#adventure completed; homes being restored; and another adventure beginning

[mumms-the-word]

Shadow Curse Events Pt. 2

Harpers, druids, and the battle against Ketheric

So in Part 1, I talked about Ketheric’s descent into Sharran zealotry and his attacks against all Selûnite faithful and anyone who so much as breathed a bad word about him. The TLDR is that Ketheric didn’t just become a follower of Shar, he basically became the Prophet-General of her new dark army, her Chosen, establishing new teachings and protocols for what defined a Dark Justiciar. It got so bad, and he became so powerful, that a leader of the Selûnite resistance, Ketheric's own master mason Morfred, made a deal with Raphael to take out his Justiciars just to hopefully give the Harpers a chance.

Because, to no one's surprise, all of this murder and fearmongering has captured the attention of the Harpers, who feel the need to step in and restore some balance.

The rest of this post is basically going to be about the Harper-druid battle against Ketheric and the siege of Reithwin, culminating in him getting sealed up in his tomb. Buckle up and be prepared for a couple of graphic war things (cw: animal death). Part 3 will be about the first few days of the shadow curse itself, because I just find that eerie and fascinating.

Full deep dive under the cut! Super long post ahead :'>

———

The moment is nigh; war has been brewing, and now it overflows. When Ketheric turned us toward Shar, I followed him - in appearance, if not in heart. This is my home, and I would not be removed from it, no matter what. I watched at a distance as the darkness here grew; as Ketheric's grief brought him farther and farther from life itself. As he gathered his army, I prayed for his defeat. As the Harpers march upon our little village - our little, beautiful village - I can only hope Ketheric will be felled at last, and Reithwin can begin to heal from this nightmare.

Let me briefly set the stage. Reithwin Town is under the governance of Ketheric Thorm, former Selûnite-turned-Chosen-of-Shar. All Selûnite worship has been driven underground. Dark Justiciars train in some elusive location outside and beneath town, only to return in order to interrogate the citizens of Reithwin about their loyalties to Shar and to Ketheric. Bodies are hanging in the square as an example to those who might think about dissenting or professing their faith in Selûne. People are going missing or being executed every day, and Ketheric's desire to expand Shar's influence beyond the borders of Reithwin is only growing stronger. Rumors abound that he's already completely destroyed a nearby village, another Selûnite refuge called Moonhaven. And now, the citizens of Reithwin hear whispers on the wind that the Harpers will soon arrive from the east...and they're bringing an army.

If a citizen were to wish to flee, they'd be nearly out of luck. The Harpers are coming from the east, but Baldur's Gate lies in the west, and the leadership in Baldur's Gate is already suspicious. Ketheric has drawn the attention of Grand Duke Eltan, the founder of the Flaming Fist and the good-aligned general who aided the heroes of BG1 (like Jaheira) during the Sarevok crisis. He's heard whispers of a Sharran enclave and has ordered a scout to go and investigate. That scout is Art Cullagh.

Incidentally, in the last post I suggested that these events are happening either between 1371-1374 or between 1396-1399. We don't know when Grand Duke Eltan died, so either theory still holds water (pick whichever you like best), but I do think his involvement moves the needle a little more towards the 1371-1374 theory. Eltan has just wrapped up the Sarevok adventure with Jaheira and the other heroes in 1368 and was dealing with other issues in 1369. He would still be in the height of his power as a leader of Baldur's Gate and the Grand Marshal of the Flaming Fist in the early 1370s. So he would have a vested interest in trying to maintain peace in his city, and that includes investigating rumors of civil unrest and strange darkness in a town just up the river from him to make sure that whatever is happening there doesn't come downriver.

Eltan sends Art Cullagh, a lieutenant/officer of the Flaming Fist (and virtuoso with a lute, as we well know). I won't post images of his orders here, since it's a letter most of us have likely read when trying to fix the shadow curse. But essentially, he's ordered to take lodgings in Last Light Inn and begin his investigation in the House of Healing to confirm rumors of corruption and Sharran influence in town. We know he attempts to fulfill these commands because he's seen at the inn and later his lute is left behind at the House of Healing.

Shadow Vestige: You see a man drain his tankard in an inn as he listens to a Flaming Fist play the lute. He's better than his uniform might suggest.

Around the same time that Art is preparing to travel down and begin investigating, the Harpers are already at work gathering an army. They're not just making Ketheric their convenient enemy—they're declaring all-out war.

They've gathered their evidence (after interrogating locals and possibly attempting to assassinate Ketheric from afar) and now they're ready to take the fight to him directly. But they need backup. So they write to the Emerald Enclave (not to be confused with the Emerald Grove) to arrange an alliance. Ketheric is going against nature, after all, and who better to call on for aid in preserving nature than the Emerald Enclave?

[The first few inches of this scroll are written in formal, elaborate script.] To the Emerald Enclave, and those deemed worthy to see this record, greetings from Those Who Harp. Know ye that the one known as Ketheric Thorm, a paladin of Shar, is guilty of crimes against body and spirit. They include, but are not limited to Murder, Slavery, and Desecration of Temples Most Holy. Let our intent be known: an alliance between the Harpers and the Emerald Enclave. United, we may end Thorm's reign of terror. The High Harpers eagerly await your good word.

The Emerald Enclave is massive, since it basically serves as the high council and umbrella organization for all druidic circles and groves that exist in Faerûn (or those who choose to align with the Emerald Enclave's tenants anyway). When the Harpers declare an alliance with the Enclave, those in charge of selecting allies make sure to enlist the druid circle that is local to that area, the Emerald Grove, since they will be the closest and have a stake in preserving the land around their grove. The Emerald Grove even immortalizes this alliance in their inner sanctum.

Image: Mural of Harpers and Druids shaking hands in front of an oak; Narrator reads: "In darkest hour, a concord made / 'Twixt harp and wild against the shade." Image: Mural of Harpers and druids stand back to back with the fallen armor of Dark Justiciars at their feet; Narrator reads: "The towers seized, the battle done / the moonrise broke the Darkest One."

It's possible that the Emerald Grove was the only circle that joined or was even asked to be in the battle, but perhaps the Enclave sent more. The Harpers needed an army, after all, and Jaheira says they numbered hundreds strong. Either way, the infamous Halsin Silverbough and his predecessor, the Archdruid in charge before him, are among the druids who join the army, though they never meet Jaheira in the battle.

Jaheira: The Archdruid Halsin. Do not be surprised that I know your name - you fit a rather singular description. And one survivor of the shadow curse's fall ought to know another. Halsin: We never actually got to meet, when fighting Ketheric that first time. Jaheira: No. We were a host hundreds strong, after all. Until we were not.

With the druids and Harpers finally aligned, they can at last march on Reithwin and begin their siege.

So let me pause for a moment to confess that the battle itself is...hard to track. Some characters (Halsin, Jaheira) and some accounts suggest that the battle only takes up about one day. The battle seems to either be contained to the banks of the Chionthar, or it spreads into the town to eventually reach Moonrise Towers. Other accounts, like the Harper's Testimonial, suggest the battle raged for three straight days outside of Moonrise alone before Ketheric descended personally into the field. Notes and letters from the House of Healing suggest the siege may have taken even longer, because supplies dwindled to dangerously low levels. Trying to reconcile all these accounts is tricky.

It's important to note that sieging a town doesn't always mean active fighting, it just means cutting off supplies and travel, keeping everyone out, or keeping everyone in, so it's possible the town was under siege for much longer than the battle that was actually fought. So the following is my best interpretation for the events, in an order that makes semi-logical sense to me. Some of this is complete conjecture. But feel free to come up with your own timelines!

Shadow Vestige: You sense a faded memory of marching in an army against Ketheric Thorm. Victory seemed possible back then.

The plan is to lay siege to Reithwin Town and force Ketheric to surrender. Failing that, siege the town until the army is too weak from hunger to fight well, then push forward into Moonrise Towers and kill Ketheric.

Part of the Chionthar divides Reithwin from the rest of the village outskirts (as you can see on the map), making three bridges the only access into town if you're approaching from the east as the Harpers and druids would have done (unless, of course, you want to get wet or you can fly). On one side of the river is the town proper. On the other, Last Light Inn and several farms.

If the Harpers barricade the bridges, or the Justiciars build barricades to keep them out, then Reithwin is cut off from everything on the east side of the river. Cut off the farms, and Reithwin loses food. Cut off travel and trade from the east, and Reithwin is forced to look to the west for supplies...but Baldur's Gate is to the west, and Grand Duke Eltan is already suspicious. He will not be a friend to Ketheric Thorm. Reithwin is essentially (if not literally) boxed in.

It's a good siege plan...in theory, anyway. And if the Harpers lay siege while waiting for their army to grow, waiting for the druids to join them, etc., then it helps them in two ways. It starves out and weakens the enemy and gives them time to increase their own strength.

For a while, the seige seems to be working.

Whether it was the Harpers or the Justiciars who built the barricades and pickets along the bridge, Reithwin is now officially under siege, and trade and supplies start to trickle nearly to a stop. The number of travelers through the tollhouse drastically dwindles, until eventually it seems to be cut off entirely. Reithwin begins to suffer food shortages, enough that the veterinarian in town is forced to butcher some of the stable's horses to provide food. And it's not just horses, judging by the evidence we find elsewhere in town, like the missing pets posters and the pile of bloodied cat and dog collars outside of the tollhouse.

(Ugh I hate it so much. But the Harpers are determined to win. And yes, while some of the food shortage stuff could have been Ketheric failing at governing his town appropriately, a siege makes more sense to me.)

At some point (days? weeks?) Ketheric likely says enough is enough. The battle must begin or he will lose his town and his army to starvation, especially with winter quickly approaching. Alternatively, the Harpers themselves grow tired of waiting. They see that their siege is doing little to sway Ketheric and decide that the only thing left to do is attack.

Either way, the battle will begin on the morrow.

On the eve of the first day of the battle, many Harpers and druids bunk at Last Light Inn, likely including Jaheira and Halsin (who both remember the inn as it was before the shadow curse). Art Cullagh is also staying there. Whether he has already visited the House of Healing and lost his lute there is uncertain, though I think it's likely. Perhaps he visited before Reithwin was sieged, or visited during the siege but before the fighting started. Perhaps he is there in the inn when the Harpers toast one another the night before the battle. The Harpers no doubt expect a hard-fought but certain victory. I can only wonder what Art must have thought, watching them, if he was there that same night.

Shadow Vestige: You glimpse a young Harper on the eve of battle against Thorm, long ago. He and his comrades toast each other in Last Light.

The next day, the battle begins.

Ketheric is a remarkable general who understands how to rouse his soldiers. Minthara describes him, even a century later, as "everything a general should be - a charismatic leader with a brilliant strategic mind." He knows his soldiers and those who would volunteer to join his army are going hungry and are fearful of what the winter might bring to their seiged town. Whether they are Dark Justiciars or not, they're mortal. More mortal than he is. So he gathers them together to bolster their morale before the battle.

[A record of Ketheric Thorm's speech to his troops before his victory over the druids and Harpers.] Take this. You there, take this from me. That is gold, friends. Let those who are coveters and cravens among you take my gold and go. There's enough to keep you warm in winter. But in those cold and lonely winters to come, you will look into the bought flames in the purchased hearth and see a bargained-for peace, and then you'll realise that such a retirement comes at the price of pride. Go on and take it. Take it and go. Those who are not afraid and me? We won't stop you. But neither shall we know a winter in which the coin of regret is idly spent. Instead we shall know blood, and fury, and a triumph worthy of a flame reconcileable only with heaven, I swear it! Against us arrayed is a group of fools - let them be our bank vault! Let us raid them, friends! Let us grow rich on screams!

The Harper Testimonial suggests that Ketheric himself did not enter the battle until day three. I can imagine Ketheric giving such a speech and then watching from the towers (a good vantage point to view the battle below) as his Dark Justiciar army descends on hundreds of Harpers and druids, knowing that victory is well in hand. His Justiciars have trained hard and ritually killed a celestial being, after all. They are an elite force.

~1~ A Harper's Testimonial: The Last Stand of Ketheric Thorm, Chosen of Shar. [The pursuant text describes a battle between Ketheric Thorm's faithful and magical Harper forces.] I do not know what magic the Dark Justiciars summoned to our plane. But if it came from the Weave, then let it be cursed for eternity. For three days, we sieged the Towers. For three days, their darkbolts cleaved our ranks. And on the third day, as his men and woman at last began to fall, Ketheric entered battle.

(The Harper might be conflating the Towers with Reithwin itself, or perhaps I'm wrong about this theory and the Harper is only talking about a secondary battle that happened right outside the Towers. Either way, putting it here because the information is extremely relevant, but here's your warning that there's plenty of conjecture ahead!)

The Harpers and druids clash with the Justiciars on the east banks of the Chionthar, slaughtering each other around ballistae, barricades, and battering rams, trying to push forward across the bridges and docks that connect the tollhouse with the village outskirts. This is no mere skirmish. The ground is slick with blood as Dark Justiciars fight to keep the Harpers and druids from advancing forward into town and reaching Moonrise. Dead and wounded soon begin to litter the ground. The battle is so brutal that vestiges of it remain even a century later, identifiable at a glance.

Character comments regarding the centuries-old remains of the battle around the main bridge into the tollhouse. Astarion: This battlefield must've ran slick with blood - I can taste it in the air, even after so long. Lae'zel: There was a great battle here. The ground stained red with blood long dried. Gale: The site of no ordinary skirmish. This was once a battlefield, and a bloody one, too, judging by the number of bodies. Shadowheart: These aren't the remains of some skirmish - whole armies clashed here once. Wyll: A great battle was fought here - I can practically hear the din of blade against blade, axe against shield. Karlach: This is a battlefield. An old one, but still. Jaheira: Forces from the Emerald Grove. Many stood against Ketheric - only we lucky few survived him. Halsin: A great many druids once stood here to fight Ketheric Thorm. Few ever left. Minthara: Remains of those who stood against Ketheric in the past.

Dark Justiciars rain down darkbolts on the Harpers and druids, bolts of pure darkness that deal moderate damage and can daze the victim. Healers among the Harper and druid ranks begin to get overwhelmed by the amount of wounded. Many of the dead are left abandoned on the field, the fighting too intense to stop and take them away for burial. Most are never recovered.

As the battle rages on for one day, two days, three days, things are growing dire for the citizens inside the town, some of whom are cowering as the battle gets closer and closer, spilling out onto the streets of Reithwin and surging toward Moonrise Towers. The House of Healing is trying to tend to the wounded and the sick, operating as both a regular clinic and a war hospital. Because the siege (and now the battle) has stopped all supplies from entering the town, their potions and tonics are running dangerously low. Additionally, though the House of Healing should technically be offering aid to any wounded person, no matter their faith or creed, Ketheric issues an order that all Selûnites or Harpers must be turned away and that all healing items must be focused on Dark Justiciars alone—an order that his surgeon uncle, Malus, strictly enforces.

[This exhaustive log lists each and every patient to have sought healing in Reithwin, along with their ailments. The minor injuries and common diseases of the early pages give way to critical wounds and deep lacerations - the repercussions of battle. Several unbound scrolls have been slid among the final pages, demanding that healers turn away wounded Harpers and Selûnites, and reserve their tonics for wounded Dark Justiciars - on the orders of General Ketheric Thorm.]

(If Art Cullagh hasn't visited the House of Healing already, he likely can't now.)

The House is still operating as a clinic, accepting patients who come in with ailments or injuries, but they're ordered to essentially ignore them. Malus even forbids the use of sleep aids and anesthetics to ease the pain or passing of the elderly and mortally wounded. Soon they begin turning away even Sharran citizen patients, or leaving them untreated, like the husband of one Cleric of Shar who comes to the House of Healing to be treated for an unknown malady. The husband never realizes that he is suffering the damage that his wife should be getting as she takes on "whole troops" of Harpers single-handedly and walks away without a scratch. He dies, forgotten, either a victim of the shadow curse or of his wife's warding bond.

Things grow so dire that at least one nurse, Sister Anna Lidwin, pens a note to the Chief Chirurgeon (surgeon) of Harbourside Hospital (which is itself kinda sketchy) requesting aid. Potions, herbs, clerics, anything that can help.

To: Chief Chirurgeon, Harbourside Hospital, Baldur's Gate From: Sister Anna Lidwin, Darkcloak, Reithwin House of Healing URGENT! Dear Sir or Madam, We have reached dire times in Reithwin. War has come. Do you not teach that it is our duty to mend all who break, comfort all who ail, without regard for the gods they worship or the champions they heed? Yet our surgeon Malus Thorm abides by his own creed. 'The will of Shar', he might say, and I dare not argue with him - or any Thorm. He allows supplies to dwindle, leaves some patients' injuries to fester so he may 'study', and commands me to nurse only Dark Justiciars that seek treatment. I beg you, Sir or Madam - please deliver us aid, so I might close every tear and cleanse every wound, even those of Harpers and Selûnites. We will humbly accept all you can offer: potions, herbs, sutures, even clerics. Help us to heal. With gratitude, Anna Lidwin

The letter is never sent. It lies abandoned in the House of Healing even a century later. Perhaps she wrote it on the final day of battle and was caught by the shadow curse as she was trying to tend to the wounded.

For the Harpers and druids, the battle has taken a turn for the worse. Ketheric's Dark Justiciars seem overwhelmingly powerful and the damage this battle is doing is only increasing, especially as it spills into town. Eventually, the Harpers weigh the cost of victory and elect to surrender. They get Khelben Arunsun, the Blackstaff himself, to write the surrender letter (whether he was physically there at the battle or not is uncertain).

Ketheric denies the surrender.

General Ketheric Thorm: It is with heavy heart that I must announce the surrender of the Harper forces and its allies to your Dark Justiciar army, under unanimous agreement. 'Harpers work against villainy and wickedness wherever they find it…' So states our code, and so here have we acted. But I also know, all too well, how the statement continues: '… but they work ever mindful of the consequences of what they do.' We cannot be party to the suffering of the people of Reithwin, and indeed, of the great loss of life that this war will visit upon the Sword Coast - and, perhaps, beyond it. So it is written, and so let it be done, Khelben Arunsun, on behalf of the High Harper Council and its allies. [Two words are slashed across the bottom of the scroll:] SURRENDER DECLINED

Ketheric rejects the surrender and clamps it in the jaws of some poor dead soul whose head or skull is then set on a pike at the battlefield (knowing him, it was probably the messenger who brought the surrender letter). The Harpers and druids keep fighting. They have no other choice. It's fight or be slaughtered.

It's the third day. Something has shifted in the ranks. Dark Justiciars are falling in battle, and for once, reinforcements aren't coming. Unbeknownst to the Harpers and druids, an infernal force is destroying Justiciars in Grymforge and in the Gauntlet of Shar. The Harpers and druids at last have a fighting chance.

And that's when Ketheric joins the battle.

The details of this part of the battle are lost to time. We know from Minthara that Ketheric is absolutely fearless in battle. She describes him as a man who leads his troops from the front and cuts through the enemy “like a scythe through stalks.” I suspect that even back then, when the blows and arrows rain down on him as they do when Minthara fights with him a century later, he does not readily fall or falter. With immortality practically guaranteed, he likely butchers more Harpers and druids than they dared imagine possible for one man. The hundreds that made up the original army of Harpers and druids have been winnowed and cut down until only, as Jaheira says, a lucky few remain. The dead number so high for Halsin that he says it would take him a day and night recite all the names of the friends he lost in this battle.

