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snowwhitelass · 3 years

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New Outlander Game Coming – Talking with the Game Designers

By: Erin Conrad, June 15, 2021

Gamers Corner, TV News

Outlander game, Sony, Starz Outlander, Variable Outcomes

Who wouldn’t want to dash around the Highlands with Jamie, trying to be his favorite, and rescuing him from trouble on the way? That definitely sounds like a fun time, even if all you can do is dream about it. Or IS that all you can do?

NO! Sometime this fall, a brand new board game will debut – Outlander The Series! Designed by the husband and wife team of Matthew and Ashley Killeen, the game will let you play with a bunch of your friends, meeting familiar faces along the way, and getting in and out of all kinds of scrapes. The game will be available for holiday shopping, so you can start to set up your Outlander game nights now. I had the opportunity to talk with Matthew and Ashley about the development of this new game, and learned some details.

From the game’s marketing information: “His fate is in your hands! Step through the stones of Craigh Na Dun and run through the Scottish Highlands with the handsome Jamie. The year is 1743, and the outlaw James Fraser is at your side as you navigate the thrills and dangers of the Highlands. Use your wit, reach the right locations, make the right friends, and gather the items you need, all while keeping Jamie out of the hands of the many who would do him wrong. The gallows await fair Jamie (or worse!) should you fail. Fulfill your destiny, and win his heart. Only then will victory be yours!”

Outlander is the Killeen’s first big franchise game. “From a business point of view, it’s something I always wanted to do,” Matthew said. “I enjoy games with an IP license attached, TV show or movie, and I have designed prototypes that might be good for Ghostbusters or Star Trek. I really wanted to get into that.” Ashley knew Matthew was interested in trying a licensed game, and said “I’ve been watching Outlander, you should make a game based on that.” Matthew hadn’t yet seen the show, so he said “you do it” – and she did.

Ashley didn’t get into the show until season three. “The first version (of the game) was based on the book, because I thought that might be the avenue to go. But it ended up being more layers to secure the book rights than TV. We heard back from Starz/Sony quickly, and the show and book were similar enough that I didn’t have to change too much from initial design. I swapped out characters and items that didn’t translate from one to another. Jamie still has same event encounters, the same enemies. It’s nice to look at both sides, to really put in all those little hidden tidbits from show. I’m hoping that fans of the show will enjoy all those subtle things that I’ve put in. But the other thing we wanted to make sure was that it was not dependent upon being familiar with the show, because the last thing you want is a game with Outlander masked on top of it that doesn’t play as anything on its own. And having a lot of friends who knew nothing about Outlander, how could I get them to the table?”

Matthew said, “One of philosophies for the board game stuff was that I’ve seen games that were maybe like a movie spin on top. Is this fun or exciting because of the game, or just because of the movie or tv show tie in? And one reason, the biggest reason why I got excited was when I first played it, I had never seen the show. I knew nothing about it. I had never seen the characters, and yet, I still enjoyed it. It was a good game.” Ashley added, “He has since seen the show.” Matthew continued, “That’s another thing that’s always bothered me. I feel like if a certain publisher or game designer makes something but doesn’t know the back story, that’s lazy. As soon as I found out we were going to do this, I watched the show. I know all my lore now. I was obviously able to play the game again once I knew the show and the lore, and it made the game play better.” “You understood my decisions,” said Ashley. “Exactly,” said Matthew. “Whether you know the show or not, it’s a good game.”

Ashley discussed their process: “I started December 2019. This past December, we were finally able to go forward. We got the contract from Sony in November. It was a long process! We got approvals for the design of the game, and access to the virtual library. We could figure out images that would go with the components we had.” Once they had that, Matthew figured out the graphic design for the game.

Was Sony/Starz helpful? Enthusiastic? Ashley said, “They were enthusiastic. They didn’t really have a board game. They had Destiny Dice, but that wasn’t the same thing.” (For my review of Destiny Dice, a game that came out a couple of years ago, click here.) I’ve had reservations about this previous game, so I asked how they overcame the failings of that one to make this new game. My concern with a platform like this is that the show is so big and layered – a group of women will come together over a glass of wine or three, and are they going to be able to figure it out easily enough to have a good time in an evening? Ashley feels that the new game will let us do that. “The idea behind this was that we wanted to bring everybody to the table – people whose board games lives consisted of Scrabble for their whole lives, and those who have played campaigning, like Mage Knights, epically, every week. We want to bring both those sets to the table. It should be intuitive enough once you’ve figured out the first turn order. It’s the repetition of that, it’s just your personal strategy that changes on what you choose to do, but the game play isn’t going to change on you as you go.”

She added, “But there’s enough in there that if you are an experienced board game player, you’re not sitting there bored waiting for the next thing to happen. That was our goal, as many people at the same table as possible enjoying it at the level they’re at. You can have the game player who knows nothing about Outlander, and you can have the Outlander fan who doesn’t play board games, and they will have a good evening. We also tried to be strategic about the length, because you don’t want to have just a tease of a game, because then you can’t be really invested and immersed in that world, but we also know, especially being parents now, you don’t have time to spend four hours on a game. That’s not going to happen any more. What’s a good length? If you can watch an episode of Outlander, you can play a round. So we wanted to find something that made sense. A lot of these pieces, once you apply a little logic to it, they fell together really nicely.”

This is the first “franchise” game the Killeens have designed. The fascination with board games started in 2004, and in 2011, Matthew began to design games as hobby. “I enjoyed playing, but in between then I was going to school and forgot about it. As school was winding down, I really got into it. I created an educational game called Witchful Thinking. We’re both teachers, and when doing practicum, the teacher (that he was working with) had kids doing games for math. but they were really boring, and the kids didn’t like it at all. I remembered I had a game that worked for this! I started looking at my business from a professional point of view, filling in gaps in the market. I wanted to bring people to a table they hadn’t been to yet. Witchful Thinking is a card game – witches brewing potions, teaching math – subtraction, addition, pre-algebra, and more advanced math. It was a great educational tool.” The company has more ideas – they have an upcoming Kickstarter for a game called Tennessee James, an Indiana Jones parody (learn more here). Matthew says that the company expects to bring out many more titles – “Between the two of us, we have a backlog of designs.”

When do they expect to have this out? Matthew said definitely for the Christmas season. “I am working with manufacturers right now, trying to iron out some of those details, but we’re going to be moving into manufacturing right now. It depends on how long it takes to do the mass production plus shipping, but I would estimate this would maybe in stores (or online retailers) by October. That’s probably a good estimate.”

Did they do a lot of testing? “We needed especially non-Outlander fans to play this game. The Outlander fans, it didn’t take a lot of convincing to get them to play,” said Matthew. “Even before there were pictures on the cards, they knew the board, they knew the characters. So even if you had a blank piece of paper that just said Murtagh on it, they know what it means. I wasn’t worried about the Outlander fans, and the game play is pretty intuitive, once you go through the steps. So once you’ve done a round, you can keep going around, no problem. So we were just like, ok, you don’t know what these names mean and where these places are, but you’ve got a bit of the information, are you on board? And so far the reaction has been, yes, I feel like I’m playing a game, even if they don’t know who Jamie is or anything like that.”

He continued, “The tall and short of it is that this that this has been play tested thoroughly. It’s not broken, and the most important part is that it’s fun.” Ashley added, “It’s a nice balance of cooperative, nobody wants Jamie to come to any harm, but you still want to be his favorite. So you can get a little catty, and that’s what makes the fun. You’ll be adding something a little stronger to your tea nights once you start playing that way.”

Matthew said, “One of my strategies for play testing is that I like to try different strategies each time and see what works and what doesn’t .Ashley laughed, “You played mean one time.” “Yeah, it’s my wife, I’ve got to play nice, right? But one time, I didn’t play nice, and I took a competitive edge, and it was awesome,” he said. So players, remember that!

“When I was working on Witchful Thinking, I was looking to put it into Walmart and Target. But they don’t want to talk to the independent company, they want to make sure they’re getting multiple products from the same distributors. So we want to make sure that the distributors that we get are also trying to get the game out there. I do have distribution in the US for Witchful Thinking, and they’re excited to take on this one.”

What was your favorite part of the game, as you play it, I asked? Ashley said, “I like the QuickSave. This is a component we have because Jamie is always going to move in a predictable pattern, and the three villains he’s trying to avoid – Black Jack Randall, the Redcoats and the Watch – those are all the Meeples that are going to be moving around. As you are collecting friends along the way, if you happen to be en route to an Encounter, you can use the special abilities from your friends. So maybe it’s Dougal who is going to be discarded, and that will be a Quicksave to put Jamie back in hiding, so the game’s not over, you haven’t captured him yet. I like that idea, the Quicksave. So you’re strategizing, not just for what’s going to give you a lot of Favor from Jamie to try to win his heart in the game, but where are these people going to help me if Jamie is in a pickle. Because he’s going to get himself in a lot of pickles.”

As he does on the show, I said! Ashley continued, “And as a designer, that’s a fun way for me to tie in the personality of the characters. There’s a reason why they have the values that they do. There was a little argument between us in the design phase, because I made Willie – Willie Mackenzie from the first season – he has this hidden kind of superpower that most of the time, he’s a bit weaker, but when the danger level’s up, he’s strong. Matt was criticizing that, ‘he’s a minor character, why is he so strong?’ But you haven’t been paying attention. Because when Jamie’s in Wentworth, it’s Willie who’s willing to go. So that’s his power, when things are toughest, he’s the one that can save the most. I was having fun finding those little nuggets, the lore, that fans love, and if you’re paying attention to how I’ve designed it, you’ll start seeing like why you get more Favor in some places, or more Wit, or why you have the saving abilities.”

The women playing will like seeing that, I agreed. “I think that we’ve got it so that your favorite characters, from S1 at least, this is just in the Highlands, you’re going to see them, I think they’ll do you proud,” Ashley says. “We’re still excited about it, even though it’s been a year and a half doing it, so I think that says something about it, that we can still be passionate about it, little choices like that, I think the game has life.” Ashley told me that she has ideas for additional Outlander games to follow each season, so this may go on for quite a while!

As their cute kids came into the room, I asked if game design was full time, or is this an extra job? Ashley said, “I’m a full time teacher, so I’m squeezing this in between the report card writing and the classroom stuff. With a bunch of changes with Covid, it’s made more sense for Matthew to stay home, so we decided to go all in, make this run for itself.” Matthew said, “I can speak from the graphic design standpoint – I didn’t design the gameplay, Ashley did that, but I offered suggestions here and there, it was her decision on things, and she made some great decisions. And between that, I did the playtesting and the graphic design in January and early February, I’ve put in hundreds of hours, not just with the graphic design, but also the business stuff too, figuring out social media posts, getting things approved by Sony, talking with the distributors. So this has been not just like a full time job, but overtime, I’ve put in some serious hours for this.”

Since this is the company’s first big license, I asked if is this something they want to continue. “Absolutely,” Matthew said. “And I knew that when I turned this into a hobby back in 2011. I enjoy making board games. I enjoying making movies, watching movies, reading books, all that stuff. I needed some sort of creative outlet. And this was it. I enjoy tabletop games, so I found a business that I’m passionate about. But I found over the years, since I am a small business, I had to learn everything. I can do the game design, I can do the graphic design, the IP stuff, social media, the PR, distribution. I have all those experiences, so if I can continue this, I’ll be very happy.”

Price point for the game should be $48.99 CA (US equivalent is about $40). And it will be available in the US, and more – Matthew says, “The territories we have with Sony are Canada, USA, UK, Australia and France. We’re a small family run company, but at the same time, this is a big license. So we want to do the fans proud, we want to do this IP proud, so we want to give the biggest reach that we can.” Ashley said, “We’re limited because we’re not the distributors, so once we put it in those hands, it’s really up to those stores that want to put it on their shelves. So until we know where they’re placing it, I can’t tell you ‘oh, pick it up here.’ ” Matthew agreed. “I have experience with all of that, so when I made Witchful Thinking and released that, I had a hard time getting distribution. So I went store to store, city to city, and I made those contacts myself. For me as a business owner, I’m not just one of those owners who throws money out and does it. I have experience in all these aspects. So when this game comes out, let’s say that distribution doesn’t have as far of a reach as possible, I’ll make it happen. With Covid especially, the online market is important.”

“From a business standpoint, we’re a new company,” Matthew said. “It seems that we’re very new to this but that’s not really the case. This game has been been in development for a long time, and between the two of us we have 20+ games in prototypes. So we definitely know how to make games, and make games fun. And the fact that we’re both teachers, I think makes it even better. Because as teachers, we have to know how to sell to an audience.” ” And explain the games,” Ashley added.

PRE-ORDER THE GAME RIGHT HERE! Three if by Space has the game available for pre-orders in our Collectibles shop!! Click here to go to the pre-order page!

#outlander board game #three if by space #sony #outlander starz #starz outlander #outlander game #scottish highlands #craigh na dun

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time-to-write-and-suffer · 3 years

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I wouldn't mind that post on VNs!

So I was gonna write three different lists, but then after writing the first part I realized this is very long and takes a while to write and nobody cares anyway so I’ll just post my recommended list only. Well, I mean, you asked, but I doubt you wanted all this lol. Thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about this stuff, though. Hope you enjoy my ramblings!

An explanation for what this list is: Sometimes I know a game isn't perfect in many aspects but I still had a genuinely good time playing it, hence why I'm recommending it. Also I should mention that I could talk for hours about some of these games so if anyone’s curious about more of my thoughts, let me know.

Alright, now that that's out of the way ...

How to Take Off Your Mask / How to Fool a Liar King / How to Sing to Open Your Heart (f/m): This is a trilogy of smaller, single-RO games where you can take one of two routes depending on how you act, and they’re all interconnected where you get to meet and interact with the previous games’ characters in the sequel games. I went into this expecting very little but what I got blew me away with how funny, charming and cute the games were. They don’t take themselves too seriously, at one point an angsty male character monologues deeply about some shit, and another one just slides into frame and starts mocking him. It was so fucking funny, holy shit. Also, a central theme is literally racism against catgirls? Which is monumentally stupid, and probably the games’ main flaw, especially in the final game where it pairs up a catgirl with a catgirl racist, but that one still ends with a literal bisexual queen literally making a man her malewife because she fell in love with his cooking, so like ... It speaks for itself. My favorite game of the three is the second one, where you get to play a punchy fake catgirl and romance a pink-haired prince. And honestly, all the female protags in these games are lovely and a breath of fresh air, and the male characters are fun and not abusive assholes either. There’s full Japanese voice acting, and two out of three female protags are literal catgirls who pepper in “nya” and “mya” into their dialogue, and it’s just treated as a quirk of their catgirl race. I AM NOT KIDDING. Yet somehow it never comes off as cringe, because it doesn’t take it self too seriously. These games are just cozy. That’s the only way I can describe them. Cozy and hilarious. Play them yesterday. Dream Daddy (m/m): Man tumblr did this game dirty. This is just a cute, wholesome daddy dating simulator with gorgeous art. Coming out on Top (m/m): So you know Dream Daddy? What if it was EXTREMELY, MAJORLY NSFW? Though I realize how bad the comparison really is, the only thing these games have in common is that they’re gay dating sims and don’t have an anime art style and oh, yeah, they’re both really well-written. Or at least, extremely funny. COOT (heh) is DDADDS’ horny older cousin, and I first encountered the game on a lesbian letsplayer’s YouTube channel. Yes I watched a lesbian play a gay porn game and it was GOOD. I was there for the cringe and fun and got surprised by how genuinely funny and sometimes actually touching the game was. I can’t give it my universal endorsement because it’s not a game for everyone, as I said, it’s extremely NSFW and the menu theme literally includes the singers screaming “SEX SEX” at the top of their lungs. There’s more to this game than the porn, but there’s just so much porn. It can be censored in the settings but it’s unavoidable. However, I still think it’s worth a look just because of how funny it is and how charming the characters are. If you don’t want to play it yourself, at least watch Anima’s playthrough of it. It hasn’t aged super well in some spots but I still go back to it every now and then. Akash: Path of the Five (f/m): This game markets itself as a more “professionally produced” western dating sim, and that’s accurate in some superficial aspects. The game is pretty poorly written, but it’s absolutely gorgeous and has really good English voice acting by actual professional voice actors. The premise is quite self-indulgent, but I genuinely respect that about it. You play as the only female elemental in a village with only men, and all five of your classmates want a piece of you. It’s clear the writers have put some thought into the lore and worldbuilding of this world, but barely any of it comes through in the actual writing and plot, which is basically just a vehicle for you to get together with your boy of choice. The ROs aren’t very well-developed either, and the plot is the same in every route with only minor variations depending on which guy you pick, up to the point where the protag has the same voice lines in some parts regardless of which guy she’s talking about. It also has one extra half-route that’s so bad and pointless I genuinely wonder why they wasted resources on making it instead of spending a bit more on the writing/adding some variations to the main plot. So why am I recommending this game? Well, it’s pretty, and it sounds nice. This game is a himbo, gorgeous but dumb as rocks. Enjoy it for what it is. I know I did. Get it when it’s on sale, I think if I hadn’t gotten it at half-price I would’ve felt a bit more cranky about it. Also Rocco is bae. Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons (f/m): Yes that’s the full title, no I don’t know what it means either. You may have noticed how most of the games so far I’ve enjoyed because they don’t take themselves too seriously? Well, this one does. It takes itself SO FUCKING SERIOUSLY. Like, way too seriously. It’s a little embarrassing at points because baby, you’re an urban fantasy dating sim. Calm down. But the game has gorgeous art and 3 out of 5 routes are very good. The last route, the one with your teacher, is both the most problematic yet somehow the one that breaks down the very concept of a dating sim within its own narrative (yes, this shit gets fucking META) and it got so wild at the end that 1) I still listen to the soundtrack for that route and 2) I still remember it to this day despite finishing it ages ago. My favorite route is Shou, he’s a sweetheart, but the mindfuck route is so buckwild that I think the game is worth playing just for that. There’s also a route that’s like a neo-noir mystery? I Do Not Know. This game is many, many things and it does them so sincerely and tries so hard, you can’t help but respect it. It doesn’t always stick the landing but man, just let this thing take your hand and wax poetic at you for a bit. Also get this one at a sale because it’s very expensive to get the full version. I got it for 9 bucks on itch.io and I felt that was a fair enough price, I’d say I wouldn’t have minded paying more for it because there’s a lot of content to enjoy and/or be baffled by. Arcade Spirits: This one’s a bit more weird from what I recall, and I honestly couldn’t tell you much about it, but I remember having a very good time with it and recommending it to a friend when she was going through some tough times and she said it made her feel better. I remember it making me feel better, as well. This is a VN about an arcade and the ROs are wonderfully diverse, with very real human conflicts that get explored in each of their routes. It can get quite existential and heavy at times, but in the end it’s a kindhearted game that I think everyone can enjoy. The main character was also, how you say, mood. It’s a game about getting possessed by a video game and then learning self-love. Ebon Light (f/m): This one’s free/name your own price on itch.io so go play it. It’s a weird plot where you play as a girl who ate an elven relic? And then the elves kidnap you because you’re the relic now. All the ROs are extremely pasty (like, literally white, as in literally the color white) dark-haired elves, except for one, who’s an extremely pasty blond elf, so ... diversity? I honestly don’t know what this game is aside from unique. I used to be a bit put off by the art style but now I think it contributes to the general atmosphere. It’s a weird game that technically doesn’t do anything groundbreaking but still left an impression of “huh. weird” in my mind and I think more people should play it. The ROs are all pretty generic dating sim archetypes but done well, with bonus points to Duliae who’s just a massive creep and I love him, and also Vadeyn who’s the only bitch in this house I respect. The worldbuilding is honestly a bit buckwild and I can’t give enough credit for how unique the elves’ culture is in this game. Definitely give it a go. Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds / Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms (f/m): These two are newer releases of an older Japanese visual novel. I wouldn’t call it a dating sim, it’s ... it’s more of a super depressing historical fantasy epic with some minor romance aspects awkwardly wedged in. It’s seriously some of the heaviest and most grimdark shit I’ve ever played in a VN/otome. I don’t understand why it’s a dating sim, it doesn’t read like one, it’s just historical fantasy based on real world events with characters based on real people, and they kill and they die and they grieve and they suffer. The games are literally about the downfall of the Shinsengumi, there’s no way of avoiding everything going to shit and you get to watch and be in the middle of it all as they struggle to stay alive and relevant in a world that doesn’t need them anymore. And there’s the protag in the middle of it all, being useless and submissive and bland just the way the usual otome protag is. I don’t think these games are necessarily fun, and the romance is certainly a lot more downplayed and deeply problematic just based on the age differences alone with some of the men, but the sheer amount of horror and sadness in these games make them stand out above its peers. It’s like watching a war movie. Since most of the characters are based on real people, they feel like real people instead of the usual otome archetypes, and they are so, SO flawed, it’s interesting to just watch them deal with the shit the world throws at them. It’s an Experience, and if you’re up for it, I think it’s worth the time. Cinderella Phenomenon (f/m): This game is free on Steam so go get it. You play as a really, genuinely shitty princess who gets cursed to be poor and forgotten and she has to help one of the ROs break his fairy tale curse so that she can learn about being a good person herself and return to her normal life. This game doesn’t look like much, but it has a genuinely well-written main character who’s actually at the center of each of the stories and in the overarching plot instead of just being around to make eyes at the real protagonists, aka the love interests. Aside from the main character, my favorite part of this game’s writing is how each route slowly but very smoothly expands upon the overarching intrigue. If you play them in a certain order, you get more and more info revealed to you that you didn’t see in other routes, gaps are filled in as you find out more about what actually happened and why, but every route also stands on its own as a full experience and none is more canon than the rest. There’s also some really heavy emotional parental abuse explored, which I found quite potent at times. The romances themselves were alright, I think Karma and Waltz were my faves.

