my time!"

"Exactly. You were perfectly comfortable keeping us all imprisoned in your city instead of sorting things out."

"Hey, that’s not fair! I did what I had to do!"

"The way you treated us was unfair."

"How?! I provided homes for you all to live comfortably! I rid the vile songs that sought to poison your minds! I helped you all stay organized and provided you roles so you would never be confused in life! I dedicated my life as your ruler with love in mind! And yet, all that I received in the end was betrayal!"

Decarabian spit out the word 'betrayal' like a deadly snake shooting out the venom. Venti's expression sharpens as he begins his next retort.

"No. You forced us into homes that we never wanted to live in. You outlawed those songs not to protect our minds, but to preserve your control over us. You did not love us. You saw us only as subjects to rule, and nothing more. You never cared to understand our feelings, our needs, our desires. You made our lives hard and miserable. You were a terrible deity, a terrible king, and a terrible person who only thought for themselves. For that, you received what you deserved in the end."

This was perhaps the most serious Venti had ever been. His expression, voice, and demeanor were firm and unforgiving. It had none of that playful happiness he was well known for. Despite feeling a bit upset, he remained actually calm. In fact, it was a moment of catharsis for him, as he finally expressed what everyone alive long ago had felt about the tyrant, putting their grievances to rest.

In full denial, Decarabian shouts angrily at Venti. "None of what you said was true! I was a good ruler, you hear me?! A good ruler!"

Shaking his head, Venti then replies, "You weren't, and that is the truth."

"Truth!? That is nothing but a lie to justify your treachery! The real truth is you wanted to become the archon yourself, so you turned everyone against me and stole my throne! And worse, you’ve brought me back from the dead just to curse me as nothing more than a wind wisp!"

Venti looks with disappointment at Decarabian's vehement refusal to accept the truth. The tyrant was far more stubborn than anticipated. Yet, when hearing the so-called "real truth," he found it actually quite hilarious for how false it was. He couldn't help but chuckle softly, a hint of amusement breaking through his previously serious demeanor. A mischievous twinkle sparkles in Venti's eyes.

"Oh, so that’s your grand theory, hm? Quite an elaborate coping mechanism, but none of it is true! I never intended to take your throne, nor did I ever curse you. You were like this when I found you."

Decarabian’s face twists in fear. “Wait… then how did I become a wind wisp in the first place?!"

"That I don't know."

"But there has to be at least a way for you to reverse this… right?”

"As if you're insinuating that I would." Venti's lips curl into a sly smile, and he finishes with a cheeky wink. "Ehe."

The realization dawns on Decarabian, and his eyes widen with dread. "But I can't stay as a wind wisp!"

"Hate to break it to you," Venti says, his tone mockingly sympathetic, "but you probably are going to be one for the rest of your life. Which is great because that means no more godhood for you! Ehe!"

Decarabian's irritation flares into anger. "If you say 'Ehe' one more time, I—"

"Ehe." Venti cuts him off, his grin widening.

Decarabian trembles with frustration before erupting into a wild tantrum. He screams incoherently, his body thrashing violently, tiny legs kicking out in the air. He swings around violently in Venti's grasp, his eyes a toxic blend of envy and wrath. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!" he screams repeatedly, each utterance a chant of pure resentment. He wishes to tear out every braided strand of Venti's pigtails with brute force. Yet, restrained by his new form, he can do nothing but seethe impotently. His final exclamation is a primal scream.

"BY THE STORMS I HATE YOU!"

Nearly lightheaded, Decarabian droops his head down. Not dead but very exhausted, having spent most of his anger. Venti watches, finding the spectacle both amusing and excessively dramatic.

He comments, "You know, throwing a temper tantrum like a five-year-old isn't going to get you back your godhood privileges."

Decarabian lifts his head slightly, his eyes glaring with disdain, and mutters, "You think that's the only reason I'm angry? I could've at least been a human. That's less humiliating than being a pathetic wind wisp."

"If you ask me, being a wind wisp isn't all that bad," Venti replies, clearly biased.

"Hmph. Did that little wind wisp of yours give you that opinion?"

He pauses, remembering that Decarabian still believes he’s the Nameless Bard. "Uh… well…"

"Thought so. Now that I think about it, where is he anyway?"

Venti realizes he hadn’t planned this far into his ‘little’ lie and starts to wonder when he should come clean. But then, he quickly dismisses the thought, deciding instead to devise a new way to playfully mess with Decarabian.

"I mean, we can go find him if you like. I bet he'd be thrilled to make a new wind wisp friend!" Venti said with a mischievous grin.

Decarabian's eyes widened in horror at the proposal. "I'd rather not! The only solace I've had today is knowing that only you ascended to godhood and not him."

That, by far, was the funniest thing Venti had heard today. In fact, he starts bursting out in hysterical laughter, leaving Decarabian thoroughly confused. Once he calms down, he says, "You’re quite funny, even if you don’t realize it."

"I’m serious."

"Regardless," Venti continues, glancing at the moon, "it’s getting quite late. I have to get going, but first… what to do with you… hm…"

"You're going to kill me again, aren’t you?" Decarabian sighs deeply. "Very well…"

Venti looks at him, surprised by how calm and resigned Decarabian sounds.

"Are… are you surrendering?" he asks, genuinely curious.

"Not exactly. But in this pitiful form, there’s not much I can do anyway. So if you’re really planning to kill me again, just get it over with." Decarabian hangs his head over, waiting for his fate to be determined.

Venti pauses, weighing his next move with uncertainty. A voice emerges from the darkest recesses of his mind. It brings with it the bitter taste of the past. Kill him! Kill him right now!

But he doesn't. His eyes are clouded with hesitation. He apprehensively mutters to himself, "I… I don't know." He does so quietly so Decarabian doesn't notice.

The voice persists, hammering on him relentlessly. Why are you hesitating? You've done this before, surely you can do it again. It's not like anyone will know, and even if they did, they would understand. Think about everyone who died fighting to rid the world of this tyrant. If you let him live, all their sacrifices, including your bard friend’s, will be for nothing. Do it now!

But he couldn't. The past, with all its rage and sorrow, remained just that—the past. Sure, back then, Decarabian's death was probably necessary in order to end the storms barricading everyone to be free. That was, of course, during a rather tumultuous time. But in the present, with the storms long gone, Venti couldn't help but question whether taking such drastic measures was still justified. Besides, as a former wind wisp himself, it felt wrong of him to go and kill another wind wisp, no matter who it was.

Venti then remembers the Lawrence Clan being exiled when their tyrannical regime ended. Perhaps, he can do the same with Decarabian. Finding a location wouldn't be an issue, but could he really trust the ex-tyrant to behave in exile? And what if somebody like the Abyss Order found him and persuaded him with revenge? Venti did not want another Dvalin situation, and so decided to rule out banishment. With execution and exile out of the question, he ponders his next move.

Suddenly, Venti gets an audacious idea, and finds himself amused by that idea. Telling Decarabian that he was a tyrant was ineffective, so perhaps it was better to enlighten him on the values of freedom. Perhaps, by doing this, he could gradually get him to understand the error of his ways. Venti was familiar with toppling tyrants, but reshaping one sounded like a new venture that was too tempting to pass up.

With a mischievous glint in his eyes, Venti declares, "Alright, I've officially made a decision! I'm going teach you all about freedom!"

Decarabian looks up, completely appalled. "You? Teaching me about freedom? Ugh, such audacity! Freedom is nothing but blasphemy, where humans act unruly towards their gods and overthrow them whenever they like!"

Venti furrows his brow, countering, "I believe you're confusing freedom with rebellion."

"Whatever. Same thing."

"You see, this is exactly why you need a lesson on freedom. You don't grasp its meaning or why we fought so hard for it. Besides, you can learn a lot from me."

"What could I possibly learn from you?"

"Like how to be a happy, caring wind wisp," Venti answers with an optimistic smile.

"What good will that do for me?"

"You'll get to learn how to fly, for starters."

"Learning to fly? Wow, that definitely beats controlling the storms," Decarabian responds with frustration and sarcasm.

Venti ignores the sarcasm and says, "It sure does, and I can help get you started."

"How exactly are you going to—"

Without warning, Venti hurls Decarabian high into the air, sending him soaring towards the clouds. As expected, Decarabian panics and screams at the top of his lungs. Time begins to slow as he reaches the apex, suspended in the air for a few seconds. During which he glances down and becomes shocked at how unrecognizable the landscape is. He also spots the new Mondstadt, situated on an island encircled by a vast lake. It was fortified by stone-brick walls, and inside were timber-framed houses along with windmills turning slowly by the breeze. He has hardly any time to react, as he quickly begins plummeting down at an alarming rate.

Decarabian screams, "I DON'T WANT TO DIE AGAIN!"

He then hears Venti holler out, "Just flap your wings or something!"

Oh that was right, he did have wings. Decarabian had nearly forgotten until now. Looking over to see his wings, he tries figuring out exactly what to do next. He needed to hurry as time was running out. He flaps his wings frantically, but it was off rhythm. He tries again and again, and each attempt fails, causing his hope to gradually dwindle. The ground looms ever closer, a mere few feet away. He braces himself, eyes clenched shut, ready to meet his end again.

…But it never comes.

Decarabian slowly opens one eye, then the other, and realizes that he's hovering mere inches away from the stone floor. The steady rhythm of his wings and its flapping sounds proved he was not dead. He maneuvers his body to a more stable position, and finds Venti standing in front him, clapping and smiling with approval. In an explosive burst of speed, Decarabian flies towards Venti, who flinches by the sudden approach. Despite being a wind wisp, he was looking surprisingly intimidating.

Venti raises his hands up and says defensively, "Woah relax, I did you a favor!"

Decarabian's voice erupts, sharp with disbelief. "Is that what you call a favor!? Hurtling me to the sky and then letting me fall to my death!?"

"Oh, quit being dramatic. I was only trying to teach you how to fly and as I expected, you succeeded. Even if you didn't, the worst you would receive is a slight headache. You may not know this but wind wisps are a lot tougher than they look. Believe me, I’ve survived worse."

"How could learning to fly as a god compared to as a wind wisp be any similar?" asked Decarabian, staring at him with confusion.

Venti's smirk falters as he realizes it's best to drop his facade and come clean. He closes his eyes, mulling over how to confess. It takes him a few seconds before eventually letting out a resigned sigh.

"Look, there is something I need to tell you, I'm—" As he opens his eyes again, he trails off since Decarabian was no longer in front of him.

Confused, Venti looks around and asks, "Decarabian, where did you go?"

“Right here, thou wretch!”

The voice echoes from his right, and as Venti turns to look, he is smacked in the face by Decarabian, who flies directly at him. Then, a resounding smack reverberates through the ruins as Venti cries out in anguish. He put his hand on his hot injured cheek and crouched to avoid further injury. He realizes Decarabian is floating still, with eyes burning with anger.

"What was that for… actually, considering our history together, I should know by now."

"Consider that to be a preview of the vengeance I plan to exact upon you and your allies!"

"We already have someone in Mondstadt who's famous for wanting to claim vengeance, and we don't need another one. Can't we instead resolve things?"

"As sworn enemies, that is impossible! I shall be going to reclaim my rightful rule over Mondstadt and not even this pathetic new form of mine will hold me back!"

"Um, I don't believe you are thinking this through. There's no way for you to take over without the Knights getting… and he's gone before I could finish my sentence."

Decarabian soars up to the bridge and makes his way out of the lair. Venti groans, knowing what was about to ensue. It would be a ridiculous chase since wind wisps were undoubtedly swift. But from his own experiences, Venti knew that sustained high-speed flight would eventually wear the wisp down. Therefore, with a sense of urgency, he wasted no time in running after Decarabian.

Venti's mind raced, thinking how the day had gone by fast and how it had taken such a drastic turn for the worse. His concern wasn't so much for Decarabian's plan itself, but rather the severe consequences that would occur if he fell into the Abyss Order's clutches. But Venti failed to consider that someone else had a keen interest in the former God of Storms.

To be continued…

#genshin fanfic #genshin venti #genshin impact #decarabian

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mysticwizardglitter · 2 months

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Adventure Activities to Try in Malaysia

Malaysia, a Southeast Asian gem, offers an abundance of adventure activities that cater to thrill-seekers and nature enthusiasts alike. If you're looking for things to do in Malaysia, especially there are many adventure activities in Malaysia to do From dense rain forests and towering mountains to pristine beaches and vibrant underwater worlds, Malaysia's diverse landscapes provide the perfect backdrop for an array of exciting adventures, here’s a guide to some of the top experiences you should try.

1. Jungle Trekking in Taman Negara

Taman Negara, Malaysia's premier national park, is a haven for jungle trekking. This ancient rainforest, estimated to be over 130 million years old, offers a variety of trails for all levels of trekkers. One of the most popular treks is the journey to Bukit Teresek, which provides stunning panoramic views of the forest canopy. For the more adventurous, a multi-day trek to Gunung Tahan, the highest peak in Peninsular Malaysia, is a challenging yet rewarding experience. Along the way, trekkers can encounter diverse wildlife, including tapirs, deer, and a myriad of bird species.

2. White Water Rafting in Kuala Kubu Bharu

For those seeking an adrenaline rush, white water rafting in Kuala Kubu Bharu is a must-try. Located just a couple of hours from Kuala Lumpur, this picturesque town is home to the Selangor River, which offers thrilling rapids suitable for both beginners and experienced rafters. The 7km rafting journey takes you through lush greenery and scenic landscapes, with rapids ranging from Grade I to III. It's an exhilarating way to experience Malaysia's natural beauty while getting your heart pumping.

3. Scuba Diving in Sipadan Island

Sipadan Island, located off the east coast of Sabah, is renowned as one of the world's best scuba diving destinations. The island's rich marine biodiversity and crystal-clear waters attract divers from around the globe. Diving at Sipadan offers encounters with an array of marine life, including sea turtles, reef sharks, barracudas, and colorful coral gardens. The iconic Barracuda Point is a dive site not to be missed, where divers can witness the mesmerizing sight of thousands of swirling barracudas. With its vibrant underwater world, Sipadan promises an unforgettable diving experience.

