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ficsnroses · 4 years ago

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Away - John Wick x Reader

prompt : just some headcanons about how John and reader stay intimate while he’s away working!

warnings : smut. nudity n fluff n stuff hehe

notes : this was requested by a lovely reader who wanted nsfw headcanons that involve distance. please go easy on me, I've been slowly writing these for the past two weeks while simultaneously studying for exams. hope everyone had an amazing halloween! xx

I know its not my best work and its super disorganized, I really just wanted to have something out! I enjoyed writing them though, and it was nice to not care not have to worry about a storyline please be kind ily

Recently, John had been away on a long job. Two months of distance had been awful; you’d spent practically every waking moment together for the past 4 years you’d been together.

For the past two months, you’d been ecstatic to have him back, and he in return had been awaiting the day he’d finally be able to hold you again;

to see you for real, in front of him, to kiss you, to feel that warm chill that entices his bones each time his lips find yours, to fall asleep next to you, where he belongs, to sigh through whispered laughs and quiet kisses in the dark.

To make love to you, something he hadn’t been able to do for far too long.

The distance was tough; perhaps the greatest of plights was being unable to physically show you how much he needs you, how much he wants you.

This relationship was something special; something just yours, and his. And that was the most wonderful part of all;

This little piece of glory, was just yours, and his.

You recall the first time you’d made love to him, after a couple months of seeing each other. You remember, he’d grinned at your every joke, you’d pulled him closer with every twitch of his mouth. His lips had adorned each inch of your skin; the painted marks and intimate bruises bedecked across each other’s skin had made you both blush rosy hues the next morning; awoken by the warm morning glow kissing your bodies; nestled together in the beautiful morning’s haven.

Since, you’d spent countless nights together. Sex was your way of showing each other love, the intimacy was something you both needed.

However, neither of you had planned on John needing to be away from you for an extra month last minute; a tougher job at hand than initially thought.

“I can’t believe we need to wait another month.” You soundlessly whisper over the phone line, a hand rested to your chest, tired eyes frowning, the thought of being away from your love for longer than intended feeling like a cut to your heart.

“I know baby. I’m sorry.” He explains, voice beautifully rich, smoked, yet held with that certain warm affection, reserved uniquely for you. “Please don’t forget how much I love you.”

It had begun to feel lonely around the house, two months of fetch with Dog and lonesome nights burrowed in on the couch were beginning to not avail; the smell of John’s skin had been fading away unsteadily.

His pillow had begun to rid of that special scent of his aftershave,

The smell of his preferred coffee roast had begun to remind you of him being near, when you’d brew a pot in thought of his hands curled around yours on easy mornings, the way he’d quietly sip, fingers tracing yours; a desperate attempt to feel him around when he wasn’t physically there by you.

Through daily calls, check up and check ins, texts, and videos, you’d been making do, however.

John would call you at breakfast each morning to make sure you’d slept well and ate something; he’d never let his weary head fall pressed to his own pillow without a call to tell you he loves you, and thought of you while passing a flower shop earlier.

John thinks of you all day, each day spent away. It went to show how much you’d really become part of him, part of what matters to him.

In the little things; such as when he sits down for his afternoon coffee. The Continental had been home to him for a long time before he’d met you; it held people he knew, collogues, associates. For many, work means anything but home. But for John, John Wick, who constituted nothing more than the last face damned souls saw before darkness, it felt as if all he knew.

He found familiarity within the crème, golden marbled walls and weary eyes that feared him.

Now, however, after meeting you, falling in love with you, he thinks to himself, sitting in the café of the hotel as the silver spoon swirls a clink in the fine china coffee cup.

That this, this simple thing he does on routine afternoons, would be much better with his heavenly love nestled into his side.

Would be sweeter with the weight of your smaller hand held around his. Would be warmer, with the sound of your sweet giggle tuneful on the tip of your tongue as you smile, and smile at one of his corny jokes.

You’d been sending him pictures of Dog, and little projects you’d been working on day to day. You’d been calling him to make sure he’d taken care, that he’d been tending to any littered mauve bruises and resting up. You’d been asking him to be kind to himself; something you’d often have to do for him, because your John, had never done so to himself.

You love each other, so you’d been making do.

Needless to say, having John physically not around had built up much pent up…frustration.

It had been two months since you’d had sex, and you’d swore you’d been finding yourself driven a little crazier each day without. John felt the same; lonesome nights spent alone in the solitude walls of the continental without you by his side had been proving harsh.

Of course, you’d been making do. The intimacy John and you shared was something special, something only you and him had the right to relish in. Addicting, mesmerising, that intimacy was something neither of you were willing to give up; thousands of miles of distance between or not.

On a quiet weeknight evening, a finished job lays completed behind, a tired John finding refuge in the deep pleated sheets of his king sized bed. With his slacks kicked off and discarded below, he knows tonight would require something more than the sting of an amber Bourbon enjoyed alone;

Tonight he’d need release; and he’d needed it to come with the sight of you, your voice a sonata on the other end.

Phone sex had been a reoccurring theme upon your time spent apart;

John works hard,

John has needs. And the only person that can take care of him, had always been only you.

When at home, John often found himself dreading the haul of his worn out limbs, basking in the quietude of the house after a finished job forgotten behind. His favourite way to wind down of course,

involved being buried between your thighs; deep, whenever he wanted, however he wanted. The safest, warmest, most liberating haven he’d had the pleasure of enjoying sanctuary within.

Being away from you however, John often found himself needing your voice on the other end, to let the grisly deeds of the day wash away, allow a melting warmth to cascade over each hungering inch of his body.

“Hi baby,” You’d purr on the other end, perhaps sprawled upon your shared California King, or nestled within the steaming hues of a well needed soak in the master bath. “Are you touching yourself, John?” sultry, bewitching, his eyes roll to the back of his head, breathy gasps and hallow exhales fleeing to the sound of your inquisitive lips on the other end of the phone line. “Pull your cock out for me, baby.” You instruct, finding a burn throb to your feverishly heating center, allowing two measly fingers to explore yourself as you hear him twitch on the other end.

His eyes drift shut, and he remembers the feeling of you. he remembers the way your sweet, sweet pussy moulds perfectly just to him; just for him.

You’d purr, and hum, sending vibrations tingling down the column of his neck, his manhood yearning to remember the feel of your wet, sloppy lips taking well care of him, just as you’d done hundreds of times before. His palm lazily laps his shaft, tightening, pumping and pumping, chasing the memory of you as he swirls thin drops of seeping pre cum douse his glistening tip to the sound of your voice.

“Fuck, sweetheart” His tender cock jolts, hard erect to a pounding ache. “I need you so much.” his buttery voice allows, falling back on tired bones with his creamy release sputtered onto crisp white bed sheets. The bed falls hallow, the spot to his left where your body should be nestled, vacant.

That vacant spot kills him a little more each day. Chips away at his sanity just a little more, day by day. Each inch of him longs for you, each part waits for the time he’ll finally find you buried within his arms, and he swears, when it happens,

He’ll never let you go.

He’ll hold you all night, he’ll make up for each lost kiss.

He’ll steal quiet laughs, tender touches in the dark, and he’ll remember; that he has a home to come to now. That someone hopes, waits for him each second he’s away.

Of course, being each other’s meant seeing things only the other had the right to see.

The first time John ever sent a nude had been to you. Although tech savvy, John hadn’t paid much attention to his phone and the world it opened, before it had become a portal to you when he’d have to be away.

You however, had been sending him countless pictures, whenever time allowed.

John worshipped you, John fell so wholly in love with every single inch of your skin, your mind, your spirit.

And you best believe he’d never let that little bit of madness die; even if far away physically.

You take pictures for John often, for his prying eyes to relish. Fully nude, fully on display for him to see, to devour.

Whether it be embellished in deliciously embroidered lingerie that compliments all the exquisite curves of your figure, or completely bare, pert breasts free, accompanied by smooth, satin skin falling in channeled glows.

You adore modelling all your favourite lingerie pieces for John, most of them being things he picked out for you.

Lingerie shopping with John was a treat of the kindest; the way he’d watch you try on all the skimpy laced pieces, the sweet symphony of his quiet, warm lips on your neck as his palms glaze over your figure send shivers down your spine in remembrance.

“Get it all, baby. I can’t wait to take these off you tonight.” He’d whisper in your ear, earnest, rich.

John saves each and every picture you send him. For John, nothing compares to the way the mere sight of your body causes a tent to rise in his pants.

To feel lucky was an understatement. As he sits alone, phone equipped in stocky hand, he opens the album locked away, hidden in his phone, filled full with nothing but pictures you’ve sent him.

John’s camera roll is already brimmed with the golden glow of your beautiful smile, even his lock screen captures a striking sight of you, candidly posing with Dog. His two favourite things in his favourite picture ever.

But this secret album…this album is something only his eyes may see. These are pictures of all of you, for the taking. Each tender swell, delicate curve of your chest, the perk of your nipples, that searing sulteur in your eyes when you take pictures for him this way. Everything is locked away, hidden. Kept secure for him to see, whenever, wherever he needed the sight of your heavenly figure to get him a quick fix.

Of course, John and you have also done frequent video calls. Most often, they compose of catching up, or perhaps a dinner shared over the blue lit screen with your love, or a pre bedtime video chat to catch up, to tell him you love him.

That was something John missed the most. Spending time with you in the most mundane of ways; sipping on a cup of morning French roast as his hand holds yours, the other absentmindedly browsing the newspaper.

But sometimes,

The videos were a bit more intimate.

“Lay back and touch yourself, sweetheart.” A raspy voiced John whispers, heavy cock sheathed in his hand as his eyes gloss over the screen, where the image of you on the other end sits, decorated in his favourite black babydoll. “Show me what you do when I’m not there.” The sound of his inquisitive voice is killing you, and a whimper falls your throat when you watch the throb of his sizeable cock seeping those much familiar drops of pre cum in his hand. He touches himself as well, tenderly, slowly, eyes never leaving you.

You miss cumming together with John. Video chats provided a quick fix indeed, yet compared nothing to the weight of his body on yours, his rosy skin sticking with your supple, silky touch.

You miss sex with John far too much to comprehend, far too much to explain. Each part of it, the burning pain you feel when the bulk of his cock glides into you, the way his impending tip grinds your G spot. The way he eats you out, lapping your nectar as his tongue expertly flicks your folds, hands graciously soothing over your thighs. You miss the sounds of his mouth, the wetness, the slicking, his soft moans and heartfelt groans. You miss the way he builds that long inside your stomach; the way his generous length dips in inch by inch, slowly, leaving you practically gushing and quivering for him before he’s even picked up pace. You miss the sound of the bed creaking to his hasty thrusts in the middle of the night, your arms and legs securely rapped around him as he pounds into you, the sounds of skin slapping skin and his moans mixed with your yelps ceasing the room. And the best part of it all,

You miss the way his hand would never let go of yours through it all. You yearn for the ache John leaves between your legs. You miss being reminded of him for days when he’d fuck you oh so well.

Until then however, John invested in a few sex toys to keep his lady satisfied while he’s away. His favourite of the bunch, being a pair of vibrating panties controlled from the comfort of his phone.

His mouth almost envies the set for being able to satisfy you the way he longs to. To be able to taste you the way he craves.

On a particularly stifling evening, he’d asked you to go to bed wearing them, only to awaken you the next morning with the feel of them sending wavelengths of pleasure building in your core. John had been increasing the intensity on the other end, the same way he’d make music with his lips pressed to your clit.

“John…John please..” you’d wail, squirming, knowing he’d be hot and aroused to the sounds you’d spill just for him.

With a phone call in-between, he’d listened to your tender moans and gaspy sighs. Your cries of his name had gotten him through the day, had him hunger for the evening when he’d call you once again, only to have you whisper sinful yearnings in his ears, as the nights before.

The distance had been tough, and it would continue to be.

But it would be so worth it, to soon have the man of your dreams back where he’d belonged.

John would remind you daily of how everything he did, had only been for you. Everything your boulder of a man does, is only for you.

His love runs deep, perhaps deeper than you know.

You await the day you’d be able to find yourself tucked away in his embrace in the midnight eve, pillow talk on mind, soft giggles let into the night. You wait for the day you’ll be able to know he’s safe, beside you. that he’s dreaming of sunshine and waterfalls, that he’s resting at last, pressed to your chest.

But until then, you wait. You wait, with murals and daydreams of nothing but him, painting your thoughts;

and frequent check ins, soft ‘I love you’s’ over a much too distant phone line, having to suffice.

➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴

My taglist will be posted in reblogs, let me know if you want to be added or removed! :)

#john wick x reader #keanu reeves x reader #john wick imagine #john wick fanfic #john wick x y/n

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cosmicjoke · 4 years ago

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Ohh, just got through reading chapter 53 of AoT, and boy oh boy, was there some incredible stuff here not included in the anime.

Well, the first scene that really stood out to me was after the hardening experiments with Eren fail, and we get that whole scene with Levi kind of berating Eren for his failure, before assuring Mikasa that he isn’t blaming Eren, and launching into his monologue about how he’d only started noticing the stink inside the walls a few years ago, and how it’s been like this for a hundred years, how they’ve all been prisoners for that whole time. What I love about this scene is how Hange steps in eventually and helps Levi out, because he’s trying to explain that they need to keep trying, and not give up, even if Eren failed at hardening himself, but he’s doing a bad job of getting what he means across. We start to really see the relationship between Levi and Hange developing here, and are shown an aspect of it we haven’t really seen before, which is Hange sort of serving as Levi’s translator of sorts, understanding that he isn’t always so good at expressing himself. The way Levi seems to calm down after she steps in, and then confirms for Hange that she’s right about what he meant, before thanking her, is incredibly poignant in its way. This is one thing Levi’s not good at. He’s not good at expressing himself, or making himself clear in words, and you can see his frustration in this scene, trying to impress upon Eren and all of them what he means, but being unable to really do so, coming across more harshly than he intends. We see that because Mikasa thinks he’s blaming Eren, but he’s not, and he says so, but he can’t get across what he IS trying to say. So it’s just really sweet, the way Hange swoops in and kind of rescues him here, and explains to everyone what he really means. You can feel Levi’s gratitude towards her for that.

Of course there’s the big scene in this chapter that I always see everyone lamenting that they didn’t include in the anime, and that’s the scene in Trost with the merchants. I’ve seen other people point out that Levi doesn’t at all argue with or fight back against the merchants who are verbally accosting him and the SC in general. He doesn’t try to defend himself, or in any way downplay the merchants complaints or criticisms. He COULD, because of course what they’re saying about the SC is all wrong, about them being lazy, or doing nothing to help people, etc... And particularly, Levi could defend himself and be right to do so, because he himself had nothing to do with the higher up’s decisions to evacuate the city, etc... But he doesn’t. He just stands there and lets these people vent their frustrations and fears out onto him. This scene really tells us so much about Levi, who he is as a person, and, I know like I’m sounding like a broken record here, but his deep compassion and understanding for other people and what they’re feeling and going through. Because of Levi’s own, deprived background, the poverty and starvation he experienced as a child, you can see Levi has deep empathy for these people’s particular plight of being unable to put food on the table, or earn enough money to really live. Levi’s got this despairing look on his face throughout this whole scene, and then of course, the big, telling moment is when he looks up and sees the woman with her child. Others have pointed out already how Levi was no doubt thinking of his own mother in this moment, and remembering the hardship and pain of their own lives together in the Underground. Just seeing Levi’s capacity here for empathy and understanding is really extraordinary. One moment in particular though really stands out to me, and again is such a perfect demonstration of Levi’s goodness. When Levi, after taking this verbal abuse, suddenly hears a carriage approaching them, and realizes in a panic that all of these people that have surrounded him are in danger, and he cries for them to watch out, before kicking one of the men directly in the way of the carriage out of its path, and elbowing the other who’d just put his hands on him in a violent, aggressive manner, also out of the way. He saves the lives of two men who had just been ragging HARD on him and completely dismissing everything he had lost and suffered, had even started to mock him. He doesn’t even think about it, or hesitate. He just automatically does all he can to prevent them from being crushed under the carriages wheels. Again, this is just such a powerful demonstration of the goodness of Levi’s heart. It doesn’t matter that these men seemed to dislike, even hate him, and had been trying to shame him and humiliate him and drag him just moments before. All that matters is saving their lives, and that’s what Levi does, despite their unkindness towards him. This really was an incredible moment. I mean, damn, Levi is just such a good person, he really is. It’s just intrinsically who he is. He doesn’t have to think about saving or helping others, or convince himself that he should. He just DOES, even when those same people have shown him nothing but scorn or derision.

Another moments that stood out to me in this chapter too was Erwin’s conversation with Nile, and particularly the last exchange between them before Erwin leaves the carriage, when he tells Niles he was fond of Marie too, and Nile spits back at him that there’s something wrong with him for choosing Titans over her. Here we really start to see Erwin’s sense of guilt and regret for the first time, his sadness and depression. His look of resignation after Nile leaves, and just this awful sense of loneliness that clearly weighs down on him, is really heartbreaking. There’s such a tragic isolation to him in this moment, and I think Nile himself knows he shouldn’t have said what he did to Erwin, shouldn’t have been so unkind.

Another moment too, though, was how after Levi receives Erwin’s instructions, despite him starting to form his own doubts as to Erwin’s intentions and motivations, he still trusts him to make the right decisions. What Levi says here to his squad, asking them if they trust Erwin, and if any of them are “dumb enough” to, they should follow him. This tells us that Levi still DOES trust Erwin, which speaks to the level of faith Levi had in him, even after having that faith shaken in chapter 51. He’s still willing to follow his plans and believe in him and his vision. When people say Levi is Erwin’s connection to his own humanity, I think this is a perfect demonstration of that too. Levi never abandons Erwin, never gives up on him, never leaves him alone. So as lonely as Erwin seems in that panel, after Nile says such unkind things to him, the truth is, Levi is still in his corner, is still there for Erwin, as a comrade, and as a friend. It’s that refusal to give up on Erwin, I think, that allows Erwin to hang on to his own sense of humanity.

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #Levi Ackerman #hange zöe #Erwin Smith #Meta #thoughts

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chillax-kass-w · 5 years ago

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After All | M19

[Reiner Braun/Reader]

Happiness seems impossible for Reiner, but he may get there after all.

Read on AO3

[As a note, the format of this story is as follows: chapters actually titled “Chapter _” are current to the Marley Arc, chapters titled “M_” are Reiner’s memories in succession, and chapters titled “RM_” are the Reader’s memories in succession]

Sunlight was filtering through the leaves, and he knew. He knew (f/n) would love these trees. She’d scale them up and down and wonder what their story was. She’d write that story; she’d tell it to him. She’d always been curious like that. He could just imagine her smiling at the adventure ahead of them; he could just see the golden sun in her hair, the life in her eyes.

“Hey, Reiner, got any water?”

His imagination halted at Ymir’s question. “Sorry, there’s not a hell of a lot I can do, even if it is a matter of life and death.” Now that she mentioned it, he was parched. He wondered when they’d get back to the Walls for some much needed rest.

“You’re right about that. This whole thing is bullshit.”

“Speaking of which, we’ve been working our asses off. No food, no sleep, no nothing. Ever since those Titans showed up. That was yesterday, right?” He sighed. “Man, we’re lucky the Wall hasn’t been destroyed. Still,” he held his hand to his head, “you’d think that meant they’d give us a break. And don’t even get me started on promotion…”

“Reiner.” He looked to Bertholdt; his eyes were wide.

