#just a note: Gil is actually pretty manipulative

[etcseacow]

How do Moe and Gil handle each others lower / harsher moods? Both of them are mentally ill as shit. (If this topic isn't something you'd like to touch on feel free to skip it but I think there's a LOT of gooood hurt/comfort opportunity in this ship)

Oh they absolutely are.

They both have poor self esteem and struggle with loneliness. Interestingly, while Moe tends to become very pessimistic, Gil actually tries to be optimistic. Even if Gil gets upset, 5 seconds later he’s often trying to plaster some kind of cheer on the situation.

Of course there’s a point where he’s literally just:

Meanwhile, Moe gets mean when he’s upset. He’s always got that little nasty voice in his head. It makes him feel bad about himself but also makes him want to make others feel just as bad as he does. A part of him is aware of it and tries to ignore it, but sometimes it’s hard to think rationally when you’re upset.

Early on, when Moe accidentally takes out his irritation on Gil, Gil attempts to accept it as his own fault. He’s used to having a partner that indicates they don’t like him because of his screwups. The behavior in itself reminds him of his failed marriage and that distresses him. Since Gil likes to pretend things are fine, it’s often hard for Moe to catch onto. He def feels bad when Gil is visibly upset tho and awkwardly (but genuinely!) apologizes.

Much later (probably with the confidence boost of the alt persona and not having to deal with Shirley by this point) Gil absolutely does not tolerate cruel words to be thrown at him. It becomes a unique dominance because Moe is almost never challenged when he gets angry. When he throws a fit in his bar and baseball bats booze bottles, his customers bolt out of the tavern. He points a shotgun at his friends, they just kinda drunkenly let the whole threat roll off of them like it’s not a big deal. No one really holds him accountable for his temper and its consequences, at best it’s him who occasionally considers dialing it back.

But Gil basically goes “excuse me?” and it reminds Moe to analyze the way he’s acting, realize he’s just being plain mean to someone he cares about. More often than not this actually startles Moe and makes him upset in the opposite direction (aka Niagara Falls). To which Gil becomes more agreeable to comforting him rather than confronting him. Particularly because the whole temper problem Moe struggles with stems from deeper issues.

Both men also have depression and suicidal tendencies. Gil mainly experiences the worst of it right after his divorce and it gets much better after he gets together with Moe. It’s more situational than anything. Moe’s own outrage on Gil’s behalf is a big help in rationalizing that not everything is always his fault.

However, Moe deals with very long term depression. It’s rooted in his upbringing and poor relationships. Gil learns how greatly this impacts Moe’s moods and as he gains his own confidence, he starts trying to unravel Moe. Moe does not like to think about his childhood because he knows it makes him upset.

Gil and Moe actually get in few arguments, they’re very similar so there’s lacking conflict, but this topic is an argument starter and it’s one Gil will push on even if he knows Moe will react badly. But inevitably it’s talked through and Moe ends up more interested in being hugged by Gil than being mad at him.

Both tend to revert to touch tactics when comforting; for Moe it’s because it’s natural response, for Gil it’s because he knows Moe is very receptive to it.

[ellrond]

I posted 2,100 times in 2022

That's 1,284 more posts than 2021!

230 posts created (11%)

1,870 posts reblogged (89%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@frodo-baggins

@alethiometry

@klngfili

@westenra

@haleths

I tagged 2,089 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#rings of power - 352 posts

#elrond - 282 posts

#lotr - 208 posts

#fanart - 186 posts

#ask - 132 posts

#house of the dragon - 97 posts

#bridgerton - 93 posts

#silm - 92 posts

#anon - 92 posts

#galadriel - 83 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#‘bilbo this is fingon felagund you may have heard of-‘ ‘love what you did with the caves i used to live in somewhat of a cave myself’

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

In early notes by Tolkien the marriage of Elrond and Celebrian was 2500 Third Age and he originally planned to have Celebrian travel to Lothlorien in 2600 Third Age when she was actually killed, a mere hundred years after her marriage to Elrond so anyway thanks Tolkien for revising that but also fuck him for giving her that fate anyway when it adds nothing to the story and she could have been the ruling lady of Rivendell during LotR 😭😭😭

188 notes - Posted November 21, 2022

#4

The fact that they didn't even give new Elrond the sexy long locks he deserves we really are getting robbed 🤧

Literally not to be a bitch but who the fuck is that skinny twink, Hugo didn’t put his whole Weavussy into 5 films as Elrond for this wisp of a tween to come in and not even give us 22” of lace front

288 notes - Posted February 10, 2022

#3

Galadriel and Elrond in Vanity Fair’s First Look at the Rings of Power

344 notes - Posted February 10, 2022

#2

Is Halbrand Sauron? Probably.

Spoilers ahead!

TL;DR: it’s too lazy for him to be Aragorn 2.0- they want us so badly to come to the conclusion that he’s a lost king, it is too easy for that to be the truth. He’s in the right place at the right time to fill the role of Sauron in Numenor and he is of the right, charming, slippery, calculating disposition.

My main reason is they’re laying on this idea of him being Aragorn 2.0 way too thick and it’s the biggest red herring out there. We’ve seen the ‘lost king fulfilling his fate’ story already in the Lord of the Rings and in the Hobbit and it’s tired and lazy and boring.

So what does Sauron want to do in the books? He wants to infiltrate Numenor and recruit the people there to his side and he successfully does that over years of lies and manipulation when the majority of Numenoreans are poisoned against elves, Valar, and each other because of him. Sauron’s end goal in Numenor is ultimate control.

Now let’s look at the evidence in the first three episodes.

Episode 1:

Gil Galad says that he and Elrond foresaw that if Galadriel had continued trying to stop Sauron, she would inadvertently help him

Episode 2:

When the sea monster comes towards the raft, Halbrand advises to stand still to avoid detection when no one else suggests it and it initially works as it doesnt attack them - how would someone from a landlocked region have any knowledge of an ancient sea monster?

Galadriel asked why he separated his raft from the main one to save himself and he said ‘why be part of the larger target?’ - this could be alluding to the fact that Sauron’s forces are in central middle earth while he’s in the middle of the ocean

He talks about suffering and losing his home - Sauron served Morgoth in the First Age and their home was in Angband which was destroyed by the Valar in the War of Wrath. Sauron lost his home and he lost his master

Galadriel tells Halbrand to bind himself to her which is pretty loaded language when she could have just told him to tie himself to her. It’s at this point that he could have let Galadriel die, but he may already know that she could provide him with leverage in the future.

Episode 3 is where it gets way more obvious

Sauron is a charmer - in the books, Celebrimbor is all but in love with him when he’s in disguise. Halbrand flirts with Galadriel and charms her and goes above and beyond for her, like taking Finrod’s dagger from Elendil to give back to her

The moment he gets a bit of freedom, Halbrand goes to a blacksmith and asks for work and says his work is the best the blacksmith will have ever seen. Sauron is a mighty smith who learned under Aule, the god of smithery. Why’s he so set on having access to a smithy? He goes so far as theft to enable his pathway to work

Sauron took the name of Lord of Gifts when he was disguised with the elves, and what does he do in the tavern? Orders rounds of drinks for everyone

When he’s cornered in the alleyway he fights off 5 strong Numenorians with barely a scratch - Sauron was skilled in hand-to-hand combat

He’s eager to appease Tar-Miriel the queen and be seen as trustworthy. Yes, he is captive at the moment, but he has an easy charm even with great lords and ladies that do not befit his station

The figure at the end of the episode is another red herring - it’s not Sauron himself, but a commander of his, perhaps even the Witch-King of Angmar?

It makes sense that Sauron himself would be far away from the Southlands and the centre of his power when he knows that the elves keep watch - whether that be Gil-Galad from afar, or the Silvan elves who are now withdrawing.

His current location of Numenor where Sauron wants to be, and he is developing his relationship with Galadriel who is key to the entire race of elves. If he can manipulate her, he has an easy journey ahead of him. Remember, she ends up being a ring-bearer herself and although her ring is not made by Sauron, her fate is tied to the One Ring and to Sauron.

He’s also wanting to start crafting whatever and promises his work will be the best. He’s already privy to the two factions in Numenor - those who follow the old king and those who follow the queen - and is beginning to learn more about them.

As already said, he’s a charmer, he’s likeable, he has some sense of destiny about him, and he’s good-looking to boot. That’s Sauron’s go-to disguise. To many people familiar with the lore, it seems obvious that Halbrand is not the good guy Galadriel wants him to be. I think this will also lead into conflict between Gil Galad, Elrond, and Galadriel and a decline in her confidence and place in the world over the coming seasons, along with her rising from the ashes.

376 notes - Posted September 10, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

obsessed with how tidy he keeps his hair around Gil Galad versus the floppy hair in Khazad Dum. look at this

Gil Galad is like that grandmother who pulls kids close and combs their hair until they yell

690 notes - Posted September 28, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[spaceorphan18]

So beside being invested what did you think about Rings of Power? I really loved it and I can't wait for S2! :)

Oh, hi Nonny! I'm sorry I'm behind on answering asks. I hope you're still around - because I do love talking about Tolkien, and I don't get to do it a whole lot here!

So - yes, I'm interested, and I thought it was much better than I worried it would be. I still has some issues though that I hope they work on.

Okay, story stuff behind the cut in case people don't want to be spoiled. And because I'm wordy, as usual.

****

I'm mostly going to break this down by character/story arc

Galadriel - I liked her a lot more than general consensus, but I do understand the concerns. There's a lot of room in Tolkien's canon to let Galadriel be whatever the story needs her to be. What they made her be, however, is mostly an angry, aggressive, and static character. I don't blame the actress -- she's doing great with some questionable script writing. I'm fine with her wanting revenge, but they're swinging wildly on this one note, and really need to give her more depth and nuance moving forward.

(Also /what/ was that dark scene where she threatened Adar? I mean why go that far?)

Halbrand/Sauron - Okay, I love LOVE the idea of what they did here more than the actual execution. This is one of those times where the show was trying to have its cake and eat it too. They were trying to walk this line -- making him seem like he could be a real lost king, or someone who was going to be the Nazgul, and wanted to play up the mystery of who Sauron was but... they could have spent a lot more time letting us in on the secret, and letting him be way more manipulative than he actually was. I feel like it was /such/ a missed opportunity to not have him just be sinister, or at least unsettling, the whole way through.

I also think there was a missed opportunity not to have him spend more time with the Elves (as he does in canon) teaching them how to make their rings. It was weird to me that it was, like, a half episode.

Loved the actor (kudos to having him have the whole Aragorn feel to him). Loved the scene between he and Galadriel in the last episode -- so, so good. And I'm really glad they didn't try to force some weird kind of romance there, and instead were opting for two sides of a similar coin kind of thing.

Again - interested to see where they go with this -- will they stick to canon and have him involved in the fall of Numenor?

Elendil, Ilsildur, and Numenor - Look, we know how this ends - with Numenor sinking into the sea and Elendil and Ilsildur creating the last alliance (with the Elves) to defeat Sauron. I think there's a good start here -- both with Elendil and Ilsildur and with the beginnings of the fall of Numenor. I can't say this was the most interesting part of the show, but it does have potential for getting some really fascinating fantasy politics going.

Celebrimbor, Gil-Galad, and the Elves - Out of all the places we've been, the land of the Elves feels kind of limited, and I wish they'd expand the scope here a little. Celebrimbor isn't like I thought he'd be, but that's okay -- I do wish we had more of him though. Gil-Galad feels so stiff and undeveloped. Let him expand his role a bit.

Elrond - Yes, I love him and everything about him. No complaints. Let's give him more to do in upcoming seasons.

The Dwarves - This was pretty well done. Even if there were some huge departs to canon (There should only be one Durin at a time) I think this might be the strongest story line in the show. I loved Elrond and Durin's friendship. I also loved Dessa - and how she's somewhat a Lady MacBeth character. The characterization in these plot lines feels like it was handled the best.

The whole Mithril being the Elves' savior thing -- *sigh* Look, I know they're limited because they don't get the Silmarillion, and it's causing some strange things to happen. And I'm not a Tolkien purist - I'm fine with changes but... wtf?? Mithril was somehow created from the Silmarils and a balrog and... no. Stop. Stop explaining it.

The Southlands - I was a little worried at first, because all of the characters here were original ones. While I really did not care about the romance between the Elf dude and the Southlander woman, overall, I think what they did here was pretty good. The tension during this story line was pretty well done, and the characters weren't nearly as annoying as I feared they might be.

I still feel like the kid has some part to play -- will he become a great king of men and become one of the nazgul? That'd be a twist, huh?

I also kind of loved the eruption of Mt. Doom -- though another missed opportunity not having the Southlands change to Mordor on the map.

Adar - I actually loved this character -- because he struck on some of the lore actually from canon, and made him a sympathetic villain. Idk, I just thought it was cool what they did with him. The orcs, too, were rather well done -- and much more menacing than in the original trilogy, tbh.

The Stranger - I love Wizards, I really do. I think they spent too much time making us wonder if it was Sauron, though, when it clearly wasn't. All signs point to Gandalf, which would be.. I get it, even if Gandalf wasn't in the third age. They have room to tell the story of one of the blue wizards, which would at least be a neat twist. I also kind of wonder if he's Saruman - because that'd be even more unexpected. I suppose we'll see. I do hope, though, he has more interaction with the others, though, because this plot line was so disjointed that it kind of felt annoying to go back to it.

The Hobbits - *sigh* This is where I'm confused - in canon, there are three factions of Hobbits and the Fallohides are the ones that are wanderers, not the Harfoots. Nothing about these Harfoots resembled what we know about them in canon, so why not make them Fallohides? I don't get it.

Anyway... when I heard they were bringing Hobbits into the mix, I kind of groaned. It was better than I thought it'd be, but still not great. They were just kinda dumb -- and it was their own fault they kept getting killed by the stranger. Nori drove me crazy. Oops. (Also - holy Elijah Wood look alike with this actress.)

Some other things --

The LotR references - as someone who loves Easter Eggs and callbacks, even I was getting a little bit tired of them. They were going out of their way to pay so much homage to the original trilogy that I felt like it was trying too hard.

the cinematography is gorgeous. It is the most expensive TV show ever filmed, and it shows. I hope that push back about the show doesn't cause Amazon (or who ever is funding it) to cut the budget on this - because omg, is it beautiful.

