#now noa needs to convert

[violeteclipseboaty]

SPOILERS FOR KINGDOM

Did anyone find it hilarious that raka basically 'adopted' or 'kept' Mae because of Caesar?

He was like "Caesar cared for humans, welp I guess I will care for this one" 💀💀🤣🤣

Also, when Noa kept looking at him weird for really taking into heart Caesars morals? Hilarious duo, poor Noa didn't know the IMPACT Caesar had 🤣

[bookoflibrary]

Event Summary: "Everything Begins within the Stars

The event story starts off with reality Alice reading a book, 'The Galactic Railroad' on the school's roof, as recommended to her by her teacher who she loves. This is where she is contemplating suicide. One thing I found neat is the part where all the alts in the event are about to die take direct excerpts from their stories of the same scene. But then suddenly a giant locomotive falls through the sky and ruins her suicide. Reality Alice is wincing and wondering what just happened when Match Girl yells out if she is okay, but Nutcracker gets angry says they should be seeing about him first.

It turns out Dorothy helped the dolls build the train, and all the Library characters groan like 'Of course there was gonna be something defective on it.' Reality Alice is still sitting there confused as they talk amongst themselves. It was originally meant to be a Conducter's Day event, but the train broke. Aladdin says he needs to find a place in this world that can buy gold stat, but Nutcracker says they don't have time to do that and convert it to real money. The locomotive is still broken, so Aladdin says they need to find a place to stay until they can fix it or sell off some gold. They ask Reality Alice what she was doing and she sighs, 'suicide… '

The two Alice have a small and gentle exchange of words. Reality Alice snaps back to reality and looks down at the bustle below the building. She feels a moment of sickness, but somehow finds Library Alice comforting. Aladdin says in broken English they need to seek an asylum. Match Girl is confused, 'What's an… asylum?' And Aladdin corrects himself, 'A shelter.'

Nut then takes it upon himself to ask Reality Alice invasive questions about her home and life, and invites them all into her home, saying it's a responsibility of the youth to protect the elderly. Her parents happened to be overseas on a trip, so they come in. There Reality Alice's cat, Noa, greets everyone. But the cat startles him and he stumbles backwards into the stove and catches on fire.

Enter Reality!Matchie coming to help extinguish the fire because the crew call 9-11 and she taps their location. 'Where's the fire?' But then the two Matchies exchange shocked looks. Once they use an extinguisher and get rid of the fire, Nut stands there wet and the two Matchies looking at each other confused. They may look like they have a difference in age, but there is no mistaking they also share the same face. Library Matchie breaks the ice saying Reality Matchie was so cool just now, and she reminded her of 'her other self'. Reality Matchie could only question her confusion.

The two Matchie's get together right away and have fun. But there's one more character here missing. Aladdin somehow finds out 'he' is living in a luxurious apartment. There's a high tech facial recognition thing attached to the gates of them, but because he has 'his' face, Library Aladdin just continues on with a smile. He sees the apartment and smiles, because of course it would be like this. 'Well, I guess it makes sense I would have money no matter where I'm at' and 'With lots of people, like a castle'

But then suddenly the intercom comes on. Its Altladdin and he's less than pleased. 'Don't come near my apartment without an appointment for starters.'

Library Aladdin is kinda taken back by the day trader and tries to explain things to him, but Altladdin refuses to believe him.

So Altladdin says he wants proof he's from a fairytale and he wants proof there's a magical train. 'If it exists and it's from another world, it's probably worth a ton of money anyway'. So they all assemble to the roof and reality Ala is basically like well holy shit basically once the tarp covering the train is taken off.

Aladdin is like 'Weeeeeell… I need something from this world to fix it because the train is broken' and asks Altladdin if he could buy the part in this world they need. Altladdin says, 'What's in it for me?' Aladdin says gold is going up in value in this world and he can have as much of his gold as he pleases and Altladdin hurries and says 'Good deal'

The train gets repaired thanks to the day trader. While they're getting everyone on board, Altladdin pops open a can of an energy drink. Aladdin wonders what that is, and so Altladdin tells him the day is looking busy so he needs it. Aladdin looks at him sadly. 'You shouldn't drink that. That doesn't look healthy for you…. '

Alice decides to go to school in place of Reality Alice. The two had gotten very close. She does just that, meanwhile Reality Alice's cat Noa continues to bully and scratch Nutcracker. While Library Alice is at school, the teacher approaches her, saying he looked into abortion and it wouldn't cost much at this stage and that there would be little to no damage on her body either. Library Alice remembers Reality Alice throwing up as they were changing, and sees the wedding ring on his left finger and then realizes what's happening. She gets angry and swats him away. 'DON'T TOUCH HER AGAIN!' Upset, she runs home despite the school day not being over. Reality Alice sees how poorly Library Alice looks and asks what's wrong. Library Alice says no one knew they swapped places but students picked that she looks like she lost weight, then tells her that the teacher is awful and even he couldn't tell.

Reality Alice knows that her teacher is cruel, but she can't stop loving him, and it reminds Library ALice of how she is bounded to her Author. 'Then, if you can't hate him, I will.' Reality Alice says in that case she will hate her Author for her, and the two girls laugh after they hug.

Meanwhile Reality Matchie is in the dispatch car with her coworkers. It turns out people are turning to nightmares, and soon they all start doing the same. She screams out, and as they drive by, she sees the building she set herself on fire at at the end of her reality chapter. This is.. my story. I'm supposed to die here… '

It turns out this the dolls doing. They are determined to get the characters to end the world and continue killing again and don't want the story disturbed. Reality Alice begs her cat Noa to wake up. Reality Matchie runs off. She takes Noa and runs to the building. 'I have to go to that building!' That's her story. The dolls are like 'that's right.' It turns out this current world is one Reality Alice's unborn child dreamed of to save her from killing herself, and is trying to summon every single fairytale and alt alike to help.

The dolls say the unborn child is too weak to maintain the order in this world and keep the dream going, therefore the world is going to collapse. It doesn't matter because all of the characters can keep killing and dying and coming back to life anyway.

Reality Matchie also realizes she has matches in her hand, but Library Matchie rushes to her. Library Matchie is crying tears of joy, happy she was able to save the firefighter. 'Thank goodness for the other-other me…' Reality Matchie says she was indeed rescued by a girl exactly like her who was more brutish. The two girls team up to defeat nightmares, then Library Matchie takes her hand. 'Come with me!'

Meanwhile, Aladdin Alt walked himself to the brokerage firm, the same one in his story where he died. He had an energy drink in one hand and caffeine pills in the other. At this point he was aware this was his story and he accepted the consequences of his actions. But then Library Aladdin rushes to him. 'You are me, and I am you. And you too are using money to compensate not being able to protect someone important to you.' Aladdin Alt: 'What do you mean?' Aladdin just smiles at his reality self saying the answer is simple, and swats the stuff out of his hands. Saying that losing anything else at this point is foolish and he should come with him.

Meanwhile Nut has been busy trying to Avenger assemble the other characters, but the alts are no longer in the scene of their deaths and he cant get every character. All the characters and their reality counterparts rush out, and the dolls try to stop them in their tracks saying they are violating conduct to seasonal events and the main story, then summon a huge nightmare. Nutcracker yells back at them that they violate things all the time and they're the ones who set everything up like this in the first place.

They all panic and run to the locomotive and get inside. Altladdin mocks Aladdin and says 'Drive safely conductor' and Aladdin smiles and says to leave it to him. Reallity Matchie says in the case of a fire to leave it to her and it dawns on Alice what book she was reading. She made a conductor signal to her reality counterpart. 'Night on the Galactic Railroad.' A hole appears in the sky and they take off into it, away from the collapsing city the unborn child tried to make a better haven from it's dream it couldn't sustain.

Alice says as they talk off she's tired of wearing strange clothes every season anymore. Aladdin says Library is quite weird and he's tired of it himself. But Reality Matchie tells Library Matchie her conductor suit looks really nice on her and that makes her happy. Reality Aladdin said maybe it's time they all revolt against the dolls. Library Alice agrees, they had it a long time coming. The dolls tell them to stop talking and get their asses back in the Library.

Meanwhile Reality Alice is quiet, and looks down in her lap to her dying cat Noa. It suddenly dawns on her the soul of her child was Noa, and she tears up, saying she's sorry for being an incompetent mother. Noa licks the tears off her hands to comfort her, then meows one last meow before fading away.

Library Alice comforts her, saying Noa did everything he could to save them all. Aladdin says this new world they are going to feels like a child being reborn. The characters have broken free from the pain of their stories but now they lost their sense of purpose. Nutcrucker comforts them, saying that this train goes anywhere and they can explore every single possibility.

Nut says this place goes beyond the Library, where no rules restrict anyone. Aladdin says it's like a baby being reborn. And the event ends with Alice blowing a conductor whistle which sounds like a cry of an infant. Alice points it out but Nutcracker says she is hearing things. A new scratch from nowhere appears on his back. And so, these 'nobody' characters traveled through new stories in the galaxy. Altladdin eyes sparkle like a child at the view.

End.

Side Note: The alts aren't in the location of their deaths because this triggered an effect on all the characters to avoid their fate. They are alive and well, fully voiced in the side story reading the Library Abridged ver of The Night on The Galactic Express. With Dorothy's help, of course.

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Uuuehghhuhggh touching grass touching grass and I’m lowkey SICK OF IT I just wanna do nothing now RAGGH ok but EPINAGI CHAPTWR BROOOOOO NAGI AND CHIGIRI IM CRYING NAGIS EYE SPARKLE TOO GOODBYEEEE

U20/3rd selection yuki truly on TOP like that’s the yuki that karasus afraid of in fwtkac and pursuit ugh he’s such a gentleman Noel noa PLEASEEE PUT HIM ON THE FIELD

LMAOO THE REUNICLUS ANALYSIS it’s even better when you remember it’s a psychic type and it’s probably using that to backup its claims like “trust me im a psychic type i can read minds and I saw the future and they get married #canon”

Am I hearing that there’s potential for the first yuki fic on the miraverse…..

NO I STILL FRESH EDITS AND ANJMATIONS OF THAT SCENE it’s got everyone in a chokehold (they better throw in a juicy anime only Karasu scene SOON) wait lowk I bet that Karasu panel is gonna be animated next ep?? Since the match is definitely kicking off and I remember that being one of the Karasu “intro” panels

That’s only such a flex though like “oh yeah I’m zooming in from my horse nbd” LMAOO it’s okay the abs will forever live on via this post on your blog or maybe this is a sign to start writing and riding more /hj

- Karasu anon

AHAHAHA THAT’S SO REAL sometimes after i’ve been too busy irl i need an entire weekend to recover from it and do nothing 😭 praying you get through it all and can return to being chronically online once more /j unrelated but i’ve seen so many tik toks that i need to send someone so i’m just to link them all at the bottom KFHFHSHS

THE EPINAGI CHAPTER WAS SO GOOD AS ALWAYS fire tabieita panels + BAROU LOOKED AMAZINGGGGG OH MY GOD and yeah the nagi chigiri scene was so cute i hope people realize how genuinely nice nagi is like yeah he’s a little emotionally oblivious but he really does mean well for the most part 🙁 he was so worried abt chigiri it’s such a contrast to isagi literally SHOVING HIM TO THE GROUND in first selection (i forget if isagi knew about chigiri’s leg atp or not either way it was insane work on his part)

YESSSS THIS ERA OF YUKI IS SO PEAK truly the man of all time…the only one to make fwtkac AND pursuit karasu shudder in fear/mediocrity 😫 he’s so kind and gentle and handsome and perfect it’s insane HAHAHA like i just love him sm

HELPPP reuniclus fake prophet era??? imagine nagi’s birthday is coming up so his pokémon band together to raise money to get him a gift or smth and reuniclus just tells people’s fortunes and then uses his psychic powers to manipulate things so that what he predicted happens LMAOAOA the entire team is pulling scams and doing anything to get money until one of them (probably arcanine) realizes that can just ask reo for funds 😭

YESSSS omg wait technically yuki has an oaeu entry should i do his next 😧⁉️ it’s possible…it’s certainly possible…

YEAHHH I THINK SO that panel is like one of the first we get of him playing and considering he’s also the first of the team to get the spotlight (since he’s isagi’s main opp as well as the highest ranked besides rin/shidou) we will almost definitely get it saturday or at least i’m praying!! we’ll also get isagi calling him a villain which will def pull a chuckle out of me because he’s just silly baby tabito please 🙁 he’s not evil he’s just a loser

LMAOO abs gone but never forgotten 😭 unfortunately it was a combo of riding every day and then walking my dog for 6-8 miles daily because it was the pandemic so i had nothing else to do!! so that era will never be repeated…now i ride other people’s horses too so i leave my phone in the barn in order to be #respectful HAHA so i will have to regain them in some other way

OKAY TIK TOK PALOOZA BELOW ‼️

BAROU edit oh my god they did him so well in ep1 it’s insane

this shit lowkey converting me to itoshism…NOO who said that

nagi edit with a karasu cameo AND slandering isagi truly this was made for me

this is also cracking me up because i’m slow i didn’t realize otoya was referencing smth HAHAH just makes him even funnier

most normal pursuit tabieita interaction

THIS IS THE ONE I WANTED TO SEND THE MOST LMAOAAO it’s literally oaeu aiku and niko @ barou i’ve actually been crying at the visual of them filming this because they would (aiku would do it to go viral and get girls and niko just somehow ends up involved like usual)

[secularprolifeconspectus]

Are you personally disabled? If not, then please don’t ‘advocate’ for us disabled people at all by trying to get rid of prenatal testing. It’s not ableist at all to want to know if a fetus has any kind of medical conditions. Some medical conditions can be fixed by performing surgery on the fetus by the way. Also, we don’t want or need you ‘looking out for us’.

I have debilitating ADHD, asthma, IBS, and it's likely I've inherited an immune disorder. I suspect I have EDS and POTS, to top it off. So yes, I am disabled, I am one of "us". And to top it off, I experience homosexual attraction: all of these things are theorized to have genetic markers for predisposition.

So one day, any and all of my conditions could be detectable via in utero testing. And all of these are reasons that people might suffer or have a difficult life, thus people like me are seen as undesirable and better off exterminated in the womb. I am advocating for rights, respect, and accommodation for myself and people like me. Further, I am looking out for EVERYONE, because anyone can become disabled and eventually will if privileged to live a long life.

When I say prenatal genetic testing should be opt-in, I'm saying that disabled prenates should not be systematically screened and recommended for suffocation, poisoning, or dismemberment before birth. I'm saying that disabled folks have inherent dignity and equal value, and we should not feed the cultural presumption that folks are better off being killed than suffering the indignity of disability. That is systemic, lethal ableism in healthcare. Converting prenatal genetic testing to opt-in, rather than assuming every parent wants it, is accommodation for disability. More on this perspective in this essay and its sources.

I'll give you benefit of doubt for a moment. Maybe we aren't thinking of the same kinds of tests and screens. Obviously, ultrasounds should be opt-out, as in, it's assumed parents want to be informed about what's up with their prenates. Many prenatal conditions can be detected this way, and then this may justify prenatal genetic testing to confirm the diagnosis. When I talk about prenatal testing, I am most likely referring to genetic testing solely and specifically.

On its own, prenatal genetic testing can't definitively diagnose most medical conditions; it can only screen for increased potential, aka predisposition. Many prenatal children are suffocated, poisoned, or dismembered only because there was an elevated chance that they might suffer indicated by prenatal genetic testing. With the alternative of perinatal hospice available that can greatly reduce their suffering, it is immoral to violently deprive any child of their life.

