#it was a metaphor for capitalism all along!

[sparklespectres]

Actually, the difference between the fears in TMA and the fears in TMAGP isn’t that they’ve manifested more as desires, they‘ve just changed from being an outside, god-like force/power into an unregulated man-made one. This is why there are so many incidents involving things that are much more socially constructed/human than natural (the entertainment industry/social media, gambling, debt/wealth, scientific experimentation, etc). What we’ve been perceiving as ‘desire’ is actually more of a desperation/greed for wealth, fame, power, reverence, etc. In this essay I will-

[hoseoksluna]

ICHOR | jjk

pairing: idol!boyfriend!jungkook x f. reader

genre: fluff

word count: 2.4k

summary: after a bad day at work, you lose a sense of yourself and jungkook leads you right back to her.

warnings: crying, capitalism, death metaphors, sadness, jungkook is sweaty and is wearing that nike shirt he wore in his working out live, has fluffy hair!

note: hiii, bubbas, so this is fluff fic is partly for @frmisnow bc she inspired me to write this & i also want to make her feel better with this sacchariny-sweet jungkook, partly for me bc i genuinely wrote in detail about what i went through at work these past two days. and, also, for all you guys because i made you go through reading about such evil jungkook in my last berries fic. i hope you enjoy it, let me know what you think. here's to a bit of happiness in our lives *cheers with an imaginary glass of imaginary pink, glittery, strong, fairy alcohol*. <3

You used to be a goddess, the ichor in your veins carried the color of roses, glinted with flecks of gold that would radiate your skin from beneath, make any heads turn, especially the one you loved the most. Customers at work smiled upon seeing your cordial aura, close-knit even though they were mere strangers, preferred to go to you amidst the flock of your other colleagues around. They would become radiated just the same, joy so terribly evident on their faces as their smile would grow. They would frown upon seeing the state of you at this current moment—curled up on your bed while the heat of the beginning of the summer clings to your near bareness, coming through your wide opened windows, the white, translucent curtains billowing up and down in their strange, but magnolious dance. 

You’re not Aphrodite. You’re not Euphrosyne, the goddess of joy and mirth, either. 

You’re the slain fawn at their feet—for their very own feast and for the feast of those aforementioned customers, who stand behind the dryly bloodied cause of your death. 

Work was hell, to say the least. 

You always thought death was a kind embrace, not a tight clasp of doom around the nape of your neck, your mental strain and disquietude the half moon marks that ever so slowly deepen. You mimic the movement on the hem of the linen shirt you wore for the day, one that you were too drowsy to take off when you arrived at home, having only a slight wisp of an energy to rid yourself of the uncomfortable tightness of your jeans and crawl onto your bed, knees to chest, on your side. You bunch up the fabric in your fist, wrinkling it, but you hardly vanquish the cuts that your anxiety slashes on your skin. You thought it would alleviate you of your tenseness, but as it seems—it only worsened it. 

You don’t even have tears to shed. Wept them all out in your manager’s office while she harshly, yet calmly reprimanded you for your mistake and the gravity of the fact that you almost lost your precious job, that you can’t imagine living without, washed over you and pained you like a splash of salty water in your eyes. Wept them all out when you breathed in the crooked, paralyzed expression of disappointment in her face—and that’s the sole thing that emptied out your system of that ichor, wiped out your reputation of being a good, reliable employee that everybody liked. 

Now the next unfolding of your days spent at work shall be filled with silent judgements and secretive gossip, the big talk of the entire building—something that will hang by the strands of your hair for every head to turn to until something else comes along. Another topic, another fuck-up. That’s the face of modern capitalism, the absurdity of day-to-day normalcy its features, and you’re so sick, so repulsed to be staring at it every single day of your life that you yearn to not be anymore. 

Death has flattened over you, but has not finished its job. It was Dante who described the process of hell in his Divine Comedy and you hate him for the rotten pulchritude of his mind because you find yourself to be standing in the middle of inferno with no guide—no Virgil, no Beatrice—to hold your hand and lead you through this scalding maze. You’re all alone, your mistake carving the branches of the trees burning down in your hell over your burdened, heavy heart that has been longing for the company of another ever since you walked out of your manager’s office. 

Your face screws as another agonized emotion rises in you. You can’t stand your aloneness, can’t stand your burden—and before you realize what you’re doing, your fingers have already tapped on your boyfriend’s name in your history of calls. The screen of your phone is cool against the fever of your cheek and you rub your face harder against your duvet, staining the strawberry pattern with the particular tinge of your makeup, which must have been the color of your ichor. 

You wince, the rings prolonging in your ear, your impatience running thin. 

Then, your heart drops once you hear the broken whisper of your Beatrice, faintly, barely, which causes your heart to spread its longing. Damn iPhones and their bad service. 

“Jungkook?” you call out, nonsense coming through the other end—and you repeat his name until his voice smooths out, relief sinking in like a stone in a pond. 

It turns out you were exchanging each other’s names and the intimacy of it curls the smallest of smiles on your mouth. You miss him; you need him. 

“When are you coming home?” you ask, wishing to descend into the emitting waves of the call, slide through them until you spring to wherever he is, no matter how tired you are—you’re willing to cross the distance. 

You hear him turn on his blinker and your heart almost does it for you. 

“I’m driving home right now. I’ll be there in ten,” he says and your relief expands in your chest, taking a small weight off of your heart. You place your palm against it. 

“Okay.” 

A beat of silence. 

“Why do you sound so sad?” 

Your mouth curls downwards. “Something happened at work.” 

An inhale of breath. “Screw that, baby. I’ll be there in five, okay?” 

A whimper. “Okay, drive safe.” 

And your Beatrice didn’t lie to you. Soon, you hear the banging of the front door closing, the tossing of his keys and the prodding open of your shared bedroom door. The hastened footsteps, hefty on the floating floor, the squeak of the mattress as his knee dips on it and the glide of his hand up your thigh. All before you use the last of your strength to focus your swimming vision on him. 

Hearing him alone helped you take a step further in your inferno. 

And then you can smell him. The scent of sweat clinging to his favorite ivory Nike shirt, interlaced with his natural, poetic scent, creating something divine that blesses you with the strength to place your palm on top of his hand. Your coworkers hugged you earlier, clasped your hands in theirs in reassurement and more than welcome it, you absolutely despised it. Lingered in their affection only because you thought you should let yourself be consoled, for you know they care about you. But his touch… that’s not something you sense your body to want to run away from. On the contrary, it seems to be something that it’s missing. 

You can’t part the stream of your new tears with your other hand. 

You spill, completely. 

Jungkook coos, squeezing the bare flesh of your thigh as turns you onto your back and nudges himself between them, plopping his body on top of yours. And then, he’s kissing the place your undone shirt made for him, trailing his lips up your neck, where he stays, where he conjures a garden of fluttering gardenias, their tender petals tickling you. 

“What did they do to my princess?” he murmurs against your skin, his words muffled but heard clearly by your ears. You sob, your chest shuddering in violent staccatos against his, unable to settle, unable to speak. Jungkook lifts his small head and frowns, his thumb swiping your tears away while the rest of his four fingers cradle your cheek. You lean into the balmy safety of the realm of his palm, gaze fixed on the wrinkle between his brows, mouth letting out puffs of soft, gentle exhales. He kisses your chin, the corner of your mouth, the wetness of your other cheek—buries his nose into it, right beside yours, inhaling you, giving you fresh air to breathe in. “Don’t cry. I’m gonna decapitate them.” 

The whisper, the hand that parted the stream. You whimper and he steals the traces of your despondency, pecking the new, smooth surface, planting roses to bloom, its roots bestowing you with the ability of speech. 

Two sentences, two miles further in the inferno. Your burnt down trees are lost in the far distance, swallowed by the fire, yet the forest shows every sign of growing anew the longer Jungkook’s heart beats against your breast. 

He’s so benevolently patient with you, not rushing you with your explanation. It all the more drives you to disclose it to him—and you open your mouth to speak, your fingers following suit, helping you with your words as you drag them through the soft mop of his fluffy hair. 

“I made a mistake yesterday while closing up,” you croak out, licking your lips. Jungkook lifts himself onto his elbows, clutching your shoulders, keeping the close proximity intact. His warm grip is a stability you lean on, one you appreciate with every broken shard in you. “I did it five minutes earlier and somebody came in. I sent them away and they filed a complaint against me. They wrote an email to my manager and I… I almost lost my job.”

The wrinkle between his brows deepens and you thumb it, wishing it away. You don’t want to mar his beautiful face because of your foolishness; you want it to remain that soft ball of light that he always is, but then you realize you’re asking for the impossible. His mouth flattens, pity flashes across his round eyes, which helps you perceive that if he didn’t react like this, he wouldn’t love you—and his love is the air you breathe; his love is the ointment you need for your sadness. 

As if he heard you, he kisses you delicately and you sail—skip the purgatory and land in paradiso, a meadow of wildflowers overlooking a cliff that opens the restfulness of the sea, scattered with windswept petals of those lost blossoms, coloring the surface with pinks, whites and the greens of their leaves. 

“Did your manager yell at you?” Jungkook questions, his lips lifted a millimeter above yours, his thumbs fondling the fabric of your shirt upon your shoulders. 

“No, but she was very strict with me. Told me not to cry—”

His breath wafts over your face when he looks into your eyes, displeased. “She made you cry?” 

You cried because through her words you comprehended the gravity of your mistake and its repercussions, not because she deliberately used them to open the dam of your emotions. It’s precisely why she told you not to cry, giving you a hint of her perpetually nonexistent compassion. And you tell him. 

“No, she didn’t. She was very professional with me and made me realize what I did after I apologized. I cried because I was so scared of losing my job, of disappointing her and shit like that.” 

Jungkook purses his lips, shaking his head, curly strands rippling like the tremor of leaves. “She should’ve dropped it after you apologized. Five minutes is nothing, baby. You did nothing to deserve to be treated like that.” 

Your chest heaves, his love and reassurement sifting sand into your bloodstream, the color of ichor. “I know but… you know,” you trail off, indicating the realm of respect all peers must have for the management that you don’t really want to venture into, not when Jungkook had to deal with it as well in his music company. But unlike you, he broke out of its clutches. It cost him tears, frustration and weight loss, but now he’s a free bird of paradise. You don’t wish to make him remember his cage. 

Jungkook sighs. “Yeah, baby, I know, which is why I’m telling you that you didn’t deserve that.” 

Your chin quivers, the negative thoughts that wore you down in his absence returning at full speed. “It affects my mental health when I’m bad at my job.” 

Brows rounding upwards, his eyes flick to your chin, a glossy wetness coating them. He pecks it before he gazes into your irises. “But you’re not bad at your job. You just closed a few minutes earlier. You’re amazing at your job. You make people happy. I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” he says, meaning every word with the way he presses each one into your pupils. You feel its magnetism and you take it. “And I’m proud of you. Every day. You work so hard. Come home tired every day. Deal with people who aren’t always nice to you with kindness that I envy. I’m proud of you, you hear me? You didn’t make a mistake. You did good.”

And there it is, the stampede of your bloodstream—Jungkook has seeped the entirety of the sand until he emptied out his hand and your ichor charges forward, its light like a bud flaring open beneath your skin. And you're floating on that sea in paradiso, your braid adorned with the wet petals that swims back and forth to his arm that holds your body steady upon the surface, the names of the Greek goddesses lining every perimeter, sinking within. 

You’ve become them, all over again. 

“Thank you, Ggukie,” you whisper, running your hand through the front bangs of his hair, gripping them. It’s as if you’re holding the petals. “I needed to hear that.” 

He pouts, touched by the love name. “I know. You need to rest now after such an emotionally exhausting day. No more tears, okay?” 

You nod, feeling whole, feeling like you can face tomorrow with more courage. “Okay.” 

You pout, mimicking him, asking for a kiss and he gives it to you in that same delicate manner, plunging the entirety of the summer’s heat, molded by his hands, into you, making it bearable for you. 

Looks at you for a long time, after. Smiling. 

“You know, I didn’t take a shower after the gym for you,” he says, quirking a smile on your face.

You’re intimately acknowledged with the reason why, yet still you ask: “Why’s that?” 

He reciprocates the smile. “I thought you’d help me wash up. My muscles are sore and all. I lifted the double amount of your body weight.” 

You bite your lip. You’re willing to wash every inch of him with your utmost care. You deem he deserves it for enlivening you, but you’d much rather stay here, inhaling that dizzying scent of him. 

“I’ll do that, but let’s stay here for a little while.” 

Jungkook nods, kissing your jaw before he finds a comfortable place on your bosom, listening to the rush of your ichor, the sun rays upon the sea of that paradiso, inching you closer and closer to God. Augments the ending of that Divine Comedy. 

Doesn’t lead you to the final installment of death, but pushes you to life full of that brisk wind, the humming of the sea and the song of swaying wildflowers. 

Holds your hand. 

Doesn’t let go. 

𓂃 ౨ৎ LOVE-KISSED BABIES: @tkslovechild, @jjk7k, @parkinglot-nights, @bethvar, @Sexytholland, @yoongibaybee, @crystaleah,@fennecnco, @lil-kpopstan, @euphoricmyth.

© 2024 hoseoksluna, all rights reserved

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[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Worldbuilding Vocabulary

Abeyance:  When the audience temporarily suspends their questions about made-up words or worldbuilding details with the implicit understanding that they will be answered later in the story.

Absorption:  The two-way street wherein the audience is immersed in the created world and is picking up the author’s metaphoric building blocks to recreate the concept in their head.

Acculturation:  When an adult assimilates into another culture.

Additive:  When something has been added to a secondary world, usually in the form of magic or fantasy species.

Affinity:  A kinship pattern wherein the familial bond is based upon marriage.

Aggregate Inconsistencies:  When audiences pick up internal inconsistencies not within the same story but from multiple sources within the shared universe.

Anachronism:  Details that do not conform to their time period or culture.

Analogue Culture: Real-life cultures that the creator emulates in their work and then applies their fantasy conceits to.

Ancestor Worship:  The belief that deceased ancestors still exist, are still a part of the family, and can intervene within the living world on their descendants’ behalf.

Animism:  The belief that all objects, creatures, and places are imbued with a spiritual essence.

Apex Predator:  The predator at the top of a food web that no other creature naturally feeds upon. Two apex predators cannot exist in the same niche.

Apologetics:  In worldbuilding, the attempt to explain inconsistencies in terms of existing canon.

