#but what's the fun in a character that's not even a little freakish. NONE that is what!!!

[goldensunset]

re: the music rant I tagged you in I am so sorry for tagging you in my double-dose caffeine fueled haterism explosion post. truly was off the shits and did not realize how much random garbage talking points I was ready to spill on the first person to ask

but i love haterism…..

[humanimalgam]

this slut has a body now

[penny00dreadful]

Heyyy

I accidentally went down a rabbit hole for the devotion art, and I was wondering if you filled out character sheets for the boys and if so, would you be willing to share them??

No worries if not in either way!

The stat blocks need not exist, not do you have to share them even if they do.

Hello hello! Thank you for asking! I actually did fill out character sheets for the boys at Lvl. 3, Lvl. 10 and Lvl. 15 for my upcoming D&D AU, Devotion.

And then I put them down and now I can't find them again to share 😭😭😭

But I DO HAVE AN ANSWER FOR YOU! And I do have the few notes I could find. I saw your reblogs about Eddie's Lvl. 10 stats and you're so right, his health is really low 😬 BUT I have an in universe reason for it! 😅

When I was filling out their stats and figuring them out, I knew I wasn't going to be building them to min/max them, you know? Like I wasn't going to level them up the way one might usually with a character they are playing. Like I wasn't gonna say:

There might be battles up ahead so I need to increase their stats here and here.

Instead I went more in the direction of:

At this stage in Steve's life, he's 16, he thinks he's hot shit because he's got his expensive gold armor and he's at the start of his story arc so, for example, his Wisdom is very low (-1) at Lvl. 3 and he also has NO experience in combat of any kind, he's only fought when in training, never in a real world scenario.

Then as he gets up to Lvl. 10, he learns, he grows. He's 21 year old now. He's become more wise to the ways of the world, he's learned to fight, his weapons have changed, he's gotten stronger. He's at a +0 for his Wisdom now as he's learned more of the world outside his small town.

It's the same story for Eddie. While I don't want to say too much because of potential spoilers, I can tell you he has the 'urchin' background sooo... 😬😬😬 That might give a hint. 😅 But as a Lvl. 3 Bard at 17 years old, growing up in the poor part of town, he doesn't have a lot of access to the kinds of benefits Steve had growing up. Y'know, sometimes you gotta busk to eat and sometimes you go home empty handed.

So this poor fucker is STARTING OFF at a +0 Constitution.

Which... doesn't get better. Because his situation does not get better.

There is a reason he multiclasses into Wizard, and it is very reflective of his story in the show. Like, in a sense his situation gets better, he has his people around him, but he also ends up leaning into the freakishness, hence the School of Necromancy.

But none of this is conducive to growing up healthy. So by the time he is at Lvl. 10 at 22 years old, he's still at +0 Constitution because... well... because there's only so much one can do. Regular meals and a constant training regimene is not something he had access to for the longest time.

(And listen, as someone who's favourite character I played was a School of Necromancy Wizard who was the most glass of glass canons, I feel you, Eddie 😅)

So like, he's got 3d8 HP when he's at Lvl. 3 and I believe he rolled fairly high with his +0 and I think he was at 21. Then he took 7 Wizard levels (still at +0) which was 7d6, leaving us with ~30 HP gained.

So I suppose, long story short, I am approaching these stats from a storytelling perspective, rather than trying to buff them up for any future battles, you know? Along with a little bit of homebrewing or just straight up ignoring some things that I need to.

Like as a DM, if something needs to be ignored or overlooked to make the story more entertaining to my players, I'll do it. The Rule of Cool is always in effect with me. 🤣

So I kind of see it as me being the DM of their story, but of course, rather than me being the DM and them running off in the opposite direction I want them to, like my players so often do I am also the author, and I know exactly what direction the story is going to go in and what's going to happen and what their motivations are.

I dunno, it's a really fun thinking exercise and it has allowed me to get so deep into their characters.

Anyway I am SORRY this explanation has gone on so long and I've gone so far in depth when you probably just wanted something short and sweet but I love talking about this so, I took the opportunity and ran with it. 😅

So here's the notes that I found on their character sheets on scattered scraps of paper 😅 (and I know some of these might not line up with what's supposed to be done, but isn't the main point at the end of the day to have fun? 😊)

Eddie Lvl. 10:

Keen Mind Feat STR: -1 DEX: +1 Con: +0 INT: +3 WIS: +1 CHA: +3

Steve Lvl. 10:

STR: +3 DEX: +0 Con: +2 INT: +1 WIS: +0 CHA: +3

[aion-rsa]

Best Horror TV Shows on Hulu

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You thought movies were the only place to get your daily dose of horror? Oh you fool! You absolute FOOL! There are plenty of bingeworthy and scary horror TV shows out there and Hulu just happens to be a great place to find them. 

Hulu is home to recent hits like The Terror and Castle Rock but there are still more scares to be found for the horror enthusiast willing to dig deep. Gathered here are some of the best and scariest horror TV shows that Hulu has to offer.

Editor’s Note: This post is updated monthly. Bookmark this page and come back every month to see the additions to the best horror TV shows on Hulu.

Updated for October 2020

The Terror

Based on a 2007 book of the same name by Dan Simmons, The Terror season 1 tells a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin’s expedition to the arctic in 1845. In real life, the doomed men likely got lost and succumbed to the cold but the show asks “what if there was something more sinister than low temperatures lurking about?”

The Terror features a cast impressively full of “hey it’s that guy” guys like Jared Harris, Ciarán Hindis, and Tobias Menzes. It deftly turned itself into an anthology with the second season The Terror: Infamy that tells a ghost story within the setting of a Japanese interment camp in World War II.

American Horror Story

Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story is revolutionary in quite a few ways. Not only did it help usher in a renewed era of anthology storytelling on television, it also was arguably the first successful network television horror show since The X-Files.

Like all anthologies, American Horror Story has its better seasons (season 1 a.k.a. Murder House, season 2 a.k.a. Asylum, season 6 a.k.a. Roanoke) and its worse (season 3 a.k.a. Coven and season 8 a.k.a. Apocalypse). Still, for nine years and counting, American Horror Story has been one of the go-to options for TV horror fans.

Castle Rock

Stephen King properties have made their way to television before. There have been miniseries for classic King texts like The Stand and ‘Salem’s Lot and even full series for works like Rose Red and Under the Dome. Still, none of those series has had the audacity to adapt multiple aspects of the Stephen King universe itself…until Castle Rock.

Castle Rock takes multiple characters, storylines, and concepts from the vast works of Stephen King and puts them all in King’s own Castle Rock, Maine. The first season featured inmates from Shawshank prison, extended family of Jack Torrance, and maybe even a touch of the shine. The show opened itself up for more storytelling possibilities in season 2, adopting an anthology format and bringing Annie Wilkes into the fold.

The Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone is an all-time television classic for good reason. Join Rod Serling each episode for a new tale of mystery, horror and woe.

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Whatever you do, however, do NOT drop your glasses.

The Strain

The most novel thing about FX’s vampire horror thriller The Strain is how it equates the ancient fear of vampirism with the more modern, global fear of pandemic. The Strain, produced by Guillermo del Toro Chuck Hogan and based on their novel series opens with a flight landing with all of its passengers mysteriously dead.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Seduction of Old School Movie Magic

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Lake Mungo: the Lingering Mystery Behind One of Australia’s Scariest Horror Films

By Rosie Fletcher

As CDC director Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) steps in to investigate, he discovers that there might be something more sinister…and ancient afoot than a simple virus. The Strain lasted for four mostly decent seasons on FX and if nothing else helped re-embrace the vampire as a monster and not some sort of noble antihero.

