#tldr: the horde is bad and we know it's bad but if we want an equal faction war the alliance needs to be bad too

[that-house]

Ran the first proper Field of White Flowers playtest the other day.

I stuck them in the Kill Six Billion Demons universe, because i love that setting and its general aesthetics and power level are perfect matches for FoWF (tbh K6BD was a significant inspiration for FoWF)

They were mercenaries hired by the Repossessions Guild to break into the house of a mob boss who’d gone missing and take everything that wasn’t nailed down.

TLDR: it was fun

in depth breakdown of what happened below the cut because i don't wanna nuke everyone's dash <3

For those with no context: Field of White Flowers is a high fantasy high power tabletop roleplaying game system geared towards huge dramatic anime fight scenes, wuxia bullshit, and feats of tremendous heroism and villainy. It draws inspiration from the webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons, fighting games, a vast slew of other roleplaying game systems, and the time-honored video gaming tradition of having a climactic duel in a field of white flowers.

The big thing I was worried about going into the playtest was just that it wouldn’t be fun. I’d had a lot of fun designing it and talking about it, but until you play the game properly it’s impossible to tell whether the game is actually fun.

Like, take Lancer. I love Lancer, I love the design philosophy behind it, I love theorycrafting builds for Lancer. Actually playing through a Lancer combat is like getting a cavity filled without anesthetic. How do 4 rounds with 4 players and no roleplay take 6 hours? We will never know

Our cast, in order of introduction:

Abzu, Newborn God: a young ocean god seeking to prove himself to his brethren. flavorwise he was a waterbender, mechanically he was a fairly supportive debuff engine focusing on lowering enemies’ stats with Chill. Attempts to get Abzu's player to join tumblr have been unsuccessful thus far.

Alizoba, King of Miscellany: sapient pile of trash looking for more stuff to add to themself. had a build based around Baiting enemies into bad moves and following up with huge combos. Alizoba was played by @cyrus-swag.

Ophidia, Serpent Queen of Lead: cowgirl and gun witch, mostly just here to kill people and get money. build revolved (haha gun pun) around throwing flashbangs, vanishing, and reappearing somewhere else with a huge gun. Ophidia was played by @fearlesscomfort.

Sixgill Griseus, The Bartender No One Fucks With: shark man who is a bartender/bouncer/chef/waiter/etc at his bar. magically-enhanced death glare can intimidate inanimate objects and shut down people's nervous systems. Sixgill was played by @historically-innaccurate-dialga.

The events of the session:

Abzu immediately murders someone for polluting a canal

gradually all met up and made their way to the house they were going to rob

encountered two devils, the tiny chainsaw-wielding Ozzy and the colossal Scunge who wielded a machete and a harmonica, guarding the house

Scunge was tackled clean through the door of the house and pinned down by Sixgill until he simply keeled over dead from the force of the bartender's stare

Ozzy mauled Abzu and Ophidia, and was about to coup de grace the latter when Alizoba summoned a building on top of him

Ozzy and Scunge served as a test of the Power Couple mechanic, in which two combatants are represented by a single statblock, one of which dies and changes the statblock when they collectively reach half HP

Inside the house, they encountered a vast horde of living dead who had been employed as meth cooks and house guards. They fought them off for a while before Ophidia finished off the last forty or so by briefly stopping time and lining up a headshot on each one

The zombies were an example of the horde mechanic for representing a TON of enemies with one statblock and a few minions. They worked great

Next was a hall of huge swinging blades, because i wanted to include a few simple skill challenges.

Sixgill just used his enhanced senses to walk through the hall, only getting barely clipped by the last one.

Abzu attempted to freeze the mechanisms, but they exerted too much force and shattered the ice.

Ophidia solved the "there are several thousand pounds of high velocity metal in front of us" with her own several hundred pounds of high velocity metal (she shot the blades with her minigun until they broke)

The next room was a treasure room, with tons of weapons in glass cases. Sixgill broke one of the cases to get a harpoon, causing the rest of the weapons to drop through the floor and poison gas to pour into the room

Abzu waited out the poison in a bubble, while Alizoba summoned a fridge to hide in. Sixgill stared the fucking poison down and the very air said "you know what fuck that I'm not getting paid enough." Ophidia tried to fire off enough guns to replace the air near her with gunsmoke, which went badly

the final thing we had time for in this session (we're going to finish it another day) was a room with an enchanted idol in the middle, which compelled everyone who saw it to want it.

Ophidia burned a fifth of her HP to teleport over to it instantly and take it before anyone else could, and we ended the session as they walked into the next room, which contained a devil named BIG BOY (all caps)

The good stuff:

combat flows quickly from player to player, turns are short but impactful. it's not a tactical wargame, there's no grid or elaborate line of sight rules, but decisions about when to bring up damaged allies and whether or not to take short term disadvantages for long term benefit mattered

even though the system has a lot of room for optimization and certain characters were definitely stronger than others, no one felt useless even with bad rolls

the general Math of the system worked out pretty well. people were critting about as often as I wanted them to be, the HP amount for the players felt right

people had fun (the most important thing)

other important thing: it filled a niche that no other system i've played has filled, and did it well. the experience might have been different if we'd used another system, but it would not have been enriched by the change. Field of White Flowers just. fundamentally. works.

The stuff that needs improvement:

in retrospect it should have been obvious that, given that at its core the game is designed to be roughly balanced (especially at lower levels), making enemies that are on even footing with the players would make the combat REALLY fucking difficult. That was a silly on my part <3 the first encounter was not meant to be that hard. I halved the HP of the second encounter and it was much more reasonable

the mental overhead of certain builds is a little too high. the character sheet handles a lot of things for the players, but some builds have numbers that fluctuate frequently in combat

debuffs didn't quite feel impactful enough on enemies. main issue is that many of the durations are too short, leading to a lot of debuffs just sort of feeling bad when you use your whole turn to apply them, while other debuffs are just VERY VERY VERY good (looking at you Shock)

current out of combat resolution system is very bare-bones (skill checks are roll a few dice against a DC), and either a sliding scale of success or a push mechanic would likely augment it

nerfed Knife Juggler because holy fuck it was so OP for how easy it is to obtain

The nice thing about game design is you can make a system you want to play. Field of White Flowers ticks soooo many of my boxes, and it proved to be pretty easy to pick up, fun to play, and with enough depth of content to keep people talking about it for a good while after the session.

thanks for reading, and always remember: Pariah Stance allows you to tick down the countdown on Forbidden Technique faster

[scratchyemporium]

i play salmon run because honestly i don't see the salmon as equals to inklings/octolings. i don't feel bad when i run over a horde of salmon because i know they wouldn't understand what a roller was. they're brutes, in simple terms.

octolings were raised in a militaristic society, but they still knew speech. they could communicate with inklings. we had a whole war against them, for crying out loud, and even though they were trapped underground for god knows how long, they still wanted to rejoin us on the surface.

"oh, the salmonids and the octonarians traded though, that's why they have that advanced tech" i don't think so. their arsenal is discarded cooking ware and scraps from the dumps nearby. that's why the water is green sludge around the maps - the pollution they live in.

when they go on big runs, they're trying to pollute living areas and fun zones. wahoo world? the art academy? eeltail alley? they're trying to ruin and take over our worlds because we just want their eggs.

speaking of eggs: we've been at some sort of war with the salmon before salmon run even existed. we used salmon eggs to upgrade our gear back in octo valley. we gathered them from splatting octonarians and breaking boxes.

personally, i see them as a smaller power source. enough to sustain, but not enough to be as powerful as the great zapfish. no matter how many salmon we crush or bomb or shoot, it'll just be the same.

tldr; salmonids aren't equal to us; they're just a power source

no nuance just yes or no, but say your reasoning in the notes if you want

[erazon]

I’ve sort of been thinking this for a while and seeing how it’s topical I kinda wanna go into why I really like Genn Greymane as a character without necessarily thinking he’s a “good” Alliance hero or a “bad” manipulative evil guy, and it’s mostly to do with faction stuff so if you’re interested

So I know there’s a bit of a rivalry going on between people who see Genn in a positive light, who understand that his grief and the curse he carries impacts his behaviour and that his opponent is arguably very morally corrupt- and those who consider him in a negative light; he’s war hungry, manipulates Anduin and only seems to care about anything when it concerns Gilneas. 

But I think we need to agree that he’s kind of all of these things at once, so you can’t really shine just one light on him and walk away. He’s a morally grey character and we’re all gonna like it because that’s exactly what the Alliance needs. 

Going into larger faction stuff, I think that the original core themes of the factions were meant to be the Alliance: Knights in Shining Armour, against the Horde: Misunderstood Outcasts. Faction pride was fostered by the idea that you couldn’t pick the wrong side, because there wasn’t one. What mattered most was what you identified with more: Justice and Valour for the Alliance or Resilience and Strength for the Horde. Then Cataclysm happened, Garrosh Hellscream happened, and the Horde went from the Misunderstood Outcasts to the Primary Aggressors. 

Whenever the writers wanted some kind of faction conflict, they sat around a room and said, “okay, which Horde leader gets to hold the Stupid Stick and attack the Alliance or act aggressively in some kind of way?”. And I think the best way to explain the consequence of this kind of writing is using the Mists of Pandaria intro quests. 

Horde intro basically goes like this: You show up on Pandaria on your big airship, you see an Alliance airship, and Nazgrim promptly presses the Beserk Button and immediately sends you off to blow shit up because the Alliance are here and that’s bad and you should kill them because they’re Alliance. Your player character goes along with it because there’s no such thing as autonomy in WoW, and then Taran Zhu shows up and rightly tells you “WTF? You need to chill out and probably go home”. You spend the rest of the intro making it up to the local Pandaren village by trying to repair the destruction you caused, there’s a little part that explains that ‘The Alliance can be bad too we promise!’ but when you go to deal with the Hozen you start by attacking them and their leader and it takes Lorewalker Cho sitting you down and saying “have you tried this thing called Diplomacy??” for you to get your shit together. 

Alliance intro goes like this: You show up on Pandaria, but the Horde got there first and is doing terrible things to the local Pandaren. You need to hop off your ship and help the poor locals, save them from the Horde’s dangerous machines and enslavement and basically go about being the hero who swoops in to save the day. There’s a bit where you have to shoot unarmed Horde soldiers who are swimming to safety, and one of the Alliance members expresses such doubt and remorse about it that he has the Sha of Doubt manifest in him. Not the Sha of Hatred for the person who was killing them, but Doubt for the guy who thought that was the wrong thing to do to show you that even when the Alliance is being bad, it’s still good deep down. You basically go on to stop more Horde baddies and help out the locals just because you’re nice. 

It’s a stark contrast when you’re playing through it. As the Horde, you need to take responsibility for your aggression. As the Alliance, you get to save the day. And that’s basically been the status quo for pretty much everything about the faction wars. A lot of Horde biased players will try to excuse and ignore the bad things that the Horde has done, but I think we need to understand that these people probably started playing back when Thrall was the leader and the Horde was still Misunderstood Outcasts, and don’t want to reconcile that that’s just not what it is anymore. 

