#albeit a bit overly optimistic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fademirrored · 10 months

Text

alpha: Champion of Kirkwall

“I’m an older brother to twins. I’ve learned from the best how to ignore someone trying to get on my nerves.”

Cyrus “Crabapple” Hawke Champion of Kirkwall. Primarily Blue

Male. He/Him/His. Panromantic, demisexual. 13 Bloomington, 9:10 Dragon. Lothering, Ferelden. Mage; Primal and Force magic.

Eyes: Light blue. Narrow, hooded. Looks perpetually skeptical. Hair: Very pale blond, but more gold than white. Smooth, slightly wavy, just past his shoulders. Usually pulled back, though he’s not fussed about how. If it’s down, he spends most of his time pushing it out of his face. Skin: Typically pale, but tans relatively easily. Gets freckles easily. Height: 5'9". Build: Average height, stocky, with well built arms and shoulders. Generally looks like he can deck someone pretty solidly in the face. Notable Details: Electrical scars up his arms. Very prominent bump on the bridge of his nose. Scar through his right eyebrow. Voice: Standard male Hawke voice.

Positive Traits: Kind to a fault, general grumpiness aside; he likes to help and to give what he can, and he likes to keep people safe and happy and tended to. Patient, even if he’s grumpy; it takes a while before his default grumpiness turns into actual anger. Modest and willing to take input; he knows he’s not the top of every class, and accordingly he’s willing to take advice. Decisive; it typically doesn’t take him long to pro and con a situation and decide on a course of action, and he’s not prone to waffling once he’s made his decision. Team player, good at cooperating; he doesn’t necessarily need to be in charge, even if that’s how it frequently works out, and he’s happy to defer to someone else when that would be best. Negative Traits: Irritable and grumpy, and is typically always some level of exasperated, like he’s just assuming the situation is going to turn weird; Varric calls him Crabapple for a reason. Strict, even when it’s not required; it’s more of a knee-jerk reaction carried over from the fact that Kirkwall is a deathtrap, and he’s duly chastened when called on it, but it happens again regardless. Overly blunt, to the point of being tactless; it’s not even an ignorant thing, since he’s generally aware that what he’s saying is not the most polite option, but he wants what he thinks to be known anyway. Neutral Traits: Ambivert. Deadpan. Dryly snarky. Agreeable to most things that don’t sound bat shit crazy. Casual and not too fussed about ceremony or formality. Gets a bit scatterbrained when it’s quiet. Gets a little theatrical at times. Optimist vs. Pessimist: Optimistic, albeit cautiously so; attempts to be a realist. Quirks: Prone to nonsequiturs. Likes having company, but doesn’t always want to talk to his company. Prefers a day to be structured, which probably contributes to his grumpiness.

Religion: Agnostic and uninterested. Likes: Dogs. Kids. Music. Dance. Finding new and bizarre uses for magic. Savory-sweet combos. Coffee. Mead. The night sky. Heavy storms. The rare chance to see a good landslide. Dislikes: Templars. People who are very insistent that The Circle Is Good Actually. Being underground. Most authority figures, until they prove themselves. Being hurled into the limelight. Getting caught in heavy storms or a good landslide. Being preached at. Favorite Colors: Electric blue. Grey-blue. Crimson red. Electric yellow. Hobbies: Finding unconventional magic uses. Can play the piano. Cooking. Dog-training. Helps in the clinic. Somehow winds up babysitting most of the children in Lowtown even once he lives in Hightown.

Family: Malcolm Hawke (father, deceased). Leandra Hawke (mother, deceased). Carver Hawke (brother). Bethany Hawke (sister, deceased). Gamlen (uncle). Dog: Decker. Romance: Anders. Friends: Fenris. Merrill. Aveline. Varric. Carver. Note: He’s a little embarrassed to admit that Sebastian always made him a little uncomfortable, what with his utmost faith in the Chantry and the Circle and Cyrus’s greatest fear being getting thrown into the Circle. *everything in this sectioncan of course be tweaked or disregarded entirely for specific threads, if you’d rather.

#Hightown Matters [Cyrus]#darp #dragon age rp

0 notes

jenstar1992-2 · 3 years

Note

I’ve been having a rough week, and it only gonna get worse. Could you please write a comfort fic where Ahsoka tells the reader she’s proud of them? I really need it this week. Thank you

My dear Anon, I’m sorry you’re having a rough time (and I’m so sorry it took me this long to get this posted) 🥺. I hope this can be a source of comfort for you, even if only a small one, and I hope things get better for you. 💕

Also, I went with Rebels Ahsoka for this one, I hope that’s okay.

The Comfort of a Friend

Pairing: Ahsoka x reader (platonic)

Warnings: Accidental self- injury (nothing major), self- doubt, self- blame, talk of war, mentions of war related losses, brief mention of scars, mentally stressed reader (Ahsoka to the rescue 😄)

Word count: 1,742

The door hissed as you entered your private quarters, what followed was a loud clattering of objects hitting the durasteel floor of the ship as you kicked over the metal box that contained your various tools, causing them to go flying and scatter across its surface. You muttered a quiet curse as a sharp pain ran through your foot and up your leg; perhaps that hadn’t been the best choice of action, then again, none of your actions lately had been “good choices”, at least, that’s how it felt.

You let out a heavy sigh as you made your way to your bunk, limping slightly as you attempted to lessen the pressure on your dully throbbing foot, and let yourself fall onto its soft surface. You laid there for a good minute before finally sitting up, only to then slump forward, holding your head in your hands as you contemplated your situation, something you’d done a lot of lately.

No one said joining the rebellion would be easy, you knew it wouldn’t be, you’d expected it to be hard. What you hadn’t expected was just how incredibly frustrating and emotionally taxing it would be. You felt as if every win, big or small, came with an even worse defeat, to the point where, at the end of the day, it didn’t feel like a win at all. You gave your all, you all did, and what did it get you? More scars, and less friends, that’s what. You were at your wits end, feeling as if you were reaching the very edge of your sanity, just short of falling, knowing it wouldn’t take much more to send you tumbling over. You felt heat rising to your face as you desperately fought back the tears that threatened your eyes. This wasn’t going to get any easier, and in the recesses of your mind, a thought lingered, lightly poking at your consciousness, “Should I just give up?”

Before you could dwell on this idea any longer, there was a knock at your door. You straightened, composing yourself as best you could, and called for them to come in.

The door then hissed open to reveal your ally and closest friend, who regarded you with a warm smile.

“Hey”, Ahsoka greeted you, voice gentle, careful. Could she sense your distress, was she worried she might hit a nerve with one wrong word? Most likely.

“Hey”, you greeted back, the word coming out in a sigh as you let your guard down; she’d see right through your façade anyway.

She moved into the room, letting the door slide shut behind her, and came to sit beside you.

“Wanna talk about it”, she asked.

“Not sure it’ll change anything.”

She shrugged. “Maybe not, but it might help, voicing your troubles, gets things off your chest, and lightens the burden on the mind”, she said, lightly tapping your temple with her index finger.

You meet her gaze and see that she still wears that same warm smile, the one she wore every time you two had a heart-to-heart, the one that made you feel cared for. You decide to take her suggestion and you let the burdens weighing on your mind flow from you, one after the other.

“I just, I feel like such a screw-up. It seems like all I do is make bad decisions, ones that cost more than just my own safety, and with every wrong choice I make, I lose more; more hope, more friends, more of my own sanity… more of myself. I feel like all we do is give for this rebellion, but we get nothing in return, just more pain and hardship, and I can’t help but feel responsible for our failures. I’m no leader, never have been”, you said, pausing for a minute as you tried to sort your thoughts. Ahsoka waited patiently, not wanting to say anything until she knew you were done.

“I don’t know, maybe… maybe it would be better if I left, I’m not sure if I’m cut out for this”, you finally said, finishing your train of thought.

Ahsoka regarded you for a long moment before she finally spoke.

“(Y/N), I know this is hard, and I know things feel pretty hopeless right now, but I promise you, they will get better. It might not seem like it now, but victory doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time, and a great deal of effort, effort I see you put in every single day. You might not see your prowess as a leader, but I do, and so does every other person who’s fought by you, they put their trust in you because they see your dedication to the cause, they know you want to free the galaxy just as much as they do, and they know you’ll do what it takes to make that a reality. It’s an attribute they respect”, she said, confidence thick in her tone.

You furrowed your eyebrows, your inner thoughts fighting her encouragement within the confines of your mind.

“Tell that to the ones that didn’t make it back, the ones I let down because of my misguided choices, the ones I…”

“Stop”, Ahsoka said, her voice becoming firm as she cut your sentence short. “Loss is a part of war, a sad truth, but true nonetheless; they knew that, and they still chose to fight, because they believed in what we’re fighting for. Those losses are not on you, those people, they weren’t blind to the dangers they faced, they knew the risks, as do we, because we’re the ones taking those risks right alongside them, we’re with them, every step of the way, don’t forget that.”

You sighed; she was right, you were facing the same dangers as any one of the rebels under your command, and it could’ve just as easily been you who didn’t return, you’d just gotten lucky. You knew you were being overly hard on yourself, but as time went on it was getting more difficult not to, you couldn’t help but feel responsible, even if it was for things out of your control.

“I know, it’s just hard, and it only seems to be getting harder. It’s difficult to look at things optimistically when it feels like the whole galaxy is crumbling down around you. It’s hard to keep going when it feels like you’re getting nowhere”, you told her, leaning forward to rest your head in one of your hands.

“I understand”, Ahsoka said as she placed a comforting hand on your shoulder, moving it gently so you turned back to face her. “But I know you can do it, you’re more capable than you give yourself credit for.”

You raised a quizzical brow at her words, your expression earning a chuckle from the woman.

“I’m serious”, she affirmed. “I’ve seen you do countless things I’m sure you thought you couldn’t; impressed me many a time.”

You noticed her gaze didn’t waver, the only thing it conveyed was complete belief in the words she spoke. She gave you her familiar warm smile once again and you found yourself smiling back, albeit a bit weakly.

“Really?”

“Really”, she confirmed, giving a single nod to emphasize her response. “Try not to let your self-criticisms get the better of you, okay? You can acknowledge your successes just as much as your defeats.” She paused, speaking again only after you nodded your understanding. “You’ve done well, I’m proud of you (Y/N).”

Her words tugged at your heart and had the small smile you displayed growing wider and more genuine.

“Thanks, Ahsoka, that means a lot”, you said, your tone conveying just how touched you were by her words. She then pulled you in for a hug, her hold strong and affirming, but still gentle in nature; you gave just as much to the embrace, attempting to demonstrate your appreciation and love for your friend through this wordless action.

“Any time”, she said, releasing you moments later, rising from the bunk and moving towards the door, but not before giving your hand one final comforting squeeze. She touched the keypad, opening the door, but stopped before fully exiting. She turned to face you; eyebrow raised in a playful manner.

“Meditation”, she said simply.

Your face scrunched up in confusion. “Huh?”

“Meditation”, she repeated. “I’ve felt a lot of stress on your mind lately, it gets pretty loud in there”, she explained, pointing to your head. “I think a little mindful meditation is just what you need, help you sort out your thoughts, quiet things down a bit”, she suggested.

You huffed an amused laugh.

“Yeah, not sure how effective that’ll be, not even sure I’ll be able to do it right, I’m no jedi, after all.”

Ahsoka shook her head and laughed.

“(Y/N), you don’t have to be a jedi to meditate, you simply have to sit, clear your mind, and look inward, take control of your own thoughts for a while, trust me, it’s easier than it sounds”, she explained.

“Uh huh”, you said, not fully convinced.

“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it”, she said with a grin and a shrug.

“Whatever you say”, you replied, still smiling.

You said your goodbyes and soon you were once again alone. You smiled to yourself as Ahsoka’s comforting words echoed in your mind. You were truly grateful to her, she always knew how to help you, always seemed to know what you needed, so maybe, she was right about this too.

You sat up straight, folded your legs, and rested your hands atop your knees, rolling your eyes after doing so; you felt a bit ridiculous humoring this notion, but you trusted Ahsoka, so, you closed your eyes, and attempted to clear your mind.

Nothing happened at first, but you kept at it, and soon enough you felt yourself drifting, it felt like falling into that place between sleeping and waking, but you knew that wasn’t where you were going, rather you were going inward, and you soon found yourself inside your own head, mingling with and sorting through your inner thoughts.

This went on for a good while before you finally felt comfortable enough to bring yourself back to the surface, falling back on the soft cushioned surface of your bunk once you’d done so. In that moment, you realized the feeling you had was one you’d almost come to forget, a true sense, of peace.

#ahsoka x reader #platonic pairing #star wars fanfiction #rebels fanfic #comfort fic #request #sending positive vibes your way Anon #ahsoka tano #star wars #star wars rebels

54 notes · View notes

robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Text

Tedious Joys - Chapter 7 -

- Ao3 link -

“You could have mentioned that your father likes to kiss his saber,” Lan Qiren hissed at Nie Mingjue, who flailed helplessly as both of them tried to whisper outside of Lao Nie’s hearing – a task only rendered possible from the fact that he was currently scrubbing his hair extremely vigorously to get rid of all the dirt and grime, Lan Qiren’s extended hand firmly on his back. The jade pendant was back to hanging at his waist, since hasty experimentation had revealed that the physical contact with Lan Qiren was the key aspect, although the jade pendant seemed key as well - removing it appeared to make the contact less effective.

“He didn’t, did he? Are you all right?” Nie Mingjue asked, and he looked so serious and earnest about it, like he was going to march up to his father right then and there and challenge him over Lan Qiren’s honor or something if Lan Qiren implied that he should, that Lan Qiren’s irritation faded away at once.

“Only on the hand,” Lan Qiren assured him. “He didn’t take any liberties.”

That last part was more of a joke than anything else – however intimate Lao Nie was with her, Jiwei was still a saber – but Nie Mingjue looked alarmed. “You’ll say something if he does anything you’re uncomfortable with, right?” he asked anxiously, and Lan Qiren stared at him.

“Nie Mingjue,” he said stiffly, attempting to quell a little bit of possibly hysterical and definitely inappropriate laughter. “Is there something you need to tell me about you and Baxia…?”

“Tell you – oh! No, no, nothing like that,” Nie Mingjue said, turning bright red. “That’s not what I meant, Teacher Lan! Really, I swear!”

Lao Nie poked his head out of the water briefly to look at them both suspiciously, but accepted it when Lan Qiren shook his head at him and turned back away.

Nie Mingjue waited until his father was distracted to continue whispering. “I just meant – our sabers may be our partners, but it’s not…it’s not an equal distribution of authority, you know? In the end, they’re the weapons and we’re the masters.”

Lan Qiren frowned, finally understanding the nature of Nie Mingjue’s concern, and it was much more astute than he’d initially thought. “I see. So if Baxia refused to cultivate with you…?”

Nie Mingjue shifted uncomfortably from side to side. “Well, I mean, I wouldn’t, personally,” he said. “She’s my friend. But A-die’s always saying I’m too soft on her, that I need to take her more firmly in hand, so…I don’t know. It’d definitely be a few days before he forces the issue – uh, that is – I mean – not that he’d ever –”

“It won’t come to that,” Lan Qiren assured him. “A few days will give us enough time to come up with a plan, and at any rate I would not allow him to mistreat me.”