But don't take my word for it. Listen to a mother who was coerced into Termination For Medical Reasons by prenatal genetic testing. And read about Noa, who was killed before birth because her genetic testing indicated she would have the same disabilities as her mom (who was likely also coerced into TFMR.)

Now I will speak to you how you spoke to me. Don't assume that all disabled folks hold the same opinion as you, because we don't want or need you "speaking for" all of us. No one fucking asked!! Please speak as yourself, an individual disabled person with an individual opinion. You aren't the gatekeeper of disability babe.

[luuxxart]

THIS IS ME ASKING FOR YOUR FERDITHEABERT HEADCANONS I didn't even know how badly I needed this ot3!!

THABK YOU FOR ENABLIGN ME

SO MUCH under the cut

I’m gonna go with individual ships first and then branch into ferditheabert that way it’s easier to sort of chronicle ???

Also someone remind me to write a fic one day im literally going to go through an entire plotline over here sndmdkdkdkd

Pre-Timeskip Ferdithea

I think this one would be the one that would happen first

I’m a whore for canon so everything definitely happens according to the supports imo

Ferdinand sort of just goes with the flow and is nice to everyone but anyone with eyes can see he’s madly in love with Dorothea

Just absolutely head over heels like

“If you asked me to jump off a bridge right now I would go do it” kind of head over heels madly in love

Dorothea is aware but is trying very hard not to be

She doesn’t really get it because she’s still under the impression he was gawking at her in the fountain and suddenly feels guilty about it now that they’re pretty much on the same pedestal

And as Dorothea navigates how she feels about Ferdinand and his adoration of her, she turns to Hubert’s relationship with Edelgard

Pre-Timeskip Huberthea

Dorothea pesters Hubert endlessly about his feelings for Edelgard

Knowing that his feelings for her aren’t romantic is relieving, but she’s not sure why

Especially because this now makes Ferdinand’s doting on her even more confusing

So she hangs around Hubert, much to his annoyance, to see what fuels his drive for Edelgard

She ends up doing a few tasks with him like buying some Bergamot, polishing axes, and eventually uh

They touch hands

While harvesting some Noa Fruit

And the ensuing weekend dinner with the Professor becomes all the more awkward because of course the Professor is playing matchmaker after noticing the time they’ve been spending together

Then one day Dorothea notices Hubert drinking coffee and is like

Holy shit that stuff we used to drink to stay up for five fucking acts of an opera how do you drink that

But he makes a bombass brew and suddenly the caffeine addiction is back

They don’t really talk about the almost-touches and the wistful talks about romance that don’t really go anywhere

But Dorothea manages to convince Hubert to do some things for himself (like planting coffee beans in the greenhouse and like vent)

And Hubert’s errands for Edelgard takes Dorothea’s mind off the stress of finding a suitor

Because devotion to someone or something is ,,, honestly a lot more important than money

And holy shit maybe there’s something to Ferdinand’s actions?????

Oh well better ignore it for now

Pre-Timeskip Ferdibert

But this is where it gets cOMPLICATED folks

Hubert is VERY aware that what he has with Dorothea is bordering romantic but he’s trying to push that down a because he feels like he doesn’t deserve someone who could be as devoted to him as he is to them

He’s ALSO trying to push down his feelings for Ferdinand mostly because he knows that Ferdinand is currently pursuing Dorothea

So Hubert is caught in the middle between the two

If at all, he tries to focus a little more on his attraction to Ferdinand because he understands that Dorothea is currently not interested in either one of them

(or else she would’ve said something, right????)

Also, due to Ferdinand being heir apparent to the prime ministry, Hubert has an excuse to keep watch over him

I mean

What can I say except Hubert is morosexual

He wants someone to fix/take care of and currently Dorothea is not exhibiting that need

Ferdinand tho? dude would literally lose his head if it weren’t attached to his neck

Eventually Hubert draws up a proposal to have a double prime ministry so that he can overlook Ferdinand’s actions in the future

He ends up tucking the draft into a drawer, but the idea tends to sit at the tip of his tongue every time he sees Ferdinand

He’s afraid Ferdinand will see it for what it is

A proposal proposal

And that’s exactly what it is

And he (no thoughts) talks to Dorothea about it and she (head empty) encourages him to propose it at the dance

Pre-Timeskip Goddess Tower

so after presumably edelethy actions have happened and the goddess tower becomes unoccupied,

Hubert asks Ferdinand to accompany him up to the tower for the government proposal™️

Ferdinand doesn’t suspect anything

But then they get up there and Dorothea is there, waiting to pour her heart out to Hubert because she realizes if she doesn’t nip it in the bud, she’ll never have a devoted suitor (and also she still doesn’t realize that this is a proposal proposal)

So then it basically becomes that spiderman meme with all the spidermen pointing at each other because they all have dumb stupid crushes on each other

Problem is they’re all young and dumb and they don’t know how to sort it out so they just don’t and leave

Post-Timeskip Ferdithea

So war happens and everyone’s pretty distant from each other

Then the Professor comes back and is extremely upset to see all the rifts between everyone

So everyone kind of tries

But that’s hard because it’s been five years and the rifts are now pretty much ravines

Ferdinand finally gets the nerve up to talk to Dorothea again because he’s at his breaking point

He can’t stand not talking to either of them and Dorothea’s more open to talking

Their A support happens and Dorothea finally understands why Ferdinand did the things he did

ONLY PROBLEM IS

NOW HUBERT/EDELGARD IS VERY CONFUSING AGAIN

Post-Timeskip Huberthea

So Dorothea finally confronts Hubert again and asks him again if he truly loves Edelgard

He decidedly does not

He also decidedly does not want to speak to Dorothea after the Goddess Tower Incident

Dorothea begs him to at least speak to Ferdinand

Hubert considers this

Post-Timeskip Ferdibert

Meanwhile, Ferdinand is mending the bridge between himself and Hubert

They have their A+ Support

They start doing missions together

And after Hubert protects Ferdinand from a close call with a Faerghus fusillade, Ferdinand starts to see what Dorothea saw in Hubert

Uh the devotion that is

Now Ferdiberthea :)

So have i said devotion enough yet? Because that’s the name of the game

And Dorothea fuckiNg misses Hubert

and Ferdinand is pretty much spending all his time with Hubert so Dorothea ends up missing him a lot too

(Also at this point both Ferdithea/ferdibert have become an unspoken thing around Garreg Mach and everyone is VERY confused)

(Except the Professor who is watching their matchmaking attempts come to fruition)

So anyway Dorothea has Edelgard arrange for her to go on the next mission with Hubert and Ferdinand

And OOPS ITS WINTER AND THEY ALL GET STRANDED IN A SMALL TOWN WITH ONLY A ONE BED ROOM OPEN AT AN INN

it’s a king size don’t worry

They just have to get used to each other’s company for a long Pegasus Moon

Ferdinand catches onto the coldness between Hubert and Dorothea so he tries to find situations to get them alone together

So after a couple of those moments, Hubert and Dorothea have a colder version of their A support out in the small town market

There’s some crying, some consoling, and a passionate makeout back at the inn followed by Ferdinand reaping the spoils by joining in

When they get back to Garreg Mach, they become an impervious wall of magic and equestrian fighting

They also become an impervious wall of love and devotion

Miscellaneous headcanons

Ferdinand always sleeps in the middle just because Hubert and Dorothea can be all over each other one minute, and suddenly need space the next

It’s not that they don’t like each other, they’re just both A LOT sometimes

Dorothea and Hubert often stay up longer than Ferdinand because they are very avid coffee drinkers

They double team carrying him back to the bedroom if he ends up nodding off at a late night war meeting

One thing to keep in mind is that I also headcanon Hubert as trans

And so he has met Dorothea at an opera in person before Garreg Mach, she just doesn’t recognize him, and he’s gonna let it stay that way

But it was with her that he was introduced to coffee, which sort of helped him through Edelgard’s disappearance (if you count staying up until the crack of dawn to plan ways to rescue her as “help”)

Hubert will never admit that he’s sick because he is devoted to his royal duties

so Dorothea and Ferdinand take turns staying with him to make sure he doesn’t move and fulfilling his duties in his absence

Ferdinand is still very fuCking reckless and hes even more reckless in war so it takes both dark knight!Hubert and gremory!Dorothea (riding on Hubert’s horse usually) to keep great knight!Ferdinand in check

Were you also disappointed that Dorothea wasn’t a theater/opera kid meme? Me too.

Anyway she is. And so is Ferdinand. So they convert Hubert into operakidism and then proceed to annoy the rest of the black eagles endlessly with opera songs and dance numbers

Listen, if u haven’t seen the Manuela/Ferdinand supports,,, like

Manuela is an enabler of the opera kids just saying

also it is no secret that Ferdinand is a horse girl and he ends up turning the other two into horse girls as well and eventually the rest of the black eagles have to ban horses from conversation entirely

Pegasi were already banned from conversation because of Hubert

Eventually the three get married and have a couple kids by mage

They take an annual winter vacation in a small town to rekindle any sparks they might lose in the stress of governance

[sweetbitgaming]

Zelda Wind Waker 2 Brief History

Wind Waker 2 was first teased in March of 2004 during a Game Developers Conference entitled “The Evolution of a Franchise: The Legend of Zelda. Eiji Aonuma confirmed the sequel in a timeline picture showing “Wind Waker 2” is being set for a 2xxx release. IGN would report on this and mention several times that a 2004 release was possible for the game. Eiji Aonuma would mention during this conference that more information about the Wind Waker 2 would be revealed at the upcoming e3 event.  

E3 2004 would come, and a new trailer would be unveiled; however, it wasn’t a trailer for the Wind Waker 2, instead, it was for a more realistic Zelda game similar to Ocarina of Time.  The trailer seemed to fit the same tone of the Zelda Space World 2000 demo video which featured Link going one on one with Ganondorf in a sword battle. Fan reaction was electric to say the least as Miyamoto came out on stage carrying a replica of the Master Sword and Hylian Shield; however, where was the sea? Where was the King of Red Lions? Where was Toon Link? Well to put it simply, they were gone now.  

During a presentation during GDC, Aonuma would speak about what exactly happened to Wind Waker 2. Here’s an excerpt from that presentation “Let me backtrack a little. As I was busy working on the connectivity project, it wasn’t as though the Wind Waker 2 project that I spoke of earlier came to a halt. Not at all. As some of you know, at E3 2004, we unveiled the game that would become Twilight Princess, the realistic Zelda game, and we announced that it was developed by the team that had been developing Wind Waker 2. Actually, there was a reason that that decision was made at the time. At one point, I had heard that even Wind Waker, which had reached the million mark in sales, had become sluggish in North America, where the market was much healthier than in Japan. I asked NOA why this was. What I was told was that the toon-shading technique was, in fact, giving the impression that this Zelda was for a younger audience and that, for this reason, it alienated the upper teen audience that had represented the typical Zelda player. Having heard that, I began to worry about whether Wind Waker 2, which used a similar presentation, was something that would actually sell. In addition, because we knew how difficult it would be to create an innovative way of playing using existing GameCube hardware, we knew what a challenge it would be to develop something that would do well in the Japanese market, where gamer drift was happening.

That’s when I decided that if we didn’t have an effective and immediate solution, the only thing we could do was to give the healthy North American market the Zelda that they wanted. So, at the end of 2003, I went to Miyamoto and said, “I want to make a realistic Zelda." Miyamoto was skeptical at first. I was so focused on changing the look of the game as being the solution we were looking for without coming up with a breakthrough game idea, and he advised me that “If you really want to make a realistic Zelda, you should start by doing what you couldn’t in the Ocarina of Time. Make it so that Link can attack enemies while riding on his horse using the Wind Waker engine, and make your decision based on how that feels." This is something that went against everything that the staff had been working on and I expected to come as quite a shock to the team. Surprisingly, my entire staff was enthusiastic about this change, and the project on which progress had slowed was given a much-needed jumpstart.

Four months later, development had progressed to a point where Link could swing his sword in battle against enemies while riding on his horse in a realistic looking environment. When it was announced as a surprise trailer at the 2004 E3, it received a standing ovation by the media audience. This was a very exciting moment for us, but we were still very much in the early stages of converting the game into something more realistic. We knew that we had to create a Zelda game that would live up to expectations of fans in North America, and that if we didn’t, it could mean the end of the franchise. But I also trusted the ability of the team, which was able to bring the game so far in just four short months, and Miyamoto and I announced that this Zelda would be released in the fall of 2005.”

So, the project was canceled and was converted into Twilight Princess. Toon Link would continue his adventures on the Nintendo DS hardware and things would be at peace. However, it would be revealed many years later that a group of game developers was working on pitching a version of Wind Waker for the Gameboy Advance. David Soliani, developer of Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle, another Nintendo game using first-party characters revealed in a Twitter post back in 2017 revealed that back in 2003 he and a fellow colleague were close to getting a demo version of Wind Waker on Gameboy Advance by their manager. The colleague mentioned was Fabio Pagetti. This is what Soliani had to say about the project "Long time ago, I guess it was the 2003, me and Fabio Pagetti (the artist who made the pixel art below) almost convinced our managing director to let us produce a demo for a GBA version of Wind Waker. No luck that time, but it was running nicely. We were dreamers,"

Nothing more has ever come out about Wind Waker 2 other than game developers wanted Link to be able to ride through Hyrule on horseback. This concept easily carried over to Twilight Princess which features an extensive amount of horseback combat. There was also talks of making an adult version of Toon Link to better suite the horseback riding mechanic; however, no footage of this has ever been leaked. As mentioned earlier, Toon Link will live on forever through the two DS titles he starred in; however, it’s always fun to think “what if?” when thinking of a direct sequel to the Wind Waker on GameCube.  

[theonlinemuse]

And now it’s JT’s turn to have a headcanon post! Yet another collaboration with @incorrectprodigalsonquotes and we’ll be tackling Gil after this. 

