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space-blue · 2 years

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Pointless little story

For my birthday I will tell you a story I still find endlessly funny.

I'm a woman, and a gamer. One of my managers at my last company was a man and a casual gamer. I think I put more hours into gaming than he did, but again he had a partner and the only thing I'm married to is my own fanfiction.

Anyway, our relationship would go that way : he'd harass me about this game he liked so much. Relentlessly tell me about it until I caved and tried it out. MIND YOU, most his recommendations were stellar! I got to play Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, Banner Saga trilogy and even Celeste thanks to his badgering.

I would then proceed to get WAY past him in that game, and we couldn't really talk about it anymore because he didn't want spoilers. Things rarely went the other way around, and games I was excited about, such as Fire Emblem or Death Stranding, never made it on his list.

But. I did talk a big talk about tetris... I started playing the OG NES tetris years ago on an emulator on my laptop while listening to documentaries and conferences and the like. No saved pieces, single preview, no hard drops, no preview outline, etc. Hard shit.

When I finally cracked and bought Tetris Effect, it blew my socks off. I now only need 4 effect modes at S level and the final story mode at S to platinum the game (on my second copy on my switch, mind you. I bought the game twice! lol)

I frequently win at tetris 99, an online battle royal tetris with 98 other players, without the use of combos.

And my manager, with his charming but immaculate dudebro energy, thought I was all bluster and that I could be beat at the one game I actually brag about, when it's a game he barely plays himself... We were bantering back and forth and I thought he was just teasing me, but eventually he brought his switch to work, with a weird tetris-like game on it (puyo puyo) that let us do some pvp.

So he takes me aside in the manager's room during my lunch break... We play on a single controller each. It was my first time on that game.

I obliterated his ass. "Best of three" humiliation rounds. It was glorious.

He never challenged me to tetris ever again. His tone sort of changed after that too...

That's it, that's the story. How some manager dude thought he could catch me out and got to eat shit because I'm an obsessive tetris player thank you very much.

#tetris #games #ah dudebros #and managers

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scrawnytreedemon · 3 years

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Shit I’ve Been Winding Up For A Long Time Now But Am Very Aware Will Probably Hold No Relevance Should I Actually Go Into This More--

This is about Bhunivelze.

You know, when I was chilling out, on my bed, that evening on that half term in early June, deciding to check up on ClementJ64′s FF retrospective because-- Hey! It’s been awhile, I wonder if he’s got around to doing the final bit of the FFXIII saga --You know, I was there, chilling, just for a laff. Just a laff.

The rest of that week was spent spiralling into a hyperfixation I absolutely did not anticipate in any way, shape, or form, because the way they introduced that character was “wwhdhfjjhHJDFJKHKJHW H A T??”

That retrospective and a good amount of wiki-scrounging is all I have as a basis for this. This is not a coherent character analysis-- Though I might tag it as that for ease of access. This is not, by any means, the thoughts of someone deeply familiar with FFXIII on the whole beyond plot synopses and overarching themes.

I don’t think I’m brave enough for that.

Reading the vast yet surface-deep lore on those wiki pages on my birthday while in a delirious state of mind was enough to make me somewhat nauseous.

Do you think I’m going to go through all of that in real time?

(Someday, someday.)

Ugh, I don’t know how to begin, but let us, I guess. I’d recommend you read this church-mime-demiurge’s FF Wiki page if you want the same level of base-knowledge I had, and maybe the aformentioned retrospective if you want the experience, because I don’t think I have the wherewithal to get into all of that from the bottom-up.

I am also, so, so fucking sorry for any remaining FFXIII fans in advance. There is like, a good chance I may be butchering the characterisation completely, so bear with me here.

With that... we begin?

Where do we even start with this guy?

How on earth to you begin to explain the absolute monolith you’ve constructed from crumbs of a Guy, some material no doubt spliced in from the Pale King, Sephiroth, y o u r o w n G o d O C and other characters, and the mountains of religious trauma you carry around at all times that is probably the only reason you’ve been able to latch on as hard as you did?

I’m going to try.

What gets me, in summary, about Bhunivelze is how he’s a prime example of how love and concern can become deadly forces if in the wrong hands. His first acquainting with human emotion was by deceiving and possessing Hope, reverting his body to a teenage state, and planning to live among humanity through him. He sees human sorrow and suffering, and decides that, to End This(because it must be ended, you see) he’s going to destroy all the souls of the deceased that make up the Chaos that’s been eating this world for the past five-hundred years so they all forget and Are Happy. :).

Capital G God here hasn’t been present for the vast part of human history because he’s hidden himself away from Everything due to paranoia from killing his own mother and throwing her body into the Cosmic Basement, THEN creating the beings that would come to create humanity and OTHER beings because he didn’t have the keys to the cosmic basement. And also he believes death is a thing because she’d’ve somehow cursed all things to pass(including him) out of Spite.

Which explains why he’s so fucking averse to it and anything to do with it.

Bhunivelze, to put it lightly, is Shit at stepping into others’ shoes and Getting their experiences-- All the FalCie in FFXIII are, but him especially. It’s clear(again, in the f u c k i n g JP--) that he makes attempts to sympathise with them and does what he can to help, but it’s with such a loftiness and a complete inability to Understand why anyone would want grief, The Worst Fucking Experience In Existence, and even less why they’d be willing to Go Up Against Him And HisThe New Perfect World just for it-- And what would it matter, anyway, forgetting their loved ones. It’s not like you can grieve lost memories, right?

Right.

It reminds me of when at the end of the story of Job in the Bible, where, after putting this man through hell on earth, God rewards Job by giving him ten new children to make up for the ones that he lost. I. And that’s fucked! Nothing can replace the sheer uniqueness of each individual person you loved so dearly! But if you were a nigh-omnipotent deity high and mighty, with a cursory, almost mechanical knowledge on the functionings of the human psyche, that would seem adequete; enough.

Bhunivelze is doing that on a cosmic level.

I now want to get onto the romance: that being, his affections for Lightning. I don’t know how much I’m going to say, but it’ll probably be alot. It’s something that hits very close to home.

There is this... thing, within certain branches of Christianity, perhaps even in those of various Abrahamic faiths, where God’s love is posited to be the love-- The ultimate, most-fulfilling, all-encompassing love you could ever imagine --Because, well, he is love, so the story goes, and so often the best way to convey that is through the imagery of...

Marriage.

Giving up yourself so completely, to serve, to be the Bride; to be bound by him for all eternity; and for there to be no higher bliss than this.

This angle is pushed on young girls and women the most; from the mere parallels to the woman’s role in marriage, all the way down to downright-horrifying ultra-Evangelical purity pacts. With men, God is your dad, your best bud and confidant, your boss, your king, your this, your that, and the ‘marriage‘ as it were is relegated to a sort of half-thought; a metaphor.

For me, God was an attempt at all that, and my arranged groom.

(It was almost incestuous; was incestuous, that my own Divine Father would reach for my hand in marriage.)

