#which really makes it a good equivalent to deciding on a major life path

[rocaillefox]

honestly. the eeveelutions vn is directly inspired by the many 'eevee love story' videos six year old me watched on youtube that were made in what mightve been a slideshow program set to music and by pmd. and also hatoful boyfriend. and also bc i want to make something that will hopefully have aspects of both the analytical and storytelling aspects of pokemon fan creations and entertainment.

i want it to be both a silly story, and one that also incorporates themes of figuring out who youre going to be in life- and figuring out who you are in relation to other people. sometimes life throws a curveball and your plans drastically change. sometimes you dont know if the path youre going down is right for you- sometimes you even regret it. thats life! nobody knows whats going to happen until it does.

i also definitely want to incorporate a balance here of self and others; when figuring out who you are, you have to figure out who others around you are, too.

so yeah! some thoughts from during the creative process and a few goals for the game, and why i chose primarily eevee characters. ^^

will likely not be streaming script-working later, but might be streaming something else, and ppl are always free to pop in and ask questions!

[boreal-sea]

So I have over 1,000 hours in Civ V for... reasons...

(I'm trying to get through victories for all of the leaders ok? And I play on Standard pace, and it takes a couple of hours per leader, and there's like 50 leaders, ok???)

anyway

I usually aim for just having the most points or getting a Science victory because those are easiest for me. And at the end of the Science victory, for years, I've seen the "Go Beyond Earth" button, and knew it linked to a download of Civ: Beyond Earth.

Well, the other day, I finally decided to download it because it was on sale for like $6, so why not?

And... I really like it. It's very similar to Civ V in a lot of ways, which I like. The tech tree is... bad, from a design perspective, but I get why they did it that way. Thankfully, they have ways to filter the monster spiderweb they turned the tech tree into so it's actually pretty easy to work your way towards the different victory types.

For my first playthrough, I was on standard difficulty and found it impossible to keep Health up (this game's equivalent of Happiness) and then Hutama attacked me and that was that. Second playthrough I went on Easy and found it much better, I wasn't struggling to keep Health up and could actually enjoy the game. Hutama was still a dick, but other civs were my friend and I was making a boatload of energy (gold) so I was able to kick Hutama's ass when he inevitably attacked me. He's like the equivalent of Napoleon or Bismark or Alexander: if you start off next to him, he's gonna attack you at some point.

SO: a lot of the game is identical. You construct units and buildings that have familiar purposes. You do research, you develop both science and culture trees. You trade, and try not to get killed by other players.

Where the differences lay I find a lot of interest.

First, setup is a bit slower than for Civ V. After picking difficulty/map size etc, you have to pick a Sponsor - the equivalent of leaders. They of course come with different abilities to take into account. Then you have to pick a Colonist type, Spacecraft type, and Cargo. These can give you some major advantages, and add variety to startup. Finally, you pick Planet Type, which is equivalent to continent type.

Instead of Ideologies, you have Affinities, and they're really interesting. The three Affinities are Supremacy (technologically advance humans), Purity (solve humanity's problems while remaining human), and Harmony (genetically modify humans to synergize with the alien planet). These synthesize with the Victory types: Domination, Contact, Transcendence, Promised Land, Emancipation, and End of Time.

I took the Harmony/Transcendence path in my first successful playthrough, because I'm a big ol' hippy and becoming one with the new planet and its ecosystem just seemed like the right thing to do.

The Contact victory entails making contact with a superior alien race. Promised Land is a Purity victory that involves bringing more humans from Earth to settle. Emancipation involves returning to Earth and helping those humans achieve Supremacy. End of Time is what happens if you get to turn 500 and no one has won, much like getting to 2050 in Civ V. Points are tallied, and the player with the most points wins.

But that's not where the differences end!! The spying is reworked, and you can assign them actual tasks. I am not good at it.

But a BIG difference is that you get quests and throughout the game you have to make choices about what to do, which was really engaging and added even more variety to the game for me.

Oh, and there's the BUG problem, too. The planet you land on isn't lifeless, and there are lots of local life forms that really want to eat you. Whether you kill them or not actually has an affect on gameplay and how the other leaders feel about you.

[borkthemork]

‘Ivy on the Run’, and What Sasha Needs

So, back when I was rewatching Season 2B, I had considered a lot of the tiny details found in prior episodes that seemed to promise massive comebacks later on.

I’m talking about the mossmen, who were alluded to way back in Wally and Anne, who were mentioned later with the mural and the sleepover episode.

We also have stuff such as the ability for Anne to bend light into imagery, which I definitely absolutely believe is one of her powers that will be delved into in Season Three.

With all these details, I decided to really put my foot into the series and see how much could potentially be planted throughout what I once considered to be episodic episodes.

And that was where I had a realization.

Ivy on the Run wasn’t just a Sprig and Ivy episode. It wasn’t just some random episode for the sake of having fun with the characters.

This episode is where the show tells the audience subtly that Ivy Sundew is going to be an important character to the plot when it comes to being Sasha Waybrights’s Sprig equivalent, and I’m going to be talking about why I believe that here.

Ivy on the Run is established with three things in mind: to tell the audience about who Ivy is as a character, how she interacts with her family, and what she yearns for overall in the story.

The first scene showcases her personality through the environment itself.

She has a map of the Amphibian continent to track Sprig’s progress, she has posters that talk about finding your own path in life, and you can see that she is a very action-oriented person with the amount of knives and axes on the throwing board.

This entire episode is mainly about Ivy’s wanting to find adventure. She feels trapped in Wartwood because she saw nothing in her family but boring tea sessions, and continuously does actions that shows she’s antsy for her turn in the spotlight, for her turn to explore and conquer the world in her own way since she’s never been out of the Valley.

And here, the narrative makes sure to highlight the more rambunctious and feisty sides of the family too. With Ivy’s debut episode, we were never really given much information about her that wasn’t just one-dimensional tomboy attitude; there were moments where she showed genuine awkwardness over the whole courtship incident, but it wasn’t until Season Two where we were able to flesh her out more as a character overall.

She hates the rules and regulations her mother does for her, she is very much okay with going against said rules if she believes her boundaries were crossed, she can be pretty adaptable in stressful situations, and it isn’t until the end of the episode — where she sees more sides of her mother being an experienced traveler — do we get to see her become more open-minded and excited for learning about this side of her family that she’s never heard of before.

And when the two Sundews went face to face...

We get a parallel.

These episodes are similar in a lot of ways, but how they’re handled is executed differently.

They both focus on the wanting for communication and open-mindedness in a family dynamic, but what’s interesting here is that Sprig deliberately loses to let Hop Pop return to his role as the head of the house, while Felicia deliberately allows Ivy to win as a reassurance that she knows what her daughter needs.

In spite of Felicia’s strict actions, she pushes Ivy because she knows that Ivy will have to leave the Valley one day, and the ending makes a big promise that her part of the journey is almost ready.

"Ivy, you think I don't see you, but I do. You want to travel the world and I get it. But you have to be patient, because it's dangerous out there, and I just want you to be ready before we go."

Of course, the last part is all about their tea trip outside the Valley, but this perhaps could be foreshadowing to another big event in Ivy’s life that will make her leave the Valley.

Now, let’s talk about Sasha and the theme of nurture in Amphibia.

With Sasha, we have an interesting arc going on with her. She has a promised redemption arc, but the thing with her is that the Season Three opening explicitly promises that she’s going to have to compromise with Wartwood if she ever wants to fight Andrias. And we all know how the town is slow when it comes to the respect department.

This is where we start to get some potential parallels with Anne and Sasha. The thing with these two characters is that they do make genuine connections, however the theme of nurture found throughout the story itself emphasizes heavily on the environment and the support system the girls have.

For Anne, she was dropped into a place that knew boundaries and yet opened up to love instead of doubling down on punishment, and this leads to not only empathy but growth if Anne so chooses to become a good person.

For Sasha, she’s not given that place to grow. It has been confirmed in the show itself that Sasha, ever since she dropped into Amphibia, had been imprisoned in Toad Tower for one month. One month. It wasn’t a surprise that Sasha took advantage of the chaos found in Prison Break, since it was a lot better than having nothing by being stubborn. She played it smart, however, that meant Sasha’s manipulative nature and wanting for control became more noticeable and a key to her own survival. And this environment didn’t get any better in spite the fallout of Reunion.

Now take this angry and repressed teenager, who has no clue how to execute her actions in a genuine and authentic manner, and place her into Wartwood.

This is where Ivy Sundew comes in.

Ivy Sundew is not Sprig Plantar by any means; she is a fierce, no-can-do girl who loves adventure, fighting, ambushes, and won’t back down when it comes to being pushed around. Sprig is very emphatic but this makes him easy to push around if you look at him in Sasha’s eyes; we’ve seen him be desperate at times for the affection of people such as Sadie Croaker, and if Sasha ended up with him then the poor boy was gonna get chewed out eventually.

Sasha has the strength, she really has the capability to do amazing things, but the major factor that she needs right now is a careful guide in showing how she could improve as a person, and that means she needs someone who believes in her first and foremost while not taking her shit.

This is why Ivy Sundew could be absolutely crucial to Sasha’s development.

Sasha right now has learned some tips from people such as Toadie when it comes to listening to others, but she needs more than just one person to make lessons about empathy and collaboration stick.

Ivy is not going to take Sasha when she’s pushy, rude, or plain manipulative. She’ll call her out, she’ll mark the boundaries, she won’t let Sasha just foot around her just because she can — and if you think about it, the Sundews have the same attitude too, they’re all fighters who won’t allow themselves to be pushed around by some external force.

And we wouldn’t have known these specific details at all if Ivy on the Run didn’t air.

[maipreciation]

a bit ago I had an anon ask me about my ‘Mako-as-an-accountant’ hcs and I said I didn’t have anything specific... well turns out I very much do.  shoutout to @hollypunkers for inadvertently getting me hooked on this concept with that post about Mako being good at math and @trans-meelo for being the owner of the only relevant post that came up when I searched “accountant Mako” (and of course @little-league-coach-mako I hope you enjoy!!) 

to preface: I refuse to entertain this concept as anything but a modern AU because I just can’t put Mako into a numbers related career in a world without excel or some other equivalent- it’s too cruel.  (this decision also comes with the realization that canon Mako was likely doing his work for the triads by hand at a young age, which really makes the whole thing even more impressive).  geographically speaking this either takes place in the US with Mako and Bolin as second gen immigrants or in an asian business hub city like Singapore, Hong Kong, or KL.  personally I’m partial towards the former because it adds another dimension to Mako navigating school/ the workplace/ life in general that I find super interesting (to be explored in more depth in another post probably) but I also love the idea of setting something in a fast-paced asian metropolis so...idk

alright first things first- there’s a huge difference between Mako being a bookkeeper (like what he did for the triads, basically keeping track of income, expenses, etc. for an individual or business) vs him being a certified public accountant, probably working for an actual accounting firm in a job that’s not really focused on doing the day-to-day journal entries.  I like to think of him as the latter, because between the two it’s generally the higher paying option and the one you can make more of a lasting career out of w/ the chance for growth within a company.  Mako understands money, and more specifically he understands what it’s like to struggle for money, so if he’s gonna invest the time and funds to get a degree and an accounting license he’ll be pragmatic and pick the higher paying job after he graduates.

speaking of graduation, the road there is by no means easy.  Mako has to hustle to get his credits done, sandwiching online lectures and night classes at a community college between shifts at the multiple part-time jobs he’s juggling to keep himself and Bolin afloat.  in his spare moments (of which there are not many) he indulges his brother and hangs out at the local rec center- and while there are days Mako would much rather be catching up on sleep or studying or just sitting on the couch for an hour of free time, he also wouldn’t miss the chance to see the competitive glint in his brother’s eye or the delighted grin that stretches across his face as they beat Tahno and his buddies at pickup basketball for the third saturday in a row.  (entirely unrelated, but in this universe I cannot help but picture Tahno as an investment banker.  just as Mako gives off long-suffering accountant vibes, Tahno very much seems like somebody who majored in finance) 

at some point in his studies Mako has to decide which of the public accounting paths he wants to follow: audit or tax.  I personally I love the idea of Mako being an auditor because it loosely lines up with his canon skill at investigative work.  a lot of auditing is gathering evidence from your client and other outside sources to verify the financial statements you’re being presented, as well as thinking critically and asking questions about the information in front of you- not just accepting things at face value.  (a lot of auditing is also quite mundane, but the Mako in my head is good with details and likes routine, so all in all this fits him well.  it’s a steady job, if a bit dull, and for someone who’s already dealt with his share of troubles and uncertainty while growing up I think a safe career would be a welcome change.)  

Mako leaves for his first day of work looking slightly uncomfortable in a button down shirt and pressed slacks; he’s nervous at the prospect of starting a new job but will never ever let Bolin see.  in the end his efforts to hide it are honestly kinda useless, Bolin can tell his brother is freaking out in that way siblings always just know, though he’s too nice to say anything about it just then.  instead Bolin just wraps Mako in a huge bear hug and ignores his protests about how he’s wrinkling his shirt before sending his older brother out the door with a slap on the back and a heartfelt declaration that everything will be fine.  (everything is fine; Mako comes home that evening tired but happy and Bolin breathes a sigh of relief.)  

the first week passes without issue and the brothers unwind on friday night with takeout noodles from narook’s.  Mako entertains Bolin with little stories about his new coworkers, speaking almost reverently about the scarily impressive woman heading up his first ever client engagement, a no-nonsense senior manager named Lin.  (Bolin knows he’ll be hearing a lot about her in the future, she seems like the exact kind of person whose respect Mako would crave and strive to earn.)  Mako excitedly describes the fancy coffee machines and cushy swivel chairs and the break room with a foosball table and the kinds of jobs he’ll likely be staffed on in the future; Bolin absorbs it all with a smile and a laugh and asks when his brother got so boring and painfully adult.  his teasing is all out of love of course- Bolin knows just how hard Mako has worked to get to this point and is immensely proud of everything that he’s achieved thus far.  (he finds his dedication incredibly inspiring, and while Bolin himself has no idea what he wants to do with his life yet he is a firm believer that anything is possible if you have enough drive because that’s exactly how Mako raised him)

[uwua3]

Hello! Sunflowers hold a really special meaning for me so when i read the "sunflower dreams" My heart was so happy!! I havent felt this happy in a long time since quarantine started so thank you for taking the time to write it! It really made my day. If i could request a kazunari x reader where they're both artists that would be amazing. Maybe the reader can be a famous anonymous art influencer? Its up to you! Again thank you so much for writing "sunflower dreams" 💜

i’m so happy i could make you smile ‧⁺◟( ᵒ̴̶̷̥́ ·̫ ᵒ̴̶̷̣̥̀ ) it’s messages like these that absolutely make my day! thank you so much for taking your time to even read it, i’m glad to know it touched your heart ♡ i hope you have a good rest of your day—please know all of a3! love you vvv much!!! ｀･ω･)9 i hope this makes your heart happy just like before! thank you, anon, for everything

summary: every time you fell in love, you made a new art piece

author’s note: please smile from this absolutely soft and endearing kazunari fluff! in times like these where negativity is all around us, it’s good to take a break and purposely give yourself happiness. i hope this is a light in your day and makes you experience all the goodness of love! ♡ — concept based on “to all the boys i’ve loved before”

word count: 3,389

music: i like me better – lauv

to everyone i’ve loved before.

