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beautifulbows924 · 3 years ago

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I posted 916 times in 2022

That's 903 more posts than 2021!

170 posts created (19%)

746 posts reblogged (81%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@raelwrites

@beautifulbows924

@darkened-writer

@dearlawdimasimp

@crazycookiecrumbles

I tagged 599 of my posts in 2022

Only 35% of my posts had no tags

#moonknight - 214 posts

#rose’s personal - 168 posts

#asks - 117 posts

#marc spector - 76 posts

#marc spector x reader - 74 posts

#steven grant x reader - 74 posts

#rose's personal - 71 posts

#steven grant - 70 posts

#roses2kwc - 66 posts

#<3 - 56 posts

Longest Tag: 122 characters

#while i was looking through the p’s i saw some of the o’s and it’s going to be hard to pick which of those i like the best

My Top Posts in 2022:

Double the Trouble

Steven Grant & Marc Spector x Gender Neutral!Reader

Masterlist

A/N: This fic is based off of idea number 4. I needed to write something to pass the time and I really like how it came out. I’ve already written the prologue to idea number 5 and that may be coming out later today. But don’t worry this is only the first part to this story, I definitely plan on writing more. As always, I hope you enjoy. Feel free to leave any feedback you have in the comments and if you like my work consider leaving a tip! Thanks:)

Word Count: 1.5K+

Warnings: A little angst in the beginning, NO Spoilers, Awkward Steven, Self deprecation, Fluff, Marc and Reader have a previously established friendship.

Summary: You’ve been friends with Marc your whole life, always secretly wishing you could be something more. So when he goes missing for months and suddenly turns up at your door asking you to help make sure one of his alters, ‘Steven’, doesn’t find out about the mess his life has become- of course you say yes. But what does that mean for you and Marc? Especially, when you’ve started to fall in love with Steven too.

Next Part: Reflections

In the 6 hours you’ve been in bed you’ve woken up four times. Albeit, not for long, but a sort of pattern forms.

You stumble to the bathroom, turn on the light, look at yourself in the mirror, wonder why you got up in the first place, and fall back into bed.

Nestling yourself underneath the covers for the fourth time, it dawns on you that you’re not getting any rest tonight, much like the days of sleep leading into this one. It started out small, just not feeling as energized in the morning, and morphed into 8 hours of sleep turning into only 10 minutes of true rest.

All the nights are the same now, you spend them worrying. And it’s so blatantly obvious that Marc going missing was the trigger for your sleep or lack thereof. But you try not to think about it.

You sit in the kitchen, coffee brewing behind you. The smell of it is sobering and it wakes you up enough for you to collect your thoughts.

You’re there for a while. Your fingers mindlessly swirling the small spoon that sits in your coffee cup and your other hand keeping your face from hitting the hard table.

You wish he would send you a sign that he’s alive. A text, a phone call, even a letter. You trust him, you know he’s smart, resourceful, but his job is dangerous. It’s likely that him going this long without contact means that something went wrong.

A bang startles you awake. It’s followed by several softer bangs that you can only assume are knocks. The clock to your right reads 7:32 am. You’re not exactly sure who it is that’s knocking at this hour but you welcome the distraction.

More bangs sound at the door, “Coming!”, you jump up, wrapping your robe around you tightly.

You throw the door open, looking down and away from the early morning visitor, “Sorry, I’m not used to visitors at this hour anymore. I hope you haven’t been waiting long”, you say, gaze shifting up, shock evident on your face when you realize who it is, “Marc?”.

His disheveled look is disheartening, but at least he’s alive.

“I didn’t know where else to go”, he says, his voice is raspy like he’s lived a whole life while he was away. But just by looking at him you think that maybe he did.

He brushes past you, sitting down at your table. It’s there, underneath the light where you can see just how bad he looks. His eyes are sunken in and his shirt is way too bloody for your liking. Although, you’re not entirely sure if it’s his or someone else’s. You assume it’s the latter.

“Are you alright?”, you ask him. You’re certain he wouldn’t come here, especially like this without good reason.

“I’m not here for me”, he responds simply, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Oh”, you quirk an eyebrow, sitting down beside him, signaling for him to talk. You quickly access him for any possible wounds. You’ve become quite the nurse with him around.

“I have to tell you something important. You’re the only one I trust, but I’m scared I’ll put you in harm's way. You know what these people are capable of and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to protect you”, he’s being honest with you, you can see it in his eyes.

The worry you’ve been feeling for weeks bubbles over inside of you, “Oh, Marc”, you take his hand in yours, “I’ve barely slept in weeks. I’ve been so worried about you, what’s going on?”.

He sighs heavily, but you continue, “We’ll figure out the rest later, together, but for now you have to talk to me”.

“I can’t tell you the full story”, you give him a pointed look, “at least not yet. I’m honestly not even sure if I fully understand everything that has happened”.

“It’s okay, just tell me what you need me to know”, you reassure him, squeezing his hand tightly.

He squeezes it harder in response, “I need your help. I’m not sure how long I’ve got before he fronts again and it’s already been hard enough making everything strange seem like a dream”.

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1,025 notes - Posted April 8, 2022

Of Gods and Men

Marc Spector & Steven Grant x Gender Neutral!Reader

Masterlist

A/N: This is the longest fic I’ve ever written- I’m so proud of it. The first part has elements of a request I got from @fangeekkk and the second half closely follows the events of Moonknight episode three. As always, I hope you enjoy. Feel free to leave any feedback you have in the comments and if you like my work consider leaving a tip! Thanks:)

Word Count: 3K+

Warnings: MAJOR MOONKNIGHT EPISODE 3 SPOLIERS, Khonshu x Reader if you squint, Angst, Several mentions of death, Reader is self destructive and critical, Layla is in this part but is Marc’s ex-wife.

Previous Part: Reflections

Next Part: White Lies

The moon taunts you, serving as a constant reminder of Marc and Steven.

Your nights are blending together again. You spend them awake and worried, a painful ache in your chest that never goes away.

It hurts. You don’t know where they are- if they’re safe.

You assume as long as Marc is needed that Khonshu will keep him alive, but what happens when their work is done? Will he simply leave him to rot?

You try not to think about it.

You wish you knew where they went. You’re no mercenary, but you can hold your own in a fight. You trained with Marc for years in case you ever needed to protect yourself. He was always terrified he would somehow put you in harm’s way.

You’re certain that’s why he didn’t tell you where he was going, and why he refuses to take any of your calls.

You’re calling him again, unsure how many voicemails you’ve left, but you don’t care. You’ll call until the end of time if you must.

It rings, over and over again, until it stops. You try again.

The last ring has the phone meeting the wall in front of you with a loud smack, leaving a dent behind. The impact shakes the mirror above where it hit, the same mirror privy to everything that happened between you.

You’re angry still, not thinking of the consequences of your actions. Your chair scrapes against the kitchen tile.

You walk towards the mirror, intending to destroy it, hoping it will alleviate some of the hurt you’re feeling. You’re mainly furious at yourself, upset you didn’t tell Steven the truth when you had the chance, heartbroken you may never get the time to explain.

Your hands clasp the mirror, bringing it down to you and your reflection makes you pause.

You haven’t slept or eaten since Marc forced you to go that night, and you can tell it’s taking a toll on you. You know he’d be mad that you’re neglecting yourself if he was here and the thought has you sinking to the floor, hugging the mirror like it’s the last thing you have of both of them.

“Good, I don’t need to intervene”, a low voice says, the sound filling the entire room. Your eyes dart around, trying to find the source, but all you find is open air.

“I'm certain Marc wouldn’t want his pet injured, even if they themselves were the ones to cause it”, it continues, close enough to make you jump.

You breathe in shakily, tilting the mirror up, and directing it towards the empty space beside you. A grey beak nearly leans on your shoulder, sharp tip close enough to stab you in the eye if you turned slightly to the right.

"K-Khonshu?”, you stutter out, certain he’s the only god who would pay you a visit.

The beak moves, allowing you to see him more clearly. “I will only say this once”, he tells you, “Marc refuses to ask for help, human pride. Instead, I do it for him”.

“I offer you a deal. When Harrow is dead, I will leave them alone. If and only if, you make yourself available to be mine”.

You’re not entirely sure why he wants you as his avatar. You’re certainly not as capable as Marc or as intelligent as Steven. You feel overwhelmingly average when compared to them, despite your obvious advantage over the general population.

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1,135 notes - Posted April 13, 2022

A Night to Remember

Steven Grant, Marc Spector, & Khonshu x Reader

Masterlist

A/N: This is a very silly oneshot I came up with based off of a request by @babieluci. Thanks again for over 2000 followers! And if you’re interested- come check out my Writing Challenge. As always, I hope you enjoy. Feel free to leave any feedback you have in the comments and if you like my work consider leaving a tip! Thanks:)

Word Count: 1K+

Warnings: Fluff, No Spoilers, Multiple smut mentions.

“You are not asking them that!”

“What are you going to do about it? I have control of the body”, Marc responds, equally annoyed, “Who am I kidding- even if you did have control you still wouldn’t do anything about it”.

“I just need a bit of time to figure out how to do it- ‘s all”, his alter mutters, fiddling with his hands, “I want to make it special”.

Marc sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose, “If one of us doesn’t just get this over with, Khonshu is going to get to them first and I hate to say this, but I’d rather share them with you”.

“Khonshu is interested in them too!?”, Steven asks, jaw opening and closing, mortified.

“Yes, now decide! Now. Who’s doing this?”

“Give me the body, I’ll ask them- you’re too abrasive”, he tells him, gesturing to the weapon that’s still in Marc’s hands.

“I’m not abrasive, I’m just forward”, he grunts.

“Same difference.”

A knock sounds at the door. It’s quite late for visitors, but you welcome the distraction. Your chair scrapes against the tile as you move to open it.

“Steven?”, you ask, immediately noticing it’s him based on his posture and relaxed features.

“Can I come in?”, he asks, walking inside before you’ve even answered.

He stiffens as his body brushes against yours, worrying you’ll be upset that he touched you, but you only look at him fondly. It makes him pause.

He wants to remember exactly how you look in this moment.

Hurry it up, or I’ll take control

Marc’s voice startles him a bit, causing him to flinch, “Um. Marc and I- I mean we-”.

Real smooth Romeo

“Shut up!”, Steven hisses, making you jump this time.

He looks at you apologetically, “Sorry, he’s giving me a hard time”.

“It’s okay, please continue and Marc be nice”, you tell him, assuming both of them can hear you.

Look what you did, now you got me in trouble

You grab Steven’s hands, holding them in yours, squeezing reassuringly.

“Well, we were wondering if you’d go out with us? Like a date?”, he rushes out.

You laugh a bit when he finishes, and he looks like he’s ready to run out the door.

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1,198 notes - Posted April 25, 2022

Tears Ricochet

Khonshu x Gender Neutral!Reader

Eventual Marc Spector & Steven Grant x Reader

Masterlist

A/N: Okay, some of you are going to be annoyed at me for this one. I just needed to lean into the angst during this part- I swear. I promise you the next part will be less heartbreaking. This is another request from @fangeekkk and I decided to turn it into a series instead of a oneshot, so here we are. As always, I hope you enjoy. Feel free to leave any feedback you have in the comments and if you like my work consider leaving a tip! Thanks:)

Word Count: 1.9K

Warnings: Major angst, No Spoilers, memory loss, mentions of death and the afterlife, Steven and Marc aren’t in this part but they will show up eventually.

Summary: The ennead made you forget your service, any memory of your beloved God. So when you meet Steven and Marc, both connected to the deity- and begin to fall in love with them. Will you remember the God that once had your heart?

Next Part: Begin Again

“I call for judgment against Khonshu”, Hathor’s avatar says, a conduit for the God’s voice.

“The charges?”

“Forming an improper relationship with an avatar”, she accuses.

“Khonshu, is this true?”, another God asks, their avatar’s face looking appalled at the thought.

You look at him, torch light dancing through his form, small reflections of it sent from his bronze staff onto your face. Despite his height and demeanor, you can tell he’s anxious. His hand grips the metal rod so tightly that the bandages surrounding it are beginning to come loose.

Beak lifted, he turns, silently requesting permission to speak through you.

You nod your consent to him, your eyes glowing a bright blue, before fading again.

“Hathor is clouded by jealousy surrounding our previous entanglement”, he booms, voice mixing with yours. You’re certain you’ll never get used to the feel of it, but you enjoy the control it gives him over you.

“That is not an answer”, Horus reminds him.

“The matter does not involve you”, the God says simply, trying to stay calm.

“Khonshu has always blurred the lines between himself and the humans”, Hathor states, “It is not surprising that he has decided to debase himself with one”.

“Quiet!”, he screams through you, forceful enough to bring tears to your eyes, “Humanity is beautiful and worth our protection, somewhere along the way the Gods lost sight of that. And because I refused to, I was banished”.

You can feel his breath hitch through yours, waiting for something to happen.

It’s strange to you, having this effect on the God.

You know he always had his reservations surrounding your relationship, but you’ve never seen him like this. Almost scared.

You can feel ripples of uncertainty flow through your bond as the silence stretches uncomfortably. The Gods must be talking amongst themselves, instead of using their avatars. You try to look at him in a way that’s reassuring, but Khonshu can tell it isn’t genuine.

It’s obvious that you’re more nervous than he is regarding the situation.

“Let us speak to your Avatar”, Tefnut says, severing your connection with him.

You breathe heavily, being used like that always drains your energy.

“Have you formed an improper relationship with your God?”, she asks, lines etching her forehead in frustration.

“Improper”, you snarl angrily, mocking her. You’re livid, who are they to tell you who you can and can’t love?

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1,602 notes - Posted April 18, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

A God, a Mercenary, and a Gift-Shopist

Steven Grant, Marc Spector, & Khonshu x Reader

Masterlist

A/N: Hopefully, this will tide you over while we wait for next weeks episode and I finish up some requests! It’s a cute little fic my head turned into- well this. I’m definitely willing to write more for it, maybe some full-on Khonshu smut if anyone is interested in reading it. As always, I hope you enjoy. Feel free to leave any feedback you have in the comments and if you like my work consider leaving a tip! Thanks:)

Word Count: 1.1K+

Warnings: Fluff, No Spoliers, Smut!

Summary: You meet Steven at a coffee shop, falling in love with him, and two others connected to him.

Steven

You’re in line waiting when you first see him. He’s cute, sitting at one of the many empty tables in the back, glasses halfway down his nose- like they had fallen and he didn’t care to push them up. You watch him for a while, but he doesn’t notice you, too captured by the book that sits in front of him.

