#you have recurring enemies spanning YEARS

[painted-bees]

aw yay! Here's a bunch more OC questions sent my way by @wulff20ko <3

promt description: Questions about two of your original characters about their relationship. Should work for friends/lovers/coworkers/enemies/etc, maybe not so much for family, but you're welcome to try!

Answering all of these for Margie and Raf again lmao

1) How did they meet?

Like this!

2) How long have these two characters known each other? 

 Since 2008..! I think the last piece of Hi-Note writing that currently exists takes place in 2014. So–six years over the span of their story so far.

3) What were their first impressions of each other? How does that compare to their impressions of each other now?

 Raf thought Margie was a bit strange and ditzy, and she rubbed him as a pathological humble-bragger at first–which was…really unattractive to him lmfao. He initially kinda pulled at that thread in the interest of seeing the whole thing quickly unravel only to discover that she’s legitimately some manner of undiscovered genius who has absolutely no idea just how incredible she is.

  Margie thought Raf was a charismatic player “says that to all the girls” sort–with some shade of mental illness that made it all feel a little too uncanny to be fully effective. She was technically right, but quite differently from what she initially thought lmao.

  Nowadays, Raf knows Margie is his superior in several avenues; she’s a smarter, faster learner, an adaptable problem solver, a far more brilliant musician, and the most genuine, kindest, patient person he’s ever known.

  And Margie knows now that the guy she met in the train station was a fictional character that Raf employed to stand between himself and the threat of forming meaningful relationships. The real Raf is a quiet, anxious, isolated pessimist buoyed by the hope that he isn’t the only person in the world who wants to do well by others.

3) How would they describe each other if asked? Physically? In personality?

  Raf: “Margie? She’s brilliant, she’s sweet. You won’t meet a more incredible person.”

  Margie: “Raf’s a huge dork with a dorkier smirk and you just kinda gotta treat him like a cat if you want to make a good impression on him. Y’know like–just sorta ignore him, let him come to you first.”

4) Do they get along? Why or why not?

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

5) Do they have any shared interests/hobbies? Do they ever do these hobbies together?

 Pretty much most things, these days. Music, walks, rock flipping at low tide… If Margie does anything, she prefers doing them with him. Good experiences are best shared!

6) How often do they see each other? Where do they usually meet?

  Well, initially it was just every Thursday for jam sessions. And then Raf started inviting Margie to crash at his place. Now they live and work together.

7) How do they communicate with each other? Are there any recurring phrases or gestures unique to their relationship?

  Their relationship only exists as it does because of how they communicate with each other. They’ve developed a lot of little shorthand gestures to indicate to one another that things are good and there’s nothing to worry about, such as here. But there are also clear signals they provide when one needs some space or time alone, or if hugs are in order, and other such things. They’ve established a baseline understanding that when they are mad, it is never at each other–and have agreed not to assume that just because one of them is upset, it’s because they’re upset at the other specifically. The person who is upset will always take the time to explain what upset them, once they are able to properly articulate it. Until then, the priority is making sure they get the space or whatever they need to calm down and process what they’re feeling and why.   If they were unable to establish free and easy modes of communication with one another, where they don’t put each other on trial, on the spot to immediately defend their behaviour in the heat of a moment, but give each other the space and grace to process and discuss things under calmer, less volatile circumstances, the wheels would fall off this relationship real quickly, real dramatically. 

8) What is one quality they have in common?

  They love music! They love playing music–together!

9) What is one major difference between them?

  Margie is a very rosy optimist, and Raf is a very calculating pessimist. 

10) Does one act as a narrative foil to the other? How so?

  Yeah, It’s very puppy and cat. Raf’s long established career and jaded burnout vs Margie’s nascent/struggling career and bright-eyed, passionate energy. Margie’s willingness to trust and believe the best in people, vs Raf’s pathological mistrust/suspicion and the constant threats he sees hidden in the actions and words of all those around him. Margie’s ability to bounce back from failures and adapt to challenges–it’s all a learning process for her, vs Raf's stubborn rigidity and unwillingness to compromise–failure is devastating for him. Raf helps Margie keep her feet on her ground so that she can make more purposeful strides towards her goals. Margie helps drag Raf out of his paralyzing anxiety spirals, and keeps his creeping cynicism at bay.

11) Do they have any affection for each other? How do they show it?

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

12) Do they have any disdain/contempt for each other? How do they show it?

oooh…Raf, at his worst, can feel quite overwhelmed with resentment towards Margie for how much sway she has over his feelings of worth and wellbeing. At times when he feels like she fails to understand how her actions can dictate his moods, and fails to behave in a manner sensitive to this [it’s very mercurial and unpredictable what exactly this entails–what sets him off], it’s really tempting–and it feels wholly just–to lash out just to make her feel a fraction of the discomfort/hurt he’s feeling, as way of some kind of punishment. Instead, he gets really quiet and withdrawn, sometimes for a week or two. Margie understands this as “mental health is happening at him” and takes care to stay well out of his way until he’s wrestled control of his narratives again. 

Margie’s got nothing but love in her heart for Raf.

13) Do they share the same goals in life?

  Yeah! They just wanna be comfy, and loved, and make good music together. Everything to do and build together is towards that shared goal.

14) Do they trust each other? Why or why not?

  They do.   Margie’s a given, she trusts everyone.

  Raf, though, has vacillated pretty wildly between wanting to trust her by trying to brute force fake that trust until he believed it–and not trusting her at all. However, the morning she basically returned from the dead to come shambling back home to him in one piece–cemented his trust in her. He thought she had died and, in her concussed state, she was just sorry that she took so long to get back, and wanted to know if they can still play music together. He still has hiccups and moments of panic about the honesty of her relationship with him and such–but so long as he can recall the sheer relief he felt when he held her, and the absolute heartbreak she delivered to him thereafter by way of concussed murmerings–it’s irrefutable to him that she loves him very dearly and that she’ll always be there. Come hell or literal high-water.

15) Is one of them keeping secrets from the other? Why? How would they react if the secret was revealed?

  Not anymore, no.   Initially, Raf had only explained to Margie that he had PTSD. All of his paranoid behaviours and such were swept under that as their explanation. Once things had become quite a bit more serious between the two of them, Raf’s Uncle asserted that Margie was eventually gonna have to know about and understand the challenges of his paranoid personality disorder. And after some gentle coaxing about that, Raf finally relented to ask his uncle to talk to Margie about it for him–because if it was left to Raf to do it himself, it wouldn’t…go well, if it ever happened at all.

  Margie had dated a guy with schizophrenia during her time in Winnipeg, and so there wasn’t really a big scary stigma that needed to be dispelled. The schizophrenia of her previous relationship had been such a non-issue compared to what she otherwise might have expected, that it maybe gave her the idea that Raf’s PD would similarly pose no major challenges. Eehhhh…she was a little off base with that assumption, but she got up to speed on all of it eventually, and it’s mostly fine. At the very least, it didn’t change her opinion of Raf at all, and any drama that accompanied the reveal was hosted exclusively in Raf’s poor brain. 

16) Are they keeping a secret together? How do they feel about that?

  Yeah lmao Raf’s PD is no one’s business but their own. Of the people still alive, Margie, Nels, and his therapist (and Tess) are the only people who are aware of Raf’s PD. The rest of the guys at Hi-Note know he has PTSD, but that’s it. 

17) Do they view their relationship as temporary or permanent?

  Use to be temporary, until the temporary part of their relationship was almost exercised–and now it’s as permanent as a relationship can be lmao

18) Are they satisfied with their relationship? Do they wish they were closer/more distant?

  There’s always things they are working towards together, but they’re both very happy with their relationship, generally.

19) What is their best memory together?

  Oh nooo there’s so much lmfao. I think they both look back on their first year in Cortes Island very very fondly–as kind of a turning point where their lives together became a pretty ironclad thing. It was forged in fire the entire year prior, and they stuck it through–and suddenly things were easy and calm and nice again, and it just…strengthened everything quite beautifully. 

20) What is their worst memory together?

That whooole year before they arrived in Cortes Island lmao. Uncle Bills death and dealing with his estate was the most difficult test their relationship will even endure, I think.

21) When were they the most vulnerable with each other?

  Hm, this is hard, they’re vulnerable with each other pretty well all the time. Again though, the most vulnerable moments were probably during that year of grieving and dealing with Bill’s estate. Raf had basically hit a melting point and was largely incapacitated for much of the latter half, and it culminated with Margie admitting she couldn’t take care of things like he needed her to. I think they both thought the other was gonna leave, because things had stopped being fun and enjoyable, and they couldn’t carry each other out of it or provide what the other person obviously needed. Raf was just waiting for Margie to get sick and tired enough to walk, but Margie was wrecking herself on the terror that he would feel irreparably let down by her if she failed to adequately carry his burden for him when he needed her the most. In the end, Margie’s breakdown and her fear of not being and doing enough for him is what galvanized Raf to get his shit together just enough to put some real, physical distance between them and all the garbage that had piled up on them. A move that Margie had suggested months earlier, but Raf had been too stubborn/overwhelmed to properly consider at the time.

22) Do they have any mutual friends? Mutual enemies?

 All of Raf’s friends are Margie’s friends (he only really has two aside from her and Tess)–but not all of Margie’s friends are Raf’s friends. No mutual enemies, either. Solely because Margie doesn’t have anyone she’d describe as an enemy haha. Maybe Raf’s mom…but Margie has never met her, so it feels weird. She greatly dislikes everything she’s heard about the woman, though.

23) How do these two interact with each other in public versus in private?

 In public, you might think they’re just really close friends. Margie and Raf don’t engage in any explicitly romantic displays of affection in public–largely because Raf is very uncomfortable about it.

 In private, they’re in each other’s space a lot of the time, and fill silences with the occasional sappy call-and-responses that are all some shade of “guess what?” “what?” “I love you.” “Woah, I love you too–weird!” Sometimes the words they string together to carry this sentiment between each other are absolute nonsense…but they know what it means. They’re also just very content to be in the same room together, quietly doing their own thing and otherwise ignoring each other in perfect comfort.

24) If a stranger saw them together, how would they describe their relationship?

 “They seem like really good friends! They’re working together quite well!”

25) How would these characters react to being stuck in a small room with each other?

  Stuck? Well…They’d try to figure out what the deal is. And if it’s like…a busted elevator situation or something, Raf wouldn’t pause for levity until the situation was under control. But once it’s just a matter of waiting for things to become unstuck again, He and Margie would sit in each other's space and pass the time musing and joking to one another. They just enjoy each other’s company, generally.

26) How far would they go for each other? Would they risk their own lives for each other? 

  Margie would crawl out of Davy Jones's coldest locker for Raf lmao

  Raf would walk into oncoming traffic for Margie.

  But more than that, both of them would endeavor to live their healthiest, happiest lives for each other.

[nicklloydnow]

“This is not an all-out war but a decentralized one with seemingly unconnected fronts that span across continents. It is fought in a hybrid style, meaning both with tanks and planes and with disinformation campaigns, political interference, and cyberwarfare. The strategy blurs the lines between war and peace and combatants and civilians. It puts a lot of extra fog in the "fog of war."

China, Russia, and Iran disagree on many things, but they all have the same goal: ridding their regions of U.S. influence and creating a multipolar global governance system and Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow know that U.S. political and military might is the only force preventing them from imposing their will on their neighbors.

(…)

When it comes to this war, the United States is asleep at the wheel. U.S. strategy has been about preparation for a large conventional war, containment, and weak deterrence. Washington has been pitifully absent in the irregular warfare field. There are almost no punishments or accountability—besides ineffective sanctions—for the nations that attack us.

(…)

Should the Biden administration continue its ineffective course, these countries will only be emboldened. Should support for Israel or Ukraine fail, China will be more likely to invade Taiwan. Deterrence is a great strategy but only works when the other side believes you will carry out your threats. You must establish that understanding by holding your enemies accountable for moves they take against you.

(…)

The Biden administration's support for Ukraine has been a rare show of force that has sent a strong message to the world. But it isn't enough. The U.S. foreign policy establishment must recognize the hybrid war being waged against it and show up on the irregular field of battle. Like it or not, the United States is the guarantor of stability in the world. By retreating from its responsibilities, the only thing Washington is guaranteeing is dark times ahead.”

“The list encompasses not just the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, but hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, Serbian military measures against Kosovo, fighting in Eastern Congo, complete turmoil in Sudan since April, and a fragile cease-fire in Tigray that Ethiopia seems poised to break at any time. Syria and Yemen have not exactly been quiet during this period, and gangs and cartels continuously menace governments, including those in Haiti and Mexico. All of this comes on top of the prospect of a major war breaking out in East Asia, such as by China invading the island of Taiwan.

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program, which has been tracking wars globally since 1945, identified 2022 and 2023 as the most conflictual years in the world since the end of the Cold War. Back in January 2023, before many of the above conflicts erupted, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed sounded the alarm, noting that peace “is now under grave threat” across the globe. The seeming cascade of conflict gives rise to one obvious question: Why?

