#same goes for Lily from Ender Lilies

[ottisbuns]

Game developers need to stop making their title themes be absolute bangers please I just want to start playing I've been sitting here for like 30 minutes

[plip-plap-plop]

Hi! I recently discovered your blog and was really captivated by your writing. I'd love to learn more about what inspires your stories and how you approach your craft.

Well, first off, Thank you quite a lot! You’re very kind!

“How do I approach my craft” is a broad one but i will try to offer something unique if not useful, but as to what inspires my stories?

I am a ball of my favorite things. I am a ball of my favorite things, discussing life philosophy, airing my grievances and celebrating humanity through my preferred way of doing it, having ten different perspectives hash it out over beers, swords or, in the case of a young coconut, a crab fight.

I suppose as to my approach, while I’m a slut for the technical details, a thing I can say in a single post is that I’m being a ball of my favorite things, let me explain.

Because art is a navigation of the soul, of emotions and perception, it’s actually technically useful to nerd out. I’m big into media criticism, and my angle is mostly to see what I and others find compelling, and how that was done so I can emulate what I want to.

I think for every piece of significant size I can point out a dozen inspirations for different aspects that I’ve broken down for the parts and paid homage to. The big fic I’m working on takes inspiration from Ender Lilies, Attack on Titan, Bloodborne, Tolkien, the Icemark Trilogy by (I think Stuart Hill?) with later roots drawing from alchemy, various history works and so many other things that the inevitable mix is something only I could come up with. And as I’ve been writing stories that I did and didn’t nail for a number of years, I’m eventually circling back around and taking inspiration and even whole subplots from things I’ve done before that either worked or had potential.

For a more specific example I like the world building of Tolkien, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and Bloodborne, that all scratch the itch of “makes sense intuitively, and if you think about it more deeply, it’s still mystical and cool and there’s still more to explore.”

Because i find that really interesting, I gained pleasure from the inordinate amounts of time putting ambitious world building together so I can see in my work what i see in theirs. (I also had to accept a ridiculous time commitment) You obviously don’t need to do that specifically, Si Vis Pacem is quite crunchy and dense and is meant for a certain type of audience who wants to dig into something and break it down, or is interested in being told a mystery that goes over their head until they look at it a few times, and that person is me, knowing that other people are like me.

I also like smaller more straightforward pieces, like the game Gris, like Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, and nearly any manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, and I do stuff like that, too, brief, linear and digestible, it’s just a matter of what itch to scratch that day.

The other tidbit I’d add is my “super power,” or at least my answer to a common problem, (specifically how one might know they’ve done well) boils down to a different angle on the same thing, and that is learning how to view your work as if it’s someone else’s.

Like if I’m able to inhabit the space of a character that likes what I like, what would they think?

That’s easier said than done, but in my case it helps that I’ve learned not to think of any piece of mine as inherently reflective of my identity. I actually recently scrapped a short story and cannibalized its concept because it was shaping up to say something about humanity that I didn’t believe. My goal wasn’t to see who I was through the art, it was to make it reflect my being, and through that, I often find myself better understanding who I am.

In all those cases, by contemplating what compels you and why, you can see if what you’re doing can move a being of similar disposition to you. That used to be hard for me once, and I think part of what I like about my approach to art is that it helps me process emotions.

To paraphrase Aoi Todo of all fictional people (Jujutsu Kaisen), if you train your eyes you can better prepare your hands.

By way of a caveat that acts as an example, I would hope you take what I wrote here, break it down and sort out the parts that work for you. It’s an art form, and beauty can be found in or in spite of just about anything, and your work has every right to be as experimental, weird, vanilla, edgy, deep, smutty or chaste, violent or clean as you want it to be.

Happy writing, and thank you for the opportunity to nerd out!

[windblooms]

topaz devices | ch. 01

if zhongli isn’t a the brightest individual blessed by the archons, then he’s socially inept, and spends his days stuck behind a desk as the heir of wangsheng incorporated.  frustrated by seeing his best friend burn through his days like paper over a bonfire, childe decides that if there’s one thing worse than a permeant desk job, it’s being converted into a corporate machine in one’s mid-twenties.  and he’s not going to let that happen to zhongli. 

gender-neutral reader x sugar daddy!zhongli.  modern au, slow burn.  chapter 1/?.  2213 words.

as usual, zhongli awakens a minute before his morning alarm goes off.  

and as he lays on the daybed, adjusting to the faint lighting of the moon that floats through the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office, the first thing he does is reach for his phone.  but when he pats down the area beside him, then above his head, and feels nothing, he begrudgingly props himself up on his elbows, and blinks the final bits of sleep out of his eyes.

this isn’t the first time he’s fallen asleep at the office.  admittedly, it’s probably over his hundredth, since he’s found it more practical to crash near his workspace than drag himself three floors up to his room.  but, oh, where did he leave his phone?  zhongli glances around, eyes no longer bleary; it’s not on the coffee table next to him, nor on the floor between it and the daybed, and for a split second he believes he left his phone at the tea station across the hall. 

and then it chimes with his alarm on the marble floor just before his work desk.

“ah,” he sighs to himself, voice still somewhat choked from the morning.  as the tone plays, he runs both of his hands through his hair, pulling back his bangs before letting them fall to the sides of his face, and takes a glance around his office: he vaguely remembers staying up until four in the morning to finish scanning over a forwarded contract, and the three empty cups of caffeinated tea that surround his desktop computer can attest to his commitment; there are reference binders on his desk that zhongli hadn’t put away after using, likely too engrossed in the project to tidy up as he worked, and the most damning evidence of his corporate devotion is easily the fact that, well – 

“conference in one hour,” his phone alarm is interrupted by the sound of its virtual assistant voice.  “conference with,” it continues in robotic fashion, “mrs. ningguang at seven-thirty-a.m.”

– he had scheduled an impromptu meeting after he finished reading said document.  as in, he intended to follow through with a meeting arrangement on less than four hours of sleep.  as in, arranged a meeting when it was three in the morning.  

as in, he also expected others to attend the conference on a four hour’s notice.  

such is the way of wangsheng incorporated, an institution where everyone involved is asked to sell their soul to the matriarch, all for the prosperity of her company.  the matriarch in this case being, of course, zhongli’s mother.

 “conference with,” his virtual assistant repeats, and zhongli hauls himself up from the daybed and onto his feet, padding over to his phone before swiping over the screen to silence all of his notifications. “mrs. ninggua – ” beep.

he inhales, stretches his arms, and then gazes out to the liyuen skyline. 

the horizon is still dark, with only hints of warmth leaking onto the expansive blanket of night.  below, however, the streets are illuminated by commuting vehicles and establishments opening for the day.  from his place on the higher floors of the company building, zhongli can only imagine the hum of life – he’s much too far up to actually hear anything.  

it’s at this moment he realizes that the last time he’s actually stepped foot out of the building was over a week ago – and a grimace becomes his first expression of the day.  archons, he didn’t think he was that busy, but begins mentally count the days regardless.  yeah, 9 days.  zhongli’s frown deepens; knowing himself, it’s probably also been 9 days since he’s left his floor on the building.

as much as he would like to leave, though, the company is more important to him.  until there’s a convenient time for him to take a break, he’ll keep working.  it’s what he’s always done – it’s what he’s good at.  

so he inhales once more, as the skyline is washed with violet.  exhales.  

the clock reads six thirty-three. 

