#people spending frivolous hundreds are NOT the enemy here

[knifecollectingcrow]

bitches clutching their pearls seeing someone spending money on a website they care about and then complain about ads and lost of authenticity or whatever in the same breath. do you not understand how this works. Do you not understand.

[lovelyirony]

76 for winteriron or 94 for rhodeytony?? ily and your work ma’am your vibes are immaculate -ambivalentmarvel

thank you! and reminder: please send in the full prompt! 

76.) “If you lay a finger on him, I’ll kill everyone in this room.” 

Tony Stark was not supposed to be a detective. He was not supposed to be a lot of things. But when his father had told him at age seven that all he’d ever be was a disappointment, he decided he might as well do whatever the hell he wanted with his life. 

So. A detective. That had gone over well with his college advisor. 

“Aren’t you...aren’t you Howard’s son?” He had said nervously, readjusting his glasses for about the eighth time in seven minutes. 

“Yes, but I also have a mother. And my mother is very keen on my having some skills of my own. Between you and I, we all know my father is going to hand it over to his business partner.” 

(This all is a very direct lie. His mother could not honestly care less what he does with his life as long as he never looks her in the eye and tells her that boxed wine is good. He’s not going to look her in the eye for quite some time.) 

Being a detective isn’t all film noir and extravagant lifestyle. Sure he gets paid the big bucks. He blends into high society well but is just unknowable enough to put on an old pair of jeans and slink into a coffee shop under the guise of being another guy on his laptop. That’s a skill few possess. 

There’s also the tiny, teensy little detail that he’s one of the only detectives to risk secret-agency-detection because in all honesty the security systems were built by Stark Industries and Howard wasn’t exactly what anyone would call “stellar” at security measures. 

Tony, however, was. 

(Did some side work for SI, you know the drill. Sure his father wasn’t exactly thrilled, but it’s not like there was the PR nightmare of Stark Sr. not being as smart in his old age as people always expected.) 

So when he gets an offer for finding and capturing the Winter Soldier from someone named Natalie? 

Well, he asks if he gets to use his frequent flier miles and packs a bag for DC. 

The Winter Soldier is regarded as a conspiracy theory. A man who is all machine, does the dirty work for an undercover organization, and has a shiny arm that can do a lot of things that Tony dreams about at night. 

He likes conspiracy theories. Enjoys the hell out of solving them. (Roswell was a particularly fun one to crack.) 

So he starts with research. 

There is one thing to be said about the Winter Soldier: 

He’s notoriously bad at hiding his tracks beyond the usual security measures. Restricting camera access, destroying tapes, passing off a flimsy excuse as to why a politician, peacemaker, or civilian that was causing a little too much trouble was suddenly found dead, the coronary reports restricted on a need-to-know basis. 

Don’t make him laugh. 

People talk. They always do, doesn’t matter if it’s been a year or thirty. 

The coroners, the police, the people that surrounded the target. They all nervously whisper about suspecting someone else. 

He gets closer to the location. He can tell by the thrum he holds in himself now, the way sleep doesn’t come as easily. (Although he still gets it. You don’t buy 400 thread count for nothing.) 

Hydra is still in business. Of course it is. 

He pays SHIELD a little visit. 

That organization is about the worst-kept secret in the world. He dresses up in a smart suit, ridiculous glasses, and pastes a cheesy grin on his face. 

He’s in an interview for tech. Gets lost on his way there. The person conducting the interviews has them booked back to back. When a “Mr. Edward Jarvis” does not show up for the interview, the next candidate will come in. 

Of course, he looks like any other employee scurrying around with stacks in his arms. Face is obscured by cameras. He’s bypassed Stark Industries’ security features, and he gets to the file room. 

Holy shit. It’s bad. 

After spending at least two minutes thinking he would die from coughing from all the dust. 

They don’t organize anything. All of the paper files, it seems, have been abandoned as soon as the digitized platform came out. (Which makes sense.) 

He finds the file box on Winter Soldier. Everything, suspiciously, is blacked out. But he finds one name: Alexander Pierce. 

For a man who is about to overtake SHIELD and ruin the entire world, you think he’d have a less consistent schedule. Or that his house would be harder to get into. 

Moral of the story: you can break into the window in an attic. 

Tony is making coffee. 

Pierce stops in his tracks. 

“Who the hell are you?” 

“Why do you have Folgers? You live in a nice neighborhood. You live like this?” Tony asks. He takes a swig of coffee, winces. “God I haven’t had stuff this bad since I was in college. Ew.” 

“If you’re here to kill me, you’ve got yourself in a bigger mess than you know.” 

“No, I don’t think I am,” Tony answers. “Because you? You’re stuck here. With me. You can try to run but to be completely frank, your joint medication by the paper towels speak to your ability to outrun me. There’s also the little fact that I’m not here for the typical reason.” 

“So what, you’re not an enemy of SHIELD?” Pierce asks. 

“Of course I’m not,” Tony says, smiling. “Even like a couple of their agents. But you’re not exactly SHIELD, are you? Some PR talked about one head cut off, two more grow back. I’m not exactly sure if you know how human anatomy works, but...” 

Pierce grins. 

“Oh, then you know about our little project.” 

“Of course I do,” Tony says. “Not so little, though. Didn’t get him operational until 1954? What was that, your birth year? Can’t imagine he’s perfect.” 

His smile thins. 

“It’s taken trial and test runs. But he’s perfect now.” 

“Ah, there’s the problem,” Tony says. “Because he probably broke a lot of people, didn’t he Pierce? Probably threw at least one person. I saw the specs for the arm. A lot of power behind that.” 

“And how would you know about the arm?” Pierce asked. “We don’t keep blueprints.” 

“You don’t,” Tony says slowly. “But the creator does. And you should’ve looked a lot carefully at who was behind your little experimental arm, Pierce. You shouldn’t trust a Stark to stay in a lane.” 

His eyes widen. 

Tony loves theatrics. He also likes that he was the one who technically found out about the little quirk. 

“So here’s what you didn’t know,” Tony continues. “Our hypothetical technological inventions have a tracking component on them, just in case we cannot find them in our inventory or database. And even though your scientists did an excellent job at hiding the box and filling it with a truly terrible amount of cookbooks, they did not know about that little feature.” 

Tony pulls out his phone. 

“Your Soldier is in...wow, you’re keeping him local? Pierce, I expected more from you.” 

“What do you want.” 

“I want him,” Tony says. “And I’ll leave you alone.” 

“Absolutely not,” Pierce seethes. “Why would we give you the star of the show?” 

“Because,” Tony says. “Your show sucks, if I’m being completely honest. One branch of Hydra is completely dedicated to the idea of Inhumans and is batshit insane. Another branch is literally only focused on weapons, and another is about this. It’s a shit-show. If there was a show about this I would not give it anything past three seasons.” 

Alexander Pierce looks like he’s going to burst a vein. 

Tony moves on. 

“Along with that if I cannot get him from you, I will be getting him. And if you touch a hair on his head, I will kill you.” 

Alexander Pierce looks mad. Which of course he does. Tony tends to have that effect on people, Rhodey says so. 

“Do you think you can even get out of my house? You think I won’t know your face, know that Tony Stark threatened me? Will anyone even believe you?” 

“Aw Andy, you say the sweetest things,” Tony says smiling. “I told you I was a Stark for two reasons. I’ve already told you the first one, let’s see when you wake up if you can guess the second.” 

“What--” 

And...man down. 

And Pepper told him a taser-pen was “hopefully frivolous” and “why the fuck would you ever make that for a pen you barely you know which coffee cup is yours and you just drink from both.” 

Pierce is left tied up in his kitchen on the floor, Tony admires the window seat for a brief moment, and leaves the files incriminating Pierce along with about sixty to a hundred other people. 

He has a taxi to catch. 

- 

“You know he will probably kill you,” Rhodey says on the phone. “And then I get to give my eulogy and I’m going to tell everyone you secretly liked cheese pizza only.” 

“I will literally commit a war crime against you,” Tony says. “Not even joking. I’ll face Congress if I have to.” 

Rhodey rolls his eyes. 

“You can’t, they’d kick you out.” 

“Oh, just for wearing a ripped up crop top and jean shorts? What, would I be a menace to society?” 

“You’re always a menace,” Rhodey mutters. “Listen, I gotta go. Pepper’s freaking out about your advertisements in the newspaper and the correct grammar.” 

“Bye!” Tony says. 

DC is definitely not Tony’s style. At least, for now. He can’t even enjoy coffee, he has to foil an assassination plot. 

Winter Soldier is not subtle, as he’s said. Neither are the Hydra agents who are just painfully obvious. 

At least this might be done by dinner.

He also faces the Winter Soldier. That’s fun. It’s too early to really be anything but fun. 

He walks right up to him. 

“Do you know someone named Natalie?” Tony asks. 

“What?” Winter Soldier asks. “No. Move or I’ll move you.” 

“Very robotic, ugh,” Tony says, smiling. “No, I have a job to do. You’re not moving me.” 

Winter Soldier lunges. 

Tony sidesteps and throws him off his balance with a cafe chair. 

Their fight takes them to a bridge. 

“You’ve compromised the mission,” Winter Soldier hisses. “Why?” 

“Because I got hired to bring you back,” Tony says. 

“To Hydra?” 

“No,” Tony says. “God no, they’re terrible. No, someone named Natalie wants you rescued.” 

“Natalia,” Winter Soldier murmurs. “How do you know her?” 

“I don’t,” Tony says. “At least, far as I know. I was asked to find you and bring you to her and whoever else is there. So, are you in?” 

He pauses, looks out at the city. 

“How are you gonna get me out of here?” 

“You underestimate the power of tourism,” Tony says. “Let’s go.” 

One “I Visited the Washington” sweatshirt and long hair wrapped into a bun later, Tony is walking out with who appears to be Bucky Barnes. 

“Of course you are,” Tony mutters. “Okay, let’s get to the meeting point.” 

“Are you staying?” Barnes asks. 

Tony cocks his head. “What do you want me for?”

“You just helped me escape from Hydra. You’re most likely near-suicidal. I think you need to stay close.” 

Tony rolls his eyes good-naturedly. 

“I’m not near-suicidal. Of course I’m not. I stick around for a really nice pizza joint. But Natalie--or Natalia, you called her that right?” 

“Natalie’s a fake name.” 

“Of course it is, who names their kid Natalie anymore?” Tony quips. “But besides the point. She probably can do you more good than I can. After all, I don’t ever drink out of the right coffee cup. I am very, insanely doubtful that I am of any help whatsoever.” 

“Fine then,” Barnes says. “I’ll keep an eye on you.” 

“I’m sure you will.” 

Tony doubts this. 

But he drives him to where whoever the hell hired him lives. It’s a nice, upscale apartment. Probably costs about as much as his whole apartment building’s rent in total. 

Of course, the woman who greets them looks gorgeous. Barnes knows her easily enough. 

“Thank you, Stark,” the woman says. 

“What do I actually call you?” Tony asks. “You know my name, I know two of yours.” 

“Call me Natasha,” she says. “And anything else isn’t your business.” 

“Of course not, I would expect a check in the mail otherwise,’ Tony remarks. “So. Barnes is delivered back to you. Expect payment tonight or tomorrow?” 

“Tomorrow at twelve,” she answers. “Afternoon.” 

“See you around,” Tony says, waving. “Barnes, try not to kill anyone right now. Seriously gonna ruin the springtime mood, you know?” 

Bucky Barnes stares after him. 

Natasha smiles. 

“Welcome back, James.” 

He nods. Goes and sits in a chair. 

“You gonna turn my brain back to mush or let me stay?” 

“Stay,” Natasha answers. “I escaped Red Room. I knew I needed to get you.” 

“And why not do it yourself? It’s not like you can’t,” he answers. 

“Because I was confident that Tony could leave more of a...dramatic element to it,” Natasha answers. “And he did. SHIELD is currently reforming all of its employees. One of the ladies who always let me eat strawberry yogurt from the fridge worked for them. He also helped dismantle any chance at regrouping to get you.” 

“Smart,” James answers. “Who is he? Stark?” 

“He’s an asshole, but a skilled detective,” Natasha adds. “Son of Howard Stark. You remember him?” 

“He was supposed to be my next mission,” James says, feeling a bit of the Winter Soldier seep back in. “Guess I won’t have a perfect record.” 

“You don’t have a perfect record, trust me,” Natasha adds. “And I didn’t get you for anything other than a rescue mission. You’re free.” 

-

Being free, James finds, is terrifying. 

Natasha has set him up with his own apartment. He has therapy appointments every Wednesday and Saturday. Grocery shopping is...interesting. 

And he keeps using his past skills to check in on Tony, who is doing well in life, if not a bit...wary. 

He’s assuming you don’t expose the underbelly of at least two secret organizations without gaining some traction. 

He’s gotten takeout four times this week. It’s Thursday. This is sad. 

His therapist also recommends that he gets “friends.” James is not exactly sure how to do that. 

So instead he breaks into Tony’s office. 

“We’re friends now,” he announces as Tony yelps and drops his plate. 

“Oh my god you could’ve just not snuck in!” Tony screeches. “I dropped my rolls!” 

They do become friends after that. Tony decides that James needs to try every single coffee shop that’s ever open. 

(He’s a sucker for iced caramel lattes. They’re good.) 

They both learn how to cook different foods, and try to make noodles. 

“Oh my god we’re both disasters,” Tony says, laughing. He takes a picture of James poking at the disastrous attempt. 

“Take me to pizza?” he asks. 

“Like you have to ask,” Tony says. “Come on.” He smiles at him, amazed by how much he’s changed. He grabs his jacket. 

-

 It is Rhodey who clocks it first. 

“You like him,” he crows. “You like him. You like the assassin!” 

“Ex-assassin,” Tony corrects. “And no. Of course I don’t.” 

“You call him ‘babe’, Tony.” 

“And I call you all sorts of pet names,” Tony argues. 

“Calling me literally the weirdest pet names like ‘honeybear sweetums’ or ‘platypus’ does not count,” Rhodey says. “You do don’t call me babe. Besides, you like hugging him all the time and I guarantee that you like him. Even if he is an ex-assassin and still thinks completing a thousand piece puzzle gives you the same rush of serotonin as jumping out of a car.” 

“He’s fun like that!” Tony protests. “Besides, he doesn’t have a lot of people in his life.” 

“That’s a lie,” Rhodey says. “He regrettably met Steve. Again. And he has Sam. Which I think they are friends. Natasha makes him do things.” 

“Wow your description of friends are so amazing,” Tony deadpans. “It’s like you have some of your one. You sound like a robot.” 

“I’m still right, it’s not like I’m not,” Rhodey says. “You know this. Pepper probably also knows that you like James.” 

- 

He consults Pepper. Clearly she will have some sense. 

“I demand a raise,” she says. “Because I can detect this shit better than you can.” 

“You’re getting a raise but not because of this.” 

“Good,” Pepper says. “Now go organize a nice dinner out or something. Get out of here. I’m rearranging your office desk.” 

Tony groans. He hates it when she does that. 

- 

He supposes they are both right. 

So he also supposes that he might have to take James to a coffee shop and tell him. 

- 

What Tony doesn’t know is that James is gearing up to tell him that he likes him. 

It was brought to his attention by Sam and Natasha. 

