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fluffi · 3 years

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MY DETENTION BUDDY :: JAY

pairing: jay x gn!reader genre: fluff, badboy!jay, highschool!au, friends-enemies-lovers!au word count: 2k event: for @lovesick-net and (early) jay day 200421 <3 author’s note: simple little one-shot for jay’s birthday (i wont be uploading anything for his actual birthday). i had to speedrun this fic because i kept changing the plot and this hasnt been proofread twice (unlike my other fics) T-T i hope it’ll still work out. warnings: (reader makes one bad decision)

Ring...ring...ring...ring..ring…

Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring

Ringringringringiringringringring.

RIRIRIRIRIRIRIRIRIRIRIRIRIRIRRI-SLAM!

The alarm clock stopped its boisterous wailing

10 more minutes. I don’t have to style my hair today.

Thirty minutes passed.

RIRIRIRIRIRIRIRIRIRI- SLAM!

Ugh. I’ll just miss assembly.

RIRIRIIRRIRIRI-

This time, the ringing stopped before he could slam his hand over the alarm clock.

“Jongseong, do you not have school today?” Jay could only make out a bush of black that stood above him as he sat up, dazed and drowsy.

“Yeah, I do. I’m about to get ready. Why?”

“It’s 9 am! You should be at school! At this point, you don’t even have to go anymore.” His mother huffed in disappointment.

It was an exaggeration, but she had a point. School started at eight in the morning. It was already an hour later but he was still sitting in bed.

“I’ll get ready now. 10 minutes. Good to go.” He shooed his mom away, already running to the bathroom to wash up.

“I’m leaving now Jay. You know darn well that I have an important meeting today and I can’t miss it just for you to not get a tardy. Heck, you’re already late! You’re-”

“Mom! I can’t walk to school! It takes too long.” Jay whined as he brushed his teeth, his muffled voice interrupting his mother’s speech.

“Young man, stop interrupting me. I told you a week ago about today’s event and it’s not my fault that my oldest son can’t take care of himself. You’re going to have to take another mode of transport, you’re old enough to deal with this yourself!” With that, his mother stormed out of his room, her feet obnoxiously thumping on the floor.

“I’m also your only son...” Jay muttered.

Of all days, why did she have to have her meeting today? Monthly evaluations aren’t that important. Dangit, I should’ve been taught how to drive. Jay returned to his rapid multitasking, grabbing his school uniform while washing his face. He didn’t even look twice,

After taking the quickest shower he had ever taken in his entire life and shoving all of his essential (what he determined as essential, at least) belongings into his bag, he opened to door and dashed outside only to be met with…

Rain.

Rain everywhere. Drenching the front yard’s perfectly tended flower garden and creating heaps of watery mud. It was pouring at 9.15 am. There was thunder and occasional flashes of light zooming through the clouds. The city was in shambles.

Not like, shamble, shambles. It was shambles in Jay’s opinion as he groaned and stomped his way through the rain.

Screw school. Screw this stupid rain, screw my alarm clock, screw this-

“Dude, why are you running in the rain? You’re soaked. Are you heading to school?” A pink-haired boy in a red Ferrari shouted from across the street.

Jay sighed in relief, immediately running across the road to said Ferrari. “Choi Yeonjun. You are a life-saver. Could I get a ride real quick? I’ll pay back for engine fees and for soaking the inside of your Ferrari with rainwater.”

“Hop right in, and don’t worry about returning. Let’s have some fun with this baby.” Yeonjun smirked and revved the engine, swerving past cars and buildings like it was a little RPG game.

At this rate, I’ll make it to school in no time.

“Dude, I’m so sorry. I guess you have to walk.”

Just as he thought things were taking a better turn, Yeonjun decides to show off his new driving skills and zooms through roads at a rapid speed, so fast that he crashed the car by a tree. It was a miracle that both of them didn’t get hurt but as far as Jay was concerned, he could worry about that some other time. This was just slowing him down on his long and tedious journey towards his form of hell.

On the bright side, the rain had stopped and the sunshine was back as if nothing had happened.

“I’ll get going to school.” Jay internally groaned and started sprinting in the direction of his school.

“Hey, at least I helped you get closer to school! Didn’t I?” Yeonjun shouted from behind and coyly smiled.

Such a boastful punk, Jay thought. “Whatever, bro!” He turned back and gave his older friend a quick wave before dashing off.

“Park Jongseong! You’re late...again.”

“I’m aware.” Jay didn’t spare his English teacher an eye and slung his backpack over the chair, about to take a seat.

“Stop giving me attitude, I’m your teacher.Why are you tardy for the fourth time this month?”

“Alarm clock.”

“Alarm clock what? Are you afraid to speak up? I don’t see you acting like this in the hallways.”

Jay looked down at his feet and sighed before side-eyeing his teacher. “Overslept, okay? Sir if you could just let me off the hook you would be able to proceed with your Shakespeare nonsense.”

The entire class snickered. It was no secret that Jay loathed Mr. Jung, the English teacher. Who didn’t? Mr. Jung treated every student in school like they were incapable toddlers and it was a wonder that anyone would dare to stand up to his stupid remarks. Jay’s carefree attitude towards his horrible teachers was one of the reasons why he earned so many fangirls.

Not like you were one, of course. You watched as he pulled his chair out and sat next to you out of the three other vacant seats at the back of the class.

Mr. Jung rolled his eyes and continued writing on the blackboard. “Also, Jongseong,” he added, “you’re wearing your school shirt the wrong way round. See you in detention for your tardiness.”

A few of the girls in a few seats in front of him whispered rapidly, although whispering didn’t stop Jay from finding out about their gossip.

“Lol! So much for being the bad boy of our grade. He looks like a wreck today.”

“I know right? I wonder what the other fangirls will think of this. Should we send the pictures to the fan club?”

The second girl giggled. “Yeah, duh. Name it jay-park-wreck-images.”

So much for my reputation. Jay could only roll his eyes as he pulled out his supplies, ignoring the camera clicks coming from the seats in front of him.

“Oh, yay. At least I’ll have a detention buddy now.”

Jay eyed you up and down like your statement was some sort of monstrosity. “Detention? You, detention? Pfft.” He laughed.

“Yeah, Jay. Me, detention. Why are you so happy about it? Glad to be stuck with another girl?”

“What, no-no. You just...don’t seem like the type to be in detention. How’d you get it?”

“This..may be kind of embarrassing, but...” You turned to the side and Jay gasped.

On the sleeve of your uniform was a...rabbit? It wasn’t too obvious as to what the marker doodle was but it was apparent that you had intentionally spent time to draw on it.

“Look, I was bored in assembly this morning and found a spare marker in my pocket! Don’t judge, we all know how bad assembly can be.” You blurted just as Jay was about to ask why you had done what you did.

“You could’ve just drawn on your hand or done something else with the marker.” Jay sighed and shook his head at your dumb decision.

“I was out of my mind, okay? Ugh, Assembly always drives me nuts. I got called out for for the horrendous ink bleed when Mr. Jung saw as I walked into the classroom. He said it ‘didn’t follow school guidelines’.”

“For once, I agree with Mr. Jung. It was a stupid choice, you know? If you didn’t draw on your uniform then you wouldn’t have to go to detention now.”

“Jay Park, the bad boy of school, is telling me to be a rule abider. Biggest twist of the century.” You rolled your eyes.

Jay frowned and turned back at you, losing that little spark in his eyes that he once kept. “I’m not a bad boy you know? I just don’t like the system in place here.”

“As if anyone is going to believe that. Go hang out with another girl of yours. I’m not here to be your toy.”

“People like you are the reason why everyone thinks I’m a bad person. I thought you were different, you know?”

You had been preoccupied with taking notes for class, but now you looked at him with squinted eyes. “Well, I am different. Different as In someone who doesn’t fall for your useless charms. Go suck up to your fangirls or something.”

Jay rolled his eyes and scooted away from you. He thought he had been lucky to meet you, but he guessed not.

You always do this, you idiot. You were so close to making a new friend.

You put your hands in your head and side-eyed Jay, who seemed to be struggling as Mr. Jung blurted out an entire unit’s summary.

The boy hadn’t brought any stationery and was definitely on the wrong page of the textbook. You figured that he was this disheveled from his absolute lack of planning but you still felt bad.

His hair was a mess, it was still damp from the rain before. If only you could help him style it…

Why do I want to touch his hair? That’s weird and gross.

You were so occupied with thinking about Jay that you realized that he was still struggling in class.

Maybe you could make things better.

“I’m sorry.”

Jay was struggling to find the page you guys were on for class when a pencil blocked his view.

“What do you want?” He said as he tried to look past your pencil swinging.

“It’s a pencil for you since I realized that your table is practically empty and you’re going to need something to take notes with for later. Also, it’s page 153, not 53.” You leaned over to help him flip the pages.

“Oh, that makes so much more sense. I was wondering why we were relearning unit 3 when finals aren’t even near yet.”

You raised your eyebrows, looking up at a relieved Jay. “So you do pay attention in class.”

“Of course I do! I’m a student. You should stop using that stereotype on me.” Jay frowned and a tinge of disappointment shadowed his face.

“Right, I know. I’m sorry. I’m trying to work on it, it’s rumors and assumptions that have built up over the past few years and I understand that it shouldn’t get in the way of our friendship.”

“Friendship? We have a friendship?” Jay chuckled and cocked an eyebrow up, teasing you.

Maybe it was that eyebrow slit or the weird tension that was building up between the both of you. You felt your face heat up. “I mean- yeah, friendship. Are we not friends?”

“I don’t know, hun. I thought we were something more.”

“Um...best...friends?”

It was perfect timing as the bell rang and you immediately started packing things into your bag, eyes glued to the clock instead of the amused boy next to you.

Jay laughed, running his hands through his blonde locks and watching as you started running out of class, your eyes occasionally looking back at him to see if he was still staring at you.

“See you in detention!” He called, drawing the attention of your classmates.

Jay Park needs to learn how to shut his mouth. Everyone was now staring at you and you were flustered, embarrassed, shocked, and confused. The weird mix of emotions were driving you nuts. All you could muster was a little nod and you dashed out of there as fast as you could.

“Today we’re going to learn about Murphy’s Law. It is where anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

“But everything that can work, will work.” Jay raised his hand and added, sparing a glance at you jotting notes in the back of the classroom, oblivious to his reference towards you.

“You’re right Jay. Murphy’s Law works both ways. Reversing it is considered part of science…”

Today morning was a storm (figuratively and literally) and everything seemed to be going wrong for Jay. Murphy’s Law prevails. but there’s always a rainbow after the storm. You were his rainbow and his lucky charm.

2021 © fluffi

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Doing some writing today off and on between errands and work, and jumping around various Kings of the Sky installments, specifically Dick, Jason and Cass stuff, so probably gonna post snippets from a bunch of them as I go.

(Kings of the Sky is an AU that goes canon divergent from the point of Jason calling Dick for advice for dealing with Bruce after the Garzonas case and where things end up going dramatically different from that point on. Including Jason not dying, being part of his own lineup of Titans between Dick and Tim’s, Dick being adopted not long after the Church of Blood incident, Cass being the third Wayne kid to be taken in and adopted and with Tim and Duke being next and then Damian coming along later once they find out about him. This is basically my ‘the family’s alright’ AU with largely ‘Good Dad Bruce’ except for Dick and then Jason yelling some sense into him about the other, respectively, in the first two installments, just FYI).

Anyway, this bit is from a story called “In Their Shadows Grow Trees Of Good and Evil,” set about a year after Cass has been adopted, when she and Jason are both sixteen and Dick’s twenty-one. Also just FYI, because canon has never been specific about what ways Cass is neurodivergent due to the comic-book style ‘rewiring’ of her brain so that she could learn to speak later in life, I tend to go with her being dyslexic and having aphasia. She sticks exclusively to sign language and being a silent presence in her costumed personas, so that there’s no chance of people connecting the dots between Black Bat and Cassandra Wayne, as she mostly speaks verbally in her civilian persona and doesn’t hide her aphasia. The reason there’s not likely to be any obvious signs of aphasia in the snippets of her I post is because I wait until I complete something to choose words at random to replace with aphasia-born mixups, so its more realistic and I’m not gearing her dialogue towards deliberately placed moments. Just in case you were wondering.

In Their Shadows Grow Trees of Good and Evil

“Hey Todd,” sneered an exquisitely obnoxious voice. “Why’s your sister so fucking weird?”

Jason sighed the sigh of a soul a mere century into its eternity of damnation as he rose from the lunch table he’d been studying at and crammed the rest of his books into his backpack. Then he pasted a cheerfully bland smile on his face and turned around, geared for academia warfare (teenage prep school edition).

“Hey Craig,” he said brightly. “Why’d you come out of the womb so ugly your parents had to tie a piece of steak around your neck just to get the family dog to go near you? Mysteries abound.”

The advancing junior slowed a step, momentarily rocked by his truly impressive return volley. The grimace Craig’s already gargoyle-esque features twisted into made his face even more unpleasant to look at than usual, which was quite the feat. Jason would have applauded if just looking at it hadn’t already turned him to stone.

But the bargain basement basilisk kept on towards him rather than turn tail and skulk off to pop his emotional blisters, so Jason sighed a sequel to his first one. Looked like it was one of those days where Craig felt up to powering through. Guess someone had eaten their self-esteem Wheaties that morning. Joy.

“You think you’re pretty hot shit, don’t you, Todd?”

Jason shrugged. “I mean, to be honest I kinda have a one track mind, so right now I’m mostly just thinking about punching you in your mistake.”

“My what?”

“Your face,” Jason elaborated with exaggerated patience.

“Huh?”

“Oh my god, I’m saying your face is a mistake. See, its not as fun when I have to stop and explain it to you. Ugh, you ruin everything.”

He neatly sidestepped the older boy as R2-Dumbass stayed frozen, smoke coming off of his internal CPU while trying to catch up. For a second Jason thought he was home free, but then he remembered the universe fucking hated him so haha, sucks to suck. Also, a small crowd had gathered to witness the verbal jousting match, and nothing invigorated an asshole like Craig more than an audience of like-minded peers. So there was that too.

“Whatever. Laugh it up all you want, you little shit,” the junior rallied. “But just remember, mocking your betters will never change the fact that you were born street trash and you’ll be street trash until the day you die.”

Honestly? Not his best effort. Jason almost felt bad using any of his good material. Seemed like overkill at this point. But he did have a strict Scorched Earth policy to maintain, so.....

“Yeah but my dad could buy out and ruin your dad so that means I still win, right?”

He smirked as the barb landed and Craig’s face set into a sunset vista of strangled purple and furious red. Bam. Direct hit.

“Listen, you - “

“Oh for fuck’s sake, it was rhetorical,” Jason interrupted. “I don’t actually care what you think even a little bit. Nobody does. You don’t matter. Please go be irrelevant elsewhere, you’re fucking dismissed, you loser.”

“Speak for yourself, charity case.” Oh goodie, Craig’s backup singers had finally arrived. Now if only he could remember to care enough to learn their names in the first place. Seriously, who told the extras they could have lines? “All the jokes in the world can’t change who and what you are.”

Jason shrugged and continued nonchalantly up the hill to where his sister was standing with arms crossed, staring down at something on the other side.

“True genius is never appreciated in its own time,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll be immortalized in song eventually.”

The mob of morons deigned to let him go without further incident. Though he suspected that had less to do with his scathing wit and more to do with him being headed towards Cass. She was immaculately presented as always, wearing the Gotham Academy uniform like she was born to it despite hating its uncomfortable stiffness every bit as much as he did. But that was just Cass for you.

For all that she still struggled at times to engage verbally or speak up in social settings, her mastery of body language remained without peer. She could chameleon-camouflage her way into matching poise and posture with anyone - a skill that had allowed her to walk into school on her very first day with her head held high as though she owned everything in her sight. Exuding so much Queen Bee Intimidation Factor even the other hive queens were afraid to approach her themselves. Sending forth their drones to try and woo her into an alliance, only to see her remain oh-so-casually above it all, a slightly contemptuous smile adorning her lips.

Basically, she scared the shit out of their classmates without them having anywhere close to a true understanding of why, and Jason was outrageously jealous. Rude. Unfair. Why did his siblings always get all the cool toys when all he had was his rakish charm, scintillating intellect and debonair.....nah, who was he kidding. He was fucking awesome.

“Sup, sis,” he said, cresting the hill to stand beside Cass. “Just FYI, I just took a popularity bullet for you, which means you owe me your dessert tonight. Its a family rule that’s totally a real thing and definitely not something I just made up right now because Alf is making chocolate soufflé.”

She made no acknowledgment and remained stock still, a Colossus at Rhodes peering down into the shifting shadows of the parking lot below.

He peered down as well, though with absolutely no idea what they were looking at. Solidarity, yo.

“So are we staring fixedly at anything in particular, or should I just pick my own spot and commit?”

His humor was totally wasted on her as always. Instead of laughing and telling him what a lovable goof he was, she just inclined her head in the direction of a blonde girl where she was standing next to the driver’s side door of a Mercedes-Benz, dictating final commandments to her peons before departing. Well, probably. Jason was just guessing, based on his own body language reads, and like, general disdain for literally everyone at this school that wasn’t related to him.

He made a face. An extra special one reserved just for this classmate in particular. “Ugh, Madison Dunleavy? She’s the worst.”

Cass raised a cool eyebrow. “I thought Craig Hendricks was the worst.”

“He is. They’re both the worst. Its a hotly contested position here at Gotham Academy.”

She rolled her eyes and nodded back down at the Queen of Air and Darkness. “So. You know her?”

“Nope,” Jason said. “Come to think of it, I’ve actually never seen her in my life. No idea who that is. Can’t help you, sorry. Shall we go home?”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition speared him with clear intent. Who the fuck needed words when you could pack the Encyclopedia Britannica into a single facial expression?

Jason sighed gustily.

“I had a slight altercation with her freshman year that led to her declaring her undying enmity for me until the end of time. The word nemesis may or may not have been thrown around once or twice. I can’t recall.”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition lowered nary an inch. Ugh, she wanted more? Why did everyone in his family hate privacy, with the obvious exclusion of himself when snooping through Cass and Dick’s rooms for blackmail material, which was actually intel-gathering and thus another matter entirely.

“Okay so basically what happened was my first week here I overheard her talking shit about me and not even twenty minutes later she was pretending to kiss my ass in homeroom, like probably because of Bruce, y’know? So I just busted out laughing and told her to fuck off and die and she has inexplicably loathed me ever since.”

Avoiding further Eyebrow Inquisition-ing, he made a show of peering around aimlessly. When the silence extended and it was clear Cass was absolutely not going to break first, Jason waved a hand in dismissal and took to peering oh so casually at his fingernails. "I suppose I was less tactful back in those days.”

He chanced a look up, finally, and saw his sister’s eyebrow had somehow managed to mighty morphin power ranger its way into a configuration evoking both judgment and disbelief, with the latter perhaps aimed at the idea he was significantly differing in the tact department these days either.

“I don’t love the implications your face is making right now,” he told her.

She ignored him, because of course she did.

