#still have to do the other 2 parts of the crystal tower stuff so i’ll be locked pretty soon. but i’ll deal with that when it comes time | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

btsslowburnfic · 4 years ago

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Series Summary: For Namjoon, the moment he set his sights on being the #1 rapper, he pushed the symbol to the side and hated it. Love should be chosen, not forced on you. He didn’t believe in fate and this mark on his wrist was a big “fuck you” to all that.

AN: a loooong update where we get YN to Korea Previous Chapter here

The three of you made it safe and sound to your new brownstone across the river in New Jersey. Joe has a job lined up, but at the moment you and Xavier are unemployed. On this particular day, you are in your room job hunting when you hear a knock on your bedroom door and then see Xavier gently push it open. “Fly your ass to Korea. Now. Here,” Xavier throws a book at you. “I bought you a Korean dictionary.”

You roll your eyes. “Namjoon speaks English. And I can’t read the characters or whatever so how will a dictionary help. And, I’m not going to Korea.”

Xavier crosses his arms in front of his body. “Girl. You are still in your twenties. You have no job. There is a hot man who is also your soulmate across the ocean. GO TO KOREA.” You pick your phone back up, ignoring him. You hear him let out a frustrated sigh and leave the room. You didn’t know what you wanted. You didn’t tell them that Namjoon had passed along his schedule to you and that he would be in Korea for 6 weeks starting in two weeks and that he had offered to buy you a plane ticket. You kept going back and forth. Fine. Fuck it.

YN: Hey! I’ve been thinking and I would like to come visit. As long as it’s not too much trouble and won’t interfere with your schedule

You let out a breath and put the phone down. One thing you have learned is that he keeps very strange hours and there is no way of knowing when he will be awake, when he will be performing, or even what country he is in. You are shocked when you receive a reply instantly.

NJ: It’s no problem. I will be working a lot of the time, but there is also some free time blocked out so make sure you’re ready to do some sightseeing as well on your own. I’ll rent a noona for you.

YN: I have no idea what that means but ok. Sounds exciting.

NJ: You can rent tour guides. An “older sister” to translate and show you around on some of the days.

YN: That would be amazing! Ok. Sounds great!!

NJ: I’ll book the flight and email you the information.

YN: Awesome ^_^ Thank you so much.

You try to keep your cool. You really do. But it doesn’t last long as you sit the phone down and walk out into the hallway. “Xavier!”

“What? Brat.” You hear him call from the living room.

“I’m going to Korea!” You say with a big smile on your face.

“Holy shit. You’re doing it!?! Really? When?” He sits up straight on the couch.

“I’m not sure. He’s booking the flight.”

“Oh my God. Oh my God. IT’S HAPPENING. Come. Sit here. Let’s watch some Kdramas. We need to prepare you.”

You roll your eyes but join him on the couch anyway.

--3 weeks later--

The flight isn’t too bad. When Namjoon booked your ticket you did secretly wonder if he would spring for an upgraded seat since you know...you guessed he was rich. You did not expect that he was going to pay for a first class seat though. The comfort of the seats and the fact that food was actually delicious helped to balance out the longest flight you had ever taken in your life. You managed to get some rest on the plane, but not very much since you were so excited and nervous. You had not seen each other for a while. And the last time you saw him you were both naked.

When you arrive you don’t have any bags to collect; you just brought your carry-on. You know you are going to do a lot of shopping while you are there and had decided you would just buy a suitcase there. You walk down to departures and scan the crowd looking for your name. This was so exciting. You had been the person in the crowd holding a name placard before, but you had never had it done for you. It helped that it was one of the few names written in English. You smile and walk over to a man in a suit. After confirming each other’s identity, you follow him out to a black SUV with tinted windows. He takes your bag and you slide into the backseat.

YN: Hey! I’m on my way to the hotel. When will I get to see you?

NJ: Yeah….about that. There is no way I would be able to just be going in and out of a hotel without anyone here noticing. This isn’t LA. We can’t really go out in public much here. The driver will be taking you to my apartment complex. Once you get here, you will let security know who you are. They will provide you with a key and directions.

You weren’t expecting this at all, but it made sense.

YN: Umm ok. Sounds like a plan.

You hoped to God someone at the security office spoke English. Oh well. You typed some things into your translation app just in case and tried to enjoy the scenery. It was a city, but it seemed a lot cleaner than LA. Less sunny, and more modern. At least the parts you were driving through.

After a fifteen minute taxi ride that has brought you into a very fancy part of Seoul you try to keep your cool as your driver assures you that this is the location you are supposed to be at. It is fancy looking as fuck and has a giant ass gate around it. The driver pulls up and shows his credentials and then pulls up and rolls your window down.

The security officer stands there, looking at you. You pull out your passport and state your name. He looks over a sheet of paper and nods. Handing you an envelope that feels like it has a keyboard and some papers in it. You thank him in shitty Korean and the driver closes the window. You open the envelope.

“Hey. If you’re getting this, I wasn’t able to get off work in time to meet you. The driver knows which building to go to. Use this key to go to unit 4106. Text me when you get there. Sorry!

Namjoon”

The chauffeur drives between several of the buildings. The streets are lined with trees and there appeared to be several small gardens between the buildings. The car comes to a stop outside building 4. The driver gets out to open your door and hands you the bag. You thank him and head into the building.

The apartment building was a lot like a luxury hotel, you find yourself thinking. It was decorated similarly with gilded light fixtures and a marble floor. You scan your key card at the elevators and head up to the 10th floor.

It becomes very obvious from the minute you walk in that this is Namjoon’s actual apartment. His giant shoes are all over the foyer. You purse your lips and take out your phone.

YN: YOU DIDNT SAY IT WAS YOUR APARTMENT

NJ: Relax sweetheart, the guest bedroom is for you. I’m hardly ever there. Make yourself at home and I’ll see you later ;p

YN: THATS NOT THE POINT

NJ: You’re welcome. Stop being a brat and enjoy.

You pout a little bit. Fine. Fine. You’ve already slept with him so why does it matter if this is his apartment. Because it feels so much more intimate, you think. You enter into the space while texting Xavier.

YN: New chapter in the Kdrama series.

You knew Xavier would normally be sleeping, but he was so excited and wanted to make sure you made it safely he was wide awake.

X: Oh no, what?

YN: he didn’t arrange for me to stay in a hotel IM AT HIS APARTMENT.

X: AHAHAHAHAHA HOLY SHIT. Is it nice? Is there like a waterfall? Does it smell like rich people? Send pictures!

YN: I don’t think I should send pics since he’s famous, but there are no waterfalls that I can see. It smells normal. Actually no, it smells new, like people don’t really live here. Stay tuned for updates.

X: Has he dicked you yet?

YN: -_- he’s stuck at work. And I’ll be in the guest bedroom thankyouverymuch.

X: Yeah….ok…..suuuuuuure.

You put your phone back in your pocket and continue to wander around the apartment. It is the size of a house. There is a small terrace running along the side of the unit and three open rooms that flow together. I guess rich people need more than one living room? You wonder. They are all furnished with couches and art. The floors are a beautiful Marble. Or Granite. Some expensive imported thing. You notice several plants on the wall as well as out on the terrace. Huh. I did not think he would be into plants, you find yourself thinking.

YN: Nice plants

NJ: My pride and joy

You smile and walk into the kitchen. It looks like a showroom. You doubt much cooking goes on here. If you could afford to eat out all the time you would too. You open the fridge and as predicted, it is mostly empty. There are a few bottles of water and some random condiments. Panic strikes you as you begin to wonder if there’s a coffee maker in this apartment. This could be a deal breaker; you might have to flee to the Marriott. There isn’t one sitting out. You frantically open cabinets. You make eye contact with a very fancy looking Espresso maker. Ok. You will learn how to use this beast. You sit it out on the counter and plug it in. Crisis averted for now. You continue through the rest of the house. You quickly find the master bedroom. Big bed. That’s all you take note of before closing the door. You don’t want to be nosy. You wander to the other end of the apartment and find an extra bedroom and an office. You don’t go to the office, but do take your stuff into the guest bedroom. You are feeling tired and starting to feel hungry.

YN: When will you be back? Is there a convenience store nearby? I need coffee and/or food.

NJ: Sorry. It will still be a while. Actually there are several stores on property. The closest one is in building 2. Here, download the app. I’ll send you the login info.

YN: Thanks.

You change out of your traveling clothes into real clothing and head to the market. The apartment complex’s layout is fairly easy to understand once you look at the app. You walk over to tower 2 and ride the elevator to the market level. It looks like the atrium of a cruise ship. There is a giant crystal chandelier hanging in the middle of the lobby area as well as beautiful indoor trees, glass art bulbs, probably a peacock or two wandering around, and some light music playing in the background. Oh God. I should just starve. This is too fancy. I need to leave.

You turned to leave when you heard a voice speaking politely in Korean. You ignore it, and then hear the same voice ask in English, “Excuse me, Miss. Can I help you?” A short man in his 50’s walked over. “I’m on the concierge staff here. You must be new.”

“Ah yes. Thank you. Umm...Coffee please?”

“Of course. Take-away or beans?”

“Both please?” You ask, trying to keep it simple and very thankful for the English.

“Yes of course. If you just get me the unit number I can actually just have it sent there. Also there is an ordering and delivery app you can use next time if you would like to save yourself the walk.” The man explained while he typed some information into a tablet.

“That’s very helpful. Thank you. For today, now please.”

“Very well miss, please insert your chip or resident card here and sign,” he turned the tablet towards you. You inserted your debit card.

“Thank you. Please wait.”

You take a seat in the fancy lobby area and get out your phone. You had some messages from Namjoon.

[NJ]: Oh, there is also an app you can download and order groceries to the apartment.

[NJ]: I usually eat at work so I forget about it.

[NJ]: Sorry, you probably already hiked there.

A smirk crossed your face as you started to type a response.

[Y/N]: Sorry, I just saw these. And no worries. It’s a beautiful part of the complex. I was a little overwhelmed to be honest but the concierge was very helpful! 10/10 recommend.

You take a picture of the lobby area and send it to him.

[NJ]: wow, yeah that’s beautiful. I haven’t actually been there myself.

The concierge returns, handing you a coffee and a bag of coffee beans. You thank him profusely one more time.

“My pleasure. Take care.”

You sit the beans down and pose with your coffee cup, snapping a selfie to send to Namjoon.

[Y/N]: There, now all is right with the world ^_^

[NJ]: :) See you soon!

You travel back to the apartment and unpack your suitcase. You try your hardest to stay awake, but at this point you have been up for over 24 hours and you can feel the pull of sleep. You’ll just lay down for a nap.

---------

It is dark outside by the time Namjoon gets off work. He feels bad he couldn’t meet you in the car at the airport, and even worse that he’s kept you waiting for hours. You haven’t answered any of his texts these past few hours either. He opens the door to his apartment. The lights are off. Did you leave? He wonders. He flips on the light and sees your shoes by the door which put a smile on his face. You must be sleeping. He hasn’t actually been in his apartment for about 2 months. It was mostly the same as he left it, except most of the time when he returned the apartment had a stale smell from having been left empty. This time it smelled like coffee and girl.

He enters the main living area and finds you laying in a small blanket nest on the couch with a laptop on the table; a coffee cup resting on a coaster next to it. He smiles and goes through to his bedroom to deposit his travel bag. He washes his face and changes clothes and then proceeds to nervously pace. Should he wake you up? You were probably tired, but at the same time, to prevent jet lag you shouldn’t sleep too much, and he wanted to hang out with you. He wrestles with this issue for a while and then decides he will try to wake you up.

He gently shakes your foot, “Hey sleepy. Wake up.”

“Mmmmmmmmmmm…” you respond. What’s happening? You kick the thing bothering your foot. So annoying. You hear a deep voice laugh. Oh shit, where were you again? The shaking of your foot resumes and you crack open one of your eyes and see Namjoon sitting on the couch. “Heyyyy.”

“Hey there sweetheart. Nice seeing you in Korea.”

You feel your heart do a little flip flop at the way he’s talking to you but you want to play it cool. “Yeah. It’s good to be here.” You stretch out and move to sit up.

“How are your legs doing?” He asks.

“Good. They get stiff pretty easily and I still have to do my exercises everyday but they don’t hurt most of the time or anything. I get pretty bad headaches from time to time, but you already knew that. Sorry about that by the way.”

“It’s fine, I just carry aspirin around with me now.” He shrugs. “Did you get any food? Should I order something?”

“Yeah. Order some super Korean food.” You are fully awake now.

“Yeah? You serious? It’s not going to be like Koreatown food.” He teases

“Might as well jump in. If I don’t like it, there’s always rice, right?” You smile.

“That’s true,” he takes out his phone to order dinner.

“What did you do today?”

“Today was planning for the Festa. Even though it’s months away we have to make sure we have enough content planned just in case there are any unforeseen delays.”

“Cool.” You say. You had done your basic level ARMY research so you were somewhat familiar with their different activities.

“How was your flight? You should probably get up and stretch those legs around. Get up.” He pushes your shoulder playfully.

“Ughhh….fine. By the way. Nice apartment. Is rent like 20 grand a month?” You stand up groaning slightly like an old woman. Damn stiff legs.

“Uhh...I paid 6 million dollars for it up front so I don’t pay rent. Do you want anything to drink?”

It’s a good thing you weren’t drinking anything when he dropped that little factoid on you or you would have spit it out comic-book style. Jesus. That explained the security and Gucci grocery store. “Uh water please.” You walked over following him to the kitchen. “It’s good to see you by the way. Thanks for inviting me.” You slowly remember how to speak like a human again.

“Sure. I wish I had more free time to spend with you, but I’m glad you were able to make it.” He fills a glass with water for you. “Wait a minute! Before I forget,” he jogs out of the room and returns with a small box. “Here, this is for you. We were in Australia last month and I wanted to get something for you.”

You are surprised. It didn’t occur to you that he would think about you or buy you something. Until a few months ago you had considered yourself a nuisance. “Wow, thank you so much. You didn’t have to do that.” you say, taking the box, “I hope it’s a tiny KNOIFE or tiny koala or tiny kangaroo,” you open the box. It is an adorable mug with a Koala on it superimposed on the Australian Continent. It says in English, “Lucky Australian Koala.” You burst out laughing, cupping the mug with both your hands in front of your face. “This is perfection. Thank you so much for my authentic LUCKY AUSTRALIAN KOALA, I cannot wait to drink out of him tomorrow. Seriously. “ You sit the mug on the kitchen table. Fuck it. “Come here,” you gesture, and pull him in for a hug. His body feels solid against your and he gently wraps his arms around you. You give a firm squeeze. “Thank you for the mug and for flying me out here.” You pull away and smile at him.

He looks away almost shy, “It was nothing. I figure I still owe you a few for the pen incident.”

You take a drink of the water. “Yeah. You have had some dickish moments.”

“Speaking of dickish behavior...do you want to talk about what happened with Ben or…?”

You shrug. “There’s not a lot to say. Ben apparently met his soulmate about 4 months before the car accident. He tried to stay away since we had already agreed that we didn't care about stuff like that. But he couldn't. I don't know when he started seeing Jessie behind my back. They were apparently banging all summer in the apartment and while I was in the hospital.” You take another gulp of water. Namjoon is surprised that he isn’t feeling much anger or sadness coming off of you. “After I got all my shit out of the apartment and had a chance to calm down, I couldn't be too mad about it you know? You and I had already slept together and most people aren't as stubborn as us. So really, how could they resist? I mean I was angry and sad at the time but at this point it seems like a lifetime ago. "

Namjoon had never asked about what had happened with Ben before, assuming that if you wanted to talk about it you would have brought it up. " Wow. "

"Yeah. I mean that's waaaay oversimplified but that's the gist of it. Anyways. Everything was a mess for me for a while. You know I stayed with Xavier and Joe and then Xavier's husband got a really good job offer here so we all picked up and left LA."

“And now you’re in New York.” He finishes your thought

“Yeah. Well Jersey technically because rent is $1000 less a month. But I’m applying for jobs as assistant director at tv stations and theaters. I’m hopeful something will come up. I can’t really teach fitness classes anymore.”

Namjoon listens thoughtfully, feeling like a jackass for never asking about this stuff before. What kind of soulmate was he?

“Well, let me know if you need a job reference.”

“Ahahahaha,” You laugh awkwardly. “No way. I don’t want people thinking I only got a job because I know someone famous.”

“Sweetheart, that’s how everyone gets jobs in the industry.” He leans against the counter.

“I don’t know, I’ll think about it.” You fidget

“You know I’ll just text Xavier and he’ll tell me the companies you applied for.” Namjoon flashes his dimples at you.

You scowl. “I didn’t realize you two were so chummy.”

“Hey, we bonded a lot in the hospital.” His phone let out a chirp. “The food is at the security office. I’ll be back in a few. Make yourself at home.” He heads over to the foyer to slip his shoes on.

You decide to unpack and then wash your face and brush your teeth before returning to the main area where he has just returned. “That was fast”, you comment, meeting him near the door and taking a bag from his hands.

“I rode my bike over.” He replies, following you to the kitchen.

“They let your clumsy ass ride a bike?” You tease, pulling food out.

He lets out a laugh, “Yeah. Just remember, only one of us has got hit by a car.”

“Touche. Touche. Alright. I don’t know what any of this is, so I’m going to go wait at the table like a lazy bitch.”

“Haha, fair enough. I’ll bring it over. “

You head over and have a seat at the dining table, placing your water down. This feels so weird. So intimate. He joins a few minutes later placing a bunch of food on the table along with a spoon and chopsticks.

“I’m sure there’s a fork around here somewhere if you need one.” He says as he opens the lids on the containers.

“I lived in LA where we ate sushi almost every day, I think I’ll be ok.” You sass back, ,looking over all of the delicious food. You start to dig in. He sits waiting to see what your reaction will be. You flash him a thumbs up as you chew. It’s definitely good. He smiles and begins to eat as well.

Dinner is relatively quiet. You had no idea how hungry you were until you started to eat. Some of the foods had a texture you didn’t quite care for, but overall you liked it all.

“Wow. That was delicious. Thank you so much.” You smile

“It was. You’re welcome.” He gets up and starts to clear the table and you join him.

You continue to yawn involuntarily as the two of you straighten up the kitchen,

“Do you want some coffee or a nap?” he asks.

“I’m going to try and stay awake a little bit longer. What does the rest of the night look like?”

“Relaxing. I am exhausted from work. And you don’t look so fresh yourself. LEt’s watch a movie or something.” He says it so casually. Like this is a normal thing the two of you do. Like it hasn’t been months since the last time you saw each other and you left him naked and alone in a bed. You feel your heartbeat speed up.

“Hold on, I’m changing into some comfy clothes before I make this commitment.” you get up and head towards your room.

You come back in leggings and a shirt. Namjoon has re-positioned himself on the end of the couch. You sit next to him. “Ok, all set,” you grab your blanket.

“You take your comfort quite seriously,” Namjoon laughs as he hits the play button.

“Definitely,” you respond, yawning. After about half an hour, It’s dark outside, the night spilling into the living room. You are trying to keep your eyes open. You feel Namjoon put his large arm around you. You don’t resist, you nestle into it. You feel the warmth of his body radiating against you. It feels so nice.You try to stay awake but your eyelids grow heavy. The next thing you know, you wake up slowly, not quite oriented to where you are. Your face is sweaty. You take stock of your surroundings. You are still in the living room. You must have fallen asleep while watching the movie. You move a bit and realize you are not alone. Namjoon is asleep as well. Underneath you. Oh god. You probably trapped him. Is that your drool on his shirt? You wonder. But you know that yes, it definitely is. Jesus [Y/N].Not making a great impression here. Must sneak out so the drool will dry before he wakes up. You move as stealthy as possible off of him, which is very difficult since you found yourself laying between his legs. How did you even get like that? You had gone in for a light snuggle to see how it would be received and then apparently passed out dead. No more starting movies when you were tired. You knew it was your weakness.