“You like him,” Sam says. 

“We’re friends!” 

“Friends don’t write their wedding vows on a napkin,” Natasha remarks. “Go organize a coffee date and tell him. I swear if you don’t tell him I’m going to make you confess at three a.m.” 

“If you get me up at three a.m. I’m violating so many rules,” James says. “Like at least four.” 

“Do five!” Steve yells from the couch. “And tell Rhodey hi for me!” 

“No, he hates you,” James says. 

“Exactly!” 

He sighs, texting Tony. 

hey can u meet me @ clocktower, 7? 

sounds gr8 :) 

Tony doesn’t know why James wants coffee. But he’s happy and definitely only that, ignore his shaking fingers. It’s the caffeine clearly. 

(The caffeine isn’t helping. He knows that.) 

“Hi,” James says. “Thank you for coming to the coffee shop. Tonight.” 

“You’re awkward,” Tony blurts out. “Why are you speaking in fragmentary sentences?” 

“That was at most only one fragmentary sentence.” 

“Oh.” 

They sit for a moment, James goes to get coffee. 

Tony steels himself. 

“You remember how I told you that you probably weren’t going to see a lot of me?” Tony asks. 

“Are you leaving?” James asks, eyes wide. “I’m going with you. Obviously.” 

“No you dumbass, I’m not leaving,” Tony says, taking another sip. “But do you remember?” 

“Clearly,” James says with a snort. 

“Well I was wrong. And we’re friends. And...well. Fuck it. I love you, and not in a like a friendship way. I really, really have been wondering what it’s like to kiss you. And if you don’t feel the same way then just tell me and we’ll be cool just give me like a month.” 

James grins. 

“You mean to tell me we can finally actually go on a date at that fancy seafood restaurant you’ve been dying to go to?” 

“We could’ve always done that, but yes it will be nice to look at you across,” Tony says. 

James takes his hand, smiling. 

“Can I take you out on Friday then?” 

“I’ll wear my best suit,” Tony says, grinning. 

- 

When they’re asked about how they meet, it’s not exactly like you can say “oh I got assigned to find and capture the love of my life and we also managed to wreck a secret organization” for the origin story. 

So they usually keep telling people they met while on a business call. 

Technically true. 

[beeblackburn]

Pretender Reads A Little Hatred, Part I, Chapter Five

If anyone would like to publicly hang me for posting more frequently after months since the first read-through, feel free! Goes without saying spoilers ahead for the entirety of The First Law works beyond the keep reading. Read at your own risk.

Chapter Title: A Little Public Hanging Point-of-View: Crown Prince Orso

As a forewarning, I just want to say this: I hate privileged royal characters. I do, I really do! They always end up as some form of ineffectual, despite being in high positions, spoiled whiners who complain about how hard their lives are, despite having vastly more than the mud-and-shit-worked peasants they rule over, and refusing to actually change things for the better. 

And, after a lifetime of reading about privileged royal twats as protagonists who complained about how hard their lives were, only to end up getting a heart for the peasantry later, but not actually rocking the boat too hard, in terms of changing their monarchies to something directly more beneficial, I’m just kind of done with them? 

That being said, Abercrombie wrote Jezal dan Luthar and I actually liked how he progressed, but at the same time, he wasn’t royalty at the start. Just a noble prick who had to take some hard blows before he could grow the hell up. So, we’ll see how this goes...

“I hate bloody hangings,” said Orso.

One of the whores tittered as if he’d cracked quite the joke. It was the falsest laugh he had ever heard, and when it came to false laughter, he was quite the connoisseur. Everyone was false in his presence, and he the worst actor of all.

“I guess you could stop it,” said Hildi. “If you wanted.”

Orso frowned up at her, perched on the wall with her legs crossed and her chin propped on one palm.

“Well… I suppose…” Strange how the idea had never occurred to him before. He pictured himself springing onto the scaffold, insisting these poor people be pardoned, ushering them back to their miserable lives to tearful thanks and rapturous applause. Then he sighed. “But… one really shouldn’t interfere with the workings of the judiciary.”

Lies, like everything that left his mouth, engineered to make him appear just a touch less detestable. He wondered who he was trying to fool. Hildi undoubtedly saw straight through it. The truth was, when it came to stopping this, as with so much else, he simply couldn’t be arsed. He took another pinch of pearl dust, his heavy snorts ringing out as the Inquisitor in charge stepped to the front of the scaffold and the crowd fell breathlessly silent.

My, my, Orso’s quite the charmer, isn’t he. Just this apathetic mess who can’t be bothered to act in any way real, even stop a hanging he doesn’t like. There’s a pitiful quality to him, but not in a way that arouses sympathy or love to me, given how much privilege and power his position has, especially with how much he knows he’s a shit and can afford to get away with it as crown prince.

That being said, what strikes me about this opening is just how painfully self-depreciating Orso’s voice is. To the noting of false laughter, to the knowledge that he knows he’s using his words to paint himself less awful to Hildi, to this feeling that she can see through how despicable he is (and he kind of is here!), one thing that contrasts him with a high screech against early Jezal and, more accurately, Crown Prince Ladisla, is that... Orso really doesn’t buy into any hype of his. He knows he’s a shit person, everyone knows it, so why bother denying it to himself?

Hmmm. I’m not entirely sure how to feel about this, self-awareness can cut both ways in terms of reader sympathy, but he’s no Ladisla so far. He’s certainly an interesting contrast to Savine, the other Union voice, and Leo, the other male voice, so far. He’s not particular fixated on public appearances, given the ease of doing drugs out in the open, and he’s not exactly a man of action either. He’s just... kind of an inactive shit stuck in his privilege.

“These three…people,” and the Inquisitor swept an arm towards the chained convicts, each held under the armpit by a hooded executioner, “are members of the outlawed group known as the Breakers, convicted of High Treason against the Crown!”

“Treason!” someone screeched, then dissolved into coughing. It was a still day, so a bad one for the vapours. Not that there were many good days for the vapours lately, what with the new chimneys sprouting up all over Adua. People at the very back must have been struggling to see the scaffold through the murk.

“They have been found guilty of setting fires and breaking machinery, of incitement to riot and sheltering fugitives from the king’s justice! Have you anything to say?”

The first prisoner, a heavyset fellow with a beard, evidently did. “We’re faithful subjects of His Majesty!” he bellowed in a hero’s voice, all manly bass and quivering passion. “All we want is an honest wage for honest work!”

Huh, so the Breakers are effectively revolutionaries? Honestly, I can’t really blame them for railing against their conditions. As we’ve seen in Savine’s chapter, they live in some truly wretched environments. And all these passages prove is that is the new age of progress that Savine’s taking advantage is here to stay, and Orso’s eyes are a necessary lens to see all the curses of it, whereas Savine would only see the Breakers and the vapours as the inevitable collateral damage of this new world where money is power.

“I’d sooner take a dishonest wage for no work at all,” grunted Tunny.

Yolk burst out laughing while swigging from his bottle and sprayed a reeking mist of spirits, which settled over the wig of a well-dressed old lady just in front.

Hey, Tunny and Yolk! Hi, you two surviving bastards! Playing to the hits, I see.

“Yes.” Tunny showed his yellow grin and Orso winced. He hated it when Tunny used him to bully people. Almost as much as he hated hangings. But somehow he could never bring himself to stop either one.

(arches an eyebrow) Now, how did Tunny manage to get in close enough to the Crown Prince ever since serving in the war against Styria? And why get close to a Crown Prince to begin with? Is Tunny not afraid of the shitting falling on him once Orso’s enemies angling to take him and his friends out?

And, by god, Tunny’s turned into more of a shit than he originally was. I mean, given his appearance in Sharp Ends, I’m not surprised, but never let it be said that Abercrombie lets up on the negative character development he’s famous for among his characters.

The side-whisker enthusiast had turned pale as a freshly laundered sheet, something Orso had not seen in some time. “Your Highness, I had no idea. Please accept my—”

“No need.” Orso waved a lazy hand, wine-stained lace cuff flapping, and took another pinch of pearl dust. “I am a damn disgrace. Notoriously so.” He gave the man a reassuring pat on the shoulder, realised he had smeared dust all over his coat and tried ineffectually to brush it off. If Orso excelled at anything, after all, it was being ineffectual. “Please don’t concern yourself over my feelings. I don’t have any.” Or so he often said. The truth was he sometimes felt he had too many. He was dragged so violently in a dozen different directions that he could not move at all.

Honestly, as much as I don’t come out of this respecting Orso, I can relate to that last sentiment. Being so dragged apart by different responsibilities and obligations that you feel paralyzed by it. You can’t move, you can’t do anything.

That being said, Orso, you’re doing drugs while watching a hanging you can, theoretically, try to stop. I’m not seeing where you’re being dragged apart here.

And there is so much apathy and self-depreciation in these passages, so much of Orso not getting angry or petty, not even for a power high considering Side-whiskers would be fine with however he reacted, which is so telling compared to the usual reactions of nobles. There’s no knee-jerk anger at being told off like Jezal or Ladisla or Vallimir or most others here. Orso’s so inactive, he can’t even summon up the typical petty retribution that nobles do. 

He’s a shit, but he’s a very different shit compared to the others, I feel.

“Majir?”

“Y’owe Majir a hundred and fifty-one marks. Said she can’t give you more credit.”

“Spizeria, then?”

“Y’owe him three hundred and six. Same story.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

Hildi gave Tunny, Yolk and the whores a significant glance. “You want me to answer that?”

Orso racked his brains to think of someone else, then gave up. If he excelled at anything, after all, it was giving up. “For pity’s sake, Hildi, everyone knows I’m good for it. I’ll be coming into a considerable legacy one of these days.” No less than the Union, and everything in it, and all its unliftable weight of care, and impossible responsibility, and crushing expectation. He grimaced and tossed her the box.

Huh! The same Majir in Savine’s chapter? A neat note, but dang, Orso, who haven’t you indebted yourself to at this point? So much privilege of never needing to mind one’s personal purse. Though, you’d think Jezal would’ve covered him or Terez, at least, told him to knock it off the frivolous spending, up to a point.

And there’s that awareness again, knowing how much weight he’s going to be under once he stops being Crown Prince and starts being King of the Union, and, to put a pause on haranguing Orso for his inactivity and open apathy, the Circle of the World might be the only series where there’s greater context to more justify a lack of feeling any agency among the royalty, given how Bayaz’s set it up and how much Jezal is ultimately a prisoner to his status, though Orso doesn’t know how bad it’ll get.

Kind of hard to do anything when stepping out of line means an “accident.”

“You owe me nine marks,” she muttered.

“Shoo!” Orso tried to wave her away, got his little finger painfully tangled in his cuff and had to rip it free. “Just get it done!”

She gave a long-suffering sigh, jammed that ancient soldier’s cap down over her blonde curls and stepped off into the crowd.

“She’s a funny little thing, your errand girl,” warbled one of the whores, dragging too heavily on his arm.

“She’s my valet,” said Orso, frowning, “and she’s a fucking treasure.”

Awww, is it wrong this made me like Orso more? If he drags himself, he elevates others as well. And he’s right, Hildi’s a damn treasure and it’s still kind of amazing a prince allows his inner circle to be contrary to him, mouthing off to him and using him in their petty power plays like with Tunny and Side-whiskers earlier. 

It’s like he has so little regard for himself, that there’s room for him to think so much better of others.

On the scaffold, meanwhile, the bearded man was bellowing out the Breakers’ manifesto with ever more emotion. The noise from the crowd was growing but, much to the upset of the Inquisitor, he was starting to strike a chord. Calls of support were breaking through the mockery.

“No more machines!” the bearded man roared, veins bulging in his thick neck. “No more seizure of common land!”

He seemed a useful fellow. More useful than Orso, certainly. “What a bloody waste,” he muttered.

This is reminding me of when Last Argument of Kings had the Tanner plotline and how much the peasantry rebelled then. Except thematically... this feels different. That rebellion was an orchestrated farce at the head of it in the end, but this feels more... real.

Orso, especially stuck in his self-depreciation, can see the validity of the people involved with the movement, and see the waste of killing a good man. Yet, he’ll still let him die because his station is built upon on culling the dissidents of royalty, hence why the Inquisition are doing this.

He might believe it a waste, hell, I think he genuinely does, but ultimately, without acting, all those thoughts? Empty gestures and sighs, full of pity, Orso.

It was a riddle. This man, born with no advantages, believed in something so much he was willing to die for it. Orso, born with everything, could scarcely make himself get out of bed of a morning. Or, indeed, an afternoon.

“Bed is warm, though,” he murmured.

Well, that’s just the thing. The privileged, with their inherited wealth, don’t have to work to preserve it and their privileges. They’ve known no other life beyond it and have grown accustomed to their degree of luxury. Their wealth and privilege allows them to live as comfortably as possible, and the human lives exploited and squeezed out of their use? They’re less a consideration to the immediate pleasures of the privileges of those in high places. 

Comfort and pleasure can blind you, because too much of them can close you off to the pain and anguish of others, if your luxurious life is dependent on the suffering of others. It’s only when you have skin in the game that you learn to fight for something until the bitter end, because you don’t have any luxury to fall back on when you’re knee-deep in the shit. A world’s difference between that Breaker and Orso, between those with losing and winning hands.

Rather than needing strong men or horses to haul up the condemned, some enterprising fellow had devised a system whereby prisoners could be dropped through the scaffold floor at a touch upon a lever. There was an invention to make everything more efficient these days, after all. Why would killing people be an exception?

(snorts) Done in a new way, indeed.

“Damn it,” muttered Orso, working a finger into his collar. There was nothing even faintly satisfying in this. Even if these people really were enemies of the state, they hardly looked like very dangerous ones.

In some ways, this is a shockingly naive thought in the Circle of the World. Plenty of otherwise harmless-looking or quiet people can turn out your most dangerous and ruthless enemies in this world, as Logen would point out. But, at the same time... this is still an acknowledgment of all this being wrong. Orso’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t know right or wrong, it’s that he can’t be bothered to do anything about it, and that damns him, given he, out of everyone there, could stop it. Could, at least, try! And doesn’t!

The next in line to receive the king’s justice was a girl who might not yet have been sixteen. Her eyes, wide in bruised sockets, flickered from the open trapdoor to the Inquisitor as he stepped towards her. “Have you anything to say?”

She appeared hardly to comprehend. Orso found himself wishing the vapours were thicker, and that he could not see her face at all.

“Please,” said the man beside her. There were tears streaking his dirty cheeks. “Take me but, please—”

Oof. I can’t say I’m surprised, considering West’s chapter at the Angland camp noting the Inquisition takes children in, but seeing it still punches me in the heart. And that man, just begging for leniency to that girl, for himself...

And Orso, wishing he didn’t have to see her face, in order not to feel the guilt burning in him. At staying his hand. Because looking at someone’s eyes beforehand makes it all the harder to say they deserved to die.

Orso gritted his as he looked to the scaffold. Hildi had been right, he could stop this. If not him, who? If not now, when?

There was some problem with the girl’s noose, the Inquisitor hissing furiously at one of the executioners as he dragged his hood up over his sweaty face to peer at the knots.

Orso was just about to step forward. Was just about to roar, Stop!

