#not bad for an hour's worth of work

[triscribe]

The Magic Trousers

(So I'm trying to come up with something to submit for a magazine's flash fiction competition, and while I don't think this is going to be it, I don't want to just lose it in my folders either. Hope you guys enjoy)

The third time her little brother turned up with blood on his face, Alene decided she needed to do something about it.

Not that Elber ever came out and said, but she knew good and well who bloodied his nose, who split his lip. Less than twenty kids lived in their village, but even out of a hundred, two hundred, a thousand, she’d have no trouble knowing who did it.

“I'm fine,” Elber tried to protest, when she sat him down and cleaned him up. “You don’t have to-”

“I do have to,” huffed Alene. “Just you and me now, and old Nana, but she’s too blind to do this anyhow. So hush up and sit still.”

She tended to her brother, warm water and a soft cloth and a dab of salve to speed along his healing. Then Alene sat him down next to her, and made the boy hold a ball of rough yarn as she pulled from it. Back and forth, across their mother’s old loom. Back and forth, click-clack, back and forth.

And she told Elber, “You know there used to be witches in our family?” Her brother’s eyes went wide. “Good witches, who cast their spells on tyrants and bullies, taught them harsh lessons so they’d leave the smallfolk who lived under them alone. Once, there was a witch who went to a king’s castle, pulling an empty cart like it was full and heavy. And she told everyone along the way, whether they asked or not, that she’d brought a gift: magic cloth made on a magic loom, enchanted so only wise and worldly people could see it.”

“...what’s ‘worldly’ mean?”

“Means you know what’s what,” Alene explained. “And nobody she told wanted to admit they didn’t, so instead they all went ‘oh, of course, what lovely cloth’. All the way through the castle, and to the king, who didn’t want anyone thinking he was stupid either, so he agreed to pay the witch to turn the magic cloth into robes for him to wear.”

Elber’s eyes got even wider. “But- there wasn’t any cloth?”

“Not a single thread. Speaking of, I’m almost done with this, go get me Momma’s old sewing kit.”

She finished telling her brother the story while putting her lengths of fabric together, skipping more stitches than not. About how the witch put on a great show, going through the motions and chanting in a strange tongue, until she announced the robes were ready, lighter than air and softer than a cloud. The king immediately put on his new outfit to show off, going up and down his whole castle, then out of it entirely to parade through the nearest village. But only the castle folk knew what the witch said about her magic cloth - the villagers didn’t. They saw the king prancing about in his small clothes, and one by one everybody started laughing, more and more until you could hear sound for miles around. The king tried to wave it off, tried to insist not a one of them was wise enough to see his wonderful magic robes.

But he still went back to his castle awfully embarrassed.

By the end of her story, Alene held up a pair of simple, homespun trousers, nothing odd to be seen. That night, after the whole village went to sleep, she stole out of her family’s home and over to another house, switching the trousers with another pair, not a soul aware of what she’d done.

Well. None besides Elber. And the next morning, when the blacksmith’s son promised to punch him in the face again, Alene’s little brother did exactly as she’d told him: he pointed at the bigger boy and yelled that the Old Magic punished bullies for their crimes, along with a few made-up words for good measure.

All the other kids jeered. And the blacksmith’s son did what he always did: he picked up one foot to brace against the nearest wall, posing like a hero out of a storybook.

And his trousers promptly came apart at the seams.

Alene, walking by with her market basket as laughter erupted, hid a smirk all the way home.

