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alpine-sitte · 1 year

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Not the subtlest of signs. (aka some personal, recent UPG experience)

I guess I haven’t really talked much on this blog yet about my personal experiences/encounters with situations that I consider a bit too broad-hint-ish to be mere coincidences. Well, maybe it’s time to start, with the thing that happened to me a couple weeks ago and continued into the present day.

(Content Warnings, information about what to expect below: Talking about death and injury as the result of traffic accidents and workplace accidents, mentions of human and specifically animal death in the context of railway roadkill. Photos of dead birds, taken by me in relation to the specific event I discuss in this post, after the Read More. Nothing gory, though, no blood or open wounds - in fact nothing graphic at all is being shown in the photos except for the animals being very clearly dead and in an advanced stage of decay in the last photo. They were already dead when I found them. Due to the almost certain nature of their death - essentially a lightning strike - it was instant and it's safe to say they did not suffer.)

First, I want to explain the general situation of my life and why it is very heavily affected by the topic of death due to my career.

As I may have mentioned before I work for the federal railway, and part of that job reality is frequent encounters with injury and even death. Not only things that happen to me personally, but also where I’m involved in as a bystander or get told about the incident(s) by someone who was either personally affected or a direct witness. In fact, this is such a constant occurence in the average railway worker’s life that a lot of these events are told like random anecdotes in our break rooms.

The most common “victim” of the railway continues to be all sort of animals that end up being killed by the vehicles themselves or by infrastructure like the overhead power lines. Human victims are also common, probably most common among our workers since the jobs we do involve dangerous activities.

I personally don’t do any driving anymore, but I do work at a station and tend to the engines and trains there before we send them off on their way with their drivers.

So, as I do my work, I'll sometimes stumble upon dead animals by the tracks. Sometimes more literally than other times.

The other day as I was wrapping up my day shift, I walked around the back again one last time and...was met with a sight that definitely made me pause:

There's a lot of ravens and crows here, and if they touch the overhead powerlines in the wrong spot it kills them instantly. Same happens to any that cross the path of a fast moving train. It doesn't upset me and I tend not to spend much thought on it if I walk past a dead creature. But it's pretty unusual to see two of them suffer that fate at once. Like I said I was wrapping up my shift so I just walked on and back to the quarters and wondered about these two.

A coworker told me that he also saw them on the ground, and he claimed that he saw them being struck by lightning a couple hours prior. Hard to say if he saw actual lightning from the sky or "just" the spark from the powerline. I did see some charring on the wooden ties of the tracks below, but I don't know if that was there before already or new. The fact that the crows' legs were mangled pretty badly suggests to me that they could have caused a short-circuit by sitting on the powerline where its isolated parts meet the live parts (as is the case at the power poles that I found them by). Sitting only on the live parts or the isolated parts doesn't harm them, but getting too close to the transitional part does. It happens often. Either way, the details don't matter all that much, I think.

Back home, I told a friend about this since it definitely felt like a meaningful incident in some way. If this was a sign of some sort, I wasn't sure what to take away from it.

But the more I thought about it, the more I also thought about how my life has changed in significant ways in the past months (for the better, for once) and how I've been slowly able to let go of my resentment for these changes that felt out of my control and unfair at first. For the first time in six months or so, I've been slowly able to let my negative feelings about the recent events go. Of course the feelings of being wronged and set up for failure were resilient and when they would surface again, I would question whether I really should "settle for" what I have. Or if I should try to keep the flame of my resentment alight, even if there was no realistic chance for me to achieve what I was convinced I truly wanted. All I've been achieving is ruining my mood and making myself feel bitter about things that have long passed.

So when I came back to work the following week and saw that the two dead crows were still there in the same spot but now slowly decaying as the slugs and beetles thrived on their meat, I felt that I understood what I needed to do, both on a symbolic level and on a very tangible one.

I took a bucket and picked them up carefully, and looked for a suitable spot nearby to put them to rest. In a niche behind one of the power poles that probably killed them, I found a pile of twigs that reminded me of a nest, and that felt like just the right place.

(I'm glad I thought to use a bucket instead of my hands even though I was wearing my work gloves, because after I took out the birds, there was a whole swarm of bugs left behind in the bucket. I made sure to deposit them onto the twigs as well, so that they may continue their funeral banquet in the new location after the brief interruption.) They're not bothering anyone there and during each of my shifts since, I make sure to visit them and remind myself of how the possible future I had to abandon is nevertheless being replaced by a different future that may be just as bright, if not brighter. The feelings and hopes that died with that other future won't simply disappear and I'll occasionally still have to linger and grieve for them, but there's no point in letting resentment and "what-ifs" control my present. It shouldn't keep me from enjoying what I have, being grateful for all the people I was able to meet and the experiences I made, as well as being hopeful for what the path ahead may still hold.

The worldly journey of these two crows may have ended at this final station for them, but I no longer feel like my life's journey has found a dead end here. After all, no train that arrives here stays forever, either - not even the ones that call this station their final destination.

Safe travels to these spirits, and whenever they should find themselves at this station once more, they are always welcome to join me here behind the tracks and rest for a while - until they are ready to start their journey anew.

Wrapping up this post, I probably don't need to point it out to the (presumably) mostly heathen audience of this blog that the two crows are almost a textbook example of how I'd imagine a sign from Odin/Wotan to look like. I'm always a bit hesitant to "default" to interpreting anything I experience as a sign from Odin in particular, which probably sounds silly and defiant. But it's not that I somehow resent the old man or refuse to acknowledge the possibility of him trying to throw some helpful hints my way. My feelings on the matter are a bit more complex than that. I'll probably make a separate post about this topic since it deserves more space than a footnote on another post. The gist is simply that I'm trying not to miss the forest for the trees by considering other options/sources/explanations/entities first instead of immediately looking at the most "obvious" and calling it a day. I'm not ruling out the possibility of his involvement at all (even "just" partial involvement), but to me this particular incident seems similar in "style" and circumstances as some other recent ones that I'm tentatively ascribing to some other sort of entity that I'm only starting to get a proper impression of. It's too soon for me to determine its identity with certainty.

#upg #paganism #heathenry #animal death #death #signs and omens #the content warning is overly verbose for a specific reason by the way #I believe that there's nothing more counter-productive in terms of giving a viewer/reader the option to make an informed decision #about whether they want to engage with media #than cryptic and heavily censored content warnings that avoid actually explaining what is being warned for #so I'm trying to set a good example by practicing what I preach and making my content warnings as descriptive as possible #without getting into the details I'm trying to warn people of #I hope this helps people judge better if they feel comfortable engaging with possibly triggering content #since there is after all a huge spectrum to content that is commonly warned for #and comfort levels vary #at least that's how I see it and I'm open to other people's points of view there of course #odin #wotan #deities #personal deity #animism #unverified personal gnosis

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chaeshosie · 3 years

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What’s Happening with Legacies Season 3 and How do all the Theories Fit?

hello quick disclaimer i am very confused with tumblr and i haven’t used this in years i’m just lazy to summarize the essay so i’m putting it here

also this is a 6-page essay i just think i should warn people beforehand

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Season 3 focusing a lot on consequences and obsession

As we’ve seen through most of what season 3 has been released so far, a lot of the character arcs and plot developments that the writers are trying to pull off have something to do with consequences. Some of the observable ones are the consequences of Hope’s actions from the recent episodes, Josie trying to find a sense of normalcy at MFHS after dealing with the consequences of Dark Josie during the earlier parts of season 3, the consequences of Lizzie kinda betraying MG in 3x08 being MG leaving the school, etc. I think that the “big bad” of the season isn’t really a creature, Malivore, or the artifact, but rather the antagonist of the season considerably be the consequences that the characters deal with as a result of their actions. If we take into thought the Puck theory and how his character in the Shakespearean play mismatched the couples, the dynamics between the characters and the ship of the show (mostly Handon-Hosie) in the episodes after the 3x03 can be considered the consequences of Puck matching the wrong people together. The most noticeable of these consequences are Hope and Josie’s lack of interactions and Hope’s obsession with Landon.

While we’re on the topic of obsession in relation to consequences, let’s tackle how 2x11 can possibly be foreshadowing to Hope’s character arc in season 3. Hope and Alyssa Chang are essentially reflections of the same character. They’re both considerably reckless with magic and both come from tragedies in their families (parents’ deaths) that they at least partially blame themselves for. In 2x11, the audience watches as Alyssa tries to kill Kym and MG while under the influence of the Obsession arrow. What we can consider the consequences that Alyssa faces here is not only Kym leaving, but also MG (who she had a crush on) distancing himself from her. Now we can see parts of that being reflected in Hope’s arc throughout season 3, most noticeably starting by around 3x04. Hope has been obsessed with Landon and even just protecting him in general (but let’s be honest, it’s been like that partially in season 2 also) that she’s going through such lengths just to make sure that Landon’s safe. This reaches to the point that she’s already hurting the people she loves like Josie and Lizzie while her obsessive love for Landon seems to be her driving force this season. This very much reflects how Alyssa willing to hurt MG, whom she had a crush on, just to get what she wanted. I think it’s good to note also that in this episode, it was Pothos that was pulling the strings and not Cupid. In mythology, Cupid or Eros is the god of attraction, affection, and passionate desire while Pothos is the god of longing, yearning, desire. Seeing as to how obsession is quite linked to one’s desire we can see how this plays out for Hope’s arc involving her desire to keep Landon alive while balancing her relationships with the other characters. In relation to Hope and Josie or rather Hosie in general, longing and yearning can be referenced to how they’ve been slowburn for most of season 3 with their very small amount of interactions and how their ship has always been mostly about longing and yearning, even stemming from Josie’s crush on Hope when she was younger.

Even the references they make throughout 3x09 have something to do with consequences and/or obsession. Let’s start with the monster references they’ve made. In fact, the first monster Hope references, which is a cherub, is very often mixed together with imagery of Cupid. Cherubs are known for helping people deal with sin that separates them from God (Judaism) and also said to keep record of everything that happens in the universe (Christianity), but more on that will be expounded later on. On the other hand, pixies grant wishes in exchange for favors, which can fit to the kitsune!Hope theory with its similarity to how kitsune grants supernatural wishes in exchange for kindness. The Jinni reference can be related to how Lizzie was “obsessed” with trying to find the perfect reality; we’ll go back to this reference in a while. We also have a reference to an artifact similar to the Inari wishing pot which is the Monkey’s Paw. The Monkey’s Paw is said to be a story that acts also as a cautionary tale which reminds us that unintended consequences often accompany the best intentions.

Now that we’re on the topic of artifacts, let’s talk about what the artifact, which is believed to be an Inari wishing pot, is connected to the whole plotline of season 3. We see three different historical figures connected to it, namely Einstein, Rasputin, and Napoleon. In relation to consequences, these three people have all experienced some kind of consequences that may or may not be related to the artifact. But with the fact that the writers take the effort to acknowledge that they owned the artifact, it can be assumed that these consequences have something to do with the wishing pot. We’ll focus on Einstein more compared to the other two because he was seen having a direct relation to Clarke in the flashback scene in 3x09. Considering that in the scene where Einstein and Elsa were seen, it looked to be like they were leaving their house so I assume this is when they left Berlin to go to the United States. Based on what I researched on this history, before they reached the train station, Einstein and Elsa had to close up their house at Caputh. In the scene, we saw them about to leave their house right before Clarke and the guys he was with (I’m guessing Triad at the time) raided the place looking for what I assume would be the artifact. Clarke also mentioned that they had to find it before “der Fuhrer” got there. “Der Fuhrer” was actually a term used to refer to Hitler at the time, which lines up well with history given Einstein’s historic distrust of the German political body especially with Hitler’s sudden rush to prominence. This line suggests two things, either Clarke meant that Hitler and/or the military was going after Einstein or that Hitler knew about the artifact’s existence. Moving later on to history, Einstein was said to indirectly have caused the atomic bomb due to a letter he wrote to the U.S. President Roosevelt about the Germans possibly making an atomic bomb, which then led to the death of thousands with the bombing of Hiroshima. In fact, if we look at the history of these three historical figures, their “consequences” have something to do with death. Einstein with the deaths caused by the bomb, Rasputin having been said to predict that if he died because of a Russian nobility, their whole family would be assassinated (which did end up happening), and the deaths associated with Napoleon due to his persistence towards victory with the French Revolution. Given that we’re going to see a banshee in 3x10, a supernatural creature which is said to literally be the “harbinger of death”, I’m thinking that we get to see these consequences to Hope’s wish of bringing Landon back finally coming into play, seeing as to how the consequences of the past three historical figures had something to do with death. Aside from that, as observed by some people, the wishing pot can be seen in the background of the season 3 poster as some kind of window of sorts.Interestingly, windows are often associated with symbolism for opportunities, fresh starts, beginnings, protection, views or opinions or perceptions. I think the opportunities part could be attributed to “opportunities” that would come depending on what wish you made with the Inari wishing pot while the “fresh start” could not really be fresh but more in the sense of Hope starting to finally have something to her character or possibly even a fresh start as a tribrid (??). Windows can also mean that one is too quick to judge, which can be applied to how Hope’s obsession over Landon has made her too quick to judge everything around her thus affecting her relationships with the other characters in the Super Squad.

Hope’s Character Arc and How the Theories Affect It; The relation of Kitsune to Sprites in the context of the Puck and Kitsune!Hope Theories

Now that we’ve covered most of what 3x09 really adds to the theories, let’s go to the theories themselves. So for this, we’ll be covering the Puck theory, possessed!Hope or kitsune!Hope theory, and the “the Landon that came back is actually MaliLandon” theory. Let’s go over the Puck theory real quick first. So in short, a sprite named Puck Goodfellow was the MOTW in 3x03 aka the musical episode and was sort of a “good” monster in the sense that he didn’t really directly affect the plot or try to kill the students but then he was more of a psychological monster that influenced the relationships of the characters with one another (Hope and Landon in particular). Seeing as to how he was able to control or implant memories/thoughts into the students’ minds makes me assume that he has some kind of telepathy powers. In fact, in some folklore it is said that some sprites have telepathic powers, specifically to project thoughts in the sense of psychic persuasion and confusion inducement/misdirection which I think is what we see Puck actually practice a lot in that whole sequence with MG trying to figure out his identity. Although they actually did tackle three celtic supernatural creatures in season 3 alone, I think Puck is the one with the most important role. Several stories describe sprites as mystical beings that either help humankind or trick some unsuspecting human into a sad tragedy of sorts. I think we would be able to watch Puck do both of that as seen in the earlier episode and later on in season 3 if/when he does come back.

So how does the Puck theory relate to the kitsune!Hope theory? Well in Japanese folklore, sprites exist as yosei. They’re said to more or less have the same powers as yosei are simply the Japanese counterparts for sprites and the difference is mostly just in the term used to call them. Yōsei or Yousei, are small magical creatures (specifically fairies or sprites) which can regularly attract ghosts to them. What differs Yōsei from their European counterparts is that they can learn the human spoken language, and they also have mastered sign language. The one thing that actually directly links Puck (as a yosei/sprite) to the whole theme of consequences surrounding death is that many folklore actually included beliefs that yosei could bring the dead back to life. The thing is though, that there’s this thin line between yosei and yokai, the latter being where kitsune usually falls under. In fact, some kitsune are often mistaken by several folklore to yosei (depending on which story you read). One example would be Hakuzōsu, a kitsune that takes over the place of a monk it killed, who is often mistaken as a yosei in some stories. The essential difference between yosei and yokai is that yosei are shape shifting animals and water-spirits and city ghouls (if you know spirited away, those are practically yokais). Meanwhile, yokai are, yes, demons, but are the embodiment of a moment: a feeling of dread and bewilderment, or even awe and wonder of an event; OR a strange sound or peculiar scent. This doesn’t necessarily mean that yokai are automatically evil, it’s just the strong association of a specific distinction to them such as emotions or a scent. This is the reason why some kitsune are often mistaken for yosei, as they are also shape shifting animals with a strong connection to nature. Some yosei can also be mistaken for yokai, one example being tsukumogami which are spirits that haunt household objects. This is why some stories have both kitsune and yosei interacting with one another or at the very least acknowledging each other’s existence, a favorite reference yosei make about kitsune being the Tamamo No Mae. Another thing that helps connect kitsune to the whole theme of consequences involving death is that kitsune can be consumed by negative emotions easily, especially when it comes to seeking vengeance, to the point that it can lead to death.

How I think the rest of s3 will play out if these theories do end up happening, esp with artifact

Now that we’ve established the connections between the Puck theory and the kitsune!Hope theory, this is how I think these two theories would play out in season 3 alongside the Inari wishing pot (the artifact) and the possible MaliLandon theory.

First of all, let's connect the theories to the episodes of season 3 that have already aired, basically 3x01 to 3x09. In connection to what Clarke said in 2x01 about Hope being Malivore opening the gates which would most likely end up allowing other monsters including the kitsune to escape at some point during season 2. While Hope was in a coma from 2x16 to 3x01, it's assumed that the kitsune possessed her, which would be easier for the kitsune since it's easier for them to possess people who are asleep or in a comatose state. From late 3x01 to early 3x03, this is the closest we get to Hope's actual personality outside of being obsessively in love with Landon. We even get to see Hope being critical of Landon and upfront with him in the end of 3x02 and for the first three-fourths of 3x03. In fact, we can actually connect Hope starting to become more attached and we could say obsessed with Landon after her interaction with Puck. For most of 3x03, we see Puck mess with the minds of the students, making them believe that he was always a faculty at the school. This could obviously be taken as a form of psychic persuasion as part of the telepathic powers that several sprites have. Then we see Puck talk to Hope right before she goes on stage to sing Always and Tomorrow. Interestingly, their conversation hardly has anything to do with Hope and Landon's relationship entirely. In fact, it was more focused on her legacy as a Mikaelson and how opening herself to feel that heartbreak that came with the loss of her parents is what allows her to grow. It would've been the perfect chance to see Hope grow as an individual character outside being Landon's girlfriend and finally see her live out the Mikaelson legacy along with the build up of her character in The Originals. But instead we see her sing a song directed towards Landon, get back together with him, and proceed to become more and more obsessively in love with him in the future episodes. I think that Puck didn't exactly put any kind of love spell/potion on Hope, but rather he mostly used psychic persuasion. The fact that we've already seen him do it throughout the episode might as well be the writers priming us to consider the possibility of Puck telepathically messing with Hope's brain. But if you take Puck's lines about losing people and feeling that heartbreak and think of it from the kitsune's perspective. Many kitsune usually travel in packs (similar to werewolves) so imagine what it would feel to the kitsune who's been consumed by Malivore thousands of years ago, having lost the rest of her pack at this point and as alone as Hope probably does. I honestly think that the kitsune might have even possessed Hope not purely out of spite or for revenge against Malivore, but because it was still weakened from being stuck in Malivore for so long without being able to feed that it relied on a powerful body she could find. And honestly, what's more powerful than a tribrid? So I think Puck's words spoke not only to Hope, but to the kitsune as well. But along with these words, Puck did some kind of telepathic psychic persuasion that allowed the kitsune to surface more with Hope and have more control. Considering how both Puck and the kitsune know what it's like to be stuck in Malivore, it would be understandable for Puck to take the kitsune's side. This is also putting into consideration that by the time of the musical, the kitsune must have spent a few weeks to at least a month in Hope's body which would allow them to have enough strength to gain control. In the episodes after 3x03, this is when Hope begins to use her "wolf eyes" more. The noticeable difference though with her eyes is that they are more gold-toned compared to the usual yellow color of the other werewolves' eyes. This along with gold lighting from the previous season 3 episodes can be attributed to the connection kitsune has to the color gold. Aside from this, kitsune often flash their eyes as a sign that they're in control (this was also utilized in a korean show centered on kitsune/gumiho so I'm taking reference from that also). Then we reach 3x04 where it's very possible that the kitsune killed MaliLandon/Landon by having sex with him, taking his life force, and reducing him to his original goo form. The catch that the writers included here is that he took Hope's Mikaelson necklace with him, which can also possibly be the kitsune's life orb in its jewelry form. Then we move to 3x05 where the artifact is first introduced. Seeing as to how the artifact is an Inari wishing pot based on the jewels, structure, and the fact that it opens, it makes sense for Hope to be the only one able to open it considering that she's possessed by a kitsune. Here we get the wish that Hope makes which is to bring Landon back. But then we also put into consideration the kitsune's wish which is to get back their life orb. I believe that the artifact mixed these two wishes together, bringing back MaliLandon and creating a mirror version of Landon that's the more "idealized, perfect" version of him. This is in the sense that a new malivore portal appeared (which would give the kitsune a way to get the necklace back and a way for MaliLandon to come back) and hope got her idealized version of landon (which was missing the necklace because he's not really Landon or MaliLandon). By 3x08, Hope starts to work to get Landon back which ends up with her putting Lizzie and Josie in danger. Considering how the Malivore portal can be assumed to have opened somewhere around 3x07 and Hope getting Landon back the episode right after, this could be the artifact granting their wishes. But then to get her idealized version of Landon, the wishing pot can only grant wishes involving material things. This is where the dark magic in 3x08 comes in which gives the artifact something tangible to form into that idealized version of Landon that we see in 3x09 and possibly the later episodes as well.

