#not that what I went through was equivalent but you know she's fictional and it's about the emotional catharsis

[athenasdragon]

Not to get like sappy about an rpg series. But in honor of this year being the 10th anniversary of me personally getting into Dragon Age, and thus one decade of Gwen Cousland living in my brain, I really do have a sense of her having like. Been there with me through the ups and downs of the last 10 years! Part of this is that I was writing Reunion for three of the hardest and most chaotic of those years, so a lot of what I was dealing with necessarily bled into her story, but also just... when I made her character she started out as me with a very thin layer of fiction and she became her own person over time. We both grew up. I feel like I've been through it and she's been through it. But if she could be ok after that then I could be ok after that. You know?

Anyway I continue to rotate her in my brain and I WILL be writing what she's up to during Veilguard because obviously she's gotta continue to be ok lol

[darklydeliciousdesires]

Burn Bright White - Chapter Five.

Thanks to my lovely Diana and Lindsey for their enthusiasm, as always <3

Previous Chapters - One Two Three Four

Tag list - In the comments. DM to be added/removed

Words - 2,513

Warnings - 18+ content, minors DNI! Also, while I have tried to remain as true to how Niklas is in reality as I can, I have to have a little creative freedom of my own with him in this. If you don’t like it, simply scroll on by. Bitching isn’t tolerated here. At all. Remember, it’s fiction, not a documentary ;) It’s also worth mentioning that while Taissa has qualities of being quite charming at times, she is not, by any means, a good person.

After returning to the bar, she headed inside to wash the blood from her hands and tidy herself a little, buying another round. Sitting there, still buzzing from her altercation, it was violence they found themselves discussing firstly. She firstly learned he had a background in martial arts, but the way he delivered answers to some of her questions, well, it was certainly unique. 

He was, at times, the conversational equivalent of a broken sat nav; he could never get from point A to B without several detours, more often than not never even arriving at point B at all. Of course, she’d witnessed that in him, watching him being interviewed, knowing it was a mixture likely borne of his desire to be vague when it suited him, and surprisingly candid when it didn’t.  

“I have my father to thank for my temperamental streak,” she began, lighting a cigarette and knocking the pack across the table to him. “He always said to me, ‘Tai, you were blessed with your mother’s looks, but cursed with her small stature. But it is no matter. I will show how to be tiny, yet mighty’, and he did.” 

Niklas had indeed noticed that it was only her choice of footwear that made her tall, Taissa continuing. “He taught me how to shoot, wield knives and bare-knuckle fight. Well, when he wasn’t in prison, that is. I went from the piss-weak, skinny little kid to the one turning over the playground bullies for the money and trinkets they’d stolen from other kids fairly quickly.”  

They had a paternal common ground, it seemed. “Prison is where my father remains. He’s... well. I’m my father’s son, let’s put it that way. Except he’s much worse than I am.”  

“I think I’m probably at the same level as hostile as my dad when antagonised, except I’m not a Nazi and he is, unfortunately. I still adore him, though, that aside. He looks menacing, too. Imagine Zakk Wylde with a shaved head, but over two metres tall and covered in Neo-Nazi tattoos, and you have my papa.  

“Some might call it perverse that my taste in men is somewhat similar. I like a tall guy with more hair on his face than his head, covered in ink.” She paused, reaching to drag her finger in a slow glide down his cheek. “What’s scary to some is sexy fucking beast to me.”  

Turning his head, he bit her finger, sucking it into his mouth, Taissa’s eyes narrowing at him although a smile danced upon her lips. “What did I tell you about biting me, Kvarforth?” 

Releasing her finger, he looked mildly incredulous, reaching beneath her hair to stroke the purple bite at the side of her neck. “Bit late for that, isn’t it?”  

It jolted through her, the memory of his groan when he’d bitten her, the feel of his cock flooding her with cum as he’d pounded her against the hallway wall. The air seemed to crackle as they stared at one another, both in silent challenge of the other to look away first. 

“Did you say your apartment is two minutes away?”  

She nodded, her breath catching in her throat as desire began to lap in waves through her, remembering the heat of it, having him all over her. It didn’t help matters when his fingers began to glide across her neck, the touch chasing a herd of goose pimples over her skin. “Shall we go now?” 

He looked thoughtful for a moment, standing slowly. “No. I think I’ll make you wait for it a little longer first.” 

Bastard. That wasn’t to say she’d take it lying down, though. Well, eventually she would.  

“So, tell me. Why did you choose your career path, lucrative payoff aside?” he asked after returning from the bar, placing the bottle of Never Say Die bourbon he’d been requesting down on the table. There was just under a third left, and so as not to have to suffer being inside the bar any more than he absolutely had to, he’d talked the barmaid into selling him what remained.  

“I enjoy having that power over somebody. I have what they need, and I get to profit off of that. Much like you, I am not a people person, beyond what they can do for me. I live a very good life from their addiction, their weakness. This will never cease being thrilling to me.”  

Brutal honesty. He respected that. Seldom few were the same. 

“Before I started buying from your brother,” he began, Taissa rapidly shaking her head. 

“Me. You buy from me. I stand at the helm,” she interrupted. 

“From you,” he continued, “I used to buy from a man named Stefan. I think he was probably one of the most fantastically dark individuals I have ever known. He used to have one hell of a kink, engineering it so junkies would overdose and masturbating as he witnessed them die. I went with him once, but she didn’t fucking die. Shame, I’d have liked to witness that.” 

Taissa knew exactly what he was doing, seeing if he could force some kind of shock reaction from her. She gave none. “Did you hear how he died?” 

Curiosity piqued within him. “He’s dead? I assumed he’d been arrested when I could no longer reach him. That was usually the way when he went quiet.” 

“No, he did a Michael Hutchence. Died by autoerotic asphyxiation. He was found hanging in his bedroom, cock still hard, with a twelve-inch dildo suctioned onto the floor beneath him.”  

Niklas couldn’t help but laugh at that. “This does not surprise me in the slightest. That man propositioned me multiple times.” 

Her eyebrow raised. “And did you?” 

“No, men don’t do it for me,” he revealed, sipping his drink. “I am alas a fucking slave to what you women have between your legs.”  

“Alas?” she questioned, kicking off her shoe beneath the table, beginning to slowly slide her foot up his inner thigh. “Why is that?” 

“Because you are all cunning, terrible creatures.” His eyes flitted down, seeing her red-painted toes press into his crotch. “Case in point.”  

“Guilty as charged,” she shrugged, beginning to massage his cock with the ball of her foot. “But you like it.”  

Her assertion was correct, but he didn’t confirm, shifting in his seat a little as he felt himself beginning to harden. Fuck, this woman. Tempress didn’t cut it.  

Just then, the sound of gears being furiously crunched attracted their attention, both turning to see a car haphazardly shuddering up the street. At the same time, they shouted the exact same words. 

“Put it in H!” 

Niklas’s eyes snapped to her in an instant. A Simpsons fan. He rarely met them these days, it seemed. “So, not only can she quote The Simpsons, but she can recall the most obscure quotes, too. Interesting.” 

Taissa pointed to the car, the driver of which continuing to struggle. “She’ll go three hundred hectares on a single tank of kerosene.”  

He couldn’t help but begin laughing. Her impersonation of the Crazy Vaclav character was utterly perfect. “What country is this car from?” 

“It no longer exists.” They both fell into soft laughter at that, their little skit from the cartoon having them both feeling entertained.  

“I remember the first episode I ever saw, with Homer repeatedly falling down the cliff,” she reminisced, snorting with laughter. “I was about five, I think. My mother thought I was warped to find it so funny, but it’s the funniest moment for certain,” she spoke, Niklas yanking her foot away from his crotch and resting it on his thigh instead, idly playing with her toes.  

He clicked his fingers, pointing at her. “Agreed.” It was a strange juxtapose, two people who so revelled in the darker, more criminal side of life, both having an affinity for the iconic, light-hearted cartoon. “A close second is him losing it in episode based on The Shining. No TV and no beer make Homer go crazy.” 

She beamed, obliging him in continuation. “Don’t mind if I do!” Her enactment of Homer indeed going crazy had him booming with laughter, people turning to stare. It was utterly ridiculous, the black metal musician and the drug dealer, broken from the veneer of hardness surrounding them, as well as their mental and sexual teasing by the reciting of a kid’s cartoon.  

He topped up their glasses with the last of the bourbon, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, offering her one, too. All while his other hand preoccupied itself with her foot. 

“How are you enjoying my toes?” 

Looking down at the dainty foot, he then stared at her intently. “I’ll be enjoying them much more when they’re in my mouth.”  

Oooh, the wink he followed those words with. Her pussy clenched in an instant. ��Got a thing for feet, hmm?” 

A thing was putting it mildly. “You could say that. Feet, feet in high heels, in nylons. Legs in nylons. My fetishes are well-documented.” Running his index finger down the centre of her foot, he rotated it a few times before returning it to tickle over her toes. “What are your fetishes?” 

“Money and power.” 

He raised an eyebrow. “I meant sexual, and you know that I did.” 

“Who said money and power can’t be sexual?” Watching him, she knew from his lowered gaze, the expectance in his eyes, that he wouldn’t accept that. Well, if there was ever a time to tease a little more... “Having the weight of a man on me, feeling pinned, being held down. I’m boss in every aspect of my life, and I rarely deviate in the bedroom. Sometimes, though, I like to submit.”  

She certainly had when he’d picked her up and fucked her against his hallway wall. Then again, with the sexual force of nature that was Niklas, she’d had little choice.  

The information shared was met by a look of appreciation, his glass lifted, the contents sunk in one gulp. “Drink up, and I can make that happen for you.” 

Pulling her foot from his grasp, she slid it in a slow glide down his leg, looking out from beneath her long lashes at him. Picking up the glass, she made a show of licking her lips before tipping the warming bourbon down her throat, slipping her foot back into her shoe. “Let’s go.”  

Time seemed to move slowly as they walked to the end of the row, turning the corner, Taissa keying in her code on the front door. It felt like a storm brewing, the heat gathering thickly as they stepped into the elevator, heading three floors up, the air becoming heavy, glances stolen, the anticipation creeping over them like a fog.  

Putting the key in her door, she felt him sweep her hair from her neck, teeth biting down, the pin pricks of pain melting like icicles trickling down her spine, turning to pull him to her level and kiss him with ferocity. He herded her backwards, lifting her with ease, the open plan of the large space meaning he didn’t need to inquire over bedroom location. Clothes were shed en route, their bodies hitting the bed, mouths locked together as he pinned her beneath his weight, taking her wrists in an encircled grip and pressing them either side of her head.  

“How’s that?”  

How was that? Enough to feel the petals of her cunt begin to become slick for him, Taissa transfixed at watching the blue of his eyes almost eclipsed entirely by rapidly inking pupils. “Amazing, but it can wait.” Pulling from the grip, she pressed her hands to his chest, pushing him off of her and back to his feet. “Right now, there’s not much I need more than your cock in my mouth.”  

He hummed a chuckle, raising an eyebrow as his hand tangled in her hair, giving it a short, sharp tug. “I’m not about to stop... that.”  

The pause between words couldn’t be helped, his breath hitching, watching himself vanish completely between her full lips. She kept him swallowed back, her mouth pulsing around the very base of his cock a few times, tongue flickering the underside before slowly gliding back up his shaft. Just that, and she already had him mindless. The feel of her nails scraping down his sides only added to it. 

“Fuck,” he whispered, chest shuddering, transfixed at the sight, his hand tightening in her hair again sharply. “You look even prettier, choking on my cock.” 

Pushing further into her throat, he triggered her gag reflex, Taissa releasing him to spit on his shaft, pumping it with her hand thereafter, tongue gliding over the tip. It made lightning begin to flicker at the base of his spine, roughly forcing himself back between her lips again, grunting quietly when her fingers began to pinch and twist at one of his nipples.  

“Oh, even though it’s a little late, you’d better not fucking have herpes or anything else nasty. I’ll fucking cut your balls off if you do,” she spoke, sucking the head of his cock, Niklas laughing through his nose. He didn’t doubt she would. 

“Surprisingly, I actually don’t. I got forced into an STI test recently, so I know I’m fine.” 

She paused, her eyebrow fluttering. “Forced?” 

“Mm,” he hummed, watching himself disappear in her mouth once more. “If you bareback two patients in the same mental facility as you within the space of forty-eight hours, they make you get tested.” 

“Animal,” she quipped, turning her head to bite the side of his hip. 

“I have a feeling that is exactly what you like about me.” He wasn’t wrong, Taissa returning her mouth to his cock and once again, making him vanish. Fuck, she was too good at sucking dick, Niklas feeling himself beginning to ascend quite rapidly, fingers weaving tighter in her hair as he began to fuck her mouth, his chest starting to rise and fall more rapidly.  

Feeling him becoming firmer within her mouth gave her the most delicious little shocks of excitement, becoming dewier at her apex, imagining how it would soon feel to have him inside her, her arousal glowing like moonbeams through the very depths of her.  

That gathered excitement spurred her mouth quicker upon him, her tongue teases becoming more potent, Niklas’s hand still clutched hard upon her hair. His gravelly groans became more frequent, her lips tightening, oh, so tight around him, pleasure skittering over his tremble-wracked body.   

The embers began to crackle, glowing, ever nearing bursting into flame, Taissa sensing it, speeding her mouth up until she felt him pulsing between her lips, shooting his load onto her tongue with a guttural grunt as his hips swayed forward, swallowing back every last hot spurt. 