The answer to "what does JT stand for” turns out to be Jaime Taliesin. The first name is for Domingo Romeo Jaime, the middle name is for his Welsh great-grandfather

It took Malcolm six months after finding out JT’s full name to figure out why that’s his middle name. He kept coming up with the most bizarre reasons why until JT gets fed up and just tells him

Malcolm’s like “I finally broke him” and then feels betrayed when he finds out that Dani already knew

He’s Afro-Cuban on his mother’s side. His maternal great-grandmother hailed from Cienfuegos and gained fame as a jazz singer after she moved to New York and married a Black Welshman 

He’s an only child, but his mom has an older sister played by Rita Marley and he has a ton of cousins. Family reunions are always hectic whenever TJ and the cousins get together 

JT was raised by his mom Lola Tarmel, a famous Broadway actress played by Lola Falana who's known for her bombastic performances and great character work. She’s a cross between Martha Rodgers from Castle and Lydia Riera from One Day at a Time 

Lola’s nicknames for JT are bombón and pollito. The former is for his secret sweet tooth while the latter is due to how he wore his hair as a kid 

There was never a father in the picture. The identity of his father has never been officially revealed to the public, even though there was a lot of public interest, but in the end it stayed a secret between him and his mom

JT practically grew up backstage on Broadway during Lola’s shows. He actually acted in a few productions when he was a kid like Peter Pan and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He was also in a production of A Raisin in the Sun when he was a teenager before he joined the army at nineteen 

The reason why he’s not so put off by Malcolm's antics is because he reminds him of his mother at times and he’s dealt with wilder stuff with Lola 

He's still not over her one woman show about raising a son who would eventually leave the theatre world to save the world. She may have been a tiny bit dramatic when he became a cop 

He’s both a history and antique weapons nerd. It started when his mom played Ruth in Pirates of Penzance and between seeing her rehearse fight scenes and reading Treasure Island in fourth grade, it lead to a life long interest in pirates, guns, and swords 

He can easily tell Malcolm really obscure facts about lady pirates from all over the world and it’s a rare moment where they both geek out over the same thing 

Malcolm immediately challenges him to an axe throwing competition after he learns that JT competed. They bond and Gil and Dani are torn between being alarmed and not comprehending what they’re seeing

Dani actually introduced JT to his wife. She and Talia “Tally” Tamarkin were roommates in college and they went to the same synagogue. They were all playing pool at Amsterdam Billiards and Tally challenged JT to a match

It led to her hustling him. She cleaned him out and JT was all "damn, now I need to marry her"

JT converted to Judaism when he married Tally and they had a Jewish ceremony 

And JT is a dad! He and Tally have twin four-year-old girls, Miri and Noa Tarmel

Miri got named for Miri, Malaysia where JT and Tally got married and Noa is named for JT’s mom’s favourite poet, Yamilka Noa 

The girls were overdue by a month until Tally finally went into labour. She kept posting Instagram stories about how done she is with being pregnant and JT found the whole thing a little too amusing 

Miri and Noa call JT papi and Tally imma. Lola gets called abuelita 

JT and Tally are trying for another baby now that the twins are in kindergarten. JT is aiming for another girl, but Tally is hankering for a boy this time 

There might be a bet involved 

JT is both a dog and a cat person, the latter because he likes that they mind their own business. He has a dog named Coquito after his mom’s favourite drink and a pair of cats called Basquiat and Kahlo after Tally’s favourite painters 

It turns out Basquiat and Kahlo are both female after discovering the cats are pregnant and JT ends up with a 101 Dalmatians situation

JT thinks it's too many cats, but then Miri and Noa throw tantrums and now they have dozens of kittens. The cats have their own room now and the twins are still naming all the kittens 

So far the kittens all have food related names. You can tell that Waffles, Noodle, and Pickles were all the girls’ idea 

He’s not particularly picky about food, but he can’t stand hazelnut. He doesn’t mind the taste, but it’s the scent that makes him scrunch his face and feel nauseous because he has the nose of a bloodhound 

The only reason the team knows anything about it is because JT threw up when he caught a whiff of Edrisa’s hazelnut coffee 

JT knows so many Celia Cruz songs by heart because his abuelita was a huge fan. He’s also a Selena fan and he often sings Bidi Bidi Bom Bom to Miri and Noa 

Malcolm sometimes catches him humming it absently in the precinct and JT always goes, “not a word, Bright” 

[fandom-meanderer]

Overcooked

Pairing: Blue Lions x Reader

Part: (1/1)

Genre: Comedy

Fandom: Fire Emblem Three Houses

P.o.V.: 2nd

Word Count: 1,041 Words

Warnings:

Further Notes: Ask, and you shall receive. Have any of you guys played Overcooked before? This is a pure, comedy fic not meant to be taken seriously in anyway, I had a blast writing this so I hope you all like it too!

—

It all started with a simple request from Flayn.

“Oh professor!” She called out. Byleth turned around to look at her. “I was wondering if you had enough ingredients for some soup?”

Then… Then this chaos happened.

“Ashe, get the tomatoes! Dedue, you focus on cooking and adding ingredients to the pot! And Dimitri,” you ponder for a moment. “You can just chop the ingredients.”

“A wise choice,” Dimitri smiles wryly.

Seteth had called on a “Soup Making Contest” and the winning house was allowed more extended free time for the next week along with a pass for the most upgraded and updated equipment from the armory. With the help of a strangely dedicated Byleth, the dining hall was converted into a large kitchen with three stations for the three houses. Whoever made the best and the most soup would be declared winner, and by the goddess, everyone was so much more into it than anyone would have ever expected.

“(Name)!” Mercedes called. “How much spice do I add to this stew?” You run over and take a quick taste, completely taken aback by how sweet it was.

“Add a pinch of salt and some more onions,” you instruct. And of course, your worst nightmare had to occur.

“ONE OF THE STATIONS IS BURNING. I REPEAT. IT’S ON FUCKING FIRE!” Sylvain shouts, ducking for cover. Annette runs over, trying to tame the flames, but surprise surprise, using a Fire spell only makes the fire WORSE, Annette.

You grab a bucket of water and run over, splashing the entire thing, not caring about a now dripping wet Dimitri because let’s be honest he looks better that way anyways.

“Sylvain, toss everything in the pot, it can’t be salvaged. Ashe! I need you to grab some more Noa Fruit and Teutates Pike.”

“Yes, ma’am!” The two shout.

“Annette! Bring those three plates to Flayn!” Annette salutes and executes her task. “We are going to win this.”

The Blue Lions had to have the most effective chain of action. With Dimitri and Felix chopping the vegetables, Mercedes and Annette on transport, Ashe and Dedue on stove duty, and you and Ingrid on management, it was perfect. You decided it would be best to keep Sylvain on support, sending him to different stations where he was needed.

Stove duty was clearly not his thing.

Also just if you’re curious, Mellow is on ingredient duty, he’s such a good boy.

~

The competition was fierce, but not that fierce.

The Golden Deer side wasn’t doing so hot either. Especially with Raphael adding way too much meat to each pot and the constant Lorenz vs. Claude power struggles. If the Blue Lions side was loud, the Golden Deers were louder.

“RAPHAEL. CAN YOU QUIT DOING THAT?!” Lysithea shouts. She takes out at least four bones of some animal from the pots and tosses them out. “Meat ingredients go in the meat pot and vegetable ingredients go to the vegetable pot. They have never, and will never, mix!”

“Alrighty!” Raphael, of course, is always all smiles.

“Ugh, do I have to do this?” Hilda lays down on one of the counter tops. “Marianne, you do it.”

“O-Okay…” the blue haired girl grabs a carrot and chops it slowly. She’s still chopping. Still chopping.

“Ugh! Just let me do it!” Hilda jumps up and starts chopping ingredients at lightning speed, pushing them towards Claude, who skewered them with an arrow and shot them across the station towards Leonie, who was in charge of cooking. Once Leonie was finished, she handed them off to Ignatz, who plated the dishes and served them to Flayn, both people slowly growing concerned with the number of plates on the table.

The Black Eagles on the other hand… Um…

“I’m gonna fight them!” Caspar shouts, pounding into the albenian moose. All to tenderize the meat of course, for cooking naturally. Petra, on the other hand, continued to add various exotic spices to the stew, claiming to make it more tasteful.

“And I am Ferdinand von Aegir!” Ferdinand quickly chops the vegetables in the way of a noble which isn’t that well and passes them off to Petra. Petra then passes it along to Edelgard, who in turn passed it off to Hubert. The three of them combined allowed them to mass produce soup at a faster rate. Hubert, who may or may not be cheating a bit, would add extra flames with his magic to the pots to make them boil faster, but that’s just between him and Edelgard.

Dorothea was the only one with a stable enough composure to deliver the bowls of soup to Flayn without spilling the majority of the soup. The job used to fall upon Linhardt, until he fell asleep half way to the table. He’s still asleep one the floor but no one could be bothered to move him right now.

Long story short, the only ones who actually know what the hell they’re doing is Edelgard, Hubert, and Dorothea.

~

At the faculty table, the chaos amongst them nearly fell upon deaf ears.

“What do you think Flayn? Is it to your liking?” Seteth asks, oblivious to his sister’s puffed cheeks and pouting mouth.

“It is simply fine, brother,” she hisses. Seteth smiles.

“Wondrous, more soup is coming your way, I assure you,” he smiles. Flayn huffs and shoves another spoonful down her mouth.

“I do like the Blue Lions’ assembly line method,” Hanneman comments. “But the Black Eagles’ mass production method is allowing them to conquer the quantity field.”

“Quality will always be better than quantity, Hanneman,” Manuela cuts in. “Observe the Golden Deer. They have engineered a fast and efficient way to produce quality soup.”

“I think the Blue Lions are going to win this,” Byleth states. Jeralt, Alois, and Catherine sit near Flayn, taking some of the bowls of soup from her to alleviate the soup hell she had subjected herself to. Shamir and Cyril on the other hand watched with slight amusement. Even Lady Rhea herself couldn’t pass up the opportunity to watch her students.

Finally, after thousands of bowls of soup, Seteth called time. The house leaders all walked up to the table and awaited anxiously for Flayn’s choice of winner.

“Blue Lions!” She announces. A mix of applause and groans filled the room as she stood up. “You all fought valiantly, and each soup tasted delectable. I thank you for your participation, and I apologize for my brother’s… eccentricity for this event.”

And thus ended the Cook off of Eagle and Lion (and Deer).

[jujuoh]

Slimebodies!

This post is for a bunch of fun history and anatomy stuff! In the Goo AU, I haven’t decided yet if there were natural slime people originally, but the googioh characters are actually using slime bodes as avatars of a sort. They’re created via various slimes, oozes, and gelatinous cubes, and various secret magic-science known only to the Kaiba Company. 

Gozuburo Kaiba, a human merchant who had no problems dabbling in necromancy for his own gain, started out initially trying to make a new (or at least temporary) body for his dying son, Noa, but quickly veered off into using the research for soldiers/weapons that could live indefinitely and heal from almost any common battle wound - to be created en masse for the highest bidders. Noa’s mind and soul were uploaded with technomancy to an isolated machine in the back of a warehouse and forgotten until Gozuburo’s death, and his adopted son Seto Kaiba inherited all of his possessions and assets. Even though Seto is ridiculously competitive and appreciates a good fight, he detests anything resembling actual warfare and wants to use the technology and magicks to create rather than destroy.

Seto is a human technomancer Warlock, who’s magical sugardaddy is the lightning dragon goddess, Kisara. Mokuba is still in training. Their parents were killed in an avalanche, later discovered to be caused by one of Gozuburo’s weapons. The man adopted them after Seto showed off his intricate knowledge of electrical runes.

Seto goes back into the original slimebody research and tries to give Noa the body he was always meant to have. To do this he had to start the spells and potions over almost from scratch, trying to steer it away from necromancy and into artificery, and while doing so discovered that adding fruit extract made the bodies more stable and less.... unsettling, more sentient rather than living weapons or mindless beasts like they were under Gozuburo’s direction. The type of fruit didn’t seem to matter beyond what colour (and bizarrely, flavour) the resulting body had. 

After this success (and with a new whiny, but clever, slimy, green-apple-and-mint brother in tow), Seto decided to do more test trials for others in need of a new (or spare) body. Along with everything else he was making in terms of technomagical supplies and creations, the Kaiba Company was rebranded into a force for good. The slimebodies could be used when traveling or doing work underwater or hazardous conditions, or for people who are in magically induced comas to promote healing or are unable to move, in order to keep their daily lives going and their minds healthy and active while their bodies rest. They’re especially handy for disembodied souls like Noa, though ghosts specifically seem to have a harder time possessing them than flesh-and-blood bodies.

Now we finally get to use the infographic up above! Here it is again:

Humans, elves, dwarves - Any of the races can use slimebodies, even non-humanoid ones, though the transition will be more difficult the farther away in similarity the body plans are. All you need is sentience and the ability to give consent (that last one isn’t technically necessary but Seto won’t do it without it unless it’s an absolute (medical) emergency and the affected party physically isn’t capable.) The comparisons here will all be to humans for simplicity’s sake.

1. Auricles - In place of both ears and noses, the auricles are little triangular protrusions on the side of the head, that sense vibrations (and thus sound), chemicals (smell), and also electricity. This makes them highly empathetic. All three of these senses are stronger than those humans have, but sensitivity to bad smells is much lower, and sensitivity to bad sounds is much higher. 

Piercings aren’t permanent and will close up immediately upon removal of piercing jewellery, but they are easy and nearly harmless to redo. Jewellery and jewels can be simply stuck into or onto the bodies as well, and is a unique form of accessorizing available to the slimes (though I suppose one could glue jewels to the body, this is much more secure, and there’s no threat of sweat loosening the gems).

2. “Hair” - Nobody knows why, but the slime on top of the head seems to mimic hair growth, down to the specific hairstyle the embodied prefers. Mobuka’s answer is “It’s magic, dummy.” It can be changed as well, and sometimes even grows out the way actual hair would, but other times it doesn’t. Mokuba’s answer still holds. Long natural (A), cut/blunt end (B), short and spiky (C), and pulled back (D) styles can be seen here. For some reason - *coughmagiccough* - any “extra” flavours like mint or honey end up in the hair, as can be seen in Noa’s pale, minty bangs, and Yugi’s golden bangs.

3. Eyes - Slimes have vision nearly identical to humans, though they have no trouble seeing underwater without goggles, and with no limit to their pupil size, have a wider range of light they can see in. The main differences are in purple (or approaching purple) eyes, which can see in ultraviolet as well, and in red (or approaching red, like orange) eyes which can see in infrared. They don’t need to blink, and can see through their eyelids even though their irises are obscured from outside view. Blinking is just a residual habit or an emotional response. 

4. Mouth - Slimes don’t have teeth. Not permanent, solid teeth, anyways. Hard ridges form in the mouth while eating or in response to emotion. While slimes technically can be able to taste (and eat) with their entire bodies, reminiscent of their oozy progenitors, it is something that they must actively concentrate to do. The mouth area and the tongue do these passively, and it’s more habitual for one to eat with their mouths and no, say, shove food directly into their digestive center. It’s also pretty rude to taste your friend when giving them a hug - you wouldn’t go up to your bestie and lick them, would you? Or would you...?

5. Organs - Or rather, lacktherof. Slimes breathe through their skin, much like frogs do, and can breathe in the air and underwater. Fresh water is preferred, but they are able to stay in salt water for quite a time as long as fresh drinking water is available. They also need to absorb a lot of light - slimes are capable of photosynthesis through the presence of chlorophyll (green-blue) and rhodopsin (red-purple). Due to this, slimes try to wear as little clothing as possible without feeling or appearing naked or inappropriately dressed. They do, and must, however, eat actual food. Anything from hamburgers to non-toxic minerals can be digested in the cores of slimebodies. Need to hide a corpse?

6. GenitaIs - Slimes only form temporary organs between their legs during certain times, which can be uncomfortable at first for those inhabiting the slimebodies. Others use this as the perfect excuse to forgo underwear.

7. Nails - While the ends of fingers and toes are firmer in order to  function properly, there are no nails. Slimes that find this uncomfortable or just want to decorate themselves use stick-on nails (no glue required. While the sticking-to isn’t permanent, it’s more like semi-permanent, like a perfect vacuum seal.)

8. “Skin” - As you can see, slimebodies are overall semi-transparent and heavily tinted. Depending on the lighting, the position, and the slime, objects might show through the bodies clearly or be barely visible. While the outside has a shiny, slick appearance, to the touch the “skin” of a slimebody feels no different to an amphibian (or perhaps a damp, sweaty person). While slime droplets occasionally drip down or even off the body, not much is lost throughout the day, no more than a flesh-and-blood body loses from sweat, dead skin cells, and other passive loss. Slimes wear clothes and shoes not for concealment (though hiding the digestion process is considered polite), but to keep themselves clean, like any other being, though slimes tend to pick up much more lint than anyone else due to the constant slight moisture at the surface.