Focusing now on 3x09, the lines "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" vs. "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" are very easily applicable to the situation with the artifact and with Hope's character arc. We see that Hope has already seen firsthand what obsession does to a person yet she still hasn't "learned" from it which is why she's repeating it in season 3. Aside from this, we can also take into consideration that Puck matching the two people together and being wrong could also mean that he does end up fixing it later on. The line is also a reference to Handon and how they’ve broken up and gotten back together way more than the number of k-pop albums I have. And that they also need to learn from the history of the artifact and the consequences that come with using it. The line about not remembering the past can be a direct nod to how those who are consumed by Malivore are forgotten by everyone. This could be in reference to how the kitsune was forgotten by the world because of being consumed by Malivore, and this is also considering that kitsune existed mostly in the Edo period (1603-1867) which is also near the time Puck must have existed (if we take into Shakespeare’s years of being alive which were 1564-1616). This allows us to consider the possibility of Puck and the kitsune having at least aware of the existence of the other considering the close relations between a lot of the supernatural creatures. That being said, this could have a factor in the psychic persuasion that Puck did in 3x03. To address what other people are saying that “Puck’s dead why are you still making theories you’re just desperate” whatever, remember that sprites/yosei are literally shape-shifting animals and/or spirits. Puck could’ve easily just shapeshifted when the Necromancer stabbed him, especially since the original form of sprites are usually depicted as small creatures that are often not easily noticeable by the human eye. In relation to the kitsune, the color of Hope’s wolf eyes have become more similar to the common yellow color of other werewolves as compared to the gold color earlier in the season. This is most likely because of the kitsune spending too much time away from her life orb (in the form of the Mikaelson necklace) which caused it to lose its control over Hope over the episodes.

Given that Hope/kitsune has already used the artifact, certain consequences which would most likely involve death would follow in the next episodes; explaining why we get a banshee in the 3x10. I think that there’s three possible options to how this would go: mirror version Landon would die which would cause Hope to go crazy obsessed over protecting him again, the kitsune would die because of being separated from her fox marble/life orb for too long, or Alaric would die since they’ve been hinting at it already with the sphinx which would allow for Josie to enter the storyline and back into the SBS drama. Given that the mirror version of Landon is bound to die anyways since it’s not really Landon but something that the artifact conjured from dark magic, he has to die at some point. Given how Hope feels this need to protect Landon, I think that there would be some kind of conflict with Hope’s character in that context when it comes to the two versions of Landon (mirror version Landon and MaliLandon). On the other hand, if they go through with the kitsune dying, I think it would end up being anticlimactic in the sense that they never really had to deal with the kitsune in the beforehand. Lastly, if they do kill off Alaric as part of one of the consequences from Hope’s wish would obviously cause something to come up between Josie and Hope’s relationship, especially given that Hope had guilt tripped Josie to help her in 3x08. This would also cause another rift between Hope and Lizzie given how Lizzie reacted for the most part of 3x09. This would allow the audience to see Hope finally go through the consequences of everything she’s done in 3A just to get what she wants.

On how Puck and the kitsune can come into play in 3B, I think that Puck would most likely come back after the death to sort of patch things up in a sense which works with his “putting people back together.” I also think the part of his plan to “break people apart” would be pertaining to separating Hope and the kitsune so that Hope wouldn’t be possessed by the kitsune anymore. Once the two are separated, this would allow Puck to “put them back together” by suggesting a sort of team up between Puck, the kitsune, and the Super Squad to get MaliLandon and the kitsune’s life orb back. This would serve the goals of the kitsune and Hope so it also seems likely that they’ll reach that agreement some point in time. Lastly, Lizzie saying people get hurt whenever Hope gets in the way and that she’s only there when she needs something could be some sort of foreshadowing towards Hope needing something from the artifact which was her wish, even if it is very OOC for this line to describe Hope’s character in the earlier seasons, but it also hints on the possible consequences being that someone gets hurt, possibly leading to the death of someone that majority of the characters have a direct relationship to. Oh and also, Emma being in Shanghai seems to be either intentional or coincidental considering one of the most popular kitsune figures, Tamamo no Mae, was born in China.

~ END ~

i have no idea what tags to put lmao

#legacies #hosie #legacies theory #legacies season 3 #kitsune!Hope #hosie rain kiss

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sunsetinmyvein · 4 years

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CLOSED (for now)

All right, all right, ALL RIGHT. PEOPLE. For the first time, I am taking requestsssss (so, let’s see if this goes well or not lol). @aphxsia‘s taking requests, @dot-writes is taking requests, everyone is taking them and I just felt a tad left out, y’know? I’ve chopped up a bunch of other prompt lists to throw together this lovely prompt list below at the suggestion of Dot. My general idea is: send me a character, and one prompt from the “dialogue” side as well as one prompt from the “context” side (or more if you have more that fit together in an idea, I suppose. But I need one of each to get a VibeTM) and Iiiiii’ll do my best to make it work within a character x OFC/Reader sorta thing. Oh, and send me an album era for added flair, if you’d like. Deets below the cut.

I’ll write for:

- The boys of Fall Out Boy

- The boys of Panic! At the Disco (we’re talkin’ Ryan and Jon days)

- The boys of The 1975

- And, if you’re incredibly ambitious, also willing to give Alex Gaskarth of All Time Low a whirl

Rules:

- Can’t do smut (sorry, it’s just awkward and clunky for me to write and nobody wants that)

- Won’t write characters under 18

- Won’t write slash

- I just kind of reserve the right to be like “I dunno what to do with this, sorry” (But I’ve curated this prompt list, so I should be okay lol)

- I’ll get around to them when I get around to them - I’ll be writing them around The Radio Station being posted as well, so you won’t be starved for content.

Dialogue:

· “You’re not in love with them, are you?”

· “I could literally strangle you right now and no one would stop me.”

· “It’s not as bad as it looks.” - “You’re not very convincing.”

· “You need to relax.” - “Relaxing is for the weak.”

· “How long has it been since you’ve slept?” - “A week?”

· “How the fuck are you still alive?” - “It’s a special talent of mine.”

· “Can you please just listen to me for once?”

· “I think this is a bad idea.” - “You think all of my plans are bad ideas.”

· “You should really listen to me more.”

· “Do I even want to know?”

· “You have the cutest smile I’ve ever seen.”

· “Just take care of yourself, okay?”

· “Please don’t use cheesy pickup lines on me.”

· “I like it when you’re romantic.”

· “I’m going to be pissed if we get murdered.”

· “How could I resist?”

· “I’m sorry, I don’t speak dumbass.” - “Real mature.”

· “You’re worth every scratch.”

· “I could name about 110 things I love about you.” - “That’s oddly specific.”

· “We can raise hell together.”

· “Partners?”

· “Don’t get too cocky now.”

· “Fuck me.” - “Really?” - “No.”

· “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic.”

· “Do you trust me?” - “Should I?”

· “Do you have any idea on how frustrating you can really be?”

· “I really, really want to kiss you right now.”

· “I think we got off on the wrong foot.” - “You think so?”

· “I don’t think that cancels out.” - “It does in my book.”

· “You’re being dramatic.” - “I’m not being shit!”

· “Take a break.” - “I don’t need it.” - “You look like a fucking zombie.”

· “Then we’ll leave. Just you and me.”

· “Do you need help? - “No… yes.”

· “I hate you.” - “I love you too.”

· “You have something in your hair, umm… Do you want me to get it out?”

· “It’s nice that your voice was the first thing I heard today.”

· “No, like…. It’s just, I can’t believe you’re actually wearing my clothes.”

· “Would it be too cliche if we matched clothes a little?”

· “My friends get so annoyed by how much I talk about how sometimes.”

· “Wanna, like– I mean, if you’re not busy… We could get lunch? Or even just coffee if you don’t have a lot of time?”

· “Quit smiling at me, I can’t stop messing up my sentences when you look at me like that.”

· “What are you smiling about?”

· “What’s in it for me?”

· “Could you say that again?” “Were you not listening?” “No I was, I just like hearing your voice.”

· “You’re an idiot.” “But you love me.”

· “Is that my shirt?” “You mean our shirt?”

· “You come here often?” “Well considering I work here, yes.”

· “Are you blushing?”

· “Your hair is really soft.”

· “You’re really warm.”

· “You owe me.” “Fine, whatever you like.”

· “I love you.” “Tell me that when you’re sober.”

· “I wasn’t lying when I told you that I loved you.”

· “It’s pouring rain why are you here?”

· “Is that blood?” “Yes, but that doesn’t matter right now, what does matter is-” “You are literally bleeding.”

· “Cheers, I’ll drink to that.” “You drink to everything.” “Cheers!”

· “Why is there a deer in the room?”

· “Is that vodka? At 7 in the morning?”

· “Wake me up when it’s over.”

· “Why is arson always your first answer?”

· “Are you flirting with me?”

· “Are they really ‘just a friend’?”

· “Is there a reason you never say my first name?”

· “Shh… listen… that’s the sound of me falling in love with you.”

· “I have to tell you something really important and if I don’t tell you now, I won’t get the chance.”

· “Whatever he’s saying, he’s lying!”

· “I play a mean air guitar, if that’s what you’re asking.”

· “I thought you knew?”

· “We can, y’know, go together? If that’s a thing you’d like.”

Context:

· I remembered it was Valentine’s Day late on my way from work and the only place still open was McDonald’s, is bringing you a cheeseburger acceptable?

· I accidentally punched you in the face when I was too overexcited about something

· The library’s pretty empty save for you and me and, OH that couple making out loudly in the shelves somewhere

· You’re overdue on this book and I want it so I’m tracking you the fuck down

· You give me a different fake name every time you come into this coffee shop and I just want to know your real name because you’re cute but here I am scrawling “batman” onto your stupid cappuccino

· We live in the same block of flats but haven’t ever talked and Sunday morning we were both doing the walk of shame and had to stand in the lift together

· “My shower’s broken but I’ve got a date tonight could I possibly use your shower please?” “Oh sure (neighbour that I’ve been crushing on for the past six months) of course you can use my shower to get ready for your date (fuck fuck fuck)”

· You’ve got a date tonight and you asked for advice on what to wear but I’m so in love with you and damn you look good in the outfit I picked out for you

· It’s my high school reunion and I need a hot date so I can rub it in the faces of the people who hated me

· There’s a person who won’t stop bugging me will you pretend to be my partner so that they’ll fuck off?

· I wanted to go on the Ferris wheel but there has to be two people to a cart come on random person let’s go – oh, wait, are we stuck at the top? Fuck

· It started to snow and I’m the only one of our friends who would go outside with you – I soon found out why none of the others would go out in the snow with you when you shoved a handful of snow down my back and declared snow war

· It’s nowhere near Christmas it’s literally still November would you calm down about Christmas wait no why are you getting the tree out – no, stop, please stop

· You were waving at your friend behind me but I got confused and waved back at you and now I’m dying of embarrassment but you think it’s cute

· I’m a waiter at this wedding and you’re a drunk guest who will not stop hitting on me please I’m trying to work no I can’t dance with you omg let me find you some water

· You’re pretending to be your friend’s lover for the sake of the friend’s family. But, I’m their sibling. And I know you’re not dating.

· You had an assigned seat next to them at a wedding for a mutual friend.

· You accidentally sprayed them with yogurt when you opened the lid the wrong way.

· They mistook your bowling ball for theirs in the shared ball return.

· They caught you when you slipped on ice and nearly fell over.

· Accidentally stepping on their heel in a crowded room.

· Tripping while getting into your seat in the theatre and spilling your popcorn on them.

· Accidentally opening a door on their face.

· They cover the small amount of change you are short on for a purchase.

· They see your ice cream drop to the ground and buy you a new one.

· You walk out of a dressing room asking if the outfit suits you, but it’s not your friend waiting outside the room like you thought.

· Sharing an umbrella at a bus stop as it rains.

· You help catch their dog when the leash slips from their hand.

· Texting the incorrect number but continuing the conversation.

· Getting paired up on an amusement park that requires even numbered riders.

· A friend of a friend needs a place to crash because they got evicted

· You’re so sunburnt you can’t even more, do you need help?

· I admit that sleeping on the beach wasn’t the smartest idea but someone buried me in sand please help me

· I met you last night when you were drunkenly patting my dog in my backyard at 3am and when I asked you what the hell you were doing, you slurred something about dogs being great and then you threw up on my feet. Fifteen minutes later you were passed out on my couch so that’s why you’re here right now. What the fuck is your name.

· I always see you eat breakfast on the train and you always offer me some

· I’m waiting for the train and the only open seat is on a bench next to you. Okay, sure, I’ll sit down next to the very cute person and I JUST SPILLED MY DRINK ALL OVER YOU I’M SO SORRY.

· I don’t know you, but I fall asleep on the train every ride home and you always wake me up because we have the same stop, but we’ve never actually talked. Then one day you’re the one falling asleep and I got so excited for my comeuppance I made us get off at the wrong stop.

· My cat steals underwear and I come home to find you chasing my cat to get your underwear back.

· We’re always making stupid bets like ‘bet you can’t drink this whole bottle of BBQ sauce’ but then you did and now you’re sick and I feel really bad. Let me look after you

· Did you actually just blue shell me on our date you fucker

· I beat you at Mario Kart and now I’ve been banished to the couch for the night

· I’m calling to cancel our date because I’m actually in the ER right now, sorry. I mean… sure? I guess you can come down here but- okay…

· I asked a staff member and they said you’ve been coming to the pound every day to play with the dog I’m taking home today and that’s why you’re getting weirdly emotional

· It’s my turn to open up the café today and you were sleeping under one of the tables when I came in, and I don’t know what to say so I’m just awkwardly sweeping around you

· I’m drunk on public transport and you’re high and we both keep looking at each other knowingly.

· You’re mowing your lawn at 5am and that is completely unacceptable and I’m going over to your house to yell at you about how unacceptable that is.

· It’s like 3am and my roommate locked me out of the house and I forgot my keys and I’m really drunk and please take pity on me and let me crash at your place for the night o’neighbour of mine

· We decided it would be fun to go camping and now it’s raining and we can’t figure out how to set up the tent.

· I know it’s probably poor taste to ask you out during your relative’s funeral but I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again, so…

· It’s raining. I’m walking home in this downpour and have no umbrella. I’ve taken shelter on a random porch in the hopes that the rain will let up, but the door behind me had just opened

· You’ve got a big, lush pool and I overheard you say you were going out of town, so I snuck over to use it but you came home early

· You’re having a BBQ in your backyard and it smelled really good so I crashed the party

· Not trying to make a scene here, but you took the last pool floatie and I want it

· This is a big beach, why do you have to build that sandcastle right next to me?

· You tried to grab the exact Halloween costume I want and it’s the last one and I want it.

· I pranked the wrong person on accident, I’m so sorry I thought this was my friend’s car.

· We just wanted to do one of these awful, fake ghost hunting shows but now shit is happening and we don’t know what to do.

· I tried to take a shortcut and ended up stuck in this damn fence and you just happen to pass by and after poking fun at me for a million years you finally help me.

· Two strangers locked inside the store at 3am together.

· I accidentally broke your nose in a moshpit, sorry.

· You’re the bastard who keeps parking in my spot so I retaliated by keying your car and you caught me

· This is a long plane ride. You’re stuck next to me, and apparently afraid of flying.

#Posting this now because I am impatient #even though I probably won't have time to work on any until Sunday #hoping that I don't get overloaded with prompts and then stare at them blankly with no ideas #if I do #sorry in advance #definitely not mildly nervous about taking requests for the first time #dunno what you're talking about #sunsetinmyvein prompts #sunsetinmyvein requests #sunsetinmyvein

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honeymoonjin · 5 years

Text

A/N: part of the Roll Deep series. Banner created by @jeonau, go show her some love xx In a desperate bid to cure your troubles in the bedroom, you and your boyfriend Jimin reach out to a famous dom on twitter that specialises in helping couples spice up their boring sex lives, Jay94. Warnings for sexually explicit content: threesome, exhibitionism/voyeurism, pet names, sub!Jimin, sub!reader, dom!Hoseok, being filmed w consent, double penetration, protected sex, unprotected sex (only one of them wears a condom), fingering, maybe a hint of cuckholding. Word count: 5.9k

“You have the forms?” Jimin hands them to the young man enthusiastically. “Alright, age verification, STI tests, hard limits… This all seems in order. Give me a sec to go over these and I’ll be right back.”

The moment he leaves the hotel suite to sneak into the adjoined bathroom, Jimin jumps on you with all the eagerness of an overexcited puppy. “This is it, jagiya! It’s finally happening, can you believe it?”

You bite your lip, trying to steady your racing heart. “Not really… Jimin, when you suggested a threesome, this really wasn’t what I was expecting.” The truth was, you weren’t all that surprised when Jimin had come to you one night and proposed inviting another person in to bed with you. The two of you had always been complete matches for each other since the moment you met, but it seemed that chemistry had never really extended into the bedroom. The two of you barely bothered with sex anymore since it was just never good for either of you, and you had felt that frustrated tension rising in both of you for the past few months. “Honestly, I thought you were gonna ask if one of your friends could join in, not some random guy off the internet.”

Jimin’s eyes widen in protest. “It’s not some random guy, it’s Jay94! He’s one of the most popular nsfw profiles on twitter. Trust me, this is way better than any of my friends. He’s an expert. A sexpert.”

As nervous as you are, you can’t help the reluctant smile that breaks across your face. “You’re such an idiot.”

“You love me.”

You shake your head at his cheeky grin with a laugh. “If this goes downhill, it’s your-”

“Alrighty!” You jump a little when the door to the bathroom opens again and the man steps back in with an easygoing beam on his face. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?” You pout as Jimin pushes you over a little to leave room beside him for the man to sit down, the three of you lined up on the edge of the firm mattress. “First of all, just so you both feel a little more comfortable, my name isn’t Jay, it’s Hoseok, but please try to avoid calling my real name out in bed. If you do slip up, I can censor it out, but it disrupts the audio, so either use Jay or a title like sir or daddy.”

Before you can hold it back, you let out a snort at the way he’s speaking so casually about things. Jimin widens his eyes and whacks you, but Hoseok just shrugs, unbothered.

“I know it sounds weird now, but a huge part of what I do is to make sure all my companions are 100% comfortable and aware before we start filming. This isn’t a sex dungeon; you can laugh and joke around and ask questions as much as you want.”

You shift slightly on the bed. “Well, then… Jimin’s seen like all of your videos, bought some full ones and everything, he’s a big fan-”

“Y/n!”

“-but I don’t really know so much what’s going on. What do you, uh, normally do?”

Once Jimin collapses back onto the bed, covering his cheeks as they burn bright red, you can see past him to Hoseok, who gives you a reassuring smile. “Well, I don’t know how much your boyfriend has told you, but I specialize in providing help to those that have difficulties in performing sexually. Think of it like hands-on training, in the literal sense. I normally work with subs-”

“Subtitles?” you question curiously.

His eyebrows lift in bewilderment. “Submissives. Wow, he really hasn’t told you a thing, has he?”

Your eyes slide to Jimin as he sits up, leaning back on his elbows so that you can still see Hoseok. “To be fair,” Jimin protests petulantly, “I did tell her she could check out your profile at any time. She just chose not to.”