Bhunivelze experiences Emotions™ for the first time through Hope, experiences Hope’s sheer overwhelming admiration for Lighting(whether there were any baby-crush feelings mixed in, I can’t say), and promptly falls into a nigh-romantic obsession with Lightning, deciding that she will be Etro(his all-but daughter)’s replacement, will be his Goddess of Death to-be-- He even calls her as such, before the final boss-battle--

...In the JP.

What happened in localisation, probably due to a number of factors, all the way back in early 2014, was that everything emotionally challenging about Bhunivelze was scraped off, like it was extra fat, and tossed aside, leaving us with the bland, clichéd shell of a foe-god we’ve seen time and time again. And I mean everything. I mean his very love for humanity; the fact his ploy was, in his eyes, to save them. Because if they’d left that all on, then it would raise the question of even if there was such a seemingly pure, all-knowing, loving being hell-bent on setting things “straight,“ would they truly be unquestionable? Would we have the right to fight for our humanity in the face of the Creator of the Universe?

To reject a love so personal?

That’s what gets me about FFXIII’s tackling of God, no matter how hackneyed and poorly-executed. It’s personal.

It’s from a feminine experience.

I know that terming is... vague, and problematic, but the way Christianity and much of the video game industry handle femininity itself is weird and problematic, so as it stands, I’ll have to simplify it. Apologies.

What sets FFXIII’s Let’s Kill God™ plot aside from most JRPG Let’s Kill God™ plots is that with our protagonist being a woman, and one who is very in touch with her femininity alongside her sheer strength; often, in these stories, God is reduced to Yet Another Foe, expected or unexpected, and you are tasked with taking him down unquestioningly for the Good of Mankind-- You will fight God, because you are right to, and you will go man-to-man-to-however-many-men you decide to bring along for the bloodbath.

And that just, doesn’t speak to me.

Even as an Extian.

Especially as an Extian. And an AFAB one with a deeply complicated experience with my gender, at that.

Leaving Christianity was painful. Questioning God was painful. Coming to terms with the fact that I had been mentally, emotionally, and spiritually traumatised under the guise of All-Encompassing Love was so, so fucking painful. I had been taught since I was five years old to devote myself to him, spent my life desperate to feel something, anything, to stay connected because I just, I never could Feel It on a deeper level, never could Give Up Myself, all I was, couldn’t Die A Spiritual Death And Be Reborn As His Eager Vessel, thus deeming myself to be worthless and a broken vessel for years and years on end... And for all that to have been... Nothing.

Lightning is hollowed out, the shards of her dead sister ripped from her in-stasis, leaving her emotionally numb for the majority of the game, Bhunivelze sweeps it under the rug, pretends he’ll perform a miracle and return Serah to life in exchange for her compliance, then sends her on her way to do his work, all the while knowing he’s going to pull said-rug from under her and elevate her such dizzying heights in the aftermath--

That he’ll deny her humanity.

Sand down all the rough edges that make her her, and polish her up afterwards, gild her as he is gilded, make her a Goddess.

And he’ll do it all because he loves her.

You can’t fight God like you can everything else. To fight It is the fight Existence Itself; FFXIII even conveys that by making Bhunivelze’s model part of the arena; it’s baked into the fabric of the game, no matter how minute.

While Lightning Returns is far from perfect in its execution of this concept, and that in itself makes me wince, not even taking into account the horribly botched excuse for a localisation Bhunivelze endured, it speaks to me more than anything else I’ve seen so far.

And it’s helped uncover some things within me. Helped me untangle them, just a little more.

So, yeah. I have alot of Thoughts on Bhunivelze, I want to share them, and I’m kinda really sad I have no one but my currently-absent friend Vee to share them with. I could get into alot more, like his very Fucked relationship with familial bonds, and how Lightning’s role as saviour so deeply parallels the overwhelming panic and never-ending guilt of Evangelical proselytisation, but I think I’ll leave those for another time.

In short, Bhunivelze is the epitome of Divine Love gone deeply wrong; on all fronts.

And if all of that isn’t enough to intrigue you, then, in Vee’s words, Lightning and Velze are literally canon endgame Sefikura lmaOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--

#ffxiii #lightning returns #bhunivelze #analysis #scrawny speaks #scrawny rambles #this was written on and off over the course of a couple months #i know this will only get two notes #if even that #but fuck it i love this guy and i'm going to puke words for his sake #religion mention

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blitheringmcgonagall · 3 years

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A Little Risk (aka Marauders Murder Mystery AU)

Okay I’m done! Thanks to @stonecoldhedwig @justtoarguewithyou @scriibble-fics and The Jily Discord for all the ideas and opinions for the fancast, you are so kind 😭❤️ We ended up with some golden age of Hollywood stars from the 1930s, and some more recent ones!

Firstly thanks to @purplechimera8 for the help in writing Remus!! Thanks also to @mollymarymarie @therealrjlupin @pianistbynight @of-stars-and-moon @araniaexumae @elanev91 @nymphadoratonqs @tumbledfreckles @jencala@bluebirdlinginthenest @malfoylestrange @jamesandthedog and everyone on the Wolfstar and Jily discords for the encouragement ...I really hope you enjoy this story...

I've been wanting to write this for a while, and now that We Can Be Heroes is finished, I thought I'd switch from canon marauders saga to this murder mystery au. Set in 1930s England, because (sadly) anti-semitism, homophobia, right wing/fascist bullshit, racism and the likes are still very much with us, and I do love a good fascist-bashing fic...This chapter is dedicated to @maraudersftw - belated Happy Birthday Claudia, I hope you enjoy it!!

Happy New Year...

CHAPTER ONE: BLUE MOON

“Where were you on the night of the twenty- nineth of September…. Sir Grimmauld, I mean…” Remus cleared his throat.

He could never remember how one was meant to address these Upper Class, titled idiots.

“Lord Grimmauld, but I prefer Sirius, Sirius Black.”

The man smiled, a tight smile that failed to reach his eyes. It was both sad and tense, Remus thought, although he was desperately trying to appear nonchalant. He watched the way the dark-haired man’s elegant hands played with the cigarette lighter. Nerves. He made a note of it.

“Pardon me, Lord Grimmauld,” Remus said, leaning back against the uncomfortable, small chair.

The chair creaked, and he cursed silently. If he broke the Duchess of Grimmauld’s antique lady’s writing chair, he was in so much trouble.

“The Duchess will eat you alive if you break that,” the man laughed.

A hollow, bitter sort of a sound.

He looked like one of the centuries old Black family portraits he had seen lining the gallery downstairs - the long hair, effortlessly elegant, the timeless quality of his clothes, something ethereal, the pale column of his neck. Remus cleared his throat again. What the hell was wrong with him today? He needed caffeine and more sleep, and he needed to get his act together and stop feeling sorry for this pathetic, (undoubtedly fascist) man who had never done an honest day’s work in all his life.

And what sort of a bloke called his mother the Duchess? Without thinking, Remus rolled his eyes. The other man didn’t seem to care, judging by the way his lips quirked upwards.

