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slimepuparibaba · 3 years

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ChiLumi | The Battle of Golden House

Golden House was what screwed my feelings over the most, if I'm being completely honest here. It hurts so damn much.

I don't wanna get into too much of the nitty-gritty before we start but here are some FYIs.

Childe temporarily joined Lumine's team after their little outing in Liyue. His reasoning to the Fatui was that it was to squeeze out information--in reality, he just wanted to spend time with Lumine.

The team was compromised of most of the characters, except for Venti, Klee, Bennett, Mona, Keqing, Qiqi, Jean, Diluc, Ningguang, Zhongli, and Xinyan. This took place BEFORE the 1.2 update happened!

Kaeya, Chongyun, Xiangling, and Barbara were the least suspicious of Childe as they spent more time around him and knew of his feelings towards Lumine--they are also the main team members in this fight.

All this is based off of my gameplay in Genshin!

Leading Up to the Battle

Childe and Lumine were very close. Weeks had passed and Childe had gotten to the point where he would use "Lumine" more often instead of "Traveler" or "ojou-chan". Childe would also call Lumine "Aster" due to her favorite flower being a Windwheel Aster

Kaeya was also the closest to the two of them and gave advice to both Lumine and Childe on how they should court each other

However, Childe was eventually reminded that the good times can't last forever. After he hard that Lumine visited the Jade Chamber that floated above Liyue, he remembered that he wasn't here to chat. His initial goal was to bring back the gnosis.

The night before the fight, as the team rested at an inn on the way to Liyue, Childe, cloakee by the darkness of night, left the group. He ditched the weapons that Lumine gave to him as well as his artifacts. If he held onto them during their destined battle, he knew he wouldn't be able to fulfill his duty.

Childe hesitated to leave, and yet, with a heavy heart, he left the Inn behind and stationed the Fatui to mobilize in Liyue.

The next morning, Lumine was shattered to see that Childe was gone.

Confrontation

The group heard of the Fatui being mobilized as well as the Adepti and the Qixing about to throw down, and Zhongli gave Lumine the tip that Childe was behind it. She really wanted to be able to talk it out with Childe and convince him he didn't need to go this far, but Zhongli himself stated that "sometimes, they won't understand that until everything is said and done."

Lumine was ready to confront Childe, but her heart was shaking and she felt uneasy. The uneasiness began to settle in though when she and the rest of the group approched the Exuvia and heard Childe's chilling laughter echo throughout the empty hall.

Lumine, hoping to resolve this without fighting, tried to talk to him.

"Childe, you don't have to do this! Don't you remember all the fun times we had? All of us? You're one of us, Childe! You don't have to be their pawn!"

Deep inside, Childe agreed. He knew full well that Lumine had a point--that he was merely being used as a pawn and he could easily discarded. He wanted to join Lumine, but...

"Monsters like the Fatui cannot be saved."

That was all that ran through his mind.

He wanted to agree; god knows he did. What he wouldn't give to leave the Fatui, resign as a Harbinger, and join everyone on that team on their adventures and protect everyone that he ever loved.

But he just couldn't do that.

Childe knew that Lumine wouldn't give up, no matter what, and he kept battling within himself. Sadly, though, his "loyalty" to the Tsaritsa got the better of him.

"Shut up!"

Lumine fell silent, and the entire group watched as Childe began to call her out. It pained him to do so, but his loyalty to the Tsaritsa practically demanded that he continue with this farce.

He said many things he truly wished he didn't say, many things he wanted to take back. But he was too far in. He stopped calling Lumine by her name, instead only calling her "Traveler", trying to distance himself. He mocked Lumine, as well as everyone else, calling them naïve for trusting a Fatui, of all people. Deep down, he was happy they trusted him. He wasn't upset with them, but himself for doing this.

Childe was waiting for Lumine to retort--to fight back and say something, and it looked like she was about to...

...until he said he was simply toying with Lumine's feelings.

Lumine didn't want to take that at face value, and Childe didn't want her to either. But, as soon as he said that, even though he may not have meant it, she shed a single tear.

Kaeya intervened, stating that Childe went too far. The Harbinger knew that... he knew that all too well. But, time could not rewind. He had already done enough damage.

He convinced himself that there was no turning back. If he was to fulfill his duty as a vassal of the Tsaritsa, he needed Lumine to hate him. He needed to crush all the lingering feelings that were held between the two of them. He needed to be the villain.

With that, he challenged Lumine to a battle. And thus, the Battle of Golden House was set in motion.

Phase 1 and 2: Childe Unleashed

He was completely ready for Lumine to throw everything at him, but instead, she stood still, not moving. Her eyes were devoid of the hatred he was hoping to see. It was... empty.

Instead, Kaeya, Chongyun, Xiangling, and Barbara hopped in. Noelle shielded the rest of the party, Lisa and Amber comforting Lumine, who was silently weeping in heartbreak. Everyone looked upon Childe with hatred, wondering why he would do such a thing.

Xiangling would crash into Childe, crossing blades and questioning why he was doing this. She believed he was happy with them, so why did they have to fight?

Chongyun, too, was upset. He may have come late to the party, but he saw how easily Childe fit in. In fact, while Chongyun was trying to train to get on par with the rest of the team, Childe would help out.

Barbara was one of the only rational ones, and she sensed there was more to the story. She tried to talk it out with Childe, saying that he didn't have to do this and there was no real reason they had to fight. She knew that Childe wasn't happy with this either.

But it was Kaeya that completely lost it.

People say that Kaeya is one of the chiller, cooler people in all of Teyvat. But, make no mistake... Kaeya is scary when he gets angered. When you push the wrong buttons, he will show absolutely no mercy.

While the three main fighters were throwing questions at him, trying to persuade him to stop it, Kaeya threw himself into the battle without second thought. He asked no questions--he only snarled at the one he once saw Lumine happy with.

Kaeya was supportive of Childe and Lumine when he saw how happy she was with him and how Childe seemed to be the same way. Kaeya understood Lumine didn't have her brother there like she used to, and he understood that same feeling, so he swore to try and be the brother that the both of them didn't have at the moment. Lumine was practically his little sister.

So when Childe betrayed her, when he broke her heart, Kaeya was ready to go absolutely apeshit.

Throughout the battle, even when Childe reached Phase 2, Kaeya would be the one throwing blow after blow at the Harbinger. It wasn't just physical hits, either. It included emotional daggers.

The two men would argue constantly, Kaeya threatening Childe and Childe laughing in response, mocking him.

"She trusted you--no, WE trusted you! I let the fact that you're a Fatui go because I thought you had some piece of humanity in you!"

"Then that was YOUR mistake! You just had to believe a Fatui all because, what? Your "surrogate sister" fell in love? Haha, don't make me laugh! Just because you didn't have a brother for half your life doesn't mean you need to project yourself onto the Traveler and become hers!"

The more their blades crossed, the more enraged Kaeya became. However, a third blade came into play and threw Kaeya's sword out of his hands.

It was Lumine.

Phase 3: Tartaglia's Foul Legacy

Lumine was standing still, her sword at her side. She stared at Childe with no emotion showing on her face. This was it, Childe thought. She finally hates me.

Childe held up his weapon, but before he could strike Kaeya and Lumine, she blocked it with her anemo skill, her feet digging into the floor as her geo skill kept her in place. Kaeya lept away, and all that was left on the battlefield was Childe and Lumine.

A large explosion of light occurred, but Childe simply appeared on the Exuvia, ready to grab the Gnosis. But when he discovered it wasn't there, he didn't know what to think.

Lumine stood still, and Childe wanted to end it there. But part of him delusionally screamed "No!", and instead pinned the blame on her.

It felt like Childe was slowly being torn apart on the inside. He wanted to stop it, apologize to Lumine and run away with her and their friends, but he needed to fulfill his duties.

In the end, Childe listened to his head. He unleashed his Foul Legacy transformation and destroyed the flooring below everyone, sending them to the lower platform.

Kaeya was going to step in, but Lumine game him a look. It was as if to say "This is between me and him." So, Kaeya backed off and retreated to the rest of the group.

Lumine and Tartaglia simply stared at each other. Tartaglia expected for Lumine to say something, but no words were spoken. Instead, she immediately rushed towards him.

Tartaglia expected to block it, ready to stop her in her tracks. He was ready to take her head-on and see her full power...

...then she drew two blades made of water.

Tartaglia was in shock. Lumine pulled a surprising move... she was using his weapon! It stunned him, even amazed him, but for some reason, it also broke his heart. He left behind the weapons he used when with Lumine's team, not wanting to use them in fear that it would stop him from using his full potential, but here they were... being used against them.

It was after she pulled those weapons out that Tartaglia's moves grew slower.

Many speculated this was because Tartaglia's armor was heavier and using up most of his power. However, Barbara understood. She saw the look in Childe's eyes when Lumine entered the arena. He seemed prideful, but his eyes said different. He, just like Lumine, didn't want to do this.

Tartaglia was holding back.

Tartaglia and Lumine kept clashing. Their powers were equal to each other, and Lumine kept switching between using her blade and the weapons once used by Childe himself. Even still, no words were exchanged. There was no expression on Lumine's face. Within the Golden House, all that could be heard was the sounds of blades clashing, lightning striking, wind howling, and water crashing.

The two of them fought hard. In the end, both were one hit away from being knocked out and losing. Tartaglia had one charged attack he had been storing up and was ready to unleash it.

"If I use it, she will obviously dodge it... and then she can beat me. Then, she will hate me like she was destined to."

Tartaglia lifted his blade into the air and, using his Delusion, summoned a large amount of Electro energy. It wasn't undodgable--in fact, Lumine could just jump back and strike him and the fight would end there.

Just as he was about to strike, however, Lumine instead rushed towards Tartaglia, rushing right past him. Instead of dodging, she ran straight into the attack. Tartaglia was shocked, staring at the Traveler being pierced by the lightning. Just as she was struck, she whispered softly the only words she had spoken throughout the entire fiasco...

"...if I knew it would've come to this, I wish I never fell in love with you."

Lumine, at last, fell.

Fallen

Childe dropped his weapon, staring at Lumine's body as it hit the ground. She was knocked out cold. He reached out his arm, only for Barbara to rush in and throw her arms out to her side, as if forbidding Childe to touch her.

Memories of the times that they spent together flowed through his mind. He couldn't move. He felt paralyzed. He wanted to pick up Lumine and apologize, say it was all a joke and he just wanted to test her strength, but he couldn't do that. He glabced at her body, lying on the cold floor, and understood.

He did this to her.

This was all his fault.

The words that Lumine said kept repeating in his head, echoing and resounding, practically taunting him. Just as he was caught in a trance, he felt a sharp pain in his abdomen.

Kaeya stabbed him through his armor.

Childe, his Foul Legacy transformation fading, then collapsed on the ground, returning back to normal.

Paimon and Kaeya confronted Childe, who expected Lumine to be the one to get upset with him instead of the Calvary Knight. The Fatui Harbinger looked at Lumine, who was being healed by both Diona and Barbara. He felt like saying sorry, but the angry looks from everyone told him one thing, and one thing only.

"You're a liar. You never could've been saved in the first place."

"Monsters can never be saved."

Childe, feeling he had nothing left, lifelessly continued forth with the plan that he had formulated weeks before he had joined Lumine. He was still waiting for her to wake up and hug him, beg him not to, or at least just try and stop him. He wanted someone to tell him that he could change.

But no one did.

With a heavy heart and a false smile on his face, he summoned Osial and escaped from the Golden House. He felt no reason to stay there...

He was now a lost cause.

Kaeya, still angered by Childe, wanted to chase after him, but a weary Lumine told him to worry about Liyue instead. Kaeya protested, saying they should nip the issue in the bud, but Barbara agreed.

Not only that, but she knew that Childe wanted them to stop Osial. She could tell... she saw it in the saddened look on his face.

Departure

The group, after fully healing, ventured to the Golden Chamber and fought against Osial alongside the adepti and the Qixing. They succeeded, naturally, with the Golden Chamber sadly sacrificed. The Qixing became the ruling power of Liyue, with the Adepti stepping down.

In the end, however, the mystery of the Gnosis and it's whereabouts still remained. Thus, the team ventured to the Northland Bank.

It was there that they saw Zhongli, Signora, and Childe.

Childe saw Lumine and was about to congratulate her, but Kaeya stood in the way, and Signora gave Childe a dirty look. He realized that, truly, what was done couldn't be undone. He had to continue lying through his teeth, just as he always did.

Childe made a false apology, saying that he truly was just a pawn and just doing his job. But, truth was that he meant to say that he didn't want to do it, and that he wanted Lumine to scold him and steal him away from the Fatui. Even then, though, Lumine didn't look him in the eye and fell silent.

The answers to the entire "Rex Lapis murder mystery" were solved, and Signora gained the Geo Archon's Gnosis. With that out of the way, Signora commanded Childe to head back to Snezhnaya with her. Reluctantly, he followed.

But, just before he could leave, he waited at the door and for Signora to keep walking just out of hearing distance. When she did, Childe turned around and looked Lumine in the eye. He gave a sad smile, and said one last sentence to her.

"...Lumine... I... really hope you didn't mean what you said back there..."

Lumine, taken aback, had no words to say. He responded to what she said back at the Golden House... did that mean that he...?

Before she could try and ask, Childe left, walking out of her sight, never looking back.

From then on, Childe and Lumine weren't reunited. All that remained with the both of them was the memories of the time they spent together before the fateful battle that tore them apart.

...that is, until Childe's Story Mission.

may i just say that this entire thing broke me

bruh. childe. Why did u do that

;;;

also the blows he made to kaeya's pride

"i know you and diluc aint close, dont go projecting on lumine"

fucking christ dude you needed LUMINE to hate you, not the fake pirate dude!

#genshin impact #genshin #headcanon #chilumi #childe #tartaglia #ajax #genshin childe #genshin traveler #traveler #lumine #this one...#THIS ONE is angst #CHILDE WHY #SHE LO V E D YOU???#AAAAAAAA #it gets somewhat happier when teucer gets involved tho dw #just deal with the consequences of childe being fatui

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hothian-snow · 3 years

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Worldbuilding: Sith Magic (WIP)

An update to my original post.

I want to theorize about what magic may have been commonplace during the times of the Sith Pureblood, before they became influenced by the Dark Jedi. Some beliefs and practice may have evolved into what we know today, but many traditions will have likely died down, lost to time and to cultural colonisation. These are my headcanons, inspired by some headcanons others have made plus my own understanding of traditional witchcraft and Ancient Greek magic.

1) Magic of the Sun

Korriban is one of the original homes of the Sith Pureblood, and presumably the most prominent one. What could be seen the moment you step onto Korriban is the rocky red ending desert and the blistering sun. Magic from many cultures around our world are rooted in the land, and I believe Sith magic should be no different. In this case, their magic will be drawn from the sun, the bones that lie beneath the sands.

In the real world Greek Magical Papyri, a record of Greco-Egyptian magic spells, the sun god Helios is called upon in various rites ranging from consecration to restraining anger to bringing victory. In that same manner, I believe the sun may be called by the Sith to perform magical acts. In a lot of POC traditions, planets are also deified to be gods (something like astrolatry in Thailand etc), and so the Sith - who in my views are POC-coded - may revere the sun as a central religious figure (which makes it ironic that the concept of the Dark Side of the Force was later made to be the enemy of the Light). The sun nourishes, but it also burns. The light allows you to see, but too much can blind. It is the sun’s heat that rot corpses, freeing flesh from bones, rushing forth decomposition. The sun is life and the sun is death.

Just as Ancient Greek witches could be identified as descendants of Helios due to their flashing eyes, it is also possible that the Sith Pureblood may view themselves to be descendants of the sun. After all, their fiery eyes are like two miniature suns and their distinctive red skin are like the blood-red dawn.

2) Magic of the Bones

In many ways, the Force is similar to the real-world belief of animism. Inside everything is something that is alive and powerful. In the bones, buried beneath the sands, are a vault of memories. Through feeding the bones - feeding the spirits within the bones - one can cultivate a relationship with the dead. One can redden the bones with flowers from cactus mixed with drops of blood, or blacken them with roots and soot. Incense smoke can be like food to the soul. This works for both animal and Sith bones.

Once awakened, bones can be your teachers, or used both as an offensive and defensive tool. The empty eye sockets of skulls can be placed in strategic places, eternally watching guard. Fangs and claws can be turned into magical talismans, to protect their masters and shred their enemies to pieces. Bones may whisper their wisdom to you. Learn from the tuk’ata how to protect and defend. Learn from the K’lor’slugs how to poison and strike.

3) Necromancy

With the talks of bones, we cannot avoid the topic of necromancy. In a lot of POC cultures, ancestor veneration plays an integral part of bringing families together. As the Sith Purebloods are POC-coded, and because we have seen in-game that ghosts of ancestors (Lord Kallig) may wish to help their descendants (the Sith Inquisitor), I believe ancestor veneration would have a prominent role in Sith culture. Ancestors may send you dreams for you to be prepared for upcoming threats. Ancestors may work their magic from beyond the grave to influence situations in the living world.

Aside from having a ghost literally show up, transmission of knowledge through dreams is one way that tradition can be passed down, in spite of the Sith Genocide that occured. Children may have been made orphans, but it does not mean that their parents can’t speak through them in an oneiric vision. Texts may have been burnt, cultural artifacts may have been destroyed, but magic prevails. History finds a way to be remembered.

Dream incubation can be used to receive information that would be otherwise unknown. Trances can be used to induce visions from the dead and from higher powers. Ointments made from poisonous herbs, smeared onto the body, can be used to induce the liminal state required for a person to get in touch with the otherworld.

There is also canonical evidence that necromancy was practiced among the Sith before the Dark Jedi colonised them: Dathka Graush, a Sith King of Korriban active in the decades prior to the arrival of the Dark Jedi Exiles in 6900 BBY, was among the earliest practitioners of Sith necromancy. Necromancy can be as dramatic as raising zombies using occult incantations, reanimating the freshly dead and the buried skeletons. However, I also want to go for a different approach.

