#and not utterly descriptive of immediately prior events

[junebug-the]

Another day, another piece!

This time featuring @poptartportfolio's Meowdrey, in a brief, small scene after her 'Halo: Eclipse' story.

Rescue; Recovery — A short story of half of a rescue squad sent into Prophetic Dawn as a last ditch effort, now safe in space after escaping hell, and the sole survivor they could find.

[oatmilkslytherin]

one night (d.l.m)

description: after one night of drunken mishaps, draco finds himself absolutely obsessed with slytherin!reader whose name and face he cannot remember, and only the remnants of her sweet strawberry scent remain

requested: yes / no

warnings: mentions of alcohol, mentions of sexual themes

a/n: send me requests i love them:))

draco’s pov:

one night. one night of allowing myself to let loose and enjoy myself. one night that dulled into blurry memories that continued to haunt my dreams. one night with one girl, and i couldn’t even remember her name. 

it wasn’t like me to partake in illegal substances, but after the week i had, i decided a party amongst my housemates was a perfect excuse to rid of my worries. i thought i wasn’t going to let myself become too out of control, but by the pounding in my head and the heaviness in my chest, i knew i may have consumed more firewhisky than i anticipated. 

whilst the bitter taste of last night’s consumptions lingered on my lips, i couldn’t help but also taste the most vague hint of something sweeter. something barely distinguishable, but still present. i had almost forgot about the nameless, faceless girl i so willingly brought into my dorm only a few hours prior. 

i looked to the empty space on the bed next to me, noticing how crumpled the sheets looked, but also unable to deny the obvious dent left from another person’s body. the space was still warm, but clearly empty. she must have just left. 

although i didn’t know who i brought to my dorm, her laughter rang through my ears and settled into a heaviness in my chest. from what i remembered, she was absolutely intoxicating. i couldn’t even tell if the effects of last night were worn off yet; i was drunk off of a stranger. 

i begrudgingly slumped my duvet off of my body, allowing myself to drag my heavy body out of bed. i immediately headed towards blaise’s dorms, hoping someone could give me a coherent answer to the endless questions that implanted themselves in my mind.

y/n’s pov:

i quietly snuck into my dorm, my clothes lazily clinging to my body. i’m sure i looked a wreck; i sure as hell felt like one. after closing the mahogany door, i slumped onto my bed, exhaling deeply in the comfort of my room. while last night was certainly an unforgettable night, the person i woke up next to was surely one that would haunt my dreams for the next few nights. 

draco malfoy. even his name brought a smile to my lips. i never intended on making him one of my one-night-stands, but crazier things have happened within these school walls. waking up next to him, however, instilled pure panic throughout me. he has barely looked my way in the entire time we have attended this school, and i was positive that his senses were nearly lost when he decided to bring me to his dorm the night prior. 

“fun night, y/l/n?” my roommate asked from the other side of the room, propping herself up on her bed with her hand pressed against the side of her head. i shook my head slightly, letting out a scoff of laughter.

“you have no clue,” i muttered, laying back onto my own bed in pure exhaustion and confusion. 

draco’s pov:

i wandered through the halls of hogwarts, completely lost in my own thoughts. blaise had just about as much information about the mystery girl as i did, saying he thought her to have y/h/c and y/e/c, but that was about it. my mind jumped to a few possibilities, but i was ultimately ruled them all out due to knowledge on their whereabouts. 

i turned the corner abruptly as i walked back towards the common room, so lost in thought i couldn’t stop myself colliding with a much smaller frame. she collapsed against my body, my hands instinctively flying to her arms to steady her so she wouldn’t fall over. just as i was about to mutter something about her carelessness, my eyes fell upon her own.

y/n y/l/n. one girl who truly made me melt in her presence. i had always thought her to be beautiful, nearly everyone did. she was the kind of beautiful that made me nervous, her smile was absolutely intoxicating. and here she left me, standing like a dumbstruck fool in front of her as i cradled her in my arms to steady her falling. 

she looked just as shocked as i did, her mouth slightly agape as she stared up at me. 

“i’m sorry, draco,” she murmured finally, managing to steady herself and immediately brushing past me with her head down. i couldn’t help but find her exit quizzical. while we were never the greatest friends, i was never mean to her. i couldn’t bring myself to be cruel towards her. i couldn’t help but let my mind linger on her use of my first name. to my recollection, we had never been on a first name basis. but listening to my name roll off of her lips was something i would absolutely want to get used to. 

just as she passed me, i let my eyes follow her for a second more. and then the scent, the intoxicating, all-consuming scent reached my nose just moments later. a scent that has been driving me crazy all day long.

strawberries.

y/n’s pov:

i settled onto the couch in the common room, the fire dancing and flickering delicately in front of me. i sighed in relief, pulling out some parchment of schoolwork and beginning to write. 

the entire ordeal with draco made me utterly nervous. i couldn’t tell if he remembered the events of the night prior and decided to ignore it, or if the memory just entirely escaped his mind as i was written off as another one of draco’s notorious hook-ups. 

i couldn’t lie and say that the feeling of his hands embracing my arms as our bodies collided against one another’s didn’t make my heart beat out of my chest. when his gaze softened as his eyes met mine, and the way he looked so calm despite my own clumsiness, the way he acted around me didn’t make sense.

as i began to shake off my reeling thoughts and write once more, i felt a presence settle onto the couch next to me. very close to me, may i add. i looked up momentarily, my breath hitching in my throat as my eyes met his piercing blue ones once more. my lips were parted slightly as i was unable to form a coherent thought or sentence. only a smirk could form on his lips as he stared into me.

“clever girl. to sneak out before i woke up. did you think i wouldn’t find out it was you?” his question completely caught me off-guard, and i found my mouth drying out as he spoke. 

“we can pretend like it never happened. it can just be a one night thing... no one knows...” i trailed off as i slightly stuttered over my own words. draco only smirked deeper, his body now inching undeniably closer to my own. he brought his hand up, placing it under my chin slightly as he traced lightly circles into my skin. 

“what if i want people to know?” draco asked, his face inching closer to mine. a lump of nervousness formed in my throat as he closed the gap between our faces. “what if i want it to be more than a one night thing?”

“theoretically... i would have no objections.” my voice was barely above a whisper as i spoke. our lips were now barely brushing against against one another’s and draco longingly closed the gap between us. our lips pressed together softly and sweetly, much different than the fruitful kisses we exchanged last night. his lips lingered with the sweet taste of peppermint and i took in every inch of the taste as my lips moved against his. 

my heart pounded out of my chest as we broke apart, both of our chests heaving with breathlessness as our lips brushed against each other’s once more. he leaned his forehead against my own, chuckling lightly at my flustered, yet clumsily happy state. i smiled deeply at him as a red hue lingered on my cheeks. 

“only one night with you and you already have me hooked.”

[vantablade]

【 🌌 MYTHOPOEIA I. 】

TL;DR: Nocturne’s species is the same as her family name, which is one of royalty amongst her home planet. This species possesses two bodies, feeds on creative/life energy (mostly through sex and bodily consumption), manipulates sonokinesis and aquakinesis with ease. They are alluring and terrifying, always unsettling, and their native country depends on their existence. 

The following lore post is a re-write of Nocturne’s lore regarding her species and some of her heritage. It references sex albeit not explicitly nor descriptively, as well as the conception and deaths of the species. There are non-descriptive references to cannibalism (of a supernatural kind). Information-wise, it includes the etymology of the family name, the chronology of their origins with vague references to the circumstances of said origins, some references to significant events and brief descriptors of Nocturne’s kinsmen. As I mentioned, it also includes a description of how the Ametsuchi are formed through conception and their life spans, as well as the usual circumstances of their death, and other biological tid-bits such as abilities, particularly their Glamours, and the cultural ideology that surrounds the species in their native land of Izana, Neo. Word count is girthy, so if you read the whole thing an acknowledging like would be very encouraging! 

Ametsuchi, Nocturne’s family name, is both the moniker attributed to a royal family and a species; within their general cultural environs, the two are synonymous, for only members of the former can be the latter, due to a magical contract made with the Living Sea of Neo during the Sixth Epoch, after the Genesis Migration. The etymology of “Ametsuchi” is comprised of the characters suggesting, literally, “rain” and “earth”, however its meaning can be more symbolically interpreted as “Heaven and Earth” or, in some cases, “the Universe”, illustrating the duality of the Ametsuchi’s existence.

The Ametsuchi are not mortal by our understanding—the canonical term referring to any non-mortal being “Undane”—for their life spans and way of creation are jarringly different from that of a mortal life. An Ametsuchi can live, theoretically, forever, however rarely do they achieve such longevity due to the fact their appetite grows with age, forcing them to consume more and more to sustain their gigantic forms, not unlike the Earthly lobsters or the Terrawatas of the planet Cthylle, which has a similar aging approach. As well as the biological difficulties of maintaining the massive form that comes with old age, the Ametsuchis—particularly those who reign as or are immediately in line to reign as the High King—often are killed pre-maturely by assassinations or other politicalized deaths. Notable examples are Kamo, the High King two generations prior in the Fifth Epoch, to the current regent, and Nocturne’s great-grandmother, whose surprising gentleness became an instrument of irony as her tender heart led to her death by a rebel group within Izana. Another notable example is the Ametsuchi Massacre just prior to the turn of the Sixth Epoch, whereupon the survivor of the previous assassination—High King Kana the Unloved—was murdered by her third heir, the current monarch High King Kazumi the Good, alongside almost all of the living Ametsuchi.

Due to the severity of the upheaval, there is a remarkable shortage of Ametsuchi, as once they were a plentiful people who could reign as Lords among the various cities and villages of Izana as well as forming the sole security of the capital. Now, where once there were many, there remains only the High King; her Oracle Hitomi; her exiled heir High Prince Kimiko, currently absent and whereabouts unknown; Nocturne, whose existence is currently unknown to the Neoni populace; a lost heir sacrificed to Spider’s Eye shortly after her birth; the twins, Lords Hato and Karasu, children of the previous High Prince and nieces to the current High King, and Lord Komadori, who perished a few years prior to this blog’s currently timeline. Unusually, there is one other Ametsuchi, though she is the singular occurrence of a royal member—and the currently coronated High Prince, heir to the Ever-Drowning Throne—who is not also, biologically, an Ametsuchi, due to the unusual (and secretive) circumstances of her birth.

The conceptions and births of Ametsuchi are crucial to the biological formation of an Ametsuchi, as one does not inherit these traits innately from their parentage. Conception relies on the existence of three parents: the donor, the Ametsuchi, and the Living Sea. It is avian in nature, as it involves an external egg which is incubated by one of the parents, in this case the aforementioned Living Sea. The moment of conception is achieved when a donor, usually a Mundane but can be some form of magical entity, is “sacrificed” to the Living Sea and implanted with a part of the parental Ametsuchi’s mana. This mana is parasitic, rendering the donor comatose and paralysed but not dead, as it slowly consumes the life energy of the donor in order to transform it into something else. This transformation then becomes an egg, around six foot in height and three feet in width, comprised of a fleshy physical magic toxic to the touch. It is not dissimilar from the sort of alien eggs found in science fiction horror movies, as it is not clean nor smooth but rather a dark blue-brown flesh-like consistency that is ribbed and wet with slime. Encountering one is both highly unlikely—as they are incubated within the incredibly hostile and carnivorous Living Sea—but also deeply unwanted, as its appearance, while gross in description, cannot be over-stated for its deeply unsettling magnetism and its horrid stench of salt and decaying flesh, with the raw smell not incomparable to the exposed innards of a recent carcass. Approaching one, if it is somehow isolated from its environment, is also a fool’s errand: its “shell” emits potent magnetism; an allure that cannot be resisted by any but those with an impenetrable resistance to such a siren’s call. This allure, apropos to the previous metaphor, proves fatal to the innocent who falls under its enchantment, for the flesh is carnivorous and deeply starved, and will absorb the unlucky soul who touches it—and they will touch it, for despite its repulsiveness, its magic will convince the onlooker that it is a most desirable, peaceful and treasured object that speaks to their very soul.

This egg, its terribleness aside, incubates within the abyssal stomach of the Living Sea, an entity whose body is—as one can imagine—a great, black sea, possessing a wicked sentience and an odd morality that is difficult to comprehend. The Living Sea then “fertilizes” its innards, transforming the remains in a gruelling process into that of a living being, independent of the instruments that contributed to its making, which, stripped of the Ametsuchi glamour, appears to be a monstrous bird-like mortal-like creature that has only the simplest, animalistic of urges, the primary of which is the urge—the primal need—to survive, and as such has a fitting and horrifying hunger.

Until the new-born Ametsuchi is conscious enough to understand Glamours, it will remain in this bird-like form, which is protected from the eyes of mortals and Undanes alike who are not privy to the sacred and grotesque rituals of the royal family, until it can adopt a form which suits it. The form usually mimics the primary care-giver, likely the Ametsuchi which served to create it, at least in part, as well as harbouring some sort of semblance to the donor which served as its first meal and its energy donation. This is still of its own accord, of course, but as this is an instinctual first guise, it is often rooted in the subconscious will rather than the conscious ego, and once it has been adopted is unlikely to be utterly changed if only due to the Ametsuchi in question’s comfort in its regular form. As well as that, changing one’s body exerts a tremendous amount of will and energy and can be quite an exhausting process that bodes little to no reward. However, as the Ametsuchi grows into adolescence and adulthood, the latter of which is usually kept for far longer than the average mortal, due to the societal boons afforded to those with an unearthly youthful maturity, they will grow and adapt, often adapting to the societal standard of beauty to better attract unwavering loyalty and inspire a sacrificial martyrdom in its subjects. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this is a law that is engraved into the nature of the Ametsuchi: it is in their survival’s best interest to be seen as attractive, whether it be sexually or as a matter of character, and as such their appearance often fits the ideal of their surroundings consciously or otherwise. Of course, attractiveness is not always the key to survival; they possess an underlying aura of terror that unsettles as it lures, inspiring awe in its observer. In hostile environs, the Ametsuchi will adapt appropriately: becoming larger, more intimidating, more monstrous in appearance to better be suited for intimidation tactics.