You’re ready to defend yourself, but instead of looking offended, Hoseok just grins even wider, eyes running down your body and back up again. Your cheeks heat up as he chuckles. “Well, then, she’ll be extra fun to play with.” The lust in his eyes vanishes as he snaps back into professional mode, and the duality has you feeling a little whiplashed. “Most of the time the people I film with are fans like young Jimin here, so they already have some awareness and preconceived expectations. Which on the whole is a positive thing, but I’m definitely going to enjoy the chance to introduce someone completely new into it.”

“See, jagiya,” Jimin interjects, “I told you this would be fine! All we need is a push in the right direction and our sex life will be fantastic after this!”

Hoseok laughs at your boyfriend’s eagerness, and the sound is carefree and high-toned. As irrational as it may be, you’re already finding yourself comfortable in his presence, even in this very odd context. “Alright, Jimin, let’s start with you first since you know what you’re doing. What do you believe your strengths are in bed?” Automatically, Jimin’s face turns to you for confirmation, and Hoseok tuts. “I’ll ask her to leave the room if I have to, Jimin. This is your question to answer. No rights and wrongs, just learning curves.”

You fight the urge to smile fondly at the rosy flush on Jimin’s cheeks as he looks down at the mattress, gone shy. “Um… I guess I’m good at trying new things? Uh, I’m a good kisser. I don’t know. I don’t think I have any strengths, really. I have the motivation and want to be better, but I just don’t know what to do.”

Instead of passing any comment, Hoseok simply nods solemnly and turns to you. “Do you have anything to add about his strengths, Y/n?”

You try and ignore the way him saying your name makes you warm up inside. “I agree with Jimin, he’s an amazing kisser. And he has a fantastic ass, the best I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s just because you haven’t watched 128B. His ass was better than mine.”

You crinkle your brow in confusion, but Hoseok apparently understands Jimin’s statement. “Ah, 128B was a fun time. He was a sports coach, though, not so good with taking instructions and listening to me.” His voice lowers to a honeyed drawl. “You’ll behave well for me, won’t you, Jimin?”

Jimin’s face goes blank and his eyes glaze over. He nods.

Satisfied, Hoseok lights up again and shifts out of that persona. “Anyways, that’s that, let’s move on. Y/n, your strengths.”

You swallow hard when the attention shifts back to you. “I can take risks; I can follow instructions. I’m eager to please. I think… I think I’m good at giving handjobs and blowjobs.” Jimin nods vigorously with a cheery beam. “Okay, yeah. I think that’s it.”

“Alrighty then,” Hoseok nods, “we won’t waste time with those, then.” Jimin’s face falls. “Jimin, what are Y/n’s strengths in bed?”

He pouts, slumping on the bed. “Handjobs and blowjobs,” he mumbles pettily.

Hoseok laughs heartily, clapping him on the shoulder. “You two can do as much of that at home as you wish, but this here is for working on everything but your strengths. Now, I think I might see our problem here. The two of you both seem to be naturally submissive, which might make things awkward in bed, as neither of you will automatically jump into a position of leadership. We’ll work on that.”

Spiel done, Hoseok stands up and starts checking out the cameras, stationed strategically around the room. Your heart begins to race. God, this was really happening. “Do we-” you cough a little to break the nervous lilt to your voice, “do we wear masks? I don’t want to be recognized…”

Without looking up, Hoseok quirks his head in the direction of the closet, in front of which is a large, splayed-open suitcase with a terrifying selection of sex toys, some you couldn’t even guess the use for. “Top zipper pocket has masks, you can choose. Cute ones, full-face ones, comfortable ones. Go wild.”

You make your way over on shaky legs. Pulling a general handful out, you hold them up to your boyfriend, who smiles cheerily and picks out a soft fuzzy pink one, a solid band with two slots for his eyes. You chuck it over to him, then choose a simple black one, not unlike a sleep mask, only with those same eye-holes cut out.

“Now, then,” Hoseok announces, now crouched on the floor, fiddling with a camera tripod, raising it higher, “the fun part. Kinks. Since the two of you don’t seem like overly experienced people, I think today can be about exploration and discovery.” When he straightens up, he goes over to the suitcase and opens a different pocket, putting out a mask rather similar to yours, but a glossy black latex rather than the cheaper fabric of yours. He puts it on and adjusts the straps as he continues talking. “Y/n, since you might not know, it’s important I tell you how important communication is. We’ll be doing new things, challenging you, pushing limits. I want you to go along with it as best you can, but the moment things get too much for you, or if something just isn’t arousing to you, please let me know. Similarly, be sure to tell me when something does feel good, or if you want more. Feel free to use the traffic light system. Green means go, yellow means slow down or pull back a little, and red will stop our proceedings immediately. This goes for you too, Jimin, of course. You both understand?” The two of you nod obediently, but Hoseok shakes his head. “Verbal consent. You both understand?”

“Yes,” you say, though it comes out husky like a whisper. Jimin speaks his agreement too.

“Alrighty, masks on, please. We’ll start rolling.”

In a hurry, you slip your mask over your head, adjusting your hair so that it doesn’t stick up, though you don’t imagine it’ll stay neat for long. Jimin follows suit, but takes it one step further by beginning to slip off his shoes and socks.

Hoseok turns back from switching on all of the cameras, and chuckles. “My my, someone’s eager. First things first, you know what you can call me, but I’m assuming you don’t want your real names being used.”

Your eyes widen. Fuck, you hadn’t even thought about that. “No, definitely not.”

“That’s okay, do either of you have a preference for a pet name?”

Jimin lightens up. “Oh, uh, I like being called baby boy. If that’s okay.”

Jimin had brought this up with the two of you before, and although you obliged, you always felt a little silly calling him that when you had automatically viewed him as the more dominant person in your relationship in general. Hoseok, however, clearly doesn’t have that prejudice, as he prowls over to Jimin, who still sits on the edge of the bed with his legs dangling over the edge and pushes himself between Jimin’s knees.

You’re taken aback, and more than a little turned on, by how predatory Hoseok looks right now, as he brushes Jimin’s hair back from his face and tips his head up. Jimin looks in heaven, letting his eyelids slide closed and his mouth part.

“Hm, is my baby boy gonna be good for me tonight?” Jimin exhales shakily and nods as much as he can in Hoseok’s grip. The elder smiles, and bends down to pull Jimin into a deep kiss. Your hips shift against the mattress at the erotic sight of another man claiming your boyfriend with lips, teeth and tongue. Even though it’s not happening to you, by the time Hoseok pulls away, breaking a strand of saliva with his tongue, you feel your heat thumping furiously in your chest. Jimin’s already-full lips are even more swollen and his eyes are lidded as he blinks in a daze. You want that for yourself.

Luckily, it looks like you’re going to get it, as Hoseok sets his sights on you and leaves Jimin’s side to stand in front of you. The black latex clings to his face, stopping just along his cheekbones, and it makes his eyes seem even more domineering. You swallow.

“No preference?” he asks. You shake your head wordlessly, but he just smiles and grabs your chin gently but firmly, turning your head up to face him. You feel your pulse throbbing in your neck, and you can barely breathe. You hadn’t felt this excited in the bedroom in a long time, and you hadn’t even gotten started yet. “Eyes on me,” he commands, “let’s let your body speak for itself, hm? Are you gonna be my baby girl? My princess? My whore? My kitten?” Without realizing, you suck in a breath through your nose, and a broad grin stretches across his face. “Interesting. I bet my little kitten wants a kiss like her boyfriend got, doesn’t she?”

You lick your dry lips. “Yes, please.”

“Good girl.” And then his lips are pressing against yours, and you feel like you’re being devoured whole, drunk on the sensation of his fingers tightening on your chin as his tongue explores every inch of your wet cavern. The nerves about being filmed go away under the drag of his teeth against your bottom lip, and you’re filled with a shameless need. You wanted this man to take every part of you, not just your mouth.

Too soon, he’s pulling away from you, letting you go. You sway slightly, feeling unanchored without his hands on you. You sneak a glance at Jimin, who’s biting hard on his lip, palming at the front of his jeans, where you can see he’s rock hard, straining against the stiff fabric. Jimin sees you staring and gives you a baleful look from under his eyelashes.

Hoseok, ever observant, notices this. “Do you want your clothes off, baby boy? Looks like you’re having a hard time.”

Jimin pouts and glances down, rubbing himself again. “Hurts,” he complains simply.

“Undress for me, then,” Hoseok commands. “Stand up in front of us and undress.”

Us? The moment Jimin hops up off the bed, Hoseok takes his place and sidles up behind you, tugging you back so that you rest on his chest, his legs on either side of you. You gasp at the way he moves your body for you, pulling it around as he pleases. His arms snake around under yours and rest on your thighs. Your ass is right against his crotch, and you can feel how hard he is.

Jimin pauses and stares in surprise. Standing awkwardly in front of you in his bare feet, he tugs at his shirt uncertainly.

Hoseok’s behind you, so you can’t see his expression, but it’s enough to make Jimin’s eyes go wide and glassy. His voice is stern. “Did I stutter? Undress. Slowly.”

You frown in concern, mouthing, ‘are you okay?’ to your boyfriend, but he nods lightly, grabbing the edges of his shirt and slowly slipping it over his head, revealing the unblemished skin beneath. His fingers slip down, passing over the little happy trail below his belly button to reach for his jeans.

Your breath catches when you feel fingers dancing around your throat, brushing your hair aside and tipping your head over slightly. Instead of his fingers, or his lips like you were expecting, the sensitive skin is greeted with a broad swipe of his tongue, and you let out an unbidden whimper, causing Jimin to freeze and Hoseok to chuckle throatily in your ear.

“Lesson one, anticipation and surprise. You know how you can’t tickle yourself because you know it’s coming? That’s the exact same for sex. Things feel better when you increase anticipation and change expectations. If I had just sat our kitten down and licked her, she probably would’ve cringed away and found it gross. But because I put her on edge, it felt good.” Hoseok’s teacher voice drops away to something darker. “Did I say to stop, baby boy?”

Jimin gasps and hurriedly unbuttons his jeans, before remembering to go slow, and gingerly slides them down his legs, hopping on one foot to get each pant leg off from around his ankles. Now only in his underwear, you can see that his straining erection has managed to slip out of the waistband of his underwear, the head peeking out the top of the elastic, smearing a pearly clear fluid on the solid plane of his lower stomach. You feel your mouth water at the sight.

“All the way,” Hoseok specifies, and Jimin takes a deep breath for slipping his underwear off, exposing himself fully to the two of you. “Now turn around and show me that ass my kitten loves so much.” Jimin blushes furiously, but turns around, crossing his arms over his chest for comfort. You and Hoseok both shamelessly drink in the sight. “Fuck, baby,” Hoseok groans, “she was right. That is the best ass I’ve ever seen. Come here, on the bed.”

Jimin’s cheeks are still pink when he turns back around and climbs on the bed, cock bobbing in the air, but his eyes are bright with the praise he received, and you can see that when he crawls further up the mattress, he sticks his ass out more than strictly necessary.

Hoseok taps your side, guiding you to move forward, so you assume it’s your turn to undress, but the moment your hands find the hem of your shirt, Hoseok stops you.

“Not yet,” he chastises, “I want you to undress me.”

You swallow hard as he gets off the bed, standing in front of you. You go for his shirt first, brushing the backs of your knuckles over his skin as you lift the black fabric off, tossing it in the same general pile that Jimin left his clothes in, before turning your attention to his jeans. You feel the weight of his stare on you as your hands hover shakily over his crotch, popping the button open. After unzipping them and sliding them off him, Hoseok kicking his shoes and socks away at the same time, the only item that remains is his underwear.

But just as you go to reach for them, you feel a hand on your shoulder. “Kitten,” Hoseok says in a low voice, “not with your hands.” The pressure on your shoulder increases, and you let yourself be pushed onto your knees.

Face to face with the sizeable tent in Hoseok’s briefs, you glance up at him one last time before getting closer, using your teeth to grab onto the elastic just on top of his hipbone, and dragging it down.

The whole affair takes longer than you were expecting, and you feel yourself go hot in the face with humiliation at the ungraceful act, wiggling your face side to side to try and pull it over the curve of his ass, switching sides as one would get stuck, but his hand stayed on your shoulder the whole time, and something deep inside of you was lighting up at the chance to do as he asked, thriving on that feeling of subservience.

Once you’re done, you sit back up on your knees, and reel back when his cock stands proudly to attention right in front of your face. He’s bigger than Jimin, although quite a bit less girthy, and although you never thought you’d say it, his dick is actually… pretty. A single vein runs up the side, and now that you’re seeing it head-on, you notice it curves slightly to the left, the head just beside his belly button instead of in line with it. You glance up at him with a question on your face.

He grins and runs his fingers through your hair, gathering it at the back. Your breath picks up in anticipation, but that’s shattered when instead of guiding you onto him, he’s tipping your head away. “What did I say? We’re not spending time on our strengths. Besides, you haven’t done anything to deserve this cock in your mouth. You haven’t even bothered undressing like the rest of us.” Your cheeks burn in indignation, but he just laughs at you, jiggling your head back and forth a little condescendingly before releasing his grip on your locks. “Come on, kitty-kitty, clothes off. No dilly-dallying this time, we haven’t got all day.”

He gets on the bed, not even watching you as he joins Jimin, who looks to be growing more impatient by the second. You stand up and pout as Hoseok throws a leg over Jimin’s lap and presses him down into the covers, reconnecting their mouths together to wetly make out with one another. Feeling forgotten, you rip your clothes off, eager to join in the action again, but once you hop up on the bed, fully naked, both men ignore you.

You sit back and cross your legs, awkwardly scratching at your arm, feeling horny and left out. You can hear the smack of lips, panted groans, and the guttural praises that fall from Hoseok’s lips, and here you are, untouched and unattended to. You awkwardly clear your throat, but the only reaction is Hoseok wrapping an arm around Jimin’s back and sitting them both up, leaving some room between them for his free hand to slip between and play at Jimin’s nipples, teasingly flicking and rubbing at the sensitive skin, swallowing up your boyfriend’s whines.

The noises are arousing, but you’re starting to get a little sick of it, of Hoseok drawing noises out of your boyfriend that you had never even heard before. “Jay,” you call, loudly enough that he can’t ignore you.

Hoseok grins against Jimin’s lips and doesn’t make any move to pull away as he replies, so that the sound is a little muffled. “Want some attention, kitten?”

You frown. “Yes.”

“Then take it.”

Cameras all but forgotten, and etiquette thrown aside, you huff and move up to them, pushing Hoseok away so that he falls back and bounces against the mattress. With one possessive move, you straddle Jimin and push him back down again, kissing him more deeply, more greedily than Hoseok did, reaching a hand up to bury in his hair and tug at the roots perhaps more harshly than you normally would have. Jimin reacts immediately, cock twitching under you as he keens.

“That’s it,” Hoseok praises with a voice thick with amusement, “that’s exactly what our baby boy needs. Someone to take control. Does it feel good, kitten? To take what’s yours?”

You pull back and sit up with a hand on Jimin’s chest, panting slightly. Your boyfriend looks up at you, blinking with wide eyes surrounded by fuzzy pink fabric, lips slick with spit. His pupils are totally blown out, and he licks his lips in wonder. “Yeah. It does.”

“Then that’s lesson two. It can feel good to take control once in a while, and power dynamics are fluid. You can be on your knees begging for cock one second, then making your baby boy writhe beneath you the next.”

You catch your breath and twist around to face him. He’s sitting up, one hand propping himself up, the other resting calmly on his inner thigh, though by the deep flush of his cock, you’re sure he’s just as desperate for friction as the two of you are. His mask is still perfectly in place, disguising the top half of his face, but the smug expression he wears is clear as day. “What’s lesson three then?”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Lesson three is testing limits.” His eyes dart down to where you’re still straddling Jimin’s thighs, spread out over him. “Do you think you could fit both of us at once?”

Reflexively, you shake your head quickly. “No way.”

Hoseok’s grin is catlike. “Should we try?”

You bite your lip, remembering the color system he had introduced. If it was too much, you could just call out yellow and he’d pull back. Hesitantly, you nod once. He tilts his head. Verbal consent. “Yes. I want to try.”

“That’s my good girl. Boyfriend gets first pick; baby boy, which hole do you want?”

Jimin, still flat on his back, pushes himself up to rest on his elbows. His eyes slide around the room: his cock, your pussy waiting just behind it, Hoseok’s cock, Hoseok’s face. He stays there, clearing his throat. “I, uh, maybe… maybe we could both go in her, you know…?”

You turn back around to Hoseok, who looks disappointed. Your heart sinks even as you feel yourself growing wetter at the thought. You hate him looking displeased. “That’s a great idea, baby boy, but how can you expect to fuck your girl right if you can’t even bring yourself to say the right words? Kitten, come here.”

You get off Jimin and crawl obediently over to Hoseok, who immediately grabs your hips and pulls you down against him, your back against his chest. With one hand pinning your arms and chest down, he slips his legs under yours, hooks your ankles with his, and then spreads them, pulling you with him so that you’re wide open and bare to Jimin, who pouts and pushes his hips against the mattress in search of friction.

“This, my dear baby boy, is a pussy.” With his free hand, Hoseok reaches down and slaps it lightly, making you jump in your grasp. His fingers slip over too, too wet to get any real friction, and you tip your head back over Hoseok’s shoulder when he buries two fingers deep inside you, holding them there. “I want you to repeat after me: I love my girlfriend’s pussy.”

Hoseok suddenly begins thrusting his fingers into you at a pace that has your toes curling. Instinctively, your thighs tense as they try to pull in around his hand, but his legs hold you open for him, and you’re helpless to do anything but take the brutal onslaught of pleasure he’s giving you.

Jimin sputters. “I- I love my girlfriend’s… pussy.”

“I want to fuck my girlfriend’s pussy.”

You whimper and shake on top of Hoseok as he pins you down and fucks you on his fingers. You hear Jimin swear under his breath. “I want to fuck my girlfriend’s pussy!”

“Good!” You gasp when Hoseok suddenly removes his fingers from you and pulls them up to his mouth, sucking on them like a lollipop, getting every last drop of you. You groan and go limp, feeling empty. “Then come fuck it.”

Normally, when you and Jimin had sex, he would painstakingly get you ready finger by finger, and when he finally took you, he would do it so slowly for fear of hurting you that you would reach a hand down to rub at your clit while he wasn’t looking, just to make sure you stayed wet. Now, however, he doesn’t waste time with any of that. Maybe it’s the safety net of those safewords, maybe it was Hoseok riling him up, maybe he was just too horny to think, but the moment he gets to you, using Hoseok’s thick thighs to keep himself steady, he lines himself up and pushes into you with one harsh thrust, snapping his hips with a grace you had only ever seen from him when he danced.

You cry out and clutch at the tops of his hands; the only things you can reach with Hoseok still locking your arms to your sides in his embrace. It’s a strange feeling, having one man holding you tight and another man fucking you, but your nerves are on fire with the feeling of being surrounded by them, every single one of your senses drunk on the two of them. That thick smell of sex, Hoseok’s proud chuckle in your ear, the way Jimin ground against your pubic bone with every thrust, hitting the underside of your clit and causing you to clench helplessly around him.

“Ji- fuck!” you cry, holding back from crying out his name like you desperately want to. Instead, you babble nonsense about how good it feels, eyes scrunched shut to fully drown in sensation.

“Stop,” Hoseok commands, but Jimin’s out of his mind, chasing that high, and he continues to pummel recklessly into you. “Stop or I won’t let you cum at all.”

Jimin growls, a guttural sound you’ve never heard from him before. “Fuck!” he complains, giving one desperate thrust before stilling inside you. You pant and go lax against Hoseok, feeling the wave of pleasure fade away.

“Don’t give me that attitude,” Hoseok scolds in a stern tone, “you were the one who wanted to share her pussy with me. Now, lie back and take my kitten with you.”

You whimper when Hoseok slips his legs and arm away from you, and you fall forward limply, crashing onto Jimin’s chest as he lies flat on his back. The move has him shifting inside you, and you grind your hips against him to feel something again, only to stop and jump when a firm hand lays a slap against your ass. Jimin groans as you clench automatically around him.

Out of seemingly nowhere, Hoseok produces a foil packet and rips it open, pumping himself a few times before slipping it on as he chastises you. “Wait your turn, kitten, don’t get greedy on me. You’ll have more than you can handle soon enough.”

You bite your lip and lower yourself fully onto Jimin’s chest so that you can arch your ass up to present to Hoseok. Although you had never even considered being taken by two men at once, you found yourself almost drooling at the thought of both of them inside you. “Please,” you beg pathetically.

