#pretty obvious assumption if it was never mentioned in canon but yeah

[bluehairperson]

I thought only now about the possibility of Lucio having commissioned some coins with his face on them. Imagine being traumatized by this tyrant and all the things he did, never wanting to see him again after his death but constantly being haunted by his memory not only because of the various monuments around the city, but also because his face is literally engraved on the local currency.

Asra grimacing every time he gets paid by a client at the shop or has to use the same coin to buy bread. The man who took everything from him and made him grow up in absolute poverty is now part of what allows him to afford food and shelter every day.

Julian spending everything he has at the tavern every night because the mere thought of having those coins in his pockets makes him feel heavy with dread. He doesn't even look when he tosses them on the table.

It doesn't matter how far away they both try to escape during their travels, some of those coins always manage to catch up to them no matter where they go. It's like he never left.

[masschase]

S T & Z for the ask meme

Fanfic ask meme

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?

Ooh... I'm not entirely sure what this means by fandom tropes? As an overthinker/overanalyser (I know; I apologise for not telling you to sit down, please pick up your jaws off the floor, clear up your spat-out drink etc. etc.) I'm a huge fan of any sort of trope in media and as such I have a really wide definition of what a trope is that a lot of people don't share 🙃. And fandom tropes could mean ones that are popular in the fandom I write in, ones that I like in fandoms, ones that are specific to fandom in general? There are a few interpretations but I'm going with my original assumption which was tropes I like to read/write?

Obviously I guess I like friends to lovers, even in the ff I wrote years ago it was mostly friends to lovers, though I feel like there always has to be some degree of reason for... if these two people are attracted to each other or in love... why aren't they a thing yet?

I read recently that people don't like stories where the whole thing could be resolved with one conversation and I think unfortunately my fic has some shades of that. But I also think the fact that one half of the pairing is determined never to fall for someone/get into a relationship and has even set a clear boundary to that effect, and that the other is aware of that, socially awkward/anxious and seems to have a pretty low opinion of himself in this regard is in itself a reason.

But also it's extremely true to my real life experience, especially as someone who is, once again, socially awkward/anxious and has a very low opinion of themself. I will chew off my own arm rather than confess my feelings. I've sat and made a spreadsheet of how many kisses someone was leaving on their texts and how it increased over time rather than saying anything so yeah. 😅

OK I may have spent too long on that one trope. I'm also heavily into things that pay off over time, like brick jokes, arc words, callbacks, foreshadowing and chekov's gun (one of my favourites btw is the literal one of casey's tiny pistol and the less literal one of shaundi's giant purse which are mentioned in ch1 and their significance is revealed in ch30) which is why writing out of order was extremely useful. Good god, one day I'll write about all the foreshadowing in my fic. I'd love to know if people notice it.

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?

'Die for our ship': when fan creators kill off or malign characters that get in the way of their ships. I've always tried to be sensitive about how I write characters like that. Asha is the most obvious example in my fic so I've tried to keep her sufficiently badass and also at times surprisingly sensitive. The Boss luckily has no one canon love interest but I was mindful of the way I wrote Johnny and Shaundi in this regard too.

I don't like to see non-con and underage stuff. I have no idea if that counts as tropes, but I will swerve a story with that in the tags immediately.

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate?

I write reversible character deaths I suppose. Cheaty as hell but my story literally starts with one so I guess if people don't like that they'll switch off straight away. I've not saved any canon characters who were already going to die, and I've not really killed off anyone new apart from OCs killed in the Earth's destruction. After the whole thing I wrote in ch29/30 I can't really complain if people kill characters off for real, but essentially... I may write a lot of angst but I do like a happy ending in some capacity.

[oh-hush-its-perfect]

do you think there is any significance that alex's colour scheme is green and pink? or do you think rr went "u know what this character needs? to look like a watermelon"

((Prefacing this by saying that I'm giving RR way too much credit here, but you shouldn't take anything an author does for granted— even a serial author who often makes blunders and mistakes.))

A while ago I saw a (pretty unfair) assumption that RR made it green and pink because blue and pink would be too obvious, but that his intention was obviously to reinforce the gender binary by using two distinctly gendered colors for a character with two distinct genders. Of course, they did not phrase it so delicately. No offense to whoever made that post, but I disagree.

Although that may have had to do with it, there's other things to consider. One of them is color symbolism. And oh. OH. I ADORE symbolism— especially flower/plant symbolism (Language of the Flowers and all that jazz), seasonal symbolism (there's a reason that evermore is my second favorite Taylor Swift album), and color symbolism.

GREEN

Let's talk about green first. Green can symbolize a lot of different things, and there are a few that can be applied to Alex's character. The most obvious thing that green often represents is jealousy— hence the expression "green with envy." But envy is not really one of Alex's character traits. Feel free to argue with me if you think that Alex is significantly envious. Just because I couldn't think of substantial textual evidence for it does not mean that there isn't any.

One of the traits that Alex does have is wealth. Green is the color of American currency, and since both RR and Alex are American, it's safe to take an American lens while looking at this color. Alex's socioeconomic background effects her in a big way. I mentioned in a previous post that I think that Alex's fatal flaw is her sense of entitlement. That kind of entitlement is a quality not exclusive to but common among the upper class. However, her distance from her wealthy background enhances the sense of irony in the story, which is a VERY big thing that we NEVER talk about within the fandom.

This is kind of a little thing, but it's worth noting that when it comes to Valhalla and everything, Alex is "green"— as in new and inexperienced.

The color green also emphasizes Alex's connection with nature. This is one of the parts of Alex's character that the fandom consistently underplays, which is an absolute shame. I don't think I have to explain why the color green is associated with all things natural. Alex's association with nature provides a few key things to her character:

It makes her a more well-rounded character. Another criticism of Alex I believe is totally unfounded is that "being genderfluid is her only personality trait because it influences her philosophy on pottery, which is her only hobby." I'm probably going to make another post in, like, a few minutes about why I find that argument a little silly, but the primary problem is that pottery is not Alex's only hobby. She also loves camping, hiking, and ice wall climbing (I bet y'all forgot about that last one!)

It gives her a connection with Magnus. I mentioned in a previous post that Magnus and Alex are foils, but I neglected to bring up why that also makes for very good chemistry between them. Of course, yes, they have different goals and philosophy, which is what makes them foils in the first place. But foil relationships function best when the characters also share some traits. As it turns out, Alex and Magnus share several hobbies, and one of them is a mutual love for nature. This is a very unexplored thing in fics. Start doing it more plz.

Finally, and this one's kind of minor, but the Alex's green gives her a connection to Natalie. I know, whenever Alex and Natalie are compared, either in canon or in fandom, everybody kind goes "eww. Oedipus complex." Which is very fair and true. But they really do have a lot of similarites. The green of Alex's hair and clothes connects her to the green of Natalie's eyes. It's worth saying, too, that Alex has one amber eye— and amber is pretty close to dirty blonde, like Natalie's hair.

If I had more faith in RR, I might bring up the concept of intextuality and how Alex wearing green is an allusion to The Great Gatsby and how Alex is elusive to Magnus, just like Daisy is to Gatsby. But I don't.

PINK

To give credit to the person who wrote the post I mentioned at the beginning of this spiel, I do believe that part of the reason pink was used was to support femininity. Please keep in mind that Alex dresses in an androgynous way— not that there is an actually "gendered" way to dress, since gender as we perceive it is mostly made up. But Alex's existence as a transfemme person (which I will maintain until my dying day) means that pink has a certain significance to her. A lot of AMAB people embrace traditionally feminine things because if they don't, they will not be accepted as genuine women or genuine nonbinary folks, since masculine dress is unisex and kind of the default. So Alex wearing pink probably had something to do with her gender, yes. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's certainly not an unrealistic thing.

Speaking of Alex's gender in relation to the color pink, let's talk about pink's use as a queer rights symbol. Alex was RR's first character to be introduced as a queer character from the start. This was not an insignificant thing, especially in the year of our Lord 2016 (which, despite popular belief, seriously had an entirely different landscape of queer rep. Though it's commonplace now to include genderqueer characters, it was exceptional at the time— especially by such an accomplished and mainstream children's author.).

Let's go back in time to Nazi Germany. Some of you might know this, but for those of you don't this transition must seem jarring. I swear there's a point. In addition to Jews, Romani individuals, people with disabilities, and Poles (among others), gay men were victimized by the Nazis. If you're wondering why lesbians weren't persecuted, it's because the Nazis didn't see them as a serious political threat, or as a threat to the perpetuation of the Aryan race since they assumed gay women could be forcefully impregnated if need be. Yeah, ew. Anyway, much like the Star of David being used to mark Jewish people, gay men were forced into concentration camps and forced to wear a pink triangle. Years later, after the gay population somewhat recovered, the pink triangle was reclaimed and used as a symbol for gay men. Some people who were not gay men used it, too, but that's somewhat controversial since it wasn't their symbol to reclaim. When the first pride flag was created, it had a pink stripe at the top to signify sex (this was later dropped so flags could be more easily produced). The pink triangle (inverted) was used during the AIDs epidemic with the caption "Silence=Death."

My point is that this is a very important color to queer folks. Having one of the first genderfluid characters in kid's lit wear pink...... I mean, it makes sense.

The last and final thing that pink represents, in this context and in general, is innocence. Granted, this kind of connects to feminitity since women (especially white women) are often infantalized and seen as innocent— which is another issue. In any case, the use of pink to represent innocence in Alex's dress is ironic. Alex has been robbed of her childhood innocence, first by her abusive parents, then by her life on the streets, and then by her eventual death at age sixteen. But then she actually regains her innocence. At the beginning of the—

Hold on. I just had a revelation. I'll make a post about it soon.

At the beginning of SotD, Alex is acting a little childish. The most obvious example is him jumping on Randolph's bed to "make noise." Alex's life is stable and relatively healthy for the first time in the years, and she experiences something that a lot of queer folks experience: a re-emergence of childhood at a late stage.

I imagine you didn't expect a post this long. I either make essay responses to asks or I add on one sentence and post it. Oops. Anyway, I believe the mcga fandom can be more creative than calling Alex a watermelon. Here are some other (kinda romantic) pink-and-green alternatives:

Roses

Dragonfruit

Grapefruit

Cherry blossom trees

[fumiko-matsubara]

Chiba and Kurahashi Friendship Headcanons

How they address each other: It used to be "Chiba-chan and Kurahashi-san" at first. But literally less than a week after they started to hang out more, they began addressing each other as "Ryuuchan and Hinano".

They make up the 2/6 of the moodmaker line in the class (the other four being Okajima, Nakamura, Maehara, and Kayano.)

But instead of doing things like cracking jokes or pulling actually funny pranks, they were considered as moodmakers of the class because the energy they carry around them is contagious, especially when they interact. One just can't help but to smile at the sight of two happy people happily talking to each other.

Flowers basically bloom and light up the room the moment these two smiley kids began walking towards each other, what more if they began talking 😭

Surprisingly, it was Chiba who initiated the friendship, or at least started approaching Kurahashi which soon led to them being friends.

At first it was just for things like reminding her about certain school works or usually being the first to answer Kurahashi's questions if she has any. Then it slowly transitioned to Chiba casually joining into group conversations until it had come to the point where he initiates a conversation with her instead.

Of course it didn't take long until Kurahashi started to approach him first herself, especially since she has always been reciprocal to Chiba's approaches.

This is one of the main reasons why Chiba likes talking to her, the fact that she returns the sentiment with the same, or even more energy. It was the first time someone had not been once hesitant towards him and it made him incredibly happy knowing that there is actually someone who doesn't judge him for his appearance.

He actually almost teared up when Kurahashi once remarked that he's not as scary as some people claim him to be.

There's a very wide range of topics that they converse about, as they have differing interests yet still don't mind listening to the other.

Especially since Chiba is one not to be shy about having to listen to "girly" topics, as his family comprises of mostly women which may have gotten him used to hearing such topics growing up, and may even possibly be interested in them himself.

So like if Kurahashi was looking at a fashion magazine and asked him if a certain outfit would look good on her or not, expect that Chiba can easily give her a solid answer, sometimes even recommend other fits he'd seen in the magazine to her instead.

Chiba: "Ahh my sisters were looking at the same copy this morning and there's a cute dress here I think you'd like, Hinano! :D"

Kurahashi: "Omg can you show me?? :D"

Chiba has been long aware about Kurahashi's crush admiration towards Karasuma before it became obvious to the whole class. He would totally let her ramble or even complain to him regarding Karasuma, never interrupting her, then successfully consoles her whenever it shows that she needs it.

Kurahashi: "Karasuma-sensei seemed so distant from us :("

Chiba: "He's even busier these days... Don't worry too much about it, Hinano. Who knows, he might have actually wanted to join us but can't have the time to because of how much work he has to do."

Kurahashi: "... yeah you're right! I hope it gets better for him soon then so we all can hang out together :D"

[This conversation totally happened in canon. You cannot convince me otherwise].

Chiba offhandedly mentioned once that he has a whole family of cats and it led to Kurahashi inevitably visiting his place on the same day just to see the cats.

You can imagine the shock written on his mother's face when she saw her son bringing such a cute and sweet girl who claimed to be his friend to their home that day.

Of course, she ended up adoring Kurahashi a lot not long after. Chiba already expected this from his mother and so wasn't even the least embarrassed that she kept approaching Kurahashi even for the tiniest things (unless he was the topic oh lord).

Naturally, among his sisters, Kurahashi got along with Yuko (youngest sister) the most, as they have very similar personalities and instantly clicked.

She wasn't able to meet Kohaku (second youngest sister) that day, as she was apparently staying at a friend's place. But Chiba was sure that they'd also get along.

There are two adult cats living in the Chiba residence. The male cat, which is the eldest, is pretty much attached to Chiba as they have been together since he was 7 years old. Yuko basically claimed their female cat, who recently had given birth to plenty of kittens.

While Kurahashi was busy cooing over the cute kitties, Rena (the eldest sister), who had just got home from club activities, approached her brother and remarked: "I already find it hard to believe that you actually got a girlfriend but oh wow I didn't think she'd be this cute."

Chiba: "That's not her 😐"

Chiba would actually fight anyone who dares to assume that his relationship with Hinano goes beyond being good friends. It felt so nice to have such a genuine friend and he doesn't want anyone to ruin that with their assumptions.

Maehara: "Oho? Kurahashi went to your place yesterday??"

Chiba: "Yeah she did and you better not have any weird thoughts about it or I'll deck you."

And don't even get me started with their shopping adventures 💔. Their friendship has come to a point that if Kurahashi's circle of friends aren't available on a day when she wants to go shopping with them, she can easily invite Chiba instead without having any second thoughts.

The first time it happened, she was mildly surprised that Chiba knows his way through the shopping district and would even take the lead in certain locations as if he had been there often enough to seemingly memorize the whole place.

Kurahashi: "There's a huge sale today but everyone has plans after school... ;-;"

Chiba: "Hmm? I'm free today, Hinano. Will you be okay with having me instead?"

Kurahashi: ":D"

Chiba always offers to carry their shopping bags (yes he always ends up shopping for himself as well lol) and Kurahashi is the one who suggests places for them to rest or eat at after spending a long time walking from one store to another.

While they are resting or eating, they would still have lots to talk about.

Actually, there was almost never a time where they're not chatty together. It was as if the moment one sees the other, there is already a topic in their minds that they want to talk about. So yeah, the room is never quiet with them together lol.

Some stuffs I thought about them because I love them and their friendship so much omg.

I like to think that Kurahashi is Chiba's natural social battery, as in she easily brings out the once rarely seen bubbly side of him the moment she gives him a smile. And I also like to think that Chiba is clinging onto the fact that there is someone who actually genuinely likes his company, which is why being with Kurahashi makes him so happy that his smile had gotten so wide without him realizing it 💔

They're just the cutest 😢

[itsclydebitches]

Godddddd I'm so upset that I dislike yen this much, doing main quests in skellige and Freyas ppl were doing stuff and she again disrespected other cultures with Geraly being against, "I may be inhumanly beautiful" I know she's meant to be confident but wowww. She's not confident and worried for Ciri she just comes off arrogant and selfish and vain. Like, fuck.

The ultimate mood, anon. My Witcher fandom life would be so much easier if I enjoyed Yen ... but I just do not lol. Remember how I mentioned that things were going to get even worse than her stealing and using a potentially dangerous artifact? Yeeeaah. She also resurrects Ciri's friend to torture him for information, all while destroying another sacred garden to get the power to do it! It's not even a "She's so evil and I love it 😏" situation for me because the game tries so hard to convince us that she's still The Best. Geralt's sexy soulmate, Ciri's adoring mother, the baddest bitch around who gets things done and does it with an effortless confidence... all while ignoring how horrific her actions and attitude are. Oh sure, other characters speak ill of her at times, but considering how much Geralt is written to adore her, no matter what you choose, that's all undermined. I love morally gray/evil characters, but I've never enjoyed them when the text refuses to appropriately acknowledge that side of them. Nothing is more frustrating to me than a story that frames disliking a character as the unambiguously wrong thing to do, especially when the text is piling up reasons to dislike them and, as a result, ignoring or shrugging them off their actions as not that bad. Yen is a rather extreme example of that for me. Despite her attitude, her choices, and other characters outright going, "Why do you like her?" the story as a whole works under the assumption that it's correct to like her anyway because Geralt loves her. And he loves her for... reasons.

They do meet before the wish, but only just. Major "The Last Wish" spoilers in this paragraph, so feel free to skip. Basically, Geralt and Dandelion run into trouble with a djinn, he goes to Yen for help since she's a sorceress (first time meeting her), he instantly falls for her because she's gorgeous and such (there's an elf there who is also madly in love with Yen. Men just... fall for her, instinctually), she heals Dandelion, Geralt agrees to pay her, but Yen has already decided on the payment she wants. She takes control of Geralt's mind and forces him to attack the town to seek revenge on those who have insulted her, resulting in him waking up in prison awaiting execution for "his" crimes. Meanwhile, Yen has gone after the djinn for herself because power/trying to regain her ability to have a kid. Geralt escapes, finds her failing to master the djinn (an attempt which btw has endangered the whole town) and despite what she's done to him, Geralt tries to get Yen to escape with him. She refuses, set on capturing the djinn even though it's obvious she can't. So as a last resort he uses the final wish to bind their fates together, saving Yen from the djinn in the process. Aaaaaand then they have sex.

So yeah, their rocky relationship is one of the main reasons why I can't enjoy Yen. For some their tumultuous history is evidence of realism, for me it's evidence that they're not actually very compatible and they're only together because a) that's the fantasy trope: protagonist men get together with the hot sorceress and b) because the magic is literally ensuring that they can't escape one another. I mean, canonically their fates are tied together by magic and canonically they spend about 20 years swinging between passionate love and fearsome fights... but there's supposedly no connection between these two things? No chance at all that they keep coming together because magic is drawing them rather than because they actually want/should be together? I wrote a meta a while back about the short story where they meet, which includes a present day scene where Geralt is criticized by another character — Nenneke — for running out on Yen. Thing is, he tries to explain that he left because she was "too possessive" and this is... flat out ignored. By both Nenneke and the fandom. There's a strong trend of ignoring Geralt's words in favor of a pro-Yen interpretation of events. He says he left because she was too possessive and she treated him like ____ — he's not allowed to finish the sentence and say what she treated him like because Nenneke interrupts him, saying she doesn't care about his version of events. Major yikes imo! She turns a claim of being possessive into Geralt not being man enough to stick around. The fandom likewise turns this into a case of Geralt getting cold feet and running out because he's a bastard who hates commitment. Likewise, Nenneke and the fandom claim Geralt is trying to get Yen money as a way of appeasing his guilt for leaving, he claims he's doing it simply because he still cares for her — even if he doesn't want to be with her — and knows she needs it. Geralt's words are frequently dismissed, in the same way others characters' opinions of Yen are dismissed. Any mark against her is treated as either a lie, or a convoluted claim that they don't really know her... never mind that an understanding of why she may act this way doesn't excuse the behavior itself. (Plus, the whole "Yen had a horrible upbringing, so of course she struggles being kind" perspective always fell flat to me when so many, including witchers, had horrendous upbringings too. The whole point is this world is a mess and most everyone suffers). It's supposedly true love, yet if someone came up to me and went, "I magically tied my fate to this woman to keep her from getting herself killed and we've spent the last couple decades having what many would term a rocky relationship, to put it kindly. I left once because she was too controlling. She once cheated on me. I likewise hooked up with others during our frequent breakups. A mutual friend used magic to get me to have sex with her — also while my lover and I were broken up — and though I view it as a dumb decision I'm happy to forgive her for, my lover is ready to commit murder because again: possessive. A lot of the time we're only a family because of our daughter. I once thought she'd horrifically betrayed us both. She didn't, but it says something that I was so ready to believe it, huh? Hmm? Permanently separated? Of course not! I love her. We're destined to be together after all :)" I'd be like, "Uh... you sure about that, dude?"

