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ejm513 · 3 years

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FAIRY TAIL NEXT GEN CHILDREN-GRUVIA EDITION

NALU

1-I know there is now a cannon child for edo Nalu and edo Gruvia with names and everything. I also know that Gajeel and Levy have twins and Levy is currently pregnant in 100 Years Quest. I love it and their names and everything about those precious babies-but I’ve had these ideas and characters and backstories growing and developing in my head for years so I’m being the stubborn Taurus that I am and sticking with it.

2-Also please forgive any misspellings and grammar mistakes as I am dyslexic and my school failed us at teaching spelling and grammar. I did my best.

Hello my lovelies!!

So I’ve spent most of the day working on the first two ships and editing everything so I figured why not just post the second one right away.

And the next ship we’re doing on this crazy journey is my personal favorite my OTP to end all OTPS

GRUVIA!!

Ah yes people... I’m in my happy place.

THE FULLBUSTERS:

Nicolai Sliver Fullbuster- Nicknames- Nick, Nicky, Nicky Bear (gotta love little sisters)

Birthday: March 15th, 797 (Bonus points if anyone gets the reference :P)

Magic: Ice Make Magic

Appearance:

-Height: 5’10 (same height as Gray)

-Hair: Dark and thick like Grays, slightly wavy curiosity of his mother.

-Eye color: Dark blue and large like he’s mother’s.

-Built like his father.

-He and Gray are the closest to clones.

IMPORTANT FACTS:

-Gray doesn’t want his boy to deal with the consequences of being a demon slayer… so he doesn’t teach him how to be one. At least not completely. He does pass on some techniques and skills but nothing more.

-For example he teaches him Ice Make Sliver.

-He got the name Nikolai Sliver from both of his grandfathers-I chose a Russian name because I have this idea in my head that in the real world Juvia would be Russian and nothing can convince me otherwise.

-Though he got over it eventually poor thing hated the cold and having to strip in the snow.

-He too got the illness Ultrear had, and while he didn’t get through it as easily as the Dragnell children he got through it in the end.

And before anyone ask yes… he stripes.

Personality:

-Kind

-Loyal (but maybe not to a fault)

-Laid back like his father

-A little moody and temperamental at times

-Can be a bit reserved but more or less wears his heart on his sleeve like Juvia.

-Very imaginative like his mother… which sometimes lead him to being a little ditzy and spacy.

-Very loving

-Very protective of those he loves

-Definitely inherited Juvia’s possessiveness-when his sister was being introduced to the guild for the first time after she was born he grabbed hold of her little blanket, stood in front of her and said

“No! She’s MY baby sister!!”

-Gray QUICKLY helped him get it under control

-A huge romantic like Juvia…like MAJOR romantic. He even enjoys reading her romance novels (but don’t you dare tell anyone)

-He also enjoys drawing, doing anything in the snow and ice

-Very intelligent and did well in school-given his magic he was particularly skilled in art. No one understands how he managed to do so well in school because his note books are covered in doodles

-In general just a much more open and expressive person than his father or sister, much more like his mother.

Relationships:

-Extremely close with both of his parents-the Fullbusters are known for having a very close knit and loving family.

-Like almost every boy in this generation he is a total mama’s boy and you better not call him out on it.

-Also idolizes his father and wants to be just like him

-Absolutely adores his little sister is very gentle and sweet with her. He’s extremely protective of her and one of the only four people he can be a little possessive over (the others being Lila and his parents).However, she can get on his nerves because like most little siblings she follows him everywhere and wants to do everything with him. Plus they can both be temperamental and stubborn. They are also so much alike yet express themselves in such different ways that it causes clashes. As a result, they bicker the most out of any of the siblings in the next gen-but their fights never, EVER turn physical. But the bottom line is they are exceptionally close-so close in fact they are one of the only pairs in the next gen that can successfully pull of a Unison Raid.

-Real he just wants Eliza to stop calling him Nicky Bear… in public at least.

-The first of his two best friends is Simon Scarlet. At first it was a matter of convenience because he was the only boy in the guild close to her age, but it didn’t take too long to become genuine friends. They love to bond over their love of sweets. The other of course is Lila.

And naturally Happy… Happy is everyone’s best friend

-He has loved Lila pretty much his entire life-before he even understood what that feeling was. When he learned what the concept of marriage, he knew right away she was the one he was going to marry. As stated before he constantly referred to her as his wife as children and when they were older (like almost 20 or older than 20) he would say “You know I’m going to marry you one day Dragnell right?”

Elizaveta/ Eliza/ Liza Ur Fullbuster

Birthday: November 23rd, 801

Magic: Water.

Appearance:

Height: 5’2 (a couple of inches shorter than Juvia who is 5’4 according to the Wiki)

Hair: Long, thick and wavy like Juvia’s, dark like Gray’s

Eyes: Juvia’s shape but dark like Gray’s

-She has the same gifted build as Juvia, but somehow a little more fragile looking

-Has her father’s smile

-Yes that beautiful beautiful smile

-Has heard from Gray that despite her strong resemblance to her mother something about her reminds him of his mother

IMPORTANT FACTS:

-Elizaveta or Eliza Ultear got her name from Juvia’s mother and obviously Ultear. Eliza is what she goes by and only those closest with her call her Liza

-Eliza was born five weeks early and this caused… problems. She was extremely sick as a baby. She ended up becoming dyslexic. Finally, it messed with her powers. She has water powers like her mother, but because she was born so early they are technically incomplete because her body isn’t completely made of water like Juvia. This means she’s not impervious to physical attacks, but she makes up for it in other ways.

-Due to being born early and being a little sickly, when she got that infamous illness all the children in the next gem see to get Ultear’s illness (I have no idea what else to call it) she got hit the worse. She actually came close to dying and Gray and Juvia were told to expect the worst.

-Because of this, despite obviously being a skilled and well trained wizard, Eliza is more known for her emotion strength and endurance rather than her physical strength (at least until she was almost an adult)

-Is definitely no ice wizard and can’t stand the cold, but did learn some tricks including how to freeze her rain into snow or freezing rain.

And yes… she is absolutely forbidden to strip under any and all circumstances unless she doesn’t want to see the outside world until she’s 30 or until Gray is dead… which ever comes first

Personality:

-Massive, huge heart of gold

-Very sweet

-Very shy and introverted

-Extremely reserved, keeps everything close to her chest like her father

-Appears laid back but is a ball of emotion and anxiety and occasional bouts of depression

-Comes off as an ethereal, sweet, Mary Jane type of dainty princess when she is anything but

-Actually, has a very snarky, sarcastic sense of humor a la Gray and is just funny like her mother.

-Is never willing to start a fight but if you push her enough she follows the same line of thought as Lila;

-Is very stubborn, moody and temperamental at times

-Very ambitious and always smiling despite everything that’s happened to her.

-Is quiet laid back with her language when she’s older and has been known to swear.

-Is also great at impressions.

-Has Juvia’s quiet astounding imagination and is definitely a dreamer.

-Is a HUGE romantic, openly reading her mother’s romance novels. Otherwise she’s very good at hiding it… mostly.

-Exceptionally smart but struggles with math and is a slow reader because of her dyslexia. She excels in history and music.

-I have a head cannon that Juvia can sing because of all the hydration she gets from having a water body, mermaids/sirens luring sailors with their voices and because apparently Juvia’s voice actress can sing. So Eliza inherited that gift but never sings on stage for the public.

RELATIONSHIPS:

-Because of how sickly she has always been, and because she was the first girl born to the guild a string of boys, and because of how bad she’s treated by kids at school, Eliza is utterly spoiled and a little coddled by all. No on one minds though because she never acts spoiled. She just loves having such a safe and warm space to fall.

-Like her brother is super close to her parents.

-Juvia is her rock and the pair are inseparable.

-She is also daddy’s littler girl though don’t you ever get her to admit it. They love joking around with each other and just talking.

-She adores and idolizes her big brother-her Nicky Bear. She always wanted to follow him around and do what he did-which after a certain point would get on his nerves. She also sometimes get annoyed with how protective he can be. They can both be a little possessive over each other and their parents. As mentioned before they have many of the same personality traits but express them in different ways, so they bicker a lot. But in the end she would be lost without him.

-Like her mother Eliza was unfortunately bullied badly by kids outside the guild and even more unfortunate a few kids in the guild. So her three closest friends are Lila Dragnell, Hazel Redfox and much to her chagrin Iggy Dragnell.

-Iggy is the only person who can flare her temper on the daily and who she has fought with-he never fights with more than words but from time to time she will blast him with water just to get him to leave her alone. He is more or less the annoying younger brother she never asked for but similar to her own brother would be lost without him.

-And before you ask no she has not and will never have a crush or any romantic feelings for Iggy… but Simon Scarlet on the other hand….

-Has a love hate relationship with Happy after he was flying her around ounce and dropped her from pretty high up which gave her a fear of heights.

All right my lovelies!! That is it for this round! I’ll be back soon... hopefully with the next ship!!!

GAJEELX LEVY!!!

#fairy tail #fairy tail next generation #gray fullbuster #Juvia Lockser #Gray X Juvia #gruvia #Headcanon #ocs #super long #this is gonna take forever

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alj4890 · 3 years

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Prompt Request

(Thomas Hunt x OC*Amanda) taken from A Second Chance storyline with the prompt, things you said when you thought I was asleep as requested by @krsnlove

(Thomas Hunt x OC*Amanda) in a Choices Red Carpet Diaries drabble.

A/N I had a few ideas about this prompt for these two in this particular AU and finally decided on this one. I always loved how awkward Thomas starts out as a father in this particular AU, even though Kathleen immediately adores him. I thought this prompt would be perfect after Amanda tells him they are now expecting twins.

@lxaah11 @alleksa16 @penguininapinktuxedo @blackcoffee85 @stopforamoment @hopefulmoonobject @krsnlove @annekebbphotography @hopelessromantic1352 . @sunflowergirl05 @desireepow-1986 @greywitchyshots @lilyoffandoms @moodyvalentinestories @emceesynonymroll @my-heart-beats-for-ya @aworldoffandoms @ab1901 @flyawayboo @i-bloody-love-drake-walker . @trappedinfanfiction @kate-mckenzie @cordoniaqueensworld @everythingmarvelsherlockspn

Masterlist

Introduction

"Pregnant?" Thomas breathed. "Are you certain?"

Amanda handed him one of the ultrasounds. She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet while keeping her hands behind her back.

He stared down at the alien like creature, unsure what he was exactly looking at.

"That's the first one." She said softly.

He tilted the photo, squinting at the lumpy potato like figure.

She placed another image on top of that one. "And this is its twin."

Thomas froze in the midst of hoping this new image would actually resemble a human baby.

"Twin?" His eyes searched her face to see if she was joking. "We're having twins now?"

She nodded, waiting on him to say how thrilled he was. "Quarantine has been a very productive time for us."

Thomas collapsed on the sofa while looking once more at this plot twist they had created.

Amanda bit her lip and eased down beside him. "You are happy, aren't you?"

"I am, exceedingly so." He placed his arm around her, hugging her close to his side. "I'm simply in a great deal of shock." He blinked a few times as the images blurred. "I expected us to get pregnant since we were trying but nothing remotely like multiples crossed my mind."

"Aren't you excited?" Amanda prodded. "You missed out on so much during Kathleen's infancy and toddlerhood. Now you'll get to experience it with double the fun."

"Twins." He repeated. "We're having twins.

Thomas caused a startled laugh to escape her lips when he surprised her with a passionate kiss.

"You," he smiled at her, "are the master of surprises when it comes to our children."

*************

"When will they get here?" Kathleen asked. "Will they look the same? Will I have two brothers or two sisters?"

"Hold on, sweetheart." Amanda laughed at all the questions that were tumbling out. "We won't know for a few months what they are. But they should be here later this summer."

"I can't wait!" Kathleen studied the ultrasounds then glanced at her mother's stomach. "I wish we could see them."

"We might not be able to see them yet, but that doesn't mean we can't talk to them." Amanda explained. "I used to talk to you all the time when I was pregnant."

Thomas lowered the pregnancy book he was reading. "Isn't it a little early for them to hear?" He flipped a few pages back. "Says here that the ears don't develop until around fourteen to sixteen weeks."

"That never stopped me." Amanda shrugged. "I was talking to Kathleen from the moment the pregnancy test came out positive."

"You were?" Kathleen beamed at that. "What did you say?"

"All sorts of things." Amanda cuddled her close. "I would read books to you. Tell you what I was doing. Shared stories about my life. Pleaded with you to let me eat my favorite foods." She made her daughter laugh when she tickled her. "And you let your opinion be heard loud and clear on that last one."

"What should I tell them?" Kathleen asked.

"Whatever you want." Amanda replied. "You could always introduce yourself. Talk about your day. Anything, really."

Kathleen leaned down and said hello. "I'm your sister and I like..." She went through all the different things she liked from dance classes to only ketchup on her hamburgers.

Thomas watched her with a soft smile on his face. He didn't know which he loved seeing more: Amanda's unmistakable joy or Kathleen's sweet excitement.

"Aren't you going to talk to them, Daddy?" Kathleen asked.

He hesitated. "Of course."

His two ladies simply stared at him in anticipation.

"Right now?" He thought it was a little silly to talk to his wife's slight baby bump. "I think I'll wait until they can clearly hear me."

His wife and daughter both had identical expressions of confusion with just a hint of disappointment on their faces.

Unable to take another moment of letting either of his ladies down, he moved over to the couch and cleared his throat.

"Good evening." He searched for something else to say.

"Talk through Mommy's bellybutton, Daddy." Kathleen told him.

"It isn't a microphone." Amanda's belly trembled with her suppressed laughter.

"It might be." Kathleen scrunched her shoulders while smiling at her parents. "Daddy, tell them you make movies."

Feeling heat rise up the back of his neck, Thomas tried to follow her directions as he spoke a few more times.

He felt ridiculous.

Sensing his inability to think of topics to discuss, Amanda told Kathleen that it was bedtime to end this awkward session for him.

After accompanying them upstairs, Thomas escaped to his study under the guise of needing to work on his upcoming online lecture series.

*****************

Later that night, he climbed the stairs to check on them.

Kathleen was fast asleep with her fairy lights on a slow twinkle speed. He gently tucked the covers around her, grinning when she snuggled further under them.

He then went in search of Amanda.

Thomas found his wife already asleep in their bedroom. He carefully removed the novel she had been reading from under her hands and marked her spot for her. He reached to turn the lamp off but paused when his attention drifted down to her stomach.

With one last glance to make certain his wife was asleep, he knelt by her side of the bed and started to talk to their unborn children.

"Forgive me for that lackluster introduction earlier this evening. I'm not certain how we should go about this. I've never enjoyed one-sided conversations. Lectures are fine, but it does help to see the person's face while speaking directly to them. Not that it is either of your faults that you can't interact with me yet. For all I know you are responding in some manner and I am simply unaware of it."

He rubbed a hand down his face as he struggled to find something worthwhile to say to his children. "In case I forgot to mention who I am, I'm Thomas...your father." He softly groaned at his unrelenting awkwardness. "Of course, that is most likely a given since you already heard my voice and those of your mother and sister."

He checked once more to see if Amanda was still asleep before continuing. His gaze touched on her lips parted in sleep, her long eyelashes, the rosy tint of her cheeks.

With a smile dawning on his face, he leaned closer to her belly. "Perhaps I should tell you about how I met your mother."

He lowered his voice. "It was late one evening at a party. I should pause here and state for the record that I usually don't enjoy attending those type of events. But it was hosted by someone I actually consider a friend, therefore I was forced to accept the invitation."