But eventually, somehow, the Harpers and druids at last defeat Ketheric and eliminate all the remaining Justiciars that are still fighting topside. Ketheric suffers a seemingly mortal wound and falls. He utters a "final curse" as he dies and then withers, according to one Harper at least. The effects of this spoken curse are not immediately apparent. For now, the Harpers and druids feel they have won a victory at last, but the curse, whatever it is meant to be, clearly spooks them. Perhaps they think that by sealing Ketheric in the mausoleum, they can avoid the effects of his last dying words.

The Harpers drag Ketheric's corpse from the battlefield and leave him in a tomb in the mausoleum. Jaheira (and possibly Halsin) personally helps other Harpers and Druids seal the mausoleum doors using arcane sigils.

Player: If he's back, perhaps you should have hit him harder in the first place. Jaheira: Believe me - he was well and truly dead. I locked his corpse in the Thorm mausoleum myself.

Halsin: These sigils...druids and Harpers alike tried to seal away Ketheric Thorm in his foul tomb. To no avail.

The remaining Harpers and druids think that this final act of sealing Ketheric away signals a hard-won victory. Jaheira and the other Harpers turn to the task of removing bodies from the battlefield to bury them at Last Light. Halsin and the other druids likely also focus on tending to their dead and wounded, while the surviving citizens of Reithwin breathe unsteady sighs of relief or resignation...until the late autumn air suddenly takes on a midwinter chill.

The shadow curse is only just beginning.

———

Tags for those who wanted the update! @fingons-rad-harp @stuffforthestash

Feel free to request a tag update for Part 3!

#bg3 #bg3 lore #bg3 meta #bg3 critical #bg3 discourse #my thoughts #deep dive #long post #super long post #ketheric thorm #halsin #halsin silverbough #jaheira #do not ask me how many times I rearranged sections and images #each post has me feeling more and more like that guy in always sunny in philadelphia #just red string and papers and pepe silvia but make it bg3

[kaia-adler]

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough." — Mae West

When I first ventured out into the world, I wanted to do what I could to make it a better place for all and so I tried. Through the years, I was able to provide children in third world countries with the vaccines they desperately needed to keep them away from illnesses that threatened to plague their villages. I rescued animals and restored their health, I brought vital resources to remote parts of our world, and even saved several species from extinction. What a life, what a privilege to be able to do such wonderful things. In all sincerity, I felt as though my life’s purpose was complete. I knew what I was meant for, my reason for existing. But after many years, I was homesick and needed to take a break to reconnect with the islands I call home. So I came back to Hawai’i.

Being home made me feel like I had lost my way. Relaxing by the beach, surfing with friends, and grabbing lunch to catch up felt like a selfish thing to do. How could I enjoy these things when there was so much suffering in the world? My heart would not let me rest. My mind was unraveling. I didn’t know this was part of the process. I was going through a change, a chapter was ending so another could begin. In the uncertainty of the future, I ventured forward and ended up finding solace in an unexpected place; the soul of Jacob Adler.

I didn’t expect to fall in love like this. To a level where your soul feels at peace and on fire at the same time. A person you could call home. I knew this existed but I didn’t think it would ever find me the way that it did. We married on January 20th, 2024 here in Hawai’i embracing all our ancestral traditions. It was the most beautiful and meaningful ceremony and celebration. On February 14th, 2024, we celebrated again in Como, Italy. The reason? Years prior, I had come across a bridal magazine that had a beautiful spread about weddings at Lake Como in Italy. The model looked so much like me, it was uncanny. I knew then that if I ever married, I would want to have it there. Years later, I was able to do just that.

On July 28th, 2024, our twin boys were born. They are the light of our lives. Our boys are just like Jay and I. Both adventurous, always wanted to be in the water, barefoot and happy. They love our dog, Cupid, who takes his role as older brother very seriously. He’s their protector and we feel at peace knowing we have an extra set of eyes on our boys.

It’s been two years since our twins have been born and though it’s unexpected, I’m pregnant again. Singleton this time. Don’t tell Jay but I’m hoping for a girl. But regardless of who our little one will become, I just know that every little thing, is going to be alright.

XOXO

Kaia Alder

#Journal x Kaia Adler #RetiringCharacter

[justassistant]

Garden story game

#GARDEN STORY GAME SERIES#

It’s possible to alter stats too – another modern touch – by adding snapshots to a book of memories. On the subject of progression, the stamina boosts and health bar extensions feel significant. This assists greatly in rebuilding the world, and opening up new areas, while also making the daily grind easier going. Suddenly, the rocks, twigs and other junk crammed in Concord’s backpack have a purpose. A couple of hours in, the crafting element is finally added – something hinted at from the outset. As the rot is pushed back, more shops and services re-open – including a library seeking donations. It then beginnings to slowly build on those basics. Eventually, though, everything clicks into place. Unify a broken community as the newly-appointed Guardian of The Grove. We also found ourselves dying surprisingly often during the opening hour or so – Concord’s health gauge is small initially, and enemies have a few different attack patterns that can catch you off guard. This item will be sent to your system automatically after purchase. If you don’t look at the map often, especially after picking up routine daily chores, you may find yourself getting lost.

#GARDEN STORY GAME SERIES#

There’s a learning curve – which definitely suggests some RPG experience is required, even if it’s just familiarity with the Zelda series – and the UI is reasonably complex, spanning several screens. You defend your garden-home from an invasion on malignant rot monsters and restore peace to the land and its inhabitants, all of which are fruit. It also features combat, dungeons and puzzles similar to the Zelda games. There’s a tribe of frogs too, with their personalities being bolder and more outspoken than regular folk.Īlthough Garden Story appears to be aimed at younger gamers, this isn’t quite the case. Garden Story is a role-playing adventure, crafting and farming game similar to Stardew Valley. They aren’t alone in their struggle, thankfully, with other guardians providing the supporting cast. They’ve been chosen to become a guardian of The Grove a hero of the realm tasked with saving their homestead from The Rot – an ominous purple goop that warps and consumes. Not just because they’re a grape, of all things, but because they’re small in stature. Like an onion, there are a lot of layers. There are even a few modern elements, such as resource management and crafting – letting you put your own stamp on the world by placing foraging bins and decorations where you see fit. Dungeons, while only spanning a dozen-or-so screens, are randomly generated and their bosses can take a couple of attempts to beat. It has both central quests and daily chores to complete, with the latter proving a steady income. Everything here has been deepened and expanded upon, however – this is a fully-fledged RPG, with a run time of 10+ hours.

#Garden story game

[lollybliz]

IT TOOK ME OVER 24 HOURS OF READ TIME BUT I FINALLY FINISHED AND HOLH FUCKING SHIT BRO

I KNOW, RIGHT??

#i reread it every 6 months or so its just. its too good not to #and its a tearjerker every time #its the fic ive hit the most times on ao3; last i checked my history page had it at 430 something #and it hits like a train! constantly! an extremely well written; thorough; emotionally devastating train! #i actually spoke to Dets once. i sent an ask in requesting the file for the music and she gave it to me #i keep it in my inbox. its been there for a little over 4 years #i hope she comes back. theres supposedly 3 more chapters! but it doesnt end badly at all imo #adventure completed; homes being restored; and another adventure beginning #... it would be nice to see the conclusion of the Let Bilbo Into The Halls thing though... #'the dead and the dying' aye and one of em's still dying what're y'gonna do with him dets???? #sansûkh #asks #answers #extreme technicality #you have no idea how unbelievably happy i am that you read and enjoyed it #i dont often get to share it; people get daunted by the size and unfinished state #im so so glad you liked it

[themardlonk]

I just finished reading the books and I've come to the conclusion that I actually really like that Sam married Rosie and Frodo left? 

Before reading the books, the ending to ROTK used to lowkey upset me, because Sam and Frodo love tf out of each other! But Frodo leaves and Sam stays behind to get married to someone we don't know and is happy in the Shire without Frodo?? It bugged me. But after reading the books, I've come to the realization that in order for them to get the happy endings they deserve, Frodo needs to leave and Sam needs to stay. And Sam's life with Rosie is essential to his happy ending and completed character arc and is entirely separate from Frodo and Sam's love for one another. The reasons behind why I think their endings are perfect for them have to do with autonomy and the difference between choices made selflessly vs. choices made in self interest.

TLDR; Frodo and Sam’s endings are perfect for them (imo) because they get to choose them for themselves. Both hobbits spend the entire trilogy sacrificing everything they are for the Good of Middle Earth. Frodo leaving is The Good Ending for him because he is suffering the traumatic effects of the Ring; Frodo isn’t happy in the Shire and chooses an adventure of his own to Valinor so that he can heal. Sam staying and getting married and becoming part of the community is The Good Ending for him because he is invested in the Shire; from the moment he returns to the Shire, he chooses to pour his time and love into its restoration and abundance. Sam is a gardener and he chooses the Shire because it brings him happiness, but Frodo can’t find happiness there and so chooses to leave because that’s what’s best for him. (And then eventually, after Sam’s lived his happy ending in the Shire, he sails to Valinor to live with Frodo, and they both get that happy ending, too.)

There’s a little mini essay on Frodo and Sam that I put under the cut because it’s just me rambling, but if I didn’t make my reasoning clear enough above, it might clear it up. (Forewarning: These notes are probably uncoordinated af, because they were jotted down in my phone while I sat on the floor of my kitchen for 3 hours in a feverish ADHD-med-fueled determination to wrap my head around the LOTR ending.)

Frodo and Sam have the same goal (destroy the Ring), but their jobs differ. Frodo is tasked with the actual job of carrying the Ring (the metaphorical weight of the world) to Mordor. On top of physical, Frodo suffers through enormous mental and spiritual anguish to complete this task. Sam, meanwhile is tasked with protecting the Ring Bearer, and every decision he makes is in Frodo's best interest before anything else. He handles the Ring very little and his suffering is mainly physical, but he spends the entire time as Frodo's second, and defers to Frodo's choices and well-being above his own the entire time.

When they return home to the Shire, of the two of them, it's Sam who takes the lead in the resistance against Saruman. Afterward, it's Sam who spreads the dirt and plants the mallorn from Galadriel. It's Sam who takes an active role in saving and restoring the Shire. Of the four hobbits, I noticed that Frodo seems to be the one most affected by the Scouring of the Shire. While they're all affected, Frodo is the only one who doesn't actively start rallying troops and planning attacks. Instead, he takes on advisory duties and then withdraws as soon as he is able.

All four hobbits come back physically changed, but the book makes it pretty plain that on top of this, Frodo is also experiencing chronic PTSD, depression, and withdrawal from the Ring. Frodo isn't completely present in his life because he's trying to cope. He tries to be there for Sam, he even lets Sam and Rosie move in with him after they marry, but on the whole, Frodo is really, really sick.

Sam explicitly states that he loves Frodo, and he tries to be there for Frodo through Frodo's sickness. But unlike the trek to Mordor, there's really only so much Sam can do for him. I think Frodo is aware of this, and it's why he encourages Sam to actively pursue happiness (Rosie, a home, a family, social standing, etc.). Frodo loves Sam and wants him to have the happy ending that Sam wants, but Frodo can only give so much of himself as he is currently. Sam is in love with the Shire, but Frodo's happy ending isn't in the Shire. He's not happy there, and Sam is. Frodo can't give Sam what he needs, and vice versa. They have a conversation about this in "The Grey Havens" chapter. Frodo asks if Sam would be willing to travel with him, and Sam says of course, but that he can't go too far from the Shire. They love each other, but their needs are different, now. Frodo needs help with trauma recovery, and he can't stay in the Shire, but he's also not going to ask Sam to leave it behind to be with him while he recovers. Frodo doesn't need Sam to go with him, and he actually kinda needs to do this himself. And it's really important to Sam's character arc that Sam says he wants to stay.

Sam's life with Rosie is essential to his happy ending and completed character arc. Sam spends the entirety of the books looking after Frodo, caring for him, risking his life for him, and making sure they both go "There and Back Again." For 15(ish) months, Sam is on constant Frodo Protection Duty, and looking at how Sam addresses him and treats him beforehand and during the journey, Sam has honestly probably deferred to Frodo his entire life. But in order for Sam to really complete his character arc, he needs to choose his future for himself. When they get back to the Shire, he begins the process of self actualization, and Frodo helps it along. On the topic of Rosie, it doesn't matter that Sam marries HER necessarily, but it does matter that he settles down and gets to live a quiet life of gardening and family and community, because that's what he WANTS. And it's important that he himself chooses it, independently of anyone else's well-being.

For Frodo, it's both very similar and the exact opposite. He spends the journey to Mount Doom inside his head, facing things he can't physically fight, and he has to lean on Sam the entire way. Frodo DOES make the choice to take the Ring to Rivendell, and then to Mordor. It could be argued that every step he takes toward Mordor is a choice, but it's never his personal choice. It's a choice between Good and Evil. From the very beginning when Bilbo leaves him the Ring to a year later when he finally returns to the Shire, Frodo's one and only choice is the big picture question: Will you choose Good or Evil? Will you give up, or will you continue to put your mind and body through intense trauma so that your entire world doesn't burn? They're both terrible options, but they're the only ones he's given, and both are detrimental to him personally.

When Frodo returns to the Shire, he could go back to living quietly there for the rest of his life, and he actually does try to do that for a little while. But he has choices available to him now, and it quickly becomes clear to him that he's not happy there. He's been changed so much by the Ring and the experiences he's been through and the wider world around him that his journey can't end in the Shire. It's impossible for him pick up where he left off, because he's not that same hobbit anymore. He's unhappy and unhealthy playing that role, and it would be antithetical to his journey and the opposite of character growth. For Frodo, his happy ending looks like trauma recovery and a kinder adventure that he gets to choose for himself, and that's why Valinor is such a good ending for him.

Before he leaves, Frodo does as much as he can to put the Shire to rights and set Sam up to live his happy ending (he INVITES Sam to live in HIS HOUSE, did I mention that? I love them), and then Frodo leaves for Valinor to heal and find his own happy ending. And he gets it. He does heal, and after he's much recovered, Sam comes to live with him after he himself has lived a full happy life in the Shire.

OTHER (other) THOUGHTS:

(((This ending also makes sense, because if Frodo can't live happily in the Shire after going on a huge journey to save it, SOMEBODY better.)))

I also think it's nice that Sam and Rosie get to be in love, and that Sam is allowed to love multiple people. And I think it's lovely that his love for Frodo is not diminished in any way by his love for Rosie. "You're allowed to love multiple people deeply in your life, and that love is not made lesser because it's being given to multiple people" is SUCH a good message.

#samfro #samfrodo #lotr #samwise gamgee #frodo baggins #rotk #tolkien #maria talks #the scouring of the shire #the grey havens

[dalekofchaos]

Rey’s lack of motivation and stake in the Sequel Trilogy

I have a question to ask you. What are Rey’s motivations? What are her wants and goals and why is she even drawn to the conflict between The First Order and The Resistance?

Rey’s motivations in the Sequels.

Rey wants to find her parents.

Wants to bring back Luke Skywalker

Rey wants to find her place 

Wants Ben to return to the light

Has no real motivation to be on either side of the conflict, but chooses The Resistance anyway

Says she wants to kill Palpatine in cold blood, was close to giving in

Now she chose to fuck off to Tatooine and we see very little in her motivation to do....ANYTHING

Let’s compare Anakin and Luke’s motivations.

What are Anakin's motivations?

Wants to leave a life of slavery and come back and free his mother

Wants to become a Jedi and become a hero

Wants to protect Padme

Wants to save Obi-Wan

Wants to stop Dooku and end the war before it can begin

Wants to be a good master to Ahsoka

Wants to clear Ahsoka’s name

Wants to stop the war

Wants to save Padme and his children's lives at the cost of the Jedi and doing whatever it takes and becomes Darth Vader

What are Luke’s motivations?

Luke is a farm boy who dreams of leaving his mundane life.

Luke discovers that his father -unlike what his uncle told him, was a heroic Jedi Knight

Luke, is reluctant and refuses the ‘call to adventure’, but after the Empire murders his Aunt and Uncle, he decides to Join Obi-Wan on the quest.

Save the Princess

Luke is angered by Obi-Wan’s death at the hands of Darth Vader, and seeks retribution.

Destroy the Death Star and save the Rebellion

To be trained by Yoda

Save Han and Leia

Luke discovers his father, the heroic Jedi, is none other than Darth Vader. After years of training, he sets out to redeem his father and turn him back to the light.

After the redemption of his father and fall of the Empire, Luke goes on a journey to restore The Jedi Order

Compare Rey and Luke’s journeys in ANH and TFA. Rey wanders around and stuff is handed to her. Luke takes initiative and works for what he has. Let's compare ANH with TFA

Luke screws up on watching R2, then chooses to chase him down. He makes another mistake by spying on the Tusken Raiders instead of getting the hell out of dodge. This leads to him being knocked out, and rescued by Ben Kenobi.

Luke initiates the meeting with Ben Kenobi, and it happens because of his early bad decisions.

His aunt & uncle are killed, but thanks to his screw-up with R2 & the raiders, he and the droids are spared.

He chooses to follow Kenobi to Alderaan instead of staying on Tattooine.

He chooses to accept Kenobi's instruction in the ways of the Force, even though most people think it's a myth and a joke. Even though he's bad at it and doesn't seem to get any results at first.

He makes the decision that they're going to rescue Leia, potentially dooming their escape from the Death Star. This sets off a chain of events that leads to Kenobi's death.

Then he chooses to help fight the Death Star, even though he's not a member of the rebellion. He was offered a job with Han, and he could have ensured his safety by leaving with them. Instead he chose certain death.

Finally, he chooses to trust a literal voice in his head instead of the targeting computer.

Let's contrast that with Rey.

BB-8 runs into her. She tries to send him away, but relents and lets him follow her home.

She chooses not to sell him for food.

Finn wanders into camp on his own initiative.

The camp is attacked because BB-8 is there. The camp would have been attacked no matter what Rey did. The other scavenger was, I'm pretty sure, from the same camp. And if she'd sold him, BB-8 would also have still been in the camp.

She is forced to take the Millennium Falcon when the ship she wanted to use was blown up.

She chooses to go with Finn and bring BB-8 to the Rebellion Resistance.

She stumbles upon Luke's lightsaber, and runs away from it.

She accidentally runs into Kylo Ren while hiding in the forest.

He chooses to kidnap her because he senses something special about her.

After her first exposure to the Force, she learns how to use some of it, successfully, and escapes from Ren. And to her credit, escaping and trying the Force out is a choice she made, rather than something that passively happened to her.

Then she, um, is standing there when Han is killed.

She chooses to fight Kylo Ren, and beats him in her first lightsaber battle after closing her eyes and thinking about the Force.

She sort of chooses to go summon Luke back to civilization - I say sort of because it's not clear why she was picked to go over, say, Leia.

Luke makes mistakes, and he is an active participant in his story. Rey is just kind of there, most of the time. She doesn't make mistakes, but she doesn't really do much else.

Rey has no personal stake in this war or motivations and she’s supposed to be the main protagonist.

Rey has never left Jakku before TFA and she tells Han that ”she never knew so much green existed” when they go to Maz’s castle.

In other words Rey must have had very limited knowledge of the world outside of Jakku and all she has heard from it are stories.

Rey who barely knows anything about the rest of the galaxy, to the point that she didn’t even know that forests existed what exactly is her personal stake in the current galactic conflict?

In TFA we saw The New Republic’s capital systems blown up by Starkiller Base and we never saw a reaction from Rey. We do see Finn and Han’s reactions. Also worth noting about Rey is that if she was unconscious throughout her involuntary travel to the Starkiller Base she was never actually aware of the Starkiller Base until just before Han, Finn and Chewie started planting the explosions in order to sabotage it.

Luke, while he had no personal attachments to Aldeeran did actually get to see the horrible aftermaths of it’s destruction.