“Sufficiently ruined?” 

The look he gave her was all darkened lust, pushing her back on the bed, yanking her legs up and taking one of her feet, sucking her toes with a groan. “No. Trust me, though. You’re about to be.”  

She could barely wait. 

[iantimony]

big ol' tuesdaypost

listening: background noise for the week has been relistening to TANIS. not gonna lie, y'all, this podcast has not aged well! it is simply not very good! it was always kinda mid with regard to dialogue etc but now after listening to other narrative podcasts (TMA, Silt Verses, Wolf359, etc) it's even worse. all it ever really had going for it was Vibes and it's hanging on that by a thread. however, it is serving the purpose of essentially white noise. audio drama equivalent of eating packing peanuts.

I also got surprised in one of the early episodes because Elisa Lam's name wasn't censored - I could have SWORN that at the time there was a pretty large backlash to using a real person's tragedy and name in a narrative fiction podcast so they went and censored her name out? like, that's why all the following episodes have that disclaimer about "for legal and safety reasons we've elected to change some names and leave others out entirely"? okay yes live mid-writing of this I went and checked and the transcript of that episode literally says "Also, we have decided to entirely redact the name of one person who has passed away whose name was used in this episode. It appears in this transcript as [REDACTED]." did I somehow get an unedited version in my podcast app??? very odd.

when I got bored of TANIS or needed something more engaging/stimulating I got back on The Silt Verses season 2! on s2e3 now for reference. especially in contrast with TANIS it is so phenomenal lol.

you will notice that last week I linked "Pale Green Things" from the album The Sunset Tree by The Mountain Goats. this made me realize that a song I listen to a lot around this time of year ("This Year", obviously, lol) is on the same album. I have embarrassing news which is that I have listened to exactly one Mountain Goats album all the way through (Jenny from Thebes) so I resolved to listen to The Sunset Tree all the way through.

gang, this is not a surprise, or news, but man, this album fucking whips. it's so good. why didn't I do this years ago. oh my god.

Broom People

Dilaudid

Magpie

reading: "Bad Influence" by Mia Sato - duuuuuuuuuude lol. I am no legal expert but I think I know how this case is gonna go because let's be totally real. the beige home shade is really funny to me, not quite a maximalist but someone who loves her home with objects that are colorful, lively, full of sentiment, and secondhand where I can make it (i.e. not mass market sludge).

On the Origin of the Hebrew Deity-Name El Shaddai by F. M. Behymer - a discussion of the name 'El Shaddai' in contexts of fertility came up in weekly torah study this week and the rabbi was wondering if there were any real scholarly sources related to that beyond just noting it a few times in scripture. naturally I immediately went to jstor. interesting article, not sure if it's exactly what my rabbi was thinking about but I will be emailing it to him.

[Is] BookTok for Dummies[?] by Chels - I am not a tiktok girly (I have deleted social media apps from my phone because I find accessing them through web browser is less addictive, and tiktok simply does not function in a web browser so I don't use it) so I am very removed from these dynamics. call me crazy but I do not care if people on tiktok are reading porn because [looks at my ao3 history] glass houses, etc. the weird reactionary bent against romance novels is very strange to me.

Static by purplewhales on ao3 :3

watching: the death of personal style by Mina Le - I've definitely never been as extravagant as she is known to be but I do love a little Outfit(tm), especially since I have officially acquired my Good Leather Jacket this fall. cooking this one in my brain still though because it takes me SO long to get ready for the day and having a 'uniform' would probably. help that. lol.

The Winter Reset Guide by Morgan Evelyn Cook - she's kinda basic (in a positive way) but I've been enjoying her vids along with Caroline Winkler as background noise. ngl I love her high five thing it's very cute. I did stop everything to hold my hand up like I was high-fiving her. her dog is adorable too.

LED Christmas lights which don't hurt the eyes by Technology Connections. "this is not what christmas looks like. it looks like a vape shop. or, worse, a gaming PC." extremely funny thank you autism etc

I bought the world's most expensive yarn by Cinema Knits - the background noise while my soup was simmering and I was crocheting another mouse cat toy. cozy bliss.

The Online Gambling Epidemic by Drew Gooden - I'm becoming more of a hockey person (especially with the women's league coming up let's goooo) and while I'm not that tapped into it I'm sure gambling there exists, though it doesn't seem as plastered across everything as it is with football?

relatedly: watched a hockey game in the background on Saturday while I ran dnd! my mom and brother were there in person so I tuned in remotely to keep up :) also watched the Sirens/Frost game on Sunday yippee

playing: as above: ran dnd on Saturday! once again I spent time before it agonizing how I did not want to even a little bit but after actually doing it I had a lot of fun.

making: like a fool, I left the container with my winter wear open and my cat RIPPED THE POMPOM OFF the top of a hat I made a few years ago. it's no great loss - the pompom really wasn't big enough, I didn't have enough of the beige yarn I'd really wanted to use - and she didn't eat any of the yarn, just relished in tearing it all apart, so I made a new one with some leftover of the white. this one is bigger and fluffier and definitely matches the vibe of the hat better so I'm not mad. it's been deadly cold here, like windchills bringing it to single digits, so I've actually gotten some good wear out of it the past few days.

made what will hopefully be a lemon coaster but I think I gave it one too many rows of the interior yellow so stay tuned, plus a mousie for my cat :)

further work on the holiday card for this year! sketches followed by some inspo images:

sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

eating: yayy thanksgiving. many leftovers, etc. made a big ass kugel that was demolished over two different get-togethers, gonna make another one for a potluck at temple this coming Friday! might make that one with crushed pineapple because every time I mention it my grandma sighs wistfully and says how her mom used to make it that way.

I also made this sunchoke soup from some sunchokes that I blanched and froze about a month ago. I halved the recipe because I only had about a pound of sunchokes and this is soooo good. no picture because I'm ngl it looks like sludge lol. made waffles again too.

finally: little emotional support cheese board from the other day, lol.

feat. paesanella ciresa (soft vaguely mushroomy?), somerdale red dragon (very dijon mustard-y), cotswold (super chives and onion flavor), and appenzeller white label (swiss adjacent) picked up as little samples from the cheese counter castoff bin. and olives and mozz balls of course.

misc: really enjoyed these few days off. it is cold as fuck here which is not encouraging me to get back in the swing of things but it has put me in cozy mode. I did reformat my resume in LaTeX so now it's sexy for my conference next week because I am … printing out a few copies I guess ?? to bring to hand to people if needed. do people still do that. who fucking knows.

[beck-a-leck]

Hello, what are your headcanon ages for the 3ot characters?😊

Oh my gosh, Nonny, this ask has been sitting in my inbox since January, and I completely forgot about it! it must have come in shortly after I answered a similar ask about the RF4 characters ages and then just fell through one of the swiss cheese holes in my brain. 😓 Sorry about that!

Funny coincidence, I've recently gotten back into playing 3oT, so all of the characters are fresh in my mind. So I guess I was cleaning out my inbox at just the opportune moment.

3oT has a ton of characters, so I'm assuming you're asking about the Marriage Candidates as opposed to Every Single Character. And I don't have any real solid numbers, just more like general age-ranges for the characters. So here goes!

Holly/Henry - They're young adults. Young enough to still be living at home with their parents (which for an American-coded family is not something that typically happens past the earliest of your 20s in fiction), and not yet have settled into a career. I know in Earth and Rebirth, I wrote Holly as being 21 (20 when the story starts), and I based that strongly off the vibes I got from the game. When you start the game your parents seem ready and accepting that the player character wants to set off on their own because you are of that age, the only push back comes when the PC says they want to be a farmer. So yeah, I really seem them as being a very young adult, no older than a recent college graduate, so in the 18-23 age range.

Lisette - She's in her mid-20s, I think. She says once that she took over the flower shop from her parents after she finished horticulture school, which I imagine was like a college program or some equivalent. So her years from 18-22 were likely spent in school. And I also believe she mentioned having run the shop for a few years by the time the game starts, so I've always placed her around 24-27ish. She could easily be read as older, she doesn't get specific about her age, and since this game does better than most with regards to characters close to 30 complaining about their age.

Wayne - He's a mid to late 20s guy. I think he mentions having lived in Westown for several years by the beginning of the game after getting assigned there as the postman. He doesn't talk about other previous assignments, but that doesn't mean he didn't have any. I believe he did mention doing the "normal schooling" before he became a postman, so it's possible he went to college as well and didn't start working until he was in his early 20s. But even getting "several" years into his 20s that can still put him at 23-25 at the young end. But I can easily see Wayne being anywhere from 25-30.

Ford - He's definitely in his 30s. I'd have to say somewhere in his mid-30s if I needed to be specific. He's a doctor, and assuming he didn't fast track himself through college and med school and graduate med school at an early age, then he would have been about 26 at the end of med school. There's mention of Ford having been Westown's doctor for the better part of a decade, so following that logic he's probably somewhere from 34-37. He's definitely the oldest of the marriage candidates (not counting the supernatural ones)

Komari - She's a tricky one to place. Her general energy and mannerisms can definitely skew her to the younger end of the 20s. But at the same time, that could just make her appear younger than she really is. I don't remember much of her later events (and haven't seen them since I started my replay) but I remember her seeming to be caught between needing to figure out what to do/how to grow up and be taken seriously. But in her early dialogue she very quickly seems to take the PC under her wing keeping an eye on them like an older sibling might. I think given the mix, I tend to read her in her early to mid-20s. Grown up, but maybe not fully matured, and not yet seen as full grown in her father's eyes. So 22-25ish.

Kasumi - I think she's younger than Komari, not by much, maybe a year or two difference, but I think she is the younger of the two. If I recall correctly, she's still a relatively new teacher when you're introduced to her. So if she's finished her own schooling and just in the first couple years of being a teacher, she's probably somewhere from 21-24 years old.

Hinata - Like Holly/Henry, I think he's a young one. Probably the youngest marriage candidate. He's been in Tsuyukusa for a while when you meet him, I believe he came here to work for Moriya when he was 13, but he still hasn't been working there for as long as Shizu and Ittetsu. So probably less than 10 years. And given he's still seems to be in the early stages of his acting training when he mentions it, it points to him being younger. I've personally headcanoned him as the same age as the PC, but really he could be anywhere from 18-23 years old.

Yuzuki - He's another tricky one to place. Given his life experiences with his illness in his youth, and his continuing fight with chronic illness, it could very easily account towards "aging" him prematurely, so he looks older than he really is, not to mention forcing him to mature much faster than he otherwise might have. However, I think Komari mentions growing up with Yuzuki and being friends, and Hinata and him became friends shortly after Hinata moved into town. So I think their ages are pretty close, within a few years of each other. So I could happily put him around 23-26ish. But honestly, an argument could be made to put Yuzuki in his late-20s. Having been sick for so long could also just mean he made friends with whatever kids he could keep up with, and that would have been the ones younger than him.

Iluka and Siluka - being twins, obviously they're going to be the same age. I generally place them in their early to mid20s. Somewhere from 23-27 I think given their experiences as children they all matured a lot faster than they would have otherwise. And given their town's culture, once they were able to do real work, they started working. So they probably started their training as priestesses in their teens and have been at it for a while now. So even if they're young, they've still probably got a decade of experience under their belts. Arguments could be made for them to be older, but I think if they were closer to their 30s or in their 30s, they probably would be more like friends with Zahau and Caolila, but when they talk about those two, it's more like they were babysitters for the kids, as opposed to cool older friends.

Ludus - I've always headcanoned him as around the same age as the twins. Older, but within a year or two. So he's also mid20s. Same arguments for why he's not older as for the twins. Their experiences had them maturing faster, he was probably beginning his jack-of-all-trades work when he was still in his teens, though probably didn't start the heavy construction projects until he was older and more experienced. (and ya'know, despite the game's suggestion he can't be the only person building houses. there has to be a team of carpenters/construction workers who help him with the jobs) So like the twins, he's 23-27.

Now for the Special Candidates!

Stephanie - I could see her being in her late20s to early30s. She's clearly been at her MC career for a while by the time she settles down in Westown. She mentions having traveled and lived lots of places, but this is the first place she feels like wanting to settle in for the long term. So I can happily place her around the 26-32 age range.

Woofio - mild spoilers for his back story, but he's gotta be decades, if not over a century old. I don't remember if he specified how old he really is, but I know he's MUCH older than anybody else in the game (deities excluded). However, if I wanted to assign an age range to the way he acts, I think like Stephanie he's mid20s to early 30s. Old enough to have gotten lots of experience with animals, learning to care for them, and judge them, and build a career on the festival circuit. So 26-32 for him as well.

Inari - They're hard to pin down. Being a deity, I'm pretty sure they're several hundred years old, if not over 1000. They do mention something like for them aging one year is equivalent to humans aging 10 years. They also look very young. but they do insist to the PC that even if they might look childish, they are much much older and more mature than they look. However, given the way they act and behave, even if they're mature enough to be an adult, they're a very Young adult. Having never spoken to a human before, since mortals can't see them, they're very naive about a lot of things, particularly when it comes to relationships and such. if I had to stick an age on them, it's gonna be Babey Adult range, 17-19.

That's all a lot of text so the tl;dr version:

Holly/Henry: 18-23

Lisette: 24-27

Wayne: 25-30

Ford: 34-37

Komari: 22-25

Kasumi: 21-24

Hinata: 18-23

Yuzuki: 23-26

Iluka: 23-27

Siluka: 23-27

Ludus: 23-27

Stephanie: 26-32

Woofio: 26-32

Inari: 17-19

[darkpokemonspecialist]

OOC: List of Boundaries

This is list is subject to change. People who do not abide by these boundaries (after being informed of them) will be blocked. If I unknowingly cross your boundaries, let me know and I will correct myself and apologize.