“Does she know Dick?” She asked instead. Jason shrugged.

“I mean, maybe? She’s probably seen him around at one of those stupid galas we have to go to, and actually I think maybe she has an older brother who was either in Dick’s grade or like, one above or below it? I don’t know.”

Now both eyebrows were doing the dance of disbelief. Okay, so maybe that was poor situational awareness on his part, since it wasn’t like Gotham Academy was a big school with a ton of other kids and also he’d only been in the same class as Madison for like over two whole years, but whatever. There were extingent circumstances.

“Look, she’s a total snob who’s always looked down on me and in return I willfully ignore both her existence and that of everyone and everything even tangentially related to her. Its called equality, Cass.”

She pursed her lips and went back to the peering, because of course in the mind of Cass it made total sense that the Grand Inquisition didn’t need to be followed up by any explanation on her part, what the hell. Like was he supposed to have inferred it?

“What’s this all about anyway?”

“I heard her talking about Dick earlier,” she said without peeling her eyes away from her personal recon mission. “I don’t know what she said though, I just heard her say Grayson, and then I was busy looking at what her body was saying. I know it was about Dick because she shut down when she saw me. And I didn’t like the way she....looked....before that happened. The way she was talking. It was.....”

Jason frowned but held back any follow-up questions while he waited - with total patience because he wasn’t an absolute cad, thank you very much - for his sister to find the word she was hunting for. It was a major source of frustration for her, that whatever neural map her brain followed put body language and spoken language in totally different regions of her brain, separated by a fairly great divide. Meaning she usually had to make a conscious choice to focus on body language or conventional languages - whether verbal or sign. But it tended to be one or the other; she’d yet to master taking in and comprehending both forms of ‘language’ at the same time. And none of them had quite figured out how to convince her that she wasn’t actually missing anything when she chose to focus on one specific form of communication - that she was still observing far more than most people ever would.

“Proprietary,” Cass settled on at last. She nodded her satisfaction with her choice of word, and Jason waited a whole two point five seconds before sticking his whole foot in his mouth.

“Proprietary?” He asked with a scrunched nose as he weighed that for possible context and implications. “You sure?”

She glared. He winced. It was a whole thing.

“Yeah, I know, sorry, sorry, I heard it the second it was out of my mouth. We don’t actually have to experiment with the legitimacy of if looks could kill.”

Cass rolled her eyes, but eh. That could’ve gone worse.

Jason swiftly redirected attention anyway. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all.

“So. The Queen of Air and Darkness was talking about our big bro, and her mood was.....proprietary, huh?” He recapped while digesting the info like a boss. “Well. Definitely not loving that, I gotta say. Hold please.”

Pulling out his phone and pulling up his most recent texts, he began typing furiously.

“What are you doing?” Cass asked.

“Texting Tom,” he replied, because duh. Hah, now it was his chance to have the answers that should be patently obvious and thus make with the ‘are you kidding me’ when she asked obvious questions she should know the answer to! How do you like them apples, sis?

“Why are you texting your boyfriend right now?”

Jason rolled his eyes, because fair is fair, but never ceased texting for a moment. Time was of the essence here, probably. Well, maybe. Okay probably not. But it’d still been like half an hour since he and Tom had last texted and that’s a very fucking long time in teenage years.

“To be our getaway driver tonight, obviously.”

She stared at him. He didn’t look up, but he could feel it anyway. He was very intuitive like that.

“What?”

Jason heaved another sigh, one keyed to tones of ‘oh my god, do I really have to spell this out,” exasperation. He was just racking up the bonus points here. It was really too bad this wasn’t an actual competition he could actually win and this was all just pettiness taking place wholly in his own head. Lame.

“Well, clearly we now have to go snoop in Madison’s house aka lair to see if its actually a house or a full on lair. Because she’s either a creeper or like, legit evil, and its important to know which one before we proceed, because obviously we can only bust her for being a weird creeper about our brother as Jason and Cass, whereas if she’s legit evil, that’s gotta go down as Robin and Black Bat. I’ll handle the snooping, you’ll take look-out, but we still need a wheelman and that’s why I’m texting Tom. This is all very mission-oriented, okay. I’m a professional.”

“Right,” she affirmed, while sounding anything but convinced. “Why don’t we just tell Bruce?”

Without looking up or breaking stride, he said: “I’m going to give you til I finish typing this sentence to figure out what was wrong with what you just said. Remember that we are talking about hypothetical danger to our brother, and also Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response to any of his children being in even hypothetical danger. And also our brother’s idea of a proportionate response to Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response. Look, you’re still new so I’m gonna need you to just trust me on this one. Its gonna be a no on telling Bruce without further intel.”

Cass said nothing in response to that, which meant that she was conceding the point and recognized the wisdom of his words. Or maybe that she was just gonna go ahead and do what she wanted anyway and just wasn’t bothering to fight about it, but it was probably that first thing.

“Well you better not just make out with your boyfriend all night,” is what she said at last, and that got his attention reeeeeal quick like.

“Umm. Wow. Okay. So, first off, you’re not the boss of me and who I make out with and when, so jot that down. And second, now I’m definitely going to make out with my boyfriend extra hard, with the exception of when we are actually on our recon mission because as previously established, I am a professional. And also, again, you’re not the boss of me.”

Jason ignored her Eye Roll With Extra Emphasis, and instead just held up his phone to Text With Extra Emphasis, as he read along with what he was typing.

“By the way babe, we have to make out extra hard tonight,” he said, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth while he dragged out his dictation with the kind of focus that usually led to Bruce asking why he couldn’t apply as much intensity to training as he did to pettiness. “Cass has suddenly decided she can dictate terms to me and I need to shut that shit down ASAP, so thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter. Smoochies and other gay stuff to the best boyfriend ever.”

Jason frowned as a response pinged back seconds later.

TheCatsMeow: ....the things I put up with for the sake of your weird family dynamics.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah, yeah. You’re a saint among were-panthers. Must you mock? Why can’t you just tell me I’m pretty instead?

TheCatsMeow: Sorry. Let me try again. OMG you’re so pretty Jase how did I get so lucky xoxo.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: No. Its too late. It feels forced and unbelievable now. You’ve ruined it forever.

TheCatsMeow: Got it. From now on I will only tell you that you’re repulsive and hideous.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: I’m breaking up with you.

TheCatsMeow: But after I help you with your mission tonight.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Obvsly. I’m a professional. Why do people keep forgetting this?

TheCatsMeow: And also the making out to spite your sister.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah we should do that first too. I mean we already penciled it in.

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interact-if · 3 years

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Day 10, 2/2 of the A/PI Heritage Month featured authors interview! For our final entry, we have the amazing Shai!

Shai, author of Hollowed Minds

A/PI Heritage Month Feature Author

“You will play as a disgraced detective, entangled in webs of conspiracies and betrayal as your character engages in a suspicious probation - with a whole lot of enigmatic hallucinations and explosions to deal with. It will be up to you to shape your detective’s (or Ripper’s, if you prefer to call them that) perception and motivations. After all, Gaile City is a place full of secrets - some of them belonging to your own character’s family - and you’ll have the freedom how to act accordingly.”

Author's Kofi

(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!)

To put it simply, Hollowed Minds is a long quest on morality and relationships. You'll start as a disgraced detective, once a favored hero of the city until this one unfortunate mistake, and now you're forced into a suspicious probation that you shouldn't even be in. There would be a lot of challenges and suffering along the way, and you can either help your character maintain their heroic ideals or succumb to the darkness that the future brings.

Q1: First of all, introduce us to your project! What is it about?

There are a lot of things to uncover in the story, but the main issues in the first book would be the mysterious hallucinations that people are suffering from and the explosions that would shake the fundamentals of the society. There would be several approaches to choose from as you go forward, some of which may be quite outside the law, and you could opt to use a certain ‘talent’—one with accompanying repercussions—to learn more secrets. You would also have the choice to cultivate your relationships with the people you trust the most and have your interactions with them matter in the long run.

As it is, you'd have a large target on your back, owing to a sinister group with a very sinister plan—something that might be worse than death.

Q2: If it’s not too spoilery, what are you most excited about your project?

First of all, the reputation system. You can manipulate how the general public would see you, either as the hero they once saw you as, or a corrupted personality that everyone would loathe. Best thing about it? You can hide your real intentions. This would have a lot of interesting consequences, especially if your character's actions tend to be the opposite of what they're perceived as.

Second, the most awaited reunion. People who have read the available demo would know what this refers to, and well, it's about to happen soon, so I'm very excited about the idea of writing the whole scene!

Then there's this one big chapter that I know would be torturous to write and code. Basically, you'll be choosing how to 'infiltrate' this certain location, the person whom you'd be with most of the time, a decision between accomplishing what you came there for or sacrificing it for something else, how you'd get out, and where you'd go to after the whole thing. It will be a wild ride of twists and emotions, and it's not even the endgame. A lot may change with this chapter alone, and it's one of those things I think about a lot before going to sleep.

Lastly, the customization of the main character. The motivations, blame mechanic, alcoholic/non-alcoholic option, and relationships (romantic or not). Those little details would change a lot of content in the narrative and maybe in the plot itself. Whether you want to build a character who's kind to a fault or an anti-hero who wouldn't hesitate to make questionable decisions, the journey would be entirely yours.

Q3: What inspired the current project you’re working on?

It was based from a short story of mine that won a small competition back in 2018. They share similar themes, but the short story was a lot darker than I could ever put in a game that I plan to get published.

I initially thought of starting my IF writing attempts with the supernatural genre—it does seem to be a successful area—but that short story was probably the first piece of mine that I've come to appreciate, and I wanted to at least honor that. The writing style that I adopted, the evocative tone I learned to use, and the plot pieces that I've managed to be good at crafting—they all started with that story.

Looking back, there aren't much similarities anymore between the two, maybe aside from the appearance of certain characters, but the themes are still the same.

It will definitely be a huge challenge to implement what I have on mind, but I do hope people would love what's to come.

Q4: Do you pull from your own identity for inspiration? How has that been reflected in your work?

I grew up in a troublesome neighborhood, along with people who continue to fight against the struggles. That's both good and bad, I suppose. Philippines has a lot of corruption deep in its roots, I won't deny that, but there are also people working hard for the changes they want. That's one of the biggest influences I've got in this story.

As we delve into the plot, the readers would discover more questionable decisions that some characters may have made or would make. It's parallel to how I witnessed people having differing reactions to injustice and the way they make changes in their lives as a response. Adding to that, I personally know the feeling of grief, and I’ve seen how the people around me deal with it themselves.

There are also moral choices to be had in the game, and when I speak of that, it's not going to be just around choosing between saving/killing people. It's about the main character's intentions and emotions, and how the revelations might slowly change their views. It would be a story that will steadily define your character’s perceptions amid the threats.

Q5: What’s been your experience so far? With writing, with the if community...

It's been great. I appreciate the people who have reached out in various ways to share their love for my work and to give meaningful feedback that are continuously helping me shape the story in a better way. And honestly, I'm so overwhelmed with excitement for all the support I'm getting. I didn't even expect a lot of people to like the story this early. That's why I'm so thankful!

There's also a great IF author whom I've been occasionally getting advice from, and they've been a huge reason as to why I even managed to make the first steps. Interacting with other writers is something that I never really expected myself to do, but I’m quite glad I did it.

Q6: Do you have any future projects in the works?

There are three more interactive fiction stories I've already thought of, though I won't be actively working on them until I finish the Hollowed Minds series, which would take a long while. Their temporary titles are respectively "Corrupted Legacies" (fantasy), "The Remnant's Keeper" (supernatural horror), and "A Hero's Touch" (superhero story with a twist).

Aside from that, I'm also looking forward to finishing my fantasy novel, one that I've been delaying for years, literally, as soon as I finish the first book of Hollowed Minds.

Q7: Finally, what piece of advice would you give to fellow authors?

Write what you want to write. I know that you're all probably tired of hearing this, but it is still very important. During the planning stages, you'd most likely be excited to show the readers what you've got in store. You'd be proud of it, and you'd believe that it's one of the most brilliant ideas out there. Then a few days after you finish planning, you'll realize it may not attract as much readers as you may have expected initially. Then you'll get tempted to change your visions for the story and adopt the plot lines that the famous works have.

Do not abandon your own vision.

It's your work. It's your masterpiece. Listen to feedback, sure, and let them guide you into becoming a better writer, but do not let go of the things that made your work your own. Some way or another, there will be people who would love your story, and they'd deeply appreciate that you made it the way it is.

So don't hesitate. Is it weird? Is it unconventional? Does it belong to a genre that's not as popular as the others? It doesn't matter. Write it, polish it, and show it to the world.

People will love it as long as you do.

#if: events #Happy Asian and Pacific Islander month!!#Asian/pacific islander month 2021 #a/pi month #a/pi month 2021 #aapiheritagemonth #aapi month #interactive fiction #authors of color

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equestrianwritingsstuff · 3 years

Note

OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO CONTINUE THE DROWNED SERIES, IT'S SO DAMN GOOD

Thank you for the ask, it makes me excited to see that people are still interested.

Drowning Part 10

@shydragonrider @asrasmysoulmate @sunflower1000

This one is kind of short, and probably makes no sense, but it starts to explain the story line a bit more and what my goal is with Supervillain (and perhaps the reason I am not having him rescued... yet 👀). Anyway, not edited.

Ask games for this series are here and here.

Masterlist

Warnings: referring to person as "it", altered state of reality, dehumanization, muzzled, talk of surgery, weaponizing a human, fear

"Okay thank you for your cooperation," the director said as he stopped the recording. He looked up, smiled, and began to pack away his things- an array of various instruments to enable both Villain and Hero's voices to be clearly heard all the way at the Hero Facility.

"Yeah well, I expect my pay within the next two days," Villain crossed his arms and swung his leg over top of the other one.

"That may not be-"

"Director. I am doing this for you guys. I have my record cleared, Hero in my custody, and a billionaire. I don't need to this for you guys."

"But you are in love with the cash," Hero chimed in, rolling her forestry green eyes. Not with attitude or snarky annoyance, but out of pure loathing.

Villain shot her a glare the second she closed her mouth and stood up, pacing. "I want my pay, fifty-thousand for a mere conversation isn't something you come by everyday," he said, rubbing his hands through his blonde mane.

"Yes but-"

"The only reason it was fifty-thousand," Hero interrupted the director. "Is because you pushed it that far." She didn't exactly understand her exasperation. After all, she agreed to do this with him- not that she had a choice. She was, in fact, thankful for him for breaking her out of the facility, even to the point of restoring friendship.

"Well they consented..." Villain's voice trailed off as he stopped his aimless walking. He sneered, a mischievous look dawning on his face. "I could, just for the record, break Supervillain out of his cell easily. Actually, I bet a novice could."

The director stiffened, fingers tapping the screen on his phone, prepare to call the authorities. Hero smiled slightly. After her aided escape, the heroes didn't bother to recapture her or Villain. And it was all because her rescuer threatened the Hero Facility if they tried to reclaim her. It was like he controlled the heroes- and maybe in a way, he did.

"Okay you will get the money! Write him a check or cash him over some. I don't care, just give it to him."

Villain snickered at the director's desperation and fear.

Hero watched as a young girl scribbled a check and handed it to Villain. Then, after than transaction, the whole team wrapped up and left without another word.

"Hmm," Villain said, eyeing the check he possessed.

"What do you want for dinner?" Hero asked, repeating the lines her current maid position required of her- not that she had to, Villain was not strict enough to enforce rules, but cleaning and cooking seemed to put his explosiveness at ease.

"Nothing. I have a date."

A date?!

"You have a girlfriend?" Hero chuckled. "Who is the unlucky damsel?"

"That's besides the point, but she is quite pretty."

"How long have you been dating?"

"This is our third date within the course of two months."

Two months... that was duration of time since she and Supervillain were kidnapped.

"Not that consistent then," Hero commented instead of voicing her curiosity.

"She works as a nurse, so she is quite busy," Villain replied, folding the check and placing it in his jean's pockets.

"I see," Hero replied. "Where is your date? Please tell me you are not taking her to McDonald's."

"That coffee date in the park sounded great," Villain replied. "Then I was thinking Taco Bell."

"No, no, no!" Hero scolded, pushing herself to her feet. "You are not taking this poor girl on a date to a fast food restaurant. You are a billionaire, Villain. Take her to one of those places where they serve an ounce of food for thirty dollars and spoil her."

Villain blushed, pulling at his fingers nervously. "You know a couple months ago I thought I would be taking you on a date."

"Me too," Hero sighed, placing her hands on her hips.

"I guess life took a turn, didn't it?"

"Yes," Hero replied, extending her arms and wrapping Villain in an embrace. Before she let go, she whispered:

"Torture was in that turn to, wasn't it?"

Villain's muscles tensed, he coughed and pulled away. "See you tonight," he said and ran up the stairs to go get changed.

《~~》

All at once, a piece of light, a string of consciousness sprouted through the dark unconsciousness of the patient's mind. It swirled, bombarding lidded eyes with intolerable brightness. They strained, trying to shut, but it was as if the motor lost control- or gained control, depending on which side of the metaphor you are one.

Then the light formed into various shapes, some holding objects of humanoid form whereas others were cubical, rectangular and circular- making the world around the patient pixelated and blurry. Colors rounded to the basis of their hue- cyan swirling into blue, pale yellow whisking itself into an off-white- until the world was a pallette of bland coloring.

The noise, lolling in a sense, but also increasingly obnoxious. Beeps and rings, rumbles and grumbles, but all the vowels and consonants equaled a series of off-tune words, some faded, others marked with clarity.

Not safe, were the only cognitive thoughts. Not safe not safe not safe. He tried to thrash, anything to get away from the looming danger, though his protruding limbs were too weak, will devoid of any resolve.

More sounds rumbled and purred around him as equally slow restraints grappled at his arms and legs- or were they fast paced? The man didn't know. The perception between reality and unreality was dim, as was his ability to process sleed and direction. Heck, he didn't even know his own name, just the anticipated danger.

He coughed, or tried to, some form of blockade in his mouth inhibited any sound, cough or otherwise, to escape. Tears pricked at his eyes, later streaming down his cheeks- he wanted to go home. Home to that dank apartment that couldn't seem to leave his very intellect. He wanted home, needed home...

The shapes around him once again began to evaporate, but this time instead of mixing into like shades and tones of color, they all shifted to one mass of brown-colored mud before it all vanished into blackness again.

《~~》

"Vitals?"

The doctor's voice ran throughout the room as nurses scrambled to check Supervillain over. The room soon sung with a chorus of "Good".

"Then everyone is dismissed other than Doctor and Medic," a new voice, equally as authoritive yet significantly much more of a feminine type.

All the nurses practically galloped out of the room as a hoard, not daring to look at the woman who just stepped in.

"Leader," the doctor greeted the woman. "What brings you here?"

"I've come to look at the project. I heard it just underwent surgery?" The lady spoke, walking up to the bed where the unconscious patient rested.

"Yes, knee replacement surgery," the doctor replied, joining Leader by the bed. Medic appeared across from them, tenderly rubbing her fingers over the supervillain's hand.