4. Paragliding in Bukit Jugra

For a bird's-eye view of Malaysia's stunning landscapes, try paragliding in Bukit Jugra. Located in Selangor, Bukit Jugra offers an excellent launch site for paragliders, with breathtaking views of the Straits of Malacca and the surrounding countryside. Whether you're a seasoned paraglider or a first-timer, tandem flights with experienced instructors are available, allowing you to soar through the skies and experience the thrill of flying. The gentle thermals and favorable wind conditions make Bukit Jugra a popular spot for this exhilarating activity.

5. Caving in Mulu National Park

Mulu National Park in Sarawak is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its impressive limestone cave systems. Caving enthusiasts can explore some of the world's largest and most spectacular caves here. The Sarawak Chamber, for instance, is the largest cave chamber in the world by area. Deer Cave, with its enormous entrance and bat exodus at dusk, is another highlight. Guided caving tours are available, ranging from easy walks to challenging spelunking adventures. The park's underground wonders, combined with its lush rainforest and unique flora and fauna, make it a caving paradise.

6. Rock Climbing in Batu Caves

Batu Caves, just north of Kuala Lumpur, is famous for its Hindu temple and limestone formations. It also offers fantastic rock climbing opportunities. With over 160 climbing routes, ranging from beginner-friendly to highly technical, Batu Caves caters to climbers of all skill levels. The routes take you up steep limestone cliffs, providing stunning views of the surrounding area. Climbing at Batu Caves is a unique experience, combining the thrill of the sport with the cultural and natural beauty of the site.

Conclusion

Malaysia's diverse landscapes and rich natural beauty provide endless opportunities for adventure. Whether you're trekking through ancient rain forests, diving into vibrant underwater worlds, or soaring through the skies, Malaysia offers thrilling experiences for every type of adventurer. So, pack your bags, put on your adventure gear, and get ready to explore the incredible adventures that await in Malaysia.

#MalaysiaAdventure #ThingsToDoInMalaysia #AdventureActivitiesInMalaysia #MalaysiaTravel #ExploreMalaysia #TravelMalaysia #VisitMalaysia

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lsundarinfo · 9 months

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UAE: A Comprehensive Guide to Prepare, Explore, and Experience the Beauty of the United Arab Emirates

Visiting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) promises an unforgettable experience filled with rich cultural encounters, stunning landscapes, and modern marvels. Before embarking on your journey, thorough preparation is essential to ensure a smooth and enjoyable trip.

Firstly, securing a visa is crucial for entry into the UAE. Depending on your nationality, the visa requirements may vary. It's advisable to check the official website of the UAE government or consult with the nearest embassy to determine the necessary documents and application procedures. Commonly required documents include a valid passport, proof of accommodation, and a return ticket.

The UAE boasts iconic cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, known for their towering skyscrapers, luxurious shopping, and vibrant nightlife. Exploring small towns and the countryside unveils a different facet of the country. Al Ain, for instance, offers a glimpse into traditional Emirati culture with its historic forts, bustling souks, and the picturesque Al Ain Oasis.

For those seeking adventure in the mountains, the Hajar Mountains provide a breathtaking backdrop for outdoor enthusiasts. Preparing for a biking long ride or mountain biking in these terrains requires proper gear, including sturdy bikes, helmets, and appropriate clothing. Whether you opt for a personal vehicle or public transport depends on your preferences. Public transport is efficient, but having a personal vehicle provides more flexibility, especially for exploring off-the-beaten-path destinations.

When it comes to accommodation, budget-conscious travelers can explore options like Couchsurfing or affordable hotels. Booking in advance is recommended to secure the best rates. Renting a vehicle or a bike as a tourist is straightforward in the UAE. Numerous rental agencies cater to tourists, offering a range of vehicles from cars to bikes. Familiarizing yourself with local traffic rules is essential, as the UAE has strict regulations to ensure safety on the roads.

For those seeking outdoor activities, the UAE offers excellent opportunities for trekking and camping. Popular trails like the Hatta Mountain Trail provide stunning views and a chance to connect with nature. Solo camping requires careful planning, including obtaining necessary permits and ensuring you have all essential camping equipment.

If you plan to explore the UAE by driving, obtaining an International Driving Permit UAE (IDP) online is a straightforward process. Ensure you have all the required documents, including a valid driving license from your home country, to facilitate the application process.

In conclusion, a trip to the UAE is a harmonious blend of modernity and tradition, with a myriad of experiences awaiting the adventurous traveler. Thorough preparation, adherence to local regulations, and an open mind are key to making the most of your visit to this captivating destination.

#International Driving Permit UAE

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vbartilucci · 2 years

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Dear Republicans:

You didn’t object when you heard Donald Trump say he likes to grab women “by the pussy.”

You didn’t object when he kicked the American media out of the Oval Office and handed two Russian spies classified data entrusted to him by one of our allies. . You didn’t object when he likened our intelligence community to “Nazis.” . You didn’t object when he stood before the Memorial Wall of Stars at Langley and told lie after lie about himself and the election. . You didn’t object while at the Helsinki Summit, he met behind closed doors with the Russian President. . You didn’t object to him banning the American Press from covering that meeting. . You didn’t object when he emerged from that meeting and sided with the Russian President over the findings of our own intelligence community. . You didn’t object when the Trump campaign admitted to accepting Russian offers to help him defeat SecState Clinton. . You didn’t object when he stood before the cameras and said; “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find 30k e-mails that are missing.” . You didn’t object when the Russians responded that VERY DAY with stolen emails. . You didn’t object when it was confirmed that the basis for the Trump Tower meeting was a total fabrication. That it had nothing to do with adopting Russian children, and everything to do with swinging the election. . You didn’t object when it was revealed that Trump himself floated the cover story of adoptions from Russia. . You didn’t object when it was confirmed that his campaign staff had met with Russian agents over 150 times, after claiming they had never met with them at all. . You didn’t object when the Trump campaign declined to inform the FBI about the Russian advances. . You didn’t object when Trump’s campaign manager gave internal data on four key battleground states to agents working for Putin. . You sure as hell didn’t object when those very same four battleground states miraculously shifted towards Trump on Election Day. . You didn’t object when Trump kicked his Attorney General out of the room and asked the FBI Director to let his National Security Advisor off the hook for lying about his contacts with Russian agents. . You didn’t object when Trump fired that FBI Director for declining to let Flynn off the hook. . You didn’t object when Special Counsel Robert Mueller said he couldn’t establish a conspiracy, largely because so many of Trump’s staffers lied during their interviews, and because Trump himself refused to submit to a live interview. . You didn’t object when Special Counsel Mueller cited no fewer than ten instances of the president himself obstructing justice in his report: an impeachable offense. . You didn’t object when it was revealed he cheated on his wife with a porn star. . You didn’t object when it was revealed that he paid off that porn star to the tune of $130,000.00 to buy her silence just prior to the election, an illegal attempt to hide relevant facts from the electorate. . You didn’t object when he withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA, which was the first and ONLY treaty that’s successfully kept Iranian nuclear ambitions in check. . You didn’t object when he pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords. . You didn’t object when he scuttled the Obama administration’s clean air and water standards. . You didn’t object when he opened up vast tracts of protected wilderness to his friends in the oil and mining industries. . You didn’t object to the myriad cases of violations of the emoluments clause. . You didn’t object when he mocked a disabled man at one of his rallies. . You didn’t object to the recently-discovered military stopovers at Trump properties in Scotland. . You didn’t object when after mass shooting after mass shooting, he wouldn’t lift a finger to protect even little school children from gun violence. . You didn’t object when he started putting tariffs on everyone from China to Turkey, which have undeniably hurt millions of people around the world and shaken the stock markets. . You didn’t object when he gave the corporate farming industry $26B in compensation for their losses due to his tariffs. . You didn’t object when he channeled $3.6B in Pentagon appropriations to his wall on the Mexican border. . You didn’t object when Trump called out against “Islamic terrorism” on multiple occasions, but never once for terrorism by white nationalists. . You didn’t object when he forcibly separated little children from their parents. . You didn’t object when he confined those children to chain-link paddocks. . You didn’t object when a whistleblower revealed the president had on multiple occasions said things that potentially undermined our nation’s safety and security. . You didn’t object when the Trump Organization misappropriated $500,000 from a kids’ cancer charity and funneled the money directly to groups that were connected to Trump’s adult children. . You didn’t object when he got caught trying to blackmail the president of Ukraine into smearing a likely Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, in an elaborate extortion scheme that undermined the national security of both the United States and Ukraine. . You didn’t object when his Chief of Staff admitted to it, and said “Get over it. We do that all the time.” . You didn’t object when his personal lawyer, his personal consultant, and his army of sycophants at Fox News have repeatedly and consistently lied about ALL of the above for three excruciatingly long years. . So here’s my question for you: What about any of the above do you believe entitles you to the right to call yourselves “patriots?” In anything other than today’s bizarro-world, you wouldn’t even make the rank of American. When this nightmare ends, we’ll remind you of just how patriotic you were during these days.

via Bruce Lindner on FB

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imagine-darksiders · 3 years

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Old-Timer

Chapter 1 - Out of time.

So, this was absolutely inspired by the anon who mentioned a young Eideard. I got to thinking, how can I send Reader back in time and meet this guy? Then it hit me. Phasewalker.

Summary: To keep you safe, Death would tear a hole through the fabric of time and space. Too bad he doesn’t know how to tear that same hole open to get you back....

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

Your eyes fly open alongside an accompanying gasp that tears out of your throat as you lurch upright, pulled from the threads of unconsciousness by some, unseen force.

Bewilderment is what you wake to first, and you spend the first few seconds of awareness jerking your head in every direction, seeking out clues as to where you are, and how in the world you'd even arrived here. Stone surrounds you, from the ceiling overhead to the ground below, even the four walls of the shadowy chamber you find yourself sprawled in are cut from the same, hardened rock.

Gulping down breaths of stale, musty air, you squint hard at the room around you, lit by nothing but a single streak of sunlight that filters in lazily through a wide entrance, beyond which, you can hear the distant whistle of birdsong and rustling leaves. Perplexed, you place a hand on your head and try to think, murmuring aloud, “How the hell... Where am I?”

The memory doesn't hit you all at once. Rather, it bleeds into frame from the very back of your mind, like you're attempting to piece together the segments of a vivid dream.

You were in the Forge Lands.... Yes... More specifically, you'd recently been travelling through Baneswood with -

“Death!” you suddenly whisper out loud, your heart bucking into overdrive once you realise that your grim and mordacious companion is definitely not in the room with you.

The room...

You've... been here. At least, you think you have.

Furrowing your brow, you try to focus.

It would not do to panic now, not least because Death would probably rebuke you for it. The Horseman always maintains that it won't be demons or corrupted constructs that kill you in the end. It'll be your tendency to lose yourself in the anxieties your mind kindly presents to you whenever something bad happens.

'Deep breaths,' you tell yourself, sucking in a lungful of air through your nose and counting backwards from four. As the breath steadily whooshes out of you again, you begin glancing around the room as though it might hold some clue that could answer the jumbled myriad of questions currently floating around inside your head.

Strangely enough, it does.

The whole chamber looks... too familiar – almost an exact replica of the room you last recall being in with Death. Although, for as familiar as it is, there is definitively something off about it as well. The dimensions and stonework might be the same, and yet... where are the holes in the roof? Why isn't the ground coated in a layer of thick dust, and how is it that the walls are suddenly barren of plant life and moss? You would have put money on there being a gaping hole in the ceiling, however when you tip your head back and look up, all you find is a solid, stone canopy standing proudly above you, looking for all the world as though it’s almost newly built.

Something definitely isn't right. Perhaps this isn't the same chamber after all.

Another memory suddenly prods at your mind before it surfaces like the elusive dorsal fin of a great whale, one that you turn all of your attention onto, afraid that it might slip below the waves of amnesia if you look away.

Death had been with you, that much is indisputable. But he'd been... agitated. You remember a pursuit, half a dozen constructs had corralled you both into one of the old, abandoned ruins that lay deep inside Baneswood.

You distinctly recall that the Horseman's gauntlet pulsed and hummed with green light the moment he shoved you behind him and past the threshold. Staggering back, you'd stumbled over an elevated platform at the centre of the room and landed on your rear, blurting out a yelp of shock before you could swallow it down again. Death had instinctively whipped about at the sound to face you and assess the cause of the sudden cry. It was in that precise moment that one of the constructs chose to lurch forwards and wrap its bulky limbs around the Horseman, pinning his arms against his sides.

You had watched, horrified as Death struggled in the stone embrace. Then, a shadow fell across you and to your terror, you looked up to find one of the constructs looming menacingly above you. It had obviously decided to leave its brethren to tangle with the raging Nephilim whilst it opted to pursue a less resilient quarry. The head sitting upon its massive shoulders was utterly devoid of any features, which had unsettled you greatly. No eyes, no nose, no mouth... Nothing but a blank slab of stone that stared down at you while you sat prone on a raised dais in front of it.

The construct twitched its head to one side and you have a memory of seeing Death rip his arm free of his assailant's grasp and stretch it out towards you, the briefest glimpse of fear flashing across his golden eyes. He was being set upon by the remain four monstrosities, all of whom circled like hungry sharks before they closed in on him, their various implements of destruction poised to strike

God... What had happened after that?

You think you might have screamed the Horseman's name, totally oblivious to the construct towering over you with its first cocked back, ready to pitch it forwards to decimate you in a single blow.

You'd tried to stand, but the surface below you was so slippery, more akin to glass than stone, and it had infuriated you when one foot slid out from underneath you and caused you to simply crash back onto your rump with a jarring impact that had sent your teeth clacking noisily inside your skull.

With blood rushing in your ears, you'd stared desperately past the construct and caught a brief glimpse of Death's burning, orange eyes. For the tiniest sliver of an instant, you could have sworn he looked afraid – ‘ironic’, you thought, given that he seemed to constantly admonish you for letting your fear show in front of your enemies.

Seeing his alarm only sent your stomach plummeting down into your shoes, but before you could begin to process the sudden flash of stark, protective fury that crossed his gaze like a lightening bolt...

'Thwump!'

Everything was suddenly illuminated by green light, the source of which emanated from a ball of spinning magic that hurtled through the gathered constructs and flew towards you at breakneck speed, faster than your eyes could even track it. In a blink, the ball of energy hit the ground directly between your legs and you barely had time to be relieved that it hadn't hit you before you were promptly and inexplicably falling.