[s0fter-sin]

soap's whole deal being sniper and demolitions gets me going bc on the surface they sound so different but when you get into it, you realise it's bc soap's smart

sniping is all math; calculating distances and wind interference and bullet drop. something i think people overlook is he was listed as a sniper first so it can be implied that he's better at it than demolitions. he does more sniping in both campaigns than demolitions work; in capture or kill, ghost specifically calls on him to take down the aq snipers

and demolitions is math with a hit of chemistry; knowing what mixes with what, knowing how much to use, recognising environmental factors and adjusting accordingly. it's not just about the boom; so much work goes into contained/ planned explosions. especially when having enough power for a breacher charge and not bringing down the whole building is the difference between mission success and failure

the chemical bombs he makes in alone can't just be any old cleaners, they have to have the correct reaction to each other; he just knew off the top of his head what would mix with what to create what reaction. he would also potentially have to recognise them by sight/smell bc they would’ve been written in spanish

soap would also have to know architecture; recognising structural integrity and weak points so he knows exactly where to plant a charge to bring it down and how it'll come down

he has an incredible soldier's mind people just forget that bc he's sociable which itself is a skill

we know he tends to buck against orders he doesn't agree with like when he pushes back against ghost in capture or kill and shepherd when he tells them to release hassan

he gets closer to people and sees if he can trust them and that's when he follows them without question. really think about how he talks to alejandro and rudy; he asks about their home and alejandro's family and rudy's relationship with him. those aren't questions you ask a stranger after a few hours of knowing them. that's not even touching on his relationship with ghost

he also deliberately brings people of higher ranks down to his level; talking informally with ghost and giving him a shoulder punch, addressing alejandro (a colonel!!) by his first name and rudy by his nickname despite literally just meeting them. he personalises all of them and it’s in direct opposition to the reason most characters do that; it’s not due to insubordination or lack of respect, the more he respects and trusts someone, the more casual he is with them

he digs into people; he wants to know what makes them tick and that determines if he can one, trust them and two, follow their orders. once he decides that, he's the ultimate soldier; he bleeds loyalty which makes him vicious when that loyalty is taken for granted

he isn't naive or bubbly or insecure; he's an incredibly smart and aware soldier. he's aggressive and bloodthirsty and loyal and intuitive and i love him so much

[barksbog]

it´s honestly so hard for me to even finish 15-30h games let alone 100h+ games because i get maybe 2-3h a night to game and the pacing of most games makes that feel extremely frustrating.

at this point i´m begging for more 1-6h games

[ganondoodle]

(more elden ring radahn thoughts)

on whats really left of him .. and his soul? general too many thoughts about him- long post and probably incoherent, but you know me, im never coherent anyway, many thoguhts, head full, quite literally

in base game, he has lost his mind we are told, and clearly he isnt like he used to be, but we really dont know the extend of it hes clearly capable of fighting rather .. controlled; its not like hes biting and clawing after you, he still uses his swords (and bow, sth he doesnt even have in dlc) and magic, we know even in this condition he held back the stars AND still fought you hard at the same time (i know undead people can still fight in elden ring, pls hear me out)

and i wonder .. how much of his mind did he really lose, obviously some since he eats people now which isnt sth he used to do, but ... we dont know how talkactive he used to be, we get one (two? i can only think of one) quotes from him in the descriptions of an item, he might have been a man of few words already, so him not talking at all isnt that good of a measure (not saying its the only measure, just wanted to mention), resorting to eating people that atack you might just be an act of desperation too

we get told he kills friend and foe alike (and im not questioning that really) but in his cutscene we see him drag along the bodies of cleanrot knights, who are under direct dommand of malenia, and by extend miquella, im guessing they kept sending them after him to finish him off; now knowing that him dying means being sent to the realm of shadow, to miquella, and NOT knowing if he wanted that, i feel that that detail has grown in importance-

when you start the fight, hes rather defensive, shooting at you almost immediately upon you entering the arena with no extra cutscene either, what he shoots at you a long ranged gravitation bolts that stop you dead in tracks with a very high stagger rate and if you are on torrent it stagger you off of it; i know it could be just tactical and bc all he knows now is to fight as best as he can BUT, you could also look at it as a defensive strategy, to keep you away, and away from him .. even though you are not told he is afraid to die and he eats people now, sure he could come over there and snack on you once he shot you enough times, but the important thing is that you as a threat to his life is eliminated AND he doesnt seem to have some sort of insatiable hunger for people that makes him charge and snap at you immediately, there could be self control there still (if i wanted to reach a little further i could also say he could be trying to keep you away from him not jsut to save himself but to save you from him too, but thats a reach and i know that)

