#this has certainly evolved since the original prompt

[bardicbeetle]

hello fellow vampire-oc-named-alex-haver! I love your alex, can I hear about your alex? whatever fun or not-so-fun facts you'd like to share :D

Hi Monday!

You can absolutely hear about my Alex, I will gladly ramble about them for almost certainly too long.

Alex Blackwood is more or less, the protagonist of Safe in the Dark, in so much as they were the original protagonist and are going to maintain that status despite the fact that there are now... five POV characters. They've come a hell of a long way since I first started writing them at the bright young age of 14, and are... somehow both more and less traumatized at the same time.

Quick little overview: mid twenties, asexual, agender, dark curly hair that is long not so much in an On Purpose Way but in an "I haven't had a haircut in Many Years" kind of way, one of the few characters whose eye color hasn't changed over the years--they're still a dark stormcloudy grey. Facial features tended to get described as birdlike when they were younger, sharp lines, prominent nose. Has a little mole on the right side of their neck and another one on the underside of their chin on that side.

Some Fun Facts:

Alex has no idea how cooking works, cannot produce more than a piece of butter toast reliably, will somehow burn things even if heat is not involved. (tbh probably a good thing they end up having to live on blood)

Has lost the majority of their southern accent as a result of being so much of the everywhere but it creeps back out the SECOND someone else near them has one. To such a strong degree that even people who know them well go ??????? what was that??????

They are indecisive to a fault, mainly because they are very afraid of making the wrong choice (whether this is the wrong choice for themself, or in relation to someone else, they spend a lot of time planning out the hypothetical consequences of things they will never actually do).

Is probably the most physically active member of the vamp!house by sheer virtue of needing the feeling of Body Moving to make their brain go quiet sometimes. Likes to run, loves sparring with Isaac and the chaos trio once that starts up. Likes the physical outlet to all the thoughts in their head.

Some Not Fun Facts:

Grew up in an extremely fundamentalist household.

Ran away at age 15 and never went back.

Suffers from sleep paralysis and really intense nightmares.

Has a lot of trouble staying present when something brings them into a memory. A smell, a sound, the look some someone's hair, they're prone to spiral into the things connected to it until their surroundings kind of, melt and they're just listening to the sound of something else, someone else, somewhen else. (oh hey the one part of my own trauma brain I gave them)

Witnessed the massacre of three dozen college students and to this day thinks it's their fault purely because their indecision meant they were still a half vampire when Eric came back, prompting him to try and force them to kill.

ANyways.

I love Alex so very very much.

They've been with me for... well over a decade now in some form or another which feels frankly ridiculous but it's so so amazing having gotten to evolve and learn more about them as time has gone by.

@albatris

[ayakh03]

The Gesamtkunstwerk theory nowadays

Gesamtkunstwerk is the idea of combining various different media to create one "total work of art". In other words, one project could cover every aspect of creation. Wagner inspired many artists to create beautiful works of art, to go beyond the disciplines to achieve a total work of art. His beliefs intrigued me because I realized I agreed with them. I find myself the happiest when I am watching a theatrical piece. I love being immersed in the piece. Learning about Wagner made me realize I love the combination of the different arts of makeup, music, singing, and acting (and more). the combination of all these media creates an escape. It creates a more profound connection between the audience and the artwork.

It could be said Gesamtkunstwerk has evolved with the years, even in today's digital age. The use of multimedia and virtual realities allows surreal levels of interactions and immersion in movies, art installations, and contemporary art.

However, I think some obstacles the Gesamtkunstwerk concept might face include losing the essence of each art form, and commercialization.

Especially in today's common culture of specializing in specific disciplines (visual arts, music, animation, etc), This specialization can make it tough to accomplish true integration, since artists may lack knowledge of other mediums. Regarding collaborations, they demand time and investment from each collaborator. Moreover, miscommunication may lead to conflict.

In addition, nowadays artists can be heavily influenced by the idea that their work can be commercialized. Financial demands and marketing pressure can lead to a final product that doesn't feel authentic to the artist's original intentions. This resonates with Rosaland Krauss's theory. She focuses on art for the essence of art itself, rather than commercialisation.

And of course today's biggest subject of debate: the use of technology and new media. I tried doing research on Lev Manovich and from what I understood, he examines the relationship between new media and traditional art forms, arguing that although they are comparable, new media adds special qualities like variety and interactivity. But I don't think he believes we don't need traditional art anymore. He says that the two can co-exist, and influence each other and that new media can help expand the possibilities rather than replace traditional art. It's not a replacement but an evolution.

I agree with his theory. However, nowadays I don't believe anything made with AI is real art. It could be used as a tool for inspiration but no more than that. If someone uses a prompt to create "art" I wouldn't consider them an artist. They could be a creator, as they create an idea for AI to generate an image, but the product isn't art. and the creator isn't an artist. AI certainly isn't an artist, it doesn't put any emotion into the piece. AI could be told to regenerate an image 10 times and still not well portray someone's true intentions.

Technology is a great tool for creating and going beyond the limitations of traditional art.

Sources:

Lockspeiser, E. (2018). Claude Debussy | Biography, Music, & Facts. In: Encyclopædia Britannica. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Debussy.

Martin, N. (2020). Gesamtkunstwerk, the Total Work of Art through the ages. [online] Artland Magazine. Available at: https://magazine.artland.com/gesamtkunstwerk-the-total-work-of-art-through-the-ages/.

RIPPEY, THEODORE F. “Quiet Audience, Roaring Crowd: The Aesthetics of Sound and the Traces of Bayreuth in Kuhle Wampe and Triumph of the Will.” The Total Work of Art: Foundations, Articulations, Inspirations, edited by DAVID IMHOOF et al., 1st ed., vol. 12, Berghahn Books, 2016, pp. 183–205. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvr6955g.15.‌

Wolfman, U.R. (2013). Richard Wagner’s Concept of the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’. [online] Interlude. Available at: https://interlude.hk/richard-wagners-concept-of-the-gesamtkunstwerk/.

‌

[adventuresinclientservice]

You might think different about these principles, but I suggest you don’t.

I don’t know why I watched Sean McCarthy’s share of a LinkedIn post, the one with Steve Jobs taking about the launch of its “Think Different” ad campaign.  The video is from 1997; I’ve glanced at it before, many times, but confess I barely paid attention; this time, I did, in particular paying heed when Jobs says,

“A lot of things have changed; the market is a totally different place than where it was a decade ago, and Apple is totally different, and Apple’s place it it is totally different, and believe me, the products, the distribution strategy … and the manufacturing are totally different, and we understand that.  But values and core values … those things shouldn’t change.  The things that Apple believed in at its core ... are the same things that Apples stands for today.”

In the twenty-plus years since I wrote the first edition of The Art of Client Service, the marketing and advertising world in which it resides has changed profoundly.  Return for a moment to 2003:  Google, Amazon, and Facebook were babies.  Netflix was delivering movies by mail.  The iPhone and Instagram had yet to be invented. Steaming music?  Someone’s dream. ��

Social media as we know it today didn’t exist.  It, along with all the other innovations of the early 21st century changed how advertising gets planned, produced, and measured, which prompts me to ask, “Should the principles espoused in my book change to match how advertising has evolved?”

Before I can respond, I hear the voice of Steve, clear, confident, unwavering:

“values and core values … those things shouldn’t change.  The things that Apple believed in at its core ... are the same things that Apples stands for today.”

When I sat down to first write The Art of Client Service, I originally thought, “You do great work, everything else, including the relationship, will take care of itself.”  I was wrong.   I came to realize, “Great work doesn’t lead to a great relationship, it’s the other way around:  a great relationship leads to great work.”

That in turn led to an amazingly simple, obvious, but powerfully motivating two-word insight:  relationships matter.  

Yes, things certainly have changed; as The Art of Client Service evolved through three editions, with more stories to tell, more subjects to cover, more mistakes to document; even so, the core principles that drove the book in the early aughts remain constant and unchanged.  

If my editor Richard Narramore were to call and ask for a fourth edition – it has been seven years since Wiley published the third – I gladly would do one. And for sure there would be more additions, revisions, and, I hope, improvements.

But just as Steve Jobs proclaims, “The things that Apple believed in at its core ... are the same things that Apples stands for today,” I would make a similar claim:

The things that reside at the core of client service are the same things that client service stands for today.”

You might think different about this, but in the unlikely event I’m still here 20 years from now, I suspect I would write this same email, making the same claim.

It still would be true then, as it was before, as it is now.

[xkurzel]

Part 3 of the college!AU series. [2] [1]

“Why can’t I get this?” Santana huffs, throwing her pencil onto the desk, the pencil clattering to the far corner.

Brittany chuckles next to her. “It’s okay. Math isn’t for everyone.”

Santana shoots Brittany a dubious look. “Says the math genius.”

Brittany grins. “If it helps, I probably really suck at law.”

Santana sighs but the corner of her lips quirk up as she gives Brittany a small smile. “A little, but that’s not gonna help me pass my Calc final in two days.”

Brittany nudges Santana’s shoulder with her own, a soft, encouraging smile on her face. “Not with that attitude. Now, c’mon,” she reaches across the desk to fetch Santana’s pencil, “Stop abusing another inanimate object and try it one more time.”

“You’re never going to let me live that down, huh?”

Brittany winks. “Never. Now try again.”

Santana rolls her eyes skyward before straightening in her chair. “Okay, so…” Santana screws her eyes shut to concentrate on remembering the right way to solve the problem in front of her, taking off her glasses and tossing it on the the desk in order to rub at the bridge of her nose.

Santana blows out a noisy exhale before opening her eyes and hunching over her notebook. “I have to find the value of the integral, first…” She carefully scribbles out line by line of the solution as she works it out, double-checking each line before getting to the final value. “Then, I just have to plug in the units into the integral… meaning, the answer should be this.” Santana circles the final answer a couple of times, running the lead of the pencil into the paper, before sitting back and nudging the notebook over to Brittany, confident that she’s finally gotten this problem right.

Brittany’s oddly quiet, a rarity compared to the handful of times Santana’s run into her. Santana raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to check if it’s right?”

In an instant, Brittany’s eyes refocus as she seems to snap out of it, tugging the notebook in front of her. Brittany checks Santana’s answer against her own before nodding. “Good job. You got it,” she confirms softly.

Santana grins and bounces in her seat, grabbing at the notebook and Brittany’s answer to triple-check. “Thank god! I was stuck on that one forever. I thought I was never going to get it.” Only then does Santana notice Brittany’s fallen silent again and she looks back to her, finding an inscrutable expression on Brittany’s face, her lips slightly parted and blue eyes boring into Santana’s.

“What?” Santana asks, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.

“Sorry,” Brittany starts, biting down on her lip, before continuing, “It’s just… you look really nice without your glasses.”

Santana almost scoffs because she thinks Brittany’s joking or just trying to lay another line on her, as she’s been doing majority of the time they’ve run into each other this week.

But the expression on Brittany’s face and the soft, sincere way she had said it, without any of the bluster or teasing usually evident, make Santana’s protests die in her throat.

Heat blooms through her skin. “Thank you,” Santana murmurs out, holding Brittany’s gaze.

A group of students entering the library breaks the charged moment and Santana flushes, laughing breathlessly, keeping her eyes pointedly on her things as she gathers them. “And thanks for the, um, tutoring session. I feel a lot more prepared for Calc now, thanks to you.”

Brittany stands as soon as Santana does, shrugging on her backpack onto one shoulder. “No biggie,” Brittany replies, “You’re a great student. And don’t worry, you’ll do great.”

Santana finally gathers all of her textbooks in her arms, fiddling with the stack of books to hold them all securely, and looks back up at Brittany.

Here’s the thing: Santana’s not an idiot.

Brittany, with her tousled blonde hair, long legs, and those crystal clear blue eyes, is hot. Plain and simple. She’s only human and Brittany’s insane attractiveness was the first thing that stood out to her the minute she turned around and saw her leaning against the wall.

And sitting next to her for over an hour and feeling the heat of her skin near hers as their arms brushed on the desk only solidified the pull of attraction Santana’s been feeling since their first meeting in the hallway.

So yeah, Santana’s attracted to her.

Not that she’d ever admit this, of course, because, despite how gorgeous those blue eyes are and the way those blonde locks make Santana’s fingers twitch to run through them, they’re just… too incompatible. With Brittany’s easy nonchalance and that smirk and her cocky attitude, she just isn’t Santana’s type. At all.

Then again, maybe Santana judged Brittany too quickly, seeing how focused Brittany was during their whole tutoring session, just patiently explaining to her how to work through the problems. Even now as Santana looks into Brittany’s eyes, that signature smirk that drives Santana up the wall is absent from Brittany’s expression, a kind and friendly smile in place instead.

“You know,” Santana says carefully, “I had my doubts before our session. I thought you were just trying to get me to go out with you again.”

Brittany tilts her head, smile still on her lips. “But?”

“You’re… not that bad,” Santana admits, the corners of her lips curving up.

Brittany’s laugh comes across easily, her eyes crinkled in delight. “I’ll take it.”

Just as Santana opens her mouth to reply, footsteps thunder from around the corner and a girl carrying a set of books jogs up to their table, slightly out of breath. Santana jumps, taken aback.

“I am so sorry I’m late!” The girl rushes out, “I completely misread the tutoring schedule! Santana, right?”

Santana’s eyebrows shoot upwards. “What?” She asks, bewildered.

The girl sets her things down onto the desk. “I’m your Calc tutor! So sorry, the tutoring center’s been slammed with finals week so our schedules are crazy. Thanks for waiting.” The girl then finally takes notice of Brittany, a confused look coming across her face. “Brittany? What are you doing here?”

“You know each other?” Santana asks slowly, looking back from Brittany to the girl.

“Brittany works at the tutoring center with me,” the girl answers.

