#like the physical environment the place itself has little to do with them dying

[tigone]

sometimes i think about “this place wants us dead” and how it’s such an obvious example of foreshadowing, but it still ends up subverted in some way. like really think about it. the place doesn’t kill them, not really. they bring the diseases and the sickness with them. the lead is already in the cans before they leave. the food was already rotten. even tuunbaq is a man-made creature, not a bear like they originally think. it’s just. it’s not the place not really. the tragedy is that they were already doomed. they were doomed before stepping on their ships and they were doomed before they even reached the arctic and they were doomed before they even got stuck in the ice. she’s been dead since the beginning etc etc. i also think it’s so interesting that it’s also the remnants of colonialism that kills them. obviously james’ bullet wound is the obvious one but also the act of hubris in of itself. the fact that they think that they can last with their supplies. maybe the land does want them dead. maybe they were already dead. idk

[pinkeoni]

Peter Pan Parallels: Is The Upside Down Neverland?

Lately I've been thinking about Petergate and I came up with what possibly could be another angle to the already complicated Peter situation— what if the name Peter is a reference to Peter Pan?

I don't think this is the only reason that the name Peter becomes prominent, although the show itself does seem to contain other references to Peter Pan, and even creates a correlation between the Upside Down and Neverland.

Peter Pan as a character has origins in early works from author J.M. Barrie, and the Peter Pan story as known today originated in a play written by Barrie before being adapted into a book and subsequently several film adaptations. The story of course being about a young boy named Peter who brings some kids to a magical land where they can never grow old.

It's written very small, but Peter Pan is on the season 4 DNA board!

There are a few instances about never growing old in the show, and they usually come from Will or involve Will.

The first instance is from season 3 during the rain fight, where Mike exclaims that they "aren't kids anymore" and they can't "play games for the rest of their lives." This is then brought up again by Will in season 4, but in a much more hopeful lens.

And then we have the Upside Down, a magical land that appears to be somewhat stuck in time.

I say "somewhat" because I'm honestly unsure if the UD actually frozen in time, or if there is just an impression of Hawkins the night that Will was taken. However, the emphasis this season on clocks as well as Nancy's mention of being in the past does at least allude to the idea of being frozen in time.

Does the UD actually function like Neverland and keep someone from aging? Will was only trapped in there for a week, not enough time to see if there was any anti-aging going on. Henry was in there for a few years, however since he changed so much physically it's hard to tell if he aged at all (and given that he was in his 30s, any aging wouldn't have been very apparent)

ALTHOUGH there could be a point to be made about the fact that Will and Henry were both able to survive in the Upside Down for as long as they did in the first place, maybe it has to do with both of their powers, but perhaps the UD was preventing them from dying?

Starting with Will, we know that he was in the UD for a week without any food or water. The body can survive that long without food, but water is another thing. The show makes a point to have Erica say this in season 3:

—which leads me to believe that they want to draw attention to the fact that Will was miraculously able to survive for so long in a place without any water. Perhaps the UD was able to keep him alive?

Something similar happens with Henry, too. It seems like his body was adapting to the new environment overtime, but still the details of his survival are vague and his ability to stay alive after all that time is still rather anomalous to say the least.

There's an indirect reference to the UD as Neverland in season one, when Troy states that "Will is in fairyland now with all the other little fairies." and while YES he means this in a derogatory way, the dialogue is still a way to point at the fact that Will really is in a magical land, and possibly even a hint at his powers.

Notice as well how Will's light magic bares a resemblance to pixie dust from the Disney movie.

Between Henry and Will, we can see both of them as being Peter Pan-like. Henry as Peter as in the one who lures children into his magical fantasy land, or Will as Peter the boy who doesn't want to/has trouble growing up.

Another aspect of Peter Pan is his shadow, which is detachable and seems to have a mind of its own. Which reminds me a lot of this:

Barrie's intentions behind what the shadow represents is pretty vague, although it has been tied to the idea of wholeness, Peter's attachment to the human world as well as duality, wholeness, and lightness within dark and darkness within light. (more to come later)

[thecharleston]

[After sleeping for a solid 17 hours a couple of weeks ago, Charlie bounced back, more focused than ever before. She'd forgotten just how much more effective sleep was at energizing her than Pixi Stix. And so, ever since, she'd been working diligently on her telescope-- with a healthy amount of breaks this time. She'd basically been living in this little quiet room of the library. Hey, it's cozy, warm, and a good work environment. And nobody's kicked her out yet, so she's really made this space her own-- pasting huge diagrams and such on the wall for easy reference, finding spots to stash her more sensitive notes... things like that.]

[And today? Her work might finally yield results. Her telescope didn't need much-- it didn't need to rise above the Earth's atmosphere to get a full view of things, for instance. All it needed to work was to scan something made of biological matter. Normally, Charlie would have a potato ready. After all, she used it as a sort of "anchor" on her adventures. Any universe that has a plant with the exact genetic code as her potato wouldn't be a universe she would immediately die in by way of the environment. It would always be at least a little familiar. Unfortunately, her potato had long since decayed and been lost. She needed something else. Some bit of genetic material that would tie the telescope to her universe and her universe alone, something from hole that remained untainted by her travels.]

[She thought about it, then realized her hair hadn't changed one bit-- that might sound obvious, but most of her physical features shift and morph to match the universe she's in-- and that includes making her colors a little less cartoonishly vibrant in many universes. Except, her hair never seemed to change, at least not in color. One could mistake her for having dyed hair with how bright it is. ...It'll have to do. Of course, it's easier to extract DNA from the follicles of her hair than the hair itself, so... one by one, she carefully tugs 5 strands out, then gently places them into the scanning chamber of her machine. She shuts the chamber's door, making sure it's sealed.]

[Now all that is left to be done is to test the darn thing. Charlie glances at the comically large and somewhat evil-looking lever she built as an on-switch (old habits die hard, okay?! Risky science deserves a little theatrics, as far as Charlie is concerned). She takes a deep breath and walks over to it. Then, grunting with effort, she yanks the lever until it's switched. The telescope bursts to mechanical life; even a few stray bolts of electricity rapidly coiling their way up the wire from the lever to the machine. Don't worry, that's usually a good sign where she's from. She anxiously watches the telescope orient itself, listening to its whirring. Then... it dings. It's located her home universe, and thus, she can use the image of it to calculate its size. Charlie gasps, then cackles, punching the air triumphantly. She can't help it this time.]

GYAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! EUREKA!

[...Silence. Charlie's smile fades as she realizes just how homesick she is: if this were home, the Narrator would have congratulated her, or at least said something witty, depending on his mood. And with a maniacal laugh THAT passionate? Lightning would be cracking outside in time with her. But she's learned that most universes don't have nigh-omniscient narrators that talk to you, nor will lightning inexplicably strike when your evil laughter escapes you. And speaking of... she's also really learning just how tame her world's definition of evil is. She misses it when things were fun and light.]

[Charlie looks toward telescope again, its screen modeling her universe in full. Even if she goes back, she'll never be able to live there with the same naivety as she used to. ...But at least, she can try to protect the others from having to learn what true evil looks like the hard way.]

[fluffi]

SARCOLINE SUNSET I: WELCOME HOME, OUTSIDER :: SOOBIN

pairing: soobin x gn!reader, platonic!ot5 x gn!reader genre: fluff, some subjective angst, bits of humor, enemies-to-lovers, childhood friends word count: 4002 event: #summerscape for @kpopscape credit: @enha-woodzies​ for making the gfx for this series! show her some love <3 author’s note: i accidentally deleted this post so here is a rushed reupload. it might not be as good as the original because it isnt proof read as well but i still hope the algorithm picks it up, maybe this’ll be good for the post. Also, the second part will be coming out in 15 days. warnings: people disappearing, mentions of burning and fire (further warnings will be released in the next parts as the story gets darker)

THIS STORY IS PURELY A WORK OF FICTION AND DOES NOT DICTATE JAY OR NI-KI’S PERSONAL LIVES AND/OR FAMILY.

part two ->

The blonde stared up at an intricately designed structure in awe, walking forward to touch the sides of it and running his calloused hands up and down its rusted carved wedges. It seemed oddly cliche and unrealistic, but he could feel its story. Every touch of the ceramic pillar provided him with emotion that he couldn’t bring himself to explain.

The sun hadn’t set yet, but he could make out the faint reflection of it settling in the background. The huge pine trees around him were making conversation with each other; their faint whispers and rustles providing peace to his veins.

So entranced in the scenery of such a mystical place, he forgot to watch out for his younger peer. Kicking back into his senses, he nervously called out, “Riki! You there?” His voice, usually strong and boisterous, laced fear today.

“Don’t worry about me Jay, I’m right behind you. Just climbing this fence..and..there!” Riki let out a grunt as he jumped onto the soft grass, looking at his older friend with an innocent grin.

At the sight of his buddy, Jay visibly loosened. It was clear that he didn’t feel safe in this environment, yet felt entranced to it in some way. Riki caught up to him in a quick jog before standing next to Jay, in awe at the magnificent view that they were spectating for the first and possibly last time.

“Is this…the place you were talking about?” Riki was out of breath from running after his peer. He pats the grassy patch below him before slumping onto it, crossing his legs afterward.

Jay took a seat next to him, setting his canvas satchel and leather jacket next to him. “According to the maps and books, this is the right spot. I just want to see if the myth is true.”

Riki clapped his hands in excitement and turned to face Jay. “We’re staying till the sun sets right? I want to see what the carousel looks like at night! This structure is so fascinating. It must be beautiful out here at night.”

“No, we’re walking back as soon as the sun goes down. I do not want to risk being out here at night. People have disappeared from staying too long and I wouldn’t want to worry your mother.”

Riki visibly slumped and turned back in time to see the last drop of orange dip. It was quiet for a while. The singing birds stopped humming their soulful tunes, yet the whispering trees grew louder, their inaudible gossip echoing in the ears of the two boys.

At nine at night, Riki’s mother would call Jay, heeding no response. She would do the same for his parents and his friends. The only piece of information they could provide was that Jay had brought Riki, in his words, to “a magical place”. With no other vital details they could draw from their son’s peers, Jay and Riki’s family agree to call the local police, reporting two missing people: two minors, one last seen in a brown leather jacket, and a taller one tailing alongside him. Both their hairs were dyed in a striking shade of blonde.

Summer’s heat-blasted onto your skin as soon as you stepped out of your sleek white Toyota. It was good to be back, you supposed. Although it was something that not many people would fawn over, you were ecstatic to be home in town.

Leaving at the mere age of sixteen wasn’t easy. After your parents decided that you were too good for a mediocre high school where people cared more about their body count than grade count, they immediately sent you off to a prestigious boarding school in the big city. You were given three days to pack and say goodbye to your friends, the rest of your family, your world. As excited as you were to study in the evolutionary epicenter of technology, you didn’t like how you had almost no say in this decision.

You didn’t return home from high school even after four years of studying at that mentally draining institution. It wasn’t like you didn’t want to come back, you were just so accustomed to life in the big city that it seemed pointless to return to square one. With the rest of the world finally in your grip (or so you thought), you enrolled in a highly expensive university and received a full-ride scholarship.

Perhaps that was your breaking point. Piles of work that could never be cleared must’ve got to your head. No one out there seemed to care about your mental health and well-being. The only reason you were allowed to take a break from the university and return was because of your constant breakdowns that your lecturers called “distracting” and “unethical”. You were hoping that this drop-by in town would give you a physical and mental cleanse.

There was no place as hot as home, from where you had been. The blazing sun scorched onto the road. Carrying baggage by itself was already hard enough, but this heat was immensely torturing. You struggled to carry your belongings while trying to close the car boot at the same time. Oh, a pity. You had just returned home and you were slowly turning into a bundle of disorganization, unlike your previous methodical attitude.

“Need a hand?” A familiar suede voice behind your shoulder sounded like music to your ears as you dropped all of your luggage and turned back to see…

“Taehyun!” Child best friend number one. You were looking at a once-innocent boy with doe eyes who had matured into a fine young man. His hair was dyed platinum blonde and, although younger than you, possessed a flair that was completely unlike his past self. His facial features were more prominent than ever and you wondered if all of your friends had developed as well as he had.

You locked your arms around his neck and embraced him as he took your baggage from you.

“You’re so tall now!” You gasped in awe and looked him up and down.

“Of course I am! A boy has to grow, doesn’t he?”

Speak of the devil(s), four people tagged behind Taehyun, waiting for you to notice their presence. All of them were just as tall (if not taller) than your blonde friend and stood out like a sore thumb. It wasn’t just the height, their hair was also in very...exciting colors.

“Can’t believe you forgot about us just for Taehyun.” Ah, that nasal voice was so recognizable. Choi Yeonjun, second-best friend. You cherished him like he was your secret weapon, a power waiting to be unleashed into your industrial world. Although older than Taehyun, they seemed to be the same height now. You couldn’t tell because his new neon pink hair was waxed slick and puffy which made him look a teensy bit taller than his younger friend. You had seen him around on social media and he was a hair-changing chameleon.

Alongside Yeonjun was Hueningkai, better known as Kai in the friend group. He was the youngest one, constantly babied and spoiled, you could say. He was probably influenced by the rest of his friends too, his hair now in a mossy shade of blonde. 

Poor Yeonjun, you completely disregarded his existence and dashed over to Kai instead, eagerly standing next to him to compare heights. The kid had grown so much, you couldn’t tell if you were contented that he was now taller than you or dejected that you had missed so much when you weren’t around.

“Hey, wait up!” Someone from behind called. With Hueningkai and Yeonjun blocking your view you couldn’t see who that one person walking next to Choi Beomgyu was.

Beomgyu, the last friend who joined the friend group. He was always a comedian and never failed to make your day. Although, he didn’t seem so smiley anymore. You figured that it was school stress and adulting getting the best of him. We all had those days; you regrettably knew them like you knew the back of your hand . Unlike the rest of his friends, Beomgyu’s hair was kept in a natural shade of ivory brown. He had never been swayed by the rest of the crowd.

There were so many things to do, so many people to see. You had missed out on most of your growing: having fun with friends, staying up late at night just to watch the stars, dancing on your balcony. You had missed the people too. The town felt different from when you had left it.

“Soobin! Don’t just stand behind, meet our friend! They just returned from the city, right?” Beomgyu ran over to you before giving you a little squeeze.

Who’s Soobin?

“Hey, I’m Choi Soobin. Twenty-one this year. I moved here a few years ago. You must have left before I showed up.” A simple and concise introduction from the blue-haired man. Maybe he was the root of this hair-dyeing trend in town (pun very much intended), as well as the height trend since he was just as tall, if not taller than the rest of the boys.

You briefly introduced yourself but that was about it. You didn’t know how to create small talk, nonetheless with someone completely unfamiliar to you.

Later that day, you wondered if he had replaced you, become another guardian in the friend group. As one of the oldest, you and Yeonjun were always known as the parents of your three “kids”, but Soobin seemed to take care of them equally well. Throughout the day, you watched his every action, how he helped Beomgyu with homework, how he styled Kai’s hair, how he treated Taehyun to his favorite meal, exactly like what you did when you were still around. For once, you felt like the outsider.

Marshmallow Night had always been a tradition here. It was a five-of-you kind of thing, well, the six-of-you now. It had always been the go-to celebration whenever one of you hit a milestone, or was just held for fun. The days of joy where the only thing you had to worry about was whether your smores were burnt.

It had changed a lot over the years, you guys would add some new events to it and remove the ones you guys outgrew, like hopscotch.

You had missed most of its evolution.

Instead of being the main catalyst for today’s event, you resorted to sitting at the side as Soobin took the lead, carrying tables back and forth as well as setting up the fire in a method that the five of you had never used.

Oh, how much you loathed him. You hated his innocent-looking face that spurred out words of authority and boastfulness. You couldn’t stand how he looked so obnoxious with his bright blue hair, his dark brown eyes that held an impeccable gleam. He looked so cheeky, so mean, and worst of all, he had made all of your friends convert to mini spawns of him. Even Yeonjun, the oldest member, no longer felt like the Choi Yeonjun you once knew.

If you could, you would throw him out of your hometown, except that you seemed to be the outsider here. Anyone who walked past would see five people sitting on a huge log, helping each other light marshmallows and biscuits. They would barely notice the one person hunched over on the other side, sitting on the ground, eyes dazed and uninterested.

Occasionally one of the boys would call out to you, either hand you a s’more or ask if you were alright, to which you responded, “I’m alright! Don’t worry about me, I’m having fun.”

Anyone could also see that you weren’t in the zone, but you didn’t want to ruin the moment and be a party pooper. You ended up spending most of the time scrolling on your phone, checking school emails, and such. It didn’t feel like you were back home, it felt like you were on a vacation, on your own.

The commotion had died down, for the most part. Everyone else was either discussing school gossip in hushed voices or making the most of use of their electronic device. You were tempted to join the little heated conversation that Soobin and Beomgyu were having, but you didn’t know who this ‘Chaeyeon’ girl was and either way, you wouldn’t want to voluntarily speak to Choi Soobin.

It wasn’t long before both of them went to do something else, the only sound prevalent being the wood crackling from the bonfire and the occasional chirp of evening birds.

It was a loud, sucked-in breath that drew the attention of everyone, eyes pinned onto the instigator.

Choi Soobin, once again disrupting the peace of this curated environment. He ducked his head in apology and you were about to return to your world when Kai’s curiosity got the best of him.

“Why did you just do that?” His booming voice resounded over everyone else.

You weren’t going to lie, you were curious too. It wasn’t every day you heard a gasp like that.

Soobin looked back up, eyes wide and awake. He was excited about something but seemed to be masking it for the sake of..suspense?

“Okay. You guys know Yongsam Park right?” He put his phone down and tapped his hands on his thighs in a state of urgency.

Now that statement got everyone’s attention. “It’s the flower place outside our town, everyone passes it when they enter. Of course we would know where the place is. Why are you so adamant about it?” Taehyun inquired.

“Well, have any of you gone inside the park? Or near the landmark in general?”

“No. Why would we? There’s nothing to do there than to take pictures of boring flower statues.” You stated.

“See. You guys don’t know anything about the place.” He smirked tilting his head upwards and proudly crossing his arms.

“Could you cut to the chase and tell us what it is already?” Thank Yeonjun for his smart, impatient mouth.

Soobin didn’t answer and merely flipped his phone so you could see whatever was on it. The only words you could make out were “Yongsam...missing...carnival” and something related to the park before he turned it back, away from your view.

“You can’t just say that we don’t know anything about this place then proceed to give us nothing about it.” You rolled your eyes, disinterested in the conversation once again.

“Fine. I’ll send it to you.” Soobin rolled his eyes back as four of the other boys snickered. They loved seeing the two of you bicker.