As mentioned before, there is the matter of Glamours: these are half-conscious manifestations of a mortal body that conceals the magnificence of their original form, which is grotesque and avian in nature, and only grows with age until it is utterly titanic, thus the growth of its demanding hunger which becomes difficult to sate with the marching of time. As a half-conscious act, they can withstand most forms of unconsciousness depending on the strength of the Ametsuchi in question; one who has mastered, in some part, their own mind and harbours a deep understanding of their capabilities will find it easier to uphold the illusion, while those weaker in spirit will find it harder to maintain in various debilitating circumstances. For example, Nocturne withstood grievous wounds that penetrated the Glamour and mutilated the original would beyond reparation, which still only sufficed to put her in a near-comatose state where her consciousness was altered and foggy. Yet still, she maintained her Glamour. She had been raised in total isolation, with only the study of her strength and identity as an Ametsuchi as an anchor for her learning, and so had a better grasp on her anatomical manipulation than her peers. There was still a dire element—she was on the verge of total unconsciousness, and since she had no moral nor emotional obligation to those surrounding her at the time (rather, she was untrusting and borderline hostile towards her hosts), she had no subconscious desire to protect them from the immensity of her true body, despite the fact that had her illusion broke, her original form would have decimated her physical environment and thus damaged, if not killed, the people who surrounded her, including potentially breaking the magical ward that kept the locus—the Sepulchre—protected from evil eyes.

However, Nocturne in particularly struggles to maintain her Glamour if she is in a state of deep sleep. For this reason, she keeps to herself and refuses to allow others near her in such a state of tremulous vulnerability, if not entirely subduing herself to the vacuous space she titles her personal “Void”, a unique ability to her due to her emotional reliance on it since her severely traumatic youth.

The Glamour is not the Ametsuchi’s sole power, however it is exceedingly impressive: to speak in technical terms, of a sort, it “compresses” the pre-existing body so that it is appropriately condensed into the glamoured guise, including its impact on the environment and its navigating of the physical space. There is still a subtle feeling of “wrongness” when one looks directly at an Ametsuchi, but it is difficult to source the reason behind these feelings; the cultural mythos surrounding the original body is more that it is a secondary body, and the glamour is the original body, instead choosing to believe that the original body is a sort of “power-up” that can be utilized for the goals of decimation of one’s enemies. These myths are not negated in any real way, if only because it furthers their reputation for being dangerous enemies. It is believed by Ametsuchis’ personal lore that their Glamour comes in part from their lycanthropic ancestors.

Of their other abilities, several come to mind. Sonokinesis, the ability to manipulate sound, is innate to the Ametsuchi due to their siren heritage, and is capable of manipulating not only the physical world but the emotional world, either, as they tie in certain sonic movements with emotional results. Often, their powers are difficult to channel completely without some sort of vessel to articulate it to a level of fatality—or extreme potency—so they often have vessels that embody an instrument of their liking, usually a subconscious choice that is rarely changed not unlike their bodies in youth, which channels the sonokinetic ability through it. For example, Nocturne’s is a violin; Hitomi’s is a harp; Kimiko’s is a flute, and so on. Exceptional Ametsuchi do master the power of their own voice, such as Kazumi the Good, who orchestrates grand musical annihilations with only the slightest modulations to her voice. This is an ancient power, first attributed to the Divine of Music, Sona, the child of the Ancients Sirein and Iathan. Their sonokinesis is Generative, which means they can generate this ability from internal power-sources rather than having to manipulate the external environment’s pre-existing sound.

Aquakinesis, the ability to manipulate water, is an even more ancient power, being one of the Primordial Essences which form the foundation, alongside Fire, Earth, Air, Light and Shadow, of the (Essential) Universe. These are another gift attributed to them, however this gift comes directly from their relationship to the Living Sea, which serves as a patron to the species. Due to this generosity, their aquakinesis is not as powerful as their sonokinesis—it is instead Interactive, relying on external resources rather than internal resources. A notable exception would be the Oracle, Hitomi, whose Generative Aquakinesis only derives from the Chaotic implants placed in her body by her mother, the High King. (Of these experiments, each of the currently living Ametsuchi are victims, and have differing reactions; Kimiko has Chaotic Generative Aerokinesis, Hato has Chaotic Generative Phosphorokinesis, and so on and so forth. Nocturne’s ability to manipulate entropic forces and Chaos also stem from these, in part.)

They possess a higher level of strength, which does not rely on their Glamoured body but rather the size and capability of their true body, which can give them the appearance of possessing super-human strength for their stature. They are graceful, beautiful, and disarmingly so, which is a mental tactic that serves them well in combative and political situations equally well.

The Ametsuchi, due to their wavering numbers, are restricted to the capital of Izana, Yomi; known by some as the Cannibal City, others as the Half-Drowned City, and these are only the beginning of its ghoulish monikers. Their home is the Drowning Palace, a white shard that protrudes from the black abyss of the Living Sea like a jagged tooth, which hosts only their own kind, donors (temporarily), and the rare, honoured guest. Their existence is attached to the welfare of the surrounding country, whose lands are made fertile by the Living Sea, as once it had been barren. Only the historical sacrifice of a mortal woman, who would become the first Ametsuchi, cinched a union between the untouchable Living Sea and the Undanes who lived there. If the Ametsuchi were ever to perish, so would the landscape that hosts them.

As part of their symbiotic relationship with the Living Sea, Ametsuchi are removed from the life-death cycle naturally afforded to all living and unliving entities within the Essential Universe; their souls, rather than being re-shaped and re-distributed across the wide Cosmos, are instead given directly to the Living Sea for all eternity, preserving them in a state of half-life that, with the passing of time, becomes increasingly abstract. The dead are capable of being communicated with, but only the Oracle can do so; likewise, the Oracle, second only to the High King in the tiers of Ametsuchi noblesse, is the sole figure capable of communicating directly with the Living Sea. There is only one Oracle at any point, and as soon as one dies, the next is chosen from the ranks; usually the closest to being born, but the Living Sea can often be whimsical, and if their whims direct them so they may choose another. It is not unheard of for Ametsuchi rulers to deliberately manipulate circumstances to encourage an Oracle to be created in devotion to them; for example, Hitomi’s existence depended on the murder of the prior Oracle, Yumi, and was a deliberate move by the High King in order to assure total allegiance as the Oracle would be her eldest daughter, entirely subordinate and alienated from a world that would encourage her otherwise.

Culturally, they are revered and feared alike. This reverence assures their survival, as willing donors are plentiful; it is considered the greatest honour for those of Izana to devote their bodies to the conceptions of an Ametsuchi, despite the fact it guarantees their death. If not their bodies to conceive, then to satisfy: the Ametsuchis feed on creative energy, which includes the creation of life through fresh (often living) meat and sexual energy. There is an element of life or creative energy in everything, but in the aforementioned examples they are most prominent and thus most fulfilling. This is not to say there has never been a desire for revolt, but the Ametsuchi’s symbiotic relationship with the landscape often demotivates those with rage against their rulers. Instead, the rage is channelled into the cities, into the architecture, into the culture.

The history of the Ametsuchi are deep, rich and blood-soaked, as they like it. They are founded on a principal of sacrifice. They are objects of reverence and repulsion, inspiring legions of the devout. Nocturne is but a tiny part of a grander legacy, but not all legacies are born to last.

[fallintosanity]

What are your thoughts on 7 Remake’s ~controversial~ ending? It’s been a few weeks now since I finished and I legit feel like I’ve journeyed through all 5 stages of grief and finally landed on Acceptance 😅

haha that’s fair! I have a lot of thoughts about the remake, but they’re coming from three different angles. 

(Spoilers under the cut obvs; also this got fucklong even after I cut a bunch of non-ending-related thoughts, and I apologize to those of you on mobile)

From the POV of someone who played and loved the original

Overall, I really enjoyed the remake, ending and all. I replayed the OG prior to the remake’s release, finishing literally four hours before the remake became available in North America, but it had still been months since I did the Midgar parts so it wasn’t too immediately fresh in my mind. Still, I was impressed by how faithful the remake is to the OG for the vast majority of the game. They noticeably cleaned up a few things, like Tseng slapping Aerith, which didn’t age well or stopped making sense with regards to the greater Compilation, which was nice to see. But they also doubled down on some of the ridiculousness of the original. I can’t tell you how much I cackled when the Hell House showed up, or how many times I said to my fiance in joy/disbelief, “They really managed to fit that in!” 

I also love all the little nods to the greater Compilation. I saw one interview excerpt from like... 2015 or 2014 or something that said the Remake is considered canon to the Compilation, and the content of the Remake itself suggests this. While some of the cameos could be considered nothing more than cameos (as much as I love Kunsel, I don’t think his name being dropped means anything other than that they needed a name and wanted to give a nod to him), there are other clear hints that Crisis Core and The Kids Are Alright, at minimum, are canon to the Remake. Hojo mentions “S and G type” SOLDIERs, i.e., Sephiroth-type and Genesis/Gillian-type. (Roche is a G type I am not taking arguments on this point) The description of the Buster Sword says it carries the hopes and dreams of those who came before, implying more than just Zack (i.e., Angeal). Zack’s scene right before he charges the ShinRa army is shot-for-shot the one from Crisis Core, which could have just been a nod, but the fact that he also says the same lines as the original is telling. There’s a lot of lore loaded into those lines. Leslie and Kyrie are both from The Kids Are Alright (which makes me wonder if the third ShinRa half-brother is floating around somewhere). You could make an argument for Before Crisis being partially or completely canon to the remake as well, since someone mentions a previous assassination attempt on the President, which happened in BC. 

But now we get into the issue of whether Advent Children is canon to the remake, i.e., the ending and the thing you actually asked about. ^^; This is where I’m more torn. My initial reaction to the ending was “Oh crap, we went from FFVII-Remake to Kingdom Hearts - oh shit now we’re in Advent Children - oh fuck now we’re in fanfiction-land.” Which... is definitely not what I was expecting from the ending of Part 1. 

On first playthrough it feels a bit like they overplayed their hand with Sephiroth in the ending: “everyone wants a Sephiroth fight in a FFVII game, so we’ll give them a Sephiroth fight”. I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the fact that Sephiroth appears in person in the Midgar sequence, when in the OG all we see of him before Kalm is the aftermath of President Shinra’s murder. I do think Sephiroth’s appearances prior to the ending were done well - the writers clearly intended to emphasize Cloud’s mental issues, and Sephiroth is too big a part of them to ignore. His appearances prior to the top of Shinra Tower both serve as a bone tossed to those who wanted to see him in the remake, and set up the Cloud-Sephiroth relationship a lot earlier and in more depth. You can see how utterly terrified Cloud is every time Sephiroth is around - even sometimes frozen into immobility. Depending on how things go with the Kalm flashback, this may also help cue new players in to just how wrong things are with Cloud. (After all, a SOLDIER First shouldn’t be afraid of another SOLDIER First, should he?) But the final fight against Sephiroth, or at least, a clone wearing Sephiroth’s face, felt premature, out of place, something that’s only there to appease people who wanted to fight Sephiroth now. 

Aside from the Sephiroth thing, I’m reserving judgment a bit on the ending as a whole. On the one hand, I’m deeply curious to see where the story goes from here, and how the writers use their newfound freedom (more on that in a minute). On the other hand, I don’t want this to turn into Kingdom Hearts 4, and I don’t trust Nomura in that regard, especially after all the bullshit that went on with KH3, Verum Rex, and FFXV/versus 13. I love Nomura, but like George Lucas, he desperately needs someone to rein in, edit, and shape his ideas.

I’m also not sure how I feel about all the theories being thrown out there - such as that at least one of the Sephiroths we see is the one from after AC, somehow flung back in time to fuck things up; or that the OG was, 999-style, Aerith seeing into the future and now in the remake she’s taking control to put everything on the path she wants. They’re interesting, for sure, and I think that with careful handling, it’s possible Squenix might be able to pull one of them off - but given what I know of Squenix (again, more on that later), I don’t trust them to do it well. I am, to be blunt, very concerned that later installments of the remake are going to turn into an incoherent tug-of-war between those who want to be faithful to the original, and Nomura’s desire to inject weird Kingdom Hearts nonsense everywhere. 

I say this with all the love to Kingdom Hearts, but it’s a very specific kind of story and it’s not what I want to see in my FFVII.

On a writing meta level

On the meta level, I’m fascinated by the choice to go with the whole Whispers/Arbiters of Fate thing. I don’t know how much of that is pure Nomura-injected BS vs how much was a deliberate choice by the writing team, but for right now I’m going to assume it was mostly a deliberate and unanimous choice. 

I’ve seen a lot of other Remake opinions along the lines of a reluctant, “I guess they had to put the Whispers in there because a perfect remake wouldn’t have been satisfying to everyone. There’s always someone who would have complained.” I... don’t think that’s entirely true. Like, yeah, sure, someone’s always going to complain if it’s not a pixel-perfect remake, but based on the overall satisfaction I’ve seen from OG fans (including myself) regarding the parts that are true to the original, I think Squenix would have done just fine if that was the path they chose. And given how much attention they paid to making most of the game into a nearly-perfect recreation, I think the writers knew it. 

So why’d they go the whole Whispers route? 

My guess would be that the writers were giving themselves freedom, on a meta level, with the Whispers. It’s a way of both poking fun at, and solving, their own dilemma: do we make a perfect, hi-res copy of the original? Or do we change things to make it our own? 

The “change something to make it your own” is a longstanding trope when someone new is put in charge of something old. You see it in everything from Disney live-action remakes to new managers who change their employees’ routines just to “make an impact”. Most of the time, these changes are neutral / un-impactful at best, or outright frustrating / terrible at worst. I wonder if the Remake writing team wasn’t fully aware of this, and possibly tangled up in knots internally about how to handle it. Would it be seen as a bad, “make it their own” change to have Tseng not slap Aerith? What about adding Chocobo Sam, Madam M, and Andrea Rhodea to the Wall Market sequence? What about the changes to how the Avalanche gang reacts to Cloud, now that we have full animation and voice acting and it’s clear Avalanche has no reason to want to keep him around except for Jessie being horny on main? Where’s the line? 

I could see the Whispers being the writing team’s way of making sure they stay in line where it’s important, while also giving themselves the freedom to make the updates needed to allow the remake to work. They’re kind of a meta nod to the audience, a “don’t worry! If we get too far out of line, the Whispers will bring us back.” In that sense, the entire ending where you (the player) kill the Whispers and free yourself (the player) from destiny is you giving the writers permission to continue making those small changes. 