. . . 

it’s around four in the morning when childe decides that zhongli is officially insane.

who the fuck arranges a meeting in the dead middle of the night?  granted, he’s only zhongli’s secretary, so it’s not like he has to take part in it – the gripe here is that he’s the one who manages zhongli’s entire schedule.  so when zhongli goes out on his own, arranging things without telling him first, that’s when the issues start.  

childe receives the conference notice just as the other executives do (while on a comfortable date with his bed); reading zhongli’s attached note with gunk wedged in his eyes and a screen flashing blue light directly into his irises makes him think – 

there’s no way zhongli’s in the right state of mind.  and after three whole years of working with him, others would think that childe’s used to his mercurial behavior by now.  but he would give himself more credit, insisting that he’s not that deep into the corporate mentality to put business before rationale – but maybe it’s the luxury that comes along with being a secretary and not anyone more important.

now, where was he?  oh, yeah.  plotting exactly which words to tell his boss when it’s an acceptable time in the morning.  

that means grumbling obscenities until he falls back asleep, brain power exhausted.  that means waking up at an appropriate time (read: six), rolling out of bed, then heading to the tea bar, and concluding that, well, this is just how zhongli operates.

as in, he can’t be angry at his best friend for long.

ceramic cup in hand and bedhead as thick as a haystack, childe recalls two things that were previously clouded by his indignance: one, that the business life is all zhongli’s ever known, even when he was a kid (that much was made obvious when he couldn’t even list out how many hobbies he had the first time they met).  two, the fact that, when asked, zhongli didn’t know which would be worse between losing stock investments or entire contact with the outside world. 

sheltered is probably the closest word childe can think of, but zhongli isn’t stupid either.  maybe socially inept is the better way to describe him – not like it cripples his personality entirely though.  he’s got some redeeming qualities – childe tells himself to think positively of zhongli for the entirety of his stroll down the hall towards his office – but stops short once he opens the door and realizes that, well, 

“three,” childe mouths incredulously, nearly dropping the ceramic in his hand.  “three cups of tea from last night alone?”

“good morning to you too.”

childe doesn’t have much time to gawk.  he would drag his face down with his fingers if his hands weren’t occupied, but knowing zhongli, he wouldn’t even make note of his dramatics.  absorbed into his work first thing in the morning – and childe, looking down at himself, isn’t even dressed properly.  just a dress shirt and pants, while zhongli has already decked himself out in a full-piece suit.

that’s what happens when zhongli decides that his office is where he’s going to live.

“you know,” childe starts, sighing for good measure.  the ginger makes his way over to zhongli’s desk, replacing the three cups with one of fresh tea.  glaze lily tea, to zhongli’s preference.  “staying up late isn’t good for your health.  especially when you’re high on caffeine six days a week.”

well, duh.  the words come out dumber than he intended, but it gets the point across.  it’s not childe’s job to sound intelligent, only that he knows how to manage someone else’s schedule.  

it takes a few seconds for zhongli to respond, as his fingers are busy typing away at the keyboard.  drafting another email, most likely.  in that time, childe hooks his fingers through the handles of the three cups zhongli had downed the previous night, preparing to carry them out.  “i do what i need to get things done,” the workaholic counters.  his eyes don’t leave the monitor for a second, and childe has half the mind to think that he’s a robot.  “we’ve talked about this before.”

zhongli’s not wrong, but childe’s face sours nonetheless.  “i can’t have the heir of the company sabotaged by his own toxic work ethic, and insist that you take a nap whenever possible, my liege.”

his dramatics doesn’t earn him any points.  he worries briefly that zhongli’s already gone into his own world, only able to be hauled back to the surface once the sun is far gone, and his eyebrows furrow.  but now bent on getting a constructive response from zhongli, he refuses to budge from his spot across the desk.  

almost as if he’s uncomfortable, zhongli looks up.  childe knows he’s not actually peeved, and that the brunette is just thinking of what to say.  three years of working for him taught him as much.  “if i have time to, then i will.”  the young heir averts his eyes towards the screen before meeting childe’s again.  “thanks for your concern.”

if childe were any other person, he would believe zhongli.  zhongli speaks without a falter in his voice – as if it weren’t already as smooth as velvet – and his eyes are resolute when locked onto his.  but he’s not someone else, and the closest individual to a friend that zhongli has.  it would be a disservice, both as a friend and coworker, to leave zhongli to his devices.  so childe doesn’t relent.  it’s his turn to be stubborn and set in his ways. 

he places the cups back onto the desk, and the other man looks up curiously, just in time to see childe’s eyes narrow.  “i mean it, zhongs.”

and, with just as much performative sincerity as before, zhongli says the same thing he always does, with a straight face and empty eyes.  “i do, too.”

“no, you don’t.”  childe’s scowl is as deep as his concern.  he wasn’t joking earlier when he said that zhongli would be murdered by his own obsession with work – “responsibility,” as the younger of the two would insist, but he’s blind to his own persistence, and time has made that blatantly obvious.  “i know you have a meeting soon, so i won’t stay long.  i don’t care if we’ve talked about this before,” he rushes his words, determined to get them in before zhongli quips, “it doesn’t make it any less important.”

a pause.  zhongli’s typing has halted and is instead replaced by silence.  hell, he even folds his fingers together on top of the keyboard, as if telling childe that he finally has his full attention.  but the void in his eyes hasn’t changed: amber, clouded with vermillion, and burning in coals.

childe assesses him sternly, extending the stillness of the moment, before proceeding.  “i’m going to block out your schedule tonight after eight, and we’re going to have a talk.”

zhongli tries not to look fazed.  to his credit, he really, really tries, but his posture bristles just enough to cue the secretary in on his client’s displeasure.  “no, i’m not going to watch over you for the rest of the night to make sure you sleep,” he reassures just as swiftly, half-teasing and half-serious, “but we are going to make some plans.”

both of childe’s hands are flat on the desk as the two of them regard each other.  although zhongli is the taller of the two, his position in the office chair gives childe the height advantage in the current situation.  “after you get enough rest this week, i’m going to get you out of this building,” childe vows to zhongli.  neither of them blink.  “you’re going to walk on the streets and breathe fresh air.  you’re going to spend time with people your age and eat at a restaurant.  you’re going to have fun.” 

it is at that moment, when zhongli’s face falters as if he’s being spoken to in python when his input is java, that childe realizes that he has no strategy, and that he’s just saying the things that he wants for zhongli: he refuses to believe that zhongli will continue to regard this room, conditioned with with frigid air and tailored to each tile on the floor, is his only future, and instead wants his 25 year-old boss to have some semblance of life in his days instead of bleeding through each, only to tear through the next.

childe had the choice to dream towards the life he currently lives.  on the other hand, zhongli never did.  inheriting a multi-million dollar company, especially being the son of the ceo, outwardly sounds like the opportunity only the archons could bestow.  childe would have thought the same too.  

until he realized that predestination sucks, and that zhongli is too good to wither his youth away behind a desk.  

childe has exactly thirteen hours to come up with a plan.  from the thoughts floating in his head, it can turn out in one of two ways:

one: zhongli is integrated back into society and lives a happier, more animated life than what he currently has. 

two: childe loses his job.

[aonogifreactions]

Minecraft headcanons no one asked for

a/n: olcvfgmlkfm this hit me so randomly i dont even know. enjoy!! under the cut due to length!

