#they literally spelled out the answer to the mystery in the first few episodes of VOLUME ONE | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

d-pennants · 4 years

Text

Everything we know about Aaravos

This includes stuff from the books, interviews and ComicCon, so spoilers. Updated with a few things from the artbook. I’ll try to keep updating when I come across new info.

Timeline

From Book 1: Moon

Callum’s Spellbook

Historical texts

The Art of the Dragon Prince

And a third page written in Italian was added to the historical texts.

“Last of the Great Ones” is interesting, because Zaird says to Sol Regem his staff was a gift from one of the Great Ones. Sol Regem is alarmed but doesn’t immediately know who Zaird is talking about. So apparently between that conversation and when this text was written all Great Ones except for Aaravos died, and even he ‘fell’.

Also this note about Aaravos not being at full power.

As a ‘fallen’ Startouch elf Aaravos can only access a fraction of his former power.

The spell Zaird used to absorb the sunbirds to create the fireball he used against Sol Regem and the spell that Aaravos casts for Viren to absorb Zym’s power are meant to resemble each other in their swirling vortex. The symbol for Dark Magic also has a swirl in it around a diamond shaped like the one on Aaravos’ chest. This absorption vortex seems to be pretty central to Dark Magic, and it only seems it can be done with the staff Aaravos most likely crafted.

The Show

Zaird staff is the same staff Viren uses. Aaravos recognized it. Given the historical text Aaravos is the “Great One” who gifted Zaird that staff.

Transcripts of all his lines in this post.

Aaravos is the narrator in the opening.

First appearance in S1 from the first war between humans and elves & dragons 1000 years ago.

Elves don’t seem to ride horses, but big cats, dogs, lizards, etc instead. Yet Aaravos choose to depict himself riding a star primal horse (He could make Viren see any creature he wanted). Considering it turns out that unicorns and Startouch elves are the only two star primal creatures humans know about, is he just being dramatic or does this have a deeper meaning?

Mirror in the Dragon King’s lair.

Cocoon

Dragon Prince Website

Bio;

Mysterious and charismatic, Aaravos is a rare kind of elf few have ever seen. He is secretive yet charming, and even Viren finds himself compelled by Aaravos’ cryptic words and gifts.

Height: 6’6 (6’9 with horns) Birthday: November 14th Age: ???

Birthday Vignette;

Aaravos does not count the passage of time in minutes, nor hours, not even days — he counts candles, one after the other, burning themselves down to the wick and a puddle of hot wax. He would run out of candles if it weren’t so easy to reform them with a wave of his hand, as though the burn had never happened.

He thinks sometimes about the way humans count their years: one day every year marks a precious point in their short life spans. They celebrate. They feast. He thinks that if he cared for the idea, he’d like to remember the taste of a smooth red fruit a human had plucked from a tree for him, once.

It had been so crisp, and so sweet.

AMA, Tumblr, Instagram Live

Who are the First Elves?

AE: First Elves are startouch elves, or possibly a subset of startouch elves...

When did the idea of Aaravos come up? How early in the planning of the saga did you guys come up with him?

AE: Justin and I came up with Aaravos very very early. In the early stages we referred to him as "Mirror Mage." We always knew he would be the secret long-game mystery villain... Aaron

Is the Key of Aaravos actually the key of where he was imprisoned?

AE & JR: We can’t tell you.

JR: We don’t even know. We haven’t even discovered the answer yet.

AE: We know! Actually, that was one of the first things we knew at the very beginning. We’ll get to it.

Did Aaravos create dark magic?

AE: No, it was discovered not created. Did Aaravos turn them onto it or help them discover it? That’s very possible. Whether Aaravos played a role in developing their ability to do dark magic. Exploring the possibilities of dark magic.

How could Avizandum (Thunder) imprison such a powerful creature as Aaravos? Can archdragons do such magic or who helped him? This required some collaboration between archdragons and elves

Were you surprised by all the thirsty reactions to Aaravos? Judging from everyone who worked on the show and their reactions, no we weren't surprised :)

Where is Aaravos walking in epsiode 6? And how and where did he a get a horse?

Aaravos can basically make Viren “see” him however he wants, so he chose to appear on the back of a purple horse. There was actually a line in there at one point that we had to cut for time that clarified a bit more heavily -- Viren grumbles at him, “Must you appear... that way?” as Aaravos is floating in the air, and Aaravos replies, “Ah, I can appear more naturally if you’d like,” and then he flips backwards onto the horse as you see in scene in episode 6. :P

which FFXIV classes would the rest of the cast be?

Aaravos - mysterious benevolent ascian

Interviews

There is no Startouch elf society as they’re not numerous enough.

Hot Brown Morning Potion Ep 5

Hypothetically, if Aaravos knew about his own fandom, how would he feel about them?

AE: He takes a special interest in humans, so he would be very pleased that humans appreciate him.

Wondercon 2019 panel Q&A

“The goal of healing and rebuilding the world is going to be a hard one, and especially a hard one when Aaravos, who may have been one of the mysterious forces who pushed the world into this situation, now seems to be on the cusp of returning or trying to return to the world.”

Inverse Season 4 interview

“Practical usable powerful magic, is drawn from the six Primal Sources, but there’s this idea that there’s this kind of earlier, less differentiated power. A kind of magic that’s deeper and more, (I don’t want to kind of say what all of them are). It’s not that important now. It has more to do with the history of beings and interactions and now I feel like I’m talking crazy, but Aaravos cares about some of this stuff and it’s funny, people have worked on a speech in season 5 where he kind of goes into some of this.”

...

“I think he’s complicated. I mean it’s, I think there’s a part of him that is kind, that is generous, that is giving and I think there’s a part of him that is arrogant and desiring to be, you know, worshipped and revered...

He never lies, I don’t know if he’s never lied about anything, if you understand where he’s coming from, he’s not lying about anything. But you don’t necessarily know where he’s coming from. He never lies, he always tells the truth. You’ve heard us talk about Aaravos before, is it Lucifer or Prometheus, who has a relationship with humanity and the gifts and sharing that he has historically have been, you know, you can interpret it differently.”

...

Q: We know he’s mastered all the primal sources, it that like could all of us do that or just him?

A: He’s very special.

Cartoon Universe Season 3 interview

kn: What’s your favorite Greek myth? AE: There are so many intriguing myths to choose from – I think if I have to choose I would say the Prometheus myth. The titan stole fire and gave it to humans, elevating them – and was punished by the gods for this. I feel like there are parallels to the biblical story of the serpent tempting Eve to eat the apple, and its effect on humanity… and the comparisons are sort of fascinating. I am interested in both the mythic/divine messenger who stole/shared these gifts with humanity, and the story of what humans chose to do once they had these gifts.

Korranews interview

Can I just jump back for a minute to the Star elves, can you talk a little bit about them?

Richmond: We can tell you their name, so they’re Startouch elves, is the type of elf they are and kind of no. [Laughs] They’re super, duper rare, they’re very mystical and we have a lot of plans for them, but that’s kind of all I want to give you. Ehasz: They’re mystical, mysterious - the mystical, mysterious Mr. Aaravos. [Laughs] Richmond: That’s the spinoff. [Laughs] Ehasz: Yeah, they are more - I mean, they’re Star Elves and they’re more associated with the heavens and they’re not immortal, but they have more of a time scale that is more like the stars than other elves, so they’re a little bit removed and big picture, but Star Elves have a, I mean, they’re part of mystery and myth and we’re going to meet one this season. I love the actor who plays him is Erik Todd Dellums, who I worked with on Avatar [the Last Airbender] who has an amazing voice and he’s perfect to embody a character like this and we’re excited about this character. We hope the audience is intrigued and ready for more.

Screenrant Season 2 interview

Going back to Aaravos for one second. We’re assuming there’s a reason why he seems to be telling this story — we see his hands at the beginning of each episode in the opening sequence. AE: Yeah, so he’s a Startouch Elf, and they are closest to the heavens of the elves. They’re kind of the most god-like, in the sense of they span much more time than more Earth-bound or Xadia-bound elves. So yeah, he has this thousand year perspective. This kind of mythic role. So he’s like this mythic character who now, suddenly, is kind of popping up in this contemporary story. JR: And obviously, he’s bad enough that they tried to literally erase him from the books. AE: He’s complicated. JR: He’s interesting enough that they tried to erase him from the books. AE: He’s disliked. That’s not the same as bad.

Hyperable season 2 interview

“The name of a very important person to Aaravos will be in the map of a novel, but it will be a long time before you know what that means,” Ehasz said. “A lot of his motivation comes from that relationship.”

Hyperable Season 3 interview (Possible names on the map are Skall’s Hook, the Ruins of Elarion, and Mount Kalik).

The team also teased The Orphan Queen, a new story they hope to tell in the series, books or even in a feature film, which follows a young human girl who starts from nothing and grows up without parents. She takes a dangerous journey to Xadia and ends up saving the world. She’s also Ezran’s first royal ancestor. Ehasz and Richmond said the idea was born when they were imagining where the Key of Aaravos comes from.

Ehasz and Richmond also dug into the timeline of Xadia, and how certain eras will impact both the books and the series. Five thousand years ago, Xadia was in its “mythical, Biblical first days,” a time long before elves and dragons were allied in which humans suffered and struggled. The “rise of Elarion” came around 2,000 years before the events of the series, and saw humans find their way to magic. Around 1200 years ago finds the arch dragon of sun, Sol Regem, as king of the dragons during this era, when dark magic became problematic and humans poached magical creatures for their parts. Shortly after came the division of Xadia. The next big turning point for the world was 300 years before the series, a time Ehasz and Richmond dub “the era of Avizandum.” Two stories they want to tell take place during this era: The Fallen Star and The Orphan Queen. We don’t know anything about The Fallen Star yet ... but we will. The team noted that history will one day know the modern era as “The Return of Aaravos.”

Polygon season 3 interview

Concept Art

Dorothy Yang’s design 'Fallen Star.’ Check out more of her work on ArtStation.

When they were first brainstorming ideas for the show Aaravos had a blindfold, but that was scrapped for being “too on the nose.” This is Giancarlos Volpe’s early sketches that he posted on Twitter.

#aaravos #my notes #tdp analysis #tdp spoilers #spoilers

269 notes · View notes

ograndebatata · 4 years

Text

Silver Linings

So... I’ve actually had this fic pretty much complete for weeks now, but I recently got motivated to polish it up and share it here, for... well... I’m not sure why, and honestly there may be many motivating factors, but... anyway, here it is.

I hope you enjoy it.

Note: Like pretty much every Elena of Avalor fanfic by me, this one takes place in my Tales of the Ever Realm AU. To give a bit of context on what it is, it’s basically an AU where all of Sofia the First is canon, and all of Elena of Avalor episodes until Snow Place Like Home (in terms of ‘timeline order’) are canon. Details and characters from later episodes will sometimes be used, but there are many important differences between my fic AU and canon.

One of those, as will be clear from reading this fic, is that in this AU, Ash Delgado has a genuinely and healthily loving relationship with both her husband and daughter (although we really only get to see the former in this one) and also is just a much better person in general, though still with a few traits of her canon self. I hope you will enjoy it for what it is, and I apologize in advance to those who happen to prefer the canon versions of her character and her relationships.

Also, I tried my best to make this fic strong enough to stand on its own, but I realize a few details may still come across as confusing. I apologize for that in advance as well. If you’d like any sort of clarification, please feel free to ask.

///

Note #2: There is some stuff in this fic that can be seen as slightly suggestive. Nothing full-blown NSFW, but still, there is a bit of steaminess. Those who aren’t particularly fond of such content want to tread carefully. I may be worrying too much over nothing, but... I feel it’s better to be safe than sorry.

///

Note #3: Although I tried my best to make it strong enough to be read on its own, this fic works better read as a sequel to @lostbutterflyutau‘s fic The Second Navidad, which she wrote for me as a Christmas gift last Christmas, and which I liked so much that I decided to make it canon to my fic universe. If you’d like to read it, I strongly recommend it.

And on that note, I say the same thing regarding all of her Elena of Avalor fics. They're full of well-written characters, great portrayals of feelings of all kinds, and wonderfully fluffy moments of the romantic, the friendship, and the familial kinds. I strongly recommend them all. Also, if you read them and like them, please take the time to leave her some feedback, even if it's only a few words. Remember that taking even only a few seconds to give feedback leads to better environments for fanworks of all kinds.

With that said... let us begin.

///

Silver Linings

The Kingdom of Norberg, February 14th, Year 9222 of the Ever Realm Calendar…

A series of sharp knocks cut through the cabin’s main room, making Ash Delgado jump in her chair as the sound brought her struggle with her focus to an abrupt end, ruining her already feeble efforts at forcing herself to study the weathered yellow page she held, trying beyond her best to find a solution to the dilemma she’d been struggling with for over a year.

One of her hands slammed the page against the table as her other one reflexively curled around her tamborita; the next instant, her ears picked up the last few knocks that rapped against the wooden boards. Her heart settled down as the force and rhythm behind the sounds told her who had arrived, drawing a relieved sigh from her as she released the drum wand’s handle. Ash looked up at the closed door on cue with its lock clicking as a key was turned inside it. The next moment, the door drew inwards, making her grimace at the chilly air that entered the cabin, followed soon after by her husband.

“I’m home!” Victor announced as he closed the door behind him, before wiping a few fresh snowflakes off his shoulders and setting down a bag of canvas he’d been carrying.

Then, as his eyes fell on her, still by the table she’d been sitting at since he left - though now with layers of pages scattered over its surface - a sheepish smile uneasily crawled across his features.

“Did I interrupt anything?”

A mock-annoyed smirk curling her lips, Ash teased, “Not this time.”

Besides, even if he had, his loud arrival was one of the safety norms that they and their daughter had established for whenever they stayed anywhere: to always make their presence known when arriving, to ensure they conveyed they weren’t any unexpected visitor.

Still, the sheepish look remaned on Victor’s features as he unclasped his cloak and hung it on a hook beside the door, before walking over towards her. Smiling at him, Ash reached up to his face and settled her hand on his jawline as he rested his’ between her shoulder blades, closing her eyes as the two of them leaned towards each other and put their lips together. Cold seeped into her fingers as the mixed smell of salty air, tobacco smoke, cooked bacon and burned wood floated into her nostrils, but Ash kept her fingers on his face and pressed her lips further into his’, holding both her touch and her kiss for a few more seconds.

Then, as she and Victor both pulled away and she opened her eyes, a faint chuckle bubbled up her throat at the sight she beheld.

Victor blinked in puzzlement. “What?”

Suppressing another chuckle, Ash explained, “Your mouth is full of lipstick.”

Again. She inwardly added, as pointless as it was. Victor’s mouth or face ending up full of lipstick when they kissed was as big a given as water being wet or as the sun rising everyday. But Ash liked her makeup in the style she wore it, and she knew that for all his playful grumbling, Victor also did.

Giving an easygoing chuckle himself, Victor reached up with his free hand and rubbed it across his mouth, the faint dark-blue sparks she saw flying from his fingertips telling her what he was trying to do. Alas, the final results were different from the intended, the smear on his lips only spreading further across his face, bringing a stronger chuckle out of her.

“Here,” she said, removing her own hand from his jawline, silvery-grey sparks swarming around her fingers. “I’ll do it for you.”

Saying so, she swept her magic-filled hand over his face, the smudges of lipstick vanishing in her fingers’ wake.

“I guess this just shows I still need more practice,” he said good-naturedly as he straightened himself, caressing her ponytail along the way.

He glanced around the room as he righted himself, then turned back to her and asked, “Did Carla leave already?”

“Princess Chloe asked her to go early,” Ash explained. “Apparently so the two of them can properly help Queen Abigail get ready for her date with King Hector. And Carla said that because she was spending the night at the palace anyway, she might as well stay over already.”

Nodding in acknowledgment, Victor walked over to her right and pulled up the chair beside her, sinking onto it with a pensive look on his face, the expression looking more pronounced thanks to his placement against the lit fireplace that burned a few feet away. Ash knew without having to ask that he was having a bout of the same struggle they had both endured since Carla had unintentionally struck up a friendship with the princess of Norberg. On one hand, it was good that Carla had made a friend, at least for the duration of their stay here. On the other, Norberg was a close ally to Avalor, and even if wanted posters of him and Carla hadn’t made it here yet (and weren’t likely to be sent now that neither of them had been to Avalor for over a year), it could still happen, especially given that Princess Chloe was at least a friendly acquaintance of Princess Elena. Or then, the Crown Princess of Avalor or someone closely associated with her could unexpectedly drop by and recognize him or Carla, which would at best mean they’d have to leave, and at worst might literally spell their dooms. And that was assuming none of their more dangerous enemies was lurking in the shadows, planning something that Ash could easily conceive as far more horrible than anything Princess Elena would ever do to them if she caught them.

But Carla knew she needed to be careful, and the three of them were making sure to keep an eye on anyone who seemed suspicious, just like their jaquin allies were doing. With luck, Carla’s friendship with Princess Chloe would just keep going without incident during their final two weeks or so in Norberg.

“How did things go at the harbor?” Ash brought up, out of genuine interest as much as out of a wish to change subjects.

The deepening of Victor’s frown answered her question well enough, but still, he replied, “Not very well. There weren’t many sailors there, it being the day it is and all, and most of those I found were more interested in drowning their sorrows or seeking other forms of consolation than in talking about some mysterious kingdom.” As he caught sight of Ash’s own frown, he added, “No thanks to it being the day it is, I guess. After all, it was the same thing during Sweetheart’s Day in Avalor.”

Though that didn’t make her feel any better, Ash gave him a reassuring smile. After all, it wasn’t his fault that today was Valentine’s Day - or Dia del Amor y la Amistad, as her parents had called it, due to it being the holiday’s name in both Paraiso and Cordoba. Most sailors who’d ordinarily be in taverns or at the harbor were likely to be with their girlfriends or wives or families, and those that weren’t would either be too busy with work or too sullen at their lack of companionship to be in a chatty mood.

“Was any sailor at all willing to talk?” she probed.

Victor shrugged.

“Some were. But most of those couldn’t tell me anything about that place, and the only two that could didn’t tell me anything we don’t already know.” He stopped, his eyes clouding over as he mentally sorted out his words. “They said that that kingdom looks clean and calm enough from a distance, and the rulers seem friendly enough, but there’s just something under its surface that doesn’t quite make it an inviting place, and anyone going farther than the harbor automatically needs a full guard unit escorting them because of the land’s perils.” His frown deepened even further, his eyes narrowing to the point they seemed to turn into two black holes thanks to the shadows from the fireplace. “In a sense, it’s like a more extreme version of what I heard Avalor was like under Shuriki’s rule.”

Ash pursed her lips, the mere reference to that woman’s name making her temper flare. She might have come to terms with her husband having fallen for Shuriki’s lie that she could make him and Carla malvagos, but having that daemonfirma brought up in conversation still made her blood boil. Good for her that she was dead, because if Ash had gotten to fight her for a third time, she would have done everything she could to ensure their fight would end with Shuriki having a departure far more painful than the one Princess Elena had given her.

Forcing herself to push aside the hatred that still burned at her, Ash said, “Well, at least we have more evidence that that kingdom is not a place where we want to stay any longer than absolutely necessary.” Her heart growing heavier, she added, “Unfortunately, we still need to go there.”

His forehead creasing, Victor gave her a sympathetic look.

“Things also didn’t go well over here then?”

The tiredness and frustration from her mostly wasted afternoon rearing up like a striking snake, Ash let out a long sigh.

“Yes and no,” she settled on.

Victor didn’t even blink at her response, his sympathetic look staying the same as before.

Taking a deep breath to gather herself, she explained, “On the good side, I went over my improved potion recipes again just to be safe, and it held up again. The improvements I made will be enough so that neither of the potions will take quite as many moon cycles to achieve its purpose.” Her heart again grew heavier as she once more realized what it implied, but she forced herself to add, “On the bad side, there still are a few ingredients for both potions that just can’t be replaced with anything found somewhere else.”

Victor’s mouth again started to curl into a frown.

“So… that means…”

Ash nodded.

“There’s no way around a trip to that kingdom that seems out of a mix between a crime novel and a horror story. It’s still the only place where some of the ingredients we need exist, and God knows how long we’ll take to find them all.”

Again, Victor narrowed his eyes so much that the fireplace made it seem like he had two black holes in his eye sockets. Ash narrowed her eyes as well, the weight of the implication hanging over her like a boulder sustained by the finest thread that was about to break. The idea of spending any amount of time in that kingdom was anything but pleasant. And having to stay there for who knew how long (at least a year, to give an optimistic estimate) only made it worse.

“And that’s not all,” Ash forced herself to go on. “It’s not even the worst part.”

Victor sat the tiniest bit straighter, his eyes opening ever so slightly.

“What’s the rest?”

Her answer seemed to swirl around in her throat, as if trying to come out, but unable to find its way to her mouth for some reason. Though she knew Victor wouldn’t judge her or think less of her, and she had never lied to him, admitting to her failures or inabilities was not something she had ever or would ever like. After all, they were failures or inabilities, which Ash had always loathed, even back when she had just been Seentahna.

But despite being a dark wizard, Ash knew how wrong it was to be dishonest, especially to the man she loved, and she knew he felt the same towards her. Neither had ever lied to each other, and she wouldn’t be the one starting now.

“I think we may be doing all of this for nothing,” she at last managed to say.

Reading Victor’s question in the way his eyebrow moved up his forehead, Ash reached towards one of the papers on the table and lifted it aside, exposing a round purple orb around the size of an orange, the orb somehow feeling as heavy in her hand as if it was made of cast iron.

“I can’t know for sure without looking at the Codex Maru, but the more I study this blasted thing, the more unlikely it seems that we will be able to channel its power as we want to, if we manage to fix it in the first place,” she explained as she raised the jewel.

The words forced its way out of her like thick mud mixed with sharp knives. Just having to utter them made her heart sink almost as much as them being true. Another smile dawned on Victor’s lips, his hands moving over and curling around her right hand like a comforting blanket, his thumbs ghosting over her knuckles in a tender caress.

“It’s alright, Pluma,” he whispered. “We can get through this.”

Despite the warmth in both his gaze and voice, the weight in her chest didn’t fade. She wouldn’t give up his support for anything, but what she really needed was a miraculous breakthrough on how to use the Jewel of Night, or on another way to recharge it. Ideally, both. Because as things stood now, achieving even one of her goals seemed borderline impossible. All means to recharge the Jewel of Night that she knew were difficult to put in practice, and many of the ingredients they would need to make both the potion that would repair it and the one that would recharge it (assuming they would manage to find a certain key ingredient for that one) came from plants and animals that had already been rare when she was a child. If even one of those had already gone extinct, they’d be right back where they started, and the Jewel of Night would be good for little more than to place on a shelf as decoration.

And even if they managed to fix it and recharge it, the only thing that might have anything on how to properly siphon its power into them was the Codex Maru, assuming that could be done in the first place. And to get the Codex Maru, they’d need to face Princess Elena, who could wield the Scepter of Light, and her Royal Wizard, who was Alacazar’s grandson and was all but certain to take after his grandfather if he’d managed to defeat a malvago powerful and skilled enough to cast the malvago-making spell on Victor and Carla at the same time and successfully pull it off.

Whoever said malvago was, defeating him would have been an impressive feat for any wizard, but it was all the more so coming from a boy who hadn’t even been eighteen when he did so. And the boy would only have grown more powerful since then. Even now that Victor and Carla had grown much more powerful themselves, Ash knew the three of them would need a good plan and a very healthy amount of luck to get the Codex on their own. And if she had to guess, they would only have one try, because if they got caught, Princess Elena was bound to execute them all.