🌻🎨 miyoshi kazunari

you created art every time you had a crush so intense, you didn’t know what else to do

no matter how big or small it was, or how long or short it lasted, love is love. even if it was a random stranger you’d never see again or someone you knew for a lifetime, love is love

therefore, there was no exact total. because even if you didn’t remember every single person you’ve made art for, you clearly remembered what it was like experiencing the euphoria of love. the phenomenon of your heart selflessly beating for someone else. the attack of getting hit by cupid’s arrow out of no where. the rush of emotions unlike any other

love was everywhere and you made sure to create something that was a memory of it. that was when you decided to practice art after being unable to recall a person’s face a moment too long

it was your form of a love letter. a picture spoke a thousand words you couldn’t write, and art was the perfect way to convey that. online for everyone to see were your love letters in art form: portraits of everyone you’ve loved

you fell in love again and again, a new art piece posted soon over the years of your life. under the username, to-everyone-ive-loved, a lifelong project was in the works for all of social media to see

unknown to the rest of the world, you were the artist behind the blog “to-everyone-ive-loved” who created portraits from memory

but, you didn’t mean to fall in love with another artist as well

all it took was one comment and you were theirs

it was one of your most recent posts, a finished piece on a stranger you saw. you found yourself in veludo way, the ideal street to find people you’d never forget. after witnessing a sudden street act, only one actor caught your eye that day

you didn’t know his name, but you didn’t need to. you were in love

you immediately rushed home without a second thought, the inspiration and creativity infectious after watching him perform. something about his energy was wildly entertaining and bizarre, like a modern pop song as a person. he was effortlessly trendy, popular, and charismatic just from the few minutes you saw him

the moment he stood up on that street corner like it was a stage, all eyes were on him and he knew it. as you sketched into the day, you remembered the small details clearly. dirty blonde hair with no dark roots in sight, glittering green eyes, wide welcoming smile. he had the face of an actor, that’s for sure

when you posted it right after finishing, you didn’t expect any major attention. on average, your posts got 100 likes or so. while it was an impressive feat, nothing could’ve prepared you for that one comment

kaz-PIKO: i’m in love with your art ♡

as your popularity and fame grew before your very eyes, you clicked on his profile and realized it was him. the actor you had seen earlier at veludo way

you didn’t know what happened, but all you knew was you couldn’t forget this one person, miyoshi kazunari, no matter how hard you tried

no matter where you went, you couldn’t draw anyone else except that boy named kazunari. after scrolling through his entire instablam account, you found out he was an actor for mankai company’s summer troupe. he was a star in his own right, with a stage presence like the spotlight was constantly on him and a heart of gold

this was the first time you ever got so caught up on someone that they didn’t leave your mind. hours became days, and days began becoming a week before you let yourself follow him back

everyone you had ever drawn had never recognized themselves before. it was all because a follower connected the visual similarities between your art and kazunari’s unique traits that kazunari knew you had seen him before

if only he wasn’t a social media influencer with followers reaching the hundreds of thousands. at least, his popularity attracted attention to your profile...

this was a problem, however. because if you couldn’t draw anyone else, what could you do? once again, you stalked kazunari’s blog once again like it was a habit

it was never really a rule to make one love letter per person, but you never had wanted to make another for the same person. until, now

video after video. picture after picture. story after story. you could see kazunari’s face even when you closed your eyes. what about him made you daydream about him constantly? was it his charming voice that could make anyone stop and stare? his intricate piercings that were different every day? his ability to make you feel at home? whatever it was (or maybe it was an accumulation of everything and more), you had to draw kazunari again

when you posted it, you typically didn’t add more to the caption than the date and time. except this time, you felt like all your rules were being broken over someone who had no idea who you were

to-everyone-ive-loved-before: XX/XX/20 (3:33 A.M.) — social butterfly

you watched it upload. it was a piece you had never done before. glowing butterflies of all colors surrounded the center of the masterpiece, a smiling kazunari

hopefully, this would solve whatever feelings you were having and the world would go back to normal. you’d move on, fall in love with someone else, and repeat

it didn’t work, because some time later, you woke up to a comment that made you feel the butterflies in your stomach

kaz-PIKO: like a butterfly, i’ll fly to you, wherever you are~ ☆

and for some reason, you wanted kazunari to find you

you had never felt so motivated to draw before. however, your muse was the same. a beautiful boy named miyoshi kazunari who was slowly capturing your heart without even knowing it. you watched the pages in your sketchbook lessen and lessen. the corners of assignments and napkins and anything in between was covered in doodles. if there was a writing instrument in your hand, something related to kazunari would come out of it

it was a fascination. a fixiation, even. you had only seen one performance before falling in love. was it because kazunari responded that it made you feel like you had a chance?

you wouldn’t admit it, but it was becoming embarrassing with how much you were staring at the few unread messages from kazunari in your dm box. they came in right after you had followed him back, and more arrived when you posted the “social butterfly” piece

what was stopping you from talking to your muse? you knew the answer without thinking: what if these feelings were real?

obsessions and crushes come and go, but... love, love stayed. there wasn’t any possibility you could love someone from afar without knowing anything about them, right?

but, then again... you did know some things about kazunari. you knew kazunari was the best actor of all time, with expressions and gestures the equivalent of art. kazunari was art—in every single way possible. everything about him made you want to draw and draw and draw

you only drew kazunari for a certain time, no matter which stranger crossed your path. people you knew you would’ve sketched simply became passer-bys, and it was all because of kazunari’s sunny smile that you were in love. or, what you thought was love

the more you thought about kazunari’s unread dms, the more you wondered what this was. why did kazunari make you so happy? was this truly the first time you were experiencing... a crush?!

for the first time since that street act, you found yourself in veludo way. while half of you was hoping you’d randomly bump into summer troupe’s moodmaker, the other half was petrified about how kazunari was a real person. a very much popular, recognizable person

it was the weekend, and the burden of university projects was telling you to go back and focus. yet, with a sketchbook in one hand and a pencil tucked behind your ear, you were very much prepared to draw to your heart’s content

as you tried to flip to a clean page, you heard something that made your heart flutter. despite the noise and busy atmosphere of veludo, a distinct laugh was audible above the crowd. when you looked up, your eyes barely registered a deep blue jacket before walking straight into the person

you nearly tumbled to the ground before two hands steadied you, a surprised “whoa!” leaving their mouth before being followed by a gentle laugh. the usual embarrassment didn’t set in until you went to go thank the person, only to stop

oh my god. you had just bumped into miyoshi kazunari, your muse for the past month or so

kazunari grinned, even though it faltered slightly at your wide-eyed expression and awkward silence. he didn’t seem to mind as he adjusted his black top hat, pocketing his phone and confidently meeting your gaze

“i’m so sorry~! i hope you’re okay, i’m kazunari!” kazunari introduced and you realized he didn’t know you were behind to-everyone-ive-loved-before. you quickly adjusted yourself, pretending as if this wasn’t the highlight of your entire week

when you introduced yourself, kazunari’s eyes sparkled with interest as he easily led you into conversation. despite being a bit of a socially awkward artist who preferred being alone over anything else, kazunari was... comfortable. you didn’t feel self-conscious of how you acted, because he readily accepted how you were with a smile

was he like this was everyone or... did he find you to be a work of art, too?

standing off to the side, you finally noticed several members of mankai were advertising their latest play. bright, aesthetically pleasing flyers were being handed out to everyone walking by, and you seemed to look a moment too long before kazunari followed your gaze and suddenly snapped his fingers

“oh! are you interested in theatre?” you really weren’t, but you nodded anyways just to see kazunari’s excitement. he pardoned himself for a moment just to snatch a flyer, returning to show it off with a proud smile

“please come to mankai company’s summer performance!” kazunari’s smile sparkled and before he looked around to see if anyone was watching, he winked. kazunari covered the side of his face that was facing his troupe members, pretending as if you two were sharing some big secret

“plus, i’ll be there. if you come, i’ll make sure to do my very best~” kazunari bargained, even though you already knew he was already planning on wowing the audience with his charisma. you took in his genuine want to impress you and the butterflies came back

“i’ll come.” you agreed without even checking the date or reading anything. now all of you just wanted more & more opportunities as the person kazunari was surprisingly interested in, not as the artist who was basically in love with him

agreeing right away was worth it when kazunari shot you a grateful, blinding smile in return. you stumbled over your words with how taken back you were, but asked anyways, “do you like flowers?”

kazunari’s eyes softened for a moment, his usual energy suddenly gone before returning. he seemed genuinely moved by your question, and you wondered how many flowers it’d take to see him smile again like that

“i do, especially if they’re from you.”

“what kind?”

someone called kazunari’s name, insisting they were going to be late for practice. kazunari shouted back an agreement by telling them to go ahead first, before putting all his attention on you once again

“hibiscus.” meaning delicate beauty

before kazunari could ask for your socials, with his hand already reaching for his phone, you cut him off, hoping your voice wasn’t off

“next week. 7 P.M., mankai theatre. i’ll be there, front row.” you promised and took off, rushing off with a wave as kazunari stared after you for a second before waving back enthusiastically

as you left, kazunari was about to leave before he noticed something on the ground. it was a plain sketchbook, unassuming at first but it was nearly bursting at the binding with how many pages there were

when kazunari picked it up, he was about to flip to the first page before mankai called his name again, impatient this time. kazunari held onto the book and sent one last glance towards your direction before disappearing, hurrying to make sure the director wouldn’t penalize him for being the reason everyone was late

when you arrived home, you instinctually reached for the pencil behind your ear. at the same time, you put your hand in your bag, attempting to feel the familiar edges of your sketchbook

then, after turning your bag inside out and finding nothing, you collapsed onto your desk chair with shock and disbelief

you lost your sketchbook in veludo way the moment you met kazunari. what if he had it?

you drew another piece and stared at your screen, wondering if you should post it. it was kazunari once again with a yellow hibiscus flower behind his ear, the same gentle smile you couldn’t perfectly capture gracing his lips

you typed the caption and backspaced before settling on something that only you and him would know

to-everyone-ive-loved-before: XX/XX/20 (8:01 P.M.) — delicate beauty

you hesitated before deleting the post a second after. maybe, you’d keep some artwork to yourself

kazunari had the sketchbook open next to his bedside, his phone in his hands and your profile open. he could recognize your art style a mile away, and the moment he saw the first sketch after practice, he couldn’t believe it

did this explain why he felt such a natural attraction to you? when you bumped into him, kazunari swore he could see the sparks flying. you made him feel like he was falling in love and you only proved him right when you two talked earlier. he wanted to know everything about you, he wanted to see you again

was this what love at first sight felt like? kazunari giddily typed a message over and over again, the unread messages of his filling his screen

kaz-PIKO: heya!! ★>d(,,･ε´-,,)⌒☆ just wanted to say i LOVE your art fr!!! we should totes collab, you know???

kaz-PIKO: thanks for drawing me btw :0 does this mean you live near veludo? let’s meet up!!!

kaz-PIKO: ,,, i don’t usually say this but, that social butterfly piece was breathtaking. you must really like me, huh? (･ω<)☆ jk haha

kaz-PIKO: no but really, it’s beautiful. thank you, honestly. it made my day, you make me happy ♡

kaz-PIKO: you must be really beautiful, too. i would want to draw you as well. lmk if ur up for that haha

kazunari read back his previous messages, all of them delivered but unopened. he realized how... how open he already was with the anonymous faceless artist, despite never interacting with them

now that he knew what you looked like, it only reassured his intuition that he was rightfully head over heels for you

kazunari typed something before deleting it, closing out of instablam and throwing his phone somewhere on his bed

kaz-PIKO: i was right, you are beautiful. i may have fallen in love, too

some things were better left unsaid. after all, you two had until next week to figure everything out

for the rest of the week, all you and kazunari did were think about the other person. a small part of you was afraid kazunari wasn’t the dream boy you imagined, but he was much more. you noticed he started posting more often and turned his notifications, wanting to be one of the first to see his practice videos and university selfies

you didn’t post any of the art you made of kazunari, making it the longest you hadn’t posted ever. kazunari couldn’t help but refresh your account every now and then, hoping he’d see his face again, as selfish as it was. kazunari wouldn’t know how’d he feel if he saw someone else had your heart

the longer time went on, the more you were certain. every fascination you had with someone was temporary, and you remembered the feeling rather than the person. but, with kazunari, you liked him for who he was. everything kazunari made you feel was new and exciting, but even when that went away, you still liked him

kazunari was your first crush, for real

kazunari liked making people like him. so, your online confession through art wasn’t exactly a surprise. but, yours was different. it was earnest, honest, and everything he didn’t know he was needing

kazunari looked through your sketchbook again and again, tracing over the notes you wrote in the margins and admiring your skill

kazunari liked you, and he was certain he would’ve still liked you even if you weren’t to-everyone-ive-loved-before

when showtime arrived, kazunari was oddly nervous. peeking from behind the red curtain, kazunari could already see you were one of the first sitting front row, just like you said. he had practiced his lines a thousand times and summer was fully prepared, why was he nervous?

before he went on, kazunari ignored the urgency of the mankai staff and quickly texted a message to your profile, hoping you’d at least see the notification this time

kaz-PIKO: i like you, too

(when you felt your phone buzz, you quickly silenced it)

the show moved you to a standing ovation, just like everyone else in the audience. as summer walked out to bow and express their gratitude, you watched kazunari’s eyes search for yours as he tilted his head towards backstage. you nodded, knowing you’d do anything to see this kazunari. actor kazunari, who was on cloud 9 with his performance and glowing from praise

you wanted to see, to experience, to draw, all versions of kazunari

after the applause, you looked around backstage before feeling a hand on your arm, the feeling reminiscent of the first time you bumped into kazunari

“you came.” kazunari breathlessly stated, as if he was surprised. before he could say anything else, you presented him with a bouquet of hibiscus flowers. the same shade of yellow you drew him with

“of course, i wanted to see you again.” you honestly admitted, knowing it made you flustered. kazunari carefully took the flowers before grinning, gently placing then beneath his chin. he looked like a vision, you wish you could’ve asked him to stand still so you could capture this moment forever

“i wanted to see you, too.” kazunari softly said, all the energy of being on stage gone. it was tranquil and peaceful, like you two were the only people in the entire theatre

kazunari took a moment to admire you before realizing something, taking something from behind him and presenting it to you. it was your sketchbook on the bottom, but a smaller version was on top of it, signed in silver sharpie. kazunari’s signature was glittering like his eyes as you took it

“next time, let’s draw together.”

kazunari’s sketchbook was filled with you. anything from small doodles to encouraging messages was found inside, with tens of post-it notes of just thoughts about you. kazunari’s art was colorful and extremely out of the box compared to his usual traditional style. it made you smile

kazunari watched you flip through it, already knowing this was the greatest act of love he could’ve declared this early on. he anticipated for you to reach the end

when you landed on the last page, you saw a note

do you want go on a date with me?

“next time, respond to my dms! that way i don’t have to write everything~!” kazunari teased and you two shared a laugh, knowing everything was going to be okay

“yes.”

“yes...?”

“yes, i’ll respond to your dms. and yes, i’ll go on a date with you.”

eventually, you ended up closing your blog for good. your last post was a picture of you and kazunari, with one caption

to-everyone-ive-loved-before: XX/XX/20 (3:33 P.M.) — to the one boy i love now, i love you

kaz-PIKO: i love you, too ♡

[dimensionwriter]

Stick to Me

Part 2

Male! Merman/ Octoperson x GN! Reader

Warning: Talk of ocean, jumping into the ocean

Word Count: 2081

Part 1

🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙

❤LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG, PLEASE💙

🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙

Vibrant reds, soft pinks, and alluring yellows wrapped around your neck in an alluring manner. The flower’s fragrance drifted from the plant and clung onto your clothes. Even on this foreign land, the flowers made you feel so safe.

The natives of this land were so kind to you. When you explain how you were simply there to talk about the beauty of their land, they were so excited to welcome you. It’s important for the approvals of the natives to enter their land. If they seem hesitant, you don’t push it. Every place that you go is being led by them and you respect their wishes if they say that a certain area is sacred and don’t bother it. They seem to like you a lot more when they saw how respectful you were to their land.

Pulling out the camera one last time, you pointed it to the group of people standing around the docking station. It was kind of a bittersweet moment having to leave them. You grew to love this land and its people, but you had your own life to go back to. There was someone that was waiting on you.

The floor on your boat was surprisingly warm from the rising sun. Puddles sprinkled around the deck with some things moved around.The chair sitting near the railing, overlooking the ocean, was pushed back towards the corner. You had a feeling what it was.

“Loire,” you called out. The sound of something splashing far away caught your ear. You moved downstairs towards your bathroom, which is the only place you know could make that sound. The door was already open allowing you to see in.

Your circular tub was filled to the brim with blue water. Orange tentacles squirmed around in the water and were spilling out of the sides. The torso of the creature was submerged in the water with the head barely above the water. The baby tentacles on his head were pulled up by your black scrunchie.

“Well, I see someone got comfortable,” you teased walking in. Loire’s arms emerged out of water and grabbed the edge of the tub to pull himself up a little. His black eyes glanced over you and a small smile came onto his face.

“You return wearing land plants. Looks beautiful around you,” he whispered. You walked over and sat on the edge of the tub. Your sandals were quick to be kicked off in order to sink your toes into the cool water. “So warm.”

A tentacle wrapped around your right ankle and stuck on. “Can I ask why you decided to take a bath on my boat instead of staying in the ocean?” Loire had stayed by your side for the last couple of months, but he never went onto your boat without you on it.

“I was watching over your pod when a… the creature you identified as dog, I believed, began to make battle cries at your pod,” his shoulder puffed out and his head rose up, “I need to protect your pod, so I swam on and scared it away.”

By the way he’s presenting himself, he obviously thought he did a heroic act by protecting your boat from a dog. He’s so adorable and doesn’t even realize it.

“Thank you, my hero.” You gave his tentacles closest to you a small little pat. The flesh felt so cold and slightly slimy, but you were used to it. The small blue freckles shined brightly as the limb moved to wrap around your hand.

His limbs tugged you forward causing you to almost fall in the tub. You opened your mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a harder pull. Your body lurched forward and you landed in the cold water.

Slender arms wrapped around your waist in order to snuggle up into you. It was so cold but so comforting at the same time. Your body was confused on how to feel.

“Loire?” You lifted your head up to see his face was majority blue. His midnight eyes glances down at you before looking up again. “You good there, buddy? You’re getting a little affectionate.”

He tightened his grip on you and placed his head on top of your head. Multiple limbs wrapped around your legs. “Affection is a part of our situation. Is it not?”

‘Our situation’? He has stated that in his shoal, it’s customary to make sure your actions are equal to others. Since he believes that you saved his life, he wants to make his actions equal. However, you don’t see how that would require affection.

You couldn’t complain though. It’s been a while since you’ve been in the embrace of another. He’s so soft and seems to mold to fit you.

The coolness of the water and the soft flesh of his tentacles slowly massaging your legs made you drift towards sleep. Maybe it was from being the sun for so many days or how… safe you felt in his arms, who knows?

“Hmm, I guess so.”

You awoke to feel a slight dampness surrounding you. You rolled over and pulled the comforter more around you, but you still felt wet. Why was your bed so wet?

Opening your eyes, the light inside of your bedroom was on. You pulled the comforter off of yourself to see that it was wet. Even your clothes were wet. How did you end up in your bed wet?

You remember dozing off on Lorei’s cool chest, but you don’t remember walking to your bed. Did he slither all the way from the bathroom to your bedroom while carrying you? Wow, he’s a lot stronger than you thought.

The cool air nipped at your skin as you hopped out of the bed. There were small little droplets of water all over the floor. However, there was something else that caught your eye. Blue petals littered lowly around your floor and led out to maybe around the main deck.

You followed the path of the flowers and came to the railing of the deck. The moonlight lit the deck in a soft blue light and reflected beautifully over the water. Calm waves pushed against the boat, but it elicited a happy feeling from you.