#eff plays

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idreamofplaid · 4 years

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Fallen - Chapter 3

Summary: Sam thought he had found happiness, but now his past is back to haunt him. Lucifer has claimed the throne of heaven, and it is his intention that Sam should finally fulfill his destiny as King of Hell.

Characters: Sam x Reader; Dean, Cas, Lucifer

Word Count: 2706

A/N: This a series I started a couple of years ago. I’m finishing it now. Each chapter is inspired by a song. For Chapter 2 it is “All the King’s Horses” by Karmina.

I KNOCK THE ICE FROM MY BONES, TRY NOT TO FEEL THE COLD

“Sam?” There was nothing, not a sound, not a movement. Sam’s hand still felt strong, but he didn’t close his fingers around yours or brush his thumb across your knuckles the way he once did. His chest was barely rising and falling as he breathed.

You let go of his hand and climbed into the bed to lay down next to him then rested your head on his shoulder and lay your palm flat against his chest. From the moment you first knew you loved him, your life had changed. Most of your friends had dreamed about weddings and having babies. You’d been witness to your parents’ unhappy marriage and had decided at an early age you wanted no part of that. Sam changed your mind without knowing he’d done it. He made you want those things.

There was so much you wanted and needed to say to him. You talked out loud, telling him things he might not know, giving him a reason to fight his way back. “Sam I won’t give up on you. Ever. We can get through this. I don’t know why I thought you would betray me; you wouldn’t, not if you had a choice. I was just so scared about what was happening. I’d forgive you if I needed to, but I don’t.”

You stopped talking long enough to kiss his neck, the very spot that had always made him moan and bury his hand in your hair. Your lips touched him there tenderly in a plea for him to open his eyes; you watched for a few seconds waiting for something that didn’t happen. Then you lay down next to him again with your head over his heart. “It’s okay, Sam. Just get better. Get better for our baby.”

The sound of Sam’s heart beating under your ear offered some comfort and hope while memories drifted through your mind, one after the other, in a constant stream of special moments and simple everyday routines that hadn’t seemed special, but they had been. You had fallen in love with Sam during the hours you’d spent with him sitting at a table in the library making your way through lore books together.

CAUGHT IN THE THOUGHT OF THAT TIME

One Year Ago

Sam put a blue mug down on the library table next to you and surveyed the stacks of books. “I made coffee; looks like we’ll be here awhile.”

The weight and warmth of the mug was comforting. “Thanks.” You had been pouring over the same book for hours, then your eyes fell on something you hadn’t noticed before, and you sat up straighter. “I think I found it.” Sam finished his sip of coffee and put his cup down on the table. Then he reached for the book you were sliding across the table. You told him excitedly, “I think it’s a harpy. In Ancient Greece, they removed people from the earth as punishment for wrongdoing. Everyone who’s disappeared hasn’t exactly been guiltless.”

Sam read the open page and nodded. “Okay. Harpy. How do you kill it?”

“Silver dagger. Tell Dean he might want to let Cas take the lead on this one; they fly.”

Sam ended the call with Dean and put his cell phone back in his pocket. You watched the way he moved. He wore the hunter’s uniform well. The cuffs of his red plaid shirt were rolled up revealing his forearms, and the black t-shirt he wore underneath hugged his body. Sam fascinated you. He was damn good at being a hunter, but there was something else about him. You contemplated him a moment before asking, “Sam, did you always know you’d do this?”

He leaned forward and picked up the book you’d given him absentmindedly stacking it on top of the one he’d been reading. “No.” He paused before continuing and sighed. “I ran from this. Over and over I ran from it.” He told you about Jessica and Amelia. Sam talked about love, how he’d been scared to love anyone again after Jessica died and how with Amelia he’d chased after something that wasn’t real.

You listened and told him you’d been in love twice. The first time you loved him as much as your eighteen year old self could which it turned out wasn’t really lasting. The second time you were much more ready for love, but he wasn’t. When you finished talking, Sam eased his fingers over the back of your hand. His eyes were deep green sprinkled with gold, and he looked at you intently. “A guy would be lucky to have you.”

He pulled his hand back, and you felt butterflies explode in your stomach. You knew everything had just changed. The air felt charged; then he lightened his tone. “You hungry?”

WHEN EVERYTHING WAS FINE, WHEN EVERYTHING WAS MINE

It wasn’t your first dinner with Sam, but it was a changing point. He made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, proud of what he’d done and joking that he could cook. You tore off a piece of your sandwich and put the warm, buttery bite in your mouth. You swallowed and smiled at the chef. “It’s perfect, Sam, melted just right.” After a few bites of soup, you found the voice to ask him questions you’d always wondered about.

“Sam, when did you start hunting?”

He put down his spoon and got a faraway look in his eyes. “My first hunt I was so scared I stayed in the car.” Sam let out a little laugh with a small shake of his head. “Dad and Dean finally left me there. I didn’t want to kill monsters. I didn’t want the blood. I didn’t want the ugliness and fear, but it was what I was born to. It was expected of me; I was trained for it. I was taught to be a hunter.”

Sam studied your face for a second and asked quietly,“What did you want to do?”

You lifted your napkin from your lap and wiped your fingers. A nostalgic smile crossed your face. “I wanted to be a fashion designer, live the glamorous life, travel to exotic places, experience things no one in my life ever had. Turns out I wasn’t really meant for that, just not that glamorous.”

“You’re good at what you do, Y/N. Sometimes a life chooses you.” Sam’s eyes moved down your face to your chin and back up again. His eyes lingered on yours before he glanced away. “It’s late. I’ll get the dishes in the morning.”

Sam walked you down the hall to your room. He stopped by your door. He was so close you could feel the heat from his body. The first touch of his mouth on yours was feather light. He moved his lips over yours in a kiss that was intense, consuming, soft, and gentle. Sam lay his hand against the small of your back and held you against him. You reached for his neck, sliding your fingers under his hair. When he pulled away with a final lingering kiss, his eyes stayed on yours. “Good night, Y/N.”

ALL THE KING’S HORSES AND ALL THE KING’S MEN COULDN’T PUT ME BACK TOGETHER AGAIN

You raised yourself up so you could look down at Sam’s face. You bent to touch your lips to his remembering how they felt during that first kiss. You whispered, “I love you, Sam,” but this wasn’t a fairytale. He didn’t wake up. You wrapped your arms around yourself trying to control the grief that threatened to bubble up and flood out of you uncontrollably. You pulled the chair close to the side of the bed and sat down. You traced your fingertips lightly up and down his arm. “Sam, if it’s a girl, I’m going to watch while she ties ribbons in your hair.” The thought of that made you smile even as tears filled your eyes again.

The next morning Dean found you still sitting in the chair with your head down on Sam’s stomach. You stirred when you heard the door. He’d brought you breakfast. “Thanks, Dean. Put it down on the desk. I’m not hungry.” You glanced at the food. Dean had been cooking. It was an omelet that, from the looks of it, was filled with vegetables and fresh fruit on the side.

Dean walked across the room and stood next to you resting his hand on your shoulder. “I know you don’t want to eat, but you should try.” Feeling the comfort of Dean’s hand and hearing his caring words, you burst into tears. Everything you’d been trying to hold back came pouring right out. “Hey. Y/N.” He knelt down beside you; and you fell into his arms.

“He’s not waking up, Dean. He isn’t waking up.” Dean held his hand firmly at the back of your head. “He did this for me. He went with that evil thing to protect me. He may never wake up because of me.” The sobs were racking your body now.

“He’d do it again, Y/N. That’s how he loves. Don’t blame yourself for a decision Sam would make every time.”

You lifted your tear streaked face from Dean’s shoulder. “There has to be something. Cas. Can’t Cas help him?”

“I already tried that, Sweetheart. His powers won’t work because heaven considers what Sam did to be...an abomination.

You sat back and looked at Sam. “He tries so hard to do the right thing. I told him I didn’t know who he was.” You ran your fingers over Sam’s hair. “He’s full of good.”

ALL THE KING’S HORSES AND ALL THE KING’S MEN COULDN’T PUT ME BACK TOGETHER AGAIN

Sam’s POV

I could hear you. You sounded far away, but I could hear you. You were calling my name. I tried to answer, but my mouth wouldn’t move. I had to let you know I was there. You needed me. “Y/N?” My mouth was so dry. I blinked my eyes open. Your hair was spread over my chest; you raised your head to look at me. Your beautiful eyes were filled with tears. My arm was heavy and weak when I tried to lift it. “D...don’t cry, Y/N. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

I heard you yell for Dean, and I remember seeing him run into the room before I drifted back to sleep. When I woke up again, you were smiling this time. I tried to sit up, but you stopped me. “Not yet. How do you feel?”

I brushed my hand through my hair. “My head hurts.”

You straightened the covers around my waist. “Don’t move. I’m going to get you something to eat. It might make you feel better.” You were close to me and smiling; I already felt better.

You came back with a bowl of broth and set it down on the bedside table. I had a hard time getting the pillows propped behind my back, so you helped me then sat and dipped a spoon into the bowl. I reached for the spoon. “I can feed myself.”

You avoided my effort to get the spoon and brought it to my mouth. “Let me take care of you, Sam.” When I had eaten almost all the soup, you looked happy. “Take the last bite.” I opened my mouth, drank the last bit from the spoon, and swallowed. “You’re going to need your strength because you’re going to be a daddy.”

My mind was all focused on you and the incredible feeling of having you again, so it took me a few seconds to process what you’d said. “I’m what?” My eyes went to your stomach.

You laughed, and it was a beautiful sound. “I’m pregnant, Sam.”

That night you stayed with me. I fell asleep holding you close with the side of my face in your hair. For awhile, I understood real happiness.

“Sammy boy!!” I jerked awake. My eyes darted around the mostly dark room, and I tightened my hold on you trying to block out the sound of Lucifer’s voice still echoing in my head. “She’s a pretty one, and she still wants you. Go figure.” I heard him, but there was nothing there. I was having hallucinations of Lucifer again.

RUN WITH MY HANDS ON MY EYES; BLIND, BUT I’M STILL ALIVE

Two days later we moved back into my room. As soon as we were under the blankets, I took you in my arms. You slipped your leg between mine and kissed me. I kissed back slowly, not rushing a minute of what I’d waited for what seemed like forever to have again. My tongue circled around yours, and you moaned softly. You eased your hands under my shirt and rubbed them up my back.

It felt so good for you to be touching me this way again. I broke the kiss long enough to pull my shirt over my head and toss it on the bed somewhere. I wanted your hands on me. I wanted to kiss you. I wanted you to know how much I love you. We kissed each other for a long time. I trailed kisses across your cheek to that spot just below your ear and back to your mouth. I brought your hand to my lips and kissed your fingertips one by one. Those kisses were complete.

Tonight was about starting over. It felt innocent in a way, like the past was washed clean. I didn’t push for anything else, just kissed you and held you. I was holding you when you fell asleep.

Everything was perfect, but still the nightmare came back. The voice. “You can’t get rid of me, ol’ buddy. We’re bonded together. Just no escaping it.” I opened my eyes. Lucifer was standing at the end of our bed. His expression was cold. “She’s a problem, Sam. Don’t make me take care of that problem.”

BUT IS IT STILL A HOME WHEN YOU’RE ALL ALONE

I watched you sleep trying to memorize the way you looked, the way your hair fell across your cheek, the slight hint of a smile on your face. I struggled with what I felt and who I am. Morning came too soon. I eased out of the bed, my mind made up. I walked away from where you were sleeping and kept my back toward you so you couldn’t see the tears; then, I called your name. “Y/N.”

I heard you start to move, and I heard the smile in your voice. “Sam.” It felt like a fist was squeezing the life right out of my heart.

I didn’t turn around. “Y/N, this isn’t a good idea.” What happened after that is a blur. I muttered some senseless crap about not knowing how I felt and needing space, which everything I’d done the night before proved was a lie. But you believed me. Crying and begging me to tell you why, you believed me.

THERE IS A REASON I’M STILL STANDING

Seven Months Later

I could hear you screaming down the hall, screaming to bring our baby into the world. I bent my head over almost to my knees and laced my hands behind my neck. I wanted to go to you so badly it was tearing at me with a physical pain I could feel in my chest and down into my stomach. It had gotten to a point where we passed each other in the bunker without saying a word. I’d been so afraid you’d catch me looking at you, and then you’d know the truth. You screamed again; I bit into my bottom lip, and then you screamed my name.

I WILL RUN FAST, OUTLAST

I tore into the room; Cas was by your side, and Dean was at the bottom of the bed looking under a sheet draped over your legs. When Cas saw me, he stepped back. I took your hand in mine forgetting all about the act I was supposed to make you believe. You looked at me like you thought maybe I wasn’t real. “Sam?”

“I’m here, Y/N. I’m here. You’re not going to do this alone.” When Dean said it was time to push, I gave you all the encouragement I could. At times it felt like you were going to break every bone in my hand, and I didn’t care. All that mattered was you and the baby. The love I felt for you burned hot inside me. It raged with all the intensity I had spent every waking moment trying to control since I the morning I lied to you about what we have.

You’ve never been more beautiful than when you were lying there exhausted looking into the face of our baby. You looked at me with pure forgiveness like you had forgotten the way I’d pulled away from you. “Sam, do you want to hold him?”

He was tiny, perfect, and the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I didn’t know there was such a thing as the love that went through me then. I started to move my hand to touch his sweet head. Then I stopped. Lucifer would hurt you. Lucifer would hurt him. Lucifer was worse than Ruby. I took one last look at your happiness. “I can’t.”

ALL THE KING’S HORSES AND ALL THE KING’S MEN COULDN’T PUT ME BACK TOGETHER AGAIN

Everything Forever: @gambitwinchester @princessmisery666 @onethirstyunicorn @peridottea91 @logical-princey @emilyshurley @beenlovingromansincedayoneish @fangirlxwritesx67 @waywardbaby @atc74 @ledzeppelinsbonzo @shaniquacynthia @mariekoukie6661 @tumbler-tidbits @67-chevy-baby @fandom-princess-forevermore @terrarium-jpeg @emoryhemsworth @crashdevlin @heycasbutt @jules-1999 @mrsdeanfuckingwinchester @cosicas-cuquis @sammyimpala-67 @queenoftheunderdark @dean-winchesters-bacon @mrs-meghan-winchester @timelordy-fangirl2 @sweetness47 @hobby27 @awesomesusiebstuff @kickingitwithkirk @gh0stgurl @becs-bunker @sandlee44 @supernaturalgrandma @lonewolf471 @sea040561 @dawnie1988 @maddiepants @volleyballer519 @outcastedangel @iknowwheremytowelis @kdfrqqg @lizette50 @daisymoder72 @sorenmarie87 @oldfreakything

Sam/Jared Love: @girl-next-door-writes @stunudo @feelmyroarrrr @theychosefamily @winchesterxfamilybusiness @idabbleincrazy @evansrogerskitten @focusonspn @i-joined-social-media-finally @wingledsam @autumninavonlea @spnxbsessed @durinsbride @deansyahtzee @wendibird @fantasy-shadows @team-free-will-you-idjiot @waywardnerd67 @neii3n @fullmooner @supernatural-took-me-over @julesthequirky

Fallen: @stephaniecanfield96us @petitgateau911

#fallen #sam x reader #sam angst #pregnant reader #sam series #sam oneshot

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kaisooficrec · 4 years

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Kaisoo Our Love As One 2 (2019)

The second round of the lovely OLAO has begun! We’re blessed by so many kaisoo fics! We encourage you to show your support and appreciation for the authors by leaving kudos, comments and shoutouts on twitter ^^ merry christmas everyone!

#1. Confession

Genre: Romance, Soulmates, Imprinting, College/University AU, Jealous!Do Kyungsoo Length: 6,436 w Rating: PG-13 Summary: Do Kyungsoo received a confession in front of the entire campus from a complete stranger. And he said yes.

#2. Case #: 181102 (The Red Cube)

Genre: SCP Foundation,Tempo MV Inspired AU, Unreliable NarratorSCP - 3008 inspiredSCP - 167 inspired Length: 9,247 w Rating: NC-17 Warnings/Kinks/Other: Blood and gore, Graphic descriptions of violence, self-injurious behaviors, memory alteration, horror movie tropes Summary: It has been years since Kyungsoo first entered the Red Cube, he isn't sure whether there has ever been anything besides it.

#3. A Summer of Plums and Peaches

Genre: fluff, country boy vs city boy AU Length: 11,450 w Rating: PG-13 Summary: Jongin visits his grandmother every summer in the rural town in Korea where she lives. There are two problems with this: he can hardly speak Korean and he hates the heat. One day, he gets lost and ends up in a patch of poisonous vines when he meets Kyungsoo, the farmer boy with a heavy country accent who doesn't believe Jongin doesn't speak Korean. This summer vacation is going to be a long one.