Inspired by Ancient Greek necromancy, I believe the dead can be split into many types. Perhaps there are the restless dead, like the Greek aōroi, the spirits who could be appeased and channeled to wreak havoc. Perhaps there are the mighty dead, (war) heroes who have been elevated to the point where they are venerated and prayed to for strength and miracles. The dead can be called upon to glean prophecies, and deals can be made with them, pacts sealed in blood. The dead can teach you secrets and grant you powers, and you can send them forth to haunt your enemies until they are maddened. A Sith may ask the ravenous dead to feed upon their enemy, and pray that the power of the tomb claims the rest.

Some parts of the current Sith cultural beliefs may have been influenced by the beliefs of the Sith Pureblood (pre-Dark Jedi arrival), but twisted into a reactionary belief in response to the Jedi code. For example, the Jedi seems to have an accepting attitude towards death (“there is no death, there is only the Force”) while the current Sith seems to wish to overcome death, whether through having a long-lasting legacy or through occult means (like Darth Zash or Emperor Vitiate). This is why a Sith like Darth Marr who are not scared to die are viewed as being terrifying. I believe this culture of immense fear towards death is a new thing.

In my headcanon, the Sith Pureblood originally viewed death as something to respect and fear, but also understood it to be a necessity - and in some cases, a beautiful part of life. Through death, grapes are transformed into wine. There is sacredness in the sweet and cloying rot, a holiness to decay and entropy. Because of this, there may be a field of magic that focuses not just on reanimating corpses, but on hastening (or temporary slowing- with consequences) the way and speed at which something decomposes. Imagine a Sith gripping their enemies with their bare hands, and from that touch comes a death sentence: bodies begin to bloat, festering sickness seeping into muscles and bones, flesh turning necrotic before death consumes them.

4) Potions and Poisons

The art of pharmakeia and veneficium is something that came up in the Sith Inquisitor storyline. Zash makes offhand remarks about poisoning her foes, and the ghost that taught the Sith Inquisitor how to Force Walk requires the Inquisitor to drink a cup of poison first. Poison can both kill and teach. In the real world, many traditional witches who walk the poison path have made allies of their poison plants. In Greek myth and religion, Circe uses potions to transmute men into pigs, and transforms women into monsters by poisoning water with drugs.

Ziost, which became capital of the Ancient Sith Empire after the reign of the Sith Overlord Adas came to an end, was described to be a planet of dark forests and barren tundra. With forests comes plants, and with plants comes poison. Perhaps dirt from graveyards and places of bloodshed can be mixed with foul herbs, along with powdered molts of poison insects, and then infused into oil to be made into a tool for cursing enemies. Should a hair or piece of armor from one’s rival be found, one could powder that and mix the blend into a poppet, enabling a Sith to feed their enemy poison from a distance.

The flipside of poison is medicine. Healers may have been as abundant as poisoners, or perhaps healers were poisoners and poisoners were healers, for the difference between killing and treating is just application and dosage. Potions may also be made to bless and enhance the abilities of someone - something like how stims are used in the current setting - and washes and ritual baths may be used to free someone from unwanted afflictions.

5) Force Lightning

I believe Force lightning has always been used by the Sith Pureblood, but its prestige and popularity only has sky-rocketted once Vitiate became Emperor. Dromund Kaas’ constant lightning and perpetual thunderstorms may have been “a result of the Sith Emperor's experiments in arcane and forbidden uses of the dark side of the Force”. Hence, it may be possible that the usage of Force lightning became a symbol of power due to Vitiate’s influence.

6) Sith Artifacts and Tools

The most well-known artifact of the Sith is the Sith holocron. I am not certain but I believe the oldest Sith holocron may be the Telos Holocron, and one of the earliest contributors to the Telos Holocron was Ajunta Pall who was a Dark Jedi. The holocron’s purpose in storing information and passing down the legacy of a Sith Lord is linked to my view that it is the Dark Jedi who want to be immortalized and are afraid of death, not the original Sith Pureblood. Thus, I infer that the Sith holocrons are made by the Dark Jedi who colonized the Sith, which makes sense considering that it just looks like an alternative version of the Jedi holocron.

However, one clear power of the Sith holocrons is how they are able to ‘corrupt’ its user to the Dark Side. This made me wonder if the Sith Pureblood may have had artifacts and fetishes that served similar purposes in corrupting, influencing and swaying their enemies. If knowledge could be passed down through ghosts and dreams, then there is no need to spend time crafting the perfect holocron and effort could instead be focused upon creating tools of defense and offense.

It would have been very practical to create an artifact out of roots and bones, place it in places of ruin, death and grief such as places of murders, and enchant it to soak in the horrific sympathetic energies of the locales it was placed at until it becomes full, brimming with misery and torment. It could then be buried on the plot of land that a Sith’s enemy lived on, hence bringing suffering to their home and family. Something like that - something folk-ish, something requiring only skill, cunning and determination, not fanciful ceremonial rituals like the ones we see the current Siths doing - is what I believe defined the practice of the original Sith Pureblood.

#sith magic #worldbuilding #swtor #Star Wars The Old Republic

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fuwafuwamedb · 4 years

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Apple Doesn’t Fall Far Pt 3 (Gilgamesh, Ur, Gula, Utu)

Previously: Utu , Gula

___

He stared over at them from time to time over the top of his gaming device.

The boy was sharpening his weapon, happily chirping along to his sister in their native tongue. The sister, whom looked absolutely nothing like him in any manner other than those eyes, nodded here and there.

Like himself, the girl held another game system in her hands. She was playing something as her brother leaned closer.

More chattering.

He wasn’t sure how the girl dealt with such things, but he wasn’t amused by the fact that Gudako had allowed them to take over his space. She knew that the northeast corner of Chaldea was his. He could enjoy his morning light and ignore the pains of watching the sun sink behind the horizon.

Gudako had situated them in a room near his chambers. She’d actually bothered to let the two drag things from their own version of his gates, chattering to one another and telling jokes in Sumerian.

And still, they gave nothing.

The two brats were sitting there, representing his strength and his legacy, and the two of them were-

“So maybe Gudako can be our parent?”

He narrowed his gaze once more, pausing the game in his hands and walking over to them.

“You are both my children, are you not?”

The two looked up at him.

“Try again,” the boy growled.

He raised a brow at the pest.

“I said, try again.” Utu hissed. “Gula did nothing to merit this kind of talk. Go back, sit down, and try again. I would recommend beginning with, ‘hello, Gula, precious temple flower of my kin.’ But if you have something better, I’m open to ideas.”

So… Ignore the boy.

Gilgamesh turned his gaze to Gula. “You are my daughter, are you not?”

Something flickered in her eyes. Something… distasteful.

Did she not get addressed enough as his daughter?

He could understand why that would be the case. She looked nothing like a child of his. Had it not been for the boy’s addressing her and for those red eyes looking up at him, he may have neglected to even notice her.

“I am,” she murmured gently.

“Then you should be showing proper respect for your king.”

They would start by shutting up first thing in the morning. No more running around the hallways and sword fighting late in the evening. No more yelling at one another and having childish squabbles. He was much too old for that kind of shit.

“You didn’t want to acknowledge…”

The girl paused.

The boy next to her sighed, shaking his head.

“I should’ve known that you would come. Did Gudako summon you?”

“Just a few minutes ago.”

The newcomer jingled. Gilgamesh could almost sense the other’s height before he turned, finding the young man standing to his nose.

“Father,” another almost him greeted.

“…How many of you do I have?”

“…Do you want an answer?”

No, he did not.

Turning away, he grabbed his game device nearby and listened to Utu snort.

“Ur, he’s being atrocious. He made Gula feel disappointed at not looking like him. As though she has any reason to feel upset about looking like a precious woman like ummum instead of having his scruffy-“

A smack came, drawing his attention.

“YOU ALWAYS HIT TOO HARD, UR!”

“I wouldn’t name a son of mine after that useless goddess’ father,” Gilgamesh growled at the two boys.

“You didn’t name me after the moon god,” Ur growled back. “I was named after the city because that’s where I was born, you evil eye ridden pestilence.”

The audaciously foul-mouthed boy grabbed his brother and sister and headed for the door.

“If you need us, we shall be in Gula’s room… wherever that is located. I intend to spoil my siblings since we no longer need to watch over Uruk.”

#drabble #drabbles

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anistarrose · 5 years

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To See The Unseen - Ch. 4 (Gravity Falls)

Summary: The kids embark on a quest to take back the mirror, and Stan embarks on a quest to find his brother. Neither goes quite according to plan.

Warnings: canon-typical violence

AO3: archiveofourown.org/works/20884673/chapters/50514815

Remember when I said last chapter had changed the most from the outline? This chapter has it beat by a pretty large margin, but I’m so glad it changed because I feel like it really went from good to great.

***

Come on, Ford, where are you…

Moving scenes flickered by Stan, like a projector wheel was whirring and spinning inside his head. Gilled alien children, playing in an underwater kelp forest. A group of humanoid beings celebrating as a sleek rocket ship lifted off in front of them.

A city burning. A smaller town rebuilding. A man offering a few scraps of food to a stray dog. Two chimeras with bat wings and scorpion stingers, chasing each other across a starlit desert sky.

Yet for all their diversity, none of the scenes showed anyone resembling Ford.

He’s got to be out here somewhere. I would feel it if anything happened to him, I’m sure I would —

A long-abandoned space station colliding with a comet. A small family carrying potted flowers up a massive, barren mountain. A world teeming with insects and arachnids, associating into families and societies and nations. A perfectly clear ocean, eerily empty for miles in every direction.

There are too many places he could be, Stan realized. I need to see more.

I need to see everything.

The images blurred together as Stan’s head spun faster and faster, but the universe resisted becoming known, writhing and shrinking away from him.

I NEED TO SEE EVERYTHING. I NEED TO SEE MY BROTHER.

The projector whirring intensified to a dull roar, as Stanley Pines grabbed existence by the throat and stared at it dead in its eyes.

***

“Shoulda figured the gate would be closed,” Wendy grumbled as they approached Northwest Mansion.

“Well, time to make Stan proud, then.” Dipper pulled a small crossbow out of his backpack, and fired off a few shots. The first bolt sailed harmlessly over the fence, but the second flew true and impaled itself in the security camera, spinning it around so that it pointed away from his party. “You want to lead the way, Mabel?”

“Sure do!” Mabel expertly scaled the gate with her grappling hook, then tossed it through a gap in the bars for Dipper to follow with. “If Pacifica asks, we’ll just tell her that we got lost in tunnels that mole people dug under the fence.”

Wendy shook her head. “First grappling hooks in the gift shop, and now crossbows in the closet? We need to get Stan back just so I can yell at him about leaving weapons where you kids can find them.”

“Hey, you carry an axe everywhere!” Dipper shot back as he landed on the other side of the wall, passing the grappling hook through the gate one last time. “And you’ve got to admit, these weapons come in handy all the time.”

Wendy shrugged. “Yeah, but I’m not a kid. I’m a responsible teenager.”

“That’s an oxymoron and we all know it,” Dipper told her as they set off towards the mansion.

“Less of an oxymoron than ‘responsible twelve-year old’ would be.”

“Shh, guys!” Mabel motioned towards a guard rounding the corner, and the three of them ducked into the bushes. Once he’d passed them by, they sprinted towards the front door, only to stand there awkwardly for a moment, unsure of how to proceed.

“Do we… just ring the doorbell?” Wendy asked. “It feels kinda anticlimactic after doing all this cool heist stuff.”

“Is it unlocked?” Dipper gave the door an experimental push, and sure enough, it slid open, revealing a grand ballroom lit by dozens of crystal chandeliers. “I guess we should just head in.”

“Aww, lots of cute animals!” Mabel exclaimed, rushing over to the nearest taxidermied squirrel. “And they must’ve been even more adorable when you were alive — weren’t you, Mister Fluffytail?”

“Why is there so much gravel on the floor?” Wendy muttered, kicking around a few of the jagged chunks of rock that were scattered across the carpet. “I woulda thought the Northwests would take better care of their stuff…” Her eyes followed the trail of gravel and dust across the ballroom, and up the stairs —

And to the balcony from which two Northwests glared down at them, one of looking far more ghostly and petrified than the other.

“Oh,” Dipper whispered. “So that’s what happened to that statue.”

“Dipper? Mabel?” Pacifica gasped. “What are you doing here?”

“Don’t worry, we had a really good reason for breaking and entering, I promise!” Mabel spoke up. “See, our grunkle spoke to me in my dreams and said that in order to lift his curse —”

Dipper and Mabel Pines? Nathaniel Northwest asked as his statue form began to rise up off the ground and out past the balcony. Oh, how convenient!

“Uh, excuse me?” Dipper asked. “I’ve never met you before, dude —”

The statue plummeted to the ground, smashing through the floorboards and coming just inches away from crushing Dipper as he jumped to the side.

You don’t even claim to know the very man whose legacy you fouled? I’ve met a lot of petty children in my day, but you put all of them to shame!

“Grandpa, what are you doing?!” Pacifica shrieked, covering her mouth with her hands. “Are you trying to kill him?!”

Nathaniel turned back towards her. Why wouldn’t I try to kill the meddling kids? Is mercilessly eradicating our enemies not the Northwest family modus operandi any longer? I didn’t think times had changed that much!

“No! It’s not! Even my parents or grandparents would never…” Pacifica’s voice trailed off, like she couldn’t help but doubt her own argument.

Oh, dear naïve granddaughter. Nathaniel shook his stone head. I can’t fault you for not knowing all your family’s history yet, but as much as I disagreed with my children, I simply can’t imagine them abandoning such a simple tenet. Nor can I imagine your parents, or your grandparents, or any of your ancestors, for that matter! How do you think we amassed the family fortune in the first place? Because it sure wasn’t by being kind, or charitable, or —

He staggered backwards as Mabel’s grappling hook caught him directly in the chest, and cracks began to spiderweb across his beard.

“That’s what you get for attacking my brother! You dumb old capitalist!”

I am not DUMB! Nathaniel roared. The world tried to suppress my genius!

His beard began to crumble even more, but a whirlwind of black smoke caught the rocky shards and hurled them through the air. Wendy knocked Mabel out of the way with a rolling tackle, then sprung to her feet and raised her axe just in time to deflect Nathaniel’s stone flagpole in place as he swung it at her.

“Pacifica?” Mabel pleaded. “A little help here?!”

“I —” Pacifica took a few hesitant steps down the stairs, and then froze. “I don’t know what to do!”

As Wendy and Nathaniel continued to spar, remaining at more or less a stalemate, Dipper frantically flipped through Journal 3.

“Come on, come on, I know there’s a whole section about ghosts in here somewhere —”

Nathaniel blew a plume of dust in Wendy’s face, but didn’t strike at her even as she began to cough. Instead, he turned to Dipper, and pointed a chipped stone finger towards the ceiling.

Searching for my weakness? Now now, we can’t have that!

Tendrils of smoke wound around the lamps and chandeliers, and their lights faded. Faint sunbeams from an overcast sky still poured into the mansion through the windows, but as the living combatants’ eyes adjusted, they saw Nathaniel’s statue form collapse to the ground, no longer possessed. His smoke-black, ghostly form was nowhere to be seen.

“Gah, it’s too dark!” Wendy cried, wiping dust away from her face. “I can’t see where he went!”

Mabel poked the lightbulb on her sweater. “Don’t worry guys, I got this!”

But nothing happened, even as she kept poking it more and more frantically. “Oh no! I must’ve ran out the batteries while we were in the bunker!”

“Look out!” Dipper shouted, and Mabel narrowly dodged a chair flung at her from behind. She whirled around and fired her grappling hook in the direction it had been thrown from, but it just harmlessly bounced off the edge of a table.

Nathaniel’s voice boomed from all around them. A lot harder to hide when you can’t see who’s attacking you, isn’t it?

Wendy picked up the same chair that Nathaniel had thrown, diving in front of Dipper and using it to shield them from a volley of broken lamps and shattered glass. “I don’t know, we still seem to be doing pretty well for ourselves!”

Nathaniel laughed. And I can’t wait to see how long you’re able to keep that up! It’s a good think I don’t grow tired like you mortals!

As Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy stood back to back to fend off a barrage of inanimate objects, Pacifica slid down the stairway banister and made a dash for the closest mounted animal — a ten-point buck, hanging on the wall just low enough for her to reach.

“What are you doing?” Dipper yelled as he noticed her pulling out her tweezers. “This is no time for —”

“You can thank me later!” Pacifica shouted back as she plucked a few hairs from the deer’s coat and tossed them into the lantern, then pulled a lighter from her pocket and set the oil ablaze. “Abracadabra!”

The resulting light didn’t quite illuminate the whole ballroom, but still cast a surprisingly far-reaching glow. It turned everything it touched grayscale, except the kids and Wendy, who still looked as brightly colored as ever, and Nathaniel himself — who no longer looked like an amorphous cloud of darkness, but rather an elderly bearded man, floating in the air and glowing a bright, impossible-to-miss shade of blue.

For a few seconds, he just stared at the transparent hands of his true form, until finally his eyes landed on Pacifica, bearing the lantern he himself had created over a century ago.

Young lady, he finally spluttered, what do you think you’re doing?!

Pacifica stared him down.

“I thought you were a kindred spirit,” she began softly. “I thought you were different from all the other Northwests… like me. But you’re really exactly the same as the rest of them after all, and…”

BLASPHEMY!

“And that’s not something I want to have in common with you!”

You want to betray your own ancestor? You want to be disowned?!

Pacifica flinched, her grip on the lantern tightening.

“You go, girl!” Mabel spoke up. “Tell him who’s boss!”

Pacifica whirled around, mouth hanging agape. “You really mean that?”

To her surprise, Dipper cheered her on too. “You heard Mabel! Give him a piece of your mind!”