But Rey was barely affected by the destruction of the Capital systems. Most characters were not as affected as they should have been in my opinion but we didn’t even get to see her have an emotional reaction to it.

This was probably the greatest genocide in Star Wars history and our main heroine is unaffected by it? Finn has a reaction to it and he’s supposedly NOT the main protagonist?

Rey really has no reason to care about the state of the galaxy. She only seems to care if people she knows are in danger.

The fact that she is supposed to be our main hero of this trilogy when she has next to no personal stakes in the well-being of the rest of the galaxy feels wrong to me.

Finn actually has stakes in this conflict since the FO took his family and childhood away from him and Poe has stakes because he actually lives in the New Republic and doesn’t want it to be under FO’s rule. Yet neither Finn nor Poe are considered the main protagonist? But oh wait, I forgot we can’t have a black or Latino man be the leading protagonist in Star Wars

The more I think about it is Rey has no goals or agency as a protagonist. She’s just whatever the plot demands her to be. Rey doesn’t actively take the initiative and make decisions, and simply react to the world around her. There is never a reason given as to why she wants to be a Jedi. Sure, she’s heard the stories about them, but she doesn’t dream to be one like Anakin, and the writers are so obsessed over her parents that they never develop any other motivation besides that. She has to be strung along the story so she can take part in it, hence she is repeatedly chased and kidnapped throughout TFA to get her to the Resistance where she decides to find Luke because she has nowhere else to go. Part of the reason she doesn’t even train with Luke is because she has no reason to, as she’s just supposed to find him. Rey joins the fight simply in reaction to learning that Luke is responsible for Ben’s fall. She’s only ever a Jedi and a member of the Resistance out of necessity- she has no where left to go and has to fight in self defense- so they try hamfist in some motives that she needs to stop herself from becoming like Palpatine but there is no tension as it’s the final act. By the end of the trilogy it’s not even clear if the Jedi Order will return because Rey never seems to want to be one and we can only assume they will return for meta reasons- because the audience knows the ST is a copypasta of the OT.

What exactly was Rey’s motivation for getting involved in the Galactic conflict before TROS? Luke was told that his father was killed by Darth Vader and later his family gets murdered by the empire so he had personal stakes to get involved in the conflict.

Anakin was a Jedi and had lived in the Republic for ten years by the time of the Clone Wars begun so he had personal reasons to get involved in the conflict.

Rey meanwhile grew up so isolated of Jakku that she had no idea forests existed and she didn’t lose anything and the FO attacked her on Jakku. In fact she wanted to return to Jakku after she had dumped BB-8 with the Resistance. Her primary motivation in TFA was to reunite with her family but the movie never establish that her family’s absence was connected to the galactic conflict in any way.

That connection isn’t established until TROS so what was her motivation until than? The Death of Han? A guy she had known for two hours? Finn? A guy she also had maybe only knew for about two hours total by the time of their hug in TLJ? Also she seemed to have completely forgotten about Finn by the time she want on a quest to redeem the guy that has far as she should have known by that point was still in a coma with his spine permanently damaged because of Kylo.

Rey’s motivation seems to either be finding her family or her dealing with her existential crisis neither had much of a connection with the galactic conflict until TROS

#Star Wars #Rey #Luke Skywalker #Anakin Skywalker #Anti Sequel Trilogy #Anti Lucasfilm #Finn #Poe Dameron #Rey Skywalker

[marmaligne]

Hey yo! :D For the requests: how about a vld post-canon fanfic in which the reader helps Lance to move on, while still remembering Allura with respect and fond memories, which ends up in a sweet love confession? :3 If you need more details, please don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks, and have a good day!

[Lance McClain] “Under The Sun”

———————————————————————

“It’s been quite awhile now, I wonder when Lance is coming home?”

You pondered without so much as a doubt that he’d be back eventually, but you were a bit worried about your long-time best friend. It was late into the summer evening now, and the gradient dark blue was only just beginning to peek over the horizon. He was out late far more often now, though you supposed it was because Allura’s death had hit him hard, but you were in disbelief in seeing the usually peppy and flirtatious boy so…. depressed. It was heartbreaking to witness.

Staring out the farmhouse window, you watched the tall grass sway in the fields beyond and the slight breeze ruffle through the distant image of an apple orchard. The sun was nearly set by now, and soon the stars would be clear in the sky—a constant reminder of the paladins journey across the galaxy.

Knowing that there was so much life out there beyond the Earth you knew, you could barely comprehend just how significantly small your life was in comparison. You hadn’t travelled with the paladins or engaged in conversation with Allura beyond briefings during the Galran invasion, but you understood that the universe they witnessed was oh-so-incredibly vast and endless.

And now you felt oh-so-incredibly lonely in it. You weren’t close with many of the other paladins, besides Hunk and Pidge of course. Shiro had his new husband, Coran was too iffy for your tastes, and Keith…. well he was always off and away. With Altea restored to its rightful glory, commerce and politics between itself and Earth were bustling and swell, never better, and many of the paladins, including Lance from time-to-time, were busy making deals and new friends.

And you felt left out and abandoned because of that. It wasn’t fair that you hadn’t been accepted into the space academy, only because there was a limit to the number of accepted students, and it wasn’t fair Lance left without a single word to you, on some grand adventure for years on end without so much as a word, and it wasn’t fair that you were helpless in all things besides cooking or cleaning or feeding the animals out in the barn, or giving Lance a hug when he needed one, or looking after his siblings while his parents were gone or just—being there. It just wasn’t fair that they’d all experienced so much of life, and you hadn’t done anything in the meantime. Your meagre living was nothing in comparison to their heroism and praise. You felt selfish for thinking this way, so you never voiced your concerns to anybody, especially Lance.

“I wonder what he’d think of me, thinking this way,” you looked out unto the glimmer of stars appearing beyond the clouds, “he’d look at me and think ‘Life is never fair, you should deal with it.’ What a joke.”

You suppose you were satisfied for now with just being able to be near Lance, as a friend and support for when he needed you most, even if he didn’t know it.

“Oh Allura,” stepping outside, your eyes had an even clearer view of the skyline, and the sunset appearing within your vision, and you could almost feel the expanse of the universe looking down upon you, Allura among the vast amount of stars blazing within it, “tell me what I should do to help him. Tell me how I should be there for him, in the same way you were and in ways otherwise. How can I make him happy now you’re gone?”

Of course, you would never receive an answer beyond a pregnant silence, and the echo of your own voice over the hills and through the house where the children were asleep. You kept your eyes on the stars, hoping they’d give you some form of sign, an astrological message that could guide you, a vision of some kind, but there was only emptiness, the soft yet visible twinkle of each individual sun, burning lightyears away.

Sigh. You really should’ve expected this you suppose.

“Speaking to the sky, I’m selfish and an idiot!”

You gripped your [H/c] hair and yanked it downwards, chanting ‘idiot’ over and over again, like a mantra or a prayer, hoping it would relieve some of your many frustrations, until you heard a small sound from a hay bale around the side of the house, near an old trough used to store feed.

“Hello? Anybody there?”

Silence was all that answered at first, but then a small series of whimpers came from the area. You grabbed a pitchfork and slowly made your way over to the bale, creeping closer and bringing the pitchfork up to your chest, ready to strike.

“AAAAAAAAAAH!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

A terrified Lance dunked himself into the trough, getting his backside stuck before tipping it over and having it land on top of him while attempting to crawl away.

“Dios mío [Y/n], you scared me!” Lance stood up and dusted off his jacket and pants, rubbing at his eyes and making an awful attempt at hiding his face away from your sight.

“Well I’m sorry, oh merciful Lord Lance, but you being secretive and not answering me when I asked has a lot to do with that.”

He looked away from you for a further moment before responding.

“Well, I uh…. just wanted to be alone for a minute y’know? All my siblings and family n’ stuff, kind of makes my back stiff and mind numb from time-to-time.”

You watched solemnly as he tried to laugh it off, sitting back down on the edge of the trough, head leaning in his hands and staring off into the distance, obviously bothered by something. You were curious, but you didn’t have any right to pry if he didn’t want to tell you first. You’d respect his wishes if he really did just want to be alone.

“Well, alright then,” you smiled softly at him, forcing yourself off your knees and turning around to head back inside, “if you want to talk, I’ll be back inside. I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

You began to walk away, adamant on getting back upstairs to the comfort of your bed and laying awake all night, when you felt a small weight on the back of your shirt. Lance’s hand had managed to grasp the fabric while you were walking away, and though you turned around to ask him why, he had barely moved from his position on the trough, only gazing at you with unshed tears in his eyes.

“Can you stay for a moment,” he pleaded, “please? It’ll only take a minute [Y/n], I swear.”

‘Allura give me strength’ you thought, letting out an exasperated sigh and seating yourself beside him on the ledge, barely glancing at him again, preferring to turn your sights to the horizon once more. You knew it’d be another nightly session of listening to his fears and sorrows, meanwhile drowning in your own self-doubt and anxieties. This also meant that tomorrow you’d wake up questioning your worth again, comparing yourself to the woman you’d come to respect and admire, and a woman who was now gone off to the afterlife, long before you.

“Tell me what’s up Lance. What’s eating away at you this time tonight, huh? Lemme guess, is it your girlfriend again?”

You watched as Lance fiddled with a piece of straw, rolling it back and forth between his palms, keeping his gaze on the sunset ahead.

“No,” he muttered, “more of an apology really.”

You nearly did a spit take, staring at him like he was a chicken with two heads. You never thought you’d be hearing an apology from the Casanova himself, let alone one aimed at you. Usually he was too cocky to have second thoughts.

“Sheesh Lance, what’s gotten into you? Did your mom finally drill some manners into that peabrain of yours?”

You jokingly put him in a headlock and started ruffling his hair, Lance desperately trying to remove your arm so he could fix his ruined part.

“[Y/n] c’mon! I styled my hair hours ago, I nearly kept it perfect for the whole day!”

He began running his fingers through his hair to put it back in place. Concentrating on perfecting it once more.

“Oh Lance, what kind of farmer like you needs styling gel? It gets greasy in a couple minutes anyways so why even bother.”

“It’s the thought that counts [Y/n]!”

You snorted as he huffed at you, the two of you quipping at each other reminded you of the days before he left off to the academy. Then you remembered,

“Oh right, the apology. Glad to see you learned some common courtesy, but what’s this all about Lance?”

You really needed answers. He suddenly went quiet and seemed to contemplate something for a moment. He worried you, and he knew it too, that you were expecting an explanation for an apology he probably wasn’t ready to give.

“Well you see [Y/n],” he stared directly at you, “I know that I’ve been down recently, and that you’ve always been…. there, I guess, for me when I needed you to be. And I know that I’ve never even thanked you or given you something in return, and that by using you as a way to escape my own problems, I’ve given you some of your own,”

He stopped for a moment to see if you were still paying attention, and seeing you looking at him with encouragement, he continued,

“I’m so sorry, [Y/n]. Really, I am. I was being dumb like always and pouring out my feelings onto someone who had difficulties of their own to deal with, and I never really thought about how I was hurting you…. I’m sorry. When Allura was here, and I was back out in space, battling alien hordes and saving the galaxy…. I felt like everything was right in the world, and that I was living my best life, being beside all the people I cared about, with friends I could trust. I didn’t realize until later that I completely forgot about you in the process, the best friend I left behind, who mattered maybe even more to me than I thought. I never meant to forget you, and I never meant to hurt you.”

He began to get nervous, losing the cocky persona he developed over the years completely, turning downtrodden and forcing out a final “I hope you can forgive me.”

Then he went quiet.

“….I never hated you, y’know,” you began, finally responding, “I never once despised you for leaving without me. I knew you’d come back someday, when I heard a lion took off from the desert that day, I just didn’t know when.”

You kept going, “If anything, I hated myself sometimes, for being selfish and wanting you to come back sooner, or blaming you in my mind for not taking me with you. It always felt unfair to me, that I was stuck here in a constant cycle of boring life, while you were out patrolling the universe, fighting Galra and going on cool missions-”

“-and nearly dying, like, 50 times!” Lance interrupted.

“….and nearly dying 50 times, yes.”

The sun was nearly gone now, disappearing quickly before you, clocking the time you’d been outside conversing in the summer heat—the pale moon climbing the sky behind you.

The stars shone ever-brighter, and the breeze had settled down, the grass at your feet stamped in and no longer swaying, and the crickets in the field were chirping, with the cows grazing in the meadow below, almost ready to head in for the night.

“I’m jealous Lance. And frustrated. But I never spoke a word of anything to you, because I loved you too much to bother you with any more problems than you already had. Nothings your fault, I was only emotional, and I have no disrespect for any of your friends or partners, including Allura. I only wish that you could’ve been happier.”

Ending your rant, you faced Lance again and shrugged, acting nonchalant, like nothing you said mattered at the moment. But he knew that whatever he said next would make a large impact on you.

“You loved me?”

You relaxed a little, “Still do Lance, never stopped even after you left. But, you came back with a space alien girlfriend, I knew I had to let you go.”

Allura was the light of his life, and he was the happiest you’d ever seen him in the weeks before her death. If she hadn’t needed to make a sacrifice, they would’ve probably grown old and had a life together, a family too, and he would have become the Altean King, with you far out of the picture. The little markings on the ridge of his cheekbones still detailed just how loving of a relationship the two were in. Even after her passing, you wouldn’t make a move when Lance only thought of you as a friend.

Both yourself and Lance were gazing at the sky now, completely silent, and yet there was an underlying comfort in the stillness, one which permeated through the air around you and invited a conversation to be had. Lance seemed to wish to speak in order to break it, scratching at the markings whilst trying to find the words to talk to you.

“Oh quiznak, words are too hard!”

Lance reaches across the trough to grasp the hand you’re using to stable yourself on the ledge, bringing it up to the space between the two of you and wearing the most serious expression you’ve ever seen on his face.

“When I was in third grade, I ran into a small child in the hallway and accidentally spilled their thermos of soup all over the floor. That tiny [H/c] kid became my desk-mate for all of third and fourth grade, and I remember having to give them my baloney sandwich because they wouldn’t stop crying till I did. In fifth grade, that same kid switched our lunchboxes because I had the better pizza pops, and in sixth grade, while taking a math test, they threw up all over the floor and I laughed like crazy; ended up going with them to the office because the teacher ‘didn’t like my attitude’. In seventh grade, I went to their birthday party and popped all the balloons, I stole half the cake and made off with three goodie bags before anyone could catch me. In eighth grade we became friends, and played pranks together on the other students during April fools, tipped an outhouse, and did each others homework because we both sucked at school. When I was in ninth grade, I gave them a Burger King crown and told them they ruled my world…. I know you know who I’m talking about.”

You began laughing the hardest you had in years, looking back on all the memories you and Lance had built up over the years, times when neither of you knew what would happen, and had big dreams and hopes for the future. The future had turned out to be far different from what both of you had expected.

“To be fair Lance, you were the one who threw up during that math test, not me. You cried for your mom all the way through the school and passed out on a couch in the lobby.”

“Shut up [Y/n], I’m attempting to be sentimental!”

When the laughter died down, and the world was quiet again, you gazed down at the entwined hands that rested between you two, and lazily swung them back and forth to see if he’d let go. When he didn’t, you smiled a bit,

“So what, this means your willing to try? To move on from Allura just like that? Forget everything you had with her and stick with me for awhile?”

He smiled brightly at you, as bright as the sun that could barely be seen, the final slivers fading away over the prairie.

“Allura’s not entirely gone,” he taps his markings, “these babies are a constant reminder of that. I’ll never forget the happiness she gave me, but I don’t want to keep dwelling on the fact that she’s gone. You’re here with me, more than anything, and I hope that we could stay this way for as long as we can.”

“I’d like that.”

It’s far too late to keep outside you realize, and the night brings with it a chilling cold that practically freezes your clothes to your skin, and tinges the air with frost. The fall season is coming, and summer is nearly over, and with it comes the colourful leaves, and the frosted grass, and the wilting flowers. You stand up, dragging Lance with you, and dust off the seat of your pants, preparing to head inside to bed.

Now the darkness has settled, the sun is gone. You take your hands and guide Lance around the house to the doorway. The door creaks open and shuts behind the two of you, and as you say your goodnights, you head off to your room. And as the glow of the moon enters through your window, enshrouding the walls in a pale light, you lay there and ponder.

Truly, you hope that you can spend many more days with Lance down in the fields, and with the cows and the tall grass, and out in the apple orchard, where the two of you will lie, down in the top soil, under the sun.

———————————————————————

BONUS:

“[Y/n], know that you’ll always be my Burger Queen.”

“Lance please. Shut the fu*k up.”

———————————————————————

✨ Hope you enjoyed ✨

#lance mcclain #voltron #vld #vld lance #vld fandom #vld allura #vld x reader #voltron x reader #lance x allura #lance x reader #reader insert #x reader #writing

[flameohotwife]

'Til We Meet Again

Aang has passed. Katara is heading to the South to start anew without him, and finally begins to process her grief along the way. Written for the @kataang-week 2021 prompt: the sea & the sky

Read on ao3 or ffn

Everyone who remained was gathered outside at the dock on Air Temple Island. Saying goodbye to the gang was always hard, but this time was different. This time they were missing one of their own, and he wouldn’t be coming back. Not as they knew him, anyway.

They’d held a private sky burial almost a week ago, and the public memorial the previous day, so most of the dignitaries had finally gone. Katara looked out to Yue Bay and willed herself to keep it together just a little longer. The low hanging clouds were pale orange in the early morning light, reminding her of when they’d bent the clouds together a lifetime ago. A sob rose in her throat and she hastily swallowed it. Not yet.

Her friends and family huddled around her. Toph, Sokka, Suki, Zuko, and even Mai came in for one of Team Avatar’s notorious group hugs. She closed her eyes when a breeze blew by, trying to pretend it was him. That he was still there. If she could keep pretending, she might be able to make it.

Bumi, Kya and Tenzin came out of the house and down to the dock, bags in hand. “Everybody ready?” Bumi asked. He fidgeted uncomfortably with his bag, unsure what to do with so much negative energy.

“There’s been a change in plans,” Katara said carefully. All eyes sprung to her. She hadn’t mentioned this to anyone, yet. “You all are going on the ship as planned with Sokka and Suki. Tenzin, dear, I’m going to take Oogi. We’ll meet you in the South Pole.”

Tenzin’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open comically. He had inherited the need to intricately plan every detail of their trips from his uncle, and this was surely throwing a wrench into his itinerary. “Mother, please, come on the ship with us,” he begged. “Or at least let one of us come with you. Are you sure you’re…”

“I’m fine,” Katara snapped, cutting Tenzin off and assuring everyone there that she was anything but. Sokka stepped forward to put a strong hand on his nephew’s shoulder.

“She’ll be okay, buddy,” he said. “She needs some time in the sky on her own.”

Katara smiled thankfully at her brother. Of course he would understand her grief. He had been with her throughout all her worst times, after all. She obviously hadn’t taken to the skies when their mother died, but she knew he remembered the nights she spent out by the ocean alone, after the chores were done and the family in bed. She’d often returned to find him waiting up for her, a pot of tea over the fire. And now, after a week of being smothered by friends and family and strangers alike, all bringing condolences, Katara needed some air. She pulled her babies--now so much taller than her--in for a group hug of their own.

“You’re all so strong,” she started, fighting the tears pricking at her eyes. Just a little longer. “We’ll be together again before you know it. And I’m going to make you all go penguin sledding, since your Dad won’t be there to do it.” She pulled back with a twinkle in her shining blue eyes, kissing them each soundly on the forehead in turn before heading over to where Oogi had been patiently waiting to get on the ship with everyone. She nuzzled his face affectionately. “Ready, boy?”