“Mind if I smoke, Lupin?”

Remus shook his head. He watched as the Duke’s eldest son lit his cigarette. He did a good job of hiding it, but Remus could see that his hands trembled. He made a note of it.

“Lord Grimmauld?” Remus asked.

The man sighed, relief or contentment, he couldn’t be sure, his eyes closing momentarily as he exhaled upwards. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top buttons of his white shirt, his neck arching backwards, the tall floor lamp behind him casting shadows on his high cheekbones and the cleft on his chin, on his Adam’s apple and the collarbones peeking out at the base of his neck. When he reopened them, he looked straight at Remus, his clear grey eyes piercing.

“Do you like dogs, Lupin?”

Trust him to end up on this godforsaken case.

Continue Chapter 1: Blue Moon

#A Little Risk #marauders murder mystery au #1930s murder mystery fancast #wolfstar and jily #jily au #wolfstar au #detective!Remus #Jewish Remus #aristocrat!Sirius #Private Investigator!Lily #doctor!James #fascist Blacks #ant-fascist marauders au #mia writes #let me know what you think

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nonsensical-twistedriddles · 4 years

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Get to Know Me?

tagged by the lovely @evil-and-twisted owo)/

1. What do you prefer to be called name wise?

you all can call me sorian or huang ! if you don’t like any of these then refer to me as the supreme evil dark overlord

2. When is your birthday?

may 20th

3. Where do you live? (you can just give the country’s or state name if you’re not comfortable with sharing the city name)

philippines !

4. Three things you’re doing right now?

watching a musical called “Ang Huling El Bimbo” with my family

writing a yandere jamil fic

finishing up my group’s research paper because apparently quarantine is an excuse for my group mates to slack off despite the deadline being tomorrow

5. Four fandoms that have your peak interest right now?

twisted wonderland

my inner demons

ensemble stars

fire emblem

jibaku shounen hanako kun

who made me a princess

death is the only ending for the villainess

a stepmother’s marchen

kimetsu no yaiba

lady baby

a capable maid

the abandoned empress

the remarried empress

the villainess reverses the hourglass

i want to be you for a day

the reason why raeliana ended up at the duke’s mansion

twice (casual)

you can’t just ask me to condense this into four fandoms

6. How has this pandemic been treating you?

despite having swollen fingers for days, i’m still alive so yay! i worry a lot for my family, especially my younger sister. i don’t really mind being cooped up in the house but i really really miss my friends and well, having a phone (context: my phone got stolen before quarantine started and now i haven’t had one for months). my birthday is coming up and i’ve never been more stressed in my whole life because everyone feels bad for me. if we’re delving more into my feelings, besides the usual: the angst and craving for death and the stress that comes with the date of my birth, i’ve been feeling a little sick. the heat is getting through me and i’m very close to moving into my fridge.

7. A song you can’t stop listening to right now?

a song? sorry, music speaks for the agony of my soul. i’ve gotta write at least a few of the tracks i listen to.

cloud - galdive

ang huling el bimbo - eraserheads

spoliarium - eraserheads

you’ve got me - the greeting committee

send me a peach - the blasting company

over you - cover by cassadee pope

wannabe - itzy

8. Recommend a movie

the sleepy hollows

forrest gump

spiderman: into the spiderverse (i cannot stress enough how much i love this movie)

the tale of princess kaguya (you know you’re in for shite when find out it’s been made by ghibli)

spilt (my favourite movie)

clueless (a classic)

breakfast at tiffany’s (also a classic)

have a couple of series too:

the witcher

the big bang theory

over the garden wall

friends

see

and anime:

full metal alchemist (i love this)

parasyte (also love this)

gakuen alice (the best out of everything on this list)

yu yu hakusho

inuyasha

psycho pass (my favourite by far)

angel beats

banana fish

the saga of tanya the evil

guilty crown

mononoke (this is a classic beauty and NOT THE GHIBLI MOVIE)

special a (beauTIFUL)

shaman king

9. How old are you?

oooo my age huh? uwu) you’ll have to guess! this is how it usually goes when people ask me. my followers on instagram guessed me to be really really really older than what i am so i’m curious to see how old everyone here thinks i am owo)

10. School, university, occupation or other?

highschool ! i do freelance work sometimes (making party stuff like invitations, giveaway tags, videos, cards and commissions)

11. Do you prefer heat or cold?

well after having an incident where i almost died because of burns and having suffered the hotness of my country, i’d have to say that i prefer the cold ^^ though not too cold :/ i don’t like the cold enough to die in it.

12. Name one fact about you that others might find unusual:

i like dipping bread into orange juice and then eating it uwu) also !! owo) i used to draw a lot more blood and gore

13. Are you shy?

mahiyaiiinn uwu) shy type po akooo~

i wouldn’t call myself shy?? well, i think that i am but then again i also think that i’m not and instead a very reserved person. i’m not very trusting towards new people because of a lot of bad experiences in the past owo)/ but i also get real nervous around people whenever they try to talk to me sooooo yeah idk??

14. Do you have preferred pronouns?

she/her or they/them or supreme evil dark overlord

15. Biggest pet peeves?

most things don’t really annoy me ._.) i let out a lot of hot air but i’m never really that much affected by things. oh, oh ! when someone tells me that tagalog is basically the shittier version of spanish uwu) i’d beat the ever loving shite out of anyone who tells me that.

16. What is your favourite “-dere” type?

ahhh romantic/personality archetypes huh? i like me my himederes <3

17. Rate your life 1-10. 1 being crappy, 10 being amazing:

can i go over ten?

i complain a lot about my life but it’s honestly been well ^^ even when i long for death’s sweet caress

18. What is your main blog?

@sorianfordarwin ! it’s where i post all my bs + random stuff

19. List your side blogs and what they are used for:

@masterattendanthuang my art account where i usually post my art !

@nonsensical-twistedriddles twst writing blog duh

20. One thing you think people should know about you before they become your friends?

i don’t trust people very easily ^^ when i get comfortable with a person, i tend to start to talk a whole LOT then suddenly just disappear. i have the attention span of a goldfish :v

tagging @twisted-eels (sorry uwu) @neato-yeet (bawal basahin ang mga gawa ko nak bby) @tswtstrash (actually curious :0)

#tagged #get to know me?

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oveliagirlhaditright · 5 years

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So... I’m a few days late for this, and I apologize. I was busy making birthday presents for the best friend and lost track of time.

And if people can’t use this because it’s late, they of course don’t have to. But...

This is what KH means to me... My thank you to the KH team...

I would have loved to write something for them, but I don’t know if they’d be big on getting fanfiction for their own work. I also could have done a digital manipulation or gmv for them... But IDK. Maybe them getting their own work back to them in a fan-edited way wouldn’t seem good at all? Because you didn’t do most of the work there. They did. You just edited it. And maybe you even edited in a way they wouldn’t approve of, and they see your work as copyright infringement?

So that leaves drawing, but I’m not the best drawer yet...