The thought hitting her like a blasting spell, Ash’s gaze snapped away from Victor, the fear that too often lingered at the bottom of her heart suddenly shooting up to the surface, her eyes wide as if to let it fly out. The next moment, twin caresses ran over the back of her hand, soft despite the roughness of the skin giving them. Though she knew where they came from without needing to look, Ash turned to meet Victor’s eyes, which still glowed with the same warmth.

“Let’s not think about that now,” he said. “Let’s think about something else.”

An empty smile flitted across her face, her gaze turning away from his’. As if drawn to it, her eyes fell on the Jewel of Night, stared into its opaque depths, the emptiness within it seeming to remind her of how difficult their mission was, and yet how they needed to accomplish it if they were to ever be truly at peace. To think Victor made it sound so easy. To put aside something that their lives in a sense literally depended on, as easily as if it was a matter of deciding not to wear clothes they didn’t particularly like.

“I’ve had practice,” he replied as if he had read her mind, a playful smirk on his lips.

Against her wishes, Ash allowed herself a small smile. Quips aside, she knew that must be true. After all, he had managed to keep himself and their daughter alive and safe, despite having very few magical skills before he was made a malvago. More than that, he had managed to raise Carla as happy and well-adjusted as their circumstances allowed, and done a better job of it than she imagined most men and some women would.

But that still didn’t change the main point.

“If we don’t think about it now, we’ll have to think about it later,” she insisted, even as she lowered the hand holding the Jewel of Night.

Her words came out tense, almost solid, but Victor simply kept giving her the same warm smile from before, rubbed his thumbs across the back of her hand again. Then, he rose from his chair and moved to stand behind her, taking his hands to her hair and releasing the knot in her hair tie, the tiniest sense of relief washing over her as a slight pressure left her head, her hair spreading out from its ponytail and cascading free to below the middle of her back. Though she couldn’t see him, she felt Victor smiling as he curled a hand around her hair, his other one gently scratching her scalp. A wider smile breaking through her lips, Ash hummed in delight, leaning back into her chair, guessing what he intended to do. As she expected, Victor lifted her hair so it wouldn’t be stuck between her and the back of the chair, his hands then settling on her head and running over her white locks like a hairbrush, spreading the strands apart and gently easing tangles and knots.

A louder hum flowing through her, Ash tilted her head back as Victor pressed the tips of his fingers to her hairline, before gently but firmly running them back, tension falling apart in their wake as he caressed her scalp.

“I know it’s difficult, Pluma,” he whispered. “Believe me, I had more than enough time to learn it on my own.” His voice shivered the slightest bit at those words, and Ash knew he was remembering his and Carla’s many close escapes over the almost fifteen years she hadn’t been with them. “But we’ll figure out how to use the Jewel of Night.” He ran his fingers over her scalp again. “And even if we don’t, we’ll find some other way to get rid of the Evergrowing Forest.”

Ash chuckled mirthlessly.

“You talk as if the odds are on our side.”

Running his fingers over her scalp once more, he replied, “I’d rather think I talk as someone who chooses to keep on believing things will get better. And as someone who was lucky despite the odds.” He reached downwards and slid his thumbs in a half-circle behind her ears, bringing them forward rubbing them over her cheeks. “And more than once at that.”

Frowning at the second sentence, Ash knitted her eyebrows as he moved his fingers back up to her scalp, rubbing continuous circular motions from her hairline to her nape.

“I was lucky enough to meet you in the first place,” he went on. “I was lucky enough to run into you again and start to know you better. I was lucky enough to reunite with you more than twelve years after losing track of you. And I was lucky enough to reunite with you a second time almost fifteen years after we got separated again. And I could make a longer list.”

Unable to help herself, Ash turned her head even farther upwards, literally smiling up at him as he looked down and gave her a smile of his own.

“I don’t suppose I could argue against that,” she replied.

His hands rubbed just a bit harder across her scalp, a sigh rolling out of her lips as relief surged from his fingertips and rushed through her.

“I was lucky as well,” she added. “On all those accounts, and more.”

Yes. Ash thought, sighing once more as he massaged her scalp again and relief rushed through her being once more.

Despite everything, she had been lucky. Probably luckier than she deserved after everything she had done. Not only for getting to meet Victor and getting to reunite with him a grand total of three times - or two, if she only counted those after they had actually started their relationship - but also for having a wonderful daughter who she loved and who loved her back, and for getting to be with them both and just be able to be a family despite the threats hanging over their heads.

Victor must have read something on her face again, for he said, “So... back to not thinking of unpleasant matters for now… why don’t you put these things away, and I can tell you an idea I’ve had?”

A deep groan rolling from her lips as Victor’s motions suddenly reversed, she fake-glared at him.

“You should know by now that I don’t take orders from anyone.”

She felt his hands temporarily stop their movements as he shrugged.

“I prefer to look at it as an invitation.” His massage still halted, he crouched to whisper in her ear. “Though it’s one I confess I would very much like you to accept, mi amor.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” she breathed as he straightened himself up, a deep sigh flowing out of her. “Very well. What is it?”

“Uh-uh-uh!” he tut-tutted. “I’m not seeing anything put away...”

Her eyes narrowed at his response, a low mock-grumble joining her change in expression. He really knew her a bit too well.

“Watch out, Victor,” she teased. “You don’t want to fall prey to the stereotype that men can’t keep a house.”

He again ran his fingers through her hair, the white locks parting in their wake. “It’s more like I don’t want to go against how you like to be the one putting your own things away, especially when it comes to magical studies.”

Another affected grumble rippled out of her mouth. Again, he knew her too well.

“Very well then,” she conceded, her fingers curling around her tamborita’s handle.

On cue once more, Victor withdrew his hands from her hair and curled them over the sides of her chair, pulling it back exactly as she stood up and drew her drum wand, then aimed it at the table’s surface.

“Llévaluq!” she chanted as she smacked the drum.

Identical silvery-grey glows bloomed around each page spread over the table, as well as around the purple gem she’d been studying for hours. Ash fiddled her fingers as if she was playing a harp; the papers bent and swerved and turned over the table like flying carpets before settling into a neat stack, the gathered pile of pages then flying into the shelf behind her with a beckoning motion from her hand. The Jewel of Night followed in their wake with the same gesture, but swerved slightly to the right and upwards, stopping its course once it hovered above a small, seemingly ordinary light yellow jar with rectangular Maruvian patterns of a darker shade over its surface.

She directed a look at Victor as she held the jewel in place. The next instant, he drew his own tamborita and aimed it at the jar.

“Piikrete tarruyniu waaygico!” he chanted, punctuating each word with a smack on the tamborita.

After the last smack resounded through the cabin, a dark-blue glow bloomed around the drum as Victor raised his hand, the jar’s lid floating about a foot off and allowing Ash to slide the Jewel of Night in. Hearing the low clatter of it landing, she holstered her tamborita as Victor lowered his hand, setting the lid on its place.

Sliding his tamborita into its own holster, Victor turned to her with a smile, reaching out with his left hand. “Now, where were we?”

Taking his hand, Ash replied. “You were about to make an invitation.”

He raised his arm in response, in time with Ash twirling in place, her hair fanning out as she completed her spin and then stepped towards Victor’s chest as he drew her to him, wrapping both arms around her as he settled his lips on her neck.

“I was thinking…” he halted his words to kiss her neck “...that you could wait here while I run you a nice warm bath…” he kissed a slightly higher spot “... and then you take the time to enjoy it while I cook a special dinner with what I brought…” So that’s what’s in the bag! Ash thought as he kissed below her ear “... and then we could have our second celebration of Dia del Amor y la Amistad.” he finished, tenderly kissing her cheek.

Her eyes widened at the words, her heart leaping slightly in her chest. Their second celebration! Amidst her frayed nerves after repeated failures with the Jewel of Night, she had completely forgotten about that! Not about the celebration they and Carla had had that morning - after all, it had been the first time the three of them properly celebrated Dia del Amor y la Amistad since her return - but about the second celebration that was meant to be just for her and Victor, which they had even talked about more than once over the previous days.

I really need to stop thinking about that jewel if it can make me forget something like that.

Victor chuckled as if she had spoken her words rather than thinking them, the curling of his lips telling her that he was cooking up a joke.

“You know, as far as stereotypes go, it’s men who are said to forget romantic celebrations…” he brought up.

Despite the laugh at his quip, Ash reached back and nudged Victor’s nose with her index finger.

“Watch your tongue, Mister. If I get annoyed, you’re going straight to the couch tonight.”

He gave her a melodramatic gape, put a hand to his chest. “Oh, the horror!...”

Taking her chance, Ash twisted out of his embrace and then pressed herself flush to him, wrapping one arm around his shoulder and sinking her other hand into his hair as her lips leapt upwards to claim his. He engulfed her in another embrace, resting his hands on her back as their mouths met. For a heartbeat, their lips started to glide over each other’s, both reading the other’s intention to take things slowly. But then, like alcohol meeting a cinder, their passion seemed to explode through their bodies, leaping the frustrations this day had brought them both as their lips devoured each other time and time again, each trying to both drain their pent up tension and help the other with their own, somehow wanting to put out and build the fire flowing between them at the same time. Awareness of everything faded into the background as they devoted every bit of their focus to the flutter of each other’s hands and mouths, to the feeling of each other’s touch, to the warmth of their kisses.

It seemed to last an eternity before they drew apart, looking into each other’s eyes like hypnotized, as if they were floating.

Then, despite herself, Ash burst into chuckles, taking her hand to her lips in a token attempt at suppressing them.

Amusement twinkling in his own eyes, Victor curled an eyebrow and blew through his pursed lips.

“I’m full of lipstick again, right?”

Her suppressed laughter slowly fading, Ash summoned magic into her other hand and waved it over Victor’s face, the lipstick smudges dispelling under the sparks swarming around her fingers.

Lowering her hand as she let the magic fade, Ash drawled, “So… that warm bath?”

“Coming right up,” he replied with a mock-casual tone and a warm smile as he lowered his arms.

Realizing she would need to let him go for him to run her bath, Ash pulled away, following him with her eyes as he headed to their cabin’s small bathroom.

A warm bath sounded nice indeed. While cleansing charms could do the job just as well, and far more quickly, they couldn’t equal the peaceful feeling of sinking into the warm water and feeling it melting the tension from within her, making her stop thinking about the day’s concerns better than the best mind control spell.

It wouldn’t really make them go away, she knew. However good this night was, their concerns wouldn’t become any less real, and the Evergrowing Forest would remain a threat to their lives until they managed to destroy it.

But at least tonight, Ash would enjoy what she had to be thankful for.

#elena of avalor #my fanfiction #tales of the ever realm au #ash delgado #victor delgado #a bit of fluff #some suggestive content #but not too bad i think

4 notes · View notes

microwaveabl · 4 years

Text

Alright fuckers,

I decided to post what I have right now of my story, starting at Comic Con. @septicake hasn’t responded all day, but I hope they like it. Flowey, sentient toilets, and gay Obi Wan are here!

The next morning, we were both excited. We were finally going to get our answers. Fairly early that morning, we set out. It took us a bit to find the convention center, which Robin remarked upon: “This sounds exactly like the sort of thing we should’ve prepared for earlier this week”. I hate it when he’s right.

When we got there, we were awestruck at the spectacle before us. Hundreds of people, dressed as wizards, elves, orcs, comic book superheroes, video game characters, and soooooooo much more were there. Cosplayers of every kind, colors everywhere, it was incredible! I can’t begin to describe the wonder I felt, or everything I wondered at.

“All the hype was worth it,” Robin whispered to me, and I slowly nodded.

“This is… wow,” I responded, my eyes large. The twos of us, Robin and I, walked into the center, and my jaw dropped. It was even better than the outside! So many people, packed into the place! I knew it was big, but now I was wondering how exactly I was supposed to entertain everybody while Robin looked through them.

“Okay, slight change to the plan. I’m going to go up on that stage and begin my act. I’ll invite some people up, do some cool stuff. I’ll use a spell to broadcast my voice, for I think it’d be difficult to get a connected microphone headpiece thing. You get up there-” I pointed up to some of the pathways near the ceiling, probably so that those large posters on the wall could be hung, or something “- and use this charm of seeing” -I produced a small magnifying glass from my pocket - obviously enchanted, not just a magnifying glass “-and scan the crowd. You know what to look for, and, I don’t know, figure out a way to contact them. Maybe you have a charm, or something, I’m not sure. Improvise, you’re good at that!”

“This is a terrible idea,” Robin told me, “and you’re going to get kicked out. Still, I can’t think of a better idea.”

I grinned. “Good, and besides, if I do well enough, they won’t want me to leave. Now go up, and get ready.”

I waited while he made his way through back ways and such, until he was up on the pathways (I should really figure out what they are called, but we don’t have them where I come from, and I don’t feel like learning it). He tossed something down at me, not sure how it got to me through the crowd, and I looked questioningly at him. He mimed putting it in my ear, and it did look like some kind of earpiece. I gently placed it in my ear, wincing slightly, for I didn’t think it was meant for my pointy elven ears.

“Hey,” a voice that sounded like Robin’s came into my ear. I jumped, and looked up at him. He was grinning, of course.

“Can we communicate through these?” I hesitantly asked, to which I heard, while noticing it was definitely Robin speaking, “Yeah, I found a couple earpieces and tuned them to each other. Don’t know how I managed, but hey, if it ain't broke, don’t knock it.”

I chuckled, and responded, “Fair. Let’s get this show on the proverbial road and the literal stage.”

I pushed my way through the crowd, passing Captain Americas, Captain Rogers’, Captain Mal Reynolds’, and many others that were not Captains. Finally, I made my way to the stage. Wondering what exactly I would say, I jumped up onto it, where there were luckily no people, and muttered to myself, “I’m an introvert, and yet I’m here at such an extrovert place, about to do something terrifying. It’s a good thing I really want to get home, and I really hope this works.”

I activated my charm as people looked up at me, wondering what an elf was doing up on stage, and began speaking.

“Hello, all of you. You might be wondering what I’m doing up here on stage. To be honest, I am not sure either, but I think I’m supposed to give a demonstration or whatever it’s called for my cosplay, but they didn’t really tell me. Hey, can I get some boxes or something destructible up here?”

A couple confused convention workers brought up some empty boxes, while I sweated, wondering if I should make a run for it. Somehow, though, nobody came up and stopped me. I wasn’t even sure why there was a stage up here in the first place. Was an event or actual demonstration supposed to happen? Whatever the case, this was working, and I could see Robin up there scanning the crowd, though none of them really should be interested yet.

It was time to change that.

I deftly pulled out my sword, keeping it in this dimension. I did some basic fighter’s moves, which seemed to impress the people.

“This is one of two Vorpal blades of mine. The name is misleading, or rather, does not do my blades justice. A vorpal blade simply is one that has the capacity to decapitate a foe, especially in fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragons. However, all of my blades are like that.”

A few nervous laughs floated to me. I looked up at Robin for support, and he gave me a thumbs up. He spoke to me, saying, “Now, tell them the special thing and give them a little demonstration.”

“Okay. My blades are special, for they are enchanted. They can change dimensions at my will, and thus pass through objects in this one when I desire, and join back up in this one to cut what I want.”

To demonstrate, I deftly stabbed my sword at the first box, phasing it just before it broke the flimsy cardboard.

“Now, that may not look impressive, as you do not know that my blades do any damage at all, or that these boxes were not staged so I would not appear to do any damage. Furthermore, optical illusions could render it such that I did not stab the cardboard at all, and thus am a fraud. Now, will someone please come up here? I really don’t care who.”

People murmured amongst themselves, until one person stepped forward.

“I will,” they said, and I asked them a little about themselves. They were John, a human male, who came alone, dressed as The Arrow from DC. He loved coming to Comic-Con, and was excited at the opportunity to be a part of what he thought of as a very real and planned demonstration. He came up on stage, and I appraised him.

“I loved your T.V. show,” I said, saying the first thing that popped into my head. I had never seen a single episode, but knew that it was a thing and hoped he wouldn’t question me.

He beamed at me, and said, “Thank you! You are a really good elf!”

“I try. Now,” I directed this at the crowd, “I shall prove, in front of a witness, that these blades are no joke.”

I quickly pulled the handles close to myself, phased them back into reality, and drove them into the boxes. They easily cut through them, for they were designed to cut through things much tougher than some boxes. I then rapidly whirled, phased my blades out of sync, swept the handles just in front of John’s face, and phased them back in sync with the world. I asked a stunned, slightly scared John to touch the blades, and he reported they were very sharp.

“Now, was that an optical illusion? I think not. I am also a great fighter, and master of small charms.” At this, I tossed up a charm I had created haphazardly and quickly earlier, which exploded into a sunburst of light. I had built it to be merely light and not also heat, a better model, I think, than the fireworks of Earth. I pulled another from my cloak, threw it to the ground, and watched as the image of a unicorn burst from it, dazzling the crowd as it dashed between them, an apparition and nothing more. After lapping the center, it returned to the charm, which I picked up. I asked John to return, and I thought about what I would do next.

I heard Robin tell me, “I may have found someone. Here, let me give you some sight.” Before I could protest, I was looking through one of Robin’s eyes and one of my own, which was quite disconcerting. I closed the eye connected to my own vision, and looked through Robin’s. He was looking at a wizard, quite a well done cosplay, perhaps too well done. He was staring attentively at me, but not the same way as the others. He wasn’t awed, or surprised, just kinda wide-eyed, like he couldn’t believe someone else was here. I nodded, prepared for vertigo, and opened my other eye.

After a moment, I noticed the position of the wizard. I noted him in my mind, noted where he was, and whispered to Robin to disconnect us. My vision was yanked back to my own perspective, which was nice, and I prepared my next bit. Everyone was still oohing and aahing at my magic, and so I decided to have a little fun.

“You there!” my voice boomed, my finger pointed at the wizard. He panicked, and I quickly said, “No, please, come on up. I won’t hurt you, I just want another person for my next part. John was lovely, but you look like you know some real magic!” I laughed, and the audience laughed as well. He was pushed forward, and reluctantly got up on stage.

“Now, what is your name?” I asked him, which was the polite way to go about things, I believed.

He glared at me, and responded, “I am Thuzhal, a wizard banished to this realm for many heinous acts.”

“Ooh, nice backstory. I like it! What kinds of acts?” I replied enthusiastically.

He sighed, and said, “Well, people don’t really ask me, so I say they’re heinous. I was just kinda messing around and apparently broke something important, and so I was magically exiled. I was trying to figure out how to get back in, looking through probably forbidden texts, when I tried a spell to return me to the place so I could undo my exile, but it instead sent me across dimensions and I ended up on this technology-ridden, climate-changed planet.”

I clapped, and people in the audience followed my example. “I like that! Gives you an objective, something dark, and just enough flare of mystery. Now, my good sir, I am also not from around here. I was transported here when I tried to figure out the true magical nature of my staff, here-” I gestured at the staff I had leaned against a wall, yes, obviously the one topped with the spider, “-and found myself in a cornfield in Illinois! Naturally, I was confused, as corn does not exist in my world, and I did not know that I had changed dimensions. Now, my man, I believe we can help each other! You know magic and magical items, and I have my staff! Now, for my demonstration…” I decided to try a little something. I pulled out my blades, and concentrated on making them visible, but slightly out of sync with Earth. The sword blades usually became invisible when phased, but I did my best to keep that from happening.

The blades flickered, trying to change dimensions, but I did my best. Eventually, they came into full view, but I passed them gently through my hand to make sure they weren’t physical. I then whirled and, similarly to what I did with John, tried to swing it through the wizard’s neck. However, he was also armed, and so tried to block my attack, which obviously failed. My blade passed straight through him, and he retaliated, swinging a small dagger at me with ferocity and a wild look in his eyes. From the way he handled his blade, I could tell he wasn’t experienced. This was going to end quickly, luckily, I thought, and parried his frenzied swing.

With a series of quick swipes, jabs, kicks, and punches, I disarmed the wizard and sent him to his knees. “Look, man, I didn’t want this to happen. I’m sorry for swinging at you, but it was part of the demonstration. You can get up and help me, or leave, alone, stuck here, probably never to return to your home. Which would you prefer?”

Thuzhal considered my words, and grudgingly got to his feet. I handed him his dagger, which appeared to be made of mithril, and smiled.

“Good, now let’s get out of here. I’m not even supposed to be demonstrating anything here, I just got up on stage and nobody stopped me for whatever reason.” I deactivated my microphone-like charm, and told Robin, “Come on, let’s go.”

He ran into a door, and quickly joined me. I surveyed the crowd, which was full of whispers, no doubt about me and what I had just said. I jumped down, followed by Thuzhal and Robin, and we pushed past the crowd, out of the door, and ran a block before slowing to a walk. We returned to our motel, and I was happy we had managed to complete our goal for that day.

“I’m afraid we may have a problem,” Thuzhal said, walking into the bedroom.

“What kind of problem?” I asked, a little surprised by his sudden entrance and a little frustrated that he couldn’t immediately solve all of our problems.

He winced at the strength of my words, and responded, “Well, I know what kind of magic it uses, and I can partially control it. However, I cannot control the exact dimension. I can make it so that we don’t end up places we can’t survive, like in the vastness of space, or on a planet where the air is poisonous. We will have to travel many worlds until we either get lucky and end up in the right one, or find someone who can use your energy signatures to lock onto our universe. Will that work?”

I thought about it, looked over at Robin, who was sitting cross-legged on his bed, and looked back at Thuzhal. “Well, I guess we don’t really have a choice, so let’s go with that. Do we have any idea how long this will take?”

Thuzhal grinned, and said loudly, “Nope!”

I sighed, and replied, “Well, pack your bags. Might as well get right on down to it.”

We packed the gear we wanted to bring with us, which included some probably illegal items. It has been neglected to mention that these items included two assault rifles, lots of ammo, a couple grenades, a few other guns, including a sniper rifle and a pistol (of course we also had plenty of those ammos as well, and I intended to get a blacksmith or something to break them open and figure out how to make them and potentially augment them/the gun.). There were others, but I shouldn’t really mention them.

We gathered behind the motel, in the parking lot, after checking out and getting our stuff all ready. I readied myself for what was about to happen, planted the staff at arm’s length in front of me, and Robin and Thuzhal both grabbed it. After exchanging grim looks with both of them, I grabbed the spider, and it did the same thing as the previous time we used it, though the eyes seemed to glow brighter and the wind seemed stronger. I closed my eyes, and wondered what would happen on the other side, just before I lost consciousness.

When I returned to consciousness, I was confused. The sky was a pastel purple, with red dots swirling through it. It seemed like some kind of strange dream, and its colors were chaos. The ground was some kind of acid green, and there were portable toilets everywhere. They were in every shade, from green to blue to pink to yellow. I closed my eyes, as I felt a migraine coming on. I shaded my eyes and reopened them, looking at the ground for Robin and Thuzhal. I found Thuzhal covering his eyes, peeking through his fingers at the landscape, and Robin was still passed out on the ground. Oh, and, by the way, Thuzhal is a human.

“This is a strange world you have brought us to, elf,” he told me, and I followed his gaze. I had originally thought that the toilets were just sitting there, but as I really looked at them, I saw that they were moving. There was even a small village, made of what I couldn’t say, as there wasn’t a tree or rock around. Even the ground itself was a deep green, and made of a substance I couldn’t make out. It was smooth, and I could push my hand through it, like a partial liquid. It was strange, as none of us were sinking into it, but it didn’t seem like good building material. The toilets weren’t walking, or splitting apart in any way, but just seemed to glide, all of which seemed very strange and impossible to me. When they came to a step, they seemed like they just jumped, but with no downward movement to create thrust upward, if that makes sense.