"Fifteen hours on the table," Leader continued to speak, observing Supervillain with contempt in her gaze. "Why?"

"We had to replace the entire knee cap with a newly engineered material made from cells of donors and a type of substance formed from titanium to enhance strength and durability. Then we had to connect the nerves and ligaments to the knee so he can control it like normal."

"Also known as a high-tech prosthetic? Why, may I ask, did my project have to get one?"

"Broken knee..."

"Shattered, Doctor," gray eyes darted around to meet the doctor's humble brown ones. "Not broken, but completely shattered. It needs to be fully operational by the end of the month."

"Ma'am, the recovery is going to be rough-" the doctor tried to protest.

"We have serums for that," Leader groaned, throwing her head into the air.

"It is not safe to drug him with much. His cells and blood need to adapt."

"I don't care. I put a lot of time and effort and money into this project. The enemy is going to launch an attack soon, our spies have gathered enough data to anticipate it by the end of the month. You have been soft Doctor, in his training."

"It's been working," the doctor reasoned.

"It's submission, not training. Ever hear of conditioning?"

"I have done some research into it and I believe that we need to take a more-"

"Yes you are right," Leader smiled. "I don't want a bodyguard. I want a weapon with one, single purpose. Eliminate Hero."

"I don't get that," Medic spoke up, her voice soft, yet filled with courage. "Why get rid of Hero when she is not the enemy?"

Leader chuckled, eyes thinkling. "What an ignorant little girl, so cute though. Did you do your make-up today? Hmm." The baby talk rapidly switched to a more serious tone, "She is a threat, even bigger than this newfound enemy. The moment she joins sides, which we know she will, the odds will be... let's say any attempt to stop them will be suicide."

"We contained her once before..."

"She will be mad, you'll see," Leader acquired a distant look in her dreary gray eyes. "Start weaponizing it. Immediately."

《~~》

Run.

Duck.

Jump.

"I love you."

"Love you more."

Punch.

Supervillain was panting for breath by the time he collapsed on the ground, exhausted to the highest extent. Sweat beaded around his hairline- recently trimmed in a convenient, yet flashy style, with a lightning bolt shaved into the side.

"I love you."

"Love you more."

Supervillain groaned, rubbing shaking hands over his face. Turn it off turn it off turn if off...

Everyday started with a morning workout in the gym. The gym had a track running around the whole thing with obstacles for him to duck under and jump over. The center only had a punching bag and a benchpress, but equally sweaty and daunting.

Suddenly, the loudspeaker rang, signaling that Supervillain could leave.

Once, of course, training was done.

Workouts weren't training, they were extra credit designed to get him further, to get him a higher GPA.

The doctor entered the room, so Supervillain stood up- respect, expected and therefore delivered.

"How many laps?"

"Twenty-five, sir."

The doctor took note of that on his clipboard, frowning before asking his speed.

"5 miles per hour, sir."

This time, the doctor smiled. "Good," he praised, then looked at the benchpress.

"Three hundred pounds," the doctor tapped the dumbbell with his pen, still grinning widely. "Nice work, but yesterday you did three-fiftey."

Supervillain whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut. He failed he failed he failed he failed.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, proceeding to walk towards the nearby intern to receive the needed correction.

The intern raised her hands, holding a contraption of metal and leather, and slipped it into Supervillain's mouth. He whimpered upon feeling the cold metal slid onto his tongue. A leather strap held it in place, tightly buckled in the back of his head. From that extended more leather that went over his nose. A chain was linked through the nasal strap, more cold metal on warm skin.

Abruptly, he was pulled forward. The metal pinched that nerve- the one that always ached from the commonly given treatment.

The intern pulled him into yet another white room.

Yet this one contained the most dreaded torture implement.

#supervillain whumpee #heros and villains #writing #surgery #drugged whumpee #drugged villain #captivity whump

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heyjude19-writing · 4 years

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Hello! I was just curious to know if there have been any changes in your writing pattern or planning pattern.. because you said you had RN in your mind for 7 years and if you're writing now(hopefully) without so many years of thoughts in your mind..is it any different?

I had various ideas in my mind and have written them down over the years..but now I'm just worried I won't be able to expand them properly? Some advice would be nice because RN is a beautiful piece of work!

Hello anon!

Oh I do not recommend holding in a story idea for a decade. My story planning process is very different now, because I’m no longer hiding from myself. RN was my 300k word mantra for too long. I’d mentally retreat into it when I needed an escape. When I finally let myself write it out, it was not with the intention to ever share (at first), so I had no word count in mind, nor a plan for how to break up chapters, I just wanted it out of my head.

I am writing a new multi-chapter and a few one-shots now. I write every day and have given myself a daily word count goal. I would say the physical act of writing looks the same for me: I write down all the little scraps of dialogue, character notes, or scenes as I think of them, regardless of where they occur in the story. Apologies if you’ve heard this from me before, but I will forever remain a “fill in the blank” style writer, which is a blending of the plotter/pantser method. I know how my story starts, I know how it ends, I know the emotional arcs I’m giving my characters and which emotional beats they need to hit on their journey to reach my envisioned end. But I do not need to write in chronological order. My outlines are hilariously disorganized and rambling.

And I would like to banish your worry about expanding on your ideas. Write them down. Write them all down. They may turn into absolutely nothing (some of my story ideas in my WIP files are one bullet point) or you might find it was the perfect jumping off point you needed to build a whole scene, then a whole fic around.

I often play the “what if” game with story threads to see if I can build something bigger. RN (chapter 8, Draco’s apology) is actually a ridiculous example of this exercise, even if it took me so fucking long to get it out. A shorter example would be Courting Customs Most Sacred: “what if Pansy manifested her clingy personality in a more positive way, like a friendship with Hermione?” and then I married it with another stray idea of “what if Narcissa tried to engineer a match between Hermione and Draco without their knowledge using some seriously insane pureblood customs?”

Because asking “what if?” of a story idea often leads to answering “why?”

Character X is in a situation. Why are they in this? What led them to this moment?

Which spirals me into: How are they feeling about this situation? What about their past is going to color how they act/react/speak? What’s their ultimate motivation?

So my advice is to indulge all your little head canons and if something excites you, chase it. Make your characters answer your questions and they will come across as authentic in whichever story you’ve crafted for them.

If it’s a confidence issue, let me be the one to give you permission to tell your inner self-loathing gremlin to fuck right off. There is an audience waiting for your story. This fandom is blessed with so many talented writers but it always needs more. Please don’t be afraid to add your voice.

#remain nameless #dramione #fic writing #fic writer asks #thoughts on writing #asked and answered

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birdwonder · 5 years

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just thought of the idea of Rohan using his stand on reader and seeing on their page they have a big crush on josuke so Rohan either teases them or helps them get together. i think the idea is cute

|| i am SO sorry this took a while longer than i usually take to write. my holiday has left me without a computer so writing long stories takes forever on a phone but i hope these 3,000 words make up for it :,) its 3am so i doubt i editted properly so ill go through it again tomorrow

Josuke Higashikata | Rohan’s Help / Confession

You and Rohan have been friends for a short time. Less than a year to be honest, and yet you two felt like you were as thick as thieves — an unstoppable duo when it came to your friendship. Both of you complimented each other so well, you being able to improve Rohan’s social skills and how he treated others, and Rohan had been making progress with you to be more confident. A kind yet self-loathing highschool student who is best friends with a prideful and stuck up manga artist, who would have thought?

In the small amount of time you two have known each other, you both have been able to pick on small quirks you had and tell-tale signs of your moods. For example, you were currently leaning on the side of Rohan’s desk as he scribbled away on a piece of paper, desperately trying to figure out a new and inventive pose for his next manga page. Your blank, dull eyes staring into the distance and lack of encouraging comments was all Rohan needed to know that something was up with you. Of course, he wasn’t the best at comfort, not when it’s so early into his progress of becoming a better person, so jumping straight to sympathy and questions was not his go-to plan.

“So, what do you think so far?” Rohan questioned with hope, holding up his sketch book with one hand and gesturing towards it with another, hoping that your thoughts on his work would be at least distracting enough from whatever was plaguing your mind. Unfortunately, you only glanced towards the sheet of stunning, detailed figures and hummed halfheartedly before returning to look at absolutely nothing with your chin pressed into the centre of your palm.

Groaning, the artist tore out the page dramatically to then scrunch it up into a tight paper ball, throwing it into the trash-can beside him in a small fit of annoyance. “Right then,” he burst out abruptly, two hands slamming on his desk and his chair scraping backwards as he got up to emphasis his change in mood, “you’re going to tell me what’s wrong right now because right now I can NOT figure out how to draw this next panel, and I can’t do it when you’re sitting here like a... a...”

“Like a what?” You piped up, one brow quirked up which gave you an atypically fed up expression, one so cold it almost sent shivers down Rohan’s spine.

“Like a killjoy!” He finally said, huffing and puffing his cheeks out. “You’re just sitting there, staring like a corpse and I’m actually trying to talk to you!”

Then, you faltered. Your tightly pressed lips tilted downwards and your brows lowered, returning your expression to it’s well known gentle and kind look, something Rohan had greatly missed the last hour or so. “Oh, I’m sorry Rohan, it’s just, oh never mind.” You mumble your last words, a strange pink tint along your cheeks that didn’t go unnoticed by the man who valued every single detail he saw.

Rohan then grabbed your shoulders firmly, forcing you to turn and look at him, his eyes narrowed with an intense stare boring into your own pupils. “[F/N], I refuse to take that as an answer, so let’s try again shall we? What. Is. The matter?”

You gulped a little, sucking in your breath while debating whether or not to tell your trusted companion about the problem that ridiculed you or not. You opted no. With a shake of your head, you gave an apologetic look and your frown only went deeper, “sorry Rohan, it’s really stupid and I just don’t want to say it. I mean, it can’t be solved anyways, so I’m sure I’ll get over it soon!” You placed a hand on his shoulder and forced yourself to smile a little, your heart swelling with some joy over the fact Rohan had clearly grown as a person - showing that he cared for the problems that bedevilled you was one large step from where he was when you first met. “Thank you though, really.”

Your gratitude and certainty may have been enough to rest anyone else’s soul, but not Rohan’s. He simply would not take ‘no’ for an answer. Sighing, he released his grip on you, giving you the message that he wasn’t going to pry anymore until he spoke, “I didn’t want to resort to this but you leave me no choice.”

Before you could question his words a familiar cry of “Heaven’s Door,” was yelled and you felt your body slowly feel lighter, almost weightless as you watched the skin on your face and arms unfold to reveal small prints of words, words you knew revealed everything there was to know about [F/N] [L/N].

Resistance was futile as you struggled to shift away from Rohan’s approaching form, the back of the chair and the wall behind you trapping you inbetween, prayers being your only tactic of getting out of the hectic situation. “Now let’s see,” Rohan hummed, taking a gentle hold of the pages attached to your face between his thumb and index finger, his eyes scanning each word carefully as though missing a single one would be detrimental.

“Rohan, please don’t,” you begged, fear arising in you from the idea that he would find out the cause of your sullen mood. Fear that was quickly picked up on.

“[F/N] [L/N], sixteen years old... Birthday is... Ah, here we are, something more modern. Cereal for breakfast, and currently stressing over the idea that Josuke Higashikata won’t like her...” Rohan’s out loud reading soon quietened and the look he gave you could only be summarised to ‘really?’

Once he pulled away from you, Heaven’s Door effects subsided and your skin was no longer detached from you. You sighed with relief that you were no longer in such a vulnerable state, calm until you began to lightly pound your fists against Rohan’s chest, unable to actually hurt him since you didn’t have to heart to. “Rohan, that was private information, how could you?!”

Rohan clicked his tongue, using only a finger to press against your forehead to push you away. The perks of you being so docile was getting you to stop any hint of aggression was easier than reciting the alphabet.

“I did it for you so I could help you with your problem!” He argued in attempt to defend himself and cringed slightly, speaking with venom in his voice. “How was I supposed to know that you were so worked up over that idiot and not something sensible?”

“He is not an idiot!” You retorted since you hated whenever either Rohan or Josuke insulted each other. Those two really had the potential to be friends with each other, they just never let it work. Regardless, your main concern was the fact your true feelings were revealed and in the worst possible way. You hadn’t meant for anyone to find out about how you feel, not when you were for sure that it wouldn’t matter in the end.

Josuke ... he was amazing. Friendly, strong, funny and whenever he looked with you with those kind eyes and a smile on his plush lips, your heart stopped only to restart beating 1000 beats per minute. You were certain that he was the most perfect person you had ever met, and every memory with him was greatly treasured.

Though you were almost certain he didn’t feel the same. You felt so small compared to him, figuratively that is, and everything he was good at, you seemed to fail at. Confidence, strength, styling the perfect pompadour; you couldn’t even compare to him, even if these all seemed like the most insignificant aspects ever. So, why would he want to be with someone who couldn’t reach his standards ? He wouldn’t.

Your internal self deprecation was silently evident to Rohan as you began to nibble on the bottom of your lip, dejectedly looking down like a lost puppy. No way was he going to let you keep that up, not when he had announced you as a friend to himself and actually cared about how you felt.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Rohan groaned at what he was about to do although he knew it was going to be worth it if it meant you weren’t ruining your hang out times anymore. “Alright, we’re going to make you confess to Josuke.” He declared, catching you off guard, and you weren’t able to even question him as a single finger was suddenly pressed upon your lips, sealing your mouth shut with one simple movement.

“Listen and remember this well, [F/N], you are perfect the way you are and as much as I would hate to see Josuke gain anything he doesn’t deserve,” he paused to retract his hand from your face and instead ruffled your hair, treating you like a younger sibling for a second, “I know being with him would make you happy, so I’m going to help you confess your entirely questionable and possibly delusional love for that delinquent.”

You blinked up at Rohan a few times, mouth agape. There was no way that this was happening, just who was this guy and where was the real manga artist you knew?

“Rohan, I appreciate you wanting to help me, I really do, but there’s no need! It’s a lost cause, let’s just get back to what we were doing before - poses right?” Your attempt to change the subject was quickly brushed off like dust on Rohan’s shoulder when he pinched your nose, an audible ‘ow’ squeaking from you.

Your resistance to the situation was irking Rohan to no end, his drive only stepping on the gas each time you tried to refuse his assistance. There was no way he was going to let you suffer in silence. Besides, if he helped two young, dumb and lovesick teens get together then maybe he could have some insight on how to work around the more romantic scenes of his manga, if he was to ever implement them.

“I’m not taking no for an answer. This is going to happen and you’re going to thank me for it,” the green hair male stated, eyes heavily trained onto you. You gulped.

You really didn’t know where this was going to go.

——

A band of raging drums had surely replaced your heart.

The hammering sound of sticks against percussion instruments was practically akin to the violent, frantic rhythm that pounded against your chest with the diagnosis resulting to be nervousness.

You sucked in your breath and released the built up carbon dioxide by muttering words of encouragement that Rohan had taught you to rehearse to yourself in case of situations like this. Ironically, he was the one who had put you in this nervous wreck state. His vow to have you confess to Josuke had stuck through pretty solidly leaving you in a cute outfit you definitely could not have afford on your lonesome, [Thank you Rohan.] and standing in front of your crush’s door.

Gulping, you began to hype yourself up.

‘I can do this! I can totally do this. No problems here, none at all!’ The repeated phrases were practically a religious mantra at this point; if you were to even dare forget a single one you’re certain life would be a living Hell. Well your stresses shouldn’t matter anymore, you were here now. Just knock. Knock and say what’s on your mind!

The unremitting worries failed to cease however , eating at your brain like parasites that were only starting to leave once you gathered enough courage and balled your hand into a fist, rapped against the wooden door.

It took less than a minute for the door to be unlocked and opened, revealing the tall, well built figure of the one and only - Josuke. For some reason you felt as though none of this actually happening right there and then, like it was some dream or even a nightmare you were going to wake up from any second. You quickly rubbed your eyes to see if that was true. When you opened them, he was still there, his usual stylised school uniform replaced with a regular white t-shirt and dark blue jeans. It wasn’t an unwelcome look but certainly threw you off for a second seeing as it was rare to see him wear anything other than his uniform.

“[F/N], hey!” He greeted,his eyes seeming to light up at the sight of you while a hand gripped the door frame, “didn’t think it’d be you at the door. What’s up?”

The moment he smiled at you, you knew that you had to this. How he instantly had made you feel relaxed would have seemed impossible to you five minutes ago, now you felt as though things would go perfectly. If not for the persistent nagging voice in the back of your head.

“Hi Josuke! I was hoping that I could maybe uhm, talk to you! About something that is. Something really important.” Your wavering voice had caused some concern to flash in Josuke’s eyes; the way he looked down at you with such a caring expression made you want to hide your face into a pillow and squeal.

He responded easily with, “oh sure, is everything alright?” Really, you weren’t even sure if things were alright or if they were going to be at all.

You doubts rose up again and a jumbled ball of words was suddenly caught in your throat, countless words and ways to say your thoughts conjuring up but not a single thing is said. If only you had more confidence — Rohan had spent so long trying to get you to perfect your confession and despite all that effort, you were still struggling.

Glancing down, you noticed that your fingers were a plain sign of your awkwardness. They constantly switched from fiddling with the fabric of your outfit to thumbs twiddling with each other, neither things helping you in the end.

“[F/N]...? You don’t look like your usual self, where’s that cute smile of your’s, huh?”

Oh god, did he just call your smile ‘cute’? Did that just make talking even harder or ten times easier? This boy was going to be the death of you!

Teeth lightly nibbled on your low lip as you argued in your head what to do. You really don’t know if you could ever have the courage to even approach him like this, let alone think about asking him out. Besides, all of Rohan’s efforts would go to waste.

“Josuke!” The sudden change of your volume had clearly surprised the teenager, his brows raising. “I— I have something serious to tell you and I’m sorry for making it so weird so far, it’s just really hard to get through what I want to say.”

Facing him was just too much. You couldn’t handle the idea of looking up to see an uncomfortable, angered, disgusted or any expression that would send you hurdling down a pit of regret. Instead, you stared down at the ground although you paid no real attention to it, your hand clutching at the clothing over your heart, almost as though you were trying to steady the rapid beating drums within your ribcage.

Taking in a deep breath, you continue, “I’m not the best at being outgoing or confident, and as my friend I know you know that, and you’re the exact opposite! You’re bold and kind to everyone and everything about you is incredible. Saying this I think I fully realised why I lo—.”

Again, the words are caught in your throat and you’re visibly struggling, almost choking on what you want to say. None of it goes unnoticed by Josuke, who had been initially taken back by the praise and tone you were using. His smile quickly returned when things became obvious to him, much softer and sweeter than before, his plush lips turning upward all thanks to your adorable stuttering.

He reached out with a large and surprisingly softer than you would have guessed hand, his palm resting against your cheek as he guided you to look up at him with both your eyes staring into each other’s.

“Do you want to come inside?”

The question was short and simple though it still took some time to process. You made a small, questioning ‘eh’ sound to which Josuke laughed at.