The barista calls your name, pulling you from your trance. You grab your coffee and thank her, moving toward where the man is sitting.

“Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?”, you ask, gesturing to the empty seat across from him.

He looks around for a moment. There are other open tables, and yet, you choose to sit with him.

“Sure”, he says softly, closing his book.

You look at the title, sitting down in front of him, “The Egyptian Book of the Dead, interesting”.

“Ah- Yes, well I work at the museum”, he tells you, pointing across the street, “It’s nice getting to see the exhibits everyday, makes you want to learn more about them”.

You look at him excitedly, almost impressed? He sighs dismissively, “I work at the gift shop. The pay is good, but my boss is quite harsh- and that’s on a good day”, he pauses, noticing your expression hasn’t changed, “I’m sorry if you were looking for a tour guide-”.

“No!”, you interrupt him, “I actually saw you while I was in line and I thought you were cute so I came over here”.

He fiddles with his fingers, not quite sure what to say.

The silence lasts a while, longer than considered comfortable, before you decide to speak, “I’m sorry if that was too forward, I can leave if you’d like”, you offer, gathering your belongings.

“I want you to stay”, he says quietly, looking at you through the dark curls splayed across his face.

You stop your actions and smile at him, beginning an awkward conversation that eventually becomes more natural.

Your coffee’s long forgotten.

Marc

He groans, stretching his arms above his head, trying to adjust to the dark lighting. Steven’s phone beeps beside him, lighting up with a message. I’m looking forward to our date, it reads.

He makes his way to the bathroom, phone in hand.

“What’s this”, he asks, holding it up to the reflection.

“None of your business”, Steven responds, annoyed. He doesn’t want him to have anything to do with you.

“It looks like something.”

“Yeah, well it’s not”, he tells him again.

“Oh, so you won’t care if I just-”, he starts to text back, telling you something has come up and Steven can’t make it anymore.

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2,155 notes - Posted April 15, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #my 2022 year in review #rose’s personal #Moonknight #The Sandman #thanks for a great year!#<3

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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago

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Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Introduction and Part One)

An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front

INTRODUCTION

The title states my premise here: the breezy way My Hero Academia presents and resolves the mass arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front is ludicrous. If taken as presented and allowed to stand without being further addressed, it serves as a breaking point from which the series will be incredibly hard-pressed to recover. Why, you ask?

From a logistical standpoint, it strains credulity. From an ethical standpoint, it suggests deeply troubling problems with the state of Hero Society. From a thematic standpoint, it unravels whole portions of the narrative’s spine. I’ll be looking at each of these facets in turn to discuss the questions they raise which My Hero Academia has not yet seen fit to answer. Many in fandom don’t seem to be thinking about it too hard, so I’d like to lay out—in exhaustive detail—all the reasons I find this plot element so wildly out of touch with causal reality.

Please note that while they are discussed when relevant, this essay is not principally about the named characters in the League of Villains or the erstwhile high command of the Metahuman Liberation Army. The sorts of consequences Shigaraki Tomura or Re-Destro would and should be facing in a courtroom are orders of magnitude beyond what Random Liberation Warrior X would be, but it’s the mass numbers of Random Liberation Warrior Xs that this essay is most concerned with, as they are the ones most in danger of being swept under a rug and forgotten by the series in its current state.

Further, be advised that this essay in its full form is both very long (about 21K words excluding Sources and Further Reading) and will contain extensive discussion of real-life Japan—comparisons to historical events, minutiae of its legal and carceral systems, and general cultural views on criminality. This will include references to imprisonment, government oppression, and incidents of terrorism both real and in the context of My Hero Academia.

Being as it is about quite a recent event in the series, it will also contain heavy spoilers all the way up through the most recent chapter as of this writing, Chapter 310. It likewise contains spoilers for the spin-off series My Hero Academia: Vigilantes up through Chapter 95.

The essay will be posted in parts on tumblr and in full on AO3. For the tumblr posting, I will provide links to other tumblr posts as I reference them; however, as I would like this to actually show up in the tags, outside links containing my sources and further reading will be provided in a separate post following the conclusion of the essay.

Lastly, I spent an entire month writing this as a fan who is sympathetic to the villains in general and the MLA in particular. If your response to the very concept of this essay is anything to the tune of, “Who cares what happens to a bunch of disgusting quirk eugenicists?” know that you and I have radically different views on the MLA, and the role of the justice system in general. You are, of course, welcome to read the essay anyway, but, having said my piece about the MLA and their relationship with quirk supremacy elsewhere, I will not be engaging with arguments or gotchas on that subject here.

PART ONE: The Facts at Hand

Before we get too deep into things, let’s lay out the basic facts: how many people are actually involved in the arrest, as well as some comparisons to real-life events to contextualize that number and provide some referents for the issues the arrest raises.

Re-Destro gives the numbers of the Metahuman Liberation Army as 116,516. A lot of people go on to die in Deika, though we’re never given a solid count. The biggest batch we see killed in a single go are the press of sixty or so people Shigaraki decays, then the sixteen-ish Toga drops, though some of those might possibly have had quirks that allowed them to survive. Any number of people certainly died as well simply in the moments we didn’t see, and who even knows how many were caught in the radius of Shigaraki’s last attack.

Further, there may well have been a measure of organization bleed when the MLA became the PLF (though I imagine trying to leave was a very dangerous proposition, giving an additional reason to stick it out on top of the general cult-like mindset the MLA displays); likewise, I find it hard to believe that there wouldn’t have been some deaths at the Gunga Villa, be it from Gigantomachia’s departure, Geten cutting loose, or combatants—be they hero or comrade—overcompensating somewhat in the middle of a chaotic melee.

I suspect it’s overestimating the depletion, but for the purposes of simplicity, let us call it 115,000 remaining members at the time of the raid.[1]

We are told that, in all, 16,929 people were captured at the villa—just about 17,000. 132 escaped in the confusion; this is a fairly negligible number, save for the fact that it includes high-ranking advisors, but not Machia and those of the Front that were with him.

We are further told, and I quote, “Their bases scattered around the country were hit too, and the sympathizers rounded up.” Horikoshi did not provide any solid numbers for this,[2] but if we’re to assume that it is just the rest of the group (more on the logistics of that bit of spycraft later), “the sympathizers” would be 98,000 additional people.

However, 98,000 may be a significant underestimation. It’s based, after all, on a number Re-Destro cites to describe “warriors lying in wait, ready to rise to action.” This begs the question: is Re-Destro quoting the entire membership of the group, or only those who actually are ready to take action? In other words, does his number account for non-combatants? Is he counting young children? I tend to assume the MLA doesn't have a retirement age as such,[3] but if they do, does his number account for the elderly?

How many more people might be “sympathizers” to the PLF insomuch as they are e.g. the six-month-old infant daughter of an MLA couple? What about the ninety-year-old man in the retirement home whose only real act of war these days is tying up the phone line at City Hall to complain about repressive quirk use laws? How about the fired-up fifteen-year-old that was going to get their official code name next month, just in time to join the first wave of attacks? If he’s being literal in his usage of “warrior,” the actual count of the MLA could easily be twice as high as the number he actually gives.

But okay, maybe Re-Destro’s number does include absolutely everyone. Maybe he’s just being rhetorical—maybe, in his mind, even the six-month-old is waiting to rise to action; she’s just going to have to wait a bit longer than the rest, is all. For simplicity’s sake, let’s stick with the numbers we have: a low-end of 17,000, a high-end of 115,000, captured not merely in a single day, but allegedly in the span of a few hours.

I’m sure I don’t need to stress that that is a lot of people. But how many people is it, practically speaking? Is there a precedent? Anything we can look to for guidance on how this kind of thing would go in real life?

Comparative Analogues

The PLF is tricky to categorize for the purposes of real-life comparison, especially compared to how they’re treated in-universe. In some lights, they resemble a protest movement; in others, a terrorist group. Just looking at the way the government reacts to them—and certainly in terms of their combat capabilities—they might as well be an all-out insurrectionist uprising! Below, I’ll examine a handful of historical incidents that cover that spectrum; they will continue to provide useful reference points throughout the rest of this essay.

The March 15 Incident

In the first half of the 20th century, Japan saw a huge uptick in socialist and communist activity, much to the general dismay of the ruling powers. In response, they passed a series of laws commonly referred to as the Peace Preservation Laws, designed to better enable authorities to suppress political dissent and freedom of speech, particularly that of leftists and labor movements.

The Japanese Communist Party was founded in 1922, but outlawed in 1925. This merely drove members underground, however, from which position they pointed supporters towards the numerous other parties with more legally tolerated leftist policies that had cropped up in the wake of the JCP’s dissolution. Following the February 1928 General Election (the first in Japan held with universal male suffrage), those parties supported by the JCP saw enormous gains in representation in Japan’s National Diet. Alarmed, the Prime Minister declared the mass arrest of known communists and suspected communist sympathizers. Accordingly, on March 15, 1,600 people were arrested throughout Japan.

Over the course of twenty years, some 70,000 people would be arrested under the auspices of the Peace Preservation Laws, the majority of them in 1925 through 1936. The laws would eventually be repealed by American occupation forces after WWII, and the JCP allowed to operate openly once again.

The Rice Riots

In 1918, an inflation spiral had driven the price of rice out of control, exacerbating economic insecurity and hardship. Farmers were being paid a pittance of the market value of their crop by rice buyers and government agents, while urban consumers were being charged an exorbitant price for the staple food, as well as a great many other consumer goods, and their own rents. In response, a series of riots ripped across Japan in late July through September. Beginning with peaceful protesting in a small fishing town in Toyama Prefecture, the unrest escalated to involve riots, strikes, looting, even bombing in demonstrations that reached major cities like Tokyo and Osaka. The scope was and remains unprecedented in modern Japanese history, seeing some 25,000 people arrested.

The Sarin Gas Attacks

If you’ve heard of any of them, it’s probably this one. On March 20, 1995, members of the cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on five different Tokyo Metro trains in the middle of morning rush hour. Thirteen people were killed and over 5500 injured, about a fifth of them moderately to severely so. If not for small errors in the production of the gas and the rudimentary distribution method thereof, loss of life might easily have been catastrophically higher.

Aum Shinrikyo was a doomsday cult, but the motives for that particular attack were much baser than bringing about the Apocalypse: at the time, the organization was under police investigation for its involvement in the kidnapping of a public official. Its leader, Asahara Shoukou, hoped that the attack would divert police’s attention from a planned raid.

It did not do so; police executed raids on numerous of the cult’s compounds, arresting many of its senior members both immediately and over the course of the following months as the investigation unfolded. In all, over 200 members were arrested of an organization that counted its membership prior to the attack as numbering 11,000 people in Japan.[4]

The February 26 Incident

There have been a significant number of uprisings and violent protests in Japan’s modern history; when looking for a representative example, I focused my attention on the military coups of the 1930s and 40s, largely because they took place in what was closest to the modern Japanese legal context.[5] Of that subset, I chose the February 26 Incident for the severity of the government response. The others disintegrated before they could be properly carried out or were met with sympathy for the dissidents despite the obvious illegality of their actions. The February 26 Incident, however, was when they finally became too troublesome to dismiss, and the Emperor himself ran out of patience.

In this period, the Japanese military had become drastically factionalized into two main groups—an ultra-nationalist group, largely powered by a group of young officers, which supported the Emperor and wanted to purge Japan of Western influences, and a more moderate group mainly defined by their opposition to the above faction.[6] Occurring in 1936, the February 26 Incident involved the young officers, believing that they had tacit approval from higher-ranked officers of their own faction, launching assassination attempts against the nationalists’ most prominent enemies in the government (six assorted Ministers and former Ministers in the Emperor’s Privy Council and the Diet) and a bid to seize control of the administrative center of the capital and the Imperial Palace, after which they planned to demand the dismissal of more officers and the selection of a new Cabinet.

The seven ringleaders had convinced eighteen other officers to lend their forces to the attempted coup, a total of around 1,500 men, calling themselves the Righteous Army. Several of their assassination attempts failed, however, and while they succeeded at taking the Prime Minister’s residence and the Ministry of War, they did not manage to secure the Palace. The outraged Cabinet demanded the Emperor take a hard line with the rebels, and by the 29th, the Righteous Army was surrounded by 20,000 government troops and 22 tanks. In this hopeless situation, the officers dismissed their troops; two committed suicide (a third attempted it unsuccessfully) and the remainder were arrested by military police.

International Examples

For obvious reasons, I prefer to limit my examples to events that happened in Japan. However, I will also be briefly referring to a few international incidents of mass arrest, taking place in India, the U.S., and Egypt, respectively.

In the following parts, I'll use these facts and comparative analogues to take a closer look at what readers were told became of the Paranormal Liberation Front.

Part Two

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Footnotes (Part One)—

[1] Over three months’ time, they likely gained some new blood also, simply in the course of their usual recruitment tactics. You don’t get an underground organization that size by sitting back and waiting for people to come to you, after all. I don’t know a practical way to calculate that, though, so just bear it in mind for when I talk about new members later.

[2] Possibly because he was aware that 17,000 people captured in one fell swoop was difficult enough to swallow without adding on more than five times that number.

[3] We do, after all, see some very aged people fighting in the streets of Deika.

[4] They were considerably more international than you may have heard. They had 50,000 members at the time, some 30,000 of them based in Russia.

[5] The Meiji Constitution was ratified in 1889; universal suffrage (for men) was granted in 1925. The modern constitution was enacted in 1947.

[6] More moderate, mind, in the context of the Imperial Japanese military. Neither of these factions had any time whatsoever for leftist movements, hence all those suppressive crackdowns.

#bnha analysis #bnha meta #paranormal liberation front #meta liberation army #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #my writing #plf arrests #stillness has salt

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saxxxology · 5 years ago

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Cosmo Says - 3

PAIRING: Sam Winchester x Reader, Dean Winchester x Reader WARNINGS: smut: p/v sex, oral sex, some dom/sub themes, eventual threesome, exploration of kinks, and more NOTE: Do not save or repost my work without my consent. I don’t tag for spoilers, so feel free to message me with any questions you have. This work is 18+ only.

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The case is done in two days, and they’re home in two more. You’ve already got dinner ready, and both men inhale two servings of your famous spaghetti and tomato sauce. Sam doesn’t miss the way your hand slides over his shoulders and up into his hair, fingernails scraping lightly against his scalp.

Sam can’t take his eyes off you as you move around the kitchen, setting dirty dishes in the sink before sitting on the edge of the large metal counter, legs slightly spread as you cradle your own bowl of food in your lap.