Appropriated Culture:  Using a culture as a whole that the creator is not a member of. Different from an analogue culture in that the analogue is changed by the creator and used respectfully.

Artifacts:  In worldbuilding, the observable ways a culture behaves due to their cultural worldview. This can include politics, economics, religion, education, arts, humanities, and linguistics, along with many other cultural norms.

Ascendant:  In worldbuilding, a world that the magic is increasing in power and influence.

Assimilation:  When an individual rejects their original culture and adopts the cultural norms and beliefs of the dominant culture.

Author Authority:  When an author demonstrates expert-level knowledge in a field to their audience.

Author Worldview:  What Mark J. P. Wolf calls “not only the ideas and ideologies of the world’s inhabitants, but also those which the author is expressing through the world’s structure of events.”

Autocracy:  A government in which supreme power concentrates in the hands of one individual or polity.

Avatar:  The embodiment of a deity in another form, usually humanoid.

B-C

Bible:  In the field of television writing, a series guidebook that usually includes the pitch, character descriptions, a synopsis, as well as worldbuilding details.

Biome:  The vegetation and animals that exists within a region. Terrestrial biomes include: forest (tropical, temperate, or boreal), grassland, desert, and tundra.

Black Box:  In information processing, when a system is viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs without any understanding as to its internal workings.

Bottom-Up:  In design, where the granular, base elements of the system are created first, then grouping them together into larger constructs over and over until a pattern forms. Also known as “pantsing” in writing and worldbuilding because the creator is building by the seat of their pants.

Callback:  From standup comedy where the punchline in a joke used earlier in the set is alluded to again, eliciting another laugh from the reframing of what was already familiar.

Canon:  The core doctrine for the world when conflicting information arises. Usually what the original creator made takes canonical precedence over subsequent additions. 

Capitalism:  The economic system wherein individuals own the means of production.

Chekhov's Gun:  Often understood to mean that something must be introduced previously if it will have significance later in a narrative, but meant by the playwright that nothing should be included in the story that is not completely necessary. 

Climate:  The temperature and rainfall in regions over approximately 30 years. Classified as tropical (high temperature and high precipitation), dry (high temperature and low precipitation), temperate (mid temperature and mid precipitation), continental (in the center of large continents with warm summers and cold winters), and polar (low temperatures and low precipitation).

Commercial Fiction:  The style of fiction that includes all genre fiction, the aim of which is entertainment. Often fast-paced and plot-driven.

Compelling:  One of the four Cs of worldbuilding, which deals with how well the core concept and subsequent details maintain audience interest.

Complete:  One of the four Cs of worldbuilding, which deals with the sense that the world is lived in, has a sense of history, and continues on even when the story ends.

Complexity Creep:  When material gradually grows in complexity over its lifetime, raising the bar of entry for new people experiencing the material for the first time.

Conceits:  Where a story deviates from reality. Usually the focus of the fiction by being what the author intends on exploring in their works.

Conlanguage:  A constructed language created specifically for a story world.

Consanguinity:  A kinship pattern wherein the familial bond is based upon a shared genetic lineage.

Consistent:  One of the four Cs of worldbuilding, which deals with how well the material maintains its own internal logic as established by the fantasy conceits.

Constructed World:  A fictional world that does not exist but was created by someone.

Continuity:  A gestalt term for perception where the mind fills in obvious blanks to make a unified whole.

Convergent Evolution:  When two or more species develop analogous features to deal with their environment.

Co-Residency:  A kinship pattern wherein the familial bond is based upon shared space.

Cosmology:  The study of mapping the universe and our place in it.

Cost:  In worldbuilding, when a character must risk or sacrifice something for magic to take effect.

Creative:  One of the four Cs of worldbuilding, which deals with how and to what extent the constructed world deviates from the real world.

Credibility Threshold:  Where worldbuilding details must only appear plausible to a general audience rather than demonstrating expert-level knowledge.

Cultural Identity:  An individual’s self-concept as distinct from others based upon nationality, ethnicity, social class, generation, and locality.

Cultural Universals:  Traits, patterns, and institutions prevalent throughout humankind.

Customs:  Informal rules of behavior that people take part in without thinking about it.

D-F

Deity:  The most powerful of metaphysical entities, deities often exist in pantheons, have thematic powers based upon their roles, and few weaknesses or limitations.

Descendent:  In terms of magic, the idea that the most powerful magics are from ages past and that magic is on the decline in terms of power and influence.

Despotism:  An economic system wherein an individual or institution controls the laws and resources of an area.

Deus Ex Machina:  A plot device in which an unexpected power, event, or deity intervenes to save a hopeless situation. 

Differentiation:  When one culture forms part of their identity by contrasting themselves with another nearby culture.

Divergent:  When the creator alters something in the development of the world but it remains very similar to the real world in every detail but this fantasy conceit. For instance, a world that resembles our own but made up of anthropomorphic animals instead of humans.

Divine:  The belief that something is of, from, or like a god.

Democracy:  A government in which the people elect a governing body in some fashion.

Early Adoption:  When an inventor or culture creates a technology long before their analogue culture did in the real world.

Easter Egg:  A hidden message, image, or feature that is meant to be hunted for within the material.

Economics:  The study of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Education:  A form of socialization in which we teach the youth what they need to know to become functioning members of society.

Effective Worldbuilding:  When (a) the immersive state is never disrupted for the audience, or when (b) the immersive state is disrupted with a positive result.

Element X:  N. K. Jemisin’s concept of when fantasy elements diverge from the real world. Similar to fantasy conceits.

Emic:  An account of a cultural idea, concept, behavior, or belief documented as if from within the culture.

Empires:  Multinational states with political hegemony over other ethnicities, cultures, or nations.

Encyclopedic Impulse:  The consumer’s desire to know everything about the world or the author’s desire to expound upon all the worldbuilding details.

Ephemera:  Transitionary materials that are not meant to exist for long term, such as advertisements, diary entries, letters, posters, and the like.

Ethnicity:  A group that identifies with each other based on presumed similarities such as a shared language, ancestry, history, society, or social treatment within an area. Ethnicities are not dependent upon, but are often associated with, certain taxonomic traits or physiological similarities within those groups.

Etic:  When cultural ideas, concepts, behaviors, or beliefs are documented from outside the cultural milieu as a passive observer with an eye for similarities between all cultures

Exsecting:  When the creator removes something that exists in the real world from the created world.

Extrapolation:  In worldbuilding, the belief that any fantasy conceit should be followed to its natural conclusion.

Face Validity:  When worldbuilding detail appears believable upon immediate examination. See Credibility Threshold.

Fan Service:  Material included in a story that serves no narrative purpose other than to please fans.

Fantasy Conceit:  What the creator intends to explore in the world, it is where the constructed world deviates from the real world, usually in the form of geography, biology, physics, metaphysics, technology, or culture.

Fantasy Function:  When analogue cultures are filtered through fantasy conceits to populate the created world with its output details.

Fetishes:  Items imbued with cultural significance and power.

First Principles:  Core belief and value systems within a culture that are often unconscious until confronted.

Flavor Text:  Texts within stories, video games, role-playing games, and action figures that add depth by providing a sense of history but do not alter the game mechanics or story in a substantial way.

Feudalism:  An economic system wherein there is a division between the lords that protect the vassals that work the land in exchange for protection.

Four Cs of Worldbuilding:  See Creative, Complete, Consistent, and Compelling.

G-L

Gender:  A social construct of how cultures differentiate the sexes.

Generalist:  When every individual in a society has the same basic job, which is providing their daily caloric intake. A staple of hunter and gatherers and in contrast to specialists.

Generation:  A social cohort group based around the period in which children grow up, become adults, and bear children of their own. Because of this shared timeframe and significant events in their lives, generations often share a similar worldview within the general culture.

Genre Expectation:  The qualities audiences expect of their genres to be considered successful, i.e. is the thriller thrilling or the romance romantic. For fantasy and science fiction, the genre expectation is worldbuilding.

Goldilocks Zone:  The habitable zone around a star where the temperature is right for water to exist in liquid form. 

Group:  Two or more individuals who share a collective sense of unity via interacting with each other because of shared similar characteristics.

Habitat:  The ecosystem or ecological community creatures exist in.

Handwave:  A writing term for explaining crucial events dismissively with minimal details.

Handwavium:  As opposed to the handwave, when everything else in the imagined world fits logically together with the exception of the fantasy conceit, which the audience must then accept to continue on with the story.

Hard Deduction:  When there is no narrator and no character bringing the worldbuilding details to the audience’s attention, who must then piece together the world rules based upon the provided details alone.

Hard Impart:  When information is imparted to the audience through narrative text, usually through the narrator or the internal thoughts of characters.

Hero Props:  Items that are necessary for a scene to take place, making them integral to the story.

Heroic Theory of Invention:  When inventors and discoverers of scientific developments are treated as solitary geniuses rather than products of good luck or a part of a team.

High-Concept:  A term from the film industry meaning an idea needs lots of background details, usually compiled from the worldbuilding, to be explained for the core concept to be compelling.

Hybrid:  (a) In biology, a living thing bred together from two different species, which is not able to produce its own viable offspring. (b) A method the author can employ to get details across to the audience in which it appears they are using a hard or soft impart, but the audience deduces are not correct, which then casts provided information into doubt and adds new nuance.

Iceberg Theory:  The theory proffered by Hemingway that so long as the author is aware of the underlying ideas, they can cut away anything from the story and it will still make sense. Usually interpreted to mean one only needs to reveal 10% of worldbuilding details or backstory.

Illusion of Completeness:  The sense that the world is complete and that all questions can be answered within it rather than the creator explicitly spelling out all the details.

Immersion:  The altered state in which the audience feels they are physically present in a non-physical world.

Ineffective Worldbuilding:  When worldbuilding details become obvious to the consumer, thus breaking the sense of immersion and reminding them of the real world. This can be caused by internal inconsistencies or from reality incursions.

Info Dump:  A sudden overwhelming quantity of backstory or background information supplied in a short timeframe.

Info Dump Equity:  The idea that an author should not reveal worldbuilding information until the audience craves it, thus being able to deliver an info dump without anyone complaining.

In-Group:  The other people an individual identifies with. While they may not share the exact worldview, they share the same first principles in understanding the world around them.

Innovation:  The drive for change, usually technological, but also socially.

Inside-Out:  How audiences process worldbuilding details, in that they pertain to the immediate understanding of the scene, which are then pieced together into an understanding of the world.

Inspired Worldbuilding:  The top form of worldbuilding, which invites additional audience interaction via their imagination after the story has concluded.

Institutions:  Stable organizations of individuals formed for a shared purpose, usually by performing specific, reoccurring patterns of behavior.

Integration:  When an individual adopts the cultural norms and beliefs of the dominant culture while still retaining their original culture.

Interconnection:  When the threads of worldbuilding are tied together cohesively. Part of Sanderson’s third law of magic systems.

Interquel:  Stories set in an existing world but that do not connect with the original story.

Intraquel:  Stories set in an existing world that fill in gaps in the existing story.

Kinship:  How social relationships organize into groups, roles, and families. Usually consisting of consanguinity, affinity, or co-residency.

Limitations:  Checks put upon magical powers, usually in the form of weaknesses and costs. Sanderson maintains in his second law that limitations are more dramatically important than powers.

Linguistics:  The study of languages.

Literary Fiction:  The style of fiction that aims for awards, considers itself art, focuses on the prose, and is usually slowly paced.

Locality:  The small-scale community in which the individuals in a group grew up, usually comprising of a town, neighborhood, or block, which differentiates them from others in the surrounding area.

M-O

Macroworldbuilding:  The first of the stages N. K. Jemisin breaks her worldbuilding process into, which consists of planet, continents, climate, and ecology.

Magic:  Change wrought through unnatural means.

Magic Point Systems:  Magic systems where the casters have a set amount of energy, usually referred to as mana, to spend on their effects.

Magical Thinking:  The belief people can affect change the world around them through thoughts and behaviors.

Mana:  A frequent generalized term for the finite resource magic users spend on their magical effects.

Marginalization:  When an individual rejects both their original culture and the dominant culture.

Mary Sue/ Marty Sue:  Originally a created character for fanfic who has no flaws and is inserted into interactions with the canonical characters. Now an insult leveled at characters consumers don’t like, usually claiming they are overly capable and without flaws.

Masquerade:  A term taking from the World of Darkness RPG wherein the existence of magic is hidden from the general populous.

Metaphysics:  In worldbuilding, dealing with deities, spirits, cosmology, and the afterlife. In essence, creatures and locations that do not abide by understandings of biology or physics.

Microworldbuilding:  The second of the stages N. K. Jemisin breaks her worldbuilding process into, which consists of species, morphology, raciation, acculturation, power, and role.

Monotheism:  The belief in a single deity only.

Mystery Box:  The theory proffered by JJ Abrams that mystery drives audience interest, which will keep them invested in a story so long as they are promised elucidation later.

Mythopeia:  Constructed mythologies, lores, and histories within created worlds.

Nationality:  How an individual relates to their state. A component of cultural identity.

Nominal Change:  A superficial change in the secondary world that contributes nothing to the worldbuilding.

Norms:  What is considered acceptable group behavior and what people should and should not do in their social surroundings.

Oligarchy:  A government in which power rests in a small group of people like the nobility, wealthy, or religious leaders.

One-Off:  An intentional inconsistency meant to highlight the aberration as separate from the established worldbuilding.

Out-Group:  Those that do not share the same collective worldview, which are often mistrusted or viewed with outright hostility.

Overlaid Worlds:  Constructed worlds with real-world locations but with the addition of fantasy elements.

P-R

Pantheon:  A categorization of collected deities based upon the culture that worships them

Pantsers:  Creators who build or write without a clear outcome in mind. See Bottom-Up.

Pidgin Language:  A grammatically simplified language used for trade that comprises vocabularies drawn from numerous languages.

Planet of Hats:  The trope of treating a species or world as monolithic and with one defining trait.

Planners:  Worldbuilders or writers who have a clear plan once they start creating. See Top-Down.

Politics:  The decision-making process within groups and individuals involving power structures.

Polytheism:  The belief of multiple gods, usually inhabiting a pantheon.

Porcelain Argument:  In worldbuilding, the belief that technology stagnates at the level at which magic or a fantasy conceit is introduced.

Portal Fantasy:  A subgenre in which the characters from the real world travel to a secondary world.

Prequel:  Stories set in an existing world that precede the original story. They do not need to connect to the original story but often do.

Primary Sexual Characteristics:  The sex organs used in reproduction.