This is why I like Genn Greymane. Because for the first time, it’s the Alliance’s turn to see how it feels to not be the Knights in Shining Armour, and to pretty clearly be shown as the aggressor. We play the intro to Stormheim, and watch as Greymane attacks the Forsaken both unprovoked and against orders. We see him chase vengeance and Sylvanas very much like a dog chasing after a cat. Of course Sylvanas herself is hardly innocent, but that’s not really the point. The point is that Greymane, the Alliance, got to hold the Stupid Stick for once. 

If faction war is going to be a prominent thing in the upcoming expansion, then there will need to be balance between the Horde’s usual aggression and the Alliance’s saviour complex. You can like Genn Greymane, you can think that he truly does love Anduin, and that he’s not the manipulative asshole people think he is. But he’s still willing to do bad things to get what he wants, just as the Horde does- and this provides a balance that brings faction pride back to square one. 

Maybe the Horde aren’t misunderstood outcasts anymore, but if Genn Greymane ruins the Alliance’s spotless knight image, then at least it’s an even playing field again. 

[dailyadventureprompts]

Monsters Reimagined: Fiends

I know I’m not alone in really disliking d&d’s alignment system, but I seldom see anyone talking about how its rigid and arbitrary simplicity really hamstrings the game’s moral mythology. 

Look no farther than the alignment based outsiders: clockwork beings of order, reptilian creatures of chaos, ineffective angels of good ( we’ll get to all of them) and today’s target of contrition: the laughably obtuse servants of evil. 

Today I’m going to explain why the way that demons and devils in d&d are so poorly implemented, then a few different ways they could be changed to enrich your campaign. 

TLDR: The great wheel cosmology is dumb and is holding you back from any nuance in your worldbuilding. There should be no one central hierarchy that all demons and devils fall into, and instead there should be numerous hell dimensions throughout the planes that all operate independently.

If you want to maintain the distinction ( which I could take or leave), demons are the manifestations of various cruelties, evils, and miseries of the world that have festered for too long. Devils should go back to their roots as tempters and punishers of mortals, existing as a counterbalance to angels as the protectors of mortals, and the messengers of the gods.   

Lets talk about some base assumptions in the default d&d universe ( note that some of this is based off previous editions of the game, but are still part of the foundational structure of the newer editions) that I think make no sense whatsoever. 

Evil is a moral absolute, and souls exist. 

Evil is not only an absolute, it is a place you can walk to if you have the right portal. 

People know about this, there is physical evidence that proves (regardless of your religion) that if you are a bad person, you will suffer forever for it. 

Somehow, there is still a significant number of free-willed people who are willing to be evil, despite physical proof of these consequences. 

Not just “ I’m going to fuck people over, morality is grey” self interested evil, ( which disappears very quickly in a world with actual, factual demons) but “ I am going to make friends with the gross monster things and do cruelty on their behalf” 

In addition to these people with an obvious death wish, there are hordes of default-evil humanoids with the indigence to know the difference between right and wrong, and are predetermined to do evil anyways. 

The souls of these evildoers, whether chosen or not chosen, get sorted into 2-3 discrete piles where they are then mashed down to nothing and used as the raw material for more fiends of the correct faction. 

Because d&d is at its heart a wargame, and product of the 80s, these factions clash against each other forever in an eternal struggle called “the blood war” which is so definitive to the cosmology that if it ever stopped the whole multiverse would end. 

Almost all fiends are tied to their role within the blood war, existing in easily discernable castes and categories. with most of the higher level ones complete descriptor being “ they fight good in the blood war”. 

All of this is very dumb, and will poison your campaign if you let it in. 

As you can probably tell, I see most of the default lore as a pretty clunky.  It completely demystifies the afterlife, and somehow makes matters of morality both immensely more complicated AND laughably simple. Likewise, it also makes the motivations of fiends very basic: they want to get a foothold in the mortal plane to either cause their particular form of havoc, harvest souls, or invade the world as part of a senseless invasion. 

 If we wanted to go back to first principles, fiends should be treated like fey: a manifestation of something fundamental about the world ( in this case wickedness in place of whimsy) who’s exact nature is left vague enough to conform to a plot as needed while remaining vivid enough to inspire. In that spirit, I’m going to try to give my explanation of demons and devils, though I encourage you to invent your own justifications as suits the mythology of your campaign. 

Demons:  Evil is like a wound upon the world, and demons are vileness that festers out if it. First manifesting as malevolent whispers on the wind, rabid animals, or the dark impulses in mortal hearts, these nescient things grow in strength as they feed off of chaos, savagery, or suffering. Eventually they gain enough power to take a physical form, and grow in strength, complexity, and intelligence as the evil that spawned them ferments. 

Demonic Adventure Hooks: 

You need no reason why a demon may be haunting an area, beyond a historical explanation why that place might be stained by evil, sorrow, or pain. Torture chambers, pauper’s graves, the sites of ancient battlefields. if demons spontaneously rise from wickedness then you can use their ranks to stock your deepest dungeons and your most far flung wilderness encounters. 

The exorcism of demons then is one of the key steps in “reclaiming” land that has fallen to ruin, and can provide a more comfortable ethical milestone than fighting off fey looking to protect their forest. If the players want to rebuild a ruined keep that once played host to a vicious gang of bandits after it was destroyed in a brutal siege, they may need to negotiate, bind, or outright destroy the malign spirit of carnage, war, and greed that has grown up from the bloodsoaked foundations. 

Demons can also manifest out of a singular person’s festering evil, some aspect of their personality they refuse to confront, or a vice that runs unchecked to the point where it takes on a life of its own. These “personal demons” then provide an excellent minion/secondary antagonist when fighting a more morally complicated foe, or may hint to an uncompromising ally’s unaddressed baggage. 

Devils: I’m of a few minds about devils, but I generally like to focus in on them as self appointed moral arbiters, hunting their individual pet cause of wickedness across the planes. The devil dosen’t want your soul because it’s raw material for some great eternal war, they want it because you handing over your singular essence as collateral means they’re right about whatever twisted theory they have about the flawed nature of mortals. The ARBITRARIYNESS of these “sins” are what makes the character of the devil. A fiend may seek to cut out the tongues of liars, but cares not if their victims gave false and lethal witness, or simply got the date wrong when recounting a story in a pub. Another may seek to punish vanity, but will do so by lighting bonfires in the home of the rich or by compelling the fearful to burn their keepsakes and live a life of aestheticism. 

Devilish Adventure Hooks: 

An evil (or morally unscrupulous) party should be AFRAID when the devils show up, because it means that someone has taken an interest in their deeds. Good or wellmeaning characters may call upon the gods and their agents to intercede on their behalf, but truly guilty ( or atleast easily convicted) individuals are often written off by these powers as “The Devils’ Due”, and left to their own devices. 

The best devilish contracts are more than mere “souls for wishes” exchanges, and instead contain thought experiments ala the trolley problem or the prisoner’s dilemma.  “ Though it may be a tragedy your lover died, would you really want them back if they were driven by murderous compulsions every full moon”,  “You need this ship to make it through the storm to save your business, but would you still favor the lives of the crew and your profits if it carried plague with it?”, “ I bet you a literal king’s ransom you can’t put your hated rivalry aside for one year and NOT do anything to hurt them in any way.”  Of course, devils are wicked, and so will do what they can to nudge circumstances in their direction. 

There are hells, but each of these domains is a sliver of a worldlet, isolated in the infinite planear sea. They are maintained by devil-princes and organized for the collection and punishment of those that raise this prime devil’s ire. These hells make excellent vaults for those who can retain a devil’s service, as they are often hostile and dreamlike, and can only be reached with the specific aid of an aligned fiend or powerful psychopomp. As such, many of these hell dimensions are allowed to persist by acting double duty as prisons for the multiverse’s worst, rogue demigods or hated foes, forced to live out eternity in a niche form of torment. 

[fated-lab-partners]

The Beauty of Entrapdak: Lab Partners in Love!

“Imperfection is beautiful.”

A masterpost full of links to Entrapdak-positive posts!

Masterposts

Cruelfeline's Hordak Bleatings Masterpost

Soranis-Sunshadow’s SPOP Masterpost

Catra and Hordak: The Parallels

A Special SPOP Announcement! 

A Loving Relationship

Season 3

S3 Gifs - Entrapdak Moments

HORDAK TRULY CARES ABOUT ENTRAPTA IM SO 🥺😭💞💖💗💖💘💞💕

They’re So Great Together 

So She Wants to Be There for Him 

S3 Gifs - What’s the Rush?

She’s Not Afraid of Him - He is Not Afraid of Her 

They Make Each Other Stronger and Happier 

Entrapta’s Neurodivergent Symptoms Are Not Repressed

S3 Gifs - Entrapta on Imperfection

Let’s Talk About: The Love/Friendship Entrapta and Hordak AKA Entrapdak/Hordapta Part 1

His Last 3 lines in the Season are ALL about Entrapta

But One (1) Person Implies Entrapta is Meh and He’s Down To Fite

Tldr Yeah It Was His Intention to Shield Her

She Put Thought and Emotion Into the Crystal

Entrapta Has Never Been Afraid of Him

Let’s Talk About: The Love/Friendship Entrapta and Hordak AKA Entrapdak/Hordapta Part 2

It’s Easier to See that She’s Trustworthy When Someone Trusts Her

And Then He Meets Entrapta

He Takes a Moment to Reflect on Entrapta Before Fleeing With Catra

He Does Need Her!

S3 Screenshots - Hair Touch

I Love Them So Much and I’m Not Even Sure Why

Things That Make Me Emotional

No Reason to Get in a Tizzy

S3 Screenshots - He Showed Her the Stars

S3 Screenshots - Look at Them. They Just Want to be Together 

Asking the Crew-Ra About Entrapta and Hordak at the Power Con She-Ra Panel

S3 Screenshots - Neither of Them Is Willing to Activate It Without the Other

I’mma Wrap You Into a Blanket, Make You Soup, Spoon Feed You Like a Baby and the Soup Is Served From Teeny-Weeny Cute Cups

It Hurts So Much

Season 4

S4 Screenshots - Blush!

S4 Gifs - Hordak’s Tears

S4 Screenshots - I Just Need to Point This Out

Please Fix This, S5

Both of These Very Intelligent People Are Fooled by Internal Fear, Insecurity, and, in Entrapta’s Case, Social Difficulties

S4 Screenshots - I Need Her Notes, Her Recordings 

S4 Screenshots - His Face

S4 Gifs - Hordak Misses Entrapta

Goth Bat Boyfriend Is Head-Over-Heels for His Gamer Girlfriend Whether He Realizes It or Not

He Definitely Thinks She’s Dead

S4 Screenshots - Hordak's Grief: The Finer Details

Season 5

S5 Screenshots - Hordak/Entrapta Moments!!