“You don’t have to stress so much, whatever you’re going to say I’m sure I’m going to like hearing,” he told you, stepping to the side so that you now had room to enter his house, a hand gesturing for you to come inside. “Maybe things would be easier if we had something to drink? My mum’s not home so we can watch a movie too!”

You had no idea how things got to this but you didn’t want to ask. If what Josuke said was true and that he was really going to like whatever you said then, why rush? It was probably better to wait for when the atmosphere was much more relaxed anyways. Things just seemed more right that way. The relationship between you and Josuke were always so casual so it was best to confess just like that. He was a serious God send to be so nice and understanding.

You mouthed a ‘thank you’ before walking through the door with small pep in your step and butterflies swarming in a welcomed fashion in your stomach. Josuke followed you, closing the door behind him as the two of you started to strike up a conversation about your week and what movie the two of you wanted to watch, every worry and care flying free and becoming lost in the sky.

From across the street stood a smiling manga artist, ready to walk home with nothing but pride in his heart for his shy and growing friend. All he really had left to worry about was whether or not Josuke would treat you right.

#josuke higashikata #josuke x reader #jjba x reader #platonic #rohan x reader #but its platonic #request

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thehierophage · 3 years

Text

Holy Day Meditation for 4/8/21 e.v.

April 8, 2021 æ.v. Dies Jovis,

☉︎ 19° ♈︎ : ☽︎ 14° ♓︎ : ♃︎ : Ⅴⅴⅰⅰ

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The Feast for the First Day of the Writing of the Book of the Law, The Day of Gimel, the Day of the Priestess

Hebrew Letter: Gimel

Numerical Value as Letter: 3

Numerical Value as Word: 73/83 (Gimel+Mem+Lamed or Gimel+Yod+Mem+Lamed)

Meaning: Camel.

Thoth Card: The Priestess (Atu II)

Alternate Title: The Priestess of the Silver Star.

Image:

Correspondences:

Tree of Life Path Association: Key 13 - Tiphareth to Kether (from Sephira 6-1)

Astrological Sign: Moon

Element: -

Egyptian Godforms: Chomse

Geomantic Figure: Enneagram

Gemstones: Moonstone, Pearl, Crystal

Perfumes: Menstrual Blood, Camphor (as Isis), Aloes, Myrrh bark (as Diana), Jasmine, Willow, Black Copal (as lunar eclipse) all sweet virginal odors and odoriferous roots

Plants: Almond, Mugwort, Hazel, Moonwort, Ranunculus, Alder, Pomegranete, Peony

Animals: Dog, Stork, Camel, Cat, Frog, Toad, Crab, Bat, Hare, Rabbit

Colors:

King Scale – Blue

Queen Scale – Silver

Prince Scale – Cold pale blue

Princess Scale – Silver rayed sky-blue

The Secret Instruction of the Master:

Purity is to live only to the Highest; and the Highest is All: be thou as Artemis to Pan! Read thou in the Book of the Law, and break through the veil of the Virgin!

Mnemonic:

Mother, moon-maiden, playmate, bride of Pan; God's Angel-Minister to every man.

Recommended Text for Meditation:

Liber AL vel Legis sub figura CCXX, Cap. 1

The Book of the Law Liber AL vel Legis sub figura CCXX

as delivered by XCIII = 418 to DCLXVI

1. Had! The manifestation of Nuit.

2. The unveiling of the company of heaven.

3. Every man and every woman is a star.

4. Every number is infinite; there is no difference.

5. Help me, o warrior lord of Thebes, in my unveiling before the Children of men!

6. Be thou Hadit, my secret centre, my heart & my tongue!

7. Behold! it is revealed by Aiwass the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat.

8. The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs.

9. Worship then the Khabs, and behold my light shed over you!

10. Let my servants be few & secret: they shall rule the many & the known.

11. These are fools that men adore; both their Gods & their men are fools.

12. Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love!

13. I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy.

14. Above, the gemmed azure is

The naked splendour of Nuit;

She bends in ecstasy to kiss

The secret ardours of Hadit.

The winged globe, the starry blue,

Are mine, O Ankh-af-na-khonsu!

15. Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men.

16. For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight.

17. But ye are not so chosen.

18. Burn upon their brows, o splendrous serpent!

19. O azure-lidded woman, bend upon them!

20. The key of the rituals is in the secret word which I have given unto him.

21. With the God & the Adorer I am nothing: they do not see me. They are as upon the earth; I am Heaven, and there is no other God than me, and my lord Hadit.

22. Now, therefore, I am known to ye by my name Nuit, and to him by a secret name which I will give him when at last he knoweth me. Since I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof, do ye also thus. Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt.

23. But whoso availeth in this, let him be the chief of all!

24. I am Nuit, and my word is six and fifty.

25. Divide, add, multiply, and understand.

26. Then saith the prophet and slave of the beauteous one: Who am I, and what shall be the sign? So she answered him, bendingdown, a lambent flame of blue, all-touching, all penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, & her lithe body arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers: Thou knowest! And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of my body.

27. Then the priest answered & said unto the Queen of Space, kissing her lovely brows, and the dew of her light bathing his whole body in a sweet-smelling perfume of sweat: O Nuit, continuous one of Heaven, let it be ever thus; that men speak not of Thee as One but as None; and let them speak not of thee at all, since thou art continuous!

28. None, breathed the light, faint & faery, of the stars, and two.

29. For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union.

30. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.

31. For these fools of men and their woes care not thou at all! They feel little; what is, is balanced by weak joys; but ye are my chosen ones.

32. Obey my prophet! follow out the ordeals of my knowledge! seek me only! Then the joys of my love will redeem ye from all pain. This is so: I swear it by the vault of my body; by my sacred heart and tongue; by all I can give, by all I desire of ye all.

33. Then the priest fell into a deep trance or swoon, & said unto the Queen of Heaven; Write unto us the ordeals; write unto us the rituals; write unto us the law!

34. But she said: the ordeals I write not: the rituals shall be half known and half concealed: the Law is for all.

35. This that thou writest is the threefold book of Law.

36. My scribe Ankh-af-na-khonsu, the priest of the princes, shall not in one letter change this book; but lest there be folly, he shall comment thereupon by the wisdom of Ra-Hoor-Khuit.

37. Also the mantras and spells; the obeah and the wanga; the work of the wand and the work of the sword; these he shall learn and teach.

38. He must teach; but he may make severe the ordeals.

39. The word of the Law is θέλημα.

40. Who calls us Thelemites will do no wrong, if he look but close into the word. For there are therein Three Grades, the Hermit, and the Lover, and the man of Earth. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

41. The word of Sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not thy wife, if she will! O lover, if thou wilt, depart! There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse. Accursed! Accursed be it to the aeons! Hell.

42. Let it be that state of manyhood bound and loathing. So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy will.

43. Do that, and no other shall say nay.

44. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

45. The Perfect and the Perfect are one Perfect and not two; nay, are none!

46. Nothing is a secret key of this law. Sixty-one the Jews call it; I call it eight, eighty, four hundred & eighteen.

47. But they have the half: unite by thine art so that all disappear.

48. My prophet is a fool with his one, one, one; are not they the Ox, and none by the Book?

49. Abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all words and signs. Ra-Hoor-Khuit hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods; and let Asar be with Isa, who also are one. But they are not of me. Let Asar be the adorant, Isa the sufferer; Hoor in his secret name and splendour is the Lord initiating.

50. There is a word to say about the Hierophantic task. Behold! there are three ordeals in one, and it may be given in three ways. The gross must pass through fire; let the fine be tried in intellect, and the lofty chosen ones in the highest. Thus ye have star & star, system & system; let not one know well the other!

51. There are four gates to one palace; the floor of that palace is of silver and gold; lapis lazuli & jasper are there; and all rare scents; jasmine & rose, and the emblems of death. Let him enter in turn or at once the four gates; let him stand on the floor of the palace. Will he not sink? Amn. Ho! warrior, if thy servant sink? But there are means and means. Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me.

52. If this be not aright; if ye confound the space-marks, saying: They are one; or saying, They are many; if the ritual be not ever unto me: then expect the direful judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit!

53. This shall regenerate the world, the little world my sister, my heart & my tongue, unto whom I send this kiss. Also, o scribe and prophet, though thou be of the princes, it shall not assuage thee nor absolve thee. But ecstasy be thine and joy of earth: ever To me! To me!

54. Change not as much as the style of a letter; for behold! thou, o prophet, shalt not behold all these mysteries hidden therein.

55. The child of thy bowels, he shall behold them.

56. Expect him not from the East, nor from the West; for from no expected house cometh that child. Aum! All words are sacred and all prophets true; save only that they understand a little; solve the first half of the equation, leave the second unattacked. But thou hast all in the clear light, and some, though not all, in the dark.

57. Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God.

All these old letters of my Book are aright; but צ is not the Star. This also is secret: my prophet shall reveal it to the wise.

58. I give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.

59. My incense is of resinous woods & gums; and there is no blood therein: because of my hair the trees of Eternity.

60. My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us. The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red. My colour is black to the blind, but the blue & gold are seen of the seeing. Also I have a secret glory for them that love me.

61. But to love me is better than all things: if under the night stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in spendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy. I charge you earnestly to come before me in a single robe, and covered with a rich headdress. I love you! I yearn to you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who am all pleasure and purple, and drunkenness of the innermost sense, desire you. Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!

62. At all my meetings with you shall the priestess say -- and her eyes shall burn with desire as she stands bare and rejoicing in my secret temple -- To me! To me! calling forth the flame of the hearts of all in her love-chant.

63. Sing the rapturous love-song unto me! Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! Drink to me, for I love you! I love you!

64. I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.

65. To me! To me!

66. The Manifestation of Nuit is at an end.

Love is the law, love under will.

#Thelema #thelemic holy season #Tarot

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joonietonin · 4 years

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Ethan Ramsey- Sugar & Ice (Analysis #2)

Hi! I’m back with another in-depth analysis about Chapter 5 and well, I am very very late! Sorry, it took me so long to write this up, I had been sick these past few days. Anyway, something that I am always in awe of, is how well-written a character, Ethan Ramsey is? I do not think there is another character/LI who has even come close to the amount of depth and progression that Ethan has had over the last few chapters and of course, throughout Book 1. So here I am analyzing Ethan all over again because, damn, this man has had the best character development in the Choices universe. Hold on tight because this is gonna be a longgggggg ride. (Literally, it's the longest post I have ever written so far!)

Note: This is an analysis based on my thoughts and interpretation of a character owned by Pixelberry Studios. My MC is female, pronouns: she/her. I will be writing this post from her perspective. If your MC is male or non-binary, I request you to change the pronouns accordingly. I will be working towards bettering my writing skills using they/them pronouns. English is not my primary language, kindly pardon my mistakes.

Taglist: @choicesyouplayandmore @freeasafishinthesea @openheart12 @junehiratas @lion-ess24 @junggoku @silverlitskies @paulfwesley @mrsdr-ethan-ramsey @reaverisabitch @binny1985 @binny1985 @desmaranj @lilyvalentine @soft-for-drake @mangoruby @mrsmatsuo

Let's start off how interesting it is that the first time I wrote about this man, it took me 13 chapters to really assess his depth and development and now in Book 2, it barely took 2 Chapters to provide a in-depth analysis. Yes, character development is key but the time span within which one grows is equally important.

• Ethan, then and now: Ethan, with his hardass, no bullshit and stoic persona is a man with strong opinions. And rightfully so, a person who is around 8-9 years your senior is bound to have more experience- be it in their professional field or their general life experiences. Ethan has always had this strong set of beliefs that were impossible to change, unless you were MC of course. Before Ethan even knew what was happening, MC had already started to infiltrate his steel walls going right towards his heart. MC may be a dumbass but she’s not illogical. I believe that her straightforwardness has always been the reason for Ethan to be drawn towards her. Throughout his whole career, he has only seen these insipid, incompetent people sucking up to him expecting that they would step up in their career. Then came MC, who was never afraid to go against the rules if it meant the well-being of her patients. She proved to him that she was indeed the “someone who could be great, truly” as Ethan had told her in Chapter 5 of Book 1. Ethan supported her at all instances because he had so much of faith in her, even if he did not show it outright.

• MC, a silver lining: For MC, Edenbrook was never entirely about money. So when Ethan tells her about the government deciding to cut down costs of Edenbrook, depending upon your interaction, the last thing MC is worried about is money. Since then she has done everything in her power to prevent that from happening. When that didn’t work, she discovered another path that could potentially save the hospital.

• To be or not to be, morality edition: And even though she anticipated what Ethan would think about the idea, she still took her chances to let Ethan know about this opportunity that could probably put Edenbrook back in the top ranks. And obviously, the hardass Ethan refused. But what’s interesting here is how calmly Ethan reacted. He did not shout, he did not jeer at her. He responded calmly with a simple no. Even when a furious MC charged him for the reason to refute her idea, he simply said that it would ruin the actual purpose of the diagnostics team- which was never meant to cater the rich, rather help those who were truly in need. And even though his intentions were morally correct and heartfelt, MC knew that this wasn’t the time to play with a moral compass.

• Ethan, the "professional": So MC did what she always does: go beyond the rules. She did what Ethan had once told her- “to stand up for what’s right”. So she went behind Ethan’s back and contacted the Instagram celeb Gwyneth Paltrow Monroe and Ethan was obviously furious when he found the whole camera set up in the hospital. And what seems like forever, Ethan regards her as 'Rookie' but this time it is not endearing. MC tries to justify her actions but Ethan, in his classic Dr. Ramsey style, shuts her out and tells her that they had more pressing matters in their hands aka the patient. But, but.. he does not shut her out completely, he says “We’ll talk about this later.” Now if this were the old Ethan Ramsey he wouldn’t have bothered even once to hear anybody’s justification for a matter of fact. But now, Ethan wants to listen to her. He wants to work out their differences. He does not want to leave this matter hanging. He does not want to cut her off due to professional disagreements. Even though Ethan claims that there is nothing but professionalism between them but his actions contradict his words. His actions show that he is truly trying to make things work between them. Ethan might say it's purely professional but I do not believe him one bit (lol).

• Ethan Ramsey is really a softie huh: Even though Ethan is super annoyed at the entire situation, somewhere down the line, he does believe that MC can handle this. He tells her to lead the case. And of course, his snarky remarks are back but this time it's for poor Gwyneth. In an earlier analysis I had stated how Ethan's snarky remarks towards MC had lessened significantly and it still holds true. Instead of berating MC for going behind his back, he handles it with a certain amount of softness. Well, at least when we compare it to how he deals with others in the same situation. So what I really want to say is: Ethan Ramsey is a softie, but only for MC.

• Diligence- 1 Annoyance-0: He is very annoyed and is willing to solve this case as immediately as possible but that does not make him indifferent towards the case. His annoyance does not make him lack diligence. He still gives his 100% towards this case. This shows how diligent Ethan is. No wonder, he's the best diagnostician in the country. He treats all his patients with the same reverence even if some (read: most) get on his nerves. Ethan seems like a cold person with no emotions but the truth is that he cares so much about certain people. The biggest reason Ethan was so annoyed by this high profile case was because the diagnostics team lost a chance to cure a underprivileged patient who needed the help much more than Gwyneth. Despite being a filthy rich person himself, he is not a snob. He has so much concern for the people who cannot afford good healthcare. He cares deeply about the regular people of his community. Yet, that does not make his shy away from his duties towards his current patient.

• Just millennial things: Going back to my previous point, Ethan is really diligent towards his work even if it means doing things he absolutely loathes... like social media. I mean, yes he hasn't seen IT. Yes, he hates texting. Yes, he is technologically impaired. Yes, he does not know how to sign up for Instagram despite being one of the best doctors in the entire world who could cure almost anything. So who does he turn to? MC, obviously. Do we really think he'd ask anybody else in this entire world to help him out with social media. Oh hell no. (Yes, I'm trying to say that MC is special) And cue: the playful banter is back. Something I always relish about Ethan × MC scenes is that their playful banter never stops no matter how tense things are between them. It's some married couple shit right there. From "I'll have you know, I'm only 37. I'm technically a millennial" to "To be clear, we're doing this under one condition. You never speak of it to anyone", let's just say Ethan Ramsey does not share that comfort level with anybody else in this entire world than MC. MC is truly 'the one' for him.

• Ethan and the internet: So here's a two part horror story, the Ethan Ramsey edition- Ethan is terrified of the internet. He does not understand how there are shirtless pictures of him on the internet. Yet, it is really wholesome how we get to know the backstory of most of those pictures. Be it wearing a suit to the A.M.A where he was awarded or when he went shirtless for his first triathlon. It's very very cute that he willingly share these little details about his life. He wants MC to know little things about him. He wants her to be a part of his life even if he claims that there is nothing but professionalism between them (yeah, right) He opened up about how much he loved living in Providence and how he would never have liked any other place for growing up. He revealed his vulnerabilities to MC about how people did not take him seriously and how adults and teachers who undermine him. He trusts MC enough to confide in her and letting her know all these small details which, perhaps, nobody knows except her. Not even Naveen, I presume. Also, please note how a major part of all the information we know about Ethan is because of his Dad. But Ethan willingly sharing details about him to MC? chef's kiss

• Music, Motorcycles and Marriage: Initially Ethan does not understand the point of social media and why so many people would use this "junk". But when MC explains to him how social media helps people connect or how fun it could be for so many people, Ethan does not retort her. He takes and minute to think about her perspective and then accepts with her view. While choosing his interests, we get to know very fond and personal details about Ethan no matter which option we chose.

While talking about Music, Ethan mentions his childhood memories of playing the cello and how his neighbour hated it and broke his cello and also gives a hint towards his mischievous side and the incredible revenge he got on his neighbour.

The Motorcycle was absolutely beautiful. Ethan let's MC know that the first time he took a bike ride was in Brazil (Amazon Rainforest) where he had gone to... well, in layman's terms- get over MC. As eloquent as he is, he describes all the emotions he felt as he rode across his bike along the Amazon River. It's a rare occurrence to see Ethan talk about his feelings therefore it is really wholesome that he would share those intricate details with MC. But the best part of this option had to be when MC demands Ethan to take her on a bike ride in the Amazons some day. Now, for a man who claims that him and MC are "reset" and are "nothing but professionals", it's quite hilarious but very cute that he replied with, "I look forward to it" This statement of his is almost like a foreshadowing of his and MC's future. Even though they're in a tough spot right now, they could always look forward to the future where things might (read: will) change for them.

The option Marriage led to a low-key romantic moment between him and MC. Ethan "love is just neurochemical responses to heightened stress and frequent exposure to each other" Ramsey obviously tells her that he understands marriage as a partnership rather than a meaningful institution. He also states that he does not believe in the concept of soulmates because there is no biological basis to support that. MC simply explains to him that, "It's love, Ethan. It doesn't have to make sense." And Ethan, in his classic 'everything has a scientific explanation' way grins and states, "I'm sorry, no, everything has to make sense." He straight up asks MC the age old question: "How are you supposed to know that you've met the right person?" And almost immediately his smug mouth is shut when MC simply replies with a "I guess, you just feel it. Isn't that biology?" He gazes deeply into her eyes and forgets himself for a moment thinking about how relevant her words are to whatever he feels for her.Deep inside, Ethan knows that he has met the right person, rather THE person.What I'm trying to say is- Yes, Ethan knows that they are soulmates and even though he won’t accept it now but man, he is whipped.