He rolled his eyes at the memory of Ryan wearing him down. "Back to the party, I was standing off in a corner in an attempt to avoid another confrontation with a woman I had previously dated." He cleared his throat. "That might need to remain between us. Your mother is unaware of the reason why I was hiding out in dark corners that night. Anyway, I happened to overhear an argument from a couple that were a few feet away from me."

"Well, I thought they were a couple." Thomas muttered. "But in reality the man was a friend of your mother's and one who shares my dislike of crowded events."

He paused there so that he could carefully climb into bed without disturbing Amanda.

"Where was I? Ah. Yes. One look at your mother had me tempted to leave my hiding spot. There was something about her that I have never been able to find a clear explanation for. There still is that something that captures and holds my attention with little effort on her part. It isn't simply her beauty or her personality. Perhaps it is some combination of the two along with that mysterious element that continuously draws me to her. You will most likely notice it too once you are here with us."

He tilted his head in thought. "I wonder if you will inherit such a trait." Smiling at the notion, he continued. "So there I was, ready to take a chance of being caught by a woman I didn't care for just for a chance to meet a woman I was instantly attracted to. And it seemed that fortune smiled once more upon me."

He could see the memory so clearly in his mind: Amanda's glittery black dress that shimmered in the light with each movement. The intelligence in her eyes as she quietly observed the party. The peacefulness she somehow exuded while laughter and conversations filled the air.

"Her friend left, claiming to need a drink if he was to endure another hour or two of the party. Your mother then moved further into the shadows near where I was to sit down. There was an empty chair next to her and I asked if I might join her."

When Amanda shifted in her sleep, he lowered his voice. "When she smiled at me, it seemed that all I had been looking for in life was finally in one place. I knew in that moment that this chance meeting was something special. I decided then and there to waste not a single second in doing my utmost to charm her into my arms. And lucky for me, I succeeded."

He noticed how late it was. "I will go into further detail about my winning your mother another night. For now though, know that you both are a part of the best thing to ever happen to me. First off was falling in love with Amanda and winning hers in return. Discovering I had a daughter came next. And now you complete the very definition of my happiness. I will do all within my power to be the father you both need." His lips curved into a smile. "And I can't wait to meet you."

Thomas pressed a feather light kiss to Amanda's stomach and then a tender one to her cheek. Muffling a yawn, he left the bed to change clothes in their bathroom.

When the door clicked shut, Amanda opened her eyes.

"See little ones. I told you your father is endearingly sweet." She whispered. "He just needed a little more time to show it."

#thomas hunt #choices thomas hunt #a second chance #thomas hunt x oc #thomas hunt x amanda #choices red carpet diaries #choices stories you play #rcd thomas hunt

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

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People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

- Edgar Degas

It’s hard to believe but in some ways, ballet was despised in Degas’ time. Despite this - or perhaps because of this - Degas made ballerinas the central theme of his artwork. I have always wondered why.

Whilst Degas loved to deflate the image people had of him, his words in the quote above ring true.

As a student Degas dreamed of drawing like Raphael and Michelangelo, and he later revived the French tradition of pastels that had flourished with the 18th-century master Chardin. But like his contemporaries, Manet, Cézanne and the Impressionists, he lived in an age of photography and electricity, and he turned to aspects of modern life - to slums, brothels and horse races - to apply his draftsmanship. Bathing nudes became a favorite subject, but he once compared his more contemporary studies to those of Rembrandt with mocking wit. “He had the luck, that Rembrandt!” Degas said. “He painted Susanna at the bath; me, I paint women at the tub.”

At the ballet Degas found a world that excited both his taste for classical beauty and his eye for modern realism. He haunted the wings and classrooms of the magnificent Palais Garnier, home of the Paris Opéra and its Ballet, where some of the city’s poorest young girls struggled to become the fairies, nymphs and queens of the stage. As he became part of this world of pink and white, so full of tradition, he invented new techniques for drawing and painting it. He claimed the ballet for modern art just as Cézanne was claiming the landscape.

The ballerinas Degas bequeathed to the world remain among the most popular images in 19th-century art. He cropped his pictures as a photographer would (and also became one); he defied traditional composition, opting for asymmetry and radical viewpoints; and he rubbed pastels over his monotype (or one-of-a-kind) prints, creating dramatic effects. Yet he always managed to keep an eye on the great masters of the past.

Degas’ friend, the French poet Paul Valéry, described Degas as, “divided against himself; on the one hand driven by an acute preoccupation with truth, eager for all the newly introduced and more or less felicitous ways of seeing things and of painting them; on the other hand possessed by a rigorous spirit of classicism, to whose principles of elegance, simplicity and style he devoted a lifetime of analysis.”

Though Degas exhibited his work with the Impressionists, his realism always set him apart. “Drawing is not the same as form; it is a way of seeing form.” He said, as a proud representative of impressionist art. With his discerning eye, Degas depicted the highly romanticised world of dance with a strong sense of realism.

Degas’s pictures of ballerinas performing onstage convey exquisitely what makes ballet ballet—all that balance, grace and radiance that a contemporary critic called “mimed poetry, dream made visible.” But, paradoxically, Degas preferred to portray ballet by stripping away the poetry and illusion to show the hard work, the boredom, the more common beauty behind the scenes.

John Berger, the formidable debunking art critic, believed that what obsessed Degas was closer to what obsessed Michelangelo and Mantegna. All three were fascinated by the human capacity for martyrdom. All three wondered if it wasn't this that defined mankind. The human quality Degas most admired was endurance. Berger might be onto something because increasingly as I reflect on the art of Degas one can see why he was obsessed by the art of classical ballet, because to Degas it said something about the human condition.

#degas #quote #art #artist #france #impressionism #history #painting #valery #french

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cookie-gal · 4 years

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When I saw you're Little Mermaid AU. I instantly followed, because I'm a big fan of Disney and Pokemon, also what about Sleeping Beauty with WaterLilyShipping?

Waterlilyshipping and Sleeping Beauty. I can work with that and I'm trash for waterlilyshipping.

☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

• King Kabu and Queen Melony finally had their first child, Prince Milo (Sorry Gordie, I love you. Maybe next time)

• They wanted a child for the longest time and now that they have one. They are celebrating his birth with the biggest party ever and everyone is invited

• A neighboring kingdom that they are in alliance with had a child around the same time, about a month into the preparation for birthday celebration. It was a little girl named Nessa

• To strengthen their alliance, it was decided that Milo and Nessa are to marry when they are 21 and the betrothal will be announced at the Milo's celebration party

• To no one's suprise, the good fairies arrived to the party to give gifts to Milo. There were 7 good fairies.

• First Great Fairy Opal gave her gift to Milo. The gift of Peace. He will be always be a peaceful person.

• Leon gave Milo his gift next. The gift of Harmony as in Milo will be friends with everything, pokemon, human and creature

• Then Raihan gave his gift, the gift of strength. This boy will be swol.

• Bea's gift to Milo was endurance to go along with his strength

• Peirs' gift was voice. Milo will sing like an angel.

• Marnie's gift was optimism. She thought that was very important and wants this boy to be a sunshine child.

• Bede's gift was intelligence. He wants Milo to be a fast learner

• Then there was Gordie. He struggled for weeks thinking of a gift to give but he couldn't find one.

• "I give you the gift of fashion, no that sounds dumb. The gift of sneezing with his eyes opened, no that's even dumber.." etc etc

• Suddenly, with ominous wind entering the room, Oleana, the evil fairy entered

• Years prior, she was defeated by Kabu and was banished from the kingdoms. But Kabu couldn't kill Oleana since if she dies, Opal dies. They two fairies are twins and their magic is intertwined. Opal said she wouldn't want die until the other fairies, who she sees as her children, are ready to thrive without her help.

• "I am here to give a gift to the brat and you can't stop me." She hovers over Milo, "He's a cutie. It would such a shame if he were to die early."

• "Listen all, and listen well! The prince will indeed grow with peace and beauty. Beloved by all that know him. But before the sunset on his 21st birthday, he will prick his finger on a spindle of a spinning wheel and die!"

• She leaves and chaos breaks out. No one can believe that the prince will die so soon.

• Opal can't undo the spell because since birth the two can't undo each other's spells and the other dairies are too weak to undo the spell.

• Gordie piped in, "I haven't given Milo my gift yet. I know I can't undo Oleana's spell, but I can alter it."

• "Sweet Prince, if through this wicked witch’s trick, a spindle should your finger prick. A ray of hope there still may be in this, the gift I give to thee. Not in death, but in sleep. That's what the prophecy will keep. And from this slumber you shall wake, with true love’s kiss, the spell shall break"

• For safety of their son, Kabu and Melony ordered that all the spinning wheels in the kingdom were destroyed. They could just import flax and make clothes. They got most if their money from exporting foods. Those that had jokes spinning fibers into treads, the couple offered them new jobs.

• But the fear of Oleana kidnapping Milo was still there. The fairies argued for hours over what to do next. Bea suggested fighting Oleana, Bede suggested making a deal with her. Etc.

• Leon made a suggestion, "This is probably the most heart breaking suggestion but it's the only way to secure Milo's safety. Raihan, Piers, Gordie, and I will raise Milo as our nephew away from civilization. We will all go by different names and Milo will be returned to his parents the night of his 21st birthday."

• After discussing this further, Kabu and Melony reluctantly agreed. It was for Milo's safety. When he was 3 years old, The squad took him and went to live in a cottage deep in the Slumbering Weald

• The squad could no longer use their magic and they also had hid their wings which meant they could no longer fly.

• They all went by new names. Leon was now Dande, Raihan was Kibana, Piers was Nerio, Gordie was Morris, and Milo was Percy

• Milo grew into a fine young man. He was handsome, charming, and has the biggest heart. He was basically a sunshine child and a gentle giant.

• It took some time for the fairies to get used to using no magic, but they managed.

• To survive, they would raise wooloo, mareeps, and other pokemon to sell wool and other goods. They also farmed fruits and vegetables to sell. They cared and love each and every pokemon. Milo was never allowed to go and sell the goods with his uncles though.

• Over time, Milo met a young girl that called herself Rurina. She was smart and sassy girl that loved to go out to fish and explore the forest and its lakes.

• They became fast friends and loved each others company.

• Milo showed her all the pokemon he raises, she taught him how to swim and fish. He taught her about vegetables and berries, she taught him about seashells. They would dance together by the lake for fun. Etc.

• Though Milo got bummed out when she would leave before sunset, which mean she couldn't stay for dinner. He couldn't go with her when she invited him to her home to eat dinner because his uncles never let him out of the forest.

• When Milo was about 16, she stopped showing up to the forest which made him super sad

• They secretly had crushes on each other

• Then Milo's 21st birthday. The squad had Milo go out into the forest to pick so many berries that the basket will over flow, just to keep Milo out of the cottage long enough so they can get everything ready.

• The plan was to make Milo a nice prince outfit and a huge birthday cake. But here's the thing, they are bad at making things.

• They usually always bought clothes at the markets once they finished selling their goods.

• The fact that they survived 18 years without magic is a miracle.

• Piers and Raihan tried to make the outfit as they bickered over the color but it looked like a hot mess. Poor Gordie was the model for the outfit. Meanwhile Leon tried to make a 21 layered cake that needed a broom to be held up. They should have had Gordie bake the cake instead of Leon.

• Enough was enough and busted out their magic wands after they closed and barricaded the house so no one can see the magic.

• Round two had better results. Piers made the outfit, Raihan cleaned the house, Gordie made a crown for Milo, and Leon made the beautiful cake, with only 5 layers this time.

• Raihan was bitter over not making the outfit and the outfit was PINK. The outfit for Milo should be BLUE. And a battle over color broke out between Piers and Raihan. Gordie and Leon minded their own business.

• Unfortunately the battle of colors caused magic to seep out from the chimney and a murkrow that was owned by Oleana saw this a reported it to her.

• She had been hunting down Miko for the past 18 years so her curse will come true.

• Meanwhile in the forest, Milo ran into his friend Rurina again after all these years. His heart fluttered because she became even more beautiful than he remembered. They caught up and danced by the lake like when were younger.

• Milo invited her over to the cottage to join him in celebrating his birthday. She agreed and Milo ran off to the cottage because he needs to help with making dinner like usual.

• Milo was greeted by his uncles. They had an amazing outfit in a nice green color (Gordie changed it to Green because he was done with Piers and Raihan fighting) and a delicious cake ready.

• For his birthday his uncles are taking him somewhere special. Milo asked his he can take his friend Rurina with him but his uncles shut the idea down.

• Milo went to his room to sulk. The squad felt bad because Milo was most likely in love with Rurina but he is still betrothed to Nessa.

• Rurina went back to her home. Turns out she was Princess Nessa. She didn't want to go to the celebration of Prince Milo's return. She knows she's betrothed to him, but she never met him. She would much rather spend the day with Percy instead after all she was in love with Percy.

• She told her parents about being in love with Percy but they said no and she went like, "fine, I'm going to his humble birthday celebration anyway" and ran off into the forest again.

• Milo got dressed in the outfit and wore the crown. He felt conflicted. He was super happy and excited to finally leave the forest and see what is beyond it but he didn't want to leave the forest without Rurina.

• On foot, the group left to the castle. Milo was in a dark clock to hid his identity

• At an excluded part of the castle, they accessed the part through secret passages, Milo was to get ready for the surprise his uncles planned. Milo was still conflicted. As his uncles bickered over nothing as usual, he saw green light. He was drawn to it that he wondered off to another part of the castle.

• When the squad realized Milo was missing, they realized it was Oleana's doing. They turned back into fairies and scrambled to find him. "Percy, where are you?"

• At the top of the tower. Milo saw a spinning wheel, he never saw one in his life. Something was drawing him to prick his finger on the needle. He did that and he fell asleep.

• Once the fairies found him, Oleana was there to mock them. "He's your precious prince"

• They couldn't present the prince like this. So they placed him in a bed.

• Oleana watched them in amusement and sneared " You might want to check up on that cottage of yours again"

• Before they left to the cottage, they put the whole kingdom to sleep in order to prevent Kabu and Melony from worrying.

• At the cottage, Nessa arrived to find Milo. She was ambushed and taken to Oleana's castle and was imprisoned.

• The fairy squad ran into the other fairies and caught them up to speed of what had occurred. Opal said they must get Rurina because she must be Milo's true love and they need her to kiss Milo. When they arrived to the cottage, it was trashed and all that was left behind if Rurina was her shell necklace.

• They knew Oleana must has imprisoned her so they made their way to her castle

• Oleana had Nessa chained up and said, "I will let you kiss your Percy, aka your fiance Milo, and break his curse, but I won't do that til 100 years have passed." Nessa cursed at Oleana but she left cackling

• The fairies came in on the scene freed Nessa.

• "So Ririna is actually Nessa and you four didn't know." Opal glared. "We never actually met her. We only got descriptions about her from Milo."

• They caught Nessa up to speed and now they must kill Oleana. Opal said she accepted her death so she's okay with it

• They got Nessa armor, a sword and shield, and a rapidash to help her on her mission.

• Upon arriving to the kingdom's entrance, Oleana casted a spell to have torns and vines grow all over the kingdom to prevent Nessa from entering. She managed to get in but now she must kill Oleana.

• Oleana took the form of a mighty Salamance and Nessa had to fight it. The fairies blessed her sword and shield to be able to kill Oleana. After a long battle, Nessa plunged the sword into Oleana's heart.

• Opal held her heart and collapsed. She was dying. All the fairies cried and she looked at all of them and said how proud she was of them. When her eyes closed, she turned into a bouquet of beautiful and exotic flowers.