★ Characters: Rin, Yukio, Mephisto, Amaimon.

★ Words: 1,6k.

Rin:

this sweetheart loves playing with you whenever you ask him to! it relaxes him a lot, plus just having fun with you is making him really happy.

he stays somewhere near you, ALWAYS. he’s way too embarrassed to admit he’s scared (same Rin, same), so whenever he yelps or jumps on his bed because he heard a zombie growl, you can laugh as much as you want, but don’t be surprised if he shoots a glare at you and pouts.

he’ll bring you whatever you want. wood? fine. iron? no problem, he’s already on his way to find a cave (even if he’s afraid of caves.. he’ll do it for you).

he’s not very good at building, so usually he leaves it to you, and it doesn’t really matter whether you live in a “house” made out of dirt or a full ass mansion; no matter what your building skills are, he’s gonna praise you anyway.

sucks at parkour. DON’T ask him to play a parkour map, he’s gonna whine and barely make one jump.

speaking about bad jumping, he’s really clumsy and somehow always ends up with the highest death streak. for example, he’s sprinting to kill a pig, but somehow doesn’t notice a fucking lava pool below him and jumps right into it. accidentally hits a zombie piglin (or pigman, depends on what version you play on) and he’s dead.

HOWEVER, he’s the guy who gets really lucky. do you remember/have a person/friend that always manages to get diamonds first? yep, it’s him. gets the best enchants. both on books and tools or armor. he also gets the ender dragon kill first too.

he won’t play without optifine and texture pack other than the default one. he hates it. his fave is faithful and if it doesn’t work, he’s constantly commenting on how the default one is hurting his eyes.

he will NOT survive listening to both disc “11″ and “13″ he hates it. don’t play it unless you want him to cry.

hasn’t played alpha nor beta versions, but he likes watching vids of it! he gets very nostalgic, which honestly bewilders him because he started playing way after beta. sometimes you can catch him listening to the old soundtrack all teared up, or falling asleep to it.

LOVES GREEN PARROTS. one of them is named after you.

MAY I INFORM YOU, HE DOES PLACE HIS BED TOGETHER WITH YOURS.

Yukio:

unlike rin, he’s always complaining about you asking him to play, but he’s obviously gonna do it (because he loves u,, even if he says he doesn’t). it also relaxes him, but mostly, he likes it because he’s able to get his mind off of “adult things” and finally get some rest.

wooo, he’s the brave one. he isn’t afraid of zombie gurgles or anything like that, so he’s always going to caves first (and gets lost because he’s literally going deeper and deeper FDMKFMV). however, there’s one thing that always startles him... cave sounds. he doesn’t scream, but if you’re near him, you can sometimes witness his character spinning or jerking his head in another direction because of it vcxkvnjhbv

don’t, i repeat, dON’T make fun of him afterward. he’s gonna go all the way back to you and kill you (and then go back mining.. like nothing happened).

the perfectionist. always mines all the resources he sees; during building something he also always makes sure everything’s proportional. gladly counts blocks for you, if your brain can’t work anymore.

now, building! not very skilled with building houses, but he likes building simple decorations, like fountains, gardens or farms. despite him always claiming it’s bad, his work always looks very detailed. not very good with ideas of those things at first, so mainly at the beginning he always finds some inspirations on the internet, but later gets the hang of it and builds his own ideas!

his favorite place to have a house in is somewhere near the ocean.

likes default textures. too used to have anything else.

doesn’t like listening to in-game music, unless it’s something from beta or alpha versions (like “Haggstorm” or “Wet Hands”). Usually listening to his own favorite songs on Spotify.

His favorite disc is “Far”. It used to be “Cat”, but due to him obtaining it like 3000 times he stopped liking it. nor hearing it anywhere near.

when he goes out to get resources and/or food, he comes back with full inventory and shulkers, just like a father that’s about to feed his kids. minimum 10 stacks of iron, coal blocks and food. the nearest 10k chunks of caves is already explored, so you better be ready for a long, lONG WALK to get something new.

he’s also fond of beta versions, but rarely plays them without you.

Mephisto:

this motherfucker wants to literally speedrun every fucking game. meanwhile you’re busy making a wooden pick, he’s out there typing “can’t wait to beat the dragon and get elytras~! ★”

remembers literally every recipe for all items and alchemy. personal minecraft wikipedia right there.

he MUST have a fucking mansion, otherwise, he isn’t playing. fortunately, he’s tried building before, so he’s perfectly capable of building one himself. it’s all made out of pink wool and concrete, along with white concrete accents here and there. 

adding to the previous one, he also has a great decorating sense. the rooms look very good, space is filled nicely and is both pretty and practical. the mansion itself looks very good on outside and inside.

of course, the main bedroom that’s designed especially for you two looks WAY TOO GOOD. I'm not even gonna start on him messing with plugins and making it even prettier.

his skin is a random, pink anime girl.

master with redstone. everything’s automated, there also might be hidden rooms with surprises. there’s a hidden shrine dedicated for you. he hasn’t told you about that though... >_>

even though he gets many useful things from the swamp biome, like lily pads or that cyan flowers, he hates this biome with a burning passion. if he sees it anywhere near his render distance he’s spasming and immediately voicing his annoyance. hates that specific, “dirty and unsightly” green water and grass color.

he doesn’t do much mining, but happily goes with you if you ask him to. even if he has no armor on, he never dies. NEVER. there might be 6 creepers but he somehow survives their explosion.

not scared at all. he knows this game like the back of his hand. he might, however, attempt to scare YOU instead. on purpose. or accidentally hit you so you fall from a large height and die. if you get upset at him afterward, he’s gonna give you even better stuff you’ve had before.

HE LOVES PLAYING ALPHA AND BETA. he started to play probably around very early alpha, so coming back to such simpler times is making him somewhat nostalgic (even if he denies it). on those versions, he builds things that used to be popular back in the day, like simple towers of cobblestone or houses inside mountains. it hits him hard when old soundtrack plays.

Amaimon:

he’s very, very confused. first off, he’s not used to the game at all, but then, he googles almost any recipe or asks you thousands of questions about how to make things. after some time, he finally figures out that there’s a book with recipes in game.

he might steal your items, but usually, he gives you back better items. for example, you notice your iron pickaxe is missing, but suddenly he sprints into the house and throws at you diamonds.

oh, he’s aware of the existence of chests, but for some reason, he likes throwing various items at you. he runs off afterward, leaving you with everything on the ground.

don’t introduce him to bedrock edition, he hates playing minecraft with a gamepad, and will smash it immediately. java edition is the only help for this man.

he’s also clumsy, like Rin. he manages to do that less than him somehow, but he tends to die pretty often anyway. his deaths are the stupidest, sometimes he doesn’t even bother explaining it. he literally can die with gravel suffocating him.

once he goes to the nether, he doesn’t wanna go back to the overworld. he says something along the lines of it being similar to gehenna or whatever, but. no matter what version it is - pre- or post- update 1.16, he likes it and that’s it.

his favorite biome in the overworld is jungle - mostly because of the lively color of grass, but also tall trees. he likes having there treehouses and always asks if you can build one (because he sucks at building. even worse than Rin >_>). his fave in the nether is blue forest or basalt biome - however, he becomes mad quickly on the second one due to frequent gaps filled with lava and magma cubes.

he likes normal slimes though. he even has a pet slime!! QwQ

he named his pet slime after Behemoth. keeps it safe in a glass cube and checks on it regularly. Behemoth doesn’t know about it doe.

he bullies every single villager that’s within his sight. burns their homes. the only thing that survives is the iron golem because he thinks it’s cool.

plays with the basic Steve skin. partially because he doesn’t know how to change it and that he isn’t determined enough to look for any.

forgets that crouching exist and falls off almost every cliff or anything that’s considered high.