“You’re not so bad after all, rich girl!” Wendy swung her axe through the air. “Don’t worry, we’ll back you up!”

Pacifica took a deep breath.

You can’t be serious! Nathaniel shouted. My granddaughter would never throw her lot in with you commoners —

“Thanks for letting me know how your lantern worked, Grandpa,” Pacifica interrupted with a smile. “I’m going to help to help these nerds exorcise you now.”

***

A fine mist of subatomic particles condensed on Stan’s glasses, then pooled into iridescent newborn dimensions. They dripped off the glass one by one, and fell into the spiral of foam rotating beneath him, ready to embark on eons-long journeys of existence.

For a fraction of a second, Stan considered looking away, but the thought escaped nearly as quickly as it had occurred to him — after all, he knew in the back of his mind that he wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away even if he wanted to.

There was such diversity in the structure of the worlds, from the liquid droplets to the solid ice crystals to the bubbles of negative space in the foam. It was so much to take in, so much that you’d think it would destroy the mind of someone like Stan — but if anything, it was a comfort to behold, a reassurance to see how tiny and insignificant every tiny sliver of existence was on its own despite how massive and all-encompassing and significant they all became together.

Do not forget, an echoing voice sung in his ear, that you are also significant all on your own — perhaps not to the grand scheme of existence itself, but certainly to many of the people you share this existence with.

Stan rubbed his head. “Wait, what?”

This place encapsulates everywhere and nowhere, for now and forever. Anyone who can make their way out here, to this place no mortals are meant to see, can surely make a difference in the little droplet of reality they reside in.

“Um… thanks? I guess?”

Stan couldn’t see the entity smile, but he sensed it nonetheless.

You have done something extraordinary, Stan. But do not let that distract you from what you came here for.

“What I came here for? I… shit, I was looking for Ford! How — how long have I been here? How much time have I wasted when I could’ve been trying to find him?!”

Worry not. Your bond with your twin is strong, and that bond will guide you to him as long as you put your faith in it.

Stan nodded slowly, and closed his eyes.

“Ford never gives up,” he reminded himself out loud, “which means he’s still out there, still fighting and surviving. He’s my brother, and I will find him, because I don’t give up either.”

He let a wave of sensations and emotions from a trillion different worlds wash over him, but it didn’t carry him off his feet this time, and he wasn’t overwhelmed and hypnotized by it.

Follow whatever feels most familiar, the voice told him. And above all else, trust yourself.

There were too many familiar sensations from the multiverse to count — too many advanced math problems and leather-bound journals and trench coats and broken glasses. And others still, things that were so tragically Ford that they ached — broken inventions and angry parting words and loaded crossbows and bloodshot eyes…

But nothing struck Stan harder than the bittersweet nostalgia.

It was distant and fleeting, like someone’s not-quite-lucid dream as they began to toss and turn and awaken; it was warm like a beach on a summer day while stinging like a splinter from a recently sanded wooden plank, and it resonated. It wasn’t a feeling Stan had ever expected to come from Ford, of all people — but it was so familiar, like a dream that could’ve sprung from his very own head.

“That’s it,” he whispered, and a light pink tail materialized beneath his feet, guiding him forward as he dove towards the droplet of reality that held his brother.

Thank you, whoever you are, he thought to the entity, and even though he hadn’t spoken out loud, something told him the message had been received.

He held his nonexistent breath as images materialized around him — a damp cave, an extinguished campfire, a black sleeping bag…

And sure enough, there was Ford, sitting upright and rubbing his eyes like he’d just woken up. There was Ford, alive.

“You’re okay!” Stan whispered, not even caring that Ford being awake meant he wouldn’t be able to communicate. “Oh my god. I mean, I knew you would be, but — holy shit, Ford. I really will be able to bring you home, won’t I?”

Ford rolled up his sleeping bag and stuffed it into a larger bag of supplies, which he slung over his back alongside a giant, rectangular case that presumably housed some kind of weapon. He marched towards the mouth of the cave, through which rays of morning light were beginning to peek, but then paused for a moment, and rifled through the inside pocket of his coat to procure something.

Stan floated closer to get a better look, only to freeze in place as he recognized the item — a photograph of two boys standing on a boat, with proud smiles on their faces despite the broken hull and tattered sails.

“You kept that picture?” he whispered.

Ford sighed and tucked the photograph back in his pocket, then looked up to stare suspiciously at the exact spot where Stan floated — and for just a moment Stan would’ve sworn that Ford could see him.

But then Ford shook his head and stepped past Stan, out of the cave and into the morning sun. As he adjusted the strap holding his weapon, he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “it won’t be long.”

“You can count on that, Sixer. It won’t be long at all.”

As Ford set off, Stan closed his eyes and concentrated on the familiar elements of the multiverse once again.

“Man, this took a lot longer than I expected, didn’t it?” he whispered. “I hope those kids haven’t broken into any mansions without me.”

***

“Pacifica, above you!” Dipper shouted, just in time for Pacifica to dodge a massive chandelier that came crashing to the ground. Nathaniel dove back into the statue, possessing it once again as he took a swing at Pacifica with a crumbling arm, and Pacifica lost her grip on the lantern as she ducked, sending it clattering across the hardwood floor as the light flickered and began to fade.

“Oh no you don’t!” Mabel jumped onto Nathaniel’s back from behind him, covering his eyes as Dipper snatched the lantern up off the ground and held it upright as the flame roared back to life. Pacifica pulled out a nail file and threw it with uncanny precision, knocking one of Nathaniel’s already crumbling fingers clear off of his flag-bearing hand.

Oh no YOU don’t! Nathaniel roared back as his other hand detached from his body, plucking Mabel off his back by the scruff of her sweater and hurling her towards the mounted head of a massive elk. She narrowly avoided being impaled on most of its antlers, but one single point pierced through her sweater just above her shoulder and ensnared her in place.

“Hang tight, Mabel!” Wendy shouted, taking a swing at the animal’s neck, but she failed to notice the detached stone fist swing around once again — first clocking her in the shoulder and making her drop her axe, and then grabbing Dipper by the throat and pinning him to the ground.

“Shit!” Wendy gasped. “Let him go, you bastard!”

Nathaniel advanced towards the lantern, blasting Pacifica backwards with a cloud of smoke and dust from his stump hand while raising his flagpole over his head in preparation to strike Dipper.

Give me the lantern, Pines, he growled. Or —

“How about I give you an ass-kicking instead?!” Stan’s ghost rose up from within the floor like a blazing blue lightning bolt, and in the same fluid motion, he delivered an uppercut to Nathaniel’s chin that knocked his spectral form clear out of the statue and twenty feet straight into the air.

“You want a fucking ghost fight?! ‘Cause I’ll give you a ghost fight!” Stan crowed, flexing incorporeal arms. “I got my ghost brass knuckles right here!”

“Grunkle Stan?!” Mabel gasped. “How did you do that?”

Stan whirled around to face her. “Wait, you can see me? Fuck, I really shouldn’t be swearing then, should I?”

Dipper got to his feet, the stone hand having relaxed its grip around his throat. “It’s the magic lantern, I think. It reveals all the ghosts in range of its light.”

“And it used to be Grandpa Granite’s own magic lantern at that,” Pacifica scoffed. “Talk about irony!”

“Ha, Grandpa Granite!” Stan laughed. “That’s pretty good!”

Nathaniel slunk out of the lantern’s range, where he transformed back into a ghost made of smoke and ashes, but his eyes were glowing such a firey orange that everyone could still make out where he was.

“Quick, kids!” Stan commanded. “Get behind me!”

Mabel tugged at her sweater, still caught on the elk’s antlers. “I can’t! I’m stuck!”

An orange smile flickered on Nathaniel’s face, and he leapt back into the light towards Mabel.

“Don’t you dare!” Stan shouted, diving forward at superhuman speed to meet him, knocking him off balance with a left hook before jabbing a knee into his groin. Nathaniel howled and aimed a blow at Stan’s head, but Stan jumped out of the way with ease, then kicked Nathaniel’s legs out from underneath him and sent him tumbling to the floor.

“I’m guessing you didn’t take boxing lessons as a kid, did you?” Stan asked smugly. “I never thought I’d tell this to a ghost that doesn’t weigh anything, but somehow, you’re putting too much of your weight into your punches.”

So this is how you want to fight? Nathaniel hissed. Too bad my quarrel isn’t with you.

His hand swept up a pile of jagged porcelain shards, and with a blast of ghostly smoke, fired them in a volley towards Mabel. Stan dove in the way to intercept, but they passed straight through him, and Mabel barely extricated herself from the antlers in time to dodge.

I can beat him to a pulp, but I can’t affect the physical world enough keep my kids safe from him while I do. They’re the ones he wants revenge on. Stan realized. I’ve got to make myself his main target, somehow. Or…

An idea occurred to him that was so dumb he couldn’t help but grin, and Nathaniel glared at him.

What’s so funny? Are you excited to watch your family die?

Stan ignored him, struggling to stifle a laugh. It was a horrible, risky, completely harebrained idea, and it was exactly what he needed.

“HEY, BILL CIPHER!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!”

The room fell dead silent as the tapestry behind Stan lit up with a flash of golden light. It depicted a gray, one-eyed triangle looming over two pleading silhouettes surrounded by red and orange flames — but as a cold wind blew through the ballroom, the figures began to write in agony as the flames lit up blue.

Bill cackled as he opened his eye and casually stepped out of the tapestry like it was something he did every day. “Well, well, well! We meet again, Stanley! Finally ready to make a deal?”

“Oh, hell no!” Stan replied, pulling his 8-ball cane out of thin air to make an overdramatic gesture in Nathaniel Northwest’s direction. “I just thought there was someone here who you might like to reunite with. For old times’ sake, you know?”

YOU! Nathaniel howled. YOU DOUBLE-CROSSED ME AND LEFT ME TO ROT!

The cockiness deflated out of Bill’s pose as his eye went wide. “Hey now, let’s not jump to conclusions here! Give me a chance to tell my side of the story —”

Nathaniel lunged forward and grabbed ahold of Bill, seething with such an overwhelming rage that his whole body lit up firey and orange. YOU ARE NO MUSE! GO TO HELL, YOU TREACHEROUS AFFRONT AGAINST INSPIRATION!

Bill fired back with a blast of blue fire, but he looked shaken. “Alright, FINE! My side of the story is that I DESPISE you and every single atom that’s ever passed through your BODY!”

“Fight, fight, FIGHT!” Stan chanted. “Kids, get the camera!”

“FUCK YOU!” Bill shouted at Stan, only for Nathaniel to seize the opening and punch him directly in the eye. They continued to tussle, tumbling out of range of the lantern’s light, and Stan flew after them, disappearing from the kids’ view.

“I am so confused right now,” Dipper muttered.

“Stan knows what he’s doing,” Mabel assured him. “Probably.”

DIE, FOUL BEAST! Nathaniel roared, but Bill caught his fist in midair, and Nathaniel screamed as bolts of blue electricity surged up his arm.

Stan seized the opportunity, floating up behind Nathaniel and tapping his wrist, where a silver watch resembling the portal appeared. The clock’s hands whirled around the inner circle unnaturally fast, and Stan put on his cockiest grin as he raised his wrist for Bill to see.

“Remember, only nine more hours until we BOTH lose everything!”

The lightning bolts sparking from Bill’s hands shorted out.

“Speak for yourself!” he shouted, voice jumping up to an even higher pitch than usual. “I DON’T need —”

Nathaniel slammed his head into Bill, knocking him backwards and through the staircase.

“But of course you can keep wasting your time letting Cowboy Casper here beat you to a pulp,” Stan jeered. “I don’t mind waiting!”

Bill flew back out of the stairway, his whole body crackling with electricity as he summoned a vortex of fire around Nathaniel, trapping him in place — but Bill’s eye stayed fixed on Stan, even as Nathaniel thrashed and howled and cursed.

“If you want the portal on so badly, then just shake my hand, you idiot!” Bill shrieked. “I really don’t know how to make this any simpler for you!”

“If you really hate Old Man Northwest so much, then you should just trap him in the mirror and let me go for no price — because that handshake? That deal? That’s never happening, Cipher,” Stan shot back. “Go ahead, call my bluff! Wait out the last nine hours, and watch thirty years of biding your time go to waste! I’m sure you know exactly what a petty, stubborn asshole my brother can be, so let me give you one last warning before you make a choice you regret — I’m just as petty and stubborn as he is!”

Bill’s whole body lit up red as he slowly pointed one index finger at Stan, and fired another blast of blue flames —

And Stan sat up in his hospital bed with Bill floating over him, looking angrier than it ever should’ve been possible for any two-dimensional object to look.

“This isn’t over, Fez!” he hissed. “I’ll still get exactly what I need from you sooner or later, one way or another!”

“So you finally admit that I’m useful to you, too!” Stan gloated. His voice was hoarse, but he didn’t care. “I figured you’d come around soon enough!”

“You have NO IDEA how lucky you are that I need you alive! I would let you rot in that mirror FOREVER if I could!”

Stan stretched his arms, giving each of his biceps a celebratory kiss. “Ahh, I missed these bad boys! How’s it feel not to have a body, Bill? If only you hadn’t made it so goddamn obvious that you still needed me, I might’ve even given in and agreed to let you borrow mine!”

Bill vanished without any fanfare or even one final threat, leaving Stan alone in the hospital room with a recently-awoken and extremely confused Soos.

“Mr. Pines?” he gasped. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, more or less,” Stan assured him, places a hand on Soos’s shoulder as Soos rushed to his side. “Plan A didn’t go so great, but Plan B worked like a charm.”

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Soos cried, wrapping Stan in an uncomfortably tight hug. “But who were you just talking to? I didn’t see anyone else in the room…”

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Stan told him. “Right now, I need you to call Wendy and the kids for me, ‘cause I vanished before their eyes just a couple minutes ago and they’re probably worried out of their minds.”

“Shh, not yet.” Soos wiped his eyes. “Just give me ten more seconds of hugging you and sobbing first.”

Stan sighed. “Alright, I suppose.”

***

(End notes:

Poor Bill, wasting such a dramatic entrance on a scene where he got completely and utterly dunked on. And there we have it, the conclusion of the main story! There’s still an epilogue coming to tie up the wide variety of loose ends I’ve created here, so keep an eye out for that sometime in November, if all goes according to plan!)

#gravity falls #stanley pines #bill cipher #stanford pines #pacifica northwest #dipper pines #mabel pines #wendy corduroy #soos ramirez #fic: to see the unseen #rosalia writes fic

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avoutput · 4 years

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Final Fantasy VII Legacy || Remake Review

This is the 2nd out of 3 articles. Find the first here.

Enough with the flowery language. No more ancient memories of times passed. No more wasted passages on the origin of Final Fantasy VII. I am not some little kid sitting crossed-legged in front of a 13-inch tube TV, but a man sitting in a lightly used office chair he found by the apartment dumpster several years ago. I have grown. The gaming world has grown. And Final Fantasy has grown. But is it the kind of growth you imagined? Does this game shed the dead weight of its numbered younger siblings? Does it recreate an experience from your childhood? Is it an innovative gaming experience that redefines the RPG like its genesis? Is breathing life into one of the most provocative modern gaming death’s worth the exhumation? These are the questions swimming in my head while I waited for the release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, a deeply marked touchstone in my life. And after having completed my run through the game, I had some thoughts I needed to organize and share. I need to decide: Is this a proper run, a proper update, a proper remake? Or is it just a repurposed chair found by the dumpster?

Let me clarify a few things. First, this is going to be a straight review of the game with little-to-no spoilers. Second, this is the 2nd in a series of 3 articles I decided to write, with the final article being a no-holds-barred, spoiler frenzy discussing the outcomes of this game and many other Final Fantasy’s. In this article, we are going to be looking at what the game did well, what it was mediocre at, and lastly, what was downright disappointing. Each section will bleed into each other a bit because the games components bleed into each other a bit, which feels a little odd for a JRPG, but this isn’t ye-old JRPG. Let’s get right to it.

RE-KWARK!-ABLE! I MEAN REMARKABLE.

Before we tear this game down, let’s spend some time building it up. The standout component of this game was very clearly the battle system. The transition is seamless and the frenzy begins almost immediately. What surprised me right off the bat is how easy it was to not only switch between characters, but how simply it was to tell them what to do. I thought slowing down the battle to issue commands was going to be a nuisance, but it really helped balance out the pace of the battle. You can assign 4 hotkeys that let you keep the battle going without slowing down to strike at an enemies weakness. I did find that it felt a little useless to assign anything other than your weapon skills, because spells take a little time to cast and most of the time you are going to want to pick a specific spell based on the enemies weakness, but that is totally up to your playstyle.

In the vein of the battle system, boss fights were engrossing and detailed. It felt like they spent a lot of time thinking about which moments in the Midgar timeline would make the best boss battles and how exactly they would design the bosses moveset and structure based not only on what the boss was, but where the boss was. In one chapter, you fight a boss that is nearby some train tracks. At a certain point in the battle, it will electrify the track, and if you are standing on it, you get major damage. Enemy types also had a pretty consistent set of weaknesses, so you didn’t have to go into the bestiary menu to determine what spell would most likely take it down. But on the other hand, the Assess ability is crucial in understanding some of the more minute methods to hitting the enemy weakness. It was actually a delight to try and fight both with and without it. Like everything else in the battle, the menu comes up with a single button press and no load time. It gives you time to read and strategize your attacks.

In some other reviews I had been reading, people had complained about a feature I loved. Using spells and abilities requires you to have your ATB gauge filled, which will fill with time, but fills much faster if you are attacking. The complaint was that the AI isn’t particularly good at attacking when you aren’t using them, and not only that, they don’t receive the ATB fill bonus from attacking, it simply takes them time. However, because transition between characters is instantaneous, I believe that the designers did this as an incentive to use each character as often as possible. This isn’t the only incentive for this either. Every weapon for each character has a single skill that can be learned from it. To learn it, you have to use a skill. Again, to use the skill the ATB gauge has to be filled. Most battles in the game go by quickly, especially once you know the enemies weakness, so you need to build ATB fast and activate the skill. Without telling you, the game basically created an environment where it's not only necessary to switch between characters and learn their playstyles, but almost necessary. What’s more, every character is somewhat unique, especially Barret and Aerith, and certain types of enemies (flying or distance based, ect) are much easier to handle with the right character. All around, the battle system is an absolute standout and easily the best part of the game.

