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b-else-writes · 8 months ago

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The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 3: Tokyo Babylon

The CLAMP 90s series. Perhaps their greatest work ever. Tokyo Babylon ran from 1990 to 1993, concurrent with RG Veda, the CLAMP School, Shirahime, Chun-hyang, AND X. It makes you wonder how X and Tokyo Babylon shaped each other (but more on that later). Tokyo Babylon (and X) is also set in the same universe as the CLAMP School reflecting CLAMP’s early interest in crossovers. Planned out as 7 volumes, it consists of 11 big stories and 3 annexes. I read the omnibus versions which contain lots of coloured art, but the original print run is a beauty in 80s and early 90s graphic design.

While I'd never read this before, it's famous enough (two OVAs, a drama CD, and a live action movie), that I went in knowing some of the big spoilers, but not details. So while my reading was coloured by the knowledge of its tragic end, it still felt revelatory to me. It is the first CLAMP work where I think they had gotten their storytelling pinned down enough to consciously think of how to write a story that ties together on a thematic level, in every stage, and it's phenomenal. Heavy spoilers.

Synopsis: Onmyoji and thirteenth head of the Sumeragi clan, Subaru Sumeragi is called upon to solve occult mysteries in post-bubble Tokyo. It's a time of glittering lights, a rotten economy, and city populated by lonely people desperate for an answer to their problems as the millennium draws near. Joined by his fashionable twin sister Hokuto and the kindly but strangely sinister vetenarian Seishiro Sakurazuka - who is in love with him - the overly sacrificing and empathetic Subaru must solve these problems and learn how to live - but Tokyo is not a kind place, especially to those with gentle natures.

The Story: On its surface, Tokyo Babylon begins as a "case-of-the-week" style story, where Subaru has to solve an occult case and learns something. Its a deceptively simple premise that allowed for CLAMP to explore pressing social issues of their time (which still feel resonant due to the sensitive way they explored them), while also building upon Subaru's character development through this, and the suspense of Seishiro's true nature. We observe Subaru grow through his failures and learn more about the limitations of his empathy. No case feels pointless in how it develops Subaru as a person, and his relationship to Seishiro. The dread we feel about Seishiro's connection to Subaru grows that we almost believe we might just get out of this. It's just excellently plotted out.

The comedy is well-timed and CLAMP know when to pull back from it to allow the emotional aspect to come through. Every case is incredibly gripping and I even cried reading "Old". I have seen some suggest it would have been more effective to have a massive twist rather than seed Seishiro's psychopathy throughout, but I actually think this works on a thematic level, and finding out Seishiro is a murderer, the bet, and Hokuto's death, still hit like a gut punch. It's a brilliant usage of seeding information without the full context until the end. I have no complaints here. It's a poignant story of Tokyo in the early 1990s and its destructiveness, while never losing its humanity.

The Themes: Do you know why the cherry blossoms are red. Tokyo Babylon is a story about well, Tokyo. It's about how modern city living that pursues only personal gain and conformity leads to human loneliness, and loneliness is a trap that destroys us all. We can never know someone else's pain, which leads to loneliness - but to recognize that is also freeing because it means we cannot judge and be judged for it. Having empathy is good, but too much and for the wrong people and not for yourself, can only lead to death. Subaru forms his self-identity through others, in contrast to his self-actualized twin, remaining aloof and detached from his own self - this is why Seishiro's betrayal breaks him, because Subaru doesn't know how to live as his own person. It is also what causes his loved ones so much harm in how little he loves himself in comparison to others.

Its a fascinating interplay between community and individuality, the reality of modern life of trying to be someone while also needing to generalize, without ever really settling on either side. Hokuto is right that they're not the same person, but Subaru is also right that they are deeply connected, as all people must be. Where it does come down hard is that humans are not the villains but Tokyo is, in what it represents - greed, selfishness, cruelty, and apathy. "Things like this happen in Tokyo everyday". It is intensely tragic and yet, strangely, incredibly life-affirming. Despite everything Subaru suffers, people are not born and made evil and everyone should be taken for who they are, not a faceless mass. Including ourselves.

The Characters: Like the plot, everything in the characters is tied into the story of Tokyo. Seishiro is Tokyo: the slick, cool-cut well to do man in a suit with no empathy and a taste for violence. He's Subaru's mirror - charming AND connected to people, and yet not. Nobody is special in Seishiro's eyes, nobody deserves to be treated as anything but an object. And then we have Subaru, poor sweet Subaru who is so empathetic and yet so detached from the world and himself because he's so focused on only his job, on not being an individual. He is what Tokyo wants him to be, filled with self-loathing and frankly suicidal impulses that he shouldn’t be alive if others are not.

It's so tragic to watch Subaru finally grow into a person, but to do so to the one person who will hurt him. Subaru wants to to love Tokyo so badly, that it kills his sister, the one person he SHOULD have been pouring his love into, the person who could love him back and expect nothing in return, the person who would allow him love while not dissolving himself in it. And Hokuto is just a showstopper, funny, kind, witty and cool. She's Subaru's northstar, the empathy and humanity where he cannot, almost co-dependent. I love characters that reflect one another and the themes.

The Art: The visual storytelling and panelling are fantastic. Tokyo Babylon offers a sparser and more distinctly black and white look than RG Veda, with a stronger emphasis on emotional paneling that breaks into beautiful spreads. It creates an almost wood-block, timeless appeal (despite the fashion) that is neither too busy nor too simplified. Anything to do with the Bet and especially the finale is incredible. Subaru surrounded by cherry blossoms? Haunting. The fashion is impeccable, I love the bold design choices in the covers and spreads. The character designs in and of themselves are quite simple (and I don't love the seme-uke look of Seishiro and Subaru), but the personality-costuming is so well done and tell stories themselves. And the use of Hokuto and Subaru being identical to conceal the twist? Masterful character design. My only complaint is some of the scanned photo backgrounds are jarring against the lovely drawn art.

Questionable Elements: Subaru is 16 and Seishiro is 25. That being said, I do think from their interviews and the actual text, we aren't meant to ship them, and it's not unrealistic to be a teen and fall for an older person only for it to majorly fuck you up because they abuse their greater knowledge to harm you (which hey, might be a theme!). Some of the way issues are handled is dated, but not too badly. Again, I’m not going to comment on whether this is queer representation or not, since I don’t think that has ever been CLAMP’s intention. Despite the stereotypical seme and uke stuff, the relationship feels real and tangible (which is why the payoff works). My real gripe is Hokuto getting fridged, though it's handled better than expected (still. let's stop killing women to make men sad).

Overall: A beautiful tragedy and an ode to human alienation, identity, and empathy. I went into this expecting to like it, and ended it never the same. It is genuinely a fantastic, fully complete thematic work from them that speaks as a reflection of the time it was written, and yet remains resonant. I know some people find it edgy, but I actually don't think edge is its intention, it's dark and it's tragic but never misanthropic. Yes, Subaru enters the adult world broken, but his refusal to become like Seishiro and to continue to count himself amongst humanity despite everything, reaffirms that life and people have value (notwithstanding his behaviour in X).

You can see so much of their ideas crystallize here that they’ll repeat across X, Xxxholic, etc. We're all just lonely people and we hurt each other in our loneliness, and it's important to recognize that in ourselves and take care of ourselves for it. We have value as individuals AND through others. Read it!

#clamp #tokyo babylon

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spockandawe · 1 year ago

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Hello,I absolutely adore your work! I have been binding books for a few years now (mostly scanlated manga that hasn't been licensed,and some pdf books that are too expensive for me to afford or too rare to buy). I came across your work a few months ago,and absolutely relish your posts. I was wondering if I could ask for some advice?

Do you print your books at home,or use a printing service? Because they're such massive amounts of pages if I want to do a full series...once I printed a 24 volume series and my printer reached its page limit,and I had to get it serviced to reset it😭(I know a code can be bought and used,if it happens again I intend to do that but I'd like to avoid if possible). If you use a service can you recommend any,or any general advice for finding one?

And if you print them at home, could you give some advice on how to print Quattro or snaller books? I just use Acrobat (older versions) to print in booklet setting to get a half page sized book,I would really appreciate some knowledge on how to go smaller (and save some paper)

It's okay if you would rather not answer though,or if you want to take a while,I completely understand if that's the case!

Oh my gosh, you can absolutely ask anything you want, this is my favorite hobby to enable people for! (I LOVE that you're doing this for scanlations, also! My manga hyperfixation is mostly dormant right now, but once my brain locked on to archival work for fan translations of cnovels, I immediately started anxiously circling this idea like a dog whining because it can't fit all the toys in its mouth at once, so I'm delighted to hear someone has this interest!)

I print my books at home. I've considered using a printing service for some special cases, like large paper my machine can't handle, but it was ultimately expensive enough, and my personal needs were off enough (I do high-volume, fast-turnaround work) that I've never actually followed through. I'm fortunate that a few years before I picked up this hobby, I got a color laser duplex printer (canon mf cdw644, iirc) as a gift, and it's filled all my needs beautifully, so I never had to look for another way to tackle the issue.

It is still very expensive to make as many books as I do, I've spent unconscionable amounts of money just on toner, but the math shakes out pretty clearly in my favor. Now, an issue that has occurred to me for more graphic prints would be that if a comic page has a lot of hard blacks, I'm not sure how much it would take before it was cost-effective to go elsewhere. I'm not sure if a point like that does exist, but it's a question I'd be interested in knowing an answer to!

(Laser printers tend to be more expensive up front, but cheaper to use in the long term. I do know one person who owns an ink TANK printer and sings its praises, but those can be harder to find for home usage)

One thing that I'm not sure would apply to your printer is that for big jobs, I *think* my computer and printer run out of memory and it messes up not just the current print job, but future ones I queue up after it, and switching the printer off only makes it worse. My pages start looping back to the beginning of the print job and starting over and the only fix is to reset my print spooler in my system services directory and ruthlessly cancel jobs until my print queue stays empty. I can get around that by printing smaller sets of pages at a time (1-50, then 51-100, etc), so something like that might also help coax your printer into cooperating!

And ahhhh, yes, small books! I'm a HUGE fan, I rarely print anything larger than quarto these days. I use a free tool developed by other fan binders, which I'll link right here

https://momijizukamori.github.io/bookbinder-js/

It has a lot of settings that I haven't explored in too much depth, but I use it to impose almost everything I make. There are layouts for the straightforward divide-in-half imposition (half-letter, quarto, octavo, etc), but towards the bottom there are wacky layouts, like six sheets per side of paper. There might be resources somewhere in renegadepublishing that go into more depth, but like I said, my experimentation has been relatively bland XD In general, I recommend double checking the files you get from it for whether you want to flip on the long or the short edge, but other than that, I've found the tool very intuitive and easy to use!

I hope that helps!!! I'm always delighted to help people out with any of this stuff :D

#spock replies #crafts #bookbinding

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i-sveikata · 1 year ago

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I've been reading various fanfics dealing with the series for a year now. Endless variations of Vegas and Pete, Kim and Chay... One shots, novels, longer stories. I feel like almost everything has been said and thought about. The fleshing out of the canon, the back story, the childhood and what might come after.

I developed a real addiction and couldn't get enough, especially of the complex relationship between Vegas and Pete and their respective very multi-faceted characters. The number of authors is huge, but I also spent a lot of time reading them. To my dismay, I am noticing signs of fatigue in me.

Now that everything seems to have been said, every possible happy or tragic ending seems to have been thought out and told, many fics veer off into alternative universes and genres.

