#like… okay…. i love berserk and i think its a story with important things to say and a lot of nuance and interesting philosophy. thats the

[kaledya]

I'm will mess the order of our conversations but I need to explain how the things happened !

So I was on Youtube, and i saw your post about you wanting to do some dark fantasy/steampunk story on your own world (and it is also my favorite type of book but with more fantasy politics I'm writing in my langage) and I was so hyped for the idea like putting some pom-pom girl outfit or whatever to encourage you to do it!!

Like let's go ! You have the potential and I will watch it all ! (Well not that my support can really help cause I have no influence on internet whatsoever but ahah) I will love it ! Like slayyyy🌸🌸🌸

And then I thought perhaps you had some concept art already on tumblr so I go here and then... IMMEDIATELY was attacked by your gift  and I was not ready. Kaledya *take my hamster* Like the doodles are so sooo cute !

First, Narrator is smooth. Ah ! My crazy baby. Just by the shape of his smile you know its over ahah

Second, Lolicia's second outfit (thanks bg3 again) and just, I just love how calm she looks.🌸 You did her so well, I need to try to do a profile like that for her!

Third, my favorite, the Human Lolicia. So pretty! First the doodles with the big eyes ! I love when you do that with the characters its very adorable. And her human face and the look is so Lolicia i think like soft and... unhinged a bit scary. Love it.

Fourth, Vittorio aaaah. So mischievous. *take my Astarion hamster back.*

Thank you ! I was not prepared! I know I was suppose to be. But I was not ahah. I will gift you back !🌸

_

I'm glad you liked the gift ! I will draw more and hopefully get better and better !

And fore the shape-shifting idea of Constantine for justifying differents type of horns is 🌸clever🌸. All questions of people answered just by that!

Also yes thank you, I just play doll with Lolicia's outfit and I justify it by saying its Velvette who makes it ahah

_

Anw I like your OCs too! And yes Narrator steal hearts of everyone I saw, good for him ahah ! Oh yes ! I think even if Constantine had a very strict and extreme education, even princes had time to go out with "friends" even if Constantine never really had friends before Serinity he still had guys of his age to spent time with sometimes and they just had a moment to be free a bit. So teen Constantine and Verdelet/Narrator we will see them in the short story !

I saw Turkish people weaponry in museum too! I don't like guns of our times but old riffles like that ? Yes. And don't mention Berserk like its not a trauma manga 😭 ahah

_

I love all of your designs I just don't say it all the time but I do!

_

I just love when you give all the comments about the chapters, rating about the songs and the ambiance (thank you again i just can't-) and then you just like :

You : So beautiful, I love it but now THE REAL DEAL, I don't fucking care, I want to know ABOUT LOLICIA...

And that just kill me with laugh. Every. Time.

_

Also for your exams (that is a damn important part) glad you made it to your first exam ! And for your boss exam just take an armor, focus on shading and proportion and just go for it. Slay! Everything will be okay *pom pom girl movement* Just slap that ART exam in the face.

The villain career just killed me twice ! Honestly, I can write your villain songs no problem. Let me just kidnapped a musician real quick just in case...

_

Thank you ! And you will do a fantastic animator once you are in that university of animation you want to be in. I'm not even worry, you have made a lot of progress since your first and last animatics on youtube for exemple, from the positioning of the characters, the dramatic effect linked to the music lyrics, the differents perspectives and the little details in the poses and camera work. So continue to be what you are !🌸🌸🌸

Now I will write !

OMG!!! Do you like the steampunk/fantasy theme too!!?? I'm so glad to hear that!! I seriously love this theme, both visually and in terms of the factors it adds to the story.

Right now, in my mind, the place where the first part of the story will take place will be a city that relies on technology and does not have much magic. Maybe it could be a region with class distinctions, a bit like the cyberpunk universe.

Or a universe where there is a lot of life difference between the nobles (wealthy people) and the Lower class people. in Red Rising and Mistborn While one side lives a rosy life amidst wealth, the other side is drowned in misery.

And did I understand correctly? Are you writing your own story about this concept in your own language??

SHOW MEEEEEE (in niffty's voice)

And THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! AND YOUR WORDS MEAN A LOT TO ME, THANKS A LOT!!❤️❤️❤️ And it doesn't matter whether you have an influence on the internet or not, you are someone whose work I love very much, it is an honor to be supported by you!)

---

YAAAAAAAAAY *gently takes the hamster* I'M SO GLAD YOU LIKED IT!!!! I wish I could draw them more now. I love all of them very much, and I love Verdelet more and more with each passing chapter! Lolicia is great as always and not to mention Abaddon. I want to draw him so bad and I'm so excited for Charlie's meeting with him!

*kindly gives the hamster back*

----

And definitely! Constantine was someone who thought that there could be alliances in hell, but even those he thought friendship was impossible, this changed with Serenity, but it was a very sloooooow process. Even then, at first, instead of calling Serenity a friend, Constantine says this "she is tolerable or I find her amusement."So it really was a long process of acceptance for him.

And yes! Although Constantine had no friends when he was young, he spent a lot of time with people at his age: his cousins, or other high nobles like Verdelet!

And I read that short story and loved it!!Constsntine's training sequence, the dialogues between him and Verdelet, everything!! I really loved the dialogues and dynamics of Verdelet and Constantine. It was great to read the little adventure between them!!

And I love brothel story arcs for some reason too.Strangely, very rich story arcs can occur in brothels. I always think of the Yoshiwara arc in Gintama, it was a really great arc.

Also, the scenes where Verdelet takes Constantine to the brothel and they live there were beautiful!

Con: These pants are not coming on tonight. *" You dont have my attention "by looking at the brothel*

Verdelet:HAH! I never said anything like that *rips out someone's heart and shows it to Con* We're just going to do a live anatomy lesson" *"well.. you got my attention now"*

The short story was a seriously fun read!

--

Definitely! In general, everything that is old seems more artistic to me, even the rain pipes on buildings.

Yes, it was a trauma (experiences traumatic flashback), but on the other hand, it was a masterpiece manga. It was a perfect manga, both in terms of story and drawings.(funny part is, I'm wearing a Berserk t-shirt while writing this part)

----

And (⁠´⁠⊙⁠ω⁠⊙⁠`⁠)⁠→of course I will do this, you always bless me in your writing

And LMAO I love Lolicia and your OCs in general. Sometimes I even say, "Damn the general plot, I want to see these characters."Looking forward to Lolicia and Con meeting *getting ready to draw ship fanart*

And all joking aside, I love the designs you chose for your OCs in general and I also love their personalities. They are so fun to read. On the other hand, if you write a story that is told only POW of your OCs Please send it to me, I'll be happy to read it! 🛐🛐

---

And thank you very much for the support!!!! I hope I can win by working hard But just in case *prepares rope for kidnapping*

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR KIND WORDS!!!!❤️❤️❤️

____

Now it's time to talk about short stories. The short story between Azrael and Abaddon was simply a masterpiece.I loved the dialogues between them, their protection details were very nice.I really liked Abaddon's personality, you really created a beautiful character.

Michael's idea of giving Charlie and Constantine a blessing to prevent them from going to the dark side was really interesting.At least it clearly worked on Charlie. 2x cinnamon rolls

And Azrael taking care of Lucifer's ducks was so sweet!!

I'm seriously excited to see abaddon in the future.

And I LOVED ABADDON'S DESIGN AND AZRAEL LOOKS AMAZING !!!

In short, thank you again for blessing my eyes!!

Have a good day❤️❤️

[magadauthan]

Ep 10: Quick Draw

Today's recap for @trigun98watchparty. Aw man, I love this one. It's perfect.

Vash's pajamas are the best, aren't they? <3

--This introductory interlude is so nice. It's the first time we hear Vash really talk about himself. He just wants to be a regular guy, in his adorable PJs (who on the planet would believe that Vash the Stampede wears jammies?), putting his pants on one leg at a time in the morning, cooking himself breakfast, talking to the birdies, reading the newspaper. And his hair is all messed up. Go get that boy, Meryl.

--That "you look like my dead girl/boyfriend" has never worked in the history of ever.

--there's a sublime irony in workaholic early-twentysomething Meryl lecturing Vash that he should doing something more worthwhile than playing with kids. After 130-ish years, Vash has more than enough data to have concluded that eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids is about the most worthwhile thing he can do.

--Wolfwood, you twerp. Playing Vash like a violin. (or, he thinks he does; Vash would have helped out either way.)

--OH MERYL YOU'RE SO MAD she's so mean to him omg and Milly gets it right again

--Vash's stat sheet! If WW filled it out... how does he know Vash's blood type, exactly? (yes, I understand the Japanese thing about blood types and how Vash fits the O "profile." Probably an O-neg, at that.)

--How's that pride taste, Meryl? Goes down better with a bottle of booze? Okay, now they're all friends. Love how this scene gets subverted in BR when it's Meryl who gets drunk off her ass and Milly has to carry her home.

--Poor Wolfwood, hoist by his own petard. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to pull a fast one on Vash the Stampede.

--2/2 for Milly.

--The level of mutual trust that Vash and WW have already built speaks volumes to their shared sense of justice; it hasn't been beaten out of WW entirely. That sense comes from very different origins, but the two of them end in the same place.

--STOP FLIRTING, YOU TWO, AND GET A ROOM.

--Cross Punisher makes its debut! (WW's berserk mode is a bit overdone imo)

--The feet belong to Chapel, presumably.

--Meryl and Milly, get yourselves a man who can cook.

--If I were Neil's mom, I'm not sure that I wouldn't be kicking Dad to the curb after he ran out, but eh. Love and Peace?

Nothing of any real plot importance happens in this ep... but everything of plot importance happens in this ep. The entire story arc is meaningless if Vash and Wolfwood don't have a bond. That bond makes each of them question why, exactly, are they doing what they're doing. (are you listening, Orange? Get on it.) Friends, nakama, comrades, lovers... pick one and make it stick.

[rueitae]

Season 2, Episode 7: the crackle goes kiwi caper for @csweekly

AKA, one more week until Stockholm. Get pumped.

This opening is so cool. Love how it’s so seamless from the previous episode. We were promised Moscow and that’s what we get. There is a nice tension to the scene too that Player doubles down on. He’s glad to hear the IDs worked, which means they weren’t sure that they would.

Hello Mr Rhys Darby nice to hear your voice again. I would support your promotion to Faculty.

Dr Bellum has SEVEN uncles. And she hates figures of speech. I love??? These moments?? The Faculty are evil but also silly and completely human. It’s these moments that humanize them. Give them depth.

It is. SO cool to see Shadowsan vs Neal here. Maybe it’s because they’re in disguise, and Neal is an older operative, and they’ve got history, or maybe because it we get to see Carmen and Shadowsan really slickly working together on a caper. Up until now they’ve all been mostly improv. We are in the thick of it now.

Love the sibs getting to work on the warehouse and make it like home. Its productive for them! Look at Ivy’s smile! Zack’s sandwich!

OH yes! Okay Shadowsan is able to confirm for Carmen that Bellum wiped Gray’s mind. I love this moment because team red now has the most complete picture of the whole situation now that Shadowsan’s with them. And Player. Is so funny. He says “fair enough” with his eyes closed, finally surrendering the idea that Crackle is a sleeper agent. Listen, this kid does not like Crackle one bit and this scene just emphasizes it.

Also! Cool that Bellum just always has a project and wants to solve things. She’s a true mad scientist.

The enthusiasm with which Zack looks up to Shadowsan absolutely kills me. Shadowsan never speaks about ninjas in a particularly positive light because that’s what he is, and he knows it’s dark. But Zack puts a positive spin on it. He’s in awe of this man. He wants to learn. ~~he wants a dad~~

Zack. Ivy. nO.

Player what.

WHAT IS THAT GESTURE? Who is gonna sign him (and Carmen and Zack and Ivy) for drama club?

“Player has wicked awesome gamer reflexes” how many rounds of Mario Kart have you lost, Zack? Tell me.

Player offering to use Crackle? Interesting. Must be fully convinced he’s clean then.

Also I appreciate that Carmen says “we can’t pull him back into the game”. Nice little nod to the CS PC games. And that was a 90s Carmen theme too.

But also this episode makes me so mad, just get Player a plane ticket and sell the story to his parents. It’s okay. I’m fine.

The way Gray barely looks at her and is all “you’re late”. Magnificent.

Okay but Shadowsan waiting for the cable guy is an important job.

Okay. Take one moment to appreciate how pretty cool and unique this caper is.

Listen. LISTEN. how funny it would be if “Peter” were actually Player’s legal name. He’s using his legal name as an ALIAS. That's next level crazy. That’s gotta be worth it’s own fic or at least a plot point in one. I’m totally cool with continuing to find fun ways to keep referring to him as Player in fics but this is one instance I might be moved to actually use a non canon name, because there are so many ways to take it.

My “Player has a grudge on Crackle” agenda goes berserk in this episode. They literally talk to each other and have NO idea. My mind is buzzing. Player does it for Carmen but how many times is he thinking about the “my best SCHOOL friend” line. (Not much because he’s comfortable and confident in his friendship but these kids are petty let me live)

So, Gray, what you’re SAYING, is that you wouldn’t mind doing the lighting for Boston.

The way Carmen dances to the music while doing her thing this caper is so cool.

Was. Was Neal the one Black Sheep stole the belt from in her flashback? I wonder that sometimes. It’s so interesting to hear the perspective of an older operative who watched her grow up there.

The panic Player has at the change of plans. Nice show of multitasking too he’s literally typing and not looking.

I love this entire near miss. Bellum, Neal, Gray could have all seen each other so easily this entire part of the episode.

And here’s what I love about Carmen. Between finishing the mission and keeping Gray safe, she doesn’t hesitate.

AH that moment he USES the crackle rod and Carmen is HOLDING her breath if he’ll remember but he doesn’t!

ULTIMATUM!!!! I love a good ultimatum. I don’t think this series has had one yet like this? Like this is super big stakes. I love Bellum. She’s kooky mad scientist who wants to solve problems and the next SECOND she’s like “let’s destroy the rice and starve a whole population” and “let’s cut the power to hospitals and air traffic” like. The others want valuable objects but Bellum’s solo capers are just??? Actual life or death???? It’s chilling. And I just love it when a character is told to surrender or else it’s one of my favorite tropes. VILE is still wanting her alive at this point.

I’m actually fully convinced, that, if given more seasons, there would have been a time travel episode courtesy of Bellum as a nod to the 90a series. This episode further lays the groundwork for her wanting to solve scientific mysteries

Love the parallels to Casablanca here.

Haha. Carmen crashes with her glider two episodes in a row. (I am salivating over next week already)

Carmen is SO relieved that Gray wants to be one of the good guys.

“I do provide a service and it is secret” lol

Player found his bank account lolol not the first time he’s found and tampered with a bank account

VILE never laid eyes in Gray! Player double checking what Carmen wants to do about him, making sure she feels safe since he saw her doing her thief stuff. Carmen’s at peace that he doesn’t remember VILE…

Which ACME is about to COMPLETELY ruin.

Next week, Rue goes feral over the amount of angst and whump in one episode for EVERYONE. But particularly Carmen. I could watch it all day.

[cuntstable]

i would honest rather kill myself than watch this but thanks youtube

[akampana]

My friend and i came to a interesting conclusion.

We both think that a chance of "redeption" for the way Saberlot is treated by the game could present itself with the possible release of Guinevere as a servant, where we could have her have an event with lancelot that would help clarify things. This comes out of my idea that Lancelot remorse is also greatly influenced by the way he treated her, and the possibility that the forgiveness or punishment he seeks might not come from Arturia, like he thinks.

This however is a double edged sword because 1 50% risk of making her another sexualized stereotype 2 reduce her as another secondary character if not written well enough.

I am also afraid that this could come out incredibly wrong, because i don't think she should simply forgive him, as the way he treated her was incredibly cruel in my opinion. But at the same time, i believe that in order to finally develop his character and break him out of the infamous image, we would also need the third individual integral to the story, and the one i believe suffered directly from its result.

I think Saberlot gets the brunt of the NTR jokes because he's the only one whose fatherhood is so blatant, considering Mash.

I'd hope for a Guinevere servant, but at this point, I'm not sure we'll get one. There's a lot of Arthurian Servants around as is, not even counting the ones coming in the latest LB. But we can still hope. :3

I'd kill for an event but damn. Maybe even just an interlude??? Please??? A lot of the interludes (off the top of my head, I think of Enkidu's) have insanely good writing that really adds to the characters. For Saberlot specifically, I think an interlude set in London would be pretty good, one in which we meet the Knights (including Agravain, because if they aren't gonna give him as a servant, might as well reuse his fcking art), a version of Arturia, and Guinevere.

This is just my personal take:

Based on what we have on Lancelot so far, it seems he's basically just...taking the insults (jokingly perhaps) cause he thinks he probably deserves to be treated that way anyway, on account of his sins. We can also assume Arturia has just preserved the status quo, meaning she hasn't really changed her stance on the cuckolding either.

In his interlude, I think it's important he gets to talk to Tristan, who was the first deserter, Agravain, who discovered the affair, Gareth, who he killed to liberate Guinevere, then Gawain, who prevented him from joining Camlann In that order, where all the knights finally get the opportunity to air out their grievances. Gareth, for example, gets to ask him "why did you kill me when I admired you so much" instead of just being okay with it and continuing to be a Lancelot fangirl. Agravain literally just tears him up without holding back. Gawain finally gets to hash out their issues that did not start and end with the murder of his siblings.

And at the end of it all, Lancelot realizes that they'd all just been keeping the peace, and everyone was just as torn up as he is. Literally no one was as okay as he thought. Which gives him the courage to finally speak up to the person he meets next.

Arturia.

He finally admits that all he wants is punishment. He asks why she wouldn't just give it to him.

And (based on diarmuid's interlude Arturia knows who he is and therefore Fate zero happened you can't change my mind) she flashes back to her battle with him as a Berserker. It makes even more sense now why Berserker was so aggressive toward her.

And then Arturia tells him that she used to lament how it all ended, but that a certain redhead helped her accept the ending she achieved and finally lay to rest. So even as Servants, she doesn't wish to punish Saberlot, and she hopes he'll forgive her wanting to make amends instead. She then advises him to accept his past as well. She has.

So by this time Lancelot's gotten his resolutions from the people that matter most to him. He now understands the Knights' grievances with his sins (and the rather... questionable ways they compensated or covered it up) then eventually realized he would never get punishment from Arturia, but that she has accepted her fate. From what he can tell as well, Arturia has finally lightened up a bit.