“What? Aw, come on, I don’t think that’s too much to ask. Do you?” He chuckled. “No, I think we’ve done enough work to deserve consideration. It’s not easy to act in a situation as messed up as this one. As a soldier, I don’t see what’s wrong with being commended and rewarded for that… It’s just nice to be acknowledged.”

“Mister Reiner, what in the hell are you going on about?” Ymir had an incredulous smile on her face. What was that for?

“What do you mean? I’m not saying that I should be immediately promoted to Captain, you know.”

“Uh… That’s not what I mean.”

“Oh, by the way, where did you guys get that cannon from? I owe you one for saving my bacon.” He sighed. “And (f/n) injured her hand saving me too. Needed stitches. I hope she’s alright. She—”

“Hey!” He jumped as Eren stood with a shout, and that’s when he noticed the steam billowing from Eren’s arms. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Is this some kind of joke?”

“What are you mad about, Eren? Was it something I said?” He held up his hands in surrender. He didn’t understand.

“If you want me to kill you, just keep talking!”

“Wait, Eren,” Ymir held out her arm. Why was she missing limbs? “Whatever he’s saying, it’s not normal. Isn’t that right, Bertholdt? If there’s something you know, then quit being quiet and do something about it.” Reiner didn’t understand what she could be implying. He looked to his friend for some sort of answer.

“Reiner…” Bertholdt couldn’t meet his eyes. “Snap out of it. You’re not a soldier. We’re Warriors.”

Warriors.

1,820 years ago, our ancestor Ymir Fritz made a deal with the Devil.

She gained power.

The power of the Titans.

Eldia’s ethnic cleansing lasted for about 1,700 years.

The Great Nation of Marley incited a civil war and brought seven of the nine Titans to its side.

The Great Nation of Marley won.

The Great Nation of Marley is merciful to the Eldians.

I will become a Warrior and live with my mother and father as an Honorary Marleyan.

I will become a Warrior and eradicate the Devils within the Walls.

I will become a Warrior.

I will become a Hero.

Eyes shut, he realized. Everything had come together. When had it come apart?

“Marcel! No!”

“Take the blame and die!”

“Reiner’s dead. If you need Marcel, I’ll be Marcel.”

“This is the only way we can go home.”

His mother was waiting; he wouldn’t let her wait long.

Complications like her ruined everything.

He’d take her down and show her how cruel the world really was to devils like her.

He couldn’t trample a smile like that, even on a devil’s face.

No one would question the aim of a person who selflessly helped others.

Keep telling yourself that.

She was a good person.

Person?

“You deserve it, Reiner.”

Friend?

He’d become a good liar.

“Well, we’ll go see it then.”

Another lie.

“All thanks to you.”

“Who am I really?”

All you cause is pain.

He couldn’t change her future, as much as he wanted to.

“It’s your choice, Rein’.”

“I just want you to be happy.”

Just do what needs to be done, and keep moving forward.

“Wait, why are you in such a rush?! We haven’t even talked this over!”

“Hey, why is Marco being eaten?”

“It’s not your fault, Reiner. Please, please, don’t blame yourself for things out of your control.”

“Please, Reiner.”

He wanted to forget.

He wanted more.

He understood.

“Look at how beautiful it is, Rein’.”

“They remind me of you… respect, chivalry, clarity of thought…”

He couldn’t afford her.

If only he had the power to douse the flames.

If only…

“I fight for you.”

“I fight for you too.”

“Reiner… I thought I lost you.”

“I thought I lost you, too.”

“Reiner!”

“No!”

No!

Warriors.

We’re Warriors.

“Right… I see…That’s how things are…” He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. All he could do was hold his head in his hands and cry.

It felt as if he’d seen someone else’s memories. He’d always expected to be in this position, but not then, not his own memories. How had he forgotten? Why did he feel so out of control? Had he ever been in control?

“I think I’m starting to see what’s going on here. I thought something was strange. I mean, why would the man who destroyed the Wall risk his life to save Connie? You were taking contradictory actions, but without being aware of it. I don’t know why that happened, but… You were originally a Warrior whose goal was to destroy the Wall, but you pretended to be a soldier for so long, you could no longer tell which was the real you…” Ymir’s words vexed him, or did they pin him? “No, maybe you couldn’t bear the weight of your sins, so, in order to keep your mind in balance, you unconsciously escaped into a fantasy, convincing yourself you were just a soldier who protected the Wall… That caused your mind to split and altered your memories. Judging by Bertholdt’s dumbfounded expression, this isn’t the first time your stories stopped fitting together…” She laughed in the face of his plight. “And not to mention the ultimate irony, you convinced yourself you were worthy of love. Ha! I wonder what (f/n) is thinking right now. She must be—”

“Shut up!” He couldn’t take it, couldn’t face it. “Don’t say her name.” His blood was boiling with regret and determination, duty and the woes of his life.

“My bad, but isn’t it you who shouldn’t be allowed to say her name? Think about it.” She was right, absolutely right. At the thought, he buried his face further into his cold hands. He didn’t want to be seen.

He didn’t want to be there.

“You have to be kidding me. How can you act like a victim?” I don’t know. “What are you even thinking?” I don’t know, Eren. “Why did you even listen to what we had to say that day? Tell me, Bertholdt. Don’t you remember what I said? I was right in front of you two. I told you about the time my mother was eaten by a Titan, didn’t I? About how she couldn’t escape because a piece of the gate you kicked down landed right on my house. You know about that, right?” Yes. “I told you, didn’t I?” Yes. “What did you think? What… were you thinking that day?”

“Back then… I felt sorry for you.” How could Bertholdt answer? Reiner’s entire being was withering away.

“Oh… I see… You two… You’re not soldiers… You’re not Warriors… You’re just murderers. You massacred people who’d done nothing wrong! You’re mass murderers!”

“I know that!” Reiner couldn’t take it. His sins were agonizing upon his back, in his chest, around his neck. “I don’t need you to tell me!”

“Then stop acting like responsible citizens worried about the state of the world! You two aren’t even human anymore! You’re the ones who turned this world into a living hell! Don’t you see that, you murderers?!”

Yes, he could see. He could see very clearly now.

A l l y o u c a u s e i s p a i n.

“So what do you want these murderers to do?! Do you want us to repent?! Do you want us to apologize?! Are you really going to preach to a couple of cold blooded murderers about how killing is wrong?! Will that satisfy you?! The Reiner and Bertholdt you know are gone! And if all you want to do is cry about it, then go ahead! Keep crying!”

He wanted to cry. He wanted to go home.

“You’re right.” Eren’s voice was cold. “Who am I? What do I know? Still, all I can do now… is work. Work hard… to make sure that you two die the most excruciating death possible.”

How could Reiner feel fear when he felt so numb?

“You can’t be for real. Eren, I’m begging you, I can’t put my faith in you if you keep talking like some stupid kid.”

“Like what…?”

“I’m saying there’s no way I’m going along with someone worried about petty little things like that.” She paused. “Hey, Reiner. What was that beast?”

His eyes widened. He didn’t want to talk about that.

He didn’t want to talk about anything.

“Beast? What’re you talking about?”

“Huh, you don’t know? Funny, considering that your eyes were beaming like you were kids when you saw it earlier.”

Eren was confused. “What ‘beast’?”

Ymir shook her head. “Just listen. That Beast Titan is the cause of this recent mess. It was what made Titans appear inside the Walls. Maybe it was testing our strength?” How did she know? “You two are trying to get to it, because, if you do, you’ll be able to go back to your home town, right?”

Before he could even piece together a response, Eren shouted again. “Tell me everything you know!”

“Be patient. I’m caught up in circumstances of my own. But listen, Eren. If you think that everything will be settled if you take care of these two… Then, you’re dead wrong.”

“Then who’s our enemy?!”

If only he knew.

“Our enemy? Well, if I had to say, then it’d be—”

“Ymir!” He couldn’t let her tell Eren. He couldn’t let her go. She was the one who’d ruined their mission to begin with. She had to return home with them. If not... “Do you think this world has a future?” He paused, piecing his argument together. “If you know that much about what’s going on, then think about your plans. Surely you can consider coming over to our side.”

“And trust you? Fat chance! You can’t trust me.”

“No, I can trust you. Your goal is to protect Krista, isn’t it?” Even in his fractured state of mind, he knew how to get to her. That much was obvious, especially with the look in her eyes. “Based on our situation, can you not imagine we can help her in some way? Or… Do you think Eren’s strength is more reliable than ours?”

“What?!”

Despite Eren’s shout, he knew he’d convinced at least some part of Ymir. She was glaring at Eren, presumably sizing him up. “You were thinking of using Eren to escape from here, probably because you thought you had no chance if you let us take you.” She didn’t, but truth was strong in times of negotiation. “To be honest with you, that’s exactly right. And even if you did join us, we wouldn’t be able to guarantee your safety. But, if we’re just talking about Krista… Together, we might be able to make something work. Your tiny little life… or Krista’s future: it’s your choice.”

He was basing this off of his own deduction. Annie had learned much about the aristocratic families, enough to know there was an illegitimate child out in the world. Ymir had told Krista to live for herself, suggesting she had never done so before. And, to top off the theory, Krista had revealed her true name was Historia. That was a noble name if he’d ever heard one.

“Hey, so who’s our real enemy?!”

“Who knows…?” With those words, he knew he’d bought her silence and support.

If only he could buy (f/n)’s safety…

“Reiner,” Bertholdt met him upon his branch, “are we really going to trust Ymir? Her Titan is small, but it was fast. If we don’t restrain her, she could take us out in moments… She… really is the one who ate Marcel, remember?”

How could he forget? That moment was cemented in his mind, his first monumental mistake. He’d let his focus drop for but a moment, and Marcel had saved him. Marcel was devoured by a Titan with long hair and black eyes. There was no second guessing the facts, at least for this memory. There was no disputing the identity of Ymir’s Titan. Her claws and sharp fangs couldn’t belong to any ther than the Jaws.

What if… he’d have been the one devoured that day?

“That’s right. But that’s exactly why her position is clear. She finally became human again. She probably wanted to wander, thinking of only her own survival… That is, until she met Krista. She found someone she valued more than herself, someone so dear that she’d jump into a swarm of Titans for her.”

He’d found that someone too…

“Reiner.” Bertholdt grabbed his shoulder; it brought him back to the moment, but he wouldn’t let it show. “What are you right now?”

No one.

“I’m a Warrior. Don’t worry. I have more reasons for bringing Krista with us than her just being cute. Did you forget? Annie tailed those guys who were loitering around the Training Grounds to see what they were up to. They came to observe Krista from the Church of the Wall, that group that knows what’s inside the Walls. Krista’s an important figure in a Wallist family. In other words, if the Coordinate we’re looking for isn’t Eren, then our mission won’t be over yet. If that happens and we have Krista, it should make the search much easier than it is now.”

“Yeah, let’s put an end to this. Next time we come here, we’ll be able to bring Annie, Krista, and that back to our hometown. And… that will be the last time we ever come here.”

Why did those words hurt so much?

Why couldn’t he use rationale to bring her home?

Why had this happened?

“Yeah, all our duties will be complete.”

His heart wouldn’t be.

But, Bertholdt’s…

He stopped him. “But, Bertholdt, tell Annie how you feel once we get to our hometown.”

If only…

“What?!”

“You stare at her too much! Enough that anyone paying attention would notice.”

“No, I—”

...he could do the same…

“Aw, who cares?” He crossed his arms. “You’re both murderers with little time left, right? Who else but one of us could understand the situation we’re in?”

Could she…?

Then, a sound met his ears. It was so familiar…

He glanced behind him, and there he found something he hadn’t quite factored into their equation.

Green smoke signals…

“Bertholdt.”

“The Survey Corps? Already?”

He readied his triggers. They had to move. “They shouldn’t be able to put together a scouting formation without moving a lot of horses over the Wall. I didn’t think they’d be able to act this quickly… Damn it. Commander Erwin might be with them.” Without a second thought, he shot an anchor above Eren. “We’re up against a tough bunch.”

He should know.

“Huh? What is it, Reiner?! It’s not night yet!”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re heading out now.”

He had to be level-headed. Bertholdt was counting on him. Annie was counting on him. Zeke was counting on him. His mother was counting on him. The entire Nation of Marley was counting on him. What were his emotions in the grand scheme of things? What was he in the grand scheme of things?

A Warrior.

There was a world waiting for his next move. The weight was on his shoulders; he could feel it. And, as he stepped toward Eren, he met his rival head on. “Eren, don’t be stupid and put up a fight.”

Eren laughed; it was forced. “Hey, you don’t need to act so tough. Look at me!” His arms were still healing from being severed, but Reiner knew better than to trust that. “There’s no way I could possibly fight back. Come on...” Reiner knew better.

So why did he let Eren attack him like that?

He was thrown on his back from the force, and Eren was above him, smashing his unformed arms relentlessly into Reiner’s head. He took it for a bit, allowed Eren to tell him to die, even considered it. But then, he found his resolve again. He kicked his former friend to the side, and, when he tried to get back up, he wrapped his forearm around Eren’s throat.

“I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll rip you apart!”

Just one squeeze, and he could kill him.

No, he needed him alive.

As he added pressure to Eren’s throat, he wondered just how it’d come to this. Why did the world have to be so cruel? Why had he been born in this position? Why were the Walls filled with people? Why had she been born inside the Walls?

At this point, he just had to accept it.

So, as Eren’s consciousness faded into nothing, he finally allowed his mind to settle on one thing: getting back home. That’d been his mission all along. That was all he’d ever wanted. Why had he forgotten that? Why hadn’t he stayed the course?

This was all his doing. He had to be the one to fix his mistakes.

As Bertholdt tied Eren to his back, Reiner planned his next course of action. The Survey Corps was too close for comfort, as were the Titans. Bertholdt had to carry Ymir on his back as well, so their mobility was limited. The situation just wasn’t in their favor.

Once Ymir was situated, Reiner and Bertholdt shot into the trees, and the Titans below followed. He gritted his teeth. “For now, we need to head somewhere with no Titans. Stay as far away from them as possible. I still haven’t recovered, and my Titan moves slow, so if we get surrounded, I won’t be able to protect both of us.”

“Then why the hell didn’t we wait ‘til night?!” Ymir shouted over the passing wind. “Oh… Signal flares?! So the Survey Corps came to save us?!”

Looking over his shoulder, he groaned. “Damn it, they’re already close. This is all because Eren got violent.” They had to get to the other side of the Titan Forest, and quickly. They were low on gas as it was, but, if they could just outrun the Titans, he could transform. It was open ground from there. They’d have the advantage.

“Reiner! It’s Krista!”

“What?”

“Krista’s with them! Now’s our chance to grab her!”

That wasn’t part of the plan. “You’re full of it! No way you can see that far!”

“I know she’s with them!” Ymir’s voice was desperate, demanding. “That idiot is too kind-hearted for her own good! She came to rescue me!”

That wasn’t part of the plan.

“Even if that’s true, we can’t go now!” He turned forward again, toward the mission. “We’ll get another chance!”

“What?!”

“We can’t grab her the way things are now! There’s no way to bust up that formation! Wait for our chance!”

“‘Wait for our chance’?! When’s that going to be?! After one of your Warrior pals eats me?! No! I can’t trust you!”

“Trust me! I’m not lying when I say we need Krista too!”

Just trust me!

“Prove it then! Prove it to me, right now! I need it to be now ! I want it to be now… At this rate, I’ll never see her again!”

At that, Reiner fell silent. His mission was in his eyes, but his heart…

I’ll never see her again…

“We can’t.” It was Bertholdt who answered, calm and collected. “Right now, we don’t even know if we can escape safely ourselves.”

He had to assure someone that a life would be saved, even if it wasn’t the one he truly wanted.

“I promise you! We’ll save her, I swear it!”

She was silent for a time. Then, as they continued their flight, she shouted, “I’m the strongest one here in this terrain.”

Reiner turned to find her grabbing at Bertholdt’s face, covering his eyes. “Ymir!”

“Ymir, stop!”

“Shut the hell up and think for a second! I’d be able to dominate this terrain, don’t you think?”

Bertholdt’s next anchor barely hit its mark. “Ymir, stop, we’ll fall!”

“That’s fine with me. My Titan might not be as strong as yours, but I can move quickly through the trees. I could grab Eren and rendezvous with the Scouts before you even knew what hit you. Wouldn’t be that hard.” At her threat, Reiner found his footing on the next tree he anchored to and stopped. They couldn’t risk it. “If you don’t take Krista right now, I’ll make a nuisance of myself here.”

Why couldn’t she just go along with the plan?

“Are you completely insane?! We won’t be able to save her that way! All because of your selfishness! I thought that you genuinely cared!”

“I do, in my way. Even if it means robbing her of her future, I want to survive and see her again. As a person, I’m really lower than shit… But she knows that, and she smiles at me anyway. You two don’t know what that’s like, do you?”

He did…

“Damnit!”

“Don’t be mad. I’ve thought this through. If I fight here, it’ll make it easier for you to escape! Or,” she glared at Bertholdt, fire in her eyes, “we could always tear each other apart instead! You think I’m nuts?! Then try me and find out!”

They couldn’t risk fighting here and now. If they did, the Corps would catch up, and they’d be too exhausted to fight them or even run away at that point. Ymir was right; she had the upper hand in this situation.

Damnit…

“Fine! We’ll keep heading to the edge of the forest! You better follow through, Ymir!”

“I will!”

With that, she let go of Bertholdt, falling behind them into a burst of lightning. The plan seemed to fall with her.

Even so, Reiner had to push forward. They still had Eren. He was more than enough, but the Jaw Titan was a priority too. He had to retrieve it. It was his own idiocy that caused them to lose it. It was all him. If he couldn’t bring it back to Marley, he was an absolute failure.

He already felt like one.

The edge of the forest was soaring into view. Their future was somewhere on the other side. As they switched positions in holding Eren, he all but held his breath. If Ymir didn’t come, what was the course of action? If—

“She’s here, Reiner!”

There she was. If she’d returned to them, that meant she’d succeeded in nabbing Krista. Somehow, the plan was working. Somehow, it didn’t seem all for naught.

“Good.”

So, just as he had so many times before, he held a knife in hand, and he jumped from the trees. It was all muscle memory from there. He eyed his hand as the blood trailed into light, and he wondered what the pain really felt like. He’d never felt it. The wound always closed as soon as he transformed.

(f/n) had felt it...

Lightning.

Ymir and Bertholdt latched onto his shoulders, and he ran. He ran, like he had the day they’d come there. He ran like he had, with Bertholdt and Annie on his shoulders. He ran, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Open sky, open land awaited his feet. He was finally free.

Why did it feel as if that wasn’t the case?

Upon his shoulder, he heard a cough. Krista must have woken up.

“Ymir!”

“Krista… No, Historia.” Ymir must have exited her Titan. “I’m sorry I ate you out of nowhere. You must be mad, right?”

Left, right, left, right…

“What is this? What’s going on? We came to rescue you and Ere—”

“You don’t need to rescue me! Things have changed! I’m with Reiner and Bertholdt now. Like it or not, you’re coming with us! There’s no future inside the Walls! Hear me out for a second, okay? Life outside isn’t as bad as you think. Believe me. There’s no one out here saying the world would be a better place if you’d never been born.”

Think again.

“Yeah?! I don’t think Titans would say much either way! They’d be too busy trying to eat me!”

“We all have our shortcomings, right?! They’re not so bad if you look past that! It’s complicated, alright?!”

“Ymir, I don’t know what’s going on in your mind, but you’re not making any sense! It must be… that Reiner and Bertholdt forced you to do this, right? They threatened you!”

