#new comic page will probably be posted at some point this Sunday | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thoseindarkness · 4 years ago

Text

DtD News Nov 2020

Thank you to anyone who came back for this nonsense. For brevity I have an announcement that I want to make up front. I didn't have room for it last month so I pushed it back, but I can't anymore. I had to make one major revision to the published story. I want people to know about it.

This is the TLDR version. I tell a more in-depth story at the end.

ANNOUNCEMENT

The summary: I had a bad outline walking into writing Mistrust Goes Both Ways. I ran into a problem mid-story. Instead of stopping and taking the time I needed, I challenged myself to creatively solve my way out of my problems. I re-started with about half of what I'd written, published Mistrust Goes Both Ways, and restarting my outline with high hopes. I was proud of myself for rising to the challenge.

Despite my best efforts, it didn't work out. In the end, I had to scrap my outline. I was able to structure the end I was going for and spent the end of 2019 trying to link the first two stories to the ending I wanted. It wasn't working. Then TRoS. Then COVID. Here we are. In June, I started experimenting with scrapping Mistrust and restarting from Read Between.

Mistrust Goes Both Ways will not be part of the finished story when I'm done. I know some of you love it. I love it. I have no intention of taking it down. I might, for a short time, when I'm posting the final story. I'll let you know if that happens and it will go back up afterward. I don't have specifics as there's no point planning for it now.

For right now, nothing is changing on my AO3 account. Feel free to read and comment to your hearts content. I promise it will stay up forever to remind me that some mistakes are worth sharing with others. I learned good lessons from this mistake. It stays.

That being said I think I owe you an actual update on the progress of this story.

WHAT THE HELL I DID THIS MONTH

After my first update I needed to re-integrate with Reylo friends. Funnily enough, that pulled me into another fic. I've been working on that between following this election. Now that it's called I can get back to writing. I tried a couple of times since I voted on Oct 30th, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted to be thinking about.

Thankfully, I've also begun doing more social/political essays lately. I'm not sure what overall form or shape those may take and I haven't published any. Still, I was creative and I did plenty of writing. Interestingly, all this political focus is good for Deceive the Deceiver. Spinning and listening to conspiracy theories is a big part of weaving a world like this one. A great deal comes from my thoughts and perceptions of the real world.

WHERE DTD IS

As of right now I am in the process of first drafting the entire story with Read Between as the starting point. That is, every one of the short stories in the series. What I'm doing is somewhere between a history, an outline and random scene writing. All of these elements are currently strung together in one long, continuous, chronological, first draft. It's everything from the history before Read Between (which starts in the 1930's), all the way to the final scene of DtD.

I'm taking all the good ideas I've created in the last couple of years and re-organizing them into a first pass. It's the skeleton and some of the meat now. I'm slowly building out now that I have a blank-er slate. It's about choosing what works and what doesn't.

I call it accordion writing. It just gets bigger and bigger. This outline will later level up into the first full story drafts for each part. I've got so much history when I finish this I might… I'm getting ahead of myself. Don't want to give too many clues away.

Another interesting thing that's happened recently is I've started pulling bits of other fic ideas that I’m just not gonna finish. A big chuck of the history I stole from a modern/academia AU where Ben and Rey are history students specializing in the ancient Jedi religion. Another was a complication between characters came from a canon story where I wanted to paint the relationship with a new layer. We'll see if I can pull that off.

I spent a lot of time prior to this year focusing on the heroes but my villains hadn't gotten much love. Filling in the history has given me a chance to flesh out the villains. All their moves and countermoves, woven through the bits I already have, are spinning a pretty tapestry. Oh, the villains are so much fun to write!

This other fic came together in the same sort of accordion fashion and it's been fun working through the kinks in the process now that I've seen some of the weak points on a scale like DtD. I think I've mentioned, but this is a writing experiment for me and I'm most invested now in improving my process and clue-threading with DtD. This other fic is helping me test it on a smaller scale.

Not that this needs to get any longer, I'm just going to throw pretense out the window and go with complete vanity. If you don't give a wet shit about my life (and I don't blame you) you have reached the end of your journey. I hope to see you next month. If not, then I leave you with this parting:

May we meet again in our next fandom, through mutes and not as rival shippers.

The following is the ridiculous story of my ups and downs with Deceive the Deceiver. I figure if I explain to you how much I'm invested in this story some of you will stop worrying that I'm going to abandon it. Trust me. I'm not.

This tale stretches from NANOWRIMO 2018 and the prompt that started it, through the ups and downs of 2019 and 2020, to the writing of last month's letter. Buckle up. I love bumpy rides.

DtD: from NANO '17 to COVID-19

This story truly starts in December 2017 when I drenched the seat beneath me during Last Jedi. I'm a TLJ shipper. I got caught on the thirst train. It hit a time when writing was becoming a really big part of my life. I've been writing since I was a kid. I stopped for a while and came back to it. It's a long story. Ultimately, I'd started writing a lot a few years earlier. A mix of fic and originals but I was running into problems so I start reading a bunch of books to get better. TLJ lit the fires. NO joke TLJ came out on the 15th. I have pages of writing from the 20th.

2018 was Reylo year! I was already on Tumblr for my previous fandom (Batman comics). I found Reylo AU week which is in August. I submitted a story for that. It was the first fic I published for Reylo. Fast-forward August to November. I'm in the Writing Den on Discord and someone throws out this spy prompt. People start running with. Throwing ideas around. One of those was the snuggie in Mistrust! I have that conversation saved and story spots for each crazy thing they threw out. Finally, I said I'd do it!

Mind you, this is November 2nd. Nano has just started and the event is about "turning off your internal editor." This prompt consumed me. I was trying to keep up with SpaceWaffleHouseTM that first year. I did, btw. We both crested 100,000. It was my first Nano. Word count is not my problem. Organizing my crazy ambitious ideas is my problem. Some of that 100k was other stories, like Custard which I wrote half of in November and the other half Jan/Feb 2019. Most of it… probably 80k of it… was DtD.

Read Between the Lies is currently 33,710. I wrote at least 20k of that during that first Nano, as well as outlines and scenes for what I thought would be the starting point. I remember wanting to write Read Between to "get into their headspace" by writing their first meeting. I didn't think it would become a whole story. I was just going with it then. Any idea that came to mind.

I took December 2019 off for a few reasons. Some personal. Some burnout. I'm one of those people that can use writing to relieve stress, but I was so exhausted from that month-long writing sprint. By the last week I was dragging to get the final four or five thousand words to hit 100k.

Also, what I had by the end (no internal editor) was a bird nest of ideas that had too many beginnings, not enough middles, and endings to go around. I knew one thing right away: I knew I had more than one story. There were so many fun ideas. I figured, what the hell. I knew another thing right away: the prompt was at the end of the story. Like, the very end. Like, the last short story. Or the second to last short story, at the earliest. That hasn't changed. Ever. That's just where it ended up.

Between January and April of 2019 I touched DtD a few times. I kept coming back to it, reading through it, trying to untangle it. I made new notes on the stories. Expanded ideas. Tried to structure it. I figured out a bunch of good notes, but no real substance. The hardest thing was figuring out where to start! Did I:

(1) Start shortly before the prompt with Ben/Rey's relationship established and fill the story with the history?

(2) Start a lot earlier and build Ben/Rey's relationship from the beginning I'd written in Read Between?

If I'm being honest, Read Between was a lot better than I thought it would be and I didn't want to get rid of it. For a while I was thinking of publishing it last as a "prequel" if people liked the series.

Funny enough, the turning point happened May fourth weekend 2019…

In the week leading up, I was struggling through another story and decided to take a break for the weekend. I'd start writing again on Sunday when I met with my writing group. I met them through Nano. We used to meet at Panera. Now they meet on Discord. They mostly sprint though and I'm not a sprinter. I miss Panera. Anyway.

May 4th was a Sunday (look it up). I gave myself a writing break for the weekend and marathoned Star fucking Wars. It was nerd weekend. I was going to nerd out. I wore exclusively SW gear all weekend. I remember it well. It was the start of something fucking magical in my life.

Have I mentioned recently I really love this story. Trust me I will fucking finish it. Oh my god the demons won't leave until I do. Get them out of my head…

I had a pretty rockstar weekend. I believe the reason I skipped the PT that weekend was because I'd watched it the month before or so. Right after finishing the Clone Wars animated series (which is awesome and I strongly recommend both it and Rebels). I skipped them and SOLO.

Starting with R1, I went through in chronological order. I stopped at RotJ. I was with my family on Saturday and they were playing RotJ in the living room during the party. We talked about my marathon. My mom came over to my apartment after. We watched RoTJ properly. Then Force Awakens. It was too late by then to watch TLJ. I know I went straight to bed after my mom left on Saturday night.

Somewhere during or right after TFA I started thinking about Deceive the Deceiver. I don't remember what sparked it. I went to bed thinking about DtD. I know this with 100% certainty because I woke up thinking about again on Sunday and I thought it was quite odd.

I dream about this story in a way I have only dreamt about a precious few. Technicolor folks. It keeps me up at night.

I went to my writing group with (a) no plan for what to write, (b) a gordian knot that I had yet to untangle, (c) a sudden urge to re-read it. I opened my notes and read DtD through all our sprints. I read most of it during that writing session. We go about three hours.

That night I had Game of Thrones at my parent's. It was the (spoiler alert) episode where Arya kills the Night King. I remember because two minutes into the episode my brother's car broken down a few blocks from our apartment and we had to go help him. Derailed the whole night (this is foreshadowing).

Side note: I live with my younger brother and he's the best roommate I've ever had in my 35 years of life. Love you, Mo!

The episode was recording so we ran out. Had to leave the car in a parking lot. Someone had already helped him push it out of a puddle but my brother was soaked to mid-calf and the engine was shot. We dropped him off at home and I rode back to my Momma's crib to watch GoT. It was only the beginning of a wild night.

I went to bed late. I had to get up a few hours early to deal with the car before work started for either of us. I guess we were both hoping to avoid taking the day off. That wasn't going to happen. I drove home but I couldn't sleep. That crazy episode and the fact that my brain was already on fire with DtD.

I spent the wee hours finishing my re-read through the rough draft of Read Between the Lies. It saw my starting place. I started writing. I wrote through waiting in a parking lot, for the tow truck, in my car, at 6 am, with no sleep. I did a voice recording as I drove from the parking lot to the mechanic where the driver was taking my brother's car. I thought about it the whole way back. I sat on the sofa a wrote some more when we got home. I went to bed at 11 am and I'd written 10k more words for Read Between the Lies.

Somewhere between the chaos of May 5th and the official publish date on June 5th, Read Between got written. I know it didn't take too long. I remember sending it off to beta (by my amazing beta team on 1 & 2: Em, Jen, and Sai) and immediately pivoting to my outline. I slapped that together far too hastily and kept moving. I was going on holiday in the UK (I'm American and I'm ashamed) in early August so I planned on trying to publish Part 2 when I got back. At the very least I wanted it ready for beta.

Also some to admit, around the middle of 2019 I was fatigued with the fandom. We were hitting a lull. I was psyching myself up for the end and the exit. I was trying to clean house. I wanted to push out unfinished fics. To make them work. There was a lot of that mood from me in 2019. I was trying to make everything work. It's why Read Between came out, and that was a good thing. It's also why Mistrust came out, and that was a bad thing.

With that mentality looming, tough outline in hand, I started writing Mistrust before the end of May. I hit my snag sometime during the period I was publishing Read Between because by the time it was all done I knew I wasn't going to have a finished story by the time I left for London. I would figure it out when I got back. I picked up another project to distracted me from my problems for a little while. That is going to be an original if it's anything. One day…

At some point after I got back I started focusing heavily on problem solving. I had two stories already and a number of plot threads I had to resolve. I have heavy, heavy, heavy notes from September to December of 2019. Lots of possible ways to run this story. It sucks that a lot of that stuff isn't going to make it, but I'm recycling shit every day and I learned so much about the characters/story in that four month period. It really shaped the finished product in an important way.

This period is where I started to look at the bigger structure and how I was going to solve specific plot problems in each short story to bring the whole together. That focus on the different parts is important because it was the last thing on my mind when TRoS happened.

December 20th (the release date) is my birthday. My ass drove up to one of those Reylo-only screenings and I was surrounded by amazing people as I watched a movie that ruined my 35th birthday. Thankfully, I spent it in incomparable company. Thank you to all the hosts and super special thanks to Jen. Not only was she a DtD beta on both, she invited me. Thank you love! You are the reason I still remember that trip with joy.

Side note: I no longer hate TRoS. I've made my peace with it. I'm a far happier person now.

Needless to say, the only Reyloing I did in January of this year was venting frustration. Then I took a few weeks away from the fandom. I'd done my purging into the void. I knew other people still needed the space to vent but I had to get away. Once the toxin is out I couldn't let it back in.

What occurred starting in February of 2020 was a series of situations in which, every time I logged into Twitter I was faced with the kind of vitriol in the fandom that I don't need in my life. Some of it was still TRoS stuff, even as late as May. I'm not judging, I'm just saying, with the world on fire (literally), I didn't need it.

I don't think I have to explain why I've avoided social media like the plague since early this year. I live in America. If you heard anything about our recent President I don't have to explain any further what this year has been like. That has been par for course all over the world.

So here's my secret to happiness. I don't fux with the trolls. Do not engage. Sometimes that means radio silence. I'm breaking that silence because I want you to know 2020 has not destroyed DtD. It's only leveled shit up.

I have pretty much been working on this story consistently since March of this year. I go back and forth with reading, history, documentaries. I'm learning to wield many new weapons. They take time to settle in. DtD is the de-stressor I go to in between the real shit.

Sometime in June I was screwing around with the order of the parts. I had worked out the end but I was trying to bridge the gap between the ending I was certain I needed to get to and the two beginning stories I'd already published. I couldn't bridge the gap. It had been a year since I published Read Between and it wasn't working. Then I had an epiphany.

What if I got rid of Mistrust? Read Between is a pretty blank slate. I didn't want to re-write it and I still don't. I have no intention of getting rid of Part 1. I may clean it up and add some stuff at the very last minute, but it will be right before the new stuff drops as a pre-cursor to the flood of subsequent stories. I may add a few new clues or alter a scene or two, but I have plenty of room to move with it exactly the way it is.

What does that mean for Mistrust Goes Both Ways? To make a long story short, there was no good way for me to continue with what I'd published and still write the story in my head. I'm sure there are cool places to take the existing story, but that's not what I'm trying to do. In truth, I should have left 1 and not published 2 when I hit a snag. Lesson learned.

In June I basically threw Mistrust out and asked myself, "Now what?" I have months of great ideas rife for reshuffling and no restrictions on how to bridge the gap from 1 to the ending I wanted. But the end had shifted.

That brings us up to speed. The last thing I did before taking a much needed break was get through 90% of the history in my accordion outline/draft. I poured the foundation that was missing. I walked away in early October and let it set. I'm going to button up this other fic I'm working on and then go back to DtD and check the foundation I laid.

I'm very confident that not only will it hold, but that with fresh eyes and the fun side stories I've had the chance to lay to rest, I will finally be able to start building the finished products on top of it.

IN CONCLUSION

I'm still as excited as I've ever been for this story. It frustrates me all the time, but that means the medicine for my soul is working its magic. Change it painful, but pain is transformative. I've embrace changed. That ache is just a sign the muscles are getting stronger. Growing pains. As I learn to live with them in my family, my country, and my job, I find that life's lesson's often end up reflecting in every place in our life if we but open our eyes to look.

Growing pains exist in my writing process too. They are as transformative in this corner of my life as they are in every other. They have revealed as much about me as a person in my writing as they have in my politics. They have taught me how to compromise with my family as I learn to compromise with my characters. As I consider how people treat each other I am reminded that struggles in understanding our fictional counterparts may shine a light on our struggles to understand our truer selves.

Take care of yourselves. Once you've got that covered, if you can, take care of each other. Feel free to poke me and say hi. If not, until next month.

Fari.

#deceive the deceiver #reylo #reylo fanfic #reylo fan fiction #modern au #spy au #fan fic #fan fiction

4 notes · View notes

rann109 · 4 years ago

Text

What the hell happened to Wereworld by Rann?

Hello folks. I know it’s been a long time. The little webcomic I did over on comicgenesis was last updated by me on 1-13-13 and frankly I’m surprised it is still up. I’m surprised comicgenesis is still up.

I don’t know if the folks in charge there are doing anything now, but last I checked there seemed to be only the barest minimum of maintenance going on. A quick perusal of the forum indicates that not much is working and creators are just kind of on their own. The glory days of the site seem to be long over.

I am starting this blog to answer questions a lot of my comic’s long-suffering fans might have been asking for years now.

This is my very first Tumblr post. I chose them because (so far) it’s easy to use, they’re popular, and most importantly, free! I also like the old-school blog feel. I don’t know how many of you will actually FIND it. I’ve planned on doing this for years now and I was going to make the announcement via the Yahoo group but, alas, Yahoo has ended their groups service just as I resolved to do this. Probably because nobody uses them anymore. I can’t really blame them, but as a result I lost contact with all of you.

This is going to take awhile to unpack. It’s been almost nine years, after all. Damn.

Before going into details, I’ll just say Life happened. It has been a chaotic time for me, as well as, I’m sure, for you. But I’ll get to the first and biggest reason I stopped the comic:

#1- BURNOUT

Yes, the artist’s arch-nemesis, burnout. I got to a point where the thought of picking up a pencil to draw was the last thing I wanted to do. It came as a shock, really. As passionate as I was in the early days I thought it would never end. I loved drawing and creating characters and stories as much as anything I ever got into. As my ability improved through dedicated practice I was proud of the work and loved the feedback. But over time I grew less and less interested in updating Wereworld. I guess about ten years of dedicated work on a project that doesn’t seem to have an end anytime soon and receiving no pay for that work can do it to a person. I really got tired of trying to compose a page, draw it, ink it, update my page using html, and post the finished comic all in the same day. Other days of the week were out of the question as I had little enough free time as it was and I had to, and wanted to, do other things during that time.

#2- FAMILY

And everyday life seemed to begrudge me even the little time I ended up spending on Wereworld. Like, everything would be going smoothly, but as soon as I sat down, put on some music to get “in the zone”, that’s when life would come kicking down my door to demand my undivided attention. Every Sunday I could count on my phone ringing, family wanting my attention and loading me with worries and problems before going merrily on their way, leaving me in a bad mood. No comic THIS week. AGAIN! My “Why bother?” kicked in and I began to plan on just waiting around, doing nothing, waiting for crisis #2076 to come banging on my door. Nobody except my wife understood how important that little bit of time was to me and how important it was for me to be in the right STATE OF MIND to work on Wereworld. All it took was a comment or a five minute call to screw me up. They are the kind of people who measure a thing’s worth by how much money you’re making because of it. And since I wasn’t making anything on it, they saw no reason not to bother me during my drawing time. The “emergency only” stipulation I made about calls tended to be loosely interpreted. (My sibs are all married with children now, with all the problems that come with it and it has been pretty damn quiet for me here on my end in the past few years, LOL!)

#3- DEPRESSION

No, not clinical depression. Not the kind that pushes people to the brink and start thinking of ending ending it all, but the combination of little to no time to spend on creating and my growing burnout pretty much marked the end. The situation made me feel depressed. But I have many other activities and a happy life with my wife (who was always very supportive of my various obsessions, including WW) and it was easier to refocus on other things instead of mourning my waning motivation to create new comics.

#4- WORK

Yep, work. Gotta pay the bills and eat. I lost my career job when the place I worked finally shut its doors after a long decline after 9-11. I did a little bit of everything after that and pretty much all of it sucked. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

I’ll end this post for now, as the day is getting on and there’s other things I have to do (yep, still!), but there’s a lot more to this and I’ll be back VERY soon to update this blog. And you CAN believe me this time!

11-24-20, AAnnd I’m back. On to number five.

#5- DISCONNECTION

The longer I went without updating the comic, the less connected to it I felt. I had in mind to finish the thing someday but not on the Comicgenesis platform. And time just sort of slipped away. I’d still think about the story now and then, but it wasn’t an all consuming thing like it was before, not even close. And I started working on other stories which I’ll get into later.

#6- GUILT

I still receive a fan email once in awhile, hard to believe. At first I answered everybody, but over time as it became more apparent I wasn’t going to get back to it anytime soon, I stopped replying. I felt guilty about leaving everyone hanging, and the longer it went, the more guilty I felt until I’d wince whenever I got an email concerning the old comic. I was going to send a letter out via my Yahoo group, but like I mentioned before, they stopped the service just as I was about to do it. That added to my guilt even more!

#7- OTHER INTERESTS

I have always had a variety of hobbies and interests and I was good and ready to get back into some of them or start new things altogether. My first passion is knife making and I have been into that in the past years since. Not full time, I don’t want to burn myself out on that too, but I have made and sold a good little amount in the past few years. I took a leather armor maker’s master class and had a lot of fun at that, I rebuild vintage road and mountain bikes, and scour the countryside for resalable items at yard and estate sales. To name a few. I also wrote and published a book on Amazon, so that’s out there. It’s called “Abagail Reese and the Supersonic Witch” if anyone cares to check it out. I had a lot of fun writing that but it hasn’t made me much change so I kinda redirected my creative focus on my knives, which actually does pay. I have a few other stories kicking around in my mind but I don’t know when I’ll ever get to writing them down. I’m sure as hell not going to try to illustrate them myself. As slow as I work and as rusty as I am, forget it. They’d be novels. Unless I found a great, fast artist who worked for almost free, lol!

#Rann Wereworld webcomic

2 notes · View notes

veryimportantsparkles · 5 years ago

Photo

Alright I’ve kept meaning to do sort of an infodump on my projects because I’ve been really slipping lately. I dunno how obvious it is? Probably kind of obvious. I’ve also been really bad about checking messages and responding to people. So I figure I can write up a status report and then point to it when I’ve been inadequate about communication.

My IRL job has been wiping me out. I’ve been getting short, labor-intensive shifts in the evenings, and then random surprise morning shifts shortly after, which has been really hard to manage my time around. My sleep schedule has been extremely broken and it’s affected my productivity a LOT. Leadership in my department is about to shuffle around and I’ve been interviewed for the manager position. If I get it I’ll be working an entirely different schedule, which could potentially be good for my sleepy brain but will definitely leave me with less art time overall. I’ve also been enduring some back/shoulder issues over the past few months. Nothing urgent, but it’s limiting how much I can draw each day. I think replacing my desk chair is going to be a big factor but it’s not the only factor. I just need to be a smart human and take care of my joints and not hunch over so much. Working on it.

Here’s the current status of my various art projects:

Laserwing

I ended chapter 5 in June and said I would finish up some other side projects before I start concept work for chapter 6. One of the projects I needed to finish was the Popkas Yugioh season 4 special, which I finished. The other big one was my Neonmob card set, which is most of what I’ve been posting lately. Once that’s out of the way (see below) I need to do concept art. Chapter 6 will put all the Laserwing characters in new outfits which will need reference sheets. I’ll need background sketches and layout diagrams so I don’t have furniture shuffle randomly around between scenes. I also need to sketch out the chapter 6 draft page by page. I’ve made Laserwing in GIMP up until this point and am going to try switching to Krita for chapter 6. I might need to do a test page to make sure my process transfers over well into a slightly different system. Once I’m ready to make real pages, those take a while. Chapter 5 pages were going up maybe every 2-3 weeks. I don’t know how many pages are going to be in chapter 6, nor can I say for sure how many chapters are in Laserwing. An old outline had maybe 40 chapters. It’s a story with a defined end point, I can say that for certain, but it’s intended to be long.

Popkas

I’ve had issues with Popkas for a while. I keep picking new themes for dailies, thinking they’re going to be quick and easy, but then end up making them hard for myself. It’s been to my benefit, I’ve forced myself into learning new art programs and techniques through Popkas. But it’s hard to keep up the daily schedule. Currently I’m doing the Paper Mario: TTYD bestiary, which has 124 enemies. At a rate of one per day, by the time I’ve finished them, Pokemon Sword and Shield should be released and we’ll have all the info about the new Pokemon. Those will be drawn in ‘Popka classic’ style (scribbly shitposts). After those are finished, unless my IRL work situation dramatically changes, I’m considering putting Popkas on pause. In order to do any other monster dexes I’d have to do a lot more research (for example, people have suggested Yokai Watch but I’ve never played one) in order to have anything meaningful to post. Same deal with Popka Specials (the anime writeup things), those take prep time and anime-watching time that I might not have. I don’t ever want to end Popkas, but a hiatus might be necessary.

Angelfire Hime

Did anyone even know about Angelfire Hime? Well I want to post more but that involves finding, scanning, retouching, and transcribing my old high school scribble comics. It takes as long as any other project but is also low priority because it’s all old content. Nobody is waiting for the latest update because nobody but me actually knows what that content is, and possibly nobody but me can even read it. It’s more a personal journey of self-reflection than anything. I want to return to it but not at the expense of better work.