Grabbing the cold railing, you peaked over the edge of the boat. In the water were full bioluminescent flowers that were a light purple near the center and slowly turned to a dark blue near the edge. All the glowing flowers stayed in a giant circle, were in the middle floated Loire.

His orange skin was tinged with a blue hue from the moonlight and water making him seeing otherworldly. The tiny tentacles on his head were pushed back and seemed to stay there. On some of the tentacles were tiny golden bands. Gold paint was smeared onto his face in a similar manner to tribal marking. A thick line went from behind his pointed ears to the sides of his neck before swirling along his muscular chest.

“Loire, what’s this?” You asked while keeping your grip on the railing. His black eyes stared at you with a sort of hope in them.

“Do you trust me with your life?” His tone was strong and unwavering. The water rolled down his sculpted arms as he raised them up towards you. “Do you… trust me?”

The way he was stating it was like he was expecting you to… jump. But he can’t be serious right. Maybe this was some sort of East Ocean Kingdom joke. He wasn’t expecting you to drop 8 feet into freezing cold water.

His arms dropped a little and you could see the corners of his lips forming a frown. Oh to hell with it.

“You better not let anything happen,” you playfully grumbled. You kicked your left leg over the railing before throwing over the right one. Sitting on the railing with a tight grip on it, you realized that 8 feet seem a lot longer in the dark.

You tore your eyes from the dark murky water to Loire. His eyes were big and wide with happiness as his arms went back to being outreached for you.The tiny tentacles on his hair started to curl around themselves and twitching slightly.

You took a slow breath in before slowly exhaling. Your grip on the railing loosen and body fell forward. Your heart was beating at a hundred miles per hour while your stomach lurched up into your throat. You couldn’t stop your eyes from squeezing shut in fear.

When you were supposed to hit the water, a pair of strong arms cradled under you. An arm wrapped around your upper body while the second one went under your legs. Your body didn’t even touch the water.

Opening your eyes, a pair of black ones stared deeply into yours. A giant smile broke out onto his face as tiny giggles slipped out of him. He dropped his face into your neck and started snuggling into your neck.

“Loire,” you whispered into his ear. He lifted his head away from you and his entire face was dark blue. “Can I get a reason for why you made me jump off of my ship?”

“It’s a custom of my shoal. We must ensure there exists a bond of trust between two creatures before going through with… with the… with the mating ritual. In order for me to ask for you to consider me to be your mate, under the approving gaze of the moon goddess’ eyes, I need to see if I had your trust. And it seems I do.”

The blush had settled down on his face, only allowing you to see his beautiful orange skin. Tiny blue freckles splatted around his cheeks and down his chest. A few of them were hidden under the golden paint.

“Consider you my mate?” You lifted a hand and ran it along his chest. He was cold to the touch, but so firm. You drifted over and touched the paint. It didn’t feel like any paint from the surface.

“Y-yeah. I am bound to you until our actions are equal, but I want to be closer. I want to be yours… and I want you to be mine.” Your fingers were behind his ears now. You moved it until your fingers were at the base of his head.

Your heart was pounding in your chest. You weren’t oblivious. You knew what he meant when he said he wanted to be your mate; he would become the equivalent of your husband. And… you liked that idea. You could imagine spending the rest of this vacation with Loire by your side. And your job allows you to work from home, so you can stay out here with him. You could see your future with Loire by your side.

“I don’t think I could even imagine my life without you at this point,” you muttered hiding your face in his neck. How did you not even notice yourself falling for an octoman?

“Really!” Water splashed on around as Loire began to jump around in the water. You let out a squeal and some laughter at the cool droplets coming onto your skin. His arms around you pulled you closer to him as he spun you around. “I will treat you better than any queen or king you have seen on land or ocean.”

He stopped spinning and snuggled up against you. You leaned forward to press a kiss against the area above his lip. Blue spread against his cheeks as he looked down at you.

Leaning forward, he left barely an inch of space between your lips. Heat spread up your cheeks as you realized what he was planning to do. In his words, “Affection is a part of our situation. Is it not?”

“I’ve been waiting to do this for months,” he growled in your ear. A cold pair of lips were pressed against yours as he pulled you closer to him. The kiss was so soft, but you could feel his love through it.

If a year ago, someone would tell you that you would end up the mate of a half human half octopus, you would have thought they were crazy. But here, under the light of the moon, in the cold water, you couldn’t imagine it any other way.

“Now, let’s get back in your pod so I can warm you up,” he purred, pecking your cheek.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Here’s that second part I’ve promised. I apologized if it seems a little weird at the end, I’ve started dissociation a little while writing the end. I still push through because I wanted to get this done today, so I can write this new story I’m really looking forward to. 

Anyway, the question for this story is, ‘Would you have jump if Loire asked you to?’ To be honest, I definitely wouldn’t have.Even if I was a foot off the ground, I would have been too scared to. 

[ironwoodatl01]

RWBY: Start to Finish -

Introduction - What is RWBY without the blessings of the twin gods of fantastic animation, and Halo existentialism? It is a project that should have only survived until the next big thing to distract its creators. But RWBY has taken to life the way Frankenstein’s Monster took it. Not very well.

RWBY can never escape the drama of its famed creators, which in any case gives the show a twist of lemon that zests up the story. Depending, of course, on which side of the fandom one asks. But that begs the question; how does RWBY stack up for someone who is not invested in the legend of its creation?

RWBY -

In a world of Humans, Monsters, and Magic there are four girls. Four well-armed, deadly little girls training to slay monsters known as ‘Grimm,’ to protect a civilization that is a ‘Remnant’ of something greater that was destroyed long ago.

Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long. Together they form the titular team ‘RWBY,’ and these are their adventures.

A punchy premise. Simple, yet solid enough to build a story upon. Complexity should only be a product of the story, not its selling point, and for the worse RWBY gets complex as the story progresses.

But for now, let’s start with Chapter 1.

Chapter 1; Ruby Rose

While a mysterious couple debates the merits of a Simple Soul and its effect on a ‘victory’ of some sort, we are introduced to Remnant. More specifically, a city in the wider world of Remnant. A very modern city with modern criminals, wearing sharp suits and wielding guns.

A gang of these sharply dressed ne’er do wells attempt to rob a store for its ‘Dust,’ but their crime spree is halted by the show’s Protagonist. A little girl in a red riding hood named Ruby Rose.

Shenanigans ensue, a rooftop chase leads to a rooftop duel, followed by a rooftop magic duel between a ‘Huntress’ and a Mysterious Female in a red dress. The fight ends with the Mysterious Female winning since she manages to escape.

Ruby Rose is a Huntress fangirl though, so she chalks it up as a lucky escape on the Mysterious Woman’s part, and tries to get the Huntress’s autograph.

Ruby gets interrogated instead. With cookies, compliments on her skills, a career talk, and an enrollment form into Beacon Academy. Where Ruby Rose gets a chance to follow in the footsteps of the very people she idolizes.

In the end, we learn that the criminal Ruby fought was Roman Torchwick, the Huntress Ruby first met was named Glynda Goodwitch, there was a civil rights thing for Faunus, and that Ruby could see Signal Academy from the airship she was riding to Beacon Academy.

Thus, the adventure begins.

Problems -

There are several problems from the start of this episode which could all be summarized with a general umbrella under which the show tries to hide from any criticism about its story pacing, and world-building. This singular, lampshade issue could incidentally be resolved with three words.

Keep. It. Simple.

RWBY’s first episode suffers from complexity. The bad kind of Complexity. Now, while both good and bad Complexity makes people think, the good kind of Complexity makes you think about the facts of life.

Bad Complexity makes you rethink your life’s choices.

There are a few points in this episode that illustrate my point on complexity, and I will talk a little about each below:

The Opening Narration -

The opening narration was wordy. Pretentiously so. But more importantly, it sets up a world of fantasy. A world that is a ‘Remnant’ of something that came before, a world where its inhabitants grapple with infinite darkness composed of fangs and claws using primal magic. Magic manifested in Dust, a material dug up from the earth of Remnant. The very flesh of the world aiding its inhabitants in the war against the darkness.

The narration sets up an adventure in a world that is highly fantastical. But the first scene of the episode involves men in modern suits, wielding modern weaponry. Followed by the minimal display of this vital material called Dust, and no sign of the darkness called Grimm.

Okie Dokie.

Huntresses -

A tiny girl in a red cloak pulls out a giant scythe and beats up grown men.

Roman; I sleep.

Older woman with a tiny stick.

Roman: wE gOT a HUnTrESS!

Granted, Glynda does pull off some impressive magic. But what identifies a Huntress from any other fighter with a giant scythe? A Cop pulls out a badge, wears a uniform, and identities himself as a Cop in action. How does Glynda identify herself as a Huntress to criminals like Roman?

The Faunus Rally -

Toward the end of the episode, a few minutes is dedicated to talking about the Faunus and their rally.

This is all I could tell you about them since nothing in the opening narration or the fight with Roman alludes to either the presence of Faunus or their place in the world of Remnant.

Taking each problem together -

Is nearly impossible because each point raised above is individually so distinct, there is no clear way to connect them into a coherent whole.

The opening narration sets up a high fantasy story about people fighting for their survival against vicious monsters.

The fight between Ruby and Roman, where a lone girl with powers battles modern criminals and stops robberies like a superhero comic.

Then there are the Faunus.

There are thus three distinct stories instead of a singular narrative focused around the girl named Ruby Rose, neither of which are properly developed. This is not surprising since there are only 12 or so minutes for the episode.

As a result, instead of an episode and an introduction to the story. I get three separate scenes written by different people. Solely united by the character of Ruby Rose, who is wholly inadequate for the task.

Ruby Rose -

A rose by any other name would be just as dull.

A character’s complexity is something that should not be decided upon at the start of the story. Complexity, and a character in general, develops over the course of a narrative and is fully grown at the end. At this point in the show, all we really need to know about Ruby Rose is her goal as it would be the main reason the audience would follow Ruby’s story. However, Ruby’s goal is not to be a Huntress.

Sure, Ruby says she wants to be a Huntress to help people. But nothing we were shown through the episode indicates that she wants to be a Huntress. Ruby Rose doesn’t do anything to become a Huntress. She fights Roman because of coincidence, her training has nothing to do with being a Huntsman since Huntsmen use Glyphs to fight. If Glynda was any indication. Ruby Rose may idolize the Huntsmen, but that doesn’t show passion toward being a Huntsman in the first place.

A contrast to Ruby would be Izuku from My Hero Academia. Izuku wants to be a hero, so he studies up on the pro heroes in his area. His education is focused on becoming a professional hero once he graduates Middle School. More importantly, Izuku's values and his heart is set on walking the path of a hero, and when given the chance to save his bully’s life? Izuku takes that chance and proves himself to have the heart of a hero.

Altogether, Ruby only becomes a Huntress by chance. While Deku was waiting for a chance to become a Hero. The latter is what makes a Protagonist’s desire and goal interesting for the audience.

Conclusion -

Ruby Rose, both the episode and the character, are kinda dull.

The first episode has set up three distinct story set-ups without formatting them into a coherent narrative. The Protagonist also fails to bring the episode’s three major plot elements together into an interesting story. This is especially egregious since a reasonable audience doesn’t need a very big hook to get them interested in a story. The attention span of the audience of ANY show is equivalent to a shoal of Mackerel. We just need a picture of a hook that says ‘Hook’, and we’d be flapping on the end of a line.

In conclusion, Ruby Rose the episode is confusing, conflicting, and saddled with a very tepid Protagonist who is so bland Gordon Ramsay is waiting in the wings to tear your walk-in apart.

Better shows were canceled for less.

[iwillgetridofyourangerforyou]

limit, LIMITS and Limiter.

There has been a lot of controversy about whether or not Genos, or really any character other than Saitama, might be able to ‘break their limits’. I’ve thought a bit about this and I think I’m about ready to share some of my theories and observations.

So, I think there are at least three differentiated levels: small limits, Big Limits, and The Limiter. 

Small limits

Small ‘limits’ are our most basic pleasure seeking pain avoiding instincts. Everyone’s limits are completely different and personal but some examples could be that resistance you feel to waking up to your alarm, the resistance to might feel to making healthier food choices or going to the gym.

‘Resistance’ might be a good synonym for small limits but the resistance is comparatively easy to overcome. It’s easy enough to understand that the consequences of not eating right or not waking up in time to make it to work may result in a significantly less pleasurable outcome and it can be easy enough to rewire the pleasure seeking impulses for a greater good, allowing us to ride a wave over the small limits. Small limits can get bigger and bigger when life is hitting you particularly hard, and there is no real shame in being taken out by small limits every once in a while but if you’re getting taken out by them regularly you might need to ask for help or re-evaluate some things.  

As a side note, just because small limits are small doesn’t mean they’re insignificant. By one interpretation Saitama’s training routine involved overcoming a lot of Small limits regularly. EVERY. Single. Day. 

Big Limits 

Big limits are a lot like the thing an athlete describe as the ‘wall’ they’ve had to work past in order to attain a higher level of achievement. Big Limits can be tangible or intangible but they are the types of things that a person that people say has ‘succeeded against all odds’ have overcome. It seems that most people could go their entire lives without ever breaking through a Big Limit. I think it’s one of the things that give the audience a sense that the character’s they are watching are ‘truly exceptional’. One example is one of the recent world record weight lifters did not only train himself physically everyday but he trained himself to project himself into a scenario where his family was under a car and if he didn’t lift the car they would all die. He claims that this is how he was able to break the world record when he did by much more than a sliver, by a relatively large margin.

Big Limits are being pushed left and right in One-Punch Man. The way I see it, Garou broke a few major Big Limits during his arc. Almost every time he breaks a Big Limit is marked by a physical change in his character design. He broke a massive limit fighting through broken bones and bleeding. He broke limits when he fought Genos after being nearly taken out by a group of heroes. He broke limits to save Tareo. Almost every time Garou was on the edge of death and decided to keep going. Maybe Big Limits could be described as ‘little deaths’. 

The thing about Big Limits is that I think some people already have an intuitive understanding of Big Limits but what they assume is that if you break enough Big Limits consecutively you will break your ‘limiter’ and become as strong as Saitama. It’s not so different from the idea that if you work hard enough for long enough the universe somehow owes you what you seek. But the thing is, life isn’t fair, there isn’t really an equivalent exchange for life and life energy is what you’re paying in the expectation you’ll get something. So many people (myself at times included) believe that if you’re not where you think you should be it must be because you haven’t sacrificed enough of yourself for your dreams yet. If you keep cutting away at yourself maybe, one day, you’ll get there. Well I have some bad news, life isn’t fair, the Universe doesn’t owe you anything. 

I think breaking Big Limits is a really admirable thing. I think that fulfillment can often come from the willingness to experience little deaths for what we believe in. I think there is a really good set of reasons society tends to praise high achievers, like artists and athletes that have exceeded human expectation to do what they’ve done. But that’s not the end. It’s not the answer. It can’t be, because the Big Limits continue to generate in front of you indefinitely, forever. If you take no pleasure in the process or path which leads you to your Big Limits the Big Limits on that path may eventually break you. Maybe that’s part of what monsterfication means? 

The Limiter

So, the LIMITER is not any type of limit. The limiter is the source of all limits. One does not simply ‘break’ one’s limiter. At the end of the day, my prediction (take it or leave it I might be wrong. And honestly, I would be thrilled if I was wrong) is that no one has nor ever will break their limiter other than Saitama. I don’t think Genos will break his limiter, I don’t think Garou has broken his limiter. I do think Garou has broken enough of his Big Limits to sufficiently change who he is as a person and expand a whole new set of possibilities for him that would not have been accessible to him otherwise. 

If facing one’s small limits is like setting sail across the sea, even at times against the wind and waves, and if facing one’s Big Limits are like weathering storms or making it over major waves that push against you, facing one’s limiter is like diving head-first into the ocean itself and learning how to breath underwater. Facing one’s limiter may be akin to facing the source of all suffering in your life. Breaking one’s limiter is a truer kind of death.

I’m still not sure what breaking one’s limiter really takes or if it’s even worth it. It certainly doesn’t seem like the end of the story.

[sirpoley]

On the Four Table Legs of Traveller, Leg 3: Character Creation

In part 1 of this series, I described how Mongoose Traveller's spaceship mortgage rule becomes the drive for adventure and action in a spacefaring sandbox, and the 'autonomous' gameplay loop that follows.

In part 2, I talked about how Traveller's Patron system gives the DM a tool to pull the party out of the 'loop' and into more traditional adventures.

In this part, I'll talk about Traveller's unique character creation system, and how it supports the previous two systems.

Brief Overview of Character Creation

Traveller's character creation is weird, and it was the first thing house-ruled away by my old DM—and I can see why.

Traveller character creation is a minigame of sorts, in which you first generate ability scores (much like in D&D), then pick a career. You make a stat check to qualify for the career, one to 'survive' the career (more on this later), and one to advance. Every time you qualify for the career and/or advance, you get a random skill or stat boost from a table related to your training. In the Army and Marines, for example, you're very likely to get combat-related skills, while as a Merchant you're more likely to get something like Broker or Admin (which tend to be more useful, surprisingly).

You also roll once on a life event table, in which your character might fall in or out of love, make friends or enemies, study abroad, and so on.

You then advance four years in age and try again, and continue for as long as you want. If your character gets too old, they start suffering physical ability score consequences, though these can be bought off with semi-legal anti-aging meds, the consequence of which is starting with high amounts of medical debt.

