#same place where [3rd character] happens to be and then running into them Creates Problems

[doctorwhoisadhd]

grrrrrrr bark bark why cant i figure out the big adventure at the beginning of my 12jack fic

[swaps55]

About (writing) Horizon

@painterofhorizons asked me to go into more detail about this post, in which I whinged about the logistical complexities I was running into while drafting Horizon for Mezzo. I proceeded to write a dissertation on the topic, so here is my Ted Talk for anyone who has some time to kill. I kept it as spoiler free as possible. :D

Not surprisingly, I’ve got a number of challenges to deal with to get this scene to have the emotional impact I want it to have, but the one I referenced in that post has mostly to do with what I refer to as setting the chess board. It’s something I do for combat scenes, or scenes where the setting plays any kind of important role in understanding where characters are in relation to one another, or when I just have too many characters in one place. Ideally, before I write the scene, I lay out in my head: what does the setting look like, and who is where?

For fight scenes, this is important so I understand what combat will look like, and so I won’t lose track of anyone during the scene. How many enemies are there? Who is taking on who? What limitations or advantages does the setting provide to influence the action? How can I use that to provide characterization or advance a character arc? Etc. In the case of Horizon, the issue isn’t the combat: it’s understanding where people start and how they get from one place to another.

Here’s the challenge: I have 3, and eventually 4 groups of people or person. Let’s call them A, B, C, and D.

A and B are in very separate locations.

C joins the fray in a 3rd location that cannot be near A or B.

A, B, and C are all aiming to reach the same location: the AA gun.

C cannot encounter A or B, which means A & B must reach the AA gun via different routes than C.  

D separates off from C, and must encounter B but not A.

C needs to arrive first, then B, then A, then D.

Simple, right? D:

So instead of the chess board dictating the flow of action, I need to set the chess board in a way to facilitate the scene as I need it to play out. This means the basic layout from the game isn’t sufficient, because it’s too linear, and provides only 1 “entrance” to the area where the AA gun are, and I need two different routes to get there.

Now, am I going to waste a lot of time painstakingly explaining to the reader the layout of Horizon? No. That’s boring, and the reader doesn’t need it. But I need to know it well enough and establish it well enough that even if the reader isn’t backchecking my logic, they trust that I have not dragged them into an MC Escher painting. I don’t want people to stop and wonder, “wait, where the fuck did B come from?” in the middle of a high stakes, high adrenaline scene.

The other logistical issue I have is a very clumsy POV handoff. I do not like putting in a scene break just to switch POVs and continue the exact same scene you were just in, but there is a crucial moment where a POV handoff has to happen as a new character arrives on scene and takes over POV duties from someone who is already present. My options are:

Do the entire scene from the first POV and don’t switch. But this would completely alter the impact of the scene and shut me out of accessing some pretty critical information that only the new POV character will have.

Do the thing I don’t like: put a scene break in the middle of the scene, end the first ‘scene’ on a dramatic moment that feels like the close of a scene before jumping back in with the new character.

Do the scene break, but back up a few minutes before the new POV character arrives on scene. This does two helpful things: creates a fresh scene and minimizes the awkward handoff, while giving me a chance to fill in some of the logistics to avoid the, “where the fuck did this person come from??” problem. Because while I know where they come from, there isn’t a good opportunity for me to communicate it to the reader otherwise. Originally this is what I planned to go with, but when I got there, I changed my mind. The problem with this is that it kills the tension and feels like a bait and switch: get the reader to the moment they have been waiting for, then pull the rug and back up a few steps. The last thing I want in this chapter is for the reader to be frustrated by the way I am telling the story.

End the chapter on the POV switch and move the Big Moment to a new chapter. I don’t love this either, because it feels like a cliffhanger for the sake of a cliffhanger – if not for the POV shift, it wouldn’t occur to me to break the chapter here. While I do love it when people yell at me for things, getting yelled at for this particular cliffhanger would feel cheap and manipulative rather than earned, if that makes any sense.   

Option 2 is best for the story, but it leaves me with this clumsy POV handoff that I still don’t like.

Now, on top of all the logistical complexities, I still have the other layers of this chapter: the sheer emotional complexity of it, which causes additional logistical issues. This is some of what I am trying to juggle:

Convey scene setting through the eyes of characters who are not paying a lick of attention to their surroundings because they are preoccupied or distressed by other events.

Telegraph Sam’s distress and anxiety through the eyes of someone who does not have enough context for it. This is further complicated by it being very likely this character would have more context than I would prefer them to have, so now I have to work with that in a way that feels right for the character and right for the story. Too often, supporting characters get shoehorned into plot in ways that does them a disservice, so I try to take the approach that the POV character is now the main character in THEIR story. My job is to get their priorities and motivations to circle back and support the plot while also serving their own interests. Sometimes this is very hard.   

Portray Kaidan, a character known for thinking things through, as someone being extremely (and understandably) reactive in a high stakes and very personal moment while still feeling like Kaidan. He cannot be thinking straight, and he would not be thinking straight, but I have to sell that to the reader and make them believe it.

Not losing track of every other character in the scene,while also not having them interrupt the flow of the scene. If you are familiar with Arrested Development, imagine the scenes in which the camera focuses on two characters having a VERY private discussion, only to zoom out and reveal they are surrounded by a much larger, captive audience. That keeps happening in this scene, ha. These characters are not the focus of the scene, but they are still present, and therefore the reader needs to be aware of where they are and what they’re doing so they don’t seem to magically appear out of thin air when they do or say something.    

So how do I put all of these pieces together? Well, it’s still in progress, so I don’t have a success story yet, but the emotional thumbtacks come first. The whole point of the scene is something I have been dying to write for years. All the details and logistics that ultimately make it work are just in the way when all I can think about is the Big Confrontation, so I just spit it out, even if it’s mostly just broad strokes, because once it’s out there I can actually think about the rest. Now I can go back through and chip away at the logistics, create a deeper and richer narrative for the POV characters, turn the volume up on the side characters who play a smaller role, and sharpen the knives so those emotional moments really land in a meaningful, gut wrenching way. Doing all of this will inevitably reshape the manner in which some of these events unfold, because drilling deeper into characters often leads to new discoveries. But I can rewire the underlying skeleton when the skeleton at least exists.

The hope is that in the end, it reads like the whole thing was effortless, and you would never guess how much work and angst and handwringing went into writing it unless you read this post. Wish me luck!!!!! I need it.   

[mxtcha-tea]

and that's how i met you mother

✎desc; love at first sight with shiratorizawa (honestly, not all of them are love at first sight but ignore that)

✎pairing[s]; shiratorizawa 3rd years x f!reader (separate)

✎genre; fluff, crack

✎language[s]; english

✎chef note; just an excuse for me to write lovesick boys💗 (I can’t do Shirabu, Kawanishi and Goshiki’s part cause I ran out of ideas🤸‍♀️🚆)

Ushijima

It would just be a normal day in his class, learning and stuff like usual

Then after the teacher finished explaining and hand out the tasks, he'll went through his pencil case and couldn't seem to find any pen

Ushijima frowned at that and looked throughly in his pencil case but with no luck, there's none

He swore that he had put some inside, maybe his mind slipped a little?

A tap on his shoulder caught his attention as he turned his head around to make eye contact with you

You're holding out one of your pen to him with a neutral look,

"You can have it," Ushijima look at you surprised, does that mean he can just take it from you? That's a little absurd

But he didn't question it and nodded, slowly taking the pen from your hand and continue studying

The pen doesn't really sit right in his hand, it's not being his and literally someone else that he doesn't have the chance to talk to

He'll spare a glance at you every minute (ngl, he's complimenting your side view internally)

And when you caught him looking at him, he'll just blink and slowly look back at his work with a light blush on his cheeks

(Istg it's so cute)

After the class ends and before you can leave for lunch, Ushijima caught your attention first,

"Here, thank you for lending me this. And unfortunately, i can't take it from you"

You're just looking at him with a dumbfounded look before taking the pen from him,

"Ah, no problem, um..." "Ushijima Wakatoshi"

You nodded at that, scratching the back of your head "...Ushijima. And it's [y/n]"

Both of you are just standing there in front of each other but it's not awkward, surprisingly

It's as if you two are waiting for one of you to speak and end the convo

(Spoiler alert; none of you wanted to end the convo since both of you find each other interesting)

You cleared your throat, fiddling with your pen a little, "Okay, see you after this, Ushijima"

He nodded at that and with that, both of you went to your separate ways

'[Y/N], YOU AWKWARD BASTARD! THAT WAS SO EMBARRASSING, I BET HE THOUGHT THAT YOU'RE WEIRD NOW!'

Ushijima's just walking towards the gym with a fairly visible blush across his cheeks as he look down

"Ushijima..."

"[y/n]..."

"I guess he's fine..."

"I guess she's fine..."

Ushijima Current Mission!

Trying to figure what other scenarios he can drag you in to have a convo with you again

Good luck Wakatoshi~!

Tendou

You and Tendou have talked with eachother a couple of times but it's nothing more than that

And Tendou actually want to talk more with you (at first for friendship points but y'know...)

Today, you look more beautiful than ever to him today

It's not like you're not beautiful every other day (he thinks you're pretty so that's why he kept on having a convo with you)

And he caught into that

Somehow, he can't help bet stare at you in a distance and he tried his best to avoid getting caught

(Tendou's scared that you find him creepy for looking at you all the time and he don't want that thought to flood you mind)

Then, you came to him to explain about the work your science teacher gave since she's absent for the time being

And you can bet that he doesn't hear a single thing you said because he's too focused on yourself

It's kinda like in those scenes in manga where the main character stare into the main interest

The main interest looking as beautiful as ever with flowers around them

Pretty eyes, angelic face, kissable lips

For him, you're perfect and he even thought that you might be an angel in disguise

No matter how you even see yourself, he would always think that you're fascinating, adorable, enticing—

"Tendou, are you okay?"

The redhead snapped out from his thought and got caught by you

By now, his face is literally mocking his hair color as he chuckled nervously,

"Ah, I'm fine! It's just that..."

He was about to stop mid sentences but thankfully he still got that crumbs of courage and just goes with it,

"...you look pretty today,"

Tendou said with a closed eyes smile, peeking an eye open and trying to see your reaction (ngl he's nervous)

You blinked

Before you literally exploded at that which is what make him surprised in his seat

You fake coughed, looking away and avoiding eye contact,

"Thanks...."

[love meter +10!]

If this is an actual manga or anime, there could've been hearts dancing around him

Timeskip to Tendou at his home and squealing quietly to himself (he can't let his family hear him fanboying for someone in his school lmao)

"We're totally going to marry 3 years from now on~" he says to himself in the mirror with so many confidence

(I just love it when Tendou act like that, let him have his moment)

"Haha, thank you gods for creating me and [y/n] in the same world,"

Tendou's Current Mission!

Getting to know you better and give tons and tons of compliments, just like in the simulations! Specifically otomes and dating games

Try your best Satori~!

Semi

It was another day, another practice session

Except that it went longer than Semi expected, he managed to run from the gym to the main entrance

But before he can even put on his shoes, heavy rain started pouring down

He look at the dark grey sky, resting his forehead onto the shoe locker with one shoe already in his foot while the other in his hand

Sighing, Semi thought about asking to come with Tendou and Yamagata since he didn't bring his umbrella

But on second thought, he realized that they prolly forgot theirs too

And all 3 of them have to run under the rain again like last time

Yamagata and Tendou: "We can avoid the rain if we're fast enough!"

He shivered at that their words and the thought of getting terribly sick again

And before Semi's brain can process a strategy for himself, he was caught off guard when an umbrella was opened next to him,

"Ah sorry,"

In those few seconds, everything went slow motion when your eyes catches his

(He swore it felt like in the anime)

He can feel his cheeks flushing a little but thanks to the wheater, it's not obvious

"Hello?" Semi snapped from his thoughts, shaking his head before focusing on you again,

"Sorry, sorry, um—" "You don't have an umbrella?"

He blinked, shaking his head slightly

It's a pretty peaceful staring between you two with the rain hitting the ground as background sounds

Until you lift your umbrella up, and pointed at the small spot next to you with your thumb,

"Here, I'll help you,"

"Eh?"

Semi was flabbergasted a little at your statement but would he decline it?

Of course not,

"Just tell me where your house is then I help you go there,"

And that's how he find himself back at his house's entrance with you in front of him,

"And that's why I just let you walk with me for the afternoon,"

"Is that so, oh wait! I haven't known your name, and you prolly haven't known my name either..."

He scratched the back of his neck before looking at you with a smile,

"The name's Semi Eita, thanks for the walk back home,"

Your lips parted a little before in turns into a tooth rotting smile,

"[y/n], no problem and thanks for the company, Eita,"

An arrow pierced through his heart as his face is literally the color of Tendou's hair

And just like that, you left him on the entrance with a funny expression upon his face

Cutting the scene to Semi punching his pillow (rip pillow)

"You already caught me off guard already but you really had to look at me like that...."

Semi's Current Mission!

Try to find you the next day after first period and try not to be awkward with you and his convo after the eventful day

You can do it Eita~!

Yamagata

Let's just say that,

Yamagata went through the late anime girl scenario

But with his toast falling down from his mouth while running towards his school

And his stamina almost running low despite being a volleyball player and a libero

(His house's prolly far from his school, cut him some slacks sheesh)

He's pretty much stumbling a lot when he enters the school and speed walking up the stairs

Some of the students look at him weirdly but that doesn't become his main concern because a strict teacher is going first

Yamagata's almost there, almost reaching his classroom's door

But god had other plans and place an invisible rock in front of him

And as you can tell, he slipped on it and now facepalming the floor

(The sound is so loud my lord)

He groaned, shaking a little while trying to sit up from his position

The male look up and is now face to face with you, who's looking down at him

Okay he might be delusional from the impact but is he actually looking at an angel right now?

"Dude, you okay? That's gotta hurt from the sound that it made—"

Your words drowned inside his mind as he widened his eyes with pink tints decorating his cheeks

'This...THIS IS IT!'

"—also I think your nose is bleed—"

"PLEASE MARRY ME!!"

You flinched at that but keep a calm face, a little bit concerned that he may hit his head too hard

While Yamagata is just having heart eyes for you, sparkles around him after saying those words almost too confidently

He doesn't know what's in him that make him think that you're the one,

But he definitely can feel it

You sighed, crouching down while searching through your pocket and pulling out a small pack of tissues,

"I think we're going so fast right now but no, maybe 5 years later or never,"

"Does that mean you agree??"

"I don't know, you're handsome but also stupid, a himbo I think,"

You wipe away the blood dripping down his nose, taking his arm, opening it and put the bloodied tissue on it before closing it, giving a light tap,

"Now go to the nurse office,"

"Will you be there for me?"

"No,"

You help him stand up, dusting his shoulder and walk away as if nothing happened

Yamagata watches you from the distance with a lovesick smile

Tendou laughed behind him with Ushijima and Reon next to him and Semi looking at Yamagata, confused,

"Hayato, I have no idea if you had your alarm on but you just came to school during recess,"

"She's perfect...also, I think I need to go to the nurse right now cause my head hurts,"

Yamagata's Current Mission!

Marry [y/n]

Have fun, Hayato~!

Reon

(He will have the best love at first sight cause I say so)

It was the school festival and it's lively in every corner of the school, the outside, inside the classrooms, even the hallways

Reon had just finished his part of his classroom and now can walk around to enjoy the festival

Honestly, it's a pretty normal day to him despite being the school's festival

The students of Shiratorizawa has always been this lively so it's good that they can be keep the atmosphere as how it is like any other days

Since the others are still working on their parts, Reon was all by himself

Sure, the quiet sounds without Tendou, Semi and Yamagata is fine but he prefer it being loud anyway

A short of way to fill in the boring silence

But what's the bad thing to enjoy the peace once in a while?

So he take a small walk outside the Shiratorizawa building

Stalls decorated the outside with students busy serving the customers

He was greeted by some of them as he greeted them back with a warm smile

Hands inside his pocket while looking at the sky every few seconds

Baby blue sky with fluffy white clouds, it is the spring afterall

It was at that moment where he turn his head around and caught your eyes

It was something between those few seconds that a lighting strike between the string connecting you two for a second

Reon knew he did from the moment you two clashed with each other so suddenly

It was...not love at first sight exactly,

But rather, familiarity, like,

'Oh, hello, it's you. It's going to be you,'

The staring prolly lasted more than he expected before you snapped out from your thought, shaking your head,

"Sorry! Didn't mean to..." "But you didn't do anything?" He rose an eyebrow, smiling sheepishly and watch your panic slowly dissolves

"Well, technically yeah but It was bad of me to stare off at you like that,"

He chuckled, your heart clenching at that,

"Don't worry, I think I did it too...maybe both of us did,"

"Ah, yeah! Probably..." you fiddled with your fingers, visibly nervous facing him since he's basically a stranger even tho being in the same school,

"Reon Oohira," "Eh?" You look at him with confusion at first, while he just offers you a smile,

"My name, since we have...how to say it, meet each other? And I don't want to make you uncomfortable after all that so I think it's best if we introduce ourselves,"

Your heart's basically beating out loudly that you'll afraid that he'll hear it

But, that doesn't seem so bad, does it?