(…)

The first explanation holds that the cascade is in the eye of the beholder. People are too easily “fooled by randomness,” the essayist and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb admonished in his 2001 book of the same title, seeking intentional explanations for what may be coincidence. The flurry of armed confrontations could be just such a phenomenon, concealing no deeper meaning: Some of the frozen conflicts, for instance, were due for flare-ups or had gone quiet only recently. Today’s volume of wars, in other words, should be viewed as little more than a series of unfortunate events that could recur or worsen at any time.

(…)

Although coincidences certainly do occur, the current onslaught happens to be taking place at a time of big changes in the international system. The era of Pax Americana appears to be over, and the United States is no longer poised to police the world. Not that Pax Americana was necessarily so peaceful. The 1990s were especially disputatious; civil wars arose on multiple continents, as did major wars in Europe and Africa. But the United States attempted to solve and contain many potential conflicts: Washington led a coalition to oust Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from Kuwait, facilitated the Oslo Process to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fostered improved relations between North and South Korea, and encouraged the growth of peacekeeping operations around the globe. Even following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the invasion of Afghanistan was supported by many in the international community as necessary to remove a pariah regime and enable a long-troubled nation to rebuild. War was not over, but humanity seemed closer than ever to finding a formula for lasting peace.

Over the subsequent decades, the United States seemed to fritter away both the goodwill needed to support such efforts and the means to carry them out. By the early 2010s, the United States was bogged down in two losing wars and recovering from a financial crisis. The world, too, had changed, with power ebbing from Washington’s singular pole to multiple emerging powers. As then–Secretary of State John Kerry remarked in a 2013 interview in The Atlantic, “We live in a world more like the 18th and 19th centuries.” And a multipolar world, where several great powers jostle for advantage on the global stage, harbors the potential for more conflicts, large and small.

Specifically, China has emerged as a great power seeking to influence the international system, whether by leveraging the economic allure of its Belt and Road Initiative or by militarily revising the status quo within its region. Russia does not have China’s economic muscle, but it, too, seeks to dominate its region, establish itself as an influential global player, and revise the international order. Whether Russia or China is yet on an economic or military par with the United States hardly matters. Both are strong enough to challenge the U.S.-led international order by leveraging the revisionist sentiment they share with countries throughout the global South.

(…)

Suppose, though, that the proliferation of wars doesn’t have a systemic cause, but an entirely particular one. That the world owes its present state of unrest directly to Russia—and, even more specifically, to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 and its decision to continue fighting since.

The war in Ukraine, the largest war in Europe since World War II and one poised to continue well past 2024, is absorbing the attention of international actors who otherwise would have been well positioned to prevent any of the abovementioned crises from escalating. This case is not the same as the great-power distraction, in which the world’s most powerful states simply fail to focus on emerging crises. Rather, the great powers lack the diplomatic and military capacity to respond to conflicts beyond Ukraine—and other actors know it.

(…)

These three explanations—coincidence, multipolarity, Russia’s war in Ukraine—are not mutually exclusive. If anything, they are interrelated, as wars are complex events; the decline of U.S. hegemony contributes to growing multipolarity; and great-power competition has surely fed Russia’s aggression and the West’s response. The consequence is that others are caught in the great-power cross fire or will seek to start fires of their own. Even if none of these wars rise to the level of a third world war, they will be devastating all the same. We do not need to be in a world war to be in a world at war.

Wars were already a persistent feature of the international system. But they were not widespread. War was always happening somewhere, in other words, but war was not happening everywhere. The above dynamics could change that tendency. The prevalence of war, not just its persistence, could now be our future.”

[roadandruingame]

RaR Musings #19.2: Market Saturation

There are WAY more ttrpgs out there than anybody realizes. I don't think it's possible to not be surprised by the knowledge that itch.io has 40 000 ttrpgs listed, 75% of which are available for free. But I would hazard to guess that most of them fall into one of three categories, all of which contribute to bloat for different reasons:

One Page Rules. There's nothing inherently wrong with this game format, but the speed of development and shallowness of play mean that it very rapidly blows out the listings. Too many options only bewilders people looking for something to play, and while they might pick one at random, learn it, and play it, and have fun, all in the span of an afternoon, they all start to blur together, until it's this insurmountable wall of products that really don't contribute anything meaningful to the medium.

Reinventing The Wheel. Arguably Road and Ruin can fall into this category, but a lot of them are simply making a game for the sake of it. They aren't really game designers, and they bombard rpg boards and forums with questions like "does this dice system make sense?", "I have an idea, does anyone know if it's been done before", and so on. Generic Medieval Fantasy RPG #23,489 is hardly going to make much of an impact on things, and due to either an overfamiliarity with a single product, never having played another product, or possibly only ever having played a single game session, they end up applying a lot of their resources toward reinventing things that have already been made a hundred times over, believing themselves to be some remarkable visionary.

D20 Reskins. This is a little like reinventing the wheel, but I personally loathe this more than the other two. The D20 system that originated in Dungeons and Dragons isn't a bad system, and it's had some 40-50 years and dozens of designers and hundreds of thousands of players to refine it into a game that is just complicated enough and just easy enough to learn and play that it still dominates the market. But for the love of god, stop reskinning DND. It's infuriating that there is still so much fanatic loyalty to a game system that is, often, and often intentionally, underdeveloped and pushed out for a quick buck, and prospective designers who take that disappointment and direct it toward a new DND, one with new classes (they're the same), new enemies (they're the same), new places, items, spells, or mechanics. The world of D20 reskins and DND homebrew is a massive wasteland, players relying on influencers and streamers to tell them how to play and sifting through the ashes for the occasional nugget of good game design, that just gets lost in the noise of everyone cannibalizing a broken and underdeveloped product for whatever scrap of attention and ad revenue that they can get. A couple decades of "don't worry, YOU make the game!" will do that to you.

Any of the above that are successful are rarely the result of good design. OPRs like Goblin With A Fat Ass are more about shock value, getting a giggle out of entertainment junkies who flit from one novelty to the next, desperate for anything that can be sensationalized for even a microsecond. I've heard of maybe 8 "Avatar the Last Airbender" ttrpg projects in the last couple of years, and that's just since I started reading places that they're posted in, and half of any "brand new ttrpg" based on a recognized license is just a D20 reskin, hastily cobbling together any mechanics like guns or driving that aren't readily available in DND.

No, the ones that are successful are the result of clout. DNDtubers and streamers who command an audience of thousands are a great source of recurring ad revenue and product pushing for anything anyone wants to pay them to sell, and the hit-the-ground-running success of rpgs created by prominent streamers in the wake of the WOTC implosion are solely due to that clout. They might not be good designers, they might not be able to do much beyond fix DND, and they might never have built a game before, but that doesn't matter, here's four million dollars.

I sound bitter about this. In a way, I am. Despite making Road and Ruin for fun, I can't deny that I haven't fantasized once or twice about the project getting fans. Even a hundred, even fifty, even twenty, ten, FIVE people who look at what I've done, and genuinely like it, who'd be excited for new developments as I continue to expand on options for probably the rest of my life.

I think about what would have happened if I'd released Road and Ruin a couple years ago, before the "fracturing of the fanbase", or even during it, amidst the clamor of streamers all announcing their own projects. What would happen if I released it now, or what would happen if I waited a couple years for the market of non-DND games to grow a little, as more people accept that DND isn't the only game in town. Is there an opportunity anywhere? Was there, and I missed it?

Then I remember that I'm making this game for me, for fun, and that's all it should be. I already hold myself to a lofty standard, but one of quality, not one of fame and fortune or popularity. I shouldn't anticipate any success, but if I want others to like the game, I should continue considering what other people want, what other people feel. I shouldn't ever put anything in my life on hold, using the project as an excuse, or prioritize it over anything important. It won't be going anywhere, and neither will I.

[tea-earl-grey]

Weapon of Choice "live"blog

yeah sorry it's really long so i'm putting it under a cut.

also obviously spoilers for this episode but also spoilers for the whole Gallifrey series as i mention a few future plot points.

i swear to god i can recite this entire episode from memory. it’s so engrained in me.

Nepenthe’s description of the bondspeople (slaves) is such a good parallel to Leela’s role in Gallifrey. she is tied to this planet forever whether she wants to or not and when she leaves, she will be condemned to death.

also. thinky thoughts on why the Warpsmiths changed to Warpwrights and why the element of their being non-corporeal was almost entirely dropped. i mean. i think the human slavery thing was maybe not the right tone for future Gallifrey releases & i think there were copyright issues with the term “Warpsmiths” but i like to imagine that sometime in the gap between season 6 & Enemy Lines, there was some sort of civil conflict that led to two factions – Warpsmiths vs Warpwrights. maybe the Warpwrights advocated an end to the bondspeople/slavery aspect of their existence and advocated for a permanent corporeal existence (maybe through synthetic bodies or something?) rather than temporarily inhabiting various humans for 80 years at a time. idk. i’m desperate for more worldbuilding around the temporal powers.

forever really want to study Andred’s weird political opinions. he obviously isn’t as xenophobic as other Time Lords (not a high bar to clear btw) and he does genuinely see aliens as people but the weird pretense of xenophobia he’s had to maintain in his disguise as Torvald (if it was ever a pretense) has just warped his view & moral compass so much… he’s fascinating to me.

i'll never love anyone as much as I love the s1-3 theme song.

NARVIN. BRAX. I MISSED THEM SO MUCH.

i genuinely don’t think I’ve listened to any Brax audios since I finished my novel-length character study about him so uh. this will be interesting.

i love Narvin & Brax’s shitty workplace relationship so much. they are such good foils to each other (i’ll expand on this in a future post i’m sure)

ROMANA. MY WIFE. I’VE MISSED HER.

Seán Carlsen is simply so good at playing Narvin. he’s always so earnest when he could have just portrayed Narvin as another sleazy Time Lord. but Narvin cares so much! even if before his character development it's for the wrong things!

Narvin saying that Project Alpha is “hardly relevant” after knowing the events of The Inquiry is SO FUCKING FUNNY. man really lost a version of the device they’re looking for, literally saw it vanish in front of him, and then thought this has absolutely no bearing on the fact that someone now claiming to have this device. i know you were trying to cover your ass here but... c'mon.

WHAT DOES BRAX MEAN WHEN HE SAYS THAT NARVIN & HIM ARE THE LAST SURVIVING TIME LORDS TO KNOW ABOUT PROJECT ALPHA??? like Time Lords live for thousands of years and Narvin & Brax are both implied to be pretty young during Project Alpha and were the most junior members involved. like did the CIA really kill everyone else associated with the project? why spare Brax? why was no one else recruited to the CIA like Narvin? (it is a recurring minor problem i have with the show that the entire span of events from here to the Time War could only cover a couple of hundred years which. is not that long for Time Lords. and yet anyone else who worked in the government or CIA before Romana’s presidency is entirely gone after s3. sure a lot of them probably died in the Civil War but all of them? did they all see the mess that was happening and just nope out? i mean i know in a novel i think it was stated that there was a big overhaul of the government after Trial of a Time Lord due to general corruption (which is how Romana got so high up in politics so quickly) but… i need more answers y’all)

LEELA.

i really wish we got to see her and the Outsiders together more (on Gallifrey Prime at least). like she ostensibly had contact with them since before the series (and i headcanon that she often went to stay with them on trips away from the Capitol) so she never really talks about them. could she feel herself growing more distant from them over time as she became more engrained in the fabric of Gallifreyan politics? as she became more and more of a Time Lord without her even noticing?

still so fucked up that we never actually get to see Andred & Leela happy (in the audios at least, they are in Lungbarrow together!)

lots of feelings about how the Outsiders are so removed from Time Lord society that they can’t tell the difference between a Cardinal & a Guard because presumably they associate any uniformed Time Lord with the Chancellery Guard as that’s the only body of Time Lord society they have contact with

"Many of these arrivals claim they cannot return to their own time. Apparently. Oh you wouldn’t believe the excuses. ‘Oh the Daleks will get us!’" Obviously Narvin at this point is just hideously xenophobic but god the fact that he’s making fun of refugees from the Dalek wars when that will eventually become himself is so wonderfully prophetic. Especially as when this was written, the Dalek version of the Time War didn’t exist yet.

obsessed with how Narvin rolls the r in Gryben in this scene. hello? i don’t remember him every rolling his rs again.

it’s been said a million times but Romana’s hypocrisy in being extremely moderate in her compassion for refugees as a whole but entirely compassionate to Leela (albeit in a patronizing way) is so delicious and is never really something that she makes an effort to fix over the course of the series. like. again she’s less xenophobic than other Time Lords but the amount she cares and is willing to make exceptions is so deeply attached to her personal feelings. (which is perhaps the reason why she’s always making exceptions for herself both out of egotism & self-hatred)

again it’s been said before but Narvin’s character development from here to being the leader of a resistance movement against Gallifrey is so fucking delicious

“If I knew anymore, I would tell you.” says the woman who allegedly has access to all of the information recorded in the universe

my Andred/Leela & Romana thoughts deserve a separate post. stay tuned.

i don’t normally outright headcanon a lot of characters with specific disabilities/neurodivergencies but Leela is autistic and i will die on this hill

i’ll never be over how absolutely horrible all of these characters are at intelligence work despite all of them, at one point or another, working for supposedly the most powerful intelligence organization in the universe

“Lapdog of Rassilon” is such a loaded insult considering the future of this show

Leela’s monologue about how she hates the Time Lords will never not be so good. and her criticisms of them are so well followed through the rest of the show

Leela threatening to kill “Torvald” from Andred’s perspective is so wonderfully fucked up and tragic

“That’s so CIA. All intervention, no intelligence.” has to be one of the funniest lines in the show tbh.

the true eventual role reversal in this show is that in ep 1, Braxiatel is the only character talking sense and being reasonable and by the end of the show he’ll be threatening to destroy most of the universe to save a single planet (i have complicated feelings about Beyond but. i love that he got so much Worse)

“Torvald” insulting Andred to Leela’s face by calling him liberal will never not be funny

“We are all of us willing to die to defend our beliefs.” GOD THIS LINE!!!!! it’s really one of my favorites in the whole series because it’s such wonderful foreshadowing because 1) as we’ve all pointed out numerous times, Romana reallllly can’t stop martyring herself. as in. she tries to kill herself “for the greater good” at least 20 times in this series (literally in half of the episodes she appears in). 2) though her self sacrificing nature remains consistent, over time and especially in the Time War series, she tries to self sacrifice more and more for her friends, not for Gallifrey or for lofty ideals (this can probably best be seen in Unity where Romana’s supposed last words to a Dalek she knows will kill her is “I will never betray those I love”). 3) aside from Romana specifically, it’s also just kind of the main thesis of the show. Wynter dies in an effort to stop Pandora/save Gallifrey. Andred dies because he finally decided his loyalties to genuine compassion for people means more than politics. Braxiatel sacrifices himself to Pandora to save Romana. even villains like Darkel die because she so adamantly won’t budge from her traditionalist/conservative views. as the Doctor would say – "Who I am is where I stand and where I stand is where I fall."