Santana’s jaw falls slack as she turns to Brittany, who has her hands outstretched in defense like she was expecting Santana’s reaction.

That smirk reappears on Brittany’s lips. “Okay, so I might’ve seen your name on the tutoring schedule when I swung by and I may have switched some schedules around so I could be the one to help you out.”

“I—you—what—” Santana stutters out in disbelief. She looks to the tutor and back to Brittany, whose mouth is twitching like she’s about to grin at how worked up Santana’s getting. Santana’s face suddenly feels uncomfortably warm, the tips of her ears red-hot as she flushes in embarrassment.

“You’re unbelievable, you know that!” Santana finally huffs, pointing a finger towards Brittany who breaks out into a sheepish grin. Santana spins on her heel and stalks away.

“Santana, wait!” Santana hears Brittany call after her, but Santana just shakes her head, picking up her pace so Brittany can’t follow after her.

Santana strides off to her dorm, determined to hole up there for the rest of the night and focus on acing her finals and putting one infuriating blonde and all of her antics out of sight and out of mind.

/

Santana aces her finals, of course.

After buckling down in her dorm and pulling consecutive all-nighters, she breezes through the rest of her exams. Calculus was the hardest out of all of her finals, but—Santana admits begrudgingly—Brittany’s tutoring session really helped her understand the material.

Even though Brittany wasn’t really her tutor and was apparently just trying to pull something. Or whatever.

But Santana’s trying not to think about that. Or her. Since Santana made a point to avoid the library for the rest of the week, she hasn’t run into Brittany since, to her relief. The few days of interacting with the blonde had been confusing and distracting and frustrating, all at the worst possible time. So Santana’s glad that finals week is over, that the blonde that took up far too much time in her thoughts in just a few days has been thankfully absent from her life, and that she’s finally getting out of her dorm and meeting up with Mercedes to grab a coffee.

Santana walks out of her dorm building and spots Mercedes on the grassy quad in the center of the cluster of dorm buildings. Mercedes turns as soon as she spots her and Santana’s steps quicken to meet her halfway.

“Finally! Where have you been?” Mercedes greets her with an arm around her shoulders, wrapping her up in a hug.

Santana laughs and hugs her back. “I know, I know. But it was finals week. I had a good reason to go M.I.A.”

Mercedes rolls her eyes. “Girl, we’re taking the same classes so don’t even give me that. You could’ve sent a text so I knew you were alive, instead of ghosting me.”

“Well, that’s why I’m here now, isn’t it? Now, are we gonna get this coffee or not? I needs my caffeine,” Santana tugs on Mercedes’s arm to get her to start walking and Mercedes follows with a chuckle.

“Don’t think I don’t know you’re just using me for my wheels because you’re car-less this semester,” Mercedes says breezily, unlocking her black SUV as soon as the pair arrive at the dorm parking lot.

“But it’s just so, so sweet,” Santana says as she climbs in, trailing a hand over the matte black dashboard, and Mercedes reaches out to swat at Santana’s hand.

“Hands off the damn ride, Satan. I just got it detailed,” Mercedes points at Santana, narrowing her eyes playfully, and Santana laughs and throws her hands up in defense.

“Okay, relax, I’m hands off. Just get me to coffee already.” Santana throws on a pair of shades from her purse and snaps towards the road impatiently.

Mercedes rolls her eyes but sets the car into drive. “You are so damn dramatic.”

The two catch up over the finals they just took, commiserating over being only five semesters through all of their pre-law classes, before Mercedes pulls up to a bustling coffee shop a few blocks away from campus.

“Why is it always so packed?” Mercedes exclaims as she puts the car in park and the two clamber out of the SUV.

“I know, god, it seems like everyone from campus is always here,” Santana grumbles in response, opening the door for the two of them. The coffee shop is a known popular haunt for students from their college, so they see a few familiar faces that both of them send a few nods and waves to, some being in both of their classes, a few that Santana knows from around her dorm, and a couple others that Mercedes knows from the various student clubs she’s in.

“So since finals are over, I’m thinking we need to go out. You’re staying on campus during break, right?” Mercedes asks as they both fall into line.

“Yeah, broke the news to my mom last week. How are breaks on campus, anyways? I’ve always thought they’d be dead because everyone goes home,” Santana muses, squinting up at the menu as she decides what to get.

“It’s pretty fun. A lot of people stick around and you can finally come with me to all the off campus parties over break, like I’ve been asking you to for the past two years.”

Santana rolls her eyes. “Not interested.”

“Oh, come on. You were plenty interested back in high school.”

“Yeah, that was high school. Now, your girl’s just trying to graduate and get to law school.”

“You’ve gone soft, Satan,” Mercedes teases as the two get to the front of the line.

Santana rolls her eyes again, hip-checking Mercedes softly. “Shut up and order.”

Mercedes just chuckles but rattles off her order to the barista and Santana does the same. When Mercedes reaches into her purse for her wallet, Santana smacks her hand out of the way. “Nuh uh. You fly, I buy, remember? This round’s on me,” Santana says as she takes out her own wallet.

“Actually, it’s on me,” a familiar voice chimes in from behind them as a hand slaps a card into the barista’s outstretched hand, and Santana’s stomach drops as she whirls around.

Brittany’s standing there, looking dangerously good in a tank top, a flannel wrapped casually around her waist, with ripped jeans that look almost painted on. She gives a wink to the barista as she takes her card back. Annoyingly, the barista flushes at Brittany’s attention and Santana grits her teeth.

“Thanks?” Mercedes says warily, glancing at Santana, who’s shaking her head exasperatedly. “And you are?”

“No one,” Santana answers flatly, shoving Mercedes towards the other end of the coffee shop where their drinks will be and pointedly away from Brittany.

“I’m Brittany,” Brittany offers with a grin, following after the two.

“You two know each other?” Mercedes raises an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“No.”

Santana rolls her eyes, turning her back towards Brittany. “No, we don’t know each other,” Santana confirms to Mercedes, who has an amused look on her face.

Brittany chuckles, stepping around Santana to shoot Mercedes a dazzling smile. “We totally do. We were practically study buddies all through finals week. But I don’t know you, though you do look familiar. You are…?”

Mercedes laughs, shaking her head in amusement. “Mercedes. And you know, you look familiar too. I think I’ve been to a few of your parties. You room with Sam Evans in that house on Shaker Avenue, right?”

Brittany grins. “I knew I’ve seen you before. Yeah, I do, with a couple others, too. That’s what I came over to talk to you ladies about. I wanted to invite you two to a party we’re throwing tonight to celebrate being on break. You in, ‘Cedes?”

Mercedes hums, shooting a furtive glance to Santana, who has her arms crossed and a scowl on her face, and goes to respond, but the barista calls out hers and Santana’s orders. Mercedes goes to pick up the two coffees, sending a friendly smile to Brittany. “You know what, if Santana’s down, then I am, too. But it looks like you two need a moment so, Brittany, thanks for the coffee, and Santana, I’ll see you in the car?”

Santana sends Mercedes her most withering glare, but Mercedes just lifts her coffee to her lips and raises her eyebrows as she turns to walk out of the coffee shop.

Santana turns towards Brittany. “You need to stop.”

Brittany tilts her head innocently. “I don’t know what you’re referring to. Also, hi. Haven’t seen you in awhile.”

“That’s completely on purpose, because last time we ran into each other, you lied about being my tutor.”

“Okay, look,” Brittany steps close to Santana, who takes a step back, “I actually came over here to apologize about just that. I should’ve just been up front with you. It was kind of uncool and I know that you were just trying to get some help and probably didn’t need that stress.”

Santana keeps her arms crossed, looking off towards the side. She’s trying not to show it, but she’s actually kind of surprised Brittany’s apologizing. “Yeah, you should’ve and yeah, it was,” Santana mutters.

Brittany ducks her head to try and catch Santana’s eyes. “Can we start over? We obviously keep running into each other and are gonna see each other around. I’d like to start fresh, if you’ll forgive me.”

Santana hesitates, finally facing Brittany to try and see if Brittany’s being sincere or if she’s just trying something. Brittany smiles back tentatively.

“Okay, fine. Whatever. Apology accepted. And since I can’t seem to avoid you, for whatever reason, consider the slate clean.”

Brittany’s smile breaks into a full grin, bouncing on her heels with barely contained excitement, and Santana rolls her eyes gently at her reaction. “But some rules,” Santana points at her and Brittany nods fervently. “You’ve got to stop hitting on me because I’ve already told you I’m not interested. And no more stunts like the whole tutor thing.”

Brittany narrows her eyes, grin still on her face. “You never said you weren't interested. You just said we didn’t know each other well enough.”

“Yeah, well,” Santana clears her throat, “I’m not. And we don’t. But since I’m pretty sure Mercedes will end up dragging me to your party tonight, we might as well be on civil terms. But only if you stick to the rules. Got it?”

Brittany composes the expression on her face to a serious one, nodding solemnly. “Got it.” Her mouth twitches upwards slightly. “You’re really into rules and stuff,” she notes nonchalantly.

Santana narrows her eyes at her, walking towards the exit. “Don’t push it.”

Brittany just hums in response, following after her and through the exit. “So I’ll see you two at the party then?”

“Probably, considering how Mercedes keeps looking over here.”

“Great. Can’t wait to see you. In a totally friendly way, of course,” Brittany says with a slight smirk.

Santana rolls her eyes before nodding towards the parking lot. “Are you parked by Mercedes? She’s in the black SUV. You can swing by and say bye to her, if you want.”

Brittany shakes her head, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “Nah, I took my bike here. But tell her I said it was good to officially meet her and that I’ll see her tonight. See you later?”

Santana just nods as a goodbye, sending Brittany a tight-lipped smile, and Brittany chuckles, raising her eyebrows at her and waving before jogging off around the corner.

Santana sighs as she makes her way over to where Mercedes is parked, already mentally preparing for the barrage of questions she knows she’s sure to get.

Santana swings the door open and climbs in, her hand immediately shooting to her coffee and drinking a few gulps to get the caffeine rushing through her, her other hand holding a finger up at Mercedes to tell her to wait.

“Okay, go ahead,” Santana sighs after getting her well-needed coffee fix.

Mercedes reaches out and shoves Santana’s shoulder. “Girl, you did not tell me you ditched me last week to hang out with that girl Brittany. Since when do you two know each other?”

Santana scowls, rubbing at her shoulder. “Watch it, Wheezy. And we weren’t hanging out. I just ran into her a couple times at the library during finals week and she kept talking to me.”

Mercedes raises an eyebrow. “Sure seemed like more than that.”

Santana picks up her coffee, taking another sip. “It’s not. Seriously. We’ve just bumped into each other a lot recently. That’s it. How do you know her?”

“I don’t really know her, but I damn sure know of her. She, Sam Evans, and a couple of other people throw these huge functions at their off-campus place all the time. I’m talking major parties. I would’ve never pictured you two running in the same circles, to be honest.”

“What do you mean? You and I run in the same circle and you said you’ve been to their parties.”

Mercedes rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but that’s different. I go to a lot of parties and know a lot of different folks. And look, Santana, I say this with love and all, but you’ve been kind of buttoned up since we got to college. And Brittany’s crew, well, they’re pretty wild.”

Santana scoffs, affronted. “I’m not buttoned up!”

Mercedes shoots her a look. “Girl, other than me, who else do you hang out with? And I’m talking about actually hanging out off campus and not for school. I shouldn’t even count because we went to high school together.”

Santana huffs. “Well, mostly everyone sucks anyways and okay, so I like to stay in at my dorm most of the time. So what? That doesn’t mean I’m buttoned up.”

“Right.”

“I’m not!”

Mercedes chuckles. “Alright, okay, you’re not. So does that mean you’ll come with me to the party tonight? Because I’ve been trying to get at Brittany’s friend, Sam, and could use a wingwoman. But only if you’re up for it.”

Santana nods, straightening her shoulders. “You know what? Hell yes, I’m up for it. We’ll go.”

[kitsu-katsu]

On kiribaku becoming canon and their evidence:

So I posted this on reddit earlier, but wanted to have it here where more KRBK shippers are, since I just ended up compiling a lot more than I thought I would.

Fair warning: A pretty big text with a compilation of kiribaku moments ahead.

We would all love kiribaku being canon, and I think it's not as much of a longshot as some may lead you to believe.

Honestly, if one of them was a girl, this would most certainly be canon, like, just in the anime we have:

Them becoming friends slowly in the background, leaving us with good development between them that is so seamless it can hit you hard once you notice how close they've become if you hadn't noticed before.

Them arriving and leaving the pool together while walking in the sunset.

They support and compliment each other (both on personality and quirks, like come on).

Kirishima can just lean on Bakugou or side hug him all the time and Bakugou lets him with no problem, which considering who we're talking about is a pretty big thing.

Kirishima can seem even more agitated than Deku about Bakugou being taken, and Deku is the one who idolized him since childhood.

The whole "It has to be you" thing and the precious hand holding (including that little scene after the rescue, where Kiri tries to grab Baku's hand again).

Kirishima bought expensive night vision googles in case they were useful for the rescue even though they had Yaomomo with them (this boy goes through extremes just to ensure his boyfriend's best friend's safety)

Kirishima is officially the one Bakugou considers an equal, and considering his conflicting inferiority and superiority complexes (making him perpetually place people as above him or beneath him) is vital information.

Kirishima is esentially Bakugou's first real friend (as Deku was considered more of an incomprehensible nuisance and his childhood troop seemed more like his followers who just put him up on a pedestal and followed what he did).

Kirishima has jumped in front of danger for Bakugou's sake quite a bit of times (including a time in the movie).

Kirishima is a central piece in Bakugou's character development.

Bakugou was the one who told Kirishima he was strong and gave him his confidence back, reminding him of what he said at the start of their friendship.

Kirishima unlocked fucking UNBREAKABLE because of Bakugou's encouragement.