I’m So Fucking Proud of Him. Hordak Is Officially Free From Abuse and Cult

S5 Screenshots - Your Imperfections Are Beautiful! 

S5 Screenshots - She Loves Him So Much💜

This Is a Love Arc 

We Can Tell She’s So Happy to Finally Be With Him Again That She Won’t Let Him Go

A Bit of Thoughts About the Mind Control in She Ra…

S5 Gifs - THEY DO NOT WANT TO BE SEPARATED YOUR HONOUR

S5 Gifs - Did You Not Hear Me Little Brother? Do It Now!

S5 Gifs - So, Are We All Just, Like, Okay With This?

S5 Screenshots - Entrapta?

Let Me Explain How Powerful the Writing for Entrapdak Is

Entrapta and Hordak Parallels: Then and Now Part Two

There Ain’t No “OWO I cAn SaVe HiM~~” Here Bitches, Just Good Old Respect

She Could Have Just Scurried Out of There

You Know Why I Love Entrapdak?

I Need Everyone to Realize That Hordak Actually Told a Successful Lie

They Love Each Other, Your Honor!

Hordak/Entrapta Parallels

Damn Straight He Wouldn't Do That!

Debunking Anti-Arguments

Entrapta

Entrapta’s Age 

More Age Discourse & Other Arguments

I’ve Seen the Age Discourse Floating About Again, Though It’s a Bit Different This Time

Entrapta is Not a Child!

Entrapta is an Adult

Entrapta's Autism: The Manipulation Argument (Again)

The Only People Who Think Hordak Has Any Kind of Actual Power Over Entrapta Are People Who Don’t Like Their Dynamic

Hordak Isn’t Using Entrapta 

Did Hordak Actually Manipulate Entrapta?

Assertive Entrapta

Screenshots - Entrapta the Innocent. Such Manipulation

“Entrapta Deserves Someone Better for Her Than Hordak”

No One Respected and Valued Entrapta the Way Hordak Did

More Respect

Really Makes Me Think, Again, About the Way the Alliance Only Seems Interested in Entrapta for Her Usefulness

Entrapta Doesn’t Hold Back Around Hordak

Entrapta Did Not Fix Hordak 

Entrapta Doesn’t Fear Hordak

Hordak

"Daddy Issues"

Horde Prime Character Analysis (Heavy and Sensitive Topics Ahead) - Long Post

Hordak's Mental/Emotional Age

Antis: Hordak’s Abusive! He’s Done So Many Bad Things!!!!

Wrong Hordak and Hordak - Indoctrination & Support Systems

Can we stop forgetting that Wrong Hordak Wasn’t “Baby” Until Bow Fried Him?

People Don’t Want to See the Horde Clones as Slaves, Because That Makes Some People Uncomfortable

Just a Friendly Reminder That Hordak Did Not Commit Genocide

She-Ra Fandom…Words Have Meaning

Another Example of Genocide 

There Was No Scorpion Genocide - Irrefutable Proof

Hordak Is Not a Fascist 

Hordak Is Not a Fascist - More Details

SPOP’s Themes

Here’s an Unpopular Opinion!

The Way Hordak Treated Others Doesn’t Ruin His Relationship With Entrapta, Period

Excusing vs. Explaining  

Debunking the Medium Article About Hordak

The People Antis Are Actually Attacking 

Identifying With Hordak

Why Hordak and All of His Brothers Are Cult Victims Suffering From Religious Trauma Syndrome

Hordak Never Left His Cult

Hordak Is Not Horde Prime

Hordak: The Power-Hungry Warmonger

Catra & Hordak

Why Not Both?

It's Not About Deserving Redemption

I Don’t Understand How People Can Wax Poetic About the Depth and Trauma of Catra’s Abuse, Only to Just Sort of… Brush Off Hordak’s

Catra and Hordak are Parallel Characters

Okay, Antis. If Hordak is Committing Genocide, Then Catra Was Committing 400% Times More Genocide

Hordak and Catra’s Crimes 

Entrapdak & Catradora

Catradora - Abuse

Screenshots: Catra’s Abusive Actions

Catra Abused Adora

Yes, Catra Was Abusive 

Entrapdak & Catradora - Important Differences

Entrapdak Did Not Overtake Catradora 

The Show is Still for You. That Hasn’t Changed

Entrapdak in General

It’s Not Problematic to Ship Entrapdak!

Don’t Take Your Anger out on an Entire Group of Fans Over Their Opinions Concerning Fictional Characters

But Isn't Entr@p/dak Like.... Not a Good Ship...

Noelle Confirmed Entrapdak

Noelle Doesn't Hate Entrapdak

Not All Conflict Is Abuse

Addressing the Same Anti-Arguments - Again 

Hordak and Entrapta Are More Than Just Friends

[swampgallows]

my uncle works at blizzard and i know the end of shadowlands

here is my prediction, it’s sloppy as fuck but i wanna just draft my general idea before the shit actually comes out so i can be like “CALLED IT” if i’m right lol

okay so let’s talk DREADLORDS babey. they are not demons per se but a separate race of sentient beings called the nathrezim. apparently they were discovered by sargeras when he was traversing the cosmos. they were sitting around chilling with the old gods, which is how sargeras found out about the old gods and void lords in the first place. so the history of dreadlords and the old gods/void goes way back.

there are three things that dreadlords are very good at:

1. summoning chaotic shit 2. crafting chaotic shit 3. being chaotic neutral emissaries, mostly for the burning legion. mostly.

1. dreadlords are really powerful interdimensional beings from the twisting nether. however, with the afterlives: maldraxxus cinematic it possibly implies that both the denizens of the shadowlands and the nathrezim themselves have the power to move between life and death as well as laterally across realms like the elemental plane, twisting nether, etc.

2: the dreadlords have forged the sword apocalypse and are possibly the original smiths of the helm of domination and frostmourne. we know that these artifacts are not of azeroth. the nathrezim could have smithed both the helm and frostmourne with help from the jailor and his magic. side note is the WoW canon spelling his name Jailor or Jailer? ive seen both. guess it’s one of those imposter/impostor situations.

anyway, point number 3: we have witnessed dreadlords allying themselves with several different factions, including but not limited to the scourge (sub-faction of the legion), the burning legion, the light (lothraxion), and waaaay back when... the forsaken. by sprinkling themselves throughout the cosmos they can tip the scales on several fronts toward chaos/old gods/void (yes, even lothraxion, since the Light seems to have its own agenda per Xe’ra).

newer players may not know that sylvanas once had a dreadlord ally named Varimathras. one of his click-quotes he’d say “I’m always on the winning side.” he claimed to hold no more ties to the burning legion and that he also wanted to get revenge on arthas/the lich king, and since that was sylvanas’ ultimate goal, they teamed up. he used to chill right next to her in the royal quarter, until the battle for the undercity. this was a wotlk-era event not unlike the pre-bfa “war of thorns” that followed The Wrathgate. the horde, including thrall and varok saurfang, led horde troops into the undercity to oust the mutineers from the horde. the alliance was also present, with newly-returned king varian wrynn and lady jaina proudmoore also invading to take their revenge on putress and his loyalists. 

but before all that, sylvanas could have possibly been clued in by varimathras about the jailor’s intentions all the way back in wrath. especially if she was looking for a way to defeat the “death god” lich king, varimathras would have been more than happy to tell her about death’s boss—the jailor—and the suffering arthas would undergo in the maw. (remember, shadowlands itself is not new lore. it has existed since the dawn of warcraft itself; whenever you die in game you are in the shadowlands. the spirit healers in the graveyards are in the shadowlands.)

again, this is just my speculation, but varimathras easily could have told sylvanas about the origins of the helm and frostmourne, the source of arthas/the lich king’s powers. varimathras/putress betray her (though even this has conflicts with new lore, e.g. Chronicle [my bane] saying that Sylvanas had planned the Wrathgate all along). battle for undercity happens, and varimathras is banished. 

sylvanas maybe figures ‘dont worry imma bust that shit open when i go kill arthas’. maybe she even planned to hold dominion over the scourge and wear the helm herself, taking the place bolvar has currently. but the halls of reflection & ICC happen and... she doesnt get to kill arthas, her one reason for continuing her existence.

so we get Edge of Night, which potentially planted a lot of seeds (if blizz is that clever).

VALKYR possibly trick her (i have said this before), as they are agents of the scourge/the jailor, hopefully to get sylvanas on their side to incur more death and be a secondary wave of would-be scourge (since bolvar aint doin that job and he’s not dead so they cant really get to him BUT they can travel throughout the shadowlands). either that or maybe they were planning on her becoming the new lich king and when bolvar got the hat instead they got a lil pist about it.

sylvanas is foisted into the very non-consensual position of “choose death and suffer for eternity or come back to life and Lead Your People™”. there is some OLD ASS LORE that i cannot find and maybe it’s something i misread somewhere or whatever but i was always under the impression that the Light could not save the Scourge, so anyone turned Scourge could possibly end up in the Maw on principle of being inherently irredeemable (hence the name “Forsaken”, they cannot be saved by the Light). the lore might have changed or, like i said, i might have just picked this up from somewhere and it’s wrong entirely. but if that’s the case, more Scourge = more anima dumped into the Maw disposal, which strengthens the jailor. either that or breaking sylvanas’ spirit to redirect her vengeance on Capital D Death rather than arthas himself.

basically everything sylvanas does while “alive” in azeroth pales in comparison to the eternal suffering and torment that awaits her if she is to die. so she has literally nothing to lose and can only gain by at least keeping herself alive as long as possible, no matter what wild shit she gets up to, it cant be as bad as the maw. 

ultimately i think sylvanas becomes the new jailor to satisfy both her loyalists/fans and those who want her to pay for her crimes, she is redeemed by technically stopping the maw expansion by taking over a la bolvar keeping the scourge dormant, all the symbolism of her destroying the helm of domination becomes all the more poetic and poignant along with her ‘this world is a prison and i will set us all free’ bullshit, avoids her potential fate in the maw as a prisoner by becoming the jailor itself (”better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”). PLUS then she gets placed in a limbo much like illidan fighting sargeras for potentially eternity by being dead-but-not-really as the jailor so blizzard can cameo to her or make merch of her all they want or bring her back as deus ex machina if they feel like it.

i had way more details about this shit when me n the best friends talkd about it a while back but it’s  been seemingly an eternity since then but yeah the tldr

sylvanas becomes jailor (predictabo) because varimathras spilled the beans about the funny sword and hat his buddies made purely for the bants w the old gods/void (less predictabo).

boy are they gonna make that covid vaccine soon or what i need a fuckin job

[mustloveshera]

amalthea & hordak

i saw a post point out that hordak asking entrapta “what have you done to me?” is the same line as what the unicorn from the last unicorn asked schmendrick after being transformed into a human (who was given the human name amalthea shortly after). although this is kind of pointless, i felt compelled to write up a thorough analysis of the comparison.