So why does he still feel guilty even after all those talks? He still has one more loose end to tie up

This is where we finally get Guinevere (honestly she can have one of those stock faces or something I'd be happy for any Guin content at this point). They discuss what happened with his relationship. He says he's sorry he wasn't around when she died at the convent, she says she's sorry they let their guilt eat at them their whole lives, and that now that he has a second chance, he shouldn't squander it.(bonus if you ship Lancetoria, a subtle reference to that line in Einzbern consultation room where he admits he loved his king more, with which Guinevere laughs and says that she knew that already).

After more discussion on how their relationship ended, Guinevere is able to walk away with a smile as Saberlot returns to Chaldea, this time free of all that burdened him and ready to start again without anything weighing him down.

I just want good things for Lancelot. Really.

(edit: I wasn't able to fit in mo-san and bedi but they could totally talk too)

(edit edit: the other possibility I saw was him talking to servants that went through something similar, i.e. lancer Diarmuid (their legends are literally the quite the same) and maybe Fionn(but don't quote me on that idk enough about his fgo version yet)

[nox-artemis]

Isidro brings out the worst in Berserk (or, me going on a long, dumb tangent like the old days)

Tis’ time.

I was watching The Kavernacle’s recent upload about how a lot of anime capitalizes on this weird fetishization of women and girls - which is for the most part true and is why I personally try to stay clear of a lot of anime. Honestly, any anime that focuses way too much on the “Japanese school girl” archetype and anime that depict nearly all female characters as though they’re still in the adolescent stage either behavior-wise or “phenotypically” (like that moe shit) kind of weirds me out. 

Berserk has kind of stayed away from this, but it seems like it teeters on that because so many of the female characters in the series are under the age of 20. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that but I noticed in the chapters where the Guts’ party first arrived on Elfhelm, the character designs were on the borderline of giving characters that round cherubic type face, but especially with the female characters. In the recently chapters (From the last two years) Miura seems to have chiseled the style again, which is more preferable IMHO.

But I think this kind of tangles into some wider problems I find with some character designs. If people remember me and my content, probably my biggest gripe with Berserk as a series was its usage of sexual violence toward women. It still bugs me but I can give Miura credit in that he seems to have teetered away from using it so exploitatively. THAT SAID, I think as an older fan (and an older person altogether) I think a bigger overarching issue with Berserk is that Miura was never really that good at creating female characters.

(I can have so many interesting opinions now that I don’t care about making friends within this fandom)

No I’m not saying people shouldn’t draw any adult female character with more youthful features (I mean, as some who is at that age where I experience ageism, a lot of people - particularly men - believe that as soon as a woman hits 25 they’re suppose to shrivel up??? 🤨) just -

DON’T KNOW WHY A LOT OF (MALE) CREATORS DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT WOMEN CAN HAVE DIVERSE FEATURES AND DIVERSE PERSONALITY TYPES.

I think that diatribe is for another day (I know I’ve been explaining this to other people on my other social media during my Tumblr hiatus). But to condense what I’m saying, I notice that there isn’t a lot of age diversity of female characters: most of the female characters are in adolescent. Now, I don’t think it was a big issue in early Berserk because - and even though I still take some issue with how over-exploitation was handled - we still got to explore these young girls as characters whether it were girls like Casca, Theresia, Rosine(Rosalind), Jill, or even Erica and we’re meant empathize with the cruelty (or potential cruelty in the case of Erica) that the world dished out to them. Even with Luca and her gang we got explore the concept of sisterhood if just for a bit.

Now there’s less of that - WHICH CAN BE A GOOD THING because not every female character’s traumatic origin has to be rooted in a gender-based violence backstory. I like having Schierke not having a clear backstory and being “wise beyond her years” and we can just keep it that way. Only problem is that I see a lot more that weird lol!con humor when it comes to her - especially with her relationship with Guts. 

I’m thinking of the excuse they use in hentai where, “the young prepubescent girl character is really a 7000 year old demon-lord from another dimension - so it’s not really p*doph!l!a.” Schierke is way mature for her own age, so she’s practically an adult. 😒

This isn’t just an issue with Schierke. Like, I notice a lot of up-skirt shots with these newer young girl characters; with Isma it’s kind of worse because she also embodies that “too naïve to know that she’s a turn on” when she’s like what? Thirteen? Fourteen?? I guess we’re also given the excuse that a lot of these characters are magical/supernatural/near-human so you can away with a lot more. Now that they’re on Elfhelm and there is a litany of these female characters  we just have a bunch of the fantasy-universe version of the Japanese school girl shit, where we enter - 

Ugh. Isidro.

I wasn’t too fond of him the beginning but I could appreciate his place a little. But his introduction was the point where we we start to see more of that typical dumb, pervy schoolboy humor in the series. I get it: Isidro is a teenage boy.

So was Guts.

And Griffith.

And Rickert.

And it’s just as important to have a diversity of young boy characters as well, but it’s just that for the amount of spotlight Isidro is given, not much of it is meaningful, especially in recent chapters. If anything his character is devolving IMO. MAYBE it’s some weird affect that Elfhelm has on him and other characters that is yet to be explored, but I somehow doubt it. Maybe it’s a phase that’ll be gone soon. I dunno. 

Maybe just overall the time spent on Elfhelm isn’t being spent as productively as I had hoped for. I mean BY NO MEANS AM I OVERLOOKING THE FACT THAT AFTER OVER 20 YEAR OF WAITING CASCA IS FINALLY CURED WHICH IS BY FAR THE BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT IN THIS SERIES EVER but I think with so much anticipation of what comes next for her and Guts it’s frustrating to see other side stories that aren’t focused on their to reconciliation spent so frivolously. We got a bit with Guts and the Berserker armor; we got a bit with Schierke and her training; we got a bit with Farnese and her training; we got a bit with Casca retraining her self and her trauma.

See what I’m getting at a bit? We’re just getting bits and shit, it seems. No streamline story arc. We get introduced to one bit and then POP where at some other point with some other character. I get that things are a bit different in this setting because this is the first time in a long while that Guts, Casca and their company are actually physically safe from the affects of the formers’ brands. I with so much rest and recreation time I WANT there to be more retrospective time as well. 

I’ve said elsewhere that I’m super duper disappointed with how Puck has gone downhill, especially in regard to he and Guts’ relationship. We haven’t gotten any sort of meaningful interaction with him since Isidro came into the story. AND EVEN BETWEEN THE TWO OF THEM IT’S MORE OR LESS MEANINGLESS FRIVOLITY. Couldn’t Puck and Isidro be using their on-screen time more wisely, even if it has to be away from each other. What happened to Isidro wanting to be a bad-ass swordsman? Like, just being associated with two badass swordsmen (now that Casca is active again) is not a replacement for character/skill development. DO SOMETHING. BE INSPIRED OR SOME SHIT (INSTEAD OF LOOKING UP WITCH SKIRTS).

And what the hell is Serpico doing? And Roderick? And aren’t there like three or four other -

- OKAY this is what happens when have these big ass fantasy adventure parties where only a third of the occupants actually contribute shit of merit. That’s why the O.G. Band of the Hawk worked; I guess that’s neo Band of the Hawk technically works but I just don’t give a shit about them because #fuckgriffith.

GOD DAMMIT I JUST NEED THE STORY TO GET BACK TO THE HOLY TRIAD CHARACTERS ALREADY (GUTS-GRIFFITH-CASCA). PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET MOONLIGHT BOY BE A BRIDGE TO THAT HAPPENING SOON. щ(ಠ益ಠщ)

I think I have to stop here.

Don’t you miss this? Me starting on one note and ending on something completely different but universally important?)

[sockparade]

tips for surviving the pandemic: things i learned from my immigrant parents

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a little over a week since the WHO announced that the coronavirus (COVID-19) was officially a pandemic. This has been a long, challenging week for a lot of people and it is nothing short of terrifying to read reports of what is happening in Asia and Europe as many predict that we’ll likely endure a similar fate here in the United States. In the midst of all of this chaos and uncertainty, I’ve been reminded of so many lessons that my Taiwanese immigrant parents taught me. I’m sharing them here so that others might also benefit. Thanks Ma. Thanks Daddy.

你昨天已經出去了.

“You already went out yesterday.“

1. Learn how to stay home. Our family is eight days into self-isolating at home and Tony asked me this morning if I had cabin fever. And strangely, the answer is no. I’m not. Not to downplay the difficulty of this moment but my experience with this “shelter-in-place” ordinance reminds of pretty much all my summers between kindergarten and 8th grade. Both of my parents worked full-time so summer was just three blissful months of nothing. No structure, no plans, no camps, no playdates, and no responsibilities. My parents never made me feel like I was missing a thing by staying home and I don’t remember ever feeling bored. There were always library books to read, stories to write, and thoughts to journal. Hours were spent playing school with my big sister (now a first grade teacher!), making up random games like who can avoid touching the carpet longest, learning Kim Zmeskal’s latest gymnastics floor routine, writing lyrics to Kenny G saxophone solos, and rehearsing for our variety show that we would perform to our tired parents at the end of the day. And that’s not even including the hours we spent watching The Price is Right, CHIPS, Knight Rider, and Airwolf (yep, no cable).   

As a teenager I carefully plotted all my hangouts with friends so that I didn’t have too many consecutive days when I was out of the house. Whenever I asked my parents if I could hang out with friends, they would always say, “But you already went out yesterday. What’s wrong with staying home? Why do you always have to go out?” It was as if having too much fun two days in a row was off limits. If there was a big party on Friday, I would purposely make sure I stayed home Wednesday and Thursday just to increase the chances of being able to go out on Friday. I know a lot of people talk about how awful their high school years were but I was one of those lucky kids who had a really great group of friends that made me feel seen, loved, and cared for. The downside was that I couldn’t get enough of it. I was always thinking about the next hangout, the next event, the next thing. It took me all the way until my late twenties to fully appreciate the fine art of staying home and to finish my unexpected transformation into the expert homebody that I am today. 

I’m reminded of that old quote by Blaise Pascal, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." 

It’s great to be out and about, but it’s also really important to learn how to stay home.  

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晚上要吃什麼？清冰箱.

“What are we eating for dinner?” “Cleaning the fridge.”

2. Be creative with what you have. I love food. Not in a foodie sense, but I get a lot of pleasure out of eating. I’m not a food snob by any stretch of the imagination. I thoroughly enjoy a Stouffer’s frozen lasagna or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as much as I enjoy a fancy, inventive, Michelin-starred meal at Commis. What’s hard for me is when food is eaten as sustenance rather than with delight. But my parents taught me that you can always take pride in preparing a meal. No matter your ingredients.

My mom is an excellent cook. I know a lot of people think their mom is a good cook but my mom is legitimately skilled in the kitchen. There were some nights when I’d ask what was for dinner and my mom would just reply, “Cleaning the fridge.” 

Now for some, this might sound terrifying. But my mom could honestly make something out of nothing. I still crave my dad’s simple egg and garlic fried rice. My parents raised me to be able to make an tasty meal just from rummaging in the pantry and fridge for random leftover things. There were plenty of summers where lunches and snacks were an individual culinary adventure for each of us kids. I still remember the day I witnessed my baby sister add a Kraft single on top of her onion ramen noodles. She saw my confusion, shrugged and said, “You should try it, it’s good.” 

With all the hoarding folks have been doing during this pandemic, I’ve found myself feeling quite anxious. Trying to calculate if we have enough food. Estimating how many more meals we can eat at home before we need to make another grocery run. As someone who struggles with a scarcity mentality it has been hard not to panic. But then I keep reminding myself that I know how to make good food using just whatever’s available. 

You know, I was pretty disappointed with Mary H.K. Choi’s second novel, Permanent Record, given how much I enjoyed her debut novel, Emergency Contact. But I was absolutely thrilled with the shine she gave to what her protagonist calls “Hot Snacks”.

Here’s an excerpt from Permanent Record that is a beautiful ode to creative food mashups and immigrant kids everywhere: 

“I edit and post a Shin Ramyun Black video set to music. My favorite instant noodles with three flavor packets and so much garlic. It’s a classic Korean HotSnack, especially when you throw in cut-up hot dogs, frozen dumplings, extra kimchi - and this is where the artistry comes in- eggs, cheese, corn from a can, and a drizzle of sesame oil on top. And furikake if you’re feeling wealthy. The next night I put up a bacon, egg, and cheese not in a bagel but in a glazed honey bun. Laced with sriracha and pan fried on the outside. Then it’s chilaquiles with Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos and chorizo. Jamaican beef patty casserole disrespected with a smothering of Japanese curry and broiled. With Crystal Hot Sauce over the top and pickled banana peppers. I’m trolling with that one but the controversy is berserk. When I run out of old videos, I make saag paneer naanchos with Trader Joe’s frozen Indian food, and it’s a hit. Especially when I add yogurt and a thick layer of crushed-up Takis on top.”

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看連續劇.

“Watch soap operas.” 

3. Find a way to escape. I’m generally pro technology but I’ll admit I’m a little bummed at the way iPhones and iPads have made TV viewing such an individual activity. I like how Disney+ has gotten some families back to watching TV together again. Although I will say, we really coddle our kids these days. I grew up in a time when movie ratings only applied in the theaters and we watched movies with our families like Alien, The Fly, and Gremlins. We were scared out of our minds and sometimes could only watch through the cracks between our fingers covering our eyes because it was so scary. Okay, this also might be why I can’t watch horror movies as an adult. 

From a young age, my parents taught me that watching other people’s drama unfold on screen is one of the best way to escape your own drama. Some people say binge watching became a thing when the TV networks started releasing shows on DVD. Others give credit to Netflix releasing their original content a whole season at a time. But truth be told, I first learned how to binge watch from my parents. 

We would rent 30-40 VHS cassette tapes from that random spot in Bellaire Chinatown. Can you picture it? You needed multiple plastic bags to transport that many VHS tapes. 

Do you remember the one about the dying mother who needed to find homes for each of her 7 children? I don’t think it’s normal for a 10 year old to cry so much but you better believe it’s made me learn the true value of a soap opera escape hatch. 

Are you in a pandemic? Now’s the perfect time to pick up that YA novel, binge that reality show, start that kdrama, or rewatch all six seasons of The Sopranos again.

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下個禮拜會下雨.

“It’s going to rain next week.”

4. Be informed about what’s ahead. If you ask either of my parents about the weather at any given time they can reliably tell you the daily percent chance of precipitation and humidity for at least seven days out. They’ve always been this way. They would inform me of the weather at various points throughout the week. They planned their yard work and car washes around the weather forecast. There’s something about the way the weather forecast is available to everyone. And it feels like it’s just a matter of making the small extra effort to access it and gain a slight advantage. I feel like so much of the immigrant mentality is to be diligent in making the right choices to not screw yourself over and seizing opportunities whenever you can. And it wasn’t just weather but this is such an obvious example of it. 

I remember my dad saying to me once, "Can you imagine if someone decided to read every book in their local library? If they just went shelf by shelf and systematically read all the books? You could do it, you know. It’s free, it doesn’t cost any money to check out a book from the library. But no one really does it.” 

I think immigrant parents get a bad reputation for forwarding chain letters and health/science hoaxes they get on email, WeChat and Line. And in a pandemic, yes, they are definitely susceptible to misinformation, rumors and flat out untruths. But the thought behind it seems right. 

The mistrust of government leadership is actually quite relevant right now in this pandemic. Many immigrants left countries with governments that were overtly corrupt, oppressive, and used propaganda to influence its citizens. And while many Americans still take pride in living in a country that verbally champions freedom and democracy, the truth is that our government has already failed us and lied to us in many ways. During this pandemic, we cannot wait on leaders to tell us what to do. We must be diligent in reading for ourselves, seeking experts, using our critical thinking skills, and making preparations accordingly.

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會不會冷?

“Are you cold?” 

5. Check in with yourself. Check in with others. I have so many memories of my parents walking through the living room and asking me and my sisters if we were cold. It felt like they couldn’t walk past the thermostat without asking us if they needed to raise it or lower it. As if they couldn’t hear us sneeze and wonder if they needed to turn off the ceiling fan. They couldn’t see us sitting in a dim room without turning on a light for us. There are so many times I fell asleep reading on the couch and woke up with a blanket over me. Or sometimes I was fully awake doing something random, like playing Egyptian Rat Screw with my sisters (a cardgame for the uninitiated), and my mom would walk by and wordlessly drop a warm, heavy blanket over my shoulders. That’s care, y’all. Consistent, immediate action, and often without words.  

The tip here is to pay attention to your discomfort during a pandemic. There’s this immigrant stereotype of stoicism and that’s true to some degree but maybe the resilience is made possible not because of unnatural toughness but largely because immigrant parents can also be so incredibly perceptive and tender in some very tangible ways. 

When everything is chaotic around you and you’re busy multitasking these next few months, don’t ignore your needs. Notice how you’re feeling. Physically and emotionally. Where are you carrying your stress and tension in your body? You don’t have to tough it out. Oh and remember to check in with your people on how they’re feeling. Is there a light switch you can turn on for someone? 

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笑死人.

“Laugh to death.” 

6. Laugh to survive. Look, we didn’t have the perfect family or anything like that. We’ve definitely had our share of difficult times, financial stress, health issues, arguments, and pain. But my parents also really knew how to laugh and taught us to laugh with abandon. Like, bent over, tears running out of your eyes, can’t breathe kind of laughing. Our dinner table was kind of like a writer’s room. It was difficult to tell a mediocre story. You had better come prepared with a punchline or a point. It was a tough crowd, every night. On many occasions I stopped myself halfway through a story upon the self-realization that there was no real way to land the plane. Polite laughs were nowhere to be found, except perhaps a charitable smile from my baby sister. But it didn’t stop us from trying. I think my sisters and I are all probably better storytellers for it and we definitely have learned to try to bring humor into difficult times.  

I know that this pandemic is so incredibly dark and depressing that it can sometimes feel disrespectful, inappropriate, or childish to laugh at anything. But my parents taught me that you laugh to survive. Nothing is ever so dark that you can’t find a reason to laugh. And sometimes you really need to find something to laugh about.

I’ve been taking long breaks each day from major media news outlets but I have been finding such joy and laughter from the meme creators on IG and the comedic geniuses on Twitter. In Taiwanese when something’s really funny, people will say a phrase that is imperfectly translated as laugh to death. Like you killed a person it was so funny. Now’s the time to find that content or those people who will get you to laugh to death. 

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我要去挪車.

“I’m going to go re-park the cars.” 

7. Go to bed with a plan for the next morning. I grew up in a suburb of Houston, Texas where one property developer built the entire neighborhood and used the same eight or nine floor plans for all the houses but changed up the brick and trim color to keep things interesting. Most homes have a long driveway that connects a garage set near the backdoor of a home to the street. By the time I was driving, we had four cars in total -- two in the garage and two on the driveway. At the end of the day when everyone was home for the night and my dad was getting ready to go to bed, he’d announce, “I’m going to go re-park the cars.” Then we’d all kind of stop what we were doing and rearrange the order of the cars to match our morning departure schedules. This meant figuring out who was leaving when in the morning and sometimes also prompted brief check-in conversations about any changes in our usual routine. 