• Nessa was then guided up to Milo's tower and kissed him, that was something she always wanted to do. Milo woke up and everyone else in the kingdom too.

• Nessa was super happy she gets to marry her true love Milo aka her Percy and same with Milo.

• The two got married, Milo was reunited with his family, Bede was chosen to step up as the new Great Fairy, Nessa was honored as Oleana's slayer, and they all lived happily ever after.

67 notes · View notes

qm-vox · 5 years

Text

So You Want To Play An Elemental

(Re-used portrait of Colors Eriksdotter, the Warlock Knight, provided by Domochevsky. Catch her in New Avalon, where she’s the protagonist of Cinderella Sanction Quest.)

Previous articles: So You Want To Play A Beast & So You Want To Play A Wizened

Author’s Note: You’d think the hard part of writing this article would have been refuting basically every canon depiction of Elementals in Changeling: the Lost 1e, but instead it was the bit where I tried to write my lived experiences with autism. While not all Elementals need to be autistic or represent autism, they as a Seeming are pretty good at it, and I’ve written this article with that in mind. That said, the experiences I’m drawing from are my own and those of close friends, and are therefore not even close to being universal, to say nothing of me running my mouth about other kinds of troubles Elementals might metaphorically (or literally) represent. While I’ve made every effort to talk to folks who’ve lived these experiences and to write about them with respect, I recognize that I may well have fucked up. I invite you to let me know if that’s the case.

The stories all agree; you do not want the attention of the Lords and Ladies. Be polite, stay humble, mind your manners. It goes a lot further, of course: don’t stand out, don’t be special, don’t rock the boat. Some say that the purpose of these fairy tales is to reinforce societal mores, but those the Lost know as Elementals have been the victims of those tales firsthand. Taken for a purpose, transformed to fulfill it, they face the task of rebuilding lives in a world they only half belong to. Of all the Lost, even Beasts, it is Elementals who struggle most with human society.

This article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost, as well as Winter Masques and Swords at Dawn. Other sources, when used, will be cited. It requires Content Warnings for depictions of torture, maiming, abuse, and transformation.

The Remade - Elemental Overview

Elemental is the third Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost, and joins Beast in being almost as defined by Kith as it is by its Seeming. Elemental is unusual in that it is commonly represented in printed material (Elemental characters with stat blocks appear in Changeling: the Lost, Night Horrors: Grim Fears, and The Rose Bride’s Plight), but also commonly and egregiously misused and mischaracterized. As a result, more than the prior two articles, this one must directly address some of the way White Wolf chose to write Elementals and refute them as examples of the Seeming.

A stunning variety of people become Elementals, but generally speaking any given person was selected for their fate. Unlike the opportunistic kidnappings that mark Beasts and Wizened, Elementals are those whom the Fae sought for some specific purpose or trait, which either served as the catalyst for their later transformation or was enhanced by that same transformation. Infused with the thoughts and feelings of inanimate matter - rushing rivers, whispering winds, forge-hot silver, cold earth, crackling lightning, and more - Elementals gain a distance from humanity that they are never again to bridge. To be Elemental is to be alien even among the Lost, and for those without help it’s all too easy to become a stranger in their own homes.

Nature In Revolt - Homecoming As An Elemental

With few exceptions, most Elementals can eventually point to a singular moment in which they were transformed into what they are. Though all Lost experience shattered, faded, and absent memories of the Fairest of Lands when they first have their Homecoming, the moment of transformation is among the earliest memories Elementals recover. The vehicle of that transformation varies - sweet-smelling fruit that turn humans to trees, vats of molten glass into which their living bones were dipped, vast farms of lightning-trees to which humans are lashed until the levin-bolts enter their souls, and more - but the essence of the moment is the same. Some part of the human soul calves away like ice from a berg, and the Wyrd that rushes into its place is brimming with the will of the inanimate. It could be a singular moment, over almost as soon as it’s begun, or a gradual one (as is the case for the rare passive transformations one finds among Kiths such as Earthbones), but that was the moment at which an Elemental was born.

What happens after depends very much on why any given Elemental was taken and why they were transformed. For some Keepers it’s a matter of pure practicality; the Elemental’s new form is necessary to exist in their Domains (such as the Shining Network and the City of Brass, both in Winter Masques), and without those modifications they would be useless for the Fae’s purpose - or dead, which amounts to the same thing. Many passive transformations are similar to this as well; Snowskins who adopt the ice to survive their duties in the wild tundra, Earthbones who dig until digging runs through their living veins, and Waterborn who choose transformation instead of death share a lot of bones with those who were reshaped before beginning their dread tasks. In other cases, though, the transformation is the logical (well, “logical”) extension of what their Keeper wanted them for to begin with. A bored Page of the Stacks steals a bright-voiced human boy to serve her as a lantern in her dark domains and ignites him from the soul outward; the Screaming Demon ‘rewards’ the luckless gym teacher who beat him in a yelling contest by making her an Airtouched with bottomless lungs. These Elementals share uncomfortable commonalities with the Fairest, who sometimes flock to them once the gap in communications between the two Seemings can be bridged.

Some of the most unfortunate are transformed because they wish to be. The Fae are not above openly offering their ‘gifts’ to others, and for those bending and breaking under the weight of inhuman expectations, inhuman abilities can seem like a godsend. But whether it’s a college student pacting for an all-too-literal ‘enlightenment’, an athlete offered the chance to run ‘like the wind’, or a broken-hearted romantic who takes the hand of a Fae selling a cold heart, the consequences of these deals are never clear up front - and there are no take-backs in the Fairest of Lands. Elementals who suffered this fate often drift towards Summer or Autumn, and throw themselves into the mortal world besides, driven to ensure that no one else is forced to endure the torments that made them other than human.

In Arcadia proper, the transformations Elementals endure are often much more extreme than the ones they bear when they emerge from the Thorns. This forms the first obstacle to a potential escape; an Elemental must recall human form, human emotions, human perspective. Where a Beast loses their reason and intelligence, Elementals lose some vital part of themselves, the part which knows how to speak to other human things and be heard by them, to understand what they do and why they do it, and it is this they must grasp once more in the wounded halls of their soul before they can once again yearn for the mortal world. Those who yearn without remembering end up as hobgoblins when they finally breach into the Hedge, or else dissolve entirely once they have well and truly broken the oaths that hold their new forms together. On the other side of human perspective is the memory of human flesh, and part of almost every Elemental’s escape is the incomplete transformation back into a form of flesh once more.

The escapes themselves are often spectacularly violent. Elementals wield great power over their elements and are, by their nature, surrounded by it during their Durance. An Elemental’s fragmented memories of escapes might be marked by revolts fought alongside their fellow slaves while tame flames consume the soldiers of their master, obedient earthquakes opening ways into the underground of the Hedge, duels of water and ice whose backblasts can cleave steel, and more. For those who cannot escape their memories of this godlike power, the Autumn Court beckons, but for most of the others the fear those recollections evoke is enough reason to quietly pack them away and think about them as little as possible. Still, even the meekest Elemental is the person who performed those acts of sorcerous violence, and their fellows among the Lost quickly learn to respect that capability in those who make it home at last.

The memories that draw an Elemental home can be different from what they or others expect, at least in part due to the nature of their transformation. The infusion of the inanimate shifts the emphasis in recollections of the mortal world, calling to mind thoughts of Earth’s manifestations of the elements. A Fireheart may well want to return home to her loving family, but the memories she has of that family which stand out will often feature fire in some way; candlelit dinners, camping trips with her brothers around a crackling fire, shivering with her wife in front of a space heater in their apartment after the gas bill came up bust. An Airtouched thinks of long walks through whispering woods, sitting on the porch with his mother while a tornado rips its way across a distant street, the cool breeze through a classroom window on the day he crushed his SATs. The mortals these Elementals once were remember those events in a different light, but who they’ve become has an undeniable connection to their element and the call of Earth - for better or worse - is also about the relationship humans have with that element. They may not have asked to have the breeze put in their soul, but the winds of Earth still taste like home in a way those of Arcadia can’t.

By Your Powers Combined, I Am - Elemental Kiths

It’s telling that the common bonds that unite Elementals are almost all about the downsides of their experience. Their Seeming blessing enables them to temporarily display inhuman endurance, but without access to more or less immediate healing any situation that requires its use has already killed the Elemental and they just don’t know it yet. Still, the grim prospect of exactly how dead you have to kill one of them before they die does inform how other Seemings - especially the more violent ones such as Darklings and Ogres - treat Elementals. It pays to remain polite when the other guy can afford to die more dead than you can.

On the negative side, Elementals consistently have problems with, not to put too fine a point on it, being human people. All Lost have urges that are inhuman and suffered inhuman abuse, but for Elementals relating to other people - even other Lost - can be supremely difficult. Their Seeming curse hits all rolls based on Manipulation, as well as those based on Empathy, Persuasion, Socialize, and Subterfuge; that is to say, when it comes to social skills Elementals only display human-level competence in Intimidation, rearing animals, and, for some reason, criminal networking (Streetwise). While Elementals, much like Beasts, are not wholly incapable, their social skills will fall consistently behind a mortal with equal values - and, much like Beasts, this tends to get Elementals seen as idiots by people who refuse to understand their struggle (in some ways moreso; struggling with math is relatable to many people, but struggling with social cues can get the taste slapped out of your mouth right fuckin’ quick).

How this manifests varies widely from Elemental to Elemental, but the common touchstone is some disconnect from societal perception. Elementals quite often come off as autistic (and are prime for representing the struggles of an autistic person, as mentioned in So You Want To Play A Wizened); they miss social cues, misread or don’t understand body language, and struggle to describe their own perceptions and experiences in a way others can understand. Some of that is just not being able to quite connect what they feel with words in a human language; some of it is that Elementals genuinely are not perceiving the same things the people around them are. How do you tell your friends about the language of mirrors without sounding like you’ve absolutely lost it? The way a steady, eroding breeze feels against your rocky skin? The color of the lightning in your veins?

This comes out in the behavior of Elementals in a variety of ways, which does not always help those outside the Seeming understand the common thread, but it’s never quite...”right”, for lack of a better word. A Woodblood with flowers growing in his skin doesn’t always reply even when you speak to him directly, and when he does talk he over-shares; others don’t know of the secrets entrusted to him in a distant Arcadian wood, and the terrible consequences for speaking. A Waterborn nymph won’t shut up even when she ought to; as a babbling brook her musical voice soothed the rages of her Keeper. A heavyset Earthbones, thick with mud and rent with craggy scars, has trouble not touching people, as if he’s afraid they’ll slide away; his friend, a Fireheart, shrieks at the tiniest human contact and flashes knives to keep you away from her precious wick and its life-giving flame. A Snowskin’s volume goes up and down with the ambient light; an Airtouched can’t seem to stop just picking up objects to stare at them in fascination. In all of these cases, the root problem is the same - disconnection from societal expectations - even though the causes of those problems are different. The challenge that Elementals face in their recovery is not to pass as “normal” - no Lost can really do that for long anyway - but to find a medium between their rights and needs and the rights & needs of those around them.

Like Beasts, Elementals are essentially defined by their Kiths, in some senses even more than by their Seeming. Though a Fireheart and a Waterborn have things in common, the experiences that gave them those commonalities are likely to be so different as to be essentially alien to one another. An Airtouched is more likely to feel like she has things to talk about with, say, a Runnerswift Beast or a Windwing than she is to immediately realize she has touchstones with a local Snowskin witch. Mechanically, the Kiths themselves are a pretty even mix of ‘almost entirely related to the folklore’ and ‘almost entirely the physical property of being This Thing’. Some, like Beast’s, are begging for Dual Kith or other Merits to round out certain archetypes, but not all of them.

Some thoughts on the individual Elemental Kiths follow:

Airtouched - Do you like to go fast? Fleet of Foot not cutting the mustard for you any more? Runnerswift is too slow? Airtouched is here to help you. In a game where combat is often decided at the point when initiative is rolled, the potential to add 1-9 to your Initiative if you pick your chicken right means the chance to decide a lot more combats. The Speed boost isn’t anything to sneeze at either (and is applicable to a lot more situations than just murder). Thematically, Airtouched are meant to represent spirits of the air, but their sheer speed doesn’t do it for all such representations, especially in the realm of storms, gales, and other destructive manifestations of the firmament. If your Airtouched concept bends that direction, consider investing in Contracts of Stone, the Giant Size merit, Dual Kithing out (Earthbones, in-seeming, can provide great out-of-combat strength, while Hunterheart & Razorhand could work wonders for you as a more murderous spirit), the Lethal Mien merit, or any combination of the above.

Earthbones - Elemental does Ogre; Earthbones are great for puzzles and problems that can be solved with physical force but which are not in some way murder-related, and strike a solid image of various earthen beings with basically no add-ons. That said, Earthbones also makes a fantastic Dual Kith option for other Elemental Kiths that you might want to use to embody large & strong versions of themselves (such as a glacial Snowskin or a towering Waterborn with the soul of a tsunami).

Fireheart - This is the first Kith where it’s great for thematic reasons but kinda weird for physical ones. Firehearts can burn Glamour for Wits rolls, which makes them great at bursts of perception, quick thought, and cunning, but also sorta bad at being fire. Now, that could very well be a feature! A character used as a candle, a torch, a hearth-fire, a forge beast, might not embody the destructive potential of flame and you may have no need to do so; even if you do, Elements (Fire) is a lot of destructive potential. Should you want to draw that out a little more, consider Lethal Mien as an option, possibly alongside a Dual Kith into Draconic. If the fire you’re interested in is one of renewal or purification, look into the Goblin Contracts of Sacrifice and/or Contracts of Hearth, and if pyromancy is your game it’s hard to beat Contracts of Omen.

Manikin - I wanted to love Manikin, I really did, but I can’t. It’s trash. It’s absolute trash, not just because Artifice is essentially only half a contract (see So You Want To Be A Wizened) but because the other half of their Blessing is completely negated by having any ranks in Craft to begin with. I don’t even know where to start on suggesting a fix for this, but if you’re dead-set on it, maybe look to Shadowsoul for inspiration, as it’s the other Kith that does what Manikin tried to do.

Snowskin - Elemental does Fairest. Appropriately enough, Snowskin shares Fireheart’s potential problem of being very strong in the folklore (its icy social focus is shared by many of the mythic beings you might want to emulate) but very weak on the ‘embodying the element itself’ back end. Snowskins are great candidates for overtly sorcerous Elementals, not just because of those social bonuses but because they get less out of the classic Elemental contracts (Elements and Communion) and a lot more out of Contracts such as Wild, Eternal Autumn (or Winter), and Smoke which provide powers traditionally associated with the lords of frost and snow. A note: Snowskin does not have the same mechanical exemption that Chatelaine does, which means that its bonus of getting 9-again on Subterfuge meets the Elemental curse of not getting 10-again and evens out to having no bonus or penalty. Even then, though, the Intimidate end of things is pretty legit.

Waterborn - Remember Swimmerskin? This is Swimmerskin but as an Elemental. The three water-based Kiths are all fairly alike, so there’s not really a lot for me to say here.

Woodblood - Elemental Does Darkling, Badly. Don’t get me wrong, the actual bonuses are great, but getting access to them is incredibly situational and unlike Snowskin who can, with investment, eventually create the conditions for their more restricted abilities themselves, Woodbloods can’t just grow plants where no plants are no matter how hard they try - which is a shame, since Woodblood is absolutely amazing for many concepts! Talk to your Storyteller before you select this Kith and see where your Chronicle might be taking you. Semi-regular expeditions into the Hedge, a more rural Freehold, or even a traveling Chronicle are all great chances for Woodblood to shine.