He could step up right between those pretty thighs, push you back and spread you open for him to fuck. You’d be so tight and warm, and he could lean over, get a nipple in his mouth…

“Sam?”

He jerks back to the present, blinking several times. “What?”

“You’re drooling.” Dean gestures to Sam’s mouth and grimaces.

You giggle as Sam reaches up to indeed find that there is a little dribble of saliva on his lower lip. He wipes it away, blushing, and clears his throat, hoping that someone can cover the awkward silence.

You stretch a leg out and poke his knee with the tip of your sock-covered toes. “I’m gonna get to bed. You two mind cleaning up?”

Sam watches you saunter out of the room, mouth still watering at the thought of what he knows is coming. He’s got a brand new pack of condoms in his bag, and the minute his bowl and fork are stacked on the drying rack, he’s off, grabbing his bag from where he’d set it next to the table and heading down to your room.

He knocks on your door, gets startled when you open it faster than expected, and lets out a quick breath of surprise when you grab him by the front of his shirt and pull him inside, locking the door behind him. Without waiting for you to speak, he drops his bag on the floor, cups your face in both hands, and kisses you hard enough to make you whimper as your fingers curl into the front of his shirt.

“You have no idea how bad I’ve been wanting you to get back,” you purr, running your fingers up his chest.

Sam slides his hands down your sides to grab handfuls of your ass. His heart’s racing, and when you pull him down for another kiss, fingers pushing up at the hem of his shirt, he lets out a soft moan in reply, stepping back to discard the clothing on the ground. He drags your own over your head, fumbling on your back as he unhooks the strap of your bra.

Fuck, your tits are already one of the best things in his life, but they’re even better now. Soft under his palms, nipples firm between his fingers. He wants to get them in his mouth, but you have other plans. You’ve dropped your joggers to the ground, leaving you completely bare, and Sam’s cock throbs hard in his jeans as he lifts you off the floor and carries you the two steps to the bed.

Your fingers press into his shoulders as he lowers you onto the mattress, and he can’t help but sigh at the plush give under his knees. Your bed is way better than his…

“I need a condom,” he whispers, “I got some in my—”

“I’m on the pill,” you whisper, “we’re good.”

He shakes his head and gives you another kiss. “Better to be safe.” Pressing another kiss to your lips, he goes to his backpack, tugging the box out of the front pocket. A gold foil packet drops easily into his palm, and he steps out of his jeans before coming back to the bed. You reach up as he kneels between your legs, and he lets you slide your fingers into his boxers to ease them down.

Sam holds his breath when you gather his cock in one hand, closing your fingers around the thick shaft and deliver a long, gentle stroke.

“You’re gonna destroy me with this thing,” you joke, looking up at him with a smile playing on your lips.

“I doubt that.” He allows you to pluck the condom from his fingers and unwrap it. You roll it down, tucking the snug band down at the base before reaching up for him. He drapes himself over you, dipping his head to kiss along the column of your throat. You slide a hand down between your bodies, gripping him firmly as you try and wiggle into place. Sam’s heart is beating so fast, and his breath catches in his throat when he feels you slide him through your folds, trying to get him lined up with your entrance.

“Here, baby, let me.” He replaces your hand with his and rolls his hips, searching blindly for the soft dip between your legs. Your hips push up when he finds it, taking the tip of him inside, and he keeps his hand fisted around his cock as he sinks deep, a solid groan of satisfaction muffled against the side of your neck.

“Oh, fuck—” you gasp out as he slumps down over you, “Sam…”

“Hmm?” Pleasure clouds Sam’s brain as he raises his head to look at you. “Something wrong?”

“No, just…” you hitch your legs up a little higher, arms wrapping around his shoulders, “fuck me.”

Sam breathes a sigh of what might just be relief and kisses you, shifting between your legs. You feel him brace on the mattress and bite your lower lip as he slowly drags back, waiting until he’s just a warm, firm pressure at your entrance before pushing back in. You whimper at the warm, heavy slide, and when he adds an experimental grind that makes his stomach rub against yours… ooh, fuck.

He runs a hand up your side, finally settling on the soft, warm swell of your breast. He kisses down your neck, allowing his body to fall into a steady rhythm, and gently squeezes. “Can I?”

He waits for you to nod, fingers trailing up into his hair, and he lowers his head to suck a nipple into his mouth. You arch up, taking pleasure from the wet heat of his lips and tongue rather than the friction it provides, and his hips stutter as he goes still, pressed deep inside you with a heavy groan that’s muffled by your tit.

“Did you cum?” you ask, somewhat surprised.

Sam pulls his lips away, shaking his head. “No. Just liked feeling how deep you’re taking it.”

“Oh.” You giggle and pull his head back down as he delivers a heavier, stronger thrust. His hips smack against your ass and he keeps that pace going until your breaths turning into high-pitched gasps, and his own body starts to shudder over yours. His kisses steal your breath away, and your legs wrap around his waist to hold him close.

For Sam, this is a success—he’s made it past the awkward part, and now all he’s feeling is bliss and pleasure. His thrusts peak with his enthusiasm, and you squeak when he slips out, his cock falling along the back of your thigh. You laugh, panting as he holds himself up on surprisingly steady arms.

“Here,” he huffs, running his hands up your legs to spread you open a little wider. He presses back in, watching your back arch, and holds your waist as his thrusts pick back up. You smack the bedsheets with your hands, lower lip caught between your teeth as the angle of his cock changes.

“Ahh… ah, yeah—” you tip your head back and pull the sheets into your fingers. “Right there, that’s it… fuck…”

Sam’s hands slide up your body until he’s cupping your tits, watching your body bounce on the mattress as he fights to keep fucking you exactly how you want it. He can feel you tensing and clenching around him, and your breathing is starting to hitch high in your throat.

“Are you gonna cum?” he asks, pausing briefly to flick his hair out of his face.

You nod, clearing your throat and reaching down to rub your fingers over your clit. “Yeah… just keep doin’ that, baby, don’t stop.”

Sam resumes his strong, determined thrusts, eyes closing as he listens to your whimpers turn into cries, and then into a long, drawn out moan as you cum, mouth open as your fingers work between your legs. He thrusts through it, vision blurring as he staves off his own climax. You go lax underneath him, a smile stretching your lips as he comes back to hold himself over you.

“You good?” he asks, teasing you with a gentle kiss.

“Mmm.” You giggle when his cock gives a little pulse inside you. “You need to—?”

“Yeah.” Sam takes a deep breath and gazes down at you. “Do you want to switch, or…”

You shake your head, running your fingers up into his hair. “I like this a lot.”

Sam laughs, pressing his mouth to the side of your neck. “Me too… hang on, baby.”

He rolls his hips slowly, dragging out the burning pleasure in his gut as his body quickly catches up to the point of orgasm. Your legs wrap tighter around his waist, and he grunts heavily into the crook of your neck when he feels your nails digging into his ass, pulling him deep on every inward thrust.

“Fuck,” he grinds out, “I’m cumming, baby…”

You gasp when his body stutters and jolt forward, his body pressing heavy as he unloads into the condom. His groans and pants are hot against your shoulder, and you rock your hips up to try and drag his pleasure out as long as you can.

Finally, he goes lax, propping himself over you and pressing a messy kiss to your lips. “Damn,” he breathes, chuckling against the side of your mouth before pulling away. He slumps down on his side next to you, his arm slung over your stomach.

“Yeah.” You close your legs and roll onto your side to face him. “Feel good?”

Sam nods and leans in, claiming you with another bruising kiss. “Real good… can’t believe we’ve never done that before.”

“I never thought you were interested,” you murmur.

“I never thought you were either.” He smiles and laces his fingers with yours. “Wanna share a shower?”

You allow him to pull you up, and he leads you down the hall and into the communal bathroom. He ties the condom off and tosses it in the trash can under the sink before joining you in your stall, where you pull him close and let him press you up against the tile. He steals the moments where you’re not cleaning each other with sweet, tender kisses that take your breath away, only stopping when the water starts to run cold. He offers you a towel and follows you back down to your room, standing just outside your door.

“Do you want me to stay?” He sounds somewhat anxious, as if torn between being relieved or dejected if you say no.

You nod, holding a hand out for him. He takes it, breathing out a sigh as you close the door behind him. You pull back the covers and crawl underneath, allowing Sam to situate himself beside you. He loops an arm around your shoulders and reaches over to turn out the light, drowning both of you in darkness.

Well, except for the Avengers-logo night light that glows softly from the far wall.

“I get scared if it’s completely dark,” you explain before Sam can say anything. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” He kisses your forehead. “Truthfully, I can’t either. I keep the hall light on so it comes through the grating at the bottom of my door.”

You hum and close your eyes. “Smart.”

He breathes against your damp hair, inhaling the scent of your strawberry shampoo as you snuggle against him. “Sleep well, baby.”

You hum and settle a palm on his chest. “You too, Sam.”

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#cosmo says...#sam x reader x dean #sam winchester fanfiction #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester reader insert

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kyidyl · 5 years ago

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Ok so I wrote this post once and it got eaten before I could finish it and then I started the Vinland arc and I wanted to wait till I finished that before I wrote it because @systlin I know I only mentioned the dig in the modern bit, but you’re about to get some Bonus Content (TM).

Anyway, in AC: Valhalla (AKA: Ass Creed Pillage England) they show a dig in the modern outside of the animus scenes and the question of accuracy came up on Systlin’s stream the other day so here we are. I even took pictures! Yes, pictures, with my phone, because I play on console and couldn’t figure out how to send myself screenies. I’m going to blame it on covid-related brain cell loss. :P That orange hue is not my phone, it’s the game, it’s a plot thing.

First up, we have this:

100% accurate, every dig is contractually obligated to have one of those shitty plastic chairs and at least one person will bring a cloth folding chair (me. I’m that one person.) to a dig.

Ok, so here’s a wider shot of the dig:

Not bad, TBH. Table for finds, random jumble of equipment, tarp for covering the hole when not in use. The lights aren’t a thing, but none of us are doing a dig during a world-ending electromagnetic storm either. I can’t see a spoil heap (the dirt we’ve dug up and screened already), but I wasn’t looking for one. Usually the stuff won’t be so close to the dig itself, and there’s no screen, but that’s less of a thing in a burial dig so it’s fine.

Next, a shot of the table with the artefacts on it:

Again, not bad as far as accuracy goes. Most people don’t realize this, but archaeologists use trowels MUCH more than pretty much any other tool. We tend not to use brushes bc they can damage delicate things. We don’t use hammers, not as far as I’ve seen anyway. The tools between the brushes and the trowel are accurate, too. TBH I have no idea what they’re called but they’re basically tiny trowels for really delicate stuff (I used them almost exclusively when I was excavating a kid.). The state of preservation of the artifacts is also pretty damned accurate, as is the inclusion of a DSLR. We take lots of pictures. The tags aren’t accurate, but I’ll get back to that in a hot second. Also I literally have one of these plastic tables in the basement on which I was doing artefact processing for *months* so like....accurate lol.

Ok, the dig itself:

So this is a good place to mention that I’m specifically trained as a bioarchaeologist (even tho I’ve spent more time digging up other stuff.), which means that I specifically am trained to deal with human remains and other biological stuff. Primarily humans tho. Excavations of burials and excavations of, for example, a home, are handled very differently. So you see those stakes with the string? That’s...accurate, but not to a burial. We don’t need ‘em because you just go to the edges of the burial. When you don’t do a burial, then you mark the sides of the hole with stakes and string, so they’d also be on the surface not in the pit.

The partial excavation is accurate, but probably not on purpose by Ubisoft. See, arch generally try to stick to the philosophy of the most info you can get for the least amount of destruction of the site. Because Shawn’s goal here is to gain access to Eivor’s body for the animus and not necessarily to lift the body out of the ground, it’s accurate that he hasn’t excavated her entirely. It’s also possible that ubisoft left the pelvis covered bc the game lets you choose your gender (Yes, I know that sex != gender, but in the context of Ubisoft’s game creation, I could see them obscuring all references to a canon sex OR gender for Eivor.).

I’m not like an expert or anything on viking burials so I can’t speak to the contents of the burial, but the fact that they included grave goods at all is accurate.

Another feature here that was interesting to me was the stepped sides of the grave. Because *that’s how we dig*, lol. It’s not how we dig burials, because burials are dug in stages (expose the remains, dig around the remains, dig under the remains, and lift the remains out.), but here’s a picture of one of the holes at my current dig:

Note the string along the top of the hole...

Anyway, the stepped sides shows me that they definitely DID put some effort into designing the dig, but like...it kinda falls into “he’s confused but he’s got the spirit” territory.

The last comment I have about the dig is about the little tags. We don’t tag things and label them like that because we take and draw a lot of pictures of the hole and we tag things in the pictures later, not in the hole itself. However, I think that the tags are a good way of indicating to the audience in the game that Shawn is being meticulous bc it’s not like we’re gonna see his paperwork later. So there you go...the AC: Valhalla dig through the eyes of an actual archaeologist.

Now, bonus Vinland content:

THIS IS GONNA CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR AC: VALHALLA.

For those who don’t know, the Norse visited the Americas several times on several different occasions. Generally speaking, when their explorations appear in the popular consciousness, they can be divided into two locations: Vinland and L’anse aux Meadows. Vinland may actually refer to several different settlements and their locations aren’t precisely known (although there are several guesses based on the descriptions in the sagas.), but L’anse aux Meadows is an actual site in Newfoundland that is an active dig (fun fact: one of my profs during my masters spends his summers there sometimes bc a buddy of his is in charge of the dig.) and you can go visit it if you want. Popularly though people tend to refer to Vinland as one settlement, and its location is unknown.

So the Vinland saga ends with you getting an apple of Eden from Gorm Kjotveyson when you murder him for being a bastard. You also see the doorway to an Isu temple that he’s dug up. Eivor gives this apple to the native people that you trade with over the course of the story. These people are a local Mohawk tribe. And, specifically, they are the tribe that protagonist of Assassin’s Creed 3 - Ratonhnhake:ton - is born into. They guard the apple they get from Eivor and it eventually ends up in Ratonhnhake:ton ‘s possession. His dad is a Templar (Haytham Kenway, the son of Edward Kenway - the protag of AC:4 pirates. Not to be confused with Hytham, the baby Hidden One in AC: Valhalla.), and if I remember correctly Connor is conceived in the temple that Gorm dug up. Anyway regardless, his people still live in the area and because we know where Ratonhnhake:ton was born, we know where Vinland is within the AC universe. Turin, New York.