The poor man probably had to pee and was stuck, forced to lay underneath you until he fell asleep. Is he snoring? Huh. Well ok. You drool and he snores. Very attractive individuals. You grab a blanket from your nest on the other side of the couch and put it on top of him. You sneak down the hallway to your bathroom, pee and sneak into your bedroom. You lay down and try to fall asleep, but your heart is beating fast as all you can think about it falling asleep on Namjoon. You feel your face grow warm. You are a mix of turned on and embarrassed. You turn off your light and wonder if he will still want to go sightseeing with your drooly-ass tomorrow. @calling-dips-on-j-hope @ghostkat23 @cuteipat @marianeamine@thisisval @almonte12 @themisunderstoodblackswan @bobbyboops @betysotelo18 @katerbees

#bts fic #bts writing #rm x reader #bts rm fanfic #namjoon scenarios #namjoon x you #namjoon x reader #bts namjoon x reader #bts soulmate au #bts rm x reader #bts rm x you #rm x y/n

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macattackp · 5 years ago

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Things You Shouldn’t Say to Chronically ill/Disabled People

Don’t Ask “Are You STILL Not Well?” Our conditions are ‘chronic’ This means they are possibly never going to heal. After a few years you should catch on to this

Don’t Tell Us About Your Miracle Cure Yes we know about magnesium, crystals, epsom salts, and yoga. We are eating a balanced diet, we might even meditate regularly. The fact that we are still ill doesn’t mean we haven’t tried it. The fact that we haven’t chased after every suggestion doesn’t mean that is the one thing keeping us unhealthy... we get a LOT of these. A LOT

Don’t Get Angry When We Say We’ve Tried Everything You Think Of We are not dismissing you and your value. We are not being smarmy or trying to throw a pity party for ourselves. We have been researching this condition for years now. Don’t feel so shocked that we’ve already considered every idea you’ve come up with in 5 minutes!

Don’t Tell Us About How Weak Our Generation is and How Back In Your Day You Just Fought Forward and Pretended it Wasn’t There 1) You are NOT chronically ill. Your problems and my ‘problems’ are my ‘normal’ 2) Is being stupid and self destructive really something worth bragging about or emulating?

Don’t Tell us About Your Aunt’s Cousin’s Nephew’s Friend Who Has Our Condition and Still Does The Things We Don’t These conditions have a VERY broad range to them. Some people will have them and live totally normal lives. Some people will struggle with them. Some people will consider even what I do amazing freedom and strength. The fact that the people you know who have this condition are doing things is probably because they are the only ones who are able to be in the places you go. Trust me, I’ve read the statistics. Majority of us are not able to do what we are not able to do.

Don’t Ask Us When We Are Going to Get Past This or be Done Making a Big Deal About This Believe me, it is a full time job as a chronically ill/chronically injured person to not blame ourselves. We don’t need you reminding us what a burden we’re being or telling us we could totally get past this if we just tried. We are trying. And we do get that you’re tired of worrying about our issues. We are too. But unlike you, you can walk away and not notice it anymore. We have to live with this every waking minute. We can’t run away from this because this is us. This is our reality

Ways You SHOULD Talk To Chronically ill/Chronically Injured People

Just Talk to Us Seriously. Just have a light conversation with us. It is stinking lonely going through this and we are always thankful for a distraction. Talk to us about what interests you. Talk to us about if you think whales burp through their blowholes. Talk to us about anything!

If We Can’t Stand Then Sit To Talk to Us This isn’t a demand, but if you want to put us more at ease, it really does help. It is something I myself didn’t realize until I lost my ability to stand for long periods of time. People like to stand while talking. More to the point, they like to stand FAR away from anything you can sit on. Even if you are sitting, people like to stand to talk to you, and trust me. It is both daunting and kind of awkward talking to people’s crotches as they tower over you. If we are sitting down, it doesn’t mean you need to walk away because we are done talking to you. It means we needed to sit down. Sit down with us. It’s relaxing. We’ll talk for hours not distracted so much by our increasing pain and trying to awkwardly stand as long as we are sitting.

Talk About Things Other Than How Hard Our Lives Must Be It’s not like we are completely against it. I notice other people walking with cool looking canes and want to ask them where they got them (cane envy as I like to call it). This is a huge part of our lives and we can’t avoid talking about it entirely because it does take up our schedules, choices, and more. But we are more than our suffering as well. We like to talk about movies, games, books, some even like to talk about sports! I mean there’s a whole Paralympics thing! (Though not me... Don’t talk to me about sports. I’ll have literally no idea what on earth you’re talking about)

Roll With It If you ask if we want to go to a museum with you, and we reply “Oh I’d love to, unfortunately I can’t stand that long.” or “Unfortunately I get my nerve blocks at that time so I’ll be out of it for the day.” Don’t solemnly go “Oh....” and then sit their awkwardly thinking how you just ruined the mood. The fact that we casually mentioned something like that usually means we are feeling comfortable with you. To us this isn’t a trigger point, it is literally just our weekly schedule. It’s almost the same as saying “Oh I can’t, I play golf Saturday mornings!” Just suggest another date. Or another activity. Ask us if we have anything you might like to try. Just keep the conversation going!

Basically... Just Treat Us Like Friends We have to deal with stuff you may not understand. We may have to make accommodations you don’t think of. But we are still people. We don’t expect you to know everything we go through, or have the cure we haven’t thought of... We just want someone to connect with and have a pleasant conversation with! Just be you!

#chronic fatigue #chronic pain #chronic illness #chronically ill #chronic injury #fibromyalgia #NASH #tourettes #Hypermobility #social skills 101

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modernmarcy · 5 years ago

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[UPDATED: Complete Guide] Are you interested in watching Adventure Time, but intimidated by the thought of watching 283 episodes? Have you watched the series before, but want to watch again without any filler episodes (unless it’s Bubbline, of course?) This is for you!

After seeing several requests, I have compiled the complete list of all the Adventure Time episodes that contain major plot, important backstory, major characterization, and/or Bubbline moments. I have also included optional episodes that I think will increase your understanding/enjoyment of the show (I put the reason next to it; if it says something about being an arc, backstory, characterization, etc., be warned that not watching may make the major plot points of the show a bit more confusing for you).

I condensed the show down to 153 of the 10-minute episodes (91 episodes if you don’t watch any of the optional episodes). Optional episodes are in italics. Episodes with Bubbline moments, characterization of Marcy/Princess Bubblegum (PB), or major backstory/plot related to Marcy/PB are in bold. Anything with a an asterisk (*) can be watched at any time (order doesn’t matter, though you may still want to watch it in the same season).

I hope this helps someone out since I spent hours putting it together! Without further ado…

Season 1

1 x 2 “Trouble in Lumpy Space” | Introduces LSP

1 x 3 “Prisoners of Love” | Introduces the Ice King

1 x 5 “The Enchiridion”

1 x 9 “My Two Favorite People” | Introduces Jake & Lady Rainacorn (LR) arc

1 x 10 “Memories of Boom Boom Mountain”

1 x 12 “Evicted”

1 x 15 “What is Life?” | Introduces NEPTR + Ice King characterization

1 x 16 “Ocean of Fear” | Finn characterization

1 x 17 “When Wedding Bells Thaw” | Ice King characterization

1 x 20 “Freak City” | Introduces Magic Man

1 x 22 “Henchman”

1 x 24 “What Have You Done?” | Ice King characterization (*)

1 x 25 “His Hero”

Season 2

2 x 1 “It Came from the Nightosphere”

2 x 2 “The Eyes” | Ice King characterization

2 x 3 “Loyalty to the King” | Ice King characterization

2 x 6 “Slow Love” | Just a funny/cute episode (*)

2 x 7 “Power Animal” | Establishes more of Adventure Time universe

2 x 10 “To Cut a Woman’s Hair”

2 x 11 “Chamber of Frozen Blades” | Ice King characterization (*)

2 x 12 “Her Parents” | Jake and Lady Rainacorn (LR) arc

2 x 15 “The Real You”

2 x 17 “Death in Bloom” | Establishes more of the AT universe

2 x 18 “Susan Strong” | Introduces Susan Strong arc

2 x 20 “Go with Me” | Subtle Bubbline

2 x 24 “Mortal Folly”

2 x 25 “Mortal Recoil”

2 x 26 “Heat Signature”

Season 3

3 x 3 “Memory of a Memory”

3 x 5 “Too Young”

3 x 6 “The Monster” | LSP characterization/general cuteness (*)

3 x 7 “Still” | Ice King characterization

3 x 9 “Fiona and Cake” | Gender bending episode (*)

3 x 10 “What was Missing”

3 x 14 “Beautopia” | Susan Strong arc continues

3 x 17 “Thank You” | Not vital to plot, but adorable (*)

3 x 18 “Apple Thief” | Not vital to plot, but a favorite (*)

3 x 19 “Holly Jolly Secrets Pt. 1”

3 X 20 “Holly Jolly Secrets Pt. 2″

3 x 21 “Marceline’s Closet”

3 x 25 “Dad’s Dungeon” | Finn and Jake background

3 x 26 “Incendium” | Flame Princess Arc

Season 4

4 x 1 “Hot to the Touch” | Flame Princess arc

4 x 2 “Five Short Graybles” | Established more of AT universe (*)

4 x 5 “Return to the Nightsophere”

4 x 6 “Daddy’s Little Monster”

4 x 8 “Hug Wolf” | Generally cute (*)

4 x 9 “Princess Monster Wife” | Ice King characterization + great episode

4 x 10 Goliad

4 x 11 “Beyond this Earthly Realm” | Ice King characterization

4 x 13 “Princess Cookie” | Generally cute

4 x 15 “Sons of Mars” | Established more of AT universe

4 x 16 “Burning Low” | Flame princess arc + PB characterization

4 x 18 “King Worm” | Serious foreshadowing

4 x 19 “Lady and Peebles”

4 x 20 “You Made Me”

4 x 22 “Ignition Point” | Flame Princess Arc

4 x 24 “Reign of Gunters”

4 x 24 “I Remember You"

4 x 26 “The Lich”

Season 5

5 x 1 “Finn the Human”

5 x 2 “Jake the Dog”

5 x 6 “Jake the Dad” | Jake/LR arc

5 x 5 “All the Little People” | Cool and very slight Bubbline cameo

5 x 9 “All Your Fault”

5 x 11 “Bad Little Boy” | Gender bending + Marcy/Ice King development

5 x 12 “Vault of Bones” | Flame Princess arc

5 x 14 “Simon and Marcy”

5 x 16 “Puhoy” | Flame Princess arc

5 x 17 “BMO Lost” | SO ADORABLE. If you don’t watch you’re missing out (*)

5 x 18 “Princess Potluck” | Ice King characterization (*)

5 x 20 “Shh!” | Established more AT universe and is cute/neat (*)

5 x 21 “The Suitor”

5 x 22 “The Party’s Over, Isla de Senorita” | Ice King character development

5 x 23 “One Last Job” | Jake character development

5 x 26 “Wizards Only, Fools”

5 x 28 “Be More” | BMO backstory (*)

5 x 29 “Sky Witch”

5 x 30 “Frost and Fire” | Flame Princess arc

5 x 31 “Too Old”

5 x 32 “Earth and Water”

5 x 33 “Time Sandwich”

5 x 34 “The Vault"

5 x 38 “Red Starved”

5 x 40 “Play Date” | Finn character development

5 x 41 “The Pit” | Finn character development

5 x 45 “Blade of Grass”

5 x 46 “Rattleballs” | Finn character development

5 x 47 “The Red Throne” | Flame Princess arc

5 x 48 “Betty”

5 x 50 “Lemonhope Pt. 1″

5 x 51 “Lemonhope Pt. 2″

5 x 52 “Billy’s Bucket List”

Season 6

6 x 1 “Wake Up”

6 x 2 “Escape from the Citadel”

6 x 4 “The Tower” | Finn character development

6 x 6 “Breezy”

6 x 9 “The Prince Who Wanted Everything | Gender bending (*)

6 x 10 “Something Big”

6 x 12 “Ocarina” | Jake character development

6 x 14 “Princess Day”

6 x 16 “Joshua and Margaret Investigate”

6 x 19 “Is That You?” | Flame Princess arc

6 x 22 “The Cooler” | Flame Princess arc

6 x 23 “The Pajama War”

6 x 24 “Evergreen”

6 x 25 “Astral Plane” | Martin arc

6 x 26 “Gold Stars” | Lich arc

6 x 27 “The Visitor” | Martin arc

6 x 28 “The Mountain” | Flame Princess arc + Lemongrab characterization

6 x 29 “Dark Purple” | Susan Strong arc

6 x 32 “Friends Forever” | Ice King characterization

6 x 35 “Graybles 1000+” | Foreshadowing

6 x 38 “You Forgot Your Floaties”

6 x 39 “Be Sweet” | Lich arc + LSP character development

6 x 40 “Orgalorg”

6 x 42 “Hot Diggity Doom”

6 x 43 “The Comet”

Season 7

7 x 1 “Bonnie & Neddy”

7 x 2 “Varmits”

7 x 4 “Mama Said” | Finn/Jake character development

7 x 5 “Football” | Adorable BMO (*)

7 x 6 “Marceline the Vampire Queen”

7 x 7 “Everything Stays”

7 x 8 “Vamps About”

7 x 9 “The Empress Eyes”

7 x 10 “May I Come In?”

7 x 11 “Take Her Back”

7 x 12 “Checkmate”

7 x 13 “The Dark Cloud”

7 x 14 “The More You Moe, The Moe You Know (Part I)” | BMO arc

7 x 15 “The More you Moe, The Moe You Know (Part II)” | BMO arc

7 x 18 “President Porpoise is Missing!” | Adorable + Marcy cameo

7 x 21 “King’s Ransom”

7 x 25 “Flute Spell” | Introduces Huntress Wizard

7 x 26 “The Thin Yellow Line”

7 x 27 “Broke His Crown”

7 x 28 “Don’t Look”

7 x 29 “Beyond the Grotto” | Established more AT universe/cool (*)

7 x 30 “Lady Rainacorn of the Crystal Dimension” | LR backstory (*)

7 x 31 “I am a Sword”

7 x 32 “Bun Bun” | Finn + Flame Princess arc and characterization

7 x 33 “Normal Man”

7 x 34 “Elemental”

7 x 35 “Five Short Tables” | Gender bending (*)

7 x 36 “The Music Hole”

7 x 38 “Preboot”

7 x 39 “Reboot”

Season 8

8 x 1 “Two Swords”

8 x 2 “Do No Harm”

8 x 3 “Wheels” | Jake characterization/background (*)

8 x 4 “High Strangeness”

8 x 6 “Jelly Beans Have Powers”

8 x 7 “The Invitation”

8 x 8 “Whipple the Happy Dragon”

8 x 9 “Mysterious Island”

8 x 10 “Imaginary Resources”

8 x 11 “Hide and Seek”

8 x 12 “Min and Marty”

8 x 13 “Helpers”

8 x 14 “The Light Cloud”

Season 9

9 x 02 “Skyhooks”

9 x 03 “Bespoken For”

9 x 04 “Winter Light”

9 x 05 “Cloudy”

9 x 06 “Slime Central”

9 x 07 “Happy Warrior”

9 x 08 “Hero Heart”

9 x 09 “Skyhooks II”

9 x 10 “Abstract”

9 x 11 “Ketchup”

9 x 12 “Fiona and Cake and Fiona” | Gender bending (*)

9 x 13 “Whispers”

9 x 14 “Three Buckets”

Season 10

10 x 01 “The Wild Hunt”

10 x 02 “Always BMO Closing” | Cute BMO episode that is sort of important to this season’s plot but you will still understand what’s going on without it

10 x 03 “Son of Rap Bear” | Flame Princess arc fulfilled; fun episode

10 x 04 “Bonnibel Bubblegum”

10 x 05 “Seventeen”

10 x 07 “Marcy and Hunson”

10 x 08 “The First Investigation”

10 x 09 “Blenanas” | Finn characterization; brief appearance of PB

10 x 10 “Jake the Starchild”

10 x 11 “Temple of Mars”

10 x 12 “Gumbaldia”

10 x 13 “Come Along with Me”

Follow Modern Marcy for affordable finds inspired by Adventure Time (along with a lot of fanart, fan theory, and general posts about the show and its characters!) I’ll be opening up an Etsy shop next month with Adventure Time knickknacks and props from the show (and stuff from a few other fandoms!) so be sure to check back :)

#ATimers #Adventure Time #Episode Guide #Bubbline #Mareceline #Princess Bubblegum #Bubbline episodes #Episode list #Modern Marcy episode list #Updated #Complete Series #AT #Sugarless gum #LGBTQ cartoon representation #Bubbline moments

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cynthiaandsamus · 3 years ago

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Custom Toonami Block Week 73 Rundown

Code Geass: Lelouch and co. are still stuck in China and Xingke’s flipping out because the Chinese assholes are gonna kill the Empress and go with someone less problematic for their political marriage to Britannia’s creepily overaged prince. However Lelouch pulls out a Knightmare that’s basically the Twink version of the Gawain and busts everyone up as well as pulling a Father Cornello on them and letting the people know they’re all elitst 1% assholes that don’t care about them, which I suspect all countries probably know about their leaders but it sucks to hear it in a recording so riots show up all over China and CC Geass Flashes Anya to take her out so Britannia has to back out because the Chinese Hierarchy are now the least popular people in the world. So Xingke gets to be with his Empress and joins the Black Knights but Dietard wants the Empress to marry someone on their side so they can basically do the asshole move Britannia just tried to do but for them. All the girls are like ‘hey no’ and Lelouch is like “Oh hey Tamaki buddy, let’s go talk and get me the fuck out of here” so before Lelouch actually has to give Tamaki more lines and elevate him beyond the Black Knight’s Yamacha Shirley calls and Lelouch just straight up asks Shirley about love in a weirdly forced series of circumstance. But Shirley’s like “Yeah don’t fuck with love, don’t you love anyone?” and Lelouch is like “Yeah I do, Nunally!” and I don’t think that’s at all what Shirley meant but it does mean Lelouch sees that fighting for something beyond politics is powerful and agrees to not marry off the twelve year old girl, so that’s good. Lelouch decides to return home while they hunt down the Geass cult which is in China for some reason despite that being one of the like two places on earth Britannia doesn’t control and the Geass Cult largely being a Britannian affair. Meanwhile Sayoko is basically a Lelouch Vtuber at this point with her insanely accurate Lupin III mask of Lelouch and kisses Shirley so Shirley’s a little bit more gay than she was before and is not sure how to feel about that. When she’s about to tell the real Lelouch he kisses like a girl, Anya and Gino show up because we’re retreading the whole ‘sleeping with the enemy at school’ thing from the first season except with way less interesting enemies. Also the preview for the next episode is Lelouch dramatically talking about enemies finding out he’s Zero overtop footage of Shirley and Milly absolutely naked in a batthouse scene so I think we know what kind of episode that’ll be.