In courtesy of Beomgyu who gave Soobin your number (without your consent), you received a news article and skimmed through it with eager eyes:

[WHAT’S THE HYBE?]

YONGSAM PARK CURRENTLY UNDER INVESTIGATION, AUTHORITIES SAY 3 days ago

What’s the deal with Yongsam Park? Insiders say that, although bland and boring, Yongsam Park is currently under high-level investigation for the disappearance of a few citizens. The flower-decorated park is the perfect place to take Instagram-worthy pictures and is quite harmless in itself, so visitors were shocked to arrive at the park only to find it surrounded by heaps of yellow tape.

Yongsam Park was developed by Kim Yongsam, director of My Flowers, a multi-million florist franchise that has now spread to Japan and Taiwan. In a 2015 Interview with the millionaire, he mentioned that he had created the park in the inspiration of the rising ootd picture trend, also known as the outfit-of-the-day trend, which he had initially discovered from his teen daughter. 

“I wanted to create a welcoming park for people of all ages, but I couldn’t find a suitable place to do it without the budget being drastically high. In the end, my team and I found an abandoned site and decided to build a simple structure with lower costs up there. Props to my team for the discovery of this landmark. The scenery there, especially in the evening, is stunning .” He stated in the 2015 interview with Soup Magazine.

What’s the abandoned site? With the evidence that is still standing, Yongsam Park is rumored to have previously been a carnival. Said evidence is a worn-down carousel in the back of the park, along with piles of other burnt carnival decoration and equipment. With research, Yongsam Park’s site may have once been an abandoned carnival that perished from an unknown wildfire. This may have been the primary cause of the drought that ensued in the 80s, leaving only a carousel and ashes behind. When questioned, Mr. Kim said that he had decided to leave the carousel standing behind the park due because he felt ‘drawn by its alluring glow’, as quoted.

Investigators and the local police have only enclosed the flower section of Yongsam Park because that was where the victims were spotted. They believe that disappearances took place there and are currently trying to find evidence to back up their stance. Most of this new information is not known to the public, however, Kim and his team are trying to keep it that way. The current disappearance count is seven people, the most recent case being two high-schoolers.

The carousel is still open and does not require a visitor ticket, but visitors are advised to take precautions and leave before the sun sets.

RELATED

TWO MORE BOYS HAVE DISAPPEARED AT THE NOW INFAMOUS YONGSAM PARK 5 days ago

FAMILY OF TOURISTS DISAPPEAR AT YONGSAM PARK, INSIDERS SAY THIS IS THE SECOND CASE OF DISAPPEARANCE HERE 2 weeks ago

JAPANESE COUPLE DISAPPEAR AT FLOWER PARK, NETIZENS CALL THE NEWS A POLITICAL DISTRACTION 3 weeks ago

“Are you seriously...telling us...that we should visit a place where people have been kidnapped?” Yeonjun gawked. “Dude, that’s so stupid. What if we die or something?”

“Don’t say that! I was just curious if you guys wanted to go since it’s so near and since your old friend is back home.”

“It’s a dumb move. I’m not risking my life just so I can celebrate the return of my friend. Not worth it.” Beomgyu huffed.

“Hey! You’re worth it, right?” Soobin glanced at you, waiting for a response.

He was...defending you? His ulterior motives were questionable and you weren’t sure if he was protecting you because he cared about you (cue the puking) or solely because he wanted to go to Yongsam Park that bad.

You didn’t reply and chose to drown out the wailing and chaos that ensued with your friends. You clicked on a related article below, curious to learn more about this lesser-known part of the park.

[WHAT’S THE HYBE?]

TWO MORE BOYS HAVE DISAPPEARED AT THE NOW INFAMOUS YONGSAM PARK 5 days ago

Park Jongseong (20) and Nishimura Riki (15) mentioned to their friends that they would be heading to ‘a magical place’, before disappearing for around a week. They were last spotted walking through Yongsam Park, according to anonymous witnesses. This is the third case of disappearances at the park and both teens are the sixth and seventh people to go missing.

Both families reported their children missing just two days after their disappearance. With this case being the last straw, local authorities forcibly shut down Yongsam Park despite protests from staff and management.

Parents of the two minors refused to respond when called for an interview and HYBE reporters resorted to interviewing the victims’ friends instead.

“Jay’s never been a bad kid. Yeah, he might be late here and there, but he wouldn’t skip class or fly across the country for vacation during school. I just don’t understand why he’s not here with us. He wouldn’t voluntarily disappear.” Park Sunghoon (19), a friend and classmate of Jongseong (who is better known as Jay among his friends) said.

“Although I’m not close with Jay, I know Riki personally and I know for a fact that both of them wouldn’t run away like that. Why, Riki was gearing up for a dance competition that he’s been excited about all year, and now he’s just gone? Like that? Riki has always been like my little brother, and he’ll always be. I just want him back at my side.” A teary-eyed Lee Heeseung (20) says.

Netizens have been complaining about the lack of coverage on this issue.

“Maybe Mr. Kim spent all his money on covering this story up from the mainstream public. That’s why he had to build the stupid park on an abandoned sketchy site.” An anonymous netizen commented.

Regardless, we’ll be keeping our prayers for Jongseong and Riki, as well as the five other victims, to return home soon.

“...you guys are such wimps.” That was the first thing you heard Soobin say when you tuned in to the conversation again.

How dare he say that? How dare he have the courage to call you, someone who moved out on your own at 16 to live in the big, scary world, a..wimp?

“Look, Choi Soobin. I may be a lot of things, but I’m not a wimp. I didn’t say that I wasn’t interested on this trip.” You stand up and blurt out without thinking twice.

The rest of the boys are gawking at you, their mouths open wide in awe and shock. Yes, you weren’t a wimp, that was for sure, but they had known you all their life as someone who could not stand going out into the wilderness. Maybe the big city had really changed you.

“At least someone wants to go! Perfect. We can leave tomorrow at noon, bring your camping stuff!” Soobin grabbed his things and began walking away.

“Camping?” The five of you exclaimed in unison.

Taehyun, the rational member, gasped. “I, personally, wouldn’t mind going to the carousel thing..or whatever it is, but I am not staying the night. Dude, are you nuts?” The rest of you nodded your heads in agreement.

“It says in the article that we are advised to leave before the sun sets.” You point out, trying to keep your voice as steady as possible in fear of breaking this mask of false confidence, when in reality, you were terrified of this place.

Soobin turned back and eyed you down disinterestedly. “Conclusion is that we’ll bring a small backpack, or whatever you guys want to pack, and we’ll stay there until eight. Deal?”

“Seven.” Hueningkai timidly said.

“Whatever you guys want.”

You hadn’t been able to sleep last night. It wasn’t due to fear of the place you were going, rather, you weren’t too excited about having to spend half of your day around Soobin.

What were you going to say to him? You were definitely overthinking at this point.

You know, they always say that the person one hates the most is the one that they also love most. And when Soobin flipped his blue hair back or cheekily smiled, showing his endearing dimples, you couldn’t help but…

No! You loathe Choi Soobin. You couldn’t stand his smile, or his hair, or his height. That evil moonwitch.

“Hey, you ready to go?” Speak of the devil (or moonwitch), you spotted a fluff of blue hair in your peripheral vision.

You couldn’t even muster up the courage to look back at him, merely nodding your head while staring at the white wall.

“Why aren’t you looking at me? Are you...scared?” You could see him wiggle his eyebrows as he made that statement.

That was it. You turned back at him. “Yes I am. I’m absolute terrified. I can’t stand the fact that I have to forcibly spend my precious time around you. It’s like I’m about to voluntarily live a nightmare.”

Woah there, calm down. You had smoke spurting out of your ears at this point.

Soobin’s once excited face fell into one of disappointment. “Yeah, it’s a nightmare having to be around you too. Gosh, the immaturity.” He left the room in haste as your eyes shot lasers through his well-toned back.

Maybe you had gone too far with the insult. He hadn’t been mean to you at all, really.

Then again, he had been mean. He took your place when you weren’t around. Suddenly, you were determined to get it back.

“Hop on the magic school bus!”

“Shut up, Yeonjun.” You deadpanned before leaning your head on his shoulder. The two of you were finally falling back into routine and you couldn’t help but bask in this nostalgia.

You also couldn’t help but notice how Soobin kept on looking through the rearview mirror at the both of you, pupils darting away once you locked eyes with him.

Man, this was going to be a long ride.

2021 © fluffi

[shinebrightlikeanarwhal]

Random SF ideas

It has a lot of Travis ships because that's my feral lil bby. I'm having fun keeping him from bullying people by bullying him instead lol

Every time he enters school Sal mutters “anything can happen in the Bronx”. Todd is the only one that doesn’t understand.

Travis is emotionally constipated and will take it out on others, but later do small things as his form of apologizing. Philip and his mother are the only people that understand him and understand why. Sal thinks he may be bipolar and Larry has probably called him the r-slur under his breath. (Stinky boy probably would say it openly if not for Sal's disdain for that word).

Maple and Travis bonding over jewelry and make up. Travis won’t admit it to anyone but her but he likes the way Maple accessorizes. Obligatory Chug appreciation to keep on her good side, later forms a healthy and wholesome friendship.

Travis and Larry fight verbally. It doesn’t get physical unless Larry loses control and shoved Travis. This prompting a snarky reminder that Larry is no better than Travis’ own father. They cuddle and fall asleep later tho, after Sal puts them in their get along corner.

Nicknames. Travis’ weakness is nicknames. Lisa discovers this and shows Larry and Sal who abuse this power. Travis’ tan cheeks are bright red anytime he’s out public with them because of their stupidly sweet nicknames. Their go to for reactions are baby(boy), sweetheart and bottom

Shameless PDA when Sal is jealous. Travis learns the hard way how easy it is to make him jealous when a hand is in his waist and holding him close to the shorter. Fingers tracing any exposed skin to keep Travis focused on him. Sorry Lar, you took up too much Travis time..

Travis’ mom being an absolute babe. Apple if her eye is her sweet boy. Probably passed while he was young and had to watch him grow in that unhealthy environment.. maybe reaches out to Sal for help since he’s more intuitive. Def terrifies Larry a couple times as a prank. He hit her son, bully or not, it just felt right to braid his hair to his bed post a couple times and paint his nasty thoughts on his chest.

Travis hates surprises and loud noises because of his father. They don’t learn that until they throw a surprise birthday party with cheering and loud pops of confetti balloons, his panic attack damn near gave him a heart attack. (He refused to accept apologies for something they didn’t know. Instead demanding they spoil him for the rest of the week as compensation for his hospital trip on his birthday)

I said it once, and I’ll say it again. Service. Animals. Mr. Phelps legally obligated to give him a service animal and Travis is somewhat saved from Kenneth's abuse. Taking more time outside for walks (the dog can’t bare letting Travis stay in the house for long with his father home). He genuinely bonds with other students over his new dog (the dog allowing contact when not in uniform but if Travis’ needs are present will attach itself to Travis’ hip.

Religious trauma and coping. Because PLS, can we please address the amount of abuse because of the Bible?? That boy may stay and follow the proper words of his lord. Or he could detach himself from the church entirely (especially because of the cult!)

Travis ships: Salvis and Larvis

Asked out: Oh. Oh no. How did they fall for Travis?!? What did they do to find that feral little kitten so cute?? Was it they dyed hair? The dresses when he shows off more legs than they anticipated? Him apologizing and changing for the better?? What happened to him to make him so interesting!? Sal absolutely starts approaching Travis cautiously. Taken aback when he's greeted with a warm smile and compliments. They start to grow as friends and spend time together often. Sharing eachother with their friend groups and on their own. It takes a couple of years before Sal nervously asks Travis if he would be interested in getting closer. Travis doesn't understand and Sal just awkwardly blurts out if he would try dating him... for an experiment or anything. Travis is excited, he wants to be closer and happily hugs onto Sal as his answer.

Larry is a lot ore aggressive. Cornering Travis and glaring down at him. Demanding to know what his game is. Travis doesn't fight he just nervously asks if Larry hates him. Larry almost says he does but gets distracted by the trembling and cowering kitten before him. Fuck, he can't possibly hate Travis. Larry instead starts approaching Travis. At first Travis is afraid that Larry will hit him if he doesn't like something he does. Larry hates to admit it, but Travis infested his mind. Dreams were no longer sacred when teenage hormones and a new love interest were involved. Many a times he had to look away when Travis were a particular skirt or dress because his dreams seemed to run rampant with those items. When they finally talk, Travis initiates it. He Pushes Larry into a bathroom stall and demands he explain himself. He's staring at him like a piece of meat and following him around. Larry is scaring HIS friends. Larry doesn't even hesitate to pounce on Travis. Mouth to mouth and hands on ass. Travis surprised but kinda into it allows the kiss until Larry gets too handsy. He returns to his friends with an angry red hand print on his cheek. It takes a month of apologizing Travis finally agrees to give Larry a chance. (Larry tells his mom and dances around the apartment that night)

First kiss failures: Larry got too into the kiss and starts feeling up the poor boy. Sal pecks him in his sleep and never tells Travis. He just happily holds the memory of kissing his sleeping princess.

First dates: Larry tries to show Travis the fun things to do in this sleepy little town. Travis is excited just to go anywhere other than church and school. At first there are a few hiccups, maybe weather, maybe places are crowded or cancelled. But it still ends well with the boys passed out in the truck, snuggled under a blanket Larry stores with a big smile on their face. Sal is much more romantic. Candles and flowers. Dresses up nice and styles his hair in a neat bun. He wants to impress Travis and assert he can be the man for him by presenting more masculine (Travis snorts and tells him even in a dress Sal could fight a bear). Its a simple dinner at home with Gizmo as their lazy server, sleeping on the couch in a little suit. The night ends well with the boys enjoying a night stroll and admiring the calm and almost desolate surroundings of Nockfell.

First Times: Sal does NOT expect Travis to offer it. In fact, he almost shattered his favorite mug with the tight grip he put on it. Travis thinks this means Sal doesn't want him, but no nono, Sal wants it/ He wants Travis bad. That simp wastes no time scurrying to their room, cleaning his bed and all necessary items are prepared. He was well stocked for... college purposes, but Travis offering to give Sal his first?? (Yes. He did a victory dance and scream in the tree house when he thought he was alone.)

First Time: Larry would waste no time, grabbing Travis and making sure, this is what he wants. Larry may sleep around before they got together but he would never expect Travis to offer his first time so soon. Travis agreeing and Larry in tears hugging onto the confused man. He has never been so gentle with a partner and savored every second, sound and action. It may not have been Larry's first but he was more than happy to say it was his best. Larry would 100% scream to Sal about it later though. He is a man that appreciates his partner and would be an aftercare fiend. Relishing in any reactions Travis gives him while massages and treats the poor tired bum.

Living together: Hell hath no fury like Travis on cleaning day. The boys no not to be in his way if he has his cleaning apron and swiffer. The only one allowed to interrupt his most sacred day is Gizmo and any animals they adopt. Larry has to moderate his metal music or sleep on the porch, he tried to test Travis and found the porch uncomfortable during a rainstorm. No ghost hunting after 11pm. If you even think Travis will allow you in the house after hunting ghosts he will promptly pack your bags and ship them off to your parents. Sal has his own room dedicated entirely to clothes and accessories. His prosthetics he tries to hide at first but after a harsh scolding from Travis (while he literally hand cleans every single prosthetic so Sal doesn't get an infection) Sal starts putting them away where he feels comfortable and clean. They don't expect Travis to be semi nude half the time. Especially before they marry and start a family, no pants. Never wearing pants. Larry hams up the free skin. Sal is too embarrassed of his sinful thoughts.

Proposals: Travis would be terrified of marriage after what happened to his mother. If they were to propose they ould make sure he is fully comfortable and settled in their new life. They would make sure he is loved and never feels any of the fear his father had instilled in him. Larry mentions marriage in passing to gauge his reaction. Ig Travis tenses, he kills the conversation and instead distracts Travis. If Travis reacts positively he would sneak a ring on his finger and just smirk until Travis realizes and smiles. Sal =, however, is sneaky. Keeping close tabs on Travis. If Travis starts showing signs of interest, he would 100% plan the biggest proposal for Travis and make sure he feels cherished during every moment.

[marimo-o]

ok so im making a long ass post about Abzu (the game) within the context of mesopotamian mythology because I'm insane. It's gonna be a doozy and likely incomprehensible so <3 below the cut it goes! There's gonna be TONS of spoilers for the game, and, like, I guess for the mesopotamian creation epic, so. Play Abzu if you haven't and if you wanna read the Enuma Elish that's also cool. Good for u

(a note from afterwards: it's long. like, REALLY fucking long, holy shit. if you actually want to read the whole thing, be. prepared or something idk take breaks! the last two paragraphs (i know they're walls of text pls bear with me) contain most of the important information. like, the final hurrah of my brain after working on this for multiple hours! So if u wanna save time and avoid some of the redundancy, just skip to those last two <3)

So "Abzu" referred to two things; the fresh water people got from underground aquifers (also as the void-sea which was underneath the Sumerian underworld, Kur), and the deity; he only appeared in the creation story, Enuma Elish, because a big part of that whole thing was that oh no! He dies! And that's also a thing I'm gonna touch on (sorry about the lack of accent marks in advance, it's not available on my current keyboard^ ^;)

I'm gonna start off with a brief tale of what happened with Abzu the deity, and then move onto how both the deity and the concept relate to the game!

So like I mentioned, Abzu the deity only really appears in the creation myth. The story goes that the Primordial Soup divided into two beings, with Abzu representing the freshwater and Tiamat being the saltwater. They were married, and together birthed some of the first formative gods! Some of these gods, jealous of Abzu's power convinced Tiamat to kill him (or, I thought it was started by Tiamat growing resentful of the younger gods, one of those). Either way, Abzu was killed, and Tiamat ended up lashing out, creating the first "dragons", or perhaps becoming one herself; with "poison instead of blood". She is killed by Marduk, the god of storms and the child of Enki (one of the first gods created by Abzu and Tiamat), and from her body the heavens and the earth are formed. Imagine getting killed by ur grandson lol cringe /j

Now! The waters itself! This also brings Enki into the equation, who kinda took over as god of the waters in place of his dead father. He's also the god of creation, intelligence, crafts, mischief, and more! Very important guy.

Abzu refers to both the groundwater reservoirs that people depended on for both accessible clean water and for some agricultural work, and also to the void-sea beneath the underworld, where it is said that Enki rests. He had a temple at Eridu, a now-ruined city, and I remember hearing somewhere that he lived in a temple in an underground aquifer? But I can't find wherever I read that anymore so don't take my word for it. Anyway, the basics of Enki as a deity is: child of Tiamat and Abzu, widely worshipped in his time, god of the waters, generally a cool and important dude.