Going to extra stuff:

Bakugou's favourite hobbie is hiking, and we're shown he takes Kirishima with him sometimes, thing he doesn't seem to do with other characters.

The whole festival thing, with the narrator outright assuming Bakugou must have given his coat to a pretty girl who was cold, only for it to be revealed in another picture that he gave it to Kirishima because as usual, he didn't have a shirt on.

On the movie Bakugou could have taken anyone to I-Island and took Kirishima as his plus one. They share a room. Kirishima bought suits for both of them, with the most detailed one with white roses being for Bakugou, and they decide to go to the party together.

In a BNHA Smash connected directly to the movie, Midoriya notices the white roses in Bakugou's suit and notes that they mean deep respect and "I'm the one for you", which prompts Bakugou to send an explosion his way (not to Kirishima who gave him the suit, mind you), which makes the flowers turn red (from blood), after which Mineta appears to say that red roses mean "beautiful and passionate love".

They are usually seen together in merch stuff.

There's this tumblr post talking about japanese fan's reactions to one of Horikoshi's drawings which I find at least hilarious:

https://exbrodokills.tumblr.com/post/187710597637/here-it-is

There are discussions regarding Kirishima's character sheet and the translation of him liking "tough guys" (here's a podt by aitaikimochi explaining the meaning of the translation: https://www.google.com/amp/s/aitaikimochi.tumblr.com/post/171127708911/amp) where even translator such as aitaikimochi have gotten into, and they have mentioned that there's a japanese stereotype of a type of gay guy who is obsessed with "manly behaviour" and usually stay away from women, prefering tough guys instead, which is interesting to say the least.

Some of the light novel episodes which show more slice of life moment feature some good kiribaku moments, with a prominent one being this one wich details their study date (it seriously seems like fan fiction, not even kidding, and this is supposed to be sort of canon):

https://www.google.com/amp/s/aitaikimochi.tumblr.com/post/171236111166/amp

Also there's a chapter where Kirishima tells Fatgum about Bakugou being extremely happy, and another one where they are arm wrestling between classes and they cheer for one another heavily.

(Honesly, just go through aitaikimochi's whole kiribaku tag, there are some pretty interesting things there)

Here are some analysis on their possible coding, if you guys are interested:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dxO6Y0yK_wxOJDmRsBYvsVWKwsH7tKc92skxJ--R1m4/edit?usp=drivesdk

(Bakugou's one link can be found at the end of that one)

And in BNHA Smash, there are quite a lot of things, and we must not forget that the whole thing still gets approved by Horikoshi before being published, some of my favourite things are:

Kirishima inviting Bakugou to spend christmas together, with the translators noting christmas in Japan to be a romantic holiday in the same panel.

In one issue, Jirou falls for Kiri and him being oblivious just leaves her for Bakugou.

Once Bakugou becomes a shoujo boy after being his with a quirk and just involuntarily talks in flirt, and in one moment Kirishima outright flirts back.

Bakugou works his ass off to repay Kirishima for the night vision googles they used in the rescue.

Kirishima is literally described as the chicken soup for Bakugou's soul!

An interesting thing I found out is that in the chapter where all of 1A minus Bakugou turn into animals, one scene originally had Kirishima (as a dog) getting jealous of Kaminari and Midoriya petting Tsuyu (as a cat - yes I know, a cat) and giving all their attention to her, however, Horikoshi himself changed that scene, noting he didn't think their character relations worked well in that scene, and made it so that the one that ended up in smash contains Kirishima (as a dog) getting jealous because Todoroki (as a koala) has climbed up Bakugou's torso and won't let go. I saw this all in a tumblr post a few months ago, which showed the original scene in a book (I think it was in italian and was translates below) but I can't currently find the link, sorry, if someone finds it, It'd be appreciated if you could reblog with said link.

And in regards to meta stuff, the show already has some LGBT characters in it, with Magne and Tiger being trans and Toga being bisexual, so it's not as much of a lost cause to hope for this as it would initially seem.

(Please kirimina shippers, don't take offence because of this, it isn't my intention to insult your ship, I simply want to analize what has been given to us, so please try to take this lightly):

We should also take into consideration Krishima's first version in the sort of "beta" for the manga (where Midoriya was Yamikumo).

His character sheet mentions he's quite the delinquent and entered UA to impress a girl. Obviously his character evolved tremendously since then, but the girl was most probably intended to be Mina's equivalent. This was later changed to him liking "tough guys"/"hard liners" and his thing with Mina became more of an "I admired your bravery and heroic spirit when in middle school even if I hardly knew you", later seeing each other and establishing more of a little friendship. However, it hasn't really moved further from there, and Kirishima has already established much stronger bonds with our favourite exploding boy. All changes in characters are made for a reason, and Horikoshi clearly changed his mind on Kirishima's motives for wanting to be a hero and his relationship with Mina.

So yeah, all in all, this ship is great, it's precious, adorable, helps both characters grow, is balanced and has good chemistry. So even if after all these things they don't become officially canon, we still have so much canon material for them in the present I'd honestly still be happy, these dorks make me smile and melt my heart, so I hope they both have good endings.

[t100ficrecsblog]

an interview with @ravenreyes-0g (she/hers)

what are you working on right now? I'm working on both my Bellarke fic for BLM and a personal fantasy story that I've written and rewritten from the beginning to about 5000000 times because my ideas keep changing. My Bellarke fic is a modern day COVID AU that is also the longest I've ever done so it's been taking a minute to finish! :) 

what’s something you’d like to write one day? A YA either historical fiction or realistic fiction LGBTQ+ romance. I have  a ton of ideas for plots, but I haven’t quite gotten the chance to sit down and try to plot them out. For historical fiction, I’m very interested in the 1900-1950s era, especially the Roaring 20s and WWI/II so I’d most likely set it there! I’m all in for the angsty romance, but I'd definitely want to end it on a happy note (unlike my current fantasy work) and I’m really looking forward to getting the chance to write a character driven story that doesn’t focus so much on heavy plot elements - something I can’t do as much in a fantasy setting!

what is the fanwork you’re most proud of? This one is actually pretty hard considering how my writing style has developed since I started writing fanfics. But if I had to choose, I’d probably say my FirstPrince (Alex/Henry from Red, White, and Royal Blue) fic on Ao3 called To Love Another Is to Cherish Life Itself. The title is a bit dramatic but basically it is an angsty/fluffy one-shot that I wrote really late one night and did minimal edits to before posting. It definitely feels like the most in character and honest fic I’ve ever done, and it broke my heart to write about some of the darker stuff, but in the end I’m pretty proud of it! 

why did you first start writing fic? Well, I’ve been writing fanfics since I was probably 10 or 11 years old (I had PJO phase that spanned close to a decade and I’m still not totally over it 😂) but I started publishing work on Wattpad literally the night I turned 13. That was actually my first Bellarke/the 100 fic! It started out as my predictions for season 5 and then evolved into a fix-it fic for everything I didn’t like about the season. I’ve abandoned it for almost two years, but I’m slowly coming back to it so...slow updates y’all :)

what frustrates you most about fic writing? Everything! Just kidding - I love fic writing! But if I had to choose, probably two main things tho. 1) Creating a plot for a long term fic - I’m sooooo bad at it because I always feel like I’m writing too much in line with the actual show/book/movie and it feels like copying. 2) Making sure that I stay honest to the character I’m writing about. I have a huge tendency to write my fics (ESPECIALLY my one-shots) from the POV of the character who was not the main character in the original thing (like my POV for my RWRB fic is Henry, the love interest of Alex/other main character). This means that the only look inside their head that we’ve gotten has been through the eyes of the main character - which can obviously be biased. I try to stay as honest as I can to my interpretation of the character drawn directly from the text - but sometimes that means that I can’t include scenes that I want to because it feels off/out of character and that’s always disappointing. (also dialogue is just...something I really need to work on)

what are your top five songs right now? Ahhh see it changes on my day/mood but right now it’s probably

1. The Last Great American Dynasty - Taylor Swift 2. The Garden - Dua Lipa 3. Mirrorball - Taylor Swift 4. Icarus - Emma Blackery 5. Betty - Taylor Swift 

(taylor really blessed us with folklore...I’m in love)

what are your inspirations? Ahhh - there are many. First and foremost, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. It’s my favorite book for so many reasons, but it teaches me so much about writing and character development. Also Liesel and Rudy melt my heart every time. I also love all the songs listed above for inspiration, and I listen to I Get To Love You by Ruelle (it’s the Malec wedding song for any Shadowhuners fans out there!) whenever I write a really emotionally intense romantic scene. If you’re looking for amazing fic recs, I highly recommend all of HMS-Chill’s works (multi fandoms), clarkesbell, and DracoWillHearAboutThis on Ao3. Though not all of them write Bellarke/the 100, if you are in any of their fic fandoms, I highly recommend checking them out because they are fantastic writers!

what first attracted you to Bellarke? what attracts you now? Honestly? #1 - their development. I love enemies to lovers with my whole heart, but I honestly didn’t see Bellarke as romantic until the 2x05 hug where I was just hit with a wave of OMG THEY BELONG TOGETHER!!! Seriously, though, the fact that they go from enemies, to grudging allies, to co-leaders, to partners, to friends, to best friends, to soulmates just makes my heart go !!!! - Also they have insane chemistry, and that certainly doesn’t hurt. What attracts me to them now is much the same, but also how much they care about each other. They’d go to the ends of the earth to save one another, and it just blows me away how powerful their screen time is, even when their scenes together have become so rare. I also don’t thinkI’m ever getting over 6x10. I swear my heart actually stopped beating when I watched it live the first time. 

BESIDES Bellarke, what character or pairing do you like best on t100? Ha! Umm, I actually really like Murven, both platonically and romantically. Their journey might not be as well developed as Bellarke’s but it is still a powerful one hinging on love and forgiveness. I love how Lindsey/Richard play off of each other on screen - it’s such a joy to watch! I’ve also loved the Octavia/Indra dynamic, but it’s kinda been tabled in recent seasons which is sad :(

why did you decide to start writing for bellarkefic-for-blm? Two reasons - 1) I wanted to do everything I could for BLM and it was so amazing that I could do that, and write works for my favorite show! 2) I was super curious about the prompts people would send in. My work right now is a modern day AU COVID fic where Bellamy and Clarke have to share a room together in an overcrowded hospital until one day Clarke disappears. It’s so different than what I usually write - bc I almost always write canon compliant/in universe fics - so it’s a nice challenge!

what’s your writing process like? Honestly it depends. For long/multi-chapter fics I try to plan out as much of it as I can, characters, plot, important moments, etc - even though I am not very good at planning. But for one-shots I tend to go off of emotion or feelings. Usually when I write one-shots, it’s because a particular line or moment in a book/movie/show really spoke out to me, and spurred this idea in my head. I always start with the line I want to get to at the heart of the fic and then write around it from there. I am definitely much more of a panster than a planner- which is why one-shots work much better for me!

what are some things you’d like to recommend? 1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Also, All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuinston, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz. 2. Musicals! They can be amazing inspiration - my favorites are Les Mis, Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Six, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Hadestown, Anastasia, Island Song, Newsies, & Tuck Everlasting! 3. TV Shows besides The 100 - Anne with an E, Shadowhunters (just pretend you haven’t read the books), French SKAM, Love Victor, HSMTMTS, Merlin, Lucifer, I think I’m just listing fandoms at this point 😂

Also, almost any Taylor Swift, Troye Sivan, Conan Gray, Dua Lipa, Emma Blackery or Harry Styles songs are amazing!

My handle is the same for everything - Twitter, Tumblr, Ao3, Wattpad (if anyone still uses that anymore), etc (RavenReyes0G). I also run a book review blog on Instagram which is @betweenthepagesandtea, so feel free to check that out too! Request a fic written by her via @bellarkefic-for-blm!

[hermannsthumb]

Can you do winter prompt 13 obvious setups?

13. my family invites you to join our holiday meal as an obvious setup and i’m so sorry

from winter writing prompts here

GOD i was so FUCKIN obsessed with this prompt when u sent it in, thank u so much. consider this the remix fic of 45. your family ditches you for the holiday so i take you home with me, except my family thinks we’re dating now

--------------------------------------------------------

“I swear,” Newt says, “I didn’t know.”

Hermann--suitcase at his side in an iron grip, snow still melting off the shoulders of his parka, splotchy red spreading across his cheeks--scowls at Newt like Newt’s just dug up his mother’s grave or something equally unforgivable. Newt shrinks away instinctively. “You cannot be serious,” Hermann says. “You must have known.”

The situation in question is this: intimately aware of Hermann’s famously bad relationship with a good chunk of his family, and how it’s likely to have only gotten worse after the whole Breach collapse Hermann-was-right-and-your-wall-was-stupid-and-wrong thing, Newt decided to take one for the proverbial team and just invite Hermann ‘round to his place for low key holiday celebrations this year. The alternative was ditching Hermann in the mostly deserted Hong Kong Shatterdome and listen to his dad guilt him about it for two weeks. Not that Newt would need any help feeling guilty; he knew for a fact that if he did ditch Hermann, Hermann would just be up all hours of the night in LOCCENT monitoring the late location of the Breach and missing Newt.

Newt wasn’t being sentimental, either. Hermann really would miss him like Newt was a limb that’d been lobbed off. Lingering side effects of their drift (even all these months later) has made it difficult for them to be even a few miles away from each other, let alone a fucking ocean. Luckily reluctant co-dependency isn’t new for them.

So Hermann agreed. Newt’s dad was just thrilled. He seemed to take it as confirmation of his decade-long suspicions that Newt and Hermann desperately want to be more than lab partners but are too chicken to make a move (as he explained eloquently over the phone to Newt, while Newt spluttered and protested) and ran with it, to Newt’s horror. Especially to his horror now.

His dad’s only done up one bed--one full-sized, dinosaur-patterned bed--for Newt and Hermann to share.