It's all wonderful to read and I'm grateful that there are so many unknown but worthwhile authors whose work will never be printed but who are worthy of a large readership.

But: Since fanfiction is tied to concrete people and concrete, and to a readership that has seen the series. How do you see the future? The actors will take on new roles, if all goes well, new beautiful plots will be developed there too and good series or films will be made.

How long can the hype around KinnPorsch and the series continue? Do you have the feeling that everything is coming to an end, now that the anniversary of KP is being celebrated in a big way? Is boredom creeping up on you or is the end not yet in sight and is there still a lot that needs to be written? I have also asked this question to other writers because it really bothers me, but I would be interested in YOUR answer.

Hi there!! hmm interesting question and I don't really want to discount how youre feeling or anything but i do very much doubt that everything that could be possibly said and thought about for this fandom has been done already.

because this show isn't really that old? and the age of the show or when it finished really has no bearing on the existing fandom if you think about it. at a certain point fandom breaks away and becomes its own separate entity.

like i wouldnt say im an expert but the things that keep fandom alive are not really even directly related to whether there's new episodes or video clips or content about the actors from the show that the fans can consume.

take teen wolf for example (because its a fandom ive been in the longest) that show ended in 2017 and literally as of now when i've just checked it on ao3 it has 106,344 works written for it. A show that started in 2011 and finished six years ago. And people are still posting stories for it today! (i myself still have some WIPs which i eventually intend to finish off and share) ignoring the fact that there was a teen wolf movie recently that hardly anyone in the fandom watched it's still inspiring fic, and fanart even now six years later.

and why is that? because there's no time limit on a fandom, it's because of the fans creating things like fanart, fanfic, playlists, gifs, meta analysis, tumblr posts, twitter posts, fandom discords etc. because having a constantly running tv show or a movie or book doesn't keep a fandom alive. fans do.

to compare right now, the works i can see in kinnporsche tv series tag in ao3 havent even topped 10,000 yet. like seriously let that sink in. 106,344 fics to 9,556. like im not really trying to compare right now but its just to give you some idea that KP in particular is really just starting out, like we are literally dealing with a baby fandom here so i wouldnt despair just yet that people have already run out of ideas or that its already finished because if you have dedicated fans behind you you can end up with literally over one hundred thousand stories to read about that fandom. and tbh teen wolf isn't even the biggest fandom out there!!

And if you are feeling fatigue with the KP fandom right now then of course i would recommend stepping away from it for a while in order to give yourself a break. because at the end of the day it is totally up to you to customise your own experience.

im not really sure why it matters whether authors writing for this fandom will be published or not? im mean they literally cant legally publish fandom works? or profit off it? not without sanding the story down to repurpose it for entirely new characters. but you can always save or download copies of your favourite KP fic and if you are interested in a physical copy you could always get these bound into a book yourself (with permission from the fic authors of course).

im also a little hesitant to address the comment about 'worthwhile authors being worthy of a large readership' because it kind of discounts all of the other authors who are putting their time and effort into posting stories and might not be getting the same level of comments or kudos or attention as others. like the whole point of keeping a fandom alive is to interact with all of it and if you want to encourage more content than that means dealing with the fandom at a community level. (im not talking about the dont like/dont read elements of fandom obviously the rule of thumb there is to just click out)

But i personally really dont like the idea of setting some authors above the rest because their stories might have gotten more attention or traction within a fandom. it's meant to be a community. not a hierarchy. nobody should be on a pedestal in fandom. and i would hesitate to put any number of people above anyone else for this reason. like we really all are just people being inspired by the things we watch and experience. and by suggesting that some authors might be 'worthy' it also implies that others are not, which kind of goes against the spirit of fandom imo and can be really discouraging for people creating art or fic that might not be getting as much likes, reblogs, kudos, comments etc compared to others.

I also just want to point out that a lot of people come into fandoms without having ever watched the specific content that the fandom might be about? its actually a very common thing and they still read and engage with the fandom anyway in spite of this? so its really not tied to specific people or a readership that has watched the series.

At the end of the day i really don't think hype is what keeps a fandom alive, it's the dedicated people within that community who like and share and comment and talk to each other about the stories they love.

personally im not at all bored with this fandom (and tbh im still not bored with teen wolf lol) so i hope you aren't discouraged by the idea that a fandom simply will fall apart without its tv show because i absolutely can reassure you that it wont!

and also, taking time from a fandom can also mean that when you are ready to come back there's always the possibility of falling in love all over again. so really dont let the fatigue bother you! just because your love might be waning for the show doesn't mean that others are feeling the same way! there's always plenty more for people to share and enjoy and talk about so its not really over.

tbh fandoms dont ever really finish or disappear completely anyway. like at the end of the day you have platforms like ao3 where peoples works are archived for all time and tumblr where hints of fandom will always still roam about in reblog land. that kind of love doesn't just vanish!

welp this was a long response lol but i hope it helped in some way!

#on fandom #kinnporsche the series #teen wolf

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davvoid · 11 months ago

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what are ORBS and licenses. my friend group is interested in MSpain and do not have a idea of what they are

Ah! You awaken me from my slumber! Here's some info from a good ol' pal because I must rest:

"Howdy! You're new to MSpain aren'tcha? Well don't worry, I'll answer your inquiries quickly!"

"Ah, ORBs and licenses huh? Well I'll tell ya what buddy, what you're asking about are some secondary "mechanics" tied to lore that simply emerged from the nature of the game, much like many others. Inserting them into your own game might be a bit of a leap, but applying those concepts might serve some purpose!"

"Let's start with ORBs. Pretty big buggers that had been created through one way or another, with the first one simply being printed out."

"They served as hard time limits and ""skill"" checks with a roll to escape, appearing usually near the end of encounters/adventures, as a final unbeatable threat that you simply had to run away from while slowly covering up more of the canvas. You could risk doing more actions, or get consumed by the ORB! The first ORB was also particularly threatening, appearing in a time of many recruits being around, as a way to get rid of them completely from available play until the ORB itself was destroyed. Also deployed when the DM needed to end quickly, but don't say you heard that from me."

"In lore, the ORB was described as a nothing that slowly grew itself until it could consume the whole world! Now that didn't happen, but it sure did wreck havock upon the landscape. The inside of it quickly deteriorated non-organic matter, leaving non-mechanical recruits fine enough to rescue before certain void beings within got to them first."

"Y'know, you think they'd learn about creating their own world ending threats by the 10th time..."

"Licenses! They're something everybody and everything has for each of their attributes, no matter how basic or extrapolated! Rock license? Solid state license? French license? That's all there, and you can "take" it from that someone for yourself, while removing all those traits from the previous owner!"

"Think of a puddle with a wet license. What happens if you take that from the puddle? Well, you most likely become liquid, and the puddle turns completely dry! Whatever is funnier in the moment! Do note, that even with licenses themselves being a rare occurance, they could easily derail any encounter with a petty squabble over them. Very much keep in check with how the players are using them if implemented."

"Oh, whoops! Looks like I'm talking a little bit over what I'm allowed to say! Well, hopefully that helped ya! And who knows, maybe you'll see me in your game? Up to you if you draw me and act out my very whims! Hee hee hee..."

Well uh, yea basically that hopefully that cleared things up? Very interested in someone else taking note of the silly game of MSpain and I very much just recommend you people experiment and see what the players come up with as you play! Very much part of the fun is to build your elaborate web of lore and esoteric mechanics.

#mspain #ask

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gengrasmotorcars · 2 years ago

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stupidstupidratcreatures · 1 year ago

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like. ok. going thru them by set number:

gyruda: restriction is a really nice mix of flexible and restrictivd, you can have spells that cost less than 2 but they have to Literally Cost Zero to play. since wizards is judicious about how they do this, this is actually hard to do and it is six mana to cast. pre-nerf i can sorta see it just hanging out in the ether as an emergency finisher, post-nerf of course that is just way too little bang for that much buck

jegantha: the second-biggest offender after lurrus, for more or less the same reasons. that's a very big gap tho because it's also a 5/5 for 5 with no keywords and a restriction on how to use the mana ability. is a little fringe but is very much On The Map in commander aiui. probably a really risky design but i don't think it caused any problems? i like it

kaheera: this was not made for older formats. might get better with the added LCI dino support? we'll see. funnily enough i think it saw some play in creatureless pioneer decks or modern decks that run evokelementals, as just kind of a Bonus Guy to have hanging around if you need it. you could maybe make a non-terrible Kaheera Scam list. that's fun to think about

keruga: this card is both bad and bad in a way i dislike. ironically i think if it only limited permanent cards like lurrus does it would turn it into a thing i like without negatively affecting metas. all-but-forces you to have a list full of Dismembers and friends, which just sucks as a dynamic to have

lurrus: problematic fave. probably makes the entire game slightly shittier with its existence even now, but i still really like it. BANNED ON ARRIVAL IN VINTAGE. actually really fun to build around in commander since you actually want to play permanents that cost 3 in that format because there's twice as much life and three times as much opponent. BANNED ON ARRIVAL IN VINTAGE

lutri: now that's what i'm fucking talking about. it's incredibly necessary that this was banned in commander before the set even rolled out but a dualcaster mage in the zone would be really sweet. they were willing to print that effect on a pushed card for a pushed mechanic so there's still hope they do a playable version at some point

obosh: the fair version of lurrus imo. not allowing 2-drops is actually decently harsh and the payoff is in the sweet spot of specific and generically good for an incentivizer card. love it

umori: i want this to be good so bad. restriction definitely compatible with vintage artifact piles but if you're casting things for 4 in vintage the last thing you care about is cost reductions. the existence of that obnoxious WUB legend aggro deck makes me sort of glad it isn't legal in standard rn

yorion: the other one that got banned, for pretty good reasons. that said i honestly think this one is fine. it's just that shuffling and watching people play it was agonizing

zirda: this is the only one of these i'd consider running in the maindeck. "activated abilities matter" is clearly something wizards is trying to push and i'm kind of interested to see where it goes. Training Grounds (!) is legal in standard right now

pretty crazy how the companion functional errata was literally all lurrus' fault. all they had to do was not print the "you get a free card but only if your deck consists of the only cards you were going to play anyway" card. 2020 design sure was something

#mtg

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iphoenixrising · 3 years ago

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DickTim Week Day 4: Dark!Dick and Vampire!Tim

So. So. *Steeples fingers* this may or may not be the fic for you. Yet another combination prompt because the people on the Capes and Coffee Discord are fucking enablers. You know who you are.

Warnings for: captivity, blood-letting, missing-in-time Bruce

The hidden bunker is outside the city limits of Gotham, a perfect place to stay off the grid.

Officer Grayson makes the drive with the radio on WKKG, All Gotham, All the Time. He moves his head to the beat of the pop song blaring over the line.

The outside of the abandoned gas station looks positively deserted and if they were any more rural, tumble weeds would be rolling around the decrepit gas pumps.

Officer Grayson parks around the back of the building out of sight and grabs the paper bags from the passenger side, holds his cup of coffee in the same hand, whistles to himself as he gets out of the police cruiser.

A complex locking system on a seemingly outdated walk-in freezer opens up to an elevator that is decidedly the newest fixture in the place.

He hums the chorus of the pop song from the radio on the way down, small smile on his face reflecting back at him from the mirrored doors.

The underground is a completely different world.