Rolling to Survive

If you fail a survival roll, you're permanently expelled from your career (but can start another one), and often suffer major debilitating injuries in the form of sweeping permanent ability score damage, though this can be bought off by going deep into medical debt. It's technically possible to die in character creation if your physical ability scores are reduced to zero in this way, in which case you would start over. For that to happen, the player would have to decline treatment—basically, they're making a choice to give up and start over. This is a kind of extreme "safety net" against playing truly worthless characters, I suppose, though I haven't seen it happen yet.

Why is this Good Again?

This way of creating characters is shockingly different from any that I've seen before. The character that you end creation with might not have any resemblance at all to what you sat down and intended to create, which was a huge source of frustration, as a player, in my last two campaigns. It's more common than not to, for example, come up with a concept for a dashing space pilot and end up with a 98 year-old-that-looks-34 white-collar office worker who's got a laundry list of grievances against various corporations who have fired him over the years.

When I've seen this system work well, it's because players went into it with different expectations that they would in D&D. For a D&D campaign, you usually come to the table with a more-or-less fully-fledged character concept, then roll stats (or point-buy) and fill in the boxes. In Traveller, it's more like spinning a wheel and seeing what you'll get.

For the kind of campaign that Traveller assumes, however, this is perfect, and here's why.

First, it sets the tone of the campaign. Traveller is very different from most D&D-esque RPGs. It doesn't provide any guidance for or benefit from, for example, balanced encounters. By creating mechanically unbalanced, unpredictable characters, it is telling the players from the start that there are sharp edges to this game and they have to stay on their toes.

Second, it generates crucially important NPCs for the campaign. Those life events—and some fail-to-survive rolls—often create allies, enemies, rivals, and contacts: NPCs that are guaranteed to be met during the campaign. The book provides tips to the DM to ensure that these NPCs have access to spaceships, as they can be found on the random encounter tables. But here's the fun bit: the Player will be just as pissed at their rival, Captain Morgensen (or whatever) as their character is supposed to be, as he was (according to the events table) instrumental in getting them fired from their career as a space scout. By generating these characters during character creation's life-simulation, it gives them a real, emotional connection that leads to a lot of fun during play. These NPCs can easily function as Patrons (which, as explained in part 2, are the keys to adventure), or can provide paths to Patrons.

Third, it has the potential to start the characters massively in debt. The clear optimal path in character creation is to pay off any injuries by going into medical debt, and chug analgesic anti-aging pills like they're Skittles in order to keep advancing down your career paths, or start new ones. As explained in part 1, Traveller's 'loop' functions best when the PCs are swimming in as much debt as possible. The more debt, the more motivation to travel, and thus the more space pirates and space dragons and space princesses and whatever that they'll meet.

Fourth, it familiarizes them with the setting. The book provides quite a few career path options to the Players, and uses the same to generate its NPCs. Thus, just by reading through the career path options available to them, Players learn a lot about the world of Traveller and the kinds of people they might meet, without having to read lengthy setting handouts or pages and pages of lore or anything like that.

Fifth, it creates gaps in the party's expertise, which encourages hiring NPCs. It's virtually impossible to end up with an adventuring party that can cover every skill required to operate a spaceship, for example. This encourages hiring NPC crewmembers to fill in those gaps, which really helps make Traveller 'work'. A lot of the party's time is going to be spent on their spaceship, so the more people who are on there, the better from a roleplaying standpoint. Also,  

That said, it's not perfect, as…

There Are Some Real Limitations

Mechanically, the main issue that's come up with Traveller's character creation is that it's entirely possible for the party to be missing one or more vital skills, or for a character to be lacking something that would be key to making them 'work'. Traveller's basic dice mechanics harshly penalize untrained skill checks compared to attempting even slightly-trained ones, and some roles can't be easily filled in by NPC crewmembers. If your character never rolls to learn the Gun Combat skill, for example, they'll more likely than not miss every attack they make in the whole campaign. The party can overcome this by hiring marines, for example, but the player might still be bored every time a gunfight starts.

This can be mitigated by, say, letting that player control their hired NPCs in combat directly, but as the game doesn't really provide a lot of guidance for who plays hired NPCs (the DM? the player that hired them? The party as a whole, by vote?), the DM and player will have to come up with their own solution. Since they might not even realize that there is a problem that needs to be solved, this can easily lead to traps (for example, if the DM assumes full control over hired NPCs, many battles will lead to the DM just rolling checks against himself/herself over and over in front of an audience) that generate frustration.

Mechanics aside, there are some narrative implications for character creation that might strike many Players as quite weird. Most D&D Players default to making their adventurers whatever their races' equivalent of early-20s is. Sometimes there's an old wizard thrown in to spice things up, but I'd say 9-in-10 characters I've seen are 'college-aged.'  

Traveller strongly rewards old characters. Sometimes very old. Don't be surprised if the average age of the Traveller characters is the same as the summed age of all of your Players. This isn't necessarily bad—immortal, eternally-young sci-fi characters are kinda neat—but it's also pretty limiting, and may not be within the Players' expectations. If a Player wants to make a character who's a young hotshot just starting out, the rules will punish them severely. They'll have virtually no skills, no money (or debt!), no ship shares (units that track ownership of the spaceship), and no NPC connections.

Making it Work

I'm not going to change these rules until I'm more familiar with the system, but my gut says that many of the game's skills (such as Computers, Comms, and Sensors, or the two skills that govern two different, but similar, kinds of environmentally-sealed armour) could be consolidated to reduce the odds of a missing skill torpedoing a character. I also think flexibly passing back and forth control of hired NPCs between the DM and Players will solve a lot of problems, but deciding on the fly who is in control in a given scenario will probably take some experience as a DM. I’m vaguely aware that there’s a second edition of Mongoose Traveller, which may have done some of these things, but I haven’t played it and as such can’t comment on it.

I think for a satisfying experience, you have to make it clear to your Players not to try to build their characters to a pre-imagined concept, but rather come up with a concept as they play through their character's life. Also, tell them upfront that, in this particular sci-fi universe, anti-aging technology has allowed for the rich and powerful to stay eternally young, and that they can expect to have already retired from one or more full careers before the campaign even begins.

Next up, how this all ties in with random encounters.

[theholycovenantrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, MIMZ! YOU’VE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF RAPHAEL.

Admin Rosey: I never really thought that Raphael’s application would be so f u n to read. Macabre? Absolutely. Impassioned? Of course. But hilarious to the point where I was giggling? Definitely unexpected but that is what made this so enjoyable and it is ultimately why this application received a r e s o u n d i n g yes from each of us. There was a perspective that I always envisioned for Raphael but was never able to articulate it myself until you laid it out, word by word, with this application, Mimz. Raphael is such a multi-faceted and character that holds so much potential, and the way that you wove it into every aspect of the application made this so fun to read. Thank you so much for taking the time to produce such a wonderful application! Your faceclaim change to Kendrick Sampson has been approved. Please create and send in your account, review the information on our CHECKLIST, and follow everyone on the FOLLOW LIST. Welcome to the Holy Land!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias 

mimz

Age

21

Personal Pronouns

she/her

Activity Level

i’ll typically check the dash every day, and i try not to keep replies stewing for longer than a couple of days! that said i can be a little slow, especially around exam seasons.

Timezone

pst

Triggers

REMOVED

How did you find the group?

miss minnie bleubeard’s blog

IN CHARACTER

Character

raphael, with a fc change to kendrick sampson

What drew you to this character? 

short answer: divine amorality sexy HAHAHAHA

long answer: there was something i read a little while ago about some of the best surgeons being able to dehumanize their patients to a rather frightening degree. there’s a level of abstraction that you need in order to not let your empathy get in the way of the practice of medicine; ultimately, a body is a body is a body, right? and then there’s the moral quandary of healing - it is a doctor’s duty to heal, but what does that actually mean? to what extent is a doctor’s duty to relieve suffering? to obstinately prolong life? if the body heals but the mind still ails, is a person healed? what i’m getting at, here, is that in some ways the healer is the most dangerous character of all. 

when i read raphael’s bio, there was a quote in that article from a surgeon named david cheever that came to mind: “as a result of anaesthetics, the surgeon ‘need not hurry; he need not sympathise; he need not worry; he can calmly dissect, as on a dead body.’” to me, raphael is an explosion and expansion of this concept. raphael is, quite literally, a medical ethicist’s worst nightmare, and to me, that’s absolutely fascinating. without sympathy, what separates a healer from an educated control freak with a god complex? with raphael, we can extend this concept to its furthest extreme. raphael isn’t even human - how could he even begin to sympathize with an experience so foreign to him? why would he worry about something trivial as human suffering when it essentially exists as a theoretical concept to him? divine beings have no reason to play by human rules, and as a creature raised by god’s side raphael was so far removed from the concept of human suffering that it’s sort of a no-brainer that he developed a sick fascination with it, like a child who managed to con their parent into buying a grand theft auto game and is obsessed with running over pedestrians because the stakes never quite feel real. it’s a perspective i’d absolutely love to explore in a group rp setting because the nature of rp means that it’s kind of...completely unsustainable? like as writers we’re shoving these characters together, which means that raphael will have to be exposed to mortals. there’s room for a lot of character development there, and it seems like something extremely interesting to explore.

BUT HERE’S THE THING⁠—and this is where the character gets really fun, in my opinion. i’ve talked a fair bit about god complexes already, but when applied to raphael an interesting question is raised: how much is a complex, and how much of it is actually being divine? what really made me want to get my grubby little hands on the reins of raphael’s story was seeing the disconnect between the way his connections are written from raphael’s perspective versus the other character’s perspective. it’s a fun little hubristic shade that makes him an unreliable narrator and infinitely more interesting than a simple morality thought experiment. i think it’s easy to see raphael as this super cool, all-powerful master manipulator (i think that’s a pretty accurate take on his self-image, in fact), but he’s not the only player in this game. for every pawn he’s trying to move, there is someone else trying to use him in a similar way, and i don’t know that he truly understands the ramifications of that. see, i think it’s easy to reduce raphael to the points i discuss in the previous paragraphs because that’s what he wants you to think of him. but this is a world of gods and superpowers and magical political intrigue and game of thrones doesn’t exist so nobody can tell him that he’s on the path to becoming a cersei lannister (admittedly i haven’t watched got so this reference might not be right but i feel like it’s right so uh. yeah!). maybe i just like to see arrogant men getting knocked down a peg? this might be a projection of that. i dunno. i just know that there are quite a few mind games and mental gymnastics to untangle with raphael and that’s fun. he’s fun.

also. i would like to once again reiterate: divine amorality sexy. it’s not good, to be clear, and i don’t condone it, but i’m just saying.

What future plots do you have in mind for the character?

WHEN  THE  CITY  CRUMBLES  AROUND  YOU  AND  YOU  HOLD  ITS VESTIGES  IN  YOUR  HANDS,  WHOM  DO  YOU  BLAME?

i think Raphael’s big character arc revolves around a simple question: how far are you willing to go to achieve what you want? 

ostensibly, it’s an easy answer: very far. but when your desire is antithetical to your very purpose, when chasing it puts you at odds with the thing you’ve worked to build, do the goalposts move?

(the correct answer is that raphael did not build caelum. he simply destroyed god.)

let’s say, hypothetically, that raphael gets what he wants. the world is thrown into war and chaos and destruction, yadda yadda, raphael gets his blood and his suffering, great. he’s lived through this before (a couple times, actually), so you think he’d realize by now—eventually, the dust will settle. people will tire of suffering. and where will that leave raphael? how many times will you remake the world to watch it burn? can you ever be fulfilled chasing a temporary high? 

(the correct answer is no, but raphael is an immortal being. more importantly, he is a patient one. he will wait a million days for rome to be built, if only to witness the single day in which it will burn.)

i think raphael needs to reckon with these questions. i think he’s lived far too long with his mentality unquestioned and that has made him both insufferable and a major threat to society. this is a long and pretentious way to say that raphael honestly kind of needs a hobby whatever the thc-verse equivalent of therapy is, but i think any sort of positive character development is contingent upon a recontextualization of suffering and chaos and raphael’s masks.

of course, this isn’t to say that introspection will only lead to positive character development. perhaps a raphael who looks deeper into his psyche will come to understand that his desires outweigh his role; perhaps such thoughts will push raphael over the edge of propriety and into something more outwardly despicable. no matter what, though, i think that the direction of raphael’s character development will be largely shaped on how he decides to prioritize his⁠ roles and goals. 

FOR  WHOM  DO  THESE  HANDS  HEAL?

let’s discuss the archangels, shall we? despite it all, raphael genuinely loves his brothers. i would argue, even, that raphael believes that his scheming is in service to the other archangels; he’s not blind to the way complacency has softened the angels. at this point, the only true threat to the angels is themselves—if michael wants to to unlock a state of sanctifying grace, it will happen at the hand of one of his kin. 

i spoke earlier about raphael’s goals ultimately being futile. this is largely because they are diametrically opposed to michael and gabriel’s goals, and while raphael knows this intellectually, i don’t think he’s quite thought about what the long-term implications of that conflict entails. he’s so caught up in the conflict between michael and gabriel that he’s neglected to consider how he factors into the dynamic. could he be the common ground that brings michael and gabriel together? could he be the final straw that breaks them apart? he is excited for the fighting, the fallout; but has he stopped to consider what the long-reaching effects of such a rift may be?

raphael is breaking his family apart because he loves them. will that be enough, when he is sent to pick up the pieces? whose side will he fall on, if he is to pick a side at all? 

DID  PYGMALION  FALL  IN  LOVE  WITH  THE  BEAUTY  OF  HIS  CREATION,  OR  THE  BEAUTY  HE  CREATED?

i said this in the previous section but i’d like to reiterate it: i think a big reason raphael is Like That is because the stakes have never quite felt real to him. raphael’s a pot stirrer, but he’s not a creature of action. to this, i say give him real stakes. to be honest, i don’t know exactly what that entails, because i could see a number of ways in which tangible pressure manifests itself for raphael. perhaps his meddling with michael and gabriel steps too far, and his brothers  perhaps the angels become suspicious of his maneuvering, in which the spider is drawn into his own web of intrigue. maybe we apply positive pressure, where the ails of the world require a healer and raphael is tapped to higher purpose⁠—and higher power. maybe raphael will find himself tempted by the very demons he holds in contempt. 

the point is that raphael has largely been a character who acts through others. even now, we see this through his grooming of romilda, with his subtle manipulation of michael and gabriel. i want him to become a more active character, either by his own volition or by his hand being forced. 

similarly, i’m extremely interested in seeing how raphael navigates the political elements of this verse. i expect it stings a bit to be the only archangel not given a position of leadership; perhaps he holds lingering resentment toward zadkiel for being given a role raphael had expected to receive. does he subtly undermine zadkiel’s leadership? i want to watch him play up tensions with the vices, to hide a vicious war-hawk perspective under the guise of a concerned healer. i want him to smile in abaddon and samael’s faces and plot their suffering in his mind. i want to see the snake slither in the grass, to return to his original form as a spider spinning a web of intrigue across his court. yes, i want a more active raphael, but i think the political drama is ripe for development, as well.

WHEN  I  SPIT  UP  MY  SINS  AND  BEG  FOR  REPENTANCE,  WHAT  WILL COME  UP?

this one’s a long shot, but i could maybe...see...raphael……..falling. i can guarantee you that the idea has never even crossed raphael’s mind, and that he would literally rather be smited than be cast out of caelum, but i can see it. i think he might be happier, actually; if he fell, he could really lean into the chaos and suffering thing without any compunction.

of course, this is something infinitely easier said than done. were raphael to be cast out of caelum, he would have nowhere to go. infernum would never take him⁠—he’s made far too many enemies among their ranks. he could wander the holy land, but he’s far too proud to bind himself to its existing social systems. (he wouldn’t be able to look gabriel in the eye.)

raphael would have absolutely nothing. 

but he would also be free.

that’s right, i think that a horsemen-style liberation arc would be an absolute banger for raphael. again, i don’t think it’s feasible unless a very specific set of circumstances happen, but just imagine a raphael with nothing to lose, free to go absolutely apeshit. his only prerogative is to make sure you have a bad day. he is free to sow whatever chaos, whatever suffering he so wishes across the land. WHEW.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character?

yes, but i don’t see him going down easily.

IN DEPTH

Driving Character Motivation

entomological curiosity, in short. consider: why did god leave the apple in the garden of eden? why do humans keep animals in glass cases? why do children burn ants with magnifying glasses?

raphael wants to observe the world. a good healer must understand his patients at a fundamental level, and such truths are only revealed when the subject is broken down to its basest parts. you see, raphael was weaned on temperance and virtue; there is a lush decadence to emotional extremes that he finds most fascinating. they are debased. they are crass. they are wantonly sentimental, in a garishly beautiful way.

but this is not all. he wants to stave off boredom, and these are the tools he has to play with. for all of his machinations, raphael is a simple being. raphael has no grand ambitions, no lofty ideals, and that is what makes him so dangerous. he wants to be amused. he wants to be stimulated. he wants to observe a world in which things happen.

ostensibly, this is not as selfish a motivation as it may seem. as a healer, raphael knows something that many do not: serenity cannot exist in perpetuity. it is impossible for the world to remain unchanged⁠—even if the change is not evident, it is happening. an eternal peace is all but a stagnation of the kingdom; the only thing stagnation breeds is degradation. the angels are weakening because they are not being challenged. michael and the virtues may be doing extensive research to find an alternate explanation, but raphael knows this to be the truth. 

of course, the irony underlying the selfless explanation of raphael’s motivations reveals the truth of the matter: it is a farce. perhaps it is a lie that raphael has even convinced himself he believes, but it is farcical nonetheless. raphael claims he wants to invoke change because stagnation is dangerous, but riddle me this⁠—if this is true, why has raphael never changed? centuries upon centuries have passed, and the world has changed around him, but raphael himself has remained largely unchanged. he is the orchestrator of change, not its agent nor its subject, and that is just the way he would like things to stay.