In FFXV, almost the entire ending sequence is a cutscene: Noctis on the throne, being murdered by his ancestors and descending into the spirit realm. But there’s one single quick-time event in there, one point where the player has to take action and push a button. It’s not even difficult, and on the surface it seems pointless. Except, if you don’t, Noctis lives. (Trapped in purgatory maybe, but he’s still there.) If you never push that button, Noctis doesn’t sacrifice his spirit and those of the Lucii to destroy Ardyn and wipe the Scourge from Eos. By asking - requiring - the player to push that button to commit that final act, the game makes the player complicit in Noct’s sacrifice. It’s a powerful moment, and similar to what (I suspect) the Remake writers intended with the Whispers. 

Because they could have left the Whispers in forever. They could have had them be a continuous presence throughout all episodes of the Remake, a little reminder that no matter what tweaks the writers might make to update the story, to “make it their own”, the Arbiters of Fate will ensure things are on track. That things will play out exactly as in the original. But by asking the player to destroy the Arbiters, the writers are asking for the player’s permission to make changes. And by killing the Arbiters, you’re granting it. Because, just like you can keep Noctis alive by not pushing the button when prompted, you can keep the original game more-or-less on track by never stepping through that portal, never killing the Arbiters. But if you do step through that portal and go through with it, you’re agreeing to accept that things might change, thus freeing the writers from the constant double jeopardy of changing things vs keeping them exactly the same. 

On a business meta level

As cool as (I think) that all sounds, the bigger question is, can Square Enix actually pull it off? And here’s where I start to have my most significant doubts. After the FFvs13/FFXV debacle and the hopeless mess that was KH3, I do not trust Nomura to tell a coherent story, even if it’s supposedly a retelling of an existing, well-known story. I don’t know anything about the inner workings or politics at Square Enix, other than that there are politics at play, so in fairness to him I can’t really say it’s because he himself is bad at telling a story, or just doesn’t have the support he needs to convey his vision well. But that gets into other issues with Squenix. We know their last several major games have had long and troubled developments. Someone way more attuned than me to the Japanese video games industry can talk in depth about why; all I know is that it happened (is happening?) and that it’s something of a miracle the remake came out as well as it did. 

On top of that, I’m a bit concerned that even if Squenix can get (and keep) its shit together, it might be up against external forces that constrain how it can tell the story of FFVII in the present. For example, from what I’ve heard, the reason Crisis Core never got ported the way so many other games did, and the reason Genesis Rhapsodos has never been seen outside it and a Dirge of Cerberus cameo, is due to image licensing fights with Gackt, Genesis’s face model. CC established Genesis as a key player in the events leading up to the original game’s story, and enough hints have been dropped about CC in the remake that, like I said earlier, it appears to be canon. But if Squenix can’t reach an agreement to use the character again, they might be trapped in a corner where they either have to completely rewrite the parts of the story involving Genesis, or dance around his existence. 

And on top of all that, it’s just expensive and time-consuming as hell to make games on the remake’s scale. Everyone expects the PS4 to be retired by the time Remake Part 2 comes out, which is going to pose huge logistical issues for releasing it. Squenix has been having a rough time of it lately, from what I’ve heard - are they, as a company, capable of handling all those logistical issues? I don’t know, and that makes me nervous. 

Still, they did do a remarkable job with the remake overall, even grappling with the pandemic around the launch date. So maybe they’re getting their shit together again, and things will be smooth sailing from here. We’ll have to wait and see. 

[thatoneawkwardhorse]

Broken Hearts and Broken Bodies

I kinda actually hate this. Like I think the idea is fine, it’s just my writing that’s... eh

Summary: Ghidorah and Rodan are having young! Only, the egg laying and event taken shortly after that don’t go exactly the way the hydra was expecting, and it’s all his fault.

WARNINGS: This contains death with slight description, blood, and the death of a child. (Spoiler i guess?) If any of this stuff makes you uncomfortable, I would suggest you don’t read this.

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They had heard the cry from across the world while looking for the little king. It was the cry of their mate. Was he laying the egg? No, it was too hurried and pained to be that. Possibly an attack? He had gone silent a couple of minutes ago, and that worried them deeply. Their volcano home came into view as their minds continued to whirl with the possibilities of what had happened to their mate.

It seemed like hours before they eventually saw the inside of their nest in view, although it had only been few minutes. They harshly closed their wings before landing roughly on the ground, shaking their entire nest. Their eyes fixated on their mate almost immediately, and their heart sank.

His eyes were open and glossed over, unblinking. His mouth was open, and his side lay still. His position made him look pathetic. Weak. Their eyes looked carefully over his body. No scratches from another creature. No ripped armor or skin. It took every bit of control they had for them to not immediately hold their mate tightly to themselves, hoping he would wake up, but knowing very well he wouldn’t.

They slowly inched closer, and immediately pressed their snouts up against his now cooling armor. His heat was gone. San tried giving him licks, trying to wake him. Ichi pushed into his chest, and Ni rubbed gently on his back. When the right head opened his eyes slightly, he noticed something. Blood, trailing from their mate.

Had he done it? Ni called to his brothers, and both turned to give him their attention. Ghidorah slowly raised themselves up, following the trail of blood to the corner of their nest where Rodan had been making bedding for their soon-to-be-born young. As their eyes followed the trail, all sets locked onto a spherical shape. It was a light rosy red, dotted in darkened yellow splotches. It was their egg. They slowly inched closer, and as they did so they had noticed that a sticky liquid covered the egg. Along with that liquid was blood. The blood had covered not only the egg itself but the nest and surrounding area as well.

Most creatures would be filled with deep admiration, even after losing their mate. They would want to protect the egg from all harm, not leaving its side for any purpose, but Ghidorah felt no such thing. They were an alien creature, with alien feelings and instincts. No, they weren’t filled with this want to protect. As soon as their had noticed the sheer amount of blood around the egg leading from their mate, and their brain had pieced it together, they were filled with an indescribable rage. A want to kill. A need to avenge their mate. Their mind screamed enemy enemy enemy! kill it kill it kill it!

Before they could truly process what they were about to do, they let out a shriek of pure rage and sorrow, lifting up a powerful foot, and slamming it down on the egg as hard as possible. It didn’t take much as the helpless little egg was so incredibly soft, only having been laid about 24 hours prior. The egg immediately cracked under the pressure. The heads snarled, lifting their now yolk covered foot off the shattered egg shell.

They had only realized what they had done when they sniffed at the shell, and found a small creature within the yolk. It was tiny, no larger than one of those annoying insects. The tiny creature looked so wrong, utterly disgusting. It’s blackened eyes were covered in a thin membrane, its wings looked battered and fragile. The basic anatomy was all there. It had two heads, two wings, two legs, and a tail. Even then, everything looked so messed up and out of place. That’s when they noticed it. Each head had a beak and two straight horns growing out the back of their respective head. They looked so regal, so beautiful. Like their mate. Only then had what they done truly come into perspective.

They had just killed their young. The only thing they could remember they have created. They just destroyed the only bit of their mate they would have left, “Oh god…” Ni muttered. All of the heads looked utterly terrified with themselves. For the first time in their life had they felt regret for ending another creatures life. Ichi gently lowered his head, grabbing the hybrid embryo in his mouth, and walked over to where their mate lay unmoving. San bit gently into his wing, and lifted it, allowing Ichi to place the reminisce of their young in the comfort of its parent.

Ichi gently dropped the young down before San allowed Rodans wing to fall back to the ground. The dragon lifted themselves up, before letting out a roar of pure agony and regret. Their throats were tight with what they could only assume to be anguish. Ichi lowered his head, rubbing his snout against his mates cold beak, “I’m so sorry, my love… I have failed you and our young.” Was all he could mutter out.

Ichi raised himself back up before opening up their golden wings. San allowed himself one last look at their dead mate and young. Deep down, they all knew this was the last time they’d be able to see either of them ever again. San could feel a lump in his throat and his eyes threaten him with tears. He turned his head back around harshly as they golden hydra launched themselves into the sky.

As much as they hated the thought, they no longer had any ties to this planet, and would now do to it what they had originally planned, and by god did they loathe it.

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

As said, not the best. Constructive criticism is welcomed with open arms!