Without giving anything away, another strong part of the game is the scenario design. I was driven to hear more, see more, and do more in this game. The characters a crisp and vibrant, even when they lack depth. They are undeniably “cool” or “cute” or whatever their main adjective should be for the given scenario. The voice acting in both the Japanese and English versions are great, though the Japanese version from time to time has a different take on some of the characters than the English, it's still a blast. Every moment that leads into a battle with a signature villain is thoroughly enjoyable. I don’t think you absolutely need to have played the original to enjoy these moments, but more on that later. What it really comes down to is this game has some pretty great pacing because even when it fumbles, it doesn’t stop you from wanting to play more. The battle system element just propels you forward and hearing what crazy thing is going to happen next is more than enough to make up for follies.

This is sad to say, but there really is only one more exceptional item to mention. The return of Nobuo Uematsu. The soundtrack of this game was already pretty well designed in the original. Coming back to it was more than just a nostalgic walk down memory lane. It was like coming home and realizing your parent’s upgraded your house to a mansion with room service, a full staff, and a kitchen that's open 24 hours a day stocked with everything you desire. And it isn’t just that the music was remastered, it flows in and out of the game with masterful timing. Multiple versions of each song were recorded so that movements in the song crescendo at the exact moment your Cloud lands a hit or Reno and Rude jump from a helicopter. It made every moment of the game feel like so much more than just an average confrontation. There are a few moments that even made me laugh. There is a hip-hop inspired Chocobo theme that made me smile both for how odd it was and how awful it should have been received, but somehow it just slaps. If you pay attention you might notice some of the music is more reminiscent of other entries in the series with two standouts in particular, one sounding like Final Fantasy XII and another like Final Fantasy XIII, two very different scores. But it felt right at home in this modernized version of Final Fantasy VII. There is also a music collection sidequest that is mostly made up of jazzy remakes of classic Final Fantasy VII songs. These are less remarkable, but still good for the most part. Part of the issue with these songs is it is played through some kind of fuzzy record player speaker overlay, which I found annoying and distorting.

MISSED THE KWARK! I MEAN MARK.

I would say that almost everything else in this game missed the mark in some way or another. Some are just shy of a home run, others are baseline grounders, and some are just straight fouls. Either way, they could have used more attention or a different direction in my opinion. And I want to start with something I almost never complain about in video games: the graphics. Talking about graphics is usually pointless. People who are after ridiculous levels of fidelity always seem to believe this either makes or breaks the game. In Remake, that might actually be true for once. I am not a graphics designer, but one thing I noticed and couldn’t stop noticing is that there were so many different levels of graphical fidelity all smashed into one place. In some scenes, there were gorgeous details, like the entirety of Aerith’s house area, but then you get to the flowers, it's like 1997 again. In other moments, like when looking down at the Midgar Slums from the upper plate, it is clearly a very flat and stretched image meant to look three-dimensional like the other things around you, but the image was just off. Doors on buildings would look like garbage compared to the floor or walls in the room. It was just very clear that a once over on all the different assets would have helped out quite a bit. The problem wasn’t that the graphics were good or bad, but that they were inconsistent. It was like looking at photo-realistic drawing with some Picasso in the middle. The character models were so well done, when the interacted with this space, it was just jarring. Again, not awful, just missed the mark.

With such a well maintained battle system, you would think the menu system would be equally flawless, but it wasn’t. The main UI where you would outfit your party was a bit of a mess. For one, there was no way to go from upgrading your weapon to equipping it or vice-versa. They had completely separate menus for both that didn’t lead to each other. Then there is the upgrade menu itself, wherein you select upgrades in a similar way to FFXIII crystal upgrade menu. When you choose the weapon, it takes you to a completely different screen and makes this loud noise and transition effect. It's annoying to read and to navigate. You can bypass this by having the computer choose your upgrades for you, but that really felt like I was missing out. It would have been a huge improvement just to list the abilities and have me choose from the same menu I chose everything else. It was unnecessarily fancy and kind of an eyesore. Equipping materia got a small upgrade from the original game, wherein you can press a button to see and switch out materia with everyone, but this should have just been THE menu, not an extra button press. They also should have categorized the materia, letting you choose which type you wanted to look at instead of having to scroll through line after line. The menu also doesn’t give you simple information in places where you could use it, like what chapter you are in. To know, you have to go to the save menu. It could have simply been listed next to the playtime in the bottom corner.

There are even certain materia that are hard to understand, specifically the Enemy Skill materia. In the old game it would list which skills you had obtained. This one didn’t give you any idea what you had obtained and what exactly was obtainable. After a while I figured out that in the bestiary, although it would tell you which monster had a skill you could get, it wouldn’t exactly say if you had it. Turns out that if the skill was highlighted green on the enemy skills screen (another button press away), you didn’t have it, if it was blue, you did. Then, to see which skills you had in total, you had to go to the party screen and it would be listed under your abilities if they were wearing the materia. Not only that, the skill would have a different name than the skill the enemy used, the naming convention wasn’t 1-to-1. Add to this, materia sometimes have very obscure instructions or descriptions. The battles can go by so fast, it's hard to even notice the effect of them if something isn’t exploding or outwardly obvious. In fact, many of the instructions are weird in the game. If you die in a series of fights where they are linked, it will ask if you want to go back to the first fight or the last fight. Choosing the first actually sends you back to before you started the series and you can adjust your equipment, which is fine, but in a normal fight, if you die, you can only go back to the fight and it doesn’t let you modify your equipment. It's a simple inconsistency but the text and cursor placement also make it hard to understand exactly what is going to happen.

Finally, all the smaller issues. There are too many places where the game has you “walk” for no particular reason. You just slow down. I thought it might be due to loading, but it happens in places where no story or anything appears to be happening next. Summon materia is already maxed and it doesn’t feel like it helps all that much, even when the enemy is weak to them. The game design is set up so that whichever character you are currently playing as the only thing enemies are interested in attacking, especially if someone isn’t using provoke. So, your summon simply attacks, and to do it's better attacks, you have to sacrifice ATB. Mostly this is fine, it creates balance, but i’d prefer they came and left like in the original. In fact, I have hated all summon mechanics since FFX. They need to come, do damage, and be gone. But I have to admit, this is the best marriage of the two versions. Next, the choices you make that alter certain outcomes in the game are so far away from the thing you are altering, and at times not clear. This could have been more fun had they given you a bit more of control or some kind of gauge to show you what was going on, but in a way, it was true to its roots, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Lastly, having to aim the camera to interact with items that are just outside of its view is just annoying. That coupled with the random moments you have to hold “triangle” for a series of switches always rubbed me the wrong way.

DOWNRIGHT DISAPPOINTING… uh.. kwark.

Final Fantasy VII Remake obviously has a great foundation and pretty great framework. The music is great, it's a blast to play, and the characters really resonate. But there are still some aspects of this game that make it feel a little less than game of the year. These complaints might be less of an issue than I am making it. The game is what it is, and I am easily going to clock in at about 90 hours for both regular and hard modes. Still. STILL. There are just a few things that were completely disappointing, and not just from an old fan, but as a current gen gamer.

My biggest complaint is married together and baked into the design of the game, namely Midgar and Chapters. Final Fantasy has always felt like it was about exploring not just a story, but the world it exists in. In the first 9 entries to the series, this was done by giving the player a chance to get lost on its world map, looking for towns, roaming through forests. You had to use your imagination to fill the gaps, but that wasn’t a bad thing. As the entries iterated, the worlds got bigger, and so did their stories. They had lore and depth. With the release of 10, this all changed. In the 10th game, the story was suddenly on rails, the only direction you could move in was forward. It took all of the exploration away in favor of level design and pacing. I remember thinking that this was the beginning of the end for a series I loved. With the release of 12, it felt a little better, but mostly it was just an offline version of the massively popular MMORPG formula. It felt more rote and less like exploration. With the 13th entry, it was back to the rails. It began to feel like the creators sought only to make an experience where the characters and story where the vehicle, and the world was just the background. In 15, this would change somewhat, but it was also an experiment for them that ended in failure. They tried to give us an open world governed by a chapter system. But, despite their best efforts, they couldn’t breathe life into the world of 15. They tried to spread the world and its characters across too many dimensions. There was an anime series, a full length movie prequel, missing chapters introduced as DLC, and even a mobile game. A broken chimera. I think the success of 10 and their failure to create a modern, open world game is what ended up making 7 Remake what it is. A game on rails.

Before the games release, the game designers touted that Midgar was now a place that could be fully experienced. For me, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. It was just a series of narrow hallways masquerading as a city. The people in the background make noise and act like they live there, but they don’t move, goto work on a schedule, ride the trains, or even run stores. You can’t interact with them. They are just mouthpieces. Because the game runs by chapters, you have almost no ability to explore anything that doesn’t have to do with the immediate story. The characters will chide you for going the “wrong direction” and the game will outright stop you from wandering too far. “No no, you fool, the GAME is over HERE”. In the original game, Midgar is partially just an introduction to the world, characters, and battle system. But really, it was the beating heart of the entire game world and story just as much as the characters that live in it and run Shinra. The remake seems to have forsaken that in favor of story beats. Outside of a few distinct places, most of Midgar just feels like window dressing. Wall Market is obviously a delight, but the entirety of Midgar should have been like Wall Market. You should be able to get lost in the back streets or take the wrong train. Shinra headquarters gives you little glimpse into the way people on the upper plates live and work, but yet again they are just mannequins.

Games today give you vibrant open worlds to explore. You can jump on rooftops and glide over large swaths of land. The way in which Midgar was designed leaves little to the imaginationa as compared to the original. The graphics are crisp and every pipe and air conditioner feels like they might actually do something, but you can’t follow that pipe anywhere or walk down alleyways and talk to vagrants. Old games got a pass on size and depth because their limitations were obvious, often baked into whatever the genre was. If it was a brawler, you walk down streets beating people up. In racer, you play the track. But RPG’s were one of the few where you would be expected to explore the edges of its world. With new generation games, the choice to stop exploration in a RPG feel less like a limitation of raw power and more like a design decision. I would have preferred a game in which Midgar was a place to see and explore and interact with. Where I could haggle with one vendor over something found in another. Where I could watch the day cycle send people back and forth work. But Midgar wasn’t their focus. Telling you a story was. And as fun as that was, it was so disappointing to find that the original game gave you more by letting your mind wander past its graphical limitations than the remake did do by making the decision to limit your ability to physically explore visible areas. Instead of letting a visible wall stop you from going somewhere, an invisible force just puts a stop to your antics and tells you to get back to work. Maybe it's just psychological, but it is maddening. The physical world of 7 was just as important as its story and characters, but the story got to lead the show, and to me this feels off balance and off brand.

THE TAKEAWAY

This is a good game. A well made game for the most part. It's rough in places, but not so rough that it really hurts the end result. Final Fantasy 7 Remake is actually a showcase of talent that comes out of Square-Enix and despite the fact that I feel like they either bite off more than they can chew or completely misunderstand their core fanbase, they are still great artists. I often question whether game designers at big companies are customer service machines that should give us the product we demand or artists that deserve to create in a space that we support. Remake reminds me why I am both supportive but vocal. They may never hear me, but I want to know I said something. Still, it ends up being more than the sum of its parts. The game hums along like a well made machine. It takes time to remind fans of key moments, interjects tons of surprises that don’t entirely offend its base, and ultimately is never boring. What more could you ask from a game? Well, as it turns out, a lot. And I have so much more to say about the actual story content of this game and of Final Fantasy as a whole. If I didn’t mention some aspect here, it's probably because I want to discuss it in a way that may ruin the story, so look for the 3rd and final entry next week.

#Articles #Final Fantasy 7 #Final Fantasy VII #Final Fantasy 7 Remake #Final Fantasy #Nobuo Uematsu #FF7 #Review #JRPG #Voice Acting #Tifa #Cloud #Aerith #Barret #Jessie

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fundeadasylum · 5 years

Text

This Photo of Us Part 1: Lips Like Strawberry Wine

To literally no one��s surprise it’s more Micoverse. Let’s just say I listened to Blake Robin’s Unhealthy Obsession one too many times.

Warnings: none for this chapter

Part 2 / Part 3

**********************************

On a wet, rainy autumn afternoon, Jacob Pierly disappeared.

----

Months before, just as spring was nudging aside the last, clingy vestiges of winter and stubbornly sprouting flowers against the still chilly mornings, Jacob Pierly met a girl. He’d ducked a coffee shop, eager to warm fingers cold from poor circulation and a breeze that had been biting since the early afternoon. Instead he got a shirt soaked with piping hot coco and a frantic, scrambling apology from the young woman who’d spilled her drink on him.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I wasn’t paying attention--it was a total accident--I’ll pay for the cleaning! I’ll--I’ll buy you a new shirt! I’m so, so sorry!”

“I, uh, n-no, it’s f-fine, it’s just--it’ll come right out. It’s not a big deal,” Jake stepped back, awkwardly raising his hands to fend off the woman’s frantic cascade of paper napkins, “It was my fault, I was distracted. Let--let me buy you another one.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t--”

“Please?”

The young woman bit her lip, dirty blonde hair in disarray, twenty or so napkins clutched in her grasp, “I...okay.” She smiled, shy and relenting, straightening up and trying to compose herself.

Jake’s heart skipped a beat for reasons entirely unrelated to preexisting medical conditions.

----

Her name was Rosanna Pearl and she was studying for a medical degree at a nearby college.

“With a minor in chemistry,” She added as they sat at a table in the cafe, each anxiously clutching at their drinks and avoiding direct eye contact, “And you can call me Rosie. Everyone else does.”

“Jake Pierly,” He said, the corner of his mouth twitching in an awkward smile, “Stay at home editor.”

Rosie giggled, “Pierly. Sounds like Pearl. Our last names kind of match. That’s a little funny. Maybe it’s fate we ran into each other.”

“Ah, maybe,” Jake could feel his ears burning as he chuckled, “But next time fate intervenes, I hope it involves less spilled hot chocolate.”

Rosie laughed, a real, resonating laugh that made her cheeks turn pink. It was such a sweet laugh that Jake found himself laughing too.

“What do you edit, if you don’t mind me asking?” Rosie asked when they had settled down.

Jake swallowed a mouthful of decaf, shrugged one shoulder and looked out the window so he didn’t have to face his problems, “Nothing special. Usually whatever anyone throws my way. Creative writing, mostly. Sometimes academic papers but there’s a lot of jargon I don’t get in those so I have to decline a lot of them. I can’t tell you how many awful books get handed off to me by these wanna-be novelists that think they’re going to be the next Stephen King or something.” He rolled his eyes, caught Rosie’s glance, and flushed, “D-don’t tell them I said that, I mean, I do the work. P-pays the bills, you know. Heh.”

“Oh no, don’t apologize, I’m pretty sure I know the type,” Rosie raised her eyebrows, “I used to work at a salon and you would not believe the bitches--the kinds of people who came through there! Awful people. Just. Terrible.”

Jake hid a smile behind the lid of his coffee cup, “Sounds like you’ve got some horror stories.”

Rosie smirked, “I’ll regale you with them sometime.” She glanced at her phone sitting on the table next to her, “But right now I really have to head out. Tell you what, coffee’s on me next time and I’ll spill all the dirty client secrets. Deal?”

Jake hummed, “Deal. What’s your number?”

----

“DAD! DAD! JAKE HAS A DATE! JAKE HAS A DATE!”

Dan looked up from the stove so fast he banged his head on the cabinet. Head smarting and eyes watering, he turned to face the teenager spilling head over heels into the kitchen, “Ow! What!? Milo, stop shouting! What did you say?”

“He didn’t say anything!” Jake shouted, spilling into the kitchen and nearly wiping out on the tile as his socks slid underneath him.

“JAKE’S GOING ON A DATE!”

Dan stared at Milo and then looked at Jake who appeared as though he’d like nothing better than to vanish through the floor, never to show himself again. His face was bright red and he was twisting his shirt into knots between his fingers, gaze darting across the room, shoulders hunched to his ears as he curled in on himself. In contrast, Milo was bouncing up and down, a wide grin on his face, snickering madly at having shared a piece of juicy gossip.

“Jake?” And even though Dan said it carefully he could still hear the eggshells popping under his feet.

“Ih-it’s not a date!” Jake said to the floor, “It’s just a coffee…meetup. Thing. To talk about work. Strictly--strictly platonic. M-maybe even business related. We only just met today and barely know each other but sh-she seems nice and stuff and we were joking around and so we’re just--just going to meet for coffee next week. It’s not a date! It’s nothing!”

Dan winked at him, “Of course, Jake. Not a date. Strictly professional. Got it.”

“You both are the worst.” Jake groaned and Milo cackled with glee.

-----

Dan and Milo left him alone about it for the time preceding the coffee meetup (though Jake suspected Milo only did so with much bribing and pleading from Dan). Jake was grateful for that much because he honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten out of the house with friends apart from Dan and...well, these days it was just Dan. So this would be a nice change of pace from the usual fanfare.

Still, that didn’t stop him from fretting the morning of and changing his shirt three times. He couldn’t help it, he wanted to be presentable. That’s just who he was. He only settled down when Milo caught him trying to match ties and asked him what “his date’s favorite color was”. Dan had to stop Jake from chasing the teenager around the house with a dress shoe and threatening to smack the smile right off his face.

“When do you think you’ll be home?” Dan asked as he ushered Milo away to find something more productive to do with his time.

“Um, no later than 5?” Jake hazard, pulling on a jacket, “I’ve got a video call with a client I don’t want to look like roadkill for tomorrow, so I’ll be home in time for dinner and a decent night’s sleep.”