In a pandemic it can sometimes feel like there are a million different things to attend to and large conceptual concerns that demand your attention. But there’s something calming and centering about spending a few minutes each night thinking through specifically what needs to happen just tomorrow. Not the day after or next week. Get super tactical and specific about what tomorrow morning looks like. Check-in with your partner about any aberrations to your schedule (e.g. I have a super important conference call at 7am tomorrow) to minimize any unnecessary surprises. There’s something magical about setting up your morning that helps you rest just a little easier at night. 

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星期三我們有禱告會.

“On Wednesdays we have prayer meeting.”

8. Make time for your spirituality. Growing up my parents both had physically demanding jobs. My mom was a seamstress for many years, providing alterations at my aunt and uncle’s dry cleaners. She later worked in an elementary school cafeteria and then eventually became a classroom aide for special needs students. My dad worked at that same dry cleaners for years until he got a job at the post office. He then became a letter carrier, delivering mail on foot. The summer months were especially grueling, carrying a heavy sack of mail in 100 degree, humid weather, and walking until sweat soaked his shirts and blisters formed on his feet. They had every excuse to skip weeknight events. But unless they were sick in bed, I can’t remember a time when they missed their weekly prayer meeting with their friends from church.  

Pandemics have an unsettling way of forcing us to confront our mortality and can trigger a bunch of unresolved shit that has been bubbling underneath the surface. We’ve lost some of our usual coping mechanisms and it can be super hard to quiet the anxieties, fears, and other demons that we usually try to keep under control. This isn’t a lecture about a particular faith or belief system. It’s just a reminder to prioritize your existential questions, your interior life, and your connection to things much bigger than yourself -- whether that’s a community, a yoga practice, a faith group, a tradition, or something else. 

I have a fledgling meditation practice that I’ve been trying to strengthen since last year. When I say fledgling I mean that sometimes I bail before the ten minutes is up and check my phone. Even though I’m not very good at it yet, I can really tell the difference on the days that I make time for it. Our church started hosting its weekly Sunday service online and that’s challenging for me because a church service feels like it’s designed to be so much about the physical rhythm of going to a place, seeing faces of people I love, hearing their voices co-mingling with mine in song and in prayer, and tasting the bread and wine in my mouth. The online service was short, and just for viewing through a zoom conference call, but there was still something meaningful about setting aside that time Sunday morning, asking our wiggly kids to be present, and saying the liturgy out loud knowing that in homes all across the country, other people are doing the same. 

If things are really going to get as bad as some are predicting, we’ll need the spiritual strength to make it to the other side. Those habits are hard to form overnight. My parents taught me that you really have to make the time for your spirituality non-negotiable, so that you won’t abandon it when it’s inconvenient or when you are too tired.    

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沒辦法.

“What choice do we have?” 

9. Rise to the occasion. Whenever my parents are telling old war stories about things they had to do to get to where they are today, inevitably one of us will say, “Man that’s crazy, how did you manage to do it?” And instead of pointing to some super personality trait of theirs or some complex self-help principle, they always say, “We had no choice.” It’s not said in a defeated way, but in a posture of accepting that life can be cruel, unfair, and capricious. And that it’s not helpful to dwell too long on the why’s and how’s. My parents taught me that you can’t stay in despair mode. You eventually have to push yourself into problem solving mode and you do whatever it takes to move forward.  

This coronavirus is so unlike anything we’ve ever experienced in our lifetime. It is so unprecedented for me that my brain is having a hard time processing the reality of what’s happening right now and the rest of my lived experience. I spent the first few days of this week just being overwhelmed, anxious, angry, and irritable. At this point though, I’m in go mode. I’m doing what needs to be done for our family and taking care of business. What choice do we have? I can hear my parents saying it. One day, if we’re lucky, we’ll say it to our kids too. 

[nadziejastar]

I have a theory regarding Saix's hatred of Xion. Xion is the personification of Sora's memories of Kairi. It is heavily implied that Kairi was wrapped up in the experiments at Radiant Garden, as were Lea and Isa. I wonder, was the connection to Kairi somehow dredging up bad memories? Just a thought.

“Aeleus, where is the girl?” Xehanort asked.

“She’s asleep…” Aeleus pointed to the capsule room in the back.

The girl was very particular—unique among people. They had not been able to create any Heartless using her heart. Perhaps because she was too young, or perhaps…

Xehanort disappeared into the capsule room.

Yeah, I wish we learned exactly what was done to Kairi. In the novels, it said they tried to create darkness using her heart, but were unable to. So, she was definitely experimented on.

One of the Ansem Reports mentioned trying to “cultivate darkness in a pure heart”. But beyond that? I have no clue. I honestly have no idea if Kairi herself being related to Xion had an impact on Saïx’s memories. Especially since Saïx couldn’t even “see” her. I think the story may have just been written that way because all those characters had something in common.

Lea and Isa were test subjects. Kairi was, too. And so was Ventus. He was Master Xehanort’s original guinea pig. Ven’s story is actually a lot like Xion’s. He wanted to sacrifice himself to protect his friends and not be used as a human weapon. Isa probably had a similar backstory, so there were a lot of parallels to him and Xion.

Saïx’s connection to Kairi was probably more indirect than direct. I think the Replica Project was innately tied to the original experiments, and that might have influenced why Saïx hated Xion so much in particular, in addition to his jealousy. It was just his hatred for Replicas in general because of what he knew about them and how they were created. That’s what brought back memories. 

One thing I am sure of is that they are entirely devoid of emotion. Perhaps further study will unlock the mysteries of the heart. Fortunately, there is no shortage of test samples. They are multiplying underground even as I write this report.

I don’t think Saïx’s feelings about Replicas make sense without his past as a human test subject. I think what Axel said in Re:CoM was meant to be a hint of his and Isa’s involvement in the experiments. Unlike Kairi, Lea and Isa were most likely made to directly interact with the Heartless in order to study their behavioral principles.

There is no doubt that the Heartless are deeply connected to the people's hearts. Further study may unravel both their motivations and the mysteries shrouding the heart. As a start, I have built a device that artificially creates Heartless. By recreating the conditions that spawn the Heartless naturally, I should be able to produce them artificially. This may be a step toward creating a heart from nothing.

Also, Lea and Isa were probably involved in an experiment to create a heart from nothing. Or in other words, a heart made out of data. This experiment involved in recreating the original conditions that spawned the Heartless naturally. The original experiments caused the subjects’ hearts to collapse. So, that experiment involved something very dark happening to them.

“Oh ho. So it’s a fight you want. Very well! Fight me, if you can!”

That was exactly the method by which Vexen would obtain Riku’s power. He was a scientist by nature, not well suited to combat…but there was no better option. All he had to do was draw out the greatest strength the boy could muster. And then, if he succeeded in mass-producing the replicas, the Organization would have greater power than ever before. Far beyond even Emblem Heartless.

Vexen deflected a strike from Soul Eater with his shield of ice. “Release your rage… Show me the strength of the darkness you harbor!”

Again and again, Riku swung his sword, and each time Vexen accumulated more of his memories and power as data.

I think the entire point of both the Replica Program and making the Emblem Heartless was to create a heart out of data. That was Even’s goal in the experiments. He was motivated by scientific advancement. Vexen fought Riku to acquire memories of him while he’s in a rage. Then he used that data and installed it into the Replica, which later grew a heart. So, his Project was successful.

It is my duty to expose what this darkness really is. I shall conduct the following experiments:

-Extract the darkness from a person's heart.

-Cultivate darkness in a pure heart.

-Both suppress and amplify the darkness within.

I think Kairi was an example of “cultivating darkness in a pure heart.” Ventus was an example of “extracting the darkness from a person’s heart.” Lea and Isa were probably involved in an experiment meant to “amplify the darkness within” one of them.

“No. It is because you are trying to hold it in. Let the dark impulses waken in the pit of your heart. Release them, here and now! Sharpen your fear into rage!” Xehanort shouted to Ventus.

I don’t know how to. There’s nothing like that in me. I can’t change my fear into rage. I’m just scared.

“You must! If you do not let the storm within you run its course, it will wipe you from the face of the world, make no mistake! Do it. Embrace the darkness. Produce for your Master the χ-Blade!”

How does the darkness within get amplified? By creating rage. How to create rage? When Ventus was experimented on, Master Xehanort was trying sharpen his fear into rage.

“Fear’s an emotion. It doesn’t exist for us.”

“But…I am feeling it. I’m scared right now.” Axel and Xion ceasing to exist—the thought was even more frightening to him than his own termination. Roxas didn’t want to dwell on it at all.

Axel looked away into the distance. “Something in you probably does remember what it’s like to be scared. So you think you’re feeling it now.”

Day 150 is called “Fear”. This was an important idea to Axel’s backstory. On this day, Axel and Roxas talk about what they couldn’t bear to lose. Axel says fear isn’t something Nobodies can feel.

“Man, don’t scare us like that,” Axel complained.

“I’ll try not to.”

“You stay in bed, okay? Take it easy.”

“I will,” she said meekly and smiled at them. “Thanks, guys.”

But on Day 193, Axel was scared when Xion collapsed. He was very pissed off at Saïx, too, for knowingly putting him in a situation that would make him feel fear. To me, it seemed like he remembered being scared of losing Isa. Something very traumatic happened.

Saïx: Did it break again? That didn’t take long.

Axel: Keep your mouth shut.

Saïx: You have changed... Something at Castle Oblivion changed you. Does the past mean nothing to you now?

Saïx was mad, too. He was remembering something traumatic from the past as well. And the “broken” comment set Axel off.

“You see how powerless you are to save them? Savor that rage and despair. Let it empower you!”

What good was the power of light if it couldn’t save his two friends? It was meaningless. He would be able to save them if he was strong enough.

If so…If that’s how it is…

“Yes, boy, that’s it! More! Let your whole heart blacken with anger!”

Terra didn’t care that the power thrumming through him belonged to the darkness. As long as it made him strong.

Basically, once the apprentices learned how the Heartless behaved and what motivated them, I think they decided to perform an experiment to recreate the conditions that spawned the original Heartless. This was so that they could get the necessary data to create a heart. So, they decided to amplify the darkness in Lea’s heart to turn him into a Heartless. They knew his biggest fear, which was losing Isa. They were probably going to torture and kill Isa right in front of Lea. Lea’s fear would sharpen into rage and they could use the data from those memories to create a heart. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m protecting those islands!” Riku rushed into range, but this time the Claymore, Saïx’s sword, was there to block Soul Eater.

“How do you expect to protect anything when you’ve cloaked yourself in darkness? You sold your soul for power. Was it worth it?”

Isa just so happens to have a berserk mode, which is pure RAGE. I think Isa was the one who went berserk during this experiment. He was not the intended target.

“Wait—you had your fun on the first floor.” Larxene flashed her most bewitching smile. “This time, it’s my turn.”

“…Don’t break him,” were the words that slipped unconsciously out of Axel’s mouth.

“Ohhh, do I detect a soft spot?”

“You don’t trust me?” Larxene slumped in mock disappointment. “I know when to let up. I’m not stupid enough to break my toys.”

Isa was just a toy. Someone (probably Braig) had fun torturing him and used his screams of pain and anguish to try and get Lea to succumb to darkness. He went berserk and became possessed by darkness, but he was motivated by love, so his heart did not collapse and he didn’t become a Heartless, making him the special and unique Subject X and a vessel.

“No, I won’t do it. He told me the only way the χ-Blade can be forged is if you and me fight. Well, guess what? I’m not fighting,” Ven said, his back still turned.

“You used to be too broken to talk back,” Vanitas retorted.

But Isa was probably “broken” after that ordeal, like Ventus was originally.

Day 150: Dealing with Xion

Author: Saïx

As expected, the Duplicate is starting to show its limits. The Program showed promise, but a puppet is just a puppet: something to be toyed with until it breaks. I am utterly at a loss as to what Roxas and Axel see in that thing. How best to dispose of it merits my consideration going forward.

It’s no wonder why Saïx would hate a Replica, if he knew they were created from memories of conflict and rage. It’d bring back memories for sure, no matter who the Replica was based on. And I think he probably did know how Replicas were made. Even Axel was a lot more understanding of Saïx’s treatment of Xion once he realized she was a Replica. He even felt uncomfortable around her at first, too.

[littlepurinsesu]

V Watches MagiReco - Season 1 Review

*Spoilers for Magia Record Anime*

If you’ve been been following my weekly reviews on the Magia Record anime, you’ll know that my “reviews” are really more like general impressions, thoughts, and fangirling as I mentally recap the episode after my initial viewing.

For this final review of the season as a whole, however, I’m actually going to try and make it more like an actual “review" and discuss each aspect of the anime separately. I’ll be splitting my points of discussion into individual sections and giving each a score out of 10, before rounding it all off with an overall score/grade.

Oh, not sure if this needs to be emphasised, but these are just my opinions! You may agree and you may disagree, and either way is cool!  (・ω・)b

Before I begin, I just want to make it clear that one very, very important thing to keep in mind when watching and reviewing MagiReco is the fact that it isn’t a direct continuation of PMMM. So many people find themselves unable to enjoy the series because it’s “not the same” or “not the PMMM they know” etc. But it isn’t and was never intended to be. It’s a spin-off, not a sequel. To expect a spin-off to have the exact same impact and level of quality as the original is unrealistic to begin with, not to mention that although comparisons will be inevitable, the original PMMM anime has reached a legendary status where it isn’t really fair to compare anything with it xD

(And for the PMMM fans who are unhappy with MagiReco simply because it isn’t “dark enough” and there isn’t enough “suffering”, all I can say is that if a lack of darkness and suffering automatically means the show is bad, then this one just isn’t for you. Dark doesn’t equal good, and suffering isn’t essential. MagiReco is not intended to have the same tone as PMMM, and those elements do not entail everything that defined PMMM to begin with anyway.)

For these reasons, I’m going to try my best to review the MagiReco anime as a standalone piece and try not to make too many comparisons with PMMM, unless explicitly necessary. Also, as a game player, the inevitable curse of “expectations” was a major issue I needed to overcome when watching the anime. I will therefore also try my best to look past these expectations and try to see the anime as a story of its own. However, there will be discussions on the changes that the anime made and how I feel the anime did in adapting the game story for a television series.

Anyway, sorry for all the additional rambling. Let’s jump into the review before I lose everyone’s attention ^^;; 

Plot: 8/10

One thing I love about the MagiReco plot is that they take the original world and concepts of PMMM and actually come up with a whole new story. It’s familiar yet different, and a perfect way to please the nostalgic fans while also offering something fresh. The PMMM world always had a lot of potential to explore other girls’ stories, considering how many Magical Girls there are, and it’s nice to meet a whole new cast of characters with their own story that’s still set in the same world and uses the same concepts we’re familiar with.

I think my favourite thing about the MagiReco plot, which is the same both in the game and in the anime, is the idea of the Wings of Magius. Any story that involves Magical Girls somehow trying to undermine or overthrow the Incubators’ system always has a lot of potential, in my opinion, and it’s a creative way to delve even deeper into PMMM’s unique take on the magical girl genre without being repetitive. But the key to what makes the Wings of Magius so compelling and intriguing as antagonists is the moral issues it raises. The grey morality going on with the Wings of Magius is not too different from the issues presented by Kyubey, and these kinds of moral debates get the audience really thinking about what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s good and what’s evil. The Magius are presented as being very similar to the Incubators in many senses--sometimes even worse--and I always love a compelling villain or villain group that actually gets the audience pondering whether the bad guys really are that “wrong" after all. Plus the whole idea of salvation and liberation and the whole cult impression we get from the Wings of Magius really adds another layer of that dark and creepy atmosphere that PMMM does so well.

However, I do strongly feel that many of the important scenes and major plot points were presented much better in the game. As mentioned earlier, having played the game meant I was going in with expectations for how I wanted/hoped/expected certain things to be done, and this is a common issue that adaptations have when there’s an audience familiar with the source material. I’m okay with completely changing parts of the game’s story to create something new, but there were instances where the anime intended to replicate the scene as it was in the game but somehow fell short in its presentation. These cases of inadequate storytelling thus hinder the unfolding of the plot, ultimately creating problems with coherency and pacing. (I mean, if you think about it, the “main plot” doesn’t really even truly begin until all five main characters have been introduced.) I have dedicated a whole section to this pacing issue, so I’ll go into detail when we get there xD

Characterisation: 7/10

The anime’s presentation of the characters ranges from fantastic to extremely lacking. Iroha has moments where she’s extremely passive, but also times where she’s shown to be quite proactive and brave as well. I’m honestly not too sure what to make of Iroha’s characterisation so far due to this big range, but I’m hoping that she’ll show more growth and that her changes will be written in a way that actually makes sense, rather than abrupt shifts that make you question how and when she had it in her. Either way, she’s a lovely sweet girl and a very likable character, and I do like that even if she isn’t necessarily always doing anything or contributing to a fight, the sole reason she’s in Kamihama in the first place (to look for her sister) is a good sign that she knows what she’s doing and has taken the necessary measures to go about her quest.

Yachiyo didn’t seem to display much uniqueness until her past was unveiled, and that wasn’t until we were well into the second half of the first season. In my opinion, this took way too long. I find this to be a slight problem because of how central to the plot Yachiyo is, and while I understand that backstories being revealed later on can have a bigger impact (like Homura’s in Episode 10 of PMMM), the way they portray Yachiyo throughout the majority of the season doesn’t have that constant loose thread hanging. She almost seems too “normal” at times, blending into the cast, and only when certain things happen or when someone says something in particular do you actually remember that we still don’t know what her deal is yet. I guess what I mean is that a more looming sense of “mysteriousness” could have justified the late reveal a lot better. The reveal of her past and her wish were slightly underwhelming, too, seeing as we hardly got to know Kanae and Meru before they were killed off, making it difficult to connect with those characters and thus relate to Yachiyo’s grief at losing them. And as for the revelation of her wish, I’ve ranted enough about it in my review for Episode 13, so you can check that one out if you haven’t already xD

Tsuruno has it even worse than Yachiyo because they literally haven’t revealed or even teased anything about her. All we know is that she works at a Chinese restaurant, was already friends with Yachiyo in the past (this “mystery” was later explained in Yachiyo’s flashbacks), and is super cheerful and energetic. Her backstory is the only one that hasn’t been shown yet, and they never really even hinted at there being something deeper about her character. While I completely understand that they’re intending to leave all that for the Rumour Tsuruno arc (which will most likely be done next season), I feel that they really needed to give us at least something for now. Even in the game, we got a better sense of who Tsuruno was as a person before the Rumour Tsuruno arc revealed her hidden sadness. I guess I can’t really fault the anime for this, since they’re just going in chronological order, but a little more insight into Tsuruno’s character would have been a better decision so that we don’t get another round of “info-dumping” when we do get to Rumour Tsuruno, and the reveal about her inner emotional turmoil would actually be a slight twist that adds even more depth to her character, rather than random information that never seemed important because there were never any signs of it.

