#and i have very few world quests left on main. mostly the really long and lore-heavy ones like byakuyakoku and dirge of bilqis

[rubys-domain]

so uh... my alt's kazuha is lvl 80 now. and i don't feel like fighting the maguu kenki another 10 fucking times. i'm not sure what else i could do though. there's a lot of world quests that still need doing as well as the sumeru archon quest. but i don't feel like doing any of that rn...

honestly i just want to keep playing on main. even if it's just world quests. i'm way more motivated to do world quests on main for some reason

[ganondoodle]

i know i said i wouldnt be ranting about totk anymore, but i realized i didnt really count the sage dungeons as story (dont ask me why) so i thought im gonna write a better summarized version of my opinion about totk (i have around 60% of the game, all lightroots, not yet all shrines (missing like .. 20 or so, know the reward), not all krogs (dont know the reward), not all mayoi (half know the reward?) )

(in no particular order)

good stuff (in my opinion)

the. MUSIC! god the music is good, it was good in botw too but now with much more different bosses it really is probably one of my fav soundtracks of all time (most fav are all three phases of the end fight, the pre-fight to that, the build up one before all of those, Frosgeira (wind tempel boss) the glorious mASTER KOGA and more tbh)

the build up and end boss fight(s) are fantastic, i dont think im ever not gonna have my heart racing when approaching it (despite now skipping almost the entire way bc i set a teleport thing right before it) just bc the build up is so well made and the music(again) is such a banger and the fight(s) itself is so fun too, tbh i keep wanting to play it just bc its so fun

i LOVE how many themes play into the music (endfight alone had so many layers, fav probably is ganondorfs classic theme and calamity ganons both in the same piece among much more, and daruks theme in the fire temple)

(edit) YOU. CAN. TOUCH. DA. DRAGONS!!!!

ganondorf

ganondorfs design (x3)

ganondorfs weapon designs

ganondorfs voice (japanese)

everyone elses voice (japanese)

all voices (german)

thE YIGA!!! i love everythign about them and am so happy they got to be more than just some mini mission

(edit) also the fact that they get zonau tech to work without any special ghost powers is so ????

(edit) koga can summon and use zonau tech unlimited?? hes so cool

NO stealth mission!! (as far as im aware)

bosses are very different from each other

main dungeons are not too short and not too long and mostly fun (mostly bc i personally didnt like the gerudo one), i love that you can still somewhat cheese them and do them your way

sages felt like they got a bit more involved

(edit) you gotta do more stuff before getting to the actual dungeons and i really like that, feels less like a fetch quest but that you are actually helping

(edit) each sage is actually there in the dungeon and is required for it, which is great!

each settlement saw a much bigger danger/change (tho that has more impact if you have played botw) and its problems felt much more real

shrines are well varied tho i think overall a little easy (only got stuck on two so far and later solved them easily bc when i first started them i was tired and exhausted, no brain left lol)

NPCs felt less flat + more bigger sidequests that felt like they had more impact

cool new monsters + designs

the underground was pretty appropiately creepy

the sages abilities are neat

you can refight bosses!!

stable points system is a neat way to encourage you using them

weapon fusing is neat

(edit) the forest of the krogs being corrupted like that is both creepy and a neat nod to oot

(edit) the vai gerudo outfit being gone!! (one) evil has been defeated

(edit) the health bar going so far off the middle in ganondorfs second phase is honestly just funny hnjdfdjk unfortunate that you only need the master sword and with a few perfect dodges his health melts like butter in the summer

(edit) the music when dragondorf transforms sounds so sad .. its probably meant as a oh no world is actually ending sad but i like to think of it as a oh god what did he do to himself sad

the scene where rauru seals ganondorf kinda fruity

(graphic, animations and the overall world is still fantastic)

bad stuff (in my opinion)

everything zonau they feel forced into every bit of the world and its history (i know them being somewhat alien is intentional but not like that) it feels crammed into places they werent before and shouldnt be and it makes it all feel very artificial

the glyphs/dragon tears/memories really ruined alot for me, while it gave you insight as to what happened, it felt like it showed you too much and too little at the same time and i think it would have worked better if it was all in text for once if even at all, so the past stil stayed a mystery and youd be left wondering

timetravel .. really wasnt necessary and felt more like an excuse to get rid of zelda + make her the poor little sacrificial girl again + and to make her turning into a dragon as tragic as possible, like nothing but a stepping stone to the big reveal tm

shiekah tech being not just fully irrelevant but practically erased, wiped off the world (i know about the literally last guardian parts in hateno, it feels more like an oversight tbh, purah technically using it ... tho i dont think she ever calls it that, the purah pad is jsut the sheikah stone but worse), there being no good explanation, no remains, nothing as to why it would suddendly stop working and why even the titans and ESPEICALLY the shrine of life would be destroyed, if anything why wouldnt you enshrine it as a memento to history it was such a focus in botw and so well integrated into the world that it being fully gone, not even old overgrown, or visibly reused to build homes etc., or remains of how they built the og shrines in the underground feels like a HUGE missed opportunity (seriously it would have been so easy to make the ancient shiekah base their tech on old zonau tech, without stealign the gocus but buildign a connection)

all of the continuity problems, totk feels like botw didnt happen and the excuse of 'they didnt want to confuse new players' doesnt make a lick of sense in my eyes bc; its supposed to be a sequel, if you want it to be a standalone game then dont call it a sequel- if you start to play a game with the sequel instead of the first part its your own damn fault if you get confused; if anything, it would have been a good opportuntiy to make people interested in botw so theyd buy and play that one too

ganondorfs character is very flat, you basically get to know nothing about him (yuno even calls that out midgame but its never elaborated upon nhgfrdfhkk)

the zonau and their kingdom of hyrule is presented as this so perfectly good thing to such a degree it turns creepy, the end cutscene with mineru going poof was kinda uncomfy to watch tbh

the reward for all shrines being essentially a reveal as to who the hero in the tapestry was and it being, of course, some weird half zonau is the lamest answer to a mystery i didnt want an anwser too, it doesnt feel like it came naturally either (again my point of the zonau being forced into everything)

the shrines (zonau) feel so much more unnatural than the shiekah shrines, alien in a bad way and not in a good way + really are like a bad reskin of them, their sudden appearance and use is so much less logical

back in botw i was doubtful of if the shiekah tech wasnt going to far too modern tech and cause it all to feel like a bad mix of modern tech and medival fantasy, but they balanced it perfectly (tho the eponator zero was very much the limit imo) but the zonau tech .... oversteps that line i think, it really does feel, more than anything else, that it was just bc they wanted the stuff to be in there bc it might be fun to play around with, im not against that kind of stuff mind you im all for fun, but it feels a little like they thought of a box with endless stuff to play with first and a zelda game second (if you get what i mean)

quite a few quests or things in the game seem like they are more and then end in a dead end (the worst of all is impa saying she wants to go research what could help zelda turn back, and i was excited and convinced that shed give me a quest to find some mcguffin that would do that after i beat ganon but there wasnt anything you could actually do; less bad one but disappointing nonetheless the dongos were mentioned and treated like this big awesome thing from alot of NPCs all around the map and then when you find them they are bascially just gem vending maschines)

the way zelda turns back and link gets his arm back is incredibly unsatisfying, none of them even have something like a scar, or mark from it all, zelda spent thousands of years as a dragon (a transformation that was said to cost your soul but i guess that wasnt true) and link had his arm bascially eaten by miasma and he gets it back like it was never lost, zelda returns all intact as if nothing happened, getting blasted by some magic tm by two ghosts that were supposed to be long gone is the solution to all problems!!

(edit) link losing an arm wouldnt just be super intersting but also lend itself well to lead up into the next game where his prothesis is the focus and source of abilities

(edit) zelda got done so dirty, instead of her actual interests and character to shine she just gets shoved into yet another crisis surrounded by strangers in a world that looks like hers but isnt, and all she does is beg the ancient sages to swear to help link and sacrifice herself again (can you call that fridging? bc she sure feels like she got fridged) i like zelda and i dont like how much i didnt care about her and tbh im angry at the game for that

(edit) both link and zelda not even slightly changing in the years btween botw and totk kinda boring, like a haircut can only do so much

(edit) sonia really is the wife that dies to make husband sad thing isnt she? i get that gan had to get his hands on an enigma stone but i feel like there had been better ways to do that, the fact that she dies that easily is almost funny honestly, why does ganondorf even have weapons when he can just one punch people to death (tho i find it funny to imagine he can literally just kill people in one punch but hes too prideful to do it most of the time so he always uses weapons to look more cool)

(edit) so many new characters that you barely get to see or interact with, i really ... couldnt get myself to care much

(edit) zonau tech being so irrelevant to the games story while its also the focus is .. weird, its really just play doh for the players and nothing else honestly

(edit) monsters mining sonanium feels strange bc ... they dont do anything with it? the best thing i can think of is that they were told to do that so link cant .. upgrade his battery thignies? but then again you could just destroy the mines and remaining constructs to stop it .... also you really dont need anything zonau tech related to beat gan?

(edit) ganondorf beign so utterly uninterested in their tech is weird considering how he dealt with shiekah tech (and we KNOW it can get corrupted) he should be a tech nerd tbh

my twitch VoD of the first time beating the game getting muted at the credits despite me talking over it

nitpicks (in my opninion)

(edit) ganondorf should have a bit more of a boar inspired design, as treat, i think

(edit) the enigma stone wandering back to ganondorfs forehead even after transforming is? weird? i guess an excuse for da epic last stabby but still? (how cool would it have been to have to plunge into his mouth and break it there or something)

(edit) the underground gets a lil old after a while, the fact that its pretty much the same everywhere aside from some .. very strange flowing magma is a lil boring

(edit) ganondorf could have gone way more crazy with abilities and all that, imagine hed spwan multiple miasma arms on himself when you get him to a certain level of health

(edit) i miss unique weapons, there arent even normal axes around anymore, everything is about fusing really, i miss the cool shiekah tech weapons

(edit) the forest of the krogs being largely irrelevant is kinda weird

(edit) mineru being the sage of spirit still is kinda meh, the robot is neat but i thought tauro or purah would be the surprise sage tbh

(edit) the bosses were a little easy (i did boldo gohma rather early and did it without even getting hit)

you cant talk to koga normally :(

you cant find koga again after the last fight :(

you cant refight him (to my knowledge) :(

i find it very strange that yuno seemingly lost daruk shield, despite him having inhereted it in botw

the sage powers are not .. very great integrated, while its fun to haven them run around and help you fight, to actually use their powers you have to chase after them, something that in the heat of a battle is very annoying to do, constantly activating the wrong on or them losing their charge up when they get knocked over is like trying to herd a wild pack of geese while a three headed dragon is shotting laserbeams at you

some widlife just disappearing all of the sudden is very strange (like the rhino in hebra)

some new houses or settlements would have been cool, that the material things at the sides of roads are really only for you to play around with and not to build anything that lasts

you cant fight ganondorf (non dragon, even the dragon is locked to that evening sky) in the sunlight, night or rain, i would have loved to fight him at various times of day

their refusal to show any kind of blood is honestly turnign serious scenes into very awkward ones, sonia just getting punched and she dies with not even like, losing some spit from the force or something, or the fact when you defeat ganondorfs second phase he acts mortally wounded but doesnt even look scratched is just :/

amiibo stuff while neat being included its really mostly just bloating your inventory, if i wanted 5 vaguely different link outfits then i would have gotten the amiibo for it

why hide the -now-totally-not-phantom-ganon-armor- behind such a long questline and then .. have that NOT be upgradable

they put in a house building thingy and then not let you have a roof or a tree or something :(

at some point stable points jsut get you more and more of those free staying over night tickets that i maybe used .. once at the very start and now its just accumulating in my inventory

only one new horse coat pattern :(

satori now only being a thingy that shows you caves is kinda boring, i loved the mystery around it in botw (additionally, that it shows you caves you have completed already kinda sucks)

the end of the shrines isnt that cool anymore, speaking to a mummified monk that gives you essentially his last remains of life energy is so much cooler than a statue of the oh so awesome god king and his wife

the many references and reuse of old names is neat but together with timetravel etc. it easily leads to confusing and fighting among fans for who is more 'right' and its just .. tiring

(edit) considering how much of the advertising was about the sky islands i wished there were more and bigger ones, the underground (that was a little one sided after a while, it all looking the same rly) could have been alot smaller if the sky was bigger instead

(edit) i wished there was more of a sense of .. lost life in the ruins you find, from all races, the ancient ruins are jsut some bridged and ceremonial stuff and i wished there were more like .. houses, like people actually lived there and it not being all around beign a platform for you

(edit) the fact that the half zonau hero exists mean either rauru and sonia had kids but those were clearly not important enough to ever show nor mention, or there were other mixing of them before they all mysteriously died out the fact that the ancient hero was half zonau means their genes survided till then but somehow it never came up? the tapestry still exists and impa and purah say like its a well known fact that the hero looked like that (not at all close to any modern species) when you talk to them while wearing it (the fact that the hero armor thingy is very reminiscemt of ganondorf is like some backtreading bc we were theorizing about the hero having been ganondorf once and they wanted to stop that .. but the more funny thing is the HC of its a descdendet of rauru and ganondorf nhjdfknhdgkfnhkfd) (edit to add to the HC; the game being a big battle about child support is funnier than it should be idk if nintendo knew what they were doing adding details like that)

all in all it just feels like missed opportunities, lost potential, and more a game build around some game mechanics they really wanted to get into than telling a neat story, espeically so bc they called it a sequel, most of my complaints wouldnt be there if it was some alternate thing instead

i probably forgot stuff but if i think of more i will add them later with a little note that it was added in an edit (sidenote, i find it funny how much more nuance that whole conflict would get if rauru and ganondorf were bitter exes bfdrjfbdfndk)

[antiqua-lugar]

fuck it it's veilguard plotting time

just spent three hours putting things into boxes and couldn't even go to gym because my headphones died, moving sucks, i am taking a break so it's plotting rooks for veilguard time!!! (with the help of this picrew)

main rook: male - dwarf - warrior - shadowdragons - LI: Lucanis

just a regular dwarf from a merchant family in the dwarven enclave of minrathous who went well. this is fucked up. dwarven society is fucked up. tevinter society is fucked up. i really can't sit here and not do anything about it.

his house isn't happy but his family is supportive and also they have given up on telling him what to do long ago. the one time they tried to matchmake him, his perspective wife decided to follow her dreams and ran away to antiva.

depending on how they met it's not impossible he flirted with varric. he will do it again because is he just supposed to NOT flirt with famous author varric tethras?!

tall for a dwarf to go with lucanis being a short king.

rook: female - city elf - rogue - shadowdragons - LI: neve

your regular hypercompetent servant who is actually plotting a revolution. on the side she's looking for her favourite uncle who disappeared months ago. if he got killed she would like to know by whom and shank them.

conceptually, started as the watson to neve's noir holmes and instead she became a jeeves.

rook: male - dalish elf - NOT A MAGE - grey wardens - LI: davrin

bargained his way into the grey wardens in exchange for help with his clan and now he is faithfully fighting darkspawn - preferably nearby other dalish clans, thank you very much. "wardens can't have families" but no one said anything about not checking up on your allies, did they. spent a few years in the deep roads and learnt some dwarven and also likes dwarven food. depending on the world state he might or might not have spent a night with a warden hawke. he definitely hit on velanna and she said no. his sister is a keeper.

i predict many "no, the OTHER dalish grey warden" moments.

he's supposed to be the stoic type on the outside.

rook: nb - human - mage - antiva crows - LI: emmrich

between the circle and becoming an assassin that at least can go whatever the fuck they want, at five years old they already picked becoming an assassin.

really good at disguises and going undercover despite the fact that they are REALLY FUCKING TALL so they definitely stand out in a crowd. how the fuck does that work.

they definitely aren't telling emmrich to just let them know if he needs more corpses.

they might have some white hair due to crow training do not even worry about it.

rook: male - human - ? - mourn watch - LI: taash

he's a scholar. he is doing the thedas equivalent of a phd. he is tired. picrew doesn't let me show it but he's greying and it's mostly the stress. he is 100% into whatever solas is doing because it looks extremely cool and he wants to know everything about it but also can solas stop doing it he has deadlines.

i think he'll probably not be a mage but whatever role i think will work better to be a mortalitasi assistent.

either extremely tall so he and taash can look like the biggest couple you have seen in your life or quite short so she use him as headrest.

rook: female - dalish elf - ? - lord of fortunes - LI: bellara

she genuinely thinks it's fun to hunt for treasure but also she's on a quest to retrieve elven artifacts and bring them back to the dalish.

i'm thinking she might be a mage in a year where no one really needed a second or a third so she was allowed to go adventuring as long as she promised to write back regularly.

also I like the idea that she left a guy at the (metaphorical) altar when she killed a bear for their engagement and realised she was dreading it and would rather go have another round with the bear. she gave the pelt to her mom for safekeeping "i am definitely getting married one day I promise".

she always makes sure to bring jewelry for her mother and her sisters at every arlathvhen (she WILL attend even if it kills her).

rook: male - vashoth - ? - veil jumpers - LI: harding

there aren't that many options as a vashoth to build a life but sometimes you go hunting and thinking and stumble in people doing cool fade stuff in the woods.

i honestly ship harding so much with one of my inquisitors that romancing her myself is going to annoy me a bit, I can already tell. i really like this guy tho. oldest sister is working for the company lead by my ashkari adaar in a timeline where she isn't inquisitor.