“Call me if you need anything.”

“Yes, dear,” Jake chided gently, “I’ll keep my phone on and I promise not to sleep with any strangers.”

“Jake…”

“Whoa! Dad’s cheating on dad!”

“Milo, go to your room!”

“This house is a nightmare!”

Jake could only laugh as he stepped outside and pulled the door shut.

The drive to the cafe was short but enough for Jake to work himself back up into a nervous frenzy all over again. He nearly shut his leg in the car door and tripped over his own feet as he stepped into the cafe.

A glance around and he met Rosie’s pretty brown eyes at a seat near the back, private and away from the crowd, sheltered mostly by a bakery display. She smiled and waved and he made his way over, slinging his jacket over the back of the chair as he sat down.

“Hi, um, hello Rosie, sorry. I hope you haven’t been waiting long. You haven’t, have you? It’s just I had to wrangle Milo and--”

“No, no, you’re fine, I’ve only been here a couple of minutes,” She assured him with a smile, “Who’s Milo? Your cat?”

Jake choked on his own breath of air and struggled not to laugh, “Oh my g--no, if he heard you call him that--good lord. No, no, Milo’s my son. Adopted son. My roommate Dan and I are looking after him since his dad, our friend, um…” He swallowed, the lies tasting foul in his mouth.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain. I’m sorry I asked.” Rosie said quietly. She shifted in her seat, glancing away from him, “Wow, what a way to start the day. Good job, Rosie.”

“Ah, it’s not...a big deal. It’s been ten years.” Jake pushed his finger across the linoleum tabletop in an absent manner, “Anyway, weren’t you going to--what was it?--regale me with epic tales of your worst clients?”

Rosie smirked, “I don’t think I said it quite like that. But why don’t I get us our drinks and tell you about this lady who wanted every shade of pink in her hair.”

----

It carried on, as these things tended to.

Every few weeks, Jake and Rosie would meet up at a cafe or a restaurant, and share drinks, a meal, and stories of their lives. Jake told her about college, about the red head father of his adopted son, something he hadn’t talked about to anyone for ages. In response, Rosie admitted her crippling fear of academic failure and disappointing the legacy of her dead parents. They got along incredibly well for a pair of mostly introverts, enthusiastically discussing music almost every time they met up. It made Jake light up in a way that even Dan couldn’t remember seeing before.

So of course, it had to end and end badly. Because life just couldn’t be fair to Jacob Pierly.

Dan came home from his shift one evening to find Jake slumped bonelessly on the couch in the sitting room, his expression tired and forlorn, his shirt unbuttoned and rumpled, and an empty package of Oreos open beside him. The television was stuck on the retro channel, playing old reruns of shows from the 70’s and 80’s, audio muffled by age and then cleaned up by modern tech.

“Jake…?” Dan asked tentatively, setting his coat down on the back of the couch, “Hey, buddy, you okay? Is Milo sick again?”

“Huh?” Jake blinked, coming back to himself with a small jolt and looking around as if unsure of where he was, “Oh, no, he’s over at Cody’s right now. He’s fine.”

“But...you’re not.” Dan said, easing onto the couch as if afraid he would startle his friend away, “Wanna talk about it?”

“Mm...I dunno…” Jake sighed, letting his head roll back onto the couch cushions, “Not really, but…” He sighed again, “I screwed up, Dan.”

“How’s that?”

“I...I asked Rosie out.”

Dan brightened but then immediately sobered, “Ah, that was, um, real brave of you.”

“Tch,” Jake snorted and his lip curled and for a second, Dan saw a flash of forgotten bitterness and old anger bubble to the surface, “Yeah, sure. Would have been great except she...she said no.” He deflated all over again, staring at his fingers curled loosely in his lap, looking more drawn and tired than ever, “Said I must’ve gotten the wrong impression, that she never wanted to be more than just friends. Said...we should probably...not see each other for a while.”

“Aw, Jake,” Dan murmured, “Jake, buddy, I’m sorry.”

Jake shrugged and sniffed as if he could dismiss the dreary atmosphere hanging in a cloud over his head, “‘S whatever.”

“Nooooo, no it’s noooottt,” Dan cooed, scooting closer to his friend on the couch, “Come here, Jake, let Dan hug all your sorrow away. Hug Machine Dan is here for you.”

“No, no, no Hug Machine Dan!” Jake backed up, but Dan pinned him against the arm rest and crushed him into a hug, “DAN! DAN LEGGO!”

“Are you done being sad?”

“YES!”

“Lies. I’m gonna keep hugging you!”

“I’m going to tell Milo to eat your cookie stash.”

----

Jake’s funk lasted for weeks.

But, eventually, as summer tumbled awkwardly into autumn, apologized, and politely stepped out of the way, he got over it. Jake tended to hang onto things and hang onto them hard and it took work for him to let them go. But he was trying and Dan could see he was trying and told him he was proud and Jake shoved him and they laughed and tried to pretend they didn’t miss the echo of a third laugh that should have been there but wasn’t.

Things were getting better. Things were looking up.

And then, on a wet, rainy autumn afternoon, Jacob Pierly disappeared.

#should i post this on my gore blog? yes. will i? no.#why? the formatting's all bugged up and i can't fix it and i'm lazy deal with it #micoverse #jake pierly

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heroismdreams-moved · 6 years

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❣️+++ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Owain~

{ ❣️ Mistletoe~ } |( I’m gonna be more creative with this one Sayl )

5 times Owain and Cynthia were caught under the mistletoe

“Owain wait!” They’re young, and innocent, bright eyed in the way they see the world. Neither child has been touched by war or bloodshed or loss just yet. The little girl who reaches out to grasp Owain’s sleeve is almost unrecognizable from who she’ll grow up to be - her hair is long and flowing, and in her red velvet dress she looks like the epitome of ‘a little lady.’

“It’s bad luck! My momma told me so!” She points upward, at the hanging plant with it’s white berries. “She says you gotta kiss someone you’re under it with, or else!” She lets that ‘or else’ hang ominously in the air as she implores Owain to understand how terrible it would be to just step away from it.

He’s her friend, not her best friend as that’s a title reserved for Severa still, and she’d hate to make him have bad luck! He’s supposed to start learning how to fight with a sword soon like Lucy and his uncle!

So, the little girl leans forward and quickly kisses his cheek, stepping back with a proud smile. “There! Now you won’t have any bad luck!” She’s so proud of herself for solving this problem that she hadn’t noticed Owain lean in and kiss her cheek back - before he ran off with a quick ‘Thanks’ followed by his laughter as he dared her to chase after him.

A lady never runs... but Cynthia grinned brighter than the candles lit everywhere and hiked up her skirt to run.

No longer are they innocent now. Both have known loss, both have mourned... But neither realize how much more they’ll have to lose. It still feels weird, her hair being so short, how quick it is to brush it, how light she feels with it gone. What also feels weird is seeing the yuletide decorations still being hung up - as if the world forgot that her mother was gone, as if she could be merry and bright when it felt like her world was ending.

Severa wasn’t even her friend anymore. No, now Owain claimed that title, the boy in question stepping along beside her, forming up heroic names for his new training sword. It was nice, this talk of heroes and making a difference and building their legacies. It distracted her, it gave her a reason to keep trying to learn how to wield a lance and how to use it on her mother’s pegasus without whacking the poor steed in the head.

She laughed at something (how was it he still could make her laugh when it was like a grey cloud was always following her?) shaking her head as he said a name that was more ridiculous than epic, when he suddenly reached out and grabbed her sleeve. “Wait, bad luck remember?” And he points up - where someone had hung mistletoe.

“You remember?” Cynthia asks, surprised and pleased, staying still under it.

“Of course! Right after that you tripped face first and almost knocked down the tree with you!” Cynthia gasps, faking being offended as she stomps her foot - unable to stop from smiling.

“That was totally on you! You turned the corner too fast and my slippers lost any sort of traction they had!”

“Still almost ruined Midwinter~” He teases, grin bright as ever and making her laugh and gently shove his shoulder.

“Well, how about I ruin your midwinter by giving you bad luck!” She teased back, smirking.

“You. Would. Never!” Owain says, faking shock and affront himself, making Cynthia laugh once more over how dramatic it is. Cynthia paused, humming for a moment, before quickly leaning forward and kissing his cheek.

“Yeah, you’re right. I wouldn’t.” She says, pleased as ever with a grin that spoke only of happiness. “Now hurry up and give me a kiss back so that we can get back before it gets cold!”

She thinks the only reason they even bother with Midwinter festivities and traditions now is because the morale is needed. People want to be happy, they want to celebrate, they want to forget that beyond Ylisstol’s walls, the world is ending. So, old tinsel is strung up, presents that are modest at best and practical are exchanged, and somewhere, a sprig of mistletoe is found by a self-styled heroine as she tries to hang it up.

Her hair is slightly longer now, framing her face and falling just below her ears. It keeps getting into her face - she’ll have to figure out a way to tie it back sooner or later or else doom herself to perpetually spitting out flyaway strands when she’s in the sky. Cynthia is focused, standing on top of a wiggly, unsteady ladder as she tries to string it up. She smiles - it now hanging successfully with a red ribbon tied around it - when suddenly gravity tries to claim a victim and she falls backwards -

And into the arms of Owain. “Oh... Hey!” She says, laughing, that horrible falling feeling replaced by pure mirth as she buries her face into his neck for a short second. “My hero.” She teasingly says the name as he sets her back onto her feed.

“But of course I am, else you’d be caught prey to the terrible force of the ground!” He replies, striking a pose and prompting her to strike one back. “Ah, but Owain - now you’ve fallen prey to the surface trap of the mistletoe sprig!”

He notices, finally, what she had hung up, and laughs heartily. “So I have, and the only way to avoid it’s terrible, foul curse is to kiss my companion beneath it?”

“Yep! That is the tradition after all.” She says, giggling and brushing away her hair to offer her cheek to him. Unknown to her though, he had already been moving in to give her that kiss on the cheek - and in her moving, instead for the faintest of seconds, his lips met her’s.

Both sprang back, the awkward teens that they still were beneath the terrors and horrors they’ve witnessed, looking at each other in shock. It was Cynthia who spoke up first, “W-well, no more bad luck?”

“Y-yeah, no more bad luck.”

She hates how much she wants to press her fingers to her lips, to sigh and blush and giggle, to name this her first ever kiss. Just as she’s hated how her heart keeps speeding up around him, and how seeing his smile makes her feel warm and floaty inside.

He’s her best friend, and she has a crush on him. How fickle is she to get a crush on him after having had one on Inigo for so long? How stupid is she to entertain any flight of fancy when not even the boy who flirted with every girl even looked once at her that way. She’s Owain’s best friend, she should be happy with that.

And so Cynthia smiles and gently punches his shoulder, “C’mon, they’ve been saving those dried apples they found in the storeroom to make cider - let’s go see if it’s ready yet!” She tries not to think about how she wishes the kiss would’ve lasted longer.

It still gives her whiplash how bright and green it is in the past. The sky is blue again, the sun shines again, there are stars again, and flowers and the Midwinter festivities are truly festive now!

Someone forgot to tell a certain pig-tailed punisher of crime that the cider she drank from was alcoholic, and so Cynthia’s cheeks were rosy in a way that wasn’t just from the cold weather.

Learning she was a lightweight with alcohol was not a fun experience, and neither was being tipsy at her first real Midwinter festival in forever.

“Owain!” Cynthia spots her friend, practically falling on him in a mix of her clumsiness and the drinks’ effects - giggling slightly as he caught her. “Whoops, lost my balance! Hey are you having fun?” She hopes he is - she hopes he’s enjoying it like she is, she hopes that he -

“Oh my gods! Owain I’m so sorry!” She just noticed that they were both under a mistletoe sprig. She remembers the last time they were in this situation - how it felt to kiss him. The crush is gone, she tells herself, but sometimes when he does something - she feels that warm and happy feeling again.

“We-we don’t have to kiss though if you don’t want to.” She says, standing up and brushing away invisible dirt off his shoulder. “I mean it’s just a silly tradition and I’m kinda not myself and really who would -”

She’s standing so close to him. She can see the exact shade of his eyes and match it to a million different things she’s seen that are almost as vibrant. “Who would...” She trails off and leans in, not even realizing what she’s doing until she feels his lips press against her’s.

She practically shoves herself back at that contact, blushing redder than a holly’s berries, as she stammers out an apology and goes to run off - only to be stopped by Owain’s hand on her.

She forgets what he says, only that he stays with her the rest of the night, until that damned buzz in her system is gone and she can properly think again. They don’t talk about the kiss, and for that she’s grateful as it seems that stupid crush on her best friend is back once more...

Even though she’s no longer tipsy from that cider, she still thinks about how it had felt to kiss him, and how she wishes she had the mistletoe hanging over her head right now so she could do it again.

“Happy Midwinter, Odin Dark!” Deliah says, laughing as they embrace one another. They see each other almost daily, but that doesn’t mean anything to them as Odin’s warm arms encompass her and she can hear his hearty laugh in her ears.

“Deliah the Daring! A merry Midwinter to you as well!” She misses his old hair color, she misses how he had looked with a sword in his hand, but he is still her best friend of many, many years and she’s missed him most of all in the time it took to find him.

This was their first Midwinter they could celebrate together ever since his disappearance, and Deliah planned for it to go great! She even found the perfect gift for him and couldn’t wait to see his face - she just knew it would beat whatever gift he got her!

“Bet I can still throw a better snowball than you~” She teased, walking along with him into the party proper, “Want to meet me outside in an hour so I can prove it?”

They don’t even notice what they walk under until suddenly hands are shoving them back. It was, after all, bad luck to not kiss under the mistletoe that now hung over their heads with it’s mockingly happy little bow.

Deliah blushes, remembering the last time, and the time before that, when they bore different names. She looks up at him, and is surprised to see that... he’s blushing too. Great, she thinks to herself, he’s embarrassed to kiss you after the spectacle you made of yourself last time! Oh, what are you -

She’s cut off as lips cover her’s - and Odin’s hand snakes it’s way to her back. No running away this time. Deliah closes her eyes, kisses him back. So this is what it’s like to really kiss him...

Somewhere, someone whistles - and they break apart, though he’s still holding her close.

Deliah smiles and leans in, kissing him again for longer than a moment, before she’s grabbed his hand and led him into the party.

She felt like only good luck would follow her for the rest of the upcoming year.

#answered #( take this damn it )#emblembound

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the-record-columns · 4 years

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Feb. 12, 2020: Columns

A friend first, then a banker…

(Editor’s note: This column was written by Ken Welborn shortly after the death in 2010 of his longtime friend, Ronald “Ron” Shoemaker.)

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

I simply do not know to express the sadness I feel as I write today about my friend, Ron Shoemaker.

For my entire adult life, Ron was there whenever I needed him with wise counsel, patience and understanding. Anytime I had the opportunity to introduce Ron, I would always do so as “…my friend, Ron,” and the fact that he was my banker would only come up if appropriate or necessary. While he made his entire career in the realm of finance, his true legacy is that of an honest man, a good family man, a brother like no other — and a trusted friend.

Ron Shoemaker was what I like to refer to as an old-line banker, one who could read people as well as financial statements, and who would place character ahead of collateral when circumstances called for it. Ron truly cared about his customers, never more clearly evidenced to me than the time, back in the old NCNB days, when he didn’t loan me the money.

I had gotten myself involved in a circumstance (the proverbial good cause) that had gone south and I had been convinced by the gentleman in charge that I had no choice but to ante up $10,000 as my part to clean up the mess. I went to see Ron, explained what had transpired to him, and asked to borrow the money.

He then asked me several questions about my involvement in the deal, studied about it a minute or two and then leaned forward and said, “I’ll loan you the money, I promise, but I want you to do something for me first.”

He then went on to tell me that he didn’t think what was going on was fair to me; that I was being scammed, and that I should see an attorney before I agreed to pay a dime. I kind of hesitated, so, without another word, he picked up his phone and called Jim Moore, asking him if he could see Ken Welborn for a few minutes.

About an hour later, as I left Jim’s law office in the old Northwestern Bank Building, he told me I was fortunate to have a friend like Ron looking out for me, because I had no liability whatever in this deal, and if anyone argued with me to simply tell them “…you’ll see them in court.”

When I went by to thank Ron, he smiled broadly and said, “I have heard your daddy the preacher say many times that there is no right way to do the wrong thing, and this is plainly wrong.”

That was my friend Ron talking — clearly the banker Ron took a back seat that day.

I followed him when he went to Southern National Bank (now BB&T), and was as happy as anyone in the county when, some years later, he told me he and a group of directors were forming what came to be Wilkes National Bank and then Northwestern National Bank. They made a great success of that company, catering particularly to small businesses and individuals; and by understanding just how personal folks take a banking relationship. Simply put, they treated their customers the way they would want to be treated.

That attitude came from the top down, from Ron Shoemaker.

After his retirement, I mostly saw him when he was out to eat with his wife, Jane — who always looked as though she just left the beauty shop. I would tease him about still dressing up like a banker, even after retirement, and he would remind me he needed the coat pockets to hold the fifty or so pictures he always carried of his grandson; his newest pride and joy.

Ron’s health had been failing for the past few years, and I cannot even imagine what he went through, but clearly he didn’t have to go it alone — his family stood by him steadfastly. He remained positive and upbeat, always finding the best in whatever circumstance he was facing.

He was a man at peace with himself, with his family, and with God.

I am a better man for having known him.

Ron Shoemaker May 1, 1940—February 12, 2010 Rest in Peace

The Perfect Valentines Gift Does Exist

By HEATHER DEAN

Record Reporter

Disclaimer: I’m that girl.

I would rather spend the day curled up with a good book and a warm beverage instead of going out in public.

Contrary to popular belief, people like us do exist outside of fairy tales and movies, and there’s nothing supernatural about it. Think about it: Books are so much better than the blasé “flowers, chocolates, and promises you don’t intend to keep” on the most commercialized day of the year, posing as a holiday.