Nie Mingjue looked relieved, which was a flattering if perhaps not entirely accurate reflection of how strong he believed Lan Qiren to be.

“A good night’s rest will help more than anything,” Lan Qiren continued. “For him, and for you. I suggest you take advantage of it at once – actual sleep, not meditation.”

Nie Mingjue nodded again. “But he’s going to be all right?” he asked, anxious. “Eventually?”

Lan Qiren glanced at his friend, happily humming some bawdy song and appearing likely about to break out into actual singing at any moment, and felt a pain in his chest at the thought of what might be necessary.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I really don’t know. We’ll do everything we can for him.”

Nie Mingjue accepted that, taking a deep breath and centering himself, then striding away – he would probably go and do some work before he actually retired, rather than actually go straight to sleep, but Lan Qiren did not call him out on it. There was still a chance that Nie Mingjue would end up as sect leader, and then he wouldn’t have a choice in it at all.

After being tormented briefly by some rather off-key singing and extremely dubious lyrical choices, Lan Qiren found himself bundled off to Lao Nie’s quarters and into his bed, with Lao Nie curling up quite happily against his back.

“There are rules about judging other people,” Lan Qiren mumbled, staring at the wall and ignoring the feeling of Lao Nie’s chin on his shoulder. It was pointy, and they didn’t quite fit – Lan Qiren was the just barely taller of the two, although Lao Nie was broader, and his arms were heavy around him – and all in all Lan Qiren was not especially enjoying the experience of sharing a bed any more than he had any of the previous times it had been forced upon him by necessity, luckily small in number. “I am currently breaking it. I will need to think of a suitable punishment for myself later.”

“Judging me, sweetheart?” Lao Nie said into his ear, sounding amused. “What did I do?”

“Sleep in the same bed as an extremely sharp and angry blade, apparently.”

“Only when you’re angry at me,” Lao Nie said, completely shameless. Lan Qiren really didn’t know why he’d been expecting anything different, really. “You know, it’s much easier to hold you in my arms when you’re like this, all soft, even if your hips are a bit knobby. I like it.”

Lan Qiren sighed.

The next morning, Lan Qiren woke at the prescribed time and performed his morning ablutions in the time before Lao Nie woke, settling himself down beside the bed to play calming music and think about what could be behind Lao Nie’s current fixation on believing that he was Jiwei.

He thought it must have something to do with the jade pendant he had cultivated on Lao Nie’s behalf. Indeed, now that he thought about it, that might in fact be the problem – he had cultivated the pendant, not Lao Nie, and he had done it using Jiwei’s spiritual energy. A Nie saber had only one master, but he had apparently won enough of Jiwei’s respect for her to allow him access to some part of her; just as Lao Nie had intertwined himself with his saber, so to had Lan Qiren, albeit unknowingly and at a distance. There was certainly no overly intimate sharing of qi between them, but they had an undeniable connection. That might explain it.

There was also the ongoing mystery of why the pendant burned so fiercely. It had always been reactive to Jiwei’s anger, full of her spiritual energy and spillover rage as it was, but Jiwei was gone – shattered. Whose energy was powering it now? And how could it maintain such a high level of energy, so hot as to damage someone like Lan Qiren, who while not martially inclined was still a powerful cultivator in his own right?

He had more questions than answers.

Unfortunately, he did not have a great deal of time to find answers. If Lao Nie’s condition persisted – he hoped that it wouldn’t, that his friend would wake knowing who Lan Qiren was and not in a horrible rage, but he wasn’t optimistic – they would need to find a solution, and fast. Lao Nie was the unquestioned master of his sect and even he’d only managed to leave it behind for a month and a half before his duties forced him to return; Lan Qiren was a substitute for his brother, a pale and inferior custodian put in place solely to fill the time between the generations, and his sect elders would never let him forget it. There was no way he would be able to stay away so long.

And if he left…

“Jiwei,” Lao Nie murmured in his sleep, which had become restless. His face had gone from a neutral expression to a frown, twisted in anger and pain, and when he opened his eyes, they were once again red. The music was not helping. “My saber – Jiwei…where is my saber?” Lao Nie struggled to sit up. “Where is it? Give her to me!”

Lan Qiren stopped playing and reached out his hand, interlocking his fingers with Lao Nie’s as if they were back once again to all those years ago when he had been a slow, stuttering child and Lao Nie a kind young adult, taking him in hand to show him the basics of night-hunting without worrying about him falling over his own feet.

He watched as the red slowly faded out of Lao Nie’s eyes – not gone entirely, still there, a thin pink film that seemed as though it could be blinked out of existence.

He sighed.

“My friend,” he said. “I am going to need your help with this.”

“Anything,” Lao Nie said, then paused and amended to, “Anything that won’t cause undue harm.”

“It involves research.”

“…one could argue that that would be undue harm to my ability to enjoy my free time.”

Lan Qiren shook his hand lightly. “You are in need of healing. Do you understand what I am saying?”

The humor slowly faded out of Lao Nie’s face.

“You had a qi deviation,” Lan Qiren said bluntly. “The one you’ve been afraid of, the one you always knew was coming – it happened. You went mad, years before your time. But you did not die, and so there is still hope…but I will need your help. I will need you to try to get better. I cannot do this without you.”

Lao Nie looked at him, lips pressed together tightly.

Lan Qiren waited, patient. Whatever the reason for it, Lao Nie regained much of his clarity when they were in contact – and if he could think, he could be an ally in this. He would have to be.

“The strangers weren’t strangers, were they,” Lao Nie said abruptly, and it wasn’t a question. Lan Qiren looked at him. “A-Jue…I was the one who did that to him, wasn’t I? I was the one that hurt him. That’s why you wouldn’t tell me about it yesterday.”

Lan Qiren nodded.

Lao Nie looked away, angry – real anger, this time, and entirely self-directed – but it was only a few moments before he collected himself and looked back, his eyes bright with tears but fiercely determined. “What can I do to help?”

“For now, answer my questions, no matter how unusual,” Lan Qiren instructed, and Lao Nie nodded. “First question: who am I?”

“…Jiwei.”

They were still there, then, although Lao Nie sounded much less sure about it than he had the night before. Lan Qiren fumbled for the pendant at his waist. “Can you sense the spiritual energy in this? Whose is it?”

Lao Nie reached for the pendant and focused. “Also Jiwei.” This time, he sounded more confident.

“The energy in the pendant exceeds what I previously put in there,” Lan Qiren said. “Do you know why?”

Lao Nie frowned down at the pendant. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Have you cultivated with it recently?”

Lan Qiren arched his eyebrows, think that that would be rather difficult without Jiwei around to transfer energy from. “No, I haven’t. Why?”

“There’s something strange about it, that’s all.” He shook the pendant lightly. “Familiar. Same as you, but not; same as me, but not. It wants to fly.”

Lan Qiren stared at him blankly.

Lao Nie shrugged and scratched at his beard. “What did A-Jue say about it?”

“…Mingjue?” Lan Qiren asked blankly. “Say? About what?”

Lao Nie blinked at him. “Well, he’s the only other one with a similar pendant, right?”

Actually, Lan Qiren had made one for little Nie Huaisang, too – he used it as the base of his fan tassel, transferred from one fan to another – but it wasn’t really relevant to him yet, weak cultivator that he was. But that was a good point: in his fear for Nie Mingjue’s health, his worry for his safety, he had forgotten that Nie Mingjue was the closest thing they had to another perspective on the connection between pendant and saber.

Lan Qiren frowned at his oversight. “I’ll ask Mingjue to join us.”

Nie Mingjue looked better already, even if Lan Qiren’s heart hurt at how cautious he was around his father, at how Lao Nie could barely stand to look at the colorful bruises littering his son’s face. “What can I do?”

“Take this pendant,” Lao Nie said, holding it out.

Nie Mingjue extended his hand in return and Lao Nie dropped the pendant into it before Lan Qiren could intervene and point out why it was a terrible idea to just hand it over to someone who was both unprepared and little more than a child, however talented a genius he might be. The second it touched Nie Mingjue’s palm, he yelped and nearly dropped it, Lan Qiren snatching it away from him with his free hand before it could fall to the floor.

“It hurts!” he exclaimed, as Lan Qiren might have expected.

What he did not expect, however, was that Baxia abruptly drew herself, hurtling out of her sheath to hang in midair, emanating the distinct sensation of rage that was the characteristic of a Nie saber.

The pendant abruptly flared up, the heat in it rising as if in response to Baxia’s challenge, and Lan Qiren had to temporarily free himself from Lao Nie to quickly loop a guqin string through the pendant, letting it dangle away from his flesh, and then returned his hand to his friend before the red got too far into his eyes.

“What in the world is going on?” he demanded. “Lao Nie – explain.”

“I have no idea,” Lao Nie said, rubbing his eyes as if he realized something had happened to him in the brief interlude where they were separated. “They’re…fighting. I think? How can they be fighting? Why would a saber start a fight with a piece of jade?”

“Can you ask Baxia?” Lan Qiren asked Nie Mingjue, who was still clutching at his hand and looking blankly at them both. “I know it doesn’t exactly work as cleanly as all that, but your father always said you had an unusually strong connection…”

Nie Mingjue reached out and caught Baxia by the hilt, brow creased in a frown. “It really doesn’t work that way, Teacher Lan. All I can tell is that she’s angry.” He hesitated. “She feels betrayed.”

“Betrayed?” Lan Qiren asked, surprised. “But – how can she be betrayed? That would imply an initial association, familiarity, that something changed…”

“Jiwei,” Lao Nie suddenly said. He was staring at the pendant swinging in Lan Qiren’s hand. “Jiwei’s in the pendant.”

Nie Mingjue glanced at Lan Qiren, clearly concerned that his father had simply started seeing Jiwei in everything, but Lan Qiren bit his lip, thinking it over seriously.

He had initially thought that the reason for Lao Nie’s mistaken impression of him was because he had cultivated with the pendant using Jiwei’s energy, acting in Lao Nie’s place, and thereby he had been imprinted with the qi of the saber, that it had been that shadow upon him that Lao Nie had recognized.

But what if he had thought about it backwards?

“Is it possible,” he said slowly, wishing he knew more about the saber spirits, wishing that he’d had more time, wishing even that his Xinfei could speak as clearly as a saber could, “Mingjue, is it possible that Jiwei’s spirit is in the pendant? The saber spirit itself, I mean, as opposed to the physical saber?”

Nie Mingjue goggled at him. “In the pendant, Teacher Lan? A saber? But how?”

“I tied the two together using resonance,” Lan Qiren explained. Poor tone-deaf Nie Mingjue had never really understood what he was doing with his music, which Lan Qiren couldn’t blame him for – it was esoteric even by musical cultivation standards. He’d more or less made the entire thing up over the past few years. “Adjusting the internal music of the jade to match Jiwei, so that the two recognized each other – and, once recognized, forged a connection between them. That’s what allowed me to continue to draw out Jiwei’s anger even from a distance.”

Both Nie nodded, listening intently. Good students, both of them, for all their occasional faults; if only he had three dozen like them. As a teacher, it was the highest compliment he knew to speak.

“The unusual heat started, as far as we can tell, when the saber shattered,” he continued, now thinking out loud. “If Jiwei’s anger can transfer from one container to the other through the pathway forged by the resonance, why couldn’t the rest of her spirit do the same? Why couldn’t she come to possess the jade if she so wished?”

He wasn’t sure what to do with that idea, in all fairness – he might speak of questioning the sabers, might have reluctantly accepted them as having some form of sentience, but the idea of an entire spirit transferring from one body to another within the same lifetime in a method not unlike possession was rather disturbing. But at the same time he couldn’t imagine any other reason for Baxia to try to challenge a jade pendant to a duel.

Proud, strong Baxia, the only match to Nie Mingjue’s matchless talent, so fearsome that even other saber spirits yielded before her…

“But –” Nie Mingjue glanced sidelong at his father. “Teacher Lan, he also thinks you’re Jiwei.”

“Because I cultivated the pendant,” Lan Qiren said, because it made a certain amount of sense. “There are two types of spiritual energy in there: Jiwei’s and my own. Perhaps when I offered him the pendant, he recognized Jiwei in there, and also me, and thereby conflated the two…”

“I’m right here, you know,” Lao Nie interjected. “Being talked about as if I’m not.”

Lan Qiren leveled a quelling look at him.

Lao Nie gave him an arch look in return. “Just reminding you that I understand spoken speech, in the event you’ve forgotten.”

“Very well,” Lan Qiren said tetchily. “In that case, who I am again?”

Lao Nie paused, eyes traveling between Lan Qiren, the pendant dangling from his hand, and Nie Mingjue.

“You feel like Jiwei,” he said hesitantly. “But – the strangers felt like strangers, and weren’t. So you’re – not Jiwei. You’re…” He glanced at Nie Mingjue again, seeking external confirmation that his senses were misleading him; Nie Mingjue nodded eagerly. His gaze slide back to Lan Qiren. “Qiren?”

“Well done,” Lan Qiren said, full of relief. “Full marks, passing grade. Would it be possible for you to stop calling me ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’ now?”

Lao Nie – despite being the shameless scoundrel that he was – abruptly flushed bright red, while Nie Mingjue covered his face with his hands.

“I understand, of course,” Lan Qiren assured him. “What passes between a man and his spiritual weapon is very private, and –”

“Stop talking,” Lao Nie growled. “Just – stop talking.”

#mdzs #lan qiren #sect leader nie #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #tedious joys

141 notes · View notes

gureishi · 3 years

Text

Hi hello hi.

I’ve got a bunch of wonderful prompts sitting in my inbox but I was feeling anxious af yesterday and today I had to go to a freakin Zoom funeral and my anxiety brain instead spewed out...this.

I was watching a playthrough of the Forgive ending to try and sort out the timeline for the Jihyun request I’m writing (which I should be posting tomorrow~ <3) and then I started thinking about the disturbing little hints that are in there about depressed Saeyoung and alcohol, and then my anxiety said I needed to write about it. So I transposed that thought into another timeline so my boy could have an mc cause god knows otherwise it would get way worse.

I know alcohol is a really sensitive topic when it pertains to the Choi twins because of their trauma relating specifically to alcohol and alcoholism. To be super super clear, drinking can be fine and okay and not harmful for lots of people, but that’s not the type of drinking I’m portraying here.

YEESH, I’ll stop rambling. Cw for alcohol abuse; if Saeyoung drinking alcohol is gonna be triggering for you please skip this one. Take care of yourself I love you <3

wanna be ok

The bunker is dark when you get home, and that is your first sign that something is wrong.

You’re off work a little early, and you fully expected to find the house bright and full of energy. Usually at this time, there would be at least one brother in the living room. There’d be a half-built robot croaking gibberish in a corner or an inexplicable mess from some overly enthusiastic project in the hall.

But when the door slides open (greeting you by name, of course), you’re met with darkness and a startling, eerie quiet. Could they both have fallen asleep…? You check your watch. It’s just after nine.

