#however as someone who's trying to survive in a world that's hostile and cruel to unnecessary lengths

[sweet-beezus]

Are you happy?

Hesitated on answering simply because it's such a loaded and unexpected question, however the short of it is that I am happy, at the very least, to be alive to experience wonders I never imagined I'd get the chance to!

I'd say that's as simple as it needs to be right now :)

[goodneighborxfallout]

How would the companions react to Little Lamplight and Mayor Maccready?

Thanks for requesting!

Cait:

Little Lamplight: “It may seem cruel for these children to have to live like this but… I think I would prefer this over my own childhood, you know?” 

MacCready: “Not a hope that this little shithead and MacCready are the same person! Way too polite, that bloke.” 

Codsworth:

Little Lamplight: “A society run by children? Oh mum/sir, I don’t dare imagine little Shaun having to grow up in a place like this.” 

MacCready: “Oh dear, such hostility from a child? I suppose I can’t expect anything different. These poor kids never had any proper adult guidance! Sir/mum, I propose we send a Ms Nanny their way!” 

Curie:

Little Lamplight: “Oh, this is just horrible! No child should have to survive in these conditions! Isn’t there anything we can do to help them?” 

MacCready: “Such vulgarity! Has no one got manners anymore in this world?” 

Danse:

Little Lamplight: “Look what the war did to these children! This is yet more proof of why technology in the hands of the wrong people can have devastating consequences!” 

MacCready: “The exact attitude one would expect from someone who’d grow up to be a mercenary.” (Mac: “What’s that supposed to mean??”) 

Deacon:

Little Lamplight: “A parentless life is a sad reality for many children in the wastes. However morbid this may look, they’ve been managing well.”

MacCready: Deacon will try to convince mayor MacCready that he’s just a really tall child. On top of that, he will forever call adult MacCready ‘mungo’ and make up countless different reasons for how he knows that term.

Gage:

Little Lamplight: “Interesting set-up. I guess they’re pretty safe here from outside threats, except - you know - the gigantic green monsters next door.” (insert sarcasm)

MacCready: “Kid, you have no idea the kind of company I’ve had to deal with all these years. You wanna rile me up? Then stray away from your vanilla boring ass insults ‘cause I ain’t impressed.” 

Hancock:

Little Lamplight: “Huh, cozying up right next to a super mutant den? Either these kids are incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. Probably an unhealthy mix of both.” 

MacCready: “So this is the origin story of our favorite mercenary? Hm, I’ll admit, almost as good as mine.” 

Longfellow:

Little Lamplight: Longfellow won’t say anything, but a profound sadness washes over him at the sight in front of him. If somewhere deep down he still had hope for the world, it was now for sure fully taken away.

MacCready: “Youngsters these days…” 

MacCready:

“Ahh the good old times.” 

Nick:

Little Lamplight: “I can’t tell if I’m more impressed by their tenacity, or more disappointed that they need it to survive.” 

MacCready: “Well, behind every hardened mercenary, there is some kind of tragic backstory, isn’t there?” He sighs. “Maybe I’ve been too hard on the kid.” 

Piper:

Little Lamplight: “Oh god… I’ve always known the Wasteland was hard but… these are children. They should be getting raised by two loving parents not living like… this.”

MacCready: Piper’s always known MacCready as a chill mercenary who tries a bit too hard to flirt with her. She’s never paid much attention to him, but seeing him as a child living in these circumstances, she suddenly finds herself looking at him in a completely different light. 

Preston:

Little Lamplight: “This is why we have to bring back the Minutemen! Children deserve to grow up in a safe place, not hiding out in a cave.”

MacCready: “Damn… With how chill he is, you’d never guess he had this kind of childhood. Certainly explains why he’s so good at his job though.” 

Strong:

Little Lamplight: “Not safe for small human! Brother smash small human!” 

MacCready: “Small human talk too much!” 

X6-88:

Little Lamplight: “And here I thought I’d already seen the worst of the surface.” 

MacCready: “Interesting. Somehow the child version seems tougher than the adult.”

[autisticsupervillain]

FTF: Isekai Invasion

The show where we take a character and drop them into a different franchise at a random location to see if they can conquer the world.

This Episode...

Xefros Tritoh invades Empire City!

Conditions:

Takes place in the Evil Karma Timeline of inFAMOUS 1

Scenario:

After finding the device that sent Joey to Alternia, Xefros inadvertently gets himself to to Empire City, landing smack dab in the middle of its gang war conflict.

Invader: Xefros

Return Readers are no doubt familiar with the hellish planet of Alternia. The bleeding heart of the cruel, colonizing Alternian Empire and the factor in which trollkind's children are raised to be killers. It is a brutal, uncaring world where enemy and friend mean the same thing and the corpses outnumber the houses on the streets.

How does an ordinary child survive on such a planet? How does an average person look like in Hell? Well, they don't get much more average than Xefros Tritoh.

Xefros is flat at the bottom of Alternia's hierarchy. As a rust blood with a timid demeanor and no immediately obvious combat ability, Xefros fears for his life on a nightly basis. Anyone or anything could have him killed at any time and no one would care. When the world acknowledged him at all, it was only to remind him that his life didn't matter. Even to a rebellion supposedly fighting in his interests, Xefros didn't matter. His own moirail, er, basically alien queerplatonic life partner those not in the know, doesn't treat him with the slightest respect, doubling down on squashing his self esteem at seemingly every opportunity for reasons we still don't understand. It was a miserable existence.... until he made an actual friend.

Joey Claire was a human far from home with Xefros as her only guide on this hostile alien world. With no understanding of any kind of hemospectrum or an preconceived notions of Xefros's self worth, Joey could see Xefros for who he actually was. Not as a disposable pawn or a worthless servant, but as a scared, traumatized boy who desperately needed a friend. And, now that he has one, Xefros will do anything he can to protect her.

Xefros is an entirely ordinary example of his species, yes, but he's standard for a race of galactic conquers. His strength and speed are clearly superhuman by Earth standards, such as when he survived his hive getting reduced to rubble on top of him with nothing but light bleeding. He also seems resistant to energy draining abilities, with Folykl, someone who drains the psionic and life energy of anyone she touches to keep herself alive, describing trying to drain him as like "sucking on a brick". As a rust blood, Xefros possesses weak basic telekinesis, allowing him to move small objects with great exertion, and can see and talk to ghosts. Most impressively, however, he's capable of holding his own against gold bloods.

Gold bloods are used as batteries for the Empire's fleet ships when they come of age, having their incredible psionic abilities harnessed to power the Empire's warcrafts. When reduced to this state, gold bloods are capable of supplying enough power to these sheeps to push them at near light speeds, generating an awe inspiring kinetic energy of nearly 95 Petatons of TNT. That's enough to obliterate continents, almost enough to completely raze the Earth's surface!

Source:

The gold bloods Xefros fought should be capable of this level of power. Kuprum has been actively training himself and his abilities for the sake of being as good a Helmsman as possible, while Azdaja is even stronger than him. Folykl, someone who easily feeds on Kuprum, can't even tough Azdaja because of his sheer raw power. Azdaja is powerful enough to carve up canyons, and is a dreaded assassin with hundreds of kills to his name.

Xefros could stand up to Azdaja, but ultimately couldn't win... at first. But when Joey was threatened, Xefros's latent Rage powers activated and allowed him to completely stomp Azdaja into the ground.

Rage is one of the twelve Aspects, primordial concepts that govern Homestuck's reality. As a Rage Bound, Xefros can naturally harness negative emotions to bolster himself. His abilities here remain undeveloped, as he simply doesn't have the privilege to be allowed to get angry at anything without being killed. But, seeing as Xefros has already shown to beat Goldbloods and even Purple Bloods with this power, his full potential is likely awe inspiring.

That's sorta the running theme with Xefros. His potential as a person is hampered by a society that's presumed him to be worthless. But, now that he has someone he can fight for, someone who values Xefros for Xefros, the full well of his potential as been opened. Xef just has a lot of self confrontation and soul searching to do before he gets there.

Invaded: Empire City

Empire City. One of the biggest, richest, and most populated cities in the United States. As the inFAMOUS universe's equivalent to New York, this meant it was only a matter of time until everything went wrong.

A mysterious terrorist organization called the First Sons created a device called the Ray Sphere, an explosive device that wiped out much of the city's population, unleashed a horrid plague upon the people, and, worse, gave a select few with a certain gene elemental superpowers. These "Conduits" as they came to be known took their power to the streets and took over the now quarantined city, plunging it into a gang war.

The City and its districts were split by three factions. The Reapers, former drug dealers led by a former First Sons mad scientist named Sasha. The Dust Men, a group of homeless people who turned into a cult who worshipped their leader, Alden Tate, after his fortune was stolen and he was reduced to living in the slums, and the First Sons themselves, lead by an enigmatic man named Kessler.

Sasha's gang is the weakest of the three, as its made mostly of mind controlled innocent civilians brought to heel under Sasha's mind controlling tar. Anyone doused in the substance will be brought under Sasha's command, with repeated ingestions even transforming the victims body's. Ordinary Reapers are strong enough to threaten Zeke Dunbar, who himself is strong enough to tackle open gates, survive a fall into the Hudson River from the bridge, and is fast enough to dodge automatic fire. While Reaper Conduits fully transformed by the tar are granted superhuman stature, being strong enough to survive a gas station explosion and fast enough to dodge Cole's lightning attacks briefly. Sasha's tar is potent enough to potentially control all of Empire City and can induce hallucinations in those strong enough to resist it.

The Dust Men are even more powerful, amplified by Alden's ability to turn scrap and rusty trash into giant mechanical golems to bolster his army's forces. These golems are powerful enough to blast helicopters out of the sky and strudy enough to survive a helicopters engine exploding in their face. While Alden himself may he physically frail and require a cane, he can create a giant trash behemoth capable of putting up a fight against Cole MacGrath.

And finally, the First Sons. A secret society do advanced that people abducted by them have assumed they've been kidnapped by aliens. They created and perfected the Ray Sphere device, a machine that upon detonation sucks the bio-electricity out of none Conduits and pours it into all the Conduits in range, activating their powers and amplifying their existing ones. Every gang leader in inFAMOUS 1 is, at the bare minimum, strong enough to survive the Ray Sphere explosion, which vaporized six city blocks, requiring them to tank an energy equivalent to 5.7 megatons of TNT.

Source:

Kessler spent decades planning his take over of Empire City, getting connections in Washington to keep the quarantine going while he took over. His Conduits possess the power to turn into giants and he's built flying drones that can turn invisible and shoot grenades from afar. Kessler himself possesses all of Cole MacGrath's powers from the first game, with a few additional abilities. He can punch the ground hard enough to make Earthquakes, create giant clones of himself that mind control anyone they touch, including Cole himself if he gets hit, and can teleport in invisible drones to assist him in combat.

But then there's the man himself. The Demon of Empire City. Evil Cole MacGrath. Unjustly framed for the nuking of Empire City, Cole MacGrath in this timeline became a bitter, power hungry tyrant, interest in little else than dominating Empire City like his own kingdom. His vast electrokinetic arsenal allows him to glide, control electricity as it moves at 90% light speed through wires, create forcefields that convert matter into energy, and create thunderstorms that cover all of Empire City, generating an energy equivalent to 34 megatons of TNT.

Source:

In the end, Empire City is reduced to Hell On Earth, dominated under the iron fist of Cole MacGrath, the inFAMOUS terror of Empire City.

Throwdown Breakdown:

I did this matchup because I thought it was funny how much of a stomp it was... in Xefros's favor. Let me explain.

Cole MacGrath, as the strongest guy in Empire City at this point, clocks in at around 34 megatons give or take with near light speed.

Xefros's calc scales him to 95,000,000,000 megatons and near light speed.

Xefros is literally billions of times stronger. Around 2,794,117,650x to be exact.

I've spent most of this show's lifespan hyping inFAMOUS up, so I can knock it down from time to time.

Now, Xefros doesn't solo all of inFAMOUS. He can't do a damn thing to the Beast, be that John White or Cole MacGrath, due to not having any way to kill someone who can come back from a single atom. The Second Son cast are also likely fast enough to, say, turn him into Neon particles before he can do anything.

As far as the first game goes? Xefros is resistant to energy drain, so Cole and Kessler's Bio-leech abilities are out. This just leaves Kessler and Sasha's mind control powers as the only viable win condition, as Xefros has no resistance to it. This is... circumstantial. If this takes place at the end of the game, then Kessler is dead and Sasha is being tortured by the government. If this takes place at the beginning.... Hmm.

Both characters should be roughly equal in speed and I don't see either Sasha or Kessler doing anything to activate Xefros's rage booster and getting instantly mulched. Sasha is generally smart enough to stay inside her lair, which is filled ceiling to floor with her mind controlling tar, so its not like Xefros can confront her there. That said, he's definitely strong enough to just... smash the ground the cave the whole place in on top of her. Which I could see him honestly doing. Xefros has survived by virtue of keeping his head down and out of dangerous situations, so if he can get by without actually having to fight Sasha, well.... he will.

Kessler meanwhile, is a cunning schemer. He'll take a look at the alien tanking literally everything his forces can throw at him and go "nope, not fighting that", then try to recruit the kid against The Beast. Which Xefros... would likely genuinely agree to. O mean, his friend Joey is human, so he'd definitely want to help prevent humanity from going extinct. That's kinda a win for everyone, as Kessler would certainly begin working on backup plans to take out the Beast if Xef can't manage it and keep working on Cole as a backup. Win-win? Kessler would see antagonizing Xefros by attempting to control him as an unnecessary risk, as he has no viable fallbacks if that doesn't work, so he'd try to talk him into it first.

There's this thing in Power Scaling that I just made up a name for called Writers Didn't Do The Math. It's when you take a mathematical look at a character to find that they are hilariously stronger than the narrative of the story actually treats them. See "Batman can tank a nuke" or "Fire Emblem characters can move at escape velocity". Joey Claire is supposed to be an ordinary human girl, yet she inarguably power scales to the same feat Xefros does and is, consequently, billions of times stronger than a nuke. It's a consequence of writers not understanding power scaling as a story telling device or realizing the context it creates, I suppose.

This is likely what turns people off from the community, on top of the general toxicity it produces in people who take these things to seriously, and that's entirely fair. Me personally, I view this as a feature, not a bug. When I tell you Xefros Tritoh can solo a superhero universe because he's billions of times stronger than a nuke, well... just understand that I find it really damn funny.

Tune in next time to see Greg Universe crush Senator Armstrong, I suppose.

....Actually, that's not a bad idea, someone write that down.

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Xefros Tritoh!

[howlingday]

Jaune: (Panting) Where... Where am I?

Jaune looked around the bleak and barren landscape around him. Last night, he fell asleep while camping alone, in an attempt to prove himself braver than his family believed him to be. In his hands rested a pendant holding a photo of his family inside.

He had to get home.

---------------------------------------------------

Weiss: Leader, we found a human in Yang's den.

The red-cloaked Grimm queen spared a glance to her ivory-crowned second. The shorter of the two glared blue daggers at her superior.

Ruby huffed.

Ruby: Why are you telling me this? Yang can defend herself.

Weiss: Yes, but...

A seer passed before the Grimm queen, and an image blurred into view. Inside, her older sister, with fiery-red eyes glaring through her golden mask, thrashed against her chains at the foolish human who dared to get close.

Weiss: ...he is trying to free her. It seems he intends to free her, fully aware that she will kill him once freed. He is already gravely injured by her attacks.

---------------------------------------------------

Ruby: You. Human.

Everything hurt. Jaune groaned as life entered his lungs once more. With wheezing breaths, he followed the voice to find a pale woman, dressed in blood-red robes, glaring at him with eyes like the shattered moon made whole.