Primary World:  The real world in which we all reside and draw our experience from.

Prime Mover:  A conceit that cannot be removed without the story world falling apart.

Profane:  Something that is religiously blasphemous or obscene.

Prologue:  An opening sequence in a narrative that establishes background details to create context, clarification, and miscellaneous information for the audience

Promise of the Premise:  The term coined by Blake Snyder for the point in the story when the setup is complete and it examines its core conceits. An author breaks the promise of the premise when the story is not about the promised core concepts.

Pull Factors:  Factors that draw immigrants to an area.

Purple Prose:  Descriptions that becomes overly ornate and extravagant, to the point they break the sense of immersion by drawing attention to themselves.

Push Factors:  Factors that drive immigrants out of an area.

Race:  (a) In biology, a grouping of populations below the level of subspecies, and is rather imprecise in distinguishing the differences between them. (b) In the fantasy genre, usually understood to mean “species.”

Racial Attributes:  The assumption that any one fantasy race shares not only certain abilities like flight or the capacity to speak with animals, but certain demeanors, temperaments, and biases.

Reality Incursions:  When the outside world interjects itself into the created fantasy experience to remind the consumer that this is indeed a made-up world. They usually occur when the consumer has expert knowledge in a field that is not depicted correctly in the narrative.

Reciprocity:  When people respond to actions with similar actions. This can be positive, as in the exchanging of gifts, or negative, as with punitive eye-for-an-eye punishments for crimes.

Relativism:  The belief there is no real objective universal truth and that we base all understanding upon perception and consideration.

Religion:  The cultural system of behaviors, morals, ethics, and worldview in which humans deal with supernatural, metaphysical, and spiritual conceptions.

Retcon:  Short for “retroactive continuity,” the term comes from comic books when previous canon or facts are ignored or contradicted so as to assimilate new stories or understandings in current storylines.

Reverberations and Repercussions:  The understanding that any change within a world creates many expected and unexpected changes to the whole.

Rituals:  Formal customs often involving gestures, words, and objects performed in a traditional sequence.

Rule of Cool:  The understanding that the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its level of “coolness.”

Rule of Law:  The idea that laws extend to the lawmakers as well as the general populous.

Rule of Three:  In worldbuilding, the concept coined by Randy Ellefson in which an author should alter at least three components of a trope to make it their own.

S

Saturation:  Mark J. P. Wolf’s term for when there are simply too many details for the audience to fully absorb, which he maintains makes the world stronger since it invites the audience to reexperience the material again and again to glean something new each time.

Scarcity:  When people put higher value on rare things and assign lesser value to things in abundance.

Secondary Sexual Characteristics:  The distinguishing traits that distinguish the sexes, such as human males’ facial hair or females’ breasts.

Secondary World:  A created world that does not exist.

Selection:  In biology, the preferential survival and reproduction or elimination of individuals with certain traits. Can be either artificial, natural, positive, or negative.

Separation:  When an individual rejects the dominant culture in favor of preserving their original culture, which often leads to minority enclaves within the dominant culture

Sequel:  Stories set in an existing world that follow the original story. They do not need to connect to the original story but often do.

Set Piece:  An iconic scene that exemplifies the story even though it might not actually be necessary to the story itself.

Shamanism:  The belief that specific individuals have access to and influence over the spiritual realm, usually derived by ritual and entering altered states.

Show Don't Tell:  The understanding that the audience prefers to experience the worldbuilding details and storytelling events in action rather than having them explained.

Smeerp:  Unnecessarily renaming something to make it seem exotic. Derived from James Blish’s sarcastic use of the term when describing rabbits.

Smeerp Hole:  When one seemingly minor change contributes to a whole slew of other changes on the author’s part that add little to the audience experience as a whole.

Social Class:  The hierarchal social stratification of groups, usually manifesting as upper, middle, and lower classes.

Socialism:  The economic system in which the workers or government own and manage the means of production.

Socialization:  The process in which a group passes on the worldviews, norms, and customs to their children.

Soft Deduction:  When a character with knowledge of the worldbuilding takes action based upon specific information to get the worldbuilding rules across to the audience.

Soft Impart:  Information presented to the audience not through narrative text but through a trustworthy side character or source. Can often come about from an overheard conversation or explanation from another character.

Specialization:  The divisions of labor and creation of occupations when the population does not individually have to account for their daily caloric intake. As opposed to generalist.

Species:  A group of living creatures capable of exchanging genetic material and producing viable offspring.

Speculative Fiction:  An umbrella term for fiction that inject elements into the story that do not exist in the real world. Fantasy, science fiction, horror, historical fiction, alternative history, and dystopian and utopian fiction are just a few genres that qualify as speculative fiction.

Spotlighted/Lampshaded:  A potentially troublesome concept or idea that is intentionally brought to the audience’s attention before it becomes problematic to highlight that it is intended as a fantasy conceit rather than an accidental anachronism.

Stasis:  The drive to maintain the current order, be it social, political, or technological.

States:  Organized governments overseeing a specific territory that can interact with other states.

Streamlining:  Part of Sanderson’s third law of magic in which worldbuilding details should be accounted for by already existing fantasy conceits instead of creating whole new conceits.

Suspension of Disbelief:  When an audience makes a choice to suspend their critical faculties to allow for a patently unreal concept to be considered logical for the sake of entertainment.

T-W

Taming:  When an animal has been taught to tolerate human presence. As opposed to domestication.

Technobabble:  When a character spouts a number of details to establish their expert credentials in the field. Technobabble is not meant to be understood by either the audience or the other characters, only to establish the character’s authority on the subject.

Terra De Facto:  The implicit understanding that anything that is not accounted for by a fantasy conceit must therefore abide by the rules of the primary world.

Terrain:  The vertical and horizontal proportions of land masses, which includes how high it is above sea level and at what slope.

Theocracy:  A government where the religious leaders and practices control the laws in addition to the religious norms and rituals.

Toehold Details:  Descriptors that specifically trigger the assumption of an analogue culture and time period, and therefore help the audience to mentally populate the scene.

Top-Down:  In design, when the underlying idea or system is formed on a grand scale, then with all subsequent subsystems being added and refined until everything is mapped out. Also referred to as “planner” or “engineer” when it comes to writing or worldbuilding. 

Totems:  Imbued emblems representing a group of people tied to a specific spirit.

Transmedial:  When a story or world exists in multiple mediums.  

Tropes:  Reoccurring motifs, images, plots, and characterization that exist within a genre.

Unchanged:  When the creator does not use a particular fantasy conceit and leaves their created world the same as the real world in regards to this fantasy conceit. See Terra De Facto.

Unobtanium:  In engineering, the term used for materials or technologies that do not yet exist but will one day solve current problems. Frequently used in science fiction worldbuilding.

Upmarket Fiction:  The style of fiction that aims for creating discussion. It often blends literary and commercial fiction, deals with universal themes, has accessible language, and is character-driven.

Weakness:  Limiting factors that diminish the power or the person using it. Part of Sanderson’s second law of magic.

Worldbuilding Capital:  Time and mental energy sunk into a world, which is why authors frequently reuse the existing world instead of forming a new one for subsequent stories.

Worldbuilding Kudzu:  When too many worldbuilding choke out the pertinent information by sheer volume, thus disrupting immersion.

Worldview:   How a society or individual orients their knowledge and point of view towards the world. This includes philosophy, fundamentals, existential postulates, values and ethics, ideology, and attitude. It encompasses the concept of why the world works the way it does and the “correct” way to act within it.

Worship:  The act of religious devotion towards a deity or ideal.

Source ⚜ More: Word Lists

[adragonsfriend]

There are no trash takes on Jedi philosophy, there is contextual analysis.

As may be obvious from the title (humorous--I have gone through several common misinterpretations myself), this is about that infamous scrap of poetry,

There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.

And the other version,

Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.

I've seen quite a few interpretations of these along the lines of "the second version is reasonable but the first version is crazy and stupid," so here's why I think both versions are actually communicating the same idea, and the wording doesn't really change the meaning much at all.

So just like I did in my post about "do or do not there is not try," let's start by asking some questions to establish context before we look at the text itself.

Is it THE Jedi Code or just a mantra? Legends says it's the Code, canon says it's a mantra. The fact of the matter is that no matter what, it's really a scrap of poetry which couldn't encompass the entire philosophical basis of a culture even if it was trying, so we'll consider it a mantra.

Does the fact that it's a mantra rather than THE Jedi Code mean that we can't get anything deep or meaningful out of it? Of course not. Just because it's not the whole of or a full explanation of Jedi philosophy doesn't mean it's just a nice sounding string of words.

Who is saying this to who? This mantra is often used to focus a meditation, with the first phrasing used by adults in the culture, while the second phrasing is more often used by children.

What were George Lucas' inspirations for Jedi culture that relate to this mantra? (borrowing from this post) A combination of christianity, buddhism, and his interpretations. I'm not an expert in any religion, and definitely not in buddhism, but I know enough to know I'm about to make some sweeping generalizations, so take this with a grain of salt. Disclaimers aside, this mantra, and the way it is phrased, indicate it is being inspired more by buddhism. The way christian texts, specifically the Bible, are written typically goes "here is a story about people doing something, and here is how big G god and/or Jesus reacted." There are metaphors sprinkled in, but they are mainly there to clarify for readers. Buddhist texts on the other hand (and lots of other eastern belief systems as well, like daoism, hinduism, etc. It's an important note that these belief systems don't necessarily conform to the western idea of what a religion is, and often their original languages don't even have a word which is equivalent in meaning to "religion") use metaphor in often deliberately contradictory ways, to make the reader think about things which are difficult to express in words alone. The ongoing struggle to reconcile contradictory descriptions is the point. This doesn't mean those texts can be interpreted however a reader would like. There may be multiple right interpretations, but there can also be wrong interpretations.

What the mantra does NOT mean:

"There is no ___ …" =/= "The experience of ___ is fake news."

"There is no ___ …" =/= "___ is not a useful concept."

"There is no ___ …" =/= "We should totally ignore ___ and pretend we've never heard that word before."

The mantra is not realy a set of advice on how to act. It's a set of statements about Existance. And I do mean capital E, philosophical, epistemological, weird, deep, think-y, Existence.

Temperature Metaphor

You know the first time someone tells you as a kid that cold isn't real, it's just the absence of heat and you're like… "but I'm touching something right now and it feels cold???" It sounds wild the first time you hear it, but as you think about it more, maybe learn about it a second time in science class, get some more context about how molecules work, etc. it begins to make more sense. It gets easier to grasp, until eventually the knowledge feels intuitive--especially if you're a STEM person who thinks about it a lot. We still talk about cold as a concept, because it's useful to us as well--lack of heat can have damaging effects on our bodies after all, and a cold drink is great on a hot day--and it's more efficient to say "cold" than it is to say "lack of heat." But there are some situations, like developing refrigeration or air conditioning, where it is not just useful but essential to think of temperature as it really is--heat exists, cold doesn't--and thinking of it colloquially can only hold us back (if this isn't actually intuitive to you, that's fine, it's just a metaphor--you could also think about dark being the absence of light, vacuum being the absence of mass, any number of things mirror this).

Probably the easiest like to get one's head around, imo at least, is "there is no ignorance, there is knowledge."

Taken hyper-literally it would mean "why seek out knowledge ever when everyone already knows everything?" But if we say knowledge is to heat as ignorance is to cold, then we can understand the real meaning--knowledge is real, where ignorance is only the name of an experience.

The Whole Mantra

This is the way the Jedi are understanding of emotion, ignorance, passion, chaos, death, etc. They are introduced, as children, to the idea that whilst they may feel all of these things, what they are actually experiencing is the lack of the other things--peace, knowledge, serenity, harmony, the Force. That's why they start with the "___ yet ___" phrasing--it introduces them to the first steps of understanding:

They can feel emotions, yet peace is still real and out there to reach for no matter how overwhelming those emotions may be at the moment,

They can feel ignorant or unknowledgeable, yet knowledge is out there to find,

They can experience passion (meaning suffering or pain in this context), yet know that serenity will return to them,

They can find their surroundings chaotic, and yet look for the harmony in the noise,

They can understand that death happens, yet be comforted by the fact that the person dying is still as much a part of the Force as they ever were.

Eventually they move onto the full mantra:

They will always feel emotions, but if they always reckon with those emotions and pass through them they can always return to a place of peace,

If they feel ignorant, they must seek out knowledge, rather than acting rashly. Also, their own knowledge is not the limit--others may hold knowledge in places they consider clouded,

They may experience suffering and pain--it may even feel like a good thing--but there is no wisdom in pain, it is the distraction from serenity, which is where truth can be found,

No matter how chaotic the world appears, it is actually a part of an underlying harmony that makes up all the patterns and the beauty in the world,

Death is not an ending, no matter how much it may look like one. It is a natural transition back into the Force, the place all life comes from.

A Jedi youngling is someone for whom this understanding is an essential part of the culture they are being brought up in.

A Jedi Padawan is someone who is beginning to learn to apply this understanding outside the confines of the Jedi temple, in a world where not everyone shares it.

A Jedi Knight is someone who has learned to apply this understanding on their own, without supervision.

A Jedi Master is someone for whom this understanding has become intuitive and automatic, no matter their surroundings.

All this is to say,

[licorice-and-rum]

My response to some "critics" about Babel

Okay, I'm gonna start by saying this: English is not my first language so I may commit some spelling and grammar mistakes here but I felt like I just had to write this down, especially because of the negative reviews this book has that just… didn't get it.

Don't get me wrong, of course you're allowed to not like this book, I recognize that it's most certainly not gonna be everyone's cup of tea but some of the people here just didn't get what this book was all about. Babel isn't a fantasy like ACOTAR, or HP, or whatever (in the sense that, for those, the story guides the message while Babel is the contrary): like many classical books, Babel was written to make a point, it's a romance, sure, but it was written to argue for something - the necessity of violence.

So, first of all: Babel is a historical fantasy, it talks about colonialism, racism, sexism, and other matters with no qualms, no embellishing to make it digestible, no allegories or metaphors because this isn't the point. Kuang's "lack of nuance" as someone here pointed out is very deliberate and extremely important for the story because the points she wants to make are always lost in nuance (just think how many people go on misinterpreting Star Wars, Hunger Games, or even anti-system songs like The Wall ffs), and the message is too important to get lost in allegories.

