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caramelcal · 3 years

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Exile

Request: Anonymous said:OMGGGGG COULD YOU DO A LUKE CENTIC FIC BASED AROUND EXILE BY TAYLOR SWIFT!! BUT ITS LUKE FINDING OUT THAT THE GIRL HE IS FALLING IN LOVE WITH IS ACTUALLY TRYING TO GET THEM BACK IN CALEB’S HOUSE BAND?? SHE’S A LIFER WHO DOSEN’T REALIZE WHAT SHE IS DOING UNTIL ITS TOO LATE AND BREAKS HER OWN HEART IN PROCESS OF SELLING LUKE AND THE BOYS OUT TO CALEB?!

Word count: 1.6k

a/n: i love this request so so so much...here you go :) I hope this is okay! lots of love x ALSO!! PLEASE CONTINUE TO SEND IN REQUESTS, I LOVE WRITING STUFF IK YOU GUYS WANT !!! Alternative title: Puppeteer?

Masterlist

I can see you standin', honey With his arms around your body Laughin' but the joke's not funny at all And it took you five whole minutes To pack us up and leave me with it Holdin' all this love out here in the hall

Dating a ghost was never something you ever imagined happening. You didn’t even know about ghosts until you met Luke, in a series of him believes you couldn’t see him, and you freaking out when he passes through you. Ever since then, you had become close, and he came in frequently to check up on you and you guys just clicked. It was a strange experience, that was for sure but you wouldn’t change it for anything else.

Luke was amazing. He was funny, goofy, and just...perfect. So even if he was made out of air, it didn’t matter to you.

“Hey, I need to get heading, band practice. I’ll meet you tomorrow?” Luke said as you gave him a smile and nod in return. He went in to hug you, only for his arms to pass right through you. Retreating, he frowned, clasping his hands together, muttering, “Right.”

“Don’t worry about it, Lu,” You reassured, smiling at him as he nodded his head, bidding you one last farewell before leaving. It was a well known fact that Luke always got upset about not being able to touch you, especially considering touch was his ‘love language’. It was something that you constantly reassured him on, to make sure he knew that you would still be with him if you couldn’t touch him.

Tonight was just one of many dates you had been on with Luke, your boyfriend. Of course, you probably looked weird being by yourself and laughing and talking in public but you didn’t care, because being with Luke was all that mattered to you. You stood for several moments, a smile on your face as you went over the events of the evening.

“Hello, dear,” You heard from behind you, snapping you out of your haze as you whipped around to look at the man standing behind you. He was tall and wore a long coat, and in full black.

“Who are you?” You asked, taking a step back to add distance between the two of you.

“You don’t know me, but your little friend Luke does,” He replied, giving you a creepy smile as he titles his head, looking up and down your figure, almost as if he was evaluating you, “Caleb Covington.”

“You’re that evil ghost, aren’t you?”

His eyes widened slightly in amusement, his smirk growing wider, “Well, well it appears you’re quite close to Luke, aren’t you? You’re going to be more useful than I thought you were.”

“What are you-” You started, but you didn’t get to finish. Not before Caleb branded you.

I think I've seen this film before And I didn't like the ending You're not my homeland anymore So what am I defendin' now? You were my town Now I'm in exile seein' you out I think I've seen this film before

True to his promise, Luke met up with you the next day. He held a smile on his face as he caught eyes with him. You jumped into his arms, your own arms wrapping around his neck as your chest collided with him. He enjoyed the embrace for a few moments before pulling you away from his body, keeping his hands wrapped around your upper arm as he spoke in confusion, “I-I can touch you?”

“I guess so,” You smiled, looking at the eyes of your lover before he pulled you in for another hug. The embrace you two shared was long needed, something that you both craved but thought you could never have, so when you were able to, Luke didn’t question it.

He didn’t even notice how you seemed to know you could touch him, considering that if you didn’t know you probably would’ve gone flying through his body without that knowledge.

Your lips crashed onto his and you smirked into the kiss, leaving Luke to enjoy this newfound affection. The day went on but it was different today. You were different. You were more confident, more sure of yourself than the kind of shy person that Luke was used to.