Oogi grunted and licked her and a laugh escaped her throat. “Toph, Zuko, Mai,” she said, turning to face her friends who wouldn’t be joining them in the South Pole, “Thank you. For everything, especially this week. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

“Don’t be so sure about that, Sweetness,” Toph laughed, “I’m going back into hiding. That was too much people-ing for me. Maybe in another 66 years.”

“Well, you’re welcome at the palace anytime,” Zuko said. “We should get back to Izumi, though. Have a safe journey south, okay?”

“Yeah, don’t be a stranger,” Mai added dryly. Katara nodded, but Mai knew she wouldn’t be coming to visit the palace again. She and Aang had shared too many memories there. Maybe they’d see each other at smaller events, but it seemed Katara was going to retire from public view as well. She watched as her friend climbed up onto the giant bison’s head and Tenzin airbent her bags into the saddle for her. Her long hair, drawn up in a bun with her signature loopies, was more white than brown now, and Mai noticed far more wrinkles and worry lines on Katara’s face than she’d had the last time they’d seen each other, only a few months prior. Aang’s illness and subsequent passing had taken a physical toll on her, as well.

“Bye, everyone,” Katara waved one last time, sad eyes sweeping over each cherished face, and the place that had been her home for the majority of her life so far. That she had built with him. She could feel her heart squeezing in her chest, and knew she had to get out of there. “Yip yip!”

Finally, the wind whipped around her as they soared into the sky. It was such a familiar feeling, even though it had been months since she had left Air Temple Island while she tended to Aang, refusing to leave his side. But there was nothing tying her to this place--this home that they had dreamed of together and made so many memories in--anymore. Her children were grown and would be fine on their own, and her tether was gone.

Katara closed her eyes and just listened to the sound of the air moving against her ears. She had never felt as at home in the sky as Aang had, but after traveling with him so much throughout their lives, flying on a bison gave her a warmth in her chest that had been missing since he’d passed. She felt the walls she had built, trying to be strong for her children and friends, begin to crumble, and after keeping them in for so long, let the tears flow freely, sobbing to the sky.

Suddenly, she was 14, bending the clouds atop Appa with her best friend. She remembered being in awe of their ability to combine their elements to make something new, how much fun it had been; how it had felt like dancing, and how he had referenced that moment later, when they began to have children together, calling Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin their little “cloudbabies.”

She was soaring through the sky beside him on his glider to deal with the Harmony Restoration Movement. Learning to fly side-by-side on his glider with him had been something of an adventure, but when they did, it was like nothing she had ever experienced before. They were perfectly in sync, especially when they flew over the ocean. She remembered staring at the horizon, where the sea touched the sky, and the wispy clouds made from both of them coming together, and feeling so at home, like she had always been meant to be there, with him.

She was flying over the ocean with Aang, sitting back in Appa’s saddle and leaning into his warm chest. He was asking her to stay with him forever, and she was telling him she couldn’t live without him. Katara felt her heart shatter for the thousandth time since he passed, and he wasn’t there to glue her pieces back together again, like he always had been.

She knew she was resilient. That she had lost before, and would lose again, and that this pain--though it would never leave her--would become bearable with time. She knew her life didn’t revolve completely around Aang, and it never had, but she had spent so much of her life loving him so completely that now, with nowhere left for that love to go, she felt swallowed by it.

Alone, up in his element, without the people she always felt the need to be strong for (and the one person who had never made her feel that way), Katara let herself break. Again and again, as often as she needed to. The wind was comforting in an aching sort of way, and the crying was cathartic. She hadn’t felt this free since before Aang had fallen ill. Since the last time they’d flown together. She wanted to close her eyes and pretend he was sitting next to her, that the breeze was him teasing her, that this was all a dream. Instead she forced her eyes to the horizon, tears still streaming.

The sun had risen much higher in the sky since she’d left Air Temple Island. There was no more orangish-pink sky, but there was still a string of low-lying clouds that blocked her view of the sky and sea coming together. All of a sudden, that freeness she felt dissipated and an indignant anger rose in her. She was angry at those clouds and angry at the circumstances that caused Aang’s early death and angry that he wasn’t there to comfort her. It wasn’t fair. She felt cheated out of decades more time with him, of the chance to be grandparents together, or to really enjoy their golden years together. She erupted with a mournful wail, slashing at the clouds with her bending until they too exploded in a downpour.

Katara took some time then, to breathe, and to feel. To really, truly, deliberately feel everything she had been trying to avoid in the week since he died. Since he left her. She recalled another time her grief and anger had gotten the better of her, and how he had calmly, gently advised her, “let your anger out. Then let it go.” She could still hear his sweet twelve-year-old voice and see the concern in his grey eyes in the back of her memory. She took another centering breath, like he had taught her to do after the war when they were both haunted by nightmares and panic attacks, and as she exhaled, she tried to push out all the anger with the air. To rid her body and soul of any animosity surrounding her feelings about him.

She resolved to be at peace. To let her waves of anger and frustration flow like water, and let it go. She didn’t have a choice in the situation, after all; the only choice she had was how she responded.

“I love you, Sweetie,” she whispered to the sky. The tears were still tracing paths down her face, but it was calming, again like before. “I know you had to go. And...I know you would have stayed with me if you could. It’s just another Avatar trip--another Spirit World journey, only this time…” Katara paused, closing her eyes to allow the sorrow to pass through her in sobs before continuing. “This time, it seems so permanent. I know you said it’s not goodbye forever, that this will only last ‘til we meet again in the Spirit World, and then we’ll be together for eternity. But it just… it hurts so much more, being without you this time. I know I can be strong. I will be. I just miss you, is all.”

There was a gentle breeze that swirled around her hair and kissed her face. She opened her eyes in shock; it seemed so intentional, like bending, but he wasn’t there, of course. She smiled, though, and then she laughed, because she knew she would always find him. She had been destined to find him in that iceberg, and she would continue to find his spirit now in the playful air currents, or in the beauty of a field of flowers, or in the laughter of children, until she could find him in the Spirit World and they would be united once more.

She knew that as long as she could keep his spirit with her, she could get through this. That she could be happy again, for him, for their children, and for herself. She also understood that her decision to move to the South Pole was the right one, not only because it would be the best place to train the next Avatar in waterbending, like she had promised Aang she would, but because the open space would be perfect for her healing heart. Katara could live out the rest of her days there, surrounded by both their elements; by the sea and the sky.

#kataang week 2021 #the sea & the sky #SORRY for the sad! #katara #aang #kataang #atla #grown up gaang #cloud family #grief/mourning #i can't usually even read aang death fics but here i am writing one #I'M SORRY

[orsuliya]

Alright! Time for part 3 of married!Awu/XQ headcanons. This time? It’s all about the children!

There is nothing unplanned about Awu’s second pregnancy. The subject of children comes up again not long after Awu reunites with Xiao Qi after the so-called death of the latter. Their days in Ningshuo may be filled with the hustle and bustle of preparing for the upcoming march on the capital, but evenings and nights? Those are for holding each other close in search of comfort and reassurance. If not for that, Awu would scarcely have the strength to let Xiao Qi out of her eyesight during those first days and weeks.

During one of those quiet Ningshuo evenings Awu finally breaks. She has had to be strong for so long, all the while half-believing she would never be allowed the luxury of being weak in her husband’s arms again, that even now it takes time for her to let go and simply cry. When tears finally do come out, so do all of Awu’s past fears, leaving her one by one in an unstoppable torrent. Fear for those reliant on her, for the orphaned country and for her own fate; all of those are carefully listened to and soothed with words, silent affection and sense of complete togetherness.

One of those fears? Had you died, had you truly left me alone, what would I have of you for all the years to come? she asks, her voice muffled, her face pressed into her husband’s neck. There is a good reason why she was prepared to die after exacting her revenge. Far too many sleepless nights in Hulan had been spent imagining the long, dreary years of her widowhood. Ten, twenty, thirty years of loneliness, seeing her nephews and nieces being born and then growing up, with nothing, not even her husband’s sword to put in that bloody chapel; would that have been her fate?

She hits him – not too hard, but hard enough for it to be more than a playful tap – when he says that, in time, she would remarry and find happiness again. Would you?! she demands angrily, then softens, once she reads the answer in his eyes. A man should take responsibility from the beginning to the end. Not even a bloody sword to be mounted on the family altar, she laughs tiredly. You owe me, my Prince Yuzhang, you owe me and I shall be your most merciless creditor. Give me a child with your smile, one with your hands and eyes, she demands, pressing insistent kisses to that smile, to those hands and eyes, and then and only then will I consider myself satisfied.

He would, you know, he would have given her a dozen children if that were only possible, but surely she must know that it is not, it can never be in this lifetime. Awu can have anything else for the payment of his debt; he knows he owes her and will give her all that she may wish for that she does not already own. She wants children? Fine, she may have all the orphans in Ningshuo for the raising, if that will bring her joy. But he doesn’t, can never regret putting her health above all else and would give her five more miracle flowers if he had to…

Yes, Awu finally shuts her husband up, unable to take any more of this lethal sincerity. How? Well, the exact method I shall leave to your imagination, but the gist of it is as follows: Xiao Qi is not getting off that easily. They can and will have that child. How? Well, Awu might have plotted with Doctor Shen towards that goal and it will work this time. Maybe not now, maybe it will take another few months or years of fiery needles, but it’s not like they are in hurry. There is no way Awu will agree to have a child in the middle of a civil war, so her husband should really get on with restoring peace in all Cheng. Not right now! In the morning should be soon enough.

____________________________________

It does take some time, first to restore peace and then for Awu to actually get pregnant. In the meantime, she does take all the orphans in Ningshuo as an advance on that debt, not to mention their first son and daughter, Xiaohe and Qinzhi.

Doctor Shen, who – struck with a sudden premonition – had moved to Ningshuo among much grumbling and trembling over the contents of his priceless apothecary, is rewarded with the dubious honour of playing witness to Xiao Qi’s complete meltdown. The first thing our brave general does upon hearing of his wife’s pregnancy is to hug her and refuse to let go for a good while, not that she protests. The second thing? He panics like he’s never panicked before. Doctor Shen comes upon his noble patron, well, not hyperventilating, we’re talking about Xiao Qi here, remember. But certainly in throes of a good old anxiety attack. It’s… an experience for the good doctor, that’s for sure.

Thankfully Doctor Shen manages to talk Xiao Qi out of his wildest ideas. Like, for example, shutting Awu in her rooms in the middle of Ningshuo Fortress and standing guard over her until the baby is born. Yeah, that was not Xiao Qi’s proudest moment. Doctor Shen promises not to tell anyone of this sudden bout of unreasonable behaviour and keeps his word… for about three days, when he gladly throws Xiao Qi under the bus in order to ensure Awu’s full compliance with his own, medically justified safety measures.

Mind you, even Doctor Shen cannot work miracles, which he comes to bitterly regret in those next few months. Panicked Xiao Qi and worried Turnip Wang make for a truly hellish duo and Ningshuo soon experiences a steady trickle of accomplished doctors from the capital. Some of them have clearly been dragged out of their comfortable practices under duress, for others it’s quite an adventure. The latter soon find themselves put to work; no use in simply standing around and deliberating over a stunningly healthy woman when there are actual patients in need to be seen to!

____________________________________

Awu considers Xiao Qi’s debt fully repaid the moment she sees her son smile for the first time. Xiao Qi, an overachiever that he is, doesn’t quite agree… and a few years later they try for another child; this time it’s a daughter. One - as Xiao Qi likes to brag - as beautiful as her mother and isn’t it lucky that he has an army fit to guard the greatest treasures in all Cheng? Awu thinks that it would serve him right should Treasure the Younger marry an officer of that very army in the future. She doesn’t, by the way, but that is an entirely different story.

The children are named Yunshuo and Yunning, which is a reason of much good-natured teasing. Even among the children themselves. Yunning, once she grows to an age when she starts to assert her dominance, insists that really, her brother should listen to her in all things. He may be older in years, that much is true, but Ning always comes before Shuo, everybody knows that!

Jinruo’s words come true after all: Xiao Yunning is Awu’s tiny copy, only, according to Awu herself, twice as bossy and confident. Xiao Qi never questions this claim, at least not out loud, but Uncle Asu has no such qualms and immediately provides a good half-dozen stories to that effect. Now, Yunning has every chance to grow up spoiled with a mother who applauds her strong character, a father who might seem strict, yet folds like wet paper at the first sight of a trembling lip and a whole bunch of playmates only too easily coaxed into following her commands. And she very well might have... if not for one Hu Yao (who is alive and you won’t convince me otherwise, ha!). The younger Hu, a true Ningshuo legend, enjoys great authority among recruits and veterans both; she proves a match for a head-strong girl like Yunning, although only barely. No, Hu Yao’s pupil doesn’t become a general in her own right, choosing another path instead… but she keeps up with her training in the years to come.

Xiao Yunshuo, affectionately called Xiao Xiao, is no warrior in the making, being of a rather gentle disposition, something that he never grows out of, for all that this gentle disposition later turns out to hide a character of pure steel. Oh, make no mistake, Yunshuo is perfectly competent with weapons and on horseback, but it is not something that comes naturally to him, nor does he find much joy in fighting. This becomes blatantly obvious once he starts advanced training. Every child under Awu’s care is taught enough to be able to defend themselves or know when to run away, but nobody is forced to persist with military training, should they not wish to. Yunshuo persists all the same, making continuous progress. It’s only natural that he does: he’s rather frighteningly smart, that boy, and he works hard.

A bit too hard, as it turns out. Xiao Qi becomes suspicious of his son’s behaviour and makes sure to ‘accidentally’ come upon one of Yunshuo’s solitary and completely unsanctioned training sessions. Why, he asks and becomes rather angry once the truth starts coming out. No, not with Yunshuo. With himself, for not preventing this whole issue from existing in the first place. See, Yunshuo thinks it shameful that he, the firstborn and only son of Prince Yuzhang, the greatest general and warrior Cheng has had for generations, will never be able to become a worthy successor to his famous father. No, nobody has said anything, but Yunshuo is not stupid, he knows what he is and is not capable of!

Xiao Qi takes a minute to consider his next words carefully. In the end, he tells the truth: when he was a bit older that Yunshuo is now, he had no valuable skills, no education, no family and no real hope for the future. Signing up for an army was pretty much the easiest choice to make for somebody who didn’t really have all that much to live for. Killing people? Is not that difficult. All it takes is a good sharpened sword and some basic training. Learning to protect people, well, that was a bit harder; took Xiao Qi some years and a lot grief and pain to master that. Everything else – building a true home, making peace for yourself and everybody else, and creating a lasting, better future? That’s Awu’s forte and her work. There is no shame in having different skills, explains Xiao Qi. Find what you do best and make sure that it is of use to somebody. That’s it. Whatever Yunshuo’s skills, as long as at the end of the day he is be ready to use them to protect what is dear to him, he will be a warrior in his father’s eyes.

Xiao Yunshuo takes his father’s words to heart and, when the time comes, relays them to his own children. He never becomes a one man army, for all that he takes care not to let his skill with weapons go to rust. He does, however, become a great lord and statesman, and a startlingly brilliant strategist to boot; his advice is greatly appreciated by his older brother, the brave General Xiao Xiaohe… as well as by his brother-in-law, the Emperor of Cheng himself.

In Ningshuo, despite all his merits and great dignity, Xiao Yunshuo stays Xiao Xiao long, long after becoming a father himself.

____________________________________

Xiao Yunning is widely held by the ministers of Cheng to be the cause for at least a quarter of their grey hair. And all because of one rather tiny, if rather infamous deed. Okay, maybe not that tiny… But it is not Yunning’s fault that Xiao Qi had made such an impression on a bunch of delicate noblemen over twenty years earlier!

Once His Imperial Majesty, one Ma Jing, successfully negotiates puberty, it becomes a matter of national importance to supply him with a wife of appropriate station, character, beauty and fertility, the first and the last being the most important, of course. The true war over who will become the Empress of Cheng does not start until His Imperial Majesty becomes a fully-grown man; that is not until the Prime Minister’s eldest daughter comes of age. Having another Wang Empress is seen as inevitable by many; others are rather eager to see the streak of Wang Empresses die a final death. The idea of courting a foreign princess gets briefly thrown around and then soundly rejected. It’s a pity that all of His Majesty’s marriageable cousins with even a drop of Ma blood have the same family name, says somebody who sounds suspiciously like a true Classist Wei. For a moment there is complete silence as the thoughts of everyone present turn to the one cousin who is neither a Ma or a Wang.

See, Xiao Qi and Awu could easily make their daughter an Empress… if they thought that it would make her happy. They have nothing against Jing’er, why, he’s a beloved nephew to them both and they have taken a good measure of his character during the time he spent in Ningshuo, which amounts to a good couple of years. If they were to be honest, Yunning could use a husband this good-natured and conciliatory, and Jing’er would do well with an Empress of Yunning’s strength of character. There is also the matter of a rather touching childhood crush… but since Yunning herself has nothing but derogatory words for this whole imperial marriage mart mess, there is nothing to be done. Nothing to be done at all, as Xiao Qi quite readily assures his brother-in-law, adding that being an Empress is not an easy fate and one that he would not wish on anybody. Asu, long-used to not truly understanding Xiao Qi’s ambitions or rather the lack thereof, takes this assurance on its merits and goes back to planning his own daughter’s imperial wedding.

Rather surprisingly it’s Jing’er who becomes the greatest obstacle to Asu’s dynastic plans. Somehow he never really says no… but no mercenary father can ever pin him long enough to force him to say yes to any of the myriad of candidates. This stand-off lasts for some time, to Xiao Qi’s quiet amusement and Turnip’s frustration. Awu, on the other hand, becomes rather pensive, although she refuses to share her suspicions with anybody. It’s not like she has any proof…

...until her daughter provides her with all the proof she could have ever wished for.

The day another group of potential candidates is to be presented at court, Xiao Yunning pulls a Xiao Qi, causing many a minister to relieve their old trauma. Yes, she marches into the throne room accompanied by six of her companions, most of which do rather poorly at concealing weapons under their dresses. Yes, she climbs the stairs without as much as a by-your-leave. Yes, she does all of that while wearing clothing in a colour appropriate for the occasion. In this case? Wedding red. The main difference is that Ma Jing is a much wiser Emperor than Ma Zitan and grants Yunning’s petition immediately and with good grace.

The reason why Yunning did what she did, leaving Jing’er with no choice but to accept her suit? Well, that childhood crush might have been rather more than a crush. Really, Yunning would have had it in the bag the day of her coming-of-age ceremony, were His Imperial Majesty not such a noble bore. I cannot condemn you to carry this burden with me before you really know what you want, he said, every word disgustingly noble and self-sacrificial. You are not somebody who can be caged, so go and spread your wings and I shall wait for you for as long as it takes, he offered in a rather suspiciously bland tone of voice. Really, one could almost believe that Jing’er actually bought into that silly rumour that Xiao Qi requires every prospective son-in-law to fight him with live steel. Which, by the way, is not true. He only ever fought two rather persistent young lordlings who couldn’t understand that Qinzhi’s no means no.

Everything ends rather well for all interested parties, although Turnip keeps grumbling about having an unfairly deceitful brother-in-law. Awu quickly shuts him down, if only to get in her own portion of shameless teasing. See, if Xiao Qi wanted to avoid such situations, then he should have given his children a better example. This quickly devolves into a round of Yuzhang-style teasing, which prompts a stark realization from Xiao Yunning. She might be the Empress-to-be now, but even being thrice an Empress would still give her no power to stop her parents from being a pair of embarrassing old people in love. Jing’er, ever the conciliator, shows his diplomatic skill by proposing that she might have her revenge… by being one half of a pair of embarrassing young people in love.