[screaming--incoherently]

Traitorous - Chapter 2

Word Count: 2.2k

Warnings: Swearing, Dylan being a bitch

| Prologue/Chapter 1 |

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Odessa was not having a good time. In the span of ten minutes, her whole world had turned upside down. And now she stood on an uneven concrete sidewalk, beside her former friend now enemy who apparently got amnesia and just so happened to wake up on her school bus, with all of her friends convinced they knew him.

Plus, it was really cold. Odessa hated winter with a burning passion and she dressed like it: black boot-cut jeans over fleece-lined tights, fluffy socks and steel-toed combat boots (just in case), and a long-sleeved black sweater with a dark grey oversized fleece-lined denim jacket on top.

Coach Hedge blew his obnoxiously loud whistle, herding everyone toward the museum. The four of them—Odessa, Piper, Jason, and Leo—hung back, trailing slightly behind the main group so they were out of earshot.

“So,” Leo started, in a helpful tone that meant he was going to be anything but helpful. “We go to the ‘Wilderness School’”—Leo made air quotes with his fingers— “Which means we’re ‘bad kids.’ Your family, or the court, or whoever, decided you were too much trouble, so they shipped you off to this lovely prison—sorry, ‘boarding school’—in Armpit, Nevada, where you learn valuable nature skills like running ten miles a day through the cacti and weaving daisies into hats! And for a special treat we go on ‘educational’ field trips with Coach Hedge, who keeps order with a baseball bat. Is it all coming back to you now?”

Odessa rolled her eyes at Leo’s explanation. He made them sound like hardened criminals—which wasn't wrong, but certainly wasn't helping Jason, who was now staring wide-eyed at the other kids like he thought one of them was going to axe murder him.

“Our class is mostly just kids with theft or drug charges,” Odessa assured him, not wanting Jason to freak out and accidentally fry someone. “The most dangerous person here is Leo, but that's only because he likes to mess with the electrical outlets and start fires.”

Leo scoffed, rolling his eyes at Odessa's comment. “That was one time, and I barely caused any damage!”

Jason was shaking, clearly overwhelmed with the entire situation. Or maybe he was just shivering from the cold. Taking a better look at him, Odessa frowned, noticing the purple t-shirt that was clearly a Camp Jupiter shirt without the letters. Jason was dressed for California weather, not Nevada in December, who/whatever had brought him here clearly hadn't thought it through very well.

“Here,” Odessa shrugged off her fleece-lined jacket, a jacket—she suddenly remembered—that Jason had given her a year earlier during a quest up in Montana. Shoving down the sudden onslaught of conflicting emotions, Odessa held it out for Jason to take, hoping he didn't question why it fit him perfectly. She wasn’t Jason’s biggest fan at the moment, but it wouldn’t be helpful if he froze. “We don't want you to have frostbite and amnesia.”

“Thank you,” Jason said, gratefully taking the jacket and slipping it on. Some of the tension left his shoulders almost immediately, and when Jason smiled at her, Odessa fought the urge to scream, or cry, or maybe both.

A few moments went by, and Odessa didn't realize she'd just been standing there, holding eye contact with Jason, until Piper cleared her throat. “Yeah, no problem,” Odessa said quickly, a slightly awkward smile on her face. She looked away, mentally cursing herself for not being able to get it together. 

Leo—as always—quickly filled the silence. “Anyway, the three of us”—he pointed at himself, Piper, and Jason—��started out here together this semester, and Odessa joined about halfway through November. We're all best friends, and you do everything I say and give me your dessert and do my chores—”

“Leo!” Piper glared at him.

Leo raised his hands in mock defeat. “Okay, okay, ignore that last part. Except for the friends part, we are friends.” He paused for a moment, smirking at Piper, “well, Piper's a little more than your friend, and Odessa's secretly in love with m—”

Odessa elbowed Leo in the side just as Piper snapped, “Leo! Stop it.”

Piper looked incredibly flustered, and Jason also was suddenly very red. More than a friend?… It took Odessa a moment longer than it should have to realize the meaning behind that statement. She was silent for a moment, doing her best to keep her expression as neutral as possible.

Leo—who had doubled over after Odessa elbowed him—took a moment to catch his breath before straightening. He shot Odessa a playful glare before turning back to Piper and Jason with an impish grin on his face. “What?” He teased, “Jason should know that—”

“Leo!” Piper insisted, her eyes wide as she looked between him and Jason. “He's got amnesia of something,” she said, sounding genuinely worried. Piper turned to Odessa, obviously not trusting Leo to take the situation seriously. “We should tell somebody.”

Odessa grimaced, quickly shaking her head in response. Telling somebody was the last thing they should do, getting mortals involved into half-blood business was always a terrible idea. It was bad enough that Piper and Leo had gotten dragged into this, Odessa didn't need adults getting in her way too.

Thankfully, Leo seemed equally against the idea. “Who would we tell?” He countered, raising his eyebrows at Piper, “Coach Hedge? He'd try and fix Jason by whacking him upside the head with his bat.”

Odessa nodded in agreement. Hedge could see through the Mist, and that made him a gamble she wasn't willing to take right now. While Odessa had originally been all for the idea of handing Jason over to Hedge, now that she knew he'd lost his memories, clearly someone had sent him to where she was going to school for a reason. Odessa wasn’t going to involve anyone unless she knew for certain they weren’t a threat.

“But guys,” Piper continued to insist, “Jason needs help. He's got a concussion or—”

“Yo, 'Dessa.”

Odessa stilled, recognizing the voice instantly. Her patience was already stretched thin with the whole Jason-showing-up-with-amnesia-and-fucking-shit-up situation, Odessa didn't want to have to deal with Dylan too.

Dylan was like if Superman only had a third grade education. Muscular, handsome, the whitest smile known to man, but absolutely fucking stupid. He was dressed like he was going to a Stampede, and he spoke with a southern drawl that Odessa knew was fake as fuck.

Dylan wedged his way between Odessa and Jason, flashing her a smile clearly designed to drive women crazy. “Don't talk to these bottom feeders,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, “you're my partner remember?”

“Like hell I am,” Odessa replied, attempting to push him away.

Dylan was surprisingly strong and didn't budge as she shoved him. His grip on her shoulder tightened, and Dylan laughed as if she'd cracked a joke. “Don't be difficult, darling,” he chided, beginning to half lead/half drag Odessa away from the group. “Come on, this is your lucky day!”

“Hey!” Jason stepped forward, grabbing Dylan's arm, “she said she doesn't want to go with you.”

Dylan scoffed, sizing up Jason with a laid-back grin. He didn't take his arm off of Odessa's shoulders, instead tightening his hold on her. “Careful now,” Dylan warned, leaning a little closer to Jason and whispering, “I’ll give her back afterwards, no need to start picking fights.”

Odessa rolled her eyes, trying and failing to pull away from Dylan one last time before giving up. Coach Hedge was already suspicious of Jason, she didn't want to push it by causing a scene. “It's fine Jason,” Odessa told him, giving him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, “I'll catch up with you guys later.”

Dylan smirked triumphantly and Odessa was tempted to let Jason fight him just to wipe that stupid grin off his face. She let Dylan lead her towards the museum, tuning out whatever nonsense he was rambling on about.

Odessa didn’t pay much attention to the exhibits. She halfheartedly scanned a few infographics, the tour guide’s voice fading to incoherent background noise. Odessa was too busy worrying about Jason, about how he got his amnesia, about how he'd react to her presence when he got his memories back.

If he got his memories back.

Odessa stilled as that thought crossed her mind. If. Jason might not regain his memories. She didn't have to search for whatever monster caused his amnesia. If Jason didn't remember the war, didn't remember the arguments, the choices that had driven them apart, Odessa could have a second chance, without the pressure of being half-bloods weighing them down.

She glanced back at Jason, and the thought immediately disappeared from her mind. She could see the tension in his shoulders, the way he was looking at the world with wide, lost eyes. Instantly Odessa knew she was going to do whatever it took to get Jason's memories back. She might not be his biggest fan right now, but she wasn’t cruel enough to manipulate him into being her friend again.

“Thinking about something interesting?”

Odessa flinched, suddenly pulled out of her thoughts and back into reality. Dylan had gotten even closer to her, leaning in to whisper his question in her ear, his surprisingly cold breath tickling her neck. At some point while she was distracted they'd left the museum and entered onto the skywalk, a long horseshoe shaped walkway made entirely of glass.

“No,” Odessa lied smoothly, fighting back the urge to glance over at Jason. “I’m just tired, it's been a long day.”

The wind blew a little stronger now than it had before, her dark tresses fluttering like tendrils of shadows. Dylan chuckled, the sound as annoyingly perfect as his smile. “I'm sure it has been,” he agreed, leaning casually against the railing. “How does it feel to see Jason again after all that happened between you two?”

Odessa stilled. She started to reach for her knife before realizing she'd given her jacket to Jason. Shit. Dylan smirked at her, as if he could sense her realization that she was absolutely fucked. Over Dylan's shoulder, Odessa could see Jason and Leo, both of them looking up at the sky instead of down at the canyon. Glancing up, it became very obvious why. A circle of storm clouds, perfectly positioned over the walkway, while the rest of the sky was perfectly clear.

“You're a ventus,” Odessa muttered, cursing herself for not noticing the signs earlier. “What do you want with me? How do you know about Jason?”

Electricity crackled in Dylan's eyes, his grin widening. “I’m impressed, ‘Dessa,” Dylan praised, dropping his fake southern accent, “even your so-called protector hasn't caught on to what I am yet.” He nodded towards Coach Hedge, who was still glaring over at Jason every few seconds.

Odessa frowned. Protector? She wasn't entirely sure what Coach Hedge was, but he certainly wasn’t much of a protector. In her peripherals, she noticed Jason mutter something to Leo and Piper before walking towards Coach Hedge. They made brief eye contact as he walked past and Odessa forced a smile before turning back to Dylan.

“What do you know about Jason's amnesia?” She demanded, not bothering to keep her voice down. The wind had picked up enough that only Dylan was close enough to hear her, the storm clouds growing darker and darker the longer they spent on the skywalk.

Dylan shrugged, his blinding smile disappearing for a moment while he contemplated his answer. “Not much. My mistress is not responsible for it, I know that for sure.” He leaned back against the railing, scanning the clusters of teenagers spread out around the skywalk. “She is a fair lady, much less volatile than Saturn was. I'm sure you two would get along well.”

The wind around them calmed down slightly, the eye of the storm forming around Dylan. “I don't involve myself with that kind of business anymore,” she told him firmly, her eyes still watching Jason as he spoke to Hedge across the skywalk. “I've made that mistake once, I'm not doing it again.”

Dylan sighed disappointedly. “You’ve chosen your side out of fear, Odessa,” he warned her, his eyes crackling with electricity. “You are stronger than that.” Dylan pushed himself off of the railing, momentarily blinding her with that freakishly white smile. “My offer remains, if you change your mind later,” he promised, glancing up at the storm clouds gathering above. “I'd go back inside, if I were you. My mistress has business with the other half-bloods, and I don't want to hurt you if I don't have to.” 

Odessa's attention snapped to Dylan, “what business? What other half-bloods?”

Dylan grinned, nodding in the direction of Leo and Piper. “Your friends. You didn't know they were demigods?” He chuckled, shaking his head, “well, I guess it is harder for you to sense it than it is for me.” He shrugged nonchalantly, giving Odessa one last award-winning smile. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go kill your friends.”

And before Odessa could react, Dylan snapped his fingers and the storm descended on the skywalk in full force.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 2 is up! I'm so glad that people are actually reading this fanfic, I'm having a lot of fun writing it! Next chapter will be posted next week! <3 Mack

[arcadian-vampire]

Do you have an info or art about the other characters involved with Kalamari??? Esp Glass since you mentioned them directly!!! OwO

Okay SO I do have a few things!! Most of these are old and a lil messy/outdated, so I'm really hoping to whip out a bunch of new stuff soon, but!! I'm gonna put everything under a ReadMore link again bc boy I have things to say and none of it is organized or really coherent so good luck (and also I am still shy)

I've got my two protagonists, Iso (I-20) and Aerani--

[These are Old outfit designs, I redesigned them sorta recently but haven't finished a drawing of them, sobs] I first drew Aerani in like, 2016 I think? and Iso followed not long after! Iso is a bunny chimera, so he's got big silly ears, wahoo. Chimeras have identification codes to keep track of like, when they were created, and Iso's is I-20: Chimera Generation I, Specimen Number 20. Aerani gave him the nickname Iso <3

Here was Iso in like. 2017? 2018? idk but it was ages ago. He's changed quite a bit, mostly bc I would Constantly misplace sketchbooks and Constantly forget exactly what things looked like lksad;f

This era of my art was so cute,, I wanna draw hair more like that again tbh

Here's a semi-recent doodle wip of their new outfits, hoorayyy. Don't mind how unfinished it is and my silly notes all over the place. I'm gonna just redraw this at some point bc my art has improved since then aklsdjf;lskdk

Comfy boys!! Iso's clothing is always kinda ill-fitting bc he Hates skintight stuff, and he is gonna lose those cute slouchy boots SO fast bc I'm gonna drop him in the desert. Woe, sand be upon ye

Iso used to live in a mansion w a rich guy that was Kind Of A Dick, until that guy's daughter-- Iso's childhood best friend-- snapped and killed her dad w a fireplace poker. I haven't drawn her yet and honestly How Dare I. I wanna draw her making flower crowns w Iso

I was Nervous about jumping straight into making smth about them, because I feel like I need wayyyy more practice to be able to tell the story I really wanna tell, so I ended up scooping up my dorky purple merchant Kalamari like 'you know what sure, you can be the protagonist of my practice project and it will be Silly As Hell'. I call my main Eventual Goal 'Quote Unquote Quest', so Kalamari's adventure I'm calling 'Quote Unquote Quest Negative One', since it becomes before the main thing! Aerani will be in that practice project as a side character, bc he's Glass's little brother, but Iso won't be

Also, please witness Aerani's pet, a squishy jello-like blob he calls a frog. It is absolutely not a frog. It sits on his head a lot and makes squeaky lil noises

Here's another chimera! She's much older than Iso, from gen F! The only one left from gen F actually. She calls herself Fa, and she doesn't like to talk, she just hangs out by a pond all day to watch the fish

This is OLD so I'm def gonna redraw it soon, but here's one of my antagonists! They by the name Scratch, and they're sort of. the opposite of Kalamari. I have So Much I wanna draw abt them omg,,

While I do like their color palette, I'm gonnadesign one to match. everyone else. The colors I wanna use for this project (that might eventually change ofc) are brown, orange, golden yellow, magenta, a slightly more purple magenta, violet, indigo, and blueee, with Very Dark Blue and Very Light versions of the other colors for lines and junk. Basically Kalamari Colors ft. some extras to spice things up, since my silly littol practice project revolves around her and how he sees the world:

Everything is very saturated of course bc I'm. cannot and will not use desaturated colors. It's kind of like my chunky lineart-- I can try So Hard to make it thin, but that just doesn't look right to me and as I work woopsie everything is thick and I'm dying

AND FINALLY. MESSY SKETCHY WIP OF GAY PEOPLE IN MY ART PROGRAM

Glass and Kalamari!!!!!!! I hadn't drawn Glass yet and I'm crying bc she's turning out so cute. sobs. I was working on this before I realized oh shit yeah the oc tournament is posting Kalamari tomorrow, and I had to stop to go finish up my other art + my oc sideblog bc I wanted that to all be ready to go

[ladyirisreviews]

Lufia & the Fortress of Doom - Review

Lufia is a Super Nintendo RPG published by Taito mere 2 months after Breath of Fire 1, in June of 1993, and like with Breath of Fire, this was a game wanted to play for quite a long time, so I was quite excited about it.

Because it is an RPG from the same era, I can't help but compare this game to Breath of Fire, which I'll do as the review goes along, but first I want to start by describing the plot of the game a bit.

The game starts at the end of the adventure of Maxim and his group, on their quest to defeat evil beings known as the Sinistrals, an evil group of beings that came out of nowhere and started wracking havoc around the world.

They succeed in defeating them, and we get text explaining that it's been 90 years since the Sinistrals were defeated and everything is at peace.

We now see a descendant of Maxim as a kid, meeting a lost girl called Lufia, except she's got no memory, she gets along with Maxim's descendant and the innkeeper decides to take care of her, since she doesn't have anywhere else to go.

9 years pass and the main character, now a soldier for his village, hears that a nearby village is under attack and goes alone to investigate, only to discover that is has already been destroyed.

He then comes back to his hometown to gather help, but no one besides lufia goes with him, when he arrives again he discovers that one of the Sinistrals is the cause of the destruction, and he swears to defeat them once more, starting his journey like his ancestor did almost 100 years ago.

The main plot itself isn't anything that unique by this point, evil entities show up, and your job is to beat them.

But what it has over Breath of Fire, is that there is a bunch of characters interacting with each other, from beginning to end, characters will at some points talk and reveal some aspects of their personalities, and the relationships they have between them, this is especially true with the main character and lufia.

The game also attempts to give the side characters some personality, even having NPCs that will reference another NPC in a different town.

There's also a bit of a personal motivation in the main character, as these are the enemies his ancestor fought so many years ago, and on top of that, the game has some twists that keep it interesting.