#4. Ask Me And I Might Answer

Genre: slight angst, fluff, doctor AU Length: 12,225 w Rating: NC-17 Warnings: minor character death, pregnancy scare Summary: When Kyungsoo volunteered to read for the kids at the hospital with his step-brother, he didn't expect to encounter any trouble at all. But trouble came in a form of a handsome surgeon-in-training, Kim Jongin. Not that he was a bad influence or anything. In fact, he was the exact opposite. But he was trouble for Kyungsoo's stubborn heart.And Kyungsoo didn't need that. And he certainly didn't need a pregnancy scare just because he's showing symptoms of pregnancy weeks after they spent the night together.Kyungsoo knew it was the chicken.

#5. don’t tell me the moon is shining

Genre: bakery AU, uni AU, angst Length: 7,487 w Rating: G Warning: implied/referenced character death Summary: Time bends with his wrists, its passage as malleable as the dough between his fingers. Everything is slow; and in no unpleasant way. The old ceiling fan circles as though swimming through honey, and the adjacent lights hum the afternoon away. Kyungsoo himself feels absorbed in the warp, his breaths deep and his blinking almost sluggish. It’s relaxing. A breath of fresh air and a return to familiarity, all at once.

#6. (now you wanna) play with me

Genre: celebrity AU, actor!kyungsoo, slice of life, smut, humor, fluff Length: 14,064 w Rating: NC-17 Summary: kyungsoo is an actor and jongin's the first photographer to take him home after a shoot for vogue

#7. Destiny

Genre: historical AU ish, slight angst, slight drama, supernatural elements Length: 9,208 w Rating: NC-17 Summary: Kyungsoo wanted to build things that will last, not destroy them. But the latest project he got from his father's architectural firm was to demolish a beautiful, old house. He can't understand but there was a pull when he saw the house's picture. Like he just have to be there.His questions were answered when he roomed at the old house's attic and talked to the boy who used to stay there. The only problem is that the boy is 100 years from the past.

#8. Mr. Kim’s Boyfriend

Genre: Angst, Mafia au Length: 3,150 w Rating: NC-17 Warning: Kidnapping, Blackmailing, Misunderstadings Summary: It start with a joke and it end with a disaster, Kyungsoo was joking about him being the boyfriend of the most powerful gang leader in the town " THE KIM", who no one knew really.But the problem was when someone hears Kyungsoo saying that he's the gang leader's baby boy and start spread the rumour. Kyungsoo didn't bother to correct them yet it spread enough to reach the most dangerous gangs's ears.

#9. To Those Who Feel Nothing

Genre: Rebellion against the government, Slight Angst, Dystopian AU Legth: 10,344 w Rating: PG-13 Summary: In the utopia of the Stato Kolektiva, emotions have been destroyed for the sake of logic and progress. Do Kyungsoo runs an underground operation of bottled emotions for a hefty price in the city of Nova Okazo. Fear, Happiness, Sadness - he has it all. All except Love. He cannot make what he has not felt. But then he meets a dancer.

#10. Just Believe

Genre: Fluff, angst, dystopian-ish Length: 5,744 w Rating: PG-13 Summary: Kyungsoo's time had come. When you’re 12, you have to pass the test. if you hear the song and sing along, you’ll have to go in the “static”. kai wishes he could meet d.o. again, but he’s long gone now.

#11. Best Of Me

Genre: Caretaker au, drama, angst Warning: Blind and paralyzed character Length: 15,320w Rating: NC-17 Summary: When Kyungsoo was hired to be Jongin's caretaker, he had expected the job to be difficult but he didn't expect to care for his patient more than he should. Jongin, blind and paralyzed, constantly belittles everything Kyungsoo does but Kyungsoo just takes it all in for he knew that pain can make monsters out of the best people. So Kyungsoo vowed. He promised himself that he will help Jongin go back to the best version of himself. Even if it would mean that Kyungsoo had to burn and fade out just to reignite the fire within Jongin.

#12. Rain Drops

Genre: abo au, royalty au Length: 14,616w Rating: NC-17 Summary: As an Alpha prince, Jongin is expected to marry an Omega from a Nobel family, not the stray they picked up on the side of the road on the way to his summer home.

#13. it’s heist time, baby!

Genre: robbery au(?), it’s a cute robbery though :) Length: 4,849w Rating: G Summary: a halloween heist goes slightly wrong when kyungsoo finds the ring instead of the plaque in jongin's desk. he has to pretend that he doesn't know anything but the thing is—he sucks at lying.

#14. The clumsiest soulmate.

Genre: Soulmate au, fluff Length: 2,420w Rating: G Summary: Since he was a kid, Kyungsoo believed his soulmate was bullied from how many times he wake up with bruises all over his body. Little he knew it was far from that.

#15. The cute little bear

Genre: Hybrid au, domestic fluff Length: 3,966w Rating: G Summary: Kyungsoo woke up on the sound of loud sobs and found a cute bear hybrid, curled in his backyard, who he didn't hesitate to take care of and love beyond limits.

#16. Joys of Fate

Genre: Abo au, mates, strangers to lovers Length: 8,294w Rating: NC-17 Summary: Kim JongIn had never left anything made him feel like he wasn’t capable of leading his father's legacy, not his second gender, not those nasty and traditional alphas that worked with him. He was ready to face everything that was thrown at him. Even his destined alpha being his new secretary, Do KyungSoo.

#17. Hero In

Genre: Stalking, broken relationships Length: 7,792w Rating: NC-17 Summary: Little did he know, a mysterious man watches him every night, the same man he broke his heart months ago.

#18. Raggedy Man

Genre: Science-fiction, Doctor Who au(?), time travel Length: 25,015w Rating: G Summary: Kyungsoo just wanted a date. What he got was an adventure of a lifetime!

#19: Bloom (피어나)

Genre: Romance, Fluff, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Alternate Universe - Historical Length: 11,179 w Rating: R Summary: Everyone thinks Jongin was kidnapped by Kyungsoo, the god of death, but the man always visited him while he rested surrounded by flowers and talked to him, never forced him to do anything, sometimes he simply stared for hours on end, always with a kind smile on his gorgeous lips, until he had to go back to the underworld. Jongin wasn't kidnapped, not really. He fell into the underworld because he fell in love.

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svint-of-the-deep · 4 years

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I’ve read the lore book. I almost got physically sick from the lore book. I’m flat out terrified of talking about it outside of tumblr memes. Somewhere out there in the toxic mess of Destiny, this book has the capacity to weed out every misogynist in a ten mile radius without trying as hard as some other things. I’m praying I don’t see them. What follows is my giant spinfoil for everything. My bad.

Warning: lots of spinfoil. giant, giant rant.

Implications for Exos: The fact that Clovis Sr. still has the full upload scan of his son to possibly put back in a more fitting exo body raises questions. Whose scans are really saved? Is it an auto-delete button once the consciousness is transferred? Does the radiolaria/darkness mix remember the consciousness instead of the neural wiring? It would explain how Vex can connect with each other instantly. One shared consciousness remembers even when the chassis is gone and radiolaria scattered. If this is the case, it means that even with a memory reset, it’s possible to maintain a complete inaccessible memory bank. This could also explain why Banshee still remembers a fairly decent amount even with 44 resets. (And why Ada is physically fine for so long; she doesn’t have to worry about a pseudo-darkness compound in her veins.)

Aside from the radiolaria memory for exos, this could solve the conundrum of the Vex tech scannables. Radiolaria remembers the patterns its used to. It is, all things considered, Vex. It still holds the building blocks to interact with Vex data and constructs. Its interaction with and within exos could be an extension of that (let’s simplify it dramatically) programming. New body means adapting to do the same under the hood tasks. No idea when it’ll be useful, but it’ll be something. (Thoughts on if Asher was exo? Or if Kabr was so successful in integrating is Light and entire being with the Vex because he was exo? Then again totally forgot if he was or not big oops if so.)

Thoughts on pyramids: The Darkness likes seeing a natural rise and fall of life. The final pattern will always be there. It’s right in the flower game. Clovis sees this Clarity mix as a key to immortality. The Traveler hadn’t yet made guardians and this was tempting. Too tempting. We as guardians are, immortal, blank slates that have superhuman (yes paracausal just stick with me) powers, upgraded motor and cognitive functions, and are effectively stronger than what we were before. Good argument for the Traveler here.

Now we have Clovis’ hopefully perfected exos. Effectively immortal, upgraded motor and cognitive functions, stronger than they were before. The blank slate could’ve been so they wouldn’t remember the crypt or something more sinister. Both were made in a desperate attempt to stop the inevitable. I’m not equating a monster with a paracausal entity I’m totally confused about still. But they tempted fate (an inevitable death) and paid for it. The Darkness sees blatant disregard for a natural order (you live, you fight to be the top, you either succeed and live or die trying) in both. We’ve yet to see the consequences of these exo trials, but it can’t be good. Elsie is alive, but we have no idea at the cost or what she’s been through after that.

Ties to Shadowkeep: Temptation is a key theme for the Darkness. Flying into the Black Garden was a bold move for the fireteam that succumbed to the pull of Divinity. It was never meant to leave. But it did. We can’t help but run headfirst at the Moon, vanquishing our past foes and repelling new ones. Wouldn’t any guardian fight their nightmares? We fall for it every time. We fell again in the raid, right into the hands of a small pyramid that would mark darkness transmat points in this season for Contact. They can incapacitate us at any moment. But why outright hurt us when we can be lured into a trap ourselves? Guardians aren’t a fighter in the flower game as much as a complete cheat card. We win our battles, have nothing to stop us, and keep going. Without us, the Traveler loses.

Every rez we turn to our Ghost for help, to our Light, and to the Traveler. What’s a few more hard resets to make us completely dependent on the Light? There’s not a lot of guardians left who don’t trust the big ball in the sky. We shouldn’t trust the pyramids, but I think a lot more is in store than another talking ball that drops from nowhere into our arms. Stasis could be an edge, or it could cripple us completely.

The pyramids talk about us being their salvation, but what could they want? They had their answer to the game eons ago. As terrible as it is, the only solution I can think of is that they overfill the Traveler with Light, drain us of it, and make the Vex paracausal. Is it possible? Probably not, but it would be the only viable thing at 5:15 am. There’s very few futures in which the Vex win. We can’t be in them if they do. Salvation in this case is uniting all the enemy races of the Dark along with us to prepare Sol for a hard reset. This time where Light and Dark aren’t around, and we’re left with nothingness. No blinding immortality, and no shadowed entropy. The game begins again.

Extra, extra: Kinda funny how the pyramids and Savathûn are in a battle over us. She’s the other one looking for an escape from this game. We can already walk away. Our guardian stays in the world of the game and we go on with our lives. If she succeeds in breaking away from her worm, it means maintaining paracausality and immortality for her brood and the Hive as a whole. The Taken are gonna stay no matter the outcome. It would mean a battle that ends where one side has infinite control while the other has a force that won’t stay down. If either wins, it spells disaster for the Vex. So why not control both and reduce the time and energy spent fighting both?

wow beyond light is close. and still no transmog news. oh well.

#beyond light spoilers #destiny 2 spoilers #fuckin hell im tired but uh my brain has thoughts

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overdrivels · 4 years

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Imploration

This is a sort of prequel to an old fic of mine, On Guard. Mostly talks about conspiracy and the stuff that led up to the events of that fic. I wrote this long, long ago, but just never finished it. Apparently the last edit was back in 2018, so I’m actually happy I got my ass back into gear to finish it up.

It’s basically just a tangent of potential lore-weaving and what-if Sojiro Shimada wasn’t an asshole and knew Gabriel Reyes.

----

「Sapporo, please.」

“Water.”

The two men waited in silence for their respective drinks to come. They sat side by side at the counter in the furthest seats away from the door with a great view of the dinky ramen shack that could barely seat ten people. One was obviously a foreigner to this place. The other patron was obviously from the area, dressed in nothing but jinbei, and personally greeted by the shopkeeper warmly in his thick dialect (「Welc–oh! So-chan, long time! How are th'boys?」)

Their drinks were placed in front of them not too long, and they each took a pull, relishing in the relief the liquids brought them in this humid weather. The cicadas were loud, and combined their voices with the cheap electrical fan overhead, almost enough to make up for the simmering silence in the shop. Though, one of the patrons decided that cicadas make for terrible conversationalists, and that perhaps the man next to him would be better.

“Are you a perhaps a tourist?” Sojiro asked coolly in near perfect English, eyes crinkling in mirth. Gabriel’s eyes swept the shop before focusing on the man. There were very few who would know English in this part of town. Both were able to speak freely in this nearly abandoned shop. The shopkeep himself was tending to his broth unhurriedly.

Gabriel took a sip of his water, condensation already forming on the side from the hot summer air.

“Yeah, something like that. You a local?”

“Something like that,” he repeated cheekily. Gabriel snorted. His new friend had a sense of humor.

“Are you here for business, then?”

The air shifted briefly when Sojiro said that, and Gabriel had to grin. It reeked of danger and shady dealings. “I’m just here for…sight-seeing. Heard that Hanamura was quite…magical this time of year.”

Sojiro mirrored his expression, a knowing look in his eyes. “Of course. Hanamura is very beautiful. You’ve come at a good time, friend.” He jerked a chin at the shopkeeper behind the counter.

「Koma-chan!」

「Ay, So-chan? What can I do fer ya?」

「My new friend here wants your Tonkotsu special. Double eggs, extra firm noodles, make them wavy. Oh, and don’t forget the garlic. Two heads of it.」

With a knowing nod, and a curt, 「Sure thin’,」 the shopkeeper clicked off the fire to his broth, provided the two a pitcher of water to drink at their leisure, and disappeared into the back, leaving the two customers by their lonesome. The lights above their heads flicked momentarily, and a dull buzzing current that Gabriel could feel crawling up the back of his bare neck. Neither of the patrons moved until they could hear the wooden door to the shop click shut, and a body leaning heavily against it–basic assurance that no one will come in.

In the privacy of the shop guarded by a man who’s paid to keep secrets, both men were able to drop their pretenses.

“Where are my noodles, Shimada?” Gabriel gestured grandly at the kitchen just behind the bar table they sat at. “You promised me noodles when I got here.”

Sojiro laughed out loud. “You’ll get them, Reyes-san. Where is your hat?”

The Blackwatch commander ran a hand over his bare head, seeming annoyed now that he was reminded that he was bereft of his signature beanie. “At home getting tossed ‘round like a toy by some ingrate. Probably.”

The Japanese man had to raise an eyebrow at that. “Oh? A dog, is it?”

The image of Jesse McCree as a dog–the correct analog was a roadside mutt, really–wasn’t entirely wrong, but Gabriel waved it off. “Something like that. But enough of this bull.”

“Yes,” Sojiro said coolly. “Welcome to my Hanamura, I am very pleased you were able to make it.”

The possessiveness does not go unnoticed—a dual invitation and a threat.

“’was getting tired of talking to you through stupid cigarette paper.” From one of his inner pockets, Gabriel tossed out a rolled up piece of scrap onto the table, which Sojiro picked up, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, amused.

“I had assumed you liked my style. Apologies.” The paper disappeared into the inside of Sojiro’s sleeves as he crossed his arms.

Gabriel snorted in disbelief. “If you were really sorry, you’d get your ass on one of our comms already and not send one of your mechanical birds. You’re a damn hack, Shimada,” he said, pounding the table just once to get his point across.

“You flatter me.”

“That ain’t a compliment.”

“Then I’m afraid I misunderstood.” He pressed a mocking hand to his heart. “Forgive the ignorance of this old man.”

While the runaround was annoying, Gabriel could appreciate the sarcasm, it’s much better than listening to the straight-laced Jack Morrison all day. “Just get on with it. You said you had a favor to ask Blackwatch?”

“Ah, yes.”

Sojiro leaned against the bar counter with one elbow, suddenly donning the posture of one more fitting of his actual position. Comfortable, unhurried, but menacing. “But first, allow me to tell you the tale passed down from our family throughout the generations.”

The Blackwatch commander drained the last of his water, and waved the bottom of it at him, willing him to continue. He had a feeling that he’d be forced to hear it whether he wanted to or not.

“My family tells of an ancient legend about two great dragon brothers…”

By the time the story was over, Gabriel was leaned over the counter, his palm digging another crater-sized dimple into his face. "And? What does that have to do with your clan?”

“We, the Shimada clan, descended from those dragons,” he paused, looking thoughtful for a moment before he looked at Gabriel with a mischievous glint in his eyes, "or so it’s said. Though, some have interpreted the story to mean that the two dragons were once the rulers of the Shimada clan. When the Dragon of the North killed his younger brother, he did not fall to the ground. He fell on a Shimada.”

The image of a multi-ton mythical snake falling onto some poor soul made Gabriel laugh out loud, and he slapped the table, shaking the empty glasses in his mirth. Sojiro was not particularly bothered by this, and let him laugh it out–he’s dealt with worse, he has two sons that could disappear at a moment’s notice (one of which does it on a nearly bi-hourly basis).

Gabriel finally calmed down after a couple of minutes, he was clutching his stomach, tears at the corner of his eyes. By that time, Sojiro has already drained the last of his alcohol. “That’s hilarious, Shimada.”

His lips quirked upward and he shrugged far more casually than a man who just had his family legacy laughed at should. “There’s more–”

“Did he fall on more than one?”

“–to this theory. When the elder Dragon was asked to descend, he did not descend onto any land, but into a Shimada. Possessed a human body.”

“That interpretation’s a stretch, isn’t it?”

Sojiro shrugged again. “Regardless, these dragons are in our family. And the Shimadas have the ability to control them.”

“And? If you have those mythical dragons running around, why do you need our help?”

Sojiro laughed humorlessly. “Because, Reyes-san, you are a smart man. You should understand.”

“Flattery gets you nowhere, Shimada. I’m not making my people do your dirty work for you.”

“Of course not, and this request is not without adequate compensation.”

Sojiro poured water into Gabriel’s empty glass and then into his own. Gabriel watched quietly as the man turned away from him and ran a hand through his hair slowly, the streaks of grey a testament to how difficult his life must have been. The man’s chest expanded with a deep breath, unwilling to actually sigh, before he faced the Blackwatch commander again.

“They killed my wife, Reyes-san,” Sojiro said solemnly. “Now they seek to kill me to control my sons.”

His eyebrow raised. “The news said she died of heart failure.” Not that Gabriel believed everything he heard in the news, but he was admittedly not very concerned with Japanese politics at the time. The Shimadas always kept their affairs to Japanese soil, though there were always rumors of the clan being seen in various areas of South and East Asia.

The widower scoffed, downing his new glass of water as though it’ll cleanse him of this reality.

“They lie,” Sojiro huffed bitterly. “They killed her. Because she was a strong woman. She frightened the clan elders.” A flash of fondness crossed his face. “She was beautiful. Powerful. But then…”

He gnashed his teeth, and Gabriel could’ve sworn he was imagining it, but something beneath the clan leader’s clothes seemed to glow. “The filthy cowards. They thought I would not discover it.”

“Discover what?”