The score was fantastic - yes, good, goes in with the wonderful cinematography

The show has some pacing issues. Some plot lines drag on too much. Others are rushed.

Also, as reviewers mentioned - some of the dialogue is really awkward and just plain weird.

So.... are they going to show the making of the other rings? Are they going to show the downfall of men into the Nazgul? How's the fall of Numenor going to go? Will they expand into the east and south? There's a lot of story to tell yet -- I'm hoping they listen to some feedback about this first season and try to improve upon it. There's a lot of potential here, and I want to see it grow into an even better show!

Those be my thoughts! Thanks for asking Nonny!

[ultimatetrashgoblin]

My thoughts on Immortal Heart Society

DISCLAIMER: These are my OPINIONS. I do not claim any of this as fact, you are allowed to disagree with me. (Spoilers for Cassius and Alanna season 1)

First impressions for this series could have been better. There are plenty of problems with this series so far that I will address, but for now, let’s focus on the positives.

The writing is beautiful. As an avid reader and writer, one of my biggest pet peeves is lazy and unimaginative writing. IHS had some incredibly written lines, and I was immediately hooked even if I hated the love interests.

(I don’t have many screenshots but here are a few I did take)

The plot is interesting. While the pacing is a bit off at times, I found the concept of a corrupt secret society intriguing, and the mysteries surrounding the father was enough to get me invested.

The Inner Circle is (mostly) likable. I’m a sucker for found family, and my favorite series on this app (EAA, QoT, GIL, etc.) will usually have plenty of group banter, and the Inner Circle is no exception. One of my favorite scenes in Alanna’s route was in Richard’s office when everyone realized Alanna and FMC were exes.

Kiran. No further explanation. Lovestruck let me date her please.

For the most part, IHS seems like a promising series. But of course, when you have plenty of amazing side characters who would make wonderful LIs, you decide to premiere your series with the arrogant asshole and the compulsive liar.

Cassius Tarkhan

I should probably begin by saying I’m usually not a fan of the “rude, snarky, arrogant” LIs and read Cassius’s route solely because I was excited for the new series. So please take what you’re about to read with a grain of salt, since I am probably extremely biased against him.

This is a direct quote from me reading Cassius’s first few episodes: “I want to punch this man in his stupid fucking face.” I said this out loud, which should give you an indication of what’s to come.

As far as first meetings go, Cassius was probably one of the worst. At first it was all “fun banter oh look at the chemistry” until he sees the invitation and becomes the most insufferable pricks I have ever seen. (I’m sorry, but was that supposed to be romantic?! If I were in FMC’s position, I would be terrified!)

Most of the season went by with Cassius being infuriating and not telling FMC anything, and me questioning if I was actually supposed to like the guy I was supposed to be romancing. The villain dude (I don’t care enough about him to try to remember his name) was boring and creepy. I also had a strong desire to punch him in the face, but I’ll settle for him turning to stone.

It wasn’t until the season finale that I actually started to like Cassius. He started to open up more to FMC, he showed vulnerability, and was generally more tolerable. Hopefully we’ll be able to see more of this Cassius in later seasons, because I believe that it might save his route and maybe I won’t want to punch him in the face as badly.

As for the ending, I’ve read the final episode multiple times and I’m still not exactly sure what happened in that final scene. Cassius tells FMC that he won’t let her meet with the Society on her own and then... is he about to kiss her? This is a genuine question I’m asking I honestly couldn’t tell. It seemed like he was going to but it was very unclear to me.

If I was going to rate this season as a whole, I’d give it a 3 out of 10. Hope to see better next season, because he does have the potential to be better, but that wasn’t shown until the end of the season.

Alanna McKenna

At first, I liked Alanna’s route. I was excited about have an LI who was an ex, she was attractive (except for that weird smirk expression what was that???), she was funny, and I’ve already talked about how much I love the writing.

Then the lying started. I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with my family, many of which are narcissistic pathological liars, so I consider myself pretty decent at figuring out patterns in their behavior. And Alanna fits them to a T.

Please note that I am in no way educated on this topic and do not have the authority to state anything as fact. I am making observations based on personal experience dealing with people like this, and I encourage you to view Alanna’s behavior for yourself and come up with your own conclusions.

My first red flag was the emotional manipulation. Near the beginning, this was in the form of flattery. If FMC started asking questions, Alanna would flirt with her, which would cause FMC to either become flustered or flirt back, both outcomes momentarily distracting her from the original topic.

To FMC’s credit, she does notice when Alanna starts deflecting (she mentions recognizing certain behaviors from when they were together), but she backs down. As someone who hates confrontation, I can understand FMC’s reasoning for this. I find trying to communicate certain issues with these people exhausting. It tends to feel like speaking to a broken record, and can become emotionally draining. However, this is the exact outcome that these people want. They hate being called out on their lies, and when pushed further (in my experience), they tend to result to guilt tripping.

The flirting I could ignore. When I first read it, I thought that was just her personality (which is partially true). But then FMC stood her ground more, and Alanna fell apart. She started crying, talking about how much pressure she was under, making up excuses (a prime example of this was her saying that she thought ghosting FMC would make it easier, which I’ll touch on later), and causing FMC to doubt her (valid) reasons for being angry with Alanna.

I feel like it’s also necessary to talk about Alanna interacting with the other society members. FMC was noticeably uncomfortable with how genuine Alanna seemed to be, and I understand the feeling of betrayal of thinking you know a person, only to see them act like a complete stranger at the drop of a hat. The mental turmoil of wondering which version of this person is the real them, and whether your entire relationship was all a lie.

That part was way longer than I expected, so let’s talk about the “villain”. I’m glad that Arabella isn’t the big bad even if she tried to kill FMC, because she seems like such a genuine person and I’m tired of season WOC be villainized in visual novels (I’m not naming names but you know what apps I’m talking about Choices). I hope that FMC and Alanna will be able to help her and her sister, and that Arabella will get a redemption arc in the future and maybe a route.

The cliffhanger was actually sort of unexpected. FMC finally called Alanna out on her bs (GOOD👏FOR👏HER👏) and tried to leave the Society. Lowkey kind of scared to see how they follow this up in season 2, because it seems like they’re ready to murder FMC.

If we ignore the LIs themselves, I did prefer Alanna��s route to Cassius’s. I feel like we got to see more of the other characters, and I thought the pacing was better. But I don’t like either of them. As I’ve said Cassius seems like he’s improving, but Alanna? Nope. I’m staying for the plot and Arabella, but I’m more than willing to drop her route if this pattern continues (especially if I decide it’s too triggering for me, my mental health is more important).

Rating: 2/10

Final thoughts

As I stated previously, while IHS’s initial premiere wasn’t the best, I believe this series has the potential to be good. My main issues are with the pacing, and above all, the LIs (which isn’t good for a visual novel story centered around romancing the LIs).

Overall rating: 3/10

This is my first time doing something like this so any feedback would be very appreciated. Feel free to offer any criticisms, and let me know if I should make a series out of this! (This did take me a while so if I decide to continue doing this it might not be posted until a day or two later)

[kendrixtermina]

Observations on the evolution of Maeglin’s character

One interesting thing is that while Maeglin’s role in the story had remained exactly the same (ie, being the dude who betrays Gondolin) since the very first draft version, his actual ‘character design’ underwet various radical changes everything from personality, appearance, background & his position in the city. 

Maeglin Version 1.0 (Lost tales)

Appearance: Swarthy, unattractive

Personality: unlikeable, greedy, no fun to be around

Status: From a prestigious noble house that had somewhat lost its influence as of late, but unpopular for being a jerk, it was considered to make him related to the feanorians  (who were at this point separate from the royal family and also just straight up scoundrels, at least the sons)

Backstory:  Rumored to be part Orc. Had asked Turgon for Idril’s hand but Turgon kinda suspected that he largely wanted her cause she’s his only heir

Circumstances of Treason: Basically offered to betray the city as soon as he was threatened to “buy his freedom”, telling the orcs to take him to their leader cause he#d be more useful alive

So thus far a fairly unremarkable minor standard issue Slimy Villain à la Grima Wormtongue. Pretty boring. Only the idea that he’s a miner really survived from this stage

Maeglin Version 2.0 (Sketch of the mythology/Quenta)

Appearance: Still swarthy but distincly good-looking now

Personality: quite the opposite from before he’s now charming and a skilled sweet-talker, manipulative

Status: Because of the above charm he’s now actually rather respected in the city & Turgon likes him

Backstory:  Here’s where his father first becomes one of the moriquendi, at this point a sindarin deserter of the war. Was one of the last few ppl to be allowed refuge in Gondolin (either alone or with his mom)

Circumstances of Treason: Got apprehended threatened. It’s stated explicitly that he wasn’t a coward or weakling, but this version was already plotting to overthrow Turgon before that happened

By this point he has at least become a cool villain

At this point Tolkien probably realized that he already had very many “charming silver-tongued schemer villains” (Morgoth, Sauron, Curufin...) and decided to give him another overhaul

Maeglin Version 3.0 (Final)

Appearance: Still good looking, but markedly pasty (to go with the new backstory of growing up in lightless dark wood)

Personality: Sort of intense, taciturn introvert, perceptive

Status: Still respected & popular but in this case it seems more deserved like he really worked his way up, cause he’s no longer a sweet talker but noted to be a brave warrior who marched out for the great battle, the gist is less “everyone was fooled by this jerk cause he was smooth” and more “if only he could’ve been content with the sucess he already had”

Backstory:  You know this one already, the whole thing where he escapes from Eol with his mom only to get pursued & witness their deaths

Circumstances of Treason: Explicitly did get tortured & cracked eventually (at least it’s phrased that way in ‘Quendi and Eldar’)

Not coincidentally this is when Aredhel finally gets some characterization beyond “gets kidnapped” & emerged as this cool, likeable tragic character which probably made it seem only right that her kid get some reedeeming features as well  (though this was probably also when he decided to make the elves more idealized as a whole, the lost tales have a lot more starring as episodic villains)- now he’s actually brave & did well enough as a lord, and initially just wanted to be free, get to know all those relatives he was always told about & learn more stuff. So a lot more distinctive than just some basic villain archetype. 

That said it’s an overlooked aspect imho that he’s still ambitious, like its noted that he gets very interested once he hears Aredhel mention that Turgon is very rich & has no male heirs. Which is prolly why they made for Gondolin &not the much closer Feanorian territories cause those are just spartan war outposts & Celegorm has heirs a-plenty with his younger brother & nephew right there; (though part of it is probably that while Celegorm is fun to party with, Aredhel might’ve wanted to go to her reliable reasonale brother now that she’s in a real pinch, or she thought she wouldn’t be found in a more secret location) We’re also told that he very much pursued power & influence once he got to Gondolin (perhaps as overcompensation for having no luck with Idril)

Personally I’d say that wanting to be a respected influential leader isn’t necessarily bad in itself as long as it’s not pursued by crooked means (though some might disagree there) though it’s a character trait that I feel gets forgotten cause it’s not conductive to woobiefication. 

Still, for the final version it seems unlikely that he would have done anything worse than quietly simmer in bitterness over being jilted and being a bit of a jerk to Tuor if Morgoth hadn’t got his hands on him; (Consider that Morgoth had a huge grudge against his grandfather, too) It’s not his fault he got tortured and while he did have exploitable character flaws you can see how if he’d had a better life he might’ve been as heroic as all the other nolofinweans, so he’s a lot more tragic. 

Bit of a waste that he never got to meet Fingolfin or Gil-Galad though they were alive at the same time. (though he could’ve conceivably have met Fingon at the pre-battle strategy meetings and C&C while he & his mom were making their escape, probably Celebrimbor too if he did wind up in Gondolin. )

Must’ve sucked to be the only one who didn’t personally know Fingolfin when Throndor dropped off his body & there was presumably a funeral. I’d also speculate that part of the reason he didn’t like the “Flee to the Sea” plan was that he had no idea what Valinor is like (probably feeling left out when Idril, Turgon & the other lords talked about it) & feared he might lose what influence he had if they got there. 

[jenovahh]

The Honey Pot - Ch. 29 - A Love Just as Sweet

“You’re sure you don’t need me to come help? No furniture you need to move?”

“I think you’re just looking for an excuse to ditch work, Ardbert.”

“You’re half right. I’m also looking for an excuse to come see my godchild as well.”

“Your godchild is at home with the babysitter, waiting for me to return from the grocery store.” You can’t help but giggle into the phone at Ardbert’s dramatic groan as you pick up a few rolanberries to put in your shopping cart. “You know you’re more than free to visit, Ardbert.” you grin, even if he cannot see it.

“I know, I know. But it’s hard work now being in charge of an entire luxury chauffeur service now that Varis is gone! I may be the boss, but I have employees to manage. Paychecks to write. Won’t you have pity on your poor friend? Won’t you pay for my ticket to Eorzea?” Ardbert bemoans, and already you can envision his melodramatic flare, unable to stop yourself from snorting at his antics.

“Maybe in a few years I’ll be ready to come back to Kugane.” you murmur softly, rolling an apple around in your hand.

“Always at your own pace, Honey.” Ardbert adds warmly, and it’s times like these you do miss your closest friend. “Even if you feel you can never return, I’ll never fault you for it. I’ll always do my best to come see you.”

You prepare to say something back when your phone beeps in your ear. Pulling it from your face, you see you have an incoming call. “Hey Ardbert, I’ll call back later. I’ve got an important call coming in.”

“No problem, talk to you later, Honey.”

Tapping on the screen, you transfer the call over, bringing your phone to your ear again as you continue to amble around the grocery store. “And what do you want?”

“Is that any way to greet a friend?” Cid scoffs, just as, if not more dramatic than Ardbert.

“It’s a way to greet this friend.” You laugh, nabbing some chips off the shelf. You were getting pretty low on snacks.

“I called to check in on you and also deliver some news. Are you busy?”

“I’m a full time mother, Cid. When am I not busy?” you joke, making your way to the meat department. “After all, my days are filled with diaper changes and games of peekaboo. Exciting stuff.”