Not that Geralt doesn't make his fair share of mistakes in the relationship — he absolutely does — but I don't think it helps his case that he's immature in other ways and, frankly, that he's a very strong, badass witcher. It's easy to turn the hints we get about their relationship into a simplistic "emotionally naive man can't give the poor woman the commitment she wants" situation. Given Geralt's status as the badass fighter of the tale, it's likewise easy to dismiss his admissions of her being "possessive" and his general discomfort. He's the man. He's the witcher. If he's making any claims about how Yen isn't treating him well, they must be excuses, or exaggerations, because real men, especially physically powerful men, would do something about that — a something that's not sneaking out in the middle of the night. A lot of people read Geralt leaving as the ultimate proof that he's an immature bastard who doesn't deserve her. I read him leaving and think, "What were you trying to get away from? What was going on that made you think you could only leave by sneaking out without a word?" To me, that doesn't read as someone who felt safe, comfortable, and respected enough to do anything but slip away and try to wash his hands of things. And I'm not just pulling this "Geralt is at least somewhat afraid of Yen and isn't comfortable establishing boundaries with her" reading out of my ass. When Yen wants Geralt to kill the golden dragon for her and he refuses, saying he doesn't care anymore, his thoughts are:

He expected the worst: a cascade of flames, flashes of lightning, blows raining down on his face, insults and curses. There was nothing. He saw, with astonishment, only the subtle trembling of her lips. Yennefer turned around slowly. Geralt regretted his words.

And everyone is like, "See! Yen has improved so much. Geralt nearly made her cry, but she's supposed to be the bad guy here?" Meanwhile, I'm going, "Uh... anyone want to unpack why he expects fire, lightning, insults, curses, and blows to his face for telling her no? Why he's astonished that she wouldn't use her magic against him? Anyone think that Yen refraining from attacking Geralt when he refuses to murder on her command is a pretty low bar? No? Just me?"

Geralt and Yen's relationship makes me uncomfortable and a great deal of that discomfort derives from how much of the Witcher fandom shrugs off the fictional warning signs. I mean, I post primarily about RWBY. We watched a man in that show try to sneak away with his kids when his villainous wife planned to use them for a eugenics plan... and the fandom still blames him for that, refusing to admit that he was in an abusive relationship. Because that doesn't happen to men, right? I'm not saying it's the same for Geralt and Yen, simply because they are written to be soulmates. An abusive relationship was, quite obviously, never the authorial intent. However, I am saying that the a "This isn't a healthy relationship" reading is there, it exists as an interpretation, and both the story and fandom's tendency to dismiss it is something that hasn't helped me enjoy Yen's status as an otherwise well written, complex character. Their equality supposedly stems in part because they're both so flawed, yet each time I see a list of Geralt's supposedly equal faults they're... lacking imo. "Geralt bound himself to Yen without her consent." Yeah, to save her from dying from the djinn she was trying to enslave, after she refused to leave, while her actions threatened a whole town. "Geralt ran off without a word." Mmm hmm, anyone care about why? And my personal favorite is a scene you may not have gotten to yet (or may not get depending on your choices), but suffice to say, Yen is supposedly justified in physically attacking Geralt if he dares to challenge her in any way. That's the main takeaway across the fandom: If Yen is pissed off, you must have done something to deserve it which, in the relationship deliberately written to be "stormy," is something that sets all the alarm bells in my head off. Honestly, it kinda makes my skin crawl to go, "Geralt didn't deserve that" and get responses back of, "Yeah he did because he [insert basic human action here]." The Witcher world is hard and cruel, absolutely, but that doesn't mean I personally enjoy seeing an equally messed up relationship presented as something that's enviable in its flaws. "That's actually true love because the magically bound man who often expresses discomfort with his lover, written by a male author with a very iffy perspective on women, says it's true love." Crazy theory here, but... maybe it's not?

Idk, lots of rambling on my end tonight! For me, Geralt/Yen reads as something rather tragic which, in a canon that unironically upholds the relationship, and in a Yen-adoring fandom, doesn't make enjoying her character any easier. I keep coming back to Witcher 3, the comics, the show, even the books going, "Maybe I'll like her this time?" but nope, still trying lol.

[isa-ghost]

Bro Average & Divorce Analysis

Y’all are right, don’t demonize Stacy. It’s unfair and stupid and some of the extents people go to to demonize her are straight fuckin gross. Don’t do it. But don’t criminalize Chase either. Don’t make out either of the two to be evil. Here’s why--

In Bro Average, the divorce was shown super spontaneously (a big reason why people demonize Stacy so much).

The only two reasons for the divorce that have solid evidence to support them are that the Brodys either had serious financial problems and Chase’s channel wasn’t doing enough, or that Stacy thought Chase’s dream job was childish and dumped him because of it (his trickshot names and reactions to scoring shots are arguably “immature” for a man Chase’s age, even if there’s nothing wrong with being a child at heart. Stacy might even think being a YouTuber/vlogger in general is immature, we don’t know).

More solidly supported is the financial trouble reason--

“No, baby, no. No, I know, yeah, I’m trying, okay? I’m working, I’m trying to get all the shots. Just look, just don’t take the kids.”

“Just don’t take the kids.” really makes it sound like she’s threatening him with taking them away from him if he doesn’t start making money. This right here is probably one of the biggest reasons why people demonize her so much.

“This one’s called I’m Staying At My Sister’s This Weekend.”

Stacy is separating from him. Chase is no saint here, it could be because he’s too stubborn to get a more financially helpful job. Or, he’s simply trying to hold out hope that his dream job will take off finally. (Speaking as someone who had a father who did that, and it ended up not taking off and royally fucking things up financially for the family). What we know of Chase so far from all of his video appearances shows he’s got that Soft Heart And Big Dreams personality, it’s very likely that’s what he tried to do. It’s a common movie/show trope that the father figure just can’t bring himself to let go of work-related dreams until it’s too late. But the stubbornness isn’t out-ruled here. We don’t know which was the case. Either way, Stacy separated from him.

“Well I don’t care what your sister says. Just please, at least let me see [the kids] on the weekends still.”

Okay 1) Stacy’s sister has no say in Chase’s visitation of HIS kids. She’s not the legal guardian, even if she’s a relative, regardless of why she says he can’t see them. 2) There is no reason Chase can’t see them on weekends or at all. Whether the separation (not yet divorce) was because of Chase’s “immaturity” or because of financial failure, there is no reason Chase can’t have any visitation with his kids whatsoever other than “you’re too immature, so you’re not mature enough to be a father” which is a little bit unreasonable, not to mention a huge assumption on Stacy’s part and definitely more opinion than fact. (Another big reason people demonize Stacy).

“This one’s called Fuck You Chase, I’m Leaving You And I’m Taking The Kids With Me.”

He could have said it that way out of frustration, she could have actually said that word for word. We don’t know. But Stacy moving to her sister’s to get away from Chase and refusing to let him see the kids was a very obvious sign she’s getting ready to divorce him. This is where people shouldn’t demonize Stacy. If she took the kids with her, she obviously cares enough about them and takes being a mother seriously enough that she wants them. Not to mention, if Chase is at fault for the financial troubles because his dream job of being a vlogger won’t take off and make enough money, then why would she leave the kids with him?

“H-H- Hey sweetie! Yeah, daddy loves y-” [Chase is hung up on.]

Here I personally think it was Stacy that hung up the phone (whether she pressed the button or if she made the kid do it, because it’s not far fetched to say that if his kids love him, they wouldn’t hang up so suddenly), BUT if Chase has little kids, like we’re pretty sure he does based on the sounds we hear in Dark Silence, then maybe the kid just hung up too soon on accident or something. If Stacy DID hang up on him or make the kid do it, then this is yet another reason people demonize her. The assumption alone that she might’ve been the one to do it is another reason people demonize her. It’s more evidence that she’s completely cutting Chase off from his kids.

“This one’s called Fuck You Chase, I Want A Divorce”

Again, we don’t know if that was said by Stacy word for word or said out of frustration. If it was, Chase is reasonably upset and kind of has every right to say it that way. It’s our fault if we take that as a reason to demonize Stacy.

[Chase breaks down crying]

THIS is the moment I think his depression truly started, or kicked into the severity we see later on in the storyline if he had depression this entire time and just never showed it on-screen in what we see. He’s lost his family, and Stacy is being difficult about visitation.

It was never mentioned that he drank, he never seemed drunk, and he was never shown drinking alcohol here, before the divorce or even right after. There is NO evidence that he drank heavily before Bro Average and the divorce. If anything, him using the teabags might imply he drank a lot of tea. He started drinking whiskey AFTER the divorce, out of grief because he lost his family to is drinking to to try and numb the pain. He didn’t even really show he has depression during BA/before the divorce. He’s actually extremely bubbly and happy in BA in the scenes he isn’t talking to Stacy/being upset about the divorce, which I know doesn’t mean he’s not depressed, but he certainly doesn’t show it here as strongly as he does in any video we see him in after BA.

**Also gonna just mention here about the idea that Anti might’ve had a hand in the divorce. We have 0 evidence for that so it’s possible but equally as unlikely. I personally feel like Sean would’ve included SOME kind of way to show he did. At this point in time (April 2017) he might not have even planned on having an entire ego storyline OR have egos interacting with each other. So again, its possible but also unlikely.**

“This one’s called The Drive-By.”

And THIS is where all the huge confusion on our end comes in. Did he really pull a drive-by? All the rest of his trickshots seem like they take place in that office building. And we see all of his struggling with Stacy going on there too, like they’re arguing while he’s at work trying to make money for them. 99% of BA takes place in that building, its just this scene we don’t know about.

There’s actual gunshot noises and screams like he actually committed a drive-by. It’s also not uncommon for people both in media and real life to do something stupid, rash or even violent when they’re under too much emotional/mental stress. It’s actually proven that men especially act out in violence because of fear of being perceived as weak if they show vulnerable emotions like sadness (*vibrates in psychology major, oops*), so they vent through physical, often violent means instead. (I doubt Sean knows that, and I doubt even more that he planned such an intricate real life detail in something that wasn’t even supposed to be an ego power hour in the first place, but I digress).

This face especially right here makes me think he might have actually done it. He looks dead inside, almost like he’s glaring. If Anti had a hand in the divorce, did he make Chase do this too, if he really did do it?

“This one’s called Stacy I Love You, Please Don’t Go.”

It’s not uncommon for a mass shooter to commit suicide after they commit their shooting. Not only that, but obviously of course, suicide is extremely common in depressed people, and the divorce (with or without the depression as an added factor) is a big motivator for someone to do something like this, especially since Chase likely doesn’t have much else to live for besides his kids, which are being kept from him completely by Stacy. Basically what I’m saying here is, there’s A LOT of good reasons why Chase would try to kill himself. Also want to mention really quick that Chase did not show violent behavior that we saw before this, so him being violent towards Stacy or the kids remains ruled out of the reasons with evidence why Stacy would divorce him.

There’s a real gunshot noise when he shoots himself. It has also been CONFIRMED by Henrik in KJSE that this suicide attempt was legit, because he said he saved Chase.

We should also keep this scene after the outro in mind. Is it just as canon as the rest of BA? Is it just Sean being a goof and this is a blooper? Did Chase not successfully kill himself? That’s a big possibility. We don’t know. But we DO know he definitely shot himself for real and Henrik saved him. I’m kinda leaning towards this being a blooper of Sean being a dork, personally.

ALSO-

*Galaxy-brains for a moment here* What if Chase’s dreams of being a YouTuber/vlogger DID end the divorce and now as some twisted ass irony, he’s actually achieved his dream because he has to pose as Jack on the channel? Now THAT I could see Sean doing, especially since he said he’s been plotting for months and definitely had a vague plan during Mayhem, which is when Chase posing as Jack while Jack is comatose was revealed.

Anyways, TLDR; Don’t demonize Stacy, it’s gross and we have no justified reason to, only assumptions. But don’t demonize Chase either, because from all we’ve seen of him so far from BA and afterwards, he was only trying to make a dream career happen and his refusal to let that dream die killed his marriage. Both he and Stacy have their flaws here, so don’t demonize one or the other.

[azeher]

It’s the last Sunday of the decade and I will spend it sharing some predictions for Spiderman: Homeboy

We’re gonna learn MJ was abandoned by one of her parents: When I first watched the trailer for FFH where MJ assumes Peter was gonna tell her he’s Spiderman, my first thought was, “Aw, he probably was gonna confess but she has emotional issues that made her think that was unlikely and she went with the Spiderman revelation scenario instead”. And when I watched the movie that’s exactly what happened. But she was also hurting when she lied to Peter about only watching him closely due to her suspicions, which we see in her pained expression, so I thought that maybe she didn’t want to get attached to him. And by the end, she admits she lied because she actually has trouble getting attached to people in general. But why would a teen feel that way unless they feared loving someone and then losing that someone? However, this has nothing to do with Peter having a dangerous double life that might get him killed since she wasn’t certain he was Spiderman when she lied to him. The only explanation is that she lost someone she loved. So either someone died or she was abandoned. But abandonment is the most likely reason why a kid would get scared of getting attached to people, bc they fear they will be abandoned again.

This revelation will be triggered by the current Peter situation: Even if MJ wasn’t abandoned, it’s canon she has a hard time getting close to people, right? So either way, imagine how hard it’s gonna be for her being in constant fear of losing Peter forever. However, if I’m right about my theory, this will make it 1000 times worse for her, especially bc there’s nothing she can do about it. Peter might die or go to prison, just right after she allowed herself to be open about her feelings and get attached to him. If I’m correct, this will be what pushes her to talk about her family background.

Peter will mention Uncle Ben, once: Okay, hear me out. I’m not one to think he has to talk about Uncle Ben necessarily but after FFH I finally understand why he never mentions him and why it DOES make sense for him not to do it, outside of, ‘We know about the Uncle Ben backstory’. A lot of people complained that FFH was too upbeat after the Endgame events and that Peter didn’t mourn Tony as much as he had to. After all, he was all about going on a school trip and having fun and confessing to MJ. What ppl seemed to ignore is that THIS is Peter mourning Tony. He was purposely avoiding the subject and trying to distance himself from anything that could make him think of him. These are not even assumptions. That’s why he left the suit, that’s why he panicked and ran away after the homeless auction event. But of course, the world wasn’t gonna let him not think about it, with Ironman imagery literally everywhere.

But Peter doesn’t ever mention Tony until the Jet scene, which yeah is my favorite scene. However, Peter doesn’t just open up bc this is the emotional climax of the movie, but bc everything that happened before pushed him to his limits to the point he had talk about it. And he didn’t just talk, he exploded, meaning he was bottling up all of his feelings and emotions.

And if we analize what pushes him to that point, it’s all just so harsh. We know Peter blames himself for Tony’s death, which Mysterio uses against him. When Peter sees a dead Tony crawl out of his grave he doesn’t say anything but his body tells us what we need to know. He’s terrified and in shock and the fact that he doesn’t say anything out loud speaks louder because we know everything Mysterio showed him, he actually thinks and fears. But there’s also the pressure the world is putting on him to step up and become the next Number 1 hero just cuz Ironman mentored him. No one is giving him space to disconnect from the events of Endgame for even one moment. Not the current damaged and depressed reality of the world that is starting to heal, not the kids at school who try to cope with humor but still keep doing homages to the Avengers and talking about the Blip, not the police or the press who keep asking Peter questions, not Nick Fury who keeps forcing him to save the world again and making him feel guilty for being scared and depressed.

Except, I’m wrong. Because there’s ONE person who does understand and has always understood. And that is May. May gives him space, she lets him be Spiderman, she lets him grief however he wants to do it. She doesn’t question that note next to the light switch that begs for the lights to stay always on. She doesn’t ask questions or try to force him to talk about how he really feels, even tho she knows he’s dealing with PTSD. When she tells him to take the suit, she does it bc she wants him to stay save (you think she isn’t terrified of him dying again?), but doesn’t mention Tony. She makes sure to support him, and after the events of FFH, she welcomes him with a smile and a hug and feelings of pride.

Now, there aren’t pictures of Ben Parker in their home, and there hasn’t ever been in any movie. People thought this was an odd inconsistency. But I’m pretty sure May put them all away so Peter didn’t have to see them. Because she can tell his death is something Peter has a hard time dealing with.

And it is. Even more than Tony’s. He feels responsible for Tony’s death. But he knows he’s responsible for Ben’s death. And he knows sooner or later he will have to tell May this. Yet we know Peter can’t help to think of him and feel a deep respect, bc he uses his suitcase. It’s old and uncomfortable to travel with but he still picked it. If anyone wants to argue that it’s bc he couldn’t afford a new suitcase, that still doesn’t change that he was aware that Ben owned that suitcase. Besides, May didn’t make it a big deal when it blew up, although there was a halt at the question (“Where’s your suitcase?”), so I think he definitely chose to take it as opposed to not having any other option.

Peter doesn’t mention Ben bc he can’t and that’s how he deals with death in general. But I think he will talk about Ben in the next movie, which is the last one (apparently). He has to come clean with May about what happened to Ben. But like with Tony, I think smt really bad is what’s gonna push him to that moment.

Flash is gonna have his well-deserved character arc and development: I don’t know what is going on with his parents/mother. But they made a big deal out of it and it’s obvious Flash is a neglected child. I saw a theory about how Flash was probably an Osborn, which I thought was cool but that theory was kinda debunked. However, I do think they’re setting up the Thompson parents to be quite relevant. If they just wanted to point out Flash is not receiving a lot of love and attention from his family they could have done it without putting so much focus on the absent parents. Flash is probably going to have to face them one way or another and since now he knows Peter is his beloved Spidey, it makes me believe at one point he’s gonna have to choose sides, and he’ll choose Peter’s.

Marvel will use Spiderman: Homeboy to introduce Matt Murdock: Everyone has this theory, not only me. Like, that was my first thought but it was also everyone’s first thought. I still think it’s gonna be true. And I want it to be true. I need to see this guy being Peter’s lawyer.

Ned and Peter will have a fallout: ONLY if this isn’t the last Spiderman movie, which might not be if you count the possibility of Sony making their own Spidey movies or if you’re hopeful smt will convince Sony and Disney to keep cooperating. Something small but important, something flat and green depicting dead historical figures. Yes, I’m talking about money. That might do the trick.

Anyway, this theory doesn’t come from the movies per se but from the insistence by Ned’s actor Jacob that he wants Ned to go Dark Side and become Hobgoblin. I’m all about fulfilling this guy’s dream so if he wants that to happen, I want that to happen. Will it destroy my heart, though? Yes, it will. BUT if that happens, I’m expecting a redemption arc. And if they go that route it will possibly lead to two scenarios depending on if Sony and Disney stay married or get another divorce.

A. Sony introduces Harry Osborn. Or B. Marvel introduces Johnny Storm.

[mittensmorgul]

I don't think Sam ever actually "gave up hope" in the future timeline. He kept dragging Dean along with him, trying to keep fighting. But losing Eileen is what made Sam have a "death wish," according to Dean (or Chuck, maybe). I'm really not a die-hard Sam/Eileen person necessarily, I could take it or leave it. But your comments about them always seem like you're saying that they don't even really care about each other, and that's just... not true.

Okay this is gonna be a convoluted sentence, but I need everyone to follow along with this one: If anything I’m saying about Sam and Eileen’s relationship is being interpreted in such a way that the reader believes that I am implying that Sam and Eileen do not care about each other, that’s the reader’s inference, and not what I am actually saying.