The last thing you saw as you sank below the solid ground you'd once been sitting on was the construct's face, completely featureless, yet somehow managing to convey a look of total surprise.

Then, just as abruptly as you fell, you started to rise. Your ascent lasted for less than a second before you felt yourself snatched up by the unmistakable hand of gravity once more.

In a disorienting moment of utter chaos, you slammed back down to earth and there was an instance of blinding pain as your head cracked against the smooth surface below you.

And after that... only darkness.

--------

You come back into yourself with a jolt and lift your hand to touch gingerly at the back of your head, wincing when even the barest touch of your fingers brings forth a searing bolt that shoots down the base of your skull. It's only a minor relief to pull your hand away and find it clean of any blood.

Small miracles, and all that.

Emitting a soft huff, you begin to push yourself up and onto your feet, only to end up sprawled flat on your back again moments later after your shoe slides out from underneath you with an almost deafening squeak.

Exasperated, you scowl up at the ceiling for a few seconds before you sit up and twist yourself about to inspect the ground below you.

At a glance, you're laying in the middle of a raised, circular dais. Its surface is made of a polished material, more akin to glass than stone. One of your hands brushes distractedly over strange patterns that form the shape of concentric circles, each emitting a soft, blue light, and skimming around the very edge of the dais are sigils and glyphs, written in a language you can neither read, write, nor speak. Though whilst you might not recognise what they say, you can recognise what they entail.

You've seen them before, after all, dotted about the walls and ceilings and floors in most of the realms you've already visited alongside Death. They're the typical markings of portal.

The revelation brings with it the awful, sinking feeling of dread.

You're sitting slap-bang in the centre of a portal.

Shaking hands card slowly through your hair as your breathing picks up and you swallow hard, finally slotting the final puzzle piece into place.

“Death's phasewalker...” you murmur aloud.

There have only been a handful of times when you've witnessed the Horseman use the artefact that he wears around his wrist like the world's most versatile watch. With it, you've seen him tear holes in space and time, as though he's merely opening a door from one room to the next. Only these doors tend to lead you much further astray than any regular door ever has. It's one thing to use Vulgrim's Serpent holes to travel to another realm, but it’s something else entirely to step through a hole created by the Phasewalker and fall out into a whole different time.

Even after experiencing a few temporal distortions, you still can't say you're a big fan of it in practice.

Rolling yourself sideways off the platform and finally standing up on wobbly legs, you glance around at the chamber, realising now why it looks so like the one you'd just been in. It is the same chamber – only you're standing in it at a different time in history. The past, judging by the lack of weathering on the stone.

Likely, Death had, in a moment of chaos, sought to remove you from danger in any way he could.

The flash of green light, the ball of energy and the sudden sensation of falling...

He'd... saved you...

By sending you through a portal to the past.

You're not sure whether to laugh at his genius or cry at his short-sightedness.

Certainly, you're out of immediate danger, but the Forge Lands is far from safe at any point in time, and while you may not be crushed by a construct, there are other threats lurking amongst the lush, green trees and crumbling ruins.

Still, it's of some comfort that you're still standing, at least. Peering around into the shadowy corners of the chamber, you're fairly confident that there are no nasty surprises lying in wait, ready to pounce at you at any moment, though you're still hesitant to let your guard down. Swallowing down the rising wave of fear, you park yourself up against the wall furthest from the entrance and hunker down, returning your gaze to the portal you'd fallen through. If Death had sent you here, then he must know how to bring you back. All you need to do is sit and wait for him to finish off those constructs, reopen the portal and pull you back through.

And if you know the Horseman, which you like to think you do by now, he'll be stepping through that portal at any moment. So, you sit, trying very hard not to count the seconds flying by as if you might trick yourself into believing that less time has passed than really has. Subsequently, you keep your drooping eyes fixed on the portal and not the sunbeam that moves steadily across the chamber's entrance. You don't want to be reminded quite so starkly that it has been hours, and still Death has yet to emerge.

“Any time now, pal,” you mutter, tapping your heel anxiously against the stone below you.

Far beyond the entrance, something monstrous lets out a distant and melancholy howl, drawing your attention away from the portal, and it only takes seconds for the colour to drain from your face upon noticing that the outside world has grown startlingly darker.

By the looks of the long shadows cast by Banewood's trees you'd wager that sunset has arrived, with the darkness of night nipping closely at its heels.

If there's one lesson that has been drummed into you, both by the Horseman and the makers, it's that for as dangerous as the Forge Lands can be during the day, it's doubly so at night. As another howl answers the first, you start to realise that with every passing minute, your chances of getting through the night relatively unscathed are dwindling, but you're reluctant to leave the portal lest Death appear. Yet, you're also hesitant to stay out in an exposed ruin in the middle of Baneswood until he does.

“Okay.” Slapping your hands decisively on your knees, you push yourself upright, wobbling a little after sitting on your backside for so long. There's only one place in this realm that you can go, somewhere safer, at least. Somewhere that Death might actually think to look for you if he doesn't find you here. Tentative now, you start forwards, edging past the silent portal and taking carefully measured steps to the entrance.

You'd be remiss to deny the apprehensive curl of your gut at the prospect of venturing all the way to Tri Stone. You have little-to-no idea of what to expect.

In your own time, the quiet village is a haven, and you would count the makers who live there among your closest friends.

There's Karn, the youngest, a maker for whom adventure is the be-all, end-all of his life. He'd taken to you the hardest and the fastest, declaring you his best friend in a matter of hours, though you suspect that was perhaps due to your proximity in age. He may be literally thousands of years your senior, yet, of all the denizens of Tri Stone, the youngling is the closest equivalent they have to someone of your age. That isn't to say the other makers don't get along with you though. Far from it, in fact.

The twins, Alya and Valus, didn't take much longer to cultivate a friendship with you, especially the latter, who spoke so rarely that when you first met him, you thought he was entirely mute. It was his sister who did most of the talking for both of them, which is convenient, you suppose, given that she's inclined to talk enough for two people anyway. She'd been a godsend when you first came to Tri-Stone after a timely rescue from the demon-infested Earth. You would have listened to the maker talk for hours if you could, more than welcoming of the distraction her friendly voice brought you. She's the perfect counterpart to her brother, Valus, a strong and silent maker with a tendency to fret, a lot, specifically over someone as small and fragile as a human like you.

A fond smile worms its way onto your face as you dwell upon thoughts of your friends and step a little more surely out of the stone ruins and into Baneswood proper.

Part of you wonders how furious Thane would be if he ever finds out that you've walked amongst the giant, twisting trees by yourself. Hell, he'd probably have conniptions. Whilst you appreciate that the gruff warrior only wants to protect you, he's hardly helping humanity's street-cred by scolding their one, surviving member every time you try to venture within five feet of the village entrance on your own.

With a soft chuckle, you shake your head, already able to picture the maker’s furious expression if he ever happens to hear of this little escapade.

A shadow moves across the path ahead and you swiftly duck behind the closest tree, your heart racing. For a long moment, you simply hold your breath and wait until the sound of heavy, shuffling footsteps moves along, then you promptly set out once again, following the glow of the setting sun.

As you cast your gaze about in search of any lurking threats, you can't help but notice how lush and wild the woods are in comparison to those you'd left back in your own time. Bushes grow in abundance between the vibrant, green trees, among which flowers and strangely glowing mushrooms rise out of the ground, coming close to the height of your waist. It's almost impossible not to brush your fingers reverently over the petals of one such flower, noting that it shares the same colour as Muria's elegant, blue robes. It occurs to you that, when you return to your own time, you'll have to describe this Baneswood in vivid detail for the blind seer, knowing that her heart bleeds for the nature that had been destroyed by Corruption's foul influence.

Besides, you'd never pass up the chance to try and cheer her up. You've noticed a certain air of melancholy that surrounds the shaman whenever she thinks you aren't looking her way. You can hardly blame her. The responsibilities of a leader had been heaped upon her shoulders so suddenly after Eideard was killed....

A tiny spot in your heart that's been rubbed raw by all the losses you've suffered promptly splits open and starts to bleed at the mere recollection of the oldest maker. You scrub at one of your eyes as a treacherous tear threatens to escape the confines of your lashes.

Of all the terrible times to start thinking about Eideard...

While the others had taken to you with exuberance and intrigue, the elder's welcome had somehow felt... warmer. Subdued, but no less cordial. He'd been the first maker you met, and he hadn't even taken offence after you took one look at him and promptly fainted. His size didn't frighten you though, at least, not after you remained conscious long enough for him to assure you that he meant no harm. Once introductions were out of the way, it was as though you could just sense that this giant had more control over himself than the others, more experience being around small and fragile things.

In spite of the staff he wielded more like a walking stick than a weapon, and the labyrinth of wrinkles that mapped his face, you were never once under the impression that Eideard was anything but a being who possessed phenomenal power. Makers don't get to live as long as he did without a certain degree of strength, after all.

Over time, he reminded you less and less of the village elder and more of a kindly grandfather, diligently watching over his family with patience and proud consideration, who would go to immeasurable lengths to protect his own.

And in the end... he did just that.

The tear that had been making steady progress with its jailbreak finally succeeds in spilling over the edge of your eyelid where it clings to the lashes, turning the bottom of your vision hazy and distorted.

You don't even notice that the shadow stretched out in front of you is no longer your own until suddenly, a gush of air hits the nape of your neck, hot and wet and stinking of rot, causing you to freeze in your tracks and choke on your tongue.

In hindsight, it would have been far more prudent to just start running, but, for all of humanity's qualities, one of their strongest by far has always been curiosity.

So, it's with agonising trepidation that you twist your neck around, your torso following suit until you find yourself staring up at a row of gleaming, white fangs.

It's a wonder that you don't drop dead from fright then and there.

You must have been so caught up in missing your old friend, you hadn't even noticed that you were being stalked, a fitting term that suits the creature currently looming behind you.

Stalkers are not an unknown enemy for you, nor are they especially what you wanted to see right at this exact moment, if ever. This isn't the first time you've run into one either, but it is the first time you've been alone during the fact. Even Death seems wary of the enormous, cat-like demons that prowl around the Forge Lands, and if the Horseman is wary, then you know you should be downright terrified.

When you raise your eyes to meet its slitted pupils, the scales on its back and forearms bristle like plates of armour, tinted all hues of green and brown. In these dark woods, it's the perfect camouflage for an apex predator.

For a human, there's only one tried-and-true method for surviving an encounter with a stalker, and it doesn't include fighting back.

Stowing away the impulse to smack yourself on the forehead, you finally spring into action, whipping about and jolting forwards into a dead sprint, feeling the Stalker's excited hiss once again waft over the back of your neck as it gives chase, propelled by the instinct to hunt a fleeing quarry.

The galloping thuds of its claws striking the earth close at your heels is more than enough incentive to keep you sprinting like a gold medalist, heedless of a stitch or breathlessness. You try to dive in between the more tightly-knit trees in the hopes that the stalker's immense bulk will work to its disadvantage. To your dismay however, your efforts are in vain.

The beast twists itself sideways and back again with the ease of an gymnast, adapting to its surroundings rather than trying to blunder through them, and with every tree you dash past, the stalker draws nearer and nearer, drool flying from its lolling tongue as it inhales the scent of fresh, scared meat.

The sensation of claws swiping at the backs of your legs tugs a shrill screech from you and you kick up your heels, bursting out into a sunlit glade.

Without dwelling on the fact that you've just opened up a window for the stalker to put on some real speed, you suddenly dart to the left and head for the closest line of trees, and although the demon lets out a grunt of surprise at the sudden change in direction, your manoeuvre doesn't throw it off course.

Lungs burning, heart thrashing, you will your body to keep going until, at last, the stalker grows weary of the chase. Halfway to the tree line, it snarls and lashes out again with its long, blackened claws and this time, they hit their mark, slicing across your calves like butcher knives, leaving three, gaping wounds in their wake and causing your legs to buckle underneath you.

With all the grace of a train that's left its tracks, you careen forwards and fall flat on your face, rolling several times before you eventually come to a stop, gasping for air and crying openly. The pain in your leg is almost unbearable. Heat like hell's fire emanates from the gashes left in your skin and they sting worse than any pain you've ever had. At first, you deliriously wonder if stalker claws carry venom, then you scoff at yourself. 'What the Hell would stalkers ever need to use venom for!?'

Peeling your eyes open, you go rigid at the sight of the demon's foreleg reaching out towards you. It snaps its teeth together in triumph and you let out a wheeze when it places its clawed foot directly on your spine and presses down, hard.

Adrenaline still fires through your body in stubborn spite of your injury and has you clawing at the ground whilst feeble whimpers and sobs run from your mouth in a relentless stream of nonsensical babbling.

'This is really about to happen,' you think, cringing when hot, sticky saliva dribbles down onto your neck, 'Of all the ways I could have gone, I'm gonna be eaten alive.'

You distantly wish that Death was here, or rather, you wish that it’s happening back in your own timeline so that there's the chance that one of the makers will find your body and be kind enough to give you a proper burial.

The stalker’s claws sink into your already injured calf and you let out a faltering scream, hating that it's probably enjoying the sound. Summoning one last burst of courage, you grit your teeth and twist your head to the side, glaring up at it and snarling, “I hope you choke, asshole.”

In response, the demon parts its jaws and rears its head back, aiming to lunge forwards and rip the cartilage right out of your delicate neck so that you won't struggle whilst it devours you, when all of a sudden, something akin to an earthquake rumbles through the ground below you, powerful and abrupt enough to give the stalker pause.

This pause would prove to be a mistake as not a moment later, an immense shape crashes through the undergrowth and charges towards you, drowning the glade in a din that sends birds flapping from their nests.

Caught off guard, the stalker's claws retract from your leg and it takes several, clumsy steps back, lifting its hackles and hissing ferociously.

A shadow falls over you and you barely have time to register that the stalker has backed off before a huge, fur-trimmed boot swings over your head and plants itself in front of you, swiftly followed by its twin.

“You leave this wee'un alone,” a dangerously deep-toned voice growls, low as the purring of a truck's engine. It takes you a moment to realise that the rumbling sound isn't coming from the demon, but from whoever has just placed themselves fearlessly between you and certain death.