“Boring, but peaceful.” Cid supplies, giving out his sage wisdom as usual. “But on a more serious note, is all well?”

Was all well?

It had been a year since your coming to Eorzea, landing yourself a fairly decent sized house in the Gridanian countryside. While off the grid, you were still afforded modern amenities, such as high speed internet and cable TV. Every so often you would have to work your way into the city to run a few errands, just like you are today. You would usually call up one of your trusted neighbors to come over and babysit to put some spare change in their pocket.

You had woken up in the hospital alone, feeling as if you had been hit by a truck while getting ran over by a train, and somehow managed to live. Merlwyb and Cid were the first to barge in your room at news you had woken from your sleep, having feared you would fall into a coma from the damage to your body, or even the damage to your mind.

There was hardly a day that either of them wasn’t at your side, working in shifts almost until Ardbert had even managed to convince them to squeeze in on the rotation. Ardbert’s presence helped break down the walls you had immediately put up upon waking, spending an entire night sobbing into his arms, finally allowing yourself to mourn everything you had lost.

With his help did you get yourself to therapy, Ardbert there with you every step of the way on the road to recovery.

When you reached a point where you felt stable enough to confront all that had happened, you had asked the three of them to tell you what had been going on since that day.

Cid and Merlwyb were quick to hold off the local news of misconstruing facts, Cid telling them to wait until he could get back to his home and compile all the evidence the public needed. The entire city was in an uproar, Varis’ most loyal followers spewing hate and lies to try and convince the public that everything was a ruse and that Cid was the one to cause the explosion at the research facility.

There seemed to be no hope in sight until an unsuspecting witness came to the front.

Gaius of all people had given his testimony, exposing every bit of collusion and dirty deals Varis had a hand in, debunking every lie that Varis had ever spewed, every promise he had intended to break. He had offered himself up for arrest for taking part in Varis’ crimes, even if he had been manipulated into thinking it was for the better of Kugane.

But with Varis gone, and his heir missing, what would happen to Galvus industries?

Cid would receive everything from the corporation, from shares to assets to the building itself. Cid, being the philanthropist he is, decided there was no use of him having so much extra wealth on top of what he already had, and decided to spend the rest of his days giving the money to charities and actually improving the city he now called home.

Said city of course let Lord Hien serve another term. Lord Hien, being an honest man, did not hide his taking part of your operation to stop Varis. With full transparency he informed the public of why he made the decisions he did, assuring them he had not taken out Varis for power, but had kept a tyrant from taking over their country.

When you ask what had become of Elidibus, everyone only stares at you in confusion. You try to describe him to the best of your ability, but all it seems to do is make people more concerned for your mental health by trying to make them remember someone who never existed. Hoping you had not gone off the deep end, it is only when you try to search for him on the internet do you realize his entire existence has been erased.

No notes of him being prime minister of Garlemald, no notes of him having a casual friendship with Vris. As if he had been a figment of your imagination.

Only when you reach for the back of your neck and feel the telltale pulse of your tattoo do you know it wasn’t all a dream.

Taking a deep breath, you finally answer Cid. “I...am well.”

“Good,” Cid breathes, and just hearing his voice makes you yearn for his company. You hope he’ll visit soon. “All good on funds? Need any extra change?”

“Cid, you already wire me nearly 500,000 gil a month; I couldn’t do anything else with more of it.” You grumble as you pick up some chicken breasts and place them in your basket.

“Hey, that money isn’t just for you. I know you want to keep baby Aldynn a secret, but he is still the rightful heir of the Galvus inheritance, and with me in charge of the funds I’ll ensure he gets it. The best time to start saving for college is now,”

“Cid.” you sigh, padding your way to prepare to checkout. Thankfully the lines aren’t too long this time of day. “Aldynn is barely a year old. I don’t have to start thinking about college for another decade and a half.”

“I know, I know…” Cid grumbles, and you can’t help but feel a little bad. Cid really did mean well, being every bit the overprotective uncle you knew he’d be. “I just worry. And I miss you.”

Smiling sadly, you begin to hand your items to the cashier to checkout. “I miss you too, Cid.”

“And better me to call you than Merlwyb, eh? You know we’re practically monitoring her bank account to make sure she hasn’t bought another round trip ticket to Eorzea.” Cid laughs, prompting you to snicker as you hand your payment to the cashier.

“I don’t know what she worries so much for...she really should work through her guilt…” you muse quietly, thanking the cashier as they help load your bags back into your basket.

“She will, in time. Granted, I'm sure the statue they are about to erect of Raubahn down at the police station will reopen some old wounds for a little bit.” Cid laments, both of you silent for a second. “You may be seeing her come over sooner than you’d like. Your statue,”

You stop in place as you glare angrily at the phone glued to the side of your face. “My statue?”

“Shit,” Cid curses under his breath. “Yeah, I fucked that one up. Sorry, Honey.” Cid apologizes, but you’re already fuming as you make your way out to the parking lot.

“I already said I didn’t want a statue! That Chief Raubahn was the only one who deserved it for his sacrifice!” You huff and puff, practically throwing your groceries into your trunk in frustration.

“I know, I know, but you know Merlwyb can be very convincing and very intimidating…” Cid winces as he tries to calm you down. “It’s just going to be a nice little statue in one of the parks, I promise. Merlwyb was prepared to give you an entire fountain--”

“Well thanks for making her show some restraint.” You drone sarcastically, slamming the trunk lid closed. You swear you were going to give that woman a piece of your mind. “Anyway, I appreciate the call Cid. I’m about to drive back home and cook dinner. Gotta send the babysitter on their way.”

“Of course, Honey. Take care.”

The call ends and you pull out of the parking lot, driving your humble car back out of the city. You took to Gridania almost immediately, the climate not too different from Kugane, though the entire country was packed with trees and native flora. You didn’t mind it though, having picked up gardening as a little side hobby as a result. You most likely wouldn’t try and go back into any line of work until baby Aldynn started going to school, which wouldn’t be for a few years yet.

Adjusting to an entirely new life hadn’t been easy, but you needed to just get away from everything. When you were fit to be released from the hospital after the whole ordeal, the outside of the hospital was packed with press, so much so that the only way out of there undetected was with Ardbert’s help since he wasn’t as prominent a figure as Cid or Merlwyb.

You were dodging letters and emails and phone calls every hour of every day it felt like, people badgering you about how you stayed undercover for so long, about how you had saved Merlwyb from being killed alongside Raubahn, about your supposed romance with the heir who had mysteriously gone missing--

It was Lyse and Y’Shtola’s idea that you leave Kugane.

You couldn’t have been any happier to finally reunite with them, the two of them crying their eyes out as they are finally allowed to see you, weeping about how they saw you on the news and how worried they were and for you to never leave their sight again.

You had thought to do just that, but even they could see your mental health continue to deteriorate. You couldn’t even leave your own apartment for fear of being recognized in public, unsure if people would question your “heroic deeds” or ask you things far too personal to answer. It was with their encouragement you got the idea to leave the country and start anew, and what better time to do so when you were halfway through your pregnancy? A pregnancy that against all odds, your unborn child had been just as strong as its parents.

Which, as hard as it was for you to admit, made you wonder if Aldynn would have some kind of freakish strength as he got older. No matter how many doctors checked you, after the sting operation, they said that both mother and baby were the perfect picture of health. While you were overjoyed that you would not have to deal with the trauma of a miscarriage, you can’t steer your mind from darker thoughts that your baby might have been the invincible weapon Varis had been hoping for.

Pulled from your thoughts as your phone rings, you activate the hands free calling, noticing it is your babysitter. “Hello, Zhloe. I know you’re probably eager to get home, I just left the grocery store a little while ago--”

“Oh don’t worry about it! Aldynn is safe with his father!”

Your heart stops.

“Excuse me?” you ask, voice tight but making sure to not lose your cool. While an adult, Zhloe was a very kindhearted, yet unfortunately naive individual. She lived with her younger sister down the road where they ran an animal sanctuary, the two of them orphaned when they were young but maintaining their good hearts regardless.

“Yes! I had left the house a little while ago, but a man knocked on the door. I asked who he was and he told me he was looking for you. I told him very nicely to go away at first because I thought he was a stranger, but when I got a good look at him through the window, I saw he looked just like Aldynn. I asked how he knew you, and he said he was Aldynn’s father.”

Your foot floors the gas before you can stop yourself. You had told her nothing of your past; for all you knew whatever stranger she let in your house could be out for revenge. “Zhloe, I hate to tell you this, but Aldynn’s father,”

“It’s okay, Ms. Honey, I won’t tell anybody! When I asked him questions about you, he answered all of them and that made me sure he wasn’t a stranger. I’ll admit, I had always wondered about Aldynn’s father, but it makes sense he was off in the military like he said. If you guys ever need a date night, just give me a call! He’s so handsome too...you really hit the jackpot!”

“Zhloe, wait--”

“I’m going to get dinner ready for me and Khloe. Have a good night!”

The phone call ends, and you decide not to try and call back to not worry the poor woman. She surely meant well, but you can’t stop your heart from leaping out of your chest as you turn onto the road that has you exit the city and leads to your countryside home.

It’s not possible, you keep telling yourself as you blaze down the street, passing cars like you’re in a street race. Could one of Varis’ old goons have found you, wanting revenge? Would they hold your baby hostage? It’s not possible, it’s not possible--

You’re practically drifting into the driveway of your home, kicking up dirt as you wrench the car to a stop, practically flailing as you kick the car door open. “Aldynn!” You cry. You can see the light on in his room upstairs. Your baby is in danger, he’s in danger--

Shoving the keys into the lock, you fling the door open, running down the entrance hallway and straight into the living room. Your living room is completely empty and you can see nobody in the kitchen or dining area. The house is quiet, not even the sound of your baby crying. Did they already get him? Is he gone--

“I would keep it down,” a voice calls from upstairs, “our son is sleeping.”

It’s not possible.

Halfway near tears, you numbly climb the stairs, afraid of what you might find.

You know that voice.

A single light fills the hallway from Aldynn’s room, and you hear not so much as a whimper from your babe. He knows he is safe, knows he is in no danger.

It’s not possible.

Reaching the doorway, Aldynn’s room is exactly as you left it, and so is your son. Not a hair out of place, his chubby face relaxed and asleep, entirely content in the muscular arms of the man who rocks him gently in his arms. With golden hair like your son’s adorning the man’s shoulders, there is no doubt of who is holding your child.

Blue eyes land upon you, twinkling with mirth. Pouty, pink lips pull into a taunting smile.

“Hello, my love.”

[mhdiaries]

Wave 4 Venus McFlytrap Diary

9*9

Today I got in trouble for not paying attention in class. It’s not like I wasn’t interested in what Mr. Hackington was saying but after a week of clouds and rain the sun was calling my name. Shouting it actually - “HEY VENUS - YEAH YOU MCFLYTRAP! DON’T JUST SIT THERE LIKE A POTTED PLANT GET OUT HERE!” I HATE IT WHEN THE SUN SHOUTS AT ME; SO RUDE AND STISTRTACTING. Plus Mr. Hack’s classroom is so cold and dank. Not exactly the kind of place where a ghoul wants to put down roots. Good thing I knew I knew the answer to the question Mr. Hack was asking, even if I didn’t hear it the first time he asked me. “Photosynthesis!” “That’s correct Ms. McFlytrap… did you know or guess?” What I wanted to say was, “Oh, was that the answer?” I though I was placing my lunch order.” Instead I just pointed to my notes, which seemed to satisfy him for the moment. Mom always says, “Be a flower not a weed.” Of course the difference between a flower and a weed depends on the gardener. Whoa. I’m not even sure what that means but next time mom tells me not to be a weed I’m going try it out on her and see what happens.

9*15

I went outside to eat lunch today and saw Operetta sitting under a tree playing her guitar. I walked over to ask if she minded me sitting down to listen and she immediately stopped playing. She looked up at me and wrapped her arms around her guitar like she thought I was going to try and take it from her, “This guitar was made for me by my best friend out of ah hard rock maple tree that blew down in a storm and I ain’t about to apologize or give her up for one made from recycled plastic bottles so you can just save your speeches.” She really hurt my feelings but I wasn’t about to let her see me wilt so I yelled back, “I don’t care what your dumb old guitar is made of I was just going to ask if I could sit here and listen to you play!” She looked surprised at first then she threw her head back and laughed! “All right, all right pull in your thorns ghoul friend and have a seat.” I sat down and she played. She is scary good. I told her being a plant monster means I get all my nourishment from the soil, air and water around me so living in a clean environment is important. I know it may seem selfish but I bet if other monsters saw garbage being dumped into something they were about to eat they’d be all up in claws too and it’s not like I want to build a big fence around the outdoors so no other  monsters can enjoy it cause that wouldn’t be fair either. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask for monsters to throw something that can be recycled into the recycling bin and not treat the environment like their own personal trash  can. Operetta said, “I reckon I see your point but I’ve also seen you do that pollen think to monsters who don’t agree with you an no monster wants to feel like they’re being manipulated into doing something even if it’s something good and that’s why some of ‘em run whey they see you coming.” Whoa. Then she told me why she doesn’t sing in front of audiences. “Monsters who hear me sing live will believe and do whatever I tell ‘em to just like they do for you – only they’ll keep doing it till I tell them to stop.” I almost laughed but I realized she was dead serious. “Now I reckon I could be the biggest music star in the monster world with that ability but I’d rather my music be listened to cause it really is the best not just because I tell monsters it is.” I guess I see her point too.