Still, this game still has sections where a lot of dialogue is just "go here, do that, or get that" proceeded with what basically are fetch quests to get further into the game.

In general, it's a step ahead of Breath of Fire 1, and I would recommend it over it for this reason alone, but I would lie if I said the plot stays interesting for every moment of the game, it has some slow parts.

Now, moving over to the gameplay, the combat is a basic turn-based battle system, with a few quirks, like with most RPGs, your basic options are to attack, to use an item, cast a spell, guard, or run.

Both normal attacks and magic spells are extremely important, when you first get lufia into your party her strength is very lacking but her spells really pack a punch.

On top of this, there's some equipable rings that amplify the effect of various spell types, so magic as an offensive tool is very valuable in this game.

The support spells also play a big role in the gameplay, mostly on bosses though, but it's very nice that they do play a role at all.

The first quirk is how you operate the menu in battle, to access an option you need to hold a direction and then press A, this makes menuing in battles feel more fluid when you get used to this system, only requiring holding a direction and pressing A, as opposed to pressing a direction multiple times to select an option.

Sure, there's still menuing left to do when you need to pick a spell or an item, and I'm kind of making a big deal out of a small feature, but in the grand scheme of things, this small feature could end up saving a lot of minutes after the hundreds of battles you will have to face.

Menus in RPGs are an often overlooked part of this genre of games, bad menus could and will lead to a lot of wasted time, so as far as I know, this is one of the first attempts at making menuing faster and more fluid, at least in the battles.

To get the rest of the menus out of the way, I'll just quickly mention that shop menus are alright too, they let you see what effects the equipment will have on your stats, and lets you purchase and sell items in bulk, and even if the inventory is similar to breath of fire, it's much easier to navigate and organize.

A thing breath of fire had over lufia though, is that you were able to map a specific menu to any button you wanted, having the spells and items menus ready with just a button, even if there was almost no reason to check all the other menus, it was nice that you could do this.

Now coming back to the actual gameplay, random encounters pose danger as opposed to being just time wasters, they can, and will often k.o. some of your party members if you don't play your cards right, so there is planning required on every fight.

You need to be even more careful because attacks don't track to another enemy when the enemy you selected dies before the character gets to act, so in order to be optimal and have the danger be at a minimum, you also have to be aware of how strong your characters are and have an idea of how much hp a monster has.

However there's a problem with this, and that's the other quirk the battle system has, and it's that the turn orders are not consistent, the actions you pick don't start after selecting them, or after your whole team selects them.

The speed and weight stats influence the order, a character might be fast to get their turn first and attack just after you pick their action, but a lot of times you will pick to attack an enemy, and the character will take so long to act, by the time it acts the enemy is long gone.

With random battles that pose a risk, the way the game handles the turn order can make it a bit frustrating, this isn't a problem in boss battles though, and you can take advantage of all the options you have in them, but it is rough on the random battles.

You also can't select a specific enemy sometimes, since enemies come in groups of the same types or as a single unit, and when you pick a group it randomly selects 1 of the enemies, making spells that hit a certain group of enemies, or all enemies very valuable, but making it tedious to deal with if you don't have any available.

The battle system isn't perfect, but at least it demands your attention which I think is better than mindlessly pressing the A button over and over again.

Encounter rates however, do be kind of rough, you can take less than 5 steps and a random encounter will pop up, there's an item called sweet water that lowers the encounter rate, and it kind of feels like the encounter rate that should have been from the start, I used it for most of the time in my playthrough and I had to do virtually no grinding, so I really recommend getting quite a lot of those to not get frustrated while traveling the overworld or a dungeon.

That's pretty much everything related to the actual gameplay, and I gotta say that I prefer it much more to breath of fire, even if it has some issues.

The graphics are not outstanding, with most dungeons looking exactly the same, but with a different color, cities, and castles also look the same, the only exception to this is the final dungeon.

The enemy sprites have nothing wrong with them, but all of them got a slight shaking animation applied to them, and I don't feel like they add anything, I feel like it would have been better if they were static, and only moved when doing an attack or a spell, it just looks awkward the way it is.

Bosses are static though, and some have glowing colors that look very cool, breath of fire might be better looking, but I think graphics are one of the least important aspects of an RPG, and the gameplay on this game, in general, is much better than Breath of Fire's in my opinion.

Now, would I recommend this game? again, like in Breath of Fire, I would only recommend it if

A) you really like old RPGs.

B) you like playing a series from the start instead of jumping to the actual good games in it.

C) you need a game to grind while watching videos or a stream.

Because there's lots of better games out there already, but the way I am, I like seeing the improvements they do on the following games of a series, and even then, I found it much more enjoyable than Breath of Fire, engaging combat and characters actually interacting was a breath of fresh air (no pun intended).

[ideas-on-paper]

The Thorian on Feros - Questions and Musings

Following the (very weird) main questline with the Thorian on Feros, the ending left me with quite a few questions. Mainly, it's about the very cryptic explanations Shiala gave.

Q1: Upon being "vomited out" by the Thorian, Shiala explains that she initially accompanied Matriarch Benezia on her quest to dissuade Saren from his path. However, the two fell victim to being "indoctrinated", a kind of brainwashing that occurs when you're near Saren's ship. Shiala describes the process as subtle, but irreversible - and yet, after being released by the Thorian, she seems to be the same person she was before being indoctrinated. So, if this condition truly cannot be reversed, does that mean she was essentially "born anew" from the Thorian's body?

Q2: When explaining the purpose of the Cipher, Shiala says that to understand the message from the Prothean transmitter, "you must think like a Prothean". You have to understand "their culture, their history, their very existence", and she states that it's knowledge "that cannot be taught, but simply exists" - if you tried, it would be like "describing color to a creature without eyes". However, even though the Thorian was there when Prothean civilization was thriving, that does not make the Thorian itself a Prothean - watching someone live and living life yourself are still two very different things. (I believe what Shiala actually meant to say is "perception": History and culture can be imparted in a way that makes you understand them at least on a factual level - it's the personal experience which cannot be replicated, seeing the world through someone else's eyes.) Still, it's quite curious that the Thorian apparently learned the Prothean way of thinking by simply devouring their bodies. Like, is it even possible to read someone else's mind if they're dead?

Q3: Moreover, I find it interesting that Shiala claims that the Cipher contains "the experience of an entire people", "a viewpoint spanning thousands of Prothean generations". To acquire something like this, the Thorian would have to consume dead Protheans over a very long period of time - and even then, the memory would be limited to the Protheans inhabiting Feros. There was the theory that people may be able to genetically pass down memories, but this assumption has mostly been disproven. It's not possible for people to pass down recollections of specific events or life experiences through their genes, but there are genetically programmed reactions to certain stimuli based on past experiences (for example, there are studies that suggest the general fear of spiders and snakes is hereditary in humans). However, while the reaction is preserved, the reason for it is not, which makes sense since it would probably be superfluous information from an evolutionary standpoint. So, with the possibility of genetic memory ruled out, that only leaves tracing the electrical currents in the brain - which puts us right back at the beginning, because how the hell are you supposed to "read" the nerve impulses of someone who's basically brain-dead? The whole thing is just so confusing, really.

[foibles-fables]

You shared your thoughts on Talanah’s quest (which I agree was totally awful) but have you finished the full game yet? I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the overall main story.

I have--I finished the main quest a few days go, and am mopping up side quests and other activities now. But I certainly have thoughts on the overall story. I've been wanting to sit down and write a post about it, so I think this might be the perfect motivation to actually do so!

Spoilers for the entirety of Horizon Forbidden West's main quest story lurk under the cut here. I hope I remember all of my praise and criticism as construct this, because I really don't wanna do this more than once, lmao. (but catch me reblogging like "AND ANOTHER THING--!" multiple times anyway.) This got a little long so uh, hang on tight! Always open to kind discussion about my thoughts, and I'd love to see/hear all of yours!

HFW was a game that tried to do a lot of things, and in doing so, failed to stick the landing on some of the most important of them. Very good ideas with a lack of follow-through. I--don't really want to come right out of the gate saying that I'm disappointed? I'm not even sure "disappointed" is the right word. But it's the one coming to mind. And I suppose maybe that was inevitable, considering how expectations have been mounting for over a year! It just feels like it aimed FAR wide of the Horizon vibe we were spoiled with in ZD, and I think I've identified a few reasons for this.

I know I talked about this a little bit in my Burning Blooms/Need to Know post, but the first rough spot is the writing. (trust me, this is NOT me claiming that l could do any better. Just my observations.) I'm...really wondering what happened here. I know Jon Gonzalez left as narrative director in 2020, but it seems like the structure of HFW would've been in place by then. In any case, it entirely lacked the elegance of Zero Dawn's narrative. The writing was so heavy-handed and ham-fisted and so very surface-level at every turn, which, IMO, robbed it of emotional depth. Everything felt stripped down in a way that encouraged instant consumption--unlike in ZD, when I'd really have to sit there and chew on what was presented in a cutscene or the lore. Tropes are not a negative thing, but there were so many played straight for the sake of themselves. I felt like a nail begging mercy from the Narrative Big Idea hammer by the ending.

Because of its lack of subtlety and depth and nuance, I personally do not think Aloy's "maybe I don't have to do this alone" epiphany was really...earned? Her growth felt like it happened because it should have happened, not because it actually did. I fail to see where she was challenged by her friends, or truly relied on them, as opposed to them just...being there in the (missed opportunity in and of itself) base, talking about pizza and ice skating. Tied into this is the fact that returning characters (including Elisabet herself, if we can please count her here) were downright neglected in their development--either being lobotomized or backsliding or staying The Same, Only Louder. These are the folks who should be adapting to a world becoming a LOT bigger (both physically, in the West, and temporally/informationally, with the Focuses). I didn't see any of them being truly challenged or changed, and that's a shame because they're the ones I was invested in seeing develop.

Then we get to Beta. Whom I loved. But who represents missed opportunities. I think the "my sister" line with Beta was wildly unearned. In fact, IMO, there were tons of moments that missed the mark re: Aloy's reactions to and interactions with Beta. The Rost conversation was great but...did it really resolve anything for Beta or just point out that she didn't have Dad? Lol. I'm also...kind of miffed that Aloy's "I'm no longer alone" moment came about mostly because of her [checks notes] fellow clone and GAIA--both things tethering her to her otherness and to the old world--rather than her allies, whom she continued to treat as underlings of a sort. They could have cemented her unique and valuable place in the current world DESPITE her being entrenched in both. But that's much more of a personal quibble than other criticism I've seen floating around.

(Not to mention...Aloy's "maybe I don't have to hold myself up to Elisabet's existence and standards" moment--which should have been a big deal IMO--came up in a completely missable interaction with an object in Aloy's room at the base. Talk about oof.)

The ending simply didn't hit me in the chest like it did with ZD, and I think that's because the writing itself did all the digesting for me. Which very much colored my impression of the ending. I couldn't help but think of all the missed opportunities, both for lore reference and emotional impact.

My other major criticism is the Zenith plot in and of itself. IMO, Forbidden West introduced and followed through with what should have been a Game 3 conflict in Game 2. Way, way premature. We all knew it from the lore--the Odyssey was going to come into relevance in some way or another at some point. I feel like this was much too early to bring it into play, though, and it fundamentally shifted the vibe. I really do think we needed a few more narrative steps before bringing the heavier classic sci-fi themes in.

For instance, a Game 2 where the main objective is subfunction wrangling to restore GAIA, with the Regalla plot (WOEFULLY UNDERUSED) including Sylens as the main conflict, and with a late-game reveal of the Odyssey (and maybe the Zeniths with it) being a new threat for Game 3 would have felt much more elegant and less whiplashy, IMO. That way, APOLLO acquisition would've been a series-ender, and they wouldn't have had to invent the bigger fish of Nemesis to create Horizon Zero Three's existential conflict. (which...also...if you want a big angy destroy-humanity AI antagonist, look, VAST SILVER is already right there.) I know the Zenith plot criticism is probably very much YMMV, but it's one of the main factors in me being a little "hm." overall. The Zeniths being a part of everything now made the Horizon aspects we were so used to feel very stretched-thin.

BUT!!! I don't want anyone to think my criticisms equate to a lack of love! Because I adore this world, and that hasn't changed one bit. And it's hard to be critical of something you enjoy so deeply--and sometimes that's precisely why we're so critical of them. So let's please move on to the good stuff before anyone gets too mad at me!!

I found myself entirely enthralled by so much of HFW. The world is beautiful, the soundtrack is phenomenal. The gameplay is fucking fun, and this comes from someone who is Not a gamer. The Thebes quest was so masterfully done in every way--it was THEE shining star of the game. The side quests and errands are WORLDS more engaging than ZD's. The new characters--Zo, Kotallo, Alva, plenty of smaller side friends--were given great charisma and seamless integration. The tribal lore for the Tenakth, the Utaru, and the Quen (in particular) continued to be so thoughtful and I wish we had gotten to experience much more of a narrative focus on them than we did. Honestly, so much of the world is stunning and improves on HZD in every way. I just wish it could've hit the mark with me on everything above.

Again, I love this series, even if HFW tripped up on some of my expectations and points of enjoyment. And I've reached a point where I'm incredibly excited for what Horizon Zero Three will have to offer. Enthusiastic, despite everything, to see what's planned. I'm pretty sure my horrible spatial relations will keep me doing these relic ruins and vantages until it's released anyway.

[ot3]

i watched red vs blue: zero with my dear friends today and i was asked to “post” my “thoughts” on the subject. Please do not click this readmore unless, for some reason, you want to read three thousand words on the subject of red vs blue: zero critical analysis. i highly doubt that’s the reason anyone is following me, but hey. 

anyway. here you have it. 

Here are my opinions on RVB0 as someone who has quite literally no nostalgia for any older RVB content. I’ve seen seasons 1-13 once and bits and pieces of it more than once here and there, but I only saw it for the first time within the past couple of months. I’ve literally never seen any other RT/AH content. I can name a few people who worked on OG Red vs. Blue but other than Mounty Oum I have NO idea who is responsible for what, really, or what anything else they’ve ever worked on is, or whether or not they’re awful people. I know even less about the people making RVB0 - All I know is that the main writer is named Torrian but I honestly don’t even know if that’s a first name, a last name, or a moniker. All this to say; nothing about my criticism is rooted in any perceived slight against the franchise or branding by the new staff members, because I don’t know or care about any of it. In fact, I’m going to try and avoid any direct comparison between RVB0 and earlier seasons of RVB as a means of critique until the very end, where I’ll look at that relationship specifically.

So here is my opinion of RVB0 as it stands right now:

1. The Writing

Everything about RVB0 feels as if it was written by a first-time writer who hasn’t learned to kill his darlings. The narrative is both simultaneously far too full, leaving very little breathing room for character interaction, and oddly sparse, with a story that lacks any meaningful takeaway, interesting ideas, or genuine emotional connection. It also feels like it’s for a very much younger audience - I don’t mean this as a negative at all. I love tv for kids. I watch more TV for kids than I do for adults, mostly, but I think it’s important to address this because a lot of the time ‘this is for kids’ is used to act like you’re not allowed to critique a narrative thoroughly. It definitely changes the way you critique it, but the critique can still be in good faith.  I watched the entirety of RVB0 only after it was finished, in one sitting, and I was giving it my full attention, essentially like it was a movie. I’m going to assume it was much better to watch in chunks, because as it stood, there was literally no time built into the narrative to process the events that had just transpired, or try and predict what events might be coming in the future. When there’s no time to think about the narrative as you’re watching it, the narrative ends up as being something that happens to the audience, not something they engage with. It’s like the difference between taking notes during a lecture or just sitting and listening. If you’re making no attempt to actively process what’s happening, it doesn’t stick in your mind well. I found myself struggling to recall the events and explanations that had immediately transpired because as soon as one thing had happened, another thing was already happening, and it was like a mental juggling act to try and figure out which information was important enough to dwell on in the time we were given to dwell on it.

Which brings me to another point - pacing. Every event in the show, whether a character moment, a plot moment, or a fight scene, felt like it was supposed to land with almost the exact same amount of emotional weight. It all felt like The Most Important Thing that had Yet Happened. And I understand that this is done as an attempt to squeeze as much as possible out of a rather short runtime, but it fundamentally fails. When everything is the most important thing happening, it all fades into static. That’s what most of 0’s narrative was to me: static. It’s only been a few hours since I watched it but I had to go step by step and type out all of the story beats I could remember and run it by my friends who are much more enthusiastic RVB fans than I am to make sure I hadn’t missed or forgotten anything. I hadn’t, apparently, but the fact that my takeaway from the show was pretty accurate and also disappointingly lackluster says a lot. Strangely enough, the most interesting thing the show alluded to - a holo echo, or whatever the term they used was - was one of the things least extrapolated upon in the show’s incredibly bulky exposition. Benefit of the doubt says that’s something they’ll explore in future seasons (are they getting more? Is that planned? I just realized I don’t actually know.)

And bulky it was! I have quite honestly never seen such flagrant disregard for the rule of “show, don’t tell.” There was not a single ounce of subtlety or implication involved in the storytelling of RVB0. Something was either told to you explicitly, or almost entirely absent from the narrative. Essentially zilch in between. We are told the dynamic the characters have with each other, and their personality pros and cons are listed for us conveniently by Carolina. The plot develops in exposition dumps. This is partially due to the series’ short runtime, but is also very much a result of how that runtime was then used by the writers. They sacrificed a massive chunk of their show for the sake of cramming in a ton of fight scenes, and if they wanted to keep all of those fight scenes, it would have been necessary to pare down their story and characters proportionally in comparison, but they didn’t do that either. They wanted to have it both ways and there simply wasn’t enough time for it. 