Stan Against Evil

To parody horror, one needs to love horror. And Stan Against Evil creator Dana Gould really, really, really loves horror. The longtime standup comedian and comedy writer brings his unique humor sensibilities and lifelong appreciation of horror to tell the story of a quaint New Hampshire town that just happens to be built on the cursed site of a massive witch burning.

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By Kayti Burt

John C. McGinley stars as the titular Stan, a disgraced former sheriff who opts to pick up the battle against evil after a close call. He teams up with new sheriff Evie Barret (Janet Varney) to defend the town (and sometimes world) from supernatural threats.

The X-Files

The X-Files is quite simply the gold standard for horror on television. Chris Carter’s conspiracy-tinged supernatural masterpiece not only inspired every horror TV show that came after it, but just about every other TV show in general.

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By Chris Longo

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By Alejandro Rojas

The X-Files follows FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) as they investigate the unusual cases that traditional law enforcement won’t touch. For 11 seasons (and a handful of movies), the show expertly balanced a massive series-long story along with what came to be called “monster of the week” self-contained tales.

Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural

When it first premiered on YouTube back in 2016, Buzzfeed Unsolved became a huge hit by appealing to one of the Internet’s favorite subjects: true crime. Still Buzzfeed saw all of that success and realzied there was still another audience to serve. Thus Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural was born.

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20 Scariest Horror Games Ever Made

By Matthew Byrd

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By Rosie Knight

In this spinoff hosts Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej examine some of the supernatural world’s biggest mysteries. With the right balance of skepticism and belief, Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural is a welcome entry into the paranormal investigation TV canon.

The Outer Limits

When The Twilight Zone premiered in 1959, it set off a brief little renaissance of anthology horror storytelling on television. The best of these contenders to the Zone‘s throne was probably the sci-fi centric The Outer Limits.

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How Arachnophobia Became the Perfect Creepy Crawly Horror Comedy

By Jack Beresford

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By Alana Joli Abbott

Outer Limits aired from 1963 to 1965 on ABC. In that span it generated 49 spooky episodes, several of which made an impact on pop culture. Alan Moore infamously borrowed the plot of the episode “The Architects of Fear” for the ending of Watchmen. The Outer Limits received a Sci-Fi Channel revival in the ’90s and is currently poised for another bite at the apple.

Freakish

Freakish stars several high profile (at the time at least) social media stars as students at Kent High School. The kids are gathered together at school on Saturday for detention, Breakfast Club-style, when a nearby chemical plant explodes, turning the local population into mutated zombies. The group must band together to survive.

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Debuting in 2016, Freakish ran for two seasons on Hulu. The show embraces its teenage soapiness and isn’t necessarily the most heavyweight horror option. But it’s a quick, fun watch for any zombie horror fan nonetheless.

The Exorcist

The Exorcist is one of the greatest horror films ever made. The Fox series that bears its name and premise isn’t quite as good (few things could ever be) but it’s still an excellent horror story in its own right.

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The Exorcist is a two-season long anthology series that follows two different cases of demonic possession. In the first installment, two Catholic priests assist a woman with a possession in her home. In the second, two new priests help a young girl battle evil.

Ghost Adventures

Since the turn of the millennium, television has not been lacking for shows involving paranormal investigations. But even within the crowded spooky market, Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures stands out.

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By Tony Sokol

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First premiering in 2008, Ghost Adventures follows paranormal researchers Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, Aaron Goodwin, Billy Tolley, and Jay Wasley as they travel the world looking for ghoulish occurrences to investigate. Over its 200-some episodes (not including specials), Ghost Adventures has proven itself to be the gold standard for people who just want to watch some dudes stumble around old properties in night vision.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Monsterland

Since Netflix acquired the rights to Black Mirror back in 2015, the streaming world has been a veritable arms race of sci-fi and horror anthology series. Hulu has already tried its hand at horror anthology with the Blumhouse-produced Into the Dark, and Monsterland represents the latest effort.

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The WNUF Halloween Special: The Making of the Most Fun Found Footage Horror Movie Ever

By Gavin Jasper

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How Scorn Turned the Art of H.R. Giger into a Nightmarish Horror Game World

By John Saavedra

Monsterland is based on the short story collection North American Lake Monsters: Stories by Nathan Ballingrud. It consists of eight spooky, unconnected tales and features the acting talents of Kaitlyn Dever, Bill Camp, Kelly Marie Tran, and more. The twist here is that each episode focuses on an urban legend from a different city within the United States. And given how weird this country is, the series won’t be running out of of stories anytime soon.

The post Best Horror TV Shows on Hulu appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[nadziejastar]

In a lot of your posts, they have a lot of the texts from the novels and manga. If you were to go off of ONLY the games, would Subject X still be hinted? I think yes, but I'm a casual fan.

Well, I developed my opinion on Subject X based ONLY on the games. I played all the games as soon as they came out. So, that would be many years ago at this point. I didn’t read the novels or the manga until after I beat KH3, which was relatively recently. My opinions on the story/characters were quite solidified by then. I actually read them because I thought KH3′s story was so inconsistent with the previous games.The novels/manga simply reinforced the opinions I already had formed after playing the games. I felt validated by them, but they had nothing to do with my opinion on Subject X. 

Now, are you are asking me if I think Subject X—the way it was written in canon—was hinted at in the games? A mysterious time-travelling girl that Lea and Isa were looking for the whole time they were in Organization XIII? LOL. Hell no. Absolutely not. She was never hinted at even once, not even vaguely. And the way Axel and Saïx were written was never consistent with that motivation at all. If you mean Subject X as a concept? Xehanort’s lab rat? Yes, definitely. That was pretty much EXACTLY what I always expected Isa’s backstory to be, based ONLY on the games. I thought Lea and Isa were set up perfectly to be test subjects. When I play the older games, I’m still unable to see them as anything but test subjects. That’s how much support there was for that idea and how little there was for anything else. 

I was VERY confused when KH3 did feature a character who was Xehanort’s lab rat. But instead of being Isa, it was a random girl he never mentioned before (but apparently was obsessed with). Them being apprentices was something so farfetched, it never even once crossed my mind. I didn’t understand how anyone could give that girl the backstory that seemed 1,000 times more suitable for Lea and Isa. How could the person writing the story not see that? How do they expect the fans to not see it, either? How dumb and/or incompetent do you have to be to write the story that way? How did that even get approved by a whole team of people? Those were my thoughts when I played KH3, based ONLY on the previous games.

That is NOT how someone will feel if a story is well-written. Some people act like Nomura made the story up as it went along, with each individual game. But that wasn’t the case for the games building up to KH3. Re:CoM and KH2FM+ were released together. And BBS, Days, and Coded were being developed simultaneously. These were all part of one big master plan. The way Saïx was written in Days was connected to how Isa was written in BBS, etc. Isa was planned to be a good guy MANY years in advance. IMO, him being the real Subject X was hinted at MANY years in advance. If you think anyone else was foreshadowed to be Subject X, let’s look at the games one by one. 

Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix+

In all the games building up to KH3, the only person from Axel’s past that had any relevance was Isa/Saïx. They could have hinted at Subject X any time they wanted to in ALL these games, but they never did. In KH2FM+, all the new scenes with Saïx involved his relationship with Axel. Saïx seemed to be conflicted about Axel’s elimination. Xemnas made a comment to Saïx about Axel chasing the illusion of friendship. This scene hinted that Axel wasn’t really obsessed with Roxas like people thought. He was really just trying to recover his lost friendship with Isa. I had always suspected that Axel’s “obsession” with Roxas was due to his troubled past, so it didn’t surprise me at all. And Nomura loves twists like that.