Mostly made of water, even more so than FnB bodies, slimebodies are immune to water attacks, strong to fire attacks, weak to ice attacks, and are immune to electric attacks as long as they have contact with the ground. Slashing attacks can cause damage, but unless it’s magical or elemental, the cuts will heal quickly and completely. Crushing attacks cause more damage and are hard to reform from, but it is possible.

In times of high, unstable emotion or high damage, the shape of the bodies way denature temporarily and turn partially or entirely into a slimy puddle. This is reversible, and not harmful in and of itself, but it will certainly feel very, very strange. Should a body be cut in half, the two halves can either be cleaved back together, or the bigger half will reform into a new body with rest and food. The bodies can stretch and melt through conscious effort as well, and many slimes can even be seen “melting into each other” during particularly snuggly hugs. Any foreign residue will eventually be converted or replaced by the original slime, so any colour or flavour changes are not permanent.

The way young Yugi came to inhabit a slimebody is quite an adventure. The short-ish version is this: 

Sugoroku Mutou in his youth was a human adventurer, a budding merchant-slash-warrior that would go on quests for rare, expensive items, either for a wealthy client or to expand his own collection. Whilst in Fantasy Egypt looking for an ancient cursed game board (the very one he would later use against Mr. Otogi, an eladrin bard), he stumbled into a lost tomb. From what he could tell, it was the tomb of an Aasimar prince, 3000 years gone, and yet the only thing in the burial chamber was a box on a pedestal, and you know the story from there... 

A powerful, but gentle presence urged Sugoroku to take the box, filled with what appeared to be a magical, solid-gold three-dimensional puzzle out of the tomb and back home. Having had many, many, MANY experiences with cursed objects, Sugoroku could tell this thing was deeply and powerfully cursed, but not in potentia, the trap had already been sprung long ago. There was no danger, here, just a lot of loneliness.

He returned home and kept the box shut, having given up on solving the puzzle himself after a few decades, got married, had a kid, his son got married to a spritely elf, and they, too, had a son, all before the puzzle was even thought of again.

Yugi, a half-elf with the makings of a great hero, solves the puzzle one year after finding it at age 7, and he suddenly has a second shadow. The shadow is always there, though sometimes it hides in his real shadow, and it does its best to protect Yugi throughout the years. Slowly, ever so slowly, the shadow gains sentience, and sometimes Yugi sees the shape of smiling eyes, and Yugi always smiles back. 

On Yugi’s sixteenth birthday, several years into his magical training, he can suddenly hear his shadow friend’s voice, and his friend can possess his body, and everyone realises that this poor ghost has been trapped sealed in this piece of metal for millennia. He doesn’t even remember his own name. 

Yugi decides to set off on a quest to discover his friend’s past and try to find something to help him, but Mr. Otogi shows up to exact his revenge before he even gets the chance to ask his friends along on the quest. Yugi’s body is burnt to ashes, but his shadow clings to his soul and hides it in the puzzle alongside his own.

Seto hears about what happened, and Jounouchi is the one to suggest that Yugi might be in the puzzle with his shadow friend, and Seto makes them both slimebodies and hopes for the best. It’s a huge adjustment for everyone, especially poor Atem, suddenly in a body, remembering scraps of his past thanks to Yugi’s brief presence in the puzzle. Unlike the other slimes, Atem can’t stay in his body unless the puzzle is encased in the goop - why is he so different?

The slimebodies were always intended to be temporary, and now with three different people in need of new, actual flesh-and-blood bodies, their adventures are only beginning. What - there are other ways to create slimebodies? Somebody is trying to compete with Kaiba Co? There are groups calling this blasphemy? Must they foray into necromancy in order to return Yugi, Atem, and Noa to their actual bodies? Who cursed Atem in the first place? What caused the lost prince to become lost? There are other cursed golden items with souls hidden inside? Why does Seto choose everyone’s fruit so carefully? It’s because he’s gay

[architectnews]

Gfell Wellness Hotel, South Tyrol

Gfell Wellness Hotel, South Tyrol Contemporary Resort, Italian Architecture, Images

Gfell Wellness Hotel in South Tyrol

9 Mar 2021

Gfell Wellness Hotel

Design: noa* network of architecture

Location: Fiè allo Sciliar, South Tyrol, Italy

Its roots are underground, yet it boasts an amazing view: the hotel designed by noa* in Fiè allo Sciliar was extended by embedding it in the terrain, offering guests a spectacular view and the feeling of being emerged in nature.

Transform a traditional South Tyrolean restaurant into a larger hospitality space, without altering the charming, beautiful landscape with new levels. This was noa*’s goal with its project in Fiè, within the wonderful Dolomite scenery of the Sciliar and the Catinaccio.

The Gfell Hotel, which is adjacent to the pre-existing Schönblick restaurant, sits alone just a stone’s throw from the village of Fiè allo Sciliar, on top of a slope that provides views over unspoiled forests and meadows. The owner was aiming to coordinate this restoration project with top quality accommodation, building new spaces able to enhance the distinctiveness of the location.

“We could have added an extra level”, explains the architect Andreas Profanter, a partner at noa*’s studio. “But in line with the contractors, we opted for a less invasive and more environmentally friendly solution, placing the new section inside the hill. So it’s an earth shelter construction that reduces the impact of the operation without taking any views away from the restaurant, whilst in actual fact, providing all the guests at the new hotel with a spectacular panorama. And not only that, but an old barn on site has been refurbished as an additional space for the new hotel”

The hotel, which takes its name from the Gfell meadows (prati di Gfell) area, has been classified as 3-star superior.

THE BARN COMING BACK TO LIFE It is meaningful that access to the new spaces takes place through an old barn which sits by the restaurant. The outside of the building has preserved its traditional look thanks to careful restoration works, but the inside holds a surprise for visitors: it has been fully converted to host the hotel’s reception, a lounge and breakfast hall within one large open space area.

It is an uncommon yet effective design solution from both an environmental and architectural point of view; on the one hand, it repurposes the existing level, deeply rooted in the heritage and land of the local alpine community; and on the other hand, it breathes new life into a building that would otherwise be neglected or left to decay, transforming it into a place of discovery and surprise.

Inside, all the rooms take light from the large window overlooking the valley and they are structured seamlessly under the large wooden truss, which was partly rebuilt from scratch in line with local architectural tradition to restore all the feel of a typical South Tyrolean farmstead. Even the flooring, which makes an impression as a simple original cement screed, aims to reproduce the uneven surface area of the original barn (a specific treatment makes the surface waterproof and stain-resistant, however). In the middle is a spectacular column fireplace reinterpreting the alpine hearth and creating a visual crux around which the different functional spaces revolve.

Brise soleil-type wooden panels soften radiation from the sun during the hottest hours of the day, whilst creating aesthetic impact at the same time.

Outside, the building opens out onto a large terrace that provides guests with a view over the valley.

THE HOTEL: HYPOGEAL AND SUSTAINABLE The new building is developed on two underground levels, which follow the land’s natural slope. Its architecture is almost cancelled out in order to allow for the natural scenery to be read with no interruptions. For noa*, hospitality is about (and in this project more so than ever) continuously seeking out dialogue with nature and providing the latter with the starring role.

There are 17 new rooms, complemented by a wellness area with a sauna and relaxation area. Going down a staircase from the barn, we enter the lower level which provides access to the new rooms; all of the rooms are the same on both levels (-1 and -2) and are amazing in terms of their features and size. On entering, a wooden entry-type hall (concealing the wardrobes) leads to a bright, open space (25 square metres). The model is that of the suite, with an open bathroom area (except for the toilet and bidet) designed with stone effect tiles which break up the colour uniformity of the durmast wood chosen for the flooring in the room, whilst a white ceramic vessel sink revokes the traditional country basin in terms of its shape. All the furniture is custom designed in light and natural tones. But most importantly, in each room there is a huge glass window (measuring 4.8 metres in length) that coincides with the façade, showcasing a thrilling view. “There’s nothing in front of us, only pine forests, pastures and mountains”, notes the architect Profanter. The room is complemented by a terrace, featuring wooden flooring (on level -2 it directly borders the lawn) which provides more living space.

The wellness area, which is also on level -1, also shares the splendid view with the rooms, extending out onto wooden terraces where guests can sunbathe or simply relax in the warmer months. Inside, 6 cabins create fully wooden-cladded mini-rooms for individual use, allowing guests privacy and tranquillity whilst they lie down on a soft mattress that is submerged into the flooring. Custom-designed chaise lounges round off the decor. In the wellness area there is a Finnish- and bio-sauna (the latter with a lower temperature), which have a panoramic glass window.

THE OLD RESTAURANT SPEAKS TO THE NEW ONE The restoration mainly involved the pre-existing building, which still hosts the Schönblick restaurant with its typical alpine kitchen. Now, however, this is also connected to the new spaces and guests at the hotel may gain direct access to them via a lift.

NATURAL CHOICES ON THE INSIDE Noa* was actively involved in designing the new hotel at all levels, from the conception and implementation of the architecture to the design of the interiors and furniture, even deciding on the smallest of details. For example, the flower outline motif that is a recurrent theme in the lounge, the wellness area and even the sauna’s interior.

“The interior design was handled with great detail”, explains the interior designer Barbara Runggatscher, who coordinated the project. “We decided on natural materials and fabrics to create a relaxing environment. We chose the darkest tone of durmast wood and paired it with neutral rough-fibre upholstery, like thick-weaved linen and cotton. A large part of the decor was custom-designed with the aim of offering maximum comfort and personalised solutions”.

A good example in terms of functionality is the multi-purpose cabinet in the old barn’s lounge, which if need be can be transformed into a breakfast corner but is also useful for afternoon tea breaks.

The main material used for the interior design was wood, used for furniture (tables, chairs, benches, beds, cabinets…) as well as for the flooring in all the rooms. Here, unprocessed durmast wood was used showing all its knots. This is also a feature of the furniture’s craftsmanship.

In terms of fabrics, the designers went mainly for natural textures and tones which are the perfect union for the wood. Mono-coloured felt or one with a geometric motif was chosen in the rooms for the textile upholstery whilst thick curtains, made with special fireproof fabric ensure the necessary privacy and soften the light during the hours of maximum sun rays.

The attention to aesthetic and functional aspects in the lighting project gave rise to ad hoc lights: for example, the lamps with textile lampshades used in the old barn, with the warm and welcoming lighting that is in full symphony with the upholstery of sofas and armchairs.

INSULATION & HEATING The hotel boasts the latest insulation technology, ensuring high levels of comfort. The heating and hot water are obtained thanks to a pellet burner, which guarantees “zero impact”on CO2 emissions.

Gfell Wellness Hotel in South Tyrol, Italy – Building Information

Architects: noa* network of architecture Client: Gfell Architecture: noa* network of architecture Interior Design: noa* network of architecture Construction start: January 2020 Completion: July 2020 Intervention: Expansion Volume: 6.300 m3 Surface area: 2.000 sqm

Text (IT): Laura Ragazzola Translations (EN): Landoor

Photographs: Alex Filz

Gfell Wellness Hotel, South Tyrol images / information received 090321

Location: Fiè allo Sciliar, South Tyrol, Italy, central Europe

Italian Architecture

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North Italian Hotel Buildings on e-architect:

Hotel Silena, Via Birchwald, Valles, Bolzano, Italy Design: noa* photograph : Alex Filz Hotel Silena in Vals

Hotel Valentinerhof Building, Kastelruth Design: noa* photo from architecture studio Hotel Valentinerhof Building

Rosa Alpina Hotel SPA Penthouse, Dolomites Architects: Vudafieri-Saverino Partner photography : Alex Filz Rosa Alpina Hotel SPA Penthouse

North Italian Building Designs

Italian Houses

South Tyrol House, Kaltern an der Weinstraße (Caldaro) South Tyrol, northern Italy Design: feld72, architects photo : David Schreyer South Tyrol Family Home

House at Muehlen In Taufers / Campo Tures, South Tyrol, northern Italy Design: Pedevilla Architects photograph © Pedevilla Architects / Photography by Gustav Willeit House at Mill Creek Muehlen In Taufers

Z House, Tarvisio, Udine, Italia, north east Italy Design: GEA Gri e Zucchi Architettura srl photo : Gianni Antoniali Z House in Tarvisio, Udine

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Website: South Tyro

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[noyastalgia]

QUICK GUIDE TO HAYADO KURA

Okay…

First of all, this is my girl

Meaning, this is the one I lean towards the most when it comes to creative stuff

Mostly because I’m a simp for Bakugou, who is her boyfriend.

Lets start off with her name, then, shall we? since it’s the most basic fact about her

(i’m actually not 100% sure about any of this since i don’t speak japanese but I’m fairly certain and tried to doublecheck everything)

Her name is Hayado Kura, which is written like “はやど くら” with hiragana and “ハヤド クラ” with katakana. 

The Kanji for her surname is “速度”, which put together means speed or velocity. It is actually romanized as “Sokudo”, but I used the reading “Haya” for 速. There isn’t really a deep meaning to it, though, it just references her Quirk.

The Kanji for her first name is “宮羅” where 宮 means “shrine” and 羅 means “lightweight fabric”. Again, no deep meaning, but I loved the name Kura and can’t change it now.

Though it doesn’t seem like it, I struggled with her name the most. At first, it was Zeizen Noa, I believe, then it became Nakano Kura, then Rikisou Kura, then Ryokusou Kura before I landed on Hayado Kura. Hopefully, it’ll stay on Hayado Kura, but you never know.

Anyway, her Quirk is called Adrenaline. In short, it converts her adrenaline and energy to physical attacks in the form of blasts and such. She can also fly. 

This is particularly effective in battle, as her attacks become more powerful the more she fights

However, as you could probably guess, it’s quite draining. Though she can start flying from the get-go if she’s well-rested and thus has energy to start up with, she can’t do it if she’s tired.

If she’s being chased and in situations where she would panic, her Quirk lasts longer, but it’s also prone to Adrenaline Rushes. It starts up with her veins glowing scarlet, then her body completely shuts down. 

This is the sequence of an Adrenaline Rush: glowing veins → light shaking → dizzy → cold → generally weak → shut down.

While this can come with perks, as she’s much more powerful in such a state, she often tips beyond the “glowing veins” step and ends up with an Adrenaline Shock.

At the start of the school year, such shocks would leave her unconscious up to ten hours, but with training, she’s reduced the time to where she’s able to stay awake, simply exhausted and unable to use her Quirk. 

Moving on to her fight style, she tends to lean towards an all-out offense, with emphasis on her arms and punches. 

Before Hayado was accepted into U.A., she used to get into fights with other kids at school, where she learnt a somewhat effective aggressive style that didn’t have much technique. She tended to only shoot blasts from her punches, where she found it most natural to focus her Quirk, and threw some kicks in here and there for variations. Thus, she developed a bad habit of doing the same in each fight she was in, which often made her lose against trained opponents. This used to irritate her beyond no end, until she lost against Todoroki in the Sports Festival and Bakugou told her afterwards that she was too predictable in her attacks. Initially, she ignored it out of spite, but his blunt advice resonated with her, and during the internship, Hayado interned with Helia, a Pro-hero with a similar Quirk but vastly different fighting style. 