On a purely realistic note, I kind of wonder what would have happened, had Orso acted? Glokta’s not there, nor is Bayaz, and it can be agreed-upon the public masses that the royalty of the Union still holds the power over there. So, ultimately, it depends on whether Orso would buckle to the Inquisitors there, them telling him that the Breakers are traitors and deserve no quarter with him conceding in the end, or if he could argue that children have done no crime worth execution? In truth, the Inquisition are the real power, given Arch Lector Glokta, but at the same time, publicly undercutting the royalty might be more trouble than Orso undercutting the Inquisition, who nominally serve under him.

In short, it’s entirely possible he could’ve, at least, saved the girl, just like Jezal protected Brock’s children against his Closed Council once:

“There will be no hangings.” The king was frowning levelly at Bayaz.

Hoff blinked. “But your Majesty, you cannot allow—”

“There has been enough bloodshed. Far more than enough. Release Lord Brock’s children.”

Last Argument of Kings, Patriotic Duties

(Sobs at father/son connections)

In all honesty, if we’re talking echoes of the first trilogy, there’s a lot of later-Jezal in Orso, the self-depreciating man who was more painfully aware of how out-of-depth he was as king, except the self-depreciation is far more pointed in Orso’s case, Orso’s voice is choked full of it, so much so that it’s a miasma of disregard to himself. Not undeserved, considering how little he’s doing now, but it’s definitely a notable quality. On a structural level, I can’t help, but read a certain Crown Prince Ladisla in Orso, except, instead of just a punchline, there’s an actual character in this useless prince, and enough self-aware and want to do the right thing...

... Yet, Orso doesn’t.

But circumstances always conspired to stop him doing the right thing. He heard a soft, high voice in his ear. “Your Highness.”

Orso turned to see the broad, flat and decidedly unwelcome face of Bremer dan Gorst at his shoulder.

HEY, GORST THE WORST! How’re ya doing? :D Still the King's First Guard? Of course you are! Also still being a depressed, self-pitying murderous incel? That too, most like! 

Gods, I wonder if he’s still fixated on Finree, after all these years...

“The queen has sent for you,” piped Gorst.

Orso blew out through his pursed lips to make a long farting sound. “Hasn’t she better things to do?”

Oh, SNAP! We’re getting Terez this early? My, my, I’m certainly interested in seeing her again, after how Abercrombie dropped the ball with her the first trilogy.

Orso turned away without much reluctance. He hated bloody hangings, but the girls had wanted to go and he hated disappointing people, too. As a result of which, it seemed, he disappointed everyone. At his back, there was that strange sound between gasp and cheer as the next trapdoor dropped open.

Disappointing me as well. Damn it, Orso. Nothing was stopping you from stopping the girl’s execution, at least, and then going to your mother right after. But no, you took the easy excuse of needing to be with your mother, instead of the hard choice of standing for what’s right.

Another thing Abercrombie relies on? The anti-climax, the thwarting of expectations on a chapter and series scale, I knew it as one of his writing tools going in, and I still fell for it, hoping Orso would do something useful, anything useful and stop the excessive execution of a child. I suppose I have no one to blame but myself, given even Orso’s expressed what a useless shit he is, but...

Oh, Orso, Orso, Orso. What am I to do with you?

Orso tossed his hat onto the bald head of a bust of Bayaz, congratulating himself that it came to rest on the legendary wizard at a pleasingly rakish angle.

Huh, I do wonder how a meeting between Orso and Bayaz would go down. Bayaz’s inevitable to come visit the Union at some point in this trilogy, especially if Jezal croaks in the middle of it (the Breakers would serve as an abject reason for murdering the king, given the allusions to the French Revolution). Orso hardly seem to be made of sterner stuff, even more than his father, who wasn’t exactly a lion deep down... but at the same time, that’s expected, isn’t it? 

Who are you, Orso, beyond a self-aware fool I can’t respect, and pity without sympathy?

The tapping of his boot heels echoed in the vast spaces of the salon as he crossed a sea of gleaming tiles to the tiny island of furniture in its centre. The High Queen of the Union sat fearsomely erect there, dripping with diamonds, growing out of the chaise like a spectacular orchid from a gilded pot. It hardly needed to be said that he’d known her his whole life, but the sheer regality of the woman still took him aback every time.

You know, I was expecting this, but wow. We’re really getting Terez, huh! Looking the picture-perfect example of royalty.

Also, I got to love that fearsomely. Lovely detail to capture how Orso feels about his mother.

“Mother,” he said, in Styrian. Using the tongue of the country they actually ruled only aggravated her, and he knew from long experience that aggravating Queen Terez was never, ever worth it. “I was just on my way to visit when Gorst found me.”

“You must take me for a rare kind of fool,” she said, angling her face towards him.

“No, no.” He bent to brush one heavily powdered cheek with his lips. “Just the usual kind.”

“Really, Orso, your accent has become appalling.”

“Well, now that Styria is almost entirely controlled by our enemies, I get so little chance to practice.”

As an immigrant child, someone born away from my current home, I can’t entirely relate to this... but I know my parents suffered a great deal of cultural diaspora when they came to where we currently live. And, when my brother and I could, we would speak Chinese because it was part of our parents’ culture. I’m not particularly good at it, but I know enough to make my parents’ lives more convenient instead of speaking a language they’re less comfortable with. 

I say all this to say? I completely get where Terez’s coming from. She was effectively sold off from her father to a foreign country to accumulate more of his power and she’s adrift from her original culture and home and just wants to keep as much as possible. And it’s honestly such a neat detail from a character who was given the short shrift in the first trilogy, writing-wise. I can already tell there’s a greater sense of detail attended to her this time.

The royal bosom, constrained by corsetry that was a feat of engineering to rival any wonder of the new age, inflated majestically as the queen sighed. “People expect a certain amount of indolence in a Crown Prince. It was quite winning when you were seventeen. At twenty-two, it began to become tiresome. At twenty-seven, it looks positively desperate.”

(looks at Crown Prince Ladisla) Different sort of man, yet, the same disappointment. I come back to the Prince Ladisla comparison because the way they’re written feels so different, despite occupying a similar useless royal twat archetype. Prince Ladisla completely bought into himself being the best thing since sliced bread, full of illusions of himself as a great general in his head. Crown Prince Orso, though? If anything, he suffers from the opposite problem: so thoroughly disillusioned of himself that he feels he can’t do anything. They’re both privileged, useless, royal twat archetypes, but how their uselessness is expressed is the difference between day and night.

“You have no idea, Mother.” Orso dropped into a chair so savagely uncomfortable it was like being punched in the arse. “I have long been thoroughly ashamed of myself.”

“You could try doing something to be proud of. Have you considered that?”

“I’ve spent whole days considering it.” He frowned discerningly through the wine as he held it up to the light from the giant windows. “But doing it really feels like such a lot of effort.”

This feels similar to the Finree/Leo dynamic, except where that mother was exasperated at her son’s inability to do anything but act, Terez takes issue with how much Orso will do anything but act. A true man of inaction against Leo’s man of action.

Also, “long been thoroughly ashamed”? How long as this been happening for Orso, then? Terez did mention that he was like this since seventeen, but... why? I mean, as Terez says, you could try doing something. Like, um, stopping an execution? Orso? Hello?

“Frankly, your father could use your support. He is a weak man, Orso.”

“So you never tire of telling him.”

“And these are difficult times. The last war did… not end well.”

“It ended pretty well if you’re King Jappo of Styria.”

His mother pronounced each word with icy precision. “Which you… are…not.”

“Sadly, for all concerned.”

“You are King Jappo’s mortal enemy and the rightful heir to all he and the thrice-damned Snake of Talins have stolen, and it is high time you took your position seriously! We have enemies everywhere. Inside our borders, too.”

Well. That answers one question about Jezal and Terez. Though, honestly, I expected as much, given those grisly circumstances. (grimaces)

Also, snrrrk. Terez, Orso barely has the energy to do the right thing for a girl, what makes you think he has the energy to take up a mortal enemy he never asked for?

Also, calling it now: Orso and Jappo are totally going to meet eventually in this trilogy and get along because they can share in their mutual burdens of dominating mothers.

“Then I trust you come to me in a receptive mood.” Orso’s mother gave two sharp claps and Lord Chamberlain Hoff strutted in. With waistcoat bulging around his belly and legs stick-like in tight breeches, he looked like nothing so much as a prize rooster jealously patrolling the farmyard.

“Your Majesty.” He bowed so low to the queen, he virtually buffed the tiles with his nose. “Your Highness.” He bowed just as low to Orso but in a manner that somehow expressed boundless contempt. Or perhaps Orso only saw his own contempt for himself reflected in that obsequious smile. “I have positively scoured the entire Circle of the World for the most eligible candidates. Dare one suggest that the future High Queen of the Union waits among them?”

HEY, Hoff! You piece of utter shit! How’ve you been?

(stares before wincing) Well, that feels familiar... though, I imagine there’s just some genuine contempt, considering that you’re not exactly the model of princely behavior.

Well, not good princely behavior.

“Oh, good grief.” Orso let his head drop back, staring up towards the beautifully painted ceiling of the peoples of the world kneeling before a golden sun. “The parade again?”

“Ensuring the succession is not a joke,” pronounced his mother.

“Not a funny one, anyway.”

“Don’t be facetious, Orso. Your sisters both did their dynastic duty. Do you suppose Cathil wanted to move to Starikland?”

“She’s an inspiration.”

“Do you think Carlot wanted to marry the Chancellor of Sipani?”

Actually, she had been delighted by the idea, but Orso’s mother loved to imagine everyone sacrificing all on the altar of duty, the way she was always telling them she had. “Of course not, Mother.”

Cathil? Carlot? What the... who named them? Orso makes me think Terez got to name the sons (oh geez, I just realized Crown Prince Orso was still a child when Duke Orso got killed, what a bad omen) and Cathil and Carlot... did Jezal name them? Where did he get those names? Now I’m wondering Jezal asking Glokta for advice on names, and Glokta asking Pike for another name for the daughter after the first one.

Either that or Cathil and Carlot are common Union names, maybe, but just imagine the awkwardness of that naming discussion between Jezal and Glokta.

Also, STARIKLAND? Where Conthus and Carlot are? Oh dear...

What strikes me about this is the idea that Orso and Carlot were close enough that he knew that she was delighted at the arrangement between her and the Chancellor of Sipani. It’s just a nugget, but it helps make Orso a little more palatable.

Also, as much as I really dislike the guilt-tripping from Terez here... there’s a sad reality that she was sacrificed for her father’s power. Whether he knew she was a lesbian or not is immaterial, he could’ve arranged her a match she actually liked and straight-up didn’t care enough to, only thinking that she would’ve whined, had he offered Euz, instead of simply a king. 

“Lady Sithrin dan Harnveld,” announced the lord chamberlain.

Orso sank lower into his chair. “Do I really want a wife who measures the distance from her chin to her tits in miles?”

“Artistic licence, Your Highness,” explained Hoff.

“Call it art, you can get away with anything.”

HA! I have a few artistic friends, and have seen enough artists justify wonky perspective or anatomy, that this is endlessly amusing to me.

Honestly, Orso’s got a few good zingers here. That’s another good part about this chapter here: he’s funny in a way Rikke and Leo, or even Savine, aren’t, despite the darkness of the initial half. A lot of his quips undercut a good chunk of the darkness there. Not enough that the reality doesn’t sink in, but enough that it doesn’t choke us with the misery of child execution.

“The Countess Istarine of Affoia is a proven politician, and would bring us valuable allies in Styria.”

“From the looks of her, she’s more likely to bring me a dose of the cock-rot.”

“I had imagined you would be immune from constant exposure,” observed the queen, waving the portrait away with an exquisite flourish of her fingers.

Snrrrrk. Dang, even Terez’s got some good zingers here. This back-and-forth is delightfully fun.

And so it went, as Orso marked the turning of morning into afternoon by the steadily decreasing level of wine in the decanter, and dismissed the flower of womanhood, one by one.

“How could I abide a wife taller than me?”

“She’s a worse drunk than I am.”

“At least we know she’s fertile, she’s borne two bastards that I know about.”

“Is that a nose on her face or a prick?”

He almost wished he was back at the hanging. That, he could theoretically have stopped. Over his mother, he was utterly powerless. His only chance was to wait her out. There were a finite number of women in the Circle of the World, after all.

Yeaaaaaaaah, Orso might be a shit person, but dang, this part of him is oodles of fun, a delightful wry awareness. Though, dang, some of these are pretty damn petty complaints, all things considering.

“Finished?” asked Orso. “No portrait of Savine dan Glokta lurking in the hallway?”

(feels a chill in his spine) Oh god, no, Orso.

No, just no. Please don’t. I’m serious. Don’t fuck your half-sister!

On a less horrified note, is that why he gave those petty complaints and denials to those women? Because he has his heart set on Savine? Which, I mean, all the power to you, Orso, but it’s Savine. Putting aside the incest angle that you don’t know about, it’s Savine.

Even at this distance, he felt the chill of the queen’s displeasure. “For pity’s sake, her mother is a low-born boor, and a drunk to boot.”

“But an absolute scream at parties, and whatever you say for Lady Ardee, Arch Lector Glokta has the people’s respect. Or at any rate their abject terror.”

“A crippled worm,” spat the queen. “A torturer!”

“But our torturer, eh, Mother? Our torturer. And I understand his daughter has made herself quite spectacularly rich.”

I 100% do not blame Terez for being so visceral against Glokta. What he did to her the first trilogy is some abjectly ghastly shit. I will never hold that against her. Though, you really have to be a classist shit to Ardee, Terez?

That being said, whatever happened to Shalere? She’s not attending to Terez and she was particularly joined at the hip with Terez back in Last Argument of Kings, so... was she killed? I noticed Orso didn’t mention a brother, or did Glokta take mercy on Terez and Shalere after the former sired Orso, Cathil, and Carlot, and Terez told her lover to get out of dodge to protect her? That’s... just even more sad and lonely for Terez.

Also, huh, Ardee goes out to parties and living the high life? Good for her, I guess she doesn’t just stay home all the time, like Savine’s chapter implies. At least that’s some levity from the misery of loneliness.

“Money made through trade, and dealings, and investments.” The queen spat the words as though they were criminal enterprises. For all Orso knew, Savine’s dealings were criminal enterprises. He wouldn’t at all have put it past her.

“Oh, come now, money shamefully made from trade fills the same holes in the treasury as the kind nobly wrung from the misery of the peasantry.”

“She is too old! You are too old, and she is even older than you are.”

“But she has impeccable manners and is still quite the celebrated beauty.” He waved a loose hand towards the doorway. “She’d make a prettier portrait than any of those piglets, and the painter wouldn’t even have to lie. Queen Savine sounds rather well.” He gave a chuckle. “It even rhymes.”

I’ve said plenty about Orso’s inactivity and his shittiness for that, but he’s certainly got a brain to him, and enough understanding and no class illusions to realize that money’s money, no matter where it comes from. 

Honestly, it’s a little refreshing, how much Orso isn’t the usual privileged royal twat, characterization-wise.

Also, huh! Good to know how to pronounce Savine’s name! Now, I sort of wish I knew how to pronounce your name, Orso, ya fop.

“Promise me you will have nothing to do with that ambitious worm of a woman.”