But while Yachiyo’s and Tsuruno’s characterisation could have been better, Felicia’s and Sana’s were handled superbly. The anime actually made me adore Felicia as a character when I merely “liked her enough” in the game. She’s so much more than just the spoiled and rowdy child who goes berserk when seeing a Witch, and her introductory episodes (namely Episode 7) actually managed to move me to tears. Her bond with Iroha is also portrayed even more nicely in the anime, and I have a newfound love for the friendship between these two, which is quite underrepresented in the game. Felicia manages to retain all the lovable traits she displayed in the game with just the right amount of brattiness so as to not seem too annoying, and the anime hasn’t even really touched upon the cruel reality behind her wish. Whether or not they venture into that territory at some point, I just hope they continue doing as amazingly as they’ve done with Felicia so far, because she really is super cute and a lot more likable in the anime version <3

As for Sana, she’s more or less the same as her game counterpart, but something about the way the anime unveils her past makes it even more tragic. We’ve always known of her terrible “family” and the unfortunate circumstances of her home life prior to joining Mikazuki Villa. But the episodes that detail her story did a stellar job at bringing out and actually showing the sheer horror of having a family like Sana’s, and just how deep and suffocating her sense of loneliness was. Her story is absolutely miserable, but the anime manages to present it in a way that doesn’t make it seem like they were “trying too hard” just to make it as sad as possible. The things happen for a reason, and the consequences it has on Sana as a character are all realistic and believable, and even a wish as extreme as hers made perfect sense after seeing everything she had to go through.

Other characters don’t seem to have as much of a presence to warrant a paragraph of their own, but I will give honourable mentions to Rena and Tsukuyo. Rena’s Magical Girl Story made me a sobbing mess when I first read it, and while the anime obviously couldn’t sidetrack and include all the details, I think they did a pretty good job considering the limited amount of time they could spend on a supporting character. The anime also did a really nice job at giving Tsukuyo that humanising moment during her conversation with Iroha at the cafe, emphasising the good inside of her despite being an antagonist, and also taking the chance to give her a sense of individuality so that she and her sister are not always seen as an identical and inseparable pair with no personal lives or traits, so props to them for that :) Mitama has hardly made many appearances and doesn’t even seem very story-relevant at this point, so I’m wondering how they’re going to build up her importance in the next season so that she doesn’t seem like the “token shopkeeper character” who’s there for no real purpose outside of gaming mechanics (because we all know that Mitama is so much more than that). And as for characters like Kaede, she’s been changed so much that I’ll reserve my judgment for now because I simply don’t know where they’re intending to take her character. Same goes for Kuroe and her still-unclear purpose in the plot lmao

I think it’s important to remember that a lot of characterisation we get in the game is from Magical Girl Stories and Event Stories, both of which are obviously not viable to delve into too much in the anime. As a result, I guess it’s “to be expected” that the anime will have to give up quite a bit of the details that make all these characters so real, likable, or relatable. I’m not an anime writer, nor do I know anything about adapting games into anime, but I do feel that it would have been so much better if they had come up with some other way of compensating for the lost characterisation moments that are only shown in the game’s side stories. Not sure how else they should have done it, but simply removing some of these vital bits of information does harm the portrayal of these characters, especially when they’re part of the main cast.

But yeah, mixed feelings because while some characters really needed more work in the characterisation department, others were handled amazingly well xD

Pacing: 4/10

Okay, let’s be real. The pacing was almost definitely the anime’s weakest point, and possibly one of the main reasons why someone would find the show hard to enjoy or even understand. I’ve seen people complain that the story is too fast, and I’ve also seen people complain that it moves way too slowly. In my opinion, it really is a combination of both, and I’m honestly quite fascinated at how the anime somehow manages to pull off being both too fast and too slow at the same time xD

The story is almost excruciatingly slow in that it takes a whole ten episodes before the main cast is fully assembled. I thought a bit about this and, to be fair, some classic magical girl shows also take many, many episodes before all the main characters are introduced, such as Sailor Moon taking a whopping 33 episodes before all five Inner Senshi have gathered. So I guess this slow episode-by-episode “collection” of team members really isn’t something new. But MagiReco isn’t really a long-running anime that has filler episodes back-to-back to justify the slow pace of the plot. The plot is moving every week, yet it still feels like it takes forever to get the main cast together, which is slow enough to make the viewer question what they had been sitting through all this time when it’s been ten episodes and the story is really only “actually beginning” now.

And at the same time the plot somehow manages to feel too fast at the same time. How is this even possible? My answer to this is simply the fact that they introduce conflicts and mysteries, only to quickly resolve them and then immediately jump to the next one before the audience has even had a chance to really process or understand what they just watched. We’re not given the time to really absorb the development of the story or the subtle changes the characters are undergoing before we’re immediately thrown into a new mini “arc” the next week. In some ways, it almost seems like the “Monster of the Week” formula that many magical girl series adopt, only instead of being aware that we’re seeing trivial conflicts that are intended to last for one episode with characters we are likely not going to see again, MagiReco is throwing out new ideas, new terms, and new plot-relevant characters almost every episode, vomiting out information in a way that viewers who haven’t played the game will find very difficult to keep up with.

And that brings me to one of the biggest problems I had with the anime: important terms and concepts are often thrown in as a “by the way”. (This is most apparent with anything to do with the Wings of Magius before Episode 10, most notably Alina’s introduction.) Game players will obviously know what they’re talking about, but anime-only viewers are left confused and lost as to what exactly is happening half the time. I’ve seen more than a few instances where a viewer who wasn’t familiar with the game needed extra clarification and explanation before they understood certain things, and honestly that isn’t a good sign. All the important stuff should be made crystal clear so that even anime-only viewers will be able to grasp all the concepts without game players to spell things out for them. The anime should be a standalone piece on its own, not a “supplement" to the game. And the consequence is that anime viewers are constantly raising their eyebrows and wondering what the heck just happened or when the heck something was ever established, because crucial information is thrown around with no emphasis and the fast pace doesn’t allow viewers to digest anything properly. This unclear storytelling wastes the opportunity to present mysteries that are intended to keep the audience invested; rather than continuing the series because you just have to find out what something means or why something is the way it is, you’re left with question marks popping up all around your head because you’re confused af and wondering if you forgot or missed some crucial information at some point.

Another issue I had with the anime was what I’ve decided to dub the “one-shot curse”. Witches and Rumours alike are one-shot-ed so quickly and fights resolved so suddenly that I was often left wondering what the point of that fight was. Not to mention that a lot of the battles lacked real “action”. Witches appear, get one-shot-ed, and the characters return to whatever it was they were doing before as though nothing had happened. So... what was the point? I guess they really wanted to emphasise just how many Witches there are in Kamihama and just how easy it is to come across one everyday? Or maybe it was just for the sake of including an obligatory battle in each episode so there’s at least some action each week? Either way, if you’re going to include Witch battles, you may as well do them properly. For crying out loud, InuCurry, the guy who designs the Witches, is the director of the MagiReco anime! You’d expect a bit more emphasis and flourish to highlight what he’s so good at! But to be fair, there were some good Witch battles, such as the ones in the first episode, the ones in Yachiyo’s flashbacks when Kanae and Meru died, and of course, the epic battle between Holy Mami and Sayaka in the final episode. So they’re not all that bad, but I just feel like there was a lot of wasted potential.

I find that the main problem is a lack of balance between the battles, the exposition, the plot, and the fluffy slice-of-life stuff. All these are crucial to a good anime, and a lot of these moments were done quite nicely as standalone scenes. But the way the MagiReco anime has packaged them together and tied a very unattractive Bad Pacing ribbon on top just doesn’t work. It’s like a giftbox that has some lovely things inside if you look carefully at them one by one, but the way the gift is presented just isn’t very appealing and ruins the goodness of the content inside.

I get that the anime probably has issues with pacing because it’s essentially adapting a mobile game. I’m not sure if the pacing would be better if this weren’t the case and the MagiReco story was scripted for an anime to begin with, but I really, really hope they fix these pacing issues next season.

Visuals and Animation: 8/10

To me, the visuals were nearly always top-notch, and definitely a huge improvement from the original series. They managed to retain the art style of PMMM while also updating it so that it looks a lot more sleek and polished. The characters looked great, the scenery is gorgeous, the labyrinths all unique and intricately designed, and there was a lot of clever visual symbolism going on in the still shots and subtle scene transitions. I’m not an expert on animation or visual arts, but I definitely think this series deserves a very high score for this section.

There were a few instances where we saw some wonky “meguca" shots, but those were rare and nowhere near bad enough to detract from my overall enjoyment of the series. I don’t really have much else to say because, like I said, this really isn’t my forte, but I genuinely loved most of the visuals we got.

Music and Soundtrack: 9/10

I know a lot of us were disappointed when we learned that Yuki Kajiura would not be returning to do the music for MagiReco. And we all knew that whoever they hired would have very, very, very large shoes to fill. And I can definitely say that I was not disappointed at all.

Guys, the music for this series is AMAZING. Takumi Ozawa managed to capture the style that Kajiura used for PMMM in a way that retains the original tone of the franchise without seeming like a mere carbon copy of her work. I don’t think there was a single musical piece in there that didn’t make me feel like, “Ah, this is no doubt a PMMM anime!” And none of them gave me the impression that he was “trying too hard" to “rehash” Kajiura’s style. No, there’s familiarity and there’s originality, and it’s all packed together in a way that allows MagiReco to retain the charm of its predecessor while also standing strong as a work of art by itself.

I only docked one point because there were so many amazing tracks from the game and I don’t really understand why they didn’t use them when there were moments that seemed perfect for those tunes. It would be a nice sense of familiarity for game players, and it’s still considered “new stuff” for anime-only viewers too, so I really don’t get why xD Maybe they really wanted to separate the anime from the game? Which is also fair enough :)

I wasn’t so sure about “Gomakashi” as the OP when I first heard it in the trailer, but it’s definitely grown on me! While I still think “Kakawari” is superior and has a more catchy and iconic sound to it, “Gomakashi” is sweet and girly, very much like the kind of song you’d hear in a magical girl series. I don’t think this is an OP that will be legendary enough that everyone knows the tune (like the theme song for Sailor Moon, for example), but it’s a lovely song and I do like it a lot ^^

“Alicia” was beautiful from the very first time I heard it, and I’ve only grown more and more fond of it with each listen. Definitely one of my favourite EDs of all time, and perhaps my favourite OP/ED song out of the entire PMMM franchise.

And that ED song for the final episode? Gorgeous, too. Almost has a “Magia” kind of sound, and definitely sets a darker tone for the upcoming season where (I assume) sh*t starts getting real.

Overall: 7/10, B+ or A-

Despite my criticism and picking the anime apart in this review, overall I still genuinely enjoyed it a lot :D It’s far from perfect, but I was nowhere near as disappointed as I’ve been in the past with other anime adaptations, and while some parts could definitely have been handled a lot better, it was mostly still decent in my opinion. Get rid of the pacing issues and I’d probably give it a solid 9 (for context, I rate the original PMMM anime a 10/10, perhaps even higher if possible).

Again, I think my experience and knowledge as a game player definitely influenced my view on the anime as an adaptaion. For example, I already love the characters and know enough about them, and so I probably didn’t really feel the consequences caused by the anime’s sometimes lackluster characterisation. I also often have ideas of how I want or hope a part gets adapted, and then get disappointed when it’s done in a different and underwhelming way compared to what I imagined. I’m sure my impressions, comments, and scores would be very different if I were an anime-only viewer and had no idea how things went in the game. But alas, you can’t have both experiences to compare, so it is what it is xD