And now. Finally. We move onto the game. My head hurts.

So, for a quick (post-writing: lol it's not quick) overview of the game; you play as a funny little diver, who woke up in the middle of the ocean and, as the player, are given no clues as to who or what you are. You explore through the ocean levels peacefully at first, and with the guidance of a scarred shark (painted as a bit of an antagonist at first with the audio cues) you make your way to wells at the bottom-center of each level that revitalize the space around them; as they progress, many levels start out as barren, empty landscapes that give you a foreboding, nervous feeling going in, before using an energy from yourself to rekindle the life. Huge coral growths, seaweed, and a myriad of ocean animals spring to life. The player character can also ride on the sides of the bigger ones! The game also puts a big stress on unity between yourself and the environment; there's not a whole lot you can physically interact with, but you can play with the animals there and, like I said before, ride on some of the larger animals. There are also "meditation spots", statues where you can sit and explore the wildlife from more of their point of view, able to follow them seamlessly and see what the different kinds of fish and such are called. It's a calming experience, and really the most interaction you get with some of the more timid animals, letting you still see them up close even if you can't get there as the player character.

The story of the game is told via writings on the walls, which you can light up and access by solving small puzzles regarding connecting reservoirs of glowing waters, similar to that of the almost cosmic area you go to between levels; one thing I read described it as a kind of "rebirth area", which I can definitely see hehe!

At the end of the game, you've held the shark in its dying moments, you've discovered a strange factory that builds the weird triangular prisms that deliver anything that touches them a shock, the little flashlight dudes that you've found over the levels, and little divers that uncannily resemble yourself, and you've seen yourself disassembled to your funny little mechanical skeleton, weak and slow as you try to walk on land, before you are rebirthed from the void-cosmic-water area once again, fully yourself. There's a wonderful ending sequence where you swim through all these rivers, bringing life with you as you go, with the shark once again by your side. The whole game, you saw no land when you poked your head above water, just miles and miles of water, but you've travelled far enough to reach a reservoir. You cut the chains to a central triangular prism, and it grows over with moss. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it, really, it feels like such a... grand gesture as you play through it. It feels personal.

Okay. Theory time. Finally, we're getting into the meat of it. Fucking hell.

So, imagine that you are this being. You're wandering an oceanic wonderland, observing and caring for what you need to, doing as any good little diver should. After a bit of poking around, you discover the start of the engravings on the walls; they tell the story of the people that were here before you, who built these temples and halls and used, or at least stored, the strange blue glowing "water" that you connect and move. It's a water of life, of sorts, one that they truly valued. You come to an impasse between areas, and this massive, scarred-up shark cuts in front of you. You're gonna stay hidden, that thing is terrifying! You try not to move. It doesn't spot you, or at least doesn't move to attack you. However, once it's safely out of view, you do follow it, and it leads you to a dark, desolate, empty chamber. This is wrong, you think to yourself. This isn't how it should be. There's a well, towards the bottom, and you approach it, taking... a fragment of light, from your chest, and imbuing that spark of life into the well. And, lo and behold, that intuition proved helpful, because the world around you springs back to life. Congratulations! You did it! And you continue to, as you work past puzzles and challenges and the appearance of these strange triangular mechanisms, that shock you when you get too close. These people worshipped a shark, as well, likely the same as the one you saw; the guide, now old and scarred, that brings you to where that spark is needed. Even later in the game, you see depictions of the triangular mechanisms, at first heralded as a positive, before these things are found to be the reason for this society's collapse. As if that wasn't perplexing enough, you see a depiction of a being that appears suspiciously similar to yourself, once again treated with reverence from the past civilization. In their hand is a ball of light, similar to the one shown when you revitalize the oceanic chambers. Well, that's certainly odd, you think to yourself. Perhaps this was a being that postponed the death of the civilization, or first allowed for those small chambers of life to exist in captivity instead of the open, natural landscapes you explored at the start. Regardless, it's now a relic of something long gone; but it still gives you something to think about. Later on, that strange coincidence of your similarities to that person are explained; you find a manufacturing plant, full of the vicious triangular mechanisms in each tight hallway, and right at the center of it all... multiple iterations of yourself, running down an assembly line, a spark not unlike what you saw before imbued into each of them. My, look at that; you've been responsible for part of this destruction all along, haven't you? Borne from that same ill that has been forcibly removing that spark from each of the places you've gone to. A bit inconsiderate of you, no? And yet... look at all the good you've done. You've rebirthed, revitalized, purified these ocean fragments, is that not enough? You are the keeper of these waters, regardless of the evil you had come from, despite the terrifying empty things may have reverted to. You, who trusted and followed the shark that seemed so scary at first. You, who followed it as it tried to attack a source of the evil, of the thing that was draining the oceans of their life. You, who held and comforted that shark as it lay dying, despite any fear you may have had. You, who attempted to traverse a minefield of those triangular machines, shocked over and over again and at the final moment, unable to make it to the finish line. You, who was rebirthed in full regardless by the oceans you'd cared for, by the void-sea you always returned to, to rest. You, who traversed a now-ruined citadel, temple, all of which had been flooded and had been dedicated to you. You, who brought life with you.

I hope you see what I'm getting at here. You're serving as a figure not unlike Enki, god and guardian of the waters. In the wake of Abzu, the avatar of the fresh waters, now confined to irrigation canals so as not to kill the younger gods, Tiamat lashes out. Her husband is dead, as far as she is concerned, and she goes to those younger gods to seek her revenge. The dragon, that which sucked the life from the seas and poisoned the waters. That which Marduk killed, to carve new life from. I would say that the shark is Marduk, even; given how the shark is the only one who is openly on the offense to those mechanisms, and who comes in at the endgame to finish them off, bringing new life with it. Even in how it all shapes up with the civilization before, in connection to the constructs; Tiamat was the mother of all in existence at that time. She was surely loved; but she turned hostile and violent. She could no longer be safely loved. And Abzu, both the glowing water we use to open doors and the light that we hold and the deep void-sea we enter between levels and father to all in existence, he was confined to small canals and reservoirs and put in a deep sleep so that he would not kill his own children. And by you, no less. Enki put him there. That is why you can use that water from the start; you lived in the Abzu, you came from it, and each time, that is where you return. That temple, now submerged and decrepit, is Eridu; the place where Enki was most worshipped. The other diver clones are the other gods, or perhaps the "dragons", now, that Tiamat had mothered. The smaller prisms definitely count in that "dragon" category; purely harmful beings that seek to destroy life. And in the end, indeed, you restore life; you and your son, upon killing Tiamat, return life to the world from her body. Perhaps you could not save those who once worshipped you, perhaps those structures will forever be in ruin. But there is no more danger, now; there is space to build and replenish. There is space to grow.

Fuck ok that was long as hell. Hi if u made it this far i love u. god fucking damn im never writing anything again after this. it took about as long as a full playthrough of the game, coincidentally!!

[johannas-motivational-insults]

@ericamzdm I’ve read all three parts of your 5x06 pick apart and I think you made some interesting points. I’m going to respond to all of the posts at once (really just the first two, though) for the sake of clarity, and because a lot of the themes carry over and my remarks on them are more general. I’m doing this in a seperate post to avoid highjacking yours and so I’m not sending a huge ass post onto my followers’ timelines. (But interested readers should check out the original posts here: part 1, part 2, part 3.)

First of all, while I disagree with a number of your conclusions, I want to say thank you for putting into words why this episode (and in particular the fandom’s reaction to it) makes me really uncomfortable. I’m not actually sure how much of the problem is in the episode itself vs. the way people talk about it, but I agree said framing issue is there and the writers could have made it better with a few small changes.

I wouldn’t call Adora’s behavior in this episode abusive, with the possible exceptions of the mattress flip and backing Catra into the corner and pinning her arm. And even with those, you gotta remember that these two have been friends since they were little kids, and scrapping and physical aggression is just part of their relationship (remember Catra scratching Adora in 5x03?). Of course, it used to be playful/childish and now the context is different, so there’s room for disagreement there. Even if it is abusive it’s clearly unintentionally so, but Adora does have a very bad habit (we saw it in Promise too) of getting up in Catra’s face and using her superior size to intimidate, which is super uncomfortable to watch given how many times we have seen Shadow Weaver do the same thing to Catra.

Really, I think the crux of this matter is that neither Catra nor Adora is abusive towards the other, but they were raised in an abusive environment and picked up a lot of their tools for handling conflict from that environment. Further, I disagree with your assertion that Adora was abusing Catra back in the Horde. However, you are right that she picked up bad habits there and I think in a way Catra feels like Adora abused her because she was part of the system that abused her - while she tried to protect her from Shadow Weaver we know she also did some victim blaming. Adora wasn’t in a position of much influence and was trying to help, but I can understand the resentment there and why Catra felt the need to cut ties earlier in the show.

One thing you’re very right about, though, is that in this episode Adora did loom quite a bit and used intimidating body language that made me (and Catra) uncomfortable as an abuse survivor. I disagree Adora’s holding Catra prisoner but I think to Catra it might feel that way anyway, which is really the issue. As you noted there is a huge power imbalance here with Catra recovering from basically dying and being in her PJs and with no allies. And Adora definitely violates Catra’s boundaries again and again, so set on smoothing things over that she fails to realize her insistence on fixing things is making them worse. As is often the case with her, her intentions are good but she completely misreads what the other person needs from her and barges on with her way instead of listening to them. Adora’s complaint that nothing has changed is her fault as much as Catra’s imo.

I also agree the part where she is stomping around huffing and kicking things and complaining that Catra is a brat is a sign of her emotional dysregulation and Not Great behavior. Someone asked once if I found that behavior abusive and no I don’t because it’s not directed at Catra, but it is still hard to watch. I agree Adora’s categorization of Catra as a brat while lashing out physically feels a little Shadow Weaver (intentionally or not) and that specific word choice does imply that she looks down on Catra and doesn’t respect her agency/isn’t putting in the effort to understand why she is not being ‘convenient’. It’s not a good look, and it’s not clear enough that she’s in the wrong here. (Catra is in the wrong too, the issue is that Adora’s behavior is also problematic but is not sufficiently framed that way.)

This could have been such a pivotal scene if Glimmer had taken a bit of a different tack with Adora. In fact, I think that was what made the episode just not quite work the way it’s supposed to. Glimmer is a lot like Catra, and she has had a lot of similar conflicts with Adora. If Glimmer had done more to discourage Adora’s overbearing behavior and told her she needs to give Catra space and respect it could have done a lot for Glimmer’s character arc as well as the arc of this episode. Without that, you’re right, the moment when Adora backs off and gives Catra the space to choose lands more like bitterness and giving up as opposed to making a choice to respect Catra’s agency in the way she needs to if she wants Catra to feel safe to open up.

(Of course she does agree later on to trust Catra’s judgement and let her connect to the hivemind and that also shows development, but as you said it felt a little unearned.)

So yeah I disagree with your assertions that Adora is an abuser and that she’s holding Catra prisoner, but I agree with a number of your observations about the episode itself. I also agree that the framing of the episode made it seem more like it was Catra being the problem rather than Catradora having a hard time renegotiating their relationship and its boundaries. Adora is absolutely being overbearing in this episode and I don’t think it was properly addressed, i.e. it wasn’t clear enough that those problems they were both having were problems on Adora’s end too. And I think a different conversation with Glimmer could have fixed that, just a few lines. The episode showed both of them struggling but I think it does come across like more of the onus is on Catra, like she’s being unreasonable as opposed to being defensive for understandable reasons.

But like I said, some of this is actually more about the fandom’s reaction to the episode. Maybe the writers were hoping to get across that they both needed to work on their bullshit but the fandom has excused Adora because she’s the hero. To be fair, Adora’s mistakes in this episode are very in character for her, in line with her faults/insecurities in general, so maybe they expected us to understand she’s not handling the situation properly.

The fandom reaction to Adora flipping Catra’s mattress and backing her into the corner reminds me of the reactions to DT obliterating Catra with that speech in 4x13. I think on some level we like seeing these drastic actions because watching Catra spiral is frustrating and we want to see something get through to her. It’s satisfying in a way. But on the other hand, both those situations left her with this kind of body language:

And idk, I’m not sure that’s something we as a fandom should be celebrating. Especially considering that DT’s speech left Catra wanting to die and that this bullish behavior by Adora wasn’t really what flipped the switch. It’s pretty significant that the moment Catra asks Adora to stay is once she backs off and says she won’t force her to give her a place in her life. And I think we the fandom tend to overlook that.

So op, I wish you hadn’t come to some of the conclusions you did with your analysis, but I am grateful to you for starting this conversation. I was having a hard time putting it into words other than “it sets off tons of alarm bells in my head and does no one else hear that??”

[brazenautomaton]

Fixing Afterlives: The Maw, First Visit

So our Shadowlands journey starts with the Maw. You know what? People hate this scenario now because you can’t skip it and have to go through it on every character, but the first time through, this is actually really good. You’re kicking in the gates of Hell with a platoon of Death Knights and then everything goes tits-up and you don’t have a beachhead and you’re lost and wandering and there are awful, awful things everywhere and you’re hiding and isolated and need to learn how to escape. You just need the option to skip it on your alts.

Plus the aesthetics of the Maw are great. They sell what it is -- the hostile architecture, sinister crystal formations, the way everything seems swept and shaped by a windstream of souls. We’ve seen plenty of environments that look like a Hell of flames. This is a Hell of pure suffering. Pain is what lives here. Pain is all that enters and pain is all that is produced. It’s only after you went farming Stygia for a while that the pain gets inflicted on you.

So we assemble the crew, get the exposition while we put together the Helm of Domination, get given a portal stone to establish a beachhead, and we bust in to find the four captives: Anduin, Jaina, Baine, Thrall. We rally the Death Knights into enough of a formation to make it in and find the evidence of Jaina, and I like that, I like how you track her by the huge formations of ice -- it shows you her power and the mark she leaves. Finding her is mostly the same although her dialogue is less generic and content-free (from now on assume I apply this caveat to all dialogue). She’s more confused and disoriented and even though she’s fighting it’s with a resignation that she knows it won’t work and she’s starting to think she’s only hurting herself by trying. She acts like she has been there for years. But you say you and the DKs are here to save her and she follows against her better judgment and agrees to try and find Thrall, who she struggles to remember, but seems to be trying very hard to be able to remember.

Then the Mawsworn Kyrian show up and laugh about her hopelessness, and you fight them. And they kill the shit out of you. 

More and more and more of them keep coming and they’re level 60 when you’re level 50 and if you do some bullshit to survive eventually one of them will grab you by the neck to Silence you, lift you into the air, and do the ol’ Val’Kyr Special and fatally drop you. You unavoidably die.

This is necessary early to establish what dying in the Shadowlands means. Play a special graphic effect when the player dies, something more drawn out and grasping. Play a sound effect appropriate to race/gender of the PC of them struggling against great pain and gasping. Then you appear next to a Spirit Healer (yes normally in the Maw you just respawn alive so you have to pick up your Stygia like in Dark Souls, we’ll explain the discrepancy later), a Mawsworn Spirit Healer, who says “No. Your suffering will not end. The Maw claims you.” and then starts to chase you the fuck down with a bunch of shades. You need to run, as a ghost, to claw your way back into your body. Obviously, if the shades catch you, you get dragged back to the start and the Spirit Healer fucks with you a bit. 

Your body has been dragged over to the area where Jaina and the rest are hiding; they fled while you were being merced. Jaina sees you stir. And she says “I’m sorry, champion. Death is no respite here. It is so hard to fight the pull… I struggle to even remember my body when I try to return.”

Jaina has been brutally killed over a dozen times. This is not her first rodeo. This is not her first escape attempt. This is not the first time she’s killed that particular Mawsworn tormenter whose name I don’t recall. It doesn’t end. It never ends. She doesn’t know why she tries any more, when she knows it will fail and she will die and suffer and claw her way back to her flesh and every time it gets harder and harder. All it buys her is the ability to offer futile resistance and maybe that isn’t even worth it.

Mood: established.

From there it goes mostly the same. You try to pump the shades for info about how to escape and they don’t know, they can’t know, they can’t even want to escape. The info you get is a memory of spitefully hating someone who fled to the waystone. You rescue your buddies. You see the Jailer fuck up Baine, only instead of giving him a spirit poison, he fucking snaps the dude like a Kit-Kat and drops his lifeless corpse, and you drag it to safety. You don’t need to find a poison dagger to counteract the spirit poison; you need to keep him safe and clear a path for his spirit to flee back to his body. Thus reinforcing what the danger here is and how it’s different and what they fear.

And while you do this, at some point, you run into Sylvanas. Maybe she just walks up to you while you’re all collected around Baine trying to help him revive. Since the Jailer won’t be saying “it’s not like you won anything b-b-baka, it was just a temporary setback,” you need to establish that feeling that he views your victories as completely meaningless. Sylvanas knows you’re here saving Baine. So does the Jailer. It does not matter. You cannot accomplish anything. 

Thrall kills her dead. She just gets back up. She has an escort for her soul to go back to her body. “How many times are you going to try that before you learn it’s futile? Come now, Thrall. I know you’re smarter than this. I know you respected me more than this.”

And then stuff like “How could you do this, Sylvanas? How could you betray the Horde?” Thrall is incredibly angry and offended at her. He thought he knew her. “Neither of us had any illusions you were not a monster, Banshee Queen. But I trusted you anyway because I knew you wanted what was best for your people. You were a monster, but a loyal one. How can you now turn your back on what little principle you had?” Sylvanas is hurt by this, but she doesn’t linger on it.

Jaina, however, is desperately trying to flatter her. Do this to sell the kind of impact this has had on Jaina, and what this suffering drives her to. “Please, Sylvanas. I know you were my enemy but you were an honorable one. It isn’t too late. Someone as cunning as you must know that this will end in ruin. I promise… I promise… I will surrender if you let me return. Kul Tiras will become servants of the Forsaken. Just, just let them live… please, you could rule our world, not slaughter it…”

Jaina breaks down in tears. Yes, she just tried to surrender her people to the enemy for mercy. Jaina is breaking. All of them will. The Maw is a Bad Place and makes them give up hope. That’s how we sell the threat. Not by making the enemies bigger or spikier, showing how they have broken these heroes. Less screaming anger. More pain.

Sylvanas scoffs at her offer. “It doesn’t matter where your people’s loyalty lies, Lord Admiral.” And then she says the phrase that will become a motif: “Nobody escapes the Maw.” She leaves. She doesn’t care what you do. It doesn’t matter.

But you have to still hold on to that sliver of hope that maybe the waystone is a way out. So you get Baine up and you sneak past this big-ass Maw army that can fuck 31 flavors of your day up. The jailer notices you and sends out a force to stop you at the waystone, and he repeats the phrase when he sends out the order: “Nobody escapes the Maw.”