Hoseok chuckles, and you feel his finger pressing into you, a tight fit around Jimin’s cock. “Patience,” he chastises, increasing to two fingers.

It’s torture, waiting for him to stretch you out enough. You know it’s necessary, but god, you just want him in you already. Finally, after he can comfortably scissor three fingers beside Jimin, he removes them and you feel the bed shift as he gets into place, cock brushing against your inner thigh.

He lines you up with one hand on his cock and the other splayed out on your ass, and begins to press in. The fit is snug, and you’ve never felt this split open before, but it has you open-mouthed, drooling on Jimin’s chest, unable to hold back the low moans that fall out of you with every inch.

“Color?” Hoseok checks in, and after you confirm it’s green, he rubs your ass comfortingly. “Having fun?”

“So good,” you groan, clutching at the sheets on either side of Jimin, feeling the muscles in your thighs tremble. “Fuck, so good.”

“How are you holding up, baby boy?”

Jimin has his eyebrows knitted and his eyes tightly shut. He nods stiffly. “Mhm. Good. Really good.”

Hoseok laughs breathily as he finally bottoms out. “Hm, I don’t think our baby boy is going to last very long. We better get a move on then.” And with that, he slides partly out and rocks back up into you. You cry out and pant against Jimin’s chest as Hoseok begins to fuck you, his front pressing against the curve of your ass with every thrust.

It’s too much. You can’t close your mouth or even think, but at the same time it’s not quite enough. You gargle in an attempt to make words, pushing a shaky hand down further to reach for your clit, hoping that one of them would get the message, and luckily your Jimin opens his eyes at the feeling of your hand pressed between you and reaches down to thumb at your clit.

You had told him once that many women couldn’t orgasm without clitoral stimulation and although he may have been inexperienced in other areas, he never forgot to provide that stimulation for you no matter what you were doing. You babble out a thank you, feeling your orgasm quickly approaching, more powerful and deep than it’s ever been before. “Close,” you manage to make out through moans.

Hoseok grunts in affirmation. “You gonna cum for us, kitten? Look, our baby boy is about to.”

You open your eyes blearily and glance up at Jimin, who’s started rubbing at your clit in a frenzy as he whines desperately, arching underneath you. You lower your head back down to suck at his nipple, dragging your teeth over, and he cums with a shout, spilling inside you.

You can feel cum running out of you as Hoseok continues to fuck you, and in the back of your pleasure-addled mind you wish he wasn’t wearing a condom so that he could fill you up too, and the thought of two men’s cum dripping out of your abused pussy propels you over the edge, and you begin to convulse under the overwhelming sensations hitting you like a strong wave.

Hoseok thrusts once, twice, three more times before he presses himself flush against you and groans, scratching your ass slightly as his fingers curl.

The three of you stay in a pile, all panting heavily, for about ten minutes. Your legs have gone numb yet strangely tingly, and they have no energy in them. Hoseok pulls out of you first, but extremely slowly, trying to let your pussy adjust to the empty space he leaves behind. When Hoseok lifts your hips up and Jimin falls out, you whimper at the strange sensation of your walls not closing in fully, still stretched wide open by the two cocks you had inside you.

As Hoseok quickly leaves to dispose of the used condom, you roll limply to the side, and Jimin’s hand finds yours, intertwining your fingers and holding on tightly. You turn your head to face him and smile dopily. “Thank you for talking me into this, baby.”

Even after the vigorous sex he had just had, Jimin’s eyes are bright and he beams warmly at you, squeezing your hand. “Thank you for saying yes. I can’t wait to take you home and fuck you again. Fuck that beautiful pussy of yours.”

Your cheeks flush, but you chuckle. “Oh, so now you’re a sexpert, huh? My beautiful pussy probably needs a day or two to recover, Jiminie.” Your face falls. “Oh fuck, the camer-”

“I’ve switched them off,” Hoseok assures you calmly as he walks back in the room. “You were both too fucked-out to notice. I hope you enjoyed yourselves.”

You let out a contented sigh. “God, yes. That was amazing. I wish I could do that again.”

Hoseok shrugs. “I’ve had plenty of people come back for a second-”

“Uh-uh,” Jimin protests, sidling up to you possessively. “I appreciate your help, Hoseok-hyung, but now that I know how to fuck her right, I can guarantee she’ll be too tired to come back again. She’s my kitten.”

#btssmutclub #bangtanarmynet #btswritingcafe #btswriterscollective #jihope x reader smut #bts smut #jimin x reader #hoseok x reader #sub jimin #dom hoseok #jimin x hoseok #bts fic

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mllemaenad · 6 years

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Cruelty vs Compassion: Cullen and Niall in Broken Circle

Cullen: Uldred tortured these mages, hoping to break their wills and turn them into abominations. We don’t know how many of them have turned.

Irving: What? Don’t be ridiculous!

Cullen: Of course he’ll say that! He might be a blood mage! Don’t you know what they did?

Greagoir: I am the knight-commander here, not you.

I know much is made of the torture Cullen suffered in the Fereldan Circle. In Dragon Age 2 it is used to set him up as an extremist, and an ally of Meredith. In Dragon Age Inquisition it is used to excuse and moderate his actions in the previous game, and to justify his ongoing persecution of mage characters.

However, I think it’s worth looking at that scene in the original context, in Broken Circle. Here, it isn’t really about Cullen’s pain at all. Rather, it is about establishing him, as well as his fellow templars, as the bad guys of the quest.

Bioware and its grey morality is ... a thing. When it works, it offers layers and complexity to the world and its story. When it doesn’t, it can leave the player frustrated and angry with a story that’s asking them to sympathise with vicious slavers, nobles and religious extremists.

Origins’s take on grey morality is to ... more or less literally let the player get away with murder, if they want. One way or another, you’re going to end the Blight, and then your Warden will either be a dead hero, or the living Hero of Ferelden, who can damn near do no wrong. While in Inquisition, and even DA2, it can be difficult to remain friends with a companion if you take a hard line stance on something they hate, in Origins they rarely have strong reactions to quest-based decisions. And hell, I have the Feast Day pack, so Seanna could disagree with her companions all day and then feed them cake until they loved her again, if she wanted. Origins is big on options; low on consequences.

It does, however, tend to give you a broad sense of which would be the ‘good’ or ‘evil’ options in a given quest. Murdering slaves to increase your stats is evil. Saving children from demons is good. Some quests have multiple options, and I don’t necessarily agree with the framing (the morality of The Urn of Sacred Ashes is pretty fucked up, if you ask me), but you can generally get a sense of whether your Warden’s behaviour counts as moral.

Cullen’s torture in Broken Circle, and his reaction to it, exists in counterpoint to someone else’s torture, and his reaction to it. Cullen is a foil to a much more important character: the man with the plan, and possibly the true saviour of the Fereldan Circle – the mage Niall.

Niall: Who are you? Where did you come from? Are you a demon?

Cullen: This trick again? I know what you are. It won’t work. I will stay strong.

Niall: This place drains you of everything ... hope, feeling, life ...

Cullen: Enough visions. If anything in you is human ... kill me now and stop this game.

Unless you actively choose to go back downstairs after completing the Fade sequence (who hasn’t forgotten they still need to fight Shah Wyrd and made a last minute dash to the ground floor at least once?) you’ll likely have these encounters one after the other. Collecting the Litany of Adralla is the last step before you’re ready to take on Uldred.

It’s impossible to miss the parallels in these encounters: both men have been captured and tormented by demons; both are exhausted, despairing and at the end of their endurance; both have been confused enough by demons and Fade dreams to initially mistake the Warden for another spirit.

Niall: I gathered some of my fellows and we obtained the Litany from the stockroom. I thought if we disabled the others, we could throw everything we had at Uldred.

Niall: But I saw my friends fall, one by one, and now it’s my turn.

Cullen: You broke the others, but I will stay strong, for my sake ... for theirs ...

Both have lost the friends they came with, and have found themselves the last man standing against an enemy they have no hope of defeating. Both have, in short, had a really shit couple of days. They’re not equally bad, of course: Niall is being quite literally eaten alive by a sloth demon, and will not survive the day; while no doubt exhausted and distressed, Cullen is more-or-less fine. But let’s not quibble: they’re both in a bad way.

Niall: It is time for us both to be on our way. Remember the Litany of Adralla. The Circle is all that matters now.

Cullen: To ensure this horror is ended ... to guarantee that no abominations or blood mages live, you must kill everyone up there.

And, significantly, both characters advise you on how to complete the quest: Niall wants you to save anybody who’s still breathing; Cullen wants you to murder everyone. Niall’s plea, while impassioned, is also reasoned and well thought out – he came in with a plan, a good plan, and he only needs your help to complete it. He is profoundly dignified, even at the point of death, after days of wandering through the same hellscape you just golem-and-fiery-skeleton-ed your way though. He judges himself for failing to win a battle he should never have had to fight. Meanwhile, Cullen is aggressive and demanding. He rejects any offer of compassion – especially from Circle mage Wynne, despite the fact that she has come to save him – and he doesn’t really have a good argument as to why you need to kill everyone. It boils down to ‘kill them just in case’.

You don’t need to put a halo and a pair of horns on these two to guess who is sitting on which shoulder.

It’s worth noting, at this point, that the choice between Niall’s way and Cullen’s sits against the background of information you’ve gathered as you ascend the tower. Mage wardens will obviously have a little more context for the places and characters you meet, but you don’t need that. The story establishes it on its own: templars are full of shit; mages are pretty awesome.

Greagoir: We saw only demons, hunting templars and mages alike. I realised we could not defeat them and told my men to flee.

Greagoir: They took us by surprise. We were prepared for one or two abominations – not the horde that fell upon us.

Greagoir: No one could have survived those monstrous creatures. It is too painful to hope for survivors and find ... nothing.

When you first enter the Circle you encounter Knight-Commander Greagoir, who makes it abundantly clear that, though the templars are technically trained in dealing specifically with demons and blood magic, they were in no way prepared for any situation involving demons, plural. They cut and run immediately, leaving behind both the entire mage population and their own templar brethren. Greagoir is firmly of the opinion that the situation in the Fereldan Circle is not survivable. Everyone in there who is not a demon is dead.

Wynne: It’s you! No ... come no further. Grey Warden or no, I will strike you down where you stand!

As soon as you step through the doors, you find that he is thoroughly and disastrously wrong. You encounter an entire section that has been successfully cleared and secured. You watch a mage defeat a demon – entirely without your aid. You see that, not only are there survivors, some of the survivors are children.

Greagoir: This situation is dire. There is no alternative – everything in the tower must be destroyed so it can be made safe again.

Wynne: Yes. Even if we cannot eliminate all the demons and abominations, together, we could lead the survivors out.

Greagoir’s plan is simply to murder everyone: to charge in and stick a sword in anything that moves (children included) without any thought of strategy or reason. Wynne would like to be methodical: she would like to go from room to room, killing any hostiles she encounters, and send survivors down to safety.

We already have evidence that Greagoir's assessment of the situation is wildly inaccurate – the mages in front of us. Likewise, we have evidence that Wynne and her people can follow through on the plan: they’ve already cleared this area, and protected the children.

Wynne pairs with Greagoir and Niall pairs with Cullen. The debate you hear at the bottom of the tower is repeated at the top. In both instances, the mages present solid plans to save as many people as possible; in both instances, the templars advocate wanton destruction for no clear reason.

The templars’ argument is further undermined by evidence you find as you climb the tower:

Pile of Rubble in first area after ascending to this level: I have the utmost sympathy for what happened to your charge, but it is beyond the Cicle's ability to anticipate every obscure demise that an apprentice might face, especially involving methods outside the already extensive realm of magical study. We simply don't have the room for additional training facilities, and there are concerns about becoming too inclusive that I will not elaborate on. Your request is denied.

--First Enchanter Sinclair

Pile of Books in next room after escaping from the Fade: If space is your excuse, I will surrender my quarters. If it is about money, I will hire the appropriate people. I will not graduate another student ignorant of weapons that any ditch-digger can shove into his ribs. We teach them to append ridiculous glamours on parade arms, but they don't know simple steel. That is criminal.

--Enchanter Bergin

Pile of Books in room with Blood Mage and Charmed Templars: Notice herewith that the exercise area on the fourth floor shall serve as permanent berthing for the templar garrison stationed at the tower. Since facilities that accommodate their particular training requirements are already on hand, they will be assuming an even closer watch over Circle affairs. Enchanter Bergin's optional weapons training is canceled until further notice. Enchanter Bergin has additionally stepped down from teaching duties.

--First Enchanter Sinclair

– Extracurricular Studies

It’s established that the mages have been actively prevented from learning how to defend themselves. There used to be combat classes, taught by someone named Enchanter Bergin, but he was forced to stop and templars moved in to his space to “assum(e) an even closer watch over Circle affairs”.

Owain: Please refrain from going into the stockroom. It is a mess and I have not been able to get it into a state fit to be seen.

Tranquil: Thank you. That was an uncomfortable experience.

Nevertheless, there are several encounters with mages and tranquil in this quest who are fighting, hiding, resisting torture – still trying to find a way through this nightmare. There are survivors. Despite what the templars tell you, there are people you can save.

Desire demon: We are partners. I give him what no one else can, and through him, I experience what it is to be mortal.

Meanwhile, Cullen outright admits that the rest of his comrades broke (we have only his word that he didn’t, which strangely enough he expects us to accept, while not regarding Irving’s word as good enough), and there are no free templars in the entire quest. They are all possessed or charmed by demons.

Broken Circle is asking you a simple question. Which do you want? Warriors trained in dealing with the arcane and the monstrous who will absolutely scream and run away if the fight gets a little bit difficult? Or civilians with no combat training who have proved to be surprisingly resilient in a crisis?

Strategically, that might be a bit tough: what you actually want is competent professionals, and those are in short supply right now. Morally, it’s an easy call: the mages are heroes, survivors and innocents; the templars are murderous cowards.

Alistair: His hatred of mages is so intense ... the memory of his friends’ deaths is still fresh in his mind.

Wynne: He’s suffered pain and anguish like few have had to endure. That and his lust for revenge have confused the issue –

Cullen: Do not presume to judge me, mage! I am thinking clearly – for perhaps the first time in my life.

Cullen: As you can see, I am in no position to directly influence your actions, though I would love to deal with the mages myself.

To return to Cullen’s motivation – while no one is disputing that he’s had a really bad day (We’re not! We’re all being very understanding about his demands for mass murder!), the story doesn’t actually emphasise his distress very much. That is raised and dismissed. What is raised and accepted is that Cullen is angry. Cullen is vengeful. The mages (some of them, anyway) have risen up, and templar blood has been spilled. Now mage blood must be spilled in return. It doesn’t matter very much if the mages were involved in the uprising or not. He just wants to kill them in an act of revenge.

While we can understand Cullen’s grief over his friends at a personal level, it’s worth considering whether it’s reasonable. We have just established that the mages are imprisoned in the Circle tower, that they have been prevented from learning how to protect themselves, and that the templars have not only abandoned their charges to die, they are actively in favour of murdering them.

Do ... we care that much about their deaths? This looks like the only part of the uprising that went right.

This is like Nathaniel Howe’s distress over his father’s death. Of course you can sympathise: this was his dad. But at the same time, you expect him to look at the evidence, and come to understand that his father was not an innocent. Nathaniel does, because he is a fundamentally decent person. Cullen doesn’t.

Put another way: if you’ve played Fallout 4, you’ll note that the NPC raiders sometimes cry out in grief and distress when their comrades fall in battle. That’s a nice touch on the AI: the raiders are human beings, with human emotions, and the people you’re killing are their friends, their family. But when the battle is done and you walk into their camps ... and you observe the bloody remains of their victims scattered about for decoration ... maybe you don’t feel too bad about making them sad?

Same deal.

The original epilogue for this quest has this:

Templars

Once the tower was rebuilt, Knight-Commander Greagoir stepped down from his post and retired to a life of private contemplation as a brother in the Chantry. His health failed over time, and after refusing treatment, he perished in his sleep. Knight-Commander Cullen was said to be more strict and less trusting of the mages even than Greagoir was. He ruled the Circle with fear.

Mages

The young templar Cullen never quite recovered from his ordeal. After months of attempting to convince his superiors that the tower was still a danger, he finally snapped and killed three apprentices before being stopped by his fellow templars. Eventually, Cullen escaped from prison, a madman and a threat to any mage he encountered.

– Epilogue

Now, I realise the details of this have been pretty thoroughly retconned. There is absolutely no point in bringing this stuff up in relation to later games. However, it is worth looking at the epilogue in relation to the original quest. Regardless of the ending you choose, these epilogues tell you that the real threat was never the mages, or even the demons. The threat was the templars – the individual murderer, or the institution with a cruel man in charge.

The mages are not possessed (at least not in a harmful sense – Hi, Wynne!). They are not evil. But the templars always have power over them, and they can hurt them simply because they hate them. Cullen hates them, and was thwarted in his vengeance. So he hurts them.

Also, if you mash those two endings together and change the location you’ve pretty much got the plot of Dragon Age 2. So the details have changed, but the theme remains the same.

To end: Broken Circle fundamentally lets you choose. You can show compassion to the tortured mages, who asked for none of this, and who were never prepared for this violence. You can accept the aid of their heroes, enact a plan, and save the survivors. Or, you can murder them to satisfy the vengeance of their gaolers who resent having to take any risks on behalf of their charges.

Niall represents that compassion. Cullen represents that cruelty. It isn’t really about Cullen’s tragedy at all. If anything, it’s about Niall’s. And yet, two games on, he is effectively forgotten.

Niall: Dark times, greater acts of heroism, eh? You may be right.

A salute to Niall – who fought for compassion and saved the Circle (at least from my save game) when the templars would have destroyed it.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #Seanna Brosca #niall #cullen critical #broken circle

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lunawings · 5 years

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King of Prism SSS Episode 3 commentary (Taiga)

I am SO RELIEVED that this episode is FINALLY out.

I finally get to show you guys what the inside of my head has been like for two months.

THE FESTIVAL THAT HAS BEEN INSIDE ME

GET BUCKLED IN

Taiga’s room is divided into half Kazuki worship, half Aomori. Seems about right.

Let me start off by saying it brings me SO MUCH JOY how much Taiga loves Aomori. Aomori is way far removed from Tokyo, on the northernmost tip of the main island, and pretty much in the countryside. I went there 4-5 years ago before King of Prism existed AND I. LOVED. IT. There was a cool breeze even in the brutal Japanese summer, the atmosphere was refreshing and wonderful... and the festival. Two of the biggest things Aomori is known for are apples and, of course, the Nebuta festival which I’m convinced has to be the best festival in all of Japan. Those giant festival floats are just fucking amazing and I will be inter-splicing this post with my travel photos from that time.

But even so, I’d think a boy at Taiga’s age would still think Tokyo is a lot cooler and want to be in the big city. BUT NO. NOT TAIGA. And since I also CANNOT FUCKING STAND TOKYO either, every time Taiga in this episode says Aomori is better than Tokyo I just want to stand up and be like

FUCK YEAH IT IS

Okay moving on, sorry this post is gonna be long enough as it is.

When I first heard this line I swore it sounded like he was saying something about “Las Vegas” ahah... ha...

I am very happy with this screenshot.

*ahem* Anyway. I looked up “rassera” ages ago because I had no idea what that was about and apparently it’s a phrase that lost it’s original meaning over time as it got muddled together, and is now only used as a festival chant. It used to mean “bring out the candles” or something?

The “us” in the sub kind of annoys me because Over the Rainbow isn’t a part of Edel Rose anymore but maybe that’s.... just.... meeeeeeeeee..............

I took the night bus from Tokyo to Aomori before. It was 10 or 11 hours. It was... unpleasant.

Old dude club in the back row.

I really wonder what people who have never seen Pride the Hero are gonna think of this exchange. If you have not seen Pride the Hero, sorry to disappoint you(?) but taxi is actually not a metaphor.

I wonder if Kakeru would have really kept hounding Taiga if he didn’t pay him back. It’s not like Kakeru needs the money. I think it’s more that Taiga just has his pride and wants to do right by Kakeru and not take advantage of him. Or at least I like thinking that way.

My second favorite line by Taiga in SSS.

People at the cheering shows are like “Gimme the apron!!”

No, I have no idea why they decided to design Taiga’s cousin(s) to look like Ann and Wakana.