Anyway, no matter how much I nitpicked, I still love MagiReco a lot, both the game and the anime, and am really looking forward to Season 2! With the obvious changes they made in that last episode, I get the feeling that it’ll only diverge even further as the story unfolds. I’m okay with these new surprises and new takes on characters, but I do hope that they aren’t changing it all completely, because there’s a lot of good stuff in the later chapters that I really hope gets animated, e.g. Kanagi’s entrance, Rumour Tsuruno, Yachiyo vs. Holy Mami, basically everything that happens at Fenthope in Chapter 9, and of course, the big reveal about Ui, Touka, and Nemu’s wishes in the final chapter. Just imagining these things animated already gets me super excited, so hopefully we’ll at least still keep the core of the game’s story despite the changes (and hopefully these changes are all improvements!) ｡^‿^｡ 

~~~

And since the anime is taking a break, my reviews will also be going on a break ╥﹏╥ I’ll probably still pop up in the MagiReco tag every now and then if I can think of something to talk about, though? Depends on what I can come up with xD But yeah, I don’t really post updates about my gameplay here (unless it’s something major like pulling my favourite character lol), so if you’re interested in seeing any of that stuff, you can follow me on Twitter instead, since I’m much more active there nowadays. I’m always happy to discuss things and scream with fellow fans, so whether it’s here or on Twitter, please feel free to approach me anytime if you want someone to fangirl with (๑ゝڡ◕๑)

I’ll be ending this post here! Thank you so much for reading, and please continue to love and support MagiReco while we wait for the second season ღゝ◡╹)ノ♡

[bunny-banana]

For the director's cut thing, the story where Fabri asks Ermal out on a date but Ermal doesn't realize that? 👀

YO SO WE GONNA DO THAT OR WHAT

Its this fic btw if anyones curious.  

Chap 1

Even with closed eyes, he sensed the man lying next to him turn towards him but Fabrizio did not spoke immediately. No, he just stayed silent for a bit, Ermal wasn’t quite sure what he was observing but before Ermal could ask, Fabrizio broke the silence.

its u. he’s gazing at u, u idiot.

*

*

’You didn’t exactly give off the vibe that you’d say yes’

“What the fuck does that even mean? I don’t give off the vibe?!”

mr no-homo meta has NO right to be surprised at that. boy went into a panic attack every time someone as much as breathed the suggestion ofc fab was Anxious

*

*

A certain Roman showing up at his doorstep looking like he’d belong to the Milan Fashion Week.A tight grey shirt whose top three buttons almost begged to be opened (yet remained miraculously, in Fabris case, closed!) clung nicely to the body underneath it. A very fine silver chain hung around his neck that perfectly fit with the rings and the watch on his hand.Instead of ripped denim, now tight & shiny dark jeans were worn and to round this look up, an impeccably tailored black, suit jacket was thrown over him.

so not to be Hoe on main but we all just love Sexy Fab.  but more so, i really thought Fabrizio would have put a lot of effort into dressing nicely this time around. Probably called a few friends, crying to help him. He just wanted Ermal to like his look. Which he did.   A lot.  again, outstanding heterosexual of the year, ermal meta is completely mesmerised by that look.

*

*

“Well, well, Fab. Gotta say, this place is on a whole different level“ The curly haired man commented as he flipped through the menu.“You like it?”“How could I not?”

again, Fabrizio intentionally looking up a fancy place for their Date, something he actually felt a little bit uncomfortable about himself and wouldnt normally chose for himself. But then again, he was greatly relieved when Ermal actually did say he liked it.

*

*It felt.. nice. The whole evening was quite nice, Ermal had to admit, even with the unusual ambient.

Ermal is just honestly iconic in this fic. man enjoys fabrizios appearance, enjoys talking with him,  eating out with him, just spending time with him in general sooo much……and yet.

*

*

Fabrizio tilted his head and was it the candle light or something else, but a intriguing shine filled his eyes.“I’d know something sweeter than this.” In the next moment, everything turned upside down when Fabrizio suddenly took his hand and intertwined their fingers, his thumb gently brushing over the back of the younger man’s hand.

THE COURAGE THIS TOOK. THE NERVES WHICH WERE WRECKED.  Fab really just went “ok here we go balls to the wall now or never”

*

*

Chap2

“So, Fabrizio….Fabrizio likes me. Apparently.” It felt interesting to say it out loud. Ermal got a tingly feeling at the thought. So ..it was him who made Fabrizio blush earlier? Who made him nervous? And smiley?  Christ, he actually really wanted Ermal to like his outfit, didn’t he? A small smirk found its way on Ermal’s face. Who would have thought that he’d have Fabrizio Moro of all people wrapped around his finger.

erm: so im het

also erm: wow i really really like the fact that fabrizio is into me. its actually super exciting. kinda makes me happy in a way.

*

*

“Wait, what?! I should ask him out?!”“Yeah? Isn’t that something you want?”Is that something he- But that would imply that he’d want to pursue Fabrizio, his very male, masculine, manly friend Fabrizio who was definitely not by any chance a woman. To have a relationship with guy that was …..romantic… and oh sweet Mother of God, sexual?!“I- I- I don’t know.”

so yeah, to get to the bottom of this, when you’re in the process of realising your own …..non-heterosexuality, its just A Lot to take in.  I thought, realistically, that would just be a bit too much for Ermal to take in at that moment. He had to process the mere thought of “yes, you could have a romantic relationship with this guy, since he’s into you. Its absolutely a possibility”. When you’re conditioned to think “i can only ever date people of the opposite sex” all your life, it takes a bit of time to get accustomed to new possibilities.

And then theres the sexual aspect which is like, on Jupiter, for Ermal’s current state of mind.

*

*

Chap3

The video he currently was immersed in showed a slow-mo fight between a mongoose and a cobra that in all its intensity outdid any action movie in a heartbeat.

i remember watching that vid before writing that chapter and being mesmerised by it. u fucking go lil mongoose!

*

*

[Bizio]: sorry i cant this weekend

First, i just love the thought of him being saved as Bizio on Ermals phone. Second, the reason why he replied so late was because he was wrecking his mind about it. Should he go? should he not? god, the thought of seeing ermal excited him and yet scared him. nonononno. he’s trying to get Over Ermal. He needs space. he is not ready yet.

*

*

[Ermal]:Fabri!! Heard you’re coming up North! 😁 I have this excellent bottle of wine that a fan gave me the other day (don’t ask) so how about we open it at my place? I know you love a good wine 😉🍷

He couldn’t even slide the phone back into his pocket before it started buzzing. Surprisingly, the reply came almost instantly this time.[Bizio]:sorry no the schedule is pretty tight for me at the moment i dont think ill have much time in milan

i just image him getting the weirdest fucking fan gifts. also lmao the lightning speed with which fab replied. homeboy saw that wine would be involved and imemdiately thought “nononononono. worst case, my drunk ass might kiss him, god forbid. we are absolutely not gonna do that”

*

*

[Ermal]:So I’m flipping through the channels at home and there comes a baking show and I wouldn’t normally stop to watch but you know what they’re baking? Those creamy pastry things we had in Lisbon!

Now the idea about the Pasteis de Nata stemms from a real life event! During ESC 2018 i slept at a friends house and since the contest was held in Portugal we decided to cook something portuguese. Thats what we did. They fucking slap. Also, one of the best weekends ive ever had

*

*

However, this is how things continued as to all of Ermal’s messages, he’d receive rather uncharacteristically short replies. When he sent him photos he’d often not reply at all and even when he called Fabri didn’t pick.

Okay we have to image in WHAT kinda mental state Fabrizio is in that time. Boy is EMBARASSED to death. Then obviously, he is trying his hardest to get rid of this crush.  So he just isnt talking to Ermal at all. Which in turn makes him lonely and sad.  So then Ermal shoots him a message, sends him a picture and Fabrizio is immediately head over heels again. Which he shouldnt be. Bad Fabri. And the circle repeats itself.

*

*

Fabrizio who smiled sweetly at the host, who hugged her tightly, who joked with her and oh, whose eyes didn’t stick to her face but wandered more and more south.

Dude honestly, Fab was not flirting with anyone. He was just being nice as he usually is. And we all know he a lil bit sleazy so yeah, he might have looked down once or twice. but he really was not flirting. It was just Ermals affection-deprived mind going berserk.

Also that was the first time Ermal witnessed Fabrizio being affectionate with someone else. And the contrast to that cold shoulder he received was just the last straw for him.

*

*

“Why is he all smiley and lovey-dovey with her while he treats me as if I’m a war criminal?!” Ermal shouted the second the other line got picked up.“Uhm, hello? Maybe a ‘Good morning’ first of all? A simple ‘how are you doing, Sabina?’ would have been appreciated too.”

Damn bitch can ya greet ur sister first before going off smh

*

*

And would it have been really that bad if Ermal had just held on to his hand? Let Fabrizio gently stroke him with his thumb, maybe even squeeze back while Ermal’s finger draws circles over letters that covered the older man’s knuckles.It would have been nice and Ermal would have liked it.

I think he just needed to see what he was missing out to realise what he really has always wanted. If things were to go back to normal, he would have never made any realisations.

*

*

“Am I- Do I like Fabrizio?”

No, we dont ask what he is. Because thats for another time, a calmer time. Or maybe not at all. He doesnt know the answer to that question and its not important right now. All he knows is that despite it all, he likes Fabrizio.

*

*

The fact he was a guy was new, but those feelings involved weren’t.

I feel like this is just a very bisexual experience. At least to me it was. Its very confusing when u are genuinely attracted to the opposite sex, so you make the conclusion: you are obviously straight. Its not possibly that you are not-straight.  

Then u start feeling attraction to someone of ur own gender and its like “hmmm. Obviously this must be fake since we have established that Im genuinely attracted to the opposite sex ”

But the thing is..it aint going away. And then u think how you’d perhaps be down for sex, and perhaps be down for something more, and perhaps do all those nice things you would be doing with someone of the opposite sex.  

So yeah, its ..its really confusing and complicated to figure it out. And if you actually do have a feelings for someone it only makes matters more complicated ig

*

*

“Jesus, I really do like him. Me. Liking a guy.”

Again, once u made That Realisation, its just the WILDEST thing in the beginning. a complete NEW concept being applied to yourself.

*

*

“LISTEN CUT THE BULLSHIT I KNOW EXACTLY THAT YOU’RE HOME! OPEN UP OR I WILL STAND HERE ALL NIGHT I’M NOT FUCKING AROUND!” In addition to the knocking he now also started ringing the doorbell. He sure as hell wouldn’t move here until that door wasn’t opened.“I DONT GIVE A FUCK, I WON’T EVEN SLEEP AND NEITHER WILL YOU. I CAN GO ON FOREVER YOU HEAR ME, FABRIZIO MOBRICI?!”

Ermal is just unhinged in all my fics.

*

*

Epilogue

[Ermal💛]: You ready?

Fabrizio added that heart right immediately after Ermal left his house a week prior.

*

*

Ermal looked….cuddly.

So yeah we all know Fab isnt the keenest on fashion and shit. And i just though Ermal would want him to be as comfortable as possible on their date, so he was like “ay come casual” . and also, its sort of cute that Ermal lets Fabri see him so casual too, its sort of more private in that sense.

*

*

And those were still the mild surprises, let’s not start with the downright shock he felt when his brain started providing words like kissable, attractive, sexy and hot during lonelier nights.

i have a fic for those kinda nights too

*

*

“It’s not that far and God knows men your age need the exercise anyway.”

ermal just cant show affection like a normal person, he has to roast u even when he’s madly in love with u

*

*

What followed behind the colourful door was a small chaos. Literally. People constantly coming and going, with buzzing voices chatting in every corner. They made their way half through the rather crowded establishment, got greeted by a waiter who rushed past them, before they finally spotted a couple leaving, liberating two chairs for them.

SO YEAH. the restaurant. it is loosely based on a place here in Vienna. Its pakistani food too, its a buffet, its kinda chaotic like described in the fic. also u can pay as much as u want.

i just thought, yknow, its home made cooking and its kinda relaxed and chill and casual and has a certain liberal flair to it. and i thought yeah that has fabri energy we gonna use that. also their mango rice puddings fucking slap

*

*

Languages were not his forte, those belonged to Ermal, but Fabrizio ran through his options. It surely wasn’t French or Spanish, that he would at least recognise. German looked different too; they had those dots over their U’s and those curly B’s which allegedly weren’t B’s at all. Swedish? Danish? No. He’s been to Ikea often enough to know that his wardrobe wouldn’t be called Qershor. And Russian had different letters but maybe it was something similar to Russian?

Okay, so I’m a known Slut for Languages.  Fabrizio is not. I can pretty much recognise most European languages in written form at some point in a text. Fabrizio can not. Therefore writing this from the perspective of someone who really isnt into languages was kind of interesting and a bit challenging. I was just thinking ‘how would he recognise them when he isnt into them?’  And i think, in the end, i did it realistically.

*

*

“Is it like..Serbian? Croatian? Or something?” He mumbled while putting a piece of eggplant in his mouth but quickly realised the answer when Ermal almost spit out his water from laughing.“No, definitely not. I can guarantee you, it’s very much not Serbian or Croatian ‘or something’.” Ermal chuckled with a bright smile, obviously enjoying their little guessing game. “But you’re close. In a way.”

This is SO embarrassing but this whole language guessing game was just a setup to an inside joke I have with myself.  So, for those who don’t know, I speak Serbo-Croatian. And I study Slavic studies. The first things they tell you in the first lesson of the Slavic Linguistics course is “Please, for the love of God, PLEASE, dont say Albanian/Hungarian/Romanian is a slavic language”. Apparently many europeans assume these languages are because theyre surrounded by slavic countries. BUT TO AN ACTUAL SLAVIC NATIVE SPEAKER, the difference is immediately obvious and so its quite comical when people assume theyre related languages.   So i thought the reverse would be kinda funny to Ermal too.

*

*

“I can be anything the teacher wants me to be. A good student, a naughty student, whatever floats his boat…” He asked sultrily before winking at the man across of him whose higher brain functions seemed to have ceased at once and just gaped at him like a fish.

boys whole brain got fried when the sexiest man in italy started flirting with him. issokay, he was just shocked. fabrizio has never been flirty with him before, he’ll get used to it.

*

*

“I was just trying to give you the best date that I could.“At those words, the Roman frowned however."Wait, this was a date?!”

im just an asshole honestly

*

*

They giggled as they finally closed the gap between them going for a slow and deep kiss.

i just love them being all SOFT and in LOVE

*

*

“Erm, I- I have an instore tomorrow, I better be well rested.”His counterpart just huffed and raised an eyebrow.“So were you planning on staying up all night, huh?”

Fabs horn dog brain definitively went HmmmmMmm this is nice:) ..could get even nicer:)  but no fuck, i have work to do tomorrow

*

*

“Love how you immediately forget about a good night’s sleep once you have a tongue in your mouth.”“Fuck off.”

He just got carried away as if u were complaining ermal smh

*

*

"I bet on everything I have that your password is 'liberoanita1’ so yes, I actually can.”

Parents culture is just using ur children’s names as all your passwords and we all know Fabri is that kinda parent.

*

*

All in All, i also wanna talk about how the epilogue mirrors the first chapter, but in a more successful light.

Fabrizio dresses for Ermal - Ermal dresses for Fabrizio

fancy place - more casual place

They take the car - they walk

Fabrizio takes Ermals hand on the open for everyone to see - Ermal takes Fabrizios hand under the table, in private

They eat their dessert seperately - they eat theri dessert together

they fall out - they become closer, kiss

they dont talk - they plan the next date

anyway thanks for reading and thank uuuuuu for this ask julchen

[midnight-in-town]

Hi! I just wanted to know how you rank all the stories you read these days. What story you talk about is your favourite, what is your second favourite, etc

Hello Anon! Sooo, I’m not sure I understood your question so please tell me if that’s not what you had in mind?

When it comes to on-going series I like to blog (more or less) about, my faves are as follow:

Ao no Exorcist

I already answered someone who asked me for reasons to give the series a try and, lately, it’s without a doubt my absolute fave, because we’re focusing on the main plot and there are so many answers, so many possible plot twists, so much angst that I wake up eager for more every day.

No kidding, the fact we didn’t have a chapter this month really had me downcast.

Anyway, the pace is consistent, the writing is top notch, I love the cast, what else can I ask for? xD

Berserk

What I wrote for AnE multiplied by 20, since this series is possibly the best story I ever read. It’s just that I have less excitement for it daily, because we don’t get chapters that frequently. 

It’s not a criticism, as I understand why Sensei’s schedule is the way it is and, most importantly, within the story the pacing is great which is all that matters. 

Anyway, whenever a chapter is close by, it definitely makes me super excited and I’m always looking forward to it, because Sensei never disappointed so far. 

Shingeki no kyojin

Yeah, maybe it’s an unpopular opinion (?) but I totally dig the current arc and unfathomable!Eren, while Sensei is giving us answers about Zeke, so I can’t get enough of it. xD

Add to this that the anime is airing about the most tragic arc of the series and you’ve got why I’m overwhelmed by feels for this series lately. 

Kuroshitsuji

Okay so. Actually it’s hard to explain, because if any other series had the same pacing issues as Kuro has had lately, I would have let go of it a while ago already.

However, for some reasons, I can’t let this series out of my mind, no matter how dreadful the pacing issues are and that’s why I’m still blogging about it.

Not gonna lie, I’m not looking forward to the chapters as much as I used to lately and I constantly fear plot convenience, but I still love to discuss the series and write theories. :)

Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens

The fandom is, like, super small xD but IloveitIloveitIloveit. So many feels and I love the unexpected developments.

Gangsta.

Same as for Berserk: unfortunately, Sensei cannot give us chapters frequently but considering how much I love the story and its characters, I’m just happy with whatever we get. 

I’d love more worldbuilding, but one of the latest chapters kinda answered why it was hard to figure things out about the plot’s circumstances, so I think I’ll just be here, enjoying the crazy ride. xD

Golden Kamuy

Well, I think this series is incredible and Sensei is a great author who knows his stuff. But: 

=> I gotta admit that lately I noticed some pacing issues (most likely related to the fact that, from two main sides until the Abashiri arc, we evolved into several groups of characters working on different goals, so we have to switch POV often). It doesn’t impede my enjoyment though.

=> We also had some weird fandom conflicts happening after one character died and, not gonna lie, it did bother me because Sensei was unfairly called out, so I kinda took my distance and that’s why I blog less about it, even if I still love it.    

Gintama 

This final arc has been a mess, but in a good way, so it’s fine. xD 

I’d rather have it that way actually, with Sensei taking all the time he needs to finish it properly (for this reason, everything post time skip made the final arc way more enjoyable), because a rushed ending can ruin good chunks of a story and I wouldn’t want that, considering how great this series is.

I feel kinda on edge though, because I know that, no matter how it ends, some parts of the fandom will be angry and I’m not here to browse through conflicts. 

Akatsuki no Yona 

L o v e d the current arc. Great story, great developments, etc. 

Not enough theory content for my tastes, but ya know, that’s not the most important considering everything else that has been happening lately. xD

Black Lagoon

Clearly Sensei is not super motivated anymore to finish it, but hey, I still love what this series is about, its crazy characters and all the arcs till now. 

Still hoping we’ll have more content soon, though. *sigh*

Vinland Saga 

The current arc was kinda longish and a bit predictable on some parts (I mean, ain’t no way Sensei is going to butcher Thorfinn’s character development), but it’s still an amazing series. :) 

I’d blog more about it, but the fandom is super small, so it’s not like I have a lot of people to interact with, haha.

The anime is coming up this summer though, so maybe this will change!

Chihayafuru

Oh boy. Errn I don’t want to start rambling, especially if you don’t know the story, but it feels as if it’s not at its best lately. :/ 

I don’t know exactly if this rather gloomy feeling within the story is on purpose by Sensei or not(it might be though), but all I can say is that I’m hoping that Sensei knows what she’s doing. 

Lately though, seeing some developments, I have this fear that maybe she won’t be able to finish what she spent years on building, but here’s to hoping she’ll 100% prove me wrong. 

Other series I keep up with, mostly from afar: Gokushufudou, Chainsawman, Witch Hat Atelier, Yotsubato…….. 

There are probably others but I can’t remember right now. xD I like all of them!

Sorry Anon, maybe it’s not what you wanted, but that’s how I understood your question. :) Have a nice weekend!

[dailyaudiobible]

11/29/2019 DAB Transcript

Dan 6:1-28, 2 Pet 3:1-18, Ps 119:129-152, Pr 28:21-22

Today is the 29th day of November. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. Happy…happy Black Friday. It's gonna be a shopping day today. This is the day that is traditionally…well...it traditionally kind of launches the holiday season. And yeah, we’ve mentioned it on a number of occasions, this is the point in the year where things seem to accelerate and for some reason between now and the end of the year it seems like everything’s moving at double speed and it’s really, really easy to get taken out and really easy to get knocked off of our…our usual rhythms. And, so, this is a time to focus in on what's most important and the things that we will not allow ourselves to be moved from and obviously the rhythm of Scripture should be one of those things. And, so, we’ll take the next step forward as we continue our journey through the Scriptures this year. We’re reading from the New International Version this week. Today from the Old Testament Daniel chapter 6.

Commentary:

Okay. So, as we move into the end of our week here and for that matter as we move into the end of this month and get ready for the 12th month of the year, we have concluded second Peter. So, I have a great idea. Let's talk about endurance because that's what the Bible talking about and but today, we have a really good opportunity to understand why endurance is necessary from a cosmic perspective. So, we can apply endurance to our own lives and understand that resistance makes us strong, right? And being…being patient and persevering actually strengthens our lives. So, we can…we can understand that even though it's difficult. But is there a greater purpose that we should endure? That’s what the apostle Peter is talking about it as we conclude this letter today. And as we concluded this letter today, we…we certainly brushed up against the apocalyptic worldview that existed in the first century. And we can go like, “like…well…what do I need to know about the apocalyptic worldview of the first century?” Because we have the same essential apocalyptic worldview. And essentially that is that the world as we know it is a changing thing and a new era is coming and this change that is taking place will eventually bring about unrest and great challenge, but inside of all of that rescue will come and something new will be born. So, we don't usually articulate that but that is a backdrop for our lives. Generally, we all believe this in one way or another and this belief or this sense of the fact that things are going somewhere was a part of the culture that…that Jesus was in in the first century. It actually was the kind of language He used because Jesus continually talked about the kingdom of heaven and revealing the kingdom of heaven, and the nowness of it. In fact, if Jesus were not looked at from a spiritual perspective just as a historical figure then He would generally be considered an apocalyptic profit. So, we’re a couple thousand years in the future since this letter so we know that a couple thousand years have passed since the time Jesus did his ministry on this earth. So, we understand that the…the apocalypse…the time is unknown…even though lots of people are trying to name the dates and figure it out, we accept that we don't know but we still live with the conviction that we are going somewhere, there is an ultimate destiny. And, so, as the generations go by, right, everybody is considering where we are on that continuum. And in light of this, at the time of the writing of second Peter, this understanding hadn't evolved, thousands of years hadn’t passed. And the early believers in the first century, they were not looking toward a…a distant unknown future. They believed that the return of Jesus was imminent. So, in the decades that followed Jesus life, His followers taught that Christ would soon return and reveal himself ushering in the kingdom of God revealing the new heaven and a new earth. And because this is all over the New Testament, we find ourselves basically waiting for the same thing. But in the time of…of Peter's writing, years had passed, and Jesus hadn't returned. So, what they thought was supposed to happen imminently hadn't happened imminently, hadn't happened at all, which left a problem that needed clarity. And, so, Peter stepped into that offering some clarity and I'm quoting here, “above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They’ll say, “where is this coming, He promised”. Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” And skipping ahead a little bit, “but do not forget this one thing, dear friends, with the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise as some understand slowness. Instead He is patient with you not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” So, this is where things get really interesting for us because we need the same clarity. According to Peter, God isn't being slow about anything, especially His promises. We are being impatient. And the irony is, the thing we are being impatient about is God's patience, which should flick some lights on for those of us who feel like we've been waiting on the Lord for a long time. God doesn't want to lose anyone, and He has entrusted we who have received Christ who are being transformed into His likeness. He has entrusted us to be His witness in the world, to reveal the good news. Now it's easy to quote from Revelation that they overcame by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. That's what we’re talking about here. The blood of the Lamb is our salvation. The word of our testimony is what our lives are communicating to a world that is dying. When we endure. We are embodying God's patience. So, think of it like this, it's very easy for us to say, “Jesus, come. I wish it could be today. Can you just get me out of this mess?” Just, would you return? Would you just make things right?” And I certainly pray those prayers when a more appropriate posture might be, “God strengthen me to endure, to be Your witness in this world to stand here and show that what You…that what I claim to be true is true. May those who are lost and floundering see Your light in me and be drawn to it and help me to endure so that no one will be lost, so that all can hear?” Basically, when we live by faith and endure then we’re doing it for the sake of the world. It would be easy enough for us to say, “okay. If God could just bring fire down and end it all today and start a new thing, I would be with him, that would be great”, but what about…what about those that would be lost? We must find the heart of God in this. So, the next time we’re going berserk because of impatience, we must remember God's patience because if He hadn't been patient with us, we would have never known Him. And there are many that He would like to know. And we are His hands and feet in this world. Jesus said we are the light of the world. When we endure, we are revealing God's kingdom and that is a game changer.

Prayer:

Father we invite Your Holy Spirit into this and we ask that even though today’s a busy day and it's going to be busy, busy, busy, and we can be very distracted, we pray God that You would help us understand that we are here for a reason and it is to reveal the good news and we need to be willing to face whatever challenge that might bring, especially in this season, especially when we have the opportunity to interact and rub up against family and friends that we may not otherwise see the rest of the year. May we be light in the midst of it all, Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website its home-base, its where you find out what’s going on around here.

And today is Black Friday, so like one of the biggest shopping days in the year if not the biggest shopping day of the year worldwide. So, I'm guessing that whether online or off-line, maybe chances are good you're going to do some shopping. So, have fun and be careful out there and…and…and share the love of Christ in everything that you do, even if that means you have to give up a parking place. Show the love of Christ.

I'll remind you that it's Black Friday and every…every Christmas season we compile resources and create the Daily Audio Bible family Christmas Box for the year. And, so, it's family Christmas Box for the year 2019 and we’re super excited about this. The things in this Box have…have never been in in any box because they’re…they’re…they’re new. And, so, a number of resources from our Global Campfire line that we…that we released back in September are in the Boxes, some of our most popular items. So, there are the brand-new Global Campfire postcards. There's five postcards. They’re in a nice little package and they’re beautiful, they’re frameable, they’re givable, they’re mailable, they’re shareable, they’re wonderful. And, so, five of them are in the Christmas Box as well as two of the Global Campfire stickers are in the Box. The…the brand-new resource in book form, known as the God of Your Story, which is a one year 365-day devotional that in written form captures the essence of our journey through the Scriptures in a year. So, it is a fantastic gift idea, but it's also a wonderful resource for everyone around the Global Campfire to have. It’s a tangible representation of what it is that we do here. So, this is a beautifully hardbound first edition and this is a signed first edition copy of the God of Your Story. And that's in the Christmas Box. We also have our new Daily Audio Bible Journal 2.0. We have well…we went to the drawing board and crafted a journal that we wanted to be, you know, something that's was beautiful, was the right size, was good to hold, had a good feel to it, had really good paper, was like the kind of thing that would encourage companionship and interaction with and writing in and…well…journaling. And, so, we went to the drawing board and crafted that and had some made and went back to the drawing board after that first batch and refined and just made it even better. And, so, our Journal 2.0 is in the Box this year. Also, fantastic gift for anybody that’s journaler but a wonderful way to set up for the new year. Life of your gonna take the journey through the Bible again then let's write down the things that God shares with us. And as those things accumulate over years, we begin to see the wisdom of God in our lives as He keeps bringing insights from His word into our hearts. So, that's what the Journal 2.0 is about. So, that's in the box. The brand-new Global Campfire candle is in the box. And I've mentioned many times, we worked hard to get this aroma right. It's amazing how an aroma, and we even studied this in the Scriptures when we were talking about the aroma of Christ, which is…which is something that Paul said. But it's incredible how an aroma changes the atmosphere. And, so, like here in the US we just went through Thanksgiving. My wife, she's like a master chef. So, you know, the day before Thanksgiving my house had such a festive, such a homey aroma in it, just a…that the entire atmosphere was permeated in my home. That's what an aroma can do. And we were trying to…to find an aroma that was reminiscent of Campfire and community and sweetness and…and wholeness and nature. And, so, we worked really hard to make the Global Campfire smell like a Global Campfire and…and it does. And, so, we've included a candle in the box. Ahhhh…the Daily Audio Bible ornament for the year 2019, those are only ever available in the Christmas Boxes, is in the Christmas Box. This one, it says Daily Audio Bible 2019 and our word which has been “Maintain” is on the…is on the ornament. And mine is hanging on my tree. And I hope yours will be hanging on your tree soon. We also have your choice of our Daily Audio Bible blend of whole bean coffee or our boutique tea. And the coffee is roasted fresh in Colorado and will be sent…sent. It will arrive to you fresh. It's not something that…well…I mean a lot of the gift Boxes that are out there that will have coffee and that kind of stuff in them, those were roasted may be a couple months ago and they’re just making their way through distribution channels. The coffee that we’re gonna send to you is gonna be roasted like days ago and you’ll be able to tell the difference, significantly. So, your choice, coffee or tea. We also have a pack of the 20 postcards…or…not postcards, Christmas cards, 20 of the Daily Audio Bible 2019 Christmas cards with their companion envelopes. And you can certainly get the Christmas cards in the Daily Audio Bible Shop separate from the Christmas Box, like if you need more than 20 or whatever. They’re five bucks for 20. I mean…and they’re a wonderful way to invite your friends and family along for the journey next year. These are not advertisements for Daily Audio Bible. They say Daily Audio Bible on the back where Hallmark would be written and that's it. But they are beautiful, and they are wonderful way to engage with your sphere of influence and invite your friends and family to be on this journey because where at this point in the year where you can see like a journey through the Bible, I mean it touches everything in your life and it's the constant in a year and it makes such a huge profound difference. So, invite your friends and family along for the journey next year. Anyway, a pack of 20 of the Christmas cards are in the Christmas Box. And lastly, one of the Global Campfire pop sockets, which has been very popular for your phone or your tablet device to…to…it’s a little thing that pulls out and you can use your fingers to kind of hold onto things, that's in the Box as well. So, check that out. Like I said, you can get Christmas cards separate if you need more.

There is a Christmas section in the Daily Audio Bible shop and it contains a few Christmas items including our own family Christmas album that we released…ahhh…I can’t remember…a couple years ago. And you get out on Spotify, you can that on Apple music, just search my name, search for family Christmas, you'll find that. Enjoy a Family Christmas. I created that album to be as classic…like the kind of album…I don't know…I’m a Christmas music lover and I’ve got albums from my childhood that they were made in such a way that they…they feel timeless and that's what I was going for in this instrumental Christmas album. It’s the kind of album that you put on after a busy day, right, you’re just kind of winding down for the night, it's the holiday season, you’ve got the tree on, I don't know, maybe you’ve got a fire, but all the lights are off and you’re just kind of sitting there in the bask of the glow of the lights and this album makes the perfect companion for that atmosphere. So…so, check that out as well. All of these things are available here on Black Friday in the Daily Audio Bible shop dailyaudiobible.com.

The only other thing I want to say about that is that our international cutoff date for shipping of the Christmas Box or for anything Christmas later will be Tuesday. We have an arrangement that allows us to ship via FedEx into another country. But then, that…that country then takes it…takes the item and via their domestic mail system delivers it and that can take 21 days or more. And, so, this is the date that we’re cutting off for international…I mean you can order internationally as long as we have these. Just heads up, like this is the date that we think is the last safe date ship for Christmas and that's just kind of born out of years of experience.

Okay, if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you, thank you, thank you. You can do that at the website, you can do that on the app, you can do that via the mail. The mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial or you can just press the Hotline button in app, the little red button up at the top and begin sharing your story.

And that is it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Greetings everyone this is Toni from Germany. So, I am calling first and foremost because I am thinking about Prodigal because I remember Prodigal about last time of this…last year…pardon me at about this time where in December you were calling in with some very grim messages. And I’m smiling just thinking about where you are now compared to then. And, so, I’m grateful for that and I’m sure this will make others…other people smile who remember that time and have seen where you’ve come. And, so I’m glad you have hung on and you have listened to the Lord and you’ve leaned on the faith however thin it was and just kept hanging in there and that you’re doing, you know, with the Lord wants you to do basically. So, God bless you and continued…continued joy on your journey. As for me, I’m a little bit better health wise. I called in before. On a long journey of being sick but…and I’ve been using natural remedies but I just kind of feel that this illness that I’ve had is the Lord’s way of actually helping me get some other medical issues under control. So, yeah, so I’m on an interesting journey. A lot of different trials but I’m seeing the Lord in that and I’m trusting him. So, I just want to say too, hello mom. She started listening again. Bye-bye everyone. God bless.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible listeners my name is Vicki I am also called Victorine and I’m calling from Winnipeg in Canada. I am a longtime listener. I’ve listened actually for over 11 years now, but this is the first time I’m calling. I have tried to call before but just not had the courage to post it. Anyway, I’m calling today to ask for prayer because I will be having surgery tomorrow, November 25th, 2019. I know that will long be done by the time you guys listen to this request, but I believe that God is God and He knows what’s to be and I just pray that everything is a success and that my recovery is quick. I am hardly ever sick, and I’ve never gone to anything as major as this. So, needless to say I’m a little worried but I believe God is good and He means good for us and He’s a God that heals and He’s going to heal me. I want to thank you Brian and Jill for all you do. I want to thank you for this forum and thank you for all the people who call in regularly. I listen every time. I enjoy hearing the requests. I pray with people that give requests and I rejoice with those who call in to give prayers that have been answered. I don’t call. Anyway, this is my first time calling but I pray that that’s a __. I do miss some people’s voices like Pastor Gene who has called in the past. I listen for regulars like Biola, like Rebecca from Michigan and, like Blind Tony and several other people. I just…I just thank you so much for having the courage to call often. It is very encouraging. And for those who pray we are with you in spirit. I know I never call in to pray but we do pray for you in the background and we pray that God will walk us all through this different struggles that we have

Hey DAB family this is Dominque I know haven’t checked in a while. I just wanted to say thank you for everything. Thank you for the prayers, thank you for the books, thank you for the year planning…the year Bible reading book. Like I said this is Dominic Crumhold from LDC in Arab Alabama, friends with Pelham Morris. He’s a good brother of mine I love him the death. I’m very happy that God sent him, in my life. I just want to give you a quick update on myself. I’ve moved beyond the fear of the future. I am falling more and more in love with Jesus. I’m understanding and more and more and am emptying out myself more and more. I just recently give my testimony, which was amazing ordeal for me. I just love…I can’t even really explain it…I’m just loving walking with God, walking with my father, walking with dad. And I’m almost done with my program. I graduate in two months. Thank you for your time. Love you all.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible DABbers this is Norma from the Bronx and I just have to call and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, a time when I spend meditation particularly just in Thanksgiving for all of the great things that God has done for me for the year. And one of them is definitely for this Daily Audio Bible ministry. I just have to thank Brian for this amazing...I…I…that I divinely got…divinely got…just brought me to and wishing…wishing that I had found Daily Audio Bible sooner. It has been such a blessing to me. And I want to thank your wife for giving you the support to do this Daily Audio Bible forum. I am thankful for the DABbers, the community. I feel like I have brothers and sisters all over the world and I’m just so thankful to Jesus, to your blood, the resurrection, the power of the Holy Ghost. I thank you God for the gospel and just so thankful for all of you. I have you in my heart, I have you in my prayers, and I pray that each and every one of you will have many, many, many reasons to be thankful, to focus…focus on the things, the things you can be thankful for. Don’t focus on the things you don’t have. God bless you and I love you.

Hi everybody this is Susie from Colorado. I’m going to try to talk fast because I have so many praises to report. First of all, his little Cherry, thank you so much for praying for me and my children in Haiti and Joe my husband. We were getting ready for work this morning and my husband turned around and I looked at him and he looked at me and your voice was on DAB praying for us. I was just…it just started this week off so wonderfully. And then I talked to my staff in Haiti at the orphanage in the schools and they wanted to say praise God. We have had the biggest blessing and that not one of our children has had to be rushed to the emergency room during this civil war. This almost never happens. We almost always every week are having to take our children to the emergency room because we have a lot of terminally ill and very severely handicapped children. But God knew that we could not safely get in the streets, so He has kept them safe and well and we’ve had plenty of oxygen. We…this is also a miracle because we just run out of supplies so often with many, many crises, lots of little sick kiddos, but every one of them…no seizures in the last couple months. This is just a miracle. I can’t tell you. So, praise be to God. I mean…really. And thank you. Keep please keep praying for these kids in Haiti. Just we thank you should so very, very, very, very much. We love you and just keep us all in your prayers and just pray that God would keep the kids with no seizures, with no emergencies, and that we would not run about oxygen. We’ve lost a few animals because we couldn’t get into the streets to get food for them but just…and we’ve…

Hey everybody this is Pelham in Arab Alabama with lighthouse deliverance center. Addicted to Christ is my first white stone name that the DAB gave me. I’ve got a couple others, but I won’t mention those right now. I’m calling to let you guys know how…you know…I’m coming up on six months I’ve been in this program here which is…it’s tough but it’s life…but life is tough wherever you are. You face it day-to-day with His help and He’s got treasures along the way if you’re looking for them. So, I’m calling because on Friday…well okay…first of all, I can’t get on the Internet, I cannot listen to the show for the first time in almost a decade that I’ve been a part of this community, I can’t get to the show, I can’t hear Brian, I can’t keep up with what you guys are doing. So…but I still call, and I still let you guys know was going on. So, apparently someone has heard that and low and behold Friday I received a box with about 20 copies of the God of Your Story, the companion to the one-year Bible that goes through the whole thing and it’s get the words that Brian each day. So, now at the beginning of the new year I can keep up with you guys and I can actually read the book and then read Brian’s commentary. I read…I want to give the book to the guys in the program. That’s why they sent so many copies. And thank you so much to who sent them to me. I don’t have but a few more seconds. Brian your words in the opening introduction brought me to tears in front of the men in the program…

[rueitae]

Roommates in Disguise - Chapter 9

My last chapter! @fallen-angel-nightshade has the final chapter tomorrow!

Thank you so much to @whyamistillhungry for beta and @mybluelionlancylance for the outstanding art. You guys both really motivated us and we can’t thank you enough!

Read the chapter on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19901668/chapters/47478652