Turin isn’t coastal, but given AC’s map compression for the sake of gaming and the location of the temple in the far northwest of the Vinland map, it’s close enough. It’s also within the range of proposed locations for Vinland, so there ya go. I actually have other interesting stuff about Vinland stories that I know, but this post is stupid long so I’m gonna leave it off, lol.

#video games #archaeology #ac: valhalla #Assassin's Creed #Assassin's creed: Valhalla #AC: Valhalla spoilers

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thefigureinthecorner · 6 years ago

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tama-rrow will be kinder- an am archives playlist

at least 3 months and 31 songs later and this monster of a playlist finally has a cover hell yeah

the pun title is....... literally the only fun thing about this playlist, actually.

song notes, and also spoilers, under the cut

a lot of these songs are mood songs; the lyrics don’t have a whole lot of relevance. most of them do have at least some lyrical relevance, though, provided that the song has any lyrics at all. it’s p much just the songs that helped me draw all that Good Good Angst

also important to note: I started making it after episode 9, so it’s mostly relevant to the back half of the show, and especially to the last couple of episodes.

again, this is 31 songs and over 2 hours long, so the notes are........ kind of long

Ghosts That We Knew - Mumford & Sons

So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light/'Cause oh that gave me such a fright/But I will hold as long as you like/Just promise me we'll be alright

Desert Song - My Chemical Romance

this is one of those songs that’s there primarily for mood reasons; i added it right after episode 9 came out and it was on loop pretty much the whole time i was drawing stuff for that episode. the lyrics are kinda relevant, but not enough for me to pull out any specific lines.

The World Is Ugly - My Chemical Romance

this was added for mood reasons after 9, but then it became relevant.

I just wanted you to know/That the world is ugly/But you're beautiful to me/Are you thinking of me/Like I'm thinking of you/I would say I'm sorry, though/Though I really need to go

The Light Behind Your Eyes - My Chemical Romance

yes, there are three mcr songs in a row, and no, i’m not gonna apologize for that. the am archives slam dunked me right back into my emo phase. also, this song just straight-up hurts. like, the whole thing.

If I could be with you tonight/I would sing you to sleep/Never let them take the light behind your eyes/I failed and lost this fight/Never fade in the dark/Just remember you will always burn as bright

In Case You Don't Live Forever - Ben Platt

my one note for this song is: ow.

I've waited way too long to say/Everything you mean to me/In case you don't live forever, let me tell you now/I love you more than you'll ever wrap your head around/In case you don't live forever, let me tell you the truth/I'm everything that I am because of you

Spanish Sahara - Foals

this one’s another mood song, but it does have some lines that work; the forget the horror here sections are the biggest reason this song ended up on the playlist, actually, mood aside.

Hot Gates - Mumford & Sons

mood mostly, but also:

And I can't be for you all of the things you want me to/But I will love you constantly/There's precious little else to me/And though we cry, we must stay alive

Iridescent - Linkin Park

When you were standing in the wake of devastation When you were waiting on the edge of the unknown And with the cataclysm raining down, insides crying save me now You were there impossibly alone

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation You build up hope but failure's all you've known Remember all the sadness and frustration And let it go, let it go

Gone Away - SafetySuit

again: ow.

i just... go look at the lyrics. do it. it hurts.

POWERLESS - Linkin Park

it’s mostly here for mood, but the lyrics feel relevant in a way that i can’t pinpoint but it’s a way that hurts.

Daylight - Boyce Avenue

i have other connections to this specific cover of this song that make it Extra Painful but like Daylight started playing literally right after Crazy while i was at CVS and i was like hey hi excuse me i just wanted to get some Arizona w h y

anyway.

Here I am staring at your perfection/In my arms, so beautiful/The sky is getting bright, the stars are burning out/Somebody slow it down/This is way too hard/'Cause I know, when the sun comes up/I will leave, this is my last glance/That will soon be memory

Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol

ah. the Quintessential Sad Medical Drama Song. not that tama is a medical drama but like it kinda gave me those vibes at times?? anyway. it’s here for mood more than anything but there are some lyrics in it that hurt

The Winner Takes It All - ABBA

not even abba is safe from tama angst.

no seriously though i got this song stuck in my head and had an aw fuck come on seriously???? ABBA?????? you’re making ABBA hurt???????? moment

re: joan and owen

The gods may throw a dice/Their minds as cold as ice/And someone way down here/Loses someone dear/The winner takes it all/The loser has to fall/It's simple and it's plain/Why should I complain

and re: joan and wadsworth

I don't want to talk/If it makes you feel sad/And I understand/You've come to shake my hand/I apologize/If it makes you feel bad/Seeing me so tense/No self-confidence/But you see/The winner takes it all

I Of The Storm - Of Monsters and Men

Are you really gonna love me when I'm gone?/I fear you won't/I fear you don't/And it echoes when I breathe/Until all you see is my ghost/Empty vessel, crooked teeth/Wish you could see/And they call me under/And I'm shaking like a leaf/And they call me under/And I wither underneath

Hail To Whatever You Found In The Sunlight That Surrounds You - Rilo Kiley

this one is 100% a mood song. i’ve debated taking it off the playlist but it just... gets me in the right headspace for drawing tama art, i guess?? something about the sadness/anxiety in the song or something i think

Fear - Sleeping At Last

it’s instrumental, so yeah, mood song

For Good - Wicked

i’ve made art based on this song, but i didn’t even use the lyrics that actually hurt the most?

And just to clear the air/I ask forgiveness/For the things I've done you blame me for

But then, I guess we know/There's blame to share

And none of it seems to matter anymore

Empty Chairs At Empty Tables - Les Miserables

yeah so realizing how well this song fit kind of felt like what i would imagine getting hit by a train feels like

the whole song fits. just trust me on this.

All Gone (No Escape) - Gustavo Santaolalla

another instrumental one that’s mood-only, but i was rewatching a last of us playthrough as a reference for a thing and this song popped up towards the end and i was like “ah, that hurts, i need it”

All Is Well (It's Only Blood) - Radical Face

y’know what? the song’s pretty short. have all the lyrics, and i’m sorry.

All is well now Pay no mind All is well now I'm just fine I'm just fine It's only blood; I have plenty left It's only blood; I just need to rest I said I'd fix this That I'd set things straight You begged me not to But I couldn't stay Couldn't wait They cut me up, but I did them worse And I'll be fine, I just need to rest All is well now All is well now All is well now All is well now

......yeah.

when i heard it, i swear to god it replicated that exact sinking feeling i felt in the pit of my stomach when i first listened to episode 15. it fits way too well, and i have too many feelings about this song, and hhhhhhh

After the Storm - Mumford & Sons

And I won't die alone and be left there Well I guess I'll just go home, Oh God knows where Because death is just so full and man so small Well I'm scared of what's behind and what's before

The Trapeze Swinger - Iron & Wine

someone in the tag mentioned this song and i’ve been crying over it ever since

it’s just. 9 minutes of jesus christ, ow, what the fuck

Winter Song - The Head and the Heart

this one’s mostly here for mood, but some of the lyrics do fit and they hurt, like “we’re just praying that we’re doing this right/but that’s not the way it seems”; joan realizing that she’s been going about the tier 5 clear out the wrong way and the costly mistakes that come with that.

Touch - Sleeping At Last

i think this one’s mostly for the mood, but there’s something in the lyrics that make me think of joan in the finale; that kind of numb, “none of this feels real” denial of everything that’s happened both to her and to the people she loves.

Silhouette - Owl City

this song hurts especially in the context of the “i need you to be happy” line, i think; the line changing between “will i ever feel again//will i ever smile again//will i ever love again” is just, like, a trifecta of pain

The fire I began, is burning me alive But I know better than to leave and let it die I'm a silhouette asking every now and then Is it over yet? Will I ever smile again? I'm a silhouette chasing rainbows on my own But the more I try to move on the more I feel alone So I watch the summer stars to lead me home

All Is Well (Goodbye, Goodbye) - Radical Face

fun fact! all is well (it’s only blood) has a companion song!! because you know what’s better than one angst? two angst!!

And I have lost your face It slips between my fingers now And all the world is gray As though you took the colors with you When you went and passed away

It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday - Jason Mraz

this one’s on my joan/owen playlist too, but it hurt too much to not put it here.

And if we get to see tomorrow I hope it's worth all the wait It's hard to say goodbye to yesterday

And I'll take with me the memories To be my sunshine after the rain It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday

Cradle and All - Audra McDonald

i’m just sitting here, innocently listening to joan’s playlist, when this song pops up and i’m like aw fuck aw shit no goddammit

It's not like he didn't love, no, that I couldn’t conceive There are many ways a man can stay And many ways that he can leave

Oh hush, oh hush, don't be scared I know that you tried, I know cared Let's put it behind us, that noise in the hall

We All Go the Same - Radical Face

i’ve made art for this song, too! it hurts. it’s sad. it’s about death. it’s got sad piano. what more explanation do you want

Light In The Hallway - Pentatonix

it’s.... comforting in a sad way, idk. it felt like it fit, especially towards the end of this playlist.

Tomorrow Will Be Kinder - The Secret Sisters this song is kind of like... sad and optimistic at the same time. i wanted to end this playlist on at least kind of a lighter note, and i think this song does that. it works with the finale; sad, not quite recovered, but still looking towards the future and knowing things can still be better despite every terrible thing that’s happened.

also, it’s where the pun title comes from.

Sorrow weighs my shoulders down And trouble haunts my mind But I know the present will not last And tomorrow will be kinder

Tomorrow will be kinder It's true, I've seen it before A brighter day is coming my way Yes, tomorrow will be kinder

Today I've cried a many tear And pain is in my heart Around me lies a somber scene I don't know where to start

#the bright sessions #the am archives #am archives spoilers #joan bright #agent green #sam barnes #helen #ellie wadsworth

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epicstuckyficrecs · 6 years ago

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How To Tag Stucky Fics Part 3: Additional Tags

The Additional Tags are probably the hardest to fill out, but also the most important! All of the other fields are pretty straightforward when it comes to what you need to put in, but here? It’s the Wild West! You can pretty much write as much or as little as you want, but those tags are really gonna be the ones that will let potential readers know what is in your fic. In fact, they’re probably as important as your summary

If you want an easy reminder of what to tag for, keep in mind the W’s: WHO, WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE?

Under a read more because this is long!

Who

Character traits

We’ve already settled which characters are appearing in your fic, now it’s time to tell us more about WHO they are. This can include:

Physical traits

Personality traits

Jobs

Sexuality and other sex-related stuff

Religion

Nationality

Disabilities and mental illnesses

Fantasy creatures: vampire, werewolf, angel and demon… you get the gist.

MCU specific stuff

etc.

In my opinion, these tags are useful if the characteristic in question is something that is memorable, important with regards to the plot, something that defines the character in your story specifically, or something that differs from canon. I don’t really need to know that your fic contains some Shy Bucky Barnes if it’s not somewhat important to the story; you probably don’t need to tag for “British Peggy Carter” since thats just the default canon, but you could tag “American Peggy Carter” if she’s American in your AU!

I’ve mentioned a lot of them in my Comprehensive List of Stucky Tags post, but it’s not actually a complete list! If you want to know all of the canon tags existing for a specific character: go on AO3 and click on the Search tab on top of the page > Tags > Enter the character’s name > Select “Freeform” in the list > Click “canonical”.

And besides, if you can’t find a canonical tag for what you want, you can always invent one! Just remember: if you wanna create a freeform tag for a character, please make sure to use the characters’ LAST NAME too, in order to help tag wranglers! For example: if you want to tag for Steve having black hair, you should write something like “Steve Rogers has black hair”, and not just “Steve has black hair”, because at the moment there are 279 canonical “Steve” character tags so… who knows which Steve you’re talking about? XD

As for some things specific to the MCU, again, I’ve listed a lot of them in my Comprehensive List of Stucky Tags post, but I would tag especially anything that differs from canon, for example, “Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier” or “Bucky Barnes as Captain America”. You can check out the post if you wanna have an idea of the canonical tags that already exist, but once again, you can always create your own tags and let the wranglers deal with it! :P Just make sure to use the characters’ last name in your tag.

Another tip: if there’s a dichotomy in the character roles or attributes, or opposite roles/positions between the characters, I would make sure to tag them both! For example:

Don’t just tag “Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics”: also tag Alpha Bucky Barnes, Omega Steve Rogers, or vice-versa

Don’t just tag “BDSM”: also tag Dom Steve Rogers, Sub Bucky Barnes, or vice-versa

Don’t just tag “Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons”: also tag Angel Steve Rogers, Demon Bucky Barnes, or vice-versa

etc.

Relationships

Why am I talking about relationships again, you say? Haven’t we covered that in Part 2 of the series? Yes I did. But here’s a little reminder of what I said then:

“Any side pairings/friendships can go in the Additional Tags field (for example: Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov or Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes Friendship).”

So there’s a few types of relationships that you can consider here:

Friendships: you can decide wether you want to mention the friendship in the Relationships field, in the Additional Tags field, or both. That’s your choice!

Past relationships, minor/side relationships: I personally would put them only in the Additional Tags field (NOT in the Relationship field), and here’s why:

Putting “past” or “minor” or “side” or whatever else qualifier in front of your ship in the Relationships field makes it a non-canonical tag (only the Additional tags can be non-canonical, or “freeform”. Like I’ve said in Part 2: try to only use canonical tags for the Fandom, Relationship, and Characters fields). That means that your tag is gonna be made a synonym of a canon tag. For example: the non-canonical “(Past) Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers” tag that a few people have used is a synonym of the canon “Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers” tag. That means that those past Peggy/Steve fics appear in the Steve/Peggy tag. Are people looking for Steggy fics likely to want to read past Steggy fics? You tell me...

If you’re tagging with the canon tag, but the couple is only a side/minor pairing, it might annoy people who are looking for fics in that tag and keep seeing fics that are not about their ship. This is especially true if the ship is less popular in the fandom.

So TLDR in my opinion: tag your main couple (if you’re writing a romance) or your main friendship/platonic relationship (if you’re writing a Gen fic) in the Relationship field, and tag everything else in the Additional Tags field.

POV

You can specify from which POV your fic is written from. Personally, I would pay attention to this mostly if your POV differs from the classic “3rd person” Steve or Bucky POV. Some existing tags tags to give you an idea:

POV Steve Rogers

POV Bucky Barnes

POV Sam Wilson or POV Natasha Romanov, etc.

POV Outsider or POV Original Character

POV First Person or POV Second Person

POV Alternating

POV Multiple

What

This is pretty self-explanatory, but you want to tell your readers what’s in your story! What’s happening? What’s the plot about? What are some specific subjects/themes your story contains?