Second, as to the story, many people seem to think what she's pointing out is obvious "ur dur colonialism is bad, we get it". No, you clearly don't. There's a profound difference between getting it and actually comprehending it to an elemental level. Robin's travel to Canton illustrates that perfectly: he knew that colonialism was bad, he knew it was violent but he didn't comprehend it until he was forced to face it happening in front of him - to people who could've been easily him. More than that, because that was when he finally connected the theory with the reality, it became palpable to him.

It's not enough to get it, you have to actually stay attuned to it, to feel the flow of its violence throughout the world because then, and only then, I'll realize you can't be complacent, you can't turn your head from it. And Babel is an attempt, however tiny, of showing this to you. Of telling you "Look, you're ignoring it, the discomfort you felt reading this is your conscience telling you you relate to that". So no, I refuse to accept that Kuang should have been more nuanced: she was as clear as she could because she knows people say they get it but they don't, not really.

Third, the magical system is just chef's kiss. I've seen many people complaining about it but the thing is: the silver working is not about having magic in the world, it's about creating a palpable, material place where Kuang could center her attention as she talked about the economic aspect of colonialism. That's because colonial power is not centered in one place or thing, it is scattered all around but you can't hardly make a point like Babel's if you have your characters fighting off colonialism in all corners of the world. Like the Capital in the Hunger Games, Babel is a material place that symbolizes something.

Moreover, the silver working symbolizes the Industrial Revolution and its need for the advance of colonialism. More than that, silver-working is about capital, it's about technology to generate more profit, quicker, for a specific class that doesn't care who they have to kill to continue, doesn't care whether it is good or bad for the common folk.

Fourth, many people pointed out how academic Kuang's writing style felt during Babel and they're right, it is indeed very identifiable. I'm sure I even commented something along the lines of "it feels like I'm having the best History lesson of all time". But I'm going to challenge people who say things against the notion that the historical description of Kuang was unnecessary: every time Kuang chose to give the readers historical context has served somehow to the narrative.

I remember early on in the book when Robin was still a teen walking through London and reading anything he could put his hands on, and then we get two paragraphs of historical and political context for the time, then Robin comments that he didn't understand why this mattered so much. That paragraph served so much, both because it made us know a little more about Robin and because it served to make us understand the profound environmental change England was going through at the time.

And every time she did this, it served for something. Again, Babel is a historical fantasy, it is supposed to make you think about the point Kuang is trying to make but you won't understand it if you don't know the context of which Robin and the other characters in the book are coming from. It was a time of decision: either England would consolidate itself as an almost all-powerful oppressor, or it could go down… if the oppressed people - who share a common enemy - understood their responsibility to do something.

The strikes of the English working class, the violent acts of rioters, the advancement in technology, the possibility of the Opium War, the colonialism… it's all important. It's important because it allows us to understand the deep connection between it all. It allows us to understand who profits off of it, and who doesn't; who is able to understand and who isn't. It's why Letty is upper-class. It's why Abel isn't.

It's not as simple as some people think to understand colonialism, the flows through which one thing is tied to another. Why do people ask "How does this affect me?" when we point out deeply unfair things like unpaid maternity leave (I actually saw an American once saying she "wouldn't want her tax money to go to someone who didn't plan through"), like the fact people starve when we have the ability to feed a world and a half, of that Palestine is going through ethnic cleansing? Because they are unable to understand how closely their lives are tied to other peoples they have never met and probably never will.

Kuang's message is not "colonialism is bad", she's saying "These are all the forms through which colonialism is bad to everyone but a few, do something about it", she's saying "Every single one of your struggles is tied together in more ways than you even understand. A person in Haiti, in China, in India, in the other side of the world, has more to do with you than these white rich people, fight with them, stand with them."

Fifth, I can't believe I gotta say this but I'm not going to even bother with you if you think this book is somehow "anti-white": just get over your main character syndrome. We're talking about a historical fantasy set in England in the epitome of colonialism through the eyes of a person of color. Of course, most white people are gonna be bad, get over yourself ffs!

The actual entitlement to the protagonism white people have is maddening. As a white woman (in Brazil, at least), I'm ashamed of some comments here. It's not because white people in this book are majorly racist (which, according to the setting is 100% accurate) that Kuang is talking about you (although, if you're so bothered by it, it's probably about you anyway). This is a book about the experience of people of color under the oppression of colonialism: white people are the problem!

You can't just expect someone to write about colonialism and not talk majorly about race. White people reap all the privileges of this system and not just that, they are responsible for it, and all the crying about being the bad guys is just insufferable (they're actually so right about having to console Letty once she learns about the racism they suffer).

Be f*ing accountable for your privileges, take responsibility for your internalized racism, and be accountable for the system that privileges you. It doesn't matter that it wasn't your fault, that you didn't set up the system, you still benefit from it anyway so get a grip. This story isn't about you at all, it isn't about how some white people fought against slavery or oppression, it isn't about you.

Let's be very clear about this: most white people who fought against slavery did so to serve their own interests, exactly as Kuang points out. This doesn't mean none of them were good people who actually believed slavery was bad but we're talking of a time when racism and racial discrimination weren't even discussed seriously. Most white people, even the ones against slavery would have a deeply ingrained racism in them, so get real.

More than that, though: if those people who actually have no shame in saying Babel is "anti-white" had actually read the book through, they would know that some white people actually help and are good people in the story.

Anyway, Babel is so good, it's so painfully real and so passionately well-written. You can feel Kuang's love for her people, the struggles of what it means to love something but still not be a part of it, the deep understanding of how the world works, and how intricately every single thing in our lives is.

I just felt so heard (as a person from a third-world country) reading Babel, like someone was telling me all this rage and indignation I feel is justified, it's valid. I just treasured it so much, how I identified with Robin's need for security contrasting with his indignation for the price of it; with the rage Griffin carried around him, sharpened and well-directed even in its volition; with the love Victoire had to learn to have for her country and its story; with all the pain I was able to share with someone who understood it.

It's an honor to allow words to change me so fundamentally. It's humbling to realize I'm not alone, that my actions and my feelings are shared by other people. It is really precious, you know, to be able to become a better person than I was before because of a book.

[thewritetofreespeech]

Gale x Tav

WORDS: 1994

RATING: E

PAIRING: Gale x Tav (post game pairing)

SUMMARY: Gale's perspective on how his lovely little ring went while he was all alone, watching Tav through his projection's eyes (part i part ii)

TAGS: magic sex (literally. but also metaphorically), f/m, voyeurism, Gale using magic for naughty reasons, masturbation

-------------------------------🟣--------------------------------

Some of the most gifted, magically academic minds were in this hall right now. And all they could do was argue about table settings.

Gale sighed and stood up from his chair with his drink. Already tuning out the lively debate about Faerûn midcentury design and how one professor could tell that its wood was clearly Zazesspur from the pre-capital era, while another professor stated she was clearly being absurd as the lines in the wood were obviously from a wood in a much more norther region like Neverwinter.

He left his wife home alone for this?

Gale left the company of his fellow academics for his quarters. No one seemed to notice. There was a time when Gale himself would have been immersed in the lively debate along with his other book beaters. Sparing wits and parring with obscure contextual footnotes for no other reason than to prove they were the smartest in the room. It all seemed so trivial now.

Once you’ve brushed against death, not once but twice, and fought the destruction of the world with your bare hands, academic strife seemed…pointless. Absolutely pointless. Like the rest of this week had been.

When he originally received the invitation for the summit, Gale had been overjoyed. Honored, more like. To be recognized as a man of distinction at the school he held so dear, in education in general, for only just starting was a great achievement for him, he felt. Now he wonders if it was just that no one wanted to go, because it was so boring.

He wished that he could have just projected his consciousness here, like Tav suggested, so he could be home with her now. With his much better wine and much less blow-harded company.

The door to his quarters clicked into place behind him and Gale sighed at the quiet. Enjoying it for just a moment, until he opened his eyes and saw just the small desk, by his small bed, in his small room, with his small window. Oh to be home…..

Gale took a seat at the desk as he wasn’t quite ready for bed. He sat his wine down. His magic lighting the few lamps in the room for him to see as he debated about reading or reviewing the agenda plan for tomorrow in want of something to do.

Then his eyes caught a glint of the ring resting on the oak (or was it Neverwinter ashe?) and picked it up. A gift from his wife. One of those spontaneous, no reason, ‘I was down by the market & I thought you would like it’ kind of gifts. Gale smiled wistfully at the memory of her giving it to him. And he thought he was the romantic out of the two of them.

His thumb brushed against the smooth silver. Admiring it, like he wished he could be admiring her right now. This was the longest he and his beloved had been apart since they got married. A few days here and there, but nothing this consecutive nor extensive. Gale doesn’t like it.

He tries not to be obsessive with his love, but when Gale loves he loves passionately. And Tav has been a big part of his life ever since she pulled him out of that misbehaving portal. They’ve built a life together. She’s the first person he wants to tell everything about his day, and eager to hear what she’s been up to when they were apart. And at night...well, let’s just say that it was a good thing this place had the option for bracing cold baths in the morning.

Gale examines the ring further as his teeth pull in his bottom lip. ‘I wonder if it will work’ He mused to himself as he pondered on a spell he had created a few months back but never put into practice.

It started out purely from an academic standpoint. He wanted to make that very clear! Just a simple…trans configuration experiment on magically linking two objects together and see what the effects would be. He hadn’t intended for it to turn into a sort of randy parlor trick, but he had impulse control issues.

Setting the ring down, Gale recalled the simple incantation and gesture needed for the spell. Focusing his magic and the Weave to press not just into the ring but also link to his beloved. He hoped Mystra had her back turned for a moment while he cast this one.

Spell incantation done, Gale picked up the ring and gave it a small nudge. Nothing happened. He supposed that should be obvious. The effects would be on the other side of the link and not here with him. Gale tried it again, hoping to feel some kind of magical sense of confirmation, but still nothing.

Humming to himself in befuddlement, Gale looked over at the clock in his room and did some quick math. It was almost 2:30 in Waterdeep. Which meant that it was almost time for his normal office hours at the academy. Perfect. If Tav was there, which he was certain she would be as she was dutiful to a fault, then Gale knew exactly where they were, and he could see if his ‘gift’ was working out well for her.

Calling on the Weave again, Gale focused his consciousness and perception to separate from him and fly back home to Waterdeep. Silently wishing it was that easy for him. When his projection landed, and the mental link between them righted into a clear picture, Gale’s mouth went slack as he saw Tav. "Gods above...." Her cheeks were flushed. Her breath panting. Her body in clear stages of pleasure as her hands braced herself on his desk. Gods! What he wouldn’t give to be there right now to make love to her on that definitely Sword Coast mahogany.

“Hello there!”

Tav’s head jerked up at his projections greeting, and Gale groaned at the wild look in her eyes. Surprise first, but then bridled arousal. Just waiting to be unbridled and throw her into loss, but his dutiful love was well aware she was still in public and in a school.

When she spat an accusatory remark about him doing this to her and Gale touched the stone of the ring now on his hand. He watched Tav’s knees quake in response. It worked. Oh....goody.

He moaned in tandem with her image but then told his specter to tell her what was going on. Gale didn’t want to leave her in the dark. Tav seemed to accept this, but then asked about all the practicalities of him doing this at work and getting caught. Wouldn’t that be a shame?

He tells his image to tell her about his office hours and the locked down, then moaned along with her as her hold finally became unbridled and she fell into his chair. Limbs asunder as she just accepted what was happening to her and gave into the pleasure.

Gale continued to touch the stone with one hand, while the other went to his belt and quickly undid it. He’s been hard since he first saw her against his desk. Now seeing her give loose to the pleasure, Gale might cum in his pants like he was a novice back in school and Gods could you imagine if he had someone like Tav for a teacher?? He’d still be in his Active Principles of Elements & Arcane lectures.

His hand stroked his erection with the same speed as his massaged the stone. “Tell her I’m happy she likes my present.” He orders his projection. Watching her through their eyes. It did as it was told and Tav opened her eyes to stare right back into them. Gale moaned. The heat in her eyes, the desire, that cheeky grin coiling on her lips almost make him double over against his own desk.

“My present, eh?” Tav answered back, and Gale bit his lip so hard he nearly tasted blood.

“Yes. Of course. I did this for you.”

The projection relayed his response, but that doesn’t seem to convenience Tav. “Just for me?” Gale watched, transfixed, as his beloved began to open her blouse ‘in front of him’.

He whimpered at the sight as his thumb brushed over the aching red tip of his cock. He had to swallow the drool collecting in his mouth before he could respond with, “yes” for his projection to repeat. But the damn thing went rouge and blurted out his secret, so he pressed his thumb harder against this stone to distract Tav from its honesty.

Soon, Tav was begging him to fuck her. Desperate and needy. Mewling like a wanton kitten; or maybe that was just him. She asked if his projection was anatomically correct like last time and before it could fully answer, Gale ordered, “no!” He didn’t want to watch an illusion of himself make love to his wife. It was silly to be jealous of a projection of himself, that he created, but Gale wouldn’t have it.

If he couldn't have her, no one could. Not even his illusions.

Tav whined and looked ready to just do it herself. Gale gulped as he watched her hand move to the front of her pants, prepared to slide down and--Gale gripped the base of his cock to stop himself from cumming. He wants them to cum together, but it seemed rude to have Tav finish herself off.

Conjuring all the magic he could, Gale used the mind’s eye of his projection to summon Mage Hands. They touch her everywhere he wanted to, all at once. Tav seemed delighted, although overstimulated. He would have to remember that for later. Her delicate sweet hands gripping the armrests of his chair as her body arched and bucked against the hands. Gale watching it all as he jerked himself closer and closer to the edge. “Tav…!” He knew she couldn’t hear him, but he had to say it. Almost a reflex at this point as he came.

His hand was a mess. Portions of his desk splattered with it too. Cold baths only negated the symptoms, not the cause. So he was quite backed up since coming here.

“Did you enjoy yourself?”

Gale and Tav look up at the projections ask. Taking it upon itself to check in on her. What a good little ghost.

She told it yes, and Gale felt his cock twitch at the look in her eyes. Perfectly sated and happy, but still that glimmer of ‘more’. He tells the projection to let Tav know that the door would be opening soon, and she should get righted with herself; lest they be discovered. She made a very clever retort about him deciding to do this here if he was so concerned, which made him smile and love her all the more.

Gods how he missed her.

“Ask her if she would like to do this again tonight. When we're at home, and a little more private.”

The projection did as it was told, and Gale groaned as Tav bit her lip before giving an enthusiastic yes. Then, Gale severed the link, and he was alone again. Alone with only his hand and his memories.