Blightbent - You remember how Venombite is cool but kinda a late bloomer? Blightbent is more or less in the same camp; the bonus against man-made toxins is a solid additional bonus, but rolling against Armor, Defense, and Stamina is a losing game both just in general and in a world where shotguns exist. Blightbent’s a really cool concept but even beyond the Kith blessing problem is begs some questions about how you parse out your choices for Contracts of Elements and/or Communion. You’re probably better off flavoring another Kith as a polluted aspect of itself and leaving this one on the table.

Levinquick - Thematically, Levinquick is the physical fire/lightning to Fireheart’s metaphorical fire/lightning. Mechanically they’re solid enough; situationally better than Runnerswift, but at a cost. At low Wyrd, though, that duration on their Blessing is gonna kick your ass if you don’t pick your chicken right. For the cost and duration, you’re better off running an Airtouched with a stormy theme, which is a damn shame because Levinquick is just such a cool idea in theory.

Sandharrowed - When I find an RPG that has a functional grapple system, I will let y’all know. As it stands, Sandharrowed’s Blessing is both incredibly narrow (even if grappling DID work, which it absolutely does not) and kinda a head-scratcher as far as physical themes or metaphorical ones go. I really don’t know what to suggest here beyond ‘anything but this’. Airtouched, Dual Kithing into Earthbones maybe? Air/Fire? Something.

You’re the Queen? Well I Didn’t Vote For You - Lost’s Canon Elementals

So: Elementals are quite bad at all social situations, and especially in those required for leadership considering that their penalty to Empathy makes it harder for them to detect bullshit, be judges of character, recognize the needs of their subjects, and get into the minds of their enemies. That in mind, what are the canon Elementals in the run of Changeling: the Lost 1e - ‘canon’ in this context meaning with fully available statistics that make them ready to use?

- Jack Tallow, a Spring Court Fireheart, who is...primarily Social...spending his time openly inciting revolution against Grandfather Thunder and attempting to talk his way out of trouble. Okay. Like, he’s bad at it and this is the sample character, the example White Wolf gives of how you yourself should make characters (a bad example, at that), but surely the next will be - - Rose Thorn, the Queen of Spring in Miami and a Woodblood, who is known for her...inspiring leadership...and...empathy...hold up...

- Grandfather Thunder, the King of Endless Summer, another Fireheart Elemental. THIS guy is known for his cunning, tactical acumen, ruthless ambition, and raw, unbridled rage. He’s probably the only one of the lot that’s a plausible Elemental ruler. It helps that Thunder was a founding Freehold member, but Summer’s strict chain of command and tendency to favor Mental and Physical attributes over Social in leadership definitely does him favors here.

- Aeolian (The Rose Bride’s Plight), a Spring Airtouched, also a Queen, who for reasons never broken down in the adventure has a dice pool of fucking SIXTEEN to try and trap people into Pledges. She is an abusive and nakedly evil Queen who enslaves her subjects with the word-bond and is known for her fast-talking and being good at all the things Elementals are bad at but surely our last one will be an iconic and helpful example of an Elemental, ri-

- Green-Eyed Gerta, the Queen of Jealousy, ANOTHER Spring monarch and our second evil one: a seductive (???) and charming (??????) Mannikin with a severe abandonment complex, who pacted with a Fae to drive a former lover mad.

And that’s it. That’s all the printed Elementals. And with maybe one exception, who comes from fucking Miami, a setting that should not have been written at the time it was for reasons I might get into in its own article, they’re all garbage. That one exception, Grandfather Thunder, is still an unusual case in and of himself, and as a result should not have been the only fucking poster child of this Seeming.

But Vox, you say, surely this is one of the reasons you’re writing this article? Well, yeah, it is, but I bring it up specifically because for the other Seemings there’s at least a solid base to start with in terms of canon representation. You can look at other Fairest, or Darklings, or Beasts that have been published and get a bit of an idea of what they’re “usually” like. That doesn’t mean yours has to be or even should be like that, but it does form a helpful point for discussion and inspiration! But Elemental has no such point of reference, and for a Seeming as incredibly diverse as it can be, such a reference point is more, not less, valuable. Unfortunately, WW’s writing advice in nWoD 1e had this tendency to encourage players to create characters that were, well...bad. Uninvolved in the plot, incompetent at their supposed specialties, disconnected from the game world, or some godawful combination of the above, and it is with this in mind that I want to counsel you to just kinda studiously ignore the published Elementals. It’s my hope that the contents of this article will be enough to help guide you along in creating your own Elementals if you’re stuck or just kinda lost, but if they’re not, please, feel free to let me know.

Assigned Wizard At Homecoming - Elementals In The Courts

All Lost of all Seemings deal with greater or lesser amounts of prejudice when they join a Freehold, depending on the Freehold in question, and the stereotype that follows Elementals around is “WIZARDS! NO SENSE OF RIGHT AND WRONG!” It’s not entirely without reason; Elementals have native access to three of the most potent and versatile Contracts in all of Lost’s run, and depending on their selections and affinities the roles they can fill are staggering. Contracts of Elements alone can be used for information gathering, theft, sabotage, rescue, construction & demolition, straight combat, open warfare, disguise, home repair, gardening, and That Gay Witch Aesthetic, and that’s before we even touch Communion, Wild, any of the game’s other Contracts, or the fact that the majority of Elemental Kiths see huge returns for cranking their Wyrd like they’re trying to cold-start a Model T in Anchorage. Every Court could use the services of a powerful sorcerer in its baliwick, and almost all Elementals are theoretically capable of providing those services.

But just because the Courts would prefer that Elementals be big-shot wizards doesn’t mean they agree.

Elementals are more keenly aware than most Lost that there is no such thing as a non-magical Changeling, and the closest you get to the idea is a frightened victim trying to deny what’s happened to them, but for many Elementals the idea of following the Wyrd all the way down has a distinctly sour taste. They’re already distanced from mortals in ways that can be confusing, frustrating, and hurtful; why distance themselves further? Going further, institutions without a strong Elemental voice may not understand what they’re asking when they try to whistle up a wildfire or get someone’s bird bath to spy on them, and what those actions might mean to the Elementals they’re blithely attempting to order around. An Elemental might seek a primarily non-magical position in their Court as a way of grounding their humanity, or simply because they find the idea of such work more appealing than witchcraft.

None of which is to suggest that Elementals don’t also commonly fall into sorcerous roles. Even if their title doesn’t say ‘witch’ or ‘magi’, Elementals are likely to lean on magic to enhance their prowess because they, unlike their peers, cannot natively ‘flare’ their strengths. An Ogre knight can call upon her Seeming to intimidate people; an Elemental is more likely to invest in Contracts of Darkness to do the same, or else to get very good at meaningful looks while fingering weapons.

When it comes to selecting their Courts, Elementals often lean towards the ideological end of the scale. Though they, like Beasts, can be extremely sensitive to the seasonal nature of the Courts, Elementals tend to look to Courts for guidance on how to be a person again. After what could have been years of being an object instead, with their references to mortal behavior and mortal society severely damaged, Courts provide a much-needed sense of direction and purpose, a starting point for the all-important question of “who am I?”. Wise Courts help guide their youngblood Elementals, who are rather likely to adopt a performative identity (generally one rooted in their profession) in order to simplify social interactions in a way that makes it easier for everyone to understand each other; the important thing is not to stop this, but to ensure that it doesn’t get in the way of the Elemental’s recovery and journey towards the promise of their Court.

For obvious reasons you don’t see a lot of Elementals wearing the Crown or in general leadership positions, but you do see them in some. Autumn’s Witch of the Bitter Wind is often an Elemental, if not because of strict sorcerous prowess than because of going Full Sith Lord on the previous incumbent. Summer fields Elementals as Jaegers or leaders of knights, favoring tactical prowess and experience over their ability to inspire or politic. Elementals can make for ideal senior Squires in Winter, and can excel as Icebound Armigers with the right Thane to handle them - or enough raw stoicism to negate awkward social encounters before they can start. When looking for Elementals in positions of power and responsibility, try positions that favor intellect, experience, and diligence rather than those predicated on good social skills. Like Wizened, Elementals are common secondary combatants; even if they weren’t inclined to fight tooth and nail to never be literally turned into objects again, figures like the Arrayer of Distant Thunder are exactly as erect for the powerful sorceries of Elementals as everyone else is.

Spring - Elementals don’t often rise to prominence in Spring, for rather obvious reasons, but perversely are among those Seemings most likely to choose Spring as a first Court. Spring’s promise of renewal can be very attractive to Elementals, who then prove completely immune to the subtle attempts to snub them out of the Court by virtue of not noticing the slights to begin with. Many of Spring’s off-brand roles (such as “warrior”) are filled by Elementals just trying to earnestly live their truth, which is not to say that Elementals don’t sometimes make a splash in the Emerald Court as masters of high ritual or keepers of grand Hollows.

Summer - The Court of Wrath has many tactical and logistical needs, and God damn if Elementals can’t provide a ton of them in a single package. Summer puts a lot of effort into recruiting Elementals so that it can use their talents to secure places of power, shore up defensive positions, call tame wildfires down on hobgoblin invaders, create distractions for assaults, and anything else the Crimson Court can think of. The culture of brotherhood and military honor that Summer provides can be equally attractive to Elementals, who find in Summer an identity they can feel good about and which does not ask them to perform complex social niceties...until it does, anyway.

Autumn - Autumn is often of two or three minds about Elementals. On the one hand, they make for incredible sorcerers and Autumn has a strong interest in recruiting those who want to fulfill that potential. On the other hand, Fear is a powerfully intimate emotion, and while Elementals are capable of putting on a good game face they often struggle to achieve the intimacy necessary to understand the Fears of others. And on the third mutant hand growing right out of Autumn’s chest, the Leaden Mirror has powerful needs both social and intellectual at all times, and must balance such factions within itself to maintain its identity. An Autumn with a high Elemental population is likely a somewhat visibly calmer one, with strong similarities to an academic institution in how it comports itself; one with a lower Elemental population is still likely to have some rather explosive Elemental personalities placed highly within it, by virtue of their powerful lore and merciless wills.

Winter - While almost all Lost dally with Winter for a time after their Homecoming, Elementals are among those who dally for the shortest time unless they’re inclined to stay. So much of what they are is obvious and bombastic that it can be difficult for them to feel like they belong. For those who can shake those feelings, Winter puts just as much value in their services - and is much more up front about payment for those services - as its peers do. Winter’s strict culture of humility and silence can be attractive to those Elementals who feel insecure about their difficulties with mortal and Lost society; in time, the Coldest Court may even be able to coax them from their shells.

Fuck, I Forgot How To Person - Elementals And Changeling’s Themes

All Lost need the help and support of their fellows to make a new home on Earth again, but Elementals need it more than most in some ways. Though I’ve brought up their potential to represent the autistic experience (and I’m going to keep bringing it up because this Seeming is among the strongest candidates for it), Elemental is good for any experience of abuse and trauma which changes how a person is capable of relating to society. The person who grew up bent beneath inhuman expectations and the guilt they felt for not meeting them is an Elemental. The person who learns to dissociate in order to function in stressful situations they cannot escape is an Elemental, as is someone so used to being ignored and neglected for their chronic pain that the concept of genuine compassion from the medical establishment is alien to them. Where Wizened embody those whose lives are destroyed by oppressive economic systems, Elementals are those crushed beneath the weight of oppressive social systems that value the appearance of normalcy over genuine health and happiness.

While Elementals can feel disconnected even from their peers (not just because their experiences are different, but because they have difficulty mentally and emotionally envisioning those different experiences), their greatest struggle is with mortal society - which, in this metaphor, is the wider body of neurotypical people. Their fellow Lost at least have a jumping-off point when it comes to understanding and communicating with Elementals, but ‘normal’ people do not, and it is all too easy for them to callously mistake an Elemental’s struggles for deliberate rudeness or malice. In response to this constant rejection and exclusion, many Elementals develop maladaptive coping mechanisms which they then struggle to shake once they find the acceptance they were seeking, ranging from deliberate isolation to dissociation or even, in extreme cases, retreating into power fantasies (”people only hate me because I’m better than them”). While Fairest get all the press in the books for being prone to going back to Arcadia (and that’s its own bag of absolute bullshit that we’ll be addressing in their article), it’s Elementals that can find the idea of complete separation from mortal society to be the most attractive. For too many, trying to relate to the rest of humanity is traumatic in itself.

Autism isn’t the only set of troubles Elementals are primed to embody; almost any kind of neurodivergence which leads to trauma fits very easily into the Seeming’s mechanics and themes, in large part because society is absolute garbage about this topic no matter what your troubles are. Schizophrenia (which causes disconnects in what perception and symbolism mean to a person vs. what they mean to wider society) & ADHD (which is often ‘treated’ in ways ultimately harmful to the person who has it, with long-lasting side effects), among others, are also prime for depiction as Elementals. More physical problems such as chronic pain, fibromyalgia, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, or multiple sclerosis, might also be represented by this Seeming, again because - and I cannot stress this enough - society is garbage; victims of these conditions are often disbelieved, pushed to harm themselves to meet societal expectations, and neglected or abused by those skeptical of their condition or its severity (including family members), and the resulting trauma & its attendant effects stalk them for the rest of their lives. If you’re looking to draw out those themes of medical problems and their life effects, consider using your Blessing more often than you otherwise might (representing the push to try and “function” and its attendant consequences).

Keep in mind that all Elementals are more than their magic, whether that’s their Kith or their Contracts. I’m not here to tell you that you’re playing the game wrong as long as your group is having fun and not hurting anyone, but overt focus on the power of Elemental magic definitely leaves a lot of their potential just sitting on the table. I highly encourage you to ask yourself questions about how your Elemental characters think, feel, and believe. What is their relationship to their element and how does that shape their use of Contracts? What confuses them the most about other people? Do they resent that thing, want it for themselves, maybe just yearn to understand it? What kind of identity has your Elemental chosen to adopt and why have they decided to try to be that person? Do they miss their mortal life, and whether or not they do, how do they feel about that? There’s a lot to explore here, and the best part is that exploring it doesn’t mean you can’t still cast fireball.

Sir, That Is My Emotional Support Belle Dame Sans Merci - Coping As An Elemental

Relating to society - wider mortal society, Freehold society, and most often both - is the great challenge that Elementals face. Most remember at least some helpful things - what pants are for, why you don’t just kick in the door to strangers’ houses, stealing is wrong, that kind of thing - but when it comes to the day-to-day social cues and actions needed to navigate a job, one’s school, a party, or even just kinda sitting at a bar, Elementals’ problems with mis-reading signals or even failing to detect them entirely rise to the fore. Accordingly, Elementals seeking to cope with their return to Earth seek out social solutions to these problems.

There are suggestions in the books that Fairest tend to exoticize or fetishize Elementals; I’m gonna need you to throw that concept in the garbage next to the Magister of Nightmares (So You Want To Run An Autumn Court) and the canon description of the Sage Escort (So You Want To Run A Spring Court). That said, there is something there in the idea that the relationship between Darklings and Elementals, as well as Fairest and Elementals, is different from how those two relate to other Seemings. For Darklings and Fairest, Elementals can often represent someone around whom they can let down their guard; someone who is honest (even if that honesty is just because they’re real bad at lying) and, often, straightforward. For Seemings so consumed with performative social and emotional expression, whose anxieties and fears center around those expressions, a friendship with someone for whom they do not have to perform can be one of the most precious things in their life - something to kill for, if need be. Elementals, in turn, can rely on such friends (including friends of other Seemings, of course, though not usually Wizened because of that Seeming’s own problems navigating society) for help translating the confusing world that is Other People; to trust them to be honest in turn and to help the Elemental back the fuck out of situations in which they have managed to deepthroat their own foot. It doesn’t always work out so neatly (everyone involved has their own troubles and trauma, their own emotions and needs, and like all human and post-human relationships such things cause Drama), but it works out enough.