You mirrored his smile, this time more confidently than before,

"[y/n] [l/n], nice to meet you Reon!"

"Please,"

Reon put his hand onto your head, "Just call me Hira,"

You fainted

"She's interesting, I love her,"

Reon's Current Mission!

Get to know you better and honestly, there's nothing else to do after that other than asking you out

You'll do great, Oohira~!

[aliceinteyvat]

Genshin Impact Idol AU ideas

So we all know the groups Veechu made with 4nemo, DCKZ, L/yue and, TVT DREAM however, I thought it was a crime the actual idol Barbara wasn’t in a group so, I made my own! I do not have the skills to draw this so, I will be including concept photos by actual groups(older and newer as well as the time in those examples i think suits them just for an example bts run era - dope era for a boy group) for the general vibe. Click on their names for a link to the kpop wiki about them. I also won’t include Lumine because many fans have made their own headcanons for that I like.

Feel free to use the ideas I added to this in fanworks just please credit me for the idea of the groups I made myself if you do. All will be under the read more so mobile users don’t break their fingers trying to scroll past. Wiki links are included for each real world inspiration. If looking for a specific character use ctrl+f on PC to search for them to make your life easier.

Note: their stories can be changed if you would like to make it different for your art/writing/whatever. I just think a bit of drama makes them feel more real. None of the stories are 100% based on any real group even their inspirations aren’t direct copies. As new characters are released/shown in stories I will be adding onto existing groups I made up or, making new ones so if you like my ideas save this and come back to it.

                             7evelUp! [pronounced Level Up!]

A rookie girl group created from the top seven trainees(voted by judges & public vote) in a survival show that quickly gained international fame from their debut single and, performance. No one doubts their talents however, some question how legitimate the voting/ranking was in the show.  No one blames the girls themselves for this and, there is no real evidence to prove this. All of the members believe the show to be real due to their own experiences too although, a few of them due to their low self-esteem believe other trainees would’ve been better suited in the group even if they are thankful for the support. It will take a while for all of them to adjust and, have it all feel real. Will they rise to super stardom or, crack under the immense pressure?

- Members

Amber (leader, main dancer) 3rd place(got the leader position because she is the one who brought every team she was in together to usually win the challenges showing her leadership skills not from ranking)

Barbara (main vocalist,maknae,center) 1st place

Noelle (lead dancer,visual) 6th place

Sucrose (lead vocalist) 7th place

Xiangling (lead dancer, lead rapper)  5th place

Yanfei (main rapper,oldest) 2nd place

Yoimiya (lead rapper, vocalist) 4th place

- Real World Inspirations

Weeekly(Tag Me era - 7Days Tension era)

Girls’ Generation(Into the New World era-Gee era)

TWICE(Like Ooh Aah era - Heart Shaker era)

                                                                                                         SYZYGY

An unconventional girl group with a unique sound. Despite their enormous amount of talent/skill , they haven’t been as successful as their small company had hoped. However, they continue to invest everything they can into this group much to the displeasure of the other idols under the company. Will their burning hot passion find success with the masses or, will they disband early leaving their company in complete ruin?

- Members

Hu Tao (leader, main rapper, vocalist)

Fischl (lead vocalist, lead rapper, maknae)

Mona (lead dancer, vocalist, visual)

Rosaria (main dancer, vocalist, rapper, oldest)

Xinyan (main vocalist, dancer,center)

- Real World Inspirations

Dreamcatcher (Chase Me era - Odd Eye era)

1NB (Stalker era - Once again, Winter era)

                                    1MP@CT [prounced Impact]

A previously underrated boy group that seemingly appeared out of thin air on the #1 spots of all major top music charts. Most attribute their overnight success to their newest song going viral on social media but, some who work within their company secretly wonder if it has anything to do with the CEO’s private life and, the new anonymous investors. Regardless, they have made a name for themselves. They have a work ethic like no other and, will do whatever necessary to rise to the top. Even though fans are starting to worry their agency is pushing them too far. Will they become legendary performers the kind that future generations remember by name or, will their boss’ dirty little secrets make them guilty by association to the press when/if the time comes?

- Members     

Baizhu (leader, lead vocalist, lead dancer)

Dainsleif (main rapper, lead dancer, maknae)

Scaramouche (main dancer, lead rapper, oldest, center)

Albedo (main vocalist,visual)

- Real World Inspirations

Big Bang (Fantastic Baby era - Bang Bang Bang era)

ATEEZ (Wonderland era - Fireworks era)

B.A.P (Badman era - Hands Up era)

                                                    DoDoCo

A junior girl group for kids/tweens made(and managed) by Alice to promote her daughter Klee and, have her gain experience for her dream of being a real idol. Although they perform, act, model and, release music similar older groups they still are children so, their concepts are always wholesome feel-good things to appeal to kid’s even younger their age or, younger. They also don’t have the same restrictions or, work hours due to their age. This group is very popular with Elementary schoolers and, sometimes even their families but, can be annoying to anyone older due to how cheesy it all is.

(Note: I don’t personally agree with kids being idols irl especially some I’ve seen that look like older teen/adult idols it’s scary. However, since it is a thing that exists and, this is a fictional head canon let’s pretend this is a world where none of them get hurt and can live pretty normal lives during & after their time as idols if they choose to do so. I just didn’t want to leave a playable character/important story character out of the AU entirely. Also, Sayu would be here but since she’s not officially released yet and, we don’t know any story about her I think it’s best for her to join later.)

- Members

Klee (leader, main dancer, vocalist, maknae,center)

Diona (main rapper, dancer)

Qiqi (vocalist, oldest)

Yaoyao (main vocalist, rapper)

- Real World Inspirations

RE:KIDS ANGEL (Ocean era) note: also their only era so far it seems but, apparently RE:KIDS is a larger thing with many other kids kpop groups so I assume others would have a similar concept.

CutieL (Debut era - Jungle Journey era)

                                                Dandelion

A girl group that has stayed at the top for the past 7 years known for their elegant concepts although, they have had other concepts in the past(sexy, cute, etc.). Not only is Dandelion super famous but, each member has their own solo careers just as successful. Outside of the group Jean is known for her solo albums and, charity work. Lisa is known for her modelling career and, secretly is a successful author under a pen name. Eula is known for her many wins on dancing contest shows and, the many important roles she plays in dramas. Since this year marks the dreaded 7 year curse fans worry they might disband or, go on a permanent hiatus. Before this year they seemed inseparable to fans but, something happened during their last tour. Jean and, Lisa who were known to be best friends suddenly won’t even sit next to each other. Eula who was usually more reserved during interviews is having to do most of the work since they’re just awkwardly sitting on the opposite sides of her. Eula has never been the best at public speaking and, her blunt responses are causing antis to go on huge smear campaigns on social media. Jean who previously wanted to renew her contract is thinking about starting her own company. Lisa who previously wanted to renew her contract now wants to leave and, join a modelling agency. Eula still wants to renew her contract but, she doesn’t want to be solo yet. She is trying her hardest to get the group back together but, her harsh personality is only making the problem worse she feels. Will they stay together or, will they split? And if they stay together, will it be the same Dandelion fans fell in love with or, are some bridges burned forever?

- Members

Jean (leader, main vocalist, center, dancer)

Lisa (main rapper, visual, sub vocalist, oldest)

Eula (main dancer, vocalist, maknae)

- Real World Inspirations

IZ*ONE (Violeta era - Panorama era)

GFRIEND (Sunrise era - Mago era)

TWICE (Fancy era - Alcohol Free era)

Solo Idols

- Ayaka

From a wealthy Inazuman family Kamisato Ayaka (known as Ayaka) shocked the entire nation when she decided to stop pursuing traditional dance(which she had earned many honors and, was famous for since she was a small child) and, instead go overseas to become an idol. Due to her connections it wasn’t long after becoming a trainee that she was put on the same survival show that formed 7evelUp!. However, her good luck ran out when after filming she got into an accident in her company’s car on the way to her company’s trainee dorms. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured but, she sustained an injury to her ankle that made her unable to perform for the rest of the show and, therefore was disqualified. She was a fan favorite and, everyone was heartbroken that she couldn’t compete. Due to her popularity, her company decided that if she could prove she was able to work after being healed they would let her have a solo debut. She far surpassed their expectations being even better than she was before, resulting in her debuting the same time 7evelUp! did. She doesn’t have any negative feelings towards those girls but, she views them as her rivals. She is quickly gaining popularity for her insane talent in singing, dancing, acting, modelling and, song-writing. She is known to the media as “The Idol Princess” for her family’s wealth, her talent and, her graceful demeanor. Don’t put her into a box though, she can pull off any concept with ease. The question is though, will her company allow her the freedom to express herself to the fullest?

- Real World Inspirations

Note: I am not saying she would be super similar to these artist’s work but, I am saying she has the range and, the potential to reach this level of fame. Since I can’t pinpoint a single solo artist that has what I think she would do I’ll put the ones I think have the insane talent and fame I think she would have as well as a similar feeling although it will take a while for her to get to their level

- IU

- Taeyeon

That was all of the Genshin Impact characters that I know enough about currently to feel comfortable making headcanons for them! Let me know what you think and if you make fanfic of or fanart of these ideas please credit me for these specifically and veechu for the idea of the idol au in general! Feel free to spread this post around if you want to or repost it too with credit. I also would love it if you tagged me if it’s on here or would be kind enough to send me a link to your work/work you find of it.

[awed-frog]

jonathan stroud interview

Lucca Comics 2020

[Here is the link, but I don’t know how it works and if you can rewatch the event...it was a weird streaming interview, they lost a lot of time with the translation but the questions were interesting. I’m sorry I missed the part with Licia Troisi, but I was busy writing down Stroud’s answers and I couldn’t possibly do both.

Stroud appeared at his home (?); his study is 90% books - most of them looked part of a series, probably a demon hunting encyclopedia or something - and 10% weird artefacts, like a pharaoh’s bust.

Troisi and Stroud were interviewed by YA expert and editor Chiara Codecà.]

Where do your stories come from?

I start with a little scene between two characters, or a piece of dialogue. For The Bartimaeus Sequence, it was about a boy magician and a djinn, and the confrontation between them; the energy of the book comes from this initial confrontation. For Lockwood & Co, I had a boy and a girl coming to a house in London, knocking at the door...they had swords, were there to fight ghosts. I knew nothing about the story and who those guys were, but I loved the energy and wrote the story from there. 

Fantasy books always start with tiny acorns. As a writer you have to get excited by what you're doing...many times I try writing something and it has no life, but when I find a tiny scene that has life, I get excited, I think "I will stay with this and see if I can build it into something bigger".

Methods of working? 

I need to have discipline and write a certain number of words every day. I need a roadmap and to know where I'm going, but when I start it's very bad, there is no detailed structure at all, just a series of loose ideas and themes. Often I'll improvise for quite a while, write 50 or 60 pages of scenes, trying, and nothing really works...But I am looking for the story, for the right atmosphere, eventually a structure emerges and then I'll follow it and write chronologically. But that early bit is just about hunting and searching. I wish it wasn't like this because it's really slow! For the current book, I needed 2 years of work! It's a slow process for me. 

It is a mechanism, a complicated mechanism. Sometimes you start with a little piece on the inside, which works, you know it works, it's characters or a scene, you know it's good and a useful piece of technology, but at that point you need to figure out what goes on the outside. Often I have to take time to figure out how the bigger machine works from the tiny piece of engine I already have: what machine does this belong to? It's like you have to figure out what the car looks like, its purpose and colour and everything. That comes later for me.

Role of your previous life as an editor?

Being an editor is a noble profession, and an important one! For me it was essential to begin like this because it taught me how to look at text, how not to be afraid of changing and manoeuvring, playing with text. Not being frightened of these things is important. As a writer you have to learn not to be frightened of the blank page and of change. As an editor you become more relaxed about that. Now, as a writer, I spend time on things, if it doesn't work, I change it, move it; I'm happy to play with it, and I think being relaxed about that is a great skill to learn.

(Licia Troisi mentions she's a fan and is also a fan of The Name of the Rose, which she read more than 20 times)

It's what we all aspire to as writers, we want to create something that's like a home, a welcoming house, where people can come in and they're your guests, you make them feel comfortable. As a child I read The Name of the Rose, of course, but also detective stories in general, they're interesting...I read Sherlock Holmes when I was 10, those books have that same quality, you enter this world, and it's complete and beautiful. When you're inside you think it's a special, cozy place, I reread them very often since. When I write I try to consciously imagine that effect on me: as a writer you try to bring a warmth. You have terrible things happening, murders and ghosts, but you want to have a warmth also, which the reader will sense. It's an important quality.

Any news on the new book?

I have it here, it’s almost finished, here is the manuscript: The Outlaws: Scarlett and Browne, it's really thick! It's about the same length as a Lockwood book. It's a fantasy, a new series. The original idea was to do a British western, so it's set in a version of England in the future: many strange things have happened, it's a different place, more dangerous, like the wild West in some way, but British. There are monsters and cannibals but also our heroes: our heroine is Scarlett McCain, she's an outlaw, robs the little town dotting the wilderness. She's tough and formidable, and she meets a young boy called Albert, who seems a little foolish and weak, she gets crossed with him a lot but he may be more interesting than she thought.

It will be out in the UK in the spring 2021.

How are you coping with the pandemic and has it leaked into your work?

It's an interesting one...For me I think I'm lucky with my existence, I'm able to carry on working, I'm so much more fortunate than many others. I carried on working, my children are running around the house but it's not a problem. For the work...I've been working on this book for two years, and as I was writing this year I realized it has echoes of the current situation - but I had been working on it even before the pandemic. One connection is that the world of Scarlett and Brown is a very chaotic and challenging world; many people kind of hide themselves away, shut their doors, don't want to engage with the world at all. My heroes are two very different people, but both have a positivity to them, they're not afraid to embrace the world and these changes. And as I was writing, this was important to me: the world has horrible things to it, but you have to face up to them even if it's hard.

Imaginary worlds: you have to set rules, but do you always abide by them? Have you broken any rules?

You try not to, it's a bad mistake to break rules. For a very small but annoying one, with The Bartimaeus Sequence...the 1st book is always the most difficult to write, you're inventing and figuring out the rules...and there is mention of a computer, just once, a magician using a computer, and it's not an important detail, but later, when I understood my world better, I understood how ludicrous it was! These guys use magic, they can use it for everything, so they never...their technology has not advanced in the way it is in our world. I was very angry at this foolish mistake. It's very hard to accept tiny errors. This is why the new book it has taken me two years, I was struggling to understand the world, change things around. I hope the 2nd book will be quicker!

(Comment from the audience) Discovering a new book for the first time, there's nothing like it.

Yes, it's what we're all looking for, both as a writer and a reader.

Writers who inspire you? Any recs for our listeners? Advice for new writers?

Licia is wise, she's a sage, I agree with her tips (ie, read everything, in multiple genres, and write stuff you enjoy writing, not in view of publication). You have to write for pleasure, absolutely, it's the fundamental thing; if you get it right you will pass that pleasure on to other people. Like Licia, I like to play with genres, so as a reader I have to try everything...I always liked fantasy, Ursula K. LeGuin and others, but I read everything...At the moment I'm reading George Orwell, and he talks about politics, literature, truth, and whether it's possible to be a writer in a moment democracy is under attack. It's a very important read, and he's on my mind a lot.

What is the book you got most emotional to write?

The 3rd book in The Bartimaeus Sequence, Ptolemy's Gate, has carried the most emotional weight for me. It's the ending, it brings the story of Nathaniel and Kitty to a close, so I was anxious to get it right, I was very concerned about the ending. But once it was on the page, I had this great feeling of emotional release, I knew this was the best ending I could do and I was very proud of it.

How do you approach a character? The depth of feeling you manage is amazing.

Writing a character is like getting to know a new friend. You need to like them, to be interested in them, to slowly uncover who they are. Initially I know what they look like, maybe a couple of other things, but as I write, I slowly discover their inner lives, their secrets, their flaws, their sense of humour...it takes me a long time to find those things, but you need to find them. These are people you're going to work with for years. It's a constant discovery, you need to treat them like friends.

[joe-maristopher]

«WandaVision»: 3. Wanda, dear, do we have a problem?

Boom! We have a mention of Pietro, Ultron, Shakespeare (ah, Vision's an ntellectual), neighbors with a slight horror in their eyes, unjustified speed of events, as well as the subtext "Wanda in her world is a king and the god". And yes, that awesome soap ads! The slogan is a reference to Wanda's newfound abilities, I think. I keep my eyes on Agnes and prepare an invitation for her to go to the evil characters' bench. You can't be sure of anything, but who knows, she is able use the situation for her own purposes and be a helper of Mephisto.

Let's talk about the kids and the speed of everything.