“Saeyoung…?” You slip off your shoes, calling quietly in case he really is asleep. He hasn’t been sleeping much since his father’s investigation began, waking up at night and pacing the house. Sometimes he does fall asleep at the computer, even these days…

No answer. You peek into the darkened living room. Nothing. No light from his office or the bedroom, either.

You hear a noise and spin, senses on high alert. All your instincts telling you that something is certainly off, you peer warily around the corner.

He’s in the kitchen.

“Babe?”

He’s perched precariously on one of the tall stools at the kitchen island. His arms are everywhere, splayed over the scrubbed wood; he’s slumped over, head in the crook of his elbow. His hair is mussed as though he’s been running his hands through it.

None of this surprises you too much—it’s much a difficult few days. But what does startle you is the stale, harsh smell in the air. There’s a bottle on the counter that looks suspiciously like…

Dread settles in your stomach like hot lead.

You call his name again, some foolishly optimistic part of your mind hopeful that this is an off-color prank. But this isn’t the kind of thing he jokes about.

At the sound of his name, he stirs, lifts his head. As he does, he slips to the side, almost falling off the stool—catching himself at the last minute on the island.

He blinks at you blearily, as if he’s trying to get you into focus, and you know in that moment that he’s not messing with you.

“Hiii, babe,” he slurs, his voice thick. He tries to say your name, stumbles over it. Laughs at himself.

“Honey.” You approach him cautiously. Closer up, the smell is unmistakable—it’s whiskey, mingling with his natural spicy-sweet scent in a way that you find particularly unsettling. “What did you do?”

He tries to spin around in the stool to face you and nearly falls again—you have to reach out an arm to grab him. He gazes at you dizzily, his eyes glazed over.

“Wha’ d’you mean?” he mumbles, his words running together. He sways dangerously on the stool and you put a hand on his shoulder, bracing him. Out of the corner of your eye, you peer at the bottle beside him—it’s one you’d gotten as a gift ages ago and put away in a closet. It’s more than half empty.

“Baby, why did you drink that?” You shift, taking his face in both your hands; he’s unstable again without your hand on his shoulder. You turn him, make him look you in the eye—and he tries, he tries, but his gaze slides over your face as though he can’t quite focus on it.

“You’re pretty,” he sings, and he leans forward as if to kiss you—and misses, his head falling onto your shoulder. “Missed,” he says, giggling. His hands reach clumsily for your waist.

It would be almost cute, you think, under other circumstances. If it weren’t Saeyoung, who doesn’t drink alcohol. Who’s promised himself never to drink alcohol—and for good reason.

He presses his lips against your neck, tilting sideways as he does so. Okay. Okay. One thing at a time. You know how to deal with drunk people, under normal circumstances. Just pretend it’s not Saeyoung. Just for now.

“Come with me, baby,” you say, expertly evading his grasp and offering him both your hands. “Let’s go sit somewhere a little more comfy, okay?”

“Don’wanna,” he mumbles, titling to the right. “Comfy here.”

“You’ll be comfier on the couch, I promise.” You keep your voice light. Taking both his hands, you give a gentle tug, and he obliges you, sliding off the stool without any of his usual grace or agility. He sways as he lands on his feet and you brace him with both hands again, waiting till his gaze clears.

You lead him to the living room and he comes obediently, albeit stumblingly.

“…m’too drunk for this,” he mutters, laughing at himself as he narrowly avoids running face-first into the door frame.

“Too drunk to walk to the living room?” You guide him more carefully now. Most people would be well and truly messed up from the amount that he drank—based on your cursory assessment of the kitchen, anyway. For him—someone who has, to your knowledge, quite literally never consumed alcohol before—it’s astonishing he’s even still conscious.

You steer him to the couch. He hesitates and you turn to him—his face has gone pale, and he claps a hand over his mouth.

“M’gonna…never mind.” He shuts his eyes.

With some difficulty, you get him onto the couch. He slides sideways immediately and you slip a pillow under his head. He smiles a sloppy, lopsided grin.

“…galaxy,” he murmurs, sinking heavily into the pillow. You don’t question it.

Confident that he’s not going anywhere, you make your way back to the kitchen, fill a big glass with water. Now that you’re alone, your hands are shaking.

It’s not the end of the world to get drunk, but it’s certainly less than great to do it alone. It’s worse, though, so much worse, because it’s him—because of the promise he made to himself, because of the memories of his mother’s violence, because of the fear you know he has of those same genes manifesting in him.

You know that the last few days have been difficult, that the trial’s brought up memories he’d long repressed. But you wouldn’t ever have anticipated…this.

What could possibly have happened?

You take in the havoc in the kitchen: in addition to the whiskey bottle, there’s a glass knocked over on its side as well as the usual debris from chips and other junk food. One of the stools is on the ground.

And where, you think suddenly, is Saeran?

You take a deep, steadying breath—care now, you remind yourself. Figure out the rest later.

When you return to the living room with the water, he’s crying.

His eyes are shut tight and he’s wrapped both arms around the pillow; there are tear tracks on his cheeks and as you approach he lets out a quiet, pitiful sob.

“Sweetheart…” You kneel beside him and he wriggles toward you like a wounded animal. You bring a hand to his face and wipe away the tears and he clumsily throws out one arm and dangles it over your body.

“Drink a little bit of this, please, love.” You tilt the cup toward his mouth and he opens his lips the tiniest bit. You get a little water in him; most of it ends up on the couch.

“…still hates me,” he mutters, pushing aside the cup, nuzzling his face into your chest. You stroke his messy, tangled hair with your free hand, pulling it off his forehead.

“Who does, baby?”

“Saeran…does.”

You run your fingers over his feverish skin; his cheeks are flushed and his forehead is warm to the touch.

“Saeran doesn’t hate you, honey. I promise he doesn’t.” You try again with the water. It’s a little more successful this time.

“Does. We hadda…fight,” he slurs. “Gotta…find’m.” Defying all logic, he tries to sit up again, using your shoulders for leverage. Even in this state, he’s stubborn as hell.

“Where is he?” you ask, not sure if Saeyoung will even be able to tell you. You help him wriggle into a sitting position, thinking it’s perhaps safer than lying down after all.

“Walk,” he murmurs. He’s trying to look at you again, his eyes wandering over your face. “Babe! Your face’s…blurry.”

You sigh. It’s not out of the ordinary Saeyoung to push Saeran too far, or for Saeran to snap at him and go for a walk to clear his head. You wonder if the confluence of circumstances—the trial, both twins’ tensions running extra high, the memories Saeyoung associates with his family and raised voices and a dark, empty house—led to this turn of events.

One of the cameras near the door flickers to life—someone’s coming into the garage. You sit up stick straight. Saeran was just on a walk—he couldn’t have gone far. Which means…

“Baby, I’m so sorry, but I need you to move again.”

He groans and mutters something you don’t understand, but you have no time to waste. Glad you’ve already got him sitting, you slide your hands under both his arms and pull. He sags like a rag doll, but he doesn’t weigh a lot, and you’re strong—you tug him to a standing position and he sways dangerously in place, his face pale again.

“Can’t,” he moans, and you don’t have time to pity him. You simply can’t risk the consequences—for both brothers—of Saeran finding him like this.

“C’mon, sweetheart, please try to walk. For me.” You kiss him firmly on the cheek and he perks up a little, reaching for you. You take both his hands again and walk backwards, guiding him to the bedroom.

“No more…” he moans, but you get him down the hall and into the room, giving the corners a wider berth this time.

Panting, you deposit him on the bed.

“…spinning,” he mutters, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

“I swear I will be right back,” you gasp, and you run from the room before he can respond. You sprint to the kitchen, sweep the whiskey bottle into the cabinet under the sink. You dump the glass and throw it under there too for good measure. You right the stool, leaving the chips bags—that’s normal enough.

But the smell…

You hastily grab your bag, which you’d dropped on the floor earlier when you’d found him here—pull out the little bottle of perfume you carry, spritz it liberally over the kitchen island. You inhale. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

You throw open the big window over the sink and, bag under your arm, slink back to your bedroom. As the bedroom door is shutting behind you, you hear the security system beeping, the front door sliding open. Just in time.

You spin around. Now where is…?

A soft moan from the en suite bathroom answers your question. You peer through the dark—sure enough, he’s sprawled on the ground, head bent over the toilet. The fact that he’s managed to drag himself there is impressive. You sigh—this was inevitable and is probably for the best.

You sit with him there for a long time: pressing a cool, wet washcloth to his head, plying him with tiny sips of water when you can. He apologizes to you again and again in a raw, miserable voice; you stroke his hair and rub his back and promise him that he’s going to be okay.

Eventually he slumps into your lap and, almost incoherently, whispers the word “bed.” So you hoist him up again, arms around his torso; he tries valiantly to help you, stumbling through the doorway, over the carpeted floor. You guide him onto the bed and he practically melts into it, his breathing immediately slowing, deepening.

You get him as comfortable as you can—wresting his jeans off and casting them aside, tucking the blankets all the way around him. He murmurs groggily as you press a soft kiss to his forehead and then he’s out, chest moving slowly up and down, face peaceful.

You’d never know, you think.

You retrieve his glasses from the bathroom floor, fold them neatly on the bedside table. And then, steeling yourself, you slip through the bedroom door as quietly as you can, tiptoe down the hall. As you’d suspected, Saeran is still in the living room.

“Hey,” he says, lifting his eyes from the book he’s reading. He’s draped over the couch, white hair tousled. He’s turned on a lamp—the dim light illuminates the red roots that are just starting to grow in.

“Hi,” you say. For something to do, you fetch the cup of water you’d left on the floor earlier. Saeran doesn’t bat an eyelash.

“We had a fight,” he offers, unprompted. He drums his fingers on his book—the same nervous habit his brother has. “Did he tell you?”

“Um…sort of.” You put the cup on a side table. Nervously straighten one of the fluffy throw blankets.

“I was mean,” Saeran says bluntly. “I shouldn’t have been.”

You perch on the arm of the couch. Once, he would have flinched away from you; now, he watches you impassively, green eyes unreadable.

“Was it about the trial?” you ask, with some hesitation.

Saeran shrugs. “I guess. He keeps all the TVs in the house on all day. I can’t stand hearing our father’s voice anymore.”

“Right.” You know this—know that the ongoing trial is wearing on them both, know that they’re coping in their own ways.

“Is he…” Saeran looks down and back up at you; his eyes are bright. “Is he mad?”

You take a shaky breath. “No,” you say honestly. “But he feels bad that you fought.”

“Should I talk to him?”

He is still looking at you. You’re surprised—he’s never asked you for advice before.

“Maybe in the morning,” you say, perhaps a little too firmly—but Saeran is unfazed.

“I get it,” he says. “I’m gonna go back to reading now.”

You smile, grateful as always for Saeran’s manner. There’s no risk of overstaying your welcome, because he’ll always tell you when he’s done.

“Good night,” you say. He looks up at you again, gives you a tiny smile.

“Night.”

。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

You wake abruptly the next morning. Through the haze of half-dream, half-wakefulness, you hear an intrusive rustling sound—then clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Your eyes shoot open.

“Saeyoung…?” you murmur, the events of the previous night momentarily evading you. You blink the sleep out of your eyes, see a blur of red hair in your peripheral vision.

He’s…cleaning?

“Oh god.” His golden eyes go huge with panic as he sees that you’re awake. He drops the mop (why was it clunking?) and throws himself onto the bed, kneeling beside you. “Hi. Good morning. Um. I am. So, so, so, so, so, so, so sorry. I mean, I—uh. Gah. I practiced this. Hang on—”

“Shhh.” You put a finger to his lips, pushing yourself up in bed. He sits back on his heels like a guilty puppy, eyes huge, waiting for a scolding. “So you remember last night, huh?”

His cheeks match his hair. He lowers his gaze.

“I am so, so, so, so…”

“Hush.” You take his face in both hands again, just as you’d done the night before. Tilt it up, forcing him to meet your eyes. “You don’t need to apologize to me. But I would like to know how it happened.”

He hangs his head, one red curl falling into his eyes. You brush it away.

“I don’t know,” he mutters. “You know I’ve never done that before. Right?”

“Yes, I know.” You slip out of the blankets and sit cross-legged, facing him. “Do you remember why you did it? Why you went looking for the whiskey that I didn’t even think you knew was in the storage closet?”

“I’d known where it was for a while,” he says softly, shamefully. “I found it one day when I was looking for an old hard drive and I guess I thought, wow, glad I know that’s there in case I ever lose my mind.”

This surprises you. You didn’t know he’d ever give it any thought at all.

“I wasn’t seriously thinking I was gonna drink it!” he says hurriedly, his cheeks growing—if it were possible—redder. “It was like a…weird, bad joke. Like, haha, what a great way to escape my mind if I ever hate myself that much. I…dunno.”

You make yourself take a deep breath. You hate it when he says things like this. “Okay, fine. So why did you…?”

“I fought with Saeran,” he says, still looking down. He twiddles his hands in his lap, fiddles with the blanket. “It was stupid. We were just tense about the trial. And then he left, and it got dark, and I was alone, and I just couldn’t…stop thinking about her.”

“Your mother.”

“Yeah.”

He taps a pattern on his thigh, too fast, too hard. You take his hand, wrapping up his fingers in yours. He shoots you a grateful glance.

“It’s hard to explain,” he mutters. “It was like I was possessed. It was this feeling, like if I could…get inside her head somehow, I’d understand.”

“Understand what?” You realize you’re squeezing his hand too hard and you make a conscious effort to loosen your grip.

“Why she didn’t love us,” he says simply. You look up; there are tears in his eyes again. Automatically you reach for him, catching a tear on your fingertip. You kiss it away.

“Did you?” you ask quietly. Slowly, he shakes his head.

“I don’t think I ever will.”

“Oh, Saeyoung…” You hold open your arms for him and he bows his head, falling into you. You cradle his head against your chest, kiss the tears from his eyelashes.

“I don’t deserve you,” he whispers.

“You are a wonderful man, and you deserve the world,” you say firmly. You wrap your arms all the way around his waist and squeeze him tight and he exhales, like he’s letting out breath he’s been holding for a long time.

“I’ll never do it again,” he says, his voice muffled by your shirt. “I promise. I mean it.”

You thoughtfully run your fingers through his curls, de-tangling them, pulling them apart one by one. “Can I ask you something I’ve asked you before?” you say tentatively. He nods; you can feel it. “Would it be okay if I just…got some names? My therapist offered to make a list for you before, you know, and you don’t need to commit to anything, but I just—”

“Yes.” He pulls back enough to peer up at you. There are tear tracks on his cheeks again but his expression is sure. “I’d like that.”

His eagerness takes you by surprise. You smile and kiss the tip of his nose.

“Thank you.”

He leans his forehead against yours. “I’m meant to be the one thanking you. You shouldn’t have had to take care of me last night. You should’ve just left me there.”

“Never.” You take a deep breath and he breathes with you, exhaling against your lips, tickling you. “Now would you please explain to me what the hell you were doing that woke me up this morning?”