Helia drilled her in technique and taught her how to utilise her Quirk in  different ways, such as expanding her blasts to be able to come from her legs to add variation. She also taught her to focus her energy on her whole body, which increases her strength, speed, senses and endurance.

When she returned to class, Hayado was a whole other person, which didn't go unnoticed. While her skills had increased, she had also learnt to sharpen her focus, which both made her a more formidable opponent and calmed her overall hot temper ever so slightly. 

This was also the first time she won against Bakugou in a practice match. It was ever so slightly and partly due to his surprise at her sudden improvement, but she didn't let it die down until they had another match where Bakugou won.

Also, Hayado can also use her Quirk to fly.

At first, Hayado seems like a hot-tempered girl who's all brawn and no brain. Since childhood, she didn't respond well to criticism and retorted back with spiteful insults, which put most people off from being friends with her. Sadly, this only furthered her aggression and made her into one of her school's bullies, who constantly got into fights and skipped class often. (the only reason she got into U.A. was because she had a teacher who still believed in her and helped her study for the written exam, which she barely passed, but she got in through the practical exam)

Underneath this surface, however, Hayado is loyal and playful, which she only showed to Class 1-A after she befriended Mina and started messing around with her in class. As she didn't have a lot of them growing up, she deeply values her friendships and would do almost whatever for them, unless another one of her friends tells her to not do as they say.

Admittedly, she's beyond impulsive, and often doesn't think before she goes into action. She doesn't make much of a tactic, most often settling for fighting things out and hoping it works, which highly depends on two factors 1) who she's fighting and 2) if Bakugou shows up to help while simultaneously scolding her and calling her irresponsible (happens more often than you’d think)

Part of her arc is learning how to take more care of herself. Since she’s so fiercely loyal, she tends to forget her own needs and interests for her friends, such as not rushing into battle without plans and tactics, not neglecting her grades, and other things like it. While she does get better throughout high school, I’m thinking that after graduation, she starts dating a guy named Sutora Eki, who is manipulative and exploits her dependence and loyalty. However, Bakugou comes back into her life and helps her see what Eki is doing to her, so she gets back on track after she breaks up with him.

In case you can’t tell, she ends up with Bakugou after she breaks up with Eki and becomes more sure of herself.

Other facts about her

She loves caffeine, mostly as coffee, but she likes energy drinks as well. However, she has to limit her intake since it might affect her Quirk.

She would be an ESTP-T, but I reckon she becomes more of an ESTP-A when she grows older (it’s 49/51 percent)

Her best friend is Yua, another OC

She was born in All for One’s Quirk Facility, which is why her Quirk is so strong, but flawed (I’ll expand on this later, but it’s pretty much what it sounds like)

Overall, she might be one of my favourite ocs of all time. I love her loads, and I love her relationship with Katsuki (i don’t go too into depth with it here, but they start off with an intense rivalry, which unintentionally turns into caring for each other, then they have a rivalry/friendship/romance thing going on where Bakugou realises he likes her, but doesn’t do anything as her relationship starts to develop with Eki).

[fableweaver]

Arc of the Deadman Reaper

Arc of the Deadman Reaper

Seth crouched on the roof of the castle idly twirling the white feather between his fingers. Since his torture and rebirth, he no longer had the need to sleep; that left him spare time to think. It was strange, he felt nothing, yet his mental facilities remained as sharp as ever. The moon vanished behind a cloud and Seth stood, pocketing the feather.  

The castles of Lir were more like ornate forts, built of timber and more like a mansion than the castles of the west. It made it easier though to break into them when they were more like houses. The guards didn’t see the figure in black walk along the roof and swing into a window in the darkness of the night. Guards rarely looked up.

Inside Seth walked almost casually down through the halls and to the lord’s quarters. He dispatched a few guards he came across with silent ease, he could now see in the dark as well as a cat thanks to Loe. His own skills however allowed him to slip into the heart of the castle to the lord’s personal rooms.

The Count Gan lay asleep in his bed with his wife next to him, his arm resting under her head. Seth could remember feeling remorse in moments like this, but the memory seemed stale and brittle now. He drew a sword silently and with one swift stroke took the lord’s head off in one clean stroke. The Countess woke as the spray of blood and screamed, scrambling back from the blood in horror.

“I’ll be taking this,” Seth said flatly. Since the change he could no longer inflict his words with any emotion, he found this only unnerved people more to his presence. He bent down and took the Lord’s head, still dripping blood.

“W-Who are you?” the Countess managed to ask shivering.

“Death,” he answered, and she wailed. “The Emperor claims the Count Gan’s life. His successor would do best to pledge loyalty to him or his head will join his father’s.”

“Yes milord,” the Countess said groveling down on the floor. “P-please spare my life.”

Seth looked at her feeling nothing; his orders were for the Count’s head only. Two heads would be harder to carry. He didn’t bother with an answer to her and turned to leave. Carrying the lord’s head, he walked out through the castle. Some of the guards reacted violently when they saw him carrying the lord’s head, and Seth responded in kind. After killing four men with ease and not even flinching at the stabs of blades into his flesh.

He pulled out a dagger from his side and turned to see two guards staring at him in horror.

“Just my luck to get stabbed in the liver,” Seth said. “And I wanted to go out for a drink too.”

The two guards dropped their weapons and fled, pushing at each other in their haste to get away. Seth tossed the dagger aside and kept walking. He joked still, mainly out of habit rather than humor. Yet of course his tone remained flat, so he supposed the jokes sounded horrifying to those who heard them. His humor had taken a darker turn as well.

He left the castle through the front gate; the guards seemed to have abandoned all hope of stopping him. The small village around the castle was still asleep and Seth didn’t bother waking anyone. He fetched his horse from the small thicket he had tied it up at and disposed of the head in his saddle back. He could no longer smell fortunately because the rotting remains of two more heads were rather ripe in his saddle bags.

Seth rode heedless of the rising sun or any sense of fatigue or exhaustion. His horse though was another matter. Seth stopped to rest the horse rather than himself. As always when idle he took out the white feather and looked at it. Sometimes Seth thought he felt something when he stared at the feather, but it remained out of his grasp. He wondered though about the strange man that had turned into a bird. Loe of course said nothing about him, just issued orders that he was to be captured if ever seen again. He said captured not dead, which Seth only found more curious. Since he could no longer feel anything Seth found he was more curious about things, thinking was all he had left.

He didn’t feel hunger either but Loe had told him he still needed to eat and drink. Food had no taste, Seth couldn’t even feel it in his mouth as he chewed and swallowed. There was no satisfaction, no gratitude, and no disgust. He ate whatever came to hand which was mostly rice.

He put his feather away and rode on. His wounds healed on their own, he healed faster than an average man but not as quickly as Loe. Seth wasn’t bothered with the pain of healing so often he went by with wounds over his body that were in different states of healing. Some festered and Seth had to get them treated. He wondered though what would happen if he were to let his body rot, or if he was dismembered or beheaded. He also wondered what would happen if he did the same to Loe.

Seth arrived back in Shin-Ra after about five days. The change of power in the city had greatly altered the center of the east. Loe had first made a curfew so people were confined to their homes after the dusk hours until dawn. Slaves were now available by the thousands because Loe had forced many who resisted him into slavery. Lir had always been central in the slave trade, now there seemed to be only two types of people here: slaves and masters.

When Seth rode through the city the people cringed away from him. He still wore death’s mask by Loe’s insistence, and the mask sent fear through the people that saw him. He had been Loe’s executioner in many of the public executions and rituals. The other change in the city had been religion. All the Sects of Shin-Ra had been burned with their worshipers still within them. In their places were altars of stone and iron to the god Kal Ba’el.

Seth rode past one on his way to the palace feeling nothing when he gazed at the open paved square. Tortured victims hung from chains and cages around the altar, blood congealed in puddles around the altar.

Seth had never known there had been so many members of the Legion until now. Now that Loe held control of Lir the Legion had come out of hiding revealing their numbers were far greater than a mere cult. And they had converted every day, it was often convert or die.

The palace had changed as well as Seth rode up. The opulent manor had been changed to imposing militant displays of power and gory severed heads of Loe’s enemies. Seth didn’t even blink as he rode past the heads on pikes, the crows flying off at his approach. He dismounted in the courtyard and took his saddle bags. A servant scurried forward and took the horse unable to look Seth in the eye.

Seth barely even noticed him as he walked into the palace. He walked through the halls and into the great hall where the Emperor held court. The great table was gone now and the lords knelt around the throne in mute supplication. Daily the lords had to come to Loe and present gifts to him or just worship at his feet. Loe now sat in a great dais surrounded by a tent like structure meant to almost conceal him.

Seth kept back because a lord was before Loe presenting a gift.

“Your excellency, may I present my daughter Mao Han?” the Duke Han said bowing low. His two daughters bowed as well. One was sixteen into marriage age the other looked only nine or ten. The younger of the two had a zither set before her. “She would like to sing for you your Excellency.”

Loe simply nodded and the girl sat up. She began to sing, her voice raising up in a wonderful song of old Lirian tradition that had been written in praise of the emperor. The younger girl played the zither to accompany her sister’s voice, as a pair they worked well together to bring honor to the song. Seth stood feeling nothing at the sound of the music. He could hear the emotion in it, but it raised nothing in response from him. The song ended and a hesitant applause came from the crowd, Loe didn’t react and his cold stare made the applause patter off.

“Your Excellency if it would please you, I would present my daughter to you as a bride,” Duke Han said nervously. “We of your faithful servants hope to see an heir to your reign.”

“Tell me, if I am immortal why would I need an heir?” Loe asked coldly and Han flinched and lowered his head to the glass floor. Loe’s eyes looked at Mao coldly combing over her as if bored. Seth knew where he would look next, Loe’s eyes going to the younger daughter. His eyes lit then with greed, not lust but in Loe that was about the same thing.

“What is your name child?” Loe said smoothly. The girl had her face pressed so close to the glass floor her breath fogged the glass. “Answer.”

“Noa your Excellency,” the girl answered softly. Loe smiled and looked back at Duke Han.

“Very well Lord Han I will take Noa as my first wife,” Loe said and Duke Han was so surprised he actually looked up at Loe in the eye.

“Your Excellency she is only nine!” Han said horrified. “You cannot…”

The look in Loe’s eyes killed the words on the man’s lips and he shrank back.

“What I mean is you cannot father a child on her for many years,” Han finished lamely.

“I do not plan to, for I do not need an heir as I said,” Loe said. “I will take a wife from each of the kingdoms to ensure the loyalty of that kingdom. I believe Noa will make a very good wife of Lir.”

“What of her children?” Han asked. “What are they to get if you will not name one as heir.”

“Male children will become soldiers perhaps, depending on their skill,” Loe said. “Out of her female children I will choose my next bride after her.”

Several lords could not keep back a gasp of appalment. Seth could only wonder what effect that kind of inbreeding would have on the generations to come.

“Do you disagree with this Lord Han?” Loe asked mildly. Seth could see the man struggling with his disgust and knew that if he did not conquer it Seth would be taking his life.

“No, your Excellency,” Han said at last sinking down to the floor in defeat. “I am honored you would choose one of my line to join yours.”

“Good,” Loe said. “I will accept Noa into my house.”

Loe signaled to a servant who stepped forward and pulled Noa to her feet.

“Father!” Noa called out.

“Your Excellency, what of a wedding!” Han said terrified as his daughter was dragged away.

“Weddings are a device of the Sect,” Loe said coldly. “Kal Ba’el requires only the bedding to bind a man and woman together.”

“But a marriage requires more than just that!” Han said looking ready to chase after his daughter. “We must at least prepare her.”

“Marriage is no longer something relevant,” Loe said. “From now on women only belong to men, their fathers, brothers, or any man that chooses to take her. Women are not wise enough to choose their mate, they are only meant to bear children. This is my command.”

“Father!” Noa was nearly out the door now and Han’s resolve broke. He stood and started to go after her, but Seth had already moved. Seth stood between him and his daughter and Han stopped looking pale. Seth drew his sword and advanced. For a moment Han looked ready to fight, but the lord’s eyes went to the bloody saddle bags Seth carried. Going pale Lord Han lowered himself to the floor in supplication. Noa whimpered one last time as the servant pulled her out of the hall.

“Very wise,” Loe said. “You are dismissed Lord Han; I will see your family richly rewarded for the gift of your daughter to me.”

Han slunk back with his eyes low, Seth noted not out of fear but to hide the look of loathing on his face. He gathered his other daughter and they quickly left the hall. Seth turned back to Loe who looked pleased with this outcome. Seth dropped his bloody saddle bags at Loe’s feet, making the man glare at him.

“Your order of three lord’s heads highness,” Seth said. “Sorry I didn’t wrap them.”

Loe looked up at him flatly and signaled to a servant.

“Mount these with the others,” Loe ordered the servant. The man bowed and quickly took the saddle bags away.

“What no tip?” Seth asked.

“I would think having your soul eaten would remove that glib tongue from your mouth,” Loe said irritated. “Instead it seems to have made it worse.”

“You can try to cut it out if you want,” Seth answered.

“Shut up,” Loe said and Seth gazed down at him fingering the hilt of a dagger. If he knew he could succeed he would try to kill Loe, but he knew he wouldn’t. Until Seth found a way to get past Loe’s immortality he knew it was pointless to attack the man. He found he could though; nothing restricted his movements or thoughts. He had tried a few times to be sure, when Loe wasn’t looking, and he found he could turn against Loe if he wanted to. But the desire was gone, only the logic remained, Seth knew logically that this man had to die.

“You are thinking about killing me,” Loe said, Seth was no longer surprised by this trick.

“I will not succeed so why bother?” Seth said.

“Because I stole your humanity and made you into a monster,” Loe answered. “I know now that I do not control you, so why do you follow my commands?”

“Because I want to kill you,” Seth answered simply. That was the only reason he kept near Loe, to find a way to kill him. Loe sneered at him but before he could answer a messenger charged into the room. Both turned to the messenger as he stumbled forward and collapsed in front of them.

“Speak,” Loe said mildly.

“Majesty, an army comes from the east,” the man said afraid. “An army of monsters.”

“Ah, they’ve finally arrived,” Loe said as he stood. “Tell the guards to let them into the city.”

Trembling the boy bowed and hurried out to do as the Emperor commanded. Loe stood and went to the throne room where guests were often received, Seth following him. Seth stood by the throne leaning against a pillar casually. The rest of the nobles filed in as well to stand along the wall like lost sheep. This room as well had the black glass floor, the great halls built over the glass floor centuries ago.

It wasn’t long for their guests to arrive. The large double doors boomed open and the guests walked in. The courtiers of the Court of Whispers all gasped and cried out; a few even fainted at the sight of the creatures.

They were large brutes, standing over six spans tall and looked to weigh at least eight stones. Their skin was molted black and blue like they had been badly bruised. Their faces were ugly, tusks, horns, pig like noses, and beady black eyes. They all wore animal skins and soot stained armor with ragged chain mail. There were five of them, Seth guessing that they were the generals of the beasts. They marched forward and knelt before Loe, putting their fists on the floor.

“Hail to the Emperor Feng Loe,” they said in unison. They spoke Lirian with a strange accent that Seth had never heard before.

“Welcome my generals,” Loe said pleased. “My court, these are the generals of the Orc army: Vallug, Ubal, Snag, Gorgol, and Raigo.”