It is obvious in s15, just as it was obvious in 11.11, 12.17, and 12.21 that Sam does care about Eileen. And that Eileen obviously likes Sam (and Dean, for that matter… her interactions with Dean are just about as cute, for anyone who hasn’t picked up on that… like in 12.17, more than half of her conversation ARE WITH DEAN, and Dean clearly cares about her, too. Even if it’s always been presented in a slightly different way, or possibly in a less… intense? way than her interactions with Sam.

That said… in the future timeline– that is, in CHUCK’S STORY HE WAS SHOWING TO SAM– Chuck’s STORY (which, remember, he planted Eileen in Sam’s life in 15.06 specifically to become Sam’s love interest, for the purposes of Chuck’s story) said that Sam’s had a death wish ever since Eileen died. Because that would line up with CHUCK’S STORY as it had been playing out all season that had made her into Sam’s love interest. That story also suggested that Dean… LOST THE WILL TO FIGHT after he had to lock Cas up in a Ma’lak box. Not that Dean had a death wish.

(I mean, we know this is accurate but this is how Dean personally reacts when he loses Cas. We know how he reacts when he loses anyone else– think about what he did when Charlie died. He went on a murder rampage against the Stynes for killing her. When Mary died he broke some furniture and went full bore toward both resurrecting her and stopping Jack. But without Cas, Dean loses the will to fight. Sam has… always been different. He referenced Jess in 15.04 to remind us of how he was after she died in the pilot episode. Just like John, he picked up the revenge mission and ran with it. But for Dean, Cas is different. Without Cas… Dean gives up.)

But if we are to believe this is a True Seeing of future events that WILL actually happen in reality, we have to disregard the fact that Chuck is a supremely unreliable narrator. And the guy is not a great liar. And it’s been lampshaded repeatedly this season that he’s not a particularly good storyteller either.

To Becky’s horror, all Chuck seems to care about are the monsters, and he gets angry and tries to argue when Becky tells him that NOBODY cares about the monsters. That we all care about the characters. And Chuck’s pretty much been trying to prove how great the monsters are ever since. Have you noticed that pretty much every episode this season so far has involved monsters? Ever since they got the hell rift sealed up, anyway. Ghosts and demons apparently aren’t good enough for Chuck, and from 15.04 on we’ve had vampires, werewolves, witches and djinn, a marid, werewolf, and now (FINALLY! Chuck is probably thinking) Leviathans, leviathan blossoms, a mention of Eve, and whatever that rando corpse was in Purgatory, aka Monster Heaven.

And yet, Chuck’s line is that without him in the universe, it would be Nothing But Monster Apocalypse, as if he was the one holding all that at bay. And just… dude, do you think we’re all “crazy and stupid” like you attempted to convince Dean that Sam was for telling him the truth about how you had manipulated their lives in 14.20? He pulled a similar string of lies with Amara (who saw through his lies), he pulled a similar string of lies with Becky (who still tried to be kind to him anyway, even after he treated her like a jerk). So I’m wondering how anyone trusts anything he says now, you know?

Chuck made the monsters. He LIKES the monsters. And it’s like he’s writing his ending out of spite over Becky’s critique of his “fic” in 15.04. Becky doesn’t like monsters? Doesn’t think the stakes were high enough? Well, he’ll show her! What does she know? She’s not a real writer anyway, right? Just a fanfic writer who wants them all to sit around an talk about their feelings. Ew, right?

>.>

So, yeah, this is how I approach anything that we’re told is part of “Chuck’s process,” or Chuck’s story. With the assumption that he’s lying. Because writers lie.

(This was also a staple of his character in s11. This is exactly how he wrote back then. Metatron called him out on it several times, but even then we know he was still trying to lie his way out of direct responsibility for anything. He blamed Dean for not having killed Amara (!!!????) as if that was something Dean was supposed to be able to do. He blamed Amara for “blocking him” when we’d seen her literally tearing through the world looking for him. Then after all that, he said they CAN’T kill Amara because it would create an imbalance in the universe and the universe would collapse. Pick a story and stick with it, Chuck. We also know when he writes himself into a corner, he invents something on the spot to fix it, such as Chekhov’s Equalizer Gun. Or going WAY back to 5.10 and the apocalypse that failed… The Colt, which was supposed to kill anything, failed to work on Lucifer, because it didn’t fit Chuck’s desired plot, all of a sudden there were five exceptions to the Colt’s powers. Shocker, that… >.>)

Rule of thumb: If Chuck is saying something, there’s a super good chance you should at least inspect it with a measure of doubt, run it through the BS filter for good measure, and then give it 24 hours or at least one (1) more installment of canon before you begin to trust it…

But back to your original question. If Sam and Eileen hadn’t at least LIKED each other, Sam would never have even CONSIDERED any sort of a relationship with Eileen, and Chuck’s plot would’ve been foiled a heck of a lot earlier. Chuck’s a bad writer, but he’s not THAT bad of a writer…

eta, because after posting I realized I never addressed the first part of your question: Sam gave up hope when he refused to cast the spell to lock Chuck up. That’s what Chuck is referring to. And it wasn’t anything to do with Eileen that made him “lose hope.” Which is Chuck’s phrase for what happened... maybe “lost the will to cast that spell in particular because of the risk of a specific set of consequences,” is more accurate. Because Sam remained defiant (or disbelieving of Chuck’s story) up until Chuck told him that their fate as cheesy vampires wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that Sam and Dean would give up, and the world would be overrun and succumb to the monsters. That not just the Winchesters, but all of humanity, would lose. THAT is what Sam could not put at risk.

Okay, I just needed to get that in there :’D

[sarah-writes-stories]

Chapter 4: Down By The River

A Post-Canon Inuyasha Romance/Adventure Epic

Find it on: Fanfiction.net / AO3 / Wattpad

Words: 2,105

Full Chapter List & Description is here.

Prologue  •  Chapter 1  •  Chapter 2  •  Chapter 3  •  Chapter 4  •  Chapter 5  •  Chapter 6  •  Chapter 7  •  Chapter 8  •  Chapter 9  •  Chapter 10  •  Chapter 11  •  Chapter 12  •  Chapter 13

⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯

Inuyasha and Kagome made their way towards the river. It was still early spring, and the air down by the water was cooler than it had been in the meadow. A few of the younger teenage boys from the village appeared to be fishing near the bridge, while a little further along, three women knelt on the bank with their laundry, laughing and chatting as they worked.

Inuyasha instinctively turned Kagome away to walk in the opposite direction – away from the other villagers – before they could notice her presence.

The two of them walked along in silence for several minutes, neither of them quite sure how to restart their interrupted conversation. Finally, Inuyasha blurted out the first thing that came to mind, "You're taller now."

He'd noticed right away when he'd pulled her from the well. There were… other differences as well. She wasn't as lanky as she'd been in his memories. Her hips swelled softly beneath her strange modern skirt, and her breasts… He blushed a deep red, before ripping his thoughts away from the path they'd started travelling down.

Kagome, thankfully, didn't seem to notice his sudden nervousness at the turn of his thoughts. "Yeah, I guess I am. Although, I haven't really grown in the last year or so… Still, I doubt I'd fit into my old school uniform anymore!"

She laughed then, but all Inuyasha could suddenly picture was her as she was now except in her too-tight old clothes from back then. He blushed even deeper and was immediately thankful for the voluminous nature of his robes.

Kagome did notice his blush this time and decided to have mercy on him, changing the topic. "Is it possible that you're taller too? I mean, I thought youkai didn't age the same way humans did, but you look taller and… I don't know… your face is a bit different from how I remembered it in my mind."

She wasn't going to mention that his shoulders seemed broader and his jaw had taken on a squarer, more masculine appearance. It was her turn to blush at the direction of her thoughts.

"Yeah, I think those 50 years pinned to the Goshinboku caught up with me sometime over the past 3 years, though I doubt I'll look any older than this anytime soon." He smirked a bit as he spoke, glad that his changes hadn't gone unnoticed by her either.

"I never did ask you how that worked. I mean, I wasn't expecting Shippō to have grown so much! How old are you anyway? I don't think I ever asked you that either."

"Me? Well, including those 50 years, I'd be…" He trailed off as he made the calculations in his head. "…213."

"213?! Whoa. So if you're so old but look so young, how is it that Shippō's grown so much in just 3 years?"

"Youkai and Hanyou age at pretty much the same rate as humans for the first, uh, maybe 8 years or so. I think it's some kind of survival thing. But then, the older we get, the slower it gets until we reach maturity, and then it really slows down. Or at least that's what Myōga told me, anyway."

"I see…" A shadow crossed Kagome's eyes then. Over the course of her entire lifetime, Inuyasha would never age much beyond how he appeared now… and yet she would grow older and—

She couldn't bring herself to finish the thought. Instead, she looked away, towards Inuyasha's forest in the distance.

Turned away as she was, Inuyasha didn't see the look of sadness that passed across her face. Instead, he spoke up about another change in her that had slowly been tugging on the edges of his awareness, ever since he'd pulled her from the well.

"I think… I think your powers have grown, too."

"Huh?" Pulled out of her burgeoning self-pity, Kagome wasn't sure if she'd heard him correctly.

"The aura of your reiki, I mean. It's stronger now than it was before. I think so anyway."

"Really? That's… I mean, I never even felt my spiritual powers very much when I was back in my ti— In my mother's time." She corrected herself. "But being back here… I don't know. Maybe you're right? I mean, after my full powers were unsealed from whatever Magatsuhi had done to lock them away, I never really had a chance to explore them much before…" She trailed off. "And then, over there, I guess I was too busy training in other things to think about it much."

"Training? You mean like your math tests and stuff?"

Kagome smiled at the fact that he remembered something as silly as that. She'd always hated math.

"Well, yes, but no. I meant other training, too. I joined the archery club at school to keep up my skills and took a bunch of self-defence classes, as well. I even took a couple of introductory katana classes."

She didn't mention anything about all the research that she and her friends had done. Their fears and assumptions from that night two-and-a-half years ago were just that, fears and assumptions. She wasn't about to lay them all at his feet after being back for less than two hours.

Inuyasha just stared at her as she'd spoke. "You did WHAT?"

"Well, yeah. Ayumi, Eri and Yuka encouraged me to do it. You remember my friends, don't you? Well, they thought… I mean, I figured that if— When I made it back here I shouldn't just show up unskilled and vulnerable again, right. I mean, I know you're here to protect me but…" She trailed off feeling her face flush the colour of his fire-rat. She was hesitant to say anything else in the face of his incredulity.

"What is it, Inuyasha? Why are you staring at me like that?!"

Inuyasha jerked her into his arms, crushing her to his body. "Inuyasha, what…?" Her question trailed off with the surprise of his sudden embrace.

Inuyasha couldn't completely keep his tumultuous emotions out of his voice when he said, "You were training to come back? All that time, you never stopped planning to come back?"

"Of course I never stopped!" She said into the folds of his robes, "I never stopped planning or trying! I tried once a week, every week, Inuyasha."

Kagome pulled back slightly so she could look up into his golden eyes. "Did you think I'd stopped trying? That I'd just moved on?" It was her turn to be incredulous.

"No. I mean, I hoped you hadn't. But when you never returned and I couldn't get through either, I… started… losing hope." His last words were barely more than a whisper, as he looked down and away from her eyes, ashamed.

She gave him a slight squeeze so that he would return his eyes to hers. "The only reason I never lost hope was because my friends wouldn't let me."

"What do you mean?"

"Apparently, they'd been there at the well house when it disappeared. I didn't know for the first six months after I came back, and those were…" She closed her eyes against the pain of the memory. "Those were terrible months. Eventually, though, they made me explain what had happened and convinced me not to give up hope, to train and to keep trying the well. If I hadn't had their support, I would have lost hope, too. Three years is a long time. I don't blame you if you stopped trying to get through." She kept her eyes fixed on his, urging him not to feel guilty if he had.

"I- I- never stopped trying. I– Shit, Shippō's probably going to blurt it out at some point anyway, so I may as well tell you myself." He took a deep breath before continuing. "I've been trying the well every three days or so ever since it closed."

Kagome's eyes widened in surprise at his confession. "Every— Every three days!"

Inuyasha blushed at the obvious surprise in her voice. "Well, yeah. I mean, it's not like I was busy or nothin'. I didn't have any math tests to worry about." He said with a lopsided grin, trying to ease her shocked expression. He rubbed at the back of his neck in embarrassment.

Without another word, Kagome grabbed Inuyasha by his forelocks and pulled him into another kiss. Only this time there was an urgency in her touch that hadn't been there before.

This time, when their lips met, Inuyasha didn't hesitate. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her in close. Kagome released his forelocks and instead slid one hand into the hair at the back of his head, the other hand cupping the nape of his neck. He groaned slightly when Kagome's small hand fisted in his hair. At his groan she took the opportunity to slip her tongue tentatively inside his mouth, reaching out with her's to taste him.

'Oh, Kami! Did she just—? Fuuuuuuck!' On another groan, Inuyasha opened his mouth fully to her, deepening their kiss. And when her tongue retreated, he followed it back to the velvety warmth of her mouth. 'She tastes like she smells,' he thought. 'Sweet like berries.'

Kagome finally broke the kiss for the simple reason that she needed to breathe. She blushed furiously at her sudden boldness and was immediately grateful that they'd walked so far away from the village that no one else had been around to witness their passionate moment.

'You idiot,' she thought. 'You haven't even asked him about his feelings yet, or told him about yours and yet here you are shoving your tongue down his throat!' She berated herself silently for her brazenness and opened her mouth to apologize.

Inuyasha saw the contrition take over her features and before she could form the words, he interrupted her. "Remember what I said: You don't ever have to apologize for that, Kagome. Not ever. Please." He urged her with his words and his eyes to believe him, as a wide, genuine smile spread over his face. She couldn't help but smile up at him in return.

Linking their hands together again, they walked on, talking about this and that. 'I could listen to his voice for hours,' she thought dreamily. 'Oh Kami, please let this be real. Please let it not be another dream.' She surreptitiously, pinched herself on the leg then, confirming that yes, being here with the man she loved was, indeed, real.

Sighing happily, Kagome wrapping her free hand around Inuyasha's bicep and leaned her head on it as they continued to walk, hand in hand. Inuyasha caught her up on how the village had rallied together after Naraku's final attack. How he, Miroku, Sango, and Shippō had helped with the rebuilding efforts, and how in return they'd been invited to stay and settle in the village. He even regaled her with some of his and Miroku's more impressive youkai-exterminating exploits.

Before long, Kagome noticed that the sun was beginning to sink towards the tree-line. "Hey, do you think maybe we should head back? We've walked pretty far and Sango said that dinner would be ready before sunset."

Inuyasha seemed reluctant for their time alone together to end. He didn't want to go back yet. He wanted her all to himself. There was still so much more he wanted to say to her – things he hadn't yet found the courage to say – but he knew she was right. "Yeah, Miroku will probably tease us like the lecher he is if we're even a few minutes late."

Kagome laughed at that, and the sound of it – hearing her genuine laugh of joy and amusement – filled his entire body with a warmth that he hadn't felt in three long years.

"Yeah," Kagome said, oblivious to her effect on him. "You're definitely right about that! Let's head back. I can't wait to see Kaede-sama!"

She turned and pulled him back the way they'd come… and Inuyasha didn't even care that he would likely have the goofiest grin plastered across his face the whole way back. ⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯ A/N: I do not own Inuyasha nor any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi.

I LOVE it when readers leave me a comment and let me know what they think! ❤︎

[tenspontaneite]

Peace Is A Journey (Chapter 1/?)

It was a long way to Xadia. A really, really long way. A month's travel if they were lucky. If they weren’t lucky....well, it could take twice that, or even longer.

It would take a miracle to get the egg to the Dragon Queen before war broke out. But what else could they do?

(AU in which the Xadian continent is much larger, the kids and their egg will be travelling together for a long, long time, and canon lays dying in a ditch along the way)

(Long fic, slow burn, 60k already written, cross-posted on ao3)

Chapter 1

In which there is a Lodge Heist.

The day began auspiciously enough, what with the discussion of Primal Sources and Callum successfully managing to get Rayla to agree to a very slight detour to the Banther Lodge. It was far more understanding and compromise than he might have expected from an elf, given all the stories, so he felt quite optimistic as he set out that day.

Of course, then he had to put his foot in it with his unfortunate assumptions about the diet of elves. And now Rayla was walking ahead of he and Ez with a sort of rigidity to her shoulders that implied she was unhappy about it. But, really, how was he supposed to know? Everyone knew that elves were blood-drinkers – or, well. Everyone said that they were. Wrongly, maybe, but – well. How was he supposed to know that?

At any rate, it was an uncomfortable situation all around. Especially given they probably wouldn’t arrive at the lodge until evening at the earliest, which made for a whole lot of uncomfortable silence to fill the time with.

Ezran, of course, wasn’t having any of that. “I think you annoyed her.” He said, in what was probably meant to be a whisper but carried perfectly well in the quiet forest. Callum winced.

“Wow, really? I never would have noticed. Thanks.” He muttered back to his brother, folding his arms.

Entirely unmoved by the sarcasm, Ez hefted the dragon egg in his arms, and persisted: “You were kind of a jerk.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that, please – do tell me more.” He glanced to the side, saw the hint of a smile building on the kid’s face, and immediately knew what was running through his head. “No, Ez, I know what you’re thinking, and no.”

“But-“

“The Crazy Jerkface Dance is not for-“ he bit off the word strangers, “-people we just met.” Ahead of them, he saw Rayla’s head tilt very slightly in their direction, as if listening more closely. He spared a moment to hope, sincerely, that she would not ask.

Ezran’s jaw set, stubbornly. It was a familiar look on him. “Well, maybe not the dance.” He allowed, generously. “But you can’t be a jerk to someone and just leave it.”

Why did Dad have to raise him so well? “…You’re not wrong.” He admitted, begrudgingly.

“Which means I’m right.” Bait, sat atop the egg, croaked as if to reinforce the statement.

Callum sighed, deeply. “Yes, Ez. You’re right. Congrats.” Ezran stared at him expectantly, and so did Bait, and the combination of the stares was enough to finally prod him into moving. He sped up enough to start catching up with the maligned elf in question, and clearly she heard him coming because she turned to stare at him suspiciously as he approached. “Rayla,” he said, reaching her side and slowing down.

“….Yes, Callum?” She answered, flatly, glancing briefly at him before returning her eyes to the path ahead.

“I’m sorry for what I said.” He expressed quickly, the words sort of hurried, just to make sure he’d get them out. “For thinking you were. You know, a blood-drinker. And that you’d try to feed Ez blood. I, well. I wasn’t thinking.” He wrung his hands a little, jittery with the social awkwardness of it all, and tried not to be too anxious while waiting for her response.

She was quiet for a second, and glanced at him again. The narrow-eyed tension ebbed a little. “…It’s not your fault, I guess.” She said, after a moment. “You just don’t know any better.”

His nerves settled a bit at the implied forgiveness, and he cleared his throat. “Still. I’ll try not to just…assume things like that, from now on.”

Her posture eased even more, and she eyed him a fair bit more tolerantly. “Makes me wonder if there’s anything I think I know about humans that I have completely wrong.” She commented, in an obvious enough progression of subject matter that Callum felt mostly off the hook. And, actually, he was kind of curious, now that she mentioned it.

Ez, having eavesdropped shamelessly on the whole thing, hurried forwards to look up brightly at Rayla. “Like what?” He inquired, apparently just as interested as Callum.

“Well,” She mused pensively, looking ahead as if deep in thought. “You all have ten fingers and fourteen toes, right?”

Callum had started nodding at ‘ten fingers’, nearly choked on his own saliva at ‘fourteen toes’, and then did a double-take just in time to see her trying and failing to smother a grin. “…I admit, you had me going for a second there.”

Ezran giggled and kicked his feet up experimentally for his next few steps. “Imagine having fourteen toes! Do you think we’d still fit in our shoes?”

“If we didn’t, we’d just make bigger shoes, I guess.” Callum shrugged, and glanced briefly at Rayla’s own footwear. He wasn’t sure if she just had smallish feet or if they actually were slim enough to suggest fewer toes than the human norm. “…So, do elves have number of toes as fingers?” He inquired, figuring he might as well just ask.