[eve6262]

sequestered away

The castle walls are cold, the stone harsh and unforgiving. Her room still holds the last remnants of anything soft, with plush carpeting that’s fraying and ripped at the edges. The desk is rotting in its place, with a letter she doesn’t remember writing or reading. Perhaps if she could get up, she would know what it said.

The sun is beaming down, angry and bright. There’s thunder in the distance; the sky is a perfectly clear blue as far as the eye can see. If she could get to the top of the tallest tower, maybe there would be dark clouds on the horizon waiting for permission.

There’s commotion outside, and for a moment she wonders if someone has come for her. But her legs tell her no, there’s no one coming for her, because where can she go? This is her room, this is her home, this is her eternity. Within the ruined room, where the walls and ceiling are largely intact but holes in spots let in the rain that comes and goes, where she is chained by legs that fused with the flowerbed and refused to move again.

In her arms is Lulu. She cried into her for what felt like days, when reality first set in, but now she clings to the doll as something to ground herself with. Lulu is still there, if nothing else.

She does not remember her own name.

There’s a lot missing from her memory. Maybe it’s the air, she thinks; sickly sweet laden with poison pollen that suffocates until there’s nothing left but a husk of a shell of a body. Opinions on that faded into nothingness, and all she knows now is that it’s like drowning in honey-covered molasses. There should have been a time before this, where the air was thinner, breathable, bearable, where she walked and talked and danced and read and wrote and loved. But that is all gone.

The commotion is louder now. She knows there are some creatures outside her room’s door- can see them from here, through the cracks in the old wood. A beast on four legs, no taller than her as she is now, seated on the floor; the vines have pierced through its skull, a blossoming lily placed between beady black eyes. It paces about, sometimes growling at nothing, sometimes sitting down for a moment. If she looks at it for too long she forgets she isn’t there.

Perhaps it would be a happier time to pretend she was, act as though she could see through its eyes and know everything it knows. Lulu is the only thing that stops her. The poor girl would have no one left.

She is living for Lulu’s sake. Is she the doll?

Noises reach a fever pitch, clashing and clanging and the sound of metal going through flesh and battle. And the beast outside her door runs away, and she’s pitifully alone save for Lulu and her thoughts. In response to a particularly loud clash, she hugs the doll tighter, takes the time to look down at her.

Matted pink hair, eyes piercing into her soul, light porcelain skin and clothes that must have been pastels at some point, but seem more like whites given the slightest hint of color. The sun has washed away all the color in this room; she swears she remembers the carpet being a more vivid red, and yet it feels dangerously close to pink. Her bed is the most obvious victim; where the canopy hides the covers it’s still a vivid crimson, the moment sunlight pierces through the veil it’s a similar color to Lulu’s hair.

Faded, gone, all the spirit left. Much like her.

The flowers must like all the sunlight, likely appreciate the water that ends at her knees. It’s a puddle she doesn’t know the origin of, nor how it continues to stay despite the thirsty vines and overbearing heat of the day. It’s always still, perfectly so, never gets drained by a centimeter or raised by an inch.

There’s a cry outside from someone she should remember. Memories, faintly, tell her that it’s bad that they’re crying out, for that means that person is dying, and she should be sad about that. But there’s nothing there, no connection, no emotions, nothing. Simply the slow death of her own consciousness and eventually, even Lulu will be alone.

The door opens. She looks up, still clutching Lulu, holding her just above the water. It’s a young little boy, with black hair and black beady eyes and vines falling off his limbs. He tilts his head, asking, “Are you still there?”

She should respond, but distantly, she realizes she’s forgotten how to speak. Her head moves for her in a vague nod.

He sways in place a little, turns his head slightly as a figure appears behind him. Some creature with black veins for limbs, vaguely in a butler’s outfit. She can’t hear it speak, but the boy nods, and starts looking around the room. Eventually he happens upon the letter on the desk, which he reads.

Presumably he learns something important from it, because when he puts it down he turns to her and looks directly at Lulu. “That doll.”

She tilts her head in a way she hopes means what about her?

“May I have her?”

Lulu is all that is left of her in this world. Without the doll she will fade away, fall asleep in this shallow puddle, likely finally be eaten by rose vines until she’s but shrubbery-eaten flesh, no longer a consciousness. The little doll is her everything.

He has the same eyes as the beast, she thinks distantly, as she holds out the doll.

Lulu will be forgotten by her, if she clings until her very last breath. And then there will be no one to care for her, or think of her, or save her from the waters. She will fall and be ruined, and it’d be all her fault. But this boy treats her like a long-lost jewel, carefully places her into a bag with all the precision of a surgeon. “Thank you.”

She watches him leave, and distantly wonders why her cheeks feel wet.

---

inspired by Ender Lillies, here comes another random short story no one's gonna read or wanted

~Eve6262

[airkingasparagus]

Can you do what the outsiders would be like now

+

Darry

~Has a man-crush on Jared Padalecki 

~Perfected making chili

~Tried to have a garden but it didn’t work out

~Got into every college he applied to

~Wants a fitbit because he runs before and after work but doesn’t tell Soda or Ponyboy because they can’t afford one

~Has watched “Mean Girls” with his girlfriend well over fifteen times

~Is very concerned about vaping (mainly, Pony vaping)

~Loved reading the Oedipus plays in school (even though he thought they were gross)

~Hides the parenting books he bought when his parents died from Soda and Pony in his underwear drawer

~Looks forward to watching Food Network with Ponyboy on Fridays

Two-Bit

~Instead of Mickey Mouse being his favorite show, it’s “Adventure Time”

~Picks his sister up from the library every day at 5:00

~Has gone to prom every year he’s been in high school

~Went through a big Marvel phase in middle school and will leave the room if anyone mentions it

~His favorite youtuber is nigahiga (Ryan Higa)

~Thinks Jenna Marbles is the hottest girl to walk the planet

~Is Jewish!