9*19

I guess I’m getting adjusted to Monster High but it hasn’t exactly been easy. Probably cause I’m really not very good at going along just to get along. Even when I was just a little sprout I wanted to do things my own way. Like one time these monster aphids infested my whole class but instead of using that nasty shampoo or letting my mom comb them out of my hair I totally pruned my head. I looked like a dandelion that had lost its seeds for a while, but at least I didn’t have aphids anymore. I even decided the pruned look was scary cool so I kept it that way on the one side. At my old school all the classes were taught outside so that we were always in our element so to speak. Being indoors all day was really making me droopy but I didn’t want any monster to think that I was some kind of fainting violet cause I’m not. Lagoona must have noticed though cause she told me that I should go talk to Headmistress Bloodgood and let her know I was having a problem. I was like, whoa. I didn’t really want to cause the last time I had to go see her was when she caught me using my pollens of persuasion to make Meowlody and Purrsephone pull aluminum cans from the regular trash and put them in the recycling bin. I got a very long lecture on the need for self-control, and assignment for an even longer paper on the ends not justifying the means, and I had to apologize. Lagoona kept bugging me until I finally made an appointment with the Headmistress. She told me her old assistant was a plant monster and she turned a supply cabinet into a special grow room with lights that mimicked the sun . Headless Headmistress gave me the key and said I could use it any time I was feeling droopy. Amazing,… just amazing.

10*2

I had my meeting with Mr. D’eath, the school guidance counselor today. He wasn’t there when I got there so I had to wait for him. I wasn’t really looking forward to it at all. He always seems to be sighing about something and he cracks his knuckles… a lot. It sounds like dry branches snapping which is like claws on a chalkboard to me. The other day I overheard Miss Kindergrubber telling Mr. Hackington that unlife had not been very kind to Mr. D’eath this year and that lately he was looking more gaunt than usual. I’m not sure how that could even be possible. Of course Miss. K. is always telling some monster to eat cause they’re just “skin and bones”. Guess it must be a prerequisite for her job. Anyway, Mr. D’eath’ss office always smells like herbal tea… can’t really even think about that… and his walls are covered with motivational posters. There’s one with this troll sitting on top of a bridge instead of underneath it that says, “Don’t be afraid of a new perspective.” Whoa. Deep. I’m sure they’re supposed to be profound and encouraging but they’re really not my kind of fertilizer. There was also a picture of him and some other teachers white water rafting down the River Styx. It would take a pretty penny for me to do that. He finally came in with my records, sat down and started flipping through them:

Hmm… okay… I see… oh ho! Well Miss Yelps I think you have a bright future and, if I may confide in you for a moment, over the years a job like mine can make one rather brittle. It gets so discouraging when students don’t listen to my advice especially after all my years of education and seminars which I am beginning to suspect are taught by monsters whose last interaction with students was back in the day of the quill and inkwell. You mention something as simple as an iCoffin and they look at you like you’re speaking zombie… no offense.

He went on about how according to my permanent file I, (Ghoulia), could go to any poison ivy league school that I wanted. He said some other really nice things about me (her.) and then gave me a bunch of college brochures. He told me it had been a real pleasure and that I could come back any time. I didn’t have the heart to correct his error so I just moaned and shuffled out. I’ll probably get in trouble for it later but I’ll sit on that bridge when I come out from under it.

10*15

I got some new art pencils today so I did some sketches of Chewlian who wasn’t being very cooperative. I think he was mad that I closed my window when I went to school. He likes me to leave it open in hopes that lunch will come creeping, crawling or flying into my room. I don’t like bugs nearly as much as he does though and sometimes I forget and close it. I finally had to tell him that I’d let him spend the day out by the compost heap if he’d be still. He was pretty good after that and I was happy with the results.

11*15

When I got called into Headmistress Bloodgood’s office, last week, I was thinking it was because she found out about my appointment with Mr. D’eath but it turned out to be an “opportunity for growth” that would involve me rooting myself in a face painting booth at the middle school carnival. So today I sat in a booth with Draculaura turning werewolves into zombies, vampires into skeletons, zombies into Dead Fast… okay that was just Ghoulia… and cute little ghouls into “scary” normies. Draculaura was happy to do all the kittens, bats with pink bows and the occasional full on mini-makeover although it was mostly the moms who requested those. It also gave me a perfect audience to talk about the importance of keeping the world around us clean. Then we got to watch Robecca, who is a wonder of sustainability, do an amazing stunt. Whoa. It was really scary cool. I think every monster from that time on wanted me to turn them into a robot. Lagoona and Gil even came by and Gil let me paint his helmet to make it look al steam punkish. Not sure I did any growing but I got to spend time in the sun with my beasties, use my art skills and maybe plant some seeds about taking better care of the world around us.

[themachiavellianpig]

Prodigal Son, Episode 7: Take Your Father To Work Day Was A Terrible Idea

Episode 7 of Prodigal Son, and we get father-daughter bonding, Jessica’s well-deserved ‘I told you so’ moment, and three, count them, three scenes with the stupendous Dr Edrisa. A good week for us, for Martin Whitley, for pretty much everyone except Malcolm and Jin the Cameraman. 

Full review and spoilers below. 

This week, Prodigal Son veered smartly away from it’s Crime of the Week format by giving us the first indications of a long term threat. Following his discovery of his father’s old car (aka the most concerning station wagon in the entirety of the Bronx), Malcolm is interrupted by a shadowy figure who shoots first, asks questions never. 

(Sidenote: Malcolm, I’m aware that your status as title character means you’re unlikely to be killed off, but please stay in cover the next time someone shoots at you, thank you very much). 

The idea of an active serial killer operating out of a junkyard which just-so-happens to house the Surgeon’s old car is brilliantly creepy, despite Gil’s forlorn pretence that maybe it’s all just a coincidence. The reveal that the new serial killer murders and disposes of his victims through the use of a car-compactor came with thankfully few flashbacks, and that’s all I’m going to say about that for the moment.

This new, densely packed crime scene gave us three glorious scenes with Dr Edrisa Tanaka, experienced coroner with an excellent habit for bizarra segues. I adore a woman who can run us through the proper nomenclature for pizza spatulas, although if she could refrain from ever mentioning puppies at crimes scenes again, that would be stellar. Her temporary-glee at having results for Malcolm is brilliantly undercut by her disappointment at the relative uselessness of such results; I could very happily keep watching these two be awkward at each other for another three seasons at least. 

(I also sincerely hope that the fandom will note that Malcolm, for possibly the first time this season, gave an honest answer to the question ‘Are you okay?’, and he gave it to Dr Edrisa Tanaka. Please, make good use of this information, I beg of you). 

Of course, the main feature of this week’s episode was Ainsley’s promised interview with the Surgeon. It gets off to a rocky start, with Martin pushing back against Ainsley’s list of his victims with his own list of medical accomplishments - shifting the interview from the discussion of a man whose heart her ripped out to a young boy who’s fatal heart defect he managed to repair is a hell of an interview strategy, but, while it is always a delight to watch Michael Sheen having such fun in a role, we’re used to seeing Martin manipulate people all over the place.

The interview gets derailed when Malcolm turns up to question Martin about the new serial killer, and then gets truly interesting when Ainsley convinces Malcolm to sit in with her; it is only when she throws Malcolm’s deeply unhappy life in Martin’s face that we get to see the great Martin Whitley lose control on camera. It was a bold line for Ainsley to take, but using your own brother’s trauma (and personal diagnoses, plural) to score points in an interview is profoundly upsetting. 

Almost as upsetting as the reveal that the knife found in the station wagon was actually Malcolm’s, not Martin’s, which raises some very awkward questions, particularly when paired with flashbacks of Martin apparently trying to teach Malcolm how to use the knife properly on something - or someone. 

Fortunately, we get a nice madman-loose-in-the-madhouse subplot to take our minds off things. The character of Tevin was introduced briefly last week, in just enough detail that we get a wonderful sense of foreboding when he reappears. His stabbing of poor Jin the Cameraman gave an additional element of tension to the whole scenario, particularly because it forced Malcolm’s issues front and centre with a far more definite time limit on the whole “processing your childhood trauma thing” than we’ve previously had to deal with; his inability to cut into a living person, even to save their life, was easy to see coming but still impactful if only because of his desperate need not to hand a knife over to his serial killer father.  

Even though I was entirely on Team No Don’t Give The Scalpel To The Murderous Surgeon, I am also rather pleased that Jin the Cameraman didn’t die - a guy who makes jokes about it being too early to meet the parents before interviewing a serial killer is a guy who I wouldn’t mind seeing again in future episodes. Additionally, I would really like to see someone processing the fact that their life was saved by a man like Martin Whitley while their girlfriend filmed it (seriously, Ainsley, what the hell is wrong with you?), because that has to be a little bit weird. 

I’m also a big fan of the show’s decision to cut straight from Gil reassuring Jessica that Malcolm wouldn’t do anything stupid to a scene in which Malcolm does something stupid. It’s the kind of simple humour that I need to break up all the big existential questions. 

The reveal that Martin had set up the drama by manipulating Tevin was delightful, although I am a little curious as to what the original plan was; being able to save your daughter’s boyfriend is certainly a good way to make an excellent second impression, but I do not believe that Martin could have set things up that perfectly, given the erratic nature of the tools at his disposal. Was he planning to save Ainsley from Tevin? Or just reassure her when things got scary? 

Just how far is Martin willing to go in order to prove himself a ‘good’ father? 

As the dust settles, and Ainsley dashes off to hospital with Jin, Jessica finally gets to find out exactly what her children have been doing all day. Her exasperated “Of course he did” when being told that Martin saved Jin’s life was almost as delightful as her sarcastic comments to Malcolm later: “So you’re saying that my children went to see their serial killer father in serial killer prison and it didn’t go well? I’m shocked. Truly.”

Like Malcolm said, enjoy that I-told-you-so, Jessica. Lord knows you’ve probably earned it by now.  

However, the final, big reveal of the episode was, of course, that the new serial killer was in regular contact with Martin at some point - regular enough to know the number to the private phone line in the murder basement - but this was totally overshadowed in my mind by the fact that Jessica is still living in the house which she shared with a serial killer! 

What the heck, Jessica. What the actual heck. 

Previous Prodigal Son reviews available here. 

[han100894]

Some of My Frustration with NNT

So this is probably going to be a controversial take, but as much as I like NNT, there are things about it that have been bothering me.

One big one is, despite attempting at least lip service, the girls often vastly get overshadowed by the guys.

(Note, this is me airing my frustrations, I still like NNT, I like all of theses ships to some extent, I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade. It would be awesome to know if anyone else agrees, but mostly I’m just trying to make myself feel better and honestly it may not be the best written and I’m probably forgetting points that made me feel this way and I’m sure I’ve forgotten things in the Manga itself.)

Just look at the three biggest ships: Kaine, Banlaine, and Melizabeth.

I like Kaine, it was my first favorite ship but… it’s ultimately King’s story. The majority of the focus is on King’s POV and feelings. Even Daine’s memory loss is played more about how he feels than her—she doesn’t even get a chance to get mad at Gowther for it, or for that matter angry at King—no instead King gets mad on her behaft. She gets pulled around by the plot, and the memory loss in particular to give King extra angst. Even her confused feeling for Meliodas are mostly played as comic relief, drama fodder early on with Elizabeth, and to King more angst. We get very little from her POV.

And whenever Diane tries to protect King (In my memory at least) it always backfires on her, leading to King to Angst and “power up” and come to the rescue.

She has no real major victories to her name. Generally in any fight from the second half of arc 1 and moving forward she’s either coached by King (The Vytle festival, he saves Diane and defeats his enemy alone, but Diane needs couching), or King takes the spotlight (fighting Helbram, fighting Mael)

The only plot point she gets on her own is the brief time with Matrona after she loses her memory once again. Otherwise her plotlines are heavily tangled with King’s and again we usually see things from King’s point of view. Even when they both went back to the past Diane ends up goofing off but King notices something is wrong. We just—we never get into her head like we do King. We don’t see anywhere near the kind of character development he has.

And King gets several plots unconnected to Diane, Helbram, the fairy forest, Ban and his sister, his inferiority complex…

I just wish she’s get some focus that didn’t revolve around King (or Mel)—and also that she got a chance to protect King without it instantly backfiring on her or making King feel bad about himself again…

(Also, there is no reason for Diane to be “equivalent of 15” none at all. Made even worse once King gets to go through “fairy puberty” in an instant and grow up something she can’t do (Also why the heck would 700=15 when giants only live to like 2000?)

And then Banlaine:

Let’s be honest, Elaine exists almost completely as a prop for Ban’s story, up to and including dying on him (aka being fridged) and causing his manangst and driving his story). She spend half the story dead and the other half deathly ill. She has little to no interaction with anyone else—even her conversations with her own brother is all about Ban.

She doesn’t even really get much of a say about the whole thing, Ban’s quest to save her, it just is.

I do think the Raven’s arc was the best arc, but it was so entirely because of Jericho and her character development and drive, not because of Elaine. She had one moment of cute interactions with Elizabeth as they fought off two people who had no build up and were pretty much fodder, and then she had one moment where she saved Ban and managed to “grow up” something that’s downplayed slightly by being part of the reason Ban gets into his huge angst, and her losing her upgrade literally the next time we really see her just in time for Ban to save her (And turning her back into a child look alike) something that was truly not necessary. Gloxina didn’t lose his wings when he died, and wings are literally something fairies are killed for to sell—she could have stilled died and not lose her upgrade.

Honestly what I want from her is her to get to talk with her god damn brother, and maybe actually work things out on screen how he hurt her, and her understanding how he did so almost entirely unintentionally without Ban being their or brought up would be nice. Off screen does not count at all either. other than that let her be a person and not a prop!

And finally Melizabeth

Technically, or at least some people believe so, Meliodas and Elizabeth are the two main, main characters of the story. Honestly I kinda feel that Meliodas, Ban and King are the one who have gotten the most development and focus throughout the whole story, or at least until recently.

Elizabeth has tried, but in a lot of situation she’s been a plot point (Getting kidnapped, the seed not being in the cup for her test, ect) or had a lot of her agency taken from her to push the story along. Ever since she got her memories back she’s been trying to change that yes, but so far has instead been nearly instantly kidnapped and put into a situation where she could only be saved by others. (And yes, in story context she as in a bad situation for her powerset, but Nakaba still decided to have this happened to her and decided that she could do nothing to help just after she decided she would do something about all of this. It’s not like he didn’t have a choice.)

Meanwhile Meliodas has mostly treated Elizabeth like a child—which is fair considering she is one, she’s only 16 (Seriously, why couldn’t she have been at least 18, what would that have changed other than a tiny bit of the creepy factor)—but even after she regains her memories, he decides what he’s going to do with no input from her (Take the Commandment, break the curse, kidnap her, ect) and yes he has no emotions at the time but it’s still really shitty and only a step more than earlier when he refused to allow her to join the Sins again at the start of arc 2, without even explaining why, and even insulting and hurting her instead.