Clenching your fists, you shove yourself upright and onto your backside, hissing when the sharp, little blades of grass poke and prod at the open wounds on your calf. Rather than bother to inspect the injury – which you already know to be god-awful – you turn your attention to your saviour.

You know enough about the species to recognise that it's a maker, not least judging by the size of the boots alone. Blinking through the tears that sting at the corners of your eyes, you lift your chin and gaze up past the maker's boots, over brown, leather trousers to a belt that's almost as thick as you are wide. Then, you pause, admittedly taken aback by what you see after you move your gaze up a bit further.

....You don't think you've ever known a maker to wear so... little.

Above his belt, there's.... nothing. No tunic, no armour adorning his shoulders, no cowl draped loosely around a robust neck. Instead, you find yourself staring up at a generously-muscled back with pale skin stretched tightly around every dip and bulge, giving him the appearance of someone that might have been sculpted from marble by a renaissance artist. He puffs himself up, creating a decidedly imposing wall of solid muscle between you and the snarling stalker.

You'd take the time to be impressed by his size were you not already gawking at the absolute fountain of lustrous, golden hair that cascades in gentle waves down to the centre of his spine.

Another growl draws your wandering eyes back down to the demon, which has now ceased its pacing and turns to face the maker properly, glaring at him through unblinking, yellow eyes and flexing its claws into the soft grass, as though contemplating the pros and cons of risking itself for a morsel as small as yourself.

The strange maker emits his own, threatening growl, perhaps sensing that the predator's change in demeanour doesn't signify anything good.

“Don't even think about it,” he snarls through his teeth.

Clearly however, the demon cares little for his request, because not a moment later, its body goes tense and it kicks off the ground with powerful hind legs, launching itself towards the maker, its forelegs outstretched and the long claws at the end of each toe flashing like knives in the flecked sunlight.

For a split second, you remember that your saviour is un-armoured and a shrill cry blurts out of your mouth before you can hold it back. “NO!”

Suddenly, the maker's arm snaps out in front of him, his fingers splayed wide, and the stalker just.... stops. It hangs suspended in the air, utterly still, if not entirely disturbed,

Logically, you know you're witnessing magic at work, but there's just something so mind-boggling about seeing a four tonne demon freeze in midair, its eyes bulging open wide and its limbs still stuck in their outstretched position, twitching minutely against the invisible force encasing them.

Giving the stalker a gruff snort, your timely rescuer draws his hand close to his chest and you watch, enraptured as the demon is pulled closer as well on imperceptible strings of magic. It meets the maker's eye for a few, silent moments, hatred and rage passing between the two beings so strongly, you aren't sure whether the tingle on your skin is from their flaring emotions or the magic hanging oppressively in the air.

All at once, the maker flings his arm out again and the demon goes with the motion, incapable of doing much else. It flies sideways through the air and crashes through one tree trunk, obliterating the wood to splinters before its journey is stopped abruptly by a second trunk. With a howl of pain, it drops onto a thick root protruding from the ground and you wince at the resulting crack that you guess is the sound of one of its ribs breaking from the impact. Regardless, you can't bring yourself to feel sorry for it.

The maker’s hand falls to his side once more and he gives his head a firm, decisive nod, apparently satisfied. For a silent minute, you watch the demon writhe around in agony before it manages to pick itself back up, although one of its forelegs is held up off the grass and tucked against a heaving chest. Definitely injured, then.

Shaking its head, the stalker drags its gaze over to the maker and lets out a noise that's half defiance, half surprise. You wonder if it had expected such resistance.

In response, the giant stomps his boot hard on the ground and bares his tusks at it, just daring it to try again. But the stalker, perhaps possessing slightly more brain in its head than you'd give it credit for, lowers its haunches and turns, limping back through the copse of trees until it disappears into the shadows.

“Serves you right, you great, big bully,” the maker huffs, spitting in the direction the stalker had skulked before he drops his fearsome snarl and begins to turn, slow and cautious as though he’s afraid to frighten you away.

Your heart certainly does skip a beat when you finally get a proper glimpse of his striking features.

Long tresses of golden hair tumble down around the maker's face, framing a strong, square jaw and a modest beard that sweeps neatly down to his throat. With eyes that reflect the alluring blue of a summer sky, he peers down at you in amazement as a soft, yet curious smile parts his lips, revealing a pair of tusks that gleam almost as brightly as his eyes. “What do we have here?”

-----

Bonus - Reader and the mystery maker <3

#Darksiders #Darksiders 2 #Eideard #Fluff #time travel #reader #oh no he's cute #he gets cuter #let me know if you want a part 2 #I mean #i'll probably write it anyway but #makers #g/t #giant/tiny #injury #whump #because I like to make my reader suffer

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smellslikemultifandomimagines · 3 years

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jason todd → a titans character analysis

Hiya, just before you continue, please note that titans is the only DC thing i watch so everything thing here is exclusive to titans. You're free to disagree, but these have been some thoughts i had after watching ep 5 last week lol

While watching this episode, the realisation of Robin being a bad idea had become apparent. Being Batman's sidekick, Robin is known to symbolise violence, and though it might be for 'the greater good, for the wrong person, this may be a faux pas. For instance, in episodes 4&5 (even 6, this was mentioned) that Bruce weaponises children. We see this through the explanation Dick provides when he was a kid, and Bruce would take him into the woods against his will and learn to use "fear as his friend". Here, we see the reinforcement of violence and the exploitation of children proves to be, not for the child's benefit, but for Bruce's power and his Batman persona.

Jason, being a kid who grew up with a repetitive family history of drugs, violence, foster care system, Robin would not have been the best influence for him, let alone Bruce's role in his life. In episode 5 and prior episodes, we see that Jason is a kid looking for love and acceptance and wants to settle into a loving, stable home. However, as aforementioned, Robin is the embodiment of violence. In the context of domestic abusers/violent offenders, we often see a history of violence in the family, so it is almost amusing why everyone seems to shake their heads and wonder why Jason has become a villain. Why is the simple answer that has been emphasised a myriad of times. Violence is all he's known, and instead of taking him into a violent-free, stable household, where I believe Jason would have thrived, Bruce decided to weaponise him into a protégé that he knew Jason would not be able to cope with or live up to. For instance, this is seen a plethora of times throughout episode 5. The mention that Jason is not able to distinguish between Bruce and Batman is one of them. Here, this highlights Jason's self and social perception as the 'hero', which Robin is able to do.

Further, I think he feels he has to be Robin all the time because he wants to be Batman and what Batman represents: the hero. Here, we see the envy present in Jason when Leslie said she was glad Bruce was there to save her in her encounter with Crane. In another instance, as seen throughout season 2, when they move into the Titan's Tower, Dick never lets Jason be a part of any 'real' vigilante things. Dick here is positioned to be the protective older brother, emphasising the damage that Robin has caused him, and he can already see those in Jason. Perhaps the reason why Jason transgresses from this is to prove himself and put himself as the 'hero of the day' just as Batman is seen to be time-after-time again.

Bruce, on the other hand, is at fault for this. In episode 5, we hear him call Jason "son" multiple times; however this poses a question as to why he adopted Jason in the first place. In Jason's first episode in season 1, he explains that he was working for Bruce and was caught stealing the hubcaps off the batmobile. Was this an opportunity for another Robin, or did Bruce sympathise and take in a fragile orphan? If he truly cared about Jason, he would have never gotten him to be Robin, but rather a son he could mentor in other ways. However, we see this pattern in Dick, whereby Dick was an orphan and fragile, and Bruce took him in only to train him to be the Robin that Bruce wanted. So, this poses another question as to whether he genuinely views Jason as his son, or just another outlet/opportunity to be Robin. This would be an interesting viewpoint for Tim Drake and the emergence of Red Robin, whether we see those patterns for a third time.

So, in conclusion, did Robin give Jason a much-needed purpose in life? Yes, but the violence and the weaponising that Robin emphasises throughout Titans history has proven to be a mistake for Jason (and maybe possibly Dick). We see that it has taken a big toll on Jason mentally, and maybe this is what makes him a good villain, but he is a smart kid. One who would have thrived in a stable home, and not one that focuses entirely on brutality and weaponising yourself.

#jason todd #titans!jason #titans #:jason todd analysis

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itariilles · 4 years

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My Statement on Tolkien 2019

[ French translation and German translation availible. ]

It has been incredibly difficult for me to speak on my experiences regarding my experiences of hostility and othering in spaces that I loved and still hold dear to my heart, and for that reason I have been silent. That is until now.

I have decided that now is the right time for me to come forward with my experience and statement regarding my negative experience as a person of colour engaging in Tolkien spaces.

I want people involved in the wider Tolkien community to reflect on their roles in the specific spaces they inhabit, and how you can foster a better environment for marginalised groups to interact and engage with those spaces in a safe and inclusive manner.

Take your time to listen and put effort into listening to fans of colour when they are speaking about their lived experiences and their grievances especially when they are speaking about a topic as personal as racism. Being critical of a work you love and the media surrounding it is not easy thing, but we need to recognise that these criticisms are valid and deserve to be taken seriously when it affects a collective of people across different backgrounds.

I want to preface this by stating that I am speaking only for myself and my own lived experience as a vocal young non-black POC in a predominantly white space. I acknowledge that my experience is by no means universal or indicative of all POC in Tolkien fandom spaces.

I also understand that real life interactions differ widely from interactions on online fandom spaces, but there are disturbing similarities across both online and real life spaces with specific regard to the environment and treatment of vocal POC in both.

The tragedy is many people do not realise their impact not only on the individuals involved, but on the wider attitude towards POC voices in fandom when the topic of racism is discussed. We need to build safe environments where critical discussions of diversity and race from the people most affected by them are taken to heart, not invalidated or spoken over as targets of microaggressions.

To give a bit of context, Tolkien 2019 was an in person conference organised by the Tolkien Society (which I was a member of at the time). The official website for Tolkien 2019 has been taken down but the Tolkien Society has a nice summary written in August 2018 breaking down the event here.

I was approached by the Education Secretary at the time about my possible involvement in a panel discussing the history and future of the Tolkien Society which I elaborate on further in my statement. It was the first time I had felt that I had a platform where I could freely express my voice as a diverse reader and consumer of Tolkien media who held diversity in Tolkien as a core value in the wider Tolkien brand.

I felt that as the only non-white member on the panel I had an obligation to speak out on the topic of diversity when it was raised. I tried to speak briefly about some of the points and discourses I had heard on portrayals of diversity in Tolkien media with as much nuance as I could manage at the time. In response to some points I had made I was met with vocal disapproval by some audience members and visible signs of disapproval and hostile body language from others.

This was made even more jarring when later during the course of the event when two white creators hinted at vague notions of diversity were met with a far greater degree of approval. The former instance was during the context of a panel regarding the upcoming LOTR on Prime series, and the latter was during a talk presented by the chair of the Tolkien Society.

I felt intimidated and reluctant to involve myself any further in the Tolkien fandom, especially in real life spaces as my experience at Tolkien 2019 had only solidified and reaffirmed my fears and unease I had engaging in a predominantly white fandom with few visible POC members and creators who tackle topics of diversity and racism in both the community and source texts.

Following this event I was approached by an affiliate of one of the attendees who very kindly took the time to listen to me and suggested that I should write a statement in response to my experience. To my knowledge, my statement has not been shared or published on any platform yet and this will be the first time I have ever spoken about it publicly.

Since then some of my thoughts and opinions on certain aspects of Tolkien fandom and meta have shifted or evolved which I will hopefully expand on in the future, but I wanted to share my initial unchanged statement I wrote reflecting my immediate reaction to my experience.

I want to be seen as a Tolkien creative and critical thinker above anything else, but I cannot move forward with my work without speaking about my lived experience in a space which has been consistently hostile to me and so many others across different Tolkien spaces for so many years starting with my account of this one experience.

I hope my statement finds itself in good hands and I will always be willing to engage with others about my experiences so long as you engage with me in good faith.

The statement I wrote on 25/09/2019 is as follows:

From the 9th to 11th of August of this year I attended a conference held by the Tolkien society aptly named “Tolkien 2019” that advertised itself as the “largest celebration of Tolkien ever held by the Society” in which I both spoke as a panelist and independant speaker. The event itself was a mixture of both formal and informal panels, papers presented by selected members of the society, and evening social events.

My invitation to speak on the “History of the Tolkien Society” panel was presented as deliberate choice made by the panel organiser as a gateway for discussion about diversity and representation in Tolkien. On the official programme, the panel was described as a discussion concerning “what the Tolkien Society and Tolkien fandom in general may become as it encounters digital spaces, issues of representation and diversity, academic interest and a myriad other factors that make up our lived experience today”.

Although there was much excitement and anticipation on my half in the weeks and days leading up to the event, it soon turned to dread when the tone and climate of the discussion dawned on me when I took my seat alongside five other panelists ranging from seasoned Tolkien scholars, long-time members of the Society, and a member with a leadership position within the Society. On that four person panel, I was the only one racialised as non-white. In fact, I was one of only three people in a room of approximately fifty to sixty people racialised as non-white.

It wasn’t long before the true motive of placing me — a young, new member of the Society, who felt already out of place and out of my depth even being offered the opportunity to participate in the first place — on a panel of what I perceived to be more seasoned members of the society.

When the topic of diversity and representation in the Tolkien fandom was raised by the moderator, I saw it as an opportunity for me to share my own experiences as a young fan who predominantly consumed Tolkien content online, as well as some observations I had made regarding the current pop-cultural perception of Tolkien as being heavily influenced, if not wholly entered around the Peter Jackson trilogies and being deeply ingrained with the issues that seep from those interpretations into our overall perception of the Tolkien brand.

One of the talking points that seemed to have caused the biggest uproar and dissent was one in which I referred Tolkien’s description of Sam’s hands as brown in two instances — the first in the Two Towers, and the second instance in Return of the King and how this has been translated into film as both literal and symbolic interpretations. The former in the Ralph Bakshi’s the “Lord of the Rings” released in 1978 in which I noted that the decision to portray Sam as more ethnically ambiguous compared to the other Hobbits was a deliberate choice, whereas the latter was depicted in the recent Peter Jackson trilogy released in the early 2000’s took the description symbolically and cast the white American actor Sean Astin for the role.