Genres

When I think about genres, I always picture the FF.net categories lol XD. But it’s actually a good way to look at it!Here’s a few examples on AO3:

Action/Adventure

Angst

Character Study

Crack

Crimes and Criminals

Crossovers & Fandom Fusions

Family

Fluff

Friendship

Humor

Hurt/Comfort

Love

Mystery

Pining

Porn

Romance

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Sexual content

Smut

I wouldn’t say these are the most essential tags, but they can give your readers a general idea of the tone/content of your story.

Relationship

On top of that, we want to know what kind of relationship your ship has in this fic! What are they to each other? What’s their progression? Here’s a few examples:

Boss/Employee Relationship

Break Up

Childhood Friends

Enemies to Friends to Lovers

Established Relationship

Fake/Pretend Relationship

Friends to Lovers

Friends With Benefits

Getting Together

Long-Distance Relationship

Strangers to Lovers

Triggers

It can be hard to know what to tag with regards to triggers. I’d say better safe than sorry, and be open to suggestions and comments from your readers, especially with triggers.

Here’s a few examples to give you an idea what to tag for, which are taken from this great triggers list, but I definitely suggest you take a look at this post and bookmark it for whenever you need to tag your fics!

Violence:

Death: main/minor character death, animal death, child death...

Suicide: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, suicidal “insert character name”, ...

Abuse: child abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, emotionnal abuse, gaslighting...

Assault

Torture

Kidnapping

Stalking

Sex:

Rape/Sexual assault/Non con

Dub con

Incest

Specific sex acts: like @kiragecko says in the post I linked: “some people search for, others want to avoid”.

Specify if your characters are being Safe Sane and Consensual or not when engaging in kinky sex.

Health:

Drugs and/or Alcohol

Food

Illnesses (physical or mental)

Pregnancy: mpreg, miscariage

Self-harm

Panic attacks, PTSD, dissociation

Phobias:

Any phobias that your character(s) have and are specifically mentioned/depicted in your fic

Common phobias: spiders, clowns, hospitals...

Gross content:

Gore

Bodily fluids

Smut

I’ve said it above in the triggers section, but you can tag sexual acts appearing in your story as a way to both attract readers who are looking for them and help readers who want to avoid them.

If your story has a lot of smut, you might be reluctant to tagging all of them in fear of making your tag list very long. I would always at least indicate in your tags that there’s Sexual Content in your fic; then, you could do like I’ve suggested with the Warnings and add something like “more info about specific sexual acts in the author’s note” to your tags, and make a detailed list of sexual acts in your authors’ note.

Here’s a few generic tags about smut, and here’s a link to all the different canon “sex” tags (350 at the moment!)

Angst and Fluff and Smut

Angst and Porn

Emotional Porn

Eventual Smut

Fluff and Smut

Identity Porn

Mild Sexual Content

Mild Smut

No Smut

Non-Graphic Smut

Porn with Feelings

Porn With Plot

Sexual Tension

Unresolved Sexual Tension

When

MCU

In my post about Stucky tags, I made a list of a lot of tags regarding the MCU movies. Not all of them of course, this list was mainly focused on movies where Stucky would appear, but you get the gist. We want to know WHEN in the MCU your fic is happening.

I’m not gonna list every single MCU movie and all of their tags, but basically you have a few options:

Pre-movie

Movie

Movie mid/end credit scenes

Post-movie

Movie compliant

Not Movie compliant

Canon divergence

Canon divergence - post movie

Some movies also have specific tags for their trailers. I would recommend using the trailer tag if you are indeed writing your fic based on the trailer of a movie that isn’t out yet (you could also add the movie’s specific “spoiler” tag too while you’re at it!) in order for people to be able to avoid spoilers if they want to.

Moreover, in the case of movies that are canonically happening in another time, you could also add the relevant tags if it’s pertinent! (for example, with The First Avenger: 1930s or World War II). You can also refer to events that happened within the MCU (example: Battle of New York (Marvel)).

Alternate Universe

Whatever era or time your fic is happening in, there’s probably a tag for that! There’s a tag for every decade of the 20th century and pretty much every century too. Is it a Victorian, Ancient Rome, or a Future fic?

But even if it’s just a simple Alternate Universe - Modern Setting with No Powers … there are tags for that too! :P

If there’s a specific historical/fictional event that your story is centered around, you could tag it too! For example: PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, World War I, 2008 United States Presidential Election, Battle of Hogwarts, 75th Hunger Games, etc.

Don’t forget your holidays! Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween, to name a few...

Where

Self-explanatory again, but where is your story taking place? :P Again, maybe not the most important tag category to consider, but I would use it especially if the story is taking place in a specific/unusual place for the canon or your ship. See examples below!

MCU

Avengers Tower

Avengers Compound

Red Room (Marvel)

Sanctum Sanctorum (Marvel)

Wakanda (Marvel)

Asgard (Marvel)

Alternate universe

(Reminder: There’s sooooooooooo many different Alternate Universe tags!)

If your AU is taking place in a different country/city, you can mention it! You could either go with the AU tag or just the tag for the place itself. For example: Alternate Universe - Canada or Canada.

But it can also be even more precise than that! Stuck in a cabin during a snowstorm? There’s Cabin Fic! Steve and Bucky are men of the Night’s Watch? Maybe tag Castle Black! You get the gist ;)

And lastly...

Format

(inspired by this post from @salt-of-the-ao3 on tumblr)

If your fic has a specific format, you can specify it! Here’s a few suggestions:

Drabble

Epistolary

Songfic

Poetry

Reader-Insert

And I think that’s it folks! All you need to know to tag your fics the best you can! :)

See Part 1: A Comprehensive List of Stucky Tags here!

See Part 2: Rating, Warnings, Fandoms, Relationships & Characters here!

You can also access a handy bullet-point checklist that summarizes these posts on Google Docs here!

#how to tag stucky fics #ao3 #AO3 tags #ao3 tagging #stucky fanfic #stucky fic #stucky fanfiction #marvel fic #marvel

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karanan · 8 years ago

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Headcanon: Although he's not new to the practice, Roscoe regularly wears nail polish after the torture on Corellia on account of having sharp objects jammed in under his fingernails, leaving them rather, well, fucked up.

#OC: Roscoe #but yeah there's often a reason behind Roscoe's obsession over his appearance :')#not a swtor tag #Imperial Agent spoilers I guess #nail horror tw #torture tw #body horror tw #trying to cover all bases just to be sure #hrgh p nope-worthy tbh makes my skin crawl just thinking about it but I'm here to ruin my boy's day 4ever

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moistwithgender · 6 years ago

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Monthly Media Roundup (May 2019)

The march of time inexorably proceeds beyond my grasp and so I must write another post. I’ve been a bit burned out, just focusing on one diversion (it was Zelda, you know it was Zelda), but after finishing it I recovered enough energy to get a few more things done in the last half of the month. I didn’t watch any anime or read any manga in May, though I did read some 70s Marvel, which I liveblog in my “curry reads comics” tag. Last time I did an actual capital-P Post about my Marvel reading was a year ago after marathoning a full(ish) decade. If people are interested in more of that I could work at making posts for each year of issues I read, recapping the developments and my thoughts on them (which will become more relevant as Events become more common, I imagine). I’ve just got a few games to talk about this month, but I imagine I have a lot to say about at least one of them.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): 2 years ago I did something I extremely rarely do: stood in line at a Best Buy at midnight for the release of the Switch so that I could buy it with BotW. BotW was also out on Wii U, which I had, but the promotional material for BotW had struck such a chord in me that it justified making the jump for the new console (this would eventually become troublesome when the first model of joycons failed, but, well). I got home, put some ten odd hours into it, and then put it down for two years. I’ve always had a problem where, struck with the intuition that I will end up forming a deep relationship with a work, I will put it off for years. I put off Persona 3 for five years after buying it at launch, and it eventually became the most personal game experience I would have, even seven years onward. I think the two factors that pushed me to finally play through BotW was wanting to watch a friend stream it (but also not wanting it spoiled for me), and needing a distraction for when I was taking care of my cat.

It’s been about two months now since he passed away, and I finally finished the game at 215+ hours about half a month ago. So, I was playing this game as a coping method while preparing for loss, and in dealing with loss. It’s appropriate that the game is effectively both a fantasy about reclaiming at least part of what you have lost, and a colossal exercise in coping. The game is as much about getting distracted from your responsibilities and fucking off to snowboard in the mountains as it is about being aware of the world around you. The Zelda games have frequently used themes of Shintoism to portray harmony in nature and in civilization. I’m currently replaying Ocarina of Time and the cosmogony myth (is it a myth if a talking tree explains it to you?) specifically words the goddesses as “[giving] the spirit of law to the world” and “[producing] all life forms who would uphold the law.” When I was younger (see: early 20s) I didn’t scrutinize the text much but now I figure it’s reasonable to read “law” as “natural order”. It should be noted that for an N64 game, OoT has remarkably good prose. BotW, in transitioning the series in what may be its third main genre (as opposed to the genres of Zelda 1 and OoT), has taken that Shintoist aesthetic and incorporated it into the entire philosophy of the game’s design. More than just being a game whose narrative concerns an imbalanced world, BotW embraces the trends of open worlds and immersive sims to create an immense, varied space where the coded laws of physics are always impacting the experience. Thunderstorms make metal equipment a liability, while rain covers the sounds of footsteps. Wind can sweep away items, fire and high temperatures affect flammable objects (including yourself), and aforementioned metallic items can conduct electricity, which can be used to solve puzzles in unintended ways. Weather changes regularly based on the region and changes the world in tandem. Rain doesn’t just fall, it actively collects, and ponds become bigger, and surfaces become slicker. Each systemic element (pun not intended) that was incorporated affected everything else in the world, and in interviews there were mentions that changing the volume of wind in one area had a butterfly effect on another, causing pots to fly off of patios in a village. It’s no wonder the game took five years to make, considering how rarely glitches occur in the game (and most that I know of have to be deliberately recreated for exploitation). You’re engaging with enemies as much as you are with the environment, and at times even with your own body, creating and consuming food and drink for the purpose of staving off sunstroke or frostbite. As a result, BotW’s Hyrule is immensely palpable, and easy to lose oneself in from how livable it feels.

When I first started playing at release, I was a bit disappointed to discover that villages existed in-game, as early promotional material and the state of the Great Plateau you start on painted a picture of a lonely world. In the end, the soundtrack and vast amount of uncolonized land does give an understated sense of melancholy that defines the game, though the fact that every five steps you’ll find a Korok micropuzzle waiting to YA HA HA and fanfare at you betrays that a bit (I still love those Koroks and their puzzles, don’t @ me). The NPCs in this are numerous, though, from the occupants of the villages to wandering traders, and their personalities are all distinct and charming, and probably the best I’ve ever seen in a game, or at least in a long time. If this game wasn’t railroading the Link/Zelda relationship so hard, I would have liked a Dragon’s Dogma-style “date any NPC (within reason)” mechanic. I’m just going to have to start a “NPCs you should marry” side-tumblr.

Another defining aspect of the gameplay, and easily what makes the game surpass arguably every other Zelda, is how Nintendo heard the decade or so of complaints about the linear Zelda lock-and-key formula being reiterated to the point of stagnation, and, after great success with A Link Between Worlds’ item rental subversion, just decided to make everything optional. You do the tutorial on the Great Plateau, and, if you feel especially gutsy, you can beeline it straight to Ganon. He’s in horse-riding distance, or running distance, if you’re tenacious. Will you make it to him, survive the hordes of enemies, and take him down? If it’s your first time playing the game and you haven’t learned the systems, probably not. Is it possible? Absolutely. Much like how the monthly cycle of a Persona game is a proverbial Rocky training montage of preparing for The Big Fight, everything you do in BotW is in preparation. A lot of open world games can feel dissonant in that you’re incentivized to be distracted as a player and make your own fun, meanwhile the protagonist keeps saying “I’m gonna get bloody revenge on the mafia boss!” during bowling matches. There is still, unavoidably, a sense of urgency played up for narrative sake in BotW, since Impa insists Zelda is waiting and can’t hold Ganon back forever, but it’s all much more narratively justifiable, if you want that. You know, because Zelda is for hardcore roleplaying.

I couldn’t resist a second playthrough, even after logging 215+ hours, so I went ahead and started a separate file on Master Mode, Nintendo’s weird in-house, in-franchise rebranding of, uh, a hard mode. Previously it was called Hero Mode. Why do you--well, okay, I know why they do it. They’re likely trying to distinguish it from a “we just tweaked the numbers” hard mode, and also want to make it feel less threatening than something labeled hard mode. If they’re going to go to the trouble to make it a distinct form of play, they want to try and appeal to everyone. And it is fairly distinct. All enemies are bumped up one rank, so a red bokoblin is blue, and a blue bokoblin is black, and so on. There is a new strongest rank of enemy, though in my run I did not seek them out. There are enemies (and treasure chests!) perched on flying rafts, which can be one-shot with proper bow aiming, but also carry dangerous elemental arrows, and can alert all other enemies in the area. Stealth is much more difficult, and pointless early in. All enemies regenerate up to a third of their health, including bosses! Though, that can be temporarily interrupted by inflicting any amount of damage on them, so it behooves you to be on the offense. Less autosave slots! This wasn’t a problem for me. Guardians randomly delay the firing of their beams! This was absolutely a problem for me and I avoided them entirely in my run. In the beginning when tools and resources are scare, particularly on the Great Plateau, Master Mode is at its hardest, and its most thrilling. Rather than aimlessly exploring, I was pressured to decide where I knew things were, and beeline it to them. Sometime in-between two of the four main optional dungeons, I had amassed enough valuable resources that the game had settled back into the same kind of difficulty as normal mode. Bosses were a little harder due to regen and my resources being somewhat scarcer, but they were manageable. Competently performing flurry attacks (upon successfully dodging attacks at the last second) was extremely valuable to me, but I imagine with enough food in my inventory, I could have brute forced my way through a lot of the fights (though, uh, obviously thou wouldst like to live deliciously (please hate me for this phrasing)). I chose to forego the Master Sword for the sake of challenge, and beat Master Mode with only seven hearts, in around 25 hours. You should play Master Mode, it’s fun.

Here’s a little gameplay SPOILER:

Something I haven’t done, but would like to eventually do, is avoid the main dungeons and just head straight to Ganon. When I played Master Mode, I wasn’t totally confident, and did the dungeons for the resources. After watching some speedruns I learned that if you skip the dungeons, and therefore the main bosses, you have to fight them all at once immediately before the fight with Ganon, without breaks.

That. Sounds. Great.

Wandersong (PC/Steam): Have you heard about Homestuck?