Info: Pronouns She/Her. I TRY to remember yours, too. Let me know if I mess up, I'll correct myself. I also tag information about my character as "character lore" and I run a separate blog about my other OC ( @teamnight )to keep storytelling going smoother since it doesn't make sense storywise for my characters to share a blog.

Edited: False Accusations are... I've come to realize...are a huge trigger for me. I guess I always assumed reacting this harshly to such things was normal, rather than a result of the crap I went through.

If at any point I'm no longer comfortable with where the roleplay is going, I will break character so we can either change direction or just quickly make up a resolution to the conversation and drop it. If you are uncomfortable with where it is going, I encourage you to do the same.

No NSFW roleplay. I'm not keeping it G, we acknowledge sex exists, here. But if I see ONE person trying to get sexy fun times with me (or worse, send me their barely disguised fetish like what happened on an older blog years ago), I'm out.

I am ok with in-character arguing and banter between characters. It adds realism. Out of character, we keep it civil. If we need to take a breather or it starts to feel a bit TOO real, I understand.

No gore. I don't think that would come up, but putting it here just to be safe.

No IRL Politics. Pokemon World Politics are fine. Make fun of the Galarian Monarchy all you want! Accuse the Unovan President of being a Ditto! Be a Pokemon Conspiracy Theorist, it'll be fun.

As of November 3, 2024, way too early in the morning, that's all I currently have. Any new boundaries will be listed and dated below.

Update: November 3, 2024,3:50

After reflection, I don't think it's wise for me to interact with most villain OCs, save for my own villain character or some of the "milder" ones. A lot of the behaviors most villain OCs behave in...hit a little too close to home, making it hard to separate the roleplay from my past experiences.

Update November 29, 2 am, gosh I should be ASLEEEEEEP

I am operating on the assumption that most real world historical events didn't happen in the Pokemon universe, or have a Pokemon equivalent. Unless The Pokemon Company is crazy enough to officially say something like, "the World Wars canonically happened and the Pokemon fought fiercely while trying to avoid mustard gas and committing unforgivable war crimes"... let's assume they didn't. Along with other historical conflicts, genocides, and whatever else falls into this category. Pokemon makes up their own fictional conflicts, anyway.

My character's universe is MOSTLY canon compliant, save for occasionally throwing in events from the anime, and incorporating my fan made Pokemon region and OCs.

[gildedmuse]

So, I just know all of Tumblr was wondering, "hey, you remember that really weird ZoLaw fan with the annoyingly overly stylized post? I wonder if she's seen this and if she has any theories or thoughts, an observation or two?"

Well, allow me to set your wandering mind at ease, fictional Tumblr fan. The answer is: No. No, I really don't.

I have like three hundred.

[I also spent time just trying to track down as many translations as possible. Is Tera A Criminal's Daughter or The Daughter Of Thieving Bandits! These are CLEARLY separate things and can ENTIRELY change how her utter nonpresence in Zoro's life shaped him! Though I can take comfort in knowing that, regardless of what kind of crimes her father was committing they were more important than anything his daughter ever did in her entire life.]

And, hey, as might as well jump right into that whole mess.

1. Wait, Zoro's mom is dead? Thank goodness, I was worried Oda forgot one!

(AKA: Stop. Murdering. Moms.)

I'll go first, I don't mind saying when I was wrong. True, in the past I may have suggested that the vast majority of female characters in One Piece come off as ever so slightly, "leaning into sexist tropes with unadulterated joy; it's the misogynistic tropes equivalent of a child running naked through a grocery store. It's right there, everyone sees it, yet people shut up and continue shopping in part because, well, these days you just expect most people to cover that junk! What would you even say? And if you DO speak up and call out the inappropriate, be prepared for blank stares and tantrums; but THEY don't mind! THEY don't think it's wrong! You're just being mean!"

More or less a direct quote.

However, I see now that I rushed to judgement and the reality of the situation is far more nuanced. With that in mind, I was just wondering if someone could help answer some of the questions I have.

Like: Why does Oda believe that it's illegal for (maternal) female characters to survive other character's backstories?

More importantly, why hasn't someone just reached out to explain the misconception!? It can't be that difficult. If nothing else, just have a lawyer or judge or other expert in censorship on hand. Or is the one of those cases where back in highschool his friends made something up and then kept pretending it was real to see if he'd believe you and not only did he fall for it, it took over 20 years before he learned that, what, no that's not illegal. That would be crazy if it were an actual law. Cause you know, after the first 10 years I think yeah you have to just lean into it. Pretend it's a creative decision on your part and definitely not because you were terrified of being sentenced to a slow and humiliating public death.

Just to be clear that's definitely what's up, right? I mean, I'm struggling to think of another reason....able excuse why a story that I really enjoy keeps playing the same old sexist tropes cards again and again to the point of absurdity. It would just help if I had a valid excus- explanation. I almost mistyped the word explanation.

....

....

So I imagine it went like.

"That's the third mangaka they've had to Publically Execute this week!"

"They've started taking this law way more serious lately."

"This one really deserved it though! I heard his main character has a mother in her late forties!"

"That does seem old to have your first child."

"No, he's the middle of three and 22 years old. The story even has flashbacks of defining moments in his childhood and never once did she try to sacrifice herself for him, get murdered by his enemies, or die in meaningless unrelated accidents."

"Damn, that's cold to be there for all the protagonist core moments and not die and help him develop and grow a character? They must have a very antagonistic relationship. Is she actually the villain."

"Not that we know, and when they asked about this being a possible plot twist since - obviously if she's evil no laws are being broken."

"Well, of course, that's the whole reason Statue 2-dash-57 exists; if creators can show they have consistently been building up to a surprise twist then the female character in question can continue to live so long as she continues to be unrepentant and unlikable until the resolution of her arch by the protagonist."

"That's the thing! Under oath not only did man present no evidence to support her identity as a secret villain, he went on the record stating he wanted to depict their relationship as one of a normal modern 20 year old and his mother."

"That can't be true! What publishing company would even print that!?"

"It gets worse. I told you he was a middle child? Well, according to those who've read the actual manga, his younger sister was really sick as a child."

"Oh, well, at least-"

"It was just a fish allergy. She's perfectly fine."

"Sometimes I feel this law is unnecessarily harsh but.... Then you hear stories like that, and you realize that some people really are monsters."

[kkerossne]

I need the system update that ppl have that allows you to lie down and fall asleep instantly without ruminating for 3 hours

Need to sit here and write about life and everything I never said

I love earphones. Yeeees. Plug both my ears and talk to me through the cord. Nothing matters I got my noise shield on

oh yes, oh yes, oh yes they both, oh yes they both, oh yes they both reached for the gun, the gun, the gun, the gun, oh yes they both reached for the gun, for the gun.

I don’t want to feel uncomfortable in my body anymore

Every time I’m mad at someone I torture their fav fictional character in my head

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@contrrl

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Jul 30, 2024

You stood me up for 30 mins in the heat now Rick Grimes is going to get it

Keeping trinkets to remember memories is the equivalent of folding the corner of a page so that you can co

me back to it

I want to confess everything, be ugly, be pathetic, be stupid, and be loved still

There’s a reason vulnerability is called a strength. It takes fucking guts to just be with no buffer. To be loved for what you’re not… is not to be loved at all

I get offended when my phone needs me to empty storage. I need these 22.987 pictures

Stumbling onto songs I listened to in my teens and being zapped with feeling I forgot

Drank sparkling water at 6 am like an alcoholic bc the bubbles feel like an alarm

Had an aunty that made me stand in the corner once as punishment and I thought “ok bet”. When she said I could come back now I went “mh I don’t think I will” and she had to physically drag me away. Everytime she’d tick me off I’d go “oh you’ve done it now, I’m going to the CORNER

since you can’t behave” and she’Archaeologists in the future are going to start throwing up and bawling after the 100th set of veneers they excavated panic “do NOT go to the corner”

Ppl quoting my shit like “my humour is so fucked up” BRO IM FUNNY

( notices something green ) maybe life is worth living

I wish I could be casual about anything but my brain latches onto things like the facehugger from Alien

You’ll tweet some random shit about you and get qrts like “jungkook”, “this is so bakougo freakugo and fartkugo” and I can’t even argue like yeah maybe freakugo would say that idk

Archaeologists in the future are going to start throwing up and bawling after the 100th set of veneers they excavate

Having to feed myself feels like I’m the horse AND the stable boy. Give me a break dude

Having your own place is such a warm feeling. The space between these walls is my private little burrow. It’s always there, unchanged and familiar, to retire to when life gets rough or unpredictable

Going to start tweeting like Kafka journaling. 22 July 2024, fuck mine foolish baka life

Trying to give someone my full attention while my brain is talking to itself and there’s a little sound and some kind of movement in the background and what did you say

Just once, I want to get washed like a rag in a washing machine and go round and round to soft bossa nova

You better not be hyperaware of your existence and body agai- oh gosh darn it

be nice to franz kafka — “He asked for no pickles” Stop babygirling dead dudes. His bones are fucking rattling every time you draw hearts on the metamorphosis pages

Every day spend on this earth feels like day 1 and I know nothing

I don’t get how ppl find the energy to cheat. I get overwhelmed just replying to all of my friends, how do you handle keeping up with a double life

In a situationship with routine. One day she kills me, another day I love her

“Routine killed me” I shriek when I use her as knife to gut myself from navel to sternum and throw my tongue out to the side for extra credibility

I hate being a sad drunk. You drink with friends to loosen up and have a good time, all of a sudden Mr. Depression McSadalot wakes up and wants a say

Had to tell my therapist I hold meetings with her in my head all the time because I’ve confessed so much to her imaginary self I’ve started losing track what I’ve said to who

Looking at mutuals’ tweets with my hands behind my back like I’m at the museum

[fandomfloozy]

I coined the term Post Fic Clarity™️ with my friend group and I feel I can share it here

So we all know about "post nut clarity" and how men supposedly have different feelings about things and/or people after... Finishing; but in the moment, they're ALL about it for the sake of the euphoric feeling that comes right before... The end, y'know.

ANYWAY, you get it. Beer goggles come off. Nutting essentially sobers you up. And so, Post Fic Clarity™️ is the equivalent that I just so happened to develop while in the midst of reading a very romance-centered, smut-heavy fic while simultaneously getting back on speaking terms with a situationship from my high school days

For context ✨

This was a genuine situationship. Not what people these days define as a "situationship" which is usually actually, truly just a multiple-year long romantic relationship that they don't have the internal security to define in proper terms. That's besides the point. My relationship with this man for multiple years was toxic. Strung along for a long time, sat through various relationships for the sake of waiting for "my turn," allowed him to treat me VERY shittily, gave so much for little in return, supported him through rough patches in his life and was a rock he could lean on until I finally said "enough's enough" and stopped answering his midnight phone calls to go get high with him.

Cut him off. Cold turkey.

UNTIL, fast forward months/years later, something happened while I was very conveniently reading this wonderful xreader fanfic. Beautifully written. The dynamic between reader and the ML was SOOOOO good.

While reading, the real life man, whom I had cut off a long time ago and resigned myself to never speaking to again, reached out to me saying: he was sober, had gone go rehab, had "found God again," and he wanted to apologize for all those years he took my place in his life for granted.

Now, buddy, I had some nice 🩷 rose colored lenses 🩷 on from the ML of the fic treating reader so kindlyyyyyy. Him ravishing reader and calling her pet names and treating her like she hung the very moon in the sky. It had me believing this REAL LIFE MAN's shit was legit, and boooooooyyyyy was I eating it the FUCK UP.

We end up talking. Setting up a day to meet and catch up. I'm low-key kicking my feet and giggling. And BLESS my friends, I was so excited telling them ALL about it. They were so supportive while internally being like

SO supportive.

All while I was set to meet up with this man again who had been NOTHING but bad news since I met him.

And THEN!!!!!

And then.... I finished the fic. (Or at least as much as was available of it at the time. I was waiting on the next update.)

And as time went on after the fact, inching closer to the date this guy and I were meant to meet up..... The Fic Feelings started to wear off... And it was suddenly dawning on me that I wanted nothing to do with this man 😭😭😭😭😭

The feelings I was feeling of hope and attraction and excitement suddenly melted into DREAD that I had to see him in person. I was NOT looking forward to it as I started to realize that I was PROJECTING feelings I was feeling for a FICTIONAL CHARACTER ONTO A REAL LIFE MAN. But as SOON as I stopped reading the fic the feelings STOPPED.

POST FIC CLARITY ™️

Anyway, he cancelled on me and it was the biggest relief of my life lol

My friends tore into him in the GC as soon as I admitted that I didn't feel the way I thought I felt. They were straight up like "thank GOD." They're so good to me 🥹

So yeah, Post Fic Clarity™️

BIG TAKEAWAY: we can regret our choices after euphoric feelings too, my friends. Ya don't gotta have a dick

Side note: the fic was Rough Day. "Sweet girl" did something to my psyche. I'm so glad you hadn't updated yet, nodroids

[ofallthingsnasty]

If Crocodile gave you a purse dog (or kitty! Or any animal you want really) for being such a good basement wife what would you name them?