Apparently constructed to be a bunker, the basement is lead-lined and spacious with all processes set-up to stay off the grid, perfect for his needs. He has a separate power supply, a separate HVAC system, a security system with nearly imperceptible cameras to make sure no one, no one gets close enough to the property without alerting him immediately.

And he certainly doesn’t want anyone finding his personal mission here.

Officer Grayson puts one of the grocery bags down on a table littered with notebooks and read-outs he’d left the last time after he’d gotten samples. He sips on his coffee as he walks around the first room, lit only by the emergency lights at the top of the low-slung ceiling, and turns on the power, turns on the lights in the rest of the bunker.

The beeps behind him are the locks resetting on the elevator, the only way out.

Dick is still humming when he passes into the next room, blocked on either end with thick, metal doors complete with a complex locking mechanism and impressive alarm system. The many tables in this room are filled with laboratory equipment, a biotechnician’s playground.

Half-completed analyses are still running on the impressive screens mounted overhead, status bar at 68%.

Five-gallon buckets under the tables with black Sharpie denote chemical names with dates scribbled hastily below.

Dick sips his coffee as he looks up at the running totals, makes mental notes, compares previous tests and results.

It’s discouraging, but Dick just sighs to himself. Of all vigilantes in Gotham, he’s the optimist, and he knows that each failure will just bring him closer and closer to success. He just can’t give up.

Bruce is counting on them.

With his coffee and bag in one hand, he lets the analysis churn, and enters his code in the next door, then places a palm print on the pad outside. Leans down so his eye scan can be completed.

Unlike the other rooms, the lights come on the second the door fully unlocks and opens to allow Dick entrance.

The reason for that is to turn on the intense sun lamps to further weaken the figure strapped down to the gurney in the center of the room, strategically lessening the possibility of an attack.

Dick puts the bag and his coffee down on the only table in the room.

“Sorry I didn’t come yesterday. Rupert Thorne had a big shipment planned and we were up late tracking it,” his voice is light and cheery, his smile wide and white. He comes to the side of the gurney, takes note of the slight burning smell that always seems to permeate the room no matter how much he tries to avoid it by making sure there’s always something between skin and pure silver. Struggling dislodges whatever he uses, so the result is the smell of burning flesh.

He clicks his tongue in disappointment, looking down at Timmy’s closed eyes and painfully pale face.

His frown deepens when Tim Drake rolls his head over to face the wall instead.

Silver chains wrap his arms, legs, neck, and torso, rendering him utterly immobile. Holy relics hang over the gurney as an added safety measure. He’s completely naked under a flimsy sheet.

“Aren’t you going to say hello?” He asks softly. “I’m letting Alfred pick up Dami so I can spend some extra time with you today.”

IVs are grotesquely hooked into each major artery, set on slow drain. The multiple blood bags hooked under the gurney show the slow trickle as the bags fill to a crawl.

Tim’s violet-blue eyes crack open a sliver, but he doesn’t look away from the wall, away from freedom.

“That isn’t very nice,” Dick’s tone stays soft, yet firm. “You know what I’m trying to do here.”

The sound of Tim trying to swallow is heard over the soft mechanical beeping, the hum of working equipment. “You know how important you are to this, Timmy. I don’t like how you keep refusing to be a team player.” Dick pauses just a moment, eyes narrow, “is this still about Damian being Robin now? Because you know how many times we’ve been over this.”

Tim closes his eyes again, a muscle in his jaw jumps.

“Well, I think you’ve been sulking about it long enough,” Dick brusquely throws the sheet out of the way to show IVs, burns, and the network of complicated blood vessels below deathly pale skin. “You knew even before you went to Iraq my choices were the best for everyone, not just you.”

Dick checks all the leads, makes sure the drip is slow. He doesn’t so much as lift up the solid silver chains and nudge them with the cloth he keeps underneath, the point of it is to try and keep Tim’s skin from burning, temporarily cauterizing his veins and killing the supply. The last time the chains were displaced this much, Dick had made the mistake of lifting one, giving Tim enough power to bare his fangs and lunge. Since then, the chains have stayed put, only shuffled around a little.

“And if you would have just listened to me and stayed in Gotham, you wouldn’t have been caught by vampires in the first place. You know that, don’t you? If you would have worked with us at home, Ra’s would have never taken that much of an interest and led them right to you. Heck, you might still be alive and have your spleen.”

Shaking his head in frustration at all the events from last year when Bruce’s body was brought back, when the Battle for the Cowl had forced him to raise his hand against Jason again and break his heart over Little Wing again, when he knew Tim didn’t need any more mentorship, didn’t need the support and encouragement Damian did after losing their father, and the ultimate decision to let Tim decide his own future after Robin, when seeing Tim six months after his disappearance as a vampire in a cape, all of it had made the choice on how to handle this situation.

How to fix everything that had gone so horribly wrong.

Do what he had to do, try disseminating the secrets of immortality so they could bring Bruce back.

And like this, Tim is going to help him do it.

“But it’s okay,” he’s back to smiling again, “we’ve worked past all that, haven’t we, Timmy?” Dick is satisfied all the leads are fine and the slow flow unimpeded. He steps back to the bag on the table.

In one hand is a pint of O Positive. In the other, a Krispy Kreme with sprinkles.

Both their favorites.

“C’mon,” he cajoles after taking a bite of his donut, “it’s one of Steph’s extra pints. I know you’re going to like it.”

He holds the oozing bag to Tim’s averted mouth and patiently waits, nibbles on his donut in the other hand.

“Why don’t,” and the tone is hoarse, faint because Timmy mostly doesn’t really talk to him anymore, “you just kill me?”

Dick pauses mid-chew, blinking down at the eyes filling with bloody tears, the hitch in the chest that doesn’t really move anymore.

Dick swallows the bite, suddenly more like ash than icing in his mouth. “You know I can’t do that,” is more harsh than he means. “We don’t kill. Not even vampires.”

“Then let me go.”

“Can’t let you go out and kill people either, Tim, and I need the supply for testing.”

“This is torture. This is fucking torture and you don’t even give a shit about me anymore–”

With a flick of his fingers, a crucifix falls right on Tim’s chest, and the screams are awful, horrible, but that is probably never going to outweigh the smell.

By the time Dick finishes his donut, Tim is weakly writhing in agony and the screams have died down to soft whimpers, mouth open to show those killer fangs.

He dusts his hands off and pulls on a glove from the Nightwing suit under his uniform, gingerly lifts the holy item off, grimaces when tissue and flesh stick to it.

“Kill me,” Timmy whimpers. “Just fucking kill me.”

Dick scoffs and takes the chance to lean down, presses his mouth to Tim’s forehead. “You know I can’t lose anyone else,” is the softest of reprimands. “Don’t worry. Once I just figure this out, we’ll get Bruce back and he’ll help us reverse the turning. Before you know it, this will seem like just a bad dream.”

Dick presses another kiss to each eyelid, talking softly against the deceptively soft yet immortal skin. “And when you’re back to yourself, we can be together again. I’ll take care of you just like I used to, promise.”

Dick leans back up with a small smile on his face and familiar fondness in his eyes. He holds the bag up to Tim’s mouth again, ignores the red tears streaming down the pale face. “We’ll get there, okay? I’m close to the answers we need. I just need a little more time. But, I have to have samples to work with, which means you to drink, Timmy.”

Like usual, the pink tracks down his face stand out starkly in the false sunlight when Tim finally gives in and punctures the bag with his fangs.

#how is this my life #dicktim #dicktimweek2021 #dick grayson #tim drake #vampire!tim #dark!dick grayson #tw: captivity #this might not be for you #and that's okay #winter goes a little off the rails #because writing #my fic #my writing

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bunnimew · 3 years ago

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5 Times Pitch Used Terrible Pick Up Lines and the 1 Time It Kinda Worked

Fandom: Rise of the Guardians Pairing: Jack Frost/Pitch Black Tags: Fluff, Crack, Pick Up Lines, Post-Movie, 5+1, rating for themes, Pitch Black is a ridiculous man, Jack Frost you little shit Rating: T Words: 1884 Summary: Does what it says on the tin.

For RotG Bingo 2021: Terrible Pick-Up Lines On AO3 Here.

Jack hadn’t seen Pitch since the nightmares dragged him away.

The image was never far from his mind. The panic, the despair. And the children were so carefree now that Jack began to wonder if the Boogeyman would ever return.

Which is what made it such a shock when he finally heard that voice again, that silky smooth tone Jack thought locked away in his past, out of the literal darkness.

“If you were words on a page, you’d be fine print.”

Jack gripped his staff on instinct and spun to face his opponent before he realized that wasn’t an insult at all.

That was a pick-up line.

Pitch Black had just laid a pick-up line on Jack. Frost. One of the Guardians.

What.

The shock was so complete that all the fight melted out of Jack and left him reeling in confusion. Pitch’s lines were meant to sting, right? They weren’t supposed to be–

“Did you just call me fine?” Jack had to ask. Just to make sure.

Pitch’s expression remained smooth and suave, but his body, what little of it was solid, began to waiver and… was the Nightmare King fidgeting?

“Of course, Jack,” he said. “Surely you know how appealing you are?”

Jack nodded. He did. He definitely did. “Surely you know how weird it is that you said it?”

Pitch tilted his chin up, straightening his spine and assuming a very carefully composed stance. He looked uncomfortable as fuck. “It’s not that strange, Jack. If you’ll recall, it’s not the first… offer I’ve made you.”

That was a fair point, and Jack almost gave it to him. “Taking over the world and taking me to bed aren’t exactly the same thing, Pitch.”

His eyes widened in feigned surprise. Pitch leaned forward just enough to make Jack feel his height, and then he said, “Aren’t they, though?”

He vanished into the dark before Jack could come up with a good reply.

“Kiss me if I'm wrong. But dinosaurs still exist, right?”

This time, Jack was less surprised. Surprised, yes, but Jack didn’t jump into a defensive stance or anything, which was good for his sense of pride.

Instead, he thought about what Pitch actually said. Dinosaurs did not exist, and that was one of the saddest facts Jack knew. “These are supposed to be Pick-Ups, not Put-Downs. What are you doing?”

Pitch didn’t miss a beat. He turned his head coyly to the side and made himself look very unassuming. “You know, I’m actually terrible at flirting. How about you try to pick me up instead?”

That was… a pretty good line, if Jack were honest. Unfortunately, fraternizing with the enemy was frowned upon in most establishments, and also Jack was not going to reward the Boogeyman for bad behavior. “I’m not falling for it.”

“Are you sure?” Pitch looked up, all innocence. “Maybe you should check again.”

Jack snorted a laugh. He knew Pitch was witty and all, but somehow the Guardian had thought it limited to nasty insults and setting traps. Speaking of…

He looked right into Pitch’s eyes when he said. “You’re wrong, but I’m not kissing you.”

Pitch’s lips twisted, but it looked more playful than aggrieved. “Well you’re no fun.”

Jack skated to the edge of the lake, the one he liked to think of as home, and tipped joyously over into the soft snowbank to rest. Figure eights were a lot of fun, but figure skating was a lot of work.

“We’re not socks, but I think we’d make a great pair.”

Jack almost jumped right back out into the lake and through the ice. Instead, he used his unwillfully gained momentum to turn and smack Pitch’s shoulder for scaring him. That was no way to woo a man.

“Antarctica hit you hard, didn’t it?” he accused.

Pitch did look off-put by that, but he didn’t leave so Jack figured he was over it enough. It was only fair, too, considering the whole Antarctica thing was largely Pitch’s doing.