“They did something to her. She became different.” The older man’s hazel eyes became hard, glaring holes into the wooden counter. “It was still my wife, but she—she began to lose sight of herself. She looked the same, but she…” He shook his head roughly. “I do not know what happened, but only that the clan elders were responsible.”

“You said something about killing you to control your sons?”

“Yes, yes.” He waved a hand, nonchalant, as if his life was a trivial matter. “My sons are still young. In the case of my eldest, Hanzo, I’m afraid his burden is a much heavier destiny than he can bear.”

“How so?”

“The eldest’s role is to lead the clan.”

“So, he’s just a you 2.0.”

Sojiro shakes his head. “It would be my greatest joy, but my greatest sorrow if he were to become like his father.”

“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“If only my second son fell nearer. Wild and rambunctious; capricious.”

“Why? Second son belongs to the milkman?”

Even Reyes knows when he’s crossed the line, regretting those words the instance they left his mouth. There was a threatening crackle in the air, every sense in his body running rampant and screaming danger was near. Sojiro’s face remained carefully neutral, but there’s hardness to his eyes that even Reyes, a hardened soldier and having given the look himself many times, felt compelled to retract his statement.

“My bad.”

Sojiro nodded. “Do you know our clan’s symbol?”

He’s seen it several times before in pictures of the mobster in the reports he’s given occasionally. Sojiro normally wore it proudly on his back during the day, unlike now, in an unassuming set of the equivalent of lounging clothes. The two dragons like an ouroboros–eating the other rather than itself. Normally, an ouroboros signifies the cycle of creation and life, all as one. Ana had taught this to him before among other things during their times of idleness.

But two of them trying to eat the other? Gabriel could fathom a guess, but he’s sure it’d be a poor one. He’s not much for this sort of philosophical thinking. (It was honestly more of the space gorilla’s favorite pastime.)

“It is rare that both dragons, North and South, are born together in the same generation. Both my sons have received the blessing of dragons.” Sojiro swirled his glass, the water formed a mini-tornado within. “It was supposed to be joyous. The strongest generation, the elders claimed. Finally, the two dragon brothers have been reunited.”

“Isn’t that a good thing for you guys?”

“But there is a problem. My son, Hanzo, has two dragons.”

The meaningful look Sojiro gave him forced the truth upon him so quickly, he got figurative whiplash.

“So they only require one of the brothers, then.”

Sojiro’s eyes were downcast, the grip on his empty glass so tight, it was clattering against the table. “Once they have Hanzo, they will have no need for Genji.”

“Didn’t know the dragon legend had a third brother.”

“Not explicitly. But if one were to read between the lines of text, you could infer the existence of an East and West Wind. But that is hardly relevant. Who would believe such a thing?”

Gabriel shrugged. It’s true. If it’s not mentioned anywhere, there’s no reason for anyone to believe such a thing. “But why kill your other son? Isn’t the more dragons the better? More auspicious, isn’t it?”

“No. It has to be two dragons, or one of the two.”

“In that case, Genji has no use. They could just oust him or something.”

Sojiro slammed his glass against the table in anger. “It is because Genji still has a use that the clan elders want him dead. They cannot control him, so they will seek his death.”

It would be easy for another faction to challenge Hanzo’s legitimacy. Hanzo may have two dragons, but they could argue it’s the result of some defect—one dragon split into two. It’s a stretch, but a very compelling possibility. Genji, on the other hand, is whole. If a branch family were to rally behind Genji and claim him as the true heir, the clan elders would either be forced to recognize it or forced to have a civil war. Neither options were desirable.

Genji, from Sojiro’s account, is a force of nature; untameable and unflappable. A cheeky young thing with no regards toward tradition or hierarchy. A walking nightmare for a band of traditionalists stewing in their own filth they call “order”.

“Should you really be leaving your sons alone, then?”

“My eldest cousin, Asahi, is guarding my youngest, Genji. My other cousin is guarding Hanzo. I trust them both to watch over my sons properly.”

Gabriel took a contemplative sip of water, staring off into space. “Cousins, huh? So they’re branch members?”

The unspoken implication hung heavily over their heads, but Sojiro responded, “Reyes-san. I trust them.”

“Glad someone does.”

It’s not unheard of for the branch members of a family in the middle of a power struggle to take sides or drastic measures. It’s natural, even. Some members may even want to lay claim to the Head seat themselves. But the case of the Shimadas, whose worth was determined by the family’s dragons, they could only make due with manipulating the leader. Gabriel has seen more than his fair share of skirmishes over seats of power, and the inevitable mess of an aftermath.

Gabriel tapped the counter. “I don’t see why I’m here, though. If we’re talking allies, Talon should be higher on the list than us.”

Sojiro’s lip curled in derision. “They do not know their place.”

“Oh, and we do?”

“You’re much more preferable to work with. And many times more trustworthy than Talon.”

“Well, I’m honored,” Gabriel answered sarcastically, putting a hand to his chest. “That you think we could do something that even you or Talon cannot do.”

That Sojiro spoke of his sons and the sticky matter of his clan’s politics to an outsider was extremely telling. It’s a weakness that Gabriel never thought he’d ever get to see.

“It must be funny to you that the head of the Shimada clan–ruler of all Hanamura–can’t even protect his own children,” Sojiro spat out bitterly. “It is shameful for me to ask an outsider this, but…”

Gabriel did not expect the man to suddenly get on his hands and knees, pressing his forehead to the ground. “Please, protect my sons. I beg you as the father of these two children, please.”

“Get up, Shimada.” Despite his words, the Blackwatch commander was already trying to pull him up. This look does not suit the head of the Shimada empire. Such a powerful man grovelling at his feet when he was only stomping around on things unmentionable just the week before was unsettling.

The man refused to budge, as though the weight of his request and the lives that rested on Reyes’ answer kept him glued to the floor.

“I beg you.”

“Don’t be an ass, Shimada.”

“When I die, I have no power to protect them. They are too green. They lack power.”

“Isn’t that your damn job as a parent?”

“I cannot!” Sojiro shouted. “I have failed as a parent. I cannot hope to pretend to be one now. I can only entrust this to someone I trust.”

“You’d trust an enemy, Shimada?”

“Yes.”

It was a peculiar thing that most people would never understand. Multiple encounters of their teams clashing, outsmarting each other, outmaneuvering the other forged an ironclad trust that many people would never have the privilege of experiencing. Someone who knows all your weaknesses, your strengths, morals, and respects the rules which you play by. It’s how they were both able to meet in such a place, neither with weapons or additional guards. This was a peculiar bond that perhaps only enemies would ever know.

Gabriel sighed, dropping his ass onto the ground. “You’re a real piece of work, Shimada.”

“So I’ve been told,” Sojiro replied, a hint of a smile in his voice. He slowly raised his head from the ground, a red mark maring his forehead. “Is that a ‘yes’, then?”

Again, Gabriel sighed. What Sojiro was asking of him was not only going to be difficult, but risky as well. It could put Overwatch (and Blackwatch) at serious political risk with the Japanese government. Even worse, it would make them the target of the Shimada clan and all of its affiliates and stakeholders. Jack would definitely be opposed to such a plan.

Even if they managed to protect the two brothers, the only thing Blackwatch would get out of this is the lukewarm gratitude of two brats who would not know the desperate lengths to which their father went to protect their lives and future. And they would likely never understand or appreciate it.

High risk, low reward was not how Blackwatch liked to operate.

But Gabriel Reyes was a different story.

“We’ll need a proper plan. Can’t guarantee it’ll work out, but we need your cooperation if we’re going to maximize our chances of getting either of your sons out of this in one piece.”

“Of course. You have my thanks, Reyes-san.”

The deal was sealed with a handshake and the ramen that Sojiro owed Reyes. Both men made small talk for the rest of the night before leaving to don the mantle of their respective roles.

When Gabriel returned, the details with Sojiro were confirmed. Blackwatch’s mission is to keep a watchful eye over the two brothers and ensure they stay alive. If possible, get them out by force.

He assigned you to Hanamura under the pretense that you will be gathering information about their arms trade by becoming the bodyguard of a Shimada heir. You will get close to them, get them to divulge their secrets. While it’s true that the Shimadas were involved in the exchange of weaponry, he did not disclose to you the real reason—it’s better if you didn’t know. You will protect them anyway, keep an eye on both brothers regardless.

After all, it goes without saying that in order to fool your enemies, you must first fool your allies.

The implant goes without a hitch, at least, from his part.

Sojiro continued to communicate with him through the tiny scrolls delivered by his robotic birds—entirely indistinguishable from ordinary ones. His coded messages were short, but expressed his gratitude and trepidation.

The news of Sojiro’s death does not surprise him.

What did surprise him was your insistence on leaving.

“I’m with the wrong Shimada!” you hissed into your communicator, and Gabriel stopped himself from telling you just how wrong that statement was.

Instead, he carefully considered your words. If you were to leave, there’d be no one around to report on either Shimada brother. It was hard enough for Sojiro to get you accepted in their fold, and it wouldn’t do to waste such an opportunity.

But on the other hand, the oligarchy surrounding the new Shimada head would be considerably less cautious if the outsider finally leaves their midst. Their guard might even be down for a short while as they take the chance to eliminate you which meant a short window of opportunity.

It might be worth taking this chance. They could get you and one of the brothers out alive. From your reports, you’ve built a fair amount of trust between yourself and your charge. A few words and the promise of freedom might convince the younger Shimada to go with them.

“Jack, we’re storming Hanamura.”

“What? Gabe! We don’t have jurisdiction over Japan! What are you thinking?”

“I have an agent who wants out. This departure is going to turn the Shimada’s inside-out, I can’t imagine the clan will let a foreigner leave so easily.”

Moments of silence later, Jack heaved a shuddering sigh. Gabriel could just imagine the man rubbing his forehead, trying to formulate a speech for the media when this all goes to hell in a hand basket. “When?”

“A week from now. Dead of night.”

Little did he know, a week from now, they’d be storming Hanamura for very different reasons.

#my writing #back on my bullshit #general #no real pairing here just two old men talking to each other

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carriagelamp · 4 years

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February 2020 Book Review

The Last Wish / Sword Of Destiny

Let’s start with the books that currently have me in a stranglehold. I apologize to everyone that actually follows me and watched me descend into fandom pits but whatcha gonna do. So, I was aware of the video game when it came out, but not being a prolific gamer I was intrigued but never bothered getting into it. Then the Netflix series came out, and I was again intrigued... but I suck at sitting down and watching shows. So what the heck I decided, it’s probably mediocre hypermasculine high fantasy but let’s try a book to see what the fuss is all about.

Good god. Guys. It’s real good. And so fucking different from the show. Geralt is actually a really emotional, well-meaning guy who’s starved for positive social interactions and is just trying to do his best. And the books’ consistent themes of colonialism, environmental destruction, forced extinction, and changing eras is... chilling and fascinating and honestly a little too relatable at times. These books have made me laugh and shout and frankly sob. Still a little sexist, cause 90s fantasy, but Geralt is so not the gruff, heartless, manly man character I thought he would be. I am so deeply into these and have just cracked the spine of the next book in the series. If you like high fantasy, I can’t recommend these enough.

The Silver Eyes

I just learnt that there were Five Nights At Freddy’s books, and honestly picked this up from the library as a joke for my brother. We’d played the games back when they first came out, and were into the lore, but lbr they’re more of a meme at this point. Anyway, we ended up reading this out loud to each other, a chapter a night, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Probably wouldn’t have liked it as much on my own, but the main character was complicated and messy, and the book’s way or portraying trauma was neat. It was nominally horror, and did have the occasional chilling moment, or times it was fun to speculate, it over all it was pretty run of the mill middle grade fiction.

FRNK

Probably the best graphic novel I’ve read this month.

I was howling with laughter while I read it. Good quality Belgium comics, always a treat. This story is about a modern day boy, Frank, who is accidentally thrown back into prehistoric times, where he’s stuck with a bunch of cavemen who haven’t invented the concept of vowels yet. Admittedly my French isn’t great, so it made trying to decipher words with half the letters missing a challenge to say the least, but plenty worth it. I really want to get my hands on book two. I believe there’s an English translation, and I’d recommend giving it a try.

Best Friends

A neat little graphic novel that addresses common growing up issues, about what it means to be friends, stay friends, how to cope with people changing and when it’s time to walk away. Anxiety, being yourself, fitting in, all that sort of stuff. It’s a quick read, very pleasant, and has nice art.

Karen’s Witch

Another cute graphic novel with charming art. I read this at the store while I was waiting for a prescription to be filled. It’s about this five year old (or thereabouts) who is absolutely determined that her neighbour is a witch and by god she is going to prove it or at least scare herself and her friend silly in the process. A fun little read!

Endling: The First

The second book in the Endling series, and all my praise for the first book apply here as well. A super unique high fantasy that gives extinct and threatened species a voice. The book explore themes of war, environmental destruction, sacrifice and loss. You really get to see how much Byx has grown and how much she needs to continue to grow. This book has me so excited for the third, I haven’t read such an emotionally rewarding quest novel in a long time.

Bleach

I found out my library has a billion books of this series and decided to jump into it again for the first time in over a decade. Honestly it’s even better than I remembered? The art is absolutely stunning, Ichigo is such a power fantasy hero, and it’s one of those series with a lot of really loveable characters and a lot of heart. Ichigo is a good guy who you actually feel good liking, which can’t be said for all shonen protags by any means. This is just such a classic and it holds up man. And if you like manga and have never read it? Jump in and enjoy a normal human getting supernatural powers and kicking absolutely enormous monsters’ asses.

Dinotopia: Sabertooth Mountain

This was my favourite Dinotopia book as a kid, and it was still fun to reread. The world of Dinotopia is one separate from the rest of the world, where humanity lives in perfect harmony with many prehistoric creatures that have managed to survive and evolve on the island of Dinotopia. This story is about a crisis brewing, as the sabertooths are cut off from their food supply and are in danger of not only starving but of bringing death to the rest of the mountain as well. While surveying the situation with his older sister, the main character finds himself falling from the airship in the middle of a storm, directly into the valley of starving sabertooths.

I read a bunch of this author’s graphic novels, and they are such feel-good queer lit. This was probably my favourite of the lot, but I also read Tea Dragon Society, Aquicorn Cove, and Princess Princess Ever After. Taking place in a picturesque mountain community, it’s about a girl meeting a guardian dragon who accidentally fell asleep in the mountains a century ago rather than watch over the village like intended. It’s about coming to terms with and loving yourself (and also about super cute little tea dragons).

Just Jaime

Another story that focuses on the complications of middle school, and how friends can grow and change, and when sometimes friendships become toxic and cruel. These are novel/graphic novel hybrids that are very visually appealing, and really do manage to tell very heartfelt stories. This one takes a side character from the earlier two books, and turns her from a very one dimensional, somewhat annoying character, into a fully realized person with her own issues and her own need for growth.

The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up / The Life-Changing Manga Of Tidying Up

Given that I’m not really a non-fiction person and DEFINITELY not a self-help book person, I really enjoyed these (though I didn’t read Spark Joy). I read the manga first, out of curiosity, but enough of it struck true that I decided to try the book as well. Have I cleaned anything up yet? No. But honestly, I can genuinely say that despite being repetitive at points I do truly feel like I got a lot of good out of it, and I feel much more excited and prepared when I do decide to do a big clean next. It really does reframe the relationship you have with your belongings and with yourself. I genuinely love the concept of “sparking joy”.

Bigfoot Boy: The Sound Of Thunder

Technically the last book of the series, whoops. Though honestly having read it I didn’t feel like I missed that much. It’s a Canadian graphic novel and I had... mixed feelings about it. Interesting and exciting in some ways, but the pacing was odd, and honestly I don’t think indigenous voices went into making it (I could be wrong but...) and it reads as kinda... eugh. Problematic. Having a none indigenous author write about a white boy being the guardian of a first nation totem and turning into a bigfoot isn’t a super cool optic.

Bloodchild

I was told “hey this is a really fucked up short story” so I read it, and guess what? It was a really fucked up short story. Would recommend if you want weird alien sex slavery bullshit-- it was a wild ride. And the overall themes obviously went a lot deeper than that, but honestly, it’s like a few dozen pages long if you wanna dig into all the philosophical shit, just give it a read! Uh, heavy content warning, tw tw tw, but a really bizarre, unsettling look at gender and power dynamics and oppression through a scifi lens.

Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIHM

I hadn’t read this book since elementary school so I reread it on a whim. It really is such a charming story. As far as animal stories go, this feels almost like the platonic ideal. Mother mouse is worried about her sick son and winds up compelled to seek out the mysterious rats who live in the rosebush for help, and is not only thrust into her own adventure but learns about the strange past her late husband shared with the rats of NIMH. It’s such a relaxing read, while still managing to be exciting and compelling.

Exploring According to Og the Frog

And one last animal story to round us off. I’d read one of the Humphrey books last month, and check out a couple more from the library for fun. I didn’t enjoy Mysteries According to Humphrey that much, but this one was charming, showing the world through Humphrey’s frog friend Og instead. The same charming type of adventure, but being a frog, Og has a very different attitude and view of the world, which was fun. Very cute elementary kid lit.

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maddrmatt · 4 years

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Kairi’s Epic Journey: The Quest for Sora

New to this fanfic? Click here to properly begin!

Chapter 1: When Everything Fell Apart

Destiny Islands

Crouching down, Kairi was practically crawling as she entered the Secret Place on the Play Island. She remembered how easily it used to be when she was little. But now that seemed like such a lifetime ago.

Soon, she emerged in the cave. All around were the scribbles that she, Sora and Riku had doodled throughout the years. As she walked toward the door to the world’s heart, she averted her eyes from glancing at a certain drawing. Looking at that one would only bring her more pain.

Stopping right in front of the door, Kairi gazed on what she had added to it. Though she had always been more of a writer, she did have a small talent for art. After all, Naminè had to get it from somewhere and it definitely wasn’t from the other person who had a hand in bringing her into existence.

But what was now on the door was a far more ambitious piece of art than the various doodles on the walls. It was an elaborate woodcut picture that had been partially painted in. It almost resembled a stained-glass window made of wood.

A small whine was heard. Kairi turned around and saw that Pluto had emerged into the cave.

“I’m going to finish this today, Pluto. I want it to be ready when Sora comes back,” she said a little more half-heartedly than she meant to. The dog just laid down and watched Kairi get to work.

First, Kairi took out her Gummi Phone and opened up th-e music app. It still fascinated her how useful the device was especially the fact that she could get several of her favorite songs. Selecting a song, one that she had listened to very often since starting this project, she pressed play and the set it on the ground next to the door as the piano introduction began.

(In-Universe Music: Don't Think Twice by Utada Hikaru playing on Kairi’s Gummi Phone)

She then reached over where she had left some painting supplies in the cave and took out a painter’s smock. Once donning it, she assembled herself a palette of colors, selected a brush and began to work on the picture.

As she added the colors to her picture, tears began to run down her eyes and onto the palette wetting the paint. But in spite of it, she carried on painting as she thought back to the day one month ago when things truly started to fall apart.

________________________________________________________________

Land of Departure, One Month Ago

“Fire!” shouted Kairi as a ball of fire emerged from Destiny’s Embrace. The fire soared across a field and incinerated a target.

“Well done, Kairi! You’re getting a lot better at casting magic,” said Aqua who had been instructing her.