THAT’S THE TROUBLE WITH BEING A MARTYR. WE DON’T BACK DOWN, DO WE?

the mention that one day Braxiatel will own a K9 is one of the things that I was never quite able to fit into atbm

“I only go forward.” ironic statement from a woman who was literally created to bring back an ancient line of dictators

the fact that Arkadian is only in three episodes is such a travesty. he’s the only character aware that of the genre that he’s in and he’s having a blast with that self-awareness

Romana’s last line here being “I’m planning on keeping this job for a very, very long time.” ends up being so sinister knowing what she does to keep her position, how she eventually keeps trying to escape the Presidency & Gallifrey and yet it always draws her back in…

hey

did you know that i really love this series?

[firebirdsdaughter]

Actually…

… Now that I think about it, that would have made so much more sense.

Jack was involved in all of the Ghost incidents right up until the last one (and that was due to the actor wanting out), like 2x12 was literally about Mac and Jack’s past and relationship… Feels like it’d fit in to have Jack allegedly taken out by the Ghost’s final bomb would be very tragic and poetic, and a great parallel to Mac’s last father figure. Bc pain.

[dwellordream]

“A millennium of detailed descriptions of Amazons presented as history began with Herodotus (fifth century BC) and continued through the late antique authors Orosius and Jordanes (fifth–sixth centuries AD). Between the lifetimes of these men, many other Greek and Roman historians also chronicled the origins, rise, and fall of the legendary Amazon “empire.” Each of these writers had access to texts and unwritten traditions that no longer exist today. Their accounts commingle fact and fancy, legend and history, but all identify the women called Amazons as Scythians.

Herodotus, the inquisitive Greek historian from Halicarnassus (Caria, part of the Persian Empire), preserved a treasury of information about the many tribes of Near and Far Scythia, based on personal observations, local histories and legends, and interviews. Admiration for resourceful, self-reliant Amazons is evident in Herodotus’s “historical” account of the origin of the Sarmatians. That story (recounted in the next chapter) tells how a gang of Amazons from Pontus joined a band of young Scythian men from the northern Black Sea and relocated to form a new ethnolinguistic group, a realistic option in the nomadic context of flexibility, alliances, and constant movement around the Black Sea and steppes.

About a century after Herodotus, in 380 BC, the Athenian orator Isocrates named the three most dangerous enemies of Athens: the Thracians, “the Scythians led by the Amazons,” and the Persians. Isocrates was harking back to glorious victories when “Hellas was still insignificant.” He reminded his audience that the first Athenians had repelled an “invasion of the Scythians, led by the Amazons.” Isocrates was alluding to the mythic Battle for Athens, which the Athenians treated as a historical event (chapter 17). After their defeat, Isocrates recalls, the army of women did not return to Pontus but went to live with their Scythian allies in the north. The Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily (65–50 BC) also wrote about Amazons, associating them with Saka-Scythian women who were as brave and aggressive in battle as the men. He pointed to the historical example of Zarina, who led a Saka-Parthian coalition to victories against tribes who wanted to enslave them (her story appears in chapter 23).

For his research on Amazon history, Diodorus consulted works by Ctesias (a Greek physician who settled in Persia around 400 BC) and Megasthenes (a Greek ethnographer who traveled to India ca. 350–290 BC). According to Diodorus’s sources, after a series of “revolutions” in Scythia, the Scythians were often ruled by strong women “endowed with exceptional valor”; they “train for war just like the men and in acts of manly courage they are in no way inferior to the men.” Many of these women accomplished “many great deeds, not just in Scythia, but in the lands bordering Scythia.”

At some point in the past, Pontus became home to a Scythian group governed by women who rode to war beside their men. One woman (Diodorus does not give her name) possessed extraordinary authority, superb intelligence, physical strength, and battle prowess. This brilliant leader trained a handpicked force of fighting women and began subduing neighboring lands. She founded Themiscyra at the mouth of the Thermodon in Pontus. Filled with pride “as the tide of her fortunes” rose, she began calling herself “Daughter of Ares,” the war god. Under this “kindly ruler beloved by her subjects, young girls were taught to hunt and they drilled daily in the arts of war.” She continued to lead her special army on wars of further conquest, advancing as far north as the Don River. So far there is nothing incredible in Diodorus’s account of a group of Scythians led by a successful female commander at some point in the distant past.

But in the following passage we can glimpse mythography in process, as the plausible is transformed into something more sensational. Ordinary Scythian society is twisted into an ominous “rule of hubristic women” scenario, a reversal of what was normal in the Mediterranean world, bound to titillate Diodorus’s audience. This powerful “queen,” declares Diodorus, enacted new laws that created a true gynocracy in Pontus, in which the women would always be sovereign and trained for warfare. She assigned men to domestic tasks, spinning wool and caring for children. She ordered that baby boys’ legs were to be maimed and girls would have one breast seared. From then on, Diodorus tells us, this Scythian tribe ruled exclusively by women was known as the Amazons and their queens were called “Daughters of Ares.”

This first great Amazon queen died heroically in battle. Her daughter (also unnamed) surpassed her mother’s great accomplishments, relates Diodorus, conquering lands around the Black Sea from the Don to Thrace, and she even made forays south into Syria. For many generations, these queens’ descendants continued to advance the Amazon nation in power and fame. Their decline began when the Greek hero Her- acles killed their queen, Hippolyte. Then Theseus abducted Antiope and made her his wife in Athens. In retaliation, the Amazons, aided by other Scythians, invaded Greece and besieged the Acropolis. But meanwhile, the native Anatolians they had conquered saw a chance to ex- ploit the Amazons’ absence. They united to make war against the few Amazons guarding Pontus.

These wars were so successful, says Diodorus, that the great race of Amazons of Pontus was essentially erased from history. Soon the Amazons were so diminished that only a few scattered bands remained. One of these small vestigial bands, led by Penthesilea, helped to defend Troy in the legendary Trojan War. People “in my day wrongly consider the ancient stories about the Amazons to be fictitious tales,” declares Diodorus. He explains why. After the Amazons lost the great Battle for Athens, the surviving Amazons gave up the idea of returning to Pontus, because it was ravaged by wars while they were away. Echoing Isocrates, above, Diodorus says the defeated Amazons accompanied their allies “the Scythians, into Scythia.” Thus the great Amazon empire vanished—absorbed back into the steppes of Scythia.

Strabo, a well-traveled native of Pontus, also speaks of the Amazons as an ethnic group consisting of both men and women. These people had once lived on the coast of Pontus, “the plain of the Amazons,” but were driven out. Strabo reports that some say they still live in the mountains of Caucasian Albania (eastern Georgia and Azerbaijan), while others place them in the northern foothills of the Caucasus. According to Strabo, the Amazon tribe was seminomadic and not all female. “When they were at home, they planted crops . . . and raised and trained horses, but the bravest among them spent most of their time away, hunting on horseback and making war.” Strabo’s account is another realistic description of a typical pastoral, seminomadic lifestyle, in which men and women could choose to hunt and campaign together or in segregated groups.

Scythians and Amazons received special attention in a work of the first century BC by Pompeius Trogus, a historian of Celtic roots with encyclopedic knowledge. His lost history was summarized and elaborated by Justin, who probably lived in the second century AD. The Scythians are described as battle-hardened warriors who prized inde- pendence and repelled all would-be conquerors. Trogus and Justin are clear that Amazons were Scythian women, capable of making war when they chose to. Scythian men and women were equals in heroic exploits, remarks Justin, making it “difficult to decide which of the two sexes had the more distinguished history.” Scythian men founded the Baktrian and Parthian empires, he reports, while Scythian women founded the Amazonian empire.

Once when the Scythian men were away for fifteen years making war in Asia, the women sent their husbands a message: If you don’t return home we will have sex with the neighboring tribe and the result- ing children will carry on the Scythian race. This story appears to refer to the seventh–sixth centuries BC during the Scythians’ conquests across western Asia, when there would have been long spans of years when most of the men were away. This theme of Scythian women taking up with other men of their own choosing recurs in many nomadic and Amazon traditions.

Herodotus, for example, relates that while the Scythians from the Don region were away for nearly thirty years campaigning against the Cimmerians and Medes, their women “consorted with the male slaves.” The women and their new consorts not only raised a whole generation of children to adulthood, but together they created an army to oppose the male warriors when they came home. In Justin’s account, the men returned home after receiving their women’s message. But in his detailed story of the origin of the Amazons of Pontus we hear about yet another group of resourceful Scythian women whose men had been killed in battle.

On the northern Black Sea, wrote Justin, two young Scythians named Plynus and Skolopitus were forced out of their homeland by a faction. They assembled a large band of young men and traveled south over the Caucasus Mountains and occupied Pontus. “From their new base in Pontus, they plundered the nearby lands for a long time.” At last, the native peoples rose up. They ambushed and slaughtered most of the Scythian men. “The Scythians’ wives now perceived that they were widows as well as outsiders. They took up arms and defended their territory. And then the women went on the attack. They refused to marry, calling it slavery.”

These women, says Justin, “embarked on an enterprise unparalleled in all history,” creating and defending a state without men. They even killed the hus- bands who had survived by remaining at home, so that no woman would seem more fortunate than those who had lost their men. Next they avenged their husbands’ deaths by destroying the guilty local tribes. In the peace that followed, they had sex with neighboring peoples so that their bloodline would not die out. The Amazons of Pontus killed baby boys and raised the girls to ride horses, kill game, and train for combat “instead of keeping them in idleness or working with wool” like Greek wives.

An earlier fragmentary version of this Amazon origin tale comes from the geographer Skymnos of Chios (ca. 185 BC). In his account, a group of Maeotians led by two young men named Ilinus and Skolopitus journeyed from the Sea of Azov over the Caucasus and settled in Pontus. After the men were killed by an uprising of the natives, the women took up arms and became successful warriors in their own right. The warrior women were later conquered by the Greeks and dispersed back to the north. These “Amazons and their husbands” migrated back to the land west of the Don and continued to be known as Maeotians. Skymnos clearly identifies Amazons as women of Scythian origins. See chapter 22 for a historical warrior queen of the Maeotians, Tirgatao.)

The geographer Pomponius Mela, writing in about AD 43, located Amazons on the steppes around the Don, the Sea of Azov, and the Caspian Sea, and also in the vast expanse eastward toward the land of the Seres (“Silk People,” China). In Pontus, on the Thermodon plain, a place called “Amazonius” had long ago been an encampment of Amazons when they dominated Anatolia. They had worshipped Artemis at Ephesus and named the town of Cyme on the Aegean coast after the Amazon leader who drove out the native inhabitants (Cyme issued coins showing an Amazon and a prancing horse). The steppes, he wrote, are rich in pastures and they are occupied by the Amazons. The Maeotians around the Sea of Azov are called Gynaecocratumenoe (“Ruled by Women”). The men are archers on foot, while the women ride on horse-back and lasso enemies with lariats. There is no predictable age for women to marry, noted Pomponius Mela, because the women remain single until they prove themselves in battle.