Jack brushed off the snowflakes he’d thrown all over himself in his panic and settled down into the bank the way he’d meant to before Pitch so rudely interrupted. “You know, you’d get further if you stopped sneaking up on people.”

Pitch looked even more offended by that. “I am the Boogeyman!”

“Yeah, so?”

Pitch tossed his head. Dramatically. Jack hid his grin. “Sneaking up on people is what I do.”

“Sneaking up on targets is what you do,” Jack corrected mildly. He stuffed one arm under his head and made sure to have a good angle on Pitch’s face for what he said next. “Sneaking up on a pull is how you go to bed lonely.”

Pitch drew back in shock, and Jack loved to see it. His eyes were wide and everything.

Jack raised his eyebrows and said, “That is what you’re trying to do, isn’t it?”

Pitch sputtered. It was hilarious. He recovered quickly, and that was fun, too. “And who are you to give me dating advice?”

Jack shrugged. “Just the guy you’re trying to date.”

Pitch walked right into that one, and he clearly knew it by the way he kept his mouth shut and looked at everything that wasn’t Jack. Finally, he licked his lips and said, “Yes, well…”

“Well?” Jack prompted. He would have sworn Pitch’s high cheekbones were looking darker than usual.

“Have a nice night,” Pitch said in a rush of breath and vanished into the shadows from whence he came.

Jack grinned. He didn’t care if Pitch was actually still there and could see. “Oh, I’m sure I will.”

If Jack was the kind of person to compliment his arch nemesis, he would give him props for materializing slowly this time. Was Pitch trying to learn?

All the same, the Nightmare King stopped Jack in his tracks by blocking his way with a long gray arm and a beautiful purple rose.

“I just wanted to show this rose how beautiful you are.”

Gorgeous as the rose was, that line was transparent as hell. Jack dropped his shoulders and stared at Pitch, hoping his expression was as lame as that line.

To his credit, Pitch held his ground. His face was the picture of innocent interest, maybe even with a dash of hope.

As they watched each other, waiting to see who blinked first, Pitch’s arms slowly lifted to place the rose, de-thorned thankfully, over Jack’s ear.

...Well played.

Jack tried to maintain his stare, but it was hard to stay mad when he felt pretty. That didn’t mean Pitch’s line was working; it just meant Jack liked roses. Who didn’t like roses?

Jack gathered his wits and tried to look casual when he asked, “If that’s all you wanted, then I guess your job’s done here, isn’t it?”

Pitch didn’t look upset the way Jack thought he would. His eyes were roaming over Jack’s face and the flower tucked against it in distant admiration and Jack, for the first time, really started to think Pitch might mean something by these lines he was using.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” he said as if waking from a dream. This time, when Pitch melted into the dark, he sank slowly into the shadows and it didn’t feel anything like the running away it had every time previously.

He could have taken three times as long to leave and Jack still wouldn’t have found his tongue in time to reply.

This time, when Pitch appeared, Jack was reclining lazily up in a tree. Which Jack would have considered his home turf, except the way Pitch dripped out from the shadow of the branch above him to hang upside down, comfortable as any bat, made him feel at a distinct disadvantage.

It was creepy, but Jack could admit it was cool, too. Pitch had style.

Jack waited patiently for the line he knew was coming.

“I'd like to take you to the movies, but they don't let you bring in your own snacks.”

Jack snorted a laugh. He couldn’t help it. And yet, after all of this, Jack could admit to feeling flattered by it, too. A snack, huh?

“Why can’t you just tell me you like me and get it over with?”

Jack hadn’t realized any part of Pitch was moving until all of it, extended shadows and everything, came to a screeching halt. “Wha–” He stuttered, and it was music to Jack’s ears. “No, That’s–I don–”

The Boogeyman didn’t know how to handle it when he wasn’t in control, but rather than lash out the way Jack feared, the way he was used to, he flailed in embarrassment and conceded all ground to Jack. That, more than anything else, told Jack what he needed to know.

“Goodbye, Frost.” Pitch said with what little dignity he could muster, and dropped right into the ground.

Pitch wasn’t even a surprise this time.

Jack was in the middle of a long brick walkway, icing up the ornate lamps and decorating the bare trees on either side with snow. There were plenty of shadows to pick from, but Pitch walked over from some distance away giving Jack more than enough warning to know he was there.

Jack was tempted to interrupt him. To see if he could wrongfoot him again, get Pitch to trip over his own words and obvious desires and flee.

It would be easy. Jack could think up dozens of ways to call Pitch out before he even spoke a word.

But then Jack wouldn’t get to hear him speak a word.

And he was curious what words Pitch might speak.

“Your eyes are bluer than the Atlantic ocean,” Pitch spoke softly, poetically. He must have practised to deliver the line this well. “And I don’t mind being lost at sea”

It was worth it, Jack thought: the practice and letting Pitch say it. That smooth tongue was meant for promises on the wind and romance in every word.

Jack stared for too long and only realized when Pitch’s eyes gleamed and he took another breath.

“I wish I were a tear,” he whispered as he moved closer. His cool fingers brushed gently along the side of Jack’s face and Jack felt no fear. Pitch was telling him just what he wanted, and Jack held all the power here. “...So I could start in your eyes,” Pitch said, “live on your face…” His fingers drifted down along Jack’s jaw. He knew what Pitch was going to say before he said it, “...and die on your lips.”

But it was so much better out loud, in Pitch’s voice, than in Jack’s head.

It was Antarctica all over again, but this time Pitch was offering something whose price wasn’t Jack’s soul. It was Antarctica all over again, and Pitch was brave to come back a second time, a third time, a sixth time to risk rejection and hurt and wounds reopened that maybe only just healed.

Jack watched Pitch glow in the moonlight. Watched him take a deep breath and open his lips to speak—

“You can stop now,” Jack said, and grabbed the back of Pitch’s neck to pull him in for a kiss.

Pitch’s lips tasted just as sweet as his lines.

#TheBunni #Rise of the Guardians #rotg #blackicerotg #blackice rotg #blackice #Jack Frost #Pitch Black #Pick-up lines #Rotg Bingo #rotgbingo

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falloutghoulzine · 3 years ago

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With the interest check wrapped up, we decided we would like to address some of the questions and comments we received! We got over 100 responses to the interest check which provided us with a lot of insight.

All questions/comments will remain anonymous. Hopefully our responses will give you something to look forward to!

---

How has your day been?

Every response we’ve received made us giddy. We’ve been great! Hope you’ve been well! (bonus: It’s @radiationgroove‘s birthday so toot a horn for her before the night is up!)

I love y'all already xoxo

We love y’all, too xoxo

This is an idea I've considered doing myself, so I'm very excited to see like minded people!

We’re happy to have the support of a community with highly refined taste.

please for the love of god include some gob content i love him thank u ily 🙏

We love Gob too! With any luck, we’ll get some contributors itchin’ to tackle our favorite ghoul bartender.

I love this zine idea! I would love for there to be a focus on already-existing characters since the ghoul NPCs are so underrated!

Our interest check has shown us that all ghouls are welcome in the zine. We will however be working to keep an appropriate ratio so that canon characters, including companion, NPC, and feral, will be the focus. There’s clearly a lot of love for ghouls of all sorts!

I've seen a lot of mentions of Fallout 3, 4, and New Vegas ghouls- would we be able to do some ghouls from fallout 1, 2, and possibly BOS in our work? Thanks!!

What, no Tactics? No, seriously, we’re happy to have any ghoul from any reach of the franchise. Do keep in mind however that many of the ghouls from the early games used the same sprites as other ghouls and did not have unique ‘talking head’ versions. This may make it difficult to include them, but mods are willing to work with contributors on the issue.

Perhaps a sign up/way to organize illustrations of characters and a certain quota or limit of a particular character? To prevent illustrations leaning heavily toward Hancock, Raul etc

When we accept contributors, we will be implementing a process to ensure no one (or two) ghoul(s) end up dominating the zine. We love Hancock and Raul and Charon and and and- as much as the next, but we can always do a more focused zine some other time.

Fallout is an 18+ game

It sure is! As such, we have decided that all organizers and contributors must be 18+ to participate. In addition, the zine itself will be rated M/18+. However, NSFW content is going to remain in a separate optional ‘addendum’.

Did a nsfw zine a while back through Short Run Printing and they were totally okay with nsfw and had a really good price, so you might check them out!

Thank you for your suggestion. We have been shopping around for printers (including Short Run Printing) and found a handful of options that also are okay with NSFW printing.

be careful when producing charms for zines - from experience these can cost as much to manufacture as the zines themselves!

Thank you for your concern. We’re shopping around for suppliers for our various merch ideas and making sure we can get what we’d like in a budget that allows for fair pricing.

who did the nuka ghoul pin-up used in the graphic? i love it!

Nuka Ghoul has become our unofficial mascot alongside Vee and Sunny. The header graphic for the interest check as well as the upcoming contributor applications feature official pinup art of Nuka Girl, the Vim girl, and a Sunset Sarsaparilla lithograph that have been edited by @digitalduckie. The chibi artwork of the trio that we’ve been using were also made by Duckie.

I love this idea! I hope there are enough people interested to do this thing.

I'm so excited for this zine

I think it's a great idea! Ghouls don't get enough love in the fandom imo.

Only that i love the focus of this, ghouls are lovely!!

I think it's a great and fun idea for a zine, looking forward to contributing!

This sounds super fun! Can’t wait to see all the art in the zine!

This is an awesome idea! Stoked to see what everyone comes up with :)

This is super awesome!

This sounds like a really fun idea, with the amount of ghoul lovers in the fandom im sure there will be no shortage of people wanting to take part and purchasing the final product.

I just want to say I'm excited about this and I hope there's enough interest for this zine to get started! ;)

not really, it seems youre doing great so far, so keep it up! :)

Just gotta say, I adore this idea and am very excited to see what comes of it!

Look at all this excitement! We’re grateful for all the support and we can’t wait to share the final product with everyone when we get there. We’ll be doing our best to keep y’all informed and engaged so we can share in our love for ghouls and Fallout!

good luck with this! i'd love to apply to contribute if the interest check goes well! (- v -)b

Thank you! We’ll be emailing everyone who asked to be notified when applications go live. But we also will tell you right here, right now, contributor applications will open Fri, Aug 20 at 3pm ET/2pm CT! We’ll share the links on all of our socials when they go live.

Let’s make this happen ghouls are good ghouls are great 🙌

2-4-6-8 ghouls are really super great!

#long post #question and answer #q&a #faq

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voxiferous · 2 years ago

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i completely agree with you regarding check ins and deadlines. i think many zine mods are too uptight about something that people are doing FOR. FUN.

i also agree with you that it sucks the way writers are disregarded by many zines. i am a writer, and it always sucks to see a cool sounding project where i’m just not invited. in fact, i go out of my way to invite all types of creators to the zines i run. not just artists and writers. that’s too limiting for me! i invite cosplayers and people who make crafted objects and anyone else who can make something cool that can go on a page.

however, as a mod myself and from a completely pragmatic standpoint, more pages cost more money and in a small fandom it can be difficult to get the money needed to print a zine with 20 authors who have 5,000 words each. (i usually solve this by setting a low word count of approx 2,500 words and having a ratio of about 4 artists to one writer, but it’s not perfect.)

to my mind, that’s also the purpose of the applications. people want to see their work in print, right? so how do you get the money to print up 50-ish books for the participants? the answer is sales. in a fandom where one zine might make 40 sales (this has literally happened to me) max, i can’t onboard the ~100 artists who applied to the zine because i know that it won’t make enough money to print 100 full colour pages each for them. so i have to narrow the pool of applicants to a number that can feasibly be printed without putting my personal finances on the line.

i am very interested to hear your or anyone else’s solutions or thoughts on this aspect of the situation. i have never done a digital zine but i do believe that anyone who wants to be in a digital zine should be in it, since there are no space limitations like there are in print. (i have considered doing a physical zine with the “selected” candidates from the application pool, and a digital expansion that includes literally everyone who is interested. but i don’t want the artists who are in the digital version of the zine to feel excluded, so not sure that’s great either?) i’m pretty sure the thing i do is not an art book due to the inclusion of writing and those other things i mentioned earlier, so i don’t think the solution would just be changing the name.

but yeah, i really just want to create things that bring joy to the fandom i’m in and also to the participants and i’m always open to feedback about it!