He giggles, a little guiltily—still, you’re relieved to hear him laugh. “I felt like crap, both physically and emotionally. I thought I could start apologizing by…”

“Slamming the mop against the wall?”

“I don’t…actually know how to use a mop.”

That makes you laugh, and it feels good, like a release. You wrap your arms around his neck and he sighs against you.

“You’re gonna be okay?” you whisper. He nods, gazing at you reverently.

“Because of you,” he says. He strokes your hair with his long, thin fingers—cautiously, gently, like he needs reassurance that you’re still there. “I’m gonna be okay.”

#mystic messenger #mysticmessenger #saeyoung choi #707 #cw drinking #cw alcohol abuse

33 notes · View notes

smol-and-trashy · 4 years

Text

So this turned out longer than i thought... (JJBA: DiU vore)

A/N: this was originally just supposed to be a short drabble... how did it turn out like this? It’s almost 2am and I maaaay have been re-watching part 4, so blame that for the inspiration. Idk if I’m gonna finish it, but enjoy?

___________________

“W-what are you doing, Josuke?” Koichi gazed up at his giant friend in terror. Josuke’s blue eyes narrowed as his stomach turned. He bit his bottom lip, could he keep Crazy Diamond inside his own body to prevent digestion? In theory, it would make sense, but for the actual execution, he had no idea if it would work. As footsteps neared, he could see a flash of orange begin to turn corner, Josuke’s heart thumped, no time. I just have to trust my gut.

“Trust me.” were the last words he was able to utter at his friends before popping them in his mouth, instantly recoiling on how easy they were to stash inside him.

Koichi and Okuyasu had polar opposite reactions to being eaten by someone they considered a close friend; while Koichi went rigid, Okuyasu screamed and fought for his life. Shouts of betrayal scratched at his throat until he started coughing.

“This…this isn’t f-funny, Josuke!” he rasped, throat burning with each word.

“Okuyasu!” Koichi shouted, unable to help his friend as he was thrown into the pouch of Josuke’s cheek.

The slimy tongue shot out from under the scarred man and firmly pushed Okuyasu’s back upwards. He was pinned to the roof of the mouth while a stream of saliva trickled down the daunting entrance behind them. Koichi’s entire body shivered at the wet sound, just the thought of what lies behind that dark throat horrified him to no end. Time stood still, and neither party was released from their position. Koichi paused, it was certainly possible that Josuke was simply keeping them in his mouth for safekeeping. Albeit a disgusting way to protect them, it would be safer than possibly getting crushed inside Josuke’s pockets.

However, fate was a cruel mistress, he was proven wrong when the tongue released its hold on Okuyasu. The muscle twitched a bit as if unsure what to do next and Koichi’s brows furrowed, Josuke, what are you planning? The giant teenager’s gullet flexed open, and Koichi’s mouth dried up. His thoughts were answered in the worst way possible as Okuyasu was pulled to the back of the throat, hands clawing frantically at the back of the tongue, trying to maintain some grasp, any grasp to survival.

“The Hand—!” he clamored urgently, but right as he could feel the strength of his stand separate from his soul, another wretched contraction forced his chest deeper into Josuke’s throat and the stand vanished.

Koichi felt the bile rise up in his throat as he saw his friend get dragged down the throat.

“N-no!” he screamed and lunged to lend a hand to Okuyasu. He was too late. Another echoing swallow and Okuyasu screeched a string of profanities before finally getting sucked into the darkness.

Koichi’s insides watered as he saw Okuyasu getting swallowed by someone whom they considered so close. His eyes blurred with tears as the tongue began to maneuver him into the center of the mouth. He grabbed onto a molar as quick as possible and clung with all his strength, saliva coating his hair, and something warm dribbled down his cheek, he couldn’t forget Josuke’s calm yet determined face as he rose them to his maw, like pieces of candy. That’s how insignificant they were to the giant, Koichi trembled,

He doesn’t care.

No, no no no. Koichi squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to look any further in the cramped mouth

Maybe this is sill all part of his plan? Okuyasu could just be safely wedged in his throat and he’s going to let us out after Murachi is gone? He knew he was being overly optimistic but he didn’t want to believe that Josuke would eat them willingly.

His fingers held onto the wedge of the molar, giving everything to not let go, yet he was outmatched as the tongue carefully wrapped around his torso and pushed him to the back of the mouth.

#jjba vore #vore writer #jojo vore #unwilling prey #kinda unwilling pred #safe vore #josuke pred #fearplay

72 notes · View notes

garazza · 4 years

Text

This starts out as a hot take but meara-eldestofthemall put some of my thoughts that I was struggling to articulate into words so I put a more positive spin on things at the end

[link to meara-eldestofthemall‘s post]

One thing I don’t get is this obsession with Tim’s youth. Like I totally get liking him being baby-faced, but that doesn't require him being a young teenager and never anything older. Artists drawing Tim as bulky, muscular, or just much more physically mature than he should be (but what that means is entirely subjective) is definitely contradictory and detrimental in making Tim seem like Just Another Robin instead of his own character, but I think a larger purpose is being served albeit in way that ends up being regressive.

One of my favorite things about Tim's solo book is the passage of time. When we are introduced to him in A Lonely Place of Dying in 1989, he's stated to be 13 (going on 14 as we find out later). When we see him in school in his first solo books, it's not clear if he's in eighth grade or ninth grade (the last year of middle school vs. the first year of high school). But as his solo book goes on, we find out he's a freshman in high school, so we can infer that he turned 14 and graduated from middle school at some point early on and is on his way to being 15. After No Man's Land (10 years after his initial appearance), he goes to Brentwood Academy for his sophomore year, making him 15. Tim celebrates his 16th birthday before he starts his junior year at the start of Bill Willingham's run in 2004 (I'm not a big fan of explicitly stating ages like that which I’ll address in a bit). When he became Red Robin around 2009, he was a senior before he dropped out of school, making him 17, maybe even 18.

All throughout this time, Tim is depicted as being on the smaller side and very young looking, but by the same token, he's also matured both physically and mentally by virtue of him being a character for so long and his stories building up into his personal history as part of the continuous narrative of DC. His signature physical depiction doesn’t require him being a certain age, but what it is does mean is that he has to age if you want the stories he’s been in to matter. His growth as a person and his development as a character is measured by his growing older at a reasonable pace. That doesn’t mean he has to grow significantly larger and have facial hair. He can still be mistaken for being much younger than his actual age.

As I said earlier, I don't like explicitly stating the exact age of a character (like that recent panel of Tim saying he’s a 16 year old that doesn’t sleep and only drinks coffee). I'd much rather infer a character is within a particular age range as opposed to a fixed age (like the fact Tim went through all four years of high school over the course of 20 years of publication). It allows for a lot more freedom and doesn't unnecessarily limit the character. Wanting to keep Tim young as opposed to young-looking is just inhibiting a character’s growth for no reason.

I read somewhere that a big problem that DC fans have with modern DC comics is that for a significant period of time DC was telling stories that didn’t have a hidden agenda other than being good and make sense in relation to one another and now DC has kind of forgotten how to do that. Right now, they’re are more concerned with cash-grabs rather than investments. It’s like they’ve forgotten why people fell in love with DC and its characters in the first place.

And I think Tim represents that earlier time in DC. Tim’s solo book is one continuous, consistent narrative. DC didn’t insist on the book or the character. They just let them speak for themselves. They were slow and deliberate in their execution. Fans were rewarded for reading the book as opposed to having to figure out how it fits in the larger universe.

At the start of Rebirth and Tynion’s Detective run, there’s some line said to the effect that Tim is planning on going to college, which tracks with where he was left off pre-New 52 (which is what the spirit of Rebirth was). Tynion’s Tec run was very much a plot-focused team book, as opposed to a character-focused book, so it was unlikely to show either Tim visiting and applying to colleges or even attending college without shifting the narrative focus of the book away from all the other characters to him. However, that didn’t preclude that story from being told in another book that would focus much more on him, because Tim and his stories have too big an audience to be relegated to a team book whose spotlight/page real estate he has to share with a bigger plot and other significant characters, but as we know that would never come to be.

So when fans clamor for a young/teen Tim instead of a young adult Tim, it’s because he represents a return to form for DC. It shows to them that DC might’ve learned the error of their ways and are going to start telling stories from the point where they last made sense, which is when Tim was younger.

Still, instances of good decisions are not indicative of a change in DC’s thinking in regards to their characters and how they tell stories. There is no consistent pattern that tells us they’re fixing their mistakes. If anything, these decisions in regards to Tim are just patches to smaller gripes instead of solutions to a larger structural issue in DC’s methodology. But that’s just me being overly critical, meara-eldestofthemall (link to her post at at the top) put it more optimistically that made me less cynical.

What I want from DC is both a return to form but also the next step forward. Tim can’t be a teenager forever. I’m not saying he has to make a a leap as big as Dick did with his transition from Robin to Nightwing. But, he’s already made that transition, from Robin to Red Robin. It’s not an outright abandonment of what came before, like what Dick did. If anything, Tim has graduated from his time in high school and is ready for his time in college. Now, it’s up to DC to recognize that and commit to it.

#tim drake #batfamily #batfam #robin #red robin #dc #dc comics #detective comics #james tynion iv #dick grayson #nightwing

15 notes · View notes

timegears-moved · 4 years

Note

☕️ mmmm pokemon games specifically (not including spinoffs)

sorry this is late im terrible with actually answering asks. ill do this generation by generation. also this ended up very long because i have a lot of thoughts about pkmn.

gen one: okay so right off the bat im gonna say that i have a massive soft spot for gen one, considering blue was the first game i ever played. i do have a degree of nostalgia towards it which is why i can never be truly be harsh on these games. i know they're a mess of glitches and mechanics that make no fucking sense (seriously FUCK psychic types and everything they stand for) but it has a certain charm to it.

but even as a "kanto apologist" (which damien calls me) i can absolutely agree that the pandering is fucking abysmal. they're trying cater to a demographic who hasn't cared about pokemon in years and aren't going to pick up a new game just because charizard is in it. by doing this it feels like they're alienating the people who actually care, like "yeah ur support is nice but we want the genwunners to like us more than anything.

also on the topic of pandering is that their pandering is so half-assed too. all of this gen one content and not one shred of love for my boys victreebel or cloyster? bro i hate it here.

gen two: i dont really have that much to say here tbh. i have no fond memories of it at all considering i only played through gold once right before hgss came out. i can say that i appreciate all of the bullshit from gen one that it fixed but i have issues with johto as a region that ill elaborate on when i talk about the remakes.

gen three: honestly i never cared much for this gen. i played it quite a bit growing up but it's always been whatever for me. a lot of it just feels kind of.....bland for me. i really don't know what to say because it leaves me feeling conflicted. there's nothing bad about these games that sticks out like a sore thumb but they just don't do it for me, ya know?

i do appreciate frlg for shedding a much better light on kanto though.

gen four: okay so i'll fully admit that the sinnoh games are my childhood faves and are still my faves now but im not letting nostalgia completely cloud my judgement on this.

honestly? i think pokemon peaked with platinum. dp had their problems for sure and some of those still carried over to platinum but the scale in which platinum told its story feels so much grander than any pokemon game that came before or after it. i absolute adore the sinnoh mythos and i only want dp remakes just so it can get expanded upon, i could care less about any actually gameplay from it. ive said this before but you cannot make the god of pokemon and not do anything with it.

as for hgss, i have very mixed feelings about this one but not in the same way gen 3 made me feel because i do have genuine problems here. ive talked before about them but i just cannot stress how bad the level and pokemon distributions are. how the fuck can you make brand new pokemon for your johto region and not put them in fucking johto?

like these games are fine ig. i never cared about the walking pokemon mechanic but it literally feels like people only praise this game as the best because of that one thing that has no bearing on the actual game itself. you can like these games all you want, i still enjoy parts of them myself, but calling them the best is a huge reach.

gen five: right off the bat im gonna say that i do love the gen five games so nobody thinks im being overly critical or anything. i love the aesthetic of these games, i ADORE the pokemon here and they're some of the most fun pokemon games to play through. it's the story and characters (with the exception of n i will absolutely give credit where it is die there) that throw me for a loop.

i feel like whenever i praise the story or characters im just following the crowd here. i don't know if im just very stupid (i definitely am very stupid) or what but none of it felt as powerful as people claim it is for me personally. maybe i should just pay more attention but i honestly don't know. im definitely not saying theyre bad or anything i just in all hobestly dont get the (very sudden) hype.

uhhh i can't say much about bw2 because i haven't beaten it since it came out but i remember liking hugh and it made iris a champion so i remember them being good on those two things alone.

gen six: hohohohoho here we go. tbh i don't even know what i can say about xy that hasn't already been said. like gen one might be a huge mess looking back on it but at least it had character. xy introduced a few pokemon that i really liked and some amazing shiny hunting methods that should definitely return but that's the most i can say in terms of praise.

i dont think pokemon has ever gotten this boring before, and that's speaking as someone who clocked over 300 hours into my x save file. nothing has life (which in hindsight is ironic considering xerneas is the god of life) and i hate the way mega evolution was handled so much. i really don't know what else to say because everyone has already said what i want to but i think this has been pokemon's lowest point so far.

oras once again made hoenn complicated for me. they made hoenn somewhat interesting for me in a way that didnt capture me in the originals. i don't think they're stellar but ive seen people call these the worst ones and....why. i get that the originals are special to a lot of people and that they feel like oras did them injustice but honestly i would oras over the originals because they're just more fun for me.

gen seven: it made popplio. 10/10.

okay so i can understand why the very slow start and unskippable long cutscenes threw a lot of people off but i just don't understand so much of the hate it around other things. again i see people proclaiming it as the worst and you can see it as that from a gameplay element, but the story fucking slapped ass and i don't think amybody can or should deny that. maybe i just feel very passionately about them because they're very personal for me in helping me through a rough time in my life but i just also dont see why everybody is so mad at these games sometimes.

the fact that sm mean so much to me makes usum's entire existence hurt so much more. like wow i love abuse apologism: the game thank you sooooo much gamefreak! /s

aside from ultra wormhole jumping, my baby dusk lycanroc and the new ultra beasts i dont care for anything new usum brought. it feels like it back peddled so much by completely ruining lillie's character by attempting to make lusamine likable when the damage from the first games was already done. i hate usum they're the only pokemon games i can state that i hate. i don't know how you can take sm's well-done albeit flawed blueprints, take out everything that was good and only leave stuff that either doesn't matter or is actively harmful.

also let's go pikachu and eevee exist too idrc

gen eight: ive already spoken my piece on swsh but im gonna be more clear here. i dont think swsh is inherently bad and i can still have fun with them. i dont think the issue here lies with the cut pokedex. i could honestly care less about that and i always figured we would get to this point. the issue lies with nintendo and tpci pushing for yearly releases, forcing the devs to make yearly subpar games. i can think of so many ways they can remedy this situation: taking longer times between releases, hiring more staff at gamefreak or even splitting developments for different projects between multiple different studios. i hope that the reported low moral at gamefreak at swsh's releases is enough of a wake up call for change but that could just be me being optimistic.

i am SO sorry this ended up as long as it is but i have a lot of opinions and not enpugh willpower to keep my mouth shut

#asks #ty for the ask!#jasper tag #long post #also im on mobile so i cant put a read more 😔

11 notes · View notes

lunias-takes-on-homestuck · 4 years

Text

My Classpects Through the Years

I started getting into Homestuck in late 2012, about a year after [S] Cascade dropped, and like most of y’all I got pretty interested in the system of Classes and Aspects.