Inuyasha: The Panther Demon filler concludes with everyone meeting at the site where the Panther Master is being revived behind a strong barrier, if only someone just got a barrier upgrade to their sword, oh wait. But yeah everyone manages to free the hostages so even though Kagome’s jewel shards revives the Panther Master he’s still a zombie without a sacrifice which is weird since Naraku managed to completely revive the Band of Seven with one jewel shard each from skeletons and the Panther Lord has three shards so idk the rules here but yeah he steals the souls of his own men to revive and is Wind Scar Proof because he just is. It’s pretty cool to see him shooting his claws and lightning and shit but he’s too big and slow for it to be much of an interesting fight. Sesshomaru’s about to go full demon which would be interesting since we haven’t seen his full demon form since he lost his arm but in a neat bit of character development, Tenseiga calms his rage and tells him to use it instead. You get the feeling Sesshomaru only goes full demon when he flies off the handle and forgets about speed and strategy so him opting to not repeat the mistake he made against Inuyasha is pretty cool. Anyway Tenseiga heals the souls of the Panther Demons and drains their energy from the lord so he’s back to Zombie Cat Man which Inuyasha can Wind Scar because that’s what happens to villains on this show, all Wind Scars all the time. The Panthers don’t wanna fight anymore since their boss just killed them and tell Inuyasha to tell Sesshomaru the feud is over and they’re going back to the West. Honestly this is basically the same backstory they gave Kirinmaru in Yashahime so it’s funny for them to say they’re going back to the same place Kirinmaru is from, wonder if it’ll ever come up in Yashahime since most filler seems canon there.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Yusuke and Kuwabara continue the assault on Tarukane’s compound and basically plow through the lower demons easy since they’ve been fighting minor deities up to this point. It’s always pretty cool in Shonen to just have a few rounds to show how much power creep the heroes have had where certain things just don’t bother them anymore. Toguro murders a Chimera which has an oddly similar backstory to Nina from FMA and he seems really bummed about it but he’s like “Hey we’re both monsters made by humans telling us to do shit, so sorry for killing you bro”. And Tarukane basically sees Toguro is the next boss and is like “Yup time to scam some people off of this” and he sets up a betting ring for how far Yusuke and Co will get into his compound. This is kinda neat because it puts Tarukane in the weird position of betting against his own guards and hoping Yusuke will make it all the way to Toguro and then lose after everyone else has seen how awesome Yusuke is and bets on him. And funnily enough Sakyo’s in on the betting and he’s watched anime before so he knows to bet on the plucky teenagers with weird powers. So yeah Yusuke and Kuwabara finish plowing through the demons while Hiei kinda stalks them and remembers getting his eye surgery and wanting to help his sister but it’s kind of against spirit world rules for demons to just go plow through humans even if they’re scumbag humans so now Yusuke and Kuwabara have to go fight the Triad of boss demons Toguro has under him before Hiei busts in and just murders everyone for kidnapping his bird-loving jewel-crying little flower of a sister.

Fate Zero: So Kiritsugu can break Kayneth’s Terminator 2 Gaara defenses with rib bullets that just say ‘no’ to using magic and fucks his arrogant ass up. Saber and Lancer do some combo shenanigans to stab Caster right in the book and disrupt all his hentai tentacle demons but the book heals so idk why he can’t just make more. Kirei fucks up Maiya and Iris but didn’t double tap Maiya and DID double tap iris but she’s got Saber’s bullshit healing scabbard on her which no one knows about so Saber’s like “uhhh why are you healing” and Iris can’t tell her so she’s basically “Uhh internet?” Lancer comes in to save Kayneth’s worthless ass and tells Kiritsugu to stop being a dick to Saber because she’s pretty dope. But as usual for an early Fate encounter, no one dies and nothing of terrible consequence happens despite it being teased a couple times. I’ve noticed a trend with Fate that it really doesn’t like killing characters early so you’re basically guaranteed to have the first 2-3 major battles have a zero net gain/loss. Rider in UBW was probably the subversion to that since it happened crazy fast and anticlimactic but even that wasn’t till like ten episodes in.

Konosuba: So we finally meet Wiz the big booby Lich and Kazuma learns a new skill, both fun things. Also the gang gets a house to stay in after escapades with an army of haunted dolls and the most “I need to pee” in a horror setting since Corpse Party. But yeah, good progress this time honestly, the living in a stable gag was getting kind of old so Kazuma’s a bit stronger now and they have a home base so that’s pretty cool. Also Wiz is a Demon General or some shit but no one cares cause there ain’t no money in murdering busty zombie waifus.

Sailor Moon Crystal: So turns out Minako is Princess Serenity, except everyone who knows anything about Sailor Moon or indeed plot structure knows Sailor Moon is Princess Serenity, that’s like the Luke I Am Your Father of this series. But still turns out Minako has been guiding everyone with the power of video games but also thinks the power of friendship sucks and she’s gotta go do everything alone. This makes things super awkward because Mamoru’s pretty sure he was in love with the Princess but likes Usagi, now instead of running with this interesting thread of a reincarnation falling in love with someone new we’re gonna do the reveal that Usagi’s the princess and the whole ‘till death do us part’ part of marriage was just a metaphor and you’re stuck with one person no matter how many times you reincarnate. But yeah, Minako fights the bad guy on top of the tower but he has Naraku’s Barrier now and Minako doesn’t have the Red Tessaiga upgrade yet so she needs the power of friendship but this barrier is friendship-proof and this fight is basically a bunch of kids on the playground making up increasingly stupid powers that negate the other powers the other guy just made up. Anyway Tuxedo Mask shows up and is like “Holy shit Sailor Moon I love when you kiss me and kick ass, go get em sweetie I’ll hold your flower” and they kiss and Usagi has learned that if she just pretends she got this the power of her confidence will beat the bad guy. Unfortunately she does not got this and Tuxedo Mask has to pull a Piccolo and throw himself in front of the blast.

Durarara!!: So now that we’ve had our climax for the arc we have a six month timeskip and everyone’s just kinda living life, Mika and Seiji are being clinically insane together, there’s cops harassing Celty to the point of mental breakdown (normal cop stuff) Shinra’s dad’s in town, Namie’s become Izaya’s secretary for blackmail shit, you know, normal stuff. Also there’s a katana-wielding maniac going around slashing people and Anri’s being bullied and sexually harassed to the point of mental collapse, normal stuff.

#ooc #Toonami #Custom Toonami Block #Code Geass #Inuyasha #Yu Yu Hakusho #Fate Zero #Konosuba #Sailor Moon Crystal #Durarara!!

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cursewoodrecap · 3 years ago

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Session 23: Medical Ethics

Y’all ever been to college?

Our new friend Vigdor has just pulled a pale, twitching human leg out of a poster tube, sheepishly admitting to Valeria that it’s his own.

Valeria blinks at it. “Well, it doesn’t appear to be bleeding demons, so that’s good?”

Shoshana sticks her head in the door, and has to pause to take in the sight. “Uh, bruh? Bruh? I have questions. Is that yours? I mean, like, yes, you HAVE it, but was it attached to-“

“That’s a bit tricky? It was amputated twice.”

“Twice?!”

“Once from me, and then, well, um. Once from an amalgam of sewn together body parts?”

(Gral and Shoshana pile into the room, because Oh, Lore?)

“When I was in the swamp, we were fighting a bunch of zombies led by this particularly nasty undead guy. We called it the Wailing Wight. At first it was just the usual undead hordes, but then a local leatherworker was found, torn apart and harpooned every which way, half his limbs torn off and stolen. After that, we started getting attacked by stitched together abominations cobbled together from human and animal pieces. I was there just trying to help the villagers, being a doctor and all. But that’s when I lost my actual limbs.”

“They got stolen, like the leatherworker’s?”

“I had to chop them off. Which, for the record, is not a fun time? The Wight’s harpoon has a kind of poison that rots everything it touches. So I had to amputate or, like, die. So I cut them off and his zombies, uh, stole them. And I managed to get one back? Kind of a long story. I don’t know how I recognized it, but – I guess I know my own leg like the back of my hand? Now I’m taking it back to Sturmhearst. There’s a weird fluid inside it; I want to study what’s going on with that so we can take care of the nastyboy in the swamp.”

“Well, I am generally against nastyboys,” says Shoshana, poking his foot in the ticklish bit. It squirms at her.

We’re headed to Sturmhearst anyway, so traveling together seems reasonable. We think about taking Fun Key Shortcuts, but that could backfire spectacularly, so we’ll play it safe and go the normal, boring way.

In the morning, we head downstairs. The inn is trashed. The stalwart barkeep Rene is not there; instead there’s a young elf sweeping out what debris he can. As we grab breakfast and the young fellow thanks us over and over for saving his friend’s life, Vigdor awkwardly wanders around casting Mending on chairs and tables that got a little too close to the tentacles and chainsaws. Shoshana doesn’t really do non-destructive magic, but she slips the barkeep some gold for repairs.

Vigdor’s too lopsided for a horse, so he’s gonna hop on in our cart. He’s very taken with the Eyegis, poking at it with fascination. “You can see the blood vessels in the eyes, despite no source for a blood supply! Do they have tear ducts? Have you ever seen the shield produce tears? Can you make it cry?”

Valeria gets very uncomfortable with this line of questioning and turns the eyes back into painted ones, put off by a Weird Stranger gettin’ all up in her business. Gral distracts him by asking about his fancy metal limbs.

Vigdor goes full technobabble on how the runes and machinery work. “Well, there’s three different kind of magical actuators on each joint, and they act as conduits for the dilithium crystals-” He knows the details secondhand from Bjork and none of us speak robotics, so if he ever needs serious repairs he’ll have to bring them back to Sturmhearst for the engineers to take a look at.

Valeria knows a bit about Jotunn runesmithing, but she’s never heard of it working to this degree of precision; before, she’d only heard of stuff like boats that row themselves, or a peg leg that has a little extra articulation. These are fully actuated limbs!

Val checks if the limbs are the same metal as our space wrench, but nope, they look like completely normal everyday metals. She’s not gonna inspect further, because she has RESPECT, unlike SOME people.

(“Hey, I didn’t try to pry the eyes open or anything!” Vigdor protests.)

She does notice one thing, though: Valeria recognizes runes from most magic systems even though she doesn’t know them well enough to use; her sister studied magic for a long time, so she knows what they look like. There’s one elaborate rune that appears on both Vigdor’s forearm and leg that is of no origin she’s ever seen.

“How long’d it take Bjork to build this thing?” Shoshana asks, squinting at Vigdor’s kneecap.

“Well, I was unconscious for a good bit of it so…between a week and 2 months? He was already working on it when I, uh, had to amputate.”

“…did you KNOW you were gonna wake up with those things on?”

“Oh! Yeah, yeah. It took a while ‘cause the original blueprints they found were for somebody, like…really short for a human or really tall for a halfling? Something in between. Bjork had to resize the whole model to fit a human.”

“He, uh, FOUND blueprints?

“I can’t imagine he’d have made blueprints for a person who didn’t exist? It was all proportioned very strangely. I don’t know too much about it, you’d have to ask Professor Bjork.”

(One of the players asks if the strange rune, perhaps, says ISTC in a language the characters don’t know. It DOES, and we’re all very pleased with ourselves for previous-campaign references.)

The long road stretches on before us, and we have plenty of time to talk as we spend a week or two heading north toward the coast. We fill Vigdor in on the four flavors of Curse and the concept of the Prisoners, and that we suspect there’s major Key nonsense going on up at the university. (Heh heh, “major key.”)

Vigdor and Shoshana bond over being locals. Why are foreigners so weird about trolls?

Vigdor really, really wants to look at Twombly’s glasses. We explain to him that the Key could take his desire for knowledge and turn him into a cackling, dimension-hopping madman with a few extra eyeballs. He still wants to play with the glasses. Valeria protectively hides the Key map, just in case, flashing her Hunt fangs at anyone who asks about it.

After like a week of pestering everybody, Vigdor gets to look at the glasses. Disappointingly, when not looking at the Key map, the colorful lenses just make everything look slightly more those colors. Maybe Gral’s lutestrings look weird, but that could be the placebo effect. He tries flipping around the many lenses in different combinations, and finds that all of them make him look absolutely ridiculous.

Eventually after many days of travel, we can smell the ocean and the distinctive stench of a large number of humans living in one place. Vigdor takes in the familiar sight of his college hometown. Shoshana is dumbfounded that this many people can live on top of each other, while Valeria thinks it’s a quaint little town.

Up to the west, Sturm Castle squats on a cliff above the city, like a big hippo of knowledge. It looks like it was once a reasonable castle shape, but it’s had new wings and towers built onto it haphazardly until it’s a weird sprawling network of jammed-together architecture. By the edge of the cliff, in one of the more sensibly-built sections, a majestic lighthouse beams out over the bay. In the city below, the largest building appears to be a grand temple, with its roof carved in the shape of an open book. The perimeter of the city is outlined by strange wooden and metal towers, two or three stories tall with conical brass roofs.

Eh. It’s only got one castle, so it can’t be that good of a city compared to Aurentium.

Our cart is briefly stopped for a quick examination at the gate by a friendly city guardsman. He’s flanked by two of the same enormous owl-masked guards we saw accompanying Quercus and Ulmus. “Hi, welcome to Sturmhearst, folks! What brings you here?”

We all awkwardly try not to look at Vigdor’s leg bag.

“I’m, uh, here to visit Dr. Emily Thorpe?” he tries.

“Oh, visiting the university. Don’t need yer life story. Where you stayin’? I can recommend some inns. Oh, and check out the Scholar’s Temple while yer here!” He hands us a brochure from the Sturmhearst Tourism Board and steps back. “ALL RIGHT BIG GUYS, LET EM THROUGH!”

The owl guards don’t move.

“Oh, uh, I mean –“ He fishes in his pocket and pulls out a whistle. “Lemme see if I can remember how the doc told me to do this.” He blows a few sharp notes on the whistle, and the owl guards promptly step off the road to let us through.

Huh.

Vigdor makes an investigation check on those guards, who definitely weren’t around back when he was in school. They’re pretty bulky for humans – no, honestly, they’d be bulky even for goliaths. He’d heard a story from Professor Bjork that the school was hiring goliath mercs and dressing them in owl masks, but the professor had sounded like he hadn’t believed it much. Supposedly they’re silent because they don’t speak the language, but Vigdor’s pretty sure Bjork speaks Jotunn, so that excuse doesn’t quite hold up.

Once we’re out of the guards’ earshot, Gral pulls a huddle. “Vigdor, the Key’s a more recent influence, so let us know about anything new or significantly more abundant – that’s where we’ll need to search.”

Vigdor hmms. “The big brass towers weren’t here before. And the owl guys didn’t used to be a thing.”

Gral cuts another glance back to the owl guards, considering. “…How much of a faux pas is it to remove a Sturmhearst person’s mask?”

“I mean, if you’re dealing with the plague, it’s kind of a dick move? And dangerous? But most people – it’s like, the same rudeness of grabbing someone’s hat or jacket. For some people it’s badge of honor or superiority, y’know, how amazing they were to get through the gauntlet of Sturmhearst. But mostly it’s a practical tool of the job. We’re not, like, afraid to show our faces.”

Gral nods. “So you wouldn’t have to duel them, then.”

“W-what?”

“Oh, with bards it’s like ‘you are not deserving of your title’ and you have to duel about it. You know, like, how dare you slander my name, I’ll have to fight you for my honor?”

“Oh, uh, no, nothing like that. The mask is proof of office, that’s all.”

Before we get investigating, though, it’s late and we should rest. Vigdor wasn’t a palling-around-town type, but he rolls a nat 20 and knows the best inn in the city – not one of those touristy places on the square; the best-kept-secret on a side street that only the locals and regulars know about.

We have a lovely night around the docks of Sturmhearst. Shoshana spends like fifteen minutes just staring out to sea, because they MAKE boats that big???? This much water even EXISTS????? There’s a dragonborn ship from Aurentium, a goliath ship from Jotunhein, a couple of Galwan freighters, and even a ship crewed by colorful macaw aarakocra. (History check: while the Aquilians mostly died out, some of the ground-based aarakocra cultures survived. Valeria’s met macaw traders before in Aurentium; they tell lots of stories and do GREAT impressions.)

Valeria, meanwhile, holies some ocean water. They say Galwan clerics swear by holy seawater; salt repels demons, right? It’s gross harbor water but, whatever, it’s holy now. She also beats a sea captain at Man-go, presumably dock style. The inn’s equipped for foreign travelers, so it’s got a whole bar of draconic and goblin spices!

Gral, meanwhile, discovers the inn is near a bath house and enjoys finding out what a sauna is.

Morning comes, and Sturmhearst U awaits. Vigdor knows the main campus has the colleges of Engineering, Science, and Medicine, while the satellite campus across the bay houses the college of Ethics, which includes humanities like economics and history.

Valeria rolls for Order of the Rose knowledge. The Order actually has an arrangement with Sturmhearst when they’re working in Valdia – whenever the Order is sent on disaster relief, some Sturmhearst ethicists are sent to help coordinate. Valeria’s never worked with them personally, but the impression she’s gotten from her fellow knights is Not Great. From what she’s heard, they’re supposed to do triage and help direct the knights, but it seems like they spend the whole time sitting around debating absolutely horrible things. “Hey, if we brewed up some necromancy, could we use the skeletons of plague victims to transport supplies without spreading the infection?” Apparently they just sit around in corners debating whether that kind of shit is kosher or not, without ever actually DOING anything.

Also ethicists wear white instead of black like most Sturmhearst scholars, which is just pretentious. We then poke fun at an Order of the Rose knight calling anyone else pretentious.

Vigdor studied at the College of Medicine; he’s a doctor. But that’s not where he’s taking the leg.

“Why not Medicine? I mean, it’s a human body part, innit?” Shoshana asks.

“It’s…I have some concerns…regarding the, um. So, along with this leg, my arm was stolen, right? Not long after the arm was stolen, the sewn-together amalgams got a lot, uh, cleaner.”

We stare at him.

“…as if whatever stitched them together had my medical training.”

…oh.

“I’m a little hesitant taking that info to the College of Medicine,” he admits.

“Why?”

“There’s a lot of ‘for the greater good’ stuff with the College of Medicine sometimes. The College of Ethics keeps them in check. Anyway, there’s actually this thaumochemist I want to take a look at it.”

(We’d know the discipline as alchemy, but she hates that. She’ll go on a whole tirade about it. Somebody yells “Full Metal Thaumochemist” and we accidentally take a commercial break. We’ll never get tired of that joke.)

More of those owl guards are at the door, supervised by a businesslike white-coated member of the College of Ethics. His mask is a bit more abstract than the ones we’re used to; not modeled after a bird face like the regular scholars’. He lets Vigdor in with no problem, though he’s a bit suspicious of the rest of us. We’re with a doctor, though, so he’ll let it slide. “Welcome to Sturmhearst, may your visit be enlightening.” He does the same whistle we heard before and the guards step aside. Gral’s a string guy, he can figure out the notes easily enough but he doesn’t whistle.

“Nothing goes on here without Ethics knowing about it, huh,” Gral observes.

More owl guards are stomping around, some carrying heavy objects. Vigdor knows where he’s going, but asks an owl guard for directions, as an experiment. The owl guard doesn’t even notice him. He steps in front of the guard, who just steps around him very politely.

The castle is a nightmare to navigate, like Hoeska, but we have an expert tour guide. “The old keep, the part that used to be a castle – that’s where all the 101 classes are and the whole working hospital. All the additions are laid out super weird, and then there’s the tunnels underneath. The Chem students had WILD parties down there, they brewed up all SORTS of stuff. The lighthouse is a real lighthouse, but it’s also where admin is, and the dean’s and headmaster’s offices. Oh! DO NOT cross the librarians. Each college has its own library? Like, theoretically they share the whole collection, but which college keeps which books is kind of a blood sport…”

Shoshana and Gral hang back, feeling out of place. “Bards don’t really have a college, exactly?” Gral explains. “It’s more of a pilgrimage. I met the elders of each village and they imparted wisdom upon me?”

Shosh feels like an uneducated hick even by that standard.

We take a hairpin turn in one of the Science buildings and run into Professor Quercus! Or at least someone with a bird mask and a similar voice, chatting with some other masked scholar. “Ah! Yes! We made a lot of excellent discoveries before we started to run into problems – you see, there hadn’t been an event in some time, but if we could get in there to the source, we could really – well, my goodness! These are the people I was telling you about, who gave me such wonderful notes!” Quercus turns to us, sounding rather delighted. “I certainly didn’t expect to see you here. Welcome to the world of knowledge! What brings you here? I thought you were having adventures and derring-do!”

“Well, it turns out our adventures led here!” Gral tells him.

Quercus nods enthusiastically. “I’d show you around, but I rather need to speak to the bursar! If you need anything, I’m sure you can find my offices without too much problem. And please, if you’ve encountered any interesting monsters, I’d love to hear details! Especially if you have samples!” Despite his keen excitement, Professor Quercus rolls a four and fails to notice our Shusva accessories.