Pliny the Elder, the Roman natural historian writing in about AD 70, uses words and names similar to those used by Skymnos and Pomponius Mela. Pliny calls the Sarmatians Gynaecocratumenoe (“Ruled by Women”) and also refers to the “Amazons and their husbands.” A century later, during the Roman defeat of the Goths in Thrace (AD 270– 275), the Romans referred to the captive Gothic women as “Amazons.” Orosius, a learned and well-traveled Christian historian of the early fifth century AD, consulted numerous classical sources, such as Livy, Tacitus, Diodorus, and Justin, as well as Trogus and other texts that no longer survive, including traditional foundation tales of cities that claimed Amazons in their past. In his History Against the Pagans, Orosius tells how the Amazons came to rule in long-ago Pontus. Orosius’s history recaps Diodorus’s account, above, but supplies proper names and details from Justin’s account.

Orosius also inserts his own views. One of Orosius’s important sources was Justin, who reported that the ancient Amazons of Pontus were ruled by a pair of queens named Martesia (Marpesia, “Snatcher or Seizer”) and Lampeto (Lampedo, “Burning Torch”). Justin says the corulers divided their all-women forces and took turns leading conquering armies and defending Pontus (Orosius says they drew lots). According to Orosius, Lampedo led the invading Amazon army to subdue most of Thrace and captured some cities of Anatolia, founding Ephesus and other towns. Her victorious army “laden with rich booty,returned to Pontus.But she found that the other half of the forces that had remained with Queen Marpesia to protect their empire had been cut to pieces in a battle.”

Marpesia’s daughter, Sinope, succeeded her mother, giving her name to Sinope in Pontus. As a “crowning achievement to her matchless reputation for courage,” says Orosius, Sinope remained a virgin to the end of her life.” So great was the “admiration and fear spread by her fame” that when Heracles was ordered to bring the weapons of the Amazon queen to his master, he was “certain that he would face inevitable peril.” Orosius expected his Christian audience to be shocked and outraged by the “shame and human error” of powerful women of antiquity willfully dominating men, choosing foreign lovers, killing baby boys, building cities, and marching out to conquer. Unlike Justin, who plainly admired the “unparalleled enterprise” of the women, Orosius is the first ancient writer to explicitly express disapproval of the “unnatural” state of independent Scythian women who behaved as the equals of men. Yet even Orosius cannot suppress his admiration for the Amazons of yore. In a surprising conclusion, Orosius praises the sublime courage of the four greatest Amazon queens, Hippolyte, Melanippe, Antiope, and Penthesilea.

Notably, in 2006, archaeologists discovered magnificent life-size portraits of the famous quartet of Amazon queens, Hippolyte, Antiope, Melanippe, and Penthesilea, in a mosaic floor of the ruins of a villa under a parking lot in ancient Edessa (Sanliurfa, Turkey) . The action-packed scenes are unusual because they show the queens hunting lions and leopards instead of making war. The spectacular mosaics at the Villa of the Amazons were made in the fifth or sixth century AD, in the period when Orosius was writing his history of the pagans. The power of ancient Amazon stories to thrill had not faded after four centuries of Christianity.

Another author of later antiquity, an Alan-Goth from the northern Caucasus named Jordanes, wrote a fascinating history of the Goths— laced with heaping doses of fiction—in AD 551. Jordanes, who had access to ancient Gothic and Alan traditions, portrayed the Goths, who migrated from Europe to the steppes, as the heirs of the Scythians “whom ancient tradition asserts to have been the husbands of the Amazons.” Here is yet another succinct expression of the ancient understanding of Amazons as Scythian women. Jordanes says that the Amazons once dwelled around the Sea of Azov, from the Borysthenes to the Don—and he claims the Amazon queens Marpesia and Lampeto as the ancient “ancestors” of the Goths.

In Jordanes’s Gothocentric version of the old legends told by Justin and Orosius, long ago while the Goth men were away on an expedition, an enemy tribe attempted to carry off the Goth women. But “they made a brave resistance, as they had been taught to do by their husbands.” After routing the attackers, the Goth women “were inspired with great daring.” They took up arms and chose as their leaders the two boldest women, Marpesia and Lampeto. In this Gothic rendition, it was Marpesia who led an army of conquest while Lampeto stayed to guard their native land. On her campaigns Marpesia and her Amazon army encamped for a long time at the eastern tip of the Caucasus range where it meets the Caspian Sea (ancient Caucasian Albania, now Dagestan), one of the major nomad migration routes described earlier. This place, says Jordanes, was thereafter called the “Rock of Marpesia.” This legend was already known in the first century BC to Virgil, who calls it the “Marpesian Cliff.”

Jordanes lists the glorious conquests across Anatolia and Armenia by the “Scythian-born women who had by chance gained control over the tribes of Asia and held them for almost a hundred years, before returning to their kinsfolk at the Marpesian Rock.” Amazons retained “power in that region up to the time of Alexander the Great” (here Jordanes alludes to Alexander’s meeting with Amazons on the southern shore of the Caspian; chapter 20). By Jordanes’s time—more than a thousand years after Homer and Herodotus—the fame of the warlike Scythian women, called Amazons, evoked such respect and awe that the legendary Amazon queens were claimed as ancestors of the powerful Goths.”

- Adrienne Mayor, “Scythia, Amazon Homeland.” in The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World

[lexa-lives-in-us]

Yasha finding out about what really is going on behind the scenes with the A.O.I (Angel of Irons) Organization. Break my heart please.

Part 13 of ???

Read 1 - 2 - 3 - 4  - 5 - 6  - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12

Dairon doesn’t get the full story until lunch time rolls around.

Caduceus, Veth and Marion whip out a full three course meal in the span of one hour, and Dairon has finally the chance to see the last room of the base.

They limp towards the kitchen, ignoring Beau’s offers to help, and crash on the nearest chair, taking a good look around.

It’s a poorly lit, big room, with stoves, fridge and countertop across the opposite wall from one of the two doors. Dairon sees Veth disappear behind another, and they make a note of exploring it later. In the middle of the room, a long table is already filled with silverware, food and drinks. It can host up to fifteen people, but the Nein plus Marion crowd the side where Dairon is already sitting.

Marion meets their eyes and Dairon averts their gaze, barely suppressing a smile.

The woman takes a seat next to them, and Dairon gets immediately kicked in the shin. When they look up at her, Marion is looking straight ahead with a smirk on her face.

This woman.

***

They devour the food in silence, everyone too absorbed in their own plate, still too exhausted and recovering from last night to dare speaking.

Dairon themselves barely looks up from the delicious meal, too famished to partake in even the smallest of conversations.

Only when every dish is cleared and Caduceus is readying the kettle, Dairon sits back.

“So. Does anyone want to explain?” they ask.

The Nein look around the table, exchanging a series of glances. Jester clears her voice.

“Remember the A of I?”

Dairon nods, but next to them, Marion shakes her head.

“Not going to lie,” Dairon adds then. “I can use a refresher on what you guys did. I only remember it involved Yasha and then, of course, all of you.”

They all nod, the mood suddenly very dark.

Marion reaches for Dairon’s hand from under the table, and Dairon can’t negate that request. Their fingers intertwine.

Above the table, though, Beau is doing the same with Yasha. Their hands join, and Beau looks at her wife and her wife only. Yasha smiles at her and nods. She thanks softly Caduceus as he places a steaming mug in front of her, then takes a deep breath.

As Caduceus gives a cup to everyone, Yasha starts recounting.

Yasha sticks her head around the corner, making sure that nobody is present. It’s not like she’s never been down in the basement, but it’s also not one of her favorite places, and it’s most certainly somewhere she should be without a specific order. She is ready to lie, of course, but she would really rather she didn’t have to.

She is a terrible liar after all.

Obann doesn’t keep her around for her charisma, that is for sure.

Yasha rounds the corner, hand near the leg holster, ready to whip out her weapon at any suspicious movement.

Luckily for her, the hallways seem to be empty.

She can’t hear a single sound coming from either direction, so she keeps walking, and finally uses the key she’s borrowed from one of the others to open the door of the record room.

She sneaks inside, locking the door behind her and turning the light on.

The neon lights come to life with a buzz, illuminating the rows of shelves with a sick green ray.

She roams around them for a few minutes, trying to find a sign that tells her where the files starting with N are.

Finally, she notices a very faint labeling system at the bottom of each row, and then it’s a matter of minutes before she finds a bow with NT-NZ scribbled on the front.

She extracts the box, hesitating for just a moment.

She shouldn’t be here.

She should be upstairs, where Obann and the others are resting, or getting ready and trained for the next mission. Not down here. Not sneaking around like a criminal, looking over files that could-

Files that could either confirm that Beauregard Lionett is indeed the enemy or that could instead destroy every single certainty she’s had of her adult life.

Yasha bites her lower lip.

Because one thing is unfortunately very true.

She doesn’t remember her childhood. At all. She remembers coming to terms with a sort of amnesia, a result of having hit her head too hard during training, or during a mission, but that is pretty much it.

Obann has told her she is being with the Angels of Iron since birth, where she has being trained and educated, loved and cared for. And Yasha has never really questioned anything. She simply does what Obann tells her to do, and although sometimes some mission is not exactly her cup of tea, Obann has always been very clear and reassuring in telling her that they’re doing it for the best of causes.

But Yasha isn’t as dense as her companions believe her to be.

And Beau.

Because there is Beau.

Beautiful, strong, smart Beauregard Lionett.

A CIA Agent.

And Yasha isn’t well versed in American politics or whatever, but she’s pretty sure the CIA is supposed to be the good guys. Or something like that. But Obann hates them. Obann has told her to eliminate any CIA threat on sight.

Yasha doesn’t understand.

Because Beau has talked to her. They’ve talked a lot, actually. And Beau has told her that the Angels of Iron are not, in fact, good. Quite the opposite, really.

And Beau... Beau has kissed her. Beau has looked at her in a way that Yasha only remembers being looked at once, although the details are still blurry.

There’s a woman, a young girl, in her past, that Yasha doesn’t remember. She has a name, but she can’t remember a face. Zuala, the name is. She’s asked Obann about her, but he’s just shrugged and told her to move on.

And Yasha had.

But now she can’t.

Not anymore.

Because Beau has pushed her away from danger, Beau has almost gotten a bullet for her, no longer than a week ago, and Yasha can’t stand the idea of not knowing anymore.

So she places the box on the ground, sits cross legged on the cold concrete floor and finds her file.

Nydoorin, Yasha.

It’s a thick one.

Yasha takes a deep breath, then opens it.

The first page is a birth certificate, in Russian. Born in Novosibirsk, Siberia from [REDACTED] Nydoorin and [REDACTED] Nydoorin. Yasha blinks. She presses a finger on the black rectangular lines, where her parents names have been erased, possibly forever.

Swallowing a lump of tears and bile, Yasha flips the page. It a report, once again with several sections erased, with the Angels of Iron’s letterhead.

Yasha skims through the document, of several pages, noticing how entire sections seem to have been cancelled off.

“The child is above average. The vitals are [REDACTED]. The child appears to be healthy enough for the project. [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] Nydoorin have refused to sign the child off to the organization. [REDACTED] might be necessary.”

“Obtainment of the child is an asset.”

“Approval from [REDACTED] has been received.”

“Proceed with obtainment.”

Yasha remembers witnessing a car crash, one day, a few years back. She remembers how horrible it had been, to see the bodies burn and the people scream without being able to do anything to help them.

It’s exactly how she feels now.

She wants to close everything and run, but she can’t stop reading.

She flips another page, and a set of pictures clipped to a paper appear in front of her.

One is a picture of two adults, a man and a woman, smiling in a hospital room with a newborn baby in their arms. The woman has gentle features, gentle eyes, big hands, large shoulders and long, wavy hair. The man is very tall, with an athletic build, and a nose that Yasha sees in the mirror every day.

The baby is asleep, a small fist curled and closed on her mother’s thumb.

They look peaceful. Happy.

A tear falls on the picture, and Yasha wipes it away slowly, hesitating with her finger on the shape of her father’s face.

She forces herself to move on and look at the other pictures.

A child, with long, dark black hair collected into a braid, stands next to two more girls, one of them with red hair, the other with dark brown ones. Three year old Yasha’s eyes are focused. Her little body is not all that little, compared to the two other children, standing tall above them.

They all seem to be wearing the same uniform.

Other pictures show Yasha’s growth, in that same uniform, and picture her fighting other girls, training in both hand to hand and weapon combat.

The reports the pictures are attached to talk about her.

“Agent Y is skilled.”

“Agent Y mastered the course.”

“Agent Y is fit and ready for combat.”

Yasha keeps going through pictures and files, and every report she reads confirms her suspicions, confirms what Beau has told her about the Angels of Iron.

She starts to see a recurring pattern.

A woman, next to her or behind her or in front of her. A woman with gentle eyes, dark hair and a shit eating grin. Yasha knows immediately who this girl is. As she goes back to the first picture, she recognizes her as one of the two other toddlers in uniform.

“Zuala...” Yasha whispers.

Yasha reads everything once more, looking for signs. And she finds them.

“Agent Y and Agent Z work well together.”

“Agent Z has punched another Agent who was making fun of Agent Y. Investigation required.”

“Agent Y and Agent Z have been found within Agent Y’s quarters, in a compromising situation.”

“Agent Y is a precious asset. Agent Z has been removed from the project.”