Ruby: You're dying.

Jaune groaned in reply.

Ruby: Oh, son of Remnant... Why didn't you flee? You had entered mine sister's cave, and was met with true burning hostility. You might have survived, even if a little more.

Jaune rolled his head to the side, where his pendant rested in his hand still. It felt warm in his hand, as his body grew ever colder. With another painful wheeze, he spoke.

Jaune: She... was in pain...

Jaune: She needed someone to help her... like my little sisters...

Jaune: As a big brother... I couldn't leave her like that... Y'know?

His eyes shut, and darkness filled his mind once more. Before they fell, however, he thought he saw a glimmer of emotion in the red one's eyes.

Ruby: Blake, summon a nevermore to return him to Remnant.

From the shadows rose a beast with talons for claws at the end of ribbon-like arms. Her midnight black muzzle hid any confusion on her lips. With a huff, she answered.

Blake: Yes, Leader.

As the Nevermore was called to heel, and plucked the human in it's beak, Ruby continued to watch as he feebly breathe through his agony. As they departed, her thoughts grew more melancholic.

More so than usual.

Ruby: (Thinking) Son of Remnant, I can see great hope in your eyes. Great love.

Ruby: Hold these close to your heart, for the world is cruel, and will not hesitate to tear them away.

[ailuronymy]

do you think every disabled character in wc is handled poorly? i understand theres def some cases of ableism but at the same time when i hear ppl say that its usually bc the disabled cat wasnt able to become a warrior due to their disability. and i feel like ppl forget, that not everyone irl CAN do what they want after they become disabled. ex. someone wants to be an athlete, but their legs have to be amputated. a cat like briarlight esp i feel is p realistic and could be a source of comfort

Hello there, thank you for writing in. I’m going to reply to this question with a series of questions I think are a bit more useful, given what you’re trying to ask me. I hope that’ll clarify what is a deeply complex, multilayered issue. 

Do I think Erin Hunter handles anything in the series “well”? Not really. I don’t have a high opinion of the work of the collective and, broadly speaking, I think every right note they play, metaphorically speaking, is an instance of chance rather than effort, skill, or intention. Stopped clocks are right twice a day, mediocre writers will sometimes do something cool by accident, similar principle. That’s not to say Erin Hunter hasn’t ever done anything on purpose--just that overall the underlying drive of the series isn’t so much quality as it is quantity, and speed of production, and it shows. 

Do I think Erin Hunter puts any significant research into how they portray disability? No. I do not think it is a priority for this series. They’re not trying to make a meaningful work of literature, or capture a realistic experience of disability, or tell especially impactful or thoughtful stories, or even make a particularly good or coherent fantasy world. Warriors is a specifically commercial product that was commissioned by HarperCollins to appeal to a particular demographic of drama-loving, cat-loving kids. It’s not really trying to do anything but sell books, because it’s a business, so the text in many ways reflects that. They’re not going for disability representation, in my opinion. They’re including disability in many cases as a plot-point or an obstacle. 

Do I think this means that people can’t connect to these characters and narratives in meaningful ways? No. Often I say that a work is completed only when it is read. Before that point, it doesn’t have a meaning: a reader finishes the work through the act of reading, and interpretation, and filling in the spaces and resonance of the story with their own values and experiences. When people talk about subjectivity, this is what they are talking about. What this means in the context of disabled characters in Warriors is that these characters and their stories can be multiple, conflicting, even mutually exclusive things at the same time, to different people, for different reasons. 

Do I think characters have to be “good” to be significant to someone? No. I think genuinely “bad” (i.e., not researched or poorly researched, cliche, thoughtlessly written, problematic, etc. etc.) characters can be deeply meaningful, and often are. Ditto above: for many people, and especially marginalised or stigmatised people, reading is almost always an act of translation, wherein the person is reading against the creative work of the dominant culture in a way that the author likely didn’t intend or didn’t even imagine. There’s a long documented history of this in queer culture, but it’s true for just about everyone who is rarely (or unfairly) represented in media. Disabled people often have to read deeply imperfect works of fiction featuring disability and reinterpret them in the process--whether to relate to a kind of disability they don’t experience themselves but which is the closest they’re offered to something familiar, or to turn positive and meaningful what is intended as narrative punishment, or simply to create what’s commonly called headcanon about “non-disabled” characters who echo their personal experiences. 

Do I think everyone has to agree? Extremely no. As I said before, people will actually always disagree, because all people have different needs and different experiences. What can be interpreted as empowering to one person might be very othering and painful for another. There is no “right” answer, because, again, that is how subjectivity works. This is especially true because marginalised communities are often many different kinds of people with different lives and needs brought together over a trait or traits they share due to the need for solidarity as protection and power--but only in a broad sense. It’s why there is often intracommunity fighting over representation: there isn’t enough, there’s only scraps, and so each person’s personal interpretation can feel threatening to people whose needs are different. You can see examples of this especially when it comes to arguments over character sexuality: a queer female character might be interpreted as bisexual by bisexual people who relate to her and want her to be, while being interpreted as lesbian by lesbians who also relate to her and want her to be like them. Who is correct? Often these different interpretations based on different needs are presented as if one interpretation is theft from the other, when in fact the situation is indicative of the huge dearth of options for queer people. It becomes increasingly more intense when it comes to “canon” representations, because of the long history of having to read against the grain I mentioned above: there’s novelty and, for some people, validation in “canon” certainty. And again, all of this is also true for disabled people and other stigmatised groups. 

Do I think this is a problem? Not exactly. It is what it is. It is the expected effect of the circumstances. Enforced scarcity creates both the need for community organising and solidarity and the oppressive pressure to prioritise one’s self first and leave everyone else in the dust (or else it might happen to you). The system will always pit suppressed people against each other constantly, because it actively benefits from intracommunity fighting. Who needs enemies when you have friends like these, and so on. A solution is absolutely for everyone in community to hold space for these different needs and values, and to uplift and support despite these differences, but it’s not anyone’s fault for feeling threatened or upset when you don’t have much and feel like the thing that you do have is being taken away. It’s a normal, if not really helpful, human response. But until people learn and internalised that the media is multifaceted and able to be many things at once, without any of those things being untrue or impacting your truth of the text, then there will be fighting. 

Do I think my opinion on disability on Warriors is all that important? No, not really. I can relate to some characters in some moment through that translation, but my opinion on, say, Jayfeather is nowhere near as worthy of consideration than that of someone who is blind. I don’t have that experience and it’s not something I can bring meaningful thinking about, really. That’s true for all these characters. If you want to learn about disability, prioritise reading work about disabled rights and activism that is done by disabled people, and literary criticism from disabled people. And as I mentioned above, remember that community isn’t a monolith: it’s a survival tactic, that brings together many different people with disparate experiences of the world. So research widely. 

Finally--do I think there’s only one kind of disabled narrative worth telling? No. For some people, a disabled character achieving a specific, ability-focused dream is a good story. For other people, a story that acknowledges and deals with the realities, and limitations, of disability is a good story. The same person might want both of those stories at different times, depending on their mood. That’s okay. Sometimes there’s power and delight in a fantasy of overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles and defying all expectations. Sometimes there’s value and catharsis in a narrative that delves into the challenges and grief and oppression experienced because of disability. There’s no one truth. 

To round all this off, I’m going to give my favourite example of this, which is Cinderella. I think it’s a great and useful tool, since for many it’s familiar and it’s very simple. Not much happens. In the story, she is bullied and tormented, until a fairy godmother gifts her over several nights with the opportunity to go to a royal ball, where she dances with a prince. The prince eventually is able to find Cinderella, due to a shoe left behind, and they are married. In some versions, the family that mistreated her are killed. In others, they’re forgiven. 

Some people hate the story of Cinderella, because she is seen as passive. She tolerates the bullying and never fights back. She does every chore she’s told. She is given an opportunity by a fairy godmother, and she doesn’t help herself go to the ball. She runs from the prince and he does the work to find her again. Eventually, she’s married and the prince, presumably, keeps her in happiness and comfort for the rest of her life. 

For some, this story is infuriating, because Cinderella doesn’t “save herself”: she is largely saved by external forces. She is seen as a quintessential damsel-in-distress, and especially for people who have been bullied, infantalised, or made to feel less capable or weak, that can be a real point of personal pain and discomfort. 

However, for some others, Cinderella is a figure of strength, because she is able to endure such hostile environments and terrible people and never gives up her gentle nature or her hope. She never becomes cruel, or bitter. She is brave in daring to go outside her tiny, trapped world, and she is brave to let the prince find her. She doesn’t have to fight or struggle to earn her reward of happiness and prove her worth, because she was always deserving of love and kindness. The prince recognises at once, narratively speaking, her goodness and virtue, and stops at nothing to deliver her a better life. 

Depending on the version, the wicked family disfigure themselves for their own greed--or are punished, which for some is a revenge fantasy; or Cinderella forgives them and once again shows her tenacious kindness, which for others is a different revenge fantasy. 

The point? Cinderella is the same character in the same story, but these are almost unrecognisable readings when you put them side-by-side. Which one is right? Which one is better? In my opinion, those are the wrong questions. I hope this (long, sorry) reply is a set of more useful ones. 

[sairenharia]

Chloe Wanted A Sister

So I finally got to properly watch Sole Crusher and Queen Banana and here I am on my Chloe Thoughts(tm)

First off, is Zoe a good character? I’m on the fence. She isn’t annoying, I don’t hate her and want to burn her at the stake, but whether she is good depends greatly on her Actual Place In The Narrative. Or if they give her more of a personality that isn’t like a good number of other characters.

But she could be Incredibly Interesting.

The really interesting thing about Sole Crusher, however, is the fact Chloe Absolutely Wanted A Sister.

We know Chloe. We know how cruel she is. We know how she demeans and bullies people. The way she treated Zoe was incredibly different from how she’s treated literally everyone else in the series. The only one, literally the only one who came close, is how Chloe explained school to Adrien his first day!

Throughout Sole Crusher, Chloe was being WHAT SHE THOUGHT WAS NICE.

She was giving Zoe advice. She was telling her how to dominate and control. She told her how to get approval in the family (from their mother). She told her what was expected. She tells her what she should have and wear. When she brings Zoe to school, she tells EVERYONE to treat her well. She is absolutely delighted when Zoe is mean.

Was Chloe being a good person? No. Was Chloe being Exactly What She Thinks She Has To Be? Oh yes. And we know this, because Zoe was doing the exact same thing. Because that is an important thing to note, at no point does Zoe protest any of this to Chloe.

Zoe acts like a snobby brat for her mother and for Chloe. She demeans and insults people. She acts like Chloe and she does it without ever giving a hint that she is anything else.

The only time, literally the only time before the end that Chloe is hostile to Zoe, is when she sees Zoe on the phone with Marinette.

Marinette-charms-the-pants-off-everyone-including-her-mother-Dupain-Cheng.

Chloe more than likely had immediate flashbacks to that time her mother totally tore her down in public after showing approval for Marinette.

Chloe is only ever hostile to Zoe THIS ONE TIME. Every other time, she speaks of expectations. The same expectations Chloe is under. But she also tells Zoe what they all are. She is trying, from her perspective, to help Zoe. And when Zoe says she’s going to reject Marinette, Chloe immediately gives Zoe the ever important shoes.

Because unlike her mother, Chloe sees someone she wanted beside her REJECT Marinette. Choose CHLOE over MARINETTE.

She was so happy. Was she still being a terrible person? Yes. But she was happy.

And when she sees Zoe has been Akumatized, she seems genuinely confused and more than that, scared. Chloe rarely shows fear in the face of Akumas, but this time, she did. And I think part of it is because Chloe has NO IDEA WHY THIS HAPPENED. Usually she can at least see why an Akuma is after her, whether she admits it or not. But she can see where its coming from. This time, she didn’t.

We can see it when she tries to ‘talk down Zoe.’ She tells Zoe she’s not the one to step on, but others. They’re supposed to be alike. She thinks its just some misunderstanding, that she wants to do this to everyone, not just her.

Made all the more evident by the end. Chloe still thinks Zoe is going to reject Marinette. She is excited for it. She brought in her MOTHER. Which is an important detail. She wanted her mother to see it, to have a good time about it.

Chloe wanted AUDREY TO APPROVE OF ZOE. Chloe didn’t see Zoe as a threat for Audrey’s approval, and went out of her way to do something ‘nice’ for Zoe.

Only to see her eat the macarons. To see everyone hugging her and having a good time. And as far as Chloe knows?

Zoe is like her.

And her classmates hug her, love her.

And suddenly Zoe is no longer the sister she gets to have. She’s Chloe’s replacement. The one everyone loves.

And she doesn’t know why. And she never learns why because Zoe is choosing Marinette, choosing others, over her and she rejects her FIRST. Because she has to protect herself.

Further reinforced in Queen Banana. The class is doing something that gets attention, so yes, she wants the attention. But when she gets there, there’s her sister being the star. She demands that spot, because Zoe is just her REPLACEMENT, after all. So she should have the spot.

But still, people are choosing Zoe, saying Zoe is better, and Chloe still doesn’t understand why. She doesn’t know who Zoe really is because whenever Chloe is around, Zoe shuts down. Chloe DOES NOT KNOW who Zoe is. As far as she knows, Zoe is still like her.

She was a brat for the film, but then the film happens with Zoe in the lead, her replacement, and everyone else is talking about how its better. Even her father is. And she leaves, hurting, confused, and Adrien comes after her, threatening to leave and Chloe can’t deal with that at the moment.

Because she’s already being a replacement and she rejects Adrien cold and runs away.

The last time we saw her curled up like that, it was in Despair Bear, where she didn’t know what to do, and Zombizou, where she was afraid and feeling in the way.

She’s Akumatized, and when she comes to, there’s another Bee.

She’s replaced again.

She’s still mad. She demands Zoe go away, but her father is telling her no when he never tells her no.

And Zoe comes up, and talks about loving Chloe and she’s so shocked at hearing those words. She doesn’t know what to do with them, but she’s so far gone now, she’s terrified. Then Zoe talks about a gift from their mother and she looks confused even more and she demands it because at this point, all Chloe HAS is Sabrina and her mother in her eyes.

Adrien chose everyone else over her.

Zoe was chosen by everyone else over her and she chose Marinette over her.

Ladybug chose another Bee.

And Chloe Does Not Understand Why.

Because what Chloe wanted was a sister. It didn’t matter if Zoe might have very well been the reason her mother went too New York. Audrey said Zoe’s name right on the first try. It didn’t matter that Zoe was only her half sister.

Chloe WANTED her as her sister. She just needed expectations to be meant and as far as Chloe knew, Zoe did. Zoe was playing the same role Chloe was. She doesn’t know Zoe’s tragic story, doesn’t know she’s nice.

But her classmates chose her.

Zoe could be LIKE HER, but still be loved.

She has to be wondering just what’s wrong with her when someone like her is accepted?

And the sad thing is, I think Zoe is a lot like Chloe. We know Zoe used to act. Change who she was to be what people wanted. We know she knows how to be for Audrey. And when she stopped, she got roaches in her locker. Why would she get roaches?

She was either such an incredible doormat, people hated when she stopped doing what she wanted....

Or she was so mean that when she stopped, people saw it as a lie or a chance for revenge. Because turning sweet doesn’t make it so you only have one friend unless whatever you did before burned a lot of bridges.

I think Zoe was a mean girl. I think she dominated and controlled and she hated it, but she did it. Until she got sick and tired and then people finally stopped being afraid and hit her back. So she left because she had already burned everything at her boarding school.

Zoe used to be like Chloe. A girl who was cruel because it was expected, because it was what you thought you had to do, to survive. Because it was what Audrey demanded. And she could only stop after Audrey left and it turned bad.