~~~~~

“I think I’d like to go on a date.”

The words ran through his head when he woke, when he showered, during breakfast, and as he sat at work twirling a pencil; the word document open on his computer remaining untouched.

“Are you working on the Founder’s Day Parade article?”

Lance sighed, calm delight filling his mind. “Yeah,” he answered dreamily. 

“Coran wants that on his desk today, you know.”

“It’ll be there,” Lance replied in his haze. He tapped the eraser on his keyboard. K. A. T. --

“... the press is under attack from the Green Starling.”

Lance hummed. I. E. “That’s nice.”

“She’s got Katie hostage.”

Lance dropped his pencil. Blood rushed to his head as he stood in a flurry. He’d promised to keep her safe! 

A hand with familiar fingerless gloves nabbed him by the arm. Warmth returned to his gut, quelling his icy powers - for now. There was no attack.

“What is going on with you?” Keith asked. “You’re acting even weirder than normal.”

Lance clenched his teeth and licked his parched lips. There was so much to it between his near breakthrough with Pidge and his relationship with Katie - how life was going right for once. “You wouldn’t understand,” he settled with. 

He grabbed his thermos and walked past Keith to the drinking fountain, not caring that their shoulders collided. 

“What do you really want?” Lance asked with a growl when Keith doesn’t leave him alone to fill his mug.

“Is that Katie Holt you’re thinking about?”

Unprompted jealousy filled his chest as he spun to face his rival intern. “What do you know about Katie?” he demanded. He gasped before his peer could respond, memory returning to him. Pointing a finger at Keith, he said, “You like her! I saw you watching her at Cafe Altea that day!”

Keith grit his teeth. “I was making sure Lotor didn’t take advantage of you - protecting you.” He sighed, frustration leaving his posture. “She’s been in the school paper - the Green Starling taking over her house was big news. I wrote the article.”

Lance bristled, something about the casualness in which Keith spoke of the incident rubbed him the wrong way. “Katie and I are going on date, if you must know.”

He couldn’t always get a surprised reaction out of Keith, so Lance relished in this one, grinning smugly as Keith gaped. “Um... congratulations. You’re… you two are okay with that?”

“Of course we are!” Lance exclaimed. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

“Because…” Keith stops himself, steeling his gaze. “Nothing.” 

And he began to walk away.

Lance had the worst feeling that he was missing something very important. While he and Keith butted heads often, Lance begrudgingly acknowledged he wasn’t a bad person by any stretch of the imagination. “W-wait! What do you mean?”

“Forget it, Lance! Just…” Keith turns around, an odd look of... sympathy on his face. “Just be careful, okay? I’ve been doing some Galra Corp stories and there’s some weird stuff going on. Stay away from them if you don’t want to get burned.”

Keith disappeared into the break room, leaving Lance standing dumbstruck. “What the quiznak?”

“They have you all fooled!”

~~~~~

All thoughts of Keith and their mysterious conversation was out of Lance’s mind by the time he left work that day. His heart thumped swiftly and there was nothing that could wipe the giddy smile off his face or quell the flutter in his chest - there was so much to do before tonight! 

Dinner would be candle-lit with spaghetti, meatballs, and garlic knots. Then an evening full of Killbot Melee and he’d tap it off with the biggest surprise of all; stargazing. 

There’s a beautiful high-end telescope in the closet of his bedroom, covered up with a sheet with dust on top of it. Lance doesn’t know when it was last used, but from the wear it looks as if it was well-loved. For weeks he’d been thinking about cleaning it off and putting it to use. It stirred up childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut. Using his powers to go fast was fun, but there was a nostalgic beauty to spacecraft; to pilot a machine to its full potential above the atmosphere and take in the majesty of space. 

Lance loved space. Katie’s eyes would light up whenever the stars wove into conversation. They could look at the details of the moon, make up their own constellations - talk about the great deeds of the heroes who they represented. 

He’d talk about the crafts and the missions; Katie would talk about orbits and black holes and the latest theory.

The genuine smile on her face and the light in her eyes… Lance could listen to her talk forever. 

And maybe, just maybe, if this worked out - and continued to work out, he dared to think - he would. 

Groceries first, loverboy.

Basket in hand he made his way through the aisles. It was nice to see the place cleaned up so quickly after he and Pidge trashed it in their fight. 

He found the fresh oregano and garlic against the newly built wall. The scent of wood behind the mortar was still fresh. An unpleasant knot filled his stomach; he still hadn’t come to any definite conclusions over his newest power - it was almost if… as if he had a berserk mode. 

Lance placed the items in his basket and walked away as quickly as he could. Later. He could worry about his own problems later. Katie came first today. What kind of boyfriend would he be if he couldn’t do that?

Grabbing ripe tomatoes on his way out of the produce section - because surely making the sauce from scratch would impress her, he’d have to thank Hunk for the recipe later - he strode over to the pasta aisle. Pausing with his hand over the traditional noodles, he spots the package further down - angel hair pasta. 

Lance grinned. That was far more romantic - he could think of at least ten flirtatious lines with simply the name of the pasta as a jumping point. 

Neatly and lovingly arranged bouquets were on display at the floral section. Lance selected a small one featuring a beautiful mix of a variety of flowers. 

Everything was going perfectly. 