I wouldn’t want to name them after names I have for potential future cats (like “Purrrincess Leia” for example) because it’d make me sad thinking about my old life. I’d probably be really cheesy or something and name them “Hope” or after a fictional character that went through so much adversary and had a happy ending (like the One Piece equivalent of “Cinderella”)

That is a valid question, you're totally right 🤔 Having a little pet would be so bittersweet, I never really thought about that. But I have to confess - I am ass at naming animals. I've had a lot of bunnies in my life and all except for the first one had no names. That one had a people name - I love it when pets have people names, it's ridiculous to me. I'd probably name mine something like 'baby' or 'angel', that's just something I always say to animals I interact with. (Because that's what they are... angels...) It wouldn't be their proper name, rather a nickname that sticks, you know? And when referring to them - sticking to the pug for example - it would be something like 'thank you for walking her', 'did she have fun on her walk?'. That little thing's name is baby for all she knows and 'she/her' to others lmao

But I really like your take. Maybe you've always wanted x kind of dog or cat; and now that you have it - and the circumstances are beyond fucked up - it feels utterly wrong and empty... The more I think about being his basement wife (looking at some recent revelations in my life, too), the more I realize that it'd be utterly miserable and that I'd get depressed extremely quickly 😭

[oisinwrites]

              Bad Panda Mom

This is fan-fiction. I do not own Zootropolis. All rights go to Disney and Pixar. This fan-fiction was based on real facts about pandas and may contain spoilers for the movie.

“This is wrong!”, said Officer Judy Hopps, looking at the street vendor, where so many tabloids and gossip magazines all showed the same large, rotund, middle-aged panda in bright pink flowery clothing. Apparently, she was the worst mother in all of Zootropolis, but Judy didn’t think this was possible. Then again, if she hadn’t known better, she wouldn’t have thought it was possible for the media to be this unbearably harsh. It was bamboozling to her. “I’m not so squeaky clean myself, but having two cubs, only loving one and abandoning the other, that is very outrageous.” Said Nick Wilde, who was just flicking through his smartphone. “you’re a parent too, aren’t you?”, asked Judy. “I thought you had figured out by now,” answered Nick, “He’s not really a cub, He’s an adult of a different fox breed much smaller than me who pretended to be my baby as part of a con, which you fell for, because you were a rookie cop.” “It’s not like she was a cannibal trying to eat her own cub,” stated Judy,” it’s obvious she was just carrying him in her mouth, so we’ve both fallen for a con.” “Maybe I should have been more careful,” Nick admitted, “you can’t always believe what you read in the papers, but I know about con’s and this is technically more of a hyperbole than a con.”

At the station, Judy wondered if it was the same Panda that she was now seeing as an equally large  panda in the same pink flowery clothing entered the building, followed by cameras and wiping her eyes with a tissue. This was confirmed by the thunderous voice of Chief Bogo. “Mrs. Panderson, you are here for questioning in relation to your cubs!”, he boomed. Officer Judy, Chief Bogo and Mrs. Panderson withdrew to another room and began the questioning. Chief Bogo’s imposing demeanour and quick temper made him perfect for the role of “bad cop”, while Officer Judies soft heart and sympathy towards mothers made her more suited to being “good cop”. “You may introduce yourself”, permitted officer Judy. “Hi, I’m Pamela Panderson, I am a mother of two, they are twins, but unfortunately have not been able to maintain custody of both cubs.” Answered Mrs. Panderson, still sniffling and wiping her eyes. Chief Bogo raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really”, he said, skeptically, “Why ever not?”. “I’m sure there’s a good reason.” Said Officer Judy.” Mrs. Panderson raised a paw and gestured towards her chest. “Well, I was able to get it going in here but…” “Argh, you’re on a tangent about breastfeeding!” interrupted Chief Bogo, “get to the point!” “No that’s okay,” said Officer Judy, “It’s a natural thing that all moms do or have done at some point, go on…”. Mrs. Panderson was already sniffling, but now she was really crying. “It was only enough for one cub! Their names are Fuzzy and Wuzzy, so I had to choose between Fuzzy and Wuzzy and have the other taken into care.”

“You had the choice no mother wants to have!”, exclaimed Judy. “Yes, but doesn’t Fuzzy have the right to know he has a twin brother called Wuzzy who was separated at birth?” asked Chief Bogo, “and are you aware that Fuzzy is obese?” “Panda cubs are supposed to be getting fatter and fatter,” said Judy, “I’d be worried if a panda cub wasn’t becoming a roly-poly blob of dough.” “Did you burn him alive by pouring barbecue sauce all over his body and lick it all off him?” asked Chief Bogo. “Why in blazes would I do that?”, exclaimed Mrs. Panderson, “then I’d burn my tongue!” “But did you lick him?”, he went on. “Well, that’s our culture,” answered Mrs. Panderson, “licking is a form of affection, it’s pretty much our equivalent of kissing and we panda moms lick our cubs all the time, but especially potty time, when we lick their tummies.” “So, you weren’t trying to eat him?” he asked. “what? No, of course not!”, Mrs Panderson spluttered. “Did you bite his ear off?” Chief bogo asked next. “That’s ridiculous! Ear-nibbling is also a form of affection among pandas and it’s a gentle bite”, she answered. “You’ve been accused of so many ridiculous things, they can’t all be true!”, stated Judy. “But we have found out one that is true,” replied Chief Bogo, “I would like to ask one more thing, did you sit on top of Fuzzy and crush him?”. “Well, yes and no”, answered Mrs. Panderson, “Thats another thing we Panda moms do, but it’s just a way of keeping them safe and we’re very careful not to crush them. I suppose it might seem strange to those outside of our culture, but in the panda communities its normal for mothers to squat down with their bum over their cub. It also signals to those nearby to watch out for those little cubs and please be gentle.” “Does that mean it was just a load of exaggerated nonsense all along?” asked Chief Bogo. “I think you’re a wonderful mum!” said Judy. “Thank you, but it’s very clear that Mrs. Tigerson does not agree.”, answered Mrs. Panderson.

“Who is this Mrs. Tigerson?” asked Judy. “I think it’s time to wrap it up”, said Chief Bogo, “We’ve found out what we needed.” “Well, she’s another mom, but she’s not a panda mom like me, she’s a tiger mom and I tend to avoid her.” Chief Bogo stood up. “You’re free to go.”, he said loudly and clearly. “Wait, I want to hear the rest of this!”, enthused Judy. “I Don’t bring fuzzy to the same pre-school where she’s around,” Mrs. Panderson went on, “or the same creche, or the same playground, okay, I think you get the picture now.” “I get that picture, but tell me more about why you avoid this other Mom?”, asked Judy. “I think the two of you can discuss this on your own time,” said Chief Bogo, “Its time for her to come back out of the station and you will probably be seeing her on parole.” Mrs. Panderson left the way she came, followed by cameras, journalists and officer Judy. She was still sniffling, but this time she was also thanking officer Judy in front of the press. The media had been incredibly harsh, but one particular Bunny had cut her some slack.

It was mostly Nick who she was seeing and talking to on parole and they were still arguing about whether Mrs. Panderson was really a “bad mom”. “When you put a cub into care, you make sure it’s the right place.” argued Nick. “let’s look at this logically for a moment.” began Judy, “She probably would have been very careful about where this cub ended up, you can’t just ASSUME!” “I am looking at it logically!” answered Nick, ”bottle-feeding is an option.” “Yes, but you see, it’s not a complete formula.” Explained Judy, “what do you know about babies anyway? He wasn’t really a cub, he was an adult of another fox breed smaller than you pretending to be your baby.” “So, you admit it, you were just a rookie cop!” snapped nick. “Yes, it was a rookie mistake and you can call me a dumb bunny, but do you have any experience with actual cubs?” “Alright, I don’t know much about cubs”, nick admitted, “but was that the only reason she had to choose between two cubs?” “There could have been more, but chief Bogo cut it short.” complained Judy. “I don’t think he was really all that interested in the whole mother’s story. He didn’t even want to hear about breast-feeding.” “Well, all that sounds dumb to me too.”, said Nick. “Goodness, That Mrs. Panderson really is a disgrace!”, butted in a rather intimidating mother tiger who was holding onto her cub’s paw.

“Are you Mrs. Tigerson?” asked Officer Judy. “Yes, I am Tiffany Tigerson and this is my daughter Tia, who I am raising properly!” roared Mrs. Tigerson, “I haven’t had the police involved!” Judies heart melted when she saw into Tia the tiger Cubs large, round eyes and Tia the tiger cub looked into hers. ”Hellooo!! I’m officer Judy!”, she said as she began slightly bending over before the little cub, with her paws on her hips and her legs arched outwards. “Er… Hewwo officer Judy!” Tia the tiger cub answered politely. “she’s just adorable, have you any other cubs?” asked Judy, “Er, no, just the one.” Answered Mrs. Tigerson. “Then how can you judge a mother of two?” Judy continued. Mrs. Tigerson became speechless. “Ha! You can’t answer, can you?”, Judy smirked. “That’s some solid policing right there.” Nick muttered with a slight hint of sarcasm. Finally, Mrs Tigerson was able to answer, but she was still coughing and spluttering. “Is it wrong for me to judge other mothers?”, she asked, “but when you’re a parent, you have to get your affairs in order, her life is a mess!” “Isn’t everyone’s life a mess?”, asked Judy, this time roaring back with passion, “If you don’t share another moms load, then you’re only contributing to the same problems you’re complaining about!” “Wow, where is all this fire from!?” gasped Nick, “You sure are sharing a mothers load, but you’re not actually a mother!” “I…I don’t know,” answered Judy, “something just took a-hold of me!”

“I… I never thought about it like that before at all!!”, Mrs Tigerson choked, “My whole life I’ve been roaring at everyone, It’s the first time anyone had the guts to roar back at me and it’s changed my entire universe! As for that Mrs Panderson, how will I ever make it up to her after having been treating her like this for so long?! Come to think of it, I don’t see her that often anymore, is she… avoiding me?” “I don’t weally see Fuzzy panda or her mommy anymore.”, added Tia the tiger cub. “I’m sorry Tia, you should have a playmate like fuzzy panda,” Said Mrs. Tigerson, “but you haven’t, because I drove a wedge between his mother and me, pushing us further away from each other.” Now it was Nicks turn to become speechless. He had no idea what to make of what he had just witnessed. After the tigers left, with officer Judy and Tia the tiger cub politely waving goodbye, Judy then said to Nick, “I’d like to meet Mr. Panderson, I wonder if he’s a family man? You know all the ladies love that kind of man! They go crazy over the domestic types who are fully committed to being the best husband and father!” “That’s not their culture, Judy.” Sighed Nick. “What do you mean, that’s not their culture?”, asked Judy. “Let’s get real here.” Snorted Nick, “A male bunny doing all that domestic stuff? Yeah, I could Imagine that, but a male panda, pull the other one!”

The next day, they did get the chance to meet Mr. Panderson at the tram-stop. A very sleepy-looking panda in work-clothes got off the tram saying, “What a day at work, I’m exhausted and a little peckish, I really want to munch on some bamboo and then take a nap.” “Excuse me, you’re not under arrest,” Judy addressed him,” But there’s been a case of a mother panda who had one of her two cubs taken into care, are you by any chance the father?”, “Er.. I think so.” Yawned the sleepy panda. “What do you mean you think so?!”, Screeched Judy. “Are you Mr. Panderson?”, she asked. “Yup, I’ve got my work-badge here, Peter Panderson.”, He yawned. “See, I told you!”, said Nick. “Even though it would make the girls go wild?”, asked Judy. “What are you talking about?” asked Mr. Panderson. “Well, you are a girl, so I won’t argue with you there.”, Nick backed out. “But what is this about making the girls go wild?”, asked Mr. Panderson. “Oh, you know, being involved in the childcare and stuff like that.” Judy answered. “You mean women just love being in childcare so much?” asked Mr. Panderson, “Are they really that crazy?”. “Nooo… they GO crazy over a MAN being involved in the childcare!” Judy explained. “You mean that’s the kind of man that’s irresistible.”, said Mr. Panderson. “Yes!”, answered Judy. “Uh-oh, that’s not very good news for me!”, said Mr. Panderson. “This is the good news, you just heard it too late, but better late than never.”, Said Judy. “I sure hope that’s not what they want from a man, that’s really scary!”, panicked Mr. Panderson.

When Judy saw Mrs Panderson at the station again, not only were Fuzzy and Wuzzy there, meeting each other for the first time, but chief Bogo also announced another visitor who was there to see her. It was Mrs Tigerson, who had also brought her daughter. Judy couldn’t help crying when, in front of all the reporters and all the cameras, the two mothers hugged one another. “I disrespected you and I’m sorry.” Whispered Mrs Tigerson. “I had much more favourable circumstances to be a mom in and I didn’t think about it being a lot harder for other mothers, but now I see that the cubs should be allowed to have playdates with each other and for that to happen both their moms need to be together as friends.” “If we are going to arrange a playdate, that would make it up to me.”, answered Mrs. Panderson. “I forgive you.” “I, too, feel that I owe you an apology.” said Chief Bogo, “I think its these adorable baby pandas that are bringing out the worst in us and I allowed my emotions to interfere with my judgement, which isn’t very professional for a chief of police.” “what’s wrong with police being emotional?”, asked Judy, who was still honking into a pink, lacy handkerchief. “Well, I mean when it’s getting in the way of logic and reason.”, explained chief Bogo. “Hey, you should have been there when I managed to convince Mrs. Tigerson to make up with Mrs. Panderson!”, laughed Judy, “It’s strange, I don’t have children of my own, but there was a new fire in me unlike anything I had ever felt before, yet I still think I was able to see rationally at the same time. If I may say so myself, I must have been able to come up some good arguments to get her convinced like this.” “Well, even when you get to be police chief you’re still learning and from now on I will try harder to look at things in a more objective and detached way.”, answered Chief Bogo. “Things aren’t all so black and white, there are fuzzy areas.”