He cleaned himself off and thought about going back downstairs for a final nightcap, as he was too riled up still to sleep. But when he opened the door, and heard the architecture debate still going on, only now they had switched to stone, Gale closed the door and rested his head on whatever cheap wood this terrible door was made out of.

He had to get out of here. He had to go home.

So he spent the rest of the evening coming up with a clever plan and semi-lie about how his wife needed him. “Emergency. Unavoidable. Must get home before my wife spontaneously combusts…without me. Should probably leave that last part out.”

[crimeronan]

hey kitkat, if its not too much trouble, could you make a propaganda post for the silt verses? I've been seeing you talk about it a lot (i have spoilers marked dw) but im afraid to look up anything about it. is it horror? all i know about it is val <- horrible woman(?) so im intrigued. was wondering if it'd be possible for a silt verses post a la that trc post you made a while back

OH, ABSOLUTELY. i think about 95% of my followers have no idea what this media is about, so this ask is very exciting. i'll preface it by saying that i think it's edged out the dreamer trilogy for my favorite story Ever -- it's exactly on par with the first two books in terms of Reading My Heart Off The Page.

the premise:

the silt verses is a now-complete horror-tragedy narrative podcast set in a fantasy world that has many parallels to our own. this fantasy world is embroiled in late-stage corporate capitalism and is ravaged by the effects of colonialism, war, and oppression.

in this world, gods are created through sacrifice and belief. there are thousands of them, with thousands of individual religions.

the problem is that gods must be fed through human sacrifice. and if they aren't fed, they die.

and people are very invested in keeping their gods alive.

sacrifice is considered a necessary part of society, something that's as essential as breathing. the idea of simply not making sacrifices is considered a violent, radical, leftist anarchist position that is simply unsustainable. or so the state would have you believe!

but. SOME gods have been outlawed, and worshiping them WILL get you killed by the government.

the state says that it's because these gods are uniquely evil, and too dangerous or sadistic or wild to be fed.

in actuality, gods are outlawed when they don't serve the state or corporations' purposes. the question at the heart of the worldbuilding is always, "is Anything you've been told about the gods and the magic true? how much of this world is socially constructed? who benefits from the way things are?"

Metaphors Abound.

-

the cast:

the first season follows four key narrators; the second season introduces a fifth; the third a sixth.

-

carpenter - sister carpenter is an older woman who was born into an outlawed river-worshiping faith. she has seen her entire family murdered by the state, including her brother, parents, and grandmother. she briefly left the faith but returned to the parish because she had nowhere else to go; her relationship with her river and her church is complicated at best.

carpenter begins the series as a """devout""" disciple of the river parish. in actuality, her faith has been slipping for a Long Time. she's no longer certain that she loves this god she's been killing for for her entire life.

she begins the series investigating some unexplained "miracles," aka Deeply Fucking Horrific Murders, that appear to have been done by her god.

alongside her is brother faulkner.

-

faulkner - faulkner is a kid, somewhere around 19 or 20 years old when the story starts. he was NOT born into the river faith, but was instead called to it, back when he was still a rural farm boy living with his father and brothers. his first sacrifice was his brother, who he drowned on the farm. he later left home to find the parish.

faulkner has been with the parish for a pretty short period of time, but he truly IS a devout fanatic. because of this, he does not get along with carpenter. the two of them bicker a lot. carpenter thinks that faulkner is a stupid country bumpkin who's naive and full of starry-eyed optimism, and he annoys the piss out of her.

faulkner is not a dumb country bumpkin.

but he knows how he sounds and he knows how he looks. so he plays the part of the starry-eyed child with ease.

he is planning to kill carpenter.

he knows she's slipping, he knows she's losing her faith, and he wants her dead. he's been asked to keep an eye on her because the parish knows she's slipping, too.

uh oh!

-

hayward - investigating officer hayward is a police officer in the religious homicides division of the greater glottage police force. this police force has jurisdiction over outlawed gods. hayward's job is to find outlawed gods, arrest/kill their worshipers, and report them to the government.

he is the main antagonist of season one. crucially, he's a Good Cop - he's friendly, affable, funny and likable. he's kind of a dickhead bastard, but in the way that the protagonists of Cop Tv Shows (TM) often are. he offers to "help" the people he's arresting. he's good at playing the role of a good guy who just needs to uphold the status quo for the good of society.

but. he is, first and foremost, a cop. and the narrative has a Lot to say about cops. and about other people whose job is to Enforce The Law.

so. don't think that him being a Good Cop means that he's Actually a good guy or that he's not dangerous to the protagonists. Hoo Boy.

-

paige - paige duplass is a corporate boardroom executive who works for a marketing firm that creates gods. her job is to do all the marketing and branding for new corporate mascots. what does the god look like? how does the worship work? how are the sacrifices made?

but her company's profits are waning. and they need to return value to the shareholders.

so. they're going to kill their employees.

not paige, of course! she's a highly valued member of the team. she just has to keep everyone calm and be a kind, upbeat manager while the Layoffs approach. everything is fine, everyone. we aren't going to kill you :) don't worry :) just keep smiling :)

the horror of this gives her a crisis of conscience; after all the murder goes down, she leaves to go on a long drive.

which becomes longer still when she's taken hostage by carpenter and faulkner.

-

shrue - season two introduces shrue, a spineless liberal politician who runs on a """left-wing""" platform but really could not care less about anything except polling numbers. they're willing to do rotten, ugly propagandist things for their campaign -- including killing the river god. and all of its followers. for the good PR! :)

not great news for carpenter, faulkner, or their people.

but then shrue experiences Actual Violence up close for the first time. and it Shakes Them To Their Core.

and, well. suddenly they're not so comfortable being a spineless liberal politician anymore.

too bad they've locked themselves into their role and cannot fucking escape it!!

-

val - introduced in season three, VAL is the saint of a god of liars, purposefully created by the government for use as a weapon. she is the remnants of a woman who killed herself to serve her country. she does not remember who she is or what else she wanted, aside from her mother's approval.

as the saint of a god of liars, whatever VAL says becomes true..... as long as someone is there to listen. you're a loyal soldier? no, you died of a tumor as a child. you're a politician begging for mercy for the sake of your infant child? no, your baby has an insatiable taste for flesh and ate your sorry ass. etc

she's a monster and a sadist; she enjoys killing people to try to fill the emptiness in her. she is in terrible pain all the time and does not understand why. and she is becoming increasingly disillusioned and sick with herself, the government she serves, and the Utter Pointlessness of all this systemic violence.

but how do you break a cycle when you Are the cycle?? how do you get better?? how do you change anything??

much to consider.

-

overall, it's as close to a perfect story as it gets imo. literally every detail is carefully, painstakingly chosen to further the themes, arcs, characterization, etc. the plotting is suspenseful, the horror is Deeply Fucking Scary, the storylines are gutwrenching, the voice acting is spine-chilling, and the characters are So Fucking Compelling.

also, i get frustrated by representation-first fiction recs, but if you get this far and want to know: it's Deeply queer. faulkner, paige, and shrue are all trans (shrue is they/them, paige is a post-transition trans woman, faulkner is a trans guy who's recently started T). carpenter is aroace, there's casual representation and normalization of trans n gay people throughout the ensemble cast.

and more importantly, it's just. So Damn Good.

@valtsv @deermouth you two are the other main silt verses bloggers i know, so if you want a pitch for your followers.... here is this!

[scapegoated-if]

How did the band come up with the name “Voyeurs” and why did they choose it? Would the name itself have been controversial in-game at that time, due to the sexual connotation?

This also comes up in the story but I will spoil it because it’s not majorly significant in the grand scheme of things. There will be a scene that explains all of this again, so read at your own discretion.

In the group, their initial idea as a band was ‘The Spectators’, which I got from a 1970 Jim Morrison interview where he said something along the lines of ‘a spectator is the most dangerous thing you can be’—I will reblog this with the specific quote and interview when I get home later (I have spare time on my hands so I’m replying to this at work).

Léon, however, suggests the name ‘The Spectators’ in reference to Oscar Wilde’s Preface from The Picture of Dorian Gray:

‘All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.’

Léon also sees “spectating” as the act of baring witness to the world around him at the time and writing what he’s baring witness to, more so than having anything to openly say about it. He doesn’t see himself as a writer but a vessel.

I imagine Vince thinks it’s too pretentious and, although Léon doesn’t agree with this sentiment, he does agree that the name in particular isn’t right for the band because it’s too on the nose.

Shiloh then suggests ‘The Voyeurs’ as a synonym, without knowing that the actual sadistic meaning refers to sexual voyeurism as well as in a sense enjoying pain inflicted upon others.

Vince would shut it down, interpreting the former. Leon would be open to it in the context of the latter—he would elaborate that he is specifically referring to watching those who suffer at the hands of progression and transgression from capitalism and the discriminatory systems currently in place at the time.

Eventually MC would decide to remove ‘The’ altogether from the name because there are many examples already of groups that have ‘The’ in their names: The Beatles; The Rolling Stones; The Velvet Underground; The Lovin’ Spoonful; The Byrds; The Who; The Doors; and etc, but I could go on.

I have the scene written down for the sake of myself contextually (it was one of the first pieces of writing I did for Scapegoated to grasp a sense of the dynamic between the band), but I’ll share it with you guys at a later time because I want to include space for coding so your MC can decide where she stands in this discussion.

The name is received negatively for a while by others and has a lot of discourse around it. Many record labels receive it negatively in the fear of a lack of marketability. But your label is open to it and loves it for the discourse it can create and the image of your band as very much so a product of your “angry” and “subversive” generation. At the time your band takes this well, especially because it’s a very famous and successful label (evidently), but bad publicity isn’t always good publicity…

I offered a different name to my best friend when I was planning Scapegoated: ‘Pitstop’. It would have been a literal reference to the QE2 and the fact you met Léon on a pit stop along the ship’s schedule. But I didn’t feel that it had the same impact if the MC was from France because you would both be getting on the QE2 at the same time, rather than experiencing the journey without Leon for a day, and then picking him up at the South of France terminal where it massively turns around what the trip is like for you. On the other hand, metaphorically it was meant to be allusive to the fact your group are passing by—you’re dropping an album and then disappearing, which felt too on the nose on my part in terms of the hiatus. The band wouldn’t know they’re going on hiatus when they start it, otherwise it’s like what’s the point in the first place?

Also, I associated the name ‘Pitstop’ as less ‘70s and more ‘00s heavy metal for some reason—maybe I’m subconsciously rhyming it with ‘Slipknot’ or something.

Sorry for how long this has become! A lot to unpack!

Stay groovy!

[itsbenedict]

Games I Played In 2024 And Whether Or Not I Thought They Were Good (Part 3/4)

[1] - [2] - 3 - [4]

More of them! I've been doing these roughly in chronological order so I'm going to have more to say about these ones probably.

Another Crab's Treasure

Haaaaaah. Mixed feelings on this one!

The idea is that it's a Dark Souls game, only, like, vibrant and colorful and ocean-themed. You're a hermit crab who's trying to get his shell back! Cute!

First off: if you get this game, do not get it on the Switch. It is broken on Switch. Like, crashes regularly, freezes up on simple object interactions, drops frames all the time... it's rough. I've seen LPs of people playing the PC version, where it looks and plays much better, so that's probably what you want to do instead. I'm shocked Nintendo let them release it on their store in this state.

And... that kind of colors my perception of the gameplay, too, because it turns out soulslike difficulty gets way more frustrating if you're usually dying to the game freezing up during an enemy attack, or the camera getting stuck where you couldn't see the tell animation, or some other technical issue that completely wasn't your fault. I was fighting the game every step of the way.

That said, I can easily see the version of the game that works, and the gameplay's pretty fun! The various shell powers, the rolling mechanics, and the smart enemy design make it really smooth to play when it's actually running at full FPS. The environment design is also really good, and overall it's very well-executed.

Hated the story, though. What a mess. It's... totally thoughtless doomer nonsense, whose primary message is "capitalism bad!" while completely failing to depict any capitalism and instead having the government be bad. It's all half-formed ideas from people with no model of how the world actually works- just a vague sense of anger at powerlessness and disenfranchisement, directed at incoherent strawmen. The speech where the evil corrupt mayor tells you that laws exist to make it legal for him to kill anyone who defies him is especially eye-rolling- as is the strawman of techno-optimism who shows up as the surprise final boss. Just idiotic stuff.

None of its metaphors even work on its own terms- like the thing where pollution is a nebulous force of corruption caused by greed in the hearts of the crabs who hoard trash, except that the greedy trash hoarders live in the clean colorful heights and the poors with no trash live in the polluted undercity with too much trash. Wait, what? Yeah.

Fun though.

Loop Hero

This one was really cool! It feels like there's some potential it had that it didn't realize, but I enjoyed it as a smaller experience anyway.

The idea is... the world's been destroyed, and you can sort of bring it back by remembering. As you walk along this desolate looped path autobattling enemies in search of a boss, you can put down tiles that change it- biomes that spawn different types of monsters, buildings that give you buffs, and terrain with global effects. As you progress, you unlock more types of tiles, and learn synergies between different types of tiles that create new effects.

There's a lot of these, and they're really cool. Like, put down nine mountains or hills in a square, and bam, you get a tall peak that spawns harpies to fight. Or put forests next to a lightning tower, and get burning forests that, uh, I think lower everyone's HP or something? Place a light source next to a field, and it blooms with flowers, doubling its XP bonus or whatever it is those do.

My problem I think is just that there's not enough of them. Each type of tile has between two and four different kinds of interactions with other tiles, and you don't really get too many elaborate combos. Most types of tiles ignore each other. I kind of wish there'd been a little more depth to these systems, with more surprising interactions with older terrain types as you unlocked new ones. Let me run a river past a spider nest and get diving bell spiders, or put a storm tower next to a vampire castle to spawn frankensteins! The surprise tile synergies were the most exciting part, and there was definitely room to include more of them.

The story had some kind of cool things to say about, like, the weight of creation, passing judgment on the world, deciding what has the right to exist. I don't know that it really explores it fully, but there's something there!

Hades II

Yep, this thing's in early access! And no surprise: it's good as hell. I've wasted far too much time in it.

Gameplay-wise, it's going to be pretty familiar if you've played Hades, but there's a few major changes. The most impactful, I've found, is that you only get one dash. No upgrading it with the mirror or getting more from Hermes- you get one, and then can hold down the button to run slightly faster if you gotta move fast. This makes Melinoe play very differently from Zagreus, who favored getting in close and overwhelming foes with a flurry of blows before zipping back out with dashes when things get hairy. Melinoe needs to stay safe a lot more than Zag does, and relies on her ranged options to do so.