This focus on friendships and social identity follows Elementals elsewhere. Adopting a performative identity, especially a collective one, gives them guidance on how to interact with other people and helps them establish a routine for their day-to-day. An Elemental that becomes a Knight of Summer knows what’s expected of them and can then perform those expectations, and count on their fellow Knights for assistance and advice; likewise, joining Entitlements, or seeking prestigious offices like the Witch of the Bitter Wind can similarly set expectations. It doesn’t alleviate all of an Elemental’s social problems, of course, but it at least gives a place to start. Shuffling which hat they’re wearing at what time can be exhausting, as it can be for anyone, but the value of those hats cannot be overstated.

When it comes to their physical environment, Elementals are often less concerned with it than Beasts or Wizened. They do tend to lean towards locations that are strong in their element or in which they can be close to it (as an easy example, all other things being equal, most Firehearts will choose an apartment with a working fireplace over one without a fireplace) and to decorate and appoint their homes in ways reminiscent of that element. An Airtouched is likely to have gauzy curtains, open windows, windchimes, glass decorations, relatively light furniture, and the like, whereas a Snowskin’s home may seem like a winter cottage no matter what time of year it is. For those Elementals that are skilled in Communion and/or Wild, their ability to establish a place of power rivals that of Beasts; those who invade such a sorcerer’s home quickly find that the doorknobs are trying to kill them, and the kitchen knives move on their own. Attempts by Elementals to deny these tendencies in themselves traditionally end poorly. Whether they like it or not - and their feelings on the matter are often complicated at best - the Elemental has an affinity with their element, a relationship which inherently brings a feeling of comfort and kinship. Trying to reject that relationship only makes them unhappy on purpose.

With a place to live in and friends made, Elementals then have to actually figure out what to do with the arc of their lives. This can be...challenging. For those with unfinished business from their mortal lives, finishing such business and making decisions about it can be a great initial goal, but eventually all Elementals come back around to the idea of making something of themselves in the context of their Freehold. That isn’t to say that Elementals lack ambition or desires, but rather that articulating such desires, even to themselves, can often be difficult. Many Elementals don’t know what they want or why they want it, and without outside guidance end up spinning their wheels in the lower ranks of their Courts without comprehending either why they have done this or why it has made them unhappy. Here, as well, an Elemental’s Motley, friends, mentors, and/or romantic partners provide invaluable insight and direction. No Seeming proves the truism that isolation leads to shredded Clarity more clearly than Elementals.

Example Elemental - Ripley “Rip” Tide, Summer Waterborn

Jaeger Rip Tide is a coastal-dwelling Summer Courtier who, unusually for their Court, travels quite a bit. They keep a home in one Freehold to which they ostensibly belong, but are rarely there; they take bounties on Hedge beasts, exiled True Fae, and water monsters of all kinds from five separate Freeholds, all of whom have either appointed Rip their Jaeger or else just not made an argument about it when they’ve introduced themselves as such. Rip keeps two Hedge Beasts (”professional associates”), twin eels who introduce themselves as Port & Starboard, which run messages to and from the busy hunter and help Rip with particularly difficult quarries. The sight of their gem-like teeth, or Rip themself (coming in at a clean six-foot-six and never found without their thorn-and-steel fishing spear) is a sight for sore eyes to the Freeholds that the Jaeger services.

Lately, though, Rip’s been under pressure that they don’t really understand. Their ‘native’ Freehold wants them home more often or to at least take time from hunting to train an apprentice, both things Rip does not want to do. People need their help, right? Rip can reach those people easily, right? So what’s the problem? As far as Rip is concerned, their job is to Protect The Weak, not just a particular subset of The Weak. If someone doesn’t manage to defuse the situation, the Jaeger is going to end up exiled or worse over the sheer unwitting indignity of it all.

As with all of my articles, I welcome questions, comments, discussion, feedback, and criticisms. Please, feel free to reblog if you’re feelin’ it!

Next up: Ogres

#Changeling: the Lost #Seemings #RPG #Elemental #abuse #trauma #torture #transformation #autism

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thecloserkin · 5 years

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book review: Helen Oyeyemi, White is For Witching (2010)

Genre: haute literature masquerading as gothic magical realism

Is it the main pairing: no

Is it canon: no

Is it explicit: no

Is it endgame: no

Is it shippable: not really

Bottom line: if they’re not in love what even is the point? i feel like this story is a collection of twincest tropes someone slapped together without bothering to inject any chemistry

Twins Miranda and Eliot Silver inherit a haunted house from their lately deceased mother. Their father converts the house into a bed-and-breakfast, except the staff keep quitting because GHOSTS, and then Miranda goes missing. That’s the mystery at the center of the book. Where did Miranda go? What happened to her? Well to begin with Miranda was a very troubled girl:

My sister turned seventeen in a mental health clinic; I brought our birthday cake to her there.

Miranda has an eating disorder that has rendered her an ethereal sack of bones. Her father refuses to buy her new clothes; he insists she must fill out enough to fit into her old ones. She’s not interested in food but she’s got an insatiable hunger for materials like plastic and rubber and her go-to, chalk:

She took some chalk out of the pocket of her dress. When she offered Eliot a stick of it he looked surprised, but took it and stuck it in his mouth, pretended to smoke it like a cigar while she ate.

That’s beautiful, isn’t it? Sad but beautiful. The two of them sitting in companionable silence, Miranda chewing on a piece of chalk and Eliot not judging her at all.

when we were ten I always knew the meaning of the sounds she made, even when they were unsuccessful

The implicit contrast between when we were ten and now (late adolescence/early adulthood) is the yawning gap that has opened up between the twins—they no longer share every waking thought. This is them moving to Dover from London in the wake of their mother’s loss:

Miri and I conferred and decided we liked the tallness of the house … We liked that the passageways on each floor were wide enough for the two of us to stand beside each other with our arms and legs spread, touching but not touching.

I’m not even sure when he says they conferred that they were using words, you know? It’s entirely possible that telepathic communication came as naturally as breathing to these two. You have to remember the two of them were experiencing seven different kinds of upheaval and displacement—uprooted from their neighborhood, their classmates and friends and routines; motherless; plunked down in the middle of a new town; inhabiting a restless house that’s trying to inhabit them.

Miri is good at making friends, and I am good at tagging along on expeditions and acting as if the whole thing was my idea in the first place … Actually, when we were sixteen Miri gave me the task of telling Martin that he didn’t stand a chance with her.

Of course she delegates the task of rejecting a suitor to her brother lol. In addition, what this passage tells us is that they ran in more or less the same circles. They had the same friends. They were inseparable and they probably thought they would remain so from womb to tomb. Such sweet summer children they were.

She said, “You’re applying to Cambridge?” Uncertainty worked his mouth. She thought she had wobbled in her seat, then realized she hadn’t moved at all; the thought don’t go had flashed through her like a swarm of pins. Eliot was one of those boys that made girls go quiet. He was so beautiful that it seemed certain he was arrogant or insensitive or stupid … His bone structure was scary and unnatural and flawless. Besides that he was her knight.

Cue Miranda flashing back to when they were kids role-playing King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Of course she applies to Cambridge too, not in the expectation that she’ll actually get in but because she can’t cope with the idea of being apart from Eliot. She’s never been apart from Eliot. In one of those ironic quirks of fate she gets in and he doesn’t, and he watches her and all their friends go off to university while he takes a gap year in South Africa, during which his radio silence causes Miranda no end of anxiety. She thinks he is punishing her. They go from this:

Eliot lay under Miranda’s elbows, reading Moby-Dick while she used his back to prop up her collected works of Poe.

and this

Miranda was so cold in her bed that she knew she couldn’t survive it and knocked on the wall between her and Eliot’s rooms. With minimal grumbling, he came and climbed into bed with her and let her lie with her head on his breastbone, his arms around her

to this:

She thought of Eliot. He anchored her mind, a troublesome weight, reassuring.

She’s never learned how to be without him.

In addition to the Miranda POV there are three first-person narrators of varying degrees of unreliability: Eliot, the house itself, and a girl Miranda falls in love with at Cambridge. All three of them want different things from Miranda, and it’s impossible to discern who the “real” Miranda is or what she wants because she’s constantly being pulled in different directions.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

So the house. It is perhaps not correct to characterize the house as the antagonist of the story, but the thing certainly lies at the root of Miranda’s mental health struggles. The house is sentient. The house is the repository of the souls of Miranda’s ancestors in the maternal line: her mother and grandmother and great-grandma, all of their personalities absorbed into a kind of mind-meld …. and you better believe that the Borg is coming for Miranda too. The house taking over Miranda’s body actually explains many of the gaps in her memory, and the fact that she looks like a completely different person from pictures taken only a few years ago. Eliot and Miranda’s father has a recurring dream where he’s trying to get into the house but the doors and windows are all boarded up, he’s hollering for the twins’ mother and there is no one to let him in. Eliot is afflicted by the same dream, only it’s Miranda he’s calling for, Miranda who won’t let him in. I bring up this parallel in order to observe that Miranda stands in the same relation to Eliot as their mother does to their father, and isn’t that interesting. It isn’t that the twins don’t have love interests, but these never seem to last: Eliot gets himself a girlfriend and it doesn’t work out; Miranda gets herself a girlfriend, brings the chick home for the holidays, and the poor girl is driven out of her wits by the toxicity of the house and its possessiveness of Miranda.

When their mother was alive she was really big on drawing BOUNDARIES between the twins. She tried to make Eliot understand that:

my pressing my lips to Miri’s nine-year-old heartbeat was not the same as feeling the blood move in myself.

But once they lost their mother they grew closer. This is the money quote:

everyone thinks that twin brothers and sisters grow up magnetized towards each other, the prince at the foot of Rapunzel’s tower before the tower is even built, the lover you can get at all the fucking time, the one who is you but a girl, or you but a boy, whose bed you know as well as your own. How could you endure that without falling in love? The question is, were they born in love with each other, these twins, or did it blossom? At any rate it’s already happened, the onlookers agree. It must have. Ask them when they fell. The brother and sister say no, no, it’s nothing like that, but what they mean is they can’t remember when.

!!!! Excuse me while I commission someone to engrave these words on a 24-karat gold plaque and hang it up in my living room. The book was worth reading for this quote alone. The Rapunzel reference!!!!!! Why the hell did Helen Oyeyemi not write a novel about incest in fairy tales:

A pair of hands slipped over her eyes and rested there, heavy and warm. The screwdriver fell. “Hello Gretel,” her brother said in her ear. She heard the screwdriver roll across the floor and knew he had kicked it … “Hello Hansel.” She laid her own hands on his wrists; he kissed the tip of her ear. “So we’re in a fairy tale … I knew it,” she said, as he led her out of the laundry room.

….instead of the book she actually wrote which obviously fell short of my expectations lol.

#book review #helen oyeyemi #white is for witching

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sian22redux · 6 years

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Faramir Fridays

ok.. I have some time today and thought I would get back to regular posts if possible, and remembering that I never did get around to posting from my TVM talk, I decided that is what I shall cover today--- my hypothesis of how the character came to be.

It will be about 17 images of the slides from the talk..and a few written points..so after the first few I will put them under a cut... (note: not to be reproduced without permission)

Faramir, Tolkien’s sensitive, reluctant warrior who declines the Ring, arrived quite late in the story of The Two Towers, appearing suddenly, and to Tolkien’s surprise, at a pivotal moment in the creation of the chapters ‘Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit’ and ‘Window on the West’.

Ithilien’s Captain of record at that point, one Falborn, son of Anborn, was just finalizing his interrogation of Frodo and had been amusingly dressed down by Sam, when much lore and history of Gondor and Numenor began to be discussed. And, although a substantial part inevitably was cut to go into the Appendices, there was much that JRR wished to keep. To do that he needed a new character

The name Faramir is most commonly translated as ‘sufficient jewel’ from ‘mire’ the Quenya for jewel and ‘far’ the Sindarin for sufficient or enough. In the Peter Jackson version of the character this was a deliberate slight, that he was essentially lesser than Boromir—the steadfast jewel. Perhaps, there can be a different take. If name is destiny, Faramir, named for a Prince of Gondor who defied his father’s orders, is actually, quite simply, enough. A modest, yet noble man, with just the wisdom to resist the Ring and a play a pivotal part in Sam and Frodo’s story.

Despite this, and his enduring place as the most popular minor male character, Faramir has not often been a subject of critical analysis.

The character was conceived of and came to fruition in less than a week in early May 1944 and the relevant chapter, ‘Window on the West’, according to Christopher Tolkien, was written at great speed. May 4th there was no thought of him but by 11th he had appeared. How was an author famously obsessive about revising, one who took a decade and half between first sentence and finalized manuscript (and in so doing converted his protagonist from a hobbit called Trotter to a scion of Numenor) able to fully realize such an enduring resonant character so swiftly?

I suggest to you that it was because he had a model to draw from…. his childhood friend Robert Quilter Gilson

Robert Gilson, an artist and designer, was a member of the famous ‘Tea Club and Barrovian Society’. Hewas born in 1893 in Harrow on Hill, where his father, Cary Gilson, taught Classics. In 1900 the family moved to Marston Green when Cary became Headmaster of King Edward’s school. There, the TCBS tight circle formed, and like the others of the group, he went on to study Classics at Trinity College. His letters are a wealth of knowledge. He wrote daily, to family and friends, from university and from the Front where he served as a Lieutenant in the Suffolk regiment. He shared many qualities with Tolkien: a love of lore, and antiquity and history, but also strikingly many more with Ithilien’s Ranger.

The influence of Tolkien’s war on his writing is fertile ground for study, be it the allegory of evil mechanization in Grond; or more direct examples in his imagery of the Dead Marshes, or Sam—the doughty british batman. Tolkien was part of a generation turned their grief to work, from Everest expeditions to his own scholarship-- it was a fertile time after that great conflagration.

With respect to Faramir much has been made about him as the embodiment of a modern warrior archetype, and Tolkien, when asked by a pesky journalist which character, presumably Gandalf, he was most like, replied “Faramir,” noting though, that he lacked the character’s essential courage.

I am going to suggest that Tolkien drew on a man very like him in many ways but one who also was demonstrably courageous: Gilson.

Creating characters readers connect with is one of most important challenges for a fiction writer, for a good use of characterization always leads the audience to relate better to the events taking place in the story. Physical and psychological traits, sociological and biographical details all lend themselves to creating character. Much of what we know about Faramir in the book comes from indirect characterization.. through the lens of Sam and Frodo, how he relates to them, and they to him, and his own actions. This approach is considered more effective because it slowly discloses the inner turmoil of the character, over the course of the narrative and lets the audience understand.

For the process of this I like Alexandra Sokoloff’s quote:

‘I think all writers are always collecting characters as we go along...[stored in] the back of our minds like the shelves full of buttons and ribbons and fabrics and threads and beads in a costumer’s shop.’

This surely lends richness…but also requires one has the 'bobs and buttons’ stored.

Below I shall compare the two men, real and fictional, through the lens of the character components outlined above.

First are superficial similarities…

Faramir is typically depicted as more finely featured then his brother..an influence artists pick up, presumably from Finduilas of Dol Amroth and her descent from the elleth Mithrellas and Imrazor, the first Prince. In fact, Legolas remarks on Imrahil’s elven features in RoTK. Gilson had something of the Numenorean look given to Faramir: fine features, dark haired, and, as John Garth notes, calmly apprising eyes; a feature remarked of Faramir by number of characters in book.