 Vallug was the largest of the five, nearly nine spans tall his lower jaw jutted out and he was almost as hairy as a bear. Ubal and Gorgol were only a span shorter than Vallug and had horns and tusks. The only difference between those two seemed to be their skin tones, Ubal was more green and Gorgol more blue. Snag was as tall as Ubal and Gorgol but much thinner, his long arms reaching past his knees.

Raigo stood in the center and while he only stood seven spans, a runt compared to the others, Seth could tell he was the most dangerous. His features were hideous, his wide nostrils like a bat’s and tusks jutting out from his lips. His eyes glowed red under his thick brows. Unlike the others there was a fire of intelligence in those eyes, and Seth knew this creature was a killer not just a brute.

“They and their men are creatures from beyond our world, brought here by Kal Ba’el to help me conquer the kingdoms. You will honor them as generals of my armies and be wise not to displease them for their hunger knows no bounds.”

Several lords whimpered in fear cringing back from the Orc generals Seth having no doubt that these creatures were man eaters.

“Now leave I have things I need to discuss with only my generals,” Loe ordered. The room cleared in minutes, but Seth stayed, Loe giving no objection to his presence.

“Great one,” Raigo said, he seemed to be the speaker, “The Burning Gate was destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” Loe said surprised. “How?”

“An old Aldan came and dropped it into the abyss,” Raigo answered. “Kal Ba’el is very displeased, he says this man must be captured and his soul given to him.”

“I believe I know of this man,” Loe said his eyes narrow. Seth did not reach for the white feather he carried, but it burned in his mind. Loe turned to him and Seth quickly shoved the thought of the feather aside. “This man goes high on the list.”

“Yes Excellency,” Seth answered. Loe had given him a list of people that he was to capture and bring to him. There had only been descriptions of these people: twin girls of both Daunish and Aldan decent, a blind Daunish man, a young Regarian cleric, a rogue mage, a dwarf, a Nyrgardic noble lady, a Xinian nomad, and a Markian girl. The description of the Markian girl had drawn his eye, Loe had only told him she was in the Court of Miracles. Yet Seth knew he had meant Lucia. He felt nothing at the thought of her being on this list, but he wondered if confronted with her he might feel something.

Besides he wasn’t supposed to kill these people but capture them and bring them to Loe. He had no doubts on what Loe would do to them, but he felt nothing and so thought little of future confrontations that may not happen. Loe had not ordered him to actively hunt these people, only to keep his eyes open for them. Until Loe decided to unleash him Seth thought little of the people he might have to kill.

“Good,” Loe said and turned back to the Orcs. “There is nothing we can do about the gate.”

“But we cannot hear the word of Kal Ba’el without the gate,” Raigo argued.

“He can still watch us, and we can summon enough of his spirit to know his wishes,” Loe said. “We know his wishes, conquer the kingdoms. Have you brought your army?”

“Yes and they are hungry,” Raigo answered.

“They will be fed,” Loe answered. “There are plenty of poor in the streets, I will see that they are rounded up.”

“Thank you Great One,” Raigo answered, his companion’s licking their lips in anticipation.

“Once the army is fed you must march west,” Loe answered. “I have the lords under my thumb and have called an army from them of only four thousand; this number is not enough to take the kingdoms. Raigo, Ubal, and Vallug, you will take the clans under your command west. Snag will travel Lir and get the lords to submit more men to my armies. Gorgol will remain in Shin-Ra to guard the capital.”

“Yes, Great One,” the Orcs replied.

“Hollow,” Loe said and Seth stepped forward. Loe liked to call him that, rather than using his name. “You will be going with Raigo and joining the army. I want you to bring me the head of the High King.”

“What makes you think he will be at the battle?” Seth asked. “Arian will not leave Cair Leon just for this.”

“The news of the Orc army will rouse him,” Loe said and Seth nodded. There was a chance Arian wouldn’t rise to the challenge, but Seth knew Arian. The High King would go to battle; his pride would not accept defeat. “Go now and feast, then the orcs shall march.”

The Orcs bowed to the emperor before they left, and Seth followed them. He kept his distance as he followed; the Orcs seemed to ignore him. They left the palace and even the city to where the army rested. Seth didn’t lose stride as he walked out to see the full extent of the Orc army.

There had to be at least a hundred thousand of them, a dark blanket of camps as far as the eye could see. Raigo stopped and turned to him, his eyes burning and unreadable.

“Do you feel fear man thing?” the Orc asked bearing his teeth in a grimace. Seth realized that the expression must have been the Orc equivalent of a grin.

“I fear nothing,” Seth answered dully. “That piss poor excuse of a god of yours ate my spirit.”

“Hollow Man,” Raigo said nodding. “We have been told of you. Join us, the Emperor has gathered us a meal.”

Seth followed them into the camp of the Orcs. Smoke hung over the camp from the many fires, the tents all made of dark felt and animal skins. Seth saw piles of offal had already appeared between the tents even though the army had just arrived. He could smell nothing, his only senses that remained to him was his hearing and sight. Some were still setting up tents and camps, arguments over where they could put their tents. The Orcs groveled before their leaders; Seth could tell it was out of fear.

“Where are your females?” Seth asked, seeing only males.

“Females?” Raigo asked puzzled.

“Those that you mate with to have children,” Seth answered. This had to be all of the Orcs in the world, yet they had not brought their females with them. Raigo grinned again, had Seth been able to feel anything he might have felt terror in that grin.

“You will see,” Raigo answered.

They arrived to a great pen where thousands of people had been gathered. It seemed like Loe had anticipated the Orcs’ need despite his careless remark earlier since the people had already been gathered. These were the poor of the city, but not the old. Most were young children, many women, and some men. The people sat in their pen with wide eyed fear, the children grouped together around any adult they could find.  

“Hail my brothers!” Raigo shouted and the Orcs turned to him. “The Great One has given us a feast. Let us eat!”

The Orcs roared in agreement and crowded around the pen. Children cried and women screamed as Orcs flooded into the pen. Seth watched the Orcs feed feeling nothing. It wasn’t like he didn’t understand what was going on, he just couldn’t muster any emotional response. The blood and gore of dying children didn’t stir a single heart string in him.

He soon saw what Raigo had eluded to when he had asked about the females. The women were not eaten, instead they were raped. After several Orcs were done with a woman Raigo and the other generals stepped in and pulled the women away or else the Orcs would have raped them to death. The women were dragged away to be kept in a well-guarded pen. Not all were so fortunate, some were killed and eaten before the generals or chiefs could intervene.

“I see what you meant,” Seth said to Raigo as the Orc general joined him along the sidelines. Raigo’s mouth was bloody and he was licking his lips. “Those women will bear your children.”

“Each can bear a litter of five,” Raigo answered.

“Five? They must be small babies,” Seth said and Raigo shook his head.

“The female will die for the Orc pups will eat their way free of her body,” Raigo answered. “It takes three moons for the pups to be born, and another six for them to mature.”

“Interesting,” Seth said dully. “Is this how you have bred?”

“Yes,” Raigo answered.

“Where did you get all the women?” Seth asked. “There are many of you. It takes one woman to birth five and she dies in the process.”

“We do not age like your kind,” Raigo answered. “I crossed into this world five centuries ago. We used that time to capture females over the empty hills. Wolves can bear us seven pups, deer can bear ten, and the Paracer can bear thirty.”

“Are you saying you have bred with beasts?” Seth asked.

“We breed with what we can get but it must be large and warm blooded,” Raigo answered. “We had tried to breed with a grounded Roc, but it did not bear children. Do you want a woman?”

“I can’t feel anything,” Seth answered. He could no longer feel a woman’s touch; this might have been frustrating if Seth could feel frustration. He found the only thing that really came of this was clarity of thought.

Seth turned back to look at five Orcs having their way with a woman. She was screaming in pain, struggling uselessly against the creatures. Seth turned to see a child had been ripped apart and the Orcs were devouring the bloody flesh raw. Another sight of a young boy being shoved into a fire pit to cook was just beyond. The screams of the poor were constant, only fading as the Orcs satiated their hunger.

“Lir has plenty of food for you,” Seth said. “Why not eat rice?”

“We cannot eat the food of men,” Raigo answered with a sneer. “The greens and grasses do not sit well with us, only meat. Many will only eat fresh meat; we need blood when we eat. We can eat meat that has soured or rots, we prefer that over dried meat.”

“Will this be enough?” Seth asked.

“We are not like Kal Ba’el in his hunger,” Raigo answered. “We can go moons without meat. And soon there will be a feast of war. Come and join us.”

“No thanks,” Seth said. The sound of cracking bones began as the meat was stripped from the bones. Seth noticed that many with the great jaws were swallowing the bones shards, it looked like there would be little left. The Orcs had eaten everything of the bodies, even the guts and heads.

Raigo took a swing at him and Seth dodged the sudden blow. Raigo’s face was set in a snarl, his teeth bared, but Seth saw humor glimmering in his eyes.

“Come Hollow Man,” Raigo roared. “Let us see what gifts Kal Ba’el has bestowed upon you! Fight me!”

“Fine but don’t blame me if you get killed,” Seth answered drawing his sword. Raigo howled and the orcs turned. In seconds a crowd drew around the pair, keeping their distance but fencing them in. Raigo drew his own sword, a rusted yet sharp blade. He lashed out faster than any man could move and Seth blocked the blow feeling it ring through him.

The Orc was faster and stronger than any man, had Seth not been changed by Kal Ba’el he wouldn’t have been able to hold his own against this creature. He fought with Raigo for a full ten minutes until at last on a silent agreement they dropped their weapons. The fight was over, both breathing heavily. Seth had scored a few blows and noted that Raigo bled an inky black blood.

“Good, you are a very good warrior,” Raigo said with praise. The other orcs now looked at Seth with fear and awe. Seth understood this was because they all feared Raigo a great deal, and Seth had been able to hold his own against him. “Now all our clans understand you are a fierce warrior. You need not fear attacks to test this.”

“I cannot fear them,” Seth answered looking at the orcs dully. Some glared back at him and he knew despite seeing his skill some orcs would challenge him now. It seemed Orcs were more human than Seth had thought.

“So you cannot,” Raigo said as he nodded. “Come the feast continues.”

Seth spent the night in the Orc camp watching as they feasted and drank. Orcs didn’t drink alcohol to become intoxicated but vinegar or soured milk. As night fell the Orcs continued their feasting, it seemed they were actually nocturnal. They had arrived late in the day so it hadn’t taken long for night to fall.

Soon Seth decided he would seek the company of humans since he was going to be living with Orcs for some time. He walked back into the city and his feet soon led him to a familiar house. Din’s pleasure house was very active now, the night a popular time to visit. After Loe had taken over and destroyed all of the Sects and killed all the members, it seemed people indulged in sin now. Seth walked in and once again a well painted greeter bowed to him.

“Welcome,” she said smoothly, she didn’t even bat an eye at his attire. “How may I help you?”

“I’m looking for Din,” Seth answered. “Tell her an old friend is here to see her.”

“May I get a name?” the woman asked.

“She doesn’t know it anyways,” Seth said. “Tell her I knew Mai.”

“Very well,” the woman said smoothly. “This way.”

She led him to another room, past others where sounds of sex could be heard. The room was decorated the same as before and Seth sat to wait. It wasn’t long when Din arrived carrying a tray of rice wine. She set it on the table and looked at him, her almond shaped eyes shrewd.

“Greetings,” she said mildly. “Wine?”

“No, it doesn’t work for me anymore,” Seth said.

“Then if I may ask, how did you know Mai?” Din asked. Seth answered her by taking off his mask and pushing back his hood. Her face paled and she looked away, Seth seeing a tear trail down her cheek. He reached out and brushed the tear away because he knew that was what he had to do not out of any feelings of caring for this woman. He couldn’t even feel the touch of the tear on his finger as he brushed it away.

She calmed herself and looked back at him all business once more.

“So you’re alive,” she said crisply.

“If you want to call it that,” Seth answered.

“Mai is dead you know,” Din said. “I’m sorry, but Loe’s goons came and took her. I’m sure she is dead now or wishes to be.”

“I know,” Seth said. “I killed her.”

“What happened?” Din said looking a bit relieved to at least know Mai’s fate. Seth told her about trying to kill Loe with snake sand, his torture, and how he had killed Mai.

“Now I only stay close to Loe so I might kill him one day,” Seth said.

“Doesn’t it bother you to kill for him?” Din asked. She now leaned against him, his robe open to her fingers which idly played over his chest. He felt nothing of her touch and nothing as he looked down at her own open robe.

“I feel nothing,” Seth answered. “Not even your hand down my trews.”

“Really because I think I feel you stiffening,” Din said playfully. “Maybe I can satisfy you now.”

Seth let her do as she pleased simply because he felt no reason to stop her. Din knew her business well and her skill allowed her to get a response out of Seth’s body even if his mind felt nothing. He guessed it was because his body still had some of its basic functions; after all he still had to eat. Din seemed to be enjoying herself more and once they were finished, she sat back and lit her pipe again.

“How was that?” Din asked.

“I told you I can’t feel anything,” Seth said.

“Isn’t that frustrating at all?” Din asked. “You didn’t orgasm, I could tell.”

“Din I don’t think you understand what I mean when I don’t feel anything,” Seth said.

“No I suppose I don’t,” Din said before she took a mouthful of smoke and breathed it out. “I enjoyed myself.”

“That means a lot from a whore,” Seth said.

“You know you speak without an ounce of inflection or emotion yet you’re still a smart ass,” Din said. “Glad to see that hasn’t changed.”

“It never will,” Seth answered, and Din laughed.

“What will you do now?” Din asked after she had calmed and drank some wine.

“I march with the Orc army,” Seth answered. “I’ve been ordered to take the High King’s head.”

“Do you think Loe will conquer the kingdoms?” Din asked, fear in her voice.

“I don’t care, I can’t care,” Seth answered. “He made me immortal, and he is immortal. I’ll stay by his side until I learn of a way to kill him, even if it takes me centuries.”

“It sounds lonely,” Din said. “What of that woman you love?”

“I don’t love her anymore,” Seth answered.

“Right,” Din said as if she didn’t believe him. Seth looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Come on my friend no matter what you may say about your soul being hollow, even that dark spirit can’t strip you of love.”

“A whore that believes in love?” Seth said.

“All whores believe in love. We deal in love, we trade in love, we are masters of love. Not just love making but love itself. We must love each and every customer that comes to us, for we are the ultimate lovers.”

“You love for money,” Seth said. “That isn’t love that’s greed.”

“Is greed not a form of love?” Din asked grinning wickedly. “Speaking of money…”

Seth took out his purse and set a gold crown on the table. Din looked impressed and ready to say something.

“For Mai,” Seth said, and Din closed her mouth and nodded. He gathered his things and dressed, donning his mask once more. “I should go.”

“Good travels to you stranger of death,” Din said.

“Call me Hollow Jack,” Seth said. Din laughed as he stood and left her to finish smoking her pipe. As he walked out he thought for just a moment he could smell her tobacco smoke. The moment passed however, and he couldn’t be sure if he had just imagined it. He left the city to seek a dark solitude in the night to stare at his white feather and try to feel something.  

The Orc army set out the next night after a night of feasting and a day of rest. The Orcs preferred to travel at night, or under heavy cover of clouds. Winter thus was the best time for them to travel as the nights were longer than the days. Seth traveled with them; the Orcs were not burdened with horses or even supplies. They could march for days without rest or food, traveling at a steady ground eating pace. Seth was sure the only reason he kept pace with them was because of his inhuman stamina.