They were setting up Isa’s relationship with Lea to have significance, not his relationship with anyone else. It’s absurd for me to think that they were trying to track down a girl they didn’t even know existed. They had real problems to worry about. KH2FM+ also introduced the Chamber of Repose and the Cavern of Remembrance. This all suggested that the experiments on the darkness of the heart would be very important and explored in much more depth. Xigbar seemed to have heavy involvement in these experiments, since he didn’t want to go down into the castle basement. And he’s the one who taunted Saïx about not being able to see Xion and not having a heart.

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories

Castle Oblivion is all about recovering forgotten memories. The other most important recurring theme in Re:CoM was reuniting with people you miss. Pretty much every Disney world incorporated this theme. This was the perfect opportunity to hint at Subject X, but they didn’t do that. Instead, they chose to keep the focus on Axel’s relationship with Saïx.

Days made a big point of showing that Axel changed a LOT after coming back from Castle Oblivion. Saïx said this to him on Day 193, called “Memories”. He also asked Axel if the past meant nothing to him. Axel said he missed what was gone between him and Saïx. He didn’t mention missing anyone else. There was also a new scene where Axel acted extremely cold to Naminé because she was making two childhood friends fight. Isa was the only childhood friend we ever saw, and he later became an enemy. In every game building up to KH3, Isa was set up to be the most important character to Lea. Subject X? Crickets.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

Axel said in his report that he forgot what friendship felt like after becoming a Nobody. That was the whole point of him befriending Roxas and Xion. He was not focused on friendship until he met Roxas. And Saïx was always cold and indifferent towards everyone, even Axel, who was his best friend that he was inseparable from. They’ve been together for 10 years in the organization. I’m expected to believe that Saïx was able to care about some imaginary girl, but not his best friend? To be honest, I thought that the writers had to be drunk if they thought that was believable or realistic. Or that it made Saïx more sympathetic.

Even in Days, I could tell that Axel had a lot of baggage from his past. He always treated his memories of the past like they were sacred. Day 150 is about having something you can’t bear to lose. He said that for Nobodies, it was their past, because that’s all you have to remember the pain of losing something. Perfect time to mention Subject X. After all, her disappearance was Axel’s motivation, right? But the story made it perfectly clear: Axel was heartbroken over the loss of his best friend. Nothing else was ever mentioned. Axel was good friends with Roxas, but I got the sense that he was much, MUCH closer with Isa. 

Personally, I thought Axel was a former test subject ever since the original KH2. It fit him perfectly. He was a sad, lonely, dysfunctional person. When Days hinted that Axel had a tragic past and dark secrets that he didn’t like to talk about, I was not at all surprised. He suffered from something way more traumatic than someone he barely knew disappearing. And it never seemed like he chose to be in the organization. That’s why he was always yearning for his childhood with things like ice cream and summer vacation. My personal belief is that Axel was always written with the backstory of a former test subject in mind. They came up with Saïx‘s backstory later, though I suspected he might have been a test subject too, due to his scar and his berserk state, which made him seem kinda freakish. We always knew that Xigbar and Saïx were unique due to them having gold eyes and pointy ears.

Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep

When I played BBS, I knew that something horrible must have happened to Isa to turn him into someone like Saïx. The difference between Saïx and Isa was like night and day. None of the other Nobodies were THAT different from their human counterparts. BBS also confirmed my opinion on Axel/Roxas/Xion. Lea was WAY closer to Isa than he was with them. Isa seemed like a shy kid. But he was very comfortable with Lea. And Lea acted much more naturally with Isa compared to Roxas and Xion.

After BBS, it was obvious that Isa was not a villain, and that he was going to be on the good side at the end of KH3. This was the game that was supposed to show you who the organization members were as humans. They showed that Braig was always evil. Lea and Isa were only in one single scene, other than the epilogue. So, why would they choose to show him as an innocent kid who was Lea’s best friend? Obviously, all of this was to show that he was the polar opposite of Braig. How is that consistent with his canon characterization? He sold his soul to Xehanort, did icky jobs for Xemnas at a pace Axel couldn’t keep up with, and tried to murder Axel. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to write Lea’s best friend that way, if he was not possessed? Especially if they wanted him to appear in future titles?

In the epilogue, they showed Lea and Isa eating ice cream together. Sea-salt ice cream was VERY important to Axel’s character. Axel defined friendship as people who eat ice cream together. I knew that Isa was very special to Axel if he was the origin of his addiction to ice cream. They also showed Lea and Isa trying to sneak into the castle. This was BEFORE the experiments took place. So, Subject X had nothing to do with why Lea and Isa were originally trying to sneak in. They wanted to sneak in because it sounded like fun. Not because they thought people were being tortured in there. There’s no evidence the mystery girl even existed back when BBS was written. The apprentices were not recruiting kids to be apprentices, they were kidnapping kids. What reason would Ansem have to let them be apprentices anyways? It makes no sense.

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance

In KH3D, Lea was recompleted. Xehanort was gone. He could have used that opportunity to look for information on Subject X. But he didn’t even mention her. He immediately set off to look for Isa. That was his main priority upon being recompleted, not finding Subject X or Roxas, who had gone back to Sora. Lea wasn’t even concerned that Saïx was trying to hunt him down in KH2. He was happy to look for him, even when he was putting himself at risk using the dark corridors. He used the same lines he did for Xion, which had huge narrative significance. It was clear that he was dead set on bringing Isa home. If Subject X was important, Lea didn’t act like it. KH3D sent the message to me that Lea was VERY devoted to Isa. Why even write him this way if he wasn’t supposed to rescue him eventually? Why make it seem like Isa was kidnapped if he was supposed to be looking for Subject X?

Lea and Isa were also the only two who were wearing the black coats when they were recompleted, which gave me the impression that they were test subjects. The apprentices never wore the black cloaks. And of course, the big revelation in KH3D was that Isa was a vessel. Unlike Xigbar, he seemed like he was being controlled, like a puppet. Lea awakened his Keyblade, the Flame Liberator, immediately afterwards. Xemnas also mentioned mind control experiments in this game. Why bring this up if Subject X was only experimented on for her memories. NONE of the games gave me the impression that Lea and Isa were apprentices, that Isa willingly joined the bad side, or that there was some mystery girl that he was looking for. They gave me the impression that Isa was one of the many characters who needed their hurting mended. That was supposed to be the main theme of KH3, after all.

Birth By Sleep Final Mix+

Xemnas may have called Aqua’s armor “friend”, but that was only because he had access to Terra’s memories. He tried to manipulate Aqua by impersonating Terra in KH0.2. And I got the impression that a similar idea was behind the relationship between Axel and Saïx. In the secret ending of BBSFM+, the camera zoomed in on Master Xehanort’s eyes when he said he had many other roads open besides Terra. Then they zoomed in on the amnesiac Terranort’s eyes, showing that they were brown. They zoomed in on Ansem the Wise’s eyes afterwards, showing that the were orange. And finally they zoomed in on his eyes again when he was in the Realm of Darkness. The implication was that Master Xehanort had so many options because of these experiments. His goal was to create vessels, not learn about the age of fairy tales.

Ansem put his research results in Sora to atone for all the lives he ruined. It can be reasonably discerned that Ansem Seeker of Darkness and Xemnas had orange eyes because of Ansem the Wise probing the depths of Xehanort’s heart, to restore his memory. He gained all of Terra’s memories in the process. And in the games building up to KH3, they specifically changed Saïx’s eyes from gold to orange. This implies that the same thing was done to him as well. We know Subject X was also an amnesiac and that Ansem the Wise hid them away when he released the other subjects. It makes sense that Isa was the same as Terra.