So there’s the event, you fight off the army while the waystone charges, the army gets bigger and bigger, the charge meter gets stuck at 90%, you go to kick it and it teleports you to Oribos.

The mob descends on the other captives. Sylvanas and the Jailer look completely unconcerned with your escape. After having clearly seen you physically leave the Maw, Sylvanas brushes it off with “Nobody escapes the Maw.” Dun-DUNNN! Cutscene end.

You appear in Oribos. The Protectors stop you because you stink like the Maw and what the hell dude, yada yada. This is when you get a tour of the city, here’s the profession trainers, the bank, the transmog. Only secondary details need to be changed here. One, this is an instanced version of the city where no other players exist (you are the first one there, nobody else is). Two, Lich King Bolvar (hashtag #notmylichking) arrives from Azeroth and says SOMETHING to justify other players coming from the Maw but being less important than you. Something like, he saw what you did, there are other adventurers from Azeroth still in the Maw, his DKs are hunkering down in defensive positions and will try to make their way to the Waystone once it cools off because you already activated it, since you are the more special one, and there might be a chance that a couple others might have an echo of your power because they have had similar adventures. You are the True Maw Walker, and the context of the massively multiplayer element is “for your story, all those other guys have shitty Maw Walker powers that only work once you opened the pickle jar for them.” They can’t bring passengers, either.

Third, not the most importantly but yes the most importantly, if you are Forsaken or a Death Knight or Mechagnome or whatever you get a special dialogue where you say “Why do you keep calling me a ‘living mortal’? I’m not alive. I’m undead / a machine / maybe something else like maybe I missed the fact that vulpera are made of rocks and string.”

So Tal-Inara or whoever can be like “Oh, THAT’S what that is. Something was odd about you, mortal, that I couldn’t quite place. I call you ‘living’ because your soul is still tethered to a body. To us in the Shadowlands, to be bound in a vessel like this is far more important than the nature of the vessel itself.” That’s why people keep calling you “living”, to them you’re easy to mistake for one.

Kyrian in the Maw is disturbing news, and also WEIRD, because as Tal-Inara reminds us, “Nobody escapes the Maw.” Why would the Kyrian go down there when they can’t come back? It is terrible but not unheard of for mortals to try and speak to the Jailer but they never GO there because they can’t get out. And yet Sylvanas just walked in there? And he is mustering armies? Better go to Bastion and find out what is up. Let’s crank open this gateway, and...

[tgsofu]

I don’t often watch live-action TV shows and when I do, I rarely finish them. But The Squid Game is a beautiful exception to that rule with its thrilling, engaging story and wonderful characters! Read more for my full-length review of the show.

CONTENT: ★★★★☆

The story of Squid Game delves deep into human nature and the problematic aspects of a capitalistic society. I think this meta commentary is brilliantly communicated through the story without relying too much on symbolism or expecting the audience to read too much between the lines to catch a drift of it. A huge relief for a low-RAM mind such as mine!

The universe itself is a real-world setting, but the isolated environment in which majority of the events take place make it feel like a dimension of its own, governed by its own vicious rules. There are obvious similarities between Squid Game and reality TV shows such as Big Brother and Survivor, all of which utilize the same concept of voluntary imprisonment within a staged game that turns your physical and emotional struggles into amusement. The very backbone of this show seems to be built on blatant nods to these kinds of IRL reality TV shows, and even us as the consumers of this particular piece of media are not spared from its quirky criticism as we come to recognize ourselves in the cruel audience depicted in Squid Game. I have just brutally been called out for being part of the wealthy, those with enough money to afford a Netflix subscription (or privileged enough to leech off of their parents'), choosing to entertain theirselves with yet another grotesque battle royale story that forces them to self-reflect on their own guilty pleasures.

The characters each come with their own set of flaws and strengths. Each fare from specific circumstances that drive them to risk their lives for the big prize at the end. Going in, I saw some people list the cast as one of the show's less appealing aspects, especially in contrast to the similar Alice in Borderland. However, for me personally, these characters felt both very varied and very real which had me become emotionally invested in their arcs and remain interested in them from start to finish! These personalities were often good people caught in a desperate cycle of debt that drove them to act on greedy and selfish impulses.

That being said, the way these different parties functioned within the narrative made it feel like several independent stories were taking place instead of one coherent whole. Albeit it is realistic for people to form intimate groups and alliances with little meaningful interaction to those outside of it, I was left hoping for more connection between some of the most prominent characters and story threads.

EXECUTION: ★★★★★

The pacing and narrative structure were excellent, perhaps even my favorite aspect of the whole package! The screen time dedicated to the moments outside of the massacre at the heart of the show taught me to care for these sacrificial lambs and their circumstances by giving me time to view and process the motivations behind their actions. The plot didn’t rush ahead with these narratively significant moments, yet it never felt slow or boring; the next horrible experience would always be looming in the horizon, threatening the wellbeing of the participants we have come to adore despite full well knowing what fate has in store for their poor souls. The plot keeps feeding us small bits of intrigue and mystery to help pave way for future seasons and to lure us right back in to find answers to our burning questions once the next one finally arrives.

VISUALS: ★★★★☆

For a live action show, I found this show visually engaging. The realistic, grey palettes of the real world were contrasted by the colorful kiddy bright ones found on the guards are players’ clothes, and later as the choice of color of Gi-hun's dyed hair. Such popping bright colors were loaded with emotion and meaning as they seemed to intentionally break the monotony of the mundane world with their connections to games, fun and escapism. Furthermore, the scenes were filmed with psychologically clever choices and relied a lot on angles and pacing that helped enhance the emotional weight of many significant moments. Alas, to have earned a 5-star rating from me in this aspect, it would still have needed something more to help it really stand out from the sea of similar live action shows, to travel another extra mile to create a sense of identity that would help us identify the show beyond its choice of colors and costume designs.

INGENUITY: ★★★★☆

From Hunger Games to Truman Show, from Danganronpa to Saw, the core idea of this show is obviously nothing new. The vague line between entertainment and inhumane bloodlust has been explored in media time and time again, as is the case for the general meta level discourse about ethics and our relationship with the media we consume. Still, as a theme it is one I will probably never get tired of and I don’t feel like it takes anything away from the Squid Game’s own well-established ingenuity and depth. The show takes its own original approach to these issues and adds a new layer to the discussion started through different media at different points in time, while linking it to other prominent modern-day issues such as money, debt, and addiction. I know I enjoy it, but if you are sick and tired of seeing these themes explored in your daily doses of cynical escapism, you may find it an issue here.

Also yes, I drew Gi-hun as a squid kid. I KNOW I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE TO HAVE BEEN COMPELLED TO CREATE THIS CROSSOVER!!

[translations-by-aiimee]

Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 5

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Chapter 5 - Expert

The subsequent calm was something Lin Yan wasn't expecting. The thing seemed to have decided it tortured him enough and nothing else happened the rest of the night. Lin Yan changed back into his clothes and unplugged his computer. Even though he knew that that probably wouldn't do anything, the screen actually powered off and didn't come back on at all in the night.

Perhaps a new storm was brewing in the silence, but Lin Yan was too exhausted to worry about it. The alcohol that was left in his system worked as a great tranquillizer, and he rolled over and fell asleep.

While he was deep in sleep, something cold pressed itself on his lips again, but Lin Yan was too much a heavy sleeper to realize it.

When he woke up, the entire room was clean. All the red paint had disappeared, the light gray printed wallpaper and the screen wall painted by the students of the Academy of Fine Arts were intact, and the glass was spotless. There was no other evidence to prove that the absurdity of last night had ever happened except for the shameful traces of liquid on Lin Yan's body and clothes. He took a bath and threw the red clothes into the washbowl. Compared with the power of the invisible thing, he was clearly at a disadvantage. Instead of running around without a plan, it was better to observe what happens as things unravel.

After he finished packing things up, Lin Yan took out his phone and texted Yin Zhou about the meeting place. Unexpectedly, he got a reply almost instantly: See you at the school gate in half an hour.

Lin Yan looked at himself in the mirror. Within just two nights, he looked like he had been doing drugs for years, he had a scruffy stubble growing, and his eyes were red. The mint scent of his shaving foam made Lin Yan feel for the first time that his typically monotonous life was actually so much more beautiful than that. The blade was thin and sharp. Just one long stroke across his neck and there would be nothing left.

Humans were such fragile creatures.

"Shit. . ." Lin Yan hissed, sighing at his unfortunate luck and put his fingers under the water. His hand had slipped and he sliced his fingertip on the blade, red blood seeping out. Lin Yan wrapped a bandaid around his finger, leaning against the wall and pondering about how unlucky it was to feel the pain.

He didn't know what kind of dye was used on the funeral clothes, but it had bled dramatically in the water. After a while, the whole basin of water had been dyed red. Lin Yan glanced at it in disgust as he left and slammed the door shut.

At 8 o'clock, Lin Yan saw Yin Zhou holding a Scallion pancake and some fruit in front of the school gate.

The two of them regretted trying to drive. The roads were clogged with morning rush hour traffic to the point that they couldn't even see the end of the lines of cars. What genius designed this kind of urban roundabout? Five ring roads surrounded the main road and they were forced to convene together every morning and night.

Lin Yan and Yin Zhou were nearing the third ring road and they still didn't have any temper, so all they could do was turn on the radio and eat the breakfast that Yin Zhou brought.

"A 13-year-old boy from a remote village in Sichuan was found hanged at home wearing a red coat. The locals suspected it was most likely cult-related. It is reported that the boy's time of birth and time of death are both extremely negative times and very suitable for. . ."

Lin Yan snapped the radio off.

It seemed that everything in the world had been messed up overnight. Even this kind of unreliable news could be relayed to the public.

Yin Zhou didn't care. He swallowed the last bite of his pancake and hiccuped. He said with satisfaction: "I spent the rest of the night in the library. I was starving and I couldn't buy anything. It's great to feel full."

"There was no exam recently, what were you doing at the library?"

"I was studying the enemy's intelligence. This enemy works in the dark. Can we defeat it if we understand how it operates? What do you think, buddy?"

Lin Yan turned his face to look at the crowded traffic outside the window. He stayed silent for a while before he said softly, "Do you really believe that there are ghosts in this world? I feel like something is wrong with me. Maybe I should see a psychiatrist first."

Yin Zhou's eyes widened in surprise: "Come on, even if something's up with you, I'm totally normal, yet we both saw those clothes yesterday."

". . . At your house the day before yesterday, I was the only one who thought it was cold, and I was the only one who could feel ‘it’ in the house."

Lin Yan sorted out his thoughts and told Yin Zhou his experience of being choked by someone last night.

Lin Yan wasn't expecting it but Yin Zhou exploded after hearing this, and blurted out: "Fuck, that ghost was a rabbit master* during his lifetime?" He scanned Lin Yan's face over and over again: "Little Brother Lin, don't tell me. . . you can be considered a nice-looking guy if you look closely. He's dead and maybe he's lonely and wants to recruit you as his wife."

*because they would kill the rabbit by snapping its neck

"Fuck you. If you aren't going to be serious, get out of my car and leave. Don't forget to burn two boxes of condoms for me when I croak." Lin Yan said quietly. The car behind him honked its horn twice, and Lin Yan realized that while he was talking, a 5-6 metre gap had cleared in front of him. He hurriedly followed the line of traffic.

"Furthermore, in the middle of the night, I obviously saw that the whole house was covered with red paint, but in the morning there was nothing. It was as if I had been dreaming."

Yin Zhou dragged the backpack out of the back seat and hugged it in his arms. He said, "Hey, let me show you the results of my brother's research." As he talked, he opened his bag and took out a dozen crumpled papers from it and spread them out on his knees. He flattened them with his hands and started going over them from top to bottom.

"You can't take care of shit. I feel uncomfortable just looking at those."

"See, the attributes of a wife. This ghost saw it perfectly."

A grass mud horse roared and ran across Lin Yan's heart.

Sure enough, these geeks are something else.

"Listen carefully." Yin Zhou pushed up his glasses with his long fingers: "There are generally two modern interpretations of ghosts. The first is due to the discovery of dark matter. You know the law of conservation of energy?"

". . . Go on." Lin Yan gave him a blank look.

"The universe expands at a certain rate every year. If the law of conservation of energy goes as normal, where does the energy that supports the expansion of the universe come from? According to this question, modern physics puts forward the concept of dark matter and dark energy. It does not generate electromagnetic waves, cannot be sensed, and cannot be measured. The law of gravity estimates that dark matter and energy account for 96% of the mass of the universe, and the remaining 4% is what humans can now recognize."

"Many unexplainable phenomena are therefore attributed to the results of dark matter, such as meridians in traditional Chinese medicine, the power of the mind, and ghosts. There are many discussions on this field abroad, but it is obviously blocked in China and difficult to find." Yin Zhou spread out his hands.

Lin Yan nodded. This was a bit like a science fiction novel he had read once.

"And the second one?"

"The second type is attributed to electromagnetic waves. The environment in which the deceased died is not conducive to electromagnetic wave attenuation. The powerful thoughts it had before death form a unique energy field. If a person's own frequency is similar to it, it will resonate when they come into contact. The waveform of the original ghost is greatly strengthened so then the two can sense each other."

Lin Yan was stunned: "You mean I. . . resonate with the ghost?"

Yin Zhou said indifferently that it was possible. He turned and smiled mysteriously: "Do you know how to explain love at first sight using electromagnetic fields?"

Lin Yan's heart stuttered.

"It's just resonating. It's the same with both men and women."

Yin Zhou sighed: "I don't want to fall in love for a while. It's boring, it's like a ghost."

The cars finally started moving again, and they finally got off the third road ring after being stuck for three hours. Lin Yan turned on the navigation and stepped on the accelerator to hurry towards the destination.

He always thinks that love was just like a ghost; he didn't believe in either. He only understood the panic and anxiety he felt when he encountered it, but he has never imagined that ghosts were also like love, triggered by a specific reason in a specific environment and dragged forcibly into the abyss, unable to escape.

"Have you been in touch with anything special recently, or have you been to anywhere special?"

Lin Yan thought about it for a moment and shook his head: "No. Every day I'm in the study room, tutor's office, library, home, cafeteria, there's nowhere else. But I have come into a lot of contact with lots of things from several dynasties."

Yin Zhou clumped the pile of information in his hand, and put it into back his backpack despite Lin Yan's contemptuous eyes, and clicked the buckle shut.

"Impossible. The electromagnetic waves would have decayed early in a small object, even if the Maoshan technique was used."

A thought suddenly flashed through Lin Yan's mind.

"There was this one place. . .Last month, my old man arranged an internship position for me on an archaeological team. It was a tomb with small specifications. I was there for less than a week."

Yin Zhou's eyes lit up all of a sudden: "There's this show, we should wait and check it. . . what the fuck!"

Lin Yan slammed on the brakes. Yin Zhou's head slammed into the windshield with a bang, and he wailed in pain.

"What are you doing?! Braking like that is going to kill you. What if we got rear-ended?!"

Lin Yan looked at the empty windshield in shock. He pulled the car over and, when he turned to Yin Zhou, his face changed.

"You. . . didn't see that just now?"

"What!" Yin Zhou took off the glasses that had been knocked off-kilter, trying to push them into their original spot, and couldn't help complaining in grief.

"There was a hand. . . stretching down from the roof of the car."

Yin Zhou was stunned and looked up at the window glass cautiously. A truck came up from behind, went around their car and drove on.

Lin Yan was too scared to speak for a while. He recalled the stiff white hand that had slapped on the windshield from the roof of the car just now, but it disappeared in a blink of an eye. There were speeding trucks or tankers everywhere on the sixth ring road. He opened his mouth and looked at Yin Zhou. The other party understood his thoughts immediately. Yin Zhou took a breath and hesitated: "Then this thing. . . it wants a human life."

Lin Yan shook his head. He always felt that there was some motive behind everything that had happened, but he couldn't say it out loud.

They drove out of the city in a blink of an eye. The endless rows of poplar trees and the green border fields in the suburbs relaxed the tension of the two people in the car a lot. Lin Yan rolled down the car window, and the car air mixed with the fragrance of flowers and plants that poured in. Inside the car, the stuffy scent of the pancakes was blown away.

After the twist and turns the GPS took them on, the car turned onto a rugged path paved with stones. The surrounding buildings were replaced with independent bungalows and small farmyards. A yellow dog squatted on the steps and stretched its neck. Some hens gathered in groups lazily together. Every now and again, they passed by a white goose on the side of the road. Lin Yan slowed down and stared at the map displayed on the GPS. He glanced at Yin Zhou distrustfully.

"If I keep going, I'll have to turn around to go back to the village. Did your mother send us to a reclusive expert?"

Yin Zhou leaned over to study the map, then turned his head in confusion and looked out the window. He happened to pass by a house, a yellow mud bungalow, with a faded couplet on the door. The old man in front of it only lost two front teeth, and he was leaning back to watch the excitement. . Yin Zhou scratched his scalp suspiciously: "The address my mother gave is at the end of the village, and she said it was amazing. Let me buy some tributes to bring with me. I can't do it alone."

So Lin Yan stopped the car when passing by the market, and bought two gifts according to Yin Zhou's suggestion. . . that bastard.

"Are you sure about all this?" Lin Yan looked embarrassedly left and right, carrying a live turtle in one hand and walking back, Yin Zhou happily pointed at the turtle's head and said, "What do you know? , These kinds of psychic masters rely on this stuff to keep up with their lifestyle. Trust me."

Lin Yan threw the two bastards into the trunk, took out a bottle of mineral water and handed it to Yin Zhou. He also opened a bottle for himself and took a few sips.

The country cicadas cried one after another, and the green wheat was headed; it was a wonderful scene of peace and prosperity.

Several children wearing red and green were squatting on the ground playing fan cards not far away. Lin Yan asked Yin Zhou: "What did your mother saw that name of the expert was? I'll ask around."

He couldn't help but imagine a scene of a bamboo hut with a mantle drooping in front of the porch. An old man in white with his hand stroked his beard and smiled slightly. He and Yin Zhou knelt forward on one knee, clasping their fists and begging, "Master, please guide me!"

Yin Zhou took a note from his pocket. He squinted at it, and said perplexedly: "Second Immortal Gu."

Before Lin Yan had enough time to swallow, all the water was spat back out.

"Ahem. . . is that so?"

In a small courtyard in the northeast corner of the village, Lin Yan and Yin Zhou found the legendary Second Immortal Gu’s house. When Lin Yan saw Second Immortal Gu's respectable face from outside the door, the regret in his heart was like torrential rapids. There was an enclave in an empty black room; he didn't know which god was being worshipped. An old woman in blue flower cloth sat cross-legged on the futon with her eyes closed and rests her mind. The red cloth strip that was tied to her forehead was quite imposing.