From his other shoulder, he heard Bertholdt voice his own thoughts. “It’s the opposite, actually…”

“I’m right, aren’t I?! Let go! Whatever they’ve got on you, I don’t care! We can fight them! Put the past behind you! What matters is right now! I’m here! I will always be your ally!”

If only…

“Ymir!” Bertholdt. “In case you haven’t noticed, the Scouts are closing in. If we’d left earlier, there might’ve been a decent chance of outrunning them. Going back for Krista was your idea. You forced us. Remember that? Ymir, why? What did we do this for?! Have you changed your mind again? Have you decided to stay inside the Walls with Krista? Don’t be a fool! Think!”

A fool…

“Let go! Don’t listen to him!”

Don’t listen…

“I can’t!” Ymir’s voice was shattering upon the wind. “I wish I could. Historia, I know you think I did this for you. But, at the end of the day, I did it for me. A long time ago, I stole the power of the Titans from one of their comrades. Their power is absolute. Inside or outside the Walls, there’s nowhere for me to run. At this rate, I’m going to be killed… But, they said if I cooperate, hand you over, they’ll speak on my behalf to get my crimes pardoned. It’s because you’re so important to the Wallists, who know the secrets of the Walls… When this world started going to hell… I thought that being with you… would be insurance for the near future… I almost died fighting at the tower… And I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was scared of dying. I wanted someone to save me somehow… I lied, and told you I was doing it all for you, but, really… It was all for my own sake. I’m begging you, Historia! Please, please save me!”

Please…

Please, save me…

“Didn’t I just tell you, Ymir? No matter what happens, I’m on your side!”

He was running toward the sun, running toward the blaze, but it didn’t emanate the brilliance he’d always revered. No, that was behind him. She was behind him. He knew. It was inevitable.

Shadows always sail away from the sun, after all.

Then, another familiar sound…

Was that an anchor in his shoulder?

Was that the whir of the 3dmg?

Were they that close already?

Ymir’s scream told him they were.

“Reiner! Protect us!” Bertholdt jumped under his chin, and to shield him, Reiner brought both his hands up to form a cage against his neck. Just in time, for Mikasa slashed at his hardened knuckles only a second too late.

“Mikasa, no! You’re not going to kill Ymir!”

Mikasa was on his head now. “That all depends on her! What’ll it be?! She can step aside or she can die! Her choice!”

“Reiner.”

That voice…

On his right shoulder, next to his ear...

She shouldn’t be here. She’s injured. She shouldn’t be here.

“Reiner, I know you can hear me.”

I can, (f/n).

“Please, tell me this is some sort of misunderstanding. There’s no way…”

It isn’t.

“Tell me, was any of it real? Did you ever truly care about me? Or was it all part of this lie?”

It was real. I care about you. I care about you.

“How many lies did you tell me?”

Too many to count.

“Why…?”

She was crying. Her fists met his cheek; he barely felt them. He barely felt.

If he had it his way, he’d tell her how real it all was. If he had it his way, he’d take her with him. If he had it his way, he’d stay with her until the end of time, until he’d heard everything she knew and everything she didn’t and every wish and every cry a thousand times over. But, it was never fated to go his way. Fate didn’t favor bloodstained hands. He had to accept that. He had to.

He was up to his shoulders in red.

“Why would you do this to me, Reiner?!”

To save the world.

“Why would you hurt so many people?!”

To save the world.

“You’re terrible!”

I am.

“You’re terrible…”

Her voice fell to a whisper. He couldn’t hear anything else. It was only her.

It was always her.

“I guess it’s always been like this. I’ve never gotten any answers from you. You’ve never listened to me. I should’ve known.”

I’ve always listened. I hear you.

“You’re a monster. I cared about you, and you’re a monster.”

You’re right. You’ve always been right.

“None of that matters. Just focus on taking their heads off,” Mikasa’s words reached him. “If you even hesitate for a moment, we’ll never get Eren back. They’re a threat to Humanity. That’s all.”

Thump, thump, thump.

“Do you think that anyone wants to kill people?!” Bertholdt voiced his own thoughts, broken and all alone. “What kind of person would do this for fun?! Who would want to do this?! With what we did, of course you despise us and want to kill us! We can never take any of it back! But, we couldn’t come to terms with our sins… When we were pretending to be soldiers, it was a little bit easier. It’s not a lie, (f/n)! Connie! Jean! It’s true that we deceived you, but it wasn’t all lies! We really did think of you as friends! We really did care! I know… we don’t have the right to apologize. But, someone… Please, someone… I’m begging you, someone find us…”

“Bertholdt… Give Eren back.”

“I can’t do that. Someone has to do this. Someone…has to get blood on their hands.”

Someone...

“Everyone, jump off right now!”

She left a void on his shoulder. She left a void.

And Death was coming. Titans, a horde of Titans, were approaching them from ahead. The Commander was leading them straight toward Reiner. There was nowhere to go. The weight of the World was on his shoulders; the weight of his friends’ pain was there too. There was no escaping his sins. There was no escaping the path he’d set out on. All he could do was run, run and hope they’d make it out on the other side.

Just do what needs to be done, and keep moving forward.

With hands latched firmly to his neck, Reiner dipped his shoulder and ran. Just as he’d destroyed the gate those many years before, he rammed through the horde in his path. They kept coming. He kept charging. Ymir was screaming. They were around his neck, biting his head, holding him down. He had to move. Quickly, quickly, he had to move.

He had to get home.

Where could he go? He was surrounded. There was no way to fight with his hands around Bertholdt. There was no way to protect Bertholdt as he fought. What could he do? How many were there? Ten? Twenty?

It wouldn’t matter if they died.

Hold on, Bertholdt.

Just a little longer.

We’re almost there.

He let Bertholdt go, and he swung at the Titans closest to him. He swung, and he swung, and he prayed for safety. He prayed for home.

The Scouts…

They were upon him now. They were after Bertholdt. He had to choose the greatest enemy. He had to choose. He brought his hand up and around his friend.

“We’ve made it this far! We’re taking Eren with us and going back home!”

“Bertholdt!” Armin, upon his neck. “Are you two sure about this? You’re going to go home and leave your friend behind?”

Annie…

“You’re leaving Annie behind? Right now… Annie’s deep underground in Utopia District, to the far north… where they’re torturing her…”

No, no that couldn’t be true.

“As soon as they heard her screams, they realized… The wounds on her body might heal, but she can’t make the pain go away. They’re being careful not to kill her, of course, but they won’t let her rest. At this very moment, they’re inflicting pain on her in every way they know how—”

No, Annie…

“Children of the Devil!” Bertholdt… “I’ll kill every last one of you!”

At Bertholdt’s scream, Reiner looked down. At the sight of the Commander, he knew it was all over. Eren was falling; Eren was in Mikasa’s arms. They’d lost. He reached out to the retreating Survey Corps in a last attempt at recovering the Coordinate, but there was no moving with the Titans surrounding him, suppressing him.

It was over. He wouldn’t be able to last against so many Titans on his own. Bertholdt’s Titan was useless in a retreat. They needed Annie. They needed Marcel.

This was all his fault.

In an act of hopelessness and indignation, he picked up one of the smaller Titans and hurled it at their formation. He didn’t care who he killed. He didn’t care. He was on the brink. He was in a corner. So, he hauled another onto his shoulders, and he threw. If Eren was eaten, all the better. Perhaps the one to inherit his Titan would be less of a maniac. Perhaps, they’d be like Marcel. Then, they could go home.

Home…

With that on his mind, he could move. With that on his mind, he could push through hordes of Titans to his goal. In the face of Death, in the face of failure, he could do anything if home was the goal.

Lightning…

No, that wasn’t lightning. What was that?

Was that… the Coordinate?

What was that scream?

All of the Titans upon his back, all of the Titans begging for his nape, left him. They all ran past him, away, to devour another Titan. It was a Pure Titan. There was no reason for them to target it.

Unless…

Eren had the Coordinate. He could use it. The situation couldn’t be worse. Eren, of all people…

We have to get it back.

The last person in this world who should have that power is you, Eren.

“Stay back, you bastards! I’ll kill all of you!”

Eren’s voice reverberated in his very soul. That lightning was behind his eyes again, and he knew it was over. There was no escaping the horde Eren directed their way. There was no escaping his sins. Eren had promised an excruciating death; this was it. He would be devoured if he didn’t run. He would be devoured if he ran.

Bertholdt… I can’t keep him safe!

Bertholdt was screaming. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing.

Nothing…

But then, something so inexplicable happened.

Ymir came back.Ymir saved Bertholdt. Ymir fought the Titans along with him. For some reason, she’d chosen them; for some reason, he’d live another day. So, he ran. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore. He ran until his mind was numb. He ran until Ymir had to take over. And she ran until they were atop Wall Maria, the same Wall they’d destroyed those many years ago.

And, as they caught the breath they hadn’t anticipated in their lungs, he found only one question upon his lips.

“Ymir, why did you come back for us?”

“Well… Must be because I’m an idiot.” They didn’t laugh. “I’m here so you’ll have something to hand over. You guys can’t go home empty handed, right?”

He couldn’t believe it. “Do you understand there’s no hope of you being rescued if we go home from here? If you’re going to run… Now’s the time.”

“What’re you talking about, dumbass? I’m tired out. I’ve just had enough. I’m done.” In that moment, he had to agree. He felt done. Done with the hand he’d been dealt; done with the world; done with life.

“Ymir, why did you rescue me?” It seemed Bertholdt didn’t believe it either.

“Maybe because I heard your voice… If you hadn’t come to destroy this Wall, I would’ve been stuck in an endless nightmare. All I did was repay a debt. I’m the only one who knows about your situation, too… I’m the same way… I was hopeless on my own.” She reached toward the sky. The gesture pained him. He’d seen another hand reach for the stars so many times.

“Thank you, Ymir… I’m sorry.” Bertholdt was crying. If Reiner didn’t feel absolutely void, he would be as well.

“It’s fine… Being a goddess doesn’t feel so bad, either.”

He didn’t know about that.

But, something stuck with him. She’d said she would have been in an endless nightmare if they hadn't come to destroy the Wall. As he watched the stars parade across the sky, he had to agree, at least in some respect. If he’d never come there, he never would have experienced life. He never would have experienced friendship. He never would’ve experienced love. Within the Walls, he’d found a love for the World he’d never known. He’d wished for forever. He’d wished for a future. He’d planned a future. He’d found love.

He’d found (f/n).

She was everything he’d wanted. She was everything he’d known. She was everything he was never meant to know.

But, now, he realized that that destruction was a double edged sword. That destruction had led him to his present moment. That destruction had initiated his own endless nightmare, and there was no deliverance.

You deserve it, Reiner.

#reiner braun #reiner braun x reader #reiner braun/reader #aot #snk manga #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #bertholdt hoover #attack on titan ymir #historia reiss

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snowpeawritings · 4 years ago

Note

I thought of this cute scenario when playing Persona Q. There’s an area called the group date cafe where you can get “married” with one of the characters series based on your choices. Naoto and Yuu’s interactions were so adorable! Could I get a similar scenario where Naoto and her fem! S/o were chosen to get “married” in the cafe. Naoto is all flustered by everything while s/o is romantically teasing and ecstatic at the fact they can have lesbian marriage. See a video for reference if you need 2

AAAAHH PQ MEMORIES!!!

BRUH MY FIRST TIME WITH THE MARRIAGE THING I PLAYED YU THEN GOT MINATO AS MY HUSBAND ASHKDHKA

Reader is female

CW (CONTENT WARNING): Japan’s taboo against the lgbt+

As much as how cringey this dungeon was, you were happy that you were able to explore this dungeon with Naoto. With the Valentine decor that littered the dungeon (hell, even the cringey as hell group date cafe was funny), you were glad that you were able to be with Naoto despite the obvious problem that you two show.

Now with a larger group full of people who were tired of the old ways, you and Naoto were free to just hold hands. You were free just to hold hands without causing an uproar and you two were happy about that.

... Still doesn’t replace the feeling of cringiness though.

Hearing the weird mechanical voice for your supposed love result, you sighed out of exhaustion. “Thank god, it’s over.”

Beside you, Naoto exhaled from her nose, a sign that she found your exhaustion amusing. “I thought you liked this place?”

You gave her a disgusted look. “Any sane person would get sick of the hearts, babe.”

“Well then...” The mechanical voice continued. “The time has come to announce your destined partner.”

As if on cue, the lights shut down. A drum roll soon followed as stage lights out of nowhere danced across your team. “Your destined partner is... lo and behold...”

Oh my god this is the cringiest shit I’ve seen.

As if the spotlights understood, your plight, they stopped on you and a certain individual. Seeing her familiar cap shining under the spotlight, you barked out a jovial laugh as you raised your arms in the air. Under the spotlight, your girlfriend blushed even more when she saw you celebrating.

Among your team’s coos and awes, she yelled your name. “Th-This isn’t anything to celebrate about! I don’t know what is the basis of this—”

Before she could’ve clobbered you, the floor opened beneath you two as you fell down. Your teammates worried screams grew farther and farther until your body hit grassy terrain.

Rubbing your butt, you looked around as you gaped at the seemingly vast field that stretched across the horizon. Hearing another hatch open, you looked up in the sky to see a falling high school student. Quickly running to where she was going to drop, you raised your arms to catch your girlfriend.

Naoto soon dropped into your arms with an oof, your arms struggling to carry her. “Sup, babe?”

She let out an embarrassed yelp. “P-Please put me down. And uh... thank you?”

You chuckled as you set her down but before she could recuperate, you grabbed her hand and swung it back and forth. She looked at you with a blushing face before the same voice rang out again.

“It seems you have reached your destination. This seems to be a path where lovers who met their destined partners discuss their love for each other...”

You immediately zoned out from its useless drivel, instead looking at Naoto with the dumbest look on your face. “This is everything that I wanted and more.”

She flushed once more, covering the bottom half of her face with her free hand. “You...! There’s not even a basis of what this conductor is implying! And why are you so nonchalant about this?!”

Your goofy smile still stayed but your eyes hardened with seriousness. “Naoto, when could we ever have an opportunity like this?”

That made her pause. She looked at you expectantly, realizing you were serious about what you were saying.

"Japan is shitty enough as it is." You continued, taking both of her hands in yours this time. "We can't go out without people assuming the worst of us. Here, we get to be us without anyone breathing down our backs!"

It was a fever dream, that you knew. You knew everything here was fake but even pretending that it was real was good enough for you.

"You..." Naoto trailed off, realizing what you meant. "But... We're still high schoolers! Why are you thinking of something like that?"

You smirked, pressing your forehead against hers. "I mean, I'm planning to anyways."

She choked, throwing her head back from you like it was on fire. "W-We're not children either!"

"I know I know!" You laughed, staring at Naoto's expression for longer. "But I'm serious. I really do love you, babe. And I really do hope we'll be together for longer until we actually do get married."

She still retained her blush but she did calm down after your confession. Her lips parted, wanting to say something that you assumed that she needed evidence for your claim but she pursed them. Instead, she leaned in closer, nuzzling your nose with hers as she sighed softly.

"New Zealand's flower fields are beautiful... I always wanted to go there with you when we're older."

---

I know we're in hard times but for wanting to making things positive, Japan has made the first prefecture to have a law where it is illegal to out lgbt+. Granted its only in one prefecture but i think its a step forward for the country

#i think i havent said this yet but i writee my gays with happy endings #also yes ive been in japan enough times to see how toxic they are #someone says japan is uwu kawaii land im coming to your home to beat you to death #persona #persona 4 #persona 4 imagines #persona q #persona q imagines #naoto shirogane #naoto shirogane x reader #naoto shirogane imagines #x f!reader #x female!reader #scenario #ladyqinn

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rutilation · 5 years ago

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Listen, they’re not evil. They just lack empathy, and go into a dissociative state and commit atrocities.

As much as it pains me to do so, I’m going to start off by talking about the bastard himself. I must say, believing that rage and misery is the inevitable endpoint of a person’s life is an awfully convenient belief for Aechmea to hold when his plan would end all sentient life as collateral damage. If all your victims are better off dead anyway, then your actions don’t warrant any guilt!

There’s a little moment in chapter 67 that has always stuck out to me as being representative of Aechmea’s character, and I think it’s especially relevant to this chapter. It’s the part in which Cairngorm is trying to argue that it’s in Aechmea’s best interest to keep Phos as mentally stable as possible since they’re his staunchest ally amongst the gems. My reaction upon reading that line was that their appraisal of Aechmea’s intentions was very naïve. To the contrary, the more unstable Phos becomes, the easier it is for Aechmea to manipulate them. At this point in the narrative, Phos is no longer carefully treading through negotiations with Aechmea, as they were in volume eight and the beginning of volume nine; they’re now doing exactly what he wants, with gusto, and no thought to the long term consequences. This is entirely deliberate on Aechmea’s part, and indeed, in the very same chapter that Cairngorm brought this up, Aechmea pulled the same trick on them. He made Cairn feel cornered and desperate, presented himself as the sole solution to their problem, and thus Cairn went from being deeply suspicious of Aechmea to…still being deeply suspicious of Aechmea, tbh, but burying it under an ironclad sense of denial. This chapter even contains a callback to chapter 67: Both here and there, Phos/Cairn is broken and despondent, Aechmea is looming over them, and they reach out to weakly cling to his hand.

He asks Barbata to “handle” Phos��s memories of the past two hundred years. That’s an ambiguous line if I’ve ever heard one. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Phos shouldn’t have memories of the past two hundred years, right? I’m not sure if this is implying that he wants Barbata to implant false memories within Phos of the past two hundred twenty years, or—heaven forbid—if he’s implying that Phos actually has memories of the timeskip, and that he wants Barbata to make sure Phos doesn’t lose any of them. If it’s the latter, that would suggest that Phos has, somehow, been conscious this whole time (holy shit,) and that Aechmea doesn’t want Phos to be able to move past those memories. Regardless of what he’s referring to though, the sentiment behind his cryptic order is clear: now that he’s molded Phos into something he can easily control, he’s taking pains to ensure that they’re stuck in their current incarnation, so that they don’t evolve ever again. It brings to my mind this scene in chapter 54, in which Aechmea all but fetishizes Phos’s capacity for change. It was already pretty creepy, but knowing that this is what he intended for Phos to change into adds another layer of wrongness to that exchange.

It’s interesting that just a couple chapters ago, Phos was screaming at Kongou “If only you weren’t here!” But here, the sentiment has completely inverted, and Phos is weeping as they say that Kongou is the only one who still cares for them, and that it’s the gems who shouldn’t be here. In only a few short hours, they’ve gone from directing all their hatred at Kongou, to directing it at everyone except him. Their rage is unformed and all over the place. Good thing Aechmea’s here to refine it to his own ends!

Aechmea says that he’ll answer Cairngorm’s question “when this is all over.” That could imply a couple of different things, depending on what he means by that. If he means he’ll tell Cairn after he’s finished dealing with Phos for this chapter, then that’s one thing. But, if by ‘all over’ he means that he’s not going to say anything until Kongou successfully prays, and his victory is assured--as with the previous secret he was keeping from Cairngorm, then that implies that whatever he was alluding to when he said he had loved Cairngorm since before they came to the moon, it’s probably something awful.

If you’ve been following my essays for a while, you’ll know that I’ve long suspected that some sort of Cairn-related plot twist will rear its ugly head at some point in the near future, and that mind-control eyeballs were perhaps only the tip of the iceberg. Well, after nearly a year of deliberation, I’ve settled on my personal theory of what this plot twist could be, but it’s far outside the scope of an essay focused on a single chapter, so I’m going to post my thoughts on that in another essay sometime in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for it if you want to see me go fully and embarrassingly tinfoil hat. (With my luck, chapter 83 is going to reveal what Aechmea meant by his cryptic statement before I get that essay done, and it’s going to be something banal, thus ruining my precious conspiracy theory.)