“Look,” Newt says, even though he knows what he’s about to say is a blatant lie, “it’s gotta be a mistake. We’ve got a sorta-guest room down the hall, I bet my dad meant for you to go there.”

“I certainly hope so,” Hermann sniffs.

Newt takes Hermann’s suitcase from him and books it down the hallway, and Hermann clacks angrily behind him. The sorta-guest room is classified as such because of the lumpy cot they kept in there for when Newt’s uncle would visit, though the bulk of it contained mostly junk, overstuffed bookshelves, and a desk Newt used to grow weird plants on in a fish tank. The tank (Newt discovers when he pushes the door open) is still there. The cot is not.

God damn it. “Dad,” he calls, while Hermann continues to seethe. “Hey, Dad?”

Nothing. Then, finally: “Yes?”

“Where’s the cot?”

Footsteps up the stairs. Dad pokes his head around the doorframe. “Cot?”

Newt sighs. “The cot we used to keep in here,” he says. “Hermann needs a place to sleep. Or I do, at least,” he adds, turning to Hermann, “you can take my bed--the cot’s not super comfortable.” The room never had very good ventilation, either. Hermann will just wake up shivering from the lack of heat with a stiff knee every morning, which means, thanks to drift hangover, Newt will too, and then they’ll both be miserable. At least Newt’s got a bit more meat on his bones.

“Oh, I tossed it out years ago,” Dad says. “Too old. It was falling apart.” Newt spies the beginnings of a smile beneath his beard, even as he feigns confusion. (God, he is so not getting a Father’s Day card next year). “Is there something wrong with your bedroom, Newt?”

“Uh, yeah,” Newt says. He shoves Hermann’s suitcase back at him just to fold his arms angrily. “Whatever, I’ll just sleep on the couch.” It’s a pullout. He thinks. It’ll be better than curling up on the carpet in his room or contending with Dr. Icicle Feet Blanket Hogger of the Year--stuff he only knows also thanks to the drift, okay, he and Hermann don’t make a habit of sleeping together. In both senses.

“But where will your poor uncle sleep?” Dad says. His smile grows.

Right. Illia’s already claimed the couch. Newt takes Hermann’s suitcase back. “Fine. I’ll dig out my stupid Boy Scouts sleeping bag and take the carpet. Hermann--”

“Newton,” Hermann interrupts. He looks slightly embarrassed. “Ah. That really isn’t necessary. I suppose we can manage to make your bed work.”

“Great,” Newt says.

“Great!” Dad says. He slaps Hermann so hard on the back that Hermann squeaks and sways on his feet.

Newt clears away some space in his old dresser--which is easy, since his fashion tastes haven’t evolved from when he was seventeen, and he took most of his clothing with him to the Shatterdome in the first place--and he and Hermann unpack their suitcases with relative ease. Or at least Newt unpacks their suitcases with relative ease. Claiming fatigue from their terribly long journey, Hermann lounges on Newt’s bed with his collar undone, like the picture of Victorian debauchery, and watches him. Frankly, though, Newt prefers the bossy little orders to his previous whining about their sleeping situation, so he’s happy to do it. Mostly. “You haven’t folded that sweater correctly,” Hermann says.

“It literally doesn’t matter,” Newt says. “It fits, and that’s all I care about.” He shuts the drawer to prove his point.

“It matters to me,” Hermann says. “I’ll know it’s not folded, and it’ll bother me.”

Newt grits his teeth. He opens the drawer. He folds Hermann’s sweater.

“There, was that so terribly difficult?” Hermann says.

He stretches his arms above his head, and nestles back against Newt’s stack of pillows with a soft groan that makes Newt’s witty, sarcastic retort shrivel and die on his tongue. Hermann can be awfully, uh...sensual for a guy with a bowlcut. “You really have got quite a comfortable bed,” Hermann murmurs. “I could fall asleep right now. Mm.”

Newt kicks the drawer shut again and flops down next to him. They do both fit, at least, though they’ll be bumping elbows and legs for sure. “It’s the most average bed of all time,” he says. He grins. “It just feels like it isn’t because it’s not one of those fucking cement slabs we have back at the base.”

Hermann makes a face. “I won’t be happy to get back to those.”

“Yeah,” Newt agrees. 

He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. The little plastic glow-in-the-dark stars he pasted up there when he was twelve are still going strong, though the Lego spaceship he strung up with fishing twine is long-gone. Probably fell and broke into a million little pieces over a decade ago. “I’m sorry about this, by the way,” he says. “The, uh, sleeping situation. My dad...”

He trails off. Hermann crooks an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“He thinks that we,” Newt says, and swallows, “I mean, like--he wants us to...” To admit they dig each other? To get hitched and have, like, a half-dozen genius physicist-biologist babies? Be happy together? It’s not as if Newt doesn’t want those things with Hermann. (Well, maybe not the genius baby thing. He can wait a while for that.) “It’s just, I’m an only child, you know, and my mom’s out of the picture, and I think he thinks that I need--”

Newt’s saved by a knock at the bedroom door. “Dinner!” Dad says.

It turns out it was only temporary salvation. The moment he and Hermann take their seats at the tiny dining table--seats which are, for some reason, crammed together at one side, when there’s a whole fourth perfectly fine one just sitting there empty--and heaping mounds of everything are piled onto Hermann’s plate (too skinny, Dad says with a sigh, and Hermann only looks mildly offended), Dad and Illia start giving them the third degree. Yes, Hermann was born in Germany; no, he hasn’t spent any significant time there since university, though he supposes he wouldn’t mind going back at some point; yes, a lot of the original jaeger coding was of his own design; yes, he and Newt have shared a lab for the entirety of their time in Hong Kong, and before that in the various Shatterdomes they were shuttled between, and-- “Er, no,” Hermann says, “no, Newton is an--ah--exemplary lab partner, what makes you say...?”

“I raised him, Hermann,” Dad says.

Hermann’s mouth twitches up. “He’s the messiest man I have met in my entire life,” he says. “You ought to see the sort of rubbish he used to leave around--kaiju intestines, blood--oh, and there was one time he left a piece of dead skin louse on the coffee maker--”

“Hey, I’ve gotten better!” Newt says around a mouthful of potatoes. “Last week you didn’t even have to ask me to clean up all that venom I spilled on your desk.” He was proud of himself for doing it as fast as he did. A minute more, and it probably would’ve eaten through to the top drawer. Hermann was less enthused.

“And it only took you half a decade,” Hermann says. “Well done, Newton. If the kaijus ever return, perhaps you’ll have learned to operate a broom by then.”

He takes a smug little sip of his wine that he quickly coughs up into a cloth napkin when Illia--apropos of nothing--says “Are you married, Hermann?”

“Ah.” Hermann coughs a few more times, and wipes at his eyes. Newt suddenly becomes very interested in his plate. “No. I am not.”

“Seeing anyone?” Dad says.

“Dad,” Newt groans, shrinking down in his chair. If he’s lucky, and thinks very hard about it, maybe the Breach will reopen right beneath him and he’ll be tossed into an alternate dimension where Otachi ate him after all and he never had to sit through this conversation.

“No,” Hermann repeats. “I--no.”

Dad and Illia share a satisfied glance. “Our little Newt was always quite a handful,” Dad says, “but--”

No helpful Breach comes to swallow him whole, so Newt resorts to his back-up plan, which is smacking Hermann’s glass of wine off the table and into his lap as Hermann shouts in surprise. “Shit,” Newt says, too-loud, “looks like we gotta get that cleaned up, Hermann--c’mon, here we go--”

He shoves Hermann’s cane into his arms, and then proceeds to shove Hermann down the hallway until they reach the bathroom. Hermann’s glower has returned with a vengeance. “You utter buffoon,” he keeps saying, while Newt (crouched on the floor) dabs at his newly-burgundy pants with a wet handtowel, “you moron, you wretched little--”

“I’m sorry, okay,” Newt half-shrieks. He throws the handtowel to the ground as he stands. His ears are still burning red-hot from the table, and his sudden close proximity to Hermann--noses barely an inch from each other, so close Newt can smell wine on his breath and count every last dark eyelash that frames his soft eyes--isn’t helping matters at all. “What else was I supposed to do? I panicked!”

“These were my best slacks,” Hermann says, “and now--”

“You have a dozen just like them,” Newt says, “two dozen. Three dozen. I just fucking folded them all!”

“Stop shouting,” Hermann says.

“Make me!” Newt shouts.

“I bloody will!” Hermann shouts back, and then he grabs Newt by his tie and kisses him. 

When they emerge from the bathroom and take their seats fifteen minutes later, Hermann with his collar suspiciously askew, Newt with his own buttoned suspiciously higher than it was going in, Dad and Illia pointedly say nothing.

Hermann pours himself a new glass of wine and clears his throat. “What, ah, what were we discussing?”

[hiddendreamer67]

Original Character List

I present to you, something Legendary! 😄 It’s so cute, like, oh my gosh, heh, hi! 

Guess what- I have Original Characters now! I’m listing them here to introduce you guys to the handful that exist already, because later I’m going to reblog a prompt list or two and I’m hoping to write some oneshots/drabbles with them to help my with character, plot, and world development. ☺️ 

Btw this world is totally gonna have gt elements but ironically everyone I’ve created so far is human-sized!  😅 And also I’m putting this list under a cut so that as I add people I can list them here as well. (And disclaimer, this is my initial ideas for these peeps, they still have the potential to evolve and change).

Human Characters

Prince Valentine, I think youngest son? - One of the princes in the TBD main human kingdom. The fae and mortals have been in an everlasting state of unrest and war for a long time now, and Valentine gets the idea to try out diplomacy. He hears of Garth/Cam’s friendship and decides to send them out since clearly they know what they’re doing! (They don’t.) Valentine is very energetic and a bit air-headed, he’s also ignorant in a lot of viewpoints because he was raised to believe fae are wild beasts and wants to control them. Later on he’ll get better and realize “Hey fae are people too...ish.” His family thinks his diplomacy mission is foolish but don’t care because he’s not sticking his own neck out.

Cornelius, prince’s main adviser- This wizard(?) is pretty much the only one in the entire castle who actually believes in this diplomacy mission and also is the only one keeping an eye on Valentine. He basically makes sure Garth and Cam are equipped with enough knowledge to not immediately die and helps filter missions as best he can.

Noemi, witch at the edge of the woods- She lives at a different edge than the Thornton family. I don’t know a lot about her yet except that she’s a mostly self-taught witch with a best fae friend (girlfriend?) named Witch Hazel. 

(I think the Thornton family all live in a house on the edge of town near a forest that was -recently?- inhabited by some of the flower fae)

Perth Thornton, father- Not much developed for him yet.

Marabelle Thornton, mother - Not much developed for her either! But both parents are at least alive.

Quill Thornton, eldest son - Perfect boy, start child, parent’s favorite. Sometimes siblings are jealous of him because of attention but they love him too because this guy is obnoxious in there’s not really a reason to hate him. The strong, brotherly type who volunteers around town to help others and is a good leader but listens more than he speaks. Fae relations unclear, I think flower fae generally like him too but idk how he feels about fae.

Bentley Thornton, second oldest son - He’s a good boy too, wants to be an academic but that’s not really in the family line of work. He’s more concerned w/ logistics than the rest of his family which can turn him into a frustrated/stressed wreck since he’s just trying to keep everything in check and good lord why am I the only rational sibling. Flower fae call him Sparrow because his heart always speeds up like a lil’ bird when they’re around since he’s naturally weary.

Garth Thornton, middle child - He’s the main character human, or he’s intended to be. He’s snarky. Spent a long while as the youngest kid and especially now that there’s a new baby he gets sorta left to his own devices, so naturally he ended up accidentally befriending a fae named Cam in the woods. He’s generally distrustful of fae and can feel like the only normal one who gets thrown or tugged into magical dangerous adventures. Flower fae call him Germ- that’s a fun story. ;) 

Posie Thornton, newborn baby sister -  She’s adorable and a baby. Flower fae call her Bud or Blossom because they love her and want her to be one of them so they basically lowkey made her an honorary flower. 

Fae Characters

So an important note: I haven’t fully developed all of the creatures and beings in this universe (feel free to ask if there’s any certain types or categories afoot & where they’d fall), but basically one category is the fae, who basically encompass all natural spirits and come in a variety of physical forms & sizes. There’s a lot of lore w/ fae in play but a big one is Names have power so you gotta use some sort of nickname.

The Winter Vale, King of Winter- Vale is a very powerful fae, controlling all of the winter court. He’s cold-hearted and a real awful dude. He has a few children he repeatedly neglects (@Thistle) and is known for stealing away flower fae to be his stolen brides and bring a spot of color to his chilly domain until inevitably they fade or he gets bored or they run away. Oof. 

Gaia, Queen of Spring- This is the mother of all flower fae; basically, Gaia slept around with pretty much every male fae and that’s why there are a million daughters. She did this because normally Spring can be weaker than Winter, but in large numbers she grew in power and children are more affiliated with whatever parent has more royal blood (so even if she weds a winter, the child will fall in the Spring Court). 

Flower Fae- lil’ bit o’ lore

The flower fae are a sub-branch of Fae; flower fae are all sisters, and they each call each other by a given flower name. They’re basically a lil’ cult of children; by nature, flower fae are curious and giggly and love to play games. Also flower fae are independent beings in that they can have their own outlooks on thing like, say, their opinion on mortals, but inherently they all share this sort of sisterly bond and are inclined to view other sisters fondly. (That comes into play especially w/ sisters spread across the globe, which should not be a thing b/c they thrive on togetherness but yeah some flower fae are kinda everywhere now? Also they aren’t immortal as in they’ve existed forever, they are born from a garden thing and they do have an age order and idk how many are in existence currently but they’re only limited in number by the amount of flower names I can discover. No way in hell have I characterized them all yet.)