~Exclusively shops in the graphic mens’ tee section of Target

~Has way to many shitty stick and poke tattoos

Dally

~Hasn’t had a phone since a social worker in sophmore year used the “find my iphone” feature on him

~Has a copy of “Ender’s Game” he takes with him whenever he skips town

~Doesn’t do social media

~Had his first kiss when he was 14

~Has a habit of getting into fights because he goes after creeps who follow girls out bars

~Sneaks into gyms so he can hit the punching bag

Sodapop

~Skincare bitch

~Instagram famous

~His favorite movie is “Perks of Being a Wallflower” and he cries every time

~Has severe anxiety over dropping out because getting a job WITH a degree is hard and Soda has no clue where he sees himself in five years

~Hasn’t been single for over two months since seventh grade

~Likes handing out candy on Halloween

~Wears fake glasses 

Steve

~His first kiss was Soda in an eighth grade during a game of spin-the-bottle

~I’ve said this before, but Steve doesn’t believe in teenage love

~Thinks everything from 2010s (t.v shows, music, etc. etc.) is trash and wishes he grew up in the 90s/early 2000s

~Watches “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” because of Sarah Michelle Gellar

~Evie’s instgram is full of videos where she tricked Steve into talking with Snapchat filters on that mess with his voice

~Was once caught with Evie in his car by the school resource officer… it was awkward, to say the least

Ponyboy

~Was goth the whole of freshman year

~Only listened to 21 Pilot’s cover of “Cancer” for three months after his parents died

~Spends a lot of time at Barnes and Nobles

~Helped organize his school’s March for Our Lives

~Has a thing for Lily Collins and Demi Lovato

~Vine references with Soda

Johnny

~Wears the same pair of Doc Martens every day

~Was given a long list of numbers he could call about his dad by the Curtis brothers but never he never does

~Didn’t get that you don’t eat a whole pot brownie and suffered for it

~Loves the double chocolate donut from Dunkin Donuts- the Gang always gets him one for his birthday

~Can remember reading “The Cat in the Hat” with his mom and wonders what happened

~Takes French for his language credit

[varaxous]

An image of my base, in total

The “front” view (formerly the front view, was absorbed in my great expansion)

Second view from the side

Behind view!

The other side view

And finally, another angle on the front.

This door is where everything ORIGINALLY was but then I expanded and forgot that was there, as I have crafted creative flight :I

The first view we have, here you can see my cobblestone and seared brick generator (right). I checked and the compression thing I have there has 9,366 double compressed cobble stone, which comes to a total of 758,646 cobble. Woah! (I have about 1.8 million in my other storage :P)

On the left you can see an old coke oven, which promptly fell out of use when I found out immersive engineering steel was interchangeably with other types of steel and also just didn’t want to use immersive engineering.

Let’s move on!

Moving upstairs, we see what was once my storage area and main crafting area. The pink wood over there is a leftover from a fire I needed to patch up (cursed soil is a pesky thing >:V) The storage stuff in the back is LONG out of use and just has some nuggets of stuff I don’t need anymore.

In that back corner, we have my lava storage for tinkerers and also my really big smelting tower! I installed a few mods because I didn’t want to deal with some craft recipes so I don’t really use it anymore. 

Now finally going outside, we can see my main crafting area. Those machines on the right I rarely ever use and are a leftover of my former crafting area. The stuff in the middle though is still used a TON! Those are my AE2 crafting stuff and once I unlocked autocrafting, I stored EVERY SINGLE RECIPE I used. Took a while but it was super nifty in the end. I’ll get back to the autocrafting in a bit.

My automatic pure certus, fluix, and pure fluix crystal crafting area, which use teleporters and a 6 facet seed speed up thing, which reduce the time needed from 12+ hours down to about 2 minutes. 

This is the only machine I use from immersive engineering, the elusive bottler. For 500 mb more of ender fluid stuff, I can automate the tesseract building a lot more. And that’s all I use it for :P

Here’s where I make all my charged certus and some various machines. The stuff on the left (the green things) do my soul binding stuff and that green rod thing store experience from mod farm. It was at about 347 levels which is…a lot to say the least.

One of my capacitor banks! You can’t see it too well here but that right there stores about 10 million rf there, which is useful as a buffer before it goes off to the various other machines and my quarry.

Here it is! The heart of my auto-crafting. These hold probably like 300 recipes ((I’ve never counted lmao) and each have the max speed cartridge things. 

This is the heart of my AE2 system total! AE2 is a pain in the ass and I hate channels. 

And a quick rewind! Here is where I power everying, with my two reactors. I’m not sure how much rf they’re actually producing per tick, but it is enough to fill that 300 million rf bank up in like an hour or so. As much as that is though, it’s still draining at about 10k per tick and I’m running out of fuel soooo…not good.

Back to autocrafting! Here I alloy, smelt, and macerate and all that jazz, as well as some extra goodies!

This is the other half of my alloying thing, which does the special ores ™ such as vibrant alloy or redstone alloy. 

This is where 90% of my ore processing occurs! Here, ores of any type filter in from my various quarries and are macerated then smelted. I have somewhere in the realm of 100k of most metals.

Right by that I have my shiny metal processing thing, which is surprisingly difficult to do. It involves this part, which smelts ferrous ore, cinnebar, and…

Cryotheum dust ;) Entirely automated and I have like 20k of it lmao.

Backpedal just a bit, here is where I make all of my circuits and stuff.

AND OF COURSE STORAGE!!! Here is pretty much all of my misc items, from blaze powder to gun powder. I’ve got all this storage interfaces hooked up to my AE2 system and it works like a charm. 

And metals! Here are all my metals with a bonus shot of my auto alloying stuff. I fell out of making more when I realized it was super inefficient and really hard to make automatic past “filling a block with 64 stacks of stuff and just make more when you run out.”

Which brings me to farming. Ah, how annoying but also not annoying it is. In the back, I’ve got my ender lily farms producing ender pearls and on the left I’ve got my nether wart production. Apart from that, here is rather vanilla.

Here we’ve got my breeding area and crop storage. The sprinklers make it work super fast and the machine breeds for 10/10/10 crops. Speeds up a process which would otherwise take a while.

And here is the cream of the crop (ha ha). This produces a SHIT LOAD of mystical leaves which is super useful for botania. I think, however, I overdid it a little. I’ve got like 200k-800k of each leaf. On the left, minicio essence, of which I have 8.5 million. Not useful right now, but should be in the future. Also got some rubber production, wood production, it’s pretty neat. But where do all those leave go, I wonder?

Here is my botania set up! I’ve automated every single rune and the petal apothecary. I had to cheat just a little bit and install buildcraft for the pipes, but I don’t care cause otherwise it would have been essentially impossible.

This right here is where I automate the elf stuff, with a nifty cannon and some coal eating flowers. This process, combined, is incredibly wasteful but I have too much coal so we’ll just keep going until it becomes a problem :^)

Down back in the basement, this is where I automate my mana steel production. I use a bunch of ender lilies, coal, and some fancy redstone stuff to automatically facilitate the production of terrasteel. The pipes ensure that only one operation is attempted to be completed at a time. The Redstone stuff ensures that the stuff in that buffer chest are ONLY dropped when there is enough mana to create one terrasteel ingot, which avoids the pesky item despawn timer. As for botania, that’s really all I’ve got.

Blood magic, woo! I’ve got mixed feelings on this mod but whatever, it was fun. This set up automatically produces me life points on two different rings. That giant stone structure over there is where I automatic minor demon spawning for a bit. I ended that because they tended to two shot and also just clip through the walls :/

And now down here. Where I’ve automated EVERY. SINGLE. BLOOD MAGIC. POTION THING. This took hours to finally do but it was so worth it.

My witch reactor, which has the benefits of A). not despawning B) not dying to the damage ticks and C) all of them are named some variation of “fart.” Real mature, I know. 

The mystical realm of…thaumcraft…

Here we have my thaumcraft base, which I built out of a tree because what the hell else would I do with it? Also because all the machinery and WATER SPRINKLERS RUNNING 100% OF THE TIME, my main base slaps my computer down to an entire 9 frames every second. 

This was my only real attempt at actually building something visually pleasing. I think I did alright?  Anyways, front door pics.

In the hall of the mountain king…

And here’s the inside! Completely empty! 