But enough about cornmeal and acne man, let’s talk about the trajectory Phos seems to be on, and also about Cinnabar.

For quite a while now, it’s been a pretty popular theory that Cinnabar will eventually kill Phos with their mercury, and it does feel like things could head in that direction. Phos is so far gone that they’re willing to kill anyone in their path, and in so much pain that their death could be construed as a mercy. And since they can best Bort in a fight, it would seem that Cinnabar’s mercury is the only thing that could actually stop them, especially since it could chemically bind to their alloy and poison Phos from the inside out. To be perfectly honest though, something about this potential course of events has always rubbed me the wrong way, but until this chapter, I hadn’t been able to pinpoint exactly what it was I didn’t like.

The whole story was started because Phos thought Cinnabar deserved better than their miserable lot in life. At no point did Phos, or the narrative for that matter, ever suggest that it would be for the best if Cinnabar were simply put out of their misery. Their plight warranted not just a release from pain, but a better life to replace it. And as they are now, Cinnabar probably doesn’t want to die anymore, and I imagine they’re glad they didn’t go through with their passive attempt at suicide. (Come to think of it, I think they’re the sole character who’s moved away from being suicidally depressed over the course of the story, instead of gradually succumbing to it.) So, now that the shoe is thoroughly on the other foot, and Phos is the one at rock bottom, it would leave a really bad taste in my mouth if Cinnabar’s response to Phos’s pain ends up being: “Yeah, you should die.”

So, although the plot is probably going maneuver Cinnabar into a situation in which they have to decide whether or not to kill Phos, I hope that it’s ultimately in service of that not coming to pass.

Speaking of Cinnabar, I really hope we finally get more insight into them in these coming chapters. Broadly speaking, more stuff has happened with them the past twenty or so chapters than most of the rest of the series. Their whole life was upended, they (seemingly) made a friend in Bort, and they’re finally making choices that affect the plot, which hasn’t really happened since volume two. But, despite all this, we don’t really know what they’re actually thinking, of what emotions they’ve been going through. You can make some inferences, but that’s not really as affecting as experiencing their perspective firsthand, and I think that’s why people get the impression that they’ve been made irrelevant to the story, despite the fact that they’ve been contributing to the plot lately. So, hopefully we’ll finally get some further elaboration on them in the near future; I think it would remedy the issue quite a bit.

I’ve been thinking lately that what Cinnabar did to Phos in this arc is kind of a grim mirror of how Phos’s desire to help Cinnabar became muddied over the course of the story. I don’t believe that Cinnabar was acting out of malice in chapter 78 when they suggested burying Phos in pieces. If they genuinely wanted Phos dead, they could have encouraged the earth gems to go along with Rutile’s murderous impulses, instead of coming up with a plan in which Phos might come back eventually—certainly no one else in that scene, sans Euclase, voiced any objection to Rutile’s idea, and if Cinnabar hadn’t spoken up, they all might have gone along with it. I think it’s quite possible that they were attempting to protect Phos by trying to appease the other gems’ enmity in a way that wouldn’t bring Phos permanent harm.

But, just like how Phos’s ever-shifting goalposts pushed Cinnabar to the back of their mind over the course of the story, it’s possible that their new life among the gems had the same effect on Cinnabar. Thus, in their mind, Phos was relegated to an important but altogether distant obligation that they’d deal with later, when the time was right. But since these are gems we’re talking about, the time is never right, and complicated problems like these never get dealt with. And just like how it was cruel and thoughtless when Phos put Cinnabar on the backburner, it’s cruel here too—especially if, as I speculated earlier, Phos was somehow awake this whole time.

Because I am a sentimental sap who still has a little bit of hope for a bittersweet ending instead of a complete tragedy, I think that Cinnabar might actually be a wild card in this situation, one who has the potential to save Phos from themselves. (I’m sorry. I can’t help myself. My mind is stuck in power-of-friendship mode, and it’ll probably stay there until Ichikawa beats the idealism out of me, just like she beat it out of Phos.) Keeping in mind what things Aechmea has been able to deduce either through direct observation through Phos’s eye, or what might have been reported to him from any Lunarians returning from an attack on earth, he doesn’t have enough information to figure out that Phos had a strong connection to Cinnabar. Although he’s confident now that Phos has no ties to anything they once loved, and is wholly dependent on him, the previous chapter shows that Cinnabar still means something to Phos, even in this state. Since all of this exists in a blind spot for Aechmea, I think it has the potential to muck up his plans—if Ichikawa deigns it to be so, of course.

Now let’s talk about symbolism, because there’s a lot of it. First off, I want to talk about a pattern I noticed regarding Phos’s changes, one which I discussed in the very first meta I wrote for the series. At the time, I speculated that the title of the art book, Pseudomorph of Love, was hinting at this pattern, but when the artbook was translated later courtesy of @red-dia, it turns out that said title was alluding to something totally different. Nevertheless, I think I may have inadvertently stumbled onto a method regarding Phos’s changes that seems too consistent to not be deliberate, and I’ll reiterate it here: With the very notable exception of the pearl eye, down to even the most minor of losses, every permanent loss and addition to Phos’s body has been tied to an attempted act of kindness. Specifically, Phos loses parts when trying to do something altruistic, and they are given new parts out of kindness on another characters part.

They had to have contaminated parts of their body scraped away after trying to save Cinnabar from falling.

They lost their legs while trying to help Ventricosus return home, and gained the new legs because of an act of kindness on her part.

Although the ice flows initially tried tempting Phos into giving up their arms by reflecting their self-loathing, it was only when they frightened Phos with the idea that Cinnabar might kill themselves if Phos doesn’t change quickly enough that they accidentally-on-purpose lost their arms. While Antarc initially dismissed the gold they ended up giving to Phos as useless, they changed their tune when they noticed Phos projecting their own low self-esteem onto the gold. To me, it seems like the act of giving Phos the gold was their way of telling Phos that they’re not worthless.

They lost a bunch of small pieces while trying to save Antarcticite

They lost their head while trying to save Cairn’s arm. And then Cairn... uh… Let’s put a pin in that for now, and come back to it when their character arc has progressed a bit further. The element of mind control eyeballs that may or may not even be real makes the situation a bit more fraught than I care to get into right this very second.

They lost Lapis’s hair while shielding Morga and Goshe from the Lunarians.

They gave away a piece of their leg so the Admirabilis would know they weren’t holding a grudge against Ventricosus

With that established, let’s talk about the pearl eye. The moment they received it was practically an inverse of the established pattern. It was a transformation motivated by spite on Phos’s part, and for Aechmea, it was an opportunity to exert control over them. Even the act of receiving the pearl eye made them sick, mysterious human particles notwithstanding. The ensuing chapters after they received the pearl eye are, as I’m sure you’re all aware, a whole lot darker and meaner than what the story had been up to that point. If I had to draw a dividing line between the part of hnk that is simply melancholy, and the part that makes the reader feel like a frog in boiling water, I’d use Phos’s first trip to the moon to demarcate these two tones—and the symbol that heralded this descent into hell was the introduction of an unkind addition to Phos’s body.

That brings us to the matter of their most recent loss. Since it’s now apparent that they won’t be getting their other parts back, we can look back on the moment they lost those parts for good and see if it fits the previous pattern, and in my opinion, it does. The reason Phos was in that situation was because they were making a last ditch effort to do right by everyone else, and take responsibility for their mistakes. It was at this point that they mustered up the last bit of kindness and courage they still had in their heart.

But the loss of a given part is only one half of the equation, which begs the question: with what sentiment will Barbata give Phos their replacements? Barbata has subtly given off the impression that he feels guilty about his role in the various atrocities the Lunarians have undertaken, and is disillusioned with Aechmea, but is as of yet unwilling to actually go against him. If there’s ever going to be a point in the story in which he decides to do the right thing instead of just following orders, it’s now or never. I’m counting on you, pasta man. Follow your conscience for once! Either way, whether Phos’s reconstruction ends up being an act of kindness on Barbata’s part, or simply another expression of Aechmea’s corruption is, in my opinion, a crucial distinction that will have ramifications for the future of Phos’s character arc. Speaking of which, it now seems like Red Diamond is the most likely candidate for a replacement, since Padparadscha is busy being asleep on earth.

I’ve talked about how a character’s eyeballs and where they got them from symbolizes their worldview, broadly speaking. This chapter seems to be a continuation of that. Kongou shaped the gems’ worldview, which is symbolized by him giving them their eyes, Cairngorm’s devotion to Aechmea is accompanied by them adopting eyes that Aechmea made for them, during the time that Phos was trying to balance the needs of both the gems and the Lunarians, they had an eye from both Kongou and Aechmea, and now that Phos only has the single pearl eye left, they’re thinking with a one-track mind from a distinctly Lunarian perspective: that everything that gets in the way of their salvation needs to die.

I also find it interesting that Phos’s original material is mostly intact, and what they’ve lost are chunks of their legs and head. It probably symbolizes something, but my brain is starting to leak out of my ears at this point, so I’m just going to remember it for later and see if the meaning becomes clearer in retrospect.

Regarding Phos’s alloy shaping itself into a lotus’s seedpod, my first reaction was that it was a rather ambivalent symbol to use in the context of Phos’s downfall. On one hand, the seedpod only appears when the highly symbolic flower dies, but on the other hand, while the flower is the part of the plant to which a number of cultures have ascribed auspicious meanings like purity and renewal, it is the humble, unsightly seedpod that goes about the actual business of rebirth.

But, as @rinboz pointed out in a post on the subject, it appears to be specifically evoking the image of an empty seedpod. If that’s what Ichikawa is going for, then the meaning is unambiguously ominous, to put it mildly.

Lastly, I brought up in my previous essay that it was highly convenient that Phos happened to trip off the table at the last possible second, and in a manner so noisy that it woke the other gems, no less. In this chapter, Phos lays the blame for their failure on the earth gems interfering… but that only happened because Phos made a racket. I speculated that they may have subconsciously sabotaged themselves—it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. I don’t know how likely that possibility is, but I think it’s one worth keeping in mind.

Well, that was heavy. But on a lighter note, I think it may be time for me to update the only good meta I’ve ever written, birdseki no kuni. What should Phos 4.0 be? I think this feral demigod of vengeance ought to be represented by a real apeshit bird, like an Australian magpie, or something. This will require further deliberation.

#houseki no kuni #finally got this done #i haven't checked if the leaks are out yet #but if they are i hope they don't invalidate half this post #land of the lustrous

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years ago

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Michael in the Mainstream: Joker

I don’t know if there is a single film as hard to talk about as Joker. I’m not talking about all of the manufactured controversy around it either; I just mean that this film is so dark, bleak, and heavy that it’s just so hard to figure out where to start. I will say this; the movie definitely has more in common with something like Logan than it does a Batman movie. It’s certainly not a traditional comic book film, with lots of action and excitement. Rather, this is a dark psychological thriller, a character study of a mentally ill man who means well but is slowly driven to madness by the world around him.

I’m sure you’ve heard everyone raving about Joauquin Phoenix’s performance, and they are absolutely not exaggerating. He is just mesmerizing as Arthur Fleck, the man who would become Joker. He is able to fill even the corniest lines with raw emotion, he truly sells how broken and battered this man is, and my god his laugh. HIS LAUGH. This is up there with Hamill’s laugh; it is so creepy, uncomfortable and with a sense that something is off about it that it gets under your skin. Even better: there is an in-story reason for his laugh, and while that may sound like the sort of cheesiness that resulted in Han Solo’s name, it’s actually done rather effectively.

I think the big thing with this movie is just how unabashedly uncomfortable it is. This movie doesn’t pull any punches in showing just how awful a place Gotham is, how sad of a person Fleck is, and how miserable his entire life is. From his uncomfortably emaciated body to his numerous mental problems to people everywhere treating him like garbage for his mental issues, this movie spends much of its runtime painting a painful picture of the sort of stigma that the mentally ill face. Fleck remains sympathetic for a good long while, but eventually he does cross the line (as he must; he does become the Joker, after all).

Still, while he is ultimately not sympathetic and the movie does not try to paint his actions as just, at the same time it’s hard not to understand what lead to all of this. Of course Fleck has culpability in what he does, but then you see what his mother did, what Murray Franklin does, what Thomas Wayne does, what his coworkers do, what his boss does, what strangers on the street do… it makes you consider if perhaps all of the blame really is on Arthur. We are all shaped by our environments, after all, and his was overwhelmingly bleak and negative and filled with tragedy.

Of course, that’s if you take everything you see at face value. One of the most clever things this film does is how it utilizes its lead character’s mental state to make you question whether what you’re seeing is real or not. There are some revelations late in the film that cast doubt on a lot of what we saw, and there are a lot of elements that are left ambiguous. The fact that we are following a character with an already fragile mental state and seeing the world through his eyes makes us question everything… and honestly, I think that’s a good thing with this movie. I think this movie, more than any I’ve seen in a long time, Is one that is meant to be viewed from different angles and perspectives, for each viewer to find their own meaning. It’s a film that seems perfectly constructed to allow this, to let many interpretations coexist with evidence to either one, but it never lets the film’s ambiguities overtake the narrative and swallow up the core concept: a character study of a tragically broken man’s descent into madness.

This film is a modern masterpiece, but I say this while also noting that this is not a film that will appeal to everyone. Again, comparing this to Logan feels apt; where that movie a stark contrast to the rest of the X-Men franhcise by being a dark, brooding Western with a post-apocalyptic aesthetic rather than a dumb action film with social undertones, Joker is a bleak character study that is dark and unpleasant (but in a good way) as opposed to the lighter, funnier, more action-oriented affairs Marvel and DC produce. This is a long way from Shazam, that’s for sure. As great as the film is and how I’d easily say it’s worth seeing for Phoenix’s performance, I can’t totally recommend this to everyone. You really need to understand going in this is not a traditional comic book movie, and that it is more akin to a psychological thriller like Taxi Driver (one of the chief influences of the film) than anything else. If that sounds good to you, or you just like Phoenix’s acting in general, you’re going to have a hell of a time with this. Otherwise, this film may not be your cup of tea, and really, that’s fine; I think the fate of any film like this is to be polarizing.

It’s so interesting, the conversations that have sprung up around this film. While I can’t say I’m a fan of all of them, this is one of the most dissected and scrutinized pieces of media I have ever seen, and there are so many different takes and interpretations on it even a few days after a wide release. I think this is one of those films that will be talked about and discussed for years to come, and it deserves it. I have rarely seen such an engaging movie that confronts me with horrible, uncomfortable truths about how we treat those who are different and how the negative influences of society can warp even the most harmless and well-meaning individuals into monsters.

But that’s just one possible take, a fragment of all my thoughts. To me, Joker is a lot of things. It’s an indictment of how society treats the mentally ill, demonizes, abuses, and stigmatizes them. It is a dark tale of how the mentally ill can be warped by toxic environments and bad influences into doing horrible things. It is a story about suicidal depression and negative coping mechanisms. It is a story about the cruelty of the rich and their apathy to the plight of the lower class. It is a warning to the dangers of punching down in comedy. It is a narrative told from the POV of the world’s most unreliable narrator, that will have you questioning whether what you’ve seen is really the truth or just the broken fragments of Arthur’s mind.

But most of all, this is exactly the sort of tragic tale that Joker would want told about himself. And I think that’s what truly makes this film great.

#Michael in the Mainstream #Review #movie review #Joker #joaquin phoenix #DC #comic book movie #psychological thriller

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shanastoryteller · 6 years ago

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okay some of you are like. really missing the point here, so we're just going get real basic.

I changed the house elf system to give it nuance. on purpose.

the canon system is just straight up "house elves love working for no pay, who cares if they're beaten for it, let's all mock Hermione for trying to change it"

that's not nuanced, or complicated, or interesting. if anything is slavery apologism, it's that. the thing about canon is that it's terrible. I've said this before, but if you're going to address house elves and not just hand wave their plight away, your options are just straight up revolution because slavery is uh fucking terrible and intolerable at every level, or you have to change it to make canon slightly less awful. so that's what I did.

house elves now directly benefit from the servant bond when they didnt before. magic is their equivalent to money, and they can use it to get anything they desire except clothes, and the only reason that clothes restriction exists is because I'm working somewhat within the confines of the rules jkr has set up. they used to be forest keepers, but less forest meant more house elves who needed somewhere else to go and some other source of magic.

but it's not all sunshine and puppies. it's not designed to be. because house elves can hurt the people they're bound to and those people are powerless to stop them, they resort to physical punishments. because firing a house elf for being disloyal is a death sentence, it's not done lightly, and it's illegal to do so if theres no family to take their bond specifically for that reason. and people abuse their power over house elves, just like bosses abuse their power over their employees, employees who's just can't quit because they live paycheck to paycheck and without money theyll starve. just like a house elf who doesnt have access to magic.

wizards don't like being bound to house elves. it's a servant in return for being extremely vulnerable and literally having them feed off your energy. the ultra rich are usually the only ones with house elves, and i think they'd really rather just pay a few gallons a week than be vulnerable.

what do you do then? what's the solution? it's a flawed, exploitative system, but it's not the black and white easy "this is terrible" of slavery. its modeled after capitalism. terrible, of course, but not so terrible that most of us just dont carry on living with it, and hey. it's really working out to the benefit of some of us, even if a lot of other people are a pay cut away from death.

characters realizing that the house elf system and flawed and needs to change is a journey, because part of growing up is realizing that complicated things are more messed up than you thought.

this isn't me, a white person, wringing my hands and clutching my pearls because how dare someone accuse me, a liberal, of slavery apologism

this is me, an author, saying that by calling the house elf system slavery, you take all that nuance and complications and grey area that I put in so much effort to include, and you throw it away. slavery isnt nuanced or complicated or justifiable in any way. it's just terrible. you turn characters growing up and realizing things arent as easy and straightforward as they seemed when they were younger, and turn it into "they approve of slavery, actually"

this most recent chapter we have draco apologizing to dobby, saying the system is wrong, and going "Hermione was right about house elves, I should talk to her about the research shes been doing to help and offer to help her"

I put a lot of set up into that. it took us a long time to get there. and by calling an exploitive system where creatures are compensated for their labor and not considered property and calling it slavery, all that effort and character growth and nuance is just ... destroyed

and i, unsurprisingly, take issue with that

#house elf discourse

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clayvedevs · 5 years ago

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Emyn Arnen

24th December, Fo.A 3019

My dearest Theresa,

It is that magical time of the year again. Our eager anticipation for Yule has finally come to an end. Yet for me, Yule will never be the same again. Not without Boromir. This will not be my first Yule without him to celebrate by my side, but this shall be the first one without even the comfort of his impending letter. I do indeed miss those who are not among us now, but I am even more grateful for those who are. Your friendship has been a boon to me, my friend. And I shall cherish it all the more for I know now what it is to lose loved-ones. War does that to you. I hope you never witness its curse in your land.

Forgive me for the lapse on my part in keeping up correspondence with you this year. It was not my intent to neglect you, sweet Tessa. I wish I could have written sooner, for I have the most wonderful news to share. I have finally found love. Yes, you read that right. Her name is Éowyn, daughter of Éomund and she is a shieldmaiden of Rohan. The slayer of the Witch-King. We were troth-plighted a few months back in her homeland, by her brother Éomer, the King of Rohan. I wish you were there. You'd like her. For I believe you two have much in common, your fiery determination to protect your people not the least of them. The more I get to know her, the more she reminds me of you. Whatever did I do to have such awe-inspiring women in my life?