My third favorite Taiga line in SSS. I just love how perfect the timing is. Taiga just watches everyone walk past him trying to debate if this is really happening or not and then just HOLD ON WAIT--

Behold Yukinojo examining what I think is supposed to be the armor that made Taiga pee his pants in Young of Prism. This is the Easter egg I was talking about.

I LOVE OZORA.

Another great thing about SSS is learning how all of the boys have these amazing female characters in their lives.

The first/only anime reference to Taiga’s distaste for apples. In side material it’s been explained that Taiga can’t stand apples because they are everywhere in Aomori. Even the sound of someone biting into the skin of an apple drives him nuts. Minato has used it as punishment before in Prism Rush.

People in the theater like to say “Don’t forget the apple!”

At the midnight showing I think the girl next to me had a brain aneurysm when she saw Wakana here. And I might of as well.

At this part I always yell “WAKANA DON’T GO!!!!”

Just.... ahhhhhh Taiga being seamlessly inserted in the Rainbow Live continuity like this is just... kjlfjfkljfls.......

Even though I know in the logical part of my brain that Taiga did not exist when Rainbow Live was made, I still kinda want to go back and look for him in the background of that episode anyway. But I hesitate because I know I won’t want to be disappointed with not finding him.

Still, the idea that Wanana, Ann, and Kazuki all supposedly knew him from way back when is crazy and makes my heart warm.

(Oh but WAKANAAAAAAA so sad)

So. “Gaudy” huh. We’re goin’ with that huh. HUH. “Gaudy” I know for a fact is the literal translation you get when you look up “charachara” in a Japanese-English dictionary. I have used it too... AS A PLACEHOLDER....................

Seeing this and trying so hard not to FUCKING SCREAM at the midnight showing was a moment for all of us. Taiga.... Taiga.................. Taigaaaaa................. I can’t see this without feeling it travel through every nerve in my body.

WakanAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Accurate description of summertime in the countryside of Japan. Everyone hangs out and eats copious amounts of fruit probably from a neighbor’s farm. Just go out and walk down the street and you’ll come home with fruit.

So this is Aomori city, the area not far from the station. When I saw this in the theater I was like, that looks.... kinda familiar. Then the next day I went searching for photos from my sideblog @mdawnjpn and....

I found this and I just immediately started tearing up, like hand over my mouth trying not to cry on the bullet train from Tokyo back to Nagoya during that first weekend. I was there I WAS THERE.

So I mentioned previously I got to Aomori after a 10 or 11 hour night bus. And I didn’t sleep for almost any of it because I just can’t sleep on buses. And I felt LIKE. DEATH. But I couldn’t find an internet cafe or anywhere to sleep for a while because Aomori city just doesn’t have a lot of things. So I ended up literally just sleeping on a park bench by the ocean for a couple hours. Like around here.

And I remember seeing them starting to set up the festival when I woke up and being like woooah where am I this is amazing. But.. Just like, since Over the Rainbow performs here every year I guess I must have slept through their show. Oh NOOO ahaha

Anyway

And here it is. My number one favorite Taiga line in SSS. Just like the way he says it

OVER THE RAINBOW

THE FUCK IS THAT

Ohhhh Taiga you’ll know very soon......

Also notice the different colored tie. I wonder if this was his legit school uniform at the time.

People hold up two concert lights and break them apart when Hiro’s pride is broken in the first movie, and they do the same here.

Oh Taiga...... why is your pain so hilarious.........................

Sometimes I ask myself the same thing.

I love the contrast here between the overly realistic uncomfortable crowd, overenthusiastic Ozora, and poor Taiga. I love it. I LOVE IT. I WAS NOT KIDDING WHEN I SAID EVERY FRAME IN THIS EPISODE IS A FUCKING MASTERPIECE

It took me two or three viewings to realize that Taiga is actually crying here. Or rather trying really hard not to cry.

I’m not sure if I’m counting favorite Kazuki lines or not since he doesn’t have a big roll in SSS, but if I am this little “Huuuaah” might be it.

Poor Kazuki. He does nothing on purpose to incite the storm that has brewed around him with both Taiga and Alexander.

Taiga’s Mom is the fucking best. Like I said, I love SSS for bringing out all these amazing, supportive, strong female characters. Everyone’s Mom is great but Taiga’s Mom might be best Mom.

Or at least I thought so until I met Alexander’s Mom but the jury is out right now.

It took me like five viewings to realize their watermelon switched to corn and I laughed way harder than I should have.

OTSUKARE TAIGA

I loved seeing him be a big brother here eheh.

Taiga why did you even ask. You know how Edel Rose works.

Shin just looks so happy. He’s a puppy.

My goal in life is to enjoy everything the way Shin enjoys things.

Yu’s AHHHHH MOOOOUUU in this scene might be my favorite Yu line ahaha.

I don’t know why, but I the more he whines the more I love him. That’s just how you know Yu is having a good time.

RIGHT

FUCK TOKYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

AHHHHH I WANT TO GO BACK TO AOMORI RIGHT NOOOWWWW

I’m like 40% considering going back this summer.

I live in Aichi not Tokyo by the way so if I don’t fly that’s about UMMM 16 or 17 HOURS ON TWO BUSES BUT

Okay okay okay. So NOW it’s “street style” huh. Well what the fuck was with that whole “Solid Style” thing in episode 1 then? I guess the translator didn’t realize they were literally talking about street dance? Like WHAT? Or did they just forget?

And you know what actually this kinda pisses me off more, because the least they could do is keep it consistent.

Because now that whole important line where Shin actually explains it for the first time in the main canon MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE ANYMORE

ALSO

WHY IS ACADEMY CAPITALIZED AND STREET NOT

WHY

FOR FUCKS SAKE IM GONNA K--

Taigaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

(I’m OK now.)

Giving him a shojo reaction here was a choice. They didn’t have to. It was a deliberate choice. To portray Taiga’s feelings for Kazuki. Ahhhhhhhh

So remember when I stayed up translating this all of a sudden after I watched SSS Part 1 for..... reasons.....

No I do not know why he’s an apple. Well I assume it has to do with the job he’s doing. And I do have a hunch from a creative standpoint but I’ll talk about that later.

First timers in the theater always be like “R... RINGO..?????”

NO YOUR ASS IS BIG

....Is one of my favorite callouts of this episode.

AND WHY IS JOJI EVEN IN THE CAR ANYWAY

At this point during the midnight showing I was like.... is the real villain of SSS just gonna be Joji going around casually inconveniencing everyone? ....I’d watch that.

This is the storage area near the main festival stage where you can go and see the floats before the festival starts.

Here’s what it looks like in real life:

One of the few instances where I can assure you real life is just as good as the anime.

For people who read my shitty out of context spoiler about how a character beat Louis for the amount of skin showed in a prism show. Wasn’t kidding.

Tasuku kinda spoiled this outfit in the first day greeting show by saying something like how it was an outfit which fit Taiga’s tastes well (festival wear) and everyone else was like NO STOP--

But yeah. This show. This soonggggg

Taiga’s voice is just SO. BEAUTIFUL. He has my favorite singing voice in all of Edel Rose.

So after the first weekend I made a post to Tumblr about how I thought I had avoided getting any of the songs in my head, but then a certain one started CREEPIN IN...

IT WAS THIS

Taiga’s song is both the first one to get stuck in my head, and the one that keeps getting stuck in my head the most often to this day.

I just love how he makes Nebuta floats of all his friends ahhhhhh

Here are some more photos of the real thing..

It was raining the year I was there, and when it rains they put plastic over them so they look like snowglobes. That’s kinda cool in itself though.

I’ll never forget seeing this for the first time, realizing what was about to happen and being like NO... NO WAY.... IS THIS REAL LIFE NO WAY IS WHAT HDHFKHFDFH;LSFHDLSHFDS

I’ll never forget it because I basically still feel the same way every time.

They didn’t have to set this up like a confession scene. But they did. It was a choice.

But during this scene at cheering shows, I am much less concerned with what Taiga was trying to say and much more concerned with prepping blue and green lights for.....

Words cannot express how happy this made me. If you haven’t picked up on it already Wakana is my favorite girl from RL. MATTE NYAAAAAAAAAA

Oh look here. A GOOD translation for “charachara”. One that I might actually steal from now on. Usually the best I can come up with is “flirty”, “carefree”, or “showy” depending on the situation.

So it seems at this point the translator finally understood what “charachara” actually means in the context of King of Prism. So of course, the logical thing to do here would be to go back and correct the previous wonky line where they used “gaudy” to make it consistent... right.... RIGHT??

Does Crunchyroll actually translate line-by-line as soon as the episode comes out in the hour before they post it?

They don’t even get any time to edit it?

ARE

YOU

FUCKING

KIDDING ME

I dunno about you but I would wait a few more hours for fucking slightly more decent consistency in the translation BUT MAYBE THATS JUST ME

OH LORD Kakeru’s episode next week is gonna be A SHITSHOW.

The sitcom ending to this episode is so dorky but I love it.

THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT

FRAME IT

DIP IT IN COPPER

SEND IT TO SPACE

DONE

It was really cool to finally see the details in these festival floats in the ending since they go by so fast in the episode. Shin’s has a rainbow! I wasn’t expecting Masquerade, but I suppose it fits Taiga as well. And it’s not that the Taiga version isn’t good but...

It’s just that... I.... I want the CD but I..... I already have three different King of Prism covers of it on my phone........... nnnrhg

So.

I dunno about you guys.

But basically my interpretation of this episode is that no matter what Taiga says....

Everything he’s done...

It was never about the street style.

It was always

ALWAYS

about Kazuki

And that makes a lot of sense.

Kazuki spends this entire episode being an apple. Taiga hates apples. Kazuki is a personification of something Taiga hates. But it changes nothing. He loves him. HE LOVES HIM.

I always questioned whether Taiga’s feelings for Kazuki were pure admiration or true love. And now I know the answer. Probably both.

So this ends what I know to be King of Prism SSS Part 1, as per the theatrical release.

Next week is Kakeru and also the beginning of what I know as SSS Part 2.

I don’t want to de-hype you guys that much, but I actually feel the Part 2 episodes are a good deal more low key than Part 1. But then again that doesn’t say that much for the King of Prism standard.

I have been looking forward to Kakeru’s episode being released with subs for the sole reason of finally being able to clarify a lot of things I didn’t understand about it. But after seeing the subs this week. HMMM.

#king of prism sss #taiga kougami #king of prism #king of prism shiny seven stars #shiny seven stars #kinpri

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dylanjonferguson-blog · 5 years

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S01E07: “Target For Terror”: Dichromatism

Our misty, videotaped dreams of the un-human Hobo as an actor of radical freedom may have been premature, if not delusional. The dog's narrow focus on interpersonal justice leaves no room for ideology, politics, or other forest-over-trees considerations. “Target For Terror,” the seventh episode of TLH, is a mix of menace, moral clarity, and naiveté that mimics a dog’s worldview, but draws uneasy parallels with our own.

The fairly fantastic characters of “Target For Terror” literally leap from the headlines. The first thing we see is the bold, 72-point pronouncement at the top of a broadsheet, filling the screen: "TERRORISTS MAKE MORE DEMANDS." The unidentified newspaper reader then folds down the page, which, like an upside-down opera curtain, has the effect of revealing our human hero. Paul Hamilton – young man, snub-nose, Lego-hair, jacket-collar popped, flared pants swishing – is striding confidently into a train station. Following closely behind are two sketchy characters, who we immediately surmise are the terrorists. It is as if the dramatic headline conjured these players, or as if we have passed through the headline, into the world of ALL-CAPS anxiety, entering the fear-soaked deathscape of broadsheet news.

Briefly now, let’s jump ahead to an almost unaccountably strange moment that occurs halfway through the episode. One terrorist walks in on the other, who is perusing a thick paperback, and tells him to “Stop reading that junk!" Why were we invited to this moment? The title of the book, unfortunately can't be glimpsed. The only part of the cover we can see in an element in the lower left-hand corner: a swastika! Is it a book about Nazism? Are we being told that the terrorists are Nazis? Or that they're anti-fascists who consider Nazism "junk"? Perhaps it's a red herring to focus on that graphic detail. But surely there's a reason the one terrorist is chastised for reading a book.

I think it has to do with the newspaper headline at the start, which introduced our setting as a reductive and fearful world. Being in the world of a panicked newspaper means rejecting the world of books, which would include depths of context and greater stores of information, reasoning, empathy. Even the terrorists reject any intrusion from that world, which is foreign to the territory of the tale.

A dog must naturally see the world as tense and simple, but we are coached that way by broadsheet profiteers. And those who manipulate their message.

Paul Hamilton is a kind and rich fellow. The terrorists want to kill or capture him as part of an obscure plot to get at the boy's grandfather, Chief Justice Hamilton, played by John Carradine. Carradine, very old at this point, sometimes struggles with his delivery, but still has a large, theatrical presence, and beautifully gnarled, expressive hands that cling to fine lapels in his opulent office, which is replete with mahogany furnishings and a deep, patterned carpet that no doubt hides expensive Cuban ash. The camera films that office with a certain staid reverence: we’re not to scoff at this man, we’re to see his perspective as right and proper. The terrorists, in comparison, have weird, strained faces, natty clothes, and awkwardly-carved facial hair (one is played by the great Cronenberg regular Geva Kovacs). The dog – named Nick, this time around – saves Paul in the train station, but Chief Justice Hamilton warns his grandson that the rugged schemers are still out there. Now that the terrorists have spooked their prey, they take another line of attack. By successfully kidnapping Paul’s fiancée, Pam, they force the groom-to-be to come out to a remote hotel in the country, where he too is kidnapped.

“We have a cause,” the terrorist tells Paul, warning him not to try any funny stuff. “We live for it, and we’re willing to die for it.” But what this cause might be is, glaringly, never even hinted at.

In the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, US intelligence officials initially concluded that Syria was behind the attack, as retaliation for America’s downing of an Iranian passenger jet earlier that year. President Reagan, however, shifted the blame to Libya’s President Gaddafi, who was a more convenient villain (and happy to play along, to boost his anti-American cred). The U.S. president-cum-actor even participated in the creation of a neo-conservative conspiracy theory that had Gaddafi and Carlos the Jackal heading a deranged hit-squad hellbent on assassinating Reagan. A similar form of narrative alchemy happened in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, when the Bush administration shifted the story to point blame at the unconnected Saddam Hussein, even though almost all the attackers were Saudis. The point is that American government ideologues seem to kind of like terrorists because, unlike a state army, their origins and motives often seem unclear, and so can be manipulated in the public mind. Obviously, anyone willing to kill and die for a cause has strong beliefs, but American governments would rather obscure the meaning, or even existence, of a cause. We can all remember George W. Bush nonsensically asserting that the terrorists simply “hate our freedoms.”

This matters, because our films tend to reflect, intentionally or not, the false storylines being peddled. At the height of the Bush-era terrorism panic, The Dark Knight was released, starring a Bush/Blair-style Batman battling an anti-ideology lunatic who just wanted to “watch the world burn.” Why? Oh, no reason. Terrorists, we’ve been counterintuitively led to believe by state propaganda, don’t really need a reason. Apparently they just want to fuck shit up (or “maximize chaos” to use the ridiculous description of Nazi motives peddled by Jordan Peterson). It’s clear why we’re fed this lie. Obfuscating the position and ultimate aims of the terrorists makes their actions seem mad, and any opposing actions seem justified.

With both Pam and Paul captive to the villains, it’s up to the dog Nick to save them. And here we’re introduced to the episode’s most sympathetic character: Osborne, the meek, bespectacled man who runs the dilapidated country inn where the criminal action is happening. Unlike Paul, Osborne is not aligned with state ideology; he’s motivated by narrow, everyday concerns, like ensuring no dogs loiter on his property. We’re clearly meant to identify with Osborne: when Nick sprays the hotelier with a water hose, to get his attention, the water is first sprayed directly on the camera lens, at us.

Nick rouses the non-ideologic self-interested character to the defense of one political side. However, he does this not by appealing to ideology, but by threatening the comfort of the passive actor. This is reminiscent of how the newspaper is always declaring our comfort to be under threat. The sleight is possible, since the terrorists’ positions have been strategically re-written so that it appears that threatening stability is a goal unto itself, rather than a means to an end.

The Hobo is of course not actually acting in defense of state ideology, but his narrow focus on context-free morality (and waking up the non-ideological actor with his moral concerns) can be exploited to that end.

The dog comes from a third world, not of power or of resistance, but the world of the woods. Among the trees, living as an animal, there are only immediate concerns, so of course he can’t see the greater context of his actions. But at times, this can also be an advantage, for him. When the terrorists chase Nick, he leads them off into the trees, and there they become hopelessly lost. In the woods, among individual trunks, their ideology can't follow, so they're easily duped.

Osborne has a “No Dogs Allowed” sign on his property. By forbidding dogs, Osborne wishes to keep the wildness of apolitical moral action at bay (the forest, after all, is cut down a safe distance from his beloved lawn). And yet, even though he appears unaligned, Osborne’s cherished obsession with self-concern is policed by the channels and apparatuses of the state (which are nourished by a particular ideology, though he doesn't see it).

The wildness of the dog's morality runs outside of these channels. And yet, it is the dog, the apparently-radical actor, that draws Osborne's actions to a political side, for it is a roused Osborne who eventually unties and frees the kidnapped couple.

Here we see the dangers of radical actions being co-opted to state ends, if the actions don't have their own, competing ideological compass.

This is why Osborne changes his sign at the end, crossing out the “No,” so it says simply “Dogs Allowed.” Since the moral-ideological motivation of the terrorists has been successfully hidden from him, and his own morality has been manipulated to be indistinguishable from self-interest, he is now able to see morality, state ideology, and his own comfort as compatible, and indeed mutually-reinforcing.

The freed Paul Hamilton says he wants to make the dog his “best man.” Nick has been granted humanity because he is perceived to have collaborated with the correct (state) ideology.

The Hobo naturally flees this.