“Thanks Aqua. It’s good to know that I’m improving. But then again, everyone is,” said Kairi as she looked around at the others.

Riku, Ventus and Goofy were sparring. Terra was teaching Roxas and Axel how to transform their Keyblades into Keyblade Gliders. Xion was running and dodging through a gauntlet of various magical attacks conjured by Donald as Mickey oversaw them. Nearby, Naminè was sketching while Chirithy watched all the action.

“Things are going to be different when the next big threat comes along. We’ll have an unstoppable team. Yen Sid even said that he was going to give Terra and Axel a Mark of Mastery exam in the near future,” said Aqua.

“That’s great! Then you’ll both have finally achieved your dream,” said Kairi.

“Yes. After all this time. I just wish Master Eraqus had lived to see it,” said Aqua casting her gaze downward.

Kairi placed her hand on the Keyblade Master’s shoulder. “He may not be here anymore. But he’s still watching you from wherever he may be. And I know he’d be proud of you as well as Terra and Ven.”

Aqua mustered a smile. “Thanks, Kairi.”

“Anytime, Aqua,” said Kairi with a smile.

“So, I’ve been meaning to ask you this: how have you been doing lately?” asked Aqua.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ve been quite busy these past few months. Whenever you’re not training, you seem to be doing a lot of research. I’ve noticed you working through much of Master Eraqus’ old Keyblade lore as well as all of the notes on the Heartless and Nobodies that Jiminy wrote down. Also, is it true that Chip and Dale are also teaching you how to take care of Gummi Ships?”

“Yes, I am Aqua. And I’ve just been trying to learn a few extra useful skills. There are more ways that I can help than just by fighting. If trouble comes back, I want to be as useful as possible,” said Kairi.

Aqua felt a sudden feeling of pity toward the Princess of Heart. ‘I can’t believe she still feels that she wasn’t useful during the Keyblade War way even after all these months. Kairi, don’t you realize that if you hadn’t kept Sora alive, we would have lost completely?’

“And what about your…?” Aqua hesitated to finish her question.

Kairi looked into her eyes and knew what she was meaning. “My scar?”

Aqua nodded in response. Much to the dismay of everyone, when Kairi had been restored, they discovered that she had not come back unscathed.

On her back, extending from her right shoulder to her left hip, was a long ugly slash mark that was unhealable by medicine or magic. An unfortunate reminder of when Xehanort struck her down.

“It’s fine, Aqua. It hasn’t hurt in months. Why are you so curious right now?” asked Kairi.

“Just wanting to make sure you’re okay,” said Aqua with a gentle smile.

“I am and I appreciate your concern. But right now, I just want to focus on training and honing all my skills. Now I think my other spells could use some improvement. I think my aim with the Thunder spells could be better. I want to be in tiptop shape for when we go looking for Sora.”

The smile vanished from Aqua’s face. “Kairi, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Oh that reminds me. There’s something I need to tell you all. In fact, I better do it right now. Hey everyone! Come over here!” she called excitedly. Everyone stopped what they were doing and immediately headed toward the two girls.

“What’s up, Kairi?” asked Ven.

“Yeah. You seem pretty excited,” said Goofy.

“Oh I am. And you’re going to be excited too.”

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense. Out with it!” exclaimed Donald.

“Okay. This morning, I felt something I hadn’t felt for so long. It was Sora! I felt him! We can find him!”

Surprisingly, the group’s reaction was not that of excitement. Instead, they gazed at the Princess of Heart with skepticism.

“You felt him?” asked Roxas.

“Well, it was only for a few minutes. But I know it was him! He’s somewhere out there in the worlds and now we can set out to bring him home!”

“Kairi, are you sure you didn’t dream it?” asked Xion.

“No, I was awake. It happened just before I left my house to come here. Guys, why are being so doubtful? Don’t you believe me?”

“No one’s calling you a lair, Kairi. But it has been six months. Why would you feel Sora’s presence now and only for a few minutes at that? Maybe you only imagined it,” said Mickey.

“Yeah, Kairi. I can’t even feel Sora anymore and I spent a long time in his heart,” said Ven.

“Well, I don’t think amount of time has anything to do with it since Roxas and I were in the same boat. But we haven’t felt Sora either,” said Xion.

‘Yes but you guys never shared a paopu fruit with Sora and I think that makes a big difference,’ thought Kairi who was getting angrier by her friends’ doubts by the second.

“Maybe you only imagined it,” said Mickey.

Kairi couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “No, I didn’t. Guys, it was real! Why aren’t you taking this seriously?”

Aqua gave a heavy sigh as she walked up to Kairi and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Kairi, this isn’t going to be easy to hear. But some of us have been talking.”

“Talking? Talking about what?” asked the Princess of Heart.

Terra chimed in, “Please understand that this was not an easy decision. But many of us believe that maybe it’s time to suspend the search for Sora.”

Kairi gasped. “Suspend? You mean, give up? We can’t!”

“Try to understand where we’re coming from, Kairi. Over the past six months, we’ve looked into anything about the Power of Waking for some way that could help us get Sora back. We’ve looked through everything Master Yen Sid, Master Eraqus, Merlin and Ansem the Wise had, and we’ve found nothing,” said Aqua.

“Even I have no solution at all, Kairi, and I’ve been around a lot longer than anybody here,” chimed in Chirithy.

“I know. I didn’t find anything either in all my research. But just because we haven’t found a solution doesn’t mean there isn’t one. There has to be something!” shouted Kairi as she pulled away from Aqua and turned to the rest of their group. “You all can’t be seriously considering this, can you?”

The ones in the group who had yet to voice their opinion gave uncomfortable looks. Kairi could see the conflict in their eyes. That just made her madder.

Axel spoke up, “Kairi, you know I’m hardly the one to be rational. But we can’t spend the rest of our lives looking for him. Especially when we have no idea where to start.”

“And it’s not like we’re giving up completely, Kairi. If something does come up, we’ll pursue it. But for now, maybe it is best we stop actively looking and just move forward. It might actually help us adjust to the possibility that he might be…” began Mickey before being interrupted by the increasingly distraught Princess of Heart.

“He’s not gone forever! I felt him! He’s out there somewhere! I know he is!” Kairi turned to Riku, Donald and Goofy. “Riku, Donald, Goofy, you believe me, don’t you? You don’t want to give up on Sora too?”

What she saw in the eyes of Sora’s closest friends were the same conflict that the others had shown. After a few moments, Riku spoke up, “Kairi, you know I want Sora back just as much as you do. But…”

“But what?”

“…they are making some very good points.”

Kairi felt like she had been stabbed in the back by the one she thought would always have her back. She looked to Donald and Goofy who sadly nodded.

‘You promised! When I got back, you promised we would find him!’

“Look, I’ll try to reach out to him! I’ll see if I can detect where he is!” said Kairi desperately as she closed her eyes and tried to focus on Sora.

‘Come on, Sora! Wherever you are, please let me know! Please show me where we can find you!’

She stayed that way for minutes. But there was no response.

Tears began to drip down her cheeks. She felt a hand take her own. Opening her eyes, she saw Mickey holding her hand.

“Kairi, maybe you’d better go take a rest. We can discuss this later when you’ve calmed down,” he said.

Kairi wrenched her hand out of Mickey’s. “No offense, Your Majesty, but I think you’ve all made it perfectly clear there’s nothing to discuss since it appears that your minds are all made up on this. So, don’t count on me ever coming around here again!” she shouted as she started to run away from them.

“Kairi, wait!” shouted Xion.

“Don’t go!” shouted Naminè.

Kairi stopped in her tracks and whipped around, her face a portrait of hurt and rage. “How could you all? After all that Sora has done for you, you all just give up on him?”

She looked at Terra, Aqua and Ven. “He didn’t even know you and still risked everything to undo the damage Xehanort did to you.”

She looked at Roxas, Naminè and Xion. “He’s not only responsible for your existences but he also made it his mission to get you your own lives.”

She looked at Axel. “He forgave you for what you put him through even when he had every right not to.”

She looked at Mickey. “He did everything you ever asked of him even when you didn’t make him a Master when he clearly deserved to be one.”

She looked at Riku, Donald and Goofy. “He…” But she couldn’t even form the words because she was thoroughly disgusted by Sora’s closest friends.

“Sora told me that his greatest power was his friends. But right now, I see no one who deserves to be called that.” And with that Kairi ran away.

She never looked back.

________________________________________________________________

Onto the next chapter!

#kingdom hearts #kh fanfiction #sokai #kairi #pluto #riku #king mickey mouse #donald duck #goofy #namine #axel/lea #roxas #xion #terra #aqua #ventus #chirithy #maddrmatt

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vagrantblvrd · 4 years

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@rogueghost Tumblr’s still acting weird for me so I had to do the old DIY reply to your ask, but here you go. :D?

Oh, friend! There’s so much lore to Destiny that I haven’t kept up with myself because ~lazy. The AUs I’ve written are a mishmash of Destiny universe and ~artistic liberties on my part, so yeah.

(There’s an amazing video here about the lore thus far that I hope to watch One Day? But, again, lazy and lack of time to sit down to properly absorb it.)

Quick background on the games/Ghosts for those who don’t play the game/want to see me ramble on about A Thing:

The game tells us is the Traveler (giant white space orb/messiah/McGuffin showed up in our solar system which resulted in what’s called the Golden Age where human technology advanced like whoa. (But surprise, surprise, the Traveler was being pursued by an enemy referred to as the Darkness and things got messy for humanity, something that happened to several races that happened to run into the Traveler before us.)

There was an extinction level event several centuries before the events of the Destiny games called The Collapse when the Darkness caught up to it. The Traveler “died”, creating the Ghosts as it did to seek out Guardians...who tend to be dead at the time (they get better) who then join the ranks of the Guardians (who for the most part) fight to save humanity/the universe and/or engage in shenanigans such as flinging themselves off the Tower for funsies and the whatnot. (Guardians have no common sense, btw. Also, lunatics.)

BUT.

Back to your amazing prompt???

It would be this entire Thing on its own because I want to set it before the games back in the days before there was a Vanguard, which from what I gather from the lore I have read was not unlike ye olden medieval days/wild west with sci-fi twist, because yes. (Also, it was referred to as the Dark Ages, so yeah.)

Geoff and Jack are among the first Lightbearers that are referred to as Risen in various bits of game lore, right? Before the Iron Lords and the whole “Guardian” business with the Vanguard and the Tower and all that good stuff.

Back in the days where there were some like them who abused their powers over those who weren’t like them. Grabbing land and wealth for themselves and gaining followers through fear and the whatnot?

They spend a long, long time trying to figure out what the hell is going on because no memories of their past lives and this hellish world they’ve been brought back to with Fallen and God knows what else wandering the lands.

Just these little glowing balls of Light and sass nagging them about finding shelter and armor and weapons, getting them into hiding when Fallen patrols or other bandits go past.

Abilities before there were proper classes and sub-classes and all that.

Geoff and Jack both lean more towards the floofy jumps and glides of Warlocks. (not that they know what a Warlock even is at that point, of course.)

Jack’s abilities and whatnot lean more towards a support role, but he’s not defenseless, oh no. He learns to use his Light as a weapon and that goes for Geoff too.

They carry guns and knives and in a pinch whatever is at hand.

Run into each other in a little settlement somewhere and at first it’s this Thing where they’re keeping their Ghosts out of sight – Warlords and so on who flaunt their little Ghost friends and the way people have learned to react to them. (And also? Just smart not to go about advertising the fact you’re harder to kill than most, that if they don’t know you have a Ghost you won’t stay down once someone tries to put you in the ground.)

There’s an attack, Fallen or human bandits or some Warlord’s goon squad trying to terrorize the settlement into rolling over for them. Pay a tax or whatever they’d call it back then to “protect” them from the roving bands of Fallen and other enemies.

Can’t do much without giving themselves away – and why would they? They don’t owe these people anything, and that old woman scooping her wares off the ground where her booth’s been knocked down tried to shortchange Geoff less than an hour ago.

The asshole with the weapons parts Jack needed is – okay, he’s kind of dead now, but he lied to Jack’s face about not having them in stock. Said he’d have to ask around, and wouldn’t you know it that would cost more. (Jack can see the parts he was after spilling from a box hidden at the back of the guy’s booth and into the grass, blood all over them and what a mess.)

Still.

Jack quietly takes the parts he needs and leaves the money he would have paid fairly for them and a little more with the boy crouched beside the booth. (His mother’s a settlement over, said she’d be a bit before joining his father with the parts she was bartering for there.)

Sighs as he looks down the road the goons left on and starts after them. Geoff’s munching on an apple he got of a nearby tree and watches him go, all thoughtful about it because there are people mourning here and they don’t owe them a damn thing, and what does that idiot think he’s going to do about it?

So of course he follows, just to see.

The end up killing everyone at the Warlord’s little castle, wherever he’s holed up because none of them will listen to reason and the man’s a blowhard. Full of himself because he’s clearly been chosen for a reason, and what else could it be than to rule over the weaker, lesser people in this section of the world?

And Geoff, God, Geoff.

Died several times getting to this asshole, right? Snipers and assholes with knives and other melee weapons and he was in dire need up upgrading his armor before he waded into this fight, but he’s got his trusty Ghost buddy and this stubbornness that just won’t quit. Smiles because this pathetic weasel playing king and is just like, “Oh, buddy, have I got news for you.” and behind him Jack pops his super, Radiance lighting up the Warlord’s pitiful little throne room.

Geoff lets that sink in for a moment before he fricking nova bombs the Warlord in the face.

It kind of hurts a little, when they see the asshole’s Ghost hiding in a corner of the room waiting for the right moment to resurrect the bastard, because their own Ghosts and the bonds they’ve built with them, you know?

But the little Ghost floats out to the center of the room, looks down at the body of its chosen and sighs because it knew a long time ago it chose poorly. (Maybe the Warlord could have done great things with this second chance, but he chose to do terrible things instead.)

They could kill the Ghost, make sure the Warlord didn’t come back, but -

There’s no point to it now. The Ghost is surprised at their decision, maybe disappointed. (Easier for things to end and not have to consider everything that went wrong because of its choice of course. Having to go on however long with that hanging over it? Nothing like mercy, is it?)

So.

They leave the Ghost behind, and all the dead in the halls and rooms where they fell. Find the path that leads away from the settlement and that small little Warlord and keep walking. (Swear they see a light in the woods along the castle grounds following them for a distance, but they leave it be and eventually it vanishes, wandering as aimlessly as them.)

And then!

They kind of fall in together after that, aren't really friends but there aren’t that many directions to go in, you know? And sometimes the Fallen patrols and whatnot are tricky for one Risen to deal with alone and it’s just.

Convenient.

They’re not bad guys, really, certainly no villains, but wouldn’t you know it? There are a lot of people out there who claim they are?

All these warlords with their bounties and other thieves and grifters with grudges to bear against them. Settlements who aren’t sure what to make of them and are wary of strangers because it pays to be paranoid.

And sometimes they kind of do bad things, pilfer some goods off a settlement where the leader’s an asshole and it’s doing well enough for they won’t miss just a little and so on and so forth. (Ignore the fact they maybe stop ‘round a poorer settlement or homestead kind of place to barter their stolen goods for a place with a roof over their heads for the night and so on. Because unimportant and definitely not a Good Deed or anything.)

Eventually they happen on this little asshole of a Hunter, a kid, really. (Well, no. Just. Young.)

Skittish, almost, the way he acts around them and after they win his trust by sheer dint of doing nothing he joins them beside the campfire they’ve set up.

Well, not nothing. Just. Something?

They set up camp in a clearing of the forest they’ve found themselves in this time. Tired after crossing a snowy mountain rage and it’s warm enough where they are they won’t freeze to death at night. (Once was enough, thanks.)

Hunt and fish and forage for food and leave the Hunter they spot lurking about alone when they realize he’s no threat to them.

Eventually Gavin gets curious enough, or maybe something else because he comes to their campfire with tidbits of food of his own. Treats and delicacies he’s made himself or bought or traded for somewhere else to supplement whatever Geoff and Jack caught/foraged for themselves.

They share stories, mostly Geoff and Jack about their adventures up to then. Little ones, because they’d hate to spook Gavin, scare him back into the forest and probably gone off somewhere they don’t stand a chance of finding him again.

After a while Gavin offers up some of his? Mostly advice for the area around them, dangers to look out for like Fallen patrols and the like.

Geoff asks after this human bandit encampment he heard about from a settlement nearby and Gavin goes quiet. Shifts uncomfortably before he tells them it won’t be a problem anymore and leaves it at that.

They don’t ask because they have stories of their own that end like that and it would just be rude after the goodies Gavin shared with them, so they don’t press.

The three of them wander around the forest for a few days, a week. Headed the same direction to another settlement nearby and it’s pretty nice having someone else around for a change, you know?

But once they reach the settlement Gavin vanishes on them and knowing how skittish he is, they don’t go looking for him.

A few years – twenty, thirty, maybe more – go by before they run into Gavin again.

They’ve left Earth a few times since then, gone wandering in these Jumpships that fell apart on them before too long and they ended back up on Earth.

By that time there’s a new group of Risen calling themselves the Iron something or others, and they’re out there giving the Warlords a time of it to hear the stories.

(A few from this shady guy who owns a bar in this little settlement that grew up to be a tiny town. Tells them about this lady named Efrideet responsible for the hole in the ceiling of his fine establishment, but he doesn’t seem too annoyed about it, so it’s probably fine.)

Run across this kid in a town somewhere, angry as hell and taking on some Warlord’s stooges with just his fists. Seems weapons would just slow him down because he’s doing just fine resolving whatever argument or debate he’s engaged in by punching the shit out of his opponents.

When it’s over they buy him a drink because it saves them the trouble of handling things themselves – picked up a bounty not too far away the kid took care of for them – and they offer to split the reward money since he did all the work.

And Michael, okay.

Squints at them because he sure as hell doesn’t know them, but who is he to turn down a free drink?

He agrees to taking a quarter of the reward because it seems they won’t accept anything less, but whatever. He would have have kicked the shit out of those assholes anyway for trying to bully the people here and this way he’ll have a little extra money in his pockets. (Whatevers.)

They part ways there, but he tells them if they need a hand they’re welcome to in touch with them.

Geoff and Jack wander a little more. Hear about these Iron Lords or whatever they’re calling themselves these days and are understandably concerned because the warlords business and who says these idiots are going to be any better?

(Say they’re out to protect people and all that, but entire settlements, towns, have gotten caught in the crossfire between them and the warlords and the only ones to walk out of it are these Iron Lords. So. Yeah. They’ve got some trouble thinking anyone’s a good guy in that scenario.)

More time goes by and they’re at some little outpost somewhere when Gavin pops up out of nowhere.

Strained look on his face and eyeing Michael who’s with them warily.

Says, “I could use your help,” which is a first because whenever they run into him he’s the one helping them out.

Hell of a sniper and no one better they’ve met when stealth is needed and anyway, anyway, they say yes because of course they do.

Like this little idiot who creeps around the wilds like it’s second nature, goes delving into Darkness Zones looking for God knows what. All kinds of trouble he gets up to and no one watching his back and just.

They worry, okay? They do.

More so with the way he’s all wound up about something. Won’t even tell them what it is until they’re out of the outpost and miles into the woods. Ghosts telling them no one’s around to listen in and even then he’s nervous.