“Let’s… explore?” I said hesitantly, and Thuzhal strode toward the settlement. I followed him, after a moment’s consideration, and dragged Robin behind me. When we got closer, we could see that it was made of some kind of wood, and so I guessed that they had just taken down any trees in view. It seemed similar to a Wild West town, minus the dust everywhere, horses, natural colors, or people. I was quite unnerved, and moved close to one of the johns.

“Uh… hello?” I said (asked?) hesitantly. It’s door turned to me, and it seemed to make an annoyed, squishy sound from within it.

“Do you guys have any wizards or magic folk at all?” I asked it. It moved toward me, making angry sounds from within it, and I backed away. “I don’t think it likes the sound of ‘wizard’.” It moved faster, squishing louder, and other toilets started coming over. I pulled Robin into a fireman’s carry on my back, and readied one of my blades.

“We should get out of here, Thuzhal,” I told him, and he nodded, his eyes frantic. I turned and ran, but there were toilets everywhere.

“No time! We have to do it here!” I shouted, and he grabbed the staff. I shrugged Robin forward and held his hand around the pole, and grabbed the arachnid on top.

When I awoke, I simply lay there. I didn’t really want to open my eyes and find out where we had landed, but I suppose it would have to happen eventually. I slowly opened my eyes, and squinted at the bright light coming from the sun… suns? There were two shining orbs in the sky, one more yellow-y, and one more orange-y. It was very hot, and the ground was grainy. When I looked at the landscape, I saw that we were in a large desert of sand, and there were a couple houses in the distance. It looked like about midday, but I couldn’t be sure how long the day lasted, so it would be best to start moving. I got to my feet, and noticed that both Thuzhal and Robin were still passed out.

“Hey,” I said, shaking Robin. He stirred, and started moving. I moved over to Thuzhal, and patted his shoulder.

“Wakey, wakey, time to get up sleepyhead,” I told Thuzhal, and his eyes snapped open, then quickly shut.

“Where are we, and why is it so bright?” Thuzhal said, and Robin nodded in agreement.

I shrugged. “I’m not sure, but there are some houses over there, we can ask them. I hope it goes better this time than last time.”

Robin looked confused. He held up a finger, and said, “Last time? Do you mean Earth?”

I was also confused for a second, before I remembered that Robin had been asleep the previous dimension.

“Well, we travelled dimensions, and you know how we always fall unconscious when we do that? Well, you were asleep while Thuzhal and I almost died from sentient Porta-Potties.”

This only served to bewilder him even more, and I described the events that had taken place in the strange, colorful dimension.

“Anyway,” I said, finishing up, “we should get moving. We aren’t going to kill ourselves, after all!”

With that lovely remark, we started walking toward the houses. It was extremely hot, hotter than Calimport, even hotter than California in summer. I didn’t know how people handled it, but then I thought, perhaps the people here are different and more adapted to this environment.

After probably 15 minutes, we got to the houses. They were strange, quite small and kinda dome-like, circular, with person-height walls and a sloped, domed kinda roof. It was similarly colored as the sand, probably so that it could blend in, though the satellite dish looking thing on top of it kinda ruined the effect. It was silvery, and very much did not blend in.

“Sh-should we go in?” I asked tentatively, and Thuzhal marched forward, grinning. “Um, is that a yes?”

“I recognize this place!” he said in response, and knocked on the first door. I rushed toward him, but it was too late.

“HOW, exactly can you recognize this? You’ve never been here! You were directly transported to-” A thought rushed into my mind, causing me to stop in my tracks. “It’s like Faerûn, huh? Someone came from this world, or travelled here, and made a story or whatever based on this place?”

He slowly nodded, and simply replied, “Star Wars.”

The door opened, sliding to one side, and a man came out. I hadn’t seen a lot about Star Wars, but there were a lot of cosplayers at Comic-Con that I had recognized as probably being from this universe. The person that opened the door looked like Obi-Wan, except his hair was black. I blinked, for, while it was true I didn’t know much about Star Wars (already mentioned, but it makes this sentence flow better. Shut up, stupid), I knew that: 1. He wasn’t supposed to be on Tatooine until much later, when he looked old with white hair, or something, and 2. His hair was brown, not black. All of this was very confusing, especially once Qui Gon Jinn walked past, asking, “Who is it, honey?”

“U… u-um, I’m Alushtas, and these are Robin and Thuzhal,” I stammered, my eyes searching for answers I doubted I would easily find.

“Ah, hello! What lovely and strange names! What can I do for you?” he asked nicely, and I looked at my companions.

“Uh, can we come in? I think we need to talk to you,” I said kinda randomly, for I was still very confused and needed to figure out what was happening.

He smiled, and ushered us in. “Honey, come meet our guests!” he said, and Qui Gon walked back in.

I looked back and forth between the two men, and I asked Obi-Wan, “Why does he keep calling you ‘honey’?”

They looked at each other and smiled, and Obi-Wan told me, “Well, we were dating for a while, but then this wonderful man approached me, what, probably almost a year and a half ago, and proposed to me! Of course, I said yes, and we’ve been living here ever since, happier than ever!” Qui Gon came over and hugged Obi-Wan deeply, and the two men sat down on a couch, holding hands.

Thuzhal looked confused as well, though I had realized that this was not the normal Star Wars universe I knew, and the wizard asked, “Where is Luke? I thought he lived here.”

“Well, yes, he has, but once he married his spouse, they’ve been travelling the galaxy. Would you like some blue milk?”

“Uh, sure,” I said, and Obi-Wan waved his hand. A glass came over to me, as if by magic, and I sipped it warily. It was good, similar to Earth milk, but more coconut-y.

“Soooo, who has Luke married, anyway?” I asked Qui Gon, taking a longer drink from my glass.

“Oh, he ran off with that hooligan, Han Solo, for a bit, but he came back eventually, and told me they were getting married. I was shocked, for it seemed sudden, but they were happy, and so we gave them our blessing,” he replied, and I, suddenly realizing something, asked another question (we really wanted to ask questions, I guess), “So what happened to Chewbacca?”

“Ah, good old Chew. They are going around the galaxy, exploring, happy by themselves. They liked Han, but they always felt less, you know? They are very introverted, and just like to explore. They find people difficult to understand, and they’ve told me that everyone just goes too quickly for them. Last I heard, they were going to Coruscant, which is nice.”

“Mhm. Anyway, you guys haven’t mastered inter-dimensional travel yet, have you?” I asked, realizing that, while cool, this place wasn’t really gonna help us.

“Unfortunately, that project was shut down because of its possible repercussions and side effects and all that,” he told me, “did you need something like that?”

I shrugged, and said, “Yeah, it would’ve been nice, but I think we might be able to manage. We should be going, though. Thank you, both of you, for everything.”

Qui Gon smiled at us, and asked, “Are you sure you want to leave? We’d be happy for you to stay.”

I sadly smiled back at him, and replied, “Yeah, we need to go.”

We said our goodbyes, and left. When we were out of sight of the house, it was probably about midnight.

“Well guys? Shall we?” I said, holding out the spider-adorned staff.

We travelled through many more dimensions, probably more than I could ever describe. As we travelled, and got used to dimension-hopping, we slept for less and less time, and eventually simply got tired, and then slightly dizzy.

Something that I have talked about, but not really explained, was that Earth was a Chaos realm. This means that both magic and technology work there, though there are other realms in which magic works and tech doesn’t, ones where tech works and magic doesn’t, and ones where neither work. However, this is a flawed perspective. It is one described by wizards of old in my world (yes, interdimensional travel isn’t completely unknown back home in Faerun), and their experiences in other realms.

This is flawed for a couple reasons. It isn’t so simple as just ‘technology and magic, or one, or neither’. Magic can take many forms, and magic that works in one place doesn’t necessarily work in another. In the Star Wars-like world, there were Jedi that could manipulate objects using their mind and what they called the Force, which seems to be a type of magic. Meanwhile, my own magic could have been unstable or unusable, because it is a different world than mine. Similarly, magic could exist on Earth, though its inhabitants didn’t usually have it, leading to unpredictable results. I was lucky that only a couple of my charms failed or had issues, and not more of them. There were many other forms of magic, but to go into detail would take too long.

Technology is also a difficult thing to pin down. It’s basically just the application of knowledge for practical purposes, and so almost anything creature-made could be said to be technology. Again, some technology could function in some places, but not in others. Some steampunk worlds, for instance, couldn’t ‘fathom’ the existence of further innovation, like cars or computers. Other worlds were stuck in the Stone Age, and in some, not even bird’s nests could be made. I am not sure what would happen if one tried to make a bird’s nest in that world, but I had decided not to find out.

As we went along in our journey, I collected items. I wanted mementos of our travels, and hey, they might be useful in the future. Unfortunately, I wasn’t always able to pick things up, whether because of being chased by the inhabitants of the world or something else (and if you’re wondering if I took something from the Star Wars world, yes, I palmed a handle-looking thing with a button from a counter). This led to some fights, some running, and some pain. Still, I wanted certain items, like I think one was called a “Babel fish”, which allowed me to understand others, no matter what language they spoke.

Something that I realized was that no matter where we went, some items were still able to be used. I eventually figured out that it was because they were dimensional items, which transcended some of the ordinary rules of the realms. We started with two - the staff itself, which is a good thing, because otherwise we would’ve ended up stranded on a random world. The other was my Vorpal blades, which was nice, because I liked them. However, the realm we received the third (and fourth and fifth?) dimensional item(s) was very… strange…

We had come from a world of robots. There wasn’t a single human, elf, dog, orc, sentient species of any kind, or really any organic being that we found. Everything was automated, and seemed as though there had once been people, but then they had left, potentially leaving the robots there to keep things up until they returned. However, we realized that it was unlikely, if not impossible, that a machine could bring us home, rather than magic. Therefore, we left pretty quickly, though not before I got a small bracelet that had nanotech that could form a dagger in my hand in a millisecond, which could be quite useful.

When we arrived in the new realm, we found ourselves in a smallish room. There was a bed of flowers, yellow flowers, illuminated by a fairly dim light coming through a hole in the ceiling of the room. Actually, it seemed more like a cave, though we couldn’t really be completely sure. There was a hallway, or corridor, or whatever to our right. We went through it, and found a doorway.

We went through it, and walked through a system of rooms, some of which had puzzles, and traps, though none of them actually hurt us (well, except for Robin, who got a sprained ankle after falling through some leaves). We saw beings, some might call them monsters or abominations, which had very strange physical makeups. This wasn’t really uncommon for us to see, because of everywhere we had already been, but weird stuff is weird. One had a large eye as most of its body, and another looked similar to a frog. They ran from us, so we didn’t have to worry about fighting them, and when we got to the end of the rooms, we came to a small house.

We tentatively opened the door, and found the house deserted (or at least visibly so, and nobody came to the door to see who was there). There were stairs leading down to what I assumed was a basement right in front of us, a living room looking area to our left, and a hallway to our right. It seemed like an odd way to set up a house, but again, lots of places were quite queer (in both senses of the term).

Anyway, we entered the living room. There was a table with chairs, bookshelves with books on them - “How to Cook Snails, Snail Basics, Meals with Snails?” -, and an armchair in front of a fireplace, fire included, which seemed like a fire hazard, but whatever. We didn’t find anyone, so we went through the door leading out of the room (not the one we entered).

We were in a kitchen, which seemed normal, except the stove didn’t work, there was white fur in the sink, and a pie on the counter. There was a faint smell of pie crust and cinnamon in the air, and I took a slice for later, in case I might want it (hey, I’m a thief, what would you expect, perfect morals?). We went back to the first room, and entered the hall.

There were three doors, two of which were bedrooms. We decided not to explore them, though one looked more like a child’s bedroom and one like an adult’s. The third was locked, however, and had a sign that read, ‘Room under Renovations’. Because there was no more of the house to explore, we went down the stairs to the basement.

There wasn’t really an actual basement, as far as we could tell. It was a long hallway, which, after walking the entirety of, showed us a doorway, similar to the one at the entrance, which we went through, as we didn’t want to walk back. We found ourselves in some kind of snowy, forest-y area, though, when we looked up to the sky, we could faintly see a cavern roof.

I’ll spare you the details, but basically, we went through this region, a very wet, cave-like region, and a very hot area. In the hot area, we came across a laboratory, which we chose to go into. It had a large video screen, seemingly inactive, though I couldn’t tell its use. As we continued walking through the building, we saw a cluttered desk, a bag of dog food(?), and a dark hole in the wall. When we got to the hole, the door to a bathroom hitherto unseen opened, and a tall lizard woman (?) came out. She looked quite surprised to see us, but hurried over nonetheless.

“More humans? This is quite unusual… umm… hello? Who are you?” she asked hesitantly.

“I am Alushtas, and I am not a human… which I only tell you because I don’t know why. I am an elf, This is Robin, he’s a human, and Thuzhal, whose race I never actually found out, I think,” I responded.

“And I would prefer to keep it that way,” Thuzhal said, smiling and extending his hand toward the person. “And you are…?”

“Oh!” She blushed furiously. “M-my name is A-alphys, and I’m the-the royal scientist for King Asgore.”

“Oh, that’s cool. Do you guys have any, you know…, magic?” I asked Alphys. We seemed to do a lot of questioning in these worlds, and not much else.

“K-kinda, we have magical a-attacks and the like, and fire magic, and probably other kinds.”

“Oh.” I must’ve looked really sad, because she immediately responded with, “B-but that’s okay! Here, I can improve your phones! You… don’t… have phones? Um, I can get you phones!”

She rushed upstairs up an escalator, then quickly came down another closer to the entrance. She was holding three small objects, which I assumed was a phone, and hoped her word for phone meant the same thing it meant for me, because it could be useful. It seemed that way, so yay.

“Here! I have a phone for each of you! Y-yes, I had them l-laying around… anyway, they can text, access the internet wherever, access special Dimensional Boxes, defuse bombs, and activate a jetpack! Here, t-take them!”

We each took a phone, and I immediately checked out the Dimensional Boxes. They each had space for 8 items, seemingly no matter the size, which didn’t make sense, but whatever. There were 3 boxes, which was nice, so I didn’t have to worry about 24 items taking up space in my Bag of Holding.

“Sweet, thank you!” I said, and she blushed again. “Oh, don’t worry, I just like helping people! S-speaking of which, there was this human that came through a bit ago. Have y-you seen them? I think Toriel is coming after them, and I’m a b-bit worried.”

Thuzhal and I exchanged looks as Robin looked between us. “No, we haven’t seen anybody except a couple dudes back at that purple place,” I told her, and her eyes widened.

“O-oh! You n-need to go… I’m s-sorry I can’t help more! Now, g-get out of here!”

She pushed us out of a back door, while I protested and tried to ask her about dimensional travelling. She didn’t listen to me, and locked the door after us.

“Well, now what? Do we go after the human? Do we go see the king? Do we leave? What do you dudes think?” I asked, looking at Robin and Thuzhal, whose backs were to the lab.

“I think I can help!” a cheery voice said from behind. I whirled around, dagger forming in my hand. A little yellow flower had popped up from the ground, and it had a face which was smiling at us.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Thuzhal asked, suspicious of the small being.

“I’m Flowey! Flowey the flower! You were just talking to that overgrown lizard, huh? Don’t listen to her, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about!” the golden flower told us.

“Um, she seemed nice, while you were insulting her. Not really the way to play the ‘nice guy’ card,” Robin interjected.

Flowey gave a wide smile, and said, “Oh, sorry. We all insult her, ‘cause she’s senile and ignorant of the world. Even nice old King Asgore cracks jokes about her!”

By this point, I was very unsettled, but decided to humor Flowey. “So, you said you can help us. How?”

“Easy! The rules down here are simple. You k i l l, o r y o u b e k i l l e d.” As he spoke, his face grew ugly, into a mixture of a smile and a look of utter hatred. He sent little white bullets at us, which we tried to dodge, but some still hit us. They really hurt, and it felt like my life force itself was being sapped. I swung my dagger at him, but he popped back into the ground and back up a bit further on.

“Hope you guys have fun! See ya later!” he said, smiling, and vanished into the ground.

“That… was horrible,” I said, and both of my companions nodded.

“We should leave and never return.” Again, they nodded.

I pulled out the staff from my Bag, held it out, and we did our thing. However, as we began to flicker out of the strange, underground world, none of us noticed the edge of a flower root curling around the base of the staff.

wasn’t really sure how to say that Flowey was comin with the gang (obv without them wanting hiim to :P) with the exact wording, so I used ‘flower root’, but I am open to suggestions or changes if you think soething should change. It mgiht not, because I know hwere this is going and you don’t, but you coudl definitely help!

1 note · View note

attemptingthoughtfulness · 4 years

Text

...this is worthless, I’m rambling and procrastinating. Sorry ‘bout that.

(minor spoilers for Naruto and Detective Conan as well as major spoilers for Magic Kaito and... Avengers Endgame?)

I’m procrastinating, don’t mind me. And during that time of procrastination I have been watching a show I used to watch when I was like 12 or 13, so it’s been a while. And even though that show has some obvious flaws - flaws I will be writing about in a bit - it find myself liking it. So why?

Magic Kaito is a spin-off show of the much bigger Detective Conan anime, which was actually my first anime ever and one of the few memories I have from age 0-4. I actually went onto the wiki and looked up the episode, which was a lot harder than you can imagine: episode 282 which features (for that show anyway) rather graphic imagery of a bloody corpse and like blood in showers and stuff. I don’t know if I just randomly watched the most traumatizing episodes of animes or - which is far more likely - I just remember them darker thant they were but the Naruto episode right afterwards was the one where Gaara tries to murder Lee at the Chunin exams which is also a rather dark episode. (I know, it doesn’t really matter but that was season 3 episode 58 of the original Naruto series). I bet you could find out the exact day and station that I was watching because there’s virtually no way those two episodes would ever follow each other more than once.

I guess that’s not what it’s really about but Detective Conan was probably one of the core animes I watched when I was younger because it was well known and free online. It was also the one that got me into doing QCs for subtitles (funny story, since I had been a QC for a while and seen the really bad mistakes some translators did, I actually applied for the “job” of a translator, that was mere months before I wrote my Cambridge Certificate exam which I, not to brag, passed with C2, and I had been rejected, which probably fed into my fear of rejection but is also very funny retrospectively.)

I don’t like Detective Conan that much, it’s a fun episodic detective story that has a very, very thin overarching plot and is probably only ever end when the writers don’t have ideas for crimes anymore. And Magic Kaito suffers from its bigger sibling immensely. In case you don’t know, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, Magic Kaito tells the story of a character that occasionally appears in Detective Conan - a thief who is also a magician (which is quite frankly the best pairing I have ever seen, it’s such a good idea!). Kaito is the son of one of the biggest magicians ever who gets killed in a mysterious accident. One day he finds out that his dad was the thief in the moonlight Kaito Kid and murdered by a mysterious organization - who he now tries to lure out of hiding to protect his father’s legacy and put them in jail.. or something? I mean, there is some revenge fantasy implied, but he’s also like 17 and it’s a children’s anime, so he probably doesn’t want to kill them. Anyway, the way he does it is dressing himself up as Kaito Kid to attract those criminals. And that’s the entire premise of a 24 episodes anime.

Before we get into anything, here some in-universe lore that has been stuck in my mind since 13. My favourite thing about Kid is that his name was also “master thief 1412″, the number being the police file number, but if you write the numbers in a certain way it looks like the word “Kid”, a name given him by Shinichi Kudo’s father (meaning Conan’s father). And both Conan’s and Kaito’s fathers knew each other and were aquantances that respected each other? Like, Conan’s mom went to Kaito’s dad for acting training and stuff which is how his dad figured out that he was Kaito Kid. And when her training ended Conan’s dad gave her a card to give Kaito’s dad with an exclaimationpoint - which was an answer to a card he had previously given him with a question mark. Excuse me if my speech is unclear, I am just nostalgic.

Okay, let’s get started: the series suffers from weak characters and the introduction of too many ideas. That’s it. To get the first thing out of the way: if you make an anime about a spin off character and the main character of the main show keeps showing up that means you don’t trust your spin off to stand on its own feet. I love appearances of in universe characters of other shows, I love the MCU, but imagine if Iron Man kept popping up in Jessica Jones. I mean, he can’t because he’s dead but still. Or Aang keept being part of The Legend of Korra. From 24 episodes, Conan/Shinichi is a major character in 4 of them and is also kinda important in another one. That does not really speak of confidence about your series’ characters which is fair considering it got rebooted. Also, every episode starts with Kaito Kid “opening commentary” the episode before the curtain opens and the actual thing starts - and it also ends with Kid shortly commenting on it and bowing in the end which more often than not features the phrase “I will keep entertaining you if you wish so.”, which is a kinda funny meta commentary of the creator’s being painfully aware of their situation.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are really good scenes and funny moments; the one that made me laugh was when Kid hasn’t stolen anything for like three months and since Kaito still goes to high school his friend is kinda disappointed and he thinks: “Who do you think I am? A weekly manga magazine?”, which is already funny but literally a few miliseconds afterwards his friend goes: “Oh, I know why he hasn’t stolen anything for so long! He’s dead!” and he falls off his chair. These jokes wouldn’t be fun on their own but their close proximity to each other makes them work so well. I’m like 70% sure this happened to Gosho Aoyama at some point Over all there is a lot of very good imagery, the magic tricks and heists are fun and often times we have parallel’s, call backs and very well fitting juxtapositions, but over all there’s just a bunch of not-great going on, which I will list now:

1. The Jukebox and the Poker Face: The entire show is also framed by this jukebox Kaito’s dad has left him which has 24 disk and an appendix playing some advice that is tangentially related to the episode. And what more often than not gets repeated is that “he should not forget his poker face”, which, yeah, seems like generally good advice for a magician but... why? It doesn’t serve narrative purpose at all. There is no theme or deeper meaning in the show? The idea of a poker face doesn’t even gets touched on outside of the first episode? Like, otherwise he never breaks his pokerface and there’s like no tension between his real self and the poker face which might as well be a metaphor for Kaito vs. his thief persona. I dunno, am I reading too much into this - why poker face?! Further more, because the jukebox only has 25 audio tracks in total and they play every time Kaito is up to a heist, it kinda feels like he doesn’t do anything in between the episodes? Like, if he listens to that juke box chronologically, which seemed implied, he has only gone to like 25 heists in total which.. is fine for real life statistics but doesn’t really make sense since there is no sense of time in that universe and it just feels like he’s done a lot more?

2. Magic: Yupp, in a universe with a magician reliant on smart tricks and improvisation like a magician on stage there are witches with actual magic. There is actual magic introduced to a world that has previously never had magic before and, believe it or not, magic has no purpose at all. Actually, it does kinda come up in three episodes and they do some really fun stuff the first time with the idea that an illusionist wants to trick and entertain an audience, change their hearts which has different if not more value than actual magic changing the people themselves. Really cool stuff. Would be a shame if the writers wouldn’t know how to go from there and it never comes up again.