The courtyard!

My little viewport on the side because what wizard tower is complete without creepy eyes? This modpack was not the place to start thaumpack because it came at a time where I had automated everything else and I just hit this massive roadblack. It looks interesting but the stuff is a bit confusing and It’s frustrating having a shit ton of resources and just being forced to sit on them because you don’t need any of them for the first half of thaumcraft (at least not in amounts that would have any measurable impact). Right here is where I stopped playing the pack because thaumcraft, with the jacked up recipes and tweaks in this, was just boring.

Circling back to my main base, here are my various portals! The dimensions added by divine rpg, im sorry, suck. They suck super fucking hard. Every single one is the same reskinned dimension with the same reskinned enemies. The only reason you need to get in there is for like 1k of the ore, 1k of the enemy drops, and nothing else. 

Smol wittle nether base uwu. Here is my nether stuff. Accidentally put a quarry to dirt replace right in the middle. Woops.

May have done it twice actually…

Here is where I have my wither skeleton farm and ghast farm They run constantly and are big.

And that’s it for the tour! Have a couple stats pages:

And that wraps that up :) The pack is Divine Journey, slightly edited configs to adjust some recipes and drops and a couple of mods added. If you’ve got any questions or want to see a specific part, just ask!

As for the pack itself, a lot of fun but very grindy. I couldn’t make it past thaumcraft because of the aforementioned stuff and this is an awful first pack (lmao woops). For experienced players tho (or with friends of various experience), I expect it would fun and also a lot more doable. 

[foxstens]

ok i gotta talk about afterimage

i didnt think i’d say this but at this point it feels like the game is a bit too big. i have nearly 40 hours in it, far from discovering all areas or getting all movement abilities, and i just found myself in an area that i’m very underleveled for but am also trapped in unless i manage to defeat a gauntlet of enemies. i could probably beat them if i tried a few times but why am i trapped now in this very late-game area when this has never happened before? and i feel like im missing something but even though i have 5 heals by now, they barely even heal me?? what’s the point then? ive been trying not to rely on potions the entire game since theyre consumable but now its kind of forcing me to since my healthbar is so big??

i had a spell that i could use to heal pretty much endlessly by converting mana into hp and since mana replenishes automatically over time, i could just wait it out and then do that. very helpful during platforming challenges for example. but now i accidentally did a thing with the spell that updated a quest so it was probably intended but now its fucking unusable!!!!!!!! i literally cant equip it wtf

speaking of spells, i don’t think they’re very well implemented. i really liked the first like 5 or so i got but now they do way too little damage and there isn’t a way to upgrade them and the ones ive gotten more recently are different and they keep me in place for way too long when casting so even if they do decent damage theyre just not as viable to use. i usually only have one equipped for the health recovery bonus thingy it gives you

also as someone who doesn’t play rpgs, the weapon system in this game is a mess in my opinion. you have like 5 or so types of weapons, and then as the game goes on you find like 20 of each, each new one doing more damage and having different like... affixes or whatever they’re called. like they might give a health bonus or a mana bonus or a drop bonus or whatever. but the moveset itself is the same and the animation is the same, it just does more damage and gives a different bonus. but the thing is, you can also upgrade them by spending some currency and a resource you find while exploring. but. how do you do choose which one to uprade and how often when you never know when you’re going to find the next one that does more damage? i just don’t understand it

then there’s the platforming, which to me felt clunky in the beginning and it still does even now that i have all sorts of movement abilities. while it works, i find the platforming sections exceedingly difficult and something is just not clicking for me even 40 hours in. which, of course, affects the combat and my overall enjoyment of the game

there’s also the fast travel which they’re way too stingy with. the game operates on the bonfire system but with trees instead, which is fine, except that they’re kind of scarce even for my liking, and initially you can only fast travel by using a consumable. as you level up you become able to fast travel between trees, but only between certain trees. i fucking hate that. i guess ender lilies spoiled me with its generous amount of respites and the ‘return to respite’ button and being able to fast travel between every respite but f u c k why does that game have does and this one doesn’t, despite being like at least 3 times bigger. apparently after the patch you can now purchase the consumable from somewhere but i haven’t been able to find it so rip me i guess.

idek why it bothers me so much when in hk and blasphemous it didn’t. i guess because the game isn’t hitting the sweet spot that those games did. i mean blasphemous only did to an extent, but it still did. and thinking about it, i think it might partially be because of the boss fights.

i don’t play games for boss fights, in fact i couldn’t care less if there even are boss fights, but if there’s a lot of them they better be good. and afterimage both has a huge map and a lot of bosses. like i currently have access to about 9 of them, but after giving each of them a few tries, i’d rather just explore somewhere else.

i don’t know how many bosses i’ve beaten so far but i’ve only liked one of them. i don’t know why but in this game i just don’t look forward to fighting and dying to and learning a boss’ moveset the way i did in ender lilies for example (which in retrospect has phenomenal boss design and i fucking love it)

it might be because of the weapon system half of which i don’t get, it might be because of the movement that isn’t clicking with me, it might be because of the excessive freeze-frames and way too loud sound effect when you get hit, it might be because of the music which is outstanding in some areas but mediocre in others and annoying in certain boss fights, i don’t know. 

i don’t know but i already feel like this game has overstayed its welcome, and i just found out there’s a new game+ and also 10 endings. like what the fuck. according to some people it has the largest map and the biggest number of bosses in the metroidvania genre period. i guess it just feels too big because im not enjoying it that much but. fuck. 

oh. except that apparently some people complete their first playthrough after 22 hours. uh. how? like i know i play slowly but what. did you miss half the game or....

anyway i wish ender lilies was this long ugh

[onceland]

Once Upon a Time bosses tease 'satisfying' finale

The Final Battle has begun — and not everyone will make it out alive.

Ahead of Once Upon a Time‘s two-hour season finale, the Black Fairy (Jaime Murray) unleashed a curse aimed to separate Emma (Jennifer Morrison) from her loved ones. Where is everyone? Can they break this curse?

Here’s the newly released logline for the season-ender: “Henry awakens to a cursed Storybrooke and discovers Emma has been in the mental hospital, and the Black Fairy is the new mayor. Henry attempts to help Emma regain her memory while Gold tries to find out what has really happened to Belle. Meanwhile, Snow, Charming, Regina, Zelena, and Hook are trapped in a crumbling Fairy Tale Land and desperately try to figure out a way to be reunited with Emma and Henry.”

The season finale will feature guest star appearances by several familiar faces, including Jasmine (Karen David), Aladdin (Deniz Akdeniz), Tiger Lily (Sara Tomko), and Violet (Olivia Steel Falconer), among others, as well as Andrew J. West and Alison Fernandez, who are credited simply as Young Man and Little Girl. Check out our theory on that here.

Following a recent screening of the musical episode, executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz sat down with press members to answer some burning questions about the finale:

Now that the curse has hit, what’s in store for the finale? ADAM HOROWITZ: There’s a curse that’s coming. We’re well aware that we’ve done a curse occasionally in the past on the show, but this time we’re trying to do a little twist on it. EDWARD KITSIS: I would say that the Final Battle and the curse are all tied in one, and the first act of the finale will make sense of what we’re doing this time.

Is there a geographic move, because they’re talking about how everyone is going to be split up? KITSIS: For some people, there may be a geographic move. HOROWITZ: It’s a combo platter kind of curse. There’s a bunch of different things that happen. KITSIS: The Black Fairy is not to be messed with. She’s got some airtight [plans].