The story itself is… uninteresting. It plays out more like the flimsy premise of a video game quest rather than a piece of media to be meaningfully engaged with. RVB0 is I think something I would be pitched by a guy who thinks the MCU and BNHA are the best storytelling to come out of the past decade. It is nothing but tropes. And I hate having to use this as an insult! I love tropes. The worst thing about RVB0 is that nothing it does is wholly unforgivable in its own right. Hunter x Hunter, a phenomenal shonen, is notoriously filled with pages upon pages of detailed exposition and explanations of things, and I absolutely love it. Leverage, my favorite TV show of all time, is literally nothing but a five man band who has to learn to work as a team while seemingly systematically hitting a checklist of every relevant trope in the book. Pacific Rim is an incredibly straightforward good guys vs giant monsters blockbuster to show off some cool fight scenes such as a big robot cutting an alien in half with a giant sword, and it’s some of the most fun I ever have watching a movie. Something being derivative, clunky, poorly executed in some specific areas, narratively weak, or any single one of these flaws, is perfectly fine assuming it’s done with the intention and care that’s necessary to make the good parts shine more. I’ll forgive literally any crime a piece of media commits as long as it’s interesting and/or enjoyable to consume. RVB0 is not that. I’m not sure what the main point of RVB0 was supposed to be, because it seemingly succeeds at nothing. It has absolutely nothing new or innovative to justify its lack of concern for traditional storytelling conventions. Based solely on the amount of screentime things were given, I’d be inclined to say the narrative existed mostly to give flimsy pretense for the fight scenes, but that’s an entire other can of worms.

2. The Visuals + Fights

I have no qualms with things that are all style and no substance. Sometimes you just want to see pretty colors moving on the screen for a while or watch some cool bad guys and monsters or whatever get punched. RVB0 was not this either. The show fundamentally lacked a coherent aesthetic vision. Much of the show had a rather generic sci-fi feel to it with the biggest standouts to this being the very noir looking cityscape, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like something from a batman game, or the temple, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like a world of warcraft raid. They were obviously attempting to get variety in their environment design, which I appreciate, but they did this without having a coherent enough visual language to feel like it was all part of the same world. In general, there was also just a lack of visual clarity or strong shots. The value range in any given scene was poor, the compositions and framing were functional at best, and the character animation was unpleasantly exaggerated. It just doesn’t really look that good beyond fancy rendering techniques.

The fight scenes are their entire own beast. Since ‘FIGHT SCENE’ is the largest single category of scenes in the show, they definitely feel worth looking at with a genuine critical eye. Or, at least, I’d like to, but honestly half the time I found myself almost unable to look at them. The camera is rarely still long enough to really enjoy what you’re watching - tracking the motion of the character AND the camera at such constant breakneck high speeds left little time to appreciate any nuances that might have been present in the choreography or character animation. I tried, believe me, I really did, but the fight scenes leave one with the same sort of dizzy convoluted spectacle as a Michael Bay transformers movie. They also really lacked the impact fight scenes are supposed to have.

It’s hard to have a good, memorable fight scene without it doing one of three things: 1. Showing off innovative or creative fighting styles and choreography 2. Making use of the fight’s setting or environment in an engaging and visually interesting way or 3. Further exploring a character’s personality or actions by the way they fight. It’s also hard to do one of these things on its own without at least touching a bit on the other two. For the most part, I find RVB0’s fight scenes fail to do this. Other than rather surface level insubstantial factors, there was little to visually distinguish any of RVB0’s fight scenes from each other. Not only did I find a lot of them difficult to watch and unappealing, I found them all difficult to watch and unappealing in an almost identical way. They felt incredibly interchangeable and very generic. If you could take a fight scene and change the location it was set and also change which characters were participating and have very little change, it’s probably not a good fight scene. 

I think “generic” is really just the defining word of RVB0 and I think that’s also why it falls short in the humor department  as well.

3. The Comedy

Funny shit is hard to write and humor is also incredibly subjective but I definitely got almost no laughs out of RVB0. I think a total of three. By far the best joke was Carolina having a cast on top of her armor, which, I must stress, is an incredibly funny gag and I love it. But overall I think the humor fell short because it felt like it was tacked on more than a natural and intentional part of this world and these characters. A lot of the jokes felt like they were just thrown in wherever they’d fit, without any build up to punchlines and with little regard for what sort of joke each character would make. Like, there was some, obviously Raymond’s sense of humor had the most character to it, but the character-oriented humor still felt very weak. When focusing on character-driven humor, there’s a LOT you can establish about characters based on what sort of jokes they choose to make, who they’re picking as the punchlines of these jokes, and who their in-universe audience for the jokes is. In RVB0, the jokes all felt very immersion-breaking and self aware, directed wholly towards the audience rather than occurring as a natural result of interplay between the characters. This is partially due to how lackluster the character writing was overall, and the previously stated tight timing, but also definitely due to a lack of a real understanding about what makes a joke land. 

A rule of thumb I personally hold for comedy is that, when push comes to shove, more specific is always going to be more funny. The example I gave when trying to explain this was this:

saying two characters had awkward sex in a movie theater: funny

saying two characters had an awkward handjob in a cinemark: even funnier

saying two characters spent 54 minutes of 11:14's 1:26 runtime trying out some uncomfortably-angled hand stuff in the back of a dilapidated cinemark that lost funding halfway through retrofitting into a dinner theater: the funniest

The more specific a joke is, the more it relies on an in-depth understanding of the characters and world you’re dealing with and the more ‘realistic’ it feels within the context of your media. Especially with this kind of humor. When you’re joking with your friends, you don’t go for stock-humor that could be pulled out of a joke book, you go for the specific. You aim for the weak spots. If a set of jokes could be blindly transplanted into another world, onto another cast of characters, then it’s far too generic to be truly funny or memorable. I don’t think there’s a single joke in RVB0 where the humor of it hinged upon the characters or the setting.

Then there’s the issue of situational comedy and physical comedy. This is really where the humor being ‘tacked on’ shows the most. Once again, part of what makes actually solid comedy land properly is it feeling like a natural result of the world you have established. Real life is absurd and comical situations can be found even in the midst of some pretty grim context, and that’s why black comedy is successful, and why comedy shows are allowed to dip into heavier subject matter from time to time, or why dramas often search for levity in humor. It’s a natural part of being human to find humor in almost any situation. The key thing, though, once again, is finding it in the situation. Many of RVB0’s attempts at humor, once again, feel like they would be the exact same jokes when stripped from their context, and that’s almost never good. A pretty fundamental concept in both storytelling in general but particularly comedy writing is ‘setup and payoff’. No joke in RVB0 is a reward for a seemingly innocuous event in an earlier scene or for an overlooked piece of environmental design. The jokes pop in when there’s time for them in between all the exposition and fighting, and are gone as soon as they’re done. There’s no long term, underlying comedic throughline to give any sense of coherence or intent to the sense of humor the show is trying to establish. Every joke is an isolated one-off quip or one-liner, and it fails to engage the audience in a meaningful way.

All together, each individual component of RVB0 feels like it was conjured up independently, without any concern to how it interacted with the larger product they were creating. And I think this is really where it all falls apart. RVB0 feels criminally generic in a way reminiscent of mass-market media which at least has the luxury of attributing these flaws, this complete and total watering down of anything unique, to heavy oversight and large teams with competing visions. But I don’t think that’s the case for RVB0. I don’t know much about what the pipeline is like for this show, but I feel like the fundamental problem it suffers from is a lack of heart.

In comparison to Red vs. Blue

Let's face it. This is a terrible successor to Red vs. Blue. I wouldn’t care if NONE of the old characters were in it - that’s not my problem. I haven’t seen past season 13 because from what I heard the show already jumped the shark a bit and then some. That’s not what makes it a poor follow up. What makes it a bad successor is that it fundamentally lacks any of the aspects of the OG RVB that made it unique or appealing at all. I find myself wondering what Torrian is trying to say with RVB0 and quite literally the only answer I find myself falling back onto is that he isn’t trying to say anything at all. Regardless of what you feel about the original RVB, it undeniably had things to say. The opening “why are we here” speech does an excellent job at establishing that this is a show intended to poke fun at the misery of bureaucracy and subservience to nonsensical systems, not just in the context of military life, but in a very broad-strokes way almost any middle-class worker can relate to. At the end of the day, fiction is at its best when it resonates with some aspect of its audience’s life. I know instantly which parts of the original Red vs Blue I’m supposed to relate to. I can’t say anything even close to that about 0.

RVB is an absurdist parody that heavily satirizes aspects of the military and life as a low-on-the-food-chain worker in general that almost it’s entire target audience will be familiar with. The most significant draw of the show to me was how the dialogue felt like listening to my friends bicker with each other in our group chats. It required no effort for me to connect with and although the narrative never outright looked to the camera and explained ‘we are critiquing the military’s stupid red tape and self-fullfilling eternal conflict’ they didn’t need to, because the writing trusted itself and its audience enough to believe this could be conveyed. It is, in a way, the complete antithesis to the badass superhero macho military man protagonist that we all know so well. RVB was saying something, and it was saying it in a rather novel format.

Nothing about RVB0 is novel. Nothing about RVB0 says anything. Nothing about it compels me to relate to any of these characters or their situations. RVB0 doesn’t feel like absurdism, or satire. RVB0 feels like it is, completely uncritically, the exact media that RVB itself was riffing off of. Both RVB0 and RVB when you watch them give you the feeling that what you’re seeing here is kids on a playground larping with toy soldiers. It’s all ridiculous and over the top cliche stupid garbage where each side is trying to one-up the other. The critical difference is, in RVB, we’re supposed to look at this and laugh at how ridiculous this is. In RVB0 we’re supposed to unironically think this is all pretty badass. 

The PFL arc of the original RVB existed to show us that setting up an elite team of supersoldiers with special powers was something done in bad faith, with poor outcomes, that left everyone involved either cruel, damaged, or dead. It was a bad thing. And what we’re seeing in RVB0 is the same premise, except, this time it’s good. We’re supposed to root for this format. RVB0 feels much more like a demo reel, cutscenes from a video game that doesn’t exist, or a shonen anime fanboy’s journal scribbling than it feels like a piece of media with any objective value in any area.  In every area that RVB was anti-establishment, RVB0 is pure undiluted establishment through and through.  

[lo-55]

Playing With Fire

While playing a perfectly innocent video game you get thrown into a dangerous world on the brink of incineration! At least you’re surrounded by a bunch of hot people. If nothing else you can shower them with copious, well earned affection. 

You come awake with a start. 

Everything is just a little off kilter. Like your eyes aren’t focused or you're wearing someone else's glasses. It takes you a few long minutes to realize that you’re staring down at a piece of paper. 

It’s listed one through eight, with a check box next to each number. 

At the top you see ‘Company Preference List’, and beneath that is your name scrawled in your own handwriting. But, when did you write it? And what was the list? You look up to find yourself in a library, surrounded by a bunch of other people all dressed in orange uniforms. You look down and find yourself in the same one. You recognize it as the Fire Force boiler suits. 

You touch your cheek slowly. Then poke the corner of your eyes. You’re not wearing your VR visor. And you’re not holding handles either. Are you hallucinating? You were playing the game, in the middle of some side quest. Did the game reset? This looked like a scene from the start of the game. It followed the beginning of the series, but through the eyes of a random side character researching Haijima on their own. There was some kind of revenge plot and a lot of stuff about their big sister, but you hadn’t gotten to the full reveal of the tragic back story yet. They interacted with the main characters plenty, but mostly they spent their time in their own squad, the fourth. 

You were halfway through the game, and now you were back at the start?

You look around for something to tell you what’s going on. You try to poke the menu button, but you’re not holding controllers. So all you really end up doing is poking the air between your hands with your thumbs. You’re starting to panic, when something shiny catches your attention. 

When did you get that ring? 

Plain silver on your forefinger. You poke it and gasp when the world shifts minutely. 

A flicker of fire, a figure dark against the light. It warps in and out of your vision in a split second. 

Right. Tragic back story. 

The ring was from their (your?) older sister. Now disappeared a-la-infernal fire. You were like the reverse Shinra. 

Wait. 

Shinra. 

Your head snapped around quickly from one person to the other. Most of them were boring background characters. No, no, no. Boring. Lame. Basically grey blobs. 

Were you going crazy and you couldn’t even enjoy it?! 

“Uh, hey? Are you okay?” 

Your head snaps sideways to find bright red eyes peering at you in concern. 

Red eyes. Black hair. 

You stare hard at him until the corners of his mouth start to twitch and curl upwards. 

“H-hey. Why are you staring at me?” 

Abruptly you reach over and cup his cheeks. His face is hot beneath your hands. You can touch him. You can feel the heat of his skin. He’s blushing something fierce. 

“You are… adorable,” you declare. 

He turns bright red and squeaks at you until you finally let him go. 

“What?!” 

“Did I stutter?” you prop your chin in your hand and look him over. Yep. Definitely cute. You just wanna squeeze him. But, you should probably do other things first. Like figure out what exactly is going on. 

Not that you can come outta the gate with ‘hey I was playing a video game and now I’m stuck in it, also I thought you weren’t real? What gives yo?’ 

Even you aren’t that impulsive. 

Actually, in real live you’re not very impulsive at all. That was what made games so fun, especially open world ones where you could do basically whatever you wanted. IRL you were more withdrawn than anything, even when you wanted to be social. 

Now… You could be whoever you wanted, right? 

Did you even have to follow the plot? Could you put a preference for another company and go there? Or would you still end up in the forth? And what about your abilities? In the game you’d had a choice at the beginning between a second gen ability and two third gen powers. You’d ended up picking at random, since they all seemed cool and you hadn’t been very far into the anime yet at the time. 

How would you even use those powers here, assuming that you could? 

“Sorry, I was spacing out,” you finally said, “What were you saying?” 

“Oh uh,” Shinra looked away, his grin still pulling at his face. “I was just asking if you were okay. You were looking at the form for so long, but whenever you talked about joining a company before you always said you would go to the fourth. Not that we talk a lot, so I wouldn’t know if you wanted to go to the fifth or the sixth or the seventh or-” 

“Babe, you’re rambling,” you cut in, starting to smile yourself. Even though you’re beyond confused something about Shinra puts you at ease. Everything about him seems so… warm. And yeah, the smile could be off putting. If it wasn’t so damn adorable. 

“O-oh!” aaaand he was blushing again. 

You look down at the paper, your brows furrowing. What are you even supposed to say to this? 

“I dunno,” you said at last, “I guess I was reconsidering. There’s a lot of companies, and a lot of options out there. I might end up going a totally different path if it’s not too late… What about you?” 

“Me? Well I didn’t really have a particular preference, but I heard that they’re trying to send more people to the eighth this year. Since its such a new company, and so small.” 

“Mmmm. That’s true. Maybe I’ll go there,” you muse. It would put you smack in the middle of all the action, and you could see the sweet Iris, and the too-hot-to-be-fair Maki. You could stay with adorable Shinra and the well meaning dumbass that was Arthur. Not to mention the two guys in charge. If you could get Obi to bench press you- 

Nope! Bad! Focus on the task at hand. No thirsting over captains right now! 

“I was thinking the same thing,” Shinra admitted, looking down at his own paper. 

“Yeah? I guess such a small company would make it easy for you to stand out and come a hero, right?” 

Shinra looked startled. You offered him a sweet smile and turned back to your paper and picked up your pen. 

You marked your preferences. 

Eighth, seventh, fourth, second, fifth, sixth, third, first. 

“The eighth and the seventh?” Shinra asked, peaking over at your sheet. 

You shot him a grin. “They both sound like fun to me. Hey, Shinra?” 

“Yeah?” 

Your grin grows wider. “Let’s both do our best, and save lots of people okay?” 

Shinra’s smile is small, but true. 

“Okay.” 

You bump your fist to his to seal the deal. 

~ 

It had taken you a couple of tries to find your dorm room. 

Your body seemed like it knew what it was doing, even if your mind didn’t. You had to explain away your frazzled state to the woman in charge of your wing, a nun who’s name you couldn’t recall to save your life, as nerves. She had looked dubious, but hadn’t questioned you when she pointed you to your room. 

Probably thinks I’m hung over, you thought as you stepped inside. If I didn’t know better I’d think I was drunk enough to hallucinate. But it’s all way too real. Just what happened? One second I was playing the game, and then my phone went off, and then it was all dark. After that I was in the library. 

 It was making your head hurt thinking about it. 

You poked around the room. If you remembered right you’d had a roommate, but she’d already been assigned her company a week early. Her dad was some top brass in the military, so off to the second company she went, 

You made sure the door was locked before you started riffling through your things. 

Books, papers, clothes. Personal items. 

You had a collection of antique keys for some reason, and a blanket shaped like a tortilla that was warmer than most space heaters. There was an old lighter with a hawk engraved on it in one drawer. When you touched it you got the sudden smell of pipe tobacco and a man laughing far in the back of your mind before it was gone. Just like when you touched the ring earlier. 

Memories that weren’t yours. You had stepped into someone else's life. 