Camellia (Cam), flower fae- This is my main girl, she’s the one who somehow manages to befriend Garth and sneak her way into his stony heart. Cam is the youngest of the flower fae when we meet her. She grows attached to Garth and basically becomes an overexcited puppy going on adventures. She’s occasionally viewed as a lil’ sister until she pulls some powerful magic out and everyone’s like “oh yeah nvm she can hold her own”. She’s easily distracted especially when it comes to being serious or mortal affairs. Also she’s got some natural weaknesses like cold and iron are not good for her so she turns a jittery mess in cities and a sleepy mess in the snow.

Uva Ursi, flower fae- She’s a lot more bristly than flower fae are typically known for (at least from Garth’s perspective), but she means well. Was separated from several of her sisters a long time ago but adapted well to the cold. Has a little bit of control over winter elements, due to her relations with The Winter Vale. She was his bride to replace Nightshade and certainly has a complicated past and somehow ended up in the desert for a bit.

Nightshade, flower fae- A previous flower fae gone rogue/evil, basically she was a bride to Vale and managed to escape but went insane. She’s now an assassin and I don’t know all the details but is very encouraging of getting flower fae to join her... cause? Basically it’s a rebel flower fae group who just want to mess life up for others and get vengeance.

Baby’s Breath, flower fae- The true infant of the sisterhood; she’s born after Camellia and is the epitome of ‘baby’. 

Thistle, flower fae- Daughter of Vale and Gaia (King of Winter and Queen of Spring). She is the only flower fae who actually falls into the Winter Court, and as such is accepted by neither. Has SEVERE daddy issues because her father will never accept or love her. But, on a more surface level note, she’s a mischievous little sprite who’s very sarcastic and snarky.

Rose, flower fae- She is the. First. Flower fae, and will never let you forget it. There is a whole clan of ‘roses’ (Primrose, Petite rose, Tea rose, etc.) but Rose is THE Rose. She’s very vain, and thinks she’s mom’s favorite; that might actually be true. Rose does love her sisters but she is not nearly as devoted to them all as is typical of flower fae.

Lily, flower fae- She’s another original flower fae who has a clan of her own  (Tiger Lily, Calla Lily, etc.) but is not nearly as iconic as Rose. She does tend to be a good motherly figure for the flower fae still in the home garden, especially since Gaia is not an attentive mother. At the very least she’s a responsible older sister.

Witch Hazel, flower fae- Hazel found the human witch Noemi and pretty much instantly fell in love (romantically or platonically tbd), so much so that she decided to leave the flower fae sisterhood behind to stay permanently with Noemi and only occasionally comes back to visit. She’s very sweet and a bit uneducated but still wants to do whatever she can to help her witch succeed.

Azalea, flower fae- Way down the road, this is Bentley’s fae girlfriend! In the meantime though, she’s an older sister of Cam’s who’s a bit of a brash, sassy personality but she means well. Is actually a bit nervous about the idea of Cam going into the world of mortals.

...I think that’s everything? Kinda info dumped there, I hope this was at least interesting for some of you. Thank you for reading this list! Feel free to send me any questions you have or let me know if something was unclear!

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 1

Biological Change

One argument advanced by those who accept (or, rather, who believe) the theory of evolution against those who believe in creation is this: ‘We put forward certain concepts related to evolution, right or wrong, for the sake of enabling and informing scientific understanding. But you merely refuse and refute this effort. You ignore a lot of biological facts, such as adaptation and natural selection, in order to deny evolution, but you can neither interpret those facts, nor offer any alternative ideas in a persuasively scientific manner.’

By answering this argument we shall show that we do indeed accept the same biological facts, but do not agree about the ‘laws’ which try to explain them, nor about the limits and qualifications for the operation of those ‘laws’.

Unlike other Scriptures which claim Divine authority, there is no proposition in the Qur’an which can be contradicted by established scientific knowledge as untrue. The Qur’an does not underestimate the importance of reflection and argument, but it does indicate that our suppositions about the origin of creation cannot explain the reality of it: we simply were not present there.

I called them not to witness the creation of the heavens and the earth, nor their own creation: Nor is it for Me to take as helpers such as lead (men) astray (al-Kahf 18.51).

This verse should not be interpreted to mean ‘Do not ask questions or do not research’, for the Qur’an encourages scientific research explicitly. It is, rather, a warning about those who vainly claim to explain the phenomena which happen outside the normal course of events and cannot be described in terms of material causes and effects. Since the creation is the great, inclusive miracle, human beings can neither imitate it (that is, they cannot create out of nothing) nor explain it. To attribute the creation to God makes everything plausible and saves scientific inquiry from fruitless uncertainties and insecure speculations. To understand the basic principles of the reality of creation is most important. If they are properly understood, useful and worthwhile aspects of the theory of evolution can be sifted out from pretentious and false interpretations of it. For, in every idea, even if it is against common sense in general, there are some elements of truth. The biological facts, rightly so called, such as variation, adaptation, natural selection and mutation, in evolution theory, should be differentiated from the ideological and metaphysical baggage they have accumulated.

In our approach, evolution may be described as the changes and variations in the form of creatures, especially in living beings, and the genetic and environmental factors associated with those changes. We do not assert that living beings are fixed and unchangeable in their forms. To claim that would imply a limitation upon the knowledge and power of God which is contradictory to His Names, the All-Knowing and the All-Powerful. The creation reflects His Names through its novelty within renewal, its prolific variety amid abundance. Individual diversity is programmed into the genetic mechanisms which, as they unfold and evolve under the prompting of environmental factors, display (for our admiration and understanding) the action in the world of Divine grace and power. The many hundreds of apples on a single tree are not identical, nor are they identical over different seasons-they are only similar. Thus, the first emphasis in our definition of the concept of evolution is change which is vital for the maintenance of ecological diversity and balance.

To paraphrase the Qur’an: God imposes the law of change and evolution as a basic principle in the universe. In the enforcement of this law, He creates pairs and opposites which, interacting according to subtle purposes, are placed in the core of every being. Thus, the change-dependent evolution and the dynamic balance in the universe, have been realized through the intersection of the opposites continually since the outset of creation. There are many verses in the Qur’an (for example in Chapter 55, al-Rahman) which indicate change and balance.

The ideologues of evolution theory, however, ignore the Divine wisdom, measure and purpose in the universe, claiming that the change they observe is an effect of coincidences-random variations, aimless mutations.

In the light of recent findings, we know the apparent causes of change to be mutations, which are the hereditary alternations in the genetic information; the differentiation of an isolated population from its ancestor through multiplying inside the population; adaptation and so-called ‘natural selection’, that is the decrease or extinction of generations which are weak and unable to reproduce in their immediate environment.

Believers in the One God affirm that everything, from subatomic particles to galaxies, is created by Him, that He is Omniscient and Omnipotent, and everything acts under His will and command. Causes are created by God in the appropriate time and space and the appropriate order and combination as a sort of veil for His dignity and might. He only says ‘Be!’, and all the material causes, such as heat, moisture, air, chemical elements, radiation, etc., are. If such causes are seen in this way, if their being brought together into an order is understood to be a response to their need (their prayer) to participate in a collaborative universe-and if their being causes is confirmed by observations and experiments-then, we may regard causes as a useful way to explain biological phenomena.

We know that diversity in a species is realized through mutations in the genetic program, arranged by Divine wisdom, not by coincidence. The evolutionist idea that the mutations are arbitrary, that useful changes can occur by sheer chance and lead to the development of a living being, or that a lot of random mutations can accumulate to enable a sudden leap from one species to another, has not been confirmed by experiments and observations. To accept that the mutations are arbitrary interferences in the genetic order is like accepting that a rocket can be generated out of a sound aircraft by raking it randomly with machine-gun fire. Certainly, computer-aided probability calculations show that it is impossible for thousands of random mutations to accumulate on a living being and change it into another species. Any such change is manifestly against that organism’s survival and would have to overwhelm it suddenly, not gradually.

Some bacteria can be given the ability to synthesize insulin by means of genetic engineering. This is a kind of planned mutation. Such a transfer of ability is, though remarkable, a relatively small change: it is, in any case, only possible because of the relevant ability being present in the genetic material being transferred. It is sheer arrogance to claim that living beings having millions of such able genes have evolved from each other by arbitrary, random mutations.

Adaptation is a biological manifestation of the flexibility coded into the genetic programs of living organisms; it carries the potential, within the limits of the species, for the organism to survive in changing conditions and to sustain that survival through reproduction.

When environmental conditions change, responsive adaptations occur- e.g. change of colour or density of hair, size of ears-in proportion to the flexibility of the organism’s genetic potential. If the organism cannot adapt adequately, the species does not mutate into some new species, it goes extinct. That is what happened, we presume, to dinosaurs and dodos.

The diversity of various human races can also be explained by the flexibility of their genetic potentials in response to different geographical, climatic and environmental conditions, provided, as before, that the changes are contained within species boundaries. Intermarriages between the various races add to the diversity within the species boundaries, they do not yield another species. The working of genetic potential can also be seen in the way that insects adapt to pesticides, and certain bacteria acquire a nearly invincible resistance to particular antibiotics. Insects or bacteria become more resistant, but they do not become different species. Their potential for adaptation is understood, by believers, as a power to survive given to them by Divine Wisdom.

We do not wholly reject the concept of natural selection. However, it is necessary to criticize the extreme interpretation evolutionists make of it. First of all, there is not an absolute ‘cruel competition’ in nature which the strong dominate absolutely, nor a pitiless ‘selection’ process of exterminating rivals in the struggle for food (survival). Rather, there is a dynamic balance among the great variety of creatures which is characterized, overall, by mutual collaboration and solidarity. The killing of weak creatures by the stronger ones is not random, nor characterized by a drive to exterminate and monopolize resources for survival. On the contrary, it is, overall, purposive and beneficial. Predators prey, generally, on weak and sick animals, and this ‘selects’ the fit and healthy for survival and, quite probably, prevents epidemics within and between species. Also, it is manifestly obvious that the apparent ‘competition’ in nature is the outward face of a subtle and complex feeding chain which is vital for the overall balance of the ecosystem, providing niches for great numbers of species, not least those which feed on the left-overs of others thus cleansing and purifying the food-chain.

Another factor affecting natural selection is the difference in rates of breeding. One bacterium multiplies by millions in one day, a fly by thousands in two days. Vertebrates, except fish and amphibians on the other hand, breed far more slowly. From the base of the food pyramid to the top, the production of food increases in quality but decreases in mass, and consequently a lot of tiny living organisms are the food of larger ones. The difference in breeding rates among members of the same species causes rapid multiplying of a certain group, but not the change of its species. An organism with many young has more opportunity to survive in changing environmental conditions, because when the number of its young increases, so too do the combinations of genetic characters. Even after drastic environmental changes, a few may survive.

The concepts used by evolutionists used to explain biological realities have a merely nominal reality, they are far from being ultimate causes. Attributing reality or, worse, Divine power to concepts which can be useful only for building mental models, and ignoring the knowledge, might and eternal wisdom of the Creator, means binding our hearts and minds to nature, like nature-worshippers and polytheists generally.

[fuse2dx]

July ‘20

Final Fantasy 7: Remake

Straight to it: this game is gorgeous. It’s the closest thing to playing a CG movie that I think I’ve ever experienced. Heck, it sounds great too - not that everything is perfect, but it’s clear that the sound team have been given a pretty wide remit to try new, weird, and wonderful ideas out with the original’s motifs and themes - which I have a lot of time for. Split out almost any given moment from its 40-hour runtime, and it’s really something to behold. 

Where it all gets a bit more mixed for me is in how much it’s weighed down by its own ambitions, and the trappings of AAA game design. Intentionally slow walk-and-talk sections, shimmying through narrow gaps, climbing ladders, and balancing across long beams all do their best to stifle your momentum and mask the load times for the grand scenes they usher in. Rather than the varied and open world of the FF7 you remember, this is an exhaustive deep dive into the tiniest part of that world, creating new stories out of it, but ultimately prompting a constant re-treading of environments in the process, ones that are already pretty repetitive in their look and feel. That big wide world you want to explore is tantalisingly out of reach, instead holding you to a linear run of cut scenes and set piece battles with the occasional hub for side quests. Having the entire game voiced means that for every scene that’s enhanced with by a particularly powerful performance, there’s a multitude more that are bogged down in daft, over-egged nonsense. 

The change from traditional JRPG battles to more action-based combat is a bit more subjective; characters control in pleasingly different ways, there’s clearly some depth to how party and materia configurations influence your outcomes, and it certainly helps demonstrate this heightened level of visual flair - but it’s got plenty of room for improvement. The camera clings far too closely to your character, and when locked on, really struggles to keep up in a lot of instances. While some enemy attacks are telegraphed, they’re easily missed from as a result of these failings. Sufficiently rough beat-downs can prove difficult to recover from too, in light of its rather restrictive re-imagining of what the ATB system should mean in a real-time situation.

It all feels very elaborate and self-celebratory, and not surprisingly so given how rabid the demand for its existence was in the first place. I’m all for a bit of change, and while I enjoyed a lot of it, so much of it hangs on what comes next - and I can’t help but worry that this project as a whole is an over-commitment. 

Streets of Rage 4

Given the first three games in the series released within a 3 year window, and it’s now been over 25 years since, it’s perhaps not the most surprising revelation to find this newest title heralds the biggest changes that the series has seen to date. Love it or hate it, there’s a very distinct, very modern visual style, and no amount of ‘Retro CRT’ filter is going to bring back your beloved pixels as you remember them. That’s not to say the visuals won’t create a similar impression on you, but as it happens, I’ve seen enough to know there’s a pretty broad church of opinion on what a modern Streets of Rage game should look like. It’s a similar tale with the audio; the original games are often held up as the pinnacle of what was possible with the Megadrive’s sound chip, and while plenty of inspiration has been taken from these cuts, there’s a much wider range of instrumentation and sequencing complexity that’s become possible with modern sound processing. Some tracks stand out, whereas others blend more into the background, but in general it fits well. Is it as bleeding-edge cool as the originals sounded at the time? Perhaps not. Does it still capture that Streets of Rage magic? It’s a damn good shot.