The Wang Princess of that generation, a rather lovely and wise young woman by the name of Wang Xu, is not all that sad about losing a chance at the throne. Why, her tastes were always rather specific and in general ran more to generals than delicate young nobles. Now, this Xiao Xiaohe looks like an interesting specimen and certainly worthy of taking a closer look, should one be in-market for a pet general of one’s own...

#Awu and XQ headcanon time #I am losing the plot and all my dignity to boot #who cares not me #I have some very naughty headcanons about big hands and pregnant bellies #but that is best left to an adult-only edition #I am always open to inspiring asks wink-wink #which may come one day who knows #monarch industry #the rebel princess

[recentanimenews]

J-Novel Club Anime Expo Lite 2021 Announcements

  J-Novel Club took to Anime Expo Lite 2021 to announce yet another sizable slate of titles, many that will launch later today on the service digitally, from pulp novels to its light novel bread and butter and everything in-between, J-Novel Club’s latest slate has something for everyone. Without further ado, the slate of announcements.

      Maddrax by Various Authors with Cover Art by Nestor Taylor 

When a comet struck Earth, Matthew Drax found himself sent 500 years into the future - only to find civilization in ruins. In a world filled with barbarians, hostile mutants, and lost technology, Drax and co. cross the globe in search of adventure. Having recently saved the world by restoring the moon from its falling orbit, an accident in proceedings causes pockets of parallel worlds to dot the globe. What new dangers await Matt and his travelling companion, the telepathic warrior queen Aruula, as they cross these strange gaps in time and space? 

A J-Novel Pulp title launching today with Part 1 of Volume 1!

A Late-Start Tamer’s Laid-Back Life by Yuu Tanaka with Illustrations by Nardack

Old MacDonald had a...gnome?! The Law of Justice Online, also known as LJO, is the hottest new VRMMORPG of the season, and office worker Yuta Sasaki is one of the lucky few granted access to the official launch. After some careful research, Yuta is chomping at the bit to start his virtual life as a Tamer, a class that harnesses the powers of wild monsters. Luckily, upon building his character, Yuta manages to land not only his chosen class, but a heap of bonuses to boot! He soon finds, however, that his abilities are not all they're cracked up to be, and that the talents of the rare first monster he is granted lie not in combat...but gardening! Already well behind the other adventurers, and facing a long and slow progression path ahead of him, Yuta is left with two choices—start over from scratch, or make the best of what he has been given. For Yuta the choice is obvious: When life gives you manure...start up a farm!

Launching today with Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 1!

Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers by Miya Kinojo with Illustrations by Katagiri 

The Magical Kingdom of Klyrode summons hundreds of heroes from other worlds every year to fight in their war against the Dark One and his army of powerful demons. Banaza is one of those heroes, summoned from the Royal Capital Paluma, but something’s not right—Banaza is only an average merchant. He has no magic, no fighting ability, and his stats are abysmal. Worse, a mishap leaves him unable to return home! Rejected as a hero and stranded in another world, abandoned to the far reaches of the kingdom by a cruel king who just wants him gone, Banaza’s fate looks pretty bleak. But what will happen once the failed hero candidate finds himself with super cheat powers once he hits level two? 

Launching today with Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 1!

Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World by Schuld with Illustrations by Lansane Commissioned in death to save a world in peril, a tabletop RPG fanatic is reborn as a humble farm boy with the rulebook for the universe at his fingertips! Young Erich’s quest for an invincible character build will require more than his decades as a number-crunching munchkin, though. Even with powerleveled skills, feudal life is no cakewalk—especially when you keep drawing more attention than you can handle…Can Erich adapt to his strange new world before his worst impulses take the campaign of a lifetime completely off the rails? Let the dice fall where they may! Launching today with Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 1!

The Reincarnated Princess Spends Another Day Skipping Story Routes by Bisu with Illustrations by Yukiko 

After an accident, a modern careerist is reborn as Princess Rosemary Von Velfalt. She soon realizes that her new life is identical to that of a rival character in an otome game that she’d once played to “100%” completion. Luxury and magic abound in the Kingdom of Nevel, alongside a collection of attractive men. However, beneath the suitors' dazzling faces lie awful personalities: masochists, necrophiles, and perverts, oh my! But it’s not all bad news—the side characters are perfect, and Rosemary has fallen for the captain of the royal guard. 

Since the game offers no true route to happiness, Rosemary decides to forge her own path; to avoid marriage with the suitors, she'll have to skip their story routes and fix their deviance. She’ll navigate palace and marriage politics, kidnappings, and the threat of war, all while contending with a world that’s drifting further from the game she remembers. “100%” game completion isn’t all it’s cracked up to be— sometimes, “0%” is the route to a dream life! A J-Novel Heart title launching today with Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 1!

My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a 

Chance Against Me! —AΩ— (Manga) by Hanamaru Nanto, Based on the Novels by 

Tsuyoshi Fujitaka with Original Character Designs by Chisato Naruse

Awaking to absolute chaos and carnage while on a school trip, Yogiri Takatou discovers that everyone in his class has been transported to another world! He had somehow managed to sleep through the entire ordeal himself, missing out on the Gift — powers bestowed upon the others by a mysterious Sage who appeared to transport them. Even worse, he and another classmate were ruthlessly abandoned by their friends, left as bait to distract a nearby dragon. Although not terribly bothered by the thought of dying, he reluctantly decides to protect his lone companion. After all, a lowly Level 1000 monster doesn't stand a chance against his secret power to invoke Instant Death with a single thought! If he can stay awake long enough to bother using it, that is...Launching today with Chapter 1 of Volume 1!

Reborn to Master the Blade: From Hero-King to Extraordinary Squire♀ (Manga) by Moto Kuromura, Based on the Novels by Hayaken with Original Character Designs by Nagu 

From his deathbed, Hero-King Inglis, the divine knight and master of all he surveys, gazes down on the empire he built with his mighty hand. Having devoted his life to statecraft and his subjects’ well-being, his one unfulfilled wish is to live again, for himself this time: a warrior’s life he’d devoted himself to before his rise to power. His patron goddess, Alistia, hears his plea and smiles upon him, flinging his soul into the far future. Goddesses work in mysterious ways—not only is Inglis now the daughter of a minor noble family, but at her first coming-of-age ceremony at 6, she's found ineligible to begin her knighthood! However, for a lady of Inglis's ambition, this is less a setback and more the challenge she was (re)born to overcome. “It's not the blood that runs through your veins that makes a knight; it’s the blood you shed on the battlefield!” The curtain rises on the legend of an extraordinary lady squire reborn to master the blade! Coming Soon to J-Novel Club!

My Daughter Left the Nest and Returned an S-Rank Adventurer by MOJIKAKIYA 

with Illustrations by toi8

The life of an adventurer isn’t always a glamorous one. 

Belgrieve finds this out the hard way when a deadly encounter robs him of his leg and the ability to pursue his dreams not long after setting off for fame and fortune. But fate isn’t finished with this retired adventurer! While gathering herbs in the wilderness, he discovers an abandoned baby girl and names her Angeline after deciding to raise her as his own. Angeline grows up to become a top-tier adventurer in her own right, yet after venturing out into the world and making a name for herself, fame, fortune, and power hold no allure for the accomplished S-rank adventurer: her heartfelt wish is for nothing more than to see her father again.

Launching today with Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 1!

Dragon Daddy Diaries: A Girl Grows to Greatness by Ameko Kaeruda with Illustrations by Sencha 

“Daddy!” The dragon blinked as the wee little human called out to him. Him? Her “Daddy”? Powerful enough to have been venerated by humankind, yet warmhearted and even a tad ditzy, the dragon soon finds himself raising and doting on the precocious Olivia as if she really were his daughter in this touching tale. The toddler may be impossibly cute now, but just you wait—she’s a curious child and she’s growing up real fast. You can bet that one day, she’ll be the strongest human there is! But first, how will he handle little Olivia receiving an acceptance letter to a human school? Launching today with Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 1!

Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start With Magical Tools by Hisaya Amagishi with Illustrations by Kei 

After dying of overwork in Japan, Dahlia is reborn into a world filled with magic. Raised by a master of magical toolmaking, she develops a passion for the craft and becomes engaged to her father’s apprentice. Before her father can see her wed, however, he suddenly passes away. As if this weren’t enough, on the day before their wedding, her fiancé announces that he’s in love—but not with her! Dahlia finally realizes she needs to live for herself. She vows to be her own woman from now on and devote herself to her craft, even if it’s not quite the quiet life she was hoping for! From a chance encounter with a knight to starting her own company, there are challenges aplenty on the horizon. But this young craftswoman is no longer a shrinking violet—she’s Dahlia, and she’s ready to bloom. 

A J-Novel Heart title launching today with Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 1!

  Hell Mode ~The Hardcore Gamer Dominates in Another World with Garbage Balancing~ by Hamuo with Illustrations by Mo 

“‘Level up even while offline’?! That’s not a game on ‘easy mode’—that’s just an AFK game!” The online game Yamada Kenichi had been playing religiously is shutting down its servers, leaving him with a void in his heart. He looks for a new game to fill it, but everything he finds is way too easy. The kind of game he likes—the kind punishing enough to make players want to spend thousands of hours on it—just isn’t around anymore. “What’s this? ‘You are invited to a game that will never end.’” Kenichi stumbles upon an untitled game, one promising incomparable challenge with unprecedented potential. Without hesitation, he selects the “Hell Mode” difficulty. Lo and behold, he finds himself reincarnated in another world as a serf! Now called Allen, he sets out to unlock the secrets of his mystery-laden Summoner class; without the convenience of walkthroughs, game guides, or online forums, he must grope his way to the top of his new world! Launching today with Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 1!

  By: Humberto Saabedra

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

[thefreelanceangel]

Shadowbringers Is Finally Ended

With Patch 5.55 and the official end of the Shadowbringers story, setting up now for Endwalker in November, there are now a few months ahead to grind gear, finish content and reflect on the most recent expansion.

And, without any hyperbole, I can say definitively that I have never in my life been as impressed with a game's writing as I have that of Shadowbringers, both the original expansion and a lot of the patch content. I have... thoughts.

I'm a bit of an outlier; I skipped Stormblood (oops) and went straight from completing Heavensward (which greatly impressed me at the time and still does) into Shadowbringers because I wanted to get a max level character already.

Within the first few cutscenes of Shadowbringers, I was absolutely hooked.

First, let me just say that "monstrous angels" is 100% My Thing. I ADORE the reinterpretation of the standard "Renaissance art angelic figures" into something closer to incomprehensible beings taking on twisted, terrifying appearances. The human mind is a finite thing and comprehending an angel would be as difficult as comprehending infinity; these are things so alien to our experience that assuming they'd be easy to grasp and familiar feels disingenuous to me.

So the sin-eaters and the Lightwardens? SLAP.

Also, the intent behind the usage of "Light" in Shadowbringers was deliberate and purposeful. Our Lord and Savior, Yoshi-P, stated this clearly in his Forbes interview.

"The inception of this idea was very simple: in recent fantasy works, the perception that light equates to good and dark equates to evil is very set in stone, we wanted to shake this up a bit.

"Until this point in Final Fantasy XIV, our players have been Warriors of Light: the hero. However, with Shadowbringers, we leave the Source and embark on a journey to the First, and through this I want our players to discover the truth of the world, as well as think about the real nature of light and dark. That is the theme of Shadowbringers.

"In any case, a light too strong could potentially become evil. Darkness and night are also necessary for the world to maintain its balance; that's the kind of theme we will be shedding light on."

And the themes in Shadowbringers had such an amazing resonance that they were both painfully clear and masterfully executed. Not only was the theme of "balance" clearly executed in the "returning Darkness to a world flooded by Light" goal, but the desire for players to "think about the real nature of light and dark" showed in a multitude of ways.

The Warriors of Light (who we met as the Warriors of Darkness in Heavensward) are, in their home world, reviled. They directly caused the Flood which nearly destroyed their home and although they were able to save it with personal sacrifice, the populace at large is unaware of that sacrifice. The motives behind what the Warriors did is essentially lost to history; all that remains is the perception of their actions and the results thereof.

Motives, however, which you (player and WoL) are privy to.

"At long last, you see. To save our world, we gave our lives. We were just adventurers trying to make our way. An odd job here, a favor there—we never aspired to be Warriors of Light. But word of our deeds spread, and soon people were calling us heroes. They placed their hopes and dreams on our shoulders and bid us fight for all that was good and right. We fought and we fought and we fought...until there was no one left to fight. We won...and now our world is being erased from existence. We did everything right, everything that was asked of us, and still—still it came to this! You of all people should understand! We cannot—we will not falter. We brought our world to the brink of destruction, and now we must save it."

You had that fight with the Warriors of Darkness. You heard Ardbert explain exactly what happened, how they came to the point where they faced off against you, and you saw what happened when they were given the choice to hold back the Flood. And you were there when the one favor Ardbert asked was for the Warriors of Darkness to be taken home.

You see how the First remembers them and it's stark contrast to the heroes you met who were fighting desperately to save people who now spit on their names. History quite clearly has two sides and which you believe is dependent entirely on what information you have.

This becomes even more of a clear theme when you meet Emet-Selch and learn more about the Calamity which led to the entire Zodiark/Hydaelyn duality. Here, your previous experiences with Ascians has painted them solely as "villains." They are established enemies, manipulating events and people in order to attain goals which, to you, are nothing but Calamities.

And yet, as you learn more about the original Source and the Amaurotines that once lived on it, these goals are painted in an entirely new light. Instead of merely seeking to wipe out "the world" for no apparent reason or, at best guess, greater power for their deity Zodiark, the Ascians were striving to repair the damage done by the original Sundering. They, in a manner of speaking, were doing what the Warriors of Darkness were. What you, the Warrior of Light, have been doing. They were trying to restore what was lost.

Which leads into another of Shadowbringers' major themes: grief and loss.

The earliest touches of this are in Alisaie's questlines where you learn about what happens to people tainted by the Light. Families are destroyed, people are transmuted into sin-eaters and those who avoid that fate must stand by and watch as their loved ones fall to something far worse than death. "A Purchase of Fruit" shows you exactly what the end result is while also highlighting something very specific: with no hope of removing the Light's taint, knowing that all that awaits the tainted is a painful transmutation and existence as a sin-eater, those untainted make the best they can of those last days and end the tainted individual's pain before it begins.

Grief, yes. Loss? Absolutely. And yet, this is a loving, compassionate thing that those in Amh Araeng are doing. They face their own grief and loss. Rather than refusing to accept the actuality of their circumstances or refuse to weigh themselves down with taking a decisive action, they make the choice to face their grief and loss directly, even willingly taking on the guilt of their actions rather than leaving the tainted to suffer.

Magnus in Twine lost his wife and son, which immobilizes him. He can't find solance in anything save alcohol and brooding over their graves. It takes outside interference to pull him directly from his grief, to help him see past the loss of his family and look towards the future where life might once again be worth living. His struggle with grief is painfully familiar and so very, very close to many real life struggles that it's extremely poignant.

This struggle with grief is the fight the Ascians are, without question, losing. Let's set aside the "tempering" argument when it comes to Emet-Selch and Elidibus for the moment, largely because it's actually quite true that grief can spur people into committing horrific acts either as a desperate attempt to assuage their own pain (revenge) or make 'things right' in some way (vengeance).

Emet-Selch does not, in fact, properly grieve for Amaurot and the Ancients he knew. He clings to them, as Hythlodaeus tells us, weighed down by an aching sense of loss.

"And though he may carry himself with a certain glib ease, Emet-Selch is not a man to bear his burdens lightly. In fact, I imagine they have only grown heavier with every passing century. ...T'is truly a terrible weight he has chosen to carry."

Quite significantly is the word "chosen" in that. Grief is a process that involves, eventually, letting go of the pain and living with the memories of what was loved and what no longer is. Emet-Selch chooses not to do that. He does not grieve for Amaurot and his lost loved ones; he refuses, no matter how often he mentions his loss, to admit that what is gone is gone.

Elidibus, rather similarly, refuses to accept that the duty he took on when called upon to become Zodiark's heart is finally at an end. That the world he and Emet-Selch originated from is gone. Although he admits that he can barely remember why he's set on this path, he refuses to turn away from him.

One won't forget, one can barely remember--neither will grieve and let go.

Even the Ascians' characteristic arrogance and disdain for what they consider "lesser beings" is easy to read as their long-lasting struggle with grief. Considering the Sundering, all the beings that the Ascians are so disdainful of are, in fact, echoes of that which they once knew. If they acknowledged that, accepted those beings as what they are and perhaps even admitted they had worth... well... Rather like realizing abruptly that you've spent a whole day without thinking of someone recently departed, it feels like a betrayal.

To find value in the worlds as they currently are, to turn away from the duty they were asked to uphold, to choose to lay down the memories of the past are all, in essence, choices the Ascians will not make because to do so would be to let go of what's lost, to move into the acceptance of grief and that can feel like betraying those whose memories are slowly fading.

Emet-Selch's end--"Remember us."--is directly tied to his refusal to forget. To let himself have even one day without hoping for an eventuality that's highly unlikely regardless of effort, without remembering the Sundering and the Final Days. He remembered, forcefully and tenaciously, and wishes that legacy to live beyond him.

While Elidibus, in remembering, unable to deny failure any longer, finally expresses grief and loss. "My people. My brothers. ...My friends. Stay strong. Keep the faith. At duty's end, we will meet again. We will. We will. The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it."

And coming from villains, quite specifically from villains that have been largely indistinct "puppet master" figures throughout the previous expansions, these story arcs were a punch to the gut. (Yes, I had to pause writing this to cry helplessly over Elidibus again because my gods, that last line just...) Villains are at their best in fiction when they're relatable. When it's so very easy to see that thin line between villain and hero.

Faced with the loss of everything you'd ever loved, with the faintest possibility of getting it back, what would you do? What wouldn't you do? Yes, the Ascians did terrible things and that's undeniable. Stopping them was necessary to save hundreds of thousands of lives. And doing so, being victorious, didn't feel like a victory and that is such a rare, rare thing in media. The Warrior of Light does the right thing, but in doing so, must face the fact that those they've been fighting have hopes and dreams and feelings and pain as real and as motivating as theirs.

And Shadowbringers does such an impressive job of turning those standard tropes around. Heroes are a dime a dozen because if you just awaken them, as Elidibus did with the starshower, well, there can be dozens of Warriors running around. Villains have heart-wrenching motivations and relatable reasons for their goals. History is multi-faceted and no one person knows what the "truth" truly is. Grief can spur people to helping others (i.e. the tank Role Quest ending) or it can fester and go unhealed and create nothing but more destruction.

There is so much that Shadowbringers did beautifully, I don't have the time to touch on all of it. The lack of "breaking the flawed system fixes everything" trope following Eulmore's liberation from Vauthry and the struggles that Eulmore faces in trying to build a functional, working social order for themselves. Embracing the value of childish dreams and tending to the smallest, most overlooked victims of trauma with the Pixie Tribal Quests. Dealing with a commander whose soldiers died and seeing Lyna's survivor's guilt. Seeing how having a single, unified goal can inspire and rally people into putting differences aside and helping each other.

Shadowbringers has finally ended with Patch 5.55. The story on the First ended with Patch 5.3. And all I can say is that this is a game that I will never forget.