When you looked in the mirror you found the face that your had designed for your character staring back at you. There was a thin ring of white in your eyes, cutting through their color and marking you as a pyrokinetic. 

Shit. Each of those abilities had a different eye. Which one was the circle? There was a circle, a pointy cross, and teardrop because the designer was some edgelord. Which power does this mean I have? Wings? Magnet sand? Or the spear torch thingy? 

You wished this could have been more like Fate/Grand Order. Then you would just have to keep track of your teams abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Not your own. 

Fuck. 

You spend a long time in your room, packing up all of your belongings. None of them really belong to you. They belong to your character, and they’re only familiar in the sense that you’ve thrown them over your shoulder when you were looking for something specific before. Only now if you throw them they won’t puff back to where they were before eventually. You’ll actually have to put this stuff away. 

Damn it, you’ve never liked packing. 

Still, you carefully rolled your new found clothes into baggage burritos. They were pretty plain, all in all. Oh well. You could make adjustments later if you really wanted to. Was it a game mechanic you haven't unlocked? Full customization? You could pick gender and hair, and the eyes depended on your pyrokinesis. Maybe at some point you got to change clothes too. 

You’d figure it out. 

You hoped. 

Your head was still reeling the with the idea of what was going on, but for now, with nothing else you really could do, you decided to go with it. 

Once you had everything all packed up you left your room to do some exploring. You tried to keep track of where you were going in the big fire station/training academy, but before long you were hopelessly lost. 

You stumbled upon a training room, where a familiar boy with a dorky pony tail was slashing a glowing blue sword through a training dummy. The poor dummy fell to the floor in pieces. 

You watched him for a few minutes before he noticed you. 

“Oh,” he said, “It’s you.” 

Which was… pretty lame, if you’re being honest. 

What, did you one pop his delusional bubble? 

“Yep,” you popped your ‘p’, “It’s a-me.” Mario. “What did that guy ever do to you? Try to challenge the great Knight King Arthur on a troll bridge?” you meant it to be a joke, but Arthur actually lit up. 

“Hardly! This was merely training. A Knight King must always be ready to defend his people!” 

“Of course,” you nodded along, playing with him. “And soon you’ll be embarking on a great quest to your new company, right? Do you know which one?” 

“I didn’t bother with those silly preference sheets. Let whichever company requires a knight most vie for my presence.” 

You were honestly impressed Arthur even knew the word ‘vie’. Wasn’t he kind of a loon? 

“Mhmm, mhmm, I see,” you nodded seriously. “Then in case, I might see you in my own company.” 

You wanted to ask him to spar, if only to see Excalibur in action more, but you still weren’t sure what your power was or how to use it. So you ended up bowing out. 

It took you another hour to find your way  back to your room. 

Whoops. 

You don’t really sleep. You lay down and try to wake up, and hope that come morning you’ll be back in your living room with a vr stapped to your head and this whole thing will have been a (not so terrible) dream. 

Keep Dreaming. 

~    ~

[vaguely-concerned]

The Mandalorian Chapter 11 reactions; the ‘the sea is a harsh mistress’ edition

- on first watch this wasn’t really one of my favorite episodes. I think it’s something to do with... one of the many things I love about the mandalorian is how it made the star wars universe feel HUGE. big and surprising and unknowable, there could be fucking anything out there man we don’t know. so having first bo katan show up and then ahsoka being set up right after (quite aside from who’s rumoured to play her, which is an entirely different can of wormy beans) in additon to opening the season on tatooine... eh. I’m not that into it, it feels like shrinking the world. we haven’t even gotten to see any other type of force user yet. it is only early/mid season tho so they’re probably going to pull some unexpected twists on us 

my opinion might change with rewatches too, that happens quite a bit with this show!

- 

🎶I’VE COME TO TALK WITH YOU AGAIN🎶

honestly I had kind of a hard day yesterday and watched this the next morning and kept pointing tiredly to the crest like ‘it me tho’ 

- I was unreasonably happy about seeing the calamari flan again hahaha he’s been keeping that shit in his pockets for a season and a half now (didn’t he pay with some at one other point too?)! also the sound effects for them are SO EXCELLENT, I keep thinking about how well this show does texture which is wild considering how it’s filmed 

- the warm pat din gave frog lady’s arm when he thanked her and said goodbye 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 I love the small ways he’s thawing 

-

my heart ached so much for him at this point, he just looks so small and tense and lost, like a kid who’s lost his parents in a supermarket

(he keeps his hand on the blaster the whole time too so he knows this is a bad scene but now they’re right out in the middle of the ocean already soooo) 

- din’s very very very dry sense of humour is so blessed. ‘a bowl of chowder for my friend’ faklhfsadkjlfhsadkjhfsd

the baby’s look when he poked the squid thing with his knife too -- yodito’s like ‘dad is a wizard??’ haha. some good baby & dad stuff in this one 

- oh din... side quest boy, side quest booooooyyy

- the shot when bo katan helped him out of the water is perfectly mirroring the scene of bb!din being pulled up to safety by the mandalorian in the flashback, which seems Very Intentional

I Extremely Do Not Trust Her in the larger scale tho. I think it’s important that din knows now that he was raised in a very specific offshoot of the mandalorians ant that there’s some Stuff he hasn’t been told, but I also think it’s crucial to remember that her pov is not unbiased either and she, in fact, already has an established tendency to selectively share information with him to manipulate him into fulfilling her goals. (which he realizes because he keeps saying ‘that is not my mission, my mission is the child’ and I could not love him more). hell, I’m not sure exactly how ‘the children of the watch’ were positioned within death watch, but she was fucking death watch too for the longest time! and she hardly left for particularly noble reasons, she just didn’t like maul! she already lost mandalore like twice, do we just have to trust that third time’s the charm or what! 

she lied to him about the scope of the mission to force him into a position to do what she wanted (fully knowing he’s responsible for a child!!) and she called that ‘the way’ just as easily as the thing about not letting his bravery be forgotten! big red warning lights, NO! I think the thing is that din is having to find his own ‘way’ of being mandalorian (/how does one be a person exactly help?? relatable content, and he’ll get there in the end I’m sure he’s so good), but her way is no less fucked up to me than the children of the watch from what we’ve seen so far. she’s good at killing imperials though which is of course a mark in her favour

(considering that the episode gives her the epithet ‘the heiress’... yeah that’s probably a hint that she’s loyal first and foremost to her entitlement, getting the position she considers hers by right of inheritance. guess we’ll see if the text agrees with her)  

- ‘mandalorians are stronger together’ yeah that’s probably why the cosmic balance makes sure they’re mostly engaged in being at each other’s throats lol 

- so I might be feeling kind of sketch about these guys but on the other hand... when that one lady saved the baby and then promptly took off her helmet to reveal she looks like t h i s ?

you better BELIEVE I was ready to fall down on one knee and propose right then and there holy shit

- ...wow if he didn’t have the jet pack din probably would have just sunk like a rock and drowned there huh 😨 that armour’s pretty heavy, turns out

- in happier news: din has become so good at reading what the child is expressing and responding/labeling the feeling for him! that’s so important to his development! ‘I know you’re hungry’ and both telling and showing him there’s a solution! still a bit of an issue that he thinks he can inform the baby of things like it’s a reasoned adult and have it understand, but we’re getting there we’re getting there lol

- that poor lady guiding them in for landing and sounding more and more worried fhkasjdlhfkjsdlahf (and he fucking TURNS OFF THE RADIO or whatever he’s using to talk to her through sdkfhaksdfhjs he takes a precious split second just to cut her off asfdjhaslkdfsdfhsda I love my salty dad) 

- when the fisherman asshole tells mando he knows where to find more of his people there’s the tinkling bell sound in the background music, I think it’s meant to convey almost childlike longing for belonging and connection, for finding someone who’ll know what to do? 

- when they took off their helmets and baby looked up at din like ‘???dad what the fuck? can you do that???’. (or like he just sensed his father taking a shitload of psychic damage all in one go)

- the way din didn’t start breathing again until they got the baby up from the water and he had him in his arms... the way he held him... sladfhasdklfhsjakdhfjsakldhfsakjldhfsjkadhfjaskdhfskajdhfjsdakhfslakhfskladhfsakljdhfjskadlhfkjsld

that whole scene was like a nightmare, so desperately unpleasant, in a way it mirrors the way the mandalorians have been hunted down and pummeled these last few generations, this must sort of be what it feels like to him subconsciously 

- din isn’t particularly inflexible as a person, after the initial kneejerk rejection he did listen to what they said and is carefully considering it (he did say ‘this is the way’ back at the end!)   

- the baby’s babbling when he wakes up and looks around in the beginning sounds half like ‘baba?’ and I almost had a heart attack

- loved how greasy and awful and dumb all the empire dudes were (and the comedy on board the ship too it was good for me) 

- the boob plates huh. shit they’ve shown with the armorer that they don’t have to do that in any way shape or form and they still brought the boob plates back :/ I guess it’s so they match up with the rebels/clone wars look, evoking that ~*era*~ and everything, but I don’t have to like it lol  

- I feel so validated in my theory that the razor crest is symbolic of din’s sense of self  (now with beautifully added commentary!) after this haha (and also so so scared now they might be ditching it for a new ship eventually). it’s in pieces, his world view is going to pieces and can’t be patched together the way it was before, from what he knows he’s about to deliver the baby to someone else who’ll understand/love/deserve him better (I do think that feeling is still in him) and he doesn’t even have the certainty of the code anymore to fill the void. oh buddy. 

the discomfort I felt when we got back into the cockpit -- into where it’s supposed to be familiar and safe! -- and saw all the ocean junk lying around, making it feel weird and changed and dirty (it probably smells like rotten seaweed in there now :( no likey)... I mean it was also very funny to see the pilot’s chair held together with a literal fishing net, but please favreau leave my dad’s car/ego alooooone 

- baby laughing his little bum off at din catching the small sea monster before it got him and then munching it......... the ‘there’s nothing in this world my dad can’t fix’ safe energy.......... I’m so scared we’re coming up on something din can’t fix 

- knitwear in star wars: I didn’t know I wanted it, but I am ELATED with having been given it

- moff gideon’s amazing evil voice... back in our ears, in our hearts, I gleefully hate him 

- at least din’s armour is clean again after that (awful) swim? one must appreciate some silver linings along the way I suppose

- din goes straight for the main pilot’s seat once they get the imperial out of it, so he must feel really secure that he’s probably the best man for the job; he is genuinely a good pilot! (and after this I am wondering even MORE who taught him. who raised you within the mandos din??)

- even while everything is new and scary and falling apart we can live safe in the knowledge that at least frog lady and frog husband had a good day and will have a good and happy frog life together with their frog children

couple goals tbh 

(I don’t necessarily know how it works for frog people but I uh. guess they got busy quickly huh hahaha good thing mando didn’t turn up again until later)

[kimjoongs]

ateez playing genshin

hongjoong

mains: albedo and mona

initially wasnt interested in playing but then he heard the soundtrack from another member’s phone and was intrigued

ended up staying up all night just playing the game

chose lumine to be the traveler bc he thought she was cool (sorry aether </3)

gets rlly rlly into the lore and is a sucker for the graphics and music

spends most of his time just talking to npc’s and reading everything they have to say

failed the gliding test many times so he asked yunho to do it for him

“you just follow the rings–”

“i’m TRYING”

gets scared when the music suddenly changes as a crowd of hilichurls comes running towards him

has a personal vendetta against paimon idk why but he does

played co-op once with san and yunho but instantly regretted it bc they kept teleporting and leaving him behind

seonghwa

mains: diona

doesnt rlly know what he’s doing but he thinks the game is very pretty <3

aether is his traveler and seonghwa is v attached to him

knows all of the names of the npc’s in monstadt so whenever he passes by them he greets them out loud “hi flora” “oh hey huffman” “SARAAAAH”

always gasps when he finds a seelie and gets all :D as he follows it

keeps falling off the mountains bc he underestimates how tall they are and loses stamina before he reaches the top

absolutely DETESTS doing quests in dragonspine

“wHY IS THERE NO TORCH HERE”

*comes across a frostarm lawachurl* “haha NO <3″

“oh don’t worry joel i’ll find your dad!” *5 minutes later* “nvm fuck your dad sorry joel”

has so many ingredients in his inventory so he’s always stocked with food

always denies wooyoung’s request to join

yunho

mains: amber, lisa or kaeya

the first person in the group who started playing genshin and downloaded the game just a few days after it came out

HAS SO MANY GOOD FUCKING CHARACTERS but always mains the three mentioned above bc “they’ve been w me since the beginning you don’t understand the bond we have”

he and san have the most experience w the game so they’re always helping out the other members

absolutely LOVES liyue and likes to glide around bc it’s so pretty

when he’s on the ground he likes to hop around instead of sprint bc according to him it’s more fun that way

he thinks the slimes are cute

is supersuper lucky and gets a new character w every pull (he cried when he got zhongli)

he’s super knowledgeable about how the game works and when he’s trying to explain the other members are like ????? but they just smile and nod bc yunho literally lights up talking about it and they would rather punt themselves into the sun than make him upset

spends lots of his mora leveling up his weapons so as a result he’s always low on that “spare mora pls”

yeosang

mains: qiqi

doesnt really know what he’s doing pt 2 but he’s vibing

started panicking when he had to run (glide) from the knights of favonius and COULD NOT find diluc’s tavern for the longest time

“aww look at the cute animals” he says as he aims his arrow at it

teleports to a statue of the seven in the middle of a boss fight bc all of his characters are dead and he has no food left

wants to throttle tf out of paimon

collects potatoes and radish in the middle of a fight

he’ll put off doing quests but ends up gaining more quests to do so he ends up having like 238743875 different quests

purposefully bumps into the npc’s bc he thinks it’s funny

he, wooyoung, and san all played co-op tgt but ended up just playing hide n seek in liyue

forgot that wangshu inn had an elevator so he’s been taking the stairs the whole time

san

mains: tartaglia/childe

has a personal vendetta against reckless pallad and refuses to save him

the geo hypostasis is the bane of his very existence and he almost cursed it out on more than one occasion

spent 10 minutes trying to climb qingyun peak only to fall off once he reached the top </3

complained a lot during his quest w albedo

“why are we doing all these experiments”

“i am NOT drinking that potion—fuck okay i’m drinking the potion”

“why are you giving me a sword did you steal the sword albedo what the hell”

has the BIGGEST soft spot for razor and he most likely cried a little a lot when he met him for the first time

he rarely ever uses the free characters that the game gives him in the beginning

likes to climb the anemo archon statue in monstadt and sit in its hands

mingi

mains: closes his eyes and whoever he lands on is his main (it’s sucrose)

saw a ruin guard just chilling and immediately turned right back around

has the fattest crush on diluc but dont we all

“...do i have enough stamina to swim across that? i think i do” *ends up drowning not even halfway*

gets super excited whenever he finds a chest but doesnt like having to fight enemies to unlock it

“ooh i see a chest—” *slimes pop up from who knows where* “nevermind”

he gets really into the cut scenes and watches them so intently it’s cute

takes a long time to get his ar up bc he mostly enjoys running around and playing casually

he HATES timed fights bc it stresses him out

racks up a lot of primogems but never really uses them for some reason

feels bad whenever he has to switch a character in his party bc he needs a character with a diff element

“icb the game lets us use good characters during certain quests but then rips them away from us as soon as the quest is over i call scam—”

wooyoung

mains: ningguang or fischl

he was in the middle of a quest but completely forgot about it bc he saw an anemoculus and spent forever trying to get it

likes to bully timmie on a daily basis

“sorry timmie i need fowl” *does an elemental burst on the birds*

he knew how much seonghwa wanted to get diluc so when wooyoung pulled him he rubbed it in seonghwa’s face for 2 whole weeks

during the quests where he has to be sneaky, he always got caught and almost threw his phone after having to restart for the 10th time

when he plays co-op with any of the other members, wooyoung just starts attacking them w his weapons

“fuck the fatui everyone hates the fatui....except tartaglia i like him”

gets annoyed when he sees hilichurls running after him

“i’m just trying to deliver food LEAVE ME ALONE”

will be in the middle of doing a quest when he sees a dog and spends 5 minutes just standing next to it

jongho

mains: diluc

he’s more of a silent player, meaning that he plays the game a LOT but isn’t as vocal about it

“hey jongho what ar are you?” “30″ “...didnt you just start playing three days ago?

*shrugs* “yeah”

the members who have a lower world level than him ask him if he can do co-op and help them defeat some enemies that they’re having trouble w but jongho’s like nah do it yourself

finishes all of his commissions in like 2 minutes

he agrees w diluc and also has a thing against the knights of favonius

“who was the one who defeated stormterror? yeah that’s right ME”

“i snuck in to steal the holy lyre and none of them noticed pssh amateurs”

the only person he’ll play co-op with is yunho and the two of them just wreak havoc all over liyue and monstadt

had to fight 3 ruin guards at the same and hated every second of it

instead of sprinting on the ground he just hops/glides from roof to roof

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - What Is the Point? (first half of S2 Recap)

So we’ve reached the mid-season finale of season two and so now's as good a time as any to recap and summarize thus far. 

You can find the recaps for season one here  To Filler or Not To Filler Hey, What Ever Happened to That Varitas, Guy?