Okay, wait. Wait. Come back, wait. Stop leaving. PLEASE.

Okay, I got the most inflammatory sentence out of the way. Now that we’re eased into that: Wandersong is unignorably influenced by Homestuck. Homestuck conjured a lot of baggage, from having a really difficult, pretentious, arrogant author (I should know, I gave him the benefit of the doubt for way too long), to having some unfortunate narrative turns, to being a billion words long. Wandersong invokes the vaster-than-God scope, the minute and personal perspective of the heroes, and its inclinations toward emotional intelligence (it still surprises me Homestuck had these moments given the author’s deeply unsympathetic sense of humor), and… condenses it! It also makes it a light puzzle-platformer and is about performing music (note: not rhythm, you don’t have to have ANY rhythm), and looks like a Paper Mario game. It is very charming, very funny, very optimistic, and most surprisingly, uncompromising at times. Wandersong says that you, despite your role, are capable of great things, especially self growth and change, as long as you commit to it. If, faced with the consequences of your bad decisions, you choose to double down and keep at it, you will reap what you sow. This is distinctly different from Undertale’s brand of pacifism route optimism, where “no one has to die!” This brand of optimism is a measured but enthusiastic “you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, but you can save the rest” and I think that’s a uniquely valuable message.

I was a little confused about the resolution of the communist uprising chapter, but I recall the game bringing my cynicism into question, and the most important thing a work can do is make you question yourself.

(Also, if any of my mutuals are low on funds but interested, I do have a drm-free version I can share.)

Minit (PC/Steam): I don’t think I actually have a lot to say about Minit! It’s very fun and curious and short. You play a little… duck… thing, and you pick up a cursed sword which kills you in one minute. Then you wake up the next day, and die in a minute. Then you wake up the next day. Having only sixty seconds of vitality, you have to optimize your exploration. There’s a slow-speaking old man who you will die listening to, but the hint he gives at the end of his sentence will lead you to something valuable. There’s a guy in a bar angry about the lack of music. If you change the music, he will probably dislike it. If you keep changing the music, you might live to see him like it. There’s a boat ride to a tropical island you have to grit your teeth and wait through. Not all of the events are slow, some are quick bouts of hurried exploration. Most of it is, given the time limit. I’d say more, but given the overall length (it took me about an hour to finish), I’d risk spoiling a sizable fraction of the experience. It’s about $10, though I got mine in a Humble Bundle Monthly subscription. The spec requirements are very low, so your laptop can likely run it.

A Hat in Time (PC/Steam): Heads up, I’m gonna get into a lot of spoilers for this game, including endgame spoilers, but also heads up, the story isn’t really the point in this game. This is a game about tone and platforming. That said, I’m gonna be talking exclusively about the weird ideas in this game, and if you want those weird ideas to be a surprise, then just skip ahead until I put up big letters.

I’m somewhat hesitant to be critical of A Hat in Time because despite a number of weird Things about it, I recognize that it’s quite popular with a lot of people, and that always makes me pause and want to figure out what it is that makes it pass the bar for others. My guess at this point is that it invokes nostalgia through its unmitigated imitation of games that came before. The games it chooses to ape are all your childhood’s Greatest Hits, Wind Waker (which it most resembled in its earliest development), Super Mario Sunshine/Galaxy (which it most resembles now), Banjo-Kazooie, Psychonauts, etc. It never really surpasses those games, for me, and at times cribs from them to the degree that it obscures the game’s own identity. After all, what you enjoy may help define you, but you wouldn’t say it’s your personality. Well. Unless you kin the Gamecube. I guess. There are bonus levels to the game’s different “worlds” (I thought they were different planets, since your hub area is a spaceship, and you access them via different telescopes, but it turns out it’s just one planet?), and you can collect photographs, which sequentially tell a story about the residents of that “world”. Psychonauts did this because each level took place in the mind of a character, and the photos together told a story about the character that fundamentally changed the way you thought about them, and made the whole game feel richer as a result. I collected the photos for all but the DLC levels in AHiT (those are Really Hard), and of those five or so worlds, none of those bonus photos told me anything that changed how I thought about the characters. There’s a dock town run by a mafia (s-sorta) led by a chef, but did you know they all used to work at a processing factory before going there? There are two manipulative bird directors who are fighting over the same studio to produce their own film and win an award, but did you know they… wanted to be directors since they were kids? There’s a devil analogue who steals people’s souls if they wander into his forest, but did you know he was a prince, and the princess was mad he talked to another girl (it was a flower girl, he was getting flowers for the princess), and imprisoned him until they both the prince and princess turned into evil ghosts? That’s the only one that comes close to being an “oh” moment, but I don’t think it does for the reasons the writer was hoping for. In general, these are prologues without substance.

Speaking of substance, the game has a bit of an issue with theming. At least, it does at first. The first town is the previously mentioned dock town, run by a mafia. By “mafia”, I mean a bunch of meatheads who talk about how they like punching people, and refer to themselves individually, in the third person, as Mafia. Mafia loves to punch the poor and the birds. Mafia is a one-dimensional character copy-pasted across 20% of the game. Mafia laughs. They’re run by a chef, but also they can’t cook, so there’s a cat chef in hiding who routinely swaps out their food with his so no one has to eat bad food. I don’t know why, when the town has maybe three non-Mafia character. He does eventually leave and board your ship, so maybe he’s just looking for something to do. The leader of the mafia also boards your ship, for a joke and to sell you an upgrade. The mafia are also afraid of mud monsters, or aliens, or something. There’s a girl with a moustache named Moustache Girl who wants to use your Time Macguffins to overthrow organized crime, and Hat Girl decides that’s a no-go. There are giant faucets around the town that replace all the water with lava. You might be noticing these things have little to no connection. You might be suspecting this level was made first when the dev was inexperienced. I might be suspecting this. It’s fine.

Later worlds do a much better job of theming. There’s the movie studio split between two birds. One of them a penguin, who prefers science fiction, the other a…

...hmmm. I suspect this guy, The Conductor, is an OC the director has had for a while, maybe since childhood, that they just decided Is A Bird, and carried it into the game, since the game occasionally is like... bird?? Alternatively, it’s some sort of corruption of Woodstock from Peanuts. Possibly both. Anyway, this guy just wants to make movies that take place on wild western trains. He has a strong fake Scottish accent, and the penguin, named DJ Grooves, is some sort of disco Elvis. They’ve both hired owls as actors, and some crows have snuck onto the train set (the crows are so obviously the G-Men from Psychonauts’ Milkman level it bothers me a bit). This is already a little busy, but it’s okay! Birds, movies, two distinct genres, and you trapped in-between them, just trying to collect your macguffins. It works. You take part in both of their movies, and your performance in both determines the winner, when suddenly… CORRUPTION WAS AFOOT, and you have to explore the depths of the studio and engage in a showdown.

Another world is a spooky forest where your access is restricted by completing certain contracts for the devilish character. Sometimes it’s murder (reasonable), exploring a haunted mansion in survival horror format (ooh!), fixing the plumbing in a well (wait, what), and doing mail delivery (back up back up). Half of that works. The finale of the forest makes up for it, though. This game insists on most of its bosses having like 4-5 phases and breaks for dialogue and the gall required to get away with that honestly earned my respect. They’re pretty fun times.

The best level to play is, unsurprisingly, the first DLC. I say unsurprising because it’s clear the dev is learning as they go, and the level design improves as they go along. Aside from bonus levels, the first DLC takes place on a massive cruise liner titled the SS Literally Can’t Sink. Ha ha. It’s split into three parts. The first part has you exploring the many interconnected rooms of the ship to find broken shards of a macguffin, the second part has you taking that mental map and using it to frantically complete multiple timed fetch quests at once, and the third part, now that you understand the ship pretty intimately, capsizes the ship, requiring you to traverse frigid waters and overturned scenery to retrieve babies and the ship’s incompetent but adorable baby seal crew (the seals speak in hewwo talk, the game is unforgivably loaded with memes but let me have this). This progression is my favorite in the game, and while I haven’t bought the Nyakuza Metro DLC, I’m looking forward to it.

The ending level had me a bit bewildered at first because in the beginning when Hat Kid refuses to use time powers to stop organized crime, I saw it as a hamfisted way to create tension between Hat Kid and Moustache Girl. Apparently it was working up towards the moral of the story. In the final level, Moustache Girl has stolen all the macguffins, and possessing ultimate power, becomes corrupted ultimately, and summons everyone in the world to her Bowser castle to be judged and die. On first glance, I thought “well, sure, that’s sensible,” but when Hat Kid finds the support of all the villains in the game, I was a little confused. The villains sacrifice themselves to give you infinite health, explicitly stating that they’ll just come back through time magic if you win so who cares (cool stakes), and you overcome authoritarianism with the support of corrupt hollywood, organized crime, and the literal devil. This would be fine if at some point Hat Kid, you know, took them on a Zuko Quest to face turn all of them, but that doesn’t happen. They just all decide “hey yeah, fuck this girl! Also we don’t have time for the nuance this might require!” After all is said and done and you collect all your macguffins, you’re given the choice of leaving the defeated Moustache Girl a single macguffin so she can defeat the mafia (whose side are we on) or just saying nahhh. Neither appears to make a difference, but maybe in a year or two we’ll get a DLC that makes you regret your words and deeds. You try to fly your ship to your home planet, and the villains all grab on to your ship, which is in space, begging you not to leave. I seriously suspect they intended to incorporate face-turn scenes and just couldn’t find the time, because nothing but physical proximity implies these guys would have any emotional attachment to Hat Kid, and that’s a bit of a stretch. Anyway, Hat Kid brooms them off the ship to plummet down to earth and flies away. Sheds a tear about the whole thing. In the end, the moral was that Order good, but too much Order bad, except if you are Hat Kid, in which case Chaos good. Or maybe…

After finishing the game I decided to look into any left over secrets, since my completion score was in the 80s of percents. Turns out that if you use the camera badge to finagle the free look feature into a marginally open armoire somewhere on your spaceship, you can find a shrine to Hat Kid with a couple skulls, a bunch of blurry photos, and some strange symbols. If you doing this while wearing the mask that lets you see the secrets of the dead (for platforming and puzzle purposes, of course), there’s a bunch of alien text you can decode. And then there’s some youtube channels. And a twitter account. All sharing more of those decodable ciphers, all talking about vague dreamy apocalyptic histories and dark betrayals. Or something. That’s right, this game’s got a fucking ARG. I cut things off there. If the developer Gears for Breakfast is gonna make an occultist grimdark sequel to A Hat in Time, they can put up a trailer for it.

OKAY I’M DONE TALKING ABOUT A HAT IN TIME, the short of it is that I had a lot of mixed feelings but had fun.

How did I end up talking more about A Hat in Time than Breath of the Wild? What are my priorities?

Well, that’s everything I finished in May! Will I get back to anime and manga in June? Guess we’ll see! Again, let me know if you want me to do year-recap Marvel posts, since my liveblogging is mostly just shitposts, and the occasional attempt at thoughtfulness among those posts feels kind of out of place. Honestly, I’m probably gonna do that anyway, but it’s nice to see interest. If you read all this, thanks a lot! Go play Breath of the Wild and Wandersong.

#curry plays games

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ladyfl4me · 6 years ago

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A,E,F,G,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z ;o

Okay *cracks knuckles* let’s go! F, M, and S have already been taken from this list, so feel free to send in... B, C, D, or H, I guess. Yeehaw. This is really fucking long.

A: How did you come up with the title to [TMWCIFTC]? -- It started, as many things do, as a bad pun. The novel The Spy who Came In from the Cold was a cold-war spy thriller, about a British spy who goes over to East Germany as an apparent defect, except he’s actually there to spread misinformation and fuck shit up. He falls in love, becomes disillusioned with his superiors, and is shot dead over the corpse of his lover after climbing over to the east side of the wall. Needless to say, this is nowhere close to what happens in TMWCIFTC. I chose it early on because of the literal meaning: there’s a moth(man), he’s coming in from the cold WV weather, boom shaka laka, we have a title. Over time, though, it’s evolved into another meaning. Indrid himself is coming in from an isolated, lonely existence: he’s rejoining the family that cut ties with him, he’s in love, he’s warm and safe. The moth sure did come in from the cold, and hopefully he stays that way.

E: If you wrote a sequel to [TMWCIFTC], what would it be about? -- Hm. Considering my entire TAZ fic career is a tangled hairball of sequels and prequels, I kind of have this base covered. At the moment, TCOS - aka The Children of Sylvain, the sequel to TMWCIFTC - is about three things: a Pine Guard road trip race against time and the feds, the Spanish Sylvan Inquisition That Nobody Expected (least of all Jake and Hollis, who have to set aside their differences and past conflicts to save Kepler - and who knows, maybe they’ll fall in love along the way), and Alexandra the Interpreter getting woke to Sylvan politics and doing what she can from the inside to change them. In other words, it’s going to be a massive sequel that is the finale of the Amnesty alternate universe I’ve created. It’s this series’ Endgame. (That reminds me, I need an actual title for this collection of stories I’m writing. The “Tin Cinematic Universe” doesn’t quite have the ring to it that I’d like.)

G: Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order? -- eh, it kind of depends. It’s like a buffering bar on Youtube videos. I outline what I can until I run out of ideas, then start writing, then add outlines to the end, until the outline is complete and I just have to keep writing.

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)? -- I don’t have one for reading, but for writing, I fucking love structuring chapters around songs. Classical or otherwise, I love music. All my stories play in my head like a movie screen, and I just do my best to describe what I’m seeing in my head with an accompanying score. It’s not so much a guilty pleasure as it is a writing process. Frankly, I don’t think I actually have a guilty pleasure; the act of writing itself is all the happiness I need.

J: Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic]. -- An alternate ending for The Devil Went Down To Georgia would be... interesting. It ended with Boyd-as-Jersey-Devil scaring the pants off some poor broke college kid, who stole his worthless fiddle; then he changed back, and he and Ned went on their merry way to go break into Aubrey’s house and send everything down the drain. If there was one thing that I could change in there, it would be how fast Ned ran. If he ran a little faster, he would have seen the alley; he would have witnessed Boyd turning into the Jersey Devil, or at least turning back into himself; and he’d get a very rude awakening as to what Sylvans are and that his partner (in crime, and everything that mattered) was a fucking cryptid. God, that’d be a fun AU to write. Who knows, I might go do that someday.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with? -- At the moment, the only angsty idea that I’m actually conceptualizing is a Hollis/Jake angsty breakup for TSG. (Spoilers, I guess.) I once wrote a very grimdark ending to TMWCIFTC where everyone fell through the ice and drowned. It wasn’t fun. I’ve also mentally killed off each Amnesty protagonist and NPC in various ways, but I never felt comfortable writing them down. I only write angst with a happy ending because those are the kinds of stories I need to hear.