I've never been a fan of Billy and Tommy in the first place. I don't understand all the excitement associated with them, and I remember that everything ended after their appearence... badly. Besides. I've always wondered why Wanda rode into the magical wilds and didn't think/want to solve the problem any other way. Adoption, for example. Donor sperm. Something else. Why was it necessary to create such problems, taking pieces of Mefisto´s soul, and thereby laying a huge dynamite under her family?

Let's say, our Wanda goes with a different vector, without the insane desire of a crazy momma-wannabe, but the children are still demonic? Playing with Mephisto's shadow isn't for nothing, is it?

I can't help but notice that Wanda's pregnancy in the comics also appeared suddenly. I might have forgotten something, because I was laughing so hard while reading the pages, but it was like this, the quotes are not accurate.

Wanda: I WANT A REAL FAMILY WITH KIDS. WANTWANTWANT!

The magic poof!

And Wanda is on the eve of her confinement. I don't remember Vision's reaction...

Our Vision was as surprised as I was, because in normal life, it does not happen, even if you are a synthesoid (five points to Marvel for mentioning this term! Finally! We waited for the long time!). I felt like I was watching the Sims with their woohoo and three-day pregnancy. It was all very fast, and I couldn't even blink. I didn't like that part, honestly. Something is missing. I also don't like that Marvel didn't focus much on Wanda and Vision, and instead our characters existed for fast-paced development, plot tools for introducing the twins, and Geraldine-Monica's "deportation" beyond the bubble. In other words, long periods of time are reduced to the limit.

A small question. The child is already doing magic (and Wanda calmly allows)?

Creepy moment. Let's talk about Vision again.

I thought that my screen glitched or the cat walked on the keyboard, so I didn't notice... Wanda, we have a real problem... And a new question. In the opinion for the first two series, I posted a list of the questions and now it gonna be expanded. We're still walking in the fog.

So... Vision is an illusion? Highly likely! Who would give us a resurrected Vision, right? Marvel won't let us be happy, and neither will Wanda.-_-

But if Vision was an illusion, controlled, a Wanda's puppet, then why did he even begin to think about what was happening, to understand that something was happening? Why? And how many times has this actually happened, off-screen? Fic-writers, let's go! And I'm probably going with you.

I also remember Vision's face when their dinner went wrong. So what are you, Vision? And by the way, how much control do you have? The feelings are your own, aren't they? Yes, Marvel?! Don't mess with me here. Don't make the shippers angry, they're already traumatized by the comic book versions of Wanda and Vision.

A lyrical digression.

There is one more thing that I want to touch, connected with all above. A certain Twitter user previously guessed or knew the names by which Wanda and Vision will be in the series. Before the release of the series, I ask you to note. I'm talking about Illusion and Glamour. Back then no one took it seriously, but after the release of episodes, the account began to be studied almost under a microscope. There is a long history with the renaming of acc, creating new acc with the same info, it's not the point. The same acc wrote that what we see isn't Vision, but Wonder Man, who thinks he is Vision..

I have a confession. I can't stand Wonder Man and everything that goes with him, including his shenanigans with Wanda. I just hate this stuff. Who doesn't know: Wonder Man and Vision have a connection in the comics, Wonder Man's brainwaves formed the basis of Vision's, correct me if I am wrong. So, technically, they're kind of brothers. Difficult, you may say? It's comics, kids! In short, if it really turns out to be so — I will consider it a personal insult. I'm sorry, but I love Vision and I watch the show with him, not with someone else.

Also, in general, Marvel owed us one moment, and it's good if they remembered about it and give a serial explanation: for all the years of Endgame, you did not try to do anything with the Vision's body? Where is it? In what condition? Tony forgot and didn't remember Vision?

Screw it!

Okay, okay, I've calmed down. I return to the subject and stop burning with righteous anger.

Illusion or not, we know from the trailers that Vision will posibly receive an information about his death. I see how it can go: It turns out that Vision learns the truth, Wanda is not there to stop him, he decides to find out everything from Wanda, but the moment is not very good, because the agents of S. W. O. R. D doing their job, and Wanda is already in the berserk mode... And it ends badly.

Creepy moment. A sad moment. Give Wanda some cocoa and a warm blanket. Please.

That was full of pain. Wanda could try and run from her memories, or force herself to forget them, but they are coming back with suspicious questions from a stranger, with jewelry on someone's neck. Wanda's upset, the neighbors ara glitching (to Vision´s concern), and under the iceberg of family life with two newborns and a lullaby for them, there are the abyss, hiding... Creepy and painful.

I am kinda dissaponted with the 3rd episode, but still enjoyed some moments and still want to save Wanda from this darkness.

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 7-10

This is the “Dead Zone” arc, featuring Luke and Jan Valentine.

This arc is set around... uh, September 3rd-ish, I think.   By now, Hellsing has had time to investigate this recent uptick in vampire incidents, and she calls a meeting of the “Convention of Twelve” to discuss her findings.   This group represents the heads of various important agencies, political leaders, and noblemen, and the manga states that they “essentially” run the British Empire.    I’m not sure how to read that, exactly.  Kouta Hirano appears to be establishing one of two things:

1) Parliament Shmarliament, everything is really controlled by this secret group of oligarchs sitting at a table.

or

2) This is a collection of all the big wheels in British society, so they might as well be calling the shots even if they aren’t a true governing body. 

I’m not terribly concerned about which one it is, since we left real-world Great Britain behind a long time ago.    The Hellsing U.K. seems to put a lot more power in the monarchy, for example.    Also there’s friggin’ draulas runnin’ around everwhere. 

Anyway, Integra reveals that the vampires they’ve been killing lately all have microchips installed in their bodies.  She says the chips “define the vampire’s status, behavior, intent, and aggression.”   I don’t know if that means outright control or a more subtle manipulation.    It might exaplain why the couple in Chapter 3 weren’t exactly being subtle.

Moreover, these vampires haven’t been following the conventional rules laid down back in Chapter 1.   Vampire bites can turn a person into another vampire, but only if the victim is a virgin.   Otherwise, they turn into ghouls.   Destroying the head vampire will destroy all the ghouls he’s created.    But that hasn’t been happening.    The couple in Chapter 3 killed a lot of children, but they all became ghouls.   And in Badrick, Anderson killed the vampire, but the ghouls remained active long enough for Alucard and Seras to fight them.  

At least, that’s what Integra is saying.   We never actually saw any ghouls in Chapter 3, and Anderson killed the vampire in Badrick off-panel, so we don’t know the exact timing.    But I’ll take Integra’s word for it.   

Something that got lost along the way was the matter of what happens to Seras if someone managed to kill Alucard.   According to Chapter 1, she’d die immediately, but we never actually see that play out, and Seras is the only vampire created by another vampire in this story.   We never see ghouls die en masse, either, because there’s never a situation where their master dies first, and the ghouls we see from here on out are these rule-breaking microchippy kind anyway.    

Never mind that shit, here comes the Seras part.   Walter has replaced her bed with a coffin.    Apparently she had a bed in this dank-ass dungeon, and then one day Integra got a wild hair and decided “Oh, yeah, she should be sleeping in a vampire bed.”     She’s been a vampire for like two months now.    I feel bad for Walter, having to lug that big-ass bed down here, only to have to take the damn thing right back out.   He must have known it was going to end this way.   You’d think he would have said something before.  

Seras hates this idea, but Walter relays a second order, one from Alucard: Seras has to sleep in the coffin.   Well, that seems kind of redundant, but I guess Seras might have tried to sleep on the floor or something instead.    The main thing I find interesting about this is that Seras is mostly irritated by Integra ordering the coffin, but she takes it much more seriously when Alucard is mentioned.  

According to Walter, since Seras hasn’t drunk any blood, her powers will weaken... unless she sleeps in a coffin lined with soil from her birthplace.   So maybe it’s an either/or deal.   Integra was fine with Seras using a big girl bed because she assumed Seras would be drinking blood.  But without it, she has to use a coffin, or she’ll be no good to the team.   And after two months, it’s become clear that Seras has no intention of drinking blood, even bags of donated blood, like the one Alucard snacked on in Badrick.

Even Seras doesn’t know exactly why she won’t do it, which Alucard finds baffling.    If this was a dealbreaker for her, she should have just died as a human in Cheddar.  

But Al isn’t entirely unsympathetic either.    His words are harsh, but they’re the truth: Seras is a vampire now, and there’s no going back.  She keeps trying to resist this, but it’s already happened.   Denial will only make this more painful for her.   I think that’s part of the reason he offered his own blood to her in Badrick.   I mean, there weren’t a lot of other options, but from an ethical standpoint, drinking Alucard’s blood seems reasonable, since it won’t kill him.    The unspoken sentiment here is: Listen, I know this is difficult for you, and I’ll try to make this as easy as possible, but you need to do this and there’s no way around it.    But even that doesn’t seem to work, and Alucard’s in no particular hurry, so he’s willing to table the matter.   Which I suppose is how the coffin thing came about in the first place.

Walter also takes this moment to give the vampires their new guns.    Alucard wanted something special for the next time he tangles with Alexander Anderson.    Recall that Al already has a special cosmogun with an infinite supply of magic bullets, and he shot Anderson in the face and it didn’t stop him.    So Walter builds him “The Jackal”, which is basically the same as his first gun, only even bigger and with a black finish.   It also says “Jesus Christ is in Heaven Now”, which drives me nuts because I don’t know if that’s like a message to Anderson, or just some random thing.    Kouta Hirano puts these nonsense religious slogans all over Hellsing, and I’m pretty sure he’s just doing it for effect, and not particularly concerned over whether there’s any religious significance to the words.   

As for Seras, she gets a giant bazooka-looking think called the Harkonnen, named after a Dune character.   One of these days I want to sit down and read Dune.   I kind of feel guilty that I haven’t already, because then I could be writing this and get all excited for this moment.   “HOLY SHIT!! IS THAT MOTHERFUCKING DUNE REFERENCE?!”  Instead I’m like, ho-hum, yes it is.

Let’s move on.    This arc is about the Valentine Brothers, two vampires who take the fight to Hellsing instead.   They have a small army of ghouls, and their plan is to just drive up in a tour bus and storm the gate.   Ghouls are mindless, zombie-like monsters, but apparently they can work a gun well enough, and Hellsing never imagined an enemy would try such a thing.

As soon as Integra finds out about this, she tries to evacuate the Twelve, but their helicopter gets destroyed, cutting off any chance of escape.   Then Jan (pronounced “Yon” by the way), calls her on the comm system and threatens to kill them all.  

So Integra calls Walter, who already knows what’s happening.   Um, how?   I feel like the anime explained this better.   Maybe Jan’s profanity-laden threats were on a public-address system instead of just for the conference room.   But it sure looks like Walter’s just chilling out in a windowless, underground room.   But he already knows there’s no hope of reinforcements arriving to save them.   He proposes himself and Seras using the ventilation shafts to get to the coference room, where they can defend the twelve, while Alucard can go on the offensive.

Alucard is amused to hear that Walter is going back into action, and calls him “Angel of Death”.    We’ll come back to that.

So Walter’s pretty much on top of things here.    No one ever considered anything like this happening before.    Hellsing is supposed to be a secret organization, so a vampire shouldn’t know to come here in the first place.    Moreover, no one dreamed that a vampire would plan it out so well, using ghouls in a military fashion.     But he’s optimistic about their chances for survival, because...

Walter has super powers.    Specifically, he has these magic wires he can use to bind and slice up his enemies, and this makes short work of the Valentines’ ghouls.   He then repeats Jan’s taunts back at him.   Okay, so I guess Walter did hear Jan’s message from earlier. 

The problem I always had with this development was that it seemed awfully convenient for Walter to have super powers.    But then, it took me a while to catch on to Anderson having super powers, and he took a bullet to the face.    I think the conceit of the Hellsing world is that these “anti-freak” organizations have to have super-powered operatives, so they use secret techniques and alchemy or whatever to empower men like Walter and Anderson.   It’s really not that hard to swallow.

Except that the first vampire-hunter we meet in Hellsing is Alucard, who is himself a vampire. So it seemed like the whole point was that he was the best suited for the job because he had the raw power to do it.   Integra doesn’t seem to have any powers, and neither do any of the rank-and-file Hellsing operatives who get mowed down by the Valentines’ ghouls.   So it always confused me for Walter to just go “Wassup, I have powers too.”   But it only makes sense for Hellsing to have more than one card to play.    Clearly, Walter used to hunt vampires on  the regular before he retired to become a butler.

Between Walter’s wires and Seras’ giant gun, they manage to subdue Jan easily enough, but he reveals he has a partner, Luke, whose job is to tackle the second half of their mission: to destroy Alucard.   Let’s check in on him...

Yeah.    I was thinking about doing a blow-by-blow of this fight, but it’s kind of pointless.    Luke talks a big game, and seems confident that he’s on a higher level than the vampires Alucard has been fighting recently, and for a hot minute, even Alucard believes that he might be a worthy adversary, “above even a ‘Category A’ vampire,” so he releases his “control art restriction,” to “Level 1″.  

I guess I should back up and explain this.    Alucard, like all overpowered anime characters, can hold back his full power and reveal it in stages.   For some reason he has to announce that he’s doing this, like Windows 10 describing it’s own updating.   Presumably, there’s a Level 4 where he usually operates, and that was enough for him to fight Luke evenly.    But here, we see him jump all the way to Level 1, which allows him to turn into some shadowy form with lots of eyes and two dog heads.  

Also, centipedes.  The point is, this is all stuff Luke can’t do.   He’s more of a “super speed gun-shooting” kind of vampire, so he’s immediately outclassed.    Alucard’s dog form eats Luke and that’s the end of him.... OR IS IT? 

Meanwhile, Jan’s ghoul army is beaten, but he still has reinforcements in the form of all the Hellsing soldiers they killed earlier.   These men rise up as new ghouls and chase down Seras while Jan makes a break for the conference room where the Twelve are holed up.    Walter tries to catch Jan, but only manages to rip off one of his arms.   He makes it to the door, only to find...

Integra and the others all have guns, and they shoot him down.  

All Jan has left now is his second wave of ghouls, except Seras manages to overwhelm them.   At first, she was panicking, but then she freaks out and goes feral on them, to the point where Integra has to jump in and order her to stop.   When she does, she seems to have no idea what just happened.    This is mostly overshadowed by the sheer horror of Hellsing’s soldiers being reduced to the undead.  

All that’s left is Jan, who refuses to talk.    He has the same microchip implants as the previous vampires, and the people who sent him are monitoring him in real-time, which means they know he failed, and they can make him self-destruct before he can tell Hellsing anything.  As he dies, Jan flips them all off and gives them one word of information: “Millennium.”

After that, Integra tasks Walter with destroying the remaining Hellsing ghouls, until Sir Irons, one of the Twelve reminds Integra that this is the duty of a commander.   As Hellsing’s C.O., it’s her responsibility, so she agrees and starts shooting the ghouls in the head.   

Meanwhile, Jan’s mysterious overseers talk amongst themselves, and their leader calls for them to resume their “research”.   As devastating as this attack on Hellsing was, for Millennium, this was merely a test.   

[thelordofdarkreunion]

Magnificent Scoundrels- Grand Tour

I decided to write about Thomas Drake and his crew for this one.  As usual, I do not own any other characters except Drake and his crew.  Enjoy the story.  

“I am not a good person, but I am an honest one.”

-Thomas Drake

“You said you wanted to take a tour of my ship, so, here we are.”  Drake gave an elaborate, formal bow.  “Welcome aboard the Apocalypse.  You all have your engineers with you?”  He looked around the group of, who did, indeed have all their engineers with them.  “Good.  Everyone is invited, and if you are able to replicate anything you see here from memory, then I think it’s yours, fairly won.”  Which cut right into the heart of why everyone had their engineers here.  

Drake turned into the hangar bay, beginning the tour.  “The Apocalypse is an Apricus Industries 745-class light cruiser, heavily modified by us, of course.  Originally named the Summer’s Light, it was renamed something more appropriate for a warship after me and my merry band of maniacs stole it during the Jerrick War.  It was, uh, well, upgraded, as I said before, and now includes reinforced shielding on the hull, better engines, best in class, as a matter of fact, heavy railgun batteries, more point defense batteries, and nuclear launch tubes, of which I am particularly proud of.  Unique amongst most capital sized ships from my home galaxy, it can enter atmosphere, a fact that I have come to appreciate in my line of work.  Now, this,” he waved vaguely at their surroundings, “is the hangar bay.  We only need a couple of shuttles, so for the most part, it’s open and used by the armsmen for training.  Speaking of which,” he nodded in the direction of a group wearing a collection of military-looking uniforms watching two of their number spar, “those are the armsmen.”  Drake gave a sharp whistle, and the armsmen stopped what they were doing.  Three of their number walked over to the Scoundrels, while the rest milled around, apparently taking a break from what they were doing.  