MOTIVE

schmendrick turned the unicorn into a human to save her life (their enemy was interested in unicorns, not humans), and to prove that he could use the real magic required for such a transformation. he hadn’t intended to turn her into a human specifically; he’d only desired to change her into something that their enemy wouldn’t be interested in.

entrapta helped hordak embrace his individuality just because he was there and he was suffering and she cared about him, and to teach him about her philosophy on imperfections. while she did do it to help him, it wasn’t a life-or-death situation. she hadn’t intended to inspire him in this way; she’d just wanted to help him.

TLDR: schmendrick’s motive was to save her life and prove himself. entrapta’s motive was to help him out and share her philosophy.

METHOD

schmendrick used magic to transform the unicorn into a human. the effect was instantaneous, but the true weight of the consequences weren’t felt until later. at first, amalthea (the unicorn’s human form) acted like a unicorn in a human’s body. over time, she became more human, to the point that schmendrick worried that he couldn’t return her to her true form.

entrapta used The Magic of Friendship (lol) to help hordak expand upon his individuality. these interactions took place over more than a year, and the consequences compounded, to the point that he reconsidered his true purpose.

TLDR: schmendrick transformed her instantly. entrapta helped hordak grow as a person over the span of more than a year.

WHAT WAS DONE...GOOD OR BAD?

our titular unicorn was perfectly content being a unicorn--immortal, the most beautiful creature on earth, capable of kindness and sorrow but incapable of regret, protecting her forest from any hunters or winters or famines. she only began her quest because she wanted to determine whether she was truly the last of her kind, and if she was, find out what had happened to them. she could not maintain her idyllic existence as long as those questions plagued her.

hordak began as a high-ranking clone who worked closely with horde prime. as far as we know, he enjoyed that existence, even if it prevented him from reaching his full potential as an individual (which he couldn’t fathom anyway). as far as he knew, that was as good as it got. however, he could not maintain that existence given his physical defects. separated from the hivemind in etheria, he became miserable and obsessive, seeking to restore that existence that he’d enjoyed so much. even at this point, he’d been transformed by his own experiences; he’d dared to give himself a name, after all.

in both cases, these existences were destined to end. however, the quality of these existences differed. the unicorn, albeit different than a human, did not lead an inferior or unfulfilling existence. hordak, as a clone in a hivemind, had the capacity to be an individual, but only knew of assimilation and obedience. even if both of them felt content with their existences, only hordak had been deprived of his full potential.

-

the unicorn was transformed into a human. it was at this point that she asked, “what have you done to me?” while touching her forehead, where her horn had once been. at first, she loathed this new existence. however, as she became more human with each passing day, and fell in love with prince lir, amalthea desired to remain human. she also wanted to abandon her quest to save the rest of the unicorns, focusing on her own happiness. did she genuinely consider being human (and mortal) a more fulfilling existence, or had she simply become too human to remember who she truly was? if the plot hadn’t forced her to turn back into a unicorn, would she have been happy with the prince?

hordak began to embrace his individuality as entrapta’s “lab partner.” this progressed over more than a year. he became so happy living like this that he considered abandoning his all-consuming goal of reuniting with his brother and re-assimilating into the hivemind. if circumstances had played out differently, would hordak have abandoned his plans and remained with entrapta on etheria?

as hordak embraced his individuality, he became more himself. as the unicorn’s transformation progressed, she became a human who didn’t even want to remember what she’d been before. (especially in the book, there were physical signs that staying human was wrong and unnatural, such as her beauty evoking profound uneasiness rather than awe from the guards as her transformation progressed.) both of them considered abandoning their original quest for their own happy ending, but the unicorn’s quest had been noble, while hordak’s quest had been selfish from the start. hordak was being true to himself by rejecting this, while the unicorn was deluding herself by trying to forget it. even if both of them might have been happy living out their days with their partners, hordak would be living authentically, and "amalthea” would be living a lie.

-

the unicorn returned to her true form. haunted by her memories and filled with regret over her decision, she would forever be alone, even among her fellow unicorns. she knew that she could not return to her human form, but she would always remember the prince she’d fallen in love with.

hordak returned to horde prime and was reprogrammed. his memories couldn’t be completely erased, but without physical reminders (such as seeing catra or the LUVD pin), he seemed...functional. he was different than the rest of the clones, but not to the extent that he couldn’t connect with them. it was when he saw entrapta again that he asked, “what have you done to me?" while looking at the LUVD pin she’d given him. the memories she evoked were of a better life that distracted him from his new/old reality.

in the end, hordak asserted his independence, and entrapta happily dragged him off into the sunset.

so, “what have you done to me?” well, that depends on who you were before.

[real-jaune-isms]

RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 3 Review & Rundown

Oh boy oh boy, this sure was a heck of a time wasn’t it? Not quite as panic inducing and chaotic as last week with the Hound playing fetch with Oscar’s body, but I still felt a great deal of dread and unease as things took a turn for the negative. Hopefully I can properly explain how.

We begin on a black screen as Ruby pants and groans in a way that made me worry I had put on the wrong video. But no, she’s just winded from riding the tube up to Atlas, and we see her stagger out to see the rest of the group awaiting her. Nora is being painfully held by the ear for what she did to Weiss last episode, but she defends herself by saying it was the kind of thing you only get to do once in a lifetime so she should be happy about it. Blake is the last one to pop out of the tube, and she seems to have had a real bad time coming up. Hair a mess, a little of balance, out of breath, she has good reason to want to NEVER do this again. May asks Penny for directions through the base, though she calls her “robo-girl” when she does it which isn’t the greatest nickname. Penny does a 3D scan of the base and pulls up a map for reference, or something cool and digital to that effect, its more of a visual thing than something you can explain. She gives a rapid series of perfect directions, much to everyone but Ruby’s wide eyed amazement. Ruby is just smugly impressed that her gal pal can do this sort of cool thing. Penny also takes this chance to assert that she would much prefer being called by her actual name. Ruby gives a smug “heh” that May is getting told off, to which May scoffs. Kdin herself has commented that this was meant to only be indignation at being chided for the nickname, not any annoyance at Penny being insistent on what she is called. Personal identity is something May understands well, and she does call her Penny from that point on. So it’s nothing to go insulting or slandering May over.

May puts up her invisibility bubble, and they head off. We see them standing around in an elevator waiting to reach their floor, a very relatable bit of comedy, before taking a few hesitant steps back as it stops on an early floor and two soldiers get in. These two are outside the bubble so they can’t see our girls, but it’s still a tense situation. They get to their floor and sneak around the soldiers while they’re busy talking about how creepy Salem’s horde waiting in the air is, and Nora plays a little prank by hitting every elevator button on the way out. The soldiers are so confused and annoyed! Reaching a door with a security checkpoint, Penny pops one of her fingertips off to reveal a USB insert that she plugs into the terminal to use Pietro’s credentials without his hand print. Ruby is quite impressed by this cool new tool, as would be expected of the weapons buff. May asks which way to turn, and Penny informs them that next they will need to go directly through the central command room. There are a lot of people crowded together and walking around, and May’s Semblance is not equipped for that kind of navigation. Fortunately, we get an answer in the form of what I’d like to call the Pennydex. She explains, with a fun cartoony visual, that Ruby’s Semblance allows her to do much more than just move fast, she actually breaks down to a molecular level so her mass can be negated and she can move faster. So, as we saw briefly in episode 1 of Volumes 4 and 6 with Nora and Weiss respectively, she can do the same to other people and transport a group since the mass of a whole group wouldn’t matter if they’re all just flying molecules. TLDR: We were misinterpreting Ruby’s Semblance the whole time and she can use it to get them through the crowded room easily. And judging from Ruby’s look of shock and confusion, she’s been misinterpreting her Semblance too. Harriet did say that her power is unlike anything she’s ever seen before back in V7... Blake continues to be the funniest member of the group by pointing out how Penny knew this was possible before Ruby did, and all Ruby can do is remind her (and us) that Penny also figured out Blake’s faunus identity before Ruby had. Not exactly painting yourself in the brightest light if your only rebuttal is further proof you’re not that perceptive... 

With the opening of a door we shift scenes to Ironwood explaining himself for being tardy to... whatever it is he’s doing, and blaming it on how busy today has been. Meaning he’s probably killed someone else offscreen. The only thing that pisses me off more than that idea is whom he’s talking to: Watts, working for Ironwood to try and hack Penny under threat of execution from two armed guards. Point all the guns you want, Jimbo, this WILL backfire on you in a tremendous way. As quickly illustrated in a podcast about this episode by an IT professional, it is VERY bad business to hire a malicious hacker who has made no efforts to prove his stance with your security or what he will do with his skills has changed. If you can’t understand the jargon on his screen, he will use your ignorance to stab you in the back and turn this in his favor. But it is at least fortunate for Ironwood that Watts is here, because he points out that Pietro’s credentials are in use within the compound and it’s a little uncertain if the general would have noticed that without someone there checking the system. Naturally, as the paranoid man he is, Ironwood declares a security breach and a code red lockdown, authorization to use lethal force granted. Hey, I said this was fortunate for Ironwood, not for our heroes! The girls are of course panicked and worried, Penny checking the systems to see the tubes have been sealed too so they can’t leave how they came in. May is ready to swipe an airship for them so they can bail immediately, but Penny is resolute that the mission can still be achieved. Nora gets a good idea on how to make this work, and we see May sneak into the control room while cloaked to trip a guy walking by with a cup of coffee. His mug, labeled #1 Dad Dud, flies through the air and the hot coffee spills on a coworker’s computer and lap. This poor guy Bill who just wanted to drink some good bean juice, gets screamed at by another employee while the victim of the spill runs screaming out of the room to change pants. Bill is apparently notorious for not heeding the sign they have pinned up to say no food or drinks in the control room, and while the angry guy lists off his misdemeanors Ruby swoops up the rest of her friends and zooms through the room towards their destination while everyone is occupied with Bill. There’s a theory Bill is actually Velvet’s father Will Scarletina, since according to Before the Dawn he does work in Atlas, but considering the kind of guy Bill seems to be I would kinda hope otherwise. He microwaved salmon, for Christ’s sake! Unforgiveable!