So she goes to Paris and hopes maybe she could connect with her family and that would be enough and it wasn’t, not anymore, not when she had to be fake.

The advantage is, Zoe is an actor. She knows how to be sweet and kind.

And now she has a whole bunch of new friends to help support her.

And Chloe is now under more of her mother’s influence then ever.

Tried to be good and was denied for reasons she doesn’t understand.

And slowly crashing and burning even harder.

And there’s not going to be anyone to catch her because she thinks she’s replaced by a sister who didn’t want her and she’d rather burn the world around her then let it hurt her.

[transdrowned]

please do i want to hear them

@salamencerobot @rutilated-quarz 8)

Well lads. The votes are in.

So.

Tiny ones first:

Every living thing is sensitive to Glitches, which are entities that break the laws of their given World, IE Herobrine, Obviously, or someone who has a creative inventory despite being in Survival. Glitches have this sort of unsettling vibe to them, and it makes people avoid or be scared of them.

Illagers are actually extremely organized and cultured, and each World usually has several reigning noble or notable families. Villagers, however, are prone to living in independent communities from one-another, rather than band into full cities or kingdoms or the like.

Endermen call teleporting “blinking”, because that’s how it feels to them. (Get it. Cause pearls can be made into ender eyes. Eyes can blink. Ha.) (Also, I like using DND and other fantasy and RPG terms for Minecraft. Because it’s fun.)

Hostile mobs are intelligent and are having Slamacow parties when we’re not looking. I’m kidding. But seriously, several kinds of hostile mobs also have languages. Endermen who learn playerspeak sound very “fuzzy”, and Spiders and Creepers have some overlap in their very hissing-based languages. I just think it’d be fun for everyone to be at least capable of being friends, alright.

Respawn works for Everyone. Which means, yes, you Are killing the same exact skeleton in your mob grinder. How cruel.

And now. The Big One.

I think… I think Minecraft should be technofantasy. For fun.

The world is, in fact, a program, The Program, if you will. It’s run by two Administrators, who are the closest things to gods the Program has, and we’re already familiar with them. I choose to think, in a roundabout way, that chapels in villages are meant for them. Mother Moon, Father Sun. Because I think religion is just neat, and so so human.

The Program is a sprawling mass of redstone and command blocks and computers that hovers in a wide white gridspace, which occupies its own dimension. The Program grows, sometimes in independent parts which it grafts on over time, which is how it updates itself. It does not stop growing. Its goal is to be perpetual, always becoming new, upcycling code and existing forever. The Admins, Poets, whatever you’d like to call them, aid in this by overseeing.

A hot topic in Minecraft worldbuilding theories is the origins of man-made structures that exist in the Overworld and the End. My idea is that it’s upcycled or regrafted code.

Currently, the Program hosts all Worlds on their own separate servers. This was not always the case; there was once one singular world, with an Overworld, an End, a Nether, as well as all the Dimensions from the Infinity Snapshot; the Program could bear the load of hosting all these Dimensions, because it only had to do so once.

The inhabitants of the first World I will dub Worldwalkers; they were adventurers, scholars, a developed people rich in wanderlust and ideas and hungry to know more. They built and explored and lived their lives and wanted to know everything. And so, they managed to stumble upon the Program.

The Program was never meant to be accessed; it was meant to be insular, never tampered by outside unapproved hands, but there are holes in every firewall and the Worldwalkers managed to poke in the right place.

Their falling was the result of foolishness and hubris; destruction of the physical manifestation of the coding of their universe, resulting in the great Fracture.

The World split into thousands upon thousands, and the Program, struggling to bear the load, locked all Worlds into their three core dimensions and generated dedicated servers to host them.

Everything the Worldwalkers built was destroyed, but not deleted. More and more of their relics are grafted into every World as the Program updates. The End Cities have returned, Monuments and Mansions repurposed, and odds and ends scattered all over creations.

And the Worldwalkers themselves turned into something new, since what they were shattered. Something that still feels the call of wanderlust and now can travel almost completely freely. Something that can’t fit into the cities they live around, trying to build. Something that’s hypersensitive to seeing the codes of others, which drives them to rage.

The same is true for the Dragon. She’s forgotten her purpose. She ignores those she was born to protect, but still guards the End as her own, like a guard dog whose owner is long gone. It is her home, even if she is, for the most part, lost in purpose thanks to the breaks in her own memories, her own code. Shulkers are the same, defending empty homes. The worms… The worms are new.

And that’s where reincarnation comes in, too; since the Program never deletes code, especially for entities, it upcycles it into something new. Sometimes, it’s only a string. But sometimes… Sometimes there is enough of the old code to give you feelings, fuzzy memories that you can’t seem to grasp at. Like fog in the wind, curling away. Everyone and everything, when they die, becomes something or someone new. There is no true death of one’s code.

Endermen are especially prone to this feeling.

So! All Worlds are derivative of a single World that was Fractured beyond repair and glitched out so hard it split itself into thousands upon thousands. Worlds are on separate servers and cannot cross over.

EXCEPT.

Remember the Infinity Snapshot?

The Program accidentally reloaded old rejected code that it couldn’t get rid of. You can’t give every World uncounted dimensions; the Program would fry.

So the solution is just one. Make each Dimension its own micro-server.

All servers that were not affected by the Infinity Patch [meant to repair this glaring hole in security and functionality] can still contact each-other, swap servers even.

They just need to be on the same Dimension at the same time.

8)

PS: I have a former glitched Worldwalker OC that acts as a Moderator and Antivirus. Her name is Tek. I’m having fun and I’m aware this is all silly.

Sidenote: I will never count N*tch or any Mojang creators in my lore or headcanon ideas, I don’t care, I respect the people who make the game, I just don’t wanna do that. It feels weird.

[little-mad]

Downsides of Thievery Pt. 9

~ Previous Part ~ Next Part ~

After departing from the stream, it only took about fifteen minutes before Rael and his passenger reached the edge of Ostrad. The moment they broke through the treeline, Rael was greeted by the familiar sight of home.

Despite being the location in which the Emperor resided, Ostrad was not the largest city in the realm. This was due in large part to the fact that the city had originally only been built as a secondary residence for the Emperor. However, over a century ago a flood in the former Imperial Capital had forced it to be relocated to Ostrad.

That being said, looking from Gavin to the bustling city that loomed ahead of them, Ostrad looked positively massive. A slight frown tugged at the corners of Rael’s lips. The most direct route to the palace was straight through town, down the main boulevard and up to the main gates. However, going that way would require walking past a great many alteons. With so many people around, there was a high risk of accidents happening, whether intentional or not.

Having spent his youth running up and down the streets of Ostrad, Rael was quite familiar with its layout. He created a mental image of the city in his mind, mapping out the different potential routes they could take. After several moments of deliberation, he decided on a path that snaked along beside the outer wall. Such a route was more winding and less direct than going straight through the city, but it would decrease their chances of encountering other alteons significantly. After the encounter with Kaydin, Rael was simply not ready to subject Gavin to the possibility of being grabbed again.

Rael glanced down at his hands. He was surprised the human had kept quiet for so long and not interrupted Rael’s contemplation once. The reason became quite clear as he noticed Gavin staring at the nearby city with wide eyes. “Right, this is his first time seeing any kind of alteon civilization.”

Gavin’s expression was a mixture of shock, awe, and fear--which Rael supposed was a reasonable reaction. Even putting the size aside, the architecture was likely entirely foreign to the human. The structures in the human city Rael had seen had certainly seemed very different from alteon craftsmanship.

As if he could feel Rael’s gaze on him, Gavin looked up. “It’s like I got transported into a medieval movie,” he breathed in disbelief.

Rael blew out a soft sigh, the breeze ruffling Gavin’s crop of brown hair. “I don’t know what that means,” he told the human. Both the words “medieval” and “movie” were foriegn to him. He assumed they weren’t important words, considering he hadn’t learnt them during his study of human language.

“Oh right,” Gavin said with a light chuckle. “Nevermind then.” Although he appeared to be making an effort to hide it, Rael suspected the sight of the city had caused some nervousness to develop in Gavin. The little guy’s energy levels seemed slightly lower than they had earlier.

“Alright,” Rael carefully moved the hand holding Gavin up a bit so he didn’t have to tilt his head down so much to look him in the eye. “I’m going to take you around the edge of the city,” he began. “Our chances of running into anyone are low, but I’m going to keep you hidden from sight anyways.” While it wasn’t necessarily a secret that a human was being brought to the Emperor, Rael considered it safer if no one even laid eyes on Gavin until they were safely ensconced in the palace.

“I guess there’s not gonna be a parade held in my honor then,” Gavin joked, mock disappointment in his tone.

Rael shook his head. Not even the human diplomats and politicians that had visited the palace received any sort of celebratory welcome. “Consider yourself lucky you’re even getting to ride in my hands rather than the cage,” he snipped.

-

If Gavin had thought he’d been being smothered before, the situation he was in now was on a whole other level. He still sat in the center of Rael’s palm, but now his entire view of the outside world was obscured. Rael’s free hand caged Gavin in against the giant chest, leaving him in the dark except for the small slivers of light that filtered in between the massive fingers.

While Gavin was effectively trapped, he knew the action wasn’t hostile this time. In fact, it was actually meant to be for his own good. That wasn’t to say Gavin was happy with the arrangement. Despite how intimidating it had been, he had kind of wanted to take in the sights of the alteon city. Though, after the encounter with Kaydin, he could understand Rael’s reasoning for wanting to keep him hidden.

“God, I don’t think I’ve been this close to someone else in...well who knows how long,” Gavin thought to himself. He wasn’t really opposed to physical contact, in fact he had a tendency to maybe be a little bit too handsy at times. However, most of his friends and acquaintances were opposed to physical contact, and so would throw Gavin off whenever he greeted them with an overenthusiastic hug or overzealous handshake.

Now all of a sudden he was being effectively cradled by a literal giant. Gavin ran a hand down his face. How the hell had his life gotten so goddamn weird? Of course, his life was bound to be pretty unconventional as soon as he chose stealing as a career path--but come on, this was beyond bizarre.

“There’s a couple people up ahead, keep quiet,” Rael ordered in a hushed voice.

The urge to scream at the top of his lungs in order to freak out the alteons was quite strong for Gavin. He could only imagine the looks on their faces would be priceless as they tried to figure out who or what had made the noise when Rael’s mouth obviously hadn’t moved. But as funny as that would be, the risk of another Kaydin situation was too great. Not to mention the fact that he would no doubt incur Rael’s wrath. Although, that might actually be funny in its own right…

Suddenly he heard an unfamiliar woman’s voice say something that sounded kind of like a greeting.

Rael gave a perfectly polite, but perfectly simple reply. He slowed his pace ever so slightly, but never came to a stop. Gavin was just fine with that, he wasn’t really interested in having to listen in on small talk while stuck in Rael’s hands.

As they got closer and closer to the palace, the reality of Gavin’s situation was beginning to slowly set in. Surviving the journey to the palace had proven to be a challenge in and of itself, so much so that he hadn’t really stopped for long to consider what was waiting for him when he finally reached his destination. He knew his fate was entirely in the hands of this dimension’s emperor, but he hadn’t the slightest idea what kind of fate that might be. “I’m a criminal being brought in to be judged for a crime, it’s not like whatever it is is going to be good,” Gavin reminded himself solemnly.

“Do you guys have a rule against cruel and unusual punishment here?” Gavin asked Rael, his voice just loud enough to be heard by the giant.

“You’re supposed to be keeping quiet,” Rael immediately scolded, sounding more exasperated than actually angry.

“Is there anyone around right now?” Gavin inquired.

“No, but--”

“Then please just answer the question.” Gavin didn’t like the way his voice sounded, notes of anxiety and fear were obvious in it. Rael was perceptive, he would undoubtedly pick up on it, even if Gavin had spoken very quietly.

There was a long pause. Gavin began to wonder whether Rael planned to just ignore the question and remain silent, but then, “There aren’t rules for punishments, there are precedents.” Rael spoke so quietly Gavin doubted an alteon standing right beside them would be able to discern the words. “The current emperor is known for his fair but firm sentences,” Rael explained. “But you will be the first human he has ever judged, so it’s difficult to predict exactly what he might decide.”

Gavin didn’t really know what to make of that. He supposed it was good to hear that the Emperor wasn’t known for being sadistically cruel. However, the fact that Gavin would be the first human to ever be sentenced in this dimension wasn’t exactly encouraging. What if the Emperor wanted to make an example of him--to send a message to all humans that going against alteons was a horrible mistake?

“There’s no use fretting over it,” Rael whispered. Gavin knew he was right, and normally worrying about things he couldn’t control wasn’t really his style. Rolling with the punches was a part of being a good thief. But with so many unknowns in front of him, Gavin was having a hard time not letting his worst fears intrude upon his mind.

-

Honestly, Gavin’s question had thrown Rael off guard. He himself had been pondering what the future might hold for the human, but he hadn’t really stopped to think about how the weight of the unknown might be weighing on the little man himself.

At the start, the fate that might await the human criminal hadn’t mattered much to Rael. Whether Gavin was imprisoned for life, kept as the Emperor’s pet, or simply slapped on the wrist--it hadn’t mattered to him. All he’d been concerned with was delivering the human to the palace and getting the unwanted assignment over with.

Things had changed. Now Rael found himself feeling almost...nervous about what the Emperor might decide. After all, now he knew that Gavin wasn’t the one truly at fault for stealing from the diplomat. He had been nothing more than a pawn. Of course, the Emperor didn’t know that. “Should I...should I try to tell him?” he asked himself. However, he was quick to dismiss that thought. Speaking out of turn to the Emperor was a sure fire way to damage his reputation, which was something Rael simply couldn’t allow.

“I’ll just have to trust the Emperor's judgement,” Rael told himself. The ruler of the realm seemed a wise and just man. Despite being fairly young for his position, the Emperor had already made a name for himself as one of the best rulers the realm had ever seen. Surely Rael could trust him to make the right decision regarding Gavin.

It was just then that one of the servant’s entrances into the palace came into view. The door, typically used by cooks, maids, and other domestic servants, was always guarded by a single soldier. Today, the guard was familiar to Rael, but he didn’t know the woman well enough to know her name.

“Returning from an assignment?” the guard asked, apparently recognizing him as a member of the Imperial Guard despite his lack of uniform. She seemed confused as to why Rael would use this entrance rather than one of the ones specified for the Imperial Guard, but it didn’t appear as though she was going to press for information.

Rael nodded. “Yes, that is correct,” he replied. All of the palace guards were aware a human would be arriving soon, but this woman clearly didn’t realize that she was speaking to the one who had been tasked with retrieving said human.

“Welcome back then, head on in,” she said with a polite smile. Rael was thankful she didn’t ask about the specifics of his assignment, he really wasn’t in the mood to explain it all to her, nor was he eager to show Gavin to her. Despite now being at the palace, Rael, for whatever reason, preferred to keep Gavin hidden as long as possible.

[magicalgirlagency]

I know that you hate Enji/Endeavor and you've made an Incubator based on him in the past... but I really want to know your opinion on Horikoshi trying to reform and humanize him. Certainly, you must disagree with the idea of forgiving an abuser, right?

You are correct, Anon. I personally disapprove of the idea of Enji being "redeemed", because of the repercussions this might have on some people who struggle with abusive relatives IRL.

What sort of message is the creator spreading, by "redeeming" someone like Enji...? Certainly, a most controversial one.

I personally think that people are too soft on him only because he's filthy stinkin' rich and thicker than a bowl of oatmeal (I won't lie that he's quite the looker; but his personality stinks! It's a turn-off to me, in every aspect!), but hey! Each to their own! And liking him doesn't make you a bad person in real life, I swear!