(There's also a few other tweaks- every attack comes with a charged version that costs mana from a mana bar, olympian calls are replaced with "moon blessings", and of course all the weapons are new and take some getting used to- but the dash is the biggest thing.)

The story, this time, is fascinatingly weird. It concerns a war between the gods and the titan Chronos, and... it's not entirely clear if you're on the right side of it. They play up how callous and evil the gods are with respect to mortal life, and have multiple supporting characters who put this concern front and center where Hades 1 kind of sidelined it. But Melinoe is this weird, uptight honor student type of character with a strong sense of propriety and familial loyalty, and kind of doesn't care about that compared to her quest to rescue her family.

It keeps, like... dropping hints that you're not really on the right side, here? Chronos is personally unpleasant and loathsome, but you keep getting little hints that what he's actually doing is an improvement over how the gods were running things. Various character arcs seem to be headed in a "the gods suck and you should stick up for your non-god friends" direction, but...

...I mean, they can't actually do that, can they? Just, structurally! It's a roguelike, meant to be infinitely replayable! Hades 1 had a pretty elegant resolution to that problem, reframing the gameplay as something that can fit without the central conflict, but I can't imagine how Hades 2 could possibly do that. An entire section of the world takes place on a fleet of ghost ships sailing to join the war effort! Even Melinoe failing to grow and just winning seems incompatible with the game continuing. A good chunk of the game doesn't exist without the conflict! I don't see how they can possibly put a bow on all this, and I'm excited to see how they try.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

My favorite game from my childhood has received an updated rerelease on Switch... and they did it right. You gotta check this out.

I've talked about why TTYD is great before- I think one of the first posts on this blog, waaaaaay back in the day when my posts were bad and you shouldn't go looking for them? But the upshot is: the battle system uses small numbers, and you can figure out exactly what kind of damage you can dish out and take in a given turn, and plan your risk-taking and resource management around it precisely- in a way you can't really do when you've got big damage numbers with RNG ranges of outcomes. All the risk is in the execution of your guards and special moves, which let you attempt harder inputs in exchange for more favorable outcomes, with a chance that you'll fail because you fucked up,

Going back to it after so long... honestly, with fresh eyes, the writing isn't quite as lively as I remember? Like, I remember a big reason I was disappointed by later PM games was that there were no partners, or that the partners didn't really talk or figure into the story. But... honestly, TTYD does have that same problem, outside of the chapters where those characters are introduced. Once someone's In Your Party, their relevance is kind of over, and they all deliver pretty similar filler lines while out. That's something they could maybe improve on in a proper sequel.

Still, the writing generally remains sharp and very funny, and the variety of scenarios it throws at you are great. And the remake adds a few things that really enhance the experience- like new remixes of the battle theme for every chapter, and extra animations for every character, even the random background nobodies. You can hit NPCs with your hammer and they'll play a little "hey, ow!" animation now! Different characters get different dialogue bleep sounds! And they added a warp hub for backtracking, so the General White quest isn't so tedious! And a warp pipe between Creepy Steeple and Twilight Town, to cut out like an hour of pointless backtracking! All the changes they made were really smart.

(Including: putting Vivian's trans stuff back in the script, after it was cut in the original localization. Good on you, Nintendo!)

Pokérogue

I was weak. I held out two months, and then gave in. And I regret everything.

This fucking thing ate multiple months of my life. It's... infuriatingly addictive. It boils the Pokémon experience down to this ultra-tuned flow state, with accelerated levelups and mechanics to streamline the game into a roguelike form factor, and it's so goddamn tight. Every moment of it is setting you up with a thing you can do next, so there's no stopping points- just new goal after new goal after new goal. It totally hijacked my brain until I beat the damn thing into submission, doing absolutely everything it's possible to do in it.

Except "ever voluntarily using Skwovet", because fuck that thing.

Don't play this. It's bad for you.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Technically not a new game, but the DLC is basically an entire new game, with a map about the size of the base game and its own progression system and story.

I don't have too much to say about the DLC itself! It's More Elden Ring. Miquella's story is cool and tragic, the final boss was a terrifying surprise, and the new environments and enemy designs were sick as hell. If you liked Elden Ring for those things, there's more of it here! 'Nuff said.

What stuck out to me was... I started a new character and a whole fresh playthrough of the game, because I didn't know what the entry point to the DLC was. And while last time, I built a strength-focused warrior with tons of HP, this time I decided to try out a totally different build and play a squishy wizard with ranged attacks. And the game was so different like that! Still balanced, still fun, but completely a different game.

Instead of being about getting in close, staying in close, and sticking around for a long time while finding openings to attack, it became about staying at a safe distance, dodging projectiles, and retaliating with nuke spells to end fights before bosses could get much of a chance to hit me. Some areas that were a huge problem for me before were trivialized by my reusable ranged blasts, and some areas that were no trouble were suddenly a difficulty cliff because there was no way to be effective at range. I'm surprised at how much of a transformation it was! Impressive feat of design.

WEBFISHING

This is a cute little multiplayer fishing game based off Animal Crossing's fishing system. It's a relaxing little second-screen game without too much going on! Not too much to say about it- it does what it sets out to do. Kinda wish they'd tried a little harder for some of the fish "jokes", though- a lot of them are anti-humor about not having a joke for this one. I will retaliate by... not having much of a review for this one.

DEATHLOOP

This thing was fuckin' cool. You're an amnesiac trapped in a time loop- but not just any time loop. The people on this island came here specifically to trap themselves in a time loop, where they could kill each other and live out hedonistic fantasies with no consequences, but something fucked up and now only you and a crazy lady who's trying to kill you are actually experiencing the loop. For everyone else, it's their first day, and they don't take kindly to you trying to break the loop and ruin their fun.

In order to break the loop, you have to kill a bunch of important assholes (called "Visionaries") who've somehow anchored the loop to themselves. But you've got to do it in a single day, and they're scattered all over this huge island- so you've got to come up with a plan. Find ways to manipulate where they'll be at what times, when they'll be vulnerable, and line up that perfect killstreak.

It's fun stuff. Initially, it seems impossible- they're too spread out, too inaccessible, too heavily-defended. But as you work on figuring them out one at a time, you learn lots of little details about gaps in their defenses, ways to fuck with their routines, and traps you can set for them so they'll die without you needing to be present. It's like a mystery game, even though the minute-to-minute gameplay is a pretty standard stealth action shooter.

(Said gameplay's pretty fun on its own- though weirdly, the starting pistol pretty much kills everything in the game in one headshot and has perfect accuracy, so I'm not sure why they bother giving you other guns. I upgraded to Frank's SMG which is basically the same gun but it reloads instantly, and basically never needed to use anything else.)

The story's... a little weird. It tries to focus on the relationship between Colt and Julianna (your also-looping nemesis trying to stop you from breaking the loop), but like... she's not... there, except as an annoying random superboss encounter that sometimes spawns in the middle of you trying to do other shit. She's just a voice over the radio that snarks at you and doesn't have any relationships with any of the other characters.

So like, ultimately you learn a twist about who she was to you before you lost your memory, and she explicates her reasons for wanting to protect the loop, and there's like, some decent character work being done there?

Buuuuuut, in attempting to foreground this character dynamic and make it the main resolution to the game, they kind of forgot to give a satisfying resolution to anything else. Like, these seven people you spend the whole game obsessively stalking and learning everything about so you can efficiently murder them in one go... don't really get a resolution other than being anticlimactically murdered. And there's like no resolution to like, what is the loop and how does it work and why did it get fucked up and what are the stakes here. It's all so meticulously done that I get the impression some writer somewhere answered these questions while plotting it, but they just either didn't put any of it in the game, or I missed something huge.

One negative I will say is: this thing made my old computer overheat like instantly. I had to build a proper gaming PC before I could run this thing- and that was in fact my main motivation for building it, was because I wanted to play this game without my laptop melting. Not really playable on smaller machines, even on minimum settings.

-

One more coming down the line, for the games I played but didn't beat this year, and that should do it!

[1] - [2] - 3 - [4]

[puhpandas]

MCR kill all your friends is soo beckory/gregory & tony

"well you can hide a lot about yourself" rab lying to tony (and ellis) about everything basically. being a normal kid and having parents and caring at all. especially in tonys case just lying and stringing him along

"cause you can sleep in a coffin but the past aint through with you" basically just like, everything with tonys dad being old news and the coffin line being about everyone putting it to rest, & "the past aint through with you" being tony never letting it go and letting it constantly affect him in the present and fuel him to solve mysteries

"cause its tragic with a capital T" just eveyrthing about Tony fr lmao. even in this scenario where he doesnt die the line fits his canon story. every single part of his character is tragic. can also apply to Gregory in this situation bc hes tragic af too

"cause we all wanna party when the funeral ends + and we all te together when we bury our friends" rab and vanny and the glamrocks and stuff after successfully stopping another person from getting too close to the truth by killing tony, his friend

"its been eight bitter years since ive been seeing your face" tony surviving the attack and spending a lot of time searching for gregory and ggy afterwards with no luck & it taking a long time to get leads & all that turmoil

"and youre walking away, and i will die in this place" tony in present time dying in the pizzaplex with gregory walking away

"sometimes you scrape and sink so low" can apply to both tony and rab with tony being in like the worst mental state ever and rabs reputation in tonys eyes being ruined by rab sinking so low as to kill to in tonys eyes just not get in trouble for hacking the plex

"im shocked of what youre capable of" the betrayal between tony and gregory with tony being shocked of what he did to him

"So, tell me all about your problems, I was killing before killing was cool" rab stringing tony along and listening to what he has to say and learning to understand him better than anyone else to keep him interested in him for cover, and rab also having been killing the entire time he was doing it + before tonys big ggy obsession

"You're so cool, you're so cool, so cool" tony liking gregory more than ellis and viewing him as higher above other ppl (because of the traits he shares with tony)

first half being a repeat of the era of tony searching for gregory with another year being added showing how long its taking and how crazy tony is. "youre walking away and i will die in this place" remembering the day gregory walked away from him and holding onto the memory with both hands to fuel him to search + nightmares and trauma, hes still mentally stuck in the pizzaplex experiencing gregorys betrayal

second half being tonys determination after surviving + escaping to get to the bottom of rab after he failed to take him down, PLUS gregory during SB after being freed at this point surviving his night at the pizzaplex

another repeat showing that tony is still in the trenches, with frustration being shown in the curse. pre meeting where they finally reunite after everuthing when tony is in the worst mental state of his life and gregory is traumatized from the pizzaplex. them metaphorically walking away in opposite directions from eachother but eventally finding their way back to eachother what would be post-song

[jayvikstolemyheart]

Thinking about Jayvik thinking about Squid Games…

In a modern world, I can totally imagine Viktor would be in debt due to his health issues or because he’s a scientist or both, but I don’t think he would get scouted for the games since the billionaires might not be as entertained with a disabled player.

(Also something something capitalism metaphor of how the most poor are forced to struggle while the rich watch but disabled people aren’t even allowed on the starting line something something)

Jayce could get in the debt if he can’t get funding for research or if his mother/family is already on the poorer side, = less opportunities = more likely to get into debt.

BUT if he and Viktor are already “lab partners” and Viktor gets sick, Jayce would totally go into the games to get money to pay for whatever treatment Viktor might need. Sure he could get desperate for fuming of his research, but I think saving Viktor’s life would make Jayce be willing to be slapped over and over again.

After the first game, Jayce would vote to be let out after seeing all the death. If he’s successful and leaves, he would try to go to the police but it would be the same thing as the show, no one would believe him. He might try to confess what happened to Viktor, but Jayce would probably feel too guilty to tell Viktor what happened, afraid of what his partner would think of Jayce now.

And of course, Viktor is still really sick. And Jayce gets an offer to return…

Fun but unlikely Alternative:

Viktor is the one to meet the recruiter. Maybe he’s at a real low point so he goes along with the Ddakji. Gets some cash, gets the card but once he gets back to his home/lab he’s like “That was fucking suspicious I better just leave this alone.”

However, Jayce finds the card, sees that Viktor got some cash from an unknown source, and out of a mix of curiosity and desperation to help Viktor calls the number. I’m not sure what the protocol on the other side would be, but let’s say Jayce sounds desperate enough that despite not being “formerly recruited” they decide to let Jayce enter the games.

And there’s the same issues I mentioned before, Jayce would go out of his way to save as many people as possible once he saw lives were on the line and vote to leave. But if Viktor is dying he may very well be tempted to go in again. Justifying it that anyone else who would go on knew what was going on this time, so everyone had accepted the risks.

I mention this scenario cuz I think it would be delicious if Viktor was an even bigger factor for Jayce getting involved in the games.

Plus Viktor would probably make the connection with Jayce’s sudden “trip” and the Ddakji-guy’s card vanishing. He’d try to investigate from the outside what it all means and might get involved in something bigger…

[sunflower1experiment]

One more analysis that actually blew my mind and people already saw.

Pony Express, NOT ENOUGH PEEPS CALLS THEM OUT!

Now hear me out here

Jimmy and Curly somewhat represent Pony Express

How?

Curly represents what they could’ve been if they actually cared for their workers, but fails in the sense of his own inaction to hold one of his own accountable.

STAY WITH ME

The failure relies in Pony express’s own protocol: Captain is responsible for the crew, if anyone fails to get along your pay will be docked. Saftey.

Saftey for what? The medical tools and the self defense tools? The ax and gun, Curly falls under the system of capitalism in terms of keeping a toxic positivity in an unchecked environment of chemistry between the coworkers aka Anya and Jimmy.

Because of that we see that in the sequel of Mouthwashing with How Fish are made. He’s self loathing, regretting, still blaming himself and taking responsibility for Jimmy’s actions and for failing Anya. When he should only be taking responsibility for failing Anya. Not Jimmy, but Curly is kind to a fault. Thats his flaw.

Which is what makes Jimmy including some of us misinterpret him. We all think he had his head in the game and had it together so why does he fail Anya!?

Because he didn’t, the guy was stressed, anxiously trying to fix what he can (and fix Jimmy which isn’t his job) and play peace keeper and friend instead of Captain. Does that excuse or justify him? No it just explains a lot but also explains his terrible choice of words with Jimmy as well as letting Jimmy walk away.

The company placed such a huge standard onto Curly who saw everyone as human. Meanwhile Jimmy took that for granted, took advantage and challenged his authority.