Attached to that one file, a single picture.

A black bag, with a dark skinned arm poking out of it. In the background, Yasha sees herself, spine ramrod straight, no emotion on her face.

Yasha stares at the picture, and presses a palm against her mouth, to prevent...

To prevent her to scream, or to puke, or both. She’s not exactly sure.

She stares and stares, and details form back into her memory. Details of Zuala. Of nights together. Of days together. They’re blurred and they’re vague, but they’re memories.

She exhales, trying to swallow a surge of vomit into her throat, and flips the page. It’s a medical report.

She skims through it almost in a haze.

An injection. A cocktail of drugs. An experiment.

Memories being wiped.

A new life. A new Agent. A new Yasha.

More obedient, now that she doesn’t remember. More loyal, now that she has being cleared of distractions.

The last page is a picture in colors.

It’s recent, way too recent. Yasha remembers this one.

It’s herself, her recent self. And next to her, staring with adoring eyes...

“Beauregard...”

Underneath, a few words.

“Possible distraction. Liability. Kill on sight.”

Yasha slams the folder close.

Tears have dried on her face, but it doesn’t matter. She might not know everything, but she knows enough.

It’s time to go.

Silence falls into the kitchen.

The Mighty Nein are all looking down into their mugs, pensive expressions on their faces. They all know the story.

Beauregard’s hand is still on Yasha’s, and her free one is clenched onto a fist. She hasn’t looked away from Yasha’s face for a single moment during the whole story.

Dairon can see the same rage, the same horror they feel, reflected on their kid’s face.

Marion’s hand has been squeezing theirs painfully for the whole duration, and when Dairon turns to look at the woman, they see tears streaming down her perfect face.

“Yasha.” she says, broken voice and broken soul. “My child.”

Yasha closes her eyes for a moment at the word, a single tear escaping her.

She grabs Beau’s hand with both of hers, and takes a deep breath.

A soft voice speaks up from the corner of the table, making both Dairon and Marion turn.

“We found more intel, a few weeks ago.” Jester says, all her usual cheerfulness now gone. “We’ve been trying to dismantle the project for years, now. It’s not easy. They have connections everywhere. Mafia and Ndrangheta in Italy. The Cartel in Mexico. Triad, China. You name it. They’re everywhere.”

Veth takes over.

“So we started setting up traps. All over. We’ve been trying to collect intel about customers, buyers, sellers, anything. We started suspecting on someone who was once seen with one of Marion’s old... Clients.”

Marion is quicker than Dairon to understand.

“The Gentleman.” she says, in a whisper. Her hold on Dairon’s hand loosens just slightly.

Jester nods.

“I talked to him. He didn’t seem to have anything to do with them, this time around. But we didn’t trust that he would just leave it alone, so we had Beau and Yasha at the Hotel, as security. We were going to tell you, Mama, as soon as possible. But then...”

Everyone turns to look at Dairon.

“Then the CIA got wind of a possible meeting of drug lords in Paris, and the Gentleman’s name was made.” Dairon continues, finally piecing everything together. “I was sent in to gather intel and protect the source. Marion, we assumed.”

Everyone around the table nods.

Beau, finally turning away from Yasha, places her palm on the wooden table.

“As you can see, Dairon... We have work to do. You are welcome to stay or to go, once you’re feeling better. But we’re going to do this with or without you.”

The table turns to look at them.

Dairon looks at Marion, and the woman blinks, her beautiful face pale as a ghost.

Dairon turns to look at Beau.

"I’m in.”

[stars-on-fyre]

hi, this is a ticket to infodump/ gush about something you’re really passionate about or excited by. don’t hold back! i’m genuinely interested :3

O-Oh??? 👀👀👀 Allowing me to love something unconditionally you say??? 👀👀👀 I SHALL ACCEPT!!! LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT ONE OF MY FAVORITE GAMES OF ALL TIME: DRAGON AGE: INQUISITION!!! 💜💜💜

To start, the Dragon Age series is a fantasy game series where you are a leader in a group that must stop a catastrophe from happening in the world you live in. Each game has a different sort of catastrophe that your character must go through: in Dragon Age Origins, you play as a Grey Warden who must stop the next Blight by gathering all the alliances the Grey Wardens have made in the past Blights; in Dragon Age 2, you play as a character named Hawke who must rise in power to stop the threats that occur in the city of Kirkwall after you escape from the Blight (this occurs immediately after DA: O and is in the span of 10 years! This is also a really rough summary of these games since I wanted to mostly talk about DA: I, though I might talk about them more one day!)

However, in Dragon Age: Inquisition, you play as the Inquisitor, a person who is blessed by Andraste with the power to close rifts that appeared out of nowhere due to one of the first Darkspawns created: Corypheus! Your character is known as the Inquisitor due to being the leader of the Inquisition, a group that emerges to face darkness and evils! This one takes place almost right after DA2, though you travel between two major kingdoms: Orlais and Ferelden!

While I love the first two games since they’ve laid a lot of the foundation to make DA: I and they all play in a choice-based setting, Inquisition has a lot of amazing characters and interactions that really make me feel like a part of the story! It also has amazing designs for not only the characters and enemies, but also for the areas you go to and in the small things that you wouldn’t even think about! I could go on about how I adore the color palettes and how the developers and designers spent their times creating such wonderful designs, but I also want to talk a little bit about the characters, so I’ll probably do that one day later lol! If you look at my blog header, though, it’s one of the many places in the game! As for my icon, it’s a drawing of one of the characters named Cole drawn by @a-drama-addict ! (Thank you again so much for it!!! 💜💜💜)

Now, to continue with the characters, some of the characters in the game are also introduced in the first two games, such as Leliana, Cullen, Varric, Cassandra, and even Hawke!!! There are a lot more characters and a few more recurring characters, but this game really make the characters feel more real in the sense that they are faced with real struggles and situations! One of most heartbreaking struggles to me is Cullen’s who, in DA: O, was tortured by bloodmages at the age of 18 when he was a Templar and, because he decided to no longer be a Templar, is dealing with Lyrium withdrawal, a highly addictive mineral that helps non-magic users protect themselves against mages and is commonly used for Templars since they watch over the Circle of Magi. Of course, he’s not the only one who faces struggles: Cole, a spirit of kindness from the Fade (the place between dream and reality), struggles with the choice of being more of a spirit or more human since he desires to help everyone, but is alienated by everyone due to his weirdness and lack of qualities that make a person a person; or Blackwall, a Grey Warden who doesn’t see himself as a hero due to his past and who constantly questions if he truly is worthy of being a part of the Inquisition since he’s filled with self-doubt and uncertainty.

While these are just a few characters and a bit of their lives, the game does a really good job at letting the player connect to the characters and feel like they are more than a simple addition to the group and more of a friend or enemy if they are that! This game has wonderful characters and I can’t even tell you who is a badly written character because I think they’re all well written and amazing (though I can tell you that my favorite character is Cullen if you couldn’t tell by my description lol)!!!

I think I’ve talked enough about this game, but thank you for letting me rant on about this wonderful game! I highly recommend this game if you’re interested in fantasy games! 💜

[chaninfused]

fic writer tag ✧˖°

I've been tagged by @aliceu, thank you so much! ♥✨

I'm tagging @blueprint-han, @scxrlettwxtches, @scriptura-delirus, @wingkkun, and @poutylino ♡

1. what fandoms have you written for (but do not currently)?

I used to write for seventeen and idol producer!

2. what fandoms are you currently writing for?

as of now, I write for stray kids and several mcyts 🤸🏻‍♀️

3. how long have you been writing?

since 2017, so this is my fifth year writing stories.

4. on which platforms do you post your stories?

tumblr, mainly. I used to post on wattpad and some of my stuff is still there.

5. what is your favorite genre to write?

fantasy is my favorite genre to write, with all the angst, romance, and adventure that goes into it. when it comes to tropes, though, my favorite is enemies-to-lovers. it's both fun to read and write :]

6. are you a pantser or a planner?

a planner. I need to plan or else I can't write. I have a notebook where I plan my plots, part by part, and write down every little character detail. it's only the blurbs that I don't plan on paper (I still need to have a fixed idea in my head though, including little pieces of dialogue).

7. one-shot or multi-chapter?

one-shot all the way. better to read and write. as a writer, you don't have to worry about staying consistent with updates or newer chapters having lesser notes. and as a reader, you don't need to wait for new updates 🤸🏻‍♀️

however, they do take so long to finish writing 🥴

8. what is the perfect chapter length in your opinion?

I'm going to talk about parts rather than chapters because I post one-shots mainly.

I think the shorter the better. as long as the part (or chapter) sufficiently goes over the events, it doesn't need to be too long. personally, I divide my longer one-shots into 10 parts. each part divides into two or three sub-parts depending on what I feel like as I'm writing. I like to get straight to the point and so I tend to have several short sub-parts.

I think it also makes it easier to read and focus on the story and the events unfolding. it helps hold and maintain a reader's attention span since each sub-part is short and concise.

9. what is your longest published story?

my longest story as of the 22nd of july, 2021, is dull blood, with a word count of 26.8k. I mention the date because I'm working on a 30k wip that will be out sometime later this year 🥴

10. which story did you enjoy working on the most?

I think that might be danse macabre. I had a lot of fun with the setting and the universe. also, it's always fun to write for minho.

11. favorite request you’ve written and why?

I don't take requests 😔

12. are there reoccurring themes in your stories?

princes. there are too many princes in my masterlist and I am not sorry about it. there will be more. yes.

other than that, I don't really know? it would be interesting if someone told me what they find is a recurring theme in my works tho 🤔

13. current number of wips?

four. and I hate it 😔

14. three things you have noticed about your writing?

- he sighed, she sighed, they all sighed, we all sighed.

- the moon is a stalker I suppose. she's always watching the characters.

- elaborate descriptions? never met her.

15. a quote you like from a published story?

“One must always polish a heart made of stone. Until one’s fingers hurt, and no more polishing cleavers remain usable. Until one grows tired of the weight of a stone heart.”

- danse macabre, 2020

16. a quote from an unpublished story?

"Jisung died in your arms."

- gilded kingdom (that is what I have on my notebook and it's all I'm willing to give away since I haven't really...written anything since february 🥴)

17. space for you to say something to your readers!

thank you guys for sticking around despite me not posting for a long while. I truly appreciate every single one of you more than words could ever express ♥

[hardcore-like-eezo]

Five Questions for Writers

Thanks a bunch for the tag @ooachilliaoo​! ^_^

I’ll tag, with no obligation of course, @1esk19​, @lesbianically​, @ferociousqueak​, @renwritesstuff​, @ahealthylionisanonillion​, @bronzeagelove​

1.  Do you have a favorite character to write? Who and why?

The immediate answer is Commander Cambria Shepard, and definitely because I’ve spent so much time writing out her backstory.  After first playing her as a solid mix of paragon and renegade in-game (before I ever started writing her), I really enjoyed the challenge of figuring out what sort of history would make a person like her.  When you’ve fleshed a character out so much that you know them inside and out, it makes it exciting to drop them into just about any setting, because you feel like you understand how and why they’ll react the way they do.

Beyond that, I’ve got a few OCs that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing, but I won’t bother with any details right now, since they’re all in the as-yet unposted backstory for Shepard. Suffice to say, I enjoy capitalizing on certain character traits, like Shepard’s hardass mentor from her early years in the Alliance, and two fellow N7s later on, one who’s delightfully sarcastic and the other who’s vibrantly delightful.

2.  Do you have a favorite trope to write? Or one you want to write?

Lemmethinkaboutitforasec: found family.  This theme has managed to show up at least a few times in Shepard’s story (helps that she’s also got the convenient orphan trope thanks to the Earthborn background).

Not sure if there are any I’m itching to write at the moment…I tend to write them without realizing at first and then laugh at myself later when I spot it.

3.  Share your favorite description you’ve written?

I’m gonna pull from that as-yet unposted longfic on Shepard’s backstory here.  In this scene, Shepard and company (pre-ME trilogy) are on aerial approach to the previously undiscovered ruins of a Prothean city.  I had a lot of fun writing this description, and spent way more time on it than I normally would over just two paragraphs: 

What seemed an impossibility stretched out before their eyes.  Not far beneath the dropship, extending as far as the wide-angle camera could bear witness, was what remained of a fifty thousand-year-old metropolis. Built to unimaginable standards to have withstood the test of time, alongside a calamity that brought the galaxy-spanning Prothean Empire to its knees, were countless skyscrapers towering over a haze-choked beige landscape.

Like sandcastles standing defiant against their own inevitable collapse, virtually every remaining structure in sight was in a progressive state of decay.  Towers reached to the sky, pining for their former days of glory, while nearly half their mass had crumbled and dissolved away, foreshadowing the ultimate disintegration of the once palace-like estates. Without intervention, they might stand for another millennia, another century, or only another day.  By nothing more than the relentless march of time would they meet their formless fate as they tumbled to the ground, with no living ears to record their demise, and at last join the graveyard of an empire that littered the streets below.