Next we consider psychological traits. The above slide and below, via direct quotes from letters and the books, and John Garth’s extensive overview of Gilson’s own letters, illustrates a number of key commonalities.

Both were good leaders, loyal yet also thoughtful and poetic, but for Gilson this new role did not come naturally: he agonized over it. In a moving letter from Albert Bradman, his batman, to Cary Gilson, Bradman noted that Robert was ‘loved by all the men in the Platoon, and I may say Company, as he was a very good officer and a good leader.’

Of course, Pippin’s thoughts when first viewing Faramir, bowed and weary, at the entrance to the citadel run this very way.

There are sociological similarities between them as well. Both were conservative, as was typical of men of their social rank; pacifists and compassionate by nature, at ease across society and with people of every class.

Both had a love of the archaic. For Faramir it is exemplified by his words to Sam and Frodo, and in his delight in tutelage by Mithrandir. Gilson, similarly loved an earlier time, for him it was Renaissance painting and sculpture and 18th century Neoclassical styles that looked back to earlier era. Both men enjoyed atypical, one could say unsoldierly pursuits. For Gilson it was art, design and even embroidery. For Faramir this was music and lore. Tolkien speaks of this deliberately, that these pursuits made men superficially judge him less courageous.

Both have a reverence for wild spaces and living things. Faramir was quite evidently at home in Ithilien and dreamt of making it the garden of Gondor once again. Gilson, restricted in what he could say in his letters from the Front, spoke frequently of his enjoyment of being on the move, in the beauty of the French countryside.

Both were modern soldiers in the sense used by Stephen Carter-- highly skilled, yet classically trained and not caught by conventional views of martial glory. Both were marksmen. Gilson’s eye for artistic detail transferred to riflery, where he won the Shooting 8 of the Officer Training Corps.

It is in their biographical details that the similarities become almost uncanny. Like the classical element of fairy stories, both lose a parent, their mothers, at a young age. Both men lived under the shadow of important, larger-than-life fathers who were the ‘rulers’ of their worlds. Faramir's being the ruling Steward and scion of Numenor; Gilson’s the headmaster of King Edward’s school,’ the self-contained world in which Tolkien and Gilson lived. Cary Gilson was an intimidating, formidable man, who moved in important circles but unlike Denethor, loved his son greatly, however much, in keeping with his era, he did not show it publically.

Gilson, like Faramir, followed his duty, if not his heart. The first of the TCBS to enlist, he left Cambridge where he had undertaken studies chosen for him by his father. Like Faramir, he struggled to live up to parental expectation at times, finding it hard to achieve grades expected in a subject he did not love. Ultimately he was confident enough to defy his father’s will and societal convention: just before the war, he announced he would give up Classics to study Architecture…something considered a ‘trade’ in those days, not a vocation.

Both loved above their station and were initially rebuffed. Faramir’s true love is of course Eowyn of Rohan, niece of, and sister to, a King, Gilson’s was Estelle King, the daughter of the American Consul. They became friends on holidays in the Scottish Highlands but she was at first utterly shocked and flummoxed by his declaration of love. Gilson went off to France thinking his suit was lost but it was not so. On shore leave they became engaged. Letters between Gilson and the adventurous King, who was serving in Holland as a nurse, detail and deep affinity.

Most heartbreaking of all is the echo of Gilson in Faramir’s charge on Osgiliath: another personally courageous scholar-soldier, calmly leading his men against overwhelming odds into a rain of endless slaughter. Gilson’s battalion went over the top the first morning of the first day of the battle of the Somme, one that would in live infamy. Gilson, the last officer surviving in the midst of battle, he unflinchingly and briefly took over leadership of the entire company. The Suffolk Regiment’s loss that day was the largest of any single battalion in their division. 70% of the officers and 50% of men, far greater than Gondor’s retreat.

Unlike Faramir, Gilson did not survive. He was killed by a shell burst that morn.

Tolkien said of his friend’s death that ‘something has gone crack’, and it was so seminal a loss that for the first time in a decade he said he felt ‘a mere individual’.

Geoffrey Bache Smith of the TCBS memorialized Rob in his poem “Let us tell quiet stories of kind eyes”

To conclude, I suggest Tolkien was able to paint such a resonant portrait in so short a time, to develop a fine characterization of a sensitive poet-soldier, adored by his men, driven by duty to do what goes against his nature, by drawing upon one he knew in life, subconsiously or otherwise. And in this we have another influence of the Great War and his childhood friends on Tolkien’s work.

Acknowledgements and Sources below:

#Faramir Fridays #faramir #meta #Tolkien in Vermont #characterization

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douxreviews · 5 years

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Charmed - Season Five Review

"My sister, the demon magnet."

A clear departure from the dark, mature tone of the previous two years, Season Five is where Charmed starts to go downhill. Following some network meddling to avoid the apparent doom and gloom of the previous season, there's a massive shift towards a lighter, and subsequently more banal form of writing. I do feel like I have to defend the first half the season to many, which features a few of Charmed's better hours, but the second half...not so much. Spoilers and, unfortunately, leprechaun discussion ahead.

You can kind of get why there would be an attempt to back track to the light-hearted tone of the early episodes of the series. Season Four was by all rights a bitter pill to swallow. With Prue's untimely death, and the Halliwells’ hard battle to rid themselves of The Source for good, things got pretty dark. Why not change tack and have a bit more fun? Sadly, for Brad Kern et. al, more fun means squeezing Alyssa Milano into the skimpiest costumes possible, and breaking the record for the highest number of irritating magical creatures in a single episode of television. Ugh.

Initially, the dress-up games aren't all that terrible. Sure, the Mermaid fiasco in the two-part premiere was questionable, but the decision to tie it back to Phoebe's pain and desire to escape the toxicity of her relationship with Cole was oddly affecting. Even the fairy tale absurdity of 'Happily Ever After' feels rooted in similar personal struggles. By episode 5, though, we get our first taste of the tackless dreck that will become signature in the series' later seasons. The results are a mixed bag, to say the least. 'Witches in Tights' is a great title for an hour that serves very little purpose other than to get the girls in a "theme of the week" get-up to liven up the WB promos. This tastelessness carries through to the end of the season with Rose McGowan's pain coming through in spades during 'Nymphs Just Wanna Have Fun', where she spends two thirds of the episode prancing around in rags like some brainless dodo. The costume party even runs into the season finale, where a potentially great idea is squandered by a need to ham up every single angle of the girls' transformation into Greek Goddesses.

The first half of the season does shine in a lot of ways. Julian McMahon's presence is still welcome, though Cole's return feels little redundant in light of the rather conclusive ending his vanquish gave us in Season Four's 'Long Live the Queen'. Regardless, we get some great character beats throughout the first 12 episodes before Cole's humanity is eventually lost and he has to be vanquished for the final time in the 100th episode 'Centennial Charmed'. Despite an unnecessarily extended arc, Cole was still an integral part of the show's growth and maturity and Julian McMahon will be remembered fondly.

There are some clear high-points elsewhere, too. A great guest spot from Melinda Clarke in 'Siren Song' helps to buoy yet another episode dedicated to the never-ending push and pull of Phoebe and Cole's now defunct marriage. 'A Witch in Time' is one of my personal favorites. With a fun time-travel element at its core, and one hell of a twist mid-way through the hour, it’s one of the rare examples of how smart the writing team could still be this late in the game. The 100th episode toys with the idea of an alternate reality without Paige around to save the Power of Three. It's played well for the most part, and effectively ties a nice bow around Julian McMahon's time of the series. 'Sense and Sense Ability' is also a bright spot in the otherwise depressing haze of nymphs and leprechauns in the second half of the season. Its full of fun gags and is home to a clever idea that ties neatly back to the strength of The Power of Three, an element that's oddly rare at this point.

For the most part, though, Season Five is a big disappointment with some really low lows. 'Lucky Charmed' is one the worst hours of the series, drawing on cliched leprechaun tropes, and tired demon drama. 'The Importance of Being phoebe' is a tacky mess, and is one of those episodes where you question how good the girls are at spotting when there's something clearly wrong with each other. What's so sad about episodes like these is that you have to endure them knowing there's material that’s just as heinous coming up later in the series.

In the face of some dreadful episodic content, you would usually be able to turn to the sibling dynamics that were almost always well crafted. Unfortunately, Season Five marks a point in the show where the writers begin to favor a more segregated approach to the girls' individual arcs, with lifeless love interests and silly new jobs taking precedent over genuinely effecting drama. Phoebe's time is spent floating from guy to guy and building her career as the city's biggest advice columnist, a career development that makes Prue's quick hire at 415 Magazine seem like a completely feasible move. It's great to see her mature, though. Paige makes a rather questionable choice to leave her job as a social worker, one that causes her to drift for most of the season with very little purpose. Piper's role is probably the better one this season, with her pregnancy, and the subsequent birth of her first child Wyatt, taking up most of her screen time. Unfortunately, her journey this year ends with one of the biggest mistakes the show ever made; the dissolution of her marriage to Leo.

For reasons that stem from lazy writing more than anything else, Piper and Leo are pulled apart in the finale in order to allow Leo to take up a bigger role "up there" with the Elders, and to make room for the time-travelling Chris, who pops up in the season finale and will continue to plague the series next season. It's a move that's just as frustrating as it is contrived, and almost appropriately messy as we enter Charmed's problematic sixth season. There were some attempts to shoe-horn in some martial discord before the finale, notably in clip-show episode 'Cat House', but those small scenes do little to shake the feeling that the writers are now driven more by major story beats, and are far less concerned with the characters that were so well drawn when we started this journey five seasons earlier.

Potions and Notions

Sam makes his first re-appears here since season two, and it marks the first time he comes face-to-face with his daughter, Paige.

There was a lot of build up to Wyatt's birth. The moment itself is actually rather sweet, but the show doesn't really use his abilities to their fullest extent right away.

Phoebe's premonitions start to become more vivid this season, which basically means they're less blurry.

Spells and Chants

Cole: "What happened to us, Phoebe? How'd we get here? We used to be so in love! Even without your sisters, it's not working... Why?" Phoebe: "I don't know... Maybe it just wasn't meant to be."

Piper: "Even if he can handle the demons, he must sense the tension, which means at the very best we end up with a neurotic infant." Leo: "Look on the bright side. Growing up with your sisters, he was bound to be neurotic anyway."

Best Episode: A Witch in Time.

Honorable Mentions: Siren Song, The Eyes Have It, Sympathy for the Demon, Centennial Charmed, Sense and Sense Ability.

Worst Episode: Lucky Charmed.

There are some admittedly strong elements this season, but it's mostly a disappointing year that feels like a disservice to the well written drama that came before it.

5 out of 10 leprechauns.

Panda

#Charmed #Piper Halliwell #Phoebe Halliwell #Paige Matthews #Charmed Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews #something from the archive

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themousai · 4 years

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Top 10 Albums of the Decade: Nic Martin

Nightmare Avenged Sevenfold

[2010]

This is a fitting album to start with; I will probably always pin my decision to pursue music as a career on Avenged Sevenfold. 14-year-old me was absolutely crushed by the tragic death of drummer Jimmy Sullivan in 2009, but truly believed in the band’s decision to carry on, full speed ahead, and manifest Sullivan’s vision that he never got to complete; being 2010’s Nightmare.

While I personally never cared for the title track/lead single, it was cathartic and honest tracks like Victim and Tonight The World Dies that really showed me a new and important layer to the band I was already so inspired by. We still had the A7X that has gone on to, frankly, dominate the world stage - the relentless Danger Line and prog-epic-closer Save Me were reminders that these California boys were on to something huge, and they knew it.

Teenage Dream Katy Perry

[2010]

Admittedly: I came to listen to Katy Perry because I had a mad celeb-crush on her in this era. This album is a surprisingly diverse collection of legitimately well written pop songs, front-to-back. Obviously it has the singles we’re all numb to these days (I’m pretty sure California Gurls and Firework were enforced listening for every Jayjay’s across the country), but I found myself using songs like Circle The Drain and Hummingbird Heartbeat as an excuse to enjoy the undeniable pleasure of great pop melodies.

I guess I just feel like this was one of those “cut-above” mega-pop albums, alongside T-Swift’s 1989 and Bieber’s Purpose, I guess I just never saw either of them shooting whipped cream from their chest.

There Is A Hell, Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is A Heaven, Let’s Keep It A Secret Bring Me The Horizon

[2010]

I rarely hear people cite this as their favourite Bring Me album; never disregarded, but never the top of many lists; yet you Tumblr-Millennials out there would be lying if you said you never reblogged a grainy photo of a bedroom strewn with fairy-lights and band posters with lyrics from It Never Ends or Blessed With A Curse edited over it. I have no issue in saying that the quality of Oli Sykes’ voice was at a low point for this release, but I will always defend the telling depth and emotion that’s explored in the lyrics and structure of each song.

A dark and pummelling metalcore offering in a general sense, it’s Bring Me’s signature unapologetic approach to the point of difference they’re always pursuing – especially on tracks like Blacklist, the transition between the second half of Fuck into Don’t Go, and the catastrophic closer The Fox and the Wolf – that ensured I would keep tabs on this band’s evolution throughout the decade.

Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal Periphery

[2012]

I have a tattoo dedicated to this album and how much this band + album changed my perception of music, especially heavy metal. With that considered, I struggle to find a way to describe this album in way that isn’t simply “If you like metal, go and listen to this album” because there is bound to be something within this gem that will scratch an itch you didn’t know you had.

No one else sounded quite like this, and no one really has since. Whatever, djent. This album absolutely rips. Spencer Sotelo’s vocals are inhuman (not pitch-corrected on this album, noteworthy), and it contains multiple personal-favourite guitar solos ever, ever (Luck As A Constant and Mile Zero). Listen to the whole damn thing, but check out Muramasa, Facepalm Mute, Scarlet, or Ragnarok if you need convincing.

Parallax II: Future Sequence Between The Buried And Me

[2012]

“Goodbye To Everything”. One hell of an alluring motif, no? There is a LOT to unpack on this album, and if you struggle to resonate with musical journeys that take you across the galaxy and back 10+ minutes at a time, then it’ll take a while to sink your teeth into Future Sequence to the depth that it deserves to be appreciated at. The technicality and intricacy of the music accurately reflects the complexity of the lyrical narrative, only made even less-accessible by Tommy Giles Rogers’ ambiguous, cryptically simple/broad verses.

As necessary as the shorter breather tracks/interludes are, the highlights on this release are the lengthier pieces that all take you on a true journey, taking its time to set each scene and its mood. Lay Your Ghosts To Rest and Telos are integral tracks that really take you to a new dimension and show you every nook and cranny of it; and the final 18 minutes of Silent Flight Parliament & Goodbye To Everything (Reprise) has got to be the single most epic metal album closer this decade; a claim I’m open to having challenged.

Make no mistake, this is literally a 72 minute melting pot of progressive rock and technical death metal, with hearty sides of wack synths and lush orchestration, atmosphere that shifts from grand to crushing, and cheeky passages that skim from surf-rock to noodly jazz.

Altered State TesseracT

[2013]

My uncle introduced me to TesseracT’s first album One in 2012, which immediately cemented the band as one of my favourites. But 2013’s Altered State is one of those “perfectly aligned” albums for me: it was exactly what I needed to hear right when it was announced and released. It’s the only album to feature vocalist Ashe O’Hara (who now sings for Voices In The Fuselage) and is widely considered their crown jewel – although I firmly stand by the sentiment that TesseracT are incapable of writing a song that isn’t stunningly incredible.