• Ethan's first, last and only: It's adorable that Ethan let's MC make his first post on behalf of him. MC might be the only person in this entire world who has so much hold over Ethan. It is funny because Ethan is MC's boss in the streets but MC in Ethan's boss in the sheets when it comes to personal moments. I think the highlight of the scene was definitely when Ethan follows MC on Instagram. She jokes about it claiming,"Wow, what an honour, I'm humbled." but Ethan deadass let's her know,"You should be. My first, last and only Instagram friend." Again, I think it's a subtle foreshadowing of their future. In real life, technically MC truly one of Ethan's best friends besides being a LI. But I think this statement will hold much more meaning in the future, given the fact that somewhere deep inside Ethan does know that him and MC are soulmates, no matter how much he denies it.

• True feelings and acceptance: We all know Ethan is not the one to back down on his opinions. But often more than not, he really does give a thought about MC's actions and always tries to understand her perspective of it. Yes, it does take him some time to come around but he always comes back to her. When MC tries to justify her actions this second time, Ethan cuts her off- not because he does not want to hear it, but because he has finally understood her point of view.

Another very important detail in this scene, personally my favourite detail, is how this time around he addresses MC by her name. At the start of the chapter he addressed MC as 'Rookie' which symbolised his disappointment over what he feels is a mistake on MC's part. He establishes his seniority over her letting her know that him and MC are not equals. This second time around, he addresses her by name because he has finally come around to understand that MC is really not a 'rookie' anymore. She isn't a resident either. Ethan now saw her as a colleague, someone who was his equal.. his peer.

Ethan rarely accepts his mistakes, because let's be real, this man was practically emotionally inept before MC came around. The whole concept of apology and acceptance is complicated for him. But he is not worried to own up to his mistakes in front of MC. Ethan let's her know that they are bound to disagree over things because they were peers. Knowing her thoughts, even if they contradicted his, helped Ethan see MC in a truer light. When MC worries whether that light is a bad one, he is quick to reassure her that it is a 'complicated' one. This mirrors his feelings about their relationship too, how he can never be entirely professional with her neither could he ever give her the love and warmth he wants to. He tells MC that her perspective does help him to see situations as they really are instead of what he perceives them to be. He ends this declaration of his feelings with, "I want to know you, as you are." My heart goes warm thinking about how much he cares for her and how he'd rather have disagreements with her than force her to be something that she is not. He wants her be just the way she is. He wants to know the real MC, the one who does not shy away from doing what's right rather than doing what's moral and ethical.

• MC x Ethan, the unstoppable force: Lastly, can we all agree that MC and Ethan make a hell of a great team? Even if we put their love life aside, they just absolutely smash it out of the park when it comes to them solving cases together. As they sit together researching about their patient, we see how well coordinated they are. It's almost like, each one knows exactly what the other person is thinking. They are like medical Jedis. Ethan always worries about how if they were to pursue a real relationship, it would be hard for him to push her to do her best.. but the truth is right in front of us. Despite their playful banters, stolen glances, innocent touches and plans about their future, Ethan always pushes MC to evaluate the information and reveal the diagnosis. It would take Ethan 2 minutes to do it himself but as her mentor he constantly helps her get better at providing fast diagnosis. Also, Ethan never ever shies away from giving MC her due credit and appreciation. Getting praise from Ethan Ramsey is very very rare but for MC it's like a usual occurrence, not because they have feelings for each other rather because Ethan truly sees the amount of potential MC has and it reassures him that he was right when he chose MC for Edenbrook knowing that she had the potential to be someone great. While revealing the diagnosis with June and Baz, he proudly let's them know,"MC pieced it together last night. Excellent work." He is honestly like a proud husband showing off how amazing his wife is (lol)

____________________________________________

FINAL THOUGHTS: Sooooo.. let's re-evaluate:

✓ Ethan and MC are very very close on a personal level no matter how much Ethan tries to deny it.

✓ MC is literally Ethan's closest friend. He shares little details about him to her, only her.

✓ Ethan does not shut MC out like he did in Book 1. He tries to understand her and thinks about her point of view.

✓ Ethan and MC have continuous playful banter which makes them look like a whole ass married couple but whatever.

✓ Ethan considers MC to be his equal rather than a subordinate. That is HUGE coming from Mr. Broody Ramsey. He has a lot of respect for MC.

✓ Ethan pushes MC to do her very best despite of them being personal and contradicting their original deal of being professional.

✓ Ethan proudly let's others know about how amazing MC is at what she does.

So, what I am trying to say is: If they are equals, and they work together like two peas in a pod, and the have the cutest most playful relationship, and they respect each other so much, and they are fulfilling every aspect of their mentor/mentee relationship— SO WHEN THE FUCK ARE THEY GONNA REALIZE THAT THEY CAN STILL DO ALL OF THIS WHILE PURSUING A RELATIONSHIP. @ Ethan sweetie, you're one of the smartest men on the planet but you're really so dense when love is involved. I live for the angst but I just want to see my babies being officially domestic and have passionate sex like they did in Chapter 15 (no shit that was THE BEST, read x) yeah that's all, maybe even save the hospital and punch Declan again while they're at it. Ethan and MC are really have the most realistic depiction when it comes to work relationships. Whether Ethan believes it or not— I, for one, am certain that Ethan and MC are truly soulmates and are meant to be. Professionally AND Personally.

Why did I title this as Sugar and Ice?

Because just like ice Ethan is cold,harsh and stoic when it comes to dealing with regular people. But when it comes to people he really cares about and loves (read: MC) he is like sugar- warm, gentle and open.

____________________________________________

Not to be a cheesy romantic, I'm still a cynic but Ethan is an exception. Andddddd we're done. If you have reached up till here then wow, I cannot believe that you would actually take the time to read my thoughts about a character. You don't know how much that means to me. It makes me feel like I am creating some worthwhile. Thank you for all the constant love and support y'all have given me. I am truly so grateful to each one of you.❤️

Also, yes I know Chapter 6 is out and this is an analysis of Chapter 5 but believe me, I you've read this you'll figure out that nothing that happened in today's chapter contradicts my thoughts about Ethan in the previous chapter. I will start working on an analysis for Chapter 6 tonight itself. Just need some time to process all of it. Thank you for always being so patient. I appreciate it so much.❤️

This was a very long post and believe me I tried to cut it short as much as possible. Let's just say I really cannot write short pieces lmao. So yes, thank you for taking out your valuable time to read this. Sending my gratitude and love.❤️

[If you want to be added to my taglist, just let me know as I will be writing some more stuff in the days to come. All my works are sorted in my MASTERLIST. The link is in my bio.]

#open heart #ethan ramsey #playchoices #ethan x mc #open heart 2 #choices: open heart #dr ethan ramsey #mc x ethan #mc x ethan ramsey #bee's analysis

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theoriquewitherseld · 4 years

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not sure if you've answered this before, but how/when did you get into asoue or atwq? is there anything that really drew you into the two series? personally i fell in love with the writing style first and /then/ the characters and worldbuilding :'))

Okay.

cw: abuse mention, depression mention, anxiety mention

This is gonna sound bonkers, but it's true.

My parents loved Jim Carrey.

Dude's funny. Thought he was clownish amd exaggerated but whatever. My oldest sister remembered watching an old yet really good movie with him but it was odd and tragic but really good. She said that it seems like I'd like it because I was eccentric myself.

So we bought a bootleg cd and watched the 2004 film. I was 11 at that time, who has undiagnosed ADHD.

Well no shit I LOVED it and got obsessed with it so I researched more about it.

Received around +6000 points in psychological damages spoiling myself, so at that point began my obsessive hunt of completing asoue.

It was an impossible hunt. It's 13 books, all hardbound. If it's from an actual bookstore, it's expensive as hell. If it's from a book thrift store, still expensive as hell but within my range. Local libraries are virtually nonexistent. And they are really, really hard to find and get.

The first book I got was Book 3, and yep. I loved it.

However, with every book purchase, all of it not done in the order it was released, I recall gradually being depressed. I dunno if it's because I'm 11 and an idiot or it's due to the increasingly abusive situation I was in buuut it's likely a mix of both. Snicket's cynicism at that time... Despite being true and important, isn't exactly what I needed to read at that time.

I never really got to complete the series, although I received a lot of help from fellow fans trying to get me some copies (one was a stranger, but that's another heartwarming story entirely, God. And the other was actually @sandfordsmostwanted ). But I know how it went, more or less. I just never got the experience of reading it properly nor getting genuinely invested in it. Frankly speaking, it just wasn't for me. Hell it didn't even occur to me it was supposed to be a dark comedy.

NOW... On ATWQ... Well, despite the depression. I'm still obsessed with Lemony Snicket. And it was the Holidays, me and my family loves books, and we are out during an outing during the rare moments we have spare money. Now, dad has offered to buy me a couple of books, and ngl... I had saw a Lemony Snicket book and it was purple. I fucking love purple and Lemony Snicket so I grabbed it. The other book I grabbed randomly was the House of Secrets, because a.) I'm an idiot, b.) I was a pjo and hoo stan a few years earlier, and hey, it's a thick book, it's probably great, right?

WRONG. I hated that fucking series. Never have I read such a shitty fucking book and it was expensive as HELL. And I bought fucking TWO OF THEM before realizing my mistake. Christ. Do not waste your goddamn time, money, and effort to even bother giving a crap about the House of Secrets. If you saw one, run the other way. Or destroy it.

Now, I also didn't read ATWQ in order, hell, I didn't even read its second book in order because I'm a very foolish reader and guess. Guess what happened. I ended up with so many questions that's what. But the story was so good and the characters so well done, and there's so many about it that's clever and witty. It's also the most brutalized of my books becausd of how often I obsessively read it when I was younger. If anything, I liked the writing style and characters immensely better than asoue ever did for me. So, I ended up with another hunt for ATWQ books.

I think I bought 13 suspicious indcidents next, and then book 3, then book 1, and then book 4. It was not bloody easy finding the books, and they're all. Still. Expensive. As. Hell.

However I realized that as I read the books, I became an unbearably cynical, insufferable know-it-all. Just a huge asshole in general who doesn't give two dimes about changing their attitude (because that's how a 12 year old interprets 12 year old Snicket and models after him. Very stupid of me I know). But I was still Depressed, except it's Depressed 2x. And the ending was... Whew. Well, let's just say as a 12 year old abused and lonely neurodivergent kid with no friends happily consuming content of a group with close friendship and reading that ending was.... A special trauma in itself. I was extremely devastated.

12 year old me may be stupid, but not too stupid to recognize that reading the series is no longer healthy for me, be it psychologically or emotionally, so I stopped. It's also the reason why I ceased activity in this blog during 2015 (yeah I was actually there during the ATWQ heydays). It also gave me anxiety. God, the entire sellpoint of Lemony Snicket is being a bunch of store-bought Anxiety and Depression huh. (But I got out eventually thank goodness)

It wasn't until? Recently I reread the series, fallen in love with it again, now understanding it better as someone with improved critical thinking skills and has matured in kind. It's a damn good series, and hits absolutely different, now one can understand it.

It still hurts reading it tho. And I've got an entirely new set of opinions regarding several characters, now that I've reread it (Ellington, particularly. She's not exactly my fave character, but my understanding of her since I genuinely understand her situation has gained quite the upheaval once I've reread the series. Back then I sorta both loathed/pity her. Now I just pity and worry about her a lot, and want to punch Snicket in the throat. Damn.)

Either way, sorry for the super long rant. I'm so embarrassed. But that's the general gist of lore of the Pencil behind this blog :D nowadays I just make ATWQ art and daydream abt my AU

#asks #ssssorry?

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powerovernothing · 4 years

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And now for something entirely different to help breathe a bit of life back into my blog! After having a dry spell in terms of content around my three favorite boys, I thought I would add a touch of variety to the many numerous things that I have written in regards to the Knight, the Emperor, and the Assassin!

It should be no surprise that I oftentimes find inspiration in the strangest of places, but one thing that is always a constant source of inspiration for me is music. Or rather, certain songs that remind me so much of the boys that I cannot help but fit the lyrics to different parts of Korbin and his brother’s lives, or some scenario that they have went through – or will go through with time.

I very rarely post lyrical write ups on my blog, as they are what you would consider – by using an ancient term from fan fiction’s past – song fics, or even animatic scripts if you want to get a bit more clever, but since I was quite fond of the work I did for this song in particular… I thought that it may not hurt to upload it and see what the reactions may be!

So sit back, relax, and buckle down for almost nine thousand words worth of an emotional rollercoaster with the boys and their story that was born from the wonderful song Found/Tonight by Ben Platt, and Lin-Manuel Miranda! Thanks so much for reading~! ♥

We may not yet have reached our glory But I will gladly join the fight - The entire premise of this write up starts with the opening line, and the opening scene. And that, of course, begins right before the Battle of the Great Gate. Before the brothers, the Blades, and members of the Cheydinhal Family walk down to that field, and face off against the worst that Oblivion has to offer, all in the hopes of turning the tide back in their favor, and getting the last thing needed for the Portal to Paradise.

Martin, already in his Dragon Armor, stands in the main hall of Cloud Ruler Temple, and speaks to those before him. He tells them that they may be in an unspeakable position, that lives may be lost, they everything could go wrong... but even so, he will not stand around and simply watch. He will join such a battle and will fight for their freedom against Oblivion itself.

And when our children tell their story They'll tell the story of tonight - Lucien, in his Legends style of armor, comes to stand at Martin's side, and speaks to the crowd just as well. He explains that everything is against them, that so much could go wrong, and he is not certain how this battle will play out... but he has faith.

He has faith that whatever happens, whatever will come to pass, when those who remember this battle -- the children who are here in said battle, such as Ocheeva and Teinaava, and those that will come years afterwards -- will think back to this moment, be it glory or ruin, and know what they risked to put an end to the Crisis once and for all.

They will stand together, or they will fall together, and it all depends on how much they are willing to give to push back the forces of Oblivion.

They'll tell the story of tonight Tonight - Korbin stands away from the crowd, watching from the shadows as his brothers speak to the crowd before them. The army that is before them. And he feels himself uncomfortable with the entire situation. He looks down at his feet, listening to what his brothers say, and how confident they are in their abilities, and he feels... uneasy.

He has been here before, in another time, in another life, and yet he knows that there is so much more that is placed on the line. Not only do they have more people to stand with them, but Korbin knows that they have far more to lose because of it. Friends that he has made over the half year, family members that he loves and cares about... he knows that he could lose it all, once again, if he is not careful enough.

A bitter smile touches his lips, and his shuts his eyes to the memories that flood in his mind. The story of tonight? He's already lived this story, and he will do anything to make absolute certain that it does lead him down the same path as it did in the previous timeline. He refuses for such a thing to happen, and yet...

He doesn't realize that his brothers are feeling the same worry, the same discomfort, the same paranoia of what will happen in this battle, and yet keep a careful mask in place for the sake of their loved ones. For the sake of being strong. Of encouraging them, believing in them, and hoping it will be enough to help them fight.

Have you ever felt like nobody was there? - Lucien looks up from the crowd, and notices Korbin in the distance, and frowns softly. He thinks back to his childhood -- if you could even consider it such a thing -- and the time he spent with his family, and how he often fought, struggled, and desired to have affection, and love from them, and yet never received it. It made him feel as though he was alone.

And then into his adulthood where he feels as though he is being left behind. He was shunned by his parents, he was cared for by the previous Speaker of the Cheydinhal Sanctuary, and she perished. He loved his previous Silencer, and yet she died trying to prove to him that she was more than capable. He was betrayed by the Brotherhood's traitor, and nearly lost his entire family because of his own paranoia.

And, worse of all, he feels next to useless during the course of the Oblivion Crisis compared to Korbin, and Martin. Korbin is the Hero of Kvatch, and Martin is the future Emperor. And what is he? A taker of life? An Assassin? They do so much good, so many amazing feats, and he... feels himself being forgotten, and he loathes such a feeling.

Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere? - Korbin isn't aware that Lucien is looking at him, and dealing with his own concerns, his own worries. He is so lost within his own mind, and it is clouding his judgement, and silencing everything else around him.

He too, thinks back to his childhood -- and like his brother, although unaware of the similarities, wonders if he could consider it such a thing -- and how he was suddenly abandoned by his parents in the Waterfront District. Never truly understanding why they would simply leave him, and then walk away as he cried and reached out for them. The memory of them faded over the years, and became something repressed, and as he grew... he adapted to the cruel world around him.

He took his first life over his blanket and continued to kill to survive. He was brought into the Brotherhood, and he wound up losing the members of his family because he was following Lucien's commands to the letter. And then... he lost Lucien because of the very same mistakes.

And, just when he assumed that the world hadn't taken enough from him, hadn't tormented him, or laughed at his misery... then he lost Martin, and suddenly... he was alone again. Alone just as he had always been. And he just continued to walk, passing by everyone as he sought out a desperate source of comfort, and knowing all too well that no one cared for his pain, and that he had been forgotten by the world yet again.

Have you ever felt like you could disappear? - Martin doesn't look from the Blades, from the members of the Brotherhood, he holds his gaze, and yet his eyes slowly show an incredible amount of pain hidden within blue eyes that normally held such love, such comfort. He thinks of what he is doing, where he is, and what he has done throughout his life.

He thinks back to his childhood with Darius -- and although he took it for granted, especially compared to his brother's and their past, he did value it, he did treasure it, just not as much as he should have if he had known -- and he remembers his mistakes. His terrible, awful cycle of mistake that seemed to grow, and grow, and nearly consume him entirely.

He never realized that his dear adoptive father was sick until it was far too late. He wished to try and go to his farm, to say goodbye, to beg forgiveness after he had passed for never being there, for never seeing the signs, but he couldn't. He was too afraid.

So, he turned his back on what used to be his home and ran back to the shelter of the Mage's Guild. And when he returned, his friends did what they thought would be best for his guilt... by taking him to Sanguine. He let his past mistakes fall off of his shoulders for a time, he shed himself of the life he used to lead, he disappeared into something that he thought would help him -- the drink, the parties, the temptations --and then he made another mistake, and lost his friends because of it.

And what did he do? What did he do when he realized what he had done? He ran once more. Disappearing into Cyrodiil for a time and hoping that no one would piece together what had happened, what he had done. What he had continued doing, and how much of a foolish coward he truly was.

Like you could fall, and no one would hear? - During this lyric, there is a gentle piano beat that occurs three times whilst these words are sung in an equal amount of gentleness.

Thus, from this sort of thing, you can imagine that for a moment Korbin would clutch a hand over his chest. Wondering if he is doing what he needed, wondering if he will be able to protect his brothers from their fate, protect his family from suffering in a worse way than in the Original Timeline, and if he will, truly, be able to fix everything that he believed that he ruined the first time around.