So screw it. I’m just going to write an essay about what this series has meant to me, the last seventeen years.

(Warning. This will be long. And probably emotional.)

Where do I even begin... I discovered this series when I was nine-years-old, right after the first game had come out. And seeing the advertisements for it on Disney channel made me want to have it so very badly.

I actually didn’t have a PS2 at the time... And while my sister and I did want other games alongside KH, yes, it was mainly for KH that we wanted a Playstation 2... So we begged our parents for one for Christmas, and they were gracious enough to get us one and quite a few games... and, of course, Kingdom Hearts with them.

We actually didn’t start with that one, though (even though I wanted to). My sister wanted to somewhat save the best for last, I guess... And when we did finally end up playing it, I had actually caught a bit of a cold (and it was only the promise that we’d finally play Kingdom Hearts, that day that got me to game. Even though I had been every day before, and had enjoyed all the other games--don’t get me wrong--but I was feeling that crappy, and it took the incentive of Kingdom Hearts to get me to agree).

And to say that I fell in love with it from the get-go would be an understatement. The opening cinematic pulled me in, it’s true (and already, I could tell this was different from the other games based on movies that I’d played), but it was mainly the Dive to the Heart section that really captured me (and made me forget my illness). That atmosphere still gives me chills and wonder, and calls me back to give it a go again years and years later. And I’m glad something like it has been included in games since, like in KHII, KHIII, Re:Coded, and what have you.

I was nine... So I stumbled my way through a lot of this game--and I mean stumbled--I had no idea what I was doing most of the time. In the fights, a lot of the ways I’d let Donald and Goofy do all of the work... and it took me a whole month to find Maleficent in Hollow Bastion. But I did end up beating the game, and understanding all of it.

I also ended up getting deep thoughts about it--as it is a mystery series that leaves you thinking--and I know I used to annoy people by talking about it. Haha. But this series got me thinking in a way that nothing else had... And that I honestly don’t know if most other kids my age could have... at least without something like this in their lives.

At this point, the series owned my soul. It touched me more than any other piece of media ever had, and ever will--and I’d had plenty pieces of media I really liked back then, such as Sailor Moon and yet they didn’t even come close. And while I’d shipped other couples before, such as Usagi and Mamoru from Sailor Moon, Sora and Kairi was the first one where I really felt like “These two have to be together”--and my life became about waiting for the next game (it still very much is, as sad as that might be to say).

I remember I would go to the store, and often times ask people who worked in the game section if they knew anything about a Kingdom Hearts II (this was before I had the Internet), and I recall being really sad one time when one of the workers told me maybe there never would be. LOL And to be clear, this was the time even before Chain of Memories.

Eventually, I saw Chain of Memories advertised on Cartoon Network and then begged my parents for a Game Boy Advance, so I could play this sequel. And for the Christmas that year, they complied as well (gosh, I have the best parents in the world). But I was saddened when I realized I couldn’t really play it with my sister (and her best friend) who I’d played the first game with. So my sister just told me to play it, and then tell her everything that happened. Which I did... With notes, and everything. Oh, yeah. I kept notes on KHI, CoM, and KHII, I think. I was that level of crazy (in a good way!).

Around this time, I was also subscribed to Disney magazines... And when I eventually got one that had Kingdom Hearts II in it: the one that revealed Sora’s new outfit as Beast’s Castle as a world--the first I’d ever heard of it, and the first I realized that Chain of Memories wasn’t the “true sequel” (as much as I did like Chain of Memories, I was glad to hear this. And even moreso that it was coming back to consoles, so I could experience it with my sister and her best friend again), I legitimately screamed so loud, you don’t even know. It’s a good thing I was home alone that day... And screaming about anything Kingdom Hearts related has pretty much become a trend of mine. Oops.

...So then I ended up pre-ordering Kingdom Hearts II from GameStop, with all of the cool things that came with that (like the special edition strategy guide that had four different covers, based on Sora’s Drive Forms. I have the Valor/Brave Form one), and I asked my mom to pick it up for me while I was at school so I could come home the day it came out and immediately start playing it. It came out near the beginning of that year’s spring break, and I beat the whole game in that time... You couldn’t have pulled me away from my Playstation 2 that break if you had tried.

I also know that I tried out for my school’s show choir the time that Kingdom Hearts II had just come out... Something I really should have cared about, but I didn’t as much as I could’ve... And while my mom had gotten busy talking to someone, waiting for me to come back from my audition, when I got back and she was still talking to them... I sort of wanted her to hurry along, so I could get back to my game... Something I think my mom even admitted to that person (but in as nice a way as possible)... Oh my gosh.

I also know that one day, I was thinking about KHII in class--I’d left off on the half-way mark of the game, with the 1000 Heartless battle and all that--so it was heavy on my mind... Our teacher was asking us about our weekends, and someone else in class started talking about how they started playing Kingdom Hearts II, and I gasped loudly--to which everyone stared--and I said that I had the game, too, and loved it... My teacher then said that was the most emotion they’d ever gotten out of me.

Ahahahahaha. I have many other embarrassing stories that I could admit with this series--particularly with KHII, and I have on past accounts--but you know what? I’m going to save myself some humiliation and keep them to myself.

But KH... It means the world to me. How can it not? It’s been a constant joy in my life for so many years: That’s been with me through just a little before my double-digit years, all of my teens, and into my adulthood.

I’ve made many friends through this series, too, either by convincing my friends to give it a try or making friends with people I know love the saga.

It’s a constant light for me, and always has been, that reminds me of my childhood (for so many reasons. The Disney for sure being one of them) and simpler times: And that there always is a light at the end of the tunnel...

In fact, the KH characters even feel like friends I’ve had for a long time--that I can always count on--and who I’m always happy to see.

And even now, that feeling hasn’t faded away (it probably never will). Since the way I reacted to KHIII, is pretty much the way I did KHII: Even fourteen years later, and as an adult now.

Kingdom Hearts even introduced me to all the things I love. I found YouTube--after I finally got Internet--when a friend told me I could watch the Kingdom Hearts II secret ending there, as I hadn’t unlocked it myself (and since I had doubts in myself as a gamer back then, I wasn’t sure that I could. Even though I had unlocked the one for the first game. And did eventually do so for the second game... and all of them, except for KHIIFM so far). And YouTube, amvs (a lot of them for KH) is how I found my love for video editing.

And moreover, I’m a writer. And it was in Googling stuff about Sora and Kairi that I eventually discovered fanfiction (that I actually, stupidly, thought was official stuff by the actual writers at first, because I found fanfiction on sites that weren’t called that), and through that started it myself and honed my writing skills. My writing style is probably even inspired by KH, in a lot of ways--like how I handle mystery and when I deliver information to the reader, and all.

KH also did simpler things, like getting me into other Square Enix games (Final Fantasy, The World Ends With You, Bravely Default), and gaming in general.

I wouldn’t be the person I am today without Kingdom Hearts, and that’s just the facts.