~~~~~

There was a note waiting for him on the counter when he arrived home. He unloaded the ground beef from his bag as he read:

In and out for a school project. I’ve got laundry going - food at seven? Call my cell if I’m not upstairs by then. - Katie

As if on cue, the washer beeps to signal it finished with the current load. 

Perfect. The only thing that could ruin this night would be a visit from Pidge. Worry passed quickly. He’d had pretty good luck with Pdge leaving the city alone when he and Katie did things together. As long as he didn’t say it out loud and jinx himself, he saw no reason why the trend wouldn’t continue.

He opened the linen closet and squatted, using a discriminant eye to look for the table cloths. Fingering through a stack of them, a white one colored with red flowers caught his eye. The petals are large and sweeping, as if someone took a paintbrush and simply took a few strokes. The flowers with thin green stems seem to float on the cloth, like they’re raining down on him - on Katie. 

This is the one. 

Lance unfurled the cloth and with a flourish he let it land delicately on the dining room table. He ran his hand along the surface quickly, doing his best to straighten out the creases. 

Maybe he should tell her tonight, about being Icebound. He really should. They were good friends, of that Lance was confident. She deserved him to be upfront with her and he trusted she would keep his secret. 

He paused mid-rub of a particularly infuriating fold. A sickening feeling began to churn in his stomach.

Yet… when the thought crossed his mind, when he imagined what she might say in response to his confession, he couldn’t help but see a more insidious smirk on her face. In his mind it's a good, reasonable idea - dating wasn’t a time to keep secrets - but his gut… his gut screamed not to say anything about it. 

But his heart was tickled with the idea of having someone to share his hero exploits with. He liked the idea of it being Katie. They already talked about everything else, why not this?

Really, it would be easier to coordinate the search for her family this way. 

He continued his preparations. Plates, silverware, candles, napkins - paper towels, but he folded them nicely - and then with great care, the small bouquet at the center, are all arranged neatly on the table. 

Lance stepped lightly; this was fun. The anticipation of seeing Katie’s face at his over-the-top display was just one more thing to look forward to. 

His heart pounded and his cheeks warmed as he worked. He was genuinely looking forward to tonight. 

The laundry beeped done again. Lance rolled his eyes. Katie must be really wrapped up in her project. He dug his phone out of his pocket and sent her a quick text:

Laundry’s done. You called it, you got it. (I promise the reward is worth it *wink emoji*)

There was no need to start cooking for another hour or so, the food would get cold otherwise. Lance set the phone down on the counter. He grabbed the saucepan from the cabinets and the boiling pot for the noodles, setting them both near the stove. 

With all the materials he needed for cooking set out and ready, Lance moved on to what he hoped would be the perfect cap to the evening. If Katie was working so hard, she’d probably enjoy a nice bath. He’d prepare one for her, then let her soak away her worries before bed. She wouldn’t be able to refuse the gesture if the tub was already full with hot water and bubbles and scented candles. 

He couldn’t count the times he pined for a hot shower to ease his sore muscles - he missed hot water so much. 

Lance scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed again before declaring the tub clean. He plugged in an air freshener and a beachy smell began to fill the air. The pink bottle full of bath bubble liquid was set on the lip of the tub, ready for later use. 

The living room got the full treatment - vacuuming, dusting, air freshener. He even polished the wooden end tables, giving the area a fresh pine scent. 

Lance stretched, arching his aching back. Just cooking was left. 

His phone flashed red from its spot on the counter. “What the…” It had never done that before that he could remember. Eyebrow raised, he paused his date preparation to investigate. 

It wasn’t coming from the screen. He had no messages of any kind, not even an acknowledgement from Katie of the text he sent to her (that was no surprise). He turned it around in his hands, searching, until he found the flash coming from the battery case. 

He flipped it open.

Immediately, a microbot scurried out of it - itself blinking red. Lance gasped and dropped the phone to the floor. His heart trembled with fear as he backed as far away from it as he could, eventually stopped by the back of the couch. 

The nanobot disappeared but Lance continued to shake. He slid down the back of the couch, giving in to weak knees. 

That was one of Pidge’s bots. He’d recognize the difference between her and Katie’s anywhere. 

Pidge really had been keeping tabs on him this whole time. Through his phone. 

A small part of him worried she knew. Why hadn’t she acted on it? Up until now he had no idea about the phone and she’d told him explicitly about monitoring the house. Surely she’d have said something, gloated, held his identity hostage over his head. 

Muscles relax and breathing became easier. Maybe she doesn’t know.

Maybe she does and was toying with him.

He couldn’t let her know that he knew that she was tracking him. 

Lance buried his face in his knees, letting out a frustrated groan. If he was going to make that breakthrough with Pidge he needed to do it soon. He was running out of time. Pidge was always one step ahead of him and soon… he wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop her, couldn’t do anything to protect others. 

He’d be a prisoner in his own mind, held hostage by her threats.

A problem for tomorrow’s Lance. Today’s Lance was saving the evening for Katie. 

It was time to look the part. 

With renewed determination, he stalked to his bedroom and threw open the closet door. His wardrobe had grown over the time he’d been here - but this created a new problem.

What should he wear?

Work clothes were out of the question. He wanted to feel like he could have fun. Lance removed the hanger of his Gameflux t-shirt. He smiled as quickly as he frowned as he put it back on the rack; Katie loved this one, but he wanted something a little nicer, something dressy-casual. 

Lance growled, teeth grinding. “Fine,” he said with a huff. “Compromise time. Saturday we are doing some serious shopping.”

His dark jeans are worn, one of the few pieces of clothing left over from before the apartment fire. The collared blue sweater was almost too stark of a contrast, but Katie wouldn’t care what he wore. This was for him. 

Lance adjusted the collar, looking himself over in the body-length mirror. For the first time since his family passed away, he winked and flashed a flirtatious smile at himself. It felt good. It felt right. 

It felt like himself. 

“You’re going to kill it today, Lance,” he told mirror-him. “You finally found someone in town who can stand your dumb, gorgeous face.” 

He meant it, but deep down, something uncomfortable rested in his gut. Lance took a deep breath. The microbot had set him on edge. Everything was going to be fine. 

To top it off, he spotted himself with cheaper cologne than he liked. After he became a junior reporter the first thing he’d get for himself would be the brand he liked. 

The buzzer beeped on the washing machine. Hadn’t Katie taken her things out yet? Well, she had said she was in and out. 

Tonight was for her. The least he could do was take care of laundry. It wasn’t like loading the dryer was hard. 

He trudged down the stairs, steps not as light as earlier. The pit of worry that Pidge knew his identity continued to eat away at him. With each stair, a sense of foreboding grew, as if he was walking into a trap. 

He walked past Katie’s workshop - the one she’d taken back from Pidge all those months ago. The chair he’d once been captive in was still there, but the laser and other villainous machines are gone. A shiver wound its way up his arms. Lance doesn’t mind the cold, but crossed his arms and rubbed them regardless. This chill felt different. 

The dryer was empty, the wash long done. Katie must be out. 

Lance sifted through the load, mostly Katie’s stuff, and threw it in the dryer. The mundane chore let him breathe, at ease with the familiarity. 

Until he grabbed it. 

Long and twisted tightly around the dispenser, it wasn’t a towel. Thick and dark he lifted it out, curious. It was longer than a towel, like a coat. Why would Katie need a coat in summer?

Green accents around the collar and cuffs made him freeze. He couldn’t breathe. 

“I hate Galra Corp for taking my family from me.”

“Ms. Berry was right for yelling at you for those heroics.”

“I know what it's like to be alone and no one deserves that. Even heroes.”

“Well, say... hypothetically, if someone wanted to steal a bunch of chemicals, when would the best time this week to do it?”

“Genius doesn’t allow for plans!”

“I had a chance to find my brother today - you ruined it!”

“I… have something to tell you, Lance. I haven’t been honest with you and you deserve to know.”

Katie was washing Pidge’s coat. 

Katie’s coat. 

Dread filled him as he dropped to his knees, mind broken considering everything in a new light. Katie was never in danger.  

He… never really escaped that day. 

A door opened. Tears blurred his vision, but he knew there was no visible door there in the wall. It only made his heart shatter even more as Katie walked out of the hidden room wearing Pidge’s goggles on her forehead. 

Her eyes grow the size of saucers. “Lance! What are you doing down here? I told you I’d get the laundry and --” 

She cut herself off when Lance stood and raised the coat to where she could see it. 

“Why?” he choked out. There was so much he wanted to ask, wanted to scream. He doesn’t trust himself to say anything more. 

He could see it now. The fear in her eyes when he destroyed the flash drive - he felt sick, he destroyed the key to finding her brother - it’s the same. All he could see now was Pidge’s expressions on Katie’s face.

Because they were the same person.

“I… I can explain, Lance,” she started. “I was going to tell you tonight, I swear.”

But he didn’t give her a chance, anger rose to a boiling point. Lance doesn’t care that it comes at odds with his ice powers, making him even more queasy, he’s mad and terrified. He’s been living with his arch nemesis and falling in love with her. 

“Is that why you wondered if we could have a proper date? So you could gloat?” The accusations come faster than he could think. “Was that part of the plan too? Get me to lower my guard first?” 

“I like all of you, Lance.”

Because quiznak he had been ready to do that.

Katie - Pidge - swallowed thickly. “No - not anymore. I --”

Lance let the coat drop to the floor. It lands with a heavy flop, cutting her off. “I trusted you,” he said, voice trembling. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Pidge said hastily. 

She took a step forward and he found himself taking a step back, tense. “You - you destroyed my apartment so that I had to live here.” He took another step back, resting a shaky hand on a table;

“I didn’t know the lab was there. I just tried to... it wasn’t a meth lab, it was--” She took a deep breath. “Look, Lance, you’re not in danger here. I promise.”

Something in his brain snaps. “How do I know you’re not lying like you have been this entire time?” he exploded. He clenched his fists, unable to look her way. “Was anything about… us, real?”

“Of course it was!” she said quickly, stepping forward again. Lance couldn’t help it, despite her words he backpedels a few steps towards the stairs. “I like you a lot, Lance. I treasured every moment, from the day we went to the arcade to all the nights we just hang out and goof off. I’ve never felt more like myself since my family disappeared.”

A tinge of empathy twisted in his heart, but the hurt was too overwhelming. “Even though you’ve been hiding who you are?” Lance accused like a hypocrite. 

His heart stopped as her eyes turned hard, glinting with danger - a familiar Pidge expression. “And see where that got me,” she said, gesturing around them. Her face softened. “Please, Lance, I’m so sorry. I just need a chance to explain.”

“Explain what you want from me?” he hissed. “I’ve been the perfect captive for you.”

“You’re not,” she said firmly. 

Her words do nothing to calm him. “So you’d let me just walk out of here, take my things and go?”

Pidge sucked in a breath. Her eyes shone, as if his words actually hurt her. “That’s - that’s not the best idea,” she said. “You’re in legitimate danger - you’re a lot safer here.”

“Oh am I?” Lance spit. “With your death ray? What’s more dangerous than you threatening to kill me?”

“Haxus is after you! He’s been reporting to Galra Corp on your every movement!” 

Lance rolled his eyes. He couldn’t do this anymore. Looking at her, remembering all the good times they’ve had in this house - each one like a million painful pinpricks on his heart - he doesn’t want to remember. He took a few deep breaths before saying, “I’m leaving.”

Pidge jogged forward, arm out to reach for him. “Lance. I’m serious.” 

He turned and climbed the first few stairs.

“You promised you’d help me find my family!”

Lance stopped. He had promised.

But that was before he knew she was Pidge. He couldn’t help her anymore. 

I’m sorry, Mama, he thought. He’d tried to listen, but this knowledge of betrayal, her long term plan...

A hand wraps around his forearm. “Please.”

Cool mist formed around his skin, concentrated where Pidge held him until she removed her hand. In its place, icy armor that quickly ran up his whole arm. He squeezed the banister with his other hand; why not reveal himself? It wasn’t as if it mattered anymore. 

“I’m sorry I destroyed the flash drive,” he said quietly. He owed her that much.

“I forgive you,” she said quickly - a little too quickly, as if she’d already had time to think over it. “I should have done this a lot sooner. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be this close and --”

A knot twists in his stomach as he turned to face her. A mournful tone escaped his lips. “How long have you known?”

“... Since after the supermarket fight,” she said. There’s no lie in her voice, he believed her despite all of this. “I should have told you. I’m sorry.”

“I…” Tears threatened to overwhelm him, his chest tight.

“Please don’t go,” she begged. “They’re looking for you - I think they know. They’re looking for everyone who survived the accident.”

“Then let them find me,” he blurted out angrily. “At least they haven’t lied to me.” His legs move him up the stairs. He doesn’t stop. 

“Lance, stop!” 

He doesn’t. 

“They are lying to you! They aren’t after you for your benefit! Lance!” 

He opened the door to the ground level. 

“House! Initiate Protocol Six!”

Lance ran. He just wanted to sit down and cry. Instead, he shot ice shards into small drones that launch sticky webbing at his feet and all over his body. He shattered the large mechanical arms that attempted to restrain him. So much for being free to go.

Even when he managed to exit the house he kept running. He’d lost a home before, but this hurt a thousand times more than losing the apartment. 

He’d lost a friend. He’d trusted her and she’d used him. How badly he wanted to believe her apology. That’s what he’d wanted from Pidge wasn’t it? An apology and understanding? To work with her instead of against her? To bring out the good heart beneath?

“No matter what happens, I want you to know that.”

But what she’d done to him hurt far more than any physical wound she’d ever inflicted upon him. He wasn’t ready to forgive yet. He wasn’t sure he could. 

Lance was unsure for how long he ran, or how far from the house he’d ended up. He only knew how tired he was as he collapsed into an alleyway. After regaining his strength he could go… somewhere… Ms. Berry had said he was welcome at her niece’s home. Perhaps he’d go there.

The air was the perfect temperature, which meant it was chilly for everyone else. A raindrop fell on his nose.

It was just one of those times the weather was going to reflect his mood. “Great, as if things couldn’t get any worse,” he groaned, sniffing deeply.

He wanted things to go back to the way they were; no powers, no super villains, his family still alive.

He missed his mom so much. 

Something pricked him in the back of the neck, perking his senses. It was too big to be a bug. Lance reached around to grab it - and came away with a dart in his hand.

His heart leapt into his throat and he swallowed deeply, closing his eyes in despair. Had Pidge followed him so quickly? He slumped against the wall of the alleyway. Maybe that wasn’t so bad; she’d find him no matter where he went. He only wished he had more time to compose himself. He wasn’t ready to face her again so soon.