Last summer, my two daughters and I spent the day at Biltmore. We toured the house and gardens, and then went to the shops. They made a bee line for the candy store and I perused for a bit at the other treasures before going into the bookstore. (Side note: If I ever win the lottery, I will have a library that puts Mr. Vanderbilt’s to shame.) After about 30 minutes I heard a familiar voice echo in the hallway. It was my youngest. “TOLD you mom would be in the bookshop!” They came in and we looked over books together, discussing the history, language and Edwardian clothing surrounding the primary books in the shop, as well as swooning over the calligraphy sets. As I made my purchase the shopkeeper said “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversations. You have such well behaved and intelligent children. Thank you for that.”

I told her it was generational- my mom instilled that same love for history and leaning in her children, and I am grateful that my kids have inherited that as well. Of course they have inherited my tenaciousness as well and more than once a letter has been sent home about them debating in the class when the information about something historical has been inaccurate. (Guess the administration wasn’t ready for a first grader to know about the Celts, or a third grader to know her Greek gods.)

I say all this because there is an invaluable opportunity here in Wilkes next week to get that perfect Valentines Day gift. The Friends of the Library Used Book Sale is Thursday, Feb. 13, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday, Feb. 14 and Feb. 15, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

So go ahead and lay out a candlelit table, with favored beverage and lots of candy, but don’t miss this opportunity to wow and amaze your significant other by placing a book they would love at the table setting.

Collusion in disguise?

By AMBASSADOR EARL COX and KATHLEEN COX

Special to The Record

On March 2, Israelis will go to the polls again for the third time in one year to elect, or re-elect, their prime minister. One week ago, MSNBC audiences were told by Bill Kristol, a NeverTrump propagandist, that if Prime Minister Netanyahu is defeated, then the Democrats have a better chance of winning the White House. Given the Democrat’s deep-in-the-gut hatred for Donald Trump, is it beyond the realm of possibility to think their operatives could have a hand in helping to swing the election against Netanyahu? On this we must keep a close watch for even a hint of collusion. It’s interesting to note the players on Team Gantz, better known as the Blue and White party - Netanyahu’s major opposition. More on this later.

With Trump’s newly unveiled peace plan, Netanyahu is in an awkward and difficult position. Attached to that plan was a map. After the peace plan was published, Israelis noticed problems with the attached map. Large sections of Highway 60 which crosses Judea and Samaria from north to south, is placed outside of Israeli jurisdiction. Without correction, entire Israeli communities, equaling approximately 700,000 individual Israelis, will be isolated outside of Israeli jurisdiction.

Israel has always insisted that any viable peace plan must make clear provision for defensible borders. As unbelievable as it is, the map was crafted in error. Netanyahu’s team is now working on the corrections. If not completed before the March 2nd elections, Netanyahu will be in political trouble.

Last Monday, Gantz, along with two of his senior campaign advisors and strategists, traveled to Washington to meet with President Trump. Prior to Gantz’s arrival, light was shed on his two traveling companions, Ronen Tzur and Joel Benenson. Both have Tweeted numerous vicious attacks on President Trump even going so far as to compare him to Hitler. After meeting with President Trump, Gantz left Washington with Trump’s peace plan tucked underarm and knowing of the errors on the map. As Israel’s former Chief of Staff for the Israel Defense Forces, Gantz is a superb strategist. As such, he returned to Israel and announced that he intended to present the plan to the Knesset for approval. Knowing that Netanyahu’s base of support, which are the Likud, right-wing lawmakers and the right-religious bloc, could not pass the plan with errors, even though they support it overall. Forcing them to publicly oppose the plan would serve the best interests of both Gantz’s party and the Democrats. With Netanyahu supporters opposing the plan, both the plan and Netanyahu would be discredited in the eyes of voters. This would force many to simply stay away from the polls on March 2nd.All of this, the defeat of the plan and the defeat of Netanyahu, would bode well for the Democrats.

Now, a word about the players. Who are Joel Benenson and Ronen Tzur of Team Gantz? Both are currently serving as senior campaign advisors to Gantz. As it turns out, Benenson helped shape the policies and positions of the Democrat Party. He served as Obama’s senior political strategist in the 2008 and 2012 elections and he also served as Hillary Clinton’s senior political strategist in 2016. The Israeli left is clearly intertwined with the Democrat Party. Gantz’s announcement that he intended to present the plan to the Knesset for approval, along with the faulty map, was not a sign of his support for the peace plan but rather a cleverly disguised attempt to discredit Trump and Netanyahu. It seems foul play may be underway. Dare I suggest collusion?

Leather Britches and a good talk

By CARL WHITE

Life in the Carolinas

I think it’s safe to say that food has the unique capacity to nourish the body as well as relationships of all sorts.

During lunch with a friend not long ago, our lunch included among other things a tasty Amish potato salad which was made with chunks of potato with easy blending to leave good amounts of the potato structure intact. Based on its flavor profile, I do believe that the traditional Amish recipe was followed.

As the meal progressed, my friend looked up and said, “While this is a good potato salad, my mama made the best I have ever eaten. Hers was creamy and had a yellow tent to it.” He went on to share memories about his sweet mother and how well she treated him. He is confident that he was her favorite child.

The stories progressed to when he was invited to a Homecoming at the Hinshaw Baptist Church. As is tradition, there were all sorts of good foods to enjoy, including a potato salad that appeared to be creamy and had a familiar yellow tent to it.

With modest expectations, he spooned out a good helping and when he set down to eat, was instantly flooded with memories of his mama’s potato salad. He could not believe what he was tasting. He immediately went on a search to find the maker of the dish that had stirred so many memories.

He found her and to his delight she not only knew his mother but had learned from her how to make that creamy potato salad that featured a hint of yellow mustard for flavor and color.

The maker could not have been more pleased to know that a recipe learned long ago, brought forward such wonderful and meaningful memories on that day.

I attended an event not long ago where the Appalachian Song Writer, Singer and Storyteller William Ritter presented a program titled “Songs, Stories and Seeds.”

I had met Will several years prior during a gathering of the storyteller’s series “Liars Bench” which was being hosted at Western Carolina University. The series was produced by the renowned and colorful storyteller Gary Carden. We had cameras rolling for the evening and it was a great event.

On this day, however, he shared stories about Appalachian inspired music and the not so talked about seed sharing system of the Appalachian Region.

Much of Will’s talk was around the culture of seed sharing and some of the music was about the same thing. I loved his story about “Leather Britches” and the song he penned titled “Greasy Beans.”

I liked the “Leathers Britches” because they brought back memories of my grandparents stringing the beans on a thread and hanging them to dry. In the cooler months when fresh beans were not growing, they were rehydrated and cooked. The have a very different flavor; some folks like them and some do not. I like them because of the memory. They are hard to find these days because it’s easy to get fresh food year-round. However, there are some folks who still make them.

Will’s song about “Greasy Beans” talks about the love people have for the unique aspects of the bean. The plants run long, and the beans are best eaten big and plump.

After Will’s program, we set and talked about music, heirloom seed sharing, and good mountain stories for about three hours. It was a good time and it all started around food memories.

When I think about all the great conversations I have had around food, I am confident that if food or a good beverage were not involved, the visits would have been much shorter. Sometimes a quick visit is good, but often, a little lingering is much better.

Carl White is the Executive Producer and Host of the award-winning syndicated TV show Carl White’s Life In The Carolinas. The weekly show is now in its 11th year of syndication and can be seen in the Charlotte market on WJZY Fox 46 Saturday’s at noon and My 12. The show also streams on Amazon Prime. For more information visit www.lifeinthecarolinas.com. You can email Carl at [email protected].

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that-foul-legacy-lover · 10 months

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A Lesson in Fontaine Flora

Synopsis: Fontaine is, among other things, a nation of romance, and you find yourself at the mercy of one of its oldest traditions.

Foul Legacy x Reader Pronouns: Gender Neutral (no pronouns mentioned) Genre: Fluff Warnings: Allusions to anxiety and battle

~ * ~ Someone’s been leaving flowers on your doorstep. It started about a week ago, right after you returned from a job on Elynas. Ready to collapse onto your bed for the night, you hadn’t even noticed anything until your foot brushed against the petals of a freshly picked marcotte, right on top of your welcome mat. Then the next day, a romaritime, and a lumidouce bell after that. Only one per day, but always freshly picked and covered in dew. Marcotte- “I treasure your friendship.” This type of thing isn’t entirely unheard of- quite the opposite, actually. Fontaine prides itself on being “romantical” alongside being the nation of Justice and Hydro- honestly, you’re not sure how many more signature traits one city can take. Still, giving flowers to someone you fancy isn’t exactly out of the ordinary in the Court. Many nobles even take time to study the language of the blossoms, arranging bouquets for their loved ones depending on what message they want to send; marcottes for friendship, pluie lotuses for gratitude, rainbow roses for love, and so on.

You just never expected it to happen to you- who would waste time giving flowers to a workaholic agent of the Marechaussee Phantom? Rarely were you ever home to admire them, although you found them beautiful, and you’ve never been good with plants, nor were you close to any of your coworkers other than a couple of the Melusine who looked up to you. All you could do was shrug and put any new blooms you received in some water, the vase overflowing with flora of all types and colors, and go on with your work, as a Marechaussee agent never rests. Somehow, the flowers haven’t withered yet. You admire them on cold, lonely nights, the sweet scent making you hum in the moonlight. Your new assignment is again on Elynas- something about rifts and odd magic summoning unearthly monsters- and you catch a quick ride on a passing ship, since the aquabus doesn’t go to Elynas yet. The air is hot and humid, your clothes sticking to your skin as you traverse the bone-scattered landscape, avoiding the rogue mekas and treasure hoarders. They’re not yours to deal with, not yet. Though it seems like someone else is already on the job, a few violently destroyed automatons blocking parts of the path, torn to shreds. The air turns dark and smoky as you approach a clearing in between the mountains, a symbol in the ground glowing oddly purple and patrolled by floating hounds. As soon as you get close they attack, snarling and howling at your unwelcome presence with blank, shining eyes. A few swishes of your blade makes them crumble, your skills with a weapon outmatching your need for a vision. Still, the sun has long set by the time you’re done clearing the area, using what knowledge you have of Teyvat to scrub any trace of the purple symbol from the ground, and by the time you arrive home you’re covered in dust and exhaustion.

Another flower lays near your door, a richly-colored pluie lotus, and despite your irritation your lips twitch up into a grin. Pluie lotus- “Thank you for being here.” You’re free from work the next morning, as you receive at least one day off every month, courtesy of Monsieur Neuvillette. Normally it’d be a blessing to have a break, for most people, but you always find yourself rather bored and restless, being so attached to your job. So you do what you always do- return to the site of your previous investigation. It’s just a once-over, you tell yourself. Just one more check, to be completely certain that the area is safe again, obviously! In truth it’s so you don’t go mad with boredom, giving yourself something work-related to do since it’s all you’ll worry about anyway. The beastly hounds haven’t returned when you make your way into the valley, and a smile of satisfaction crosses your lips, folding your arms and nodding firmly. Someone’s even cleaned up more of the clockwork mekas around the island, too! You know that your coworkers don’t bother checking sites they’ve left- why would they? Most of the time, there’s no need for it. But you do it anyway, for your peace of mind and to keep your heart from fluttering nervously in your chest, lest you worry yourself into a stupor.

A rustle suddenly sounds from a nearby grove of trees and you whirl around, one hand on the hilt of your blade. You scan the area slowly, eyes landing on a pair of… something sticking out from behind the branches, red and slightly curved, unlike any plant you’ve ever seen. You take a step forward and the red things emerge- they’re horns, attached to the crimson mask-like face of an otherworldly creature, several feet taller than you and covered in black and violet armor. The creature tilts its head, blinking its single crystalline eye, and you’re met with a gaze of clear, hopeful blue, like the sea. It’s monstrous. It’s Abyssal. It’s beautiful. Yet you still move to unsheathe your weapon, ready to defend yourself at any minute. The Abyss is like a poisonous flower, dazzling but deadly- that is what Monsieur Neuvillette tells each and every agent of the Marechaussee Phantom, so that they don’t get swept away by corrupted waves- and the monster’s eye widens, taking a step back. It whines softly and lowers itself towards the ground, towards your height, trying to appear smaller. When you don’t strike first it slowly moves closer, small chirping sounds slipping from its fanged maw, and you stiffen as it reaches for you, grip tightening around your sword.

But it doesn’t attack- no, instead it extends a hand, and in its palm lays a perfect rainbow rose, freshly picked. Your mouth hangs open in shock, gasping as realization seeps into your mind, blooming like a bouquet of flowers speckled with stars. The fingers around your blade loosen and fall, instead moving to delicately grasp the rose by its stem, the horned beast’s claws gently brushing against your skin. The petals of the blossom lightly touch your nose as you breathe in the pleasant scent, the scent you would catch wafting from perfume shops but always refused to indulge in, unsuited for such luxury. A gentle smile spreads across your face, your features relaxing from their stern expression for the first time in months, and through the sound of running water comes a deep, rumbling purr of adoration and delight. Rainbow rose- “I love you.”

#genshin x reader #childe x reader #tartaglia x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact #childe #tartaglia #gi ajax #foul legacy #foul legacy childe #genshin tartagalia #genshin childe #genshin tartaglia #foul legacy x reader #sfw #genshin sfw #genshin fluff #fluff #tartagalia x reader #just something short and cute about a topic that's been sitting in my head for a while #i saw all the pretty flowers in fontaine and i was like yeah. that's perfect #i love the image of Foul Legacy holding out a delicate flower to you #by the way he doesn't know what most of them mean #he just knows that he's seen humans give them to people they seem to like #so he gives you all the flowers just to make sure #anyways this probably makes no sense but it's fine i had fun #he saw you on your first mission on Elynas and fell in love #genshin fic #wifi writes

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sagara-megumi · 7 years

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SasuSaku Month - Day 2: Something More || [Fanfic] Prospective Partners II (Sakura)

Title: Prospective Partners II (Sakura)

Rating: K/G

Notes: I apologise for the extreme lateness of this story. I finished writing it last night and did some revision this morning. However the day has been a nightmare and to top it all, I ended up being away from home many more hours than I expected. I’ll start working on the 3rd prompt as soon as I publish this one. Despite its delay, I hope you enjoy it :)

Also, Inner Sakura will make her debut, and her words will be in italics and between ‘...’

Words: 2271

PROSPECTIVE PARTNERS II (SAKURA)

She would not be treated like an object.

Sakura punctuated each word in her thoughts with a punch on the bag that hung from the ceiling of the room, imagining the face of some uptight middle-aged pervert in a suit.

She had been in a foul mood since her grandmother had told her that there was a potential candidate to be her husband, a second son from an extremely prestigious family. She gritted her teeth and landed a kick on the bag, making it swing. Second sons were a pain. In the shadow of the heir of the family, they were thirsty for recognition but not willing to work hard since nobody gave them credit when they did. All for the heir's sake, people around them said. She had met a few, most of them men in their thirties, and even forties, used to live comfortably and ready to marry into an heiress' family and be a nobody if they could keep on doing it.

With her hands on her waist, she turned, panting, and grabbed the towel set on a nearby wooden bench, wiping the sweat from her face. Then, she took a bottle of water and took a big sip.

She had felt so angry at that sudden decision that she had locked herself in the training room behind the house and had been throwing punches at the imaginary man in question.

It was not that Sakura was against marriage. In fact, it had been one of her dreams since she had been a little girl. But she had also dreamt of falling in love, sweet moments and butterflies in her stomach, like in the stories she had been told before falling asleep.

Soon, she had learnt that to get the man of her dreams in her world, she could not wait sitting like an Edo Period lady and that she had to polish herself to be better than the other princesses. She had done everything they had told her to. She had studied hard, kept fit and taken lessons on good manners, tea ceremony and flower arrangement. Also, she had successfully managed to show a collected attitude, masking her true feelings and opinions, and voicing them inward. She could be listening and discussing politely a topic with someone at a gathering while dying to shove her shoe in their mouth so they would shut up.

Her efforts had been rewarding and, as she progressed in her academic life brilliantly, she had gone out with two or three men that her family would approve without any doubt, but it had taken her nowhere. She was too intelligent, too strong. Elite men did not want that, they preferred a nice delicate girl who said yes to everything, a pretty trophy wife. Sakura looked at her image in the mirror on the wall in front of her. She had never considered herself beautiful, her forehead was too wide and her body had built muscle from the contact sports she did. And, she lowered her sight to her chest, she preferred not to think about the size of her bust. Of course, she knew she had her good points too. She had a beautiful posture, a bright smile and big eyes of an uncommon shade of green.

So, she had focused all her efforts on her degree and her future as the successful head of her family hospital and laboratories. There would be time for finding someone to share that future with after that. And suddenly, a few weeks before, people around her had started talking about omiai and promising candidates, and she had felt the urge to express her strong opposition to the idea. To no avail, it seemed.

Furrowing her brows and gritting her teeth, she threw the towel on the bench, left the bottle of water next to it and bumped her glove-covered fists, turning to the punching bag again.

Hell could freeze but in no way was she going to marry someone she did not know, someone she did not love.

~o~o~o~

One hour and a half later, Sakura came out of her private bathroom after taking a long bath. She felt calmer now, but she knew that the issue would be the topic of the family conversations for a few days. She rolled her eyes as she stopped before her window and looked outside. Maybe she should give in and meet the man once, then refuse him flatly making up a reason. That way, they would try to find another one and leave her alone for a few weeks. And then, repeat the process.

There was a knock on her door and she turned from the window, giving her permission. An old woman wearing a cream coloured kimono and a dark blue obi with a single flower on the knot entered the room and closed the door behind her as Sakura bowed lightly.

Her grandmother Chiyo was a nice but traditional woman who knew when to be strict and when to be warm. And seeing her face, she realised that this time she had to be ready for the first.