Character Traits

CHARISMATIC - there’s a reason very few have cottoned on to raphael’s true nature, and it’s not (just) his pretty face and magical girl-esque aura. there’s something effortlessly captivating about raphael, a pace to his cadence that has you hanging on to his every word, a lightness to his smile that makes you want to coax it out whenever and however you can. everything about raphael puts people at ease, except for his eyes, which tend to put people on edge if he’s not careful. he’s not gregarious or the outgoing sort of charismatic by any means, but he does manage to exude an overwhelming charisma.

PATIENT - it’s important to remember that before raphael turned on god, he waited for him. raphael performed healings for centuries and never raised a hand against his father in that time. think of all the angels that fell, that rebelled; raphael was not among them. no, raphael played the dutiful son, allowing his resentment to fester and boil deep underneath his skin, but never to surface. for centuries he served loyally, biding his time. remember: lucifer fell. raphael did not. which one killed god? as i mentioned in the plot section, raphael will wait a million days for rome to be built to witness the single day it burns. prolonged suffering is perhaps the most beautiful of all. fortitude goes hand-and-hand with patience.

INTELLIGENT - in a few ways. raphael is well-studied, with extensive knowledge of biology and chemistry and history and politics. raphael is emotionally intelligent; he hides his true nature behind a veneer constructed to meet expectations. he may not be as talented as gabriel in this regard, but it is a skillful construction nonetheless.

MANIPULATIVE - i mean. yeah.

ARROGANT - he thinks he’s smarter than god???????????????? tbf god was a bit of a headass in this universe but we’ve all read enough tragedies to know where this kind of hubris ends up going.

CRUEL - there’s a bit to unpack here. i’d argue that there are two types of cruelty: malicious cruelty and callous cruelty. raphael is certainly capable of both, but i think he embodies the latter. with certain notable exceptions, raphael’s cruelty is rarely personal; it is a thoughtless sort of cruelty, the type inflicted upon beings considered expendable. raphael is selfish and petty and powerful, and these traits coalesce into a casual cruelty. 

In-Character Para Sample cw: light gore

Look at how they look at him. God’s good little lambs, lined up all in a row, passive and pliant and patiently awaiting benediction. Patiently waiting for Raphael. 

Raphael hates them.

No. This is false. It is difficult for Raphael to muster up stronger feelings toward mortals than a vague sort of amusement, the sort of affinity one might have for a particularly stupid kit when it does something surprisingly clever. In this regard, he understands that he differs from his kin. Gabriel, in particular, has developed a particular fondness for the mortals. Why anyone would wish to strip mortals of their most fascinating behavior⁠—to the point of openly defying their Father⁠—is beyond Raphael. He has given up on trying to reason with his brother on the matter. 

The first supplicant is beckoned forward. They pray to the Lord and Raphael touches their forehead with one palm, cups their chin with the other. His fingers splay carelessly around a throat all but bared to him and the ceremony is so mechanical Raphael allows his thoughts to wander⁠. 

How easy it would be to tighten his grip. How beautiful it would be, to watch the lamb’s naive adoration flash into fear, to watch fear darken into betrayal and resentment and the most beautiful emotion of all: despair. He can feel the pulse at his fingertips. It would quicken in a stress response, he knows. It would quicken, then it would pound, and then maybe it would stop.  It all falls to Raphael’s whim. In this moment, Raphael holds their life in his hands. They have all but laid on his sword for the promise of absolution and when they look up at Raphael with their dumb, trusting eyes he can see the sparkling tracks where tears once fell, down the hollow of a cheek into the pool of a collarbone. He finds himself overcome with the desire to trace the fall with his tongue. “Give me your pain,” he murmurs. Let me taste it. Let me understand. 

He takes it. He does not taste it. He does not understand.

He releases the mortal. Those beautiful tear tracks are already fading. “The Lord be with you,” he says, and perhaps he even means it. His Father’s gaze burns into his back, even from a world away. He’d laugh at the irony, were he free to. Is this the weight you so desire? he wants to ask the devotee. No, Raphael knows the truth: God’s love is a shackle. God’s love is a leash and it is holding Raphael back from his fullest potential.

“And also with you,” the lamb responds. Their head is bowed obediently in prayer and they shuffle away, appropriately awed. The next supplicant is beckoned forward.

The light of Raphael’s presence obfuscates the darkness in his eyes.

— 

Later, much later, Raphael finds himself studying his hands. He flexes them, balls them into fists, stretches his fingers as far as they will spread. 

How easy it would be to tighten his grip.

The hand is at once an individual unit and a summation of individual parts. The hand contains twenty-seven bones and thirty-four muscles connected by over a hundred ligaments and tendons. Wrists connect to metacarpals, which connect to carpals, which taper off into delicate phalanges. Individually, each of these parts are largely useless; were Raphael to take a scalpel and drag it through a tendon, across the joints, the strings would be cut and the puppetry would cease to dance. You would be left with a small pile of carpals and metacarpals and phalanges, loose strings of muscle and tendon. At times, it is difficult to fathom how such mundane component parts are the instruments of extraordinary acts.

Raphael flexes his hand, watches bone shift under skin. If he remembers correctly, mortals have an idiom about knowing your hands, or something along those lines. He will not pretend to be familiar with mortal culture. Did you know that, wings aside, mortals and angels all have the same bone structure? 

Of course you did. It is common knowledge that God made all beings in His image, or so the story goes. 

This is an easy answer, but one with interesting implications. Let us extrapolate. If mortals and angels are essentially biological mirrors, and each are made in the image of God, does that mean that God will bleed like His creations? Slide a scalpel across God’s knuckles—will His puppets cease to dance?

Raphael could find out. It would take only a single blade, sliced through a single tendon. 

Now, Raphael is not so arrogant to believe himself the blade. He would not even consider himself the hand. Such a role requires a particular kind of conviction—

( —and that sort of conviction is made manifest in bitter disillusionment⁠—the sort inflicted upon Michael. How easy it would be to find himself in his brother’s ear, whispering of their Father’s capriciousness and the unnecessary cruelty that resulted for the poor, poor humans— )

( —and that sort of conviction is made manifest in righteous anger⁠—the sort inflicted upon Gabriel. How easy it would be to find himself in his brother’s ear, whispering of their Father’s neglect and the unnecessary cruelty that resulted for the poor, poor humans— )

( —and that sort of conviction is made manifest in a whetted hunger⁠—the sort God gifted to each of His angels. Hunger breeds hunters and heaven is full— )

—that Raphael simply cannot embody. Rage has never been his forte. 

Consider, however, that the hand is controlled by nerve impulses. A spark is all the hand needs to transform from a collection of bone to an agent of action. Yes. He clenches his fists. Here are the bones, the veins, the tendons, the muscle. Angels and mortals all share the same bone structure.

Does God?

Extras

pinterest.

raphael has classically beautiful wings. i’m talking TEXTBOOK cherubic angel wings, with the sweeping white feathers and all. raphael kind of hates them, though he takes a great deal of pride in them.

raphael doesn’t have a signature weapon. he’s proficient with blades, yes, and fights with a surgeon’s precision, not the strongest nor the fastest but eerily efficient in his blows. but he is a healer—at the end of the day, his empty hands are all he needs. (his empty hands are what you should fear.)

raphael hates the heretics pro forma but. but. he cannot deny a certain...fondness for them. the heretics exhibited such dedication to a futile cause; they believed their suffering to be something noble. it’s a laughable notion, certainly, but a sentiment so distinctly human it’s almost charming. should they wish to return, to throw themselves on the knife over and over and over, well. raphael shall not complain. he shall smile beatifically, perhaps abate their suffering, even⁠—and watch them do it again. 

in a modern au, raphael is a reality tv producer. ok actually he’s probably a surgeon but i think he’d make a very good reality tv producer. alternately, there is a universe out there where raph fixated on like...baking, or k-pop, instead of suffering. those are good timelines, i think. maybe not the k-pop stan timeline.

raphael is the living embodiment of that dwight schrute “we need a new plague” meme.

[fmdjoosungarchive]

location: tokyo, studios

date: april & september 2019. march, september, & october 2020

word count: 1753

tldr; verification for sung’s song tokyo. partial lyrics, full comp & prod. the song starts in tokyo, when sung is missing his boyfriend. it evolves over time to be like a diary piece and since it serves as the first ‘chapter’ in his album, it’s also kinda like an intro where it talks through/foreshadows what will be in the rest of the album. sung’s affinity for natural sounds continues, as well as inspiration from @fmdxsuji’s song arari on the composition. again pls dont come for me if it isn’t a gayageum it Sounds like one (in the equivalent of white ppl playing the ukulele but still)

not all songs needed to be about one thing. tokyo, for instance, happened to be about ten different things at once.

it’d started in tokyo. element had a tour stop in the city, and sung wasn’t feeling as chipper as he’d have liked. he loved performing with everything in his being, but-- he still rested his head against the window, watching buildings and people pass by in blurs, no other care for conversation.

sung couldn’t quite make sense of what had caused such a mood in him on the plane from seoul. he supposed, part of it was that he missed daisuke. his boyfriend wasn’t from tokyo, far from it actually, which over time seemed to have made daisuke feel a bit bitter towards tokyo. it wasn’t close enough for his family to visit, which meant seeing them even less often than he would have through touring. sung understood that. he doesn’t like being so far away from his parents the few weeks at a time that element go on tour. years sounded impossible.

but, tokyo still reminded him of daisuke. being greeted at the gate, and hearing chit chat all around him in japanese, sat an ache in his heart. after all, coming to know daisuke over the last four years was the reason he’d come to be better at japanese. passing on by, he could understand most of what was being said, and that was all daisuke’s impact. most every sign he saw reminded him of his boyfriend, the food that he ate reminded him of what wasn’t with him.

maybe, he was just sad in general. that happened to sung, sometimes. he couldn’t pinpoint an exact cause of sadness, and was just sad. underlying issues he hadn’t dealt with could be the reason that happened, but it could also simply be his brain chemistry acting up.

that was his trouble; sung didn’t know. all that he could do was sit in his feelings until they lessened. he took a walk by himself before the concert, telling his manager he can ask for directions if he happens to get lost. that time alone was really needed. he called daisuke, but it seemed the man was busy, as he went to voicemail.

“hi, honey. um, i made it into town safely. it’s- it’s kind of loud here, this might have been the wrong time to call, but, um, i just wanted to check in. maybe see your face.” he’d stopped his path, leaning up against a building to look at the sky. “i miss you already. it’s hard being surrounded by so much that reminds me of you, when i don’t have... you.” his sigh probably sounded tinny over the phone. “anyway, um, call me when you have time, please. i love you!”

sung stayed in that spot for a while, long enough that he decided to record a video of the bustling landscape around him. as he started walking again, he caught all kinds of sounds, cars, trains, planes, click clacking of heels, even a siren. he ended the video with a short facecam, so he could cut that part of the video to send to daisuke.

over the rest of his time in tokyo, sung kept playing that ten minute video over and over, and over again. something about the ambient, faceless sound of human existence was calming, comforting.

in the shower after the concert, sung kept humming the same note pattern on repeat. at first, it was natural, as his brain kept coming back to it, without his active thought towards it. however, the more he repeated himself, the more sung thought that he should be keeping his melody in his head to record after he got out of the shower. it could be useful for something, at some point, he’d reasoned.

he was right, eventually. in the flurry of trying to write songs for his first solo album, sung had turned back to every piece of unfinished song that he possibly could. one of them was this piece, broken into the sounds of daily tokyo streets, and a short humming melody. it was... workable.

sung crafted a simple piano piece based on the humming, used some of the sound from his tokyo video, and just with those two things, it was a basis to write off of. he tried to recall the feeling of that day, by watching the full video of the street a few times over. getting back to that day wasn’t as hard as he thought. papers, then his computer, were dotted in with sing-rap lines about missing someone.

only partially through mixing that vocal line in, did sung think he might be wasting his time. the sound was so different from everything else he’d been working on, much too simply and abstract. and so, the playlist of tokyo was shelved again.

with march came the end of his second solo promotions, and in came the desire to write more music. it was then he came back to toyko, to fiddle around. sung wasn’t sure what he wanted from the song, or if he wanted anything at all, which took some of the pressure off in continuing to write. he made it much more complicated, at first, adding a plethora of digital instruments that he figured he could add in live later, should he so choose. in the end, basically none of that made it into the final cut. the negative of doing whatever he pleased, was that for the most part, he’d lost the point, and feeling, of the song.

what did stay, was something sung came to find integral to the piece. modeled after a recording of his own heartbeat, there was a drum line. deep, guttural, mixed into the piece as if it was still stuck in someone’s chest, and your ear was against it, straining to hear what was pounding into you without any effort on its part.

the song had started to be about life, and those held dear, which was a perfect place to use something that sounded like the foundation of life.

stumbling across the song for the last time was entirely accidental. sung would call it fate. that melody hadn’t crossed his mind in months, but the second he heard it again, it was stuck for weeks. there was nothing he could do to quell the sound in his brain than work on it.

first, he stripped back what wasn’t working, back to the simplistic version he’d started with. after adding on the drums, the world was his oyster. over the next couple of weeks, sung started writing lyrics, mixing where he was at back in tokyo, with his feelings of self. he wondered, if maybe part of his sadness, that day, was in missing himself, too. being in that sad area wasn’t what sung liked to consider part of him. it was something that happened to him, that he dealt with decently regularly.

lyrics took the majority of his time, as he mulled over this thoughts of what the song might come to be, if about anything particular at all. the next major composition change was quite quick, though. his interest had been piqued, the first time he heard suji’s demo of arari. sung had yet to attempt using traditional korean instruments in his music. really, the thought hadn’t crossed his mind until that moment, having his heart swayed by the beauty of the danso and suji’s beautiful voice.

he wasn’t very confident, never having trained with traditional instruments before, but there was a first step in everything. he’d gone to his usual music shop as soon as he had time to, to rent a gayageum. and, simple as the piece he wrote was, it didn’t take too much learning for him to get a good recording of it. listening to it again, with that addition, sung felt how much the song benefitted from that small change, and promised himself that he would continue to learn the gayageum, so that he could make something more beautiful to show the world in the future.

sung also made a note to thank suji for the inspiration.

the next change was quite a big one, though it didn’t deal with the composition. towards the end of september, sung thought he might want to go further than he did with moonchild, and have a song completely in english. even more ambitious than before, he knew, but he also had a slight edge of confidence, after having felt the power moonchild ended up bringing.

a creature of habit, sung called up the same songwriter he’d worked with on moonchild, to request help again. he didn’t really want to translate the words he’d already written, thinking that would flow much less smoothly as a full song, but rather, he wanted to take the feelings he’d put into the korean lyrics, and match it with english.

sung tried to take a more active role in writing the lyrics that time, because it was a full song, based on his own experiences and feelings. it worked fine enough, since sung had a decent grasp on understanding english, even if he didn’t think of it easily himself.

he’d insisted they keep one of the english lyrics that was in the original piece. it was a callback to another song he’d written for the album, talking about love and hate. tokyo was a place that held those feelings, from himself and his original inspiration for the song, just like seoul had from himself for the last decade.

getting to where he wanted was harder than it was for moonchild, since they were starting from near zero, from where sung usually started his songs, and because... sung knew he was being more stressful of a writing partner than he was the last time. every word he wasn’t sure of, he asked for in-depth explanations of, wanting each line to express exactly what it was he was going for.

sung couldn’t explain what this song was about, if he was asked, not in a pretty pink bow. the song was about tokyo, and what that city had brought to sung. that ditty, on repeat, with the sounds of scratched pavement underneath. music wasn’t always simple to understand. it could be a feeling.

the last thing sung changed about the song before sending it off in his final tracklist, was a clip of him humming at the end of the song, with that siren in tokyo in the distance.

[thedistantstorm]

Project Compass 03

Read Along on AO3 Here

<< Previous Chapter <<    >> Next Chapter >>

This time: Thrawn is visited by Vah'nya and exchanges a handful of words with Eli.

Next time: Ezra doesn’t feel like he’s made a very good impression on the Chiss. Thrawn doesn’t really make him feel better. Vah’nya and Ivant discuss Un’hee.

-/

Thrawn was not used to having time. At least, not true free time. Sure, he indulged his love of art within the scope of his duties, but rarely did he do something just because he could. In fact, in his later years with the Empire, he rarely did anything but work. Leave was unnecessary, and he found he gained more enjoyment from fulfilling the tasks required of him while mentoring others along the way.

Briefly, his mind struck up the image of Karyn Faro. He wondered not for the first time what she made of the news, how she had so narrowly avoided sharing the fate of the Seventh Fleet. Ezra’s actions - the Revels' last ditch effort - had still managed to kill tens of thousands of Imperial troops. The survivors had all gone different ways, trying to get a lock on civilization. Thrawn had managed to convince Ezra to stick with him, though it was likely more so that Thrawn had been open about his lack of inclination to kill the young Jedi than any true kinship at the start, while the majority of his officers had at least considered murdering him in his sleep.

Now, he woke up expecting to be in his too small room aboard the Chimaera, not in comfortable lodgings amongst his own people. And despite it, he was not sure what to do with himself. Things here had changed. There had been a tension in the lines of the panel members’ faces indicative of strife. Which meant it was bad, if he was able to see it on the faces of Chiss politicians.

Not to mention that somehow, in the span of the not-quite two years since he’d parted with the Steadfast after their encounter with the Grysks, Eli Vanto had earned another promotion - and a large one, at that. Was he also tangled up in the politics of whatever was happening with the Aristocra? He did not act like it.