I received your letter and, my friend, I wish you to know that I am most sympathetic about your worries lately. There are no empty platitudes I can give you that will sooth your tense brow. But I have faith in you, my dear friend. We had one such Yule when Gondor had been plagued with droughts, crop failures, and calamities all year. That Yule, I had found no joy in visiting our Lossarnach estate - as was our tradition every year. I had been worried about the survival of our people. But I remember Boromir telling me, "Brother, it is not a question of 'is it enough', but rather 'is it worth it'." I didn't understand it then. And sometimes I believe I never will, for the worry will always be there. Yet his words still resonate in my mind and I think he meant to say that the worry is worth it. For that is how we know we're loved. Ah. I'm not making much sense, am I? Perhaps I've been around Mithrandir too long.

As your people say - have a merry Christmas, Tessa. May this coming year bring a resolution for your worries with it. You do not need my well-wishes really, as you are a wish in yourself. I am so fortunate to call you my friend.

May the Valar bless you and yours.

Yours sincerely,

Prince Faramir of Ithilien, Steward of Gondor

#Submission #Letter Exchange #Faramir #submission #thank you!

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dishonoredrpg · 5 years ago

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Congratulations, ROSEY! You’ve been accepted for the role of THE HIGH PRIESTESS with the faceclaim of SOO JOO PARK. The High Priestess fits you like a well-tailored glove, ma’am, I must say that. Levana is a fascinating study in what occurs when you let Necromancy take root without letting it fully control you. This application very much made me feel like a student of Levana’s, someone who could look up to and admire her while also trembling at the power she dragged along behind her. The human elements were there, yes, but it became clear by the end of the application just who Levana was: a frame, a shell, a portrait of a woman in the middle of decay. She’s cold and merciless and starving, and I can’t wait for her to meet the dashboard.

Please review the CHECKLIST and send your blog in within 24 hours.

THE HIGH PRIESTESS APPLICATION

- OOC -

NAME: rosey

PRONOUNS: she/her

AGE: 23? i think?

TIMEZONE, ACTIVITY LEVEL: PST area and i don’t even know...i think i can put out 3-4 replies a week, although i do take breaks sometimes just to keep myself refreshed and going! so i think my activity could be a 7/10

ANYTHING ELSE?: ty for taking the time to read the app !! uwu please feel free to throw it in the garbage disposal BECAUSE IT’S TRASH

- IN CHARACTER-

TW: Death, child death, dark themes, and abuse throughout the application

SKELETON: The High Priestess

UPRIGHT

Intuition -- She has always had a remarkable intuition, knowing exactly how to pull and tug at minds and heartstrings. And so too has she always trusted in the way that she works her magic, in the way that she pulls and weaves the energies of the world to give life to once-beating hearts. Her intuition has always been her greatest asset, as though the Undying God herself has granted it to her and made it a blessing greater than her powers.

Sacred knowledge -- From a young age she understood her place in the world and why the Undying God had placed her upon it. There was a certain surety that came from understanding the Beginning and the ever-looming End, the tale of the wolf, the serpent, and the folly of man. How the birth of the Undying God came to be. Her parents looked at her and were jealous of the daughter that they had, of the age-old look in her eyes and how ignorant she made them feel.

Divine Feminine -- A divine woman is one who is circumspect in all things, tying together intuition, compassion, empathy, and inner wisdom. And at one time, she did have empathy for her fellow man -- for each person who sweated, bled, and ached as she did. But the ability to commiserate is no longer an option to her, but that does not taint her very intimate understanding of the plights of others because, at one point or another, it is likely she has felt such things herself. Having lived the life of man three times over, how could she not?

Subconscious Mind -- It’s in her dreams that she feels closest to them, the Undying God. There have been times where she swears she can hear their voice, and feel her touch. But then she wakes and the voices fade to whispers, which fade to breezes, which fade to nothing more than a melancholy silence. Every time she wakes and finds herself conscious, she wishes to hold a wake and mourn the loss of being so close to something so divine. But, as she wakes, that hunger comes for her again, and her subconscious mind is eclipsed by that yawning hunger for power once more.

REVERSED Secrets -- She keeps too many of them. Hoards them hungrily, like a bear dragging one poor doe after the other into its den to gorge on before the long winter comes. She keeps them even when she knows that they are of no use, even when she knows that they’ll die with her and none shall ever be able to taste the potency of their sweetness on their lips. Maybe it’s because she thinks she’s given too much to the world at this point in her life -- and these are the only things she can think of to call hers and hers alone.

Disconnected from Intuition -- It happens when she begins to perform resurrections that drain more from her and those around her. The weeks that follow leave her disconnected from herself, leave her tormented by her own silence. Her eyes shift around the room, trying to linger on a face that would give her that familiar pull in her gut, that certainty in her soul. But she’s left adrift in an ocean of quiet, and she has no choice but to lean on her logic and reasoning, to deduce until she can be as certain as she can be. All she has is her intuition and that, too, is slowly dying.

Withdrawal & Silence -- At a young age she became very adept at withdrawing into herself, at slipping into shadows. She realized that biting at the hands that sought to strike her only ended up in her getting hit harder. That raising her voice only ended up leaving her hoarse from her sobbing and tears. As all things in life, this means of survival was learned and it was a more difficult lesson to swallow. But after living two lifetimes, she realized that it was difficult to feel pain when you’re made of nothing but hard, unmoving stone.

NAME: Levana Morrigan Morrell

LEVANA Being given the name of a dead thing was perhaps the most ironic prelude to her story. Being forced to act as they would have expected her sister to, the most cruel. Her mother never missed the chance to tell her how beautiful her older sister would have been, with her wide, dark eyes and sweet disposition. Even though her sister never lived past the second summer of her life, she was the one that was meant to bring them out of their destitute life. What a disappointment then that the namesake had to be given to a child that was far less capable-- according to her mother -- of gaining such a future. To which her father would sagely nod his head, watery, large eyes blinking at her sorrowfully as she sat at the rotting table, cheeks burning as she pushed her food around. She forgave them for it, though. After all, Death could rob people of their ability to love.

MORRIGAN It’s the name of her rebirth. It’s the name that she gave at the Temple, the name that she would give at courts when bestowing them with the great gift of her presence and knowledge. Sometimes used in place of Levana, other times attached to it. Nevertheless it was a name that would forever remind those who had bore witness to her power the Undying God had blessed her with. It was the name that was tied to the image of a woman bent low over the corpse of a wolfhound, teeth bared, eyes as dark as the coal that she smothered around her brow. Then the wolfhound’s teeth bared, like hers. It’s eyes opened, like hers. And soon Death gave way to Life, just as Levana gave way to Morrigan.

MORRELL -- NO LONGER USED/RECOGNIZED A name that was never meant to make something of itself, and a name that never would. Her father, whenever he was in his drunken stupors, would always remind her that the Morrell name was cursed and that she was the culmination of its disappointments. The words would slide off of his lips, the slurs a true litany illustrating her uselessness and shame. There was no use in taking the bottle away, though, not until it slipped out of his grasp and rolled onto the floor. Now, though, she never bothers to acknowledge her surname. Why should she, when they know her as Levana the Necromancer? She had promised to let the Morrell name die with her, and it did. It died with her the moment she put breath into the life of the first corpse that was laid at her feet.

FACECLAIM: Soo Joo Park Marquita Pring Golshifteh Farahini Freida Pinto Inbar Lavi

AGE: 220 years old

DETAILS: You have not always been power-hungry. It was from the very first line that I think I fell head-over-heels in love with her. She has so much power held within the palm of her hand but the cost has been so very, very great. When you read about the necromancers all you can really see is their power and glory of the title, the High Priestess being a force within herself, gaining the ear of a king, the power of a God, the reverence and awe of so many more. But there is such great weakness and pain that comes from holding power -- and it’s reverberated within every single aspect of the High Priestess. She’s suffered such great loss and the most tragic part is that she can’t even grieve it because that ability, too, has been stolen away from her.

I feel like...in general, people might think of a character like her -- old, withering, so close to death as someone boring. What is there to do with a character like her? What does she have to live her? But that’s what I love so much about her. She’s seen so much, has been through so much and she’s jaded by every single thing in the world. She’s lived for so long, what’s to keep her from doing what she wants and saying fuck all to everyone and everything? There’s a motivation that’s keeping her from completely letting loose on them all. Perhaps it’s the mere love of the long game but I think it’s because, at her core, she’s a giver and she wants to leave some semblance of good -- what she defines as good -- in this world.

BACKGROUND:

It’s an unfortunate thing, to carry the legacy of a ghost before you’ve even taken your first breath. Her parents were never able to really let go of dead things, though. Their marriage was long dead before they even tried for their first child, the love that they had once had for one another before even that. They held onto their dead ideas and dreams just as they had held onto the memory of their first daughter years after she was buried six feet beneath the dry soil of the summer ground. A famine had swept through their country and Levana’s poor sister had never stood a chance, despite the prayers that had been offered up by the Morrells time and time again. The last vestiges of their hope for something living had been placed on Levana and even when she had been placed into her mother’s arms, howling and red-faced, it hadn’t been enough. Where her sister had been a thing of beauty, she was a shock of white hair and sharp edges -- looking like the corpse that her sister very much had been.

The irony of it all was not lost on her. It was perhaps why she had such a wry, dry sense of humor despite how tragic it actually was. In the face of fate’s cruel humor, she couldn’t help but laugh along with it. She still had air in her lungs, a brightness in her eyes and a smile so bright that the moon had no choice but to look on in envy. When her mother would bite and spit at her, she would simply turn her gaze the other way and go out to the fields once more - either to lay in the wheat or lounge upon the back of their old, weary work-horse. As the sun would shine upon her pale, ivory skin she was more than content to let it eat away at her, all too happy to live a life of ease, if it only meant that she not bother the world with her existence and it not bother her with its woes and tragedy. Levana had disappointed her parents enough, there was no need to disappoint the rest of Tyrolhm by imposing her useless heap of skin and bones, her cutting mouth and staunch moralities.

When she wasn’t blissfully sketching away with a bit of charcoal stolen from the hearth or wrestling another bottle out of her father’s hand, she always managed to corral the kids of the neighboring farms into grand, elaborate games. She was always the leader, the one who set the rules, who dictated what was fair and what wasn’t -- just as she was always the one to clean up the scrapes and bruises of her comrades, whether they “fight for the king” or not. Even when she ruled with an iron-fist it was clear that she was soft around the edges, forever armed with a warm smile and a bawdy joke that would have made her mother balk and her father grab the broom to smack her with it.

What a lovely childhood she had. She wished she could remember it, now. She wished it had lasted longer.

The days of playing games of mages and holding mock-court were long behind her. The reality of her inability to be anything more than a farmer’s daughter was beginning to make the Morrell household a rather suffocating place to be. Too odd-looking to marry off, not savvy or competent enough to hold the land and keep it to herself. There was no profit to be made in caring for the children of the countryside or teaching the war-ravaged and orphaned creatures how to find joy in capturing the smile of another in charcoal, or coaxing them into sweet sleep with tales of pirates and warrior women. No man wanted a woman so useless. No family wanted to pay a dowry for useless little Levana who could only offer a shining -- albeit impish -- smile. The only suitor that had come knocking had left in quite a hurry when he realized how strong-headed she could be, how sharp her tongue was and how her eyes seemed to see right through the facade of gentility and courteousness. For the umpteenth time in her life, she had been sent to bed with an empty stomach -- though, throughout the night it had been full of laughter at her suitor’s expense.

Not long after, on the night of her 20th birthday, when her parents were ready to sell her to the most ill-reputed house in Tyrolhm that was furthest away, the Undying God decided it was high time that the blessings they had placed upon her be brought into the light -- the revelation of her abilities shining unabashedly in the bright, spring sun.

Her little gaggle had all grown and had children of their own or moved to have adventures across the Sahrnian sea. Some of them even became clerics at the Temple, while she was all too content to take each day as it came, toiling away at the dying soil, listening to the bickering of her loveless parents, frequenting the markets and listening to the songs of bards that were passing through. Levana had taught the children of the countryside her games -- telling them tales of the glorious adventures she and her friends had when they were in the golden years of their childhood. Wars raged while wielding sticks in the place of swords, and pieces of barks as shields. One of the girls had stumbled into the stream -- its waters tumultuous and high from floods that had come from the melting winter snow. The fretful, panicked hands of the small children tugged at her skirt, pulling her from her place beneath the shaded tree, voices high and weeping as they tried to pound life into little Errena’s chest.

That was the first time Levana could recall giving everything.

That was the first time Levana could remember trying.

She remembered peering up through the leaves, watching them sway in the light breeze. Years later, she knew that it was the last time she had ever known the meaning of peace.

Untrained and reckless, she had poisoned the earth that was there -- and because it hadn’t been enough, she had poisoned something within herself as well. The grass had grown black beneath her fingers, parched and dry as though it had never known green days. She remembered the cries of horror from the children as they had watched her body bow over little Errana’s, had heard the guttural noises that tore from her lips, the darkness that had been cast over her eyes. If the Undying God were to have had a voice that could be heard, it would have been the very same that poured from her lips as she called Errana’s name from the land of the dead. When she had arisen with the girl’s cold, trembling hand in hers, she looked at the children that stared at her in terror -- a weary smile on her lips as she told them to run along and keep this secret between them. There was no need, though; terror was the most effective muzzle.

She packed her bags and made her way to the Temple, leaving the Morrell lands and the Morrell name far behind her. Levana never thought to question why it was so easy for her to leave those ties behind -- the land of golden wheat and warm, drowsy memories. She never thought to ruminate on which part of her had died that fateful day when she had exchanged a life of peace for Errana’s beating heart. Levana built her life anew as Morrigan, giving the name at the steps of the Temple, while enlightening them about the tale of a girl once known as Levana. There had been no need, though; it would always be worth it for the lives that she managed to call back from the arms of the Undying God. Her tutelage at the Temple illuminated the path that she had willingly turned a blind eye towards in favor of lazing days spent adventuring under Tyrolhm’s golden sun. Ravenously, she consumed the tomes that they placed in front of her, testing the limits of her power and reflecting on the tolls that they took on her. For one of the orphan girls she resurrected a bird that had been target practice for the impish little boys -- and for that she lost her taste.

For a queen’s handmaiden, she had animated the limbs of her poxed brother, and for that she lost the life of the only person she had made there that she could have called friend -- a wizened old tutor whose eyes were milky and whose lips carried lines from smiling so often. The years began to bleed into one another, her hunger for knowledge growing as her abilities did until she began to spend restless nights squinting into tomes as the wax of once-tall candles melted into stubs. The coldness of corpses and the silence that they offered became more familiar to her and far more preferable than playing the enigmatic mage at the courts that the Temple recommended she visit. But for many years, she clung to who she remembered herself to be, the charming and vibrant girl that had spent so many days dictating which child would be allowed to be king, who was to be the advisor, the general, the serf, the mistress, and the queen. Her cutting tongue was known to cause riots within courts, stirring subjects with barks of laughter, making handmaidens and queens flush -- charming kings and princes and royals alike.

They whispered of her across the lands and the wide, raging sea -- the necromancer with silver hair and dark eyes, whose smile you wished to see before you died, whose siren-like voice you heard call you from the embrace of the Undying God.

But just as death and life were inseparable, were one, so too was the love and hatred of those who heard the tales of Morrigan. There were those who sought to control her, just as she had controlled the corpses -- shackling her in dungeons until she did their bidding. There were kings and queens who wished to bed her and use her for nothing more, casting her out of their castles mid-winter when they realized she would not. Poisonings and beatings were something she learned to become familiar with (demoness, devil, defiler), prejudice, bigotry, and poverty haunted her as assuredly as her sister’s nearly-forgotten ghost had. And what did the Temple do but preach to her about the practices of her power and her duty to guard wayward kingdoms from their tumultuous, violent ways? What more was she meant to do but bear these burdens and slights, so that they might know she might usher in a new age of peace? In her many travels and over the two centuries that she walked the earth she had lived a number of lives. The mage, the pick-pocket, the farmer’s daughter, the con, the philosopher, the artist, the scholar. Not a single one of them had known peace as intimately as Levana Morrell had.

But she was dead.

Only brought back to life once, in the chamber of a queen she thought she had loved, across the Sarhnian sea who always kept a wolfhound at her side. Morrigan thought she had the heart of a wolfhound too, which made it all the more easy to lay her heart at the queen’s feet. She remembered how she had poured herself into the creature, had harkened for its heart to beat, for its heart to rise. Some nights she can still taste the growl that had torn through her throat -- an echo from the wolfhound’s maw. She could still feel how her spine had bent over the limp form, arms twitching, back arching as the creature began to rise to its feet, tongue lolling, eyes black. In restless fits of sleep, her and the hound became one in the same. Sometimes she would wake, touching her teeth, thinking that they might be sharp. Within that week, she had been ushered out of the castle by one of the queen’s advisor, his eyes unable to meet hers as her threw her traveling cloak over her shoulders, shuddering away when his skin had grazed hers, paying no mind to the way he had the guards drag her since her legs didn’t seem to respond and gave way.

When she was returned to the Temple she wept for a fortnight, unable and unwilling to leave her bed. She had given everything and they had taken everything. There was no one but herself to blame -- and what was worse, she still craved the power that had poured forth from her. She hadn’t noticed how her legs had failed her, only the way all eyes within the court had looked to her in awe, in terror, in reverence, in horror. In the years that followed, she learned to use her legs once more, the iron casts and crutch aiding her, adding further allure to the century old necromancer whose bright eyes brought corpses to life in the Undying God’s name. She knew what power the whispers of common folk and courtiers had. When she had laid her heart out for the queen consort, something within her had exhaled its final, shuddering breath. Something within her had risen from its ashes and come to life -- awakening with a ravenous, insatiable hunger that eclipsed any she had ever known.

In the eyes of the great court, she had seen within them the reflection of the death defier that was whispered about. In them, she had seen the power that she had. She could realign the stars and there was no doubt that they would look at her with that intoxicating concoction of horror and awe. They would have no choice but to do as she wished -- and what she wished was for that power to be wielded by her and her alone. To bring about the Golden Age of the world as she would define it.

The woman that stepped into the court of King Septimus was a far cry from the girl that had spent her days lounging beneath the large branches and green leaves of an age-old tree. Her iron casts had echoed as she entered the large, grand doors of the castle and from the moment she laid eyes on Septimus, she saw a future of glory -- the Golden Age made incarnate. He was malleable beneath her touch and in the first decade of his rule, she flourished. It was not unlike when she was a child, dictating this and that, her the cutting edge of her words coming off as roguish and charming, refreshing and novel as the entirety of his court leaned in to listen. Morrigan forgot, though, how quickly novelty can wear off and before long the revulsion sets in, her contempt for Septimus beginning to become a nigh-impossible pill to swallow. She thought that perhaps her intuition had failed her, that once again fate, with its cruel humor, hoped to make a mockery of her once more.

The mage with all the power in the world at her fingertips was unable to bring anything more than a handful of decades of tenuous peace, known for nothing but carnage and carnage alone under King Septimus’ rule.

She didn’t even have the ability to laugh, as she once might have been able to. That power had been taken from her, too.

The yawning hunger within her, though, did not balk in the face of kings, though. It recognized neither the limitations of Morrigan’s own body, the intricacies of politics, nor the iron, bloodied fist of Septimus. All it knew was how close she had been to power -- fingers outstretched, yearning, reaching, grasping. She remembered the weary faces of the soldiers as they returned from the carnage, how pale and wide-eyed they had been, how their armor had shone, painted with the scarlet blood of the fallen. One soldier’s eyes had lifted to hers and within them, she saw the lifelessness of so many corpses that had been laid, prostrate at her feet before harkening to her call, their once-still hearts beginning to beat something fierce.