“Hey, I think the tabloids have shifted their focus!”, said officer Clawhauser, who was showing the magazine he’d been reading. “They used to be obsessed with Mrs. Panderson being a bad mom, now they’re all about Mr. Panderson being a dead-beat dad, but some bits are in his own words, so we can see that he’s at least making an effort, even if it is driving him crazy because it’s so far out of his comfort zone.” So, I have a long-lost twin brother who was separated at birth and you are that twin.”, said Fuzzy. “The police have helped me find my real family”, said Wuzzy. “And your mother was there, though you may not have known it.”, said Mrs Panderson. “I always Thought my mom was checking on someone, now I really know.”, said Fuzzy. “If I had to give up one of my children, I wanted to make sure they’re being treated humanely wherever I’ve left them.”, answered Mrs. Panderson. The next day, Judy met Nick again at the same street vendor and Nick was swiping through everything on his smartphone, as usual. Just like officer Clawhauser had said, the tabloids had shifted their focus, so now the new pandemonium was about Mr. Panderson being a deadbeat dad. “Wow, what a lazy father!”, remarked Nick. “Oh, come on!”, replied Judy, “He’s not mom, but he’s doing the best he can!”

[radarsteddybear]

Whumptober Day 9 - Can You Hear Me?

Fandom: Original Fiction (H.O.U.N.D.S.) Prompt(s): radio silence, "Can you hear me?" Rating: Teen Additional Tags: whump, hurt/comfort, friendship, found family, spy-fi

“Cass?  Cass, do you read me?”  Minnow opened and closed the channel a few times, the equivalent of hitting a telephone hook a couple of times to get the operator’s attention.  No dice.  Minnow lowered her ring.  It has been three days since anybody at H.O.U.N.D.S. had heard from Cassandra.  No telephone calls, no letters, no telegrams, nothing on the communicator rings.  Not even a signal from her homing beacon.  She was out on a mission so secret that not even Minnow was allowed to know what she was doing.  Mr. Thaddeus was the only one who knew the details, and he’d started getting worried two and a half days ago.  Unfortunately, though, not worried enough to send an extraction.

So here Minnow was, able to do nothing more than open a channel every hour or so and pray that Cassandra answered.  But so far, no luck.

Minnow stood from her desk and walked down the hall towards Mr. Thaddeus’ office.  At some point, an extraction would be worth breaking mission security; Minnow just hoped that that time had come.

About halfway down the hall, Minnow began to hear a familiar beeping.  She stopped and held up her hand.  Sure enough, the light was flashing.  Minnow twisted the setting to open the channel.

“Channel open,” she said, hardly daring to breathe.  “This is Agent George.”

“Hello?  Is this thing on?”

“Cass?  Can you hear me?”

“Is this working?  God, I hope it’s working.”

“Cass!  Are you ok?  Where are y–”

Cassandra’s voice came through again, cutting her off.  “I can’t–I don’t know if this is working or not,” she said.  “I can’t–I can’t hear much of anything, so I just have to hope–”  She took a shaky breath.  

“Cass!” Minnow shouted.  Around her, lights flashed and alarms blared.  All calls were monitored, and Mr. Thaddeus had no doubt been notified that Cassandra had finally made contact.

“I’m activating my homing beacon.  I hope it’s still working.  Please–I need an extraction.  I’m not–I’m not quite sure what happened, but I’m not much use anymore.  Tell Mr. Thaddeus I’m sorry I couldn’t complete the mission.”

“Cass!”

Cassandra took another deep breath.  “O-over and out.”

Minnow’s communicator went silent.

She felt a hand on her shoulder.  She looked up to find Mr. Thaddeus, a troubled look on his face.  There was something else there, too.  Sympathy.  Or maybe even empathy.  Working for H.O.U.N.D.S. as long as he had, Mr. Thaddeus had no doubt lived through this sort of thing before.

Mr. Thaddeus removed his hand and went into the communications room.  Minnow followed close behind.

“Is Miss Jacobson’s homing beacon working?” he said.

“Yes,” said Lydia, the girl at the control panel.  “We’ve got her location.  She seems to be staying put, at least for now.”

“Good,” said Mr. Thaddeus.  He turned to Minnow.  “Now go bring her home.”

To Be Continued...

[luminousvision]

Personal Statement

This is my mostly autobiographical, but partially fictional personal statement written as though I were in high school again, applying for Stanford, my undergrad. It is set in 2011.

—

Sis went to John Hopkins. When her acceptance letter arrived in the mail, mom cried because it wasn’t from Harvard. Sis ignored mom’s heartfelt congratulations and put the first fat green checkbox on the list of colleges she had applied to. Dad, whose most intimate display of affection ’til date was a pat on the shoulder, put an arm around sobbing mom and said: it’s okay, we have one more chance. I couldn’t look, but I knew they were looking at me. I was busy forcing an acidic geyser back into my stomach. I swear, I gave serious consideration to staying in our living-now-study-room, just to state for the record that we had not yet received any word from Harvard. But that would have just reminded them that I was uninterested in applying there anyway.

I’m not interested in college at all, in fact. If I had confidence that this world would accept me for who I was and what I could do, independent of who stamped a damn sheet of paper with my name on it, I wouldn’t go to college at all. But dad tried to put my idealism to rest, telling me that twenty years from now every software engineer like him would be out of a job, outsourced to India. Do you want to go to India? He asked me this every third dinner my sophomore year like it was a fact. My decision to major in computer science was doomed to be about as financially prudent as mom’s Mrs. degree in English Lit. It didn’t matter even if the sheet of paper was to be earned from the legendary Stanford. Look: we got our degrees from Seoul National University, the Harvard of South Korea, but dad was stuck at a decade old startup that had long since lost any conception of “start” or “up” and mom still didn’t consistently know when “a” or “the” was supposed to appear before her nouns.

I admit I’m an ungrateful child to two kind, loving, and capable parents who thought it was a good idea to prep a Harvard kid from what is now officially a desert, both in terms of rainfall and intellectual vitality. I grew up in Tracy. This Central Valley town is about as cringeworthy as its slogan “Think Inside the Triangle”, proudly splashed across the city website made by its one librarian. And inside the triangle I loved, because when none of your friends know what acronyms like AIME or ACT mean, high school is bliss. Expectations are below sea level. 

But eventually, I learned that I was statistically 100 points disadvantaged at the SAT compared to the kids next door who grew up thirty minutes away in Livermore. To me, who was desperately trying to salvage my complete lack of reading and writing fundamentals, this sounded like a free hundred points my parents preferred to squeeze out of my blood, sweat, and tears instead of theirs. Dad even worked in Livermore for God’s sake! When I brought this up after dinner one night, Seoul-raised city dad gave me a pat on the shoulder. He told me that every year, the kid with the national highest score on the suneung, or the Korean equivalent of the SAT, always came from a shigol. Shigol means “a small rural town", but in this context, it translates into “bum-fuck-middle-of-nowhere”.

Fine. Ok. I was kind of that kid. I miraculously scored a 2360 despite my most desperate efforts to study less and spend more time with my music or my code, which let me tell you, was not easy, because software engineering dad did not like me coding.

I got into programming through my love for video games and my dad’s hate for both subjects. I was at a friends house in fourth grade, together doing insane twirls in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2  when dad suggested that rather than playing games, I could make them. Of course, it was so obvious! With dad’s help, I installed Visual Studio Code 2003, the C++ SDK, plopped open an OpenGL book, and went to work. In retrospect, I’m impressed that I fought this thing for a whole year, eventually making something that resembled Astroid Blaster except with strangely colored squares, triangles, and circles that didn’t always collide correctly despite my self-taught geometry. Dad was a moderately helpful figure who would explain things twice and would then get frustrated when he had to explain for a third time that in order to rotate this square, I had to multiply a spatial transformation matrix to each of its coordinate vectors.

By sixth grade, I had graduated into a more efficient game development paradigm: “modding”. I went into the Starcraft: Brood War engine where rather than programming something from scratch, I simply wrote code that allowed me to edit how the game behaved. I made increasingly sophisticated games, moving to Warcraft 3 and eventually Starcraft 2, all hidden from dad, who believed that if I was going to be shipped to India, I should at least go knowing C++, not some useless scripting language for a video game. Mom didn’t really know what to think. I suspect she was not convinced I would be sent to India. Regardless, since this activity appeared substantially more productive than playing video games, she let me code after school until dad came home from coding all day at his C++ job at which point I had to stop coding.

I later understood dad’s love for me in all of this: he really just wanted a future for me where I wasn’t half as miserable as he was. And until about sophomore year, I admit I really didn’t have a plan for the future. I just did things… because. Maybe if I hadn’t flipped my life upside down, I really was going to end up in India. Thankfully, a really strange and upside-down idea in the shape of Ayn Rand flipped me inside out. Maybe I should value the energy, passion, and enthusiasm for the things I loved regardless of whether it’d send me to Harvard. Maybe this is what it meant to live. First on my list was music.

I remember coming back to my ninth year of piano lessons, telling my piano teacher Lauren that I was now really, I mean really, into Maurice Ravel. I opened the sheet music, its binding worn via repetition to the point where it would practically open itself to Une Barque Sur L’ocean. I had played this piece so many times on my Yamaha throughout that August, the whole month of “piano summer break”. Even my normally understanding Sis complained about the repetition. Lauren sat silent for a good long while after I had finished playing through it. I didn’t think much of it at the time, except that it was unusual for my normally critical teacher to say nothing. Two weeks ago, while writing recommendation letters for me, she told me that it was the moment I had graduated from being good at piano to being a pianist.

Piano became my emotional dictionary, spanning the sorrows of Ondine to the euphoria of L’isle Joyeuse. Mom even asked me if I would consider going to Harvard to study music. No, I told her, this is just something I really want to do. This badly? You do this just for fun? Yes, because this music expresses the joy and misery of being alive. Her confusion made me wonder if this desert town was truly hot enough to bleach any sense of purpose and identity.

I want to come to Stanford, not to escape this triangle, but to actually further challenge my flame for life. I have not come this far to imagine that I will encounter less adversity in my objective to pursue what I love. I want you to know that I will take no pleasure in the conformity of converting my soul into homework assignments, group projects, and final exams. I’ll major in computer science because I have to and refuse to take a class in music because I have principles. If you’re okay with that, please send me an acceptance letter. You’ll probably make mom cry, but don’t worry. We’ve all been through much worse.

[desultory-novice]

@mobgabriel said…

“frankly if they made a movie with the "relatable real person" and didn't use adeline for the role i would be shocked because of how obvious of an idea it is, she is already a real character who is one of the 2 humans that we see in the setting(with the other one being kirby universe's equivalent of samus),who has very little lore(as far as i remenber the most backstory we get from her is that she went to popstar to study art in the K64 manual wich is frequently ignored) and has ties to what is by far one of the dark matter trilogy wich is one of the best stories to adapt to a kirby movie and you can easily do a emotional climax by having adeline being possessed as a nod to the source material(wich feeds into my extremely Sisyphean hope that the series will one day explore the eldritch horrors of its antagonists form a POV that isn't kirby's)”

I’m of two minds.

I would say my main argument against using Adeleine for THIS is that, as a big Adeleine fan, I’m hesitant to see her worked into the “ingenue in distress” role! I’m a fan of her character (thin as it is, officially) which is why I try to be careful in my own use of her.

Even in Apologies AU, it is mostly Noir quietly pining over their life’s tragedies as I didn’t want to twist Adeleine into the kind of character who is like, grieving the loss of her family so deeply she can no longer get out of bed or remember what food tastes like... Not against sad Adeleine HC though! And a thoughtful/wistful Christopher Robin type Ado is one of my favs! But I do think it’s beneficial to use sparingly rather than risk it becoming the fandom zeitgeist!

Back when I wrote my own fairly serious attempt ^^; at a Kirby movie treatment (though I would change things up if I did it again…) I choose to make Ribbon the “heroine in need of a hero during the 3/4s mark” for that reason! I didn’t love Hollywood heroine-ifying her either, but she DOES have a movie-sized problem in 64 and it did require Kirby’s assistance to solve! Their teaming up to fight Zero 2 feels like one of those kinda ~legendary~ moments that make them the most likely to occupy the lead hero and heroine spots.

The other reason is that anime movies of this type seem to peddle in one-off characters that people utterly unfamiliar with the property can imprint onto. It’s not MY preference, as a fan. I know "member berries" (?) or whatever it's called when new movies dangle cheap nostalgia in front of you is a tech that gets a lot of flack (for being done as a shoddy cash grab, I would like to think) but I WOULD like to be able to point at the colorful shape on screen and go “AH!” instead of be forced to empathize with some random kid we KNOW will NEVER show up again. ("We'll stay friends forever!" :said through tears: "Note: Poochie died on the way back to his home planet")

But can’t deny it seems to be industry standard. And if we're talking about the -possibility- of a Kirby happening movie, even in a highly fictionalized and fun way, the dead-eyed working stiff in me can't help but chime in with "Now, this is how they WOULD do it. Even if it's not necessarily how they should." XD

Oh and I agree that the Dark Matter trilogy/the Dark Matter invasion would make a good movie plot! Zero + Dark Matter are presented as an immediate a global threat, and a visible, compelling one (scary eyeballs!) that is easy to follow!