[lakinda5654]

~~~~A Girl and A God~~~~ Chapter 23- Words

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A Girl and A God is a RATED M Loki Fanfic with an original character, Alexa, who is taken in by Tony Stark after the revelation of abilities of her own. There’s sex, romance, heartbreak, action, fluff, angst, all that good stuff. Full description in blog, and a jump-to-chapter list if you just want the smut or the cuteness bits. Enjoy <3

Chapter Summary: Alexa and Loki spend their last day at the tower before she leaves for the full moon, Alexa tells Loki a sultry secret, and the two have an eventful evening on the couch...

Contains: Jealousy, Smut, Fluff, Coming out, dirty talk, dom/sub

Word Count: 1,776

~Previous Chapter~~Next Chapter~

~~Beginning of Story~~

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Another day passed. It was typical, with nothing super special, but for Alexa it was difficult. The full moon was the day after tomorrow, and she couldn’t get it out of her head.

During lab that day, Tony had spoken to her about his plan. He had a special holding cell, out in the middle of the countryside in Canada. Nothing for miles around but woods. He would take her there and be able to safely monitor her and keep her calm and at ease, hopefully without any issues. Alexa agreed but was sad that she wouldn’t be able to be with Loki during the whole process, though it wasn’t like she was expecting it.

Loki had been sensing her tension and fear through the whole day, so he’d tried to make it as lighthearted as possible. They watched the comedies that she somehow found funny, and he tolerated them with her.

Inside though, Loki had been struggling with his own desires. He hadn’t been with a woman in such a long time, their acts in the days prior had been stuck in his mind like a virus. But he knew that Alexa had much to deal with at the moment, and he didn’t want to seem desperate or needy, even though at this point, he was.

Alexa went to group lunch and chatted with Peter and Thor most of the time. She had found that those two made good companions for her. Thor was so very kind and always seemed understanding. He told her some of his stories of adventures and how he first came to Earth. She loved hearing them. She also told Thor of her power discoveries, and though they hadn’t gotten to play with lightning together, she still wanted to on her next cycle. She also showed Thor pictures on her phone and little videos of Pikachu, which he didn’t quite seem to find as cute as she did, but he at least tried to understand.

Peter had visited after lunch that day to play with Thunder and talk with her. She’d hidden Loki under the bed for his visit. They had a good time together, the two of them had a lot in common, mostly with their humor. 

Once Peter had left, Loki groaned and rolled out from under the bed. “Could we try to make his visits as minimal as possible?”

“Yes, I know it’s uncomfortable down there... I’m sorry,” she said, helping him to his feet and giving him a kiss on the cheek. 

Loki stretched his cramped muscles now that they were free. As he went into the kitchen to get a snack, he commented to Alexa from across the room. “You two do seem to get along well.” His tone was ever so slightly sarcastic. 

Is he jealous? she thought. “What do you mean?”

“Well, he seems quite fond of you.” His tone was growing more sarcastic and snarky as they spoke. 

“Loki oh my word he is 16. Not only is he under-age but he is 4 years younger than me. He’s just a kid. A kid who wants a friend.”

 “You do realize I am over a thousand years old, Petal. If 4 years is too much for you I am certainly off-limits.”

Alexa sighed loudly. “That’s different. You’re immortal basically. Exceptions apply.” She ended it at that and turned on the TV to watch an episode of The Office before going to dinner.

When she returned from dinner, it was their last evening together before she would leave for Canada tomorrow afternoon with Stark. Loki knew he’d miss her, but he kept trying to keep things lighthearted. “What is your favorite show, Petal?” He said as they picked something to watch, spooning on the couch.

“House. But I haven’t shown you that one yet, so I guess out of the ones you’ve seen, my favorite is The Office.” She replied, but her tone was heavy, and the happiness normally present in her voice was drained.

“Hm,” he said and kept looking to the tv while stroking his hand through her hair.

“Loki…” she clearly had something to say, and he felt it would surely be about the full moon, but she surprised him. “Was I good? At sex?”

This was unexpected. “My petal we haven’t even had sex. If you think we have then I have a lot more to teach you than I thought.” He chuckled a bit as he spoke into the back of her head. 

“I mean i know we haven’t actually done it, but in general.” she rolled onto her back so she could see him. “Like the other night, when you…” she looked at him and made a motion with her head, begging to not have to say it. 

He raised his eyebrows at her expectantly. 

“I mean when we kissed and I tried to…” she paused, clearly uncomfortable. 

He pounced in this opportunity. “To what, love?”

“To do other things? Like, grab your hair and kind of, move my body with yours, or… whatever. Was I good at that stuff?”

She had no idea how good she’d been. He was utterly intoxicated and wanted to command her to strip at this instant. To throw her on his bed and take what was his, to hear her scream his name…

But that was the sole physical drive in him. He’d done that with the many Asgardians in the past that were paid for such things, but this was different. He cared for this girl’s feelings. He wanted to make sure she was comfortable and wanted to know what she liked. He wanted to please her. Not to mention, that he was her first. He wanted to be a good experience for her, but truly he wanted to be her only experience. He knew that was wrong, he shouldn’t want to own this girl, but he wanted to in the purest way; he wanted to be owned by her too.

“You were… utterly perfect Petal.” He said, his tone was deep. Thinking back to what she’d done made him even more filled with lust.

That made her smile. “And what of me?” Loki said, raising his eyebrows at her. “Was I satisfactory to you, pet?” He already knew the answer.

“Oh… yes, Loki it was… amazing.” She stuttered a bit.

“And what more would you like of me? Is there anything that you have a fondness for? Any particular… desires?” He was struggling to hold himself back now and began running his fingertips up and down her neck.

“Actually, yes. There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you, um…” he noticed immediately that her tone had changed, she seemed nervous again.

“What is it, love?”

“On Asgard… is anyone ever, like what’s the stance on… well…same-sex relationships?”

Oh. Loki could see where this was possibly going, and it utterly drove him mad with want. The thought of her with another girl…

“Ah yes. Humans still find it controversial don’t they?”

“Well, some do.”

“On Asgard, it does not matter who you love, so long as you love them kindly and with loyalty.”

“Oh okay…” Alexa paused. “Well, do you know what Bi is?”

“I certainly do.” His voice was smooth and understanding.

She didn’t speak, it seemed like she couldn’t get the words out herself.

“Is that what you are, love?

Alexa nodded nervously.

Loki laughed. “Petal you don’t need to be afraid. You think I have the ability to shape-shift into whoever I please at my whim and I have not explored the many realms of sex in my one thousand years of life?”

Oh. She wasn’t expecting that, but it made everything that much better. She smiled, relieved, and pushed her lips onto his. The more she learned of this god, the more deeply she fell in love with him.

“There are other kinks I have too…” Alexa said. She’d gained more confidence, and her tone had turned from anxious to teasing. 

Loki noticed. “Oh? Do tell.”

“Well…” she said, playing with the collar of her shirt. “I love being controlled. Like, someone just using me. At least I fantasize about that a lot when…” she jolted back into uncomfortable. Loki was now bursting with lust at her confession of being submissive, and he pushed himself closer to her. “When what, pet?”

With his lips inches from her face, his breathing heavy, Alexa realized very quickly where this was going.

“When you play with yourself?”

She gave a short nod. Her eyes once again trapped in his and wouldn’t let go. He kept leaning towards her and moved to the side until he had pushed her down onto her back on the couch, and he held himself over her.

“Oh my dear, I would love to see that, but I do believe would be punishable if you were to touch what is mine without permission.”

His words caught her by surprise, causing her mouth to hang slightly open for a moment. At the same time, she could feel how effective his words were between her legs. 

Suddenly, he was literally ripping the t-shirt off of her body,  and he pulled her shorts down. She kicked them off her feet. He then forcefully grabbed her wrists and held her hands down behind her head. He looked over his mortal girl in only her underwear and blush-colored bra and admired how her skin tensed up from the sudden cold of the room.

“I know you’re not experienced pet, but don’t worry, I will teach you.” He said as he looked over her blushing face. “Kiss me. Give me your pretty tongue to suck on. Seduction begins with the lips, little girl.” (*)

His words were rendering her speechless, but she did as she was told. They fell into a kiss, that Loki almost immediately took over, his lips crashing into hers over and over, and his tongue fighting with hers.

Loki began to remove his own clothes, opting for the non-magical route given how she always seemed to watch him so intensely when he manually pulled off his own shirt over his head.

Alexa looked at him in total admiration, his body was so damn perfect.

He leaned down to start kissing her again, holding her down by her wrists against the arm of the couch with one hand, and pulling her head back by her hair with the other. He kissed and bit at her neck, causing her to whimper. 

Then, the door opened. 

“Hey Alexa I went to the pet store and found this super cute thing for…”

Peter’s eyes widened. For once, he didn’t have words.

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*I remember that line was from a Loki dirty talk submission blog, but I can not for the life of me find it. Please tell if anyone knows where it came from!

[shookethbrooketh]

stars

chapter 1

summary: dan grew up in a normal 1930s london family with his parents and little brother. everything was completely and utterly normal… until the bombs started dropping. when dan was fifteen his father went off to war, and when he was sixteen he and his brother hayden were sent off to a foster family in rural england. he looked up at the stars and couldn’t help but wonder how something that beautiful could exist in such a broken world. just when he thought things would never get better, dan met phil, and he became the shining star of his life. but when phil turned eighteen and went off to war, dan couldn’t help but wonder when, if ever, the stars would twinkle the same way again.

rating: t

genre: angst, fluff, history au, strangers to lovers, teenagers

whole fic warnings: warfare (not descriptive), mild language, fire, homophobia, death chapter warnings: none

chapter word count: 1.4k total word count: 1.4k

read it on ao3 read it on wattpad

Fearful. Dan had thought through a list of words and finally decided that was the right word to describe how he felt. Fearful. It wasn’t just him being scared for his current situation, and it wasn’t even as horrifically extreme as terror. It was just fear. Fear for the present, fear for the future, and fear for the lack of a future. Fear. Living in London in those days was really nothing but fear. Dan was thirteen at the time, and his thought process seemed childish even to himself, but he had no choice but to occupy his mind with something, with anything. When he didn’t, it was simply the sound of the bombs ringing in his ears.

In 1924, Dan was born into his happy, British family. He had a mother, a father, and a younger brother, Hayden; it was everything a typical family should be. He lived a normal life, going to primary school and eventually secondary. He was happy. He was healthy. There was peace.

When Dan was fifteen, the year of 1939 struck Europe; news traveled slow across the continent, but it reached him with full force. It was like watching a horror movie flash before his eyes. First, in April, they began the drafts. Dan knew the severity of the situation; the government was making it very clear the Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party, and Germany in general posed a great threat to their country and their well being. It was like the fear of school shootings in America today. It’s around. It’s happening. It’s coming. And that’s terrifying. When something happened, even far away from him, it reminded him that it was on its way, and there was a chance that one day the violence would reach him. It was constantly living on edge, constantly being afraid to go about his daily life for fear that, living in the biggest city in Britain, that something horrific would happen and he would never return. But even then, nothing too bad had happened yet. Then, the first of September, Germany invaded Poland. This drove Dan almost mad; things were spiraling worse and worse, and the Nazis were taking whole countries over. Yes, they were going in the other direction, but if they could take Poland, who was to say they couldn’t take Britain too?

It was the same day that they got the news of the Polish invasion that they began relocation. Operation Pied Piper, they called it. Dan was forced to watch his friends begin to disappear from class, although he himself stayed in London; his mother found there no reason for him to leave yet, and she wouldn’t let him and his brother go until there was immediate danger. Suddenly, and all at once nearly half of his classmates were gone. Two days later, they were at war. Both Britain and France had declared war, Germany not willing to comply with their demands. And that was when the air raid alarms sounded, and Dan realized all his fear was finally justified.

No bombs fell that night, nor did they for long enough to where he forgot about that event itself. But the effects of the bomb risk was something the entire city felt for years. Suddenly the entire morale of the city changed. Prior to the war, which he still disliked calling it, children roamed free in the streets as long as they wanted. Kids a few years older than him would sneak out in the evenings and go see a movie. But suddenly that all changed. Lights went off at sundown. Nobody left their houses. The city went completely silent every night. But Dan’s normal happiness had been silent since the original declaration of war.

It was shortly after the declaration of war that his father was drafted into the army, and it was the worst thing he’d experienced thus far. His family had never separated, even for a night, and he wasn’t ready for that yet. He wasn’t ready for his father to go off to war with a chance of never returning. He wasn’t ready for the fact that if the war lasted three more years he could be drafted too. He didn’t like to think about that. He didn’t like to think about war. He didn’t really like to think anymore.

Months passed without his father, and life moved on. Fear was the word; everyone was constantly afraid that they’d receive the dreaded telegram, especially Dan. Every few days, the principal of his school would enter one of his classes, his posture overly perfected and suit spotless, his face showing the deepest gloom, and everyone would know. The entire class would tense up, the teacher included; her husband would often be off in the war just like all the children’s fathers. Someone’s mother or even the telegram deliverer himself had delivered the news that someone had gone missing, or, even worse, was confirmed dead. Dan was unsure that a human heart was meant to beat as fast as it did every time he heard the tall man clear his throat in a classroom doorway; any time it could be him. He could almost feel that eventually it would be. And still, he lived on, watching his classmates mourn their own loved ones. But at least he was still there.

As the number of telegrams grew, the number of classmates fell. They began to relocate more and more often, although Dan wasn’t sure why. There was no immediate danger to London; everything was as alright as it possibly could be.

Finally, school let out for the summer, and Dan’s birthday passed. It had been the happiest day of the year for him prior to that day, but on Dan’s sixteenth birthday he cried. Without his father there, it really wasn’t a birthday anymore.

Finally the month of September 1940 arrived, and the schoolchildren were preparing for the upcoming year; the sixteen year old Dan had finally managed to defeat the majority of his internal demons and learned to live with the war raging in the world around him, and finally he was beginning to truly live again.

And then, on September 7, he heard the bomb. Blitzkrieg, the Germans called it. It translated to Lightning War in English, but they merely called it The Blitz. And it was the most terrifying thing of all. Sleep became a thing of the past; suddenly half of his classmates stopped coming to school, and Dan could only tell himself that they had been relocated and not killed in the previous night’s blasts. It was a miracle he himself was alive. Between the lack of sleep from having to head to a cellar every night and not being able to sleep through the noise or the fear, he could barely function, and that was nothing compared to the danger of the blasts themselves. And suddenly that was life. Hiding for his life in the evenings. And honestly, it killed him.

The rest of the country was enamored. They found motivation in the blasts; all the civilians suffering in London and apparently many other cities across the country inspired the soldiers to push harder for the sake of the war, and did the same back home. Dan’s mother found herself working the men’s jobs, and Dan ended up doing most of the work at home.

Dan found himself maturing a lot in that one year. He’d turned from a fifteen year old boy to a sixteen year old man. There was something about it all that got to him. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t seen his father in a year, maybe it was the fact that he barely had any friends still in London, or maybe it was the simple trauma of the ringing sounds of The Blitz in his ears constantly, but something about it really forced him to grow up fast. Nevertheless, It just started piling up. School, work, bombs. School, work, bombs. School, work, bombs. He couldn’t take the vicious cycle any longer, and so, on the night of December 29, he finally slept.

[petersvibes]

june - peter parker

description: no one is sure if things will ever be okay again. 

song: june - briston maroney 

pairing: peter parker x fem!reader

warnings: blood and pain and tears and trauma

author’s note: hi. i have so many things to say lol. 1. do any of y'all have macbeth research paper topics? 2. hey did any of you ever watch degrassi? let me know if you watched degrassi. also i refuse to proofread this because i have??? a macbeth research paper??? 

Nothing is okay. 

The war ended a long time ago. Both sides laid down their weapons, the warcraft in the skies vanished either willingly or in fiery heaps, but the blood you’ve tried so hard to scrub off your hands remains stained to your skin. You walk the streets alone, sure, yet the manifestation of your sorrows seems to follow behind you, arms open and ready to snatch you back into its talons at any moment. But you push on, you’ve been pushing on, because there are things more important to think about than just you. 