Aesthetics aside, characters stomp about with good weight, feel delightfully unique in how they are best played, and both giving and taking hits feels really chunky and convincing. Moves chain into one another nicely, and juggling works well; there’s plenty of opportunity to showboat with good usage of situational specials and environmental features without too much opportunity for thing to become silly. There’s a nice range of stages, and a complete run poses a well balanced challenge. A good range of modes and features make this stand out as a generous blend of old and new, and in total you end up with a pretty great product overall. I like it a lot. 

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2

Supposedly put together on a pretty tight schedule, it’s no surprise that we found out about this only about a month before it launched. Unsurprising too, that it’s not much evolved from the first title. Zangetsu returns as lead, but supported by a new cast of companions, and eventually, in worst-kept-secret style, the rest of the first game’s cast too (they’re in the trailer, for heaven’s sake). The game’s eight levels are set out with multiple paths, designed intentionally to let different groups of these characters use their unique traversal powers to steer you down different routes - and while preferable to a totally linear setup, that’s not to say it changes things up enough to not get a little tiresome, either. Bosses do have harder variations in some modes but are not always the most fun to re-visit in the first place, given they vary wildly in challenge stakes, and are often best handled by experimenting with different character’s sub weapons until you find the one that’s exploitable. Chances are, turning on Hachi’s invincibility and just tanking your way through everything will do just that. 

Moment to moment things are still fun enough - particularly when you get in the spirit of things and experiment with different characters, rather than brute forcing your way through every scenario with the same one. The soundtrack isn’t quite as memorable, but is still plenty enjoyable. Despite the feeling that little’s new, it’s still a worthy release, and a good way to keep Bloodstained relevant in lieu of what’s likely to be a much longer development cycle before we see a proper follow-up to Ritual of the Night. 

Mother Russia Bleeds

A scrolling brawler it may be, but after the gloss Streets of Rage 4, it’s clear the two couldn’t be any further out of step tonally. The plot sits on top of an alt-1980s Russia, and revolves around a group of Romani street fighters out for revenge after being taken forcibly from their camp to be used as guinea pigs for a highly addictive, hallucinogenic drug... that just happens to grant them super-human strength. Smooth and sanitised this is not; the pixels are out in full force, and gritty, needle-fuelled ultra-violent thuggery is the order of the day. The tutorial running you through its range of moves is a succinct highlighting of this, where the first time you kneel in front of and pummel a blood-soaked opponent to death is handled in a way that’s genuinely quite striking, and yet is but is utterly inconsequential as you move on to fight your next. Weapons just crank this up tenfold, with chainsaws, grenades, rifles and the like having results akin to their real-world equivalents - with environments often left as a bloody mess of corpses, rather than a pretty picture with the aftermath faded from view.

The action is fast, almost frantic at first impression, but after some time adjusting, it begins to feel much more by intention, and manageable too. There’s a few options to mix up your combo endings - like pushing people back, or launching for a few more hits, but make no mistake that you’ll be focused more on crowd control by numbers rather than finesse. There’s a few neat ideas coming out of some of the game’s set pieces, and bosses are typically less dependent on your typical straight-up fighting skill, instead relying on your ability to determine the mechanical gimmicks needed to beat them - and this leads to them breaking things up nicely. The lack of one-on-one finesse might have been an initial detractor, but as the battles became bigger, and the stages became more interesting, I felt like the game came far more into its own. The game’s hard cocktail of downtrodden types pushed through a backdrop of sex, drugs, and violence feels a little too try-hard in places - and one does wonder how closely the team involved had been looking at Devolver’s other output before pursuing the theme - but it doesn’t take too much away from what’s actually a pretty refreshing example of this type of game.

[shealwaysreads]

WIP Monday

Okay so it’s Tuesday - what’re you gonna do?

Tagged by the lovely @tackytigerfic​ and @tepre​ who both apparently are happy to ask me to expose myself as a dirty great WIP hoarder. 

My writing muse has rapidly evolved from a timid little creature into some kind of obsessive dragon. I blame all of you.

If you see something you like - come and yell at me about it - I need the motivation because none of these have deaaaaadlines!

So, exposure and accountability, here I come:

Recently finished: a little ditty inspired by @potter-art​‘s glorious leather-clad Draco. Call me a fandom cliche but I couldn’t resist: it’s here if you fancy a peep!

Onto the actual WIPS:

The Loch fic: Currently at 14k - a love letter to Scotland, to survival, and what it means to be honest - in which I make D&H submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known. Spoiler alert: they hate it.

Excerpt: It had been five years and four months since the fall of Voldemort.

It had been five years and two months since Draco was defined by law as a ��child soldier’ and saved from vengeful punishment under hasty legislative changes made in the wake of a truly stupendous display of impassioned debate on the part of Hermione Granger, and the crackling storm of barely restrained power that was Harry Potter standing at her right shoulder. Even if half the Wizengamot weren’t convinced that sending a seventeen year old to Azkaban was morally dubious, they were certainly confident enough that Harry Potter might casually obliterate them just like he had the most powerful dark wizard their world had seen in a generation if they didn’t vote unanimously in Granger’s favour.

It had been five years and twenty-five days since he walked back into Hogwarts for his Eighth Year, his second chance; every shred of bigotry and fancied superiority ground into dust by the vicious contrast between Voldemort’s lunatic sadism, and Potter’s savage compassion. Terror, humiliation, gratitude, and searing, aching regret had scoured Draco’s personality to the bone. 

The one with Unspeakable Draco: 200 words of ‘Bella woke from dozing at midnight with the crystal clear aesthetic of “bamf!powerful!sexy!Harry” (direct quote, yes, don't laugh) and then strung some vague plot points around the notion. Peril! Magical theory! Unspeakable Hermione! Dark Magic!

The BDSM fic(s): Yes. Fics plural. Because I have two very distinct head canons about how drarry would go kinky, and it requires two fics. Butterfly-wings. The same but different. One with Dom Harry/sub Draco, and the other with the opposite. I have a lot of feelings about BDSM in general, and more about drarry and BDSM. 

No official words yet, but 600 words of thinky-thoughts and concepts.

The Goblin fic: Post-war, goblins, reparations - who owes who? 

The one with lawyer Draco: An idea I’ve had on the back-burner for months now - Harry realising quite how regressive the Wizarding legal system is in the wake of the war, and finding an unlikely ally for reform in one Draco Malfoy, barrister.

Original fic: Shamefully neglected over the last couple of months, I’ve been up to my elbows in fests - but I’ll be back on it after Christmas! 30k and a mile of world-building that will never make it into the book!

Hozier prompt game: I saw Mr Hozier this September (and fell in love with every member of his band) and just - every fucking song is such a drarry vibe okay? - SO I’ll be doing a prompt thing for the first time ever. Look out for it and prompt me, else I’ll look a right twat, yeah? 😉

Now I’ve so thoroughly exposed myself - I’m gonna make the rest of you do it!

Tagging: @dualwieldteacup​ @clotpolesonly​ @fictional​ @tedahfromtayla​ @quicksilvermaid​ @malenkayacherepakha​ @keyflight790​ @tsundanire​ @maesterchill​ @lemonbuncake​ @coriesocks​ @drarryruinedme7​ @diligent-thunder​

I also tag YOU reader - join me ❤️

[dwellordream]

I'd love a directors commentary for all of "my heart is a fist of barbed wire", but there's so many chapters (really, really good ones gah) so chapter 32 "ring" would be fascinating to hear your take on, it really ties into the last couple chapters and is still so shocking?! I really enjoyed it, thank youu!! ♥️

thank you!  i remember going into chapter 32 i was just so worn down from the fic (as much as I enjoyed writing it) that I was kind of dreading having to wrap up so many major plot points in just one chapter. the chapter ended up being nearly 10,000 words, which at that time especially was brutal for me to try to get through, so it was kind of tiring to get through, but I ended up being pretty satisfied with it. I wrote it in parts and spent about a day on each ‘section’ since it’s divided by months. I still feel like the pacing is pretty uneven, but it got across Amy’s rapidly evolving emotional state as she figures out what she wants to do with her life. ‘August’ was interesting because this is where Amy takes her first real step towards actively deceiving Tom; we see her come to a series of conclusions pretty much all at once. she knows he is going to find out that she came looking for him in Knockturn Alley. either she can confess that she followed up on the Riddles and knows what he’s done, or she can hide it. her decision to hide is largely due to the fact that she’s now realized this is the *only* advantage she has over him. he’s committed a serious crime- murder!- and is convinced he’s getting away with it. the only way she can keep this leverage over his head is to feed into Tom’s sizable ego and play up his cunning and charisma, convincing him that he’s ‘won her back’. fortunately for Amy, she is perceptive enough to realize that she needs to go about this in a manner that is convincing. he has some massive blind spots, but she knows he will be suspicious if she suddenly seems completely forgiving and accepting of his bad behavior once again. with this in mind, Amy comes up with a haphazard plan to reel Tom back in; she’s going to play coy and distant, feed into his desire to ‘prove himself’ to her, and let him do a lot of her work for her. Tom is very smart but he’s also used to being right, and he relies on a ton of assumptions to live his life. his #1 assumption is that no one is cleverer than him or more cunning than him, and Amy is not an exception to this. he might respect her obvious wits and determination, but he certainly doesn’t want to acknowledge that it could ever be used against him, personally. therefore when Amy is reunited with Tom in ‘August’, she puts on a pretty good act, pretending to slip up and reveal that she still cares for him and his well-being; Tom is only too eager to fall for this, and leaps at the chance to convince her that he’s back on his best behavior; when he wheedles her into a date, she lets him, albeit pretending to still have her guard up. one interesting note about ‘October’ is that despite her obvious animosity and desire to get away from Tom, Amy still worries that he might be drafted after he’s turned eighteen. I think it just speaks to her overall compassion. she has plenty of reason to hate him, but she still wouldn’t wish the war upon him. In ‘December’ we see that Tom and Amy are back to their own tricks; on friendly enough terms to exchange holiday gifts once more, albeit in private. Amy is forced to remain back at Hogwarts for the break due to Wool’s closure, leaving her extremely isolated and vulnerable. Tom, of course, senses an opportunity here and presents her with a very expensive gift of pearl earrings (which Amy infamously speculates over the origins of). there is a whole lot of fucked up stuff wrapped up with this present exchange. Amy bakes Tom cookies almost as a ‘test’ experiment to see how trusting he is of her: the answer is ‘very’. he accepts her gift without question, almost as if it were expected and prompted by him. he presents her with what would ordinarily be considered a very serious and romantic gift; genuine pearl earrings (or really any expensive jewelry) was a major status symbol gift in the 1940s. no normal teenage boy would have been giving a girl he wasn’t even ‘going steady with’ such a lavish present. it would have been more in line for a married couple. this is some obvious foreshadowing of what’s to come. the very first thing Tom does after giving Amy this present is not ask if she likes the earrings or tell her he got her them because he cares about her and knows she’s fond of pearls, but instruct her to put them on. I think this is such a textbook example of his controlling and possessive behavior. it pops up throughout the fic and we certainly see it when he has Matthew attacked out of jealousy and a desire to make Amy suffer, but it’s just super blatant here. it’s almost like he doesn’t really care whether Amy likes the earrings or not. what he cares about is that she is willing to put them on, even if only temporarily, thus demonstrating (in his view) some level of devotion that he’s going to rely on later. in his mind, if she can accept the earrings without rejecting them (or him) she can accept something more serious. we then see him immediately try to kiss her, something he hasn’t done in over a year at that point; they’ve had pretty much no physical contact whatsoever since the Matthew Fiasco. what’s also disturbing here is that Amy senses he’s about to kiss her and decides to ‘let it happen’, without much regard for her own consent. she doesn’t seem to care whether or not she actually wants Tom to kiss her- he wants to, and she’s decided that it’s in her best interests to keep him placated. compared to her earlier trend of usually taking the initiative in their romantic relationship and being very clear about what she wants and doesn’t want, I think this is really sad and concerning.  what surprises Amy (and maybe the reader) is that when Tom does go through with it, he almost immediately realizes that she’s not into it, at all, beyond just not reciprocating right off the bat, and backs off. there’s multiple ways to interpret this. we could argue that Tom still cares about her consent and has no interest in kissing someone who clearly doesn’t want to be kissed. we could argue that Tom realizes it’s in *his* best interests to try to *prove* he can be understanding and patient and so he reluctantly backs off. we could argue that the tender and sweet nature of the kiss itself shows a ‘soft side’ to Tom that is really desperate for love and affection, as opposed to him trying to bully her into reciprocating.  in the end, this is from Amy’s POV, and she just doesn’t know. what she does see is that Tom seems visibly disturbed by her lack of reaction, and is genuinely concerned she’s about to cry. he then apologizes (or as much of an ‘apology’ as we might ever see from him in Barbed Wire) and seems to remind himself that she asked him for some space and time.  Amy latches onto this, and tries to reassure him that she, too, wants things to go back ‘to the way they were’. but the cold reality here is that there is no going back. Amy *can’t* go back. the real dysfunction here is Tom’s insistence on trying to turn back time- to him, the reminder that they are graduating and will soon ‘leave behind’ their school social circles is a comforting one. the irony of course is that literally none of that happens. Tom has no intention of moving on with his life or dropping the fairweather friends he’s cultivated at Hogwarts. he intends to exploit as much as possible from them and the reputation he’s built up as an aspiring pureblood elite. nothing really changes for him, but everything is about to change for amy. finally we get to ‘May’ and ‘June’. I seriously debated giving ‘June’ its own chapter and ending 32 on ‘May’, but I decided at the time it would give readers a false impression of the direction the fic was headed in. I figured there were enough twists already without convincing everyone that we were about to have an ‘unhappy happy ending’ or I guess ‘happy ending for Tom, mediocre ending for Amy’. in ‘May’ of course comes the Proposal. I really debated combining this with ‘June’ and having Tom propose right before Amy springs her trap, but it ended up working out better this way. Amy and Tom yet again meet up in secret, this time above the dueling gallery, and they almost seem to have fully reconciled- Amy enthusiastically reciprocates his kiss, and he presents her with yet another gift: an unexpected letter of recommendation from one Oliver Parkinson, a successful healer guaranteed to ensure her a prosperous career at St Mungo’s straight out of graduation. I think kind of the crux of Amy’s character is her reaction to this gift. even while pretending to be won over, she cannot hide her distaste for this method; she doesn’t want anything she feels she hasn’t earned. to Tom, this is a pointless (if endearing) waste of her pride. he is really patting himself on the back here, going, ‘look how enlightened I am, not only being tolerant of you wanting a career of your own, but going to all this trouble to set it up for you!’. but that’s not what Amy wants. she wants a partner who is going to encourage her to forge her own path, not do the work for her. she doesn’t want an easy life, she wants a meaningful one, and her and Tom’s definitions of ‘meaningful’ just don’t align. it also has to do with his own pride- in Tom’s mind, if they’re going to be engaged, *of course* she needs an illustrious career, especially since Amy has no ‘good breeding’ or lovely country estate to fall back on. he knows it will be much easier to work her into pureblood society if she is a respected protege of a man like Oliver Parkinson; than he can arrange for people to conveniently forget about her wild school days and her muggleborn background, and really shape her into a woman he feels will best suit his goals in life; someone successful in their own right, but still owing it all to him and his connections. he then almost immediately shoots himself in the foot by bragging about his blackmailing of Atticus Greengrass to secure his own career prospects, and then, of course, unveils the fateful Ring, the same Ring Amy immediately spotted on him way back in ‘August’, which has conveniently fit very well into her plans. Tom still can’t be bothered with a more traditional propose, and launches into one final sales pitch to Amy. a lot of people have commented on about how earnest and genuinely compelling they found his speech. I felt like it had to be in order to sell the moment. he needs to *believe* in what he’s saying. it has to be the most open and vulnerable moment of Tom’s in the entire fic for it to seem plausible. he puts it all on the line for one split second of faith... and of course it blows up in his face, but the point is that he seeded his own destruction, more or less. had he been like this with Amy from the start, maybe they could have built a much more positive and open relationship, instead of a dysfunctional mess. “you’re alone,” Tom tells Amy, more or less, “you’ve always been alone, and you will always need me to make you feel less alone” but we know that’s just not true. Amy isn’t alone; she has real friends and passions, she has so much to look forward to, an entire life ahead of her. Tom is the one who’s alone, in the worst possible way. the one person who made him feel less alone, he ended up pushing away with his poor choices and selfish desires.  he brings up her background in this ‘gotcha’ moment- but the joke is that Amy doesn’t care! she’s always known, and she doesn’t care. it’s painful, yes, and she acknowledges that pain, but she has moved on from that part of her life. she holds no rage or even resentment towards her mother for giving her up. she doesn’t resent her mother for being an impoverished sex worker with no means to care for a small child. she has no desire to find out who her father was or ‘confront’ her mother- that doesn’t matter to Amy. where she comes from, her origins, they don’t matter. she doesn’t give a damn about her heritage or ancestry, she just wants to move forward.  and now the only thing standing in her way is Tom. I think ‘June’ pretty much speaks for herself, but I will say this; when I wrote I didn’t really feel any vindictive sense of ‘ah, she’s getting her revenge on him now!’, mostly just sadness. It’s really sad that Amy ends up feeling the only way she can even have this honest talk with Tom... is with him incapacitated and literally unable to respond.  she identifies herself as being selfish, and I think this is a good example of selfishness not always being a bad thing, which I think is very important, especially for girls! (not that I’m condoning drugging anyone or blackmailing them, etc). but learning to put yourself and your wants and needs first is important. Amy is mature enough to realize that this relationship with Tom and her cannot work. she cannot be his moral compass, and she cannot turn a blind eye to his actions. his speeches about ‘letting her win’ and them being happy together are pretty and persuasive but ultimately hollow. there is no happy ending for them. he ruined their chances of that a long time ago. she’s not his enemy- he is.  and I think her parting of “I love you” just really speaks to who she is as well. it’s really hard to recognize that someone you love isn’t good for you, that not all loves are necessarily good things. being with him might feel right in the moment, but in the long-term she knows it would be the exact opposite. she’s able to honestly acknowledge her feelings while still finding the strength to walk away.