The backlash I received for this was, I believe, absolutely disproportionate to the views I expressed. I saw members frown and grunt in disapproval, as well as some visibly shake their heads at me. In spite of me parroting how I saw both interpretations as equally valid as a defence mechanism in the face of such an aggressive response to what to me seemed like an innocuous observation made by a young person of colour who did not see many portrayals of people of colour in Tolkien.

Comments such as “I don’t care who they cast as Sam whether he’s black, brown, yellow, blue or green!” and “Tolkien’s message is universal I don’t see how race factors into this!” were shouted in between points I was making, and countless others were made as an effort to dismiss the effort I put in to hopefully start an open dialogue about the lack of diversity in adaptations of Tolkien and how it has coloured our perception of the overall brand, and perhaps fantasy as a whole.

Some other talking points I decided to mention included Peter Jackson’s Easterlings (coded as being North African or Middle Eastern in the film) as being appallingly Orientalist and damaging in a post-911 world, as well as referring to Tolkien’s vague descriptions of certain characters and people groups that can be interpreted as ethnic coding or perhaps hint at a more diverse cast than the popular brand of Tolkien that may have us believe. I iterated that it is the responsibility of consumers of Tolkien and Tolkien related media to push for different interpretations of the text in order to break the perception that Tolkien’s works are entirely Anglo and Eurocentric with no place for people of colour in the vast world he had created in my opinion as a love letter to his own.

A month later it is still difficult for me to fully wrap my head around what I had experienced during the conference, much less articulating it in a statement, but if there is a note I would like to conclude on it would be this: it was never about changing Tolkien’s works, but reinterpreting his 20th century text littered with colonial artefacts and reimagining the foundations of his work through a 21st century lens in an attempt to decolonise the interpretation of his works in popular culture.

To change the way we read, write and depict the Tolkien brand is to fundamentally change the landscape of the entire genre of fantasy which has and still derives so heavily from Tolkien’s works and the global Tolkien brand.

End.

#tolkien fandom #tolkien society #racism in tolkien #tolkien fandom racism #ok to reblog

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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Your Top Five Pulp Heroes that you wish were better known? By Pulp Hero fans, I mean. Since pretty much all of them except Conan and Tarzan are fairly unknown.

It’s actually quite hard for me to narrow it down to just five, because I’m having to choose between characters that are my favorites that I wish were more well-known and appreciated (which is all of them), and characters that aren’t quite my favorites but I very much think should have achieved great popularity for a myriad of reasons. So instead I’m going to pick some of each. These are not necessarily ranked by their importance or my personal taste, just 5 characters I felt like highlighting in particular.

Honorable mentions goes to characters I already talked about prior and don’t want to repeat myself on. These aren’t “lesser” picks, just ones that I already talked about: Imaro (who in particular definitely feels like he could, and should be, a pop culture superstar if he was only more well-known), Kapitan Mors (who’s got a lot in common with one of my favorite fictional characters, Captain Nemo, but also has a lot of interesting things going on for him as his own character). Sar Dubnotal (a character that appeals a lot to me and I think should be included much more often in pulp hero team-ups). The Golden Amazon (again, definitely a character that feels like it’s just begging to have a pop culture breakout, even comic books rarely if ever have female supervillains this ruthless and over-the-top), The Mexican Fantomas (who absolutely deserves a better name than what I’m calling him here, because he’s incredibly awesome and leagues ahead of just being a knock-off). And of course my homeboy, The Grey Claw, whom I would consider Number One of the list if it wasn’t for the fact that his obscurity has left him untouched by copyright and I got plans of my own for the character that wouldn’t be possible if he was more well-known, so I guess I’m ultimately glad he’s obscure (even if I’m still bothered by how little he’s known).

Allright let’s go:

Number 5: Sheridan Doome

Sheridan Doome appeared in fifty-four stories and three novels from 1935 to 1943. As chief detective for U.S. Naval Intelligence, Lieutenant Commander Sheridan Doome’s job was a grim one. Whenever an extraordinary mystery or crime occurred in the fleet, on a naval base, or anywhere the navy worked to protect American interests, Doome was immediately dispatched to investigate it. Fear and dread would always precede Doome’s arrival in his special black airplane. For, in an explosion during WWI, he had been monstrously disfigured.

He was six feet two inches tall; had a chalk-white face and head. It appeared as though it had once been seared or burned. For eyes, he had only black blotches; glittering optics, that looked like small chunks of coal. His nose was long, the end of it squared off rudely. He had no lips, just a slit that was his mouth. His neck was long, as white and as bony as his face…. Sheridan Doome looked more like a robot than a human being. He was tall and ghastly; his uniform fitted him in a loose manner. Long arms hung at his sides; his face was a perfect blank. He had no control of his facial muscles; consequently, his countenance was always without expression, chalky and bony.

But behind the ugliness was a brilliant mind. Sheridan Doome always got his man. Before Sheridan Doome became a staple in the pages of The Shadow magazine, two Doome hardcover mysteries were written in the mid-1930’s by acclaimed hard-boiled author Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming) and edited by his wife Edythe Seims (Dime Detective, G-8 and His Battle Aces). Age of Aces now brings you both books in one huge double novel, presented in a retro “flip book” style. This book is currently Out of Print.

I sadly don’t have any more information on the character other than this. The book is unavailable for me to acquire in any capacity, and the text above is taken from the Age of Aces website as well as Jess Nevins’s personal profile for the character. I’m not even sure if any of those 54 stories even exist anymore, since although he was published as a backup in Shadow Magazine, there doesn’t seem to be reprints of them anywhere, at least as far as I can find, and the original Shadow magazines have largely turned to dust by now.

A character who combines aspects of The Phantom of the Opera and The Shadow, whose adventures are set in a backdrop that can easily lead to ocean adventures? That’s like, what, three of my favorite things in the world combined. I really, really wish I could at least read the stories this character stars in, but as is, this description is all I can provide. Again, time really has been cruel to the pulp heroes.

Number 4: Harlan Dyce

This is another character I’ve only been able to learn about through Jess Nevins’s archives and have not been able to attain any further information on, which is sadly the case with a lot of pulp heroes that nowadays only seem to exist as footnotes in his Encyclopedia or records in libraries. I don’t post more about these characters because I really would just be copying the stuff he wrote without much to justify me quoting him verbatim, and I hate the idea of doing that.

I especially hate that in Harlan Dyce’s case though. Here’s his description

“Dyce had brains, taste, money, ambition, and a total lack of physical or spiritual fear. But—

“Dyce was thirty-three inches tall and weighed sixty pounds.

“That was all the world could ever hold against him. That was what had made the world, most of it, in all the countries of the world, stare at Harlan Dyce, billed in the big show as “General Midge.””

Harlan Dyce is a misanthropic and venomous private detective. He has an “amazingly handsome face,” and the aforementioned brains. But all anyone sees is his stature, and he hates that and turns his cold eyes and acid tongue on them.

The only person Dyce likes and gets along with (besides his dwarf wife, a former client) is his assistant, Nick Melchem, a six-foot tall former p.i.’s assistant with bleak eyes and a strong body. Melchem ignores Dyce’s stature and treats Dyce normally, which Dyce responds warmly to.

Dwarfs may be the single most maligned group of people depicted in pulp magazines, even more so than the Japanese in the war years or the Chinese during the peak of the Yellow Peril’s popularity. Evil dwarfs, murderous dwarfs, sexually depraved dwarfs, they are all loathsome, ugly cliches that are, sadly, the only instances you see of dwarf characters being represented at all, with the only ones who are awarded any measure of sympathy are doomed henchmen or tragic villains. Even outside of the pulps, the only other examples of heroic, protagonist dwarfs I can think off the top of my head are Puck from Marvel Comics and Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones.

I’m not gonna say Harlan Dyce is great representation because I’m not a little person and can never make that kind of claim for a group I’m not a part of, but Harlan Dyce may be the first time I’ve ever seen a dwarf character in pulp fiction who was not a villain or a murderous goon or a victim, but an actual person and a heroic protagonist, and that definitely counts for something. I’m not sure how popular this character was or could be if someone picked up the concept and ran with it (and I’m pretty sure he’s public domain), but I definitely think this is a character that should exist and should be popular.

Hell, this character has Peter Dinklage written all over it, give it to him. Maybe then he will get to play a smart, fearless, cynical, misanthropic but good-natured and heroic character in something where he actually gets to keep these traits until the show ends.

Number 3: Audaz, O Demolidor

Audaz is a Brazilian character who was created and published by Gazetinha, the same publishers of Grey Claw as well as properties exported from elsewhere like Superman and Popeye, and much like The Grey Claw, he is also completely unknown even here. I’ll get to Audaz more in-depth sometime but here I’m going to provide a quick summary:

Audaz, The Demolisher is a gigantic crime-fighting robot controlled and piloted by the brilliant scientist Dr. Blum, his close friend Gregor and the child prodigy Jacques Ennes, who pilot the giant robot from a massive laboratory inside it's head rather than a cockpit. He takes on a variety of ordinary human criminals, mad scientists, supervillains and invading armies, towering over skyscrapers and grappling with jets.

Audaz was created in 1939 by illustrator Messias de Melo, a year before Quality Comics's Bozo the Iron Man and 5 years before Ryuichi Yokoyama's Kagaku Senshi, and decades before the debut of Mazinger Z. Although he is not the first giant robot of science fiction, he is the first heroic giant robot piloted by human pilots, and thus the first true example of "mecha" fiction.

Number 2: Emilia the Ragdoll

This is another Brazilian character, although nowhere near as obscure as Audaz as even a cursory Google search can show. Although Brazil did not have a “pulp era” in the same way the US had, we’ve long gotten past the point of sticking to it as a definitive rule, and I’m including Emilia as a pulp hero because she’s a 1920s fantasy literature character who was created under a publishing company that released pulp stories, because she doesn’t quite belong in the mold of fantasy literature characters she takes after, and because I like her and if I was putting a bunch of pulp heroes together in the same story, I would definitely include Emilia in it. It’s not like she really has anywhere else to go, now that she’s public domain and she’s outlasted her franchise.

As you can tell by the above image, Emilia’s had a lot of variations over the years and that’s because the work she was created for, Sítio do Picapau Amarelo (Yellow Woodpecker Ranch/Farm), has become a major bedrock of Brazilian fantasy literature, one of the only works created here that you can find substantial information about in English if you go looking for it. Here’s some descriptions of Emilia’s character:

Emília is a rag doll described as "clumsy" or "ugly", resembling a "witch" that was handmade by Aunt Nastácia, the ranch's cook, for the little girl Lúcia, out of an old skirt. After Lucia takes her on an adventure and the doll is given a dose of magic pills, Emília suddenly started talking, and would never stop henceforth.

Emilia has a rough, antagonistic personality, and an independent, free-spirited and anarchist behaviour. She is rogue, rebellious, stubborn, rough and intensely determined at anything she sets her mind on, eager to take off on just about any adventure. She is often immature and behaves like a curious and arrogant child, always wanting to be the center of attention.

She is extremely opinionated even when she constantly and confidently mispronounces words and expressions. Her attitude often gets her into trouble, and she very often has to fight against the villains who attack her home on the Yellow Woodpecker Farm and mistreat her friends.

In the stories, Emilia often takes the role of a heroine who travels through different realms and dimensions, as the books include not only figures from Brazilian and worldwide folklore, but also several characters both real and fictional, such as Hercules, King Arthur, Don Quixote, Thumbelina, Da Vinci, Shirley Temple, Captain Hook, Santos Dumont and Baron von Munchausen.

She's fought scorpions and martians and nymph hordes, her arch-enemy is an alligator witch, she rescued an angel from the Milky Way and tried to teach it how to become a human, and once shrunk the entire population of Earth to try and talk the president of the United States into ending war forever.

To little surprise, she has become the most popular character and the series’s mascot.

It’s a little strange to consider Emilia underrated considering she is one of the most famous original characters of Brazilian literature, but hardly anyone outside of Brazil even knows who she is, and regardless of the quality of the original stories (and Monteiro Lobato’s views on race that tar much of his reputation), Emilia definitely feels to me like a character that should be a lot more popular globally.

She is the only character from Yellow Woodpecker Ranch that has transcended the original stories, since she was always the most popular character and there’s been a couple of stories written about her that usually separate her from the ranch and just set her out on the world by herself. The latest story about this character has been a series called The Return of Emilia, that’s about her stepping out of the books in 2050 and discovering a Brazil that’s been ruined by social and ecological devastation, and traveling back in time via a flying scooter in order to try and prevent this calamity.

Now that she’s public domain, I definitely think there’s some great stories that can be told with the character that just about anyone could get to, and I definitely think she’s a character that deserves more appreciation. Anything goes in stories starring her and it’s that kind of free-for-all freedom that I think can benefit future takes on pulp heroes. I would be very happy to place Emilia among them.

Oh yeah, and there was one time she kicked Popeye's ass by tricking him with a can of mouldy cabbage instead of spinach, making him sick and then beating him, which possibly puts her as one of the all-time badasses of fiction, except she would be pissed at not being number one and likely embark on a quest to beat everyone else just to prove she could, because that’s how Emilia rolls.

Number 1: Luna Bartendale, from The Undying Monster (1922)

Not necessarily my favorite of the bunch, but one who sort of epitomizes what you asked, a character who is both incredibly obscure and incredibly underrated in every sense. Despite the book being somewhat known, mainly thanks to the movie, the character is so obscure that I don’t even have an illustration of her to display here, not even fan art, just one of the book’s covers that I think best conveys it. Luckily, the book is also available freely online, so you can all go check it out here. The movie adaptation does not feature the character of Luna Bartendale which makes it pointless to talk about.

To not spoil it too much, The Undying Monster is a very fascinating book, ahead of it’s time in quite a few ways. You expect it to just be a detective story centered around a werewolf cursed, except the subtitle of the book is “The Fifth Dimension” and then it goes to talk about dimensions of thought and post-WWI trauma and love and hypnotic regression that travels through time and ancient runes and Norse mythology. It’s not exactly an easy book to get through in one setting, but I’d recommend it much the same if only because it’s got supersensitive psychic sleuth Luna Bartendale, literature’s first female occult detective, and she’s an incredible character who absolutely feels like she should have become a literary icon.