MeganFantastic dot com

I had a domain name linked to a tumblr that was supposed to be my news blog/front page and I barely use it. Also, I let the domain registration drop. Also, I had let a typo in my banner graphic go unnoticed for YEARS and still haven’t fixed it. Even now, I’m writing this big post to my personal blog instead of the one for news. The idea was to eventually buy some real hosting and make MeganFantastic a whole site of its own, but that’s a lot of work. I’ve got a generally good idea of HOW I’d do it (probably wordpress) but I’m not a coder, it would take a lot of trial and error. This would be a huge undertaking and eventually Laserwing, Popkas, and all my other junk would be contained on one big non-tumblr website. But it’s uhhhhh not happening yet.

Hundera Youtube

My contribution to our LP channel is to show up, talk about video games, and then draw title cards. All recording, editing, and channel management is maintained by Josh, and I can’t speak on his behalf about our update schedule. I will say there are a lot of half-finished games we want to return to. I will also say that when the new Pokemon comes out Josh is dead set on recording it. I don’t know if he intends that to be a stream or a regular LP. In the meantime he streams Minecraft with his friends every Sunday and we fit in our own streams and recordings when we can.

Commissions/Patron Art/etc

I’ve not been very good about this lately and I’m truly sorry! I have a few things I’m working on, a few things I’ve promised to start working on, and a few things I’ve told people I can do once my workload lightens up, which hasn’t been happening yet. I really don’t have an answer. I almost never delete anything so if I’ve been sent a message in any form I should still have it, and I’ll be sure not to forget anyone. And if I do forget someone feel free to throw rocks at me!

Rane Story 2

What the heck is Rane Story 2? Well I guess I have to explain Neonmob. Imagine if ChickenSmoothie and DeviantART had a baby. It’s a virtual trading card site, which is fun and cute, and I’m drawing out a card series to release on there. I’ve been using it as practice for painting backgrounds and to fill out some backstory for some 4th-string Laserwing support characters. Before Mistaire came to Earth, she went to space high school, and that’s where Rane Story takes place. You can preview the series, and when it’s finished I’ll post about it. I’ll also repost all the art to DA. If you scroll through the last several pages of this blog you’ll see some of the art. I’ve put a lot of my brain energy into getting this done in spite of my work/sleep issues because I don’t want to resume Laserwing until I’ve finished it. This is what’s stolen my life, guys. Right now I have 6 more cards to make, and then I have to write and finalize all the text. I should be done SOON.

Pokemon Nonsense

When my back and shoulder get too hurty and I have to take a break from drawing, one of the easy things to do is whip out a DS and play Pokemon. I’ve done a lot of twitter shitposting about it lately. I’ve also drawn up a bunch of gijinkas for my Pokemon. I’m talking about it now because I also intend to draw up gijinkas for Pokemon to trade away. I’ve already done a few. However, I don’t know for sure how I’m going to distribute them. The idea is people can trade actual Pokemon with me (in either X or Let’s Go Eevee) and the Pokemon they get will come with a character design for you to keep. I was thinking I might do a discord server for organizing trades and such, but I haven’t yet. Mostly because it’s low priority and I have SO many other things going on. But actually playing Pokemon can happen when I’m too fatigued for real work, so the horde keeps growing. Hopefully my posts and scribbles about it are entertaining.

I feel like there’s other projects on hold that I wanted to discuss, but right now I’m too braintired to remember, and some of my ‘projects’ never actually got talked about online so nobody’s waiting for an update. My greatest problem seems to be that I try to juggle too many pointless side projects and then drop them all over the place. Sometimes I’ll shitpost about an idea and even I won’t be sure if I was serious or not. How do I end this post? I don’t know.

tl;dr Megan is SLEEPY and dropped her spaghetti everywhere but somehow still has time to play POKEMON and WON’T STOP TALKING ABOUT IT

#long post #what do i even tag this as

5 notes · View notes

mirika · 6 years ago

Text

I went to Dutch Comic Con once again. On Saturday I went as Ladybug from Miraculous Ladybug, but as I spotted an Angewomon who told me she’d be there the next day too, I went as Mimi from Digimon on Sunday.

Besides, the whole point of not having blue hair anymore was so that I can wear both cosplay whenever I want.

Day one!

Downside of this year is that I did not have my annual friend with me - I always visit Dutch Comic Con (March edition) with one friend in particular. This meant that Saturday I was by myself. The plus side was that I could do everything at my pace(!), but the problem with being by myself was everything else. I took only one photo with another cosplay and that was when a friend of mine tagged along for a little while.

It’s me with a bunch of androids from Detroit: Become Human, heh. I was holding my bag and everything, so it was awkward too!

I saw many more androids who looked amazing, but I lost my friend and therefore could not take any other photos. There was one Connor & Hank in particular that I was very fond of, and I made sure Hank knew how much I appreciated the dedication to the beard they applied to their face. I was really amazed by it as beards are hard to achieve.

I also saw an amazing Sylvanas (World of Warcraft) cosplay, when I saw her I actually said “wow” (or more specifically “wauw”) out loud and I told her she looked good or something like that. She really did. On Sunday I also saw a blood elf character, but I am not familiar with all NPC’s, so...

As I said before, I also saw Angewomon and I really wanted to take a photo with her. She seemed in a rush though, told her I will go as Mimi tomorrow as she said she’ll be there tomorrow again and therefore left it as it is.

I also visited two Q&As that day. Felt nice to visit Q&As without having to make friends wander alone.

The first one right at 12:00 was Katherine McNamara, she is known as the main character Clary from Shadowhunters, a show that is a bit of a guilty pleasure. I loved her excitement and her love for the franchise and other characters, and she had to keep herself from telling any spoilers, but she is really excited for the first upcoming episode.

The second Q&A at 16:00 was Jennifer Morrison, known as the main character Emma Swan from Once Upon A Time. I know she has a role in Arrow too, but I don’t watch it. Because of Katherine’s excitement during her Q&A, Jennifer really made a huge contrast in that regard. Not that she wasn’t happy, it was just different. I slightly feel bad about all the Once-related questions because you could kinda tell she’s done, and she deflected a Swan Queen question by just answering she is an actress portraying a character who is written the way they are, so I liked that; no fuss about shipping. Shipping is what made the Once fandom so destructive, after all. She solved it very well, probably put a lot of thought into it.

Other than that I bought a bunch of merchandise. I actually only bought stuff from the artist alley; none of the official merch pulled me in. The artist alley is great, because it has such a variety in fandoms. My only issue is that I am limited to buttons, stickers and charms, because I would not know what to do with prints.

Two random animal stickers of a cat and a bat because the artist was kind and it looked cool. The bottom two are magnets from the video game Journey, and few of my friends know I’ve been very involved with a Journey community lately.

Three buttons of Connor from Detroit: Become Human. I am actually really sad that no one sold Kara or Markus because I love all three main characters nearly equally. Some did sell Hank and Sumo, but yeah... would’ve loved some Kara and Markus. That is why I was glad I saw some Kara cosplay around, compared to Connor the other two appear so underappreciated when they are all such lovely characters. I love Connor most too, but the difference for me is rather minor.

And a bunch of stickers! Illidan Stormrage from World of Warcraft (he looks so adorable and the vendor was so nice), Spider-man in his homemade suit, and a sticker set from Miraculous Ladybug.

I kinda wish I did not have to say that this sums up Saturday already, but here we are.

I found a couple of artists I want to commission from, but many are way above my budget. Complicated. I also took 1,5 hours to hunt Pokemon in Pokemon GO because there was a special day going on and inside the building the GPS was crazy, but because I could visit at my own pace, I made sure I saw all the shops already. I get really nasty about not having seen everything, my brains just can’t comprehend the idea of not seeing everything (or at least having tried).

Either way!

Day two!

On Sunday my bestie tagged along, but ironically now I didn’t really find any cosplay I wanted to take a photo with, hah. The entire day we visited I tried to find Angewomon, and by the time we were close to leaving (last hour at the con), we found her in line for food!!!

I found her Instagram so you can see her with her wings on, but yeah, she didn’t have them today (heavy). It’s the same as how I did not bring Palmon. We weren’t allowed any bags bigger than 12 x 18 cm OR they had to be transparent, so I had nothing to carry Palmon in (it’s for safety reasons due to recent shooting in the same city). Either way, I was so happy to have found her! We shared the mutual feeling of never seeing other Digimon cosplay, so we were both just really happy. Another stranger saw us together and wanted to take a photo as he’d never expect to see two Digimon cosplay together, and guess what, neither did we!

So she was easily the highlight of my day, haha! I saw she also did Garurumon on her page, which is really cool too!

I do want to say that I was pleasantly surprised with seeing The Umbrella Academy cosplay around as well by the way, even if it was 90% Klaus and 10% Five. Considering the show being new I thought it was amazing and for some reason it never occurred to me I could see cosplay from that show until I saw them. The Five cosplayers that were around were actually rather young-looking and short, so that was fantastic, and the Five who was together with towel-Klaus were very in-character together as Klaus was teasing them and Five wasn’t having it. I loved it.

Because I did not find any new merch I wanted to get, I ended up buying mysterious Japanese snacks. I meant to buy one box of panda cookies and one box of regular cookies, but the vendor talked me into this.

The cookies were alright, not too amazing, but I loved the panda cookies too much to even share sorry bestie. All of these are gone already, by the way. I uh... liked my pricey Japanese mystery food. Much better than mochi (yikes) or pocky (meh), but those are opinions!

I think that sums it up. I hope I get the photo Angewomon took of us on her phone, because that was a selfie.

It was a successful weekend regardless.

The photo of Angewomon and I has surfaced!

DCC 2019 - Ladybug (Miraculous Ladybug) / Mimi (Digimon) DCC 2018 - Ladybug (Miraculous Ladybug) ACC 2018 - Ladybug (Miraculous Ladybug) DCC 2018 - Ladybug (Miraculous Ladybug) RCC 2018 - Mimi (Digimon) WDCC 2017 - Mimi (Digimon) ACC 2017 - Mimi (Digimon) DCC 2017 - Mimi (Digimon) RCC 2017 - Mimi (Digimon) ACC 2016 - Hook (Once Upon A Time) DCC 2016 - Ladybug (Miraculous Ladybug) DCC 2015 - Sunday - Hobbit (Lord of the Rings) DCC 2015 - Saturday - Ellie (The Last of Us)

I have been to Elfia in 2015, but I cannot find this post. I was Donna Noble and I actually had a really bad day, which is why I have never returned to Elfia.

#mirika #mirikalj

7 notes · View notes

pikapeppa · 6 years ago

Text

Fenris/f!Hawke modern AU: Lyrium

Chapter 4 of Damned Spot is up! Read on AO3, or read the previous chapters here on Tumblr: [1] [2] [3]

Also, @schoute is making a gorgeous comic of the fic! See the first two pages on her Tumblr!

In which there are text messages, and also a party WITH FRIENDS. And also some angst. A longer chapter (~7700 words), but what the heck, I’ll post it all.

****************

Piper solicitously wrapped a blanket around Rynne’s shoulders. “So let me get this straight,” she said. “He saves you from a butthurt asshole in the alley. You patch him up. He walks you home. And not even a goodnight kiss?”

She jumped up from the couch and moved toward the kitchen, and Rynne let out a quick laugh. “Trust me, Pipes, it wasn’t… The mood was not right for a kiss.”

It was Monday afternoon, and Piper had gotten home late last night from her weekend getaway. Rynne had just finished an abridged telling of the Friday night debacle - leaving out all the information about Fenris’s past, of course.

Rynne wasn’t being entirely truthful when she said the mood hadn’t been right for a kiss. During the whole walk home, she’d been forced to suppress the urge to take shelter in the steady strength of Fenris’s arms. She was a big fan of physical comfort, hugs and hand-holding and the like, and Fenris’s timely rescue - combined with the fact that she was already infatuated with him - made her want to cling to him like a baby lemur.

But she was trying to respect his aversion to touch. Besides, the walk home had been… oddly intense. Fenris had seemed deep in thought, and Rynne had nervously blathered about all kinds of stupid things to make up for his silence, and by the time they reached the door of Isabela’s condo building, it had almost been a relief when he’d dropped her off with nothing more than a polite nod of the head and a wish for a good night.

Rynne knew she should probably be more freaked out about Fenris’s past. Being an enforcer for the Tevinter mob was not a minor revelation. But for some reason, she just couldn’t bring herself to be scared of him. Maybe she was in denial, or maybe she’d seen so many action movies that she was desensitized to the idea, but she just… didn’t mind.

Fenris’s past didn’t change anything. He was still the same quiet, broody, private, smooth-voiced, handsome and helpful elf he’d always been. The only difference was that Rynne now knew why he was so quiet and broody and private.

How basic was it that the reveal of his dark past just made her want to kiss him all the more?

Piper grunted and poured a cup of hot tea. “What about Saturday and Sunday night, then? He walked you home all weekend and no kiss?”

Rynne slumped on the couch as Piper flitted back to her side and placed the tea on the coffee table. “No, okay? No kiss. He’s probably not interested. He probably thinks I’m just some dumb girl who needs to be looked after.” She couldn’t help but kind of feel that way herself. What the hell was the point of self-defence training if it just melted out of her brain the second she was attacked? She’d tried to headbutt the guy in the face, but that had failed, and if Fenris hadn’t shown up -

She shivered and wrapped her arms around her knees. She could still remember the disgusting feeling of that asshole’s bulging crotch pressing against her back as he shoved her against the wall.

Fucking horrible, she thought. She reached out and grabbed the mug of tea on the coffee table, then took a gulp and scalded her tongue.

Piper watched her worriedly, then carefully tucked the blanket around her neck and her feet. “Should’ve let Fenris cut that guy’s dick off. That would have served him right.”

“Yeah,” Rynne sighed. “But we would have been there all night. His dick was probably microscopic and impossible to find.”

Piper snorted. “Probably. But once Fenris cut it off, we could stick it into the garnish tray with the cornichons. It would be right at home.”

Rynne grinned at the gross image, and they both burst into raucous laughter. Then Piper wrapped her arms around Rynne’s neck in a tight hug. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” she said. “If I’d been there to watch out for you -”

Rynne hugged her back. “Oh balls, don’t be fucking stupid,” she said. “You were off having a sexy holiday! How was your weekend, by the way? You didn’t tell me. How’s Ostwick at this time of year?”

Piper pulled away and shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

Her tone of voice was exceedingly innocent. Rynne hid her smirk and played along. “Oh? What do you mean?” she asked.

Piper coyly tugged her silvery braid over one shoulder. “We spent the whole weekend in the hotel room. Except for meals. That is, when I wasn’t devouring Cullen’s-”

Rynne snickered and shoved Piper away. “Thank you, too much information. I don’t want to hear all the details of my best friend feasting on my lawyer’s cock, thanks very much.”

Piper cackled and shoved her in return. “Hey, you said it, not me. You’re the nasty one.”

“Ooh, who’s nasty? Do tell.” Isabela floated into the living room wearing nothing but a silken dressing gown and a grin. She flopped down on the couch beside Rynne, and one half of her gown fell open to reveal a pierced nipple.

As always, Piper and Rynne ignored her nudity. “Piper spent the whole weekend sucking Cullen’s cock,” Rynne reported.

“And Rynne spent the whole weekend wishing she was sucking Fenris’s cock,” Piper retaliated.

Rynne gasped in mock offense. “How dare you get so far into my brain? You pervert.”

Isabela straightened up. “That’s it. I need to meet this Fenris.” She pulled her phone out of her dressing gown pocket and tapped the screen, then held the phone to her ear.

Rynne raised an eyebrow. “Who are you calling?”

Isabela blew her a kiss, then rose gracefully from the couch. “Josie? It’s me. I’m throwing a party this Saturday. Let’s say… seventy-five people. A smaller little thing, yes. Can you-” She paused and listened, then threw her head back and laughed. “Thanks, sweets. You know me too well.” She listened for a moment longer, then grinned and ended the call.

She shifted her weight to one hip and planted a hand on her waist. “Bring your handsome bouncer, Hawke. I won’t take no for an answer.”

A flutter of anticipation lit Rynne’s belly, and she and Piper grinned at each other. Then another cheerful voice joined the conversation. “Oh, are we having a party? How nice! Can I make a cake?”

Rynne grinned as Merrill flitted through the kitchen into the living room. “Is it going to be a cake like last time? Because if so, then that’s a hard no.”

Merrill waved her hands. “No, no, that was just a mistake! Silly me, putting in a tablespoon of salt instead of a teaspoon-”

Isabela draped her arm around Merrill’s slender shoulders. “Of course you can make a cake, kitten. I’ll eat the first piece myself.”

Merrill happily clapped her hands. “Oh good! Mihris sent me a pin with a new recipe and I’ve been hoping for a good reason to try it. It’s kind of an odd one, mind you, it’s got dragonthorn in it, but most of the reviews say the aftertaste is supposed to be lovely…”

Piper, Merrill, and Isabela continued to chat about cakes and cocks and who to invite to the party, and Rynne pulled out her phone and flicked through to her contacts. Finally, at long last, she had a good reason to text him.

She bit her lip as she looked at Fenris’s number. Then, with a happy little flutter of nerves, she tapped his name and started a new message thread.

1:27pm - hey! party at Isabela’s place this Saturday! 1:27pm - you can come anytime after 8pm but the earlier the better 1:27pm - dont be fashionably late. i like punctuality in a man 1:28pm - i’ll dance with you if you’re very good ;)

She sent the messages rapid-fire, then listened to her friends’ conversation with half an ear while she waited.

She waited and tapped her toes impatiently for a minute or so, then rose to her feet and went to the kitchen to refresh her tea. Fenris’s phone was so archaic that Rynne probably wouldn’t get the little animated-ellipsis-thingy showing that he was typing, so she would just have to suffer the wait.

While the kettle was boiling, she heard the ding of a new text in her pocket. She hurriedly pulled out her phone.

1:35pm - Who is this 1:35pm - How did you get this number

She laughed. She could almost hear his suspicion through the letters on her screen. She started to type a response, but his next message appeared before she could finish.

1:36pm - Hawke?

She grinned giddily, feeling somehow flattered that he knew it was her. She quickly finished her replies.

1:36pm - 10 points to the broody elf! yes, it’s Hawke 1:36pm - keep your schedule clear for saturday night! 1:36pm - Isabela relaly wants to meet you 1:36pm - really**

She placed the phone on the counter and stared unseeingly at the kettle while she waited. Once the kettle had boiled, she poured her tea over the teabag in her mug and picked up her phone, despite not having heard the text tone.

Indeed, no new replies from Fenris. Rynne nibbled the inside of her cheek, then flicked around on Pinterest and saved a few fanart posts, but she was having trouble pretending to be interested in anything except the burning silence of her messaging app.

She eventually returned to the living room and forced herself to join in with the others’ conversation. An eon later, when her phone dinged again, she shamelessly whipped it out and looked at the screen.

1:52pm - It is not a good idea.

She frowned. She understood that he wanted to keep his head down, but he would just be one more face in the crowd at this party.

She swiftly tapped out her replies.

1:52pm - please come 1:52pm - i promise my friends are not as bad as me 1:52pm - well that might be a lie 1:53pm - but i promise youll have a good time 1:53pm - if you hate it, you can leave. i’ll pack you a doggie bag of snacks and everything

Did she sound desperate? Probably. Did she care? Apparently not. She really was willing to make an idiot of herself for him, it seemed.

“So?” Isabela asked. “What’s he saying?”

Rynne didn’t bother to ask how Isabela knew who she was texting. She gave Isabela a rueful smile. “It’s touch and go. He’s not really a ‘people person’.”

Isabela shrugged, and her silken gown slipped off of one shoulder. “Tell him we’ll all show him our tits if he comes.”

Merrill gasped and folded her arms across her chest, and Piper cackled. “Only if we all want Cullen’s face to burst into flame.”

Isabela laughed and Rynne grinned wickedly, but before she could reply, her phone dinged once more.

1:55pm - I will think about it.

Rynne breathed a small sigh of relief. An opening was all she needed.

1:55pm - yay! i’ll make sure Bels stocks up on the best red wine just for you

She had the entire week to bring him around. Surely she could convince him to come in the space of a week.

***********************

Fenris shouldn’t have come.

He stood stock-still outside of the entrance to Isabela’s condo. It was a mistake to come here. Parties involved being introduced to people, and having them stare at him and wanting to shake hands, and remembering his face and his name in order to tell other people about him later.

All of it boded poorly. Fenris was trying to stay incognito. He didn’t want to be looked at. He didn’t want to be remembered, so coming here was a mistake. The entire time he was walking here from Lowtown, he’d told himself that coming to this party was a mistake, and yet here he was.

He scowled at the big glass double doors for a long minute while he considered turning around and going home. Then his phone vibrated in his pocket.

He flipped it open to find a new message from Hawke.

9:42pm - i hope your on your way! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 9:42pm - you’re*** 9:43pm - for the first you’re i mean 9:43pm - fuck it you understand what i mena 9:43pm - fuck’s sake

Despite his buzzing discomfort, he couldn’t help but smile. Her texts were just like her: over the top, overly flirtatious, and impossible to ignore. And also oddly charming.

He traced his thumb across the texts, then flipped his phone shut. He pushed open the heavy glass doors and buzzed the intercom for Isabela’s condo.

A loud voice and an indistinct buzz of noise greeted him. “Welcome to the animal house. Who dares to enter this den of debauchery?”

Fenris frowned apprehensively. The voice on the line sultry and smooth, and definitely not Hawke’s. “Is Hawke there?” he asked.

The sultry voice chuckled. “I don’t know your voice, but I bet I know who you are. Come on in, handsome.” She disconnected the call, and Fenris heard the click of the inner doors unlocking.

He cast the intercom a suspicious look, then slunk through the lobby toward the elevators and hit the PH button. He held himself perfectly still as the elevator slid smoothly up to the penthouse floor, then stepped out of the elevator into a short corridor.

He immediately heard the faint thump of bass and the noise of conversation. He swallowed hard, then cautiously approached the door at the end of the hall and rang the doorbell. Moments later, a beautiful woman in a scandalously short white dress answered the door.

She grinned at him and slid a salacious look across his body. “Wow. You must be Fenris.”

He raised one eyebrow and hid his hands in his pockets. “And you must be Isabela.”

She laughed and raised her mostly-empty crystal tumbler. “Guilty as charged. Come on in and make yourself comfortable.”

Fenris followed her into the apartment and immediately began assessing the situation. The condo was less crowded than he’d anticipated, but that was likely more because of how enormous it was rather than the number of people per se. Two storeys, two generous sitting areas, and an enormous open-plan kitchen were the first features he absorbed, as well as the exceedingly tasteful white-and chrome decor… or at least it would be exceedingly tasteful, but it was broken up by a multitude of personal touches - knick-knacks, cushions and blankets, and wall art and plants that were variably colourful, chaotic, and cozy, and all of which clearly indicated the tastes of a number of different residents.

“I’ll get you a drink,” Isabela said. “Red wine, right?”

Fenris turned his attention to her and narrowed his eyes. “What else have Piper and Hawke told you?” he drawled.

Isabela smirked. “Honestly? Nothing much. Which is why I was hoping you would come. I hate missing out. What’s the point of being a famous actress if your friends are flirting with handsome boys and having all the fun at home?”

“Hm,” Fenris said as Isabela ushered him further into the house and further into the cheerfully chattering crowd. “Is that why you have roommates? You certainly don’t seem to need them.”

“Exactly,” Isabela purred. “Why else would I own an extravagantly large penthouse if it’s not to fill it with beautiful women and party all the time?”

Fenris huffed in amusement, then followed Isabela into the kitchen. Myriad people were laughing and drinking therein, and as he waited for Isabela to pour his wine, he caught sight of a familiar face - or rather, a familiar silvery fall of hair.

He slowly drifted away from Isabela to join Piper, who was talking animatedly to an attractive blond man. “...and this asshole clips me on my bike. So naturally, I go after him.”

“Maker preserve me, Piper,” the man groaned. Piper chuckled, then glanced over in Fenris’s direction.

She straightened and smiled. “Fenris! You’re finally here! Hawke was - we weren’t sure if you were going to show!”

He tilted his head in a polite nod. “My apologies. I wasn’t sure if I would come, either.”

Piper’s blond companion gave him a half-smile. “Not a fan of parties, I take it?”

Fenris raised an eyebrow. “Not particularly.”

The man folded his arms. “Neither am I. The, um, unwanted attention usually makes such events more annoying than they’re worth.”

“Oh, Cullen. Are you complaining again about being too handsome?” Isabela wafted over and handed Fenris a glass of wine. “It’s such a hard life, isn’t it?”

Cullen shot Isabela a chiding look. “We don’t all make careers off of our looks, Isabela.”

“More’s the pity,” she replied, then winked at him.

Fenris raised his eyebrows in recognition. “So you are Piper’s boyfriend,” he said to Cullen. “She and Hawke have spoken highly of you.”