...Okay, I got obsessed with it. Who wouldn’t? A highly-flexible system of essentially taking an aspect of reality and interpreting it through the lens of a key verb or idea, creating unique and self-determined power sets limited only by your own imagination? That’s wild. And when I say I got into it, I mean I really got into it. I dove deep into Homestuck’s lore, reading up on popular and somewhat fringe theories about what each Aspect related to, how the Classes utilized them, what the potential Active/Passive pairings were, and how certain Aspects seemed to oppose each other. I even went so far as to contribute to a theory regarding the future of Tavros Nitram, which... didn’t exactly pan out as expected... but it was a ton of fun! And of course, while I was certainly interested in what this all meant for our cast of characters, I was also interested in how it could be interpreted and/or applied to real people.

People are, of course, far more complicated than a simple personality test could possibly explain, but I still got a lot of entertainment out of trying to pin down the classpects of characters or people I knew irl. Which naturally included me. Looking back on it, I think it’s very interesting to see the progression in ideas that led up to my more recent musings, so I figured it would be cool to dive into that and share my past and current classpects here!

Credits:

All images are pulled from the Homestuck Classpect Chart Updated posted by JosiahR94 on DeviantArt.

Artists: Zynchilada (compiled, partially drawn) and Owyn (updated at original resolution). Both blogs listed on the artwork have since been deactivated.

2012-2013 - Knight of Breath

This one is the byproduct of some test manipulation on my part - the fan test I was using was based on MBTI and Jungian archetypes, and honestly I’ve never found them to remain accurate for longer than a couple months at a time. I’ve wound my way around four different MBTI results over the years so I’m not inclined to use them as the basis for much, especially since the original test included fan-created classes and aspects that I really didn’t understand or jive with. But even once I narrowed it down to strictly canonical classes and aspects, I still wound up going with the 3rd-most accurate one. At the time I saw the Knight as the Active Exploiter class, the type to jump into action and wield their aspect as a weapon. I really related the idea of a detached loner who was fiercely protective of their friends, and John had shown off very, very recently (for me, anyway) just how powerful wind could be. The powers were sick, the outfit was neat, and it was absolutely wrong in nearly every way. Nearly. But we’ll get to that.

2013-2015 - Seer of Doom

You’re probably a little familiar with this one if you’ve been keeping up with Homestuck theorists lately, as there are two prolific content creators I know of who identify as Seers of Doom. For some time, I did too! The change was largely brought about because I thought my initial Knight of Breath result hadn’t been accurate enough, and also because I wanted to try my hand at classpecting myself without the aid of tests. At the time I was really feeling the Doom aspect and I saw myself as a guide (or maybe a teacher?) so it felt like it fit. There was just one sliiiight problem - I was entirely focused on how the Doom aspect related to the problems I was having in my life, rather than how I viewed the world around me and interacted with it. I still felt like I was sort of onto something with Doom, but it took some major life events to give me the nudge I needed to see things a little more clearly...

2015-2020 - Sylph of Life

For me, 2015 felt like the year I was finally coming out of my funk and figuring my shit out. It’s the year I started taking college courses (well, a college course), getting into meetups, making new friends, and reinventing myself. At some point I decided that the issue with my initial Doom analysis was that I was overly focused on the challenges I had instead of how I actually dealt with them, and my new aggressively-optimistic outlook would simply not mesh with Doom. Not one bit. I also felt that my class didn’t quite fit, and Sylph was sitting right there with their magick-y healing and creation powerset -- the ultimate support, and the type of person who makes their own way through life by simply refusing to accept they could be stopped or put down by anything. By the time the Extended Zodiac Quiz came out in 2017 and confirmed I was Lifebound, I had already proven to be on top of my game in college in a creative field. I joined our LGBT+ club and started somewhat aggressively railing against overly-restrictive labels and social constructs in Contemporary English to the point that I was exceeding the page limit on our essay assignments on a regular basis and still felt I wasn’t saying everything I wanted to say. Sylph of Life just clicked for me in a way the Knight of Breath and Seer of Doom never had, so I figured I’d nailed it.

Then, earlier this year, I found out I was actually a girl.

2020-Present - Knight of Life... or maybe Heart???

Imagine for a minute that you’re at a theater watching some movie through the perspective of the protagonist. You think you’ve got the plot all figured out, you’re guessing every story beat, and then in the last 5 minutes the big twist reveals the protagonist has unwittingly been an unreliable narrator for the last two hours. Literally everything you thought you understood has been flipped on its head, and it’s still good but it’s all very confusing. You leave the theater wondering what you just watched, and as you turn on your car you suddenly realize there were subtle hints foreshadowing the twist for over half the film. With every passing second the pieces start coming together, and you just know that watching it again would leave you going “How the hell did I miss that?!”

That’s about the best way I can explain what I’ve been experiencing for the past four-ish months. All the puzzle pieces I had put together were thrown totally out of whack and I’m finding every day that there are aspects of myself and my personality that I never knew where there. Discovering myself is hard work, but it’s a wonderful feeling, and it’s no wonder that on the heels of this I’m seriously vibing with the aspect relating to Personal Identity. That said, I still find myself parsing labels and identity through the lens of Life - words which are too restrictive to properly convey who I am, and an experience that can’t be explained or constrained by the stereotypical narrative people tend to have about people who are bisexual, polyamorous, transgender, and at once more complicated than those words can really describe. When I take the Extended Zodiac Quiz I find that I’m still Lifebound, but changing even a single question by a single step leaves me Heartbound instead, and I think that dichotomy really mirrors where I feel I’m at as a person.

Class-wise, I feel drawn to both Sylph and Knight to a degree, but in the years since I first chose the Knight of Breath classpect I have come to understand the class as a Passive Server - one who gives for the benefit of others - and that speaks to me. The wonderful Mythological Class Quiz by @homestuckexamination has only confirmed my suspicions about that. I have yet to decide between Knight of Life and Knight of Heart, but they’re both very interesting classpects imo, and either way I’m sure I’ll be spending far too much of my free time developing powers and things for them :P

Takeaway

Whew, that’s a lot of words! But what exactly does it all mean? Well... if you ask me, Classpecting is sort of a process. I’m sure that, years down the line, I’ll probably say I had it all wrong and I’m actually some other combination of class and aspect, and I’ll reminisce about the days when I was so obviously misreading myself. But that’s kind of the fun of it, isn’t it? It’s just another form of personality quiz, albeit one where you get sick powers and a nifty set of pajamas at the end. And for all the good that introspection can do to help you understand yourself a little better, you better believe I’m going to be spending the next hour or two debating whether passing out heals and buffs while tanking everything would be more cool than body-surfing and turning enemies into clones à la Agent Smith in The Matrix: Reloaded.

#Homestuck #Classpecting #Knight of Breath #Seer of Doom #Sylph of Life #Knight of Life #Knight of Heart #Lunias Takes #Lunias Personal

2 notes · View notes

beneaththetangles · 4 years

Text

BtT Light Novel Club, Chapter 16: Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, Vol. 1!

Welcome to the first Light Novel Club discussion of 2020! Our discussion this month is on Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, Vol. 1, in which a gamer dares to take on the “game” of real life. We have quite the discussion for this title coming up, so strap yourself in and join @jeskaiangel and I for a deep dive not just into the story, but also what even is a “game” in the first place!

-----

1. What are your general impressions of the novel?

Jeskai Angel: My impression of the novel = Video games + Proverbs / Ecclesiastes + My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong as I Expected + Self-help booklet + Optimism.

stardf29: I’ve got nothing to add; you did the math on that perfectly.

2. What are your thoughts on the characters in the novel?

Jeskai Angel: As I observed Tomozaki, I strongly had the sense that I was watching an alternative version of Hachiman Hikigaya from a parallel universe. His opening monologue sounds every bit as cynical, jaded, and bitter as something Hiki would say. But, crucially, Hiki is actively resistant to changing and finds a sense of moral superiority in not “conforming.” Hiki’s story kicks off because his teacher tries to help him change for better, but (at least as of vol. 1) he begrudges this meddling in his life and resists every step of the way. The two parallel universes diverge because when NO NAME / Aoi also offers Tomozaki the chance to change, he willingly (albeit skeptically) embraces the opportunity. That difference lends the whole story a far more hopeful, optimistic tone than My Youth Romantic Comedy.

I could spend more time contrasting the other characters of this LN and My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong as I Expected, but I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say that I think the girls of both stories bear further comparison.

Aoi is an interesting twist on the “perfect girl” trope. First, one doesn’t commonly see that sort of character AND have them be an unapologetic hardcore gamer (you sometimes see the “perfect girl who’s secretly an otaku” figure, but not one like Aoi who displays no sense of shame about her nerdy hobby). The other thing that subverts the “perfect girl” trope is that we learn quickly that Aoi wasn’t always “perfect” and in fact works incredibly hard to maintain her sterling image. She’s not just magically perfect thanks to inherent natural awesomeness. I feel like the rest of the cast is well written, but they don’t necessarily stand out in any exceptional way. Hopefully they’ll get more chances to shine in the future.

stardf29: That’s a good compare and contrast between Tomozaki and Hachiman. Hachiman’s constant cynicism and the commentary that comes from that is entertaining in its own way, but as a character, I really like how Tomozaki actually tries to make more of real life, and he gets some cool moments out of it, such as when he stands up for Nakamura when other girls start trash-talking him. Oh, and he’s a gamer, too, which I guess earns him some extra cool points for me.

I definitely appreciate Aoi having had to work hard to become the “perfect girl”, for the reason you mentioned. What I also like about that aspect is that it has shades of the “secret of the popular girl” trope where the guy finds out the popular girl’s secret and they grow closer because of it, which I often enjoy.

The other side characters definitely interested me a lot. While they might not have a lot of development yet at just one volume in, they do have very strong base characterizations with their own motivations and don’t feel like one-dimensional tropes; I’m definitely looking forward to what role they play in future volumes.

3. What do you think about the various gaming references and the use of video games in the story?

Jeskai Angel: Am I right in thinking that Atafami is a coded reference to the Super Smash Bros. series? Between the name and some of the characters mentioned, I had a distinct suspicion that the story was making a nod toward a very specific real-life game/series. The rest of the gaming references that I recall were all more general nods to various tropes and common features of video games, things common enough that they didn’t require knowledge of any particular game to understand. I enjoyed the references and use of gaming concepts as metaphors for real life.

stardf29: Yes, Atafami is pretty clearly a mock-up of Smash Bros. (“Smash Brothers -> Attack Families”), with their own versions of Fox (“Foxy”) and Sheik (“Found”; this one took a while to figure out, but it’s pretty clever; “Sheik” sounds like “Seek”, especially with Japanese pronunciation, so you have “Seek” -> “Found”).

The whole thing is pretty amusing since I have some vague familiarity with the competitive Smash scene (though I’m not a competitive Smash player myself), so a lot of the portrayals of the whole gaming aspect of the story are just that much more interesting to me.

4. What do you think about the various “life tips” in the story?

Jeskai Angel: Ooh, yes! I have mixed feelings about the life tips. On the one hand, I think there’s some real truth to Aoi’s advice. I sort of wish someone had given me some of this advice back when I was in high school (of course, I was such a trainwreck at that point in my life that Aoi’s coaching wouldn’t have been nearly enough to help me).

On the other hand, sometimes Aoi’s view feels a little too much like self-made man-pull yourself up by your own bootstraps-rugged individualism. It paints this overly positive picture of how if you just work hard, your life will be great and everything will work out well. That’s how I used to think life worked (thanks, American culture), but then life proved me wrong. I think Tomozaki has a legitimate point when he says that life doesn’t always have a right answer, that trying hard doesn’t guarantee the desired outcome, and that some people have massive, unearned advantages over others. No matter how long and how hard you try, there’s no promise that you’ll get what you want out of life. Maybe Aoi’s perspective doesn’t go quite that far, but it treads close at times.

This tension, where each of the two leads has some valid points, is where my reference to Proverbs and Ecclesiastes above fits in. The book of Proverbs paints an extremely optimistic view of life: if you live according to wisdom, things will be great. And to be clear, it’s not entirely wrong. But then Ecclesiastes comes along and says not so fast: no matter how wise / rich / strong / whatever you are, bad things may still befall you. If nothing else, we’re all gonna die no matter what we do. I suspect that Ecclesiastes sometimes presents an unduly cynical outlook on life, and that things aren’t necessarily quite as bad as you might think if you only read Ecclesiastes. But Ecclesiastes also has a valid point that life isn’t as easy as you might think if you only read Proverbs.

stardf29: You bring up something that one could make an entire dissertation on: the conflict between “do everything you can to improve things” and “there are some things in life we cannot control”. Ideally, these two ideas would work together: we take action where we can, while giving the things we cannot control up to God. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to lean too much into one direction or the other. Tomozaki’s initial stance is too much into “there’s too much I cannot control”, and he includes stuff he does actually have control over to improve his life. Aoi, on the flip side, is perhaps trying to take control over too much. I think it’s pretty telling how, in the final confrontation, she’s ultimately not able to do anything when things take an unexpected turn until well after the fact.

Overall, while I liked a lot of Aoi’s tips, I do have one notable gripe. The whole thing about getting Tomozaki a girlfriend is a bit weird but ultimately, not too bad. However, when she tried to get him to ask Fuka out over their supposed shared interest in a particular author, despite Tomozaki lying about said interest, that definitely rubbed me the wrong way. It felt like Aoi was telling him to do whatever it takes to “win” the game, even if it means lying and deceiving others. I’m glad he ultimately chose not to listen to her and tell the truth to Fuka, and it seems like they still have the chance for some development later.

Jeskai Angel: I had forgotten about the whole “lie about liking this book to get a girlfriend” incident until you brought it up. Yeah, I really appreciated that Tomozaki averted tons of rom-com tropes by taking the first opportunity to correct the misunderstanding, instead of creating an extended series of painfully awkward situations where he struggles to maintain the lie. I wonder…Aoi generally comes across in a fairly favorable light, but does this case hint at a darker side to her character?

You also make a really interesting point in framing the climactic defense-of-Nakamura scene in terms of Aoi being unable to do anything when the situation gets out of hand. It does seem to speak to her limitations.

stardf29: “Darker side” perhaps, but to the extent that every realistic person has some sinful tendencies to her; in her case, it’s a willingness to fudge the truth in order to do what she wants to get done. (If I may say, she seems to be very much a Type 3 on the Enneagram.)

Tomozaki laughs at your “Foxy only” rule.