I've mentioned before that I disagree about RtDL making for "the best" game to movie pipeline project - though I would say now even RtDL could be adapted into a nice movie! It would just have to be one of those compilation movie "retell the story" type deals where you know what you’re going to see. I still hold it would be kinda a bad choice for this hypothetical of “big Hollywood film to use to introduce Kirby and his friends to a wider audience/global audience."

So, if we ever got a DM Trilogy adaptation, I would absolutely love to see our girl in it, but...I also have fond memories of like, various Sailor Moon movies (...okay, I admit it, I’m thinking specifically of that one pegasus one?! XD) and I do think a new, one-off human character would be a way to pull that adaptation off!

:on that note, I've been wanting to design a gijinka for Zero and Gooey so I can pair them with Noir for various fun cough FUN times:

-

>Explore the series’s horrors from an outside Kirby perspective 

👀 Ooh, I like this concept too!

For an actually good Kirby movie idea that still has the mandated "relatable real person": Kirby's clash with Eifilis (which takes place on Shiver Star) causes Kirby to be sent back in time to when Earth was Earth, leading to Kirby making friends with a struggling autistic kid. Kirby, wanting to make sure his new friend stays alive, brings him into the future... Unfortunately, this kid was important to the future of Kirby, being the basis of Zero's negative energy, so Kirby is faced with a dilemma: fix his present, and cause the kid to suffer, or sit in an unfamiliar future, with a friend whose no longer in pain.

Ooh, I think you've got something GOOD going here! In combination with @newthinkerer’s “Kirby movies by decade” this feels like a movie plot that really could have happened! (Give or take the use of the Forgotten Land and Elfilis as major plot points, which would otherwise necessitate it as a “newish” thing.)

Now, I'm a child of the 80s >w> so I can easily envision this as an undiscovered 2D animated movie of that era, in the vein of like, the Rainbow Brite movie, that ends up with surprising amounts of heart despite also playing a little fast and loose with canon! (And experiences a revival in light of the terrible Hollywood Kirby! XD)

It would probably also have a weirdly catchy earworm of an ending song that would have the hardcores combing through used stores and internet archives trying to find the cleanest rip of... (COUGH)

Listen half these lyrics sound like they COULD come from a Kirby movie!!

[jolienjoyswriting]

The Maiden in the Mist (ft. Riku (the-minuscule-task), Ch. II

Chapter 2 of 4 for "The Maiden in the Mist," a fan fiction story.

When Joseph finds him faced with a language barrier, his new dragon friend finds a most unexpected way around it.

Word count: 2,898 – Character count: 16,524 Drafted: April 5th, 2023 Revised: April 6th, 2023 –

"Kāmu on, bēbī, kisu mī!  Moh-moh-moh-moh-moh~!"

Incidentally, the name of this story came about because I'm jolly well addicted to Bones, innit. (Almost every episode name follows a "X Preposition the Y" format, so…)

Riku and related characters and concepts created by and © the-minuscule-task Joseph Lithius and related characters and concepts created by and © Jo Li

[ ← Prev. Chapter | Next Chapter → ]

    Okay, maaaybe I jumped to conclusions…  Maybe she wasn't a dragon.  Maybe she was just some other kind of lizard lady.  She did look kind of like a dragon from Eastern mythos, though.  At the very least, she was anything but ordinary.  She was really beautiful.

    The woman stood knee-deep in the waters of the hot spring, taking in the warmth and the mist that surrounded her.  She had golden horns that were maybe about a foot long?  They were kind of faintly Z-shaped, pointy, and segmented with a trio of rings.  The woman's hair was dark green in color, some falling over her shoulders with most of it draping along her back and coming to rest just above her tail.  On that topic, her tail had a wide stripe of fur that ran down to a soft-looking plume at the tip, all of it as dark and lovely as the hair on her head.  I suddenly wondered how far the other way the fur went…     As I continued to look at the woman, I noticed that her body was covered in light green scales.  From where I was, though, it just looked like "skin".  She had a strong, slender, feminine form, a long neck, and average-sized hips with very lovely legs.  I couldn't see much more of her, though.  She was holding her tail in one arm, conveniently covering her chest.  Her other hand, though…  Her… her other hand…  O-oh.  Oh, gosh.     My face burned under my fur and my eyes widened.  I hadn't noticed until just then… but that woman wasn't simply standing there.  Her eyes were closed and her cheeks were a faint shade of pink.  I could hear her panting a little, too.  And that hand?  It was, uh… b-between her legs, let's say?  You can probably guess what it was doing there, too…

    When I looked back up, I noticed that the girl was looking at me through one half-open eye.  She… er… "tended to herself" for a few seconds more… then, as if just realizing someone was there, both of her eyes shot open and her face turned bright red.  I froze in place, unsure of what to do.  She seemed frozen, too, still clutching her tail while the other hand stayed right where it was.  I couldn't help but look into her startled eyes.     "Etooo…"     She spoke in a soft, almost innocent tone.  That, in itself, was surprising.  I was completely prepared for her to scream…     "Gomen'nasai!"     She never screamed.  She just yelped an apology before making a fast break for the women's locker room.  However…     "Hey– wait!"     I grabbed her tail as she ran by… and immediately got pulled off my feet!  She was strong!  However, I didn't stay airborne long.  I let go of her tail… and fell forward, faceplanting hard against the stone.  Ouch…

    "Anata wa daijōbu?!"

    When I managed to regain my senses, I dizzily looked up…     "Hnnngh…"     I quickly shook my head, trying to clear the daze.  Once I did, I realized what I was looking at.  The lizard lady had stopped running and came back to check on me.  And man… she got close to my face.  Those big, innocent eyes of hers looked like dinner plates, too!  I guess she was really worried about me.

    "Etooo…" I said, knowing that was the Japanese equivalent of a stammer.  "Daijōbu…"     "'Daijōbu'…?" she echoed, sounding surprised.     I nodded, gently sitting up on my knees.  Honestly, my face hurt…!  I don't think my nose was bleeding, though.     "Yokatta!"     I looked up… and almost jumped back, startled.  That lizard girl's face had gotten intimately close to mine!  She looked happy, though… probably relieved that I hadn't hurt myself.  That really was stupid, grabbing her tail like that…

    I offered a smile as I stood.  She looked up with big, innocent eyes, softly blinking.  I was watching her watch me…     "Watashi wa amari nihongo o shirimasen," I told her.  "Gomen'nasai."     She blinked again.  Then, she tilted her head.     "Eigo," I said, trying to tell her I spoke only English.  "In-gu-ri-sshu."     "'In-gu-ri-sshu' desu?" she asked, repeating what I'd said exactly as I'd said it.     I nodded.  She nodded back.  Wait… was she just imitating me?     "Gomen'nasai…" I said, rubbing my arm.     Her head tilted the other way.  Then, she slowly stood.  W… whoa…  She was tall!

    The lizard… dragon… lady thing rose to her full height, easily standing more than a head taller than me.  I'm about five-foot-eight, so she must have been close to seven feet fall – not including her horns.  My eyes wandered a little…  As I'd assumed, her body was slightly toned – especially in the leg area.  She also… uh… wasn't very buxom?  Is… is that polite enough?  I… she– she had a very "conservative" curvature in her chest area.  N-nothin' wrong with that…

    "Ah!"

    I jolted as she gasped.  I took a step back, then, as she crouched on the balls of her feet.  Something had caught her attention.     "Reddoroketto!" she said, staring at my… crotch.  Oh.     "Wh-what?"     I looked down… then I burst into a blush.  My towel was missing – probably knocked off when she pulled me off my feet.  More embarrassingly, though… she was absolutely correct about what she saw.  Oh, geez…     I fidgeted a little, rooted to the spot as the lady stared at my lap.  She reached out with a hand, gently poking me with one of her claws.  When she looked back up, I just nervously smiled.  Those innocent eyes of hers were equal parts disarming… and alarming.     "Itai no?" she asked.  I think?     "I don't know what that means…" I answered.     When she tilted her head again, I got the feeling we weren't going to be doing much communicating…  There was a language barrier between us, clearly.     I blinked as the lady got back up.  When she took my hand into hers, I just blushed even more.  She was leading me back into the locker area…  Worse still, she was bringing me into the women's side!  I almost told her not to, but I realized she wouldn't understand, so I just… let her.

    "Chottomattekudasai!"

    Now, as I'd mentioned… I didn't know much conversational Japanese.  However, I'd watched enough dubbed anime to recognize that.  She was either telling me or asking me to wait.  So, I waited.  I waited, and I watched.  I watched her walk over and gather a few towels into her arms.  I then watched as she walked over to a nearby outcropping… or seating area… and set them down.  My gaze started to wander as she did whatever she was doing.  Funny enough… the women's locker area wasn't much different from the men's.  The only real difference was that it seemed mirrored or inverted when compared to the men's lockers…

    "Junbi!"

    I blinked, my ears flicking.  That mysterious lizard lady had spoken again, her tone cheerful and merry.  When I looked back over, though… I went wide-eyed again.  The dragon girl had found a spot on the bench… and taken quite a pose!     I stared at the woman, my heart racing as she sat on the long bench.  There were towels between her and the wall, working as a kind of cushion for her to rest against.  Her legs were tucked in slightly, partly hanging off the bench, and her tail was to one side.  Those legs of hers were also spread wide open…  Between that and the placement of her hands on her thighs, it was pretty obvious she was… u-uh… well… "presenting" herself to me?  I just didn't know why…

    "Kitsune-san?"

    I snapped out of my daze, looking up.  I noticed that she was looking at me with those big, innocent eyes, again.     "Junbi dekimashita…" she softly told me.  "O mata se shinaide kudasai!"     Language barrier be damned…  I didn't need to understand a word of what that girl was saying to know what she wanted.  Between her soft tone and provocative pose, I could tell that she wanted… well… me!  I didn't know what to make of it…

    I slowly walked over to the dragon lady, my ears twitching and my cheeks burning.  I'm not gonna lie…  My body wanted hers.  Her body seemed to want me, too.  She still had the soft fragrance of… uh… l-let's call it "womanhood"… lingering on her body.  It seemed like my trip to Japan was about to go somewhere I never anticipated…  That is… until I noticed something.

    I paused, standing close to the woman.  As I looked down, I noticed that she was starting to blush.  It wasn't a sweet, shy blush, though.  It was the blush of someone who wasn't entirely comfortable with their situation.  On top of that, her innocent eyes… were showing uncertainty.  Her body might have been ready for what she was suggesting… but it was pretty clear that her heart wasn't.  Worse still, the longer I stared… the more uncomfortable she seemed to get.  Eventually, though, she broke the tension with more words I didn't understand.     "A-anata wa nani o ma– matteimasu ka…?"     She gestured downward with her head.     "Anata no besuto o tsukushite kudasai…"     I continued to stare, watching the girl squirm.  She didn't seem anxious for us to be intimate anymore.  She seemed just plain anxious…  Seeing her so uncomfortable affected me…  And no, I don't mean a physical one.  Though, I probably lost my… ah, never mind.

    "No."

    The dragon jolted.  All at once, she moved her hands away from her crotch and sat up.     "No…?" she cried.  She definitely knew what that meant.  "Nazena no?"     I was about to explain when I noticed something else…  Her face was turning stormy.     "W-wait.  Don't do th–"     But it was too late.  She brought her hands over her face and began sobbing.  Quietly.  Thank goodness it wasn't a "big ugly cry".  Still… she was crying… over being rejected, seemingly.  I couldn't let her feel that way…

    "Miss…"     I sat next to her, being careful of her tail.     "Miss, it's not that I don't want to…  It's more than I don't know you…  I'm sure you're lots of fun…!"     I almost added, "In bed".  Thankfully, I had more tact than that.     "B-but, I'm not the kind of person who has 'casual encounters' with people I just met…  I… oh, why am I bothering…  You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?"     The girl peeked through her fingers, calming slightly as I sighed.     "You know what?"  I smiled.  "Actions speak louder than words.  Here."     Not knowing what else to do, I leaned up and kissed her cheek.  Yeah… it was boneheaded, I know.  But, hey.  It worked.  The girl stopped crying entirely!  I almost started to smile… until I noticed the look on her face.     Her eyes seemed to shrink and she looked at me like I'd just done something horrible.  Her mouth opened to say something.  Instead, though, she winced back, pulling her legs up and hiding her face again.  I was positive she was going to scream, that time.  But…     "Wa… watashi ga… su… s-sukidesu?"     I was wrong.

    Her words hit me like a bolt of lightning.  Again, my knowledge of anime was paying off.  However, I wish she hadn't asked me that.  I didn't know what to say to "You love me?"…

    "I…"  I paused, then I swallowed hard before telling her, "Yeah.  I do."     She looked at me with newfound awe, blushing as we sat there side-by-side… naked in the women's lockers.  I smiled at her, my tail wagging.  I wasn't lying.  I did like her.  I thought she was interesting, at the very least.  And beautiful…  Really beautiful.  She was the most beautiful… most innocent thing I'd ever seen.  I wanted to see her smile.  I wanted to be the one who helped her smile.  And… it seemed like I was on the right path for that, too.