Piper smacked herself in the forehead. “Right! You haven’t met! I’m so sorry - Fenris, this is Cullen. Cullen, Fenris.”

Cullen smiled and held out his hand to shake. With a small internal sigh - and so the handshaking begins - Fenris briefly grasped Cullen’s proffered hand. “I hear your law practice is very successful. And very busy.”

“Too busy, at times,” Cullen said ruefully. “I haven’t had a chance to take a case like Hawke’s in a very long time.”

Fenris frowned. “...Hawke’s?”

“Oh,” Piper said brightly. “I forgot to tell you. Cullen sometimes takes pro bono cases for us little people who can’t afford a big fancy lawyer. He’s very generous with his time that way.” She looped her hand through Cullen’s elbow and gave him an adoring look.

Isabela made a mock-vomiting noise, and Piper snickered and punched her in the shoulder. Meanwhile, Cullen cleared his throat awkwardly. His cheeks were turning pink. “It is not - she exaggerates, it’s simply my duty to help -”

“Don’t dismiss yourself,” Fenris interjected. “That is a very noble undertaking. It sickens me that the trappings of power and wealth also ensnare the justice system. The world could use more lawyers such as yourself, who care more about righting wrongs than collecting wealth.”

Piper and Isabela stared at him, and Cullen lifted his eyebrows appreciatively. “Well. I… thank you, Fenris, that’s very kind of you to say.”

Fenris nodded and sipped his wine, feeling increasingly awkward. The dance beats and the sounds of conversation and laughter were loud, but the stunned silence from Isabela and Piper somehow felt louder.

He returned his gaze to Cullen. “So. You… you worked with Hawke?”

He nodded. “Yes, with the whole situation with her father and the lyrium. I was happy to help. It wasn’t -”

Fenris’s belly jolted. “Lyrium?” he said sharply.

Cullen frowned slightly. “Yes, in his final days. She… she didn’t tell you?”

Fenris stared at him with growing discomfiture. Then Piper cut in. “Shit. Maybe she didn’t tell him,” she said to Cullen. She grimaced at Fenris. “Sorry, Fenris, she’s an open book about it, I just assumed -”

“Fenris!” Hawke’s bright and cheerful voice cut through the noise. She bounced over and beamed at him. “You’re here, finally! Took you long enough. Did you take the scenic route through the docks to get here? If so, I hope you brought us some seafood. The shrimp cocktail leaves something to be desired.”

Isabela scoffed. “Ungrateful tart. I’ll make sure to let Josephine know.”

“Please do,” Hawke snickered. “I mean, you know I prefer my shrimp breaded and fried, but I’m also a pleb with simple tastes.” She tilted her head at Fenris. “Is the wine okay?”

How are you involved with lyrium? The question burned through his mind. Had she been on the receiving end of it? Had someone forced her to deal it? What had Cullen been talking about?

He tried to push his agitation aside as he scrambled for an appropriate response to her question. “I - yes, it’s fine,” he said.

“Only ‘fine’?” Isabela said indignantly. “That’s a shame. This was supposed to be the best stock from Nevarra.” She plucked the glass from his hand and sipped it, then pouted slightly. “You’re right. It’s not great. Let me get you another.”

“Oh. No, that’s not - that glass is fine-” he started to say, but Isabela had already turned away.

Hawke shrugged and smiled at him. “I’m sure she knew your wine was fine. She just needed an excuse to walk away so we could all stare at her fine ass.”

At her words, Fenris instinctively looked at Isabela’s departing backside. It was admittedly a very fine one.

He returned his gaze to Hawke, and she smiled more broadly. “Made you look,” she teased.

He studied her playful expression. Isabela’s curves were undeniably ripe, but if Fenris was completely honest, he was more interested in the slender physique of the cheeky, pixie-haired woman in front of him.

He stuck his hands into his pockets, wishing that he had a wine glass to hold onto. “Your dress is interesting,” he said to Hawke. Indeed, the fabric of her grey-and-white dress was the oddest print he had ever seen: a chaotic pattern of skulls and pineapples, of all the strange things.

She beamed at him. “Thank you! It is, isn’t it?” She snickered. “Don’t think I didn’t notice your wording, though. ‘Interesting’ is not exactly a compliment.”

“Then I misspoke,” Fenris replied. “I like it very much.” And he did. The pattern was odd, but the cut of the fitted dress was… extremely flattering.

Hawke’s smile softened, and Fenris felt an undeniable - and treacherous - jolt of satisfaction when her cheeks started to flush. “You smooth talker,” she said happily. “Keep up the compliments, and you’re definitely invited to the next party.”

“Hmm. A dubious honour at best,” he replied.

Hawke laughed brightly at his comment. Fenris smirked, then tore his eyes away from her lovely laughing face, incidentally making eye contact with Piper.

Piper, who was watching him with a very satisfied grin.

Fenris dropped his gaze and cleared his throat uncomfortably - why was Isabela taking so long with that wine? - and was very relieved when another familiar face joined their group.

“Well well, the broody elf has come out of his hole,” Varric said. He gave Fenris an appraising look. “Our girls finally managed to drag you out, did they?”

“You could say that,” Fenris said. “They’re very… persistent.” He shot Hawke a quick glance, and she winked at him.

Varric chuckled. “Good. The more the merrier at these things, I say.”

Cullen harrumphed. “I have to say, I’m glad Isabela kept this one small. I haven’t forgotten what happened the last time.” He shot Piper a resentful look.

Piper scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I left you alone for two minutes. It’s not my fault that your resting bitch face is just as cute as your happy face.”

“I - but - they started unbuttoning my shirt!” Cullen protested, and Piper giggled and kissed his cheek.

Fenris looked around at the crowded penthouse. “Wait. This is a small party?” The house wasn’t uncomfortably crowded, but it was getting there. There were so many people that Fenris wasn’t even worrying anymore about being recognized or remembered.

“Oh yeah,” Varric drawled. “You’ve got room to move? Then it’s a small party. This place can get worse than a nightclub on a good night.”

“Why are we even still standing in the kitchen?” Hawke demanded. “We should go upstairs. The upstairs living room is usually less busy.”

Then Isabela reappeared behind Varric. “Sorry for the hold-up,” she said as she handed Fenris his wine. “Now, whose cock size were you gossiping about? Don’t be shy. Fill me in. I mean, I’m fairly sure Varric’s is the biggest, but let’s just say -”

“We were discussing going upstairs,” Cullen interrupted loudly. “A fine idea, I think, if it means fewer people around.”

Isabela rolled her eyes. “I thought Piper brought you along to loosen up, not so your asshole gets even tighter.”

Cullen pursed his lips in annoyance, and Piper laughed and pinched his bum. “Come on, babe, let’s go. Everyone upstairs. Last one there has to dance on the pole for us.”

Fenris frowned. “Pole?”

Hawke blurted a tiny laugh, and Fenris glanced over to find her cheeks turning pink. She shot him an oddly coy look, then jerked her head to the right. “This way,” she said. Then she waved to a couple of other people in the main foyer. “Anders! Merrill! Come join us!”

Feeling increasingly nonplussed, Fenris followed Hawke and her friends up the stairs to yet another seating area that was indeed centered around a pole that spanned from the ceiling to a circular platform on the floor.

His eyebrows jumped high on his forehead. “Why…?”

Hawke sat on the couch and patted the cushion beside her, and Fenris took a seat. “It’s good exercise,” she told him.

“And we look gorgeous doing it,” Isabela added. She leaned her elbows on the back of the couch and gave him a sly grin. “Maybe we’ll let you watch sometime.” She elbowed Hawke, and the two of them laughed dirtily, but Fenris noted that Hawke’s cheeks were still pink.

Isabela drifted away to join Varric, Cullen and Piper on the other couch, and Fenris met Hawke’s eyes. She was still smiling, but there was something else about her expression that made him feel oddly jittery. Something almost… deep, or weighted, but not in a bad way - in a nice, warm way, in fact.

He nervously gnawed the inside of his cheek as he cast around for something to say, but Hawke spoke first. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

Her tone was warm and serious. Fenris stared at her, feeling strangely at a loss for words. “I-”

Another handsome blond stranger suddenly swooped in and hugged her. “Hawke! There you are. I was just catching up with Merrill. She was going on about that blood lotus treatment of hers and the talk she gave at the Arlathvhen, it doesn’t sound like it went over too well -”

“Anders, I told you, it wasn’t the blood lotus part they didn’t like,” a small Dalish girl interjected. She folded her arms and frowned at the new blond man. “I just didn’t explain it well. Hawke, can I practice my presentation with you next time, you know I’m not a very good public speaker…”

The blond man shook his head. “There’s not enough evidence to support the use of blood lotus in medicine, Merrill.”

Fenris watched with growing puzzlement as the Dalish girl’s ears began turning red. “Healing isn’t all about Fereldan medicine!” she snapped. “Traditional elvhen healing isn’t worthless just because there’s insufficient research. But try telling that to your research funding bodies!”

“You two do know this is a party, right?” Hawke drawled. “It’s not a medical conference.”

Anders opened his mouth, then released a little chuckle and sat on the platform that the dancing pole was affixed to. “Right. Sorry, Hawke, sometimes I get overexcited -”

“This is Fenris, by the way,” Hawke interrupted. “He works with me and Pipes. Fenris, this is Anders and Merrill. Anders is a doctor. Merrill is a Dalish healer.”

Anders nodded politely, and Merrill smiled at Fenris. “Aneth ara. I’ve never seen vallaslin like yours before.” Her eyes fell on his hands, which were resting on his knees.

He frowned and tucked his hands back into his pockets. “It is not vallaslin. I am not Dalish.”

Merrill’s eyes widened. “Oh. I’m sorry, I thought -”

“Sorry, Hawke, I just have to tell you this one thing,” Anders interrupted excitedly. “I finally got that funding I was telling you about! We’ll be able to start the project in about a month, as soon as we’ve finalized the contract with the lyrium supplier.”

Fenris whipped around and narrowed his eyes at Anders. “You work with lyrium?”

“Yes, of course,” Anders said in surprise. “All physicians in Kirkwall do. It’s the only city in the Free Marches where the use of lyrium is legal across the board.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Fenris said brusquely.

Beside him, Hawke went still. Anders recoiled slightly. “You can’t be serious,” he said slowly. “Lyrium saves lives. It’s both a painkiller and a stimulant for the immune system if it’s used safely-”

“There is no safe way to use lyrium,” Fenris retorted. “It’s a dangerous psychoactive drug. There is an enormous market for it in Tevinter. Where I am from, lyrium sales are the backbone of at least seventy percent of organized crime activities.”

Anders relaxed. “Ah. Well, that’s the problem. The Imperium is a specific case. The distribution is much more regulated and controlled here-”

“There is no controlling it,” Fenris said firmly. “Lyrium might be a painkiller and an immune system stimulant, but it is also extremely addictive. It is a weapon used against the poor and unknowing. Tell me, Doctor, how much does a single lyrium capsule cost?”

Anders frowned, then pursed his lips. “It costs approximately $16 per capsule,” he admitted. “More, depending on the brand.”

Fenris leaned back and stretched his arms along the back of the couch. “And you think that your colleagues in this city aren’t taking advantage of that cost? I have read the local news. There have been multiple cases of physicians putting their most vulnerable patients on a higher dose than they require in order to keep them coming back for more.”

Anders glared at him. “The doctors that do that are the exception. They are not the rule.”

“When money is at play, no one is exempt from such corruption,” Fenris announced. “You are a fool if you think yourself immune.”

Anders shot him a filthy look. “And just who are you to lecture about these matters? You work at a pub. What do you know of it?”

“Hey,” Hawke interjected. “Nothing wrong with working at a pub.”

Fenris scowled at Anders’s dismissive tone. “I know more about the dangers of lyrium than you ever will,” he snapped. “You are protected by your physician’s licence and your research funding. You know nothing of how the illicit sale and misuse of lyrium can devastate a family or a town. Or an entire country, in the case of Tevinter.” His mother’s and Varania’s faces flashed across his mind - dead because of Danarius and his lyrium business.

Fenris had never even gotten to say goodbye. Danarius’s people had already dealt with their bodies by the time Fenris had woken up in the hospital. And then Fenris had sullied their memories by becoming addicted to the very substance that had indirectly claimed their lives.

He inhaled deeply through his nose. It is done, he thought. He couldn’t change his past. He wasn’t addicted to lyrium anymore, and that had to be good enough. “Lyrium is a filthy substance, and it is the lifeblood of Tevinter,” he announced. “The Imperium is a corrupt and foul place, and it would not be so if it was not for the lax attitudes toward lyrium.”

Hawke laughed nervously and tugged at one of her many earrings. “I don’t know, Fenris. I don’t think they’d make lyrium legal in Kirkwall if the doctors and policy-making people hadn’t done their due diligence and all that.”

Fenris shot her a hard look. “Don’t be naive. Just because something is legal does not mean it is right. The legalization of lyrium makes it that much easier to abuse.”

Anders leaned forward. “How can you talk about lyrium like this to Hawke?” he demanded.

Fenris frowned at him. “What are you talking about?” He turned his gaze back to Hawke, who was looking increasingly uncomfortable. “What is he talking about?”

Hawke slowly met his gaze, and Fenris’s stomach jolted uncomfortably at the apologetic look on her face. But Anders piped in before she could speak. “Her father died of a lyrium overdose,” he said. “And it was the best thing for him. He would have been in agony otherwise.”

Fenris stared at her. Bewilderment and anger were churning together in his chest. “What… why…?”

“Cancer,” Hawke said. She picked up her tumbler of brandy and idly swirled it. “It was everywhere. His bones, his brain, his organs, everywhere. We moved to Kirkwall specifically so he could be treated with lyrium. Palliative, of course, since the cancer was incurable.” She took a sip of her drink. “He killed himself with lyrium. But they thought I was the one who gave him the dose that killed him.”

Fenris’s eyes widened. “What?” he blurted. Then the pieces clicked into place. “This is how you know Cullen?”

She nodded. “He got the charges against me dropped. He’s pretty amazing, actually. There’s a good reason Pipes is head-over-heels for him.” She took another gulp of brandy and gave him a crooked little smile. “Anders didn’t even tell you the best part,” she said pleasantly. “Do you know who called the police on me?”

Fenris watched with a growing sense of dread as she finished off the last of her drink, then placed the tumbler on the table and looked at him once more. “My mother,” she said. “My mother called the police and told them I killed my dad.” Her smile widened, and then she started to laugh.

Fenris couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t swallow. He stared at her as she laughed, then rose to her feet. “I’m going to get another drink,” she said cheerfully. “Anyone else want one?”

Merrill and Anders quietly declined, and Fenris dumbly shook his head. Hawke winked and slipped past him, then headed down the stairs without looking back.

As soon as she was gone, Anders glared at him. “Nicely done. You really don’t know her at all, do you?”

Fenris returned his glare, but he couldn’t deny the discomfort roiling in his stomach. Most of the lyrium victims he’d encountered had been young and healthy people looking for an escape. Young elves, primarily, who thought they’d found that escape in Danarius’s dealers as they peddled lyrium as a party drug. The only physicians he’d known were the corrupt ones that Danarius worked with, who misused their prescription privileges and kept their patients addicted to lyrium for years on end. Patients like Fenris himself.

He hadn’t encountered anyone like Hawke’s father: riddled with disease and looking to lyrium for relief.

He rose from the couch, and Anders grabbed his arm. “Leave her alone-”

Fenris wrenched his arm away and pinned Anders with a glare. “Touch me again, and it will be the last thing you ever do.”

Merrill’s eyes grew impossibly large, and Anders glared back at him in silence, and Fenris made his way to the stairs to find Hawke.

*********************

Rynne leaned her elbows on the balcony railing and took another deep breath, then another gulp of her drink. When she’d imagined getting to know Fenris a little better, this was not really what she’d had in mind.

He hates lyrium. The unpleasant truth raced through her mind. Not only that, but he really seemed to hate the people who thought using it was okay. Fenris wasn’t exactly the warm and cuddly type, but she’d never seen him react so negatively toward anyone as he had toward Anders.

But there was nothing Rynne could do about it. She couldn’t change what had happened with her father. Furthermore, she wouldn’t change it even if she had a choice. He’d been suffering, suffering for months and months with no respite even with the strongest doses of lyrium that the doctor was willing to prescribe, and with the fucking law in this city, there had been no choice. The overdose had been a mercy.

She’d had no choice.

Rynne took another gulp of her brandy, and her phone buzzed against her thigh.

She surreptitiously looked around, then reached between her legs and pulled her phone out of the clever little thigh strap that Piper had found during an idle afternoon of browsing around on Amazon.

Her heart did a funny little jump as she checked the screen. The message was from Fenris.

10:17pm - Where are you?

She nibbled her lip, then put her tumbler down and slowly typed out a response.

10:17pm - why? miss me already? ^^

His reply came quickly.

10:18pm - I want to talk to you.

She tugged nervously at her earrings. Why did he want to talk? Was he mad at her? Maybe he just wanted to compliment her dress again? A girl could hope.

She hesitated for a moment, then scoffed at herself. Oh, who am I kidding, she thought. Of course she was going to tell him where she was.

10:18pm - i’m on the balcony. first floor, the door is close to the piano. 10:18pm - and no, before you ask, none of us can play the piano 10:18pm - it’s just there for Isabela to lounge on and look sexy LOL

He didn’t reply, and Rynne eventually tucked her phone back into her thigh sheath and waited with increasing nerves to see if he would show up.

A minute later, the noise of the party spilled out onto the balcony, and Rynne turned to see Fenris stepping outside to join her. He closed the door behind him, shutting out the noise, and then it was just the two of them in the peaceful night air.

Rynne warily watched his face as he slowly approached. He looked… the same as usual. Inscrutable and serious as ever.

She swallowed and rested her elbows on the railing again. “Come to check out the view?” she said breezily. “Kirkwall looks way better at night. It all just looks like fireflies. The darkness really hides the rampant graffiti well.”

He leaned back against the balcony railing and continued to study her in silence, and Rynne turned her gaze back to the city lights, unable to tolerate the intensity of his gaze.

A long, awkward moment later, Fenris finally spoke. “Why did your mother accuse you of killing your father?”

Rynne nervously licked her lips. “Did you know that physician-assisted suicide is illegal in Kirkwall?” she asked.

He didn’t reply, and Rynne finally shot him a very quick glance. He was frowning slightly, but he didn’t look outright angry, so she continued. “My family is from Lothering. They have physician-assisted suicide there, but lyrium is illegal. Here in Kirkwall, lyrium is legal, but physician-assisted suicide isn’t. It’s a stupid catch-22.” She sighed and leaned more heavily on her elbows. “We came here for the pain control. Lyrium is very good for that, especially for terminal cancer patients. But… Maker’s balls, Fenris, my dad’s cancer was everywhere. Even the lyrium wasn’t taking the edge off. And he was too weak for us to take him back to Lothering for physician-assisted suicide. Not that my mother would have agreed to it anyway, she… well, whatever.” Rynne shrugged dismissively. “So one day, when I was alone at home with him, he asked me to help him end it.”

“He asked you...?” Fenris said quietly.

“Not to actually kill him,” she said hurriedly. “But to help him get enough lyrium to… to finish himself off.” She swallowed hard, then shot him a tiny smile. “Did you know you can take lyrium in a bunch of different ways? Pills, shots, ointments, under the tongue, all kinds of ways. My dad was getting it in a number of different ways. So for about a month, he just… cut back on how much he was taking and pretended he wasn’t in agonizing pain. And I helped him keep track of the extra stock.”

She took a deep breath and ruffled her hair. “My mother didn’t know what we were up to. I couldn’t tell her, she… she and Carver were in denial about his prognosis. They thought… Andraste’s tits, I don’t know what they thought. That he wasn’t dying, I suppose. But they didn’t know he was planning this, or they would have tried to stop him. So once he’d stored up enough lyrium to end it all, we chose a day when they were both out running errands, and he just… started taking all of it. The pills, the sublingual tabs, everything.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “By the time Mother and Carver came back, he was gone.”

“So they thought you had done it,” Fenris said quietly.

Rynne nodded. “I was there. The empty blister packs and everything were there. My mother…” She laughed and shook her head. Maker’s balls, her mother had completely lost her shit. Screaming that Rynne had murdered Malcolm, that she would never forgive her, that she hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye…

It didn’t bear thinking about. Rynne shoved the memory away. “She called the police. Carver was too upset to stop her. I mean, I don’t know if he would have stopped her anyway. He’s still pretty mad at me.” She shrugged. “Cullen eventually got wind of the situation and offered to help me out like the obnoxiously good person he is. And that’s my tragic little backstory.” She chuckled weakly.

Fenris was silent for a long time, and Rynne twisted her fingers together as she waited for him to respond. There was one last piece to the story, one that gnawed at the inside of her stomach to this day - not because of the truth of it, but because nobody else knew, not even Piper. No one else knew except for Cullen, who had counselled her not to tell anyone.

Finally Fenris sighed. “Hawke, I… don’t know what to say.”

She shrugged and gave him a wry little half-smile. “It’s all right. It’s pretty heavy shit to share at a party.”

He frowned slightly at her. “No,” he said. “It’s not all right. It… it is as you said. It sucks.”

Rynne smiled more broadly, then laughed. “Are you reusing my words?”

He ran a hand through his snowy hair. “I… Yes, I am. I’m sorry. I am ill-equipped for this kind of… comforting.”

He did look rather discomfited, and for some reason, it made Rynne feel more comfortable. She relaxed against the balcony railing and gently bumped his shoulder with hers. “Don’t worry about it. It sucks, sure, but it was years ago. And Anders had it right - it was the best way for him to go without suffering.”

Fenris nodded and didn’t reply, and they stood in silence for a while.

Then Rynne spoke, very quietly. “Your former gang in Tevinter dealt in lyrium, didn’t they?”

Fenris nodded again. “Yes,” he said. “From mining to street dealing. We - they were involved in every part of it.” He clenched his jaw, and Rynne waited with bated breath until he spoke again.

“They tried to bring my sister into the business,” he said. “She - the others on Danarius’s staff - our house was used sometimes. My sister was naive, and they acted kind to her…” He trailed off and scrubbed an agitated hand through his hair.

“It’s okay,” Rynne said quickly. “You don’t have to talk about it.” He looked so angry and so sad, and her heart felt like it was swelling inside her rib cage, and this was not how she’d expected this party to go.

He shook his head roughly. “It was my fault,” he snapped. “I exposed her and my mother to the lyrium trade. It came into the house because of me. I was meant to protect them, and they’re both dead.”

Rynne’s eyes widened. His mother and his sister were dead? “Oh fuck,” she said. Without thinking about it, she grabbed his hand. “Fenris, I’m so fucking sorry.”

He squeezed her fingers hard. “Lyrium is a sickness,” he told her. His voice was rough and deep and strained. “It’s a sickness, and I brought it into the house.”

She stared into his eyes. His deep, brilliant, angry, self-recriminating green eyes.

She desperately wanted to comfort him. To convince him that he wasn't a bad person. She opened her mouth. “I administered the last shot of lyrium to my dad,” she blurted. “He was too weak to do it himself, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t watch him suffer. So I did it. I… I killed him.”

Fenris’s eyes widened. She smiled weakly. “Cullen is the only one who knows,” she whispered. “All the evidence was circumstantial, so he got me off the hook. But… I know the truth, you know? There was no choice. If I hadn’t, my dad would have lingered on for months longer. I had no choice.”

Fenris was still tightly holding her hand. His eyes were fixed on her face. She squeezed his fingers. “Do you think I’m a monster?” she asked.

He frowned. He released her fingers, then slowly lifted his hand toward her face.

Rynne held her breath as he hesitated. Then, carefully, so very carefully, he wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb.

“You are not a monster,” he said. He lowered his hand. “You don’t know what a true monster looks like.”

Rynne swallowed hard. Her cheek was tingling from the warmth of his thumb. “You’re not a monster, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she told him. “You’re perfect.”

Fenris’s eyebrows leapt high on his forehead, and Rynne flushed. Damn it, she thought. The word had slipped out before she could stop it. She dropped her eyes and laughed nervously, but before she could speak, Fenris chuckled as well.

“If that is what you think, then you must be quite drunk,” he said.

She glanced up at him. He still looked rather serious, but the corner of his lips was lifted in a hint of a smirk.

A wash of relief loosened her shoulders, and she laughed more genuinely. “Not nearly drunk enough for this conversation,” she joked. She jerked her head at the thumping party inside. “Want to head back in?”

He studied her for a moment, but his gaze was warmer somehow, warmer and more intense than before, and now Rynne found that she couldn’t look away.

Her heart was pounding in her throat. His fucking forest-green eyes were so beautiful. Finally he nodded. “Yes. Let’s go,” he said.

Rynne smiled and followed Fenris back towards the door. Perhaps this party wasn’t a total loss after all.