"This posture rivals some of the best dancers out there!" Yin Zhou pointed at the scene inside and couldn't help muttering softly.

"Come on, this is who your mother mentioned. Be respectful." Lin Yan said embarrassedly.

"What should we do?"

"Let's take a look first. Maybe the real person hasn't shown up."

Lin Yan and Yin Zhou walked through the door. Hearing the movement, the immortal woman lifted her eyelids slightly, and hummed from her nose aimlessly.

"Oh, ahem. . ." Yin Zhou couldn't hold back his grin and quickly concealed it with a cough.

What happened later was a farce. After receiving the turtle and two hundred yuan brought by Lin Yan, the woman suddenly became energetic. She worshipped the gods with incense and poured a bowl of clear water on Lin Yan while muttering words. After turning around Lin Yan more than ten times, she finally opened his eyes sharply. Lin Yan was so frightened by her that his body was shocked. The only thing she did was shout: "Aha! I saw it!"

"There is a little girl standing behind you!"

Lin Yan and Yin Zhou looked at each other, each holding their breaths.

"Oh, this baby girl died terribly. She said that she was locked up and could not be born. She didn't have money to buy clothes, and she didn't have money to pay her way through death. That's why she's gotten involved with you. . ."

"Wait, I'll ask her how to resolve this. . ."

The immortal woman closed her eyes and began to sing. Lin Yan pointed at the door to Yin Zhou and said: "Do you need someone to grease your feet, what are you waiting for?"

After reciting a long list of words, she opened her eyes and saw that there were no longer two other people in the room.

The immortal woman had no choice but to touch the newly collected two hundred yuan and shook her head, muttering that the young people nowadays are really impatient. Then she staggered around to pack her things up.

When she picked up the bastard turtle, she couldn't help but give a long sigh.

[aboutlouishofmann]

White Lies Magazine Interview with Louis Hofmann

How long are you in England for? I'm currently staying for six weeks, but I've already been here for five and a half so I'm only here for a couple more days before heading back to Germany for rehearsals for my next film.

Really, or did they kick you out because of Brexit ? 

No they didn't (laughs) - and luckily there are no real changes until December so I can get in and out without a problem. I'm not exactly sure what will change for Germans anyway, if there are new regulations or if it will be the same in terms of travelling. It's gonna be really crappy for basically everyone leaving the UK - if you consider that someone who has a band for example and plays a tour around Europe will need to pay or be passport-controlled with their equipment every time they cross borders. It might not matter for a big band like Coldplay but small bands will have a lot of trouble with that.

Actually Coldplay has suspended their tours until they can find a way to make them sustainable.

I know and I think that is amazing! 

How are you with environmentalism, are you active? 

I wish I was more active to be honest, because I have a platform on Instagram which I could use a bit more - I'm just always quite scared when it comes to posting because I know that so many people then talk about it and judge me for what I have posted. l don't have an issue with taking a political side on an I think fairly easy topic to take sides on when it comes to the environment. But then again it's this general thing of posting something and l know 400.000 people will look at it or make up their mind about it - have an opinion and voice it. It's just something that scares me, so that is holding me back a bit but I'm trying a bit more. 

Understood. But isn't it the same with doing a movie or starring in a TV series, you put it out there and everyone is going to judge you ? Even more people than just your followers as a matter of fact.

Of course. But that's my job. That's what I love to do, that's what I've chosen to do. I have not chosen to be someone who is followed by 400.000 people on Instagram, that sort of just happened. 

It's a side effect. 

It is and I am grateful for it but it also scares me (laughs). 

That makes sense. But do you even realise how famous you are? I remember I walked into someone's house in Korea last year and they were watching "Dark" that very moment, all fans of yours. 

I don't think I get it. No, I don't quite get it. When I talk to casting directors about my value on the English language market they will eventually tell me that it's not as profound as they want it to be to play a main role in an English language feature film. You have to separate between being known from something and being so known for quality that you have international value - having sort of a critical acclaim and value in different countries. I don't think I'm there yet and would only consider myself famous, which is already weird to discuss and acknowledge out loud. For now, to be fair, I'm just the guy from "Dark". 

It did reach a bit of an iconic status though, also your character. Everyone is going to remember you for that yellow raincoat.

I hope they won't only remember me for only that (laughs). 

Do you wear a yellow raincoat in private ?

No, there is no opportunity for me anymore to wear a yellow raincoat. It's not possible. But let's get back once more to environmentalism. One thing is stating your opinion on social media but the other thing is when it comes to acting myself, to change my daily life to help the environment. I would say I'm quite conscious about it and avoid flying and consuming local produce. Focus on quality and try to not waste products. 

Who is inspiring you?

Leonardo Dicaprio for example. But I don't know if he necessarily acts himself that way, but he does something about speaking out about it - using his figure and position as an activist to talk about it. I quite like that.

He is doing one thing I could personally not do however. Speaking out for something and then doing the opposite in his private life. And that judgement is what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of getting perceived as a hypocrite. But then again being perceived as that in terms of climate change doesn't really help because it needs to be spoken about and maybe you do not do as much as you talk about it. But at least you raise awareness and take even just a small part.

I absolutely agree. I think we need to re-think that whole concept of hypocrisy in this thing because if he reaches a couple of million people and they are changing something about it - even if he is doing the opposite - he is still doing a lot of good with it. Even though he is a hypocrite I think we need to redefine what it means - at the end of the day we will all be hypocrites because no one is really going to be able to live completely sustainably, we can't think in those absolute terms too much. Everyone needs to start with one thing - picking their battles. Focus on plastic for example, we may get better at disposing of it while still being bad in terms of traveling for example, but that is okay, we can only do one thing at a time. 

Don't you think it's crazy that in relation to something like the coronavirus pandemic, pressing and tangible as it affects us now - everybody is afraid, everyone acts, the government acts and everyone is doing their part. Then there is climate change which is more intangible because it's still far away and people don't really care about it - I think this is a problem. Why only act about something that only affects yourself? It's quite selfish and stands for a lot more than only this. 

That's it. We went really deep pretty quick didn't we? The most pressing question however is - how often do you cry watching movies ? 

I do like to cry when I watch films, because I think I'm quite empathetic so I can relate to the characters a lot. I don't often do it but I really do not mind - it means I'm involved in the story. I like crying in movies. Therefore I know it has touched me somehow.

I have a weird relationship to crying in movies, I like doing it but there is a certain place where I cry much more easily - on planes. It's quite strange actually but I get very emotional when I'm up in the air.

That's good, I guess? Have you seen the film "Click"? It's not the greatest film out there, it's with Adam Sandler. But there is a scene in the end where he (spoiler alert) dies. There is a remote with which he can forward his life and he fasts forward to the moment when he dies. It's very dramatic, tragic - almost pathetic and still I started crying because I imagined that happening to me and felt so sad (laughs). 

This is going to be the headline: Louis Hofmann, the guy who cries at Adam Sandler movies.

I can imagine you being the guy who would make a head- line like this. 

Have you ever died in a movie?

[START OF SPOILER]

Yes, I've died in "Alone in Berlin" and also in "Prélude", where my character hangs himself in the end. 

How was that for you?

I was not very attached to myself at that moment. I mean eventually it gets cut out. So the moment I actually die they cut off and it turns black. I still enacted the scenes but it was weird, it was more of a physical thing than an emotional one when I acted it. It's just sometimes with very physical scenes - the dynamic approach and action can be so mentally and intellectually exhausting that there is not much room left for emotional attachment. It didn't feel I was dying myself. It did hurt though, I had the rope around my neck.

[END OF SPOILER]

Good one. Do you believe in fairytales?

No I don't. But I do like "Bojack Horseman" though because it seems so dumb first but turns so philosophical. 

In general, what is happiness to you?

I don't know what it means to me but I know when l feel happy - that's when I'm grounded, when I'm self-assured and when I feel like I'm really being myself. When I reach that state I feel happiness. Sharing that happiness with someone is what's most important. Happiness is truly being yourself.

Very profound answer. How is your work- life balance, are you always working?

I think it's quite okay. The only thing I kind of need to improve is that - when I work I work 100% and I tend to think about the year in little phases. I work then I'm free, then I work then I'm free. And I always only take really care of myself in the times when I have spare time. When I work my health and my hobbies - I just do not look at that. It's all about the work. I want to get somewhere where I can balance those things better.

The thing I really wanted to touch base with you on was the future of movies. We are talking about technology, virtual reality, 3D. Would you like to do some work in 3D?

I would only like to do something in 3D if the new technology elevates the film to another level and makes sense story-wise. I'm not a fan of it only if it looks good. If it helps the story to evolve into something bigger then it's okay. I'm an admirer of that old cinema look, of that really organic taste of a film. I don't know if I would like to act in a VR film. What I don't like about new technologies is that the acting itself and the characters and craft are kind-of left behind. In the foreground it's only the technique, the focus is too much on the visual aspects rather than the screencraft.

I totally understand what you're saying - but if you think about it this way now - people probably said the same thing about colour films in times of black/white films because colours took away the attention from the acting. I think it's about what we are used to. If we say in a couple of years it's normal to consume everything in 3D and VR, do we still think about that?

I mean it surely is incredible what they have achieved and still continue to achieve with 3D and VR. Remarkable how they portray an illusion and tell a story in such a unique and involving way. I'm just always afraid that if you want to tell a character based story with that technique, the characters and the acting will be left behind due to the sheer amount of attention the technical stuff needs from the cast and the team. But of course it's fascinating and intriguing. And since we sort of got used to seeing films in 3D, maybe that's also gonna happen to VR.

How do you think we will consume movies and series in 20 years or how does acting actually change? Looking at "Death Stranding", a video game by Hideo Koji-ma that stars an impressive cast with Mads Mikkelsen, Lea Seydoux and Norman Reedus, to name but a few. They are in this game as actors through 3D scanning. Imagine this fast-forwarded 20 years.

I really hope that traditional acting doesn't die. I don't know - in 30 years I'll probably think differently but right now I think you can not replace something natural with something computer-generated. If the technology evolves, maybe it will be possible.

Anyway, how does it feel like to see yourself in a sex scene?

(laughs) I've always said I separate myself from the character when I watch my films. It's the character who gets naked and has sex, it's not me. It's just when you are around people who you know personally, it might get awkward, for example with my mom. You just have to evaluate if nudity and sex is necessary for the story and the character - if it is, it's not tough to watch.

It's a powerful meditation on how to detach yourself from something, isn't it?

For sure, it doesn't always work though.

[just-the-mage]

Review-Love Death + Robots (Pt 1. Episodes 1-4)

So here we are again.  You, dear readers, and I, a mostly defunct tumblr page.  I was thinking...I’ve written a few reviews on here before, and I’ve rather enjoyed myself to be honest.  So until RP starts up again for me, I’m going to grab some popcorn and start reviewing some of the media I’ve been indulging in during this exceptionally fun pandemic we’ve all been saddled with (and are becoming increasingly more and more used to as time goes on).  Here we go! 

Spoilers incoming! I don’t like to discuss a show without going through it entirely-no stone unturned.  You have been warned! 

Love Death + Robots is a compilation series-each episode is self-contained content, based on what I have experienced thus far.  The content varies wildly from cute and sweet to surreal, to horrific.  For right now I’m going to stick with the first four episodes since they are fresh in my mind.  

Episode 1: Three Robots

Three robots shows a short adventure shared by, you guessed it-Three robots exploring the crumbling remains of human society.  It comes across as three tourists making their way through an area that they are completely unfamiliar with, attempting to define and understand elements of the environment as humans once did.  Their analysis and attempts to understand not only human culture, but also basic human biology, were entertaining to say the least.  Each robot has flair, character, and a their own take on humans and humanity.  Over the course of the episode, the fall of mankind is referenced a few times, being initially explained as a mass extinction due to environmental disasters (global warming is probably a factor-one of the buildings has an entire ship sticking out of it).  However, the twist ending throws that whole theory into question once the cat that has been accompanying the robots for the last leg of their journey reveals itself as capable of speech.  And, interestingly enough...being in possession of opposable thumbs.  It was certainly unexpected, and a bit odd-the cat (and its many, many brethren) manage to finish out the episode by convincing the robots that if the robots do not pet them, the cats may explode.  I will say that the ending, though it was rather silly and fitting with the tone, felt like an out of place twist intended mostly to give a bit of closure to a story that had no real need to have an ending.  It felt a little out-of-left field, at least to me.

This first episode, I think, is one that I could recommend to a much more general audience than almost all of the other content of the show.  It’s whimsical and cute, despite inhabiting such a grim setting (and grim it is-post apocalyptic is not taken lightly here.  There are plenty of corpses, some skeletal and some not quite so much.  At least one of them appears to have died by suicide).  I found it to be a nice addition and a good introduction to ease people into the tone of the show.  Definitely give this one a watch, even if the ending sort of comes from nowhere. 

Episode 2: Beyond the Aquila Rift

This episode was definitely a change of pace from the first.  It begins as a high science fiction story starring a hunky, middle aged man and his two crewmates, making some sort of cargo run (?) through a wormhole of some kind, but promptly finding themselves in a completely different place from what they expected.  Hunky space captain wakes up first, finding that he is greeted by an old friend (read: lover) of his, who explains that there was a navigation error that led them off course-way off course.  They’re in a completely different area than they expected.  The ship’s navigator wakes as well, swearing that there couldn’t have been an error in her calculations, but seems ill and is placed back in her future tech cryopod to rest.  Space captain man then bangs it out with his ex-lover (Greta) in a scene that was almost definitely written by a man, and she reveals to him that she lied, and that him and his crew are actually hundreds of light-years further off course than they had thought they were, basically dashing any hopes that he could have of returning to his old life.  The two then wake the navigator again, who immediately starts ranting that ‘Greta’ isn’t who she says she is.  At this point, enough clues have been given that the captain catches up with the audience (it was all a simulation the whole time), and he confronts Greta, demanding that she reveal herself as she truly is.  She does, after some prodding-and the captain finds himself in an infested husk of a ship, aged and haggard, obviously dying of starvation.  Greta reveals herself as a lovely spider-beast, and the captain wakes up from his pod again-back in his comfortable illusion once more.  

I love the premise of this one.  Crazy aliens and shit like this is a huge draw for me-sci-fi horror is probably my favorite subgenre of horror when it’s done well.  I would count this episode as doing it pretty well.  They don’t go into much techno-babble, which I think is a pitfall for some sci-fi stories.  The writers are well aware that we aren’t spending too long in this world, so we don’t need to know much about the rules under which it operates outside of ‘computer mistake your ship fly here.’  The twist ending didn’t end up being too much of a twist-in my opinion there were too many clues given throughout the episode to make it that much of a surprise that things weren’t as they seemed.  The odds of this man meeting his ex-lover in the infinitesimal reaches of space just by chance were a bit too impossible to make it believable-and the navigator was far too convinced that her work couldn’t be incorrect.  In the end, it was an expected twist, but still pretty jarring.  Execution is pretty good overall though-and the sex scene is pretty decent as well, even if its strictly a dude-fantasy thing.  Also, call me a sucker for cool looking beasties, but I adore the design on spider-Greta.  That’s a lady right there for you.  

Episode 3: Ice Age

The only live action episode I’ve seen so far-this one gives an *entirely* different tone than the majority of the other episodes in the series.  Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead happen upon a lost civilization that exists entirely within their refrigerator.  They watch in awe as it develops incredibly quickly-hundreds of years passing within the civilization in roughly an hour or so of real time.  What starts in the morning as a town in the viking ages eventually develops into a modern society, almost destroys itself with nukes, and then rebuilds from the ashes into a fully futuristic society that quickly ascends beyond physical form, appearing to disperse itself into the cosmos, no longer bound by such petty rules as the laws of physics.  A disappointed Topher asks if they’ll return-to which he receives a sad ‘no’ from his partner.  It seems all is lost, and the couple go to bed for the night-only to find that the cycle has restarted overnight, and they probably won’t be able to keep any frozen chicken in the freezer for quite some time.

This one is probably one of my favorites of the series so far.  It’s fairly well acted, but the real beauty of the episode is getting to watch the mini-civilization develop itself in a glorious time lapse-the work that must’ve gone into it must have been monumental, to be honest.  The final product certainly felt that way, in any case.  What I also found fascinating was a specific scene in which the protagonists were abandoned in place of some of the tiny denizens of the lost civilization-which made me realize exactly how slow the ‘normal sized people’s’ actions must have looked to the diminutive people of this rapidly developing society.  Reminiscent of the earth’s motion in relation to our own perception-and reinforcing the concept that to an individual, perception is everything. 

Episode 4:  Sonnie’s Edge 

This episode opens with three people transporting mysterious cargo into a heavily guarded complex, quickly encountering and interacting with a ‘bigwig’ of sorts with a beautiful woman on his arm.  Through context clues the audience is easily able to discover that the three (pictured above) are here for a fight-and that their cargo is their fighter, a living creature of obviously immense proportion.  The bigwig asks the team to throw the fight, and they refuse, even after he offers a large amount of money.  (It’s worth mentioning that during this scene, ‘Sonnie’, the leader and controller of the beast fighter, shares an EXTREMELY homosexual gaze with the bigwig’s beautiful lady friend.  Don’t think I didn’t notice the setup, because I definitely noticed the payoff, even though it was rudely interrupted).  Sonnie and her teammates enter the ring, setting up as it appears that she will be piloting her fighter in some way.  Her opponent is also introduced, though he is hardly important in the story-imagine a cake of beef with a big sticker on him that says ‘mysogyny’ in bold print.  What follows is one of the most brutal fight scenes I’ve seen in animation (this is just my personal opinion though).  These creatures fucking tear each other to shreds, with Sonnie’s beast only just barely emerging as the victor, tearing the opposing fighter’s head clean from its body.  The bigwig is obviously angry, as is Sonnie’s opponent, and Sonnie and her team retires to a hotel room of sorts, with the exception of Sonnie-who slips away into the room that houses her fighter, promptly encountering the beauty from earlier! (Payoff time)..and it gets gay.  Fast.  I love me some wlw content, and there’s some nice tension here, right up until the beauty stabs Sonnie through the head.  Rude.  The bigwig reveals himself, which was a bit of a surprise-the part of me that hadn’t seen much of this show yet was hoping for a fluffy little happy ending.  It wasn’t to be though..after the beauty crushes Sonnie’s skull, the two promptly realize that ‘Sonnie’ wasn’t Sonnie at all-just some biotech.  The *real* Sonnie...was the fighter, the whole time.  Who promptly makes short work of both the beauty and the bigwig, (implied), in what I can only describe as the most satisfying moment in the series that I’ve seen thus far.  