And it’s not that I want her to be a badass fighter. I’m fine with her being a realistic pacifist and mostly a healer and leader—that’s great. I just want her to have more agency instead of being shoved around to force the plot to do what Nakaba wants and get a chance to actually help Meliodas like she wants.

Bonus: Monspeet and Derieri

Their relationship is interesting, as on its outside it’s actually reverses some of the tropes this story has. Derieri is the one who get most of the focus and character development, while Monspeet is somewhat behind her. And in a twist, instead of the girl being fridged for the guy’s character development, the guy is fridged for the girls. Something rare enough that I actually thought that Monspeet’s death was somewhat okay (Up until Derieri’s story faltered right after).

Derieri has the same somewhat realization as Elizabeth—she was always the one being protected by Monspeet, being taken cared of by him, and how she wanted to be the one who did it back.

But then just as she was getting a big moment, finally a chance to somewhat redeem herself and try and help stop this war and save Mael, she is killed just as she’s about to do it, stopping her story cold turkey.

And now with Mael doing the weird reincarnation thing I have to ask why. If she’s almost certainly going to come back at some point (probably in the sequel—Arthur’s story I’d assumed if it actually happens) why couldn’t she have succeeded when she was so close. Why did she have to be worfed to show off Mael and eventually being the catalyst to power up King.

It’s just… frustrating.

I just wish she’s been allowed to succeeded after everything. I wish she’d gotten at least one moment where she protected Monspeet.

Last complaint

And one thing that has bothered me over all is, most notably while Ban and Meliodas were in Purgatory, how “We are going to get out of here and save our girls” which is great I guess, but, both them, and King in his “I have to protect you” say it so often that it almost feels…infantizing. The guys are so obsessed with taking care of and protecting the girls who don’t get the same chance to do it for them, or try and get punished for it, or realize to late and it’s just…

Ban and Mel really do it, King has his huge “I have to save everyone” complex, even Monspeet goes overboard with Derieri a bit (hitting away the rocks anyone). Escanor is similar, though he respects and believes in Merlin as much as he wants to jump to her defense making him a bit of an exception but I have no idea if Escalin is supposed to be a thing or not at this point. Margret got to be political prisoner for ages, and when she went out to find Gil she gets manipulated into becoming Ludo’s host. Veronica gets a whole side plot only for it to suddenly stop with no conclusion.

I just want the girls to get to do cool things, sometimes completely unconnected to the boys, and not have it backfire on them or get overshadowed. I want the relationships to have more equal screen time between each partner, Is that so much?

[sassycassie-s-writing]

An Argument

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): Final Fantasy XV/Ignis Scientia

Rating: PG-11 (for arguing)

Original Idea: The argument Talcott tells Noctis about in my last one-shot: The Original Story.

Notes: (Masterlist)(By Character)(About Me) This one has some arguing so if you don’t like that sort of thing, be advised it’s here. Also, I swear I didn’t mean for it to get this long... (2,250 words XD)

^^^^^

“Princess?” Talcott asked quietly, the door to my bedroom opening. I turned around.

“Hey kiddo. What’s up?”

“The meeting’s about to start. They’re just waiting for you.”

“Ah shoot. Totally spaced it started now. I thought it was in a half-hour. Thank you so much, Talcott. Let’s go!” I followed him out of my room and through the halls of the hotel—which really was functioning as more of an Insomnia city hall. In Lestallum. Most of the government of Insomnia who made it out or was being rebuilt tended to meet in the Leville.

In the conference room, there were seven other people, not including me and Talcott. Iris, Ignis, Prompto, Gladiolus, Cor, Cid, and Cid’s granddaughter. I could never remember if her name was Cindy or Cidney.

“Sooo sorry I'm late. I thought the meeting was in a half-hour,” I said, taking my seat at the head of the table. Ignis sat at my right hand, as he always had. He was brilliant and a fantastic strategist, and he’d taken up the role of “royal advisor” flawlessly. He’d been training for it since we were kids, after all. “To the matter at hand, Miranda and her son Garrett went missing two days ago and haven’t been seen. Last anyone saw them they were venturing away from Lestallum for a brief search for a specific type of plant that doesn’t grow domestically.”

“Correct,” Ignis said.

“All things considered, two days is a long time in a daemon-infested eternal night. I don’t want to assume the worst, but I’ve been trying to abide by the philosophy of ‘Hope for the best, plan for the worst.’ So, I'm thinking a search party. As many people as we can get. The more the better. No one will be allowed to go alone and unarmed. Groups of two or three, maybe more, and everyone has a weapon,” I said. “There are a lot of daemons out there.”

“Very good,” Ignis agreed.

“By the way, Cindy, Prompto: thanks for making your way here from Hammerhead for this. We’re gonna need some skilled people on the party.”

“Well, sure thing, Highness,” Cindy—I'm sticking with Cindy because she didn’t correct me—said with a smile.

“Yeah, you got it,” Prompto said.

I nodded with a smile. “Now, we need to gather people. Volunteers. Everyone needs flashlights as usual. And we’re going to start sweeping after the dinner shifts are over.”

“Princess, if I may,” Ignis piped up quietly. I turned. “You keep saying ‘we,’ implying that you’re joining the search party.”

“A Lucian mother and her son have gone missing. Of course I'm joining the search party.”

“With all due respect, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why?” I challenged in frustration.

“Noctis has been missing for a year. At this point it’d be a good idea to prepare for his absence enduring an even longer amount of time,” Ignis said. “With that in mind, our people are looking to you as the leader, princess. It would be wise for you to remain behind.”

“‘Remain behind’?” I quoted in disbelief. “C’mon, Ignis. You know me better than that. Noctis would be the one leading the charge out into the darkness.”

“Noctis is not here and you are not Noctis—as you always seemed keen on reminding me,” Ignis said. I clenched my jaw to rein in the flare of my temper. “We lost King Regis and Prince Noctis within an extremely short time of one another. Noctis is not dead, of course, but who knows how long he will be cradled within the Crystal. The people of Lucis need a strong, constant leader. They need to see that you are strong and you will be here to serve them through this darkness.”

“And the best way to serve the people is to show it,” I insisted.

“Not if you die out there!” Ignis exclaimed.

“Awkward…” Prompto whispered to Talcott. Ignis and I ignored him.

“Princess, you are the closest thing we have to a monarch right now. The closest thing we have to… to Noctis,” Ignis continued. “You must stay here. It’s dangerous out there and the Lucian people cannot lose the last remnant of the throne so soon after Regis and Noctis.”

“Are you going to stay here too, Ignis?” I demanded. “I mean, after all, you can’t see!”

Talcott gasped. Prompto looked surprised. Everyone exchanged looks.

If I wasn’t so angry I would have clapped my hand over my mouth and immediately apologized for being insensitive. As it was, I wasn’t thinking too much about that. Ignis was a big boy. He could take it.

“This isn’t about me, princess!” Ignis snapped. For the first time in my life, he used the title Regis had given me in a derisive, sarcastic tone. Gladio called me “princess” in a mocking tone all the time to tease me, but Ignis had always used it to be respectful. “This is about you! Whether you like it or not, you are acting Queen of Lucis right now. You cannot take unnecessary risks to your life.”

“And being branded a coward?”

“Living to lead another day is not cowardice.”

“I don’t get it, Ignis!” I exclaimed. “You know me! I'm perfectly capable of handling myself. Noctis might have been a slacker when we were in our late teens but I wasn’t! I never skipped training. Or lessons. I studied for my exams. You know I’d be just fine out there! You’d let Noctis go! Why are you fighting to keep me here?!”

“Because I let Noctis risk his life and now look what’s happened! He’s gone and unlikely to return in the near future. I was raised and educated to be an advisor to the True King and in his absence, to you. I intend to advise you to the best of my ability and wisdom, princess,” he said.

“Don’t lie to me, Ignis,” I snapped. “You were protective of Noctis too—but this is going too far. This is overprotective! Why are you being so overprotective?”

“Because I love you!” Ignis shouted.

The whispers and uncomfortable paper shuffling in the conference room went absolutely silent. All I could do was sit there in stunned silence as well. I stared at Ignis’ dark glasses, jaw hanging open. His head was facing me, but his eyes weren’t quite at mine. He appeared to be looking at my upper lip.

“I… I…” I tried to say. All words seemed strangled in my throat. I couldn’t even come up with a response to that—not one that didn’t sound totally stupid, anyway.

I was pretty sure I saw Prompto and Gladio exchange a few gil across the table in the corner of my vision.

“What?” I finally said.

“You heard me,” Ignis said.

Years. Literal, actual years of awkward half-flirtations and acting like I totally didn’t have a crush on him leading to that. I’d developed a schoolgirl crush on Ignis about a week after I met him when King Regis took me in. He was around Noctis and I all the time when we were kids. He was smart and four years older than me and cute and I was six when I first jokingly told Noctis when we were supposed to be in bed, but weren’t, that I was going to marry Ignis. Noc had given me a look like I was crazy and told me I couldn’t marry Ignis because he was four years older than me and wore glasses.

Oh, the good times when things like that were the reasons I couldn’t marry Ignis.

“Excuse me for a minute,” I said, pushing away from the table. “Iris, I'm leaving the planning to you.” I ran out of the conference room.

“Princess!” Talcott called, running after me. How old was this kid? Like, ten? Max? “Princess what’s wrong?”

“Go back to the meeting, Talcott,” I said, fumbling in my pocket for the key to my hotel room. “Ah crap. Musta dropped it or left it in my room.”

“Princess, you and Ignis are friends, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah we are.”

“So why were you mad at each other? And why did you run away when he said he loved you?”

“Ignis wants to keep me safe—for some of the right and wrong reasons. But I want to do the right thing by my people and I can’t just leave a mother and her child out in the wild without looking for them myself and I understand the reasons he wants to keep me safe but he can be so… stubborn.”

“It’s a good thing he loves you, though, right?”

“Yeah kiddo,” I said, going back along the path I’d come trying to find my key. “Gosh dang it. Where did I leave it…?”

“Looking for this?” a familiar voice asked ahead. Ignis held my key up in his free hand—the one that wasn’t holding his cane. There was a slight smile on his face. “Heard it fall from your pocket as you fled the conference room.”

“Attentive, as always,” I said, taking it from him.

“Princess, I am sorry for how that meeting turned out,” he said.

“Talcott, head back inside the conference room. Help Iris plan the search parties. I’ll explain everything later,” I told the kid. He nodded and ran off. I looked at Ignis. “Me too. I got angry. I shouldn’t have said what I did about your vision. If anything, you’re better-suited to all this eternal nighttime business than I am. I'm sorry, Ignis. Can you forgive me? Eventually?”

He smiled. “I can forgive you right now if you can forgive me eventually,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did about my feelings. It was unprofessional. Especially in front of an audience. I swear I didn’t mean to manipulate you in any way.”

“No, no. I know,” I said. I pulled on his shirtsleeve towards my room. He followed after me. “I can forgive you right now too.”

We made it back to my room.

I opened the door. “C’mon in. I think we need to chat.”

“Fascinating that you didn’t say ‘talk.’”

“Well ‘we need to talk’ sounds like it’ll always be followed by bad news,” I said.

“Indeed.”

I kicked the door closed and sat on my bed. Ignis perched next to me. “Iggy… well. Full disclosure: I’ve had a crush on you since I was six. Started out as a simple schoolgirl crush since I was so young, but it grew and developed over the last… thirteen years.” I told him the story about me telling Noctis that I was going to marry Ignis. Which made him laugh. “The thing is, though,” I carried on, “with Noc gone… it seems… wrong, almost—to find happiness when the world is full of despair.”

“I agree, actually,” Ignis said. “That being said, I know Noct better than I know myself. He would want the two of us to find happiness. Whether it be together or… not.”

I sighed. “I know,” I said. “I just… I don’t want everyone to think I'm… unfocused. They want me to be the acting queen. You want me to be the acting queen. I don’t want our people to lose faith in me because they think I'm distracted by romance.”

Ignis nodded. “I understand that completely. If you should wish to pursue a relationship, perhaps at this particular juncture a private one would be most beneficial.”

I stared at him for a moment. “What, like, secretly date?”

“That is one term for it.”

I bit my lower lip and thought. “I don’t like the idea of lying.”

“You wouldn’t have to so long as no one asked. And why would they? We have greater problems to deal with than your love life.”

“Right.” I scratched the back of my head. “I'm in love with you, Ignis. I probably shouldn’t be for the sake of our people and I feel bad that it’s now. But I'm done keeping it to myself. Done fighting it down. So yeah. Yeah. If you’re willing, let’s play the secretly-dating game. I hate the idea of Noctis not being here but you’re right.”

Ignis smiled. His hand reached out and found my elbow. His glove was softer than it used to be—more well-worn—as it slid up my bare arm to my short sleeve and paused. After a moment, he let go and brushed my hair behind my shoulder with surprising accuracy.

“Of course I'm willing,” he said.

I shook the hair on the other side of my head out of my face and cupped the side of his face in my hand. “Then let’s try.”

“Yes. Let’s,” he agreed.

We both leaned forward at the same time. I closed my eyes and let my hesitations go—just for a few minutes—to kiss him without caring about how this would impact everything else. Nothing would ever be the same between he and I, but I wasn’t sure I minded. Not yet anyway. Sometimes change was for the better—something Ignis had told me growing up that I’d never liked. I didn’t like change. Getting adopted by the king was a huge change and it frightened me back then.

Ignis had comforted me then with the same warmth he kissed me with now.

My heart soared and I had a feeling that, for now at least, some things would turn out alright.

[brawltogethernow]

Neutral Element - I Am Well

Installment Masterlist/what am I looking at here || Relationships: FINALLY; Characters: Tarvek and Gil, Agatha; Length: 2k; Content notes: Just when including this section was starting to feel overly precious - Medical stuff! Dissociation! Flashbacks! Body horror? Aaronev Wilhelm leaving sticky residue on things that persists after his death. All conveyed through experimental formatting. This segment was fun. Readmores are still broken on mobile and I’m still sorry.