“No, we’ve got ten toes, same as humans.” Rayla answered, utterly straight-faced. He stared at her, nonplussed.

“I can’t actually tell if you’re joking or not.” He complained, and received his answer easily enough as she immediately snickered at him.

After a second, she took pity on him, snickering, and clarified “We have eight.”

“Huh.” Callum was reminded, abruptly, of his historic struggles with drawing human feet. He wasn’t so bad at them anymore, but once, they’d been his single most detested body part to attempt to render. He turned to stare ahead, brow furrowing a little as he imagined the different lines he’d need for a four-toed foot. And, for that matter, a four-fingered hand. He wanted, suddenly, to look at Rayla’s hands to inspect their configuration, but that would probably be pretty weird of him, given he’d not even known her a day.

His fingers itched for his sketchbook. He stubbornly held them still.

He became aware, suddenly, that Rayla was something. “-allum. Callum. What are you thinking about now?”

“Oh? Huh? Nothing much. Why?” he responded automatically, turning to blink at her.

“She asked you a question.” Ezran informed him.

“I asked you a question.” Rayla agreed.

“Sorry, I guess I tend to daydream a lot.” He shrugged. “What is it?”

She eyed him for a moment, but repeated it easily enough. “I asked how far it is to this winter lodge of yours.”

“Oh. Hmm.” Callum looked ahead as if trying to see all the way ahead to their destination. “It’s a good while yet. I think we’ll maybe get there in late afternoon, early evening.”

Rayla considered that. “Might want to keep an eye out for food on the way, then. Stop by a berry bush for lunch.” She hesitated, as if considering saying something else, but in the end kept quiet.

“We’ve not even had breakfast.” Ezran pointed out. “And, wait, Callum – we’re going to the Banther Lodge?”

“Yeah, didn’t you – oh, you were asleep.” He remembered. “Right. I wanted to go there to pick up that weird cube in the game room. I think it might be magic. And the lodge is on the way, anyway, so…”

Ez frowned at him. “…Okay, I guess. But aren’t you worried there might be people there?”

“It’s the winter lodge, Ez. And it’s spring. No one is gonna be there.”

“Yeah, but…Isn’t the Banther Lodge where dad was sending us?”

Callum stopped walking, and after a step, so did the others. “….Oh.” he expressed, eyes widening. “…yeah. Yeah, it is, isn’t it. Um. Whoops?”

Rayla gave him a long looked. “’No winter, no humans’?” She parroted back at him a little sardonically, eyebrows raising.

“Yeah, I really didn’t think that one through.” He admitted, slumping. “If dad sent us there, he’d definitely have sent some guards. Maybe it’s not worth risking it, then.” He thought of the six symbols drawn into his sketchbook, and the primal stone in his bag, and felt his face falling. He’d thought the cube could be something important – something that could help him become a mage, but…it was probably just an old Xadian toy or something. Probably not worth the risk.

It was still a bummer, though.

A second later, he noticed that Rayla was still staring at him, now looking vaguely indecisive. “…What?”

She crossed her arms, muttered something indistinct about heartfelt speeches, and then produced a very put-upon sigh. “It probably wouldn’t hurt if we stopped near the lodge, and I went to check if there’s any humans around.” She announced, finally.

He straightened, eyes wide. “What, really?” He asked, astonished by this unexpected benevolence.

She rolled her eyes tolerantly, and smiled a little. “Yes, really. It should be fine as long as you lot stay back, and don’t go blundering in all-“ She waved her hand expressively in the air as she searched for words. “-Loud. And clumsy.”

“Thanks, Rayla.” He said sincerely, at the same time as Ezran said “Callum’s the clumsy one!”

Their eyes turned his way, and he added “He’s clumsy, not me. I can be pretty quiet when I want to be. But I’m carrying a dragon egg, so I don’t think I can do sneaky too well either.”

Rayla pointed to Callum first, “You’re welcome-“ And then Ezran, “-and, duly noted.”

By this point, though, Callum was occupied with his brother. “Since when am I the clumsy one?” He demanded, crossing his arms.

Tactfully, Rayla put a hand on his shoulder, and he was momentarily distracted by his earlier thoughts about elf hand structure. They really were just…like that, weren’t they? They didn’t look like they were missing a finger at all. They were just sort of…less wide than human hands. “Callum,” She said, kindly, interrupting his musing. “I’ve seen you trip over tree roots twice today already. We’ve not even been walking an hour.”

Well. When you put it that way…. “Alright, maybe I am a little clumsy.” He admitted, a little sulkily. “So what?”

She removed her hand, shot him a vaguely smug-looking smile, and turned to keep walking. “So, you leave the sneaking to me.”

“I can live with that.” Ezran said, trotting off after her.

“Let’s hurry up a little. If we want to get there in good time for a sneak-around today, then no more lollygagging.”

In the end, Callum declined to ask whether lollygagging was a real word or not, and just obediently followed after her.

In the end, some lollygagging turned out to be warranted: firstly, because Ezran’s little legs weren’t used to all this walking and needed a rest; secondly, because Callum’s less-little legs weren’t faring much better; and thirdly, because Rayla spotted a bush of something edible at a lunch-appropriate hour on the way.

Berries, as it happened, didn’t really go a long way towards satisfying hunger. He felt better than before, sure, and they tasted alright, if a bit sour…but, well, it was no bacon and eggs. Or a good sandwich. Or even a jelly tart. He peeled another stick of berries from the bush, making a face at them, and picked them one by one from their twigs, fingers becoming incrementally more and more red-stained.

…Come to think of it, they hadn’t really planned for the feeding-themselves aspect of the journey, had they?

….or any part of the journey at all, to be honest.

Callum frowned, licking berry juice from his fingers, and wiped his hands on his pants. Then he shuffled away from the bush and pulled his sketchbook into his lap, flipping one page past the symbols Rayla had drawn that morning. His charcoal hovered over the page as he called the memory of his lessons to mind, and after a moment, sketched out a rough map of Katolis in quick lines.

He put a mark down for the capital they’d vacated last night, and drew in the major rivers and lakes he could remember, as well as a few inverted V-shapes to indicate where the mountain ranges were. Then, at the north-east edge of Katolis, he drew a long bold line to represent the harsh divide of the Breach. He remembered, with some dismay, how long it had taken last time they travelled to the Great Bay for summer – and that had been with horses! And boats! And travelling on the roads!

It was a long way to Xadia. A really long way. A month's travel if they were lucky, and could catch a ship or two to speed it up, and the weather didn’t strand them anywhere for too long, and they didn’t have to go over any mountains, and there weren’t any other setbacks. And…that was a lot of ‘if’s.  If they weren’t lucky....well, the journey could take a lot more than a month. And that wasn’t even counting how far into Xadia they’d need to travel once they got to the border.

It would take a miracle to get the egg to the Dragon Queen before the war could break out. But what else could they do?

“Something on your mind?” Rayla inquired from beside him, wiping off her own red fingertips on the edge of a tooth.

“Just…the way to Xadia. And how I didn’t think this through.” He tapped his charcoal against his hand, troubled, as he stared at the map. Rayla pulled herself over after a second to look down, tilting her head at the shape on the page. She hummed briefly with recognition, and settled next to him. “…How long did it take you to get to the castle from the border?” He noticed Ezran looking over, listening, as he presented a small bunch of berries to Bait.

Rayla frowned a little herself, perhaps reading the track of his thoughts. “’Bout two months.” She admitted, apologetically.

Ezran made an incredulous noise around a mouthful of fruit, and Callum wasn’t feeling much better. “­Two – why did it take you so long?”

“We went the most isolated and impassable ways we could, to make sure no one spotted us.” She answered, quietly, not meeting his eyes. “It added a lot of time to the journey, even when we went as fast as we could. But it was necessary. Maybe not for us, though.”

“Why not?” he asked, a little desperate for any shred of hope of shortening the journey.

She offered a half-smile, and pulled up her hood, throwing her face into shadow. “If we’re careful, we can hide that I’m an elf. That’s a bit harder to do with six elves, maybe, but if it’s just me…I think we can afford to risk getting closer to human towns.” She flipped her hood down again, hair and ears and horns returning to view.

He made an interested noise. “Well, if you keep your hands hidden, sure, maybe.” He cast a doubtful glance at the map. “It’s still a really long way, though. Maybe there’ll be some food at the Banther Lodge that we can take with us.” Rayla shuffled a little at that, but didn’t say anything. He eyed her. “…What?”

“I was wondering – if we’re going to this lodge of yours for your magic cube, maybe we should try to pick up some supplies for the journey.”

Ezran spoke up, apparently done with his lunch. “Like what? Food?”

“I mean supplies.” Rayla reiterated, a little impatiently. “Long trips like this take a lot of doing, you know? I’m not sure what you’ve got packed, but I’ve only got what I’m wearing. My – the camp was on the wrong side of the castle for us to pick anything up on the way out. If we try to make the trip to Xadia without supplies, let me tell you, we will not have a fun time.”

“I didn’t think about that.” Callum admitted, noticing for the first time that she didn’t have a bag of any sort on her. “I…hm.” He stared back down at his sketchbook for a second, then turned to the back page to pick out a folded sheet of rough paper that was made for times like this. He held the charcoal poised. “I don’t actually have any idea of the sorts of things we’d need for travelling alone without twenty guards and however many household staff – maybe we should make a list? And if it’s in the lodge, you can see if you can pick it up.”

Rayla blinked, looking down at the paper. “Sounds good.” She said after a moment. “Let me think. There’s a lot of stuff, I’ll definitely forget some of it. Let’s see…well, what have you got in your bags already?”

“I have some clothes.” Ezran volunteered, pulling his bag open to inspect the contents. Bait promptly hopped into it, sitting atop the egg. “And dried jelly tart goop. And jelly tart crumbs. And a dragon egg, and Bait.”

Callum opened his own bag to check. He’d sort of packed in a hurry, and definitely hadn’t been thinking about it much. “I’ve got a few sets of clothes, my sketchbook, and a primal stone.”

Rayla made a vaguely disapproving noise. “Well, at least your drawing book thingy has a strap. What clothes do you two have? How many?”

He reflected that it was very weird to end up in a situation where he might need to tell a near-stranger how many pairs of underwear he had with him. “Er. I’ll check.” He said, and rifled through the bag to make a full accounting, Ezran doing the same.

“I’ve got two pairs of underpants, and one pair of pants and a spare shirt and undershirt. Couple of socks.” Ezran reported, making a face. “They’re all covered in jam though.” Rayla nodded at him, then pointed expectantly at Callum.

“Er. Three underpants, one pants, two undershirts, one shirt, one jacket, a cloak, and socks.”

“Well, that’s a start. Callum, is that jacket good for cold weather? Or the cloak?”

He blinked. “…Not, really? It’s basically the same as the one I’m wearing. Same colour, even. And the cloak is more for if it rains – it’s a little bit rainproof.” He tugged on his jacket to demonstrate its thickness, and then pulled out the edges of a black cloak from his bag to show her that. “It’s spring, though, and it’ll only get warmer. Do we need cold-weather stuff?”

She reached out to feel at the cloak, and made a dubious noise. “If we end up going through the mountains, yes.” She assured him, dry. “Okay. What I was taught about packing light is that you want one set of clothes to wear, and then a second one you can wear when you wash the first pair. And, you know, so on. So you, Ezran – you’ll want a spare jacket of some sort, and some winter things. Callum, you just need winter things.”

“Well, good thing it’s the winter lodge, then.” Callum remarked.

“We’ve got some really fluffy cloaks there. And gloves. And scarves, and hats.” Ezran informed her.

“They’d all be in our room or the cloakroom, so easy to find.” He paused, and gestured at his book. “Are we definitely going into the lodge then? Even if there’s people there? Because if we are, I can draw you a floor plan.”

Rayla raised her eyebrows at that, but nodded. “Even if it turns out to be packed with humans, we do need the supplies.” She admitted. “Better to get them from your things than have to steal from someone.”

“Not-stealing is definitely a bonus. Stealing from one’s citizens is not a very princely thing to do.” Callum said sagely, and Ezran nodded solemnly along with him.

“On that, we agree.” Rayla said, and scrutinised the book and charcoal. “…Well, you draw your floor plan, and I’ll have a think about the things we need.”

Callum did not require a great deal of prompting to get highly occupied with drawing, so he happily took that directive, putting charcoal to loose leaf paper and frowning in concentration as he mapped out the shapes of the Banther Lodge into a recognisable map of the rooms and floors. He couldn’t quite resist doing something a bit more comprehensive, so after a moment, he started drawing tiny representations of several of the rooms around the edges, adding helpful lines to make it obvious where they were on the plan.

While he was doing that, apparently, Rayla was consulting with Ezran about the locations of varying things in the lodge, not that he heard or noticed a word of it. At any rate, when he was basically done and presented the plan to Rayla, she seemed like a girl who had a game plan. All sort of….determined and focused, and satisfied. “Thanks.” She said, accepting the page and looking over it, eyebrows raising a little again. “…Hm.”

“Is it not good?” Callum asked after a second, face falling.

“No, it’s…fine.” She assured him, with an absentminded flap of her hand. “…Don’t suppose you could mark where the windows are on here as well?”

“Oh, right, of course.” He took the drawing back and sketched in quick lines on the floor plan. “Like that?”

“…Yes. Yeah, that’s good.” Rayla’s expression was a little strange as she received the updated drawing. “If it’s accurate, that’s a lot more information than I’ve had before when sneaking into places.”

“Callum has a really good memory.” Ezran informed her proudly. “So it’ll definitely be accurate.” Callum reached over to pat his brother’s shoulder affectionately, and then turned back to Rayla.

“So, did you work out what we’ll need?”

“Yep. Or most of it, anyway. If I think of more on the way – actually, do you mind if I write a list on the back of this?” She brandished the floor plan.

He waved agreeably towards the paper with both hands. “Of course, go ahead. It’s just loose paper.” For good measure, he passed over his spare stick of charcoal so she could actually write.

She muttered a thanks and stood as she took it, already writing. “If you two are good to go, I’d best do this while we walk. We’ve still got a lot of ground to cover.”

Bait, as if understanding the urgency, shot his tongue out to pry another mouthful of berries from the bush. Callum considered it a fairly sound idea, and snapped off a few larger clusters to eat on the way, passing one to Ez. “Yeah, okay.” He nodded, and stood. “Let’s go.”

The light of the day was growing dim by the time Rayla began to hear the distant sounds of voices; she held up her hand and stopped, ducking backwards into the shelter of a tree’s shadow. Callum opened his mouth to start to say something, but she held a finger to his mouth and shushed him, listening carefully.

The clatter and clamour of distant armour. Voices. It was very faint, but…

“I hear people.” She said, lowly, and tilted her head. “Reckon that’ll be the lodge over there?” She nodded towards the sound.

Callum and Ezran exchanged a glance, and both nodded. “I don’t hear anything.” Callum said, thankfully very quietly, “But yeah. This place looks about familiar.”

“I think that’s the rock I tripped over last year, see?” Ezran pointed out a rock next to a fallen tree covered in a thick sheet of moss and greenery. “I remember because it was next to the tree.”

“Shh.” Rayla reminded, as his voice was louder than she’d prefer, and after a second of listening, spoke again. “Let’s get some distance between us and the heavily-armed humans. Be quiet.” She mimed zipping her mouth shut and stared at them until she was reasonably sure they’d listen, and then directed them away. She spared a moment to wonder if humans even had zips, to understand the gesture, and then shook her thoughts back to practicality.

She’d need them to stop somewhere secluded and out-of-the-way of the humans’ patrol paths. Somewhere she could leave them without having to worry too much about them running into trouble while she was gone. Unfortunately, the direction she chose to search for this ‘somewhere’ seemed to be in the direction of deep water, because she was quite certain she could hear a river nearby.

Well. Sometimes life was just like that.

The river came into view only a few minutes later, and after scanning the treeline for anything likely, she found a nice enclosed area where the trees and foliage ought to hide the princes from casual sight, and that was also not too close to the river. She marched them up to it, made a quick circle of the trees, and nodded slightly to herself. “Wait here a second.” She directed them, and jumped up the nearest tree.

“Hey-“ He heard Callum protest, startled, but she ignored him.

She pulled her way through the branches as high as she could go, and looked out from between the leaves.

The lodge was visible, even from this reasonable distance. The clearing its grounds left in the forest was very distinctive, and she could see the top of the roof sloping above the trees. The river they’d come up against seemed to run down one side of it. She couldn’t see a lot of the actual ground from this angle, but – there did seem to be horses there, and humans milling about in the open area.

It was a good thing night was coming. Humans had rubbish eyesight in the dark – she’d have a much better chance of getting away with looting the lodge for supplies under their noses. It heavily depended on where they were stationing their soldiers, though. If there were too many inside the lodge…well, they might have to give it up as a bad thought.

Rayla considered the distant clearing for a few moments more, then descended the tree, finding the princes milling uncertainly about the bottom.

“You climb trees really fast.” Ezran informed her, sounding very impressed.

“Thanks?” She offered a hesitant smile, and then dropped down lightly to the ground from the last branch. “I had a wee look up there – there’s a good few humans about that lodge. I want you two to stay here while I go have a closer look at their patrol patterns, see what they’re up to.”

Callum nodded at her, eyebrows dropping a little into an expression of vague concern. “So you’re not going to try to go into the lodge yet?”

“Nah. Just doing a bit of reconnaissance.” It had been thoroughly trained into her to carefully observe and map out the area and security of a place before trying to slip through its defences. The fact that neither she nor the rest of the assassins had done any preliminary recon of the castle at all was testament to how much they’d had to rush to make it in time for the full moon. “I shouldn’t be any longer than half an hour, alright? Stay hidden. They might be patrolling.”

“We will.” Callum put a hand on Ezran’s shoulder, as if to ward him from walking off. “…Good luck? Happy sneaking.”

She snorted, flashed them a half-grin as she pulled her hood down, and then jumped back into the tree, this time using it as a platform to start swinging through the rest of them. She paused every few trees to stop and listen, careful for the sounds of nearby humans trampling through the undergrowth, and eventually heard a few. She stopped hidden in the branches above a pair of armoured humans, both women, who were walking in a fairly straight line through the forest, talking idly with one another.

Rayla listened to see if they were saying anything useful, and they sort of were. One of them was expressing relief over getting to patrol instead of setting up camp. The second disagreed, because she apparently liked dealing with tents more than walking around after they’d already been riding all day.

So, the humans were setting up camp at the lodge. With tents. That implied they weren’t staying inside the lodge.

Feeling vaguely more optimistic, she waited for them to pass her by, trying to trace their route from what she’d seen. A basic perimeter walk, maybe? They weren’t far from the lodge. Maybe only fifty or sixty metres out.

Once the guards were far enough to probably not hear it, Rayla leaped to the next tree and continued her progress to the edge of the clearing, growing slower and more cautious the closer she came. Most of the trees here were pines, which didn’t make her job easier, but she managed. The sun was setting to the west, and since she’d approached from the easterly side of the lodge, the large building in the clearing was casting a convenient shadow over the treeline she’d approached from. She watched the skyline, briefly, some tension in her face that she’d not been paying attention to easing a little as the light dimmed. She sighed, the shadows a welcome relief to her eyes, and felt the coming night prickle her into alertness. Good.

She sat in the tree and looked out at the lodge, quietly withdrawing the paper Callum had drawn on to inspect its correspondence to reality. She’d been impressed by the quality of the drawing, but Ezran had been right – it really was accurate. It was a novel experience, sneaking around a place she had an actual map for. She nodded to herself, satisfied, and put the paper away again, eyes now tracking the force of humans in the area.

There were fewer than she’d feared. Only about ten, including what looked like their commander, a man wearing that cloak and armour she recognised from the castle Crownguard. He was standing over by the lines of horses out to the front of the house, not far from the slope of the river that ran eastwards to where she’d left the princes. He seemed to be taking reports from two other soldiers, but was too far away for her to hear anything being said.

Rayla cast a glance to the rest of the humans, finding two apparently in the process of pitching tents to the rear of the lodge. They were planning to stay for a while, then. And they couldn’t have arrived too long ago, or their camp would be set up already. It was late, for humans to still be setting up. They’d have difficulty getting things done in the dark.