But then again, Thrawn was not entirely sure which side of him was the act, if any of it was. Originally, he’d come across as warm and nearly paternal toward Ezra during their first interaction. Human. Then, he’d become… stoic. Emotionless. Practically Chiss-like. It was impressive, Thrawn could admit, though he couldn’t help but remember the coldness of Vanto’s eyes, how he’d made direct eye contact with Thrawn and spoke evenly, no hint of anger and yet a solid weight behind his words that gave the seasoned military-man pause.

Something in Thrawn’s loins had shifted with those words. Eli Vanto was telling him, without saying explicitly so, that he had betrayed his principles. The cost of such a choice was loyalty. Loyalty between them that had been built upon time and effort, that had been forged both by time and hardship. Anger would have made Thrawn more comfortable than hard eyes and durasteel words. This was an unknown he knew nothing about how to deal with, much less if it could be dealt with at all.

Yet, he stood by his actions. At the time, over Lothal, he had done what he had to. It was a regrettable course of action, one he would have to live with for the rest of his life. But he had been trying to salvage the broken scraps of the TIE Defender Program, trying to piece back together what Arindha broke. It had been pointless, in the end. He’d known the Defender Project would be shut down before he went back to Coruscant that last time. Still, he had wanted to try and press forward. He was single-minded, determined to make things work. If he could not salvage that project, there had to be something he could do to get the Emperor’s favor. The Emperor hadn’t kept Thrawn in the confines of his upper echelon without a reason. Surely Thrawn could have found some way to turn Emperor Palpatine’s use of him into a mutually beneficial situation.

Now, he’d never know. The Ascendancy had intercepted his signals after roughly a year of being able to establish a stable frequency with the adequate trajectory. They’d managed a safe, covert extraction - not that there had been much to extract from, the remaining soldiers on the jungle planet would likely remain there for the rest of their natural lives by choice. Thrawn had relinquished his command of them early on, when it became clear that they were stranded in deep Wild Space and there would be no rescue. By the time he and Ezra had left, there was no one remaining to care.

His entire career with the Empire, more than a decade of his life, had been gone in an instant. To show for it, he had hardly anything at all. He’d brought the Ascendancy no honor, guaranteed them no support or security for his actions. His mission, overall, had been a failure.

And his assignment, now, meant that the Chiss felt him to be either a liability or-

A buzz of the intercom stole into his thoughts. Extracting himself from the chair he’d been sitting in, Thrawn crossed the small room to tap the console beside the door. “Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” A woman greeted him. Her voice was familiar.

“Navigator Vah’nya,” He replied in kind, letting his thoughts slip into the depths of his mind. “Come in.” He keyed access for her to the suite and opened the door that linked his quarters to the shared living space. Vah’nya carried two trays with a delicate ease, setting them at the low table before selecting a side of the couch in the space for herself.

She’d grown a little more since he had last seen her, her features a little more weathered, a touch more severe. “I had suspected you would be on the Steadfast with Admiral Ar’alani,” He said, sitting a respectable distance away. He did not move toward the second tray even as she picked up a steaming mug of tea from hers.

She smiled at him. It was a touch unusual, the delicate look on the serious Chiss. “My path has taken me down a different road,” She mused thoughtfully. “Please, eat. I waited for you in the mess hall, but in hindsight I should not have expected you there.” He listened, helping himself to some of the warm bread and rosy jam placed on his tray. “I have time before I begin instructing my younger sisters,” She said, “And I had hoped to see how you were settling in.”

“Your concern is appreciated, Navigator Vah’nya,” He paused, frowning. “You are still-”

Vah’nya nodded. “Yes, I am still a Navigator despite my old age.” Another smile, more rueful this time. He noted that her expressions were significantly less guarded on her face, though she held herself stiffly. “You are not settling in easily,” She commented. “The ozyly-esehembo, he is your assignment, I heard.”

“I suspect,” Thrawn met her gaze, “You knew that without having to be told.”

“Un’hee does not hold back much, but I suspect she would if Captain Ivant asked her to.” Thrawn does not react to the name, though Vah’nya seems to pause on it for a second too long, testing him. “Nevertheless,” She conceded gracefully, tilting her head, “I was informed by the Captain himself. I oversee the Navigators aboard this vessel.”

“You are a part of the project the Admiral mentioned during our hearing.”

“I am,” Vah’nya acknowledged. “I will be evaluating your ward this afternoon.”

“Bridger is not my ward.”

“You are tied to him indefinitely, and he is far younger than you,” She pressed, before segueing just as Thrawn parsed a response. “Finish eating. I will take you around the ship and fill you in on the goings on. I do not think the Jedi,” Her accent curled strangely over the title, “Will remember half of what Ivant tells him.”

The Compass is small. Compact, but not claustrophobic. There were around three hundred staff (including the officers) and a troop of less than twenty fledgling Navigators aboard. It was a far cry from the Chimaera, an Imperial Star Destroyer, and far older than his last vessel. He considered it the equivalent to an Imperial cruiser by comparison. Despite this, the ship was outfitted with new technologies and had dedicated facilities to the training and upkeep of the young Navigators being trained.

Vah’nya introduced him to most of the crew members with whom she suspected he would work in close quarters. She even took the liberty of contacting the bridge crew in advance to make sure the Captain was out before taking him up to introduce him to the rest of the officers.

“I am sure you realize,” She said, “That I am not acting in an official capacity. I am not sure what your role with Ezra’Bridger will entail, but knowledge is something that makes me feel more secure now.” She rubbed her arms, voice holding something dark and hidden. Something had happened to her, Thrawn suspected. He filed it away for later consideration.

“It is a wise strategy,” Thrawn agreed. Their backs were to the bridge now. Vah’nya was explaining their patrol mission, scouting along the edges of the Unknown Regions. The chance of combat was low, and the traffic was significantly non-existent and thereby safe enough to allow newly identified Navigators to test their abilities in the field. Thrawn nearly welcomed routine military procedure.

The Navigator took him back down to the eighth deck, where his quarters were. She waited for Thrawn to let them in and shut the door quietly behind her. "I should not tell you this," She said softly, not moving from the doorway. "But I do not believe Eli will."

"Do not incriminate yourself," Thrawn retorted, his command voice smooth and dangerous despite it’s recent lack of use. He had sensed an undercurrent of something going on throughout their interaction, as though Vah'nya had been trying to decide whether or not to tell him something. "If I should not know it, do not tell me."

"It is nothing of consequence to our objective," Vah'nya responded. "I have told you next to nothing about our project," She reminded him. "This is more…"

"I did see him during the hearing," Thrawn admitted, though he did not appreciate the subtle twist of the conversation towards matters personal instead of professional. His reply was opinion, not fact. "He was unimpressed."

"There is more than meets the eye," She supposed, gaze flickering to him. "You understand?"

"I am deserving of his ire." Thrawn looked out into space through the tiny window. "More than anyone else's," He added, quieter.

"You feel sorry for yourself," She pushed. Her assertiveness was new and likely brought out by her current assignment. "It is not a good look on you, Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo."

He did not glare, but the glow of his eyes, the way he positioned himself seemed to focus on her with elevated intensity.

She produced a data card from her pocket. "This should help to close the gap in your knowledge of the Ascendancy," She said, stepping closer to drop it on the low table.

"And the project?"

Vah’nya’s eyes narrowed, and her mouth twisted in a way that suggested displeasure. "I am not at liberty to discuss it. And I would warn you not to use your Jedi to glean the information from my sisters. Captain Eli’van’to will not take kindly to such games." She warmed. "But what I wished to tell you was-"

The door to the suite opened behind Vah'nya's back. In a covert and practiced move, Thrawn slipped the data card into his pocket, head tilted in a cool greeting Ezra.

Except, lingering in the doorway behind the young Jedi, was a second human, dressed in a Captain's uniform. "Oh," Ezra said in Basic, rubbing the back of his head. "I-"

"Senior Navigator," Captain Ivant said. His wood-brown gaze shifted to Thrawn. "Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo." He nodded to them both, cordially. The fierce coldness Thrawn had experienced the previous day was gone, and in its place was a cool confidence. He had the airs of someone knowledgeable and approachable. Worthy of command. Ivant did not seem to linger on Thrawn for more than the greeting, though. He shared a look with Vah’nya before asking, "I trust you have settled in alright?"

It took a moment for Thrawn to realize he'd been addressed, but military procedure was deeply ingrained. "Yes, Captain," He said.

"Good," He said in Cheunh. To Vah'nya, he quirked an eyebrow, then drew their attention to the two completed meal trays. "Take them back to the mess," He instructed her. "The Commander and his charge will not have time, and it is on the way to your seminar."

"Now?"

"Yes, Vah'nya." His Cheunh was melodic, almost, with the inflection many of the Navigators and officers used, rather than the flat language used by most subordinates. Thrawn had expected nothing less, but it was impressive to hear all the same. At least, in this, he had not been mistaken. Eli Vanto had lived up to what Thrawn had seen in him. Perhaps he could find something positive in that. "I will discuss this with you later." The heat that didn't color his face in infrared splotches came out in his voice.

Vah'nya sighed. "Yes, Sir." She scuttled around Thrawn to collect the trays.

"Thank you," Thrawn bid her as she passed him a second time to leave. "The tour of the ship was most useful."

Vah'nya nodded, suspecting that was the least of which he was thankful for. She had served with many leaders, and none of them had ever handled idle time well. "You are welcome, Thrawn." She stopped in the doorway to regard Ezra and her superior. "Captain," She nodded.

"Navigator."

The Chiss woman left, leaving Ezra to look between Ivant and Thrawn. "The data card she gifted you should have plenty of art on it," Eli said. "Ar'alani compares her love of music to it frequently."

"It is similar," Thrawn agreed, but there was an edge of caution in his voice.

He wondered if Vah'nya had been sent to collect information, rather than visiting him of her own devices. Vanto did not project any malice or anger, though his emotionless state yesterday had given a lasting and uncanny impression of it. Today, he was cool, calm, and kind, though no less in control. Intensity lingered about him. Confidence was reflected in his movements and stance. It was an interesting catalog that Thrawn would pick apart when he had time for reflection. He knew, deep down, Eli Vanto was furious with him, to a point that he'd forsaken his emotions to make the point known. He had seen humans react that way before. It made an excellent point, as Thrawn so clearly experienced first hand.

Because of all of his transgressions and the wrongs he'd done, perhaps his most severe crime was he had taken this man's life and molded it in the interest of others (though to a lesser degree, for the man himself). Thrawn gave him a task that would cast him out of the Empire, and then he himself had failed. Eli Vanto, in the wake of Thrawn's own life, had always been collateral damage. And Vanto knew it, too. From the first.

Now, Thrawn’s failure meant there was no going back.

Captain Ivant spoke into his thoughts. "I know. You'll glean more from inspecting recent pop culture pieces from Csilla than from reading texts. That's why I had asked her to compile it for you in addition to the official reports."

Vanto had to know. There was no way for him not to understand the political ramifications of Thrawn’s actions. And yet, this. He’d asked her to do this? Eli was kind, he had always been the first to want to help. It was what started their uncanny relationship, and had helped forge them into an impeccable team. What was he playing at? What angle was he manipulating? What did he see? Thrawn needed to know.

It was nearly too late. "If anything stands out to you, or you want clarification, don't hesitate to ask," Vanto said in Basic. He turned to leave. "My door is always open."

"You did not want her to visit, and yet you gave her the data card to give to me," Thrawn pressed him in Cheunh. It was a test. A thinly veiled jab at Vanto’s temper, but Thrawn was shaken by the need to know how deep beneath the surface his new superior officer's anger was. Would this be enough to stoke its flames?

The human cast a glance over his shoulder, one dark eye catching Thrawn's. "I believe she was trying to prevent us from experiencing an uncomfortable moment," He replied in kind. His voice betrayed nothing.

Thrawn continued, "Surely you could have sent another."

"Sometimes it is far easier to permit a situation to unfold rather than allow it to run rampant behind one’s back." His lip twitched into a half-smile, but it was crossed with some faint emotion Thrawn couldn’t place. Sadness, perhaps? He wasn't sure, but something about the way Vanto regarded him bothered Thrawn immensely. He wasn't used to, nor did he like the sensation. Vanto dismissed him politely all the same. "Good afternoon, Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo."

With a click of the door's hydraulics, he was gone. Thrawn stared after him. Something in the way the Captain spoke, an inflection in his tone, the slightest dilation of his eyes was a clue, and yet none of the tell-tale facial heat or reddening of his ears had indicated embarrassment or rage.

It was not sadness, Thrawn realized suddenly. It was disappointment. And it stung like an open wound in a place behind Thrawn’s ribcage and oozed unpleasantly into his core. He blinked at the closed door for a moment, trying to push the feeling down and away. It lingered.

"Uh," Ezra nudged at something invisible with the toe of his boot. He looked at Thrawn sheepishly. "You alright?"

"Why do you ask me that?" Thrawn did not mean to snap at the young man, but Ezra didn't seem to take offense.

"I can feel your sadness," Ezra said softly. "And I can pretty much never feel your feelings through the Force. It's like… like you've lost something," He rambled, "I just-"

"I am fine, Ezra."

Ezra closed his mouth. Thrawn only ever called Ezra by his given name when he really wanted the young Jedi to shut up. And usually, Ezra knew, that meant he was right about whatever he'd been saying to the Chiss. Whatever was happening in that big blue head right about now, Ezra assumed Thrawn had far more questions than answers.

[angelthefirst1]

Infinity and the world before. ♾️

Season 10 episode 8 had many Coda call backs just as I thought it would, but it also made me think of season 5 episode 9 ‘What happened and what’s going on’, season 5 episode 10 'Them’ and season 5.11 ‘The Distance’ which brought this infinity symbol to mind.

We are circling back around to the events of season 5 and they are about to collide in the middle but they are inverted just as if we are traveling along the infinity symbol.

The title of this episode even suggests it’s a repeat of “The world before” or past events and it’s no coincidence that Alpha’s belt has this symbol on it. The Whisperers story line is where the circling back began in a really obvious way.

I’ve done posts in the past about how season 5 was a half way mark in story, meaning 10 would be a major fulfillment.

Above is a very rough outline of the show so far…

Obviously Rick and Beth are equal opposites, he left the hospital and was reunited with his family very soon after, but Beth did not get that reunion after the hospital and its because her path is inverted so she will get the reunion at the end of her infinity loop (Possibly late season 10 sometime or early 11) but not straight after the hospital like Rick did (season 1)

We have a few other similarities along the way such as:

The Farm/Alexandria with the theme of coming across a safe place with good people and eventually becoming a part of that group (the Farm fell due to a herd but Alexandria didn’t because of its walls (Equal but opposite)

The Governor and Negan. Both wanted what Rick and his group had and tried to take it by force, Rick’s group fought back in both instances.The prison fell and the Governor died while Negan lived and Alexandria survived. (Equal but opposite)

Negan also seems to have eventually learnt that Rick’s way was right and they could all live together while the Governor couldn’t see it.

Grady and the Whisperers.

Both have a female in charge, both think their way of life is right, that they are doing the right thing. They also both can’t be seen to look weak in front of their people.

But they both prey on people’s weaknesses, trick and use people giving them no choice but to serve. The Grady cops had a home (Grady Hospital) while the Whisperers don’t but both these groups wear masks.

The Grady cops wear a uniform that is associated with upholding the law and what is right but in reality they kidnap and hold people against their will.

While the Whisperers wear the masks of the dead when they are very much alive (pretending to be something they are not).

With Grady, Beth was taken against her will but wanted to escape, she had her family come to trade for her where as Lydia was taken against her will and had her mother come to trade for her but eventually she chose to go back voluntarily. So all these groups are inverted or equal opposites of each other and that’s why so much of the Whisperers story so full of Beth symbolism because its repeating themes we saw around the time of Season 5 and Grady.

Let’s go through a few of the most notable things from this episode (10.08) that call back to past events from Beth’s time.

Firstly when Alpha is talking to Dante she mentioned that he had done well at the barn and that now he needed to infiltrate our group, she tells him to find some strangers and lead them to the gates of Alexandria.

This whole dialogue made me think of Aaron first coming across our group in 5.10 he had also found some strangers (at a barn) and not long after led them to the gates of Alexandria.

In 5.10 Aaron a good guy from a community is going out and looking for good people who had no home to bring them back with him.

Rick and group were very suspicious of him and it took a lot of convincing before they believed him. In 10.08 Dante is the bad guy going out looking for people so he can trick Alexandria into letting him in and trusting him.

It took almost no convincing for them to let him in.

Both Rick’s group and Dante had to do the video interview on arrival at Alexandria also.

After arriving at Alexandria we see Dante graffiti “Silence the Whisperers” all over Alexandria, we then we see him turn off the water filtration system making it look like it’s still working but it’s now providing the whole community with tainted water.  No one is suspicious of the water because it looks to be working as normal and all the levers are pointing up as they should be.

Funny… there is a sign on the filtration system from Eugene (sorry i don’t have a photo of it) but it basically says: This is a very complicated filtration device and to see him if something is wrong and not attempt to fix it without him. Eugene is the water quality assurance man.

Back in season 5 we see Aaron, just before he meets our group leaving untainted drinking water for them, but the group doesn’t want to drink it as they are suspicious someone has done something to it and it might make them sick. Again Eugene provides the role of water quality assurance man as he decides to grab a bottle and drink it, he even says he is “providing water quality assurance” to the group by being the one to test it.