The girls, minus May who went elsewhere to get a ship for their departure, emerge from Ruby’s petal blur safe and sound... except Blake. Penny, Weiss, and Nora have all been carried by Ruby before and are used to it, but this is Blake’s first time traveling Air Rose. So while the others look very proud of a triumphant Ruby, Blake is panicked and trying to steady herself. We next see them walking along an ominous looking bridgeway to a door with an electrified field in front of it. Penny does her USB insert thing to take down the electric barrier and unlock the door, and the others ready themselves to fight whoever might be on the other side. Instead, they find an empty room with several terminal pillars, a couple chairs, and one central interface computer that Penny will be using. After the door closes, Nora notes that the electricity started up again. Penny sits down at the terminal, and after taking a moment to breath and prepare herself notifies Pietro over whatever comms they use that she’s ready to start. It’s cute that she calls him dad, reminds me that yeah they are a family. What’s much less cute is that Pietro then remotely takes control of Penny from all the way at Amity so he can use her to perform the complicated process they need to make the launch plan work. The size of her irises and pupils changes, as does the color of her irises from green to yellow. Makes me very wary of the fact that her eyes were briefly red in the intro... especially since Watts is on the job to try and hack into her. Knowing her being remotely controlled is already possible in how she is programmed is TERRIFYING. Ruby is understandably a bit confused and taken aback by Pietro’s voice coming from Penny. “Penny” starts the complicated task as Ruby watches and probably has no idea what she’s looking at, and we cut over to Nora as she looks around the room. She passes by Weiss and Blake, and Blake is the one to voice her concern for Yang’s group. Makes sense she’s so concerned, she’s an only child worried by the fact that Ruby and Yang butted heads like that. Weiss is a sister so she knows what it’s like for siblings to fight like this, she knows it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other less or are on opposite sides. They just have different ideas about what’s right. Clearly she’s drawing from her own feelings on going against Winter at the end of Volume 7. Nora also tries to reassure Blake by talking about how strong and talented Jaune and Yang are and how much Oscar has grown as a fighter. Blake and Yang both seem impressed and reassured by this appraisal, while we the audience know this is very far from the current truth, since Oscar has been stolen away and Yang was unable to protect him. But what is also noteworthy is that she said nothing about Ren. She notices her own gap in information and tries to offer something but... she has no idea what Ren is right now. She hates feeling like she’s losing him, like she has less and less of an understanding who he is than ever before despite the years they’ve spent together, and she’s unsure if she should blame him or herself for this. This time Blake is the one with sage advice pulled from her own bittersweet experiences. When you’ve been at someone’s side for as long as they have, your identities become intertwined and you can lose track of what is really you vs what is a part of them mixed in. It’s important to keep a firm grip on who you are, to be your own person outside of that other person. Clearly, this is a warning to not make the mistakes she did with Adam, for Nora to not blind herself with obsession and attachment to this partner she trusts so much. They don’t say this flat out, but we can read between the lines. It’s a very nice moment from Blake, but it only worries Nora more. She’s had Ren in her life for so long, she really doesn’t know who she is as an individual. That’s a bit sad to think about, but Weiss tries to look on the bright side and says this can be an opportunity for Nora to do some self discovery and find who Nora Valkyrie truly is on her own. All Nora can think of to define herself though... is the value of her strength and her destructive capability. That’s all people expect of her, and she is finally getting a chance to prove herself beyond that.

Before Blake or Weiss have a chance to reassure her, they hear some promising beeps from the computer and rejoin Ruby and Penny. Pietro explains through Penny that he’s cloned the imprint of Ironwood’s computer signature onto Penny, so when they run the launch sequence for Amity the system will connect to her to get clearance instead of going all the way to this terminal to get it from the General. She finally returns to being herself, and says she’ll be sure to rejoin her friends once the launch is done so she can help finish the evacuations, buuuut Pietro has a different idea. He wants her to stay on the tower with him and Maria, but Penny wants to be here and help her friends who need her. Ruby does her best to be diplomatic about this, but she has to agree with Pietro. If Ironwood was right about the tower being unreachable by Salem’s forces then it will be the safest place for the Winter Maiden powers until Salem is beaten or leaves. So maybe Penny should stay there, at least for now? Weiss agrees, while Blake tries to change the subject and say they should head to the hangar and GTFO. Penny unlocks the door while lamenting how often folks are having to do things they would rather not. Appropriately enough, the Ace Ops are waiting on the other side looking for a fight our girls would probably rather not be having. With all the authority of a neighbor at your door to ask for their vacuum back, Harriet insists they’ll be bringing Penny “home” now. RNBW are quick to draw their weapons in defense, and it becomes a verbal spar instead. Surprisingly, it’s Vine who steps up with the speech to convince Penny. And just like the General, its full of negging and gaslighting to make her think she only thought she’s been doing what’s right but really she needs to do what Ironwood says. That she’s not protecting people unless she’s getting the relic for Ironwood. Which is, of course, bullshit because 60% of the people are in Mantle and the General has expressly stated he wants to abandon them to die in favor of keeping his already well fortified 40% up in Atlas safe. Penny tries to defend herself and her position on things with Mantle, but Hare and Elm have a pretty damn backwards way of remembering the end of Volume 7 because they call Penny ungrateful and blame her for Winter being in critical condition. Let’s try to imagine how that dramatic climax would have gone without Penny being there, hm? Winter wouldn’t have been able to get through the arctic vortex Fria was creating without dying of sheer cold, Cinder would have burned through with rage or spite or just been closer when Fria finally collapsed and died. Penny saved Winter’s life twofold and delayed Cinder long enough for Ruby to come in and make the Fall Maiden panic and leave. Get bent, bootlickers...

Marrow and Harriet try to rapidfire good cop bad cop Penny into backing down and surrendering her access of the vault to them, but Ruby uses actual logic and says boosting Atlas into the sky won’t stop Salem, it will only harm more people and delay the inevitable. Or at least, she tries to but hot tempered Hare yaps at her to shut up or she’ll get arrested just like Qrow. Threatening Ruby is more than Penny is willing to allow, and she takes the clear bait to step out of the server room only for Harriet to close the door behind her and leave the other girls trapped behind solid steel and deadly electric current. Penny uses her Maiden powers and her sword array to put up a good fight, but it’s still 4 vs 1 and their teamwork starts to overwhelm her, especially when Marrow uses his trump card Semblance to immobilize her for Vine to put cuffs on her. Meanwhile Weiss tries to use her Summon Knight to break down the door and even the odds, but the electric field is too much. She and Ruby lament how unfair this is and hope Penny can last a little while, but we are seeing how poorly that goes. Nora decides she has to step up for the clutch play, repeating the only 2 things she thinks she can do. “Be strong, and hit stuff...” So she jabs Magnhild into the power source on one side of the door and starts absorbing all the electricity into her body, screaming like Goku going Super Saiyan 3. And the analogy fits, because lightning runs across her skin in cool jagged bolts of pink and her hair stands on end. With a swing and a scream, she bashes the doors in and knocks the Ace Ops back a bit before they can cuff Penny. But all things must come with a cost, and this blows through all her Aura and she passes out with a momentary glassly look in her eyes. Not only that, the pink faded but the lightning patterns are still on her skin as an extensive set of scars consistent with the Lichtenberg figure observed on people actually struck by lightning. In terms of predictions for future consequences, serious electrocution like this has been documented to result in paralysis to some limbs, brain damage or memory loss, and sometimes even blindness. I worry those last two could be possible, since she was already having a hard time determining who she was without Ren so now she might completely forget who she is altogether, or she might lose her sight completely. I don’t know if RT would dare to do that, but we do have Yang’s arm as an example of their willingness for consequences... Regardless, the heroes are now down a woman but they’re still ready to fight for their friend. 

Ironwood bitches and moans about losing the chance for the odds to be stacked in his favor since he can’t win this encounter otherwise, but Watts has a new plan for the Ace Ops. Harriet doesn’t like the new orders, but Marrow is ready and willing to obey. Elm quickly swipes RWB over the edge of the walkway before they can do much to fight back against the already winded Atlesians, and by the time Ruby can scoop up her teammates with her Semblance (thank goodness she learned to do that today), the damage is done. Harriet maneuvers behind Penny and yanks one of her swords out of her back with a heart wrenching pluck of the connecting string. Like pulling off a butterfly’s wing... especially since in this world weapons are supposed to be like an extension of your soul. With the sword yoinked their job is done here and they all bail, though Marrow has a remorseful look back at the teens as if he knows he’s trapped on the wrong side. Guess we know why he agreed to this plan so quickly, it was a grab and go rather than a total takedown of their former friends. Blake is the first to point out how incredibly sus this behavior was, but they don’t have time to fully ruminate on the situation because they’ve also done what they came to do and they need to GTFO. Carrying Nora, they meet May in the hangar where her jaunty greeting is cut short by the sight of the ginger girl’s injuries. They need to get her somewhere safe, so they violently bust out through the doors. While in the open air, Penny says her goodbyes and they reveal the ship can be a convertible so she can fly away. Ruby and Penny share a tender but deep hug, and Ruby promises they’ll see each other soon. I just worry when they do it will be on opposite sides of the battlefield, and this worry is not helped by the final scene. The Ace Ops deliver Penny’s sword to a satisfied Ironwood, though Harriet would have been happier taking all of those meddling kids down. Watts cryptically implies that with a piece of Penny’s tech they can make her join them, and anyone who doesn’t trust him immediately knows by “them” he means Salem. And that’s the worrisome note we end on this week. Will next week be better? With the element of future knowledge/ the curse of this review being a week or so late I can say NOPE.

[svynakee]

castlevania s3 thoughts

Well more like complaints. Although I do find it worth watching; maybe after S4 comes out, though. Because S3 is really just a fancy teaser for S4.

I really don’t like how Castlevania S3 felt like a waste of time (except for 30% which was very good). I mean yeah I watch shows to waste time in general but hear me out.

By the end of S3, it feels like nothing happened. The status quo is kept. There’s a lot of setup with a tenuous promise of S4 payoff. There might be growth, but really, everything feels more like the catalyst for growth to happen later. It’s like following your GPS and it says “You’ve arrived at your destination :)” but you find yourself at some dusty crossroads and there isn’t even a petrol station in sight.

That’s basically all I can say without spoilers. I have a lot more to say with spoilers. So-

If Castlevania S3 was divided into 4 basically unrelated stories (Styria, Lindenfeld, Isaac’s travels, Alucard’s castle), at least half of them ended up saying/contributing nothing to the overarching plot, setting and characterisation. It felt like an extended trailer. Action, twists, your favs making an appearance…then goodbye, screen fades to black, see you next season.

TLDR version: get rid of Isaac’s entire arc, develop Sumi and Taka or get rid of them, Lindenfeld sorely needed more focus, no need to change Styria but more Styria would be nice.

Compare to S1, which was also mostly setup for the plot resolution in S2. It didn’t feel like a waste of time. Why? Because of the threat of Dracula? I don’t think so. It’s because when we first meet Trevor, we’re presented with a very solid image of who he is. He’s alone, he’s purposeless, he doesn’t want to take up his family legacy. 3 episodes later and he’s got two “friends” and a clear goal to pursue. And he’s no longer a nameless drifter – he’s the last living Belmont, vampire hunter, returning to his ancestral home so he may arm himself to face Dracula.