5. How much do you agree with the idea that “life is a game”?

Jeskai Angel: So, Tomozaki and Aoi both accept from the outset that life is a game. They don’t debate whether life is a game, but rather whether it’s a good one or a bad one. Consequently, the book skips over a crucial question: what exactly is a “game?” It’s hard to say for sure whether life is a game, or how good of a game it is, if we don’t know what we mean when we say “game.” Certainly I can see validity to a lot of the book’s metaphors. There really are times when there are substantive parallels between real life and video games. But does the fact that life and games are sometimes similar justify going all the way to the point of saying life actually is a game in any meaningful sense? I’m not so sure. My gut says no. However, I would offer the caveat that I can imagine it’s possible to come up with a coherent definition of “game” for which real life would qualify.

stardf29: Oh boy, the “what is a game” question is another one that you could make a whole research paper on.

Maybe a game like Smash Bros isn’t the best metaphor for life… but what about a game like Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon? Those are games that break somewhat from the usual definition of a game, while still being classified as a game, and it’s a bit easier to see parallels with real life with those games.

But the key question here really does seem to be: What exactly is a “game”? Again, I could dive really deep into this topic, but for a basic definition, I like to think of games in four parts: player input, the “programming” which take those inputs and create results, the goals that players try to achieve, and the rules which are known to the players and help them make choices on their inputs. A game, therefore, is a situation where, given certain known rules, you decide on a goal or goals to achieve, and then make inputs and see what results the programming gives back; based on those results, you may either continue on with making inputs, or change one or more of your goals; you can even create a “game within a game” by setting a smaller goal and trying to achieve that goal first before returning back to your original goal.

For example, in, say, Super Mario Bros., your overarching goal is to reach the end and rescue the princess, which requires you to complete several sub-goals of completing the individual levels. Within the game, you are aware of the various rules of the game (move right, don’t touch enemies or fall into pits, collect power-ups for help) and then you start making your inputs to get Mario to the end.

Given this fairly wide-encompassing definition of a “game”, I think it’s possible to classify real life as a game. You have rules that are known and more or less govern what you can and cannot do (things like laws), and from there you decide on goals you want to accomplish, and then you make your “inputs” (a.k.a. personal choices) and then see what results come from the “programming” and adjust further goals/inputs accordingly. The only real difference here is that the “programming” is far more complex than what computers are (currently) limited to. That said, it’s not like there’s no “programming” whatsoever, since things like scientific laws exist. (The inputs of fellow humans may complicate things but lots of multiplayer games have that, so…)

In that sense, I can see how Aoi approaches the “game” of life. She tries to understand the rules as much as she cans, she has certain goals she wants to achieve, and she starts making “inputs” towards those goals. And as she starts accomplishing those goals, she gets the enjoyment of “winning” at the game (or at least that goal). If my approach to life differs from hers, it largely lies in having different goals from her to start with.

Now that I think about it, there is an important “fifth” part of a game: the positive feelings that come from “winning” the game, or rather, accomplishing goals within that game. It’s why we play games, after all. The exact nature of those “positive feelings” can vary depending on your goals, from the feeling of empowerment and domination after defeating a human opponent, to the sense of pride and accomplishment from getting 100% completion, to the satisfaction of the ending of a good story. And in real life, there’s definitely a good feeling from putting in effort, getting results, and fulfilling goals.

Jeskai Angel: I remembered this interesting column by game designer Mark Rosewater (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/what-game-2018-06-04). He defines a game as “a thing with a goal (or goals), restrictions, agency, and a lack of real-world relevance.” Your definition and his agree about the importance of input / agency, rules / restrictions, and goals (whether invented by the player or established by the designer). But you differ regarding the lack of real-world relevance. MaRo holds that having the purpose of entertainment or education, as opposed to practical necessity, is a fundamental part of what distinguishes games from real life.

stardf29: That’s a great article overall, and if I combine “rules” and “mechanics” into “limitations” I would mostly agree with it… but I definitely disagree about games needing to be “separate” from real life. It feels like a meaningless distinction; if I want to make a game out of cleaning my apartment or something, I don’t see how the real-life application somehow makes it not a game.

Instead, I would replace that “lack of real-life relevancy” with that last element I mentioned: the explicit pursuit of the positive feelings that come from achieving the goals. The reason most people don’t, to use the example in the article, consider packing for a trip as a “game” is that they simply have no desire to experience the pleasure of figuring out how to optimize packing; they just want to get the job done. However, someone might decide that, yes, they’re going to figure out the optimal arrangement for their packing, and then, after getting everything into the optimal arrangement, relish in the rush of having solved the puzzle.

In a way, then, what makes something a “game” is, in part, mentally thinking of it as a game–that a game is whatever you want to be a game (as long as goals, restrictions, and agency are also in play). And this is likely what helped Aoi be so successful: she chose to view several parts of life as “games” where others just saw it as “just life”. And Tomozaki has now adapted that mindset too. Now, I do think there are times where it’s best not to think of real life as a “game”; the example of a pilot flying a real plane is probably one of those times. (Though if the threat of death makes something not a game, I guess the Aincrad part of Sword Art Online isn’t a game…) That said, there may very well be several times in real life when thinking of something as a game may be just what gives someone that motivational kick to get something done, so… perhaps, at the very least, it’s worth consideration.

Jeskai Angel: Hmm… It occurs to me that babies and children learn through play. It seems that God has hardwired us to learn about the world through play-type behavior. And if play is fundamental to us from the earliest stages of development, perhaps the idea of life as a whole being a game has more validity than I’m giving it credit for.

Final Thoughts

Jeskai Angel: In the opening monologue, Tomozaki says this:

“Since ancient times, tons of brilliant scientists have been conducting experiments to search for a Law of Everything that explains the rules of our world. They still haven’t found it. Since ancient times, tons of brilliant philosophers have been wrapping ideas up in logic trying to figure out the meaning of life—in other words, life’s concept.”

This is where I’d raise my hand and say that Christianity has an answer to this question. The “Law of Everything,” the basis of all the rules in our world, the source that connects everything else, is Jesus. That’s what John 1.1 is getting at when it describes Jesus as the Logos. All the rules are established and upheld by him. And of course life’s “concept” is to know and love God.

Jeskai Angel: On a couple of occasions, one character criticizes another (first Tomozaki to Nakamura, then Aoi to Tomozaki) for dismissing a pleasure they’d never experienced as boring or meaningless. This is really quite profound. It was super relatable when Aoi calls out Tomozaki on this, because I have done the same thing. I can easily come up with examples from my own life where, because I didn’t have opportunity to enjoy something, I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t really all that great anyway, that I didn’t really want or need it, and so it was fine if I didn’t have it. At least in some of these cases, I’ve realized later that maybe that thing was more valuable than I’d been willing to admit while I was coping by lying to myself. The story was a good reminder about the need to be honest with ourselves.

stardf29: Yep, that’s the good ol’ sour grapes fable (the fox who can’t reach the grapes decides they must be sour). And yes, it’s best to be honest with yourself, or at the very least, don’t put down others who do have things/experiences you don’t have.

Jeskai Angel: Looking back, I realized it’s kind of cool the way the story building up Aoi to be so amazing actually serves to increase my respect for Tomozaki as a gamer. Here’s this girl who, much like Mary Poppins, is practically perfect in every way. Whether in beauty or academics or athleticism or popularity or whatever, she is unsurpassed thanks to her combination of talent and incredible hard work. And then you tell me that in one respect, she gets totally outclassed by someone else, despite putting forth the same hard work at Atafami as she did to reach the pinnacle in every other area of life. And it really starts to sink in just how insanely skilled Tomozaki must be to be able to capable of trouncing her as he does.

stardf29: Honestly, having seen how insane top-tier Smash Bros. play is, I’m more impressed with Aoi being able to even basically become the second-best player in Japan in the first place, especially with everything else she’s doing for real life as well. They do go a bit into how she does it (she purposely gets into disadvantageous situations to learn how to get out of them, sacrificing her immediate win-rate for long-term improvement), but even then, getting to the top ranks is no easy feat and it shows how dedicated she really is. And, of course, Tomozaki himself is impressive for being able to beat her regardless, though I guess since I’m familiar with top-tier Smash players, it’s pretty easy to picture how good he is (or at least as easy as looking up some YouTube videos).

=====

What do you think about Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, Vol. 1? What do you think counts as a “game”? Share your opinion in the comments!

As a reminder, on February 21st, we will be covering Vol. 3 of Infinite Dendrogram, so if you plan on joining us for that and haven’t finished it yet, get to reading!

#Light Novels #Bottom Tier Character Tomozaki #Jaku Chara Tomozaki kun #Christianity #BtT Light Novel Club #Articles #Author: stardf29 #Author: JeskaiAngel

3 notes · View notes

shuoshuzhe-a · 4 years

Photo

meet the team from CHINA....they can argue that they’re the main school, the progenitor to shamanism and using cursed energy. it’s not far — fetched to say that they’re one of the oldest schools to exist that practices juryoku. separated into two streams, the use of CURSED energy is more new than the use of spiritual energy ; the need to adapt was necessary with the changing world ( filled with negative energy ) and these students [ and their 2 teachers ] are currently the top of their school. unlike tokyo where most of the shamans — in — training are high schoolers, most of the students here are entering university / college...but the concept is not unlike their basics, training starts YOUNG and the cursed techniques are often etched into their being. from spellcasters to summoners to equipment users to talisman users, the basics of using cursed energy is all the same. this particular team is known for their earrings ( tassel — like ) but some have opted to not pierce their ears. the earrings function both as a communicator and a protection charm. from top left to bottom right: lin feihong, wang guiying, huang yaling, huang yahui, tang xiulan, xie zhihao, yang kai, jiang liling, shu delun.

lin feihong ( 28, instructor, special class [top left] ) — feihong hails from a famed family of shamans ( jitong / tongji ) known for their sixth sense. a family of oracles, feihong has a bit of an affinity for foresight and is more of a passive player when it comes to battles. a strategist, feihong’s role tends to be more SUPPORTING when in battle...their role in the team tends to be more as an advisor, to help the students cultivate their abilities. the LIN family is known for their cursed techniques and talismans. feihong’s gender is unknown to many, it has left people guessing. feihong smokes quite often, but it is a practice their family uses for visions and gives an air of mysteriousness. feihong is a male but only delun knows.

wang guiying ( 19, student, 3rd class [top middle] ) — guiying is from a small village in china that was recruited and sent to the school to refine his skill. unlike his family members, he is the only one who was ‘ blessed ’ with the ability to harness energy. while his family has been shamans for a while now, they were only village healers. the moment the scout offered, without even giving guiying a chance to speak, he was sent off. there is SLIGHT resentment for being sent off without regards of what he wanted from life, but a part of him is grateful that he’s learned how to use his abilities. he’s more capable with summoning shikigami ( using talismans ) and cursed weapons. guiying is close to yahui ( sort of — they fight and bicker but they work well together ) and yaling...rather, he also worries for yaling and is much SOFTER with the female than her own brother. guiying is friendly, open — minded, and loud...he doesn’t hesitate to let people know how he feels or what he thinks, but sometimes he acts before he thinks ( while yahui thinks before he acts, even not hesitating to LEAVE ).

huang yaling ( 21, student, quasi-1st class [top right] ) — her family supposedly hails from royalty, or nobility, their lineage runs much deeper than the LIN family. all of her family have produced shamans of special grade so there was a LOT of expectations placed upon yaling and her twin brother, yahui. yaling is often faced with people who thinks she achieved her position not through her skills BUT because of her family. as the elder of the pair, yaling struggles with anxiety, insecurity and a lack of confidence ; despite having all the TRAINING and developing her skills, she’s become quite insecure about her abilities, where she doubts herself constantly. an apologist, she’s always trying to cover for her brother (trying to protect him ). she tends to be hurt often and used by others due to her kind but a pushover nature. she specializes in talismans and summoning, a prominent cursed technique user ; she’s currently trying to perfect her territory expansion. the HUANG family holds a relative large amount of cursed objects hidden away in a cache far into the mountains...the location is not known by anyone but family elders.

huang yahui ( 21, student, quasi-2nd class [middle left] ) — the younger huang twin, more bold and more temperamental. yahui tends to be a VERY angry person, towards society and towards his sister...and resentment towards his family. he tends to be more offensive and aggressive with people, a facade to hide his vulnerable and upset self...there’s so much judgement and so much expectation, he’s not being seen as who he is ( and his anger is DOUBLE because his sister is so meek and quiet ). he’s protective over his sister, always ahead or behind her ; hiding behind his angry facade, yahui is sad and frustrated with everything. he tends to SNAP first and then figure it out later. but underneath it all, he’s a soft-hearted and protective, a loyal person...yahui is just like his sister, a prominent cursed technique user and uses a form of blood manipulation as part of his technique. opposite to guiying, he thinks before acting ; he doesn’t hesitate to LEAVE if the situation is too dangerous for him or yaling ( and guiying ). his instincts is often correct, but his way to dealing with it is bad — abandoning people in favor to save those close to him.

tang xiulan ( 23, practitioner, 2nd class [middle] ) — xiulan is an optimistic person and a supportive person ; a good listener, xiulan wants to be supportive to the team. a mature mind, xiulan is a positive person with a lot of love to give. this was perhaps because of her loving relationship with her family despite the gender discrimination she faced from her elders ; her grandfather was a jitong and was hoping to pass it on but having no sons, the tradition wasn’t passed on...and when the hopes of grandsons were shattered with the birth of two daughters....xiulan took it upon herself to learn by watching, and while she was GOOD at the gestures, she had no actual training as her grandfather refused to teach her. albeit, what her grandfather practiced wasn’t the usage of cursed technique, and uses the basis of taoism...xiulan wasn’t recruited, but rather, she asked for help...she WANTED to be in this profession so she had to go behind her grandfather’s back and ask for assistance in the shaman world. initially, she had very little talent, but with hardwork, she managed to make it up the ladder. she feels for the twins and tries her best to be there for the two that are on the opposite end of the spectrum ( but she feels that yahui thinks she’s doing it out of pity ). she is versed in harnessing spiritual energy instead of cursed energy, unlike the rest of her peers. like the jack of all trades, there isn’t ONE thing she’s good at.

xie zhihao ( 19, student, 3rd class [middle right] ) — unlike zhihao’s pretty face and false smiles, zhihao has a bit of a nasty personality. she has a tendency to use people to get what she wants, she doesn’t hesitate to leave people behind for the sake of her own gain. how she manages to get along with her team is a mystery to everyone, she especially enjoys picking on xiulan and yaling ( but only when yahui isn’t around ). a cursed corpse specialist, she’s still perfecting her craft and she seems to have a PENCHANT for using humanoid figures for her art ( so much so that some people think she’s reanimating the dead — actually something she’s looking into... ). she can make simple animal shikigami but mostly for communication and distractions...they cannot attack nor defend. zhihao hails from a rich family, but as the youngest of her siblings, she was cast aside as useless. developing a superiority complex because she’s often told that she’s not NEEDED ( and not given what she wanted when asked, she had to earn it ), she has a tendency to look down on others and dig her fingers into wounds ; she hates being seen as weak and hates people like yaling & yahui ( got her place because of her family, got what they wanted without working for it — so she thinks ) and people like xiulan ( too kind and loving ).