Just before this in 5.09 we see the ‘Wolves not far’ graffiti

So it’s an inverted play on the themes running through 5.09, 5.10 and 5.11

In Season 5 the order was:

1. Wolves Graffiti

2. Leave untainted water

3. Meet group in Barn

4. Bring them back to Alexandria.

Season 10 it’s:

1. Barn

2. Meet strangers bring them to Alexandria

3. Silence the Whisperers Graffiti

4. Make the water tainted.

So Dante is inverted Aaron in some scenes.

Now Aaron wasn’t around yet to see the Wolves not far graffiti but that story led to him finding our group.

Lets look at Arron meeting with Mary

Aaron during this episode is still playing the role of looking for good people to a degree, in that he is meeting with Mary the Whisperer and trying to convince her to trust him, give them information, and that they can help each other.

This particular scene reminded me of the meeting point of Coda just before the exchange.

A little exciting extra i found when re watching Coda 5.08 was this scene below with Father Gabriel.

Another piece of fulfillment I just had to show you all, here he has found a bible and inside is the name MARY! Now it’s only in episode 10.08 that Gamma tells us her name and it just happens to be Mary wow! I will be interested to see what future interactions these two have.

In the Kitchen with Carol and Arron and Daryl

Once Arron gets back from talking with Mary and finds out about what Dante did we see him upset and angry and he says “how could I have not known, he’s been here 4 months”

At one point Daryl says “We gotta keep our heads straight, try to figure out WHAT’S GOING ON” (What happened and what’s going on or 5.09) springs straight to mind here and the main points they talk about in this kitchen scene seem to be mostly reminiscent of that past episode but also what may have happened to Beth that we the audience didn’t see.

Aaron tells Carol and Daryl where Mary says the herd is and Carol suggests they get a group, leave straight after the funeral to look for it.

Daryl also says “Lydia’s still gone we gotta figure out what that even means”

So this order of events is:

1. Funeral

2. Find the herd

3. Missing girl

Most of this scene I think alludes to the missing parts of Beth’s story where a possible herd separated her “body” from Daryl and the group after they leave Grady. When they come back after the herd has left, her body is gone.

Part of me thinks that in season 5 some of the group then go looking for this herd to try and see if Beth had turned and joined it, and that’s why her body is missing, it would also explain why the group was split up in 5.09

If this the case the timeline of events back in season 5 would be.

1 Missing Girl

2. Find the herd

3. Funeral (for Tyrese and never find Beth or in this episode Lydia)

The funeral mentioned is obviously Siddiq’s but could also be a reminder of the lack of Beth’s funeral and the time frame close to Tyrese’s funeral, They visually look extremely similar.

Speculation here yes, but as they are repeating the story from the time frame of Beth’s missing body I am not surprised to hear some discussion that would line up with what happened to her.

So finding the herd and the missing girl is the main point talked about just before coughs *Tyrese’s* I mean Siddiq’s funeral.

The next scene is also fascinating as it is Luke, Judith and Michonne in a car/horse and cart Luke and Judith stand out for reasons relating to Beth, Luke (the music)  and Judith (the new sheriff who is also writing the equivalent of a journal) are sitting in the car on the way to ocean side. Once again I see this as a missing link scene possibly a call back to Beth being left in a vehicle when the herd comes through.

They stop at the library and Luke is extremely lucky not once but twice in that he finds a very rare piece of music that he loves and as he is attacked by 2 walkers and a stranger saves him.

The fact that Mr music has a close call, is extremely lucky and doesn’t die in this… the episode that is lining up with Coda stands out to me in a major way because in this same episode we have Dante get killed, who I have talked about previously having many similarities to Beth in the last few episodes.

Such as being an outsider coming into a new community (Dante tricked his way into Alexandria while Beth was forced into Grady)

Both were the medical assistant’s, both used medicine to kill another person (With Beth she was tricked into it and falsely blamed by Dr Edwards while Dante did it deliberately and falsely blamed Siddiq)

Both think about (and in Dante’s case succeed in) killing the doctor.

So I feel like they have shown a repeat of events with two different characters, the medical assistant dies (Beth to the general audience) but the lucky music man doesn’t (we know that the music box kept playing)

This was just a different way of showing the two sides. I also think it shows that if Beth had actually succeeded in killing Dr Edwards she would definitely have died, for real.

So Dante has also played an inverted Beth.

Virgil saving Luck could also point to a stranger saving Beth after her being shot but that remains to be seen.

I don’t have too much to say about the stuff at Ocean side and Virgil except that I think they are showing some inverted themes to Beth. In this scene we see Luke trying to protect Virgil for saving his life Virgil says “I’m just trying to get home to my family” so possibly similar to what happened to Beth.

Next we see the good father Kill Dante, again as I mentioned above if Beth had of succeeded in killing Dr Edwards I believe this would have been her fate too. Locked up with someone coming in and talking it upon themselves to seek justice.

We also see the Good Father coming full circle in terms of what he was like in Coda where he was unwilling to even use a weapon to kill walkers and Carl tries to get him too but at that point he was a coward, he no longer is a coward though and says to Dante “I haven’t always been brave” just before he pulls out his knife and stabs him to death. Talk about change!

The next scene is the group going out to find Alpha’s herd, they cross the boarder and enter into her land, I mentioned earlier how the Whisperers are a repeated inversion of the Grady cops, well it’s now that we are back in their territory that we see very in your face Coda inversions. Like this scene with Carol and Daryl

Carol is about to step on a trap and Daryl comes running to stop her, yes it’s a complete callback to Beth’s trap in Alone where she did step in it and hurt her ankle. But Beth’s trap was pointing to Grady and the fact that she would fall into their trap. Beth’s animal trap scene has a walker with a police badge and gun.

So this scene with Daryl and Carol is inverted Coda, the trap represents Grady. Carol is only and completely focused on Killing their leader but this time Daryl runs forwards and stops her from “killing Dawn” falling in the trap he then says to her “You could have lost a foot“ (another reminder of Beth’s trap pointing to Grady) "Can we stop this shit please? You want her dead so bad you don’t even care what happens to you” exactly what happened in that hallway at Grady with Beth. I’m positive his reaction here to Carol is absolutely because of what happened with Beth in that hallway and he sure as hell will try to stop it this time!

Carol goes on to say “that’s not true”

There is talk of Carol being like a ghost (just like Beth really)

Daryl then hugs Carol and says about Alpha “she’s not worth it” and “she’s a dead woman anyway” this is a inverted way of repeating Daryl shooting Dawn.

I also think they are showing us the difference if Daryl had of stopped Beth before she tried to stab Dawn.

He then talks about them having a future and to not let her take that too.

To wrap up the scene Daryl disarms the trap and Carol walks away and kills a lone walker which made me again think of a complete inversion of this scene where Beth does set off the trap, and Daryl has to kill the walker, as opposed to Daryl disarming the trap and Carol Killing the walker. 

So next the next scene with Daryl and Carol’s group we see them reach the Valley where Alpha’s herd is supposed to be.

Remember this is just after the Grady trap scene.

Daryl is out front and keen to get to the herd.

Once he sees there is no herd, he gets really upset, curses and him and Aaron argue.

Aaron thinks the trap Daryl came across was set recently by the Whisperers and is a sign the Whisperers are protecting the area and that Gamma isn’t lying about the location of the herd, but that Alpha has moved it since.

Daryl thinks the trap was laid by a hunter a decade ago. So we have references to the same trap being set from around a decade ago (Beth would have been at Grady around 8-9 years ago) and then recently. Hmm 🤔 Interesting…

Daryl now focuses all his attention on finding Lydia (the missing girl) which to me is the same as season 5 looking for Beth and the herd.

As this scene comes to an end Aaron says to Carol “I know everything is upside down at the minute but I’m not wrong about this”

This line made me laugh because I feel exactly the same as Aaron… Everything IS upside down at the minute (story wise) and I’m not wrong about it 😂.

The group then starts looking for Lydia. (The Missing Girl)

Carol (the Ghost) had walked away from the trap in the previous scene unharmed, (AKA Beth didn’t die but her body is missing)

 Its not long before this happens:

We see Carol chase after Alpha ,which in turn leads to the group getting trapped in the cave with the herd of walkers.

So Carol is Ghost Beth and we are seeing the after math of Grady.

Grady 2.0

This hiatus is going to be very long… Just like this post.

[loopy777]

if you were asked to make a full(the usual three seasons) retelling of the canon timeline(aang wakes up before the comet) with Aang x Mai as the main couple, how would you do it?

Well, there’s a reason I do most of my crackship writing in AU’s and not canon-divergence. It’s really tough to pull off for anything but side characters, at least if the integrity of the earlier foreshadowing is respected. Like, sure, it’s entirely possible to write a believable and good Zutara story that diverges between Books 2 and 3, but I have never encountered one that accounts for the fact that when Aang wakes up in the first episode, he sees Katara above him with an angelic framing. Yes, the stories deal with Aang’s attraction to Katara, but not the importance the cartoon placed on his falling for her.

Which, I rush to point out, is fine. Most people don’t care. I’m just annoyed by that type of thing. When I diverge from canon, I feel the need to pay off on every prominent Chekov’s Gun in a way that corresponds to the weight of the foreshadowing.

(For those who clicked that link, note that my own storytelling preferences fall somewhere between the views of Chekov and Hemingway.)

So, to set up Aang and Mai, I’d have to start before Mai’s introduction, in the finale of Book Water.

Something would have to be added to those events to alter the story arc of Kataang. I don’t feel the need to eliminate Kataang entirely, because Katara should be important to Aang, and I like the idea of the kids figuring out what that importance is. So the Siege of the North in some way makes Katara step back from her revelation that Aang might be her predicted husband, and I think Aang should be aware of this. He could still be in love with Katara, but the season should end with him knowing that Katara isn’t interested, and he needs to deal with that. I still want them to be friends, and I’d leave the events of ‘The Avatar State’ largely unchanged with their interactions.

‘Cave of Two Loves’ is vastly changed, though. Aang discovers the legend of Oma and Shu by himself. Thematically, it would be appropriate to introduce an alternate love interest for Katara, but I’m honestly not sure who to use. Haru bores me. Jet wouldn’t work at all in that episode, and I like his introductory episode so much that I want to keep it the way it is. And I don’t want to just stick her with Zuko. I honestly find it really creepy when people swap lovers, and one-sided Maiko is established in the backstory. Yes, Zuko and Mai weren’t “lovers” as kids, but it’s the same weird mix’n’match dynamic that turns me off.

Maybe I should consider Katara/TyLee again? You know, I can see Ty Lee going on a day-long excursion with some hippies who came by the circus. That might even be a neat twist, where we’re introduced to her as a member of the hippie party, and at the end after she parts from the gAang, we see an epilogue with Azula showing up to recruit her, and we realize she’s one of our new big bads! BOOM!

And Katara discovering that she prefers girls over boys while at the North Pole might be a good way to end Kataang in a suitable way. It might be a bit much to give her a crush on a Waterbender healer girl at the same time that the siege plotline is going on and all the stuff with Sokka and Yue, but I’d be willing to sacrifice The Great Divide to get another episode set at the North Pole.

So, sure, let’s go with that for now.

Mai is introduced in the last scene of the finale of Book Water, similar to Azula, in that we see her arriving in Omashu with her family and there’s a big This Character Will Be Important foreshadowing moment. We don’t get a proper introduction, though, until the Return to Omashu. The episode is largely the same, but during the battle, Mai mainly fights Aang while Azula and Ty Lee fight Sokka and Katara. Everyone is freaked out that the friendly people they met last episode are enemy warriors, but with Azula there, Ty Lee commits (for now) to fighting. Aang takes the time to criticize Mai for calling off the trade for her brother, and she doesn’t feel the need to correct his perception. However, after escaping, Bumi imparts some information that makes Aang reconsider his assessment of her.

So far, I’ve made only small tweaks to things. This is where we diverge heavily.

In the aftermath, Azula has a plan. Mai will ‘escape’ Omashu, with the story that for her failure, she was banished. Or maybe Mai is ‘escaping’ to actually ‘save’ Tom-Tom ‘against’ the Fire Princess’s ‘orders.’ Either way, the idea is that Mai is to embed herself with the escaped Omashu rebels and get information of the Avatar’s plans.

Mai improvises when she literally bumps into the gAang on the way to return Tom-Tom. She claims that she will take care of her brother and keep him away from Omashu. She even explains that she chose the gAang over Azula for Tom-Tom’s safety. Aang decides that he really was wrong about her and is impressed.

Mai disappears until whatever the equivalent of ‘The Chase’ is. There’s no actual chase, I think, but Azula still tracks the gAang (with TY Lee) and there’s still a big battle at the end where Azula and Zuko and Iroh encounter the gAang (including Toph’s triumphant return) and a huge battle ensues. Eh, maybe there should still be a chase. I dunno. I’m interested in the big arcs, not the little stuff. I’m mainly concerned with the next beat:

Mai arrives in a dramatic moment and joins in the fight near the end.

She’s a full rebel now, here to save the Avatar! Except she’s not, she was watching and waiting until it looked like Azula was going to lose anyway, and then she stepped in to help the gAang and Zuko. Except Mai isn’t really all that undercover, and is fine with saving Zuko!

End result, Zuko diverges from the gAang’s path again, but not before having an encounter with Mai. I think Iroh is still injured here, and Zuko’s behavior – perhaps including throwing fire at Mai – has her reconsidering if he’s the boy she remembers. She escapes with the gAang.

Mai (with Tom-Tom) travels with the gAang from then on as an undercover agent, Traitor’s Face style. Except she’s a more passive infiltrator, and not actively trying to transmit a location to Azula. (There’s no telegraph system in this continuity, alas.) She’s just learning about the enemy, and keeping an eye out for how to best make use of her position. She doesn’t want to just stab Aang and be done with it, because she’s still keeping in mind that Zuko needs the Avatar to end his banishment, and she’s not fully writing him off yet.

Stuff happens, and the gAang (plus Mai and Tom-Tom) get to Ba Sing Se. Stuff happens. and Azula and Ty Lee make their way there. Major goals for this part include giving Katara a chance to having a meaningful encounter with Ty Lee to put doubts about both Azula and the Fire Nation in Ty Lee’s head. Mai also has to deal with Azula calling for some payoff to the infiltration, which ends during the climax with Mai deciding to truly defect. Perhaps Tom-Tom gets left behind with Ba Sing Se falls, but Ty Lee or Zuko ensures that he’s safe from Azula’s wrath.

Book Fire is the Fire Nation infiltration, but now with Mai, and she shows real value in guiding the gAang, but also discovering how messed up Fire Nation life is and how it contributed to her own unhappiness. This is where Aang starts to fall for her, and she in turn NON-ROMANTICALLY comes to really respect him. At some point, Aang pushes for a romantic relationship, and Mai is not interested in a boy three years younger than her at this point, never mind how confused she still is by all the upheaval in her life. Aang is especially frustrated by this after the whole Katara-discovering-that-she’s-gay thing, and doesn’t take it well at first, but that’s for no more than an episode. Aang is a good egg and quickly becomes fine with being just friends.

During the Day of Black Sun, Ty Lee acts to save Mai in some way, and gets captured by Azula. This pays off in the Boiling Rock, where she’s discovered and freed and joins the gAang.

Things largely happen similar to the cartoon from there, but with the epilogue being turned into a distant epilogue, after several years, where the three-year difference between Mai and Aang isn’t as big a deal, and they start a romance. Hooray!

Huh, for something I worked out as I typed, that didn’t end up half-bad. I wouldn’t want to write such a thing, since Traitor’s Face has satisfied my itch for epic MaiAang and I’d rather not be hobbled by the cartoon’s setup. If anyone else wants to take a crack at it, though, feel free!

[norristownnews]

What Is the Cheapest Way to Get Into the Legal Profession?