“If you ever need a cup of tea and a biscuit, you’re welcome to stop by my office! I’d be more than happy to speak with you! And if you could do me a favor – well, I wouldn’t mind having you with me when I speak to the bursar! See, our expedition to Holzog has hit a bit of a snag. The events with that mist stopped happening, you see. Luckily, we managed to identify which house you were going to, and we were all set to investigate, but then the Baroness put a squadron of those damnable Condotierri to prevent us getting in – “

Gral shrugs, deliberately casual. “I don’t know why you’d go back; there’s not much to see besides what’s already in the notes.”

(Vigdor immediately rolls insight to see if Gral is lying. Unfortunately for him, bards are excellent liars.)

“Anyway. The bursar’s giving me an earful about continuing to fund the expedition. I’m considering withdrawing from Holzog and asking him to redirect the funds into a different project! For example, lots of interesting monsters have been seen around Barroch lately!”

Yes, definitely, we want him to go somewhere that’s not a Tempting Key Portal. Valeria and Gral tag-team Persuasion checks to sell him on interesting cases of monsters we’ve heard of around Barroch. If we’re fuzzy on the details – well, all the more reason to have someone get out there and take a closer look!

Quercus is rather taken by the idea. “If you would, Mr. Duu –“

“Um, actually, Duu is the tribe, my family’s name is-“

“-yes, if you could write me some letters, I might find it useful making the acquaintance of the locals while setting up camp. Sturmhearst hasn’t established an official relationship to your people yet’”

Gral agrees to write up a formal letter explaining the mission of Sturmhearst and the expedition to make introductions a bit smoother; the word of a bard will go a long way in gaining the cooperation of the orcs of Barroch. He’ll do a personal letter of introduction for Quercus, and a general letter to Shieldeater’s administration to explain who the heck these weird bird people are.

“Wonderful! Bring it by my office!” He gives us directions that make NO sense to anyone but Vigdor. We’re pretty sure several of those compass directions aren’t real words?

“Oh, and if you see an angry tall woman stomping around, tell her I’m not here! She’s mad at me for some reason I can’t discern. Good day!”

He scuttles off, presumably to hide.

We definitely want the gossip on that – Ulmus was mad at him about funding, and she definitely dissed his field of study. Is this what academia is like?

Vigdor confirms that the professors have all kind of weird beefs, interdepartmental politics, and personal feuds. “One of my professors gave me a B- in amputation – shows what he knows – purely because I was taking some classes outside the College of Medicine and he got all offended. It’s a lot of politics and bullshit, they’re all more concerned about their careers and publishing than actually important stuff.”

We find a door with a brass plaque: Dr Emily Thorpe, Thaumochemist. There’s a paper list tacked to her door with a list of courses: “Intro to Potion Brewing,” “Principles of Alchemy Thaumochemistry”

Vigdor knocks. “Yes, who’s there? Come in!” a voice calls.

“It’s Vigdor! Vigdor Gavril!”

“Ah, Vigdor!” A halfling woman in the requisite bird mask waves from behind a counter where she’s handling a set of proper Movie Science bubbling beakers and flasks. “Yes, you sent me that letter! You had something ‘interesting’ for me!”

“Yes, and you will see why I couldn’t be more detailed!”

She notices his metal arm as he starts pulling open his heavy waterproofed case. “Oh! I heard that Professor Bjork was giving you his prototype! How’s it working?”

“They’re loud and heavy and uncomfortable sometimes, but I have limbs! Can’t complain! But then I, uh, found one of my limbs again.”

He goes over to an open table and pulls out his entire-ass leg with a flourish, plus vials of hair and blood and strange unidentified liquids. Her eyes widen.

“Ah, this is yours!” She watches his toes wiggle. “Well, you don’t see that every day.”

“Yeah, I found it stitched to some kind of unholy undead abomination.”

“And that explains the Knight of the Rose. Hello, Kyr.”

“Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service!”

“Dr. Emily Thorpe, at your service as well, I guess? Pardon the mess in my lab, it’s not much but it’s home. Hand me that vial?” She pulls out a syringe and takes a sample of not blood, but oily black liquid, from the leg. “It will take some time, but I can write up a thaumaturgical profile without much difficulty. Do you mind if I keep it?”

“You can hang on to it. But I would appreciate discretion.”

“Yes, this will stay between me, your friends, and – oh, this is Hugo, he’s my teaching assistant. He’s been helping since the school was mobilized.” She turns to Vigdor’s clearly uneducated hick friends (not you, Valeria, you’re very fancy) and explains:

“In times of crisis, the University turns from education to innovation. Were this a disease, we’d be researching cures! If demonic, we’d be researching weapons or dimensional banishment. We haven’t really received direct orders this time, so everybody is doing their own thing, which I can’t say I mind. Mostly I’ve been helping other researchers with the practical application of their theorems.”

She scribbles out a hasty list. “Hugo, if you can go to the library and put these books on order? The Vigmar and the Auspelius especially would be useful, but don’t let the librarians kill anyone over them. And the Principles of Advanced Anatomy – tell them I won’t ask. But I do need it.” The grad student nods and hustles out of the room.

(Shoshana insights, out of paranoia. Hugo’s a good egg, though he might refer to thaumochemistry as alchemy.)

“Now, Dr. Gavril, do you want this leg back? How intact-“

“Want it back? Like, in the abstract, or on my body?”

She pulls out a vial of bubbling acid. “I’d like to put some of this on it and I’d like to see what happens.”

He blanches slightly. “Uh. Um. I have some proprietary-“

“Aw, no acid then,” she grumbles, stowing the acid with an audible sigh.

“Only do something you would do to living person’s leg. That they would survive!”

“How would I know? I’m a chemist, this is only, like, my second dead person!” She pauses. “…well, fifth.”

Shoshana starts looking around at all the alchemy equipment curiously. Everything here is clearly labeled with numbers, and letters that feel like numbers, and complex formulae, which hedgewitch potionery doesn’t really account for.

There’s a knock at the door. “Ah, that must be Hugo. Come in!”

Valeria instinctively body-blocks the leg from view.

It is not Hugo. In walk 3 white-clad ethicists. The gentleman at the front is in fancier robes – we suspect he’s the kind of fellow who has tenure – and he wears a powdered judge’s wig atop his mask. We immediately don’t like it. His two companions peer around the lab – one has a jeweler’s loupe built into the lens of his mask, and the other is carrying a big chime with runes carved into it, clearly a magic item of some sort.

“Dr Thorpe,” the leader intones.

“Sorbus,” she replies disdainfully.

“I see you have guests, is now a bad time?”

“Is it ever a good time?” Emily makes a point of tending to her samples and beakers busily.

“I suppose not. We have come to ask a few follow-up questions. Have you been visited at all by Professor Matthias Macker? Has he followed up on the project you were working on together?”

“I told you, no! I had no potions strong or precise enough for what he needed, and he’s never spoken to me since. That was months ago!”

“And no one has seen him since then. You understand why we need to know what you discussed.”

“Yeah, not since you quarantined the whole surgical wing!”

“That is not what I’m asking about. Has Macker’s assistant Greta Ruble visited you?”

“No. She’s a good kid, though, don’t hassle her.”

“We are simply making sure she is not a danger.”

Emily sputters angrily. “A danger to who?!”

“I cannot tell you that.” He turns to Valeria. “Kyr, it is always a pleasure to see a member of the Order here. I suppose if you’re here we can be assured nothing… unethical is happening,” he says, unpleasantly oily. “I am Professor Rigmor Sorbus of the College of Ethics; I lecture on legal and judicial ethics. These are my assistants, Charles and Pippin.”

Valeria bows with the precise degree of politeness required. “Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance. In these times of mobilization, it falls to us as ethicists to supervise our colleagues’ noble efforts. Please, I implore you: if you see anything untoward or suspiciously unusual, I request you report it to the nearest representative of the College of Ethics.”

Emily butts in. “What happened to Eric Pelbort, his other assistant?”

“Mr. Pelbort has transferred to the College of Ethics and is assisting us with some research. We will let you know if that changes.” He tells her dismissively. “Kyr Argent, the College of Ethics has always been proud of our long association with the Order, and I would like to extend our deepest condolences for the tragedy of the Crusade. Should you have need of any assistance whatsoever, do not hesitate to ask. Our offices are on the satellite campus across the bay. If you were to visit, I’m sure many would love to speak to a paladin of the Order of the Rose.”

“We have business here, but I might be able to make time to stop by,” she equivocates.

“Very well. I will let you all get back to whatever it is you’re doing with that leg,” Sorbus says, turning neatly on his heel and taking his leave, his toadies hurrying in his wake.

(Yes, you guessed it: That was Professor Rowan, with his Tort Wig and his assistants Pip Loupe and Chime Charles.)

“Those guys give me the creeps,” Emily grumbles. “They used to be fine, but lately they’ve been doing this whole inquisitor act.”

Vigdor’s always known these guys as douchey blowhards. But now they’re douchey blowhards with AUTHORITY.

There’s always been a divide between Ethics and the other three colleges roughly the size of the harbor! The sciences don’t believe in debate, they believe in experimentation! Anyone who can spend an entire week talking without action is wasting time and breath. The College of Medicine thinks even less of them – they just get in the way of progress!

(IRL we all respect medical ethics, but Sturmhearst WAS founded on a fine tradition of graverobbing and leeches.)

Vigdor is primarily a surgeon, or he was, when he had two fully functional hands. (Two players at once: “HE GOT DR STRANGED!”) He had quite a few classes with Macker, the chair of the surgery department. Most people didn’t like the guy, except his surgical grad students who would defend him to the death. A bit of a hardass about proper procedure, but that’s probably not a bad quality for a surgeon. He was a local institution, so it’s pretty alarming he’s somehow gone rogue.

“His whole lab was quarantined?”

“The whole teaching wing, actually,” Emily tells us.

“Are there people in there? Some kind of sickness?”

“Not that I’ve heard. Ethics just put guards outside the labs and blocked everyone from going in. They’ve done it to a couple places around the school recently. The excuse is that someone was doing ‘unsafe experimentation’ that’s ‘poisoned the area’ or something?”

Wack. “How long have these quarantines lasted?”

“They don’t really end? A couple stopped after a few months, but some have been there for a year! Nobody goes in or out. Sometimes the white coats go in, but it’s pretty rare and they don’t stay long.”

“Is that what all the guards are for? Where’d they all come from?” Vigdor asks.

“Medicine used to be the ones, uh, hiring them.” (A quick insight roll notes that she hesitates on the phrase “hiring.”) “Lots of them still answer to whoever they were originally assigned to. But recently Dean Chidor from the College of Ethics took over that whole program, so a lot of the newer ones answer primarily to the ethicists. I mean, they all dress the same, so it’s kinda hard to tell? I haven’t asked a lot of questions, I’ve been trying to keep my head down since the whole thing with Macker.”

“What actually happened with him?”

“He’d been acting weird for a while,” she confides as she starts sticking pins in the leg and wiring them to a voltage generator. “He’d been working on something, some kind of extreme surgery – I think he was looking into a method of surgically removing Curse corruption. He was hitting roadblocks, though; he called in me and Alma Ulmus, who’s a College of Medicine bigwig.”

“Yeah, we met her in Bad Herzfeld!”

“I heard she’s here again, stalking around the halls complaining about funding. She knows more about his project than I do. Anyway, Macker sent me requirements for a healing potion he was gonna administer as part of some surgical procedure. I couldn’t get anything as powerful or precise as he needed. I’m a thaumochemist; I don’t know medicine that well. So it was beyond me to do that amount of gross tissue damage repair as controllably as they wanted it. I mean, I made some pretty nice innovations as far as the theory of potioncrafting, I’m hoping to get published as soon as it goes to peer review.

“But I couldn’t do what he needed, and eventually I got shut out of the project. Then one day he vanished. Alma set off for Bad Herzfeld and Macker stopped coming out of his lab. His assistants were still going in and out, but not long after that, the ethicists quarantined the place.”

“Has anyone else been quarantined?” Valeria asks.

“People from all three colleges got hit. I dunno about other ethicists, I haven’t heard about them quarantining anything of their own. But everyone else has. A group of engineering students were building a defense system to be deployed out to the Scar, and all of them got quarantined. Here in my department, Dr. Vilman – remember him? Stupid goatee, did a lot of stuff with crystals? – got shut down. Sometimes they quarantine the whole lab; sometimes they just shut down a project and everyone working on it gets a ‘guest lecture position’ over in Ethics. Sorbus said they got one of Macker’s assistants, Eric Pelbort. He had another one, Greta Ruble, but I guess she’s given them the slip.”

Emily’s got experiments to do on that leg, so we’ll let her get to it. As we head out, Gral asks one last question. “What’s up with those guards, by the way? Why do they only respond to those whistles?

“Uhhhh,” she says, as we fail our persuasion check. “They, er, don’t speak very good Valdian. Mostly foreigners, goliaths, the like. The whistles get their attention.”

Gral sighs and doesn’t push it. Vigdor’s already making plans to pickpocket a whistle. Valeria, since she has a direct invite to talk to the ethicists, considers the unheard-of paladin approach of Just Asking Them Directly.

First, though, Vigdor wants to check out the quarantine of Macker’s lab; he knew that professor well, and we’re all curious what’s been going down.

We walk on over to the surgical wing to case the joint. There’s a single owl guard blocking the hallway, presiding over a small barricade. A pleasant sandwich board sign states “Area quarantined by College of Ethics, apologies for the inconvenience.”

We try to walk in and the enormous guard holds out a hand to stop us. Shoshana tries to wiggle around him, like a cat trying to get at your dinner, but he impassively blocks her every move.

Gral tries a smoother approach. He begins with small talk; the guard doesn’t even twitch. He starts asking prying questions about the surgical ward. No response. Fine, then: he switches to Orcish, a sinister undertone weaving through his voice as he uses Words of Terror.

An insight roll reveals completely unchanged body language.

“Either they’re immune to fear or not a humanoid,” Gral reports back. “Not a single emotion. Definitely not goliath mercenaries.”

“Tryin’ to talk your way into the surgical wing?” says another chatty passerby. “Good luck. They got all the medical cadavers locked up in there and they won’t let us in.”

(Cadavers? Oh shit, we bet that’s the guard factory, theorize the players.)

“Oh, are you a med student?”

“Yeah. I work with Professor Herberts, or I used to, anyway. We needed a couple cadavers to do this comparison study about spleens; we got some weird ones from out in the wood, we compare spleens to see if place with thing don’t worry about it; need control spleen. And then these BIG DUMB IDIOTS wouldn’t let us in, and Herbert got transferred to the College of Ethics all of a sudden. He’s been gone a couple months.”

“How long do professors usually transfer for?” asks Gral.

“I mean, they usually pop over to give a lecture or two and come back by the end of the day.”

(Vigdor happens to remember that the College of Ethics also runs an asylum. They live in a big spooky castle and do dissections with guts and stuff, it can do a number on your head! Some of the ethicists have branched into the field of psychology. No reason to mention this when people are having extended stays on the ethics campus, of course…)

The student shrugs. “I gotta get to lecture. If you manage to get in there, any chance you can bring me back a couple spleens?”

We wave goodbye noncommittally, though Vigdor insists he can pop a spleen out of a corpse like a yolk from an egg. He’s a good surgeon!

Anyway, Vigdor went to school here, and the dice are on his side; he knows a side path through an old abandoned classroom into the surgical suite. He pops the lock on the door easily; all the undergrads used to go this way when slipping into lecture late, to get past the TA keeping track of tardies.

The guard is in earshot but facing the other direction, and he’s not even blinking, much less scanning around. Gral casts Silence on us and our very clanky party slips by easily.

Shosh sticks her head into the TA’s office. Nothing really stands out, but she swipes some interesting-looking notes from the desk drawers to look at later.

Meanwhile, Gral and Vigdor go into Macker’s office. The desk is an absolute mess, which is very unlike the guy Vigdor used to know. There are wheeled chalkboards crammed into the office, covered in scribbles and anatomical diagrams. Paging through the notes and glancing over the chalkboard, Vigdor makes a decent medicine check and can at least figure out what problem Macker was working on.

Based on what Dr. Emily told us, Macker’s trying to develop a surgical procedure. The issue is that whatever he’s doing would cause so much physical trauma that it’d kill the patient, and he’s looking for some way to prevent that. There are lists of healing options: formulas, spells, potions, nonmagical stabilization methods to keep the patient alive while various tissues are extracted from the body.

Gral’s unimpressed. Healing methods? That’s pretty tame for forbidden knowledge.

To Vigdor’s experienced eyes, this stuff looks mega-advanced and highly experimental, but Gral’s right – it’s not anything you’d scramble to censor.

Weirdly enough, the place doesn’t look ransacked, only disheveled and a little dusty. Macker’s notes haven’t been moved since he was here. Maybe this isn’t what the ethicists were after?

We head to cadaver storage while Valeria keeps watch. Cadaver storage is creepy as hell, but only because it’s, y’know, a room full of cadavers. A lot of the bodies, kept stable with Gentle Repose, appear to be Cursed, but that’s hardly weird. What’s so crazy they’d keep it hidden from everyone?

Vigdor opens the door to the dissection labs, Gral’s Silence deadening any ominous warning he might have had from the room beyond. Yes, the table here’s been recently used, and the bizarre symbols scrawled on the chalkboards have spilled onto the surrounding floor and walls, but Vigdor’s eyes are drawn to where the chalkboard peels away like skin to reveal a strange, multicolored, impossible space. The floor begins to take the shape of a stone hand that projects out into the shimmering void, joining a daisy-chain of enormous hands that form a walkway out to a marble platform floating in space.

Gral takes his Silence spell with him and runs to get Valeria.

Eyes starry, watching entire worlds and impossible shapes spinning through iridescent mists, Vigdor takes his first heady hit of Key taint.

As we cut session, Valeria considers that the ethicists may actually have a point.

#the cursewood #Session recap #sturmhearst university #gral omokk'duu #valeria argent #vigdor gavril #shoshana bat chaya #The key

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jenonctcity · 5 years ago

Text

Chances - Part 4

[10:00am]

Ex-Husband!Jaemin / Husband!Renjun Part 4

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Warnings: Swearing.

Word Count: 2.2k

One week ago, the worst day of your life hit you like a brick flying through a window. Having a child being in such a dangerous situation was something you would never wish on any parent. The stress and anxiety that followed was enough to keep you on edge whenever either of your children did anything other than breathe. You never wanted to be a mother that restricted her children from experiencing life and learning from their mistakes, but for at least a few months you knew that neither of your babies were going to do anything that would put them at risk. Mihyun had been released from hospital two days ago after being in for five days. The doctors wanted to keep an eye on her and after days of monitoring her they gave her the all clear to go home. Mihyun was ecstatic at the reality of leaving the confines of her hospital bed, even if you were going to make her stay at home for the next few weeks. Bolin was also excited to finally have his partner in crime back at home and despite his young age and incapability of walking properly, he thoroughly enjoyed being the replacement for Mihyun’s right arm whilst hers was repairing itself. Even if he couldn’t do much, Mihyun was enjoying using her baby brother as an assistant to do little things, like pass her building blocks while she tried to build a block tower.

“Mihyun are you sure you want to stay at daddy’s today? If you want to skip it this week and stay home then you can, daddy won’t be upset.” You tried to subtly convince your daughter to stay by your side for one more week, the thought of her being more than 20 feet away from you was freaking you out and causing anxiety to thread through your veins.

“No I want to go!” She protested as she sat on the floor of her bedroom, stuffing her new lion plushie that Renjun had bought for her into her backpack only using one arm. Bolin tried his best to help her push it in as he sat beside her, poking his little tongue out of his mouth in concentration. You sighed, the anxiety panging in your stomach once more at her words.

“Okay honey…” The sound of the doorbell caused you to jolt in shock, placing a hand on your chest and letting out a long breath.

“I’ll get it.” Renjun’s voice was stern as he made his way to the front door to greet Jaemin. Your heart dropped and you bit your bottom lip in anticipation of how the interaction between the two men was going to pan out.