3. Super weak as fuck characters outside of Kaito: There are, in total six characters that are not Conan which switch up being the focus of an episode. The witch that practises afor mentioned actual magic is this archetype of a seductress who uses love spells to make boys like her and because her magic doesn’t work on Kaito Kid, she’s like super into him. First, she wants to kill him because she detests his trickery but then she just kinda wants to bang him? And that’s her entire character. Then there is a detective. I didn’t even bother learning his name because he’s the “main challenge” for the first episode he appears and then just kinda stands next to the police officer occasionally to drop observations for exposition or tell Kid something he doesn’t know. I mean, you cannot introduce another high school detective into a universe that whose main character is literally a high school detective. It was as if Jessica Jones kept having Iron Man and another random play boy billionaire with a weird robot suit. There just hast to be a better character than that? Make it a very smart police officer, just anything else. It feels like most of the characters are mostly window dressing and there is just no emotional arc to them whatsoever - they’re treated like most side characters that get shown something by Kaito Kid, have a change of heart and never appear again - with the exception that they are on screen. Constantly. Doing nothing at all.

4.The last two episodes: They’re probably the worst. So, there is this “new magician-thief in town and his name is Kaito Corbeau” and he’s kind of the antithesis of Kaito Kid, dressing in the same suit but in black and probably like a joke on the fact that Kaito Kid is a magician who uses doves which are white and crows are black? I mean, it’s fun but the mirror doesn’t really work that much because the words “Kid” and “Corbeau” don’t mirror each other and Kaito Kid rarely uses doves. But I get the point, A for effort, I guess. Anyway, so. Corbeau who looks suspiciously much like Kaito’s dad and apparently knows something about his death, then challenges Kaito to a duel of thieves also being a magician asks him to solve the mistery of how he will steal some precious gem. By the end of the first episode of the two-parter, Corbeau has stolen the gem and Kaito walks home wondering how he did it. As he comes home the lights of his house are turned on, which is weird since he lives alone because his dad is dead and his mother is always travelling the world. But that unexpected visitor turns out to be his mother and my first reaction was... really? No, they would not be doing such a stupid thing, right? Nah, that’s probably a red herring. No way she’s Corbeau. (Spoiler: she’s Corbeau.) And she asks him “if he really wants to do this? If he doesn’t want to become a magician in Vegas or anything?”, which is a reasonable question from a mother: do you really want to be a thief and hunt some criminals who might as well kill you like your da? But it’s also kind of a stupid one because it is absolutely reasonable that he definitely wants to do that and that there is no grain of doubt in his mind that he does. And that is ultimately the problem of the last two episodes: they’re about testing Kid’s commitment which fails on a bunch of levels. The first one being: there is never a struggle on the side of Kid at all. He never doubts himself, Corbeau isn’t even that big of a challenge, considering he has been regularly challenged by genius high school detectives who seem to be the smartest demographic ever, an actual witch, a serial killer+thief, another differen thief and this shady organization that killed his dad. There is no escalation, no actual struggle against all odds making him question his motivations which - he doesn’t even think for longer than a second about his mother’s questions which is why, when Corbeau tells him around the end that it was all to test his commitment, it could have been substituted for literally anything else.

However, that’s not my real problem with that: Kaito Kid is a necessity, not an identity. There is no need for a commitment towards the figure of Kaito Kid because the moment that criminal organization is caught, there is no need for the mantle of Kaito Kid anymore. This whole idea of commitment of character falls apart because Kid is not a superhero. He’s not taking up a huge and never ending task that is going to take forever - Kaito could very well become a big magician in Vegas afterwards, these things are not mutually exclusive which is why that question kinda backfires and makes his mom look bad because she doubts him for no reason whatsoever? Also, Kaito is literally still in high school and 17, they somehow came up with something less rational than having him dress up as a magician at night and hunting criminals by having him drop out of high school and become a magician in Las fucking Vegas with 17. And I get that it’s the last episode and you wanna end it on a heroic note but that didn’t work at all.

(next morning thoughts: I think I kinda understand the underlying problem of those two episodes now, let me, like the show itself compare it to his bigger brother - Detective Conan. There is no similar episode to test the main character’s strength of mind, but his parents often times wonder and ask him if he really wants to do this considering he nearly died the first time, and that is genuine care and if it wasn’t a better idea to let the police handle it; Conan always answers that he needs to keep doing it. However, these kinds of episodes would actually work with Conan as the main character because for one, his parent’s reasoning is way more sensical and two: he’s inherently human. Yeah, he is super smart and knows a bunch of weird shit that helps him solving crimes, but detectives are humans and they never pretend to be otherwise. I’m not saying magicians aren’t humans, the idea of supernatural things that is beautiful and quite literally casts a spell over us, to be willingly tricked into a world where the impossible is possible is a very human thing. Magicians just aren’t, they’re entertainers and try to exceed our reality, to be exceptional and - to be not human. That’s why the show always has him being cocky and witty, rarely struggling more than a bit with a heist, because he needs to. At this point his poker face has quite literally become his entire character.)

I know, I have been rambling, what I wanted to say is: despite all of this I don’t dislike the show. And in a way it suffers from the same Detective Conan problem of having selfcontained stories but an obligation to connect them to each other, weakening the entire thing. And I don’t know why I like it so much, because I like it more than anything reasonable would justify me to. And this is kinda what I need to find out. I’m very tired now and I have three days to work on my paper and I should go to sleep. If you expected a satisfying conclusion to this whole affair: welcome to Magic Kaito and I’m sorry.

1 note · View note

mittensmorgul · 5 years

Text

I’m officially out into the early days of Dabb Era (masquerading as the end of Carver Era, but it’s clear that Dabb has already taken over at this point) on the tnt loop. And this scene from the end of 11.16 was just so reminiscent of 14.13:

[BOBBY leaves the house and heads to his car. He waves at the nosy neighbor, and gets in the driver's seat. He notices a bottle, with a note attached to it that says, "Fine, you Ass, you win, for now. Enjoy. R." BOBBY laughs. He gets out his journal to write about the case, when his cell phone rings.] BOBBY: Dean. You boys okay? DEAN: Yeah we're fine, Bobby, where the hell have you been? I've left three messages. BOBBY: Well, I was - DEAN: Look I got a possible lead on Lilith in Maine. But we're on a case in Reno, I texted you the address, so if you're done sitting on your ass…

To John waking up in his car, returned to the past and thinking his trip to the future was a dream:

[The Impala is parked near a lake. JOHN sleeps in the front seat. He’s back in 2003. His cell phone rings on the dashboard. He wakes up and answers the call.] JOHN: Dean. No, I’m okay. I just… I just had one hell of a dream. Yeah. No, it was a good one. I’m on my way back. I’ll see you soon.

And at first I thought, oh hey look at these two incredibly similar scenes between Dean on the phone in the past and his two father figures who’ve just unwittingly actually seen a far-future version of Dean.

11.16 was about the “Soul Eater,” whose nest where he brings victims to feast on their souls exists “outside of space and time.” A place where Dean and Bobby could see one another before being returned to their respective places in time. And 14.13 also exists as a weird not-quite-real pocket in space and time.

But then I realized... In 11.16, Dean was calling Bobby to check out a lead on Lilith because he and Sam were much farther away... in RENO of all places.

Which will become significant again in 12.01, the first “official” Dabb era episode, as the place where John and Mary were married. And also the place where Chuck apparently ditched Amara in 14.20.

The mention of Reno one episode before 11.17 just struck me as significant now, and should for anyone who still believes that Red Meat is somehow glorifying the toxic codependency between Sam and Dean. Y’all need to watch that again and actually pay attention to what the episode does as a whole... Bobo has long been Dabb’s partner in crime when it comes to the big thematic stuff, and they literally co-wrote 11.17, kind of unofficially-officially establishing their start point for the eventual endgame. Billie, Sam’s mysterious resurrection, Dean’s self-sacrifice to barter his life for Sam’s and Billie refuses basically telling him this is not a story that can work like this anymore. And this was BEFORE she became Death. She reminded him that his next destination was The Empty, but then... Dean didn’t die. This episode literally established the defining elements of the eventual subversion of the entire narrative, which we’re seeing finally come to fruition after s14.

Can you see why so many of us were THRILLED by 11.17, and the implications of it, even back then? Because it was NEVER about glorifying the “old story” of Sam and Dean trading their lives for each other. It was about the pointlessness of it on a cosmic scale. And Dabb establishing his own in-story Avatar as showrunner in Billie, the symbolic death of the old spiral narrative. He just needed to bide his time until all the planets aligned and could make the direct run at the ultimate subversion of the original author (i.e. Chuck as Kripke’s avatar).

It made me interested to know the history of Reno getting mentioned in the narrative...

2.19: Folsom Prison Blues. Reno isn’t mentioned in the episode, but the title is from the Johnny Cash song:

When I was just a baby, My Mama told me, "Son, Always be a good boy, Don't ever play with guns, " But I shot a man in Reno, Just to watch him die, When I hear that whistle blowin', I hang my head and cry.

Which is kind of interesting in the context of the episode taken with the context of all the later references. This was an episode where they deliberately committed a crime, deliberately got themselves “locked up,” not only to solve a case, but to help a friend who’d once saved their father’s life in wartime. At the end of the episode, yes, they stage their escape from prison, but their entire compulsion to help people they feel they owe even at the risk of their own lives or liberty, is sort of encapsulated in this episode. I can imagine Chuck’s fascination with these two, “my guys,” stars of his favorite show, choosing the selfless act this way when Chuck tried to keep forcing them to relive his opposite narrative-- one sibling over the other, one being locked up for all eternity while the other goes on happily creating the universe. The eternal conflict-sacrifice narrative... was always Chuck’s imposition on the Winchesters. Even Cain was confused by Dean’s choice in 9.11, not understanding why Dean chose to SAVE his brother rather than kill him, because Cain was living out just another version of Chuck’s story. This is why Sam and Dean are the exceptions, the version that Chuck just can’t understand, the ones who refuse over and over to accept that Chuck’s story must be *their* story. No matter how hard he’s tried, Chuck just can’t break their will. He can’t stop them from continuing to fight. Even now that Dean has broken and said yes to Michael. Even that couldn’t break his will in the end.

3.01: The Magnificent Seven. When Sam learns about Dean’s demon deal for his life, he begins trying to find ways to get Dean out of the deal and save his life. Tamara suggested to him that there’s a hoodoo priestess in Louisiana who may be able to help:

DEAN: Sam, no hoodoo spell's gonna break this deal, all right? It's a goose chase. SAM: Yeah, but we don't know that, Dean— DEAN (cutting him off): Yes, we do. Forget it. She can't help. SAM (trying to cut in): Look, it's worth— DEAN (speaking over SAM): We're not going, and that's that. What about Reno, huh?

And Dean tells him no, because if they try to get out of the deal, Sam dies. So said the demon he made his deal with, and Dean refuses to let that happen. He even refuses to tell Sam that fact yet, and diverts the conversation with the suggestion they go to Reno instead.

And this is the opposite of Chuck’s original choice, to sacrifice and lock up his sister so his creation could expand unfettered. Dean chose instead to sacrifice himself so Sam could go live that normal life he’d always dreamed of. This was just the beginning of the very long game Chuck would play with them...

Vaguely near the end of s4, and also 11.16:

Between April 17th - ~May 3rd, 2009: Bobby and Rufus investigate what they think is a ghost haunting a house in Grand Rapids, MI. Sam and Dean are in Reno

We never do learn more about the case they were working there, but it did give them a lead on Lilith. Remember that 4.20, the Rapture, takes place on May 3 that year, immediately after this point in the timeline. Castiel was about to try to reveal Heaven’s deception, and their role in breaking the seals to free Lucifer and was dragged back to be reprogrammed into an obedient soldier again. And he would break free of that two episodes later in 4.22, siding with the Winchesters over Heaven and sealing his own fate in a powerful display of free will.

8.21: The Great Escapist: One of the Biggersons locations where we see Cas pass through in his manipulation of quantum superposition to evade the angels is Reno, Nevada.

11.16: the other side of the “outside of time and space” meeting between s4 Bobby and s11 Dean.

12.01: Dean, in trying to convince a freshly resurrected Mary of his identity, and the fact that 33 years have elapsed since she died:

Dean: Dad told me. March 23, 1972 you walked out of a movie theater, Slaughterhouse-Five, you loved it. And you bumped into a big marine and knocked him on his ass. You were embarrassed and he laughed it off, said you could make it up to him with a cup of coffee. So you went to, uh, Maroni's, and you talked and he was cute, and he knew the words to every Zeppelin song, so when he asked you for your number you gave it to him even though you knew your dad would be pissed. That was the night that you met- Mary: John Winchester. Dean: August 19, 1975 you were married, in Reno, your idea. Few years later I came along, then Sammy.

14.20: Amara is, according to the Lying Liar Chuck, in Reno... while meanwhile Billie, Jack, and the Shadow are having a double-secret conference in the Empty while Chuck unleashes Hell on Earth.

I’m wondering if we’ll ever hear mention of Reno again...

#spn s14 spoilers #spn 14.20 #spn 11.16 #spn 11.17 #spn 14.13 #spiders georg of the tnt loop #s14 hellatus rewatch #spn 12.01 #spn 8.21 #spn 4.20 #spn 3.01 #spn 2.19 #reno is a quantum superposition #dabb vs cars #it's spirals all the way down #if you say 'mysterious ways' so help me i will kick your ass #that's what free will is

33 notes · View notes

elizabethemerald · 5 years

Text

Shipping Game

I was tagged twice! Thanks to both @autumnalfallingleaves and @eurazba for this fun game!

Pick your top 10 ships without reading the questions. [or if you’re a one ship dedicated blog, feel free to answer all of them for just that one, or do all the ships from one fandom, this is just for fun].

1. Jlaireby - Jim x Claire x Toby

2. Barbmura - Barbara x Nomura

3. Hammerhunter - Jim x Toby

4. Girl Power Polycule - Darci x Claire x Shannon x Mary x Aja

5. Main Protagonists - Jim x Darci x Claire x Toby x Aja x Steve x Eli x Krel

6. Stricklakerot - Strickler x Barbara x Angor Rot

7. Blinkbarbmura - Blinky x Barbara x Nomura

8. Mary x Shannon

9. Darci x Claire x Toby (Does this have a ship name?)

10. Trolldads - Blinky x Aaarrrgghh

[God I have 6 poly ships in my top ten, and not a single het appearing one.]

Do you remember the episode/chapter/scene where you first started shipping 6? Stricklakerot

There wasn’t a canon scene but when I first saw this piece of artwork (X) I thought of it as a possibility, fell in love with it after that.

What’s your favorite fanfiction for 4? Girl Power Polycule

Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever read a piece of fanfiction focusing on all of them. I am however thinking of writing that very story.

What’s your favorite fan art/picture for 2? Barbmura

That is...really hard to say. I think it’s going to be this one (X) because it my dream to have an amazing wedding like this.

What’s your favorite headcanon for 1? Jlaireby

I have so many headcanons for them, it’s hard to choose. I think my favorite and one I’ve written about several times is that Toby will video call Claire and Jim as “Video dates” while they are on the road to New Jersey. It’s the cutest headcanon to me.

What do you like most about the dynamic between the people of 7? Blinkbarbmura

This is one of the ships that is the most likely to absolutely lose their minds if something happens to Jim. Barbara was willing to throw hands with Merlin when Jim was hurt. Blinky straight up blew up a dude when Jim was on trial. Nomura has no hesitation with doling out punishment, and willing sacrificed herself to allow Jim to escape the Darklands. Together there isn’t a restraining force among them. So Jim gets hurt, and these three rain an ungodly hell on the perpetrator.

When 9 10 have sex is it more giggly or more serious? Trolldads

Uhhhh, I’m not to create a head canon for how three teen aged kids have sex, so how about I do Number 10 instead? I think it would be more serious. Blinky and Aaarrrgghh can be silly and lighthearted, but I feel like when its just them things are more serious.

Out of all the ships who do you think have the best chemistry?

In order of best chemistry my ships are: Jlaireby, Hammerhunter, and Darci x Claire x Toby. These kids are the ones who have gone through the most. Their relationship is started on being best friends. There’s nothing these kids can’t do together.

Which ship has the strongest bond?

I feel like saying the Main Protagonists is a little cheating, so I will say Barbmura. These two women, have a longer life experience and more in common throughout. They understand each other, understand what drives the other.

Which ship do you spend the most time reading fanfiction for/talking/writing about?

Again, in order of how much I’ve written: Barbmura, Jlaireby, and Mary x Shannon. These three ships are the focus of my entire After the Eternal Night extended universe.

Which one was your first ship?

Jlaireby. Being poly myself, I’m always all for shipping all the protagonists. Teen Titans? Lovers. The Mystery Gang? Lovers. The Trollhunters Trio? Lovers

If 6 were to break up, how would it happen? Stricklakerot

Unfortunately it would probably be because of Strickler and Angor’s history. One did kind of enslave the other. That might be hard to forgive.

Between 3 and 8, who would last the longest if they were in a zombie apocalypse?

Ok this is between Hammerhunter and Mary x Shannon. That’s a tough call. Fortunately it just happened to line up two of pair ships, rather than my many poly ships, so no unfair advantage. Jim’s biggest weakness during a zombie apocalypse would be his weakness to sun (I actually have an AU idea focusing on this idea, that I haven’t started writing yet) I think Jim and Toby would win out. They are experienced fighters with magical armor and weapons. Shannon has magic, and Mary’s no slouch in a fight, but I just think experience would win out. Or they would end up working together and be unstoppable.

Does 7 hide their relationship, and if so, why? Barbmura

I think there might be a brief period where they hide their relationship. Barbara may be unsure how Jim will feel about her dating his father figure Blinky and his former enemy Nomura, much less at the same time. I think when Jim tells he is dating Claire and Toby at the same time, she implies that she might also be dating multiple people. Jim guesses right away that her partners are Blinky and Nomura. He’s happy for her and for them. Toby and Claire are the ones to give them both the shovel talk.

What is 9′s favorite date to go on? Darci x Claire x Toby

So far in my writing they have gone on a date to a coffee shop and a funeral. Of the two they definitely seemed to prefer the coffee shop. I think staying in would probably be their favorite dates in the future.

What’s your favorite canon moment between 10? Trolldads

So my two favorite moments are when Blinky lovingly touches Aaarrrgghh’s statue in the library while Jim is in the Darklands and when Blinky is human and Aaarrrgghh is wounded by Creeper’s Sun and they are both being awkward around each other and so sad that things are weird.

What do 5 argue most about? Main Protagonists

Ok. Ha ha ha. Take your pick. There are a lot of powerful personalities here. A lot of different ways of approaching problems. They’ve all had their share of arguments about how to deal with their trials. I mean even in a domestic setting where they have a massive house in Arcadia, or in the Royal palace on Akiridion-5, or cave in New Trollmarket. There could be arguments about so many things. I love them all, but there are quite a few hot heads in this group.

If you had to pick an OTP which would you chose?

Even the concept of choosing one can go fuck itself. The closest I could get would be the choosing two. All the Teenagers and All the Adults. Every teen is dating every other one. Every adult is dating every other adult. Two massive love webs. Who even chooses?

What’s the biggest kink that 1 2 shares? Barbmura

Uh,, Still not making sexy things for teens so for number 2 instead? That’s a hard one. I don’t think its anything related to bondage or domination (Mostly because i feel like they are both doms) I think it would be “marking” the other. Scratches, bites, hickeys and the like. In her troll form Nomura has to be careful not to make the marks permanent. Barbara will cover her body in lipstick kisses, when they are both human, the fun can get intense.

Do 8 want children? Mary x Shannon

Hell yeah! Shannon is from a long line of lesbian witches. She knows a spell that can allow two women to conceive. Their kids are going to be so pretty and they’ll have a share of Shannon’s magic. Plus they will have so many magical aunts and uncles as the rest of the Reckless Club jump over themselves to take care of the kids.

Between 10 and 4, which would you rather become canon?

Which one is more likely? Trolldads. Which one would I prefer? The lesbian power polycule. Like let’s get all the ladies to date each other. It’s super gay and very wholesome. And they can all kick the asses of any guy who messes with them.

Does 2 do much PDA? And does it annoy their friends? Barbmura

Uh, probably yeah. In my story I’m writing for these two, they are pretending to date at first so they do a lot of PDA to prove that they are dating. Then when they are actually dating that trend continues. They are both in other matters pretty private people and probably wouldn’t normally, but they love each other so much they can’t help it. The PDA annoys Toby and Jim but no one else minds. Barbara is basically Toby’s mom, and literally Jim’s and they are both done with having to see their mom kiss changelings who tried to kill them.

Which of the ships would you say is the most romantic with each other?

Jlaireby, hands down. These kids who have, almost literally, been to hell and back for each other? Oh yeah. They know exactly what the others need, when to hug, when to kiss, when to give them space and when to hold them tight like they will never let go. They all go above and beyond for each other Valentines is a glorious disaster every single year. And their anniversaries (there are multiple depending on when each felt they started dating the other. None of them agree on the actual dates) are always magnificent.

How would the proposal between 5 go?

I already wrote this! (X) Like so many things, it’s a god damn disaster of a romantic night. All the planners and over thinkers interacting with all of the spur of the moments. They didn’t even mean for it to be this poly or this gay, but it sure as hell was. After everyone proposed and danced they retired to Jim’s house (it was closest) and fell asleep on the floor in the living room. The next morning they tried to sort out who had proposed to who. The relationship web became increasingly silly. A few folks who didn’t get the chance to propose to everyone they wanted to did so in the morning. Which made the relationship web even more difficult to read. They gave up when someone asked what a wedding like that would look like. I am now going to write this up!!!! This is great.

Who cooks more often in 3? Hammerhunter

Is there ever any doubt? Jim all the way.

I’ll Tag @yellowmagicalgirl, @imthegingerninja and @sombra-core Uh if anyone else wants to do this please feel free! I don’t know how many people have been tagged already.

#I have so many ships #how am I supposed to tag this?

4 notes · View notes

charlie-and-yoshi-rp-hell · 6 years

Text

Episode 47 Part 4: No Humanity Left

A ghost that is obsessed and has no humanity or conscience left could be their end.

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

Yoshi Raven: Arthur ate five of the pancakes which wasn´t even half of what Vivi and Mystery got.

"Ugh... how can you still eat? I´m sure I won´t need food until the evening." he mumbled and leaned back against the chair.

"Lewis breakfast is good... and I´m still hungry" was Mystery´s answer between a few bites of his 8th or 9th pancake.

"... well, you´re right. I won´t judge. But don´t complain when you´re getting slower one day" he giggled and grinned at the dog who just glared back while eating the next.

Charlie McCarthey: "The vet will try putting him on a diet again. Remember that time?" Lewis laughed from where he stood in front of the stove. He took a bite of his own serving, a modest few with a little bit of syrup. Eating--he could eat now! This was awesome.

But you couldn't take the cook out of the kitchen. Lewis often ate while standing, especially since he was finishing up the last of the batter.

He went to flip a pancake, and it turned over mid air, gently heading for the skillet and--SPLAT!

"Ugh--what the hell!?" Lewis moaned, staring at the soggy, raw pancake batter side down sliding off the skillet's rim and onto the counter.

"I missed? How could I miss!" He squawked and began cleaning the mess up.

"Mystery--here boy." The kitsune's iron stomach took care of any messes, thankfully.

Yoshi Raven: "Aw, don´t worry Lewis, I made most of our pancakes in the last few months so maybe you´re not used to flipping them anymore. You just have to train this and everything will be fine." Arthur got up from his chair and hugged him, placing a quick kiss on his cheek.

"See? Mystery cleaned everything and you can finish the last few pancakes. Everything is fine."

Charlie McCarthey: "Ah, yeah, yeah." Lewis shrugged, shaking his head in confusion and letting go. "Maybe you're right, Artie."

And then, on the last pancake it happened.

The fire flickered wildily, like it was put on high instead of the medium Lewis had set. Before anyone could react, Lewis gave a noise of pain and yanked his hand back, the side of it burned.