The afternoons blend together nowadays. 

It’s hot, even for a summer in the city, yet as you pace back to the Parker apartment, a chill runs down the length of your spine, forcing you instinctively to look up to the sky in worry. This time, like every time, there’s nothing there, but one day not too long ago there was, leaving you behind with the all encompassing feeling that one of these times, you’ll look up and he’ll be back, and this time, he’ll take you too. 

Opening the door to Peter’s apartment, you’re met with silence (not that you expected otherwise.) Afternoon light streams through the cracks in overdrawn curtains, illuminating the flecks of dust dancing around the room. Despite the heat of the day, the room is freezing cold, empty, and dark. Sighing, you place your backpack on the dining room table, but you can’t help but to plant your hands on the wood, gripping the table’s edge. You hate how the silence that has taken over the home that was once enlightened with laughter and smiles despite all hardship. You loathe how dark it is, how the vibrancy of the wall paint and the rugs and the chairs is lost to a deep gray. And you detest the cold, because you know it’s not just because of broken vents or failing fans, but because the warmth that once lived here has been replaced with a ghost. 

You can’t even look at May in the eye anymore, because if you forced yourself to see the brokenness behind her glassy eyes, you would have to confront the fact that you allowed her boy to be ruined. Your grip on the table intensifies as you fixate on the moment when you practically dragged her beaten and bloody nephew back into his apartment, her eagerness to see Peter completely deflated when she saw how utterly empty he looked. 

She was attentive at first, helping you carry him into his room and lay him down on his bed, but she quickly pried you away in order to grill you about the events that transpired. She had seen the news, and of course she had seen the giant floating ring over the Manhattan skyline, but the last time she saw her nephew before that night was a while ago, when she watched worriedly as one of Tony’s cars sent him away. May closed Peter’s bedroom door and took you by the wrist into the kitchen, looking down at you with a frown etched into her mature, but still obscenely gorgeous features. Looking back on it, she questioned you for a while before you answered her for the first time, as it was only when she held your cheeks in her hands and forced you to look at her that the ringing in your ears subsided. 

“(Y/N).” May repeated, her voice stern and forceful. Her heart broke when you flinched in response, your eyes filling up with unshed tears. She felt even more terrible in an instant, the reality of the extent your pain starting to dawn on her, but even though you were like a daughter to her, she needed to know what happened to Peter. Smoothing your dry and matted hair off of your face, she repeated your name, this time making her voice more gentle. 

“(Y/N).” She murmured, stroking your cheeks in an attempt to draw you back into reality, “Tell me what happened.” 

You blinked twice and broke your eye contact as you looked off to the side. Your face contorted in confusion as you realized that you couldn’t remember it all, merely moments of the 72 hours prior. You opened your mouth, your voice hoarse from - Screaming? Maybe? - and started to speak. 

“There were… there were monsters.” You murmured, your hands at your sides starting to ball up. “He was, he was so big, so strong…” You squeezed your eyes shut as flashes of the purple man towering above you invade your memory. “He wanted to k- to k-kill us and… and Peter…” You started to shake your head, the memories becoming more persistent, faster now, like a blank film reel starting to fill up with images you couldn’t process. “No… no…. no….” Your eyes had started to become glassy, but you felt no tears as you looked back up at a stricken May, who was stunned into silence. In your palms, you realized, you had drawn blood from the sheer tightness of your fists, but you could barely feel it at all. 

“Peter,” You said, suddenly, snapping your head in the direction of his closed door. If there was one thing you knew, it was that he was undeniably worse off than you. Peter, he hadn’t looked at you, he hadn’t spoken and he hadn’t moved, and although you were trembling in his aunt’s arms, your chest feeling like it was filled to the brim with thick cement, he needed you. You released your hold on your skin but didn’t spare your bloodied hands a glance as you took started to walk away.

May rushed to your side, grabbing your wrist and immediately regretting it when you ripped away from her touch, glaring at her incredulously. She put her hands up in surrender and took a tentative step forward, off put by this defensive, animalistic side that she had never encountered in the years of knowing you. “(Y/N), you have obviously been through something,” She paused, “Terrifying, but,” May’s voice cracked and she put her hands over mouth, a small sob escaping her lips, “You ha- you have to sit down or lie down or go home if that’s what you want but you have to-” 

“No.” You said, your voice steady and purposeful. “I need to help him. I need to take care of him…” You trailed off, becoming unsure if you’re telling May or yourself, but you turned around anyway, determination in every one of your footsteps as you made your way back into Peter’s room. 

Peter was just as you left him only minutes before - his body was stiff atop of a messily made bed, his long hair hanging over his face. As you walked closer to him, crouching down to his level, you realized his brown, hollow eyes were open, his breathing shallow. Tentatively, you raised your slightly shaky fingers and brush the hair out of his eyes, careful not to let your drying blood touch his skin. You were still unable to exhale - and you were not sure when you would be able to - so you just gasped, trying your best to hold in your tears as you rest your forehead on his. 

It was a gesture you had done a billion times before. Sometimes, resting your forehead on his for a while was the only way you could calm down from a hard day from work or school. Those times, Peter would take your hand in his and place it over his heart, asking you to remember that he would always be there for you. But that night, only for a minute did you allow yourself to rest your forehead on his, letting your swollen and tired eyes flutter shut as you felt for heartbeat under your palm. A part of you was worried you would feel nothing, but nevertheless his heart was still there, still beating, assuring you that no matter what, your Peter was still there. 

“I’m going to take care of you.” You whispered to him, nodding to yourself. “I’m going to be there for you just like you’ve been there for me. You’ll be better, I promise.” You pressed your chapped lips to Peter’s forehead, standing up and swearing to yourself that you would be strong for him, no matter what it took. 

You release your grip on the edge of the table, biting your lip as you started to extract items from your bag. When you touch it, your phone lit up with yet another message from May, asking you how Peter was doing. You sigh, typing I just bought food and I’m going to try to get him to eat and hitting send. The Delmar’s sandwich was just how he liked it, extra pickles and smushed down and all, but at this point, you’re not confident that he’ll spare it a second glance. However, you take off your shoes anyway, quickly getting a plate and napkins from the kitchen cabinet and making your way down the familiar path to Peter’s room. 

Peter’s room hardly resembles what it was at this point a year ago. Since the first night the two of you got back, you’ve chosen to get what little sleep you have while sitting on his floor, with your back resting on the side of his mattress, protecting him like a watchdog. Your possessions have slowly started accumulating in the small space, but both of your tattered suits are tucked under the bed, out of sight but not out of mind. You close the door behind you and take a seat on the chair you placed next to his bed. 

Despite the situation, you can’t deny the fact that Peter has remained undeniably gorgeous. His curls have grown out, framing his freckly cheeks. At points in the day like this one, golden light streams through the window and reaches the side of his face, revealing long lashes that beat slightly against the top of his cheeks with each blink. You’ve probably spent hours sitting in this chair just observing him, reassuring yourself that what you’re doing is right, that he’s breathing and when he comes out of this, it’ll all be okay. 

Sighing, you give him a strained smile that he doesn’t see and comb through his hair, trying to coax him to open his eyes. “Hi sweetheart. I’m back.” You coo, using your other hand to interlace your fingers. “I brought you some food. A sandwich from Delmar’s and some water.” You wait for any sign of awareness, but Peter offers none.

“I know you’re not hungry but you need to eat. You haven’t had anything since two nights ago and I’m worried.” You continue, squeezing his large, but limp hand. “Peter baby, if you don’t eat today, May said she’ll have to take you to the hospital and I know you don’t want to do that.” It’s like you’re bargaining with a child, you think, but you bring your mouth to his ear anyway and speak again. “Please eat for me Peach. Just a few bites for me and I’ll leave you alone if you want me to.” 

Peter opens his eyes then, peering up at you through squinted eyes. He’s only said a few words in the past few months, forcing you to interpret his occasional whimpers or groans. This time, he must be feeling courteous, because he shakes his head twice before rolling over, drawing the blue covers over his head. 

“Peter,” You plead, putting your hand on his covered shoulder and shaking him lightly. “Peter you have to eat something. You have to drink water and take a shower and eat and just do something.” You take a deep breath, shaking your head to yourself as you move to sit on the edge of his bed, leaning back over his body. “May is driving herself crazy. I heard her talking to someone about taking you to the hospital… to the psych ward. She doesn’t want to send you away but she doesn’t know what to do and I don’t know what to do and she’s leaning on me…” You trail off, trying your best to remain as calm and sweet as possible, but it’s hard. You’ve been holding in your breath since you got back and somehow, with each passing day staying in the Parker apartment, you’re growing weaker. The last thing you want is to send Peter away, for him to feel alone and to resent you because of it. 

“Just give me something Peter. Anything.” You whisper, your voice hardly audible. You lean over, pressing your lips to the small exposed part of his cheek for a long, drawn out kiss. You pull away and you start to leave, but not without giving him one last solemn glance before shutting the door behind you. 

For the next few hours, you sit on the living room fire escape and watch the world turn below you. Although you’re only a few feet above them - the before people, you call them - you feel detached, alien even. The before people are just like you were, before, before the war, before the blood, before the death and and before the destruction. They walk hand in hand with the people they love, they smile and laugh and move past things, they talk and they sing and they thank the after people - like you and Peter - for ‘saving’ the world yet again. But to you, it’s their world now. Over the past few months, you struggle to find beauty in the things you once loved, not from music or nature and definitely not from the fucking sky that can split open, unleashing the demons from above at any moment. 

Your memory has been crippled enough to leave you unable to find any resemblance between before you and after you, besides the fact that you occupy the same body. Sometimes, when you’ve been watching them from long enough, you’ll have to pinch the healed cuts on your palm to bring yourself from far away back into your body. On days like today, you’ll be outside long enough that the sun will set and night will fall upon you without you even noticing, your newfound fear of the darkness of the night forcing you to retreat back inside. 

When you’re safely back inside, you turn on the living room light and take a seat on the dining room table, taking other half of the Delmar’s sandwich and taking a bite. You eat in silence, careful not to over stuff yourself, because although your eating habits aren’t as bad as Peter’s, you’ve been having a hard time keeping it down. When you’re halfway done, your phone starts to vibrate, May’s contact lighting up your screen yet again. 

After four rings, you sigh, swiping the screen and putting your phone up to your face. “Hello?” 

“Hey (Y/N).” May starts, her voice crackling through the phone. In the background, you can hear the sounds of the hospital and shuffling footsteps. “I’m stuck at the hospital for the night, working the graveyard shift. You’ll have to find something to eat.” She doesn’t bother to insinuate that there is a possibility you won’t be staying. 

“Okay.” 

Silence. 

“How’s Peter?” May asks, even though she knows it’s a stupid question. 

You glance towards Peter’s shut door, slowly resting your head on your bony forearm. “I tried to get him to eat but he won’t do it. He’s not hungry May.” 

“(Y/N) he can’t continue like this. I was talking to an orderly here, she doesn’t know about the details of the situation but if he isn’t eating-” 

“He’ll eat, May.” You interrupt, your tired, soft voice suddenly turning into a defensive growl. “You cannot send him away. He’ll never forgive either of us.” 

“He won’t be able to resent anyone if he’s DEAD.” May barks, her equally if not more aggressive tone making you flinch, not only at the volume, but at the thought. While beautiful, Peter’s freckles cover gaunt cheeks, hallowed from malnutrition. In the past few weeks, feeding him has been especially difficult, and while the thought of him getting too sick has crossed your mind, until now, you’ve tried not to dwell on the terrifying thought. 

Hearing only your silence, May clears her throat and starts to speak. “I know you are doing everything you can for him but you are only a teenager honey. He’s sick. I hate to admit it but we may not be able to save him.”

You inhale sharply, as while her tone has softened, her words are sharp and dig into straight into your heart. You stare at the scar on your left arm, and for a second you swear you can feel the pain of being stabbed there by your enemies. “I don’t want to abandon him.” You whimper after a while, feeling that persistent pressure build in the back of your throat. “He,” Your voice trips over your shallow breaths, “He’s all I have now. I don’t want to leave him.” 

“You won’t be abandoning him (Y/N).” She answers, her voice now calm, despite the strain. “We can talk about this when I get home. I’ll be back tomorrow night.” 

You take your bottom lip between you teeth and nod, squeezing your eyes shut. “Okay.” You mumble, sparing yourself from hearing her goodbye when you hang up the phone, tossing it to the side.

You rub your fingertips against your eyes and slowly stand up, quickly walking back into Peter’s room and turning on one of his lamps. Again, you take a seat in the chair, as Peter has rolled back over. The cold sandwich rests on a plate at your feet and you stare it. “You didn’t eat.” You comment, your voice colder than you intended. He opens his eyes and looks up at you, curiously at that. You frown, still fixated on the sandwich. “May just called me. She wants to send you away, she thinks you’re sick and she thinks I’m not helping you. Honestly at this point so do I.” You chuckle humorlessly, without even a hint of a smile on your face as you finally look back at him. 

You lean down, shifting so that you can look at him, searching his eyes for any sign of life behind the emptiness. “Please tell me if I’m helping you. Tell me if I should leave or if I should stay or if you feel at least a little bit better Peter. Please.” You plead with him for what feels like the thousandth time. But just as he has for the thousandth time, he blinks at you, his silence hitting you harder than any malicious words ever could. 

So badly you want to give up and collapse, you want him to hold you like he used to as you let out all the pain that has manifested deep in you since the war. You want him back, you want to force this shell of him to leave and you want to fill him back up with his light and you want to look into the depths of his eyes and see your Peter again. You want your Peter to make you laugh again, you want your Peter to hold you again, and you want to let out your goddamn fucking breath- 

“No.” You say, springing upwards with what little energy you can call upon. You push the cold sandwich to the side and reach back down to the withered boy, ripping the covers off of Peter’s body and exposing the comfortable clothes you put him a while ago. “Get up.” You grumble, taking his stiff biceps in your arms and dragging him towards you, watching has his eyes widen with shock at the aggressiveness of your motions. Peter stumbles into your arms, but he barely has time to find his footing before you’re dragging him out of his room, across the hallway and into the bathroom. 

In an instant, you’ve exposed him to the brightness of the bathroom lights and you’ve turned on the shower. Your breathing becomes frantic as you pull off your sweatshirt, then his, but not out of lust or desire, but pure desperation. “You will not do this anymore. I won’t let you!” You scream, tearing off his t-shirt and throwing it to the side. “You will not sit in your room and you will not go another day without eating and you will take a shower because you’re fucking disgusting and I can’t take it anymore!”

Peter stares at you, bewildered as you shove your bodies into the shower, letting the ice cold water hit the both of you like a shock of electricity. You’ve pushed him against the tile, letting the stream of water hit his shocked face and his heaving chest. “Say something! Say something!” You cry, feeling a sudden wave of anger hit you at the sight of the face that only hours ago, you admired for its beauty. “What about me!?” You demand, the unshed tears from months of trying to be strong finally falling down your cheeks in a hot, waterfall-like stream that offers a contrast to the shower water around you. “I was with you and I was there and you don’t even care!” 

The sound of the shower stream hitting your bodies and the chipped bathroom tiles fills your ringing ears, harmonizing with the sound of your choked sobs and gasps for breath. You don’t take note of the black dots creeping into your already cloudy vision until you’re crumbling to the bottom of the bathtub, Peter falling atop you in a heap. While you can barely make out his figure, you know he’s looking at you with the same empty stare. 

After a few seconds, “Why are you doing this to me?”

You close your eyes then, praying that he’ll get up and leave you in a puddle of shower water to shiver in your own misery. If he does, you think, you won’t feel any more alone than you do sitting with him in his porcelain bathtub. With your eyes shut and water surrounding you, images of lying next to a busted pipe flash through your mind, rendering you short of breath. You feel yourself fading in and out of consciousness, like you’ve been struck upside the head or like you’re running out of oxygen, like the war is still going on…

“I’m sorry.” 