The album is 10 tracks split into four “suites”: Of Matter, Of Mind, Of Reality, and Of Energy; so it was a daunting thought to try and absorb the entire thing in that way during my first listen. This is one of those albums that you know how incredible it is, but it’s not until you find yourself going back to it again and again over the years that you get to truly appreciate how perfectly executed the entire 50 minutes really is. The effortlessly impossible, extended rhythmic passages in Eclipse and Singularity; the sound of a heart exploding in Resist; the GOD DAMN SAXOPHONE in Calabi-Yau and Embers, it’s ALL there to make one of the most remarkable progressive metal albums ever; and they did it without a single scream or sub-drop.

To Pimp A Butterfly Kendrick Lamar

[2015]

I have no shame in announcing that hip-hop is a genre I forced myself to like. My brother had a soft spot for it growing up, and a lot of people in my school liked it; so, while I was familiar, I hadn’t found the album ‘for me’. good kid, m.A.A.d City showed me who Kendrick Lamar was and that – like pretty much every other teenager in 2012 – I quite liked his songs. The Blacker The Berry will never not-give me the same goosebumps I got upon first hearing it. I remember seeing the announcement that To Pimp A Butterfly had just been released hours earlier on iTunes, it was probably the first album I ever purchased online that wasn’t anything close to rock or metal, and – once again – I have no shame in admitting that the artwork was a big reason for why I was so immediately drawn to wanting to hear it.

Man, as I sit here listening to the intro to u at 12:30am, driving the entire album into one of its many, many dark and completely out-the-gate corners, I’m reminded that this album was so damn ahead of its time. Kendrick is unpacking SO much. He sits you down and pours you a drink as Wesley’s Theory lulls you in with its sexy groove and upbeat formalities, and he continues to tell you EXACTLY what the fuck is up, and he does it with pure, unapologetic class. The music on this album is just… it literally leaves me speechless nearly 5 years on: there are moments where it feels like the speakers couldn’t possibly handle another layer of jazzy instrumentation or lush, effect-laden basslines. But it’s when you take that, then add Kendrick’s stories, and that’s why this album transcends beyond most other hip-hop/rap releases; listen to How Much A Dollar Cost? or Mortal Man and tell me that he doesn’t have SO much to say that the already-limitless musical landscape can barely contain him.

131 Emarosa

[2016]

Something I had to keep remembering as I considered my list and wrote about each album is that we were asked to talk about albums that were important to us and our lives on a personal level. So, although Emarosa have multiple FANTASTIC albums, 131 was an album that found me and reached out to pull me out of a dark place in my life. Bradley Walden had already proved that he was a beautiful vocalist with a gorgeous voice on 2014’s Versus, but 131 feels so honest and more real in comparison.

This album doesn’t try to be anything more or less than what it is: a collection of meaning rock songs about life and the more personal, intricate emotions and tribulations that most people endure. Songs like Sure and Cloud 9 draw you in with their ear-worm choruses, but they keep you around with the heartfelt stories being told, all of a sudden you’re lying on your kitchen floor with tears streaming down your face wailing to the climax of Never while you think about your bb. This album helped me understand and forgive myself, I hope it can help you too.

Clairvoyant The Contortionist

[2017]

“Wow, Nic put Clairvoyant in his ‘Albums of the Decade’ list? What a genuine surprise…”

Anyone who knows me is probably sick of just how frequently and in-depth I talk about this album. The Contortionist were that band that all my favourite bands loved but I never got around to checking out. That was until my friend Declan showed me Return To Earth, which would easily make my top singles of the decade, too. It’s a perfect representation of the entire album: melancholic, intense, epic, and worth being patient with as it pulls you in with its devastating themes of addiction and loss. Vocalist Michael Lessard has said the album’s lyrics were written as the darker extension of 2014’s critically acclaimed Language; the general story revolves around his close friend’s untimely overdose due to his struggles after losing his mother, with Clairvoyant taking a more subdued, less metaphorical look at the despair his friend endured.

While this album does have its hookier and more upbeat moments - found in Reimagined and the title track – it’s the way these sections are woven into a much bigger picture that really turns every track into one 54 minute journey that you’d be remiss to not repeat a few times on a road trip or during a rainy day in. A personal highlight for me is the closing track Monochrome (Pensive), particularly after having listened to the entire album from the beginning first. As one of the most heart-crushing and honest moments lyrically, the song is ultimately an indescribable piece of art: catastrophically grand, breath-takingly emotional, this album is one of my most highly recommended ever.

Sundowning Sleep Token

2019

My most treasured musical discovery this year; I heard a 7-second-long snippet of Sleep Token’s 2017 single Calcutta on another artist’s Instagram story and was shocked: were you even allowed to pair a voice as lush as Vessel’s with a musical landscape that ultimately builds into a down-tuned breakdown? I was hooked, I needed more than the minimal offerings (heh) that were available – though EVERY song leading up to Sundowning is absolutely stunning in their own rights.

All of a sudden, The Night Does Not Belong To God appears on YouTube as I check my phone early one Thursday morning: fantastic, a new single. Two weeks later, to the day: The Offering makes itself known and has since dominated the band’s ‘popular songs’ on all streaming platforms. Another exact fortnight later, Levitate is an unexpected, yet welcome change of pace as a tender piano ballad topped with Sleep Token’s signature grand-finale-breakdown that can only be described as a wrecking ball levelling everything that was so intricately crafted in the 3-4 minutes prior. A pattern was emerging, and I was HERE for it. Sundowning revealed itself as 12 tracks, each carefully composed but linked together with an emotional lyrical thread, as well as aligned graphics/videos and even merch released with each track. As a working musician, this marketing approach completely blew me away, but when the music being pushed is this boundless, this forward-thinking, this calculated yet so naturally flowing, it gives me hope for the future of heavy music.

Every song is worth giving equal time and attention to, the band knows this and that’s why they released it that way. There are no two songs that sound like each other, but there certainly are various, vivid shades to Sleep. From the brutally thick ending to Higher or Gods, to the cheekily obscure, trap-versed banger Dark Signs, to the gorgeously progressive epics Say That You Will and Blood Sport; this album is one that anyone who considers themselves a fan of music needs to check out. This is what the future of music sounds like.

Listen to our decade wrapped over on Spotify!

Written by Nic Martin / Devilskin + Seas Of Conflict

[more decade round ups here]

#nic martin #seas of conflict #top 10s of 2010s #bring me the horizon #katy perry #periphery #tesseract #kendrick lamar #sleep token #the contortionist #emarosa #between the buried and me #avenged sevenfold

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toldnews-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/sports/basketball/giannis-antetokounmpo-is-the-pride-of-a-greece-that-shunned-him/

Giannis Antetokounmpo Is the Pride of a Greece That Shunned Him

He is known as the Greek Freak, a basketball player of such transcendent ability that he has become celebrated as the face of the country of his birth. Yet for most of his life growing up in Greece, Giannis Antetokounmpo was considered a foreigner. As the son of African immigrants, he was perpetually vulnerable to attacks by racist militants, and to threats of deportation to Nigeria, a country he had never visited.

As Antetokounmpo now commands the stage in the N.B.A. playoffs as the best player on the Milwaukee Bucks, the top-seeded team in the Eastern Conference, his fellow African immigrants in Greece are watching with rapt attention. His story — the tale of a teenager who could barely dribble turning himself into one of the supreme basketball players on the planet — is the source of admiration and joy. Yet it is also cause for bitter reflection on the enduring discrimination suffered by his community. Many lament that Antetokounmpo’s experience has become fodder for a fairy tale about Greek life in which his struggles have been edited out.

Until recently, even the children of African immigrants who were born here found it difficult to secure legal residency, let alone citizenship. Their stateless status denied them national health care, Civil Service jobs and access to sports leagues. Antetokounmpo only gained Greek citizenship six years ago — just as he was about to go to New York for the N.B.A. draft.

“He was given Greek citizenship in order to prevent him from traveling to New York as a Nigerian,” said Nikos Odubitan, the founder of Generation 2.0, an advocacy group that helps second-generation immigrants gain legal status in Greece.

When Antetokounmpo was still an ordinary mortal, he was seen as just another migrant in Greece illegally. Now that he is a basketball star, “he has become the ambassador for Greece,” Odubitan said. “Of course, we are all proud of what happened. But this is not what it takes to be a Greek citizen. We have engineers, doctors, all kinds of professionals, and the Greek state does not recognize them. Why does it take being a basketball talent?”

White people in Greece now embrace Antetokounmpo, claiming him as one of their own, and reveling in his nickname as a cue for flag-waving. “They put him on a pedestal,” said Jackie Abhulimen, 27, the Greek-born daughter of African-born parents. “But the same person cheering Giannis could swear at me on the road. There’s still a very big sense of invisibility, of not being recognized as existing.”

“What Giannis represents is important for the younger kids growing up now,” Abhulimen continued. “But I do feel slightly disappointed in how certain histories and certain identities have been put aside. He hasn’t publicly identified as a black Greek.”

That appears to be changing. In November, a Greek television sports commentator called Giannis’s older brother, Thanasis Antetokounmpo, a “monkey.” Thanasis plays for one of Greece’s premier professional basketball teams, and was briefly a member of the Knicks. Giannis condemned the attack in a post on Twitter.

“My brothers and I are Greek-Nigerian,” he wrote in Greek. “If anyone doesn’t like it, that’s their problem.”

In Sepolia, the gritty Athens neighborhood in the shadow of the Acropolis where Antetokounmpo grew up, people who knew him as a child marvel at what he has become.

Chris Iliopoulos Odoemelam, 24, used to play pickup games with Antetokounmpo when they were just a couple of 11-year-olds, both children of African immigrants. His old friend exhibited little basketball acumen, fumbling around a concrete court just off a busy thoroughfare and across the street from an auto shop.

Today, the same court is painted with the image of Antetokounmpo in his current guise — a statuesque man in a green Milwaukee Bucks uniform holding a basketball skyward, presumably on his way to another emphatic dunk.

Five thousand miles away on the shores of Lake Michigan, Antetokounmpo has built himself into a bona fide superstar on the team with best record in the N.B.A., and a leading contender for this year’s Most Valuable Player Award. At nearly 7 feet tall, he has the ball-handling skills of a point guard and the battering ram force of an old school center. He gets to the rim with the ease of a grown man playing Nerf ball against a six-year-old.

Odoemelam tries to square the skinny child he remembers with the indomitable force he watches on YouTube clips. He comes up incredulous.

“He was just a guy you would see in the street, hungry and looking for food,” Odoemelam said of Antetokounmpo, who sold DVDs and sunglasses on the streets of Athens to support his family. “He didn’t have anything. He had one pair of shoes that he had to share with his brothers. And now he’s a millionaire. It’s crazy.”

You hear this frequently among people of African descent in Greece, who are still getting used to the idea that their community — a group confined to the margins of Greek life — has yielded an international superstar.

“We are proud of him,” Justina Chukwuma, an immigrant from Nigeria, said as she watched her Greek-born 10-year-old son, Great Chukwuma, practice layups at his after-school basketball program. “Everyone from Africa, they are looking up to him. They want to be like him, especially the boys. They are motivated by his achievement.”

Nepotism once made it difficult for black players to penetrate the ranks of Greek basketball.

“Black players in Greece have chances because of Giannis,” said 16-year-old Favor Ukpebor, a lanky shooting guard on an amateur team.

Antetokounmpo’s chance came through Spiros Velliniatis, who is widely credited with discovering his raw potential. Velliniatis played high school basketball in Florida as an exchange student. After he assumed the head coaching duties for the junior squad of a team in the middling ranks of Greek amateur basketball in 2007, he began walking neighborhoods full of African immigrants looking for children who appeared likely to fill out and grow tall. But he was most interested in body language.

“The most important thing is to have perception, street smarts,” Velliniatis said. “I look at people’s eyes. Are they active and engaged? This is my scouting report.”

One day that spring, he walked into a playground in the Sepolia neighborhood and caught sight of a 13-year-old boy who checked all the boxes. Giannis Antetokounmpo and his two younger brothers were running around chasing each other. The coach was transfixed.

“I could see that Giannis had real skills in changing direction,” Velliniatis recalled. He had huge hands and a frame that looked poised to grow. “It was like something stopped me from the sky. The moment I saw him, lightning struck me.”

“I had a discussion with God in this moment,” Velliniatis continued. “You can call me crazy, but this is the way I felt. I said, ‘Father in Heaven, am I seeing correctly?’ And I said, ‘Why me?’ And the answer that I got was, ‘If not you, who?’ ”

Velliniatis said he asked Giannis to get his mother, who was then cleaning houses. When she arrived, he made her an offer: He would find the parents jobs paying 800 euros per month if Giannis would come and play basketball for him.

“I knew that Nigerians don’t care about basketball,” the coach said. “They care about soccer. You need to bribe them, the parents. Otherwise, they will not be interested.”

Was this legal? The coach shrugged. “Everything is legal and everything is illegal in Greece,” he said. “It depends on how you label it.”

When his new recruit arrived at the gym, parents of other players, most of them white, gave him grief about Antetokounmpo. “He didn’t even know how to dribble or make a layup,” Velliniatis said.

Christoforos Kelaidis, then the team captain, remembered being confused. “He was not that big,” he says. “He was like an ordinary man starting something new. I couldn’t see anything remarkable.”

But there was something about Antetokounmpo that struck his teammates, well before his physique filled out, and long before he acquired the skills that would eventually draw comparisons to Magic Johnson and Kevin Garnett.

“He was very competitive,” Kelaidis said. “He didn’t like to lose. He couldn’t do that much, but he had that spirit.”

Velliniatis drilled his players extensively, preparing them to be able to play every position. He would put them in a circle on the court and have them dribble five and six balls at a time to nurture dexterity. He had them practice passing one-handed, zipping the ball down the court and running fast breaks to develop speed, vision and agility.

Antetokounmpo often stayed at the gym practicing until near midnight, sleeping there on an exercise mat in the weight room for fear of heading home in the darkness. Fascists and neo-Nazis affiliated with the Golden Dawn political party roamed the neighborhood menacing immigrants.

By the time he was 16, Antetokounmpo had become one of the top players in Greece, even as he remained in the second tier of the amateur leagues. Scouts flew in from the United States to watch his games. Milwaukee would select him in the first round of the 2013 draft, using the 15th pick. He was 19.

In the summer of 2015, after his second N.B.A. season, he flew back to Athens.

He and his old coach met for dinner.

“I told Giannis, ‘You have become what you have become, because of where you come from,’ ” Velliniatis said. “Giannis doesn’t understand fear.”

When he returns to Athens now, he is besieged by people who want him to pose for photos and sign autographs. Yet he still visits the cafe across the street from the basketball court in Sepolia, much to the delight of the proprietor, Giannis Tsiggas, 64.

From the time Antetokounmpo was nine years old, he and his brothers would pass the cafe en route to the playground from the apartments they rented in the area. “They always used to say ‘good morning,’ ” Tsiggas said. He gave the boys sandwiches and juice, knowing they were hungry, eliciting anger from some white residents who did not want Africans settling in the area.

On the cafe walls, Tsiggas displays photos of himself standing next to Antetokounmpo — as a slender teenager, and as the chiseled man he is now. A gift that Antetokounmpo brought him on his most recent trip sits in a frame over the counter: his jersey from the 2018 N.B.A. All-Star game.

Success has not changed Antetokounmpo, Tsiggas said, but it has changed the conversation about the African community.