    "Mm– hey…  Hee hee…"

    I blushed a little more as the taller woman draped one arm around me and pulled me into her embrace.  She was… colder than I'd expected.  However, I was happy to wrap my arms around her and hold her close.  When she started purring, so did I.  When she nuzzled between my ears, I nuzzled into her collarbone.  Then, when she let her snout run across my ear… I shivered… and I let my tongue taste her neck.     "Mmm…"     She giggled and squirmed in response.  Another good sign…

    "Oi…"     I leaned back as she got my attention.  There was a twinkle in her innocent eyes and a smile on her draconic muzzle.  She looked even more beautiful than before…     "Oi…" she repeated.     There was a certain uncertainty to her face… like she wanted to say something but wasn't sure she should.  Eventually, though, she asked me something that I wasn't ready for.     "D… dū yū… uantto…"     She gulped, her face getting redder.     "U-uantto…" she continued in horribly fractured Engrish.     "W-want to…?" I repeated, blushing a little myself.     She nodded.  Then… she whispered two more words…     "K-kisu me…?"     I almost forgot myself, right then and there.  I wanted, so badly, to just blurt out "God, yes" and smooch her soft, inviting snout with all my might!  I'm sure she sensed that, too, considering she shifted and blushed even harder.  However… being the gentleman that I am – don't– don't laugh – I just warmly smiled and reached up, stroking her cheek.  As she closed her eyes and leaned into it, I whispered back…     "Yes…"

    The girl flinched as I spoke… but she leaned forward.  Her lips pursed and she blushed harder still.  She wasn't hesitant about letting things happen, I'll give her that.  Even so, I didn't take advantage of her generosity.  Instead, I gave her another little peck on the cheek.

    She snapped out of her shy state long enough to give me a perplexed look.  Then…     "No, no, no!"     She raised her hand, pressing her finger against my lips… then against hers.     "Kisu me!" she exclaimed, sounding confused.  "Kiiisu!  Wakarimasu?"     I leaned in and kissed her nose.  She looked at me again, growing visibly frustrated while still a little red-faced.     "Kiiiiisu!!" she said in an adorable, raised voice.  "Kisu me, bakana kitsune-san!"     "No," I teased with a grin and a wag of my tail.  "You kiss me, kawaii ryuu-chan!"     She hid her face, quietly screaming in frustration and shaking her head.  She was losing patience with me fast.  Either that, or she couldn't believe I'd tried to turn things around on her.  Either way, she quickly calmed back down and kind of angrily pouted at me, still blushing.

    "Rukku, damī!"     I grinned as she grabbed me by the shoulders.  I was "rooking", alright.     "Kisu!  Kiiisu!" she squeaked.  "Kono yō!"     My eyes shot open again as the dragon girl pulled me up and into a hard kiss.  Honestly… I wasn't sure who was blushing more, at that point.  Her, out of sheer embarrassed frustration… or me because the kiss took me by surprise.

    "Sh-shī…?"  She leaned back, continuing to blush like crazy.  "Ī-īshī…"     I couldn't stop myself from nervously giggling.  I kind of wish I had, though…     "Nani ga son'nani omoshiroi?!"     I think I ticked her off…

    She continued to look at me, her brow furrowed down and her eyes locked on mine.  I couldn't tell what was going through her mind in the slightest.  Was she offended?  Was she upset?  Did she just want me to kiss her that badly?  I genuinely had no idea…     "I… heh."  My ears flicked and I smiled skittishly.  "I just…"     "Boisu…"     I blinked.  All at once, the lady went from looking upset… to being amused.  She rolled her eyes and offered me a smile, then she leaned in and nuzzled my muzzle, pulling me back into her lap and a hug.  I was happy to hug back, too.  She was so sweet…

    I'm sure we must have spent a lot of time just sitting there, enjoying each other's company.  I say that because, by the time I managed to look back outside, I noticed that it was getting dark.  I started to sit up, prepared to leave… but the lovely lady pulled me back in.     "Sutē…" she whispered.     I looked up… and I noticed those big, innocent eyes pleading with me.     "Purīzu?" she asked in an even sweeter tone.     She was asking me to say with her… begging, almost.  "I…"     She nuzzled me, softly purring…  "Heya ga arimasu," she said, knowing I wouldn't know what she was saying.     "I don't know what–"     "Etooo… 'a rūmu'…?" she tried to explain.  Wait.  Was she telling me she had a room?     I hesitated for a moment… before I softly nodded.  "Y… yeah.  O-okay."     The girl squeaked with excitement before kissing me on the forehead.  She set me aside, then, and stood up, walking over to a random locker.  As she opened it with a key she seemingly had hidden in her tail's plume, she looked my way and smiled.     "Shūshū," she said, politely waving me away.  "Soto de aimashou!"     I didn't quite understand her, but I nodded.  I went back to the spring and returned to the men's locker room.  I dressed as quickly as I could, wondering what she had in mind.  After I put the locker key back, I walked over to the entrance leading into the main building.  And that's when I saw her, again…

[bumblingbabooshka]

Movie Night!

Tuvok and Janeway have a movie marathon all starring this old hollywood equivalent actress that Tuvok’s secretly into (he’s watched her movies since he was a kid and you might recognize her if you keep a keen eye on my blog). Janeway at first is internally thinking that Vulcan movies will probably be boring but halfway through the first one she’s like “Oh my God...we need to watch ALL of these.” and Tuvok just goes “Indeed.” “Vulcans do not cry, it would ruin their makeup.” Is a famous line from Nai’s most well known flick - The Future Is Nai. It’s a fictionalized meta piece about the perils of fame and love and it really united hearts and minds across the galaxy. Also her makeup was stunning in it. This was all inspired by this set of tags: 

I was like ‘hell yeah oh absolutely yes’ but I didn’t know what dramas were so I went a bit off script so to speak~

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWD 11x22: Analysis, Part 3 - Peter, Passover, RxR Spikes

@twdmusicboxmystery:

Tbh, I’m not sure we’ve entirely nailed down the point of the Peter symbolism. Beth clearly isn’t Peter. She’s Christ. So why go out of their to add in Peter symbolism? Of course Edwards = Peter. This is has been discussed extensively in the past, but him having Beth kill Trevitt was a betrayal, especially when he claimed he didn’t do it, so that was the equivalent of Peter denying Christ. But if they went out of their way to put it into Slabtown, you know there will be an equivalent when Beth returns.

So, as you mentioned above, the idea of them going to the Louvre in the spinoff is interesting and I’m sure it will have at least some symbolic relevance here, if not literal.

All your words about the 22 and the 12 made me think about them a bit differently than I have before. We’ve always said 22 was related to the return/Sirius stuff, and I’m sure that’s still true. But more specifically, I kinda feel like 22 is symbolic of something negative. Maybe the negative side of things. Shane wore the 22 necklace, and while he was friends with Rick, he was also the epitome of everything we don’t want our characters to be. He displayed cowardice, selfishness, deviousness, lack of loyalty, etc. 

In terms of situations, it’s clear from some of your pics (the Grady cop car, the sailboat with Michonne) that they represent Grady/the CRM, which are kind of the ultimate Bad Situation where things go wrong. Hence 22 = bad side of things. Perhaps the A side, which is the bad side, where in the B side Beth will live and things will be put right. Just spit balling here, of course.

Now, they’re calling Alexandria Outpost 22. It went from a free, loving place to one of violence and slavery under the CW. (Even though now Daryl and co have essentially liberated it.) You mentioned the two episodes that were number 22. In each, the person (Negan) either lost someone (Lucille) or became a sacrifice. But both times, he was becoming a better person. After Lucille, he went and helped some people who needed it. And of course, after Here’s Negan, he became Negan of the Saviors, which was a negative thing. But you could also see that as his first time through. His A side. The first time, he did something negative with it. This time, he won’t.

I really love the stuff about the railroad spikes being indicative of crucifixion. That makes a lot of sense, and I know with Daryl and Leah, we saw three of them pounded into a tree not far from her cabin. But it also makes me want to go back and re-analyze how they might have been functioning in each instance. 

Weirdly specific question: did we ever see Leah in the same shot with the RxR spikes? They’re entangled with her either way, since it was her cabin and her storyline, but we also know she’s a proxy for Beth. So, just wondering if we ever saw her in the same shot with them? Anyone remember?

Empty tomb/empty trunk/empty chair. 

I really love these phrases, both as images and also for what they mean in both a religious and fiction sense. I sat and thought about this for a while and had a bit of an epiphany, but it’s very nerdy and meandering.

I was thinking about these symbols and something I heard a long time ago in some Sunday class or other. I don’t remember the exact wording or who said it, so I’m definitely paraphrasing. But it was something along the lines of, “the real symbol for the triumph of Easter was that of an empty tomb.” So, the idea is, how can something empty, or something not being there, be a triumph? It’s a little counterintuitive. But the answer is that what was supposed to be there was a dead body. And the fact that it wasn’t meant he’d been resurrected. So the empty tomb symbolized the miracle of resurrection and that life had triumphed over death. I always thought that was a cool way to think about it.

I know I mentioned this next part before, back when you first pointed out the chair on the train platform when Daryl and Carol and everyone was debating whether to take Pamela’s deal. In the Jewish religion, during Passover, they leave an open chair for Elijah, who is supposed to be a forerunner of Christ’s second coming. So, from a religious perspective, the chair definitely foreshadows a return of the person who was believed to be dead. I can’t help but wonder if we’re seeing them in this storyline to show that this arc is the forerunner of Beth’s return.

So, you also mentioned empty trunks. That put the image in my head of Maggie opening the trunk in 5x10 and seeing the Beth walker inside. And I had this thought that Maggie had not actually seen an empty trunk. She’d seen one that was full of death. And that REINFORCED her belief in Beth’s death.

Okay, so this is where I stray from TWD for a minute to nerd out. I’m a fiction coach. Meaning I teach others about writing great fiction. My teaching technique focuses on the internal conflict. Many people don’t understand (and I don’t include anyone here in that) that while plot and external story events are important (vital actually) the story itself is built on the internal character change.

My favorite definition of story comes from Vogler. “A story is a metaphor for a journey that leads to change.” So, the foundation of the story is the character change. The events in the plot are how that change is brought about. There’s a misguided belief that you keep the audience’s attention through high action. Like fight or car chase scenes. And while those are cool, it’s really the emotion of a scene that keeps the audience invested.

The audience doesn’t care that the cars are driving really fast. The reason they like the chase scene is because the hero is chasing the villain, who has kidnapped his wife and child, and he’s trying to get his family back. Sure, the adrenaline affects us too, but adrenaline alone won’t sustain a story. Without the internal or emotional, you end up with B action movies a la Van Damme or Steven Segal. (Sorry if anyone is a fan of those, but they’re known for being all action and no substance.) No one cared about Rocky Balboa’s boxing scenes because he can punch really good. They cared because he was fighting for his family, his way of life, and his self-respect. Incidentally, all things that can be said about Daryl. While he isn’t a boxer, he can still punch pretty good. ;D

ANYway. So, when I’m helping people figure out their stories, I tell them to craft a misguided belief for the character. And this can literally be anything. Just something they believe that isn’t true. So, it can be literal/external (I’m not strong enough to win that competition) or internal (I’m not worthy of love). It can be very generic (love conquers all) or very story specific (If I just provide for my family and mind my own business, the Capitol will leave me alone – Katniss Everdeen). You get the idea. Any belief, depending on the story you’re telling, that is negative, misguided, and disempowering.

Once they have the character’s misguided belief, the next thing they need to understand is that every event that happens in the plot will affect the character in one of two ways. It will either reinforce their misguided belief, or cast doubt on it. The character will waffle back and forth throughout the story, but overall, they cling to the belief mostly through the first half of the story, but really tend to move away from it and toward a higher truth in the second half. The character’s transformation is them letting go of that misguided belief and embracing the truth, which leads to a higher enlightenment and a better quality of life overall. This is the basic internal arc for all stories.

Okay, so what’s this got to do with the whole Maggie and Beth walker in the trunk situation? As I said, it suddenly occurred to me that Maggie seeing the Beth walker in the trunk is what she believes happened with Beth. So it was REINFORCING HER MISGUIDED BELIEF. And that’s when it all clicked for me. This is nothing we didn’t already know, but it’s another way to look at it that makes a lot of the stuff going on in 11c make a lot more sense from a story structure standpoint.

Gimple took this notion of the misguided belief, which is usually internal and about an individual person, and made it external and literal. The group, as a whole, has a misguided belief that Beth died in Coda. She didn’t, but they believe she did. It’s negative, misguided, and disempowering. Everything that happened in 5b—Maggie and the trunk, Daryl seeing the blond walker on the tree, the abusive dynamic between Pete and Jessie, which mirrored Grady—all reinforced TF’s misguided belief.

Which is that the world is brutal, people die, you can’t always save them except through extreme violence, and things are always going to be bleak. It’s very similar to what Hershel tried to teach Rick in 4a. The empowering truth is that we get to come back from the things we’ve done. But there are times when Rick has had the misguided belief that that isn’t true. And now that is literal as well, because Rick is physically gone, but he’s gonna get to come back.

Now, let’s talk about Daryl. (Cuz we always get there eventually, right? ;D) We didn’t see much dynamic change from Daryl between Coda and Rick’s departure. He was always sad, surly, and bleak, but not much more than that. He went through a rage phase and a few other things, but again, not much positive change. Logistically, I think that’s just because the writers wanted to go through most of the comic book stuff before bringing Beth back.