She lives in London but is world-renowned for her many good deeds. She is a small, pretty woman, with curly blonde hair, dark eyebrows and a high-bridged nose, and a slight build. She has a voice described as a light soprano that "does not make much noise but carries a long way".

Petite, bedimpled and golden curled, Luna is completely in charge of events, dominating every scene that she appears in with her welcoming disposition and cleverness.

Bartendale has various psychic powers, including mind reading. She is well-versed in psychic and occult lore, is a “supersensitive” psychic, and has a “Sixth Sense” which allows her to trace things and people through both the Fourth and the Fifth Dimension. (The Fifth Dimension is “the Dimension that surrounds and pervades the Fourth–known as the Supernatural”).

Her extensive knowledge of occult rites and practices puts John Silence, Carnacki and Miles Pennoyer to shame, and she beats them all with her "super-sensitive" gift of being able to psychically connect with troubled souls and hypnotize them.

She uses a divining rod for various tasks, including psychic detection and tracking, and distinguishing between benevolent and malevolent forces. She has various (undefined) powerful psychic defenses, can carry on seances, and can even cure a person of “wehrwolfism.” And she can always rely on her massive, intelligent dog Roska for help.

Luna sadly doesn’t show up in the book as often as I’d hoped, but everything about this character is so delightful. In a lot od ways she hardly feels like a pulp hero, at least the ones I usually talk about. She feels like a lost protagonist from an incredibly successful kid’s adventure series where a kind and eccentric detective witch and her giant dog go around solving occult mysteries and encountering all sorts of weird supernatural beings while counseling and helping people, like Ms Frizzle meets Hilda. Like this character is just waiting for Cartoon Saloon to make a film about her.

Its not so much “this character should/could be popular but it’s clear why that didn’t pan out”, it’s more me being confused as “why the hell isn’t she super popular? This character should have had a franchise ages ago, holy shit put her in everything””

#pulp heroes #pulp fiction #answer tag #sheridan doome #harlan dyce #audaz #boneca emilia #luna bartendale

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droidrights · 3 years

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For your writing prompt... A scene from always red or stay the black but in Cals POV?

Ask and you shall receive! Thanks so much for the prompt, Anon! This was fun!

Sometimes Pink

This here is the scene at the end of Chapter 9 of Always Red where Cal first wakes up after the escape from Nur.

2nd person/ present tense like the rest of Always Red except Cal is “you”.

Inquisitor Cal Kestis x Jedi Reader

Words: 1918

Warnings: Description of Injury and near death

“Now you'll be what I make you.” Her voice rings in your head. Somehow over the roar of the flames, over the howling sea wind and even over the crash of thunder, you hear her claim you in a whisper.

Laid flat on your back, soaked through to your bones, you blink the raindrops from your eyes and through bleary vision you dare to take in the sight of her. Writhed in the towering flames that engulf the Fortress Inquisitorius she stands over you in victory; small strings of blue electricity blink between her flexing fingers. The memory of those fingers pressed on the side of your face, even to deliver a brain rattling Force blast, becomes something you find yourself clinging to. Those hands, you've thought, the things those hands could do.

It's the last thing you recall before things go black.

Fuzzy and indistinct, you imagine the brush of those deadly fingers over your forehead. Most certainly imagined, in a moment burst with brightness shining behind your eyelids. Blazing and uncomfortable before the comfort of the black seeps back in.

You've always hoped that when you died your spirit would scatter, made to rejoin the living Force. There would be a loss of consciousness surely, a kind of oblivion. Force users are taught to believe they live on through connectivity to the Force and they do but...not as they were. You consider that this could be death. The Black, this endless float peppered with visions of this and that. Her. Could be worse.

Later you are slowly stirred to consciousness by the astringent scent of bacta gel stinging your nostrils, and more gentle touching though less imagined this time. When your eyelids become unstuck you spy a world much different from the one you had been imagining.

In a heartbeat the comfort of the black is banished. The place that allowed you to drift carelessly and linger on your memories of thunder and lightning evaporate in an instant, replaced with an air of the urgency to live. In the here and now you are a prisoner, confirmed bu the metallic clank of durasteel cuffs at their limit. Blazing overhead lights are blinding and your instincts are the only thing you have, aside from an intense throbbing ache on the right side of your head. You have survived many times before by allowing your instincts to take control and so your rational mind takes a backseat to an animal impulse toward survival by any means necessary.

There is a muffled crack as you fold your thumb inward, making one hand more amenable to slipping its restraint. It hurts, of course it hurts but you tell yourself it doesn't.

A startled medic bounces from his seat at witnessing his patient wake so suddenly and commit violence on himself. With one free hand, you bolt upright and the twi'lek gingerly, mistakenly presses his hands on your shoulders. No touching.

“Be calm, you mustn't aggriva-!” the twi'lek's words are cut short when you raise your open fist. His breathing become raspy and short as you draw your fingers closer and closer together.

The decision to attack had been simple for you. It always is. What you hadn't known is that you had been asleep for the past four days in recovery from grievous wounds. Against his better judgment, Byt Ilan agreed to treat your injuries as best he could, despite the fact that he witnessed your role in the battle that had lead all of you to this point. Despite the fact that you had been an active member in the institution that tortured and imprisoned him, because he is good. Truly good.

Byt claws at his throat uselessly as you get to your feet. To you there is nothing, no one, other than this obstacle before you. The only sound that matters is the hiss and wheeze that escapes this twi'lek's lips.

It's not even that much pressure, honestly. To think that most living things have a soft little spot for you to squeeze and wrench the life from. It is both dazzling and intoxicating to exercise this power. Your vision tunnels and you move with the intent and purpose of a predator that has not been unconscious for days but waiting. Your trembling fingers, broken thumb included, curls into a tight fist as you move to cross the room.

In your battle fervor, you fail to release the restraint fastened to your other wrist. Your fervent pursuit of the medic causes the heavy metal gurney to overturn. Your balance is thrown immediately and the thing brings you back a ways. There is a loud and muted pop and you know right away that your arm has become dislocated from your shoulder. It's happened several times before, each instance more unpleasant than the last.

Byt's legs scramble in the air haplessly, far from the ground. He knows he's near finished when a darkness begins to creep in from the edges of his vision. Until he is suddenly dropped to the ground like a sack of grain.

Years of training within the Empire has given you the singularity of mind that allows you to pour your focus into your goals, and exactly nothing else, until they are achieved. Discomfort, pain, your very limbs are second only to your gain. In this moment nothing matters beyond dispatching the nearest jailer.

Byt uses the brief pause in your assault to scream for help, though the wracked sound produced by his broken throat is nothing like the alarm he had intended. When he cries out a second time it is for horror at watching you drag the overturned bed, dislocated arm and all, in his direction, renewing the fight.

Byt struggles to his feet in time to be hefted again into the air. When his back hits the opposite wall of the small cargo area the twi'lek loses a lungful of air he could not spare. Your pupils triple in size as victory grows nearer and your connection to the dark side spreads its wings inside you.

“Cal, no!” A voice cries out. Y/N arrives in a flurry and immediately places herself between you and your opponent. You don't see her. There is only you and Byt Ilan's final breaths.

“Cal, stop right now!” She roars again, this time with more menace.

You hear nothing, you see nothing. You are dead to the world but for the quiet symphony of blood vessels popping in the twi'lek's eyes. The hard thump of his heart against his ribs, so rapid and vital until the blessed moment of silence that will follow. Any second now.

A loud crack echoes off the walls of the hold and every nerve on your face lights up in a spark when she strikes you with the flat of her hand. You recognize the feel of that hand across your face instantly. A bright stinging throb blossoms across your cheek and the hard contact of skin on skin breaks the kill's hold over you. The things those hands can do.

Blindsided by the sensation, you loose your grip on the poor creature by unclenching your fingers. He hits the ground hard and his breath does not return immediately. The twi'lek's rosy pink cheeks and lips have turned gray

More and more of your surroundings come to light. Gathering crew and guests become shadows around this drama in the cargo hold. Someone rushes to the medic's side and slaps him hard between the shoulder blades until he gulps in a shuddering breath. Another figure moves in the space around you but goes unnoticed. Your tunnel vision has fixated on someone new.

After the dazzling white light clears your vision you still can't quite believe your eyes. You see her before you the way she looks in your memories, the way she looks in your dreams. Framed in fire, windswept, tired, bloody and gloriously furious.

“Y/N?” you whisper, confused. You blink hard and this time she is a more realistic version of herself. Still tired, still angry. Your hand stays hefted in the air, unsteady.

You don't believe what your eyes are telling you. You died and this is a sick joke, which normally you might appreciate, but for the look on her face. You would never understand the combination of emotions you see there. Your shoulder, your head, your hand, they all pulse in various octaves of pain. It's disorienting.

It's not her, it can't be. You lost and she killed you. Shaky, you lurch forward keeping your hand outstretched. You have to be sure.

There is a swift movement from the shadow behind you and in a flash there is a sting in your neck. So minor compared to the other aches, throbs and stings but you were unprepared for the suddenness of it.

A normally welcomed old companion, the blackness, creeps in again. Your heart cries out to wait, just one more second while you figure this out. While you reach out to her.

Before you hit the ground the very tip of your longest finger connects with her chin, just below her lip, before trailing its way down her chest and belly. The hem of her shirt snaps up when the crook of your finger tugs and releases it.

As your head hits the metal flooring you decide it really was Y/N. You are indeed still living and for some reason she had decided to spare you in the rain on Nur. The fool.

You've tried to tell her since Zeffo that she's yours, from the second you saw her on Bracca, whether she knew it or not. When she inched closer to you step by step, siding against the Ninth Sister she was yours. When you touched her Master's lightsaber and saw her as a frightened and defenseless padawan she was yours. Hands and feet fastened together, jammed in the back of your TIE fighter she was yours. Until you handed her over to the Empire...and she was theirs.

What you had not anticipated were all the myriad moments that led to you belonging utterly and madly to her. Starting with the hard resolve in her face when she went for your throat in your first rain-washed clash. Again when she teased you in the industrial caverns of that Zeffo mountain. Especially when she was bubbling over with wrath and vengeance even lying weak on the floor of her cell, imagining the demolition of Imperial control. You were more hers then and completely when she made good on her promise by conjuring destruction from the air like a goddess. It's like you never had a choice.

That's a lie. It's a choice you've made repeatedly. You embraced it, fought it, misinterpreted it but you never denied it. Fool that you are.

Y/N will be your undoing, she makes you weaker than anything the Empire has put you through and nothing is scarier than to know that you will lose every time.

Yes, you tried again to kill her but it's only because you are the one who does what others will not. It was your final attempt at releasing you both from this thing. Y/N is strong but not stronger than what's between the two of you. You tried to be but it turns out you aren't either.

Now you are doomed to each other. For your part at least, you commit yourself willingly to the flames.

She really should have killed you.

#always ask #always red #stay the black #jedi fallen order #calquisitor #cal valeska #writing prompt #thank you for the suggestion #star wars jfo #star wars jedi: fallen order #inquisitor cal x reader #he is a puppy #cal kestis

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scarletooyoroi · 3 years

Note

Word was rapid in its propagation about the events of that particular 'anomaly', and while the Oni seldom bothered with the matters of clans ( with a few exceptions that is ), he did recognize the man in brief passing.

"Well, if it isn't the brave little man of the hour ! " He's not shy in approaching, head tilted in interest as he looks down at him with a wicked smile.

And a brief glance upwards. "Nice horns, those real ? " // finger guns at

Inazuma despite all efforts to suffocate it into stillness, for plots of blood festering glories to the prestige reigned through wickedness to attempt to take leads, the true spirit manage surges forth, immolating away that eroded gunk with a generation of people who aim to carry a lifestyle that’ll define fighting spirit itself. While some certainly managed to roar their presence through actions, others tailored a style that keeps a low floor to an extremely vast ceiling, finding comfort in such elements. As the Sakura’s dipped and forayed in the cradle of the wind’s embrace, the sun beckons it’s rays to a particular moment...

As in warming up these very surroundings for when two prominent souls would meet upon the crossroads.

Word of mouth easily aligned with what he sees, from how a myriad of complaints, threats and a soul too carefree to ever be restrained practically blowing all of that out the water. Quite the character. It’d be a thought he held back then, and currently holds now, finding himself effortlessly eclipsed as the oni bred being towers above, a stance Thoma takes in stride while recognition ignites with those irises. “And if you’re not the person who wrenched clear from hell’s fangs.” Tic for tat. Something about Itto’s atmosphere allows for an introduction of being a touch more loose, away from his formulated style and a lot more willing to enjoy the impulses that a fiery touch is infamously known for from the beginning,

Thus that bag carries a set of commercialized groceries is hunched into his grip securely. Catching wind of where their attention focused, the blonde partially swears he could perceive the ba-bam! noise made from the fixated direction towards those two protrusions embellished with an onyx shine. Honesty ached to slam into the forefront, yet, that need to draw up an instance of spectacle shines brighter, leading to a curious hand reaching up, allowing for his fingers to flick across what was truthfully steel plating.

“This is definitely not. Sorry to disappoint, but I take it you might’ve skirted around curiosity with those rumors too?”

How the Fixer remains a demon in human skin.

Lurking underneath that bright smile was the brand of countenance befitting of a sword demon.

Moments could be seen where he’d actually usher forth smoke from the boundless furnace of his lungs during particularly stressful days.

Thoma found satisfaction in letting people please their instances of whimsy.

”But how about I let’cha in on what they don’t know?” Drawing his thumb at the bottom of headpiece, he’d gradually lift it up, the sight itself forming a new glimmer of memory as the temperature abruptly spikes. Wavering haze simmering within the air as dancing harmlessly upon his skin, hints of that truth peeked forth, blended into a golden orange and scarlet flourish, prominent in how stalwart they stand. Tucked underneath was a hint of those horns ignited by the flames of his soul, the view in itself causing a knowing smile that borders a smirk before tapping at the dark front of the protector, allowing it to tilt back into place as the heat disperses.

“If I were to show mine, I’d need a situation befitting. Otherwise I’d be turning my favorite places to a sauna everywhere I went. A guy has to be considerate to the places he enjoy being the most, don’t ‘cha think so?”