They arrived at Kon Fort ten days after leaving Shin-Ra, a record time. The fort was a great wood structure built on a hill, an easily defensible position. A wood palisade spread for half a league to the south and it was maned by a few men of the Lirian army. These men shrank in fear at the sight of the Orc army even though they were the reinforcements. Raigo called a halt and signaled to Ubal and Vallug to follow him. Seth followed as well as they went up to the fort.

The gates were opened, and Seth looked around critically at the men of the fort. He knew little of warfare, but he could tell the place was well organized and the guards attentive. As they walked into the courtyard another man walked out of the fort. He was a military man, his hair cut short for a helm and graying. He was Lirian entering his later years, but his dark eyes were sharp and stride lithe. Seth could tell by the way the man walked that he was a sword master.

“I am General Taro,” he said bowing to them. If he was disturbed by the appearance of his reinforcements, he didn’t show it.

“I am General Raigo, this is General Ubal and Vallug. And the Hollow Man.”

“Hollow Man?” Taro said puzzled as he glanced at Seth.

“Hollow Jack,” Seth answered, and he saw Taro glare at him flatly. “I’m in his sort of profession.”

“What? Eating people?”

“No I leave that to these ugly bastards,” Seth answered. “I mean killing.”

“You have a smart mouth for a hired thug,” Taro said.

“Makes life interesting,” Seth answered. “And death.”

Seth could tell the banter was getting to Taro, not what he was saying but the dead tone in which he said it. Out of habit more than any desire Seth continued to ruffle people with the way he spoke. He supposed it kept them off balance which made them easier targets.

“Never mind all this,” Taro said turning back to Raigo. “How many men have you brought?”

“Sixty thousand,” Raigo answered. “I am to take charge here.”

General Taro’s eyes went cold and his hand dropped to his sword hilt.

“I fought in the King’s Wars, and before that in the Battles of the Northern Fells,” Taro said lowly. “I have over twenty years battle experience.”

Raigo looked down at him much like a man looking down at a dog.

“You know of the man named Wei?” Raigo said.

“He was our greatest warrior,” Taro said. “He lived during the Cursed Age and founded the Wei sword style which we use to this day. He was said to be able to cut stone. He served no lord and wandered the land healing people with knives.”

“I killed this man and ate him,” Raigo said and Taro’s face turned ashen. Seth knew Wei was nearly sacred to Lirian warriors, especially to swordsmen. “Our kind do not age or die, I have lived for centuries of your time. When an Orc kills his prey and eats its brains, he gains the knowledge of his prey. Some gain little from eating nothing but bears and wolves.”

He looked at Vallug who growled at him and said something in a guttural language. Raigo answered with distain in the same growls and Vallug scowled but looked away. Seth sensed this was an old dispute of theirs; it seemed Orcs argued most over food.

“This is impossible,” Taro argued.

“The belief is yours; I will not sway you,” Raigo said and Taro nearly drew his sword. Seth had read The Scrolls of the Blade, Raigo had quoted him perfectly.

Raigo did not have Taro’s restraint, however. With a deadly grin he drew his sword and lashed out at the general. Taro leapt back and drew his own blade and so began a battle of masters. Now standing at the side lines Seth was able to watch Raigo at work and he had to admit he might have felt a twinge of cold fear if he could feel such things. Raigo moved with strength, precision, and a ruthless reckless nature that made his flashing blade deadly. He didn’t toy with his prey either, he attacked with deadly intent. Taro was skilled and had spent his life living and breathing the way of the sword which was why he managed to last a full five minutes before Raigo ran him through.

Raigo pulled his blade from the general’s guts and cut his head off before his body could crumple. The Lirian warriors looked on in horror as Raigo picked up the General’s head, cracked it open and devoured the gray flesh of his brain. He tossed the remains aside, Vallug and Ubal scavenging the rest.

“Sir Ling,” Raigo said and one of the observing officials jumped. “You are Taro’s second; you are now in charge of the Lirian men. We are to use this as our base of operations. Show me the map room and tell me the positions of the enemy.”

“Yes General,” Sir Ling said looking ready to puke. Raigo left Vallug and Ubal to eat Taro’s corpse as he followed Sir Ling, Seth close behind. The inside of the fort was military and sparse, as it should be since this was a place of death. Seth always found that places where many people died tended to be sparse, as if life had a hard time redeeming these places of the blood that had been spilled there.

The command room was neat and orderly, a map spread out on the table with charts and pieces representing the enemy movements. Nervously Sir Ling stood next to the table as Raigo stood and examined the map. It was a grim sight, the Lirian army had lost a lot of ground and the Regarian knights had surrounded the fort on three sides.

“We have not gotten in supplies,” Sir Ling said. “The Regarians have managed to divert our supply wagons. We’ve barely managed to hold the eastern side.”

“You have done what you can with your numbers,” Raigo said, not in praise he was simply stating the truth.

“Well your numbers won’t mean much if we must dig in for a siege,” Ling said. “We don’t have the supplies for a siege.”

“We will break it,” Raigo said. “And Orcs will not need food for we feed on our enemies.”

Sir Ling looked gray and he shivered with fear. Seth couldn’t comfort him since he felt no sympathy for the man. Raigo began to detail his plans, Seth noting that he was actually a very strong strategist. It wasn’t like the game War, that checker game was far more complicated. It was more like Check, the less complicated game that was inspired by War. They had different types of soldiers, cavalry, infantry, and much more. They had to arrange their troops to counter the enemy while considering the future and what may happen afterwards.

“Gather the captains of the regiments,” Raigo ordered. “I want to tell them these orders.”

“Yes General,” Sir Ling said.

“Have you seen anything strange around here?” Seth asked before Ling could leave. “Like an albatross flying over land?”

“An albatross from the Verde Sea?” Ling said shaking his head. “No this is too far inland for them.”

“I know I was asking if anyone had seen one,” Seth said.

“No milord, not that I’ve heard,” Ling answered unable to meet Seth’s gaze. Seth realized he was intimidating the man and decided to let him go.

“Never mind,” Seth said. “Go get the captains like Raigo said.”

“Thank you, milord,” Ling said with a quick bow before he scurried from the room with his tail between his legs. Seth wondered what it was about himself that made others so nervous.

“I’ll leave you to your war,” Seth said to Raigo. “I’m going to go walk around.”

He didn’t give Raigo a chance to answer, leaving quickly out of the fort. Around the fort and behind the wall a shanty town had sprung up from the needs of the men of the fort. The little town was a lot like any Lirian city, crowded. The streets were narrow; the buildings a combination of tent and rickety walls, and the waste of many paved the streets. Whores and beggars lived here, both looking nervous now with the arrival of the Orcs. The inhabitants of the fort didn’t know what to make of these creatures just yet.

The Orcs kept to their camp, uninterested in these dredges of humanity.

“Death!” Seth turned at the brazen call of a whore who addressed him. She was a gaudy dressed woman in a silk kimono that was pulled so low her shoulders were bare and breast nearly coming out of the silk. Her face was painted thickly with cosmetics, and hair pinned up elaborately. Seth still couldn’t understand the Lirian’s love for color; the woman was dressed in bright silks of clashing colors.

“You came with those creatures did you not?” the woman asked.

“I did,” Seth answered.

“What are they like?” she asked. “Likely to give a good tip for a night’s work?”

“Their only interest in women is either to eat them or breed with them,” Seth answered. “And you aren’t likely to survive the birth as the nine children eat their way out of the mother’s womb.”

Instead of horror or disgust the woman just gave a disappointed sort of snort.

“Just my luck,” she muttered, before her eyes turned fierce and she looked at Seth. “Care for a night?”

“How old are you?” Seth asked and the woman laughed.

“Not me friend,” she said. “My name is Chi, I’m the madam of this town. I have much more appealing women than me.”

“Sorry, but I doubt your women can help me,” Seth said.

“You sure about that?” Chi asked with a wicked grin. “I have anything your heart desires.”

“My heart desires nothing,” Seth answered. Chi stared at him coyly meeting his eyes. He saw her bravo fade a bit as she saw the dead look in his eyes. Seth turned away but she caught his arm.

“What then do you have to lose but the coin it will cost?” Chi asked. Seth looked back at her to see she looked determined.

“Why do you care?” Seth asked.

“A whore is the most noble of the professions,” Chi answered with pride. “We fulfill the desires of those who come to us, we comfort lost souls, and we heal broken hearts.”

Seth was not moved by her speech or courage to stop him, so he reached out and grabbed her by the neck. The woman grabbed his wrist and tried to use her weight to flip him, but Seth was well grounded and stronger than her. He squeezed on her windpipe and her mouth opened trying to make a sound but could not.

Then Seth let her go, the whore falling to the ground gasping for breath.

“Death is the only cure for life,” Seth said before he turned his back on her. He continued to walk calmly through the town as night began to fall, this time the residents gave him a wide birth.

The darkness made shadows dance and those out at this time went about cautiously. Seth noted as he walked a few Orcs were stalking the streets. He had no doubt that a few whores and beggars were going to disappear in the night. He walked on to the palisade and climbed the ladder up to the walkway that lined the top. Torches burned here and the watchmen walked along bored. A lot of war was just waiting.

The watchmen ignored him as he looked out into the field beyond. In the dark all Seth could see were the fires of the enemy camp, enough lights to resemble a city. Seth turned and looked back and saw the Orc army’s camp and fires. Those spread even further, smoke settling over the camp like a fog.

He leaned against the palisade wall and took out the white feather. The moon was hidden behind a cover of cloud yet he could still see the white feather. As always he thought there was something just out of reach, he stared at the feather almost going into a trance. He stared at the feather for hours, the night slipping by. He thought this was what war was mostly, waiting. Most of his life now was just waiting, only there was no end to that waiting. Every man in the world was simply waiting to die, except him.

[thebeautyoftorah]

Mattot-Massei

bs'd

Shalom, I hope you are well. You have the opportunity to share in the mitzvah to honor a loved one by sponsoring my weekly parsha review, or for refua shelema (healing),or for shiduch, Atzlacha (success), etc. My weekly review goes out to over 5000 people in English and Spanish around the world. Contact me for more details. Feel free to forward these words  to any other fellow Jew. Enjoy it and Shabbat Shalom. Mattot-Massei-Convert Your Dishes

One of the more interesting and misunderstood rituals that Jewish People have been doing for over 3300 years is the mitzvah of Tevilat Kelim, immersing food utensils in a mikveh.

The source for this mitzvah can be found in this week’s double parsha. When the Jews returned from their ‘war of revenge’ against the people of Midian, they brought back with them the spoils of war, including all kinds of pots and pans that had been used by their enemy to make food. Elazar, the High Priest, instructed the people how to make these vessels ‘kosher’ and usable. [The word kosher actually means “proper” or “acceptable”. Kosher food means that it has been produced with all kosher ingredients and kosher equipment.]

He said to them[1]: “Only the gold and the silver, the copper, the iron, the tin, and the lead – everything that comes into the fire – you shall pass through the fire and it shall be purified… and everything that would not come in the fire, you shall pass through the water”.

Rashi explains that this verse is teaching two laws: Vessels which have been used previously and have absorbed the taste of non-kosher food need to be purged through fire or hot water in a process called hagalah (a Hebrew word meaning to purge or expel) to render them fit for use in a kosher kitchen. Additionally, all vessels used for preparing food and for dining that were acquired from a non-Jew - even vessels that are brand new - must be immersed in a mikvah before they can be used.

The procedure to do tevilat kelim is as follows: The utensil must be completely clean, free of dirt, dust, rust, stickers, labels or glue.

One wets one's hands in the mikvah water, holds the vessel in the wet hand and says Baruch Atah Ado-nay, Eloheinu Melech Haolam, Asher Kideshanu B'Mitzvotav Vetzivanu Al Tevilat Keli (Keilim, for multiple utensils) and immerses the vessel(s).

The water of the mikveh must touch the entire vessel inside and out, without being touched by one's hand or by any holding instrument.

The entire vessel must be under water at one time. A few seconds under the water will suffice. Care must be taken that no air is trapped in the submerged vessels.

Utensils require tevilah (immersion) with a blessing when they have direct contact with food during preparation or meal time and are made from metal such as aluminum, brass, copper, gold, iron, lead, silver, steel, tin, or glass including pyrex, dura lex, and corelle. Note that most Jewish communities around the world have specially designated “Tevilat Kelim” mikvahot for the public to use.

[There is plenty of literature if you want to learn more this topic].

But what is the rationale for this seemingly strange ritual? If it’s not about ritual contamination or non-kosher residue, then what is it about? Why does this biblical commandment apply only to metal utensils (and, according to Rabbinical law, to glass utensils) and not to vessels made of wood, earth, etc.? And why only to utensils used in preparing food and dining?

The Sages teach us that the mitzvah of immersing food vessels in a mikvah before using them is similar to the requirement for a convert to immerse himself in a mikveh before becoming a Jew. Immersion symbolizes rebirth and renewal (the waters of the mikveh represent the mother’s womb, so that immersing in a mikveh is tantamount to being reborn anew).

And just as a convert, upon his passage from non-Jew to Jew, immerses in a mikveh to symbolize his accepting upon himself the elevated and sanctified Jewish mission to be “a light unto the nations” and a role model of Torah morals and values, so too, must a vessel, when passing from non-Jewish possession to Jewish, be ‘converted’ by being immersed in a mikveh, thus serving to elevate the mundane activity of eating, and vesting it with special sanctity and meaning, as prescribed by the Torah.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, in his commentary on the aforementioned verse, explains further why this immersion is required specifically for metal utensils used for food purposes. He explains that man consists of two parts – a physical body with animal-like instincts and an intellectual/spiritual soul – and the former must always be used in the service of the latter. This is what it means to be a Jew living a sanctified life [Judaism is the only spiritual system that is almost completely based on performing physical actions}. As long as we eat, drink, and perform other physical ‘animal-like’ activities with the primary focus that we will now have the energy to sustain our intellectual/spiritual functions – i.e. we are “eating to live” and not “living to eat” - we are maintaining this hierarchy and fulfilling our mandate as Jews. [As the Mishna in Pirke Avot 2:17 tells us, ..'let all your deeds be for the sake of Heaven'].

Metal utensils represent man’s intelligent mastery over the earth and its materials metal – and glass - must be refined, heated, and hammered/blown into shape before it can be used. Animals simply don’t have these skills. Eating food is an activity which primarily belongs completely to the ‘animal side’ of man’s nature. So metal utensils used for food purposes represents the spiritual/mental side of humans employed in the service of his physical/animal side.

The remedy for this – says Rabbi Hirsch - is to immerse the utensil in a mikveh at the very moment when it first comes into Jewish possession. By ‘converting’ our dishes in the mikveh, we remind ourselves the mitzvah to elevate and sanctify our eating and everything else in life.

___________________________________________ [1] Bamidbar 31:22-23. Le Iluy nishmat Eliahu ben Simcha, Mordechai ben Shlomo, Perla bat Simcha, Abraham Meir ben Leah,Moshe ben Gila,Yaakov ben Gila, Sara bat Gila, Yitzchak ben Perla, Leah bat Chavah, Abraham Meir ben Leah. Refua Shelema of Yaacov ben Miriam, Gila bat Tzipora, Tzipora bat Gila, Dvir ben Leah, Elimelech Dovid ben Chaya Baila, Noa bat Batsheva Devorah and  Dovid Yehoshua ben Leba Malka. Atzlacha to Shmuel ben Mazal tov and Zivug agun to Marielle Gabriela bat Gila.