#Shadowbringers #FFXIV #OOC #Yes I had A Lot of Thoughts

[likealittleheartbeat]

The Queer Platonic Love of Aang & Zuko

Friend. What a weighty and intimate word in Avatar The Last Airbender. The series’ “found family” is iconic at this point, and is literally established as a “family” by Katara in the third episode. She pulls Aang back from the outrage of the Avatar state, saying “Monk Gyatso and the other monks may be gone, but you still have a family. Sokka and I, we’re your family now.”

 As I’ve said before, establishing this central safety net of trusted people is essential to Aang’s healing. Still, it’s interesting to me that they insist on this group as a “family” rather than something that might emphasize “friendship.” Something along the lines of ‘we’re your friends and we’re here with you.’ I can think of several animated shows that have done as much successfully. The show withholds the word “friend” for another purpose. I’ll happily admit that Aang and the others describe each other as “friends” throughout the series, but rarely is the use of the word (through pacing, repetition, or emotional context) given a sense of gravity in those moments. 

However, three scenes in the series rely heavily on the word “friend,” and each scene connects Aang more and more profoundly with Zuko, eventually revealing that the show’s entire plot hinges on the friendship between these two boys. In a series so latent with symbolism, what do we make of these star-crossed friends? The relationship between Aang and Zuko, I want to suggest, is meant to explore Platonic Love in all its depth, especially within a masculine culture that not only devalues it, but views its queer implications as inherently dangerous to the dominant power structures of an empire.

Get ready zukaang fans for a long-ass atla meta analysis...

“If we knew each other back then, do you think we could’ve been friends, too?”

The first time the word “friend” is uttered between them, Aang is perched on a branch, waiting for Zuko (who is laid out on a bed of leaves the Avatar made for him) to wake up after his blue spirit rescue. “You know what the worst part about being born over a hundred years ago is?” Aang waxes, “I miss all the friends I used to hang out with. Before the war started I used to always visit my friend Kuzon. The two of us, we'd get in and out of so much trouble together. He was one of the best friends I ever had...and he was from the Fire Nation, just like you. If we knew each other back then do you think we could have been friends too?” The scene stood out for me when I first watched it for the melancholy and stillness. We are not given a flashback like we did when Aang talked about Bumi or Gyatso in earlier episodes. We have to sit with Aang’s loss of a male friend. It echoes a veteran’s loss of a war buddy more than anything a western audience would expect in a children’s show about the power of friendship. Instead of simply mourning, Aang invites Zuko into the past with him. He invites Zuko to imagine a time before the war, a land of innocence, where they could live together. And between them there is a moment of reflection given to this invitation (...until Zuko shoots a fucking fire blast at Aang). 

The wistful mood returns when the two boys arrive back to their respective beds. Aang is asked by a loopy fevered Sokka if he made any “friends” on his trip, to which Aang sadly replies, “No, I don’t think I did” before tucking away to sleep. Aang’s mournful moments often stand out against his bubbly personality, but this moment stands out moreso because its the final moment for Aang in the episode. For the first time, he doesn’t receive comfort in his dejection. He doesn’t even confide in his peers. The solemnity and secrecy of this failed “friendship” is remarkable. 

It’s in the next symbolic gesture that I think Avatar reveals what’s at stake in the concept of “friendship.” Zuko, in the next scene, lays down to rest after his adventurous night, looks pensively at the fire nation flag in his room, and then turns his back on it. We realize, especially after the previous revelations in “The Storm,” that Aang’s gestures of “friendship” have caused Zuko to doubt the authority of the Fire Nation.

Now all three remaining nations have misogynistic tendencies, but the Fire Nation celebrates a specific brand of toxic masculinity, and Zuko longs to emulate it even after it has rejected and scarred him. In the episode, “The Storm,” which directly precedes “The Blue Spirit,” we see how Zuko failed to replicate masculinity’s demands. In a room of men, he disregards honorifics to speak out in the name of care and concern for people’s well-being over strategy. Though the war room was all men, we later see that The Fire Nation does not exclude women from participating in this form of toxic masculinity. (Shoutout to Azula, one of the best tragic villains of all time!) This gender parity prevents disgraced men, like Zuko, from retaining pride of place above women. So Zuko’s loving act and refusal to fight his father puts him at the lowest of the low in the social hierarchy of the Fire Nation, completely emasculated and unworthy of respect.

Since then, Zuko has been seeking to restore himself by imitating the unfeeling men of the war room and his unfeeling sister, barking orders and demands at his crew. The final redemptive act for this purpose, of course, is to capture the Avatar, who’s very being seems to counteract the violent masculinity at the heart of the Fire Nation. In most contemporary Euro-American understandings, Aang is by no means masculine. He’s openly affectionate, emotional, giggly, and supportive of everyone in his life, regardless of gender. He practices pacifism and vegetarianism, and his hobbies include dancing and jewelry-making. And, foremost, he has no interest in wielding power. (@rickthaniel has an awesome piece about Aang’s relationship to gender norms and feminism). 

In addition to the perceived femininity of Aang’s behavior, he’s equally aligned with immaturity. Aang’s childishness is emphasized in the title of the first episode, “The Boy in the Iceberg,” and then in the second episode when Zuko remarks, “you’re just a kid.” Aang, as a flying boy literally preserved against adulthood, also draws a comparison to another eternally boyish imp in the western canon: Peter Pan. This comparison becomes more explicit in “The Ember Island Players.” His theatrical parallel is a self-described “incurable trickster” played by a woman hoisted on wires mimicking theatrical productions of Peter Pan. The comparison draws together the conjunction of femininity and immaturity Aang represents to the Fire Nation.

When Zuko is offered friendship and affection by Aang, then, he faces a paradigm-shifting internal conflict. To choose this person, regardless of his spiritual status, as a “friend,” Zuko must relate himself to what he perceives as Aang’s femininity and immaturity, further demeaning himself in the eyes of his father and Fire Nation culture. The banished prince would need to submit to the softness for which he’s been abused and banished. This narrative of abuse and banishment for perceived effeminate qualities lends itself easily enough to parallels with a specific queer narrative, that of a young person kicked out of their house for their sexuality and/or gender deviance. 

I want to point out that Aang’s backstory, too, can be read through a queer lens. Although the genocide of the air nomads more explicitly parallels the experiences of victims to imperial and colonial violence, I can also see how the loss of culture, history, friends, and mentors for a young effiminate boy can evoke the experience of queer men after the AIDs pandemic and the government’s damning indifference. In fact, colonial violence and the enforcement of rigid gender roles have historically travelled hand-in-hand. Power structures at home echo the power structures of a government. Deviance from the dominant norms disrupt the rigid structures of the empire. Aang’s background highlights how cultures based in something besides hierarchy and dominance, whether they be queer cultures or indigenous societies, threaten the logic of imperialism, and thus become targets of reform, neglect, and aggression by the expanding empire and its citizens. Survivors are left, as Aang was, shuffling through the remnants, searching for some ravaged piece of history to cling to.

We begin the series, then, with two queer-coded boys, one a survivor of broad political violence, the other a survivor of more intimate domestic abuse, and both reeling from the ways the Fire Nation has stigmatized sensitivity. But the queer narrative extends beyond the tragic backstories toward possibility and hope. The concept of platonic love proposed here, though it does not manifest until later, is a prospect that will bring peace to the two boys' grief-stricken hearts and to the whole world.

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?”

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?” Toph asks before the four members of the group hold hands. Since Toph previously mourned her friendless childhood, it’s easy to appreciate this line for its hopefulness regarding the four central members of the Gaang. They long to appreciate that they’re all connected. As touching as this is, the soul-mated ‘friendship’ concept is actually uniquely applicable to Aang and Zuko.

When does Toph ask the question specifically? It’s after hearing the story of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin: how their once intimate friendship fell apart; how Fire Lord Sozin began, undaunted, the genocidal attack on Airbenders. After recounting the tale, Aang, the reincarnation of Avatar Roku, excitedly explains to the group the moral that every person is capable of great good and evil. While that moral could easily be ascribed to many people in the series, the connective tissue is stretched directly to Zuko in a parallel storyline. Reading a secret history composed by his grandfather Sozin, Zuko discovers that he is not only the grandson of the empirical firelord but of Avatar Roku, as well. We see how the rift between the Sozin and Roku echoed down across history to separate the airbending culture from the fire nation, and, on a more human level, to separate Aang from Zuko. The two boys find themselves divided by their ancestors’ choices— and connected by Avatar Roku’s legacy. 

This is what takes their “friendship” from simply a matter of the character’s preferences to something fated, something unique from the other friendships. The rest of the found family is positioned as circumstantial in their relationship to Aang and one another. Yeah, it’d be cool if they were all connected in past and future lives, but the audience receives no indicators in the series that it’s necessarily true. Only faith holds them together, which allows room for an appreciation that your “found family” friendships might simply be the trusted people you discovered along the way. 

Zuko’s friendship is characterized differently. Both his struggle to befriend Aang and his eventual “friendship” are explicitly destined by the story of Roku and Sozin. After this episode, the series depends upon Zuko’s ability to mend the divide inside himself, which can only be done by mending the divide between him and Aang. Their inheritance symbolizes this dynamic exactly. As the reincarnation of Avatar Roku, Aang can be understood as the beneficiary of Avatar Roku’s wisdom (he should not, as many jokingly suggest, be considered as any kind of biological relation of Roku or Zuko).  Zuko, on the other hand, has inherited Roku’s genealogy in the Fire Nation. These two pieces of Roku must be brought together in order to revive Roku’s legacy of firebending founded on something besides aggression. 

In addition to making the ideals of Roku whole again, the two boys must tend to the broken “friendship” between the two men. As the Avatar and the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, Aang and Zuko parallel Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin precisely. The narrative of the latter pair places destiny precisely in the hands of the former. And since both Aang and Roku expressed the desire for “friendship,” it falls in the lap of the corresponding royal to give up their imperial dreams so they can gain something more peaceful and intimate. For Zuko, this now can only be accomplished when he heals the rift within himself. 

Importantly, both the previous friendship and the destined friendship between Zuko and Aang are between two men. The coming-of-age genre has proliferated the trope of homosociality (friendship between individuals of the same sex) and its eventual decline brought on by maturity and heterosexual romance. (Check out the beautiful and quick rundown of classic examples, from Anne of Green Gables to Dead Poet’s Society, made by @greetingsprophet ). The story of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin replicates this established narrative. 

We see them playing, sparring, and joking intimately with one another. The two as young adults were intimately connected, the series explains, “sharing many things including a birthday.” Eventually their intimacy is interrupted by their worldly responsibilities and the spectre of heterosexual romance on Roku’s part.

Now, It’s not a huge leap for one to wonder if Sozin longed for something stronger in their “friendship.” We see no female romantic interests for Sozin. Instead, he continues to demonstrate his platonic allegiance to Roku. When Roku prepares to leave for his Avatar training, Sozin walks into his room and gives him his crown prince headpiece, a gesture of unique devotion that positions his friendship above his politics (which harkens to Plato and EM Forster’s ideas about platonic love that I’ll discuss in Part 3). 

One might note, too, how the wedding between Roku and his childhood sweetheart provides the setting for the escalation of Sozin’s violence. “On wedding days,” Sozin writes, “we look to the future with optimism and joy. I had my own vision for a brighter future...” He then pulls Roku away from his bride for a personal conversation, briefly recapturing the earlier homosocial dynamic with his friend. Sozin describes his affection for their intertwined lives. Then he links their shared happiness to the current prosperity of the Fire Nation. He imagines the expansion of the Fire Nation, which would also expand on the relationship between him and Roku. But the Avatar refuses the offer and returns to his wife, insisting on the value of traditional boundaries (both the pact of marriage and the strict division of the four nations). The abandonment of the homosocial relationship by Roku sets the site for the unmitigated empirical ambitions of Sozin. One wonders how history might’ve been altered had the two men’s relationship been sanctified and upheld. How might’ve Roku persuaded Sozin in his empirical ambitions if he had remained in a closer relationship to his friend? In their final encounter, Sozin reacts vengefully to his former platonic love: he lets Roku die protecting the home the Avatar shared with his wife. Sozin’s choice solidifies the divide between them, and makes the grief he’s experienced since Roku left him into actual death.

Instead of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin finding a resolution, Aang and Zuko are ordained to reverse their friendship’s disintegration. Yes, they must heal the rift in the world created by the Fire Nation’s aggression, but Aang and Zuko must also reverse the tradition of lost homosociality within a culture of unrelenting machismo. Despite Avatar: the Last Airbender’s ties to the coming-of-age genre, the arc of Aang and Zuko’s “friendship” counters one of its most prominent tropes. “Some friendships are so strong they can transcend lifetimes,” Roku says, and it’s precisely this platonic ideal that draws Zuko and Aang towards one another in ways that are revolutionary both in their world and in the traditions of our’s. To come together, as two matured boys, to form an adult platonic love that can persist into adulthood.

“And now we’re friends.”

Which brings us to the consummation of Aang and Zuko’s “friendship.” Having resolved their previous hostilities and having neutralized the outside forces that would rather them dead than together, Aang and Zuko can finally embrace and define their relationship as “friendship.” Now, if we look closely at Zuko’s expression, we’ll notice a pause, before he smiles and reiterates Aang’s comment. My initial response, with my zukaang shipping goggles on extra tightly, was that Zuko just got friend-zoned and was a little disappointed before accepting Aang’s friendship. When I took a step back, I considered that we are given this moment of reflection to recognize Zuko’s journey, his initial belligerent response to the idea of befriending the Avatar. When he accepts the term of ‘friend,’ he reveals the growth he’s undergone that’s brought peace to the world. With these two possibilities laid out, I want to offer that they might coexist. That the word ‘friend’ might feel to Zuko and the audience so small and limited and yet simultaneously powerful. The pause can hint at the importance of “friendship” and signal something more. This reading emboldens the queer concept of “friendship” that undergirds their relationship. That the hug that follows might be meant to define the depth of the platonic love that is at the very heart of the series.

Saving a hugging declaration of “friendship” for the announcement of peace in the series is quietly revolutionary. In the twentieth century, male characters could connect in battle, on competitive teams, and through crime. “In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy — as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid’s naked flesh — as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege — as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover — as long as he is riddled with bullets,” writes Kent Brintnall. Aang and Zuko’s hug starkly contrasts this kind of masculine intimacy. The show suggests that environments shaped by dominance, conflict, coercion, or harm, though seemingly productive in drawing people and especially men together, actually desecrate “friendships.” Only in a climate of humility, diplomacy, and peace can one make a true ‘friend.’

In situating the’ “friendship” between two matured males in a time of peace, the writers hearken back to older concepts of homosocial relationships in our fiction. As Hanya Yanagihara has described the Romantic concepts of friendship that pervaded fiction before the 1900s. In her book, A Little Life, Yanagihara renews this concept for the twenty-first century with a special appreciation for the queerness that one must accept in order for platonic love to thrive into adulthood. She writes, “Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together day after day bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.” Aang and Zuko’s relationship, despite a history that would keep them apart, reclaims this kind of friendship. Their hearts, bound together by an empyrean platonic love, are protected from the political and familial loyalties that would otherwise embroil them. 

In addition to Yanagihara, another author that coats the word ‘friend’ with similar gravity and longing to Avatar is E.M. Forster, who braids platonic friendship in his writing with homoeroticism and political revolution. In Forster’s novel Maurice (originally written in 1914 but published posthumously in 1971 due to Britain’s criminalization of male homsexuality), the titular character asks a lower class male lover lying in bed with him,  “Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his? I suppose such a thing can’t happen outside of sleep.” The confession, tinged with grief and providence as it is, could easily reside in Aang’s first monologue to Zuko in “The Blue Spirit.”

 Platonic love as a topic is at the heart of Maurice. Plato’s “Symposium,” from which the term platonic love derives, is even directly referenced in the book and connected with “the unspeakable vice of the Greeks”— slang for homosexual acts. For Forster, the sanction of platonic love, both the homosocial aspect and the latent homosexuality, reveals a culture’s liberation. “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend,” Forster wrote in his essay “What I Believe,”, “I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” This echoes a sentiment of philial love described by Plato. 

Rather than revolutionary ideals, for Forster friendships, and specifically friendships that disregard homophobia, provide the foundation for peace, equality, and democratic proliferation. When Aang and Zuko embrace, they are embodying this ideal.  Platonic love and the word “friend” have a history intertwined with queer romantic love, and, while I won’t argue that Avatar attempts to directly evoke this, I will suggest that the series consciously leaves room for this association. Now, the show certainly makes no attempt to imply anything romantic between Zuko and Aang within the timeline we witness (nor any same sex characters, which reflects cultural expectations in the 2000s). And for good reason, the age gap would be notably icky, to use the technical term. (You might note, however, that the show actually allows for crushes to extend upwardly across the same age gap, when Toph accidentally reveals her affection for Sokka to Suki in “The Serpent’s Pass.”) Despite connecting queer friendships to the history of ‘platonic love,’ Avatar provides two critiques to platonic love for audiences to absorb. One is the pederasty with which Plato defined his ultimate form of love in his Symposium. Fans rightfully comment on the age gap between Aang and Zuko as something preventative to shipping them together. And beyond the fact of their ages, Aang’s youthfulness is emphatic, as I remarked earlier. Aang and Zuko are prevented from consummating their platonic love until both are deemed mature in the last moments of the series. And even then, their relationship is directed toward future development rather than conclusion. Instead of cutting away, they are allowed to exit their scene together toward a speech about hope and peace. This stands in stark opposition to the permanence of Aang and Katara’s kiss. The platonic love in Avatar, the kind EM Forster cherishes, is relegated to adulthood as opposed to other kinds of boyish friendships. The conclusion of Avatar, at least for me, actually feels especially satisfying because it settles our characters in the “new era of love and peace.” It is a beginning, and it feels more expansive than the actions the characters choose to take in the episode. Even as our characters conclude three seasons of narrative tension as the sun sets and “The End” appears on the screen, it feels instead as if their stories can finally begin. The characters are allowed to simply exist for the first time. Yes, Aang and Katara or Zuko and Mai are allowed to embrace and kiss, but it’s because the pressures of empiricism have finally been banished. They are now allowed to try things and fail and make mistakes and explore. Things don’t feel rigid or permanent, whether that be one’s identity or one’s relationships.

Ideally, within the morality of the series (at least as it appears to us with no regard for whatever limits or self-censorship occurred due to its era of production and child-friendly requirements), “friends'' are maintained alongside romantic partnerships. Both Zuko and Aang’s separate romantic relationships blossom within the same episode that they declare their “friendship.” In fact, a vital plotline is the development of Zuko’s relationship with Aang’s romantic interest. While anyone in the fandom is well aware of the popular interpretation of romantic affection between Zuko and Katara because of their shared narrative, I have to point out that romantic feelings across the series are made extremely explicit through statements, blushes, and kisses. Zuko’s relationship with Katara can be better understood in the light of the coming-of-age counternarrative. While the love interest often serves as a catalyst for separation for a homosocial relationship, the friendly relationship with Aang’s love interest—seeking her forgiveness, respecting her power, calling on her support, etc—is vital for Zuko to ultimately create an environment of peace in which he and Aang can fulfill their destined “friendship.” In fact, we can look at Katara’s femininity as the most important device for manifesting Aang and Zuko’s eventual union. It’s her rage against misogyny that frees Aang from his iceberg, midwifing him into the world again after his arrested development, the complete opposite of a Wendy figure. It’s her arms that hold Aang in the pieta after his death in the Crossroads of Destiny, positioning her as a divine God-bearer. Afterwards, its her hands that resurrect Aang so that they together can fulfill his destiny. It will be these same hands with this same holy water that resurrect Zuko in the finale. Only through Katara’s decided blessing could Aang and Zuko proceed toward the fated reunion of their souls.