The second beat is Lucien placing a trembling hand over the dagger that is sheathed in his belt. He wonders if he will be strong enough, protective enough, just simply enough for those he cares about in this upcoming battle. If he will be able to stand, next to his family, as well as the Blades, and not be assumed that he would turn against them and bring about their death because an Assassin never changes his shadows.

He wonders if he will be able to stand next to the Hero of Kvatch and the Future Emperor and keep them safe. Show them that he is strong, that he is capable. He wonders if they would believe him. He wonders if he believes himself.

The third and final beat would be Martin finally looking away from the Blades, from the Brotherhood, away from his brothers that linger beside him, and just in the distance, and he sighs deeply to himself. The feeling of self-doubt, and self-hate is beginning to creep upon himself, and he feels almost smothered in his armor.

In Tiber Septim's armor.

And questions if he is truly doing the right thing. If he is truly being what these people -- his people -- need out of a future Emperor. He wonders if he can march into battle and do what is needed to spare Cyrodiil from it's terrible fate at Mehrunes Dagon, and the Mythic Dawn's hands. Is this right? Is this who he is? Can a Bastard son of a dead Emperor truly lead this people to glory itself? To freedom? Or is he... simply going to run away the moment that the battle becomes too much? He isn't certain, and the thought terrifies him.

Well, let that lonely feeling wash away All we see is light - The sound of the crowd around him slowly pulls Lucien out of his thoughts, out of the darkness of his own mind, and he looks out towards both the Blades, as well as the members of the Cheydinhal family, and he feels a wave of relief come over him.

Perhaps, he is merely worrying about nothing. Perhaps he is more than capable of proving himself in the coming battle. Perhaps he will be able to prove himself to Martin, as well as Korbin.

And, when he thinks of his brothers, of those who remain at his side -- despite everything, despite all of his paranoia, worries, and everything else that darkens his thoughts -- he instantly sees Korbin smiling at him in the distance, and the feeling of Martin's hand suddenly coming to rest upon his shoulder. He sighs and returns their smile with one of his own. (These two lyrics are Martin and Korbin to Lucien)

'Cause maybe there's a reason to believe you'll be okay For forever - Lucien senses the feeling of Martin beginning to doubt himself, even despite the fact that he went out of his way to try and soothe his own worries. He feels as though his Light Brother is beginning to doubt that he deserves to be in this battle, that he does not belong in such a battle, and so many other things that he cannot even understand.

But what he does know, however, is that he absolutely despises seeing Martin doubt himself when he has been so strong for so long. Perhaps even Korbin senses that as well. The shine of their Light Brother has dulled slightly, and they know that should not be.

Lucien turns, takes Martin's hand in his own, and carefully pulls him into a half embrace -- or rather, as much of an embrace that he can manage, considering that the latter is in heavy armor -- and Martin relaxes slightly.

As they embrace, Martin looks over Lucien's shoulder, and sees Korbin smiling at him genuinely. And that is enough to cause Martin to feel as though the armor that he wears... is not nearly as heavy as it was only moments ago. (These two lyrics are Lucien and Korbin to Martin)

'Cause when you don't feel strong enough to stand You can reach, reach out your hand - Martin and Lucien eventually break from their embrace, and Martin continues to hold Korbin's gaze as he does so. Whatever that he may have felt in his moment of self-doubt, whatever he may have questioned about his place, and his strength... he sees it flickering in Korbin's own golden eyes, and he does not believe that such a thing should be allowed to continue.

He cannot simply reassure his siblings, and then take none of that reassurance for himself. Martin shares a secret look with Lucien -- one in which the Assassin understands all too well the meaning, and why he is giving it to him at all -- and the two of them move away from their place in front of the fire of the main hall, and over to where Korbin lingers in the distance.

If he does not believe in himself, then Lucien and Martin will do whatever they possible can to help him believe. They will stand at his side, as they always have done, and they will reassure him with their presence. If Korbin is reaching out, seeking comfort, seeking reassurance, then they will take his hand, and they will give that to him willingly.

That is what brothers are meant to do. Care for each other, and Korbin is going to help them, then by both Sithis and Akatosh, they are going to do the very same for him! (These two lyrics are Martin and Lucien to Korbin)

And oh - Korbin looks up from where his eyes had fallen back upon the hardwood floor in front of him and is instantly taken aback when he sees the familiar boots -- despite one of them paved in gold -- of his siblings standing before him. He finally looks up, meets their eyes, and is shocked to see them standing before him, and so willingly.

Did they... somehow know? Was it truly so obvious what he was feeling at the moment? They both seemed to be in much better spirits, and he was thankful for it, and yet... they were here? In front of him? To try and help him as well? He doesn't know what to say. He genuinely doesn't, and simply remains in stunned silence for a moment.

Raise a glass to freedom Something they can never take away - Martin and Lucien come to stand at Korbin's side, each of their hands coming to rest upon each of his shoulders, and they turn to face the crowds that had seen them move away from their prior place in the main hall, and walk over to where the Hero of Kvatch was waiting.

They had not even been aware of his presence, they had no idea, would have had no idea that he was even presence in such a crowd, if it was not for the fact that Lucien and Martin all but forced them to be aware of him. They speak up, keeping their -- almost protective -- grip on Korbin, and reassure the crowds -- and Korbin just as well -- that they will face the hordes of Oblivion, and they will conquer!

Because as long as they stand together, as long as they hold onto the connections that they have made in knowing one another, then that is their greatest source of power, and even the cruelest Daedra cannot dare to stand against them!

No matter what they tell you - Even as Lucien and Martin stand at his side, and speak to the crowds -- intentionally including him in such a speech, and reassuring them that they will stand against the forces of Oblivion with the Hero of Kvatch, the Future Emperor, and The Great Assassin protecting them -- Korbin still feels somewhat unsure.

It isn't as though he does not trust his brother's words, it is not as though he believes them to be lying, but he feels himself being pulled. Almost as though he's being pulled back away from his siblings, away from those that he loves, and would protect with his life.

His vision begins to darken, the sounds of his brother's words begin to fade, and he feels chains slowly beginning to wrap around his body. And a laugh, a terrible, truly horrible laugh ringing in his ears.

He's felt this feeling before; he knows very well what it is, and he wishes that it wouldn't happen right now. That he wouldn't interfere right before a battle that could either turn the tides in their favor, or drown them completely, and cause Korbin to lose his chance.

But he knows that is exactly what he would want. Mayhem. Mischief. If he could make his Little Raven squirm and doubt himself. It is what he lives for, after all. Anything to pull his future vessel closer to his side. Anything to remind him of what he will gain, and Korbin will lose, the moment the Crisis is over with.

Someone will come running To take you home - And yet, even though Korbin feels the pull of the Mad God in the back of his mind, even though he feels himself being yanked back, away from his loved ones, and the allure of drowning underneath layers, upon layers, upon years, and an entire lifetime of guilt seems oh-so tempting, especially when he believes himself to fail once again... he feels the pull, the allure, the waves beginning to fade.

He doesn't understand at first, he doesn't know why such a feeling is happening -- when he knows that Sheogorath wishes to play, wishes to torment -- but when he looks up; focusing his gaze upon what is in front of him... he sees Martin and Lucien smiling at him. Genuinely smiling at him with as much love as two men could feel towards their adoptive little brother.

That is the reason why he feels Sheogorath fading in his mind for a time. That is the reason why he growls under his breath, swears a line of insults in regard to his brothers -- the helpless, pitiful Assassin, and the worthless, blinding Priest, as he would surely say -- and then finally lets the chains fall for a time.

Because he knows that if he did not, their sheer presence alone would cause the game to lose it's fun for a time. There would always be other opportunities, other ways for him to remind Korbin of what is at risk, how that he will undoubtedly fail, and that there is no such thing as a third chance. But until that time came, until Sheogorath tormented his mind once more... he holds onto his brothers.

He holds onto their presence and knows that -- even in the darkest of moments -- they will be beside him to quiet the madness for a time.

Raise a glass to all of us - Finally believing that he knows his place in this battle, in this timeline, and believing that there is indeed a chance -- no matter how slim it may be -- that they will claim victory in the coming battle, Korbin moves forward and holds up a fist and speaks to the crowd.

He smiles; a real, genuine smile, and tells the Blades, as well as his fellow members of the Dark Brotherhood that they will surely win against the Daedra. He will rush into the Great Gate himself, destroy whatever creature is there lurking within, and then come back with the Great Sigil Stone in hand, and do whatever is possible to retrieve the Amulet of Kings, and end this Crisis once and for all!

And for a single moment, he looks less like the self-doubting man that was tormented by his actions in the previous timeline, and more like the leader he had become at Lucien's side in the Cheydinhal Sanctuary. More like an actual hero that Martin sees him as. And in such a moment... the two elder brothers smile with pride.

Perhaps they did very little to dissuade the worst of Korbin's thoughts, and fears... but at this single moment; they share in Korbin's glory. They share in his renewed strength. And they carry it upon their shoulders and allow such a sight before them to strengthen them, and quiet their own doubts, just as well.

Tomorrow they'll be more of us Telling the story of tonight - Korbin turns away from the crowds and flashes a more playful grin at his siblings after he is finished speaking. Before they have a chance to match his smile with one of their own, or even begin to question what he is so very happy about, he quickly pulls them into a tight embrace.

One arm over each of his brothers, and he shows his appreciation, and his affection towards them, towards what they are doing, and where they are, by doing what he does best. Hugging them and smiling as though the weight that he carries -- that they know he carries daily -- has now somewhat faded. They accept the embrace, and their own smiles grow.

Perhaps the battle will end up changing things. Perhaps there will be some of them within this temple that will not walk away unscathed, and perhaps some of them will not even come back at all... but Korbin believes in them. He believes in his brothers, his friends, his dark family, and -- for whatever possible reason -- they believe in him as well.

So, he holds onto such a hope, just as he holds his brothers in his actual embrace, and he keeps smiling. Hoping that the result of such a battle will be okay, that they will walk away from it with their heads held high, and not collapsed into a bloody pile somewhere.

Whatever may come, whatever happens, they will face it together, and they know that they will have a story to tell.

Or, there will be a story that is told. Somehow, somewhat, Korbin will make sure that his brother's actions, their strength, their journey -- as well as their survival -- is not forgotten. And secretly -- just to themselves, as they share another knowing look towards one another -- Martin and Lucien promises each other that they will do the very same on Korbin's behalf.

No matter what comes, no matter how the Crisis ends, no one will be forgotten. They will make absolute certain of it.

Out of the shadows The morning is breaking (they'll tell the story of tonight) - And then this is where the scene would fade away from the Battle of the Great Gate. From where the Emperor and the Assassin, as well as the Blades and the Dark Brotherhood fight for their very lives and hope and pray that their Hero of Kvatch will return back with the Sigil Stone, and close the Great Gate before the Deadra somehow manage to overthrow them.

The scene would fade, away from Korbin returning, Martin rushing over and embracing him, and Lucien smiling in the distance, and it would cut to a scene of Korbin, Martin, and Lucien walking away from the destroyed Temple of the One.

Lucien and Martin would be helping -- a newly revived -- Korbin walk away from the Temple District, and back towards the Imperial Palace, and then suddenly... they stop. Because Korbin is looking up, Korbin is smiling up at the clouds above him, and both Martin and Lucien are confused.

They do not know what he is staring at, they do not understand why he is smiling -- after just being brought back from death's cruel hand -- but when they follow his gaze, and see that the dawn of a new day is peeking out over the walls of the Imperial City... they smile just as well.

Because it is the start of a new day. It is the start of a new Era. The Oblivion Crisis is over, they are all three alive, and well, and they won. It's finally done.

This is the story that they wish to tell. The story of three brothers who, when faced with the worst that life had to offer, the very worst that all of Oblivion itself tried to throw at them -- to separate them, to break them apart, to destroy them -- they still stood at each other's sides.

They still relied on each other, protected each other, and now... now nothing is in their way. Now they can live their lives, and they can continue to write whatever story they wish to continue telling.

And all is new All is new All is new - And then the scene shifts away from the brothers walking away from the destruction of the Temple of the One, away from the memories of what happened just before Martin tapped into the power of the Amulet of Kings, as well as his own blessing, and Lucien followed suit in a desperate attempt to keep Martin from using too much power.

Instead, the scene would fade, and then you would see Martin's coronation in the chamber of the Ruby Throne. Once more, as there is three different lyrics, it would show three different scenes accompanying each.

For the first one, Martin would be walking out of the crowd, coming up to Ocato with a look of nervousness upon his face, but steeling himself for his future. Knowing that he is to be Emperor, and that Lucien told him that he was ready. That he was more than ready, and perhaps... he believes it himself.

Then, the next one would be Korbin coming next to Martin one he is finally crowned, and appointed Emperor officially, and bowing respectfully before him... before being pulled into a tight embrace by his brother. He may still be Emperor, but that doesn't change how he feels about his little brother.

And then finally, the last would have Lucien coming up to his pair of -- incredibly sappy -- siblings with a shake of his head, and a look of amusement over how they are acting in the middle of a crowded room, and then being pulled into the embrace by Martin and Korbin just as well.

It's only a matter of Time - One of the reasons why I genuinely love this song so much, and why I believe that it fits my Oblivion Verse -- outside of the lyrical obvious, of course -- is how often the lyrics play up the aspect of threes. I've done it twice now, and yet this lyric here is sung three times, and then finally a fourth to crescendo to an emotional climax before carrying on the rest of the song.

And because of such a thing, you know that I am going to take complete and utter advantage of it each and every time that the opportunity presents itself. Thus, carrying on from the above with the boys at Martin's coronation... the scene would continue with them being brought into a tight, overly emotional embrace with one another.

Lucien would be pulled in suddenly, a look of genuine surprise on his face, and then the boys would look at one another -- each of them accompanied with one time for each -- Korbin, then Martin, then Lucien, and they would simply laugh emotionally; tearfully, and not at all care what Ocato, or the other royalists or higher ups believe of such a show.

Right now, all that truly matters to them, is one another. They endured the Crisis, and they came out on top of everything. They endured the worst that Oblivion had to offer, and they survived. And whenever when it seemed that everything was against them, even when everything attempted to take away what it was that they cherished most... they still managed to turn the tides of fate itself and keep their family together.

And then the scene would fade, and much like the instance of the three brothers within the main hall of Cloud Ruler Temple, they would each endure some sort of thought, some sort of fear, and reach their lowest possible points.

Doubting themselves; doubting who they are. Being afraid of something coming to pass; or something that had indeed came to pass without realizing. Carrying the guilt of mistakes that were not theirs in the first place; and feeling as though the weight of the world has crashed around them.

Even when the dark comes crashing through - Lucien feeling absolutely consumed with the suffocating darkness of where he is in life. Normally such a darkness would be a comfort, a reassurance. It should be a means of showing that he is cloaked in the shadows of the Dread Father, and the Night Mother, and yet. He still feels himself at a loss for everything that happened over the course of his life.

Such as the loss of his previous Silencer, and how he believed that Lara resented him in her final moments for never being able to grant her what she desired most out of her beloved Speaker. The traitor's betrayal that had been lurking just out of view for so many years, and how such a thing nearly cost him everything because of his own mistakes, his remaining family included.

How he believes that he is still stuck underneath the terrible memories of his parents, almost looming over him when he believes himself to be healing, to be in a better place, with actual people that love him, and how he worries about becoming exactly like them, and never providing those, who he genuine cares for more than anything else in this bloodstained world, the trust and love that they so willingly deserve.

When you need a friend to carry you - Lucien's worries fade, and then the scene turns to Martin. Martin who feels himself stuck underneath the genuine terror of everything that he endured throughout his life that led up to the events of Kvatch.

He thinks back to when he was younger, and how he had so many dreams, so many things that he wished to accomplish, and then... before he knew what was happening, before he realized anything was wrong whatsoever -- swimming about in the waves of his own ignorance -- he lost his adoptive father Darius.

The man who raised him, the man who taught him everything, the man who loved him, even if Martin was not truly his flesh and blood child.

And in the aftermath of his guilt, he wound up underneath the foot of the Daedric Prince of Debauchery Sanguine, and how such a choice in his life ended up causing the deaths of his friends, those that he cared for, just as much as Darius... it only made the waves of what was once ignorance, turn into overwhelming guilt.

And then, making matters far worse, and foolishly believing that he could find something better if he kept his focus on those who needed his so-called caring healing hand.

But it was not enough, it was never enough, for then the invasion of Kvatch happened -- all in a means of finding him -- and he struggled to understand. He struggled to understand the Gods, and their plans, and struggled to make sense of knowing that so many people -- so many good people -- died because the forces of Oblivion wished to bring about the end to the Septim Dynasty once and for all.

He was unable to continue on by himself. He needed someone to be there for him, and to give him the strength that he desperately lacked.

When you're broken on the ground - And then, much like how Lucien faded to Martin, then Martin would fade to Korbin. Korbin who is deeply overwhelmed with the guilt of everything that took place throughout the course of the Original Timeline.

Feeling as though his knees can carry him no longer, and that every step forward is a step that causes the death of someone that he loves, someone that he cared about, and for some reason that he cannot even begin to understand, the death of someone who cared about him in turn.

What good would it be to keep walking? To rush out of the ruined Temple of the One, away from Ocato, away from Baurus, and Jauffre, and everyone that he deemed to be allies, when the two people that he loved the most... were now gone, and gone because of him?

Because of his naive, foolish, and awful choices that took away the only family he ever had. The only ones who ever truly saw him as something more. Someone far more than simply the shamefully abandoned child left upon the filthy streets to fumble about in his own ignorance that he so often saw within himself whenever he looked into the nearest mirror.

He crumbles to the ground in the harsh rain that followed in the aftermath of the events of the Temple of the One in the Original Timeline; overwhelmed with knowing that he is alone again, that there is nothing that can be done, and he simply cries.

You will be found - The boys have now reached their lowest possible point in their lives. Lucien is overwhelmed with doubt, Martin can no longer carry on with the weight of his past mistakes, and Korbin is broken because of his own actions, and yet; even despite the fact that they have crumbled, they have fractured, broken down, and are past the point of even trying to hold their own against the countless amount of numerous, unspeakable, terrible enemies... suddenly something finally changes.

Something that they never would have thought possible. Something that they would have never expected. Not in their lives, not in this world, and yet...

Suddenly Lucien no longer is drowning from the concepts of what ifs and what could bes, fueled by the worst aspects of his own paranoia because of what he could lose, and what he has lost.

Martin no longer believes that he has to force himself -- past his breaking point, and even past that just as well -- to use some sort of strength that he no longer has, that he never believed he had in the first place, and doesn't have to carry it all on his own.

And Korbin doesn't have to remain broken, forgotten, and suffocating underneath layers and layers of guilt of something that wasn't his fault; no matter what his own mind, what his own madness tells him otherwise.

Because, even in their darkest moments, even when they can no longer stand against it all... they have each other. They found each other. They no longer have to be alone and endure the torment of what terrifies them most in their most shielded, private moments, because now they have someone beside them.

Someone there to pull them up, brush them off, smile at them, and reassure them that everything will be okay. And, if it isn't -- not at first -- then they will continue to be beside them until it finally is. They don't have to be alone anymore, because they are wanted, they are cared for, they are finally found.