She considered the number of humans, and the number of horses. There were an even sixteen horses, so…perhaps she should assume the presence of the same number of humans. Ten were in the clearing, and she’d seen two on patrol, which left four unaccounted for. They might be on patrol, or they might be in the lodge.

After some consideration, she left her tree for the next one over, picking her way quietly around the edge of the treeline, closer to where the commander was taking reports. He was well away from the trees, close to the river as he was, but the wind was in her favour – once she got into the right position, she could just about hear their conversation.

She settled into a well-concealed branch and listened.

He finished taking reports from those two soldiers, and then another two came out of the lodge and talked to him as well. Another two emerged from the shadow of the forest about ten minutes later, and she recognised them as the patrol guards from earlier. There was still no sign of the last two hypothetical humans, but the reports shed some light on that.

It was a good haul of intel. Rayla considered it more than enough, and once the commander turned to write a letter for the crow one of his people was offering, she turned to glide back through the trees.

She kept eastwards until she saw the river, and adjusted her course back to where she’d left the boys. She found them sat where she’d left them, Callum with his sketchbook out and Ezran peering over his shoulder, making comments. She dropped down in front of them without ceremony, and both jumped back, shrieking a little from shock. She smirked slightly and, somewhat needlessly, announced “I’m back.”

“Er, yes, so we noticed.” Callum said, wide-eyed, hand resting lightly over his chest like a fainting maiden. “You scared the crap out of me!”

“I forget sometimes how easy it is to sneak up on you humans.” She lied, grinning, and leaned over to glance at what he’d been drawing. The egg of the Dragon Prince, apparently. It was only half-shaded, but already impressive. She wasn’t quite sure how he managed to get the look of the light and glow with just grey charcoal.

“How did it go at the lodge?” Ezran asked, looking up at her. “Did anyone see you?”

“’Course not.” She made a vaguely derisive noise at the mere thought. “It all went fine. I think we can do this.”

Callum perked up. “So there’s not too many people?”

“’Bout sixteen, I’d say, but they’ve already searched the lodge, so if there’s anyone posted in there, it won’t be more than two people.” She answered, thinking back to the conversation she’d eavesdropped on. “They’re looking for you. They knew you’d been sent here, and thought you might have managed to arrive before them. They’re setting up camp to wait and see if you show up.”

“Huh. I guess that makes sense. Did you listen to what they were saying, then?” He closed his book and put it down at his side, interested.

“Yep. And turns out we got very, very lucky.” She sighed a little at the memory of the most pertinent piece of information. “They’re waiting on reinforcements, but they won’t arrive for days. We’ll be long gone by then. And that’s definitely a good thing, because apparently it’s General Amaya who’s on the way.” She shook her head in disbelief. Imagine that: the Standing Battalion herself, redirected to wait around for a couple of princes.

Unexpectedly, Callum and Ezran instantly looked at each other, expressions turning weird. Baffled, maybe. Or uneasy.

Ezran spoke first, confusedly. “Do you think it’s a different Amaya?”

“I don’t think there’s another General Amaya, Ez.”

“But still-“

“Yeah, I know.” Callum turned back to her, looking strangely pensive. “You’re sure they said General Amaya?”

She eyed them suspiciously. “Believe me, it’s not a name I’m about to get wrong.” She said, dryly, and crossed her arms at the next loaded glance exchanged by the boys. “Alright, what is it?”

“Er. Well, nothing much.” Callum attempted. She levelled him with a very unimpressed stare. He deflated. “Well – she’s, kind of our aunt? Yeah.”

Rayla stared.

“I’m kind of sorry we’ll miss her.” Ezran said, obliviously, smiling a little as if recalling something pleasant. “It’s been so long since she last got to visit.”

“Well, she’s a busy woman. It’s probably a good thing we’ll be gone by the time she gets here, though. Aunt Amaya…well, she really doesn’t like elves. You know that.” He looked across at her, and whatever he saw on her face made him quickly look away again, nervously clearing his throat. “I don’t think it would go well if she met Rayla.”

“Maybe.” Ezran sounded very doubtful. “I bet she’d listen if we tried though.”

Callum made a doubtful noise, and seemed about to say something else when Rayla found her voice again. “Aunt Amaya.” She repeated, incredulously, and looked over the two boys with disbelief. “General Amaya. She’s your aunt?”

“….yes?” Callum offered tentatively. “I didn’t know you’d have heard of her.”

Rayla stared, still half lost for words, and reached up to rub at the centre of her forehead, feeling a headache threatening her at the mere thought. “Your aunt is probably the best human warrior alive.” She said, finally. “You could say I’ve heard of her. We definitely got lucky that she’s not here. Ransacking your lodge for supplies under her watch….I’m good, but I don’t think I’m that good.” She shook her head, still not entirely able to process the idea of these dumb humans being related to General Amaya.

The humans shared another glance and shrugged. “When’s the supply heist going to happen, then? Since you think it’s alright.” The elder prince inquired, leaning forwards with interest.

Rayla frowned, and looked up at the sky. “Well, I would say it would be better to do in a few hours, when they’ll be sleepy and complacent, but…” She tapped her fingers on her knee, crouching down to rest closer to eye level with the others. “I kinda want to steal one of their tents. And that’ll be very hard to do once they’re all set-up and being slept in.”

“Steal a tent?” Ezran parroted, surprised, and then visibly actually put some thought to it. “That’s a great idea, Rayla.”

“You said there wouldn’t be any tents in the lodge, but…the soldiers all have them.” She shrugged. “And theirs don’t look half bad, either.”

“And there’s a lodge right there, so it’s not like we’ll be condemning some poor schmuck to sleeping out in the open.” Callum nodded along, clearly picking up on her enthusiasm.

“Personally I care more about condemning us to sleeping out in the open for the whole journey, but that’s also true.” Rayla commented dryly. “Anyway, they already had two set up when I left, so if I want to grab a tent pack I’d best get a move on. Can’t afford to sit around. But – I don’t know what they’ll do when they notice the pack missing. We might have to run. So I want you to be ready to move. No drawing, or settling in.”

Callum glanced forlornly at his sketchbook, but slung its strap over his shoulder agreeably enough. “Yeah, that makes sense. Do you know how long you’ll be?”

“Nope. No clue. Probably not more than an hour or so if all goes well.” She stood, and cracked her neck, stretching out her limbs with a series of satisfying pops. “Right then. Hand over the bag, mister.” She held out her hand, expectantly. He blinked, but got her meaning after a second, obediently passing over his barely-filled backpack. She slung it over her shoulder and exhaled sharply. “Keep an ear out. Don’t get caught.”

“Right back at you.” He smiled lopsidedly. “Have fun.”

She mock-saluted him, and then returned gladly to the trees.

Night was well and truly falling now, and the dark settled over her with a comforting familiarity. Her eyes adjusted easily to the low light, the colours of the forest going grey and pale in the absence of sunlight to colour them. Something in her eased, settled, and then another part of her woke up. Rayla leapt through the forest, and felt herself coming alive and alert, senses sharp and perfectly-attuned to the twilit forest.

Moonshadow elves could adapt to a diurnal routine well enough, and frequently did – but it was night that they were made for. And this – sneaking through the night-shadows, lit by nothing more than stars and moon? She was born for this.

Easy, alert anticipation stretched under her skin as she approached the lodge, quick and silent in the treetops. The first thing she looked at when she arrived was the fledgling camp. Three tents were up now, the soldiers getting to work on the fourth. She wasn’t quite sure how many packs were left at the wall of the lodge, but there couldn’t be more than six remaining. She stared, narrow-eyed, and considered what to do.

They were setting up the tents by the light of a single torch, lodged at the top of a nearby post. The actual packs were in shadow. She thought she had a very high chance of grabbing one without being seen, but what about when they noticed it missing? If they searched the lodge while she was still packing supplies, she’d be in trouble. But if she waited until there were fewer packs left, she might miss her chance to get one. And she did not fancy the idea of sleeping in the open for weeks on end.

Finally, she exhaled quietly, and dropped down from the trees into the deepest shadows. She marked the positions of twelve visible humans, two of whom were standing watch by the doors of the lodge, three tending to the horses, the commander tending the crow, two seeming to be arranging the camp food supplies, two pitching tents, and the last two standing guard beside-

Her eyes narrowed. Was that a boat?

It was. Ugh. She stared at it, with an uncomfortable prickling feeling, and resolved to ignore the thing entirely. It probably wouldn’t be relevant. It hopefully wouldn’t be relevant.

Quietly, Rayla slipped around the edge of the clearing, across to the back wall of the lodge, and stealthily picked her way towards the tent packs, casting wary glances to the tent-pitchers who were amiably coordinating their work by torchlight, just ten metres away. She ran quick eyes over the packs – only five left. After a moment of quick decision, she extracted one at the edge and rearranged the others to make it look less like there was one actually missing, and then turned tail and made a beeline back to the trees. She climbed a likely specimen a few metres out from the clearing, and stowed the tent pack in it, and then extracted her floor plan to have a last look over it.

She looked from the paper to the lodge, squinting, and noted with disbelief that the windows were all wide open. What in the world was that in aid of? Were they trying to air out the building? Was it dusty in there? Either way, she definitely wasn’t complaining. Once again, she spared a moment to thank magic itself for not making her have to contend with General Amaya.

Without further ado, Rayla dropped down from the tree and slunk quickly over to the walls, lodging her boots into the masonry and hauling herself up the walls, and slipped easily through a large window on the first floor. She didn’t even need to use her picks.

She ducked down to the floor quickly, and looked around, getting her bearings. She’d landed in what looked like the kitchen Callum had sketched, which meant the main hall should be through that door, the stairs to the cellar through that one…

…and, yeah, Callum’s drawings were actually stunningly accurate. That human had skill.

She shook away the thought, and listened carefully for signs of any of the last two or four humans within the lodge, but all of the sound seemed to be coming from outside. The building was dark, and very, very still.

All the better.

Rayla headed for the main hall, steps silent, and upon confirming it empty, made a beeline for the cloakroom. It was strange, to have everything look like the drawings she’d seen, to know where she was meant to be looking. She pulled the largest backpack she could find off of a hook, and then looked over the winterwear, finding a row of heavy fur cloaks, luxurious enough to be thick fur on both sides, and to have collars bristling with even longer fur. Only one of them looked potentially Ezran-sized, so she stuffed that into the bag, and then studied the rest of them a little more closely. That one looked a bit shorter, maybe? She unhooked it and held it up in front of her to judge it, and concluded it to be approximately the right size to be Callum’s. She hesitated to pull another one off the hooks, but, well, Ezran had given it his blessing. So she took a third, which might also have been Callum’s, and stuffed them all into Callum’s bag, with some difficulty.

Heavy winter cloaks were, as a rule, very bulky, and these ones were extravagantly thick. She doubted she’d be able to get any more into his bag, but maybe she’d manage some smaller bits of clothing. She scanned the cloakroom and found the little set of drawers she was looking for, pulling each of them open to find hats, scarves, and gloves. She pulled a pair of the latter out with some amusement, holding them up to her hands to look at the extra finger on the fabric. Hand-disguises, she thought, and suppressed a snigger.

She grabbed a few of each and shoved them in next to the cloaks, and then moved on.

Her progress through the lodge was slow and careful, stopping in the shadows of furniture and doors to listen to the sounds outside. There was still no noise within the lodge. She headed for the cellar next, since it would be the hardest to escape from if she was cornered there, and she wanted it out of the way. She rooted through every container she could find, throwing things haphazardly into whichever bag would fit it. A roll of bandages, plus a couple other useful wound-care things. Scissors. Two large empty jars. A pair of large waterskins. Two long coils of rope. Some spark-rocks. She left the cellar as soon as she could, and then rooted through the kitchen.

She located some long brown things where Callum had helpful annotated the possibility of food. They were rock solid and heavy enough to use as blunt force weapons. Dubiously, she inspected one, having a sniff, and….it maybe smelled edible, but she wasn’t at all certain. In the end, she elected to take the jar of mush that smelled like fruit instead, figuring it was probably some kind of jam. She located a bar of soap near the washing basin and took that too, adding in a wash-rag for good measure, and found a small iron cooking pot in one of the cupboards. Heavy, but probably worth it.

The kitchen thus raided, she headed upstairs, and straight for where the princes’ room ought to be. She opened the door to it, and noted the familiar-looking space with two beds, several chests, and a large wardrobe at the end. Callum’s drawings continued to serve well.

She located Ezran’s clothing and pulled out a thick wool jumper from there, and then found Callum’s and did the same.

Then she hesitated.

Dubiously, she extracted a pair of trousers, holding them to her hips to gauge the length. Short. Not horribly short, but….definitely short. She frowned indecisively, slinging the clothing over one arm as she inspected the shirts, and then the thin jackets. They all looked nearly identical to what Callum was already wearing, the only variance being in colour and in some cases the embroidered patterns on the front. She sighed, resigning herself to the fact that a journey back to Xadia on one set of clothes would be too disgusting to contemplate, and liberally raided Callum’s vestments to pick out a few bits for her own use. She gave the rest of the room a quick once-over, and extracted a hairbrush from someone’s drawer, a plain towel, and a couple sticks of charcoal that were almost certainly Callum’s.

That only left the supposedly-magic cube.

Now feeling rather weighed down by the two increasingly-full bags, Rayla made the final trip to the game room, locating her quarry in a box of keys. It was, indeed, a weird cube with the symbols of the primals laid out on each side. The moon symbol glowed as she touched it, so maybe there was something to the idea of it being magical. Without incident, she shoved it into the bag and traced her path back through the lodge to the window she’d come in from.

She paused to listen at the window before leaving it. There was the sound of raised voices outside. Arguing. Someone named Marcos was being accused of losing a tent.

They’d noticed its absence, then. Best move quickly.

She peeked out of the window, confirmed a clear path to the treeline, and hauled herself and her cargo out, landing a bit more heavily than she’d have preferred. She made it back to the trees with an almost laughable lack of trouble, retrieved the tent pack, and made her way back eastward after a heist that went off without a hitch.

Mind, the two bags plus the tent pack made her significantly less graceful than she’d have liked, and the exertion had her breathing heavily and making an uncomfortable amount of noise as she finally drew close to where she’d left the boys. Enough noise that they actually heard her coming, startling and looking up warily at the trees above them. Rayla dropped heavily down in front of them, and this time they weren’t surprised. Relieved, though; it was gratifying to see that on their faces. The glow toad croaked reproachfully at the sight of her, evidently not as pleased to see her as the humans.

“Rayla! You’re back.” Ezran sounded audibly relieved too, bless him. He really did seem like a good kid.

With a groan of relief, she set the backs down. “I’m back.” She confirmed, shaking out her shoulders.

Callum stepped forwards to inspect her haul, hands hovering over each bag in turn. “Looks like it went well?” he asked cautiously, hand coming to rest on the tent pack. It was a heavy, bulky thing – shaped like a long roll with a single strap to sling it over a shoulder. It had bounced about like nobody’s business when she’d had to jump through the trees with the thing. “Hey, you got the tent?” he sounded impressed.

“Oh, thank goodness.” Ezran sighed, seeing the potential future of many days sleeping rough vanish before his eyes.

She grinned, proud and immensely satisfied. “Mission accomplished.” She declared, and sat down. “No one saw me, and when I left they were blaming each other for losing the tent, but I don’t know if they’ll notice anything off if they go back into the lodge. I think we should move out a bit before we rest for the night, just in case.”

They exchanged dismayed looks. “….Do we have to?” Ezran asked plaintively after a moment. “I was nearly falling asleep while you were gone. Could we at least have a nap?”

Rayla hesitated, and looked back over her shoulder. They were about five minutes of casual walking away from the lodge, which…wasn’t really far. It didn’t feel very safe. But… “I don’t think it’s safe,” She said after a moment, and their faces fell. “But if you want to sleep now, I’ll keep watch, so I can wake you up if there’s any issue.”

Callum blinked at her. “What about you, Rayla? Won’t you be tired?”

She was tired. Naturally nocturnal or not, she’d still been up and walking all day. But… “It’s only a day past the full moon.” She looked up at the sky, where the trees obscured the waning shape of it. But she could feel it. Even past the power the true full moon brought, it was invigorating. “I’ll last. And I’ll wake one of you at dawn and get a couple hours then.”

Callum inspected her, face serious, and nodded. “Thanks, Rayla.” He said, sincere, and Ezran echoed it quickly. “Wake me up when you want to get some sleep, okay? Even if it’s in the middle of the night.”

“…Sure.” She agreed, with absolutely no intention of actually waking him up earlier than necessary. She was not at all certain of his abilities as a watchman, and these were far from the best circumstances to test him in.

Ezran yawned widely, rubbed his eyes, and shuffled over to find a comfortable patch of moss to sleep on. “Mmkay. Thanks again, Rayla. ‘Night.” Callum hesitated a bit, looking at her awkwardly, before he turned over to do the same.

She sat still and quiet for several minutes, listening as they shuffled and shifted and then, when they’d grown comfortable, eased audibly into sleep, breath evening out. She wondered if they were heavy enough sleepers for her to get some organising done in the night, or if she’d just have to sit quietly for hours.

Well, if she did, it wouldn’t be all that new, though the length of the watch would be. She was used to a watch rotation shared among six people, which was much more lenient. If this little group tried to set up a rotation…well, it’d only be her and Callum trading off, wouldn’t it? Ezran was a kid. He couldn’t be any older than ten, and you didn’t put ten-year-olds on watch duty. Even she wouldn’t have been a good watchelf at the age of ten.

Her wrist twinged unpleasantly, not for the first time that day, but….for the first time, Rayla didn’t ignore it. Casting a furtive glance at the princes to make sure they were asleep, she brought up her left wrist to stare at the binding. It looked so deceptively unassuming now. It felt a little uncomfortable, maybe, like she ought to loosen it, but certainly not like irrevocable limb loss embodied in a tiny silver band.

She’d never seen an assassin’s bind stay on for more than a day before. She knew, in theory, what was going to happen, but….how long would it take? How much would it hurt? Would her hand just fall off on its own…or would it be more of an agonising process of the band tightening until it squeezed through her skin and flesh and bone? Her fingers clenched reflexively at the mere thought, and she shivered. If it came to that, she’d much rather cut it off herself. At least then maybe she wouldn’t die from infection before the hand even came off.

Quietly, she pulled out one of her blades, and lodged the tip under the binding. She tugged, and pulled, but the blade that could happily pierce rock did absolutely nothing to the piece of flimsy-looking ribbon. It didn’t even so much as displace a thread. She hadn’t expected any different, really, but…

She sighed, frustrated, and put the blade away.

Miles away, the kingdom was changing. That day had dawned on the end of a beloved monarch’s reign, his funeral procession rang out by the castle bells, tolling lowly all the way to the Valley of Graves. There, Lord Viren declared that the Princes of Katolis were both dead, and the kingdom grieved for the death of the entire royal family as the King’s body burned.

The sun set, and by the light of the Acolytes’ fires, Opeli reluctantly placed the Crown of Towers upon a new head.

On that day, the Thirteenth of the month, the High Mage was crowned Lord Protector of the realm.

---

End chapter.

Timeline: I’ve decided a date for the start of canon just so I can make a proper timeline to follow. In this story, the first day of canon (night-time, when Rayla fails to kill Marcos) was 11th of May. The day of the full moon was 12.05, day 2 since start of canon. This chapter takes place on 13.05, or day 3 since start of canon. Numbering the days like this helps me keep track of when events should take place, as my notes on TDP episodes are numbered according to the day count. My timeline is meticulously planned up to day 14 so far, and I have plans that will take the story far beyond that.

Important canon divergences this chapter: Amaya is still many days away from the castle, and had no chance of stopping Viren’s coronation. Viren is now, somewhat legitimately, the Lord Protector of Katolis, and will have full authority to use the king’s seal and command the forces of Katolis. You can bet Opeli isn’t happy about it though, and most of the local citizens won’t be, either.