#fenris #fenris fic #fenris modern AU #damned spot #fenhawke #fenris/hawke #fenris x hawke #fenris/femhawke #fenris x femhawke #fenris/f!hawke #fenris x f!hawke #pikapeppa writes

9 notes · View notes

fangzeronos · 6 years ago

Text

SDCC 2018 wrap up

Ok now that SDCC is over, I feel like I should do a little wrap up for the weekend. I got to sit and wait for all the trailers and news to come out since I couldn’t afford to go, so this is gonna be strictly from the “Nerd on the Couch” perspective. I’m putting a read more in case anyone wanna skip this.

Titans: The trailer was alright. Robin’s in a bad place because of Batman so his “Fuck Batman” line is justified. Starfire and Beast Boy could still use some work, but it was only the first trailer, so we’ll have to reserve judgement until the show comes out. I’m looking forward to it anyway.

Young Justice Outsiders: It’s actually real. I thought for the last two years we’ve all been thinking it’s not coming and that we’ve all been living in a dream about wanting it back. I was in the middle of the store when I saw the trailer and my heart stopped. Two minutes of Season 2 recap, including Wally’s ‘death’ (HE ISN’T DEAD ALRIGHT!? HE’S JUST IN THE SPEED FORCE AND NOBODY CAN CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE DAMMIT!!!) before we get the new footage. The new characters look amazing, Geoforce looks like he’s going to be a good character, hopefully we’ll get Terra since she’s “been missing for two years”. Still waiting to see M’gann, Kaldur, Beast Boy, and the rest of the season 2 cast, but I’m excited for this one more then Titans.

And since both shows above are going to be on the DC Universe Online service, I can see paying $75 a year for it if we’re going to get more Young Justice. With all the shows coming out on DCUO, like Harley Quinn, Stargirl, Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol, and all of the older shows like Batman The Animated Series, Wonder Woman, the older DC movies and the comics, I can justify paying that much for a yearlong subscription.

Supergirl: Season 4 looks like it’s going to be interesting. Agent Liberty seems like a decent antagonist, but with the way this show has done in the past, hyping a villain for the first half and then swapping it with a generic bad guy for the second, I don’t have much hope. It looks like they’re toning down the relationship drama from season 2 and 3, which is good. I’m honestly thinking they’re going to screw Lena’s character development and have her go evil Luthor judging by how season 3 ended with her “We can begin phase two” line and having the Harun-El made up that she gave to Alura. A few quick shots of Alex as Director of the DEO sporting a new haircut, nothing too revealing except for the Supergirl spacesuit at the end. I saw it and my mind went to the first Injustice 2 game trailer from 2016 with the armored look. I’m looking forward to the new season, not keen on it being on Sundays before the Charmed reboot but have to get the viewers for a remake somehow.

Arrow: Oliver Queen in prison. That’s a hell of a concept for the season. We know something’s going to change and he’s going to be out by the fourth or fifth episode, possibly earlier. Decent shots of the other characters, Dinah wearing SCPD riot gear was a nice touch, Laurel-2 denouncing vigilantism makes for an interesting idea considering what the hell she’s done in the last seasons. Diaz is fine, not enjoying having him around again but since he didn’t get killed at the end of the last season, it’s fine. Longbow Hunters might make for interesting fodder, but we can’t be sure until the show starts. I’m sick of Felicity, but that arguments been done to death. We all know it was Roy in the Green Arrow suit in the end of the trailer. If it had been Diggle, we’d have seen his face and since we know Roy’s back, it doesn’t really give us many options to choose from. I’m glad it’s on Mondays now so I can watch it and keep up instead of being behind.

Legends of Tomorrow: It looks great. This one has become one of my favorites on the network and I’m glad to see they’re getting more episodes. Hopefully this season doesn’t get shafted and end up getting thrown to a different night or time or cut in the middle for a different show. Bringing Constantine back for a regular spot is a good move considering what they’re going to be dealing with thanks to the fallout from killing Mallus. Dragons, demons, all sorts of magical and mythical creatures. “Couldn’t we be heroes just a little longer?” made me laugh and it’s that sort of thing that makes Legends stand out to me. It can be dark and gritty but still lighthearted and fun. It’s what Flash started to be and it’s what Arrow needs to be. I’m glad it’s going to be on Mondays along with Arrow.

Flash: Coming off of the reveal that Mystery Girl is actually Barry and Iris’ daughter (which I’d had a feeling about anyway since she was so giddy at the wedding in the Crisis crossover), Nora seems to be a fun addition to the cast this year. I’m honestly looking forward to seeing what she messed up, why she came back, and why didn’t she learn from Barry’s mistakes about screwing with the Timeline. Cicada looks to be interesting, and I hope he’s going to be the main villain for the year. I want to know more about how Caitlin was Frost before the Accelerator and Flashpoint happened, or is it a side effect of Flashpoint two years later? Guess we’ll find out in October.

Aquaman: The trailer looked amazing. This might just be part of what the DCEU needs to get its shit together and stop being so grimdark. Wonder Woman proved DC movies can do fun and lighthearted and still hit some dark themes and notes, and this looks like it’s going to do the same thing. Jason Mamoa looks as badass as he did in Justice League, Amber Heard is beautiful as Mera. Atlantis looked amazing. I’m thoroughly excited and December can’t come quick enough to see this.

Shazam!: One of my favorite DC heroes, man. Zachary Levi just killed it in this trailer and I was laughing the whole way through. If the movie keeps that same energy up, I’ll be damn happy. March release for this one and I’m ready to go!

Godzilla: King of the Monsters: It’s frigging Godzilla, fighting his own list of bad guys. Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah, all classics that should have been in the first one instead of the MUTO. I’ve always been a Godzilla nerd, so when I saw this trailer I was geeking the fuck out. I’m definitely excited for this one.

Now, you’re probably wondering, “Hey, where’s Voltron in all of this?” and you’d be right that I haven’t talked about it yet. I have spent three days milling over the reveals from the Voltron panel and been trying the right ways to word things, so I don’t seem like I’m being an asshole and damning myself with what I’m going to say. Now, with that out of the way.

The season 7 trailer looked good. We’re going back to Earth, so who knows how much time really has passed since the only indication we’ve had was the week that Kuron was in the Galra fighter before Keith and Black found him back in season 3. I’m sad to see that season 8 is going to be the last of VLD, but I can understand why, since they were only approved for so many episodes. Going back to a 13-episode season is the best thing they could have done. Keith piloting Black still kind of irks me, but with Shiro only having one arm, I guess it makes sense. I would much rather have Allura in Black, put Lance back in Blue, and give Red back to Keith, but that’s a whole other post.

The big thing people took away from the panel was “You’ll meet Shiro’s significant other, Adam.” When I saw that on Twitter, I was…. I’m not gonna lie, I was disappointed. You’ve had six seasons of moments between Shiro and Allura, the Hand Touch, the way she looked at him when he said “You found me” at the end of the season, how adamant they are about saving each other every time they’re in danger, Shiro’s resolve to get her back in Season 1 after she threw him into the shuttle and got taken by the Galra. And now it’s all thrown out of the airlock?

No offense to the writers, Josh Keaton who gets mad credit for keeping this close to the chest and not revealing anything, the fans that are a fan of this plot point for the next season, but I’m not a fan. Don’t get me wrong, LGBT representation in animation/kids’ media has come a long way in a few short years. Look at Steven Universe. One of the main characters is a literal fusion of two she-pronoun using space rocks. I just feel like this is shoehorned in like a checkmark on an RPG character creation. “PTSD? Check. Missing limb? Check. Male POC? Check. What else can we check to make people happy? OH! Gay! DOUBLE CHECK!!” is what it feels like to me. To me, this feels like the writers have been shadow stalking Tumblr, AO3, FF.net, everywhere else Voltron is big and made their choice but what the popular ships were in the search results.

Make Shiro gay, fine. Make him bi, that’d be a better option because then we can ship him with whoever we want and not get comments that say that shipping Shiro with Allura or any other female member of this show is gay erasure. By saying “Shiro’s gay”, you’re shooting all of the other Shiro ships in the face. Shieth shippers are over the moon, Shallura shippers are sitting in a corner, Klance shippers are looking between the two going “WTF”, and the rest of the internet’s like “Why is it a big deal?”

I feel like I should stop there about this. This is already more then a page in my word doc.

SDCC 2018 was fun to watch from a distance. CW brought some good trailers, DC killed it with 8 trailers, and Voltron is what it is. Now begins the countdown for SDCC 2019.

#SDCC 2018 #Titans #Young Justice Outsiders #Arrow #Supergirl #Flash #Legends of Tomorrow #Godzilla #Aquaman #Shazam

26 notes · View notes

yujachachacha · 7 years ago

Note

Hey how have you been doing lately sunsengnim?

I no longer work as a teacher and I’m not an esteemed professional at my current job (nor my side hobby as a QCer/TLer/subber), so that title doesn’t really work with me, haha. You only use this for well-established veterans of a field - as a comparison, consider the use of “sensei” with masters like Hayao Miyazaki (animated films) and Rumiko Takahashi (manga).

If you’re actually trying to use 선생님 as a polite suffix, FYI you only use that in certain situations for strangers who are much older than you. I think the only time I’ve actually seen it used towards a non-teacher/doctor/etc. was for my grandma. My family celebrated her 80th birthday (which is huge in Korea - think of it as the equivalent of a quinceañera or a sweet sixteen, but even more lavish thanks to the person being an elder) at a banquet hall in Korea and the reservation was listed as “(My grandma’s name) 선생님”. I’m the same age as some of the Aqours seiyuu, y’know…I’m not that old yet.

Mini Korean lesson aside - personally, I’ve been doing well! Been super-busy lately due to showing around my aunts and uncle around, but I’m glad to see them. They’re leaving on Sunday so I might get some free time back to myself then. On the other hand, it’ll probably take me around a week after that to get caught up to everything I missed (I had to find out through an ONIBE member I met yesterday that there were wedding vows at the Chiba FMT, what the shit??).

My tentative future plans include QCing a fairly large ONIBE project (which I was supposed to get to 2 weeks ago RIP), translating some Korean LLS Twitter comics (my Dynasty Scans page has more non-LL content than LL content now and that’s a travesty), going through asks I haven’t answered yet, making progress on videos I have yet to release, and drafting a couple of analyses posts I’ve been meaning to write. It’s pretty much the same as the previous to-do list I made for myself, actually.

For now, I’ll be answering asks and writing up a SIF analysis post containing my predictions for a future set. I’ll probably start posting spaghetti again once LLS S2 BD4 starts shipping next week or so (I ordered a copy for “Beginner’s Sailing”, of course), so look forward to that(?) as well.

Also, I received news yesterday (again, from my friend in ONIBE) that previews are out for the μ’s solo live collection. I decided to change my blog background in honor of that. Time for me to drown in feels throughout this month. :’)

And finally: I’ve actually received zero responses in regards to how I should celebrate reaching 1,000 followers. 🙃 I’m unsure as to whether it’s due to people not caring what I do for it, not noticing the post (despite the fact that I changed my blog’s sidebar description to point it out), thinking I’m dead due to my relative inactivity this past week, or some combination of all of these. While a part of me is like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ “ayyy lmao that means I don’t have to add something to my to-do list”, I do actually want to do something in honor of this. Please feel free to reply to this post or my 1k follower post linked above with suggestions, or send in an ask! I’ll do my best to prioritize that request so I can properly celebrate the milestone.

If I still don’t get any responses, well…I’ll either just let it slide without doing anything, or I might just pick something myself like I did with my 300 followers milestone. Who knows? :3c

#yujachask #anonymous #translation #status update #to do list #yujachat #is this koreanon?#if so: hey long time no see~! :D #(and sorry for hijacking your post to do a mini status update;;)#the post background looks p ugly because it clashes with my blog theme #BUT IDC BECAUSE MY KOKORO IS BROKORO FOR μ's

20 notes · View notes

nipponnomad · 7 years ago

Text

Translation: ONE-Sensei Young Sunday Interview :D

youtube

I did my best to summarize this hour-long interview with ONE-sensei, uploaded to YouTube by Young Sunday in March and uploaded to Tumblr by the lovely and talented @one-blog last week. Please note, while my Japanese is decently high-level, I typically translate written Japanese rather than spoken Japanese (which, by its very nature, is harder to translate), so there might be mistakes here or there. That said, I believe I captured the general gist of things. If you're fluent in Japanese and want to do a more comprehensive translation in the future, please feel free!

EDIT: Here are some more detailed translations of selected parts of the interview, based on Japanese transcripts that @isasm found. :)

ONE-SENSEI: YOUNG SUNDAY INTERVIEW

Things to note:

-I mostly focused on what ONE said, as the hosts talked a lot and tended to get off on tangents.

-ONE comes across quite shy in this interview, especially in comparison to the super-chatty hosts. There are times when the hosts start to ask him a question and he doesn't seem to know what to say. There are also a few times where it looks like ONE is honest-to-god dissociating. That said, it's a good interview that includes some pretty insightful commentary.

-ONE is forced to sit in the creakiest wooden chair known to man.

-Maybe this is common knowledge, but is ONE married? You can see what looks like a wedding ring in a lot of shots.

-Instead of “ONE-sensei,” the hosts refer to ONE as “ONE-kun” throughout. I'm not sure why. It's kind of cute though.

The Interview: ONE's Life Story

The hosts begin with small talk, chatting about a new album they've listened to, and introducing ONE-sensei and his work in general terms. ONE doesn't actually show up until about nine and a half minutes in. The hosts ask if he's seen their show before and he says he has, that he watched it after he was invited to appear on it. The hosts seem quite pleased and amused about that.

ONE is asked what sorts of activities he did in middle school and high school. He responds that he did tennis in middle school, but he wasn't at a super high level. Because ONE comes across pretty shy and self-effacing, the hosts joke that they can now understand where Mob Psycho came from. They then announce that they're going to do an abbreviated life history for ONE, who says he's nervous.

ONE says he was born on October 29th, 1986, and is a Scorpio. His birthday is next week or the week after next (from when this interview was filmed). The hosts remark on how he's relatively young.

ONE says he was born in Niigata but raised in Saitama Prefecture, where he's lived for 22 or 23 years. His hometown is near Kounosu (wherever that is). He specifies that his town shares a DMV with Kounosu, which is such a charmingly mundane detail. :P

The hosts ask what kind of kid he was. He says he was a normal kid, but “low tension” (i.e. low energy, quiet, laid back). The hosts say that that explains why his characters tend to be low tension as well. ONE agrees that might be the case. He says there are times when he gets more energetic, and the hosts tease him, implying that now is certainly not one of those times. ONE says he did get really energetic when the One Punch Man anime was announced.

How ONE Started Drawing Manga

The hosts ask how he felt when the One Punch Man anime was announced, and ONE says it was really awesome. The hosts remark that One Punch Man reminds them of American comics and is like a “Japanese Marvel.” ONE agrees that he has a similar image of One Punch Man and has always found its advent a little mysterious—like he doesn't quite know where it came from. ONE states that it's now been about three or four years since One Punch Man debuted in Ura Sunday and Shonen Jump.

ONE says that he started drawing manga in elementary school and can't remember exactly how he got started. He says he remembers reading Crayon Shin-chan on the shinkansen and stuff and trying to draw it (he specifies that he was very slow at drawing at the time). He says that Crayon Shin-Chan was an early influence on him, which the hosts find unusual.

The hosts ask about his upbringing and whether or not his parents were strict. It seems his family was a bit strict and he didn't show them his manga growing up—because he was embarrassed, but also because he expected he would be scolded for drawing manga instead of studying. So basically, he hid his manga hobby until he got to college. The hosts compare him to Kamuro from Mob Psycho, presumably because of the strict family.

The hosts ask if ONE ever submitted one of his comics for publication. ONE says he did submit to Shonen Jump when he was a first-year college student, but that it didn't go well because “it wasn't an interesting story.” He says the guy who reviewed his manga at Shonen Jump went through it really fast with a totally blank face and that ONE was sent packing pretty quickly.

Because the submission didn't go well, ONE started putting his comics on his personal blog. At the time, it was really hard to read the comic on your phone because you could basically only see one panel at a time and you had to go through all fifteen pages that way. Eventually, he started drawing manga on his computer and uploading it from there. He got really into the “pasokon manga” culture and bought himself a drawing tablet and downloaded Comic Studio.

He began uploading his work to a pasokon manga site where all the users were beginners or semi-professional. As far as I can tell, the site was called NEETsha, short for “NEET Shakai” or “NEET Society.” (Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that one.) This was when he started drawing One Punch Man.

About One Punch Man

The hosts ask where the name One Punch Man (“Wanpanman”) came from. One host points out that it obviously sounds like Anpanman. Obviously it also sounds like One Piece (“Wanpiisu”), which is a sales juggernaut in Japan. ONE points out that actually “Wanpanman” outsells “Wanpiisu” overseas.

They ask what kind of character ONE was aiming for when he created Saitama. ONE says he always loved shonen manga and read a lot of it, and he thought about the final episode/battle, when the character was at their greatest strength. Basically, he thought it would be funny to start with a character who was already at the peak of their power and go from there, watching each successive villain get taken out in one hit.

Within the world of One Punch Man, the hosts note, Saitama is basically a regular person, he's laid back and flexible and his main concern is everyday stuff like going to special sales. They also note that Mob is similar, being a quiet type of guy who keeps a low profile until his percentage starts going up.

The hosts ask if One Punch Man immediately became popular after ONE posted it to NEETsha. ONE says it was pretty soon afterward, and that he enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts and comments and encouragement.

At this point, the hosts realize the interview is half over and they've totally forgotten about the personal history thing.

About Mob Psycho 100

As the hosts see it, there are three major themes in ONE's work: 1) What is power? 2) What should be done with power? 3) What is our true power, and how are we supposed to live with that power? We don't typically see the characters longing for more power; instead, we're dropped into the middle of the story and watch what they do after they've already become powerful. This is evident in Mob Psycho 100.

The hosts ask if the Mob Psycho manga has changed from when ONE put it online to when it was released in print. ONE says it hasn't really changed but it was worse reading it online because it was so small and hard to read on a cell phone screen. The hosts also ask if ONE has had assistants helping him to edit and fix things up, but ONE says they weren't there in the beginning.

The hosts look at some of the pages from Mob Psycho and comment on the art. When they compliment ONE's use of lines for emphasis in one picture, ONE says, in a self-deprecating sort of way, that he just did it using a tool in Comic Studio. The hosts also remark on the way Reigen holds a phone in one panel (you probably know which one) and laugh a lot. However, following this seeming criticism, one of the hosts keeps calling the art in Mob Psycho “punk” or “hip hop.” I had a hard time figuring out what he meant by that, but I think he's calling it a sort of indie, outsider art. He goes on to say that it's not like how everyone else draws and isn't imitating the prevailing manga style.

The same host states that there are two kinds of mangaka: 1) the “cover band” type that imitates others without really thinking for themselves, and 2) the type that doesn't imitate others and thinks for themselves. For example, many “cover band” mangaka imitate the battle scenes in Dragonball, whereas the ones in Mob Psycho look—if anything—more like battles in Akira. The hosts ask ONE if he was inspired by Akira. ONE says he likes Akira but doesn't really answer one way or another.

The hosts have been talking a lot, so they interrupt themselves to ask if ONE wants to correct them on anything. ONE has just one thing he wants to say: when he was drawing the picture of Reigen holding the cell phone, surprisingly enough, he drew it while looking at his own hand. This comment gets big laughs.

Themes in ONE's Work

The hosts discuss the issue of “leveling up,” comparing it to “geemu nou” (“game brain,” a type of dementia allegedly caused by playing too many video games). In English academic discourse, we would probably call this “gameification.” Basically, people who play a lot of games—as well as the protagonists in a lot of shonen manga—become obsessed with “reaching the next level” and don't focus on anything else. The hosts ask ONE if there's some sort of lesson in his work about the dangers of this type of single-mindedness.

ONE says that he's noticed this tendency in shonen manga. By contrast, he discusses the series he was influenced by as a child, Crayon Shin-chan—specifically, the movie version of Crayon Shin-chan. As a series about a normal family, Crayon Shin-chan was generally fairly peaceful and funny. However, in the movie, things got kind of serious. ONE believes that, when things get serious in a gag series, they hit extra hard.

He compares this to One Punch Man. Even though it's a gag manga, the world itself is pretty serious, with people being killed by monsters all the time and so on. Existence itself is like a gag in the world of One Punch Man, which ONE finds interesting.

Finally, the hosts show pages from the fight between the esper kids and Claw's 7th Division. They discuss the part where Mob very calmly and directly tells Gas Mask Ojiichan: “Having psychic powers won't make you popular.” Gas Mask Ojiichan then gets upset and yells: “EVEN SO, I SHOULD BE TREATED SPECIAL!” So basically, Claw is full of children who never managed to mature into adults and don't want to become “commoners.”

ONE then talks about “commoners,” average people who get up in the morning, get on the train to go to work, and do their best day after day. ONE thinks that this in itself—being a member of society—is difficult in its own way, and that's what Saitama and Mob are trying to do.

I feel like that's a really lovely way to end the interview. Sadly, they never finish the personal history and we never find out what ONE's favorite food, color, movie, manga, and type of woman are. :(

#ONE #one-sensei #one-blog #one punch man #mob psycho 100 #opm #mp100 #translation #interview

695 notes · View notes

marvelandponder · 7 years ago

Photo

I’m a Little Upset They Made Me Excited for Something Called Hascon

But, they did, and over the past two days (and counting! expect an IDW comic panel on Sunday!), they’ve released some spoilers and news that’s pretty damn cool.

No real movie news aside from Hype! It’s coming in 4 weeks! because they didn’t want to reveal too many spoilers for that (although I’m still waiting for Hasbro to step up its marketing game with this one), but aside from that, let’s see what news we got for MLP this weekend [if you want Movie insight, I actually recommend picking up the art book. I just got mine in the mail and WOW is the concept art ever pretty]! This is your spoiler warning if you don’t like that sort of thing.

UPDATED: TONS OF STUFF! Movie Screenshots, more season 8 news, IDW comics, and more!

MLP: The Movie!

Not much in the way of spoilers (you can read the novelization or the art book for those, I guess was their thinking), but have three stills!

Equestria Girls

New outfits, designed by an actual red carpet stylist, Carol Lam, for both the new doll line and the characters in canon

New Youtube series officially announced, and it’s Choose Your Own Adventure style! Expected in November

Shorts to continue, and one has even been teased

youtube

Another one was a “2 minute short about Sunset Shimmer drawing a comic and them animating it... based around [the] girls catching a jewel thief.”

youtube

School play is a concept that’s coming up. Whether in short form, 22 minute special form, or perhaps even movie (although please note there has been no explicit mention of an EG5, so lovers of the movies will have to be patient)

“When asked if there is a Sunset Shimmer doppleganger rolling around, one of the panelists noted that her pet theory is that it was always Sunset's fate to travel to humanland, and there isn't an original Sunset in the world. They are leaving this open in canon though.”

No plans for Discord in EQG at the moment, but who knows?

Find EQD’s report on that here.

Okay, so first off? Loving the new outfits. With any other teenager characters, it would be ridiculous that they’re so well dressed and styled (I noticed Sunset’s hair is juuust slightly different, can’t see the others well enough to tell), but for these girls, it makes sense, since they’re all friends with Rarity.

So, yes, Hasbro. I’ll buy your crazy marketing tactics for now, because cute outfits.

As to the Choose Your Own Adventure series, I think that’ll be interesting, but not quite as cool to me as stuff like the shorts, specials, and movies. Just a matter of personal taste, but the world-building going on in the Overpowered short, for instance, is only really cool if it has a lasting effect on the characters and their world (the report said something about a coal miners daughter wanting to disco, and while that sounds possibly cute, it’s not exactly my cup of tea).

But it’ll be fun to try, no doubt! And definitely cool for younger fans!

The post wasn’t super clear on whether the Choose Your Own Adventure stuff was the only EQG content coming to Youtube (we have been teased about a series, similar to the Hana Zuki show Hasbro has on there already), but until we hear otherwise, assume it’s just the CYOA series.

And a school play theme really does sound like it could be used for a movie or a special, if they wanted to keep doing long-form stories, so that’s what I’m hoping for, personally.

Oh and we still don’t know what these are from/for:

A currently unreleased summertime short, most likely a music video.

A Netflix listing we found out about back in August. This might be the place they feature the specials and shorts, but who knows?

Season 7 News

Clips were shown for next week’s episode, It Isn’t the Mane Thing About You (which might end up being a Pinkie and Rarity episode) and Marks and Recreation

youtube

It Isn’t the Mane Thing About (better clip than the first that was released)

youtube

Marks and Recreation (featuring the last song of the season)

Find EQD’s report on that here.

In addition, have some stills from a promo yet to be released on the rest of the season!