Alucard

Alucard’s story was the worst offender in my opinion. We start with Alucard being alone and sad in his empty castle. We end with Alucard being alone and sad in his empty castle. While this could be an interesting start of darkness for the dhampir, the fact that we don’t really see the results make it an overall unsatisfying season. Suki and Taka contributed nothing. We learned almost nothing about them. Their motivations were frankly generic – they want to fight vampires? Well we already know people who do that. Their obsession with the castle’s engine? Goes nowhere. Their friendship with Alucard? Shallow, not really built on mutual points of interest. Then they die.

The truth is, Sumi and Taka were dealt a bad card to begin with – Alucard, to be exact. Because a ranged and close quarters fighter duo of vampire hunters has direct competition with the previous season’s S&T, Sypha and Trevor. Instead of giving them the time and development needed to grow apart, they seemed more like plot devices to get Alucard to where he needs to be in S4. Or just to prove he’s lonely and gullible. And a bottom.

I feel like there’s a lot of potential in this storyline. Perhaps Taka and Suki’s interest in the castle is more nefarious; maybe they were part of a bigger group. Their betrayal of Alucard could cause him to reconsider his father’s stance on humanity. As a stepping stone, I have no complaints about this storyline. But that’s because there’s nothing to say. Its impact all depends on S4 and S4 isn’t out yet. So, the entire thing just feels frustrating, a pointless distraction from the other storylines.

Isaac

Isaac should not have gotten as much screen time as he did, unless they actually did something useful with him. As much as I love his character (Casually putting Godbrand down? Instant fav.) his presence in S3 feels like pointless pandering. Because he spent all that time doing nothing.

We know who Isaac is, because of S2. We know what his motivations are: return to/avenge Dracula. We know his general worldview, the thing that makes him what he is – he has a low opinion of humanity, is highly disciplined and loyal to Dracula. And the thing is, NONE of these things change in S3. Instead we’re treated to Isaac repeatedly almost thinking humans are okay, then getting proven wrong when he tries to give them a chance, then killing everyone.

This is would serve a purpose if: Isaac was seen as ambivalent towards humanity or conflicted about condemning them in S1 (more like Hector, perhaps). Isaac was more like original Isaac, an unhinged sadist and being saved by Dracula starts him on a path to redemption which is repeatedly denied.

But no. Isaac is always shown to be calm, disciplined and set in his views. Having him go through this completely unchanged makes his character ‘arc’ a waste of time.

The problem is Isaac’s storyline also feels unnecessary plot-wise. Isaac finds humans disgusting and his power is to be a monster spawn point. The fact is, if Isaac shows up one day with a monster army and wants to kill humans, we don’t need an explanation for it. Isaac himself is the explanation. The only thing that needs resolving is ‘how did he get from the desert to bother the heroes’ and that can be solved by “I took a boat” or “I found a transportation mirror” or even “I used a night creature to carry me”. He can just tell us. It can be a shot of him travelling. Or a cheesy montage set to rock music I don’t care.

So the fact that character-wise Isaac is just going through a series of resets is made even more tedious when you realise that plot-wise he’s also been completely useless.

His big fight was fun, but it lacked emotional impact. The wizard wasn’t opposed to Isaac, either in terms of good/evil or ideologically. There was no catharsis to the wizard dying because we never knew those townspeople. Who got turned into night creatures anyway. By Isaac.

Belnades and Belmont (the dancing bear)

The Lindenfeld plot I would say has all the elements of an excellent story but needed more time. More focus. I hated S3’s style of constantly jumping between the four storylines, especially when one of them involved Isaac going through a banal cycle on another continent and the other had the Discount Belmont and Belnades.

In my opinion, Lindenfeld only suffered because there wasn’t enough focus to really build up the almost Lovecraft-esque mystery for Trevor and Sypha to investigate. Germain barely interacted with them, we only got his story via infodumping and a bad dream. Their relationship with the Judge didn’t feel deep enough that his ‘betrayal’ had impact (besides, it was bundled up with Alucard and Hector’s betrayals so there’s a bit of overexposure apathy). And it’s hard to be sympathetic towards townspeople when, for most of the series, townspeople are shit. Townspeople blamed Belmont for Dracula’s horde. Townspeople tattled on Lisa. Townspeople antagonise Isaac. Showing us 1 family eating dinner isn’t going to change that.

There was something of a start to an emotional arc where Trevor questions Sypha’s naiveté, his future with her, etc. which would have been stronger if it wasn’t just the start of an arc. Leaving them horrified at the truth of the Judge, the destruction of the town and their inability to prevent disaster is absolutely fine. But when it’s also paired with Isaac’s Are Humans Bad Merry-go-Round and Forever Alone Alucard, yet another “to be continued” ending instead of closure was frustrating.

Hector but not really

Hector, similar to Isaac and Alucard, starts and ends in the same place. I have no complaints about the Styria storyline though because Hector isn’t the character carrying this subplot. Lenore is.

Lenore starts out with a clear goal and obstacle to that goal. The other vampire sisters seem unconvinced that she can solve it, or that any of them can. Lenore succeeds despite these odds, proving her own strength, cunning and patience. She also shows how her way, the diplomat’s way, has the same value as Carmilla’s schemes, Striga’s military knowledge and Morana’s talent for governance. She has an arc. Sure, it’s a villain arc, but villains need them. S2 had Carmilla working against Dracula, putting her forces into place, manipulating the war council, stealing Hector to her side. S3 has Lenore.

Meanwhile, the Styria subplot also sets up the new villains for the heroes to face – cunning Carmilla, strong Striga, strategic Morana and manipulative Lenore. Along with Hector the army spawn point. We have the new location, Styria. We see the dynamic and power hierarchies of the new villains. We learn about their overarching goal and how they mean to achieve it. Lots of setup, even more than the other storylines, but it has a satisfying arc within it that means it gives closure.

If S3 was freed from Static Isaac and Sumi/Taka (who have expiry dates and arrived half stale), the Styria storyline could benefit from the extra time. Better establish the dynamic between the four sisters (as opposed to Striga-Morana, Lenore-Hector and then a little bit of Carmilla). Give Hector more time to show his emotions; his despair, his loneliness, his genuine desire to have a friend despite his better judgement.

Final thoughts and Season Finales

Overall, the strongest parts of S3 are bogged down by subplots that really didn’t deserve so much screen time. I question the editing style of constantly jumping between the storylines; it comes at the cost of emotional investment into each one. The finale is especially strange to me. Two fights and two sex scenes that clashed, broke tension and made it tough to respond emotionally. Isaac’s fight should’ve happened earlier, a mid-season spectacle that really doesn’t have emotional impact. Lenore’s manipulation and betrayal could have been a second-to-last episode thing. The heroes naturally deserve the prime spot of season finale; the disastrous end of that fight also sets up the gloomy tone of the ending.

Sumi and Taka can die whenever, however. I literally could not care less whether they tried to kill Alucard after sex or over dinner. I barely care about their reason for attempted murder. I don’t know what part they play in the grand scheme of things and I am not invested in them as individuals.

If the entire point of the arc was to prove that Alucard was a bottom, just have him absent the entire season and add a post-credits scene of him using a dildo. Then he accidentally smashes it with his vampire strength and cries on the floor.

[devilmaycamera]

V thoughts

krazy06

replied to your photo

“I will not lose… Not to Dante… I need power… More power! I know… We...”

I love him so fucking much but this pic scares the shit out of me

Okay, Essay time. Thanks for opening the floodgates @krazy06​. I guess this is my day now because IT IS LONG.

MASSIVE spoilers ahead for anyone that hasn’t played and beaten the games. But I mean, it’s been three months. I’ve hidden it behind the cut but consider yourself warned.

That picture is seconds before V rams his cane into Urizen.

I too was so disturbed in that moment. His terrifying lust for power came back for an instant like when he found Dante and the Sparda... And evidently, that moment sure as hell was intoxicating. I want to look at why.

This moment is scary because people expect Urizen to be the monster. It is scary because people expect Vergil to do horrible things. But V? Up until now he's mostly at a glance been a tragic, scared and frail guide, even recruiting the full Devil May Cry crew to begin with to aid him in defeating his unadmitted-other-self. To quote Urizen, as he says of Nero, he would most likely describe V as 'Useless and Human.'

V is holds the most understated power because of his duality. And that makes him terrifyingly disturbed in this moment.

V is more than just human. Don't get me wrong, his human qualities and desire to right his wrongs and work through his trauma is deserving of healing. I truly hope as Vergil he can get there. Canonically (as in the ‘DMC5: Before the Nightmare’ novel) after the team’s first attack on Urizen in the Prologue, when Nero left to prepare and figure out the whole Arm shindig with Nico, V chose to stay behind in Redgrave and do what he could to fight and save people.

For. A. Month. By himself. Out of guilt.

Not to get all Bible up in here but it came to my mind when reading so there’s that, but in a way it adheres to the concept to Matthew 6:3 - " When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." - He didn't stay for praise and heroics or as a cover story to make himself look good to Nero and everyone. He did it alone (well, alone as having Griffon Shadow and Nightmare is. But they certainly didn’t think it was a good idea on V’s part.) at risk to only himself. He does have morality but it was only brought to the fore at his most vulnerable as a side effect as a by-product.

Jump forwards.

It seems often missed in V's final scene because everyone shifts focus to Vergil:

V would have had this goal of re-merging/reconciling with himself the whole time. It doesn’t negate the humanity I mentioned before, but his goal has always been survival.  Survival and Safety, or comfort so-have-you.

By his own admission, one I do believe is genuine, V (and Vergil) wanted to be protected and loved. And then, as an eight-year old, attacked on a playground alone by a horde of demons he was forced to fight for his life. Never seeing his parents again, only finding his brother years later and holding a grudge... (’If our positions were switched’) Stemming from trauma at such a young age it’s understandable he sought power to prevent ever being so helpless and alone again. His actions thereafter aren’t justified, but understandable. He didn’t have a chance to develop any healthy coping mechanisms.

Power is safety. No one else can hurt you. No one can touch you. Power means you can sleep despite the nightmares because you’re stronger than them. (The Nelo Angelo years.) Power is absolute. It’s anger, rage, lust, wild, hot, flaming. And when you’re colder than ice, isolated in depression it certainly sounds like a viable option.

If Vergil’s morality really were all V embodied and that alone, he could have stood there and let Dante finish Urizen off. He could have sacrificed himself in that way, crumbling away to dust the tragic hero. But V’s human. And in all seriousness with Millennial/Gen-Z whatever jokes aside, most of us don’t want to die.

In that moment, V reclaimed his power. Re-joining with his other half was his path to safety and survival and he had to take it. 

Then mere moments later, in his final frames, he’s anguished and I’d dare say mourning himself still without choice. Same as when he was Eight. He was out of time and had to act.

That leads us to two ending conclusions:

The more tragic I imagine in honesty had Vergil defeated both Dante and Nero, gone on to conquer all of Hell and Earth, he would have naught left to do but cry. Deep down I think he (especially as V) knows it too, but until he got there he would be in denial of it.