When you approach a curse, what’s the thought process behind it? Any set rules? HOROWITZ: In this case, it was less about thinking of it as a curse, and thinking about it as What is the Final Battle? We had a concept for what this Final Battle would be and we kind of worked backwards from that, and that led to in this curse that you saw hinted at in the musical episode that then starts to play out in the two-hour season finale.

Will everyone make it out alive? KITSIS: Can’t promise you that.

Can you talk about the process of breaking the curse? KITSIS: I would say that how they’re going to break the curse is kind of the conundrum of the episode because the usual tricks don’t work anymore.

A big part of this musical episode was Emma not being alone when she goes into the Final Battle and we see everyone gets sucked into the curse. Will the Black Fairy be going into the Final Battle alone or will she be bringing Rumple and her people? KITSIS: She’ll be bringing her spicy attitude and that’s all she needs.

What can you tease about Rumple’s role in the finale? KITSIS: I will say the Final Battle will be thematic for everybody and that Rumple, as a man who is a difficult man to love, I think he will have a very difficult choice to make again.

What is the theme? KITSIS: I would say the theme of the final two hours is belief.

As opposed to hope? HOROWITZ: Do we ever not do hope? KITSIS: Hope and belief are all the same. They’re friends, they’re roommates.

Speaking vaguely about the finale, what are some of the characters that you’re most happy with their journey and arc from the beginning of season 1 to the end of season 6? KITSIS: Absolutely Emma.

What do you think she learned the most? KITSIS: I think she learned to trust other people, and I think that’s the hardest thing to do. When you are used to being on your own, it’s very hard to let someone in and have it be real. It’s very easy to be surface and “like” their stuff on Facebook; it’s hard to actually be the person they call, and I think that Emma has gone from somebody that slept in her car and denied she had a kid to someone who actually has found a real life, and to me, that’s the show, right there. HOROWITZ: I agree, and I would say adding to that also Regina, who has gone through so much from where she started in the pilot to where she is now. I’d say in the season finale, there are real echoes to the pilot, and where she began, and where she and Emma began, and where they are now. It’s been a tumultuous journey for both of them as they’ve grown and changed over the years. For us — and hopefully you and the fans will agree — we think it’s a satisfying place they find themselves.

Once Upon a Time‘s two-hour finale airs Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

x

[lit102]

I loved this book when I first read it 3 1/2 years ago. I found it deliciously creepy, gripping, humanistic (I guess) and... baffling. How could someone who wrote a whole book about the power of empathy be homophobic? (This was just after the Ender’s Game movie came out and people were boycotting it so the subject of his homophobia was in the air.)

Upon rereading it, I’m appalled that I ever found it any of those things. This is a profoundly, nauseatingly narcissistic book; the lip service it pays to the power of empathy is actually worship of its protagonist, Ender Wiggin, and through him its author, Card himself. A quick summary: The world of Lusitania, largely Portuguese and Catholic (black Portuguese, specifically, which I bring up because he skirts around race in the weirdest way when he’s not being outright racist), is home to a small human colony and the first sentient alien species discovered since the Buggers (I cannot believe they are called the Buggers, the Buggers!) were exterminated three thousand years ago: the porquinhos, or piggies. The piggies are small bipeds with porcine faces (thus the nickname), separated from humans by a high fence that causes unbearable agony on contact (someone compares it to your fingers being filed off). This is supposed to protect them from cultural contamination, but it’s actually as much—or more—meant for humans, who fear what they don’t understand. The only humans who are allowed contact with the piggies—xenologers, or alien scholars—must try to learn as much about the piggies as they can while revealing as little of themselves as possible: they can’t even ask the questions they’re most want answered, for fear that they’ll give something of themselves away. This policy backfires tragically when the beloved xenologer Pipo is tortured to death by the piggies, and the young orphaned biologist Novinha, who loved him as a father, sends out a call for the nearest Speaker for the Dead — which happens, of course, to be none other than Ender Wiggin himself.

Ender and his kind play the role of secular priests, who investigate and then “speak” peoples’ lives, warts and all. They “[hold] as their only doctrine that good or evil exist entirely in human motive, and not at all in the act” (35), a doctrine of which I am deeply suspicious but that undergirds the whole book. Ender is the original speaker: three thousand years ago, he wrote a book called The Hive Queen and the Hegemon that spoke the Buggers’ death and taught humanity that they were worth mourning. Now, he wanders the worlds, just thirty-five years old because of the way space flight works, seeking a home for the last living Bugger hive queen and an end to the guilt that eats him up inside: guilt for the xenocide that made him the universe’s most hated man. When he hears that the piggies have tortured a human to death, he knows he must answer Novinha’s call. (He’s also attracted to her even though she’s twelve or thirteen years old, but whatever.) This is his chance to make peace between human and alien — to earn redemption for the role he played in the human/alien war that left all but one alien dead. So off he goes to Lusitania. When he arrives — two weeks later for him and like twenty years later for the colony — Novinha is grown, freshly widowed by a physically abusive man, and consumed by a secret guilt of her own; her household is tearing itself apart from the inside; and the piggies have murdered Pipo’s son and successor, Libo. It’s Ender’s job to make sense of all this in time to prevent intergalactic war and — most importantly — to redeem himself. 

Rereading this, I realized what a blatant author surrogate Ender is. Not only he is literally a writer, his book is powerful enough to literally become the piggies’ religion. His word is God. He’s also flawless. Yes, he murdered countless aliens, and he’s wracked with guilt, but his redemption feels inevitable from the start — and not only that, the one surviving Bugger forgives him, because she understands his motives in slaughtering her species. Motives, as we know, are all that matter in the moral universe Card has created, and because we know Ender’s, he’s also redeemed in the reader’s eyes; his guilt is nothing more than a narrative hoop for him to jump through. (Not only that, he makes the hoops; as Speaker for the Dead, he first acts as his own accuser, then as his own judge, ruling — unsurprisingly — his favor.) Moreover, most of the characters worship him. Some literally. The AI Jane — the most ancient, knowledgeable, and powerful being in the known universe — refers unironically to his “genius” (62): “his genius — or his curse was his ability to conceive events as someone else saw them” (65). In other words, he has... empathy. Something that most humans have (and something that women have more of than men, I might add). However, in Ender, empathy is almost supernatural; it gives him the godlike ability to know (“no, not guess, to know” [65]) people without even speaking to or spending time with them. (“It was as if he were so familiar with the human mind that he could see, right on your face, the desires so deep, the truths so well-disguised that you didn’t even know yourself that you had them in you” [234–35].) Just like the author knows his characters. He can also make them worship him — again, some of them literally. Ender’s sister Valentine refers breathlessly to her brother’s “brilliant understanding of human nature” (75). His nieces and nephews think of him as “something of a savior, or a prophet, or at least a martyr” (82). Novinha’s feral children fall in love with him — as does, of course, Novinha herself (“his eyes were seductive with understanding. Perigoso, she thought. He is dangerous, he is beautiful, I could drown in his understanding” [129]. Gag me). Jane, the AI, is bored by literally every other human in the universe (”when she tried to observe other human lives to pass the time, she became annoyed with their emptiness and lack of purpose” [175]). Take this appalling passage:

Through his eyes [Jane] no longer saw humans as scurrying ants. She took part in his effort to find order and meaning in their lives. She suspected that in fact there was no meaning, that by telling his stories when he spoke people’s lives, he was actually creating order where there had been none before. But it didn’t matter if it was fabrication; it became true when he spoke it, and in the process he ordered the universe for her as well. He taught her what it meant to be alive. (175)

And the piggies, though they reject Christian scripture, turn The Hive Queen and the Hegemon into their bible. It’s like... jaw-droppingly blatant, isn’t it? Even when characters hate him, they elevate him, like the Bishop who claims he’s “as dangerous as Satan” (298).