“With Savine dan Glokta?” Orso sat back with a bemused expression. “Her mother’s a commoner, her father’s a torturer and she made her money from business.” He shook the last drops from the decanter into his glass. “Quite apart from which, really, she’s far too bloody old.”

“Oh,” he gasped. “Oh! Oh fuck!”

He arched his back, clutched desperately at the edge of the desk, kicked a pot of pens onto the floor, smacked his head against the wall and sent a little shower of plaster across his shoulders. He tried desperately to squirm away, but she had him by the balls. Quite literally.

He crushed his face up, nearly swallowed his tongue, coughed and hissed one more desperate, “Fuck!” through gritted teeth, then sagged back with a whimper, kicked and sagged again, legs shuddering weakly with aching after-spasms.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

(bursts into laughter) HAHAHAHAHAHAHA HOLY SHIT! (continues howling in laughter) Oh my god, Orso!!! (descends into a strangled sort of laughter now) Wow, Orso, just wow... hahahahaha (putters in tiny, almost choked snickers) ... hahahaha...

... Shit, this is kind of bad, isn’t it. Guys, what the fuck.

Orso watched his seed float around in the wine. “That… is somewhat disgusting.”

“Please.” Savine rinsed her mouth out from the other glass. “You only have to look at it.”

“Such cavalier disrespect. One day, madam, I shall be your king!”

“And your queen will no doubt spit your come into a golden box to be shared out on holidays for the public good. My congratulations to you both, Your Highness.”

He gave vent to a silly giggle. “Why does someone as altogether perfect as you waste her energy on a dolt like me?”

Snrrrk, gods, this chapter really be a ton of fun, given how much Orso’s matching up against people his fencing level. Brings out the best in everyone, dialogue-wise.

And it doesn’t pass my notice that when Orso says the usual entitled and typical “I shall be your king” remark, just like Ladisla towards Cathil in Before They Are Hanged, Orso is clearly saying it in jest and lets the retorting quip pass with a giggle. There’s so much of Orso that feels like an intentional course-correction of that particular fantasy archetype, a forceful zag where Ladisla zigged.

She pushed out her lips discerningly, as though considering the mystery, and for a strange, stupid moment he almost asked her. The words tickled at his lips. There was no one better suited to him. She had all the qualities he wished he had. So sharp. So disciplined. So decisive. Besides, it would have been worth it just for the look on his mother’s face. He almost asked her.

But circumstances always conspired to stop him doing the right thing.

“I can only think of one reason,” she said, hitching her skirts up and wriggling onto the desk beside him.

Oh, Orso. You’re a bit of a coward and even more of a fool than I thought if you don’t see the reality that she’s only after you for your impending kingship. The writing’s on the wall here, and you’re refusing to see it because you think Savine’s just the best (I suppose not incorrect in most aspect aside from morality).

“Get to it, then.”

“You really are in no mood for romance today, are you?”

She slid her fingers into his hair, then twisted his head somewhat painfully down between her legs. “My time is valuable.”

“The naked gall.” Orso gave a sigh as he hooked her leg over his shoulder, sliding his hand down the bare skin, hearing her gasp, feeling her shudder. He kissed gently at her shin, at her knee, at her thigh. “Is there no end to the demands of one’s subjects?”

This ending and this entire sex scene really does illuminate a lot of things, like the actual Savine/Orso dynamic (sub male and dom woman), how gentle and passive-compared-to-Savine Orso is as a lover, how clever he can be with words during intimacy, and... how much Orso feels so worthless, he feels he need the best to complete him, no matter how much she might be using him for her own gains. I shake my head at this, not even taking into account the incest quality, but... there’s a sadder register to it.

As a chapter, this does set up quite a few details, like the ills of the new age, and the Breakers that’ll resist this to the point of death, the Savine/Orso affair, and Orso’s (really) apathetic and self-depreciating character. Orso’s asides manage to undercut quite a bit of the darkness of the chapter’s first half, where Orso’s inaction is condemned by even himself, and the second half is where it crackles with dialogue and fencing between more equal opponents, unlike Savine’s punching down against random putzes. It’s not quite as self-contained as Where the Fight’s Hottest, but it’s more fun than all the prior chapters so far.

As a character... honestly, Orso fascinates me in a way only Rikke also does for me. I won’t exactly say he’s more interesting than Savine at this point, but he makes for an interesting contrast to Leo as a man of inaction. Self-aware, yet useless, Orso’s kind of a huge mess and a privileged shit in a way that I should hate, and, yeah, I don’t particularly think it says great things that he still let the executions happen (at the very least, he could’ve tried to save the girl!), but... he’s a shit in a way that’s so different from most other privileged royal twats. A man who knows himself for the useless prince and just internalizes it as deep as the pearl dust he snorts. In some ways, the self-awareness damns him, because he knows he’s useless and doesn’t try for better or not being useless, but, at the same time, he’s not unintelligent, has no illusions about himself, and is certainly a sort of fun character, if blatantly aware of how trashy he is. 

I kind of wonder where Abercrombie’s going to take Orso, because he’s really fascinating as a character construct, a fantasy archetype given this modernized wry self-awareness, the privileged royal twat who has no illusions of his station and what a shit he is.

PART I

Chapter One: Blessings and Curses Chapter Two: Where the Fight’s Hottest Chapter Three: Guilt Is a Luxury Chapter Four: Keeping Score Chapter Five:  A Little Public Hanging Chapter Six: The Breakers Chapter Seven: The Answer to Your Tears Chapter Eight: Young Heroes Chapter Nine: The Moment

[lapinbunwrites]

Their First Date

Ratings: Not Rated

Warnings: None

Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia

Relationships: Shouto Todoroki/Ochako Uraraka

Ao3 Link

Amidst the noise, Shoto could hear his friends talking about some frivolous things like going on dates with people, the people that they were interested in, or something of the like. He sighed, sometimes he wished that he had been in a relationship. It would make him feel a little less different from his friends. On the other hand, it was nice not having to worry about that kind of thing and putting his attention into something more important to him. It wasn’t like there was anyone that he thought he would feel that way towards.

He walked back to his room, slowly tunning out the chatter coming from the common room. It became a skill he learned when his older brother and his father were fighting. Just breathe in, breathe out, close your eyes, losing your mind into a world that you have never been into. Escaping from all the noise.

Shoto was able to tune out most of the noise. He could hear lightfoot stomps from someone making their way to his room. He heard her stop, taking in deep breathes. It sounded as if she was nervous. After gaining her confidence, he heard a light knock on his door, followed by her soft voice.

“Shoto,” Ochako said, “is everything alright?”

He didn’t let any words part his lips.

“You left the common area earlier than usual and I was worried.”

It took a bit of time for him to snap back to reality, coming back to the world that he was meant to be in. He shifted around, slowly making his way towards his door. He opened it slightly to only show part of his face.

Ochako clearly could tell he was extremely tired. Though, she couldn’t tell from what. It was a pretty easygoing day. All they did was go to class and did some desk work, then everyone decided to just sit in the common room and chat amongst themselves. But that was pretty much it.

“Are you feeling alright?” She asked.

Shoto yawned. “I’m fine. I’m just tired.”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” “It’s fine.”

Shoto closed the door and made his way back to his bed. He pulled the cover over his body. He tuned out the noise in the background, returning to a whole different world.

Ochako sighed. She didn’t know what exactly she was going to do. She could tell he was under a lot of stress lately, she just wanted to see him smile. Ochako had an idea, but it was a long shot.

The next morning, Ochako saw Shoto sitting on the couch all by himself, reading a book. He seemed a little less tense. This was her chance, her way to ask him to hang out with him. She walked over to him with a big smile on her face.

“Hello, Shoto!” She said.

He looked up to see who it was. “Hello. What is it you need?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to hang out next week?”

“I’m not all that interested.”

“Oh? You seem like you have been stressed lately and maybe hanging out with a friend can help relieve some of it.”

Shoto couldn’t really argue with her on that. “Where is it you want to take me?”

“Plenty of places! We can go to the beach, an arcade, a cafe! Anywhere you would like to go!”

Not all of the places she listed didn’t sound unpleasant. He would rather stay in his dorm than go out, but since she was offering, he didn’t want to be rude and refuse her nice gesture.

“That sounds...nice.”

“Hehe! Be up early!”

That wasn’t really all that difficult for him to do. He does it on a daily basis.

He could hear her giggle as she walked away. He faintly smiled as he went back to reading his book. Maybe next Sunday won’t be as bad as he imagines it.  

The next few days have been grueling. While sitting in the classroom learning about regular subjects weren’t bad, it was the training that Aizawa put them through destroyed them. All he wanted to do was lie down and do nothing for the next five months; his body hurt so much. His muscles were begging for mercy.

Shoto entered the empty cafeteria, grabbing some food for dinner. He was alone, for a time, before Ochako and their other classmates came into the cafeteria. She smiled at him followed by a wave, before getting some food to eat. She slowly made her way to him, sitting across from him.

Silence. Silence between the two of them. They were only listening to their friends talking. Bakugo was yelling at Izuku for one reason or another, Kirishima was trying to calm him down, Momo and Jirou were talking to each other about music, and the others, they tuned out the others.

She looked at his plate. He barely ate anything. Though, it might have been hard for him to eat with all the noise when you were expecting to be by yourself. She was done with her food in a few minutes but only stayed behind to make sure that Shoto ate. One by one their classmates left and she noticed he ate more and more of his food. Ochako was happy to see that he ate all of his food.

“Um, Shoto,” she said.

“What?” He asked.

“Would you like me to walk with you back to your dorm?”

“Why?”

“I dunno. Maybe you would like some company. We don’t have to talk or anything.”

“Sure.”

Ochako smiled. The two walked in silence back to his dorm. Shoto found it rather nice. He didn’t feel alone for once. For once, she could feel his cold, icy layer starting to melt. It felt nice to feel his warm side.

She smiled as he walked back into his room. It was her way of saying good-bye without saying anything. He smiled back and closing his door. He set his alarm clock before he curled up into bed. Part of him wanted tomorrow to pass, he didn’t feel like living it. The other part of him was looking forward for tomorrow. After this week, he could really use a break.

Shoto sighed as he shut off his alarm clock. Ochako listed out some things that they would do today, but he didn’t know what was going to happen. Honestly, he never thought in a million years, ask him out. Let alone Ochako. He thought she would be more interested in someone else instead of him. It didn’t take him long to get ready. Shoto opened his door, seeing that Ochaco was about to knock on it.

“Ah! Sorry for coming so early!” She apologized.

“It’s fine, really,” Shoto said. “I was about to head over to your dorm.”

“Hehe,” she giggled, “I’m assuming you’re ready.”

“Yeah.”

The two walked in silence as they left the school. Shoto glanced over to Ochako who was in a really cheerful mood. She seemed excited. Him on the other hand, he was a bit nervous. He never hung out with just one friend before. Let alone went on a date with someone.

He looked at all the places the passed by. He recognized a few of them. He recognized the training place his father took him to occasionally, the cafe that Fuyumi and Natsuo take him to, and a clothing shop that a few friends took him to. Nothing else here he knew.

“Tada!” Ochako yelled happily.

“Where are we?” Shoto asked.

“An arcade!”

“Oh.”

“It’s going to be fun!”

Shoto didn’t say anything. He followed her into the building. He looked around. The lights were dim, only being lit up by the game screens. It was loud from the games and the people trying to scream over the games. This was new to him and it didn’t exactly feel too entirely good about this. He hopes that Ochako knew what she was doing.

While he was looking around, she disappeared for a moment to do something. She put some money into a machine. It spit out some coins for them to use. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to play a few games.

“Here you go!”

“Ten coins? Between the two of us?”

“Yeah…”

“Where is the coin machine?”

She pointed in the direction from where she came. He walked over to the machine and got some more coins. Ochako was surprised that he came back with a lot of coins.

“One-hundred coins!?! That...That’s a lot of money…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But I’m supposed to be treating you!”

“I really don’t mind.”

“A-Are you sure?” She asked, becoming flustered.

“Yeah.” As much as he wanted to tell her that it was his father’s money and that he was spending it out of spite. “What game should play first?”

“U-Uh...Pa-Pac-man!”

Shoto became a bit concerned when Ochako started to waddle towards the game. He didn’t understand how one-hundred coins was a big problem. How was a thousand yen a big problem? It surely wasn’t a big problem to him. He watched her as she played the game. She wasn’t doing a really good job at it. Was it because she was still flustered.

“Awe, man,” she said when it only gave her a few tickets.

“Can I try?”

“S-Sure.”

She scooted over and watched him play. He was really good at it. He was getting all the dots and defeating all of the ghosts. And when he lost, they got twenty tickets. It put a smile on Ochako’s face.

“Amazing!”

Shoto faintly smiled as a light blush came across his face. She saw his face and giggled a little. He was finally showing a genuine smile. She took his hand and walked around the arcade. He looked around and saw the prize table. There was a giant stuffed bunny that he wanted. She looked over at him and saw the bunny. She knew she had to get it for him.

Shoto watched as she played a few games, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and so forth. Out of all the games that she played, her playing DDR was his favorite. She was really good at it.

“Why don’t you play some games?”

“Um.”

“Oh, come on! It’s fun!”

She handed him some coins. He walked around, trying to find a good game to play. He found one game, Galaga. Shoto inserted a coin and started to play. Ochako watched him play. She was in awe. He was really good at this game. He was easily dodging the enemies and destroying them.

There were a lot of people started to crowd around the two. Everyone was mesmerized to see how well he was doing. Shoto peered over his shoulder to look at Ochako. He could hear her words of encouragement. ‘Ahh! Watch out!’ He heard her say. ‘You can do it!’ She also said. He smiled and kept on going. He got to the last boss and instantly died.

Everyone around him was distraught. No one was more upset than he was. All that work and he died right off the bat. As everyone walked away, Ochako grabbed the tickets that he earned. He earned sixty tickets from how far he got.

“That was amazing!”

“I lost.”

“So! You got a new high score and look at how many tickets we got! So many!”

“I…”

“It’s okay to lose sometimes, or a bunch of times! At least you did your best.”

Her words were kind of reassuring. Only if he could apply that logic to this. He isn’t the best when it comes to dealing with losing at something.  Ochako counted up all the tickets that they had won. It was enough to get the giant stuffed bunny that Shoto wanted.

“Stay right here!”

“Wait, where are you going?” He asked as she rushed off.

He was so confused and he stayed that way until she came back.

“Tada!” She said, holding out the stuffed bunny.

“Oh.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah.” He smiled.

“Have it!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah! You were eyeing it early and I really wanted to give it to you.”

“You really didn’t have to.”

“I know, but you looked like you really wanted it!”

“Oh. Thank you!” He took it from her and held it close to him.

“We still have a few coins left. What should we do with them?” “There are those car racing games. I want to play those ones.”

“Those don’t give out tickets or anything.”

“That’s fine. I have what I wanted.”

Ochako smiled and followed him to the game. They each took a coin. They picked out their cars and if they wanted to use a stick or a manual shift. It wasn’t long before they started to race each other. She could tell that Shoto was having fun and that he was really into the game. He was a ways away from everyone her and the bots that were in the game. He got fifth place.

He looked over at her and saw where she was. She was in last place. He let out a low laugh when she pouted when she crashed and ended her game. She congratulated him and he did the same, even though she pouted about it. He repeated to her what she said about losing earlier. She smiled and laughed it off.