From your position on Luke’s back, you grabbed his head and moved it to the side so you could kiss him again, which he reciprocated but ended up pulling back at, “Where’s all this confidence coming from, angel?”

The pet name fell off of his lips effortless when he asked the question but you seemed to pay no mind to it, instead Luke seen you frown. He shook his head lightly as he elaborated, “Don’t get me wrong, I like this newfound confidence, I was just confused.”

However, that didn’t ease your nerves because inside you were screaming. He would never be able to tell though, because on the outside, you smiled and kissed him again. You couldn’t say anything, you couldn’t warn him that this wasn’t you, this confidence wasn’t yours. It was Caleb. You had no idea what Caleb had planned for them, but you could only imagine how bad it was and no doubt Luke would be ripped away from you and you couldn’t even warn him, or say goodbye.

All you wanted to do was scream and cry, to get Luke to leave and save himself, because it didn’t matter what Caleb did to you, what he would do to Luke would be way worse. But with Caleb controlling your every word, your every move, you couldn’t. All you could do was sit back and observe as the boy you loved fell into his trap.

I can see you starin', honey Like he's just your understudy Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me Second, third, and hundredth chances Balancin' on breaking branches Those eyes add insult to injury

It was dark outside as you lay against Luke, his arms wrapped around you and clasping on your stomach, his head tucked into your neck as you both watched the stars. You guys were quiet, simply enjoying one another’s company before Luke spoke up, “Angel?”

“hm?”

“I love you,” He whispered, eyes staring into yours, a small smile on his face as he looked at the features on your face, noticing every single detail of your skin and eyes; the features that he loved so very much.

“I love you too.”

And you did, but it wasn’t you saying it. It was Caleb, and even though he wasn’t directly processing your body, he controlled everything. You were just balancing in the middle, between Luke and Caleb, like a puppet with Caleb pulling the strings.

What should’ve felt like a heartfelt moment, filled with love and happiness wasn’t. Not for you at least, because you were screaming; screaming at Luke to run. Yet, he had no idea what was happening because you were helpless, simply a pawn in Caleb’s plan. A plan that Luke was easily falling victim too, with both you and Luke’s hearts on the line. And Caleb? All he did was laugh at your pain.

I think I've seen this film before And I didn't like the ending I'm not your problem anymore So who am I offending now? You were my crown Now I'm in exile seein' you out I think I've seen this film before So I'm leavin' out the side door

“Luke! Luke, you need to go, now!” You shouted in pain and horror, pushing your boyfriend’s chest in the opposite direction to you. The utter horror in your voice was evident as you shrieked, “Go! You need to go, Luke! Now!”

“What’s wrong? Angel? Tell me, please!” Luke said, trying to withstand the force of your panicked shoves as he stared at you, seeing the tears running thickly down your cheeks.

“I don’t have time to explain, you need to go! You can’t go with him!”

However, Luke would never get the chance. A voice called mockingly from behind you, “Awh y/n, and here I thought you were being helpful.”

Luke’s eyes went wide whilst he took a step back in shock, mouth parting as he looked up at Caleb then back at you, betrayal evident on his face, “Caleb? You’re working for him?”

“L-Luke...” The tears continued to pour from your eyes, your throat closing up almost causing you to sob. The look of betrayal that Luke was giving you broke your heart, all you wanted to do was turn back time, avoid Caleb, and continue being happy with Luke.

Both you and Luke were oblivious to Caleb teleporting you into the Hollywood Ghost Club; somewhere you had never been before but Luke certainly had. The flashy lights and decorations in the club continued to go unnoticed as Caleb looked on to you both fighting, a stony and unapologetic expression on his face.

“I loved you, I trusted you!” Luke shouted in betrayal, staring wildly down at you e/c eyes filled with tears, hands clenched at his sides, “This is how you repay me? After everything we’ve been through?”

Luke’s voice was quiet by the end as he muttered out the last part so only you could hear, his hands firmly planted on your shoulders whilst you continued to cry, “I had no choice Luke, I love you, I really do.”

However, you didn’t get a reply to that as Luke was dragged along with Caleb, the invisible shackles tied to his soul. Caleb walked in front of Luke, being carefree as if he didn’t just rip two lovers apart from each other. Your legs felt weak, lip trembling as Luke looked back at you over his shoulder; the last glimpse you would ever see of him.