This is where Jimmy comes in, he represents Pony Express for what it is. Lazy, unethical and simply corrupt.

In one of Pony Express’s posters they speak about complaints about coworkers in a complaint box….that takes three months to check or otherwise never get acknowledged. Doesn’t that sound familiar?? And then when it comes to safety they lack any form of that because they do not see their workers as human.

They laid them off and sent them with most likely the rest of the mouthwash, it was practically a whole set up for failure. And it was their way of basically saying their workers life is as important as that mouthwash…

Now here is where Jimmy comes in, he disregards Anya’s safety, like Pony Express does to all of them. Sees her as useless, Pony express while they did hire them to deliver they also do not value the crew members one bit. Then here is the part that’s actually a kicker, Jimmy assaults Anya, crashes the ship because she told Curly who then goes to Jimmy who was looking for the gun after he finds out that she is pregnant.

Where does this all tie to, it ties to the fact that Pony Express sets everyone up to be abused and does not care until it affects them, just like Jimmy. They go bankrupt, so they lay everyone off. Curly proceeds to tell everyone like a friend instead of Captain who was supposed to wait.

Jimmy crashes out on him, then breaks a nonexistent safety protocol and assaults Anya, this is where Pony Express plays in this without even being there. He expects Anya to act normally after he assaults her, I can’t even imagine the pain and grief she went through. But she doesn’t instead she tells the Captain, not Curly, not her friend, the Captain.

Curly is the complaint box and he as that said metaphorical box does not heed Anya’s request to handle Jimmy.

Jimmy realizes she told, and realizes she didn’t “act normal” and proceeds to look for something to be rid of her, that fails because Curly goes to him and proceeds to try and play peacekeeper/do what the company does.

Try to make it subtle and discreet, Jimmy doesn’t do that and like the company lays everyone off. Aka killing everyone when his main target was Anya, but wait.

Curly is incapacitated indefinitely, so Jimmy takes over and continues his monstrous behavior. Verbally Abusing Anya like he does to Curly, then he physically abuses Curly like how he does to Anya.

No matter what every choice Curly makes it will be wrong to us, and he wholeheartedly agrees with us. How fish are made he hates himself and I wish people saw that he doesn’t give himself grace for it.

But we also see the fish representing Jimmy, and he’s this blob consuming everything.

Now hang on, one more thing I must mention and it’s about Anya. When I mentioned how Pony Express don’t see them as human, and Jimmy parallels them. It’s mainly because of how he treats everyone, he expects things to go back to normal. For Anya to be okay with his verbal abuse, but also praise him because he’s the captain. That title is so important.

Just like during judgement hour, we all see Anya there and telling Jimmy to give a speech. Why? Why does she talk first?

Well it’s simple, he doesn’t care that he hurt her or the others. He just wanted to be important, he wanted to be in Curly’s place so bad. Being praised and loved, even after doing all of that.

Which is why I can’t help but laugh at him because you really did all of that? Just to sit at a table, cut your so called friend’s leg off. Kill Daisuke and Swansea and ruin Anya’s life because you were envious?

Pathetic, really.

Curly maybe likable but he fails as a Captain, while also being a victim too.

And I have to say this real quick.

Can we please stop saying Anya failed medical school? She was rejected 8 times 😭 being rejected is different from being in the school. She wanted to try again after working at Pony Express but Jimmy ruined that chance by forcing a kid on her.

And idk if folks agree with if not then I get it, but folks can hate Curly and Jimmy while also understanding that people like those two. As long as folks aren’t being weird and idolizing Jimmy or trying to infantilize Curly/Daisuke. I mention Daisuke cuz thats literally what Jimmy does and he makes him out to be dumb when in actuality he really isn’t.

[lawbin-archive]

Lawbin Wano Analysis Part 2 - you're not alone anymore

I actually want to wait Law to reappear before writing this analysis but we probably need to wait a long time for him to reappear *sigh* So I will just finish writing this :'( this is the last part but also imo the most romantic part haha

Since I have talked about this chapter for sooo many times, so I will try to talk about something that I haven't mention before. But if I said the same thing again, just scroll through haha -> *INCLUDE MANGA SPOILERS*

-> highlighted in purple are my delulu~

-> Again, don't read if you don't like Lawbin. Includes lots of bias.

~LAWBIN DATING PHASE~ ~LAWBIN A LITTLE BIT MORE THAN FRIENDS PHASE~

Chapter 1055: Learning history with you

my bias ass want to say they are literally dating here!!! again I think I have been reading too much fanfic so in my mind, they definitely went on a date after I don't care what other says.

The little bickering they have in the beginning is so adorable! Like Robin knew exactly why Law follow along but she needs to tease him a bit haha

Law searching through the whole palace or the whole flower capital just to find Robin is just really cute to me. You can tell Law really cares about Robin a lot, otherwise he wouldn't notice that she's not with her crew and he wouldn't spend time just to look for her. Like why did people missed that?!

Law trying to explain himself is also so funny, like yea sure...of course she is really suspicious that you need to find her haha I think someone also mentioned he looks like a high school boy trying to get close with his crush so pretend to be interested with the same hobby?! that's so funny

I also did a bit of research about hyena, they have excellent hearing and smell which is what Law referring here. Hyena also have a metaphor for people who are greedy for money or privilege which I think is not applicable in this case. But I'm surprised that there's a lore that hyena have long been thought to be a beast that can change sex. So did Oda put a little foreshadowing here?! (source: https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%83%8F%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A8%E3%83%8A-112682)

And I think Oda purposely make it ambiguous here, he has a lot of ways to make them find poneglyph together without making Law a stalker (jk) But he has to shown it in this way that seems like Law is interested to Robin. He is definitely stirring something up here!

Robin demeanour is also really different in front of Law. Me and the other lawbin enjoyers have talked about this in the discord before. When Robin flirting with other men, her tone is full of confidence and showing that she is a grown and mature women. And I think she always acting tough and has a "big sister" energy as a habit because of her past experience. She acted like this because that's her mechanism to protect herself. She grew up in an environment that she's afraid people will abandon her or hurt her when she is showing any weakness.

Not that I think her flirting is not genuine or being a "big sister" is not her real personality, she definitely is complimenting the person and she definitely want to take care of the straw hats like a big sis or mom.

What I'm trying to say is she doesn't show her weakness or her soft side to others easily. And I think she will show it only when she thinks she can rely or trust that person. And the only time she has shown her soft and cute side outside of straw hats is in front of Law!!

I have read some japanese readers' comments and some of them is saying usually Robin will say "ずるいわ…" to others (even to her own crew) but for Law, she said "ずるい…" which is a closer way to communicate. I will translate a few comments from japanese fans here: After all, Robin-chan doesn't seem to have her usual older sister vibe when she's with Law, right? Also, this time she said 'that's not fair… (zurui...)' but if it were with someone else, she would have said 'that's not fair…(zuruiwa....)' with a slightly different tone. This difference is quite significant; in many ways, it feels like there's something special. (source: ひさぎ@hisagi_cfa85c) I started shipping Lawbin from Chapter 1055. Normally, she would probably say 'That's not fair…(zuruiwa...)' but with Torao, she said 'That's not fair…(zurui...)' It feels like they have a classmate-like vibe that's different from Franky, Zoro, or Sanji, and I really like it. (source: aria2372)

+ plus one more comment from Chapter 996! It's probably because 'you're the survivor of Ohara and researching the Void Century' that he told you, but even knowing that, the choice of words is surprising. It's like a typical behavior or phrase one would use towards someone of the opposite sex they want to be conscious of, so I was really surprised. (source: user-xk4ru8cv9q)

And yes there are LOTS of comments about Robin's "it's not fair...(ずるい…)" and Law's "I told you because it's you (お前だから話した)" that the wording they chose is surprisingly ambiguous and hinting that they have a close relationship. And they wouldn't act like this with other people. I think that's one of the reasons why lawbin is so much popular in Japan because they can read the tone and wordings with more depth.

Also, as @/cericebelle mentioned we haven't seen Law called Robin since zou so maybe they changed how they called each other already?! Like maybe Law will called Robin as "Robin" instead of "Nico-ya" and Robin will start calling "Law" instead of "tora-o" again.

*BELOW HAVE MANGA SPOILERS* Now that we knew Clover's brother died just because he is a D. And we know that having a D in your name is dangerous which can get yourself killed, can we all agree that Law NEED to trust Robin in order to tell her his full name?! Especially he grew up with a childhood that he doesn't trust people easily. Like Law just tell her you like her! (my delulu again)

Since we are talking about the "true name" culture in Japan, I want to add this in the last analysis. I saw @/happytact reblog that Tales from Earthsea is written by an American author Ursula K. Le Guin. I'm really sorry for the misinformation and putting out the wrong references ><! There are so many anime that have the true name concept and yet I picked out the wrong one -.-

I will add more references to it, in "Spirited Away", the story is focus on true name, Chihiro signed contract by giving her true name and she needs to take her name back in order to go back reality. At the end, Haku also found his true name and he regains his freedom again. In "Natsume's Book of Friends", if you know the monster's true name you can control it. And in "Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle", sakura and syaoran they fell in love and saved each other along their journey, they confessed with each other and only at the end, they exchanged their real name. Not to mention there are lots of anime that express exposing your true name is important or dangerous like "Death Note" or "Your Name" . Telling your true name has a significant meaning in japanese culture, it almost means you're giving yourself to the person (only depends on the context, sometimes it's implied) so when Law told Robin his true name voluntarily, it's really important!!!

When they are looking old wano in the little tunnel and standing really close to each other is way too cute!! When did you see Law self-willingly to get this close with a person that's outside of his crew?! (well maybe except when he is mad at Zoro and trying to fight him haha) Also because Robin teased him in the beginning so he flexed his ability in front of her and try to make her annoyed is so funny. Law act cool in front of anyone but being a little kid in front of his crush is just so him!!! They really show off a classmate vibe here!

so y'all probably know one of the arguments from lawbin haters is "Law is just interested in the road poneglyph" "It's just for the plot" I always laugh at these comments because did you see Law didn't even get close to the poneglyph?! LOL he just standing behind like "I'm good" When Robin stand on a level higher to get close with the poneglyph, Law is also just down there.

And if he is only interested to the poneglyph, he didn't need to the flex in front of her to see the under water wano. He can just stand outside of the tunnel like Sukiyaki.

So in my opinion, Law wants to accompany with Robin. Not that he is completely non-interested to the poneglyph but I think most of it is because he is interested to learn history and find road poneglyph with Robin. Also, it really seems like he wants to get close with her and protect her from behind.

Oh no that's the end of their interactions T^T there is one more from 1056 but I already wrote a long post about it so I wouldn't repeat it again. Hopefully we can see them interact again soon so I can write more analysis!!!

Chapter 1056 analysis:

So some of my future lawbin delulu thoughts are: - they exchanged vivre card - they will meet at elbaf again and will learn more history together - robin will worried about law when she learnt that...you know

hopefully at least one of it will come true haha Thank you so much for reading this!! I really blab a lot haha Please always share your thoughts or comments with me. And also I will promote the lawbin discord group here if you're interested!

[leosficlist]

Johnlock Fluff Rec List part 3!

As always, these can be set anywhere in canon or not at all, and are stories that contained more good feelings than anything else. <3

Fluff pt 1, Fluff pt 2

A Slice of Sentiment by darcylindbergh 9.6k

Sherlock Holmes has a secret. A hot, gooey, greasy, extra cheese and pepperoni secret.

And he’s waiting for the person—the right person, the only person, the capital-O One person—to share it with.

notes: eating pizza as a metaphor for love, will be rereading often

like a lover (or a partner in crime) by ivorysteel

John finds Sherlock's sketchbook full of drawings of just him and wonders why.

AKA Sherlock draws out his feelings.

notes: fluffy, flirting, john figures out his feelings, post s4 insomuch that it has rosie and mary is dead

A Good Old Fashioned Happy Ending by darcylindbergh 32.7k words

And Sherlock stands there, in the middle of a Christmas market as John hums along to Silent Night, John’s hand warm in his with fingertips a little gritty from the cinnamon-sugar doused churros they’d shared, and thinks, oh, that’s–that’s an idea, isn’t it?

For Christmas this year, Sherlock wants to get John something special: something every fairytale deserves.

notes: written for a 25days of ficmas, has 26 chapters, proposals

Of Small and Unexpected Things by wearitcounts 1.2k words

It’s by accident, the first time John sees them

notes: not quite fluff but not quite angst, john sees sherlock’s scars from his time after the fall

Feel your breathing by Mixxy @mixxtapej 2.1k words

And he was numb yet feeling far too much, he was back on that pavement, and his mind was buzzing far too hard, whispering you didn’t do it in time, Mrs. Hudson is dead, Lestrade is dead, your John is dead dead dead-

And then John’s hand was around his wrist, thumb rubbing over his pulse point, and Sherlock’s not sure if it was to comfort him or John but either way it worked

14 Days by a_4_patch_problem 5.9k words

And then Sherlock looked at the calendar, noticing the sickly cheesy red heart around the date, two weeks from then.

Valentines Day.

notes: Sherlock writes John lovenotes.

Let You Kiss Me (So Sweet and So Soft) by out_there 8.6k

The first time Sherlock kisses him, John keeps his eyes open, and so does Sherlock, and mostly, he wonders what Sherlock could possibly be up to. There'll be some logic to this. Some ridiculous experiment about body warmth or respiratory rates or testing a new way of picking pockets. Sherlock does the unimaginable for bizarre reasons, but behind it, there's always logic and curiosity. Sometimes, it just takes him a while to explain it to John.

notes: Sherlock trying to get John to stay

29 Days by naughtyspirit

For the prompt "John bets Sherlock that he can’t compliment someone every day for a month. It ends up many of these compliments are aimed at John and it leads to them kissing/confessing or whatever."

Of Midnight Moments and Mistletoe by huddersandhiddles (LeslieWrites) 7.6k

John and Sherlock are throwing a Christmas Eve party, and the flat is all strung up with mistletoe.

notes: first kiss, getting together during a holiday party

Honeybee by Ireallydontcare443 1.9k words

Watson experiments with nicknames, hoping to find one that will make Holmes' knees go weak.

notes: ACD

Thirty Blue Toes by Itsallfine 1.3k

John Watson had seen a lot of unexpected things upon entering 221b Baker Street. Somewhere along the way, he’d ceased being surprised.