So let the sun come streaming in - As the darkness attempts to suffocate everything that Lucien ever knew, everyone that Lucien ever loved...a sudden light cuts through the terrible darkness -- not born of the Dread Father, not gifted by the Night Mother, something worse, something far worse, and frightening -- that is surrounding him; clouding his thoughts, and causing him to worry about every single action that he makes going forward.

The once infinite darkness then slowly turn to a soft grey, and even though he strains to see through the rays that appear, almost out of nowhere -- and he tries to see through his fingers that shield his eyes -- he doesn't turn away from such a sight. He doesn't reject it as he would have other such things.

This light is somehow warm, somehow almost inviting, and because of this feeling, this comfort, he actively moves forward to try and seek out the source.

'Cause you'll reach up and you'll rise again - In the destruction of Kvatch, when everything that Martin thought he knew -- everything that he thought he followed willingly, and hardly without question -- suddenly made no sense, and he began to doubt... only then does the door to the half ruined Chapel of Akatosh open up. Martin assumes it to be Daedra, that fate has finally come to bestow whatever he believes is proper to one such as him, and yet... suddenly there are two saviors rushing in instead.

They're terribly dirty, covered in blood, soot, and Divines only know what else. They're both tired, angry, and even despite their emotions during such a horrible situation, they call out for him specifically. One even calls him brother -- despite the fact that he is indeed referred to by such a name, by such a title -- and he does not quite understand why he feels drawn to such strange men.

Everything else is telling him to heal those who are injured, who are dying, and then finally get back upon the road, and put it all behind him once again. And yet these men will not allow him to do such a thing. He is told of his lineage, of who he really is, and they explain how they are there to protect him, to rescue him, to take him to safety... and, despite everything telling him otherwise, he believes them. He follows them. He trusts them.

If you only look around - Korbin still remains in the rainfall, crumbled upon the ground as he did in the aftermath of the events of the Temple of the One in the first timeline. He does not know how long he has stayed in such a position; he does not know how long the rain has fell around him, and he does not care.

But even despite the pain and the agony that he feels, two gentle hands come to touch his shoulder. He looks up in shock -- no one had ever thought to do such a thing to him before, not when he was broken, fractured, in his most venerable, and weakest state of mind -- and there are both of his brother's standing in front of him.

They smile gently down at him -- despite how he looks, despite how he cries, despite how much weakness he is showing -- and they pull him up. As they do, they instantly begin to soothe his cries, and comfort him. They embrace him tightly and tell him that it will be all right. That he doesn't have to face such emotion, such darkness alone. That he is never alone.

For even though he is often overwhelmed with his emotions, his guilt, his pain that lingers from the previous timeline, and it causes him to often second guess himself... his brothers are always there to hush those fears. Because they are with him, they'll always be with him.

You will be found - And at last, Lucien finds the source of the light that cut through his darkness. The light that followed, willingly, and without question, and at the end of the light, he finds Martin and Korbin waiting for him with open arms.

Martin goes with the strange men that he met in the destruction of Kvatch, as the Oblivion Crisis first began, and he follows them upon their path, upon their shared journey, until he finally moves forward as the Emperor with Korbin and Lucien at his side as his Knight and Adviser.

Korbin finally stands from where he had fallen, the storm that was raging behind him beginning to slow to a light trickle, and he allows Martin and Lucien to hold him close. To soothe him. To comfort him, and he embraces them just as tightly in return.

They may endure hardships upon hardships, they may suffer underneath the weight of their own fears and their past choices, they may second guess themselves if they are truly doing what is needed, and what will make the others around them proud... but they have each other throughout every doubt, every worry.

They're never truly alone, because they will be found by the other, and have be found, because they found each other and became a family.

And when our children tell their story - And then the scene suddenly fades away from the brothers being found by one another, and it cuts to a shot of three children.

Three children -- a young boy holding a large book, with dark skin, shining eyes, and a golden circlet around his forehead, a young girl who is nestled close to the boy, with two toned hair of shades of brown and grey, and golden eyes, and then another that sits on the opposite side of the two with shining black hair in a braid, and piercing eyes -- excitedly reading about the many numerous adventures, and journeys that have come before them.

The journeys that had happened before they were even born. Those of which they had heard about in passing and were eager to know more of the time in which Shadow and Flame clashed, and what exactly brought about the End to Madness at last.

You will be found - The shot of the children reading begins to close in on the words within the book, and the scene slowly fades away to a nearly empty chamber. A chamber that is filled with nothing but darkness, and the most unbearable, unimaginable pain.

Two men stand together, side by side, and their blessings begin to appear to the eyes of the one who dares to defy them. Who dares to come between them, and the one that they would face off against the very depths of Madness itself to protect.

They'll tell the story of tonight - A pair of sharp golden wings appear upon the shoulders of the one who stares up at the Mad God with protective fury in his eyes; the wings coming to drape around his shadowy companion, and the one who had fallen behind them.

A thick smoke of red tinted mist falls off of the one who carries the artifact that would bring about even a Daedra's doom, and they block his attempts of getting to his Little Raven with as much power as they are able to wield.

In the distance, floating in the height of his supposed victory, floats the spectral form of Sheogorath himself, and he looks down at them with a cheerful smile. Taunting them, encouraging them, seeing if they are capable of coming between what is rightfully his for one final time.

Would they defy fate itself for the sake of keeping The Mad God away from their little brother? Without a doubt. They had done so before, without even realizing it, and now that they knew. Now they understood their own powers, and what their brother had given up, what he had sacrificed... they would do so again a second time.

No matter what they tell you - The children turn the page, and sudden the scene changes as well.

Martin and Lucien face off against The Mad God, and finally defeat him. They strike him down with their combined strength, their combined rages of what he has done to their brother over the course of so many years, and how close -- how often -- he came to ripping him away.

And that was Sheogorath's first mistake. He may have seen his Little Raven as nothing more than a broken bird, and yet... Lucien and Martin still wanted him. Still loved him. They saw his faults, his flaws, and accepted them all the same. And when it came time for the Mad God to come for his due, to get what he was owed, they stood in his way... and he did not expect such a thing.

And when it is done; when it is finally finished, and Sheogorath's spectral form fades away with a bitter, ironic, defeated chuckle... they rush back over to Korbin and heal him of the injury that he sustained in such a risk.

They had one shot. One small shot to free their brother from the pain, and the agony, and now that the one who had hurt him for so long was finally gone... they are desperate to bring him back from the brink of death itself. They had come so far, too far, and would not let him go so easily.

Tomorrow they'll be more of us - The children are hanging on the edge of their seats; their eyes widened, and desperate to know how it all ends. They continue to flip the page -- excited, overjoyed stars shining in their eyes -- and then the scene fades once again.

It fades to Korbin being brought back from the brink. To him waking up, much to the relief of his two terrified older brothers, and genuinely smiling for the first time in months. He looks towards Martin -- who laughs with gentle tears in his eyes at such a sight before him -- and then he turns towards Lucien. He speaks a clever quip, hoping to invoke some sort of emotion from Lucien, hoping that, in doing so, he would force his brother to speak... and when such playful words leave his lips, Lucien grabs him in a sudden, overwhelming tight embrace.

The two Assassins fall backwards into a collective heap, laughing as they go, and rest their foreheads against the other as they weep openly in knowing what they actually managed to achieve. In what they saved, despite everything saying that they would fail. That they would lose. That they would remain incomplete and be fractured in such unimaginable ways. In whom they saved from a Mad God's cruel hand.

Lucien pulls Korbin into a sit after a moment, they turn to Martin, and hold out their arms for him to come into the tearful embrace as well. It feels familiar, as though they did this so long ago, within similar chambers, and yet with a far greater audience.

They laugh to themselves; they hold each other close, and they allow themselves to breathe, and savor their hard-earned victory against the wrath of Oblivion a second time.

Telling the story of tonight - The scene slowly fades away from the brothers and their tearful embrace, and the young children close the book with large smiles on their faces.

They had heard the tales in passing, they had heard of such a remarkable feat from those that they cared for, and those they loved, and yet... now they have actually read it thoroughly. They actually had their chance to know it all in the most in-depth, gloriously detailed way possible. And knowing all that three great heroes had managed to accomplish -- against Oblivion, against the Mad God -- simply causes them to latch onto one another as well.

They laugh happily, albeit with far less tears, and suddenly familiar stars twinkle brightly in their eyes, and they want to know more.

They want to hear more adventures. They want to know everything that happened before their time. They want to grasp onto the strength and inspiration that such tales give to them, and possibly form their own story in turn. To follow in their footsteps, place down the roadwork to their own wonderful tales, and amazing adventures, and somehow make those that they admire most of all proud of their hard-earned accomplishments.

The story of tonight - As they break away from their emotional embrace after an extended moment, they look out to the distance, and see three men standing there in waiting. And it was somehow possible, the stars in their eyes twinkle all the more, and they instantly are up on their feet.

Running forward, smiling widely, and asking so many questions in breathless gasps. Did they know what they just read, did it really happen in such a way, did they really face off against Mehrunes Dagon himself, and The Mad God as well?

How did they find the courage of being able to keep going when everything around them seemed impossible? What sort of strength did they truly have when they were together? What new adventures are they going to have, and can they come along as well?

The children want to know everything; every possible thing about what they read, what they just learned, and they refuse to take no for an answer.

Three brothers look down at their children and laugh warmly at such intense curiosity. They hold out their hands to them and promise to tell them everything with time. But for now, for the rest of the day, all they wish to do is walk alongside their children and see where the road takes them.

And if, by some chance, they stumble upon a new journey that was ten times more amazing than what their children just read... well, then they would surely greet such a thing with open arms, and an ever-playful smile.

Not only because the thought of something new, something exciting, made them eager for new opportunities, and a brand-new adventure, but because whatever was out there, whatever was waiting... they would face it together. Just as they had always done, and just how they always will.

The children smile up at their fathers, and back towards each other upon hearing such wonderful words, and they nod their heads. It sounded amazing, absolutely amazing, and they couldn't wait to see where such a road would take them together.

After all, it was only a matter of time~

#hero of kvatch #martin septim #lucien lachance #the elder scrolls oblivion #tes oblivion #The Knight The Emperor And The Assassin~#My Fan Fiction~

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nosunsetsjustsilence · 4 years

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The Manics and Gender Identity, Part 1

There is a lot to unpack in Nicky and Richey’s early lyrics pertaining to gender, particularly in terms of identifying with women. Richey approaches the subject — as he is wont to do — with regard to the exploitation and degradation of the female image, while Nicky’s attitude is more inquisitive and casual. Both use lyrics to express their own personal “What if?”

Make no mistake: I’m not claiming that either Nicky or Richey is/was non-cis or trans or anything other than curious. But it’s clear from their personal lyric struggles and hard-won lifestyle choices that this was a different time they were living in. In the 1990s, gender identity was not a topic with any kind of mainstream recognition, at least beyond those who wanted a “sex change” or girls who were considered “one of the boys”. I think it’s fascinating, at least from my perspective, to go back and examine the themes of gender dysphoria, identity, and frustration in lyrics written before any of it was part of popular conversation, and in a way that emphasized the then absolute cultural disconnect between desire and society.

Also, it’s important to note that both Nicky and Richey have presented gender in ways that don’t have anything to do with lyrics. Nicky is comfortable in traditionally female clothing and wears dresses on and off stage; both band members wore makeup and feathers on a regular basis. I’ve tried to write about gender in terms of lyrics only, but at times I do take examples from visual media.

Finally, keep in mind that yours truly is non-binary, and the discussion will hopefully not reek of a cis person watching queer men from behind bars in a zoo.

Special thanks to @sinisterrouge for vetting this before I posted <3

Little Baby Nothing

Although Richey seemed to find comfort in claiming that his lyrics were about the larger world — in the case of Little Baby Nothing, feminism and the way women are perceived in media — a closer look usually reveals a personal stake. When I discussed the meaning of this song previously, I emphasized that the “Little baby nothing” in question is clearly Richey himself, writing in the first person and deconstructing his own image to align with a kind of mindless female groupie used for sex.

My mind is dead, everybody loves me Wants a slice of me Hopelessly passive and compatible Need to belong, oh the roads are scary Hold me in your arms I wanna be your only possession

Richey often refers to himself as a “slut” and a “prostitute” and uses self-referential porn star imagery in his lyrics (So Dead: “You need a fix I’m your prostitute”, Yes: “there’s no lust in this coma even for a fifty”), aligning the industries of pornography and music performance in very vivid ways most often pertaining to exploitation. Appropriately, singing pivotal stanzas on this track is none other than Traci Lords, arguably most famous (especially in the early 90s) for an underage porn scandal.

What’s more, in the lyrics booklet for Generation Terrorists, there is a quotation or excerpt included for each song. The following corresponds to Little Baby Nothing:

“The male chromosome is an incomplete female chromosome. In other words the male is a walking abortion; aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.” -Valerie Solanos.

Ninety percent of what the Manics said and did in their early years was intended to be shocking and/or ironic. Of course they were trying to incite anger and riots, the questioning of institutions, and a teardown of normalcy. But the fact that Richey later used part of this radical statement as the title to one of his songs (“Of Walking Abortion”, natch) proves that he took it somewhat seriously, even if only in the most simple sense — that part of him resented his own maleness.

Life Becoming a Landslide

This is another song I’ve previously discussed, mostly in the arena of Nicky and Richey individualizing their distinctive voices into lines that can clearly be attributed to one or the other. In a song about nature vs nurture and the plastic confines of greater humanity cracking down on who or what someone is really supposed to be, we have:

Life becoming a landslide Ice freezing nature dead Life becoming a landslide I don’t wanna be a man

As far as writing style goes, Nicky was always fairly straightforward. Richey loves to convolute his message with proper nouns and alternating verb cases and a lack of a subject just to throw people off, but here’s Nicky, my boy, just saying, “Dude. Being a man sucks. I don’t like this.”

He could mean that being human in general sucks. But, since his attitude towards women leads me to believe he would not abbreviate humanity in this way, and given his and Richey’s track record with gender and Nicky’s well-documented gender presentation, I think it’s clear the lyric means that he doesn’t want to be male. Because he feels it doesn’t suit him, for whatever reason. And that nature failed by making him a man instead of a woman.

Yes

‘Yes’ is an incredible song. Its major-chord melody juxtaposed against Richey’s raw portrait of degradation is truly a thing to behold. The theme? Being used, prostitution both literal and metaphorical (“For sale? dumb cunt’s same dumb questions”), exploitation in the name of capitalism (“In these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything”), and reaching the lowest possible point of existence (“Purgatory’s circle, drowning here, someone will always say yes”). But the chorus — the chorus boasts one of the rawest images of sexual violence the band has ever used:

He’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want

Wow. Okay. Where to begin? The implication here is that gender, along with everything else, is mutable if you have enough money and power to abuse people. However, it appears the change would be made not to entertain others, but to appeal to a specific person, sexually (“fuck him”). The “you” in question is clearly attracted to women, so the narrator offering to mutilate himself to please them can be seen as a last-ditch act of desperation. (“It feels like this massive defeat,” said a friend. “You can make him a woman to pleasure someone, but what’s left to change after that?”)

Richey wrote most of the song; “Rita”, obviously, is the name used for an alternative female identity. But who would Rita be? Richey seems to be wondering. Would she still be me? And would the change even be worth the affections of whomever he’s speaking to? If the means are so drastic (and difficult to picture without experiencing secondhand pain), that answer would usually be “no”. But the song is called “Yes”. I would say yes to anything at this point, Richey is saying, even the most extreme sexual violence imaginable, if that’s what you wanted.

4st 7lb

This is an extreme example of Richey using world issues to examine his own nature. Although anorexic himself, Richey writes “4st 7lb” from the point of view of an obsessive young girl admiring thin models. There could be multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is that when a person fails to fit the “classic” case of an eating disorder, they are often ignored. So, Richey says, you need me to be a teenage girl? I can do that.

(Note that in 1994, when this song was written, any eating disorder demographic outside the “white girl who loves fashion too much” model did not exist by medical standards and was usually subject to ridicule.)

Karen says I’ve reached my target weight Kate and Emma and Kristin know it’s fake Problem is diet’s not a big enough word I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view

Embodying the anorexic female stereotype allows Richey to criticize both the world and himself; by creating a parody of a young girl with an eating disorder, he creates commentary on how ridiculous and counter-intuitive her thought process actually is. The song is brutal and often focuses on nudity and sexual imagery, as it has been suggested in studies that eating disorders occur in those who are trying to annihilate their own puberty. Though Richey was well into his 20s when he wrote this, he often expressed a loathing of aging and the entire concept of adulthood.

Stomach collapsed at five Lift up my skirt my sex is gone Naked and lovely and 5 stone 2 May I bud and never flower My vision’s getting blurred But I can see my ribs and I feel fine My hands are trembling stalks And I can feel my breasts are sinking

Ultimately, “4st 7lb” hits hard as both an experiment in identity and a vicious satire of the rich white girl eating disorder cliché. Although the lyrics do not express a desire to become female, they do indicate that Richey feels everything might be easier and fit more neatly into a box if he were a girl.

[Coming in Part 2: The Girl Who Wanted to be God, Tsunami, Born a Girl, and Pretention/Repulsion.]

#gender identity #gender fuckery #manic street preachers #manics #nicky wire #richey james #richey edwards #lyrics #yes #little baby nothing #generation terroris #the holy bible #life becoming a landslide #4st 7lb #eating disorders #gender

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yurimother · 5 years

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Top 34 Yuri Anime

From mid-February to mid-March Akiba held a poll asking viewers what their favorite anime series were. Over 50,000 votes were counted and in the end, they organized the 34 entries by votes to declare which series was the most popular. While not including every yuri series, these titles do vary wildly from pulse-pounding action to salacious dramas and subtext filled slice of life shows. Of course, the eternal problem with popularity polls is that they only show what is, well... popular. So I have decided to organize the same 34 series into my own list, based on a mixture person preference, influence, and historical importance to the genre. Note that this list is not exhaustive, as there are more than just these 34 Here we go!

34. Kuttsukiboshi – No surprise here. While impressive from a technical standpoint, as this two episode series was written, directed, and animated by one may, Nayoya Ishikawa, this impressive feat does nothing to sate the deep loathing I have for Kuttsukiboshi. I found it not only nonsensical but disgusting and offensive at almost every turn.

33. Maria Holic – Ok this one has some funny moments and a solid opening theme but mostly it is about a cross-dressing sadist abusing the hell out of one of the cringiest characters ever written.

32. Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid – ew

31. Seraphim Call – Certainly not the worst but age really took a toll on this anime. It is entirely lost to history, only obtaining 12 votes in the original poll.

30. Love To-LIE-Angle - FANTASTIC TITLE, gross series that was forgotten before it even finished

29. Kurau: Phantom Memory – whut

28. Hidamari Sketch – How did this below average series get as many anime adaptations as it did?

27. Candy Boy – 2007 - 2009 was weird. I actually like parts of this one, as it is really cute, but you have to turn your brain off because full out incest. I have not heard about this one since 2009 and that seems to be cool with everyone involved.