@geohund

#geohund #| Tucked Letters #THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN #Itto welcome to the club #Where Inazuma just be built different

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a-duck-with-a-book · 3 years

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REVIEW // Seven Blades in Black (The Grave of Empires #1) by Sam Sykes

★☆☆☆☆

Disclaimer: while I was reading this book, I found out that Sam Sykes has been accused by numerous women of sexual harassment. You can find more information about it below: - a post listing several accusations of misconduct - twitter post responding to the situation - one of the accusations against Sam Sykes - his quickly-deleted apology Suffice to say, I have no intention of continuing this series or reading any more of his books.

I have a lot to say about this novel, so I’ll begin by making a quick bullet point list outlining what I liked and disliked:

Liked:

Cavric <3

Lisette deserved better

Some interesting concepts in the world building

Disliked:

Sal as a narrator

Sal as an antihero

Sal as a person in general

Writing style

Constant interruptions

Meandering narrative

The “narrator knows something but the writer avoids revealing it until the end for the drama” trope

This is a Big Tough World and Nobody Gets To Be Happy

Lesbians written by a man who harasses women

Unnecessarily long

// image: official cover art Jeremy Wilson //

Let’s begin with the full review by starting with the (few) positives, shall we?

First and foremost, I genuinely enjoyed Cavric and Lisette. It is unfortunate that they had to deal with Sal for the entirety of the novel, but we’ll get to her later. If this book had been a buddy adventure with these two, in which Cavric slowly shows Lisette that she is in a toxic relationships and deserves to move on and find someone better for herself, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more. Secondly (and finally), Sykes introduced some genuinely interesting world building. The background of the Empire and the Scar was fascinating to read, but unfortunately did not save the rest of this mess.

Alright now let’s rant.

I have 35 notes and 52 highlights from this book, so this might get block quote heavy. (Go check out my notes if you want to see me slowly lose my sanity)

Sal is awful. I know she’s meant to be awful, but she’s not flawed in the way that I think Sykes was trying to write her. I believe she was intended to be a scruffy, lovable antihero who fought her way through a dangerous landscape with her sharp blade and even sharper tongue. A girl who had wrongs committed against her in the past, who did terrible things but is now on the road to an epic redemption arc. She shoots bad guys, she says f*ck and a*s a lot, and she is morally complex. That’s the character that Sykes was trying to make. The one he created, however, is a genuinely terrible person who I had no desire to see come out on top. I have a myriad of issues with her, but let’s outline a couple below: (1) She is incredibly toxic for Lisette. Am I getting a bit too heated about a fictional relationship? Sure. Was I happy to read a toxic lesbian romance written by a man who sexually harasses women? Nope. It kind of grossed me out, actually. Anyway, let me give you a run down of their relationship. Sal arrives. Sal and Lisette sleep together. Sal asks Lisette to give her weapons and or fix things for her. Sal sneaks away, telling herself no good will come of this relationship and they will only cause each other pain. Sal needs something. Sal comes back. Repeat over and over. She constantly says, throughout the book, that it would be better if they just left each other, but then again Sal is the one who goes back to Lisette over and over, causing her renewed heartbreak. I don’t know if Sykes thought that simply making Sal aware of how terrible this behavior was was enough, but it just made me incredibly frustrated. At one point Sal says:

”Intellect like hers is a curse. The more you understand of the world, the less of it you trust.”

Yes, Sal, that’s what’s giving her trust issues. Her intelligence. Nice. By the end of the book, it seems that they are on the mend-I’m getting end-game vibes from these two. But honestly, I spent the entire time thinking that Lisette deserved so much better than Sal. Like literally a chicken would have provided healthier companionship. I’ll end with this quote, in which Lisette outlines perfectly why Sal does not deserve her:

“What am I doing wrong that you’d choose this over me?”

(2) Sal is annoying. Really, really annoying. I kid you not, half of this book is made up of Sal’s snarky comments. She is badass. She has a gun. She is an outlaw. And she will never, EVER shut up about it. Imagine a quirky line after an otherwise dark or action-packed sequence. Funny, right? Might break the tension, make the narrator more endearing, etc. Now imagine one such line after every. Single. Paragraph. Picture a violent battle scene where the protagonist is fighting for their lives against a ruthless opponent. Now insert a snarky comment after every other paragraph and watch the entire flow of the scene fall apart with constant interruptions. That’s what this book is-which brings me to my next point.

The writing isn’t great. There are constant interruptions, meandering narratives, and the trope that haunts me in nearly every dark fantasy novel I read-This is a Big Tough World and Nobody Gets To Be Happy-is shoved repeatedly in your face. Let’s start with the interruptions, returning to my previous point (ie. Sal never shuts up), by looking at this sequence:

I followed the shrieking wind. I had come here prepared for something bad. But I wasn’t prepared for just how bad it was. I rounded the corner of the hall, came out atop a battlement. The wind struck me with a screaming gale, forcing me to shield my face and cling to the stone for purchase. My eyes squinted against the harshness of the light, the kind of offensive pale you only see in your nightmares. And through them, I could see the bowed shapes of towers sagging, the flayed flesh of banners whipping in a wind that wouldn’t cease, the shadows of figures frozen in a death that had brought no peace. And I knew where I was. There was nothing that had ever made Fort Dogsjaw special. It had never been crucial for defense, never a hub for trade, it hadn’t even been named for anything special—the commander just liked the sound of it. It lived its whole life a regular, boring Imperial fort on the edge of the Husks. It only got important at the time of its death. Over three hundred mages and a few thousand regulars had assembled here in one day—some to receive assignments, some to man the garrison, some to head back to Cathama on leave. They had been laughing, cursing, drinking when the news came that the new Emperor of Cathama was a nul, born with no magic. And then there had been a moment of silence.

I’ve bolded for emphasis, but do you see what I’m talking about? The paragraph-line-paragraph-line format is so annoying to read, I had to put the book down at certain points because of how frustrated I got. It interrupted the forward movement of the story, making the novel drag on and on.

You know what else makes this feel like the nightmare version of the Never-ending Story? The page count. I don’t mind long books-The Priory of the Orange Tree is one of my favorite reads so far this year, and it’s longer than this one-but they have to have a reason for being so hefty. As I mentioned earlier, a considerable chunk of Seven Blades of Black is Sal making her awful, awful, AWFUL asides. I literally cannot express how much I despise those comments. Okay, let’s move on before I get hung up on THOSE STUPID COM-*cough*

This novel is marred by unnecessary lines and a meandering plot that drag out the story. One instance is the amount of times that Sal is a second away from killing someone and, for some reason (usually not a good one), fails in her goal. She places a gun at someone’s head and goes through a whole monologue in her head until the person miraculously escapes. This type of subversion of expectations is fine every once in a while, but if you are going to build up to a crucial moment and then take away the satisfaction of the defeat of some villain (or mini-boss, as many of the antagonists in this book feel like), then you need to have a good reason for doing it upwards of twenty times in ONE BOOK. Secondly, if you spend almost the entire novel setting up more and more villains and stressing how hard they are to kill and how dangerous their powers are (and presenting them separately and isolated), then when you have them all in one place at the end, at which point the protagonists starts going through them like a plate of french fries at a seagull convention, then you’re kind of taking away the satisfaction of the death. Somehow, this book manages to do both. We are constantly teased with almost-kills, then at the end Sal just blows through everyone in five seconds, easy-peasy.

I’m almost done, I swear-just two more gripes.

So much of the tension of this book rests on the fact that Sal, our narrator and our main viewpoint into the story, knows something that we don’t. I’ll be upfront with you-I hate this trope. If our POV character, the one whose mind we are in constantly, is entirely aware of something that happened before the beginning of the novel, and the author keeps from revealing that something for the entirety of the story solely to add drama, then I will not be a happy reader. Where is the logic. We are in this person’s mind. Just show us already and add tension ELSEWHERE.

And FINALLY (as painful as it was for you to read this, it was worse for me to write it), another issue I have with a lot of dark fantasy (see my review of Nevernight) is that the author really, really wants us to know that this is an incredibly dangerous and dark world by filling it to the brim with edge lord narrators, Big Guns, and, usually, women being harrased-because why not force all your female readers to constantly have to read about women getting assaulted? Apart from Sal’s 300,000 comments explaining to us that she is an asshole, that the Scar is Dangerous, and that she has Killed A Lot of People, we as readers must sit through hundreds of lines of dialogue and exposition that beat us over the head with the fact that this is DARK fantasy. This isn’t your nice little fairy adventure-no sir. Here we have Swear Words and Violence and Men writing Queer Women. To emphasize just how blatant Sykes is with the dark part of dark fantasy, let me tell you about an exchange Sal has with three old ladies who run a criminal empire. In the 2-3 pages that these women appear in, we are told, in some form or other, that they are grandmas who kill people, a grand total of, I kid you not, ELEVEN TIMES. Here are some excerpts from that whole situation:

”“Now, now.” Yoc, old and white haired and sweet as a grandmother—if that grandmother also had people killed on the regular—smiled at me. “I’m sure she has a good reason for being here.” She raised the hand that had signed the contracts that had killed a thousand men and women and took up her whiskey glass. “After all, I’m sure she knows how much we don’t like having our game interrupted.”” *I counted this as one since it’s in the same exchange but technically he mentions it TWICE

”…one didn’t waste the Three’s time if one didn’t want to end up with their teeth pried out.”

”How often do you meet the three old ladies who have people killed for money?”

”I said we should kill her on principle.”

”“But you know how many orphans I’ve made, don’t you, dear?””

”“He’s not so unlike us, is he? A murderer, yes. A monster to some. But, at his heart, a businessman.”

”Theirs were the hands that signed a thousand death contracts a year.”

”When they could be bothered to look up from their game, they decided who lived and died with a stroke of their pen.”

”At a word, they could have me stripped, tied, tortured, and cut up…”

”the Three don’t lie. Their assassins do. Their thieves do. But they don’t.”

”I had already wasted their time and I knew the Three were being generous just letting me fuck off instead of having me killed for the effort.”

TL;DR - Sal is annoying, Sykes is a bad writer, and Someone should have stopped me from reading this book

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aaroncutler · 4 years

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Two lists

January 1: I am including below links to two year-end round-up posts to which I contributed individual lists of my film highlights from the year 2020. The first (bilingual in Spanish and in English) pertains to the Peru-based online magazine desistfilm, co-directed by Mónica Delgado and José Sarmiento Hinojosa, and the second (Spanish only) to the film criticism website Con los ojos abiertos, edited by the Argentinian critic and programmer Roger Koza:

- https://desistfilm.com/desistfilm-2020-film-round-up-the-lists-las-listas/

- http://www.conlosojosabiertos.com/la-internacional-cinefila-2020/

The lists that I made are intended to be complementary and they contain no overlapping titles. They also contain no films that screened in this year’s edition of Olhar de Cinema, or that I programmed or wrote about in other contexts. I did not consciously strive to create patterns or themes among the films I selected – either the official “bests” or the myriad supplemental choices – although the nature of my personal taste will undoubtedly reveal these things, as well as my blind spots and limitations. Short and medium-length films are emphasized over features, both for aesthetic and for political reasons: I feel happy when I think about each of the titles I listed, and sad when I think about how routinely year-end lists tend to ignore shorter works entirely. The one feature that I included among the so-called best, The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin), is a film that I felt merited exceptional attention. It is an atypical feature not only by the fact of it being over eight hours long, but also due to its being a work for cinema in the most literal sense – to the best of my knowledge, its makers will not allow it to screen in any other context. And to me, such a position resonates in these days perhaps more than ever before.

We can all understand at some level how rankings are dictated by access. For a film to be valued, it must be seen, and for it to be valued by many people, a large number has to be able to watch it. This is partly why, in any given year, films that premiered at Berlin and at Cannes tend to aggregate year-end votes more than do films that premiered at FIDMarseille or at DOK Leipzig, and the best of Hollywood can tower over anything else - in a traditional year, theatrical distribution deals and event screenings are crucial for a film to garner critical attention. But access can also help explain why this year’s desistfilm poll was led in total number of votes by Jean-Marie Straub’s 10-minute-long La France contre les robots, which the great filmmaker’s team chose to release directly online in open form (and subtitled in multiple languages) before screening in any physical festival.

I am aware that I have juxtaposed what seem like drastically different experiences – a long film that officially exists only for cinema; a short film that, from what I know, has existed primarily or entirely online. And although it’s easy to blame COVID-19 for forcing these two strands of viewing to the fore, I understand that the need to make strong choices on how to screen and watch films was formulating well beforehand, with the challenges facing traditional arthouse and repertory theaters and the possibilities for home viewing rising side by side. It would commonly happen until recently, for instance, that a programmer would watch a film at home with the understanding of his or her screening as a preview for a hypothetical theatrical experience. Now, it often happens that that same person watches films at home with the understanding that what he or she is going through is in fact the experience, and that it essentially will be so for a hypothetical audience. The person’s act of viewing does not change in this scenario, but its meaning does, as do its ramifications and implications.

This blog’s readers probably recognize the personal importance that I place on watching films projected in theatrical settings, and they can accordingly guess how I feel as a cinephile in response to the shifting winds, which likely no vaccine can redirect. At the same time, one can only play Lear for so long. May it be a New Year’s Resolution, then, to live with hopefulness, and to value the possibilities that the vast and ample fields of filmmaking and film viewing can bring about. I hope for possibilities for watching films to be discoveries at least to the extent that the films themselves are. And I will also keep my fingers crossed for the world’s alternative theaters to remain standing and operating throughout.

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typewriterghcst · 4 years

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Title: But For Me It Was Tuesday Rating: also G-ish, but some allusions to probably what we would consider child abuse in the modern day lbr Characters: one (1) OC, Baron, Natori, Yuki Summary: The events of The Cat Returns, but told through the eyes of the smallest-- oh, sorry, my mistake— the youngest kitchen maid in the service of the Cat King. No romantic pairings. A crush or two may be mentioned, though. Notes: Written for the 2020 TCR Birthday Bash, even though I emphatically missed the deadline rip. This one was for the prompt of ‘Movie Extra’, which I took to mean, well, pretty much just what I wrote— the events of the movie as a backdrop to another character’s everyday life, lmao This is another one that isn't Entirely Finished, but I've been working on it since June-ish and I've just lost all motivation to finish it. Though, unlike the last one I posted that was unfinished, the only part missing from this one is the ending. There's also a part in here involving Natori that needed to be changed, but I liked the wording and imagery of it, and never did get around to figuring out where else to put it, so some of the pacing in here is Off rip

&&&

She oversleeps. That's the first unusual misfortune that happens to her on this particular day. Opens the day, no less, she thinks to herself as she forlornly stokes the ovens' gently smoldering fires. Her ears are still ringing from the boxing she'd received— the fact that Cook had had to include a little hop to even reach them means what little pride she has feels just as bruised.