But he didn’t defeat them. While admission will take time due to his pride in whole, part of him (V) is relieved. He’s clearly retained the memories of both sides. His defeat heartless and powerful to Dante, and the sobering emotional grounding reality brought from his experiences as V. Comradery no longer alone as he’d been growing up. And perhaps… He’d like more of that.

When someone first comes out of a toxic or dangerous position mentally they don’t know how to cope, and often if unsupported, return to negative coping mechanisms that land them right back where they started. (Toxic relationships, bad workplaces, etc.) Vergil offered to deal with the Qliphoth alone, but Dante’s lived with depression as well. He recognised it, and didn’t let Vergil go alone. Those Sparda boys are broken, but they’re making headway.

However this couldn’t have been a possibility without reconciling his two halves. V would have died. He actually puts a lot of trust in Dante really throughout DMC5: Getting him involved to start with, re merging, and then with his fate after the Qliphoth.

That’s my brief take on V anyhow. There’s a lot more moments and beats I’d love to break down. And my god, I'd love to have a conversation with Brian Hanford about acting V, his mind set and motivations for V overall and specifically going into acting these scenes. His performances the whole game are astounding.

 TLDR ; This moment is terrifying because it’s Vergil at his best- V -succumbing to his worst- Urizen -for his overall goal: survival.

[scraemes]

          ( PARK JIMIN.  AGENDER. )  Aleksander’s coven is intimately familiar with SUWON YI, a dedicated Death Dealer for the coven.  HE is a 750 year old vampire known throughout the New World Coven for being DARING + GENEROUS.  However, those who are familiar with them also know that they are very DECEITFUL - CANTANKEROUS.  They’re known for being the CHAMELEON.  Though they are technically disbanded, they are still dedicated to their cause.

a dumbass biography.  tldr below.

          first, he’s a fisherman in jeolla.  it’s late goryeo, but the suwon of mud, huts, and nets doesn’t know this.  the country’s in chaos with mongols and famine bearing on their necks and all he’s ever known is the emptiness of land and the bounty of a peaceful ocean.  ( lies start simply here.  yes, to the tax collector, they’ll collect more tomorrow.  no, to his mother, you don’t need to worry.  i love you, he says to a farmer’s daughter, i’ll love you forever.  yes, to his sister, i’ll stay here. )  when generals ride through their coastal town, suwon’s one of the first to volunteer for the ranks.  ( i want to protect my country, he says before making his mark.  it’s not a total lie, though he’ll never admit it.  )  he doesn’t know how to read letters on a page, but he knows how to swing a sword.  fishing’s made his shoulders stronger than others and he’s quickly ushered up the ranks to a position of relative privilege.  a general refines how he reads people and soon, suwon finds himself in the ranks of a golden company pushing the mongols back, back, back. 

          second, he’s a vampire.  after years of fighting end in a tentative peace, suwon returns home and finds his home devastated.  not mongols.  a different breed of creature.  suwon goes searching for whatever ripped the harbors and huts to shreds and finds a band of paler faces with fangs and brilliant blue eyes.  one is his old general.  his world’s expanded in a single night and suwon’s given a choice: join, or die.  it’s the second easiest decision he’s ever made.  he feels more powerful than ever before and he follows the troupe north to the lycan horde.  he helps the slaughter.  suwon journeys west and doesn’t look back.  they’re an old coven, and he never feels home with them.  he feels his best with a weapon in his hand fighting an enemy with a face, and soon he’s heading his own army and chasing lycans throughout the continent.  

          third, he’s a wanderer.  suwon rested in a deep sleep for a few centuries and when he wakes, the world’s entirely different.  his old coven’s a shadow of what it was, and there’s a flourishing industry in the west.  suwon finds himself in england on the cusp of a new century and, lethargic, abandons his old post for something quieter.  it isn’t that years and years of war have made him a pacifist ------ he’s just tired.  he plays with the idea of starting his own family, gains a partner and a few fledglings, learns how to teach and care than kill and refuses the call of covens that ask for his help with lycans in the city.  it never feels right.  not fully.  but there are moments he appreciates.  theater and music, lights and laughter, card games and shopping.  his world slows down and it’s lovely until it’s not.  after decades, he finds himself standing in an empty house, alone, holding a carnaged body and wishing he could cry. 

          silver finds itself back in his hands.  fourth, he’s a punk with a plan.  a rebel with  a cause.  he likes living with the living, he finds, that constant burst of fresh air making him feel alive again and helping lead him to the tunnels where the lycans lay, and he follows unexplained deaths to every corner of europe and asia before stepping foot in the states just as the new world coven makes a truce.  suwon doesn’t like it.  not at all.  no one’s ever knwn peace and he doesn’t understand why vampries and lycans think it’s possible.  the new coven’s a weakness to be exploited, and so he finds himself here, in the city that never sleeps.  a soldier with a death wish, maybe, wondering when a war’s finally going to steal his soul back to hell for good.  or maybe he’s fighting to protect them all ------ he’s seen the devastation beasts have, tasted the pain himself over and over.  suwon doesn’t trust them.  and he won’t rest until they’re gone.

tldr ; fought the mongols, old school soldier.  joined a coven out of spite and revenge and was an elite death squad member.  hardcore grudge against lycans.  slept for a few centuries, woke up in the 19th.  tries and fails at a family before totally rides the vibe of the times and hangs out with the young’ins.  becomes a death dealer in the old coven.  travels all over the world and came to the states to be on the front-lines for when this peace business goes south.  which it will.  obviously.

a few dumbass statistics.

western zodiac sign : aquarius.  element : air.  sexuality : pansexual.  personality type : entj - a. “the commander.”  alignment : lawful neutral.  height : 5′7.  body type : athletic.  hair color : dark grey.   eye color : brown / bright blue ( after feeding idk i can’t remember how it works in the underworld verse ).  skin tone : golden.  

a dumbass playlist.

prblms - 6lack.  if we were made of water - banks.  russian soul - skott.  badbye - rm, eAeon.  ghost - halsey.  hold on, we’re going home - lykke li.  angel - massive attack.  energy - avelino, stormzy, skepta.  m.a.a.d city - kendrick lamar.  sicko mode - travis scott, drake.  money - cardi b.  blood in the cut - k. flay.  lonely soul - unkle, richard ashcroft.  hollow moon - awolnation.  paint it, black - ciara.  desire - meg myers.  closer - nine inch nails.

some dumbass aesthetics.

gucci loafers.  catnaps.  a low chuckle against your neck.  silk on skin.  mouth full of white lies.  open collars.  heavy sunglasses and sparkling ears.  rumble of the metro in the dark.  burning neon bulbs.  sly grins.  humid summer nights.  dangling cross earrings.  a fresh manicure and flashing rings.  loaded silver bullets.  old war stories.  smooth skin in candlelight.  blood-stained lips.  miniature tattoos.  homesickness.  ancient grudges.

dumbass headcanons.

hair color changes all the time.  still has battle scars from his time in the goryeo militia.  pierced ears -- need i say more.  obsessed with the lost boys and has very strong feelings about the ultimate trio that could’ve been david, michael, and star.  flat-out tells people he’s a vampire because he’s too old to be fucking with anonymity.  knows four languages fluently, but can curse in twenty.  can barely read in any language.  fuck walking, he’s always taking the public transport.  hasn’t paid for a drink in a hundred years.  the last book he read was fifty shades of grey.  before that, it was animal farm back in 1947.  gucci shades, valentino sneakers.  has a rug made of lycan fur he only brings out to piss people off.  dated michaelangelo before he was famous.  does one good deed a month, like run for charity or donate yeezys to goodwill.  raised buddhist and still kind of affiliated.  

some not dumb connections.

sired vampires.  a sire.  former fledglings.  fellow soldiers.  trained death dealers.  unfortunate run-ins.  lycans related  ( familial, platonically, or romantically )  to ones he’s killed.  allies who are also openly anti-peace.  suspicions who are openly pro-peace.  a lycan he let free before the peace, for reason tbd.  old friends.  former lovers.  a death dealer he goes on patrols  ( ? )  with.  neighbor who’s room is next to his at the coven’s headquarters.  a new vamp who’s bringing him to the 21st century.  a vamp he’s bringing to the late 20th century.  a lycan who’s really testing his patience.  a lycan who’s really going to make him question what he thinks of the world.  gaming partners at the local arcade.  competitors.  someone who annoys the shit out of him.  a bad influence.  a good influence.  a distant relative.

note : suwon is freshly arrived in new york city, but has been on the continent for about a year.

[cowboyvamps]

I just kinda went off so sorry for any spelling errors

OK SO maybe some unpopular opinions but here we go. Keep in mind I haven’t played all the RE games but I’ve played most. So here we go. A lot of people like RE because of the horror elements and don’t get me wrong- I do too! I’m a slut for horror and I love the early games bc they’re spooky. But here’s the thing- the series has evolved. That’s very evident. And the thing is.. I actually kinda like the later games (5 and 6) and I know a lot aren’t fond of them but I’m really enjoying myself! And it’s because I’m just taking them at face value. I LOVE survival horror and the old ones (And the remakes) do those elements really well. But I feel a lot of people don’t like the newer ones because they aren’t “scary enough” but the thing is they aren’t supposed to be super horror based anymore anyway. They lean towards action and honestly that isn’t?? Bad???? I mean, think about it. RE4 changed up the franchise by being more action based and people LOVE it. Honestly it’s a lot of people’s favorite of the series and that goes for me too. I’ll admit it had some scary parts but it was more of a “There’s a horde after me and I have 2 bullets dear god oh shit” type of fear than a creeping dread of what’s around the corner or what’s waiting behind the door. Now, 5 and 6 aren’t perfect, but neither is 4. They all have low points (some more than others) but the action formula isn’t bad. I really think capcom really built off of 5 and the co op play and improved it in 6. I really enjoyed seeing my favorite characters interact and see how they change. Sherry and Jake’s play through rally got me, they were real cute and even though it’s a popular trope I love the “rough an tough guy turned soft by pure character” relationship. I also enjoyed the evolution Chris went through, and even though he’s still a superhuman (like how is that man THAT strong???) he was more human in his emotions. He was angry, and wanted revenge, a popular emotion. His bromance with Piers was also something I enjoyed as well. I really think they improved off 5’s formula. On the other hand it’s really cool to see them try out a 1st person perspective and return to their horror roots with 7, which I really enjoyed and was the game that got me back into RE. Alright well, that’s all I have now but I just wanted to get that out.

TLDR: RE doesn’t have to be horror and instead of focusing on that I think people should play and enjoy them at face value sometimes- and if you don’t like them, that’s ok too! Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

[missredbean]

For You I Call: Episode 1 (7)

Premise Imagine your life. Imagine your family and friends. Imagine the best future can offer is now within your reach. Now turn that around. Your world is no longer peaceful. Your loved ones are battling ruthless creatures that devour everything in their wake. And you are now, their enemy.