5 days ago

You came home from the hospital after sitting by Mihyun’s bedside all day. You wanted to keep her company and make sure she didn’t feel abandoned so you and Jaemin took it in turns to spend the days by her side. Renjun was sat at the kitchen table with his laptop open, typing away and doing some work stuff that always went completely over your head most of the time. He glanced up when he heard you enter the room, smiling softly at you before closing his laptop.

“Hey beautiful, how’s Mihyun?” He held his hand out towards you, his eyes trailing up and down you as you came closer to him. You linked your fingers with his and wrapped your spare arm around his neck, leaning down and pressing a kiss to his forehead. Renjun still brought butterflies to your stomach even after being married to him for a while now, his handsome face and loving soul making you fall in love with him every day. So, it hurt your heart to know that what you were about to reveal to him was going to disrupt the peacefulness of your steady relationship.

“She’s getting there, she wants to see you and Bolin so I might have promised that you’d take him to see her tomorrow is that okay?” You let go of him, sliding into the seat beside him but kept your hands linked.

“Of course it’s okay! She can have anything she wants.” He pressed a soft kiss to the back of your hand and looked into your eyes lovingly. “You know I love her like I love Bolin, I think of her as my daughter.” He shrugged as if what he’d just said was nothing significant, a soft smile playing at the corner of his lips. He could see the tears forming in your eyes and making them glisten under the bright lights of the kitchen. “Oh no don’t cry!” He laughed, resting a hand on your thigh and rubbing his thumb against the fabric of your jeans. His words formed a knot of guilt in the pit of your gut. You looked down at his hand on your thigh and sniffed back the tears, deciding to rip off the band aid quickly.

“Jaemin kissed me.” The words came out quickly but clearly, you didn’t want to have to repeat those words to your husband ever again. Renjun’s hand gripped your thigh tightly as your words sunk in. His heart sunk to the fiery pit of anger now bubbling inside of him.

“He kissed you?” He seethed the words out through gritted teeth, letting go of your leg and sitting back in the chair. “Did you kiss him back?” He looked through his eyebrows at you, the look intimidating and making your shrink back on your seat.

“Only for a second then I pushed him away.” You wiped your eyes with the pad of your hand, running it through your hair as you stressed out. His hand slipped from the grip you had on it, making you want to chase it and link your fingers again, but you couldn’t take the rejection if he snatched his hand away. He also pulled his other hand off of your thigh, choosing to drum his fingers on the table in anxiety. A mixture of sadness and anger flew through Renjun, causing his nervous system to start shaking slightly.

“When?” He had many questions lined up for you in his head, wanting to know every detail of your betrayal.

“The day Mihyun got hit by the car, when we were in the waiting room…I’m sorry Renjun…” A sob ripped from your body, the guilt eating you up second by second. “I wasn’t thinking, and I needed some comfort, but I had no idea he was going to kiss me. I was so angry when he did because I love you not him. I only ever want you to be the one who kisses me” Words kept tumbling from your lips, trying to get across your emotions and feelings on the situation. He was silent for a solid 5 minutes, just staring down at the floor as thoughts ran through his mind. In his mind he could either forget this happened, be the bigger person because he knew deep down it wasn’t your fault. Or he could kick up a fuss about it and let it dwell in his mind which he knew wasn’t healthy emotionally and mentally for either of you. Especially as your daughter was still in hospital and the extra stress of him leaving for a few days wasn’t what you needed.

“Shh, stop crying. Come here.” He pulled you off of your chair forcefully, placing you in his lap as he bundled you up in the warmth of his arms. “I forgive you. I understand the situation and I know it was such a hard time for you both.” He pressed a lingering kiss to your cheek and softly sighed against your skin. “I know what you and he had is over, I trust you but please tell me if he ever does anything like this again.” Renjun masked the hurt he was feeling by squeezing you tightly to him.

“I will, thank you for understanding, I love you so much.” More tears cascaded down your cheeks as the overwhelming feeling of love you and Renjun shared warmed you.

“I love you too.”

Present

“Hello Jaemin.” Renjun answered the door with a fake smile plastered on his face. Jaemin was completely unaware of the smile being fake so smiled unsurely back at the man.

“Hey Renjun…” Jaemin hadn’t spoken to you about anything other than Mihyun so was uncertain whether you’d told your husband about the kiss. He felt nervous, not wanting any altercation or conflict with Renjun.

“So…how’s things been?” Renjun remained casual, stepping out of the apartment and pulling the door to a close behind him instead of inviting Jaemin like he normally would. Jaemin gave the door a look, feeling sceptical about Renjun’s actions.

“Good…considering.” He nodded and looked awkward, gulping silently and looking into Renjun’s eyes. “Erm…how’s Bolin?” He racked his brain to try and think of things to say to him, wanting to keep the conversation as far away from the topic of you as possible.

“He’s good.” Renjun folded his arms over his chest. “Happy his big sister is home.”

“That’s sweet…” Jaemin smiled awkwardly, glancing away from Renjun to look behind him to see if there was anyone else around, hoping to find a way out of the difficult conversation. When he turned his head back around Renjun had stepped closer to him, grabbing him by the scruff of his jumper and pushing him forcefully up against the wall.

“If you EVER kiss my wife again. You’ll fucking regret it. You had your chance with her, and you fucked it up, so back off.” Renjun growled in an intimidating tone to Jaemin, stressing the word ‘ever’ to make his point crystal clear. Jaemin gulped, pinned to the wall and unable to move. He couldn’t help but think about how the shorter man was stronger than he looked. “Understood?”

“Renjun it didn’t mean anything; I didn’t even think as I-”

“Do you understand?” Renjun cut off Jaemin, he didn’t need to hear his excuses. He’d already came to his conclusion about the situation and felt no need to hear Jaemin’s side of the story.

“Yes.” Jaemin’s heart slowed back down to its normal pace when Renjun stepped back, letting go of Jaemin’s jumper and glaring at him.

“Good.” He pushed the door to the apartment back open and went inside, leaving Jaemin at the doorstep. Jaemin leaned against the wall, taking a deep breath before sighing. He didn’t blame you for telling your husband as he knew honesty was the best policy and if the truth came out later on it could ruin your marriage from you keeping it a secret. But he couldn’t help but feel let down. The tiny flame of hope you would leave Renjun and go back to him now simmering out into ashes.

“Daddy!” Mihyun chirped, running down the hallway and hugging Jaemin’s leg with her good arm. You followed after her, biting your bottom lip as you caught eyes with Jaemin. You smiled weakly at him. a smile in which he returned and nodded his head once at you. “I want to go to the zoo!”

“Okay honey.” He rubbed her head affectionately, taking her backpack from you and slinging it over his shoulder. He noticed when Renjun snuck up behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder in a possessive way. Jaemin’s heart ached at seeing you in Renjun’s arms but he knew he needed to move on. He took a deep breath and held his head high. “Say bye to mummy…and Renjun.”

“Bye mummy! Bye Renjunnie!” She quickly ran back to you, flinging her arms around your leg and then doing the same to Renjun’s. Renjun let go of you to ruffle her hair.

“Bye pudding.” He smiled as she ran back over to her dad.

“Have I told you about my new teacher at kindergarten? She’s really pretty!” She looked up at her dad with big, curious eyes.

“Yeah you told me last week princess.” He left the apartment with her, not bothering to look back at you before he shut the door. You frowned at his hostility, turning around to Renjun and sighing.

“What did you say to him?”

“Not much…the situation is all sorted though.” He smirked at you, wrapping his arms around your waist again. “You’re MY wife.” He bit his bottom lip and leaned down, nudging your head to the side and placing soft kisses against your neck. You closed your eyes, the way Jaemin had ignored you when he left, playing on your mind and making you feel down. Renjun failed to notice the solemn expression left marred on your features, groaning when Bolin called out for him. He drew away from you, sighing as he left you stood in the hallway. Propping yourself up against the wall you screwed your eyes closed, not looking forward to your next interaction with Jaemin, knowing you would have to have a thorough discussion about what happened and what feelings he still has towards you.

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blackasteriia · 4 years ago

Text

A List of Reasons Why I Hate the ‘Sea Salt Family’

AKA It’s Sunday Tuesday and I’m back at it again at Krispie-Kremes

(Abuse tw; violence tw; salt tw; suicide tw)

I have mentioned, in passing, my problems with the prevalence of the Sea Salt Family in fandom and my problems with it. I’ve never written a comprehensive post on it before. It’s Sunday though, I have the salt, so let’s do it.

The Sea Salt Family is roughly presented, but not explicitly laid-out, in canon. At the end of KH3, Xion, Roxas, Lea, and Isa are shown sharing ice cream on the clock tower together. Since the introduction of Xion and Roxas’ character, ‘sharing ice cream’ has been a declarative statement of friendship and camaraderie. It was the origin of their friendship. Thus, the inclusion of Isa is a signal of his admittance into the reformed friend group. The intention of this scene was to show the reconciliation and unification of these characters. To cement this, it seems that Nomura has bundled Roxas, Xion, Lea, Isa, and the Twilight Trio, into a shared plot. They are mentioned in Re:Mind, by Riku, as searching for Sora through Roxas and Xion’s memories.

Common fandom interpretation takes this one step farther. The assumption is that Lea and Isa have adopted Xion and Roxas. This puts Lea and Isa in a parental role over the kids. Often times, this is done in a shipping context for Lea and Isa. Sometimes Lea and Isa have a good relationship, with two lovingly adopted children. Other times Xion and Roxas become contention points for the main ship-- Isa’s punishment for being a jerk is taking care of the kids.

Fandom does take into account that the canon scene itself in KH3 is flawed. Lets overview Lea and Isa’s relationship, with both of the kids.

Roxas spent the majority of 358/2 Days oblivious to the machinations going on around him. However, he identified a rift between Axel and Xion that developed in the midpoint of the year. He recognized that Axel had done something to estrange her and by the end of the game, blamed him for it. He was also angry at him for attacking Xion the first time. When Xion ran away for the second time, Roxas confronted Axel and forced the truth. Axel had been lying about Xion --sometimes intentionally to assuage Roxas’ concerns-- and then attempted to justify his actions to Roxas.The revelations of Axel’s lies --and outright manipulation, diverting Roxas from finding the truth-- causes Roxas to leave the Organization. Axel later attacks Roxas (twice) when Xemnas orders him to do so. At this point, Axel makes no attempt to find an alternate solution. Axel is enraged at Roxas for leaving and even forgetting him (which is a weird thing for an adult man to feel about a child, I might add). He is mocking of Roxas’ confusion in the data Twilight Town. Axel then attacks Roxas with the implicit intention to kill Roxas. Thus, we see that Axel’s relationship to Roxas is manipulative and built on lies, instead of trust. Axel also shows little regard for Roxas’ autonomy (”You’re coming with me, conscious or not.”). Roxas knows that Axel will lie to him. Roxas knows that Axel will assault him. If Roxas enters the post-KH3 relationship with no reservations then he is an oblivious moron.

When it comes to Xion I do not give Axel the benefit of the doubt. Axel is introduced to Xion, by Roxas. At the beginning of their friendship he does not see her face. He becomes aware that she is a replica but decides to give her a fair shake, due to his experience with Repliku. Eventually, he does see her face. They seem to get along for the first part of the game. However, when Xion goes to Castle Oblivion to learn the truth about herself-- Axel moves to block her. He gaslights her (’there’s nothing to see here’) and grabs her to stop her (a violation of her physical autonomy btw). She goes on into the castle and Axel does not mention the incident to Roxas (a lack of transparency and honesty in relationships). Xion is missing for almost a month. She returns, speaks with Roxas (who also grabs her and violates her physical autonomy smh), and is then attacked by Axel. Axel kidnaps Xion and returns her to the Organization against her will. Xion did not want to return to the Organization. Roxas requests that she return with him and she moves away from him. Before Axel attacked her she was going to leave. (Later, Nomura attempts to feebly justify Axel’s behavior by saying Xion is glad he did this. We’ll call that Xion attempting to assuage Roxas’ worries). Xion later goes to Axel for advice about what to do. Axel implies that she’s ‘stealing more than her share’ from Roxas. We are, as a reminder, talking about Xion killing herself here. Later, Axel lets her leave, and then still follows Xemnas’ order to attack her and kidnap her again. I do not believe there is any love loss between Axel and Xion. He betrayed her, gaslit her, attacked and assaulted her, kidnapped her (twice), and showed a cruel disregard for her autonomy. There is no reason for her to trust, or even like him. Their ‘friendship’ ended around day 255 in Castle Oblivion, and any attempt for Nomura to convince you otherwise is deliberate attempt to write over the real trauma that Axel caused her.

Saïx and Roxas have few interactions. However, I read Roxas and Xion as child soldiers. They are slaves, they are working for no payment. Saïx is the man in charge of them. He hands out the missions. We are shown that Saïx primary concern is their efficiency in collecting hearts. Roxas and Saïx interactions include Saïx telling him what his mission is, and how to prepare. Saïx, however, outright pits Roxas and Xion against each other. Even at one point, attempting to have them murder each other. (If you read the manga, and want to consider it for analysis, Saïx even attacks Roxas). Their relationship is cold, hostile, and interlaced with the knowledge of Saïx obvious emotional abuse of Xion. No reason for Roxas to trust, or even like, Saïx.

Take everything above about Saïx and double it for Xion. The profesional and cold demeanor of Saïx is stripped away to reveal an openly hostile, cruel personality. Saïx insults and degrades Xion (”You were a mistake we never should have made”.) Xion refers to him with fear and wariness, often fearing his retribution for failures. He misgenders her and disregards her personhood. He does this out of a self-stated jealousy. He sees Axel growing close to the kids and then lashes out at the easy targets. Saïx outright abuses Xion, and the threat of harm is as effective as the actual action of doing harm. Saïx wanted Xion dead, and as best as I can tell, she knew it. I have no reason to believe that his opinion of her would change from 358 to KH3. It does not make sense that Saïx after KH2 would attempt to ‘save’ Xion. He doesn’t remember her and he wouldn’t remember her all the way until the Keyblade Graveyard. Vexen’s notes would not include Xion’s personality or any of her relationships, she was, at best, two weeks old when he left for Castle Oblivion. Saïx is not shown interacting with Xion in any manner in KH3. In fact, the ‘Xion’ introduced in the Keyblade Graveyard is not Xion. Xion is in Sora’s heart. So, not only is their relationship confusing in KH3, it’s also not meaningful. Vexen mentioned Saïx wished to ‘atone’ but we never hear Saïx true intentions from the horse’s mouth. Or, if he just did it to make nice with Lea. He still refers to the kids as ‘Lea’s friends.’There is no established development between Xion and Saïx proper. Xion would have no reason to believe that Isa no longer wants to kill her, and Isa would have no reason to no longer want to kill Xion.

Despite all of this, Nomura wants us to believe that all of these characters are reconciled. The text offers little to believe that this is the case. There is not a single scene where any of Isa and Lea’s past behavior is addressed, or an apology made. Nomura’s reading of his own text fails to recognize the abuse and trauma that he wrote Xion and Roxas’ experiencing. He has a fundamental lack of understanding of the consequences and psychology of his own characters. Furthermore, he believes that the friendship they built in the Organization stands on its own. Even though Axel: gaslit, assaulted, kidnapped, and manipulated both. For example, Nomura reads his threat to Xion (”No matter what, I’ll always bring you back.” = ”I will always return your to your abusers, regardless of your wishes, even if I have to assault you to do so.”) as a promise and declaration of friendship. Why else would Xion tell Roxas that Axel kidnapping her is a good thing? Nomura believes that the Organization -- even though we’re talking about the group of people who abused, enslaved, and murdered them-- is good for Xion and Roxas. Why else would the ‘symbol of their friendship’ be the Recusant Symbol in Re: Mind? Thus, their friendship with Axel is good for them. Why else is it romanticized in KH3? Therefore, there is no reason to confront or discuss previous acts of abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, or assault.

The story of 358/2 Days is not a story of two children shaking free of the shackles of their abusers and oppressors as they grow into their own, independent, unique personalities. It is a story of two children who are abused and manipulated by the adults in their lives. Who are then murdered and discarded as soon as they hold no use for the plot. Xion’s entire character is written with the intention to motivate Roxas to leave the Organization. That is why 358/2 Days was created as a game. That is why her character was introduced. The systematic stripping of her autonomy and personhood is present in the text itself, and the meta-text. She is fridged, and then that death is milked for man pain of Roxas and Axel. Nomura’s own sexism created and destroyed her character. So, much to the point that when fan consensus demanded she be brought back: he gave her no lines and no personality. He couldn’t even muster the spine to give her an original moveset for her Re:Mind data fight-- she’s just a copy of Roxas. That’s all she is to him and that is all she will ever be to him.

And the fandom seems, for the most part, to be in concurrence with Nomura. We have asked Xion and Roxas to be in a healthy relationship with the two adults who have overtly abused them. The problem is not the writing of the Sea Salt Family. That trope, on its own, is fine. The true problem is the fandom’s failure to address the abuse in the Kingdom Hearts story.

Saïx actions, as poignant as they may or may not be in the rescue of Xion and Roxas, do not absolve him. Saïx used his position of authority and power over them to cause them tangible harm. Emotional abuse hurts as much as physical abuse and the effects are long lasting. Especially, when we know that Xion and Roxas were completely subject to Saïx. As far as Xion was aware, if she disobeyed or failed him-- her life was forfeit. What Saïx did in KH3 was take the first step of reconciliation. He fixed his most obvious mistake which included being complicit in the murder of children. Good for him. Now, he has to make tangible changes in his behavior. He must make apologies that shows he understands what and how he was wrong. This apology should be voluntary and not forced by Lea, or whittled out of him by the kids. He must take responsibility for his actions and preform further restitution. He can’t shove blame on the kids, he can’t say ‘Xemnas made me do it.’ No, Saïx caused them harm, and he has to be responsible. Anything less is in an incomplete, false apology that does not match the severity of his actions. And even if he executes a perfect apology, guess what?

Xion and Roxas do not have to feel grateful to Saïx. They do not have to forgive him. They do not owe him anything. He was their abuser. If they do not feel ready to forgive, they don’t have to. Furthermore, forgiveness and healing is a process. One and done will not realistically fix the level of trauma that these children have experienced. I have seen the expressed attitude that of course Xion and Roxas would forgive Isa. They’re good kids! To which I ask, would bad kids not forgive their abuser? Xion and Roxas would still be good kids, even if they don’t forgive the man who abused them. That’s not how this works. They are the victims here, they have been done harm, and they deserve the space to heal. If they do not want Isa in that space, then that is their right. Maybe, Roxas and Xion decide to forgive Isa, maybe it takes time, maybe they never do. It depends on how they work through their pain and trauma. Of course, repeat all this with Lea. Because as much as the fandom likes to give him a free pass for his ‘good intentions.’ Those ‘good intentions’ still hurt Roxas and Xion. You could say his actions are justified given his circumstances. That does not change their impact. Xion and Roxas know --based on Axel’s own behavior-- that he will throw them under the bus if it’s convenient. They have not met Lea. They do not know him. They have no reason to trust him. It is Lea who must do the work to fix that. Not Xion, not Roxas, it is Lea who has to prove himself trustworthy again.

It’s alright to draw Xion, Roxas, Isa, and Lea having ice cream together, or living a happy life. However, it is also necessary to address the problems. How does Xion feel living with Isa, who misgendered and emotionally abused her? Does Roxas feel at all threatened by Lea, knowing that he once attacked him? How did Lea and Isa work to address their mistakes, and reconcile with the kids? How are they addressing the real trauma that Xion and Roxas have experienced, especially the stuff at their own hands? Most depictions of ‘The Sea Salt Family’ skip past all the hard work and jump to the fun part. We’re shown Lea ‘forgiving’ Isa, when it is not Lea’s place to do so. We’re shown Lea bringing Isa, Roxas, and Xion, into his home, with little regard for how this may affect the kids. I feel as though in most depictions, Xion and Roxas are accessories to Isa and Lea’s romantic relationship. Another point of conflict or a source of fluff. This ignores the autonomy of Xion and Roxas, it ignores their struggles and character. Worse yet, it echoes Nomura’s own erasure of their trauma. Don’t write Lea and Isa adopting Xion and Roxas if you’re not prepared to talk about everything that comes with it.