“Hehe, that was fun.” She said as they walked out of the building.

“Yeah.”

“But more importantly, I’m hungry! What about you Shoto?”

“A little, why?”

“There is a cafe around here that I’ve been dying to try. I heard it’s really good and really cheap!”

“Do you want to go to it?” “Do you?”

“Sure.”

Ochako led the way to the cafe. It was the same one Natsuo and Fuyumi would take him to. It was always relaxing to be here. Not a lot of chatter, no one talking loudly. There was some music faintly playing in the background. It was soothing.

“This place has some good mochi, Ochako,” Shoto said.

“You know I like mochi?” She asked.

“Yeah. You usually buy it when we go out, so I thought I would let you know.”

“Oh thank you.”

The waitress took their order. As usual, Ochako got some strawberry mochi and she ordered honeydew boba tea. Shoto ordered castella and green tea.

“Ooo, you’re cake looks soo good!”

“Do you want to try some?”

“Please!”

He broke off a piece and feed it to her.

“Mmm. It’s spongy and tasty!”

Shoto smiled.

“Would you like to try some of my boba tea?”

“Sure.”

He took a sip. He gave her a slightly disgusted face.

“Don’t like it,” she giggled.

“That isn’t all that good. The little tapioca pearls were a nice surprise.”

“Hehe.”

She offered him some of her mochi. He politely turned her offer down. After the two finished their food, and after the check was paid, the two walked along the beach. It was the perfect thing to do after playing some games and having some lunch.

It was a really nice day out. It was really cool and the light breeze only complimented it. Shoto walked by the ocean, feeling the cold waters hitting his ankles. It felt nice to feel the water against his ankles. Ochako stayed on his left side, being shielded from the water. She didn’t like anything that was cold hit her body. Shoto took her hand and started to twirl her around.

“Eeee!” She screamed. “Cold, cold, cold.” She rushed back to his left side.

“Don’t like the cold?”

“No.”

He smirked. He splashed some water at her and laughed a little.

“Hey!” She said.

She splashed him back and the two got into a water fight until Ochako won. She walked up to him, wrapping her arms around him.

“Ah...So warm.” She could feel him using his quirk to dry himself off. “So very warm.”

He held her close until she was warmed up. He took her hand again and started to twirl her around again. She giggled and started to dance with him. They danced up and down the beach, leaving behind all their footprints in the sand.

Shoto tripped over their feet, falling into the cold water and bringing Ochako down with him. The two started to laugh. Ochako sat up, placing her hand on his chest, and looked at him. She smiled.

“Stay here,” she said.

“Uh...Okay.”

She rushed back to her shoes and grabbed her phone. She rushed back over to Shoto. She took a picture of him. Something about him being in the water seemed so soothing. He sat up and looked out to the ocean. She took another picture. He was a natural at this.

“Would you like to make some sandcastles?”

“Sand...What?”

“Sandcastles!”

She took his hand and walked him back to their stuff. She sat in the sand and started to make a sandcastle. It wasn’t a really big one, or anything fancy, but it was crafted into a castle.

“See?!”

Shoto nodded and started to make one. He had a really hard time making one. Ochako smiled and helped him make one. It wasn’t all that great, but it was presentable. He gave her a big smile. She felt elated when she saw it. She has never seen him smile so big before. She felt very warm inside.

Shoto took out his phone and took a picture of their castles and a selfie of them. He really wanted to remember this day. Thanks to Ochako, his stress levels went down significantly. The walked back to UA.

“Thanks for today Ochako,” Shoto smiled.

“Oh! You’re welcome!” She said. “It was really nice to see you smile!”

He faintly blushed. “I...uh…”

“You have a really nice smile.”

His face became a deeper red. “T-Thank you. Today was really fun and relaxing.”

“I’m glad!”

“We should really do it again sometime.”

“Yes, of course! We can go anywhere you like!”

Shoto smiled. He walked her to her room before going to his. He grabbed his pajamas and took a shower before going to bed. He really wished he could do this again. It was really relaxing. But for now, they had to focus on school.

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My piece for @bnhararepairbang I worked on with @cosmic-nopedog! You can find his piece here! I wrote the fic and he drew the pictures! His drawing turned out great and I really enjoyed working with him! I'm extremely sorry I couldn't get to the word limit. I honestly thought I could, but I couldn't. On another note, there were only a couple of ideas that I could think of when writings these two, and that was Ochako showing Shouto a cheap way to have some fun and relax. So, I hope this is fluffy and cute!

[silence-the-barking-monk]

Chögyam Trungpa ~ LETTING GO

When you live your life in accordance with basic goodness, then you develop natural elegance. Your life can be spacious and relaxed, without having to be sloppy. You can actually let go of your depression and embarrassment about being a human being, and you can cheer up.

The result of practicing the discipline of warriorship is that you learn to stop ambition and frivolity, and out of that, you develop a good sense of balance. Balance comes, not from holding onto a situation, but from making friends with heaven and Earth. Earth is gravity, or practicality. Heaven is vision or the experience of open space in which you can uplift your posture, your head and shoulders. Balance comes from joining practicality with vision, or we could say, joining skill with spontaneity.

First, you must trust in yourself. Then you can also trust in the earth or gravity of a situation, and because of that, you can uplift yourself. At that point, your discipline becomes delightful rather than being an ordeal or a great demand. When you ride a horse, balance comes, not from freezing your legs to the saddle, but from learning to float with the movement of the horse as you ride. Each step is a dance, the rider’s dance as well as the dance of the horse.

When discipline begins to be natural, a part of you, it is very important to learn to let go. For the Warrior, letting go is connected with relaxing within discipline, in order to experience freedom. Freedom here does not mean being wild or sloppy; rather it is letting yourself go so that you fully experience your existence as a human being. Letting go is completely conquering the idea that discipline is a punishment for a mistake or a bad deed that you have committed, or might like to commit. You have to completely conquer the feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong with your human nature and that therefore you need to discipline to correct your behavior. As long as you feel that discipline comes from outside, there is still a lingering feeling that something is lacking in you. So letting go is connected with letting go of any vestiges of doubt or hesitation or embarrassment about being you as you are. You have to relax with yourself in order to fully realize that discipline is simply the expression of your basic goodness. You have to appreciate yourself, respect yourself, and let go of your doubt and embarrassment so that you can proclaim your goodness and basic sanity for the benefit of others.

In order to let go, first you have to train yourself in the discipline of renunciation as well as the aspects of discipline that were discussed in the last chapter. This is necessary so that you will not confuse letting go with aggression or arrogance. Without proper training, letting go can be confused with pushing yourself to the breaking point in order to prove to yourself that you are a brave and fearless person. This is too aggressive. Letting go also has nothing to do with enjoying yourself at other people’s expense by promoting your own ego and “layering your trips” on others. Arrogance of that kind is not really based on letting go, in any case. It is based on a fundamental insecurity about yourself, which makes you insensitive rather than soft and gentle.

For example, a professional driver in an auto race can drive at two hundred miles an hour on the race track because of his training. He knows the limits of the engine and the steering and the tires; he knows the weight of the car, the road conditions, and the weather conditions. So he can drive fast without it becoming suicidal. Instead, it becomes a dance. But if you play with the letting go before you have established a proper connection with discipline, then it is quite dangerous. If you are learning to ski and you try to let go and relax at an early level of your athletic training, you might easily fracture a bone. So if you mimic letting go, you may run into trouble.

You might think that, based on this discussion, you will never have sufficient training to let go and relax in your discipline. You might feel that you will never be ready to be a daring person. But once you have made a basic connection to discipline, it is time to let go of those doubts. If you are waiting for your discipline to become immaculate, that time will never come, unless you let go. When you begin to enjoy the discipline of warriorship, when it begins to feel natural, even though it may still feel very imperfect, that is the time to let go.

Obviously, letting go is more than just relaxation. It is relaxation based on being in tune with the environment, the world. One of the important principles of letting go is living in the challenge. But this does not mean living with a constant crisis. For example, suppose your banker calls and says that your account is overdrawn, and the same day your landlord tells you that you are about to be evicted for failing to pay your rent. To respond to this crisis, you get on the telephone and call your friends to see if you can borrow enough money to avert the crisis. Living in the challenge is not based on responding to extraordinary demands that you have created for yourself by failing to relate to the details of your life. For the warrior, every moment is a challenge to be genuine, and each challenge is delightful. When you let go properly, you can relax and enjoy the challenge.

The setting-sun version of letting go is to take a vacation or to get drunk and become wild and sloppy and do outrageous things that, in your “right” mind, you would never contemplate. The Shambhala understanding is, obviously, quite different. For the warrior, letting go is not based on getting away from the constraints of ordinary life. It is quite the opposite. It is going further into your life, because you understand that your life, as it is, contains the means to unconditionally cheer you up and cure you of depression and doubt.

The setting-sun understanding of cheering up is talking yourself into feeling better, rather than actually cheering up. When you wake up in the morning and get out of bed, you go into the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror. Your hair is somewhat disheveled, you are half asleep, and there are bags under your eyes. In the setting-sun world, you say to yourself, with a big sigh, “Here we go again.” You feel that you have to crank yourself up to get through the day. To use another example, when the Iranian revolutionaries were guarding the hostages at the American Embassy, they probably woke up in the morning with a feeling of delight: “Great! We have hostages next door!” That is a setting-sun version of cheerfulness.

Cheering up is not based on artificial willpower or creating an enemy and conquering him in order to make yourself feel more alive. Human beings have basic goodness, not next door, but in them already. When you look at yourself in the mirror you can appreciate what you see, without worrying about whether what you see is what should be. You can pick up on the possibilities of basic goodness and cheer yourself up, if you just relax with yourself. Getting out of bed, walking into the bathroom, taking a shower, eating breakfast – you can appreciate whatever you do, without always worrying whether it fits your discipline or your plan for the day. You can have that much trust in yourself, and that will allow you to practice discipline much more thoroughly than if you constantly worry and try to check back to see how you are doing.

You can appreciate your life, even if it is an imperfect situation. Perhaps your apartment is run down and your furniture is old and inexpensive. You do not have to live in a palace. You can relax and let go wherever you are. Wherever you are, it is a palace. If you move into an apartment that was left in a mess, you can spend the time to clean it up, not because you feel bad or oppressed by dirt, but because you feel good. If you take the time to clean up and move in properly, you can transform a dumpy apartment into an accommodating home.

Human dignity is not based on monetary wealth. Affluent people may spend a great deal of money making their homes luxurious, but they may be creating artificial luxury. Dignity comes from using your inherent human resources, by doing this with your own bare hands – on the spot, properly and beautifully. You can do that: even in the worst of the worst situations, you can still make your life elegant.

Your body is an extension of basic goodness. It is the closest implement, or tool, that you have to express basic goodness, so appreciating your body is very important. The food you eat, the liquor you drink, the clothes you wear, and getting proper exercise are all important. You don’t have to jog or do push-ups every day, but it is important to take an attitude of caring about your body. Even if you have a physical handicap, you don’t have to feel that you are imprisoned by it. You can still respect your body and your life. Your dignity extends beyond your handicap. In the name of heaven and earth, you can afford to make love to yourself.

Shambhala vision is not purely a philosophy. It is actually training yourself to be a warrior. It is learning to treat yourself better, so that you can help to build an enlightened society. In that process, self-respect is very important and it is wonderful, absolutely excellent. You may not have money to buy expensive clothes, but you don’t have to feel that your economic problems are driving you into the depression of the setting-sun world. You can still express dignity and goodness. You may be wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but you can be a dignified person wearing a T-shirt and cut-off jeans. The problem arises when you don’t have respect for yourself and therefore for your clothes. If you go to bed in a depression and throw your clothes on the floor, that is a problem.

The basic point is that, when you live your life in accordance with basic goodness, then you develop natural elegance. Your life can be spacious and relaxed, without having to be sloppy. You can actually let go of your depression and embarrassment about being a human being, and you can cheer up. You don’t have to blame the world for your problems. You can relax and appreciate the world.

Then there is a further stage of letting go, which is telling the truth. When you have doubts about yourself or doubts about the trustworthiness of your world, then you may feel that you have to manipulate the truth in order to protect yourself. For example, when you have a job interview, you may not be entirely truthful with your potential employer. You may feel that you have to bend the truth to get the job. You think that you have to make yourself appear better than you are. From the Shambhala point of view, honesty is the best policy. But telling the truth does not mean that you have to bare your innermost secrets and expose everything that you are ashamed of. You have nothing to be ashamed of! That is the basis for telling the truth. You may not be the greatest scholar or mechanic or artist or lover in the world, but what you are is genuinely, basically good. If you actually feel that, then you can let go of hesitation and self-consciousness and tell the truth, without exaggeration or denigration.

Then you begin to understand the importance of communicating openly with others. If you tell the truth to others, then they can also be open with you – maybe not immediately, but you are giving them the opportunity to express themselves honestly as well. When you do not say what you feel, you generate confusion for yourself and confusion for others. Avoiding the truth defeats the purpose of speech as communication.

Telling the truth is also connected with gentleness. A Shambhala person speaks gently: he or she doesn’t bark. Gentle speech expresses your dignity, as does having Good head and shoulders. It would be very strange if someone had Good head and shoulders and began to bark. It would be very incongruous. Often when you talk to a person who doesn’t know English, you find yourself yelling – as if you had to shout to be understood. That is exactly what should *not* happen. If you want to communicate with others, you don’t have to shout and bang on the table in order to get them to listen. If you are telling the truth, then you can speak gently, and your words will have power. The final stage of letting go is being without deception. Deception here does not refer to deliberately misleading others. Rather, your self-deception, your own hesitation and self-doubt, may confuse other people or actually deceive them. You may ask someone to help you make a decision: “Should I ask this person to marry me?” “Should I complain to so-and-so who was rude to me?” “Should I take this job?” “Should I go on vacation?” You are deceiving others if your question is not a genuine request for help but simply reflects your lack of self-confidence. Being without deception is actually a further extension of telling the truth: it is based on being truthful with yourself. When you have a sense of trusting in your own existence, then what you communicate to other people is genuine and trustworthy.

Self-deception often arises because you are afraid of your own intelligence and afraid that you won’t be able to deal properly with your life. You are unable to acknowledge your own innate wisdom. Instead, you see wisdom as some monumental thing outside of yourself. That attitude has to be overcome. In order to be without deception, the only reference point you can rely on is the knowledge that basic goodness exists in you already. The certainty of that knowledge can be experienced in the practice of meditation. In meditation, you can experience a state of mind that is without second thoughts, free from fear and doubt. That unwavering state of mind is not swayed by the temporary ups and downs of thoughts and emotions. At first you may only have a glimpse. Through the practice of meditation, you glimpse a spark or dot of unconditional, basic goodness. When you experience that dot, you may not feel totally free or totally good, but you realize that wakefulness, fundamental goodness, is there already. You can let go of hesitation, and therefore, you *can* be without deception. There is an uplifted quality to your life, which exists effortlessly. The result of letting go is contacting that uplifting energy, which allows you to completely join together discipline and delight, so that discipline becomes both effortless and splendid.