Tarveka and Gil maintain a careful balance of, ‘Well, it would upset Agatha if something happened to you,’ and not addressing that they can feel each other’s lies of omission.

 *

“We’ve got to put her in a different head,” Agatha declares, staring into the dead eyes of Tarveka’s empty chassis with an air of diagnosis and tsking quietly. “This one’s no good.”

“We can maybe fix up some other things for her, while we’re in there....” adds Gil, pressing close to Agatha to look too.

I will not stand by while you — came the impression of Tarveka in her head, only to pause. Gil was reminded of a finicky bumacat deciding whether to put her paw down after sticking it outside her cave. Hm, that is a good idea. Zengil feels Tarveka shuffling through the half-formed ideas for improvements floating at the top of her mind, which manifests as them rising to precedence without her input. To someone with pretty strong mental control, it’s unusual and somewhat disorienting. Hm, I like that one. Oh, now that is lovely.

Gil wants to tease her for being as vain as a cat too, in this moment where she won’t have to explain the reference and Tarveka will understand and not be able to deny she’s joking, but Tarveka’s appreciation is more that of an enthusiastic connoisseur. Even Tarveka’s interest in clothing that Gil has noted  has surprisingly little of the covetous impulse that Ooh, that would look lovely on me. And Tarveka would know she knew that, and know she knew she knew, and...

Ack.

“Told you,” Gil settles on.

You’re such a mess, impresses Tarveka, plainly referring to the entire train of thought.

 *

I’ll have to commission a whole new wardrobe, of course,” Tarveka coughs. Being able to edit herself to fit clothes could certainly be convenient. The taste alerts her that blood is dripping from her mouth.

Soon she won’t be bothered by concerns like —

Zengil yanks herself out of the blood-red flash of recollection, reeling. Half of her scrambles to place when that happened to her, before it settles in that it never did.

I didn’t see anything?? she thinks at Tarveka, desperate and sheepish.

Tarveka, sick and sulky, doesn’t send more than a mild sense of irritation at Gil, but Zengil still retreats, embarrassed at having accidentally intruded on something so profoundly personal, to lurk sheepishly in the corner of her own head.

 *

Asking me to ride along like this... Tarveka begins eventually, out of the blue and awkward. I would think you of all people...

Gil, for once, is sure of what Tarveka is getting at. She’s kind of cheating right now. “You aren’t like Lucrezia, okay? I invited you in. So stop fretting.”

Gil, mercifully for the both of them, cannot actually see most of Tarveka’s thoughts, but she doesn’t need to to put together stories about Lucrezia with Tarveka’s own manner of conducting herself and see why the clank girl might be uncomfortable, snagged by hooks of misplaced guilt.

Tarveka’s presence retreats into a sulky, defensive ball, trying to shrink into itself and lash out defensively at the same time.

“Of course,” says Gil, voice growing irritated, “you could always just try being a better person instead of a manipulative sneak —”

Oh, don’t you start with me, you brutish, pathetic excuse for a diplomat! You wouldn’t know subtlety if it struck you in the face!

“That wouldn’t be very subtle of it, would it?”

 *

Tarveka considers her body, cracked open on a lab table, for the second time in her existence.

(At this point she isn’t sure she dares call it her life. It almost feels like she’ll jinx herself.)

For the first time, she’s doing so through another’s eyes. The optics of her clank were hers from the start, of course. And the eyes she saw it through were her very own, the originals, slightly myopic and a dull brown color she needs only look at Anevke to see these days, but still somewhat misses.

Her clank body’s first face didn’t move. She just didn’t have the skill or the time, and she would have needed at least one.

Tarveka had already studied the art of dollmaking before she sent her brother for the Muse, and applied those arts when she couldn’t replicate the incredible lifelike quality of Tinka, fighting her own body and racing to beat its inevitable shutdown, damn her father. She made the clank’s face so its expression could seem to change with a tilt of the head, or through association with subtle posture or a tone of voice.

Tinka’s help was invaluable with the more critical problems, before Tarveka’s father broke her too. Aaronev left the world scattered with broken women.

She is staring down at her own corpse and thinking, I don’t want to believe that I am dead, but what if —

Gil yanks them away from the memory with increasingly thoughtless ease — more of a nudge than a yank now, really, a gentle redirect — and tries not to mull on how she now knows Tarveka snuck her own body into her family castle’s medical waste.

She wasn’t bragging about knowing mental disciplines, so instead of letting herself start thinking about how she shouldn’t be thinking about things she shouldn’t be thinking about, inevitably defeating the purpose of the whole thing, she starts teaching Tarveka the Skiff alphabet. Then she moves on to their measuring system.

Base 9? thinks Tarveka. Really?

The number was sacred to an ancient simek—

Waͪrͤrͬiͦorˢᵖᵃʳᵏ, conveys the helpful impression Tarveka gets.

— so it’s sort of a thing. Don’t start. You count time by twenty-four. Twenty-four and sixty.

Yes, but that’s...

Normal here? Gil interrupts sarcastically.

Alright, touché.

 *

Gil is stripped open and vulnerable too, like this. There’s a kind of balance to it that settles the part of Tarveka that wants to be defensive. She’s shocked by the open, raw care the other woman feels, and the soft thread of doubt and hurt she put there.

 *

Tubing twists from the palanquin’s molded container like organs spilling from a fresh Coptic jar and isn’t it isn’t she dead so much to do trapped in this castle trapped —

They emerge with a gasp and Gil forces their attention back to the present project, which is strikingly reminiscent but not the same. It’s not you, you’re with me, please, Tarveka. If we don’t focus you will die.

We will die, corrects Tarveka. Suicidal idiot.

 *

Tarveka is getting better at taking the reins from Gil, remembering how to be flesh. Given all the factors, this is probably a bad thing.

 *

Gil fancies that Agatha is like one of her goddessess — a war queen who built herself wings of iron and sunlight, flew to the realm of the gods, and situated herself among them.

That is the best thing I’ve ever seen, says Tarveka. Really? Do you mind if I use that comparison? I’ve thought of her as like the sun before, you know, but we don’t have any sun goddesses.

She was reading associations out of Gil’s mind, then. Sometimes the queen was associated with Ishana, the punishing burning bringer of life.

Do you think —

That the legend could refer to some solar-powered vehicle? finishes Gil. Yes. I’ve incorporated that idea into some of my designs —

It says iron, but —

It must be from some old word that just means metal, I think.

Ah, like the “apple” of knowledge.

The what?

Now, fͭoͪuͤr of the sͫeͦvͬeͤnᶠᵒʳʷᵃʳᵈ ᵗʰᶤᶰᵏᶤᶰᵍ  popes disagree about this strongly, but...

 *

She grips her right hand with her right hand and feels for a pulse and this is the part where her heartrate should kick up but that’s the entire problem isn’t i —

“You two are spacing out again, aren’t you,” says Agatha, grabbing Gil by the chin and forcing them to look her in the eyes.

Focusing on Agatha is easy. “I’m not going to die on you, I — I  promise,” Gil reassures her. Or one of them does.

“Don’t you dare,” Agatha says, uses her grip to tilt Gil’s head, then leans forward and kisses them softly.

Then she bustles back to work. There’s still ever so much of it.

 *

Tarveka resents the ways the project of building a clank to puppet got away from her.

Tarveka has always placed a high value on her control over her own person. It is a representation of her personal strength which she feels, paradoxically, is both a testament to her indomitable will and an absolute lowest-bar basic achievement everyone should be expected to adhere to. After all, she does.

Tarveka administered as close to total control over her body as possible through the teachings of the Way of the Smoke. She controlled her own reactions. She controlled others’ perceptions of her.

But the incident of losing her body was a mad dash wresting control back from where the void devoured it from the very start, and she did not emerge entirely victorious|took heavy losses in her victory. Yes, she built her new body from its gears up, and it’s a masterwork, certainly, but she didn’t make it her new body on purpose. She didn’t mean to give that much to her father in her first move.

Overplayed her hand.

This single error is representative of a veritable cascade of them. She’s different, now, in ways she’s still only cataloguing. She was never as comfortable around biomatter as some sparks, but she finds she’s less fussed about it now. It took her months to connect that to a new aversive reaction to gutted machines and rust on old wires it takes a light fugue to push away.

Like many things, it’s nothing she ever constructed, not something she programmed. She’d very much like to put on airs and compare herself to Van Rijn with his famous bafflement at his own marvelous creations, but she would be more comfortable with this if she hadn’t created herself.

Is she even still herself?

“Did you know the fundamental components of an organic body experience a massive turnover rate?” says Gil.

“What?” snaps Tarveka, grabbing control of Gil’s own mouth to do it, which is becoming easier the longer she has to grow used to not being in a clank. She isn’t in the mood for a biology lesson.

“You know, the primary building components, uh, they’re round in animals and square in plants —”

“I know what cells are, Zengil.”

Instead of acting called out for being a patronizing know-it-all, Gil snaps her fingers and says, “Right, that’s what it is. Like little rooms. Thank you. I haven’t had reason to brush up on all the basic terminology in the local language. Didn’t usually have anyone to talk to about it, for one thing. Anyway, hundreds of millions —” She picks a flitting thought from Tarveka carelessly “— billions, thank you — of cells die off in a healthy person every day. On purpose! It’s great, really.” She finishes with a bit of the telltale distraction of a spark espousing on their specialty.

“...They do not,” says Tarveka.

“Well,” says Gil, “only some of them.” Tarveka gets a ghost impression, a diagram of the human body forged through in-depth understanding picked out in hot and cold spots. “We’re never the same for long, even if we’re sitting still. We’re not supposed to be. That’s what being alive is!”

Tarveka thinks about this. “Are you talking about necrosis?”

“I’m talking about apoptosis, you morbid little tit.”

“Seriously? You forgot ‘cell’, but you know that word?”

Gil mutters, but the impression Tarveka gets — a stack of secondhand books, at once familiar and foreign and exciting, stacked on a rock in an empty waste — is much more indicative than the actual words, which include “dare defy me”, “show them all”, and “then they’ll see, they’ll all see”, in an impressive but pat three-for-three.

Tarveka chews on a response. “If this is a clumsy attempt to make me feel better —”

“Who, me?” says Zengil. “Be nice to you? Never.”

“— Then it’s working,” finishes Tarveka. “But only a little. ...Shut up, don’t —” stare at me like that? No, that’s not right. This is getting very confusing. “Stop — stop having feelings at me, get back to work.”

“You’re not actually the boss of me, Sturm —”

“If you don’t connect that octave coupler it’s going to catch fire.”

“Ack!”

 *

“Do they realize how weird that looks?” asks Violetta, watching what appears to be Zengil talking to herself while they wait for someone madder than they are to hand them another task.

“They’re sparks,” says Moloch, shrugging. “Do they care?”

*

For a week Tarveka maintains the frequency of checking on her body she had when she’d thought something was wrong. (She’d been right.) She doesn’t have the opportunity to miss her heart pounding and her breath coming fast as she carries on the deception, because her gears whir and grind, and her vision shifts too amber, then too blue.

She goes through the motions of her normal routines, paring them down slowly. She doesn’t really know why she’s bothering when her audience is mostly the palanquin’s bearers. (Pallbearers.) She could order them away for maintenance and only seem like a snappish spark — she could bite, It’s a spark thing, get lost! when she doesn’t open the container, when she drops off the frequency of all her biological maintenance to a dead stop. But they avert their eyes and she doesn’t ever need to.

 *

Agatha grips them by the chin again but this time she just stares them in the eyes, whips out a flashlight and stares more, then says, “You’re integrating too strongly. You two can’t even be trusted to stay fighting?” She tsks. “Incredible.” Then she wanders off and begins writing out papers. They will only find out what’s on them later.

Si vales valeo is an abbreviation of si vales bene est ego valeo, which means “If you are well, I am well.”

[journeysintowebcomics]

Girl Genius Liveblog #143

UPDATE 143: Zola Kinda Wins

Last time Agatha, Tarvek and Gil were actually doing progress! They were fixing the Castle and all. Also Gil was falling for Tarvek’s manipulations. So let’s continue!

Oh hey, Violetta is here. She didn’t leave with Higgs and Zeetha, she returned here because she has a duty with Agatha – at least that’s my guess. Would she stay for Tarvek, too? I...I’m not entirely sure. I’m pretty sure she would guard him, yes, but I’m not sure if she’d be doing it willingly or not, if she had the option to decide. The fact she’s punching him gratuitously doesn’t help me decide.

The moment Violetta hears Agatha was injured, she punches Tarvek again and hurries to examine the wound.

...so it was poisoned. Figures. It must be a really slow and insidious poison; I wonder how exactly she’d have died? It must be quite subtle, if it’s called ‘natural causes’.  Luckily for everyone, Violetta is here and she has ways to counter the poison, so Agatha’s not going to die. Thank goodness. It’d have been really awful if Zola got the last laugh even after all that. I like that everyone in Agatha’s ragtag group has been useful, nobody so far has been a dead weight on the rest. It’s often said that to see if a character should be kept around, you should fully remove it and check the text to see if anything changes. If nothing changes, then that character isn’t needed. I think removing even a single one of Agatha’s closer circle would break the story.

There’s more work to be done. Like this room here, it’s on fire. I...I can’t decide if the Heterodynes would make a room on fire on purpose or not, just for kicks and giggles. My gut tells me they definitely would.

Looks like the Castle has a trick up his sleeve, or...whatever equivalent you can make for a building. After finding out where exactly the fire is – the equestrian statue of Alexandros Heterodyne? A side story about the many Heterodyne ancestors would be interesting – the Castle empties the cisterns. I suppose there really was a use for the impluvium.

Back to the hospital. Zola looks like she was run over by a truck, so yeah, she’s looking much better than I expected, considering everything she went through. Dr. Sun and his granddaughter note just how toxic Zola is, and they’re not talking about her personality. All that Movit 11 and who knows what other stuff must still be in her. After discussing that they should add some more restraints and put some guards here, Zola tries to get out, but she’s still too weak for that. Oh the humanity! Her protesting gets Anevka’s attention, who enters and tries to go out when she notices it’s someone she doesn’t know. Yeah, for simplicity’s sake I’m referring her as Anevka.