On fanzines and the mess their current state is

Or: musings from a writer’s biased perspective.

This post has been a long time coming, but always something else caught my attention and months passed as such. Finally, the time has come.

There was a zine wank recently. The mods proved to be quite ignorant how art works, kicked the artist, the artist went public with receipts, the mods insisted it wasn’t like that, and the whole affair kept derailing with possibly another explanation for the kicking until at last the mods cancelled the zine. And it’s just the latest wank of many. A zine here took money and never delivered the product, another zine there has a mod who hasn’t read the book but only heard about it from their friends who, coincidentally, are the other mods. And so on, and so forth. Everywhere you look, there’s a fanzine. Multiple fanzines in fact, sometimes at the same time. Which is understandable, given how old a concept of a zine is and how solid their foundations in fandoms.

Or, well, technically, because when I think about the zines of today, I can’t help but realise they’re gradually losing the connection to their roots.

(yes, this might be another post of the “old person yells at clouds” type. I’m fully aware of that)

I won’t summarise a history of zines, because that’s not the point here and also Fanlore has done a much better job in this article. It does serve as a good starting point, though, if you’ve never ventured past “zines are a thing that exist”. The most important thing to keep in mind is: the zines used to be about much more than just art. And here lies some of my beef with them.

Nowadays, most if not all zines are art books. Worse than that: art books that refuse to acknowledge the fact, own it, and market themselves accordingly. I actually own an art book that was announced and sold as such (Ages of Arda Anthology), which to this day in all my fandoms¹ remains the only publication of that kind. And if the zines of today would have acknowledged their main focus is mostly if not only art, I wouldn’t be writing this.

Alas, here we are. I participated in four zines. Additionally, I was one of the editors in one of those. It was the first English Hualian zine, actually, back in 2019 - unless another one somehow slipped my mind, but I don’t think so. My 2019 was bad, but TGCF is the only thing I remember well from that time. I’ve also been traditionally published (three times so far), which is also relevant to the rant. I admit I don’t remember how many check-ins we had for that one zine I was in the staff of. We had a word/size limit for the entries. As fas as I recall, that was the entry criteria. I might be missing details, though; I was hella depressed at the time. Like I said, bad year, few memories and 99% of them is TGCF.

But anyway, the other three zines I wrote for. I applied, was accepted, went through the process, saw it to the end. You know, the “usual” zine process. The one I’ve got Opinions™ about.

Let’s start with submissions. x samples of works of y quality. Okay, sure, we all think without stopping to realise it’s a tad weird to submit a selected portfolio of works for a hobby event as if it were a job application. It gets weirder the longer you think about it, because, as I once wrote, fandom is for fun. It’s a hobby. Maybe I’m old and jaded, or an idealist, or an old jaded idealist, but I believe everyone has a place in something as deeply tied to the fandom as a fanzine.

Then comes what I’ve got a personal vendetta against: check-ins and deadlines. Sure, I know people create projects with specific time frames in mind, but dear gods, again, it’s not a job. Nothing bad will happen if dates shift around a bit when there’s no money involved. Maybe it’s just me being bitter about putting fun, fannish activity into strict professional frames. again, I’m old and jaded. And dear gods, check-ins. Here’s when my trad pub history comes into play, because in neither case I had to let the editorial staff know I was actually working. True, it might be a case for a story that isn’t done yet, doubly so if there’s a deadline looming over both an author and their editor, but when you submit something finished and aren’t asked to revise&resubmit, you go over the editorial input, make the changes (or not if you’re feeling brave, lol), send it back, go over the proof copy, submit possible adjustments, and that’s it. Or at least that’s how it worked for me for two magazines and a short story anthology.

What does it matter if someone writes a story the day before the zine submissions are due? If it works for them, then it shouldn’t be an issue. Again, it might be just me, but standardising and project-managising a hobby activity doesn’t really sit well with me. From my very biased perspective, I don’t see fun in chasing deadlines and writing on the clock, but that’s just me.

Zine being a project rather than fun activity also ties to it becoming a product. That means a zine has to sell to at least cover the production cost, and with the quality the organisers and the audience expect, the labour cost is basically non-existent. That at least remained from a fun hobby activity - people working for free, lol. It also enables situations when the same few highly popular artists partake in most or all zines in a fandom (often upon invitations, whose very existence makes my blood boil), leading to a reality where zines become an endless cycle of repetition. And don’t even get me started on invitations that add to the marketing strategy of selling the zines. “Here are our wonderful, carefully selected artists, and here’s everyone else”. That’s how I see it. Where has “we’re all fans of the same thing” gone? Where’s “share our mutual love for the same thing”? Instead, we get invited people and those who have to submit a CV-like application for a senior position.

You ruined a perfectly good fan activity, is what you did. Look at it, it’s got capitalism.

And last but not least, art books that refuse to acknowledge what they are and the subsequent treatment of writers.

The longer I look at zines, the lower the artists:writers ratio is becoming. Sure, people like to look at art, because it’s quite often easier and always quicker than reading. Sure, ain’t nobody got time for reading these days. BUT. The growing disparity between respect and reception of works of artists vs writers is, well, growing, and by not giving writers an equal treatment and exposure in something as important to fandoms as fanzines doesn’t help to improve the situation. Again, my opinion, but when seeing zine promos that have got approximately 20-30+ artists and 5-10 writers at most is not cool. This is why I say most of the zines these days are art books that refuse the name. And there’s nothing wrong with that name, or with including only artists in something that’s only about visual art. But when it’s mixed for art and writing, then the least zine organisers could do is make the numbers equal. Again, we’re all fans of the same thing, and no fan activity is better than the other when its outlet is meant to be varied. Also, where are cosplayers? Where are meta writers? Both of those have got a place in a fanzine as well and should be given a treatment equal to other expression of fannish love.

Am I trying to turn back a river with a stick? Probably. But I’m fed up with zines that fail because someone embezzles funds, zines that prioritise the same group of people over and over again over a more diverse crowd, or claim they’re welcoming to all forms of expressions but obviously prefer to include only fanart. I’m fed up with manufacturing zine after zine after zine just because they sell. I’m fed up with fandom becoming more and more of a structured professional endeavour instead of a hobby. I’m fed up with audience that constantly demands a faster and faster stream of, well, content. Neither of those is what fandom and fanzines should be like.

PS. not proofread. Sorry, I’m too dead to do that, so mistakes may get fixed within the next few days, ‘cause they sure as hell are many.

¹ - I don’t know anything about other fandoms, though. Like I said: it’s all opinions from a very personal angle.

#vox speaks #zine #zines

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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago

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Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Part Four and Conclusion)

An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front Introduction and Part One Part Two Part Three

PART FOUR: Thematic Problems

For all that portions of the Western fandom look at the MLA and see Evil Quirk Eugenicists and Hypocritical Ultra-Rich, they had legitimate complaints, and their goals, while overly radical if taken to their logical extremes—see Geten[51]—still offer a way to address a huge number of the problems this society faces. Locking them up and throwing away the key is shutting off one of the most prominent angles on addressing those issues. Consider:

The Problem of Heroics

Quirk-based prejudice is real, and a huge amount of it is based in the hero/villain dichotomy. This isn’t surprising; when you set up a group of people as “heroes,” it follows logically, linguistically, naturally that the people they fight must be villains. Villains are bad, are evil, are black-and-white figures with no motivation worth considering. Toss them in jail; who cares? They earned being in there with their Bad Actions. But that kind of thinking is insidious—it spreads.

If someone looks like a villain, if someone has a bad quirk, they may well be a Bad Seed. And if they aren’t, well, the responsibility is on them to rise above that prejudice, to become better than the people around them think they can be—but no one asks the people around them to maybe stop being so damn prejudicial all the time.

A horrifyingly stark example shows up in Chapter 310, in which a woman is being attacked by a group of three men for no reason save that they think she looks like a villain, so they assume she must be a villain. Her obvious villain trait? She’s a heteromorph—unusually tall, with a vulpine face. That’s it. She’s not dressed in a threatening or antisocial style; she’s not aggressive or angry. She’s just a heteromorph who didn’t go to a shelter right away because she thought things would calm down if she waited it out.

Love Midoriya following this up with, “I bet they were just scared too.” Way to chase an aggression with a micro-aggression there, hero. (Chapter 310)

Of course, tensions are running high right now, higher than would ever be the case under normal circumstances, but even in “normal circumstances,” this uncomfortable bias persists. Consider Class 1-A’s Shoji: Shoji wears a mask because he's a gentle soul who doesn’t want to scare small children, but maybe instead, people should be teaching their kids not to judge by appearances? Then maybe their kids wouldn’t grow up to be the kinds of people who attack others for looking a little scary and not going to sufficient pains to hide it?

As far as bad quirks go, meanwhile, Shinsou is the classic example on the hero side. He was told by classmates, laughingly, that he had a good quirk for a villain; he carries himself at all times like he’s got something to prove. I suspect the only reason he’s at U.A. and not running with the League of Villains is a supportive home life,[52] but either way, people are all too ready to apply a villain label to him based on an ability that was nothing but genetic lottery, and that’s because the existence of heroes defines itself by the existence of villains.

Of course, the otherization of villains and people-who-kind-of-seem-like-they-might-be-villains is only part of the problem. The other and frankly larger issue is the effect that limiting quirk use to heroes-only has on the cultural mindset—heroes, villains, and civilians alike.

Japan in real life fosters a sense of community support so profound that children as young as four can be sent on small errands[53] around the neighborhood, safe in the knowledge that if they need help, they will be able to get that help. It’s far more common for young children to walk or take public transit to school than it is in the U.S. Another example is the country’s enthusiastic embrace of publicly available AED machines, complete with easy-to-understand printed and audio instructions about how to use them on people suffering heart attacks, a movement that has saved the lives of many who might not have otherwise survived long enough for an ambulance to arrive.

In My Hero Academia’s Japan, though?

You wind up with people who don't even particularly want to become heroes enrolling in hero schools anyway because it's the only way they can imagine contributing to society. Uraraka and Gran Torino are obvious examples—Uraraka becoming a hero less because she felt a calling to and more because it seemed like the best way to ameliorate her family’s hardscrabble lot in life; Torino getting a hero license not because he cared about being a hero at all, but because he was in on the One For All situation and needed to be able to use his quirk freely to help fight that secret war.

An even more telling case is that of the main character himself. Midoriya desperately wanted to “save” people, and from all the evidence we have in the early manga, as far as he was concerned, the only way for him to do that was to become a hero. He never even considered e.g. signing up for any volunteer programs around his neighborhood or joining the police. It’s like he never even considered the possibility of helping people via other channels.