Also consider that Xion and Roxas are extremely vulnerable. They have between them, total, two whole years of experience. They have never gone to school. They have never had friends outside of the Organization. (The Data Twilight Trio are not their actual ‘friends’ and Nomura makes no sense, I’ll die on that hill). I cannot state how easy it would be for Lea or Isa to continue a pattern of abuse with them. You say, Lea and Isa would never do that! To which I say, they have done that, and we have little canon proof that they wouldn’t do that.

Are you catching my problem here?

Do you see why having Roxas and Xion get a happily ever after with their two abusers is not a good idea? Because Nomura did not write a true redemption arc for either Isa or Lea, we do not see any fundamental changes in their character. Axel has been showing willing to commit cold blooded murder. Can you show me how he is now prepared to take care of two extremely vulnerable, traumatized, and abused children? Maybe, in your own writing you don’t think Lea is prepared to take care fo the kids. Okay, that’s fine, there’s some nuance-- but do you still write him taking care of them? Why do you think that is the best situation for Xion and Roxas? Because they have nowhere else to go. How is that acceptable? Knowing that the two children who have been abused have so few resources available to them that they have no choice but to stay with their abusers? Maybe, as a fandom, we need to stop caring so much about Isa and Lea’s feelings, and start caring about their victims.

I don’t want my reader to leave this essay and think, ‘I can’t write Sea Salt Family.’

You can write Sea Salt Family, but you have to order some nuance.

Think about the best Redemption Arc in living memory: Zuko. Zuko was shown kidnapping and attacking Katara in Season 1. Yet, I am perfectly fine with Zutara as a ship, why?

1. Katara is shown capable of standing-up to Zuko, defending herself, and challenging him. In Siege of the North Part 1, she is shown equal to, if not superior to, him in skill and power. Katara can kick Zuko’s ass and he knows it. By the end of Season 1, there is no longer a power imbalance between them. Abuse requires a power imbalance and Katara and Zuko are shown standing on equal footing.

2. Zuko and Katara then have a change in their relationship. Zuko has his change of heart in Ba Sing Se. In the crystal catacombs he shows empathy to Katara that she responds to. He even takes this point to issue his first apology. However, he betrays this budding trust by following Azula in attacking Aang.

3. Zuko reconciles with Katara and builds a friendship with her. This includes Zuko apologizing for his past actions. But also doing what he can to fix his mistakes. He works to understand and listen to her anger and pain. He helps her find the man who killed her mother, on her request. He allows her to take the space and time she needed to address her trauma. Not just what he did to her, but what the fire nation did to her. He shows a clear change of behavior and remorse for his past actions. Katara and Zuko, by the end of the series are friends who trust each other. I can believe it because of the intentional work and time the show put into the relationship.

Now look at the above. You tell me where Isa and Lea did all that in canon? Think about point 1, Katara and Zuko are pretty much the same age, as two years of difference between adolescents is not a significant age gap. Xion and Roxas, are literal toddlers, and Lea and Isa are in their late-twenties. There is a natural power imbalance between these characters caused by age and experience. Which means it’s even more on Lea and Isa to take responsibility. Furthermore, what about point 1 or 2? Xion barely has any lines in KH 3. We do not hear her story, we do not hear her experience, and we do not hear her accepting the apology Lea did not make. Canon is flawed in its execution of the Sea Salt Family. Fandom has a real chance to step-in where Nomura failed and succeeded. Yet, over a year since KH3′s release, I have seen few attempts to do so.

Abuse in relationships can be addressed. Abusers can take responsibility, apologize, and make amends for their actions. I do believe that Xion and Roxas can forgive Lea and Isa, if and only if, Lea and Isa earn that forgiveness. I believe that in theory the Sea Salt Family could be a wonderful example of found family, forgiveness, love, and healing in media. However, in practice, most examples of it fall short. The challenge there-in, is to write and portray the nuance, complexity, and triumph of a real relationship. Not a superfluous, weak, or shallow one, that looks pretty and is heartwarming, but instead a deep story, that is deserving of the characters it attempts to represents.

#✰*✦ This is the idiot speaking ⎧OOC⎫#✰*✦More than a mannequin on the strings⎧Headcanon⎫#salt tw #abuse tw #violence tw #xion #lea #isa #roxas #yeah i'll tag character names i'm not a coward

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moos-cow · 4 years ago

Text

Gemini

Chapter 1b

No sooner, a hand wrapped around her wrist and yanked her back. “Run!”

A tall figure in a green silk top hat had crept behind her. He pulled her through the nearby door, and down flights of stairs. They ran, only to emerge to what seemed like an empty town hall of some kind.

“Wait-” She stopped to ask, but alas, his sharp tongue cut her off.

“Shut up and run, idiot. Questions later.” He grunted as he pushed the heavy doors open, leading her out to the moonlit streets. A familiar face waited by a carriage nearby.

“Quickly, Hatter. We need to get her out of here.” The white-haired man motioned her to get inside the carriage. As soon as she got in, he followed. The Hatter jumped up to the driver’s box upfront, taking them away in a rumble.

Long after, the rapid clopping of the horses fell to a steady easy tempo.

“Sir, I believe this is yours.” She finally broke the silence and extended out a hand, revealing the golden pocket watch. “You must’ve dropped it when you ran into me.”

“It is!” His eyes widened at the antique, carefully taking it with two hands. “I owe you my deepest gratitude, miss. This watch means the world to me.”

“My, I completely forgot to introduce myself! Blanc Lapin, my friends call me the White Rabbit.” he smiled and held out a hand- one of which she took to shake.

“Amaya. Amaya Chan.”

After briefly introducing herself, Amaya partially drew some of the curtains of the coach, curiously inspecting the outdoors. Street lights illuminated the empty cobblestone-layered streets with a soft pale blue glow.

“If I may, Blanc. But, where exactly are we? And what is going on?”

“Are you familiar with the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?”

“The children’s novel? Very much. Yes. What about it?”

“Well, you see, you’re in Wonderland, Amaya. The Land of Magic. Cradle, to be exact.”

She stared at him in disbelief, looking for any hint of humour. You must be kidding me. Instead, he just reached up to fix his glasses.

She tried to recall the events and details from earlier. The pocket watch. The hole. Hatter. White Rabbit. Magic. Alice. Although they might've made sense on their own, there are still too many loopholes to be able to conclude that what Blanc’s statement was indeed true.

"No, no, no. This must be some kind of themed park in London, right? Because look-- it doesn't make sense. If it were just like in the book-" Blanc pressed a finger on her lips, instantly shutting the lady up.

"Amaya, truth, and history both have curious ways of being distorted in the telling. Of course, here, there aren't any talking animals, ghastly beasts, or armies of cards." he chuckled at the mere idea.

“Still, it's impossible.”

Blanc drew the curtains on the other side of the coach, giving her a full view of a fountain with a giant sapphire crystal floating above it, glistening in the moonlight.

“As impossible as it may seem, this world exists parallel to yours. But unlike yours, our way of life isn’t governed by the laws of nature and science-- rather, by the laws of magic, usually powered by Magic Crystals.”

Much to her dismay, the idea of Jonah’s cuffs popped in her mind. She rubbed her wrists as she recalled the numbing feeling brought by being bound. And that light, that warm light that came out of her hand, it felt all too real to be called fake.

“So the cuffs from earlier, the ones from that guy, Jonah. I assume they were powered by some magic?”

“Indeed. They were lined with crystals, meant to be unbreakable, that is until you came along.”

She shook her head, “I’m not following.”

“Nobody in this land can nullify magic that has been cast. Only people from your world, the Land of Reason, can.” He began to chuckle lightly. “Some time ago, a young girl with the same power as you lost her way here.”

“Alice.”

“Indeed. Little Alice was quite the mischief-maker, running around the streets of Cradle, breaking magic spells left and right.” He smiled from ear to ear, reminiscing the past in amusement.

“Cradle-” She asks inquisitively. “You mentioned that we’re in Cradle.”

“Yes.” Blanc pulled out a map from his bag, opening it before her.

“Cradle is a military state ruled by two armies, the Red and the Black. The West is ruled by the Red, while the East is ruled by the Black. We’re currently here, the Central Quarter, an area sandwiched between the Red and Black territory. This area also functions as the country’s political and economic hub.”

“The place where you were caught is called the Garden. That is where Cradle’s most powerful figures gather for debates and trials.” he continued as he pointed to the center of the map. “Only the Chosen Thirteen of both armies, and myself-- the official record keeper-- are allowed to enter.”

“Well, that explains a lot.” She threw her head back, realizing that she had just trespassed into one of the most highly secured areas of this land.

“Edgar Bright-- he addressed himself as the Jack of Hearts. What does that mean?”

“Ah yes, the Chosen Thirteen are ranked from King, Queen, all the way down to the Ace. Edgar, being the Jack of Hearts, is third in command in the Red Army.”

“I see. Much like a deck of cards.”

“Right again. Although the Ace is technically the lowest in rank, they’re often in charge of unusual assignments, placing them in a league of their own.”

The carriage fell quiet as she sat back to process the information at hand. She took a glance at the white rabbit, only to see his uneasiness unfolding before her.

“Blanc. Is everything alright?”

He let out an exasperated sigh and began to explain, “As you may have noticed, Amaya, I was running late for tonight’s council meeting since I had some business to attend to in your world. It was during my brief absence that the two armies decided to declare war.”

Once again, the tension rose and the coach fell silent.

Wow. So, to my worst of luck, I fell right in the meeting of two armies that have just declared war.

“Oh. I'm sorry to hear that, Blanc... But, how do I get home then?” She carefully says through her stoic expression.

“There’s a hole in the Garden that connects the two worlds. All you have to do is to bring something from the Land of Reason with you and jump into that hole.” His voice softened, almost pitiful, as he looked at the moon.

“But?” She interjected, cutting him from his gaze.

“It only opens for just a few hours at the night of the full moon...”

"I see-" She closed her eyes, and with a deep sigh, she resigned herself to the idea of being stuck in another world for a month.

A few moments later, the carriage came to an abrupt stop and loud poundings on the carriage door rambled them.

“Open the door, Blanc. We’re looking for the girl.”

“Looks like the Red Army is here to give us an official greeting.” Blanc frowned

“Get out of the carriage, Blanc. I’m not in the mood to pull you guys out myself.”

Blanc took her hand in his and led her out of the carriage with him.

True enough, two men clad in different red and white uniforms stood before them, and another two marched their way behind her, immediately locking her hands against her back.

"Let me go!" She squirmed. In an attempt to break free, she managed to kick one straight in the knee. He grunted in pain, but their grip never faltered. Alas, it only got tighter.

“Sorry, Blanc. Beauty and the Beast sent us to get her.” the red-haired soldier before them spoke.

“Kyle, Zero, isn’t it unbecoming for two gentlemen such as yourselves to intimidate and frighten a young woman like this?” Blanc, being the gentleman that he is, beamed at them a smile.

“Then allow me to apologize if we’ve frightened you, Alice.” The black-haired soldier spoke. He waved his hand to the other soldiers to signal her release.

“I am the Ace of Hearts, Zero. Our Queen, Jonah, wishes to meet you.”

"Seven of Hearts, Kyle.”

“Look,” Zero looked at her straight in the eyes, “We’re here on official orders. Jonah absolutely needs to speak with you. He’s promised not to be as rough as he was back at the Garden.”

She turned to Blanc in hesitation.

“If you don’t have any reservations, it might be best if you go along with them, Amaya.” he rested a hand on his chest, “As Official Record Keeper of Cradle, I mustn't get in the middle of political affairs. Though, personally, I trust Kyle and Zero. But still, the decision is yours.”

“Promise to let me go after speaking with your Queen,” She demanded from the two officers.

“I promise.” Zero nodded.

It wasn't like she was in a spot with the luxury to refuse anyway. In a land she knew little to nothing of, agreeing to them would be the most logical and practical thing to do.

"Fine. I'll go." She nodded "Wait. Let me get my stuff."

She turned around and retrieved her bag from the carriage. But as she approached, she noticed the two soldiers sizing her up from behind. She can take them down if she had wanted to, but logic overtook the situation at hand.

She turned around and glared at them as they towered before her, "Touch me again and you'll get more than an injured knee, boy."

Their eyes widened at the little lady’s threat as they parted, and she-- she made her way to mount Zero's horse.

“Hold on tight now, Amaya.”

With that note, they rode fast through town, crossed a large bridge, and galloped through villages and villas that looked like Red territory. Soon, they arrived at an enormous white, red, and gold manor.

“We’re here.” Zero pulled on the reins to halt, dismounting himself and Amaya from the gentle animal “Welcome to the Red Army Headquarters, Amaya.”

“Wait here while I go get Jonah.” Zero left with not a single word more.

“Yeah. You go do that. I’m going to grab a nightcap.” Kyle yawned and stretched from behind.

“Hey you, keep an eye on her.” He ordered the soldier nearby before helping the limping soldier to the infirmary.

Minutes stretched to what seemed like hours. She reached for her phone in her bag, 3:23 am. No signal. The soldier still stood behind her in attention.

“This saucy Queen surely doesn’t give a damn about the time,” Amaya mumbled to herself as she kept the phone again. Tired, cold, and hungry, irritation was slowly creeping up on her.

“Was that a complaint against Queen Jonah?!” the gate guard shouted, furious.

“Oh please, I mustn’t have been the first one.” She rolled her eyes and replied sarcastically, “besides, that wasn’t even close to a decent complaint. Do you want to hear a better one?”

“Shut up you impudent fool! How dare you insult our Queen of Hearts!” The guard loomed over her from behind, cracking his knuckles in the process.

Finally, some fun.

Just as he raised a hand to hit her, 2 voices called out from the gates.

“Hey, you! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!”

“Get away from her!”

Two soldiers clad in black and navy blue came running, knocking the gate guard out and away from her. Unfortunately, a then roaming guard caught the action, turned around, and frantically sprinted back to the barracks.

“The Black Army has come to attack! Sound the alarm! Form Ranks!” moments later, bells started to ring from all around, and red army soldiers slowly began emerging from around the barracks.

“So much for sneaking in, Seth.” the purple-haired soldier gave out a resigned sigh, tugging on the scarf around his neck.

“Well, at least we saved sweet Alice here from that smelly old guard now. Didn’t we, Luka?”

“Guys, I think it's time to run.” She tugged on their sleeves, watching the red army soldiers approach them with complete spunk.

With the two officers by her sides, they raced towards the gates. As she scanned the area ahead for incoming guards, an odd glimmer caught her eyes. Atop the gated entrance was a man loading a rifle, grinning from ear to ear.

What in the world?

BANG BANG. BANG BANG.

The red soldiers dispersed as a shower of bullets came raining down on them, and a thick cloud of white smoke provided cover.

“Fenrir!” Seth and Luka called out.

“Did you think I’d let you two have all the fun?” Fenrir jumped off from the top of the gates as soon as they passed. “Get out of here!”

Amaya and the two soldiers continued to run farther from the gates. The air behind them was filled with the thunderous sounds of fighting, gunfire, and Fenrir’s insane laughter. Soon, the voices of the red army soldiers faded as they turned to a corner.

“Fenrir, that’s enough!” Luka shouted from where they stood to catch their breaths.

Fenrir caught up, holstered his pistols, and appeared completely unfazed. She looked behind him to inspect the chaos, every last Red soldier was down on the ground.

“Did you kill them?” she managed to ask through heavy breaths. Endurance really wasn't her best suit.

“Literally? Nah. I would never.” Fenrir chuckled, patting his holstered pistols. “The bullets were made from Magic Crystals. So one hit from these, and off to dreamland they go.”

“Right, right. Crystals.” She shook her head, quickly reminding herself of the magical situation she was currently caught up in.

Not long after, the faint pounding of boots can be heard from behind. Another wave of Red soldiers was coming straight towards them.

“You just had to go and showboat your way through the Red Army, didn’t you?” Seth blatantly scolded Fenrir.

“Oh, c'mon! Ya ought to be thanking me for saving your butts back there.” Fenrir snapped back.

God. They’re just like kids.

“Shut up and run-- now,” Luka demanded.

He led them running through back alleys and side streets within the Red Territory. The trio’s bickering continued even until they scrambled into the carriage.

The adrenaline rush from this evening’s events immediately faded as she slumped down into the seat. She was feeling lightheaded and was unusually exhausted beyond belief. This was more draining than any other assignment before.

She quietly studied them. Albeit clad in differently designed uniforms, they all had a similar navy blue and silver band on each of them, embroidered with a certain crest. “Excuse me, are you Black Army officers?”

“Oh my, aren’t you sharp!” Seth clapped his hands in exclamation.

“I’m Seth Hyde, 10 of Spades!”

“Luka Clemence. Jack.”

“Fenrir Godspeed, Ace of Spades. It's nice to meet you, Alice.”

“Amaya-- it’s Amaya, not Alice. Sorry.” She said, not wanting to be called another name. “Uh, thank you for that.”

“Don't you worry about that, sweetie. It's all in a day’s work.” Seth gently placed his hand on hers as they took off into the night. Over time, the sky started to burn a bright crimson in the far east.

#ikemen revolution fanfiction #ikemen fanfiction #ikemen kakumei #ikemen revolution #ikemen series #ikemen original character #gemini

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phcking-detective · 5 years ago

Text

Find Familiar, ch 1/2

Nines casts the spell and feels the magic pull from their soul. They need this to work. They don’t know what else to do.

They hear nothing, but perhaps the animal is simply quiet. The summon circle contains a perch and a large bathtub, painstakingly levitated all the way to the highest floor of their tower. Even a small area filled with sand. Just in case.

A wizard never knows what form their familiar will take until they summon it.

Nines doesn’t dare open their eyes. They need this to work. They are the most brilliant wizard of their generation and likely several before and after as well, but their brilliance is purely academic. All magic comes with a price, of course. That is why they’re ... like this.

Why bright lights give them migraines, and they cannot stand to be touched, and can only wear certain fabrics, eat certain foods, sleep under EXACT conditions. Why they can understand ancient languages and cursed tomes better than they ever could read a face.

It is their Price, and they need--

Nines opens their eyes and stares resolutely at the empty summoning circle. The spell had worked. They felt it take their energy and a piece of their soul. It had cast.

But out of all the beings on this plane and sixteen others, none had answered.

Very well. They don’t need help. They never have.

A first child for inheritance, a second for insurance. A third for luck, a fourth for the middle. Fifth for work, sixth for status. Seventh to fulfill a prophecy.

And an eighth child to be tithed. Two parents, presumably, and the eighth made exactly ten, one-tenth of the family and all they owned given to the church so that they gods would look favorably upon them.

There was no point in a child after that. No prophecies or tithing, and certainly no inheritance left over after carving it up for seven others first. No one ever needed a ninth child.

And Nines has never needed anyone else.

***

Three days and nights after casting the spell, Nines has eaten few enough meals to count on one hand. The sand has not been swept from the floor, and they have not managed to drag themself from their studies long enough to utilize the bathtub for its actual purpose.

But they’re fine.

It’s fine.

They are the greatest wizard of his generation, and they will ... survive. Perhaps not live, not as others do, not in happiness. But they are not dead yet and he has no less than twenty-two contingency spells if death does dare

KNOCK

Nines looks up from their manuscript for the first time in so many hours, they don’t know if the sun is setting or rising. The crystal ball embedded above the door glows green. Someone just solved their first riddle.

Well. Surely the second will

DOOR

Nines stands, then almost collapses from the black spots overtaking their vision. That was too fast. No one should have been able to solve the second riddle that quickly.

MAT

Nines draws their wand and faces the door as the third and final crystal ball lights green.

Knock knock knock.

“Hey. Hey! Hey, asshole!”

... what? They must be dreaming. Yes, an unexpected social visit from a villager capable of bypassing all his wards is surely the stuff of nightmares.

“Either let me in or shut the fuck up!”