This was easily my favorite episode of the show, and has continued to be, and I assume will continue to be my favorite through the rest of the series.  It’s not just because of the lesbian rep (my people!), or the misogynists getting fucking destroyed, but the strength of the reveal, the choreography of the fight scene, and the *power* of the protagonist.  I love her.  I love her sooo much.  We are seamlessly introduced into the world, shown a woman who has been beaten, scarred, faced sexual abuse, and she remade herself into a being of pure power.  She fought back, and *look how she fights back*.  I cannot describe just how much of a cheer-worthy moment it was to watch the smug smile be summarily wiped from the face of the bigwig.  I *love* seeing a villain who has full confidence in their victory suddenly realize that they don’t have the upper hand anymore...and that they are, in fact, absolutely screwed.  This was one of those wonderful, wonderful moments, and I can think of nobody more deserving than this villain of being torn to shreds.  This was an A+ episode for sure-100% recommend this one for anyone who can handle a bit of gore.  

Thank you so much for reading!  This is only part 1...more to come!        

[micyclemorton]

this is a loooong one, boys

yes this is going to be a masterpost for my main 12 trolls so you can get to know them! they’re not all in the same world, but I don’t have any class/aspect clashes. biographies posted under the cut! suirev - burgundy / lumina - bronze / dietas - gold / phobis - mutant / lamiac - olive / immera - jade / ruilin - teal / tracor - cerulean / itoria - indigo / jezakk - purple / astril - violet / cirlun - fuchsia suirev - sylph of light / lumina - page of space / dietas - thief of doom phobis - mage of life / lamiac - seer of mind /  immera - bard of heart ruilin - rogue of hope / tracor - prince of blood / itoria - knight of breath jezakk - heir of time / astril - witch of rage / cirlun - maid of void 

suirev, lumina, immera, ruilin and jezakk are alternian, but only immera and ruilin are connected in terms of their lore. dietas, itoria and tracor are beforan, and all connected. suirev, lamiac, astril and cirlun hail from exonera (the first planet in the universe of my fansession) and are all connected to each other.

suirev - praying mantis lusus lumina - star-nosed mole lusus dietas - chameleon lusus phobis - serpent lusus lamiac - fennec fox lusus immera - venezualan poodle moth lusus ruilin - raccoon lusus tracor - scorpion lusus itoria - ant lusus jezakk - harp seal lusus astril - angler fish lusus cirlun - axolotl lusus

~~

YOUR NAME IS SUIREV HELIOS.

Nobody believes you, not even your MANTIS LUSUS, but you know a lot more about the fate of the world than you let on. They dismiss your PROPHECIES as bogus, no matter how many tomes you write, and you’ve lost count of how many that is. You consider yourself PRETTY ENLIGHTENED, but not in the spiritual sense… yet. The spirits that pester your caste a lot of the time even seem to avoid you, which would have confused you a time ago, but now you know why.

You’ve developed a nasty habit of checking everything you want to say in your head, and they’re sick of being your mental proofreaders. They’ve made it very clear they dislike you, so you have some HEALING to do. People find you preachy, but that confuses you a lot. You’re mostly silent so that you can concentrate on the cacophony (spirits or no spirits) ringing through your pan, as you get some REALLY GOOD STORY IDEAS from them. Besides, you were named after an OLD GOD for a reason. You should have the right to preach.

One might even say that you’re COMPLETELY RAVING MAD, but at least you try to keep your appearance in check. It’s a shame your blood colour makes your EYE BAGS so obvious.

Your handle is LiteraryLunatic, and y★u end y★ur sentences with exclamati★n marks! S★ n★b★dy notices h★w tired y★u are! Besides, y★u’ve been staying up all night with pr★phecies racing thr★ugh your pan! 

~~

YOUR NAME IS LUMINA SERVIN.

You’re a maniacally busy troll, but you wouldn’t have it any other way, because your pan is always buzzing with NEW IDEAS. You have to keep yourself busy to fend off the ENCROACHING EXISTENTIAL DREAD that fills lowbloods like you. Your mole guardian helps you expand your desert-bound hive-workshop, because you’re often too busy - catering to all of the stupid VIOLET TOURISTS AND LANDDWELLERS in the nearby hive-clusters in order to make money and survive - to pay any attention to trivial household chores. 

You’re not very good at what you do yet - though some would suggest otherwise - and you’re just striving to be better. You can recognise that you have the POTENTIAL to be GREATER, and it’s all just barely out of reach. You made yourself some KICK-ASS GOGGLES, inspired by the human subculture of STEAMPUNK, which you adore. They’re probably your best work to date, and you wear them so constantly that you’re afraid they’ll meld onto your face sometimes. The metal they’re made of, BRONZE, is the same colour as your blood, and one of the most pleasing aesthetically, in your opinion. No-one’s figured that out yet, luckily enough.

You’re an avid blacksmith, inventor, tinkerer and the rest of it. You’re making quite sure that you possess any title that involves HANDS-ON CREATION, really. Sometimes, you COMPLETELY SPACE OUT when you should be working, thinking of how best to go about things that really don’t require that much thought. It’s just how you roll.

Your handle is MechanicalMiner, and SOoMETIMES YOoU CAN COoME OoFF AS A LITTLE TOoOo LOoUD BECAUSE OoF WHAT’S PROoBABLY INDUSTRIAL DEAFNESS, EVEN AT THIS AGE.

~~

YOUR NAME IS DIETAS LAMBDA.

Misfortune has pretty much DEFINED YOUR LIFE up until now, but that’s not important. What really matters is your job, and it’s a relief to have distraction. You know that you’ve been through a WHOLE LOT OF HELL, and would never wish that on anyone else. Ever since you crashed a training ship, blacked out for a bit and met your moirail, your dear ITORIA, things changed. Your HELMSTROLL DREAMS might have shattered, but she made sure you’re not too miserable.

YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING. Well, almost. After losing your biological eye in the crash, Itoria built you a brand-new one, and now you can see in INFRARED LIGHT as well. You’ve recovered thanks to her, and you want to repay her by TAKING AWAY THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS, doing what she did for you. You travel around selling CHARGED-UP PROSTHETICS to trolls in need, while simultaneously keeping off the trail of the OVERSEERS, a pack of Ceruleans who you’re pretty sure want to kill you and your moirail for saving people.

YOU’RE NEVER GOING BACK TO THAT PLACE. The training centres are a source of shame and hurt for you, because you abandoned your guardian to get a purpose that ended up not working at all. How dumb that was.

Your handle is PsionicProsthesis. Yx0xu speak with a flare that reminds yx0xu of the symbx0xl that was given tx0x yx0xu at the training centres, as it’s a hx0xpe yx0xu’ll never fx0xrget despite the negative memx0xries, and tx0x represent yx0xur lx0xst eye. 

~~

YOUR NAME IS PHOBIS SACCHE.

If your lusus could talk, they’d probably say you were a NERVOUS WRECK. You’re not going to tell anyone otherwise, because your shaking hands prevent you from pulling up the blinds in your constantly darkened hive. Not that you’d want to, of course, since you live in a GHOST TOWN. Populated by literal ghosts. They don’t interact with you much, which you’re extremely grateful for. If the drones thought you were alive, you’d be dead in two seconds flat, with your BRIGHT RED BLOOD on public display.

It’s MAGICAL that you’ve survived this long, but you think it’s because of the menacing SERPENT that you’re fortunate enough to have as your guardian. You like to use their scales to fortify the SCYTHES AND OTHER WEAPONRY you build for yourself. They tend to do most of the hunting, as you can’t risk going out of your hive much, but you do enjoy training. Your LIFE itself is a gamble, and it makes you paranoid as hell, but at least you’re a decent fighter. Not that anyone would know or care. You also like TELESCOPES and looking at the STARS, but have no idea that your symbol means anything to do with that.

Your handle is SerpentineStargazer, and youre a phucking,,,, phucking brasssh little,,,,, ssshit whossse dumb… dumb phorked tongue makesss you…. hisss when youre nervoussss. ~~

YOUR NAME IS LAMIAC FENRIS.

You’re small in stature, but that doesn’t undermine how HARD-WORKING AND DRIVEN you can be. After all, when you work for THE EMPRESS, things need to be perfect. You’re also RESIDENT TELEMARAUDER of SKAIANET SYSTEMS, being tasked with worming your way into people’s minds to sell DIFFERENT NEFARIOUSLY-LABELLED PRODUCTS.  You’ve never seen them made, but that’s not your job. It’s most likely for the best, anyway, seeing as how easily frightened you can be when FENFOXMOM isn’t around. Working for such an awful corporation and even more awful people - looking at you, Mr LaCroix - makes you sick to your stomach, but you need the security.

You’re a pleasant enough troll to be around, but can always change your expression and demeanour, your words cutting as sharp as the weapons you use to defend yourself. You do hate getting your claws dirty unless people really get on your nerve, in which case you’ll tear them to shreds verbally and physically. Somehow, the renovated ballroom you use as your office has been clean of client’s blood for a whole week! Something tells you you shouldn’t be excited about that, but what can you say? You’re territorial. Even though you can’t remember the last time you properly hunted, you can SEE WHAT’S GOING ON INSIDE PEOPLES’ HEADS and defend yourself. 

Your best friend at the palace is the HEIRESS, which can be a bit strange due to the remarkable caste-gap between you, but she barely seems to care about that sort of a thing, which is nice. She’s the reason you have the job at the palace, because you consider THE EMPRESS HERSELF to be a very disagreeable person, even though you can’t exactly state that out loud unless you’re gossiping with Cirlun. 

Your handle is FluctuatingFoxfire, and yo)u speak in a manner that perfec)tly c)o)nveys yo)ur need to) pro)tec)t yo)urself fro)m harsh judgement, while also) ho)no)uring the sign emblazo)ned ac)ro)ss yo)ur w)ork c)lo)thes at all times. ~~ YOUR NAME IS IMMERA METREN.  

You’ve always been down in the BROODING CAVERNS, doing what all Jades should do and tending to the Mother Grub as she churns out her little grubs for everyone to see. You’d rather not be around to see them, if you’re being honest. You think it’s all just tiresome, thankless work, and aren’t really sure why exactly YOU HAVEN’T RUN AWAY YET. The chattering of your colleagues makes your head hurt, and their happy-go-lucky demeanours just make you REALLY WANT TO SCREAM. At this point, you’d take being a lowblood fighting for their life over whatever job you have here. One occupationless troll among thousands won’t hurt the economy too much, right? You sure hope not.

The fuzzy, pathetic, colourless MOTH you have as your lusus is just waiting to be crushed in the busy environment, and she refuses to leave you alone. Most Jades’ lusii abandon them if they work in a cramped space and fulfil the DESTINY SET OUT FOR THEM, but yours won’t. It’s not like you have the HEART to tell them to leave, and they barely listen to you as it is. No one seems to, troll or otherwise, even though your ninth wriggling day has come and gone and you feel your WINGS growing in. Generally speaking, that’s more of a rare Bronzeblood thing, but you’re sure that’s why your back is itching. You suppose it’s one of the - only - perks of being grub-like. 

You just want to do one of two things: Have your colleagues SING YOUR PRAISES for your hard work, as they should acknowledge you, or ESCAPE INTO THE ALTERNIAN WILDERNESS so deeply that not even your lusus will be bothered to traverse your dangerous path. But you have to put up with the noise and the heat and the MURDEROUS INTENT blooming inside you where it shouldn’t really be in the first place.

Your handle is VindictiveVenusian, and YOUR’3 NOT <3RY TOL3RANT OF ANY HOOF33ASTSHIT YOUR COLL3AGU3S TRY TO SPOUT AROUND YOU, SO YOU TRY TO <<ARN THEM OF A POTENTIAL KISM3SITUD3 AT ANY GI<3N MOM3NT. ~~ YOUR NAME IS RUILIN CAPITA.

Some would call you a thief, but you have more dignity than that. Even though people continue to call you dirty and look down upon you for the nefarious way you act, it’s JUST WHAT YOU’VE BEEN TAUGHT by your RACCOON LUSUS. You love them more than you love getting your MONEY-GRUBBING CLAWS all over your newest riches, and that’s certainly a testament to just how highly you think of them. They’ve always been around for you, and you WISH SINCERELY that they’ll never leave, because they’re the only support you have. 

You weren’t exactly raised well, being stuck in the BROODING CAVERNS for far longer than you should’ve been while the lusii took charge of all the grubs around you. YOU’RE THE ODD-ONE-OUT. It’s filled you with WHITE-HOT RESENTMENT, and you’re on a mission to gain back what you lost. You’d once wanted to become a legislacerator or something like that, as with all the other trolls in your caste. But that doesn’t quite suit the reputation you have on the streets, nor the way you’ve been treated. Why get justice for a system you don’t believe in? Besides, you know that someone would rat you out so that you’d be culled, not be the one doing the culling.

You want to take back what was stolen from you, and you’ll get your TRUSTY GAUNTLETS dirty any number of times to do so. Mostly, though, you steal money just because you have the skills to. Being a mid-lowblood isn’t the best, so you’ve picked up tips and tricks from THE VERY THUGS YOU’D NOT WANT TO STEAL FROM YOU.

Your handle is RaucousRebellion, and ¥ou t¥p€ using th€ many $trang€ $ymbol$ ¥ou find on ¥our ¢oin$ and not€$ - that w€r€n’t €xa¢tl¥ *¥our$.* until a mom€nt ago.

~~

YOUR NAME IS TRACOR BOLDEL. 

Everyone agrees with what you have to say, and that’s exactly how you like it. That’s how it’s always been, from the moment you were chosen in the brooding caverns by your MAGNIFICENT SCORPION LUSUS. They left you long ago, because you didn’t think you needed them, and you don’t really care where they might be right now. They’ve taught you to be commanding, and now your words STING SHARPER than the knives you’re so fond of using at any opportunity you may get. It’s not necessary, really, but it makes you seem fittingly intimidating and means that NO-ONE WILL STEP OUT OF LINE. 

So you thought. Contending with idiots in the PRISMATIC TRAINING CENTRE FOR YOUNG PSIONS ((LOCATION B2)) is a much harder task than you first realised, due to the fact that there aren’t enough OVERSEERS and too many indigoblooded instructors that know that they can break your control with a little bit more effort than you can prevent. Why they couldn’t spare two ceruleans per centre is beyond you, but it hardly matters enough. You’ll kill with your knives if your empath abilities don’t work, or they don’t COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DOMINATE THE COMPETITION YOU’RE CONVINCED IS REAL.

Even though you’re so busy sending goldbloods to their deaths, and you don’t really have time for quadrants, ITORIA APREIN IS OUT FOR YOUR BLOOD. She’s the main reason why you think there’s an uprising stirring within the centre, and the trolls who you let loose from your control at the end of the day DON’T WORSHIP YOU LIKE THEY SHOULD. You’ll fix that over time, of course, but you are just waiting for the right moment to strike. Your handle is BloodthistyBenevolence, and yovr tone of voice is aluuays nnvch gentler than anyone uuovld expect it to be.

~~

YOUR NAME IS ITORIA APREIN.

Since you rebelled against the TRAINING CENTRES, there has ben a resolute sense of MORAL IMPORTANCE instilled inside you. You don’t think there’s anything else you can do to fulfil your need to help people than providing refuge for the goldbloods entranced by the idealistic, worrisome occupation of helmstroll. It doesn’t bore you if there are a few trolls that come and knock on your door every so often, because ANTMOM has always been around to support you, and she’s even harder a worker tham you. You’ve always wanted to redeem yourself, and realised that preventing the CERULEAN OVERSEERS from culling any more innocent lowbloods is the way to go. There’s nothing more that feels properly fulfilling than DEFENDING OTHERS WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT.

BREAKING YOUR APATHETIC SHELL has been a hard task and still is, but you’re working as hard as you can to prevent shutting away from the world. Emotional expression has always seemed like something forbidden, especially to INDIGOBLOODS like you. YOU DON’T LIKE FEELING VULNERABLE, but there’s nothing much you can do about it unless everyone just leaves you alone and without any chance to heal. DIETAS makes you feel better about expressing yourself, and you’ve developed pale affections for the little goldblood ever since you found them SCARED AND HALF-DEAD IN THE FOLIAGE. It frightened you, but now not much can. You’re a strong team, and you know they’ll be a backup when things go awry with your DEARLY DETESTED KISMESIS, TRACOR.

You use your knack and love of WIRING AND CIRCUITRY to keep everything safe, creating cameras to track the trolls in your care. You also enjoy SHOOTING DOWN SURVEILLANCE DRONES, because you’ll never truly be FREE of the Overseers and your haunting past if you don’t do something to prevent their poor, uncoordinated attempts at monitoring you. You’re glad for that bit of your unfortunate occupation, at least.

Your handle is EsotericEngineer, and yOu c△n’t seem tO seper△te yOurself frOm △ symbOl Of the life yOu left behind.

~~

YOUR NAME IS JEZAKK IMETAT.

YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT. There’s not much you can do about it, though, because your circus troupe’s on the rise, and the RINGMASTER is starting to get some very bad ideas of what they might do to get you to actually comply for once. There’s nothing you can say that’ll make the people around you actually stop and listen. You feel small, so you try to wear BRIGHT, FLASHY COLOURS and STRIPY TIGHTS to mimic the figures so prominent in the jack-in-the-boxes you’ve always been fond of making and tinkering around with. You have no idea when that particular fascination set in, but it keeps you distracted from worse things that might happen to you. Despite the fact that you’re a highblood, you’re younger than the other performers in the troupe and feel more vulnerable than you should be.

You’re not really meant to be in the troupe, anyway. There was a time where you assume some SEADWELLERS were hunting for food or the fun of it - none of which they need to do, you’re guessing, because of how rich they are -  and that was when you’d realised there was a harpoon broken off in SEALDAD’S side. So you saw the distant big top and ran to it, hoping that someone could help your lusus. He *was* healed, which you’re grateful beyond gratefulness for, but then… you don’t really remember. Blaring carnival lights, yellow-tinged and blinding, and then… EVERYTHING CHANGED. You never quite made it back to the sea, because the other purples started to teach you their ways, and you have an eerie feeling that they were trying to lure you into working for the ringmaster, who most of them (except for your ‘friend’ Othamo, who’s pretty fearless in a callous way) worship like a god.

Then you did, but you’re working for yourself most of the time. Wilfully disobedient. You just want to get out of the troupe, and you’ll do anything you can, but it’s been a few sweeps already. Performing with Sealdad makes you happy, and your contraptions do. So maybe it’s not so bad to stay for a little while longer. The time will come when you can make a break for it, you’re sure, just as long as you can secure an escape plan that means your lusus won’t be out of the water for too long at once.