Kingdom Hearts 0.2

When Riku told Kairi that she was going to be training with Lea, she was shocked. She later admitted in KH3 that she was afraid of him, because he kidnapped her. But she said that she found it hard not to like him because all he ever wanted was to help his friend. That’s exactly what I expected to happen. My impression after playing KH0.2 was that Axel’s relationship with Roxas and Xion was meant to provide him with character development. This would allow Lea to fulfill his TRUE purpose in the story: becoming a Guardian of Light and rescuing his real best friend from Xehanort. Axel’s friendship with Roxas was supposed to carry over to Ventus because they both had a friend who was a vessel.

Axel’s friendship with Xion was meant to carry over to Kairi specifically because they were going to be training together in KH3. Kairi awakened her Keyblade because she wanted to bring Riku and Sora home. Lea and Kairi were planned as friends because he also wanted to bring his friend home. Axel’s friendship with Roxas and Xion played an important role in Lea’s development. But my impression was that getting Isa back was the ultimate goal of Lea’s character arc, not Roxas or Xion. And especially not Subject X, who is irrelevant to the Xehanort Saga.

Saïx could not see Xion for some reason that was never explained. He has a large Recusant’s Sigil scar on his face which was never explained. Axel said Saïx’s personality changed drastically, while he stayed more or less the same. This was never explained. Saïx had orange eyes like Xemnas, but this was never explained. Subject X does not explain ANY of these things. But Isa being experimented on as the REAL Subject X just happens to explain ALL of them.   

Kingdom Hearts 3

When Lea said he’d always be there to bring his friends back, Xehanort got a really nasty smirk on his face and sent Isa to attack him. It was just to punish him for ruining their plans. Xehanort knew exactly why Lea was there, and how to hurt him. Then during the final battle, it was a repeat of what happened in KH3D. Lea was ruining their plans yet again and Xemnas wanted to punish him. He was so confident that he had Isa under his full control, he thought he could murder Lea right in front of him and he wouldn’t do anything. He turned his back on Isa, literally and figuratively. Isa was positioned to be directly behind Xemnas’s right hand. He was his right-hand man, after all. Everything was all set up perfectly for Isa to finally betray Xemnas. That’s what being a recusant means in the first place.

Lea’s reunion with Roxas and Xion didn’t even feel like an organic or natural development in the story. It felt like shameless pandering. Subject X felt even more unnatural than Roxas and Xion did, which says a lot. Then there was Saïx’s transition into a “good guy”. If they wanted a character like Saïx to be redeemed, they would need to give him an actual redemption arc. Axel was always sympathetic and likable, and even he needed a redemption arc spanning multiple games. Saïx was WAY nastier than Axel. It would take a LONG time to redeem him. But…he was never humanized. The games went out of their way to depict Saïx as inhumanly cold as possible.

It was a deliberate CHOICE not to humanize him in ALL of these games. Yet there he was in the ending, chilling and eating ice cream, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Now, this would make perfect sense if his backstory was a nice kid who was kidnapped, experimented on, then got possessed. He wouldn’t have needed a redemption arc in that case. So it makes perfect sense why one was never planned for him. In every game, the emphasis was NEVER on Saïx being redeemed, but on Lea saving Isa. The power of waking was the main goal of the story. Isa was introduced in the game called “Birth by Sleep,” which IS the power of waking. 

Lea and Isa being test subjects would have made the story far more interesting for 99.9% of players, I guarantee it. But it’s not even just that. Every game since KH2FM+ was written to give the impression that they were test subjects. There’s no way the writers weren’t aware of that. They knew exactly what message they were sending to people. And it makes waaay more sense than them being apprentices. I could not understand why anyone in their right mind would waste all of that foreshadowing and change their backstory to something FAR less interesting and also not very believable. If something doesn’t make sense it’s usually not true. I’m no detective or anything, but the only thing that makes sense is that Isa was planned to be Subject X for well over a decade. Then at the very last minute it was changed to this new girl. 

There’s three reasons I could think for someone to believe that Subject X made sense the way it was written in canon. They are either:

A. Not looking at the story very closely. Probably a casual fan.

B. A blind Kingdom Hearts fanboy/fangirl who will defend anything in the story.

C. Not very intelligent or perceptive. 

[aglaecan]

6 for everyone

questions for canon muses

6. What is the general opinion of your muse’s fandom about them? Do you agree with it?

for. all of the canons here, apparently. okay….

Beruthiel:  opinions, uh… “Beruthiel who?”  I mean, uh, some people might have caught thesingle reference to her in LoTR. Others, more familiar with the extendedlegendarium, probably know who she is. I really don’t know if there’s a generalopinion of her amongst those people; but I’ve seen a lot of art that is justsort of generic evil sorceress. There’s been some depiction of her as a WoC, given the Umbarim origin story; butI am not sure how much of that has really gone into the depth with her I have,trying to reframe her narrative in terms of xenophobia and prejudice.

Constantine: lemme just say, Ihave stayed away from the Hellblazerfandom so I have no idea of prevailing opinions beyond some very basics. It’san old series, and very much deals with very 80s issues. People who were fansof it at the time and people who are fans now seem to be different groups, inlarge part. There’s some opinion of Constantine that he’s straight as a man canbe and definitely some people have lionized his exploits and have enjoyed thefact that, frankly, he’s an ass. Meanwhile he’s clearly bi and I actually hate him lmao; like he’s such an ass andso fucking whiny that I had to writehim just to get into that mindset some, not because I thought he was actuallyas fun and badass as some of his fans seem to.

Faramir: uwu precious smolbean? Also there’s a big difference between book!fans and movie!fans, given thevastly different depictions of the House of Hurin in the two media. I thinkprobably I would agree more with opinions of book!fans, being one myself; butbasically – Faramir is a leader of men. He is a scholar. He is strong and wiseand never said to be lesser physically than his brother. Even his father was awarrior, still wearing armor beneath his robes; Faramir is not some striplingstringbean, people. He doesn’t need to be protected; he can handle that all onhis own thankyouverymuch.

Caranthir: oh sweet gallopingjesus on a pogo stick where do I start. I do not agree with any of the prevailing fanons on him.Blushy Caranthir. Stammering idiot around Haleth Caranthir. Miserly Caranthir.Broiderer Caranthir. None of it. People have taken a few lines in canon andspun them into these whole character traits without taking the wider contextinto account. I do think he is passionate and has trouble controlling hisanger. I do think he could be a real righteous ass. (Just like the rest of the family could.) But I alsothink we are shown by the narrative that he is able to create and maintaindiplomatic relations with two entirely different ethnic and cultural groups,that he shows a lot of tolerance for difference despite initial reactions (thedwarves being ‘unlovely’ etc) and that when the Silm says he got great wealthfrom the trade with the dwarves we need to look back at HoME and realize thatprimarily what he was getting from them was ore and worked steel for thedefense of the leaguer; and also that Caranthir comes from a people who prettymuch literally use diamonds and pearls to pave their roads; they value beauty, not coin.

Skinner Sweet: i………. don’tthink he has a fandom. I mean there are people who read them but???

Renfri: “Renfri who?” my habitof taking minor muses on strikes again!

Kaz: I stay out of the tags, soI have no idea. He seems like the sort who’d be woobified by his fandom andhave all the atrocities he commits handwaved away because uwu trauma but I don’tactually know if that happens. (My opinion on that is “cool motive, stillmurder;” I love him because he’s completelyfucked up, not the opposite.) Oh, I tend to think of him as less handsomeand/or generally pretty than a lot of the art I see depicts? He’s angular anddangerous and Matthias describes him as “pale and freakish.” Some of that islikely just Kaz’s… aura, for lack of a better word, but I like him as a littlestrange-looking, too. Like the demon he is, properly so. 