"Jeez! The only thing worse than a stove burn is being burned by your own stove! Art, can you take a look at it later? I think the old girl's on her way out. I'm not gonna cook with a death trap." Lewis said as he held his hand under luke warm water and huffed, dissapointed with himself.

Yoshi Raven: "... yeah, of course I´ll check it, but your burned hand is more important now. I´ll get a bandage for it... "

This was odd. Arthur was quite sure the stove was fine, so why - oh. Of course, fire. Lewis´ ghost half was still able to manipulate fire, but would he hurt his human counterpart? Maybe he was right and the ghost half did turn... evil.

He turned it off and walked to his room, searching for his first aid kit he always needed just in case he´d cut himself during his work.

"Hey, ghostie.... why did you do that?" he asked quietly while looking in his cupboard.

Charlie McCarthey: A pair of glowing eyes stared at him from the gloom. They were slitted and bright, tracking him intensely.

Why did I do what? Purred a voice softly, slick like oil as the ghost leaned out from the darkness and loomed over him slowly. I've been in here the whole time, buddy.

Yoshi Raven: "Don´t lie to me Lewis." he growled, grabbing the bandage from the first aid kit and closed the cupboard.

"I know that the stove is not malfunctioning, and your human half has no fire powers - why should the flame grow if it wasn´t you, hm? He´s a part of you! You can´t hurt him, you´ll fuse back to normal one day!" Arthur scolded him slightly. He´d reverse the spell tomorrow, not risking anymore of this behaviour was the best for all of them.

Charlie McCarthey: It was an accident, so sue me! The ghost snapped right back, reacting boredly to Arthur's anger. You know how hard it is trying to be in control of these powers? Huh? No one else has to deal with this shit in here, but I do and everytime I step out of line I get in trouble for it? That's not fair, Artie. I'm trying my best. Lewis whined, grabbing his wrist to keep prevent him from leaving. C'mon, you know I wouldn't hurt anyone, let alone the other Lewis. Right?

Yoshi Raven: The ghost was right, having these powers and controlling them was difficult. Still - Arthur had seen that his behaviour had changed in the last few days. The ghost half was more possessive than before, he was always trying to get more affection than his human half.

"You knew that controlling your power was difficult, you could always stay away from the stove and still be in the kitchen with us, you know... besides, I know that you would never hurt me." he growled and took the ghost´s hand from his wrist, then walked to the door.

"I need to take care of the other Lewis. We´ll talk after that."

Charlie McCarthey: The ghost's eyes stayed on him as he walked out of the room. Ghost Lewis stayed deadly silent, and wasn't visible in the kitchen when Arthur entered.

The human side was sitting at the kitchen table, hand up and wrapped in a damp cool towel as he waited. He looked up as Arthur entered and smiled softly, if a little tiredly.

"Thanks, buddy." He said pleasently as he took the towel off, revealing the first degree burn he sported going down the side of his palm. "Ah, it'll be okay in a few days. I forget I'm not fire-proof like this." He joked a little.

Yoshi Raven: "It´s ok, this won´t go on for long anymore." Arthur mumbled while he carefully put the bandage over the burn.

"I hate saying it, but it seems like your ghost half becomes a little... dangerous. We have to reverse the spell soon." He sighed, then patted his head.

"Vivi, go and look for the last piece we need for this, alright? I´ll have a serious talk with ghostie now. And you, Lewis, cool the burn with ice but don´t put the bandage off. That might become too cold for your skin."

Arthur leaned a bit against him.

Charlie McCarthey: "C'mon Art. It'll be okay. Besides, why would I hurt myself?" The human shook his head with a little smile. Still, he wrapped an arm against Arthur, and kissed his cheek. "Look, I've gotta finish up the dishes. Let me know when the spells ready, and I will be too." He declared, letting go of Arthur and heading for the sink. Thankfully, this time nothing seemed to be out to get him.

Yoshi Raven: "I will tell you, don´t worry..." Arthur gave Vivi a worried look and moved over to her.

"Please, hurry and find it. I´m not sure how long ghost Lewis will stay nice like this. I hope I can make him listen." he whispered, then left the kitchen and got back into his room.

"Hey... we need to talk, Lewis."

Charlie McCarthey: Lewis appeared.

But quicker than normal, and literally inches from Arthur. The skeletal form leaned over him with narrowed sockets, crowding him until the kid had his back to the wall. Despite this, he didn't actually touch Arthur.

Where'd you go, Art? He said easily, but there was an edge to his tone that suggested something else.

Yoshi Raven: His sudden appearance had scared him a bit but what scared him more was his intimidating behaviour right now. But it was still Lewis and he´d never hurt him, so Arthur had no reason to worry about this.

"I took care of your human half, his hand was burned because of you. Listen: I don´t want you to hurt one of the others, got it? Even if it was an accident, just stay away from open fire until you´re back together. Vivi and I will do that soon, maybe tomorrow. So be a good ghost and stay out of trouble, okay?"

Charlie McCarthey: I don't like being around the others anyway. It was your idea to make me go to the kitchen. Lewis reminded, his voice low and even as he hung over Arthur from behind, hands on his waist and pulling him back into a hug.

So what you're saying is... I've got til tomorrow to be free, then? His tone was growing darker by the second, especially after this little realization. Guess I'd better make the most of it, huh? And the ghost's grip was suddenly no longer a hug, but a hold.

Yoshi Raven: "I know it was my idea but you could´ve kept some distance to the stove" he grumbled. Arthur didn´t like that Lewis was holding him like that. Well - not now.

"Lewis, no. We´re not doing anything right now, we had done enough in the past few days. It´s enough, so please let go of me." He grabbed his hands, trying to get them off.

Charlie McCarthey: That growl that ripped itself from the ghost holding him was as deadly as his grip had become.

Don't you say no to me. He said, gripping the other's arms and turning him to hold him against the wall, pinning him in the place easily.

I get it--you only like me when I'm nice and sweet and behaving, huh? Well guess what, Art, you're the one who choose to date a 'monster' like me. And you belong to me now, got it? This little bond of ours works both ways.

Yoshi Raven: His grip hurt so much now, but this was the smaller problem. Arthur had been right. The ghost half had become too possessive.

"Lewis stop it! This is not you, please let go of me!!" he begged, afraid of what he could do with their connection. If Arthur was able to control Lewis, he was sure the ghost was able to do that, too.

"Y-you said you wouldn´t hurt me, but you´re doing this right now...! Please... stop..."

Sad eyes were looking at him, begging him to stop.

Charlie McCarthey: The eyes that stare back maybe belong to Lewis' skeleton, but they look nothing like that usual warm, watchful gaze Arthur was so used to seeing.

You're fine. Stop being so overdramatic. The ghost hissed, shoving a knee between the blonde's legs and leaning in to kiss him roughly.

Oh, and. No. I never said I wouldn't hurt you. You just seemed to think it. I just didn't correct you. Now, if you don't want to end up burned like that sad mistake for a human out there, I suggest you relax a little, huh Art? The ghost sneered at him, admitting point black he had purposefully burned the human half. I did that for you, Artie. The ghostly entity purred, pushing closer to the smaller human. To show you I'M the better choice, I'm the stronger one. Isn't that what you want?

Yoshi Raven: Arthur didn´t enjoy having this ghost close to him. He looked like Lewis, but... but it wasn´t him. This was just a monster.

"No, it´s not what I want! And right now the better choice of you two is your human half!" he growled, glaring at the ghost. He wasn´t afraid of him, he knew the powers Lewis had. That was an advantage.

"I´m just saying it one more time before I´ll use spells against you: get off me. Now!" Arthur struggled against his grip and pushed him away.

Charlie McCarthey: The ghost pulled back coldly at the statement.

Fine then. Looks like I need to get rid of that fleshbag before you'll see the light. Sure, Arthur wasn't afraid of Lewis.

But maybe for him, now that was another story.

He let Arthur push him away but grabbed him again, a hand over his mouth as he grabbed that mechanical arm and phased it right off. There was a loud clank as it landed across the room, leaving Arthur with one arm and hardly any way to even speak, let alone call for help.

I'll go and kill that stupid human side, then everything will be perfect, right? He cooed into the blonde's ear, smiling warningly at him. Just you... and me... His fingers traced the blonde's side, trailing a line down his bellybutton as he held Arthur firmly in place, enough to leave bruises.

And we'll--

"What the fuck do you think you're doing!?" Human Lewis roared as he stormed into the room, seeing the mechanical arm across the room and his ghost side pretty much pinning Arthur in place--what the fuck!?

He froze at the deadly stare he received from the ghost half.

Yoshi Raven: If he wasn´t afraid of the ghost half before, now he was scared for real.

Arthur looked at the human Lewis, fear in his eyes. He had to do something - the ghost wanted to kill the other and he was sure that he´d do it. He didn´t care about himself right now - if one half of Lewis was gone, he would never get the real one back. Ghost Lewis was distracted, so Arthur pushed himself from the wall. The sudden attack made both of them fall down on the floor and he was free from the ghost´s grip.

Arthur let his soul emit strong waves and he whispered Restrain. Orange lines were coming from his chest and chained Lewis, keeping him from attacking or doing something else. Using the energy from his soul felt awful but it was the only way now.

"Lewis!! Get Vivi and tell her we need a spell to make a ghost sleep!! Now, hurry!!" he yelled at the human half.

Charlie McCarthey: The ghost struggled against the binds, giving Arthur a venomous look.

You can't keep me like this! You know you aren't strong enough, He hissed, sneering as Lewis ran in.

"Arthur--there's no time, we don't have a spell like that!"

The dead don't sleep. The ghost cackled, coating himself in fire--fire that hurt those orange cords, snapping angrily against Arthur's soul like a scold. His hand shot out, grabbing his human half by the neck and slamming him against the wall, And you... He breathed angrily, the two of them wrestling for power. You need to be erased.

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

(Previous) - (Next)

#msa #episode 47 part 4 #danger #violence #lewthur #they´re all in trouble

34 notes · View notes

murasaki-murasame · 5 years

Text

Thoughts on Sarazanmai Episode 11 [Finale]: “I Want To Connect, So Sarazanmai”

Do you ever just watch an anime episode that’s So Much in so many different ways that it makes you immediately want to lay down and sleep for a hundred years, but in like a good and hopeful way?

Yeah.

It’s very fitting that the final episode title is technically self-referential nonsense that in practice makes complete emotional sense and leaves everything feeling neatly tied together. It just Works [tm].

Thoughts under the cut.

Even though they were in like 5% of this episode I just wanna immediately point out that Reo and Mabu are ALIVE and IN LOVE and my SKIN IS CLEARED. It didn’t exactly happen in the way I expected, but I was hoping that they’d get revived, and here we are. The finale gave absolutely no shits about actually explaining any of the lingering mysteries about them, but I can’t fault them for it when they gave them such an unambiguously happy ending together. And in practice it perfectly fit the dreamy, surreal, intensely emotionally-driven vibe of the whole finale. Seeing their connected rings morph into them flying through the air while holding hands and the sheer power of their gay love literally paving the way for the main trio to finally connect was one of those moments where you just gotta sit back and accept that Ikuhara’s throwing at you, lmao.

Realistically I thought they might get left off on a pretty bittersweet note like a lot of Ikuhara characters, but nah, they’re just straight up back to being alive and happy and they pretty much got to attend their daughter’s magical furry wedding, lmao. They didn’t even get their memories erased like I thought might happen, so the whole confession scene from ep10 is still perfectly intact and now that the whole otter thing’s dealt with, we can probably safely assume that the two of them made up and are back to being The Ultimate Couple. It also looks like the two of them and even Sara and Keppi are still hanging out in the human world, which is kinda unexpected. I thought that even in the best case scenario they’d all just head back to the kappa kingdom, but I guess since that doesn’t really exist anymore they’re just gonna stay in the human world. Reo and Mabu seem to be working as rickshaw drivers now, which makes it even more clear that they’re probably back to being more or less regular people and being part of regular human society, and they’ve probably given up their jobs as cops, which is nice.

None of this answers the still lingering question of ‘how the fuck does the manga even fit into the timeline aaaaaaa’, but I don’t care as much about finding out the answer to that after this finale, so it’s not a big deal. I guess we’re meant to think that it happened before the anime, though. My best guess is that Sara was intentionally sent into the human world as a baby to protect her from the kappa/otter war, or something, and then Reo and Mabu raised her, she magically turned into her teenage/adult self [in an instantaneous fairy tale-y kind of way], then she went back to the kappa kingdom for a bit, and I guess she arranged things with Keppi and had them get recruited into the kappa kingdom? I still think they’re humans that got roped into this like the main trio, so I think that makes sense to me.

Even more so than with the main trio, I think that those two getting a 100% happily ever after with no caveats or drawbacks really spells out how fundamentally optimistic and hopeful this series is, and how they were one way or another victims of a harsh system that didn’t deserve the shit they went through, and so they got given a happy ending. It’d be understandable if people feel upset that they got such a happy ending after having done undeniably awful things, but I don’t mind.

And on the topic of the main trio, hoo boy they sure were the main focus of this episode, lol. And by ‘them’ I mean ‘Toi’ because let’s be honest he was basically the actual main character of the show by the end, and the finale was like 99% focused on his character development specifically. Which isn’t a bad thing. Kazuki’s whole deal had already been more or less resolved by the end of ep6, so it makes sense that the second half in general focused more on Toi.

On the flip side, Enta kinda got the short end of the stick in terms of screen-time and development, and things end in a sorta wishy-washy way in regards to his feelings for Kazuki. It makes enough sense that his whole ending was about choosing not to drown himself in fruitless delusions, even if it feels kinda lame and disappointing compared to the more climactic and intense resolutions that Kazuki and Toi got.

Though tbh a big part of why I don’t feel too negatively about how Enta’s crush on Kazuki kinda fizzled into irrelevancy is because Reo and Mabu got their happy ending that preserved all of their character development, with the obvious implication that they’re back to being in a happy and stable romantic relationship. The fact that there’s at least one happy gay couple at the end of all this makes me much more willing to forgive Enta’s story being handled a bit differently. I mean, that’s part of the whole reason why diversity in storytelling is so important. When you include multiple different gay characters/relationships in your stories, you have the freedom to do different things with them, instead of having all the narrative burdens and expectations being placed on just one character/relationship. It’s annoying when the ONLY gay character in a show ends up having to repress and move on from their feelings, but it’s fine when there are other gay characters who get to have their own happy relationships.

Anyway, I really liked how Toi’s story wrapped up here. A lot of what actually happened in the finale was full on bizarre dream logic nonsense, but the emotional undercurrent of Toi being faced with the prospect of effectively committing suicide in order to free himself from the pain of human connection once and for all, and him coming to the realization on his own terms that he doesn’t want to let go of those connections, got through perfectly clearly. They actually went a lot further with his story than I expected. Literally further, in that we had a whole timeskip epilogue detailing how after the main story ended he went to juvie for a few years and then reunited with Kazuki and Enta when he returned. I’m going to assume that he turned himself in, since there shouldn’t have been any concrete evidence tying him to any of his crimes, except for maybe him shooting Reo [though even then, Reo’s corpse immediately transformed into one of those rings so I don’t think that counts as lasting forensic evidence, lmao]. It was definitely the most brushed-over part of the finale, but it didn’t need to be focused on that much, since the more important part was him reuniting with the other two afterward.

And in terms of timeskips and whatnot, I really loved the whole potential future flashforward sequence showing a what-if scenario of the three of them becoming professional soccer players and being slowly torn apart by interpersonal drama, while the different episode title cards are re-used in this new context to show how their emotional issues and hang-ups might lead to that sort of negative outcome. It did a really nice job of illustrating how they’re willing to face the possibility of future pain in order to hold onto their connections with each other. Which is what the entire show had been building up to, really. It was all about them becoming able to face the harsh realities of being known in order to lead fulfilling lives with meaningful personal relationships.

I do kinda wish their older selves looked a bit more distinct from their base designs, though. Aside from the difference in outfits you can barely tell that they’ve grown up, lol.

I was initially planning on rewatching episode 1 after this, but honestly after what actually happened I don’t really think I’d actually get anything new out of episode 1 now. The very first scene of the show is still a bit of a mystery, even though it’s obviously based around a lot of visual imagery and cinematography from the finale, and the whole deal with the ‘A’ signs is still up for interpretation. But I don’t really think it’s super important one way or another.

I’m actually very happy that the ending didn’t involve any sort of time travel, and that that’s not what the first scene of the show was hinting at. Especially with how this finale really hammered in the importance of living with the consequences of your actions and accepting the future for what it is, it would have felt very cheap if anything got reset in the end.

I guess it’s also worth noting that, at least with the main trio, there weren’t any romantic developments, which I think was fine. With how the story had been building up to this point I think it was fairly obvious that their ending was gonna be more about friendship alone. Which might disappoint some people [and the whole topic of Enta’s unrequited crush on Kazuki is it’s own whole thing], but at the very least, Reo and Mabu got their happy romantic ending together, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out, lol.

Part of me wants to be disappointed that we didn’t really learn anything new about Sara, and that she didn’t exactly, uh, DO anything even in this final episode, but honestly I feel like that’s kinda ‘the joke’. Like, she and Keppi come across as a super tongue in cheek joke about the fairy tale concept of princes and princesses. Sorta like how the Utena movie made the ‘prince’ into a complete joke, Sara and Keppi are just there to be funny plot devices, and their big ending is that they have a big fat furry wedding and that’s that. And honestly that’s fine by me. I feel like Ikuhara’s whole artistic career has involved him becoming more and more flippant and dismissive about the concepts of princes and princesses and how much importance is placed on them in fiction, and that’s valid. It reminds me a bit of how all of the actual major characters are all queer dudes and their relationships with each other are the actually important part of the narrative, whereas straight characters like Sara and Keppi and all the different faceless kappa zombie dudes are mostly just joke characters. There’s something both deeply amusing and deeply vindicating about how this show turns the tables like that, with how it frames different types of love and relationships.

The main trio’s story ended up being not super tied into what the show has to say about sexuality in general [and overall the show is less specifically ‘about’ that than Yuri Kuma Arashi was, from what I understand], but there was definitely a whole lot of social commentary about homophobia going on with Reo and Mabu, and thankfully that part of the narrative came to a satisfying and genuinely subversive ending, with them overcoming the death imposed upon them and regaining their happy lives together.

Now I’m hoping that Ikuhara will ‘complete the set’, so to say, and have his next anime be about trans/non-binary characters, especially after how Kazuki’s whole cross-dressing thing ended up being kinda unimportant and not about gender identity to begin with. Which is still kinda disappointing to me, but oh well.

Overall, this ending was almost aggressively happy and optimistic compared to what I was bracing myself for, so thankfully it’s left me feeling warm and fuzzy and content. All in all, it was a surprisingly straightforward story in terms of it’s central messages, in spite of it’s over the top and abstract framing, and I think it really benefited from that inherent simplicity, especially in this finale, which was so singularly focused on it’s central trio [and mostly just Toi’s perspective alone]. I was a bit worried the finale might turn into one of those things where a deeply personal conflict gets blown up and tied into literally world-ending stakes, but thankfully they didn’t go unnecessarily far with it. Even the kappa/otter war resolution barely involved the main trio themselves.

At least in hindsight, I think the anime was very tightly woven and was paced surprisingly well for it’s short episode count, and it’s hard to imagine how they could have spent much more time on the main trio, but now that we have a better idea of the timeline of the series, I really think that episode 6 should have been followed up by an episode that basically adapted the ReoMabu manga, plus parts of the twitter account, and the short chapter from the first light novel volume about how they met. That way it would have ended up with a nice round 12-episode length, and I don’t think it would have ‘spoiled the surprise’ of the later reveals and developments with Reo and Mabu. I just think it would have been really good to actually cover that in the anime itself, especially since even in the finale, the whole fact that they literally raised Sara as a baby never got addressed, so it feels like anime-only viewers are missing out on a big chunk of their story. But it’s not a huge deal.

I guess at the end of the day my feelings about the finale boil down to ‘Reo and Mabu are alive and happy and that’s literally all that matters to me’, lol.

I was really worried about how I’d be left feeling after this, but I’m happy that I’ve been following this series ever since it was first announced. This is the only time I’ve watched an Ikuhara show as it’s come out, and oh boy has it been an emotional roller-coaster. The fact that it ended in a satisfying way makes it all feel worth it, though.

I probably won’t get to it immediately since I think my brain needs time to recover from this one, but sometime soon I want to finally get around to watching Penguindrum and then Yuri Kuma Arashi. I don’t think I’ll liveblog them like I’ve been doing with Sarazanmai, though, if only since I’ve already been spoiled on bits and pieces of what happens in them, but we’ll see how it goes.

#murasaki rambles #sarazanmai #I'm so relieved that this ended up being so happy and satisfying lol

21 notes · View notes

littlemissgeek8 · 6 years

Note

Okay I just wanted to say I love your dnd art like so much!! It’s amazing!!! If you don’t mind me asking, can you summarize what you’ve done in your campaign with Jemima Appleblossom so far? She’s so cute and I would literally die for your PC

Aww!! Thanks! It’s always a joy to run into people who likemy characters! :3 I can totally give you a summary of our campaign thoughunfortunately it is 30 episodes atthe time of writing, with 31 going up later today, and I was unable to shrinkit to a reasonable size. I’ll put it under a cut to save on people’s dashspace, and I’ll also put links here for the youtube playlists in case there’sanyone who’d like to watch it instead of just reading about it. XD And for anyone interested in the series, this recap will catch you up in time for today’s episode to go out!

For those not wanting to read through all 8,930 words ofthis, TL;DR: “Ragtag group of adventurers get pulled into another world wherethey find themselves rubbing elbows with gods, fighting monsters, makingfriends, reviving demigods and unwittingly unleashing some massively dangerousthings onto the planet. In between accidentally dying a few times.”

[Ghostwolf] [EscoNitz] [CriticalHat]

Well, we started off in Parnast, sent by our individualfactions to investigate a missing wizard. My halfling bard Jemima is a Harper,same as our other bard, the human Gineye. Our other party members included Lei,the Tortle Paladin, Zuradar the Tiefling ranger, Lilystra the half-orcbarbarian and Zareem, the Aasimar warlock (who works for the Zhentarim, theonly other faction I remember.) On our way to find the missing wizard, we raninto a bunch of Kobolds who attacked us, but one Kobold --with distinctivewooden legs and one arm-- was trapped inside a cart by his own people and gaveus some assistance. When we finally found the wizard he was in the process ofsummoning something that turned out to be a Water Weird, which subsequently atethe whole party, ending the first session.

We woke up a week later inside an infirmary, which we soondiscovered was in an underwater city—the water weird didn’t just eat us, ittransported us basically to another dimension far away from Faerun. Seeing usas adventurers, one of the triton soldiers from the town we woke up in took us upto the surface to the port town of Audio Bay. (I might be spelling it wrong,sorry, I don’t have good notes this far back.) There, a dwarven merchant namedJonah gave us a quest to track down some missing gear that was stolen from him,a quest which lead us to a well with a Zhentarim symbol on it (surprisingly,since none of our factions exist in this dimension) and inside said well, weencountered a “dungeon” of a dubious nature filled with hobgoblins and bugbearsin leather armor and chain shirts. (Yes it was a kink dungeon, no I don’t wantto remember much about it. XD) After thoroughly stomping everyone involved, aminiscule orc calling himself “Bob” entered the room, shouting at us forhurting his people (whom he then revived with no effort at all.) We told him ofour mission and he agreed to let us take the stolen weapons back, along withgifting us a mysterious box filled with magic coins and a magical shield to ourpaladin. It wasn’t until later that we discovered that “Bob” was actually thegod of slaughter, not until after Zareem managed to roll a natural 100 and hithim with an eldritch blast.