L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting? -- 9 times out of 10, I just throw it into the void. I write as much as I can in big chunks, and then kind of hope for the best. TMWCIFTC, for example, is a completely unedited, unbetaed vomit draft. I usually do a quick reread of my oneshots to catch grammar and spelling errors, but other than that I just trust myself that it’s fine.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you? -- Can I get some kind of resolution for To the Edge of Night? Can I please get some kind of resolution for To the Edge of Night??? I was 14 chapters into that bastard before I a) became a more casual MCU fan and b) discovered TAZ. It was such a niche fic with such a niche structure - LOTR as galactic Asgardian propaganda to cover up Odin’s mistakes - that at some point I lost interest in it. I just saw Endgame though, so now I might get some inspiration for stuff to bastardize.

O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters? -- Characters. When coming up with character backstories, I can usually find ways to slot their lives together that necessitate a plot. I love character-driven stories, where their actions actually do shit and their words actually mean something, in favor of getting dragged along behind the plot like tin cans behind a car.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?) -- I’m definitely an architect, but in a really messy way. My friends can attest that I do an insane amount of planning for each story - often in their DMs, sorry about that, Fae, Cro, Indy and Aline 😬 - and all that usually ends up in a stream-of-consciousness rant outline on Google Drive. Knowing where the story is going helps me a lot, but the planning I do is definitely just building flower beds in which to sow seeds. Or building a greenhouse. I plan the bare bones of a story, and things get really wild within it, but it does follow a logical plot structure.

Q: How do you feel about collaborations? -- I have a lot of respect for the people who can successfully pull it off, but idk if i’d ever want to do one myself. I get really possessive of my stories and ideas and like to be the one in charge of their execution. That being said, some collabs have produced amazing stories. I don’t mind reading collab fics, but actually being in a collab grates on me more than it should.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence? -- I’m definitely influenced heavily by Neil Gaiman. I read American Gods and Good Omens a lot while I was trying to write TMWCIFTC; not only was it a good brain break, but I was able to pick up a lot of tips on scene pacing, concise yet expressive language, and character interactions. My creative wriitng professors have always told us to read so we know what to steal - not in terms of content, but in execution.

On the fanfic side, @miamaroo is a huge inspiration for me. I’ve been reading Northern Migration a lot recently, and I love how its canon divergence is so worldshaking and so complex, but is still familiar in nostalgic yet terrifying ways. I read it back in October, went, “Huh, I wanna do something that wild. And if miamaroo can do it then I sure as fuck can too,” and I started planning TMWCIFTC during that one month dead zone the McElroys took last year. Northern Migration is one of the best, most coherent, most stunning, and most incredibly written TAZ Balance AUs I’ve ever read, and if I hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t have been inspired to take the fuckall huge plunge into TMWCIFTC.

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist? -- Bed sharing and cuddling, hand kissing, wrist kissing, whump, sympathetic villains. Canon divergent AUs are my absolute favorite things to both read and write. Anything that would turn me into Charlie Kelly slamming his finger on a bulletin board screaming, “CAROL,” is a fic I would give my life for.

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand? -- Not a fan of a) woobification and b) flat villain characterization, to the point where the story is riding on villain tropes instead of an actual person or plot. Character nuance is always something I look for when I read. I don’t usually get bitter about tropes, though; some stuff, when subverted, works really well. I fully subscribe to don’t like, don’t read, don’t write, which is why I don’t write anything that warrants AO3 content warning tags or an Explicit rating, in favor of focusing on plot. Every author has a reason for what they write and how - be it their level of experience, personal preference, or simply the joy of writing something and getting it out there - and I respect that. Within reason, of course.

U: Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much. --

@miamaroo, for reasons I’ve already discussed. My favorite TAZ Balance author hands down. Read Northern Migration and give it the love it deserves, or I’m replacing all the faucets in your house with silly straws.

@transagentstern. Fae has a bunch of absolutely incredible fics and an amazing grasp on characterization. We come from the same place with AUs, in that canon is but the bare planks on which we put the drywall of our plot an characterization. They structure AUs and character backstories from the ground up in believable and emotionally raw ways. Also they have great music taste. I especially like their interpretation of Indrid in Moth to the Flame; he, like all the other characters in the story, is far from perfect, and his character arc is explored in relatable ways that I love to read.

@keplersheetz. Aline - theneonpineapple on AO3 - researches like a motherfucker and has a wealth of knowledge/experience/viewpoints to draw on, making author-author interactions with her an absolute delight. She’s also doing the lord’s work with rarepairs. Spin a wheel, find a ship, and she’s probably written for it or at least conceptualized it. Reading her character studies and stories of the old Pine Guard - aka Mama’s original crew, before the current PCs joined - is always a delight. I’ve also hashed out a lot of details for The Children of Sylvain, especially for Mr. Boyd Mosche, guilt-wracked Jersey Devil extraordinaire, with her help.

V: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose? -- Not gonna lie, I’m fine with a lot of stuff that’s out there right now. It’s been a hot few months since I’ve actually stopped to read fic, but from what I recall, most of the fics I’ve read have done a good job of keeping things intact.

W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones? -- The vaguer, the better. With really specific prompts, it usually feels as if the story’s been written for me already; with vague, general prompts, I have more agency to explore my own ideas. Some accompanying detail is usually nice, though. For example, the coffee shop/college/flower shop AUs that @transagentstern wrote are my ideal prompt for drabbles: premise, a little bit of open-ended detail, clear explanation of what’s going to happen while leaving the rest up to the imagination. Good stuff. If it’s for a long-form piece, though, I prefer full agency, or even just some time to lie facedown in the dirt and wait for an idea to strike me.

X: A character you enjoy making suffer. -- Yes.

Y: A character you want to protect. -- Tim.

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate? -- I do read lots of major character death, yeah, though not always for TAZ. There’s something cathartic about seeing a character die, but sometimes it sits wrong with me in ways that I don’t like. As for writing, I’d rather kill a character for a reason rather than for shock value/for the Feels, though said Feels can accompany the reason.

#anon please dm me so i know who u are #please #i'm begging you #i'm in hell #asks #anon #ask game

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longgonegays · 6 years ago

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I was reading the tags on some of your older posts. I’m interested in this theory about Coyle you have 👀

Holy heck do I need to get better at responding to messages efficiently! This ask came in a year ago, and these Coyle theories are WAY past due. So sorry anon! I have not played Chapters 2 and 3 yet, so these are still unconfirmed theories in my mind, but I will play soon and see what goes down! Here’s a collection of my extensive thoughts after I played the game eons ago. *SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER ONE AHEAD!*

1st IDEA - Maybe Sgt. Coyle is in the same boat as Rourke, faking an injury in order to get out of the line of duty. Maybe he escaped the army in a similar fashion, but the higher-ups at The Core are just hiding it. Coyle could even be creating a separate rebel faction somewhere else in the world, and that’s when the Kaliningrad Squad finds him and actually gets a base of operations. Which, of course, will definitely be invaded later on by Core soldiers.

Now, this obviously has holes in it right off the bat. Coyle couldn’t have escaped the army and gone somewhere else because we see him with Father Eugene at the end of Chapter One, as the General recounts all the things that Rourke and Adair have been up to. I kept this thought in here for a reason though, and you’ll see why.

2nd IDEA - Coyle was Rourke, figuratively.He faked an injury, tried to get out, but was unsuccessful and got recaptured. This was covered up by Father Eugene in order to keep up his guise of infallibility. Father kept him under close watch, jailed in solitary confinement, and probably on death row for being a deserter, when the news comes around that Rourke & Adair have escaped. Father Eugene sees this as a chance at redemption for Coyle, who resignedly accepts the mission to sabotage. After all, he is a skilled sniper of use to Eugene, and what other options does he have in order to live?

Maybe Coyle convinces Eugene to let the two of them be free (for now) and act as a method of keeping track of them instead of outright killing them. We don’t really have a sense of Coyle’s personality just yet.

This thought seems a little more reasonable than the first, assuming Coyle isn’t entirely loyal to The Core. Especially because at the end of Chapter One, Coyle seemingly has no obvious injury to his arm. But a year after this idea had been spinning around in my head, the progress report for Chapter 2 was released with this gif, showing Coyle with his arm in a sling, walking alongside Father Eugene.

It all seemed like a ruse to me. The sinister look of their environment only led me to believe that they’re up to no good. My idea gained a little more plausibility after that!

(IMPORTANT EDIT: After replaying the game to see the new changes, I noticed Coyle is now seen with his sling in the ending cutscene of Chapter One. This definitely undermines the “faking an injury” aspect of my theories. Such a minor detail shifts my thoughts entirely. I’m excited to see which direction this heads! Back to the old info we go.)

However, my real theory was formed when I combined these two thoughts into one.

MAIN THEORY - Following the events of the 2nd IDEA, Coyle miraculously “stumbles” upon the Kaliningrad Squad (Rourke, Adair, Lynn, Ivan) in Germany, or perhaps even in a later location, and explains his situation using the 1st IDEA as a guise. The beginning is truthful (he was a rebel who never made it out), but his honesty turns into acting as he recites fake reasons why he currently is where he is. Coyle was ordered to lie in a briefing he had with Father Eugene. Still, the group gives him their reluctant trust, since as far as they know, Coyle is more experienced in eluding The Core than they are.

He invites the four of them to make themselves at home in his Rebel Base. It becomes their safe house for a while. It’s surprising (maybe most suspicious to Adair) how quickly all these rebel soldiers were recruited. Kaliningrad had a lot of support to defend such a quiet town, but rallying this many people to one location so quickly should set off a couple red flags. Those in the group with more hopeful outlooks probably just think more people are revolutionizing, and they have more of a fighting chance against The Core than they thought.

Over time, the Squad realizes that their actions are being watched. There’s a lot of panic at one point, and they all decide to set their main priority on who or what is keeping tabs on them. As they later find out, Coyle is a spy tied directly to The Core. The team has to defeat his squadron of pseudo-rebel soldiers, and once Coyle is the only one left, they all struggle with the dilemma of showing mercy (Ivan, Adair) or executing him (Rourke, Lynn) in order to ensure their safety.Much like the ending of Chapter One!

So, there you have it. Overdue but posted, at least! I came up with these thoughts during April of 2018, according to my Discord DMs. We’ll see how they match up to canon as soon as I have the free time to play.

Thank you for your interest! I promise I’ll try not to leave you guys hanging for this long again. :P

#Long Gone Days #LGD #Coyle #theories #lgd spoilers #long gone days spoilers #lgg log #answered #anonymous

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creativenicocorner · 6 years ago

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Original Character in 5 Gifs

Aaaah Heck <3 Got tagged by @bifacialler And challenged too! Hihi So here’s the thing with Karenna Isabella Navarro Méndez

Karenna came Topside out of the fetch in the 1300′s of what was then The Kingdom of Aragon, and what is known today as Northern Spain.

For a changeling, she has a very assured sense of self, and takes the whole ‘Who am I? What am I?’ excestential questions changelings tend to ask themselves with stride. Though just because she makes it look easy, doesn’t mean she doesn’t struggle with those questions as well - at most she answers them with an ‘easy come easy go’ sort of mentality. One of those optimistic nihilist. Names have no meaning, the past cannot be changed, and the only thing she can control is herself and how to use the cards dealt to her.

The simplest way to describe Karenna, is blunt. Which is a tricky thing to be in a secret spy organization like the Janus Order. Which has gotten her in quite a few near death situations, at least until she realized there’s a time and a place to be blunt. She is never afraid to speak her mind, or rather sign them. That doesn’t mean she isn’t clever enough to keep some thoughts and opinions to herself.

What she won’t and can’t say in words, she’ll make clear with her actions (even if the actions are done in secret). If she doesn’t agree with certain orders she’ll still do them, all while able to find some sort of loop-hole to add a variation to it.

An example of this can be seen in Terpsichore ch9 ( [Spoilers!] For most members of Gunmar’s army and secret order it’s un-spokenly expected to kill Trollhunters...though seeing as none of her direct orders mentioned anything about killing, she isn’t going to go out of her way to kill what is essentially children [End Spoilers!]).

Though perhaps the best example of this, is her time in the Spanish Inquisition, where Karenna earned the Janus Order Title of The Inquisitor...

Karenna is the go to changeling for reconnaissance and a gatherer of knowledge, which is why the hypocrisy of the Spanish Inquisition was very hard to swallow for this changeling. With the use of glamours she was stationed to infiltrate and take part in the Inquisition on the chance any other Janus Order member ended up falling into the Spanish Inquisition’s clutches, and would take measures to help sneak fallen changelings out.

More so as an attempt to keep the hidden troll world a secret, than for the safety of fellow changelings...at least that was how Stricklander explained it to Bular at the time. After all the last thing anyone needed was the Inquisition to discover magical stone creatures existed.

Thus Karenna was stationed there, however it wasn’t just fellow changelings she’d help sneak away, but other humans trapped there as well. Sometimes even forcing a glamour on another Inquisitor to take the form of a prisoner and watch gleefully as the Inquisitors torture one of their own, without their own knowing.

What a Scorpio, am I right? <3

Needless to say she became quiet adept in torturing information out of others, and is a good judge when trying to see who is lying for the sake of surviving and who is telling the truth.

Now, for plot and spoiler reasons I’m not going to disclose how her vocal chords became damaged. However they have been damaged for a very long time.

Due to Bular’s temper tantrums and practically culling any changeling he deemed obsolete (and the lack of technology and un-researched magic on the topic) Karenna still forced herself to use her vocal chords despite the pain it caused - damaging her vocal chords even more to the point of no turning back.

This was a major mental toll on the blunt opinionated changeling. Who not only enjoyed collecting knowledge but proving to others she had knowledge as well. It took a lot of soul searching to come to terms that this was a part of her life, and thus, as Shakespeare once put it; she turned her tears into sparks of fire. It was a long journey to embrace, but one she embraced with full force. She learned there was no shame in her condition and used it to her full advantage.

As the head of reconnoissance and infiltration she brought to the Janus Order the two handed alphabet, and with it a bit more freedom to her fellow changelings. A means of expressing one’s self openly, and secretively all at once. Become a quick favorite in the eyes of Stricklander.

By the time the 17th century rolled around, the two handed alphabet and all its variations became a mandatory linguistic for all changelings to learn.