[saints-row-2]

been thinking about a loose assortment of characters again... Number One, Stripes, A1 and Nestlé... theyre all the worst and all have unimaginably enormous problems and theyre doing some shit involving killing virus like monsters that exist in this fake world created by a demon but uh theyre all. the worst. god ive made so many posts explaining who they all are i do it like once every five months and then dont mention them again and then feel compelled to explain them again because i LOVE explaining my ocs over and over because i love the sound of my own voice (when its talking about ocs) so like... Number One is the unofficial leader. it can also be written #1. he used to be called Boss but i changed it bcs it was going to be too confusing forever. he is a doctor and he has a helmet stuck permanently on his head and he is extremely bad at pretending to be a normal human guy. he cant die. hes existed in this freakish other world for so long and no one knows if he forgot who he was because he was there too long or if he isnt real. maybe none of it is real! Number One is possibly some kind of cyborg. what he actually is is the physical realisation of someone's ultimate power fantasy, without any of the ability to back that up with any genuine understanding of how to be like... a charming funny hero. he is incapable of telling jokes that make sense. he talks almost entirely in complete fucking nonsense. he operates on rules that make sense to him and him alone. he thinks that everyone in the world loves him and he never gets mad or takes anything personally. hes also incapable of genuine empathy or understanding when people have problems that need resolving because he lives in a world where he's an all-powerful unstoppable hero and everyone's his sidekick Stripes is bored and shes doing this because she thinks she can have fun with no consequences. shes Number One's best friend because she thinks he's hilarious and they get each other. she loves being cool and killing stuff. she has like... never had any choice or control in her life and its left her a complete nervous wreck in real life so now she's able to live free and powerful she's going completely out of her mind living like a mad thing because she CAN at LAST but her complete refusal to recognise anything that's happening as real or acknowledge consequences for her actions means that she's treating a lot of the people around her... not great because she doesn't. see them or their issues are real. she thinks she's in a fantasy land. she's a good person mostly she just needs a fucking break because she's 21 and her real life has been irrevocably ruined and she has no freedom or control and its destroying her A1 is crushingly, suicidally lonely and isolated and so fucking desperate for love hes willing to do anything. he has literally no one who gives a single fuck about him and in nightmare land there's people who have to be around him ALL the time. he comes across as coolly sarcastic and kind of a coward but he just incredibly badly wants people to care about him and he's enormously clingy as a result. he's terrified of Number One but follows him around anyway. he's infatuated with Nestlé. he has absolutely no ability to criticise anyone. hes the kind of person who would get described as "wild" on a night out when he just cant control himself on alcohol and has no self control or real sense of self preservation Nestlé comes across as darkly cynical and funny in an edgy way but he is an enormous fucking piece of shit. he hates everyone and thinks he's better than all of them. he has no capacity to care about anyone but himself but he leads A1 along because he likes the attention and the unwavering approval. he wants power more than anything else and he desperately wants to kill Number One and take his place as the leader of their little world but Number One is unkillable and all-powerful and even Nestlé isnt stupid enough to try but he is constantly looking for some way to lead Number One to his death. he's obsessed. he's a compulsive liar who tells everyone he's a cop but he was. never a cop. he just wanted to be a figure of authority. he tells people things he think they will find impressive. he is the only one actually succeeding at trying to figure out way the fuck is going on tho and he holds those cards very tightly to his chest because he loves having any power to wield over everyone, however limited it is.

[christophercori]

Possible Blog/Journal Entry Nov 18, 2015

Ok. So, the following “entry” was written while In Brooklyn House Detention Center, overlooking the Carroll Gardens/ Crown Heights (right neighborhood?) shortly after being remanded back into custody after being out on ball for not even 30 days, following nearly 8 months on Rikers Island, which was excruciating enough in and of itself. Needless to say, my unexpected reintroduction into yet another lion’s den, after such a brief taste of freedom, was nothing short of a bad hit”, leaving the proceeding mood to be plenty somber. And so commences the woeful narrative of a young man in reflection.

House Lights:  Dim Music:  Cur ominous/dramatic, foreshadowing Jazz Note:  Written as if in Retrospection from some point in the future. So, let’s get this out of the way. between 21 and 25 I was in and out of jail. Yes, me the handsome suburban “white” boy. I had two major stints each lasting about a year (second on more like 3) with maybe a year and some change of freedom in between. You better believe there is nothing more soul-crushing than getting your life back together after a year in the “can”, just to have it taken from you all over again. Sure, I’m responsible for ending up there in first place, I made some poor, impulsive decisions I mean, sue me. Who makes many good decisions in their early twenties anyway? I just happen to have been in that small majority (oxymoron?) of poor suckers who get caught, mainly because I got to be one of those assholes so full of myself, I never thought it would happen to me. Some things I wish I could take back, but other aspects of it I am grateful for and would consider an instrumental part of my personal evolution. Why was I in jail you ask? Well the finer details will have to be suspend until a much lengthier piece comes into being, but the long short of it is the result of my menacing and hostile behavior resulting from emotional instability and substance abuse. Had I been healthier and more stable at the times of my arrest, probably none of it would have ever happened, but we can't turn back time and I've long since come to terms with paying the price of allowing myself to get spread so thin and become so unhealthy to the point where I’ve lashed out at those around me. While I’m far from playing the victim in any context, it's still ridiculous that I even did time for the petty bullshit I got myself wrapped up in, but in the end, I take responsibility for my actions and after all the insanity, I think I can say with confidence that I'm a better man for it.  Even more grateful am I than for the lessons I learned along the way, are the amazing people I was blessed enough to cross paths with, who also, totally did not deserve to be there, just as they felt about me. Some people just have “dumb luck” enough, I guess, to get their hand caught in the cookie jar, doing something the law makers” generally from upon. Rut just because you may have allegedly done questionable in the eyes of society, one cannot fairly or appropriately labeled a bad person”, something which needs serious clarification here. Just because you've been to jail or even have a felony as a result, doesn't mean society reserves the right to judge or even stigmatize you (even though they do, the fuckers). A majority of civilians, not much unlike yourself, have no idea how the criminal justice system really works (how could you without having experienced it first hand?) and to what degree it victimizes and deliberately, calculatingly dismantles the lives of some very good, if at most misguided, “impulse control lacking” individuals, who have had the misfortune of, more or less, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A majority of people who even end up arrested are victimized by some king of discrimination (a huge issue to be revisited another time), a mental breakdown we’ve all bad those moments), or guilt by association (some people truly are innocent and get caught in the crossfire of hanging with the wrong crowd). Now, once they have their slimy claws in you, they'll bleed you dry, break you down and do everything they can to kill your spirit, backing you into a corner where you're ready to hang it un or plead guilty just to get the hell out of jail (or onto state prison, which gets the clock ticking), which la not the most pleasant place to be to say the least. It's certainly not terrible (surprising, hub?), this is isn't Hollywood people, but it's no Holiday Inn either, as they say. So, after a couple of months of fighting the power, no matter how proud, strong, or rebellious you are, just about everyone sets themselves up to be haunted by this enslavement, in some way, for the rest of their lives. End of Entry #1 (to be expanded upon?)