As we left the dungeon, we were greeted by a pack of strangelooking wolves and a tall, blond man in a black coat who asked us to give himthe weapons we’d retrieved. He wouldn’t accept “no” for an answer, nor did wehave much time to try convincing him that we’d been assigned to collect thembefore our hair-trigger warlock decided to cast Charm Person on this newcomer.Unfortunately, the man was carrying a Staff of Charming and nullified the spellbefore it could affect him, before wildshaping into an earth elemental andproceeding to do his best to squash us. It wasn’t until Zareem and Zuradarmanaged to capture one of the “wolves” who turned out to be another druid thatthe man relented, changing back and calling off his friends. He admitted hisactions were hasty and together we traveled back to Jonah’s store with thestolen weapons, where it was revealed that the weapons were a special orderfrom the druid himself, Edan. In return for the weapons, Edan financed someupgrades for our group through the organization he works for (including a sweetring for Jemima which changes her vicious mockery from a d4 to a d6.)

The next day saw Edan taking us to an open air market on thedocks to shop around for supplies, before taking us to a tavern and treating usto lunch. (It was a pretty low-key session though there was a lot ofnon-story-important horseplay.) At the tavern we ran into the druids we’dfought the day before as well as a familiar face: Hanzi, the Kobold with thewooden limbs. While we ate, Edan mentioned that the druids, Hanzi and himselfwere all from Faerun originally and offered to let us join the organizationthey were working with when they went back to their base at the end of themonth. Shortly afterwards (after Jemima spent some time performing for thetavern patrons) Edan left the tavern, citing a “call” from his celestial parent(which Jemima immediately recognized, due to her own bardic master having beenan Aasimar as well.) Before they could pursue, the party was given a quest toinvestigate something in the tavern’s cellar, which turned out to be a wholeton of giant spiders (and a lot of screaming from Jemima) as well as a mimicwhich had taken the place of a box intended for Jonah.

As we returned to Jonah’s shop with his shipment, a heavystorm had started rolling in off the ocean, and after checking in with Jonah(and asking him if anyone would have been trying to kill him by sending him amimic) we headed out to the courtyard to find Edan standing by a scorched areawhere several lightning strikes had taken place. One of the lightning strikesleft behind a glowing orb that turned into a box which he quickly pocketed andrefused to tell us what it was, but we learned some troubling information aboutthe how though the portal we’d come through was a common occurrence, somethinghad interfered with it and kept his organization from closing it on time. Afterthings nearly came to blows between him, Zareem, Zuradar and Gineye, we allheaded off to prepare for whatever the next day would bring and eventuallysleep.

The next day was stormy again, but we set out with Edan anda few others to the docks, hoping to stave off whatever horrible thing wasapproaching the town from the portal in the ocean. Almost immediately, Edanflew off towards a monster out in the ocean, leaving us to deal with a largenumber of minor water elementals who did a good deal of damage before welearned we could destroy them by damaging the summoning circles they came from.Meanwhile, Gineye (with his Special Eyes) noticed “Bob” and several cloakedfigures watching the proceedings from the air nearby. As we defeated theelementals, a massive bolt of lighting shot from the storm over the ocean,right into the monster Edan was fighting, killing it and throwing Edan’slifeless body onto the docks nearby. Jemima tried in vain to use Healing Wordto revive him, only to be shut down by someone sending her a clear mentalmessage that she was wasting her time. Soon afterwards we found ourselvesfacing the same Wizard we’d been sent to find, who had merged himself with thewater weird. The battle was short and fairly one-sided as we all charged himbefore he could do much, eventually leading him to attack Lei one-on-one.Nobody’s entirely sure what happened but the wizard disappeared and Lei learnedhe could shoot a beam of radiant energy from his mouth.

That concluded, the realization of what happened to Edan hithome as a few of us tried to go over to him, only to be stopped by two of thecloaked figures Gineye had seen. One, a massive bugbear went to solemnlycollect the body, while the other (a skeletal form we couldn’t see well) tooksome glowing orb from Edan’s head before leaving. We’d managed to save thecity, but we’d lost a friend in the process. The next week was spent helpingthe city rebuild from the attack, though for Jemima it was a week of privatemourning and a grim realization that the fairy tale heroics she’d dreamed ofwere only a fantasy in the face of harsh reality. Then, we were called in toJonah’s again, only to find “Bob” sitting there, along with a large box and thedruids we’d met earlier. He gave us a mission we couldn’t really reject—travelwith Jonah and the druids to take the mysterious box to a town calledSylvenstand, checking in with a few towns along the way. When asked why hechose our group to do this, he admitted that we’d been specially requested, orrather Jemima had been requested for this job and it followed that everyoneelse would come too. In addition, Jemima was given three gifts—the owl-headedStaff of Charming that Edan had used, his bag of holding, and Bob’s holy symbolon her wrist as a sign of protection. And so, the group set off cross-countryto Sylvenstand in an enchanted cart with a box they weren’t allowed to touch(or let anyone else touch either, save for one contact they were told to meet.)

Their first destination was Flatol, where they were sent toinvestigate some reports of some strange goings on. This lead the party toinvestigate a crypt, one decorated with symbols and writing praising Orcus, andinside we found the necromancer that we’d been sent to find who almostimmediately trapped us into seeing our worst fears, but before anyone couldreally dwell on them, the Necromancer himself was murdered by the thingconjured up by Hanzi’s fear: a terrifying shadowy cleric. The battle thatensued was brutal, with us trying to defend against the cleric’s powerfulattacks or healing each other as best we could, but in the end the nightmarecleric was defeated. However, the cost of fighting him turned out to be Lei’slife, for the killing blow on the cleric sent our unconscious paladin into hisfinal death saves (Thanks, Zareem for not moving your Shatter spell somewhereelse.) However, instead of outright dying, a glow surrounded him, bringing himback but without his hard shell and with a much longer tail. The coins we’dreceived from “Bob” on our first meeting with him had each bonded with one ofus and this was the first time they’d revealed their powers: saving the bearerfrom death but bringing them back with a change or two.

We ushered our now semi-naked Tortle back to the cart andprepared to move on (though not until after a horrifying lunch in which ourTiefling nearly petrified several people with some of the dishes he’d made and did actually petrify himself for a shorttime.) Then, we moved on to Glens, the next town on our journey. TheNecromancer we’d run into had gone to Flatol from Glens and we were informedthat another necromancer had been in town as well, along with a frighteningbounty hunter who was hunting him down. Our search for clues turned up little,but as we all went to meet up in the town square, a huge hulking barbarianleaped down into our midst, wielding a massive axe. We weren’t much of a matchfor him, until Lei managed to grapple him, giving Gineye a chance to use a boltof petrification he’d picked up earlier. The Barbarian failed his save hard,turning to stone before our eyes, but as Gineye removed his hood, a familiarface stared back—Edan’s, thoughframed by dark hair instead of blond. Needless to say, Jemima didn’t take itwell, and we carefully moved the petrified man back to the cart to be restored.Before we left, however, the axe the barbarian had been using decided to attachitself to Gineye, revealing itself to be not only cursed but sentient as well.

A cleric who was currently traveling with us managed torestore the barbarian, and a conversation later revealed that he was not, infact, Edan. He introduced himself as Ivan the Lucky, a bounty hunter who hadbeen chasing down the necromancers we had run into, and he’d been working longenough to have a solid reputation, so the chances of him being Edan withamnesia or something was extremely low. However, we couldn’t let him leave asone of the jobs in our contracts was to investigate the grisly murders in Glensand there was a good likelihood he was involved somehow. So, with Ivan in towwe headed off to the next town, Crance, which was currently embroiled in arebellion of some kind. However, we had to stop there to meet up with acontact, and since we weren’t given a description of the contact we had tocross our fingers and hope we found him. A couple of men in a tavern claimed tobe the people we were looking for and agreed to come back to the wagon inexchange for some help with a situation they were in. It was only after givingthem the information we had and letting them inspect the box (which thankfullythey didn’t tamper with) that we found out they were not, in fact, our contact,but a mysterious half-orc in town might be. They were with the resistanceagainst the tyrannical government in the area and they directed us to a guardshack where the half-orc and some of their own people were being held.

Our group headed over there and found the guards to besurprisingly easy to defeat, and in the cells were a group of heavily injuredresistance fighters and one massive, angry owlbear. The half-orc however wasnowhere to be seen, until we headed to a room in the back. There, we found himstanding over the corpse of the head guard, pulling a knife out of thestill-warm body. The distinctive red teardrop tattoo on his face marked him asthe person we were searching for, since it matched the mark Jemima had receivedfrom “Bob” at the start of our quest. The half-orc, Grug, followed us back tothe cart to properly inspect the box and pay us for the tasks we’d alreadycompleted, but took an immediate dislike to the currently sleeping Ivan. Heexplained that Ivan was Edan’s Alternate—somewhat but not quite the same personborn in another dimension, though many differences in environment and home lifecan lead to wildly different characteristics, jobs and lives. He then warned usto keep Ivan away from the box, stating that it was dangerous to have himaround when Edan was in such a “weakened state.” Yet again, Jemima freaked out,demanding to know what he meant by that before Zareem completely stopped theconversation by boasting about how Bob approved of him b/c Zareem had managedto hit him. In a fit of rage, Grug dragged Ivan’s sleeping body away andunleashed a bunch of monsters on us, since pissing off a paladin by boastingthat you’d hit his god is probably the worst idea ever.

Once the monsters were defeated we raced outside after Grugand Ivan, finding Ivan yet again possessed by Gineye’s axe as he’d been thefirst time we fought him. After getting the axe back from Ivan (which sent thelarge barbarian back to sleep) we turned our attention to Grug and the animatedswords he was currently attacking our cart with. A few near deaths later, ourfight was interrupted by Grug vanishing and “Bob” appearing in his place,demanding to know what was going on. Thankfully we were in our rights to defendourselves and “Bob” admitted that Grug was overzealous and a huge problem forhim, but he was obligated to keep the half-orc around due to Grug’s familyconnections. Still, Bob fixed our wagon for us and decided to travel with us toSylvenstand, stating that he couldn’t just teleport there due to the nature ofthe place. A few days of travel later, we reached the woods surroundingSylvenstand, a dark frightening forest that seemed to twist and move around,confusing travelers who dared venture into it.

Which is when we ran into the dinosaurs. About halfway intothe forest we were stopped by a dead end and a voice demanding to know why wewere there. When we explained our mission, the voice told us we could only passafter it had “tested our mettle” upon which an allosaurus and a swarm ofdeinonychus showed up. The battle was surprisingly long, made worse by thearrows being shot from an unknown source deep in the woods. However, thedinosaurs eventually backed down, but not until after Jemima heard a veryfamiliar male voice saying the phrase “You can do better” before their woundswere healed. The fight over, we trooped back inside the cart, following theAllosaurus (named Sharp) to the secret town of Sylvenstand.

When we arrived, Jonah took the mysterious box away, whileour group accompanied by “Bob” went to a building built into the massive treein the center of town. Before we could turn in our quest, we checked in with aman at the front desk by the name of Eldon. It was he who finally explainedwhat exactly it was we had been transporting all this time—Edan’s body,magically preserved and warded to prevent decay so that a reviving ritual couldbe performed once his soul was reclaimed. Then, we were ushered upstairs intothe massive tree to an enormous room where a humanoid figure seemingly made ofwood or possibly completely encased in wooden armor sat. Seeing as it wastechnically her quest, Jemima was chosen to speak for the party, turning in theletter they were sent with as well as being given a bag of coin to be dividedamongst the team later. Lei’s divine sense however, picked up the massive amounts of divine energy comingfrom the figure in front of them, as well as noticing the oak leaf symbol onthe man’s chest. Though the contract said we’d been sent to report in to a mannamed Tay’rados, there was little question that the true originator of thequest was none other than Silvanus, the god of nature and druids himself.

After some impromptu shopping at a small bazaar in town, weheaded off to the temple district to meet with one Captain Taylor who wassupposed to be able to help Zareem with a mysterious mark he bore on his chest.Captain Taylor agreed to help on the condition that we spar with him, anexperience none of us were quite prepared for, as he turned out to be anextremely high-level paladin who was pulling his punches. Midway through thefight, having taken a decent amount of damage, Taylor grabbed Jemima beforereaching an arm into her bag of holding, coming up with a purple coin that she’dnever seen before (she’d been getting small trinkets including a bag of dragonbone from Edan’s bag over time, but never seen that coin in all her searching.)Again, Edan’s voice chimed in with the phrase “You can do better” as Taylor’swounds began to heal. In an almost uncharacteristic display of kindness, Zareemhelped her get the coin back and to keep Taylor from taking it again, Jemimadropped it down the front of her shirt with a glare. Then, taking the staff ofcharming she’d inherited from Edan, she stormed over and slapped him deadbetween the eyes, shouting at him “How dareyou touch my things?” only for Taylor to shout back “How dare you take mybrother’s things?” When the fight finally ended, she confronted him about thosewords, discovering that Taylor (who is, in fact, the real Tay’rados and thenext in line to take over for Silvanus) wasn’t kidding about Edan being hisbrother, and the coin he’d taken was an Ioun stone that Edan had obtainedduring one of his many travels. The voice she’d been hearing was simply theHealing Word spell he’d kept inside it being activated.

After our sparring match ended, Tay invited us to join himat the local tavern for drinks to celebrate Edan’s approaching revival, thoughnot before we returned to the large tree building to answer a few questionsabout the wizard we’d fought back in Audio Bay. That was where, after the armorthe wizard had worn attached itself to Lei, that the wizard hadn’t justdisappeared that day, he’d been stowing along in Lei’s brain the whole timewithout anyone knowing. He hasn’t shown his hand yet, but the eventual effectsof this are unknown. Then we trooped off to the tavern, Lei and Zareemintending to party and have a good time, Zuradar and Gineye picking a fightwith a time-manipulating satyr who’d magic’d away some of our gear earlier (wegot it back thankfully) and Jemima meeting a nice man who gave her a book oncreating a Guard Drake from dragonscale (which she conveniently had thanks tothe bag of bones and scales in Edan’s bag of holding.) The party lasted allnight, though most were passed out before it got too late, particularly Zuradarwho was the first out after he failed to seduce an elf lady two times in a rowand left to drink until he couldn’t remember anything.

The next few days were less eventful, mostly everyone havinga bit of downtime and resting up, preparing for the next phase of the revivaloperation: retrieving Edan’s soul from wherever it had ended up. The owlbearthat we’d encountered in Crance had been put into a crystal by Grug fortransport, and thanks to Eldon, it was healed (though it had to be magicallyde-aged to save it) and given to Zuradar as a companion under the name Pip.When the time came for the expedition to set out, Jemima made sure our team wasinvited, since she desperately wanted to be able to save Edan. The expeditionwould leave Sylvenstand through a portal that had been set up over the last fewdays, though the endpoint was unknown until the portal was actually opened,bringing with it a group of dimensional “police” who wanted to know why we hadopened a portal onto a plane known as “Lunacy.” Tay seemed visibly distressedat the mention of that location, but in the end we were permitted to pass,providing he didn’t come with us (astipulation he didn’t challenge at all.) Armed with a glass jar with a locatingspell cast on it, we headed off into Lunacy.

The jar lead us through marshy woods until we came upon ascene of grisly carnage. Two hags had been torn apart along with a shambling moundor two, and as we approached we saw the one who had caused such destruction: acreature seemingly formed of wood with a featureless wooden mask. Immediatelythe jar Jemima was holding began to glow and vibrate, but just as quickly thecreature melted away into the ground, causing the jar to go dark again. Afterwe were set upon by another hag (and discovered that the damaged Weave on thisplane made casting spells a risky chance that often triggered wild magic tohappen) we continued on, the trail having been picked up again by the jar.After some walking we came upon a small tavern, the inside of which was emptysave for a lone barkeep in fancy eveningwear. He offered to give us informationor magic trinkets, and explained that the creature we had encountered, the“Beastmaster” was keeping him trapped. Our whole party was sure it was a trap,with the notable exception of Zareem, who made an agreement to smuggle a blackshard out of the plane in exchange for a magic sword and an axe.

Thoroughly disgusted at our companion, we continued on untilwe came to another clearing. As Zareem dashed across the grass towards a gate,the ground turned into more shambling mounds which proceeded to attack theparty. Midway through the fight, a large bear with a wooden mask lumbered in,attacking the mounds with us. However, once the mounds were destroyed, the bearturned towards us instead. Jemima had already put together that the jarresponding to both the Beastmaster (whose mask looked shockingly likeSilvanus’s) and the Bear (one of Edan’s common wildshape forms) were somehowconnected to Edan’s soul and she was reluctant to fight until being remindedthat druids change back from their wildshape forms after losing all their HP.When the bear finally fell, it morphed back into Edan, before dissolving intodust with a cry of distress, causing part of the jar to light up. This spurredthe party forward, towards the next location. There they ran across Eldonagain, who had followed them into the plane. He was badly wounded butsurrounded by corpses, including one giant spider wearing a wooden mask.Another piece of the jar lit up as Jemima approached it.

Then, Gineye managed to spot something across a nearbylake—on an island in the center, strapped to a cross-like structure, was Edan,or at least his soul. Coming from his body were five tendrils, two of whichwere rapidly dissolving. Using the teleportation that he had gotten from a wildmagic surge, Gineye teleported over to the island and summoned his axe, usingthe soul-collecting power of the axe to free Edan by having him slice off thetendrils. Edan’s soul disappeared, along with the fragments in the jar and theBeastmaster across the lake, but as soon as he’d done that, a massive shapeappeared in the distance. Sensing danger, Gineye returned, driving us all torun with Eldon in tow, back to the portal we’d come through.

The giant creature, which revealed itself to be a Terrasque,chased us all the way to the portal, eventually parking itself right on theother side of the portal but very much within striking range should we try toescape. Then, it revealed itself to be the same person Zareem had made a dealwith--the one who had marked him with the symbol of Vecna—itself an old andpowerful Primordial. It offered to let us pass as long as we kept the guardsbusy enough for it to escape, since the plane was rapidly dissolving around usas the weave unraveled. We agreed, while secretly planning to alert the guardsonce we were through, and escaped through the portal. The dimensional “police”were on hand to help, and drove back the massive claw that came through, butdespite our efforts, a tiny portion of the creature broke off and disappeared.Still, we had what we had journeyed for and after relinquishing the axe to Silvanus,so that he could extract the soul, we nervously awaited the revival itself. Wewere graciously allowed to be present for it, and the process went surprisinglysmoothly for all the trouble we put in. Upon waking up, groggy and disoriented,Edan asked for his bag which Jemima unquestioningly returned. However, insteadof keeping it, he simply took out the wooden box from the month prior andopened it, revealing a deactivated Void card from the Deck of Many Things. Witha glare he turned to Silvanus, telling his father to try harder the next timehe wanted to kill him before storming out of the room (just in time for Gineyeto return from searching the town for a saxophone in order to serenade Jemima’sreunion with the man she was clearly crushing on.) Gineye’s return lead to anembarrassment-fueled brawl, culminating with the party members involved (sansZuradar and Zareem who had left to talk to Jonah again) waking up the next dayin the infirmary.

When the party reunited in the tavern the next day theyfound out about a list of jobs open to them, now that they had been acceptedinto Mantle, the organization based in Sylvenstand. The party was very excitedover an upcoming tournament (though Jemima had her eyes more on the Bardcollege which nobody even looked at twice) but Gineye demanded they go to thecapitol city Paplus first, upon seeing not only the capture of the resistanceleader they’d encountered in Crance, but also a name he recognized—Lord Darius,a man he’d known before we first met up who seemed to be somehow connected tothe scars Gineye hides under a porcelain mask. As we geared up to go, we askedEdan if he wanted to come along, which he agreed to do, as he wanted to get asfar away from Sylvenstand and his family as possible.

The furthest we could travel by portal was to Paplus’sneighboring town StoneHelm, a two day’s walk from Paplus. Once the journey byportal was completed, Edan took his leave, stating he would be taking the jobat the Bards college there, though the party (save for a heartbroken Jemima)were too busy making plans for marching order and cooking arrangements to evennotice. A days walk later, they set up camp, dividing the nighttime watch intoshifts. During the second shift, after Jemima had bedded down for the night atthe end of her watch, a group of drow appeared, demanding Zuradar tell them thename of the halfling in the nearby bedroll, and at her last name ofAppleblossom the drow attacked, easily subduing the sleepy party and cartingthem off.

We awoke in darkness, with our arms and legs bound, with theexception of Zuradar who had been inadvertently untied by his owlbear Pip, andZareem who instead found himself in a nice room as if he’d been invited as aguest instead of kidnapped. It wasn’t long before the drow returned, removingtheir blindfolds and walking them out of their cells to a large central roomwhere they saw Jemima trussed up and suspended over a fire, and a hooded man atthe end of the room. The man demanded Gineye be brought forward and demandedhim to take off his mask or risk Jemima’s life. Grudgingly, Gineye complied andthe man removed his own hood, revealing the face of a man Gineye had worked withbefore during a similar rebellion back in Faerun, Tiberius. Like many of the peoplethey’d met, Tai had found his way to this world as well and joined the currentrebellion due to his own curiosity at how similar it was to the one in theirown world, even down to the blonde lady behaving shockingly like Gineye himselfhad done. A betrayal from within their ranks had gotten her caught by LordDarius’s forces, and the traitor in question happened to be the reason theywere captured in the first place—they were searching for a young halfling manwith the last name of Appleblossom who was known to use polymorph spells withthe aid of an enchanted broom. Alternates again, the party realized as theygrouped back up.

As we had found our way not only to Paplus but the rebellionwe were supposed to aid, we found ourselves tasked with helping them take downsome high-priority targets. Namely, we were sent to investigate a guard house(since trying to talk a gnomish inventor into helping us without copiousviolence was sadly not anywhere close to our forte.) Inside we found no guardsat all, but instead a massive iron golem guarding the place which we wereforced to fight after the attempts to bluff our way past it failed. With sometricky maneuvering (and a hand grenade), Gineye managed to deactivate the golemand we entered the captain’s office. Our suspicions were on high alert when theguard captain’s voice didn’t quite seem to match his body, but before theErinyes possessing him could do anything, Gineye petrified the captain with acrossbow bolt, then shattered the resulting stone form to prevent the Erinyesdoing more harm.

By the time we returned, the other team had safely securedthe inventor who was currently very clearly possessed himself. After a gooddeal of fooling around and failed attempts at exorcism using the Command spell,Lei realized that as a paladin, he could perform the exorcism himself. With theinventor finally free of possession, he demanded we shut down the factory thathad been making the golems and mechanical enforcers for Lord Darius, butinsisted that we not harm Darius when the time comes for he was in fact, a goodman. The revelation that the revenge Gineye sought would be deflected by yetanother Alternate did not go over well.

So, we set off towards the golem factory with Gineye leadingthe charge, revenge still smoldering behind his mask. When we arrived, thefactory seemed deserted, but when the guard dogs that came out of a few nearbykennels turned into hellhounds, and an ice devil dropped in from above, werealized we were in trouble. The battle, though brief, was tough, painful andlikely made worse by the absence of help from Zareem (who spent all of his timeattempting to get one of the hellhounds to trust him in an attempt to keep it.)Meanwhile, the ice devil managed to get inside the mental world Gineye used toconverse with the spirit of his axe and begin to corrupt it, leading to Gineyebeing unable to get back in. In a desperate bid to regain control, he demandedLei kill him, hoping that the soul trapping powers of the axe would give him aback door and a chance to find “Axey” again before his coin revived him. With aheavy heart, Lei and Zuradar complied, using their own weapons to kill theircompanion.