Likely from Secrets and Pies

Likely from A Health of Information

(Not shown: Applejack falling into the party cave) Likely from Secrets and Pies

From It Isn’t the Mane Thing About You

From Once Upon a Zepplin

Likely from A Health of Information

Likely from A Health of Information (mask modelled after Mage Meadowbrook, so this will undoubtedly feature her story in a similar fashion to Daring Done, possibly told by Twilight, from the earlier screenshot)

From Once Upon a Zepplin

From It Isn’t the Mane Thing About You

Additionally, I’ll point out what we know for the season 7 finale: that there’s a tie into the Legends of Magic comics, and it’s called Shadow Play parts 1&2. Whether “shadow” refers to the character Shadowlock from the main comic series or King Sombra or something else entirely, we’ll have to wait and see!

Okay, so the most exciting thing for me is that Vincent Tong, voice of Flash Sentry and Feather Bangs, gets to sing again! As a villain this time! I could make a joke about him embracing the role the fandom has given him this season (Feather Bangs, the waifu stealer, and now Rumble, the antagonist).

Oh and for those who don’t remember, Rumble is Thunderlane’s little brother, who appears in Hurricane Fluttershy. It’s been a while, but he looked cute there.

I wonder if Starlight will have any role in this episode...

The addition of the Cake twins is to Mane Thing also adds hype for me. I’m still on the fence with the episode concept, mostly because I need to see how they’re going to run with it (could be uncomfortable to watch Rares lose her mane if done wrong), but the Cake twins were extremely endearing in Baby Cakes, and it would be nice to see more interaction between them and Pinkie Pie.

This season has been spectacular so far, so I’m glad not too much was spoiled (or you know, leaked...) so we get to enjoy it in full!

Season 8 News

Seaponies confirmed for season 8, the Movie will tie into the show

An animatic was released as well:

youtube

Find EQD’s report here.

SHE RETURNS!

I find it super interesting that Chrysalis is outright ignoring Starlight Glimmer while gathering DNA, given that she swore revenge against her. A large number of fans are speculating that this will be some sort of voodoo plot, where Chrysalis literally turns Starlight’s friends against her, like Starlight did to her.

Not only that, but if you look in the background of that animatic, you’ll find the mane 7 are in a suspiciously new building...

Some have speculated it’s Twilight’s new castle (meaning the crystal castle will get destroyed at the end of season 7, which is alarming because it’s connected to the Tree of Harmony). I feel like it might be more of an addition to her castle, either a school of Twilight’s own (hence, calling the rest of the girls Twilight’s “teachers”) or a house of diplomacy of some kind, like a U.N. building for the different nations that Twilight and company have been befriending (dragons, changelings, griffons, yaks---heck, even Sunset Shimmer could be considered a diplomat from Equestria to the humans).

It’s still a mystery...

Also, sea ponies! And they’re adorable! They translate to show style really well, actually! And it only makes you wonder just how many other things will carry over from the movie....

New info!

Look for a Cheese Sandwhich cameo

G. M. Berrow wrote a Season 8 episode she is super passionate about and her favorite episode overall. Maybe more book tie-ins like in "Daring Done".

Josh Haber's favorite pony is The Great and Probably Going To Be In Season 8 Trixie!

Derpy won't get a featured episode like Episode 100, but she will be around, likely more than season 7.

There will be two-parters, and that's plural, so it sounds like we return to the opening and closing episodes being epic two-parters. So expect You-Know-You that we saw in that animatic to be in one of these!

Things we already know about season 8 that you may have forgotten:

26 episodes confirmed

Orchestra music from the movie to be used in some of the season’s songs, which are all finalized by now

As well, there will be twice as many songs are there are in season 7, since Daniel Ingram’s time won’t be split up between the show and the movie

Discord confirmed

Josh Haber returning as story-editor

Mike Vogel returning finally after working on the movie

IDW Comics

This year’s holiday special!

For those of you who have listened to the Christmas album, that’ll look somewhat familiar...

MLP:FIM #60 Sara Richard cover!

MLP: FIM #61 Cover revealed! A collection of foreign dignitaries, from dragons, to deers, to cats/abyssnians, to gryphons!

“The story is going to be a "united nations" type gathering where all the various creatures throughout the planet convene to discuss the future of the planet. So think a Meeting of the United Nations but with Dragons, Buffalo, Hippogriffs, Anthro Cats, and a pony who controls the sun with a mere thought. Oh but there is a discovery made at the conference that could lead to trouble for our little ponies! A problem that might end up costing Equestria ownership of Canterlot!”

Legends of Magic #9! Seems to be a continuation of Flash Magnus’s previous issue, if the cover is to be believed.

Aaaand a page from Legends of Magic #6! Yes, that’s right, zombie ponies drawn by Andy Price. If 28 Pranks Later wasn’t grim enough for you, surely the master of expressions will deliver!

Find EQD’s report right here!

Year of the Pony

13 notes · View notes

yeonchi · 5 years ago

Text

Doctor Who Series 12 Review: Prelude

Well everyone, Doctor Who is back and I’m getting on the train again. That’s right, I’m going to review the twelfth series of Doctor Who, also known as the second series with Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor.

As with last year’s reviews for Series 11, I’ll be posting my thoughts on every episode of Series 12 and rating them on a scale out of 10. I’ve created a new page on my Tumblr with all the links to my past reviews, which you can find here. Without further ado, let’s begin the review series prelude.

A year to mull over

In the past, I had more interest in Doctor Who because I was utilising aspects of it in a personal project of mine. Now that it’s pretty much coming to an end, I could have left the series after Peter Capaldi’s final episode, but I decided to give Jodie Whittaker a chance and maintain a casual interest in it if only for something to watch.

After mulling it over for a year and rewatching some clips of Series 11, I’ve found that I’ve gotten accustomed to the Thirteenth Doctor, even if her character is basically an expy of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. It’s given me quite a bit of time to think about what I would like to see in Series 12, particularly since the writing in Series 11 wasn’t necessarily up to par.

On an unrelated note, I did a review of a decade-old Australian-Spanish-Brazilian children’s cartoon series called Sea Princesses. I’m promoting this because some episodes of that series have an environmental theme to them and there is a rumour that there will be an environmental message somewhere in this series of Doctor Who. You can find it through this link.

Waiting periods

This really doesn’t matter to me now that I’ve downgraded myself to being a casual fan, but I want to complain about how the scheduling for this series has been all over the place since Series 6. If you look on Wikipedia, you can see when each series aired each year. Take the Christmas Specials into account and you’ll have an idea of how long we had to wait between episodes.

In the revived era, series used to go from March or April to June or July, but the split series in Series 6 and 7 were the first signs of the schedule starting to go all over the place. In all honesty, it was exasperating to wait for something related to The Day of the Doctor after Series 7′s finale, particularly given that the first trailer was exclusive to Comic Con.

In the Twelfth Doctor’s era, Series 8 and 9 went from August or September to November or December. There was a gap year in 2016 before Series 10 aired from April to July 2017. After the Thirteenth Doctor’s debut, Series 11 aired from October to December 2018, then 2019 was a gap year before Series 12 premieres from January to March 2020.

This doesn’t go to say that the timing of the classic era seasons weren’t all over the place at some points, but even then, they still managed to maintain regular schedules for as long as they could. I guess back in the days without the Internet, people actually had other things to do or watch without wondering when the next season of Doctor Who would air.

I’ve heard something on some forum somewhere about how Chris Chibnall likes to have a gap year between series like he did with Broadchurch, which might explain the 2019 gap year. But still, fans have waited before and I’m sure they would be happy to wait again. I just hope that the BBC can make their minds up about what time of year that Doctor Who will be on.

Four things I would like to see in Series 12

I would do five, but I couldn’t think of a fifth one.

1. No more misunderstood villains

This was my biggest problem with Series 11 - there were five such episodes where someone would be introduced as an antagonist based on their actions, but they are later revealed not to be because of their actual intentions that are sometimes unrelated to whatever problem the Doctor and her team are trying to solve. I probably wouldn’t care as much if there were only one or two misunderstood villains at most, but the fact that there are five of them with four in a row is really telling because the actual villains in those episodes turn out to be humans.

In regards to the “four in a row” thing, I’m counting the Pting as a misunderstood villain because it fed off the energy of the Tsuranga to thrive. It didn’t have any malice toward anyone onboard (except when they were disturbing his meal).

2. More character development for the companions

In Series 11, we saw an arc based on Ryan’s relationship with Graham and his father. Ryan was also mentioned to have dyspraxia while Yaz is a police officer, but those aspects weren’t fully explored in the series. I was hoping for Ryan’s dyspraxia to be mentioned in Resolution, but I guess they forgot about it. Let’s not forget the fact that Yaz has barely had any character development in Series 11 and the question of why the Doctor has such favouritism for her.

3. Explore the Timeless Child (story arcs)

The Timeless Child was something that the Remnants found inside the Doctor’s mind in The Ghost Monument. Along with the Stenza (and how everything was basically their fault), I thought that it would have been explored in the last series, but I guess I was partially mistaken. We don’t have any clue on what the Timeless Child might be, so I’m glad that it hasn’t been forgotten, at least for the time being.

On a side note, I don’t really mind whether the Stenza return or not. You could say that their story was done at the end of the last series, but then again, we only saw one of them, namely Tim Shaw. If we do see or hear about them again, it’ll give me more opportunities to continue the joke about how everything was Tim Shaw’s fault, because I really enjoyed it.

4. Returning monsters

The lack of returning monsters made Series 11 a bit bland. Combined with the lack of story arc and the number of human villains or misunderstood villains, I could argue that the writers didn’t quite know what to do with the new monsters they created.

At this point, we know for certain that the Judoon and Cybermen will be returning in Series 12. We already had the Daleks in Resolution, but that’s considered to be part of Series 11. However, in late October, some fans had snapped some Daleks in filming on Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge. Since a Christmas special was confirmed, it is likely that they could be featuring in that.

Other matters

I won’t be reacting to the trailers for this series; I only did it in Series 11 because I was more concerned with how the series would be given that the first female Doctor was cast.

I’m feeling less concerned about SJW red flags this time around. Maybe it’s because I’m a bit dense or I wasn’t able to find much of them. As for tokusatsu references, I’ve realised that they might not be intentional and that I’m probably the one making these parallels to them. That’s not to say that I won’t be looking out for them, particularly the latter because I quite enjoyed doing it.

I think a lot of my concerns regarding the red flags were because I was following Bowlestrek’s videos during Series 11. I stopped watching his videos one day and gradually, he disappeared from my feed. I’m not saying I ever disagreed with what he said, but I do try to form my own opinions when I can and not be influenced by pessimism. At the same time, I’ve also dropped out from The Oldest Nerd’s reviews. I might try following him again for Series 12 because he does more level-headed reviews like I do (that is if I can even say that for myself). On an unrelated note, Jonathan Pie and Tim Pool are a couple of go-tos for insights on left-wing, right-wing and SJW culture, so never let it be said that I don’t try at the very least.

The first episode premieres on New Year’s Day and subsequent episodes premiere on Sundays. As such, we do get a de-facto New Year’s Special, but not a Christmas Special - the Christmas Special I mentioned earlier is likely to be for Christmas 2020, which is going to be a long way away again with no other specials after Series 12 is done.

Now, there is something I should tell everyone, which is that I’ll be going away for two weeks near the end of January, meaning that the episode reviews for the third, fourth and possibly fifth episodes will be delayed (for reference, the dates are 12, 19 and 26 January). I will probably be able to watch the episodes and possibly take some small notes on them, but I won’t be able to take detailed notes or write out the reviews until I get back to my home computer. I don’t know if I can release all the reviews within the week of 27 January, but I’ll try not to let the backlog snowball.

At the moment, I’m behind on other things, but I think I’ve covered most of what I want to cover without going any further into myth or rumour territory. I’ll see you all after the new year for the review of the first episode of Series 12, Skyfall Part One.

#doctor who #doctor who series 12 #thirteenth doctor #doctor who series 12 review #thirteenth doctor review

0 notes

fountainpenguin · 7 years ago

Note

Hey, now that we're touching on the subject in your writing, want to tell us more about Sunnie and the gang? You know, personalities and who is playing host to which spirit? That kind of thing?

Yeah, I touched on them in THIS post, but admittedly that was very superficial information, and some of the information is slightly outdated too.

To be fair, I thought I’d have more time to introduce you to each spirit and host one at a time, since they weren’t supposed to appear in my works yet. “This Is Halloween” was originally going to be about the mirror caves throughout Anti-Pixie Isle for ~foreshadowing~ reasons that you’ll see later, but then this happened instead. Sorry for the info-dump. But not very.

Okay, so let’s talk about the zodiac spirits again. Luckily for me, I can just steal some of this stuff out of the Anti-Fairy worldbuilding dump I’m posting on the 7th since there’s no fanfic update that day, and link back to this post.

Be aware that this post is massive. But when you’re ready to learn, here you go.

NATURE SPIRITS AND ZODIACS

What is the point of you creating nature spirits for your fanfics?

Giving Anti-Fairies culture that doesn’t totally revolve around evil. Don’t get me wrong- this is definitely a ‘fic about Anti-Cosmo’s rise to power. It’s an “innocence to corruption” type of story.

However, I see canon Anti-Cosmo as a guy striking out mostly because his people are majorly discriminated against by the Fairies. I needed reasons for him to believe his people deserved to not be discriminated against, and reasons for the Anti-Fairies not to think, “Well gee, maybe if we stopped attacking people, they would accept us!” So, the way Anti-Fairies appear in my works is, many of them are good, cultured people who just happen to feel the urge to make mischief and deal with bad luck.

They’re bearers of bad news, but you shouldn’t kill the messenger, so to speak. Many of them are offended at being called evil. We’ll watch Anti-Cosmo get past the point of caring and embrace the evil title. That was one of the harder things for me in writing Frayed Knots, but I think I did okay.

Anti-Fairies are creatures of bad luck, so I started by giving them a zodiac and major beliefs in astrology, fate, destiny, horoscopes, and I built out from there. This was also my way of explaining things that appear in canon, like the Darkness, or the temple to the chicken seen in “Chicken Poofs”. Additionally, many Fairies believe the stars are Fairy warriors. Anti-Fairies believe they’re stars. H.P. belongs to a religion that believes fairy dogs can die. In the show, Sparky stated that they can’t, so the Zodii believe they can’t. Different stuff like that so I can encompass as many bits of canon in the show as possible.

Finally, it was nice to create an entire culture so starkly different from H.P.’s, who grew up in Fairy World in my fanfic Origin of the Pixies. Considering the mixed feelings between Fairies and Anti-Fairies, it seemed appropriate to give them drastically different cultures and beliefs. Additionally, many fans love the Anti-Fairies and wanted to hear more about them in the show, so I wanted to have fun with this. I also wanted to keep my readers engaged since Frayed Knots is my second fanfic and has to cover some of the same worldbuilding stuff we already saw in Origin. I wanted to keep some unexplored territory.

AND, I wanted Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda to be kept busy a lot of the time, which is why we don’t see them with Foop in the later seasons. I didn’t want them to be purely working on evil plans, since it seems their son would have wanted to get in on that action. Instead, I gave them a culture that has super strong traditions and beliefs, and made Foop the oddball who still has loyalty to his culture and reacts badly when he sees Fairies mock it and the Anti-Fairies, but he still thinks most of it is dumb and doesn’t want to get in too deep, so therefore pulls away from his parents and does his own thing.

I knew I’d be writing an extensive ‘fic that would probably take me years to finish, so I needed to have fun.

Don’t worry- while Knots does include a lot of nature spirit stuff, the zodiac still just Anti-Fairy culture and isn’t what I would call “the main plot”. This is still an FOP fanfic that tries to stay close to canon without veering the story into tons of OCs. Anti-Cosmo will be doing a lot of things in this story that have nothing to do with the nature spirits. We don’t even meet Sunnie until the war over godchildren is over. Then we get a big burst of nature spirit stuff before it fades out and we pick up the other plotlines again.

What are the levels of nature spirits?

Wise Ancients - Major deities; for all intents and purposes, they’re gods. I prefer using the terms “nature spirits” and “Ancients”, but they’re basically gods.

Ex: Mother Nature (Space), Father Time (Time), Tarrow (Reality), The Hocus Poconos (Unreality), The Grim Reaper (Death), The Cycling Hen (Life), Prince Morn (Light), Princess Eve (Dark)…

Those are all the Wise Ancients I’ve thought up at this time. More might come later. They’re the overarching set, and the other spirits are their children.

The way I see it, space and time existed and mixed together. From this union, Reality was created. Reality gathered the sentience to take on solid, sentient form, and taught Space and Time how to take shape like him (Mother Nature and Father Time; Tarrow’s name obviously comes from tarot since he’s also viewed as the influencer of luck). Others followed suit.

Spirit Bears - Also considered Ancients, although they are always spirits of the land. They’re a subset of the Ancients who can only kiff-tie (I’m using that term to suggest reproduction in this sense) with other spirit bears. They’re basically personifications of different lands rather than aspects of nature. In Origin, we see H.P. doing paperwork and political things to get Pixie World recognized as an official World. In Knots, we see Anti-Cosmo dealing with the birth of the new spirit bear cub who represents Pixie World. Same timeline of events, but they play on different fields.

Ex: Fairy World (Tír Ildáthach), Anti-Fairy World (Hy-Brasil), Pixie World (Sprigganhame), Anti-Pixie World (Solis Infinitum), and what I suppose we would call Fairy Refract World (Avalon).

Things like Patio World and Mattress World are small towns that don’t have bears. I’m not sure about Hairy World and Scary World yet, but I’m leaning towards those just being nicknames for different planes of existence, so they don’t get bears either.

I drew a comic that I plan to color and upload about H.P.’s interpretation of the spirit bears vs. Anti-Cosmo’s. I also drew H.P. holding Sprigganhame in one of my Inktobers.

Demigods - The children of the Ancients. The term “demigod” is meant to be all-encompassing, so it always refers to the children of the Ancients, exception being people like Tarrow who are considered major deities and therefore Ancients. As far as you’re concerned, I have listed the Ancients above, and their children are the demigods.

Ex: Dayfry (Love; Friday), Saturn (Fire; Saturday), Sunnie (Water; Sunday), Munn (Sky; Monday), Twis (Soil; Tuesday), Winni (Breath; Wednesday), Thurmondo (Leaves; Thursday)

They’re major spirits. Imagine it like, Tarrow is Zeus, and the demigods seen here are the other major gods on Olympus.

There are other demigods (Ex: spirits that symbolize good harvests, good fortune, friendship, patience, travel, wood, stone, certain types of animals) who have similar powers to our gang, but while they might have small shrines, they don’t have official Temples. I mean, maybe some do, but that sounds complicated for my worldbuilding, so let’s not get into that.

Proper ways to address them would be as “the Seven” or “the zodiac spirits”. “Deity” is another acceptable term, as is “nature spirits”, though nature spirits refers to nature spirits as a whole, and zodiac spirits refers only to the Seven.

Minor Spirits - The children of the demigods. Some of them might have the same masteries as actual demigods, but if they aren’t born of the Ancients, they aren’t called demigods. Powers get watered down through the generations.

Ex: Multiple spirits of mist, clouds, lightning, mud, oxygen, etc.

Anything you get when two aspects of nature combine. Periodic table level and stuff. Also known as lesser spirits. There are hundreds if not thousands of them, but they’re not as important . Like I said, they tend to be combinations.

I feel like it’s also worth pointing out that Fergus Mór mac Eirc’s Wikipedia page lists his mother as “the mist”. Literally the mist. Thus, I decided that H.P.’s namesake here (H.P.’s name is Fergus in my headcanon) is the grandson of Sunnie. This gets increasingly interesting when you do further research and find out that Fergus the Great died in a “freak storm”. Apparently, Sunnie had a temper tantrum and he got caught in it. H.P. is terrified of Sunnie as a result. Considering that I dropped Anti-Cosmo in the Water Year at random when I originally decided he was born in the Year of the Black Lake, this is very interesting to me.

Additionally, when minor spirits have kids, you go even smaller. This is where you get guardians of individual rivers, mountains, or particular forest groves.

Nature spirits are “everywhere and everything”, but they all have a single manifested form that embodies their sentience, heart, and that they use to communicate. If they want to talk to you with words, they have to haul their manifested form all the way to where you are, which is often inconvenient if they’re light-years away. Even they can only travel so fast. Otherwise, the most they can do is mess around with their aspect of nature (their “mastery”). For example, by making streams bubble or leaves fall or wind blow.

So, all those signs you think you see in nature in answer to your pleas? Pure laziness. They usually only get up when they have really important messages to deliver, or they’re on the run. If you pray to them, they might be interested enough to respond, but they’re not going to get up to do it and tell you directly. They just shake branches and stuff to signal that they’re paying attention. Super simple stuff that is easily waved off as coincidence by those who don’t believe.

It’s a whole network of spirits, but don’t try to keep them all straight. Focus on the main seven.

Who are the zodiac spirits?

Seven nature spirits who are the grandsons of Mother Nature and Father Time. They each represent a different element on the Fairy zodiac, and are named after the days of the week, which was my way of excusing why the days of the week were called such in the cloudlands long ago. I cared.

Each of the zodiac spirits is a son of a deity called Tarrow the Luck-Twister (also called “the cosmic jellyfish”). He’s basically the deity of fate, and since Anti-Fairies are obsessed with luck, you can see why they like him.

However, each of the zodiac spirits has a different other parent (whom they tend to draw their element from), so they’re all technically half-brothers. Since nature spirits can produce children with either sex, some have a mother and some have two dads. Sunnie is an exception who was created asexually; he’s the water spirit and was formed from Tarrow’s tears after he got dumped by the Hocus Poconos.

I mean, the zodiac spirits are basically major region Legendary Pokémon, and then the minor spirits are each region’s lesser Legendaries. The Ancients would be Mew, Arceus, Rayquaza, etc. They’re above the main region Legendaries.

How does sex/gender work with the nature spirits?

Any nature spirit can deliver an “energy manifestation” (“child”) after they pair. The less dominant spirit will be the one to do so (*Dramatic music* The Fairy zodiac is organized according to age/dominance of the zodiac spirits). The “parent” who is “pregnant” with the spirit can decide the spirit’s sex, because some animals like insect queens can do that but I didn’t get to use that on the actual Fairies, so I gave it to the nature spirits instead because I don’t know.

My favorite dumb joke is that Tarrow is the ultimate dominant spirit against every spirit except for one, The Hocus Poconos, and this is actually the reason why he’s head over heels for her, because she’s the one that’s different. He only had one kid with her - Dayfry - who is his obvious favorite. The other kids were borne by their other parents. Nature spirit pregnancy only lasts for like thirty seconds after the spirits separate, I feel like I should point out.

Nature spirits have “true forms” and “projected forms”, as I will explain later in this post. While their true form would be their biological sex, the gender of their projected form may be different. Everyone interprets the spirits differently, remember? So if you interpret a biologically male water spirit as female, then the projected form you see would be a female water spirit. The nature spirit still interprets himself as male, and while he is aware of your interpretation, it doesn’t change the way he himself sees himself, which is his true form.

What are the Zodiac Temples?

Buildings in the cloudlands that are open places of worship for anyone who wishes to come, regardless of race. Anti-Fairies are by far the most frequent visitors. Aliens aren’t common since this is the Fairy zodiac here.

Each Temple has a public area that’s all decorated. That’s where most people visit. You can also visit one of a few more private side rooms so that you can meditate in peace and place your offerings in the provided dish.

The most important room in the Temple is the echo chamber, and only camarilla members and anyone of their zodiac who have been given explicit permission can visit there to meditate.

The Temples were created during the Sealing War, when the zodiac spirits were considered too powerful and imprisoned. Their manifested forms are inside the echo chambers of their Temples, bound with magical golden chains. As such, while they can still communicate by creating aspects of nature, they can’t go anywhere except inside their Temples.

Sometimes when you’re in their Temples, they’ll appear to speak with you, but only when they want to and their advice should always be taken with a grain of salt- they generally have their own agendas in mind, and even when trying to help, they struggle to comprehend mortal affairs.

As a general rule:

Dayfry (Love) - Knows his name carries a lot of weight and doesn’t like to throw that weight around. So, he rarely reveals himself. However, if you appear to be desperate and crying, you can probably bring him out; he hates seeing anyone miserable.

Saturn (Fire) - You can win him over with impressive offerings and displays. He’s a sucker for flattery, but probably won’t show up if there’s nothing in it for him.

Sunnie (Water) - Sometimes appears if you seek his advice and he finds you interesting, which usually means intellectual. If he doesn’t think you’re worth his time, then you aren’t and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Munn (Sky) - Will reveal himself to almost any Sky year who asks, as long as he’s impressed. He rarely gives out advice, good or otherwise. Mostly he just listens to people while he eats the offerings they brought, and cracks jokes.

Twis (Soil) - Reveals himself next to never, even to his own camarilla representatives. Mostly, he only approaches a Soil High Count or Countess. No one beneath them has enough power to interest him. He’s a stubborn butt.

Winni (Breath) - Doesn’t always appear, but when he does, he’s nosy and likes to tell you what to do. Likely to get offended when you reject his advice, even when it’s terrible.

Thurmondo (Leaves) - Might appear if you push him hard enough, though he’s pretty nervous and spacy and doesn’t like offering suggestions. Not too helpful.