Though with it, came Bular’s insecurity and paranoia of the changelings under his control. Because of this he attempted to banish this use (which resulted to changelings having to be even sneakier in using it, and mainly used it in closed locations, or among other humans). Fearful this might also mean the end of her life, Karenna was requested frequently to be placed in dangerous field work.

By the 20th century and the introduction to security cameras, as well as sustaining quite a harmful injury, Karenna was relocated to a Janus Order desk job. Securing and looking over the physical archives within, with her partner Zurougia.

A dream she works on in her own time is to invent an official CSL - changeling sign language.

Karenna and Zurougia met while taking part in the coup d'état that lead to the accession of power of Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst more famously known as Cathrine the Great Empress of Russia.

It is a rule in the Janus Order to make sure one always takes all sides. That way no matter who wins in human affairs, there is always a changeling. “We are guests in their world, until we make it our own.” is a very common phrase and reminder within the Janus Order.

When the coup d'état became a success Karenna and Zurougia celebrated, and continued celebrating...carnally. Quite unable to get enough out of the other, they fell very quickly, head over heels.

However, there’s a reason why there aren’t many love stories in changeling folklore. It’s a rare concept to come by. There’s always a level of denial that love is a thing, or that it’s happening, or even possible. Love in their world is so rare, that it is almost thought of as a fairy tale idea. And like most changelings Karenna and Zurougia struggled with it.

At least until they found themselves on opposite sides of the Pugachev's Rebellion, where the fear of losing the other forever became very great. When they met each other again on the battlefield, under almost impossible odds, they decided then and there to hold onto what they have. For as long as they can.

And they did. And have been together ever since.

At a glance they easily fall under the trope of gentle giant, and snarky little bullet. Together they make for an excellent and formidable tag team.

They are also the most stable relationship inside the Terpsichore universe. Since I’ll be exploring many different angles and heartbreak and other angsty goodness relationship-muck wise in Terpsichore, I wanted to make sure there is at least one (1) couple that radiates as a healthy stable relationship. Who’s only main argument is when the wedding bells will toll.

To those who worry if Karenna and Zurougia will survive to the end of Terpsichore, or will fall under the dreaded ‘kill your gays’ trope, I can tell you here and now - SPOILERS

yes, they will survive. They are happy and together to the end.

END SPOILERS

She is quite easily one of my favorite characters I’ve invented yet. A mixture of sass and intelligence (a common trope in most of my characters) but also a character who isn’t afraid to stick to her guns, and be true to what her heart believes- even when stacked against the odds.

Like some changelings she looks up to and respects Stricklander, as well as distrusts him considering his past actions. However that respect tripled with the death of Bular, happily accepting a life and world without Gunmar. Believing changelings to be better off with the warlord trapped in the Darklands.

To those who’ve followed Terpsichore, I can confirm she’ll be quite the thorn in Otto’s side.

Anyways I know it isn’t part of the meme, but I’m also very music based in my writing, so here’s her theme song haha

youtube

I think that just about covers it! Whew! That was fun!

And now I shall tag @random-emerald-thoughts ( *cough* a challenge for more Ashur info? Or Sadik? your pick ; P ) as well as @danger-flammable !!

#she's beauty she's grace she'll kick you in the face #Terpsichore #Karenna #Yoooo this became a lot longer than I anticipated haha #Trollhunters #Tales of Arcadia #OCs #Changeling OCs #gif meme #Nico blabs into the void #Nico Writes #Terpsichore; or rather The Comedy of the Danse Macabre

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saxxxology · 5 years ago

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Cosmo Says - 2

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Sam’s phone buzzes in his pocket. Tugging it free, he unlocks the screen and goes right to the chat string. There’s a new message from you. Odd, considering you hate texting and would rather call than send a—

Oh.

> i’ve always thought about your cock ;)

His blood turns hot. It’s been a while since he’d gotten a text like this, the last time he’d done this sort of thing, he’d been left hanging and given up. That was a while ago.

In the four years you’ve been with them you’ve all seen each other in the near-nude quite a bit, after walking in on showers, clothing changes, sex, everything. He thinks ‘well, I've always thought about your tits’ as a silent reply, but changes it at the last minute.

< What about it?

Your little chat bubble pops up, wavering back and forth for several long seconds before a message finally pops up.

> how it looks. how it feels.

He chuckles to himself, ignoring Dean’s nagging “what is it” and attempt to lean over and get a peek at whatever’s amused his little brother. Dean only earns himself a muttered “fuck off” as Sam taps on the keyboard.

< You’re telling me this just now? Why?

> cosmo said sexting is good ;)

Ahhh, yes, of course. You’ve been indulging in that damn magazine again. Might as well entertain while he’s into it.

< On the road. Want a pic later?

> yes, please :)

He smirks to himself as his dick gives an interested twitch.

< Are you gonna treat me, too?

> if you’re good. drive safe.

“What was that about?”

Sam turns his phone over. His cheeks are bright red, he’s sure of it. “What was what?”

“Somethin’ got you happy,” Dean makes a grab for the phone, somehow keeps the Impala straight on the road, and misses as Sam yanks his device out of his brother’s reach.

“Fuck you,” he retorts, grinning despite himself.

“Was it Y/N?”

“Yeah.”

Dean narrows his eyes. “She okay?”

“She’s fine.” Sam clears his throat and stares out the window, trying to will his dick to stand down. He’s seen your tits on several occasions, the most notable being when he’d walked in on you touching yourself under the covers, rolling a nipple between your fingers with a hand apparently between your legs. The memory always comes to him when he needs it, and it never fails to do its job.

“Anything juicy?”

Sam’s throat goes dry. “What?”

“She got anything on the case,” Dean clarifies.

“Uh, no.” Sam makes a show of checking his phone again, as if you might have sent something relevant to their travels. “She, uh, just wanted to check in.”

Dean relents, but gives his brother a shifty look as they continue down the long, empty stretch of road.

They pull into a motel just after six. Dean sticks around long enough to drop his stuff, use the bathroom, and takes off for the closest bar. Sam takes advantage of the fact that he’s alone to throw the lock on the door and stretch out on his bed, phone in hand. The lure of privacy finally overwhelms him, and he shoves his jeans down his thighs, gathering his cock in one hand as he shoots you a message.

< Hey

You reply within seconds.

> what you got for me?

Sam grins and strokes himself firmly, getting himself hard and ready.

< Gimmie a minute

> can’t get it up?

< Feel free to help.

> mmm i can wait ;)

You’re relaxing in bed, phone in hand. Sam’s little chat bubble keeps popping up and dissapearing, and you can’t tell if he keeps fucking up the camera or not.

> I’m sending this on Snapchat

You roll your eyes. Of course, he’s paranoid about Dean getting into his phone.

< i’m waiting

After a good five minutes, a little yellow notification pops up on your screen. A thrill of excitement makes its way through your stomach, and you open the app and scroll to the fresh chat string.

Holy goddamn.

He’s thick and long, flushed dark and glistening at the tip. Gripping himself at the base, held between his thumb and index finger. He’s shaved clean, or waxed, and you feel heat swirl between your legs at the thought of what he might feel like inside you. A quick screenshot lights up your screen, and you smile when Sam’s text comes through.

> Screenshot? Really?

You giggle, typing back.

< i liked it. keep touching yourself.

> Wasn’t planning on stopping

< video?

> Hang on

You set your phone down to wait and quickly undress, getting comfortable on the bed as the anticipation builds. When another Snaptchat notification pops up, you slide a hand between your legs, teasing your clit as you open the video, volume on high.

“Oh, fuck…” Sam’s breathy moan echoes through the receiver as the camera focuses on his cock. His hand’s moving steadily up and down, twisting around the head. You lose yourself in it, watching closely as his abs tighten, hips moving up so he can fuck up into his fist.

The video only lasts a good fifteen seconds before it times out, and you let your head fall back onto the pillow as you try to process the heated glory of what you’ve witnessed.

> Enjoy?

You raise your phone up to type a quick reply.

< yes - more?

> Define more.

< i want to see you cum

The next ten minutes are filled with the sound of Sam’s moaning on repeat in your head as you stroke and touch and rub yourself. You won’t cum quite yet—you’re just amping yourself up.

When your phone vibrates, you’re quick to snatch it up and scroll to the new message.

It’s almost a minute of Sam just panting and grunting, the phone angled down by his hip so you can see his cock aimed up towards his stomach. His fingers tighten, loosen, pumping up and down until he lets go with a strangled grunt and several drawn-out sighs as he spurts thick, white ropes of cum onto his abs. The video cuts off before he’s truly done, but you’re left satisfied as you shoot him a text with trembling fingers.

< messy boy ;)

> Haha. Can I see you now? Please?

Such a gentleman.

< what do u want to see?

Sam takes a hot minute to wipe himself clean before replying. He knows exactly what he wants to see.

< How wet are you?

> really wet

< Show me.

He sits back against the headboard, breath held as he waits. As soon as the little chat notification pops up, he opens the image and lets out a long, drawn-out moan at the sight of your middle finger, shiny with slick and nestled between the bare lips of your pussy. He’s so engrossed in the image that he forgets to snap a screenshot and asks for a second.

You send it without question, this one where you’ve got two fingers pressed down over your clit and Sam can see the soft pink inside of your cunt, flushed and swollen and shiny…

< I want to be inside you so bad is all he can manage to text you as his cock gives a solid twitch.

> mmm maybe when u get back…

Sam’s mouth waters at the thought, and he’s halfway through typing a reply when you send a follow up that makes his cock perk up in his boxers.

> i bet cumming on your dick would feel real good

Sam rubs a palm over his thigh—he can’t remember the last time he got hard twice in a row…

< Are you touching yourself?

> yeah

< Show me.

He slides a hand inside his boxers, stroking slowly as he waits.

It’s well worth it: your legs are spread wide, two fingers swirling on your clit. He can see your cunt squeezing around nothing, and debates if it’s worth asking you to use one of the toys he knows you have.

< Good girl… make yourself cum for me.

The next video, like his, takes a while to come through. He continues to rub and stroke himself, more intent on alleviating the pressure between his legs rather than having another orgasm. He wonders how warm and tight you’d be on him—it’s been a while since he got his dick wet and he’d be lying if he said his jackoff sessions the last few weeks have totally not been drenched in thoughts of you riding him, grabbing at him and begging for him...

His phone buzzes, and he bites down on his lower lip as he opens the video.

Fucking. Hell.

It’s two minutes of your hips rolling, thighs trembling, moans changing in pitch and intensity. Sam pinpoints the exact moment when your orgasm peaks: you let out a long, high-pitched cry of pleasure as your body convulses, and he can tell that you’re fighting to keep your legs spread long enough for your shaky video to capture the rest of it.

By the time the recording ends, Sam’s ready to bust hands-free. He pulls his hand from his cock and replies, breathing through his nose as he fights to keep some form of self-control.

< Gorgeous.

> next time i cum, i want you inside me.

Sam groans, shifting uncomfortably as he types a reply.

< We’ll be back by the end of the week. Think you can wait that long?

> yes

< I wanna taste you.

> you can ;)

Sam licks his lower lip, desperate to find some relief. He needs a shower, anyway, he can take more time in there.

< Gonna clean up and get to bed. You all good back there?

> got cosmo to hold me down until u get back. send me a pic in the morning?

< Of what?

> you know. goodnight.

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murfeelee · 8 years ago

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Replies - Magnus Fangirling Pt2

The people asked for more -- I can’t ignore a direct call! XD

lifeasasim replied to your post “Desperation: TS3 Poses request”

OMG WTF THE CUTENESS

lifeasasim replied to your photoset “End of Year Tag - Best of 2017 Rules: Find your fave pics of your...”

I LOVE MALEC. Need more or just a post all about Magnus

simblu replied to your photoset “Asmodeus Pt3 - Bane of My Existence “My father, who art in Hell,...”

Not familiar with what this is based on, but gorgeous pix

That’s my cue to start gushing some more about my baby’s daddy! ^0^

Shadowhunters 101

*Ahem!* Alright, so y’all hopefully know that my current fandom gameplay is inspired by a series of novels by cassandraclare, that were adapted first into a movie (The Mortal Instruments) and currently a tv show, Shadowhunters (Season 3 has been pushed up to March now, rather than April -- I’ll take it!).

My faaaavoite character in the books, movie, and on the show is Magnus Bane (I’ve gone off on a whole tangent about my love for him in Part 1 here). He's a “freewheeling bisexual Asian warlock“ who is the High Warlock of Brooklyn -- arguably the most powerful warlock in America if not the world -- I’ll fight you on this.

In the story universe warlocks are part of the Downworld (supernatural realm). The Downworld includes all beings created through demonic influence -- the Faeries/Seelies are half angel half demon, and Vampires and Werewolves are humans who were bitten and infected with demonic viruses that manifested as either vamps or wolves. Like demons and angels, faeries, vampires, and warlocks are all immortal. Werewolves are not immortal, for whatever reason.

Demons are evil monstrous creatures from Hell, that plague the Earth. They are different from Greater Demons, which I’ll get to. They are dangerous to mundanes (hapless humans), Downworlders, and Shadowhunters alike.

Shadowhunters are the Nephilim (mortal, angel-blooded humans) whose job it is to hunt demons, and try to keep the Downworld in line (though they’re really a sad sack of hypocritical bigots who harass and persecute the Downworlders almost as much as they do regular demons, let’s be real). They are covered in holy Rune tattoos imbued with angelic powers that help them fight demons, but they have no magical powers beyond a few supernatural perks they get from their Runes (super speed, senses, etc) and weapons.

The Nephilim/Shadowhunters aren’t Angels, which live in Heaven, but they’re the closest you can get on Earth, basically. They live and work together under the authority of The Clave, in what they call Institutes (abandoned glamoured churches) around the world, where they monitor demonic activity and deal with Shadowhunter-Downworld politics.

Powerful warlocks like Magnus are often hired out at different Institutes to help create magical wards that shield Institutes from demonic attacks, and create portals so Shadowhunters can quickly get to places and do their thing. Vamps and wolves have no magic, and the fae stick to themselves, so warlocks are left as the intermediaries a lot of the time.

Ideally, the Downworlders and Shadowhunters are supposed to work together to fight demons, but again, the Nephilim are bigoted speciesists (some even went so far as creating The Circle, made up of shadowhunters led by effing Valentine Morgenstern that mofo, who actively hunted Downworlders and collected their Marks -- see below -- as trophies). The Downworlders are strong independent peoples don’t need no Clave, and don’t put up with that mess, so they’ve been fighting each other for hundreds of years rather than their common enemy, the Demons/Greater Demons. Just bad feelings all around.