Your handle is ClockworkCarnevale. _/[[ yOU’rE EAsIly scArEd, yOUr vOIcE gEttIng ErrAtIcAlly lOUdEr At wEIrd tImEs. bUt yOU bEt thE jAcks In yOUr bOxEs ArE fInE, sO yOU EnclOsE yOUr tExt In OnE tOO, tryIng nOt tO pAnIc. ]] ~~ YOUR NAME IS ASTRIL HURICA.

Though you suppose you go by ASTRIL ZEPHYR now. Nothing’s really worked out for you in your life, but the dastardly clairvoyant you’ve seen loitering around your ADOPTIVE DAUGHTER swears that EVERYTHING’S YOUR FAULT. She’s all wrong, of course, and you have the authority to - and half a mind to - completely banish her from the palace if she says one more thing to damage your opinion of her, which was always bad in the first place. You’re now the ‘mother’ of Cirlun, a disobedient and woefully immature fuchsiablood who was entrusted to you by virtue of your position as head of the VENERATED COUNCIL OF VIOLETS. It was disbanded many a sweep ago, with the heiress’ arrival on your sad little planet. THE COUNCIL was a committee of seadwellers with the purest blood, closest to that of a natural Aquarian, who banded together to keep the citizens of DUIIARIA (Now colloquially ‘Earth X’) from descending into anarchy. 

You don’t have the best relationship sense, being that you CULLED YOUR MOTHER at the tender age of six sweeps. You could argue that you were only small, and naive, but you were seething with unbridled resentment and RAGE, even knowing that anglerfish don’t talk and thus don’t communicate well. You’ve kept that QUIETLY MURDEROUS DISPOSITION ever since the deed was carried out, and never intend to drop it. Tyranny is the only way you know how to keep your citizens in check, and you don’t intend to learn any other way. It’s ruthlessly effective, and that’s the only standard you’ll accept. It’s probably one of the reason’s why everyone thinks you’re WICKED AND UNCOMPROMISING, even your own daughter. You’d like nothing more than to leave Cirlun to her own devices and show her just how foolish she is to want pacifism.

But now, you wait eagerly in the shadows until she reaches the appropriate age to ascend to the throne. Then you’ll truly teach her what it’s like to fight for her life, even though you never really had to in your own right. You’ve spent a long, long time trying to prepare Duiiaria for survival when up against MILITARY AND INTERGALACTIC OPPOSITION, as you want to conquer as much as you can. You’re not about to relinquish your autocratic mindset for a brat like her, even though she has the right by blood. It won’t matter so much any more if you spill it first.

Your handle is GalacticGalvaniser, and you speak As Cr1sply And D1rec7ly As You Expect Your Orders 7o Carry 7hrough 7o Your L177le C171zens. 7OUR 7EMPERAMENT CHANGES S11GH717 WHEN YOU’RE ANGR7, 7HOUGH.

~~ YOUR NAME IS CIRLUN ZEPHYR.

You’re the heiress to an empire that you want none of. You were adopted by a troll (despite having a rather pathetic and sickly lusus) after emerging from the CHOKING DARKNESS, and she won’t give you the time of day (unless it’s to mock you for your poor fighting times) so you’ve realised there’s no point in asking how. That’s the only thing you’re glad for, you suppose. The fact that she stays out of your hair is certainly good, because you’re not good in social situations or with diplomacy at all, and you have plenty of time to escape up to the palace’s extensive library. The library is the only time you get any relief from any pressure being an heiress brings.

Reading, of course, is your main form of escapism since it’s so easy to access. Nobody much minds that you while away your time in the library, save for when ASTRIL sends guards to pull you away from your latest fascination to train. Training, that is, for your imminent death at the Empress’ own hand - or trident, as it were. You don’t really know why she does train you directly, since you think that’s something you need to do for yourself, but you guess she *is* PRETTY DAMN BLOODTHIRSTY. The fact that you put up a fight makes everything that much more enjoyable, and you’d say you’re a MORE THAN SERVICEABLE fighter. So much so that you swear you’d be at the forefront of your mother’s GALACTIC ARMY had she not decided she wanted to cull you from the moment she first laid eyes on you. 

You’re pretty sheltered, being the only fuchsiablood in your timeline, but you do have a moirail (who you’re pretty sure your mother wouldn’t like at all by virtue of his being a MUTANT) that you sneak out and see under the guise of MYSTER WAEVEL, just another violetblood. Technology has made it easier for you to hide your own blood, and you’re hoping that Etoile could one day mask his as well. Inside the palace walls, LAMIAC FENRIS is your best and only friend, and you often sit with each other and talk when she’s not working. The stories she tells are mainly client complaints, but you’re lucky that the gory recounts she tells with such zeal don’t turn your stomach much. The bloodstains on her office walls don’t help. 

A lot about you is a total mystery, but that’s just the way you like it. 

Your handle is AlchemicAxolotl, named for your love of the lusus you’re NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE. ))((oping you )(onour your biggest rolemodel - w)(o's long gone, only around in t)(e b∞ks you pour over - you've since added a little flair to your typing, and t)(ink it l∞ks a lot more personal. ~

[kyu-gsoo]

We’ll keep this culture alive

For Kataang Week 2020.

Day 5: Heritage/Responsibilities

Words:  2,336 words

Summary: Aang restores one aspect of culture lost to the hundred year war.

Author’s note:  I went away for a few days so I’m behind on Kataang week D: I know there’s no obligation to do all prompts (much less do each on the day of like I’ve been doing).. But I want to. I’ll probably try to catch up later. Anyways I know it’s technically Day 6, but here’s my Day 5 fic. Set in The Headband episode! Mostly Aang-centric but still with some good ole Kataang at the end. Again I made it a lil angsty and tbh I don’t even know if it fits the prompt

Aang watches as the flames engulf his staff, leaving nothing but ashes in their wake. He thinks about the saddle the sandbenders had thrown out when they traded Appa, about the map he packed when he ran away that fateful day; scribbled with all the places he planned to visit, about the clothes he was wearing when Azula struck him; now left tattered and torn. The anguish that he feels watching the last physical item that tied him to his old life is red hot and all-consuming, just like the flames before him. 

“That’s okay,” He’d said, even when it was not. “It would give away my identity.” He tried not to think about how he was the only piece of the Air Nomads and their culture left in existence. A living relic. Aang’s identity as an airbender was the only thing he had yet to sacrifice, and he wasn’t planning on doing so anytime soon.

Which is why, when he puts on the headband for the first time, it hurts him more than he can put into words. He realizes as he closes the cloth around his forehead that there isn’t anywhere he can check for his reflection, and is grateful for the small mercy. He can’t even begin to imagine what he would look like without his tattoos.

This war, he thinks to himself. It just keeps taking and taking and taking. Aang is sure by now, as he hides his tattoos, that he no longer has any more left to give. 

Still, he shakes the thoughts away and plasters on his signature lopsided smile. “Tada! Normal kid.”

He watches Toph and Sokka squabble over the earthbender’s new Fire Nation style shoes. In this instance, as she and Sokka bicker about, Aang finds that from an outsider’s perspective, they really do look like nothing but normal kids. Just a bunch of friends hanging out close to the shoreline. The minor moments of normalcy they are afforded are few and far in between, so Aang lets himself laugh wholeheartedly because he doesn’t know when he will next find this type of joy.

Katara’s voice breaks him out of his laughter. “How do I look?” She stands from head to toe in red, a nice contrast to her dark skin.

Beautiful is his first thought, because she is. The thought that follows is, “Uhh, your mom’s necklace.”

The waterbender immediately reaches up to touch the pendant at her neck. “Oh,” is all she says at first, obviously reluctant. Aang watches her unclasp and remove it anyway. “Oh yeah. I guess it’s pretty obviously Water Tribe, isn’t it?” Katara’s fist closes around the small choker, concealing the last of her true identity. Here and now, she follows the rest of them and gives into the guise of a Fire Nation citizen.

The disappointment her face mars is a painful reminder that they are all sacrificing bits of themselves for this war. That, consequently, they can all find solace in one another. Aang wonders briefly if that is a blessing or a curse.

Again he pushes this thought away. Instead, he follows his companions as they begin their trek into town.

X

It’s a slow day in town. Granted, he couldn’t really think much of it, since he and Momo somehow got roped into attending a local elementary school. The first day isn’t so bad, though Aang doesn’t remember this many customs present all those times he visited Kuzon. It takes him one too many times to get the bow right that he worries he’ll blow his cover soon. He has one of his new classmates to thank for hinting at him the proper way. Later, he learns that her name is On Ji. 

Of course, when he returns to their hideout, he gets an earful from Sokka for wandering off. That doesn’t stop him from attending the next day.

But the second day is what really tests his limits. 

Of all the ways to start the day, Aang never imagined staring at a portrait of the former Fire Lord Sozin being one of them. He follows the suit of the other students and stands rigidly, mouthing incorrectly to all the words of an oath he knows nothing about. The teacher catches on and is quick to punish him and his classmates with a pop quiz. This puzzles Aang even more. As if having to pledge allegiance to the very man who started the war wasn’t weird enough, the teacher adds insults to injury by starting off their quiz with:

“What year did Firelord Sozin battle the Air Nation army?”

He raises his hand almost immediately. The teacher, clearly irritated, indulges him anyway. “Is that a trick question? The Air Nomads didn’t have a formal military. Sozin defeated them by ambush.” He tries not to make it sound so defensive, instead feigning confusion. Almost all of his peers stare dumbfounded at him, but he waits for the teacher’s response anyway. These are his people they were talking about. How could they fabricate history books so blatantly? Was wiping them off the face of the earth not cruel enough?

“Well, I don’t know how you could possibly know more than our national history book, unless you were there a hundred years ago.” She clips and raises an eyebrow, as if challenging him to defy her.

The young airbender’s nervous laughter rings throughout the classroom. He wants so badly to question her further, to probe how exactly an Air Nomad militia came about, when it was within their ways to avoid violence at all costs. They were carefree, spontaneous, and had a spiritual weightlessness to them. But these words die on his tongue, all for the sake of keeping his identity secret. It pains him that he has no choice but to accept these lies knowing they are untrue. Though he owes it to his people to set things straight, he sits down and lets the culture of the Air Nomads once again get lost in translation. 

X 

It is during Music Class that he finally snaps.

He was just dancing. But the teacher had called it a “nervous disorder.”

“Dancing is not conducive to a proper learning environment.” The instructor asserts. He lets Aang march in place instead. They carry on, and Aang marches in his seat like he was given permission to, but somehow he can’t find it in himself to keep blowing the tsungi horn.

Though he doesn’t agree with it, he could understand the intention behind the Air Nomad genocide. It was to obliterate all obstacles that prevented the Fire Nation attack and reign. But what then, was the point of their overrule if they destroyed all the cultures of the Fire Nation too? What kind of empire did Sozin plan to lead if all of his people were fed lies and lived off of obedience? Aang couldn’t understand. 

What he could understand was that another culture was dying. And he couldn’t just sit back and watch.

He came to the conclusion as he, Sokka and Katara returned to their little cave. “I’m going to  throw them a secret dance party.”

“Go to your room,” is the first thing Sokka can come up with. He gets a laugh in return. It’s obvious the airbender isn’t going to heed his warnings, but Sokka tries anyway. “Aang, are you really going to risk being found out for a dumb dance party?”

Except Aang’s no longer laughing. His gray eyes have steeled over when he replies. “It may be just dancing to you, Sokka. But it’s a tradition with historical importance to me. It’s a cultural heritage that I can’t just let die out here. Not again, when I can help prevent it.”

Those words alone are what get all three of them onboard with his idea. Though the party was found out in the end, Aang regards it as a complete success.

It starts off a bit awkward, no doubt, the majority of them timid. Aang can’t even blame them when he knows they’ve never witnessed this kind of dancing, maybe even any kind of dancing, in their entire lives. Luckily On Ji and a few others quickly warm up to the occasion, which then makes it easier for even more of Aang’s peers to join as well. Aang himself has the time of his life having the chance to do a little waterbending dancing with Katara. He is surprised that she trusts him to lead her wholeheartedly. For a moment all the other kids just stare as they make their way along the makeshift dance floor. Both Aang’s cheeks and ears blush as he thinks about their intimate little moment. Even so, the occasion itself is what makes him the happiest. And if he were honest with himself, it’s the happiest he’s been since he woke up after being struck by Azula. He isn’t sure why that is.

Aang looks down at the clouds as they fly past, the cave having been out of their peripheral view for sometime now. He thinks about why that event made him so happy, and comes up blank.

X

Later, when they’ve landed and finished setting up camp, Aang lay on the ground staring up at the stars. He sprawls his arms and legs out, just feeling the earth beneath him. It brings him an unexplainable comfort that the earth still crumbles in his palms the same way it did before he set out into that storm, all those years ago. 

“Can’t sleep?” Katara whispers. She’s lying on her side with a palm to her cheek, her hair loose of all its ties. Behind her, Toph and Sokka lay sound asleep.

It’s a simple question, but somehow it compels Aang to reveal all of his innermost thoughts. They spill over one by one before he can put a stop to them.

“I just.. These past two days really opened my eyes. It made me realize that the war didn’t just take away from all the other nations, but from the Fire Nation too.” He turns to her, watching as the shadows of the campfire catch on her face, then turns back to the sky. “Seeing all of those kids dance with me tonight. I helped them relearn one aspect of their culture that the war wiped out. It just feels so.. Fulfilling. To know that I restored something. Even if it wasn’t something for my people. It gives me this new surge of hope, Katara, the fact that I managed to restore something lost to the war.” He turns to Katara. There she lies, just an arm away from him. “And you helped me.”

“I'm glad that you got to experience that, Aang. I think it healed a part of you that you didn’t know was wounded.” He sees the stars reflect in her eyes as she continues to speak, and hangs onto every syllable. “That hope you feel right now? That’s how I felt the day Sokka and I found you in the iceberg.” She pauses before she says her next words. “And I feel it grow exponentially every time you take on your role as the Avatar.”

She tucks her hair behind her ears and continues. “I hope you understand now that you’re capable, Aang, of ending the war and restoring balance. You were always capable. But now more than ever.” 

All the words in the universe evade him. He can’t even begin to explain all the emotions filled in the space of his chest. All these intense feelings he never even knew he was capable of feeling before tonight. One word and they’ll all come spilling out. His vision blurs as he tries to make sense of them all, but Katara remains smiling at him. 

Aang closes his eyes and lies on his back again, swallowing in his tears and taking a moment to gather himself. He understands now, why her words bring so much comfort yet evoke the same amount of pain, too. Because saving it all means risking it all. And Aang, one way or another, is risking the Air Nomads by fighting this war. He'd never spoken of this worry for fear that voicing it out would bring it closer to coming true. It was eating away at him the same way it was hurting him. But she’s just given him the realization that they have a chance. A fighting chance.

It takes all of him to gather enough courage to ask the next question.

“Katara?” He questions with as steady a voice he can manage.

“Yeah?”

Aang holds his breath. When he speaks, the words come out garbled and rushed. “When the war is over, do you think there’s a chance to revive the Air Nomads and their culture?”

My people and my culture. Do we have a chance?

She answers him in a heartbeat. “With you around, definitely.”

Somehow the weight of those two simple words are all it takes to break the dam. His tears betray him and he lets them, neither ashamed or uneasy. We have a chance, his mind chants over and over. One day, he will watch others inherit the culture of him and his people, not die out. He lets the weight of the unsettlement float away and cries, because this is the last time he’ll ever let it consume him the way it did. 

He thinks about the remains of the Southern Air Temple, of the Fire Nation’s buried cultures, of the crisp smoke emanating from the buildings of Omashu the last time he’d seen them, of how he’d flown out Katara with him and consequently robbed the Southern Water Tribe of their last waterbender. They all have a chance. Aang will give them that chance.

He feels a hand squeeze his shoulder and turns. Katara lies beside him, still smiling.

Neither of them break the silence after that.

[blindprof]

It’s Complicated

When people first hear me say that I am blind or severely visually impaired (B/VI), the most common reaction is surprise…followed by sympathy…followed most often by awkward silence. This is totally understandable. Unless you are regularly interacting with differently abled people, disabilities are uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable and awkward around people who live with other forms of disability.

Heck, I’m still awkward around other people who are B/VI. And even this is understandable. Because each person is unique. Each manifestation of visual impairment is unique. Each path to and with B/VI is unique. Each person has unique life experiences, coping mechanisms, support networks, etc. We are all strangers in a strange land. I’ll have other posts dedicated to the whack-a-doo personal and social psychology of B/VI. For now, the focus remains on the physical, or rather the perceptual.

The second reaction is usually a question: “How bad is it” or “What do you see?” And my answer is “It’s complicated.”

In my first post, I laid out some more technical details: I have a visual field that is less that 10 degrees, night blindness, color blindness, uncorrectable myopia, light sensitivity, etc. But it’s not apparent how these details really affect what I see and how that impacts what I can do. This post will go into greater detail into what and how I see. Later posts will focus on how I (try to, with varying levels of success, stupidity, and hilarity) cope with these limitations.

It probably makes sense to start with my visual field, as this is the aspect of my vision that “qualifies” me as legally blind. However, before getting to that, we really need a basic understanding of how humans see. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it short and simple.

It may be easiest to compare the eye to a modern digital camera. A camera lens gathers and focuses light; it also constrains the amount of light passing through by altering the size of a mechanical aperture. In the human eye, these functions are performed by the lens and the pupil, respectively. In a digital camera, the lens focus light onto a CCD or CMOS sensor, which is a dense grid of light sensitive “pixels,” each generating a small electrical charge proportional to how much light (within a certain wavelength) is hitting it. The human retina is the biological, electrochemical equivalent. Finally, a digital camera has wires that transport these electrical signals to a computer, which then interprets the signals to create a digital image. Here, the human analogues are the optic nerve and the visual cortex within the brain.

As I noted in my first post, I have Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), which primarily impacts my retina. Due to the wonders of genetics and epigenetics, other parts are impacted. But for now, I’ll focus on the retina. Characteristically, people with RP find that their retinal “pixels”—millions of light-sensitive “rod” and “cone” structures, as well as protective retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells from which the disease gets its name—stop functioning from the outside in. We don’t know the exact cause, nor is there yet any proven way to slow, much less reverse the process.

Of course, this is a biological process that is unique to each individual. For me, it has progressed relatively slowly from childhood. I can recall early symptoms as far back as age 6. I’ll have a separate post at some point talking about progression. But it is notable the process is neither steady nor predictable. I’ll have periods of relative stability followed by periods of perceptible loss. It’s rarely like a light switch, but rather more like a dimmer. Each area of loss will appear darker with less usable information until it is just “clicked off” by the brain, presumably redirecting its limited processing resources to doing something other than trying to interpret shotty data from dying cells. For me, the progression has also been very spotty—for example, I retained some usable vision in the extremes of my left-right periphery until just a couple years ago, despite progressively losing most of my peripheral vision between there and my center.