The indignity of being accused of speaking when Nines hates speaking, particularly to “people,” infuriates them enough that they forget their wand entirely and throws open the door to berate the--

The much smaller man glaring up at them.

Not small enough to be a dwarf, although he certainly has that ... stockiness. Perhaps a mixture of human and dwarf, but. Even half-dwarves have beards, while this man just has some rather scruffy stubble and a scar across the bridge of his nose.

“You don’t smell right,” the man informs them.

He shoulder-checks past Nines before they can respond. It’s only due to their momentary bout of dizziness that they don’t smite him immediately for that. Or when he circles around the large living area, sniffing at things like a dog.

“Should’ve expected it to be bigger in here than out there,” he says to himself. “Still kind of small though.”

“I do not receive visitors,” Nines replies as coldly as they can manage.

They have accidentally frozen people before, simply with the freezing burn of their anger, yet their magic lays calm and docile inside their chest.

“Good, I fucking hate people,” the man says.

Nines makes some sort of very undignified noise in the back of their throat at that. The man continues wandering about their space, finally sticking his entire head inside their cauldron.

They’re hallucinating. That last alchemical potion must have--

“Don’t you have any cooking pots?” he asks.

Nines doesn’t answer so they don’t have to admit the answer is no. They will not be judged by some--some vagabond, a dirty ugly little man who is--IS BAREFOOT?

“You don’t have shoes,” Nines says, as if that is the important part about a strange man breaking into their home.

“I wiped my feet, fuck off.”

Nines looks back toward the door. All three crystals glow a fading green as the wards slowly reset themselves.

They did not originally mean to bar all the villagers from visiting them forever. They simply wanted any guests to have basic manners. Knock on the door at the first floor before entering, close it behind them so leaves didn’t blow into the stairwell, and wipe their feet on the mat at the top.

Clearly, Nines had expected far too much of the general public.

Nines turns back to see the man filling their alchemy cauldron with water. Although they sterilize it thoroughly after each use in order to prevent cross-contamination among potions, they scrounge up enough hope past the exhaustion to ponder if maybe they had forgotten to do so in the haze of the last several days.

Unfortunately, the man’s flesh does not melt from his skin as he scrubs it out with a rag.

“What are you doing?” Nines asks.

“I’m hungry and you don’t have anything else to cook in,” the man says. “At least we’ll have leftov--”

“Get out of my tower!”

The man looks up and scowls at them. “You’re the one who kept fucking calling me, bitch. Make up your damn mind.”

The realization leaves them light-headed.

“I ... I didn’t ...”

The black spots creep back again, except now they can no longer accurately be called “spots.” They take up far too much of Nines’s vision for that, then consume it entirely.

Something warm and solid catches Nines before they fall. Their hands grab at whatever they can reach out of an instinctive need to hold onto something--fabric, skin, fur. Fur? Not quite. Hair, maybe. Very thick hair. Dwarf beard? No, only stubble. But very thick hair somewhere, somewhere, oh in the middle. His ... chest?

“Ow, quit pulling on that.”

“Furry,” Nines says, because they are very intelligent and also the greatest wizard of their generation.

“Yeah, moon’s close to full. Damn, you’re a gangly bitch, aren’t you? Where’s your fucking body fat, you need to eat more.”

Nines mumbles his very clever retort into his pillows. Oh, his pillows. They’re in bed. That’s nice. Their bed is soft and warm and good.

The other Warm Good thing wrapped around them lets go.

“Nooo.”

Nines pulls it back. Furrier now. They’d secretly wished for a dog. Obviously, a feline familiar would have been more practical, and certainly more in line with their introverted tendencies. Dogs need too much attention, and walks, and they drool and shed. Cats only do one of those things, and if they summoned a black one, the hair would just blend into their robes anyway.

But still. Some part of them had hoped ...

“All right, fine. Fucking bossy. Scoot over, bitch.”

The Warm Good thing piles into the bed with Nines, but there is still entirely too much skin. Nines does not go to bed with people. Certainly not with skin showing. They want--they need--

They want a dog.

They need a person.

Of course. A fully animal familiar could only do so much for them without thumbs, and monkeys are horrendous. Only a real person would be smart enough to take care of them the way they need it.

But a person-familiar ... unheard of. Impossible. No one had ever summoned a human before, and it would be grossly unethical regardless.

Nines crows with the proof that they really are the greatest wizard of their generation, and likely several before and after.

“OK, so you’re good with me being a werewolf, right? Because if you start crying about a monster and get a bunch of pitchforks up in here, I’m pissing on all your robes.”

A werewolf. Half man, half wolf. Brilliant!

“So. What’s your name?”

“Nines.”

“Fuck, humans are still doing that? Your litters are bigger than ours, goddamn. And popping them out one at a time like that?”

The werewolf shudders. Nines pets over them, much more fur than skin now.

“Was two of us,” they say, all filter gone with how tired they are. “Twins instead of just the last eighth. Connor, Connor was ... just ... a second quicker.”

“What, so they threw you away?” he asks, the question nearly a growl.

“Tech,,nicaaally,” Nines slurs. “They did him too. Gave him. Away. Just, pretended to love him first. It’s, s’crueler. I think. At least I, ahhhhh. I always knew.”

“Phckin’ hue-mens,” the werewolf growls.

“Mmhmm.”

“Miiine.”

That is the last word he can growl out before the transformation completes. Then Nines receives the dog they wanted. Like this, it is far easier to feel their familiar’s mind at the edge of their own, to recognize the bond for what it is.

Good boy, [name].

It’s Gavin, dickhead.

Adequate boy, Gavin.

The wolf huffs. Go to sleep. I’ll feed you soup in the morning and maybe you won’t be so hangry.

I only want potatoes and carrots. NO celery.

Go the fuck to SLEEP.

Nines does so.

The wolf licks their face only after he’s absolutely certain they’re unconscious. The dumb human just smells dehydrated.

He didn’t want to come at first. Didn’t understand what the ache in his head was in the first place, or why he kept feeling hungry no matter how much he ate or that he had to pee for four hours straight.

Just that he needed to go, go this way, this way, this way!

Fucking asshole wizard summoning him like he’s their goddamn dog.

(But it’s not like he has a pack of his own. Not like he has anything better to do. No one to protect or feed or cuddle.)

(And this human obviously needs his help.)

He’ll only stay for the moon, just so he has a safe place to sleep it off away from angry villagers convinced he’ll “deflower” their women--who already smell of sex by the way--even though he really prefers men.

And this one wizard, apparently.

Gavin licks Nines again. The human already smells way better with his scent on them, and this is the most luxurious bed he’s ever curled up in.

He can spend the night. Make some breakfast. He’s hungry, right? Wouldn’t make sense to leave a good meal behind.

Yeah, he’s just staying for the food.

***

One of my lovely followers recently commissioned a second chapter! It’s rated E for Explicit (sex scenes). Subscribers to my Patreon get early access to all my commissioned fics 2 weeks earlier than they’re posted to AO3 or tumblr ^^

#reed900 #gavin reed #dbh #dbh fanfic #reed900 fanfic #my writing

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fanfoolishness · 5 years ago

Text

a world for the birds (3/10)

Andy DeMayo took up birding years ago, but his favorite hobby takes on new meaning when shared with his nephew Steven.

A series of looks at Andy and Steven’s growing family relationship.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

***

Chapter 3: hard work

It was a few months before Andy found his way back to Beach City again. He couldn’t say why. Sometimes, it felt good to be back in Delmarva. Other times, it felt like a pair of boots he’d outgrown, a place where ghosts and memories didn’t exactly fit with Gems strolling the countryside and alien buildings rising up above the landscape.

He’d never liked change. It galled him, the older it got, knowing how much it bothered him. How hard it was for him. Like there was something inside him digging his heels in, resisting anything different as hard as it could. It’d always been like that.

But then people like Greg, they could wander off and change their name, their life, everything. Steven was living proof of that. He missed them, and Aunt Deb and her partner, and the other cousins, scattered to the winds, but sometimes, it was still easier to be on his own.

So he spent a few months flying around the Southern Hemisphere, places he’d visited before, places he’d never heard of. He took odd delivery jobs for food and lodging, traded for field guides of local birds, sent the occasional text message to family in the rare occasions he got service. He sent Steven a blurry picture of a marvellous spatuletail (a lifer!), a Peruvian thick-knee, a tiny dot that he swore was a waved albatross. He was gratified when Steven sent him a few amateur photos of northern cardinals and a nice one of a blue grosbeak.

And then there weren’t any messages for a few weeks, and Andy got worried.

***

There was a lot more change than he’d expected.

Gems and humans roamed the boardwalk of Beach City, performing construction on storefronts that looked like they’d been through a hurricane. The grass on the lighthouse hill was patchy and bare in many places like it had been burned. And all along the beach were rocks and patches of sand with filmy pink residue on them, caution tape strung up around them, and Gems working feverishly to clean the areas.

Andy had to argue with one particular Gem before they’d let him pass to the beach house, a towering black and white person with a face that reminded him of the sun. “Sorry, it’s not safe for humans,” she said. “It’s snow joke, it’s seriously toxic.” She winked.

“Uh, right,” he said. “But look, Steven’s my nephew and he lives just around the bend. I’m just in town to visit. What the heck happened here?”

“Uncle Andy!” Steven called, hurrying up to him across the sand, carefully avoiding the roped off pink-stained areas. “Oh, man, I’m so sorry you had to see this. We’re working as hard as we can to clean it up.” He closed the distance and catapulted himself into a hug with Andy.

Andy patted him on the head. Had he grown a little more? He looked different, a black t-shirt today instead of a blue one, shadows under his eyes. “You okay, kid?”

“Thanks, Snowflake,” said Steven. “I’ll keep him safe.”

“You got it,” said Snowflake, leaving them alone. Andy watched the massive Gem walk off, shaking his head. Maybe this was one of the former monster Gems Steven had been talking about. She certainly looked less like a normal hippie than the rest of Steven’s family.

“So what happened? I stopped hearing from you and your dad for a while --”

Steven rubbed the back of his neck, sighing. “Ugh. Everything’s been a mess. Basically it turns out that not everyone agreed the Gem war was over. A Gem my mom hurt came to Earth to try to destroy it. We stopped her, mostly, but she still did a lot of damage.”

“Looks like you and your people are fixing it, though. That’s good, right?” Andy asked uncertainly. He listened for the sound of gulls and terns on the air, but all he heard was the breeze and the waves. He let out a long sigh.

Steven yawned. He really did look exhausted, his hair mussed, his clothes rumpled. “The Gems are taking care of the areas where there’s still detectable bio-poison, but I can’t help with that part. It hurts me, too. But once an area’s clean --” He spotted a patch of bare soil beside them. He licked his hand, then knelt and pressed it to the dirt.

“Uh, Steven --”

The bare soil sprouted over with green and olive moss, shimmering in the sunlight as it grew before his eyes. “Once it’s clean, that’s where I come in,” said Steven, sounding both proud and tired. He straightened up, stretching as he did so. “I’m the only one with healing powers, so, you know, it’s a lot of work. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner,” he said.

Andy crossed his arms, staring at the long stretch of beach, the patchy hillside. “You gotta do all this?”

“Yeah,” said Steven blankly.

“But it wasn’t even your fault.”

“So?”

Andy tried to figure out the words. You’re just a kid probably wouldn’t go over well. He tried a variation. “Don’t you got your own stuff to do? You shouldn’t have to do all this work. Not at your age.”

“But I’m the only one who can fix it,” said Steven, a stubborn note creeping into his voice.

“How many hours a day are you doin’ this? Healing the earth?” Andy asked, trying to sound casual.

“Pretty much as soon as I get up until it gets dark,” said Steven. “There’s so much to do. All the Gems are helping with reconstruction and removing the poison, and I have to do my part, too.”

“Didn’t you say once Gems don’t even sleep?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” asked Steven defensively. “Look, I said I would protect the Earth, and it almost got destroyed on my watch. This is my duty as a Crystal Gem!” He was flushed, his cheeks pink, one hand splayed over the star on his chest.

Andy opened his mouth, then closed it again. Okay, sure, he had to believe him if the kid said he was the only one with this kind of magic, however it all worked. But still. It bugged him how much the kid looked like Greg right now.

Greg, who got more and more quiet during summers at the barn. Greg, who’d been grim and resentful that last summer, constantly fighting with his parents. Greg, who never came back.

There’d been a lot of reasons, he’d learned more recently, that Greg had left them all. This wasn’t exactly the same. But something about Steven’s pinched face and his narrowed eyes made him look so much like his dad, and Andy’s stomach clenched.

“Look, kid, I -- this is all over my head,” said Andy. “Just try to be careful. Okay? You seem worn out. Don’t forget you’re part of the Earth, too.”

Steven’s face relaxed, then creased in a smile. “I know, Uncle Andy. Thanks.” He sighed. “I still have to do a lot of work today. But my dad’s probably free if you want to hang.”

“I’ll go swing by and see if he wants to grab a bite,” said Andy. “Maybe you can join us for dessert or something, huh?”

Steven stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets. “Um, maybe. But the ice cream place has been closed down after… after all this happened.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Don’t worry about me, seriously,” said Steven. “Your next visit, everything’s gonna be back to normal. I promise.” He flashed him another grin, and headed back down the beach, his shoulders hunched.

***

Andy pushed his crab cake around on his plate, watching it crumble and flake. Good chunks of crab in there, only the barest minimum of bread needed to keep it shaped. It was decent stuff. Too bad he was hardly hungry. He took another drink of his beer, a crisp lager.

“So this crazy Gem almost blew up your town? And the Earth?” asked Andy.

Greg took a drink of his own pint, searching for words. “Well, to hear Steven tell it, she wasn’t crazy. Just in a lot of pain. He had a lot of compassion for her. It probably saved his life.”

“Well, hell,” said Andy. “Does this kind of thing happen often? I mean, he really could have died, it sounds like.”

Greg nodded, letting out a long breath. “I got hit with that poison myself. I think it actually killed my arm. Thank goodness for Steven’s healing powers; it’s good as new.” He flexed his fist. “Gem stuff’s dangerous. It always has been.”

“But how does Steven always get mixed up in it? I mean, you and me, we ain’t got any magic powers to protect him with, but what about his Gem family?” Andy asked. “You can’t tell me out of all them alien ladies that none of them can fight.”

Greg chuckled, taking a bite from his stuffed blue crab. “Oh, they can fight. But sometimes they’re just plain outmatched. Rose’s family, the Diamonds, they’re literally over fifty feet tall. Each.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“Promise I’m not. One of them picked me up like I was a toy in the palm of her hand, and kidnapped me to a human zoo in space,” said Greg, nonchalantly taking another drink. “Steven and the Gems had to rescue me. Good thing they did, too, since I accidentally started a riot because I wouldn’t say yes to an arranged marriage in the zoo.”

“Greg! What the hell!”

Greg shrugged. “I’ve seen a lot of weird shit, Andy.”

Andy laughed. “Shoot, Greg, that’s what I always liked about you. Always letting stuff roll right off your back. Does anything ever bother you?”

He knew the answer, though. Remembered Greg’s mom and dad, sweet like pie until he saw them chewing out Greg behind the barn, grinding him down with cruel calm words that weren’t even proper yelling. He’d seen how those words stuck to Greg, a corrosive poison all its own.

He remembered it, but didn’t mention it.

Greg answered him. “What can I say? It’s a gift. So what’s been going on with you?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Flyin’ around wherever the wind takes me. Spent some time in South America for a couple months. Chilly this time of year south of the Equator, but that’s okay. I like the winter weather. It’s quiet, except when it’s fierce as hell,” said Andy. “Sometimes I just need time to myself, you know?”

“I know,” said Greg. He smiled, taking another drink. “You were always like that as a kid. We’d be playing some loud crazy game and you’d be off by yourself, grumping about how loud our made-up songs were.”

“Did not,” protested Andy.

“Nah, you did.”

“Well, so what? Nothing wrong with alone time.”

“C’mon, like I can talk,” said Greg. “I’m the one who ran off and changed my name, aren’t I? Guess I really needed some alone time.” He leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. “I’m really glad we reconnected, Andy. I just wish I’d looked for you after Steven was born. I tried writing my folks, but…. They never wrote back. I kinda assumed the rest of the family didn’t want anything to do with us, either.”

“Your folks are stuck-up snobs, though,” said Andy, taking a bite of his crab cake, some of his appetite returning. “It always surprised me, how they had a kid like you. Not that you were a bad kid. Just different. My mom and dad never really got on with them, but they always made the effort because they thought maybe you and me could be friends.”

“Heh. Thanks, Andy. I used to wish sometimes I could’ve had your folks for parents instead. They were good people. At least they would have wanted to meet their grandson.” Greg finished his ale, gazing at the waves behind Andy.

“Your folks are missin’ out,” said Andy. “You got a good kid, Greg. Though I worry about him a little.”

“What do you mean?”

“I dunno. I mean, maybe it’s nothing,” said Andy hastily, not wanting to step on any toes. “Like I said, he’s a good kid. He puts up with me and my birds and all. I think he’s even birding on his own sometimes. How neat is that? But I saw him at the beach today and it seems like he’s runnin’ himself ragged.”

“I know,” said Greg, leaning his elbows on the table and resting his chin in his hands. “I’m so proud of him, Andy. Like I said, if it wasn’t for his compassion, I think the Earth would have been toast. He’s so kindhearted. But on the other hand, he works so hard. Harder than I’ve ever worked at anything, except maybe raising him. I know he didn’t have a normal childhood, and I didn’t want him to, but… I do wonder sometimes, how does he do it?”

“How does he?”

“I don’t know,” said Greg, and they fell into a silence, the waves soft and distant in the background.

#steven universe future #suf #andy demayo #uncle andy su #greg universe #steven universe #a world for the birds fic #fanfoolishness' steven universe fic

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pocketseizure · 4 years ago

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Disneybound

Case #0180602. Statement of Ted Nakamura, regarding a strange experience at the Haunted Mansion attraction in Disneyland, California. Statement recorded directly from subject on June 2, 2018.

Jonathan takes the statement of someone whose memories may not accurately reflect the events of his childhood. He then has a short conversation with Martin and learns something (perhaps not so) surprising about Elias.

The events of this story take place after Episode 103, "Cruelty Free" (the one in which Jon reads the statement of a farmer in New Zealand with a monster pig).

( This story is also on AO3. )

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jon cast a level gaze at the American sitting on the other side of the table. He was fit and clean-shaven, and he appeared to be in his early thirties. He wore a wide grin and a bright red shirt depicting Minnie Mouse posing in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Jon sighed and pressed the record button of his tape recorder.

“Statement of Theodore Nakamura – ”

“Call me Ted, please. Or Teddy, if you like. All my friends do.”

“Ted Nakamura, regarding a strange phenomenon he experienced at the Haunted Mansion attraction in Disney World – ”

“Sorry, but it’s ‘Disneyland.’ Disney World is the one in Florida.”

“In Disneyland, California. Statement recorded directly from subject on May 25, 2018.”

“This is exciting! I love the detail you’ve devoted to authenticity. The tape recorder is a nice touch.”

Jon grimaced. “Statement begins.”

A hint of uncertainty crept into Ted’s smile. “I’ve never done this before. Is there a protocol? Maybe some sort of standard introduction I should start with?”

“Just tell me about the incident you came to report. You can start whenever you’re ready.”

“All right, I’ll start at the beginning.”

Ted clapped his hands on his knees and took a deep breath. Jon watched as his eyes made a brief circuit around the densely packed shelves arranged in disorderly rows at the rear of the room before finally coming to rest on one of the objects jammed between the accordion folders and cardboard boxes. He’d witnessed this process often enough that he could pinpoint the object of the man’s attention – a cloudy snow globe with a tarnished metal base. It wasn’t connected to any of the cases on file in the archives, merely something Gertrude had brought back from one of her travels on a whim.

“I guess you could say that I’m not the sort of person who would be the star of a Disney movie,” Ted began. “I’m not an orphan, and I had a happy childhood. My mother was an architect who moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles during the construction boom of the 1980s, and my father went to business school at UCLA and never left. His family is from Seattle, and they made some money in real estate in the 1990s. We’re comfortably middle class, but I went to one of the big public schools in Orange County.”