Entry #2: Postured for a new day/first post launch of a new blog/publication whatever the kids are calling it these days. Hey Everybody and welcome to the disorienting documentation of my mind-boggling life (As if you care [laughs]). First, let me start by saying that I think this journey I am (we are) about to embark on is absolutely friggin’ ridiculous, but for some reason it appears to be one of the necessary evils of modern life for anyone who wants to be noticed for anything. Gone are the days of the next big thing showing up on a street corner, strumming a six string for space change. No those days are long gone and have been replaced by compulsive teenyboppers (is that even a category anymore?) and obsessive narcissists compulsively posting self-indulgent excrement out on every social media outlet available. Regardless of how socially retarded people have become as a result, for some freakish reason, it works People are gaining notoriety from this dysfunction, fame ever (or some bizarre degree of it) And even though human beings are gradually losing their ability to function naturally and normally in everyday life, thanks to their addiction to living though palm sized screens, this is how anything worth knowing about, gets circulated. Or at least that’s what the marketing professionals would like us to believe. While dinosaurs like me might go to the library, pick up a newspaper, drop by a community center, or peruse a bulletin board at a local coffee shop, the greater percentage of “society” is thumb-tapping their way through the search bar of their preferred information engine. I guess at the end of the day there’s nothing wrong with it except of course, the inability to say hello to a passing stranger, or get through a meal without checking for alerts, which is so incredibly rude, by the way. I suppose it's just about time that I catch up with the rest of the wonderfully dystopian populace. Like the old saying goes: “if you can’t fight’em, join'em”. So here I am world. From here on in you’re going to get to completely invade my privacy whether you like it or not. Because whether you care to cyberstalk me or otherwise, the people I'm looking for might just take notice and maybe, just maybe, it will bring me closer to my goals. So get ready world, as I post, tweet click, and ping my way through the twenty first century, while I attempt not to throw up all over myself and everything I value about my individuality. Here's to kissing that all Goodbye. Here's to my rebirth as a regular ratchet ho. End of Entry #2 Note: Disorienting originally was “Digital” after typing it up I see it probably should have been changed. Note: this could also be used as part of a fictional storyline/script as I'm not sure I could lower myself to actually publishing this.

Entry #3: Reminiscence Rant Can you remember when everything was just fucking awesome? I can. What, in God's most holy name, happened to those mind-bogglingly epic adventures? The endless nights and following morning where we wandered for miles peaking on LSD, experiencing the supernatural, making friends with homeless cartoon characters and stubborn runaway suburban kids calling themselves “gutterpunks” and “Occupiers”. What happened to the times when, all of a sudden, I'm on a subway wearing a stolen skintight glitter shirt, doing backflips next to a girl rocking a panda-bear cap with these stupid little gloves hanging like arms from either end of the accessory, while on the way to some disgusting, mold infested, totally illegal, basement rave with the illest DJs on the planet spinning the most face meltingly ass-shaking, torso-wiggling, abso-fucking-lutely, subatomically intoxicating dubstep that these ear pieces have ever had the pleasure of being blown away by. Bassdropping capsules of MDMA while being passed an endless chain of blunts until after what feels like no time at all, someone is shaking me awake, and just when I’m about to question if any of this is real, a fat glow in the dark Eskimo shapeshifter, ever so gently guides me to the exit which opens to reveal the painful slap In the face of bright, 8 in the morning daylight, only to look at mv fellow nightlife cohorts who are smiling, still wired, totally ready to continue the adventure; the words “what do we do now?” never once crossing the mind, as the flow that we're grooving with is unquestionably sure of itself. Man, how I miss those sacred moments. Will I ever get them back? Or is my yearning for them and desire to pursue or force moments like those into being. Exactly what is keeping them out of my life? Better yet, maybe those kinds of ridiculous things are only allowed to happen at certain points of one’s youth when even attempting to live so irresponsibly is even an iota within the realm of acceptable and to pursue such experiences is categorically “juvenile”? Well, fuck that!! I have faith, yet. One day, I'm gonna breath in the taste of that on-top-of-the-world air, no matter how old I get. I don’t care what anybody says. There’s no cut off age for soulshaking borderline religious experiences, never-going-to-feel-the-same-way-about-having fun. Sure, we all do have to accept reality and the responsibilities of adulthood, but that’s no reason to get bitter. Just because it’s not happening for us right now, and there seems like there are still people out there, yet to step off the “magical schoolbus.” But, how do we get back on? Does all of this fall into that realm of philosophical conversations we have at three O'clock in the morning, stoned, contemplating the meaning of life and the pursuit of happiness? It might just be. Maybe all of this just falls into the very personal narrative of my never ending quest to he truly happy, a point which I'm presently a ways from.

Having been there before, I know I'll be there again and while I'm not terribly depressed at the moment, it doesn't seem all that far away. In fact, I have a more or less framework plan for how I'm going to get there when I move on from where I’m at now, but the first step is getting out of this place. Part of me is just totally stunned at life’s great contrast. How can you go from being a happy go lucky, free spirits urban street showman, to living in a cesspool of society’s unwanted pregnancies, in what feels like a blink of an eye? Boy does time fly. What feels like yesterday, simultaneously feels like eons ago. A lifetime ago. Earlier today, some mad at the world hoodrat wannabee gangster told me I sounded like an old man, reminiscing over decades of life.

To which I responded: I’ve lived. That I sure have. I’m 23 years old and I've lived a lot of life, the details for which I’ve got little to show for other than my own words and the culmination of institution records labeling me as Bipolar, criminal, drug abuser. That's right. On paper, I’m a dual diagnosis, polysubstance abusing, mentally-ill criminal, presently laid up in jail, the lone “white-boy” in a sea of “brown” skin, for some strange reason perceived to be rich, Jewish or both, nicknamed after any celebrity I can possibly bear resemblance to, for allegedly roughing up my wife during a record breaking psychotic melt-down. In a world where the credentials hold more water than the person they represent, I'm a mentally-ill, drug addict, criminal who has a problem with women – who doesn't? Do you know how this looks? Seriously this is what I've been reduced to. These are the highlights of my "career”. In the eyes of society, I'm some kind of monster, a scumbag. I've somehow gotten myself lumped into the category which the mainstream media would call “marginalized”. Me, the kid in highschool with the long curly hair, who wore patchwork tie-dye jeans and Victorian blouses, looking like a white Jimmy Hendrix, or someone straight out of Prince music video, who just wanted to share the Love, pass the buds, and give everyone a hug. The kid who was dubbed “most likely to be famous” in his graduating class yearbook, who everyone knew just wanted to save the world, one smile at a time. And I still do, but my updated methodology is a bit more practical these days. Now, I have a stigma to live with, all of which completely overshadows and nullifies that at the age of 22 I incorporated and developed a thriving start-up, destined for success which was abruptly cut short by my untimely run in with the Law – a result of my unfortunate emotional instability which emerged from the fallout of a tumultuous and ultimately failed relationship with my now ex-wife, who I became married to and divorced from, all while behind bars. But that is another story for another time. We are, after all, just beginning to scratch the surface of this crazy rollercoaster which is my life. At this stage I don’t see the point of sugar coating any of It. No matter how bad any of it looks. I'm proud of who I am, the positive things I’ve accomplished (however overshadowed). I’m destined to achieve even greater success than that which I feel I have already tasted and I will never be ashamed of the nasty details. I love who I am and no matter how much this backwards system tries to victimize and marginalize me, I'm never going to let them snuff out this light. The End (For now)

[lawlight-week]

Lawlight Week Exchange

Title: One Good Thing Name of creator: @abbadon-abandon Created for: @joraito ** Prompt: L and Light as childhood friends (I hope this is close enough to the prompt) Characters: L and Light and various minor characters Rating, warnings and no. of words (for fics): T to be safe, Some bullying warning, 1,216 words