[quintessence-sentimentalist]

quintessence-sentimentalist Takes on 30 Days of W.i.t.c.h.versary!: Week Three

Week Three already! Days 15 through 21 below the cut!

Day 15 Something that needs a quick fix

Ahaha, well, some 99.9% of things that need fixing with this series can’t be completed quickly, so let me just go with the simplest thing that comes to mind:

The uniform color errors.

In both the comic and cartoon, there are color swaps between the top and bottom, with Irma being the most frequent offender (frankly, I only remember Cornelia’s top being purple on the cover of one of the final Ludmoore arc issues, and maaaaaaaybe Hay Lin got a color swap once too, so basically it was all with Irma). I don’t know if it’s because she and Will might look a little similar in black-and-white or something and that’s why there was confusion over whose top is which color (although if that’s the case then why didn’t it happen to Will too?), but it just kept happening throughout the series. It’s even wrong on the official promo art/opening sequence end card for the animated series. 

So yeah. Easiest fix I can think of is to please check which color goes where before inking them in.

Day 16 Something that needs an overhaul

I’m just going to spin the wheel here...

Better executed romantic break-ups/avoidance of shitty break-ups altogether. Consistent lore. All the arcs New Power and beyond. New Power Matt. That one self-indulgent what-if I had about leaving Medina, McTiennan, and Sylla’s memories intact and they basically become the girls’ non-magical mentors and trusted adult figures who help them balance their lives between Guardianship and just being normal girls.

Uh... I can’t choose. 

I’ve talked at length about and reimagined a lot of these before (and will do so again, for sure), and those I haven’t people have discussed much more eloquently than I can. And I’m sure I’m still missing some, so I’m not going to get too deep into this and save that all for inevitable rambles later on.

Day 17 Something that needs to be revisited

The Astral Drops, hands down. Why bother sending them off to live new lives of their own, while pointedly leaving them with magical tattoos that will light up when Kandrakar must call on them, if you’re not going to loop back around to that? Honestly, this is something that should have slid back into the narrative in at least some way before things wrapped up.

Day 18 Something that needs more love from the fandom

It’s going to be too predictable if I start chanting “animated series Matt and Will/Matt” (but really, they do deserve all the love), so let’s go for a different angle this time.

Oh... well, I guess since I was already at it, maybe the animated series itself? 

Alright, look: I was a comics purist for a solid eight years. I watched the show in full and enjoyed particular (largely season 2) parts, but I still had the frequent complaint that it wasn’t a faithful adaptation and didn’t watch it again for years even when I regularly reread the comics. 

But then the English translations of the comic ended, and I was left without any real new material. A couple years later, I was about to go off to college and came across something that reminded me of the cartoon (more on that later on), and I figured what the hell.

It’s still not a perfect or even great adaptation of the comics, and sometimes I still struggle with getting through the first season, but going back to the animated series as a young adult - after years of distance from it and easing up on my rigid stance on comics-only - helped me gain a newfound appreciation for it. The animated series did some things I liked better than in the comics. It had a badass theme song. From a fan creator perspective, I found the cartoon universe a little bit more malleable and full of possibilities than with the comics, partially because it unexpectedly got cut short.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t necessarily have impeccable taste when it comes to media (I have a guilty pleasure for short-lived and long-forgotten early 00s sci-fi action shows. I unabashedly enjoyed the live-action Birds of Prey series, and that’s even more wildly inaccurate a comic adaptation than the W.i.t.c.h. cartoon). Still, I think about some other animated series that are based on beloved comics/manga but not direct adaptations, and some of those are considered just as good or even better than the originals (and potentially subsequent accurate adaptations). I feel like at the very least, the W.i.t.c.h. animated series could be a guilty pleasure, or even enjoyable AU adventures of the girls as they are in the comics. 

Day 19 Something small but unforgettable

Nothing was immediately coming to mind, but then it hit me. I love that the animated series changed the name of Will’s power to quintessence in the second season. 

In the comics, her powers were a bit of a nebulous space, while the others’ were clearly defined elements. I remember it being called “energy” or “absolute energy,” which... while not wrong, it’s just such a broad term, and frankly is missing some pizzazz to it. It wasn’t even a consistent name, since oftentimes Will just called out for the Heart, and then with New Power it became “the power to unite them” or something (uh... what?). I just think it’s weird to have one of your main characters without a clearly defined - or simply named - ability, unless it’s intentionally vague to allow for various deus ex machinas from the Heart, with Will serving solely as the conduit.

And that’s kind of what happened with the first season too, where Will was honestly only able to activate the Guardians and close portals and had no inherent offensive ability. So season 2 was great in the respect that they actually gave her a power, but then there was that name!

Seriously, quintessence. Even before you really know what it is, it’s a pretty kickass name, right?? It definitely has the mystical quality to it, and the fact that it literally translates as fifth essence/element makes it just too good. Guys, there’s a reason why it’s in my username.

(Well, that and the fact that seeing the word and its definition again after many years reminded me that I should rewatch the animated series, and that was what kicked off my spiral back into W.i.t.c.h. fandom. It did tie into the “sentimentalist” aspect in the end.)

Day 20 Something you’d always come back to

Hmm, I’m a little unclear on the prompt for this one, whether it means something I’ll reread/rewatch, or some idea from the series that just sticks with me. I’m going go with the first interpretation, which I guess also ties in with the second.

Hardly a surprise at this point, but I regularly rewatch the most pivotal episodes of the Shagon arc - those being L is for Loser, M is for Mercy, and S is for Self. I just love seeing Shagon in the forefront as a villain, and how Will knows how to deal with Nerissa in some respect at this point (staying suspicious - maybe a little bit too much - and learning to out-strategize the ex-Keeper), but goes absolutely ballistic and loses her calculating edge whenever she’s facing Shagon on his own. He knows exactly how to needle into her vulnerabilities, and the two of them engaging in emotional warfare is just so good. Watching these always gets me wondering how the fallout from this arc would have gone had we had more time and the series had a different tone (maybe more along the lines of Young Justice, to borrow a different Weisman show), because I’m firmly of the mind that Matt would have some lingering trauma from the experience (which he’s had to put aside to take on a new role and deal with everything else that came after he was freed) and I would have loved to see that play out.

As for the comics, though, I like to loop back around to the girls’ potential futures from issue 50. Their careers just fit them all so well, and the way their designs and friendship evolved into adulthood just felt right to me. They’re all grown up and more sophisticated now, but they don’t simply look like a slightly older version of their Guardian forms, and manage to maintain a semblance of their styles from their young teen days. And even though they’re no longer active Guardians and are busy with their own lives (sometimes in various other places), thus not being in each others’ back pockets anymore, you can tell their bond is holding just as firmly as it was forged back in the day. I vastly prefer this glimpse into the future over the one we’re shown in the post-New Power era, so I like to use it at least as a basis for when I imagine the girls post-Guardianship. 

Day 21 A memorable architectural design

I do love the design of Sheffield Institute. It’s just so elaborate and wildly different than what you’d normally see for a high school, at least from my view and experience. It certainly looks like a place with a rich history, and honestly I think it’s a great parallel to Kandrakar and the castles of Meridian and Arkhanta - not quite as regal or mystical, but still a structure with some elegance.

[morshtalon]

Shin Megami Tensei

(Definitely part 3 of a series of posts on the entire franchise)

For the end of MegaTen II, Atlus pulled out all the stops in terms of who you'd meet and what their importance to the lore was. While the ending arguably did leave some room for further escalation, by choosing to continue the story as it was, they'd be agreeing to keep being derivative works in relation to the books that originated their backstory. Sure, it was hardly the case anymore, what with the extreme departures MegaTen II took from the novels, but still. I guess the relative corner the writers got themselves backed into, combined with the clamor to have a more independent franchise on their hands, prompted them to scrap their established continuity and kick off a new one of their own. Whatever the real case was, it was definitely a smart choice, and thus was born Shin Megami Tensei, a way for them to keep their profitable series going. Also probably a much better game than a MegaTen III would have been.

Anyway, with a new continuity, possibilities were endless. They could better retread grounds they had already covered in the previous two games (well, really just MTII, since the first one barely even had anything going on), and expand upon ongoing themes while not having to worry about the usual expectation for a sequel in terms of magnitude and impact. Given that, it's unsurprising that, in comparison to MTII, this game dials things down a notch, relegating most of the more classical power fantasy stuff to the third act and preferring to engage in more character-driven events while leading up to it. None of the final enemies in SMT are as powerful as the ones in MTI and II (in story terms, actual battle stats notwithstanding) and the influence of cosmic forces that would have been enemies fought directly in the titles so far takes on a distant, more psychological approach (for the most part), unable to be challenged by the player. This helps build them as respectable overarching threats, and keeps the setting more subdued and the stakes higher, since it feels like characters are acting under the banner of things so powerful the player shouldn't even think themselves able to scratch them. It's good not to stat things sometimes, and it's quite impressive that they exercised this restraint way back in 1992.