A nature spirit who gets “killed” while out and about will wake up again in their echo chamber. Like the shaman’s reincarnation site in Populous: The Beginning, though I don’t think many of you know that computer game. I was raised on it. No Temple means no reincarnation, so any Temple lost will send the camarilla into an immediate frenzy to rebuild it.

On the subject of Populous, your mana charges faster when you have a higher population. I borrowed that idea for the zodiac spirits too. More people born in their year on the zodiac boosts their power. People of their zodiac actively practicing in their name (namely, visiting a Temple) boosts their power further- no matter what race those visitors are, or which Temple they’re in.

So yeah, if you’ve ever wondered why they refuse to strike their own people, it’s because it hurts them. They have more fun knocking each other’s forces down and cutting each other’s powers supply than they do actually paying attention to the political and moral skirmishes going on. You probably shouldn’t ask them to help you out in times of war. They’d just as easily wipe out your allies who were born under different zodiacs. They play for their own team.

What do the zodiac spirits do?

Act as impartial votes on matters that concern multiple races, mostly (like the Bake-Off and the Olympics). We saw Mother Nature in “Balance of Flour”, but her children and grandchildren sometimes take the role of judge instead. They’re all in agreement that Nana’s brownies are delicious, much to Anti-Fairy irritation.

Mostly they chill at their Temples, snack on their offerings, and badger people to make monuments of them. It’s more complicated than this, but this is all you need to know for now. Just realize that the nature spirits have their own agendas and don’t like sacrificing their wants for mortals, and you’re good.

Yes, they are very powerful and they could snap their fingers and grant you a miracle as long as it falls within their zodiac influence, but that would be bad storytelling. Their powers are what got them into their high positions. They’re considered deities for a reason. But nowadays, their powers are limited due to being bound to their Temples. Mostly they just talk to you and give advice instead of solving all your problems.

What do the zodiac spirits NOT do?

Don’t worry - No major quests in the name of the spirits, no cryptic prophecies, and no manipulating anybody’s life without their knowledge. No major cosmic games that we’ll see Anti-Cosmo get dragged into.

The spirits definitely have their own agendas and sometimes use mortals as means to achieve an end, but the “cosmic game” they’re playing right now is ~mostly~ a competition about who can get the most worshipers and monuments. Like I said, it’s more complicated than this and there are rules that I as the author need to know to keep them in check. We can go into that one day if you want, but let’s get deeper into Knots first. These are the basics. All you really need to know is that Sunnie is a sore loser and he rage-quit a long time ago, so he doesn’t join the current play until he gets his hands on Anti-Cosmo.

But the “cosmic game” isn’t some major world-shattering thing. It just gives the spirits something to do to play with each other. Everyone’s gotta have something to work towards, especially when imprisoned.

The spirits are minor gods who are easily bored and need the camarilla to play card games with them and read bedtime stories more than anything else. Anything that keeps them entertained. A bored or angry spirit is the kind of spirit who will mess around with nature to the point that it’s annoying (Ex: Sunnie might dry up a river, whereas Saturn may make a volcano erupt).

What are true forms, projected forms, and manifested forms?

Manifested form - The single being that basically holds the brain and heart of the element or aspect of nature in question. Ex: Death is a huge thing. The Grim Reaper is Death’s manifested form. This is his soul, his brain, his mouthpiece, etc.

True form - The form a nature spirit was born into. The spirit sees himself in this form. For example, Sunnie’s true form is as a creature made of black crystal, with lynx-like ears. He has turquoise eyes and wears a turquoise cloak. He has really long white hair. That’s how he sees himself. That’s the way Anti-Cosmo sees him when they kiff-tie. It’s taboo to discuss or make monuments in the shape of a nature spirit’s true form. Immortals, however, can’t see projected forms, and only see true forms.

Projected form - The way a mortal interprets a nature spirit. This would be Sunnie’s water genie form. The Darkness projects the black and red vortex we saw in “Wishology”. Tarrow projects his jellyfish. Their true forms show very obvious weak points on their bodies, typically their chests. I mean really, really obvious. Flashing and glowing kind of obvious. Projected forms don’t show those weak points. Anti-Cosmo interprets Sunnie as a water genie, but Sunnie can’t see what Anti-Cosmo interprets him as; that’s his projected form. Sunnie only sees himself in his true form.

What does it mean to host / take a nature spirit’s favor?

A favor (spelled “favour” in Knots) is a piece of jewelry in a zodiac color. It can be any small token or piece of clothing. The spirits generally have a form they prefer (listed by spirit below), though shapes and sizes may differ, especially based on the personal preference of the one carrying it. The spirits are not technically the favors, though sometimes it’s believed that they are.

It’s very important to note that the spirits ONLY take members of the Unseelie Court as their hosts. Namely Anti-Fairies. This is because Anti-Fairies turn to smoke if they’re “killed”, and automatically regenerate within a few seconds or minutes. This means that if another member of the Unseelie Court, like another Anti-Fairy, turns to smoke near them, their particles might get mixed together when they reform. The same is true for the nature spirits, who turn to steam. Their particles combine as they regenerate. That’s kiff-tying.

So this is all… sort of a cross between “Miraculous Ladybug” and “Steven Universe”, apparently. But also Populous: The Beginning. Listen, I already had to drop my original plan of Anti-Cosmo’s accidental influence over bad luck when I discovered “Milo Murphy’s Law”. I refuse to drop the nature spirit stuff too.

As of now, 4 of 7 favors are held by the camarilla. Twis is extremely picky about who he gives his to, and Dayfry’s favor was lost a long time ago and hasn’t yet been found. Which spirits have active hosts depends on the camarilla at the time. When a new High Count / High Countess takes power, their old camarilla shifts out and a new one is called.

If you’re carrying a zodiac spirit’s favor but you’re not on the camarilla, you have to return to the Temple and return the favor to the spirit. That spirit then chooses if he wants to take a new host or take a break for awhile instead. Sometimes the break-ups can be difficult and a spirit will refuse to accept the new camarilla member, and instead throw a fit until the High Count or Countess reluctantly reinstates the old. Sometimes the extinction burst can’t be endured /shot

If a spirit has a host, they can split their awareness between their manifested form, their Temple, and as many hosts as they have, viewing all locations simultaneously. A spirit with no host is limited to viewing only their immediate surroundings and their Temple.

Rogue spirits can take hosts too, but rogue spirits usually avoid the cloudlands because that’s the territory of the main spirits and they don’t want to infringe. They hang out on Earth or other planets in the universe where their parents or older cousins won’t boss them around. Rogue nature spirits can only manifest their favors as simple beads on a simple string. You may have noticed none of the zodiac spirits has a necklace design. Those are considered “simple” and are for rogues. The zodiac spirits are too haughty for that nonsense.

There could be a few Anti-Fairies who’ve met rogue spirits and have agreed to carry their favors, but that’s something they’d likely want to keep to themselves. I don’t imagine rogue spirits are looked on very favorably. But it probably depends. A small town might worship a particular rogue who sticks around their area and always selects hosts in that town. Who knows.

The seven zodiac spirits mutually agreed to only have one host at a time for quote-unquote “cosmic game” purposes to cut down on power-playing. Thus, as a rule, they default to one of the two camarilla members for their zodiac. Because it’s Anti-Fairy culture to hold the camarilla position and retire with dignity if replaced, that creates a regular turnover rate and prevents the spirits from being stuck with someone who refuses to give their favor back and dies alone with it somewhere.

I mean, there’s no rule saying they HAVE to pick from the camarilla. But that generally gives them the most influence over politics, and it would certainly cause a stir among the Anti-Fairies if a random commoner was running around representing them and attracting attention.

What does it mean to be bound to a Temple?

First, I want to point out that the chains binding the zodiac spirits are gold. On the mural in the Blue Castle, the chains are painted on with inrita, the chemical that drains Fairykind magic. Touching the chains in the mural makes an Anti-Fairy’s skin tingle, and their fingertips will go numb for about two minutes. Inrita has no effect on the nature spirits, but inrita is painted on the mural to remind the Anti-Fairies that gold has a similar, painful effect on the nature spirits that inrita has on them. That probably won’t ever come up in Knots. We’ll see.

Being bound to the Temple means the zodiac spirits have a manifestation of themselves chained within their Temple. However, this is a bit difficult to explain, so I’ll do my best. Technically, the zodiac spirits still exist on Plane 23. Plane 23 isn’t physically “higher up” than the other planes. It overlaps every plane. Passing into Plane 23 puts you on the spirit level, and the spirits can wander around and see people, even if they can’t directly interact by touching them or anything. They’re like ghosts.

The zodiac spirits are bound to the Plane 23 version of their Temple. Therefore, you won’t see them every time you visit the echo chamber, although they can see you. They can choose if they want to create a manifestation of themselves within their echo chamber, which is pretty draining, but they can do that and will if they want to talk to you. It’ll knock them out for a week afterwards, though, so they can’t do it with everyone.

Okay, so then we get this:

Sunnie’s manifestation there is what Sunnie can use to communicate with Anti-Cosmo directly, using his mouth and words. That’s the aspect of Sunnie that Anti-Cosmo kiff-ties with. What this means is, this Sunnie turns to steam and Anti-Cosmo turns to smoke through a special ceremony where Anti-Cosmo agrees to carry and care for Sunnie’s favor, and then, well… knives are involved.

You’ll just have to watch things unfold in Knots to see how that goes down: All you really need to know is, Anti-Cosmo is basically Sunnie’s yoo-doo doll when they’re kiff-tied. Sunnie can feel everything Anti-Cosmo feels, as well as see the world through his eyes and hear through his ears. Sunnie used to be able to see the universe without a host, but he can’t do that while he’s bound. When Sunnie broke his tie with Anti-Cosmo in “This Is Halloween”, we saw Sunnie’s manifestation again. That’s the little Sunnie. The Prince of Water is still at the Water Temple, and has the ability to vaporize his manifestation at any time. However, if he did that, he wouldn’t have any other manifestation, and would completely cut off his awareness of what was going on in the Castle.

The Prince of Water can continue creating manifestations to talk to other people in the echo chamber even while kiff-tied with a host. As I believe I mentioned, the zodiac spirits can create lots of manifestations of themselves. However, it’ll knock them out for a week, and the manifestation will disappear if it isn’t tied to a mortal host. And, for “cosmic game” reasons, the zodiac spirits all agreed that they’re each allowed only one host.

Technically, because Sunnie quit, he’s not bound to that rule. He can have as many hosts as he wants as long as he’s not playing, but he would have to rescind all but one to enter the current play. However, that would be out of character for him and then he wouldn’t be Sunnie. When Anti-Cosmo meets Sunnie, Sunnie explains that he hasn’t had a host for… I think it was nine hundred thousand years. He’s a sulker.

Okay, are you following? This is where it gets trickier. The Princely forms of the nature spirits can still interact with one another despite being bound. Imagine that Plane 23 is an empty white void, except the zodiac spirits can see all the Temples. If they weren’t bound, they could see everything. So, the Prince of Water can basically go as far away from his Temple as he wants, floating in an empty white void, until he meets another spirit. Probably the Prince of Soil.

They can hang out, talk, picnic on food from their offering dishes, kiff-tie, whatever they want. They’re just in a white void that occasionally has floating Temples. The golden chains stretch forever. Like I said, if they weren’t bound, they could see all of Plane 23. But while they’re chained, it’s a void for them.

That’s what it means to be bound. The kids are grounded from playing outside unless they’re supervised by a host, but they can still play with each other inside and hang out in their rooms. So obviously, Winni and Thurmondo are together like, all the time.

Don’t really know how much we’ll get into this in Knots. We’ll see hints of Anti-Cosmo floating in the white void when he kiff-ties with Sunnie the first time.

OKAY! That was the encompassing overview that I was going to share in the worldbuilding post next week, but it’s fine, you can have it now.

Now, let’s look at each zodiac spirit in more detail. Their powers were mentioned in a previous post. Now we’ll look at them more as people and demigods.

TARROW: The Cosmic Jellyfish

Deity of creation, fate, and destiny. Not technically represented on the camarilla. His color is red, and the First General wears a magical red cloak with a jellyfish clasp. The First General does not host Tarrow or carry his favor, but only strives to act impartially and make the final call if the camarilla get locked in a debate. He is meant to act impartially.

The cloak is mostly only worn when appearing before the public, especially during ceremonial events. Anti-Buster, the First General before Anti-Cosmo whom we see in Knots, adores it and wears it almost everywhere, except when he’s sleeping. He thinks it makes him look dramatic and you will see him constantly swishing and flicking it during this story.

DAYFRY: The Hummingbird, Leader, and Peacemaker

Love Years: 1989, 1996, 2003, 2010, 2017; Fairy New Year starts March 15th)

Mastery: Love, balance, loyalty, duty, politeness, gentleness, sacrifice, honor

Parentage: Reality (Tarrow) x Unreality (The Hocus Poconos)

Preferred Favor: Amethyst ring, usually worn on left middle finger

Modern Medium: None (Would probably be Anti-Kanin (Caden))

Overview: Dayfry is the King Solomon archetype- the wise leader of the zodiac spirits… or at least that’s what he tries to be. In reality, he’s a social creature who loves getting his family together to play games and enjoy the holidays. He tries to balance them all out by rushing around and soothing everyone, and keeping them from strangling one another.

All the zodiac spirits gave their names to the day of the week they were imprisoned in their Temple. Coincidentally, they were all imprisoned on different days, in the order of their birth. Wow! Amazing mythology coincidence! Dayfry, of course, gave his name to Friday. Friday is the first day of the week in the Fairy calendar. The work day starts Friday afternoon, and it goes until Wednesday afternoon. People get Thursday off, since the Big Wand gets recharged on Friday morning as we learned in “The Big Fairy Share Scare”, so obviously it must be running at its dregs on Thursday, and people don’t want to use magic or go out and about too much. Friday is a late start day every week. Nice. Additionally, Friday the 13th obviously occurs on Friday. Thus, Dayfry is a very respected deity in Anti-Fairy culture.

Because of this, Dayfry doesn’t get out much. He may be social with his brothers, but he’s shy around mortals because he’s a huge celebrity. Also, he doesn’t like kiff-tying much. I’m sure he’s done it with a host before, but it’s just not interesting to him. We’ll only see him once in Knots, briefly, when he arrives to visit at the new Water Temple with all his brothers before it gets consecrated with Anti-Cosmo’s blood.

As previously mentioned, Dayfry is the only child Tarrow had with the Hocus Poconos, and is his dad’s obvious favorite. He’s present in spirit at a lot of ceremonial events, but he likes to stay out of the limelight. Like I said, shy celebrity archetype.

Note that Munn is the spirit of kindness and caring for others, whereas Dayfry is more the spirit of acting professional even when you have to work with someone you don’t like. Dayfry is the spirit of swallowing your pride “for the greater good”, of loving the people and prizing the community as a whole above yourself. Additionally, Dayfry is more the spirit of thoughtfulness and wisdom whereas Sunnie is education, logic, and hard facts.

Everyone is always shocked to hear that Dayfry is single and possibly aromantic asexual. But, well. Spirit of youth and virginity, I guess. I figured that a spirit of Love should either be completely asexual or completely pansexual, and since we’ve already got Tarrow running around… yeah, I went with asexual. Also, he’s purple. That’s obvious. He’s the spirit of balance, after all, so it just makes sense that if all his brothers are paired up, he just hangs out by himself as the odd one out. Not that he really minds. You could say that he gave his gift of love to mortals.

Temple: High South (Navy) Region - Plane 4 - Crowfeld, Anti-Fairy World

The Love Temple isn’t far inside the border of Anti-Fairy World, as it’s one of the places that non-Zodii Fairies frequently visit too. It’s actually the church-like building where Cosmo and Wanda were married as we saw in “School’s Out: The Musical”. I mean, come on, guys. It’s purple and people get married there. That was obvious.

Dayfry’s Temple is mostly your stereotypical place of worship. It’s a reverent, quiet area that allows peace and self-reflection and whatnot. It’s shaped like a circle and his echo chamber is in the very middle of it.

Bonds:

Dayfry is on decent terms with all his brothers. They mutually respect him. As the spirit of Balance, he has healthy purple bonds with all of them. However, he has no interest in kiff-tying. He just kind of does his own thing.

SATURN: The Lizard, Warrior, and Team Dad

Fire Years: 1990, 1997, 2004, 2011, 2018

Mastery: Fire, energy, comfort, emotional strength, passion, family, justice

Parentage: Reality (Tarrow) x Light (Prince Morn)

Preferred Favor: Ruby bracelet

Modern Medium: Anti-Julian (Electro) (Note- I pronounce his name with the ‘H’ sound. I… I don’t know. He’s just always been that way for me.)

Overview: Saturn is the energetic, passionate warrior always willing to take up arms and fight to defend his loved ones. If you mess with his family, you mess with him. He’s even willing to deliver the first blow if he suspects you might mess with his family, though he’s not quite as paranoid about everything as Sunnie is.

Saturn is short-tempered, but as the embodiment of Energy, he’s also super productive. This guy gets things done, and fast. Quality may be questionable sometimes. You can perhaps see why he doesn’t get along well with Twis, who prefers to take things slow and do them right. In mythology, Saturn is the guy who cuts corners, and always has to be humbled by going back and doing them over again more carefully. Though when he doesn’t want to, sometimes he gets frustrated enough to set things on fire. Obviously, when volcanoes erupt, Anti-Fairies panic that someone has horribly offended Saturn.

Saturn is also said to have created the first genies, on level with the creation of Adam and Eve. These genies are called Asja and Galeras, and were mentioned in THIS post awhile back. As a genie breeder, Anti-Cosmo obviously has an interest in Saturn, and visits his Temple when facing major decisions regarding his genies.

So, Saturn is the warrior who cares deeply for his family. That’s probably his main personality trait: His passion. He stands up for what he loves and acts as a brave captain leading the armies of the nature spirits in battle in mythology. He’s easily irritated and revenge-seeking, definitely not someone you want to upset. He tends to devise sick and twisted tortures for those who offend him. He’s not exactly sly and subtle- he’s just the unstoppable, terrifying force, and if you engage him in battle, you will almost certainly lose.

However, he’s not so hot-headed that he’ll forgo logic to fight you. His military training always takes priority. Saturn isn’t the rash enemy who charges you when he’s taunted. He’s the brilliant battle captain who will organize his troops, calculate your weak points, and destroy you. He relies heavily on his faithful strategist, Sunnie, to help him organize his forces, although Sunnie usually tries to calculate plans that result in the least amount of people getting hurt, whereas Saturn is the guy who does care about casualties, but considers them a necessary evil to be sacrificed to win the war if need be.

Previously, I pointed out that the Fairykind don’t have important beliefs about solar or lunar eclipses, because they can’t see those events from the cloudlands. Though, they do have the Fairy-Clipse. Anyway, it seems appropriate to state this again seeing as Saturn is the child of the sun / light / day god and Munn the child of the moon / dark / night goddess. There aren’t any myths about Saturn, Munn, or their parents in regards to solar or lunar eclipses.

Temple: Far West (Maroon) Region - Plane 6 - Shadeblink, Anti-Fairy World

The Fire Temple is shaped like a chocolate chip. It’s all black, smooth, and shiny, with colorful windows where different flames burn behind the glass. There’s a transparent column in the center of the Temple where waves of fire flicker from the bottom and head up towards the top, and burst out occasionally like a colorful volcano. The echo chamber is at the base of this column (not transparent).

This Temple will most likely appear in Knots, probably more than once, but I haven’t gotten to that point yet.

Bonds: (Ordered from “best(?)” relationship to worst. Note that the Anti-Fairies took note of the bonds that the nature spirits share, and believe that similar relationships extend to those born in their year. For example, Saturn and Munn have a close bond, a “yellow” bond, so therefore they believe that Fire and Sky years are naturally compatible.)

Yellow - See Munn’s yellow section

Blue -See Sunnie’s blue section

Pink -See Winni’s pink section

Purple - See Thurmondo’s purple section

Green -See Twis’ yellow section

SUNNIE: The Turtle, Scholar, and Strategist

Water Years: 1991, 1998, 2005, 2012, 2019

Mastery: Water (+ ice), focus, tact, introspection, education, logic, tranquility

Parentage: Born of the tears of a god

Preferred Favor: Turquoise brooch, clasp, or badge

Modern Medium: Anti-Cosmo (Julius)

Overview: Sunnie is basically a self-serving conspiracy nut who takes advantage of Anti-Cosmo for his own gain, but only when he wants to. He doesn’t like going out of way for things like that. That’s wasted energy, and isn’t practical. It took he and Anti-Cosmo a while to warm up to each other, but they’re usually a good team who work well in sync, especially when studying and making plans. It’s just… they have opposite attitudes about a lot of things. Sunnie will always prioritize survival, especially of himself, whereas Anti-Cosmo prioritizes things like protecting or helping others, even if it puts him at risk.

Sunnie doesn’t really get the concept of honor, and will frequently take the coward’s way out by running off when things get tough. He doesn’t like to get involved, and when he does, it’s out of necessity. He can be very blunt and calculating, not afraid of stepping on people’s feelings in order to relay accurate information. However, he has low self-esteem and gets panicky and flustered in the face of criticism. He’s easily offended when holes in his plans are pointed out. He’s a scholar and a strategist. Book-smart, but not people-smart.

As previously mentioned, Sunnie is a strategist who puts his all into thinking, and so he’s also a very sore loser. While he doesn’t yell, he pouts and sulks a lot, and will often vent to Twis as Twis plows his fields. Captive audience, right? Sunnie is a complainer, but as a strategist, he does like to try and fix things. But only after complaining and sulking and having his feelings soothed. He likes having his back stroked and patted while he sprawls across your lap.

Sunnie is the scholar who loves to learn. He’s the guy you’d make offerings to when you have major exams coming up. He also has some stereotypical cat-like behaviors, such as sitting on your keyboard when he wants attention and knocking things off desks and cabinets just because he can. You can scold him, but he’ll give you that, “Try me” look and try to stare you down.

In addition to the liquid form of water, Sunnie is also the demigod of snow and ice. Technically he can also be the demigod of boiling water and steam, and he is, so long as we’re talking about steam from water. Fairies turn to dust and Anti-Fairies turn to smoke, but the nature spirits turn to steam. Sunnie has nothing to do with that.

Despite his sacred animal being the turtle, Sunnie is a very agile creature, and this gift extends to those who carry his favor. He’s quick on his toes and capable of rebounding off walls and ceilings with ease in a fight. One of the highlights of Anti-Wanda’s life is the time she convinced Anti-Cosmo to dress up as one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and take advantage of Sunnie’s agility field bonus. He denies this ever happened.

Temple: Central Star (Purple) Region - Plane 3 - Inkblot City, Pixie World

After H.P. knocked the old Water Temple down because of reasons, Sunnie’s bonds broke and he escaped. Anti-Cosmo chased him down and ordered H.P. to build Sunnie a new Temple. As such, the modern Water Temple was rebuilt in Pixie World, coincidentally also fulfilling the requirement of the law that in order to be legally called a city in the cloudlands, a place must have a Temple on the premises. Funny how things work out sometimes.

The modern Temple is square and very fancy. H.P. spared no expense, much to Anti-Cosmo’s horror at the over-the-top tackiness of the place. It makes its first (fully-built) appearance in “Sunnie Rise”.

The echo chamber is in the “undercloud” area, in the basement.

Bonds:

Yellow - See Twis’ yellow bond section

Blue - Saturn is Energy, Sunnie is Focus. Together, as Stone, they act as though hyped up on coffee and energy drinks.It’s worth pointing out that when I say, “as Stone”, we’re not talking about Gem-like fusion here. No. The Prince of Stone has two forms- either Saturn wearing Sunnie’s favor, or Sunnie wearing Saturn’s favor. It’s usually the first way around, Saturn being more dominant by nature. It’s the same title, even though the two are different.

The personality, mannerisms, agenda, and speech pattern of the more dominant spirit will remain intact, with just a bit of influence from the lesser spirit creeping in (for example, Sunnie’s agility bonus, or Saturn’s battle training); it’s not quite as harmonious a union as Gem fusion. It’s just one spirit borrowing the other one’s powers for a boost. The other spirit is essentially along for the ride, with no ability to control the body- they merely observe the outside world from a passive standpoint while the dominant spirit draws from their energy.

Basically, imagine Saturn wearing Sunnie’s brooch, his personality intact, but hyped up on energy drinks and with the grace of a dancer. The personality is the same, but the physical condition here (energy drink influence) and level of ability (agility) are different. The Prince of Stone will work ceaselessly on whatever task you set him too, usually without getting too distracted.

And of course, when they come apart (the more dominant spirit takes off the less dominant one’s favor), the less dominant spirit will be “pregnant” for about thirty seconds before giving birth to - you guessed it - a spirit of Stone with a personality and interests similar to whatever was just going on with its “parents”. The title of prince is reserved purely for when two demigods wear each other’s favors, though, and isn’t passed on to the energy manifestation. The “child” is simply called a minor spirit of Stone.