**Dropped out of the event due to certain issues.

The park echoed with the squeals of small children, skittering across the playground as mothers haphazardly chased after them. Distress twisted their faces at the thought of their children scraping themselves on the asphalt. L snorted, fingers twisting jaggedly into the grass. It wasn’t like it would do them any lasting damage, he thought. As the squeals drew farther away, L’s back unhunched. It wasn’t that he disliked children, per se. They just didn’t like him. Not many strangers were civil to L, upon first glance. His oddness always put people off, and it was very easy after that for them to do something that meant L wouldn’t speak to them again, if he could help it. The world’s greatest detective had no time for people like that. Still, he couldn’t always smother the acute prick of loneliness that jabbed into him at their words. No human could realistically deal with that much rejection. Huffing, L curled his legs into his chest. For the most part, he refused to dwell on such emotions, especially when he was supposed to be relaxing. The caseload had been surprisingly low that week, and after some prompting Watari had ushered the sixteen year old out to the park, in the forlorn hope that he would “socialize” with his peers. Why Watari thought that his peers hung out at playgrounds, L wasn’t sure, but he’d rather not hurt the old man’s feelings; he had done so much for L in the past… Besides, even if Watari had managed to steer him to a venue more populated by teens close to his age, he highly doubted he would have wrung as much enjoyment out of it. Just the thought of L scrunching up in a corner as sweaty teenagers undulated around him made him shudder. No, the park was a much better choice. L yawned, a rare occurrence, and stretched out his pale limbs from their cramped position. The tension of being coiled for so long made them wobbly, and L once again found himself glad he need not move. While it wasn’t exactly what Watari would have wanted from his relaxation time, L found he quite enjoyed the quiet solitude of sitting entrenched by bushes. The semi-heavy greenery caused the light to filter in as a rather pleasing bottle green, and the half-warmth, while not too harsh, provided just the right amount of comfort for the sun-deprived teen. The park was quite the pleasant place to spend an afternoon. Except… It was always no later than three o’clock, sometimes earlier depending on the school schedules, when it started. On weekends and holidays they were usually present by ten. The patter of feet, possessing the pattern of many someones trying to conceal their noisiness and failing miserably, was always the first thing to alert him to their presence. Then their laughter. “Look at him, hiding in the bushes. What a loser!” They’d whisper. “Is he even human? He looks like a frog.” Eventually, quiet taunts wouldn’t be enough for their amusement. The leader, a gruff looking boy for only being ten, would slink out. He carried a stick most days, though L once caught him with something suspiciously sharp . Most days L could fend him off. A glare would make him scuttle away like a cockroach. It wasn’t enough of a hassle to make him seriously consider relocating, though. He’d much rather weather the taunts for the chance to rest in peace in his little haven. As L focused on the telltale pattern of footsteps, signaling the beginning of another day of annoyance, he realized something was different. His ears strained harder. There was… a new set of footsteps. Wonderful. “This is him. The one I was talking to you about. The freak.” A grin had entered the boy’s, the leader’s, voice. He sounded like he was trying to impress someone. A girl, perhaps? Someone just as cruel as him. “Oh.” The second voice was soft, but definitely masculine. “I… He doesn’t look like a freak.” He sounded withdrawn. The first boy seemed to pause. “Well, I guess he doesn’t look that freakish now. But you should hear the noises he makes. I heard he ate a kid once, you know.” The boy was definitely smirking. The other children had grown restless. Small noises fluttered as they shifted on their feet. “I guess.” Said the second boy. “You know, I bet there’ll be birds by the swings! You can chase them.” The boy had grown quieter. “I don’t think he’ll do anything.” The first boy sighed. “I guess… If it makes you happy.” “It does.” The feet pattered away. L slid into a more relaxed position. What a pleasant reprieve… It was less than an hour before the footsteps returned. Just one set. “Hi.” The same soft voice from before. L looked up. Blinked. The boy couldn’t have been more than seven, he was so small. “Hello.” L said cooly. “I’m sorry.” He looked it. “It’s just… I thought he was nice. And… I guess I was wrong.” L didn’t respond. Just stared. The boy seemed sincere, for what it was worth. “And well, it’s just, he’s the only one who didn’t- who wouldn’t-” He stopped. Took a deep breath. “I didn’t want them to think I was weird. B-back home, they don’t like me and- I just wanted a friend. I didn’t want to be alone.” A strangled sob left the boy as he slumped to the ground. Tears tracked his face. L felt a pang of pity. Empathy. He sighed, and stood. With only a few strides he loomed over the boy. The boy still sniffled. L crouched, placing an arm on the boy’s shoulder. He was shaking. Like vibrating glass, seconds from shattering. “I can be your friend.” He wasn’t exactly sure why he said it. Perhaps because he could see himself in the small boy trembling before him. L knew how it felt to be lonely. “It’s not fun to have to be with mean people.” He pulled the boy closer. A sob, louder than before, left the boy. L stopped, holding him out at arm’s length. “Are you OK?” Had he hurt him? The small boy shakily nodded. “‘M fine.” And attempted to wriggle forward. L laughed, and let him. It took a few minutes for the boy to calm down, which he spent curled against L’s chest. The sobs had quieted to even breaths. “I never did get your name.” He broke the silence. “It’s Light.” “And you mentioned something about a ‘back there”? If you don’t mind, of course.” The boy looked up. “Oh, that. I’m from Japan; my family is on vacation right now.” “Ah. You don’t have many friends back there, do you?” Light winced. “They think I’m weird.” “They think I’m weird here, too. That’s why I don’t have any friends.” “None?” Light looked aghast. “They don’t like me in Japan, but the kids on my street put up with me at least a little bit. We have to walk to school together, and one of them at least talks to me.” A thoughtful expression scrunched Light’s face. He shyly glanced up at L.“I could be your friend.” L smiled, pulling him closer. “I’d like that. I’d like that very much.”

[stuttering-wyrm]

A world in color

  A FFXV Prompto one-shot, in which Prompto has Synesthesia.   No warnings, Word Count 1064

 Prompto’s world was more colorful than most.  At a very young age he learned that sounds had color. So did music. And so did voices. He could spend hours at a time just listening and watching.

 His adoptive parents didn’t seem to mind. Peculiar? Maybe, perhaps a little. But he was a kid, and kids say strange things.  He asked them if they could put the music on; “The blue one” he says when they look over the CDs. He didn’t seem to remember the band name or any song names. So what was the blue one?  They tried to put in any one that had a blue case, a blue disc, blue lettering, blue anything and every time he would shake his head and demand for blue again.  They finally got it right; a heavy metal band. The album was shades of green and black that formed an image of being on the shoor and looking at a bridge with a city in the distance, the band name in big white letters. There was nothing blue. But it was his blue.  Strange? Just a little. But he was a kid. There was no need to take his ‘blue’ away.  Prompto eventually thought it would be easier to memorize every last shade in his boxes of colored pencils. Thought that the world of color that he saw would be easier to explain.  But somehow it didn’t.  His father didn’t understand when he answered he was feeling periwinkle when asked what was wrong. So he didn’t understand that when Prompto told him this that he meant he was feeling sad and hopeless.  From childhood, Prompto learned that no one else he knew was like this, and that once more he was all alone in something.  Other students didn’t understand why instead of saying cool he meant super green or that when he was feeling good that he was aureolin. And they didn’t like it either.  They all laughed when he tried to describe the scene of a song to them.   “Weird”, “Stupid”, “Freakish”, “Touched”, they all would call him. He was laughed out of every circle.  And in a fit of sadness he went home, and he got rid of his colored pencils; never to return to art again.  Eventually he started to forget the names of all those shades he had spent so much time in trying to learn and memorize.  He tried to forget that much of his world was in colors that should have never been there. But how could he when each sound of Insomnia carried it’s own colorful wind?  Prompto kept up his photography. Prompto might always always have that ‘curse’ in his eyes, even as he snapped a quick few, but later he would have pictures he could look back on. He could see the normal world for what it was and Prompto so desperately wishes he could hop right into the pictures and experience that normal.  Best of all; he’s just a weird kid with a camera. After so long no one thinks to call him a freak anymore, now that he doesn’t talk about it. He’s now just that weird, quiet kid with the camera.  Solace was what he found when he finally left the city with the other guys.  Like a breath of fresh spring air and of freedom; none of them had ever known of that little ‘issue’. Here the was no one to bring it up and no one to tease him about it.  But strangely, being with the guys somehow kicked up the periwinkle in him. And the amber of his nostalgia kicked in.  He wishes he had those words back...  He wishes he could talk like how he used to.  When Gladio speaks in his normal tone, his voice is tan and it swirls around him; it reminds him of a creamy espresso.  Ignis is like light frost creeping up on the corners of his periphery with speckles of pale yellow and white and streaks of deep blue- like looking out at glacier filled lake while the sun reflects off the cold blue water- Ignis is his own slice of coldness without bringing the cold.  Wisps of many kinds of green with rolling gray, just as if the fog just came in and blanketed over, whenever Noctis talked. When he laughed, the green would over power and there would be nearly no gray for a split second. And it was calming.  The Chancellor’s reminded him of sand dunes, and he was betting if he ever heard Lady Lunafreya that she would paint the prettiest picture and Noctis would never know just how lucky he was.  Sometimes Prompto wants to have his old words back. Sometimes he wants to let his friends know just what their voices look like and how it makes him feel safe seeing what they paint his world with. Sometimes he wishes he could tell Cindy that the color of her eyes is complementary to the color of her voice.  But he also fears having his old words back. What would the others think? Would they make fun of him, tease him, or mock him? He doesn’t really want to think about that. So he pushes his amber aside and deals.  Or so he tried.  It’s early in the morning and Gladio takes a quick jog around the area to get started with his usual training routine. He spots Prompto on a nearby hill with the camera in his hand.  He approaches, and while he does Gladio notes the peace and serenity on his face and he’s glad that Prompto has something to ease him from the stress of the journey.  “Hey, you look like you’re doing pretty good today.” He comments.  “I know! I’m feeling pretty aureolin today!” He smiles. But for a split second his eyes go wide and he can see the horror that briefly flashes. “Happy! I mean I’m feeling pretty happy today.” Prompto awkwardly chuckles and goes to brush it off before excusing himself with, “I, uh, should go and see if Noct is up yet.”  Gladio’s not sure what that was about. Odd? Maybe just a tad.  Perhaps Gladio, and the rest of them, will never know what that moment was about. But did it matter? Prompto is Prompto, odd quirks and all. And that was something that none of them would chang