Michael, who’s been quiet through all this loses his temper, snaps at Gavin to get on with with it already, fuck’s sake.

Jack goes to rein him in because Gavin and skittish and just, not what they need right now?

Only as it turns out, it kind of is because Gavin just.

Spills this story about coming across a crashed Fallen ketch in the mountains nearby. Too deep into Fallen territory – and treacherous terrain besides – for anyone to have reason to go up there.

But because Gavin’s an idiot and his Ghost is just as much of one, they went up there anyway.

Snuck past Fallen patrols and the whatnot to get into the ketch and found a Ghost in an odd little device that kept it from transmatting somewhere safe. Little thing begging them to find its chosen because the Fallen had caught them by surprise.

Overwhelmed them in an ambush and caught the Ghost in the cage it’s stuck in, kept its chosen because they thought he had answers they wanted.

Gavin glosses over the interrogations the Ghost told them about, how they’d torture its chosen to the point of death and have it resurrect him to do it all over again and the worst part is its chosen honestly didn’t have the answers to the questions they kept asking him? Resurrected a year ago a most when they were captured and wandering through the area by chance and just bad luck all around.

Anyway, anyway, he knows they don’t know this poor bastard, but Gavin can’t just leave him there, okay? He can’t get the guy out himself, but if they don’t want to help that’s fine, he understands, he’ll find a way -

Geoff and Jack are just like, no, you little idiot no, we’ll help. Just. Don’t do anything stupid okay?

Gavin is like “...okay?” because he didn’t know if they’d say yes – none of their business and sure, they’ve been pretty vocal about not getting involved things that don’t involve them, but that’s all just talk.

(They’ve been getting into trouble that didn’t concern them for a long damn time before now, and hey, Gavin’s kind of their business because they like him okay?)

Michael doesn’t know what Gavin’s deal is, but he’s always up for a fight and nothing better to do and when Geoff and Jack ask if he wants to go along he’s just like, sure, why not?

Gavin isn’t sure about him because Michael is a stranger to him? But he doesn’t seem too bad and Geoff and Jack like him and anyway, the more the merrier?

Thy follow Gavin up to the Fallen ketch, take out Fallen patrols and whatever else in their way headed there. Gavin has to sneak in ahead of them because there are traps and security measures the others would trample their way into and just.

“Be back in a moment,” and goes invisible because he’s got all them Hunter abilities and the whatnot.

There’s this uncomfortably long bit of time where the others are in hiding to avoid being detected and wondering if Gavin got caught by the Fallen. This whole argument about having to break in and save him too, which is when Gavin reappears, all “Took longer than I expected, but it’s all clear now,” and scares the bejesus out of them because Hunter and stealth and where the hell did he come from?

Gavin shrugging and totally not laughing at them as he takes the lead.

They get pretty far in before they’re noticed, and then it’s all fighting and shooting and maybe dying once or twice to be resurrected by their Ghost or picked up by a teammate.

Gavin makes for the trapped Ghost first, figures they might need it by the time they reach this captured Risen which, yikes? (But also smart, and also it’s easier to get and on the way and just. It works out.)

The Ghost they rescue sticks close to Gavin and his Ghost, nervous little thing after all it’s gone through and then there’s more fighting and the whatnot to get to this idiot who got himself caught.

Dicey moments and definitely some dying on their parts because there’s a Fallen tank in the ketch - naturally - and all these Vandals with their fricking wire rifles they don’t see until it’s too late, and anyway.

It’s a hell of a fight to get the guy.

Have to deal with a Kell, because of course they do, but four Lightbearers deal with him better than one or two would have and then they get to rescue the poor bastard.

His Ghost tutting and fussing and Ryan – because of course it’s Ryan – is just like, I’m alright, stop worrying and also?

Suspicious of his rescuers because he’s never seen them and four Lightbearers? Makes him Concerned, okay.

Things aren’t as bad as they were before the Iron Lords or whoever showed up, but it’s still.

He’s not very trusting, is the thing.

Grateful for the rescue and all, but not super friendly. (Which, understandable considering his recent experience.)

The group sticks together for a few days after they get out of the mountains and back down to a nearby settlement. Aren’t surprised when Ryan goes his own way – tells them he owes them one and goes off with his Ghost for more adventures or what have you.

No one is surprised when Gavin follows him all stealthy-like.

Well. Not as stealthy as he could be, because he doesn’t want to make Ryan jumpy about feeling like he’s being watched? But Gavin kind of bonded with Ryan’s Ghost a bit when he first ventured into the Ketch. Couldn’t sneak out right away and ended up living inside it avoiding Fallen for a few days. Crept down to see Ryan, talk to him when he could to tell him he’d find a way to get him out of there, you know?

(Hiding out in some little corner somewhere in the Ketch – too risky to sleep or too paranoid and there’s one or two Fallen watching Ryan he can sneak around to see him. Think about how it’d feel if he was the one in Ryan’s position and how easily that could happen to a lone Lightbearer and how awful it is that Ryan’s been there all that time and no one knew and just. He’s attached now, alright?)

Ryan too out of it most of the time to know about it, but his Ghost tells him about the idiot who went snooping where he really shouldn’t have been. Lurking about the Ketch even after he could have gotten out to make sure he had the layout and patrols memorized before going for help and just.

Everything.

So he’s not worried when the same idiot follows him when he goes on his own way, getting more bold or just bored/curious when he stops pretending he’s not following Ryan and walks into the little camp he makes somewhere.

The two of them traveling around together for a while, a few years, maybe more before they get a call from Geoff and Jack because Michael’s in a situation thanks to this asshole he fell in with somewhere.

Nothing too dire, just need the extra firepower and they help get Michael and his buddy Jeremy out of a Cabal base somewhere.

And then they go somewhere to celebrate and just. Stick together for a while?

Nothing more pressing to deal with – the Iron Lords have things pretty well in hand and all, warlords mostly gone and a semblance of order to things.

But there are still baddies out there, places the Iron Lords don’t have resources to protect just yet and they make a living out there.

Bloody, ugly living sometimes because baddies who were born that way and no one else to handle things and they’re not the bad guys here, but they’re not good either.

The SIVA clusterfuck happens and there’s this...chaos, panic for while. Things get hectic, threaten to go back to the way they were before the Iron Lords and it’s awful right?

This little group of Lightbearers out there doing what they can to keep things from getting too bad even if it means liberating goods and supplies from people hoarding them, refusing to share with those in need. Stopping the more aggressive assholes from trying for power grabs and the lot.

Maybe a few of them think twice about forming the kind of bonds they have when they see what happened to the Iron Lords because they’re not invincible even with their little Ghost buddies, you know?

But they keep on keepin’ on and watch as more and more Lightbearers show up, the City grows and Titans built its walls and the Vanguard come into being. Lightbearers start calling themselves Guardians, of all things.

And that gets derisive snort from Geoff because pretentious much? But the Guardians grow in number, fight against the Fallen and whoever – whatever – else threatens humanity. (Their City.)

Put out patrol beacons and organize strikes and all that nonsense and all these freshly resurrected Guardians going out and doing good things with their second chance. (Some driven by the desire to help mankind and all that, others by the promise of loot and prestige, and those with nothing better to do and a Ghost nudging them in the direction of being helpful.)

Still they hold out for a while, not wholly trusting in the staying power of the Vanguard and what they’re doing in that City of theirs or their Tower after seeing what happened before them.

Eventually though, they get curious.

Or maybe the Vanguard’s heard about them and they got curious.

Whichever one it is, they end up running a few strike together. Do some patrols on the side because guaranteed glimmer for some menial task they would have done for free. (Would have gotten parts and supplies anyway, handful of glimmer, but now? Better pay and earning trust in the bargain.)

Stop having to scavenge for the stuff they need and – this is bonus in Gavin’s mind at least because he’s never forgotten what happened to Ryan – someone besides one of them who’ll notice if they’re in trouble or go missing.

Who will send others to look for them (how many times have they done the same for the Vanguard already? Asked to find some wayward Guardian who bit off more than they could chew) and mourn them if they can’t be saved.

To be honest, Geoff and Jack are all about that side of things with the idiots they’ve joined up with, you know? Michael and Jeremy are one thing, get into trouble for the hell of it sometimes, but Ryan and Gavin?

Those two get up to trouble because they’re too damn stupid. Go off on their own into Dead Zones and everything else all the damn time, wander the wilds for weeks on end where communications are spotty and they won’t know they’re in trouble until long after the fact.

Ray’s even worse, but he’s one of the most capable Lightbearers any of them have met so it’s. Bad, but the whole trust thing?

(And anyway, there won’t be a time they aren’t worrying about any of their idiots, so. Yes.)

Maybe this Guardian business isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Still takes a while before they decide to throw their lot in with them, move to the Tower, but eventually they do.

Have this hidden base of sorts in the wilds all nice and locked down in case something goes wrong – Cabal attacking the city and cutting off their link to their Light, for example – and other hidey spots and boltholes all over the system because.

Paranoia for good reasons and being prepared, and anyway, anyway.

They have this little section of the Tower for their group, little clan, if you will. Pick up new Guardians every so often. Freshly resurrected or ones they hit it off with when the Vanguard sends them on strikes and the whatnot.

Lindsay and Trevor and this whole slew of new idiots Geoff and Jack watch over in their own way.

Gavin is thrilled at not being the only Hunter in the bunch when they find Alfredo. (Or maybe he finds them???)

Anyway, there’s this feeling of safety, security they have now they didn’t before being part of something bigger than themselves. (Not perfect, because the Vanguard can be horrifically shortsighted at times, but they’re doing their best.)

Also?

Loot.

Lots of loot and glimmer and that’s the important thing.

Really.

#ragehappy #fahc destiny au #rogueghost #Prompt Fills #technically not a fic #vagrant fic #i just #have FEELS about pre-Tower era or whatever it's called #i'm also bad at game lore #so my timeline for this is probs jumbled up #¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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tsukiprotranslations · 5 years

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[Translation] Machine Elements - Cast Presentation: SOARA

Yay~! It’s finally time for the character profiles! I really love all the world-building they did for KisoSekai and I absolutely love their lore for the characters~! I hope everyone becomes so much more interested in Kiso Sekai after reading my translations~

※ Please don’t re-post any of these translations without permission. Please just like/reblog them instead.

Under the cut, enjoy~!

OHARA SORA

“I wonder what’s unfolding beyond that blue sky… Just thinking about it is making me super excited…!”

PROFILE:

NAME: Ohara Sora

GUILD: SOARA (※Guildmaster)

BASE: Windy Hills

☐ Being a part of the Twelve Regions, he is the youngest Guildmaster who hails from a region filled with old history. The reason why he succeeded the old Master’s (Sora’s father) place was because his father was experiencing a recurring pain on his back. It is actually a very peaceful reason. Since the original inauguration was not official, another person was in charge for a while. However, the said person “fell in love with the person of his destiny” and ended up eloping somewhere. As a result, Sora became the youngest Guildmaster.

☐ Since it’s not a position he wished for, he, who was suddenly tasked with such a huge social status, is putting enormous effort every day together with his encouraging friends.

☐ When he’s not occupied with his job as a Guildmaster, he busies himself with developing a contraption that he calls a [Flying Wing]. “Someday, I’ll definitely fly to the sky!” is his motto.

CAST COMMENT:

Go~od~ Af~ter~noon~!

I’m SOARA’s Ohara Sora! Just like my name suggests, I’m the Guildmaster of a Guild who aims to reach the sky. At least, that’s my role this time.

Man~ During the real Leaders’ meeting, I shed a lot of tears and sweat and there’s a possibility that I might really do that during the real play, too, as one of the Twelve Regions’ Guildmasters.

Though I might have been surrounded by [THE☆Elite People], I feel like I managed to shine on my own while giving it my all (laughs). Please do feel free to take my hand and grasp it!

I’ll be in your care!

ARIHARA MORIHITO

“Sou, don’t overdo it, okay?”

PROFILE:

NAME: Arihara Morihito

GUILD: SOARA

BASE: Windy Hills

☐ While he is called SOARA’s substantial leader, he is a clear-headed young man who supports the Guildmaster, Sora. He has a calm demeanor and a deep way of speaking backed by a lot of knowledge. Though he may be young, he possesses great dignity.

☐ Taking care of complicated negotiations is basically his job. Though Sora is aware that he causes a lot of trouble for Mori and is very thankful, when Mori himself is asked… “As if I’d let you shoulder all the difficult things,” is what he says. It seems that he enjoys the difficult challenges and doesn’t mind doing it much.

☐ He is childhood friends with Sora and Soshi. Due to a lot of events in their childhood, he has grown to admire Sora, even now when he became a leader that he could support. He got acquainted with Soshi since they had the same personality and have continued supporting each other ever since.

☐ Being SOARA’s representative, he is in charge of supervising and maintaining their Mechanical Birds called the [Kazatori].

CAST COMMENT:

Welcome to TsukiPro’s Air Stage [KisoSekai]! I’m SOARA’s guitarist and vocal, Arihara Morihito.

If I could frankly describe the feeling SOARA gives, it would be “We can go anywhere thanks to the music Sora creates! We’ll jump as high as we can!”.

That is why, I feel like the people (in the story) can also feel a strong admiration for flying. Wouldn’t you say that that’s the best feeling there is?

More so, do you think that day will ever come?

That’s something we’ll have to see for ourselves on stage now, isn’t it?

KAGURAZAKA SOSHI

“Mori~? You should go easy on those maneuvers, too, got it?”

PROFILE:

NAME: Kagurazaka Soshi

GUILD: SOARA

BASE: Windy Hills

☐ SOARA’s proud and reliable big brother. Together with Morihito, they support Sora.

☐ He usually tinkers with the machines in his workshop. He is learning the techniques of the trade as the eldest son of a household qualified to maintain the [Kazatori]. He displays great talent and charisma for a man of his generation. He seems to be admired by burly men the same age as his father for his talents, a perk that he’s not too keen on.

☐ He is childhood friends with Sora and Mori and so they tease and make fun of each other but they always support one another no matter what. He treats Ren and Nozomu like younger brothers and though he teases them, he adores them a lot.

☐ The [Kazatori] were utilized by the first generation SOARA members after it was believed to have been excavated from certain ruins in the world. Though, they’re considered to be over-technology (a kind of science and technology that’s beyond the level of their current age). Therefore, the workings behind this machinery is SOARA’s greatest secret. If an unqualified person attempts to pry open the [Kazatori] or if it is opened without following the proper procedures, it will either explode or dissolve from the chemicals pre-installed inside the machines.

COMMENT:

Good afternoon. I’m SOARA’s Kagurazaka Soshi.

Though normally I’m holding drum sticks, in this play, I’m exchanging it for a wrench. It’ll turn into quite a stir, huh? It seems like there’ll be a fight scene with tools so doesn’t that give off quite the cool impression? I feel like I managed to hold my position pretty well so please, do cheer me on.

MUNAKATA REN

“The wind’s blowing so fine today, too, isn’t it?”

PROFILE:

NAME: Munakata Ren

GUILD: SOARA

BASE: Windy Hills

☐ Being the only son of a household that used to be full of Guildmasters until a little while ago, he is a young man who possesses great manners. A somewhat prudent and refined boy. The qualifications for being SOARA’s Guildmaster changes from time to time and so they’re at their current state.

☐ He is in possession of the Guild’s most powerful [Kazatori]. As Soshi’s family is in charge of maintaining the birds, each household can only keep one. Ren inherited the most powerful [Kazatori] from his mother.

☐ Although he has no siblings, Sora, Morihito, and Soshi act like his older brothers. And Nozomu acts like a younger brother… or an older brother sometimes so he never really had the time to feel lonely. Before he notices it, he’s already involved in a fuss caused by Nozomu and Sora.

COMMENT:

The curtain’s finally risen on [KisoSekai]!

I’m SOARA’s Munakata Ren who’s feeling as excited as everyone else. In this time’s stage play, we have these companions called the [Kazatori]. Mastering how to speak while making them move on top of my hand was quite difficult. But, it is definitely very rewarding and interesting so I’ll do my best at rehearsals to surprise everyone and make you say, “Oh! It moved!”

Because they are a key item for this play’s story, I’m going to do my best!

NANASE NOZOMU

“Hm… I feel like there’s something over there??”

PROFILE:

NAME: Nanase Nozomu

GUILD: SOARA

BASE: Windy Hills

☐ He’s in charge of SOARA’s liveliness & he’s in charge of making things exciting & he’s in charge of making a lot of noise. In a way, he’s a young man who stands out a lot. His ideas and actions change as frequently as the surroundings but since he bears no ill will, he’s a young man you can’t really hate.

☐ He is blessed with a very mysterious intuition that lets him sense and pick up valuable relics from ruins of long ago. Sometimes, they make good parts for the [Kazatori] and as a reward, Soshi treats him to meals.

☐ When he went to Machine City of Suzaku, the Vermillion Bird, to buy some parts, he accidentally started up important machinery for the city due to [Suzaku] being a ruins itself. It caused quite a fuss all throughout the city. This was how he encountered the SolidS members who went to check on the situation.

COMMENT:

Joint stage [KisoSekai]! Everyone in TsukiPro are looking forward to see you enjoy this year, too!

Plus, the military costumes were so cool! Apparently, it’s a continuation of [Tsukino Empire]! Last time, Nozomu-kun gave you a whole lot of excitement and laughter… This time, I’m a young man who admires the sky! My admiration also goes to the costumes! The aeronautical design is a huge point! I look forward to meeting everyone on stage!

I’ll do my best~!! Yaaaayyy!!

※ Please don’t re-post any of these translations without permission. Please just like/reblog them instead.

If you like this, please consider buying me a ko-fi here to support my work. (o^▽^o)Thank you!!

#kisosekai #machine elements #agf 2018 #tsukipro #soara #soara translations #my translations

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wrestlingisfake · 5 years

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G1 Supercard preview

This is the big New Japan/Ring of Honor show at Madison Square Garden. MSG has a special place in wrestling lore, and it’s primarily been WWE/WWF/WWWF/Capitol Wrestling turf since 1957. The venue’s official promoter briefly dropped Capitol in 1959 (in favor of the team of Kola Kwariani, Pedro Martinez, and Jack Pfefer), but management ultimately reconciled with Vince McMahon, Sr. by December 1960. There hasn’t been a non-WWE wrestling show in the Garden ever since...until now.

You can watch it on traditional PPV or stream it with Fite or Honor Club, although I personally recommend streaming with NJPW World.

Jay White vs. Kazuchika Okada - This is White’s first defense of the IWGP heavyweight championship, which is essentially the New Japan world title. Okada won the 2019 New Japan Cup tournament to earn this title shot.

Years ago Okada’s manager Gedo plucked him from obscurity and managed him on a rapid rise to the top, in which Okada quickly captured his first IWGP heavyweight championship. Okada’s last run with the title lasted 720 days, but that ended nearly a year ago with a loss to Kenny Omega. Gedo lost confidence in Okada and helped White betray him, starting a bitter rivalry that saw White score a massive upset over Okada in the Tokyo Dome on January 4. That win affirmed Gedo’s decision to switch horses. Okada had to claw his way back into title contention by winning the New Japan Cup to prove Gedo wrong.