2 stars

#dogs #thelittlesthobo #littlesthobo #canadiantv #terrorism #vintagetv #politics

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warmbeebosoftbeebo · 4 years

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are you still gonna support them even if they never address anything/the accusations turn out to be true?

depends which accusations. a lot of them are misinterpretations or regurgitating what others have said as Truth (eg about the stage gay with ryan being “ryan being sexually assaulted by brendon every night,” “fetishizes lesbian/bi women” when he’s attracted to confident bi women who know what & who they like, jokes, using barsexual to describe some women when he’s used it to describe himself and guys he’s made out with too, saying him repeating the word tranny to explain what an asshole the guy who used it was him using it himself as a slur against someone). a couple accusations are mild, nonsexual, in a public context touches that people were ok with for years until this summer.

some of the accusations are by men saying they know women/girls who say they were assaulted by b. one of them is homophobic, misogynist, and racist himself, and the other is shane morris (more of the same, plus violent including rape fantasies that he’s spewed on fob and panic fandom, plus he’s been caught in serious lies before) so... i question their honesty. a lot.

i used to be more angry at b not addressing the accusations, but it seems there’s a lot of them, and the accusations of in person inappropriateness and assault have all been anonymous and most have been drive-bys that the accuser no longer stands by, has deleted, etc. leah’s story honestly reads like fanfic and there are details that defy credulity eg that she was loitering inside after, that some guy came up to her and invited her back into a room with b. kam’s story was... that b, drunk and/or high, hit on him rather mildly for his drunken state eg *looked at him* in a sexual manner?, asked if he was into dudes. the reaction to it eg wanting to run off, feeling sick, running off, feeling disgusted with himself, seems over the top, unless he was previously sexually abused/traumatized by an older male and/or if he was under 16 (if so, it’s understandable and b shouldn’t have tried anything if he was under 16). it says he told him he was a minor, but how old? minor could even be under 21. even if 17, b just turned 22 the day before. he was able to easily get away. (i suspect unresolved trauma from someone else sexually abusing them is what’s really going on here and that this meeting either didn’t happen or happened very differently from how they claim. some have challenged the possibility of it happening at all given the where of a train station, the timing, etc..)

prettyoddfever, who has followed them since fever era, also explained in another post that these accusations have been cropping up from the get go, but would be usually quickly challenged by other fans there who saw eg girls saying they were touched inappropriately/sexually by a band member during a meet n greet, waiting outside the venue to see them, etc.

the most solid ones they should address is breezy’s revelations about zack, because those are undoubtedly true eg sexually harrassing her, bullying dallon. the worst of his tweets should be addressed too as they are undoubtedly true too eg telling a pregnant woman’s friend he only helped her because he thinks “preggos” are hot, the nude wallpaper (even if he’s saying don’t send nudes, screen-shooting them before they disappear and posting them, blurred or not, is not ok), that very misogynist one saying that females control males with our vulvas/vaginas from young girlhood.

i actually think b’s friendship with zack is the strongest piece of evidence against b, so far anyway, because most of what zack’s accused of is verifiable (breezy’s screenshots, the tweets, him being a dick to dallon in a periscope, what breezy has said is also very very credible and in line with what we’ve seen). guilt by association isn’t always on, but in clear cases like this, of repeated “bad things” over a decade, yep, it is. the question is how much he knew. obviously he’s not stalking zack’s twitter or phone or breezy’s phone. but he’d know/hear/see some things. and i think zack probably gaslights and lies to and hides from him some too, although i don’t think it’s a pat “zack groomed and was abusing b since he was 16!!!!” like some claim (eg he didn’t meet him until he was 18 or 19).

lana was the closest for the b accusations, because she had a casual sexual relationship with him in 07, but she stepped back from things once she realized a catfisher, probably chelsey, was duping her and others online until 2016. if she decided to speak out now about what happened in 07, i’d absolutely believe her, but what actually happened there is up in the air eg she still stands by the open letter being mostly untrue, written by someone else, with inside jokes.

if anyone else actually puts their identity out there in discussing this, i’ll default believe them too. ciara did, but current and former friends quickly challenged her as i explained in a couple other posts, and she herself backed out on accusing him of doing anything purposeful. i’d also probably believe someone who came forward by name as a witness. cash cooligan and alex from the cab have hinted at things, but nothing concrete has come of it aside from blaming b for capitalism and the music industry and fbr, maybe b did something to alex but who the fuck knows what, and alex’s declaration to do violence to b.

depending on what it was, and how far ago, i may or may not continue with this blog/writing smut about him. considering who i do listen too, i doubt i’d stop listening to his music. think of all the rapists, abusers, etc we listen to on the regular. if i didn’t, there’d be A LOT of men’s music i couldn’t listen to eg david bowie, led zeppelin (jimmy page what the fuck), michael jackson, iggy pop, red hot chili peppers, tupac, aerosmith, paul mccartney and john lennon (although lennon became pro-feminist and improved greatly throughout his relationship with yoko ono), alice cooper, james brown, elvis, sex pistols (sid vicious, the band also defended child pornographers), motley crue, and on and on and on... check out the dreamworlds documentary series (three of them, but the third would probably be easiest to find) for some eyeopeners on male musicians from the 90s and 00s abusing women eg snoop dogg (he was a pimp before he was famous and even when famous still pimped women in pornography), limp bizcuit (literally threw lunch meat at the groupies they demeaned). kid rock is another scumbag. of course: r kelly. kid rock is just bad music too, so no hardship not listening to him. r kelly is currently a sadist daddy dom who trafficks women, makes porn of them, literally pisses on them to degrade/humiliate them, makes them ask permission to go to the bathroom even, and controls them in a cult, and has managed to be charged for some of his abuse of underage teen girls a couple times, so i don’t support him in any way, listen to his music, etc.

edit to add: found another https://twitter.com/Zapuda/status/1294069508282494980 this one says he was groping 14 year olds behind the bus on his first tour. b himself would’ve been 18 or 19 at the time depending on what he considers b’s first tour. how does this guy know this at all? how does he know that they were only 14 (and not 15 or 16)? who the hell is zapuda? why didn’t more people see if it was to the side of a tour bus and happened repeatedly?

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mimicsecretdiary · 7 years

Text

Star Wars oneshot

[beware: long post ahead] Introduction

The Galaxy,for the first time,seems to be at peace: the Republic and Empire have reached a stall and acceptable agreements and both of them are not pinching and nabbing at each other too much. This is also thanks to the just-ended great war, lasting the incredible short period of 5 years, which had ended with a large-scale schism of the Sith order that destabilized the Empire. There are those who say the Sith "rebels" were supported by the Republic, some say they were headed by a Sith lord with powers comparable or even higher than the Emperor himself. The fact is that now the intergalactic forces are more or less in peace. [Characters introductions here]

The scene opens with a Chiss pilot in space. Janos has just finished one of his regular smuggling jobs and he's relaxing while the most recent member of his "one man crew" is being the paranoid of the bunch and he's checking the ship for any evidence or problems that might have happened during the mission. They receive a call on holo from a "private number" basically, and Janos, before letting his "co-pilot" paranoid human hacker answer, checks from where it arrives. It's from Korriban. "AH. EXCELLENT". They are a bit on the defensive but Jaydkan,the hacker knowns as "cresto", or hacker, or paranoid, or simply J says that "curiosity makes him curious" (he's a hacker, not a poet) and they respond. It is a rattataki that calls Janos by name (OK) and tells him that it is the apprentice of his "employer" (GREAT) and that has a job for him, perhaps the last "mandatory" one (actual good), and she basically wants me to pick up two Night Sisters( G L O R I U O S) and a couple of jedi ( SPEC TA CU LAR) to help her Master in a thing. "ah ok, so now I'm taxi service". Of course I accept, I do not have the right to refuse, and I head to the coordinates. The scene moves to the Night Sisters, who are briefly informed about the matter by teh same rattataki woman, even if they already knew what they had to do and they get informed about who and where and when they will be taken to do such work. Madea and Winter are of few words and many facts so when the "taxi" arrives, they introduce themselves - more or less- and they go quietly in their ""lodgings"" on the ship to meditate. New change of scene and we are on Typhon, known planet of jedi temples. Three jedi are digging and working in an archeologic site when one of the three, Sa'Vin, recieves an holo call. From a "private number" She moves away from the tent and answers, finding the same rattataki as before. But she knows her by name ("Tiraka"), and knows who she is and who her Master is, as she had had "dealings" with him in the past. There is a strenuous conversation where Tiraka asks for support from Sa'Vin, and she deduces that it must be a great deal if it is her and not her Master who calls for help. The sith apprentice confirms the situation it's as such. With a sigh, Sa'vin accepts the caller's request for help and closes the call, speaking soon after privately with her padawan Milisendis asking if she would feel comfortable doing a "special" mission. The Miraluka girl seems to be interested academically speaking and, when asked, the other Jedi, a Givin called Iad-aan, appears to be interested as well (there is a samll player-death here bcs the charcter vocie od Iad-aan made me die laughing.). Iad-Aan asks if it is an illegal thing, and when it is confirmed that it is not "technically" he lightly accepts. Sa'vin drives in speeder the two colleagues / companions to the place of randevouz for Tiraka had confirmed that she had already arranged somebody to come and get them near the place of need. The three await the ship in a open grassfield and when the said transport arrives after a a couple of hours, Iad-Aan uses the Force to "see" who is inside and percieves clearly two strong sources of Force not fully trained on but mostly Dark Ways. On the other hand, the Night Sisters perceive themselves to be observed. Landing, Janos comes down from the ship to check his "cargo" and remaining pleasantly surprised by (re)Seeing Sa'vin, cordially greeting Millisendis and remaining a little shocked by the welcoming of the Givin, makes them jump on board, urgently asking not to provoke quarrels with the other two young ladies in the ship. There is a brief chat between Janos and Sa'vin, where she asks him to use the name with which she presented herself and where she whispers that she would like to know where he had met this current employer of his (The sith master she also knows). "I could ask you the same question, Counsellor Sa'vin" "it is not obvious that i will not answer". On the ship they all meet up with a young blue twi'lek and a jawa, who is promptly threatened by Janos who warns the small alien that he is "keeping an eye on him (Zili.. Don't let it touch my droid)". It's obvious that this kind of conversation is now routine on the ship. [Sa'vins player was feeling ill so she left after this point] Before taking off, on the datapad that gave Janos the coordinates for the variosu landings a message compose itself and it suggests to ask the Nighsisters to explain the problem to the new arrivals of the ship. Janos hurriedly gets up (complaining that it could have wrote the message in the 5 seconds before i had sat down on the pilot seat) and he goes, but before he could hear the Night sisters' negative answer, he's already gone. The journey starts... without any of the main groups exchanging covnersations. We arrive at the coordinates set: a moon that looks more like a cemetery of buildings than an inhabited place, with several craters created or from large battles or frequent meteorites. When the ship docks, the landing pod blocks my supports and I find myself very frustrated at the idea of not being able to just get the fuck out. The jedis and the non-Force-users get off board looking at a pyramid liek tomb, stil lwondering what we are doing there since miss onehanded -shotgun-loading-sound Madea has not told us anything about the job yet. Looking around the landing pod we see the door of a pyramidal tomb that is closed by two statues with hands and arms joined. The scavengers notice also some computers with soem data running on the screens and the hacker + twi'lek are observing with great interests the tech there: it's an automatic station for archaeological finds' analysis. J downloads a bit of the just finished analysis on the device and Yewzili pockets some various paddles. I'm like "kid don't do it" and she "it's to repay you: 3" "if you want to repay me by sicking 45 angry Siths because I stole their precious antique night vases, i'll gladly skip that" "they will never notice." While the three smuggler-type pirate things, the jedis use the Force to open the doors, after Madea said, very caustic, that their employer is literally just locked inside (janos: "AH he called us because he got stuck a tomb, this is AMAZING"). The jedi open the door of 50cm and let pass the two Night sisters in front of line, then they go in and finally the mere blaster-holders go at the rear. As soon as we get all inside, Iad-aan uses the Force again to perceive dangerous creatures and finds two or three BIG clustersof negative energy plus a more powerful one of inestimable suffering in the depths of the tomb. We assume that's out quarry. Trying to avoid the clusters of life forms perceived by the mathematical jedi, we start our descent. At the first junction we are attacked by a Kath who is severely mistreated by the force-users (Medea jumps behind him using the wall as a lever hitting his back, ian-aad splats it on the ceiling, Zili electifies it with the vibrosword and finally Medea eviscerates it while iad -aan overkills it with a Force-beheading. Janos kinda just puts away the blaster shrughing). A little further on we find another forkin the road, with both ends going downhill, and an obelisk at the center of a small opening in the cave. The jedi interact with it- in whisper - while Janos -"feeling lucky" in whisper - gets a very bad feeling from the way on the right. Iad-aan says that the obelisk has "spoken to him" and that we must continue in the way right but "without touching the dead" - something along these lines. There is a brief pseudo-philosophical discussion between iad and medea where medea does not seem particularly inclined to speak, while janos and zili are having an heated covnersation about some potential good stored in Janos' ship that zili may or may not have"resold" or used (spoielr: it was spice. (context: spice in sw its drug basically)). In the fustration, Janos does not realize that he is walking right in the direction of the bad feeling. We arrive in a room full of stacks of skeletons and Iad-Aan assumes these are the dead not to be touched, so with nonchalance levitates wit hthe Force across the room (he's usign a lot of Force powers, he should be more careful). Madea comments caustically that "some" people REALLY like to show "how many things they can do"; the Night Sisters make show of their great agility and the others (Milisendis Zili, and J) simply walk - janos needs a few seconds before deciding to cross the room . The "bad feeling" really gets to him- [J's player is prone to be very sleepy so he left as well at this poing] Just as we are getting out the blasted room, 6 huge and disgusting humanoids, Rakghouls, jump on us and we start a fight. Janos -last in the line so first to be attacked- slips his entire arm into the mouth of one of these monsters as it growls and he like unloads his blaster charge in the skull of the disgusting thing, causing it to burst from within. The creature falls to the ground coem a fish without bones, ("Ah ... he bit me ç_c ...") biting janos' arm on the way down; Iad-aan unleashes his levitate to lift himself up into the cavernous room and not get caught by two of them; medea uses, according to old tactics already tried, Winter as jumping pad and twirling in the air with feline grace and shoots in the head to another of the creatures with the blaster incorporated in her mechanical arm; zili jumps back while the attack of the jedi padawan Milisendis doesn't go as good as she would have wanted. In the second round with a bit of Force pushes and blaster shots an classical Force-beheadings, we take the rest out. Medea snaps a bit of acid words to Zili ("Cowardice will not keep you alive") and we contine along the path down (zili is quite offended: "it actually works pretty good to me"). Around the corner we hear heavy steps and Mili, Yewzilin and Janos peek the corridor while Iad-Aan perceives it with Force: it is a fairly large creature known to feed on the Force + force users altogether. Janos comments that "hey, at least three of us are safe!" readily correct that they are nonetheless creatures carinvore and the Force flows in all of us. yadda yadda jedi shit. Janos promptly takes zili for an arm and literally sprints silently across the corridor to where the creature is eating some corpse or carcass. Zili does not make a sound but Janos almost slips and schatters a bone by mistake. Luckly the creature does not seem to care too much. ("DAMN IT YOU OLD MAN" Zili whispers angrly. "Ehy watch your mouth kid, the thing didn' saw us anway!!") Janos was "arguing" with Zili to use the Jawa as a distraction while Milsendis and Medea convinced Iad-aan that usinf the Force -again- to move soem rock in a far away corridoir would have not distracted the creature because it would have felt the source of the Force-usage. Some more or less sucessful sneaking made us avoid the creature complitely. We find now in front of a dor not much different from the one we met earlier and Medea with Winter brute-forcibly try to push it open (Medea: "will you others help us or not?". Janos and zili, together:"no no i think i'l lstay here watchign you two." zili:"I could watch them all day * eyes emoji *") while the jedi reuse the Push to Force it open. The initially percieved source of pain becomes it stronger once we enter the next room. [And hereby we ended the oneshot]

#actually happened #roleplay... in space!#DM Shaykan #star wars oneshot #Iad-Aan Onnardess #Janos Odai #Jaydkan Ligobòu #Medea #Milisendis Kalaji #Sa'Vin #Yewzilin Hole #Winter

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shapesweets83-blog · 5 years

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Best Architecture, Urban Design, & Public Art Of 2018

We’ve been saying this for a few years now, but 2018 really did feel like a year where significant changes–much of them highly-anticipated–came to Philly’s built environment.

Comcast Technology Center | Photo: Bradley Maule

A refashioned LOVE Park opened without skateboarders and a replacement National Products building with its faked but convincing historic facade began filling up with renters; some might say the original versions were better. The iconic Curtis and Bourse buildings emerged from renovations as upscale food destinations. In West Philadelphia, the development of uCitySquare, a joint project of Science Center, Cambridge Innovation Center, Wexford Science and Technology, BioLabs, and Ventas continued apace with the opening of its first mid-rise tower.

A significant extension to the Schuylkill River Trail from South to Christian street closed part of the gap between the existing boardwalk and Grays Ferry Crescent, while the Fairmount Water Works Trail and Boardwalk opened, affording views of the small island wetlands behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We like how at this point all of these Schuylkill projects have come to an understanding about the materials, finishes, and street furniture that they will be using going forward.

In fact, there’s much to like about all of the above developments but whether in scope or aesthetics, context or contributions, they weren’t the most transformative ones of 2018. What ties our winners together are linkages–past to present, city to nature, interior to exterior. For those, read on.

New Building: Skyscraper

The eastern view from the Comcast Technology Center | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

Who needs Amazon when we have Comcast? With its second skyscraper, the 1,121-foot, $1.5 billion Comcast Technology Center, the media giant has risen to the occasion by using corporate architecture to positively impact downtown. Granted, Foster + Partners’ glass tower isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but its interiors are. An installation by the world-class contemporary artist Jenny Holzer and an extensive use of wood (from slatted sides and ceilings to distinctive woodblock flooring) integrate the building into the life of the city and elevate its performance as public space. An elegant and reasonably priced cafe offers a great addition to the lunch scene (as I witnessed one recent afternoon, CEO Brian Roberts thinks it’s good enough to entertain Steven Spielberg). The expansive glass opens up respectful vistas of, and a connection to, the two towers’ stalwart neighbor, the Arch Street Presbyterian Church, and the Robert Morris Building beyond.

New Building: Hidden Gem

Entrance to the Discovery Center overlooking the East Park Reservoir | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

Discovery Center in East Fairmount Park has a grand exterior, perhaps more so than its relatively modest mission demands. Designed by Digsau for the offices and services of the local branches of Audubon and Outward Bound, its long flat planes emerge from the Fairmount Park landscape seemingly out of nowhere, promising an oasis amidst the sea of chickenwire fencing that surrounds a decommissioned reservoir/now native habitat. Serene and bold at the same time, it reminds me of some of the best of modern Japanese architecture, not only in its forms and materials but in its embrace of nature. Your first steps through the portal of a hand-forged steel gate (it looks like wood lattice) positioned in the middle of a 500-foot facade of shou sugi ban will pretty much take your breath away.

Public Space

Cherry Street Pier | Photo: Michael Bixler

Among the many civic achievements of Race Street Pier (2011) was the crystallization of the allure of its near neighbor to the south, Cherry Street Pier. The realization of that tease came this fall, with a little piece of tactical urbanism designed by Groundswell Design Group and Interface Studio Architects. Drawing on the lessons of GDG’s wildly successful Spruce St. Harbor Park–namely that people like beer, street food, and things to do along with their views–it’s a fun and dynamic environment that aims to delight. Someone please give the folks at Delaware River Waterfront Corporation (the force behind all three spaces) an award for recognizing that interventions don’t always have to take dozens of years and hundreds of millions to be transformative.

Adaptive Reuse

The Rail Park | Photo: Bradley Maule

The idea of the Rail Park was a big meh to me–until it opened. As was the case with Cherry Street Pier’s first weekend, though, the excitement and interest in the unveiling that morning (of course I went!) was tangible and encouraging. If they do nothing else, such projects foster a dialogue about how we use our urban spaces, and for that alone they deserve high praise. Sure, The Rail Park’s first phase is just a little spit of a thing and sure it can’t boast the views or (as of yet) the landscape vision of New York’s High Line. But Studio Bryan Haynes nailed it with a plan that’s firmly of its place and with enough design twists and turns (literally) to keep things interesting–and swinging (also literally).

Preservation

Sprouts Farmers Market | Photo: Michael Bixler

The debut of Philadelphia’s first Sprouts Farmers Market, the Arizona-based chain with a natural/organic bent, was particularly noteworthy because it’s filled a demonstrable market need on South Broad Street. Part of Lincoln Square, an otherwise ordinary development that offers 322 apartments and a retail coterie that includes a tired trio of Target, Starbucks and Pet Smart, its real significance is its success as a bold example of both historic preservation, of the 1876 Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad depot, and adaptive reuse. Though the corporate strip mall treatment of the entrance to the market fails to acknowledge the urban setting, the historic architecture of the train shed, or the contemporary design of the multi-use apartment building, Sprouts gets shouts simply because of how it’s smartly wedged into the historic train shed. That and the free samples.

New Place

Looking east toward East Market, with the under restoration Stephen Girard and under construction Girard apartment hotel tower in the foreground | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

East Market touts itself as “dynamic” and while that’s an overstatement, I kind of like it there. An expert mix of new construction, historic restoration, and adaptive reuse that keeps it from feeling bland, this refashioning of the downtrodden former Snellenburg Department Store site into a true mixed-use pedestrian street by BLT Architects is something we haven’t seen before. A new hotel and more local retail (Federal Donuts!) suggest things will only get better. Best of all, the development adds vibrancy to the urban fabric that surrounds it, allowing new vantage points to gaze on the Reading Terminal, PSFS Building, and the former Horn & Hardart at 11th and Ludlow Streets.

Restoration

The Met: White elephant no more | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

It’s hard to believe that The Met was ever allowed to devolve into a ruin, but after years kept alive by the Holy Ghost Headquarters Church, developer Eric Blumenfeld’s 2013 plan for the Oscar Hammerstein opera house has come to fruition. The careful $56 million renovation by local firm AOS Architects is ruby velvet and gilded surfaces–and bars, lots of bars. It’s been modernized (of course) but with much of its astounding plaster ornamentation recreated, it looks like a concert hall should. Visitors say the sightlines are almost uniformly great, too. Take that, Academy of Music.