On the story concept: The drastically increased size of the continent changes basically everything. Armies take much longer to move, and the logistics of supplying them are much more difficult. Amaya is not able to basically teleport from the Breach to the Banther Lodge in half a day. Anything that’s time-sensitive, or involves a message or a person having to go somewhere, may turn out drastically differently. Some major events in canon may still happen, others might not, and others may occur in very, very different ways.

The kids themselves will take dramatically different routes to canon, encounter different problems, make different plans, and in general spend a whole lot more time travelling and managing their travel. There’ll be lots of delicious travel scenes, and campfire scenes, and interaction, and cute character moments. Also tent-sharing. There will be a whole lot of that.

Please note that the Rayllum is going to be very slow burn. I mean that. The very first hints of it aren’t until about 30k in – this fanfiction could probably double as a slow cooker. But there will be plenty of fluff along the way.

Final note: While the first 40k of this story is pretty light and fluffy, it will get more serious after this, and contain difficult scenes, concepts, themes, and will have events with lasting consequences for the characters. I will warn readers at the start of any chapters that may contain potentially difficult concepts, events, or scenes.

Currently written chapters: 1 (This one, ~9k), 2 (about 9k), 3 (also about 9k), 4 (11k), and 5 (10k). It’s mostly cute travel fluff until chapter 5, where things start getting more serious.

I’ll update every few days ish. Want to give myself time to write more. Please please show your appreciation in some fashion if you enjoyed this or are intrigued to see more – I get super anxious whenever posting a new story, and feedback and story stats keep me motivated to continue writing.

My thanks to Jelly for reading and providing feedback while I was writing chapters 1-5, and in general for nagging me to keep writing when my motivation was flagging. You've been an excellent writing buddy.

[sugar--pie]

Recently I made a post talking about Barlee’s recent tweets and how I personally believe it doesn’t kill off Klance. I recommend reading it before you continue reading this HELLA. LONG. POST. As I might refer back to it a few times.

Edit: just want to add in here, that Barlee said those tweets weren’t about Klance, and that they were about Shiro being Rep. She also said she doesn’t know the end result of the series though... so I’m still gonna keep this post. But a lot of the things I talked about in that post about Klance in general, I’ll still refer to. Please remember to read my edits at the end too! Thanks :)

Okay.

So even after I made that post, I still had a major panic attack and slowly lost hope in Klance again. Idk, I’ve fallen way too deep into this it’s not even healthy probably, it felt like literal heart break. And I’m not even LGBT, I have another reasoning behind why I’m not really for Allura/Lance... and Season 7 kinda fuelled it a bit more. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. That post will be made after Season 8... if I manage to somehow be horrifically incorrect about what I’m going to talk about here. Which... I highly doubt I will. But I’ll keep a cushion to be safe.

I’m going to make bullet points:

One of the biggest problems the Klance fandom had before was that they put the Klance GogglesTM on for everything. Some specific things in the show were obvious yes, or at least it should be to everyone, but some things were stretched out way too far.

One of these scenarios is the theory (yes theory, this was never confirmed to be true, it’s just an assumption) that Hunk was given what was meant to be Lance’s arc with his family.

Reason why this became a theory was because of Barlee’s Tweets. And this is kind of where I started to lose hope again.

If Hunk was given Lance’s arc then that must mean Klance was written out. Because it was all about Keith and Hunk, when it “should’ve been” Keith and Lance.

However, I was seriously thinking about it as my last few morsels of hope started leaving me during work UNTIL BAM! IT HIT ME!

Yeah. Klance gogglesTM. Fans have grown to projecting Klance on to everything. And that includes Hunks arc, but trust me when I say this. Hunk was never given Lance’s arc. This is meant to be Hunks arc, through and through.

Keith was also included in Hunks arc because he is the one who didn’t have a family from the start. Including Keith in Hunks arc is demonstrating the growth Keith has had throughout the series.

Hunk was admitted to being the most underdeveloped character in the show. I remember it from an interview (video I believe) where Joaquim and Lauren say they had trouble with Hunk when creating him because, comparing him to his 80’s counterpart, was a lot different and they had trouble putting him in certain roles.

That is really lame, don’t get me wrong, but this explains why Hunks arc in Season 7 felt rushed and out of place. Hunk only mentioned missing earth or “not wanting to be a paladin” once in the beginning. And he wasn’t super upset about it.

Lance on the other hand was. He was vocal about missing earth, He was shown getting upset, leaving the room and opening up to Coran about it. This is where I think people mistook what Lance’s arc was meant to be. Even I misunderstood because of this scene.

however, this is where I’m going to point out, that yes, this is the start of Lance’s arc (“Lance and Keith’s arcs have been the only two that have lasted the entirety of the series” - incorrectly quoted by Joaquim)(I’ll expand on this a little later), but Lance’s arc isn’t about family.

I know, shocker. And it should’ve been obvious from the get go. But oooooh nooo, it wasn’t because we focused too much attention on Lance missing his family here. But let me ask:

How many times in the show has Lance voiced about missing home besides this scene? Yeah... try making a list for that lol. That’s because we took it way out of context and made it a bigger deal for Lance’s character when... it isn’t. Lance’s arc was never about family or missing earth.

Writing a show, you need to make sure the characters move into the spot they’ll need to be in. They used Lance missing earth in order to make him go off on his own, and have Coran follow.

Why you ask? It should be obvious. This could be a stretch but a very realistic one: Lance needed to be by the Crystal with Coran when it explodes, to ultimately, lead to the Bonding moment. Boom.

Lance’s Arc started here. Lance’s arc is a Romance Arc and it’s been in our faces the whole time.

He’s had more scenes voicing his charm and making it known from the get go.

He’s flirted.

It’s canon he wants to fall in love with someone.

His blog talked about crushing on Allura and wanting to be called pretty.

He’s the most feminine coded character as he enjoys generally feminine tropes like taking care of his appearance, even more so than Allura, who has only ever referenced being “girly” by having her hair done by mice(?) and wanting something sparkly.

This is also why Lance’s romantic life is such a focus not only for us, but when being talked about at Conventions. He’s the only one to have a canon romantic endgame. Gee, should’ve been obvious there what his arc is about.

And what finally made me realize Lance’s arc is a romance arc, is remembering when Lauren and Joaquim told us during a discussion that “Lance doesn’t know what he needs. We know what Lance might look for, but it’s not necessarily what he needs.” Lance being the only one known to have a canon endgame, ties into this.

This, made me realize. Lance’s arc, will be him realizing what he needs. I think it’s already leading up to it, personally because of this season alone. But arguably, it started picking up once Keith left in Season 4.

So No, Lance’s family arc was never given to Hunk because Lance was never meant to have an arc based around his family in the first place. We knew Lance missed his family and earth, but it wasn’t the main focus for him so that’s why all we saw was this glorious reaction to seeing his family again. And why the only lead role out of his family is Veronica.

(Keep in mine Keith is made out to be a focal point within this scene as well. Hunk too. I’ll bring this back up.)

So... now that I’ve covered the ground work in this long ass essay. Let’s continue the essay!

Now that we know Hunks arc was never meant for Lance, and Lance instead has a Romance Arc, let’s consider his endgame options:

In my post about Barlee’s Tweets, a lot of people assumed she was referring to a lot of things implying Lance will just end up in a rushed relationship with Allura, and I was one of these people too at first. But then it made me think. There was a lot, and I mean a lot of Keith and Lance interactions, and most of those, as I said in the Barlee post, demonstrated the trust and teamwork between the two right away, as well as had undertones and subtlety towards romantic intentions. Keith also has been a focal point in generally Lance centric moments, like above when he runs to hold his family. Hunk makes sense of being present because it starts the “family” portion of his arc this season. Keith however, only makes sense if he has purpose in Lance’s Arc, otherwise he wouldn’t be a focus and made apparent that he’s watching Lance reunite with his family. Make note that Allura was not.

The game show for example, If Lance liked Allura so much and was meant to end up with her, he would’ve picked her to leave. But instead, he chose Keith and also had a very sweet reasoning behind why, including a very dopey fond look on his face.

That’s why I love Pidge’s reaction in that scene because she practically sums up pretty much everyone’s reaction. Even mine. All of them were probably expecting him to pick Allura, (maybe even himself) but nonetheless, they weren’t expecting him to pick Keith, even Keith himself.

That’s why Keith reacts the way he does. I guarantee you he panicked.

Filler episodes in Voltron have always foreshadowed in some way, I wouldn’t be surprised if having Lance and Keith choose each other isn’t blatant foreshadowing.

Overall, there was more Keith and Lance interactions that included romantic subtext, compared to Lance and Allura, this season alone.

This is why it confused me a lot if the showrunners did write out Klance. They wouldn’t have included such strong scenarios with the two in this season if that’s the case. Not only this season but also the smaller ones that implies something more between the two in season 4, and season 6.

This is the point I’m going to bring in something interesting I read in this post. The OP said it’s probably a reach (when are they ever not?) but this is where I think Allura randomly having feelings for Lance, comes into Lance’s Arc.

Like we’ve been saying since the beginning, Allura has been what Lance has wanted from the start. But in OP’s post, they mentioned how the only time Lance had shown insecurity and being unsure of himself this seaosn, was right after his scene with Allura (and Veronica teasing him about it). That was the only scene that caused insecurity.

THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT TO POINT OUT YALL.

Lance had been secluded from season 4-6. He started getting closer to Allura, but then Lotor came along and changed that.

This is where I believe “what Lance wants isn’t necessarily what he needs,” makes sense. Allura has started having feelings for Lance, but then ending up together would be, as said by Lauren, “a disservice to both their characters.”

Allura getting feelings so soon kind of proved to me after realizing all this, that, no she isn’t Lance’s endgame. Like we’ve been saying Allura is what he wants. But not what he needs.

But who... pray tell.. is what he needs.

Keith.

I know, I know. This is the part where the typical Klance Goggles would probably come in. But I’m serious about this guys.

The moment Keith came back into the picture, Lance had been put into a more important role.

Keith listened to him, trusted him immediately and asked Lance to take over multiple times. Lance never had a moment of insecurity because everything fell back into place, and Keith made him feel useful again. Lance was once again the Red Paladin and Keith’s Right hand.

Tying in Lance being vocal about Keith “running away”, I don’t think people are far off from thinking Lance actually opened up to how he actually felt when Keith Left. And even showing worry when Keith said he’s going back for Acxa. Might as well put it in a present and wrap it up with a little bow.

Keith is ultimately what Lance had been needing the whole time. And Lance, I believe, will realize it. He’ll figure out that Allura isn’t what he needs, and because his moment of insecurity stems from an interaction he and Allura had, is also foreshadowing it too.

Throwing back to when I said Lance and Keith have had the longest arcs since the beginning, (quoted by Joaquim himself), this would explain why Lance’s finality to his arc hasn’t happened yet. It’s because it includes Keith, and Allura (possibly even Acxa which I explained in the Barlee post) and will most likely happen in season 8. The ultimate slowburn endgame.

This is where the bonding moment will be acknowledge.

They’ll also acknowledge two important scenes; Keith’s almost sacrifice, and Lances actual death (which included parallels to their season 1 bonding moment with Lance and Allura.)

And also “the other part” to Keith’s reason for leaving the team for the BOM.

Parallels are for a reason. And oooh boi.

Did my brain manage to restore faith back in Klance. Yup. Even if I’m the ONLY ONE LEFT IN THE FANDOM, I know what I’m talking about here. And if Allura/Lance do end up canon after all when it really makes no sense to, I will be one confused fucking bitch.

I believe I covered everything my jumbled brain puked out. So please, keep the faith Klance fandom. There is more story to unfold!

Edit: and technically I’m already again a really confused bitch. The Barlee post might be useless now, since she specifically stated she was referring to Shiro. And he was the intended rep.

I’m not upset again I’m just downright confused once again. Butttt... at this point. Maybe stuff will be answered in season 8. But overall, a lot of my points in this still stand!

Edit 2: Ultimately (I say this a lot), the one thing I knew from the start, is that Keith and Lance would have something to do with eachothers arcs, and arguably, they have, considering Lance and Keith’s arcs have been the longest arcs in the show. So even if Klance isn’t endgame. At this point, they have definitely become best friends and have grown on their own and with each other. And that, is still a very, very beautiful thing. No they don’t have to be together romantically. But they can and will be by each others side for a long time after the series ends.

Because that’s what Klance is. Lance and Keith, back to back. Thank you for reading. :)

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 1.3

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time, Kaito’s adventures in nearly getting himself killed had totally saved everyone until it turned out they really really hadn’t, Monokuma announced the time limit motive, and Shuichi (and by extension Kaede) fell right into the mastermind’s trap due to the lack of any visible cameras monitoring them.

Now, it’s finally Free Time! I am going to be covering some FTEs in this commentary, but only as many as I can get in a normal playthrough. I’ll be trying to keep things as close as possible to what might have potentially happened “canonically”. So I’m going to be going for characters whom the protagonists would be most likely to willingly choose to hang out with if they didn’t have a player controlling them on the other side of the fourth wall.

I’m also going to make it a regular thing to ask around all of the characters before actually initiating an FTE with the one I’m planning on doing, just to see what thoughts people have on the current situation so that I can mention any if they seem relevant. There can be quite a lot of interesting stuff going on in the pre-FTE dialogue sometimes.

Speaking of, Rantaro happens to be hanging out in the library, suspiciously close to the moving bookcase, so there’s that.

Keebo:  “I cannot believe we’re being subjected to this purely for the entertainment value!”

…whoa, Keebo, you actually hit the nail on the head there. Of all people to make that assumption, it’s interesting that it’s him specifically. I wonder if he has slightly more of a sense that that’s the case because of his inner voice? Hm.

Anyway, obviously the first person that Kaede would choose to hang out with would be Shuichi! He’s in the warehouse right now. I wonder if he’s checking out what kind of stuff it’s got to see what he can use for his plan. If only he’d taken the things he needed now while he was here instead of bringing Kaede here to get them with him tomorrow, she might never have grabbed a shot put ball. Or perhaps the fact that I’m about to make Kaede hang out with him now is what’s going to prevent him from doing that, at least in this particular version of events.

Also, while almost all the sports equipment is examinable right now, the box of shot put balls isn’t.

Kaede:  “Do you wear a cap, smoke a pipe, and use a magnifying glass to investigate crime scenes? Do you say stuff like, ‘Indeed, most intriguing!’?”

Kaede is such a goof. I love her.

Shuichi:  “A lot of those cases are small jobs… Infidelity cases, background checks…”

Shuichi is not normally a homicide detective except for that one murder case he accidentally solved. Still, I imagine that the Ultimate Initiative also looked into all of these more routine cases when deciding to name him the Ultimate Detective; just because the cases he’s solving aren’t murders doesn’t mean he can’t be talented at solving them.

That said, this kind of case is also not necessarily the most glamorous in terms of painting detectives in a positive light. Much later on in the story, Shuichi laments that all detectives do is uncover people’s secrets for money, and it’s probably these cases that make him think that.

Kaede:  “Yeah, I guess it’d be bad if flashy murder cases kept happening around you!”

Yeah that’s definitely not going to happen at all now that he’s in a killing game.

Shuichi:  “The other cases are just stuff like… finding runaways and stuff.”

This kind of case, however, does show a positive role for detectives. Shuichi’s saving people by finding the truth!

He goes on to explain that he and his uncle have a policy of following up on runaway cases to resolve the reason the person ran away in the first place, which is a lovely policy to have.

Kaede:  (I didn’t know detectives were so considerate. Or is Shuichi just a special case?)

It depends on the detective, apparently. Shuichi’s a very different kind of Ultimate Detective from Kyoko – she was very cold and impersonal, whereas Shuichi has a much more compassionate and human approach, but both kinds are good in different ways.

I’m also going to include all of the bonus item-dependent scenes, since there’s no reason to assume they’re not canon. Well, with one certain exception, but I still have a few things to say about how that one is initiated, so I’ll still talk about it when we get to that point. That said, half of them aren’t super interesting and I won’t have that much to say about them, and this nail brush scene here is one of those. Still, it’s cute – Kaede gets so excited about it! – and it’s probably not a coincidence on the writers’ part that it happens to involve the true mastermind and the person whom Kaede ends up killing because she thinks they’re the mastermind.

Also, Tsumugi, if you didn’t want Rantaro upstaging you at nail art, maybe you shouldn’t have written his character to have twelve younger sisters. Or, actually, did Tsumugi write Rantaro’s character? Because he was written for season 52, so it’s entirely possible she wasn’t involved in that. Maybe that’s why Tsumugi is so inexplicably disdainful towards Rantaro in this scene – because he’s not her character, unlike everyone else there.

Moving on, Kaede can “max out” two people’s FTEs while she’s the protagonist, so she should hang out with a second person besides Shuichi. It’s a little less obvious who else she might choose to spend time with, but… yep, you guessed it, I’m going with Kaito. It’s pretty reasonable Kaede might want to hang out with him since he’s been so supportive of her, but aside from that, he’s a very important character and doing his FTEs here will give me more chance to talk about his similarities to Kaede and what makes him tick in general. Whenever it’s more ambiguous who the protagonist might choose to hang out with, I reserve the right to go with my favourite and/or the most story-relevant out of the most plausible options.

But first, while asking around…

Rantaro:  “Oh, sorry. I was just… thinking about something. You wanna go to the library? I feel like reading.”

…not convinced that’s the real reason you want to go to the library, Rantaro.

Maki:  “It feels like we were just given our Ultimate talents on a whim…”

Whoa, Maki, that is very perceptive of you. And I guess she would be the one to think that, since she hates her true talent more than anyone else here.

Maki:  “…And if there’s time to complain, I’d rather spend it being productive.”

Don’t tell Maki right now, but this is her being pretty similar to Kaito in this particular way.

Kaito:  “What’s wrong? You got something you want to talk to me about?”

Kaede:  (Should I spend time with Kaito?) [Yes]

Kaito:  “Yeah, you can tell me anything! I may not look like it, but I’m a great listener!”

Kaede:  (I spent some time listening to Kaito, despite him telling me he was a good listener…)

This is a very meaningful exchange! On a first time through this would look like yet another supposed example of Kaito not being able to back up his own words, but it’s not that at all. Anyone who’s seen the rest of the game knows that Kaito really is a good listener when people need him to be. The reason he doesn’t end up being a good listener to Kaede here is because she doesn’t need him to be right now. The thing that’s bothering her the most is the knowledge of a mastermind and whether her and Shuichi’s plan will work, but she can’t tell him that. And maybe she could express more general worries about whether they’re really going to be able to survive the time limit, but she’s too optimistic a person to want to admit to things like that, especially to other people whom she’s trying to be an encouraging influence on. You know, kind of exactly like Kaito himself doesn’t either.

But I also like how the conversation started off with Kaito assuming she had something to vent to him about and offering to listen. This is an early sign of Kaito’s determination to support people. He may be totally at a loss in terms of coming up with a plan to deal with the time limit, but he knows that he’s good at providing emotional support for others. So he’s offering to do that here in an attempt to feel like he’s still making a difference, even though Kaede is probably the least likely person to need it.

What we have here is a clash of two people who focus far too much on helping others with their problems and never like to admit to their own, so the conversation that both of them initially thought of as an attempt to help the other relax got derailed and probably ended up as something along the lines of Kaito excitedly telling Kaede facts about space instead. Because there is absolutely no way that Kaede ending up listening to Kaito was the same unloading-your-problems kind of “listening” that Kaito was originally offering to do for her.

Getting into the actual FTE, Kaito wants Kaede to teach him to play piano.

Kaede:  “Playing the piano is gonna help you when you go to space…?”

Kaito:  “Of course! What if I meet an alien?”

I love how Kaito just says this like it makes perfect sense when it makes anything but to anyone except him.

Kaito:  “Well, we haven’t confirmed any, but… It’s silly to think that humans are alone in this vast universe. Plus, isn’t it more exciting to think they’re out there somewhere?”

Of course Kaito would think this, not just because it’s mathematically likely given how huge the universe is, but also simply because it’s fun to imagine it. It’s what he wants to believe!

Kaede:  “So, if there are aliens, do you want to try to communicate using the piano?”

Kaito:  “Not just piano, any music! Even singing would work.”

Then just sing to them, you doofus. Don’t you realise how much extra fuel it would cost to carry a piano on a spaceship.

Kaito:  “I think it’s totally possible to communicate with music.”