Then he walked in on Sherlock having his toenails painted by an 8-year-old.

notes: Sherlock babysitting Lestrade's kid, not overtly johnlock, sweet

The Oolong Disaster by unicornpoe

John has a beard. Sherlock has a panic attack.

notes: frustrated Sherlock, loving wonderful John

Hypotheticals by ArwaMachine

John finally manages to confess his love to Sherlock.

Sherlock, of course, has questions. Lots of questions.

notes: insecure sherlock but this is fluff

The deepest Fear by Schattengestalt

Sherlock fears that he will lose John someday and he despairs when he believes his worst fear has come true.

notes: checking on eachother after nightmares, insecurities and love confessions, ambiguously series 1

[umbralundertaker]

I love Ruud Hoenkloewen. He's such a non character. He's honestly just a metaphor for institutional violence distilled into a person. The need for authority, for bloodshed. The absolute platonic ideal of an oppressor pared to the least complex it could be. Compressed into one angry, snarling, shaking life form. He is no more and no less. He exists only to impart upon the player how capital looks when it takes off its mask of humanity to kill.

I love characters like that. You'd think theyd be boring, one note and only there to move the plot along, but I think he was handled so well. He made an extremely strong impression on me the first time I saw him.

His design is extra effective because you've heard a lot about the Fairweather armor throughout the course of the game. Specifically the leg, gloves, and torso pieces. I don't know if this is true for all playthroughs, but at least in my run, I had never seen the helmet piece before the tribunal. It's a great moment to reveal it imo.

Regardless of whether Ruud was the first time you saw the helmet piece, his portrait immediately communicates to the player that this is an extremely dangerous and frightening individual. Along with the more abstract Disco Elysium art style, the helmet itself is utterly sinister looking. Combining a ww1 helmet and a gas mask-esque face piece. When Ruuds portrait first appeared on screen I seriously thought it was a skeleton I got scared.

Ultimately I just wish people acknowledged him (and the other assassins) more. They have a lot of bearing on the game's message but since people can't woobify them they kind of go untouched.

[literallys-illiteracy]

The floor of technological sciences:

ahhhh i realised that the other one had some things that i wanted to change so i thought that i might as well upload it all in one post.

this one is longer than Malkuth's, shorter than Tiphereth's (i dont think that any are going to get to that length)

The harms of Technology, Capitalism and selling your soul to the devil:

i dont know if this title is better than the one i had before but i have a headache and cant be bothered titling it any better than this

Forsaken murderer was at one point in the past, a murderer on death row; rather than execution he served as a test subject so that scientists may learn how to cure a disease, though injections and chemicals his violent tendencies, along with humanity, were removed. 

Following these experiments he was no longer considered dangerous, as he had seemingly no intention to attack, meaning he was unrestrained, after this, the murder began having delusions, specifically of his head turning into metal (hence the EGO line for meursault) which caused him to begin bashing his head into solid objects - in the time following this, an incident occurred involving the murder of one of the researchers, leading to the murderer to be dissected.

Though the helper was designed to assist humanity, to recognise and assist human behaviour, it is never able to do so, its instruments being replaced with sharp blades rather than cleaning tools; The helper does not act from a will to help however, it simply follows its programming, there is no reason for it to question these instructions, rather it need just act them out as it was ordered.

Singing machine doesn't really have a backstory like others, it's simply the machine itself, and the obsession that it induces over its music; the noises produced are so addicting that those who seek it will sacrifice other employees into the grinder for it to continue; or, if we dissect it as a metaphor, the machine rewards those who willingly sacrifice others in order to succeed (yup its capitalism)

“They're bound to the company the moment they enter. Even if they do resign, they are doomed to stay here forever."

The Funeral of Dead Butterflies tells the story of a pious man who entered the company carrying a coffin to mourn those who could not leave, who soon became trapped inside the company walls himself, becoming a husk with burning memories of an empty faith.

The Funeral of dead butterflies can be separated into 3 thematic faucets, although all connecting back to the abnormality and floor as a whole.

The first is shown primarily in its, and the city’s, story as a whole: The concept of a corporatocracy.

As you enter the company, you sign the contract, you may never leave, even if one retires, they are bound to stay with the company forever.

The second is the funeral, formerly the religious man, coming to mourn those who’s souls are bound to these company walls, to act as a saviour; The Funeral too is trapped inside the company, slowly losing their sense of self, endlessly walking the halls without meaning.

The third is the Kaleidoscope of butterflies, the souls of those who were mourned in the company, trapped inside the confines of this coffin. 

The thematic of the butterflies is best demonstrated through a quote from the Abnormality’s story: 

“Butterflies are supposed to pollinate flowers, but not a single proper flower blooms in this place. There is no choice but to wait. After all, there must be an end to every world” 

In this, the Funeral of dead butterflies embodies the concept of death. Not only does it represent death in the sense of mortality, the Funeral relates to the concept of death and change, the embodiment of endings and new beginnings.

The butterflies being cocooned inside the coffin, the employees being trapped within the company; Through the ending of the company, the souls will be free to fly forth, to live as a human does, rather than a slave to those better off.

Der Freischütz, German for “The Freeshooter” is based off of figure in german folklore of the same name, who sold their soul to the devil for 7 bullets, the first 6 able to hit any target the marksman desired, but the last of which would only follow the will of the devil himself; a story of selling your soul 

In their backstory within Lobotomy Corporation, Freischütz, before taking this deal, murdered all their beloved, so that the destined bullet would have no target, yet in the end it pierced his heart. 

The Freischütz then wondered across different worlds, acting purely off of base impulse, having lost their soul long ago; The Freischütz did not only lose their soul when the devil pierced their heart, but when they gave up their loved ones in an attempt to trick the devil, but the devil seeks only suffering, which the Freischütz has long caused.

Floor Realisation links:

…I am Angela, your AI secretary whose role is to assist you in adjusting to your new workplace.

Linking Angela to our abnormalities of this floor, a new link begins to reveal itself, all linking back to Angela’s imprisonment, her lack of discretion throughout Lobotomy Corporation:

In her past, Angela was a puppet to the script, being directed, given orders she could not understand nor refuse; Her life written in stone, orchestrated by Ayin.

Though she was designed to assist the facilities, act as a helper, an assistant, she soon realised that she could not act on emotions.

Ayin’s script allowed no room for humanity, each step must be enacted as it was written, each order to be followed exactly and without question.

Though one may argue Angela to be cruel throughout Lobotomy Corporation, these sufferings were not made under her discretion, rather, this pain was merely an outcome of her script, the one she could never disobey.

After all:

A machine had no use for values. There was no point discerning between good and bad when the principles were already set in stone.

Though witnessing, causing and abiding by these sufferings, Angela was not in a place to question this, for she was in the same suffering as all others trapped within the company.

There was a time when I was sick of seeing any more death.

Despite Angela’s stoic nature throughout Lobotomy Corporation, Anglea was not willing in these sacrifices made in the plan, seeing countless, horrible gruesome deaths, yet shedding a tear would dampen the wings, and the play would reset; In this mourning, Angela embodies the funeral, yet should others not also mourn for her? Can the sufferings, the sacrifices made by others compare to how she has suffered? 

Angela was too mourned in the coffin, being trapped within the company, yet she was never allowed the rest that this confinement provided, she need endlessly fly towards the end, Angela is both the mourner and the mourned in this story, she is the butterfly inside the butterfly’s coffin inside the butterfly’s coffin (inside a bag of milk).

“Butterflies are supposed to pollinate flowers, but not a single proper flower blooms in this place. There is no choice but to wait. After all, there must be an end to every world”

And, just as the butterflies are meant to pollinate, those with a soul are meant to live freely, not confined inside the corporation, not dictated by a script, but with discretion and on their own accord; Just as the Funeral says, there is no life worth living within this place, so Angela must bring an end to her confinement, break free from her chains, and pollinate flowers i guess? 

A morbid script written for the purpose of treatment, and a machine slowly becoming numb in the act, losing her sense of guilt…

Along the course of her confinement, Angela’s sense of self withered away; Akin to the Forsaken murderer she was, for lack of a better word, forsaken, by the script, by her creator.

Though Angela suffered in their stead she was never rewarded, never applauded on the stage alongside the others; Chained to her role, never given a chance to live, never given a reason, her humanity began to erode, her guilt for these actions, her grief at witnessing these deaths faded, and in their place came a burning resentment, a hate towards those who put her here, who confined her, who decided that she would suffer before others, and that she would never be thanked for her role.

Just like the Murderer, Angela was trapped, an unceasing loop of ending, beginning, ends. Begins. Ends. Begins. Until… it ended, in a final rest for the murderer, and in the first life for Angela.

“Am I not allowed to help that person…? But they seem to be in so much pain…” …The sound of weakness.

reflecting the past of Lobotomy Corp alongside mirroring our current Angela, the singing machine represents her past, yet also her lack of reason. While she seeks freedom, she is a prisoner to the library, lacking any discretion, and suffering being the only path:

Angela was long a bystander to the machinations of Lobotomy Corporation, being powerless to help those who suffered for the greater cause, fed to corporation for Ayin’s plan, yet she also may manifest as the sacrifice herself; 

Angela was cast aside by Ayin, abandoned to be the only one in the machine, left aside even at the end, never hearing the melody that she suffered so long for; For this, in order to spite Ayin's plan, she now takes the role of the maddened employee.

We all take the sacrifice of others for granted, so that we can have immediate satisfaction.

Angela’s single minded nature mimics that of those employees who crave the song from the machine, entirely dedicated to pursuing this promised song, not caring for any consequences, never stopping to see what she has caused.

In essence, Angela’s quest for the one true book, makes her a slave to the library, being unable to live without it, no more free than completing Ayin’s plan, her single goal, her only motivation to continue living.

I came to a realisation; perhaps the last bullet was meant to puncture no one else but me.

Angela’s single minded desires, her loss of grief, and her sacrifice, both of others and herself, culminate in her taking on the EGO of Der Freischütz;

No matter how many lives would be lost for her ambitions, no matter how many innocents were in the line of her target, she would not hesitate to pull the trigger, to act out the script despite their suffering and to seek the one true book through the pain of others.

This sacrificing of innocents, this selfish act, is mirrored in the Freischütz bargain, their acceptance of this devil’s deal, their sacrifice of all they called beloved, and finally, of their soul.

Though Angela, as a machine, may not have been born with a soul, she is revealed to have one in the finale of lob corp, manifested through her desires to live, through the fragmented remains of her human nature, through her heart.

It is in this where the story of the Freischütz differs, whereas the bullet may have pierced Angela’s heart long ago, her soul was not claimed, she may have lost her humanity as she lived through her torment, yet she was not without emotions, she felt every second of pain, every moment of grief, of agony within these chains, the bullet never removing what she had not originally.

The finale of the Freischütz leaves them alone, without even the devil to whom they lost their soul, alone in the depths of this hell, much the same as Ayin planned for Angela in the end. 

The day I got my hands on this bullet, I sank down upon the ground. Was it despair that the Devil wished for?

In terms of thematics, Angela may resonate much closer to the Schütze, rather that the Freischütz, through the longing, the hope, that one day she may too become the cold machine, uncaring as the Freischütz: Angela, like the Schütze, may have hoped freedom through the loss of their soul, through the freedom brought about by nihilism (note to self, write essay about memento mori by William Woodium).

Not a sliver of impurity is allowed for the mind of those who mourn, it must remain reverent and solemn.

The Rationality to Maintain Discretion:

Gabriel: We thought relying on emotion wouldn’t help a thing. However, it became clear that to accept sadness was just as important. The false rationality we held and clung to only made our hearts rot. It is hard to accept at first. You’ll feel like you’d crumble in. But it’ll get better, I’m sure of it. - Yesod

Following Elijah's Death in the events before Lobotomy Corporation, Gabriel, now Yesod, suppressed himself, leaving only his rationality in stead of his emotions.

Gabriel began to be obsessed with safety, compulsively covering every part of his skin except for his head, ensuring that all rules must be followed perfectly, hoping that these rational precautions will be enough to prevent further death.

This obsession lead to psychosis, Gabriel believing that he was rotting from the inside, compulsively scratching at his skin until forced to take a medical checkup preceding his death.

Gabriel's death was caused though his obsessive rationality, believing that he should bury emotions, even those of mourning for Elijah, so that his decisions would not be clouded.

In holding to this false rationality, that he must suppress all his emotions, Gabriel, Yesod, mirrors his floor's abnormalities, foremost being the Der Freischutz.

"The despaired heart couldn’t go out in a passionate flame. It would only burn with a cold fire."

"Now I see; I have been wallowing in despair, for such a long time."

Akin to Angela, Yesod's relation is in the loss of ones soul, or wishing that they had; Gabriel attempted to bury his emotions, sacrifice his soul in the same manner the Freischutz did, to view all this death and suffering without a clouded mind.

The root cause of Gabriel's psychosis was wishing to not see suffering, to not witness the deaths of any others for the research, mirroring the position of Angela's beginning, and the story of the Funeral of dead butterflies, not wishing to see others suffer, yet losing ones self rather than mourning those who are lost to them.

Angela:

Similar to the way that Gabriel, or Yesod, hoped that rationality would be able to prevent death, Angela too wished to not see the death and horrors of Lobotomy Corporation, the reason that her eyes are closed in a majority of the game’s sprites.

Both Angela and Yesod were viewed as cold uncaring machines due to this trait within the events of the game, hoping that a cold emotionless approach would minimise suffering, thinking that clinging to their false rationality would bring the better future they wished for.

In the transition from Lobotomy Corporation to Library of Ruina, Angela begins to show more and more emotions, experiencing situations for the first time, acting without the puppeteer’s strings which controlled her for so long, she no longer needs to maintain her robotic facade.

Despite this, in the earliest sections of the game, Angela is unable to show the full depth of her emotions, attempting to seal the memories of her past behind, to not be driven by her irrational emotions, the same desire held by Gabriel before the events of the first game.

This suppression of emotions in pursuit of rationality is the same pitfall which held both Yesod and Ayin before her.

What Angela lacks is that of emotions, the drive behind her actions is which she views as rational, yet is driven by a suppressed hatred and sorrow, a buried past rearing its head to drive her forward. 

While Gabriel’s actions were driven from grief, the loss of Elijah, he maintained the view that he was driven by rationality.

Just like Gabriel in the past, Angela must uncloud her vision in order to pursue her dream of becoming a human

Thanks for reading, find the others of this series below:

Angela Floors:

<Malkuth>

Roland Floors:

<Tiphereth>