4.  Share your favorite dialogue you’ve written?

Here’s another from the longfic in-progress.  Sometimes I can’t help myself and paraphrase catchy dramatic lines from movies and such (granted, Shepard has a reason for going a little theatrical here in the scene this comes from).  I worked Balak into her backstory as something of a recurring villain before he appears in Bring Down the Sky, and this is part of them finally meeting – after he’s captured her.  I also love this just ‘cause it’s classic cocky Shepard, and also prophetic: 

“I’m someone who fights for those who can’t protect themselves,” she said with a deep, husky voice, staring into Balak’s eyes, “And someone who makes my enemies quake at the mention of my name.”

Balak tilted his head to the right as he studied her.

“Funny,” he said with a complete lack of amusement, “I’ve never heard of you.”

Shepard grinned devilishly, “Not yet you haven’t.”

5.  A scene you haven’t written, but want to?

Not so much a single scene, but more a short story I’ve been waiting to start for several years now.  As the idea evolved, it’s become a psychological horror story about the Reapers, and it has LOTS of scenes I’m looking forward to writing.  I think I had to build up my confidence as a writer first, because now I’m itching to start it.

[theremarkablethingsaboutlove]

1, 2 & 4 for the ask game ✨

thank u so much for asking!!! @alicewestwater

1. Tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

ooh boy. i’ve got like, a lot. i have a lot of ideas in different stages of progress but the one i have more worked on is solander, so i’m gonna talk about it. it’s a four book project on love and soulmates that spanned from a fic. it’s set on a modern day world where a fifth of the population sports an enhanced/modified sense -- it’s as normal as any other sensory disorder and is actually considered one. a side effect from this is the fact they only dream in their “talented” sense, EXCEPT for a set of recurring dreams that tend to happen once in which another person’s enhanced sense joins theirs. these are called the soulmate dreams and they’re my favourite part of it. i’m still hashing out the worldbuilding of it but i like the idea of it a lot. solander follows a group of friends/coworkers/siblings and their relationships to each other as well as to love, family, duty, expectations, wants and the concept of soulmates itself. it’s very fun to write in and i love my cast. i have plotted out the first two books and have a shortened version of them written out of both, but they require some heavy, heavy editing and a lot of expansion. 

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

oh boy. i’m very looking forward to writing pacific, at all, just because i like the story so much and i can’t wait to read it but i know it’s the sort of project i need to be ready for writing. on solander, i can’t wait to write the labour of being, the last book, because i think siyeon and mk have the most archetypal and yet complex relationship to the concept of soulmates. they are the ones that i can say surely they are soulmates, they are the “““het””” trad “enemies to lovers” relationship, they are both very tropey (chaebol & prestigious photographer), but i feel like they really challenge the bounds they’re put in and i’m very interested in seeing where these intense motherfuckers take me :D

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

cw: blood, last thoughts, buried alive, etc?

What Annalys remembered most was the unbearable heat. It was perhaps the heat of her own blood pooling inside her or the heat of the soil that had seemed to pour from the bowels of the earth over them or just that dying in and of itself was a very hot affair. She pawed at Mina’s hand and it cut her so perhaps she was grasping rock instead but in her mind it was still her fingers that remained the only thing cold around her. She couldn’t feel under her knee at all, which she later learned was because she had a two ton rock smashing it to the ground. Jamie remained nowhere to be seen even through the little she could see from the soil that just kept and kept on pouring.

Annalys wondered if they would ever find them. If she would get to see her mother again, even if she’d said she didn’t want her. They probably wouldn’t be alive. They probably weren’t already, judging by how the heat grew behind her eyes. Everything tasted so dirty. She thought back to their game. Perhaps when they did find them, years and years and years after they had fallen, when they had become part of this mountain and this cave, they would know them by what they were. A couple of knights and a bard.

this is from the first chapter of the first book of whalefall, which i haven’t started writing. the context is that annalys, jamie and mina (then thirteen and fifteen) escaped from camp to go play pretend and a landslide buried them alive inside a cave. these are annalys’ last thoughts, technically, though she doesn’t die, and i like the last few sentences particularly due to the whimsy of it. also the fact that they will be a couple of knights and a bard, and when they go back the second time, the collective memory of that and the terrible things they did will be the only things they have to go by to survive. it’s not a particularly polished bit of writing, so it probs won’t stay, but i like the imagery. 

[averytswiftie]

One year ago on August 6th, 2019, I got my first car. Also one year ago, I got the call that I had cancer. BREAST CANCER. It’s pretty ironic that on what was supposed to be a joyful, memorable day, turned out to be a really memorable one for another, horrible reason. I will never forget our shock, the moment that the doctor unexpectedly called with my biopsy results. The chances of this breast lump being cancer at my age was astronomically small. The characteristics of the cancer were super rare. The likelihood of someone my age having breast cancer, and this type, was rarer than being invited to Taylor Swift’s secret session! I guess I hit both jackpots in the span of less than a year. One was the best day of my life, and one was the worst. 

I was sitting on my bed with my mom when she answered the phone. Cancer didn’t even cross either of our minds, not even the doctor’s. I was 19, and was two weeks from heading back to college for my junior year. When I say Breast Cancer never crossed my mind once, I am telling the truth. I was still riding the high of happiness and freedom, and a sense of independence from that day.  Honestly, when I first found out, I thought it would be a simple fix, kind of like how they just remove skin cancer and you’re fine. It never crossed my mind that I would be “sick”, and I never thought of the possiblility of dying (usually people’s first thought when they hear they have cancer) . For some reason, I still felt unstoppable at that point and time. As the days went on, and the doctor’s appointments piled up, it became very real to me that I wouldn’t be able to go back to school for the year, that I might need chemotherapy (which I ended up needing four months of), and that a lumpectomy would no longer be an option. I needed a double mastectomy. 

It’s true that you go through grief of losing your breasts, especially being 19 at the time, and your whole body was going to be changing in an instant. It wasn’t until after my surgery that I felt “ruined”, “unlovable”, and “scarred”, and would spend every night for months crying alone and quietly in my bed so my mom wouldn’t hear me. No one my age would get it, which felt even lonelier. I had also always been super happy with my body before then, so it was devastating to lose the body I once knew and loved. 

Being a year out, I can say proudly that I am no where near where I was back then. I still have temporary expanders in place (and filled to my size) until I get my permanent implants in December, but I feel cute again when I wear clothes. I spent seven months flat as I had a lot of surgical and healing complications which delayed reconstruction, so having a figure again right now makes me smile more than you could ever know. 

It also feels like a different lifetime ago that I had to go every other week to get chemotherapy for four, long months. I think this is partly because my hair only thinned, but was unnoticeable to others, and I didn't lose it all like most do. It was a horrible four months, though. I was so sick on the weeks I’d get chemo, I’d be in so much pain (I would describe it by being hit by a bus in my neck, face, and back), I wouldn’t eat for days, and I’d get random fevers which would warrant an ER visit. I do recognize though, the luck I have now to be able to feel and look healthy in the mirror because I don’t have a real, physical reminder that it happened. I should also note that the chemotherapy was a preventative measure, for prevent the cancer from recurring. Even though I was stage 1, thankfully, the doctors wanted to treat me aggressively because I was so young. I am really lucky to live in an area where I have amazing doctors and surgeons right in my backyard. Being the youngest in these doctor’s practices and cancer centers, I was treated more like a daughter than just a patient. That made me feel so much more comfortable in navigating the disease that no one wants to have. I actually went back for a follow up appointment with my oncologist the other day, and all is good! I’m now only on Tamoxifen (an estrogen blocker because my cancer was hormone receptor positive) for the next eight or so years, which is normal protocol for my cancer.

Cancer completely changed my life, and I’d by lying if i said it didn’t. It changed my perspective on life and the things that matter, and taught me pain. It was the worst year of my life, and I wouldn’t have wished it on my worst enemy (well maybe haha). I went through more in these past 365 days than most do in a lifetime, and I believe I am now a more resilient and strong person because of it. You find out who your true friends are once you are faced with this diagnosis. I’m so glad I have a few of those who are near and dear to me, and oh so supportive Swiftie friends who would check up on me often. 

In a few weeks, I am headed back to college as a junior (and Lover will be released)! People are always telling me that my experiences will make me a better occupational therapist in the future. And I hope that is a positive that comes out of it. I also hope to use my unique platform to educate young women about breast cancer because never in a million years imagined that at 19, it would happen to me. Just like I never imagined I would be invited to a secret session. I’ve spent the whole year wondering if you’ve been following my story, @taylorswift . You’ve been a huge part of my journey, from wearing your shirts to every surgery and chemo, and keeping me company while I watched your interviews and music videos during treatments to take my mind off the pain and nausea. I wish you knew <3. 

[quintessence-sentimentalist]

quintessence-sentimentalist Takes on 30 Days of W.i.t.c.h.versary!: Week One

So I’ve been way too swamped as of late to keep up with this challenge day-by-day, even with only written answers (because guys, I write long answers, even when I cut myself short). As a solution (at least to start), I’m going to lump my answers for days falling within the same week together. Here’s Days 1 through 7!

Day 1: Favorite Guardian

Well, glancing up at my username and icon, I think it’d be remiss not to say Will Vandom, at least in some respect.

Will was my favorite from the beginning, back when I only had the chapter books with comic inserts. I can’t quite put my finger on why I gravitated to her, though I get the feeling that my love of energy/electricity-based powers had something to do with it. Plus, she got the cool transformation trinket! I’m sure there are many, many more reasons why she became my favorite, but this was also a good 15 years ago and even my obscure-detail-focused memory is having a hard time tracing back.

I’m not as passionate about comics Will as an adult, just in terms of how they loaded the poor girl up with so much drama that it’s just overwhelmingly exhausting, and she has some pretty immature reactions to her problems with her mom and Matt (pre-relationship). But animated Will is still my girl, with her awkwardness and quipping (of a different sort than Irma’s) and the way she grows as a leader, to the point where she’s basically set up a long con on even the viewers as a battle strategy in the latter quarter of season 2. This was the Will I grew to love as an adult rewatching the series after many years.

Since I’ve always been a Will Girl in some form, this has to be my official answer, but very honorable mentions to Irma and Hay Lin across both media. 

Day 2: Favorite Villain

Alright, if we’re talking the animated series and you aren’t new around these parts, we all know it’s Shagon. Listen, this arc is 90% of the reason why I love the cartoon as much as I do, because they took a character from the comics with a nebulous backstory and a spooky, badass design who was relatively underused even with being Nerissa’s strongest/preferred minion, and decided to pull out all the stops. They gave a recurring character (who, okay, I already loved) with very strong ties to the girls - and who’d already evolved out of his role in the comics at the time - his own challenge/story arc about literally facing his inner demon; they gave the Guardians a deadly enemy to face off against (distract them) while Nerissa is off plucking up ex-Guardians one by one; they gave Will and Matt some brutal emotional turmoil that’s actually new and refreshing for the two of them (let’s send the repeated comics jealousy plotlines back to the kitchen, yeah?). And, uh, they made an already spooky, badass character design EVEN SPOOKIER AND MORE BADASS. 

(The darker colors all around? The brilliant gold mask? The dark angel wings? I have been in love with this design since I was 12, alright?)

But! If we’re talking comics, then I’m going with Yua. I’ve talked about this at length before in a different ask game, but I think I gravitate to Yua because a) I’m largely not about full-on villains in any media and b) she’s a beautifully complex character in the context of the third arc’s narrative. 

I’m not going to reiterate everything I said before and just redirect to that post, but I just find it fascinating that the banshee - whose species we’re repeatedly told are eeeeeevil by nature - shows more humanity than the actual human antagonists in this arc. She never wanted harm to come to Maqi, taking him away the second she’s freed as both revenge on her oppressor and a means of keeping this little boy safe from his father’s single-minded crusade. Yua even directly expresses this sentiment when Maqi falls, horror-struck and swearing that it was always about hurting Ari and never Maqi. And even when Maqi is... eurgh, “healed” (yeah, there are a lot of problems with the resolution to this arc), Yua has the opportunity to strike Ari at his happiest and complete her vengeance, but seeing Maqi so delighted makes her retreat, at least for now. 

So yeah. More humanity than Ari and his blind rage in his quest to “cure” his son, and more humanity than Riddle & Co. in abducting an innocent teenage girl on the mere suspicion that she has powers with the intention of putting her through human experimentation. Yua takes Best Villain in my heart because she’s not a villain, not really.

Day 3: Favorite Love Interest

Again, unless you’re new here, it’s no shock that - if we’re talking animated series - it’s Matthew “I’m Arguing With a Housepet” Olsen. 

As wildly different as it is from the comics, I do so adore his character design, with his dark hair (which, uh, may have been the first indication that I have a Type when it comes to my favorite male characters) and purple hoodie. His personality is so endearing too, because he’s not just the idolized older boy we initially see him as in the comics, but like... a legitimate dork. He’s sweet and plays guitar and generally exudes Cool, but you get to know him and it’s easy to see that he and Will are like souls. Not the best about expressing their feelings to the person they like, but always ready to step up and fight.