Drake gave the classic back-and-forth gesture that has accompanied introductions since the dawn of time as he called out the three individuals.  “Derrick Saul, commander of 1st Squad.”  The armsman furthest to the left, a deeply sunburn man with hair cut so short he may as well have been bald, gave them a polite nod.  “Jean Garang, commander of 2nd Squad.”  The armsman in the middle, a tall woman with exceptionally dark-hued skin and short cut black hair also gave a nodd.  “And Rilgaldis, commander of 3rd Squad.”  A massive reptilian alien, well over seven feet tall, gave them a salute.  “Scoundrels, Saul, Garang, and Rilgaldis.  Rilgaldis, Garang, and Saul, the Scoundrels.”  Drake gave a moment’s pause.  “Well then, now introductions have been made.  Why don’t you three tell my glorious compatriots exactly where you come from and why you’re galavanting across the galaxy with an unstable mercenary?”  Drake’s joking manner broke the formal and somewhat strained atmosphere.  The Scoundrels relaxed, and Saul grinned.  

“Fine.  I’ll go first.  Born on Europa, joined the 317th Federal Expeditionary Division.  I’m here because, well, you pay more than the Federal Army, Captain.”

“Same thing with me.  Born in Sudan, joined the Army, got put in the 5th Guards.  Drake pays more than the Federation,” said Garang.  

“And you, Rilgaldis?”

“Born into the Dracus Army, left, joined the Imperial Foreign Legion, left, joined you because you pay better,” said Rilgaldis.  

“Yes.  The three leaders of my armsmen.  Matter of fact, it’s a wonder you two,” he indicated Saul and Garang, “get along as well as you do.”  

“Wait, what do you mean by that?” asked Kirk.  Saul and Garang grinned at each other.  

“You see, we are on opposite sides of one of humanity's oldest questions.  Matter of fact, Garang, let’s settle this once and for all.  You all seem like you know what you’re talking about.”  The Scoundrels looked at each other, hesitant about what the question would bring.  “So, here we go, and I know that you’ll all agree with me: 9 milimetre Parabellum or .45 ACP?”  

“What?” replied Vir.  The other Scoundrels seemed to be equally bemused by the question.  

“Are you not a soldier or a weapons enthusiast?  Don’t pick up guns like the rest of us?”

“I was a pilot, now an Admiral.”

“Oh dear me, the flyboys have their heads so high in the clouds they don’t know the answer to life’s greatest mystery.  Any of the rest of you?  No?  Bullets don’t exist where you come from or something?”  Kirk, Shepard, and Cain shook their heads to the negative.

“.50 cal.”  Master Chief added his input.  Saul whistled.  

“Jesus Christ.  Although,” Saul walked up and compared his height to the Chief’s, “if anyone can handle a .50 calibre handgun on the regular, it would be the two meter guy made entirely of muscle.”  

“Wonderful.  Now that we have that out of the way, onwards!” exclaimed Drake.  The rest of the Scoundrels followed, threading their way out of the hangar and through the winding grey passages of the starship.  Most were neat, clean, and paneled with easily cleanable grey metal, although one particular passageway they crossed was under repair, the panelling ripped away to expose a myriad of interconnecting pipes and wires.  A mixed group of aliens and humans, all wearing grey jumpsuits, were hard at work, fiddling with various tangles of sparking wires.  A short woman jumped from atop a ladder where she had been perched, examining the ceiling, and offered Drake a vague salute.  

“We’re almost done, Captain.  Wiring in this sector should be back up in no time.”  She seemed to notice the group following him for the first time, and gave them a cheery wave.  “Tor Herald.  In charge of...well...nothing in particular.  We,” this was accompanied by a wave encompassing the various workers, “are unofficially known throughout the ship as the ne’re-doers.  Unspecialized specialists, jacks of all trades, masters of none, we’re the crew that keeps the Apocalypse running.  This ain’t a military vessel, so we’re just on as regular crew members.  Nothing to do with most of the money and explosions that seem to follow the Captain around.”  One of the wires in the background started to spark alarmingly.  “Ah, shit.  Love to talk, got to fix this.”  She ran to the problem, an odd-shaped tool in hand.  

“Best keep going, then,” said Drake.  He gave the group a ‘follow me’ motion, and led them deeper through the halls.  “I get crew members from all over the place.  Most of the armsmen and specialists are ex-military, but the crew...I have from all over the place.  Which I said before.  Don’t really know how else to put it.  Got crew members from Earth, Vorketh, Aequalitas, Narcan, Delstrovic, and everywhere in between.  Now,” he turned and gestured to a section of more pleasant looking and open hallways, “as your esteemed colleague Jack Cooper can attest, these are the crew quarters.  They are located throughout the ship, so vital personnel can sleep next to their stations, but the bulk of them are in this area.”  He led them past the crew quarters to a pair of large sliding glass doors.  “And this is what we call the weapons room.  All our personal weapons are created, reparied, and tested here.”  It was a brightly lit room covered in stark white plastic, but what drew everyone’s attention were it’s two occupants, who, although fiddling with various bits and pieces, seemed to be in the middle of a fierce argument.  

“You see, the problem with your theory is, at the very heart of the matter, you’ve got it wrong.  The purpose of a government is to help its people by any means it finds necessary,” said a short, lean, black-haired man in the midst of inserting a new power core into a plasma gun.  

“No, the purpose of a government is to protect its people’s rights and protect them from foriegn invasion.  Otherwise, it should leave them alone,” replied a muscular, brown-haired man of medium height as he tightened the bolts on a massive machine gun.  

“Ah, but the thing is, the government can help people.  And at the basic level, why would you not help people?  You’re a Christian, and it is at the core of your philosophy to help others,” countered the black-haired man.    

“Individually.  It is our duty to individually help other people.  You’re a student of history, and you know what happens.  If the government helps people in the way you’re suggesting, then it gains control over them, and thus should it turn bad, the common people are helpless.”  The Scoundrels filed into the room behind Drake as the two argued, apparently oblivious to their presence.  

“The core problem with you is that you’re just an ignorant, uneducated farm boy who’s clinging to a dying philosophy,” sneered the black-haired man.  

“And you are a stuck up city student who has absolutely no idea how the real world works,” shot back the brown-haired man with a vengeance.  

“You’re a stupid moron who follows people who will plunge the world into despotism.”  At this, the brown-haired man threw down his wrench and cracked his knuckles.  

“I’d be very, very, careful if I were you,” he warned.  The tension in the air was almost like a physical being.  Several of the Scoundrels standing behind Drake tugged on their collars as if to escape from an oppressive heat.  Kirk stepped forward as if to mediate, but Drake held out a hand to forestall him.  

“Or what?  What are you going to do?” replied the black haired man snidely.

“This.”  And before anyone could react, the brown haired man stepped forward, wrapped his arms around the shorter man, and pulled him close into a passionate kiss.  They broke apart, and upon seeing the shocked faces of their various watchers, both started howling with laughter.  

“Oh, you should have seen your faces,” said the taller of the pair in between wheezes.  The other man was clutching his midsection and had tears streaming down his face.  He made some sort of strangled gasping noise and grabbed the edge of a counter for support.  

“We got ‘em!”  He broke down into hysterics again.  “We got you!”  Drake merely rolled his eyes.  

“Everyone, meet Mark,” he nodded towards the brown haired man, “and Oliver,” this was accompanied by a wave to the black haired man, “Danis-Holden, two of my three weapons specialists.”  The two, still trying not to laugh, stood up straighter and nodded as they were introduced.  Noting the still bemused faces of the Scoundrels, Drake sighed.  “So, you guys want to tell them who you are, where you’re from, why you’re with me and what was going on here?”  

“Sure!” replied Mark cheerfully.  “So, I was born on Enlalda, a colony world on the edge of Federal Space.  It’s an agrarian planet, and most people there moved from the center of Federal space because of religious persecution.  Like ninety-ish percent of the population are old school Evangelical Christian conservatives.  I was born and raised on a farm; grew up as a...well, old school Evangelical Christian conservative.  Always liked to tinker with things, got really good at repairing vehicles and the various guns you’ll find all farmers have on colony worlds.  But, I always thought there was more to life than just farming.  I wanted adventure.  I wanted to do something with my life.  So, one day a mercenary starship shows up,” he paused his narrative for a moment and looked queringly at Drake, “wasn’t that the Helidon job?”  Drake rubbed his forehead.

“Oh.  Yeah, it was.  Now that was a weird operation.  But I digress.  Please continue.”

“Yep.  So, as I was saying, the Captain here showed up near where I was.  I heard he was looking for a weapons specialist, and I had some experience in that area, so I decided to offer my services, and you accepted, and I joined the crew.  And that’s where I met this idiot.”  He gestured at Oliver.

“Damn straight.  But before we get into that, I have to tell you my story,” replied Oliver.  “I was born on Tyvander.  Metropolitan planet near the center of Federal space.  I grew up in a middle class family near one of the bigger cities, Menvander.  Like a lot of people, I went to college there: majored in political science, minored in specialized engineering.  Unlike some planets, Tyvander isn't super rich or famous, and there is no specialized educational infrastructure there, so if you want to go to college, you pay for it.  As it turns out, being a political science major does not pay the bills, so when the Apocalypse showed up looking for a weapon’s specialist, which I was qualified for because of my technical skills and engineering expertise.  So I joined up, and my debts and old, boring life didn’t follow.  The University of Menvander is not going to hunt you down if you declare bankruptcy and go galavanting across the galaxy with a group of mercenaries,” he finished.

“I’ll pick it up from here,” said Mark.  “How shall I put this…” he stopped to consider for a moment.  “Oliver was already aboard as a weapons specialist when I got here.  We worked together, got to know each other, and, as it turns out, the phrase ‘opposites attract’ is a very true one.  I always had the feeling that I was, well...gay, but, considering where I grew up, I never told anyone.  Didn’t really bother me.  I was perfectly fine doing what I was doing, and never saw anyone who peaked my interest.  ‘Till I met him, of course.”

“I’ve always been a hardcore liberal, been gay, and known I was gay.  Got here, met him, got married,” said Oliver.

“Wait, how did that work?” interrupted Shepard.  “You guys are all mercenaries who don’t really have legal residence anywhere, so…”

“Ah, yes.  We had a ceremony on the ship.  Was one hell of a party, actually,” replied Drake.  “Legally though…” he pursed his lips in thought.  “We’re all registered as Guild citizens for legal and infiltration purposes, so that might count...but for the most part, no legal or religious ceremony.  Doesn’t really matter though, all things considered,” he said with a shrug.

“Yep.  So now we spend all day repairing and creating weapons while bickering about politics,” interjected Oliver.  “It’s fun, actually.  Still don’t know why you support that outdated philosophy and religion when it doesn’t allow for homosexuality.  Which, you are.”

“Just because one part of a philosophy is wrong, doesn’t mean all parts of it are wrong.  Plus, you’re a hardcore liberal who supports the right to bear arms.  Like, all forms of weapons,” replied Mark.

“Eh, good point.  Goes with the job, I guess.”  They grinned at each other.

“Deviant freaks?

“Deviant freaks!”

“Goddamn right?”

“Goddamn right!”  They gave each other high fives then went back to their work.  Drake sighed.  

“Okay.  Let’s continue.”  They passed through the weapons room and into more of the winding grey hallways.  Drake spoke up as he walked.  “I should have probably told you, but everyone on this ship, myself included, is kind of nuts.  You see, being a mercenary means you kill people for money.  It does not attract the most...uh...stable of individuals.  Stable people stay near where they were born and go to college, or to some other form of school, or join the military.  Stable people do not go running around the galaxy and get into all sorts of weird things with me.”  He turned back to the Scoundrels and suddenly grinned.  “And by that logic, none of you are stable!  Welcome to the club!”  He turned another corner and walked into an enclosed room covered with constricting panels of all sorts of strange dials, knobs, and buttons.  The area was lit by yellow bulbs enclosed in metal cages, and the floor itself was made of metal grating, allowing one to see a series of tunnels underneath it.  The entire room was pervaded by a low, incessant humming noise.  “Now, this is the engine room.  It’s a lot bigger than it looks, but we need all the panels to keep the reactor functional, so it seems rather enclosed.  The engineers should be somewhere around here.”  He sighed again and gave a whistle.  “Oi!  Where are all of you guys?”  Without warning, a grey-jumpsuited woman slid from a small rectangular access hatch beneath one of the larger panels.  

“Right here, sir!  Fixing the 5130’s.”  She had a round, cheerful face framed with wispy brown hair.  She grinned up at the Scoundrels.  “Well, well, well.  Looks like we have visitors, everyone!”

“Pleasure to meet you,” said a muffled, echoey voice that seemed to emanate from the ceiling.  “I would come down to introduce myself, but I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“Visiters?”  A blond haired man poked his head from behind another panel.  “Pleasure to meet you.  Engineer First Class Boweman, at your service.”

“Engineer Baily,” said the woman, who had at this point gone back into the hatch.

“Engineer Khatri,” came the muffled voice.  

“K’rik Vhle’krik,” said someone else.  A large, brown insectoid alien turned the corner.  It looked like a cross between a centipede and a lobster, and stood on six hind legs, with eight more waving in the air in front of it.  Its back was protected by a large brown exoskeleton, and its eyes were mounted on two stalks on its head.  Cain tensed, his hand going to his sword.  Drake noticed the movement, but said nothing of it and instead made introductions.  

“Scoundrels, my engineering crew.  Engineering crew, the Scoundrels.”  He turned and addressed the ceiling.  “Are you busy at the moment?”

“A bit,” the alien replied in an odd, unnaturally exaggerated American accent.  “We’re trying to reroute the cooling systems of the 5130’s.”  

“Well then, I shall leave you to it,” said Drake in response.  “Moving on.”  The group walked through the engine room and through another hallway beyond.  “I would introduce everyone, but the cooling systems are very important in making sure everything goes un-exploded.”  

They passed into a large room covered with science equipment and what looked like the shell of a large bomb sitting in the middle of the room.  A woman with frazzled brown hair, wearing a welder’s face mask and a leather apron and gloves was standing over a strange device, pouring a red liquid into a stainless steel beaker.  She finished what she was doing, flipped up the mask and smiled at the newcomers.  

“Jennifer Muelka.  Ordnance and explosives expert.”  

“The remaining third of my weapons specialists,” interjected Drake.  “Brilliant at all forms of making things go boom.  A little too brilliant sometimes.”  She smiled sheepishly.  

“I do try my best to be careful.”

“So, I’m interested.  Why are you here?” asked Shepard.

“Oh that’s easy,” she replied with a laugh.  “No one else will let me do what I do here.  I create all sorts of nasty things.  Plasma, napalm...nukes, on occasion.”

“You...you, a mercenary, have nukes on this ship?” asked Vir.

“Yes.  No one’s complained, because if I do use them, I use them correctly.  I am very proud to say that the number of innocent civilians we have killed with nuclear weapons remains zero.”  

“That’s...kinda reassuring?” 

“Hey, if you’re hiring me, you get the best of the best,” said Drake.  Leaving Muelka to her work, they moved on.  THey walked through one long, spacious, and brightly-lit hallway before they reached a gleaming set of double doors.  “Now this is the bridge.  It’s located at the center of the ship to prevent anyone from targeting and destroying it.”  The doors slid open, revealing a large, spacious room lined with all sorts of computers.  The area seemed to be further divided into subsections, each with a semi-circular area accompanied with a chair.  Large windows adorned the entire length of the bridge, and upon noticing this, Kirk frowned.  

“You said we were at the center of the ship.  So what are those ‘windows’?”

“Computer screens, showing the space surrounding the ship.  Wouldn’t be a proper bridge if you couldn’t see outside, would it?”

“Fair enough, I guess.”

“Now then.”  Drake rubbed his hands together.  “I would like to introduce you to the two most important people on the ship.  Sarah Ordelphine and Eric Richter.”  He gestured to a lithe woman of medium height with short cut black hair and a man wearing a grey jumpsuit.  He too was of medium height, and his hair was brown, straight and cut short to the scalp.  A large scar ran across his forehead, the relic of some forgotten fight.  They both nodded curtly at the Scoundrels.  “Ordelphine is my chief navigator and pilots the ship, and Richter is my second in command.  So, why did you guys join with me?”

“I was and am the best capital ship pilot in the galaxy.  The Federal Navy and all of the corporations I was with before didn’t recognize that.  You did and still do, Captain,” replied Ordelphine.

“Damn right.  You’d think we were in a fighter, with some of the maneuvers you can do.  And you, Richter?”

“I didn’t have anything to do at the time.  Joined you.  Never had a reason to look back.”

“Fair enough.”  Drake spun around the room with a theatrical gesture.  “And so, the grand tour of the Apocalypse.  Met some new and interesting people.  I hope you enjoyed it.”

Hope you liked it.  The scene with Mark and Oliver might have been a little awkward or weird, but I am firmly of the opinion that most people are trying their best, and you can still like, love, or get along with them if you disagree politically.  If you have any comments, criticisms, questions, or requests, feel free to contact me.  And remember to sit back and enjoy your day!

[100hearteyes]

Lexa travels back in time to prevent her girlfriend’s death, for which she was responsible, from happening.

TW: past character death, grief.

(thank you @butmakeitgayblog for the moodboard and beta’ing.)

–

Three moments.

Three key moments, however inconsequential they may seem, triggered a chain of events which culminated in Clarke and Lexa meeting for the first time.

For Lexa, it was instant attraction. For Clarke, although they would only find out many years later, it was the promise of doom.