If she could not bring them peace with King Septimus then the issue was simple; she did not have enough power to. That made her culpable for this carnage. The sharp-toothed hunger within her stirred, sinking its claws deeper into her as the last vestige of her patience was swallowed whole. She would take the power that was not given to her. She would crown a new king and usher in the Golden Age of peace that she had envisioned, or upturn the board and start this game anew, with the rules dictated by her and her alone.

Her lips had twitched as she recalled a girl, standing atop a rock, dictating to those beneath her the new rules of a new game.

That young girl had been rather good at that.

She would be too.

PLOT IDEAS:

THE GATHERING: The most difficult part about being a necromancer is the fact that everyone fears you. Levana is quite aware of the fear that she incites in people -- and the problem with wanting a major shift in power is you need support in order to make sure that the kingdom isn’t lost in total and complete anarchy. The best way to ensure that the shift of power has some control and stability is by having a group ready to take control when there is a vacuum of power. And in order to have a group with a shared agenda and mission in a monarchy, one has to have a figurehead to throw their support behind. First, though, she has to assess who is loyal to who -- or who, at the very least, can be swayed. Which means networking, connecting with people, communicating with them. This is going to be a rather difficult piece of her plan to achieve since the way that people connect with others is by emoting -- and she can’t do that anymore. It’s going to certainly push her out of her comfort zone and is going to be an interesting test that will force her to reflect how much she’s changed, and how she’s lost the ability to do one of the most human things: connect with others. THE REVOLT: I broke this up in two parts because right now I see two definitive ways for The High Priestess to incite a revolt (although this could totally clash with the plans for the rp, I would be more than happy to completely scrap these OR do them and have them fail). So I think, first, she would have to find someone to support -- because she would never ever ever be the face of a revolt -- if she were, it would be coming from a mage and that would throw a wholly different light to the war and it’s not one she cares to think about (much). First, I think that she would find two of the more malleable minds that are in line for the throne -- the World and the Chariot. Depending on which one she thinks is better for the position, she would talk to them directly and either enlist their help OR if they have something in the works already, try to push herself into a position of power within the revolters group so she can have a definitive say in how this is going to play out. THE FLOURISHING: Despite how much she’s grown with her power, there’s always an opportunity to grow even more. One idea that I keep on playing around with is mass resurrection. She’s been able to resurrect individuals with repercussions, but I think she wants to try and do more. The frustration with the limitation of her powers is beginning to grow more and more apparent, and I don’t think she’s going to be satisfied until she’s exceeded everyone’s expectations. Including her own. When she performs her magic, she gives everything she has into it, pouring pieces of herself until there is nothing left -- but it still isn’t enough. If she learns how to do this, the tides of war will be changed at her say-so. Why wouldn’t she want that? THE INSTITUTION: The Temple taught her a lot, there is no doubt. But it did not teach her everything and distinctly ties the power of the mages to this idea that they are either blessed/cursed and that they owe something to the Undying God for their abilities. However, the fact that there’s only one way of learning how to control something so personal and unique to oneself does not sit well with her. It makes her lips curl and coats her tongue with bile whenever she thinks of the waste that there must be -- how a mages power can be limited by such narrow-minded thinking. And I think that the Wheel of Fortune, the Moon, and the Hierophant are evidence of that -- that, though they study the arcane there is no need for their methods to be archaic. The times are changing and so should their perceptions of magic, their understanding and belief in the Undying God, and their perception of themselves. THE EVOLUTION: One aspect that I would like to explore with the High Priestess is her perception of herself because as she grows more disconnected with the humanity that there is within her, it’s only natural that she would reflect over whether or not this is the next stage of the necromancer. There is no other like them, so why aren’t they considered gods? Why aren’t mages revered for all that they do for those who are could be conceived as “lessers”? It’s a dangerous train of thought that I think she’s careening whole-heartedly towards and something that I think could take a dangerous turn for her. Her body is literally decaying and yet she can stave off death itself at the expense of others. Isn’t there something god-like about that? WHO IS GOING TO CHECK HER? THE AGENDA: Okay this is gonna sound ICKY but Levana is the type to utilize her resources and the thing about being an orphan is that no one looks twice at you. Which makes you an asset -- someone unseeable, someone who can listen with there being no threat. The Temple didn’t utilize the orphans as they should have, and I think that (if it’s allowable) Levana has no problem utilizing these resources and taking advantage of them. For every whispered secret, she gives them a coin or resurrects a beloved pet. For orphans who give especially prized information or promise their loyalty to her, she might even hold the possibility of resurrecting their parents above their head. No one gives to her without receiving in return. Besides, you can’t survive long at court without having a means of leverage or the assurance of mutual destruction.

CHARACTER DEATH: Triple dog fishy dare you to do it, coward.

- WRITING SAMPLE -

Another bawdy dinner -- lavish, opulent, and wasteful. Dark eyes drank in the scene before her, the court members whose mouths were stained red with wine, howling and cackling. The women of the night, scantily clad, flitting from one odious lord to another, shoving their breasts in the faces of those who seemed more like boars than men. Their wives drinking more and more so that they might pretend that they didn’t notice. Perhaps, in another life, she would have acted like one of the boorish men, drinking to her heart’s content until the room grew hazy at the edges of her vision and the smile became a fixture on her face. But not now. Not with this path that she walked.

Instead, all she could do was look on in disgust.

Every barrel of wine that was rolled in might have been used to pay for a bowl of stew for a child, Another bed in the orphanage. A bushel of wheat for a hungering family. The ingredients for a doctor to mix a rare salve that might soothe the growths on a suffering, aching face. Or, at the very least, they could have saved it for when the economy of the kingdom would assuredly crumble. But who was she to say? It wasn’t as if Septimus had the capacity to process an intelligent thought. Levana had a working theory that he had three main thoughts and they rotated between power, pussy, and potent wine. Anything more than that would throw him off and likely send him into a tantrum. She supposed it hurt his brain to expend itself in such a manner, which is why he would only be able to respond in the most barbaric way.

When he patted her hand to garner her attention, she wanted to let her lip curl and pull away -- but her body was slow to respond. Today was particularly vexing -- she had brought The Wheel Of Fortune to an orphanage and the two of them had set about practicing their animations on corpses. She was resistant, which had meant that Morrigan was forced to do the majority of the work.

It’s a shame that such intelligence was outweighed by cowardice.

Her limbs were weary and deft to her commands, choosing to listen when they wanted to, which meant that her movements were labored and slow. As a result, she had no choice but to sit, watch, and endure the putrid smell of the sweaty man who was unfortunately the crowned king. So she swallowed down the bile that coated her tongue and turned to him -- she had never been more thankful for her inability to show her disgust -- brow rising as she subtly pulled her hand onto her lap.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” she apologized, playing coy as she tilted her chin down. It made her look as though she were batting her eyes at him, but the fumes of his breath made her want to gag. It was nothing more than an avoidance tactic that required minimal usage of her facial muscles. Morrigan’s eyes slid away from his. “I couldn’t hear you over the sound of your bloated sense of self-importance...”

Her voice wouldn’t carry in the room. It always seemed to fall away, giving out at the end before she could quite finish, fading into the noise, into nothing.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” He bellowed, shoving the poor drunken woman off of his lap as he leaned towards her. “SPEAK UP, MAGE.”

Against her own sense of self-preservation and thoughts for cleanliness, she leaned closer to the king, turning into his ear. “I said that your subjects will no doubt speak of the debauchery of their king.” It wasn’t exactly a compliment but it was the truth. Hopefully he would hear her over the sound of his own labored breathing -- she was curious to see what his reaction might be.

Septimus leaned back with a grin and looked at her, hesitating a bit as he tried to process what she was saying. Perhaps he was waiting for someone to tell him whether or not he should consider the words a compliment. He didn’t quite have the faculties to gauge it for himself. His eyes flickered over her face -- not quite seeing her and unable to interpret the micro-expressions.

It was like looking for fog within mist.

There was nothing to be found except further nothingness. There was something blissful about knowing that she could never be understood, that interpretations of her words and actions could never be understood correctly. Another beat passed and then another. Her mouth didn’t shift upwards, her eyes didn’t wrinkle in delight -- she merely looked at him as she waited for him to grasp her words. Then Septimus let out a loud guffaw and she inclined her chin, turning away.

“You’ve got quite the mouth on you,” he howled, “I bet back in your day before you started wearing the ugly make-up and looking like death you could’ve used it for something too!”

“Yes,” she answers, eyes flickering back to him briefly. “I happily used it for making already small men feel smaller.” Her lip twitched, nothing more than a slight lift, before dissipating quickly. It seemed that her muscles were too tired for that, even. “To chew up bones and spit them back out.”

He certainly caught that.

He snorted derisively and waved his hand. “Don’t bring talk of death here, not tonight, Morrigan.” Ah, Morrigan. So he truly was done with her for the night if he wasn’t calling her m a g e. Tediously, she rose to her feet, nodding at the Wheel of Fortune to hand her the crutch, leaning against the wall. Levana’s eyes shuttered wearily as she rose to her feet, iron casts around her legs groaning and creaking as she righted herself.

The king watched on in boredom, not bothering to help as he pulled another woman onto his lap.

Levana turned around and bowed.

“Long live the king,” she sighed, a pretty little (little, nothing more than a light lift of her lips, barely-there) smile pulling at her lips as she bid him goodnight.

One could only hope that he choked on his own tongue between now and tomorrow morning. As she put herself to sleep she couldn’t help but smile as she thought of the sound of him choking.

EXTRAS

Anything you’d like can go here, whether that be a playlist, a pinterest board, some headcanons, or whatever you’d like to show us!

#accepted #accepted: the high priestess

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p-and-p-admin · 6 years ago

Photo

Interview given to The Severus Snape and Hermione Granger Shipping Fan Group. (sharing here Admin approved)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/199718373383293/

Hello Subversa and welcome to Behind the Quill, thank-you for letting us get to know you a little better.

Many of our members will be familiar with your stories which include This Time, Improbable Felicity and of course, The Love You Take.

Okay, let’s jump right in.

What's the story behind your pen name?

My tagline on LiveJournal was Subversive Subversions, and that kind of says it all about me. I like to stir the pot

Which Harry Potter character do you identify with the most?

I identify most with Hermione, the book-loving swot. Oddly enough, on the various Sorting tests I’ve taken, I always Sort into Ravenclaw. (Until I took the Pottermore test, where I Sorted into Slytherin; I blame years of living in Snape’s head).

Do you have a favourite genre to read?

I grew up reading voraciously. My first genre of choice was romance. As an adult, I began reading thriller/suspense books, and I really didn’t come back to reading romance until I began writing fanfic.

Do you have a favourite "classic" novel?

It would be a toss-up between Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Jane Eyre. I see shades of SSHG in them all.

At what age did you start writing?

I took my first run at writing when I was eight years old. My parents, however, discouraged the idea of me being a writer, and even though I started a number of stories over the years, I never finished one until I began writing fanfic in my forties.

How did you get into writing fanfiction?

It was in April 2005, while I was impatiently waiting for HBP to be published. I was noodling around the Internet and I stumbled over Mugglenet. As I was gobbling up all the content, I found a link to their fanfiction.

I perused the genres, and under romance, I found the pairings. When I saw SSHG, I was horrified. So of course, I had to read something.

I read The Long Wait by ancientgirl, and I couldn’t stop. I was completely enchanted, and I thought to myself, “I could do this.” So I started writing Master of Enchantment.

I have to say that Potterverse, and specifically the SSHG fandom, became my obsession and occupied all my thoughts for several years. I pretty much read nothing but fanfic and did continual re-reads of the HP series during that time--this from a woman who previously read 3 novels a week.

What's the best theme you've ever come across in a fic? Is it a theme represented in your own works?

JKR may not know it, but her greatest creation is Severus Snape, the antagonistic protagonist.

I have always been driven by Snape’s plight. It is the theme I am most drawn to in stories I read. Over and over again through my years of active fanfic writing, I tried to give him redemption and the happiness he deserves.

What fandoms are you involved in other than Harry Potter?

I watched the birth and rise of the Sherlock BBC fandom on LiveJournal, and I saw a number of friends go over to that particular dark side. I read some of the fic, but was never tempted to write it.

As a favour to a friend, I wrote a Twilight fanfic story for a gift exchange on LiveJournal (it was awful).

So, Potterverse is really my only fandom.

If you could make one change to canon, what would it be? Do you have a favourite piece of fanon?

I basically hated book 7. The whole Deathly Hallows thing felt like something JKR introduced out of thin air. I hated the interminable camping trip. I hated the epilogue (except for “and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew”) and the idea that you must marry the person you crushed on in high school.

Mostly, of course, I hated the death of Snape.

So my change would be to have Snape survive, be vindicated in the eyes of the world, and live to earn the happiness he had never known before.

My favourite fanon thing is the myriad ways we have of making Snape survive Nagini’s attack.

Do you listen to music when you write or do you prefer quiet?

I always listen to music. Every piece I have ever written has its own soundtrack. I have piles of CDs from the time before I had an iPod, with the name of the current story I was writing scrawled on it in Sharpie. The longer pieces had soundtracks that evolved over the course of the story. There are songs that still pierce me with the memories of what I felt when I wrote. Music is an integral part of my process.

What are your favourite fanfictions of all time?

Wow. This is a hard question. I’m sure that any list I create will be missing an important story. Nevertheless, here are some, in no particular order:

Care of Magical Creatures

She Was Beautiful to Him

Guard... Check... Mate

Second Life

Big Name Death Eater

Marry a Choice

The Absinthe of Reason

I'll Never Take Advantage

Irresistible

The Bookshop

The Price of Madness

King of Swords

Denial

No Loyalty in the Moonlight

You Can't Have One Without The Other

The Language of Flowers

Are you a plotter or a pantser? How does that affect your writing process?

I am a total pantser. It means I can write myself into a corner and have to write myself out again.

What is your writing genre of choice?

Forever and always, romance. Often with a side of erotica.

Which of your stories are you most proud of? Why?

Transcendent Quality of Remembrance, because there were two timelines running and it was an intricate plot device. It is also one of the most heart-wrenching stories I’ve ever written.

Did it unfold as you imagined it or did you find the unexpected cropped up as you wrote? What did you learn from writing it?

I have to admit, the unexpected always crops up as I write. I’m one of those people who believe without apology in my Muse.

As for what I learned, I found that writing the entire story before trying to post it meant the story would hang together better without me having to write myself out of a corner. I probably went back and changed the first chapter seven or eight times due to developments in the plot.

How personal is the story to you, and do you think that made it harder or easier to write?

Everything I write is intensely personal to me. I am immersed in my story, and I feel every emotion. It is the only way I have ever written. I don’t think I could write something I didn’t feel. So it’s neither easier nor harder. It is what it is.

What books or authors have influenced you? How do you think that shows in your writing?

Georgette Heyer, who wrote a large number of Regency romances, was and is a huge influence on my writing. I think I absorbed her turns of phrase and plot devices and romantic hero figures through my skin. It absolutely shows in my writing.

Do people in your everyday life know you write fanfiction?

Not my coworkers or family outside of my husband and children. My best friend knows I write fanfic.

How true for you is the notion of "writing for yourself"?

For me, it’s the only way I can do it. I have to be consumed by the basic idea and let it live in me as I write. I write the stories I want to read about the subjects that fascinate and inspire me.

How important is it for you to interact with your audience? How do you engage with them? Just at the point of publishing? Through social media?

During my active fanfic writing years, I was immersed with my audience. At that time, SSHG Fandom pretty much lived in LiveJournal, and I was active there every day. I was not very good at answering reviews, but I tended to put author’s notes before and/or after chapters as a way of engaging with my readers.

What is the best advice you've received about writing?

To write the story I want to read. To fall in love with my protagonist.

What do you do when you hit writer's block?

Walk away from the computer and pick up a pen and pad of paper.

Has anything in real life trickled down into your writing?

Many, many things about my romance with my husband were fodder for the romances I’ve written.

Do you have any stories in the works? Can you give us a teaser?

I am striving to complete my first novel of original fiction. It’s the beginning of a trilogy. All have been written (first draft), and the first has been to a professional editor. I’m striving to complete a draft with her suggestions.

It’s about a swotty girl and her teacher. (shock)

They live in a magical world with conflict. (further shock)

There is lots of sex with a BDSM twist.

The protagonist is (in my heart) Severus Snape in disguise. He has his own brand of physical unattractiveness and a mesmerizing presence.

Any words of encouragement to other writers?

Write what’s in your heart. Use a good beta reader. Take constructive criticism in the spirit it is offered. Ignore trolls.

Thanks so much for giving us your time.

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #severus snape #snape #pro snape #hermione granger #snamione

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themattress · 6 years ago

Text

Wow. Tomoko Kanemaki SUCKS!

I decided to be masochistic and read back through the KH2 novels by Tomoko Kanemaki. And I just have to say: that there are actually people out there who like her writing and consider it to be in as good or superior to the games astounds me. These books are awful.

When they just straight-up adapt the game to text like the KH novels and the COM novels (except for the R/R one, but R/R sucks anyway), it’s fine. They even do the visits to Land of Dragons, Beast’s Castle and Olympus Coliseum better than the KH2 manga does, plus swaps in Agrabah for the far more important Port Royal. But that’s the only good thing I can say about them. In literally every other regard, the game and manga are infinitely superior.

The main problem is simple to sum up: Kanemaki is a fanfic writer. A pretty stereotypical KH fangirl. This in of itself wouldn’t be a problem if she weren’t adapting the games, but she is, and when she combines the game adaptations with her own fanfic based on what she wants to see, there is inevitably going to be a clash between them. The story written by Kazushige Nojima that she is adapting to novel form does not gel at all with what she writes, and as a result she has to either change that story (to the detriment of both it and its characters) or she neglects to change it even when it directly contradicts her own writing. This happens so much that it really makes for an excruciating reading experience. So let me list all of my problems with these novels point by point, to clarify just why Kanemaki’s writing fails so hard.

- I’ll get the biggest one out of the way right off the bat: Kanemaki is obsessed - and I mean obsessed - with the existential plight of the Nobodies, which includes the Draco in Leather Pants treatment to Organization XIII (”Is it really wrong to seek what you’ve lost?” is asked at one point, as though it’s a profound question. Um, when you’re doing so by inflicting that exact same loss upon millions of innocent people, yes it is!) The worst part is that characters (usually Namine, but Axel, Riku, Saix, Xemnas and even Ansem the Wise get on it at some points) are constantly repeating the exact same angsty inner monologues and internal (and sometime external) quasi-philosophical debates about Nobodies. I’m not kidding, it’s usually word-for-word. “Is it right for Nobodies to exist?” “Nobodies have nowhere to go or call home”. “Do Nobodies really lack hearts?” “What defines a heart?” “If Nobodies don’t have hearts, then why do they feel such-and-such?” “Why were Nobodies even born?” “Nobodies aren’t meant to exist, but does that still mean...?” And so on and so on, blah, blah, BLAH. Hearing this over and over and over and OVER again throughout my reading of the novels doesn’t make me more sympathetic of the Nobodies, it actually makes me less sympathetic and want them to go away so I don’t have to keep reading the same damn woe-is-me grade school-level existentialism! I want to keep reading about Sora, Donald and Goofy, damn it!