once you get close enough he usually changes to fire a salve of arrows that fall from the sky and follows you around, also high in stagger- its only when you get too close that he pulls out his swords and charges at you

his arena is interestign as well, its a piece of land in caelid that is inaccessible (unless you can fly?) from all sides, a barren battlefield only reached through a teleporter, im not sure if it is the same place as when he fought malenia or not (wasnt that in the middle of caelid where you find the rot needle?) but i doubt anyone could have put him there against his will, so did he .. go there himself? or stay there for that matter- how quickly do you lose yourself when infected with rot? and how quickly for him, since hes a demigod? did he intentionally isolate himself there? make it harder to reach him for both friend and foe alike?

another point is that most enemies (as far as i can think of) that are infected with rot/are in caelid also deal rot damage, radahn does not, hes even really vunerable to it in fact, its an intersting detail to me bc he only uses either standard attacks or gravitational magic, given that hes been in this condition for a long time and its caelid id expect the rot to be somewhat important there, but its not

how much has he really lost his mind, is he really as mindless as jerren makes him out to be? is he trying to stay alive no matter what, isolating himself on an (almost) island and only living off what comes there, which is usually people that want to kill him, be it friend or foe, all are out for his life one way or another, could it be defensive ... desperate even? no one but him and miquella/malenia seem to know that him dying means hes put into the land of shadow, where miquella is waiting for him; (why wouldnt he tell anyone? was he not able to? was he afraid to upset the golden order by spilling it out?) could he know that would be the end of him having his own will, knowing what miquella can do to people? ... perhaps even .... having been manipulated by him before when he was less experienced and more in direct vicinity to him, to promise something he doesnt actually want?

this is a reach too but ... could he be trying to make himself unusable for miquella, theres no real cure for the rot, could he have decided to stay alive as long as he can to both destroy his own body (and soul even?) intentionally so it cant be used against his will, like a desperate act to destroy himself rather than become someones unwilling puppet? did he succeed in both somewhat but not enough to become fully worthless and unsalvageable? just how much would he have had to destroy himself for him to become useless to miquella, is there even a limit? would he have been "revived" no matter what, no matter what little was left of him?

how is he mindless, yet his soul it taken when you kill him, his body beyond repair, but his soul intact? that seems like the opposite of what he is, and you are told he is, in the base game to me (maybe hes just fallen into madness i guess, but given the soul is like .. the self, he should be mad in the dlc too then, unless miquella can just pick out the parts he likes and throw away the rest .... which isnt impossible either)

now, there could be the argument that he might have actually agreed to it, hes been a big fan of godfrey, who is a consort to marika, a god, and little more than her pawn as well, his 'young' look you see at the end of the dlc could also be connected to it, the braids i thought where a sign of miquellas influence could also be just how he looked back then, an imitation of godfreys hairstyle- and we dont know for sure he didnt used to have them even after gettign older since they could just have loosened after spending so much time in a zombie lite condition (or is it?)-- but his portrait in volcano manor doesnt seem to have them either, hes also sporting the armor you see in base game (i think) there the fact that, according to godfrey, strength is the only thing that matters and to become a consort you need to be the strongest of all to be worthy, could also be interpreted that way- though i dont if he would have wanted to replace the golden order, he was a fan and follower of it, did he even think of it the implications? did he even know? was he just young and stupid? (very possible tbh)

then theres the idea of there being less left of his soul, so in the dlc he is barely if anything at all, himself, both in body AND soul, how much was there even left after all that time in caelid, he is silent except for like two grunts he does also in base game (he has more sounds there too), completely unexpressive, with very few gravitation magic, in the second phase miquella literally snakes his arms around his neck, almost every single attack is filled with light magic, clearly coming from miquella and not him (i know bringing up leonard might seem overemphasizing his role, but in these games what information you get is very scarce so every bit you do learn is important and was written intentionally- but he stayed together with him in caelid, all his attacks involve him in one way or another, he only started to learn that magic for leonard, so radahn didnt have too abandon him as he got too large to ride him, he uses gravitation in dlc too, so it means that at the point of his life that he is recreated as he already had leonard or that that is a sign of whatever is left of his soul that comes from a much older him, and if it is, its very little) (also this is a reach too but most enemies with horses have separate health bars, he doesnt, he and leonard basically share the same health bar, literally inseperable uwu)