Peter’s voice, soft and scratchy from underuse, barely whispers in your ear.   You almost think you imagined it, but when he repeats the sentence in a voice that is quiet and shy but undeniably his, your eyes open back up and you feel like you’re about to start sobbing all over again. You watch as Peter reaches for your shoulders and pulls you into the muscles of his chest, his palms pressed into the side of your face as he holds you there. Your legs are being crushed by the constraints of the bathtub but you hardly take notice of it, instead choosing to cling onto his bare skin like he’s about to disappear on you again. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Peter confesses, his voice slightly louder but just as broken sounding as yours, “I don’t know how to be me anymore.” 

“I don’t know how to be before me either.” You whisper, looking up towards him. Although he’s only said a few words to you, you start to feel like your shoulders are starting to relax and your hands are steadying just being in his embrace. 

Peter rests his cheek atop your head - despite spending a lot of time in and out of sleep, the past few minutes in this shower have rendered him exhausted - and lets out a deep breath he didn’t know he was holding in. “We’re not the same people we were before.”

“I know.” 

He sighs. 

“You took care of me and I wasn’t fair to you-” 

“-Peter don’t-” 

Peter tilts his head to the side, looking deep into your eyes with a presence behind his that you haven’t seen in god knows how long. “No, (Y/N) listen.” He adjusts his body so that his legs are spread and you’re resting between the two of them. “I should’ve been there and I should’ve,” He pauses, his train of thought drifting to the only thing that’s been occupying his mind, “I’m just so scared.” His voice cracks and you feel his chest start to rise and fall rapidly as quiet cries start impeding on his words. “(Y/N) I’m so fucking terrified and I don’t know what to do.”  

You feel a flow of tears fall onto your head, his cries of hopeless grief piercing your chest. Even in his trembling, Peter’s clutching you tight against him, not bothering to wipe away at his cheeks. “People died trying to protect us and I-” He shudders violently, making you look up at him worriedly, “-I miss him (Y/N). He didn’t deserve to die he-he didn’t deserve it.” 

His candor makes you shiver, because you know Peter isn’t wrong, and you know that that must’ve been what killed him the most. You shake your head, trying your best to push the overwhelming grief for those you’ve lost out of your mind before you begin to speak. “We’ll have to fight again.” You say, pushing yourself off of Peter until your back hits the other side of the tub. “We’ll fight for him.” You place your palms on his cheeks and rub them gently, your heart lurching as your thumbs brush against the swollen skin around his reddened eyes. “But I can’t do it without you.” 

Peter places his hands over yours and guides them away from his face, moving them downward until they’re resting over his ribs. In one swift motion, his hands are on your cheeks and his lips are moving against yours. You realize that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to kiss him, but despite both of your salty tears and the freezing cold water, you still manage to feel warmth flood your entire body. His lips move against yours slowly, the rough texture overpowered by the gentleness that manages to make the passion behind it feel chaste. 

Starting to feel lightheaded, Peter pulls away slightly, letting you rest your forehead on his as he reaches back down to intertwine your two hands. “You know I love you right?” He asks, squeezing your fingers lightly. The last thing Peter wants, or would ever want, is to see you suffer a moment longer because of him. 

Nodding, “I know you do,” You whisper, nudging your noses together. “I love you too. No matter what I’m gonna love you. I’m gonna love you forever.” You don’t know it, nor will you ever know it, but Peter has, and will never feel more relieved than hearing you say it: you’ll stay with him, he knows it now, he just has to be there for you. 

When he closes his eyes for the last time that night, Peter doesn’t meet flashes of his worst nightmares, leaving him gripping his sheets in terror. Instead, in Peter’s dreams, he sees the beautiful things, the curve of your lips when you smile, the sound of your laughter in his ears, the everlasting comfort he feels when you look at him in the eyes with the tenderness and understanding of an actual angel.

When you close your eyes for the last time that night, slack and tangled in his limbs, knowing that the boy in your arms, your Peter, is safe, you finally allow yourself to let out the breath you’ve been holding in, believing, in all sincerity, that everything will be okay.  

[jakiphyr]

Jak (re)plays FE2  [Part 01]

Awright!  It’s been a good four years since I’ve last touched Gaiden fully (late Dec 2013 - Feb 2014), so I’ll be doing a challenge this time around.

This LP is brought here today by HistoryoftheEmblem’s Gaiden event Kickstarter. So feel free to join the ride, or follow along!  Now, without further ado...

Introduction

I will be doing a Gaiden Novels Canon Playthrough challenge.  I will explain what this is, then lay out the rules that are styled similar to a draft now that I look at this back over.

My Motives (a.k.a. why am I doing this) 

This run is based on Fire Emblem: Gaiden’s two-parter novels that were released back in 1993.  Scans of illustrations can be found starting here, the rest are linked from there for those interested.

After @azebraslife ‘s discovery posts about the craziness that is Silque+Kliff subplot being half-siblings, Kamui dying to a necrodragon, possessed!Delthea killing Luthier and snapping out from that…

I meant to record my in-depth findings/summaries from what I read so far off my twitter live log in June but forgot to write them down as more than just quick blurbs.  This liveplay event will help me on being continuously motivated to read these books, from start to finish.  So I’ll be using my posts to record these summary translations, so expect those inserted throughout my LP entries.

Which is OK, the novels are easy enough to read as a beginner for the most part and makes for a fun experience.

It’s time to dig whatever hidden gems there are (and there’s plenty, I’m sure).

Rules, to keep myself organized and for followers to know what I’m doing:

(1)  Whoever dies in the novels dies, and stays dead.  No exceptions.  If you know exactly who dies from the scan posts I’ve made... a~yup, those will be dying at the same story/battle points whenever possible.

(2)  To branch off from 1, if revival springs are used, I will use them for that character to be revived from the dead.  AFAIK, the author didn’t use any, but I’m hoping for a pleasant surprise.

(3)  I’m allowing myself the old-fashion method of the Mila Turnwheel — save states.  Someone dies when they aren’t supposed to?  Reset.  There’re likely other scenarios I’ll keep a mind for when replicating novel events in my play.

(4)  Whatever the novel does — give certain classes to villagers, equip certain items to units, kill a boss with a certain strategy, choice recruitments, lionhead statboost uses — I must replicate those events and actions in my run, thus making it a challenge.  If something’s almost or actually impossible, well... I’ll figure a way around it by having the next closest thing to it.  If nothing’s specified, I’ll use my own discretion (and hope it doesn’t conflict later).

That’s the basis, for now.  I don’t want to restrict myself too tightly so I’ll be a little more flexible — unless, of course, the novels dictates otherwise

The Game

Okay!  Now with that out of the way, let’s begin.

I’ll be going Easy Mode for the ease of training female mages to level 20 to not be hellish again like on my first blind run.

And now... we get to Act 1.

But wait!  The novels have a couple of things to say before I can truly start.

It has a backstory and some pre-game exposition with our favourite Deliverance gang—their own Rise of the Deliverance DLC in novel form.  Let’s have a look.

—

[Novel]

Prologue:

Greek mythology-esque poetic literature that dragons are gods and how their actions affect weather/nature.  A roar brings the rain and lightning storms, humanity questioning why the heavens are always angry.  As the two dragons have always fought as if they were born to, and birthed Valencia to be a reflection of their souls (North vs South fighting mirrors the Duma vs Mila conflict).

It gives a history lesson of how Rigel and Zofia came to be, describing Duma and Mila like oil and water put in a single vase, eventually growing murky and bad as it mixes from being stabilized prior. And now Valencia faces the worst war in its history.

—

Chapter 1 - Liberation Army Part 1-1: 6 Fake Death Pills

[ This entire part is pre-game, contains graphic depictions of events. Warnings for characters contemplating suicide, gritty themes, blood, and graphic descriptions of murders. ]

Starts off with a visible blood splatter on the polished stone floors of Zofia Castle, the military fill the halls leading to the throne room.  An old man with pale skin, has long, hairy legs, and a long white beard, sits on the tall golden throne with a sword lodged in his bleeding chest.  King Lima IV stabbed by none other than Desaix.

Lima IV still draws breath, barely living as he’s groaning painfully and flailing an arm searching for support (but gets none).  His last words condemn Desaix for being ambitious, having stolen the sword of the royal family which he had taken out at the scene as his second sword.  (The royal sword is apparently forged with steel.)  Desaix mocks the king, and his army begins to chant as he takes the next course of action.

The royal sword was then swung to behead Lima IV, the bloodied head rolls to the stone floor, his half-opened eyes looking up at Desaix with resentment.  The usurper declares the rest of the living royal family to be thrown into dungeons or killed.  The defense rebellion broke out immediately after and utterly failed, their numbers whittled down brutally.  Desaix’s reformed royal army heed all responsibility on throwing rebels and other captives in the dungeon (which hasn’t been used for many years in the peaceful kingdom of Zofia).

The anti-Desaix faction’s numbers continue to decline until six (named) knights remained with very few others who were still fighting vigorously.  It is revealed that the six are Clive, Mathilda, Clair, Lukas, Python, and Forsyth.  Eventually, they were captured and got locked up in the cold dungeons.  Frustrated by their circumstances, Clive grieves that death is preferable for the sake of their knightly pride over being tortured by the usurpers.  An old(ish) soldier with graying hair starts talking to Clive (he is the generic looking man in the first illustration).

The six really want to die, as they’re depressed, but the generic soldier makes a deal with them: drink the 6 “death” medicine pills he had made (and calls them lucky he has that many), which will put them in heavy sleep for four hours.  He’ll disguise himself in the enemy’s uniform, cart their “dead” bodies to the graveyard catacombs full of Terrors (the Deliverance Hideout), and buy them time to rebuild forces to liberate Zofia.

He calls six names, the novel describes each one as the following: Clive, the young chief knight, Clair, the Pegasus Knight who was rewarded good luck by the gods for riding a temna, Lukas, a hot-blooded soldier whose spear strikes like a lightning bolt, Forsyth, his character is different from Lukas, whose calm judgment is true, Python, a genius archer whose bow technique is clear [and shoots] with anger, and Mathilda, the female knight who has a brave soul, as beautiful as the night sky, and is as good as Clive.

Clive rejects the offer, shouting it won’t fly with them as knights, still insistent on preferring death.  Mathilda and Clair nod in agreement with them.  A tearful Forsyth insists on all of them dying together as was their knightly vow if it came down to it, the gray-haired man calls them foolish.

The soldier persuades Clive and the others a little more, until finally, Clive makes the first move on reaching for the “death” pill, which then the other five immediately follow suit.  The man tells the knights about Mycen, a holy knight who was banished by Desaix ages past and currently living in Ram, a village located at the cape of the southernmost tip of Zofia.  He tells them to form the liberation army together with Mycen and free Zofia from the hands of Desaix.  The six proceed to swallow their pills and “died” on the spot.

The consumed medicine causes a foul odor to fill the prisons, signaling some had died to the unaware.  The guards drag their six bodies out of the dungeons, sending them to the caves on the far coast from the castle. 

Upon waking, they salvage the caves for weapons, arrows, armour, and garments.  They also attempt to cover up the cave’s entrance with rocks and leaves to keep Desaix’s men from finding the location again.  Lukas was chosen as the messenger because he can hide himself the best from being captured, he is given a map of Zofia that was found and the journey would take three nights.  Lukas and Forsyth hug it out before patting each other’s backs with fists, then Lukas departs.  Clair follows Lukas out of the cave and mentions she is going to find her pegasus.

Forsyth and Clive have strategy talks while waiting for Clair for return and talking about accommodating Mycen.  Python’s polishing his arrows.  Mathilda returns with urgent grim news that the royal army has found their hideout, rushing them to go deeper into the thin, narrow caves.  Meanwhile, Clair did not hear the loud distant yells from Desaix’s army descending upon the caves, chasing her fellow soldiers.

—

[Game]

Whew, apologies for the length so far.  It was to set up the atmosphere of how the chaos will unfold in the future.

If Gaiden’s character endings weren’t potentially depressing enough on their own, we get them from the very beginning...  

So I suppose from that cliffhanger, that was how Clair and Mathilda get captured, which is different from Shadows of Valentia’s depiction where Mathilda was taken hostage before Lukas left, and Clair got kidnapped after his departure for Ram.

These fills in the fe2′s story gaps are interesting to note (as well as the author’s portrayals of the RGB trio’s personalities).

Okay, back to the game...

Act 1 will begin in the next post.  (This one is already long enough, and the next part’s 6 pages long.  In comparison, part 1-1′s was ten pages long.)

To be continued...

—

→ Next installment: Yo, Alm! Listen to this guy! (3x)

[bobvsuniverse]

We’ve Got a Problem Here, Jose’

(a rumination about race)

   Something happened to me a week or two ago that has made a lasting impact.

 I have a hard time knowing how to think about it and a harder time attempting to explain it and my reaction to it.

 Maybe someone out there has some thoughts that will ad productively to the thinking I’ve been doing since it happened, so I thought I would attempt to write a description of it and my response to it. But that has turned out even more complicated and hard won than I had imagined.

 I think this story, and my quandaries around it, are best dealt with in a conversational, Socratic, if you will, format, but I also think it is something worth putting down on paper. So I’ll try.

  Susan and I were parked in a lot in the woods near one of the Fall beauty spots not far from where we live. It was midweek and busier with leaf peepers (as we call them) than we had expected. The rest of the year there are rarely more than a half dozen cars parked in this lot…  and even that’s more than usual. It can be blissfully empty… empty enough that you can sometimes hear the springs that come out from around the roots of the cedars at the bottom of the hills.

  When we came back to the car after hanging out at the view spot for a while the people who had parked next to us, on my driver's side, were also in the process of leaving. I had to go to the passenger side of the car to help the dog into the car and to take up the time they needed to get into their car. A big white Lincoln SUV.

 Even here I have trouble with how I should describe their car… or them. Will that impact telling the story in an unfair way? Will it inculcate a kind of bias that actually does harm to my telling of the story? Will it contribute to a defeat of my purpose? What is my purpose anyway? What I mean is: I find Lincoln SUVs ridiculously designed. That automatically causes me to assume that there is something ridiculous in the people that buy them. It was white. Like a refrigerator.

 And I want to be fair.

 Anyway: the woman crossed for a second time from the back of the cars to her now open passenger side door. The cars were parked closely.

 Suddenly she said: “Looks like we got a problem here, Jose”

 What?

 I don’t think I’ve ever been called Jose and am not familiar with it being used as a typical, common, way to refer to strangers. And her manner was notably outside the usual social protocol with which strangers initiate conversation. She was more directive, kind of like she was a teacher in my school unfamiliar to me, but who “knows” me… does that make sense? As if some assumption of prior knowledge gave her the right, even responsibility, to reprimand me about something.

 No matter. I remember feeling matter-of-fact about it at the same time I was puzzled.

 I crossed to the back of the car. For one thing I was on my way around the back of the car to the driver’s door anyway, once I was done with the dog.  So when the woman called me “Jose’” I may have moved more quickly than I normally would have. I also wanted to see what it was that she identified as a problem.

 I had left my gas cap off and it was still stuck in the clip on the little open door where I feed my car gasoline.  We had filled the car in a little town about 20 miles away. The co-op there sells gas, often at 10 to 15 cents a gallon cheaper.

 I was lucky I hadn’t lost my gas cap.

 Something kept me from being immediately grateful for her calling attention to it the way she did. And I may have been mistaken in that spontaneous gut response. I don’t know. It wasn’t a purposeful withholding of gratitude, though I was still puzzled by being called Jose. And her manner, which I never really came to terms with over the course of the events, outside of finding it out-of-sorts with my expectation in most other situations of the same kind. After I thought about it for a while as we drove away, in retrospect, I think I grew to understand it more, but even understanding it actually muddles the entire situation. The question of my own bias interferes with a clearer, more definitive explanation. Sort of. In a way.

 I just couldn’t figure out why she called me Jose.

 So the first thing that popped out my mouth was “Did you just call me Jose? Why would you call me that?”

 And she shot back rather icily: “ well, I didn’t know your name.” She may have repeated “we’ve got a problem here”…. she said it in that same overly instructive tone.

 Then I tried to thank her, after I said  “well.. that sure isn’t it”, but it was a clumsy nearly incoherent attempt and I got into my car and waited for them to back their white Lincoln SUV out.

 Then it occurred to me. I bet she called me Jose because she assumed I was not a bonafide white person! Like her and her hubby!

 Was that it? I mean, could it be that she just has an idiosyncratic way of interacting with strangers? Shit. I struggled with this for a while and it still stays in the mix of how I ruminate about the circumstance.

 And her tone.  I’m not familiar with any pattern in which overtly, even unconsciously, racist people call an unfamiliar but assumedly Hispanic man Jose’.