Everyone has experienced a wind of energy or power in their lives. For example, athletes feel a surge of energy when they are engaged in their sport. Or a person may experience a torrent of love or passion for another human being to whom he or she is attracted. Sometimes, we feel energy as a cool breeze of delight rather than a strong wind. For example, when you are hot and perspiring, if you take a shower, you feel so delightfully cool and energized at the same time.

Normally, we think that this energy comes from a definite source or has a particular cause. We associate it with the situation in which we became so energized. Athletes may become addicted to their sport because of the “rush” they experience. Some people become addicted to falling in love over and over again because they feel so good and alive when they are in love. The result of letting go is that you discover a bank of self-existing energy that is always available to you – beyond any circumstance. It actually comes from nowhere, but is always there. It is the energy of basic goodness.

This self-existing energy is called windhorse in the Shambhala teachings. The wind principle is that the energy of basic goodness is strong and exuberant and brilliant. It can actually radiate tremendous power in your life. But at the same time, basic goodness can be ridden, which is the principle of the horse. By following the disciplines of warriorship, particularly the discipline of letting go, you can harness the wind of goodness. In some sense the horse is never tamed – basic goodness never becomes your personal possession. But you can invoke and provoke the uplifted energy of basic goodness in your life. You begin to see how you can create basic goodness for yourself and others on the spot, fully and ideally, not only on a philosophical level, but on a concrete, physical level. When you contact the energy of windhorse, you can naturally let go of worrying about your own state of mind and you can begin to think of others. You feel a longing to share your discovery of goodness with your brothers and sisters, your mother and father, friends of all kinds who would also benefit from the message of basic goodness. So discovering windhorse is, first of all, acknowledging the strength of basic goodness in yourself and then fearlessly projecting that state of mind to others.

Experiencing the upliftedness of the world is a joyous situation, but it also brings sadness. It is like falling in love. When you are in love, being with your lover is both delightful and painful. You feel both joy and sorrow. That is not a problem; in fact, it is wonderful. It is the ideal human emotion. The warrior who experiences windhorse feels the joy and sorrow of love in everything he does. He feels hot and cold, sweet and sour, simultaneously. Whether things go well or things go badly, whether there is success or failure, he feels sad and delighted at once.

In that way, the Warrior begins to understand the meaning of unconditional confidence. The Tibetan word for confidence is ziji. Zi means “shine” or “glitter,” and ji means “splendor,” or “dignity,” and sometimes also has a sense of “monolithic.” So ziji expresses shining out, rejoicing while remaining dignified.

Sometimes confidence means that, being in a choiceless state, you trust in yourself and use your savings, information, strength, good memory, and stuff upper lip, and you accelerate your aggression and tell yourself that you’re going to make it. That is the way of amateur warriors. In this case, confidence does not mean that you have confidence in something, but it is remaining in the state of confidence, free from competition or one-upmanship. This is an unconditional state in which you simply possess an unwavering state of mind that needs no reference point. There is no room for doubt; even the question of doubt does not occur. This kind of confidence contains gentleness, because in the state of confidence there is ever-present resourcefulness; and joy, because trusting the heart brings a greater sense of humor. This confidence can manifest as majesty, elegance, and richness in a person’s life.

~ Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior pg 74 ~ https://bit.ly/3sMSX02

[pocketseizure]

The Legend of the Princess, Chapter Eleven

A More Enlightened Age

In which Zelda travels through time to an era of magic, where she encounters a powerful wizard and bears witness to the fall of a terrible tower.

This chapter has an illustration (link) by the fabulous @lightsintheskye!

(Chapter Eleven on AO3) (Story Tag on Tumblr) (Cover Illustration) 

* * * * *

A short letter from Ruto was discreetly passed to Zelda later that evening.

We're having a bit of trouble with the big fish, Ruto wrote with her usual irreverence, but it's nothing we can't handle.

Zelda folded the letter neatly down the middle, disfiguring the paper and indicating that it should be burned. She spoke a few brief sentences of polite concern to the messenger, requesting that he compose a reply in her stead. Ruto deserved a lengthier response, but the Great Hall was not the place to dictate it.

It was as the Zora at Telma's Bar had said; something was amiss with Lord Jabun. Ruto had grown up serving as a handmaiden to the Zora's tutelary deity, and Zelda had no doubt that she would indeed be able to handle any trouble on her own. Nevertheless, she was concerned; a being like Jabun does not simply fall ill. Even with her limited knowledge of such matters, Zelda understood that only drastic environmental change could have affected the ancient demigod – that, or magic whose like had not been recorded for hundreds of years.

Zelda rose early the next morning. She was in no mood to linger in her chambers. Once again she had dreamed of dark clouds billowing out over Hyrule. There were brilliant flashes of lightning in her nightmare, and fires racing across the plains. Above a sea of roiling black ash rose the thick white line of a colossal tower. Zelda's dream felt as real as anything she had ever experienced, and the memory of the pale tower standing in stark contrast to the violent red of the sky remained clear in her mind when she woke.

Sleep did not return to her, and she finally allowed herself to leave her bed when the first fingers of dawn touched the horizon. She dressed quickly and piled her hair in a loose bun, too distracted to make an effort with braids or pins. She would ask one of her personal attendants to put it up properly before breakfast, but before then she wanted at least an hour to herself in the library. She had to write to Ruto, but she needed to learn more about Lord Jabun. What was it, exactly? Where did it come from? What purpose did it serve, and why would anyone wish to harm it?

Once she got the library, Zelda selected a few relevant books from the shelves, but she was unable to concentrate. More people were arriving at court every day, and she had been kept busy with greetings and introductions. She'd already met many of the people who traveled to attend her coronation, but this was the first time she had the opportunity to speak to them as an adult. As she made small talk with various nobles and dignitaries over the past week, she began to better understand her role at the courts called by her father. These events were about politics, certainly, but the real business of state was largely the domain of the king and his council. Zelda would soon be elevated to the same position of responsibility, but on the cusp of her ascension she was expected to gather information from the ritual exchange of pleasantries, and she was scheduled to make a report on the intelligence she had received to her father later this afternoon. She did not mind this work, whose challenges she rather enjoyed, but the constant demands on her attention had gradually grown exhausting. The nightly courts were rendered even more difficult by the need to balance amiable approachability and polite distance in her interactions with her potential suitors. Her conversations with these men might have been a bit easier if she were in a flirtatious mood, but no one had caught her eye.

As she stared through the library window into the courtyard garden, flipping the barrel of her pen between her fingers, Zelda found herself thinking of Ganondorf. He had never said anything to her on the subject, but she supposed it must be difficult for him to be the only man in a tribe of women. If only I had that problem, she thought, smiling to herself. There were a few women on the parliament that represented the concerns of Castle Town to the throne, but the members of her father's council were entirely male, as was the council of Sheikah elders.

Zelda mused that it might be interesting to ask Ganondorf for his opinion on the matter, but she hadn't managed to make concrete plans with him during their encounter yesterday afternoon. She resolved to have a short note delivered to him after she finished her letter to Ruto, but she couldn't manage to bring herself to start writing.

Even though it was one of her favorite places, the library felt stuffy and airless. During the past two weeks, Zelda had begun to feel a bit claustrophobic everywhere in the castle. There was nothing keeping her from clearing her schedule for a day to go riding, just as there was nothing keeping her from disguising herself as Impaz and venturing out into Castle Town for a night of frivolous amusement. In fact, she probably owed herself some time to unwind before her coronation, especially since she would be even more anchored to the castle once she became a queen. Before she allowed herself to relax, however, she had to get this strange business with Ganondorf sorted out, the sooner the better.

Zelda hadn't been able to figure out a secure hiding place for her mother's ocarina, so she continued to carry it in her satchel. Thinking of the song that Ganondorf hummed in the inner garden yesterday afternoon, she took out the ocarina and held it in a beam of sunlight as she tapped her fingers against the edges of the holes in its cerulean body.

Wouldn't it be nice to get some wind in here? Someone should really dust this place every once in a while, she thought.

Zelda's mother hadn't enjoyed reading, nor had she any use for books, so the library had gone almost entirely unused during her reign. Her father read, probably more than anyone else she knew, but the library in his chambers was private, and Zelda learned at a young age that not even she was allowed to spend time there. Members of the nobility and the wealthy social climbers who associated with them had once hired specialists to build their libraries for them, but that particular display of wealth had gone out of fashion now that many books were printed by machine and thus available to the masses.

This library belongs to another time, Zelda reflected. Of course, the same could be said of the castle itself. It had its use as a gathering space, as the nightly courts demonstrated, but the center of power was slowly shifting to Castle Town, where salons and social gatherings were held in newly constructed and richly appointed private homes. If things continued in this manner, Zelda might be the last monarch to hold court in the castle itself. As it was, her father was engaging in something of a gamble by limiting the activities relating to her coronation to the castle instead of allowing her to attend the parties held in the growing city outside its walls.

How ridiculous Ganondorf is for thinking Hyrule is a threat. He believes the Gerudo should fear the royal family, when all the while we're wrapped up in our own battle to hold our position. The king is little more than the head of an army, but what use are soldiers when there are no enemies to fight? One day the wealth of the ambitious may buy us all, Zelda thought, raising the ocarina to her lips. She wondered if perhaps she herself might live to see the monarchy fall, but she resolved to put the thought from her mind as she blew into the mouthpiece.

After a few false starts, she found the opening notes of Ganondorf's song, and from there the melody seemed to flow from her fingertips. Zelda could feel a faint breeze lifting the fringes of her hair when she was hit by a powerful sense of vertigo. She realized that she was on the verge of having another vision, so she closed her eyes and allowed the tide of her dizziness to surge and then ebb away.

When Zelda opened her eyes, she could see a white tower in the distance rising above black clouds into a red sky like a scream. She had a brief flash of déjà vu and wondered where she could have possibly seen something like this, but then the memory of her nightmare struck her like a fist to her gut. Within the span of a heartbeat, her disorientation turned to dread.

Zelda could still feel the weight of the ocarina in her hand, and it comforted her to know that she could return to her own time if anything happened. Since there was nothing else to be done, she reasoned that she may as well take stock of her surroundings.

She took a deep breath as she tucked the ocarina into a loose fold of fabric at her waist. She marveled that she could see the tower over the top of the clouds and realized that she must be looking down at it from an extremely high vantage point. She turned and glanced upwards, gasping as she realized that she was standing on a balcony emerging from a massive building constructed of smooth pale stone. The walls were covered in vast windows framed within ornamental crystal latticework. The scale of the structure was almost incomprehensibly large, and it was beautiful.

The circular door leading out onto the balcony was surrounded by stylized carvings suggesting vines and flowers, and at its apex was a large Triforce. There were several such symbols adorning her own castle, but it had gone out of fashion decades ago. Her father occasionally wore old regalia bearing the Triforce, but for the most part it did not grace his clothing – or her own, for that matter. It was superstitious nonsense, her father had once remarked, adding that it was an unwelcome reminder of feudal traditions best forgotten.

Zelda looked down at herself and saw that she wore a shimmering white gown. She transferred her weight from one foot to the other, and the hue of her skirt shifted as if it had been spun of mother of pearl. She held her arms in front of her and was dazzled by her sleeves, which seemed to be embroidered with pure light in a motif of scaled triangles. The edges of her sleeves were linked to her middle fingers by silver rings as bright as small stars. The fabric of her dress was as smooth as silk, but the slight tingle on her skin suggested to Zelda that it was woven with magic.

Can this be really be Hyrule? Zelda wondered. Am I seeing the future?

Just beyond the tips of her fingers, Zelda could see a glowing geometric pattern of interlocking circles materialize in front of the doorway. At first she thought that it was an effect of the light shining through the latticework framing one of the large windows, but as it grew stronger she realized that what she was seeing was magic.

Within a few seconds, the pattern of light materialized into the figure of a man wearing armor as dark as the night sky. Like the fabric of her sleeves, its metal plates were adorned with softly glowing lines. While her clothing was beautiful in its perfectly aligned angles, however, his was a mess of swirls and spirals. The man's face was deeply lined, and he appeared to be somewhat past the prime of middle age, but she recognized him immediately.

"Ganondorf?"

To her surprise, the man nodded. "Good morning, Zelda. Are you well?" he responded pleasantly.

He spoke to her in an unfamiliar language, yet she was able to understand him. Even more astonishing was that he had answered to the name Ganondorf before addressing her with a word that needed no translation – her own name. She waited for the woman whose body she inhabited to reply to him, but no words came. It seemed that she was once again on her own.

"What could possibly be good about this?" she asked him bluntly, taking it for granted that she was speaking in the language of this era. If she was a princess, she may as well act like one. She gathered her courage and added, "It looks like the entire world is on fire."

"Is that not what happens during war?" The man shrugged, and she was momentarily mesmerized by the way his movement altered the patterns on his armor.

Zelda didn't know who she was, or where she was, or, most importantly, when she was. Just as in her earlier vision, she had arrived in the midst of some sort of terrible war, but the man who answered to the name Ganondorf seemed perfectly at ease in her presence. Was she his captive, or were they somehow partners in the destruction raging below them?

"I need you to tell me what's going on," she ordered, taking her chances that he was not hostile.

"My forces were able to make a significant advance over the night," he explained, walking forward to join her at the balcony railing. "The tower has almost fallen."

"I don't understand," she said, looking up at him as he came to stand at her side. "Why does the tower need to fall?"

"To be frank, I've asked myself that question many times before. Wouldn't it be enough to take this castle? Why not simply undo the spells supporting the tower and let it rot into the earth? Of course it's in my best interests to secure the complete surrender of your armies, and Nayru only knows why they decided to make their last stand there of all places. It's not exactly defensible, and I'd give their efforts a few days at most, even if the magic guarding the tower were at its full strength."

He sighed before continuing. "I suppose it's the principle of the thing. My days in Hyrule are numbered, but I'd prefer not to have to look at that monument to death while I'm still here."

Zelda was silent as she processed this information. Ganondorf had apparently attacked her kingdom and seized this building, which he had called her castle. She seemed to be his prisoner, yet he spoke to her as casually as if they had been discussing the weather. She glanced at him and saw that his posture was relaxed. The gaps in his armor provided numerous openings that could be taken advantage of by a deftly applied blade. Did he underestimate her, or was it rather that he trusted her? She wondered what this man's relationship to her might be, but she could see no way to make such an inquiry.

"What do you mean, your days in Hyrule are numbered?" she asked instead.

"I have no doubt that your hero will arrive soon. I'll give him a good show, but you know as well as I do that I can't win against the two of you together. That's not how this story goes, is it?"

"What story?"

"The only story: an evil wizard attacks the kingdom of the beautiful princess and holds her hostage in her own castle. Since your people do me the honor of calling me 'Ganon,' I may as well live up to the name. What sort of demon king would I be otherwise?"

He looked down at her and grinned. Despite herself, Zelda found that she enjoyed talking with this man, and he seemed to enjoy talking with her as well. It was rare that someone so urbane spoke to her with such honesty. He behaved as if answering her questions were something of a game, so she decided to keep pressing him.

"So you're an evil wizard?"

"Of course. What else would I be?"

"Doesn't that keep you busy, waging a war and practicing magic at the same time?"

"Why in Din's blessed name would I need to practice magic?"

"I thought magic was something that required constant work and effort."

"Constant work and effort? Hardly."

"Does magic really come so easily to you?"