I’ve even bonded over it with my dad. My dad doesn’t know the series at all, God bless him, but he’s always willing to talk to me about it and ask me questions since he knows I love it so much. He always asks me when the next game’s coming out. Or if he knows one’s coming out, he’s aware of how happy that must have made me... Or if I’m playing it around him, and he hears a long song begin to play, he knows I must have beaten it. He also went to the Kingdom Hearts Orchestra with me:D

My mom also knows the series through me. A bit more than my dad, since she used to come up and watch us play it some (my dad also did a few times). But I felt it’s more fitting to mention my dad here, since he actually knows it less... And still admirably does this stuff, and is still this in the know about how much it means to me.

...I’ve admitted this before (like in an official survey to Square Enix)--even though I don’t like to, for obvious and personal reasons (and this is for sure something my parents don’t know and never should)--that in really rare, dark times of mine... Kingdom Hearts has saved me from suicide: Those times that I struggle with depression, and felt like I really had nothing else to live for... And yet wanting to be alive to finally see the end of Sora's story, drove me to give life another chance.

And I don’t really think I can say much more than that, or go deeper, to express just what this franchise is to me.

So Kingdom Hearts team... from the bottom of my heart, thank you for everything.

#thank you kh team

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aspiestvmusings · 5 years

Text

ENDGAME: PARALLELS

SPOILERS, BEWARE!

SUPER LONG MASTER POST!

All* the little parallels, callback, tie-ins & little nods in Endgame:

* Not really all of them, but just a few... most “important” ones according to me.. This is not a complete list...as I've not seen all 22 films & because there are just too many to list them all in here:

CHEEK KISSES: In the beginning, when Tony returns from space - the fist Pepperony scene, where he kisses Pepper’s cheek VS In the Pepperony end scene at the battlefield, where she kisses Tony’s cheek.

The Pepperony couch scene & Pepper telling Tony that if he doesn’t do it/let it go, he won’t be able to rest VS the Pepperony end scene, where she tells him that he can now rest...finally.

Tony’s first recorded message to Pepper...the one he makes in space in the beginning of the film (the one from the trailers) and him asking not to post it in social media, because it’s a real tearjerker...is both a call-forward to the end of the film, where we see & hear Pepper & Morgan & others listen to his (last) tear-jerking message from beyond, AND a call-back to the very first Iron Man, where Tony asks the soldiers to not post the picture they snap with the legendary Tony Stark...on MySpace/online.

The Tony/Peter scene from A3, where Peter tells Tony “I don’t wanna go, mr. Stark”, VS A4 Tony/Peter end scene, where he basically says the same thing... (just the other way around)

One side of Tony’s Iron Man helmet being completely destroyed in the beginning of A4:EG...after the events of Infinity War...as he records his message to Pepper in space VS Tony’s one side (right side of his face & body) being completely destroyed/burned by the power of the infinity stones after he snaps his fingers at the end of A4:EG

Tony’s home (the Malibu villa) & family (Pepper) being attacked in IM3 VS Tony’s home (the Avengers Headquarters) & family (The Avengers) being attacked in A4:EG. Water being part of the scenes in both cases. Both being “bombed” by aircraft (helicopter, spaceship)

Tony spending 3 weeks on a spaceship stranded in space, trying to get out of the situation alive...with an alien creature (Nebula) made out of “spare parts” in A4: EG VS Tony spending 3 months in a cave held hostage, and trying to escape by building his first Iron Man suit from a box of scraps/spare parts in IM1. Useful spare parts. Playing board games to kill the time/entertain themselves.

Tony wearing the BLACK TANK TOP during the “mechanic” scenes - the clips of him & Nebula fixing the ship, as he is welding/fixing something in A4: EG VS Tony wearing the BLACK TANK TOP during building the first iron suit in the cave...as he is welding/creating the suit in IM1 VS Tony wearing the suit as he is creating the new element (to keep him stable) in his Malibu house basement in IM2.

Tony’s comment to Morgan that Mommy/Pepper never wears anything he buys her (but the thing is... he didn’t buy the helmet/suit, he made them...for her) in the beginning/middle of the films VS Pepper showing up in the end wearing the thing/outfit Tony bought/made her. Bonus: the Rescue armour in A4 seems to be based on the colour of that IM1 first Pepperony dance dress (blue-ish) - the one “Tony gave/bought her for her birthday” So... she actually does wear things he “buys” her.

Morgan asking for a cheeseburger, when Happy asks her what she wants to eat at the end of A4:EG, after Tony's funeral VS Tony asking for a cheeseburger as the 1st thing he wanted after he got home/to US after being held hostage for 3 months in IM1.

Pepper adding Tony’s first arc reactor (the one she framed & gave him as a present instead of throwing it away as he had asked... and in doing so saving his life in the first film) to the flowers at Tony’s funeral scene in A4: EG VS Pepper framing the first arc reactor and giving it to Tony as a gift in IM1. As “proof that Tony Stark has a heart”

The scary “visual” parallels - Thanos & his dream of Garden & small-time farm life VS Hawkeye living that quiet family life on a farm (as seen in past Avengers) VS Tony living that quiet farm life...with his wife reading about composting... They all kinda wanted the same thing, but the motivation and reasons and ways to get there are different. But still... crazy “similarities”

Kids coming to Team Avengers, while they’re out in public (restaurants)... as civilians (not in their costumes) & asking for autographs/photographs Kids asking for Hulk/Banner’s autograph/selfie with him in A4:EG VS Kids asking for an autograph from Tony in IM3.

The look back: Nebula & Gamora. Nebula saying she doesn’t need her sisters help, when she offers her hand to help her up in 2014 VS Later when Gamora helps Nebula up in 2023 - she lets her/asks her to offer her hand to help her get up.

Thor summoning his hammer, Mjolnir during the 2013 time heist and the “wait for it” moment, where they say that it might take a moment for it to fly to him in A4: EG VS Tony “summoning” his suit to him (first the gauntlet, then the other parts) and stalling while he waited for the gauntlet & other suit pieces fly to him ... the “wait for it” moment, as he was tied up in IM3

Pepper entering the Big Fight to help Tony out in her Rescue armour & having Tony’s jaw drop in sight of her in A4: EG VS Pepper entering/returning to the Big Fight after surviving the fall because of glowing from Extremis in her body & having Tony’s jaw drop from the sight of her in IM3

Clint watching Nat fall from the cliff after he’s unable to hold onto her in A4:EG VS Tony watching Pepper fall in IM3, when he was unable to catch her...after he asked her to reach for his hand. Tony’s “You gotta let go” vs Nat’s “Let me go”

Father & Daughters theme. Started in Avengers 3 with Thanos/Gamora & Thanos/Nebula VS continued in Avengers 4 with Hawkeye & his daughter (we see his whole family, but the focus is on the daughter, not the sons), Scott & his daughter, Tony & his daughter (very important!). Plus that hint about Nat’s father (that’s for sure part of the MCU future) The parallel of father/daughter relationship...throughout the MCU

The gauntlet scene parallels: The first time we see a character turn over the gauntlet... and be really surprised about what they see- Rocket Raccoon’s surprised look when he finds that there are no infinity stones embedded in the gauntlet VS The end scene, where a character turns it over... and being surprised to see what they see... -- Thanos finding out after the hollow snap that there are no infinity stones inside his gauntlet...and realizing Tony did some magic to snap them from him. Both of characters realizing... something... these scenes are visuals parallels

Thor powering up Tony in the Lobby (before) with (lightning) his hammer during the 2012 time heist VS Thor powering up Iron Man at the battlefield (later) using his lightning.