Plus, if I recall correctly, Enji said that he doesn't want forgiveness, but instead he wants to atone...? To repair something? He is fully aware that he doesn't deserve to be forgiven.

Like I said before, I'm not fond of the idea, but do you guys wanna see him being "redeemed"? Like, do you all REALLY want that? Okay, fine. But we will now play by MY rules this time, NOT Horikoshi's...

Consider this as my very first attempt at writing angst, btw... this is waaaay out of my area of expertise...

Ladies, gentlemen, and estimated guests, I present to you all:

Meaningless Endeavor

In the dark and fallen homeworld of the Heroes, now plagued by Villains and Nomus, it's a ruthless fight for survival. What was once a bustling and vibrant world, is now a barren and hopeless wasteland, where despair and destruction reigns.

Ever since the war began, several people have been disappearing without explanation. Pro-Heroes, their pupils and civilians have fully lost contact to this empty old world. Alien abduction? Judgement Day? All sorts of crazy conspiracies were overflowing, but no one knows the true reason why these things keep happening...

...In the middle of the chaos, only one man remained, the No.1 Hero, Endeavor. He finally got what he wanted, but he quickly discovers how painfully lonely it is to be at the top. And to make matters worse, he discovers that his family was nowhere to be found. First thing he assumes is that Dabi might have done something horrible to them; this was possibly yet another one of his schemes to instigate the so-called hero.

In an act of desperation and panic, Endeavor goes on a reckless search to find the ghost of his past, and confront his demons head-on, with nothing but red surrounding his vision... and when both villain and hero finally meet, the bloodshed took place.

In the climax of the fight, the flaming hero lands a final attack on the villain, a Blaze of Glory, both of them dying in the process. The azure beast was now finally gone, but the blazing hero was no more...

...but, there was more to his story.

Enji, now eternally abandoning the name of Endeavor and his title of Number One with it, had his soul split in two halves.

His "hero" half has found its way to an alternative Earth, where it reincarnated as an hostile parasitic alien by the name of Furnace, terrorizing innocent humans and stealing their vital energy. But thanks to the combined efforts of two Magical Guardians, Cupid Harpy Sally and Vermillon Hawk Kei, the Incubator of Competition is no longer a threat, and the victims are safe.

His "human" half, however, is now perpetually stuck on Limbo. Enji is unable to do anything, other than watch his family be taken care of by a foreign mystic community from the cold and unforgiving void of space.

From there, the man finally discovers what has happened to the disappearing people, including his family and his former colleague and fan. His youngest son Shouto, was finally free, becoming a hero by his own means, rather than living vicariously through the goals of his cruel and selfish father.

Enji was an awful, awful person, and he knows it. He was part of the problem, and a huge one at that. Thanks to his past transgressions, now being laid bare for all to see, people no longer believe in Heroes back on his homeworld. His family and former partner hate him, and rightfully so. Whatever punishment that's coming to him, he deserves it; the burden was for him to carry, and him alone.

Even though he is in no postition to make demands, he silently begs to the Universe to not reincarnate him. He is not worthy of a second chance... if he were to see the light of a new dawn ever again someday, he strongly wishes to be somewhere far, far away from his family, away from everyone; to a world where heroes are only figments of people's imaginations, solely meant to entertain and not to admire so blindly.

His reocurring dreams were now a heavy reality that he is willing to carry on for God knows how long; he is seeing his family, now being able to thrive. They can follow the hearts' desires, now under the intensive cares of this unusual but enlightened society, that aims to be better than the broken Hero Society. Away from the pressures of elitism, away from the pitiful eyes of media, away from the pain of it all.

If his absence was considered to be the ultimate meaning of atonement, he was completely willing to accept it all. Everyone that he has hurt throughout his life, directly and indirectly, is better off without him. They deserve better a fate to their lives.

To observe, but never interact... this was his eternal punishment.

This is the end of the tale of Endeavor, aka Todoroki Enji; a boisterous voice now silenced by the emptiness, flame now dead in the darkness, a man who had everything, but now has nothing.

[just-a-simple-otaku]

Alina Gray analysis

Well then, Alina Gray sure is a piece of work. The problematic fav of the MagiReco fandom, fondly referred to as psycho artist or JoJo reference. But Alina is more than a reference and more than just a psycho. In fact, is she even a psycho? In that case, psycho meaning either psychotic or psychopath (or I guess here psycho as in crazy murderous bitch). So let’s have a meaningful analysis of this character and undercover what might be a tragic tale of objectification.

We are introduced to Alina in the game in chapter 5 and in the anime in episode 9. In both media she arrives to stop the protagonists from destroying Ai, an uwasa. In the game, Madoka and Homura (Moemura) were there but not in the anime version. In the game, in her first appearance Alina appeared at first as serious, cold and irritable, before she revealed her mad and sadistic antics. In the anime, she showed up laughing maniacally, acting all eccentric and borderline insane, even strangling herself. It seems that the anime went overboard with the Alina acting crazy part. Not that I disliked it, but given that the game is the original source, I’ll keep this analysis mainly game-only.

We should start by the beginning, which is Alina’s backstory as shown in her magical girl story. It’s implied that Alina’s fascination with life and death in her art started when her grandparents and dog died when she was a child. Given that this event was what drove Alina’s art, I’d say their death must have left a pretty big impact on her (especially since she was 8 years old and might not have been fully able to grasp the concept of death). Alina mentioned how her parents often got mad at her for spending too much time painting, which led her to make her wish to have a space when she can be alone and nobody can disturb her there. Alina was treated as an artist genius from a young age and gathered a lot of attention and big expectations and ended up having no privacy and being used for her talents by people around her, including her parents and teachers. Alina wasn’t valued as a person but only for her art and adults didn’t respect her privacy or free-will as they often shared personal information about her to the public or submit her arts without her authorization.

Despite being a famous artist, Alina shows no interest in popularity, admiration or love from people and simply wants to create more art. She doesn’t seem to enjoy attention or even the company of others and prefer to be left alone. No ones seem interested in how she feels, only in her art and how they can use it for their own benefit (like her teacher who submitted her art against her will and tried to force her to participate in other contests for the sake of the school’s reputation), and when she refuses she’s been called selfish. The only person who genuinely cares for Alina as a person is her kouhai Karin, but I’ll get back to their relationship later.

Her magical girl story shows Alina as someone pretty antisocial with mood swings and impulsivity issues where she can snap and result in material destruction. She seems relatively unhappy with her life and on the verge of depression. The breaking point was when she refused an award for a contest she didn’t agree to participate in in the first place, she received a letter from one of the judges: “It seems you are capable of creating a work that is so beautiful and arcane that viewers will think about it until their deaths. However, your work, which has no external theme, is a powerful drug that might drive people insane. That's why I want to tell you this. If you don't want to change the world, stop creating. You are only fifteen years old; if you haven't realized this, your brilliance will probably run out.”

I just want to mention first that the English translation doesn’t mention she’s 15 years old at that time (she’s 16 in the main story). At first, this letter may seem insignificant and harmless, until you realize how fucked up it is for an adult to say that to a teen. This judge said that Alina’s art is hollow and hurt people and that if she doesn’t intend to change the world with it, she should stop creating, and that her light will burn out. It basically implied that Alina creating art for herself is wrong and harmful and that if she isn’t creating for others, then her art is just worthless and so is her life. Again, implying Alina is a selfish person who is basically useless because she doesn’t want to meet people’s expectations and shaming her for that. Can we talk about how inappropriate, irresponsible and cruel it is for an adult to say that to a child? To crush their passion and treat its worth only by how others appreciate it? And the fact Alina was already feeling depressive before sure didn’t help.

Some people might think Alina is selfish, but let me tell you this: Alina doesn’t owe the world anything. Her art is hers and only hers, yet people kept trying to appropriate her art for their own goal, with no concern for how Alina felt, her desires, and basically treated her as a tool and used her. Now remembers, Alina started to show interest in art at 8 and in her magical story she was 15, meaning she went through 7 years of being used, guilt-tripped, having her privacy violated and having no free-will over her own creations. No wonder why she’s tired of people and just wants to be left alone, and is overall hostile to others.

After she received this letter, Alina became full of doubt and questioned the meaning of her art and life as well as her own worth, and came to the conclusion that just like her art, she’s worthless and is basically a poison and toxic to everyone. After leaving on a vacation to find some inspiration and a meaning to her art, in vain, Alina then decided that she would be better off ending all her art, as well as herself. She went on a rampage to destroy all her art before planning to commit suicide by jumping from a rooftop. She wanted her death to be her final work, concluding her art of life and death, so people can witness her last moment before her light fade away (she put a camera to record her suicide). A last desperate attempt to give some meaning to her life through death.

Kyubey did try to convince her to make a wish, twice, and the second time, Alina agreed, and wished for a space where she cannot be bothered by others. But she had no intent to play her role as a magical girl, she just wanted to add her wish in her life so it can be lost as well in her death.

Of course, as a magical girl, Alina survived the fall and encountered a witch, and, amazed by its beauty, found what the theme of her art was, what she wanted to convert to the world: Alina’s Beauty. She found a reason to live through that and a meaning to her art. She wants people to witness what she considers to be beautiful. And this is how she started to breed witches together and create even more powerful witches (again, let’s talk about that later). Interesting thing, Alina’s doppel is highly based on virus and poison that can drive people insane, which is a clear reference to her thinking her art is poison that drive people insane because of the judge.

So, what I got from her backstory is a subtle tragedy. Alina was basically objectified in a way since she’s a child, used for her talent and treated as a mere tool. Almost no one has any consideration for her feelings, desires and privacy and is, yeah, treated more like an object than a human, and put an insane amount of pressure by all the expectation and guilt-tripping people kept putting on her shoulders. Alina ended up with a disturbed sense of her own identity and what was the purpose of her life, splitting tendencies (incapacity how seeing both positive and negative, lack of nuance), impulsivity and recklessness, unstable and chaotic relationships, self-damaging behaviors, detachment from reality, as well as depression, anger and rage.

I might have sounded really precise here, right? Well, those descriptors I used for Alina are almost all the criteria for a specific disorder: Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

Yep, I’m basically saying that I think Alina might suffer from BPD. At first I thought she might be bipolar because of her mood swing between depression and almost manic behaviors, but bipolarity is mainly genetic and the mood switch is usually not that fast, unlike BPD. BPD is also a personality disorder, it’s not genetic and is caused by the environment, which makes more sense for Alina.

People with BPD also tend to be extremely sensitive to any form of criticism and alternating between idealization and devalorization and emotionally unstable and erratic. That sounds pretty much like what happened to Alina in her magical girl story if you think about it. BPD can also lead to psychotic episodes in more serious cases.

Now, I wouldn’t say that Alina perfectly fit the diagnosis or that it was the creator’s intention, but I feel like she’s a pretty good example of someone who suffers from untreated BPD and to me, it helps me understand the character on a more psychological basis and empathize with her.

There’s also more input on Alina’s psyche in the Holy Alina magical girl story. Again, after one critic that might look trivial from Karin (implying that Alina’s work isn’t art but breeding), Alina became overwhelmed with doubt regarding her art and extremely moody. Having her art compared to breeding and raising a pet deeply upset Alina, who’s forced to admit it’s true. She is indeed breeding witches, and she came to doubt that it’s real art.

Alina feels conflicted feelings. She’s mad that her art may not be art, but at the same time, feels excited at the idea of breeding witches, which only frustrated her even more. Surprisigly, it’s Karin who managed to make her feel better by making her read her favorite manga, bing worried that Alina might attempt suicide again. Alina understood through the manga that even if the plot is redundant, there’s a recurring theme that draws people to it. As a thanks, Alina bought a strawberry milk to Karin (while she usually stole it from her whenever she’s disappointed by her). Alina knows her art is more than just breeding and that she just need to find the core of her theme beyond life and death.

Alina decides to seek advice from her fellow Magius, Touka and Nemu. Nemu did notice how irritable Alina was these days. They make Alina realize that people tend to share a collective unconsciousness, like different civilizations worshipping the sun even though they had no contact with one another. So Alina needs to find something all humanity shares collectively, something she also shares with them. Touka suggested destruction: a death drive, a self-destructive urge. So the core of Alina’s art would be a craving towards death. After reading more about it, Alina became obsessed with the idea of self-destruction and, unable to fully grasp it, threw a tantrum and destroyed her atelier and aggressively asked Touka and Nemu for more explanation. Both explain how humans is one of the only species who kill one another even if it’s unnecessary, especially through wars. Mifuyu then arrives and complained that by destroying stuff, Alina is damaging the environment. This comment brought Touka and Nemu to find the perfect example of humans’ self-destruction: them destroying the environment. Not only are humans killing one another, they are also destroying their own planet.

Alina concluded that humans unconsciously crave death and destruction, leading them to their own destruction. She thinks this is why everyone is so fascinated by her art, because humans do seek their own death. Alina decides that she’ll indeed change the world with her art and that the core of her theme is “changing the world for the good of humanity”. Even if it sounds good, there’s something sinister behind this. For her, the “good of humanity” is granting what she thinks humans want: Their own destruction.

This is how she decided to become Holy Alina by wearing an Uwasa supposed to grant people their desires. And this is how Alina came to the conclusion she has to cause destruction, for the “sake” of humanity.

We might think that Alina’s actions actually came from a misguided good intention, but let’s not forget Alina is far from being a good person. She enjoys making people suffer and causing misery all around her, she doesn’t show any empathy for others and is remorseless. She’s sadistic, cruel and callous. And that lead to another diagnosis:

Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD).

In case you don’t know, ASPD is often referred to as sociopathy or psychopathy, even if both are technically incorrect, but let’s not dwell on that. Alina does exhibit a lot of antisocial behaviors, even before she became a magical girl, such as: Failure to obey laws and norms by engaging in behavior which results in criminal arrest, or would warrant criminal arrest, impulsive behaviors, irritability and aggression, disregard for her own safety and irresponsibility. She laters shows a blatant lack of remorse for her actions and a lack of empathy. The only traits she doesn’t seem to have is lying, deceiving and manipulating for her own profit or amusement. Alina is someone who is brutally honest and has no issue with speaking her mind and herself said that she doesn’t lie. I don’t recall any incident where Alina lies, but she can be deceiving and manipulative, like when she purposefully misled Madoka and Homura about Mami’s fate to hurt them, making it look like Mami met a gruesome death simply to make them suffer. But, ASPD can only be diagnosed when you’re 18 and alas, Alina is 16. But, there exists a precursor to ASPD for kids and teens, which is required to be diagnosed with ASPD: Conduct Disorder.

Alina almost fit the textbook criteria of conduct disorder. She’s a bully, aggressive, cruel towards others (and potentially animals), vandalism, deceptiveness and serious rules violation. And most of those were even before she became a magical girl. She often mistreats Karin and shows no respect for authority, she’s cruel towards others and I feel like it’s implied that Alina might have killed animals (and there’s also her reaction to Kyubey, who she thought was an animal and ended up kicking) and causes a lot of vandalism. Those were rather mild thoughts before she became a magical girl, where she’s downright dangerous and craving destruction.

BPD and ASPD both belong to the same cluster of personality disorder, cluster b, and are often comorbid. ASPD is often referred to as sociopathy, and given her borderline behaviors, Alina is pretty low-functioning. She’s impulsive, erratic and doesn’t bother to hide her true nature.