“You can’t just erase me from your existence, you know? I’ll still be there.”

I might still die, is what Clarke doesn’t say. Lexa hears it anyway.

Nowadays, Clarke is but a ghost. Literally. Lexa has no idea how or even why it happened, but it had been an exact year since her girlfriend died when her non-corporeal form first showed up.

It was… gut-wrenching. Lexa has no words for how painful it was to see the love of her life in otherworldly tones of grey and not be able to touch her. It’s become easier with time, but she suspects this hollow ache that pulsates every time Clarke appears to her will ever go away.

“You’re the one who told me there was a way. You said it would work.”

This Clarke is Clarke, or rather the continuation of her; but she’s also not exactly the woman Lexa knew, regardless of the shape she has taken. This Clarke is rude and unsympathetic and has little to no regard for boundaries.

She’s an unpleasant version of the love of Lexa’s life.

Still, it’s hard to dissociate them. Lexa must do it, though, for the sake of her own sanity.

“I said you could avoid being the reason why I die,” Clarke states. “I meant it. You can.”

This journey has taken Lexa to remote places and from each she took tokens of different cultures and outlooks on life. She’s learned about grief and guilt. She’s learned to accept what she cannot control and respect what she doesn’t know. Above all, she’s come to a realization: if this doesn’t work, she can take the final steps to let go. This isn’t the final step towards the precipice.

Two years ago, Lexa would’ve lost herself looking for Clarke. Now, she’s finding herself again, parsing through the grief and plucking the parts of her she’d lost after everything that happened. And the puzzle is coming together, piece by piece and day by day, creating a new version of her which may not be whole anymore and may not be exactly who she was before — but it’s her, and it’s imperfect and it’s beautiful.

Lexa has learned to love herself again.

So this isn’t a desperate Hail Mary, her one last resort, the final step into madness. If anything, wherever it may lead her, this is closure.

The first door she opened was in Cape Town, South Africa, where Clarke was born before her family moved back to the States.

It was a cold December morning. On her side of the door, Lexa was thirty and falling apart. On the other side, Clarke was five and building a tower with Lego blocks.

Lexa felt herself staring long into an abyss.

All she had to do was relocate a single object and leave through the same door she’d come from. Days later, when she returned to her home country, she found out Jake was still alive. His daughter was not, though.

The second door she opened almost three months later. February 25th, Lexa’s home city. All she did was drop Anya’s phone into a lake.

When she came back, all her problems were gone.

It sent her reeling.

Lexa began to wonder; was she doing this for Clarke, or for herself?

She was meant to open the third and final door just a week later, but spent the 3rd of March holed up in her apartment, curled into a ball on the couch. She had jumped into this without a second thought, out of a selfish desire to relieve herself of the guilt of Clarke’s death.

Someone else had paid the consequences. Someone else was making her mistakes now and paying for them. Someone else was going to have a loved one ripped from their life.

What right did Lexa have to unload her burden onto someone else’s shoulders?

It took her months to get back on her feet. If the past year and a half had been an amalgam of denial, anger, and, with her selfish undertaking, bargaining, her second voyage in time had triggered the stage of depression, reflection, and loneliness.

It was then that she finally came to terms with ghost Clarke’s presence in her life. The afterlife form of her girlfriend gave her the tough love she needed to push herself off the ground. Clarke punched Lexa into motion and through it, Lexa found acceptance.

Lexa loves herself, now. She loves herself like she never did before, even when Clarke’s love made her feel invincible. Now, she sees the cracks and hard edges, the places where the cloth of her doesn’t reach far enough to breach the gaps, and she’s made peace with it.

Her shortcomings are no longer defined by her limits, but rather what she lets herself be limited by.

Lexa flexes her fingers. “What happens if I open this door?”

“I turn right instead of left. We never cross paths on the Brooklyn Bridge.”

This door has been locked for two years. Lexa never opened it, afraid of the crushing feelings that may lurk behind it. Behind it is Clarke’s studio, where she spent hours painting, the outside world all but forgotten. Lexa would sit in the corner, laptop perched on crossed legs, pretending to work but really watching Clarke print her talent on canvas.

Lexa feels ready to open it, now, even if what she finds behind it is a row of paintings leaning on purple walls, rather than gray skies and the wooden planks of the Brooklyn Bridge.

She has two conditions, though. Her fingers tighten on the handle.

“Do you live?”

“Lexa, you know I can’t–” Clarke stops short at Lexa’s stern glare and sighs. “Yes.”

But that’s not enough. Lexa won’t be selfish again — she doesn’t just want Clarke to survive; she wants her to live.

“Will you be happy?”

Clarke averts her eyes, then swallows. However, when her eyes meet Lexa’s after she’s taken a fortifying breath, there is nothing but honesty in them. “Yes.”

“Were you?”

Lexa’s heart constricts as Clarke’s eyes well with tears. What does it take to make a ghost cry?

Clarke nods, tries to get hold of her emotions. Her lips tremble and Lexa wants desperately to take her in her arms. If only she could.

“More than I can ever put into words.”

–

March 3rd, the day everything changed.

Twice.

The day Lexa found Clarke and the day she lost her.

Lexa opens the door and finds herself once again on that day, seven years ago, when she was trying to balance three cardboard boxes while speed walking down the Brooklyn Bridge, trying not to crash into any people — or worse, topple over the railings and fall to a wet death.

It was fruitless, of course. Just about to cry mission accomplished, she collided with something solid and everything in her hands went flying.

Not this time.

This time, Lexa changes the course of events and Clarke never crosses that bridge.

She watches from afar as her past self makes it to the other end of the bridge unscathed and a whole new life rolls out in front of her.

“You did well.”

Clarke appears at her side, colorless though still beautiful. There is a nostalgia to her expression, a knife that slashes at the relief that blankets it.

As she studies Clarke’s face and her mind fills the grays with color, drawing memories along the light edges dark lines, Lexa finds herself unwilling to let go. She moves to take Clarke’s hand, but catches herself at the last moment, remembering the colors she’s seeing are a figment of her memories and there is nothing she can touch.

Clarke notices, though, and regards her with such sympathy and compassion Lexa wants to run away with her and never open the door again.

“Come with me.”

They stroll down the bridge, side by side, their tranquility offsetting the electric current stringing everyone around them; the runners and the hurried, the young and the old, together. They find a bench to sit on and stay there for a while, watching the river run its course and the sun arch over the city and the people fall into slumber as the hours go by.

Can she stay here? Can she live a life in a world not her own, in a time asynchronous to hers, under the guise of having Clarke at her side?

She knows the answer to those questions. She’s long since learned that what she wants isn’t always what she needs — and vice versa.

“I’m proud of you.” Lexa meets Clarke’s gaze. Human or ghost, and despite the absence of color, Clarke’s eyes are beautiful. Lexa has always found solace in them, a rock to hold on to in times of need. She hopes she’s been able to provide even a fragment of that same comfort. “How are you feeling?”

It takes Lexa a few moments to sift through the throng of thoughts and feelings which this day has brought forth. Even now, she has doubts. But greater than anything, and the driving force behind her actions, is the desire to make things right.

She finds a feeling amongst the rubble and makes it hers. Peace. She feels…

She feels at peace.

However, after spending two years with the grumpy ghost of the woman of her life, Lexa is also feeling nostalgia as well as the pain over her upcoming loss.

Ghost Clarke was a way to remain connected to the past. Now, Lexa has to let go of that too.

“I hope I was able to make a difference,” she finally replies, eyes still locked with Clarke’s. “It’s not even about my guilt anymore. It doesn’t matter if we meet, either. I have made my peace with what happened. I just… I wanted to give you a chance.”

A chance to live; not just survive.

“You did it, Lexa.”

Lexa has made her peace with her role in Clarke’s death as well as the tragedy itself. The wound will always marr her skin, but it will no longer hurt when she touches it.

All she cares about now is for Clarke to be alive and most of all happy, even if it’s not with Lexa.

Several hours later, Lexa’s hand is once again resting on the doorknob, this time waiting to go back to her world — or whatever of it is left.

Clarke is staring at her, bottom lip trapped between her teeth. At Lexa’s questioning look, once-pink lips pull up into a rueful smile.

“Everything will be different.”

Clarke will be alive, her life will follow threads unknown to her till now. Lexa knows things will change. She also knows she will never see Clarke again in whatever shape or form.

Each time she remembers that, the ground beneath her quakes. She holds tighter onto the doorknob, determined to stay on her feet.

When she meets Clarke’s eyes again, they’re shining with unshed tears. Lexa nods, solemn.

Words would taint the moment.

“It was never about me, you know? I just wanted,” Clarke moves as to reach out, but catches herself. She clears her throat. “It was never about what would happen to me. I just- I wanted to lift the weight of guilt off your shoulders, give you closure. I-,” she chuckles humorlessly, eyes flitting to the ground for a moment before meeting Lexa’s again. “I need you to know, I’m still me. There was never… I never would’ve been able to help you if I didn’t put some distance between us. That’s why I behaved differently. But I was always still me.”

And Lexa knows this, knows what she’s saying. She always has.

“Your happiness is all that matters to me, Lexa.” Lexa opens her mouth, but a shake of Clarke’s head stops her. “Please don’t. Otherwise I’ll say something to make you stay.”

Lexa aches to touch her, kiss her, though she knows she can do neither, and her hands shake with the urge to close the space between them.

Instead, she turns the handle and opens the door. Before she can go, though, she turns to face Clarke one more time, needing to commit every single detail to memory, as though every line of Clarke’s face, every nuance, every emotion, isn’t already burned into her mind’s eye forever.

So she knows the broken words before Clarke speaks them.

“I love you, Lex. And I’ll always be with you.”

It’s with those soft words cradling her heart that Lexa crosses the threshold.

–

One of the first things Clarke told her, when they started, was that Lexa would remember everything, both her own memories and her new version’s, but the original ones — the timeline where Clarke died — would fade with time.

Clarke also told her things would change.

So Lexa was expecting to step into a different world and to be surprised at how much had changed around her.

She just wasn’t expecting her life to be quite so different.

Clarke’s friends are no longer her friends. She expected that, but the reality of it is overwhelming at first. She realizes, now, she often took them and the support they gave her for granted. Suddenly, having none of them to lean on, she feels crippled.

On the other hand, she has a different, better job. And as it turns out, her new self has left behind the concrete stuffiness of New York and embraced the free-spirited intellectualism of San Francisco, which isn’t just a different city — it’s on the other side of the country. Any latent hopes she might have had of somehow finding Clarke have vanished.

It takes her a while to adapt to all the changes, but a year later she’s back on her feet and the life she had before is now but a distant memory. She still dreams about Clarke, though the dreams are fewer and further between. Selfishly, she thanks the universe for the small reprieve.

Her old problems don’t haunt her anymore and, if not for the absence of Clarke, this would be a perfect life.

At least she’s doing her best to make it so.

She’s also learning to treat herself better than she did in her past life. Embracing the practice of being kinder to herself is refreshing. Freeing.

It’s the pursuit of one such self-indulgence that she finds a small coffee shop downtown, which she starts going to every day before work.

Today is no exception.

As she waits in line, Lexa distracts herself, noting down her to-do list for the day ahead. As she’s debating whether to go to the grocery store before or after her late afternoon run, she doesn’t notice her pen sliding down the page and falling to an early demise, until she feels a tap on her shoulder.

“Excuse me, you dropped this.”

Lexa turns around to thank her good Samaritan, a gratitude sat ready on the tip of her tongue, only for her breath to catch at the sight.

Because she’s as stunning as ever…

Clarke.

[the-bloody-masquerade]

Bloodlines 2 - They/Them Pronouns and Trans and Asexual Representation

There has been some discussion recently regarding information that was presented in a recent podcast interview given by Bloodlines 2 writers Brian Mitsoda and Cara Ellison. I think it is important to know what was and what was not said and understand it in context so I would like to provide a transcript to the passages in question for us to reference as we continue to have discourse around the issue.

I also want to try to give a little more insight as to why they/them pronouns were not able to be added to the game as there are some substantial programming concerns when it comes to adding conditional content that cannot be accessed in versions of the game where the language used only has two pronouns instead of three.

This comes from episode 22 of The RE:BIND Podcast. Published on June 22nd, 2020. The interviewer is Emily Rose, the interviewees are Cara Ellison and Brian Mitsoda, lead co-writers of Bloodlines 2 (Mitsoda having been the original Writer on Bloodlines 1)

Character Creation and Pronouns (passage starts at 1:14:45)

Note: [...] denotes a false start or when they start their sentence over a couple times.  

Emily: In Bloodlines 2, how is character creation being handled in terms of gender?  

Cara: Oh, character creation. So, one of the major problems we have is, and actually this is not unique to us, but the entire industry, is that localization severely limits the way you can write characters and we’re actually coming up against this problem now even though we have made a bunch of decisions on like how you refer to the player character and the characters in our game. But like, a major problem that we always have in video games is that English has a way to refer to people who don’t want to have a gender. And a lot of languages around the world, don’t have that.   

Brian: Currently, there’s like, movements in some languages to get that.  

Cara: Right like, so if your Quebecois, there’s a term that’s like generally recognized as being ‘they’ that you can use, but a lot of languages might have people who for example are agender, but the terms that they use to refer to themselves are not thoroughly recognized throughout their language and country. And that provides us with a humungous problem because we are making a game about Seattle, and there are a large number of people who live in Seattle who don’t want to have a gender or don’t want to be referred to as a particular gender or they frankly don’t identify as a particular thing, so we represent those characters like we normally would, but we run into a bunch of problems when we try to localize. So like, in the character creation section what we decided was the best option for us is to essentially let you create the way your character looks in like, entirely separate of gender, so you can make your character look any way you like as masculine or as feminine or whatever you like. […] You basically can then say ‘I want to be referred to as ‘he’ or I want to be referred to as ‘she,’ and that’s the option that we give you. The reason we don’t give you the they/them option is because […] I think there are four or five languages that can do this, but a lot of European languages can’t refer to the player character as ‘they’ or ‘them’ because they have to choose one or the other, so, we ended up not being able to do the they/them option for the character creation. So we basically tried to give you a way of expressing yourself and how you look, whatever, but we do end up actually asking you to specify ‘he’ or ‘she’ because it actually is just the way we had to do it for localization. […] For example, when I worked at MiniMolecule they had the exact same problem and it’s a problem of scale as well, because if the scale was just like we only release in English, we could have done the third option, we just couldn’t do it. And also because, we actually systemically throughout the game, its structured to be able to like have lots of interactions based on your identity so we had to sort of choose that early on, so it kind of got structured that way as well. But we do have main characters in the game who do not have a defined gender, and at least if you play the game in English they will be referred to as ‘they.’ We did have the option for NPCs at least in English, to have that referent, but unfortunately, we were very limited by localization on that point. And we’re not the only game that’s limited by that, but as this is kind of more, this kind of specific thing in language rolls out across lots more languages I think actually it will become easier to do this over a time, I think, as well. I’m hoping, at least.  

TLDR; You will create your characters appearance separate from physical sex or gender and then you will pick he/him or she/her pronouns. The reason why they/them is not being included is because most of the languages that the game is being localized in do not have a 3rd/gender neutral set of pronouns and [presumably] would require all version of the game that only include 2 pronouns (because of language) to have their dialogue systems reworked/separately programmed. 

This is a bit different than “they should just put they/them in the English localization then.” If pronouns will be a character creation option that probably means they will be set up as a content trigger, which is what determines which voice and text lines you get (to correspond to your gender). For languages that only have two pronouns, what would you do with that third content trigger representing the they/them pronouns? They also talked content “structured to to be able to have interactions based on your identity.” If there were interactions that were only triggered by the they/them choice in character select, this content would effectively be lost in localizations that only had two pronouns in character select, (barring a comprehensive structural overhaul for regions with only two pronouns) 

The quicker way to do this would just be to have most NPCs use as little gendered language as possible to make most lines an content universal/not have to trigger alternate text/content based on the pronoun choice, but then this may defeat the purpose of being able to customize your PC’s gender and pronouns to begin with.  I do not mean to be an apologist. Gender neutral pronouns in RPGs are frankly overdue as an industry standard it is disheartening to hear that they/them will not be a choice in Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2. I just wanted to try and elaborate on why the inclusion/exclusion of gender neutral pronouns in a game slated for world release is from a programming standpoint more involved that one may at first think.

Trans Representation in Bloodlines 2 (1:19:37)

Emily: So obviously we have some kind of gender-nonconforming representation. What is there in terms of maybe more specific representation, like say, are there any transmen are there any transwomen? Anything like that. Is that brought up at any point during the game?

Cara: […] I think what we want to do in the future is, actually have some main characters be transmen or transwomen, but I don’t—unless the junior writers have actually—actually no the junior writers have written some characters new that we have specified to be trans. But I would have to check, unfortunately, I don’t think we have actually put anyone who’s trans into the game currently unless I’m forgetting about someone. But yeah, I think our plans are to do that, but we didn’t want to do it like we’re just oh, we’re gonna just put it in…

Brian: Yeah there’s definitely […] when you’re doing the [game] design stuff, you’re looking for a character that might fit for the scene or the quest or the story beat that you’re doing and so one thing I never want to do just try to shoehorn in everything that we want to do.