In IM2 we see Tony find a video message from his dad... (to him, his kid) - that is meant to be seen by him when his dad is gone VS In A4:EG we see that Tony records a (video) message for his offspring too - to be seen after he’s gone. But those messages are very different at heart. (PS. There is no doubt in my mind that was not the only message Tony has recorded over the years that that is not the only message left behind from him. (He most likely even had a failsafe in the suit to download his consciousness or something like that).

Tony’s dad in the video footage found by Tony in IM2 asking the kid (him) to be taken away from the “office” after he had snuck in there asHoward was working, cause he’s got more work to do and no time for the kid VS Tony as a dad putting aside the work (he’s made another huge discovery...) when his kid sneaks into his “office”, and putting work aside and focusing on his kid. #NoAmountOfMoneyEverBoughtASecondtOfTime

Howard’s legacy (greatest thing he created) is his son, Tony VS Tony’s legacy (greatest thing he created) is his daughter, Morgan. And Howard’s legacy being “war” VS Tony’s legacy being “peace”

Tony’s dad/Tony father-son relationship VS Tony/Tony’s child relationship (his relationship with his own child) are very different. As we’ve heard & seen...many times in past MCU movies... Tony’s relationship with his parents/father was...not good. But... he broke the cycle. The fact that his father wasn’t a good father doesn’t mean that he won’t be - he makes different choices & doesn’t excuse his behaviour with “i grew up knowing nothing good, hence I became not good myself”. He proved that professionally already in IM1 with his decision to choose peace over war/wealth. And now he proved it personally, too. A complete arc.

Tony at the end of A4:EG in the battlefield...taking the power of the stones in his suits gauntlet on his knees, holding up his hand VS Tony in IM1 in the desert... as he’s about to be rescued..on his knees, holding up his hand. Visual parallel....kinda.

Water being the element & connecting visual during death & funeral scenes - Clint waking up in shallow water after Nat’s sacrifice...as he gets the soul stone VS Nat’s memorial moment by the lake next to the Avengers HQ in the middle of the film VS Tony’s funeral by the lake next to the Stark/Potts countryside home VS small, quiet memorial moment for fallen team members (Wanda & Clint talking Nat & Vision?) by the river.

I AM IRON MAN. Tony’s last words as Iron Man, just before he snaps his fingers being “...and *I* am Iron Man” in A4:EG VS Tony’s last words at the press conference for damage control at the end of IM1 being “(Truth is...) I am Iron Man”. The words that started his journey as the superhero & the words that ended his story as the superhero. VS The words also being the last words of IM3... so he starts & ends his journey both within the IM trilogy & the Infinity Saga 22 films with the same sentence.

Tony’s last words in IM1 - his first lines as Iron Man (publicly) were “I am Ironman” VS Iron Man’s last lines in A4 are “...and I am Ironman” #fullcircle PS. While those are Iron Man’s last words, they are not Tony’s last words. His last word is Pepper’s name...Pep (”Hi, Pep” He really drifts off thinking of her...every night). And then the final voice over (which is essentially a goodbye message from RDJ & IronMan... and parallels IM3...which also had an end voiceover...) RDJ saying goodbye to the character/Tony saying goodbye to IM... and summarizing the book that are the films from the past 11 years.. which should make it easier for us, fans, to move on, but... I think it’ll take some time to accept that RDJ really isn’t gonna play IM anymore...and that this really was the end of the journey....at least in this form.

Not to mentioned the many more obvious similarities: Like his A2 vision that Wanda “showed him” being visually very similar to what the battlefields looked like in A3 & A4 (down to the shield being broken in two). Like having a kid named Morgan...named after that eccentric uncle. Like solving a complex problem seemingly overnight (time travel, new element, miniature arc reactor...)

List compiled between April 24th & May 10th

#SPOILER #endgamespoiler #endgamespoilers #endgame spoiler #endgame spoilers #MCU #Avengers 4 #Avengers: Endgame #Avengers Endgame #Tony Stark #Pepper Potts #Pepperony #RDJ #LIST POST #MASTER POST

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gunnerpalace · 7 years

Note

Have you seen the vid 'Shonen Anime's Biggest Problem' by Reality Punch Studios? Bleach is briefly mentioned in it and the guy basically says that Kubo did a great job with the plot and characters during the Soul Society arc, but then later failed with all the other arcs after it. Thoughts?

I haven’t, but that’s pretty accurate. This is long, but fuck it, I want people to see it.

Karakura I: Great! Minor flaws, e.g., Ichigo leaving Rukia to fight Shrieker while he escorted Karin, rather than having the clearly less-than-combat effective Rukia do so, and learn about Ichigo; not covering a whole month of their time together (including Ichigo’s birthday); ultimately dispensing with Tatsuki’s importance to the plot; could have probably stood to be about twice as long to show more of Ichigo and Rukia’s early relationship and flesh out relations with the nakama more.

Soul Society: Great! No real flaws until the end, e.g., you just killed off Central 46 and had a great upheaval in the power structure of the to-date main antagonists; this was the perfect time to have some exposition on them (e.g., who the other two Great Noble Houses are, what their role in Central 46/Soul Society is aside from being strong, etc.); good pacing, dramatic, memorable and contained fights, even for supporting characters (e.g., Uryuu vs. Mayuri, Renji vs. Byakuya).

Karakura II/Arrancar: Not so great! So, Ichigo’s just spent his summer break, what, moping over “the Hollow?” Why does everything in this series revolve around no one (Kisuke, Isshin, Juushirou, Yamamoto, etc.) telling Ichigo what the fuck is going on and just solving the problem? One of the only times I can remember an authority figure just saying “We’re here to do X because Y,” is Toushirou in this arc, so good for him? The fights against the Arrancar are when Bleach started to go bad with F I G H T S N O B O D Y C A R E S A B O U T ™ because they don’t involve the protagonists. Grimmjow was an effectively introduced villain even though he’s really just Kenpachi + Zangetsu (”Shirosaki”). The moments with him, Ichigo, and Rukia were good. The Visored were neat but were ultimately a waste. Most damningly of all, Orihime didn’t learn a goddamn thing from going to an alternate dimension and watching Ichigo almost die over and over to save Rukia.