Episodes that are featured in this recap are as follows 

Beyond the Corona Walls Part 1

Beyond the Corona Walls Part 2

The Return of Quaid 

Goodbye and Goodwill 

Forest of No Return 

Freebird 

Vigor the Visionary 

Keeper of the Spire 

King Pascal 

There's Something About Hook Foot 

Happiness Is

Max and Eugene in Peril on the High Seas

Curses

The Eye of Pincosta 

Rapunzel and the Great Tree Part 1

Rapunzel and the Great Tree Part 2

Lack of Conflict 

Season two has no ongoing conflict. There’s no external force driving the characters forward, no threat they have to overcome, and no reason given for their quest. As such there’s nothing to support the underlining internal conflicts that the series wants to tell. 

Rapunzel can just go home if she wants to Cassandra can just leave the group whenever if she thinks she has more job opportunities elsewhere  Eugene is only here cause Rapunzel is, and if he wants to avoid his past he can just stay in the caravan whenever need be  Nothing is really stopping Eugene and Rapunzel from getting engaged There’s no need to listen to Adira 

And ect. and so on. All of the main characters’ supposed problems fall apart when you realize they have no reason to do what they do, and less reason to not act upon what they want. 

None of It Matters 

Of the 16 episodes I’ve covered so far, only 6 actually matter in the long run and 4 of those are two parters. 

Ten whole episodes of filler. Some might feature optional stuff, like a second of foreshadowing or just establishing how they got to a certain place, maybe even some character insight if we’re lucky, but no, most don’t tie into the final conflict nor the mains character development.  

And of the six episodes I pointed out, even what they do offer is incredibly thin. A piece of the season’s macuffin, (aka the scroll), a short flashback to the Dark Kingdom, maybe a subplot with an important character introduction; yet most of the episode will be over stuffed with pointlessness or give us hints to things that’ll never be resolved nor explained. 

Part of the problem is that most of it doesn’t connect back to all the worldbuilding we did in season one, and so most of the world building in season two winds up not coming back into play. 

Some people have suggested that they don’t mind the filler because it ‘adds flavor’ to the proceedings. You don't want to order a hamburger with all the fixings to only get meat sandwiched between bread and nothing else. But with that same analogy you don't want to order that same hamburger and get a salad with a few crumbs of ground meat thrown inside of it instead. 

It’s about balance and Tangled the Series is very much a salad with mostly wilted lettuce. You might find a bit of shredded cheese here or a crumb of a crouton there; but it’s definitely not a hamburger.  

Half the Characters Don't Even Need to Be Here

Hook Foot is useless Shorty is useless Lance shouldn’t be useless but he is Fidella is plot device not a character  Owl is barely even on screen despite the fact that he’s supposed to be there for his part in season 3  And Pascal and Max only get one episode of focus, both of which were filler. 

The consequence have having too many characters, particularly ones that don’t have anything to do with the main story, means that the writers are constantly juggling for ways to write them out or give them screen time at the expense of others. And by having this merry-go-round of character addition musical chairs, none of the group feel like a team let alone friends. 

Yet Characters That Should Be Here, Aren’t 

Adira, Lady Caine, Hector, and especially Varian all should have gotten more screen time because they all had unresolved conflicts. 

Lady Caine is unceremoniously shoved off without gaining any closure. Adira keeps sneaking off for unstated reasons instead of sticking with the group, despite doing so actively undermining her goals. Hector never gets to fulfill his purpose. And Varian is written out of the show despite being the most plot relevant character. 

In addition to those above mentioned characters, there was no shortage of characters that could have been given expanded roles instead of Hook Foot or Shorty. 

The Baron and Stalyan could have been more prominent villains; same for Weasel or the Stabingtons. Faith would have made a good secondary female friend for both Rapunzel and Cassandra, while being different enough to them to stand out on her own. Calliope would have been another option to fulfill that role, and she would have been useful as the group’s recent tour guide given all the knowledge she has. Then there’s Angry and Red, both of whom shouldn’t have been left on their on. 

 Conclusion 

The clear mismanagement of this show is mind boggling. I don’t know how anyone who has ever worked in the industry before could screw something up this badly. Not without facing some sort of corporate mandated changes and a shake up of the creative team at least. But there’s no indication that that is what happened. Now add in the bad PR from the head showrunner and yeah, it’s no wonder the show plummeted in ratings after this. 

[degenerate-perturbation]

Viv Reviews: Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

As part of my quest to read every edgy Harry Potter knockoff, I read Wayward Son.

I liked it much better than Carry On. Carry On was a confusing mess and I don’t really remember anything that happened in it. Wayward Son is a much more tightly plotted, emotionally coherent book, with many good ideas.

Is it good? No.

But here are some things I liked about it:

The plot construction. Checkov’s guns are ably placed in the first act, and fired in the third. The twists make sense, without being telegraphed. The story clips along at a reasonable pace and there is a consistent sense of motion and dynamism throughout that made me want to keep reading.

The Americana. I love all magical Americana. However, it is possible to fuck this trope up (see: CW’s Supernatural.) Wayward Son does this trope without fucking it up, and I’ll give it credit for that.

The inherent hilarity of British people interacting with America and being completely befuddled. For the duration of reading this book I felt about 4% more patriotic. There is a scene where the main characters are gearing up to fight the villains with magical spells but this is America and the villains brought guns and they just shoot them. This is hilarious and exactly what would happen.

The villains. The concept of a bunch of Silicon Valley techbros becoming vampires as like a biohacking project is brilliant, because I know so many people who would do that. I would do that. Las Vegas being run by old-school vampires and the two groups hate each other for Vampiring Wrong is also brilliant.

I really enjoyed the new muggle character. Shepard is a muggle who knows about magic and just really likes it and wants to be around it as like, a hobby. I would totally be this guy. Between him and the Silicon Valleys vampires I feel like the American characters in this book are spot-on as types of people who would exist in a setting where magic is real. So few urban fantasy books get this right, and Wayward Son kind of does!

Most of the characters do have coherent, detectable emotional arcs. They aren’t well-executed. But they exist! This is more than I could say for the previous book. Draco/Baz struggles with existing as a marginal vampire in mage society, or abandoning humanity to exist in vampire society. Hermione/Penelope takes a long series of L’s and comes to realize that she can’t actually do everything herself and should really have asked for help. Harry/Simon is depressed about not being a main character anymore.

The fact that Draco is a vampire for no obvious reason doesn’t seem as weird in Wayward Son as in Carry On because vampires are a major element of this book’s plot.

Harry and Draco’s relationship in this book is on the rocks, and it starts out seeming like they are going to break up. They still bicker a lot, despite being boyfriends, which makes perfect sense for people who disliked each other for most of the time they knew each other. This creates a fine thread of emotional tension throughout the story (I love conflict!) that, unfortunately, goes nowhere.

Here is what I did not like:

THE POV CHANGES. 

Oh my god, the POV changes are fucking intolerable. Do you guys remember those old fanfics where there was a POV change literally every paragraph and every event got described from 4 different characters’ point of view? This book does this so egregiously that part of me wonders if in fact Rowell is making the book bad on purpose to fit with the fanfiction thing--because her other books are fine! I know Rowell can write a perfectly respectable love story, so really, what gives?

This is really just one thing because I think all of the book’s flaws boil down to this supremely irritating structure. Here are some issues that I feel arise from it:

Characters do not really develop their relationships to each other, because all of their emotional turmoil happens in their first-person internal monologue. Simon and Baz never really work through their relationship issues because they do not talk to each other until the very end of the book. They live completely inside their own heads, straightfowardly telling the reader how they are feeling, without having to tell each other.

Similarly, I thought Penelope and Shepard were going to be a developing couple. They would make sense as a foil to Simon and Baz’s established (and crumbling) relationship, they interact quite a bit, Penelope gets dumped at the start of the book by her boyfriend for traits that Shepard explicitly values, and on a meta level, it is sensible to pair the most magical mage with a muggle. But they don’t really interact much on the page. I think about how much more interesting this relationship would have read if Penelope had worked through some of her issues with this guy, but she didn’t.

As a result, the character’s arcs do not really go anywhere satisfying, because they are all so inside their own heads! Without playing off each other, they don’t have opportunities to develop in a natural way. She just privately thinks her to herself that she’s in over her head, and that’s the end of it. We don’t see anyone challenge Penelope on her overconfidence or see her confess vulnerability to anyone. We don’t see Simon and Baz argue about their relationship; we just see them mutually, separately worry about it.

The other problem I have with Simon and Baz is that their relationship takes place entirely in terms of dramatic overwrought romantic inner monologue. The one time they interact with each other romantically on screen--we don’t actually see it! We just see ping-ponging POV of “He means the world to me” and “I only ever wanted him," which is wildly inconsistent with how they actually interact with each other, which is mostly tense in petty bickering. And that would have been perfectly fine if, say, it had lead to a break up and subsequent make up. That would have been a good trial-by-fire for this relationship! But it doesn’t happen. I’m left asking over and over again, why do these characters love each other? Why does he mean the world to him? Why should I care?

This is related to another issue with the book is that, like a fanfiction, it seems to require the context of “canon” events in order to make emotional sense. Simon and Baz keep referring back to their dynamic as roommates that hate each other to contextualize their present love for each other. But we never saw any of that happen! I don’t feel attachment to their pre-existing relationship because the pre-existing relationship is an informed quality.

And this is the problem with Simon himself, as a character. His arc in this book is about overcoming his depression and the burnout of being an ex-main-character. He and Penelope keep referencing adventures they’ve had that we weren’t there for, so how am I supposed to feel a sense of bittersweet nostalgia for then? It’s like hanging out with a group of friends who keep making inside jokes I don’t get. It’s alienating, and does the opposite of make me relate to these characters.

If I was reading about Harry Potter’s ex-main-character depression, this would read totally differently, because I would have already read seven years’ worth of Harry Potter’s wild adventures. A fanfiction about Harry’s post-traumatic stress about all those events would be perfectly suitable fanfiction subject. A book about Crypto-Harry-Potter’s post-traumatic stress over events we weren’t present for does not work nearly as well.

Finally, the dynamic of this trio does not work. What really worked for Harry, Ron, and Hermione is that each one of them was the awkward third friend. In Wayward Son, Penelope and Baz both have a relationship with Simon, but not really each other. And since the characters stay in their own heads, a new dynamic doesn’t really have space to develop.

Also, the prose just, isn’t very good. J. K. Rowling was not a master of prose, but Harry Potter felt magical. It felt like a fairy tale. With Wayward Son, I am Once Again reminded of this Ursula Le Guin quote, from her essay, “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie”:

Many readers, many critics, and most editors speak of style as if it were an ingredient of a book, like the sugar in a cake, or something added onto the book, like the frosting on the cake. The style, of course, is the book. If you remove the cake, all you have left is recipe. If you remove the style, all you have left is a synopsis of the plot.

This is a recipe for a book. A good recipe, with many good ingredients, but it utterly lacks style, making it just good enough to disappoint me.

Apparently there is going to be a threequel. Obviously I am going to read it.

[malindamay]

Ian POV: Hi uh, I’m Ian and I-I’m going to you a story about time that. I saved Disneyland and how me and Barley become the 26th characters so, uh, I’ll try my best I never tell anyone story’s except my movie story, of course. Uh, *clears throat* so here’s my NOBLE story. *chuckles* Mickey Mouse will you please be the narrator, please?😅

Mickey/ normal POV oh boy! Yes! So *clears* one day In a beautiful place, where all mystical creatures live in peace and harmony mostly, called, New Mushroomtin. The Lightfoot family was starting a new day. Ian, a 16-year-old elf, is shy and sometimes unconfident, but he wanna make his family proud especially his dad and his beloved brother, Barley. “Dear Brother we have a buffet awaits us!” Said Barley with enthusiasm-

Ian POV if you don’t know barley, he’s my older brother, and he’s very joyful and kind-hearted for me and the only thing that fears him the most is A, staying in hospital long time, B, he sees someone who has medical problems or has tubes, ventilator ETC, and C, seeing me hurt

Sorry, Mickey, gotta tell our Disney/fans about my brother if they don’t know who he is.😅

Mickey POV ok, so Ian replies with a chuckle, “*chuckle* its dinner Barley not a fancy buffet lol” Blazey pounces on Ian making Ian almost dropping the food “ *yelps* laughs * Blazey *ack!* okx3!🤣 😅 love you too.” Till Ian saw a letter tape on their door it’s from me(Mickey Mouse)

“ Hey Ian

this is Mickey Mouse and I was wondering if you and your brother can come to Disney world for the DVC Celebration plus you and your brother will be debating on the Disney team I know you’re shy,but you’ll be fine I’m sure my pals love ya, and even there’ll be fans who love your movie! Please accept this invitation.

Love, Mickey Mouse.❤️”

Ian reads it twice and his face turns from 😕 —>🙂😀 “Barley, will you love to go on a majestic quest with me?!😀”

Barley suddenly answer” *laughs* My dear brother, of course!” Ian nods he grabs his staff and he goes pack up their luggage’s! Laurel( their mom) looks at them a little nervous.” Are you sure you boys will be fine?” Ian nods “don’t worry I’ll call ya if something happens wrong,ok?” Laurel says “but-“ Ian cuts her off with a smile “I’m wizard well, 1st stage *chuckles* we”ll be fine, I’ll try to protect barley and he’ll protect me!”

Laurel had a tear in her eyes “ *sniffs* you two always have your father’s spirit. *sobs* 😢” Ian hugs his mom “before you go I have something for you,Ian. *grabs a flowey (lavender with gold,swirly glittered design in the edges) scarf(same style like elsa’s mom’s but different) it’s from your dad’s when he’s about almost your age.”

Ian clenched it suddenly a guset of wind swirls around him ounce as Ian closes his eyes. “Thx mom.”

Barley smiles at Ian till Blazey comes up to Ian and hugs him likes they’re gonna be leave her with their mom alone for few months, Ian says in his sweet tone “sorry girl wish we could take you with mom but, I think Mickey just wants me and Barley,ok? Who’s a good girl,come on who’s a good dragon?” Blazey barks at Ian as a “I am.” Ian gets up grabs their luggages “we’ll miss you mom,Blazey. We’ll be fine I’ll text call or FaceTime you when we want to.” Barley comes and puts his shoulder around ians’s softly “ it’s ok mom.🙂” Lauarel sheds a tear “*sniffs* you’ll always have your dad’s spirit.”

Ian goes and about to close the door “see ya in a few months,mom. *blows a kiss*”

In New Mushroomtin Airport:

Ian was a little nervous and excited to go,but he knew he always have his brother by his side and his spiritual dad beside them. Barley smiles at Ian “ready,Ian?🙂” Ian takes a deep breath and grabs his luggage’s as Barley grabs his, as Ian says” *sighs* yes!🙂”

After few days they had landed and as they saw the beauty of the Disneyland hotel Ian slowly twirls as he admires around “woah, this place is gorgeous!”😀” they’re about to unpack their luggage’s till they heard a knock on their hotel room(room 24) Ian opens the door and saw the big cheese himself,the one that started it all, Mickey Mouse! “Hi pals, hope you’re enjoying your room so far *ha ha* oh boy!” Ian shakes Mickey’s hand, *gasps* it’s a really honor to meet you Mickey can’t wait to make our 1st debut in DCA!😅” Barley comes up “hi, names Barley nice to meet you,bro*laughs* “ barley gives Mickey a bro hug. Mickey asks in his kind voice “is anything that my cast members can do for you, or-“ Ian says “no,but we’re a little hungry.” Mickey says in his cheerful tone” oh boy! I know just the place! I’ll wait till you 2 are done with your unpacking.” Ian nods and says “ I’ll knock after we’re done unpacking

Mickey closes the door as the 2 brotherly elves unpacking their luggage’s Ian took his staff out of his long suitcase. Barley asks “need help dear brother?😀” little help,please!”Ian replie. As Ian saw something in his satual shiny is a locket that has the Lightfoot gain including Blazey in the inside! replies, He puts it around his neck and looks at his reflection in the mirror Ian sheds a tear in his eyes. Barley looks at him and coax him “hey,you ok?” Ian couldn’t control his tears, so he let his tears out Barley gently puts down his stuff and hugs Ian to conforts his beloved brother. “I know you miss mom and Blazey, I miss them too,but hey, we get to make our 1st apperience in DCA,Disneyland! They’ll be tons of human fans will love us,and ETC, it’s ok.” Ian sobs softly as he hugs barley back. “ I love you and *sobs* I’m not letting anyone or anything hurt me or you. *sobs softly*😢😭“

Chapter 2

After they unpacked their luggage’s, Ian wears his shawl/scarf and grabs his staff, and knocks on the door, “ready pals?” Mickey asks. Ian grabs Barley’s hand, “*sighs* yes!🙂”

“ wow this place is majestic!” Ian said

Mickey replying “yes it’s a fun place where all ages to have fun and ETC.

Mickey: Yes, the wind blows a little bit cooler

And we're all happy

And the clouds are moving on with every pixie dusts

Our flowers just became gorgeous

Goofy:And my leaf's a little sadder and wiser

Mickey: That's why I rely on certain certainties

Yes, some things never change

Like the feel of your hand in ours

Some things stay the same

Like how we get along just fine

Like an old stone wall that will never fall

Some things are always true

Some things never change

*to Ian and Barley* Guys, did your dreams come true?

Minnie: The flowers are already blooming

Pluto, it feels like the debut is coming

*talks for pluto* tAre you telling me tonight he’s gonna get down on one knee?