Gineye fell, then disappeared, reappearing shortly afterwardsacross the room, but something was very much different. Instead of the cheerymask he wore, there was a more sinister one with a jagged smile and a sinisterred glow from his eyes. As it had several times before, the axe had taken overGineye’s unconscious body, puppeteering it into using all of its abilities toattack his friends. Hoping to somehow break its control, Lei, Jemima andZuradar threw themselves into combat while Zareem continued to ignore the fightand attempted to gain favor with the hellhound in the corner. Even aftercalling for help, Zareem didn’t join the fight, stopping only to retrieve anice spear that had fallen from the ice devil’s body and throwing it into a furnace,completing the job of destroying the factory that they had been given.

Meanwhile, inside his head, Gineye was locked in a battlewith a being that resembled a corrupted version of the mostly benevolent spirtwho had helped him for the last several weeks. Assuming (probably correctly,though no confirmation has been given on this point) that this was in fact thepower source of the axe, built from the many slaughtered souls trapped insideit, and having corrupted the actual “Axey,” he sought to free her from thecorruption. A few times her consciousness seemed to flicker, as if his attemptswere getting through, but he was running out of ideas. In one last desperate move,he pulled her into a hug, and when that didn’t work, he used the power of theaxe to summon two spears, stabbing them both through her back and into his ownchest, aiming for the coin around his heart.

Back in the real world, the spear tips manifested out ofGineye’s body before they and he vanished again, leaving only the axe behind.The party barricaded the factory and then rested, worried about their friendbut too battered and tired to leave (save Zareem who had done basically nothingthe whole fight.) As they were ending their rest, a figure began to crawl outof the axe nearby, eventually solidifying into Gineye, though mysteriouslywearing the dress his spirit friend had worn. Naturally the team had questionsbut Gineye was evasive and wanted to move on, stopping only to shoo Jemima awayafter noticing that her poking his leg was causing no sensation of touch.

Their mission complete and their party gathered, theyventured forth to return to the rebellion’s hideout, only to find the doorwelded shut and a trail of blood leading them towards the other door and an unconsciousTai. Thankfully his injuries were minimal, but Tai’s story was grim: during thetime they were away, the hideout had been attacked by the robotic enforcersthat Lord Darius was using, but during that time they had made contact with adivination wizard by the name of Monty who was also a transplant from Faerun,one willing to aid them in their cause. Monty had given them a tip, telling thatthe leader of the rebellion was going to be publicly executed the next day, whichhappened to be only hours away now. Together they went to the town square, nowfitted with a gallows and a horde of people gathered to watch the execution.

Something was very much off, however, as the party hid amongthe crowd, waiting for their chance to strike. The man introduced as LordDarius was a far cry older than the man Gineye had known, and something feltvery wrong about the whole scenario. Those feelings were proven right whenGineye was attacked by one of the masked enforcers and the cloak was knockedoff of the “prisoner,” revealing yet another masked enforcer. The crowd ran asour heroes found themselves surrounded by more of the metallic men. Having dispatchedhis own attacker, Gineye used his axe to create a rope and swung over to thebox with the elderly Lord Darius, soon after followed by Lei using his ownmisty step ability to teleport over.

Inside the box, while the old man may have been recognizedas Lord Darius to the crowd, behind him, hidden from the audience, sat a muchyounger man with a stony expression on his face. The same Lord Darius who hadscarred Gineye’s face. Gineye readied one of the many small powder keg grenadeshe owned, but before he could exact his revenge, the two figures flanking theyounger Darius revealed themselves—one, an arch devil and the other, a demonlord. The demon quickly whisked Darius away, while the arch devil took off intothe city, leaving a swath of destruction in his wake. Before long, our heroesfound themselves in the midst of a holy war, with hordes of demonic forcespreviously hidden in the town, rising up to fight an onslaught of paladins, clerics,and other warriors blessed by divine forces.

Flanked by Zuradar, Gineye ran after the arch devil that hadfled from the observation box, but quickly ran into a group of paladins andclerics who were also pursing the same target. Two of the group, marked by thesymbol of the Raven Queen, immediately took offense at Gineye’s existence, callinghim a “filthy undead” as one attempted to smite him with a lightning bolt. AsGineye protested the inhumane treatment (while the gaping hole in his chestproved their accusations correct) a paladin marked with the symbol of “Bob,”the god of slaughter they had met previous, came over and uppercut the one who castthe lightning bolt (said storm cleric looking shockingly like Zareem.) Thepaladin of Bob revealed soon himself to be in fact Grug, released from thepunishment he had been given by Bob, who urged them to leave before somethingworse happened.

The older Lord had been retrieved from the observation boxby the time Gineye and Zareem returned, but as they returned so did the archdevilwho Gineye had failed to catch before. Introducing himself as Bael, he demandedthe old man be turned over. The party refused, attempting to stop him throughcombat, but their efforts proved futile as he simply walked over and took whathe wanted, before disappearing. Through the use of a haste spell and his own paladinskills, Lei was able to track Bael’s movement back to the Lord’s castle, but itwas decided that the party should rest before continuing on. After a short rest(in which Jemima hounded Gineye for a while in regards to his new undeadstatus, one he couldn’t really deny when the gaping hole in his chest magicallypatched itself up) they trooped off to the castle, preparing for a confrontation.

Lord Darius was inside when they entered, Gineye fullyprepared to take him down one-on-one, were it not for the young noble killinghis older counterpart in front of the bard. Remembering the request from thegnome earlier, Gineye used a new spell, revivify, to revive him before whiskingthe old man outside to protect him. Then, as he returned, finally ready for hisrevenge, that moment was stolen from him as a dark shape appeared behind theyoung Darius, taunting the party before snapping his neck and summoning shadowsto attack our heroes. After having fought them once thanks to Grug, the partyknew how to deal with these shadows and the fight was brief, but by the timethey finished the shadowy creature had left, leaving behind the empty husk thatwas once Gineye’s most hated foe.

Gineye was all set to use his magic to revive or preservethe body, but the arrival of a man through a dimensional door stopped him. Itwas Monty, the diviner they’d been told about, who was more than happy to usehis magic to prove that even if Gineye preserved the body, there was no soulleft to revive him. However, Monty was able to speed them along on their waytowards finding the rebellion’s missing leader, as he directed them towards a dungeonarea that his scrying couldn’t see into—which must be the place as he couldfind her nowhere else.

Inside the dungeon lay a maze of traps, pitfalls andsentient doors who kept their rooms locked with riddles. Inside the very last doorin the maze was a set of stairs leading down to a large room, where a strange,sinister ritual was taking place. A number of cultists surrounded summoning circles,two of whom were wreathed in flame, the one in the middle conjuring up a domeof solid darkness. As stealthily as they could, the party slid closer, Gineyemanaging to make it all the way to a door on one side of the room where he cameacross a terrifying sight: the same exact cell in which he had been tortured.

Unleashing the full power of the axe, he demolished the cultistsin a single hail of swords, which left the summoned fire elementals free toattack at will. Again, the fight was short, the most notable event was Jemimadoing her best to attack one of the elementals with the rapier she’d beencarrying all this time—while forgetting that without magical properties to it,the enchanted fire could easily melt it. Rest in peace, rapier, you were loved.Once the fires died down (literally) the team set about investigating the roomand the dome of darkness in the center of the room. Sadly, efforts to dispel itproved fruitless so the party turned their attention towards a mural on thewall, one depicting a multi-segmented circle, each with a crowned creature carvedinside. After close inspection—including noticing that one segment seemed todepict the same tarrasque they had unleashed upon the world previously—the partyguessed the mural was related somehow to the cult they had encountered, worshippingprimordials from the different planes (each of the elementals seemed to bedepicted, along with ones that looked celestial and infernal.) Finally, theygave one last attempt to dispel the dome, finally breaking the spell with awell-placed arrow, but instead of finding the leader inside as they’d hoped,all they saw was a shadowy creature who disappeared in seconds, followed by hermagical cloak which Zareem kept for himself.

As they went to leave, who should they run into but Grug andthe same paladins and clerics from before? Gineye, remembering their reaction tohim, attempted to hide in the stairwell, but the storm cleric (who still lookedshockingly like Zareem) detected him with his own divine sense. As the partyrushed to protect him, Zareem himself squared up, drawing his sword anddemanding that the paladin face him instead. It only took one single mightyblow from the paladin’s mace to instantly kill the already injured Zareem. Therepresentatives of the Raven Queen left, telling the group to keep “theirundead” on a leash, as everyone tried to figure out what to do now. It was thenGineye posed an idea: someone should let him borrow a 3rd levelspell slot. His words were cryptic, but nobody had any third level slots leftafter the long day they’d had, so Gineye lowered it to a second level slot. TentativelyJemima offered him one of her second level slots, and Gineye in responseplunged his hand into his own heart, pulling out an axe and handing it to her,fading into the axe as his mask appeared on her face. From inside her mind, heused her body and magic to cast a spell to preserve Zareem’s body, before the groupset about a much longer rest.

About halfway through their rest, Zareem revived, his coinhaving activated—giving him permanent wings and a new set of powers. Gineye leftJemima’s mind and reformed in the physical world, and after a bit of foolingaround with him trying to mind-hop into Pip the owlbear’s mind that ended withGineye accidentally killing (and immediately reviving) the poor creature, the teamdecided it was time to move on. The war had died down across Paplus, and theirmission was over though at great cost. After delivering the news of the outcometo Tai, the team set off in search of a Gnoll paladin of Silvanus who they weretold had a scroll for them

What they found instead was a mysterious bar—the same barthey had encountered in Lunacy, still run by the extremely shady feeling manwho just so happened to sometimes be the primordial of Earth. Zareem andZuradar both asked to see what goods he was peddling today, leading to Zareemgaining a +1 chain shirt and Zuradar acquiring himself a +2 bow (for only twoof his hit dice, a total “bargain!”). Meanwhile, Jemima found the gnoll seatedat a table and retrieved the scroll from him. The man let them leave afterthat, noticing how uncomfortable the other three were, but with a reminder thatthey could find him if they only looked for him.

Outside the shady bar (which had mysteriously vanishedagain) they discovered that the scroll was a teleportation sigil, but one thatthey weren’t capable of activating. One person however, was, and it took only asingle utterance of Monty’s name for him to appear through a tear in reality,casting the spell that would take them off to the tournament.

After the chaos of a holy war and a rebellion all in thespan of less than a week, the gang was happy to have a chance to settle down andrelax. Once in the tournament building, they had to sign up, either in solo matchesor groups of 2, which lead to Zareem and Zuradar becoming a group (fittinglynamed Heaven and Hell), Lei and Jemima teaming up (as Swords and Chords) andGineye going solo (under the name “The Entirety of France.”) Then, with an hourto prepare, the teams wandered the building, discovering their old friend Jonahhaving set up a merchants stall there. Jemima immediately informed him of theloss of her rapier, relinquishing the melted remains. In return, he gave her asword he’d fashioned from some of the dragon bones she’d given him, a rapierelegantly combining master swordcraft with the sublime beauty of the naturalworld.

Geared up once more, the matches began. Zareem and Zuradarfound themselves heavily outmatched by a pair of orcs. After Zareemaccidentally hit the younger (and far more badly damaged) of the two with acritical hit poison spray, inadvertently killing the orc, the older and moreexperienced orc proceeded to knock both of them out. Jemima and Lei’s roundwent much smoother, against a lizardfolk and a man in a strange leather dusterwho carried what could only be referred to as guns. Despite the strange man’sapparent prowess with his weapons, he managed to score only one hit on Jemimabefore he was knocked unconscious himself, and the Lizardfolk surrendered soonafter.

Gineye’s match however was stranger still. His opponent wasa man who seemed to disappear shortly after the match started, stayinginvisible or hiding behind dust clouds the whole match, but doing significantdamage to Gineye in the process. Finally, angered, Gineye readied a crossbowbolt, striking as soon as he saw the man’s arm clearly. The petrification boltworked perfectly, petrifying the man and winning Gineye the match (though notbefore a contingency spell activated, using lesser restoration on the man whograciously conceded.)

After their match concluded, Gineye left to find his friendsin the infirmary (though only Zuradar and Zareem needed much attention.) In themidst of their conversation, the man he had just fought walked in, joining thediscussion of the fights he had witnessed. He introduced himself as James and extendedan offer to Gineye to meet him for breakfast at a specific tavern the nextmorning. Tired from their battles, the group headed out to an inn to rest. Itwas agreed that Gineye should go to the tavern to meet James the next day (sincethey might be more relaxed if it was just him) while the rest would return tothe tournament location to find out what was going on. The tournament itselfwouldn’t start for two days, and the actual matches were entirely team-based,but since Lei and Jemima both had passed their matches (as well as Gineye) theywere allowed to form a team and invite the two who had failed their matches aswell.

Gineye’s investigation only put him more on edge. Jamesseemed very eager to recruit him away from the others, even offering to “helphim leave” should Gineye need it, in a way that suggested assassination wouldbe involved. He also knew more than he should, particularly about the war inPaplus and how Gineye’s party had come through a portal in Paplus that shouldhave originated north of the town of Tance, the same as another group whoarrived recently (where, unknown to James, the hidden town of Sylvenstand waslocated.) Gineye played along as best he could, mocking his teammates and theirdecisions and offering to send a package later that day that might be useful toJames’ group. However, once he returned, he clearly wasn’t eager to join such ashady group, but instead had Lei send a package over to the tavern—one containingthe Axe Gineye had pulled from his own heart yet again. However, to his dismaynobody actually took the axe while he was there and in fact nobody was home forthe full day, leaving him to sneak out the next night with a pilfered spellbookand a sour mood.

Finally however, the day of the tournament arrived. The gangwas among the first to compete, finding themselves soon in a large arena packedwith thousands of onlookers. In the middle of the arena, a Kenku introducinghimself as Veo Elmwood was acting as the Emcee, introducing first our heroes asthe “NaCl Pain Delivery Service” and their opponents as “The Hands of Nature.” Theparty (and especially Jemima) were pleased to see Edan again, along with hisalternate Ivan, the ranger Alice (whom Zuradar had attempted and failed to seduceback in Sylvenstand) and Leafsong, the Gnoll paladin from earlier.

However, instead of a fighting competition as the party hadexpected, it was instead a series of games and tests of skill, each with a “firstto 3 points” system of one-on-one matches. The actual games were chosen by diceroll, with the first being a drinking contest. Gineye stepped up, certain hecould win with his undead constitution, even against his opponent Ivan, butonce again Ivan’s luck was on his side as he came back with three points toGineye’s two. Next, Jemima found herself face-to-face with Edan in a challengeof pure luck as they rolled dice, each hoping for a higher roll than theiropponent. Right at the last moment, when it looked as though Edan would scoreanother point for his team, Jemima caught a glow around Ivan’s hand for amoment as the dice flipped over onto a natural 1. Finally, it was Lei and Leafsong’sturn, a test of endurance as they were forced to withstand increasingly harderthrown rocks without crying out in pain. In the end however, Lei managed tohold out the longest, scoring another point for our heroes. And as we left themat the end of that session, they were preparing for the next round of combat: atrial by combat, forced by Ivan again using his luck to twist the die to his favor.

And there you are, thirty episodes summarized as best Icould, with deep apologies for not being able to condense it even further. Ihope you enjoy reading it, and feel free to check out our episodes on youtube!

#d&d #dungeons and dragons #dnd #NaCl D&D #i'm so sorry about how long this took #turns out 8900 words takes several days to write #i could have been more succint i'm sure but i didn't want to miss anything #consider this a recap for anyone wanting to catch up?#again i'm sorry for the extreme length XD i'm more wordy than i think #venusvirago

9 notes · View notes

settle-down-frohike · 6 years

Text

Late to the game as always!! My submission for @xfpornbattle . I was given an unsexy prompt by @contrivedcoincidences6, my episode being Excelsis Dei, and I’ll be honest, it was *extremely* hard to feel anything resembling smutty after watching it, but I think that was the point. ;) But! I was able to pull prompts 195(dominant Scully) and 38 (Mulder watched Scully have one-night stands for years before making his move) and try to make something work. I do strongly advise re-watching it before you read if, like me, you haven’t in a while.

My eternal gratitude to @lepus-arcticus for going easy on me and making my first beta experience lovely and pain free! <3 If you see any spelling or grammar mistakes at this point it’s from my latest hurried edit and no reflection on her skills at all. And thank you to Idris Elba, for being, well, Idris Elba. ;) Tagging @today-in-fic

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shrinking Violet

R: NC-17

“I don’t know how to explain it, but it has something to do with those pills.”

An unsubstantiated solution to the substantiated crime. That was her report in a nutshell.

Thanks, Mulder.

She’s spent the last 5 hours turning that crude statement into an official report, and to say she is tired is an understatement. To make matters worse, Mulder seems to be finding any excuse to stay in the office with her. She understands the fact that he was technically her superior, but she doesn’t literally need supervision, for Christ’s sake. He just keeps hovering around her, just outside of her periphery, like a dog circling a dinner table. Rummaging through cabinets, flipping through files, making much ado about absolutely nothing. It’s incredibly annoying, but at this point she doesn’t have the energy to analyze or address it.

She’s been in the same clothes for close to 18 hours now, and just wants her shower and her bed, in that order. She packs her briefcase and watches from the corner of her eye to see if he does the same. He doesn’t even look up. It isn’t until she is halfway out of the door that he even bothers to speak.

“Hey Scully?”

She turns, her escape thwarted, and regards him with a blank expression, save one raised brow.

“S’good work. This case I mean....I’m glad you pushed it.”

An unexpected wave of rage paralyzes her senses, and for a moment, a rehearsed tirade about his premature dismissal of their victim’s case and its similarities to her own experience plays out in her mind. How it could have so easily been her pleading for someone to validate what her body knows, but what no one can prove-all of the physical evidence that would hold up in a court of law having been erased, her chance at justice stolen, along with a good bit of faith in the system she works for. It lodges in her throat that she’s disappointed in him, maybe for the first time.

She can still hear herself pleading with him to continue to pursue this case, and the memory makes her cringe. Her abduction has her unwillingly humbled, punished for the company she’s chosen to keep, and she hates it. If she’s being punished, she’d might as well commit a crime befitting. Ahab once grounded her for a month after she came in smelling of cigarettes she hadn’t smoked. It’d felt righteous then, on the roof at 3am, choking on an entire pack of her mother’s Virginia Slims. Bad decisions might as damned well be her own.

She doesn’t know herself anymore. The body in the mirror at home is softer than it used to be, it slouches with memories of invasion and abuse. This body betrays her. It keeps secrets now. It’s frustrating to feel patronized by one’s own mind. She appreciates the work keeping her busy, and she hoped coming back as quickly as possible would be the first step in feeling whole again. But she’s not anywhere close to restored. Her edges feel tattered and stitched poorly together, and though her reflection may not show it, she’s a Raggedy-Ann version of her former self. She wants her body back, her memories back, and her autonomy back.

To let him know these things would show weakness. So instead, she smiles tightly at the floor and mumbles some platitude about teamwork or partnership and slips out. If she makes it to the garage fast enough, he won’t have time to wrap up this charade, gather his own things, and follow her home. Again. She’d rather him pull the big brother act when he thinks she’s not looking.

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

At the third stop light before the freeway, a Holiday Inn sign reads, “$1 MRGRTAS” and the rebel in her smiles. He won’t follow her in here, and if he does, she’ll hopefully be drunk enough to say what’s on her mind. She’s not ready to be at home alone with those thoughts just yet.

Two hours later, she’s four deep and enjoying her umpteenth cigarette with relish, her nose is pleasantly numb, and her thoughts about her partner are turning maudlin. He’s trying, she reckons. She knows he cares deeply for her. He likes to keep her close, like a lucky rabbit’s foot or some other talisman, rattling around in his pocket with the loose change, carelessly cherished. She remembers a time, not so long ago when she’d been starry-eyed and school-girl smitten with her new partner, with his unexpected good looks and unreachable genius. And for a time, they’d sparked against each other like flint meeting a match. For a time, it’d felt like maybe he’d felt something too. Her disappearance has exposed weakness in them both, she supposes. Her need to push against support instead of leaning into it, and his inability to offer any outright, for fear of not deserving the trust. This thought feels like something resembling forgiveness, and, her anger having dissipated, she’s thinking seriously about paying her tab and calling a taxi. At that moment, an impossibly rich baritone asks if the seat next to her is taken.

The accent is British, and his suit is expensive. He fits in here about as well as she does. He orders Glenlivet, neat. The tequila has her feeling loose limbed and mischievous, so after a few moments of quiet companionship, she slips off her jacket to reveal the pale blue silk shell underneath, just to see what might happen. Her newer, larger breasts stretch against the fine fabric, and if the sensation is unfamiliar and discomfiting, his side glance is not. She swallows any lingering traces of self doubt down with a swish of salt and cheap mix. The game is afoot, and the rush of adrenaline to her brain at her prowess is euphoric. She wants more of this kind of puissance, achieved cheaply, but effective nonetheless.

“You’re not singing tonight?” He nods towards the empty stage, floating lights and karaoke machine at the corner of the bar, unused, thankfully.

“Not tonight,” she smiles into her plastic tumbler, “too much competition.” His resulting chuckle is deep and dizzying.

Afoot, indeed.

She turns her head and is met with a very handsome smile with a face to match, basset-hound eyes and skin the color of strong espresso. His beard is well kept, and only serves to highlight his strong jawline, and sumptuous mouth. The closely tailored suit is doing nothing to hide the brutish build underneath. But he carries it with such elegance. He is fist-bitingly sexy. His handshake is gentle and warm, his name is Miles. There’s a bewitching hint of grey at his temples, and she is suddenly swooning, and damning everything all to hell.

She can’t honestly believe she hears herself ask if he is here alone, but the words come from someone that sounds a lot like her. He nods, and says he’s there ‘on conference’, the way that well-to-do Brits must put it, and the rest of his associates are at the Four Seasons.

“I’m set to give a lecture come morning, and tonight... I just needed a bit of breathing room.”

“Pressures at work?” She asks. He nods and releases a puff of smoke from one of her borrowed cigarettes.

“Comes with the terri’try, I suppose. I’m the head of my department at university. I’m expected to have allll the answers,” he cracks, with a wide sweep of his arm.

She chuffs. “That’s interesting. Lately I feel like I have no answers, only questions. But I think I understand.”

Their eyes meet again, and the air around them is suddenly charged. Not sexual, really, but a kind of understanding, a kinship being formed, and she’s now more drawn to him than ever. She feels brazenly without filter.

“Do men like you, with answers, I mean, does that power ever become a burden?”

“It absolutely does. Yes.”

She surveys the room, nodding. “Well I can assure you, Miles. Being without them can weigh on you just as well.”

He’s watching her still, even as she refuses to return his gaze.

“Can I help?”

That catches her attention. His eyes are crinkled with scrutiny, but something else, something familiar radiates behind the humor. Ah, yes. She recognizes it now. Need. Naked and thinly veiled behind his offer.

“Yes,” she answers, with a Mona Lisa smile, “yes, I think maybe you can.” He gracefully signals the barkeep, and she stands to gather her jacket and purse.