So, am I saying Alina is an irredeemable evil person who only seeks death and destruction? Yes, but no. There’s more to her. I won’t deny Alina’s cruelty and sadism and lack of concern for others well-being. After all, she doesn’t shy away from tormenting people, torture and attempted murder. But Alina isn’t born that way, she was driven to become a monster by the people around her. Alina wasn’t allowed to be a human, her feelings, desires and freedom were always disregarded, everything that makes someone human. Instead, she was treated like an object, an an object doesn’t have feelings and only serves a purpose. And the big tragedy in that is that Alina herself ended up objectifying herself. She decided to accomplish what she thinks humanity wants by causing destruction, but she’s also projecting her own self-destruction craving unto humanity as a whole. In the end, she tried to become the tool who will change the world for the good of humanity.

Being treated like an object made Alina unable to relate to others or understand their feelings, treating others just like she was treated: as objects. Alina seems to care for Mifuyu, but not as a person. Alina only values Mifuyu for her body, which she considers to be a work of art. Let’s not forget that magical girls’ true bodies are their soul gems and their human’s body is pretty much an empty shell, so Alina only caring for Mifuyu’s human body and not her as a person does show that she views Mifuyu as an object, not a person.

She also doesn’t understand humans’ bonds. When she proposed to spare their lives in exchange for Felicia (who she was angry at for destroying her witch), she didn’t understand why Tsuruno was so upset. Tsuruno even said “people aren’t objects!” which confused Alina even more. For Alina, everyone, including herself, are objects, and she herself can’t understand why others value people’s lives.

There’s also the way she’s treating witches. At first she seems to care about the witches she raised, considering like like pets and art and throwing a tantrum when Felicia destroyed one of them. But later in the story she shows no remorse to sacrifice the witches she raised, which shows that Alina doesn’t actually care for them, but given that they are hers, she can’t bear people other than her destroying them (or destroying them against her will). Alina did say that only an artist can destroy their own art. Given that she views the witches she raised and breed as her art, she doesn’t actually view them as actual pets but again, as objects. Alina’s objectification extend to witches too.

In one of the Christmas Events where she turned into Holy Alina, she ended up causing a lot of good actions while trying to do bad actions, which made people love her. But it didn’t please Alina at all. She doesn’t care about being loved or hated, she doesn’t care about what people think of her, good or bad actions. At some point, she noticed someone about to blow off a bomb and didn’t care nor show any interest in stopping him until she realized the bomb could damage Mifuyu’s body (again, she wasn’t worried for Mifuyu’s well-being, just her body). Alina seems to not feel shame for her behaviors, neither find it rewarding to be loved and praised.

Another thing regarding Mifuyu. At some point, the Magius (so Alina too) decided to sacrifice Mifuyu and feed her soul gem to Eve. I found it strange that Alina seemed to agree, until I realized something: A magical true body is their soul gem and they only need to feed that to Eve. There’s no need to feed Eve with their empty shell of an organic body. So I came to the conclusion that Alina didn’t mind sacrificing Mifuyu’s soul gem as long as she can keep her body. It just shows how much Alina doesn’t care about Mifuyu as a person and only valued her as a piece of art. An object. (And God knows what she would have done with her corpse).

Well, I’m not making a case about Alina not being an unredeemable piece of shit huh? Well, I decided to keep the best for the end: Her relationship with Karin.

It’s undeniable that Karin holds a special place in Alina’s heart (or whatever Alina has instead of a heart). Alina is cruel and mean towards Karin, true, but unlike other people, Alina never hurts Karin for her own pleasure or by sadism. Most of the time, she ended up mistreating Karin out of anger, mostly when she deemed that Karin made her lose her time or disappointed her, or when Karin is being dishonest with herself and doesn’t improve. Alina insults her and belittles her, as well as stealing her strawberry milk, not with the intention of hurting her, but as a form of punishment. Like a parent disciplining their child. But Alina does sincerely want Karin to improve and the fact that she takes the time to teach her, spend time with her and even rewards her proves that, in a way, Alina does care about Karin. In a really shitty and abusive way. But I don’t recall any instances where Alina physically harm Karin or show to enjoy hurting her. Still shitty and abusive, don’t get me wrong. But I feel like Alina is being abusive towards Karin because she’s unconsciously repeating how her parents may have treated her as a child. We know her parents often got angry at her and perhaps they acted in a way that is similar to how Alina treats Karin. The cycle of abuse sure is a tragic thing.

But why Karin? Well, I got a couple of theories. First, Karin is the only one who seems to care about Alina as a person and not an object. Karin greatly values Alina and is concerned about her feelings, something Alina isn’t used to, being only values for her talents. Karin often notices Alina’s change of mood and shows rejoice whenever Alina is in a good mood. She also worries greatly about Alina when she’s in a bad mood and even fear that she might try to commit suicide again. Karin is also someone who respects art and thrives to improve even if she seems to lack the talent. But she is still optimistic and never gives up, and she knows why she’s doing art. She wants to make people happy with her stories. Almost the opposite of Alina, who’s rather pessimistic, she oftens despaired regarding her art, she has the talent but lacks substance and doesn’t exactly know why she does art. Alina even admitted that Karin might be a bigger genius than her because of her passion, which Alina feels like she lacks, feeling empty inside. Even if Karin has expectations towards Alina, it doesn’t seem to put pressure on Alina, as Karin shows interest in how to make her own art and not Alina’s art itself. In a way, perhaps Alina can relate to Karin in a certain way, with her desire to make art, as well as being envious of how Karin can just be carefree about her art and be able to enjoy it without having people trying to use her. Perhaps this is why Alina is able to care about her, because in a way, she can relate to Karin. Still, Alina is abusive towards Karin and her intention doesn’t change how poorly she treats Karin.

Funny thing, Alina herself doesn’t seem to know exactly why she makes art, and ends up needing others' opinions to figure it out. She ended up deducing that her core theme is self-destruction because of Touka and Nemu, which seems to make sense with Alina’s fascination with life and death. People focus on the death aspect, but Karin thinks that Alina’s works are actually full of life. Perhaps Karin is the one who’s right, maybe Alina's actual core is more towards life, but given how twisted Alina became, she doesn’t even realize it herself. Maybe Karin is the only one who can see the good Alina might have deep down inside of her, or may even bring the good inside of her. Who knows, Karin might be the key for Alina potential redemption.

Also, it may not look like it, but I think Alina is constantly hurting inside, due to depression, but she’s so disconnected from her own feelings that she doesn’t realize it and unconsciously hurts others because she’s hurting. Alina is full of unhealthy coping. Her own fascination for life and death started by the death of her grandparents and dog when she was a kid, and might actually have traumatized her and her way to cope is her art. That would explain why Alina herself is uncertain about her theme, because often, understanding our own trauma can be quite hard, or even realize that we experience trauma in the first place. Perhaps death traumatized Alina and her art is her way to understand death better and accept it as a part of life itself. Maybe she actually wants to value life by understand death, because without death, life loses its core value.

So, did I answer the question? Is Alina a psycho crazy jojo villain? Yes, but no. Alina isn’t a psychopath and not downright psychotic either (even though she might experience psychotic episodes). Crazy? Well, I do think she suffers from personality disorders, but it doesn’t make her insane. A sociopath? Maaaybbeee. But to be honest, I mainly think Alina is someone broken who is the result of her environment, someone constantly hurting inside with deep self-destructive urges. The objectification made her feel disconnected from her feelings and humanity and turned her into a monster. But it doesn’t excuse her villainous actions, it only made them understandable and Alina more sympathetic.

Well that was longer than I expected. Let me know what you think and thanks for reading!

[sexyshakespeare]

Kurodai AU Chapter 1: The Wolf and The Bear

He waited in the dark for an opportunity to strike. She looked like she was alone. Not a very big bear, he could definitely take her if he aims for her throat. One big bite, even if she throws him off, he could try to land on his feet. He might break a few toes, but that was a very small price to pay if he could get food and shelter for the month. Kuroo stepped out into the clearing by the water’s edge, stalking closer behind the bear who seemed unaware of his footsteps. And just as he was about to lunge, he hears massive footsteps running towards him, causing him to turn wildly around- a giant bear, much bigger than the other was charging at him. Where had he come from, this wasn’t going according to plan at all. He ran back into the woods behind them, running for his life, his heart beating against his chest to carry him further. This was it, he was dying today, and for what- for a life of a petty vendor running errands between tribes for scraps. He could see his life flashing before his eyes as he scrambled into the woods- the grizzly was fast as he was big, even the trees weren’t deterring him like they normally should any bear. He managed to climb a leaf strewn slope up to a jutting rock- hiding behind it to try and catch his breath. He debated running further, calling for help from the neighboring packs- maybe someone would come after all, even if he wasn’t welcome there anymore, maybe they’d mistake his call for someone else. But then he knew, nobody would come. He was alone, and he would die alone, under the jaw of this grizzly. He’d have to put up a fight, and this was his one chance. He takes a deep breath, steels himself, and prepares to die. He aimed for the inside of the bear’s paw- a soft spot, easy to sink his teeth into and try to tear a chunk out of. As he connected with the beast, a terrifying, thunderous roar filled the forest, enough to shake new life into his body- he wasn’t all that small compared to him, his jaw clamping down on his entire paw, sharp fangs digging in deep. But the bear was bigger still, stronger, taller when he stood on his hind legs, and he was being thrashed around in the air like a ragdoll. Then finally, with one last shake, he was tossed into the side of that very same rock. His fate was cruel, but that wasn’t the thought running through his mind when the wind was knocked out of him- the only thought he had, as he whimpered loudly, tears stinging at his eyes- was the excruciating pain shooting through his entire body. His legs, his torso, his head. His head was spinning, the world was spinning- everything seemed to be going dark. This was it. This was the end. He was dying. Like the dog he is, bleeding against a rock in the middle of nowhere. He couldn’t breathe, his ribs surely broken and its contents jostled around. Only his heart seemed to beating still stronger, aching as it pumped life into his body that begged it to stop. Meanwhile, the bear seemed to be in immense pain, stumbling through the woods higher up the slope, leaving a trail of blood behind from its paw. Kuroo closed his eyes then, satisfied with at least that much. That he’d died a fighting dog. If.. if his parents knew, then maybe they’d be proud. And with that, he let the blackness take him. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Kuroo opened his eyes. How much time had passed, he didn’t know. It seemed dark still, had it been a day already? No, he didn’t think so- it was his instincts driving him now, he needed a safe place to crawl into. Somewhere he could pass out in peace, not here where some animal or other would find him.

But could he move? He looked down to his legs, they looked bad- bruised dark, he could see it better now on his human skin. He was so sure he looked like a sad sack of meat as a man, but he knew he was too weak to change back, for a while at least. So not only was he on the verge of death, he was in his defenseless form- no sharp teeth or claws, or fur.

He reached down to the little bundle of rags he had tied to his thigh, and suddenly felt pain, bolts of pain running jagged through his torso. He gasped for air, struggling as he undid his clothes and managed to pull his hide-skin on. The bottoms were far worse to get into, his pelvis must be shattered he thought as he willed himself not to cry out loud. Panting, sweating, and delirious from the pain, he looked up the slope- all he needed to do was find a cave to lie down in. He wouldn’t move again for at least a week, but right now, he didn’t want to die of shock when something attacked him for meat as the night went by.

Taking in sharp hissing breaths through his mouth, he gripped at the rock beside him, and discovered that he couldn’t stand. He closed his eyes as the tears came, pain like he’d never felt before- and gritted his teeth, crawling up the slope as best as he could. Thankfully, it wasn’t too steep, and there were roots he could use to hoist himself up- his arms though bruised and hurting, could still carry him.

He managed to crawl on his knees some of the way- though it took the life out of him, which made him wonder if he might just survive this. Funny what 5 seconds of being upright can do to a man. Kuroo looked ahead of him just as the slope began to ease up, and saw the entrance of a tunnel that led into the mountain. It wasn’t used by any humans, that much was certain by the large bones strewn outside of it.

It wasn’t his best choice, but it had to do. The man managed somehow to stand then- his muscles aching, tears streaming down his face- he managed to hobble the rest of the way to the little doorway of the cave and collapse right in the middle of it, elbows hitting the hard granite.

This time he did whimper- and suck in a breath, eyes tired from staying open for so long. Crawling to the wall, he tried to sit up, but it hurt to put weight on his tailbone- so he slumped up against it instead. His peculiar gold eyes glinted towards the dark tunnel, praying that nothing came out of there while he was awake. Or that if it did, it would snap his neck first, do him a kindness.

What he didn’t expect, was a pair of eyes watching him from just inside the doorway- 

human eyes.

Kuroo sucked in a breath, his adrenaline kicking in for a few seconds while he tried to sniff them out. He smelled dangerous, it made him want to roll right out of the cave he’d so painstakingly brought himself crawling into.

What was that smell.. strange, human but, unlike any human he’s ever smelled.

The stranger came forward then, his face illuminated slightly by the moonlight outside- dark hair, dark eyes, his body covered in dark furs, and a rugged face that spoke of immense strength. He didn’t seem hostile.

The two men stared at each other for a while longer- till Kuroo finally becomes aware of the smell of blood on him. Injured, like him, taking refuge in this cave then. But, a quick glance over his body revealed to him that he was nursing his hand behind him, the blood draining from there no doubt.

His gold eyes flicked up to his face just as he’d connected the dots, and so had the other man apparently,

“You should’ve run when you had the chance- I didn’t want to make a body bag out of you-“, the young man said plainly, bringing his bleeding hand out into the light, bandaged roughly with some leaves.

“I didn’t think you’d let me go with my life, after I almost attacked your mate”, Kuroo answered, his eyes studying the man’s affect, his body language was calm, composed. It wasn’t like he was a threat to anyone in the state he was in of course, and clearly he was more in danger than this bear man was.

The stranger didn’t say anything, only looking down at Kuroo’s legs, then at his torso. “Why were you hunting her- didn’t expect a wolf to hunt a grizzly on his own, the stupidest thing you dogs have ever done”

That comment got his hackles rising- a low rumble in his throat, which died as fast as it had come. He was far too much in pain to care about his pride.

“I was hunting for my tribe in the village nearby.. fish was drying up over the fall, deer running far from here- bear would’ve given them fur and meat for weeks-“, his voice was weak, his mind focusing on breathing more than his story.

“You were hunting for humans? You live with them?”, bear man asked, scooting forward to hear him better. He had a curious look on his face, clearly out to get as many answers as he could from the man he’d just maimed beyond repair.

“I.. I travel, and sell my wares..”

“What do you sell..”

“Meat.. clothes, I’ve carried messages and found wives for tribes-leaders”

The man squints at him, not fully understanding, “You’re a matchmaker?”

A little laugh sounded from the injured other as he cranes his neck backwards, reminiscing almost, “Ah h.. I’m a salesman.. I make deals in return for some food, shelter from other tribes”

“So you’re a conman-“, the brown-eyed fellow shot back at him, quick as ever to pass judgement, much to the chagrin of the wolf. However, he wants to continue this conversation, he wants to humor him, play him with his words if he can. “It’s only a con if they’re not happy.. and besides”, this he says with a little more pride, “I sell medicine too, not stolen, crafted by me”

“You don’t run with a pack..?”

Oh, the real questions were starting now. The ones that were difficult to answer.

Kuroo shook his head at him, keeping his eyes cast at the fur that hung over the man’s chest. Grizzly fur.

“Your home..? Home pack?”, he prodded some more, unknowing of the look he would see on the man’s face at the mention of it. Kuroo turned, the dark black hair that hung over half his face was facing him now, eyes cast away from his prying brown orbs. 

Kuroo saw flashes of the faces again, he could smell the fire, the blood. He’d tried to make sense of it, not fully remembering any details only just piecing together what might’ve happened to his home, to his parents and his pack. His siblings, a sharp memory of a chasing game, and his mother.

It took him a few seconds, but with a slow blink of his eyes, he turned back to him, “You..? Your home pack?”