“Good afternoon, grandmother” she smiled trying to keep a neutral attitude.

The woman smiled and took a seat on one of the armchairs in the middle of the room, motioning her granddaughter to do the same. She left something she carried on her hand on the table, something small, flat and pink. A folder. Sakura felt a knot in her stomach but breathed deeply and sat on the sofa the older woman had pointed to trying not to look at it. They stayed in silence for a few seconds and when Sakura grew impatient and was going to ask the reason for it, a maid entered carrying a tea set. She left it on the table and with a deep bow, she disappeared again behind the door.

When her grandmother did not make any move to serve the drink, Sakura took the teapot and prepared a cup for each of them, with a slice of lemon for the elder, with cream and sugar for herself. As she brought the cup to her lips, her grandmother decided to speak.

“I've heard that you've locked yourself in your training room for almost two hours...”

Straight to the point, as expected.

“Yes.”

“I think you had enough time to get used to the idea, Sakura. It's been a few weeks since the topic arose.”

“I made my thoughts clear on the point, and I believed that you understood my wishes.”

'Breathe. Behave.'

“You're already twenty-three, and you haven't had a special relationship in the last two years. So, it was just a matter of logic that we took the matter in our hands.”

'Ha! “Already twenty-three”, as if I was an old spinster!'

She remained silent, drinking some tea.

'Breathe.'

“I think nobody considers me old at that age.”

“Yes, that's true, but you're not getting any younger, the years will keep on passing by and you're too focused on your goals. And I'm not criticising you, quite the opposite. I like to see that you're becoming a strong woman, like the ones before you.”

'How strange!' her ironic side spoke in her mind. 'Grandma is praising herself...'

“But you needed a little push in that department. So, that's why I decided it was time to search for the perfect partner for you.”

Sakura sighed, leaving the cup on the table and folding her hands on her lap.

“I'll be frank with you, grandmother” the older woman looked at her directly. “I don't think it's the right time. I still have some years left to finish my degree and my specialisation” she replied in a very serious voice. “I'd like to, at least, finish my two-year trainee program before considering marriage seriously. I don't think I'll be able to handle the social responsibilities that come with tying myself to a household like the one you described this morning at the same time.”

“You can do both things. Your prospective husband's family isn't against you finishing your studies since they know they're essential for you to manage the hospital and the research laboratory when your time comes. So they will help you by planning your schedule according to your practicum and exams.”

'Oh, they don't oppose...' she thought sarcastically, clenching her teeth. 'Let's thank the gods for their consideration...'

“But I'm sure neither he nor his family wouldn't mind waiting a bit. He is a second son, right? So he must be learning the necessary abilities to help the family and the heir...”

“Sakura” Chiyo's voice had become a bit stern now. “Do you think that you're the only candidate they're considering? You're really mistaken if you think that a man like that wouldn't get the attention of quite a few women. He may be a 'second son' as you remarked, but he's an excellent catch and won't be available forever.”

'Nice. At least I'm not the only one treated like goods in a market... I was starting to feel special.'

“It's a great opportunity, maybe the best one you'll have. And you should take that into account.”

The young woman shifted uncomfortably. She was not used to talking about her most intimate thoughts and dreams with anybody. Still, if that helped her...

“But...” her cheeks became a bit pink and she lowered her gaze. “I would want to love the person I marry... You... and father...”

Her grandmother sighed a bit exasperated

“Your grandfather and I weren't in love when we got married. That came later” she took a sip from her cup. “Listen, Sakura. I understand that women nowadays are different from the ones in my generation, that they want to enjoy life, have a career and fall in love. But society still thinks that there's something wrong with a woman who isn't married or about to be when she turns twenty-five. Even though a bit dreamy, you've always been a level-headed girl. And you also know that your condition as an heiress makes you different from the rest of women. You have the duty, not only of preserving our legacy but of continuing the bloodline and pass it to them. People like us can't indulge in fantasies about an ideal life. This man” she said putting her fingertips on the pink folder and sliding it across the table to her “knows it too.”

She stood up and looked straight at her granddaughter.

“Consider this matter carefully, it's the best thing for you.”

She did not answer, she only nodded slightly in acknowledgement, without lifting her head till she heard the door close softly.

Immediately, she lifted herself from her seat and started pacing the room with fast steps.

Oh, how she desired to be in the training room again to let out all the frustration she was feeling at the moment. It had been like talking to a wall. With a scream, she punched the sofa, knocking it over with a loud noise. She breathed deeply and put her hands on her hips. At least, she felt a bit better. She turned her head, glaring at the offending rectangle of cardboard that contained his photos.

'The best thing, my ass! I don't want to do it!'

She took the folder and threw it against the wall with a cry of anger. It made a soft sound against it before falling to the floor.

She walked to it and picked it up. If she could, she would burn it, but then her grandmother would probably scold her long and hard. And she knew she could not stand it. Unintentionally, her eyes fell on the photograph.

Ink-black irises stared back at her and she paused in her inner ramblings about deaf grandmothers and cursed prospective husbands to take a good look at him.

The first thing her mind registered was that he was unexpectedly young. And that he looked vaguely familiar, as she observed his posture, his lean but clearly athletic body clad in an elegant dark tailored suit and his serious expression. He looked as enthusiastic about the idea of getting married as her, and that thawed her feelings a tiny bit.

She had to admit he was really handsome, like an actor, but not in a manly way. His features, though sharp, were soft, slightly feminine. His short spiky hair was parted on the right and some strands fell lightly on his left eye offering a casual detail in the solemn atmosphere of the image.

Well, he seemed a bit uptight, but at least he was not a middle-aged pervert in a suit.

“Uchiha Sasuke” the name escaped her lips in a whisper as she read it on his resume.

She tapped her cheek thoughtfully as she observed him once more. Maybe it would not be such a horrible experience to meet him once. He gave the impression of being a well-educated man, not only because of the list of academic centres he had attended; she could also see it in his eyes. And she never refused the chance of having an intelligent conversation. Also, it was always a good thing to have acquaintances everywhere. Who knew when they could lend you a hand...

However, as she put the photo on the table again and made a slight gesture with the hand, apologising to him for her earlier behaviour, a question kept on repeating in her mind.

Where had he seen him?

THE END

#Naruto #fanfic #ssm17 #ssm17d2 #sasusakumonth #Haruno Sakura #Uchiha Sasuke #SasuSaku #OTP

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xhapjeongkrp-blog · 7 years

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( We thought we were running away from the grown-ups, and now we are the grown-ups. )

Name: Ahn Seohee Age: 25 Occupation: Choreographer

Content Warning: Hebephilia

ACT I.

SCENERY: Architecture like silver spider webs on a wet may morning, dew-threads in the early sunlight. Belle Epoque Paris in spring.

STAGE DIRECTION: [ YOUNG GIRL IN ALL WHITE ENTERS, STAGE RIGHT. SPOTLIGHT FOLLOWS. ALL IS DARK. ]

NARRATOR: She’s the first one in her family that feels this way, but that doesn’t mean much of anything, because every dominant gene and hereditary talent that has ever been passed down like a postcard with a pre-written address has begun with one single anomaly of a child. So they call her Miraculous, christen her Aberration. Maybe in a few generations she would have been named Legacy.

If you feel you are missing out on something already, that’s alright. Stories don’t always begin at the beginning, and you’ll come to see here that the start of a tale doesn’t matter all that much. But if you are really lost, pause, pull out your phone from your pocket and lean down to shine its light on the crumpled playbill shoved under your thigh. We are starting when things are important, but here are the details: there are years before this, and they are nice. Mother is nice, father is nice. Girl-child discovers she is borne to dance. They share a house and a home and a life. They don’t have a set in this act because we couldn’t find a way to make the backdrops interesting enough. Anyway, we move on.

STAGE DIRECTION: [ GIRL MOVES INTO FIRST POSITION ]

NARRATOR: They don’t like her, they worship her, and there’s a difference. They’d love her if she gave them a chance, but she doesn’t have enough agility in her neck to spin her gaze and stretch her lips when she walks down the hall: so she faces forward, spine held rigid, lovely and immovable. She frightens them, that moon-black hair and skin, the cat eyes. She’s beautiful to the point of fearful, and every single one of them clip their nails short so they don’t start digging out their heart with their bare hands to give to her in sacrifice. Only sometimes is she cruel, but mostly they think she’s a self-chosen heir that never bothers to acknowledge her kingdom; choosing singularity over their crowded, hot breaths. They are only half right. Her choice is isolation because it suits her, because she cannot stand them. She chooses withdrawal because she knows this way, no one can get close enough to readjust her crown.

ACT II.

SCENERY: Brick and gilt buildings crumpled at the waist, holding their knees for support. Bombed-out streets. Chunks of bronze-gold beheaded on the ground. London in the terror of the second great War.

STAGE DIRECTION: [ PARTNER ENTERS; MAN IN PRIME, MAN IN BEAST. THEY TOUCH. STAGE ALIGHTS ]

NARRATOR: There is no kind way to say this. This is a war story, and you should put your hands over the ears of your heart so as not to feel the oncoming shrapnel it too deeply.

He calls her his muse and makes her his nymphet. In truth the words that follow after his don’t matter much, because it’s the possessive that means everything. He turns her into that white deer in the King’s forest, Noli Me Tangere around her slim, sylph neck, and he wears the crown of Caesar. It’s obsessive-compulsive, what unfurls between them like a sticky black rose. The choreographer and the dancer, Humbert and Dolores H.

(Don’t call the girl fucking Lolita. That’s not her name).

He is twenty-nine. Count it: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourten fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four twenty-five twenty-six twenty-seven twenty-eight twenty-nine

STAGE DIRECTION: [ THEY DANCE. ]

NARRATOR: She is fourteen. Speak it aloud: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen

Did you lose track? The math is: Too much. Not enough. Goddamn criminal.

These are the years they spend together, turning her from a prodigy to legend: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten.

She thinks it’s love, while he makes a feast of her body that lasts a decade. Just one decade, and she is the thing of myths, meteoric: the statuesque girl in the unstained tutu, bundling white flowers in her hand and bowing as they cheer her name.

The most beautiful music-box in all of Korea, and all the pretty porcelain figures twirl on command.

ACT III.

SCENERY: Giant peonies, houses made of rose petals. A bird of paradise with a mouth and a white rabbit made tye-dye with spilled wine. Alice in Wonderland on a bad trip.

NARRATOR: Like many things in this story, what happens next is a red herring. Be careful, I’ve warned you. Watch carefully, but don’t look too close.

She falls.

It’s the kind of Icarus-drop that means her wings burn out, that she won’t fly again until the wax of her ankle bone is repaired by clever hands. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes dedication.

She gives it all, packages these virtues inside herself like a present without wrapping, and she comes back.

And he - He, the one who shared her rise and matched it with his own ascent - rips her feathers from her back, one by one. She says I’m ready, he says You’re over.

STAGE DIRECTION: [ MAN EXITS. GIRL BEGINS TO TURN ]

The physicians take her side, man her spine, but doctors do no good in the face of artists - those who know how to redistribute pain throughout the body cannot imagine the cruel ways of crushing a psyche. He tears her name off the white sheets hung on the door and replaces it with the fresh ink of another for all to see. She wears her pain like madness and burns them both up in the center of the room, a bonfire for everyone watching. He turns the whole world inferno by putting his arm around the girl with the New Name and not enough talent to ever match hers.

It is enough.

STAGE DIRECTION: [ GIRL SPINS FASTER, FASTER, FASTER. ]

NARRATOR: Those in the music box watch in shameful silence as they watch her leave, unblinking because they are watching her name scrubbed off the annals of history. Their protests don’t go unheard because no one says a word. She was the queen of the stage, but he’s the tyrant of the empire now, and following a would’ve-been monarch into exile has never earned anything but beheading.

The glittering streets erupt in chaos when she arrives, careless people with reckless devotions welcoming her into the world. They love her in Seoul, want her in Gangnam, those flagrant, rich adults with half a mind and double a wallet: they see her empty time for the first time in twenty-four years, and they want to fill it.

And she tries to care about them. She tries their parties and their drugs and their lives, and no matter how it all slips onto her like platinum rings on slim fingers, she hates it all. Everything that is not art is foul.

STAGE DIRECTION: [ GIRL JUMPS ACROSS STAGE. GRAND JETE. ]

NARRATOR: Red wine and little scarlet dolls. She doesn’t eat, can’t sleep. They whisper about her - the girl that was and the possession ruining her body now - and she hears it every moment her ears are open. There’s a madness inside her and it’s building, growing, a dark garden growing up through her lungs and strangling her breath.

So she leaves, half-way and not quite, like Orpheus descending but forgetting to remember not to look back, to some place younger and with less taste for her blood.

She dresses her body in black every morning to mourn her own death.

STAGE DIRECTION: [ EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR. ]

#hpj: accepted #tw: hebephilia

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drink-n-watch · 4 years

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Genre : Fantasy, adventure, action, mystery, romance

Episodes: 12

Studio: Passione

Piena is a land of uncertainty and strife. Sure it’s enjoyed a few decades of peace, prosperity even, but in a land constantly threatened by the potential return of the demon king, a devastating monster that could wipe out humanity in its wake, no one can truly be at ease. The Goddess may have defeated him years ago but she’s long gone. Luckily her strength and legacy lives on in the braves. Every generation or so, six young men and women are chosen as heroes and saints, some granted extraordinary powers, to go forth and protect the world from fiends until the demon king is defeated once again. But as time passes and the braves become weaker, will this be the to e the braves finally fail. Even self proclaimed “strongest man in the world” Adlet made it, and he’s nothing special at all….

My synopsis is both entirely accurate and fairly misleading. I did that on purpose. It’s been a very long time since a series has surprised me as much as Rokka – Braves of the Six Flowers and I want to keep that going. I’m going to try really hard not to spoil anything but I am going to mention the generally unique elements of he series. So if you want to watch it without any expectations at all, I encourage you to do so. There’s a lot of fun to be had in the discovering. Maybe you can come back to this review after. Otherwise, let’s dig in.

This is Nachetanya (it will make sense later)

I should say that I picked up Rokka Braves of the Six Flowers entirely due to the character designs. I had seen a few images floating around, most notably the cover art and I got fascinated by them. Specifically by Nachetanya (I helpfully added that screencap for you!). That’s all I knew of the series though. In fact, I may have been way too focused on the Bunny girl (Hans and I are alike in many ways…) as I had somehow convinced myself that Adlet was a girl and spent a good five minutes trying to reconcile myself with the fact that he is supposedly “The Strongest Man in the World” (get ready to hear that a lot).

I’m happy to report those wonderful designs are in fact present throughout the series as well as lush environments and beautiful backgrounds. I’m less happy to notice that the monstrous fiends were rather dull looking and the art style was visibly inconsistent at times, even with nothing much going on, which is a real shame.

Then again, the budget may have been poured into the actual animation which is both generous and impressively smooth. There is a lot of action going on in Rokka so making sure movement is enjoyable to watch is a good investment if you ask me. Sure the Saints’ CG powers don’t always blend in perfectly but who can say magic doesn’t always look a bit uncanny? Not me, and it didn’t bother me one bit.

Rouges are overpowdered

I should also mention the score. Rokka Braves of the Six Flowers doesn’t have the type of soundtrack that you’re likely to listen to in the gym or something. It’s not full of great tunes. But once I noticed it, I realized that it actually has a pretty impressive classical cinematic type of score with grand orchestral arrangements to go along with the action. It really made everything just a bit more grand and epic!

In many ways, Rokka seemed to delight in not being what I expected it to be. For instance, right off the bat, the setting seems to resemble ancient south America both in Aztec inspired architecture and lush tropical jungles. This is really not what comes to mind when I think of high fantasy. In fact, I don’t think I can even recall another fantasy adventure in that particular setting. I loved this touch and I think they should have emphasized it way more in promotional material. Granted it’s almost entirely cosmetic as far as I can tell but it does create very unique visuals that go a long way to giving the series a distinct personality.

Second and to me more amazing is that the series pulls an entire genre bait and switch a few episodes in. It really starts out as a very traditional fantasy epic with a well-developed universe and context. Six heroes coming together to fight an immensely powerful for through with swords and magic! And then it takes a sharp left turn and becomes an Agatha Christie-style whodunit! 10 little Indians Agatha Christie, not Hercule Poirot! After getting trapped in a confined area out heroes realize that there are 7 and not 6 of them and it becomes a matter of figuring out who the imposter is before the all fall prey to foul play. I can’t express how excited I was by this. Not only is the genre subversion really well integrated into the story but the mystery and tension are so well sustained that I suspected absolutely everyone at some point. I was beginning to think that maybe I could be the 7th! For a lover of mysteries, this was nothing short of a delight!

can’t wait

Not saying the show was perfect. In fact it has one HUGE flaw in my opinion. The dialogue is really weak. This is a bizarre thing to reconcile for me. The writing as a whole wasn’t bad. The mystery plot was fantastic and although the fantasy plot was more cliche it remained engaging and we’ll established. I would have happily watched that story as well.

And the characters are actually quite good when you take a step back. All well developed, beach with unique personalities, histories, motivations and reactions. And each quite consistent with their character all of which is impressive. But because part of their characterization is made through exposition and therefore dialogue, they actually seem much more shallow than they are.

Because the dialogue is often blunt, clumsy or cheesy. I honestly found myself wondering if I wasn’t losing most of it in translation in fact and I have a feeling that this is what’s likely to discourage most viewers. That’s not to say the dialogue is insufferable but it’s not on the same level of everything else and I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered that before.

I say they should show environments more then pick zero screencaps of backgrounds…

This said, the big reveal does, in fact, explain a lot and it makes certain situations and conversations seem a lot smarter in hindsight. In case it’s not clear I loved the reveal. There’s even a final twist that had my jaw drop while simultaneously making me grin like a moron. If some of the later episodes dag a bit, Rokka Braves of the Six Flowers really sticks the landing with one of the best finales I’ve seen. In fact, that conclusion was so perfect I don’t even want another season. But I would watch it if it comes out.