Pink - See Thurmondo’s pink section

Purple - See Munn’s purple section

Green - See Winni’s green section

MUNN: The Albatross, Prankster, and Traveler

Sky Years: 1992, 1999, 2006, 2013, 2020

Mastery: Sky, acceptance, compassion, hope, faith, cheer, speed, safe travel

Parentage: Reality (Tarrow) x Dark (Princess Eve)

Preferred Favor: Sapphire piercings (usually earrings), but for those uncomfortable with piercings, his favor can even manifest as headphones

Modern Medium: Anti-Wanda (Venus)

Overview: Munn has a cheery disposition, quick to joke and look at the bright side, though he does have his nervous moments. However, he would rarely be described as “sad”. He gets disappointed at times, but he usually shakes those feelings off without dwelling on them much. He’s just a naturally happy guy, even in very stressful situations.

Munn plays the antagonistic role in much of Anti-Fairy mythology, as he’s viewed as a prankster who often taunts other spirits and creatures and gets into trouble. As the spirit of compassion, he’s a bit backwards in Anti-Fairy society. Anti-Fairies are often kind towards each other because they’re a social species who gather in colonies, but Munn takes things too far by suggesting they make friends even with people who have wronged them, like the Fairies. Gross.

As I mentioned, his prankster nature tends to get him into trouble. He’s a spirit of scouting, stealth, and the arts of escape, and loves to learn people’s secrets. He’s not the blabbermouth that Winni is, though they have been known to team up on occasion to gather information (and do things like set up the Wind Wand on the blue moon in the Vegon system while embodying the Prince of Wind).

Munn may play the antagonistic role in much of Anti-Fairy myth, but he’s still a very nice guy. He just gets excited and puts silly plans into action that usually result in stealing someone’s sacred item and realizing as he runs off with it that yeah, he probably shouldn’t have done that. His brothers generally catch and scold him, and he gets punished for his offenses, but no one’s ever upset enough with him that they would go as far as destroying his Temple and then hunting him down and killing him. They’re still family, after all.

Still, Munn’s adventures aren’t limited to the zodiac spirits, and he appears in mythology as the guy who pulls crazy stunts such as taunting Death and opening the gates of the spirit world into the living realm. Munn is the guy who would stumble across an ancient scroll about how to resurrect the dead and then follow it because, “That would be hilarious if this actually worked”. But, being Munn, he’ll probably mix at least one of the ingredients up, and end up with more than he bargained for.

Sometimes he tries to solve problems on his own, though most of the time when he knows he’s in trouble, he’ll flee to Saturn for protection, to which Saturn’s deadpan response when his half-brother comes skidding in is, “What stupid thing did you do this time?” But, those two are very close. Most people don’t like to mess with Saturn, and will let Munn off with a warning. Most of Munn’s punishments involve Munn helping to clean up the mess he made and return anything he may have stolen, and grovel his apologies. Saturn lets them do that. He just doesn’t like people hurting his family and will step in if they’re punishments entail lots of violence, is all.

Munn is also the demigod of fast, safe, and enjoyable travel, and the guy you would want to make an offering to, perhaps along with a copy of your planned route, if you’re seeking his blessing before a journey. His field bonus is Speed. Anti-Wanda, you see, was a brilliant choice for the Anti-Fairy to sprint during the Fairy World Games. Munn’s speed bonus extends much more to flying than it does to the ground, but Anti-Wanda is still a fast little gal.

Temple: Far East (Pink) Region - Plane 7 - Comet Falls, Fairy World

The Sky Temple is hardly the place you think of first when you think “temple”. Munn cares less about being worshiped directly than he does making people happy and enjoying himself. His place tends to be a wild party all the time, and a lot of sketchy things go on here. Comet Falls is a party town as it is- it’s the place where they had the clock tower that we saw in “School’s Out: The Musical”, when all the godparents were thrilled about the change of the season for their godkids. Anti-Wanda has been able to navigate it without getting into too much trouble, though.

The echo chamber is in the upper, dome-shaped part of the building. The Sky Temple is not scheduled to make any appearances at this time, though I have a loose Prompt about Anti-Wanda planned that will probably end up there.

Bonds:

Yellow - Saturn is Energy, Munn is Acceptance. Together, as Lightning, they are the embodiment of fun and new discovery in a relationship, and their bond is viewed as one of pleasure, exploration, playfulness, excitement, and perhaps a bit of lust. Together they’re seen as spirits who represent the honeymoon phase of a relationship.

Blue -See Winni’s blue section

Pink -See Twis’ pink section

Purple - Sunnie is Focus. As Cloud, they embody everything between playful teasing and deadpan sarcasm. You basically get Sunnie with speed powers and punk piercings, never missing a beat as he roasts you. It’s worth noting that Anti-Wanda carries Munn’s favor and Anti-Cosmo carries Sunnie’s, so these two could take on their Prince of Cloud state every time their hosts decide to be intimate.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, this is the joke from that one Inktober piece I drew about Foop saying he just got “the talk about where clouds come from” as he stares accusingly at his parents. It’s also a very funny joke about the giant cloud that accompanied Foop’s birth.

Green - See Thurmondo’s green section

TWIS: The Donkey, Farmer, and Merchant

Soil Years: 1993, 2000, 2007, 2014, 2021

Mastery: Soil, dedication, work, ambition, planning, harvest, physical strength

Parentage: Reality (Tarrow) x Some random gravity spirit Tarrow took an interest in, but whom Twis never really knew seeing as he was abandoned after

Preferred Favor: Thick brown belt with a citrine buckle

Modern Medium: None

Overview: Twis is the “solid as a rock” archetype in Anti-Fairy myth, stubborn and proud. He’ll usually be polite, if a bit gruff, unless you offend him, in which case he’ll probably leave and not come back. He holds long grudges, even if he doesn’t act on them quite as much as Saturn. For the most part, Sunnie is the only one who can sway his mind when he’s being an especially irritable grump.

He’s a dedicated worker who doesn’t cut corners and will get the job done and get it done well, but at his own pace. Don’t rush him. He hates to be rushed. He doesn’t like criticism, or people in general, and is reluctant to reveal himself to anyone of less authority than a High Count or High Countess born in the Soil year. With exception of relying on the sunlight and water to grow crops, he prefers to work alone and will be extremely frustrated if you try to help but you don’t measure up to his standards. He doesn’t see working with young kids as a way of teaching or bonding with them, and instead will send them off anywhere to get them out of his way. He takes pride in his work and doesn’t like it when his stuff is messed with.

Twis is the spirit of harvest too. He works in tandem with Sunnie to grow crops. He’s also a spirit of bartering, as Anti-Fairies believe that all land has life which is represented by a spirit bear. Twis, then, is the helpful spirit who carries messages to the spirit bears if someone is too embarrassed to pray to them directly. He’s the spirit who gives you strength to stand in front of a crowd, even if Winni is the spirit of communication and memory who helps you find your words and speak clearly.

Twis recognizes what people want and is always willing to put forth the effort to ensure all parties are happy. He’s the merchant spirit who is there when you strike up deals in the marketplace. He’s the careful planner who is there when you are struggling with funds and trying to stick to your budget. He’s a spirit of making deals and keeping loyal to your promises above all else. If you remember, H.P. was born in a Soil year. I think that’s fitting for the Head Pixie.

However, while Twis may be a spirit of work, budgets, and planning, he’s not so much a spirit of charity. He’s very much the ant in “The Ant and the Grasshopper”, a believer that you reap what you sow. He doesn’t enjoy straying from his plans or making sacrifices for someone he can’t prove has put forth their best effort. Of course, he doesn’t like watching these people work either, because he has things to do, nor does he like them working with him. It’s a complicated feeling. The guy just doesn’t like social interaction much, and only Sunnie seems really able to get through to him. Even that’s because Sunnie is helpful and practical, and emotionally distant.

You would think he would be a brony or something, having an affiliation with equines and all, but ain’t nobody got time for that when they live in a paradise with temperate climates year-round. There’s so much to plant and harvest! Also did I mention that he will completely work himself to exhaustion, because he will.

Temple: Lower East (Teal) Region - Plane 5 - Mudhale

The Soil Temple is built straight into a mountain, and it’s the entrance to many cave systems throughout Anti-Fairy World. It collapsed during the early years of the War of the Sunset Divide. H.P. was actually born in the year it collapsed, which is appropriately named the Year of the Fallen Mountain.

After the war, the Temple was restored to its former state. It’s in the same location and is more stable and less likely to collapse now. The echo chamber is deep in the back, among caverns of glowing mushrooms and interesting fauna. Twis doesn’t like visitors and wanted his chamber out of the way.

H.P. and Anti-Cosmo visit the Soil Temple in “Dust to Dirt”.

Bonds:

Yellow - Sunnie is Focus and Twis is Devotion. Together, as Mud, they are the embodiment of loyalty in a relationship, and their bond is viewed as one of tenderness, sweetness, warmth, and pure affection. Together they’re seen as spirits who represent companionate love (the post-honeymoon phase of a long-term relationship).

Blue - See Thurmondo’s blue section

Pink - Munn is Acceptance. As Sand, they embody peace and friendship.

Purple - See Winni’s purple section

Green - Saturn is Energy. As Ash, they embody instability and resistance. Saturn is a creature of passion, and Twis isn’t much for emotions. Saturn likes to rush, Twis likes to take things slow. Twis sees Saturn as sloppy, and Saturn sees Twis as slow. They wouldn’t kiff-tie willingly unless there was a huge emergency. They just don’t get along.

WINNI: The Leopard, Teacher, and Healer

Breath Years: 1994, 2001, 2008, 2015, 2022

Mastery: Breath, communication, health, teaching, sewing, rest, self-care

(Note: Anti-Fairies don’t believe in medicine, because it doesn’t work on them like it works on Fairies. They believe in either praying for miracles or in herbal remedies to soothe pain even if they don’t cure sickness. So instead of being the “spirit of medicine”, they consider Winni the spirit of “remedies”.)

Parentage: Reality (Tarrow) x Life (The Cycling Hen)

Preferred Favor: Beryl button or pin (Anti-Bryndin wears the button on his scarf, Foop / Hiccup would wear it on a vest or coat were they to take Winni’s favor)

Modern Medium: None (Anti-Bryndin hosts him in Knots)

Overview: Winni is the neat-freak homemaker of the family, who cleans his echo chamber obsessively. Between his nosiness, big mouth, his obsession with cleanliness, and living in a very frequented Temple, he’s the most likely to manifest himself, but you’ll probably get a tongue bath or preening in the process. For someone who so despises dirt, it’s a little surprising that he gets along much better with Twis than he does with Sunnie. Then again, it’s mostly Sunnie that finds Winni annoying rather than the other way around. Winni is still somewhat young for a spirit, and looks up to his elder half-brothers greatly.

Even so, Winni embodies the bossy mentor archetype. What he wants done, he wants done his way, and soon. He’s a bit of a jack-of-all trades, which means that many things come easily to him, which means he struggles to understand why other people can’t seem to measure up to his standards. Though he easily gets frustrated, he tries his best to shrug things off, put on a happy smile, and once again go over his instructions in careful detail. He doesn’t mind repeating himself, but he does get upset if you don’t want to listen to him.

As the spirit of medicine and herbal remedies, Winni obviously knows what he’s doing there. However, he has his set mindset about what helps what, and isn’t good at keeping up with the allergies of individuals, or even noticing if he’s just given them a deadly poison that wouldn’t kill a nature spirit. He means well.

Winni is basically the demigod of teamwork. Sunnie much prefers to work alone. Thus, the two of them are opposites, and because Anti-Cosmo plays on Sunnie’s team, Winni is a bit of an antagonist in Knots. Doesn’t help that he’s the spirit of Communication, and he’s a people-reader and a bit of a manipulator. He’s also horribly impatient, nosy as I mentioned, and a massive blabbermouth. In his free time, he enjoys all types of knitting, weaving, sewing, and embroidery. Most of the zodiac spirits prefer offerings of food, but Winni enjoys offerings of newspapers that keep him updated on the goings-on of the outside world, and he becomes super flattered if you make cross-stitches or sew plushies for him.

His inability to keep his mouth shut most of the time may have something to do with the fact that he screams every morning like a rooster, despite the fact that the rooster is Thurmondo’s sacred animal and Winni’s is the leopard. Maybe his mom and the little Leaves spirit rubbed off on him. The way I see it, Winni’s true form is actually heavily based off a rooster because of his mom, but because he spends so much time with Thurmondo, the rooster became associated with Thurmondo instead of him.

Temple: Lower West (Green) Region - Plane 3 - Godscress, Fairy World

The Breath Temple is also known by the name Temple of Healing. It’s a place of rest and strengthening, and rapidly speeds up the healing rate of all inside it- especially for magical creatures like the Fairykind. It contains a magical fountain, because in addition to being Populous trash, I am also confirmed Age of Mythology trash and I had to reference the Healing Spring.

Winni’s echo chamber is in the middle of the giant fountain. It’s like a volcano, but with healing water.

Bonds:

Yellow - See Thurmondo’s yellow section

Blue - Munn is Acceptance. As Wind, they embody politeness and structure.

Pink - Saturn is Energy. As Lava, they embody laughter and joy.

Purple - Twis is Devotion. As Roots, they embody oaths and fierce loyalty.

Green - Sunnie is Focus. As Blood, they embody sorrow and anxiety.

THURMONDO: The Rooster, Inventor, and Caretaker

Leaves Years: 1995, 2002, 2009, 2016, 2023

Parentage: Reality (Tarrow) x Death (The Grim Reaper)

Mastery: Leaves, curiosity, courage, initiative, understanding, mercy, humility

Preferred Favor: Jade circlet or tiara, usually of overlapping metal leaves

Modern Medium: Anti-Kyler (Rufus)

Overview: Thurmondo is absentminded, tending to get lost in his own thoughts as he thinks up new inventions, or wanders off after an interesting falling leaf. He’s the type who doesn’t mind being alone to work, though he does love people, and talking to them, as he finds them fascinating and loves to hear stories. He’s generally low-maintenance, though he’s nitpicky about special ceremonies and insulted when they aren’t done to his specifications.

Namely, Thurmondo knows his place as the youngest and submissive. He and those born in his zodiac are often followers rather than leaders. A stickler for tradition, Thurmondo becomes upset when, for example, someone born in his year attempts to lead someone of another zodiac through a ceremonial dance. Traditions like that. He’s paranoid about getting in the way and a bit superstitious that if doesn’t play his part, order and structure will collapse.

He has a shy nature, though if pushed far enough, he will make an effort to stand up for himself. Of course, the results of that effort depend on the reaction of whomever he’s standing up to. Thurmondo has a brave heart, but also a humble one, which can lead him to second-guess himself. This prevents him from rushing into battle like hot-headed Saturn, but the more Thurmondo starts to second-guess himself, the more nervous he becomes.

He used to be bolder in his younger years, but Winni’s really done a number on him; now, Thurmondo is viewed as more of an awkward and cowardly spirit than the clever inventor he once was. He still picks at his projects, but he doesn’t spend as much time on his research as he’d like to. His 24/7 relationship with Winni keeps his mind pretty busy. He’s easily distracted and can’t split his attention between separate tasks like Sunnie can.

Thurmondo may not be the one you would seek out for advice most of the time, but he would be the one you pray to when you don’t think you can go on any longer, especially when in unpleasant circumstances like abusive relationships (not even romantic ones necessarily). Thurmondo is the spirit of pulling through, the one who wants you to succeed and escape even if he can’t.

I wrote a potential Prompt about him and Winni, but because of the nature of abuse and coercion, I’m still deciding if I ever want to share it. If I do, it will be towards the end of the project, where only those with the determination to make it through the rest are likely to find it.

He’s basically given birth zillions of time and has oodles of children. The little guys never seem to last long, though. They often get… eaten.

Temple: High North (Blue) Region - Plane 4 - Near the FGP, Fairy World

The Leaves Temple is a quiet museum at its back, and the area at the front is full of puzzles, games, toys, and stuff to experiment and play with. Lots of fun for kids. the echo chamber is on the top floor.

Thurmondo’s Temple first appears in the distance during “Cotton Candy Oatmeal”, and is later visited in “Letters and Numbers”.

Bonds:

Yellow - Winni is Communication and Thurmondo is Curiosity. Thurmondo is also the spirit of change, especially the seasons. His spring form is one of innocence and discovery, of tentativeness and losing virginity. His summer form is one full of passion and delight. His autumn form is one of uncertainty, shame, passive-aggression, and reluctance. Finally, his winter form is one of fear and struggle, the relationship between him and Winni a drastic power imbalance of lust and abuse. Every winter, Thurmondo swears he’ll keep his memories and remember what Winni is like in winter and avoid falling back into his trap, but he loses his memories on March 14th every year, and with the new year, Winni patiently teaches him that he’s a nature spirit all over again.

Together, as Oxygen, they are the embodiment of uncertainty and hope in a relationship, and their bond is viewed as one of development, learning, realization, adaptation, and teamwork. It’s worth pointing out that from Winni’s perspective, the pair are literally creating oxygen when they’re together, so when Thurmondo resists him, Thurmondo is literally strangling people who need oxygen to breathe. Additionally, as a spirit with the ability to heal at an extremely rapid rate himself, Winni has some difficulty comprehending physical pain in others. Due to the oxygen thing, he’ll freak out when Thurmondo isn’t around, and is willing to use his powers of Communication for dirty manipulative tricks to make Thurmondo feel selfish and worthless when he wants to take a break.

Winni’s winter form has a better understanding that what he’s doing is wrong and might even feel guilty for it if you press him, though he’ll still shrug it off because he thinks he’s just doing his duty. In his autumn form, he is completely 100% convinced that he’s doing the right thing and that the people need them. In his spring form, like Thurmondo, he can also be viewed as a spirit of losing virginity, though he’s the “rite of passage” and “coming into adulthood” type of losing virginity as opposed to Thurmondo’s “wanting to give it to someone you love” or “the time just feels right”, because of course he is.

Together they’re seen as spirits who represent staying together out of necessity for the benefit of their children. Abusive relationships aren’t good from a human point of view, but for Anti-Fairies, who end up in relationships with those their counterparts do, it’s comforting to know that Thurmondo is sticking it out. When they remember the abuse Thurmondo takes from Winni every winter, suddenly the faults in their own partner don’t seem so bad.

Blue - Twis is Devotion. The weirdest thing is, Thurmondo’s field bonus is Copycat. Despite being the automatically submissive spirit, he actually can influence the mindset of those he kiff-ties with. As the Prince of Mulch, Twis’ Devotion combined with Thurmondo’s Curiosity would give you Twis’ body and personality, but instead of being devoted to farming, Twis would suddenly find himself super interested in Thurmondo’s inventions and research projects. Good luck dragging him away from those.

Pink - Sunnie is Focus. Again, Thurmondo has the power to influence the spirit in control, though whether he knows he’s doing it or not is up to debate. The Prince of Dew will lose Thurmondo’s spaciness, and is instead a brilliant mastermind who will rapidly learn anything and everything about whatever you give him to study.

Purple - Saturn is Energy. The Prince of Nitrogen is fast and furious, easily distracted, and prone to running off after anything that catches his attention and tackling it into submission. He’s super touchy-feely and will poke your face.

Green - Munn is Acceptance, but he’s also the spirit of compassion. Munn is a spirit of consent and joy, and when he and Thurmondo aren’t kiff-tied, he views his youngest half-brother in his hormonal summer form. However, when they are together, the Prince of Fungus gets slammed with all of Thurmondo’s burdens and self-doubts, and becomes overwhelmed with grief and shame. Munn doesn’t know how to deal with Thurmondo’s emotions, so the Prince of Fungus shuts down, withdrawing into himself and being mostly unresponsive, apart from the occasional snarky comment. He’s not too helpful and has a scathing outlook on the world at all times.

It’s super rare for Thurmondo to kiff-tie with other nature spirits, though, considering the hold Winni has on him. I can’t imagine any situation in my works when it would come up. Thurmondo’s fate is pretty set, and this post is simply here for you to think about the different possibilities that could result. But you shouldn’t really expect to see them in practice.

Here’s an overview zodiac kiff-tie chart. The background color of each box shows the color of the bond. The color of the text is the default dominant spirit.

There you go! That basically covers everything you could possibly need to know about the zodiac spirits! Whom you won’t be seeing until like Act 3, but okay, you do your thing and I’ll do mine.

#asks #Anon #ridwriting #FAIRIES!#Tiny Love prince #Fire lizard prince #Water genie prince #Sky monkey prince #Soil centaur prince #Breath moose prince #Chained Leaves prince #Frayed Knots #Bat cube and associates #The bat with the hat #The best bat queen #Nerdy blue bat son #Origin of the Pixies #Nature spirit ref #Long post

2 notes · View notes

goddamnitdazai · 7 years ago

Text

Love Letters From Hell

I couldn’t find this on my old blog, but I noticed it wasn’t in the line up so I’m just re-posting it here. Pairing: Punk!Dazai x Reader Modern AU - No abilities Genre: romance, drabble, fluff.