Even so, this is still great. He doesn’t just want aliens to exist, he wants to be able to meet them and communicate with them, and he understands that music is one of best forms of communication that works despite language barriers. This is already establishing Kaito’s belief in the importance of communication, even before he talks about it some more in one of his FTEs with Shuichi.

(He is making the rather human-centric assumption that any aliens he meets would communicate using sound, but still.)

Kaito goes on to talk about the Voyager Golden Record, which is a real thing that I hadn’t heard of until I saw this FTE.

Kaito:  “It was put on a spacecraft called the Voyager. It was a message to any aliens that found it. It had greetings in a bunch of languages, images of landscapes… and also music.”

It’s really cool that humanity did this and so like Kaito to be invested in this kind of thing!

Kaito:  “In the not-too-distant future, in fact! I, Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars, will be the first human to ever come in contact with an alien!”

Kaede:  (…Where does he get this confidence from?)

What a dork. Aliens existing: mathematically likely. Aliens being encountered by humanity within Kaito’s lifetime: extremely mathematically unlikely. But that’s not going to stop him!!! He is so ridiculously determined.

Kaede:  (I know well that music can transcend words and language to unite hearts as one. Oh god, I’m starting to sound like a hopeless romantic like Kaito! Hahaha…)

They are both so idealistic and so focused in different ways on communicating feelings to others and it’s great.

Kaede:  (But I won’t lose… I won’t give up. Because I want to see everyone’s smiles just a little longer.)

Guh, Kaede just wants to make everyone smile and that’s why she’s going to do what she’s going to do.

In the morning, Monokuma shows up at the door when she’s expecting Shuichi, to tell her her lab is open.

Monokuma:  “Now, go to the Ultimate Pianist’s Lab right away and compose a murderous melody!”

Ha. Ha ha. Oh dear.

And then she does the cliché of assuming it’s still Monokuma the second time the doorbell rings.

Kaede:  “Geez, enough already! You’re bothering me!”

Shuichi:  “Ah, I’m sorry! Should I come back later?”

Kaede:  “Oh, Shuichi! Sorry, just ignore what I said!”

Come on, Kaede, you could at least tell him you thought it was Monokuma so he doesn’t spend the rest of today anxiously wondering why you yelled at him and whether you secretly hate him.

I randomly decided to examine Kaede’s closet before leaving and…

Kaede:  (It even comes with my pink vest…)

Well that sure is a suspiciously specific detail that isn’t ever going to be relevant later or anything.

Kokichi:  “C’mon! I wanna see you fly! Robots have jet packs or whatever under their feet, right?”

This is some brief foreshadowing that also highlights how little of a damn Kokichi ever gives about saving everyone. If he’s apparently so enamoured with the idea of Keebo flying, when Keebo’s lab opens up in chapter 4, he could have tried to persuade Keebo to use his jetpack and laser gun sooner.

Rantaro:  “Look, like I told you before, I was just a little confused. Not being able to remember my own talent is… stressing me out. Really, I would appreciate it if you didn’t ask me about it anymore.”

This is after Shuichi tries to ask Rantaro again what he meant regarding the Ultimate Hunt, which Rantaro sees as an “interrogation”. He really must be horribly lost and confused, just like Shuichi remarks in chapter 6. He doesn’t feel like he can trust anyone, and he’s terrified that Shuichi and Kaede don’t trust him and that if he tells them the truth of how he knows about the Ultimate Hunt that’ll just make them trust him even less. Guh. If only he did trust them and tell them everything, then the tragedy that’s about to occur wouldn’t happen, but it’s so, so understandable why he doesn’t.

He also leaves after the conversation is over, making it clear that he really doesn’t want to talk about this at all.

Maki:  “…Heading to the dining hall? You guys better brace yourselves, then.”

Shuichi:  “Wh-What? Why?”

Maki:  “…Because Miu’s there.”

I absolutely adore how 1000% done Maki always is with the most annoying members of the cast. It’s very refreshing.

Maki:  “…And what about you?”

Shuichi:  “No, not yet… I suppose only Miu and Kaede’s labs have been prepared…”

Maki:  “…I see.”

[Maki leaves]

Shuichi:  “…It sounded like Maki was in a bad mood.” 

Kaede:  “I think Miu was bragging about her lab being open. But I don’t think that would bother Maki, since she seems so level-headed.”

The way Maki asks about other labs, and their observation that Maki seems uncharacteristically bothered by something that isn’t just Miu being Miu, makes me think that this is Maki being afraid of the possibility of her lab being open now. Like she’s thinking that it’s already accessible somewhere in the school and she just hasn’t found it yet, and now that it might have opened up, someone else could find it before she can stop them and learn her secret that she’s so afraid of having anyone know.

In the dining hall, Kaede starts begging to Miu because she’s just that open and straightforward of a person, but it’s sweet that Shuichi is inspired by this and joins in, even though that’s very much not the kind of thing he would have been comfortable doing if he’d been on his own.

Kaede:  “Thank you, I owe you! Even after we escape, I’ll owe you forever and ever and ever!”

Miu does not deserve Kaede being this pure and good at her.

I’m not sure why Shuichi doesn’t have Kaede come with him to the back of the warehouse to get the sensors and instead asks her to wait there by the sports equipment. I mean, obviously from an out-universe writing perspective I do, but man, that on-a-whim decision of his made all the difference.

It’s a little odd that the only photo-taking cameras the warehouse has are disposable ones, but as we learn in chapter 5, it also has video cameras as well. Kind of makes you wonder why Shuichi didn’t try asking Miu to modify one of those instead. That wouldn’t have had the problem with intervals.

Kaede:  (Will these cameras really work? Even if we take pictures of the mastermind and persuade everyone… What will we do after that? The mastermind could just smirk and order the Exisals to attack everyone. Can we really protect everyone with this plan? Will we really be able to escape this place?)

And right here is the moment where Kaede resolves to murder the mastermind instead of just capture them. She hasn’t got the whole Rube Goldberg setup in mind yet, but she grabs herself a murder weapon all the same, despite not being sure how she’s going to use it.

I’ve been talking a lot about Kaede and Kaito’s similarities and the ways in which Kaede is a better leader than Kaito, but this is one of the situations in which Kaito would have been better than her. Had it been Kaito instead who was helping Shuichi with his plan, his ridiculously stubborn optimism wouldn’t have allowed him to think this thought all the way through. He’d have stuck to Shuichi’s plan, refusing to acknowledge the possibility that it might not work. Kaede is also very optimistic, but she’s more capable of acknowledging negative possibilities than Kaito is. While that can often be a good thing, in this situation that works against her to make her conclude that her only option is murder.

Kaede:  (I shoved the things I was holding into my backpack, and ran after him.)

Everyone knows what’s up with this line since it’s referred back to during the trial, but it’s still really good. The game can no longer afford to be completely truthful with Kaede’s thoughts and actions, but it never tells an outright lie. It merely omits certain details, leaving just enough there for you to figure out what’s really happening when you know what to look for. And while there are probably a few of Kaede’s thoughts about her murderous intent that we’re not seeing, it does make sense that she would mostly try to avoid thinking about it in the first place.

Kaede:  “I was just thinking how amazing you are for coming up with this plan, Shuichi.”

Aww, look at Kaede admiring Shuichi for his talent even though he doesn’t believe in it himself. They really are a great team. Shuichi’s detective skills make him able to come up with this plan which at least on the surface looks pretty solid, but he doesn’t have the confidence or courage to carry it out on his own. Meanwhile Kaede is so great at encouraging people but doesn’t have the skills to come up with a plan like this, so she needs to team up with Shuichi for her ability to encourage people to actually be useful. If only Kaede had been able to truly believe that simply capturing the mastermind would be enough to save them.

(And, you know, if only Shuichi had been aware of the several pieces of information he’s missing that indicate the plan won’t actually work to capture the mastermind in the first place. But he’s still doing a really impressive job with what he has.)

During free time, I took Kaede to look at her newly-opened lab, because I could.

Kaede:  (Smiling, I ran toward it and lifted the cover. Beneath it, a clean row of black-and-white keys smiled back at me. I haven’t touched a piano in a couple days, but it feels like it’s been forever since I played.) “Hahaha… I really am the Piano Freak…”

Kaede being so excited about seeing the piano is adorable. I love how she describes it as “smiling back at her”, like every piano is a friend of hers.

Also, it really has been forever since she played. Since, you know, she didn’t exist until a few days ago and has literally never played before. The previous owner of her body might have done, but not her.

It’s a shame there isn’t an option to, like, have Kaede pass the free time slot by just playing the piano. I feel like she totally would have considered that instead of hanging out with someone. (She does actually end up playing the piano in Angie’s second FTE with her, but it sucks that that’s the only way to allow her to play it before she dies.)

Shuichi:  “You giving me something this wonderful… I wish I could give you something in return.”

Don’t worry, Shuichi, it’ll be your turn to give everybody presents soon.

(Does Kaede just, like, bequeath Shuichi the giant stack of presents she’s amassed from the Monomono Machine, so that he can continue her wish of making friends with everyone?)

Shuichi talks about how he lives with his uncle and aunt right now because his parents work overseas.

Shuichi:  “Well, for me, they’re just a mom and dad who have a… hands-off approach to parenting.”

Ouch. Seems like Shuichi’s uncle is more of a parent to him than his actual parents.

Kaede:  (Shuichi’s smile seems bitter. I wonder if his parents jerk him around a lot…) “Oh, we got off-topic! Um, there’s something I wanted to ask you about, Shuichi…”

I feel like Kaede is partly changing the topic here because she doesn’t want to make Shuichi think about his not-great parents. Look at her being considerate.

Shuichi’s first case was to find a classmate’s pet alligator.

Shuichi:  “I researched alligator behavior and spent a long time preparing the tools to capture it… I had to climb around mountains and swim up rivers… It was a lot of work.”

It’s things like this that make it all the more believable that their backstories were made up by someone who was trying to write cool exciting characters and not necessarily the most realistic ones.

Shuichi:  “The knowledge it took to solve that case… became the foundation for my detective work.”

Um, are you sure, Shuichi? I guess the more general skills you practiced were useful, but alligator behaviour?

Shuichi:  “And… I was so happy to be of use to someone. I can still hear her ‘thank you’ to this day.”

Aww, Shuichi. He laments a lot later on that detectives can’t help people because all they can do is solve murders once the tragedy has already happened. But even aside from how he’s ignoring the fact that in this killing game he’s directly saving everyone else’s lives by solving the murder, that’s still not true! The kind of work he and his uncle do to find missing people (or pets) is all about helping people!

Kaede:  “It never once occurred to me that detectives could show that kind of compassion. Compassion makes people trust you. If you offer them your hand, they'll reach for it... The world needs more detectives like you.”

And Kaede thinks so too!

Shuichi:  “Because… that’s the first time someone has ever said that to me. I’ll never forget this moment. I’ll be able to believe in myself and be proud of being a detective.”

On the one hand, it’s adorable how much Shuichi needed to hear something like this. On the other hand, it’s a little awkward that he seems to be acting like his issues are all solved now, when they’re very decidedly not and he’s going to continue to be ashamed and afraid of his talent for quite a bit longer.

One of Shuichi’s lines here is fully voiced. Anyone who’s maxed out a character’s FTEs in DR2 (although I don’t think this was a thing in DR1?) might remember that someone usually only gets a fully voiced line on their very final FTE. Which might raise suspicions as to Shuichi’s mortality here on a first time through, making someone think that surely he’d only apparently have so few events if he’s going to die soon, right?

Except that this happens for the second FTE of anyone Kaede hangs out with. So a first-time player who happens to hang out with the same character twice in chapter 1 might end up assuming that that specific character only has two FTEs (especially if they go on to try and hang out with them more times and not get an event regardless of the presents they give), no matter who it is. And because of that, they might think that they just happened to choose to hang out with one of the two characters who’s therefore blatantly going to die this chapter, even though actually this would have happened for literally anyone. It’s like a Schroedinger’s Death Flag.

I dunno; I didn’t get this feeling myself because I first experienced this game by watching a playthrough that barely did any FTEs, but I have to wonder how many players had different experiences of being convinced that a completely different character was going to die than most other players would, based solely on who they chose to hang out with.

This last free time slot is a good one for asking around everyone before actually initiating an event. It’s the last slot before the time limit, and most people are starting to feel nervous about it.

Angie:  “Hmmmm, I feel like cloistering myself away right now. Atua’s not feeling lively, either.”

Even Angie seems to actually be worried, for once.

Shuichi:  “… There’s a whole day left… but I’m starting to get nervous. …I’m sorry I said something so pathetic. I’ll drink some tea and try to calm down… 

Even though Shuichi has a plan to survive the time limit, he’s nervous too. He’s hanging out in the lookout classroom, probably because he’s already feeling antsy about the plan.

Meanwhile, Rantaro is in the library standing close to the moving bookcase again.

Kokichi:  “When tomorrow night comes… and we all die… I wonder what Monokuma is gonna do? Will he end it… or just start a new one…?”

Here’s a neat hint that Kokichi has already figured out what’s up with Monokuma’s time limit. He realises that what Monokuma really wants isn’t to kill everyone but to have an entertaining killing game, so Kokichi’s wondering if Monokuma would really be satisfied with killing them all. He also seems aware of the fact that if the mastermind could kidnap all of them for this so easily, maybe they’re pretty expendable and the mastermind could just kidnap another bunch of kids and try again if this killing game fails.

All very intelligent, perceptive, useful observations that it would be really nice if he shared with everyone. The fact that he doesn’t very much indicates that he only cares about himself.

…Tsumugi, what are you doing hanging out in the Flashback Light classroom? I wonder if that’s just a coincidence, or if she was already preparing the Flashback Light for next chapter – wouldn’t be surprising, since that one is already there when they get to the next floors.

Maki:  “…Hey. Your research lab is open, right? Can you… show me?”

Meanwhile Maki seems more preoccupied with the labs than the fact she’s going to die tomorrow. She probably wants to see Kaede’s lab to get a sense of how obvious a person’s talent is from the inside of their lab, so that she knows how worried to be about her own opening up. Plus, it’s not like she actually needs Kaede’s permission to check out her lab, but maybe Maki’s asking because she knows she would hate someone going into her lab without permission.

But of course, our hangout partner of choice this time…

Kaito:  “There’s only one day until the time limit… Don’t worry, I’m not panicking. I’m an astronaut, after all!”

…is not remotely nervous what are you talking about. Astronauts are always fine!

Kaito:  “Oh, you wanna learn how to have peace of mind, like me? Alright, I’ll show you how!”

Kaede:  (I spent some time learning how to have some peace of mind from Kaito… But he told me stories that made me question his definition of peace of mind…)

Hee. Probably exciting, adventurous stories of effortlessly surviving ridiculous dangers despite seemingly-impossible odds, knowing him. It’s fun how oblivious he is to the fact that other people’s minds don’t work like his and maybe this kind of thing wouldn’t be anyone else’s idea of peace of mind.

Kaito:  “I’ve been thinking this for a while, but, Kaede, you’d make a pretty good astronaut.”

Didn’t I say Kaito has noticed how similar Kaede is to him? He’s been thinking about that a lot, apparently!

Kaito:  “First off, you’re able to both cooperate with people and lead them.”

Again showing how Kaito considers co-operation one of the most important qualities due to his astronaut training, and therefore values it so much in non-space-related people and situations too!

Kaito:  “I haven’t even had to rally everyone here together yet because you’ve beat me to it.”

I see you leaving out the reason why she beat you to it, Kaito. But this supports what I was saying before that he absolutely would have done if Kaede hadn’t done it first!

Kaito:  “But you do tend to go ahead on your own sometimes.”

Look who’s talking. Kaito, who out of the two of you nearly got themselves killed two days ago because they acted without thinking?

Kaede:  “That’s true…”

…Then again, Kaede’s not denying it. After all, she is doing something on her own without telling anyone, which is precisely what’s going to end up getting her killed, so really Kaito is right to be worried.

Kaito:  “How about I make you my sidekick?”

Oh, Kaito. This must sound ridiculous on a first playthrough but makes so much more sense when you’ve seen the whole story and understand that Kaito literally does this with people all the time.

But it’s also very interesting, because when Kaito considers someone his sidekick, he thinks of them as a person who needs his support and whom he’s now going to devote his efforts to helping… and that’s not Kaede. Kaede is just as emotionally strong and capable of managing on her own as Kaito is – possibly even more so. Kaito knows this. So what I think he’s really doing here is trying to make himself feel just as good as Kaede by pretending that she’s someone who might need his support, to hide from the reality that Kaede’s been leading and encouraging everyone and seemingly working on a plan to get them all out of here while Kaito has done nothing except nearly get himself killed.

Kaede tells him she’s not interested in being an astronaut (or his sidekick), but Kaito’s still planning on using his job to make it easier for normal people, including artists like her, to get into space one day too.

Kaito:  “I’m going to take the culture that grew on Earth and spread it across the universe!”

He’s so good! He cares so much about communication that he wants to let all those aliens out there know exactly what humanity is all about!

Kaito:  “There isn’t any unnecessary art or technology in this whole world!”

I love this. Even though he’s personally most enthusiastic about space, he thinks everyone and everything is important. He might have a seemingly inflated view of his own importance, but he truly believes that everybody else is just as incredibly important, too!

Kaede:  “I thought you just wanted to travel to space, and that’s it. But you’re already thinking about what you’ll do afterward.”

Kaede realises she underestimated him! There’s a lot more to Kaito being an astronaut than just thinking space is cool.

Kaito:  “Of course! I’ll create a path for the people who come after me! That’s my role!”

Even when it’s him being an astronaut, the thing that’s supposed to be the most about himself, Kaito is still thinking of it as something to help everyone else as much as possible and not just as his own personal achievement. He’s so, so good.

Kaito:  “I promise I’ll make a path out of here too, so don’t worry!”

This is his fully-voiced line for this event – because of course it is. He really, genuinely wants to be able to do that, even though he has no idea how. And in the end, he does manage to play an important role in getting everyone else out of there.

Kaede:  (He tried to convince me of his goals, despite having no way to pull them off… Only Kaito could be this confident without a plan…)

…Pretty much, Kaede, pretty much.

This is one of my favourite FTEs – they could have just made it about why Kaito wants to go into space, but instead they present it in a way which makes it also about Kaito’s similarity to Kaede and what he admires in her, which is so interesting and relevant and I’m really happy they had a whole thing about it here.

Kaede:  (No, it won’t be our last nighttime ever… Just our last night in this horrible place.)

Kaede is so determined. (To kill the mastermind.)

Kaede:  (Yeah… We promised we would all be friends once we got out.) “…”

That ellipsis implies there are some thoughts she’s having here that we’re not privy to. Probably about the fact that no-one would want to be friends with her if they knew she killed someone. This might be when she starts thinking about disguising her crime.

Kaede:  (The time limit was set to expire tonight… but weirdly enough, I was looking forward to it.)

Looking forward to saving everyone and getting out of here, of course! (Probably looking considerably less forward to becoming a murderer.)

Kaede:  (Even then… I barely slept the whole night.)

Yeah, plotting a murder can’t be good for your ability to get to sleep.

---

[Next post]

[dancer-cotillion]

I mean there's always the solution of fuck canon. When in doubt, fuck canon. So what if canon says there's only one dose of each antidote, boom now's there's at least two doses in the vial. Also it makes sense with how big the bottle is that would be multiple doses it makes no sense why there would be only one. Canon is stupid in that regard. (Gonna put this in multiple parts to make it easier. 1/?)

You’re smarter than me. xD To be fair though, this is the first fandom I’ve ever written for where I’ve wanted to say ‘fuck canon’ and thus I don’t have much experience in such matters. Normally I write under the assumption that canon happened exactly the same or is going to happen exactly the same or is never going to happen. So, my fics don’t normally interact with canon events much at all, especially in this way.

It did not at all occur to me that I could just say that there were two doses in the bottle. I’m not really sure how I didn’t consider that, in hindsight it’s pretty obvious. And I’d forgotten about Angie’s thing with blood and I didn’t even think about the bug vac. I did consider the arm thing though and originally I did mention Kokichi using one of the wax effigies (Rantaro’s to be precise because that’s the one he has in his room) to solve that issue before I just decided to cut it so I wouldn’t have to get into any detail about things revolving around the plot hole.