That’s another quality I love about cartoon Matt. Even before the Shagon arc, very shortly after even learning of the Guardian secret, Matt wants in on the action. It’s not in a “living out his action hero dreams” way, or even really a matter of impressing/protecting Will: it’s more about not being the guy who sits safe on the sidelines while everyone else is risking their lives, and trying to prove (largely to himself, in the end) that he’s worthy to be Will’s boyfriend when she’s a honest-to-Kandrakar warrior and he’s just “Funny Matt.”

I’m going to skip the Shagon arc for now because I assure you I could probably talk for ages about cartoon Matt, and we don’t have that kind of time now.

As for comics, I definitely have to go with Eric Lyndon and - technically a pseudo-love interest - Joel Wright. Oh, and Peter Cook!! Basically, all the sweet guys who don’t get quite as much attention with the comics and whose romantic relationships developed a bit later.

Day 4: Favorite Ship

Surprise, surprise: it’s animated Will/Matt. I’ve blubbered about them before, I will blubber about them again (please give me reasons to do so?), so I’m going to spare you all this time around. Just know that they’re my longest-held major OTP, and that it normally takes a hell of a lot to get me to full-on ship something.

(Real quick though: mutually pining dorks? Matt’s insecurity about being enough for his badass electricity-flinging girlfriend? Will’s drive to just blast shit down to find and save Matt? “If this all goes south, I’m gonna be beside you”??? Please ignore my choked sobbing.)

Anyhoo, there are a couple different comics ships I’d say qualify, though I might not be as passionate about them as I am cartoon WxM. Hay Lin and Eric are positively adorable, and I love how their relationship was slow but not agonizingly so. Hay was the only one not to get a love interest of sorts from the very start, taking us all the way to issue 18 before a guy makes her giggly. And I really appreciate that it wasn’t just a superficial crush, that while Eric was cute, it was his kindness and the time he spent with Hay that made her go, You know, I think I like this guy. It was a refreshing change of pace, they’re both adorable, and we ignore the fact that Eric was mysteriously written out and Hay has that one issue in the Dark Times late in the series where she falls head-over-heels for this rockstar-ish guy for no real reason and changes her style to try to impress him.��

Honorable mentions go to Irma and Joel, who had excellent potential and should have still been kept as friends even if they decided to give Irma a different SO (we ignore the later issue where Joel just wistfully looks at Irma with his “We used to be friends” thought bubble and no actual explanation for why they aren’t anymore); and Cornelia and Peter, who I don’t give enough credit and definitely need to reread.

Day 5: Favorite Friendship

This is a tough one - can I say all of the W.i.t.c.h. girls together? Because outside of the first arc, there isn’t really a whole lot of focus on the smaller group friendships. 

Cornelia and Elyon is a good one, though, literally spanning worlds because Cornelia is dead-set on saving her friend. I’ll toss Orube and Will into the mix as well, because Will was crucial to Orube’s initial character development and they seemed to have the closest relationship moving forward.

Day 6: Favorite Cover/Pinup/Promotional Art

Oof, giving me the hard questions, are we? I have a few favorites, but one of the first that came to mind was this one of Will. It’s the cover of the 21st chapter book, which I think is actually the pinup for issue 21. They must have changed it up for the US release in order to keep it more in-line with the actual plot.

Day 7: Favorite Episode/Issue

Hrm. Let’s change it up and start with the comics on this one. Off the top of my head, I have a soft spot for issue 32. It’s the zenith of the Sylla sub-arc, so the stakes are high, the girls get cute semi-formal clothes when they go to the opera to spring and hopefully evade Riddle’s trap, Sylla double-crosses Riddle and teams up with Medina and McTiennan (and I still think there’s a missed opportunity here with wiping that particular team’s memories of the girls), and we get the most iconic page in this entire comic with Orube beating up Riddle’s goon while brushing off a suitor and then coyly asking him to be her arm candy. 

Issue 50 is another one I like, though largely because I enjoy the futures presented for each of the girls (I particularly love the concept of park ranger Cornelia and writer Will). And as a lingering vestige of my young, comic-Will/Matt-shipping heart, issue 40 is another nostalgic choice.

As for the animated series, I routinely consider my favorites on the chance that Greg Weisman still sells scripts at cons and I get the chance to buy that of a favorite episode. But true to form, basically all of my favorites are heavy Will/Matt episodes...

“D is for Dangerous” is fun because it’s the first time Will gains her quintessence lightning (yay!), the running gag with the Sisterhood of the Traveling Mr. Huggles is amusing, Elyon’s deadpan “Barehanded folding. My one talent” still kills me, and Matt and Caleb’s epic failures of training montages are great. “M is for Mercy” is brutal, with Shagon at his absolute deadliest and taunting Will with Matt’s disappearance, the utter hatred Will has for this demon who’s taken on the form of the boy she loves (and, unbeknownst to her, is legitimately a twisted reflection of Matt), and the sight of Shagon at his lowest while at Will’s mercy and her offer to teach him just that. “S is for Self” has not one but two musical numbers for Matt, and we finally get the resolution to the Shagon arc, so of course it’s a favorite.

But what the hell: I’m going with “T is for Trauma” as my favorite. I watched this episode three times the day it aired, and I still love it to this day. We get the introduction of rejuvenated C.h.y.k.n. (who wipe the floor with the W.i.t.c.h. girls at first), the Egyptian-themed costumes for no actual reason (“Could someone tell me how that man could look at me and think camel???”), Matt getting to fight as the badass normal for the first and last time since “L is for Loser,” etc. But most of all, this is Hay Lin’s episode, and it is absolutely soul-destroying but with a magnificent payoff at the end. It hurts to see the naturally lighthearted, high hopes member of the crew with her spirit absolutely shattered by her grandmother’s apparent betrayal, Eric’s brainwashing, and Nerissa’s general existence, and it’s just as painful that this was the way they gave her character development, but I have to commend this episode for one of the heaviest lines ever: “That’s how you survive the trauma - not by knowing it will be alright, but by having no other choice. ...I don’t have the luxury of breaking down right now.”

[siarven]

WIP Prep Tag Game

Thank you so much for tagging me @i-belong-in-space <3 Your wip sounds amazing, I’m glad you tagged me so I could learn about it :D

Rules: Answer the questions and then tag as many writers as there are questions answered (or as many as you can) to spread the positivity! Even if these questions are not explicitly brought up in the novel, they are still good to keep in mind when writing.

FIRST LOOK

I’ll be doing this for Like Dragons of Old because it needs development since I only started writing it for NaNoWriMo this year :D

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

The Observer (an immortal) and a phoenix chicken raise two girls among the towering stacks of an ancient, sentient library. Selandri is the first child born in the Library in millennia, and Timbre is the only survivor of a war that destroyed an entire continent and killed (or changed) everything else living on it. 

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

Because I’m incapable of doing short things Like Dragons of Old is the first in a trilogy called Song of the Aunae. 

Each book will span about 10 years, from when they’re children to ~18, 18 to around 30, and I guess 30-40? I’m very unsure about that last book. But there’ll be a lot of character development and growing up all in all. 

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

see 5 ... sorry, I’m too lazy xD 

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

A non-fiction talk held by Neil Gaiman about him basically raising himself in the library when he was young :P Also a ton of fantasy novels with creative worldbuilding and magic systems.

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

the wip-intro-post moodboard :D it’s the aesthetic for the whole story though, not just the first book

MAIN CHARACTER

6. Who is your protagonist?

I have three POV characters/protagonists, but I’m currently thinking that I’ll give each of them their own book in the series.

One is Selandri, she’ll get the first book. She’s the first child born in millennia in the Library, to later fulfill a certain task ( which she knows nothing about, of course). Selandri is ESFP and chaotic neutral. 

Next, Onii. Onii will be the POV character of the second book. She’s also immortal, but that’s mostly because she’s a phoenix. In form of a chicken, by choice (in that universe phoenix can choose their form when they are reborn). Onii is very chaotic neutral. Onii is isfp and very chaotic neutral. 

Finally, Timbre. Timbre will be the POV character of the last book. She’s the only survivor (in the strict sense) of a war that destroyed her whole continent, killed her people and changed nature there forever (think of it as sth like a magical nuclear bomb). She survived for a few months with the help of dubious gods (the aunae) before the Observer found and saved her (despite having other orders). Timbre is INTJ and chaotic good. 

They’re all very chaotic :P

7. Who is their closest ally?

All three are each other’s closest allies, and also the Observer. This will change throughout the series, however, as Selandri and Timbre will go seperate ways and finally see each other again, but on different sides. 

8. Who is their enemy?

I prefer antagonist? In this book, at first it’s mostly the Aeqana/Librarians (Selandri’s parents etc) because they aren’t used to children, and especially not their pranks. Later on some people on a surviving continent from the world Timbre is from, originally. 

9. What do they want more than anything?

On the surface, Timbre strives for knowledge, Selandri for adventure, and Onii for chaos. 

Deep down, though, Timbre and Selandri just want each other, and Onii wants them both to be happy.

10. Why can’t they have it?

Because they only realize that when it’s too late... 

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

Selandri thinks that she’ll always be second choice after Timbre, and Timbre thinks that she’s evil deep down and that everyone close to her gets hurt. Onii thinks she’s a horrible parent. Or something. 

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

I will, one day, but today is not that day. I have a wip of Onii, though (sorry instagram crew, I still haven’t gotten further than this :’D but it’s more than what you saw?...), and moodboards (including face-claims) for both Selandri and Timbre.

(it’s far from finished and the bright feather will be somewhat less bright later on, I guess)

PLOT POINTS

13. What is the internal conflict?

Selandri struggles mostly with her self-worth, and Timbre struggles heavily with survivor’s guilt, and feeling as if she should’ve died with everyone else. 

Also both of them feel like they don’t deserve the other.

Onii is generally carefree and loves pranking people (she’s very chaotic neutral) but she struggles with taking care of these two strange children, mostly because they love pranking others as much as she does but now she’s supposed to be the mature one?! After she’s spent the last millennia doing nothing else? Tsk!

14. What is the external conflict?

Librarians who haven’t been children for a long time not understanding that children need free time and having fun, especially not these children. Many raised eyebrows, and many punishments. 

Later on, when they leave the Library for the first time, the people outside, and their strange customs... and what they might have had to do with the Broken Continent’s past. 

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?  

To lose each other (for all three)

What they think:

Selandri - to become a Librarian and spend the rest of her days inside, cataloguing and transcribing knowledge collected from outside by other people. 

Timbre - to be forced into some kind of destiny she doesn’t want by the Aunae and/or the Observer. 

Onii - to be responsible for something that hurt Timbre/..., or to be incapable of stopping something like that. Also to never be allowed to prank anyone again.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

Not telling you anything! Many. ;) Some only in later books. 

17. Do you know how it ends?  

Yesssssssssss but I won’t tell you

BITS AND BOBS

18. What is the theme?  

Trees/plants, dragons, art/music, books/knowledge....

Freedom of choice, survivor’s guilt, the horrors of war, having hope even in the darkest of times (hopepunk), lgbt+, love, friendship, post-apocalyptic setting, the merits and woes of technology (as in, the continent that survived is very futuristic, combination of science and magic), racism, religion(s), nature, exclusionism; ...

....I’ll need to invest more time here :P

19. What is a recurring symbol?  

See above. 

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!)

There is one world called Ferreske. The Broken Continent exists there, as do the other continents that didn’t get struck during the War. One of those will be visited, and it’s a capitalistic, futuristic hellscape society driven by a mixture of magic and technology. 

The Broken Continent is devoid of human life. The Aunae have taken it over, more or less (they’re sort of tree gods) and they’ve changed the wildlife physically to survive the new conditions. During the War the enemy triggered a sort of “nuclear bomb” that killed everything in a 300 mile radius instantly, and set loose something the Aunae call the Radiancy, which nowadays kills everything else within about eight hours, unless you’re a plant (or the Observer). Which is why the wildlife has changed into a sort of plant/animal hybrid. Timbre’s people (some of them) prayed to the Aunae to save them when they felt the change in the air, so they got turned into trees. All children under a certain age were "protected” by the Aunae, like Timbre...except she escaped while she was still more or less herself, in contrast to everyone else. Also, the radiancy leaches away colours, so the Broken Continent is called the Grey Continent by some people. And Timbre is colourblind because of it. 

Then there’s the Library, which is its own world/realm, and also sentient. In the Library there are all kinds of knowledge. Timbre and Selandri grow up in the book part of it, but there is also an art section, music section, etc. It’s probably endless and holds a huge variety of knowledge, and peoples with different ways of life and clashing viewpoints. It’s a sort of sanctuary, I guess? The Observer is more or less the founder (but she’s lost control over it centuries ago). 

Some people are very angry that not everyone can enter/find the Library. Exclusionism will also be discussed, I guess.. but later on, when the protagonists are older. 

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

I’ve planned the first book during NaNo, for the most part. I’m currently at ~60K of usable words (which will still have to be cut drastically), and I haven’t even “really” started :’D But yup, I know a lot of what’s going to happen. Not in detail, but enough. Especially two really mean scenes >:D

22. What excited you about this story?  

I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT, IT HAS DRAGONS AND MAGIC AND MUSIC AND TREES AND I LOVE THE CHARACTERS AND THE WORLD(S) AND ALSDKJFSKDJFSLDJFSLDJFSD I can’t wait!!!!!! :’D It’s basically me mashing everything I like into one and then hoping to get a decent story out of it. 