Flesh oozed and slopped onto the floor in thick crimson splatters. The gnashing of teeth followed by periled screams of the damned rang between the alleyways as the victims took their last look at the living world before the beat of their heart was silenced by the un-dead swarming them. Feral and ravenous their eyes bore no similarities to that of their former lives as humans walking the earth beneath the glowing sun. Their skin hung in grey splotches falling off like chips of paint with highlighted bone sticking out from their unhinged jaw. Whoever did the make-up for this movie was your new idol, you decided, as you quickly thumbed through the movie’s IMBD page on your phone. Eyes frantically switching from your laptop to the phone in your hand you felt the sudden rush of summer air blow through the cracked window. Heat skated through the t-shirt hanging off your shoulders and the tiny black fan perched on your desk barely reached your toes at the foot of the bed. Even with your hair tugged high above your head you could still feel the dry temperature creeping up the back of your neck. The screaming from the laptop died out as the scene switched to an eerily empty park. “You dumb fuck you’re about to die.” You whisper harshly to the actors on screen. Most horror movies had become unbearably predictable, but the make-up had continued to evolve to astounding detail. No longer were people dependent on CGI to make a freshly skewered head look instant-stomach-heaving good, no this was an art that required hours upon hours of work. The blood, the gore, ah it was beautiful in your eyes. A goal worth fighting for, worth the long nights and exhaustion. With this wave of enthusiasm and appreciate came the following cliff dive into blood-curdling annoyance. Harsh words banged around in your head as you paused the movie and rolled off your bed with your arms stretched to the ceiling. Unconditional love from parents to children was bullshit, apparently. Rolling a sweaty palm across your forehead you padded towards the window and stuck your headphones in your ears. Summer skies were always the most beautiful despite the less than astounding neighborhood. But it was affordable and safe-ish, but nothing a metal bat couldn’t handle. Unless you were ambushed, then you were fucked nine ways to Sunday. With a quick swipe of your hand you managed to reach the apple sitting on the bedside table—a reminder to yourself to eat, from yourself—but you’d forgotten, again. Soft music pumped through your ears and settled your mood as you plopped down on the roof and leaned your back against the side of the house. The only good thing about living in the garbage part of the city was being able to see the towering skyline of Yokohama. Bright, luminous, and absolutely breathtaking, and though silly it made life a bit more bearable because it gave you something to look at rather than look for. Tokyo’s skyline was nothing to scoff at, but Yokohama felt less suffocating. It sufficed for now. Apple in hand you munched lightly and let your eyes flit the other direction towards the nearly endless horizon. Over the shanty like houses with mismatched shutters and overgrown lawns a sprinkle of light fluttered through the darkness. Slowly all the thoughts racing through your head began to disappear, back to the tiny box where you tried to store everything that made your heart sink. After the bars closed and the drunken inhabitants wobbled their way into their houses the street became utterly silent. Stars twinkled above the navy blue canvas like a coat of scattered glitter. All was peaceful and that apple was damn near perfect in flavor. Nearly all of your anxiety had been drained by the stillness of this perfect night—until a squeal so familiar and loud nearly made your jaw crack in half. His bike roared and shook the trees as he zipped down the road. You’d heard him three times in the last week, and it was always at some ungodly hour. This generally happened while you were lying in bed attempting to sleep and there his happy ass would come, loud as all hell with that damn motorcycle of his, cruising down the road with his music blaring. By the time you managed to gain enough energy to hop out of bed he’d be gone, evaporated into the night like some cryptic teleporting jack-ass from hell. You’d found his bike once outside of some dive bar at the end of the road and left a nice little message about waking up the neighbors at four am. Since then he’d oh so generously made his loud appearance home before four am. His pettiness—however annoying—was impressive. As if he sensed your narrowed eyes and snarl the owner of said bike rolled his palms over his handles, thus sparking an even louder sound to emit from his black motorcycle, as he drove past your house. Something snapped in your chest like a string on a harp plucked too hard. Your wrist nearly snapped as well from the momentum you’d exerted flinging that partially eaten apple at his forehead. Before you could even rationalize your entire existence up to that point you scurried through the window as a yelp flew from his mouth. Hiding under your covers from monsters was childish, but it had always seemed to work before, right? ------- Morning came with an abundant declaration that nearly burned your eyes straight out of your sockets. The hellish assault of sunlight had woken you from your post – panic haze and caused a very rough start way too early in the morning. As you trudged towards your small kitchen with bedhead to the nines and your pajama shorts hanging around your hips a flash of a green apple slamming a possibly dangerous biker in the face projected in the back of your mind. Groaning you held your cup of coffee with both hands and laid your head on the kitchen counter. He deserved it, but what if that apple caused him to crash? Oh god what if he rolled off his bike and flew into a telephone pole? How would you explain that to your fellow cellmate? Does it make you a better criminal to kill someone with fruit? At least you’d get sleep in jail. Refusing to let the bitter morning go to waste you slid on your shoes and walked towards the front door with your coffee in hand. Overgrown tendrils of grass had risen their way up throughout the lawn. Curling and looping around the metal fencing and tickling your ankles as you stomped down the concrete steps. The cracked pathway was barely visible beneath the dirt and apparently ever-fruitful lawn, and unfortunately at some point you would have to cut it. Milk white clouds no thicker than a string floated carelessly across the sky. A vivid blue with tinges of tangerine igniting the world, and for a moment everything was calm again. The breeze rolled through your hair and picked up the strays dancing against the nape of your neck and brushed the scent of flowers beneath your nose. “Morning, neighbor~.” A shiver ran down your spine as your eyes popped open and immediately shifted to the left. There, strung along the top of the metal gate as if he owned the entire world, was that asshole. At least this meant you didn’t commit a felony murder. It took a moment for your eyes to fixate on the tall, thin man before you and the fact that he had an apple in his hand. Smirking he took a bite and let the metal of his lip piercings clink against the skin of it. Beneath the soft cotton t-shirt jet black ink poked out up to his collar bone and littered both his arms. Intricate patterns and beautifully etched designs paralleled each other. He raised his free hand up to his chin, perching it within his palm while the other dangled over the top of the fence. “Why the hell is your bike so loud?” You snapped while bringing the coffee cup to your lips. His smirk broadened; your stomach folded in on itself. He took another bite of the apple before tossing it up in his hand. At first he made no noise as he straightened his posture and lifted his left hand to the back of his neck. Dramatically his mouth opened and let out a yawn. His shirt lifted off his stomach; you suddenly found the grass beneath your feet mind-numbingly interesting. Though groggy and still miffed about your wake-up call from the brightest light known to man there was no denying this dude was unaware of his good looks. The way he tilted his head as he looked at you, chocolate brown locks swaying over his eyes and how he made it a clear habit to nibble on the right stud in his lip. He was baiting you. “Some people like to sleep at night y’know.” Did your voice just crack? Probably, you weren’t on top of your game this early. “Says the girl screaming ‘not that door you dumbass’ at three in the morning.” An unwelcomed combination of a laugh-snort-hmph escaped your lips at his comically high imitation of your voice. This man had a talent of getting his way and getting away with everything. But not today, hopefully. Straightening your back and crossing your arms over your chest you stared back at him and hoped you looked somewhat pissed. His brow arched and lips broke into a wide smile. The apple in his hand had been tossed over the fence in the street where birds picked at it before flying elsewhere. “Are you going to keep revving that god damn thing so loud? It rattles my whole damn house.” “Ah, my apologies miss but,” he cooed while running his tattooed fingers through his hair, “but if we’re being fair you hit me with an apple so that makes us even. “ His tone had changed, like he was egging you on to continue this little tiff. The way he stood with a prominent dominance and sweet smile that probably dropped a hundred panties made it evident he was not going to let you win so easily. His eyes glimmered in a haze of honey – brown with a tint of darkness pooling behind them. This was a man who rarely lost at anything and more likely than not had never been told no by anyone. However, he seemed to have underestimated your willpower against his blatant charms. For this moment your panties remained on your own bedroom floor. It was early, you were pissed, and the sun was too damn bright. Oh no, today was not the day fucker. “Once. You’ve woken me up at least three times in the week. So I can either throw three more apples or,” you tapped your finger against your lips, “or you could mow my lawn as an apology. If we’re being fair.” “Is that a euphemism? You could have just asked me to come watch a movie~” He teased as his tongue darted out to his bottom lip. “Come a little closer to me, it’s hard to hear that sweet voice of yours from so far away.” You were on the verge of a sensory overload, but this was a game you were playing to win. He was still on the edge of success but his eyes were nowhere except your hips as they swayed his direction. Inch by inch the contours of his face became prominent, chiseled, perfect. He put up a thick mask but he couldn’t hide everything. The slight thinning of his eyes as they grew a bit hazy; how his fingers curled around the fence while the rest of his body stiffened. He seemed to tower over you. Two lions, one goal. Never losing his gaze you ran the tips of your fingers up his chest to his chin and gripped it. A flash of light cut across his eyes. Amusement perked his brow higher and that smirk returned halfway up the side of his face. “Yes my sweet?” The day he dropped that teasing tone would be the day he died. “Mow my front lawn or the next thing I throw is a rock and it’s not going to hit your face. My sweet.” Calmly you reinstate your point by knocking your knee lightly against his groin through the fence before twisting your hips and walking back towards the house. “My name is Dazai. Dazai Osamu, my sweet!” he called back with a laugh as the door to your house shut loudly. The air of victory surrounded you for the next few hours until a very deafeningly loud sound woke you from your afternoon nap. Bat in hand you kicked your front door open only to be greeted by a very sweaty, shirtless Dazai Osamu mowing your lawn. He glanced up at you as he pushed the old pile of rust across your lawn and gave you a sultry wink. His pettiness was next level, and it made you too damn weak for anything good to come out of it.

#bungou stray dogs #bsd #bungou sd #dazai #dazai osamu #my writing #my writing dazai #dazai x reader #LLFH #drabble series #first post on the new blog #dazai osamu x reader #fluff #one shot dazai #dazai fluff #scenario:fluff/dazai

152 notes · View notes

orangiah · 8 years ago

Text

5 things meme

tagged by @deadbirdlife! :D (over a month ago but i always do this)

5 things you’ll find in my bag well you can check out my meet-the-artist meme if you want to know not just five but basically everything you'll find in my bag/on my person but for the sake of this meme:

bokutowl/bokuaka nitotans (unless they're in my pocket instead of my bag) to accompany on my many adventures

i haven't really used my sketchbook for like over a year now but i still bring it with me wherever i can, maybe in the hope that i'll use it again at some point

if i do draw anything by hand it's usually on a loose sheet of paper that i carry in my clipboard case. also useful to have for any papers i might pick up while i'm out

i carry around earplugs and athletic tape/bandaids for taiko, since they're small enough that i can leave them in my bag (and bandaids are useful in general). on sundays i bring my taiko bachi and shinobue to practice

my phone case is a wallet case which i use to carry more frequently-used cards like my ID, metrocard, and primary credit card, but i keep another wallet in my bag where i leave cash/coins, other IDs, credit/debit cards, insurance info, membership/stamp cards, etc

5 things you’ll find in my bedroom

an absurd number of books/artbooks/doujinshi/comics. an entire wall of my room is dedicated to books

currently a bunch of moving boxes that i haven’t finished unpacking yet and probably won’t finish unpacking for years tbh

a few real plants and a few fake plants :P i like the idea of a room full of plants but i can only take care of so many and i'm not really opposed to supplementing with fake ones, especially in hard-to-reach places

a fledging little bokuaka shrine that i have many grand ambitions for......

okay wait i’m really excited about this because i recently moved into a new apartment and one of my goals for my room was to make a cozy little under-bed nook but this ended up being a lot more complicated than originally imagined and took like a month of wrangling with furniture weight capacities/materials/budget/help from my ex-structural engineer dad but i finally did it and it’s great

5 things i’m currently into

bokuaka but if you didn’t know that then i’m not sure who you’ve been following

went to a LITE and mouse on the keys concert a few weeks ago so i’ve been re-listening to the setlist a bunch as well as some CDs i bought

for some reason i've also been listening to a lot of ayumi hamasaki lately, digging through my old middle school favorites...

i finally started watching voltron last week okay OKAY FINE

reading paradox blue in japanese! the english scanlations stop halfway through volume 3 and i really want to know what happens -- it’s usually a bit draining for me to read anything longer than 40 pages or so or that involves a lot of non-conversational language, but i’ve been slowly moving along and it’s been good practice

5 things on my to-do list see also: new year's resolutions

HOLIDAY CARDS LOL I DIDN'T FORGET ABOUT THEM i just wasn't joking when i said they'll be like... early spring cards... or later......

starting up classes again this wednesday so i should probably brush up a bit and review my notes from last semester

i finally bought some bird repellent gel for my balcony because these pigeons have been waking me up every morning and it’s really been messing with my sleep. it’s kind of a pain to climb out there so i’ve been putting it off but they’ve been getting increasingly persistent these past few days so i should probably do it soon

i need a haircut lol

gotta call my doctor about some changes in my insurance and also (separately, but falling under the “calling medical offices” category) schedule a surgery consultation which i’ve been meaning to do for weeks now but i’m a weenie

(sticking this in as a sixth item since it’s semi-private but it’s important enough that i’d feel remiss if i didn’t include it) qkbis expxjz dkhyzxpt yrkppku, igh xp kpb ykjs, yopesjj ho jyklers

5 things people may not know about me

my dad is an ordained reverend (and so am i)

i sort of collect cute candy packaging -- i was pretty intentional about it in early high school, then recently dug up my old collection while moving to my new apartment and instead of doing the sensible thing and throwing it out i ended up keeping it

other things i casually collect: postcards, playing cards, cool hats, cool socks, knives, artbooks, doujinshi, stickers, am i a collector or just a hoarder

things i seriously considered majoring in while i was at uni: english, computer science, psychology, film, religious studies, astronomy (of them all, i probably went the furthest with astronomy). the main reason i ended up doing art wasn’t because i particularly wanted to, but because i ended up spreading myself too thin trying to do everything while also consistently taking at least one art class a semester so it ended up being the only subject i had enough credits in to complete with minimal suffering

i really like singing! i wouldn’t say i’m particularly good or bad at it, but i love going to karaoke, and in high school i spent a lot of my time participating in amateur online song cover groups and learned a bit about audio mixing while i was at it. i’ve posted a few covers on tumblr in the past, but it’s been over a year since my last one so a lot of people probably don’t know about it. i’d like to do more at some point, but it might be harder now that i’ve moved to an apartment (bonus: i live right across from a railway line)

tagging @roboraptor3000 @cmktusa @menopiano @thasali @shun-takei @toondoon-here @aidenmoo @silvercistern @twomilkmen @spacevocals @zorofab @cattletyrants @candide-kun @adropofcolour (as always, only if you want to! if you don’t like being tagged in these sorts of things, feel free to shoot me an ask and i’ll make a note of it. same for if i missed you and you really like being tagged :P)

#my post #tumblr games #blag

16 notes · View notes

ciathyzareposts · 4 years ago

Text

Game 46: Haunt (1979)

Haunt doesn’t have a title screen

Well, I had a week off. I’ve been pretty good about keeping to a schedule of late, but ever since I started playing Rogue my desire to blog has somewhat dimmed. The problem is, I don’t want to play anything else, but the blog cannot survive on Rogue alone. It’s a great game, but after a while it’s hard to find things to say about it. On top of that, I’m really into Dungeons & Dragons right now. My interests run in cycles. Sometimes I’m obsessed with D&D, sometimes with comics, and sometimes with video games. At the moment, video games is near the bottom of the cycle. Never fear, it’ll get to the top again.

What all of the above means is that I’m cutting my posts back to once a week, for the most part. On Sundays(ish) I’ll post about whatever game is next on my chronology. On Wednesdays(ish), I’ll post about Rogue, if I have something new to say about it. Once I’m done with Rogue I might pick up the pace again, but I’m not sure about that. We’ll see what happens.

For today’s post, I’m tackling Haunt, which is another mainframe-based text adventure. (It’s often written as HAUNT, all caps, and I don’t know why.) I’m not sure why I get so trepidatious about the mainframe adventure games. Zork was one, and it’s undoubtedly the best game I’ve played for the blog so far. Colossal Cave Adventure, Acheton and Battlestar have all rated well. The mainframe games do tend to be better on average than their home computer equivalents, but they also tend to be longer. Perhaps that’s it. I like making progress on the blog, and short games are great for that. I’m at the point where I’d almost rather play a short but terrible game than one that’s long and pretty good. I have no idea how big Haunt is, and that makes me nervous.

Haunt was created starting in 1979 by John E. Laird, who is currently a computer science professor at the University of Michigan. He would have been studying for his Ph.D at the time. Laird worked at Xerox PARC for a bit before getting into academia, and he’s significant enough to merit his own Wikipedia page, but I don’t think he did anything else in gaming beyond creating Haunt. The game was developed from 1979 to 1982, but as usual I’m playing it in the year that the game’s development started.

Getting the game running was a bit of a nightmare. It requires TOPS-20 emulation; I gather that TOPS-20 was the operating system for the DEC-20 mainframe. To play the game, I had to go to twenex.org and create a TOPS-20 login. Then I needed to download a telnet client; I ended up going with PuTTY, which can be found here. It was a lot of rigmarole, and not the sort of thing I’m used to, but I got there in the end.

The game kicks off with its backstory, and, well… it’s weird. Get a load of this.

This stuff is wild.

For those who don’t want to squint at my screen caps, the gist is that there’s a bloke whose wife got killed by a moose. He bought the land where the incident happened, built a mansion called Chez Moose, and set about trying to return her to life. He wasn’t seen again for seven years, and was declared dead.

What also happened on the fateful day of that picnic was that the man’s child was kidnapped by gypsies (which I’m aware isn’t a word I should be using, but I’m going with what the game says. Apologies to any Romani people who may be reading.). Only that child will apparently be able to enter the house and find the treasures inside without going mad and committing suicide. So yes, it’s a treasure hunt, but the story around it is bizarre enough that I can excuse it.

Also wrapped up in this story is an obscure hereditary disease called “Orkhisnoires sakioannes”. I’ve no idea what this is getting at. Google just points back to articles about this game, so I gather that it’s completely made up. I guess it could be a pun or an anagram, but I’m not at the stage where I’m going to try and solve it just yet.

That’s mighty nice of the government, who are always wonderful chaps.

The game began with me standing at a bus stop. My inventory contained a watch and a couple of bus tokens. I tried moving off in various directions, but there’s nowhere to go from the bus stop. The only thing to do was to wait until a bus pulled up, get on board, and exit when it dropped me at the front gate of Chez Moose.

I could see the mansion from the front gate; it was dark, but there were lights coming from the windows. There was seemingly no way to open the gate, so I did a lap of the perimeter wall. I found a gate with a buzzer on the east wall, but decided to ignore it for now. The wall was surrounded with a forest, which I’m pretty sure is only there for show. I tried to explore it, but it very quickly became impenetrable. The road to the south was bordered by a similarly impenetrable forest, but I discovered that if I went far enough east or west I’d end up back at the bus stop. I could wait and catch the bus again, but only once. After that, I had no tokens left, and being unable to catch the bus I sat down on the corner and starved to death. Going home and living the rest of my life was not an option, I suppose.

Another weird thing happened while I was exploring the wilderness. At the stroke of midnight, a ghostly moose appeared and charged right through me. It didn’t seem to have any negative effect, but I’m a little concerned about it. I wonder if there’s a way to avoid it somehow, or if it’s tied into the whole going mad and committing suicide thing?

Yep. It’s a ghost moose alright.

There’s also a weird area just off the south-west corner of the wall that has no description at all. It’s just a blank space. I’m not sure if this is significant or not, but I’ve learned not to dismiss this kind of thing. I’ll have to remember it when I’m thinking of ways to earn extra points.

With nothing else to do I approached the east gate and pressed the button. There was a buzz, but nothing else happened. At this point, I got really stuck, and I almost searched for a walkthrough, which would have been pretty shameful at this early stage. It turned out that all I had to do was press the button a couple more times. The buzzing woke up the person on the other end, and after a series of questions he let me through the gate. Some of those questions were simple (name, quest, etc.) and some of them were weird trivia. The most common one I’ve gotten is “What was the first production system with more than 1500 productions?” The answer to this is “Haunt”, which apparently has something to do with the language it was coded in; I only knew the answer to this by looking at bluerenga.blog. The other question I keep getting is “What is the capital of Assyria?” I’ve tried Assur, and the alternate spelling Ashur, but it keeps telling me I’m wrong and I’m not sure why. Google wouldn’t lie to me. (Actually, I’ve just realised that the answer is probably “A”, which is the sort of dumb thing I would write on geography tests when I didn’t know the answer. I’ll have to try that next time.)

After answering the questions I was let inside, and informed that I wouldn’t be getting back out through the gate. The mansion grounds were mostly areas of lawn, with the mansion at the centre and an empty garage to the north-east. I also found a grave in the north-east corner, which I dug up. Inside was a bone from the Missing Link, which I took with me. Taking it increased my score, so I gather that it’s one of the treasures I’m seeking. There’s also a dry garden bed, which I’m thinking I need to water, but at the moment I don’t have anything appropriate.

The mansion has two entrances. On the north side is some ivy, which I was able to climb up to a balcony. Inside was a master bedroom, and a bathroom. I tried flushing the toilet, and it spun around so rapidly that I was knocked over and cracked my head open on the bathtub. A “10th level cleric” came by and resurrected me, and I found myself back outside the wall with an empty inventory. I was able to buzz myself back into the mansion grounds, and I tried climbing the ivy again. This time I tried to test climbing back down, which was also fatal.

There’s something very undignified about being resurrected by a bus driver.

I wonder if maybe I can jump down? I dismissed it at the time, but it’s worth a shot.

On my next try I gave up on the ivy, and decided to go through the front door. The only way to open it was to knock, and the game gave me a very unusual greeting. I hadn’t mentioned that the guy on the other end of the buzzer asked me about my sexual preference. I’m not sure if it factors in elsewhere in the game, but it does get a mention here.

I’ve been called worse.

Once I was inside the house, the door slammed behind me and couldn’t be opened. This game just loves cutting off the path back to the start… In the foyer was a bowl of candy, which I took with me and resisted the urge to eat. Exploring west, I found a closet containing a wet suit with fully functioning scuba gear. I was pretty skeptical about finding a place where this would come in handy, but I put it on anyway.

North of the foyer was the main hall, with passages heading east and west, and stairs leading upwards. The game mentioned that there was a horrible noise coming from upstairs. There was also an old chair, which I took with me. It had a plaque on the back that said it was made by Louis XIV, so I figured it was another treasure.

I explored west, finding a dark hall with a safe. The safe was shut, and had a combination lock with three two-digit numbers. The game gave 10-10-10 as an example, and I tried it. I wasn’t surprised that it didn’t work, but I was a little surprised that the game acknowledged that I was being a bit of a smart-arse by trying it in the first place. Haunt responds to quite a lot of things I wouldn’t expect, and generally has something amusing to say.

West of the safe was an art room, with a modern art painting inside. I tried to take it, only to be told that it was worthless. I held on to it anyway.

East of the main hall was a library, with a bust of Homer and shelves full of books. I tried to read a book, only to be told that all of the pages were “virtual”, and that the book disappeared. I tried again, and found a book about vampires, and how to kill them. Just the usual methods, nothing too revelatory here. Trying another book, I was told that the rest were all made out of wood, so I left the library and headed upstairs. (The stairs creaked ominously, and I started to think that I’d only get a few shots at using them before they’d collapse or something. I went up and down them about a dozen times, with no trouble, so it’s probably just there for spooky ambience.)

The upper hall had passages heading north, west, and south. The stairs also continued up, but I decided to save those for later. First I went south, into a dark room with a casket. I’d already been warned by the book to expect vampires, but I went and stupidly opened the casket anyway. Sure enough, I found Dracula inside. He got up to try and bite me, but I quickly left the room, and he didn’t follow. When I went back in he was back in his casket. I didn’t have anything I could obviously use to kill him, so I left him where he was. (Dracula’s been in quite a number of adventure games that I’ve played for the blog. He’d have to be a front-runner for the most frequently recurring character or monster.)

Exploring east, I was getting closer to the “horrible noise” I’d heard from downstairs. Eventually, at a dead end, I recognised it as an Alice Cooper record. Seriously, when it comes time for me to give this game its RADNESS Index, can I knock it down a couple of points for this? Alice Cooper rules, particularly in the 1970s. He sings about getting it on with skeletons. Anyway, there was a wire running along the floor, so I pulled it and the noise stopped. I’m not sure if this affected anything.

North of the upper hall was a “dull room”, with a closet to the west. Inside the closet was some gold (another treasure) and a ventilation shaft leading south. Of more interest, though, was a skeleton and a note scrawled on the wall.

All of our dads are skeletons, deep down.

Plot development? In a game from the 1970s? I’d come into this game expecting another treasure hunt with arbitrary puzzles. For the most part that’s what Haunt has given me, but there are hints that it has deeper mysteries to unravel. Who is Bas? Is it me? What’s the deal with the illness, and the crop? I’m intrigued by all of this, and I really hope that it plays out further and isn’t just a bit of story detail thrown in at the beginning.

I explored the ventilation shaft heading south, which led into a maze of ducts. The maze was small though, and the areas easily differentiated by their exits. It didn’t take me long to navigate, and I soon found myself in a ventilation shaft over the torture chamber. I couldn’t open the grill to get down though, so there was nothing to do but retrace my steps back to the upper hall.

I decided to go upstairs, and found myself in a laboratory. There was something under a sheet, and a lever on the wall. First I tried looking under the sheet, but either the game wouldn’t let me or I couldn’t find the right verb-noun combination. So I threw the lever, and was not entirely surprised when a monster emerged from under the sheet.

I really want to know what he does for a trick.

The monster’s “trick or treat” greeting was a little more unexpected. Luckily I had a bowl of candy on me, and when I gave it to the monster he left, crashing through the west wall. I followed through the hole, and found a bar. There was no alcohol, but there was a bottle of turpentine (or “turps” as its known around these parts) which I took with me.

I had an instant brainstorm upon finding the turps, and decided to pour it on the modern art painting that I’d found. The paint washed off to reveal a valuable Rembrandt underneath; I’d found another treasure.

I was somewhat stuck at this point, and did quite a bit of stumbling about achieving not much of anything. Eventually I found myself back in the library, and on a whim I tried turning the bust of Homer. This opened a secret door to the east. I wasn’t able to get through while wearing my wetsuit, so I took it off and slipped through the opening into a secret room with stairs leading down.

The stairs led down to a wine cellar, where I found a diamond corkscrew (another treasure, which brought my tally up to five, I think). I went exploring among the empty wine racks, and was lost in a maze. The racks apparently stretched on infinitely in all directions, and try as I might I couldn’t find any way out. Just as I was about to give up (and the game started mocking me) I found a trapdoor in the floor. It was open, so I slipped through.

It led down into a room, where I found a drunk ghost. Despite being drunk, the ghost blocked every single action I tried to make. Even basic commands like INVENTORY and LOOK were unavailable to me.

This game has a lot of euphemisms for being drunk.

I figured that, whatever the solution was, it must be completely divorced from my inventory. At least I hoped so, as I couldn’t look to see what I had. I tried all sorts of things, including various levels of invective and a quote from Thor: Ragnarok, before hitting on the amusingly simple solution: BOO. The ghost disappeared, and I was able to continue on.

Beyond I found the torture chamber that I’d seen from the ventilation shaft earlier. Someone rushed out and closed the door behind them. Of more interest was the supposedly sexy female who was imprisoned there. I set her free and, well, one thing led to another…

I am a female lover, after all.

I opened the duct and crawled my way back to the main house, but at that point I was really quite stuck as to what to do next. I was also well overdue to write this post, so I decided to call it a day and switch off. I don’t think I have anywhere else left to explore inside the main area of the house, but I also don’t know how to get back outside. Well, I guess dying gets me back outside, but it also loses points, and dumps my inventory, so that’s not a good solution. And I’m pretty sure that I do need to get back outside to beat the game.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that while I was doing all of this exploring, my character was slowly going mad. I’d occasionally get a message about how the house was getting to me.

On my next game I’m going to try STAY SANE or DON”T GO MAD. You never know.

The messages gradually ramped up in intensity, until I went completely mad and killed myself. (Oddly enough, this is the second game in a row that I’ve played with suicide as a theme; Space II had it as well.) After I died I was resurrected by a passing cleric, and was able to continue playing, and had no more problems with going crazy. I’m not sure what effect it has on the game, aside from a loss of points.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten with Haunt. It’s quite fun so far, and has enough of its own style and quirks to stand out from a lot of its contemporaries. If it actually follows through on its promise it could be a real stand-out, and a game that’s well ahead of its time. I suspect that it won’t quite get there, but I’m still holding out hope.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-46-haunt-1979/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

0 notes