Cara: By the time I had joined the main cast had been very clearly defined, so we didn’t have the option to add a trans main character which is what we have wanted to do.

Brian: Yeah, I would also like it, if we do add a trans character, we can find a voice actor who’s also…

Cara: …trans as well.

Quests with Trans Themes and DLC  (1:21:24)

(immediately follows last section)

Emily: That was gonna to be my next question, so that’s really good to hear actually. So I totally understand how it goes just in terms of like, the preplanning and establishing the world and things like that, and the main reason I bring it up in the first place is just because so much of Vampire does tend to gravitate around people’s identities their expressiveness with both their sexuality and who they are and so it’s just something that’s like kind of been kind of been some sort of undertone in the series for a long time so I was just curious how it was being handled in Bloodlines 2. Those are pretty sufficient answers.

[…a brief interlude where they talked about a random quest from Bloodlines 1]

(1:23:00)

Cara: We actually have a quest based on the idea of dysmorphia, like feeling like you’re trapped in your body and it doesn’t match the way you perceive yourself. A lot of our writing is based on what it actually feels like to be in this state of stasis when you weren’t expecting to feel that because it has happened suddenly to you. And so there are loads of issues that would be really valuable to explore in that way, and you know we have staff who are super interested in giving their input on that, so I think we should definitely approach it, we just haven’t actually put it in the game in terms of main characters. We wanna make a trans main character, I think that’s important to us. We’ve got some DLC coming up that we’re gonna like make a greater effort on that front, like its Seattle, it would be so weird if we didn’t have trans characters. [Note: Cara lives in Seattle currently. 

Brian: Mmhmm

Cara: So, yeah. [to Brian] Ask Margaret as well, our voiceover director, if there are any trans actors that she would recommend we could cast for the role and maybe write it for them. So yeah.

Emily: So that’s the thing and even I struggle really to think of many games that have a trans character in a main role, let alone--I can’t actually think off the top of my head unless they’re very like micro indie stuff any games that feature like a trans woman protagonist. I think the last time I saw a transwoman in a game was I think I wanna say like Dishonoured 2, one of the semi-core side characters you encountered for one of the quests is a documented as trans.

Cara: And I think the Dishonoured 2 team really really really made a huge effort on that front to be able to represent a huge variety of different backgrounds of people. They were very interested in [doing that] from the start, so yeah I think there are like some games where it does matter too, and it really feels like the world is bigger when you actually provide those characters.

In-game Asexual Characters and Their Ideal Approach to Portraying LGBT+ characters.  (1:25:29)

Cara: But yeah, like we have tried to represent asexuality as well in the game.

Emily: Good good.

Cara: We have characters who are asexual. Who are canon asexual. And yeah, […] We try as well, not to write it sort of clumsily, we don’t write characters that like, out themselves, because that’s not—

Brian: No, because generally someone does come up and say that immediately.

Cara: when you’re from a background that has been marginalized, you’re very aware of your own safety. Especially if a stranger who looks shady approaches you, like our characters, you’re not gonna like immediately say it. But we make it explicit that this is who they are, but not in a way like ‘Hi, I’m Cara! I’m transgender!’ You know?

Brian: Yeah, yeah.

Cara: I think some of the ways in which people have done it in the past have been a little clumsy so I’m very aware of that as well.

Brian: Yeah, I would never want to handle it in a way that’s like ‘The main thing about that character is that they are trans’ like that’s not right at all

Cara: I want the main thing about that person to be something that they’re interested in, like, actually like exploring with the player character and I think like, most people are coming from somewhere when they approach you and its not going to be about I want to talk about my…[they both trail off laughing,]

Brian: They probably want to talk about a way in which they’re going to fuck you over. Or get something from you, or get you to do something for them.

Cara: Yeah and I would love to write a trans character who is like really really interesting and really really involved in something and I don’t want it [their transness] to be their defining [feature].

~~

Thank you for reading.

[wixelt]

Stargate: “Hoag” - Mass X’over Idea

About this time last year, I started watching Stargate with my dad. We watched the original movie and SG-1. And Atlantis. And the SG-1 movies. And Universe. And Origins.

We finished the franchise somewhere about a third of the way through 2020, though with how this year’s been it feels like that was years ago, now. And for a lot of the time we were watching it and for at least a little while after it, I had a thought that wouldn’t go away and that I kind of liked.

Namely that I wanted to write a Stargate fanfic of some kind, possibly even a crossover. A mass crossover, in fact. As with most of my fan-fiction thoughts, no matter the work, they eventually fell onto my pile of half-started ideas. I’m awful at keeping to things and not getting distracted by “new shiny” ideas like some kind of fanfic magpie, even when I like the idea.

That said, this was a concept I really liked, so i’m going to share the basics of it now, as far as I got with it. Maybe it will inspire someone else, or maybe i’ll come back to this someday.

Regardless, though here’s the notes:

- Post-Universe, the war with the Lucian Alliance is still going, and despite the slightly dire situation things were headed toward last we saw, the SGC’s winning. The LA are on the back foot, and is starting to break into smaller factions. One of the larger LA factions decides to cut their losses and make a run for it, their space fleet making a beeline for the Supergate the Ori Army built to link the Milky Way and Alteran Home galaxies, having either deciphered or stolen the codes required to dial it. The SGC puts together an attack force to intercept the faction at the gate and stop their escape. The fleet is accompanied by several characters from existing series.

- The battle’s one sided, but the LA faction continues to make a run for the gate. And then it happens. I’m undecided on the details, but a mix of weapons fire on the ships trying to pass through and other circumstances - in much the same way as that classic episode of SG-1 - causes the open Supergate to “jump tracks”, the destination shifting to somewhere not in the Alteran Galaxy. A side effect of energy on this scale causes all ships in the vicinity to be pulled through.

- Emerging on the far side, the surviving ships exit through what seems to be another Supergate, albeit of less refined design. Later study will show it to be Ancient, instead of Ori. This lesser design proves unstable, leading to the SGC fleet being forced to destroy both it and their crippled ships to force a ceasefire with the LA ships, stranding a cast of both old and new faces wherever they’ve ended up.

- As for where they’ve found themselves, it’s the Hoag’s Object galaxy, they eventually discover. For those unaware, this is a real ring galaxy more than 600 million light-years from the Milky Way (~200 times further from Earth than the Pegasus Galaxy). It’s a galaxy for which we have a low understanding of the mechanics behind its formation - which sparked my interest as the ideal location for a Stargate series with an underlying mystery beyond just “get home”, in the tradition of Atlantis and Universe. It’s a fun place to read and speculate about.

- The base of operations for the “Hoag Expedition” as they try to contact Earth (a challenge when their arrival method and much of their equipment has been destroyed), is the “Spire”, an automated Ancient outpost which is, as the name implies, a massive pointed tower in space. The story behind it, as the cast discover, is that the Ancients were very interested in what was causing Hoag’s Object’s structure, and sent a large automated seeding ship to the galaxy, with the intent that it would automatically drop Stargates on various interesting worlds and other locales - similar to the Destiny - also seed a few worlds with human life, as was their MO to an extent, then take up a preset location and convert itself into a stationary... station, that would serve as the Ancient’s home once they were ready to arrive - a local Supergate also being constructed as one of the projects they were intending to test alongside their studies in Hoag. Like Destiny, though, they never arrived. The Spire was dispatched late in the Ancient’s time, likely around about when they were fighting the Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy. After that, they focused on ascension, and the Spire lay forgotten, its systems waiting for a crew that wasn’t coming.

- Some of the first things the expedition discover on arrival are tied to the local gates. Firstly, they can’t dial home. Even when they work out where they are relative to Earth, they can’t calculate what the 8 symbol address required to dial would be (for reasons made harder by the second point). There’s no indication what the address would even consist of, given there’s no “dial Earth” address in the Spire’s database - presumably the Ancients didn’t know where they’d end up dialing from, and no-one ever arrived to clarify. Secondly, while the local gates are Pegasus-era 3rd generation Stargates, they have a different color palette - being purple rather than blue, because I like purple - as well as a completely different set of symbols. These symbols are determined to be a very symbol numeric system set up in 5s, presumably because the gate seeding was automated and chose a structured visual system. I actually created a guide for this system. As might be obvious, this gate network has more symbols them any other - to account for Hoag’s Object being a larger galaxy - featuring 41 non-Point of Origin options:

- As I mentioned before, however, I wanted this to be a mass crossover, which is where the Ancients’ MO of seeding human life comes in. Like the Pegasus Galaxy, you can still have those human cultures, but how far out Hoag’s Object is - as with Stargate Universe - allows for more alien cultures as well. Which naturally lets you drop pretty much any non-Earth (or otherwise, in some cases) setting into this concept amid other, more original planets and have it turn up as the expedition does what Stargate does best: explore new worlds. RWBY? No problem. Avatar? Eeyup. Fairy Tail? Definitely. Madoka Magica? Trickier, but even with that being set on Earth the Incubators have to come from somewhere, right? MLP? Simple, if the Equestria Girls world is considered the local side of the mirror and Equestria another reality. Heck, you could even throw in something as out there as Hermitcraft and probably make it fit.

- And yes, I did briefly play around with gate addresses for a few of the above places, too, but didn’t get very far due to waning inspiration (the above symbol system itself was already my 5th or 6th attempt to make something workable). I did include my meta-logic for choosing the symbols, though:

- There were other ideas I had for this whole thing, too. I played around with the idea of writing this on a forum thread on somewhere like SpaceBattles or Sufficient Velocity, and maybe I still could one day, where other people could write in the setting too if I got enough traction (always been a big fan of interactive and/or collab ventures). Also played with the concept of a story-line of two Goa’uld “brothers” who had left the Milky Way in centuries past in search of new pickings, finding Hoag’s Object and setting themselves up as gods over multiple worlds (one of which may have been RWBY, if that gives you an idea of where that was probably going), but that fell apart once I started questioning how they got to Hoag’s Object when the Spire and its gate hadn’t been touched before the SGC arrived.

All that aside, though, this idea is out in the open now. If someone wants to play around with it, they can. Or if people want to ask what i’d do with various settings or features, i’m happy to give it some more thought to get the creative juices pumping again.

For now, though, enjoy! :)

[omegangrins]

A Treatise On the Doctor

I don't know how to start this. Because I think of Peter Capaldi's words when he said that the only thing required to be a Doctor Who fan, is kindness.

I like 13 and think Chibnall is doing his best job writing the show.

So I struggle to write this because I am engaging against that very unkindness in the Doctor Who fandom, and trying very hard not to be angry back. "Allways try to be nice but never fail to be kind." But I've begun to wonder more and more if those who speak so loudly against the show really know what the show itself is about.

Enough of talking about other people though, cause frankly they're only important as set-up for this conversation. And again, I'm working kind.

So here's what you're gonna learn from this lifelong fan (and the best Tl;dr you're gonna get):

1. The Doctor sucks. From the very beginning. People complain about character traits now that have been around as long as the show.

2. Due to the Doctor's suckage, they tend to do more harm than good. (And because of this, most of the Doctor's "friends" along the way have been, well, let's leave it at the air quotes for now cause it's a damn big list of "BOOOO!!!".)

3. All of the showrunners and writers and actors and editors and everyone else has allways knows this and has played it this way.

4. And last but not least, since this is a time travel show. If you wanna know what and why stuff is happening now, look it up. Everything that happened before is allways in play.

5. None of this is bad, and in fact, it makes the show morally grayer. It's about kindness at all costs. Even your own.

A. First things first, the hard thing. The Doctor is not grrrreat. I mean, sure they try, but they fail a lot more often. In Extremis, a majority of those fatality index counts come from people the Doctor failed to save. That's why it's worded so specifically as "cause of death". All the death's caused by the Doctor's very interaction with time and lack of saving those around them. And part of it's not their fault, but more often than not, the Doctor says I can save you, and can't, won't, or chooses not to.

And that would be alright, but it took them over 1000 years to realize they should start letting their companions lead lives outside of theirs so THEY DON'T DIE. A bit too long as someone who claims to be better.

Not to mention how many times the Doctor is dismissive of their companions and the people around them only to use them for their help and just bug off again. If they truly cared and wanted to help, they would stay and listen in between adventures. Their lifespan is near infinite anyway. What's a few extra Earth hours with some friends you made along the way. You know, maybe fix some of the psychological and emotional damage created by encountering things behind a human's original scope of reasoning. But nope, we gotta go adventure more, byyyyeee!!

So when people talk about these qualities in 13 in a negative aspect I have to laugh because I'm not sure if they understand the joke. Cause we're talking about an alien that grew up around a species calling themselves Time Lords. I try not to blame them too much for it. 1 had to learn how to be hospitable to humans and it's been a bit of a slow learning curve ever since.

B. After the Doctor survived the horrors of the Time War and happened upon a human companion they felt worth connecting to, what did they do? They took Rose to watch her planet burn in front of her eyes. Great, first date, amirite?

And that's a little bit of companion damage. Do you know that the Doctor is responsible for the almost complete genocide of the Silurian race across multiple occasions. I am legitimately surprised there are any left after all of the ones the Doctor has killed. Like before, they cause destruction either purposefully or accidentally or simply by force of being there.

Remember before how I said that the Doctor just flies away. Yeah, they leave a lot of problems behind when they do (something that I can see Chibnall is planting the seeds of). If you had a time and space machine and practically unlimited capabilities and you choose to just leave after a situation and not check up on them from time to or see if there are any other underlying crises to be solved. But oh no, "gotta follow that rule of time and keep going even though I stopped in the first place because of how interested I was.". This is why 9 has a great arc about this. He thought he killed all the Daleks. They came back. He thought he'd gotten rid of the Slitheen. They came back. He thought he saved Satellite 5 from aliens. But opsies, they came back. And look! They're Daleks. Which he "finally" got rid of.

The Doctor just bounces around all carefree and without an ounce of care for themselves, their companions or consequences unless there's consequences for themselves or their companions. Then they get indignant.

Is that really kind of the person you want flying around fixing things in time and space? Who knows. But at least they are trying. Most of the time the T.A.R.D.I.S. lands somewhere and the authority figures are the most pretentious bull-headed pigs you can find. To me, I laugh cause it seems like both sides end up getting a taste of their own medicine. Usually with the bull charging to death in a sad glory while the Doctor wiles on metaphorically about not being as good as them.

But again, as a "superior" alien with "advanced" technology and "culture" you'd think they'd just know better already. But that's all part of the character. The Doctor may be in flux, but true change is difficult. The real hero of every story is the other people BESIDES the Doctor.

Cause the title is Doctor *Who* . The Who being half of the title, despite having less letters. It's the constant question of "What and why and who is that crazy person that's trying to help?" Why do you think they keep flying back to Earth? (Besides set construction reasons.) They've grown as attached to us as we have to them. And at this point, a lot of their saving us is guilt and embarrassment at having a hand in our timeline.

This is also the same reason the Doctor dumps companions in a fluff. Baggage. Every time a companion gets too heavy to carry the memories of... off they fly.

Except for 13. She's stayed. To this end, we can see how the Doctor changes. Not on our smaller, human timelines, but on the timeline of a god with way too much power.

D. With that in mind, we go Classic. It's the Who you need to consult if you wish to make any critique on what's happening now. Because how can you know how a part operates inside of a whole without seeing the whole part?

Cause I don't know if you've watched it but it can be rough, and I don't mean in the sense of production value (which admittedly they do a fairly decent job of using what money they had. A problem the BBC plagues to Doctor Who to this day.). The 3rd Doctor shits on every one they call friends constantly and then turns around expecting help. 4 did the same. Then 5 masked that contempt with a plucky face and a cheeky word. But it was still there, bubbling out of 6 and 7 as the inability to suffer fools gladly and using their own righteousness to enact change in their companions. A trait that kept going til an entire war and regeneration was used solving the question of "Doctor Who?" Only for them to try and forget twice more by putting on their pretty grinning faces and running away from it.

And I'm only talking from a companion perspective. Each of the Doctors has enacted their own form of genocide on countless species. Sure, it's to "save humans" but at the end of the day you'd have to ask yourself if we're really worth that blood. And this is all in the Doctor's history. As much as they claim better, they're hands are still gushing red.

The Doctor left Jo because she fell in love. They drove Adric to put their life on the line in order to feel adequate. The entirety of the Silurian race has been wiped out fivefold under their watch, with one time by their hand itself. Same for several other singular and unique species you won't be able to find elsewhere in the universe. 7 used time travel to enact a personality change in Ace while simultaneously using her as a pawn in an interdimensional war. The Time War itself. Sure it got erased but the Doctor still did those things ("War" Doctor or whatever nonsense titles they feel necessary to delude themselves). The entirety of Amy's childhood was destroyed by their presence, and Rory got erased. Twice! Sarah Kingdom. We know the list. Hell, the Doctor whisked Barbara and Ian away because they wanted to teach the snobby humans some lessons.