Card’s message in Speaker for the Dead is clear: “When you really know somebody, you can’t hate them” (370). For him, to know is to love, whether you’re knowing the alien who tortured your father to death or the husband who beat you for years or the man who slaughtered your entire species. 

[W]hen it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can’t hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can’t hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart. (370)

The problem is, he’s created a story in which this must be true. The piggies who tortured Libo to death didn’t know they were torturing him; they thought they were giving him their highest honor. Ender was a child when he slaughtered the Buggers, and he thought it was them or us, that he was dooming humanity if he didn’t. Card makes empathy easy, uncomplicated, for his characters and the reader, and in this way robs it of all its power: he makes it the simplest and most obvious choice. That’s because this book isn’t truly about empathy at all: it’s about deifying himself in fictional form. 

Stray observations:

Because Novinha blames herself for Pipo and Libo’s death, she endures her husband’s physical abuse as a form of punishment (“It’s no more than I deserve” [125]). The Bishop sanctions this as her “penance” for adultery later on. Foul.  

Most of the Lustanians are supposedly black, but none of the characters are described as black (except Bishop Peregrino, whose face had “a pinkish tinge under the deep brown of his skin” [155], which to me seems like a profound misunderstanding of how dark skin works?), and Novinha’s hair reads as a white woman’s hair to me, or at least not a black woman’s, though I guess he’s not explicit about it. Oh and also, Ender is lily-white, startlingly white, in a way that evokes unsavory white savior imagery. (When he’s speaking Novinha’s husband’s death, in front of a huge crowd, “his white skin made him look sickly compared to the thousand shades of brown of the Lusos. Ghostly” [257].) He’s also compared to Pizarro. 

The colony is very conservative, which Card actually celebrates: “If there were no powerful advocate of orthodoxy, the community would inevitably disintegrate. A powerful orthodoxy is annoying, but essential to the community” (158). Etc. Marriage and monogamy are highly valued.

The piggies are super sexist. Theirs is supposedly a matriarchal society, in which the females have all the power, but in fact they get pregnant, give birth, and are eaten by their babies in their own infancy. The matriarchs are sterile, which is why they survive to adulthood. When a character suggests helping the fertile females survive as well, Ender replies “To do what? They can’t bear more children, can they? They can’t compete with the males to become fathers, can they? What are they for?” (325). A female named Shouter supposedly rules the tribe, but a male named Human is Ender’s ambassador; he — again, a male — is the most important piggy in this story. Piggy society is a misogynistic man’s idea of matriarchy — on other words, not a matriarchy at all.

[ouatindia-blog]

Once Upon a Time bosses tease 'satisfying' finale

The Final Battle has begun — and not everyone will make it out alive. Ahead of Once Upon a Time‘s two-hour season finale, the Black Fairy (Jaime Murray) unleashed a curse aimed to separate Emma (Jennifer Morrison) from her loved ones. Where is everyone? Can they break this curse? Here’s the newly released logline for the season-ender: “Henry awakens to a cursed Storybrooke and discovers Emma has been in the mental hospital, and the Black Fairy is the new mayor. Henry attempts to help Emma regain her memory while Gold tries to find out what has really happened to Belle. Meanwhile, Snow, Charming, Regina, Zelena, and Hook are trapped in a crumbling Fairy Tale Land and desperately try to figure out a way to be reunited with Emma and Henry.” The season finale will feature guest star appearances by several familiar faces, including Jasmine (Karen David), Aladdin (Deniz Akdeniz), Tiger Lily (Sara Tomko), and Violet (Olivia Steel Falconer), among others, as well as Andrew J. West and Alison Fernandez, who are credited simply as Young Man and Little Girl. Following a recent screening of the musical episode, executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz sat down with press members to answer some burning questions about the finale: Now that the curse has hit, what’s in store for the finale? ADAM HOROWITZ: There’s a curse that’s coming. We’re well aware that we’ve done a curse occasionally in the past on the show, but this time we’re trying to do a little twist on it. EDWARD KITSIS: I would say that the Final Battle and the curse are all tied in one, and the first act of the finale will make sense of what we’re doing this time. Is there a geographic move, because they’re talking about how everyone is going to be split up? KITSIS: For some people, there may be a geographic move. HOROWITZ: It’s a combo platter kind of curse. There’s a bunch of different things that happen. KITSIS: The Black Fairy is not to be messed with. She’s got some airtight [plans]. RELATED: Once Upon a Timestars on ‘epic’ finale showdown. When you approach a curse, what’s the thought process behind it? Any set rules? HOROWITZ: In this case, it was less about thinking of it as a curse, and thinking about it as What is the Final Battle? We had a concept for what this Final Battle would be and we kind of worked backwards from that, and that led to in this curse that you saw hinted at in the musical episode that then starts to play out in the two-hour season finale. Will everyone make it out alive? KITSIS: Can’t promise you that. Can you talk about the process of breaking the curse? KITSIS: I would say that how they’re going to break the curse is kind of the conundrum of the episode because the usual tricks don’t work anymore. A big part of this musical episode was Emma not being alone when she goes into the Final Battle and we see everyone gets sucked into the curse. Will the Black Fairy be going into the Final Battle alone or will she be bringing Rumple and her people? KITSIS: She’ll be bringing her spicy attitude and that’s all she needs. What can you tease about Rumple’s role in the finale? KITSIS: I will say the Final Battle will be thematic for everybody and that Rumple, as a man who is a difficult man to love, I think he will have a very difficult choice to make again. What is the theme? KITSIS: I would say the theme of the final two hours is belief. As opposed to hope? HOROWITZ: Do we ever not do hope? KITSIS: Hope and belief are all the same. They’re friends, they’re roommates. Speaking vaguely about the finale, what are some of the characters that you’re most happy with their journey and arc from the beginning of season 1 to the end of season 6? KITSIS: Absolutely Emma. RELATED: Once Upon a Time bosses say finale will offer closure What do you think she learned the most? KITSIS: I think she learned to trust other people, and I think that’s the hardest thing to do. When you are used to being on your own, it’s very hard to let someone in and have it be real. It’s very easy to be surface and “like” their stuff on Facebook; it’s hard to actually be the person they call, and I think that Emma has gone from somebody that slept in her car and denied she had a kid to someone who actually has found a real life, and to me, that’s the show, right there. HOROWITZ: I agree, and I would say adding to that also Regina, who has gone through so much from where she started in the pilot to where she is now. I’d say in the season finale, there are real echoes to the pilot, and where she began, and where she and Emma began, and where they are now. It’s been a tumultuous journey for both of them as they’ve grown and changed over the years. For us — and hopefully you and the fans will agree — we think it’s a satisfying place they find themselves. Once Upon a Time‘s two-hour finale airs Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.