Zola is quite lucky, all things considered. Lucrezia in Agatha’s body screwed up and implanted a copy of herself into Zola, giving her the means to approach other iterations of Lucrezia and ruin her plans to make hers advance. That’s the kind of thing that’d be difficult to plan, yet it happened spontaneously. Not only that, she also got taken to the same building Anevka was at. Sure, it’s the only hospital around, but she got there at the right time. She really is lucky!

Speaking of this, Zola is also a good actress, much better than Lucrezia. She’s able to convince Anevka that it’s her, mostly by reciting fond memories that of course involve someone else’s misery. I almost wouldn’t be surprised if Zola is the last villain to be dealt with in Girl Genius, this is a lot of cunning.

I hope Agatha learns to keep the iteration of Lucrezia in her at bay without the locket, because that may be a target for Zola and Anevka next time they see her.

After everything I have heard about Barry and Bill I hope they appear at some point. It’d be really fun.

The Baron being here at the hospital is something Anevka hadn’t planned, and is kind of a wrench in her plans. Now that I think about it, she doesn’t know about the wasp that infected Klaus, does she? Hm. She wants to smother Wulfenbach. Honestly I think that wouldn’t change much. I think Dr. Sun would revive Klaus and keep his death a secret, so if that’s all Anevka does, not much would change. I’m not sure how reviving works, but surely there’d be a way to revive Wulfenbach, yeah – destroying the head seems to be the only way for someone to die permanently.

Oh, whoops, Zola just informed her about the wasp! Not in those exact words, but the insinuation is there! Sorry for your enslaving, Wulfenbach, hope it won’t be as awful for everyone as I think it’ll be.

Since Zola staying around in this hospital room for a long while can be a problem, Lucrezia rigs a few machines to pump Zola full of electricity so she recovers faster --- much faster, because I doubt Dr. Sun and his granddaughter will be away for long. Someone will bring the restraints sooner or later. Once she’s sure Zola will be okay – in a definition of the word – Anevka steps out, getting caught by a doctor before she can get too far away. It’s only matter of time before she gets her audience with Wulfenbach, so...yeah, the events in this hospital are like a time bomb.

Leaving that aside for a moment:

Honestly I wouldn’t have noticed there was something off until she pointed it out, so yeah, it works. Well, it doesn’t mean much. I sometimes miss a lot of stuff even when it’s in plain sight, I bet Zola could grow a double shoulder in half of her appearances and I’d be none the wiser.

I think I have time for one scene more before stopping for today. Sanaa and Othar are still wandering around, sitting on skulls and wondering why the Castle felt so empty. They haven’t stumbled upon anyone for a long while. Maybe most people already died or fell into random pits, the Castle is filled with them, if the prisoners that were with Sanaa are any indication. Or maybe Othar scares them when he enters a room and shouts—

--yeah. That. Any conversation stops when the Castle notices there are people wandering around, and since his first reaction is to open a hatch, that gives some credence to my theory about everyone being trapped in holes right now. At least the Castle remembers who the prisoners are, Sanaa should be relatively safe. Othar...not so much.

...how does he do that? Honestly, it’s like magic. Did he master teleportation or something? Does he have an army of clones following him all the time? What’s up with this man, haha! Well, it’s better if he survives. The Castle seemingly agrees, elated he can toy with a real bonafide hero – elation that kinda fades a bit when Othar reveals he knows Agatha. Since Agatha wouldn’t be happy if Othar dies, the Castle is limited to non-lethal torture. Classy.

This is a rather pink torture chamber. Alright then!

There’s something I like a lot of Girl Genius: its humor. It doesn’t try too hard; I find it often hits the right chords in me. I like this! And just in these three pages, I’m fonder of Othar than I was during the Weasel Queen interlude. Well, in that interlude he was more like an exaggeration of Othar, but yeah. I think I like him back in this tale. For now I’d like to know what Tiktoffen is doing in this torture chamber. Was he already here or did he wander in here?

...looks like I won’t know for now, this is the end of the scene. I’m ending the update here for now.

Next update: in five updates

[faygosmayhem]

Story Time #3- Final Fantasy & Me: Part Three

Landmines EVERYWHERE: 

I love Final Fantasy XII. I also hate it with seething contempt of 10,000 scorned and angry Cactuars. When the game launched I couldn’t even let myself get excited. I was deep into a period of ‘permanent grounding’ that cut me off from the world and everything else I loved (another story for another time). I stayed that way from February to December of ‘06, miserable and only getting worse. Come Christmas my parents gifted me with Final Fantasy XII. I thought it needlessly cruel at the time because they were still holding all of my electronics hostage and I had no way of playing it, but I came to understand that in giving me the game they were also giving back most of the things they had taken. 

This time, I was also given a guide to go along with it. At the start, and probably against my better judgement, I tucked the guide away with the rest of them for use only after had gotten through the game once, as usual. I had gotten a good half-way through before I decided to take a peek to look up some information on where I could find a particular spell. ‘Just that one thing,’ I told myself as I flipped through to the index.

 Of course, as I was going through a picture happened to catch my eye. Unable to help myself, I went back to it to check if I was really seeing it correctly. The picture was of 12 treasure coffers neatly lined in rows of four along a beach, with a note beside it in big,bold, lettering warning not to open ANY of them. I read a little further and discovered that this was one of four spots in the game where opening the treasure causes the best weapon in the game to disappear forever. 

At that point I nearly threw the game out the window, who does shit like that? There is absolutely no way for that to be discovered on your own, as the game makes no mention of it anywhere. I could have continued playing as I had planned, but if the game was going to pull tricky crap like that I was going to be in for one hell of a second playthrough. So, already about thirty hours into the game I scrapped the file and played it over while following the guide, grumbling about it the whole way. Turns out there’s more than one section in the game that’s nearly impossible without help if you don’t want to spent countless hours banging your head against the wall. 

Final Fantasy XII is hard. Not only does it have a lot of complex puzzles and tough enemies, you basically have to program the AI yourself or the party is going to be completely ineffective. It really doesn’t help that the game makes you pay for those little bits of code either.  It takes a lot of repetitive grinding to get through everything, and I can’t tell you how many hours I spent looping the zones over and over for LP, and Gil. 

The story is probably the most mature in the series, and full of socio-political intrigue and complicated scientific concepts. I used to play the game with a dictionary handy so I could decipher what the hell Vayne and the Judges were talking about. The cast of characters is rather polarizing for me, containing one of my all-time favorites, Balthier the debonair sky-pirate, and my least favorite of all the games- Penelo.

 I didn’t like her character from the start, I found her voice annoying, had an unexplained problem with her attitude, and absolutely could not stand her costume and hairstyle. The true reason for my hate of her, however, is that in my version of the game, for some unfathomable reason, her AI would set off EVERY SINGLE TRAP in the dungeon- even with Libra on. I had to switch her out or control her manually to stop this from happening, and since I was doing my best to level the party evenly just leaving her alone was not an option. By the end of the game I was so fed up with babysitting her I used to kill her on purpose out of spite. Yeah, I could've saved myself the effort by just making her the leader when it was the girls’ turn to grind, I found it much more enjoyable to watch Fran walk instead- her tail physics were hypnotizing. 

Final Fantasy XII caused a lot of frustration for me. There were several times I wanted to just set it down and never think about it again, but in the end it became the game I’ve spent the most time on. The game is very long and some of the individual fights can take upwards of 4 hours (I went to go make sandwiches twice while fighting Yiazmat, about 50 million HP is a little much, don’t you think devs?), but became one of the most rewarding once everything was completed thanks to that stupid Sky Pirate’s Den feature. 

If you’re reading this and skipped XII for whatever reason when it first launched, I recommend looking into the new re-master, Zodiac Age. It’s been tempting me for a while, I was actually at the Distant Worlds concert in Pennsylvania when the information on the remaster was first leaked by the game’s composer, I just don’t know if I have the will-power to pick it up again. 

A Visually Appealing Corridor Simulator: 

After finally finishing XII in ‘07, I didn’t touch a Final Fantasy game for about four years. Not like there really was anything to touch, exactly- but that’s beside the point. During those four years my life took a rather interesting turn, and I found myself immersed more in Tabletop RPGs and MMOs than anything else. It wasn’t until 2011, a year after I left my life in Arizona behind and moved to Pennsylvania that I once again found myself as the recipient of a shiny new PS3 and a copy of Final Fantasy XIII. 

I’m very glad I was able to go into this game with very little expectation, else I would’ve ended up disliking it a great deal more than I did. For the most part I don’t hate the game, but I can understand why a lot of people do. Final Fantasy XIII mostly just makes me sad because of what the game could have been. All those beautifully designed and intricate set pieces were reduced to nothing but bland hallways because of an attempt to appeal to a larger American audience, mostly due to the fact that the game was released cross-platform for the Xbox 360 as well. 

There are a lot of problems with Final Fantasy XIII. The characters are annoying and not very fleshed out, the plot is not cohesive and almost indecipherable, and about 80% of the game is walking down a never-ending hallway, and they don’t even get around to fully fleshing out the mechanics until the game is almost over. 

Despite all of this I thought the game was OK. I was impressed by the cut-scenes (the one at the end where they all roll up to Eden during the hover-bike race on the backs of their Eidolons is a personal favorite), thought the fast-paced combat was pretty fun, and had a pretty good time making fun of the ridiculous characters. The ending was another very serious “WTF?” moment, but pretty much the whole game up to that point had been, but I do admit to tearing up when Sazh is re-united with his son. 

I was even thankful, though a bit disappointed, to find out that I didn’t even need to play the game all the way through again to complete it. That is, until I tried to do it. It’s no secret that completing a Final Fantasy game, or any RPG for that matter, takes a great deal of time and dedication to repetitive action. Completing Final Fantasy XIII, however, was the most mind-numbing endeavor I’ve ever attempted. Prepare yourselves for a rant involving lots of math, because this shit got real (I’ll set the math between lines so those that really don’t care can just skip it). 

To get one of the gold trophies, you need to own one of every weapon and accessory in the game. The only way to get most of these things in the game is to upgrade them using Gil and drops acquired from monsters. The only way to make money in the game is by selling monster drops. The item worth the most is a 25% drop from the hardest enemies in the game. Even If you execute the strategy needed to kill them absolutely perfectly, which is incredibly tricky, it still takes 5-6 minutes just to kill ONE of them, and there are only about seven or eight different spawn points for them in the game (don’t quote me on that), most of them in the same zone. 

In order to upgrade everything I needed by the time I was ready to tackle this challenge, I needed about 1.5 million gil. The 25% common drop from the monster is worth 150,000, and you need SIX additional abysmally rare drops from the same creature in order to get every character their best weapon. In a perfect world, you need to kill around 40 of these stupid things for the money alone, and I would about quadruple that value for the rare drops. In an imperfect world, there are also days where you have no luck, mess up the strategy and take too long to kill the monster, or get killed yourself and get set back. 

The fastest way I found to get everything I needed was to use the long hallway right before the final boss where one of the creatures spawns at the beginning. There”s a save point at both ends of the hallway and it’s littered with other difficult encounters that can yield some other items worth a decent amount of money if done correctly. Passing through this hallway in one direction fighting everything takes about 30 to 45 minutes. Using some easy zone-out manipulation you can fight a grand total of THREE creatures in the span of about an hour and a half. 

For the final stretch of this game I spent upwards of eight hours a day, everyday, for the span of about two whole weeks doing nothing but running down that hallway fighting the same monsters, in the same patterns, over and over again until I finally had everything I needed. This reason alone is why I will never again touch a copy of Final Fantasy XIII. 

Want More? Hell No. Well...You’re Getting It Anyway 

XIII-2 and Lightning Returns were games that served almost no purpose. Even though the end of XIII didn’t make a whole lot of sense, it was still an almost complete resolution that didn’t really leave any loose ends. Aside from the obvious ‘to make money’ there was no real reason to give us another entry for a story that most people were unimpressed and dissatisfied with, rather than making the games that were already announced that the fan base was dying for. 

There’s an optimistic part of me that wants to believe that XIII-2 was created mostly out of desire to fix the gaping flaws of the game that came before and give the fans and developers a chance to see what XIII should have been.That satisfies me, until I remember that they ended it with a cliff-hanger that needed yet another game to resolve. 

I did enjoy playing XIII-2, and was happy to finally have a more complete version of the world from XIII. What they did with the story, however, was not something I was a fan of. The plot of XIII was complicated enough. Throw in time travel, world paradoxes, and non-linear story telling, and you get something so contrived it’s not even worth trying to piece together. 

By time Lightning Returns finally graced us with its presence, I was done. I played the game for about two hours, became infuriated that the game was based around mechanics I absolutely loathe and set it aside. I didn’t even bother looking up the end of the story on YouTube- by that point I really didn’t care. I don’t think I’ll ever be desperate enough to pick it back up again. 

What We’ve All Been Waiting For:

Think back on the past ten years of your life. While doing that, remember that during that whole period, the devs of Final Fantasy XV were working on the same project. I can’t even begin to imagine what that cycle must of been like for those people, and what a triumph it must have been to see it finally on the shelves. 

It’s even harder to reconcile what we got with how long it took them to make it. The incomplete feeling of the story from XV is very hard to deal with thinking back on just how much time they took to tell it. Part of me gets it; DLC, money, also making realistic games is hard and takes forever. I absolutely understand that the developers were trying to take a new angle with the series, and that they didn’t want to get to crazy with ham-fisted storytelling like pretty much every other installment, but even with the DLC we’re still missing some pretty significant chunks of the narrative. 

Honestly that’s about my only complaint about the game, and it’s with good reason. 

I fell more in love with the characters of Final Fantasy XV than I have with any other form of media. The casual interactions and mannerisms of the four boys are so heartfelt, so real, and such a joy to watch. From that first moment spent pushing the car to the opening notes of ‘Stand By Me’ (which is now my favorite into sequence in the series), I could tell that these characters were something special. The first time I heard Ignis’ exclaim “That’s it!” after staring idly at a random sign at a diner my heart fluttered, and I was completely charmed. The first time Prompto sang the victory theme I knew I was hooked for good. 