Sleep suddenly seemed like an amazing idea. His body doesn’t protest.

~~~~~

Unfamiliar machinery hummed loudly, consistently, rousing Lance to wake. 

The floor he lay on was comfortably cool, but could stand to use some cushioning. His eyes fluttered open to a curved grey ceiling - glass in his peripheral vision. Mind groggy, he groaned and flipped over to lay on his side. He faced a large window, floor to ceiling. He expected to see Pidge, dressed as Katie - resigned in his fear she’d show her villainous hand despite her earlier apologies.

On the other side - was not Pidge’s lab. 

Lance scrambled to sit up, heart racing in panic. He was in some sort of containment, wide enough he could lay down and stretch his arms and legs. 

There was no discernible door.

Past the glass, a laboratory. Tables are full of scientific equipment he doesn’t recognize, but he knew the grey and magenta tinted walls - though he hadn’t seen them since…

Since the fateful day he was chosen to deliver lunch to an employee at Galra Corp. The day the lab exploded as he was just about to walk out the door. The day he got his powers. 

Why was he here?

The door to the lab opened. First to enter was Haxus, who threw him an evil grin before holding the door open respectfully for a scientist, followed by Sendak, the chief security officer. 

A sense of wrongness intensified in his gut. 

“Hey!” he yelled, standing and pounding a fist against the glass. “Let me out of here! I’m one of the good guys!”

The door slammed shut behind Sendak with a troubling sense of finality. 

The scientist approached, grabbing a tablet off a table and powering it up. “Mr. McClain, it’s good to finally meet you face to face. You’re a rather difficult man to find.”

She sounded more like a James Bond villain than the bright smiles and cheerful disposition Galra scientists were portrayed having on the television commercials. 

Confusion set in. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I’m not hiding --”

Bright lights turn on inside the chamber, glowing reds and oranges. The temperature rose and Lance dropped to the floor - they’re heat lamps. It became hotter by the second and he couldn’t breathe --

“Subject is severely weakened to heat. Eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit brings him to his knees, ninety causes difficulty of breath,” the scientist said calmly. “Reducing temperature to sixty degrees.”

Lance collapsed as the heat lamps clicked off and blessedly cool mist rushed over his body. 

“I am Honerva,” the scientist told him. “I will be leading the study of how the Oriande serum has affected your body.”

“I think they know!”

Lance rose to his hands and knees, mind still spinning from the expose to the heat - heat someone with his age and health should have been able to handle with no problem, but rendered him helpless. 

“I - I’ve done nothing but help you!” he cried. “I’ve tried to protect your buildings and employees!”

“And your help is very much appreciated,” Honerva told him coolly, not even bothering to look up from her tablet. 

Lance looked past her, where Haxus leaned against the door, a smug smile on his face - as if he were enjoying watching Lance suffer  - and he probably was - and as if there was more of a show to come.  

“We have been searching very hard for your civilian identity,” Honerva continued. “Takashi Shirogane was the only employee known to be in the vicinity at the time of explosion, however, there are three vigilantes running around the city with powers. You can imagine our perplexion.”

Flame Dude and Sky Guy, Lance realized quickly. PhoenixFire and Arashi, their actual hero names flashed across his memory. One of them was Shiro (no way he was Flame Dude, Shiro was too awesome to be annoying like that). This is why neither of them had helped him in defending the city. His stomach churned uncomfortably. They knew Galra Corp was after them - Shiro had known they were in danger.

Why hadn’t they ever told him?

“We will find the other two in time. For now, it gives me the opportunity to focus on you.”

Lance hadn’t felt truly cold in ages, but her tone sent a chill down his spine. 

“I’m - I’m not a lab rat!” he protested. If that first test was any indication, the rats probably received better care. 

He’d have been better off with Pidge. Pidge who had tried to warn him - tried to protect him - and he hadn’t been able to see past his broken heart and anger to consider the sincerity in her words. 

He’d screwed up big time and was paying the price.

Honerva smiled at him, unkindly. “Thanks to your convenient survival, I will eventually re-engineer the correct combination of chemicals that resulted in your reception of ice powers.” 

“Why are you doing this?” he asked desperately. None of this made sense! “I’ve never done anything to do guys!”

Haxus snorted gleefully from his spot by the wall. “Except for having a hero complex.”

“Silence,” Sendak growled, banging his gigantic metal arm against the wall. The sound reverberated throughout the room, the force making his prison wobble. Haxus stood at attention.

Honerva sighed, perturbed. “Your services in preventing Ms. Holt from discovering this place will be taken into account.” She stepped up to the glass wall, towering over Lance as his heart raced despite resting on the floor. She placed a palm gently on the glass. “Do not be afraid,” she told him. “Because of you, President Zarkon will soon have powers of his own.”

“Wait,” Lance said. He doesn’t like the picture this new information painted. He’s sick to his stomach. “Why does President Zarkon want superpowers? He’s already the richest person in the city.”

Honerva tched. “Not everyone can be bought with wealth, Mr. McClain. If President Zarkon is to rule the world, he must have the ability to act.”

Lance chuckled. This situation was far from funny, he knew that; he could very well die. 

Honerva frowned. “A curious response.” She keyed in the information to her tablet. “Hysteria may be a possible side effect of the current Oriande Serum.”

He snorted and doubled over in laughter. 

Sendak hit the chamber, sending it rocking. “What’s so funny, brat?”

Lance laughed, eyes full of tears. “You guys,” he said, “are hilarious.”

The way they looked at each other in confusion made it even funnier. 

“Here I thought you were the good guys,” Lance explained through his laughter. “And I thought Pidge was the bad guy, but it's the opposite,” he howled, crossing his arms pointing left with his right hand and right with his left. 

“I got totally duped,” he threw his hands in the air, “and now it’s like a legit superhero movie and I am in serious trouble.”

He couldn’t stop laughing. This kind of stuff only happened in fiction and here he was smack dab in the middle of a conspiracy and he was definitely going to die if he couldn’t escape. 

Honerva let loose a deep sigh. “Sendak, begin the extraction procedure. I want a sample to work with before I run more tests on the boy.”

“Of course.”

A split second later Lance was hit with a prick that felt an awful lot like the tranquilizer earlier. 

Tears of laughter turned into tears of sorrow. Pidge had been right; she’d changed without him realizing and he shut her out of his life because he let fear and anger consume him.

No one was coming for him. 

[neuxue]

I was thinking about how Perrin was the best use of the werewolf trope I'd ever seen, and I wondered what your favorite trope/inversion of the trope/subversion you have read in WoT. So how about it? I bet you the first answer is The Fall of the Age of Legends. I think that's a trope.

This is a great question, anon, and I never want to answer it because I’m absolutely certain I’ll forget The Best One.

The fall (or rather, Fall, because let’s be honest that’s exactly what it is) of the Age of Legends is definitely up there, if we’re counting that as a trope, which…seems fair. The collapse of a civilisation is always fun, and the way we see the Age of Legends die is done rather well.

Another one that has its roots in Rhuidean (because I’m me) would be WoT’s take on ‘becoming that which you hate’ - namely, the history of the Aiel. It’s an interesting play on that trope because it’s not an individual person becoming ‘not so different, you and I’ from their archenemy, but rather the story of an entire people over time becoming the antithesis of all they were sworn to be, and yet holding on to a central core that includes the very importance of such promises. Also it’s just fantastically well-written and creatively presented. And beautifully crafted to hurt in every way possible, down to the desperate or determined declarations of ‘I am Aiel!’ from the ones who step away from what Aiel means in their time.

Moiraine is also easily on this list, as one of my favourite takes on the Gandalf/old sage/wise wizard who initiates the call to adventure trope. She’s just…not at all the image that trope brings to mind, and yet at the same time, she absolutely is. It’s wonderful.

Tam not dying in the first 10 chapters is also a pretty excellent subversion of expectations; I was so sure he was a dead man walking from the moment he was introduced, and yet here he is, alive and kicking at almost the end of the series. Did not see that one coming.

All of Lord of Chaos is…okay, this is maybe stretching the definition of ‘trope’ but that entire book, from opening epigraph to final line, is a masterclass in the entire concept of the carnivalesque mode (which itself is entirely based on subversion and inversion of order, so…there’s that). It’s an absolute delight, and done beautifully. And clearly done intentionally, but in such a way as to fit seamlessly within the story itself so that it doesn’t feel like an author just deciding to pull a pretentious literary experiment for no reason. I love it.

Okay, no, you know what the best play on a common trope is? Nynaeve as The Berserker. Because just like your typical berserker she’s unstoppable and terrifying when she’s furious… except instead of fighting like an absolute demon when she sees red, she heals people of things that are impossible to heal. Amazing. 

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Dying @ the Borderlands AU post to be honest. (At work. 8') ) GIVE US THE BORDERLANDS ACE ATTORNEY CONTENT WE DESERVE. (Did you ever actually post that fic with the train push-off though??) ... I should look into playing that game. (Those games? Heck if I know. I like the artstyle though.)

I posted the first chapter of the fic, though at some point as I massaged out details, I did start trying to rewrite that chapter. So plot-location-wise, that’s a bit of a mess, but the general vibe of it is the same.

I think I had some other completed excerpts I never posted, and so if I get to writing up a huge big summary of the thing, which I want to do now, I can intersperse it with a few written bits. There was a thing with Ema, and then later with Kay.

(Those games, yeah, there’s three shooters and then one….idk how to describe Tales from, I own it and haven’t played it. But yeah, there’s Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands the Pre-Sequel for the shoot-em-up main entries of the series that I’ve played. I love all of them, but I love the Pre-Sequel a little less because low-grav combat made me want to die.)

To summarize the AU, or the start of it, for everyone who doesn’t remember/wasn’t here, the main cast, and what their class names would tentatively be in-game, include:

APOLLO, the Sharpshooter, a sniper with an eyepatch who never misses a shot

(The eye patch is significant, I’ll come back to Apollo’s powers in another post.) He lived on Elpis for most of his life – Elpis is the moon of Pandora, which is the planet that most of the games take place on – and until the start of the story, works for the corporation Hyperion with his best friend Clay, an engineer. They’ve both come to be pretty important in Hyperion’s ranks, pretty quick – Apollo for his sniping skills is the personal bodyguard/assistant to Hyperion’s CEO, Kristoph, while Clay is one of the top engineers and most valuable people except for periodically when they’re forced to pay out the ass to run some antivirus/debug software on his brain, because Clay has a USB port in his head and sometimes he tries to download every cat video ever and gets a virus. Kristoph puts up with this, barely. (It is not the worst financial crime being committed in Hyperion’s ranks. Klavier is embezzling millions into pointless endeavors and Kristoph can’t lock him out of the system no matter what he tries. But that is, again, something to come back to later.)

Apollo and Clay start to suspect that there is a lot amiss about Hyperion and the kinds of experiments they do and what they want from Pandora, and together they start investigating into what, exactly, Kristoph is doing. In the midst of this, Clay is (apparently) killed, and Apollo not allowed to investigate anything about his death. This is the final straw, so Apollo takes what he knows, destroys what he can on the way out, and flees the Hyperion moonbase and Elpis, stowing away on a freighter shipment down to Pandora, intending to disappear into the wilds of Pandora. 

CLAY, however, isn’t dead – just in a coma, with his brain wired into Hyperion’s mainframe. He hacks the ECHOnet to get into Apollo’s communicator and serves as a “voice from above” font of “advice” and “wisdom”. (He’s taking the role of, to quickly spoiler-free summarize from the games, the Guardian AI called Angel, who throughout Borderlands and 2 offers advice and points you in the direction you need to go on your quest. Clay is an infinitely shittier at his job version.) Because of some limitations hacked into his brain, he can’t tell Apollo that he’s Clay, that he’s alive, and that he’s sort of being forced into trying to manipulate Apollo and friends into doing Hyperion’s bidding, but he can be very inefficient at it and sabotage from within as best he can. Also, sometimes he accidentally sabotages, like when he’s like “I’ve made the calculations and your vehicle can definitely make this jump” and they try it and crash because he was using the gravitational constant of Elpis, which has much less gravity than Pandora. 

On landing on Pandora, Apollo is waiting for one of the Hyperion trains that still runs to take him west and get as far away from this landing site as he can. There, he meets three other travelers and apparent fugitives:

ATHENA, the Berserker, who takes on robots with her fists and a sword and maybe sometimes she’ll use a shotgun;

KLAVIER, the Doppelganger, the spitting image of Hyperion’s CEO;

and TRUCY, the Siren, one of six women throughout the galaxy marked with strong magical powers and glowing tattoos that make her a target for everyone who knows the legend.

Hyperion robots stop the train and begin a search for the fugitive Apollo – the four of them take down the robots and jump off the train, and that’s where their adventures really begin.

ATHENA and TRUCY have a mind to go to the city of Sanctuary, the only free city on Pandora that isn’t corporate-owned or a bandit shithole. Trucy’s father and all her friends live in Sanctuary; Athena, too, lived there for a few years. Before that, they both lived in the city of New Haven, which was razed by Hyperion in their search for the man who screwed Kristoph out of getting his hands on a piece of the Vault Key and a Siren.

-inhales- quick more Borderlands plot context. Vaults are ancient alien caches of powerful weapons, treasure, or monsters scattered throughout the galaxy. These can only be opened by special keys, which are ancient artifacts that tend to be broken and scattered in pieces. In Borderlands, a corporation called Atlas and their military arm, the Crimson Lance, are trying to acquire all the pieces of the key scattered across Pandora to open a Vault to get the loot inside of it. You play as a Vault Hunter, who are not-quite-bandits who for whatever reason are interested in the lore of the Vault, or just kinda ended up on Pandora and fell into it accidentally. In Borderlands 2, about five years later, Hyperion is going after a different Vault, also on Pandora, also with the key in pieces, but the opening of the first Vault in the first game has done some funky stuff to the planet in the form of a mineral called Eridium. Both times, you are trying to stop the corporations from getting to the Vault, with help from some allies, such as the AI Angel and an independent resistance group, based first in New Haven, then in Sanctuary and called the Crimson Raiders, headed up by some of the player characters from the first game. In 2, the Vault Key can only be used naturally once every 100 years; otherwise, it has to be artificially charged with an Eridium-powered Siren. Thus, Hyperion needs a Siren. 

phew okay back to the AU, context thus set for Trucy.

TRUCY has spent a few years traveling Pandora on her own, trying to learn more about Eridium and its connection to her Siren-powers. At this point, however, she’s had enough being on her own, and wants to go back home to Sanctuary. She knows she’s a Hyperion target, and that’s partially why she’s been out on her own. She wanted to protect her friends and family. But she’s been reasonably undetected thus far, so she thinks she’s safe. Safe enough as anyone can be on Pandora. She wasn’t born on Pandora, actually, though her mother was from here. She spent the first years of her life living with the Troupe Gramarye, a gang of notorious con-artists who traveled the galaxy scamming people and looking for Vaults. How’d she fall in with Phoenix? Maybe that’s for next time.

ATHENA was not actually born on Pandora, either. She was born with strange, non-Siren powers, probably from her mother’s exposure to weird alien elements; Metis tried to keep this secret and devise ways to help Athena, but eventually people found out, wanted to turn Athena into a lab rat, and so Metis fled to Pandora, knowing its reputation for lawlessness because one of her former coworkers, a woman named Aura, fled there after she vaporized three people for stealing and copyrighting her own personal work. Aura’s brother followed her, after stabbing the people who showed up on his door looking for Aura. Metis knows she can rely on them, and so she takes Athena and goes.

Athena just acclimated really, really well to Pandora. In the course of fighting against Hyperion, however, some time after the attack on New Haven, Metis is murdered by an unknown infiltrator. Simon and Aura agree that they can’t raise and protect Athena the way she deserves, not when they are both dead-set on avenging Metis, and so Simon takes Athena off-world and settles her down somewhere safe. She has a normal teenager-hood in a normal part of the galaxy, goes to college, gets a degree in psychology – all the while chafing at the normalcy of it all. When she’s confronted with her massive amount of college debt, she says her final “fuck it” and abandons her responsibilities to run home to Pandora and find Simon again.

She hilariously has zero secrets that she’s keeping from the others. 

And KLAVIER was born and lived most of his life on Elpis – not that he says it, or much of anything, about himself to the others. He has obvious affiliation with Hyperion, but since Hyperion’s ‘bots are out to kill him as much as they are Athena and Trucy, they both accept that he’s on their side. Apollo isn’t quite so sure, because Apollo knew Kristoph and knows that Klavier looks just like him, thus knowing that Klavier was probably someone very important in Hyperion. 

Except Apollo can’t say that, because Kristoph (unlike Handsome Jack, Hyperion’s egomaniacal CEO in the games) doesn’t plaster his face everywhere and make himself well-known, so the fact that Apollo recognizes Klavier’s face to be shocked at him means that Apollo was also someone important in Hyperion to know Kristoph and so Apollo and Klavier are just the Spider-Man Pointing meme at each other over their Hyperion involvement. Except Hyperion has bounties on both their heads, so they’re like, okay, okay, cool, I guess I will tolerate you.

After some horrible misadventures involving Pandoran wildlife, which Klavier and Apollo are not prepared for even though Elpis also has horrible wildlife, they reach Sanctuary. Sanctuary is home to the resistance against Hyperion, called the Crimson Raiders, made up of random people and some of the remains of Atlas Corporation’s Crimson Lance who were hunting the Vault years earlier. There in Sanctuary, they catch up with former colonel EDGEWORTH formerly of the Lance, and former commandant VON KARMA also formerly of the Lance. They were once sent to Pandora to acquire the key and quash the Vault Hunters who were chasing it; however, a certain persistent Vault Hunter and his Vault-researcher friends won them over to his side, and so they turned on Atlas and the Lance. The two of them run Sanctuary and the Raiders, Von Karma handling a little more of the military matters, and Edgeworth with the mayoral matters, but mostly, they’re an apparently seamless team. 

Aaaand….I think that’s enough for one post. I could probably do, like, four more posts? One for the rest of the people of Sanctuary, one for Apollo and Klavier’s various fucked-up backstory secrets, one for Gramarye Bullshit, and one mapping out the very loose plot points moving forward.

But I’ve spent like all day writing this, so I guess I’ll do this in installments if I’m reminded. 

[plumcoloredblazer]

If you've followed my dumb blog for a while you'll know I'm mesmerized by the manga Berserk. I seed in posts about it at least once a month it seems. Part of the reason I'm nigh-obsessed with this funny, little compilation of horror is because it's an unresolved story that's existed my entire lifetime. I only found it after most of the dreaded "ship sequence" was over with, but you can bet your bottom dollar I'm a fan (For those of you not in "the know", the creator of Berserk is renowned for his hiatuses, and he had an especially lengthy one when his characters were lounging on a boat in the middle of the ocean). People in the fandom joke, rather morbidly, that they hope Kentaro Miura will live long enough to see his creation through to its end, and, I'd add, I hope I live long enough to witness it too. There aren't many pieces of storytelling that have sunk their hooks into me quite as well as Berserk.

Now, Berserk may not be your kettle of fish. I get that. Who can guarantee all who take a look at a big kettle of fish will find it appealing? But I urge you to try. The first arc is kind of a slog because Miura wasn't set up as a mangaka yet (I mean those first panels are pretty out of character for Guts). Also, Miura was in his early twenties. He was imitating his influences, but you can tell he had an idea of what he actually wanted his manga to be. Berserk is a tale about trauma, struggling, vulnerability, and - maybe - how dreams can destroy their dreamers.

Spoilers ahead. I mean it, looky-loos. Studies have said being spoiled doesn't ruin your enjoyment of a work, but there's something to be said about that thrill of discovery. Or, in this case, that Gut-punch of discovery.

Casca's great. Most everyone agrees Casca is great. I think Casca's great. Casca is many peoples' favorite character. But, Berserk is a manga chock-full of suffering so Casca has also been a walking potato for more than 20 real life years - as old as Miura was when he first started. Now... Casca is back... we think. We were left at a cliffhanger. Then we had to watch Griffith's progress back in the world. Uck.

Casca sees Guts, nearly in her right mind (not remembering anything after the start of Griffith's rescue), and then she breaks down screaming. Understandable, given the history she's probably just recalled. Here's where the quasi-point of my post comes into play. If you've read this far in, you're acquainted with the nitty-gritty that's been inked into paper so far. I'll move along.

What's going to happen next?

Things have been going too well. Relatively speaking. Casca was in a flower dress for heaven's sake. I'm worried she'll activate the behelit in Guts' purse at the base of this damn fairy tree (trees are important). Beloved characters will be sacrificed. Hopefully not though.

Miura's been setting up the dissenters to Griffith's rule. They're scattered around the place: the witch's, the nobles at the ball, and the Kushans to name three. The gang is on an island that warps time. I see our folks gathering an army to contend with our fair-headed menace. Rickert will grow up to be a major stud. We've passed the set up of the story and we're pulling together all the disparate parts now, I think. The climax is coming (it may take years, don't get me wrong).

What I see happening (if I were writing this epic which I'm not): Casca - our Casca - closes herself off to Guts. She's gone through too much. Remembered it all and can't stand it. She wants to make Griffith hurt. She's horrified by what Guts sees when he sees her. She'll lead the war effort. Guts has chosen to put aside his rage (a bit) to strive for Casca. Now that his peace still takes Casca away from him he'll feed the beast inside. I love the idea of Casca and Guts being together, but I don't know. Farnese, after learning to pull Guts out of his berserker state from Schierke, may be what he needs. I don't see Miura building up that romantic tension for nothing. Guts helped her escape her monstrousness, (burning people is sort of a bad hobby) and I think she will do the same in return. What Casca needs may not be what he needs (to echo a few prominent words). She may decide she needs to be independent and powerful. A leader and not a sword. But, who knows. And, Guts may need a shield and not a sword. Miura leaves a lot of symbolism and pathways open. It's pretty masterful.

The most recent hiatus ends this month. Who's to say how hard I'll be kicked in the balls. Miura... Miura, please don't let it be focused on Griffith again. I'm aware his plot is important too, but... he just sucks (And for those out there that ship Guts and Griffith, I'm okay with gay dudes who don't realize they're gay and fuck things up and then end up together. I don't get behind irredeemable rapists unless I aim to stab them. You're terrible if you think mangling Casca is a cute courtship practice. You're dumb. I only say this because I've looked at the world wide web and there are apparently dumb-slugs like this. Griffith is a good villain. He's not your bf, you dumb bastard. He sends his friends to unending hell for all eternity).

Keeping in mind Tumblr's jammed up search feature and the no-nipples no-problems fiasco, nobody's going to read this probably. But, if you did, I hope you put your thoughts on what’s going to happen out there. Take into account I wrote this while I was a bit, quite a bit, inebriated (that's the only time I voice my opinions on anything) so take this with a grain of salt.