- Three characters who were mostly on the sidelines in KH2 somehow get a majority of time and focus here: Riku, Axel and Namine. They are even forced into an apocryphal trio together. They are basically treated as the de-facto secondary main characters next to Sora, Donald and Goofy, with their actions and development being given equal importance. Actually, that’s a lie - Riku, Axel and Namine are honestly given more importance. There is so much wrong about this - not only does the trio not feel organic and reek of bad fanfic, but each character in it isn’t well portrayed at all compared to the game or even the manga.

- Riku had the most potential, since he’s always a major character and a more talented writer could’ve come up with more feasible things for him to have been doing off-screen during KH2. But what Kanemaki has him do is ridiculous. If it’s not just stalking Sora, Donald and Goofy as a silent protector (which is the least interesting thing you could do with him), it’s bullshit with Axel and Namine, or fighting Saix midway through even though Kanemaki still keeps Saix’s later line of “Didn’t Roxas take care of you?”, or having him fight Xemnas in the Old Mansion only for Ansem the Wise to show up and Xemnas then just...retreat for no reason, letting Ansem live and thus ensuring the later destruction of his Kingdom Hearts like a dumbass! And through all of this, she frequently makes Riku default back into snarky, arrogant asshole mode, which doesn’t fit his character at this point at all. Also, while I saw no deliberate yaoi bait in the writing of the KH2 game, it’s definitely present in these novels.

- Axel. Oh my God. Anyone who hates what was done with him as Lea in the games, you should blame Kanemaki, since she actually ran with that kind of writing and characterization for him in these novels long before that happened in the games. He is treated as a totally trustworthy good guy who is a great friend to Roxas, Riku and Namine. The one dick move Kanemaki has him make is quickly backtracked on and then swept under the rug. His whole villainous role is whitewashed at every turn, from both what he intended with Roxas (legit deciding to kill him is changed to attempting a murder/suicide so that he can die with his best friend) to everything concerning Kairi (no, he didn’t kidnap her at all, that point is hammered in frequently, he was going to take her to Namine and they’d then see Sora together! And he didn’t want to turn Sora into a Heartless, that was a wrongful assumption on Saix’s part! And Saix summoned those Dusks on Destiny Islands, not Axel! Axel is chivalrous and heroic and does everything possible to protect and save Kairi! Gag me.) It’s so obnoxious, and beyond removing all of the character’s edge, it’s a blatant case of giving a character a major role in a story that they aren’t supposed to have one in just because he’s a favorite of the writer.

- Namine is an equally blatant case of this, but her case might be even worse. Not only is she THE source of the repetitive woe-is-me existential Nobody monologues and debates, with her whole character arc being changed to revolve around this which honestly makes her unintentionally unsympathetic and annoying, but this portrayal of her has a negative effect on her in both fandom and canon. In terms of fandom, a cult of bad apples (usually yaoi fangirls who already hated Kairi) arose around Namine following KH2, declaring her as superior to Kairi in every way and worthy of being the real main heroine of the KH series. Not only is this false, but it arguably got started because of these novels (translations of which had made their way online long before they were localized), where a character who literally only got 10 minutes of screentime in the game literally gets transformed into the main heroine and one of the most frequently appearing characters in general, even if her “character development” is horribly written and amounts to her being a mouthpiece for Kanemaki’s views. Then again, maybe they just projected onto Namine due to her introverted, fond-of-drawing nature, and Kanemaki was just one of them and thus produced something that kept them going. It’s a Chicken/Egg type of thing, I guess. But whatever the case, what it did in canon was worse. Kanemaki was the first to write for Namine after KH2, in 358/2 Days, and her characterization of her translated in game form to the stagnant caricatured plot device that Nomura then realized was easy to write for and convenient for making other convoluted plot turns happen.

- Come to think of it, Kanemaki’s partnering up with Nomura for Days probably did a lot more harm than just with Namine. Because her obsession with the “What Measure is a Non-Human?” trope never truly leaves the series after Days. It doesn’t pop up in BBS, since that was being worked on before Days, but everything afterwards is sure to feature it in some abysmal way or another, whether it be Nobodies, replicas, data copies or beings of pure darkness. The “Nobodies have hearts after all” comes straight from her writing (even if she had it as a needless overcomplication of the original idea that strong hearts can share feelings with those without it and thus serve as a heart for them too, while Nomura’s retcon is just “Nah, the body can regrow a heart, Xemnas lied”.) A lot of KH3′s worst writing might have not existed had Nomura not picked up on Kanemaki’s fixation with woobified “non-beings”.

- Sora honestly feels like an afterthought for Kanemaki. She’s so eager to write new fanficcy material for other characters, but not for the actual main protagonist, who only gets straight-up game adaptation. Oh, except that some of his lines that were “mean” to the Nobodies (and thus “OOC”, as both KH2-hating anon and Kanemaki seem to think) are changed or cut out.

- Y’know how the KH2 manga made Kairi even better than her game portrayal? Yeah, well this novel makes her far worse. First off, her defiant “you’re not acting very friendly!” to Axel is cut because Axel is whitewashed in that moment (he even readies himself to defend Kairi from the Dusks which Saix summons). Later, she does not get away from Axel because he was never kidnapping her to begin with here. She then realizes that he’s really a good person before Saix kidnaps her, with Axel desperately trying to protect her. She then only shows up toward the end when Axel once again comes to be her hero (again thwarted by that dastardly Saix), with her moping about how she can do nothing to help the brave, noble Axel. (I feel sick just typing this...) In the finale, not only does Kanemaki not take advantage of the potential Kairi development that the game relegated to optional text boxes, but she actually destroys Kairi’s entire arc long before BBS did by making one of her few additions to Kairi be an inner monologue she has on the shore of Destiny Islands alongside Mickey, Donald and Goofy just before Sora and Riku make it back, where she’s just wishing with all her heart that they’ll come back because “We’re here waiting for you. We’ll always wait for you.” BULL-FUCKING-SHIT. Kanemaki, just like Nomura and Oka, clearly has no interest in Kairi as a character on her own. She is used here as a plot device for the character development of Axel and Namine, characters she is interested in, even though Kairi had more significance and screentime than them by far in the actual KH2 game. Geez, even Nojima tried with her!

- Roxas is written just fine during the prologue, since his scenes are just lifted from the game. But when he resurfaces in the final novel, added material make Axel be the most important thing on his mind. Even his final thoughts as he makes the full merging with Sora is that he hopes to meet Axel again. More deliberate yaoi-baiting, and more shoving Axel down our throats. Hell, that last novel is even named “Anthem - Meet Again / Axel Last Stand”. God damn it, Kanemaki, Axel was not important to KH2. It’s not his story. Get over it already!

- Hey, remember how in the game DiZ/ Ansem the Wise did a total character 180 due to offscreen reasons when he came back after the prologue? That was dumb. The novels add new scenes for him, so Kanemaki could actually rectify this issue....OR she just repeats it, since the first new scene she gives him also has him in 180 mode due to offscreen reasons!

- Xemnas and Saix both have their levels of menace neutered thanks to the existential angst of the Nobodies affecting them too, with none of their inner monologues bemoaning their fates really adding up with their actions. The game let you make up your own mind as to whether you found them sympathetic despite their monstrous behavior, but Kanemaki is clearly trying to force the sympathy angle, and it really lessens them, especially Xemnas.

- Really, only Xigbar, Xaldin, Demyx, Luxord, and the trio of Hayner, Pence and Olette were written completely accurately out of the KH-original cast. Nothing felt out of place with them.

- Other nonsensical fanficcy events besides what I’ve already mentioned include bringing stuff from COM (like Repliku) back up frequently instead of keeping focus on the story at hand, a totally different version of how Namine and Axel split from Riku following the prologue (one that continues making Namine unintentionally unsympathetic), Riku having Mickey make the promise after the prologue before Kanemaki’s own 358/2 Days retcons this to happening before it, Riku meeting with Maleficent in Hollow Bastion, Mickey meeting with Axel in Hollow Bastion, Axel being the one to wake Goofy up after his “death”, Axel having a sort of odd friendship with Pluto, Ansem the Wise being the one to provide the box of clues for Riku to give, Axel pretending to betray Riku and Namine so that he gets let back into the Organization and thus be able to rescue Kairi, meetings between the Organization where they talk about totally different and less interesting matters than they did in the game, and having Namine stalk the group throughout the finale as she thinks her last pretentious inner monologues. Also, given its subject matter and how it plays during Days’ opening, I swear to God that Kanemaki created the Axel/Roxas ghost scene that Nomura added to KH2:FM. That it shows up in the last novel, word-for-word, a month before KH2:FM’s release, proves this.

- The misplacement of Disney Castle. This one REALLY bothers me. She places Disney Castle between Beast’s Castle and Port Royal in the third novel. This makes no sense whatsoever, since not only was this meant to be Maleficent’s re-introduction to Sora, Donald and Goofy, but now it comes after Maleficent already made an alliance with Sora and his friends at Hollow Bastion! And then all of a sudden, she’s no longer keeping the Nobodies at bay and is back to self-interested villainy! And there isn’t any dialogue explaining this away or anything! We still have Maleficent saying “If it isn't the wretched Keyblade holder and his pitiful lackeys!” as if she hadn’t agreed to temporarily join forces with said wretched Keyblade holder and his pitiful lackeys! Way to ruin one of the best Disney world visits, Kanemaki!

- The whole finale and especially the ending itself, which were so powerful in both the game and even the manga, has no power in the light novel style of writing Kanemaki uses. Part of that isn’t Kanemaki’s fault, since so much of the finale’s greatness is visual and that obviously can’t be recaptured in text form. And yet she still makes some baffling pacing decisions, with stuff like the aforementioned Namine stalking passages throwing the whole thing off, LOL moments such as Riku himself outright admitting that he has no idea where he got Kairi’s Keyblade also breaking the immersion, character alterations like to Xemnas and Kairi ruining the effectiveness of things they do, and a truly WTF-inducing final chapter where the entire Secret Ansem Report is put before a novelization of both the credits scene where Sora sees Kairi’s drawing in the Secret Place and the epilogue scene where they get the King’s letter.

Overall, these novels just don’t feel like Kingdom Hearts II to me. Even the KH2 manga, the middle of its first half notwithstanding, felt like it. This does not. And that’s because whatever the faults in its narrative, KH2′s story was first and foremost a fun Disney/Square crossover adventure starring Sora, Donald and Goofy, with angsty existentialism merely being one of its themes and meant more for players to think about and discuss rather than the characters. The novels tell a story about angsty existentialism starring characters who think about and discuss it, with Sora, Donald and Goofy’s adventures being a passionless afterthought. That there are people who honestly think that Kanemaki doing this “fleshes out the characters” is shameful. Constant angst and grade school-level philosophical circle-jerking is not character depth. It is pretension of depth, hence the word “pretentious” which fits perfectly here. It takes a lot more than talking and expressing feelings at length to constitute character development. It requires meaningful actions, and it requires some form of growth and change. Kanemaki’s characters are largely static, simplistically characterized beings who spin their wheels in terms of both actions and growth. Riku does not change: you can barely tell he has any kind of depression or has experienced any kind of humbling. Axel does not change: he’s a great guy from the start and has no internal problems to overcome, only the external one of being separated from Roxas. Namine does not change, she goes through the same questioning and angsting over her existence and the existence of other Nobodies until the last minute where the answer just suddenly comes to her (in fact, it was apparently in her all along and she just forgot it. Shades of Sora’s dumbass “Power of Waking” arc in KH3 here...) Any actual development that happens with some characters (like Ansem the Wise) comes straight from the game...and Nojima didn’t write that all too well either! There is just very little that’s enjoyable about the KH2 novels to me, and Tomoko Kanemaki’s writing is to blame for that.

In the words of Lemony Snicket: I highly advise you to not read these books.

#Disney #Square Enix #Kingdom Hearts #Kingdom Hearts II #Anti-Tomoko Kanemaki #Bad Writing #Opinion #Analysis #Truthbomb #This has been a PSA

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salavante · 6 years ago

Note

Aesop 29 or the Helmsman

(I’ve drawn his floating head a lot, so here’s him with his hood up, which I draw less) Also formal apology because I think like maybe no more than four people who follow me play Destiny, so a couple things may sound a little esoteric. I’d suggest checking out the Ishtar Collective (links to offsite) if I refer to something unfamiliar.

Full Name: Aesop-29

Gender and Sexuality: Male and Homosexual.

Pronouns: He/Him.

Ethnicity/Species: Exo, from the little crop of Destiny fancharacters that I have.

Birthplace and Birthdate: Unknown factor. But Aesop was found by his Ghost in the middle of nowhere, in a southwestern state that I have not chosen yet. Arizona, Texas, Colorado and Southern California are all candidates. Aesop has just a little bit of a Texan accent.

Guilty Pleasures: Aesop is trying to learn how to play guitar and is really bad at it, making him very shy and nervous about his attempts. Similarly, Aesop enjoys singing, but usually does it when no one else is around - because no one else has really heard him sing before, it is a well kept secret between him and his Ghost that he’s actually pretty good. I personally like to keep the list of music that he likes to the 50’s-60’s bracket to match the kind of retrofuturistic style that the Golden Age tech in Destiny has. We the viewer read it as being ‘old’, even if it’s much, MUCH older than we realize because the setting is far future. That’s really all that matters, that we recognize it as being antiquated. His favorite of the very small pool of albums he has access to are Marty Robbins’ “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs” and Nancy Sinatra’s “Boots” and “Sugar”. Sojourn teases him about it and has thusly introduced him to the feeling of shame. He also likes drinking alcohol even if it doesn’t actually make him drunk. Sometimes he does it out of spite. Someone you don’t like? Pound his drink right in front of him and walk away.

Phobias: Aesop’s kinda agoraphobic - he feels trapped and panicked in enclosed areas with lots of people, can be overstimulated by large groups of people talking/making a lot of noise. This makes him mostly useless in large-scale conflicts. He has managed to curb some of this by being accompanied by Sojourn or Calico to areas or situations that are high risk (whether that means a combat scenario or just going to The City), but this can get squirrely because Calico doesn’t have a ghost anymore and if killed would die permanently, and Sojourn has a tendency to get worked up in a fight and leave him behind on accident. If everything goes well though, Aesop is perfectly functional fighting in the small group that is his fireteam - himself, Sojourn (exo warlock) and King (human titan). His ghost, Chanticleer, can also sometimes talk him down if he’s starting to spin up into a panic attack. It’s something that he wants to fix, but, existing within the confines of your anxiety is a cold comfort that he indulges in. In general, he’s a very anxious person with a lot of existential dread, but he puts on a clownish, brazen act and hopes people don’t notice.

What They Would Be Famous For: Honestly, probably something very mundane, like breaking a dopey Guinness-style record or something like that. The entire point of Aesop is that he is very average in his skills in a world of blisteringly powerful space wizards and the like. I find his challenges are more about what goals he sets for himself and if those goals conflict with the status quo. Does his worth need be defined by how good he is at killing things vs. is the pursuit of personal wellness and happiness selfish in the context of a world fighting for its survival. Can these things coexist. etc.

What They Would Get Arrested For: Probably something relatively benign done for the sake of pulling a dangerous stunt in the name of fun or looking cool. If he was a regular ass human in a normal modern setting, probably taking a nice vintage car for a joyride.

OC You Ship Them With: Aesop will have a love interest in the comic canon, but I’m gonna keep that under my hat for awhile yet. It’s not Cayde though, Cayde is dad. If Amanda Holliday was a man, he’d be utterly and entirely in love, but, alas. He’s still infatuated with her platonically though, and thinks she has pretty much the coolest job in the world. A promise of visiting her is a good way to entice him into going to The City.

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: When death is not a factor, this becomes less of an issue, hah. Aesop and his bff Sojourn have killed each other a number of times in training, to an almost nonchalant degree. Aesop has also been killed much more in training, by his fireteam’s resident titan, King. Aesop will also find a rival in a local Fallen pike gang, the leader of which has the placeholder name of Easy Rider. I also have a Cabal villain I am throwing around and trying to decide if they’ll stick, but I need to do a lot more work and research on that. They’re my least favorite enemy type mechanically, but I think they could make perfectly acceptable antagonists in a narrative.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Aesop does not read. He can, he just doesn’t. I think maybe, MAYBE, someone could get him to read comic books, but those aren’t very sturdy and I feel like the amount of intact physical copies at this point would be almost nothing. The pool of movies and media that he has available to him are very sparse, but he absolutely drowns himself in spaghetti westerns, and would probably also like trashy action movies if they were available to him. I also think he would like Grease, HAHA. It has cars and guys in leather jackets singing in it. He’d also probably like any kind of rustic, western themed musical. And anything with cars in it would have his immediate interest no matter how bad it is, but he’d zone out in any parts he doesn’t like.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: To be honest I think most of the time, movies are a little too long for him and lose his interest partway through. He has a really short attention span and anything too long, complicated or artsy will lose him and he’ll start being fidgety and chatty and start making his boredom everyone else’s problem. Even if there’s a movie he likes, if there’s a part that’s boring to him, he zones out. He probably watches the same 2-3 movies over and over again, which is fine because his available library of media is probably really small. I like to think that they probably have movies in some kind of archive that they put up publicly in The City every once in awhile, like they have a projector that puts it on the side of a building and people just bring chairs and shit. Aesop has an aforementioned fear of crowds but he probably does some hunter parkour bullshit and perches somewhere at a healthy distance to watch from afar, as long as it’s something he thinks he would like. If he doesn’t he gets up and leaves.

Talents and/or Powers: Aesop seems to have an interest in vehicles, but due to a bet with his mentor, Calico, he has not actually been taught how to drive a Sparrow and so pines for them from afar. As said, he’s learning how to play an instrument, and if we want to be technical, is a Gunslinger speced Hunter with the Golden Gun super. He is very bad at being stealthy, as he is very impatient and is also a little bigger than the average exo. He’s just kinda tall and wide and tends to clunk around. If his Ghost Chanticleer wasn’t as clever as she was, Aesop would probably be perma-dead by now.

Why Someone Might Love Them: He’s kind of a dumbass and a space cadet but has the potential to be very sweet, and the people he cares about, he latches on to really hard. Similarly, when set to a task he cares about, he does not quit. Unfortunately, many of his goals are unresolved, but it does not mean that he will stop trying. If he were to, say, become romantically interested in someone, he would go to great lengths to connect with him, even if it meant doing things Aesop himself may not like. In specific circumstances, Aesop may find that he has a great capacity for nurturing and bringing out the best in other people, a talent Aesop himself undervalues. Though he’s not all that intelligent, Aesop is very reflective and existentially inquisitive, and thinks about a lot of big picture stuff that other people might push aside in an era of crisis. Though he may not understand science or the way the world works in a mechanical sense, he is awed by it, and is a great appreciator of natural beauty. He’d cry at a particularly beautiful sunrise, if he could cry. I’d say he could be described as having a romantic soul.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: To be honest, Aesop has trouble establishing empathy with people he doesn’t know very well, and so is less invested in Earth’s plight than he probably should be (it would not be hard for Dead Orbit to sway him to their views). This makes some people think that he doesn’t take his charge seriously, and they also usually assume that he’s a slacker because he’s plateaued in his abilities so early. Really, Aesop is acutely socially anxious, can have panic attacks in large crowds, and generally prefers to stay away from The City unless he needs to go there, and so has a big emotional disconnect from it. Calico and Chanticleer have tried to get him more accustomed to groups, but has been thusfar mostly unsuccessful. His insecurity and anxiety also cause him to pull odd, dangerous stunts to prove his worth, making him unreliable and impulsive. He can bungle social interactions rather spectacularly, and is easily goaded into doing really stupid shit. Really, he is a person who may just be “too much” for some.