And this is a consistent issue! People who don't think that they can become heroes train themselves (and are trained by society) into believing that they are powerless, that it isn’t their responsibility to help when they see trouble, leading to things like Shimura Tenko's “long walk,” where countless people look at a child of five, bloody and alone, and then make the conscious decision to look away, because “a hero will help.”

Hell, it even spills over onto actual heroes, who in the first chapter stand around like chumps waiting for “someone with a better quirk” to come and do something about the sludge villain, because they don’t have the perfect quirk to solve the problem themselves, so they don’t even try.

Of course, even if they did try, it might not be welcomed. Consider cases where people wanted to do good, like Gentle Criminal or Vigilantes' Koichi, but had their road to heroism blocked—this led them to villainy or vigilantism, which in turn can lead to arrest and possible prison time, with all the attendant stigma.

Restricting quirk use to heroes-only has impacts beyond just how it distorts people’s desire to help, too. Evidence in the manga suggests that some people feel a stronger biological drive to use their quirks than others. What options do those people have, then, if their quirks—or their personalities—don’t seem naturally cut out for heroism?

In Tamaki Amajiki’s flashback in Chapter 140, a teacher tells his class, “People make fine use of their quirks at any number of jobs. Being a hero’s not the only option. How will you be useful to society in the future? That’s what we’re here to explore in quirk training.” This is the scene in the manga that most explicitly tells us that other avenues for quirk use exist, but we’re never once shown what those avenues might be. At best, this suggests that those avenues are drastically limited (e.g. only available to those whose quirks are deemed “useful to society”) and/or poorly explained to people in-universe—else why would Uraraka have chosen heroism despite her lack of interest in it if she could have just gotten some kind of job license for her quirk? At worst, it’s an example of Horikoshi throwing in a line that contradicts the surrounding canon. Either way, we’re left with people who feel a strong drive to use their quirks being pressured into heroism or straying into villainy for lack of other acceptable outlets.

All of these issues could be mitigated by less draconian restrictions on quirks—which Destro's followers are the only characters in the manga we've actively seen pushing for, rather than just heard about second-hand—and by not using an ideologically charged word like “heroes” to describe a glorified independent police force. Allowing people to freely use their quirks[54] means fewer people being pushed into a heroics job they're unsuited for, means fewer people being pushed into villainy, means a more rounded view on how quirks can be used, leading to less quirk-based prejudice and less—well, let’s talk some about false dichotomies.

All For Nothing, Nothing For All

Shigaraki stands as a fundamental accusation of the way the hero/civilian dynamic exacerbates the Bystander Effect, making people think of themselves as powerless, while at the same time putting untenable pressure on heroes to be perfect victory machines who don't experience pain or doubt or weakness. He further attests that this dynamic pushes out people who don't fit either category—victim or hero—making them villains. This is one of the fundamental thematic conflicts of the series—is one hero enough? Are heroes themselves enough? What are heroes, what do they fight, and what should they be fighting? Who deserves to be “saved” and what does it mean, anyway, to “save” someone? What happens to the people who aren’t saved? How will the world grapple with the consequences, the resentment, that stem from that failure?

In his work Underground, written to grapple with and criticize the way Japanese media covered the sarin gas attacks, author Murakami Haruki talked about the response to the incident being to call the members of Aum Shinrikyo evil, insane, diseased, other. They were spoken of as a monstrous fringe that could not have been predicted, about which nothing could have been done, rather than examined as bright, well-educated young people who by all accounts ought to have had good futures ahead of them but instead spiraled down into a doomsday cult. Murakami asserted that, because the Japanese public was unwilling to ask how and why that happened, was unwilling to self-examine, the country was locking itself into a repeating cycle. Memorably, he wrote, “Most Japanese seem ready to pack up the whole incident in a trunk labeled THINGS OVER AND DONE WITH,” to describe this resolute incuriosity, the strong aversion to looking into the face of evil and trying to find the humanity within it.

In this post and its follow-up, tumblr user @robotlesbianjavert discusses the problems that stem from that exact tendency as portrayed in My Hero Academia. She says, “Only making decisions that benefit the greater good is not the real solution that the narrative is rooting for. Not so long as it fails to recognize and address the needs of the victims that still come of it.” Hero Society will never stop creating its own villains so long as, every time it fails people, it does nothing but shrug and write off the victims as unavoidable, inevitable sacrifices for the greater good.

I would also like to highlight her point—which I hope she one day posts her own full essay on—about the way All For One and One For All serve as two extreme poles of equally unsustainable visions for society. This dynamic is all over the manga.

There are the characters of AFO and his younger brother themselves, each forever locked in battle to prove the correctness of his own way of thinking, and forever talking past the other even when they’re face to face.

There’s the contrast of heroes, giving their all to help strangers even when it hurts the people they love, with villains, giving their all to help the people they love even when it hurts strangers.

The flaws in the One For All model can be seen in the multilayered ravages it inflicted on All Might physically, emotionally, and socially. Thus, one for all is not always ideal.

The strengths of the All For One model can be seen in a team of heroes and police combining their efforts and will to help one single person—Eri. Nighteye even highlights this with his speech about everyone’s efforts coalescing into Midoriya and helping him to “twist fate.” Thus, all for one is not always about selfishness.

Once you start looking for it, this duality shows up everywhere, and I think—I hope—it’s an angle Horikoshi is conscious of. The obvious solution is that the extremes of this society are all undesirable—that total selflessness and total selfishness are equally unsustainable, and both are, ultimately, damaging. A more holistic approach is needed, yet if a holistic approach is what the manga ultimately proves to be seeking, it makes the mass arrest of the PLF particularly problematic, if it’s allowed to stand unchallenged. You cannot just choose not to see 115,000 dissatisfied people—some way or another, you have to reckon with them, and if you don’t do it in a way that actually helps them address whatever their core problem is, you’re just setting yourself up for more of the same further down the line.

The MLA believed that they were fighting for a just cause, for freedom, for the future. They absolutely had issues—Geten’s words indicate that much—but they were issues that would have been much better addressed by actually challenging them openly, rather than suppressing them. If they couldn’t get society to agree right away that the use of one’s quirk should be as unregulated as the use of one’s hands, maybe they would have accepted a tiered license approach to quirk use as a good starting compromise. If they wanted totally unhindered quirk use, such that people could murder with impunity? Well, that would never have gotten past the House of Representatives, but maybe a bill declaring that crimes committed by quirks should be treated no differently than crimes committed via any other means would have. A weeklong debate on the Diet floor would have stood a much greater chance of e.g. addressing the needs of the quirkless than the MLA alone would have bothered with.

The MLA didn’t get to have that kind of debate. Instead, they ran headfirst into Shigaraki Tomura, who made them far more dangerous. And yet… For all that Shigaraki twisted them, he didn’t change them so much that Re-Destro couldn’t still see the light of his ideals within them. Furthermore, even though the PLF didn’t win the battle we call the War Arc, it may be that they’re well on their way to winning the actual war.

“The Seeds Are Already Sown”

So what did the PLF actually want? Well, we have a few sources on that—Shigaraki’s desire to destroy “everything,” the cloned Re-Destro’s vision of liberation through “order without order,” and so forth. But a very instructive place to look is Hawks’ doomsaying in Chapter 258. While the PLF is a bit too scattered or imprisoned to appreciate it, a shocking number of the things Hawks laid out for the audience have actually come about, even if they didn’t happen exactly as the PLF planned. Consider:

Bring down the status quo by annihilating all heroes. Heroes—a number of whom died the day of the raid—are retiring in mass numbers. As the manga describes it, they are “being put through a sieve.” They certainly haven’t all been annihilated, but the ones remaining are having to do the work with little in the way of thanks or glory—the false heroes Stain spoke of have left the table.

They plan to attack all major cities at once throughout the nation. Gigantomachia stampeded over more than twenty cities in the space of less than an hour. A bunch of them were surely not major cities, but all the same, it was a rampage that caught the heroes almost completely off-guard (because they were all tied up arresting the PLF and didn’t think Machia would be an issue), leading to massive collateral damage and unspeakable loss of life.

With society brought to a lawless standstill… Thanks to AFO’s prison breaks, a bunch of villains are now out there raising hell to their hearts’ content, and there aren’t enough heroes around to always respond in a timely fashion. They’re having to open up schools as shelter zones, evacuating entire cities, which the common people respond to predictably poorly, leading to groups of people who were not previously villainous deciding to take the law into their own hands.

…Re-Destro and the Hearts & Minds Party will storm the political world. In Chapter 297, the less openly fascist guard worries that the remaining factions of the HMP[55] will still be stirring up trouble on the political front, especially given the enormous wave of brand-new complaints about human rights violations that he doubtlessly figured were incoming.

They will distribute weapons and extol the virtues of self-defense, calling it true freedom. Whether Detnerat picked up the pace of its black-market support goods sales, bankrolled Giran doing the same, or some other groups—yakuza, perhaps—stepped up, we already know that there are weapons and support goods circulating throughout society, and that people are using them for self-defense.

These people will throw the world into chaos and enthrone Shigaraki atop the rubble. The second coming of All For One. Far more so than anyone in the PLF would have wanted, this one has come horribly true with the AFO vestige’s possession of Shigaraki.[56]

While it is perhaps karmic that the PLF is in no position to enjoy the fruits of their villainous efforts, it’s striking how much of what they wanted has come about anyway. And how much of this can really be undone or wound back? Complete societal breakdown isn’t the kind of genie you can easily rebottle, and this, I think, is particularly illustrated by the civilians Yo and Tatami encounter in Chapter 307.

I’d like to wind this essay down by zooming in on that encounter somewhat.

The group of people the Ketsubutsu pair encounter in 307 are not nice, but neither are they violent. Having, like so many others, lost faith in heroes to protect them, they want only to protect their hometown and for heroes to leave them be. They’ve fended off a few small-time villain attacks and are bluntly uninterested in cooperating with condescending heroes (an impression Yo is not helping to mitigate) who have done nothing but disappoint them.

The spokesman in particular feels to me like someone who’s suffered a significant personal loss. The shadow over his eyes here is telling. (Chapter 307)

When Muscular shows up, they are 100% ready to put their lives where their mouths are. They are all in the process of charging outside, first to stop their town from suffering more damage, then to back up a hero kid they just got done telling to buzz off. And you know? It’s possible—probable, even!—that Muscular would have murdered every last one of them, and them charging in to fight him would have led to a horrific tragedy, one more to stack atop the pile.

And yet, while the narrative doesn’t allow them to actually assist,[57] neither does it entirely rebuke them, in the end. When all is said and done, the civilians agree to hear Tatami and Yo out, and they help Tatami get Yo inside for medical attention. The leader is a little abashed, but he doesn’t bow his head and admit to being wrong; his group doesn’t meekly submit to being herded to shelter. And that’s because the narrative is—wisely—unwilling to say that they’re wrong.

After all, how could it?

Midoriya Izuku and the jaded civilian's instincts. (Chapters 1 and 307)

For a last comparison, remember that in the first chapter, Midoriya Izuku—quirkless, untrained Midoriya Izuku—dove into a fight he had no way of winning, no way of even affecting. All he was doing was endangering himself and making the sludge villain even harder to target. Still, All Might and the narrative alike praised him for his action, because it was driven by a “desire to save.” In Chapter 307, a group of undertrained civilians witnesses a high school boy being attacked by the highest tier of villain their society knows, a Tartarus escapee, a gleeful and unrepentant serial killer with a devastatingly powerful quirk. Their response is to gather up their weapons and numbers and dive in to try and help. Regardless of the weakness of their quirks, regardless of their lack of training, regardless of the danger to their lives, their instinct is the same as Midoriya’s was back then—“the desire to save.”