[[[Author’s Note]]]

I kind of wanted to write a thing that centers a bit around Synesthesia. It’s a subject that never really gets much love, whether in stories or even conversation, and there are about 60 kinds of Synesthesia. Being someone who does have a couple of types, it does sadden me that there’s just hardly any content about any of it. But because I do have some forms, I often like to project and headcanon them onto some of my favorite characters and this time it happened to be Prompto. In this one Prompto has specific form of Synesthesia known as Chromethesia; a sound-to-color type, and another one that’s emotion-to-color. 

[bookishbaby92-blog]

House of Salt & Sorrow Review

Started House of Salt & Sorrow on 8/6/19 Completed 8/14/19

This book has 405 pages and I would rate it a 4/5

Hey there reader,

Let’s keep this spoiler free shall we? I may make references to different parts of the book, but none will expose any major plot points. 

First off, this book is not for you IF:

You’re sensitive to suicide and death.

Graphic details of death and grossness.

Dark themes.

Now onto the good stuff. House of Salt & Sorrow is a revamp of the Brothers Grimm story The 12 Princesses. This is probably the only Grimm tale I had never heard of until this book. So I did a little research before I started reading. 

The 12 princesses is about a wealthy family with 12 daughters, a father and a mother. The father buys shoes for his daughters that are to last them the season, but instead, within a few weeks the shoes are worn through. Unable to believe that his girls would wear through shoes that quickly he makes a deal with his people, that if someone could discover how their shoes were worn through so quickly, they could marry one of his daughters. Many tried and many failed until an older gentleman learned the truth that the girls were dancing the night away, every night, causing their shoes to go thread bare. Because he was an older gentleman, he chose to marry the eldest daughter. 

Pretty boring right? That’s what I thought which had me quite concerned that maybe I wouldn’t care for this book; however, I was quite wrong. 

The story begins with 9 remaining sisters attending the third eldest sisters funeral, and where the story is set, when someone dies the family must mourn for a year meaning they must wear all black and not leave their estate. For the past few years, they have had one death every year leaving the Thaumas family in constant mourning. From here the story is a roller coaster of twists and turns through murder mystery, horror, mystically, and an odd sense of romance which at times doesn’t always seem proper. There are ghosts, gods, and a butt load of funerals throughout the book that may make you wonder if you’ve gone mad. The story goes through the relationships between the sisters (living and deceased), as well as a close family friend named Fisher who was chosen as the intern for the lighthouse. Personally I liked fisher quite a bit as the author played him out as shy, sweet, and friendly with Annaleigh even though it caused some tension between Annaleigh and her remaining eldest sister Camille. Which reminds me I must introduce main characters!

Our leading female’s name is Annaleigh Thaumas and if I were to describe her I would say she is caring, doting, smart, a little sassy, and most of all strong willed. I had no problems with this character. She cared for all of her younger siblings while her father went and got himself a new wife, and while she wasn’t the eldest, she did more than her remaining eldest sister ever did. Annaleigh had a way of seeing things in people that other’s couldn’t and looking past what she knew on the surface. 

Camille is the eldest of the sisters and heir to the Thaumas estate. She is very superficial and one I could care less for to be frank. She thinks more about having fun than mourning her family members and even when thinking about mourning any future deaths of her family members, she is very nonchalant about it. 

Our leading male, Cassius is not someone I’d see myself with, and in books, that’s kinda key for me to be able to visualize a relationship. Being able to relate to the situations helps me visualize the feelings between people. When Cassius and Annaleigh first meet, he is flirty and almost too good to be true. Considering the rest of the town seems to think the family is cursed, he is taking it way too well. At first I thought, “maybe he’s a occultist? Maybe he likes being around girls that practically breathe death and destruction”. As their first encounter plays through, I found Cass to be far too handsy with Annaleigh, and she too willing and accepting of these touches. Where was the modest girl waiting for her Prince Charming? Throughout the book, he made me uneasy and I would have much rather have Annaleigh crush on someone else, but what can you do. Cass does have a deep dark secret (like any brooding male lead) that I wish the author would have delved deeper into. It would have been interesting to learn more about his past, and all of his talents. 

Fisher’s mother is a maid in the Thaumas estate leading him to grow up with the girls. As children, Camille and Annaleigh were vying for his affection causing tension between the girls. Annaleigh also competed against Fisher for the light house position which Fisher won when her father gave it to him instead. The sisters hadn’t seen him in at least 5 years due to his internship preventing him from leaving the lighthouse. 

Now, on to what I liked most plot wise of the story. I liked the ghosts, the gore, just how detailed the author got when describing a buffet of rotting fish guts, blood, and a dead maggot filled sea turtle. In my opinion, without these details it would not instill a fear in the reader that was clearly necessary to keep the reader hooked on the freakish events that took place in the Thaumas household. 

While 4/5 is a very high rating, I feel it is necessary to explain why it is is not a perfect 5/5. 

It’s basically an instant romance. And hey, I can understand that Annaleigh is a girl who has basically been trapped inside a house for five years with the only male being her father. Pretty sure any teen to twenty something would be looking for a little male companionship, but I don’t think it would lead to an instant “I love you” towards that other character. While yes he did a little favor to her, I would say Annaleigh put her ass on the line more so than he did to make the insanity pass. So why him? Cause he’s handsome like a god? Because he knows just what to say? Annaleigh can be bold and brave about everything else but with him its like she’s a fucking damsel in distress! Not cool. Not my cup of tea. 

BUT if you like that sort of thing or anything dark and spooky I highly recommend this book!