Transformation

The Hale Building | Photo: Peter Woodall

Day in, day out the miracle of the 1887 Keystone National Bank Building, designed by Willis Hale, has proven the most pleasurable for me, located as it is on a prominent corner that I pass a couple of times each week. When I first saw the spiffed up red brick and cleaned-up facade in full reveal of the “Hale Building” I do believe I let out an audible gasp. While I’m not in love with the new entrance on the Chestnut Street and I’m not expecting much from the interiors, I thank JKRP Architects for a careful revival of this masterful mashup and making my walks around town that much more pleasurable.

Design Vision

Rear view of the Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

Long under-utilized, the stately West Philadelphia Trust Building has renewed presence on Walnut Street thanks to a smart restoration and intervention from Toronto-based KPMB. Freshly engraved with the name of its tenant, the University of Pennsylania’s Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics, the 1925 Art Deco building has been seamlessly linked to a new glass-and-aluminum tower that echoes the older structure’s massing and window cutouts. Interiors, too, are elegant with clean lines and a dramatic staircase that suggests both the old and the new bones of the intertwined university building.

Placemaking

Trolley Car Station cafe adjacent to the SEPTA Subway-Surface tunnel | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

With outdoor seating and beds of native plantings, Trolley Portal Gardens makes a there out of something whose assets–historic Woodlands Cemetery, a charming tunnel–belie its utilitarian functions (catching and disembarking from mass transit). The wood structure of the Trolley Car Station café echoes the form of the adjacent tunnel and bumps up the space from an amenity for transit users to a gift for the entire neighborhood.

Public Art

Deck the Hall light show, City Hall | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

Robert Indiana’s LOVE was returned to a renovated Love Park, the Parkway Holocaust memorial expanded, and the better-in-concept-than-reality (thus far) sculpture Pulse finally debuted at Dilworth Plaza. From Winter Fountains, the luminous orbs that decorated the Parkway, to Sea Monsters HERE, an Insta-ready serpent that wreaked playful havoc at the Navy Yard, it was certainly a big year for public art. My favorite, though, came courtesy of a brilliant burst of color and movement from the geniuses over at Klip Collective: the City Hall Deck The Hall Light Show. Granted, this iteration differed only slightly from the version the group premiered last year. But because it so lovingly touted City Hall as a dazzling piece of architecture and because it comes from a homegrown operation that’s rapidly gaining a national reputation, I’m giving it the nod. Next year, guys, maybe switch it up?

About the author

Freelance journalist JoAnn Greco writes about the fascinating people, places, trends, and stories found in the worlds of urban planning, arts and culture, design, hospitality, travel and, of course, Philadelphia. Her work has been published in the Washington Post, Art & Antiques, Toronto Globe and Mail, Amtrak’s Arrive, PlanPhilly, Penn Gazette, and dozens of others. She lives in Bella Vista.

Source: https://hiddencityphila.org/2018/12/best-architecture-urban-design-public-art-of-2018/

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pancoleon · 7 years

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Baccano Rewatch Rambling Commentary

So. due to having a long and fun talk about Baccano at MCM Manchester, I felt like rewatching the anime and OH BOY I forgot how the first episode goes, so I decided I might as well do (spoilery) commentary on here as I rewatch. Don’t expect anything written nicely or concisely, I do the numberwang, not the wordidoo.

This is the first 3 episodes and because I ramble like hell and I do reference the books, it’s a “Read More”. I apologize in advance, but “Short Form” has never been a thing I can manage. This is me essentially writing down what I say to myself while watching it. I added the formatting later, but I want to keep the rambling as in tact as possible, partly out of laziness and partly out of interest in looking back later and seeing what was going through my head.

Episode 1

I forgot just how much time is spent with the discussion between (Christ me, you literally saw this half an hour ago, how have you already forgotten her name!?) *Carol* (Thanks Baccano wiki, and by extension most likely thanks Rev) and Gustav St Germain. Looking back after reading the books, I like the fact that they used the paper explosion scene and would have loved to see that reappear later had they continued the anime. That would’ve been a nice scene of the anime doing a foreshadow of a scene to come while not making it blatantly so, and that final context would’ve probably put an extra spin on things. (Oh boy, it’s really clear I can’t write short sentences…)

The scenes foreshadowing Book 6 (Was it? I lose track. Either way, the Mist Wall book.) really hurt me. I’d have loved to see Christopher, Adele, (Heck, ALL THE HOMUNCULI) and Maria, along with seeing Ronnie just be Ronnie and fuckin’ be extra as hell with the help of essentially Omnipotent powers.

The sequence initially showing Firo... Y'know, I remember this properly, but I have to say I prefer the book version? In the books, it’s before he becomes immortal and he avoids getting hit by the knife in the first place. I feel that while how this scene was rewritten means it’s good for revealing his immortality, the books help show that he is rather suspicious as a character, which works well considering his discomfort from the fact that even after becoming immortal he is careful due to the knowledge that there *is* a way to kill him. Then again, I’m not a literary master and the change probably works considering the more carefree Firo you see in the show.

I like the setup for the Flying Pussyfoot (even if I’m sad the stuff being called in doesn’t pay off due to them not using Vino in the 1932 arc that *should* be Drugs and Dominoes). What you know from the first episode is:

that the train’s been swapped out do to an “accident”

there’s an assassin on there,

there’s immortals on there,

there’s bombs on there,

a bunch of corpses and a murderous guy with no arm and a woman he’s talking of killing litter the tracks (On an off hand note, I thought that Ladd actually killed Lua there when I initially watched Baccano),

and that the people that are leaving the train are the thieves mentioned earlier (who if you pay attention are probably immortal),

the immortal child (Funny how early it’s revealed that Czes is immortal in comparison to the books),

and a group of people of which the middle one seems to be in great pain.

You also know of an unknown figure reading an unknown message about finding someone, but that’s rather late in the story.

Point is, you are swiftly shown a lot of information you probably won’t piece everything together from, but will help give you one specific idea: Something bad happened on the Flying Pussyfoot and that (probably) included the supernatural.

Episode 2

Okay, I’ll now be writing as things happen, so I might remember names this time! And before I start, let me say this at least once. “Hah! Flying Pussyfoot is a silly name!”

I like the fact they left in the couple where the woman just calls stuff in advance.

I have to say, I am love with Isaac and Miria’s logic. “If we mine, we’re stealing from the earth!”. Along with that, the story of them being shouted at for panning for gold in other people’s land is something I want to hear more about. I’m being reminded that I damn well wish I knew more about Japanese Mythology to be able to directly pinpoint where Isaac went wrong.

Oh, and the letter from Ennis. I like how this directly implies than Ennis is not actually human without going “SHE’S A HUMONCULUS, NOT HUMAN” and then quickly makes you forget about that by having I&M start talking about this clearly means she wants a brother, rather than there having been previous people before her who were destroyed before she was created.

(Oh shit, this is gonna get looooooooong, I haven’t got past the I&M scene yet). This is followed by perfectly showing what I&M are like, by having them figure out how do to a train robbery. i.e not how you actually do one. And then I&M go to the train station, move past the Lemures, and then as they talk about the “Orchestra”, the camera zooms in on Rachel. If only the Dub hadn’t specified Vino’s gender, people might’ve thought she was Vino, that’s how the books spun it anyway. And then we get to Claire, who starts talking before coming on screen and has a conversation with Tony just before Tony gets murdered. It would have been nice if the other conductor got a couple lines here, but this does set up Claire’s anger at Tony being dead later on nicely.

Meanwhile, best panicking wreck of a leader, Jacuzzi Splot, explains what his group are doing on the train, namely stealing something. Then the anime moves focus from Nice to Czes, nicely implying that their aims/jobs are related. I’ll stop listing what happens now, but OH JEEZ I LOVE THE CUTS AND PANS AND FOCUS CHANGES. I don’t know much about cinematography, but this feels good to me.

So to abridge a conversation: Nice: Why don’t you ask them? You might make some new friends. Jacuzzi: (Panics a bit) I don’t wanna. Nice then persuades Jacuzzi to go talk to Isaac and Miria. Not much meaning, but I just wanted to say, SAAAAAAME Jacuzzi. If not for @thingsarenotwholesome taking the place of Nice, I wouldn’t talk to a lot of people. but yeah, then Jacuzzi starts crying because he thinks he’s nothing but some delinquent. Props to I&M for supporting him in the only way they know: By being lovely, funny and acting ridiculously.

Some day Narita, I’d like to see how much of this is them faking it to avoid a bad topic and how much of it is their own joy in insanity. I just can’t accept “They’re a bit mad” with no other details, because even if Isaac routinely gets stuff wrong, he’s weirdly well read. I also love the fact that Jon and Fang spend their time calling out bullshit and commenting on what’s happening. It gives a nice contrast of the straight man, while not overpowering I&M and also properly showing what their influence on Jacuzzi is.

I like that the voice acting makes it clear that Czes struggled to say his own name. Clearly from the immortal thing. Good Dub there.

The Lemures in general feel much cultier than when I was reading the books. Perhaps because in the books the individual greed for immortality in the members is made clear before the operation starts, whereas this has them speak of their unwavering loyalty (yeah fucking right) to Huey Laforet, while the Conductor preaches about how this is all for the sake of freeing their “Glorious Leader”. Shame there’s a Claire on board.

Episode 3

And we start with poor Eve Genoard looking for Dallas, too bad some other poor person has him. [Edit Note: Look, you can’t expect me to remember every detail of the books perfectly, I barely remember what I had to eat most days]

I love the Daily Days and their information based business model. The Runorata Goons just got to experience information based capitalism.

Well, I might have to source the music playing while Lua and Ladd are dancing. This is also the first scene where Lua doesn’t seem to only be some poor girl who was forced into something by Ladd, but someone who actually wants to be with Ladd.

I love Randy and Pecho, those glove burning fools. I’m also starting to realise how damn good this show is at giving you information in off-hand comments. From their short conversation we know they’re friends with Firo and that there’ll be a party, while also starting the fire that kickstarts the events of the Rolling Bootlegs.

Similarly, the anime then goes on to show that Firo is joining the Camorra as a Capo and that I&M are in town at the time. This is also why I’m writing so much, BECAUSE THEY MAKE SUCH GOOD USE OF THE TIME GIVEN. This reminds me though. Narratively, in the books, the hobo attempting to stab Firo happens just before the hat shop. I damn well wish we could properly place that scene somewhere chronologically in the show. It could literally any time still during the depression after Firo becomes immortal.

The fight between Firo and Dallas' Gang really does show the fighting talent Firo has in an impressive way, which again makes Firo getting cut in episode 1 more frustrating.

And here is the first big change to Rolling Bootlegs! Firo does not have the time nor the bottles to swap about his wine with the immortality potion for the heck of it. I'm not sure how I feel about this change, but I will commend the 2016 Manga for keeping to the books on this.

And then Jacuzzi finds the two corpses in the Conductors Wagon, which is surprising when you’re first watching considering we *know* the murderous conductor was using a gun, not sawing off people's faces.(Goddammit it Claire, kill cleaner) You could explain the second corpse as being the white suit we see get the uniform in the second episode, but if you’re looking at the corpses, the body with the face torn off is the one that looks like the Young Conductor, not the Lemure Conductor. This isn’t exactly important considering it’s revealed later, but i like that the detail can be seen. Hey, this anime is doing a better job at the Mystery genre than BBC’s Sherlock!

And at the end, with the faceoff in the Dinner Wagon, I'm calling it a night.

Well, I'll be posting this in the morning evening after as I'll be doing some formatting at my PC tomorrow, but it's midnight and I'm rather tired after MCM Manchester.

#Baccano #Rambling Commentary #Baccano EP1-3 #At least I'm learning to text edit on Tumblr #Book Spoilers

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emilysn2019-blog · 5 years

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Kōmyō-in is a sub-temple of Tofuku-ji located near Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan. It’s a hidden gem best known for its traditional Chinese dry landscape garden. In this post, we’ll share further thoughts, tips, photos, and anecdotes from Komyoin Temple.

While Komyoin ranks as on our list of the Top 100 Temples & Shrines in Kyoto, Japan, that’s our attempt at objectivity and represents a “conservative” number. At the same time, Komyoin Temple makes our 1-Day Brickers’ Perfect Kyoto, Japan Itinerary of things we’d do with only a single day in the city. It’s so far under-the-radar that you’re unlikely to see anyone else here when you visit, and it’s such a hidden gem that you might literally have difficulty finding it, as the temple blends in with other structures from the street.

To give some context, Komyoin Temple currently has 62 reviews on TripAdvisor with a 4.5 rating and 132 reviews on Google with a 4.6 rating. Both of those scores are very good, even by temple standards, but that’s not the point. The low number of reviews is the key here. Compare those with Kiyomizudera, which has 14,000 Google reviews, or nearby Fushimi Inari, which has 20,000. Pretty stark contrast!

Our first visit to Komyoin Temple solidified its position as one of Kyoto’s truly magical experiences. We started with an early morning at Fushimi Inari Shrine, setting out for our favorite spot in Kyoto right around sunrise. That visit entailed heading up the Senbon Torii path like normal, until arriving at the Yotsusuji Crossroads, which is the popular viewpoint before the Summit Loop Trail.

We then found the trailhead for the Higashiyama Course of Kyoto Isshu Circuit Trail, which leads down to Tofukuji. We took that path down through a series of interesting sub-shrines, including separate ones featuring horses, mossy foxes, and serpentines.

This dumped us out right near Komyoin, where our “adventure” continued. If you’re interested in this hike, our Hiking Kyoto Trail: Fushimi Inari Shrine to Tofukuji Temple post covers everything you need to know, and the steps for taking this easy route. It’s a great experience that we highly recommend.

Komyoin Temple was practically right in front of us at this point, but it did take us a couple of passes by to “discover” it. For what it’s worth, the Google Maps location is accurate, and Komyoin Temple does more closely resemble a traditional Japanese machiya townhouse than it does a temple.

Upon arriving at the entrance to the temple, we encountered no one. Literally. Apparently, Komyoin Temple is so unpopular (I really hate using that term, as the review consensus is that those who visit love it) that they can’t justify the cost of staffing it.

Instead, the entry fee is paid into a bamboo slot via the honor system. Only in Japan.

Inside, there are a series of interconnected rooms, each of which offers a different perspective into the karesansui, or dry landscape garden for which Komyoin Temple is known.

These rooms are all simple and straightforward, and exist to highlight the garden. There’s also a teahouse known as Ragetsu (or “Mossy Moon”) that overlooks the garden.

Komyoin Temple’s dry landscape garden is named Hashin-no-Niwa and consists of rocks, water, moss, pruned trees, shrubs, plus white sand and moss to achieve its design. Hashin-no-Niwa features 3 sets of rocks arranged in circles, and the arrangement of the stones makes them appear to radiate light.

There are satsuki and azaleas that bloom in early summer along with bellflowers, which is said to give Komyoin Temple a kaleidoscope of color. (We’ve yet to see this.) As a result, Hashin-no-Niwa is sometimes informally referred to as the Niji no Kokedera (or “Rainbow Moss Temple”).

The autumn foliage that forms the backdrop of Komyoin Temple is also said to be famous. This would seem to check out. On the interior walls, Komyoin Temple proudly displays some of the ad campaigns featuring the garden, and almost all of them showcase the fall colors.

One is even a nationwide Japan Rail poster, which makes me question how is Komyoin still under the radar?!

Whatever the explanation, we’re glad that tourists don’t flock to Komyoin. For one, the small space couldn’t handle colossal crowds. We love sitting inside, soaking up the serenity and being alone with the mesmerizing Hashin-no-Niwa garden.

You don’t need much time to see everything here (10 minutes would probably do), but we love sitting here. We could do just that (and have) for an hour.

If you don’t access Komyoin Temple via the aforementioned hike, the easiest way to find it is from Tofukuji Station along the JR Keihan Line; it’s a 10 minute walk from there. Other nearby train, subway, and bus routes are also available–just consult Google Maps.

Admission to Komyoin Temple is 0 yen and it’s open from 8 a.m. until sunset.

Ultimately, a big thing that makes Komyoin Temple so special is that it’s usually deserted. The garden itself is stunning, but it wouldn’t be as impactful if it were crammed with people. Accordingly, it’s pretty much a requirement that word doesn’t spread too far and wide about Komyoin.

The upside is that this article is unlikely to ruin anything. There are already a surprising number of blog posts elsewhere about this hidden gem, and those haven’t had an impact. Even many of you who do read this advice imploring you to visit Komyoin Temple are likely to ignore it (no offense taken), as it’s on exactly 0 Kyoto top 10 lists and few other resources recommend it. That’s good news for the few of you who do heed our recommendation…and for us as we make return visits to our newest “must-see” temple in Kyoto.

If you’re planning a trip to Japan that includes Kyoto, we recommend that you start by consulting our Ultimate Guide to Kyoto, Japan to plan all aspects of our vacation. You should also check out our other posts about Japan for ideas on other places to visit!

Your Thoughts

Have you visited Komyoin Temple? What did you think of the experience? Would you recommend it to a first-timer visiting Japan? Any thoughts or tips of your own to add? Any questions about what we’ve covered here? Does visiting this spot in Kyoto interest you? Hearing about your experiences—even when you disagree with us—is both interesting and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!

The post Komyoin Temple Tips: Kyoto, Japan Info appeared first on Travel Caffeine.

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apprxmtn · 5 years

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this is a draft i found on my college wgs.111 wordpress, dated may 4, 2016, that i suppose i was too afraid to post, and i guess i keep all my writing on tumblr, and no one will read this, so

on street harassment:

this is just a lot of personal thoughts sorry

---

i stayed quiet during the discussion on street harassment - it's not something i've personally experienced often, so i wanted to respect the space and experiences of those who were sharing. personally, i feel that a non-threatening tone and respect for someone's space make the statement more of a compliment than harassment, but i also believe that men should understand and respect that some women are not comfortable being approached by any men due to past experience and real danger, and that sure it sucks for them, but if they care that much about being able to compliment women on the street, they should be also working to eradicate misogyny and rape culture amongst their peers. i do believe street harassment is a serious issue that reflects a widespread culture of men feeling entitled to women's bodies. the following is just a reflection of my experience alone (not a reflection of all of my thoughts on street harassment).

as a not-particularly-attractive-but-still-feminine-looking person, the feminist movement's rhetoric surrounding street harassment - "every woman has a story of harassment!" etc - has really alienated me and is one of the myriad reasons i decided to identify as nonbinary, because so many of these "universal women's issues" just don't apply to me. i actually considered interning for hollaback last year, but didn't feel comfortable working on street harassment when i wasn't even attractive enough to be harassed. (not to mention hollaback's myriad other issues - the video we watched, the boston chapter actually separated from them and formed a new group (the safe hub collective), the head of hollaback has been criticized for the way she treats employees and the organization... anyway.) the face(s) of the feminist movement itself even seems to often be these conventionally attractive women that make me feel unwelcome or inadequate as a feminist activist. and i do think there's some merit to this concern - conventionally attractive people are more likely to be listened to, and of course this distinction is worse for women than for men.

i think the feminist movement has been particularly vocal about these issues that affect conventionally attractive women the most. street harassment is about power, but it is also about men finding a woman attractive, as the poor "men's justifications" we saw in class show. on the flip side, the fat and body positive movements have been vocal about the issues that affect fat women - the inverse, rather than "compliments", fat women have spoken out about on-face insulting street harassment, often the insinuation that she is taking up too much space and doesn't deserve to be in public, eat certain things, or dress a certain way. women or feminine-coded people like me who aren't really on either end, i find, are sort of invisible, both in the movement and in real life. in my experience, i have quite often felt literally invisible. people have looked over and through me, walked into line as if i wasn't there, etc. for context, i'm not exactly a quiet person but i am pretty shy in public and in large groups. but this experience isn't something i've seen other people write about - i haven't seen any thinkpieces about daily experience by average-looking women. perhaps there's something to be said about women being either objects of desire, objects of ridicule, or invisible - but i don't know, because i don't know if other women have this experience, because no one talks about this.