Yep, but I'm really nervous at planning these things out

Like greeting them the 1st time!

*talks for pluto* Maybe you should leave all the exciting stuff to the characters

Yeah, some things never change

Like the joy that I feel for them

Some things stay the same

Like how dogs are easier

But if I commit and I go for it

I'll know what to say and do, right?

*talks for pluto* Some things never change

Pluto, the pressure is all on you

Ian: is this really true , could that be this day of our debut?

Dad, wish you could see us now? I'm not sure I want things to be perfect

These days are precious, can't let the magic fade

I can't stop this moment, but I can still go out and see this day!!

Other Disney characters: The wind blows a little bit cooler

Goofy: : And if you believe in yourself

The elf brothers: It's time to count our blessings beneath an heaven sky

Disney characters: We'll always live in the kingdom of plenty

That stands for the good of the many

Ian: And I promise you the flag of Disneyland will always fly BOOMBASTIA! *staff swishes*

Disney characters:Our flag will always fly

Our flag will always fly

Our flag will always fly

Some things never change

Turn around in the time that's flown

Some things stay the same

Though the future remains unknown

May our good luck rest, may our past be past

Time's moving fast, it's true

Some things never change

Barley: And I'm holding on tight to you

Ian: Holding on tight to you

Mickey:Holding on tight to you

Ian and barley: Holding on tight to you

Chapter 3

A trolly appears and a tourist comes would you both like a tour of the park?”

The elves replied “ yes of course. *laughs at each other*” Ian goes inside the horse trolley Barley sat beside his brother after he grabs few snacks from one of the shops in Main Street USA.

After 2 hours of touring around and. Behind the castle. “Thank you so much for giving us a tour!” Ian shakes the tourist and hugs him and Barley asks, “if you don’t mind can I take a selfie with you Ian and your trolley with your horse?” “Oh absolutely!” Ian poses with his staff and helds his shawl/scarf. “SELFIE!😀” Barley calls out with delight! “Thank you so much!” “Hey no problem, have a magical time on your 1st day!” Calls out the tourist as the 2 elves goes out and have fun. They’d arrive to the AMC in Disney Hollywood studio. “Ready Ian?” Ian takes a deep breath and he holds his staff in his right arm and the other holds his brother’s hand, and said “ Yes, Yes! I’m- we’re so proud of our hard work with our movie. *sigh* I’m ready to meet our fans!”

They enters the entrance and they stop at their meet and greet spot and Ian is ready.

Chapter 4

The crowds was in line and a little girl, a 2 year old dressed as Ian, got her own Ian’s staff. It was her and her family’s turn. She hides behind her mom’s leg. Ian kneels and holds out his hands “hey little girl, it’s ok I won’t use my staff on you to hurt you, it’s ok, awww. *hugs* it’s that your staff?” The mom says “ wanna show Ian your 19 inch Ian plush?”

Ian holds his doll and make it wave at her and covers its eyes “peekaboo.”

“Aww, hey, name’s Barley it’s ok. Wanna take photos? Huh?” The girl turns towards the photographer. Ian holds his doll in his left hand and his right, hugs the girl. “ok say bye.” Says the mom. Ian blows a kiss to the girl and make his doll waves bye to the girl and says in his little high pitch voice “bye, love you * makes his doll blows a kiss and make his doll hugs her* *normal pitch* bye love you, one more hug? aww. *hugs* bye.we Love you.”

Chapter 5

Suddenly blast of wind burst the door open! Malificeint appears, smoke appears from her. “Well well well.” The wind from her power makes Ian’s hair,flannel,scarf/shawl, Barley’s vest flows. “Who are you?” Ian asks as he holds his staff and points it towards the dark souceror . “I’m Malificent. The powerful villain in all the land!” Thunder boomed as she evil laughs. “ there’s something I want. Something that’s magical and more powerful. I need your magic.😈” Ian looks at her puzzled “what?” Barley looks little upset “ why,why do you want his magic?!😨😠 Ian nobley says “wait so-“ Malificient cuts him off “let you something to you all! I want his magic to becomepowerful and become the queen of DISNEYLAND!!” Ian emotion turns from 😠 —>😨 “wait. NO!! *grunts* VOLLTEr ThUNDE-“ Malificent used her power to push Ian! “*yelps in fear* NO you YOU MONSTER!!” “YOU’LL SEE YOU’LL ALL SEE!!!! *evil laughs out loud*😈” a huge gust of wind blows ounce hard across the room. Ian’s flannel opened from the wind! Ian looks at his hand and the staff “NO! *sobs*” Ian grabs his shawl/scarf and flieds through the park the trolley horse stops and yelps out the tourist tried to calm the horse down and saw Ian ran to the hotel room(room 24). Ian shuts the bedroom door and sinks to his knees and cries as he hugs his dad’s staff. “Dad! *sobs* please help me! *sobs*” suddenly the window opens and a swirl of wind created a spirit of his dad his voice echos. “Ian,my son. Why does she wants your magic?” “*sniffs* *breaking voice* I-I don’t know.” His dad puts his hand on his young son’s cheeck.

Ian holds his scarf close to him as he looks up at his spiritual dad. His dad holds his staff and gives it to Ian, but Ian slowly grabs the staff. Suddenly he saw darkness pulls into Disneyland. Ian looks out the window, he gasps in horror his iPhone rings. “I-Ian it’s me B-barley please he-“ Ian got scared his dad told him “listen you can do this you defeated the curse dragon last time.” Ian looks at the staff and looks noble! “ I’m going to give Malificent what she wants!😠” Wilden cries out “What?! No Ian I can’t let you be powerless I can’t let my son be powerless and weak!” Ian clenched his staff and runs off to Malificent!”

Chapter 6

Inside Disneyland castle all the Disney/Pixar characters inside Malificent is waiting for her power gift,Ian! Doors slam open with a blast of Ian’s staff from Ian. “Oh Ian *hugs* I thought you-“ Ian cuts Barley off. “I’m here to give you the gift. My MAGIC!” Barley gasps in horror so does all the other characters! Malificent approaches to Ian and she stabs him in the heart Ian yells in pain.

“IAN!!!😱 NO!!!”Malificent froze Barley in place. Ian lies there shouting out pain! “No *moans* please.” “Your magic will make me more powerful! *evil laugh*

Malificent: I'm not the villain in distress.

I'm not your girlfriend or the frightened sourccer .

I'm not a little bird who needs your help to fly.

Nope..... I'm the bad guy.

All these former villains that you see...

Each of them with shaking knees has knelt before me.

So I'm not your teammate or your partner in crime.

What am I, boys?!

-She's the bad guy..-

Oh, it's magic

To watch a planet

Shrivel up and die...

Oh, it's thrillin'

To be a villain.

I take over their homes and then I watch them suffer...

Mwhaha!

CUZ, I'M THE BAD GUY!!!!😈

Ian tries to stands up but the pain in his heart hurts so bad Malificent dissapears Barley unfroze as she dissapearss.

Chapter 7

Barley brought Ian to their hotel room and laid Ian on the couch, along with the other characters “Runpunzel use your heal power.” Flyn says. Runpunzel sings a special song as she wraps her hair around Ian’s torso.

✨💫flower gleam and glow,

Let your power shine.

Make the clock reverse,

Bring back as mine.

Heal will help the pain.

Change the faith desires.

Say what’s has be loved bring back ounce was mine.

When ounce was mine.💫✨

His heart was healed Ian breaths as Barley holding his hands while he sobs sofyly and saying prayers.

Chapter 8

Elsa and Anna rush yo check on Ian withe the other Disney characters

“Elsa! *moans*” barley coax Ian @shh Ian lie down.” “ I’m so sorry it’s not our fault.”

Ian: Barley, 🎶 you’re the soul who I understand. The love that show me of who I am! through the darkness to the light. You got my back and I believe you. If It weren’t for you. I’ll be the wheels and you’ll be the road.

Barley: Ian,what you’re trying to say? Can you please let me know.

Ian: cause you carried me with you

From the quest of the gem to the battle of the dragon. I was so brave cause of you. Like a moonlight with the stars you’ll guiding me, yeah it’s true. You carried me with you!

Barley: Ian, 🎶from the day that Youall begun. But, I was there to protect you. But when I see you being hurt. I tried to help, you’re a fighter. And when my heart filled with worried. found a way to comfort me. You always found a bright side, and make me feel better.

Both: cause you carried me with you

From the quest of the gem to the battle of the dragon. I was trying to protect you, like a moonlight with the stars, you’ll be guiding me, yeah it’s true, yeah carried me with you.

Ian: oh we’ll be always be together no matter what.

Barley: watching out the days turns into night

Ian: we know to brave the stormy weathers.

Both: well never give so without a fiiiihhhhhhttt!!

Ian: and if it weren’t for you from the battle

I’ll would’ve die without you.

Barley: I’ll see us through thick and thin

For love and lost till the end.

Both: yeah you carried me with you

From the quest of the gem to the battle of the dragon I was just to secard to see

Like a moonlight with the stars you’ll always protect me

Yeah it’s true

You carried me with you

Ian: oh you carried me with you.🎶

Chapter 9

Judy and nick rushes to Ian and barley with other characters in the hotel. “We heard the news! oh sweet cheese and crackers, are you ok,Ian? *holds Ian hands*” “*sighs* he’s fine,except he has no magic left Malificent had his power!” Barley told Judy. “I’m-we’re sorry we-“

“How do we stop this darkness?!” Ian asks. Barley puts their dad’s shawl/scarf around Ian’s shoulders. Barley ordered all the characters, except Ian, to go and try to stop Malificent with him, but Ian won’t let him. “What?! No” “Ian I can’t let you die!” “No I’m coming too! If dad was here, he would go a-and go to be noble to fight and never give up. I may not have dad actually being here, but if I swear to God, he’ll be with us spiritually,I love you!” Barley looks at him little sceard. Ian holds his shawl/scarf and shouts “Come on, stay together! STAY STRONG!!” Barley can’t believe that his brother is gonna sacrifice his love for his family and old/new friends!

Chapter 10

Malificent : 🎶Believe me I know

I've sunk pretty low

But whatever I've done you deserved

I'm the bad guy, that's fine

It's no fault of mine

And some justice at last will be served

Now it's time to step up

Or it's time to back down

And there's only one answer for me

And I'll stand up and fight

Cause I know that I'm right

And I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready

Ready as I'll ever be

Ian: Now it's time to rise up

Or it's time to stand down

And the answer is easy to see

And I swear by the staff

If you're in, get on board

Are you ready?

Judy: I'm ready

Mickey Minnie : We're ready

Crowd: We're ready

Ian: Ready as I'll ever be

Barley : Are you quite sure we can do this?

Ian: Together we will guarantee

Malificent : I'll make them hear me

Crowd: Now it's time to redeem

Or it's time to resolve

Ian : Prove they can trust me

Crowd: And the outcome will hardly come free

Ian: I'll save or land and family

Crowd: Now the line's in the sand

And our moment's at hand

Mérida : And I'm ready

Barley : I'm ready

Ian & Judy: I'm ready

Malificent : Ready as I'll ever be!🎶

Chapter 11

Ian got on a horse(which it almost reminds him Guenivere (their stead)

Barley looks confident but scared for his brother. “Ian, are you sure? I don’t want you to get hurt. “ Ian says “I may not have magic, but I still have little magic inside if me.” Ian fleds through Main Street USA to the Castle. As Ian gets off alone with the horse, the horse neighs meaning: be careful, ” it's ok I’ll be fine.

Chapter 12

In Disneyland caatle area the sky covers with darkness, The wind blows across the land. Ian gasps in horror along with the Disney characters. Ian stood noble to try to control his tears. “Come on, Barley you Judy with me the others splits together.” The characters nods as they splits up. They go inside the castle until army of guards surrounded them Ian reaches out his staff,Barley grabs his sword and Judy grabs a spare sword and they start batting! “Boombastia! Guys I’ll go and and find Malificent!” They agree as the others continue battling withe guards. Ian goes and find Malificent with his staff till *whoosh* smoke appears and she appears in front of him! Ian grabs his staff, “you’ll never NEVER take away my magic😡!” Malificent and Ian starts their battle as she knocks him out the bouncony and top of the castle’s roof the wind was strong. Ian shivers from the wind. Malificent uses her magic. Ian uses his staff “Volltar Thundersir!” Till Malificent shoot her magic and Ian hit hers created a huge gusts of wind till *whoosh* Ian was shot a little thank god he’s still alive. Barley saw the action “Ian? NO!!!!!” And the final act of the magic Malificent and Ian magic hits Barley and knocks him down,dead. Ian cries out “BARLEY,NO,no, please, YOU MONSTER!!! VOLLTAR THUBDERSIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” *BOOM!!” His staff explodes and kills Malificent, for good Chapter 13 sadly, Ian rushes toward his brother crying, “*voice break* Barley no please don’t leave me. I-I love you *sniffs*” Ian tries his very best to use his staff to try to heal Barley. Ian grabs his staff,still crying, and says”I-insta r-Repairo!(please work please😢😭)” suddenly swirls of wind swirls around Barley from his staff his vest,hair,shirt,Ian’s hair,flannel flows in the wind. Ian’s eyes squinted from the wind and bright swirls. Few moments later with a soft swish, Barley slowly opens his eyes. Ian cried out tears of joy! Then suddenly his staff swishes around Ian the TRANSFORMATION of a WIZARD! The cape,kimono flows in the wind as his staff rose Ian in the air and twirls him majestically . Few moments later Ian opens his eyes still full of tears of joy. “Wow,Ian you look majestic!” Barley amazed “thanks *sniffs* “Chapter 14. At the castle where they do spectacular front of the stage the crowd is waiting for a special ceremony debut. Loud speaker booms over the speaker.”laddies and gentlemen,boys and girls, please welcome,Tennesha and Alex!” The crowd cheered as they appeared to the stage “Welcome everyone we’re so delighted to have this majestic debut coming for this day before we meet our special surprise guests, we wanna bring our Disney / Pixar friends on stage!” The crowd cheered as the Disney/Pixar characters come on stage and greeted the audience. “Hello everybody!” Minnie says, “Hey pals oh boy how everybody’s doing today?!” Mickey asks the crowd shouted yes out loud! “So Mickey we are so excited to see our special characters on their debut,right everyone?!!” Tenneshia says as the crowd screams with excitement! Woody says “can’t wait to meet them *giggles*” “Ok everybody I want everybody to say Onward really loud,ok? Ready? “ the crowd stood up and shouted withe the characters “1 2 3, ONWARD!!!!” Suddenly Ian voice boomed over the speaker BOOMBASTIA!!!” Fireworks and with a flash of a firework with smoke shooting and appeared, Ian and Barley are on stage and the speaker played “Carried me with you in instrumental. “It’s Ian and Barley Lightfoot say hi Guys, come on Ian don’t be shy!” The crowd went wild with excitement till they settle down. @bluezey @itsme-starmunch

[thejollyroger-writer]

THE WASTELAND - Chapter One: THE HOSPITAL, Part 1

Some triggers: this story is rated TEEN, mostly for violence. It takes place during wartime, and some of the characters go through some violence and torture. If you need more information about this, please just message me!

SUMMARY:  In a world that has been saturated in war for as long as anyone can remember, Emma Swan has rebuilt her life as far away from the chaos as possible, opening her own maternity hospital after spending too many years in makeshift battlefield aid stations. But one night, a bloodied and battered soldier finds her hospital trying to get away from an enemy with a penchant for torture and a personal vendetta against him. With the help of Emma’s childhood friend Prince David and a motley collection of humans and magic-wielders, the quest to save Killian Jones’ life from the poison used by the enemy takes them to places even beyond the known world.

Header by the lovely @spartanguard​ -- check out her perfect (and bloody) art for this chpter here! 

Prologue on AO3 // Prologue on Tumblr 

Chapter One on AO3 

CHAPTER ONE: THE HOSPITAL, PART ONE 

In all meanings of the word, Emma Swan is tired. First and foremost, she's emotionally exhausted, hasn't had a night of sleep without nightmares for months, even before the war started. She's tired of seeing families torn apart, or children born without knowing if they have a father or not. That's almost as bad as knowing. Almost. 

Most of all, though, she's tired of war. That's why she's here in the first place, helping bring life into the world instead of seeing it slip from her grasp out on the battlefield, where she was trained to be. Sick of death, she says to herself for the hundredth time. 

She inserts her key into the lock, shrugging when she finds it already open. Maybe one of the other nurses beat her here, she thinks, but the thought is gone as soon as she pushes the door open. 

Blood. 

There is blood everywhere. 

Immediately, she goes on the defensive. This is what she trained for, yes, but it's not the life she leads anymore, hasn’t been for a while. (And a sight like this would never fail to catch someone off-guard, used to it or not.) She presses her thumb to the scanner on the lockbox next to the door, a worst-case-scenario precaution she hoped she never had to use, but when she feels the cool metal of the pistol in her fingers, the deafening pounding of her heart slows a tad, and a bit more when she turns back to the main room to find all the women still asleep in their beds. Whatever happened here, it wasn’t to one of her girls. 

“Emma, thank God.” The voice from behind her startles her even though it is one that she would recognize anywhere, but that doesn’t stop her from whipping around with the pistol held out in front of her, ready to strike. 

But, to her immense relief, it is exactly who she expects: Ruby, her head nurse and best friend. 

“Ruby, what happened here?” 