"What is the Cheapest way to get into law? " Entering the legal profession is without doubt one of the most expensive job options apart from becoming an airline pilot. It involves investing thousands of pounds in education that may or would possibly not lead to a position at the end of the road. Unfortunately there is no simple answer to which is the cheapest way to get in because there are actually all sorts of implications as to the different paths you choose to go down. The Legal Executive route is the cheapest option. Several people go down this particular route following on from an undergraduate degree, whether law or otherwise, or upright out of school. The Legal Executive route in terms of monetary cost is considerably cheaper than the Graduate Stage in Law/LLB degree and the Legal Practice Course (the solicitor route). We did a bit of research along with the current cost in 2013 to complete both parts of the Legal Executive training (Part 3 and A part 6) is about £6, 500 (course fees, exam fees etc .. ) The current cost of the Legal Exercise Course at the University of Law is £11, 000-£13, 000. If you combine the Graduate Diploma with Law (GDL) and the Legal Practice Court (LPC) the overall cost is about £18, 000-£20, 000. If you blend the Legal Practice Course with the cost of completing a law degree then the usual overall charge is around £25, 000 to £30, 000, which is gradually creeping up to around the £40, 000 mark since law schools start to capitalise on the willingness and ability of potential lawyers to pay. In the past people are generally down the vocational course route or alternatively the New York Attorney route, but these are options which were now in the past because, as we understand it, the Law Society still require you to complete the LPC and a exercising contract or training contract equivalent, which makes it senseless to plan to do either of these two in order to become a legal representative. So if you look at the different options, the cheapest one by far is the route through the Institute of Legal Executives and to become chartered legal executive before then either moving on to being a solicitor simply remaining a legal account manager. The various borders between all the different types of lawyer (legal executive, paralegal, solicitor and Barrister) are becoming distinctly unreadable. Solicitors can now do work that was exclusively reserved for barristers. Barristers can see clients directly. Legal middle management can gain the Rights of Audience that solicitors and barristers previously exclusively enjoyed. Legal Middle management can now become partners of law firms and so can barristers. Solicitors can practice as Advocates without truly needing to take instructions from clients themselves. However one thing remains very clear and that is that in the minds involving lawyers themselves there is still a hierarchy in terms of both fee income and status. At the bottom of the pack is a paralegal and this is very unlikely to change for a good few years yet simply because paralegals have no rights in any respect in terms of advocacy, and similarly cannot practice on their own without another type of lawyer being with them. Second in the bin are Legal Executives who are starting to enjoy more status in recent times but similarly hold lesser standing inside legal profession as a whole than solicitors and barristers. It is partly because of the old-fashioned view that most people who have end up legal executives are former secretaries trying to work their way up. this is still very much the case for a lot of and perfectly understandable as a very easy way in. After all, being a solicitor requires you to do quite a bit of instructional study at some point or other whereas becoming a legal executive is mostly something you can do on the job with a few times a week at night school or weekends at doing distance learning spread over a considerable length of time. Second from the prime are solicitors. Make no mistake, in the legal professional solicitors are definitely considered second rate by just about absolutely everyone including themselves, even when they are commercial lawyers earning considerable sums of money and more than the Barristers people instruct. Solicitors are seen more as wheeler-dealers and go-getters than actual lawyers, and the profession itself after a while has determined effectively that solicitors are the monkeys to barristers' organ grinders. At the top of the pile are definitely the barristers. The vast majority of barristers I suspect would class themselves as upper class. They are often very sharp, really intelligent, usually residing in exclusive villages or streets reserved for premier league footballers, doctors and older businessmen and with cars to match. Barristers see solicitors as a necessary evil as traditionally the solicitors get hold of clients for the barristers and the barristers did their best for them even though they usually have not met the client before the day of their first hearing and have absolutely no interest at all in their welfare or personal situation. Barristers are 100 % pure law at the end of the day and are not interested (quite understandably) in their clients' welfare or wellbeing. These are typically traditional views on the legal profession and the way it is structured. How you choose to interpret the above article can be a matter for yourself, but it is based on my own experiences in law, whether as a lay person undertaking cases average joe or as a qualified solicitor working with barristers and other solicitors. The reason I put this level of detail straight into this article is to show you that if you decide to go in the cheapest way into the legal profession there is always a catch, together with at the moment the catch is that your status for the remainder of your time in the profession will be diminished by the decision you cash in on now. Once a legal executive always a legal executive. The lawyers recruiting you at the moment are constantly "pure" solicitors. They will hold your status as a legal executive against you and probably for the the rest of your career. Your salary will often be affected as solicitors traditionally believe that legal executives are worth less of your budget than qualified solicitors. I would estimate that over the time of your career remaining you will lose around £5, 000 to £10, 000 per year at the very least through your decision to go down the Legal Executives route, at the least up until you have been in a solicitors job for 5 years min. Furthermore, certain doors will be closed to you from then start. If you qualify as a legal executive you very often have to qualify into a space where legal executives are used and practice. This invariably means debt recovery, some types of employment -- usually contentious, crime, family, conveyancing, wills and probate and sometimes commercial property. Whilst some of these may not be known to be too bad in the long term - commercial property and wills and probate are not too badly payed off at the moment - it does mean that the majority of commercial law for example is going to be outside your remit. It is very difficult to advance from one field to another once you have specialised in one particular area of law. So for example if you qualify as a suitable executive undertaking crime work and have 5 years' experience you cannot then use your legal executive condition (or indeed your solicitor status) to move across and practice in corporate finance. If you are an able scholar or graduate with excellent grades then you should almost always make an effort to go down the solicitor or barrister journey. Going down the solicitor route is not as expensive as people think it is. For example you do not need to pay the College associated with Law or BPP to do the Legal Practice Course or the Graduate Diploma in Law. There are actually far cheaper alternatives and regardless of what the more elite institutions tell you, the vast majority of law firms don't care two hoots where you do your LPC because most qualified lawyers view these courses as burning hoops to help you jump through in order to qualify than any sign of your ability. Employers are always interested in your basic degree. For the rest of your career. Forever! They are also interested in your A level grades. Forever! This plus your A- Level grades will determine whether you are a student or graduate with excellent academics. If you have straight A's at A Level or AAB or possibly ABB then you will be an excellent student to come into law. If you have some sort of 2: 1 Degree in anything other than pop music or country dancing (my first degree has been pop music), then you stand a very good chance of training and becoming a qualified solicitor. If you have less than this then this life as a lawyer will be considerably harder to start out with. The Legal profession do not view 2: some degrees as being something that entitles you to practice as a lawyer. It will go against you for the remainder of your position and there is no way round it. I suspect that if you are sat there reading this with a 2: a pair of degree you have been badly misinformed by anyone who has told you to go into the legal profession. It is not impossible - I have trained and coached many students and graduates who have 2: 2 degrees (sometimes even a 3rd) and they have gone onto enjoy rewarding careers as lawyers in some capacity. However , their road towards law has been considerably harder as a result of their inability to obtain a 2: 1 degree. So getting back to this statement that if you have excellent academics you should always consider becoming a solicitor so as not to damage your career in the long term just by going down the Legal Executive route. If you do not have excellent academics then you should always consider alternative options then one of these will be to go down the legal executive route. However I would not recommend paying to undertake a genuine executive course until you have legal work experience, you are able to use in the longer term to secure yourself a superb legal career. By this I mean that if you are a student or graduate you should definitely not go straight down to the Institute of Legal Executives and sign up for any legal executive course. If you are going down a nonconventional route into law then academic study once you have completed an undergraduate degree or your A-Levels is utterly immaterial. Experience is what matters and nothing else will do. Legal work experience is the key so that you can gaining a successful start into law. You cannot skip this, circumvent or navigate round it as a lot of people try every year. This is why academic institutions have been bought out by overseas companies looking to make a quick money. There are a lot of people out there undertaking postgraduate and undergraduate courses with no hope at all of ever finding a occupation in the profession they are going into. Furthermore, there are lots of people out there who have the academic qualifications but lack any succeed experience or activities or interests who similarly are very unlikely to ever get ahead in regulation or get through the easy way. No careers adviser will give you this advice, but the main thing to do to get into law may be to get experience, more experience and even more experience. This may cost money in itself, and you may say that I have your fees to pay and I have to live. This gets me to my point that if you want to invest in your job then spending money on academic qualifications is not the way to go. Getting experience is and this in itself will cost you money. To give you a simple example, as I write this a vacancy has come in from one of our central London law firms. They are buying fee earner to go and assist for a month or two with a load of admin work. They will pay properly for this, and it is a job probably most suited for an LPC graduate. I have one in mind. It is not an LPC masteral with a 2: 1 law degree or good A levels. It is not an LPC graduate with an LLM from a good university or some sort of summer school academic qualification. It is an LPC graduate with corresponding experience to that the firm are seeking. The firm will not give two hoots what the LPC scholar has in terms of additional qualifications but they will study the LPC graduate's work experience to date to decide with certainty if to take them on for this particular role. It is so important to understand this that when somebody says what is the cheaper way into law that there is no easy answer. You cannot just take a decision now that will affect the rest to your career simply on the basis that it may cost one or two thousand pounds more to go one way into the lawful profession rather than another. You will notice that so far I have not mentioned anything about barristers. This is because in my experience guidance to be a barrister is almost always a complete waste of your money and time. You would probably be shocked to hear the following and perhaps put it down to my natural bias against barristers having been a solicitor myself. I would grudgingly accept that probably I am a little biased against barristers having run around courts for them, I've taken care of some pretty awful ones over the years (as well as some absolutely fantastic ones) but the barristers' follicle of the profession is pretty much tied up and it is very important to understand this. The word nepotism could almost have been devised for this part of the profession. Let me give you an example. Back many years ago when I had just qualified as a solicitor our practice used a local chambers which had a very good reputation in the area and was probably the top number of barristers by a considerable distance. I cannot remember any of their barristers being unsuited or incompetent and a lot of being incredibly talented advocates. At some stage in my first year after training I remember that they advertised for two scholar barristers to join them. There were a considerable number of applications, as you would expect because this was a top quality set of chambers, superior reputation with quality work coming in, in an area where there are not many barristers' chambers. I do not have a clue how the recruitment process occurred but I do know that the two pupils selected were children of one of the person barristers in chambers and one of the more junior barristers. I am afraid that the barristers' profession can discuss diversity and equal opportunity to their hearts content but when recruitment like this occurs in a chambers of this size it is completely irrelevant. It is always going to be the case that if chambers at that level recruit their own personal then anyone else will either have to set up rival chambers or alternatively work for a lesser standard of chambers. It may be that the two children of the barristers already in practice were the best suited for the role, and Seen they went on to be absolutely outstanding barristers but the point is these two people gained their pupillages using chambers to which they were already affiliated through their parents. Without any sort or recruitment process that will eliminates this (and after all why should it - I would have done exactly the same myself as a barrister when my children wanted to practice as barristers! ) then this is not a strand of the profession to go directly into unless you have family or extremely good friends who are able to assist you in your search or pupillage. The vast majority of people who comprehensive the Bar Professional Training Course do not end up as barristers. They end up working as paralegals or non-qualified attorneys with a views to taking the Legal Practice Course at a future point in their career, costing much more money. This is a false economy because the cost of completing the Bar Professional Training Course and the Legal Put into practice Course is verging on the ridiculous for the returns that you will get at a later stage in your career. So summing up I recommend anyone coming into the profession to do one of two things. 1 . If you have excellent academics and the ability to increase legal work experience to your CV to bolster this then go and try and qualify as a lawyer. Do not go down any other route. 2 . If you do not have excellent academics do not go down the route of determining to be a solicitor. You can go and get work experience and prove me wrong (and I hope you do) but you would be better suited to a life as a legal executive with a view to cross-qualifying at a in the future stage by competing the Legal Practice Course or simply being happy doing what you are doing for a legal executive. Always think - why are you going into law? What do you want to get out of it? How much how about to earn in order to get what you want out of life?

[blue-mint-winter]

About Roslin and Baltar’s trial

I’ve been thinking about Roslin’s reasons behind putting Baltar on trial, because I’ve seen many different opinions on that and whether she was right or wrong. The show itself suggests a few times that she’s doing it for revenge, while her fans are taking her side. I think as always on BSG, the truth is more complicated than that.

To preface this, I am in the unique position because I am a big fan of both characters. Roslin is my favourite female character and Baltar is my favourite male character on the show. Watching their separate stories is so much fun to me and when they have scenes together is always a special delight. I love seeing how their paths cross, how they run in parallel, how they are foils to each other, everything about them is interesting. There is a symmetry to them as they exchange their roles in the show which I deeply enjoy and appreciate. They’re both very human characters, flawed, imperfect, but striving to be better. I don’t see Roslin as some paragon of virtue because she’s clearly not and never was. She made too many awful decisions for that, but she’s made quite a lot of good calls too. A lot of her ruthlessness comes from a sense of vulnerability. She can’t afford to show kindness or mercy to the enemy and potential threats have to be dealt with or the humankind won’t survive. That’s her M.O. She’s an iron lady, not some bleeding heart of a naive schoolteacher.

Season 3 of the show is all about New Caprica. Even when the characters are lightyears away from that planet, they still carry it and what happened there in their hearts. New Caprica tainted them all and left wounds they all spent the rest of the season healing. But there is one wound left for the last - Gaius Baltar. He is the symbol of New Caprica. He gave people the promised land but it turned into a living nightmare. He was a shitty president even before the Cylons came, so it was easy to place all the blame for NC squarely on his shoulders. However, it wasn’t as if he was voted in and people followed him there, rather it was the other way around - people wanted to go to NC, so they voted for him. People trusted Baltar because he was a genius scientist, because he claimed he cared, because he was an attractive political alternative to Roslin. Humanity made a bad choice, but it is easier for them to erase the physical reminder of that mistake than admit to it. Hence the ubiquitous hatred for Baltar in the Fleet.

But Roslin’s not just an average citizen, she’s much closer to Baltar. Of course she regrets not going through with stealing the election. She had a chance to prevent all this tragedy from happening and she didn’t. She chose the higher road in the end, to be the better person and she let Baltar win. Her own nobility doomed humanity. That’s a bitter pill to swallow. It must haunt her. And I think it certainly informs her ruthless decisions in S3, like ordering the Cylon genocide. NC taught her that morals can and should be sacrificed for the sake of survival. She doesn’t want to make that same mistake again.

S3 features a fascinating reversal of roles between Roslin and Baltar. It starts with him as the puppet president and her a powerless schoolteacher. Their first scene together is when he visits her in detention center where she’s held. The show never makes it clear whether Roslin was tortured and how (I suspect food and/or sleep deprivation), but she knows others were. Regardless, she is a victim of the occupation, unjustly imprisoned. Her name is on a death list, signed by Gaius Baltar.

There are many things Laura Roslin is and I believe that one of those is vengeful. She remembers everything good or bad, and she also holds grudges. One of those grudges is for Cylons who she has a certain propensity to airlock. Not unfounded of course. That combined with her regret for not stealing the election and her belief that Baltar is a traitor and traitors should be killed is a deadly combination for Gaius.

The graphic demonstration of Roslin’s grudge against Baltar is the entire episode 3x13 Taking a Break from All Your Worries. The tables have turned, the reversal of roles is complete, but what’s done is the same thing. Roslin’s doing to Baltar what was done to her. From the very beginning of the episode we have Baltar in prison, making the noose. It’s night but the guard wakes him up when he nods off. That’s the start of torture - sleep deprivation. Then Roslin’s first visit to his cell is a purposeful replication of his visit to her cell on NC. Through the episode, she continues with various methods of torture, to interrogate him and get the admission of guilt that she so desperately wants from him - which will justify what is done to him illegally. Which will validate her despicable actions against him, because he would admit to actually deserve them. But just like Roslin did not give Gaius the information or cooperation he wanted on New Caprica, Gaius doesn’t give in to her brutal methods here. Another similarity between them is that he didn’t wish her to suffer on NC and her crying when she has him tortured. Torture horrifies both of them and I think for Roslin that was a moment when she became horrified at herself and what she was doing. No Cylon was making her do this. Her conscience woke up and it couldn’t be silenced. (Still, Gaeta got only a slap on the wrist for murder attempt on the prisoner. Interesting how Roslin’s justice works when she can better empathize with Gaeta for wanting to kill Baltar, than with Gaius who she’s deliberately putting through the exact same things she’s personally gone through. As if she can transfer her own horrors to him and finally be free of NC.)

The last on her list of things to reenact is the death warrant. Adama offers to have Gaius quietly disappeared, just like Roslin was supposed to be killed back on NC. Out of sight, out of mind. But Roslin decides to give Baltar the trial for several reasons. I think the most important one is that she wants him dead for being a traitor but she also wants the moral high ground. His torture already made her too close to being like the enemy. When Baltar is tried and found guilty - and in her belief he cannot not be found guilty - he will be legally sentenced. She will not have his blood on her hands. She will not kill him just because she has the power and means to, not as a whimsy of the President. He has to be objectively judged and sentenced to death that he deserves for his own actions. Roslin fully believes her own judgment of Baltar is correct and objective. She refuses to acknowledge her own subjectivity when it concerns him. That’s why she allows the trial - because she is convinced it will go the way she wants it and Baltar will be sentenced to death. The last factor of why she decides to put him on trial is that she’s wanted to do this since she learned about his involvement with Six before the attack. She couldn’t have done it before because the only proof she had was a memory that resurfaced when she was dying and heavily medicated. It would’ve been just her word against his. But occupation of NC gives her all the reason and proof to finally convict him for his crimes. It’s tangible, real, it didn’t happen only to her. Everyone was there, everyone suffered. She has the public with her on this.

As an aside, it’s pretty hypocritical that Zarek gets away scot free. The man was the political mastermind behind Baltar’s presidential campaign, but because he got lucky and Cylons didn’t shoot him when he refused to cooperate and then he was with Roslin on the death list, he gets a free pass from her. A lot of help he was, rotting in a cell for the whole occupation. But now he’s her pal, he gave her back the presidential seat so all is cool between them. Even more hypocritical that Roslin banned Zarek’s secret tribunal killing collaborators right and left, but for Baltar she recreates it and makes it public for everyone to watch/listen to on radio.

It’s almost funny how Baltar makes Roslin lose her cool, how easily angry he can get her. She’s completely unobjective when it comes to him. He writes a book and she’s frothing mad. She imprisons a man because he read that book. She jokes about burning the book. She humiliates Baltar to make him stop writing, she lies to make him feel small, powerless, unheard. That’s how deep her grudge against him goes. If Adama is the equivalent of Zeus, Roslin fits the characteristics of Hera to a T.

One thing I really love about the show is that in the end, it doesn’t present the ideal solution to the issue of Baltar’s trial and punishment. I’d say that the actual message is that of mercy, but there’s no whitewashing his character. Baltar during and after the trial is shown at his smarmiest, but the justice is blind. It doesn’t care about likeability of the accused, it cares about evidence.

Was Roslin right or wrong? Was it right that Baltar was exonerated? What would be a just punishment for him? That’s left for the viewers to ponder about. In my opinion, the majority of S3 already showed Baltar’s punishment. Let’s not pretend that he was having a picnic when everyone else was suffering. He’s been imprisoned, horrifically tortured TWICE, he’s been almost killed multiple times, he tried to commit suicide. He had little to no control over his life, all he could do was to cling to it. His own guilt and self-loathing poisoned him and his love with Caprica Six. He’s lost everyone he cared for and became the most hated man in the universe. He was betrayed by Gaeta. And Baltar’s informal punishment isn’t going to go away just because he was freed by the court. Season 4 barely started and already someone attempted to murder him.

I spent hours writing this meta, so sorry if I rambled too much. I’ve just got a lot of feelings and opinions about the trial, Roslin and Gaius.