They may have a time machine, but we have the bill of their actions. This is where 13 excels. Because they're trying to be better than themselves. They've learnt the lessons of all those years traveling and the failures they wish they could reverse but don't as a way of keeping a scoreboard of pain. It's not perfect by any means, but look at 12 needing cue cards to understand and react to human grief under duress. They've come a helluva long way. After 50 years, I'm inclined to believe better. After all, it's what the Doctor would want.

E. You know how people like the ASOIAF series because it offers up morally complex characters existing in a morally complex world where black and white are harder to define than grey? Have you ever thought of Doctor Who as the same? Strip past the fairytale and adventure and "wibbly wobbly timey wimeyness and it's just people reacting to situations. We're just harder on the Doctor because they're hard on us. You could go round and round on who's the bigger killer, but at the end of the day Time Lords and humans fight and feel about the same things. It's allways been a joke to pretend otherwise.

That's why I love the Timeless Child. Not for making the Doctor anymore special but for saying that even despite having all of their specialness ripped away and repurposed to create a lie of a society then having the memory wiped of said event, the Doctor broke out of their mold, stole a TARDIS and told the Time Lords to fuck off. That's not a Captain America/Superman hero. That's Batman in space with a society of Lex Luthor's. Gotham and Gallifrey. The Doctor saw what they were a part of and broke free, without even knowing the more horrifying truth. Cause it's the thing I see many fans missing because they're so preocuppied with the Doctor being special. The thing that made the Doctor different was their ability to know the difference and walk away to find better. Now, the Doctor has a reason to go back and find out why they never stopped running.

The Time Lords might be the greatest monsters in the universe. It is in the name. "Lords". Those who would lord over us and impose their will with a banthium fist.

And this is a children's show.

C the thing is, the people who made and make this show all collectively rail against one thing: Hate. Kindness is the way of Doctor's. Even if they're sawing off your leg, it's to do the kindness of saving your life. This is because the people who make this (United Kingdomers) have seen centuries of war and conflict and oppression enacted by their own country in the name of progress. And they want to see it no more. Look no further than any of the Doctor's adventures with UNIT. Allways advocating for peace and being ignored for the comfortable war-cry. It's why it's hard to blame the Doctor when we do very similar and often worse (though we don't have time travel.... yet). The creators of this show know better, see better, and wrote better, to know that the powers that be nipped would nip their creations and sanitize them. So they wrote their messages so strong that you can feel them from the future. They're powerfull enough that even across eras they have all collectively moved me to write this.

That's another point I have to laugh at people saying Doctor Who has never been in your face about progressive politics. The Green Death. Survival. Trial of a Timelord (Yes, all of it. Sit down and power through.) The Happiness Patrol is one of my all time favorite episodes for going there in this regard. People may poo poo but history has its' eyes on you. Doctor Who loves taking potshots at the issues of the day. As long as you don't make the aliens black of course. Make them all the colors of the rainbow but never make them black. That'd be too on the nose (That's something they used to say back in the day! Crazy how far we've come).

So bravoa to Chibnall for continuing the legacy of Doctor Who. From where I'm standing, he's not doing anything different than any other showrunner before him. Cause if you want to argue canon, you at least have to know what created it. This show owes what it is to those Classic eras. And if you think Chibnall is shitting on those years and your childhood.... well, then why did you read this whole thing?

[pagebait75-blog]

Mediator (INFP) Character

3 Amounts of Expert Arbitration

Mediators contribute to a hassle-free and effective settlement. Throughout an agreement, conciliators can deliver helpful suggestions and also methods that could certainly not be on call to the events associated with the negotiation. For instance, a moderator may encourage making improvements to the regards to the contract, which will minimize the duties of either event.

Among the benefits of practicing meditation is constructing a successful connection between the parties. Both gatherings need to have to know and allow the significance of the mediation method, in order for it to be successful. For that reason, it is imperative that each people totally recognize the usefulness of becoming part of a mediator's task.

As a negotiator, it is crucial to be coordinated, well-informed, well-informed, trained, as well as very approachable. It is necessary that you recognize your customers' requirements and also incentives prior to you launch the negotiation method. This will certainly offer you the expertise you need to have to assist all of them comprehend the value of the negotiation process. Additionally, it is important that you know the value of the function that an arbitrator plays.

There are different levels of moderating. These consist of the following: professional negotiator, non-emergent moderator, conflict mediator, and routine negotiator. There are actually many aspects to the duties of these negotiators. Below are actually merely several of the more crucial premiums.

The first amount of resolving is actually the conciliator's function. As the moderator, you are in charge of assisting to cultivate the settlement procedure in between the celebrations and also leading the negotiations in a productive instructions. You need to have the ability to continue to be targeted on each one of the arrangement elements in addition to guarantee that the settlement is running efficiently.

Pro negotiators have a higher level of experience in every locations of the mediation process. This includes such traits as negotiation skills, discussions history, agreement techniques, mediation method management, communication skill-sets, methods, techniques, and also assumptions. Being actually a professional indicates that you understand every thing that happens throughout the mediation method. Being actually a pro also implies that you understand when you need to have to become involved with the arbitration process.

The next amount of moderator's role is actually the negotiator's function. The conciliator's function is actually crucial given that it is their task to listen closely and also to deliver guidance, techniques, as well as feedback. Additionally, it is actually the arbitrator's part to reply to all concerns that are actually raised during the course of the mediation. This likewise involves comprehending what each gathering needs and what they wish.

The 3rd level of the conciliator's duty is actually the arbitrator's function in a problem. This entails, basically, listening to each events and afterwards taking action accordingly. This level also involves meeting along with each event a number of opportunities to talk about the issues that were brought up throughout the arbitration. Likewise, the mediator is going to normally bring in various other participants of the mediation staff to ensure that they can easily focus on certain concerns.

Job of Conciliator when it comes to Breakup

What is actually the role of arbitrator in the case of divorce? There are a lot of traits that an arbitrator does, yet one of the absolute most vital ones is actually that they help their clients to communicate a common perspective that can easily help all of them exercise the concern in the case of breakup. It goes without saying, in case of separation a married couple must face a hard opportunity and it is important for both parties to become able to see the other as the very same person along with discussing the exact same market values. This is actually where the task of mediator in the case of breakup can be found in. A conciliator is going to play an essential role in assisting you as well as your partner ahead to an arrangement about what to perform from here. All the customer needs to accomplish is to seek arbitration, to provide all the needed details regarding the marriage and typically to go over the factors for the separation and also how to move on all together later on. Nevertheless, just before you actually connect for mediation, it is essential that you care for some really important matters just before your case of divorce are going to be actually solved.

When it concerns the part of negotiator in the case of divorce, the primary thing that you require to comprehend is that a negotiator participates in a crucial part in helping you communicate a typical perspective so that you may work out a compromise about what to carry out after divorce as well as what is right for you and your companion to deal with one another after the divorce. Nevertheless, it is crucial that you and your partner coincide the conciliator to ensure that they can aid you along with the goals of separation resolution. The second point that you need to understand is actually that what is the part of moderator when it comes to separation? If both you as well as your partner feel that there is nothing you may do concerning the whole separation scenario after you agree to the mediation then it is really important that you care for this just before you reach out for mediation. This is given that your partner is not heading to speak with you once again if you do certainly not settle this. As a result, it is actually quite vital that you talk with your companion concerning what is the role of mediator in the case of separation and also just how you are going to progress in case of breakup. It is actually additionally significant that you come up with services for these options through thinking of mutually appropriate answers.

It is vital that you think about your companion and what he or she would like to carry out after separation and what is the job of mediator when it comes to breakup? The job of mediator is actually extremely crucial when it comes to breakup and therefore you need to have to find methods as well as indicates to communicate a common point of view for your breakup resolution. It is very important that you have the capacity to communicate with your partner as well as this may merely be actually performed by speaking as much as achievable. This can be carried out in a normal method or even a professional method as it suits you each. The job of the moderator is extremely vital and as a result it is actually extremely vital that you take continuously to talk with your companion and also aid him or her to understand what is actually the task of conciliator in the case of divorce. For that reason, take continuously to comprehend what is actually the function of arbitrator when it comes to separation and go over all these issues along with your companion.

Just how Carries Out Mediation on Children in Separation Assist Kid?

The inquiry of how performs mediation on youngsters in breakup help kids is actually none that ought to be shrouded in secrecy. If little ones are actually going to receive injured or make blunders while they are actually appearing in a divorce scenario, it is actually the accountability of the moms and dads as well as the little ones to allow all of them know about it. If both moms and dads know that the arbitration is actually mosting likely to be the final word in the separation, they will definitely have the ability to find that they are acquiring the most effective offer from the entire process. These factors ought to additionally occur in court of domestic relations, however regrettably, that is actually certainly not constantly the instance. What's the role of arbitrator on youngsters in a separation? In numerous means, arbitration on kids in divorce can be the like in domestic relations court. In the family members court, the mediator is going to assist the little one really feel heard and also he or she is actually in command of the process.

The focus of the mediation must be on the health and wellness and health of the youngster during the time of the case. Because kids are heading to exist for the whole entire course of the divorce, each gatherings need to have to be operating in the direction of a well-balanced youngster later on. It may be that a person parent believes that his/her guardianship purchase will help the kid much more than the various other moms and dad. The little ones will possess the option to take this right into profile, but the moms and dad who has the more powerful will ought to create the scenario. This gives the little ones a feeling of honor as well as success.

A vital factor to consider when speaking about arbitration on youngsters in separation is actually that it does not suggest that both parents will definitely require to go around selecting battles with one another, specifically in the early stages of the procedures where the children might hesitate of their new daddy or mama. In reality, there is actually an odds that the kids may even be far better off because they recognize that they can consult with someone in authority if they possess any hesitations or inquiries. The job of conciliator on children in breakup likewise implies that both moms and dads require to tackle deciding on a well-balanced arbitration. Really good and healthy and balanced mediation will certainly aid little ones really feel in control of the procedures as well as are going to likewise assist kids discover to become split up pleasantly along with kids in breakup.

What is actually the Function of Arbitrator in Adult Planning?

What's the part of mediator in parental strategy? To place it merely, the part of the mediator is actually extremely necessary in this particular sort of program. It would certainly not be wrong to point out that without a moderator, the moms and dads and their children will reside in a chaotic wreck. A mediator's task is to make sure that all the individuals associated with the plan have enough understanding of what needs to become performed. In the event that of conflict, the conciliator needs to be able to speak all of them out.

The part of a conciliator in a parental plan is actually of fantastic relevance in the advancement of a child's lifestyle. The primary aim of mediators is actually to encourage people in the household to sit down with each other and also look at the strategy. They should formulate ideas as to just how they may improve it even further. In some cases it may be needed for the mediator to possess some expertise about the topic because a conciliator should be sensitive to the possible frustrations that an individual may be experiencing as a result of the plan. Or else, the negotiator could possibly leave the couple in a worse situation than just before they came.

Having said that, the conciliator ought to likewise remember that while he or she is actually resolving in the plan, both ought to likewise be actually doing so at the same time. By possessing an arbitrator in the program, the moms and dads can easily concentrate on their own plans and the arbitrator may focus on the strategy. Just in case of conflict, the negotiator needs to serve as a mediator as well as offer his ideas to the bride and groom. If in all required, the negotiator can step in and iron out the troubles.

What is actually the Role of Arbitrator in Retired Life Pension Plan?

What is actually the job of mediator in a retirement life pension account? Within this post, I will definitely be actually dealing with the duty of arbitrator in a retirement pension plan. The concept of an arbitrator is actually quite straightforward; it is actually a person who is actually designated to aid legal professionals and also accounting professionals in a legal scenario. They stand for each events as well as exemplify the judge.

What's the duty of negotiator in a retirement life pension? It is actually an incredibly common event in any type of legal action as well as it is very important to understand this concept. Essentially, the moderator needs to be actually a competent and experienced attorney or law firm expert. Commonly, the person will certainly must have previous know-how of litigation. In some cases, the conciliator may be hired on a contingency manner which means they get paid due to the gathering they are exemplifying.

A conciliator has a task to look out for the best interests of the gatherings as well as typically they are actually selected by the court or even the legal representative as well as not the lawyer himself. Their job is to consider the available info as well as decide based upon their competence. Online mediation of the times, they will offer their referral about the ultimate result. This need to be actually complied with up along with the lawyer or the legal representative's client. With these straightforward definitions, I wish you will have the capacity to respond to the question: What's the task of conciliator in a retired life pension?

[hotcuppajo]

Team GOLD(+ HD View):

Gianni Giallo - Lucky Foot

Oda Sojiro - Nekomata

José Loureiro “Loro” de Vasconcelos - Windburn and Ícaro

Nereide Dourado - Storm Body

Overview:

Team GOLD(”Gold”) is a 3rd Year Atlasian team, returning to their academy after the fall of Beacon. They are fairly popular in Atlas Academy despite being 3/4s* Faunus...

Gianni Giallo - Bunny out of Hat

Gianni was conceived from a woman’s attempt of blackmailing a rich businessman that ultimately destroyed said businessman’s marriage. That marriage, however, was out of convenience and once free from it, Gianni’s father sought to have an actual family and did his part in properly raising him.

Being a faunus in Atlas made things difficult for Gianni from an early age, but instead of putting up discrimination with or fighting back, Gianni befriended his aggressors and became a bully himself, diverging the negative attention onto others.

This behavior is maintained even in Atlas Academy, where he maintains himself and his team in a high social-status by being a jerk to some, and a friend to others.

Semblance: Smoke and Mirrors

Gianni’s Aura has light-distorting properties and, when he activates his Semblance, some of it is released into the air, creating a cloud-like light anomaly that makes it impossible to see within its area of effect(Including special types of vision, like infra-red). The cloud slowly disperses over time and Gianni can consume more Aura to make it last longer/cover more ground.

Oda Sojiro - Fat Cats

One of the many faunus orphans from Mantle, Sojiro was lucky(?) enough to be adopted by a rich and powerful family from Haven as a PR stunt to improve their company’s reputation in relation to Faunus.

He had food and a roof over his head, but that house had no love. His parents were too busy with their company or their luxurious lifestyle to pay any attention to their actual children, let alone the adoptive son... and what was a fight among the children for a minute of their parents time, became a vicious fight for future ownership of the company.

Sojiro was never interested in participating in the “family business”, and was properly kept away from it by greedy siblings, save for one. The youngest sister whom he had helped take care off since before she could walk. She is the only real family he has, and what drives him to become a Huntsman.

Semblance: Beckon

Sojiro can create an invisible hand that can grab and pull objects towards him(or him towards them). The hand can only pull and can carry objects up to twice Sojiro’s Weight with ease. The Hand is a limb of Aura, which can be severed mid-pull by Sojiro or enemies.

José Loureiro “Loro” de Vasconcelos - Talking Parrot

José Loureiro, or simply “Loro”, always was a shy boy. Growing up, he didn’t have many friends, was constantly bullied in school, but despite being the son of a police officer, never spoke of his issues with his father. He endured, because he knew his father had enough to deal with.

Being a faunus was one of the sources of his problems, so when his family had to move due his fathers job, Loro begun plucking the feathers that grew on his arms and wearing long sleeves,posing as a human in front of his new classmates.

He still had problems being social, however. His only actual friend was a puppet he had since childhood, which he used for ventriloquism. He was surprisingly good at it, even creating a character for the doll, but he soon realized people were laughing AT him, not his performance. .

Things took a turn for the better once he enrolled in Atlas Academy.He got lucky during a fight test, impressing general Ironwood and being awarded a place in an experimental fight program with the army. Suddenly, several people took notice of him and, not knowing how to behave, his puppet character took over, causing him to behave like a completely different person.

He is now able to pretend to be confident in front of others, but he’s still the awkward and cowardly person he’s always been under his flight goggles...

Semblance: Falsify

Loro’s Semblance has two components, “Scanning” and “Creation”. He is able to run his Aura through objects, gaining knowledge of their compostion, then, create a copy of it by solidifying his Aura.

The falsification looks exactly like the object it mimics, but it is made of a glass-like material, making it obvious at close inspection that the object is fake.

In combat, Loro uses his Semblance to multiply his crossbow’s projectiles mid-flight. The copies are brittle and deal less damage than actual arrows, but they help him overwhelm his enemies.

Nereide Dourado - Fighting Fish

Nereide doesn’t remember her past. She was rescued from an underground fighting ring when the police caught up with the illegal activities happening in Mantle’s under-belly. The same night the police arrived, Nereide has participated in a fight and was badly wounded in the head.

Information about her is scarce, apparently she was sold by her mother for drug money and raised to fight in these kind of circuits. She was adopted by one of the force’s police-men(Loro’s father), starting over her life with an actual family.

She is very happy with her new family and doesn’t think of her past, although she has always experienced bad nightmares over the years...

Ever since enrolling in Atlas, her brother has pretended to not be a Faunus, and while she doesn’t personally approve it, she still backs him up in his decision, helping cover for him when his secret is endangered.