How could the narrative possibly tell us that they're wrong?

And if they aren’t wrong, this group of people who are so very close to the vision the PLF had for the world after their revolution, the narrative simply cannot expect to retain the slightest hint of credibility if it tries to tell us that the PLF are worth nothing more than an authorial handwave and the slamming of a cell door.

Conclusion

What we are seeing in the manga now is a society that is fumbling towards a new way. It isn’t perfect; it has a lot of wrinkles to iron out. Yet in some ways, if this is a society that has gone back in time, it is also a society that has a chance to chart a different path forward than it did before, a more inclusive path, a more balanced one. Heroes can still exist in the same way that surgeons and emergency responders exist, but that doesn't mean people throw their first aid kits in the garbage.

People protest that untrained civilians using their quirks leads to collateral damage, and that's true. The same would be true, however, if a nation that relied solely on public transit suddenly faced the total breakdown of that system and found that, if they wanted to get anywhere farther than walking distance, they had to get behind the wheel of a car and drive there themselves with no previous experience handling a motor vehicle. With some basic training, or perhaps a test and associated license that is as ubiquitous as a driver's license, how much of the collateral damage caused by civilians fighting might be reduced? How might people feel more empowered to act when necessary?

I very much want to see that future in the manga. It will feel terribly bitter, however, if the people who always believed in that future the most don’t get to see it themselves.

Bit characters are bit characters, I know. Terrorists in fiction don’t typically get to walk away scot-free. But numbers aren’t just numbers, even in fiction, even when they’re villains. If all Horikoshi wanted was a sufficiently large, scary threat to throw his heroes up against, he should have stuck with mindless Noumu or maniacal robots. He didn’t. He chose to make that threat human. He cannot now choose to dehumanize the threat, just because those humans are no longer convenient to his story.

Or at least, he can’t make me look at his doing so as anything other than appalling—ahistorical, absurd, and unsustainable.

Come back next time for sources and further reading.

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

[51] And yes, as always, I do think that Geten-whose-name-means-Apocrypha is a radical, not a reliable barometer for the MLA norm.

[52] Contrasting Toga, the standard-bearer for bad quirks on the villain side.

[53] We don’t know if that practice—so widespread it became the subject of a long-running TV program—survived the Advent and raised crime rate, but if it didn’t, that only further suggests that kids wandering the streets unattended are probably in need of assistance.

[54] Within the same bounds other freedoms exist, e.g. they’re not unduly burdening others.

[55] Small political parties in Japan merge and fragment all the time, particularly in times of crisis, so it’s not surprising that the HMP has some sub-groups. I am somewhat surprised that these factions themselves weren’t dissolved as well, given the heavy-handedness on display everywhere else. This is about the only thing that suggests that the arrests might not be as totally over-the-top as is otherwise implied, though really, if that’s the case, it just brings us back to the problem of all the people who probably slipped the net if the HPSC did opt to undercompensate.

[56] Another enormous thematic issue I have with tossing away the PLF like this is that it renders Shigaraki and the League’s hard-fought victories in My Villain Academia all but meaningless—worse than meaningless, since settling into the villa instead of staying on the run or bunking up with Ujiko wound up losing them Twice—but that’s more a problem with the writing of Shigaraki’s arc than the themes of the series as a whole. Certainly, fumbling Shigaraki’s arc will have a nigh-incomparable impact on the themes of the series as a whole, but there’s time to salvage his situation yet, so I’m crossing my fingers and reserving judgement on that for now.

[57] It should have.

#bnha analysis #bnha meta #paranormal liberation front #meta liberation army #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #my writing #plf arrests #stillness has salt

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thecagedsong · 3 years ago

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Forgotten Light Chapter 14: Crescent Lagoon

A/N: Chapter 14 is here, and fairly short, especially after chapter 13′s monster length. Might even post chapter 15 today. We’ll see.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14

Chapter 14: Crescent Lagoon

The sombrosa swords were apparently a type of dual swords whose handles were half of the other, kind of like cutting a curved sword down the middle lengthwise.

No, Seth wasn’t allowed to touch them, yes they were magic. The wielder, with proper concentration, could make the swords sharp enough to cut through almost anything, even dragon hide, or sturdy enough to withstand tremendous pressure, though only one affect could be applied to each sword at one time. Apparently the Knights of the Dawn had had a combat tournament back in the day, and Grandma Gloria and Grandpa Stan had been the two finalists.

Vanessa took over discussing what an umbraka was and why them running loose is the perfect reason to end a tournament, but kept referencing other animals that Seth didn’t know, and it was decided there wasn’t enough time to get into that. There was another sanctuary that needed saving.

He was helped out of the Canoe by Warren, who had gone through before him. Instantly the humidity hit.

“It feels like I’m trying to breath in the ocean,” Seth complained.

“You’re welcome to compare a bit of humidity to the real experience,” Vanessa said, gesturing to the harbor. Tanu came through, then Grandma Gloria. Holding the canoe steady were short halflings. They were covered in black tattoos over their reddish skin and more of them were scattered between their spot and the treeline.

Their group gathered around a tall islander woman. Her long, curly black hair had a couple of gray streaks, but her age didn’t show otherwise. Next to her was a red-headed surfer dude.

“Welcome to Crescent Lagoon,” the woman said, “I am the caretaker, and due to the assistance of Knights Warren and Vanessa, we were able secure this small area to be protected under treaty. Be aware that the boundaries cover the beach, the water inside the cove, and about ten meters out on either side of where the beach turns into forest. And of course, my home, which you are all welcome to.”

Seth looked around, trying to make out houses around the enormous trees, but couldn’t see anything. Then a halfling came down an elevator from the big tree in the center, and Seth’s eyes went up. And up. Because this caretaker’s home made their old treehouse back at Fablehaven look like a doghouse.

“Wow,” Seth said, looking over the rope system. “We sleep in hammocks, right?”

“I’m sure we can string one up directly over the dragon-infested ocean for you, if you like,” Warren said with a grin.

“There are plenty of dangers here already,” Tanu said, “I don’t believe we need to tempt more.”

“Thank you for receiving us during these difficult times,” Grandma said, bowing to the caretaker, “I am Gloria Larsen, a knight of the dawn. Allow me to introduce my Grandson, Seth Sorenson, a shadow charmer, and Knight Tanu Dafu, an expert potion’s master. We will look forward to working together as we pursue our mutual goals.”

“Well met,” the Caretaker responded. “I am Savani, and this is one of my assistants, Grady. We will speak of more sensitive issues inside, particularly our mutual goals.” Savani started leading them away from the beach.

“Do we climb a rope latter to get up there?” Seth asked, looking at the interchanging platforms for a rope that hung all the way down.

“Not quite,” Grady said, “The Maze keeps us on our toes, but we spare ourselves at least the effort of getting up there.”

“It’s called the Monkey Maze?” Tanu asked, “Do the rooms shift?”

“Against intruders,” Grady answered, “We work closely with Heliconia, the dryad of this grove, to keep them together for most uses. Certain parts are forbidden, of course.”

“Is it required for all preserves to have dungeons for the horribly dangerous?” Seth asked, straining his ears to hear the sounds of the undead. There was a faint whispering, but it was slightly different than the Blackwell or even Fablehaven’s dungeon. He couldn’t make out anything but a low murmur, almost hidden by the sound of waves.

“Yes,” Vanessa said, “it is part of the base foundational treaty that all the sanctuaries are copied after. The caretakers must remove those who threaten the integrity of the treaty, and the undead rarely agree to be bound while being attracted to the magical souls of those on a preserve. Or they do, then break their word, and wind up in jail.”

“Noted,” Seth said.

“I would tell you that you should disregard that information,” Grandma Larsen said, amused, “but I suppose you should take note.”

“Here we are,” Savani said, bringing them to a platform that had a rope going up into the trees. “Please assemble on the platform.”

“It’s easier if you hold onto the rope in the center,” Vanessa warned, and everyone but Warren grabbed on. Seth grinned and kept his hands off.

“Brace yourself,” Warren said, crouching a little. The platform shot upwards, and Seth fell on his butt with a surprised laugh. He made it back to his feet before the platform stopped, and the adults were all chuckling at him.

“Do we get everywhere in the treehouse with unbuckled rollercoaster elevators?” Seth asked, jumping onto the bigger room the platform had become a part of.

Savani chuckled, “No, the rest is walking, I’m afraid. Come, the Menuhene have prepared refreshments to welcome you.”

“Menuhene?” Seth asked.

“Think of a breed of dwarves that hold agreements similar to brownies,” Tanu suggested, “Though their specialty if building, rather than maintaining households.”

“Awesome,” Seth said.

“Here we are,” Savani said, leading them to a different enclosed room via rope bridge. It had a couple of tables and wicker chairs. “Now, explain to me what brings a child to my nearly fallen preserve, former caretaker or not. Vanessa and Warren promised allies, not liabilities.”

“Hey, I saved Wyrmroost, and I’ve handle more secret vaults than you would ever believe,” Seth said, “I thought we were past doubting me and Kendra.”

“Be respectful Seth,” Grandma said gently, then turned to Savani, “It’s true, that Seth is young, and if it hadn’t been for the opening of the demon prison and the upcoming dragon war, we would have preferred him to grow up before venturing near any dragon sanctuary. He does have experience. Unfortunately, Seth is one of few true Dragon tamers in the world, able to move and converse with ease. Seth has also become a shadow charmer, and his skills are necessary for upcoming trials, one of which involves retrieving his sister from the Phantom Isle. One of our goals here is to find training for Seth from a demon whose interests are strongly aligned against dragons.”

“A dragon sancturary is an odd place for a dragon hating demon to lair,” Savani said, “Who is it you seek?”

“Talizar,” Grandma said.

“I am familiar with him,” Savani nodded, “he’s one of the rare demons that invoke boundary magic as one of his tools, rather than relying on his own strength against dragon neighbors. Caretakers in the past have mentioned him activating Moai to more strictly enforce dragon boundaries. His lair is on the same island as the corrupted pool.”

“Another of our goals,” Tanu said with a nod, “We have reason to believe that Ronodin kidnapped Seth’s sister and our dear friend, Kendra Sorenson. Any chance to capture and interrogate him needs to be investigated immediately.”

“And, of course,” Warren added, “We want to help further restore the boundaries of Crescent Lagoon, prevent it from falling and all that jazz.”

Savani nodded slowly, eyeing them. “I see where our interests align. I will lend you aid where I can, but my aid is further reduced by the fall of this preserve, though it improves with the aid of Warren and Vanessa, who were able to bring back the Moai that protects the Monkey Maze. As long as one Moai is active, the outer boundaries of this preserve are intact. Unfortunately, this is a temporary refuge.”

“Why is it only temporary?” Grandma Gloria asked.

“I see there was not time for complete explanations,” Savani said, going to a map on the wall, “We lost the Sunset Pearl, which was the magic source for all the Moai in the preserve. As a failsafe, individual moai can be activated independent of the sunset pearl, as the moai currently protecting here was by consuming a sacrifice of a person’s most treasured object. I will not be able to pay the debt I owe to Warren for being willing to sacrifice his.”

“What was it?” Seth asked.