Summary After three years of hiding and recovering from a traumatic experience, Argent Cross' life finally starts heading for the better—only to have it turned upside down in one night. He wakes up ten years older, without a clear memory of what happened in between, in a warring country that sees him as their enemy's spawn. Going back requires his lost memory, but does he want to remember, when the last thing he remembers is the death of a loved one?

Welcome,

Here is the new prologue of my story, “For You I Call”. If you like fantasy in renaissance setting, humans-vs-hordes-of-monsters, or simply my style of writing, then this story is for you!

What is this all about:

alternate universe

epic battles

politics

love

fantasy warfare

you-know-they-are-dating-but-I-won’t-say-it

Warnings:

ruthless-ness

tragedies

non-straight relationships (male and female version) and straight relationships

present tense style of writing

TLDR: this is basically Muv-Luv Alternative in fantasy setting. Yeah, I love those innocent-hero-thrown-to-alternate-warring-world stories and wish there’s a straight-gay version of it—but there are none, so here it is. Enjoy!

Chapter List:

Prologue  Episode 1: Arachnids (1 & 2, 3 & 4, 5, 6)

Episode 1: Arachnids

Previously:

I follow Vert into the coach. To my relief, the coach is a closed type coach with windows and curtains. Not to mention the seats are cushioned leather seats that looks like a sofa. I can close the curtain and pretend we are in a moving house instead of being outside. If it doesn’t work, I can just lay down and sleep. It’s wide enough to contain my upper body. 

I take a seat across Vert, who sits right behind the driver side. Once I’m seated, she closes the door and orders Rosalys to go.

“You can go now.” 

“Yes, lady Vert.”

Rosalys ring a bell, and the coach moves, accompanied with the pegasuses snort and flap of wings. Nobody stops us from leaving the inn. 

-7-

“We will take the main road and head to the north. On the next town, we will use the train to head south east, where my home is,” Vert says, continuing her explanation from before. “There will be a checkpoint, of course, but it should be fine with our disguise.”

“Won’t they know my face?”

“I doubt it. It’s easier to tell people to look for a white haired young man than distribute a portrait they may have or not have. Besides, you look very different from when I found you. Nobody would recognize you—not immediately.” 

“That’s a relief. What should I do at the checkpoint?”

“Just play as a visually challenged nobleman who has a really sore throat; let me and Rosalys handle the conversation.”

Visually challenged. That’s one way of putting it. In other words, sit tight and don’t do anything. Simple enough.

“Speaking of visions, your sight has come back, right?”

“Yes, but it’s a little bit dark. I can’t see very well.”

“Maybe you need more light. Hold on, let me turn up the lantern.”

Vert leans sideways to reach the lantern placed on a small plank fastened between the seats. She turns the knob, and the room becomes much darker.

“Vert, you got it wrong. You made it darker,” I say when Vert makes no attempt to fix it.

“No, I didn’t. I made it brighter.”

“But it’s darker for me,” I say, earning a frown from Vert.

“Perhaps…” Vert reaches the knob again and turns it to the opposite direction.

“How’s this?”

“Better.”

Vert turns the knob further.

“And this?”

“Much better. I can see very well now.”

“And I can’t. I think I know what’s wrong with your eyes now. They’re weak to light.”

“So I can see when it’s dark, but not when it’s bright?”

“Yes. That’s probably why you can suddenly see. It’s night now. When you woke up, it was noon and the room was bright from sunlight.”

“I see.” It’s a good news, but troubling. How am I supposed to do activities on daytime? It’s not like I can turn off the sun.

Wait. 

That’s it!

“I need sunglasses.”

“Sunglasses? What’s that?”

She doesn’t even know sunglasses? On what century is this place?

“Glasses with dark lenses. Lenses are plates of small glass that you can wear on your eyes.”

“I know what glasses are,” Vert says with a huff. “I just don’t know what sunglasses are. But it’s a good idea. Perhaps we can fashion one at a glasses shop.”

“Yes.” I hope it won’t be like grandpa Cor’s round and old fashioned glasses. The lenses are too big and he looks like a mad doctor when he wears it.

The conversation ends there. Vert adjusts the light so both of us can see. After that, it’s silence between us.

It makes me think. Now that the hectic-ness subsides, questions surface in my mind. Where am I? Somewhere far away from home, that’s clear. But where—or when—exactly? The past? No way, they have pegasuses and back at home pegasuses are only a fantasy creature. Another world? Most likely, since there’s another Vert and another me here. But how did I get here? And why there are people looking for me?

Or maybe the explanation is much simpler; I am still sleeping and this is all just a dream. But no. This is too lucid to be a dream. There’s no way I can replicate the sensation of riding a coach in my dream—because I’ve never rode one—and there’s no way I can imagine Vert’s adult version face in this much detail.

Speaking of Vert…

I sneak a glance at her. She has closed her eyes and appears to be taking a nap. Now that she relaxes, she looks even more like the Vert I know. She still has some baby fat left and only now I notice how stern and mature she looks when she’s awake. Now, she looks like an ordinary girl sleeping.

And I’m disillusioned with how she looks in her dress. Sure, she’s wearing a cream colored, long sleeved blouse paired with a green, two layer skirt and black high-heeled boots, but she does not look feminine at all. It’s like I’m looking at a pretty boy dressing up as a girl. How did she manage pulling that off? Is it the boots? The short hair? Her face? Or is it the way she crosses both arms and legs?

Vert opens her eyes. They’re green like pine’s leaves.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. I just thought you really look like Vert—my sister, I mean, you look better with pants.” I lie straight away.

Vert sniggers. “And you too, like my brother’s long lost twin.”

Boy, does this Vert eats my lie raw too?

“By the way, what’s your name?”

“…You’ve been calling me brother and only now ask my name?” I ask incredulously.

Vert shrugs. “It just occurred to me that you may share the same looks, but not necessarily the same name.”

“Right. It’s Argent. Same with your brother?”

Vert sighs. “Yes. Why you’re not my brother again?” 

That question is rhetorical, but I answer it anyway.

“Because we think memories and blood ties are necessary to be brother and sister.”

Vert goes still. No wonder, even I’m surprised by myself.

“Are you saying that we can pretend to be brother and sister if we want?” Vert asks, voice tight.

“Yes. Not as a replacement for each other though,” I quickly say.

“Sounds interesting, but I’ll have to think about that.”

“Me too.”

“Why you too? You’re the one who suggested it.”

“Yes, but on the spur of the moment. I need to prepare my heart to handle another Vert in my life,” I say, half serious half joking, which earns me a raised eyebrow from Vert.

“Surely my counterpart is not that bad.”

“She’s a dirt magnet. Everyday she comes back as if she has rolled a hundred times on the ground and thousand times on the mud.”

“Oh, then I’m as bad.”

I want ask what that means, but I notice the coach slows down to a stop. 

“Checkpoint time?”

Vert peeks through the curtain and shakes her head. 

“No. It should be further down the road. Rosalys? What’s wrong?”

“There’s a huge line in front of us, lady Vert. I have yet to know what is wrong though.”

“Can you see the front?”

“No, milady. It’s too dark. Please wait for a moment; I will inquire what’s wrong.”

Rosalys comes back a minute later. 

“The army is sending reinforcements to north-east defense line. The road is closed to allow them to come through.”

“The reinforcements should be taxied by the pegasus riders. What do they need the main road for?”

Vert’s question is answered by a tremor. 

“...oh, right. I forgot. There’s that.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Why don’t you look outside? It’ll soon pass.”

Another tremor. I lift the curtain and look forward. At first I only see other coaches, pulled to a stop for the same reason. Then the sky shifts.

No. It’s not the sky. It’s a lizard. A giant, around thirty stories high and several blocks long freakishly over-sized lizard. Its torso is shaped like a round bread, but its skin is like cone shaped rocks put together, especially on the back. Its tail is short; only half of its torso’s length, but its end is shaped like a club—with spikes. Its head is like a turtle’s but with scales and two short horns. 

I close the curtain and face Vert.

“What is that?”

“A stone dragon called Groundsweeper. Cute, isn’t it?” 

I look at the lizard again. Yeah, it’s cute; if it was palm sized and weighed several hundred grams instead of several hundred tons.

“And you’re saying that that overgrown lizard is the reinforcements.”

“Nah, that one is the reinforcements’ weapon of mass-destruction. The real reinforcements are the army escorting it. You can only see the pegasus corps from here though.”

Vert is right. There are tenths of pegasuses flying alongside the dragon. Some maintain their altitude close to the dragon’s head, wings flapping only once or twice as they glide beside its unblinking eyes.

“Amazing. How do you put something that big under control?”

Vert hands me a spyglass. “Here. Look at the top of its head, between the horns.” 

I do as instructed. I see several uniformed people riding on their pegasuses before I find the spot mentioned. There are silhouettes, people sitting in a circle between the horns. 

“See those people? They’re its summoners; the only ones who can give command to it and bring it under control.”

“If it’s a summoned being, why make it walk? Why don’t you just summon it on the battlefield?” 

“It’s not that simple. To summon a grand class familiar like Groundsweeper, you need years of preparation and tremendous amount of resources, so you can’t just dismiss and re-summon it as you like. Of course they summoned it near the battlefield where it’s stationed. But now they’re being moved because there’s another battlefield that needs its assistance and they can’t wait for years.”

The noise grows outside as Vert explains the situation. People are getting off their coaches to see the dragon better. There are ‘ooooh’s and ‘aaah’s accompanied with excited finger pointing; a complete opposite to Vert, who isn’t fazed by the sheer scale and grandiose of the dragon. She just stares at another direction, looking concerned.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“It’s strange,” I give Vert a questioning look, and she elaborates. “The Groundsweepers are the west Ulrika base’s familiar. I heard they’re planning to send one to the northeast Geneche base, but I see two.” 

“Two?” I look out again and yeah, there’s another Groundsweeper, quite far behind the first one. There are less pegasuses around it. “What’s wrong with two?”

“Think about it. How much resources and time will it take to move a creature of this scale across the country? The answer is two battalions of combined corps and three weeks. That means for three weeks, the whole border defense is one familiar and two battalions short. Anything can happen within that span of time.”

“If they’re that concerned, why send the army too? Don’t you have it under control?”

“To keep the creature in line in case it goes berserk of course. Groundsweepers may appear calm, but they’re actually very sensitive. If they accidentally acknowledged a city as an enemy because some idiot provokes it, then, well, it’s hard to change its mind.”

I look at the dragon again. It’s blinking again, so slowly. Yeah. I think it can flatten a city or two before it can be convinced otherwise.

“Long story short, moving a Groundsweeper takes months of planning and calculation. You can’t just plus one when you feel like it. Even if you’re desperate.”

“Perhaps they have no other choice,” I say, trying to make sense of the reason behind. 

“That’s what I’m afraid of. In any case, this works for us. It’ll take around three to four hours to let the dragons pass. The checkpoint will be lax with the growing line.”

“And the patrols?”

“Won’t come. They trust the checkpoint guard to do their job.”