But first I need to finish Dreams and Shadows ;w;

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!  

I spend one NaNoWriMo writing things without knowing anything about the story except for my tumblr into post. Then, halfway during NaNo, I start having some ideas for the rest of the project, I plan some things, change and rewrite some other things, and then NaNo is over when I know roughly what I want to do.

Then I procrastinate far too much, before getting back into it with more of a plan than before. Then I write the first draft/draft zero, which is mostly me trying to find out what works and what doesn’t (and what the characters want/don’t want to do o_O) -- which I then print out, and kill with a red pen. Also I’ll probably give it to some people who don’t mind the rambling and all that. 

Then I rewrite it for the most part, so it’s (1) shorter and (2) better. That is usually the “actual” draft 1, which I’ll spend a lot of time revising and editing, but not rewriting on a large scale. I hope that this time I will finally write it all in one go, and not: write some chapters, rewrite what I’ve already written, add a few more chapters, rewrite everything again, rinse, repeat-- 

I’ve never gotten further than that, yet, but my other wip, Dreams and Shadows, is almost done with the second draft (the first half got revised quite a lot, while the second half didn’t. I’ve also already had people read the first half. Which was actually helpful for that thing as it’s a standalone... I HAVE THREE SCENES LEFT BEFORE THE SECOND DRAFT IS DONE). 

I hope that I can write LDOO in one go, though :’D

I guess I’ll just tag the LDOO crew for this, and maybe some others?? wow, I’ve gotten so lazy :’D 

@dramaticvoiceover @asttralhell @authordai @thereisnothingwrongwithbeingmad @importance-of-being-crazy @madmoonink @prismalicht @romenna @fynniana @sincerestaffect @writin-maaagic @random-stuff-thrown-into-a-pot @raiswanson @zekethegm @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword @stephrawlingwrites @kittensartsbooks @annelaurant-writing @lady-redshield-writes @wolfdancer333 @bmariewinter

@lynnafred @corishadowfang @writingwordsanddrawingpictures @amongwriters 

I love learning more about wips but this does eat up a lot of time so I totally understand if you don’t want to :’D

[hazeywrites]

WIP Prep Tag Game

Tagged by: the amazing @delphwrites (tysm!) Rules: Answer the questions and then tag as many writers as there are questions answered (or as many as you can) to spread the positivity! Even if these questions are not explicitly brought up in the novel, they are still good to keep in mind when writing. Note: This will be for The Angel Peter.

FIRST LOOK

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch). Danish girl runs away to another country and is accompanied by a man who claims to be her guardian angel, who calls himself ‘Peter’. Her involvement with him gets her caught up in something intergalactic in scale. I’m super bad at pitching, as we can all see lol.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.) At the moment, I’ve ended it so that it can be continued in a second book. I do intend for it to be a duology.

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic? Friendship, loss, grainy photos, nights where you stay up until 3am talking, loneliness and the crippling fear that comes with it, adapting to somewhere new, love

4. What other stories inspire your novel? His Dark Materials, the Phantom of the Opera.

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel. I’m just gonna be lazy and use an old edit for this. Also it’s kind of relevant since I only ever talk about these two??? omg

MAIN CHARACTER

6. Who is your protagonist? My lovely girl Lotte. She’s a kind but fierce soul. Due to her perception of the world she feels trapped and overwhelmed in Denmark, so she decides to flee the country and pursue something she feels will free her.

7. Who is their closest ally? Honestly this is almost always a toss up between Peter and Andreas. At the end of the book especially. She is always connected to Peter and shares a link with him that cannot be broken, but at the same time, sometimes she chooses to ignore it.

8. Who is their enemy? Looool.

9. What do they want more than anything? The things that Lotte wants changes drastically throughout the novel, as she changes as a person and discovers more about herself and her limits. In the beginning, she wants to escape Denmark and study photography. Further to the end, she accepts more and more responsibilities and takes it upon herself to change things.

10. Why can’t they have it? She is able to achieve some of her desires. In the end, she finds herself within a network that welcomes her but has been established for millions of years prior to her initiation, with individuals who are far stronger and more intelligent than her. She’s outmatched in every sense, but she refuses to back down defending what she believes is right.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves? That what happens is ‘her fault’, that her perception makes her ‘broken’ and that she needs to ‘fix’ herself. And that she’s physically strong enough to fight an angel, lool.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description) Lol I wish I could draw.

PLOT POINTS

13. What is the internal conflict? Lotte wanted to escape and ends up doing so, to a degree she didn’t anticipate, but then she realises that escaping did not really help her, which makes her even more bitter. She wonders if she did the right thing in leaving her home and her parents, and there’s no definite answer to that. She loves Peter but always questions some of the things he did on earth (and what his race in general is doing), since the morals of angels do not match those of humans entirely.

14. What is the external conflict? This doesn’t really manifest until the end, and it’s a bit of a spoiler.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?   To be isolated and alone, even within the company of her own guardian angel.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story? That Lotte is more bitter and pissed off than we realised, lol. And that the angels have their own motivations for their actions.

17. Do you know how it ends?   I do, but I’m tossing up with rewriting bits and pieces of it

BITS AND BOBS

18. What is the theme?   Guardian angels is a huge underlying theme, which probably sounds obvious but there’s more to it than that. Like, if a human truly did have an angelic mirror of itself, what would that mean? How would that change a person, if at all? What if the concept wasn’t as simple as it’s made out to be? What kind of sacrifices do both parties have to make? Is it possible to be so poisoned by bitterness that one could hate their own guardian angel? I try to introduce some of the paradoxes that would manifest as a result of their existence, and there’s a historical and cultural overview of them, but it’s spread over the span of the story. idk. guardian angels.

19. What is a recurring symbol?   Mm I don’t know. Photography? Quantum mechanics? Moments you wish would last forever but they can’t? 

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!) It’s initially set in Denmark, then moves to Sweden, then moves to another planet.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already? I do. I need some more though, because the middle of the novel needs to be fleshed out a bit more.

22. What excited you about this story?   Everything. I love writing about angels. I love writing about Denmark and Sweden, and another planet entirely. I actually love the main cast and their interactions. I love Lotte.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!   Honestly I had a fantastic method during NaNo, which is why I got so much done. Sticking to a routine helped so much. Now I’m kind of all over the place. I’m also dying over editing (already) and trying to accomplish other small writerly things, so I haven’t been making as much progress recently. My method is: sit down and do it. Once you start typing, it’s hard to stop.

Tagging: @novelistcore, @erinoddly, @mybookisbad, @carumens, @apollchiles, @angelwriteblr, @omgbrekkerkaz, @florhiver, @sancta-silje, @girlnovels, @ikilledmyocs, @atelierwriting, @hepiit, @katabasiss, @nerocael, @vellichorwrites, @nathanielbooks, @nepeinthe, @nexiliss, @mangowriter, @rosequills, @russowrites, @lefttowritee

[entamewitchlulu]

Year of Yu-Gi-Oh Part II: Toei Adaptation

After the manga comes the anime adaptation known infamously among the fandom as “season zero.”

Aired in 1998, “”season zero”” has no actual season relation to the main series Duel Monster anime.  Instead, it as produced and run by Toei Animation, and follows the basic storyline of the first seven volumes of the manga, mostly in a game-of-the-week style format.  Like the manga, the story follows Yugi Mutou, a boy who solves the mysterious Millennium Puzzle which awakens a spirit in him that challenges his bullies, enemies, and other opponents to magical games.  Unlike the manga, however, the anime version heavily alters many scenes, including the content of the games, their results (few, if any characters actually die from the games, unlike the manga), filler episode plots, and most drastically, the addition of Miho Nosaka, a former oneshot character, as a recurring major character.

But you all already know all of that, probably!  So here’s the important stuff: what did I think of my rewatch?  Well...

The sad thing is, I seem to recall enjoying this anime a LOT more the first time I watched it.  The second watchthrough was...less interesting.

Good stuff first, though.  Most of the main voice cast is absolutely stunning.  Megumi Ogata as Yugi/Yami Yugi in particular is incredibly strong, and I will never love a Yami Yugi voice more than hers; the soft, unassuming sort of confidence fits and characterizes Yami Yugi in a way that I don’t think any other adaptation of Yami Yugi ever could (sorry, Dan Green).  

Also, I really, really love seeing the smaller, visibly young looking Yami Yugi animated in general.  Yami Yugi absolutely becomes significantly older looking than Yugi in DM and in the later half of the manga, which makes little sense considering he is using the exact same body as Yugi.  I much prefer this younger, cuter Yami Yugi, which, in my opinion, makes his entire schtick far more intimidating.  Small, childish looking Yugi Mutou challenging you to a death game?  Far more frightening and eerie than loud, brash Dan Green-ified Yami Yugi just shouting at you, imo.  Jonouchi and Anzu’s voices really stand out as a personification of their manga characters, as well.

I may be in the minority here, but I also really, really loved Miho’s addition to the main cast.  She didn’t fit into every scene, of course, and there were bits where even I felt like her inclusion was forced, but for good chunks of the series, especially in filler episodes, she absolutely shone and stood out as her own character with her own goals and motivations, who was still a part of the group and participated--and even won!!--in many of the group’s challenges.  I also just like having another girl in the group, ya know?

Smaller details that I did like: overall color palette aside, I really, REALLY love Yami Yugi’s red eyes, and I continue to describe Yami Yugi with red eyes in every fic I ever include him in.  Ryo’s green eyes are also a fave of mine.  Also: NO JOHJI!!!!  Miho basically replaces him completely in Death-T and wow, that’s honestly an even better idea than to replace him with Honda’s dog!

Now before I move on to the more negative part of this review, lemme leave you with a cute picture of Miho Nosaka:

the rest is under the cut so as to avoid clogging up the dash even more, and so that y’all can avoid my negative bits if ya want.

So, down to business.  Why didn’t I really enjoy my rewatch of the Toei adaptation?

1) Pacing.  The plot episodes seem to rush themselves along as fast as they can, to try and fit as much from the manga chapter in as possible.  Filler episodes, or episodes based on filler chapters, drag out so long that it becomes a slog to get through.

2) Low animation budget.  Unfortunately, the limits of the time this anime was produced didn’t help it’s case either.  The color palette is a goddamn oversaturated mess, and some of the color choices are truly head-scratching.  Seto Kaiba with green hair?  Who decided that?  Wasn’t he already colored with brown hair on a manga volume prior to this adaptation?  Palette aside, action scenes are considerably muted due to lack of budget to fully animate them, resulting in strange cuts and boring shots.  A LOT of the charm and intensity that gave a lot of moments in the manga their punch is lost in the adaptation, as Takahashi’s more horror manga-esque style is heavily simplified and stylized to get to the screen.  The extra cartoonish coloring also contributes to a lot of the more intense scenes from the manga falling flat.

3) Sound direction.  It’s just boring.  Only Yami Yugi’s theme stands out, and even that’s not really top of the line.  Sound effects are silly and cartoonish, and I’ll be honest, I do not like the OP or ED.  And outside of the main cast....?  A lot of the voice acting sounds pretty dull and unmemorable.

4) Adaptation changes pt 1. Listen...I’m not here to be all Edgy and say this show was bad because it refused to kill people.  But this anime completely pulls its punches when it comes to...everything.  As far as I can remember, not a single person actually dies during the series, despite Yami Yugi killing or hospitalizing at least five-six people in the manga.  It just hits a lot less hard when all he’s done is given someone an illusion of being burned to death instead of him actually dropping his cigarette butt into the alcohol and lighting himself on fire.  For some reason, it just makes everything feel a bit flatter.

5) Adaptation changes pt 2. The games!!!  They’re boring!!!  The real draw, for me, of the manga was when Yami Yugi used ordinary items in his surroundings to pull together a game.  In the anime, he just pops them into a weird, nightmare dimension where weird shit happens and the games never make sense.  Not to mention, the anime adds a lot of extra encounters with Kaiba than the manga had, including extra Duel Monsters games.  And while Takahashi had little to no rules for the game in the first place, in the anime, when they don’t have a manga script to follow, it is a goddamn free for all. It’s like Calvinball up in here, making up shit left and right, even WORSE than the manga ever did, and it’s...not fun to watch.  At all. Not understanding what’s happening just makes me, as a viewer, feel cheated and let down.  

6) Adaptation changes pt 3.  Due to the nature of the adaptation, a lot of bits and pieces of character arcs were switched around, cut out, or straight up ignored.  Mokuba does not go rescue Honda from the blocks game in Death-T.  The Jonouchi-Hirutani arc is condensed from its original several chapters span into a single episode.  And there are other examples as well, that I think overall do a disservice to the cast and the individual characters.

So, my overall verdict?  Unless you are a super die-hard fan of Yu-Gi-Oh, particular DM, I don’t think the anime is worth the time.  It’s quirky, funny, and can be fun in places, but overall, it at least wasn’t really worth my second watch.

I’m still stealing Miho for my own purposes, though.