Despite its flaws, Rokka Braves of the Six Flowers managed to surprise and delight me at every turn and I can’t help but recommend it, for the novelty if nothing else.

I feel like I haven’t gotten across that it’s a pretty good looking show

Favourite character: though call Hans and Nachetanya (great name by the way)

What this anime taught me: You can’t trust anyone!

Life is not a fairy tale. If you lose your shoe at midnight, you’re not a princess, you’re drunk!

Suggested drink: a Mother Flower

Every time Adlet blushes – take a sip

Every time they settle on a vegetarian diner – get a snack

Every time Adlet mentions his master – Raise your glass

Every time anyone says “The Strongest Man in the World” – switch to water

Every time anyone mentions the number “six” – take a deep breath

Every time Goldov yearns – take a sip

Every time anyone calls Adlet an idiot – quietly agree

Every time the camera spins around the room – hold onto your drink

Every time Nachetanya has an exaggerated reaction – take a sip

Every time we see Hans’s eyes – take a sip and get ready

Every time there’s a twist – GASP!

run…

I’ve decided to only stick to Pinterest from now on. I hope you like these extra caps!

Rokka – Braves of The Six Flowers : well that was Unexpected! Genre : Fantasy, adventure, action, mystery, romance Episodes: 12 Studio: Passione Piena is a land of uncertainty and strife.

#adventure #anime #blonde bishie #Fantasy #fun!#Mystery #Rokka #romance

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2gameprince · 7 years

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C. Banion & The Case Of The Black Delilah

My story begins within a small apartment in Merchants Row, Boston, Massachusetts, 1882. At the end of the entertainment district’s block there stood a building of yellow painted bricks and a blackened interior. This was the cluttered and musty abode of one C. Banion; the only son of the world renowned archeologist, Sir Altan Banion II and beneficiary to the Banion Family Legacy. This legacy, which included a never-ending sea of government checks and the fortune to never have to work a day in his life, was granted upon my master’s head when his father, Altan, met his demise at the hands of an unknown illness while away on a humanitarian mission in Africa. I myself, being of a studious and home-bodied upbringing, had followed down the tradition of my family line and took up the career of a butler. And one who was tasked to stay beside the Banion Family’s side. When Sir Altan first hired my father it wasn’t long before I was integrated into the servant’s lifestyle. Sir Altan was a knight of hope and good will. It was a pleasure to have met the man in my lifetime. My father and I were always treated more as family, rather than servants. We knew what was expected of us and we operated without flaw or worry. I’d first met Altan when he came to London, more towards the countryside which I had always called home. My father looked after an old mansion, the Bainbridge Manor. This was a prestigious rentable estate which the kind archeologist would frequent with his young son; a boy whom I would grow up alongside, and one day serve, as well. I was about Altan’s boy’s age when I’d first met the man himself. Sir Banion was a pillar of nobility, and in many ways he was my idol. After my father’s death I stayed on as the Banion Family butler, and on my dear father’s deathbed I vowed to never leave the Banion’s side, staying on as their butler until the last member of their line would fall. Or, at least, until I passed away. Unfortunately death had one more mission to complete before leaving Banion’s boy and myself fatherless. Sir Altan passed away many years later, at the age of fifty two. After that his son retired back to America, and after two years of awaiting his improbable return had passed, I tracked the young master down; back to a place called Boston. There I found him rotting away, living off the riches of his family line and wasting away within the shadowy stomach of a dark room at the end of a busy street. I pleaded with the young Banion, telling him of my father’s will and playing on the memories of our childhood. It was there that my good friend, C. Banion, took me on as his new butler and I was once again integrated into a familiar post. For the days ahead I could rest easy, but I knew the years had taken optimism from my friend. So, as my father requested, I have remained by Banion’s side and most likely will until the day I die. Fifteen years have passed and Banion has left the misfortunes of his youth well behind him. He operates as somewhat of a poet and crime solver, wasting a bored existence away amidst Boston, all while I tend to the upkeep of our shared apartment. In my opinion trouble seems to find him at almost every turn, and it could be considered dumb luck that his involvement in the murders and mysteries that seem to find us are usually solved by his lacking wit and nonexistent detective skills. Such as the case we came to know many years back involving a boxer and the Boston Commons. ‘The Case of the Black Deliliah’ I believe I called it. And it unfolded as follows: 1882 saw the death of a young twenty-two year old woman by the name of Amelia Long. She was beautiful woman, as anyone who knew her would say; and it was upon the soil of the Boston Common where Miss Long was found sliced to high heaven and drained of all blood, in a peculiar medical-esque fashion. Like the handy work of a surgeon from hell. The press over popularized the slaying and an obvious proof of medical experience having played a role within the case made every doctor within the area a suspect. Banion doubted any foul play on the part of a doctor. he always said it was “…just dumb luck that the cuts came out that way.” I’ll never get what he meant by that. Three months had passed us by since that day, and Banion was getting quite tired of hearing about it. To him crime consisted of a murder a week, a theft every two days and daily assaults, with major or minor vulgar activities sprinkled all in between. Even those three months after the case had finally fallen out of the minds of the law, Banion still found his way to complaining about it, reading small newspaper articles and inquiries which carried the speculations about the homicide even further. Eventually to the point of blaming demons, ghosts and entities not of this world. Banion just sat back in his chair, smoked his pipe excessively an scoffed viciously at all of it. “This sort of riffraff is beneath us all.” “How so?” Banion handed me the news paper as I stood, cleaning off the coffee table in front of him. I set aside the rag and took the paper, looking down at a small selection at the bottom of the page. I glanced over the first few sentences before Banion chimed in. “Utter bullshit. Ghosts? Demons? Wraiths and phantoms… I swear. If the news spent as much time studying the facts and realities of life as they do making up stories to shock the masses, people might actually rise up and riot at the realization of their positions in this… disgusting world.” “Quite biter this morning, are we not Mister Banion?” “Oh, shut up Theo. Drop the butler-talk and get me another cup of coffee.” “Four cups not enough today, sir?” “Stop calling me sir, and no. I won’t be satisfied till this pipe stenches of french vanilla. That way I’ll be so sure that you aren’t taking puffs while I’m away.” “You already know, sir, I appall smoking.” “And you hate french vanilla, so you say, but I’ve been noticing a decrease in my tobacco stash. And at an alarming rate as of late, as well.” “That is because you’ve been smoking it down. Quite more so… and at a much more alarming rate than usual. Need I inquire why, sir? Nerves?” “My nerves are fine. It’s my temper that’s up.” “Might I suggest setting the news papers aside for a time?” “It’d do no good. I enjoy the layout of those pages and the micro-miles of words upon words. I’d have no trouble reading, that is if the damned subject matter was any good.” I handed Banion back the paper and resumed cleaning he table. Perhaps it was curiosity to hear the comedic absurdity in his ramblings, but I continued the subject, rather than attempting to change it. “So… the slaying of Amelia Long… you believe it to be solvable?” “Absolutely. It’s merely the incompetence of the police that has brought her case to a halt.” “So you say.” Banion began to sink back cockily in his chair, boasting. “I bet I could do a hundred times what those pigs think they could do.” He announced. “That so?” I remarked. He answered in a quick and stubborn tone. “No doubt.” It wasn’t long before, in a fit of a morning rage, Banion forced himself up from his chair and demanded we make our way to to the Boston Commons; to track the elusive trail of the murderer of Miss Amelia Long. To be honest, I believed this venture to be a great waste of time and energy. Once my friend arrived on the scene and realized he actually held no detective capabilities whatsoever, I assumed we would retire back to a long drawn-out evening back at our apartment; with him sitting in his chair for the remainder of the day, quietly scolding himself for having wasted money on an ill faded attempt to prove me wrong. It wasn’t until arriving on the scene and noticing a woman in a black dress standing upon the site that Banion turned to me with a mischievous curiosity, and the look that a possible case could, indeed, unfold before us. Strange as it seemed, I pressed on. “Good evening ma’am.” Banion called out to the lady in black. “Excellent weather, is it not?” The woman was quiet and looked at us for a brief second, turning back to a memorial on the side of the pathway through the Common’s cemetery. The memorial marked the spot where Amelia Long was slain. “Did you know her?” Banion added. It was no surprise that the young woman was annoyed at our presence. I grabbed my master’s arm to pull him away, but he swatted me off and insisted on bothering her further. “Madam… can you hear me?” He insultingly waved his arms in an attempt to mimic sign language. By this point she had turned from us completely and darted swiftly away, letting no word or remark leave her lips and paying us no mind at all. Not that I blamed her after how rude my master had acted. “She’s connected.” He said. “How in the hell could you know that?” “Gut feeling.” I stepped back in a furious astonishment. “A gut feeling? Absurd. All you’ve done is bothered a probable friend of a deceased woman, and to be perfectly frank, managed to offend the mourning and the deaf all in one instance.” My tone became louder. “How the hell is she involved!?” Just before I was on the verge of grabbing Banion by the collar, his arm extended, pointing down to a folded paper tucked in-between the grass and a patch of store bought flowers. “I believe that paper would be of some curious interest.” Banion cockily remarked. I bent down and grabbed the paper, taking my time to unfold it. It was a piece of paper with the words “I’m sorry.” scribbled in red pen. “What does this mean?” I said aloud. Banion stepped in front of me, took the paper and glanced over it swiftly before answering me. “Roman, I believe we’ve found the murderer of Miss Amelia Long.” I was more confused than I had ever been. “Found the murderer!? So soon!? How? Why? How could you get all that from that little note. Obviously you’re mistaken. Explain what you mean!” There had always been times when I believed my master to be quite strange in his daily judgments, but this certainly surprised me. I awaited his answer as questions races across my mind with a mad rush. “You see…” He began. “That woman in black has been spotted here every second day of the month since Miss Long’s death. She dresses the same, she stands here for the same amount of time and she always leaves a new note in place of the old ones. Usually they are blown away or washed out by rain. I know this because my rare outings have led me the Commons these past few months and I have noticed here presence multiple times. Now… judging by the paper… this particular brand of sheet, though currently just a cut corner, was part of a bigger sheet that had the brand label inked on the back of it. I know this because I took the original paper with that mark the first day I had spotted here standing here. The mark says “Gallo Printers.” A local paper supplying company two blocks from the Commons here. Nearby there is a series of apartments and after following the woman in black I was able to conclude that she, in fact, resides in a first story apartment on Lepton Street, one block from Gallo Printers. I even went through the trash in her back alley and discovered some red pens, obviously used by her to write these notes. Now, what many people don’t know, thanks to the ignorance of the press, was that a note was discovered beside the mutilated Amelia. A note which matched the writings of those on the papers found at the grave. The letter must have been dropped by the killer, the woman in black. The letter found beside Amelia mentions a person named ‘Sam’. The police believed this to be in reference to a fiend of Amelia’s, Sam Trotter. All the while I scoured the local surrounding Commons for Sams and Samuels, just in case the letter was addressed to a man. Now… the answer to solving this murder lies in the information I have obtained about the letter found by Miss Amelia. Roman, we shall return here, same day, same time, next month, and it is before the eyes of the woman in black and the police where I will conclude this mystery homicide.” I went silent for a minute, as I’m sure Banion was expecting me to complement his skills in the matter of the murder. But there was only one thing on my mind. “You were studying this case all along!?” I screamed. “I swear to god, I have half a mind to thrash you right here!!” He asked me to calm myself and assured me his intentions were imply playful in nature. I was still angry by the time we had made it back to the apartment. All that was left to do was to wait until the following month, when the woman would return and Banion would conclude his final comments on the case. That day did eventually come and we arrived at the Commons, on the spot, shortly after the woman in black. Banion had taken the liberty of alerting a small unit of officers to pose undercover and nearby when the supposed arrest was to be made. Once again, just like before, Banion approached the woman, but instead of speaking my master had previously told me to keep to ourselves, speaking simply as if only he and myself were standing there, yet close enough so the woman could hear exactly what we were saying. Banion had always had a flare for the dramatic, but I think he was getting worse with age. We stood neatly beside the woman, set our eyes forward at the memorial and began to speak loud and clear. “So, you believe the girlfriend of the boxer, Samuel, to be the killer of Amelia Long, eh?” I began. The woman in black looked up for a moment, obviously shocked by what we had said. I must say, the sudden silence that followed intrigued me. I awaited Banion’s reply. “Indeed.” He began. “My friend, I had previously told you as to how I came to this conclusion, and now, here, upon the plot of the young Amelia’s death, I will reveal the nature of her demise. The woman was silent as my master continued. “Now then… the letter apologizes to someone named same and references missing some important event. My attention turned to a local boxer, Samuel “Tight Fist” Baker. After a few nights of stalking I found him with a young woman who happened to live in the same exact apartment as our mysterious woman in black. The woman in black in the girlfriend of Samuel, the boxer, and what I assumed was that Amelia’s death was the result of a crime-of-passion sort of incident. See… I believe the woman in black, real name: Emily Hart, found out about an affair Samuel had with Amelia, and so she killed Miss Long and greatly regretted it afterward. Hence why she comes every month to the scene of her crime to pay her respects.” The woman in black, sobbing through a black hat she had pulled from a belt on her side, turned to Banion and myself as my master concluded. “The police have the note found at the scene and the notes left behind by Emily Hart. Notes that will place Miss Emily here, at the scene of the crime, on the day of Miss Amelia’s murder.” Banion tore the hat from the woman’s head and concluded. “Anything you have the say for yourself!?” Banion yelled. He spoke angrily, looking directly inter her eyes as I stepped backward. Banion tore a small piece of paper out of her hands. Another small note with the words ‘I’m sorry.’ written in red ink. Without taking his eyes off of the woman, Miss Emily, Banion signaled the police. From behind us the undercover officers took the note Banion was holding up to them and placed it in an envelope with the note found at the scene of the crime. The evidence was secured. Suddenly, a deep voice broke the silence. “What the hell are you doing!?” We all turned to see the boxer, Samuel Baker himself, running towards us. When the large man finally caught his breath he looked directly at Emily, cuffed and sobbing, then looked at the head officer. “What are you doing to her!?” Samuel barked. Banion replied. “This woman is under arrest for the murder of Amelia Long.” Samuel stepped back, almost hesitant to reply. Finally he spoke. “No, that’s impossible.” Samuel murmured. “Darling, no!” Emily yelled. Samuel stood tall and announced. “Emily couldn’t have killed Amelia, because it was me!” I nearly fell over, not missing a chance to look over at the shock upon my master’s face. truly a comedic sight. “Explain yourself!” Banion snapped. Samuel took a moment and began. “The night Amelia died… she, Emily and myself had met here. Emily had discovered the affair between Amelia and myself, but she wasn’t mad. I separately asked each of them to meet me here for a private talk. I wanted us all to air ourselves out. When they both arrived we all began arguing. Amelia took out a knife and threatened Emily. I snapped and took it away from here, taking the blade to her while Emily fled. I guess the note she dropped that night next to Amelia was for me. Yeah, I know about it. I inquired down at the station a few months back, when I was trying to make sure my tracks were covered. I figured after a month or so that Emily never went to the police. Whether it was out of fear or protection over me. Either way I killed Amelia. Emily had nothing to do with it. I knew if she was suspected she might get taken in, and I can’t stand by while my first love serves time for a crime I committed.” “But why keep returning to the grave and leaving those notes.” I asked. “Look at this woman’s tears. Surely she felt responsible for all this. In some twisted way.” Banion replied. Now, we understood. With more tears and much confusion the cuffs were taken off of Emily and put on Samuel. The undercover leader had Sam and Emily taken aside. “Both of you lovers come with us. We’d like to ask you some questions down at the station. Can’t tell you know if or when any charges will be pressed. We just wanna talk for now.” The cop said. Banion and myself saluted the officers and made our way back to the street, to a carriage, back home. Along the way I inquired. “Why do you suppose Samuel confessed so… flawlessly? Couldn’t have Emily truly ben the killer, yet Samuel could just be covering for her. Or perhaps it was both of them? Or maybe some underlining circumstances of unexplainable phenomenon killed Miss Amelia, and Samuel has no choice but to take the blame which should exist on a third party, or risk freedom at the cost of Emily taking a fall for him… or… or…” He interrupted me. “You’re overthinking it. Love wins out, Roman. Love wins out every time.” He said. “It didn’t matter if Samuel did it, or Emily did it, if it was both of them of if it was none of them. A conclusion which I find highly doubtful. The underlining factor here is that, despite who may have done it, both individuals involved are plagued by guilt, apparent when they had been apprehended. If their story is true then perhaps Miss Amelia was not the perfect little angel the press had made her out to be.” “That is only if Samuel’s story is true.” I added. “Exactly.” Our conversation continued even after stepping through our apartment door and settling down in our chairs. Banion began. “Justice will work itself out and even if either of them is responsible, the guilt alone will drive them insane. And we should rest easy in that knowledge. Despite who is convicted or not.” “You have the strangest reasoning.” I remarked. “Eh, it keeps things interesting. I just find it funny.” Banion said. “What’s that?” I asked. He lit up his pipe and we sunk back into our seats, tired from the long day. bunion laughed for a moment and remarked upon the irony of the case. “It’s just this one thing…” He continued. “It was Emily’s note that ended up placing here there at the scene of the murder. The note that connected her to Samuel and Amelia. The note that will most likely lead to the conviction of Samuel. This reminds me of a story. Well… sort of. It was this old Hebrew story, from the Book of Judges. It was about this temptress, Delilah, who ended up becoming the downfall of this fellow, Samson. It was over money or something that her actions screwed him over. Kind of like how Emily indirectly ended up becoming the downfall of Samuel. Notes and whatnot. So in a way… Emily, our woman in black, is like Samuel’s own little Delilah… A Black Delilah! If you will.” I laughed and scolded Banion for smoking, bringing the case and this day to a clam and complete close.

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