For the demons that ARE fought, though, the artists really put their all into it this time. Even compared to games in the series's near future, I think this is the best looking they would be for a while. I mean, sure, Majin Tensei later on would have more detailed graphics, but I feel the art itself was worse there, with some weird proportions and a lot of palette swaps, while this game keeps things more consistently good overall.

Naturally, one longstanding tradition of the franchise introduced in SMT was the philosophical axis of Law vs. Chaos and the branching story that allowed the player to sit in any one point of the spectrum, with a modified final act depending on your decisions up to a certain point and where in the axis they would leave you once this point is reached. This system was partly a logical progression of the two endings from MTII and partly a way to integrate gameplay significance into what was already the grand point of SMT's storyline. While a good idea on paper and certainly innovative for its time and context, the warring faction-based story meant that as far as the plot is concerned, Law vs. Chaos pertains more to which of the factions you're appeasing with your decisions rather than any particularly lawful or chaotic behavior. There are some things that shift your alignment that have to do with being lawful or chaotic, but those lie mostly outside of the plot, in small actions that only serve to bring things one way or the other on infinitesimal increments and are meant more as an extra level of thought put into the system to label certain actions that were always there. The parallelisms between one faction and the other (i.e. temples that are identical in functionality; quests that consist of killing the other faction's quest-giver or vice-versa), together with certain easily exploitable ways to shift the alignment variable any way you want (so that you can play the game being entirely chaotic up to the crucial point where your alignment is locked, then right before that, exploit the mechanics to bring yourself to Law without having done anything lawful throughout the rest of the game), make the whole alignment system feel arbitrary, or at least the actual coded-in gameplay layer of it. I feel like maybe having only the unrepeatable story decisions actually affect alignment could help mitigate this somewhat. Then again, as I said, the story stuff doesn't feel much like the player being lawful or chaotic, so... I don't know.

Regardless of which path you take, you are going to get into a lot of fights. The game plays basically exactly like MTII, with an overhead top-down overworld and first-person dungeon crawling once you enter an area. This time around, very few areas are safe from enemy encounters, which makes sense since you're mostly just walking around Tokyo and a lot of first-person areas are just sections of the city that are populated (and besides, all of Tokyo is under threat from the demons). It made me realize that it's actually the typical RPG that opts to be nonsensical about the no-monsters-in-towns rule, but I'd be damned if that's not a smart choice on the part of the typical RPG. There are so many random encounters in this game, it's a common occurence for you to get several 1-step fights in a row. When I play an RPG, there's usually a point where I get really bored of always fighting enemies, then I finally escape the dungeon I'm in or go into a town and it's a big relief, like I can finally walk around and talk to people without having to stop dead in my tracks to fight the same enemy I already proved I can beat five hundred times before. Not so much in this game, and you'll definitely be crying out for an Estoma or a Fuma Bell most of the time. If you even know these two things act like repels in Pokémon and realize how useful they are.

If you don't know, however, you're going to need a lot of patience, because once again the game is very easy. Aside from, once again, a difficult earlygame, especially if you didn't put the right stat points into your protagonist (read: vitality and speed), the same basic problems from the previous two games' core concept of walking around and fighting dudes can be found here, but this time guns have ammo. Ammo doesn't actually count how many bullets you have left, it's just an extra thing you can equip that gives your gun attack an extra property such as more damage or a status effect. Thing is, status effects have an absurdly high hit rate in this game, work on most bosses, and there's a type of ammo that causes the "enthralled" status effect, which makes the target attack their own allies. Once you've got your hands on it, the game has been effectively turned into an interactive movie, even easier than the NES ones. Even without it, magic always seems to go before physical attacks, and both lightning and ice spells can stop an enemy for the current turn, so you'll likely always find a way to trivialize encounters within your disposal if you're just playing the game normally, even if you didn't realize it. With good speed, lightning or ice spells at your disposal and some status effect ammo, nothing will ever be able to stop you, no matter how hard they try. Once again, it's a preparations game, and that auto-battle button will get an intense workout this time around. I actually cleared the entire final dungeon under the effect of consecutive Fuma Bells, because of the combined effect a high encounter rate and the knowledge that the bosses could not stop me had on my brain. It's all about knowing which things are actually useful and which aren't, so it's actually just about struggling until the point you figure it out, then blazing through the game's fights half-asleep.

Still, battles notwithstanding, I think the exploration is more masterful than ever this time around. There isn't any significant portion of the game where you're clearly going after McGuffins, the whole story is pretty tightly paced and the balance between open-endedness and plot progression is well kept. There is a clearly evolving status quo for the entire setting of the game, and each time a major change happens new areas are made available while others are locked away. You can feel the effect the events of the narrative are having on the whole scenario, and the progression creates a bit of a disorienting effect as you attempt to find your way to the next significant location (which can and very well may cause you to get hopelessly lost on occasion, but that's part of the experience, I think). It's a pretty admirable blend of elements working together to create a continuous experience. This bleeds over into the characters themselves, who have evolving arcs and, for the most part, continue to be relevant and to have all sorts of crazy things happen to them through the course of the game. Consider it a much more mature attempt to do the sort of character-based revolving scheme that Final Fantasy IV also tried to do.

Overall, this is a game that further plays around with story concept brought over from MTII, experiments somewhat with new ways to go through some of its story beats, and creates a character-based narrative that goes through admirable amounts of change, to the point you can feel the whole cast working through their arcs as things escalate and reach a fever pitch. The gameplay is significantly less refined, though, and, admittedly, even the respectable things in SMT have struggled to stand the test of time, especially when you consider what later SMTs and SMT spinoffs would go on to do. I think this earns the original a 6.5 out of 10, my first non-integer score. It's damn respectable and admirable for 1992, but it has so many outdated things in it that it's hard to actually get oneself into the proper mentality to admire it unless you actually make the conscious decision to play the series in chronological release order. But who would be masochistic enough to do that, right?

[helshades]

Ok Hel. I've spent the whole of april reading Good Omens because it had been on my to read list thanks to you for such a long time and i Knew i needed to have finished before the series came out (and how glad am i because the series doesn't hold a candle to the original despite being very commandable). Anyways. I am thorougly in love with Terry Pratchett's voice, and i need more, stats. How should i go at it? Where to start?

‘St. Beryl of Krakow was a 5th-century Christian martyr. Forcibly married to the pagan Duke Casimir, Beryl maintained her all-important virginity by ceaselessly talking to him and incessantly chattering on, until he went down with a headache.

Eventually he couldn't stand the eternal wittering any more and had her executed, but she died a virgin, which in Christian eyes was the all-important thing and which secured her a sainthood.

The Chattering Order of St. Beryl are an order of nuns dedicated to emulating her example, and whose members are commanded to chatter, natter, and rabbit on about every last little thing that comes into their heads for every second of every waking hour.

The Sisters are allowed half an hour's respite on Tuesdays, when they may be silent and, if they wish, play table-tennis’

Truth be told, I may be the only person who upon being prompted to give advice on a reading order for the ‘Discworld’ series will inevitably reply: ‘From the beginning, by book one, what a question’. Then again, I am also the sort of person to read Good Omens in two days (it should take me one, but I keep re-reading passages out loud) and the day after I was gifted my first Pratchett novel by my grandmother who thought she was trolling me (the back read: ‘In the realm of Lancre, smaller than a nudist’s outfit...’) I hurried into the big city to purchase the thirteen previous ones, which I read in one go, bar the odd contractual pause for sleep or shower (as other activities didn’t especially require that I stop).

Now, you might actually want to show some more restraint than I usually do in your discovery of such a vast, bountiful new territory, and start strategically, as it were, by a book most likely to help you transition smoothly from Good Omens into... well, Terry Pratchett didn’t write solely about the Discworld, but the Discworld novels certainly are the best point of entry and they are exactly what you are looking for if what you are looking for is a post-Good Omens fix. If such were the case, I would select these precise books amongst my favourite:

Hogfather (20)

Going Postal (33)

Interesting Times (17)

Monstrous Regiment (31)

Lords and Ladies (14) 

Guards! Guards! (8)

The Discworld series comprises 41 books but they can absolutely be read on their own, so that in theory you may start with any of them. Nevertheless, some of the main characters have their own series: they grow up or grow older, start a family, shoulder new responsibilities... Some will deem it more satisfying to see these characters evolve along the years, especially as Pratchett’s own writing style has improved greatly since the (hilarious, but much less profound) initial volumes.

Should I advise only one book to be read after Good Omens, though, I think I would select Hogfather. It is a wonderful entry for many reasons, including the clever twists on real-world myths, the amazing main characters, the fact that it can totally be counted as a Christmas tale, and the seriously amazing main characters—who are (Duchess) Susan Sto Helit, who I guess is the closest thing the Discworld had to a Mary Poppins, and her grandfather, Death (a long story. It is told in Mort.), a 6-foot-tall skeleton normally in a black robe equipped with a scythe, except this time He is wearing a fake beard and several cushions to fake a jolly big belly, because one has to temp as the Hogfather, the latter having disappeared without a trace, meaning the little kiddies of the Disc won’t have their Hogswatch presents this year... ah, and, also, the world might just end because of it.

Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder aloud how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of the words. Yet there is the constant desire to find some point in the twisting, knotting, ravelling nets of space-time on which a metaphorical finger can be put to indicate that here, here, is the point where it all began...

Something began when the Guild of Assassins enrolled Mister Teatime, who saw things differently from other people, and one of the ways that he saw things differently from other people was in seeing other people as things (later, Lord Downey of the Guild said, ‘We took pity on him because he'd lost both parents at an early age. I think that, on reflection, we should have wondered a bit more about that.’) But it was much earlier even than that when most people forgot that the very oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood. Later on they took the blood out to make the stories more acceptable to children, or at least to the people who had to read them to children rather than the children themselves (who, on the whole, are quite keen on blood provided it's being shed by the deserving), and then wondered where the stories went.

And earlier still when something in the darkness of the deepest caves and gloomiest forests thought: what are they, these creatures? I will observe them. And much, much earlier than that, when the Discworld was formed, drifting onwards through space atop four elephants on the shell of the giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. Possibly, as it moves, it gets tangled like a blind man in a cobwebbed house in those highly specialized little spacetime strands that try to breed in every history they encounter, stretching them and breaking them and tugging them into new shapes. Or possibly not, of course. The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as ‘Things just happen. What the hell.’

This conversation is far from over, but for now I really must go—I am feeling a mighty urge to reread a couple dozen things right now.

[madaboutasoiaf]

Arya Stark Week Day 4: The Big Five

Rather than write about all five characters, for this prompt I’m going to focus on Arya’s importance in the books to come. GRRM’s named her as one of five central characters in the books in the original outline. The story has changed in many ways, and it has evolved into a much better and more complex story, but Arya’s place in it as one of the most important characters has not changed.

The path GRRM has chosen for Arya appears to take her away from Westeros, and away from the main story, but this is merely a ruse that has fooled parts of his readership. A more careful read of Arya’s chapters, and an examination of the themes within them, makes it clear that this is just a training montage before Arya returns to her rightful place. Her time in Braavos is part of her heroine’s journey, the tests and ordeals she must endure before returning to Westeros with new knowledge that she needs to succeed in her role upon her return.

Arya is a character who embraces magic. She seeks her wolf dreams, wants to learn glamours, and looks into the flames to try to see what Thoros sees. She is becoming conscious of her skinchanging powers (see the example with the cat in Braavos) but is yet to discover their full extent. She is a wolf, not just by proclaiming herself as one in her thoughts, but by sharing part of her soul with Nymeria. Arya is a born leader, as shown in her time with Gendry and Hot Pie, and her direwolf leads a pack of hundreds that Arya herself commands in her dreams.

This embrace of magic, and natural leadership, provides a hint of the valuable role Arya will play upon her return to Winterfell and to the North. Her training provides another (not so subtle) hint. Arya received some training in sword fighting, in a style to suit her smaller frame, but it is the extension of this training in Braavos that sets her up for the battle to come. The House of Black and White blinds her as part punishment and part training, and this test, this ordeal, is key to Arya’s future role.

Hear, smell, taste, feel, she reminded herself. There are many ways to know the world for those who cannot see.

Arya’s time without sight taught her to use her ears, to use her nose, to use all of her senses rather than rely on just her sight. It put Syrio’s teachings into sharper focus.

“Look with your eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterward, and in that way knowing the truth.”

Arya is forced to fend off an attacker while blind. She knows how to fight in the darkest of darknesses, and this ability has one obvious use. The long night. The wolf pack has attacked Arya’s enemies, those who were pursuing her in the Riverlands, and the wolf pack will be an invaluable weapon against the ultimate enemy of the North and of Westeros as a whole: the Others. Arya can command them through Nymeria, and she most certainly won’t be doing it from Essos.

A longing for home has been a prominent thread through Arya’s chapters since she left King’s Landing. She wanted out of the role society prescribed for her, a performance of prescribed femininity that Arya did not feel capable of succeeding at, and GRRM gave it to her. The cruel twist was that it came with one ordeal after another, and Arya never making it to the places she wanted to go, but this is all part of a well-planned journey on the part of the author. Arya takes pride in being a Stark, it’s one thing that nobody has been able to take from her no matter how hidden her identity, and this unshakable identity is what keeps her linked to Westeros, and to the North, where she wants to be.

Arya will return, with resources and knowledge needed for the war. It’s a war that will use all her skills, and is compatible with her views on justice. The Others will kill anybody, highborn or low, and Arya won’t ignore that, even if it is the lowborn who suffer first and especially if it is the lowborn who suffer first. Arya is the character we see who cares about smallfolk receiving justice, illustrated with the case of Mycah, and by returning to the North, returning to her Stark roots, she has the power to give them that.

She will, wholeheartedly, and as we have seen Arya is extremely stubborn. She’ll never give up, and never give in, and it will make her a hero for Westeros, a champion of all people and a legend to rival Nymeria and her thousand ships. It’s right there in the beginning, with the naming of her wolf.