"Magic only requires effort for the people in the border colonies whom your kingdom doesn't see fit to train properly."

"So you were trained to perform magic?" Zelda asked. She felt guilty about not pursuing the matter of the border colonies he mentioned, but she found that she was genuinely curious about how one went about learning magic.

"No. I was not trained," he answered coldly, his voice losing its patina of joviality. "At least, not in the way you were. But my people have their own traditions, and I have certain gifts of my own."

Ganondorf raised his hand as leisurely as if he were greeting an old acquaintance, and suddenly the air was filled with an electric charge so strong that Zelda could taste it on her tongue. She prepared to defend herself, but she saw that Ganondorf was regarding the tower with an intense ferocity, his lips pulled back to expose his teeth. She followed his gaze just in time to witness a thick arc of lightning strike the tower in the distance. The flash in the sky was followed by a rolling boom of thunder, and the dark clouds covering the land began to twist and swirl.

Zelda could feel the flow of the power emanating from Ganondorf, and it was intoxicating. She understood that the armor he wore was merely for show, and that no assassin's blade could ever harm him. With his talent and ability, he could have anything he wanted; he could be a god among mortals. What need did he have to fight her?

When she was certain that she could speak calmly, she asked, "Why do you want to destroy the tower?"

Ganondorf continued to watch the dark clouds swirl in a slow vortex as he answered her. "Hyrule is a land blessed above all others," he said. "It is filled with magic that enhances its rich land and gentle climate. And yet you direct this energy into unnatural channels; you insist on binding it to the elite within your unholy temples. Anyone who resists you is wiped off the face of the earth. Since your people settled here, countless races have been destroyed so completely that not even their names remain. That hideous obelisk is a warning to anyone who dreams of a world that is not utterly dominated by Hylians."

He clenched his fists against the balustrade. Zelda glanced down at his hands, whose heavy gauntlets bore a curious crest that shone with a furious crimson light.

"And that is why the Tower of Hylia must be destroyed," Ganondorf continued in a softer voice. "The beliefs that built it must be destroyed. It does not matter if we were born in the castle or born in the colonies; we are all the children of the goddesses. I must fight, and soon I must die, so that people will understand this. So that you will understand this. I can bring down that tower, but it is you who must dismantle this castle."

Ganondorf looked at her with a fierce yearning in his eyes. Zelda recognized the expression on his face; it was same look the enemy general of her previous vision had directed at her as he gazed up at her from the carnage he had created. This man was capable of terrible things, but he was not her enemy.

"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head as she turned away from him. "I don't understand. Please give me more time."

With as much dignity as she could muster, she walked across the balcony and into the castle. Once she was inside, she barely noticed the wonders surrounding her as she fumbled for the ocarina, hoping against hope that it would return her to an age where she did not doubt herself and everything once again made sense.

( Chapter Twelve )

[casualarsonist]

Max Max (2015 video game) review

God bless George Miller - the patron saint of ballsy old men. I don’t think anyone expected the best action movie of the decade to be directed by a 70-year-old man returning to a franchise that hadn’t been touched since 1985, but that’s exactly what happened when Miller revisited the Mad Max universe with Fury Road in 2015. Bigger and bolder than any film in the series before it, to some it became THE Mad Max film - where Mad Max 2 was arguably the only really good one (quieten down - Mad Max was a proof of concept and Beyond Thunderdome was a clusterfuck), Fury Road became the new benchmark for quality. Oversaturated blazing orange desert and bright teal skies marked the new vision of the apocalypse, shying away from the genre-typical washed-out visuals in favour of bold colours (he would later go on to release his preferred version of the film in super-apocalyptic black-and-white, but that’s another story). The sandy desert scrubland of MM1, 2, and 3 became a dry ocean floor, marking the remnants of the seabed where bountiful water once covered the earth before the cataclysm that ended civilisation as we know it. The traditional masked freaks of the raiding parties became the bald, white-painted war boys; insane and out for blood. Avalanche likely couldn’t have been happier that they decided to take influence from the visual design of the newest film, nor would they be upset that it became the big success that it did, and neither could I, for that matter because, for what it is, Mad Max (the game) is a wonderful addition to a franchise that I hold dear to my heart. 

For those new to the series, Mad Max is a series of films revolving around the episodic adventures of Max Rockatansky (stifle your laughter, please) – a former police officer who lost his wife and young daughter to a gang of murderous motorbike raiders not long after an as-yet-unidentified event depleted the earth of most of its natural water. Civilisation has gone to shit and its every man for himself on this new desert planet as Max, mad with grief and dead inside from the horrors he has seen and endured, wanders aimlessly in search of some intangible release. His only remaining instinct is to survive, although to what end, he does not seem to know. There is a flicker of humanity still left in him that we see manifested in his various exploits helping other wastelanders in their time of need, but in the end he is always alone, having lost everything he held dear to him. The key to understanding the series is that the films are never about Max – he is simply the vessel through which we see the world. Instead they are about the greater story of the people he helps, and he is simply the axis upon which their fates tend to hinge. Max Max (the game) necessarily gives the player a more hands-on role, placing us in the boots of Max himself and ostensibly on a quest to reach the fabled ‘Plains of Silence’. He seems to believe that he will find peace here, although whether the location even exists is uncertain, and it’s suggested early on that he won’t find whatever it is he’s looking for. We’re dropped in media res and Max is being attacked by the war boys of Scabrous Scrotus – warlord of Gas Town, whose black smoke and burning chimneys can be seen ever-present on the horizon. Max is defeated and left for dead, his iconic car stolen and cut up for scrap. He comes upon a hunchbacked mechanic ‘Chumbucket’, who worship cars as gods and sees in Max a literal angel come to save the world. Max is then dragged into a series of events that see him working with Chumbucket and the various local settlement leaders to reconstruct his vehicle and make his way to Gas Town to dethrone Scrotus. It’s in keeping with the theme of the films that Max becomes involved in the story through chance and fate, and then stays until its conclusion for his own personal reasons, and one could perhaps spend a while musing on the deeper existential connection behind Max’s choice of actions and the player’s dutiful response to the commands we’re given; why do we venture out to destroy this particular enemy stronghold, because we’re told to, because it will help, or because we enjoy the act of fighting and destroying? Maybe all of the above. It’s not a tale of redemption as such, as Max never tempers his savagery in the face of opposition, but in his actions we see the way he does his best to make the terrible world he lives in a little better, and lightens the load on those who can’t defend themselves against the ruthless.

The narrative is flimsy, however deep the thematic suggestions might seem to go, and loses a lot of the urgency due to the fact that it’s an open-world game and filled with a solid amount of busy work, but its heart is in the right place. Mad Max (the game) seemed to infuriate a few critics, who are understandably likely to be appalled by a lack of innovation, and MM isn’t going to reinvent the wheel when it comes to open-world games, but I do find it falls on the better side of the trough that the industry was making its way out of at the time (leaving a clutter of Ubisoft collect-a-thons laying at the bottom to decompose).

Functionally, it plays like a Frankenstein’s monster of late-2000s open-world games featuring a simplistic version of Arkham’s fight mechanics, open-world driving, vehicular combat, upgrades, and (sigh) collecting, so there’s not a lot here gameplay-wise that’s going to stun you. It all works though, the only gripe I have with the gameplay is the brainless fighting. Hit Y when it tells you, and hit X at every other point and you’ll make your way through most battles easily enough. There’s a distinct lack of finesse and variation in the hand-to-hand combat – you can pick up weapons but these will break after a few strikes and you can use your shotgun but ammo is scarce – and when it’s all over you’re back to pummelling X again. This is exemplary of the game’s biggest failing and one could quite reasonably critique MM by ranking the various activities and features by how well the mitigate their repetitiveness.

Which is the primary point of contention for most people – the world tries its hardest to invest you, while the gameplay works to take you out of it. It’s a balancing act that so many open world games play, and one that MM just falls on the winning side of, in my opinion. You can run and punch and roll and drive, but you can’t jump, which is insane for an open world game, especially as some of the locations require you to traverse open gaps or inclines. Every time you collect water or eat food or loot there’s a few seconds of a cutscene or an action that you have to watch. It’s one of those things that was included for immersion’s sake, but the frustration adds up steeply over time. The icon-littered map and the reliance on a minimap for navigation serves as a constant reminder that you’re the player, but these negatives are countered by some solid world building that a love for Fury Road and a nostalgia for the Mad Max series will foster. For sure there are plenty of locations, hundreds even, to investigate for scraps of…well…scrap…but there is a thrill to be had venturing into each new cavern, hut, clifftop hideout, or scrapped ship’s hull, and encountering the delinquent denizens within. Most of the icons on your map are going to be these lootable locations, and you’re looting scrap which contributes to your upgrades. These upgrades make an appreciable mark on your quality of life in-game, so the compulsion to attend to these locations is quite strong, at least for the first little while. There will be a point later on in the game where you don’t have to worry about the small amount of scrap from these places, but for those that don’t mind taking the time, there are plenty of little things to be seen and found in each of these little areas. They’re not all mind-blowing treasure troves of detail and mystery, but there is enough variation and attention to detail to make it worth doing.

The upgrades themselves don’t feel too frivolous; almost all of Max’s personal upgrades come with a visual change and you can see his evolution with each additional unlock. Your car can be upgraded as well, and while you may think at first glance that you’re simply working towards having the biggest and best of everything, they’ve balanced the upgrades with positive and negative effects – bigger rams and stronger armour will weigh more and reduce your handling, top speed, and acceleration – and these changes will have real repercussions in-game, so if you simply want a bullish battering ram you can make one; if you want a light and manoeuvrable racer, so be it; if you want a balance, you can customise as you see fit.

The wasteland is dangerous, of course, and the hazards you’ll encounter are numerous, although you’ll primarily be tussling with bandits of various factions, either on foot or in your car as you come across patrols racing about. These factions are largely similar in function, if not in look - of note are the Buzzards, a mysterious, chaotic group of psychopaths who inhabit dark underground caves and emerge only at night driving cars crudely adorned with spikes, wearing masks with glowing red eyes, and they remain supremely unnerving throughout the entirety of the game. One of the most impressive of the wasteland dangers are the sandstorms. Chumbucket will usually spot them before you and warn you of their impending onset, and on the horizon the great wall of sand will bear down. You can enter a stronghold to find it having passed when you leave, or take shelter somewhere otherwise and wait it out in real time. But it’s far more fun to brave the storm and take your car out to find rich scrap rewards, tracking down and snaring boxes of scrap, and braving the lighting and flying debris to break them open and collect their loot.

Vehicular combat is enjoyable, and it’s rarely a hindrance when you come across patrols of bandits on the road as the engagements are spaced out enough to make you hungry for the fight. Depending on your weapons, armour, and health you may prefer differing tactics, but if you’re tired of ramming them, you’re equipped with a shotgun and a harpoon that can disable vehicles, kill the occupants, and destroy fuel tanks sending the offending vehicle spinning through the air in a shower of flame and debris.

But as I was saying, this is standard fare for the most part. It’s the sandbox within which all these things sit that sets it apart from other games in the genre. Whilst Avalanche’s most well-known series, Just Cause, isn’t known for its nuanced and detailed world, MM excels at creating a believable and lived in landscape, with plenty of small and hidden details that activate your imagination. MM’s wasteland is comprised of surprisingly rich and varied terrain – sandy roads and dune-filled deserts transition into rocky plains, oily marshes, dry white coral ocean beds, and grey, craggy passes. Rotten hulls of long-abandoned ships lay half-buried, and lighthouses and bridges erupt from the earth and soar into the sky. Generally speaking, you can travel as far as the eye can see; if you’re expecting invisible walls, you’ll be hard pressed to find them, and what the game lacks in verticality it makes up for in vast ‘horizontality’. In each of the major areas of the map lies a hub which is visible for miles around, and provides a helpful landmark that can occasionally remove the need to rely on the minimap, which is a rare occurrence but a welcome one because the game is at its best when you get to look around; the visuals are quite stunning - screenshot fodder if ever I saw it, and standing on a high ledge and staring at the vista before you is mesmerising. The day/night cycle is modelled accurately and the colour palette of the landscape changes as you venture to different areas; there’s nothing quite like tearing along the remnants of a bitumen highway as the sun sets, casting and orange glow through the plumes of sand kicked up behind you, the lights of Gas Town burning in the distance. The underground Buzzard hovels are cramped and the sound is muffled by the dirt walls, so you never quite know where the enemies you can hear scrabbling about are coming from. Vehicles explode with an ear-popping bang, and dance through the air spewing orange and yellow flames. Metal parts and debris fly from the wreckages and litter the area around them, and the destroyed hull of the cars grind to a halt, burning grimly by the roadside. The game performs exceptionally well, although I’ve noticed some occasional visual glitches particularly in the shadowing in some of the dust plumes, but there’s little lag, even when you’re tearing around the landscape. There are nice little attentions to detail, such as tire marks and footprints in the dust, the way sand spits up from your wheels, the way convoys are visible from afar by the dust clouds they stir up, and the detail in the wrecked vehicles as they blast apart and then lay destroyed. It helps with immersion, which is something the game sorely needs to balance out the in-your-face-edness of its mechanics.

And that’s probably the core observation I have to make about the game – the quality of Mad Max (the game) in the eyes of the player is going to rely on how you weight each of the variables on the scales. I can see the frustration and validity of all the criticisms, but I’m also wooed by the qualities and intensity of the game world, and by the little details that show that, for every thing they got wrong, they got something quite right as well. If you want to play ‘Fury Road: The Video Game’, then you’re in the right place. If you want to brawl and blow up, if you want to run and drive, then you’re in the right place. If you want an beautiful post-apocalyptic world, then you’re in the right place. However, if want nuance and subtlety, if you want a complex narrative, if you want an innovative game that will relieve your Assassin’s Creed fatigue, then, like Max in his search for peace in the Plains of Silence, you’re not likely to find what you’re looking for here.

8/10 

Very Good

[politicalfilth-blog]

The “King of Debt” Just Broke The National Debt Record

Donald Trump, the reality TV star and self-described "King of Debt" turned president, is living up to his schizophrenic reputation, as the US national debt just surpassed $21 trillion.

(National Debt Clock - 3/21/2018) It's a sadly predictable about-face compared to how Trump sounded back in 2016:

So far, though, Agent Orange hasn't managed to "fix" anything regarding the national debt---in fact, government spending has only accelerated to shocking levels.

A trillion dollars were added to the debt in the last 6 months alone, and in just the last 6 weeks, it's skyrocketed by another five hundred billion.

No sign of the character The Donald played in 2016.

Would the old Trump be ashamed? 

  From blasting “Hope and Change” to delivering more of the same: 

For all of the Commander in Thief’s swindling, recent spikes in federal spending can be attributed to new legislation passed by Congress in February that suspended the debt ceiling.

This basically allows the government to legally “borrow” as much money as it wants---without limits---until March 1, 2019.

It's just more of the same we've come to expect from ever-expanding government---and not even a so-called "outsider" like Trump can reign in this beast.

Donny’s fanatic followers, however, will claim it's all part of his 4-D underwater chess strategy.

And apparently, that's what Trump now envisions: a “balanced budget” by the year 2027---another kick-the-can-down-the-road promise that no one will remember a decade from now.