Something about these boys just makes me happy. Not only are they all so nice to look at, but their mannerisms and interactions really make you want to know them. I really don’t understand how this game got away with having such fantastic characters in a terribly fleshed out story. While playing, I cared deeply about what happened to the four boys (and still do, as evidenced by how much time I still spend in the fan community). When they laughed, I laughed. When they were sad, so was I. When they were hurt, I couldn’t wait to get out there and ruthlessly murder the cause of it. I wanted to know everything about them, and found myself filling in my own information when there was none offered (particularly with Ignis, because that boy gets ZERO backstory). 

It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with this game, and likely will be for quite a while still. Even with the problems I have with the story, it’s still at the peak of series for me. I can only hope that in the future they fill in the holes, and we can keep the boys with us for a long time still to come. 

Well. That was a thing. All total I spent about 18 hours writing this out, and had more fun with it than I’ve had writing anything in a while. Final Fantasy is such a huge part of my life and it was almost astonishing to look back and really remember what each of these games mean to me, and why nothing will ever replace them. 

Thanks to anyone who took the time to read my long-winded rambling, you are wonderful. If you’re feeling a nostalgic as well, then I know I’ve done my job right. It will be interesting to see what else comes out of this little experiment of mine. 

Until next time

~Faygo

[lithugraph]

Fanfiction asks ! Could you answer questions 2, 3 & 4 for Lost Generation please ? :)

Well, since both @niniel-kirkland and @gummyboots asked about Lost Generation, I’ll answer both here:

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?As silly as it sounds, the original idea for this came from the name of a country western bar that is now closed I think. I never went, but I had a lot of friends who did. It was called The Cheyenne Supper Club. The name made me think of an old west saloon or an upscale “house of ill repute.” I wanted to write a PruAus where Roderich is just a complete bastard. In the fandom, he’s always portrayed as this weakling, but from an historical perspective, Austria was freakin’ boss! So I wanted to do something that showed his darker, more manipulative side. I originally thought about setting it in the old American West. If you’ve ever read East of Eden by John Steinbeck, or seen the movie Pretty Baby, I had initially based Roderich’s character off the madames in each of those. If I had gone the Wild West route, he definitely would have been the male version of Cathy from East of Eden – although I still feel he’s kind of like Madame Mosebery, just with a moral side. I switched from the Wild West theme to Weimar Germany because I felt it was more interesting and i didn’t think the western motif would hold up for long, and I felt Roddy would have just been this one dimensional asshole of a character. Plus I knew how I wanted to end the story set in Germany versus the one set in the American west.

2: What scene did you first put down?The first scene I put down is the first chapter, lol! Actually, it was the part when Gil and Lutz show up out of the blue at Roderich’s club.

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?“He thought of his mother’s voice, his uncle’s house – the corners where he used to hide, where he thought the light could not quite reach and yet always seemed to find him. He never could run from it.” This came from the very last chapter and was a theme I tried to reiterate throughout. Without trying to sound too academic or snobbish about my own writing, I was basically playing around with the idea of duality and the tug-of-war of Ludwig’s character. He’s essentially had to hide a major part of himself, in this case his sexuality, because he’s faced such hate for it from his uncle and his schoolmates. The only place he feels “safe” is at the cabaret. He’s seen how open Roderich and Gilbert are with their relationship in public and how open the “girls” are about performing, and he wants to be able to experience that openness too, but he still carries that stigma.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?Not so much a favorite line, more like favorite scenes of dialogue: Any time Ludwig and Lovino are talking together. The dialogue is so simple but I think it conveys what I was trying to get across and I just had a fun time writing their interactions.

5: What part was hardest to write?Ludwig’s sex scene with Irina because it was supposed to be so awkward – and it felt so awkward to write! Also, the build up to Ludwig asking Roderich about being a part of the cabaret act.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?It’s the longest fic I’ve ever written and my continued investment in this world I created.

7: Where did the title come from?The original title, “Bye Bye Blackbird,” was a placeholder until I could think of something better. Well. It stuck for almost five years. As mentioned in the first Author’s Note of the first chapter, some people debate the meaning of the song Bye Bye Blackbird and attribute it to a prostitute getting out of the “business.” I thought that interpretation fit, especially with regards to Roderich and Ludwig. I changed the title to “Lost Generation” because I felt it fit the overall story rather than just two of characters. “Lost generation” is a term typically applied to the generation that reached maturity during and after World War I. More generally, it defines a generation coming to maturity during a period of instability. This world was a catastrophic one. Weimar Germany may have looked pretty and fun and fascinating on the surface, but underneath was a whole different story. (Hence Ivan’s line: “This decade’s decadence can not be allowed to last.”). Periods of extreme change are typically followed by a reversal or even a backlash – ::nudge nudge wink wink:: I’m looking at you, America.

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?Uh, yeah. Just crack open a history book, lolz!

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?Other than the wild west one that never came to fruition, no.

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?It’s PruAus. Need I say more? No, seriously – these two dorks are what’s kept me in this fandom for so long.

11: What do you like best about this fic?Character exploration. Ludwig essentially became the main character in this – which was not my original intention – but I felt to get him to the point of wanting to be in the cabaret, I had to develop him more. In the wild west version, Roderich basically tells him “You’re doing this because I said so and I need the money” (again, see “Pretty Baby” Madam Mosebery reference), but I thought it would be more fun to fuck with everyone and throw in those pesky morals.

Also, this fic was completely new to me with regards to world-building, so to help my scattered brain, I collected images from that time period and drew simple layouts for things like Roddy’s and Lovino’s flats because I wanted it to be as believable as possible. Doing that was really fun, especially on the days I didn’t feel like writing but still wanted to contribute to the fic somehow – and it also helped with inspiration.

12: What do you like least about this fic?It. Is. So. Long. I feel I could have edited it better? But I also feel like everything I wrote needed to be included, so….

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?I have a Pandora station programmed to Duke Ellington, which plays some great early jazz – and even some modern stuff which is not bad. It was all I listened to when I wrote this. I still listen to it when I write “Contrapasso.”

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?Some people are worth your trust. Embrace who you are. Hiding your Self only creates more problems.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?That I should have made more of a timeline, lol! I wrote one out, but it doesn’t capture the scope of this fic, like, at all. I usually plan stuff out in my head, but there’s only so much my brain can hold on any given day. I’ve never worked with outlines for stories before, but am slowly changing that. (My timeline for Bewteen the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is already longer than the one for this fic, jfc.)

[mhdiaries]

Diary of Venus McFlytrap

Reading my diary could make me allergic to you.

9*9

Today I got in trouble for not paying attention in class. It’s not like I wasn’t interested in what Mr. Hackington was saying but after a week of clouds and rain the sun was calling my name. Shouting it actually - “HEY VENUS - YEAH YOU MCFLYTRAP! DON’T JUST SIT THERE LIKE A POTTED PLANT GET OUT HERE!” I HATE IT WHEN THE SUN SHOUTS AT ME; SO RUDE AND STISTRTACTING. Plus Mr. Hack’s classroom is so cold and dank. Not exactly the kind of place where a ghoul wants to put down roots. Good thing I knew I knew the answer to the question Mr. Hack was asking, even if I didn’t hear it the first time he asked me. “Photosynthesis!” “That’s correct Ms. McFlytrap… did you know or guess?” What I wanted to say was, “Oh, was that the answer?” I though I was placing my lunch order.” Instead I just pointed to my notes, which seemed to satisfy him for the moment. Mom always says, “Be a flower not a weed.” Of course the difference between a flower and a weed depends on the gardener. Whoa. I’m not even sure what that means but next time mom tells me not to be a weed I’m going try it out on her and see what happens.

9*15

I went outside to eat lunch today and saw Operetta sitting under a tree playing her guitar. I walked over to ask if she minded me sitting down to listen and she immediately stopped playing. She looked up at me and wrapped her arms around her guitar like she thought I was going to try and take it from her, “This guitar was made for me by my best friend out of ah hard rock maple tree that blew down in a storm and I ain’t about to apologize or give her up for one made from recycled plastic bottles so you can just save your speeches.” She really hurt my feelings but I wasn’t about to let her see me wilt so I yelled back, “I don’t care what your dumb old guitar is made of I was just going to ask if I could sit here and listen to you play!” She looked surprised at first then she threw her head back and laughed! “All right, all right pull in your thorns ghoul friend and have a seat.” I sat down and she played. She is scary good. I told her being a plant monster means I get all my nourishment from the soil, air and water around me so living in a clean environment is important. I know it may seem selfish but I bet if other monsters saw garbage being dumped into something they were about to eat they’d be all up in claws too and it’s not like I want to build a big fence around the outdoors so no other  monsters can enjoy it cause that wouldn’t be fair either. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask for monsters to throw something that can be recycled into the recycling bin and not treat the environment like their own personal trash  can. Operetta said, “I reckon I see your point but I’ve also seen you do that pollen think to monsters who don’t agree with you an no monster wants to feel like they’re being manipulated into doing something even if it’s something good and that’s why some of ‘em run whey they see you coming.” Whoa. Then she told me why she doesn’t sing in front of audiences. “Monsters who hear me sing live will believe and do whatever I tell ‘em to just like they do for you – only they’ll keep doing it till I tell them to stop.” I almost laughed but I realized she was dead serious. “Now I reckon I could be the biggest music star in the monster world with that ability but I’d rather my music be listened to cause it really is the best not just because I tell monsters it is.” I guess I see her point too.

9*19

I guess I’m getting adjusted to Monster High but it hasn’t exactly been easy. Probably cause I’m really not very good at going along just to get along. Even when I was just a little sprout I wanted to do things my own way. Like one time these monster aphids infested my whole class but instead of using that nasty shampoo or letting my mom comb them out of my hair I totally pruned my head. I looked like a dandelion that had lost its seeds for a while, but at least I didn’t have aphids anymore. I even decided the pruned look was scary cool so I kept it that way on the one side. At my old school all the classes were taught outside so that we were always in our element so to speak. Being indoors all day was really making me droopy but I didn’t want any monster to think that I was some kind of fainting violet cause I’m not. Lagoona must have noticed though cause she told me that I should go talk to Headmistress Bloodgood and let her know I was having a problem. I was like, whoa. I didn’t really want to cause the last time I had to go see her was when she caught me using my pollens of persuasion to make Meowlody and Purrsephone pull aluminum cans from the regular trash and put them in the recycling bin. I got a very long lecture on the need for self-control, and assignment for an even longer paper on the ends not justifying the means, and I had to apologize. Lagoona kept bugging me until I finally made an appointment with the Headmistress. She told me her old assistant was a plant monster and she turned a supply cabinet into a special grow room with lights that mimicked the sun . Headless Headmistress gave me the key and said I could use it any time I was feeling droopy. Amazing,… just amazing.

10*2

I had my meeting with Mr. D’eath, the school guidance counselor today. He wasn’t there when I got there so I had to wait for him. I wasn’t really looking forward to it at all. He always seems to be sighing about something and he cracks his knuckles… a lot. It sounds like dry branches snapping which is like claws on a chalkboard to me. The other day I overheard Miss Kindergrubber telling Mr. Hackington that unlife had not been very kind to Mr. D’eath this year and that lately he was looking more gaunt than usual. I’m not sure how that could even be possible. Of course Miss. K. is always telling some monster to eat cause they’re just “skin and bones”. Guess it must be a prerequisite for her job. Anyway, Mr. D’eath’ss office always smells like herbal tea… can’t really even think about that… and his walls are covered with motivational posters. There’s one with this troll sitting on top of a bridge instead of underneath it that says, “Don’t be afraid of a new perspective.” Whoa. Deep. I’m sure they’re supposed to be profound and encouraging but they’re really not my kind of fertilizer. There was also a picture of him and some other teachers white water rafting down the River Styx. It would take a pretty penny for me to do that. He finally came in with my records, sat down and started flipping through them:

Hmm… okay… I see… oh ho! Well Miss Yelps I think you have a bright future and, if I may confide in you for a moment, over the years a job like mine can make one rather brittle. It gets so discouraging when students don’t listen to my advice especially after all my years of education and seminars which I am beginning to suspect are taught by monsters whose last interaction with students was back in the day of the quill and inkwell. You mention something as simple as an iCoffin and they look at you like you’re speaking zombie… no offense.

He went on about how according to my permanent file I, (Ghoulia), could go to any poison ivy league school that I wanted. He said some other really nice things about me (her.) and then gave me a bunch of college brochures. He told me it had been a real pleasure and that I could come back any time. I didn’t have the heart to correct his error so I just moaned and shuffled out. I’ll probably get in trouble for it later but I’ll sit on that bridge when I come out from under it.

10*15

I got some new art pencils today so I did some sketches of Chewlian who wasn’t being very cooperative. I think he was mad that I closed my window when I went to school. He likes me to leave it open in hopes that lunch will come creeping, crawling or flying into my room. I don’t like bugs nearly as much as he does though and sometimes I forget and close it. I finally had to tell him that I’d let him spend the day out by the compost heap if he’d be still. He was pretty good after that and I was happy with the results.

11*15

When I got called into Headmistress Bloodgood’s office, last week, I was thinking it was because she found out about my appointment with Mr. D’eath but it turned out to be an “opportunity for growth” that would involve me rooting myself in a face painting booth at the middle school carnival. So today I sat in a booth with Draculaura turning werewolves into zombies, vampires into skeletons, zombies into Dead Fast… okay that was just Ghoulia… and cute little ghouls into “scary” normies. Draculaura was happy to do all the kittens, bats with pink bows and the occasional full on mini-makeover although it was mostly the moms who requested those. It also gave me a perfect audience to talk about the importance of keeping the world around us clean. Then we got to watch Robecca, who is a wonder of sustainability, do an amazing stunt. Whoa. It was really scary cool. I think every monster from that time on wanted me to turn them into a robot. Lagoona and Gil even came by and Gil let me paint his helmet to make it look al steam punkish. Not sure I did any growing but I got to spend time in the sun with my beasties, use my art skills and maybe plant some seeds about taking better care of the world around us.