26. The Girl in Twilight – I had never heard of this before doing this piece, which says a lot about this anime’s cultural importance. But it is a good watch.

25. El Cazador de la Bruja – worth one good watch and that’s about it.

24. My-HiME – Raise your hand if you have heard of this one. That is what I thought, and yet it is #13 on the original list.

23. Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn – There is no real place to put this one and that says more about it than I ever could.

22. Blue Drop – Weird show, you should watch it, but not memorable

21. Simoun – This one is actually a sort of hidden gem but it is lost to history for most people.

20. Destiny of the Shrine Maiden – It baffles me how this mostly mediocre mecha series was so popular. That being said, the ending of episode 11 is some of my favorite directing ever.

19. Saki – Ya know, you never hear about this one but it is actually one of the most popular, and was #6 in the poll. It is basically a mahjong sports style anime so I have no idea how it is so popular but hey, lots of people swear by it. The ultimate you “love it or hate it” show for a lot of people strangely as well.

18. Netsuzou Trap -NTR – I held off as long as I could. While really popular I cannot stand this anime, my loathing of it is rivaled only by Kuttsukiboshi.

17. Sasameki Koto – A pretty well-known yuri series. The books are FAR better, but still an enjoyable watch beloved by many yuri fans.

16. Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san – It pains me to not be able to place this one higher, as it is one of my favorites and so hilarious, but overall there are other series that just deserve to be above it.

15. Konohana Kitan – Adorable, just adorable.

14. Black Rock Shooter – It's astonishing that an (admittedly awesome) character design can spawn multiple anime adaptations, a hit song, and its own franchise. The anime adaptation packs some good old-fashion emotional suffering and cool fights but nothing really beyond that.

13. Strike Witches – Far more popular and influential than it has any right to be. One of the most salacious shows on this list I always feel uncomfortable watching it but I do love the characters.

12. Yuri Kuma Arashi – The creators behind this were clearly not sober and probably could have used a cold shower for other reasons as well, but it is an INCREDIBLE anime with some of the best, although extraordinarily odd, writing.

11. Liz and the Blue Bird – Things are starting to get a bit difficult now, this one is actually hard to place. Being only a year old we are not sure of the impact it has but the movie is beautiful and stunning with some really bad pacing.

10. Sakura Trick – Full of fluffy fanservice, and pretty popular. This is one that almost every yuri fan will enjoy.

9. Maria Watches Over Us – The show that revived the sister-love story, a lot of the most popular yuri would not exist if not for this gentle diamond.

8. Yuruyuri – A yuri somehow becomes one of the best slice of life series of all time. Its fame is well deserved, as the memorable characters and dynamics can be enjoyed for many, many viewings.

7. Bloom Into You – What started as a run of the mill yuri series became one of the most well-loved. One of the biggest anime of last year and a darn good yuri to boot. I wonder how we will look back on this one a decade later.

6. Citrus – DEAR GOD. I know how controversial this series is for many people and that some of you want to grab pitchforks right about now in response to me placing this high on the list but hear me out. Whatever your feelings about Citrus, and there is plenty of valid criticism to make, it is a very influential and popular anime. It scored the top spot on Akiba’s list by over 5000 votes. For me, it holds a special spot as the first real review I ever wrote (thank you, Erica, for the opportunity).

5. Sweet Blue Flowers – We are in the top five now, yet I still feel that I have placed this series far too low. It is one of the most grounded yuri series and ten years later its impact on the genre is still clear.

4. Strawberry Panic! – This was my first yuri and will always be special to me for this. But, there is no doubt that this series is actually worse than a lot of the ones lower than it on this list. I can almost feel the seething rage directed towards me for placing what can realistically be described as an aging, parodied, melodrama so high.Yet, as I gaze through my strawberry colored glasses, I see that Strawberry Panic has a magic to it. For so many in the American community, it holds a special place and I have heard my story with it reflected so often that I just started writing it on a speech bubble on the inside of the glasses I wear at conventions so that I know what people are saying to me when my mind wanders off. There is a reason it is nicknamed the gateway of yuri.

3. Kase-san and Morning Glories – A simply stunning, beautiful, and realistic story, this OVA movie is unlike any yuri before it. It holds nothing back in its yuri in its realistic depiction of a lesbian relationship. Kase-san is the best anime to come from twenty-gay-teen it just might change the genre forever.

2. Puella Magi Madoka Magica – Speaking of changing a genre, PMMM, my favorite anime of all time, did something truly incredible. Not since sailor moon as such a social phenomenon sprung from a magical girl series. The perfect writing, postmodern use of tropes, philosophy, and just pure awe-inspiring nature of the show has not been forgotten years later. The legacy of such a widely celebrated series is nothing short of god-like.

1. Revolutionary Girl Utena – Was there ever really any doubt? This series defined what yuri is for a generation. It is one of the defining works of LGBT and feminist media and possibly one of the most important pieces to come out of 90′s anime. Yuri, as we know it may not exist, were it not for this legendary series.

Well, that was fun but exhausting. Of course, this list is not perfect and I am sure that you more than disagree with me in a few places and I would love to hear them. Send me an ask, post a reply, tag me on twitter @HolyYuriMother for the love of the great yuri goddess! I want to know what you think, what series do you love? What anime do you hate? What nonsense thing did I say that just deserves to be torn apart? I want to know!

You can check out the original list on Akiba.

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#yuri #anime #ranking #list #top 10 #best #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtq+#queer #gay #news #art #response #pmmm #madoka #citrus #bloom into you #kase san #girls #love #girls love #wlw #femslash

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changeling-rin · 5 years

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Hi! I was wondering, what are your thoughts on the different Zelda games? Not a ranking or anything, just what did you like/dislike in each game/franchise as a whole? And how did you come up with the personalities of the characters for DL? Thank you!

Oof. Oh, you’re gonna make me Longpost, aren’t you. Yeah, okay. You asked for it.

Skyward Sword/Gen

-I both love, and hate, the motion controls. On one hand, I have never felt more epic than when I personally stabbed my sword into Demise’s head. On the other hand, I have never felt more frustrated when my wiimote would misinterpret my swings and I would subsequently die. Contrary to popular opinion, I actually like Fi. Her design is beautiful, her theme is gorgeous, and her goodbye to Link is one of the most beautiful yet heartbreaking moments in the entire franchise. The origin of the Master Sword, in my opinion, might be one of the best things to come out of this game.

Gen’s personality came about mainly as the foil to Lore and Dusk’s pre-existing dynamic. Lore is the spastic one, and while Dusk is definitely somewhat of the straight-man, he’s much more likely to roll with it unless it’s drastically damaging. Gen, on the other hand, will avidly apply common sense to anything and everything, and since Lore very rarely follows common sense, Gen morphed into his ‘conscience’, so to speak. His predilection for healing was a side-effect of me dying a lot in his game and spending more on Red Potion than probably anything else, and also because the group needed a medic and Gen was definitely the most take-charge character I had who would do that sort of thing.

Minish Cap/Speck

The Picori are the cutest things, oh my gosh. I do, however, suspect their violent and painful end in BotW - if they’re the ones who put the Rupees and Bombs and stuff in the grass, and there’s no such things in BotW… Aside from that! I adored the concept of shrinking down and having the entire environment change on you. It was such a unique way to make an old area new again. On the flipside, I loathed the Kinstone sidequest with a passion. I never did manage to match them all.

Speck was basically me saying to myself, ‘He’s a tiny person. How do tiny people see the world?’ And then he turned into a quiet, shy kid who tries very hard not to be a bother and looks at problems from a completely different angle than most people. This is why he always second guesses his words - he’s by far the most frequent user of ‘um’, ‘uh’, ‘ah’, ‘oh’, etc, and this is entirely on purpose. Tiny people, by nature, will do whatever it takes to make sure the bigger people don’t get mad enough to smush them - a bit morbid, I know, but if you think about it… This is also where his habit of stabbing the eardrum came from. Where most people wouldn’t even think of it, Speck just saw a really good access point and a whole lot of convenient fabric handholds to get him there.

Four Swords/The Four

I have actually never been able to get my hands on a copy of the original Four Swords game. I know. I’m a disgrace to the fandom. However, I have done extensive research, and I can say that by far my favorite concept is being able to deploy a Bow-Wow in the direction of my enemies. I literally cannot imagine it without cackling.

The Four were the result of me having two sets of Four Sword Heroes and desperately needing some way to tell them apart. It took a very long time for me to decide to play up the hive mind aspect, but once I did everything clicked for them. Rather than being split individual aspects of the original Link, the Four are literally a copy-paste of OG Link’s personality with only tiny variations between them, which led to the decision to make them somewhat quiet and awkward about their synchronization. People rarely accept what’s unfamiliar to them, and to be honest the Four probably have one of the more ‘tragic’ backstories. They may or may not have been chased out of a town or two due to a couple misunderstandings about the source of their hive mind. (My babies, I’m so sorry I did this to you I’m a terrible author whyyyyyyyy)

Ocarina of Time/Ocarina

By far, one of the most investing stories in a game. Ganondorf is fabulously evil, 10/10 would thwart again. Music, of course, is beautiful. The travel mechanic, on the other hand, I am not a fan of. Trying to get somewhere before getting the respective warping Song is tedious at best, and the sheer amount of time it takes for me to swap between Young and Adult Link is just… it’s a hassle, is what it is.

Ocarina is a little kid in a Big Person’s body, and I write him accordingly. He’s the wide-eyed boy in a brand-new world. He’s naive to a lot of things and oblivious to several others. He and Mask have a bit of an odd dynamic because of this - Ocarina will basically gravitate to wherever Mask is as a sort of unconscious instinct, under the unrealized assumption that Mask means protection. The ‘Little Brother’ mentality, if you will.

Majora’s Mask/Mask

THE MOON. THE FREAKING MOON. I will never be able to play this game without feeling vaguely stressed and unsettled the entire time and THAT FREAKING MOON is the reason why. Very compelling plot, 10/10, but WHY. Aside from that, the music is fantastic, Majora is Creepy To The Max and we so rarely get that in Zelda games so I am on board, the transformation masks are probably my favorite mechanic, and your heartstrings get yanked on several times with the Goron Lullaby quest and Mikau’s entire storyline.

Mask evolved directly as the opposite to Ocarina, with the caveat that he is directly aware of Ocarina’s unconscious ‘Little Brother’ mindset - Mask just happens to be sincerely uncomfortable with the ‘Big Brother’ role. He’s more knowledgable, more experienced, and this was done explicitly to be in direct contrast with the fact that he looks like a little kid. He’s Ocarina’s opposite in every single way, and it’s fun to have them play off each other.

Twilight Princess/Dusk

Probably my favorite game, art-style-wise. There’s some things that Twilight Princess does fantastically well artistically, not to mention that it contains one of my favorite characters of all time. Midna is awesome and there’s nothing that will convince me otherwise. I actually think the wolf mechanic is a really good way to make new problems within old areas - but I will admit, the bug hunts can be tedious. And that one escort mission can go jump off a cliff. But I adore everything about the concept of a Twilight Realm, and even though Ganondorf comes in and kinda shafts Zant out of the way, he’s fabulous enough that I can accept it. They are, after all, both marvelously evil.

Dusk’s personality came from me thinking back on everything that happens in his game and promptly deciding that: he either went a little insane to deal with it all, or he had the lowest level of crap to give that I’d ever seen. Obviously, I decided on the latter, and I’m very glad I did, because from there that allowed me to build the faux-duo-actually-triad leadership between him, Lore, and Gen that works so very well. I kinda ended up putting a little of myself into Dusk, in that he’s very reserved and will think about what he says before saying it. Of course, I had to incorporate the wolf somehow, and the way that was the most fun for me was to bring some of those traits over into his hylan form. One of these was me interpreting the howling mechanic as Dusk being a naturally good singer, and we all know where that led.

Four Swords Adventures/Red, Blue, Green, and Vio

The loss of the Bow-Wow hits me deeply, but we do get horses so that helps a little. Also, it surprised me a little how similar this game is to the predecessor, Four Swords. There’s a couple plot differences, Shadow Link is a thing, but for the most part it follows a very similar pattern and I kinda wish something different had been done. It’s fun having more than one weapon to swing around, but not quite as much without other people to play with. The one thing I have to say about Zelda multiplayer games is that, without actual multiple players, it’s just… not as fun.

I freely admit that large parts of Green, Vio, Red, and Blue’s personalities came directly from the FSA manga - particularly, the subversion of color expectations by having Red be the timid one and Blue be the aggressive one. You never see that nowadays, and I immediately pounced on it. Vio and Green had slightly less large chunks of manga personality, but I basically ripped their inner-group dynamic wholesale. Their individual interactions though, those are all me. Blue and Vio just seemed like natural bicker partners. Red’s Adorable Puppy face evolved out of the sheer amount of times the manga had him on the verge of, or shedding, actual tears. And Green naturally needed to be the exasperated leader keeping them all in line. It all just sorta flowed from there.

Link to the Past/Lore

The originator of such musical classics like Kakariko Village, the Dark World theme, and Zelda’s Lullaby, and I thank this game for making these songs so good. I adore the way that the Dark World can take the entire freaking country of Hyrule and turn it into something completely new. But there were some times where I wasn’t sure where to go? I don’t know if it was me or not, and it could have been. I might just be bad at inferring destinations.

Lore is the direct result of being the target of four entire games, and me thinking to myself, ‘Now how does a normal person deal with something like that?’ The answer was, of course, that they throw normality out a window. Lore is my way to have fun, and also to let out every random impulse I’ve ever had but never acted on. In a way, Lore is me, but without all the inhibitions. Sometimes he ends up being a direct conduit between my brain-thoughts and the page. That aside, I also gladly seized the opportunity to bring something different to the group, which is how the different languages came in. He’s the only Link who actively, within his games, visits other countries, and there was no way I could pass that up.

Oracle of Ages/Oracle of Seasons

They remind me of Pokemon titles. “Here’s these two games! With the exception of some minor details, they’re exactly the same! Combine them for a special surprise!” I do think the Subrosians are adorable though. And of course, shout-out to Veran, the only explicitly female villain the Zelda franchise has ever seen. Maybe someday you’ll get a friend to help you out in that testosterone-filled mess. Maybe someday.

Link’s Awakening

Far sadder than I anticipated it being. Also, the Bow-Wow returns! Clearly the best thing in the game. On the bad side - I don’t remember which one it was - there was this one dungeon that just… for the life of me I could not get it to make sense in my brain. I don’t know why. I also don’t remember what the solution was. Very engaging story though, the Windfish mystery kept me engaged right up to the Big Reveal.

A Link Between Worlds/Sketch

The painting mechanic is just. It’s so clever. The entire landscape is transformed with a single dimension shift and I loved it. I was kinda skeptical about the same map as LttP, but then Lorule happened and I was pleased enough with that to accept it. Ravio and Hilda are fine additions to the LoZ family and I wholeheartedly accept them - also, the Lorule Castle theme is one of the best songs in the franchise, fight me. One thing I do remember is this one boss battle, I think with some sort of Manhandla plant? It took me at least ten or so tries to get past that thing. Really didn’t enjoy that one.

Everything intentional about Sketch evolved from his painting ability, this being his phobia of water, his tendency to use stealth in a confrontation, and his continued sidetracking with artistic ideas. At some point though, he turned into one of the most sarcastic Links in the bunch, and I’m really not sure how it happened. But it seemed to fit him for whatever reason.

The Legend of Zelda/Realm

I regrettably have not been able to get my hands on this one either, but I have watched a play-though. My observations are as follows: Where is the map. How did anyone figure out where they were going in this game. I don’t understand how that wall was supposed to indicate it was bomb-able. How did people play this game without getting too frustrated to continue. On the bright side, the dungeons seemed to be very well-laid-out, and the bosses, while repetitive, were pretty memorable. I suspect I would get lost within the first ten minutes, though.

Realm is directly based off of my above observations. I am firmly of the opinion that absolutely nobody can make it through the original LoZ game without getting lost at least once, and this resulted in Realm’s absolutely abysmal sense of direction. Consequently, I made him hopelessly optimistic and cheerful enough to make the sun jealous, because the only person who could put up with those sorts of mishaps is the person who can just get right back up and keep going. Also, the fact that I myself and severely directionally challenged means that writing Realm comes very easily.

The Adventure of Link

I have not played this one either. I apologize. That said, I dislike the switch from top-down to 2-D scroller. In comparison with literally every other game in the franchise, AoL feels the least like a ‘Zelda’ title. Though, for the invention of Shadow Link, I award at least few points.

Wind Waker/Wind

It’s adorable. It’s somehow a very dark and serious game disguising everything behind a cute and cartoony art style and even though I can recognize it I don’t actually care. The story is engaging, Tetra is the Best Pirate, and the ocean makes it feel so big. I do think the sailing mechanic can be a bit time-consuming before the warp travel kicks in, and I actually feel like Ganondorf went down too easily, maybe?

Wind is based off of sailing, basically. I took the amount of time it takes him, in-game, to get places and decided that he has the patience of a saint. Also the bafflingly ability to stay awake for three days straight, but that hasn’t come up in DL, so. Because of this, he’s usually pretty content to let conversations evolve without much input from him, unless he’s got something important to say. And of course, he’s got the Wind Waker, which resulted in me making up an entire magical classification system to explain why he’s so good at controlling the weather, accompanied by an entire chapter-length head canon about the relation between the weather and music. Ironically enough, for all that Wind has no instrument of his own, the fact that he’s a conductor means he’s actually the most musically talented of the whole group.

Phantom Hourglass

I wouldn’t call it a worthy sequel to Wind Waker, but I honestly don’t think it’s too bad - with the exception of the Temple of the Ocean King. First time, it was kinda fun. Second time, less fun, Third time, getting repetitive. Fourth time, getting annoying. Fifth time, and I was really done with that mechanic. The remixed Sailing Theme was good though, and once I got past Linebeck’s surface personality I liked him pretty well too.

Spirit Tracks/Steam

I have never played this one, but the concept seems fun. The riding-a-train song is amazing. This Zelda is probably the most fleshed-out that the character has ever been, and I dearly hope she can take the position of ‘companion guide’ again someday. Or maybe even ‘protagonist’, who knows? I do dislike how vague Malladus is, because as the Final Bad Guy I feel like he should have been solidified more than just “Demon sealed a long time ago”. And to be honest, why Trains? It just seems so random.

Steam, like several other Links, is based around his gameplay. As an engineer, he’s a pretty hands-on type of person, which is why he frequently gets distracted with the inner workings of other Links’ items. And due to the fact that Trains require very little input to control and a lot of travel time, he’s the least physical of all of them. This basically means that he runs the slowest, hits the lightest, and will likely bring the least to the table in a fight. This is one of the reasons I gave him the ‘I Like Trains’ summon, because even if he himself can’t hit very hard, his Train sure as heck can.

Oh my gosh I think this took me a solid hour to type out, I hope you’re very happy with this response Anon ;)

#Changeling Answers #Opinions #Headcanons #I had a lot of fun with this but my gosh writing it out took forever #Anonymous Replies #All the DL Links #Dimensional Links

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