He paused, seeming to expect some sort of reaction. When it became clear that no such reaction was forthcoming, he continued.

“Even in LA, where everyone tries to stand out, high school was all about belonging to a group. I didn’t have any interest in the grandstanding of my school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, and I didn’t have the looks or the talent for the student theater club, which is where a lot of kids like me spent a year or two on their way out of the closet. Mostly I kept my grades up and my head down as my circle of friends from middle school gradually went their separate ways.

“My mom worked from home, and she made sure our house had the first high-speed internet connection in my neighborhood. I don’t mind admitting that I spent a lot of time online. I posted an embarrassing number of bad stories about cartoon characters on LiveJournal, and I eventually ended up being invited to join a popular Disney fan community moderated by a friend of a friend. All the people I spoke with on the comm were strangers, at least at first, but we gradually got to know one another as we responded to each other’s posts and comments.

“Between one thing and another, we somehow managed to figure out that most of us were the same age. Oddly enough, a lot of us lived in SoCal, so we decided to meet up over the summer at Disneyland. Everyone showed up, and we had a great time. We met again the next summer, and then again after my senior year.

“Nothing bad happened, but I stopped updating my LiveJournal after that. I went to college in New York, got a job in the city, and fell out of touch with most of my online friends.

“I moved back to LA four years ago, not that I do anything glamorous. I manage the back end of a tech company’s website and intranet, mostly database stuff, but I still have an IG account. I started it just for fun, but I joined early and picked up more than a thousand followers in less than a year. Someone suggested that it would be cool for me to visit to Disneyland and post photos, so I thought, why not? Like, I love Disneyland!”

Jon cleared his throat. “And what is this ‘strange incident’ you came to report?”

“Hold your horses, I’m getting to it. It’s important that you know my background, right? What I’m trying to say is that I’d only been to Disneyland three times before. It wasn’t a major part of my life. But it was a good part of my life – that’s important.”

Jon nodded in acknowledgment. “Very well, then. Duly noted.”

“Disneyland was considered to be a little seedy when I was in high school, but it’s gotten fancy in the past ten years or so. It used to be that you could just walk in, but these days you practically have to make an itinerary. So I did some research, got a group of people together, and we went and saw the sights. Everyone wore an outfit to match the style of a character, and we took a lot of pictures. The photos were so popular that I hit 5k followers in less than 24 hours, can you believe it? Everyone and their sister is into DisneyBounding these days, but picking up that sort of following from on-location fashion photos was still a thing you could do in 2015.

“Like I said, I had a happy childhood, but no one ever paid me that sort of attention. It was such a dopamine hit, you have no idea. Or maybe you do?”

Jon grit his teeth. “Please continue with the statement.”

Ted laughed. “Pushy, aren’t you? But that’s all right. It’s weird, but I feel like I can tell you anything. Has anyone ever said that to you before?”

“You’re not the first.”

“Maybe it’s the librarian thing you’ve got going on – or archivist thing, sorry. Puts me right at ease. And I appreciate that. If there’s an adult who willingly goes to Disneyland for fun, especially someone like me, people tend to think that’s creepy. The therapist I was seeing at the time called it ‘Peter Pan Syndrome,’ of all things. I never went to another appointment with her again, but that’s beside the point. What I’m trying to say is that I kept going back to Disneyland, usually with friends but sometimes with my boyfriend, who I met on Insta. We bonded while sharing theories about the Haunted Mansion, which is… Well, it used to be my favorite ride in the park. It still is, I guess, but I can’t go on it anymore.

“It took me long enough to get here, but this is the part of my story that should interest you. The reason I like the Haunted Mansion is because it reminds me of my mother, who passed away from a heart attack while I was living in New York. It was very sudden, completely out of the blue, and I never got to say good-bye. I never cared about the Haunted Mansion when I was in high school – we all thought it was cringe for some silly teenage reason that probably involved how awkward it would be if we were in the dark with each other. It wasn’t until I visited the park again as an adult that I finally went on the ride. When I did, I had this sudden flashback to a childhood memory.

“I must have gone to Disneyland with my parents when I was young, because standing in the dark and listening to the music made me recall being on the ride with my mother. This was during the lead-up, before you get in the Doom Buggies and begin the ride proper. I remember being absolutely terrified by what I thought was an endless maze. I felt like that line, after it entered the building, lasted forever. Kids can be like that sometimes, but my memory of this is crystal clear – the corridor genuinely didn’t end. I felt like there were people all around us, there had to be, but somehow it was just me and my mother, alone in the darkness.

“And then I remember that this terrible thing appeared out of nowhere. I’m not sure how to describe it. It definitely wasn’t a person in a costume, but it was too realistic to be the projection of a cartoon, and it was talking to us in voice that sounded like laughter and crying at the same time. Like it was hurt, but it found its pain amusing. Meanwhile, the walls kept stretching, and as they got taller I started to see awful things in the gaps between the ceiling and the floor.

“My mother held my hand the whole time. She kept whispering to me: ‘It’s going to be okay. You are brave, and you are strong. Nothing in here can hurt you.’ Just that, over and over, until the ride was over.

“When we finally got out, I ran straight to my dad, who knelt down on the pavement on the other side of the gate and hugged me. He and my mother both patted my back as I cried. I was so relieved to be outside again that my tears wouldn’t stop.

“My dad seemed confused by how afraid I was. This didn’t occur to me until I started thinking about it much later, but isn’t it strange that he didn’t understand why a young child would be frightened by a scary ride?

“I moved back to LA almost immediately after my mom’s funeral, but Dad became a little distant with me. We were both grieving, and it must have seemed callous to him that I was posting shots of myself at Disneyland on social media right after Mom died. Really I just needed a break from the move, from my job, from mourning, from everything – and I guess a part of me felt like my mother would never die as long as I kept returning to that memory of her holding my hand in the Haunted Mansion.

“My dad eventually moved on and married a younger woman. She would probably be my evil stepmother if my life were a Disney movie, but she’s actually a princess, and I adore her. I spend more time with her than I do with my dad these days, but I’m trying to do better. I thought I could reconnect with him if I took him along with me on a visit to the park, but he turned down my invitation. He told me he enjoyed my photos, but that he had never been to Disneyland and had no interest in going. Too many screaming children, he said.

“That was a surprise to me, so I told him about my memory of the Haunted Mansion. While I was talking, his face went completely pale. I don’t mean that as a figure of speech – it was like all the blood had been drained from his skin.

“He insisted that he had never been to Disneyland with me and my mother, but then he told me something strange. When I was about five years old, we went to visit his family in Seattle. My grandfather had just taken on management of a property in Capitol Hill, one of the old Gothic Revival mansions that used to be common there before the neighborhood gentrified. It was an old house, almost as old as the city itself, but my grandfather was having trouble finding potential buyers. The property had been designed by the student of a famous British architect by the name of Robert Smirke, and he wanted my mother to come take a look. Do a walkthrough, point out any potential areas of interest and value, that sort of thing.

“According to my father, my mother had a bad experience in that house. She refused to talk about it with him or anyone else, and she never went back to Seattle. She took me along with her on her tour of the property, and I was apparently just as upset as she was when we came out, even though my dad says we spent less than ten minutes inside. If I thought this place was the Haunted Mansion, and if the ride at Disneyland evoked such a strong memory, it makes me wonder – what did we see in that house?

“I checked with my grandfather, and he said the property never did find a buyer. The only person who seemed seriously interested was a British woman by the name of Gertrude Robinson. Shortly after she made inquiries, the place burned down. Imagine my surprise when I ran a search and learned that this Gertrude Robinson was employed by an institute dedicated to paranormal research.

“So,” Ted concluded, meeting Jon’s eyes, “I gave you my statement. I hope it will be useful to you. I was wondering what you could tell me in return.”

“Not much, I’m afraid. As you can see, we’re still in the process of organizing our records. We’ll investigate to the best of our abilities and contact you if we learn anything.”

“I would love that, thank you. Well, you have my information so…”

“We’ll be in touch. I believe I see my assistant Melanie hovering around. She used to have a large following on social media herself. I’m sure she’d be happy to show you outside.”

“So you’re from LA,” Jon heard Melanie say as she held the door open. Ted directed his dazzling smile at her, which she returned before allowing the door to slam shut behind them.

“Statement ends,” Jon muttered as listened to their conversation growing fainter. He ended the recording and leaned back in his chair.

“Any thoughts you’d like to share, Martin?”

“Oh, I, um,” Martin stammered. “I didn’t want to interrupt the, you know. The statement.” He rubbed the back of his neck as he emerged from between the shelves.

“It’s fine, Martin. It was a relief. To know that you were listening.”

“I’m sorry, I… What? It was?”

“I’ve never been good with people like that.”

“People like… Wait, excuse me?”

“People who are so…” Jon made a vague gesture to illustrate his point. “Sunny. Bright. Content. When someone comes here to make a statement, they’re usually upset.”

“Ah, right. I can see what you mean. But he looks like he just got back from a trip to the happiest place on earth.”

“The happiest place on earth?”

“You know, Disneyland Paris.”

“Disneyland Paris? They finished construction?”

“A few decades ago, actually.”

Jon sympathized with Ted Nakamura’s father. Between the crowds and the relentless sunshine, he couldn’t imagine a more ghastly location, and by this point he considered himself something of an expert on cursed geography.

“I don’t suppose we’ll have to go there ourselves to investigate,” he said, making an attempt to smile. He failed. His muscles were still tense from the process of taking a statement, and his face felt frozen.

“Really? You… want to go to Disneyland Paris? I suppose I could come too, I mean, if it’s not…”

Jon was alarmed by how red Martin’s face was becoming. Did Martin want to go to a theme park? Jon didn’t know much about Disneyland – or Paris, for that matter – but his childhood had been unusual, to say the least. He’d never asked, but Martin’s family couldn’t have been much if he had nowhere to sleep but down here in the archives. Perhaps he could use a vacation. Perhaps they both could.

Jon turned to face his assistant. “Martin, I…”

“Did someone say Disneyland Paris?”

Jon frowned. “Does this conversation interest you, Elias?”

“I heard you were planning a trip. You really must go sometime. It’s fantastic, quite the experience. I went myself, back in 1996.”

Elias made a quick series of taps on the screen of his phone before holding it out in front of him. Jon and Martin leaned forward to get a better look.

In the photo, Elias was posing next to someone wearing a Mickey Mouse costume. He wore an aloha shirt over denim shorts, and he was grinning from ear to ear. The camera had caught him in the act of pulling a tall man with a square jaw and a severe expression into the frame. The image quality was poor, but the man seemed far too pale for the summer sunshine.

Jon’s frown deepened. “And that is…?”

“Oh, this is Peter. You’ll meet him soon enough, I’m sure.”

“Do you, um. Do you go to Disneyland often, then?” Martin asked.

“Just the once. Peter lost a bet, you see.”

“Right.” Jon couldn’t put his finger on it, but he had a bad feeling about this.

“I wouldn’t mind going back. We could all go together, make an office party of it. It would be fun. You do know what fun is, don’t you, Archivist?”

Martin’s eyes darted between Elias and Jon. “I don’t think it’s safe to…”

“Come now,” Elias interrupted. “Would you have any reason not to?”

“China.”

“Excuse me?”

“China. I need to follow up on a statement, something Gertrude was looking into before she traveled to New Zealand.”

“Excellent. I’m glad that’s settled. I’ll leave you to your preparations, then.”

“Damn it.” Jon clenched his fists on the table as Elias left. A trap had been set, and he’d walked right into it.

“Don’t feel bad,” Martin said, oddly perceptive. After everything they’d been through, Jon was coming to appreciate that about him. “At least we know that Elias is still human. He likes Disneyland, after all.”

Jon wasn’t convinced that a fondness for theme parks qualified someone as being ‘human,’ but what would he know? He had to admit that Elias was right about one thing – it would do him good to get out of the archives.

“Are you really going to China, then?”

“I suppose I am.” Jon removed his glasses and rubbed his forehead.

“I’ve always wanted to go someplace like that, somewhere far away,” Martin said, his eyes darting to the tape recorder on the table. “I’d like to hear about it. If you don’t… If you don’t mind, of course. Maybe I could, I mean, we could go out for a coffee together. After you get back.”

“All right,” Jon replied, replacing his glasses. That would be rather nice, actually. “After I get back.”

#The Magnus Archives #Jonathan Sims #Martin Blackwood #Elias Bouchard #Haunted Mansion #full episode format #canon compliant #ghost stories #my fic

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inspector-montoya-fox · 5 years ago

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#5 - The Cold Heart of Hate

Setting: well that was fast... we make it to Russia, where we’re greeted to the evilest of evil lairs. when not dodging robo-falcons and burning boulders, the first mission acts as a tour and establishes the fact that we’re legit in a volcano. i don’t want to say that this is anticlimactic because the missions in this episode are truly hard, but there’s no hub to explore. instead, it’s a chain of missions that lead to the Clockwerk battle, and i guess that makes sense since there’s no time to waste, the stakes are high, etc. if you weren’t able to piece the clues together about Clockwerk’s identity up to this point, the missions do not help. unlike some of the game’s other episodes where the baddies’ personalities are reflected by the settings, Clockwerk remains a shadow up until the very end (and that’s kinda ironic when you think about how he has a huge fucking tower with his face on it). considering the absence of a main hub, the missions do a pretty good job in establishing the mood. we see the outside and inside of the volcano while controlling the van, and then Bentley’s hacking and Sly’s journey into the lab exhibit the level’s technological/ science-y aesthetic. on that note, let’s talk a bit about that lab. i’ve mentioned this before on my account but Cold Heart of Hate is a slave to the early platformer tradition of having an evil lab as the final stage. i don’t blame the game for that - here’s what’s weird though: if Clockwerk is so much larger than Sly, he couldn’t possibly fit into that lab. so... who works there? the robo-falcons? or is Clockwerk actually a ship for someone else? i uh *removes tin foil hat* ...... the huge Clockwerk tower is great for exposition, given that Clockwerk, although a rotting owl corpse stuffed inside a machine, has a huge ego. Sinking Peril is my favorite mission in the episode because it sets up the perfect atmosphere for the final bossfight. fighting the bird over its sinking tower of a replica not only ups the ante but also makes it feel even more satisfying when we finally get to drop it into the lava. lastly, i said Sunset Snake Eyes represented red and i kinda regret it now because that should have been orange and Cold Heart of Hate should have been red. welp! Cold Heart of Hate can be black. seems fitting.

Characters: i lied - the setting does reflect Clockwerk’s character in a very specific way: we’re literally inside a cottdamn volcano. tensions are brewing, the veil is about to be removed. Clockwerk is great. no, he’s more than great. he’s a satisfying and deserving final boss. he’s a maniacal, narcissistic, eGoMaNiAc that really gets under your skin when he keeps on pulling off the reveals. not ONLY has he killed Sly’s entire lineage, the QUEEN had the AUDACITY to stay alive for centuries! Clock-werk it baby! we have no choice but to STAN. the bitch is evil and that’s made crystal clear. his source of youth? hatred. the bird literally killed to remain healthy. and i’m glad he knows no shame because the monologue at the beginning of the bossfight is everything i ever wanted. i guess, Clockwerk has the shortest appearance in the game but still manages to make it impactful. whoever played the game during their childhood knows what i’m talking about - the music, the dialogue, the purple shooting cues: they all remain fresh in the head. the bossfight is the stuff of nightmares. Carmelita makes her final comeback in the perfect recipe for a climactic clash. she starts off as the damsel in distress that can’t be trusted because of her profession, but ultimately helps Sly take down Clockwerk. and i love that this is the beginning of Carmelita putting an end to Sly’s nemeses. her role is great here. yes, she’s the love interest that gets shamelessly left behind at the very end, but she’s the one that helps Sly get back his cain. actually, here’s something i’ve never thought of before: we make such a huge deal out of Carmelita being a playable character in Sly 3, that we all forgot she was playable in Sly 1 as well. i’m lowkey shocked. i don’t know how i overlooked this BUT ALSO shocked to just realise that in both Sly 1 and 3, Sly loses his cain (SP stuck to the original formula for final level suspense, i guess). and let me use that revelation to segue to Sly. he’s made it y’all!!! he’s finally here, ready to extract vengeance. and it shows. we might take his valour and chivalry for granted because this is the Sly we all know and love, but if this was your first time playing the game and somehow escaped all possible clichés by living under a rock your entire life, you’ll appreciate the raccoon’s persistence to save Carmelita. he didn’t have to do it, but he did it. let me praise Kevin Miller here for a sec, because without his voice-acting this would mean nothing. but it’s because of him that it means so much. when you finally beat Clockwerk and the cutscene starts playing and Sly says how he’s made it, it really feels like home, y’know? damn. also: Bentley and Murray finally come into the spotlight. i don’t want to go into detail because i’d rather talk about friendship in the cottdamn Themes section, but Cold Heart of Hate is what makes them true characters.

Themes: off the top of my head? legacy, revenge, friendship, love trumps hate, climax, heat, honour, the past, and many more. i’ll go with my favs because this deserves a post on its own. friendship goes hand-to-hand with love trumps hate because it’s represented by everyone that came out to support Sly. Bentley, Murray and Carmelita come through. they put their fears and differences aside and prevail to help Sly get to the top. they all play their roles, their motivation being love for the raccoon, and that comes into stark contrast with Clockwerk’s preachings. the age-old “good vs evil”. Clockwerk stayed alive by feeding on hatred and got his ass kicked by a group of friends and the love interest (not yet a woman on her own). it’s traditional and it works. similarly to Tide of Terror, the theme of heat ensures that the player is kept engaged. there’s no time to roam around, find clue-bottles, etc. the need to finish this as quickly as possible is enhanced by the volcano landscape and the high temperature. this is especially seen in Sinking Peril because of the rising lava. if you waste time you will literally get gobbled up. the lava encapsulates Sly’s progress and his temper as well. he’s burning inside, itching to finally get revenge (you’ll notice that Sly 1 has no operations and that presents the gang’s early days, Sly’s rash attitude and his persistence to just go up to the main baddie and fight). and the heat’s significance is ultimately shown when Clockwerk sinks into the lava. he doesn’t only get blown up - he “dies”, sinking into the volcano, deteriorating in the heat, showing how time is inescapable. there’s some karmic energy going on here, as Clockwerk cheated the Coopers of a normal death and in turn got served, showing that even if you find a way to stay alive it ultimately won’t work. i also want to touch on motifs, and the motif of technology is a nice one. it doesn’t only showcase Clockwerk’s genius, but it also allows for Bentley to go head-to-head with the owl. there’s something truly cyber about Cold Heart of Hate, but not in the traditional sense. like, the collapsing computer screens during Burning Rubber feel absurdly surreal, pushing the cyber-ness to its limits. i don’t even know anymore, i’m tired.

What I Like: hmmm... i like traversing Clockwerk’s lab. i love Sinking Peril. i love that the end cutscene gifted humanity with those Japanese Barbie Girl rainbow videos. there’s no room for likes and dislikes here, but favourite detail would definitely have to be Clockwerk’s health-bar animations during the bossfight, slowly turning from owl to computer brain thing. very reminiscent of a purple yak toy in a Cartoon Network show which i’m dying trying to remember. if anyone knows what i’m going on about lmk please.

What I Don’t Like: the lack of a hub to explore kinda irks me but i won’t say i don’t like it because i understand why they didn’t include one. instead, this spot goes to Murray’s driving and Bentley’s hacking. thematics aside, i literally do not want to replay Cold Heart of Hate because of the Murray section with the slime monsters. the controls continue to be clunky, the slime monsters are annoying and look like they have raisins for eyes. Bentley’s hacking isn’t as annoying, but it’s definitely frustrating. it’s a far cry from Sly 2 and 3′s hacking parts... yea.........

Quote: Perfection has no age...

#it sure as hell doesnt!#this was hard to write #sly cooper #episode project #sly 1 episodes: DONE

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