to be honest, the four (exactly four, all within the ages of 18 and 20) times i have been harassed or politely approached by men on the street, part of me has always appreciated it. as someone who has struggled with body image and general appearance for years, it is actually nice to know that someone out there finds me to be attractive. in the cases where i've been yelled at (2/4), i've been like, wow that's totally rude and misogynist, but hey at least i look good today? in the cases where i've been politely approached (2/4), i almost wish we'd kept talking. there's this sort of romantic-narrative-trope of two people meeting in a cafe, finding each other mutually attractive, and then finding true love or even just a fling or whatever, and i know women who have met and casually/seriously dated men they met at parties, concerts, etc. for once, i really want to have a relationship with someone where there's mutual physical attraction - despite finding the men i've been involved with fine as people, that has literally never happened to me. there's also this common argument where men are like "ugh, women have it so easy! they can literally have any guy they want" which really only applies to conventionally attractive women, which again, makes me think that ordinary-looking-women are just invisible in men's eyes and minds. one guy i was briefly involved with literally told me that women have to meet a "certain standard of attractiveness" to be dateable - but that standard must have been pretty low, because he also told me i should lose weight.

i know this sort of sounds like me whining that i can't find a boyfriend, but i have been in a very happy relationship (and an open one, so...) for over two and a half years now. that isn't the point of this. the point of this is (yes, partially a rant, but mostly) to point out the diversity of women's experiences that are often overlooked, but could provide for some rich analytic material and reveal something about our culture - orrrr to ascertain that maybe i'm the only one who feels this way.

i don't know. i guess i just want to see if anyone else has felt this way, because in all my years of trawling the feminist-leaning interwebs i have never, ever seen anyone write about this experience.

addendum: like i said, i can count the times i've been harassed or even politely approached by men on the street on one hand. in fact, i can write them all down for you, in detail.

the first time was the summer after my senior year. i had just turned eighteen and was sitting outside of starbucks by my high school (in a rich, predominantly white and asian neighborhood). if i recall correctly i was wearing a cardigan, a bland top, and shorts. when a man (probably around thirtyish years old) came up to me. he asked me what kind of ipad i had (i had been working) and about how it worked, as he was interested in buying one. then he complimented my nail polish (?! of all things), said he had seen me while working, and that i looked "all hipster and stuff." he asked how my summer was going, i told him i was going off to college, he said "oh so you're eighteen?" and i confirmed. (that should've been the warning sign, but this had never happened to me before!) after a couple more minutes of small talk, he said he lived about 20 minutes away and asked if i wanted to hang out sometime, and i said i was pretty busy for the rest of the summer getting ready for school and catching up with friends, he said alright well nice talking to you, and left. it was overall a very polite, if not pleasant, encounter.

the second time was in my second week of college. my friends and i had just gone to a waterfight on the charles as part of rush week, and as our clothes were soaked in nasty charles river water and literally attracting flies, we all decided to take our shirts off. two guys and i were walking back by the train tracks, and an old man (probably one of the homeless ones that lives behinds simmons?) yelled "hey, where can i get some of that?" to my friends' credit they quickly grabbed me, one of them held my hand in a fake-boyfriend act and we sped away. i would definitely file this encounter under harassment, but given that i was actually walking around in a bra, which isn't socially acceptable (another conversation in itself, obviously), i don't consider it to be evidence of an "everyday" phenomenon or even particularly unwarranted.

the third time was the fall of sophomore year, in the harvard yard starbucks. i don't remember what i was wearing, but i was on my way to a meeting for work and it was october, so it was probably fairly professional and covered-up. i was waiting for my drink, when the guy next to me tapped me on the shoulder, and said "excuse me? i just wanted to tell you you're really pretty." taken completely aback, i awkwardly said, "uh, thanks? i mean, i'm like five feet tall, so not much to work with?" he didn't really respond or try to engage me in further conversation. i don't think this was harassment at all, and in fact, i really appreciated it and it made me a little happier for the rest of the day, and i wished we had kept talking. i still think about it sometimes, and i'm like, damn, a stranger thought i was attractive once, so it's possible! anything can happen!

the fourth and final time was in a metro station in downtown LA, the summer before junior year. it was summer in LA and ridiculously hot, so i was wearing a tank top and short shorts, and sandals with a .5-inch heel. as i was walking across the fairly empty bus circle, someone shouted, "damn look at those legs!" i looked around and saw another man, but no other women. i was really confused because, again, i'm five feet tall (maybe the 0.5 inch of heels helped?). i'd definitely classify this as harassment, but personally, i didn't feel in danger as i was on my way to a crowded subway station, and actually part of me took it as a compliment, because for years i would wear jeans in the hottest of los angeles summers because i was so self-conscious about the way my legs looked.

#rambles #ignore thx

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bookmark-it · 6 years

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Plot Upheaval?

A little historical context:

The Karstlanders/Karstlandic Kings were a group of Viking-like people who sailed from the North (Karstland, specifically which, duh) out to the Wider Seas basically looking for places to conquer and colonize (assholes). Eventually, they arrived at the northern tip of the continent once known as Timur.

Northern Timur was made up of three to five distinct civilizations (depending on the time period and who you asked. The Karstlanders took over the region and divided it into three “states” - New Westmoreland, Gettonsgate & Yaduru (later shortened to Gettons & Yaduru), and St. Galbert’s Island.

New Westmoreland was originally home to the Pagatowar people (who called the land Umnepo). Gettons & Yaduru was originally just Yaduru. The Karstlanders invaded, but couldn’t completely defeat the Da-rai warrior tribes, which is how Yaduru exists as an independent city-state to this day. St. Galbert’s (originally called Nilam by its native peoples, the Orang batu) is an island mostly used for agriculture and has remained so even in modern times.

The Karstlanders unified these states into a single nation, called Trinnea, nearly 213 years ago, but they’re still often refereed to as the Karstland States or the Karstlandic Triadica.

In Karstland itself, they’re derogatorily called the Leftover States.

Why does all that history bullshit matter?

Part of the Karstlanders’ motivation for conquest (besides the usual), was the search for untapped sources of viv, their word for naturally occurring, raw/unrefined magical energy. Basically, viv is to magic what crude oil is to petroleum.

The Karstlanders found plenty of viv, and opened several large Ley Lines (the term for stores of refined viv/usable Magic) across Trinnea.

But they wanted more.

So the Karstland Kings broke a huge taboo, one that existed across every culture of the world: they pierced the Veil, broke the Boundary, and sailed over the Last Horizon and into the Realm of the Other Folk, the Hidden People, The Fae...in hopes of finding more Magic.

Three Karstlandic ships sailed into Faerie Territory: the Alchemist, the Archbishop, and the Artificer.

Only the Artificer survived to see landfall.

How do Humans survive in Faerie Land?

Terrible, unnatural storms battered the ships for three days straight. And even more strangely, once the sun set on that first night on the Otherside, it never rose again. There in Faerie Land, it was eternally night. The Karstlanders didn’t recognize any stars/constellations in the sky and, even more disconcertingly, there was no moon.

Finally, the relentless storms calmed. The Artificer’s captain, Sir Yancy Harken Toddleburr, recalled the moment in his ship’s log in a passage that is now famous, and a popular recitation piece in finishing schools back home in Karstland.

He writes:

“The water of this cursed, endless sea is wholly unnatural. The foreign sky above meets it [the water] at the horizon and is devoured by its waves....no lite [sic] reflects from its surface, like the eyes of a dead man...not even our bespelled torches can pierce its depths...this an evil place, and no man belongs here.”

Land, ho!

After an indeterminate time adrift, land was sighted, but it was a strange ass sight. The land literally glowed, a bright, undeniable orange, a beacon above the light-less waves. The orange color is why the Karstlanders named the new land Meteoria. Modern science has determined that the soil in Meteoria is highly ferrous (lots of iron molecules) and contains high concentrations of meteoric iron. (Rebekah says: This ties into the fact that iron is a useful ward against fae kind, in the soil it is not harmful to them, but when extracted, refined, and wielded by humans i.e. taken from its natural state, it is harmful to fairy folk).

The Karstlanders disembarked and began their exploration. They didn’t have to look very hard - the land was brimming with viv. It was also brimming with Otherfolk: Seelie, Unseelie, Demons, Monsters, Ghosts, Spirits, all kinds of non-humans.

So what did the humans do? Well...they just did what they’d always done of course: conquer, fragment, destabilize, colonize. They began a systemic destruction of the native Fae populations using techniques they’d “perfected” with the native Pagatowar of New Westmoreland, the Da-rai of Yaduru, and the Orang batu of Nilam.

Over hundreds of years of colonization, only a small area of Meteoria was left for the Fae, a bit of land to the North that the Karstlanders couldn’t tame. The Humans called it The Wildness, but the Fae knew it as the lair of the Wilder Queen, Land Spirit of the faerie realm.

The Wildness was under her direct protection, because within its depths, beat her Heart, the very kernel of the earth. If the Karstlanders ever got a hold of it, they could "tame” her, the Wilder Queen, and finally claim the once Fae-owned land completely for themselves. They haven’t managed it...yet.

Despite the Wilder Queen’s protection, the Wildness is not a Fae paradise.

Destruction of Fae habitats and relocation of all different kinds of Fae has forced long-feuding factions to co-exist. Seelie and Unseelie, Trouping and Solitary, Friendly and Malicious, Night and Day...all together in a small area. The Wildness isn’t just dangerous for Humans, but for Faekind as well.

Okay? Why do I care?

Shortly after its founding, Meteoria was used as a penal colony for the Karstland States. It was a dangerous place to settle, what with Fae running all about, as well as a LITERALLY hostile environment (The Wilder Queen wasn’t going to relinquish her control easily). The Karstland Kings figured it’d be better if Prisoner-workers died fighting to settle the colony rather than “real” people/citizens.

Modern day Meteoria is a colony in flux. Ninety-eight percent of the land is "civilized”, with human!free-settlers and human!prisoner-workers living in relative peace. It is still in use as a penal colony for the Karstland states, though now, about 40% of the prisoner-workers aren’t “shipped in” but residents of Meteoria, themselves. The current royal governor, Niveus Borscheid, is determined to be the one that finally fully “civilizes” Meteoria so it can elevate itself from penal colony to economical powerhouse, maybe one that could even challenge it’s mother country.

But that’s easier said than done because the 2% of Uncivilized Meteoria is a bitch of a place. It’s comprised of the Fringes and the Wildness itself. The Fringes are where the Human and Fae populations are most likely to mingle. It is an extremely dangerous place for Humans (and Fae). Its the considered the front lines of the battle for the Wilder Queen’s heart, a battle that’s been going on for nearly 120 years (by human measurements).

The Fringe is also home to a few “Weird Towns” where Humans and Fae co-exist. There’s even ghastly rumors in the civilized world of some Humans breeding with Fae to create...Halfmen.

It is known that such things happened in Meteoria’s past, as a way to breed some civility into the Fae. But it was an uncouth time then. Besides, back in the day such couplings were highly regulated. Humans only interbred with the Fair Folk, the Good Neighbors as they were sometimes called; the Fae who were beautiful, kind, benevolent - those who fell in line with Humanity’s standards of beauty and morality.

Now, in modern times, such couplings are considered about as charitably as interracial marriages are in our world. Every pretty human girl knows that the best way to get “revenge” on her family, is to bring home some Fae boy or girl.

A map of “civilized” Meteoria...

The capital is Port Grace. This is where prisoner-workers first arrive in country. It is also where their labor is sold at the famous/infamous Hipplethwaite Square (Labor) Market.

Besides Port Grace, there are several other medium to large cities in Meteoria. In the southern marshlands (where Port Grace is located), there is Iron Station to the northeast, and in the west are the "princess cities" of Ernestine and Rohesia.

The middle part of the island is predominantly agrarian. It's mostly farming villages, but there is one town larger than the rest, Crossings, where a huge farmers' market/agricultural festival is held every full moon. Crossings is large enough that it crosses the Needle River in three places (hence the name): once in Slurry near the Midland Ley Line, once in the Old Town, right across from Halyard's Chapel, and then again near Southgate.

Between Crossings and the west coast are several towns: Ralston, Moss Fenning, and Badwater. There are two notable ports along the western shoreline: St. Winston and Kettlesbottom Shoals.

The eastern part of Meteoria is taken up by the craggy Mossbacks, a range of green mountains known for their rugged terrain/viv mining industry. The biggest mine in all Meteoria is in the Mossback town of Jubilee. Other mining settlements include Little Holler, Travers, and Compromise. The biggest "city" out east is Asheton, named for frontiersman/explorer, Barnabas Ashe. Asheton sits at the bottom of the Salter-Erskine Escarpment, and is known as the "grand foyer" of the Mossbacks.

The northern most tip of Meteoria is taken up by the Wildness, a completely uninhabitable swath of land overrun with magical beings.

The biggest permanent settlement out that way is a Fringe town called Last Stop because that's where the Shooting Star Line (name of the only transcontinental railway) ends. Its the terminus for all train traffic in Meteoria.

Between Last Stop and the Wildness is the Fringe Land.

So how does this new information change things?

It makes the Gauntlet more concrete: the Human challengers will have to fight off hostile fae and the Wilder Queen

Owusu and Nona (J.J.’s new name, which I will explain in more detail in a separate post) are still human. I chose to do this because it seems shitty to have Fae be a metaphor for native populations but, like, not include (Fictional) native humans. The Karstlanders screwed over everybody, humans and Fae.

Taufan has Fae heritage. She is Orang bunian (basically the Southeast Asian version of Elves). Her ancestors intermarried with humans as part of the “Civilization Programs” in which “acceptable fae” and humans intermarried to create Halfmen, hopefully easing relations between the humans and the Fae. As a Bunian, Taufan has a natural affinity for all types of magic, unnatural beauty, and innate healing abilities.

Rafi is a “brute” or “mongrel” - a mix of human and several “unsavory” Fae. Specifically, Rafi is a quarter human, a quarter giant, a quarter ogre, and a quarter Duende (Hispanic gnome-like peoples). Her “bad”/”muddy” heritage is blamed for her issues with reading/using Sigils. It’s also why she’s encouraged to join the army. She’s big and strong (6′4′‘ and jacked as shit) and dumb and not fully human, so if she dies, it’s not that big of a deal (according to popular thought).

#world building #Gauntlet verse #owusu #taufan #rafi #nona #the wilder queen

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blogamyamykinslove-blog · 8 years

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“Bob-Ji” my pet spider in Simla. don’t be scared, he guarded my bathroom well!

Coffee House rear balcony view.

Heritage train station on Simla-Kalka Heritage rail

Heritage Railway Station

View from Heritage Railway

Adorable “Bloom Rooms” Hotel in Dehli.

Woke at the crack of dawn to find that my body was doing it’s natural female letting go thing, which definitely explained yesterday’s tearfulness on the physiological level…

But, no rest for the wicked, as they say, so I got myself up and power-walked back to The Coffee House for another fantastic breakfast and coffee sitting on one of the back balcony overlooking the town terraces and Himalayan foothill mountains. On the way back out of town to fetch my luggage, I observed a family of monkeys clambering down the side of the last building of The Mall from the roof using drainpipes and telephone cables, and was deeply touched by the baby of the family making his brave yet cautious effort while her mum watched intently. The wee one made little noises of trepidation the entire time “ooh, eeeh, umm, ohoooh” I could hear his thoughts, “Umm, I’m going to try this out… Um, oh dear, ok, annnd…. umm, ok I’ll try this this way, oh jeez, I’m not sure now…” Of course he made it safely and he and mum caught up to the rest of the group. It was very sweet. These are the kinds of monkey behaviours I like, and when they’re quietly preening each other while basking in the sun on top of the walls, etc. I snatched my bags after bidding good-bye to my pet spider “Bob-Ji” (all my pet spiders are named “Bob”, but since this was an Indian spider, I felt he should have an Indian inflection to his name) who kept guard in my bathroom during my stay, and walked downhill to the train station.

I was sorry to be leaving Simla. I realized that like Dharmsala it’s “India-Lite” in that it’s a friendly, clean and safe tourist town, though in two days I had seen most of what it had to offer. I was also super excited for the excruciatingly slow “toy”train ride along the World Heritage Simla to Kalka line (built in 1906, one travels 96kms, through 102 tunnels, and over 988 bridges in 6 hours). I got into the 1st class car, and was astounded by how narrow and tiny the train was altogether- economy class in airplanes have higher ceilings and more leg room- and I felt deeply sorry for the gigantic German tourists squeezing themselves onto the miniature bench seats. Everyone in the train was very friendly, but we had to be as we sat knee to knee! This train ride, despite the heat, distance and cramped quarters was absolutely worth doing! The picturesque multiple-tiered and arch supported stone bridges, tunnels short and long, gorgeous and ever-changing mountain vistas, and changing vegetation were stunning. There are a number of heritage train stations along the line that are also beyond adorable, and seem to have no other function except to be perfectly kept up with gardens, lovely hanging planter baskets and shining sky blue and white tiled water stations, so the station master cum gardener can stand proudly in front of it and wave the train on with his green flag. I was sitting facing the rear of the train, so had real difficulty getting photos of these quaint jewel-like train stations in time. I would go back and do it all again to get a lot more photos. There were many instances where we on the train were looking down onto roadways, and they had an awful lot of views of rock faces, landslide areas, and dust. The vegetation as we wound our way down from elevation was an ever-changing delight and wonder. The tops of the mountains in Himachal Pradesh are very dry, water is pumped and trucked up to towns and city cisterns, so leaving Simla initially the landscape was quite sere with short grass, shrubs, pine trees and stands of Prickly Pear and Danda Thor cacti! Only at elevation, there was also a rarely seen tree with fine pink blossoms that rivaled cherry blossoms in loveliness, although they were far more delicate. We later reached the pine forest level, and it was a gorgeous sight as each pine needle glinted and gleamed in the sunshine as if it had been polished, and the colour was vibrant and fresh. As we continued to descend, the pine gave way to deciduous trees like mountain ash and arbutus, which, again, if you live in British Columbia and have ever been traveling through the interior and Okanagan, they don’t seem so exotic- but it was good to see that a lot of these forests have been preserved and the hills not completely denuded. And of course, the wildflowers grew in colourful profusion at every point down the mountains. The flowers in India… Incomparable.

We finally arrived at Kalka, a completely unremarkable and purely utilitarian transportation hub town on the border of Himachal Pradesh. There I joined a tour group of Canadians, Brits and Germans in the “Executive” waiting room, which had a lovely washroom, air-conditioning and comfey couches to enjoy while waiting for the Kalka to Delhi train. Amusingly, a couple of the ladies there recognized me from my wanders in the streets of Dharmsala, and they happened to be from Vancouver. We all got onto a regular express train to Delhi, and I appreciated the reclining chair, A/C- and the meal and 1L water bottle provided. It wasn’t immaculate, but it was definitely a clean train- I might have been one of the dirtiest things on it! Train travel is definitely an improvement over bus travel, but one does get a view of the town garbage tips and constant litter beside the tracks, which is quite sad. Except for the upsetting amount of garbage Indians strew everywhere (it’s not their fault, the caste system makes it very difficult for the upper castes to put their minds to problems that are “beneath” them, like sanitation, garbage collection, sewage. It’s actually quite ridiculous that India has no recycling program nor proper sewage and water works, but it’s definitely a hangover from India’s historical context. Bureaucrats and officials in high levels of government LITERALLY have not been capable of wrapping their heads around managing garbage because it should not even be on their radar- they’re too “upper class”, it’s not something they have ever been concerned about) , the views are still much more picturesque, and a waxing gibbous moon was shining outside my window.

I was picked up from the New Dehli train station with little hassle by the driver supplied by “Bloom Rooms” hotel. The poor guy (whom I discovered was, you guessed it, from Dharmsala) had to run to the opposite side of the station when I failed to wait for him on the platform. I was sorry to have done that to him because Sanay was one of those devastatingly handsome, tall, bearded Indian men. Oh yes, there are a lot of very tall, devastatingly handsome, full bearded Indian men in India. When Indian men are devestatingly handsome, they are truly and ridiculously handsome. It’s devestating. Anyway. I was sorry to see him go.

“Bloom Rooms” in New Dehli, by the way, is an absolutely charming contemporary hotel very near to the train station that takes one to Agra. I highly recommend it. Everything is very Western design and Western clean- and the charming beech wood, white and yellow rooms have bunkbeds! I tumbled myself into the gorgeous shower and then into bed as quickly as possible. Next stop is Agra for the Taj Mahal… tomorrow.

Simla-> Kalka-> Delhi Oct. 14 ’16 Woke at the crack of dawn to find that my body was doing it's natural female letting go thing, which definitely explained yesterday's tearfulness on the physiological level...

#Alpine vegetation #Bloom Rooms Hotel #Cacti in India #Heritage Simla-Kalka Railway #Kalka train station #New Delhi #Toy train #Train Travel

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