"theres no evidence hes mindcontrolled" people say to me. have you seen him? how he acts? or more, how he DOESNT act? that miquellas entire deal is THAT HE BEWITCHES PEOPLE, ffs he STEALS YOUR HEART if you get grabbed by him twice in the dlc fight- theres no evidence he wasnt either, you are told they had a vow, but you never know what exactly that was, when it was (in the memory of miquella wishing for radahn to be his consort you only see miquella- was it a silly wish between kids tha miquella never grew out of?), in what circumstances, you never get to hear radahn say anything about it, its completely left out, thats a little unrelieable to me! idk!

but fine, maybe he did agree to it, maybe he thought being a consort to a god would make him just as cool as godfrey, maybe he fought malenia, who was said to be undefeated, only to prove he had the strength worthy of being a consort and it backfired when malenia infected him with the rot (why then? also he doesnt look exactly thrilled about what she say to him in the trailer but that could be just me too i guess lolololol), maybe he wanted to die all along but his pride meant he couldnt just let the rot win, maybe the festival was really what he wished for and told no one what the real goal was, maybe he wasnt rotten in the first place and just acted that part so he had an excuse to die without having to fight with all his strength as even the undefeated warrior wasnt able to beat him, maybe becoming a consort to miquella was worth leaving leonard behind to him, maybe he wanted to be nothing but a pawn to a god, to be used and discarded, maybe he really believed in miquellas wish for a "gentle" world (aka all love miquella)

it makes sense, im not going to lie about that, but the other does too- and in the end, we will never know what the truth is! we will never know if that was what he wanted, or if he was manipulated even back then, i wish we could to see his part, his voice, his will, but we never will, and it doesnt matter, in the end it doesnt matter if he wanted it or not, the fact remains hes a silent frankensteins monster of miquella, expression- and personalityless, a voiceless pawn to a god that steals everyones hearts

i dont need to be "right", i like to think about things, i am in the camp of he didnt want to or decided against it, but it doesnt really matter, even if miyazaki himself went onto stage and loudly declared that yes it was all planned from the start and radahn was in on it the whole time- i still would think the other way around it, i jsut think about him alot, i want to question things instead of taking everythign i hear at face value, especially when its very strangely told from one side, i will question every little thing if i only hear one side, no matter how much sense it makes or not, it makes me suspicious

(i some of this can be attributed about purely gameplay stuff, like the change in armor so he doesnt look the same etc, but i dont care, i like to think about the implications it brings with it, intentionally or not)

and there he is in a barren battlefield, eating the remains of whoever enters his isolated cage with the intent to kill him, never succeeding, howling like a lonely old wolf at the sky, is it desperation about a fate he cannot escape, grief about what hes done or failed to do, is it a call of yearning? for freedom?

we dont know. and it doesnt matter.

[quotidianish]

Various tones of BnB sillies

[leverage-ot3]

hozier starting to sing take me to church and then unfurling a pride flag healed something in me actually

if you listen closely you can hear me yell ‘oh my god’ when he does it

[mc-tummy-blur]

It probably gets lonely up there

Click for better quality

Check my pinned post to see links on how you can help the people in Palestine

[spaghett-onaplate]

depression is really weird actually wdym i spent 2.5 years of my life in bed

[alysiannnn]

oncies in jailsies

[hauntingblue]

WATER SEVEN BABYYYYY

Look at robin reacting when luffy says he wont give her up.... 🥺🥺

This is a joke right now but its actually a one piece tenet aldjsisjka

Usopp aksbaksjakqk the foreshadow is foreshadowing... Also Robin being happy with the crew after the Aokiji incident... Fuck!!!!