Hueco Mundo/Fake Karakura+: Really bad! When FNCA became a real problem. Just all kinds of shit that didn’t matter and wasn’t satisfying. The entire premise of them being there was stupid, as was the entire structure of the war. Aizen’s grand scheme turned out to be a bunch of bullshit. Overall just a terrible inversion of the Soul Society arc featuring a bunch of poorly-realized villains that were way overhyped. (Also, the final demonstration of the worthlessness of the Visored!) Our protagonists had to be rescued for the plot to continue on stupidly. (This can work, e.g. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, but this isn’t the way to do it.) An unsatisfying conclusion that explained nothing about why what happened, had.

Lost Substitute Shinigami: Garbage. Okay, this arc has some great character-building for Ichigo and Rukia, and Xcution have memorable designs. I like Riruka. Ginjou, Giriko, and Tsukishima are really hateable villains. I like Ikumi. But. But. Fullbring is dumb and makes no sense, or needed to be introduced much earlier. The story of the substitute Shinigami is dumb and doesn’t fit well with what we know. The contrivances necessary to make Bleach work like a horror manga are ridiculous and just make the adults around Ichigo (e.g., Isshin, Ryuuken, Kisuke, Yoruichi, Shinji, et al.) look like fucking negligent assholes at the same time as Ikumi is telling Ichigo to trust adults. Also, the way the time skip was handled was that it wasn’t. It literally never gets addressed outside of about a dozen panels. It speaks to my heart but it wasn’t well-executed (hah!) at all.

Thousand-Year Blood War: Total shitshow where everything is on fire. The Sternritter were awful and utterly lacking in interest. (They’re all amoral psychopathic murderers, whoo!) FNCA go on forever, nobody does anything of importance, Ichigo and Rukia barely appear for large sections of it, and nothing sensible or satisfying happens except for an explanation of Ichigo’s powers that, while making a kind of sense, still doesn’t really explain anything. Don’t get me started on the ending, that requires War and Peace to fully deconstruct with how it doesn’t fit any of what came before.

If Kubo was just going to stop the manga, he should’ve stopped it after Soul Society arc. He couldn’t, because Aizen was still on the run, but if Aizen had been taken out there, it would’ve been okay. Open-ended, maybe an epilogue panel or page of Rukia putting on civilian clothes to see Ichigo again. Cool.

If he was going to stop after the Aizen saga, he should’ve done that. Again, an open ending. You could maybe have an epilogue of Ichigo thinking he sees Rukia out of the corner of his eyes over time. Whatever.

But no, this guy had a plan. Bleach is kinda like The X-Files, in that there’s a bunch of episodes, and then an overarching plot arc, except instead of being episodic, it’s archic; a bunch of small arcs under a larger one. The larger arc is that Soul Society, and existence itself, is fucked up. The smaller arcs are about what passes for “mundane” or “the usual” within this fucked up existence.

That alone probably answers your question, but I’m me, so I’m going to continue on to talk about what I want to talk about.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS BLEACH ACTUALLY ABOUT?

Let me explain my theory of what Bleach was supposed to be about, before Kubo got bogged down in thinking he was Tolkien II Turbo DBZ edition and got his series cancelled with his fuckery.

There’s this interesting video about how, in The Matrix, Neo isn’t “the One,” but rather, Smith is.

youtube

The Architect tells Neo that he’s the sixth “Anomaly” which resets the Matrix. Their arrival is expected and anticipated. Smith, unwittingly “created” by Neo, is what causes this particular iteration of the Matrix to end very differently than the previous five.

Okay, what the fuck does this have to do with Bleach?

Check it out: Ichigo (and Rukia) is (are) the One. That is to say: they’re Smith. The planned outcomes, the “Anomalies,” were Aizen and Yhwach.

They would go about their plans, get up to the Royal Realm, and then be summarily murdered by Zero Division and turned into the new Soul King, as a Soul King only lasts a certain amount of time and needs periodic replacement. (Check how old and busted the current one is.) This is why Zero Division gave zero fucks about whatever happened down below: it not only didn’t matter to their outcomes, it was necessary. (Kind of like Soul Society requires suffering to work properly.)

There’s evidence of this in Sajin and his grandfather. Their existence is never explained, but Clifford the Big Red Dog says “The world’s ‘bearer’ will simply change. We won’t change. No matter who holds the world. All we can do is lay low.” This is strikingly similar to The Merovingian and his motley crew of exiled programs from previous iterations of the Matrix: they are remnants of a bygone age, after successive resets.

What resets Soul Society (or possibly reality) is swapping Soul Kings.

Now what fucks everything up and makes this time different is the existence of Ichigo and Rukia. Ichigo is directly created by the fuckery of Aizen and Yhwach, much like Agent Smith was turned into Smith. The existence of Yhwach’s descendants, plus Aizen’s machinations, produces an unplanned-for feature. Something new. He’s easy to explain.

But Ichigo isn’t alone. He would’ve never gotten anywhere without Rukia. And Rukia is harder to explain.

Now Aizen says “The ‘true’ power of the Hougyoku is to read the minds of those around it and make manifest of what it finds there. […] You don’t understand? I’m saying that all of the ‘miracles’ that have occurred surrounding Kurosaki Ichigo, Kuchiki Rukia, and Urahara Kisuke thus far were manifested by the Hougyoku’s will.“ He goes on to say "And then I, armed with a hypothesis about the Hougyoku’s abilities, sent Kuchiki Rukia in the direction of Kurosaki Ichigo. Of course, there are limits to its abilities. The Hougyoku manifests what’s in the minds of those around it. But this will not happen unless the subject inherently possesses the power to fulfill their desire. By that token, this could also be called the ‘power that guides people toward their desires.’ … But living creatures are strange, they are made in such a way that they can actualize only what their minuscule minds wish for.”

First, notice how utterly fucking pissed Isshin is. Nothing else makes him remotely this upset. Nothing to do with Grand Fisher or Yhwach makes him even fractionally this agitated.

Now, stop and think for a moment. Does what Aizen said actually make sense? The Hougyoku does what those around it want, but it can only do so through what they are capable of. He also says that the Hougyoku has begun to understand his will… only just prior to explaining all this. Why does Aizen think he was previously outside of the Hougyoku’s influence?

Kisuke’s incomplete Hougyoku was hanging out in Rukia for a long time; presumably, out of anyone, it understood her will best. Aizen sent Rukia to Ichigo? No. Rukia wanted to go to Ichigo, and Aizen was the means to facilitate that, which coincidentally accorded with his desires too. Aizen is confusing cause and effect here through his own hubris.

How did Rukia know of Ichigo? Well, you could say she was looking for someone like Kaien. But there are inevitably many people like Kaien in the world and it could’ve guided her to any one of them. It took her to the only person who could do something about the world, which Rukia saw as fundamentally unjust. But how would the Hougyoku know about Ichigo? From reading Aizen’s mind? Maybe, but can it understand things like genealogy and ghost genetic engineering? It’s much simpler to say that it saw their connection.

I’m not going to relitigate all the material in Bleach which asserts that Ichigo and Rukia are connected and fated to meet one another, like the Sand and the Rotator chapters. But it’s out there, and the Hougyoku knew, so it put them together and warped everything around it to make that happen; to execute Rukia’s will, not Aizen’s.