How They Change: Oooooghhh….I can’t talk about this. I forgot how frustrating it is to not be able to talk about things because you’re going to make a comic out of it. Suffice it to say he’s gonna change a lot.

Why You Love Them: I think Aesop encapsulates a lot of anxieties I have post-college. Aesop is a person in transition who is unsure of his future, knowing only that he can’t quit now, because quitting means failure and failure means death. Because he is in transition, he is anxious about forming relationships with people, worried that either he will be left behind by them, or that they won’t like him when he’s “finished” becoming a person. I think he has a complex relationship with his personhood and sense of self. I dunno, I think that’s an interesting anxiety for a protagonist to have. I am also interested to see what Aesop will end up contributing to his society/organization and his interpersonal relationships, and if he’ll be happy with it. I’ve put a lot of work into him, the ‘original Aesop’ I had in mind might as well be a completely different character now. Aesop was originally a little cameo that I did in our TTRPG game, Godslaughter, because my boyfriend had put a dunmer cameo character into our game and I wanted to return the favor. Then he made a sheet for him. Then I decided to keep him around, then I decided to play Destiny 2, then I decided I loved it, lol. There is still a version of Aesop in the TTRPG but he is so incredibly different, they may as well be different characters. We refer to him as “Bad Aesop” but should probably call him something more dignified (we won’t).

#solrika

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theonceoverthinker · 6 years ago

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OUAT 2X20 - The Evil Queen

Regina! What a pleasure to feature an old a-QUEEN-tance over here!!!

Once you’re done laughing from this exceptional pun, why not stay for the rest of the review below the cut?

Press Release With the aid of Hook, Regina attempts to put a plan in motion that will help transport herself and Henry back to Fairytale land. But her plan revolves around a fail-safe that was planted within the curse, which if triggered could wipe Storybrooke off the map - and kill all of its inhabitants; and Emma’s suspicions about Tamara grow. Meanwhile, in the fairytale land that was, the Evil Queen asks Rumplestiltskin to transform her into an unrecognizable peasant in order to kill an unsuspecting Snow White, with the twisted aim of earning the love and respect of her subjects. General Thoughts - Characters/Stories/Themes and Their Effectiveness Past I think this segment was incredibly well handled in its framing. The segment is able to clearly show how Regina’s reactions to her life and her impressions about her circumstances are dead wrong while still telling a tragic story for her. Like, it is very clear that the audience is supposed to laugh alongside Rumple (A framed mentor figure with a touch more moral ambiguity at this time) as she’s decrying claims that she’s an Evil Queen and be with Snow in abject horror when we see the destroyed village. That said, we’re also meant to also see the tragedy of Regina being on the cusp of real change, only to have her own remorseless history come back at the very worst moment.

Besides just the framing, the idea of neutralizing Regina and making her spend time with Snow in an alternate form was inspired. The resulting characterization of Snow and the effects of her kindness (Namely that all it takes is some one-on-one time with Snow in order to remember the potential goodness in your heart because she is honestly just that soothing and kind of a presence) is something that’s honestly much smarter than it has any right to be. But what’s better is that for all of Snow’s goodness, it DOES have a limit, and that is abruptly reached and more when she discovers the burnt village. Also, great job Ginny for a small bit at the end of her screen time where she goes through multiple expressions of anguish after letting Regina go, both as a show of her building frustration with the consequences of goodness and her frustrations with Regina. I’m honestly willing to bet that right after this episode is when the grouchier Snow from “Snow Falls” shows up. Finally, I’ve just got to say that this is such a better handling of the possibility of Regina’s goodness than the flashback in “The Cricket Game.” Here, Regina doesn’t just fail a test she was all but bound to, but she crosses over a tangible line of decency and hurts countless others. Present The present does a lot more in terms of plot progression than story progression, but it comes with more than a few solid character interactions and moments.

I enjoyed seeing Regina and Killian working together. They have a good rapport and the betrayals and speeches between these two villains are just great. I love the little ways they screw each other over, but also this light bit of compassion they share too (Ex. Killian giving his condolences for Cora’s passing).

The Emma, Henry, Neal, and Tamara subplot was equally interesting! The search through the apartment makes for an engaging mystery, even though I know the outcome of it. There’s always this worry in my heart that they’re going to be caught and when they do, it makes for a fun moment of realized tension. Everyone’s characterization (Or somewhat fake characterization concerning Tamara in her scene with Emma) is fully in-line and the conflict is an understandable one with little nuances that make for compelling bits of dramatic irony.

The plot progression itself is fine. What we learn about the trigger and Greg and Tamara’s plans is well spread out and interspersed between good character moments. Insights - Stream of Consciousness -”Actually, I prefer with the lights on.” I bet you do, Captain! XD -”She is his mother, despite all the horrors!” Very good, Snow! Look, as far as the current circumstances of this show and season have been thus far, I’m of the mind that the Charming family is currently right: Regina does deserve to be able to see Henry, but given her history and especially her recent behavior, limiting her visitation while she continues to better herself is a completely fair thing to do. No one’s denying that Regina is Henry’s mom and the one time it was done, it was appropriately framed as a wrong outburst. -”Rumple’s cell.” David...while still a supporter of the sentiment I just presented, that’s...too far. -THE PANDA BLOOPER!!! -”But I am not evil.” Regina, you just burned down a village! That’s pretty evil! -Damn, Rumple. Cutting off trade with King George’s kingdom. That’s coooooold. ...but kind of awesome. -I love that when characters, it’s explained how they’ll look different to the world while still being played by the same actor! THat’s clever as hell! -”They still see me as The Evil Queen which they made me.” Regina, no. -Regina, this is Henry. What did you expect when you were leading up to everyone dying? -Awww! Good job giving condolences, Killian! -I wonder what it would’ve been like had Cora and Regina (And presumably Henry) went back to the Enchanted Forest and started fresh? -Snow’s actually giving Emma really good advice here! She knows no one wants Henry to get an incorrect impression about the circumstances of his parents. -I LOVE the music that plays as Snow saves Regina! It reminds me of a superhero’s theme! CAN WE GET SNOW IN THE NEXT AVENGERS MOVIE?! -Killian, how can you tell that that’s Maleficent? I can hardly tell that that’s Maleficent! It looks more like what happens when the Mummy fucks Loki! -OH SHIT! I FORGOT THE GLASS COFFIN COMES BACK!!! -”Someone from another forest taught me. Long story.” HOLY SHIT! DID THEY HAVE HERCULES PLANNED FROM THE END OF SEASON 2?! I LOVE THIS SHOW! -”Not usually [Referring to how fun stakeouts are]. But this one? Yeah, kinda.” Awwww!!! Some cute Swan Believer! -I like how there is a direct consequence of Emma not heeding Snow’s words. -So I like how Regina has moments of surprise as Snow talks about how there’s still good inside of Regina. It feels like it’s just as much of a surprise to her for her own sake as it is for Snow’s sake. -I wish past Snow remembered this destroyed village in “The Cricket Game’s” flashback. Like this episode just makes that flashback even dumber. -Snow is perceptive as FUCK with the reflexes of a GOD! -I LOVE that look of frustration on Snow’s face as she lets Regina get away. It contributes nicely to her growth of disdain for the consequences of her goodness! -”Startling. Some people would say striking.” Is this a taco commercial, because why not both? -”The one thing I excel at is surviving.” I guess this is the first aspect of that line (Other than maybe his second voyage to Neverland?)! Neat! Arcs - How are These Storylines Progressing? Regina’s Redemption - Regina’s regressing a lot in this episode and I kind of struggled with how I felt about it. On one hand, it does work on a character level. Regina’s pretty dramatic and I can believe that would be her reaction to the idea of being stranded in Storybrooke would be a big one. However, watching this regression and seeing her say how she believes that the only reason she’s The Evil Queen is because Snow and Charming made her that way is just annoying to watch and makes me feel barely sympathetic at all to her plight. Like, if Regina hadn’t shown such strength in the first half of the season, I’d have felt differently, and while get that Cora’s death and this bean incident changed things, this is such a dramatic change that I don’t know if I can enjoy it (Especially when one considers how she was able to stop herself from forcing Henry’s love in “Welcome to Storybrooke,” an even more recent example of her strength). Jeez, she even ignores Henry’s pleas and memory wipes him! And I know she improves in the very next episode (I’m having serious Dark Hook flashbacks or flashforwards, whichever they would be called), but in the confines of this episode, it goes a little overboard. Killian’s Revenge/Redemption - So I know that I’m going off of a few lines here, but I love the setup for Killian’s realization that revenge isn’t what it seems. The entire opening to the downstairs elevator scene speaks to the fact that while Killian values his revenge, its conquest essentially means that his life is over and the fact that he shows even the tiniest bit of doubt there shows that there could be more in store for him. That said, until he reaches that point, he still does want revenge and will fight to ensure it, no matter how unscrupulous and awful he has to be in the process. Greg and Tamara - Gotta say. While not super impressive nor memorable as characters, Greg and Tamara are pretty clever with the knowledge they’ve been given. Their plan to recruit Killian and neutralize Regina is pretty well thought out, and their covert nature was only partially exposed due to a complete accident! Favorite Dynamic Swan Believer. Look, this one is just fun. Seeing Emma and Henry bonding on a stakeout, sharing ice cream, and breaking-and-entering together is fantastic and cute. I love seeing the little bond that’s grown between Emma and Henry, especially after the whole lying arc from a few episodes back. This is great payoff and plays into what one would naturally expect from an eleven year old when he’s helping his mom foil his dad’s fiance: could his parents get back together. I like how Emma explains to him very clearly that that’s not the case (And I swear, that’s not a shipping thing. That’s just a matter of being careful of his expectations) but also gets the added bonus of his speculations being a consequence of not listening to Snow’s advice. Writer Jane Espenson and Christine Boylan are our writers today! And I liked what they came up with. Snow’s character progression in the past segment is as smooth as peanut butter, and she’s just the tip of the iceberg. All throughout the story are well-written character moments with mostly good dialogue. It’s only failing is, as I said before, is some of Regina’s present dialogue, specifically during her conversation with Henry. Rating 9/10. This was a good one! The story in the past is, as I said before, better than it had any right to be and draws far better lines for the characters of Snow and Regina. The present storyline is equally interesting, albeit with a touch of exhaustion from some of the more repetitive dialogue. But most of the character interactions and story progression worked very well, making it a quiet wonder. Flip My Ship - Home of All Things “Shippy Goodness” Hooked Queen - Damn, Killian and Regina exchange some really nice and trusting looks in Regina’s office! Hell, Killian even being here and offering his services is pretty great for them! Captain Swan - I don’t think this has ever been pointed out before, but Killian kept the beanstalk cuff! While it didn’t work for me, Killian certainly gave a touch of value to his time with Emma on the beanstalk! Swan Fire - At risk of entering anti-shipping territory, I want to point out how the whole projection of feelings that other characters have been putting on Emma about Neal works SO much better here than it did for Graham because (1) they have a past, (2) they actually spend time together, (3) there’s a level of ambiguity to it which makes this time feel more interesting, and (4) those feelings are later believed to be true. Also, I just love Neal’s reaction to the door trick! XD ()()()()()()()()() We’re almost done!!!! Thanks for reading and to the fine folks at @watchingfairytales.

Next time...though I sincerely doubt I will, I hope I won’t have to PAN this two-part finale! XD

See you then!

Season 2 Tally (166/220) Writer Tally for Season 2: Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis: (50/60) Jane Espenson (44/50)* Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg (31/50) David Goodman (24/30)* Robert Hull (24/30)* Christine Boylan (26/30)* Kalinda Vazquez (28/30)* Daniel Thomsen (18/20)* * Indicates that their work for the season is complete

Operation Rewatch Archives

#ouat #once upon a time #watching fairytales #ouat 2x20 #ouat rewatch #jenna watches ouat

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mst3kproject · 7 years ago

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Skullduggery

I do a lot of complaining about movies that aren’t about anything. Well, here is a movie that’s trying far too hard to be about something, to the point where it leaves its storyline an utter incomprehensible shambles. It has in common with The Final Sacrifice that it’s a low-budget Canadian production, and there are a few terrible ‘medieval’ sequences as awful as anything in Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell. Mostly, though, I’m reviewing it because it’s just fucking weird. We’re talking Overdrawn at the Memory Bank weird here.

Long ago, some wizard laid a curse on all the descendants of some guy. In the 1980’s, either the last descendant or the reincarnation of the cursed guy is a dude named Adam, who works at a costume shop and plays Dungeons and Dragons with his friends in the basement. At a talent show where nobody shows any sort of talent whatsoever, the curse takes over and Adam becomes unable to distinguish real life from his D&D game, so he goes on a killing spree. When the Dungeon Master tells him his character has been hired to assassinate a sorceress dressed in white, he goes out and kills women in nurse’s uniforms. Told to fight the Apostles of Hell at the Villa Evil, he goes to a club called Villa Evil and murders a bunch of the cultists who hang out there.

Guess how it ends. Did you guess that the cops shoot him down without asking any questions? Congratulations. That’s exactly the caliber of shitty movie we’ve got here.

I’m going to get my most pedantic complaint out of the way first. Throughout the film, Skullduggery’s characters use the Latin phrase Diabolus me adiuvet, meaning so the Devil help me. Thing is, diabolus me adiuvet is in the indicative case, and means the devil helps me as a statement of present fact. If it’s a thing the speaker wishes should happen, as in may the devil help me, it ought to be in the subjunctive: diabolus me adiuvaret. This is what happens when you get your Latin from fucking Babelfish. Also, does anybody actually play tabletop games like it’s a ritual, with candles burning and solemn expressions on their faces? The games I’ve been to tended to have episodes of Scrubs on TV in the background and impassioned arguments over whether Courtney was allowed to roll diplomacy against the wasps.

Skullduggery has several themes. The one I find the most interesting is that of costumes. Adam works at a costume warehouse, commits most of his murders while in various costumes, and goes to a masquerade party. The movie toys with the idea that dressing up as somebody else brings out our true self, but where it really seems to be going, especially with Adam’s multiple costume changes during his Club Evil killing spree, is that costumes give us anonymity. Adam can kill because he’s anonymous, and is caught when he accidentally reveals his name. The partygoers at Villa Evil can live out their fantasies because they are anonymous and will suffer no consequences – once we know their names, they have to die. Anonymity brings out the worst in humanity, as anybody who’s ever turned on anon asks can attest.

But costumes are a relatively minor motif here. The movie’s main theme is that of temptation. We see several images of the temptation of Eve in the garden of Eden: a mysterious figure assembles a puzzle bearing a medieval-style image of Adam, Eve, and the serpent, and the first victim of our protagonist (also named Adam… perhaps the ‘curse’ is not so much about the wizard but about the expulsion from Eden?) is a girl playing Eve in the talent show. In the opening scene the evil wizard offers the medieval lord a poisoned apple, and it seems to be the sight of the apple in the play that triggers Adam to kill the actress. Adam is ruled by temptation. When the lust for blood comes over him, he never even tries to resist it.

He is not alone in this plight. Other characters are shown to be tempted by various things, and respond with immediate indulgence. The two nurses are tempted by sex, to the point where one comes very close to attempting rape. One of the players of the D&D game makes sexual innuendos at every opportunity. The actors at the talent show dive on the beer and nachos the magician offers to them. The medieval guy at the beginning sold his soul for power. When Adam arrives at the Villa Evil, the cultists offer him all his fantasies made real, and one of the women there tells him there are only two absolutes: money and power. I never actually counted but I’m pretty sure all seven sins show up and nobody ever even tries to say no. The Devil, through his temptations, rules us all.

The Devil appears in Skullduggery in multiple forms. He lurks in the back of random scenes in the shape of a jester puppet with a nightmare-inducing grin. Once the police have gunned Adam down they find only the puppet inside his costume, suggesting that the devil has indeed claimed him body and soul. He also appears as Dr. Evil, the head of the satanic cult that meets at the Villa Evil – the DM says that the leader of the Apostles of Hell is the Devil himself, and we also watch Dr. Evil putting together the Adam and Eve puzzle, which harks back to the fortune teller informing Adam that his life is a puzzle only the devil can solve.

Since Dr. Evil also turns out to have been Chuck the DM, the implication is that the Devil is the game-master not only of this particular roleplaying club, but of all the characters’ lives. It also seems to tell us, perhaps not intentionally, that Jack Chick is right and roleplaying games are a gateway to Satanism! By obeying the DM’s orders to murder and pillage within the world of the game, the players are allowing the Devil to rule their souls, and they will all be destroyed by him as surely as Adam was! Or something.

Then again, maybe not – because Adam kills the various cultists and at the end the suit of armor, which appears to represent his ghost, murders the GM, who was Dr. Evil. The fortune teller said that if Adam were lucky God could also solve his puzzle… so maybe this whole time Adam was actually an instrument of divine vengeance? The people he killed can be seen as sinners – the proud actress, the lusty nurses, the decidedly shifty fortune teller, and the rapists and temptresses at Club Evil. Perhaps the movie is reminding us that even the Devil is part of God’s plan, that in the words of an anonymous fifteenth century poet, nor had one apple taken been, the apple taken been/then had never our Lady a-been heaven’s queen.

So yeah, there’s all of that in a movie the filmmakers clearly thought was very deep and meaningful, and since I can tell what they were on about for the most part, they must be said to have met with some success. However, all this heavy symbolism and pessimistic outlook on human nature is crammed into a crappy slasher movie with a terrible script and abysmally low production values! Much of Skullduggery is so dark you can barely tell what’s going on, and there’s not a single line in it that sounds natural. Characters say things like so hard to say where the game begins and life ends. I think the only direction given to the people in the ‘talent show’ sequences was act badly. Once we get to Club Evil, the plot just wanders off to have a coffee and leaves us to sit and watch Adam wandering around murdering random people.

Then there’s the apparently symbolic content I did not discuss above… and I honestly can’t decide if these parts are symbolic or if they just got thrown in there because somebody thought they sounded fucked-up and cool. What’s up with Simcoe the lipstick-wearing Magician, who shows up, does his act, and never appears again? What is the significance of the one girl's itchy ankle? What’s up with the horny doctor in the gorilla suit? Why is there a guy in a bathrobe with a tic-tac-toe game on the back of it? Why do characters call a phone sex line that actually just tells lame jokes? Why does Adam wear a bunny suit to kill the woman obsessed with Sarah Bernhardt?

Or maybe Adam’s not killing people at all. He stabs the fortune teller in the neck with a dagger, but the news report claims she had a heart attack. The same thing happens to one of the nurses: he stabs her in the temple, yet she’s found on the floor by her colleagues who also diagnose a heart attack. Is this evidence for the ‘divine justice’ theory? Or is it meant to suggest that Adam is just happening across people who are about to die, and hallucinating that he is killing them – as Dr. Mustache suggests in It Lives by Night? But how does that tie in with the cops arriving and finding a bloodbath at Club Evil? Does witnessing deaths drive Adam to murder? I don’t know! At this point I’m as confused as Spoony!

MST3K could have done so much with this one. I’m positive Simcoe the Magician would have visited the SOL to puzzle and amaze. Tom and Crow could have played D&D with Pitch the Devil as their DM. The horny doctor in the gorilla suit could have made things very uncomfortable for Pearl and Bobo. They doubtless would have heaped more abuse on Canada, but I can’t deny that our indie movie scene is pretty fucking weird. Anybody out there seen Phil the Alien?

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #skullduggery #tw: rape #80s #just fuckin weird

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