Warren was looking at the floor, “A limited print baseball card I always carry with me. The player was my dad’s best friend, an Uncle to me, close as family can be. He died of cancer years ago, and it was all I had left of him.”

“Warren’s sacrifice was accepted,” Savani said, “As was my sacrifice of my family’s ancestral tablets. I can read the Moai, and we have two weeks of protection before another sacrifice is required by someone else.”

“It’s harder than you think,” Vanessa said, “Deciding on a most important object. I couldn’t think of anything then, and still can’t think of anything that the Moai would have accepted. Obviously the goal is to restore the Sunset Pearl before our current sacrifice runs out.”

“Any idea where the Sunset Pearl was taken?” Tanu asked.

“None,” Savani sighed, “I’ve lost many allies in the process of looking, but nothing has come from those sacrifices.”

“They also need to know about the Triclops,” Vanessa said.

Savani nodded, “Mombatu the Triclops is the designated dragon slayer of this sanctuary. He became active when the sanctuary fell, and he is savage. He will slay a dragon before a human, but he has lost his faculties over time. He is so ancient, my people supposed him dead, and now he is a danger to anyone who comes near him, including me. He has driven the dragons away from this particular island, and is therefore the current greatest threat to our borders.”

“Really, there is no way to talk to him?” Grandma Gloria asked, “Seems a poor choice for a dragon slayer allied with the treaty makers.”

Savani shrugged, “Our legends say the original caretaker could soothe him to peace with a flute song, but the song and the flute have been lost to legend.”

“Shame we didn’t bring Newel and Doren with us this time,” Seth said, giving a little grin. The cowards would absolutely refuse to play their panflutes for the triclops unless the only other choice was to be eaten.

“As Savani suggested,” Vanessa said, a wry grin on her lips, “The magic was in the flute, rather than being a fan of the instrument. We’ll let our satyr friends recover another day in Fablehaven before testing their bravery once again.”

“Have you seen the site where the Sunset Pearl was kept?” Tanu asked.

“I saw it with Hako,” Warren said, “We didn’t find much. Ten really big moai in a ring facing inwards. An altar of piled stones at the center with a bowl on top. Supposedly three guardians protected the pearl, but there was no sign of them. There were tracks from the triclops though.”

“No sign of the three guardians and triclops tracks,” Grandma Larsen mused, “Were they dependent on the Pearl for existence?”

“I believe so,” Savani said, “and the triclops tracks are likely from it’s rampaging, rather than having to do with the theft. The triclops appeared long after the pearl had vanished.”

“Okay, so we need a pearl, would like a flute, have to watch out for a rampaging triclops, Ronodin was spotted lurking around a corrupted pool, and we need to locate a demon to negotiate some training with him. Anything else we should discuss before planning?” Seth asked.

“What remains of your staff?” Tanu asked.

“Grady here,” Savani said, “Hako, our gamekeeper. And Uma. Uma is frail and in a wheelchair, but she will likely interest you, Potion Master.”

Tanu blinked, and his took on a bit of awestruck, “Not Uma Stormbrewer.”

“The same. She joined our staff after her legs gave out, but she and her skills remain sharp,” Savani said.

“That’s…she’s a legend,” Tanu said, “She’s a grand master of potion making, I hardly deserve the title compared to her.”

“Good thing you got courage potions in abundance,” Seth said, slapping him on the shoulder, “And I suppose you two should know about another ally we brought. Calvin, say hi.”

Calvin peeked out of his pocket, “Hello,” he waved. “I wasn’t sure to introduce myself or not, I’m one of those assets best left hidden. I’m Calvin the Nipsie.”

“You are welcome here, small ally,” Savani said, bowing her head in a nod of recognition. She waited a moment, then said, “I believe we have reached a summation of our assets and current goals. Onto planning. Hako was planning on investigating the corrupted pool alone today, since we had no timeframe for how long it would take Warren and Vanessa to find allies, even with the small dragon’s help.”

“I want to go with and help with the investigation,” Seth said.

“I go where Seth goes,” Grandma Gloria said. “Depending on what we can locate at the corrupted spring, it would also be foolish to not to greet Talizar and open negotiations for training while we are already outside the protections granted. Just as it would be foolish to delay, if our time limit is really only two weeks.

“I believe I will skip this venture in order to consult longer with Uma,” Tanu decided, “I have many fresh ingredient from dragons that I hope she will be interested in.”

“I believe she will be,” Savani said with a smile. Everyone turned to Vanessa and Warren.

“Well, what do you say?” Warren asked Vanessa with a smile, “It’s been, what, almost twenty whole hours since our last near death experience? I think we’re up for another round.”

“Right, practically a vacation,” she said drily. “Wouldn’t want to become bored with existing.”

“Count us in for one trip to the corrupted spring,” Warren said.

Finally, he could start following a lead on Kendra. She just had to keep Ronodin’s slimy hands and stupid words away from her for a little bit longer.

#Forgotten Light #Fablehaven #Dragonwatch #seth sorenson #Crescent Lagoon #shorter chapter #I thought about writing out the full argument between Stan and Gloria #and letting Vanessa geek out over mythical creatures she'd like to own #but its not plot relevant #and only I would care probably.#This is the last chapter that kind of matches Canon before Seth's story goes way sideways from it #I love it

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whatdoesshedotothem · 3 years ago

Text

Tuesday 26 January 1836

7 ½

11 40

No kiss fine morning F42 ½° at 8 ½ at which hour went out - with Robert Mann + 3 who began levelling down and filling up and graduating the slope between the Pearson Ing and coal pit field so as to leave no trace of the old hedge-row and its com dike, as they call it here - came in to breakfast at 9 5 and then sat reading (A- off to Stainland at 10 ¼ and back at 4) till 11 from p. 406 to 462 end of the volume and read also the 5 pages of appendix of this very clever and interesting

“An Experimental Inquiry into the Laws of which regulate the phenomena of organic and animal Life. By George Calvert Holland, MD Bachelor of letters of the University of Paris; formerly senior President of the Hunterian medical society, and the President of the Royal Physical society of Edinburgh The application of particulars to a whole will often discover their fallacy, and the applying any general system to particulars will often discover its true limits - Cullen.

Edinburgh printed for Maclachlan and Stewart; and Simpkin and Marshall, London 1829. J. Moir, Printer, West Register Street Edinburgh 1 volume 8vo pp. 462 + 5pp. + appendix.”

Mr. SW- came at 11 - brought me my account and balance of rents - I observed that he would see handbills out respecting Hilltop farm - He said nothing - so I, just asked if he was a very good farmer and then dropped the subject - W- said the grass land was in very fair order - I then talked of my new road to my house - asked what W- could do it for, and said if I went from home I might perhaps got him to do it - this led to the mention of Mawson - if Mr. SW- was a friend of his, had better tell him he should not have his excavators in the house, if he had, no respectable people would go to the house - W- allowed this - I said he was very foolish - he quite defeated my intention of the great respectability of the place - if he did not alter, I should tire in time - I had had several applications for the place from persons saying Mawson said he should give it up - but all I had said was he had not told me anything of this kind - the road from the Lodge to the barn doors 62 roods = 434 yards long - spoke of bur-walling the upper side and making an open shallow drain up to it - say 15in. wide - this would be done for 1/3 per yard finding sets to set up to the wall with - then exclusive of this road to be 13ft. 6in. wide thro’ the wood and 12ft. wide thro’ the field and covered with 9in. thick of boulder all broken into 2 ½ in. sized pieces, laid on at twice, and rolled with the town’s roller each time - I mentioned 3 tons of dross per wood, W- thought 2 tons enough - 2 tons per rood broken into 2in. sized pieces i.e. dross bringing breaking and laying on would be 10/. per rood - should have a little road sand or Halifax (Northgate) gravel to set it with - the bouldering would cost 30/. and the dross 10/. per rood = 40/. per rood for which SW- would engage to do it, the bed of the rood being found ready - SW- said stuff should be carted from Whiskam quarry to the road at 9d. per cubic yard - stuff should be shifted from near the Lodge to form embankment to mask the Stump house (Mr. Barber) at 7d.per yard (22 yards = a barrow-run - 1 barrow run 5d. or 5d. for the 1st run and 1 1/2d. for each run more - .:. 3 barrow runs = 8d. per cubic yard of stuff shifting) talking to Robert Mann this afternoon he said he would do it at 6d. per cubic yard - Mr. SW- said he had bid £7,000 for A- for Mr. Armitage’s estimate of Home house - thought it make £120 per annum - but he had bid for another estimate for A- which he did not know whether she would take or not - £10,000 for Sir Joseph Radcliffe’s estimate adjoining (parted only by Stony Lane) the Cliff Hill land - yes! yes! said you are safe enough there - it would be cheaper, at £10,000 than another at £7,000 ‘yes! that it would - but Mr. Jones (the steward - of Huddersfield) said it must be a great price to tempt them to sell - they would not take £10,000 but Mr. J- said he would consider about it’ - well! said I, Miss W- will not miss it for £1100, I think or even something more - asked what it would make per annum - £265 according to the present rents - but good stone in it - SW- brought me his valuation annual and real of the estimate not including any valuation of wood, stone, or coal - considering the value of the stone he had valued the estimate at 40 years purchase .:. £265x40 = £10600 - SW staid near an hour - then some while with Marian - did not say anything particular - out at 12 ½ - sauntered about till Robert Mann + 4 (one more than in the morning) came to their work - sometime with them - then at Whiskam quarry then looking about in Coney wood for a largeish tree to remove - 35 minutes with Matty - the Holdsworth suspect William Polland wants to buy the cottages for me, so told him never to say a word more about them - then off to Mytholm met Holt - has ordered the Bendwood - thinks nothing of the engine pit surface being 20 yards (3 yards more than he and Joseph Mann calculated) above the upper bed coal - all right - one whimble hole enough - sure we are on the solid - then at Mytholm with Joseph Mann + 2 men and 2 boys - the road round the house almost pheyed thro’ the garden - began siding the stones on Friday and since then have got on well and are making a good job of it - Mrs. Aquilla Green looking after her cows - feeds and waters them 3 times a day when the man is not there - feels much the better for it - stood talking a long while - she let out that Joseph W- is fast with Norris owes him so much - I said I had heard a great deal about N- having his [clow] over upper brea - I should guess JW- owed him a thousand pounds - yes! she should not be surprised if he did - the Redbeck farm mortgaged to its full value -

SH:7/ML/E/18/0168

yes! she and Aquilla always thought so - A- almost tired of keeping accounts for them and doing so much for them in that way (JW- no scholar) for they behaved so ill to him in return - got all they could out of Jack Green, and A- often thought he (Jack) would come to the poor house at last - told Mrs. AG- to be sure to tell her husband to go on taking the best care he could for JW and not to let Norris get the property out of him for nothing - let it be sold fairly and I would not let it go for nothing - it was 5 when I got back to Robert Mann and co. - they staid about 10 minutes afterwards then too dark to work - I sauntered to the Lodge the men just leaving it - nor I nor they spoke -sauntered about - sometime in the stable till George called me in at 6 5 - dressed - waited a little for A- dinner at 6 ½ and coffee in ¾ hour - then with my father and Marian till 8 - then A- went to my aunt and I came to my desk and till 9 ½ wrote all the above of today and looked into SW-‘s estimate valuation etc Letter tonight from Messrs. Hammersleys London with my account. 25 minutes with my aunt till very poorly but rather better than last night - then 10 minutes looking over the newspaper - fine day - F43° now at 10 ¼ pm and highish wind and rain at 11.

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