“It’s wonderful for Greece,” he said. “We are all proud of Giannis. We all say he is our kid, even the people who didn’t like him back when they said, ‘He’s just a black boy.’ ”

#az high school basketball news #basketball 7 news #channel 7 news basketball #pro a basketball news #ucf basketball news orlando sentinel #uk basketball news and rumors

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talesofzestiria-r · 7 years

Text

Script: Elysia, Home of the Seraphim

Part 2 - Elysia, Home of the Seraphim

Download as PDF: click

For the complete list of skits, refer to this post: Skit List

For the overview of the whole script, click here: Script

If you find any mistakes or have questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

S = Sorey

M = Mikleo

A = Alisha

Z = Zenrus

(Arrival at Elysia)

M: I'll go report this to Gramps.

S: Guess we can't keep quiet about all this.

M: Coming by afterwards?

S: Yeah.

Hey everyone, got someone to introduce to you!

(All seraphims of the town are gathering, but A can't see them)

S: This is my family living here at the shrine.

A: Is this... Uh... Some kind of perfomance piece?

S: uh, it's nothing. Don't worry about it.

A: You're an odd duck, you know that?

S: I guess?

That's my house. You go ahead and rest. I've got something to take care of.

A: May I have a look around the village?

S: Well, sure. But don't cause trouble!

A: Of course not. I'll behave as if I were in a shrine to the seraphim.

S: Yeah, exactly!

A: I'll try not to make any waves.

S: Oh man. I sure hope Mikleo's chat with Gramps went over well.

(S enters Z's house)

M: And I'll let you hear the rest from Sorey himself.

Z: I reckon I'll have to.

You idiots!

S: Hi Gramps... I'm back.

Z: How could you bring a human into our domain?!

M: Easy, Gramps. Didn't you say you'd listen to Sorey's side of the story too?

Z: That's just what I'm about to do!

You know full well the rules, Sorey. How could you break them like this?

S: I'm sorry Gramps. But I couldn't just leave her there.

Z: Her kind is sure to bring nothing but trouble to our domain!

S: But I'm „her kind“ too, you know.

Z: You were raised aloung with our kind, which nurtured in you the ability to perceive us and converse with us. Normal humans have no such capacity. You should understand that more than anyone else!

S: Well, it is true. She doesn't appear to have any resonance.

M: But Gramps, this is the first time Sorey's ever met a fellow human.

Z: Perhaps. But if she can't see or hear the same things we do, she has no business in this realm.

S & M: …

Z: I have raised both of you as my own since you were but babes, all the while doing my best to protect this land.

S: And for that I am grateful.

Z: And I did that because the time draws near when you will both serve to protect this shrine, just as all the oterhs have done. Our priority is the peace of Elysia. Any intruders, no matter how harmless, must be cast out.

S: Yes...

Z: Then it's time she left.

S: Can we at least give her time to prepare for her depature?

Z: Hmph... Just make it quick.

S: Thank you.

M: Gramps?

Z: I know, I know Mikleo.

He means well, in all things.

But that's the very reason I'm so worried for him.

(S enters his house)

M: Hey.

(M gives S the glove of the Shepherd)

M: Here's that thing I found in the ruins.

S: Oh?

Is this crest what I think it is?

M: Yup. This is the mark of the Shepherd.

S: I knew it!

The chosen one who communicates with the seraphim, controlling their incredible powers as if they were his own...

The „Shepherd“. Hah hah!

M: Sound like your kinda thing?

S: Maybe.

M: I always thought that mankind's savior would actually look a bit more imposing.

S: Be silent, seraph-beast!

M: I shall not.

S: Hmm.

M: Excavated relics aren't play-toys.

S: True.

M: She certainly is taking her time.

S: I'll see what's up.

(S goes outside and meets A)

A: Hmmm...

S: Enjoy yourself?

A: I sure did. But it's weird, I felt like I was being watched the whole time.

(stomach growling)

A: Ah...

S: Shall we eat?

A: I'm sorry. I feel like I'm going to faint!

S: Let's head to my place!

(On the way to the house)

Gosh, I hope we didn't worry him.

A: Hm?

S: Oh, uh... nothing.

Welcome in.

(Both are eating, A seems absentminding)

S: Hey.

A: Hm?

S: So then, what's your hometown like?

A: Well, I'm from the capital, Ladylake, in the Kingdom of Hyland.

S: Ladylake? Like in the legend of the Sacred Blade?

A: You've heard of it?

S: It was in the Celestial Record!

The legend says the Lady of the Lake guards the Sacred Blade, and the one who draws it becomes the Shepherd, right?

A: Yes. It was a lively and bustling town blessed with bountiful water, rich in festivals and fine drink.

S: Wait... „was“?

A: Well, it used to be.

S: Things must be hard for folks in the world below.

A: Below?

S: The land that lies beneath the mountaintops. I've never left home before.

A: You've always lived here by yourself?

Sounds to me like you're the one who's had it rough.

S: Heh heh.

Oh, let me help you get ready for your return trip tomorrow!

You need anything? Bread, rations? Stuff like that?

A: That'd be great! If you have any tools or a sleeping bag, it'd be great too.

S: Gotcha. Well then, first we'll need to do some hunting! I'll be your guide tomorrow.

A: Thank you so much for everything.

(next day, outside of the house)

M: Good morning.

S: Good mornin'.

Seraph: Come on, hurry it up, Mikleo! We ain't got time to mess around!

M: Yeah, I'll leave in a moment.

Gramps gave me all kind of things to take care of. I'm gonna be pretty swamped for a while.

S: Bummer. Well, don't you worry about me at least.

M: Sorey, Gramps only wants--

S: Yeah, I know.

Seraphim: Mikleo!

M: Maybe later.

S: Sure.

(To A) Good morning! You sleep okay?

A: Yeah, like a log! Been ages since I've done that.

S: Allright then. Shall we?

The prickleboars lurk to the left of the entry gate. It's an ideal hunting place.

A: Got it.

→ Skit/ Discovery Point: Elysalark Fledglings

S: Oh hey! There's no baby elysalarks in the nest anymore. I remember when one of 'em fell from the nest, I was gonna keep it and raise it, but Gramps wouldn't let me.

„A kept bird will never learn to fly“, he said. „Put it back.“

Guess you made it out of the nest on your own, huh?

→ Skit/ Discovery Point: The Elysian Goat

A: Such robust horns... Just like the dragons of legend.

S: Hahaha! What, like in fairy tales? You're something else.

A: Don't go near it! There's no telling how dangerous untamed beasts like those are.

S: Aw, don't worry, we're friends! Uh, well mostly. They did kick me four or five times when I was little.

A: You're... „friends“?

S: Yup! Sometimes they give me milk, and I make cheese and yogurt with everyone.

A: The mark of true friendship.

S: Yeah, it's the best!

(Seeing a monster)

S: There's a prickleboar.

A: So that's one, huh.

S: Their meat is easy to preserve when smoked, and super tasty! And the skin has all kind of uses too.

A: I almost feel sorry for it.

S: Wanna leave?

A: No. My spirit is prepared. Besides, I can't get this sort of experience back home!

S: Okay. Here we go!

S: hey, pretty smooth moves!

A: Thank you. You're rather capable yourself.

S: Okay! Guess we need a few more.

A: I don't see any around.

S: You'll find them if you look.

S: Hey, how far is it to Ladylake?

A: Let's see. I expect about to or three days.

S: Really? I had no idea it was so close!

A: But the forest at the base of the mountain is surprisingly easy to get lost in.

S: Must be the power of Gramps domain.

→ Skit: Battling the Prickleboars

A: Sorey, your sword technique is... eclectic.

Which school are you from?

S: Which school?

A: Yes. Isn't there a name signifying the style? Your swordmaster's name, perhaps.

S: Hmmmm.... I guess mine would have to be the „prickleboar school“!

A: Prickleboar school?

S: For me, it was food. For prickleboars, it was survival. Everyday, me and them, a neverending life-or-deat struggle.

A: You really are a child of nature, aren't you.

S: But it was those days that taught me how to fight.

There's no better teacher—no more exacting taskmaster—than the humble prickleboar!

A: Thus, prickleboar school.

S: You got it!

But I guess I should say „tuskmaster“.

A: Heh.

(Inside the house)

A: Sorey?

S: Oh, did I wake you? Sorry 'bout that.

A: You're sure into that book, aren't you.

S: I've read it countless times since my childhood.

A: One day, I want to explore ruins all over the world.

Everyone who's read the Celestial Record says that, and I'm no exception.

But sadly, now is not the time for some jaunt around the world.

For several years now, the world has been plunged into a nigh-incomprehensible state of chaos.

S: Chaos?

A: Mysterious illnesses, incessant storms, people bursting into flames...

There are those that say even the dead have begun to walk the earth again.

S: Woah, hang on. What are you talking about?

A: You don't believe me? Or you think this is a joke?

S: No, I...

A: The situation is beyond grave.

S: Huh?

A: The chaos has caused abnormal climate changes all over the world.

As a result, we are on the verge of endureing widespread crop death, famine, and starvation.And worst of all are the rumors of governments planning to replenish their dwindling resources through war. It mustn't come to that.

S: Can nothing be done?

A: Who knows. There's nothing to hang onto but legends.

S: Which is why you---

Nevermind. I won't ask.

I think I'm gonna just hit the hay here myself. Sleep well.

(next day)

A: Good morning.

S: Good morning! You ready to get to work? We gotta make those rations and bags from the prickleboars we hunted yesterday.

A: You got it.

S: Heh heh. Afraid it isn't exactly super fun, though!

A: Well, let me know when you're ready to start.

So, what do you need me to do?

(all things are sewn)

A: Sorry for putting you to work like this.

S: Oh, I'm pretty used to it.

A: With your help, I'll be able to leave tomorrow. Thanks so much.

S: Yeah? Great. Well, better rest up for tomorrow.

I ought to let Gramps know.

(S outside, alone)

S: Wish I'd asked her more about the world below.

(S in Z's house)

S: Hey, Gramps. She says she's leaving tomorrow.

Z: I see. We'll all be sure to see her off. After all, one must always be hospitable to one's guests.

S: Thanks!

(next day, entry of Elysia)

A: I really owe you. Thank you so much.

S: You gonna be okay by yourself?

A: I cannot cause more trouble for you than I already have.

S: I see.

(A sighs)

S: You'll be fine. Just follow that map and you'll get through the forest with no problems.

A: Oh, it's not that. I believe you.

Alisha.

S: Huh?

A: That's my name. Alisha Diphda.

S: Alisha?

A: You didn't even know who I was, and you helped me without asking anything in return.

Whereas I thought only of myself, leaving you without even a name by which to call me... As a knight, I am ashamed. Please find it in your heart to forgive me.

S: I-it's okay.

A: I must confess something to you.

S: Hm?

A: I know this sounds strange, but I believe that the seraphim really do exist.

The myths and legends that are preserved in the Celestial Record must be more than mere fairy tales.

S: Yeah.

A: This crisis that has befallen our world...

I believe that only the one spoken of in the ancient legends can truly restore order.

S: The Shepherd you mean.

A: You're not going to ridicule me? Everyone back in town does.

S: Of course not.

A: You're a real saint, you know that?

The Sacred Blad Festival is soon to commence in Ladylake.

A trial will be held based on the legend of the Shepherd's sword.

A trial I think you might be interested in.

S: Me?

A: Time to go.

But please, give it some serious thought when you have the time.

S: How come?

A: The Shepherd I see in my mind when I read the legends...

I have to say, he reminds me a lot of you.

S: …

(M gives S a dagger)

S: What's this?

M: Gramps asked me to go out search the ruins and find some clues about that girl. I've been down there looking.

S: So wait, this is Alisha's?

M: This is the crest of Hyland.

I don't think this „Alisha“ is any ordinary knight.

Z: I know this is diffucult for you, but it really is for the best.

M: Gramps?

Z: Hmm... Someone has infiltrated my domain.

Blast and damnation! Hiding your presence, are you? Crafty bugger!

Everyone, be warned! There is an intruder in our realm! Find them!

They've concealed their presence, so chance are good it's a hellion! Search with extreme caution!

S: We'll go, too.

Z: Very well. If it is a hellion, quick measures must be taken. I'm counting on you.

Seraphim: I have a hunch we'll find it around the forest.

S: Good idea.

(In the ruins)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!

(Lunarre (L) eats Mason (Seraphim))

S: Mason?!

L: How odd. I didn't expect to find anything but the main course here...

But now there's two more side dishes!

M: What on earth is this thing? Is this the hellion?

This is not the place for one such as you! Leave at once!

L: Hee hee hee heee!

Impudent brat.

I can smell the fear wafting off of you. Thos tender arms, trying to conceal their shivers...

(L steckt S in Brand, M löscht) (L sets S on fire, M extinguishes)

S: Urgh!

M: Sorey!

L: Mmm, aren't you a succulent treat.

M: What?!

L: Did I stutter?

I'm saying I'm going to eat you!

S: As if! I can take you! Prepare to meet your doom, hellion!

(after the fight)

M: All talk, aren't you.

S: Still haven't had enough yet?

M: Begone!

(L eats Mason completely)

S: Ah!

M: Mason!

S: He... He ate Mason!

M: Is... Is this what hellions are capable of?

(Z and all other seraphim of the town appear)

Z: Away with you, evil being!

Seraphim: Or you wanna take us all on at once?

L: Hmph. I shouldn't be snacking anyway. Not when the main course is getting away.

(L is gone)

S: Mason...

(Everyone is shocked)

Z: We can handle the rest.

M: Gramps. That fox-looking thing... Was that really a hellion?

They can talk to us?

Z: Yes. That's the form of a human who has become a hellion. Corrupted, essentially.

S: Humans can become hellions?

Z: Now, it's time you went back home and rest.

M: We should. C'mon... Let's head back.

S: Right.

(S and M are out of hearing distance)

Z: So... It begins anew.

(House of S)

S: … What on earth did it come here to do?

(Backflash)

L: How odd. I didn't expect to find anything but the main course here...

Not when the main course is getting away.

S: Wait a minute. Was it going after... her?

(Backflash end, S packs his things and wants to leave Elysia)

S: They'll probably freak out with me gone suddenly...

Sorry, everyone!

(S looks back)

Okay.

M: Oh?

S: Woah, Mikleo! Why are you here?

M: Thought I'd let you duck out of here?

S: Well...

M: I'm going too.

S: Seriously?

M: We can talk more while we travel. We don't have time.

But from what the fox man said, it's fair to assume that he's after Alisha.

S: You picked up on that too, huh?

M: Of course. Now, let's hurry.

S: Hey.

M: What? What's gotten into you all of a sudden?

S: I'm just really happy you came with me!

M: I couldn't let you navigate the world of humans alone. Not as guileless as you are.

S: I bet Gramps is mad though.

M: He was ready for it, in a way. He knew you'd leave someday.

S: Hey, I'm just stepping out for a bit, I'll see him again.

M: Gramps has always known.

That once you left, you'd live the rest of your days with humans.

(M gives S the pipe from Z)

S: Is this from Gramps?

M: We'll need money to get by in human society. He said to sell that if we're ever in a bind.

And there's a message for you as well.

„Walk the path you believe in and live your life to the fullest, and I know you will not go astray.“

That's what he said.

(S hugs the pipe)

S: Let's go!

(M and S see the outside world for the first time)

M: Incredible!

By themselves, people are such frail things. That is why, in times of calamity, they pray for a Shepherd to save them.

S: Woah! This is really it! This is our world!

The era later known as the „Age of Chaos“ gave birth to a new Shepherd. This... Is his story.

#tales of #tales of zestiria #tales of zestiria r #toz #sorey #mikleo #script #alisha #story #scenario #elysia

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