The wrinkle in this story is that Okada was originally supposed to challenge Kenny Omega, who was supposed to still be champion at this point. But Omega’s departure in January necessitated a couple of impromptu title changes to move White into his position. So in a sense, White was never meant to be champion this soon, which has made his meteoric rise to the top even more sensational. As a result, Okada has a chance to regain his title and get revenge on White and Gedo in one fell swoop.

Okada is easily one of the best wrestlers in the world today, and he knows he has to prove it to a lot of Westerners seeing him for the first time here. White was really not anyone’s first choice to headline this show, and I think he knows he has to prove he belongs at this level. I think they can deliver. I’ve got a good feeling about this one.

The finish could be interesting, because if the original plan was to end a lengthy Kenny Omega title reign, that may not fit well with the goal of pushing White as a sudden success. If Okada wins, I think that suggests they’re more committed to their original long-term plan than White’s push. If White retains, that suggests they’ve recently altered the plan, which could lead to other surprises this year. There’s no way to be sure which will happen, which is great since it eliminates the usual aura of inevitability that Okada brings with him. I cannot pick a winner here.

Jay Lethal vs. Matt Taven vs. Marty Scurll - Lethal is defending the ROH world championship. This is a ladder match, so the title belt will be hung above the ring and ladders will be set up at ringside to climb up and get it; the only way to win is to be the first competitor to retrieve the belt.

Lethal has been champion for 280 days. Taven has been feuding with him for months, claiming to be the “real” world champion based on his belief that he should have won the June 30 four-way match where Lethal captured the title. Meanwhile, Scurll won the Survival of the Fittest tournament on November 4 to earn the right to challenge for the title; on March 13 he declared his intention to exercise that right at this show, against the winner of Lethal vs. Taven on March 15. However that match ended in a 60-minute draw, so Lethal is still the champion but now Taven gets to be in the match as well.

Like most big three-way matches, there’s a sense that one participant is crammed in. Lethal is there because he’s the established champion, Scurll is there because he’s arguably ROH’s hottest star (the only member of the Elite not to leave for AEW), and Taven is there because ROH wants to push him. They may want Taven to win this match, but they don’t want it enough to take the risk of doing the match without Lethal and Scurll, which tells you they aren’t that serious about him, which undermines his credibility. (See also: Flair, Charlotte.) This is not to say Taven doesn’t deserve to be there (he finally impressed me in the time-limit draw), but if ROH really believed in him they wouldn’t be hedging their bets on him.

I expect a title change, but I’m not sure which challenger will end up with the belt. This is probably going to be very pro-Scurll crowd, and the intrigue of putting the title on a guy everyone expects to go to AEW someday would enhance would should already be a big reaction. On the other hand, a Taven victory sets up a Taven-Scurll program for a few months, and builds toward the long-term future after Scurll inevitably leaves. (It’s also possible the crowd will turn out to be more into Taven than anyone might have expected a month ago.) My gut says ROH should go with Scurll while they still have him, to get him as hot as possible before he puts someone over on his way out. But I’m not super confident about that.

Tetsuya Naito vs. Kota Ibushi - Ibushi pinned Naito on March 10 during the New Japan Cup tournament, so he’s getting a shot at Naito’s IWGP intercontinental championship. These guys can really take it up to another gear, and this could easily be the match of the night, if not the whole Wrestlemania weekend.

Naito’s angle these days is that he has a love-hate relationship with the intercontinental title--it keeps coming back to him, even though he thinks it’s worthlesss--but he would like to become the first man to hold it simultaneously with the main heavyweght title, so he has to fight to keep it. Ibushi, meanwhile, has finally signed a contract (dramatically choosing to stick with New Japan instead of departing for AEW), so his fans are hoping this will eliminate the “free agent” stigma that has kept him out of the booking at the top. So while neither man necessarily needs this win, a loss would be a significant detour heading into the summer.

I would personally put Ibushi over, because a title run would mean a lot for him, and give Naito something to do (chasing Kota) besides feud with Suzuki-gun. But I’m not so sure New Japan will go that way. So it’s another pick-’em at the top of this card, which is pretty nice.

Zack Sabre, Jr. vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi - Sabre is defending the Revolution Pro Wrestling British heavyweight championship. Rev Pro is a UK promotion that has a working relationship with New Japan, but this appears to be their only involvement with this show. Tanahashi pinned Sabre to eliminate him in the New Japan Cup, and that would be enough to guarantee a New Japan title match all by itself, but in this case I think the main issue is Sabre’s wounded pride.

If I was Rev Pro, I’d want the prestige of a title change in the US, in the Garden, onto a living legend like Tanahashi. Even better, It immediately sets up a rematch that would be a perfect main event for New Japan’s London show on August 31. I’m just not seeing much upside to keeping the belt on Sabre right now, even though it’s at least doable.

Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa vs. PCO & Brody King vs. Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe vs. EVIL & SANADA - The Guerillas of Destiny, Tama and Loa, are defending the IWGP heavyweight tag team championship, and PCO and King are defending the ROH tag team championship. This is a four-way match, so the first team to score a fall on any opposing team will win the match and both championships.

This match came about after GOD teamed with the Briscoes on February 22, and came to blows after losing the match. The following night, GOD won the IWGP tag title from Evil/Sanada, and challenged the Briscoes (who then held the ROH tag title) to a title-for-title match. The Briscoes accepted, but had already committed to defend their title in a match on March 15, against PCO and King, which they lost. So then the match was billed as GOD vs. PCO/King, and then on March 25 it was officially changed to a four-way for no apparent reason.

This could get crazy. The Briscoes and PCO/King had a wild and crazy fight last month, and they’ll be looking to top it here. I think GOD will do their best to keep up with that level of violence. I don’t know what to expect from Evil and Sanada if this match breaks down, but they’re certainly not delicate flowers. In theory you’d expect the New Japan side of things to rein in the chaos, but in practice I think it has to be a Pier 6 brawl to contrast with the more technical contests in the second half of the show.

I have absolutely no idea which of these teams can or should win, or how they’ll deal with either ROH or NJPW losing its tag belts for a few months, or when the double champions will drop one of the titles. However, since I’m expecting Ospreay to win his double title match for New Japan, it stands to reason an ROH team would win this win this one to even it out a bit. In that case, the Briscoes feel like the right team to bring home all the gold.

Taiji Ishimori vs. Dragon Lee vs. Bandido - Ishimori is defending the IWGP junior heavyweight championship; the first participant to score a fall on either opponent will be the champion. There is a decent chance that the champion coming out of this match will hold the title through this year’s Best of the Super Juniors tournament, and defend the championship against the tournament winner at Dominion.

This match came about because Ishimori issued an open challenge to the ROH roster, but CMLL’s Dragon Lee was the first to respond. Since that technically meant there was still a spot for an ROH guy, Bandido was added to the match. So it’s basically Ishimori against two luchadors, and we’ll just have to see if it they do a good lucha thing or if Ishimori can force them into his type of match. I’m expecting Ishimori to retain, although I suppose there’s no pressing reason they can’t do a title change.

Juice Robinson vs. Bully Ray - Bully (better known as Bubba Ray Dudley in ECW and WWE) issued an open challenge on March 15 for someone to face him here in a “New York City street fight,” and Juice accepted on March 31. Juice is the IWGP United States champion, but it’s not yet clear if the title will be on the line--New Japan typically doesn’t book title matches on the fly, but it’s in character for Bully to potentially goad Juice into making it a title match at the last minute.

There was speculation when this open challenge was announced that Bully’s opponent would be Flip Gordon (the man he’s been feuding with for the past year), as a way to bring Flip back after suffering a knee injury on January 13. Flip was expected to be cleared in time for this show, and he was, but he reinjured the knee on March 24. Juice appears to be a last-minute replacement, which would be weird since he should have been booked all along. (What’s the point of having a US champion who doesn’t wrestle at your biggest US show?)

In his preview of this show for the Observer, Dave Meltzer suggested this match could turn into a multi-man tag team match. If so, I’d expect Bully to seek backup from Shane Taylor and Silas Young, while Robinson would counter with his Lifeblood stablemates Mark Haskins and Tracy Williams. Those four men will probably get involved no matter what, seeing as there’s no rule to prevent interference.

It would be a pretty big surprise if Bully were to pin Juice and therefore be in line for the US title. For that reason I think Juice is the clear favorite to win. That being said, Bully needs something to do until Flip Gordon is back, and Juice is working in both promotions, so I could see this becoming a prolonged feud.

Mayu Iwatani vs. Kelly Klein - Iwatani won ROH’s Women of Honor championship from Klein on February 10, and successfully defended it in a rematch on March 15, but Klein is challenging her a second time for some reason. I think they’re trying to make it like Klein is a big deal and Iwatani’s wins have been huge upsets, but I barely know these women so none of that is very clear. I’m assuming Iwatani retains again, hopefully to put an end to the feud.

Rush vs. Dalton Castle - Castle has been doing a “needs to get back on track” storyline, so he was at ringside to watch the Rush-Bandido match on March 15 with the intent of challenging the winner to wrestle him here. I’m pretty sure the purpose of this is to feed a guy to Rush while also working Castle’s flamboyant entrance onto the show, so look for Rush to go over in little more than a squash.

Will Ospreay vs. Jeff Cobb - Ospreay is the NEVER openweight champion, and Cobb is the ROH television champion; the winner will hold both titles. This match came about after Ospreay pinned Cobb in a tag team match on February 22. Both guys are great and I haven’t seen much of them against one another, so I’m looking forward to it. The one big twist in this thing is that New Japan recently booked Taichi to pin Ospreay in a tag match, obviously to set up a future title match between them, which won’t make as much sense if Ospreay loses his belt before that happens. So I think that telegraphs an Ospreay win here. Which is fine with me, since I figured he should win to begin with.

30-man Honor Rumble - This is a pre-show match for everyone who didn’t make it onto the main card. It’s a gauntlet battle royal, so instead of everybody starting the match at the same time, two men start and everyone else enters one-by-one in timed intervals. The match cannot end until the last participant enters, but eliminations can occur at any time. A participant is eliminated upon putting both feet on the floor outside the ring, if and only if they last exited the ring over the top rope.

I’ve never seen one of these in ROH, but I’ve seen New Japan’s version and it’s mainly a comedy match with spots built around guys who rarely interact being unfamiliar with one another’s shticks. If you’re watching this to see, for example, Minoru Suzuki kicking ass in MSG (and I don’t even know if he’ll be there), you’re probably just going to get his entrance and then he scares Cheeseburger or Colt Cabana and then he’ll get eliminated inside of five minutes. I don’t think anything is at stake for the winner to receive, and even if there was I’m not sure it would matter who wins. I’ll just pick Jushin Thunder Liger to win, since I know he’s in it and he’s a cool old dude.

Kagetsu & Hazuki & Jenny Rose vs. Sumie Sakai & Hana Kimura & Stella Grey - This is a late addition to the card, which won’t air live but will be taped to air later. Kagetsu and Hazuki are from a stable called Oedo Tai in STARDOM, and apparently they recently attacked Sakai and Kimura to set up this match. The Oedo Tai team picked Rose to team with them here even though she regularly teams (teamed?) with Sakai in ROH. Grey is apparently Sakai’s new protege so she rounds out the babyface side. I barely follow any of this, so I think ROH could do a much better job at promoting their own women and their relationship with Stardom. But I guess this match shows they’re at least trying. I guess Sakai’s team wins, maybe?

#njpw #roh #g1 supercard #jay white #kazuchika okada

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wileds · 6 years

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so does he have a lower opinion of faunus since a lot of his houses help were faunus

wakes up early, sees this in my email notifs, hewwo ??

i can’t emphasize enough that love grew up a bit sheltered especially in the years immediately after he came into his semblance. his power is activated by shedding blood and being exposed to it. it was not a pleasant experience and it had real legal ramifications between the victim and love (a minor at the time of course) which brought on a surge of protectiveness from his parents as well as them using their political/social clout to win a favorable solution for love, basically sweeping the event under the rug, while also keeping love ignorant about what exactly happened to the person. which is why i still say that he has no criminal record. quite a bad idea in hindsight - love feels certain that he killed them and he was not given the chance to personally apologize to the family for it, if they would even have him at this point, and all of this began his feelings of shame around his semblance alongside its celebration from his tribe as a mark of charisma / a good warrior / what have you, which is why i’m always inches away from saying that love has a bit of a complex around his affinity which is … pretty unfortunately janus-faced when you really think about the contrary natures of his supposed fate: greatness or madness, or greatness even in madness - greatness is the central destiny here, the contrariness bolstered by stories of previous inheritors of their hereditary semblance who always fell into one of the two categories. the inheritor immediately before him was for sure bloodmad. which doesn’t help matters. love has a feeling that he would become so too if he fully indulged his semblance. maybe that’s paranoia or the aforementioned shame talking, but whatever, it’s genuinely how he feels.

why am i talking about semblance again.

back to the point, he was sheltered more after this event. a lot of the house help and hires were faunus so he did spend a lot of time with them when his parents were busy. yes seeing faunus in certain roles affected him, i know how iffy it can sound to say ‘i have a __ friend so i understand ___!’ or ‘i know many __, so __!’ his curiosity about some faunus traits will come across as ignorant or even affronting if done in the wrong way. and a question like ‘can i touch it?’ always vacillates between ok and wtf no. but in actuality he typically doesn’t bring attention to faunus traits at all because then he knows he won’t make a social faux pas and he’s taken way too many etiquette classes to blunder too badly at this point idk how he was as a kid, he was a fucking handful. but today he is a naturally sensitive person. has more tact than you might expect from his abundance. he’s not afraid to apologize or be corrected, at any rate. tends to notice/comment on someone’s overall attractiveness rather than specifics (he takes note of people’s attractiveness like people do the weather. it’s just a part of how he meets someone and it doesn’t need to mean anything). there’s no intentional othering going on when he thinks of faunus or meets one. also like … i’m sure historical figures such as the faunus queen of vacuo who led during the great war + the apparent egalitarianism of the society (but is it tho) has introduced some levity into vacuoan society and into love’s mind even if through history books or lessons or moments of exposure. going too far into the i don’t see species i see people direction is also an issue (kind of like the i don’t see color argument which negates imp history, current social/criminal/etc injustices, prejudice & racism, etc). but. i answered this ask a year ago and it’s still faithful to his attitude.

… after going to shade academy he at least feels ok to ask mai and aris questions too lol, rip if he’s ever said anything awkward or offensive to them. i am sure he has been offensive due to some part of his upbringing.

that said, all of the faunus in love’s life were not in subservient roles while growing up. some of his most impactful tutors were/are faunus. including one of his primary weapons & combat trainers who i am currently trying to create. her name is leila and she’s one of the lakhdari’s (alt name for the akhdar clan which his tribe belongs to) most formidable warriors. even though she flitted in and out of love’s life because she needed to go and kick ass somewhere, she is like one of his most favorite people ever. not pictured: little love, an only child, precocious and celebrated and sometimes feared with very few friends his own age, telling his badass adult trainer that they’re friends now ok? can i visit? what’s your scroll number? then they actually became friends and leila is always like, well, alright i guess. leila is an arabian oryx whose faunus trait are those horns and she is also literally a golden-eyed warrior (they have their own lore for golden-eyed warriors) (it’s a wip from my end but i gesture vigorously at love’s own gold eyes. when i say he’s fated he’s fuckin fated) … leila’s profile post is forthcoming mostly because i don’t know how the hell to edit gifs in ps for her graphic.

AND NOW THE CONNECTION.

the point of his tribe’s endogamy (marriage within one’s own group) is to preserve their hereditary semblance. it already skips generations instead of being passed down faithfully from parent to offspring. there is an element of blood purity for a blood affinity going on here. in a difficult place like vacuo you can understand why one might want to keep a semblance like that close and alive. the clarkia semblance plus their role as prominent dust merchants contributed to their wealth and influence today. in addition, the clarkias are a human tribe. so that reinforces things. the akhdar clan they belong to have both humans and faunus though, hence folks like leila. this dynamic even goes into his and ksenija’s relationship, who are second cousins i think … there was reluctance from some people in love’s life about letting them meet a lot, although their parents got along fine because love’s parents went the exogamous route. exogamy is when one marries someone outside one’s own group. isa married amina who is way outside the kin group although still of an equal (or higher tbh) socioeconomic status than isa, when the general tradition of the clarkia tribe is to marry within one’s own group. basically they all married for love and so they didn’t really give a fuck about faunus heritage when love like, cried and begged to skip out of lessons in order to see ksenija when he was little. family is so important to them.

the clarkias are a failing house because they’re in the dust industry, and that hasn’t been doing too hot in vacuo for a long while. love is trying to help save his family from obscurity. part of this means him keeping traditions and expectations like the above going. part of his decision in choosing to become a huntsman is because of this desire to keep them from obscurity, when the clarkias really have no reason or tradition of buying into the idea of a huntsman when they’ve been warring and fighting against grimm generations before shade academy ever popped up as the ““““only real source of order.””””” so love fully expects to marry a human too. it doesn’t stop who he associates with, befriends, flirts with, or sleeps with. but he’s gonna marry a human. he is currently engaged to one even if they kinda want to break it off, but even then love is gonna marry a human. if anyone thinks that’s problematic please call him out on it but he never talks about his betrothed or marriage expectations unless he has to, not because he’s ashamed (they’re actually very compatible! they just don’t want to marry each other) (also i have not ‘created’ his betrothed yet because this is going to be all disney aladdin / 1,001 nights mythos which i haven’t had the time to watch/read for the past. year … lol.)

he is a member of vacuoan elite and marriage prospects or who his family has hired / continue to hire seriously does not mean that he personally thinks lesser of faunus, only that he grew up in an environment that has informed his life and expects certain things from him.

#thrushed #✧ﾟ * hc. i see gold on your cheeks and glitter in your lungs –— *#long post /#me: i-- ; sb: you love making headcanons. we know. you LOVE headcanoning you love it SO MUCH we know - you LOOOOVE HEADCANONS

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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DC Introduces New Hero in Festival of Heroes: The Asian Superhero Celebration

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DC Festival of Heroes: The Asian Superhero Celebration, is a timely new anthology showcasing DC’s Asian superheroes. Arriving in May for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, it presents many of the top Asian storytellers of comics. Included in the 100 page commemorative anthology is an original 12-page story by Gene Luen Yang and Bernard Chang. “The Monkey Prince Hates Superheroes” introduces a new DC superhero who teams up with Shazam to battle Doctor Sivana and a Chinese deer demon.

Monkey Prince references the 16th century Chinese classic, Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en. It is the story of the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, and his epic journey to bring the Buddhist sutras to China from India. In China, it has been the subject of plays, operas, movies and TV shows. What’s more, it inspired Dragon Ball, Into the Badlands, and Yang’s own award-winning graphic novel, American Born Chinese. “We’re treating Journey to the West as canon, like DC canon. It actually happened within the DC Universe,” says Yang.

Den of Geek had a video chat with the two creators, Gene Luen Yang and Bernard Chang about the significance of the newest Asian hero coming to the DC Universe.

Den of Geek: What was your first memory of Monkey King?

Bernard Chang: Well, when my family immigrated to the States in 1978, we lived in Indiana. I was reading comics when I was in Taiwan, but when we came to the States I was reading like Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, any comics I could get at the newsstands. At some point my father saw that I was taking a liking to superhero stuff and he was like, “I wanted to introduce you to this Chinese superhero.”