Running her fingers through her long, red-streaked hair, she begins to tell Emma as much as she knows. “I must have been asleep when he came in, though how he got through the door and past me is a mystery, and he couldn’t have been here long before the smell of his blood finally woke me up. No more than a few hours, if that. And all that I know is that he’s lost a lot of blood.” 

“Did you check on him at all? See what his wounds look like?” 

With her eyes turned to the ground, Ruby shakes her head, almost ashamed. “I knew — I didn’t trust myself, what with the blood shortage and all, but he’s—” When she does lift her eyes to meet those of her friend, they’re wide with something that Emma can only define as fear. “I don’t know what he is, Em. I’ve never smelled anything like him before.” 

“You did what you could, Ruby,” Emma assures her. “I’ll — let me go see what we’re dealing with.” 

But Ruby stops her, a perfectly-manicured hand wrapped around her bicep. “Be careful, Emma. He could be dangerous.”

As silently as she can, and with Ruby’s last words echoing through her mind, she follows the trail of blood, large drops that turn to larger puddles as she gets closer to the door to the offices, ending as a large wiped smudge on the linoleum on the other side of the door, presumably where he — whoever he is — finally lost his footing. 

But the streak leads right into her office, and she is slightly shocked to find the door closed. 

Not as shocked as she is when she opens the door, though; because there, on the floor of her office, crumpled in a seated position against the front of her desk, is a man — a soldier, she assumes, though he is in jeans and a faded grey t-shirt instead of a traditional uniform. A very, very wounded soldier, every inch of him covered in blood and mud, with the former even dripping from him in some places. Instinctively, she takes a quick inventory of his visible wounds: a gash on his forehead, a long slice along his cheek, lines down his bare arms. 

But the worst of it is his left arm, blunted halfway up his forearm and tied with a large, tight tourniquet, though not tight enough to completely stop the bleeding. Seeing the piles of it around the man's body, not to mention all he's lost on his way here, Emma questions for a moment how — if — he can even be alive, also questioning his age by his delicate features, by the dark hair that hangs down to his equally dark eyebrows. He can't be much older than she is, she thinks, hoping that he's more than just another loss of this terrible war.

And then he takes a long, hitching breath, letting out a low moan on the exhale. 

Good Lord. He's alive. 

Emma falls to her knees in front of him, not even caring about the bloodstains that ruin her pants the moment they touch the ground. 

He's alive. 

She reaches onto the shelf beside her, pulling one of the rags from it's pristine pile, using it to dab away some of the blood from his face. 

“You're okay,” she says softly, searching the cups on her desk for a cup not stained with leftover coffee, which she finds on the third try, closing her eyes to focus on filling the cup with water to dip the rag in, hoping the moisture will aid in clearing the crust from around his eyes. “You're going to be okay, do you hear me?” She has no idea where the words come from, but they seem to help, and after a few more groans, the man in front of her opens his eyes with a short yelp. 

Emma drops the rag, pressing her palms instead against his cheeks. In sharp contrast to his dirty skin, to his dark hair, dark clothes, his eyes are the brightest blue she has ever seen, and for a moment, staring into them pulls the breath from her lungs and makes it impossible for her to find it again for a drawn-out moment. 

“Hello,” she says finally, hoping that her smile hides the terror that suddenly fills her heart. She has no idea who this man is, what he is capable of, which side of this war he is on — or, perhaps most importantly, what brought him to her hospital, of all places. 

He has no answer for her, simply stares at her, bright eyes wide. Slowly, the smile fades from her face. 

“You're going to be okay. I don't know what brought you here, but I'm going to do everything I can to take care of you.” The source of the words is still a mystery, but as she says them, she realizes that every single one of them is true, no matter who he is. 

The corner of his lips ticks up into a momentary smile, though it quickly turns to a grimace when he realizes how much pain it causes him. He opens his mouth, Emma assumes to try to speak, but she stops him with a hand on his arm. 

“No, please, don’t. You’re— you lost a lot of blood, I don’t even know how you made it here alive, but I’m going to take care of you, okay?” 

Again, he tries to smile, and gets a little closer before the muscles in his face fight against the movement. So, instead of talking, he tries to move — slowly, with Emma’s eyes finding every movement of his muscles — his hand pointing first to the mug of water in Emma’s hand, then — slowly, carefully — to his mouth, though the fact that the very movement causes him pain is written plainly across his features.

“Shit, yeah, okay,” she mumbles, pushing herself up off the floor. “Let me — let me find you a clean cup.” 

If they weren’t in a time of war, she tells herself, her office would be more organized. Though whether that’s really true or not is something she may never know, since she has never known a world that is not suffering through war. She would like to believe that one day, maybe, the world can be bright and healthy and good, but for now, she’ll just live with her messy desk — especially in times like this, rare as they may be, when the mess actually helps her, God forbid. It took three tries to find the mug that she filled with water to wipe the man’s face, and it takes her another two to find one already filled with water, this time worrying more about gnats and dirt and floaters than leftover coffee stains, but as she holds the worn ceramic up to his lips and slowly dribbles some into his mouth, she has a feeling that finding a gnat would have made it very high on his list of problems. 

Slowly, slowly, he swallows, once, twice, his eyes tightly shut with all the pain he must be in, and then backs his head away from the mug, making some of the contents dribble down his chin and onto his dirty grey shirt. 

She cannot even begin to imagine the type of pain he must be in, between the gashes on his face, probably a broken rib or two (if not something more serious, like internal bleeding), not to mention his newly-blunted arm. But even the few drops of water must have felt like a godsend, and, with his head resting back against the front panel of her desk once more, he takes a slow, deep breath, not even seeming to mind his body’s reaction to it, and opens his eyes once more. 

“Thank you,” he whispers, his voice cracked and hoarse, though better than Emma anticipated given his state. 

Still: “Shh, shh, don’t talk,” she says as calmly as she can, running the wet rag along his jawline again. “You have so many injuries — though,” she tries her best to smile, managing to catch a flash of brightness in his already shining blue eyes, “I’m sure you already know that. I don’t know what brought you to my hospital, but I can assure you that I’m going to do everything I can to get you back on your feet, okay? My name is Emma, and I’m going to take care of you.” 

He nods, slowly blinking his eyes, and Emma even dares to think she sees hope in them, a light that stays on his face even as he slips out of consciousness once more. 

 With the help of Ruby, they carefully move him to the cot in her office, trying their best not to reopen any of the wounds that have managed to close, removing his worn grey tee-shirt to see what they have to work with. 

“Dear God.” 

Emma doesn’t even know what to say, but Ruby’s whispered curse almost covers it. 

It’s worse than she imagined. Much worse — and Ruby, not trained in field medicine like she is, has never seen anything like it (even during the time she spends in wolf form) and leaves the room with one of her hands covering her mouth. 

Emma doesn’t blame her. 

How he is still alive is a question that she seriously contemplates, carefully ghosting her fingers over the still-open wounds to make sure that it’s really real. She’s seen dark magic; she’s seen the damage that dark magic can inflict. But what she has never seen is dark magic that sticks around once the wielder is no longer inflicting, magic that shimmers and crackles like lightning across the skin. 

What she has never seen… until now. 

“What did they do to you?” she whispers, almost wishing she knew the answer, while at the same time thankful that she has never had to go through what this man has obviously been through. She dips her rag back into the new bucket of water, carefully dabbing the blood-covered skin of his chest, finding more small cuts and bruises with every new, clean inch, which she finds surprisingly easy to heal with her magic. 

When she makes it to his left pec, though — the spot immediately over his heart — she feels the breath escape from her lungs and finds herself unable to replace it. Not only is it worse than she imagined, but it’s unlike anything Emma has ever seen before. It shocks her. Literally, the energy from the leftover magic reacts to hers and physically shocks her fingers. There’s a gash, a literal gash across his heart that’s large enough she would be able to see into it if it were clean. 

What surprises her the most, though, is that it’s not bleeding. If it were bleeding, he would probably be dead, but this is somehow… 

Worse? 

It’s black. Shining, glimmering black, moving like the waves on the ocean. For a moment, Emma is entranced by the constant motion of it, and then it shocks her again, her magic crackling in response to it. She can’t imagine the type of pain he must be in, this dark magic gash so close to his heart. She can’t help herself and she stretches her fingers out to touch it, even through the crackling of her magic at the tips of her fingers, but when she comes in contact with it, it just feels like skin. As if there is nothing wrong with it at all. 

She finds herself thinking about his status, since he is not wearing the uniform of either side of the war — but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have an allegiance, she tells herself, carefully wiping away the dirt around the bleeding gash on his shoulder, a wound that barely missed the edge of an intricate ship’s helm and compass tattoo that runs to the end of his newly-blunted arm. Somehow, the wound that brought her the most surprise upon finding him seems to be the one that has started to heal the nicest, among those that respond to her magic instead of ignoring it entirely. Even so, a field amputation is not an injury to take lightly, magic or no, and Emma makes a mental note to find some stitches and a new tourniquet, just in case.  

 Which isn’t going to be easy, with the enemy breathing down her neck. She doesn’t really even have enough morphine to treat him, since they’re mostly given pills to give to at the beginning of labor, plus a small and dwindling supply of IV drip in case the women lose consciousness. Shit. She hadn’t even thought about that. She’s going to have to make due with what she has left of that and her supply of sleeping pills until she can figure out how to get another order so soon without raising eyebrows. 

She’s going to have to contact David, though with the enemy lines shifting around her every day, whether it would even be feasible for him to come all the way out here is an entirely different problem. 

Morphine, tourniquets, stitching thread. 

She begins to make the list in her head, a sort of mantra as she continues to work her way across the cuts and gashes on his chest. She finds that many of them not only heal, but disappear without even a scar in a way that she has never seen before. She turns her attention to his face, specifically to the large cut that runs down his right cheek, but a low moan from the lips of the injured man stops her. 

“David.” 

“That’s—” she says out loud, realizing she is speaking to a room empty besides a man who needs to be unconscious, who she assumed was given his tightly-closed eyes. Impossible, she continues in her own head, going back to carefully wiping the blood and dirt from his impossibly-wounded chest. 

It can’t be the Prince, she tells herself, tossing her soiled rag onto the floor and finding a new one from the shelf behind her. David is a common enough name, he must be speaking of someone other than the Prince, someone other than the man who is the closest thing to family that she has ever known. He has to be. 

“David,” he groans again, this time followed by, “No, no, Liam, please,” and if she weren’t kneeling above him, didn’t already have her hands on his chest, he surely would have thrashed off the bed. In catching him, holding him down, her fingers are wound through a chain that holds a collection of rings, each one as beautiful and intricate as the last, obviously well taken care of, besides the same signs of hardship that cover the rest of this man’s body. For a moment, she finds herself really looking at him, at the ripples of muscle and dark hair that cover what she can see of his chest and stomach; at the collection of artistry she finds spread across his scarred skin; at his strong jawline and the long, dark eyelashes that rest against his cheeks — until he gasps, squeezing his eyes tight, and tries to thrash beneath her again.

With that, she reminds herself of her task at hand, that he is not here for her to marvel at (even being the most handsome man she has ever seen), and she stands once more, hoping that he doesn’t wound himself further in the minutes it will take her to gather more supplies from the stockroom. 

Ariel, one of her nurses, is in the basement, restocking the shelves when she makes her way down the steps. “Emma!” she says, somehow always chipper, even in the middle of an ever-present crisis. “How is our newest patient? Is he going to be okay?” 

All Emma can do is nod, finding the IV supplies she came down here for before adding a few coils of gauze to the pile in her arms. 

“He’ll — he’ll live, at least,” she mutters, but her mind is elsewhere, remembering the secret room that she built off the back of the basement, dreading the day she needed to use it — a day that, thankfully, had never come. 

Until now. 

“Well, that’s good at least. Ruby told me that he’s in pretty bad shape, but hopefully nothing that we can’t fix before we have to send him away—” 

Emma turns to her, her eyes suddenly snapping to attention. “Listen, you shouldn’t — you can’t mention him to anyone, or even around anyone. No one can know he’s here.” 

The smile fades from the redhead’s face. She simply nods. 

“Meanwhile,” Emma continues, turning back to the steel wall at the back of the hospital. “We have to move him down here, to the crisis room.” 

“Who’s looking for him?” 

Emma shakes her head. “I have no clue. But I do know that I’ve never seen dark magic like this, and that just makes me even more afraid. But until we figure it out, he’s not here, as far as anyone is aware.” 

Ariel nods again. 

“Would you be able to set up an IV for him? Make sure it’s clean enough for me to take care of him? I don’t want to move him again just yet, but I’m afraid this may be the only way to keep him safe.”

Emma pauses for a moment, wondering — wishing — there was another option besides the crisis room, hoping that maybe this is all a bad dream that she’ll wake up from any moment. But the blood she draws from inside her bottom lip tells another story, and she nods before turning away. 

“Emma,” Ariel calls, and Emma has a feeling that she may have missed the first time. “I, uh, need you to open the room.” 

Duh. 

“Of course,” she says, the ghost of a smile passing across her lips. She forgot the built-in safeties of the safe room: the fact that only she can open the door, the magic-plus-biometric locks the best she could find when she was adding the room. “Right.” 

 They move him later that day, once he comes back to consciousness, his body propped carefully between Emma and Ariel’s shoulders, walking half-on his own and half-aided by both Emma and Ariel’s magic. By the time they get him down the steps and onto the hospital bed, he’s only torn two of the stitches in his side, which were Emma’s last resort to stop some of the bleeding in the first place. 

Even with just the small amount of healing that Emma was able to do on her own, and the new morphine drip hooked up to his still-complete arm, he already seems to be in much better shape than before. 

“Thank you, Ariel,” she says, hoping that her tone of finality is enough to get her point across. Now that he’s conscious, she needs to talk to him, needs to figure out what brought him to her hospital — and she needs to do it alone. 

Ariel nods, either too exhausted to respond or picking up on Emma’s tone. “Let me know if I can help,” she says, leaving them behind without another word. 

When the door closes behind her, Emma turns to her patient, noticing the way his long eyelashes rest on his cheeks with his eyes closed. 

“Alright, listen,” she says, taking a seat in the chair set up next to the cot, and his eyes snap back open. “I need to — we need to talk about your situation here…” She wants to end the sentence with his name, hoping to make up for some of the bite behind her voice, but she realizes now that she’s never learned it. 

His face becomes an emotionless mask, his back even seeming to straighten a bit at the authority in her voice. So she tries to tone it down a little, offering a soft smile when he does dare to meet her eyes. 

“Can we start with your name?” she asks, trying to soften her voice. “Please?” Whether it works or not is unclear, but he seems to calm a bit either way. 

“Killian,” he says, his voice hoarse, and when he coughs to clear it, the pain on his face is obvious. “Killian Jones.” 

“Well, Killian Jones,” she says. “I’m Emma Swan.” 

He breathes out a small laugh, his hand squeezing into a fist on his ribs with the movement. 

“The morphine should kick in soon, and hopefully the pain will start to subside.” 

“Thank you, love,” he says, his voice stronger than Emma’s heard it — and also the first time she's noticed his accent, resembling some from the northern mer-people, though his dark hair and tanned skin makes her question even that. 

She gives him a moment like this, gathering his strength, before leaning closer to him, resting her forearms on her knees. “But now, can you — can you tell me what you remember about getting here?” 

He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes as if trying to remember — which, Emma realizes, is exactly what he’s doing. After a moment, he starts: “Alright, I was… they were questioning me about the location of —" He stops for a moment, briefly meeting her eyes but focusing behind her instead before starting again. "They were looking for some intel that they thought I had. And then when the rain started, they gave up and left me outside, thinking I was too weak to get away, and they were half-right. But the water, it — Christ, Killian — I managed to get away. I had no idea where I was, where I was trying to go, so I just… picked a direction and took off. I really thought I was going to die out there somewhere, that I was finally going to succumb to my wounds, but then I saw this light and I really thought I was going to die, until I realized that it was — it was this hospital, and the door was unlocked even though everyone was asleep. I don’t… I really don’t remember anything after that, but somehow I guess I wound up in your office.” 

"Who was questioning you?" 

She recognizes the fear in his eyes the moment the question slips through her lips. Just as she does not know which side of the war he is on, he must constantly be asking himself the same question about her, especially now that she knows he is a soldier, even without a uniform. If he says the wrong thing, if he reveals that he is on the opposite side of the war as she is, it could prove futile: she could refuse him care, could turn him out of doors to die — or, worse, she could turn him back to the enemy that he narrowly escaped from. 

But she’s not going to do either of those things. “Listen, Killian, this is a hospital. There are no sides to a war in a place like this. But, given your wounds and the obvious hardship you’ve experienced at the hands of your enemy, I fully understand your wariness towards sharing this with me, and I’m certainly not going to force you.”

A silent beat passes, the silence even deeper in the underground safe room, before she pushes herself off the chair. 

“I’m working on gathering supplies for you, but I’m going to be honest, it’s not going to be easy. We’ve been under a regular watch from the enemy recently, what with the changing territories in this area, so I may not be able to get everything I need as fast as I’m hoping to, for your sake.”

“I’m just grateful that you’re willing to help me, love,” he says, and something in his voice lets her know that this is genuine.

She just wishes there was more she could do. 

Morphine, tourniquets, stitching thread, blood, she says to herself as she leaves him alone to rest up some more. Hope, she adds, though she rolls her eyes at her own joke. He needs that more than anything else. 

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