 Even here, I have to say, I am less than sure whether or not this is the most appropriate word for the group of people she may have thought I belonged to…  but then, if it was in fact a racial slur, what group of people does she, can she, even imagine that to be?

 It is a puzzle.

 Something else too: her tone, her condescension. It was really there. As if only someone unlike her could make such a dumb mistake as forgetting to replace their gas cap after filling the car..

 Susan and I talked this over on the way out of the small lot and down the narrow dirt road that was deeply shaded by yellow-leaved trees.   We decided that it was a racial slur, though a plausibly deniable one (“ I didn’t know your name”).  We talked about how that is how racism works anyway. And how, often, usually,  people who practice even outwardly racist talk and behaviors do not believe they have done it out of racism.

 No matter.  This stuff might keep spinning around in my head as long and persistently as it spins in the culture at large.  It keeps spinning largely because the delusional assumptions about race it is based on are in the end nonsensical, utterly absurd.

 Still…  my next question, to myself, was and is just as riddled with a bizarre complexity.

 It’s not as if someone’s assumption of my being other than “WHITE” has never come up before. Especially snce I moved north from the city. We are, my family, a dark and swarthy people, especially the men as they age… at least in terms of some bizarre spectrum of skin tone that people seem to have locked in their head in spite of any evidence that skin tone is purely a matter of how much sun you and your forbears were required to live under.

 There have even been times when I have relished the idea that I am part of a lost tribe of some browner-skinned people and can relinquish my whiteness, at least in part.

 But even that kind of thinking is so “white”… isn’t it?

 It did/does happen often enough that I decided to take one of those spit tests. You know, the genome score you can get by sending your saliva to the Mormons? I also thought that it was entirely disingenuous of me to entertain a notion of being related to the magnificent non-“white” tribes of the planet, dishonest without some even paltry degree of “proof”. As if there is proof of such an individuated adherence to the completely scientifically unverifiable existence as the commonly accepted idea of Race.

 And I had for a time entertained the idea that I was up to one-eighth Native American, based on some pretty circumstantial and flimsy evidence about how one of my great-grandmothers looked in the old family pictures that circulate. I knew that. And though I also understood the failings of genetic testing of the sort that I eventually participated in, I wanted to clear the matter up for myself as much as I could.  

 It did. Though now I am sorry, a little ashamed, I took my fantasy of being partly “non-white”  as far as I did. Even if my ruminations on the subject were largely private ones, those kind of co-optations are among the worst. And it is something White people… whatever they are, whatever that means… are kind of sickeningly and persistently guilty of, if only from the standpoint of being descendent of groups of people responsible for unspeakable acts against the very groups they now seem to want to be a part of in very intimate ways… through their blood and gene pools!

 Someone explain THAT, please…

 In the end, how do I complain about that? About my being browner than many “white” people and sometimes being mistaken for a non-white person? How do I report it?

 One hardly benefits from doing it from the standpoint of declaring definitively that I AM A WHITE PERSON every time someone makes some side crack or passively cruel remark that passes judgment on me or out of nowhere mentions my skin color because I am not as … what?… WHITE?..  as they are.  

 Lord.

  But first: can someone clear this up for me? Is it a thing to call a brown-skinned person, assumed to be from the Americas south of the United States’ border, Jose’?  Has that been a practice of secret or not-so-secret white supremacists? It seems to me it is… and it seems to me I’ve heard it before, but I’m not sure. I’m getting old and all this grossly putrid evidence of racism gets lost in its loo of obstreperousness. In that mix of inherited cultural information bullshit one constantly has to sort out.  I grow old. I grow old.

 It’s weird to try to talk about this, because one could easily come to the conclusion that this IS a declaration of white ness.  And after all, I can hardly escape my whiteness, my automatic inclusion in the exceptionalism that white people expect and are enculturated with.  

 Even when I was under the false impression that there might be something other than northern European and Irish with a smattering of Spanish and Greek (and Finnish for those epicanthic folds) in the history of my blood, I was always working out the thought, the fact, that regardless: I was raised as a white boy in white culture… or at least in a white supremacist culture. Denying that would be crazy.

  So how do I talk about this? How do I think about it? It’s kind of like the phantom of some crazy 18th century race inventor man has come to the door again to insist that I fit into one of a series of boxes that he can’t really, and has never ever, figured out. Because they are not there, not really.

 My name isn’t Jose’. That is all.

 Some days I wish it were.

 **

 -- Bob Vance

[beautyintheblackness]

No Fear (1st Draft)

James Baldwin said, “Education is indoctrination if you’re white and subjugation if you’re black.” An exclusive club for the good ole boys and girls, in which I, a multi-racial, aesthetically brown girl is not invited. I began New York University September 2016, under the hopeful pretense that I would be included in a group of over achievers and fellow students who were born to innovate. When I received my acceptance letter, I felt a sense of achievement and fulfillment. I finally had a clear view of my next steps in the big wide world. I could see myself moving upward and it was I who supplied this mobility alone. Like most students, I swooned at the thought of the classes I would take, burning a whole through my credit card to obtain as much NYU memorabilia as I could afford, and attended all of the orientation events. I was prepared to take on the world, prepared to intake a plethora of knowledge, and believed that this was the beginning of the greatest moments to come.

The first week, I was eager to get started, I read ahead and took descriptive notes. I annotated and highlighted any and everything I didn’t understand, because I wanted to know these subjects’ in and out. At first, the ostracism was light and incomprehensible to the eye. The overlooking of my hand through the entirety of the class, the huffs and exasperating puffs when I did get called on, insisting I hurry up and make my point, and the contentious cutting off of my questions to elaborate how articulate I was, had taken no effect on me. I figured my Professors were irritable to the fact I wasn’t giving more or thinking hard enough.

It wasn’t until my Science Professor decided to have a class conducted online I realized it had nothing to do with me trying at all. My silence was more appreciated than actually learning, engaging, and giving my input. My classmates and I had to take an open book test, where we all would come up with the answer and the final answer would be considered our grade. In this instance, everything went well and I was pretty proud of my class on coming together to make sure we get a passing grade. As we went on, we discussed the chapters of the text we had to read the week prior. I was enthusiastic and eager to get started, because this book was an astonishing read thus far and I had tons of questions. When the Professor began asking questions assuming no one read the text, because no one answered. A fellow student Sam and I answered most of them, my Professor laughed and in a light tone asked me to, “Give some other students a try.” I obliged and didn’t speak, because I didn’t want to be that student who hogs all the “spotlight” and doesn’t give other students a chance to shine. However, Sam kept answering questions and he was praised for it. Sam also would go on long discussions between him and the Professor, while everyone stared at the screen blankly. So, after 50 mins of silence, I tried my luck again. I didn’t want to hog the proverbial microphone, but no one else was answering questions except for Sam and I wanted to engage in the conversation. Once again, the moment I gave my input on the topic in question, I was asked more sternly than the last time by my Professor, “Please Ariel, can you be quiet? Let other students have a chance to speak!” I was befuddled, I was giving others a chance to speak. In fact, the only person who wasn’t allowing others to speak was Sam and the Professor. Yet in still, I was being punished for the disruption and disobedience. I didn’t speak after for the whole class. My Professor tells me in front of the rest of the class, “I apologize Ariel, I know you are articulate, but we must give other students a chance.” As if my voice and my answers put a muzzle on their mouths, forcing them to remain in a position of submission. After that, I knew, once again, this would not be a learning opportunity for me.

After the weekend passed, I chucked the whole situation as coincidence. Maybe I was hogging all the questions. So I left it alone, letting the situation glide to another failed attempt in mere eagerness, mistaken as boisterous. As the weeks went on, I found this to be the everyday routine. My World Cultures Professor, would dismiss me entirely. Calling me meta-theoretical, because I couldn’t see how a female Dongguan factory worker, who had no idea about the succession of women’s progression in her own country, could be happy living working over 60 hours a week for what others worked for under 40 hours a week. She also implied I was trying to compare the sinister and abysmal acts of the Japanese internment camps in the US to the atrocious acts of the Holocaust in Germany. She went on a tirade so fierce and dripping with disdain, my own classmates roared ugly comments towards me, suggesting I was anti-Semite, which was completely and utterly wrong. I asked her, “Could it be the socioeconomic status of both ethnicities be the reason why they were targeted in WWII, considering both ethnic communities had accumulated extreme wealth from countries they did not originate from?” She humiliated me and ultimately put my credibility on the line because of her accusatory response. After I tried repeatedly to explain what I said and how I was in no way under any circumstance trying to compare the two. In fact, I was trying to figure out why these two ethnicities were targeted so unfairly. Especially, considering the Italians and Germans of the US were not put in such a horrible situation as the Japanese and the Israelis. I was in complete disarray, I hardly was called on in this class and when I was called on, I was mocked and smeared as a result. However, my classmate Collin can make apathetic statements about colonization and go on a rant about how it’s completely necessary. He also said, “It’s the natural way of life, someone has to be in control of another, Imperialism and Colonization is the natural way.” My Professor allows him to go on this tangent and then sums it up with, “That is an interesting point you’ve made Collin, thank you for your input.” She did not challenge him or subject him to irrational behavior from his fellow classmates. She kept us quiet and let him go on to make his point, then rewarded him for “thinking outside the box.”

           By the end of mid-terms, I felt extremely low. There was no one I could talk to other than my boyfriend, who couldn’t really do anything for me either. “We are on two different sides of the coin,” he said, “How can I help you, when I don’t receive the same treatment as you do. I go into class no matter how late and I’m always considered present. If you are three minutes late, you get a mouthful in front of the class on how you are not taking advantage of the opportunity you are privileged to have by going to this institution. I know it’s wrong, but what can I do?” Deep down I knew he was right, we were in the same class and he saw with his own eyes the blatant mistreatment I was receiving from my Professors. Either from what I told him or from what he witnessed himself, it was clear I was being seen as a threat.

When the second half of the semester started, I was completely drained. Physically, I had gained twenty pounds and mentally, I was tired. I wanted to give up, I tried to drop my science class, because I was doing severely poor in this class and felt completely limited. The more I tried to be punctual and engaged, the more I would get shut down. It wasn’t until my science Professor went out of his way to print a rebuttal of my presentation, because he didn’t believe in my scientific viewpoint on CRISPR (a genome splicer that edits DNA). I was handled and led to believe what I thought is completely wrong and the rest of the class should know how wrong I am. Although, there were other students who had extreme viewpoints on their presentations. One of them being, “Ultra Hybrid Humans” and how homo-sapiens will be extinct in the next 1,000 years, because of these Hybrid humans on our planet. There was no rebuttal or debunk for that thesis. That classmate received an A and a chuckle or two from the Professor for once again, “thinking outside the box.”

I threw in the towel, I was disgusted. I had enough with the double standards and the biases that controlled my narrative every day. NYU’s mission statement glorifies their goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion, but somehow this falls short of the mark in the classroom. Inclusion is only given to those whom have already received the entitlement of being included. It seems that different views and opinions are only seen as open minded and innovative when aligned with the similar ideology of the Professor’s in the classroom. As a society, we have formed this idea of “I am right, you are wrong mentality.” However, this ideal helps no one and innovates nothing.

During my last Word Culture class for the semester, we were broken up into four groups. Not to my surprise, all people of color (non-Asian) were in one group and the Asians and Europeans were in groups together. We were asked to decipher if the term, “Model Minority,” is perceived to be a compliment or a hindrance to the Asian community. My group proposed it was a hindrance, because all groups have their specialties, but is not promoted, because anything outside of the standard of white imperialism, is not considered valid or model material. My Professor didn’t like our point of view and began to discredit and dismiss our argument as a whole. It wasn’t until a fellow classmate Nathaniel and his group spoke in support of our theory that she even took into consideration what we were saying. She immediately came after me, as if I was the one who solely came to this conclusion. So in my mind, I had two choices. I could be like my Latin classmate Johnathan, who smeared and degraded his own culture for the sake of being separated from its entirety. He even degraded himself, by saying he would be nothing without this school, because he was in fact a Latino. Although he didn’t look aesthetically Latin in his words, “I can pass, so that makes me superior”. Or I could stand up for myself and my ideology, that it’s not what you look like or how much you polarize cultures. It’s about the significance in knowing who you are as individual, not a race. Knowledge or education is not a leverage tool, but should be in fact something you share to maintain the modernity of this nation and of its people. I received a standing ovation from my classmates.

My Professor was so impressed, she let me have the last word before we were dismissed. I concluded that a model minority, is something that suggest other minorities should follow, but in fact, this is a farce, because no one is perfect. Also, no one wants to be painted with one brush, we all are complex individuals and we all have attributes that are worth sharing. Even in our difference, we share similarities. That is the point and should be the objective synopsis of this class moving forward.

I had never been so passionate and forthright in any of my classes in New York University. I didn’t want to be, but I was tired of being overlooked and underestimated. One of my classmates, Demetrius, came up to me after others dispersed. He told me how proud he was of me and that I should never keep quiet and speak out for us. For people of color, people that feel underprivileged, and people who don’t have a voice. He also told me, he never spoke to me before, because he didn’t like the fact that my boyfriend was white, but after hearing me out and seeing what I had to go through in this particular class. He commended me for overcoming adversity and asked if we could be friends. I agreed and walked out of class that day with my head held high. I accomplished something much more than grades. I accomplished the ability to be seen as an equal among my classmates and my Professors. I gained courage and willfulness. I wasn’t afraid anymore to speak out and stand up. For the first time, I had no fear.

[ripstocking]

Architecture's Appearance and The Practices of Imagination, by K. Michael Hays

1.

The power to create images would be a good partial definition of architecture's competence, if the performance of that power is understood to be a disclosure of truths about the world by giving appearance to them. This disclosure should not be understood in a straightforward representational sense, even less so in a propositional one. Architecture is not a language. Rather, architecture summons into appearance ways of thinking about the world that are otherwise unavailable; it is a particular mode of thought, one irreducible to other ways of thinking. And its images of thought have no lesser claim on the real than those of philosophy. This mode is not representation, then, but emanation -- a showing forth of a world that exists but is not yet actualized.

So appeared architecture for Adolf Loos: "If we find in the forest a mound, six feet long and three feet wide, raised by a shovel to form a pyramid, we turn serious and something in us says: here someone lies buried. That is architecture."1 Let us unpack this hypothetical event. First, there is an unanticipated encounter with an empirical object -- If we find in the forest a mound -- the apprehension of which produces an almost immediate categorical response: That is architecture. Prior to our encounter, it is presumed, someone used a shovel to form a pyramid. Thus, technique is involved, but it is far from the most important aspect of the encounter. The pyramid as form is not identical to what is apprehended by our senses; what is sensible remains contingent and variable, notwithstanding its defined shape. The material of the mound and its indexical relation to the shovel, no matter how intense the impression they may make on us, are just sensuous qualities and associated features of the encountered object. They are not the real thing; they are not the That.

We can say this another way. The real object of architecture is autonomous from our encounter with it. If we close our eyes, the visible object that is the mound disappears, but the real object of architecture remains. So That is an instantiation of architecture that exists before and after our encounter with the mound, an architecture that is always already there, where "always already" entails prior conditions that are brought into existence by their own outcomes. For us to recognize That as architecture, architecture -- not the mound -- must always already be there.