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

She shivers visibly as he closes the door to his room, and she chalks it up to the ancient overactive air conditioner by the window and not her nerves. Like the gentlemen she expects him to be, though, he adjusts the setting before relieving himself of his own jacket, and walks to stand before her. But God he is striking, and mysterious and reserved in a way that intimidates and in turn, arouses her. And something about the scent of the cheap furnishings and the last traces of his expensive cologne is intoxicating in an illicit, tawdry sort of way. This feels like an affair. This stranger’s body she’s been inhabiting for the last few months now is behaving like the old Dana would, unmercifully enraptured by an older, powerful man.

“Tell me what I can do,” he says gently, and she’s swept up on a wave of supremecy.

“Take off your clothes,” she orders, softly but firmly, as she begins to relieve herself of her own, “and get on your knees.” His eyes flash brightly and he obeys, an eager supplicant. The slightest sway of her pelvis toward his mouth is all the command he needs, and his tongue snakes between her thighs, smoothly traces her outer folds, seeking entrance. She presses her hand to the back of his head and he growls into her in response. She can see him growing long and thick and hard between his legs, purely on the taste of her. Her voice is husky with want, and the air is saturated with pheromones.

“Make me come.”

And he does. Using long, deft fingers and a dexterous tongue he suckles and strokes with perfect pressure, an even rhythm, until the one leg she has thrown over his broad back becomes two, and she’s lying back on the bed, watching herself thrash and moan from far, far above her body, this dark god of a man at her mercy.

He laps at her gently, bringing her down from orgasm with incredible tenderness. His beard is soaked and glistening when he looks up, and she decides she’s not done with him yet.

“Lie on the bed, now.”

He rises wordlessly, licks his lips, and nods. When he settles, fully prostrate, she rises and stands next to the bed, admiring his form. Every inch of him is perfection. She wants to bite at his pebbled nipples, suckle at his mouth, capture the straining tendons at his neck between her teeth. He’s visibly, if willfully, tortured, and true power is not without mercy.

If she were to straddle and face him, it would feel too intimate. Neither want connection, they want distraction. She wants to use him and he wants to be used. So she turns back and watches herself sink down, slowly, onto his dusky length in the dresser mirror. The woman before her is dominant, formidable, and she’s aching to come again. Her fingers slide down between her breasts, over her mons and past her clitoris, fully engorged, stiff and eager. She finds their bodies’ joining, finds where he enters and his slick girth spreads her open, impaling her as she rises and falls. Her slick, shining fingers reach her mouth and taste their sex, rich and biting. He’s watching her reflection with wide, worshipful eyes. Dipping lower, her fingernails graze the tender underside of his sack, and the muscles in his legs rippling in anticipation, like a thoroughbred at the gate. He thrusts unconsciously and groans helplessly, “God!” and the succubus in her takes over. She growls, “Don’t you dare fucking move,” and starts to work herself ruthlessly, grinding him down and deep against her cervix, the sensation acute and exquisitely painful, over and over again. Her eyes never leave her reflection, even as she is open-mouthed and howling, her second orgasm consuming her like a brushfire. His own climax registers somewhere in the distance.

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

Her legs are trembling with exertion, an unnamed emotion bubbling it’s way to the surface. She collapses forward, sobbing, as a pair of warm, strong arms envelope her from behind.

“You are incredible,” he whispers, breathless, “a goddess. Now come here.” His commanding tone is softened by English r’s. The fight in her has gone, but he takes no advantage. He tucks her next to him under the thin comforter and tells her sternly, “Give yourself time to heal, girl. You have all the power you seek. Wield it as you wish. You have nothing to prove to anyone but yourself.” The last thing she thinks is how, in this moment, she does feel very much like a girl, newborn and guiltless and so very, very afraid again of what she does not know. What her mind won’t let her remember. For now though, she lets his warmth and his brawn shield her against the demons that beckon.

Come morning, on the pillow next to her, a vibrant, freshly picked violet is all that remains of him.

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

A disheveled man sits in a parked car across the street from the Holiday Inn, two days worth of stubble coating his cheeks, eyes red-rimmed and shifty. His body shakes, the indignant fury he felt previously now exhausted into fumes of guilt as he watches her come through the sliding doors, out to her car, and follows it as it drives away. She’s safe at least. She’s alive. He doesn’t know how much longer he can keep this up.

#myfic #msr fic #xf prompt battle #xfiles s2 #fic prompts #excelsis dei #drabbles #idris elba

204 notes · View notes

canvaswolfdoll · 6 years

Text

CanvasWatches: Dragon Pilot: Hisone and Masotan

Not going to do a Summer 2018 write up because I only lasted through one anime, and Chio’s School Road had… issues I don’t feel like discussing.

Also, haven’t had time to continue the Digimon Rewatch (which is exclusive to the Patreon until I finish season one).

Doesn’t mean I’ve been slacking! Netflix’s most recent license camping for it’s tedious binge watch format is Dragon Pilot: Hisone and Masotan, which was a delight to watch! Go watch it, right now! Do it!

Anyways, time for my… whatever this thing is... on it.

Hisone is a woman who joined the airforce because, near as I can tell, she didn’t have any other ideas for what to put on her school’s career plan worksheet that shows up in every anime, and she saw a fighter plane soar by.

There’s… worse motivations, I guess?

Anyways, while working a desk job, she’s invited to an interview at a far away hangar.

She goes to the hangar and is promptly eaten by a dragon.

But it’s okay! The dragon just wanted to eat her old flip phone! And the crew got her thrown up pretty quick! And now they want her to pilot the dragon.

By getting swallowed and controlling the thing but prodding its soft innards.

Anime

So, Dragons are a thing that exist, and the world governments have been helping hiding them because… that’s the deal they made? Anyways, Japan hides their dragons as fighter planes, and has their air force manage them.

Because we need to explain this bizarre premise somehow.

Dragons are selective about who they will swallow and not digest, and Hisone is one of those lucky few. So she’s a D-Pilot now, which is probably a promotion from her ill-defined desk job.

Also, now she has to put up with Nao Kaizaki, initially the only member of Gifu Base’s D-Pi program, and a woman who couldn’t get the dragon to swallow her, so her position is more theoretical.

Kaizaki is introduced exhibiting the mannerisms of your typical High School Thug boy character, so you know she’ll be interesting.[1]

Hisone’s superior officer, Remi Kakiyasu, was also once a candidate for dragon piloting who couldn’t get the dragon to accept her. So the entire program is kind of low on practical experience.

Then there’s the woman selling yogurt who is clearly important, but it’ll take a few episodes for yogurt woman to reveal her purpose.

So Kaizaki and Kakiyasu train Hisone up as she comes to grips with her new responsibilities.

Hisone finds a plaque embedded in the dragon to learn his name is Masotan.

And so, the title is complete.

Then three more pilots fly in in episode 4, and the main plot starts to meander in a direction.

Let’s meet the other three team members!

Elle Hoshino: Enlisted to become the first female fighter pilot, and is displeased to have been placed on the OTF (Organic Transformed Flier) program instead. So her dragon, F-2/Norma, refuses to leave it’s plane form to please its partner. Eventually Elle comes around and loosens up. She’s fine.

Mayumi Hitomi: A matronly shaped pilot. She’s soft-hearted and soft spoken. Flies a large, goofy looking dragon named Futomomo. She’s fine.

Lilico Kinutsugai: Winner of the Canvas’s ‘Wait, I want more’ award, Lilico is a shut-in with a wry sense of humor and love of manga. Her dragon is the samurai-looking Akemi. Lilico is also apparently asexual, something I wish they’d given space to explore a little more.

She could’ve been my favorite pilot,[2] but the show didn’t commit enough.

So the pilots are placed through a couple adventures to become friends as the creepy Iboshi (some vaguely defined government guy) watches and plots.

Iboshi is the closest thing the series has to a villain, despite it being more of a Man vs. Nature affair. He possesses a callous disregard for the people of the D-Pi program, focused on the looming Ritual the D-Pi are needed for.

This cold-naturedness made me dislike him, but also allows the series to run relationship drama in a really interesting direction.

Because, guess what? If the D-Pi fall in love, the dragons will instinctively reject them. And they need the D-Pi to keep the Dragons healthy, and also escort a giant dragon to ensure it doesn’t destroy Japan in its wake! Oh dear. This frames the ‘will-they, won’t-they’ of Hisone and Haruto of the maintenance team into an major conflict with dramatic consequences and justifies a dumb ‘misunderstanding’ plot with one of the other D-Pi.

This shows builds a very grounded, mature, and compelling view on romance, and I am super game for it. And super down to sing its praises.

I’ve found that the sweet spot for making me care about a romance plot isn’t tsundere antics, or fear, or dumb misunderstandings, because there’s nothing I crave in my media more than emotional honesty.

No, the slow burn I crave is sheer ignorance. It takes several episodes for Hisone to understand she may have feelings for Haruto beyond friendship, then more for her to actually accept and admit her feelings to herself, then the fantasy takes over to prevent a tedious ‘Oh, will you two just talk’ subplot, because Hisone can no longer do her job lest she get digested by her dragon! So the conflict of “How does Hisone deal with her feelings” becomes augmented to “How does Hisone do her freaking job now!?”

The answer, seemingly, is just have a level head on the topic: Mayumi Hitomi also has plenty of ship teases with another character, but never is at risk of being eaten. It doesn’t get examined, because Hitomi’s ability to just kind of… casually acknowledge it and not let the Doki-Dokis mess up her stride doesn’t draw attention.

And because Hitomi’s resolution to the conflict eventually comes down to “I don’t want to abandon anyone ever” means her love for Haruto[4] is just added to the pile of things Hitomi is just anxiously passionate about, in equal measures to her love of flying Masoton, and that seems to work out.

Which, I guess means the secret to flying the dragon’s isn’t a creepy expectation of a pure heart, Iboshi, but emotional maturity.

Which brings us to the jerky, playboy wannabe breaking Elle’s heart. Like a monster.

Take note, writers: this is the first time ‘I broke your heart to protect/save you!’ has ever been successfully executed without one or both parties catching a case of the stupids! Watch this and learn!

So, early in the series, we meet Yutaka Zaito, a wannabe womanizer who has no success, but maintains his illusion of charisma nevertheless. Then he meets Elle, whose serious attitude and cold shoulder grabs his attention, and he suddenly abandons his swarm and tries to, gently, ingratiate himself to Elle, who gradually warms up to him.

It’s nice.

But then the whole ‘Dragon digests those with unsteady hearts’ plot point happens, and Elle is in a position where she can’t even fly her dragon, sending her ambitions even further away. And she hasn’t realized it’s Zaito causing her heart flutters.

But Zaito, upon learning the situation, does understand. And knows that it’s either him or Elle’s career.

So, he turns up the creep, approaches Elle, and proposes a friends-with-benefits arrangement, claiming not to want a serious relationship, and subtly mocks Elle’s dragon rejection. This breaks Elle’s heart, of course, but resolves the matter. She can fly Norma again, and Zaito is left to bite his tongue and let his crush pursue her best life.

The sequence is well executed. It’s a misunderstanding perpetuated intentionally, knowingly, and selflessly by one party, and exists for reasons beyond ‘Neh, let’s have some dumb romance drama now’. Zaito knows what he’s giving up, but still breaks Elle’s heart because she legitimately needs him to so she can pursue her dreams. There’s no other timely way.

On the other end, the show introduces Natsume,[5] a childhood friend of Haruto, who comes in to be Hisone’s rival!

Except Hisone is too oblivious and all-loving to care, and Haruto is straight disinterested in Natsume. And Natsume is a shallow Tsundere and lacks any appealing characterization. They could’ve given her role to Nao, who desperately needs something to do in the later half of the series, or, better yet, just have Haruto be the human sacrifice.

“But you need a girl for the sacrificial beauty role!”

Okay.

Make Haruto a girl.

“Are you proposing the show suddenly swerve into Yuri?”

I mean, Yogurt lady’s backstory is literally a Tragic WWII-era Yuri love story.[6]

Sada Hinomoto shows up selling yogurt and being charming and mysterious so you know there’s something deeper going on.

Turns out, she’s the last D-Pi from the last time they did the ritual, so she actually has proper experience to teach the new kids, and, oh yeah, she hates Iboshi, resents the entire procedure, and carries a lot of trauma from when her friend Yae was chosen to be the human sacrifice last time, and though the show doesn’t spell it out, the intimate blocking and their schemes to flee to Paris paints a super clear picture about what that relationship was about and, gosh dangit, is she one cool grandma.

All she wants to to get back to the giant dragon to find closure with what happened to Yae and force an alternate solution.

Fortunately, Hisone is just the sort of loveable goofball to find an alternate to the Giant Dragon’s bedtime snack!

So there’s another reason why Hisone’s love interest should’ve been a girl.[8]

Now, practically this could’ve been accomplished a couple of ways: gender flip Haruto, cut Haruto and use Nao, pr combine characters. Point is, no matter how you do it, this hypothetical female love interest is now the human sacrifice for Mitatsu-sama.

With this change, there is a new parallel drawn between Hisone and Hinomoto,[9] further underlines Hisone’s tendency toward heartfelt dedication to unconventional methods, and Hisone’s desire for saving the sacrifice changes from an impersonal “Human sacrifices are wrong”[10] to “Human sacrifices are wrong, and also screw you I love that girl!”

And if that girl had Tsundere tendencies (like Nao or Natsume), that’d make the pairing even cuter.

Also, points for the entire D-Pi team unambiguously disbelieving Hisone’s ambiguous fate at the end. It’s fun to see such trope-awareness.[11]

In conclusion: Dragon Pilot is super adorable and sincere, the premise is quintessential anime, and it’s just fun. Sure, most of the characters deserve more depth and exploration, but that’s always my complaint and it’s only a 12-episode series. Plus, it very good at portraying mature characters without stooping into immature means.

And it’s really cementing my love of BONES as a studio.[12] I need to put more effort into seeking out their work.

So go watch it.

Thanks for reading my review! These do tend towards inconsistent release, but they’re fun to do. Consider checking out my other reviews, essays, and the rarer original work. I’m also nearing the end of my Muffin Comics experiment, so catch those while you can! If you really like what I’m outputting, I’ve got a Patreon, set on a monthly schedule so you know what you’re committing to.[13]

Next time: a Netflix Original of a magical tone! (And hopefully more Digimon)

Kataal kataal

[1] At least, that’s the hope. Gets dashed once the other D-Pi arrive on base and Kaizaki slips out of the spotlight. [2] The title goes to Hisone herself.[3] [3] Anyone else have troubles saying the main character/romantic lead are their favorite? Like it’s too easy an answer or something? Because I do. [4] All these H names are raising the hackles of my Mug Rule… [5] Presumably so they can localize Harvest Moon games. [6] Which means we were this close to a Yuri anime not about assaulting high schoolers and creepy family dynamics,[7] but one about Dragons pretending to be a spitfire and historical context and and light-hearted comedy and I honestly would trade this show for that and I love Hisone & Maston! [7] Citrus did not sit well with Canvas. [8] Canvas’s full tilt idea, by the way, is to combine Haruto, Nao, and Natsume. Condense characters and keep them all relevant longer. [9] Way too many H names. [10] Not that Hisone being a goofy all-loving hero isn’t super endearing. [11] Though it’d be nice to know what Hisone and Masoton were doing. Had Hisone ejected out of the dragon at any point during the… months(?) long time jump? [12] Wolf’s Rain notwithstanding. [13] Not going to lie, nothing deflects me from lending support quicker than a ‘Per Update’ schedule.

#CanvasWatches #dragon pilot #anime #CanvasReviews

3 notes · View notes

revlyncox · 6 years

Text

Sowing and Reaping

This sermon was delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring by Rev. Lyn Cox on August 5, 2018. In it, we explore covenant, the Pagan holiday of Lammas, and the wisdom of Ms. Frizzle. This worship services launches a one-year interim ministry.

Blessed is the earth, which brings forth food for all that lives. Blessed is the rain, flowing with the water of life. Blessed is the sun, which calls to grow and which speeds our return to the earth. Blessed is the wind that carries the seed and the mist, the warm and the cool, the new and the returned. May we collaborate with and give thanks for the forces that create and uphold life. Blessed be.

I am a clueless gardener. It might be a little bit of an overstatement to say I like gardening. It might be more accurate to say that I find gardening fulfilling, even though I don’t exactly know what I’m doing. I learn spiritual lessons from gardening, mainly about how I am not in control of the universe. Perhaps because I needed to learn that lesson now more than ever, I made an ambitious plan for this year’s garden. Starting in February, I made lists of plants and I used graph paper to map out how I hoped the garden would look.

Around May 1, my kids and my partner came home from a Department of Agriculture educational event with tomato seedlings in medium-size containers, around which they had planted spinach, beans, peas, and sunflowers. My kids had great luck, and soon we had little plants ready to be put into the ground. The spinach couldn’t make the transition, but the other plants looked promising. I re-drew my maps.

Under the general category of “I am not in control of the universe,” I have learned a few corollary lessons so far this summer. Lesson One: squirrels love tomatoes. In past years, when I grew cherry tomatoes, I could harvest some before they were snatched up. This year’s crop of lovely, disease-resistant, full-sized heirloom tomatoes proved to be irresistible to our local furry friends. Lesson Two: When you let children plant seeds, they will definitely put more than one seed in every hole. What I thought would be three sunflower seedlings turned into six tall, lovely sunflowers. There were seven, but squirrels like to eat sunflowers almost as much as they love tomatoes. Lesson Three: not all seedlings survive to bear fruit, no matter what you do. The beans had an early crop, then half of the plants died, and the rest needed a month of tender, loving care. All of the pea plants died except one. Sometimes things don’t work out the way we hope.

In late July, as I was deciding if I wanted to plant again for a late harvest or if I wanted to give up, I was reminded of the old aphorism about planting beans: “Sow four seeds as you make your row: one for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot, and one to grow.” In other words, plan for uncertainty. Take chances, knowing not everything we try will bear the fruit we hope for. When the odds are slim, increase your tries.

Hearing this rhyme again helped me get out of the trap of, “Why me?” Gardeners and farmers in many times and places had gone through the disappointment of losing bean seedlings. The saying has some variations, such as replacing “mouse” with “cutworm,” “rook,” or “pigeon.” There are many ways for a seed to end up as something other than food for humans. Loss does not always arise from lack of effort or character flaw. Sometimes things just don’t pan out. Sometimes you learn from mishaps. The old rhyme pushed me into an experimental mindset, the ability to try new things, or to try again after failure with the full understanding that there are no guarantees. I planted some new beans and peas, along with some radishes and beets, hoping for a late September harvest.

Moving from a focus on failure to a focus on experimentation also helped me to be grateful for the plants that did survive and grow. Nurture what is working well. Give thanks, because spectacular things do not happen through the will of one person alone. If you saw my post about today’s service on Facebook or Twitter, I included a photo of the very first pea that came to maturity in my garden, one beautiful little pod, turning green and plump against very long odds.

This is the essence of some earth-centered holidays that happens around this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, this holiday of the first harvest and the high summer tinged with the first glimmers of autumn. Some might call this holiday Lammas, which is a holiday about bread, celebrating the first grains of the season being harvested and threshed and ground. Some might call this holiday Lughnasadh (also spelled Lúnasa), after the god Lugh, a god of craftsmanship and many skills. At Lammas, we practice gratitude, we focus on the blessings we do have, and we realize that the earth itself is a more powerful partner than individual human gardeners in bringing about the abundance of the season. We remember sowing the seeds months ago, and we remember that planting is always a gamble, and we collect seeds from this year to use in the spring. When something bears fruit, we plan to use that experience in the future, we share the credit and the harvest, and we put love and artistry into the further work of transformation.

As it turns out, the spirituality of gardening carries with it some ideas that are echoed in science, education, and congregational life. One of my science education role models is Ms. Frizzle from the book and TV series of the 1990’s, “The Magic School Bus.” If you don’t know Ms. Frizzle, ask your nearest children’s librarian. In every book or episode, her students complete research projects about something like magnetism, the solar system, dinosaurs, or the human digestive system. When the students run into a question they can’t answer, Ms. Frizzle proposes a surprise field trip. “To the bus! Seatbelts, everyone!” The bus mysteriously becomes big or small, or travels through time or outer space, or withstands the conditions of a volcano or a waterfall so that the students are able to make observations and answer their scientific questions. Ms. Frizzle always says, “Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!” These three instructions are key for the ability of the class to learn new things and to have fun while learning.

Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy. You will hear me say these three things again, because they also speak to a congregation’s opportunities during the Interim Ministry period.

Going back to the spiritual insights of Lammas, we learn at this time of year that we had to take chances. Only one out of four bean seeds in the rhyme led to a harvest. Sowing any kind of seed at all, literal or metaphorical, is a gamble. Not everything turns out the way we hope. Indeed, even as we bring in the first fruits, these are risky times. Sudden storms that cause the crop to rot or drought that invites wildfire are both real possibilities in August. Our inability to control the universe does not mean we are bad or lazy or incomplete. Living life to the fullest, learning and growing, requires a certain degree of risk.

In spiritual community, especially during the golden opportunity of an Interim year, we take chances together. We experiment with new ways of understanding the world, with different ways of worshipping and of doing church. We take the risk of speaking the truth with love. Take chances.

Make mistakes. Ms. Frizzle reminds us that the scientific method involves making a hypothesis and testing it. If we guess right every time, science doesn’t advance as quickly. We have to be willing to be wrong sometimes, and to admit we were wrong so that we can get to the juicy, exciting part of the learning process. We are human beings and we are fallible. Our tendency to make mistakes does not and should not cut us off from human community or from the traditions of spiritual growth or from the disciplines of science and craftsmanship. Humans are welcome in community, broken and whole, flawed and fabulous.

Lugh, the god who is celebrated at Lughnasadh (Lúnasa), is a character of many skills. He’s a warrior and a wheelwright, he’s a musician, he’s an athlete. Even mythical characters have to practice. Getting better at anything, from blacksmithing to gardening to being human, means we have to start out not being very good at it. Fail spectacularly. Fail with gusto. Fail better, and keep learning.

I tried growing beans and peas, and I mostly failed for the first harvest. Some part of that was due to random chance, but another part helped me learn about drainage, pest control, and planting more seeds than I think I am going to need for my crop. We’ll see how the second harvest goes. When I remembered that it’s OK to make mistakes, I was able to celebrate what I had and use what I learned rather than dwell on failure. Make mistakes.

Get messy! Farming involves getting covered with dirt, and sometimes covered in things more specific than dirt. Science education can lead to all kinds of messes, from vinegar and baking soda reactions to rock collections to close observations of living things. The abundance of Lammas puts us knee deep in flour, or the gluten-free grain of your choice. In the middle of a chaotic rush to bring the harvest home, we pay more attention to what we are doing together than on looking neat and pristine or on creating the illusion of having everything together.

In spiritual community, we get messy by being vulnerable and by accepting the range of wisdom and experience and emotion that our companions bring to community. An inclusive community welcomes all people, but not all behaviors. Figuring out how to be together, setting boundaries to help the congregation to be a place of courage and growth, is not easy. This is the art of covenant. Communities where people are authentic are complicated and difficult and heartbreaking and annoying and surprisingly joyful. Get messy.

This Lammas, let us give thanks. Let us remember the risks and acknowledge the losses, yet let us focus on gratitude and abundance. Fail better, and increase tries. This Lughnasadh (Lúnasa), let us celebrate the skills within us and among us, and let us commit to the love and artistry of living in community. As we bring in the first fruits of this new church year together, let us commit to a path of spiritual growth, lifelong learning, diverse and welcoming community, justice, and compassion. To stay on that path, let us take chances, make mistakes, and get messy.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen.

#Unitarian Universalism #lammas #lughnasadh #uu

4 notes · View notes