I was also thinking that it’s actually kind of weird that Daryl hung around. We know, from all the way back in S2 after Sophia, that Daryl tends to self-isolate when he’s wounded. Especially when he’s grieving. And given what Beth meant to him, it really would have been more in character to take off on his own.

Why didn’t he? In a word: Rick. In fact, that may have been the whole reason for the “you’re my brother” scene. (Well, other than establishing a sweet and loyal relationship between these two BFFS. ;D) To give Daryl a reason to hang around. And of course he still self-isolates in other ways. Going into the woods to “look for water” or leaving Alexandria to hunt, even when it’s not necessary. He emotionally withdraws, even if he physically stays. But of course, when he loses Rick, that’s when he physically leaves.

So, my point, I guess, is that everything between Coda and Rick’s departure in Daryl’s arc reinforced his negative beliefs. Ever since Carol brought him back to civilization a la Henry, Daryl has started to move away from those misguided beliefs and toward higher truths. That family and civilization are better than isolation. That even if it’s not perfect, things are still worth fighting for. That he can be a conscientious and thoughtful friend (ie Connie and Kelly). He’s come into his own in terms of leadership. He’s become a guardian and father figure to children. Etc. This is probably why he was okay with the CW and even willing to join their army. In past years, I don’t think he would have been open to that at all, but he’s changed. He’s willing to fight for something even if it’s not perfect.

I also think this is why we keep seeing him observing other romantic couples. Let’s talk about the romance angle. Because I think this might be the over-arching answer to why the Leah arc. There are lots of reasons we’ve discussed at length, but from a Daryl’s-character-development standpoint, this will explain it.

Daryl’s misguided belief when it comes to romance is that he is either unworthy or incapable of sustaining a fulfilling romantic relationship. Based on past-Daryl, it’s safe to say that if he engaged in a relationship, as he did with Leah, and it went south, as it did with her, he would throw up his hands and swear it off. Something like, “see? This is why I’m a loner. I can’t do romance.” He would then isolate himself, not from everyone necessarily but from romantic relationships in general.

And maybe that is what he did after Leah first took off. Because, in his mind, before he understood who Leah really was, he probably thought it was his fault; that he screwed it up by not choosing her. 

That’s probably also why he went back and wrote her the note. None of us liked that because we didn’t like her and thought she was toxic, and we were right, but Daryl didn’t know that. He probably thought he needed to try harder and fight for the relationship. Which, if it’s a healthy relationship, is true. He was simply mistaken about it being a healthy relationship for him. And again, given the extent to which Leah misrepresented herself, that’s not entirely his fault.

But I think Daryl learning who Leah really was probably helped him gain back some confidence about what happened and his judgement of people. Clearly, he wasn’t the only one at fault there. When it came down to Maggie or Leah, he made a choice, didn’t hesitate, and wasn’t even really conflicted about it. That shows how much he’s grown. But my point is, he’s moving away from his misguided beliefs about himself and romance. And him observing other couples is part of that, I think. He sees others he respects not only willing to engage in relationships, though they might have doubts, but willing to fight for their own happiness. And that will greatly effect events when Beth returns.

Okay, sorry. Told you I was gonna geek out. The only other thing I wanted to mention goes hand in hand with this. It’s the A/B storyline stuff. And I’ve mentioned some of it before, but Carol keeps having dialogue that really jumps out at me.

In ep 21, she talks to Maggie about how if not for the Fall, they wouldn’t have known one another, but were forced to become family. She then says, “we’re not alone anymore and we’re going to figure this out.” (Paraphrasing.) That struck me as really significant. Even if you want to reach all the way back to S4 when we had the Alone episode, everyone ended up alone. Daryl was alone. Beth was taken to Grady alone. The rest of the group was in small pods, but they certainly weren’t together as a unified group.

And we’ve seen this other places on the show and talked about it a lot. The group has to be together in order to survive and make things work. Blair and Gina had to work together. All three communities had to work together to bring down Negan. Etc. But I wanted to specifically talk about the fact that Daryl says they can’t go get Connie. It will compromise the others, including the kids, that they are trying to get back. I can’t help but think that he’s thinking specifically about Beth there. He insisted on going into Grady to get her and Carol, and things went south.

So, I feel like he’s rebelling against his natural instinct here, which would be to go get Connie, because he’s afraid it will get her or others killed. But then, when Carol tells him to sit tight, he says he can’t do that. Despite his resolve to do the opposite of what he did in S5, he’s just not built that way. He can’t sit still when someone he cares about is in danger. Especially when they’re in the hands of an enemy who might hurt or exploit them. When the dying trooper says those marked as designation 2 are taken far away and never seen again, Daryl kinda freaks out. Of course it’s in that silent-urgency way he has, but he still kinda flips out.

Again, I can’t help but think that something in his head is screaming, “Beth! Beth was taken far away and never came back!” So naturally, he’s like, nope. Done with this shit! Outside, Rosita again says they can’t risk the troopers radioing ahead to warn the others they’re coming. D

Daryl argues that they can’t just leave Connie on the train. And then come the next line from Carol that demonstrates the theme: “I think there’s a way to do both.” So, we’ve always talked about how Rick’s plan at Grady was to go in with guns blazing. But Daryl was afraid of Beth or Carol getting hurt, so he talked Rick into the prisoner exchange. And of course, that REALLY didn’t go well either.

So, we’ve always thought maybe Rick’s first instinct, while it seems to be the riskier of the two, really would have been the better solution. But I don’t think that’s the case either. I think the point is that they have to have a little of both. They have to find a compromise that will work for everyone. Here, when they went to get Connie, guns were definitely used and they definitely had to kill people. But they also didn’t stand in front of the oncoming train and just start firing willy-nilly. There had to be a little of both. They had to be stealthy and minimize risk to themselves and their group, but they also had to use force where necessary.

I was thinking that at Grady, there was no show of force at all. Sure, they had prisoners to exchange, but clearly, they didn’t show enough force for Dawn to fear them. This is evidenced by her suddenly demanding Noah stay after the exchange was done. If they’d shown more force, maybe she wouldn’t have tried that because she’d have been too fearful of what they’d do.

Just throwing out some of my spinning thoughts on this. But we see this other places too. Blair and Gina come to mind again. They thought the solution was to let Gina go off by herself from the gas station, and they tried that. It didn’t’ work. They both still died and started the day over. So, if you think of Blair as A and Gina as B, it wasn’t an either/or situation that would lead to success. It was both. Which is exactly what Carol said. And I think the either/or IS the misguided belief we’re trying to get away from in the show as a whole. They need to learn to do both so everyone gets the happy ending they want.

You could argue this same thing with when Rick disappeared. Rick wanted to lead the walkers away. Daryl thought it was too risky and wanted Rick to come with him back to Alexandria. Rick led the walkers away, and it led to his disappearance. But I kind of think that if they’d gone with Daryl’s plan, maybe the walkers would have taken down the communities. So, it wasn’t either/or. They needed a little of both. But Rick went off on his own, ALONE, and then was taken, alone, to another place, just like Beth was.

Now, with this whole CW arc, we’re seeing the characters work together very seamlessly, and they’re having a lot of success. So anyway. I really will stop now. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Forgive the nerdy ramblings of us fiction coaches. We’re a rare breed and often can’t help ourselves.  😊

@wdway:

I really enjoyed reading this. You know how I love long post that has a lot of meat to it. You asked above if anyone remembered seeing Leah in the same frame as any of the railroad spikes. For myself the answer is no. I can't remember ever seeing her and the spikes together. We only saw her at the front door from inside of the shack. For that matter in FM we never saw Daryl going into the shack using the front door except with Carol, years after Leah.

I did a hand palm to the face when I read where you wrote of Elijah and the empty chair at Passover. When Aaron (my son, not Moses brother)was little I and a friend did a Hebrew study for the elementary and middle school kids. For the Passover meal we actually cooked all the authentic foods, lamb and made unleavened bread. The kids made eat their meal using clay cups and plates that they made. I'm rambling, that was a little side tunnel, sorry.

So this fits so well into the railroad spikes because as I mentioned about the ones at Leah's shack door it reminded me of Passover and how blood was placed above the door. 

Another episode with blood around the door was WHWGO Noah's front door. You know that silly old episode where we actually see Tyrese's hallucination of Beth. Great connection on the empty chair.

@galadrieljones:

Like @wdway, I’m also face-palming with the empty chair thing. Every year we do a Seder and leave the empty chair for Elijah. We also leave the door open for Elijah, and we pour him a glass of wine. Elijah is a prophet who performed miracles, including resurrection, and his return is a harbinger of the messiah.

I have noted before that Gimple is Jewish. He’s practicing. His wife converted to Judaism to marry him. So, all of these things are layered into his consciousness as he crafts these stories. I remember a long time ago mentioning the mezuzah and its relationship to 30 Days Without an Accident. Daryl goes to Beth’s cell, and it is the 30th day without an accident. The number 30 has special meaning in Judaism. You have 30 days to affix a protective mezuzah to your door when you move into a new home. After a loved one dies, unless it is a child, you sit shiva for seven days and for 23 days after that you continue life in a reduced but certain mourning period—a total of 30 days.

All of this is just to say that there is evidence that the author’s point of view here is very important, and that evidence pointing to Jewish tradition and Old Testament symbolism is especially potent here. I think this makes Beth even more special, since Gimple chose to make her in the Christian tradition, a Christ figure.

This would signal the coming of a new era. Christianity also upholds a more forgiving image of God than Judaism, in which God is like a very stern, punishing father. I think Gimple is very interested in the notion of the messiah. In Christianity, we view Jesus as the messiah, and the Jewish belief in the messiah is what gave way to Christian beliefs in the birth of Christ. In Judaism, the messiah will one day return to lead the Jewish people back to the Promised Land. He will be born of the Davidic Line and rule as King of the Jewish (chosen) people.

Leaning into the number 12, as it is not only the number of Jesus’s disciples. In Jewish belief there is something called the 13 Principles of Faith, the twelfth of which is in the coming of the messiah. Elijah is the harbinger of the messiah.

I suppose it’s not then coincidence that there is currently a character named Elijah, who entered the story with Maggie, Beth’s big sister. I don’t think Elijah is himself an Elijah figure. I just think that when a Biblical name is used, that’s meant to conjure a Biblical theme in the given context. See: Gabriel, Leah. Now, as of 11.22, we actually have Luke returning to the storyline. In Christianity, it’s the Gospel of Luke that tells the story of the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Christian messiah. Lots and lots of connections here!

Recalling now the empty chair beside Leah in Daryl’s first flashback in Find Me. The chair is shaped like a heart, waiting for Elijah to return, a sign that the “messiah,” or Beth, his true love may return soon thereafter.

@wdway:

Broken record but I love when we all play off of each other. After reading your response Tarah I feel even more confident that if blood above a door represents a Jewish theme then three spikes is the Christian equivalent. I too thought of Maggie's friend Elijah as a reminder of a biblical figure. In talking about Luke reappearing I'm sure is part of bringing all the living characters together for the end of the series but it does feel that it's also a reminder with a Galadriel, Luke and Elijah of a Bible theme of good vs evil. A beginning and an end and a Resurrection for a new beginning.

Acts of God. Two spikes near Leah's camp. Did anyone ever have any ideas on the strange box like object?

@twdmusicboxmystery:

No idea what the box is or what they’re doing for. But it reminds me of the Blair Witch Project.

@galadrieljones:

Me too lol. That’s like the first thing I thought. Is it some sort of trap? Like you step on a wire or something and it stabs you, or…????

But Daryl knows immediately it’s Leah based on the look of it. She clearly has some sort of thing for railroad spikes.

@wdway:

You're implying that Leah's responsible for the railroad tracks in the tree. I don't know at this point if I truly think that or if it is a writing direction that wants to make the connection. Has she simply camped near them, that they could be found all over the territory? I don't know what I'm talking about, just that I don't know that it's a isolated Leah symbol. It could also be a recognizable trigger for Daryl about Leah. I think it was Gabriel that asked something about the box, but they didn't say anything about the spikes. Ignore me I do not know what I'm talking about.

@galadrieljones:

I guess you’re right that we don’t know that Leah put them there. They seem to be “prelude” to Leah, like Daryl seeing them sort of leads to Leah, but there’s no way to know how they got there. Hmm.

Another mystery from Find Me.

Like how does Daryl know they mean Leah? Is it just a hunch? Or does he know how she loves railroad spikes? Or did he mark these places long ago that Leah is now returning to? Is this some sort of mind game? I’m confused lol

I know I initially thought Daryl put those spikes in the trees to control his delusions. I’m not sure about that anymore. But they do seem navigational, somehow. Idk!!!!

@wdway​:

What came to my mind was when they first met in FM she said, "what are you doing on my land." I kind of had wondered if Daryl had somehow marked the territory in which he had been searching. ???????

@galadrieljones​:

That’s a pretty good estimation. Idk?? Yeah, maybe they are meant to mark her “property lines,” or something? They do end up in the woods that lead to her house. But that’s still insane. Like she just decided one day “this is my land stay out no trespassing beware of DOG!”

Hard to defend land when it’s just one lady but then again she was a bit nuts so idk?

@wdway:

One thing seen certain, that we're not going to get any of these answers by the end of the series with only a couple of episodes left. For me this series isn't ending it's just moving on. So many questions left unanswered. 

@twdmusicboxmystery:

I totally agree with @wdway on that last point. The series isn’t ending, just moving on. It’s expanding. And there are plenty of unanswered questions still that are good fodder for the spinoffs. Thoughts?