Were she a more superstitious, flighty sort, she might even have taken this setback as the first of likely many portents of an upcoming stressful day. But instead she is only Topolina, the youngest (but emphatically not the smallest; more on that later) kitchen maid currently languishing away in the employ of the illustrious royal castle of the Cat Kingdom.

Of course, it’s there she stops herself. It’s only the chaos of the morning that has her using such bitter language. She should try harder, she tells herself, not to linger on the unpleasant aspects of her current existence, and instead focus on… on… well, she supposes there’s something to be grateful for in all of this.

Like…

Oh! She has a home. A relatively nice bed to sleep in. And meals, every day.

...Meals which she is most often forced to wolf down in the kitchen in solitude as she tends the fires and keeps a watchful eye on the simmering pots.

Ah.

Perhaps she needs a bit more practice with this gratitude thing, is all.

It’s entirely possible her recent light resentment had begun with her very name, Topolina, a name which had been quite fitting when she stood at least two heads shorter than all the other kitchen maids, one she'd even perhaps viewed with some fondness for its endearing quality. And yet, alas, it now exists as a name which seems only heavily ironic— that is, now that she's hit the tender age of fourteen and found herself towering over all but the very tallest of cats. It feels to dear Topolina like some massive, omnipresent joke that she remains her old timid, meek self, still eager to fade into the background and disappear... now without even the faintest hope of being able to do so.

Metaphorical salt in the wound is the undeniable fact that her pinafore's hem, once perfectly aligned with her ankles and cutely poofy, now drapes awkwardly far above its original position. Perhaps it’s comparatively trivial atop all her other complaints, but when she finds herself thinking back to her old unassuming silhouette, she can’t help but feel at least a little crestfallen. Nowadays, she feels quite akin to a pitifully overgrown shrub, no matter how many well-meaning words to the contrary she receives.

All in all, she imagines such a thing might make anyone feel rather less than appreciative.

It’s as she’s sitting there alone before one of the nine stoves in the palace kitchen, contemplating her rotten luck, that she hears— well. She’s not sure, exactly. It’s something of a crunching sound, like rusted metal grinding against itself, and she can’t imagine what its source could be. She stands, and gingerly inspects the oven itself from every angle she can think of. She even studies her fire iron. Yet still she comes up empty-handed.

Defeated, she flops back down in her original spot.

And then— she squeaks, because the ground under her is moving, slowly twisting back and forth as if she’s sitting on a lazy top. She leaps (falls is more accurate) off the emerging ground once her mind comes back to her, once it stops panicking, and stares in confounded shock as the very spot she’d been settled atop transforms into what appears to be a long-forgotten manhole covering. How long had that been there?! She’s never been made aware of an old servant’s tunnel in this area!

Her perplexion only deepens when she spies just who has made use of this abandoned tunnel— a cat much like herself, though she thinks that he looks quite a sight better than she would have had she just crawled through a dirty tunnel. His off-white suit is pressed and smart, for one, and hardly has a tear nor even a wrinkle to show for the abuse he’s no doubt just put it through.

His sharp gaze falls then on her, and she’s suddenly acutely aware of her ill-fitting, nearly threadbare pinafore, the scuffs of dirt and soot smattered across it, and her probably unkempt fur, smudged and mussed from fire-tending. Oh, if she could just will the earth itself to open its maw and swallow her up—!

“Ah,” he starts, in a much gentler voice than Topolina had expected, turning to her and offering a hand to help her up, “I apologize. It was not my intention to startle you.”

“N-No, it’s okay,” she stammers, taking his hand without thinking. (Were she in a right state of mind, she’d never do such a thing— the very last thing her poor Young Maiden’s Heart could stand is for a handsome gentleman to struggle to lift her.) He pulls her up with little difficulty, though, and in her chest she feels a very peculiar thump, and then a flutter.

“A-Are you here for the king..?” She asks impulsively.

He doesn’t answer immediately, appearing to think that over for a fleeting moment, perhaps aware of the myriad of ways the pairing of her question and his response could be interpreted, before he makes his decision.

“Yes. I would like to have an audience with him. It’s a matter of utmost importance.”

“Y… you’re not here to kill him, are you?” She whispers, perhaps irrationally afraid that the king himself might be listening in on her. And yet, not too irrational— she’s seen his spying Cat’s Eye floating languidly about the castle on more than one occasion.

There’s something pitying in his gaze, she thinks, but he replies graciously enough. “You have my word, miss. I am not here to usurp or otherwise harm your king.” Then, while dusting some nonexistent dirt off his clothes, “I do believe I will need a change of wardrobe, however. It won’t do to adress a king while clad in anything less than my finest, will it?”

He says it without flinching, and in such an earnestly straightforward fashion, that Topolina herself is almost led to believe there really is some flaw with his clothing that she simply can’t see.

“Oh!” She says then in sudden inspiration. Without explaining herself first, she scampers to the open alcove behind him, separated only by an unfinished wall. The kitchen servants have long used the area as a makeshift coat rack, and one particularly bizarre ensemble has been there for as long as she can remember. She comes back around the wall bearing the large hat and cloak before offering it to him, embarrassed now that she realizes that, judging by her actions, this is what constitutes ‘his best’ for her: an absurd hat and a dusty, worn cloak.

He himself appears no less than enchanted at her offering, however, and when he stands before her with the hat cocked just slightly on his head and azure mantle thrown over his shoulders, Topolina finds she’s again being assaulted by those odd, vexing heart palpitations. Is she really such a nervous thing? ...Yes, she answers herself firmly. Yes, she is. But she’s far from convinced nerves are to blame in this instance.

“Oh,” she breathes eventually, clasping her paws together and resting them against the edge of her cheek. “You look like you came out of a storybook.”

Well… that was more childish than she meant it to be.

“Then it’s perfect,” he says succinctly. Then, removing the hat and inclining his head to her, he adds, “Thank you for your assistance, ah—”

“Top— erm, Lina.”

“Miss Lina, it is. I’m quite grateful for your help. I am sorry only to startle you and then run without so much as a token for your assistance, but it’s imperative I make good time.”

Topolina shakes her head. “It’s okay— I-I don’t mind!”

And with a final bow, he leaves her and the kitchen behind.

&&&

Peculiar dashing stranger aside, the rest of her day passes in relative normality. There’s a clamor about the servants some time later, and she catches snippets of an excited buzz about something happening with the prince (something that ties in with a group of special guests, but she’s yet to put together how) as she goes about her duties, but in all, for how bizarre the day started out, it all strikes her as rather uneventful.

She’s instructed eventually to scour the floors in the audience chamber in preparation for a banquet, which means filling an old rusted tub with hot water and soap, and then carting it to said room. She’s no stranger to the task, of course, and thinks nothing of trudging through the hall with this metal burden in her arms.

Perhaps as penitence for her lack of investment in the day’s continuing Wonders, another ill-fated obstacle is tossed onto the tracks before her. In this case, literally.

Earlier that day, a courier had accidentally overturned a loose stone in the hallway floor. Scratching his head, staring down at the disturbed piece of clay as though it had personally insulted him in the most obtuse way possible, he’d eventually looked from one end of the corridor to the other and quietly snuck it back into place, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed.

Unfortunately, Topolina notices.

With a decidedly unfeline-like squawk, she trips over the rogue stone; the tub in her arms ends up the victim of gravity, as we all so unfortunately are.

And who should turn the corner then but Natori, just in time to be the unwitting second victim of her bad luck— drenched by the ensuing sheet of warm, sudsy water and so jarred by it, it seems he can do little other than look rapidly from his own sodden person to her no-doubt horrified countenance for near a full two minutes. In the fraught silence that follows, his glasses clatter to the earthen floor, and the tiny sound echoes in her ears like a gunshot. Trembling, Topolina instantly drops to her haunches, paws clapped together in desperate and tearful pleading.

"I-I'm so sorry, sir! Please, I beg your pardon— I didn't mean— i-it was an accident!"

"...Topolina," Natori finally interrupts quietly, gently, even, but the hum of exasperation vibrates just underneath his patient tone like a trapped butterfly, "—retrieve a mop and a towel, please.”

“Of course, sir! R-Right away!”

&&&

It’s afterward, as Topolina does her best to mop around him while he tries to dry himself without incurring any extra… floof, that Natori deems an appropriate time to address his reason for coming this way in the first place.

“It’s possible that Cook may have instructed you about this task already, but the kitchen staff will likely be needing every pot and pan that can be spared for today’s dinner, so do ensure that you tend to the ones that have been, er, languishing in... that corner.” When she chances a glance at him, she sees that his gaze is inconspicuously trained on a particularly infamous corner of the palace kitchens, one where abandoned cookware is just shy of creating its own ecosystem by now. For a brief, heart-pounding moment, some measure of indignation rises in her; she’s so very close to telling him she isn’t the one to blame in this instance! ...At least, not the only one.

Ah. Alas, once more. Her courage withers in the face of this culpability, small as it may be. Instead, she goes back to her doleful mopping. Still, there is at least enough nerve left in her to present him with one continuing question on the topic.

"Is it... is it for the special guests?"

Natori pauses, giving her something of a searching glance. "...It is, yes." Then, after a few seconds spent appearing to think this over, he continues ringing out the bottom hem of his robe. It seems at some point while she was distracted, he’d laid the drenched towel at his feet. "I see word spreads fast through the kitchens."

To herself, she thinks that he has no idea how true that is, nor precisely how fast it truly does.

Finally satisfied with all that the towel can accomplish in drying him off (and evidently feeling his now damp robe will no longer leave any puddles as he wanders through the castle), he returns it to her. "Now, Topolina, please try to keep the mishaps to a minimum. We do have an exceptional guest today, after all."

She only nods frantically, all too aware of her ears flapping up and down. To this, he gives an approving nod of his own, and then finally turns on his heel and leaves. Secure in her admittedly paltry position for at least another day, Topolina breathes a sigh of relief as she puts the mop away.

...An exceptional guest, he’d said. Curiosity flares again, this time stronger than before, and she can’t stop wondering just who they could be. For the most fleeting of seconds, she remembers the cat who had interrupted her delayed routine this morning, but he’s quickly waved away.

Honored guests did not arrive to their own commemoration by climbing through old servants’ tunnels.

&&&

Once the dirtiest, most grime-caked pots and pans are finally scrubbed to perfection, she peeks around the corner in search of Cook or Natori, wondering what other (insignificant) part she may have to play in the care of these exceptional guests. To her consternation, however, the kitchen aside from her seems rather empty, present only to the sound of a maid or two prepping extra portions of stuffed mice on the off-chance they’re requested.

Cautious as always, Topolina all but tiptoes through, still careful not to draw attention to herself, and— once she’s certain she’s not being scrutinized— peeks out of the kitchen itself into the servers’ hallway. There’s music playing, muffled, down the hall in the great dining room— something elegant, bouncy. A waltz, perhaps. She wonders distantly who it is that might be dancing, and if the well-spoken cat she’d crossed paths with earlier is anything of a dancer himself. She could imagine him dancing… Oh, the flutter is back.

“Lina—”

“Yes!!”

She jumps impressively high, her hackles on edge and tail fluffed out in alarm. Yet, when she whips around to face her unexpected company, she’s met only with Yuki. Another of the kitchen servants, Yuki has existed as a consistently friendly, warm presence, to the degree that she’d willingly adopted Topolina’s attempts to shorten her, well, newly embarrassing name, something a few of the other servants (and Natori…) were still having trouble with. Her fright abated, Topolina tries to greet the smaller cat with a smile, but it wavers.

“Oh— Yuki, it’s you.” She’s carrying a large glass bottle, freshly-filled with some unfamiliar pink-tinged liquid, Topolina notices.

“I’m sorry,” Yuki starts in reply. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I-It’s okay!”

“What were you looking at?”

Oh. That.

“I was looking for Cook,” Topolina admits reluctantly. “Or maybe Natori. I’ve finished the dishes they wanted me to clean earlier today.”

“I saw The Corner was all clean. It must have taken a while.” Yuki sounds impressed, perhaps. Topolina doesn’t mention it, of course, but deep down she’s a little tickled. “Natori’s already taken his place in the dining room, though, so I don’t think you’ll have any luck getting more directions from him.”

“Oh…” Thinking back now, she realizes she should have surmised that already. At least, if the banquet has progressed to the point that entertainment is warranted. “What about Cook? Have you seen her?”

“Sorry, I haven’t.”

After a short silence, it suddenly occurs to Topolina that Yuki seems… a little distracted. Troubled, even. Fidgeting, she gathers her resolve for the third time that day.

“...Are you okay? You look like… um, something’s on your mind.”

Just the mention of her evident disquiet is enough to erase its presence from her expression; Yuki almost instantly brightens some, shaking her head gently.

“No, no. I’m fine.” And then, before Topolina can press the issue, “How about this? Stay here— I have to go back in and serve refills. If I see Cook, I’ll ask her what else she wants you to do and then fill you in when I come back. Okay?”

Topolina is just about to enthusiastically agree (leisure time in the sparsely occupied kitchen? Not being the one to personally ask Cook for more work? Of course she’d be on board!), but a sudden eruption of screams and breaking glass from the direction of the banquet room means the two of them are turning their startled attention to the ruckus instead.

“Wh— what could it be..?” Topolina wonders aloud, shaken.

[ and that's it rip the ending i had in mind was that yuki tells topolina to find a safe place, topolina cowers probably in the kitchen the whole time, especially upon hearing an Explosion. and the next day there's all kinds of rumors and tall tales about baron and The Daring Rescue he pulled off. topolina connects the dots and. well basically becomes haru 2.0 crushing on him and indulging in fantasies where she's also swept off her feet by a dashing hero fjfjkda; ]

#the cat returns #do i #still tag it with the birthday bash tag....#tcr birthday bash #i guess #this was my first attempt at writing baron #also yuki

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