My feeling is that Rukia and Ichigo form a single unit for the purposes of reality-disruption. They are the Pair, rather than Smith’s the One. Surprise, this is why Kisuke leaves it to them when he thinks he’s gonna die. He’s like the Oracle. Or something, this analogy is getting a bit loose.

Also, Ichigo’s whole thing is power, and Rukia’s whole thing is control. You might say they’re like a power source and a regulator. Water and a water wheel. Sand and a rotator.

So, much like Smith, they were going to change the outcome of their iteration in a way that couldn’t have been foreseen.

Then Kubo got his series cancelled because he spent too long drawing Doctor Juggalo fighting a giant hand, and Sword Hobo fighting Imagination Boy and Thor, so none of that happened.

tl;dr Kubo’s inability to stop himself from fucking with unimportant characters and unimportant plots, i.e., getting bogged down in the minutiae, is exactly what killed Bleach, along with trying to be too clever by half with things like Hueco Mundo as inverted Soul Society. Dude lost the plot and couldn’t see his own damn forest for the trees.

#Asks #Bleach #IchiRuki

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jouissezduprintemps · 7 years

Text

Just a Spare

Rating:T Word Count: 1,073 Summary: Riza’s sick, Ed is disappointed, and Jean can’t keep himself together. Author’s Note: This is the first story of my Riza and Jean saga! I don’t have a broad title for the collection just yet, but this is intended to be the first piece. I hope you enjoy!

Edward never dreamed that it was possible. He was frozen in shock as he stood in the doorway, looking in on his new comrades. It hadn’t been long since he had been placed under Mustang’s command, but it wasn’t difficult to pick up on the group dynamic. It was eerily silent in the office, pencils scratching over paper. His golden eyes surveyed the room, stunned when he saw that the lieutenant was missing. Every time she left the office, he had known the others to shirk their responsibilities. But there they were, working away at their desks like she had threatened them on one of her short-tempered days.

He stepped cautiously across the threshold, his meta leg thunking on the hollow floor. “Alright, what gives?” he demanded without so much as a hello.

“Ah, Fullmetal. Have you brought me your report?” Roy asked indifferently, reciting a script he had become accustomed to.

“I’m working on it,” Ed brushed off. “Where’s the lieutenant? And why are you all acting so weird?”

“Lieutenant Hawkeye is out sick today,” Roy informed his wayward subordinate. “And we are working on a proposal that we’ve been preparing for months. So, if you have nothing to report-”

“Bullshit.”

Roy looked at the red-cloaked boy blankly.

“Bull. Shit. What did you do?”

“What the hell do you mean, ‘what did I do?’” The colonel shot back, his voice no longer steady. Damn this little runt…

“Easy there, tiger,” Jean interrupted, taking his feet off his desk. “We are capable of acting like adults, you know. Ree’s caught the stomach flu. The only way she’d stay home is if we promised to finish the proposal, and that was after we pushed her mask-wearing, zombie ass out of the office.” Kain gaped at Jean, who shrugged. It’s not like he wouldn’t have said that to her face.

Ed’s bravado fell as he realized that he wasn’t being lied to. “Oh.”

“What is it, Fullmetal?” Roy asked, looking up from his work.

“Well, Al and I wanted to do something nice for her birthday. Give her a present, you know? ‘Cause we’re headed out tomorrow for Central.”

It was easy to forget that Ed was only twelve years old. It wasn’t surprising that the two boys had latched onto Riza. At the moment, she was the most consistent, authoritative female presence that they had. Roy believed that the boys needed to toughen up. His own parents had died when he was young, and Chris wasn’t exactly an affectionate mother figure. Add to that what he had seen at the Hawkeye household, and he found it difficult to sympathize.

“Just leave it on her desk,” Roy suggested. “She should be back to work on Monday.”

“Yeah,” Ed relented. He stuck his hand into the pocket of his cloak and withdrew an impressively poorly-wrapped gift, which he set on the lieutenant’s desk. He jumped when he heard a sharp whistle.

“Here ya go, kid.” Jean tossed something into the air at him. Ed reflexively reached out and caught it. When he opened his fist, a silver key glinted against his white glove.

“What’s this?”

“Spare key.” Jean tucked his keyring back into his pocket. “Bring her some soup or something, while you’re at it.”

Ed was confused, but his hopes were back up, which was more than enough to brush that from his mind. “Thanks, Lieutenant Havoc!” He snatched the package off of Riza’s desk and ran out into the hall. “Hey, Al!”

“Don’t worry about bringing it back! I’ll get it later!” Jean called after the kid. He chuckled to himself and busied himself lighting a cigarette.

“Lieutenant Havoc?”

“Hmm?” Jean turned to his commanding officer.

“Why do you have a key to Lieutenant Hawkeye’s apartment?”

The air in the room became oppressively heavy. Jean needed to choose his next few words very carefully.

“Because she gave me one.”

Swing, and a miss.

“And I assume Lieutenant Catalina has one, as well?”

Jean shrugged. “Maybe?” When he finally met the colonel’s accusing gaze, he bristled. “I don’t get why you’re giving me the third degree here.”

“It’s very suspicious for a subordinate to have a key to his commanding officer’s residence.”

Jean arched a single eyebrow. Are you fucking kidding me right now, Mustang? “Ree has one for yours.”

“That’s different. She’s my adjutant. And her name is Lieutenant Hawkeye.”

“If it bothers you so damned bad, why don’t you give yours back to her, too? It’s the same thing.” After a moment of silence, Jean couldn’t control his smirk. “Unless you don’t have one.”

“That’s completely irrelevant!”

“Sooo, you don’t, then.”

“At least I’m acting in propriety!”

It suddenly dawned on Jean that his commanding officer was taking this far more seriously than he was. “Relax, Mustang. We all know the rules, right?” It was too late to cover his tracks when he realized what he was insinuating. “Not like that matters, though.” Shit!

“Damn, Jean,” Heymans added, astonished.

“No, that’s not what I meant!” Jean began to become frantic. He was all too aware that he wasn’t helping his own case. He let out a cry of frustration, tearing at his own hair.

Roy hadn’t said a word. Oh, god, he was going to be lit on fire. This was how he was going to die. Flambeed for his own stupidity.

He and Riza were undeniably close, but it had been a long time since he had any sort of romantic feelings for her. Sure, he had a crush at one point, but who would blame him? She was more of a bro than anything else! It was almost like thinking about sleeping with his own sister. Well, he didn’t have a sister, but he assumed that this would be what that would be like – stop!

Roy measured his tone as he handpicked his next words. “Lieutenant Havoc, do I need to consider reassignment for you to another chain of command.”

“No! It’s not like that! She’s like my hot sister!” Oh god, he wanted to die. Where was Riza when he needed her? She would have stopped him long before he got to this point. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Caught the stomach flu, did you, there, Jean?” Heymans joked before he could stop himself.

Jean just groaned and let his head fall onto his desk. “May I please be excused for the day?” he mumbled into the wood.

“Dismissed.”

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