The importance of this critical relationship to femininity becomes relevant to a scene in “Emerald Island Players” that one might note as an outstanding moment of gay panic. Zuko and Aang, watching their counterparts on stage, cringe and shrink when, upon being saved by The Blue Spirit character in the play, Aang’s performer declares “My hero!” Instead of the assumption of homophobia, I wonder whether we might read Aang and Zuko’s responses as discomfort with the misogynistic heterosexual dynamics the declaration represents. Across the board, Avatar subverted the damsel in distress trope. There’s a-whole-nother essay to be written on all the ways it goes about this work, but the events in “The Blue Spirit” certainly speak to this subversion. It’s quite explicit that Zuko, after breaking Aang’s chains, is equally dependent on Aang for their escape. And, by the end of the actual episode, the savior role is reversed as Aang drags an unconscious Zuko away from certain death. To depict these events within the simplistic “damsel in distress” scenario, as The Ember Island Players do, positions Aang as a subordinately feminized colonial subject, denies him his agency, and depicts the relationship as something merely romantic, devoid of the equalizing platonic force that actually empowers them. The moment in the play is uncomfortable for Aang and Zuko because it makes Zuko the hero and Aang the helpless object. Aang is explicit about his embarrassment over his feminized and infantilized depiction in the play. And Zuko, newly reformed, is embarrassed to see, on one hand, his villainy throughout the play and, on the other hand, see how his character is positioned as made out as a savior to the person who has actually saved him.

At the heart of the series is not the idea of a chosen one or savior. Instead, we are saved by the ability for one person to see themselves in another person and to feel that same person equally understands their own soul. This is the ideal of platonic love. Platonic love between two matured boys—two boys with whose memories and bodies bare the scars of their queer sensitivities—is an essential part of the future of peace. Many fans have a sense of this, labeling the relationship as “brotp” and “platonic soulmates.” I simply encourage people to acknowledge that platonic love, especially in this context, is not a limit. There is no “no homo” joke here. When we remark on the platonic love between Zuko and Aang (and across media more generally) we are precisely making room for friendship, romance, and whatever else it could mean, whatever else it might become. While I find Legend of Korra lacking and in some ways detrimental to appreciating the original series, it’s finale interestingly parallels and extends this reading of platonic love in a sapphic vein. And most recently, She ra Princess of Power was able to even more explicitly realize these dynamics in the relationship between Adora and Catra. Let’s simply acknowledge that Aang and Zuko’s relationship blazed the trail: that peace, happiness, hope, and freedom could all hinge on a “friendship,” because a “friend” was never supposed to be set apart from or less than other kinds of relationships. For the ways it disregards gender, disregards individualism, disregards dominion, platonic love is the foundation of any meaningful relationship. And a meaningful relationship is the foundation for a more peaceful world.  *Author’s note: I’m just tired of sitting on this and trying to edit it. It’s not perfect. I don’t touch on all the symbolism and nuances in the show and in the character’s relationships. And this is not meant to negate any ships. It’s actually, quite the opposite. This is a show about growth and change and mistakes and complexity. Hopefully you can at least appreciate this angle even if you don’t vibe with every piece of analysis here. I just have no chill and need to put this out there so I can let my obsession cool down a bit. Enjoy <3

#zukaang #atla meta #avatar the last airbender #platonic love #meta #zuko #aang #plato #maurice #spop #lok #adora #catra #em forster #remember when one person said i seemed manic in the last meta i wrote??? #look at me now! #korrasami #catradora #the symposium #kataang #zutara #maiko

[deaku]

   This is Terranor Kalanhaven; Knight of Melsaria, Paladin of Light

  He’s also a sentient suit of animated armor, but that fact is generally not very well-known.

   Terranor's story begins long ago with the elven wizard known as Kalanhaven of the Moonlight Spires, who was not only a powerful wizard but also an avid explorer. While on an expedition into the far northern wilderness Kalanhaven discovered an odd blade. They didn’t find it delving into a dungeon or winning it in some epic battle, Kalan simply found it sticking out of the wall in an icy cave. It was a well-crafted blade that seemed to radiate a form of divine energy but Kalan could not figure out the blades origins or even what it was actually made out of (other than it was some sort of crystalline metal) no matter what spells they used. Kalan eventually went back home intending to study the blade further. But one night Kalan had some sort of dreaming vision, something unlike they had ever experienced. It was hard to put into words but Kalan was positive that the blade was a weapon that was involved in some grand destiny and that it was their duty to find the person that was meant to wield the blade.

   Kalanhaven chose a remote "dungeon" to hide the blade until they could find the one to wield it. It was a place known as Ulvanor. It had once been a thriving city built at the bottom of a canyon but a massive earthquake in the past brought the canyon down, burying the city. However the city hadn't been completely destroyed, many buildings survived and they combined with the natural gaps that had been left in the stone and earth resulted in a strange labyrinth. Many creatures had moved into Ulvanor over the years making it quite a hazardous place. Kalan used their magic to find and restore an ancient vault that existed deep within Ulvanor, then got to work crafting a guardian for the blade. Using all the tricks and techniques they knew Kalan created an armored guardian, something they was sure would be strong enough to watch over the blade while Kalan searched for the person to wield it. Kalan put the guardian in place and added a few more magics to the vault that would help keep the armour in top condition. Satisfied that the blade was well-hidden and protected Kalan set off on their own quest, only visiting occasionally to make sure the guardian was still functioning and the blade still in place.

  Over time the Armour was accepted by the other denizens of Ulvanor as just another part of the dungeon, a particularly hazardous part, and most just avoided the immediate area entirely. There were many, many adventurers over the years that would make it through all the dangers of Ulvanor only to meet their end at the sword of the Armor. Eventually a tribe of goblins that lived in Ulvanor began to take advantage of how good the Armour was at disposing of adventurers. While there was magic in place that would teleport things, besides the Armor and the blade, that remained in the vault too long away, they would remain long enough to be salvaged by those clever enough to do so. The Goblins would set traps to try and herd adventurers towards the Armour and when it worked they would simply wait awhile and then go check and see if the adventurers had met their fate. Then using hook and line the would try and fish for the bodies, hooking them and then slowly dragging them out of the vault since the Armour never left that room. It would work most of the time; unless they moved the bodies too fast, then the Armour would react and chop their lines. The Goblins even started rumors of "The Terror of Ulvanor" and the fabulous treasure it guarded in an effort to lure in more adventurers.

  However one fateful day the Armour was once again doing it duty and protecting the blade from a group of adventurers that sought to claim the treasure. The last to fall was a mage whom was trying to get off a spell just as the Armour struck them down. Somehow interactions between the mystical energies of the Armour, the magical energy of the nearly cast spell and other unknown variables caused the armor to gain sentience and free-will. After being confused for a bit at the new sense of self the Armour decides to leave and take the blade with them, sudden sentience is no excuse for shirking one's duty after all; their goal to find Kalanhaven or at least complete the mission of finding the one meant to wield the blade. While the Armour had to fight through some of the other denizens of Ulvanor they eventually made their way to the surface and headed out into the wilderness.

  After wandering the wilderness alone for a time the Armor eventually stumbled upon the home of a former adventuring Paladin that had retired to settle down and raise her family, the paladin's name was Melsaria Luzera, Paladin of Light. At first Melsaria was ready to fight when she saw this magic armor walk onto her property; but then she could sense there was something different about this armored guardian than ones she had come across before and she could feel divine energy radiating from the blade it carried. The biggest shock however was when the Armor spotted and greeted her, even sounded a bit unsure while doing so. In her experience those types of things were not supposed to be able to talk. Melsaria greeted back and began to converse, both out of sheer curiosity and an attempt to find out just what was going on. The Armor introduced itself, again a bit unsure sounding, as Terranor, and answered Melsaria's questions the best it was able. After hearing Terranor's story Melsaria decided it was her duty to help; it is the duty of all Paladins of the Light to help those in need, and Terranor was perhaps in as much need as she had ever seen someone. Melsaria's spouses were unsure of the whole situation but would support Melsaria if this was something she really wanted to do, the children’s general reaction was that Terranor was one of the most awesome things they had ever seen.

  Sensing potential and an affinity for Light in this Terranor, Melsaria decided she would train him in the ways of the Paladin. Terranor was already well-versed in the ways of combat, just needed a bit of refinment, so Melsaria focused more on the moral and spiritual. And while Melsaria was training Terranor to be a Paladin the whole family helped him learn how to socialize and taught him many other skills he might have need of in normal society. Terranor proved to be a quick leaner and took in any knowledge he was presented with, it wasn’t long before Melsaria felt that Terranor’s training was complete and it was time for him to go out into the world and use his skills to help those in need. Terranor thanked Melsaria and her family and said his goodbyes as he set out on his journey.

 Now Terranor wanders the land helping those in need; but always keeps the mission of finding the one destined to wield the blade in mind, no matter how long it may take.

  Here’s a new drawing from me after a very long time, hopefully it won’t be as long before my next pic ;P heh The idea for this guy came to me one day as I was going through the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, just one of those random ideas that develops a backstory and such.

#my art #oc #dungeons and dragons #D&D #terranor #terranor kalanhaven

[strosmkai-rum]

SKYRIM MOD LIST, enb included

have fun! 

note: some mods, though very few and for the most part insignificant, were found on the steam workshop. so if it doesn’t appear on the nexus, you’ll find it there.

some general advice for new modders/just reminders - 

- always check compatibility. some mods have patches to use in combination with other mods. always read the description too. 

- if you’re able, cleaning plugins is always good. i was never able to get a hang of it but that doesn’t mean you won’t have better luck.

- never, ever test mods with an actual playthrough. the chances of corruption are small, but there. start a new game; if you can’t bother with the helgen intro, use Quick Start to skip past it and begin at the cave exit instead. 

- load order. can’t go wrong with LOOT or Wrye Bash. imo LOOT is easier to install and use but it’s all up to preference.

OVERHAULS -

Noble Skyrim (a HUGE overhaul of basically all exterior textures. but, if you don’t like the look this gives, i’d suggest 2k Textures for a more vanilla feel but in higher res, or Tamriel Reloaded - Textures and Parallax.)

Realistic Water Two (get the enb textures, with the watercolor effect too. they have a non-enb version as well, if you don’t use enb.)

aMidianborn retextures (i use almost everything. weapons, armor, creatures, dragonborn dlc, except the terrain overhaul. i also use the differently ebony and glass variants plugins, which basically mean that there’s multiple variants of the armor with the different retextures. they’re so cool, it’s a must.)

RUSTIC ( i also use almost everything from this too. alchemy/enchanting tables, daedra, death hounds, dinnerware, east empire company signs (i really don’t know why), elder scroll, monuments/tombstones, nordic murals, pottery, silverware, standing stones, windows, and word walls.)

Immersive College of Winterhold

Book Covers Skyrim (best book cover retex ever.)

More Interesting Loot (adds in so many artifacts/ingredients/loot from previous games it’s unreal. love it.)

Realistic Room Rental Enhanced (a SERIOUS overhaul of inns and stuff. lets you rent rooms for followers, discounts for extended stays, and makes them look nicer! oh, washtubs too.)

Immersive Roads (amazing. beautiful. incredible.)

RSChildren (children remodel)

Moonlight Tales 

Breezehome Fully Upgradeable (okay this too. makes breezehome huge. like, now you can have a markarth style tub upstairs, and a decent room for lydia too. plus a secret library, and another way to enter/exit your home outside of whiterun. and a lot of other stuff i’m too lazy to list right now.)

SMIM (DEFINITELY use some sort of installer for this. killed me when i tried to manually install it. totally optional, though.)

Ruins Clutter Improved

Thane Weapons Reborn

GRAPHICS -

Unique Grasses and Groundcovers (Verdant does a great job too.)

Hybrid HD Plants and Herbs Retexture (Tamriel Reloaded flora are gorgeous as well, so are the ones from Skyrim Flora Overhaul.)

AOF Detailed Mountains (my pref, but honestly, almost all of the mountain retex mods are amazing. go wild.)

Designs of the Nords Banners (the sickest retex of banners. ever.)

Skyrim Landscape Overhaul - Stone Walls (the BEST thing you will ever see. note, if used with Immersive College of Winterhold you don’t need the corresponding patch. at least, if this is the only SLO mod you’ll use.)

SLOD Wine Cellar (y'ever have an in-game crippling alcohol addiction?)

SLOD Potions/Poisons

Gemling Queen Jewelry

Barenziah’s Glory (crown and jewel retexs)

Unique Uniques (the reworks are absolutely gorgeous. i can’t even describe them. at this point, unique is an understatement.)

Bellyache’s Dragon Retextures (they’re the hell spawn of akatosh, gotta make ‘em look cool somehow)

Apophysis Dragon Priest Masks (holy mother of god, these dragon priest retextures are beautiful. if you’re more into a horror theme, Unique Dragon Priest Masks will definitely satisfy you) 

Natural Eyes

Coverkhajiits Male/Female

Dawnguard Rewritten - Arvak (so many arvak retextures here, pick and choose what you want)

Makers Mark Ingots (an ingot retexture, with minting seals/stamps on them. beautiful.)

Better Shrouded Armor (okay, this. this. if you look at the vanilla armor and say, i hate this, then you’ll love this. the armor becomes more of an armored robe with black/brown touches, and the signature hand print on the front. it’s just cool.)

Stormcloak Revival (awesome retex of the armor)

Nightingale Prime and Nightingale Pride (a retexture for armor and blade/bow, respectively)

Windhelm - Legendary Kings

Alternate Summoning Visuals

Tenets Restored (so you can actually read the damn things)

Auriel’s Bow Retexture

HD Linens

QUESTS/NEW LANDS -

Falskaar

Shadow of Morrowind 

Summerset Isle 

Beyond Skyrim - Bruma

Beyond Reach

Voyage to the Dreamborne Isles 

VIGILANT (there’s an english voiceover and a guide as well in the files section of the voiceover)

Project AHO (you need this. you do. the quest, the npcs, the oh god, everything, is so amazing. download it.)

Carved Brink (from the makers of Project AHO, equally amazing.)

Wheels of Lull (this was the best existential crisis i’ve ever had. funny, immersive, challenging, and very, very real, i’ll be at your door in a fortnight if you don’t install this mod.)

Aethernautics (with Wheels of Lull integration patch)

Gray Cowl of Nocturnal (want some oblivion nostalgia? here you are.)

Spectraverse - Magic of the Magna Ge

Dwemertech - Magic of the Dwarves

Ravengate (underground pit fighting, hell yeah!!)

The Tools of Kagrenac (morrowind fans wya. i have never played morrowind.)

Moon and Star

The Forgotten City (gonna be getting its own game on Steam by the same name!)

Fight Against the Thalmor (all 4 parts linked) 

Sinister Seven

Konahrik’s Accountments

Blackreach Railroad (trains. that is all.)

Legends of Nchuak

The McMiller Chronicles

The Notice Board (ah, witcher fans might like this.)

The Paarthurnax Dilemma (for obvs reasons) 

Localized Guild Jobs (finally, choose the city you want to do a thiefy job in.)

Missing Apprentices (a college quests never implemented in-game. there’s also another mod for another cut quest called Research Thief, but i don’t use that one.)

Barenziah Quest Markers (am NOT using the wiki again to find those floaty bastards. there’s a mod that puts the stones in quest-locked areas in accessible ones instead, so if you plan on collecting them all and being done with it i suggest Non Quest Locations for Stones of Barenziah.)

Jiub’s Opus Quest Markers (not chasing these down either)

Arvak’s Skull Quest Marker (only available through steam workshop)

an addition, Wyrmstooth, though it’s no longer on the nexus and is known to corrupt save files and cause general issues (i found a version of it, though i’m not very keen on trying it after what i’ve heard. still, if you really want it, it’s not that hard to find.)

IMMERSION -

Timing is Everything (adds in delays between quests. just a little breather in between saving the world, if that even exists.)

Northern Encounters (if you love encounters and spent a lot of time in the snow for whatever reason, this is for you.)

Extra Encounters Reborn + DLC (when you love exploring skyrim, this’ll make your adventures super interesting.)

Citizens of Tamriel (on god this mod is so funny and immersive. if you download this, stop by the abandoned shack. you won’t regret it.)

Honed Metal (lets you hire a smith to temper/craft and enchant armor and weapons for you, so you don’t have to invest in the smithing tree.)

The Hunting Game (y’ever notice how pelts are like, worthless? yeah. this changes that.) 

Organized Bandits of Skyrim

Better Combat AI (there’s probably a better mod for combat out there, but this is what i use. also from steam workshop)

Increased Merchant Gold Count (plenty of dif mods for this, all of them should work just fine. also on steam workshop)

Black Horse Courier Reborn (hey, remember the uhh, couriers in oblivion? well, they’re back, babey! the more quests you complete, different editions will be released to talk about the amazing last dragonborn, and there’s a (expensive as hell) book that you can buy from a courier that had all the editions from oblivion in one tidy leather-bound book.)

Take Notes (a journal mod!)

Celtic Music in Skyrim (a music replacer. it’s so calming and atmospheric, but if you want individual tracks replaced with ones of your own choosing, you can download Skyrim Audio Converter.)

Book Covers of Skyrim - Lost Library (adds in books from other tes games too, along with the fancy covers.)

Books of Skyrim (a book store in solitude.)

Touring Carriages

The Thieves Guild: More Thieves (only on steam workshop)

Thieves Guild Former Glory Enhancement

Regifting Lycanthropy: Infinite (on steam workshop)

KJ Tattoos and Lore Tattoos (needs RaceMenu to work.)

Loading Screens with Extra Sarcasm (beautiful mod. doesn’t ruin your immersion at all, actually.)

We Are Legion (nice legion overhaul. workshop exclusive.)

Immersive Patrols

All Merchants Buy Stolen Items

Realistic Crime Radius

Beyond Skyrim: Wares of Tamriel

Morrowind Imports (makes it so dunmer vendors will sell stuff like ash yams and sujamma, just a bit more immersive.)

Morrowind Border Trading Shack (workshop exclusive)

Staves of Skyrim

College Students

Better College Application

Night Eye Overhaul (good regardless if you rp as a khajiit or not)

Enhanced Cities: Docks of Solitude (workshop exclusive)

Towns and Villages Enhanced: Riverwood

Project Populate Skyrim: Winterhold (workshop exclusive)

Raven Rock Expanded

MISCELLANEOUS -

SkyComplete (lets you keep track of basically everything, including quests, artifacts, undiscovered locations and read books. update, it looks like the original file has been taken down. i do have a copy of the file should anyone want it.)

The Choice is Yours (fewer forced quests! woohoo!)

Jaxonz Named Save and Positioner (lets you have named saves, and reposition objects. the best mod for home decorating.)

Unlimited Bookshelves (put anything you want on those bad boys now! coupled with Jaxonz Positioner, the sky’s the limit to home decorating now.)

Follower Map Markers Complete (so you don’t lose them. again. also works for mod added followers.)

Bandolier - Bags and Pouches (you look really cool, and get a bit of extra carry weight too!)

Insanitys Celtic Katana

Better Training (no more level req bs here)

No Required Perks (workshop exclusive)

Lightweight Potions and Poisons

Lightweight Scrolls (because half a point for a scroll?! it’s paper, not rocks, dammit)

Weightless Soul Gems

Telescope

Thieves' Guild Bounty Clearer

Scoped Bows 

Font Replacement (i use fertigo pro but you know, preference) 

City Forests (just adds a few trees in a few cities, this, combined with Noble Skyrim and the enb i use makes all of my screenshots.) 

Save the Dark Brotherhood (saves your tears, too.)

Hold Border Banners 

Lost Books of Voryn Dreleth (adds in a few books, scattered throughout skyrim. i don’t know, they’re nice to read i guess. totally optional.)