yang kai ( 20, student, quasi-2nd class [bottom left] ) — an orphan / runaway that was picked up by shu delun’s family, he was discovered during an attack from a low — level cursed spirit and somehow, managed to survive. the SHU family found talent in the boy and took him in. the SHU family were known to be spellcasters and found that yang kai had an ability with his voice. trained to become a spellcaster, yang kai is praised to be a genius for his ability and for his background...he remains unaffected by other people’s opinion about him. he seems unsociable or condescending for his quiet tone or lack of talking. yang kai speaks softly with a raspy tone, avoids eye contact ( just because he’s super awkward ) and just so that he doesn’t accidentally use his ‘ voice ’ against people. a genuinely nice kid who’s overly just REALLY awkward, he has a really huge soft spot for animals and fuzzy blankets.

jiang liling ( 20, student, 3rd class [bottom middle] ) — a girl with money and sometimes told that she doesn’t have a talent and that she should quit. it’s perhaps because of her princess — like attitude, refusing to get dirty when it came to missions....her condescending tone has her seen as less important due to her attitude. she’s a capable person BUT she hates doing the dirty work. she is the type to be more bossy and work behind everyone than be ACTUALLY doing the work. when forced to, she can do it...she just has an issue with her image...she grew up learning that appearance was everything ; that she needed to look perfect no matter what...and with the addition of being influenced by people’s ideal image of what a ‘ girl ’ should look like ( effeminate, non-calloused hands, no scars, etc ), she hates digging her hands into things...keeping them well manicured, and clothes clean. it’s a surprised she even managed to make it up to 3rd class. she has a crush on yahui.

shu delun ( 29, instructor, special class [ bottom right] ) — hailing from a family full of spellcasters, delun is nearly the opposite of feihong. while feihong is more focused on the DEFENSE, delun is more OFFENSE. if either of them were to be born as a female, they were to be married. the SHU and LIN family had a good relationship despite the shu family being like nouveau — riche...the SHU family were very new but talented and made a name for themselves. the markings on delun’s face helps with limit his spellcasting abilities without unknowingly influencing others with his voice. a skilled spellcaster, he is also capable of other areas and assists in putting theory to practicality ( taking what feihong teaches to the field ). a fun — loving and adventurous male that often joins feihong in smoke breaks. he cares deeply for the team and tries his best to guide them down the right path. he dotes on yang kai ( as his nephew ) and tries to keep liling in line.

#( updates. )#this took so long asjhbsd #but i'm satisfied :D #read jujutsu kaisen!!

3 notes · View notes

popwasabi · 5 years

Text

Top 5: Jazz, Taiko Drums, and Hurdy Gurdies. My Favorite TV Intros.

It was not long ago when most streaming sites began offering a “skip intro” option for TV show content. Hell, it seemed some intros to the Netflix, Hulu and Prime content began intentionally making their original openers short and sweet so that viewers could get all the info they needed as quickly as possible.

These were welcome changes for most binge watchers who sometimes watch entire seasons of their favorite shows within a day’s time not wanting to waste time on seeing the same names on the opening credits over and over again.

(Yes, God damn it! I’m a slave to the stream!!)

Though this has been convenient for myself more than a few times I for one enjoy the artistic quality of a good TV show opener. It’s part music video, part amalgamation of everything stylistically and tonally you need to know about a series and a truly great opener can hook a fan to a show for life.

There are many shows, no matter how many times I watch them, I’ll never skip the intro too because they sum up everything I love about the series in a single 30 second to minute and a half long video and hey some of those songs really do “slap” as the kids say.

So, let’s talk a little bit about some of my favorite intros and why I love them so much in this week’s top 5.

Note: This isn’t just a discussion of the music used but the opening credits and imagery used to accompany it.

5. Cowboy Bebop

youtube

There’s a long list of truly great anime openers out there from the Karaoke-friendly J-pop tunes of “Neon Genesis Evangelion’s” “Cruel Angel’s Thesis” to the classic 80s vibes of Akira Toriyama’s “Dragon Ball” and “Dragon Ball Z.” But only one anime is going to make the cut for this list and that’s “Tank!” from the 90s classic “Cowboy Bebop.” It’s truly unique in the anime landscape as its one of the few that features Jazz and an opening that doesn’t overly rely on the tropes of more traditional anime drawing its influence instead from 60s and 70s spy movies and aesthetics. Fans of “Archer” will likely notice similar motifs in that shows own opening and Bebop’s “Tank!” is all about exuding this “cool” vibe of its show’s primary characters the fun and often dangerous missions they get involved in. It’s a hip, unique take that stands out distinctly in its genre and a truly un-skippable tune during a binge watch.

4. Star Trek: The Next Generation

youtube

I think the first time I truly fell in love with a TV opener was watching the show I gained my namesake from.

Yes, I’m named after Wesley Crusher.

I know, I know.

Anyways, there’s something special about this intro and it’s not just its nostalgia or classic Star Trek vibes but the hopeful adventurousness of the music’s tone. “Star Trek” has always been about an optimist’s view of the future, a world where people of multiple creeds, backgrounds, races, species in this case come together not to fight but to explore the furthest reaches of the cosmos.

The music always got me in the mood to watch Captain Picard, Data, and Riker to go do there thing whether it was as banal as negotiating a dispute in the neutral zone, fun and often weird times on the holodeck, or taking on the dreaded borg. The music accompanied by the venerable Patrick Stewart’s brilliant voiceover and the sprawling, albeit dated, graphics of space helped make TNG iconic and I’ll never consider skipping it on a binge watch.

3. Penny Dreadful

youtube

Though it’s later seasons never held up nearly as well as its first I became instantly hooked on Showtime’s “Penny Dreadful” largely because of Abel Korseniowski’s brilliant score, particularly the intro he wrote for the show.

Korseniowski’s use of classical and gothic tunes helped bring viewers back to horror’s more Victorian roots in the best of ways with an opener that felt touching, somber, emotional and chilling all at once. The images splashing across the screen of various classic monsters, arachnids, and ghouls as the haunting soundtrack played immediately drew me into the story in the same way the young Dr. Frankenstein in the show could not look away from the horrors uncovered in the narrative. It perfectly captures the ghoulish, dramatic charm of the show and though its later storylines don’t hold up as well it’s another intro that is undeniably un-skippable.

2. Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)

youtube

Bear McCreary is probably my favorite composer of all-time and his work on the Battlestar Galactica reboot is a big reason why.

Though he wasn’t the initial composer on the two-episode mini-series in 2003, the themes, motifs and tones he took from Richard Gibbs work he quickly made his own and created a unique outlier in the science fiction music landscape that has defined his style ever since. The opener is a big reason why his work resonates so much with me because it captures much of the these unique tones and styles not just of the music but of the series’ story itself.

It begins slow like the opening crawl to a great mythical odydessy and tale of survival as we see the last days of civilization play out across the screen. As spaceships begin to caravan across the screen we get a sense of the desperation of the story’s heroes and the stakes they are up against and as it begins to close that’s when the percussion goes into full gear. The use of taiko drums in the soundtrack is brilliant and none more so than this opener as its speeds through frenetically the events of the episode giving us only passing glimpses of the action that is about to take place. It might feel like a spoiler for the narrative but it gave each episode that extra jolt before stepping back into the story and I enjoyed it every single time.

1. Black Sails

youtube

I knew I was going to love “Black Sails” the minute the opening credits began.

The scratchy, aggravating yet hypnotic tunes of the hurdy gurdy playing over the creepy, blackness of the ocean gave the series an immediate dark and unique tone I wasn’t immediately expecting when I began watching the series. I had heard bits and pieces about the show’s plot; a sort of prequel to “Treasure Island” and an edgier take on the prototypical Pirate story is all I knew about it going in but the opener lets you know pretty much immediately this isn’t your typical tale of swashbuckling buccaneers. Like a twisted sea shanty mixed together with a pirate themed rock bank, “Black Sails” intro is dare I say a banger that has you howling along to the righteous vocals of music in the most epic of ways.

But the music truly captures the tone and theme of the story in more subtle ways as well. Like an itch you can’t scratch the music tell it’s viewer and listener of a rage lingering deep beneath the surface of the waves of its main characters, one that’s barely being contained as the music hits these powerful offbeat notes between the electric guitar play and the offkey piano drops. As the series progresses you begin to understand more who and what it’s describing it makes the series that much more memorable.

It didn’t surprise me in the least that Bear McCreary was the man behind the brilliance of this piece and it makes each episodes’ opening a must watch.

So, what are your favorite intros? What music paired with a unique and captivating opening title crawl captured your imagination and emotions the most? Let’s hear it!

Me in my car to any of these songs. All the time...

#Black Sails #Star Trek #Star Trek TNG #battlestar galactica #cowboy bebop #Anime #TV #netflix #hulu #Amazon Prime #Disney #Penny Dreadful #bear mccreary

3 notes · View notes

dotthings · 5 years

Text

This felt a bit like a classic Twilight Zone episode, mixed with TFW 2.0 feelings all around.

I jotted notes and stuff. Feelings and thoughts and milkshakes.

Running with the Twilight Zone structure and style here, Cas would be the character who figures out something’s just not right and things unravel around him and he’s slowly freaking out and has to get others to wake up to it and stop whatever’s happening. The eps this most reminds me of are things like “The Monsters are out on maple street” or “It’s a good life.”

Starting from the top -- so Jack doesn’t seem right. Nope. Sam’s not okay either, and as I figured already from the promo clip, yes it turns out he’s got a raging case of PTSD from the bunker crew he led all being slaughtered. While the characters weren’t designed to stand out to audience individually (except, perhaps, Maggie, and she wasn’t much developed), they meant something to Sam. Not in the sense that he got deeply close to them. As I pointed out earlier in the season, the bunker crew is a bit like the cantina crowd in Star Wars. They’re there for world-building. They'd all have good stories of their own given a chance to tell the tale but that’s not what they are in the main story for. And Sam cares but isn’t really part of them. He’s a leader who hasn’t formed deep personal bonds.

But they were important to Sam, and Sam’s carrying a lot of guilt and trauma over their loss, which is why he blows past Dean’s protests that he’s tired and needs rest, they all need rests. Okay so everything I thought might be going on with Sam before this ep gets vocalized by the end of it, more on that in a moment.

That scene in the bunker kitchen is so...organic and domestic. I love that SPN is a monster-killing show. I’m a fan of genre shows and watching characters whose lives are strange and dangerous and how they cope with it and watch after each other, but the domestic grace notes are an important part of grounding it and making these characters seem real. This scene in the kitchen between Dean and Cas, with Sam blowing through it, was so good. So with Sam not in a frame of mind to understand Dean’s needs for rest or wait for him, and Dean needing to stay at the bunker to rest, and both Dean and Cas worried for Sam, and all of them worried for Jack, Cas basically steps into the role of family organizer, figuratively scooping them up under his wings because someone has to try to sort out this chaos and keep it together and try to make it better. So he volunteers to go on the hunt with PTSD fixated overly-driven Sam, assigns Dean to talk to possibly-soulless Jack and figure out what’s going on, tells Dean to get the sleep that he wants “’til the cows come home.”

I love that Dean says “they’re both full of crap” about Sam and Jack’s assertions of being fine. And then Cas, once he’s in the weird town with Sam, “yeah I know, everybody’s good,” Cas says grouchily. Cas is so DONE with everyone’s pretending-to-be-okay shit.

“Was it Scanners 1, 2, or 3?” I’m betting this wasn’t a Metatron pop culture upload. Oh guess what, Dean and Cas watch horror movies together. File this with the conversations and things we now Dean and Cas do together we don’t get to actually see. I wonder when their horror movie marathon was. Just after Mint Condition? Which expressly showed how great it is having a friend who’ll watch horror movies with you? Some other time?

The reveal that Cas reads the Saturday Evening Post after everyone else is asleep in the bunker is a small thing but it’s so damn good, it gives us another glimpse into what the heck Cas does while he’s not sleeping because he doesn’t need to sleep.

Sam and Cas weirded out together is adorable, as is their surprise milkshake date.

“I think the snake is sad.” Is Jack projecting onto the snake? Assigning his own feelings of hollowness and loss from his soul being eaten away onto the snake who just lost its original owner?

Dean trying to figure out how to talk to Jack is awkward af and endearing and Dean seems so very relieved when Jack picks the angel food cake over the devil’s food. Dean, I’m pretty sure things don’t really work that way and Jack’s choice of snack food isn’t the solution but I am appreciating the reasoning behind Dean’s relief. He knows angels are mostly dicks but hey, Cas is a thing in his life, and Jack picking angel food over devil’s food (Satan), Dean takes as an optimistic sign. Cas over Lucifer. Oh, Dean.

So. Much. Floral. And citris. Imagery. In this strange little town Sam and Cas are in. Sam holding that little rose teacup. Yellow tulips on the woman’s dress. Paintings with oranges and lemons. I think the set designer’s choices were are because citrus and flowers are generally bright, sunshine-y, "happy” things usually.

LOL Cas thinks Sam has beautiful hair. Well, he's not wrong.

Sam’s brainwashed altered persona is disturbing yet Jared is adorable so it’s weirdly adorable but disturbing and please make it stop this isn’t Sam make it stop.

“You will snap the hell out of it!” “I don’t wear a hat.”

Grumpy Cas incredibly put out and grumpy over one of his best friends in literally the history of the universe being brain-snatched by this stepford town is a delight.

As I said about structuring--things are unraveling around him and Cas is not a happy camper...so he deals with it. Much like he steps in and organizes Team Free Will 2.0 so everyone is looked after in different ways as needed, Cas takes charge of this case when Sam gets brainwashed. He is a competent hunter, abd he is a badass. What was that some have been saying about not seeing enough BAMF Cas? He can handle himself in a fight just fine. Albeit, his powers don’t seem to be as strong as in some previous season but I am more and more convinced this is purposeful because we know Heaven’s batteries are dying because the angels are and that’s bound to affect Cas’s power levels. So he has angel powers and he’s extra strong and self-healing and doesn’t need to eat or sleep but he’s also not the mega power we’ve sometimes seen. It makes sense.

Jack still doesn’t seem at all right and yet he seems to have a trace of a soul. He doesn’t want Sam and Dean and Cas to worry. Sam and Dean are his human role models (and no, this wasn’t Jack ommitting Cas--Cas isn’t human. We know Jack thinks the world of Cas). Which is sweet but at the same time uneasily reminds me of soulless Sam who observed Dean and then would say what he thought was expected to pass as normal. Jack latching onto Sam and Dean as models for how to act like he has a soul isn’t the same as really having one, and it’s not the same as early Cas, with all his confusing emotions broiling inside of him, adopting the Winchesters as an emotional compass and guides for how to human emotion. Jack’s going with Donatello (who is also soulless) WWTWD--What Would the Winchesters Do--literally just a plan to mimick them instead of Jack learning and feeling it himself.

“Maybe I don’t know what nothing feels like.”

Cas threatening to rip the info from the girl’s mind doesn’t seem like something he was actually going to carry out. That was a bluff, I’d say. Cas we’ve seen in the past is great at bluffing and does a good peacocking routine, a show of power. Not that he couldn’t rip the info from her. Maybe he would, at great need, to save Sam, and she was acting guilty. But I’m not sure.