Despite calling for $50 billion in more spending for 2018 than the prior year, the grand extortion plan relies on a growing, thriving economy to help cover the costs.

This whole moronic scheme depends on the US deficit actually shrinking down to $440 billion this year and eventually reaching a surplus in 2027.

The plan also includes some minor, frivolous cuts in non-defense spending. Yet, as former Congressman Ron Paul often pointed out, there’s never any actual cuts, just superficial reductions to previously planned increases, at best.

"Fairly quickly" was how fast Trump said he would balance the budget during an interview with Sean Hannity in 2016, elaborating that:

“It can be done. ... It will take place and it will go relatively quickly. ... If you have the right people, like, in the agencies and the various people that do the balancing ... you can cut the numbers by two pennies and three pennies and balance a budget quickly and have a stronger and better country.”

None of this deception should come as a surprise to TDV readers, though, since we've extensively covered Trump's failed promises and we predicted that he would not reduce the deficit even before he was (s)elected.

As some of our readers have pointed out, “fool me once, shame on you.” Don’t be fooled again.

Stay ahead of the trends and decipher the media’s lies by reading the Dollar Vigilante newsletter (subscribe HERE). I’m currently in Nairobi where I just spoke at the World Blockchain Summit but our next issue should be coming out in the next few days.

What does over a trillion dollars in more in US government debt spending and refilling the swamp with war hawks do to the US dollar? Can wasting money on putting soldiers in space affect the US stock markets?

Well, the Dow is down nearly 1,500 points in just the last three days. And we believe the dollar will be next.

Stick with us here at The Dollar Vigilante, where we have not only predicted Trump would be no better than Barack Drone Bomber, but we have profited handsomely with our portfolio rising over 100% in both 2016 and 2017.

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Upcoming Events

d10e Liberland

Start date: April 12, 2018

End date: April 15, 2018

Location: Liberland

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d10e is the leading conference on decentralization, exploring the future of fintech, ICOs, blockchain, the sharing economy, the future of work, and disruptive culture.

Since 2004, they have hosted organized 16 editions around the world in Amsterdam, Bucharest, Cayman Islands, Davos, Gibraltar, Kyiv, Ljubljana, Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv and Warsaw.

Beach Blockchain Summit

Start date: May 10, 2018

End date: May 11, 2018

Location: Boracay, Phillipines

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The world famous white sand beach of Boracay will be the venue for the first in a series of the Beach Blockchain Conference. The event will be a sunny celebration of the inroads that blockchain has made in the past year, and how companies around the world are adapting the use of decentralization.

About the Author

Anarcho-Capitalist.  Libertarian.  Freedom fighter against mankind’s two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks.  Jeff Berwick is the founder of The Dollar Vigilante and host of the popular video podcast, Anarchast.  Jeff is a prominent speaker at many of the world’s freedom, investment and cryptocurrency conferences including his own, Anarchapulco, as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, Bloomberg and Fox Business.  Jeff also posts exclusive content daily to the new blockchain based social media network, Steemit.

from The Dollar Vigilante https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2018/03/26/king-debt-just-broke-national-debt-record.html via The Dollar Vigilante

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Xonix 3D Hacked (Cheats)

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The Psychology Behind Spending and Saving

Have you ever wondered what makes us spend or save? Many of us know people who are frivolous spenders and others who are fervent savers. For me, spending money on a new outfit and shoes is way more exciting than putting it in my savings account. But what makes a person be more of a saver or a spender? And more importantly, can these behaviors be changed? Let’s take a look at the psychology of spending and saving so that you can understand your own tendencies and take steps to improve.

A Healthy Balance Between Saving and Spending

Finding a healthy balance between saving and spending is something that many people grapple with from day to day. A recent Capital One survey of 2,000 Americans found that 25% of respondents struggle to keep up with their monthly obligations.

I recently discussed the survey with Weslia Echols, who is an accredited financial counselor and the founder of Trinity Financial Coaching in Detroit. She discussed some key factors that impact saving and spending habits.

“What I see from working with many clients is that they actually think that they are making a good decision when they choose spending over saving,” she said. “Many rationalize their decisions by making a bad decision for a good cause.”

Echols said that in general, people lack financial education and a long-term view of their money across the board. And while money may seem daunting, simple steps like using a budgeting service or implementing various techniques to free up money can put a person on the path to success.

Experiences and Observations

Beyond financial education, Echols explains that spending and saving habits actually have more to do with their past experiences and observations.

“Sometimes we have to coach people through their ability to make behavioral changes to help them with their finances,” she said. “Some people have mental blocks that keep them from saving and handling money responsibly.”

Watch Out for the Joneses

Echols pointed to the notion of “keeping up with the Joneses” as it plays into the rationale for spending. This expression refers to the desire to match or exceed the lifestyle and material wealth of people around you.

“Some people don’t realize that it doesn’t make sense keep up with your friend’s spending habits,” she explained. “And many people think the phrase ‘living beneath your means’ is a negative concept even though it will probably help them live more economically.”

Time Is a Four-Letter Word

Time is also an important psychological factor when it comes to the decision to spend money over saving it.

“I think people believe they have plenty of time to save money when they really don’t,” Echols admitted. “This is a big hurdle we face when it comes to spending habits. Life flies by very quickly while many people choose other priorities over saving money.”

For instance, savings and investments will ideally make up a large part of a person’s retirement funds, and the longer you wait to start, the less money you’ll have during your golden years. If you’re still thinking about investing, take some time to look at the math. Even waiting a year or two can mean losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars when you consider interest.

Tracking Finances

In order to save, people have to either look for ways to cut monthly expenses, increase their income or, in many instances, both, she said.

“Spending and saving both come down to making decisions that align with your goals,” Echols said. “What I’m finding is that people aren’t tracking their finances and haven’t sat down to assess their monthly cash flow. They may be spending more than they have but sometimes they aren’t aware of that.”

She used the analogy of a steak dinner: You can choose to spend $45 for a restaurant dinner or make the same meal yourself at home for less money. This is where people make a choice, and only one option can save them money.

“People have to choose to control their money. If they don’t, their money will control them!” Echols stressed. “We tell our clients that it comes down to exercising diligence and making the necessary behavior changes.”

A good place to start is through a free budgeting service like Mint.com. Here you can look at your bills, income and financial goals all in one place. It’s a great way to make yourself more aware of the changes you need to make.

Start Early

If you want to make a change in your financial life, it’s always best to start when you’re younger. While teaching an old dog new tricks is absolutely possible, it’s usually easier to learn something when you’re younger.

“This is why I love working with college students, so I can get to them early in life,” Echols said. “The biggest piece of advice I give is to start with a monthly budget and I tell them that they’re in the driver’s seat of their money.”

But even if you haven’t developed these skills in your more formative years, you can still make some simple (but effective) changes now. One way to do this is by automating your finances. Set up automatic deposits into your savings or investment accounts. This way, even when you’re not feeling especially disciplined, your bank account is doing the hard work for you.

Bad Habits Can Be Unlearned

Echols acknowledges that many of our bad habits with spending come from how we saw our parents or family live. But she says it’s just one aspect of a culmination of bad influences and financial decisions.

“It’s important to recognize when you are your own worst enemy and when your behavior is sabotaging your quest for financial success,” she said. “This understanding will help to avoid more behavioral mistakes in the long run.”

Echols has more than 20 years of experience in administration, accounting, financial planning and credit management. To find financial resources or a financial advisor in your area, visit the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors.

The post The Psychology Behind Spending and Saving appeared first on ZING Blog by Quicken Loans.

from Updates About Loans https://www.quickenloans.com/blog/the-psychology-behind-spending-and-saving

[workreveal-blog]

Make you Relationship Healthier and full of Happiness

New Post has been published on https://workreveal.biz/make-you-relationship-healthier-and-full-of-happiness/

Make you Relationship Healthier and full of Happiness

This week systemic instruct Zita Tulyahikayo and barrister James Pereira Qc talk the effects of a current study on properly-being and happiness and what we instructions we can take from it for our day by day lives.

Inspecting the existing is the path a vital part of assessing one’s well being.

But what if we ought to examine instances across the span of an entire life and learn about happiness from a life-time’s enjoy? What if we may want to draw upon the lives of others every day decide what every day do now every day be satisfied within the destiny?

Today published take a look at has finished simply that. The Harvard study of Grownup development tracked the wellness of over seven hundred guys, one institution who have been graduates of Harvard among 1939-1944, and another group who have been developing up within the poorest areas and among the poorest families of Bo every day in 1939. Over that period, the subjects have replied everyday surveys, had their blood taken, their medical data assessed, or even – in more current years – their brains scanned. Dad and mum, better halves and kids of the subjects had also been interviewed. The group contemplated all walks of existence, from manufacturing facility workers daily a US President, and their daily involved triumphs and disasters along the way. A terrific most of the men are nonetheless alive and still collaborating in the examine daily at present.The have a look at’s results are revealing. The critical issue that decided people’s wellness become now not fame, cash or fame; it turned into how happy they were with their love and relationships. In step with Robert Waldinger, the new directly-to-day of the look at, Suitable relationships make us happier and healthier.

healthier relationships

Waldinger emphasises three key classes from the seventy-five-year undertaking. First, the greater socially linked we are, the more healthy, happier and longer we stay. Feelings of isolation and loneliness have the opposite effect.

Secondly, they say there’s 7 types of love but it isn’t always the quantity of our relationships however their first-class that is vital. Suitable relationships help us in instances of pressure so that our well-being is maintained even in daily cases. On the other hand, bad relationships enlarge the impact of stressful situations. Thirdly, Desirable relationships with folks that can be relied upon in hard times were located every day postpone the ageing of the brain: the ones in Excellent relationships tended daily live sharper for longer, whereas mind ageing passed off quicker in those with terrible relationships.

What does this suggest for our each day lives?

First, we want to boost our gaze up from our books and far away from our screens and renowned the fee of social connections and interactions, now not as a counterweight every day the everyday grind but as a necessary and important part of a wholesome and happy existence.

Secondly, we need day-to-day make space and time to reinforce and deepen our bonds with folks who are near us, and remember the want daily deal with and heal factors of war in our relationships with others.

Thirdly, we want day-to-day make a commitment every day our relationships with buddies, the circle of relatives and network on an on-going basis, so they stand on company foundations with the intention to support us as we circulate thru life.

As Waldinger found, “This message that Suitable near relationships are Right for our health and well-being is as old because of the hills. So why is it so difficult every day get and so clean to ignore?”

The solution, he shows, is easy: “We’re human, what we’d without a doubt like is a short fix. Relationships are messy, and they’re complex. The daily work is lifestyles long and by no means ends.”

relationship

Legal professionals are no everyday seriously Suitable at length, day-to-day and complicated paintings. So there is no excuse, is there?

We have all heard the announcing “glad wife, happy life.” however recent studies is suggesting that having a satisfied spouse may also without a doubt help you stay a healthier existence.

Health expert, Dr Michael Roizen of Cleveland Medical Institution, says that happy marriages and fitness go collectively, due to the fact after all the closest friendship we’ve got, in truth, our spouse.

“Happiness and marriage are all tremendously vital, they are essential approaches of ablating the strain effect,” says Dr Roizen.

The research looked at about 2,000 couples among a long time of 50 and 94 and discovered that those who reported having gay spouses additionally stated having better fitness. Experts consider that the affiliation among a happy partner and a wholesome existence is that glad spouses are more likely daily provide social support and are more apt day-to-day get their partners concerned in regular exercising, healthful eating and getting sufficient sleep.

Dr Roizen says that previous research has proven that men over the age of 50 who’re luckily married age among three and eight years less than men who aren’t married.

And likewise, he says thankfully married women age two years less than individuals who are not married.

Dr Roizen says that it is probably no longer a lot the real marriage that day-to-day get all of the credit.

He says that all of us, whether or not married or now not, is in all likelihood daily pick out up on the habits of these they spend the most time with and are the nearest every day.

“The institutions, when you have friends who’re happy when you have pals who have satisfied marriages, you are much more likely daily have a satisfied wedding; you’re much more likely day-to-day have friends who do the identical activity,” says Dr Roizen.

Dr Roizen says the important thing every day staying satisfied and healthful is everyday daily out folks who assist you manipulate your strain and every day surrounds you with individuals who do wholesome things.

Our achievement and happiness rely upon the extent of our mastery of our thoughts or notion strategies In keeping with former United Countries Secretary Preferred Ban Ki-moon: “Happiness is neither a frivolity nor a luxurious. It is a deep-seated craving shared with the aid of all members of the human family.” So especially true! Happiness has usually been the closing purpose of human lifestyles. Our scriptures also declare that whenever we do whatever, it’s far continually “daily be happy” (Sukhaya Karmani Karoti-Loke). To be unfastened from pressure, ache and misery and daily attain joy, and dark feel of achievement have usually been the universal craving of all humans.

It becomes suitable that the UN Preferred Meeting recognises that “the gross home product does not correctly reflect the happiness and well-being of people in a rustic” adopted a Resolution on Happiness. And because 2012 the International Day of Happiness is being discovered on March 20 each 12 months. Because the day became proclaimed, lots of happiness projects everywhere in the global have emerged daily have fun and promote its values.

Happiness being a difficulty of established importance, it is profitable every day understand every day achieve it. It is stated that in 24 hours we have round 40,000-50,000 thoughts. Some are intentional. However, most are generated mechanically as in line with our beliefs, behaviour, information and experiences. Each information, revel in or sensation creates a thought, which produces feelings of likes, dislikes, happiness or distress. Any revel in is a sense in the ideas, and every soul is made with the aid of thoughts we create consciously or unconsciously.

This suggests how critical it is for us day-to-day cautiously nature, pleasant, quantity and texture of our thoughts. Every person is born with certain excellent tendencies: patience, Energy of forgiveness, self- control, aversion everyday scouse borrow, purity in concept, phrases and movement, and so on. Together, these traits are every day Guna Dharma: the intrinsic nature of people. Right here the phrase “dharma” is not used as a synonym for “faith”. Dharma alternatively represents human guna-dharma which, as we’ve day-to-day, accounts for the eternal and shared principles of human conduct conventional through all religions. These features are the essence of humanity. Without these traits, we will be stimulated through miserable thoughts and emotions. Dharma elevates people daily higher stages of nobleness, peace and happiness. Build a healthier relationship with full of happiness.

happiness

Hindrances day-to-day our enjoy of peace and joy, there are six bad tendencies we’re born with: Excessive choice, anger, greed, attachment, arrogance and jealousy. Those are our inborn six enemies. They may be like weeds in the rice discipline which crop up on their own and every day is rooted out as and once they rise.

We need achievement and happiness, however without tension and strain. It’s far all in our arms. It relies upon on the extent of our mastery of our thoughts or notion manner.

It’s far well worth repeating that keeping off distress and achieving peace and happiness is the ideally suited intention of human existence. The character, knowledge and technique of happiness might also range but that everyone internationally is everyday happiness is a fact.

Our natural lifestyles are managed and directed using our thoughts. It’s miles daily this determining position of our thoughts that it has stated been, “it’s miles the mind that is the cause of bondage or liberation” or “the world is, in reality, our mind”. In Other words, the motive of both our happiness and misery is our mind.

This is why all our respected experts and scriptures draw our interest everyday management of our mind and why we daily regularly continue to be alert of our notion procedure.