Semblance: Golden Memory

If Nereide has a clear vision of someone, or some thing, moving, she can analyze and memorize those movements, being able to imitate them(if physically possible).He has a limited amount of “memory”, and can maintain a certain number of moves memorized at a time, but will forget them if she attempts to memorize more. If she holds onto a memory and practice it, she may actually learn said moves, but this process takes time.

[jmsebastian]

Great Adaptation Expectations - Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage

Some things just demand to be adapted into video games, and Kentaro Miura’s dark fantasy manga series Berserk stands pretty much atop that list. Released in 1999 and developed by Yuke’s in cooperation with Miura, Sword of the Berserk: Guts’ Rage is a third-person action game for the Sega Dreamcast that attempted to scratch that initial gamification itch, and ride the success following the first anime adaptation of the series, which premiered two years prior.

Before discussing the details, it’s important to note that Sword of the Berserk suffers the same fate that so many licensed games do. It isn’t very good. Some of that comes down to the era in which it was made. There are a few frustrations that plague it that are typical of an era in which 3D action games were relatively new. That isn’t to say there aren’t things to enjoy about the game. If nothing else, it did help solidify why the approach to how action games played needed to be adjusted. Unfortunately, that means Sword of the Berserk itself, is something of a missed opportunity. On the plus side, it’s not a very long game, so its shortcomings don’t have enough time to grossly overstay their welcome, and any suffering along the way is mercifully brief.

The first obvious issue is the lack of camera control. Going back to play any 3rd person action game without a controllable camera can feel extremely limiting. It’s become such a staple that it feels more unnatural not to have it than it probably did to have it when it was first introduced. Of course, there are certainly examples of very good games that lack it. You can’t control the camera in Onimusha or Devil May Cry, but you don’t tend to notice that limitation as much since the camera is placed in thought ways that reveal the relevant visual information to the player.

Sword of the Berserk’s camera lacks that thoughtfulness. It tries to be dynamic, moving along with your character, but the concern seems to be more on framing Guts in a particular way rather than assisting the player. Given that this is an adaptation of a beautifully drawn manga series, it’s hard to fault the developers for trying to capture some of that magic in their game (which they largely accomplish in the cutscenes), however, it ends up compromising its playability to a fairly extreme degree at times.

You also have the issue of moving toward the camera a lot, meaning you’ll often find yourself running headfirst into danger you can’t see until it’s too late. There’s even an escape sequence near the end of the game reminiscent of Sonic Adventure 2’s opening sequence. You have to run around and jump over obstacles with little warning before you’re right up against them. Without rings to help you cling to life, this is extremely frustrating. One mistake means you die, and in a game with limited checkpoints and continues, it can quickly become the hardest and most frustrating part of the entire experience.

Rollin' around at the speed of sound/Got places to go, gotta follow my rainbow/Can't stick around, have to keep movin' on/Guess what lies ahead, only one way to find out!

Another part of what makes the camera so difficult is that it doesn’t have a lot of room to maneuver, even if the developers might have wanted to. You spend most of your time inside a castle, fighting through narrow corridors and cramped courtyards. In those confined spaces, the camera can’t really move wherever it wants because chances are, level geometry would get in the way. There are few examples of where this does actually happen, such as when you travel below the castle’s cemetery, and an obelisk sitting in the middle of the room complete obscures any figures that move behind it.

Aside from restricting the camera, the level design has the consequence of hampering what the game’s mechanics are centered around entirely, the combat. The whole point of a Berserk game is to play as Guts and swing the laughably huge Dragon Slayer sword around. There are several levels in this game where that is literally impossible. One level in particular, where you run through the castle town has several passageways where you’ll clank your sword against stone trying to land a hit on guards that hinder your progress. The developers seemed to realize this would be a problem, so they put in the option to sheath the Dragon Slayer and fight with your fists. I can say that this is not the most adequate solution. Even playing on the easy difficulty, punching guards out is a dubious proposition. Your damage output is drastically reduced and since the guards can snipe you with arrows from some distance with crossbows, you may well die before even getting the chance.

Let me just, uh, erm, hmm.

On some level, you have to respect the commitment to realism, as you obviously could not swing a sword the size of the Dragon Slayer in most places that human being typically occupy. However, the ability to swing said hunk of iron in the first place is fantastical, and thus, I think it would have been more than a fair compromise to let the sword simply clip through level geometry in an effort to make the combat more fluid and satisfying. Thankfully, the boss fights, which are the main draw of the game’s combat, are usually placed in much more open areas to avoid this issue.

Ultimately, I get the feeling that the game’s design took something of a back seat to the story that Kentaro Miura wanted to tell, and as such, there’s relatively little actual game to be played at all. Of the roughly four hours it takes to get through, most of that time is spent in cutscenes, making Sword of the Berserk more of an animated film than a game. Honestly, this does not really bother me. If you got the game because you were already a fan of Berserk, then what you’re getting is Berserk. What’s especially great about it is that the story told is unique to the game. It’s a side-quest, as it were, to the Millennium Falcon arc, where Guts has decided to keep the traumatized Casca close to him as he continues his quest to defeat Griffith. In this side story, Guts meets some traveling performers and decides to go watch their performance in a nearby town. He ends up walking into the middle of a conflict between the regions lord and people afflicted with a curse, called the Mandragora.

What’s more, is that the story is told quite well. For its time, the Dreamcast was a very capable platform for 3D graphics. Even twenty years later, the cutscenes are enjoyable to watch on their own if you’re willing to overlook a few flaws. Sure, the characters models are a bit blocky and they move a bit like action figures, but robotic movement is a problem that still plagues 3D animation if the 2016 Berserk or 2019 Ultraman anime is anything to go by. There’s still incredible attention to detail. The faces, in particular, have a lot of expression to them and help bring moments to life in a way that seems hard to believe at times.

You can really see the despair on his face.

It helps, too, that the voice acting is of very high quality. With well-known talents like Cam Clarke and Earl Boen, there was a clear emphasis on treating the game’s story seriously. This is extremely important since the story makes up pretty much the whole reason you’d be playing this game in the first place. There are some issues with the localization here and there (the name Guts is treated as a nickname rather than a given name in a few scenes), but the line delivery and interaction between characters really sell the scenes, even if the lines themselves are a bit clunky or cliched. When you compare the cutscenes in Sword of the Berserk to those in say, Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, released just a year earlier, you can’t help but appreciate the skill in direction and experience of the actors when stellar voice-acting in games was not a given.

You could argue that this story could have been served better through manga or traditional animation, but it’s hard to fault Yuke’s for wanting to make a Berserk game, or Miura for wanting to branch out and test the waters on new methods of conveying his story. Berserk’s popularity in Japan meant that a game based on the series was going to be made at some point, and creating a self-contained side story that can be begun and ended within that game makes perfect sense. It also helps make the game approachable by those who aren’t familiar with the series at all. In 1999, Berserk certainly wasn’t considered such a pinnacle of dark fantasy in the West as it is today, so someone picking the game off the shelf in the US would very likely have no frame of reference for the story at all. Thanks to the introduction of new characters like Rita, the player can learn what they need to know through the lens of those characters, making the reliance on that prior knowledge a lot less necessary.

Now that Berserk’s influence has become so far reaching, it seems unlikely that anyone would come to the Dreamcast game without some working knowledge of the series. While it’s hard to consider it a can’t miss part of the Berserk experience (save for the wonderful musical contributions of Susumu Hirasawa), there’s enough there for anyone willing to put up with some clunky design. At the very least, it’s worth watching a playthrough online for the story alone if the act of playing the game itself doesn’t manage to replicate the feeling of becoming the Black Swordsman himself.

[darkzorua100]

Well...that was underwhelming. I get that episode 71 was basically just set up for the start of the war between humanity and the Ignises, and there was no way they were going to be able to top episode 70 with everything that happened in that, but this episode just went by so fast that they didn’t even give us time to be whelmed by the reveals that they did give us. I mean, it didn’t help that the beginning of the episode was a four minute recap and everything else felt like stuff that we as the viewers were already able to put together, it was just the show confirming it for us. But hey, on the bright side, we got our new ED this week. The bad side? OP 2 is still the same. No changes whatsoever. I shouldn’t get annoyed at this, after all there was no evidences to begin with that we were going to get an updated OP, but at the very least couldn’t they have updated Revolver? That is just going to be awkward now seeing him in his old avatar when he’s in his new one in the ED.

Anyway, we pick up right where we left off in episode 70 with the whole Jin reveal and I do like how this episode finally establishes a term for how the Ignises view their humans. Lightning calls Jin his Origin which makes sense. Still want to know how the actual hell Jin created Light Yagami from his messed up state but I digress. As we expected, just based on his expression, Jin is basically just a lifeless drone for Lightning to use, imprisoned within his own mind. How does that exactly work though? I mean, Jin’s real body is in a coma right now with his consciousness being used as Lightning’s throne with his deeper consciousness being completely closed off. This is some Inception sh*t right here is all I can say to that. Back to the whole Origin thing, Lightning says something about it that I find interesting. He says, and I quote, “Ignis and Origins can’t help but to affect each other.” with Ai talking about how this is shown through Playmaker’s Link Sense. It is because of their connection, with Ai being the Ignis based off Yusaku, that Yusaku has that ability to begin with. Interesting. What does this say about the Lost Children and the Ignises as a whole then if they keep finding ways to affect each other whether they know it or not? Take for example Windy’s condition at the moment. He out right tried to kill his kid, if he’s alive or not who knows at the time being, and then that pain and suffering he unleashed on his kid circles back around to almost destroy him. I’m very intrigued to know more about this connection then ever now.

Playmaker puts together that Lightning was the one to destroy the Cyberse World and Ai, especially Flame, are pissed about that one. Basically Lightning did it as a giant reset button. Because they weren’t getting anywhere on their decision whether to co-exist with humans or to destroy them, because Flame, and, as revealed in this episode, Aqua wanted to side with humans. I think this basically confirms that Aqua went to her human so that’s going to be interesting to see when we finally see them in person. I also just loved the little moment between Flame and Soulburner when Flame told Lightning the reasons why he sided with Takeru in the first place. 

Okay, that’s adorable. Unlike Yusaku and Ai, who grew to believe and understand each other as partners, Flame just naturally believed in Takeru from the start when he couldn’t even do that for himself. It really is just tough love between these two on why Flame is such a jerk to Takeru at times, other then just not being able to understand humans of course on Flame’s end, but it works and it is just nice. It is also just really interesting for Flame to say this as well because again, when you look at it from Yusaku and Ai’s prospective, if Ai had actually stayed in the Cyberse World after the first attack, he probably would have been on Lightning’s side. As seen in the first episode, he watched Playmaker from a gargoyle statue when he was on the run sure but if he never left in the first place, he more then likely would have never done that. As Ai stated, he and the other Ignises wanted nothing to do with humanity at first and considering how self preservation he was in the beginning of season 1, if Lightning told him that hey, the humans are going to be planning a full out war between us then yeah, he definitely would be on Lightning’s side if it meant he would be able to win and continue to live. Some nice indirect acknowledgement for Ai’s character development right there. 

Of course, Lightning doesn’t share the same views as Ai and Flame do and just thinks it is a giant error in their programming. To put it in a nutshell, since he wasn’t able to talk them into joining his side peacefully, he’s going to try and reset them just like he did with their world when he gets the chance. Right now, Lightning has to save Windy’s life since he’s still kinda dying at the moment so he leaves with his star club. Playmaker and Soulburner make chase, and the Knights of Hanoi stay back to watch the show and make some phone calls to invite SOL Technologies to the party. Revolver feels like being lazy piece of sh*t this season, allowing his enemies to destroy each other. Considering the controversy at the moment with him and Datastormshipping in general, maybe that’s a good thing? Personally I enjoy watching Revolver murder fools with his gun dragons, but I guess we have to pass that up for another Playmaker vs Bohman duel because Playmaker needs to reveal his Synchro.

We get another reveal in this episode that it was actually Lightning that saved Playmaker and Ai from falling to their death after their duel with Spectre, not Revolver. Since Lightning couldn’t deal with the Knights when he was busy destroying the Cyberse World, he saved Playmaker to do it for him. For someone who thinks humans are inferior, you sure do trust them to save your existence from being bombed, Lightning. Well I guess Ai was with him so I guess he trusted Ai to make sure that Playmaker wouldn’t betray them or something? I don’t know, there are actually some flaws in your plan there, Lightning. Like what if he actually did lose against Revolver during that duel, you basically just got yourself killed because you didn’t feel like it was necessary to protect your kin personally and instead felt like trying to destroy them yourself for apparently your own salvation. Lightning’s plan is just weird.

After that reveal, Blood Shepherd and Go’s goons finally show up. Lightning sends out his army of Bit and Boot clones to take care of them (and fail miserably in the process) while Bohman suggests to take care of Playmaker while Lightning takes care of Soulburner. After we get some more nightmare fuel in the form of Jin pinching Windy’s eye out of its socket to create a data storm to separate the two, (on that note geez Vrains. I know it is October and all, with us getting a new Vrains episode on Halloween even (and on that note who is going to appear on that date? We had our lord and savior Zarc appear on Christmas, now better known as Zarcmas, so what are we going to be changing this date to now for the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom?) but you all have no chill when it comes to the body horror with the Ignises) Bohman appears in front of Playmaker to duel him and Lightning, with Jin, appearing to be going to duel Soulburner, with a pissed off Flame, sometime after that or maybe they are going to cut back and froth between these two duels? Regardless, I just like to say this now, Takeru and Flame are so screwed. There is no way in hell they are beating Lightning, especially with how pissed off Flame is at the current moment which could lead into so many misplays, and with the new ED revealing that it looks like Earth is siding with the humans, more on that later, unless they want to turn this into a 2 against 4, Flame is going to get reset when they lose and Takeru is going to get turned into a mindless drone in the process. If we are lucky, Lightning can really mess up his memories and turn Soulburner into a sadistic bastard instead. Now I’m not saying I want that to happen but please turn Soulburner into a sadistic bastard, please turn Soulburner into a sadistic bastard, Lightning. I need more psycho characters. 

We get to finally learn the deal with Bohman and Haru for the most part. They are both AIs created by Lightning to surpass the Ignises. Apparently all the other times we saw Bohman, he was in the Alpha and Beta stages of his programming and now, more or less, in Opened Beta. Bohman calls himself the 3rd generation of Ignis, modeled after both Playmaker and Ai (guess that explains the whole thinking he is Playmaker thing), with Haru being the 2nd and Lightning, with the rest of the original Ignises, being the 1st. Bit and Boot were the original prototypes for the 2nd that lead into Haru if I’m getting all of this correct. He created these new Ais, Ignis 2.0 and 3.0, because Lightning feared that the Ignis as they are now will turn against each other like humans have done in the past (well he isn’t wrong, but just like Kogami, how fitting, you both fulfilled your own prophecies), and made Bohman as the vessel to untie and Ignis together. Figuratively or literally I’m not sure but hello Divine Ignis. It looks like we are going to be getting one in the future, if Bohman didn’t just claim to be it. Again, nothing that he says we should take at face value, because memory problems and all that, but it actually looks like he is legitimate this time around just based on how Lightning spoke to him and his actions leading up to this reveal. They actually make some sense, mad sense anyway.

And that about does it for the episode. Like I said, kinda underwhelming in my eyes anyway since all of these reveals we kinda figured out in some shape or form but hey, it was a setup episode so I can’t complain to much. We then get our new ED. Song wise, still don’t know how to feel about it. Visuals, it is mostly our characters changing from their RL appearance into their LV appearance.  We get a shot of Ai, Flame, and Aqua together so yeah, definitely looks like Aqua is on our side and I’m hoping this is foreshadowing her appearing soon. Nothing with her human so if it isn’t Aoi, she might get added in once she is revealed I hope. We have a shot of Link Vrains with what it looks like a side by side of it next to what I’m assuming is its future self once Lightning is done with it. Speaking of which, we get a screenshot of Lightning and his group, Revolver in his new get up (once again, this is going to be weird if he is never going to be updated in the OP) with Spectre, and a shot of all our main cast of characters in a park together. Kusanagi, Emma, Akira, Yusaku, Flame, Aoi, Ai, Takeru, Aqua, Earth (yeah it looks like he is going to be on our side. Have fun with that one, Spectre), Naoki, Ryoken, and Spectre. The ED ends with us getting some of the Disaster Trio’s Ace Monsters: Playmaker’s Cyberse Clock Dragon and Cyberse Quantum Dragon (yeah he is getting a Synchro if anyone didn’t believe that before) Revolver’s Borreload Savage Dragon, and Soulburner’s Salamangreat Heatleo and Playmaker flying towards us and shattering the screen (thanks Yusaku! Now we have to repair that after each episode now!)

For the preview, it looks like whatever Bohman is saying to Playmaker and Ai is seriously pissing Ai off to the point where he is shaking from it but it looks like Playmaker is going to be the one to get Ai through this and he even gives him a smile in the preview (he smiled again ladies and gentlemen!). I hasn’t seen the cast list yet for 72 so I don’t know what else to say about it until I can find it but once I see it, I’ll be sure to give you guys my thoughts as always if there are any notable names and what could happen because of those characters.