This topic seems to lift up bear’s spirits entirely- causing a wide smile to spread on his lips. Pride in his voice when he says, “Yep- lived here all my life, parents raised me here past the under-fall river, cliffs over there”

Kuroo watched him, nodding at the words, exhaustion climbing over his body slowly but surely. And it seemed that the other man noticed, his dark brown eyes showing some concern, maybe even warmth if he wasn’t imagining it.

Another minute passed before he said, “I can take you to my pack.. heal you there-“

The injured man looked at him, tired eyes, shaking his head, “What, let you take me to a forest full of bears? I don’t think so-“, he started off- but could not shake the look in his eyes as they bore into him, his wounds.

“I’m not going to survive another two days-“, Kuroo said to deter him further.

That’s when he came forward, this stranger who owed him nothing, and locked his eyes into his gold, his voice betraying no hesitation as he spoke the words. “I’m not going to let you die”

Kuroo’s head lolled a little now, which caused him to come closer, holding at his neck with his good hand, supporting his heavy, weary form with his strong arms. His strength was leaving him, so he whispered, brows knitting together as he shook his head at him again, “It’s not your place to save my life.. I tried to attack your family today- you can leave me here and go on with a clean conscience knowing they’re safe-“

“I’m not going to let you die”

His words were spoken even firmer, an air of finality about them, the stubbornness of a bear perhaps. The wolf could only watch those eyes, full of conviction, like they defied death itself to take him from him. And though he didn’t want to be moved, though he didn’t want to fight this awful, heaviness that was setting in his bones, he just knew he couldn’t say no to him.

Or maybe he was too tired to try.

The bear understood that this defeat meant a silent agreement to being in his care, which brought an impossibly warm smile to his face- the man who could have killed him, who came very close to doing just that barely a few hours ago. “Want me to carry you?”, he asked with clinical concern, but the response Kuroo gave was one of misplaced pride, “N o ..?”

Of course, that earned him an amused look.

A heavy sigh before Kuroo nodded, feeling his pride wilt, his tail between his legs at the thought of being carried like a cub to his cave- but the pull at his neck that he somehow expected instinctually, did not come. Instead, strong, capable arms despite his own injuries scooped underneath Kuroo’s torso and his legs carefully. Before he could protest, he was lifted in the air, and held close to his chest.

Swaddled then, like a baby. His mind seemed to snap when he saw the ground below them, a good way away, and he scrambled just a little to wrap his own arms around the man’s neck, wincing in pain from the movement.

And the gall he had to laugh at him. “Just like you dogs~ always the same, put you on a little shelf and all that pomp dies in seconds-“

Kuroo fumed at him, not appreciating the commentary as he was carried out of the cave-

“Alright alright, I’ll stop cause you’re injured”

“Dying-“

“Injured”

Stubborn. Big. Stinky. Bears. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He was carried the rest of the way, past the river, and to the forest beyond the shallow fishing pool. The climb in the forest was gentle, the terrain naturally flowing back towards the riverside till it tapered to the side of a mountain. The rocky ledge he walked on was the worst hurdle- Kuroo didn’t dare look down to the depths below, burying his face into his shoulder, and closing his eyes shut.

But then, it cleared out onto a wide shelf overlooking the water- the bear cliffs were beautiful, something he’d only seen in the distance. The side of the mountain had several hollows inside of it- each one, full of sleeping bears.

His mouth hung open when he saw them, hardly believing his eyes.

“This is my home.. and you’re welcome here till you’re healed and ready to leave-“, he spoke finally, carrying him in the dark past several occupied caves and into a smaller, empty one.

He set him down on furs that lined the stone, gentle as a feather, showing exceptional control despite his severely injured hand- which the wolf suddenly felt so much guilt for giving him. Gold eyes heavy with sleep followed him as he walked about the surprisingly warm cave for where it was situated- then watched him as he kneeled by his side, a hollow shell in his hand.

“It’s a salve, should take away the fever and the pain for a little- help you sleep tonight..”, he said softly to the man in his care, trying to ease his worries. Looking down at his body now, the next words spoken were, “Strip your clothes off-“

Kuroo shouldn’t have- he shouldn’t have been able to ignore the exhaustion taking over his body, and look up at the man, a little smile building on his lips. But he did just that, eyes heavy lidded with sleep, but also something else-

The bear nearly huffed at him, raising his brow sternly, disbelievingly.  Was he being, suggestive? Of what? “Or I’ll just cut it off of you, you’re not going to be needing them anyway-“

“Alright alright, I’m doing it-“, he said with what bear could’ve sworn was a giggle. After all that he’d been through, the man was giggling and chortling like a pup as he winced and sat up to pull his hide-skin rags off of his torso. He even had the gall to reach for his skirt, which gave good enough access as it is, “This too..?”

A firm little slap on his ribs seemed to do the trick. The man reeled, and gasped for air as he lay down instantly, to the delight of the brown eyed other,  “Blood seems to be leaving your head, do better to lie down-” 

The sun seemed to be filtering through the air, it was morning after already. Orange rays of light fell on the bear man’s face as he leaned over him and applied the salve to his body.

Kuroo watched him as he did it, carefully, taking all the time he needed- first over his chest and under his ribs, then down to his abdomen. As that hand pressed soft circles into his skin, he watched its fingers travel lower, to his hips, and then to his thighs underneath the rags of his skirt. He went still lower to his knees, his shins, his feet and his toes- leaving a trail of burning-cooling tingles in his wake.

When he was done, Kuroo found himself wishing he wasn’t, waiting for another round of this, whatever it was that he was doing to his body. He’d used salves before on himself, but none hadf felt quite like this.

Oh but he wasn’t done, his warm fingers found their way underneath him, rubbing soft lines down his spine to the small of his back. His face was so close to his body while he touched him, his palm cupping over firm buttocks, and travelling.. between them.

Kuroo’s eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets when the firm fingers rubbed at his pelvic bone. There was not a moment of hesitation or awkward reluctance in the man’s eyes, only concentration on his task. A true healer at work, and a man of his word. He wasn’t going to let him die.

The wolf’s eyes poured into his, the words catching in his throat as he watched the bear put the shell down and wipe his one hand on the wall behind him, the other still covered in a bloody bandage and clotted, dirty. He came back to his patient’s side, smoothing over his forehead with the salved hand, a cool sheen of the stuff masking his skin and instantly giving him relief from the throbbing in his head.

“I’ll go find some crystals for you, they’re in a cave not far from here-“, he said to him, eyes full of not sympathy or even empathy really. They were full of care and quiet devotion. “They’re magic, they’ve healed the worst injuries we’ve had- broken bones, bleeding wounds, cured bad appetites and ailing hearts too”

Kuroo smiled faintly up at him then, “Thank you..”, he whispered, the events from the day fully settling on him as his eyes searched his brown. There was nothing there to read, only, inexplicable warmth. The bear’s thumb rubbed a small circle into his forehead, returning Kuroo’s smile with his own.

“Get some sleep..”

He didn’t have to be told twice, going out like a light as soon as the man had left the cave- sinking into dreamless slumber, and a deep one.

[ziracona]

Might be that someone already asked but give us your wisdom. Headcanons for Felix and Élodie

Initially, they’re just shocked to see each other again. And in the realm. They haven’t crossed paths since they were kids. But then almost immediately things are uncomfortable.

Élodie is the one who got the kids to go into the internment camp, /and/ who personally activated the sigil that brought the Entity to them all. She is directly responsible for the loss of her own parents and Felix’s and all the others. So, seeing him again, her first thought after surprise and relief at a familiar human is “Oh no. He hates me.” And she immediately becomes reactively and agressively defensive of herself and her past actions, predicting hostility that isn’t there yet.

Since Felix’s paragraph never even mentions Élodie, I have to assume she does not play super majorly into his own trauma memories actually and he doesn’t harbor intense resentment towards her, and probably both doesn’t blame her for being the one to push them into that trek, and simply know she activated the sigil. So, he’s surprised and relieved (even though it’s kind of awkward), and then kind of just hurt because she’s immediately reactive around him and almsot seems to resent him. He probably gets kind of pissed (understandably) like “Well you were the one who sent us down there—I don’t know why you’d hate /me/ over it” and that only makes stuff worse.

Felix is very easy to push around and terrified and takes a long time before he gets used to the realm. He is a cautious and hesistant man in general, and very very very out of his depth, both from being kind of rich and cushioned against life, and just by nature. He takes a long time to adapt and is miserable and scared, but he really does try.

Claudette, who is also miserable and scared, and Dwight, who was long the same before adapting, are especially nice to him and work to help him adapt. So are Tapp, Jane, Jeff, and Ace, who also try—especially Jane, who is well versed, and Tapp, who has experience—to comfort and reassure him about his wife giving birth without him there and his family waiting back home.

Felix misses his wife deeply and would never cheat on her and abandon her and his infant child back home on favor of a steamy realm romance. (I hold Felix ships in contempt >.> my boy has no reason to be regarded a cheater fuck off leave him alone. He’s a decent enough fellow.)

Élodie is a lot braver than Felix. She adapts to the realm quickly for average, as she is used to danger, pain, and hardship. However, unlike Felix, who is afraid and weak initially due to his complete lack of hardship experience, but is team-oriented, Élodie is used to working alone, and is not a great teammate for a while. She doesn’t mean to be cruel, and she’s not like, unfeeling or unsympathetic. But her own experience is so rooted in self-preservation and operating solo, she takes time to get used to having to share that burden with others. And kind of is resistant to it at first. It’s just...not what’s in her programming. It’s been a long time since other people were aside from in a trade and at arm’s length at best.

The survivors are such a big family though eventually Élodie is overtaken by their genuiness and affection. I think Jane and/or Kate and maybe Dwight talk to her at least once, about how this is affecting teams, or about the group’s way of operating and relationships, but I think really it’s just being saturdated in Claudette asking her for help gardening and explaining new poultices, and Meg doing movie scripts theatrically and asking her questions all the time like an (endearingly) annoying little sister, and Jeff and Tapp and Adam always there to save her and take a hit in a trial, people singing together at camp, Dwight passing her supplies to help her get started. It the family. She gets so slowly warmed up to being genuinely cared for and wanted that her walls start to go down, and she starts unlearning her instinctive reactions and begins fighting to save not just her but them too, them before her sometimes, just because it truly becomes what she wants.

Élodie is fasinated by learing any kind of information that could be useful and very dedicated, so she spends a lot of time with Dwight, Claudette, Jane, Adam, Zarina, and Tapp especially, trying to track down any information that could help them escape eventually and stuff to help then survive in the meantime. Bc of her previous life and knowledge, she is extremely useful at this.

Also gets along well with David/Kate/Laurie and Yui and Zarina. After dying, she really really wants to pick up as much fighting skill as she can.

Felix gets along pretty well with everyone, but hangs out more with the chiller activites people like Adam, Ace, Tapp, Jeff, Jane, or Dwight/Quentin/Claudette.

After arriving in the realm, Felix feels bad most of his skills seem less useful. After Dwight talks to him, he decides to so the little he can, and that even if he’s not got worlds of skills for fighting or escaping the realm, it matters at least a little he /can/ make peoples’ lives better. So he adds some rudamintery shelters to the campfire area so they have a few little actual kind of partial buildings now. He’s not the most personally skilled with tools, but he has an expansive knowledge of how to make things function well and last and be given proper support, so he and Jake make a good team when it comes to home construction.

Things with Felix and Élodie are tense for a while. They don’t fight, per se, but because she anticipates that he hates her and is automatically basically hostilely defensive towards him in preperation for that, Felix feels very disliked by her as well. With some interveigning from the others—especially Jane and Dwight—things get a little more cordial. And Felix starts trying to work hard to make things work and dedicatedly saving her in trials. Élodie hates this, she thinks/tells herself because he’s trying to be superior/sanctimonious towards her, but in reality because she is crippled with guilt over what happened a long time ago. Still, after a while, she starts trying to save him hard too to be just as good, and it’s hard to hate somebody who has rescued you from death, so unintentionally this ends up tricking them both into starting to be chill with and enjoy each other again.

Eventually, there is a breaking point when they’re alone—maybe it’s late at night and Élodie or Felix asks the other to step away to talk. Maybe it’s in a trial, and Felix is offering to die so she can take the hatch, and she just can’t take it anymore. But it happens, and Élodie breaks down and asks why he’s doing this and says she knows he must hate her, and tries to apologize and defend herself viciously at the same time, and it’s a mess, and Felix never knew she actually summoned the thing at all and it’s like getting kicked in the stomach, and he doesn’t even know what to say or think. For so long he’s blamed himself; he’s never blamed her. But he didn’t know it was her fault, and it kind of is, and she’s falling apart, and he’s so overwhelmed, and what is he supposed to say? Is he supposed to forgive her? Supposed to hate her? But. He thinks for a second. He lost everything, but so did she—so did all of them. And she didn’t know. Nobody warned them, their parents could have, and didn’t. And she was a kid. Kids make mistakes—that’s living, that’s growing up. Adults do too. And he doesn’t hate her, and it doesn’t matter if he blames her, because it doesn’t matter who /is/ to blame. They were all kids, and it was a tragedy, not an act of hate or maliciousness, and that’s all that matters. They both lost everything, and all that matters is they do the best they can with what they have now.

And that’s what he tells her. And it’s hard to accept, but she’s so relieved. She breaks down and cries and apologizes for real, no equivocations, no defense, just sorry, and he tells her there’s nothing really to forgive because it was an accident, but that if there was, he would, and they’re friends after that day. Almsot inseperably. She’s there to ask about his wife and baby he hasn’t got to meet yet and to encourage him like the best friend he never had growing up, and he’s there to hear her theories and long spiels on fascinating finds, and ask about home and what she truly wants if they make it back like the best friend she never had either, and because she finally has people she loves, she has answers to that now.

[sambinnie]

1. Happy Mabon! Every autumn, I forget that the darkness comes clanging down in a great rush in the mornings. One day, I am greeted by a pinking sunrise. 48 hours later, it’s so dark on my run to the river that I have to stop a passing runner and check the time, in case my disturbed sleep sent me dressing and leaving the house at 2am. This summer may not have given us those mornings where it’s so hot I can barely get out of the water, where those early hours feel like full silent days carved out just for me to sit in the light and wait for everyone else to wake up, where the only extra thing I put on to run home is my trainers — I look at my waiting winter gear, neoprene socks and gloves, head torch, two more thickening jumpers, hat, thermal mittens — but every season, every day, is beautiful.

Today we go early for celebrations, and the water is silky, and Orion hangs over us with his phallic sword dangling and Betelgeuse winking on one shoulder. The near-full moon spotlights us and I feel almost ready for the shortening days.

2. Hilary Mantel continues to be a literary god. How does she write with that clarity? How can I ever speak with her calm good sense and wit? 

3. We have two main problems at the moment, as far as I can see. a) What we’re doing (“curating” our lives; twitter spats; purity spirals; division and isolation; wanting ‘debates’ that can only be won or lost; encouraging people to buy more things; trying to buy our happiness; letting marketers tell us how we feel about the world rather than encouraging major moral lessons from throughout the ages to challenge us on our weaknesses; refusing to accept that life is suffering; asking self-care to be a plaster for everything we don’t have) and b) what we’re not doing (joining together to stand against those with more money and power; protecting the people who have even less power and voice than we do as a matter of course; learning from history; protecting nature above all else; prioritising going for walks; learning to repair things and campaigning to make things repairable; having a basic belief in human dignity for all, not just those with whom we agree; accepting that truly, we are all different and no amount of shaming or disgust will change that; working to shape our societies, culture, economies, production, food supplies and communications around improving — not just sustaining — the air, water and land, and fighting to ensure all of those new shapes protect women and children).