So yeah, this scenario could actually work without any plot holes. I still wish that that’s what happened. T.T Even if I didn’t ship them as much as I do, that would’ve been a much more interesting reveal, that everything Shuichi just figured out was the exact conclusion Kokichi wanted to lead everyone to. Since the protagonist always figured out the truth in pretty much every other trail in the games, it would’ve been such a mind blow to subvert that. It’s such a missed opportunity. :(

[liarsguilt-a]

What is “fun” and what is “boring” to Ouma Kokichi?

From here on out, it’s headcanon and blog canon territory! This is merely based off of my Ouma’s backstory, and the experiences he goes through in canon. Any or all things that may not line up with him may be accidental or purposeful, but let’s all be respect, right?

We always see Ouma refer to people as boring or fun/interesting/amusing. It is a key component to his character, as he is ALWAYS referencing if someone is boring or not. 

It fits his supreme leader persona all too well, the one he decides to put on when he needs to. As sociopaths and psychopaths are seen, as he portrays his supreme leader personality, they are self-centered, not stopping even if they hurt people physically or emotionally. 

Selfishness flows from their image, it only matters that you are amused or you’re not amused in that logic, are you pleased, interested? If you are not interesting or fun, then you are boring, you are unneeded. No matter your redeeming qualities, how kind you are, how compassionate or talented, it makes no difference if you are absolutely boring. 

It is an incredibly harsh insult if Ouma calls you boring, or if you decide to call Ouma boring in return. As Ouma has somewhat been taught and raised, being boring is not a good thing. The reason you never see Ouma talk about what’s “good” and what’s “bad” is because that’s not what his image entails. What kind of villain uses hero terminology?!

(below are from the Danganronpa wiki)

(If you say “this is boring”)

You’re straight up saying Ouma is boring. That is incredibly harsh on him and you even get his fake cry (while he does it a lot, he tends to do that before he gets serious). And his last statement is just him scolding you straight up, saying that it is rude to say you’re bored with someone and they didn’t have a good time together afterwards.

(If you say that you might fall asleep)

You’re saying you are tired in the presence of someone else, you’d assume you’re not entertaining enough to keep them awake, especially when you literally JUST got to the damn place. 

(If you say you’re tired inside the gym)

The gym, while it isn’t incredibly interesting to him, Saihara took him there specifically and suddenly says “Yeah I’m tired,” something that seems kinda insulting considering you haven’t even been there that long. It tells Ouma that he’s boring and it isn’t worth exerting energy for him.

(If you decide to just sit down and take in the scenery)

You take the time to call Ouma out and take him out to do something with him. He seems to be bored here, which he finds somewhat insulting. It’s like taking someone out on a date in a filthy dumpster yard with flies swarming the place and it smells bad (which in itself is rude and insulting to the person you bring out), it’s just something he really does not like and possible makes him uncomfortable. 

In all these instances, Ouma takes deep offense to doing nothing and is slightly hurt when someone considers him boring (The second one was more subtle, as you are saying you want to fall asleep in his presence, which makes him jump the gun to “wow, this is so boring that I’m gonna sleep on you because you’re so boring”). When he is bored, he straight up insults you by saying that even his lie was horrible and that you’re boring him (which is an even more serious insult when you consider that Ouma holds Saihara very high on his standards of being interesting as seen on his whiteboard and a few conversations). 

What’s more noteworthy is that Ouma seems to get more serious than he usually is when you say these kinds of things to him. While his lying persona comes up, in the end of them, he just drops it and tells you the truth of how he feels, something he usually only does when it means something personal or serious to him. 

We also see that in Ouma’s final moments, he makes it a priority to ask that he wasn’t boring.. right? It seems rather odd that you’d be concerned about someone seeing you as boring or amusing when you’re about to die, especially when the only person who can see you or hear you at the time is one person. While he most likely knew Momota would share what he said, that was a question for him, and him alone. 

We will make an assumption that boring is an insult to him because of the way he reacts to people saying he is, and when he looks at someone he dislikes (like Shinguuji after he kills both Yonaga and Chabashira), he would most likely call them that in return since it is a very heavy insult from his persona who seems to take amusing people and making people have fun a very big priority. It is something that isn’t an okay thing to say, almost like a slur in his world as he even is concerned about how boring he is in death. To note, he also mentions that a game like this could never be any fun at all, further noting his hatred towards things that are not considered entertaining to him (of course, forcing people to kill each other).

Now, let’s go onward to what fun is to him. 

As we have looked into what’s boring to him, we can assume the opposite is what’s entailed, correct? Well.. I wouldn’t say that exactly. Being interesting seems to be a lot more loose to Ouma than the word boring is to him. 

When he talks about people being interested, I believe you had much potential to him of becoming closer. You are someone who has his eyes, someone who has the attention of someone on you, something he is often used to people doing to him. Being boring isn’t fun, so why not just be fun?!!!!! 

I believe his version of interesting has double-meanings. 

It’s his sendoff to Akamatsu, someone he did hold lots of respect towards in the end even for a murderer. It sticks to his persona while also telling Akamatsu, albeit too subtly, that he acknowledged her as a person and respected her before her eventual demise. It is incredibly important to note this moment in time, as he considered her action foolish but lightly respectable unlike the other two uninvolved murderers, a big feat considering his hate towards murder. 

This shows it can come outside of his supreme leader persona slightly, even showing admiration or respect towards someone even when they have done his taboo. Considering someone interesting or not boring is an incredibly big thing for him, for someone who did something he hates so much to be given this shows that it means a lot for him to say something like that. Saying someone is interesting to him is like giving the biggest compliment you could give in his entire life, aside from a few.

Being interesting is something you’d want to be if you want to get close to Ouma, so listen to him when he says you should be more interesting or offers you something to be “less boring.”

I’d say the second one is.. less impactful. It’s a bit more personal reasoning, as being interesting is something he was most likely forced to believe is his version of “good.” As you can see in your Salmon Mode results, there are four ways you can please or displease someone; best, good, bad, or worst. 

Let’s quickly go over what he says specifically.

(still from the Danganronpa wiki)

(Worst option)

I’d say it’s pretty self-explanatory, you’ve gotten him so irritated that he will literally call you out on it. In comparison to him, you’re so inconsiderate and boring, something he thought was in low possibilities as he even acknowledges his stature with the others.

(Bad Option)

It’s pretty obvious what he means here, too. He’s telling you to become more interesting so that you make him want to spend more time with you if you’re gonna keep trying. He’ll go back alone without you.

(Good Option)

Ouma admits he had a good time, an obvious good choice for him. While he doesn’t feel like he has to really be nice to you, he finds your presence alright and easy to have fun with, good job trooper. Casually suggests they head back.

(Best Option)

It’s actually REALLY good. You’ve gotten him teasing you and having fun with you, lying, even admitting that he had a lot of fun with you, even surprising him of all people. You’ve made him have so much fun that he most definitely wants to see you again. Ouma suggests that you should walk to the dorms together, happy.

The second definition of his interesting/fun/amusing is being wanted! That’s right, being wanted, as vague as that sounds. Well, being desired by people is important, being undesirable means that you’ll be left alone in his world (While he seems to accepted being undesirable to some, he puts the most effort into being interesting to people he respects, likely because he doesn’t always like playing the lone wolf). 

While they don’t seem all that different, being respectable and being desirable are very different things for him. You can still be respectable while not being recognized or love, and you can be desirable but not so respectable or lovable. 

So, now we’ve gone over what they mean.. What does that mean to my Ouma and his backstory? Well, I’ll go over some key components to my Ouma before we start going into the discussion on why it’s important to him. 

In my backstory, he has been under influence of his older brother, Itsuki, the leader of a cult-like organization who is very manipulative and narcissistic, a psychopath to boot who has negatively affected Ouma in many different ways. To him, being desirable and amusing is the only thing that matters as he only lives to have fun and enjoy himself, even going as far as to harm his younger brother and shape him into what he wants to satisfy his own entertainment.

When he was taken in by him, he was at a very young age. His entire life, he has been taught that being fun is “good” and being boring is “bad,” morals that aren’t exactly healthy for the regular world. Even so, no matter how much he tries to think otherwise, these have been implemented into his mind. 

It is very imperative that you understand that he has grown up with this mentality, not being corrected by anyone as he has had no one to correct him and is even encouraged to continue it (though he doesn’t seem to always like this mindset). He has always had to be entertaining, to make his brother happy and having fun by doing several mind games in order to get his approval in order to survive (getting basic needs such as eating and water, along with safety from physical abuse).

In his mind, this merely enforced the whole “fun” and “boring” argument into him. He feels that he has to be entertaining for people to consider him desirable or lovable, also as a means to survive and stay safe. There is clear discomfort and irritation if he is considered boring/uninteresting, even saying it’s rude to call someone that if he is confronting someone who doesn’t know about his policy. 

This rule is something that has always been with him and is incredibly difficult to erase. Expect him to come off as rude if you consider him boring or uninteresting.

[itsclydebitches]

I believe that the Staff will be taken away from Atlas in V8, cause I'm pretty sure that if RWBY or whoever summoned the Brother Gods there, they'll take one look at Atlas/Mantle, see how things are and wipe Remnant clean. If Atlas does crash into Mantle and they get summoned later on, at least they might see the two people working together to rebuild for a better future.

Given the story’s strange insistence that the group hold onto the relic throughout Volume 7 - not even just as an obvious way for Neo to eventually steal it, but likewise implying that the RWBYJNR group basically owns it at this point. Ruby’s somewhat scandalized “But you said we could keep it” was concerning when talking about a god-given magical object gifted to all humanity that they initially intended to lock away - I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they got hold of the Staff and ran off with it. After all, from a practical perspective they’ve already got Penny, but as said, the story also seems to be pushing for the assumption that because they’re the protagonists they’re also owed the relics. Within the story-world, Ironwood claiming that the group should continue carrying the Relic around a semi-rioting city despite there being an objectively safer vault right there was insane and really speaks to the belief of, “Title characters get to hold onto the cool magical stuff, no matter how stupid that is.” I fully expect for us to cycle through all four of the relics, the story coming up with (hopefully) persuasive, but also possibly contrived reasons for why this group is able to access/find them. Then, working under the assumption that all have a consciousness like Jinn, they’ll learn something/deal with conflicts stemming from each. Once the relics were introduced, it seemed pretty likely that they’d be the four stepping stones to eventually fighting Salem, thereby leveling up our group and simultaneously stretching out the series (RWBY is a money-maker now). Which is partly why Salem’s presence at the end of the volume seems so strange to me. We don’t need to hype her up as a threat - that’s been done to such an extreme degree the story just skipped over why this group would be willing to face off against her given her power, influence, and immortality - and you don’t normally introduce a final boss like that until it’s the last showdown. Especially when she’s canonically characterized as staying on the sidelines for a thousand years... 

Anyway, getting off track there. Obviously we’ll have to wait to see how the beginning of Volume 8 handles Salem’s unexpected appearance. Regardless, yeah. It never even crossed my mind that they would try to summon the gods anytime soon because 

a) They still need all four relics. One is off in another kingdom, another guarded by Ironwood, a third stolen by Neo, and the fourth so well hidden even Salem hasn’t found it yet 

b) The group hasn’t even bothered to mention the gods yet. It would be one hell of a jump to go from a total fixation on Ozpin to “We should summon them without ever talking about the potential repercussions of that.” 

c) Those potential repercussions are massive. Astronomical. Literally world ending! RWBYJNR isn’t just working under the threat of annihilation - which would be bad enough - but also the trauma of seeing exactly what the gods are capable of via Jinn’s vision. They watched that horror with their own eyes and the fact that they didn’t come out of it shaking is astounding to me. The immediate understanding should have been, “We’re not summoning the gods until we’re ABSOLUTELY sure we’ve united everyone to their satisfaction. Cover all our bases and double-triple-quadrupedal check things.  And even then we’re not doing it unless it’s the absolute last resort because holy shit, we’ve gotten plenty of evidence that the gods are cruel, fickle beings and we can’t trust them to judge us fairly. If this is a bad call we haven’t just made a garden-variety mistaken, we’ve doomed our entire world.” 

Which circles right back to Ozpin’s supposed lack of action. I’ve theorized since Volume 6 that Ozpin did have a plan to defeat Salem: summon the gods. Get them to destroy her. Eliminate her immortality. Whatever. Only problem is that in order to get the gods’ favor they have to face judgement first, hence decades of “useless” defensive work wherein Ozpin educated and played peace-keeper. Summoning the gods is how they defeat her... up until he saw the whole story via Jinn’s vision and realized precisely how dangerous the gods are. They’re not the kindly benefactors that he assumed they were based on his one, short interaction with Light. So when Ruby asks, “What’s your plan?” in that moment Ozpin spoke truthfully. He doesn’t have one because his previous plan just got a massive, dangerous hole blown into it... but that doesn’t mean it’s now impossible. Summoning the gods is still an option for defeating Salem, but suddenly it’s far more of a gamble than he ever assumed it would be. Now, Ozpin isn’t just working under the fear of, “Have I unified Remnant enough to their satisfaction? Have I passed the test?” but also “What if I do everything right and they wipe us out anyway?” Based on the information Jinn provided, that’s a very real possibility. 

[one-thousand-splendid-stars]

“Femfirmative Fics”

I’ve had a version of this post saved in my drafts for months, but it never felt like a good time to post it. But I guess now would be an appropriate time, because of this femfirmative blog. I personally find the whole concept of it insulting - to say that our writing so misogynistic that there needs to be an entire blog dedicated to filtering out our “bullshit,” as she calls it.

I always, always treat Molly well in my fics. In all my experience of reading Johnlock fics, the women (especially Molly and Irene) always have way more dignity and agency than is ever given to them in the show, so I don’t know where this claim is coming from:

In 99.9% of the Johnlock fics I’ve read, Molly is given happiness, and isn’t hung up on Sherlock for years and years like she is in the show. Of course, there’s always going to be some outliers you could dig up. No fandom is perfect. But every single popular “big” fic I’ve read treats her well. 

Mary ranges from a friend of John’s, to temporary girlfriend, to ex partner, to villain - yes, villain. Because choosing to explore a characters’ darker sides which are shown explicitly in the show on more than one occasion is not “ridiculing” or “tearing her down.” And even if you’re not interested in a fic like that, it takes two seconds to just read the tags. That’s what they’re there for. 

Idk if the runner of this blog (who is a multi shipper but mostly a Sherl0llian) is trying to be insulting with her wording, or just genuinely isn't reading the right fics. But either way, the idea that we’re misogynists has been around in the fandom for awhile, and I want to take a closer look at some of the reasons why. Because it’s mostly supported by people taking legitimate arguments and rewording/exaggerating them until they’re unrecognizable, leaving out key points, judging the all of us based on a small percentage that they know most of us disagree with.

So here goes:

1. Not liking Mary - First of all, people who say this can never decide on their definition of “don’t like.” There are plenty of Johnlockers who love Mary and/or were hoping to see her become a kickass villain. It is possible to like a character who is a villain. And yes, there are some who don’t like Mary for perfectly valid reasons - shooting and almost killing the main character for no reason being among them. People often like to reduce this issue down to “we hate her because she gets in the way of two dicks touching.” This argument completely overrides all of the horrible things Mary canonically did, and the numerous surface level reasons to dislike her. It’s just a convenient one-liner for them to pull whenever someone points out canon facts about her from the show - not to mention it’s an extremely homophobic thing to say. Mary is a dynamic, fleshed out character who has made morally questionable (and flat out wrong) decisions, so it’s expected that there will be a wide range of opinions on her. 

1. Saying Mary is a villain - This is misogynistic how? Some of the best villains in popular media are women, and are sometimes even fan favorites. If this reading of her character had no basis whatsoever, then yeah, I can understand how it’d be seen as a convenient way to “get her out of the way.” But what people like to ignore is that there are numerous subtextual AND surface level clues pointing to her being a potential villain. The most obvious being her trying to kill Sherlock, the most subtle being her similarities to Moran from canon, and a whole bunch in between. There is a reason this theory exists - it’s totally plausible and would have been awesome. But it’s just more convenient for people who hate Johnlockers to dismiss it as misogynistic.

2. Not liking Molly- Again, this definition of “don’t like” pretty much just boils down to the fact that we don’t ship her with Sherlock…. I mean that’s pretty much all I have to say on this one. There’s not much else I can say. There are Johnlockers who love Molly, and those who don’t care so much for her, and everything in between. The same way that there are fans who like, dislike, or are neutral towards other minor characters like Irene or Mycroft. (And the same way that there are some Sherl0llians who openly hate John, but get angry if someone doesn’t like Molly. I’v never read their stuff but I think it’s safe assumption to make that those people’s hatred of him leaks into some of their fics. I HIGHLY doubt John is treated with the utmost dignity and kindness all the time in their fandom).  

3. Reducing Molly and other female characters to mirrors - This one applies to tjlcers, not all Johnlockers. A common thing for anti-tjlcers/ other shippers to say is “[Female character] is not a mirror! She’s her own person!” Two points here. 1. Being a mirror really isn’t reduction at all. Of course she’s her own person! But that’s not to say that when there are such blatant parallels between her and one of the leads, maybe just maybe those were put there for a reason. Being a mirror is basically the same concept as being foil, except it’s through similarities instead of contrast. I don’t see how this is a reduction. If that’s the case, then any time a female character is used as a foil in literature, is it sexist too? 2. How is it sexist when tjlc reads both male and female characters as possible mirrors? What about the gay innkeepers? Sholto? Mr. Holmes? Or Ajay, who strongly paralleled Mary?? Not sexist then, is it? 

Now let’s look at how Johnlockers- generally speaking- actually do view the women in the show. (Again, we’re not a hive mind, so there will be some who disagree but here we go:)

Mary: see above

Molly: see above 

Hudders: Love her

Mummy Holmes: Love her

Rosie: Wish she’s had an actual purpose in the plot instead of being a prop for some “awwws” and then disappearing until the end 

Irene: Badass lesbian. ACD feminist icon. Wish she’d beaten Sherlock like she did in the canon. Too bad Moffat’s writing of her is misogynistic to the core and she had to fall for him and be weakened by her sentiment instead. Good thing there’s fanfic!

Janine: Super funny, great brotp potential with Sherlock. Wish she could have returned to the show. So much potential, what with her connections to Magnussen’s network, friendship with Mary, and budding friendship with Sherlock 

Eurus: Canon villain. Won't apologize for not liking her. Doesn't appear in most johnlock fics, although i do know of some great ones that include her and make her far more interesting and fleshed out than a mind-controlling sociopath. 

The claim that our fics are misogynistic is absurd and comes from absolutely nowhere. Obviously, you could dig and find outliers where the woman are treated badly. The same way that you could find Sherl0lly fics that treat John horribly if you wanted. 

My point is, is it some huge problem that makes this femfirmative blog necessary? Absolutely not. 

I don’t think having blog a dedicated to reccing Johnlock fics that have well-written women is a bad idea, necessarily. My problem is the blog runner’s approach. 

This easily could’ve been a fun idea aiming to promote our work instead of presenting it like a filter for those who want a safe place from the dark, scary Johnlock tag on AO3. She introduced it by subtly and not-so-subtly dissing Johnlockers, making wild claims about our writing, calling us names, and then switching to praising our fics (but it’s too bad we’re so sexist, right?) 

She also could’ve added more johnlocky tags to the post to help it get to our side of the fandom. Instead she just used “jlock,” the tag for those who don’t ship it (which slightly makes me question the intentions of this blog).

She also could’ve tagged some Johnlock rec blogs who would’ve been happy to help spread the word instead of only tagging a Sherl0llian (another questionable thing about this). 

Heck, I even would’ve been down to send along some recs, if this hadn’t been approached with all all the petty insults and complaining about how hard it is to find a Johnlock fic that isn’t sexist (it’s not hard at all). But why would I want to participate in something that’s openly insulting, made by someone who posts wank about Johnlockers all the time on her normal blog. Our most popular rec blog already has a ton of lists entirely dedicated to the women. We don’t need to look any further than her and others to find fics that this blog calls “femfirmative.”