Sanji thinking robin just vanished or flew away and suddenly usopp is soaring thru the skies... imagine

AAAAARGGGGHHHH YOU CAN SEE THE GEARS TURNING

Zoro talking to merry..... only while he is alone of course

Why are nami and sanji matching ajdhakjsk look at the citrus sisters

Carpenter: maybe it was the government

Gov agent: I don't think so, also don't say that they are everywhere

LUFFY SUPPORTS WOMEN'S WRONGS!!!

Don't scream att chopper like that!!! Look at him... So small....

Imu tease???? (No) (Also I've changed websites again bc the translation is kinda off , I can't find a good quality b&w spanish translation and the colors scare me (i want the real manga experience))

GET HIM ICEBURG!!!!

I truly forgor if this is just a lie about her wanting to find the rio poneglyphs or genuine because she wants to die and will do it for them... because in skypiea she says she is not interested in the weapons so maybe if the gov pardons her but considering what she wants is illegal then idk abdjabjs this is such a dumb thing to forget... like thats important girl where did it go (reading this after remembering and it's kinda funny... i will make any sacrifice to kill myself (and keep you safe)... she goes HARD)

Little paulie and mozu and kiwi.... omg hello (the SBS says the twins wanted to be shipwrights too omg)

Franky's backstory is small but it does so much for me like it is so central to the themes... boats and people...

DID SOMEBODY ORDER MORE TRAGIC BROTHERS?

The fact that franky needs to learn this lesson to pass it on to robin.... do you understand how big this is.... also Tom does exactly as he says and takes responsibility for franky and what he has done... because he has done nothing wrong AND THAT'S HIS SON and he just punched spandam bc he wanta him to feel the pain franky feels... Tom is such a man..... proud of having built eater 7 up with the sea train.... goes out with a boom.... should we all kill ourselves....

I am crying again................... franky my god.... and the fucking frog!!! And of course franky can't stop Tom's hope for his island... of course he can't.... he hasnt learnt the lesson yet but this guy isn't over yet!! He has a life of being a pervert cyborg ahead!!! Iceburg following Tom's footsteps but franky not being able to do that bc of his guilt....

This is one of the coolest things chopper has done btw...

NAMII 😭😭😭

Robin damning the world for her crew when all she has ever done is damn her companions for her own sake.... how big is this...

I can't take this...... it's always nami in these positions... it happens AGAIN in Zou with Sanji... there is no way

The love letter gag is too good like damn that's so funny

AND IT'S NAMI GOING THROUGH IT AGAIN!!!! SHE LOVES ROBIN SO MUCH!!!!

[irhabiya]

god afflicted me with chronic زنقة الكلاب syndrome but gave me unparalleled cramming abilities

[quietwingsinthesky]

youtube stop recommending me that five hour long “fall of doctor who” video challenge. there is not a video i could be less interested in watching.

[victory-cookies]

done like 1000/8000 words on this damn project, 3/20 readings and I’m already so damn tired

[ecto-stone]

You know sometime you just didn't realize how similar Vlad and Danny are. Until you tries to write them as friend. but they keep graviting toward each other evolving into something more. Like this is like my 17 re write now and it still resulted in Vlad sacifiescing himself so Danny could live caused Danny importance and impact on his life is way more importance to him then his own well being. And don't get me started with the Groundhog Day where Vlad leaving caused they have a bad fall out essentially caused the worst timeline.

Danny even copy Vlad pun as a coping mechanism and Vlad adopting Danny old stoic behavior.

[toytulini]

i have got to go to bed i have got to get stuff done

[wellthatschaotic]

neurotypicals are so frustrating,, i keep forgetting that "can you do x" means "go do x"