Individualism has morphed into something so completely self-destructive that we’ve forgotten we need nature more than anything — literally, more than anything — and we need to unionise and unite and put aside differences and work together even with people we don’t like. 

Because when there are wicked people in power, when it’s genuinely exhausting to think about all the corrupt, venal, toxic, divisive, false, and cruel things they have done since coming to power, those people love to watch everyone below pointing their fingers at one another, saying, You, You’re The Enemy, You’re The Problem, while corrupt populist leaders rub their bellies and chuckle at another promise broken, another mass death on their hands, another building site on a protected forest. Do you understand the stakes here? Do you understand that it’s actual survival? It’s not about being right any more, it’s not about besting someone in the argument. It’s about having decision makers who can not only ensure there is still food to eat and air to breathe, but that relations both within a country and between countries are built on care, and support, and compassion, and believing in human dignity. And while it sounds wishy-washy and hands-clappy it’s the schmaltzy, sentimental truth. It’s the only one, really. 

If we instead continue to believe every single day that my feelings are the most important, that my beliefs are the right ones, that I’ve got to prove those baddies there are evil and awful and wrong, then honestly, what the fuck? If we’re happy to live in a country where hostile architecture is the starting point for all public builds, where we send refugee boats away from our shores, where affiliate links are a career goal, where we haven’t stormed the Daily Mail offices with accounts of all our lovely immigrant friends and family and had a huge feast together and compared our long and tangled family trees, then come on. It’s only a race to the bottom if we all keep running. 

Because, pressingly, whatever the spark of a major global conflict — assassination, fuel shortages, hyperinflation, invasion — the kindling is almost always a populace fed pure hatred for months, for years, until they can’t even taste it anymore but are ready to spew it out again, and are ready to use another populace as the receptacle. And hatred is brewed up in silence and isolation, and in the ashes of bridges burned between disparate groups. 

And on that note, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, mainly because I don’t believe governments are generally competent enough to manage Grand Plans, but it’s annoying that technology and social trends and culture have developed in such a way that no one knocks on anyone’s door for a chat as a matter of course now, that it’s a given that a ringing phone triggers anxiety, that it’s not the norm for cups of tea with your neighbours, that we don’t know each other’s neighbourhoods, that we don’t even talk on the phone, with live words and intonation and synchronised laughter, but in text, in WhatsApp chats, in tapped out words and symbols that we know can be screen-grabbed and misinterpreted, that we know are kept, filtered and sold by the tech companies. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just a reality that every single one of us can choose to do differently. 

Sometimes exactly the right thing comes along at the right time. All of us here watched About a Boy at the weekend, a film which is so wonkily weighted and oddly rhythmed, but a perfect depiction of everything I’m banging on about here. Hugh Grant’s character likes being alone. He’s happy that way. It suits him. It’s his choice. Then, between one thing and another, he finds himself drawn into a world of a suicidal single mother, a duck-murdering young boy, more single mothers, more tricky teens, plus exes and mothers-in-law and awkward support groups. And it turns out that actually, being with people is better. Being uncomfortable often develops you as a person. Constantly prioritising only yourself produces a waxen, pointless baby. Making shared sacrifices might just be the point of being alive. Remember that to be human is to be flawed. That no one is ever completely right, and no one is ever completely wrong. That the boring stuff makes us feel good, and the glossy stuff, if all we strive for is gloss, doesn’t. 

If you want anything practical, here are the things that have really helped me over the last few years:

Writing a letter or email regularly to my MP, to CEOs of organisations, to anyone I want to communicate my strong feelings and how I’d like things to be done better. Tweeting eats your soul. It’s a horrible myth the media pretends is important. It really, really isn’t.

Inviting people to go in front of me in queues, in traffic, getting on to buses and trains. It lowers my stress levels right down.

Learning the names of my neighbours and people I meet regularly on walks and letting them learn mine. (I definitely haven’t just decided I loathe a neighbour because they cut a bird-hatching tree down in their garden on the last day of the year it was legal to do so. It’s fine.)

Joining a few political parties, and the closest thing I have to a union

Making something, anything — everything can be done with love, and learning to not get sucked into the capitalist conceit of having to make it perfect, sellable, exhibitable is a genuine gift to yourself; making a cake or a film or a coaster and not putting it on social media, letting it be ugly or serviceless and loving it anyway. I felt extremely overwhelmed the other evening, but instead of doom-scrolling I knitted a… I don’t know, something flat and woollen, and it helped to have my hands and eyes working on directionless introspective creation. 

Trying to stop hating. Every time I want to tell a negative story in my head about someone, I attempt to turn it into something positive: how unhappy that person must be, what they must be missing out on. It’s so nauseatingly Pollyanna-ish, and of course it isn’t always successful, and of course every single day brings a hundred thousand examples of cruelty and injustice and wickedness, but the alternative only makes my life feel worse, so why would I indulge that? 

Teaching myself the names of birds, trees, flowers, clouds and constellations. I’m still at the most basic levels on all of these, but the difference one feels in the world when you can name things  — let alone use them and know their stories — is a very real sort of magic. (For that reason I hope to read this book very soon.) This episode of The Cut is also good on the wonder and power of learning the names of the weeds that grow in your nearest pavement crack. 

4. Creating anything is always a gamble, isn’t it, but writing a book you actually like for once and seeing it slowly and beautifully sink to the bottom of a river never to be seen again is ever so slightly crushing. However, it turns out even Thom Yorke feels that way, so I am comforted. 

5. I’m sure I’ve mentioned plenty of these before, but if you want some suggestions of where to find joy, here are my favourites from the last year or so:

I was given Lucy Easthope’s book, When the Dust Settles, for work recently, and I was surprised and delighted to discover the most uplifting, hopeful, human and rightfully angry book I’ve read in a long time. Do yourself a favour and preorder it. I bought this other book for my own birthday, gave it to a housemate to give to me, forgot about it, and was delighted to later unwrap He Used Thought As A Wife. Laughed a lot, cried twice. Marvellous. 

Now even the youngest housemate here can recite John Finnemore sketches and sing the songs. Has also taught them various composers, gods, logical fallacies and gothic story tropes. Also v funny. Oh, Kate Beaton! Her two books (Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside Pops) are a bit like a comic-book version of Finnemore, but swearier and sexier and utterly unsuitable for all the housemates who have read it and been educated about the Brontes, Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, Tom Longboat, Nancy Drew, Ida B. Wells, Sacagawea, and the Borgias. 

Had to give Inside a restraining order against me for the sake of us all, but Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade is a masterpiece of writing, acting, sound design and optimism. Spy is dumb action comedy polished to perfection, and Yasujirō Ozu’s Good Morning seems like the inspiration for almost all US arthouse films since 1990, and is also beautiful, funny, thoughtful, and good. 

Taylor Swift’s Evermore, like all brilliant albums, isn’t completely perfect. But most of the songs are. And Hole’s classic Live Through This is still just ideal for turning up very, very loud after a tricky day, for the enjoyment of any neighbours who may have hacked down a bird-friendly tree on the last day of February. 

Watched both series of Liam Williams’ Ladhood when I had a week off this summer, and really relished the location, the intention, and the writing. More please. 

Miles Jupp and Justin Edwards continue to be my comforting bedtime listening in In and Out of the Kitchen. Has it ruined Nigel Slater for me? Well, a bit, but no more than any of us deserved. 

I thought this would be a book I’d mumble through the first chapter of, then let get buried in my To Read pile, never to re-open. Instead, I found Whatever Happened to Margo? laugh-out-loud funny, drily written, and full of humanity. Excellent Women has made me want to read everything written by Barbara Pym, a goal I am slowly but surely working towards. 

6. I’ve spent the last few years trying to find hazelnut trees, and finally found a copse between a car park and a play area, full of nuts the squirrels hadn’t noticed. Now I’ve found them, the spell has been cast and I see hazel trees everywhere, on walks and on pavements and running along motorway slip roads. A tray of green and brown frilled hazelnuts now dries with the laundry. They are so beautiful. 

[linkspooky]

Nemi is the Nicest Person Ever

Sanemi is introduced to us as one of the most outright hostile and abrasive of the Pillars. His first action in the manga is to outright antagonize both Tanjiro and Nezuko, then tempt Nezuko into eating him. Unlike Tanjiro who is a kind older brother, Sanemi is shown to be rude and dismissive of Genya at best, and at worst can get downright violent of him. Kimetsu no Yaiba however is about the humanity of its characters, they are characterized as three dimmensional people with many different hidden sides, not just the way they appear on the surface. A full character analysis on Sanemi, and how he is one of the nicest people in the manga and that’s the exact reason why he’s so outwardly angry READ UNDER THE CUT. 

1. Sanemi is Always Alone

We now know that Sanemi was trying to protect Genya, but the method he used to protect Genya is very telling of his character. Namely, that his number one way of protecting someone was to push them away from him at all times. 

His actions far outstep being cruel to be kind, or just pushing someone away with words for their own sake. Sanemi does everything he can to physically destroy the bond between him and his brother so Genya will not follow him anymore. It’s like he’s trying to physically cut the strings connecting them as family. 

Not only that but his actions go a step beyond words, he gets physically violent. It’s beyond just wanting Genya to be safe, he wants to physically take away Genya’s choices if Genya is going to choose to follow him into danger. He would gauge out Genya’s eyes and blind him for life if that made him retire from the Demon Slayers, he would cut Genya’s legs off so he does not follow him. Sanemi is not just being harsh to his brother, he’s ignoring his agency and choices as a person. He wants to destroy his brother’s freedom for the sake of protecting him. 

What Tanjiro reminds him is that in his efforts to protect Genya all on his own, Sanemi is forgetting that Genya is a person with his own choices. Sanemi is trying to isolate himself and bear the burden all on his own so Genya can go off and be happy, but he’s forgotten that there is no way Genya could be happy living a safe and peaceful life out there where his brother is suffering somewhere all alone. 

In isolating himself, Sanemi also forgets what Genya might want as an individual. His brother is his important connection, but by distancing himself at all times he has forgotten about his brother as a person. His wants and needs. His desires. Sanemi has distanced himself from all of these ideas in order to fight alone to protect him. The way Sanemi protects others is incredibly broken, but this is the only way he knows how to protect. 

The inciting incident of Sanemi’s trauma probably affects Sanemi far more than he ever would admit, because he does not want to hold a grudge against Genya. 

Genya had to fight all alone to protect his younger siblings from the mother who just turned into a demon. Not only that but he failed to save most of them, and the one he did save immediately called him a murderer for killing their mother. 

Sanemi may not want to hold a grudge against Genya, but rejection like that still stings. In Sanemi’s life he has been repeteadly told by circumstances that he has to fight alone. The moment when Sanemi was most weak and vulnerable after killing his mother, Genya rejected him. We see more and more Sanemi get into the habit of no longer leaving himself vulnerable like that. Sanemi distances himself, because when there is no one close, there is no one he can fail to protect, and he has no vulnerabilities. Sanemi rejects Genya, but Genya rejected him first. Not only that but Sanemi is doing everything he can not to hold a grudge against his brother for that one traumatizing moment to the point where he suppresses all his trauma rather than feel it.

It makes sense that Sanemi never outwardly shows his emotions. The moment he was most vulernable, he was rejected by the person he needs to the most. Then after that, instead of staying together with his brother Sanemi lived his life in further isolation. 

Sanemi is born with blood that attracts demons to him. Knowing that fact he most likely also blamed himself for the incident with his mother. Not only that it would have made sense to separate himself from Genya after the incident with their mother and he became aware of the nature of his blood. 

He always fought alone, Sanemi even likens this action of his to suicide, like he was trying to die alone. 

Sanemi is a danger to those around him. He sees it better if he is the only one suffering alone, and the best possible death would be him dying alone somewhere where he could not hurt others. He sees his own death as no special loss, especially if it benefits the person he loves. Life has also taught him this lesson again and again, when he tries to fight side by side with someone he loses them. This self destructive nature even shows in his way of fighting, Sanemi lets himself get covered in wounds and then bleeds all over his opponent. He fights like he does not feel pain at all, he keeps fighting even when he suffers wounds because he’s not allowed to feel pain. 

He survived his whole family dying. He survived his first real friend dying. He survived long enough to become a member of the pillars. Sanemi says that good people die one right after another, he considers himself a bad person for living. He feels a tremendous guilt for surviving all of these people which is what leads him to fight alone. 

You can even see this in how he projects on the leader. The thing is, Sanemi is saying this himself as well. He hates the idea that he has survived when so many good people around him have died. He hates the fact that he is the one always surviving alone, especially when he has such a low image of himself as a person. 

That’s why the leader also understand Sanemi’s feelings so well because they have the same wish. They both wish for the happiness of others, and want to sacrifice themselves in order to attain that happiness even if they cannot be with them. 

Sanemi’s flaw is that he’s too geniunely selfless, that it turns into self destruction, and self harm for Genya’s sake. He wants to be the only one suffering alone, and he forgets that Genya never wanted that for him in the first place. 

2. Sanemi kindness makes him Cruel

Sanemi as a character seems to be a cruel version of Tnajiro. His complete opposite. Unlike Tanjiro who always keeps his sister close by and protects her even as a demon, Sanemi pushes away Genya and tries to sever all connection with him. 

However, Tanjiro may in fact be the closest character in nature to Sanemi in the manga. Sanemi is like Tanrjio, an incredibly kind person who gets deeply invested in the people around him to the point where they are practically a part of him. His love for them is his strongest quality of all. They also both survived the deaths of their entire families with only one younger sibling surviving. It’s just that they both view this central quality of theirs in opposite terms, Sanemi sees it as a weakness because his love for others is a burden on them that leads them to die, whereas Tanjiro sees it as his strength. 

Sanemi is an incredibly kind person. He’s so emotional and kind it’s a fault of his. He cannot get over the deaths of the people he has lost, they stay with him like the permanent scars on his body. The same way that Sanemi will keep fighting with open wounds, or walks around proudly displaying his body discovered in scars, Sanemi basically wears all of the emotional trauma he’s suffered on his sleeve. He is abrasive, rude, short tempered and violent and his entire personality is devoted to driving others away so they will not be in danger around him and he can fight alone.

To see how much he cares look at the way he describes the loss of his mother. There are no colors in the world, and he bcomes basically suicidal after this point. Sanemi felt so much even for a mother who had been turned into a demon and ate all of her children. 

Sanemi takes a tremendous amount of personal responsibility for the people he has failed to protect. Even though his mother tried to kill him and he only raised a hand against her in self defense, he sees himself as a useless son who could not do a thing for her until the very end. 

Sanemi’s kindness is a weakness to him in the same way it is a strength to Tanjiro. He feels so much for other people that losing them absolutely destroys him. Sanemi’s unsocial, hateful personality is not just an act, he’s also terribly traumatized by his life which has been constant violence and has in part lost the ability to become close to others or speak his true feelings because those emotions are so painful for him, because they destroy him. 

Sanemi respects Ubayashiki because they’re the same. They deeply care about and remember the people they’ve lost. What deeply touches him about Ubayashiki is how much he cares for the wishes and feelings of other people, because Sanemi is the same kind of person. He just cannot express it because his way of expressing himself is stunted. He has no healthy expression for these feelings because he has devoted his entire life to fighting in complete isolation. 

Sanemi always puts the needs of other people above himself. He never once acts on his own desires. We know what Sanemi wanted, and that was to fight together with Genya. However, Sanemi chose to fight alone because he genuinely thought Genya would be happier without him. 

Sanemi wants a family. He wants safety and security. He still remembers the touch of his mother. He was happiest back then, not when he was fighting, but when he was just trying to live together with his family. 