There is an epistemological claim made in Loos's aphorism: we know something about the world through the architectural event. Through the appearance of architecture, we recognize the ritual of burial and the need for memorialization -- here someone lies buried -- and it affects us. But there is also an ontological claim: That is architecture. The necessary anteriority of the architecture instantiated by That explains why we can imagine architectures that are never built.

Cognition is required to reproduce the form, or type, of the pyramid, indeed removing much of what is perceived -- the material, the technique, even the site -- to isolate what is essential to the form of the pyramid. We schematize, we mentally organize, we design the type form. And then and there, we enter the architectural imagination. We proceed from the initial appearance, through the imagination, to the symbolic order -- that is, to the category and concept of architecture. For this, preparation is required; we must have some sort of education or prior instruction in order to produce concepts. The pronouncement That is architecture is not a simple experience, not only intuition or cognition, but a recognition: an understanding built from prior encounters, memories, and reflected conceptualizations. The authority of the symbolic rule imposes itself on the imagination and determines it, regulates it, legitimizes it. The imagination operates in accordance with rule unwittingly, without expressly observing it, but the symbolic must be in play. Through its interaction with the symbolic, the imagination gains the power to both register and overcome the limits of experience. Only when the imagination mediates between the sensible and the understanding, with the symbolic order of the understanding presiding, is That architecture.

2.

My description of the architectural imagination as essentially interpretive, as well as cognitively productive, borrows from Immanuel Kant's theory of the schema and its role in reflective judgment developed in his third Critique.2 For Kant, a schema of the imagination is not quite a concept and yet is something more than an ordinary image. A schema is something like a script for producing images in accordance with the symbolic order -- a synthetic operator between the sensible and the understanding.

In Kant's architectonic, the imagination must coordinate with the two other faculties -- the intuition and the understanding -- to construct its practical-empirical role out of machinic parts. The intuition synthesizes sensory experience. The understanding spontaneously deploys concepts and categories. But intuitions are purely sensible, and the understanding cannot scan sensible objects. So we need a way of relating and connecting these two separate faculties. "There must be a third thing," Kant writes, "which must stand in homogeneity with the category on the one hand and the appearance on the other, and make possible the application of the former to the latter. This mediating representation must be pure (without anything empirical) and yet intellectual on the one hand and sensible on the other."3 This third thing is a product of the imagination; it is the schema. The function of the schema is to subsume the uncoded array of sensations, the empirical objects of intuition, and convert them into images that can be processed by the understanding.

But a schema is not itself an image in an ordinary sense, because it is not a thing. Rather, a schema is a rule for an image that is produced in the act, or procedure, of schematization, a dynamic process that takes place in the imagination. Kant gives the instructive example of a triangle: "In fact it is not images of objects but schemata that ground our pure sensible concepts. No image of a triangle would ever be adequate to the concept of it. For it would not attain the generality of the concept, which makes this valid for all triangles, right or acute, etc. . . . The schema of a triangle can never exist anywhere except in thought, and signifies a rule of the synthesis of the imagination with regard to pure shapes in space."4 Images remain attached to the senses, incommensurable with the concepts used by the understanding, while schemata regulate the abstraction of sensation into something the understanding can process. As one scholar put it, "The schema is the procedure of the imagination in providing an image for a concept. . . . Schemata must underlie all of our concepts if they are to be relevant to the realm of empirical experience."5 A schema is a necessary component of perception itself, but also a requirement for practical and theoretical knowledge, as well as reflective interpretation.

If Kant's formulation of the schema should feel familiar to architects, this is perhaps because it is very similar to Quatremère de Quincy's definition of the architectural type: "The word 'type' does not represent so much the image of something that must be copied or imitated perfectly, as the idea of an element that must itself serve as a rule for the model. . . . The model, understood from the point of view of the practical execution of art, is an object that must be repeated such as it is; [the] type, on the contrary, is an object on the basis of which everyone can conceive of works that may not resemble each other at all."6 What has not been sufficiently noticed in discussions of type is the freedom of relationships among sensation, memory, and imagination that this formulation allows, at the same time that it insists on harmony and resonance across component parts. While one model of the schema could construe its effects as rigidly stabilizing, it is also possible to find liberating hints at different modes of becoming in the constructive and autonomous act of the imagination.

Indeed, the schematic imagination, as articulated in Kant's philosophy, is deeply embedded in architectural historiography. Countless historians have been influenced by Kant -- Paul Frankl, Heinrich Wölfflin, Emil Kaufmann, Erwin Panofsky, and Wilhelm Worringer among them. But it is Rudolf Wittkower, in his 1944 drawing "Schematized Plans of Eleven of Palladio's Villas," who gives us the most vivid graphic expression of a schematizing machine. As part of his survey of Palladio's Veneto villas republished in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949) -- in which he utterly suppresses site, material, technology, decoration, patrons, clients, and even program (many of the villas were in fact working farmhouses, complete with barchesse and dovecotes) -- Wittkower "designs" a schema that totalizes the villa type as the geometric-mathematical systematization of the ground plan.7 That Wittkower's Architectural Principles was as compelling as it was tendentious is evidenced not only by its widespread and decades-long influence but also by its practical instrumentalization by scholars and designers alike.8 In 1947, Colin Rowe extended Wittkower's analysis to the villas of Le Corbusier; in 1967, Peter Eisenman used the same schema as a generative structure to begin his seminal house series; and in 1998, Greg Lynn defined his own counterposition of animate geometry and continuous differentiation as a decisive departure from the schema of Wittkower, Rowe, and Eisenman. The architectural imagination is action prone and highly connective; it is promiscuous.

[Due to copyright restrictions, an image of "Schematized Plans of Eleven of Palladio's Villas" from Rudolph Wittkower's Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949) is not available. See Lecture 1.2 for more information.]

3.

In the half century since Wittkower's powerful demonstration of the schematic imagination at work in interpretive practice, scholars have grown skeptical of the transcendental formalism of models like his, turning their attention instead toward methods able to accommodate newly conceived issues of multiplicity, potentiality, virtuality, and becoming, as well as various materialist tendencies. New practices of the imagination began to develop in the 1970s and 1980s, primarily following the work of Manfredo Tafuri but also influenced generally by exchanges across various critical disciplines that accepted Marxism and psychoanalysis as common metalanguages and tended to use methods derived from ideology critique and deconstruction. Since the 1990s, the works of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze have been the dominant influences on architectural interpretation. In particular, Foucault's diagram of the architecture of the 19th-century panopticon and Deleuze's reading of that diagram as a cartography of an entire social and historical field have authorized new modes of architecture's appearance and new constructions of the architectural imagination.9

Foucault is concerned with how the apparatus of power and knowledge configures a domain of visible matter (the "seeable") that is shaped by the articulable functions (organized utterances and discourse, or the "sayable") into various disciplinary forms like the panopticon. In his study of Foucault, Deleuze focuses on the relation of the visible (which is not reduced to a thing seen but comprises "multisensorial complexes," processes, actions, and reactions) and the articulable (or discursive formation), rendering their interaction as an agon of Kantian sensibility and conceptuality. "Between the visible and the articulable we must maintain all the following aspects at the same time: the heterogeneity of the two forms, their difference in nature or anisomorphism; a mutual presupposition between the two, a mutual grappling and capture; the well-determined primacy of the one over the other."10The visible, like Kant's intuition, is passive and determined, while the articulable, like Kant's understanding, is spontaneous and determining. But just as Kant needs the schema, Foucault needs a third agency, a mediator of the confrontation, but one in a space removed from the visible and the articulable, "in a different dimension to that of their respective forms."11 This nonplaced operator is what Deleuze, reading Foucault, calls the diagram.

The schematic imagination is an imposition of order on a stratum of sensible and conceptual knowledge that has no exterior, on an assemblage that is autonomous and closed. The schematic centers, territorializes, and patterns sensation in accordance with categories and concepts already present (even though they can be known only retrospectively), whereas the diagrammatic draws the center of the assemblage together with peripheral force fields and operations exterior to the assemblage proper; the diagrammatic is concerned with deterritorializing and reterritorializing. If the schema is a template, the diagram is a frame and a connector. The diagrammatic imagination comprises functions that trace and map a region captured from a larger field, thereby also creating an outside. Deleuze resorts to prose poetry to define the outside: "The outside is not a fixed limit but a moving matter animated by peristaltic movements, folds and foldings that together make up an inside" -- that is, an inside of thought. "Thinking involves the transmission of particular features: it is a dice-throw. What the dice-throw represents is that thinking always comes from the outside (that outside which was already engulfed in the interstice [between seeing and saying] or which constituted the common limit)." He asks, "If the outside, farther away than any external world, is also closer than any internal world, is this not a sign that thought affects itself, by revealing the outside to be its own unthought element?"12 The outside is the unthought other; it is difference itself. The outside is the virtual; and the virtual is history. But it is not the history of architecture's actual unfolding; it is not the archive. The virtual is, rather, absolute history -- the constitutive outside that, across an implicating membrane, disturbs the identity of the inside, the actual, and is nevertheless both a prerequisite for the actual's constitution and a record of its existence. Virtuality is the source of resistance.

Near the end of his Foucault study, Deleuze inserts an illustration of the diagram. It depicts the "line of the outside," an indefinitely unfurling plane with an atmosphere above -- itself populated with condensed particles and intersections of forces tossed about -- and a sedimented "strata"below (more packed and stacked, having been archived). Between the two lies a "strategic zone," a zone of negotiation between the formed strata and the unformed outside. The left-side strata are archives of visual knowledge, and the right is a kind of sound cloud of articulable knowledge: "the two irreducible forms of knowledge, Light and Language, two vast environments of exteriority where visibilities and statements are respectively deposited."13 Together the two archives delineate a band of forms of content and forms of expression that can be taken to determine the limits of actual, concrete historical formations of knowledge and power. Deleuze calls this the concrete assemblage, in contradistinction to the abstract machine of the diagram itself. In between the two archives is a striking enfolding of the line of the outside, pulled down into a pouch, a pocket, an implication "constantly reconstituting itself by changing direction, tracing an inside space but coextensive with the whole line of the outside" -- a "zone of subjectivation," as Deleuze labels it -- the place of thought itself.14

[Due to copyright restrictions, an illustration of Gilles Deleuze's diagram from Foucault (1986) is not available.]

4.

Let us now consider how this diagrammatic version of the architectural imagination works in interpreting an architectural project. Architecture is both an artifact of culture and a sociopolitical act; hence, the architectural project does not simply reproduce the contexts that are its sponsors but rather connects to their fields and forces in complex and often contradictory ways, drawing up the threads of the real into a fabric whose weaving operations may be modeled as much on dreams and prayers as on maps and machines. Architecture is the constant making and remaking of the world -- the territorialization and reterritorialization of the concrete assemblage through architecture's particular diagram. So it must be recognized that any project of architecture is not merely informed by ideology -- by its patrons, its designers, or its audiences -- it is ideological in its own right. The diagrammatic imagination accounts for the fact that architecture is entangled within a complex of social, technological, and historical forces, which are deep-seated, perhaps repressed, and yet shifting and contradictory. It is these forces that close formal readings of architectural projects seek to deconceal. What the diagrammatic model does not allow is an uncritical collapse of the architectural project into its context, as if it were completely determined by its context. Architecture necessarily remains in dialectical tension with its own historical moment. It is not capable of sublating art and life, but neither can the discursive and institutional authorities completely control and exhaust architecture. Architecture retains the power to negate certain dimensions of historical social life and expose undiscovered spaces, expanding the territory on which we dwell. "It is here that two forms of realization diverge or become differentiated," Deleuze instructs, "a form of expression and a form of content, a discursive and a non-discursive form, the form of the visible and the form of the articulable. . . . Between the visible and the articulable a gap or disjunction opens up. . . . The concrete assemblages are therefore opened up by a crack that determines how the abstract machine [the diagram] performs."15 The seeable and sayable are not contextually given forms but rather spaces of emergence inextricably linked to historical discourses, which they also help to organize. The social and historical context may determine the visible, but the visible pushes back on the expressible to enable what in turn underwrites conditions of visibility. The discontinuity between the visible and the articulable, the irreducibility of the one to the other, is the crux here. For this is the moment around which the differences between a symptomatic reading and a merely suspicious reading turn. The recognition That is architecture still entails an active, engaged, and critical imagination rather than an inert and compliant object.

The diagrammatic model of the architectural imagination enables us to retain from Kantian aesthetics and the architectural historiography that it influenced the notion that architecture is characterized by a certain degree of formal autonomy. But it mediates this with an emphasis on the social and intellectual importance of form and the corollary of a deep historicity. Finally, we achieve a materialist emphasis on architecture's embeddedness in heterogeneous networks of other forms and forces, interconnected constellations that will not resolve or reduce into a single structure because each constellation connects to the others through events rather than passages determined by one or the other. The architectural imagination has historically demonstrated the capacity to structure perceptions and experiences while remaining outside any single structure's absolute control. This explains why great architecture always exceeds description and theory. It explains architecture's power for disturbance and transformation rather than inert passivity. Architecture associates the intensity of sensation with the rigor of structure and then transfers that intensity into other disciplines and practices, revealing not only their limits but also their openness to change.

Notes

1. Adolf Loos, "Architektur" (1910), in Die Schriften von Adolf Loos, vol. 2, Trotzdem, 1900–1930 (Innsbruck: Brenner, 1931), 109–10. My translation.

2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 272 (B177/A138).

4. Ibid., 273 (B180/A141).

5. Charles E. Winquist, The Transcendental Imagination: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972), 18.

6. Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, "Imagination," in Dictionnaire historique d’architecture, vol. 2 (Paris: Librairie d’Adrien le Clere, 1832), 629, quoted in Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City, trans. Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 40.

7.See Rudolf Wittkower, “Principles of Palladio’s Architecture,” in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1949), 51–88. Originally published in two parts in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 7 (1944): 102–22; 8 (1945): 68–106.

8. See Henry A. Millon, "Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism: Its Influence on the Development and Interpretation of Modern Architecture," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 31, no. 2 (May 1972): 83–91; and Alina A. Payne, "Rudolf Wittkower and Architectural Principles in the Age of Modernism," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 53, no. 3 (September 1994): 322–42.

9. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1977); and Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, trans. Seán Hand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

10. Deleuze, Foucault, 67–68.

11. Ibid., 69.

12. Ibid., 96–97, 117–18.

13. Ibid., 121.

14. Ibid., 123.

15. Ibid., 38.

Author's note: I extend sincere thanks to Bryan Norwood and Chelsea Spencer, whose comments and recommendations on multiple drafts have produced content as well as clarity

K. Michael Hays is the Eliot Noyes Professor of Architecture Theory at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

(Hays, K. Michael. "Architecture's Appearance and the Practices of Imagination." Log, vol. 37, 2016, 205-213. https://www.anycorp.com/store?category=Log)