“I won’t hurt you, Sam.” Of course you won’t, Cas. We been knew, sweetie.

So first Cas organizes and tucks Team Free Will 2.0 under his wings, so to speak, then he takes over the case when his parter Sam gets sucked into the happy vortex of brainwashing, and then Cas fights off like 4 people at once including Sam, who is very tall, without harming Sam, and then Cas talks Sam down from brainwashing and from killing him with an angel blade. Interesting parallels back to Dean and Cas’s fight in The Prisoner, but with differences. Because hey, ding!, these relationships are different. It’s not about the strength of the bonds, but they are different.

“I know what it’s like to lose your army. I know what it’s like to fail as a leader but you can’t lose yourself. You have to keep fighting. You can’t lose yourself. Because if you lose yourself you fail us. You fail all of those that we’ve lost. You fail Jack. You fail Dean.”

There’s so many things all at once in this scene and Misha is so good here. There’s a bit of a nod back to the “believe in us” concept from Prophet and Loss. I appreciate that SPN didn’t go for a simple, Sam regrets talking Dean out of it. Because much as I am all for Winchesters protecting the world, as I’ve pointed out already, I didn’t feel Sam was the least bit in a heedless frame of mind where he wasn’t thinking of the risks to others, and Dean was so extremely fatalistic, accepting the fate literally written down for him, it just didn’t feel right. I don’t think SPN is saying it’s right to be punished for hope, that Sam should suffer, gee that’s what you get for wanting a little more time just to find a better way, not let the world burn, not screw everything else, just a shot at finding some other way. But in the story they are telling, there is a cost for that hope and that’s heartbreaking. Also I don’t feel Dean’s plan was risk free either. It really was a lose/lose no win situation and that is the point. They have Dean free of Michael, they are free of Michael it seems, but now look, Jack is a mess. And so it goes.

As Cas did in Prophet and Loss, reaching out to Dean in a less overt way than Sam (but not unimportant), Cas is a voice of hope again. Urging Sam not to give up, and echoing what Cas said earlier this season about valuing yourself, the core self “without all the bells and whistles.” So there’s an important note for Sam here, and for Cas. S14 keeps having Cas vocalize on so many things it’s really important for Cas to say, about himself, but he does it via helping others. Cas has given advice to Jack, to Dean, and to Sam this season that indicates Cas listens to his own advice and has reached some insight about these things. Not only is Cas reassuring Sam, it shows that Cas understands despite his losses and failures, he’s worth not giving up on, and there are others who need him who are affected if he gives up. So Cas, having realized this, offers it to Sam in Sam’s moment of need and Sam drives the angel blade into the floor instead of into Cas (a familiar move), and shakes free of the brainwashing.

And Sam and Cas. Back in S9, Cas commiserated with Sam’s feelings of failure then too, and branded himself an even bigger screw up than Sam. SPN has shown for a while that Sam and Cas care about each other and have quite a few points in common, but it’s been a somewhat underdeveloped bond, and a little inconsistent. They’ve often bonded over their shared love of Dean, but we also have seen them caring for each other in their own right. I like their friendship. I appreciate that SPN shows that the relationships are different, and that Sam’s feelings for Cas aren’t the Sam as Dean’s, but I do think the Sam and Cas bond has been a bit neglected. So to land here, with a really big moment of connection for them over their particular shared traumas and specific senses of failures, is great to see. If we’re told they’re family, we should see it on the screen. Cas specifically was the person Sam needed right then. Just as Dean needs more than just Sam, Sam needs more than just Dean.

Moment to appreciate the absolute miracle Mishalecki in S14 is because anyone else remember when Misha and Jared could barely get any scenes filmed there was so much messing around and Jared loves to mess with Misha, and a director had to yell at them at one point to get serious scenes filmed between them. People used to say Mishalecki was the enemy of Sam & Cas scenes. Here we are, years later, they not only filmed this immensely dramatic key Sam & Cas scene together, but did it with Jared on top of Misha, pinning him to the floor. I don’t know how they got this filmed. But they did it. Think of the gag reel. And we got a wonderful Sam & Cas scene.

Cas takes a very proactive role in this ep which is also great to see, and it’s a really interesting note on his character development to see Cas in this role of the family member holding everyone else together, knowing the right words, watching after everybody, competently handling the case temporarily solo, saving Sam, watching after Dean and Jack.

However, notably it’s the young woman who actually saves the whole town by tapping into her own (genetically inherited) powers and taming her toxic, brainwashing father. Seizing back not only her own agency but for an entire town. There’s a Jack parallel on the tip of my brain here. The power is inherited from the parent, but what the offspring does with it is their choice.

“Yeah, I told him about the cardigan.” So Cas called Dean and told him about what happened...another Dean and Cas conversation we know took place we didn’t get to see first-hand. They talk way more than we are shown, more than we know. Unlikely they talk about the...stuff they actually need to but we keep being shown how much a part of each other’s lives they have become. They watch movies together, they talk all the time, they’ve had countless bunker kitchen talks. Cas is there. He’s been there for a while.

“I hate this place right now. Everywhere I look I see them.” That sound you heard was my heart shattering, and I’m not surprised Sam feels that way. He’s living in the place where he saw his whole team slaughtered. That’s...a lot to shoulder. But the bunker is also his home. What does a person do when their own home has been tainted by that kind of trauma (people suffer from home invasions, traumatic events, in their own home...how do people regain their sense of safety?) “this is my home. This is our home...I just need some time.” Again my heart shattering for Sam. Because he means that, yes that is home and I think Sam, as Dean did openly in SPN 300, is good with his life and who he is. But there’s no quick fix for that trauma. Sam’s not only dealing with guilt and grief and trauma, but his sense of home has been violated by what Michael did. We also know unpleasant things have happened in the Impala. Blood and trauma and fear. The Impala, like the bunker, has been home and shelter and safety, but like the bunker, has been the location of traumatic events in their lives (and who knows what kind of scary moments Sam and Dean had in that car when they were children). Yet their sense of home prevailed for the Impala and I think it will for Sam with the bunker too.

Okay. So. It seems like Jack’s soul really was fully gone already after all because he kills the snake to send its soul to Heaven to reunite with its original owner and that isn’t compassionate it’s murder and Jack thought that was a really good idea.

#Sam & Cas #Sam and Dean: a work in progress #Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #Castiel #Jack Kline #spn #supernatural #supernatural spoilers #meta #Dean & Cas

32 notes · View notes

inkdrawndreamer · 5 years

Text

Fluff & Angst Danvid Headcanons (Camp Camp)

•Daniel might not have PTSD exactly, but he is definitely traumatized. Being out of the cult has also messed with his usual coping mechanisms, turning some of them into triggers. Taking a warm shower when he's panicking, for instance, can make him feel worse because the heat and steam remind him of being in a purification sauna. He also feels uncomfortable when he hears people talking about relying on faith to get them through hardship, in no small part because his doesn't help him anymore. •As a result of Daniel's specific triggers, David has had to help him find alternative ways of soothing his anxiety. The usual protocol to help when he's around is to try to talk to Daniel first (to assess the details of the situation), then wrap him up in a blanket and just hold him for a bit (it gives him warmth and compression without being too similar to the sauna), and once he seems grounded enough that he can be let go of, David will usually pick out a recipe of some kind and start getting ready to cook. Baking and cooking are helpful to both of them when they need to calm down. The fast pace and the different smells and textures are grounding. Plus food is good if they need to feel better. •David has his own issues, but most are based in fear of abandonment or neglect. Because of that, he is sometimes overly eager to please and is quick to take on a caretaker role with others. Daniel helps him by refusing to let him take on a lot of work when he is already overly stressed—essentially forcing him to let himself be looked after for a little while as he is calming down. •For David, it helps to stick around him for a while and check in every so often to see how he is feeling. He tends to try and hide when he is upset or hurt, so Daniel usually has to let him firmly know that he would rather know how he is actually feeling instead of being placated in order to get him to talk (Gwen taught him to do this). Once he knows what is bothering David, calming him down usually involves some cuddling, possibly some cooking, then once he's feeling okay, some discussion about how to tackle whatever problem might have been upsetting him. •When Daniel is panicking he wants to be touched more, so a lot of times David ends up hugging and cuddling him until he feels better. David on the other hand tends to close himself off when he's really upset or anxious, so him asking for a hug is usually a sign for Daniel that he is beginning to calm down. •Daniel first starts to gain Max's confidence when the latter sees him trying to calm David down using the above methods. He does the same thing for Max eventually when he finds him upset by thinking about his parents. Naturally he kind of stumbles through the entire conversation, but the gist of what he says is that Max's shitty parents aren't his fault nor his responsibility, and that he has people at the camp who genuinely care about him. Max warms up to Daniel after that. Slightly. •The first time Daniel sees David really depressed throws him for a loop. It's unnerving at first because David is usually so cheerful and optimistic, but he does try to comfort David about it albeit while stumbling through it a bit. Daniel finds that when David is depressed it's best to just spend time around him, give him his space when he needs it, but mostly just be around to show him that he is cared about and that his company is wanted. •They each have a lot of little tasks that they do exclusively for each other to show they care or to make each other feel better. For instance, Daniel likes to give David back rubs (which he ends up doing pretty often because David messes his back up so frequently while doing camp stuff) and David will take Daniel on long drives to help him calm down. Stuff like that. •They fall asleep together a lot, whether on purpose on accident. Usually one of them might decide to join the other when the find them falling asleep, and they wake up spooning later. That or they just doze off together while working on something and Gwen finds them in an awkward pile on the couch the next morning. •David tends to pull Daniel into camp activities, usually to help him assist the kids or perform demonstrations. Daniel does start to enjoy it after a while, and depending on what the activity is he can get really into it. David loves watching Daniel kinda take over an activity. He gets so passionate about what he's teaching and it's really endearing.

#danvid #cc entropy #cc daniel #cc david #camp camp #cc gwen #cc max #headcanons #fluff #angst #sleeping #cuddling #trauma #depression #anxiety #Clover muses

17 notes · View notes

spellbounds-eveline · 5 years

Text

Rising Sign is in 01 Degrees Gemini

Extremely active by nature, you like to get around, meet people and do different things. Very restless, you just can't seem to stay put. You need to be involved in several projects at once in order to keep your mind stimulated. You like to read books and to write letters and to talk -- constantly. Seemingly ageless, you will always appear to be much younger than you really are. Very adaptable and inquisitive, you are always open to new ideas and experiences. A "jack-of-all-trades", you are lively and versatile. Because of the high nervous tension that you always seem to have, athletic activity would be a good way for you to burn off energy. But be careful of a tendency to experience things only superficially -- try to dig in and absorb things at a deeper level. Sun is in 14 Degrees Aquarius.

You get bored with the status quo and are generally open to new things and ideas. An individualist and a free spirit, your friends are quite important to you as long as they do not try to tie you down by making too many emotional demands on you. Your thoughts are offbeat and you're a bit eccentric, but not always very changeable. As a matter of fact, you can be quite stubborn at times. Very fair-minded when dealing with large groups or broad issues, you are not always emotionally sensitive to the needs of individuals. Extremely objective, with good powers of observation, you would be qualified to study technical and complicated subjects, like science, computers or maybe even astrology. Moon is in 08 Degrees Sagittarius.

An idealist, you prefer the grand, the beautiful, the good and the noble. You get very disappointed when your high expectations in life are not met. Very curious by nature, you enjoy traveling and learning about other peoples and cultures. Try to avoid your tendency to ignore the small but important details of living. You are independent and free, and you want others to be that way, too. Optimistic, buoyant and cheerful, others like to have you around. You have an incessant desire to learn as much as possible about metaphysics, religion, philosophy and any other broad, deep subject. Your life tends to be punctuated by bursts of energy and frenetic activity. Mercury is in 21 Degrees Capricorn.

You are a careful thinker, very cautious and conservative. You are quite skillful at organizing, directing and planning activities. Practical and useful things interest you -- you are not attracted to abstract thoughts or ideas. With your tendency to be highly focused and very goal-oriented, you have a good head for business. But beware of a tendency to be narrow-minded and dogmatic. Your sense of humor tends toward being earthy and slapstick crude. Venus is in 29 Degrees Capricorn.

You tend to keep your feelings under control -- emotions are only released in serious or important situations. You are distrustful of others whose behavior could be judged excessive or immoderate. As such, you prefer to relate only to those who are older than you or to those whose position is such that respect and duty are more important for both of you than passion or emotional response. Be careful, however, of relationships that are merely based on practicality or utility or you will ultimately be lonely. Mars is in 05 Degrees Libra.

You are very aware of the need to cooperate with others in order to further any effort. You are usually willing to compromise with others, although you can be quite competitive in a friendly way. Very fair- minded and impartial, you have the ability to sense injustice and the desire to take corrective actions to make proper compensations. You see both sides of issues and questions, but you tend to be undecided or wavering when forced to make choices that might make you vulnerable or unpopular. Jupiter is in 02 Degrees Aquarius.

Your personal growth occurs when you have the freedom to do things in new and interesting ways -- this brings out your natural inventiveness. You are an individualist, but you are also attracted to mass movements that emphasize social betterment and you will devote much time and energy to their efforts. Very fair- minded and objective, you have extraordinary skills at organization and administration. Saturn is in 03 Degrees Aries.

You are aloof, independent and standoffish. This is mainly due to your fear that others might inhibit or restrict you and, quite frankly, you feel that you can govern your life by your own standards. Be careful not to associate with those who are overly critical of you or you will withdraw so deeply into your shell that you will become very lonely. You have the ability to stand on your own two feet and to make up your own mind -- albeit very carefully and cautiously. But you are known for your circumspection and therefore are respected and admired. Uranus is in 05 Degrees Aquarius.

You, and most of your peer group as well, are reformers at heart. You want to make positive changes that will benefit society as a whole. You are willing to devote your time and energy to see that they come about, especially if the proper group support and combined purpose of will can be found. Be careful that your devotion to group goals does not produce too much friction or neglect in your own interpersonal one-on-one relationships. Neptune is in 28 Degrees Capricorn.

You, and your entire generation, will idealize work, practicality and the ability to attain reasonable goals. But, because you will also stress the need to be selfless and giving, you may find it difficult to attain your goals unless you have lowered your expectations on all fronts. Pluto is in 05 Degrees Sagittarius.

For your entire generation, society's cherished beliefs and totems will be radically changed. Many traditional concepts will be totally altered, if not completely destroyed. The rights of individuals to pursue their own course in life will be reasserted. N. Node is in 29 Degrees Virgo.

You're usually quite at ease in leaving leadership roles in the hands of others. You would rather tend to the thousand and one details that need to be accomplished to keep any group going. Although you're very fussy and high-minded when it comes to choosing your associates, once your loyalty is given you can be trusted with many of the practical aspects of any project that is being undertaken. Usually quite unselfish, you will toil long hours in the service of any worthy cause that demands your attention. But be careful that your perfectionist tendencies don't get in the way of making real progress. (In other words, don't waste your time dusting clean shelves!)

#astrology

1 note · View note