However, Sanemi will always put aside the things he wants if he thinks it will bring someone else happiness. Sanemi, suicidally reckless as he is has basically given up on the idea that he himself will ever be happy. It’s an entirely selfless thing to do, but it’s also a borken philosophy because Sanemi cannot make Genya happy no matter how hard he tries. Because Genya would never be happy with Sanemi sacrificing himself like that.

Which is why Tanjiro and later Genya’s words are so important to Sanemi. That as genuine as his wish was, he could not wish for his brother’s happiness. He could not take away Genya’s choices, or ignore them if he did not like them. He had to remember that Genya cared about him too, that Genya wanted to protect him too. 

Sanemi is in pain too, but he ignores that pain always for the sake of the other people around him. Which is why Genya’s last words are so reaffirming to his character. 

Even if he could not protect Genya, even if he could not protect his family, Sanemi has a right to be happy. He has a right to live his own life. Genya wishes for his brother’s happiness more than anyone else. 

Genya uses his last moments to reaffirm that his brother is an individual person, that he can live for himself instead of continually living for others and hurting himself. 

And he reaffirms who Sanemi is inside. That the kindness Sanemi desperately tries to hide is who he is as a person, and from now on he has to live that way. Sanemi is one of the nicest characters in the manga, living his entire life for the sake of others, and never once thinking of his own pain. The last thing he has to learn is how to live for himself. It’s what Genya would want. 

[mediaeval-muse]

Book Review

The Cruel Prince. By Holly Black. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2018.

Rating: 2/5 stars

Genre: YA fantasy

Part of a Series? Yes, Folk of the Air #1

Summary: Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King. To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences. As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

***Full review under the cut.***

SPOILERS in the character section, so read with caution.

Content/Trigger Warnings: violence, blood, bullying, drinking/drugs, sexual assault

Overview: I’m well aware that Holly Black’s books generally polarize the YA fantasy community - some readers love them, some hate them. I personally adored The Darkest Part of the Forest, so I figured I’d give The Cruel Prince a try, just to see what reaction I’d have. In general, I was disappointed by this book. After all the rich, mysterious lore that was presented in The Darkest Part of the Forest, faeries felt de-mystified in The Cruel Prince - de-mystified to the point where there wasn’t much to distinguish Black’s faerie world from other YA fantasy realms. Combined with my dislike for the protagonist and the lack of attention given to the political plot for the first 200+ pages, I didn’t find this book as enjoyable as I had hoped.

Writing: Black’s writing is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, I did like the way her prose flowed and how she gave rich descriptions of magical settings and objects. On the other hand, I felt that some scenes were overwritten. I didn’t much care for the paragraphs that described Jude (our protagonist) getting ready for something, the details about her meal that don’t really matter, or the monotony of going to lectures. In my opinion, too much time was devoted to these ho-hum moments and not enough time was devoted to setting up the stakes of the main plot.

This book is also told in first person, which I personally dislike because it forces the author to give descriptions and background in ways that feel unnatural. For example, Jude articulates her emotions in ways that felt clunky to me, and background was given on certain aspects of the scenery that weren’t necessary to the plot (perhaps they create atmosphere, but it was an atmosphere that didn’t enhance the actions or emotions of the scene, in my opinion). But my dislike of first person isn’t a knock on Black specifically - to some extent, all first person narratives have this challenge, and some authors succeed more than others. In this case, I don’t think first person worked, and I much preferred the third person narration of the book’s prologue.

Plot: From the description, it would seem that this book is about a girl who struggles with her identity and gets caught up in court intrigues while trying her best to fit in. To some extent, that’s true, but I personally found that Black didn’t set up the stakes well enough to make these themes resonate. Jude barely thinks about her murdered parents, so it doesn’t feel like her past drives her present actions. Jude also doesn’t exactly ruminate on why she wants to belong to a society that is openly hostile to her and her sister, Taryn. There is a brief moment when she thinks about how she want to be better than the faeries, showing them up by advancing in their court; however, I didn’t feel that there were high emotional stakes for Jude, as she doesn’t really struggle with her identity or do things that would show me that there was a goal other than to beat the bullies. I could understand a plot where the goal was just to survive, and I did get some of that in The Cruel Prince; however, Jude is raised in such privilege that I didn’t feel it as viscerally as I think I could have.

As for the palace intrigues and deceptions themselves, I didn’t find them interesting until about 250 pages in. To Black’s credit, I liked the twist - I think it was an interesting move, and really did show off some court drama. But as much as I liked it, I wish the buildup had been more engaging. Because I didn’t feel invested in the makeup of the court and everyone in it seemed to be terrible, I didn’t much care who was on Faerie’s throne or who wanted to kill who until more emotional stakes were revealed shortly after the twist. As a result, I felt like I had to slog through 250 pages before getting a payoff, and those 250 pages could have been more than Jude dealing with Cardan and his friends at “faerie school.” (And yes, I know there was technically more than that, but it felt weak to me.)

Characters: Jude, our protagonist, doesn’t have much going for her until after the twist. I was initially intrigued by the idea of a human being raised in Faerie and what effect that might have on someone, but Jude isn’t much different from any other YA fantasy protagonist that is raised in a world of magic. She’s good at fighting, but becomes a spy, despite having zero experience being stealthy (and, in my opinion, she’s not even that good at being a spy; the only thing that really makes her useful is her ability to lie). I honestly couldn’t understand why she was specifically recruited for that purpose or why she was so entrusted with crucial missions, as she has zero skills that make her qualified (other than being human and thus beneath faerie notice - even though she is the adopted daughter of a high-ranking official, so I didn’t understand why more fairies wouldn’t recognize her). Moreover, Jude would act in ways that I found nonsensical, like punching a random human in the face and thinking about how good it felt (yet not reflecting much on how that makes her a part of Faerie), to randomly deciding to try to free a human from slavery (while claiming that she wants to fight for human justice, despite being raised like a princess and not thinking much about humans in Faerie until that moment). It felt like Black was trying to make an ambitious or morally grey character - one who was violent and ruthless, just to survive - but for me, Jude just ended up feeling flat. She’s mostly just defiant and rash, and I couldn’t connect with her because I didn’t understand or feel enthusiastic about her motivations, and I didn’t see her as developing over the course of the novel.

To be fair, though, I did think Jude displayed some good planning skills after the twist. She does show some initiative, and ends up hatching a plot that I thought was pretty good. I wish more of that scheming had been present earlier in the book, perhaps in smaller doses as some foreshadowing, or more emotional moments that would have made the twist resonate on a more personal level (like more scenes that showed her deep connection to her family).

Cardan, to Black’s credit, lives up to his description. He’s awful, and Black doesn’t try to redeem him with a tragic backstory (though he does have a difficult home life, it’s never used as an excuse). Like Jude, I didn’t find him particularly interesting until after the twist, and even then, I was more interested in his political relationship with Jude than their personal relationship. I’m a sucker for enemies-to-reluctant-allies stories, and I think this aspect was done pretty well with regards to Cardan’s character. The change in their personal relationship, however, was too abrupt and felt too much like the old advice people give children: that boys are mean to girls because they like them. I would have much rather liked to see Cardan developing respect for Jude as they worked together politically, and maybe that would be fruitful grounds for a more personal relationship.

Supporting characters were fairly bland. Taryn, Jude’s twin sister, was fine, but I hated that her arc was just about fighting with her sister over a boy. Locke, Jude’s initial love interest, seemed attracted to Jude for no reason (other than boredom?) and had no interesting qualities other than being a little less cruel than Cardan and his friends; as a result, their romance was so devoid of passion that I didn’t care if they got together or not. Dain, the prince Jude serves, is threatening without being a compelling figure; he’s mostly an archetype. Even Jude’s adoptive parents manage to be uninteresting, as her father, Madoc, is regularly absent and his wife, Oriana, only exists to be the irritated stepmother until the twist happens. Given what happens after the twist, I would have liked to see more work done to develop Jude’s relationship with her family, rather than have them be background characters until convenient. The only supporting character that consistently held my interest was Vivienne (”Vivi”), Jude’s half sister. Vivi is Madoc’s child by Jude’s mother, and thus, she is half-human, half-redcap. I found her struggle with her identity to be more compelling than Jude’s, and Vivi actually had desires and goals that felt tangible and personal.

Other: The thing that bothered me most about this book was the de-mystifying of faeries. Faeries, for me, are only interesting because humans can’t reliably predict their actions or get a handle on their “culture.” Once that mystery is taken away, they feel like humans, but meaner and hotter. The Cruel Prince, in my opinion, falls into this trap. By detailing what they eat, how they dress, what lessons they have at school, what their court is like, the faeries feel less like a fantastical creature and more like humans with a few quirks (like not being able to lie). As a result, this book didn’t feel like a fairy story to me.

Moreover, I don’t think the setting of Faerie was utilized as well as it could have been - the setting could have been changed to any other fantasy realm and not much would have been different. The Lake of Mirrors, for example, was a whimsical detail that had no bearing on the plot, as were the myriad of creatures that seemed to show up and disappear. I wanted Faerie to be more whimsical and dangerous than it ended up being, perhaps to get a sense of what kinds of skills Jude had to develop to survive there. Even though there is danger (there is a lot of violence, in addition to scenes where Jude is force-fed fairy fruit and fairies attempt to glamour or compel her), the danger felt wholly concentrated in the fairies themselves, not the setting, and was accomplished by brute force rather than the subtle trickery and word play that I associate with the fay. I would have liked to see Black use her setting to enhance her premise - maybe, because Jude was raised in Faerie, the human world becomes mysterious and alluring, and maybe the fairy court wants to go after humans more aggressively; the book then could have been a political intrigue story about appreciating and protecting the things we mortals take for granted. Even if we stick with the core events of this book as it stands, I wanted to see more of how living in such a dangerous, whimsical realm affected Jude. For example, Jude was raised by a redcap (a malevolent fay from folklore), but the only way that seems to have affected her is that she’s good at swordplay (which is a skill that could have been gained in any other fantasy setting) and she’s somewhat ruthless (though not any more than other YA protagonists, I would say).

TL;DR: I felt that this book suffered from a protagonist that was hard to connect with and from making fairies seem too familiar and predictable. While I did like the plot twist and the subsequent fallout, it isn’t enough to make me rush out for the next installment of this series. I would, however, consider picking up book #2 out of curiosity for how the political plot continues, but I’m not emotionally invested in Jude’s or Cardan’s character arc, so I’m not clamoring for the next installment.

[ornamentelle]

KH OC Week Day 2: Bonds of the Heart

(The Stonewall siblings, from left to right: Tatsuya, Akihiko, Hikaru, and Yui)

Day 2 for @khoc-week​ for the Stonewall girls; better late than never!

For Hikaru...

Family

For most of her life Hikaru’s strongest bonds were with her family. She didn’t really have many chances to make close friends due to moving frequently, and in her birthworld of Polaris, her family had a reputation that set her and her siblings as outcasts of sorts.

Akihiko: By far, her best and closest friend was her older brother Akihiko, who was something of a rival in certain regards, but more so a partner in crime for whatever mischief they found themselves in. Wherever Akihiko went, Hikaru was almost sure to follow.

Yui: Her relationship with her older sister Yui was much more strained in comparison; she always thought of Yui as needlessly grumpy and a source of a lot of their mother’s frustrations with the kids. Despite that, Hikaru does know that Yui is always watching out for them—no matter how prickly she can sometimes be.

Tatsuya: Their youngest brother and newest addition to the family, Tatsuya was taken in by them only a couple years before the story’s start after they found him alone in one of the cities they were living in. Hikaru finds him a bit strange, but likes having someone younger she can be a bad influence big sibling to.

Friends

Hikaru does branch out and make some friends once her world is destroyed, however. Some notable ones...

Sora: Like two peas in a pod. Over the course of her journey, Hikaru finds a tight friendship in Sora, who she comes to see like a brother. His cheerful demeanor and competitive nature remind her quite a bit of her brother Akihiko, though Hikaru relishes in being the older one in this duo. They spend much of their adventure together and come to trust each other a lot.

Kairi: In the short time Hikaru spends on the Destiny Islands prior to the world’s destruction, she and Kairi become fast friends. Hikaru really appreciates having another girl friend, after spending so much time around her brother and his friends. Kairi offers a certain level-headedness and understanding that Hikaru appreciates greatly.

Donald: One of her “surrogate parents.” Despite the duck’s short fuse and impatience with Hikaru’s shenanigans, he surprisingly offers something that Hikaru was always lacking in her home life: the confidence to persevere, and the encouragement to try her hardest.

Goofy: Goofy’s kindness and patience make him a much-needed father figure in Hikaru’s life, especially so soon after her father’s own passing. Goofy is understanding of Hikaru’s troubles and offers her unconditional support.

Significant other

Hovering somewhere between close friend and something more, Hikaru and Riku form a relationship based on a patient understanding of each other’s mistakes, flaws, and pains. A tentative friendship at the start of KH1 takes a turn for the rocky once the adventure kicks off, quickly devolving into hostility and a growing spiteful contention. It isn’t until some time later that Hikaru takes a step back and tries to reconcile—and in doing so, finds one of her most trusted confidantes and closest bonds. 

And now for Yui! (Unfortunately I don’t have many pictures for her relationships.)

Yui has always been something of a loner. She spends much of her time by herself, seeking a haven from the stresses from her family life and making only peripheral acquaintances wherever she goes. Sometimes she almost dares to open up, but every time previous she’s run away the moment she feels herself growing too close to someone. There’s a conflict inside her, a fear of getting close to people clashing with a deep longing for trust and connection.

Family

Akihiko: Akihiko is the family’s golden child, while Yui is the family black sheep; but they have an unspoken understanding and watch each other’s backs, even if they don’t spend a lot of time actually hanging out together. Yui takes it upon herself to keep her brother in line and make sure his ego doesn’t get the best of him, while Akihiko tries to mediate any tensions and disagreements between the family before they can reach a boiling point.

Hikaru: Yui sees Hikaru as a naive child, which isn’t completely wrong. It’s a source of frustration, but it’s also something Yui in some ways wants to protect. Yui shields Hikaru from the worst parts of life, and gods help anyone who decides to lay a hand on either of her siblings; because Yui has proven it before that any threat to her family will be met with rage and vengeance.

Luna: The darkest shadow in Yui’s life is the one cast by her mother Luna. The two of them have always had a vicious and hostile relationship with each other— a relationship that Yui calls cruel because to Luna, Yui is no better than a monster. They may not like each other, but there is at least one thing they can agree on: that Yui will always protect her younger siblings.

Friends

It takes a long time until Yui begins to make actual friendships. Of them, there are a few notable ones from the post-KH3 era.

Lea: Yui never asked to be Lea’s friend; it just sort of happened. Mainly it’s just going out for drinks, but hey, better than nothing. Yui finds Lea’s attitude and behavior a little grating at times, but her exasperation is one of mild amusement. Maybe. It depends on her mood.

Isa: Being friends with Lea means being hanging out with Isa, and Yui finds herself getting along with him more easily than Lea. Though they aren’t particularly close, she’s more willing to talk about serious issues with him.

Terra: Yui knew of Terra long before she met him, but she soon realized they were sort of like kindred spirits in several ways. Her blameless understanding of the things he’s gone through leads to some heartfelt conversations, and Terra has become one of the first people she’ll go to when she needs to talk to someone.

Significant Other

A relationship that never should have been—or at least, that’s how Yui sees it. Because really, there was no reason she and Aqua should have ever become as close as they had, other than the circumstances that had forced them together. When they first met, it had been caution and suspicion. Aqua had no reason to trust Yui, especially as she began to discover the deep darkness lurking in Yui’s heart. But loneliness and the need to survive won out, and they agreed to work together. From there, they discovered more about each other and developed a mutual respect. An act of self-sacrifice and one rescue mission later, and that mutual respect began to turn into something more.

Thanks for reading!