Halls of Dovahndor (an amazing house mod set in…sovngarde! that’s new!)

The Library of Paarthurnax (always thought this was mad cool)

Sacrificial Hunter (for the boethiah quest. also known as, when you’re too attached to your followers to kill them)

No Killmoves/Killcams/Killbites (totally optional, i just don’t like the animations.)

Big Leather Backpack (it looks cool. plus extra carry weight. bags are cool.)

Colovian Leather (just a lil extra set of armor) 

Elder Scroll on Back

More Salt

Open Face Guard Helmets

Faction Crossbows

INTERFACE -

SkyUI (the menu layout give me a headache though, you can use SkyUI Away to restore normal menus)

Immersive HUD

A Matter of Time (compatible with iHUD)

Warburg’s 3D Paper World Map (forget the old poorly rendered map. a new paper one, a lot more simplistic and minimalist. but, if you do want the normal skyrim map, A Quality World Map is the way to go.)

Main Menu Background Replacer (oh, there’s a lot of these. so choose your favorite. but i like this best.)

No Bethesda Intro Logo or a replacer, the one i use was taken down but went by Ironclad Bethesda. 

RaceMenu

Amazing Follower Tweaks

Follower Trap Safety (miiight be included in AFT, but not sure.)

FIXES/PATCHES -

USLEEP

Fuz Ro Doh (needed for some quest mods, something abt silent dialogue.)

No More Blinding Fog (if you have that issue)

Mindflux Particle Patch (if included)

Darker Dungeons for ENB (if included)

Revamped Exterior Fog

FOR ENB:

okay, here’s the thing. i’ve been modding skyrim nonstop for three years now. i’ve gone through, a lot of enbs. the big ones, the small ones. rudy, tetrachromatic, project enb, you name it. and here’s the one that i finally found that works great, lots of customizability, awesome fps, and looks fucking fantastic. 

it’s called seasons of skyrim. easy install, easy uninstall if you don’t like it. nothing else. includes further darker dungeons as well as revamped exterior fog.

my configuration’s here.

but let’s assume you don’t want to use an enb. that’s fine! there’s a lot of other ways to get dynamic lightning too. i used to use Climates of Tamriel, or ELFX, or Realistic Lighting Overhaul. note that i’m almost certain that RLO hand places light sources, so i don’t know how altered cells would go. you might be able to avoid conflict by loading the changing mod after RLO? but i don’t know for sure. 

if you want help with installing anything/with enbs or are new to it, i’m always down to help. 

other stuff i use -

SKSE is an obvs one. 

LOOT

Save Cleaner

7zip (it’s basically a free version of winzip. cause i’m not about to pay for anything, and i manually install everything.)

wow, you made it to the end? congrats! i spent longer on this than i did sleeping last night. 

#skyrim #modding #a lotta mods lmao #tes #still...modding...three years later...

[blackevermore]

x Secrets of The Lake: The Company of Misery and Pain

{ Chapter 4: Slight Nsfw }

Summary: Vladimir Masters’ family tree has always been tainted by secrets swept under the rug. From generation to generation there have been countless reasons the Masters’ family had seemed to keep private from the public. Even to this day, Vladimir was no exception. But what was one to do when a restless spirit from the settlement years finally breaks free from restraints and demands you answer for your ancestor’s crimes? Vladimir doesn’t know. However, Clockworks does.

Notes: We just having fun, rewriting some of the canon, new adventure new characters. I will apologize now for any grammar, spelling, weird sentence structuring in advance. My brain writes faster than my fingers and even when I go back through to reread it I still miss things. Sorry about that!

Word Count: 3730

P.s: the nsfw is only in the beginning but it ends in stabbing like nothing graphic. Also would anyone like to be tagged when i update?

He doesn’t remember how he got here, or even where here was but it was familiar and felt like home. It was warm by the fire that lit up the room in feverish reds and oranges. He could feel his body gaining back its energy and his core being restored the longer the warmth surrounded him. In the comfortable bliss, he didn’t notice the pair of arms snaking across his torso until they were wrapped around his neck. His eyes shot open but he was quickly buried in the shallow of someone’s neck in a strong embrace. That’s when he felt the pressure of a body on top of his pushing down. He hadn’t registered the rocking motion against his hips until he heard the broken moan in his ear. Who? It was like a siren's call that made him clasp his hands on the body atop of him. He doesn’t remember how any of this started nor did he care to stop it. The pleasure he felt was intoxicating and drowned out all of his logical senses telling him to stop. He clung to her breathlessly as he felt his chest start to burn, he was now chasing this ghostly high throughout his entire body. 

“Vlad…” The voice called his name in desperation, begging him to continue and singing for all those to hear. Her voice was all he ever wanted to hear, yet he had never heard her like this at all. What? Nails dug into his shoulders and down his back leaving trails of red tracks and intricate designs. It stung like lashes but it fueled him even more as he shifted to bite her neck. Her cry sounded more surprised than pleasurable which worried him for some reason. Before he could pull away to ask if she was alright she pulled him in again and slammed down at just the right angle to distract him once more. 

“Fu-fiddlesticks,” He caught himself saying and pulled her down against him as close as possible. He hadn’t felt this in god knows how long and he refused to allow it to fade away. Once again her nails found his back and circled around his left shoulder blade. It tickled a bit and he chuckled into her, daring to take another bite of her lovely dark skin. 

Vlad had very much given in to this fantasy of whoever he had with him. Surely, there was no harm in enjoying a fit of passion in comfortable privacy. The hands around his neck now played in his hair combing out soft tangles. But when their hand pulled back with a few loose strands he peeked and saw how dark they were. ‘My hair hasn't been that way since-’ his thoughts were cut short as he felt the jerking motion of his body as the hilt of a blade buried itself inside him. Then followed a burning, searing heat pooling and dripping down before pain came from just under his left shoulder.

Vlad shot up from the bed choking back a scream of utter pain as his back still felt attacked. He was sweating and panting as he stumbled to get out of the bed and head towards the adjacent bathroom. He made it to the mirror and looked himself over. He looked exhausted, his long silver hair was a mess as it hung into what was left of his ponytail and his eyes were lifeless. What left him speechless was a small patch of hair towards the right that had now turned jet black. He fumbled with the strands mesmerized and very confused. He hadn’t seen the darkness of his hair in almost 24 years, yet here it was. Vlad’s head began to hurt as everything that had happened flashed across his mind. He was nearly torn apart and crumbled down to nothing, Vlad knew what it was like to be badly beaten but never to the brink of existence. He gripped onto the sink to steady himself when he felt the sudden weakness in his legs. 

He knew he passed out which meant Danny was the one to drag him all the way back home. Vlad felt embarrassed having to think about the young hero having to do so. After a moment of finding the strength to stand on his own again, Vlad pushed off the sink and headed towards the door of the room. He much preferred to be in the comforts of his own bedroom than the guest room. At this moment, Vlad cursed himself for being a rich bastard, the halls seemed to almost go on for miles. He had thought about trying to turn into Plasmius to hurry the journey along but he knew his powers were still in recovery. He was stuck in his normal human form until otherwise. When he finally made it to his room he heard talking coming a few doors down where Danielle’s room was. Who in the world was in his house? That’s when it hit him he was supposed to pick up Dani from Danny’s. Had Danny brought her home? Vlad slowly made his way towards the door and slowly pushed it open. Expecting Dani to be on her bed doing whatever she liked doing. Vlad found Danny instead looking out her window on the phone.

“Yeah no, Dani has to stay with me until all this is dealt with, not that she minds it. But Vlad still hasn’t woken up and it’s been three days and when he does I don’t think he’s going to be in the best of moods.” Three days? He had been unconscious for three days? Vlad swore it felt like a couple of hours from the time he fainted to now. He gripped his head when it started to pound again. Danny's ghost sense flew from his mouth and he turned around. “Hey, I gotta go, yeah he just woke up and the last thing I need is him dying on the floor. Talk to you later guys.” Danny hung up the phone and crossed his arms.

He gave Vlad a weak smile, “Welcome back to the land of the living, feel like shit?”

“Language,” was all Vlad could retort with before he pulled back out of the room and headed towards his. Danny followed but had never actually been in Vlad’s bedroom before. He felt like he was invading privacy but if this was where they were going to talk, fine by him. Danny should have known it would be a mini apartment but he wasn’t expecting the gothic-like interior. Sam would feel like the dark goddess she was in this room and it made him snicker. Vlad sat in an armchair in front of an unlit fireplace and slumped down to get more comfortable. Danny frowned, sympathetic to the situation, he had been there before, he took the chair next to Vlad and waited for the other to speak first.

“Where do we even begin?” Vlad grumbled before dragging a hand down his face.

“Maybe with what Clockwork told you,” Danny answered. Vlad only nodded and forced himself to sit up straight and take a more proper position before he told Danny everything. Danny really wanted to crack a joke, tell Vlad that’s what he gets for all the years going after his mom, mock him for breaking a heart he knew nothing about, however, Danny kept silent and only nodded along. Vlad took long pauses between his explanations and side rambles when he felt himself getting worked up. It was just a lot to take in.

“So… do’ya know which ancestor she might be linked to?” Danny could see it on Vlad’s face the man was just as clueless as he was back at the lake.

“No idea, like I told you my family stayed in Europe the whole time then settled in Russia. I'm a second generation American, there would be no point in my family owning a servant of African descent in the German empire then losing everything and going to Russia. None of this makes sense.” Vlad’s brows knitted together and he mumbled a few curses under his breath.

“Maybe there was an ancestor that came overseas during the Mayflower or whatever and they never went back. So like now you have this distant relative that your family never kept up with and they did something bad and BAM angry ghost.” Danny could admit he was a bit dramatic with his explanation, the hands in the air waving back and forth near the end was a bit much. But he had a point, a strong point, those that went overseas tended to be forgotten by the main family if the root of the tree stayed put. Vlad had many cousins he knew nothing about simply because they lived in other European countries. This didn’t feel like a distant cousin ancestor problem though, Vlad could feel that it was heavily tied to his main bloodline.

“I would agree with you, Daniel, but something tells me this is more within my family than some twice removed cousin.” Vlad looked up at the boy weakly. Danny huffed and nodded before propping his chin upon his hand. “I have access to my complete family records,” Vlad began again which made Danny perk up a bit. “I could try to trace back and see if anyone had travelled over during that time and had maybe gone back. I heavily doubt it but right now that’s all we have.”

“Better than nothing.” Danny tried to sound optimistic but he knew it failed. Vlad only nodded in agreement before staring off into the distance once again thinking. His thoughts were clouded between checking his family records but also the dream he had earlier. Danny felt the room become uncomfortably silent and knew it was time to leave Vlad alone.

As Danny got to his feet he scratched the back of his head and asked, “So do you need anything? I’ve kinda been babysitting you while you've been out, but don’t expect me to wear some butler outfit.” Vlad lightly chuckled and it made Danny feel a bit better.

“You can’t even tie a tie without throwing a fit, but anyways no I’m fine, you may go, Daniel.”

“M’kay. Let me know what you find.” Danny turned ghost and shot through the floor to get to Vlad’s portal so he could get back home. Vlad watched him leave then sighed before snapping his fingers for a ghost maid to appear. 

“Yes, Master?”

“Something heavy, no ice.” Vlad gave his order and the maid was fading away to retrieve it. A drink, a drink was what he needed even if his body was still in recovery.

#📖Ghost Stories👻 #vlad masters #danny phantom #my writing #self ship community #Secrets of The Lake #dp fanfic

[sourcherrybomb]

SoKai Week 2020 - Day 1 - Paopu Surprise!

Synopsis: Sora and Kairi decide to take a breather and share a Paopu Fruit with each other. However, Sora finds himself in for an unwelcome surprise when he finally bites into one... 

Sneak Peek: Sora could only imagine the dumb look on his face. This was not going the way he imagined it. Kairi had seriously beaten him to the punch?

Tags: Romance, Comedy, All Ages, F/M

Prompt for the Day: One Heart / Paopu Fruit

Words: 1.4k

Fanart By: asgardianartist (Fiverr / Instagram)

Native to the Destiny Islands is a particularly peculiar fruit in the shape of a star. Trinkets made in its image are seen as good luck charms and are even known to people who have never stepped foot on the world. But to the residents of the Destiny Islands, the paopu fruit means so much more than just simple ‘good luck’.

If two people share one, their destinies become intertwined. They’ll remain a part of each other’s lives no matter what.

All that time ago, before their adventures and misadventures, these were the words Riku told Sora. At the time, he got flustered when his friend teased him at the idea of sharing one with Kairi. However, it’s not as though Sora had completely dismissed the idea; the day right after in their secret place, in between the space of a rough drawing of he and Kairi, Sora secretly drew a hand giving her the fruit.

It wasn’t until Sora, Donald, and Goofy defeated Ansem the Seeker of Darkness that Kairi would find out. 

Not long after the Destiny Islands were restored, Kairi found herself in the secret place. Reminiscing while looking at the myriad drawings of various quality, she stumbled upon Sora’s addition to the drawing of them. After letting a tear fall out of her eye, Kairi herself adds to the sketch her own arm extended towards Sora, paopu fruit in hand.

It’s been more than a year since those events first transpired. Sora, Kairi, and Riku are now back home on the islands before their ultimate battle. 

Sora and Kairi, bathed in the twilight of the setting sun, sit on a paopu tree while passing the time away. Riku rests himself directly on the beach below them.

Sora, noticing his friend, asks Kairi, “Hey, why’s Riku all alone?”

“He said he needed time to himself,” she notes. “Let’s let him be.”

As Sora sits distracted by his silver-haired friend staring into the sunset-lit ocean, Kairi silently strengthens her resolve. She was going to share this paopu fruit with Sora, and nothing, not even the looming thought of Riku teasing them without end after the fact. And plus, it’s not as though Sora would be against sharing it with her. There’s that drawing of them, the race he and Riku did, as well as all the things he did for her during their first adventure together. With a battle to the death at their doorstep, now would be the best time to share any thoughts or emotions that have been lingering around…

But what if Sora is just being nice?

No! Kairi thinks to herself. She knows that Sora is basically a paragon of kindness who can be a bit of a dolt sometimes… Okay, many times, but even he should be aware of what repeated acts of kindness and/or heroism do to a person!

Before Kairi goes through an entire internal debate in the span of seconds, her arm subconsciously moves towards a paopu fruit she may have secretly left there when no one was looking. Although now that she thinks about it, Riku did stop by here before heading down to the beach. He did have this smug grin on his face as he passed by the two of them...

As more and more thoughts rush through her mind, Kairi’s hand has already brought the paopu fruit in front of Sora. 

“Here!” she says. 

“Huh?” 

Sora could only imagine the dumb look on his face. This was not going the way he imagined it. Kairi had seriously beaten him to the punch? The whole reason he wanted to bring her here was so he could be the one to hand her the fruit! Now his whole plan has basically gone up into flames and can’t even bring out any words besides a simple “Huh?"

As Sora mentally reprimands himself, Kairi silently chides herself for basically shoving the fruit in his face and not coming up with a smoother way of handing it to him. 

“Tomorrow’s fight will be our toughest yet,” Kairi says as she softly smiles. “I want to be a part of your life no matter what. That’s all.”

Sora, who at this moment currently is still in panic mode due to his botched plan, can only take the paopu fruit in hand.

Wait, Sora thinks as he looks up and smiles at Kairi. I might be able to salvage this.

“Kairi, I’ll keep you safe,” he tells her.

Not to be outdone, Kairi shakes her head. “Let me keep you safe.”

Raising the fruits to each other's mouths, Sora and Kairi each take a bite from the paopu fruits. 

If only this moment could last forever, Kairi thinks as she stares into Sora’s eyes.

Oh my gosh, this tastes horrible, Sora thinks as he does his best to hide his disgust. 

The young man has never tried the fruit before today, but he expected it to taste way better than the overly saccharine mouthful he got. To Sora, it tasted like someone had used a shovel to feed him a mouthful of sugar, or maybe like drowning in Pooh’s coveted honey! As much as he wanted to swallow the fruit and get it over with, the taste was preventing him letting it pass through his mouth.

Just power through it, pretty sure the legend only says I need to take a bit out of it, not eat the whole thing, Sora continues to think to himself. Ohhhh man, I really hope Kairi doesn’t make me eat more of this.

So are we supposed to eat more of this? Kairi thinks to herself. Honestly, the legend is pretty vague. Like, are we supposed to share one or feed each other one… Legends need to be worded better. 

As she goes for another bite of the fruit, Kairi can’t help but notice Sora’s face. Is it… twitching?

“Hey Sora, you okay?” she asks. “Can’t help but notice you haven’t gone for another bite…”

Oh crud.

“Yeah, totally!” Sora says, his mouth muffled by the sickeningly sweet fruit. “Just sav-ughh… Savoring the taste!”

“Hmmm…” Kairi raises an eyebrow. “Sora, would you mind swallowing what’s in your mouth right now?”

A look of terror flashes in Sora’s eyes.

“Sorrystillchewingonthisbite,” he says in a rush. 

Covering her mouth, Kairi mischievously grins. “Oh, is that so? Well, with the way you’re talking, I think I notice room for one… more… BITE!”

Before Sora could even react, Kairi shoves her paopu fruit into his mouth faster than one could say “Sora, Donald, and Goofy.” Sora, disoriented by the vicious sneak attack, falls over and swallows the excess fruit in his mouth alongside the chewed up slop that was being kept in his cheeks. As he writhes around on the ground, not from choking, but rather the fruit’s taste, Kairi begins to laugh harder and harder until she falls from the tree they were sitting on as well.

Down on the beach, Riku and his Replica nod at each other as they silently judge Sora and Kairi making a fool of themselves, casually forgetting the small audience just a couple yards away from them.

As Sora spits out the Paopu Fruit from his mouth, Kairi somehow begins to laugh even harder at the ironically sour face on his mug.

“Oh ha ha, very funny!” Sora complains. “Next thing we know, we wouldn’t have an issue rescuing Roxas since I would’ve bitten the dust anyways!”

“And I suppose me... dying of laughter would have… woulda brought back Namine in the process as well, huh?” Kairi asks in between heavy breaths.

Soon enough, Sora stops pouting, Kairi’s breathing becomes more relaxed, and the two of them start to quietly giggle.

As the fiery sunset fades away into a cool starlit night, Riku quietly leaves the island, leaving Sora and Kairi to their own devices.

The two continued to lie on the ground, staring into the night sky, stargazing like the two would always do when they were younger. Normally, Sora would be telling Kairi stories about the stars and various constellations. However, tonight the only sounds a person could hear would be the ocean waves washing up onto the shore.

Occasionally they would turn their heads and lock eyes with each other. Both had so many things to say to one another, but it was like no amount of words in the world could be used to convey their feelings and emotions.

However, neither person saw this as a problem. Whenever Sora or Kairi had something to say, but didn’t have the words, they would just tighten their grip on the other’s hand.

---

Hello there, the name’s SourCherryBomb and this little oneshot is the start of a return to form for me. I’ve written under a different name years before, but I’ve decided to wipe the slate clean. It’s for many reasons, the main one being that I cringe when I look at my old works. That’s just growth, I guess.

Shoutout to the Sokai: Destined Oath Discord server for introducing me to the SoKai Week 2020 Event and an even louder one to @paintedwithapalette​ for being my Beta Reader! Check her out, you’ll love her fics.

Thanks for Reading!

#sokai #sokaiweek #sokaiweek2020 #day 1 #kingdom hearts fanfiction #Sokai Week Day 1 #sora #kairi #kingdom hearts #fanfiction #oneshot #F/M #sourcherrybomb