The result today is that I have very little of my retina remaining that pretends to function “normally.” I can detect very high contrast light vs. dark in some of my periphery, but nothing there that you would qualify as usable sight. My central vision is still somewhat functional, but has been fading rapidly of late. As I said, it’s spotty, but on average in good light I have maybe 10-15 degrees total horizontal vision and less than 10 vertical. And much of that is probably equivalent to what most would consider to be peripheral vision. To help better “feel” what this means, here are a few examples of how this manifests itself in my day-to-day life.

When I’m sitting across a table from you, I can see your face but not your hands. If I’m not socially distant, I might be able to see your eyes or your mouth, but not both at the same time. I often creep people out during a conversation because I’m constantly losing eye contact and moving my eyes to different parts of their body. I promise, I’m not “undressing you with my eyes”—people talk with their entire bodies, and I’m simply trying to catch as many visual cues as possible.

When watching TV from 10 feet away, I can “see” my entire 55-inch screen. But less than a quarter of that is in my central vision. I have to move my eyes to see detail or read signs or captions. Sports and fast action scenes are difficult to catch. A fast action, dark scene with subtitles…oy…the Battle of Winterfell may as well have been a BBC Radio broadcast.

I can read, though usually only slowly and for short periods, especially if it is paper and ink. I see only a few words at a time, so my eyes have to constantly move. This causes a lot of eye strain, and I have trouble keeping both eyes properly oriented and occasionally have periods where one eye twitches uncontrollably—obviously I’m channeling my inner Mad-Eye Moody.

And of course, navigating unfamiliar or unpredictable environments is very difficult. I navigate by moving from waypoint to waypoint, and if I don’t know the waypoints or if things jump in my way, well, bad things happen. Or maybe funny things.

More on all of these and their many repercussions in future posts.

People ask, “What do you ‘see’ in the places where you have no vision? Is it blackness? Emptiness? Blurry?” Again, it’s complicated, but for the most part, my brain has just removed those areas from its visual processing “algorithm.” So, I see the same thing that you see when something is beyond your peripheral vision…just nothing. There are long periods of adjustment as I lose sight—kind of like losing a limb and still expecting it to be there. But eventually it’s just not a part of the picture that my brain paints of the world around me.

Unfortunately, that’s not all. Night blindness is often the first detected symptom for folks with RP. What is left of my retina doesn’t detect light well, so I need much more of it. The result is that I’m totally blind in low-light situations. I need direct light to see any kind of detail. I carry a flashlight everywhere I go and use it regularly day and night.

So, I need bright light. But it is also my nemesis. My eyes compensate like one would with a digital camera…by cranking open the aperture (pupil) and turning up the gain on the sensor. This does allow me to function semi-normally in certain situations. But it also results in severe light sensitivity. As with a camera, the wider pupil also results in loss of detail, and bright light can almost entirely wash any other visual information. To make matters even worse, although my pupils do function, they are VERY slow to adjust.

The results of all of that are varied. I’ll post more details in the future. But for example, I am no longer able to read a computer screen for any length of time without inverted colors. It’s like trying to read while staring at headlights. I truly need dark mode on all of my devices. Also, changing lighting conditions are challenging, especially when they are extreme. When I come in from outside, my eyes can take many minutes to adjust. And bright light sources like sunny windows in otherwise moderately lit environments can really cause havoc.

Finally, a common comorbidity with RP are cataracts, which cause hardening and blurring of the lens. Of course, this one hit me, as well. A number of years ago, I had cataract surgery. It was great. I was the youngest patient in the surgery center by like 30 years. The process involves using a magic wand to dissolve your natural lens and replacing it with a plastic one. This gets rid of the blurring, but entirely removes the ability to focus. As a bonus, I did go from needing coke bottle glasses to just needing a couple of diopters of correction. But this further complicates reading, and means I’m constantly donning and doffing my specs or having to look below them to read. Minor in the big scheme of things, but it does make me look and feel like a damn old fart.

Okay, if you made it this far, you deserve to be let off the hook for now. There’s more like the fact that my corneas—the eyes’ (usually) clear “lens caps”—now seem to cause my sight to remain blurry for the first couple of hours of each day. Or that the eye strain can sometimes get so physically painful that I have to close my eyes for long periods during the day. But this is a mostly complete and accurate snapshot of what I’m currently living with physically.

I guess I didn’t present too many funny or uplifting or forward-looking things in here. Truth is, you kind of have to muddle along with me through these sewers to eventually find the humor and hope in all of this. Because it’s complicated. But I’ll get there if you’re patient.

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 128 Thoughts

Pacing, I think, is the single most difficult thing to do correctly when telling a story. Out loud or in text, you have to juggle every cue you’re giving off, keep it all relevant, and make it so when things fall into place, they’re falling to the gravity that the story’s been given.

That’s why we’ve got something of a problem in this arc.

I complain a lot, because it’s easy, and this is hardly a flawless work. Organization has also been one of the regular things this series just has trouble with.

Still, while I really feel that the last few chapters aren’t the best way to tell this story, the story chosen is a monster to keep in line.

[insert amusing pre-cut joke of your choice here]

Conflict is the root of every story. Character vs self. Character vs character. Character vs nature. Pick one, then plant the seed and watch the clash reform the setting. Knowing your protagonist often involves knowing your villain.

Eren has always been the best protagonist for this series. He embodies the fury of humanity in an environment that embraces complacency. He is the voice that shouts for people to do something.

Back in Trost, everyone on his starting squad plans on picking the Survey Corps. Because of his constant, unfettering influence. He’s the one who is always reminding them that there’s a world outside that they’re abandoning. He never lets Jean forget it. He interrupts parties with the vocal equivalent of hammering 99 problems to every door.

Eren is one of the top ten soldiers in the 104th, and he makes sure everyone knows what he’s using his skills for. And before they themselves are confronted with what’s being asked of them to join him, everyone in his social circle is ready to make the same choice.

Moving forward is what Eren does in a world that’s been trapped in stagnation. He is a force of change. He is a force of impotent rage in the face of disaster.

He is every reaction the humans inside the walls don’t have, because as a people, they can’t imagine what there is to be done about their problems. Staying within the safety of the walls and limiting their potential in return for not dying a bloody death seems fair, to them.

They are imprisoned, so Eren, our protagonist, seeks freedom.

Being born free is the linchpin of his first successful transformation.

His first rather disturbing act of violence comes from him murdering slavers.

The wings of freedom are the iconic brand of his chosen military branch.

Subtlety.

That’s all very straightforward and simple to work with.

Then we open up the setting, and things are still rather simple, just in a turn that kicks off one hell of a problem.

The world itself is a cage. Physically, in the form of internment camps, or culturally, in the form of how people think about each other and act. There is no freedom for the citizens of Paradis now that they have broken out of their shell. There is just another prison, and a ticking time bomb.

Naturally, in its most basic form, this would make the world Eren’s enemy, because Eren is the champion of freedom.

Only then, if you stick to the most basic form of the concept, the simple answer is that when everyone else dies, then you will have your freedom.

Eren might be the story’s protagonist, but that’s because he stands at the fulcrum of all the story’s core ideas. He makes the rest of the plot move. He is the focus point. He is why there’s a story, and not a jumble of confused, dying people throwing themselves at the problem of titans.

He’s not everything that’s going on.

The world’s cruelty is not what this story is about.

Eren starts thinking about the outside world because a boy shares his dreams of the ocean.

Mikasa takes the time to salute a little girl on a battlefield.

Sasha fights a titan off with a bow and arrow to save one child’s life. She dies because she won’t kill a little girl.

Levi chooses not to revive Erwin so that Erwin can die without being brutally abused as the rest of mankind’s sacrifice.

Niccolo’s entire concept of what he’s fighting for is disrupted because people like his cooking.

Gabi is protected and treated like a child by the 104th even after they know she pulled the trigger on their friend.

Colt dies because of his insistence on giving his little brother comfort.

Reiner’s still breathing because there’s a few little kids he can do some good for.

Annie just wants to see her dad again.

Humanity, as a general concept, begins in an easily condemnable place in the manga. One of the first things Paradis does is send out a large percentage of its citizens to die so that the rest can live. Meanwhile, the only people who do try to go outside and learn more about the world are smeared even as they’re bringing back corpses.

By the end of Uprising, there’s a crowd of cheering people waiting for the Scouts to succeed.

People are awful.

They can do better.

A lot of Eren’s objection to Jean is highlighted through that. He never gives Connie a hard time for wanting to join the MPs. It’s Jean, who’s vocally joining up just so he can take it easy, that Eren objects to. Jean doesn’t have to be a jackass. It’s a decision he’s making.

Jean decides to do better.

In the beginning, people are willing to settle for ‘good enough.' Slowly, as the arcs go by, we approach a near universal take of people seeing problems and taking preventative action.

Here, with the Yeagerists, we come back to the original sin of Paradis.

As long as this one little island is okay, and no one on it has to worry about death, what does the outside world matter? Especially when that outside world has repeatedly promised to kill them? Killing them all first isn’t a problem, it’s a solution.

Samuel’s there at the start of Trost.

Sasha saves his life.

Connie kills him.

They don’t hate each other. Neither one wants to pull the trigger. But Samuel is willing to see the rest of the world die if it means keeping Paradis safe. Connie isn’t.

Over and over, the cycle plays out the exact same way. People kill each other to free themselves. As long as there’s always an Us vs Them dynamic, the bloodshed continues indefinitely. The Eldian Empire enslaved the world through titans. Marley won its freedom and decided it was okay to do the same thing as long as they only enslaved Eldians.

The methodology is what’s going to fuck everyone over in the end.

During Uprising, it is routinely discussed that it’s possible the royal family and the upper brass do know something that makes a coup a bad idea. It’s possible that overthrowing them will bring Paradis into an even darker landscape.

What it comes down to is that whatever they know, they’re willing to let everyone else die if it saves their own skin.

Since that particular Everyone Else is united, the coup continues, and the island’s given its chance at actual peace.

Now, the Yeagerists are making that same argument.

Meanwhile, before we were dealing with this, we had Zeke. His argument was that seeing as the world would never change, Ymir’s people were all cursed and damned, it is for the best of all of us if we all die.

He’s the ultimate counter to Eren. Eren is fighting for life, while Zeke is only searching for the best death.

Only by all appearances, Eren’s fight has landed him in the exact same place. It’s only the question of which people are dying.

Getting back to Connie and Samuel, if you squint, Connie is betraying his allegiance to his comrades. ...If you squint. I know he feels that way, and I know what the chapter title is, but the Yeagerists are a genocidal cult who bully their way into power and try to kill off their actual Commander, who Connie is still following.

Samuel might not be aware of that, but that’s what we’ve got.

The closest Connie came to betrayal was throwing a Warrior Candidate into his mom’s mouth, and we wrapped up that subplot.

Without squinting, Samuel is betraying the ideals that Connie chose the Survey Corps for. Connie wants to save people. He doesn’t want all this death, regardless of how it benefits him.

So this whole conflict, throughout this entire chapter, is really all about who wants which people dead.

The Warriors are still fighting for Marley. Despite everything, that’s their home, and their base of operations if they ever want a chance at fixing things. Paradis has more friends on it than they like thinking about, but Paradis is not their problem.

Kiyomi and the Hizuru flock are pretty much... she is just so done, and it’s very easy to see why. This is not their war. They were looking for a beneficial partnership. For power and resources, sure, but they were willing to play ball. Now they get to watch as the nation they helped kills off the world and their only allies are rushing them to a basement. Hopefully to do something significant before their country burns.

What’s left of the Scouts who are actually following the legitimate chain of command is, surprisingly, focused on stopping Eren’s genocide.

Then I guess the rest of the world probably has opinions, but they don’t get any pages. But it’s pretty safe to assume Eren’s high on their ‘want dead’ list. If not all of Paradis.

We’ve got one group of people who are actually, actively, doing the anti-genocide thing.

The rest is just fighting over the biggest piece of the pie.

The conflict is that some people think genocide is bad, and some people think genocide is okay, actually.

And, you know, fine.

Only then we have Eren.

Protagonist boy.

We don’t know his conflict, and he has more power than anyone else in the entire cast. Unless we count the primordial ooze as a cast member. He is a giant stegosaurus monster who has threatened the entire world, and as far as anyone with eyes can see, he’s actually going through with it.

Nothing presented anywhere suggests that there is a way to stop him.

At best, if people succeed in killing him, they will have unleashed a bunch of mindless Colossals into the world. If we revisit our volume 1 knowledge, we know this to be a problem.

Making all of this really, really pointless.

Obviously, this is what all these characters would do in this situation.

Obviously, we have some feelings about them being forced to kill their allies while the world falls apart.

Obviously, the author probably being willing to fast-forward through all of this is not necessarily an indication that that is what creates the optimal story.

Obviously, these are important details.

The plot still might as well be a glacier.

There is one person moving pieces around. Everyone else is just scrambling on the board he’s created and rehashing whether or not genocide is a good thing every time they’re considering shooting someone they kind of don’t want to.

All of the tension is literally an ocean away.

As great as the character moments are, there’s nothing to ground them in. There’s just a baseless hope that somehow, there’s a way out of this, and the story doesn’t end with yet another genocide kicking off a rebellion.

Magath flips on his worst hot take immediately. He does that because his country is dying and it’s reorganizing his priorities and beliefs to line up with what he’s actually feeling instead of parroting the world that created him.

Yelena goes from being catatonic to being a nuisance because -- reasons?

Connie almost kills Falco then doesn’t, because he really, honestly, was never going to kill the kid and we all knew that.

The driving force of all these potential conflicts is just too distant. As much work as everyone’s doing, they’re only making progress towards getting to Eren.

When you have a character who can end the world choosing to end the world, it creates problems. When that character is your protagonist, it’s even worse.

In the past, Eren’s absence has spurred characters to action and revealed more of the world’s secrets. Presently, unlike in his various kidnappings, Eren is the one with the secrets. His absence is making people do stuff, but not stuff that has any tangible meaning outside of putting actions to the belief that genocide is bad.

Secrets, and people seeking answers, has been a major player in moving the plot from the beginning.

Here though, we have the issue of no one having the luxury of investigating why this is happening. Mikasa and Armin might be desperate to know, but they have no tools available to them except the airship. Which, again, just puts them in the same place as Eren. It does not give them much more than they had the last time they were in a room with him.

Whatever secrets are in place, they are insignificant next to the fact that the world is ending as they watch.

Only, you know, slowly.

Because the decision has been made that Eren’s perspective is going to be a Reveal. It has to stay private until the moment it’s relevant to the other members of the cast, or otherwise, what was the point of holding off so long?

The result is this. Too much going on in too little time, and all of it technically mattering, but not enough that spending 40 pages on it really changes how the story is progressing.

I’m not sure this is a problem that would be easy to see coming. In the design phase, I mean. I’ve kind of been cautiously whining about these concerns for several months.

But the stage is set like this: Eren pulls the doomsday trigger. Enough time must pass for Paradis to cultivate a new normal and for Eren to reach land with his squad of titans. The goal is gathering our cast and stopping Eren.

There’s a disconnect between what needs to be done and how much time it takes to portray those things.

Connie’s breakdown over feeding Falco to his mom is a character moment that helps to inform his emotions this chapter. That’s probably why it survived. It still drags four named characters off to a village in the middle of nowhere while Floch’s reign is establishing itself.

Magath’s turnabout this chapter is the culmination of a lot of the emotional connections he’s made with Eldians, and the attachment he has to his home, but it comes after driving in the point of why Marley is so fucking awful. He’s spouting rhetoric last chapter, then he’s immediately confronted with the birthplace of that rhetoric being destroyed thanks to events he’s had a part in forging.

Yelena goes from being willing to let Floch shoot her to having an interest in watching things play out. Courtesy of one background dump.

The emotional beats these characters are all due do not match up with what they have to do, and it’s making things come across as really disjointed. It’s a frustrating combination of this needing more pages, but the idea of yet more pages being spent off where the main plot actually is going on is exhausting.

The world is ending, but the world has been ending for months.

We’ve clearly got a checklist of things to get done before we meet up with Eren, but he’s hoarding the plot. Sticking around to watch the list be physically checked is...

To paraphrase some tumblr post from the past few months, it feels like laundry, mostly.

The story wouldn’t survive just jumping to Eren. The more time we’re away from him, the greater the impact when we finally know what’s up. The more time we have with our squad of unlikely, plucky heroes, the more we’re going to want to punch Eren in the face for not listening to them. Again.

It’s not that there’s no value in devoting chapters to all of this planning and reeling. It’s that no matter what happens here, it is not fixing the larger problem of Eren’s genocide campaign.

The plot is across the ocean, and we are months into watching our cast try to reconnect with it.

For me, that makes it a bit dull to read, but it is hard to hold it against the story. Writing the end of the world when you intend to make the audience care about the world -- even though the protagonist is ending it -- that is a lot of plot. Knitting it all together is not a simple task. You can see the seams popping.

Oh well.

One of the things I will stand by is that this manga is a great story told gracelessly. If you read it all linearly, problems are going to be noticed. Stuff be weird. Plus timed terribly.

But there’s a lot of emotion packed into it all. It’s a story that, when you look back in retrospect, free of any time line and observing only through the lens of your knowledge, it holds up and has power.

So I’m glad all of this stuff is being drawn, because one day, when the story’s over, having a fragmented, disjointed thread of progression isn’t going to matter so much.

Some stories survive on how they’re told.

Arguably, that includes this one, because the anime got people through the first few volumes.

This story, primarily, survives on the quality of what it is attempting to lump together.

...Not that I don’t wish it wouldn’t try a little harder to pace itself, but I suppose all that energy is being spent on Eren. You know. Since he’s the only one who has any of the parts of the plot that matter.

Uh.

As far as what actually happened this chapter, yay for Mikasa showing attachment to Kiyomi and crew. Intrigue for the question of where Eren is being such a topic (he’s a fucking giant stegosaurus last I saw figure it out). Sadness for Samuel being on the wrong side after surviving so long (Connie probably remembers Sasha saving his life). Sadness for Reiner trying to spare his friends the pain of what he went through for his cause. Pat on the head for Annie still being impossibly Annie. Pat on the head for Onyankopon just because (sorry about your life yikes).

The absolute funniest part of all of this, to me, is that Daz is now dead.

Beats freezing to death in a blizzard while two teenagers shout about philosophy over your unconscious body?

Anyway, another month goes by.

Much the way waves do in Wind Waker.