[varunsukumar-blog]

Taxi Demand Prediction in NYC

1.      Introduction

In big cities like New York, the taxi demand is imbalanced. While in some areas passengers wait for a long time to get a taxi, there are taxis that roam around the city empty. This imbalance has led to a decrease in profit for TLC and per the New York City Mobility report published in October 2016 there is a 11% year-on-year decrease in taxi demand. This decrease in demand is attributed to the increase in popularity of the for-hire vehicles like Uber and Lyft. Uber and Lyft are performing well because of their efficiency that is made possible by the underlying machine learning algorithms and pickup optimizations. With these tools Uber and Lyft have solved the imbalance in the supply and demand. In our project, we have primarily focused on solving the supply-demand problem that the TLC company face. The rationale of our project is to find the factors that influence demand in an area in NYC and to forecast the demand for the future using past data. This will help a) TLC to increase their profits and b) the taxi company efficiently compete with the for-hire-vehicle companies. The report is organized as follows. The existing literature in taxi demand prediction is reviewed in Section 2. Data acquisition and Data Cleaning processes have been presented in Section 3 and 4. Analysis has been presented in Section 5. Other results are summarized in Section 5 followed by our conclusions in Section 6.

2.      Background

This section provides the summary of the previous research on taxi demand Prediction.  The majority of the existing literature is summarized below.

In the paper Taxi Demand Forecasting Based on Taxi Probe Data by Neural Networks, the author has used applied Neural Networks and back-propagation learning to reveal the relationship of Tokyo. They have also created forecasts using day of the week and amount of precipitation. The author concluded that week is an important factor for predicting the demand because the demand occurs periodically.

From their results the author concludes that 4-hours and 50 neurons in their neural network outperforms other networks.  

Zhao, Khryashchev, Freire, Silva and Vo have used the data sets of uber and yellow cabs to compare the performance of the two companies in the 9940 blocks of Manhattan, NYC. They have used Markov predictor, Lempel-Ziv_Welch predictors and Neural Networks to predict the demand and have compared the models. The authors have employed symmetric Mean Absolute Percentage Error to evaluate the algorithms. They have concluded that the performance of Neural network is better with blocks with low predictability and Markov predictor can predict the taxi demand with a high accuracy in the blocks with high predictability.  

Matias, Gama and Ferreira have used live data to predict the spatial distribution of passengers to help the taxi companies fulfill their demands in Portugal. The have used Time-Varying Poisson Model, Weighted Time-Varying Poisson Model, ARIMA and Sliding-Window Ensemble Framework and symmetric Mean Percentage error is used to calculate the performance of the model. The maximum value for error found out by the authors was 28.7% and the sliding window Ensemble model was the one that always performed well.  

Phithakkitnukoon, Velasco, Bento, Biederman and Rati have just used predicted models to find the number of vacant taxis based on time of the day, day of the week and weather conditions in Lisbon, Portugal. The have implemented an inference engine which is based on the Naïve Bayes Classifier with error based learning algorithm. The historical data for first 30 days data is used as the training set and the next 77 days is used as the testing set. A prediction for the vacant taxis is made for the next 24 hours. The authors have concluded that they had an overall error of 0.8 taxis per square kilometers.  

Chang, Tai, Chen and Hsu have used spatial statistical analysis, data mining and clustering algorithms on historical data of the taxi requests to discover the demand distribution. The selection of similarity measure and clustering algorithm decides the result of clustering. DB-Scan, k means, AHC have been used as the different clustering algorithms.  

Singhvi, Frazier, Henderson, Mohony, Shmoys and Woodward have dealt with a different demand prediction. The have predicted the demand for bike sharing systems. The have the NYC CitiBike dataset along with weather database to help planners identify the demand for bikes in the city. The have used Linear regression with Log transormations to predict the demand. They have used the data of May to predict the demand that occurs in the next month and so on.  

Li, Zhang and Sun, in their paper have investigated the efficient and in efficient passenger finding strategies based on the data from 5350 Taxis in China. They have used the L1 Norm SVM to select the salient patterns for discriminating top- and ordinary-performance taxis. With that algorithm they have built a taxi performance predictor on the selected patterns and have achieved a prediction accuracy of 85.3%.

One major scope for improvement in demand forecasting of Taxi usage is that interaction between different predictors. Although, majority of past models include most important or all the related predictors to predict taxi demand. We have not come across a research paper that has considered and model correlation between various predictor and their interaction. Precisely modeling those correlations might improve the accuracy of the taxi demand. Best accuracy that has been found is 89% till now. Apart from that, one of the papers has also compared location vise performance of different models and this idea can be used for further exploration to generate a larger combinatory model based on small area wise best predictive models.

3.      Data:

The yellow and green taxi trip records include fields capturing pick-up and drop-off dates/times, pick-up and drop-off locations, trip distances, itemized fares, rate types, payment types, and driver-reported passenger counts. The data used were collected and provided to the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) by technology providers authorized under the Taxicab & Livery Passenger Enhancement Programs (TPEP/LPEP). The trip data was not created by the TLC. The total size of a single dataset was 2-2.2 GB and there were 12 datasets for 12 months.

The NOAA weather data are land-based observations are collected from instruments sited at locations on every continent. They include temperature, dew point, relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed and direction, visibility, atmospheric pressure, and types of weather occurrences such as hail, fog, and thunder. NCEI provides a broad level of service associated with land-based observations. There were a total of 12 weather datasets.

3.1.           Reverse Geocoding:

To predict the demand of the taxis in different areas we needed the zip codes for different areas in New York City. The data set had the values of latitudes and longitudes. We had to get the zipcodes from Google Maps API(http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?sensor=false&latlng= ) using a Reversing Geocoding Algorithm. Google API had a limit of 2,500 zip codes extractions for an ip per day.  

3.2.           Feature Engineering – Pickup and Drop-off Frequencies:

The frequency of the pickups at a location was computed by aggregation the number of pickups that were in the dataset corresponding to a location, data and time. Similar aggregation of the drop-offs were also done to get the frequency of drop-offs. These frequencies were the demand of taxis at a location for a particular time. Outside of New York and New Jersey city values for location (latitude and longitude) has been found by filtering the dataset by range of latitudes and longitudes, and have been removed. Data with missing values of longitude and latitude have been deleted as imputation of those values is practically impossible.

3.3.           Feature Engineering - Weather Dataset:

The weather datasets have been taken from NOA. It has total 40 variables and has temperature and relative humidity, snow, rain, amount of snowfall and visibility as the important parameters.

Many variables in this dataset has character codes of weather property. We have referred data dictionary and NOAA literature to convert those variables into categorical variables. Additionally, we have used algebraic dimensionality reduction techniques and correlation properties to merge or remove some variables. Some variables which have no relation with demand of the taxi and location of data (New York city) has been deleted directly. Final dataset has total of 9 weather variables.  

The weather dataset didn’t have hourly weather data for 16 hours out of 8760 hours of the year. To impute this data, we have used package ‘missForest’ in R. The package imputes values based on the random forest algorithm.  

3.4.           Feature Engineering – Final dataset

 The final dataset to apply models has been created by merging the transformed taxi demand dataset with final weather dataset by matching the values of each date and hour in both the dataset. The total taxi demand data size is 25 GB and weather data size is 8 Gb, after converting the dataset the final dataset has the size of 56 MB.  

4.      Exploratory Data Analysis:

 Exploratory data analysis is essential part before applying any statistical models for predictive analysis. Exploratory data analysis and data visualization can express large part of different relationships between variable and response. It can also help us in identifying the behavior of response variable for time series data.  

Due to large size of each month’s dataset (13-15 million entries) R is not able to plot the unique data points in a plot. Hence, to display some of the complex plots we have learned data visualization software tableau and generated visualizations.

The correlation plot shown above shows the correlation between the various variables. Given that it’s a time series data the variables are not highly correlation. We can still see some positive correlation

The above image shows the demand for taxi cabs for the month of January. The most concentrated part shows the high demand. As we can see the blue part shows the concentrated demand for the area of manhanttan. The bottom part shows the JFK and Lagaurdia which has high demand. This plot shows the busy areas of manhattan. Such plots can be made for other months also.

The image above shows the pick up count for the month of January for the taxi cabs for a particular week. As we can see there is very less demand for the weekends as compared to weekdays  

This image shows the demand for the taxi for the January month which has been further broken down in days for whole month. As we can see that there is a dip in the demand for every 7 days which shows that on weekends there is a less demand.

The figure shows the mosaic plot for march month for a week . Th edays are the aggregate sum of all the respective days in that month. Saturday has the highest demand followed by Sunday whch is shown by the darkest colour.

This image represents the avg. fare amount for month of March. The thickness of the band of each color shows the time of the day, so we can say that for 5am the fare amount is low as demand is low. The highest one being 10am to 10pm which are usual office hours.

The figure shows average demand for the month of march with sum of all weeks. It has been divided between hours of day. As we can see that mid night time stamps have the highest peaks as compared to others.

The plot shows the demand based on zipcodes. Here the numbers shows the demand of that location.

The image shows the demand for all the months. The sum of demand is low for February as the number of days is less. This pattern can be seen for other months also.

We can see the variation in demand with amount of snowfall.  General trend can be seen towards reduction of demand with increase in amount of snowfall.

5.  Models

After studying the data, it was evident that the dataset is a time series and that to with large no of different categories for variables like location (zipcode) and weather variables. After referring to literature on time series, previous work on our dataset and basic statistics of time series. We have selected the best models that can be applied for a time series algorithm and they are described below.

5.1 Support Vector machines:

A Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a discriminative classifier formally defined by a separating hyperplane. In other words, given labeled training data (supervised learning), the algorithm outputs an optimal hyperplane which categorizes new examples. Then, the operation of the SVM algorithm is based on finding the hyperplane that gives the largest minimum distance to the training examples. Twice, this distance receives the important name of margin within SVM’s theory. Therefore, the optimal separating hyperplane maximizes the margin of the training data.  

where represents each of the labels of the training examples.

SVM is used for a variety of purposes, particularly classification and regression problems. SVM can be especially useful in time series forecasting, from the stock market to chaotic systems. The method by which SVM works in time series is like classification: Data is mapped to a higher-dimensional space and separated using a maximum-margin hyperplane. However, the new goal differs in that our goal is to find a function that can accurately predict future values

5.2 Random Forest:

Random Forests are an ensemble learning method (also thought of as a form of nearest neighbor predictor) for classification and regression that construct a number of decision trees at training time and outputting the class that is the mode of the classes output by individual trees. Random Forests are a combination of tree predictors where each tree depends on the values of a random vector sampled independently with the same distribution for all trees in the forest. Random Forests are a wonderful tool for making predictions considering they do not overfit because of the law of large numbers. Introducing the right kind of randomness makes them accurate classifiers and regressors. For some number of trees T:

Sample N cases at random with replacement to create a subset of the data (see top layer of figure above). The subset should be about 66% of the total set.

1. At each node:

1.      For some number m (see below), m predictor variables are selected at random from all the predictor variables.

2.      The predictor variable that provides the best split, according to some objective function, is used to do a binary split on that node.

3.      At the next node, choose another m variables at random from all predictor variables and do the same.

Depending upon the value of m, there are three slightly different systems:

•       Random splitter selection: m =1

•       Breiman’s bagger: m = total number of predictor variables

•       Random forest: m << number of predictor variables. Brieman suggests three possible values for m: ½√m, √m, and 2√m

5.3 Bart:

BART is a Bayesian approach to nonparametric function estimation using regression trees. Regression trees rely on recursive binary partitioning of predictor space into a set of hyperrectangles in order to approximate some unknown function f. Predictor space has dimension of the number of variables, which we denote p. Tree-based regression models have an ability to flexibly fit interactions and nonlinearities. Models composed of sums of regression trees have an even greater ability than single trees to capture interactions and non-linearities as well as additive effects in f. BART can be considered a sum-of-trees ensemble, with a novel estimation approach relying on a fully Bayesian probability model. Specifically, the BART model can be expressed as:  

Y = f(X) + E ≈ T M 1 (X) + T M 2 (X) + . . . + T Mm (X) + E, E Nn (0, σ2 In ) where Y is the n × 1 vector of responses, X is the n × p design matrix (the predictors columnjoined), E is the n × 1 vector of noise. Here we have m distinct regression trees, each composed of a tree structure, denoted by T, and the parameters at the terminal nodes (also called leaves), denoted by M.

5.4 ARIMA:

ARIMA stands for auto-regressive integrated moving average and is specified by these three order parameters: (p, d, q). The process of fitting an ARIMA model is sometimes referred to as the Box-Jenkins method. ARIMA is most common and efficient method used in time series prediction.

An auto regressive (AR(p)) component is referring to the use of past values in the regression equation for the series Y. The auto-regressive parameter p specifies the number of lags used in the model. For example, AR(2) or, equivalently, ARIMA(2,0,0), is represented as

where φ1, φ2 are parameters for the model.The d represents the degree of differencing in the integrated (I(d)) component. Differencing a series involves simply subtracting its current and previous values d times. Often, differencing is used to stabilize the series when the stationarity assumption is not met, which we will discuss below.

A moving average (MA(q)) component represents the error of the model as a combination of previous error terms et. The order q determines the number of terms to include in the model

Differencing, autoregressive, and moving average components make up a non-seasonal ARIMA model which can be written as a linear equation:

where yd is Y differenced d times and c is a constant.

After applying the ARIMA to our dataset this the output of result that gets generated.

Plot on the top displays the error residual for each prediction values in time series. Graphs below displays autocorrelation function and partial autocorrelation function for prediction. It determines stationarity and seasonality in time series data, which accounts changes in data with variation in time.

Above graph displays predicted values by ARIMA for each hour for a specific day.  

5.5 K-nearest neighbors:

In pattern     recognition,      the k-nearest     neighbors      algorithm (k-NN)     is     a non-

parametric method used for classification and regression.[1] In both cases, the input consists of the k closest training examples in the feature space. The output depends on whether k-NN is used for classification or regression:

•       In k-NN classification, the output is a class membership. An object is classified by a majority vote of its neighbors, with the object being assigned to the class most common among its k nearest neighbors (k is a positive integer, typically small). If k = 1, then the object is simply assigned to the class of that single nearest neighbor.

•       In k-NN regression, the output is the property value for the object. This value is the average of the values of its k nearest neighbors.

k-NN is a type of instance-based learning, or lazy learning, where the function is only approximated locally and all computation is deferred until classification. The k-NN algorithm is among the simplest of all machine learning algorithms. We have used 5 as a K in our analysis.

Both for classification and regression, it can be useful to assign weight to the contributions of the neighbors, so that the nearer neighbors contribute more to the average than the more distant ones.

6.  Results:

The comparison of performance of different models applied has been done. The performance measures used for the performance are R^2 for training dataset, RMSE (Root mean square error) for training dataset and RMSE (Root Mean square error) for test dataset.

We don’t have values of R^2 and RMSE for training dataset in case of ARIMA model. But, we can see that ARIMA performance better than other models on the test dataset. In case of Machine learning algorithms Random Forest is clearly performing better than other models.

7.  Future Work:

Artificial neural network can be applied to time series analysis. But, transformation of data is required for applying ANN to the time series dataset.  

Additionally, we can improve the accuracy of prediction by applying each model for different areas of New York city and creating an ensemble model from it. This can be done by finding the best model for each area and using the best results for each area to predict combined demand for each city in New York city.