Every night he would read me bedtime stories from Sun Wukong from Monkey King. He wouldn’t read the whole chapter, but he’d read a little bit for a few minutes and then I’d go to sleep dreaming and imagining these characters, these places, these adventures. It was from a book. It wasn’t from an actual comic book. None of it was translated. It was all in Chinese.

I think [those stories] really helped to cultivate this curiosity and imagination and creativity. This is a world that I’m completely unfamiliar with in a sense, or half familiar with, but half not. The sad part to this story is that my parents got divorced when I was around 10, and so my father never got to finish the Monkey King Journey to the West story.I had the book, but it was in Chinese so I couldn’t read it and I couldn’t figure out the ending. Anytime this lore comes up, it always brings back fond memories.

Gene Luen Yang: I think I have a very similar story to Bernard. I heard the Monkey King stories first from my mom at bedtime and she wasn’t reading out of a book. She was just telling them off of the top of her head. I also remember visiting Taiwan when I was a kid. I was born in the United States, but when I was four, my mom took me back to Taiwan to hang out with her parents and her relatives. I remember there was a cartoon on TV at the time, that was Monkey King.

I was a little bit different from Bernard. I actually fell in love with the Monkey King first and then came into American superheroes when I was much older. When I was like in fifth grade, I started getting really into superheroes, but it’s the same thing. I think it’s the same kind of love.

The love I have for Monkey King is very similar to the love I have for superheroes. Both of them are these heroic stories that are all about color and brightness and hope and magic. I think this particular project, especially, it allows Bernard and I, the chance to explore those in-between spaces between these two very different storytelling traditions.

What was it like to finally work together?

Bernard: We’ve had peripheral friends, acquaintances, but this is like a culmination of that in life. In Chinese, they call it “yuanfen.”

As in ‘fate’?

Bernard: It’s like fate, destiny, but it’s like a circular, like there’s a path that you take, whether in relationships or work or whatever it is. The people that you meet, the people that you come across, are there for a particular reason. Right now, this moment in my life, in our lives, I’m presented kind of another childhood opportunity to finally almost tie up loose ends, but also pave new paths. For me, out of any other comic book project, there’s a very personal thread. I hope that that comes out in our work.

It’s not just about me satisfying myself, but also passing along that wonderment, that joy, that excitement of a little kid about to go to sleep, about to dream of this wondrous world and these adventures that these crazy characters go on. We hope to pass that on to a next generation, or at least our version of that, because we’re not retelling that story. We’re telling our own story based off certain things, inspirations from it.

Given what’s happening with #StopAsianHate and all the Asian crimes, how important is it to you personally to be doing this special issue?

Gene: I think behind all of these crimes I think it’s an impulse to dehumanize Asian-Americans. One of the big stereotypes that we deal with here in America is that all Asians look alike, right? Behind that idea is that we’re all just this one big mass, no individuals. When you think of a population like that, it becomes much easier to commit violence against them.

Bernard: We’re doing this, it’s not because of the movement that this project is born out of, but when you read characters, when you read any kind of comic books, when I was reading comic books growing up, it was about the characters in the story. It’s about these characters learning from their faults and trying to do the right thing and overcoming obstacles. Monkey King also being very mischievous and having his own personality, but those are all human traits.

Over the last few years, pre-pandemic, before that, when I was traveling quite a lot around the world to many different comic book conventions and meeting different fans in Europe and Asia, in South Africa, in India, you notice everyone, they look different, but they’re all attracted to the same values. We’re all very similar at the core. I think our story, however it plays out in terms of what’s happening in the world today, will still remain true to its basic principles.

Gene: This project got started before the Atlanta shooting, which although the Asian hate stuff had been going on for a while, the Atlanta shooting to me was a turning point. At least I saw that in the circles that I’m a part of. Even [for] Asian-Americans who wanted to deny it, I think that became the point at which it was no longer deniable. It’s a little bit of that fate that Bernard was talking about as well, that this project is coming out shortly after that. We weren’t really planning it, but it feels like it was meant to be.

In terms of the relationship, the Monkey King is supposedly the father of the Monkey Prince. We’re going to get into the details of what that might look like. It’s a slightly more complex relationship than that.

How much did earlier versions of Journey to the West artwork inform what you were drawing, Bernard?

Bernard: Well, there’s obviously a massive amount of stuff that’s already been done about Monkey King. Part of it is trying to find what I remembered as a kid and then modernizing it because the story does take place in the DC Universe here in the United States.

It was a very true collaborative stage, because Gene would send over drawings that he’s already done. Gene’s also an artist, so it’s great to help use that as a visual bouncing board, a platform to jump off and go back and forth. Then just Jessica [Chen], our editor, has really provided a lot of great visual references. But really there’s been no kind of a leash on anything. It’s just go as wild and as crazy as you can and then let’s just make this thing jam.

There’s a lot other designs we haven’t shown yet. Hopefully, as the story progresses, we’ll be able to see some of that come up.

If someone asked “Who is the Monkey King?” what might you recommend?

Gene: The first translation that I read when I was in my 20s was the Arthur Waley translation, which has been the standard for a very long time for the English-speaking world. Just recently, Julia Lovell did a translation that I thought was great. It came out just a couple of months ago.

In terms of pop culture, there’s an anime series called Monkey Magic that I really liked. Looking back now, it was a mix of traditional and 3D animation and some of the 3D animation looks really dated. In terms of the energy and in terms of his personality, it really captured something about him.

Monkey Magic was distributed through the UK, and so many leading martial artists from the UK like Ray Park reference Monkey Magic as a major influence.

Gene: Yeah. Just recently there’s a movie called Immortal Demon Slayer that I thought was really good too. That’s a Monkey King movie.

Bernard: I mean, there’s a lot. A Taiwanese artist did an adaptation. His name is Tsai Chih Chung. He did it as like a weekly strip. It was like an American-style strip where every three panels was a joke. I thought that was really well done.

Maybe I’m a little stubborn, but everything that I’ve seen since has never really measured up to what was in my head as a kid.

Do either of you have favorite chapters for Monkey King?

Gene: For the 12-pager we did, we did draw on one specific story. If you read the original, the Monkey Prince does something very similar to something that the Monkey King did in the original.

I’ve always been partial to the Gold Horned King and the Silver Horned King. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them portrayed well in media, like in a cartoon or a movie, but I think that they could be. There’s something very, very powerful and sinister about the way they’ve described them in the book that I think could translate really well into visual media.

Bernard: I’ve always been attracted to just the Monkey King himself, living in the mountain, being mischievous, going up to heaven, causing havoc, coming back down, celebrating with his friends and family.

Are we going to see Monkey Prince and Batman? I can totally see Pigsy and Wonder Woman.

Gene: Yeah. I think Wonder Woman is a very natural fit, right? Shazam too, which is why we chose to use them because both of them are tied deeply into Western mythologies. It seems like within the DC Universe that the different deities from the different mythologies all kind of know each other, at least they’re all related in some way. So having the Monkey Prince interact with them would be super easy, super logical.

The Monkey King is so iconic. That must have been challenging to capture his spirit for Monkey Prince.

Gene: Oh, dude. Yeah. Bernard did enough art to fill up an entire wall. It was amazing. The different iterations that he did. Just working with Bernard, I could tell that this was a passion project because he was just putting out version after another, after another. I think all of us wanted to get it right, but because Bernard’s the artist, he just put in hours and hours and hours into this thing. It’s been really impressive to see.

Bernard: It’s inspired by the Monkey King but it is my own character and reflective of our times.

Gene: Yeah. There’re so many iterations of the Monkey King out there, right? This version has to feel distinctively DC like it belongs in the DC Universe. That was a driving factor in everything we did.

What do you mean by distinctively DC?

Gene: DC duperheroes have these symbols that look like letters, but aren’t necessarily letters. Like Superman’s, it looks like an S, but in stories, it’s a Kryptonian symbol for hope. Aquaman’s looks like an A, but in story, it’s like this ancient Atlantean glyph. For Monkey King, we wanted him to have a symbol that looked like an M for monkey, but really it’s actually a representation of Flower Fruit Mountain, which is where the Monkey King was born, right? The origin of his story, or the origin of his power. I mean, that’s something else too, right?

In DC comics, Flash wears a lightning bolt on his chest because that’s the origin of how he got his powers. Shazam also wears a lightning bolt because that’s how he got his powers. He was struck by lightning.

Bernard: Well, the chest insignia, I mean, not to sound corny, but I went to sleep after working on some stuff. Then woke up the next day with a dream about this design.

Sun Wukong came to you in a dream. That’s awesome!

Bernard: Well, sometimes when I sleep, I’m dreaming that I’m working and then I wake up and I’m like, “Oh, I’m a little behind on my deadline.” I’ve also fallen asleep drawing. That’s not very good too, but a lot of good stuff happens to sleep.

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DC Festival of Heroes: An Asian Superhero Celebration goes on sale May 11th, 2021.

The post DC Introduces New Hero in Festival of Heroes: The Asian Superhero Celebration appeared first on Den of Geek.

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chepsi · 7 years

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#txt #you REALLY don't have to and shouldn't read this it's mostly for my own reference and i love to talk so #it's really really long and incoherent don't read it #it's 3 am

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njawaidofficial · 7 years

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DC TV Watch: Refresher on Finale Reveals

http://styleveryday.com/2017/07/14/dc-tv-watch-refresher-on-finale-reveals/

DC TV Watch: Refresher on Finale Reveals

Welcome to The Hollywood Reporter‘s weekly DC TV Watch, a rundown of all things DC Comics on TV. Every Friday, we round up the major twists, epic fights, new mysteries and anything else that goes down on The CW’s Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl and Fox’s Gotham and what it all means. Note: Gotham, Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow are on hiatus until the new seasons return in the fall. This week, we offer a crash course refresher on all the season finales as a primer for when all the new seasons are previewed at Comic-Con next week.

Gotham

Batman is officially here … maybe? | Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) is ready to take on his iconic DC Comics mantle on the Fox drama, even though he’s still a young teen. In his final scene in the season three ender, he stopped a mugging in an alley dressed in all black before taking to the roof in a cowl-neck sweater and looking down on the city of Gotham in a very Batman-esque way. He became a proto-Batman. After Bruce adopted the first rule of his moral code (no killing) earlier in the season, it was the logical next step. But did it come too soon in the Batman prequel series? Oh, and let’s not forget that Ra’s al Ghul (Alexander Siddig) mind-controlled Bruce to kill Alfred (Sean Pertwee), only to then guide the young boy into using a Lazarus Pit to revive him. Because that should totally end well and without any consequences moving forward, right?

Major villain twist | Another character taking on a classic DC Comics identity is Butch (Drew Powell). After taking a gunshot to the head, Gotham didn’t kill him off as expected. Instead, a nurse reading his health records was overheard saying he changed his name as he lay in a coma in the hospital: Cyrus Gold. Comic book fans immediately recognized that name as the pre-death identity of zombie supervillain Solomon Grundy, a character who frequently dies and gets resurrected in Slaughter Swamp. Is this potentially the season four big bad? As for the other two future Batman villains Catwoman (Camren Bicondova) and Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor), they each took a step forward in the finale. Selina picked up a whip for the first time and proved to be a natural at it (no surprise there), while Penguin froze his former love the Riddler (Cory Michael Smith) in a block of ice to portray prominently in his new club, the Iceberg Lounge (a staple in the comics). Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is going to have his hands full when Gotham returns … and he’ll have to do it without his love Lee (Morena Baccarin) who fled the city yet again.

No Harley Quinn … yet | Despite rumors circulating that a proto-Harley Quinn would be introduced last season, she never actually showed up in the finale. Or did she? Babs (Erin Richards) ended up getting electrocuted, possibly to death, but could that be her origin story to become Harley Quinn instead of her swan song? Stay tuned to find out, potentially this season.

Supergirl

Meet the new big bad | Supergirl‘s stinger scene in the finale was explained a lot sooner than viewers expected when the series announced Odette Annable’s casting just a week after the episode aired. The House alum will play Reign, an “exciting interpretation of the infamous World Killer storyline from the pages of the DC Comics.” There is so little known about Reign and the Worldkillers in the DC Comics lore, so without much to go off of in source material, there is no telling where Supergirl will be taking this villain arc. Executive producer Andrew Kreisberg called their version of Reign “scary, powerful and heartbreaking,” and it’s already been revealed that Reign’s costume will be different than her comic book counterpart. According to the comic books, the bloodthirsty Worldkillers were uncontrollable biological weapons created on Krypton, but once the Kryptonian Science Council outlawed them, all but five were destroyed. Zor-El (Robert Gant), aka Kara’s (Melissa Benoist) father, felt guilt over his part in their creation so he didn’t destroy the ones he made. After Krypton’s destruction, the Worldkillers who survived only remembered their names, Kryptonian origin and purpose of conquering worlds. With the same physical powers, Reign will be a perfect match for Supergirl in a fight, and their personal connection/shared “parent” will give their battle a powerful, emotional note as well.

Good news/bad news for Sanvers | While Sanvers fans were delighted by Alex (Chyler Leigh) and Maggie’s (Floriana Lima) romantic engagement in the finale, the surprise news that Lima would be demoted from series regular to recurring character in season three is not a good omen for their future moving forward. While it’s not confirmed that her decreased capacity means trouble for Sanvers, it does mean their relationship will be shown less onscreen as Lima will be featured in fewer episodes, and that’s a true shame as it is one of the few LGBTQ relationships represented responsibly on TV right now.

Kara’s heartbreak | Faced with a tough decision, Kara had to sacrifice her happiness in the finale when she banished the attacking Daxamites by infecting Earth’s atmosphere with lead. That meant her Daxamite boyfriend Mon-El (Chris Wood) had to flee as well, and his escape pod got sucked into a black hole in space. There’s no telling where he’ll end up or when we (and Kara) will see him again. This marks the second breakup for Kara in as many seasons. Will she continue to search for love or will she focus on staying single moving forward?

The Flash

Bait-and-switch death | All season long, The Flash threatened to kill off Iris (Candice Patton). In the finale, it did just that … before revealing the murdered STAR Labs team member was actually H.R. (Tom Cavanagh) using a transmogrifier to fool Savitar aka future/time remnant Barry Allen (Grant Gustin). So Iris was saved, and it seemed as if she and the real Barry would finally get their happy wedding day after she shot and killed Savitar. But alas, there’s no happy endings for Barry, as he needed to take the place of Jay Garrick (John Wesley Shipp) in the Speed Force prison to keep it from tearing reality apart in a massive electrical storm. With a smile (which was so weird) and a goodbye to Iris and his team, Barry filled that void and entered the Speed Force willingly. How will Central City fare without the Flash? Will Wally (Keiynon Lonsdale) be able to step up to the plate as Kid Flash? Barry will obviously return in season four, but how long will it take and how will his time in the Speed Force have changed him?

Not another speedster | When he does eventually return, Barry will have to deal with a new kind of villain as season four will introduce the first big bad that is not a speedster. Name-dropped several times throughout season three, Clifford DeVoe aka the Thinker is a genius inventor who created technology to make his infamous “thinking cap,” which gave him extremely powerful mental powers. Introduced in 1943, DeVoe was a member of the Injustice Society, but he fought against Jay Garrick, not Barry Allen, so expect the show to put their own spin on the source material.

Arrow

Ending with a bang | Arrow ended season five with a literally explosive cliffhanger, as Adrian Chase aka Prometheus (Josh Segarra) killed himself to trigger the explosives he planted all over Lian Yu while presumably all of Team Arrow was still stuck on the island. Oliver (Stephen Amell) could only watch in disbelief as he feared he lost everyone he cared about in just fell swoop. Obviously the show won’t kill off the whole team but the fallout of that explosion could be game-changing. Did anyone suffer major, permanent injuries? Did everyone make it off the island?

At least one death | In addition to the island explosion, Arrow said goodbye to a major original cast member in the finale when Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) stepped on a land mine to save his daughter Thea’s (Willa Holland) life. Though his death occurred offscreen, Barrowman took to social media to confirm his exit from the series.

Surprise return | As the series concluded its island flashback storyline after five seasons, the surprise return of Moira (Susanna Thompson) ended the flashbacks on an extremely high and emotional note. Viewers got to witness the phone call Oliver made to his now-dead mother after his rescue from Lian Yu all those years ago. Seeing that mother/son dynamic again in such a pivotal and never-before-seen moment tugged at the heartstrings in a way that reminded fans of why they fell in love with this show in the first place.

The return of Olicity | If Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) does indeed survive that island explosion, she’s got a newly-rekindled relationship to look forward to. She and Oliver shared a kiss on the island before separating, and while some viewers may be tired of their relationship, they have finally gotten over their trust issues and can explore their new dynamic in a much more mature way. And based on how small but powerful their kiss moment was in the finale, hopefully Arrow won’t overplay their relationship again. A little goes a long way.

Legends of Tomorrow

Major oops | After the Legends time traveled back to a time they already meddled in, they came in contact with their past selves, a big no-no in the time travel guidebook laid out by Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill). And for good reason: even though they saved the day and destroyed the Spear of Destiny, they essentially “broke time.” The Waverider arrived to the “present” for a vacation in Aruba only to find dinosaurs roaming the streets with an entirely new timeline all out of wack. And with Rip no longer with the team as he officially passed the captain mantle over to Sara (Caity Lotz), these Legends will have to figure out how to fix time on their own. This should go well, huh?

New team member | At least they’ll have another team member aboard the Waverider to help them figure out this mess. Tala Ashe (American Odyssey, Smash) has been cast as a series regular for season three. She will be playing Zari Adrianna Tomaz, a Muslim-American woman from the year 2030. According to the character description, “Zari lives in a world of contradictions. Technology has brought about incredible change in her future — too bad human nature hasn’t kept pace. Fear, prejudice and a lack of care for the planet have forced Zari to become a ‘grey hat hacktivist.'” Described as a computer nerd with a wry, combative attitude, she lives a double life … but doesn’t realize that she has secret, latent powers derived from an ancient, mystical source. Although the character description veers from the source material, comic book fans will recognize her name as the superheroine Isis, a normal woman who uses an Egyptian amulet to summon the powers of the goddess Isis. Sounds like Zari will become fast friends with Vixen (Maisie Richardson-Sellers), the other team member with mystical powers derived from an ancient amulet. Either that, or they’ll butt heads and become enemies pretty quickly, which would also be pretty compelling to see.

A more historical season | After news broke of Billy Zane’s casting as P.T. Barnum, viewers now know some surprising new details about what Legends will be tackling in season three. “The thing about history books is that they turn famous people into 2-D characters,” executive producer Phil Klemmer said. “This season on Legends, we want to meet other famous figures from history, people like Barnum, people we think we know, so that we can find the aspects of them, the parts of their story, that the history books left out — we want to bring history to life by infusing it with heart, humor and total absurdity (often at the same time).”

What do you think of all the shocking twists and reveals from the DC Comics finales? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Gotham returns for season four on Fox in the fall; Supergirl will return for season three on The CW in the fall; The Flash will return for season four on The CW in the fall; Arrow will return for season six on The CW in the fall; and Legends of Tomorrow will return for season three on The CW in the fall.

Arrow The Flash Gotham

#DC #Finale #Refresher #Reveals #TV #Watch

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