Before you knew it, he was gone. You were all alone, just like you had been before you had met him. Alone, unwanted, and uncared for. Your legs trembled beneath you as your hands made contact with the floor, letting you let out a deafening sob like scream. You let out every emotion, every feeling of grief over losing your lover that would have deafened anyone that was there with you.

“God, what have I done?”

#luke julie and the phantoms #julie and the phantoms #julie and the phantoms x reader #julie and the phantoms luke #luke patterson #luke patterson x reader #luke patterson x y/n #charlie gillespie x reader #luke jatp #charlie gillespie x y/n #charlie gillespie

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homespork-review · 4 years

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Homespork Act 3: Insane Mindscrew Haymakers (Part 1)

BRIGHT: Before Act 3 proper starts, we see a message from Nanna to John, written in the front of the Sassacre’s joke book from Dad’s safe. The message is somewhat bizarre. For one thing, according to Nanna, the book it’s written in will end its journey on the day she dies...and still carry on for a while. For another, it talks about game elements we’ve encountered already, and hints at more to come. Overall it’s a nice bit of detail, enough to whet the reader’s interest.

You are no doubt reading this as a handsome and strapping young man! Why, the mangrit needed to lift the book is itself a sign of your maturity, not even to speak of the wisdom needed to grasp the nuance of Sassacre's time-tested mischief. I am so proud of you, grandson! How I wish I could have delivered this heirloom to you in the flesh. But I am afraid it wasn't in the cards! For you see, John, like you, this book must yet take a journey! Its journey will end on the Final Day of my life, and even then will continue some. Though I suppose that will be up to your Father. Perhaps he will discuss it with you one day, when he and you are ready. But it is your journey I am writing about to wish you luck! There will come a day when you will be thrust into another world. And once you arrive, that is only the beginning! You will soon delve even deeper into a realm of Warring Royalty in a Timeless Expanse. A realm of Agents and Exiles and Consorts and Kernelsprites. Of toiling Underlings and slumbering Denizens. A realm where four will gather, the Heir of Breath and Seer of Light, the Knight of Time and Witch of Space, and together they will Ascend. John, if only you knew how important you were! I regret my passing came so early in your life. And yet I feel in my heart we have already met. But what I know for sure is that we will meet again! Until then, John, I do hope your Father keeps you well fed!

FAILURE ARTIST: As I said earlier, Hussie has artfully defaced books, including one antique one about an expedition around the world. Defaced books show up again in this comic.

CHEL: Particularly, it implies that Nanna also had knowledge of the game during her lifetime, somehow, and refers to the gathering of four heroes. This is our first introduction to the classpect system, which now rivals Hogwarts houses as a method of personality description in fandom at large. I think at the time I didn’t realise who it was referring to… Anyway.

Next, we officially meet GG, the fourth and final member of our gang, a “silly girl” with a cheery grin, sleeping in a greenhouse full of vegetables and spirograph-shaped flowers. Since she’s sleeping and can’t object, she’s referred to for a while as FARMSTINK BUTTLASS, but she’s way ahead of us; under her hand is a note admonishing the reader and declaring her actual name to be Jade Harley. I think she’s the cutest of the kids, myself - just seeing her first appearance makes me happy! All its weaknesses aside, Homestuck’s pretty great at creating painfully cute character designs and attaching a good range of personalities to them.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade Harley was considered a “Mary Sue” when she was first introduced. I don’t know why. Yeah, she has a lot of eccentricities and unusual possessions but so do the other characters.

Farmstink is a reference to an old comic Hussie did about this dude obsessed with the stink of farms. Hussie’s early work is really weird.

CHEL: The reader attempts to wake Jade by dropping a pumpkin carved with an animal’s face on her head, but the pumpkin disappears; as we know, WV now has it. Fortunately for the pacing, Jade wakes up on her own. Look closely, and you’ll notice the symbol on her shirt changes each page; that turns out a bit later to be due to her hi-tech WARDROBIFIER. If I recall correctly, Hussie intended to settle on one chosen by reader vote, but ended up on a cycle of three different ones.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade settles on three icons to appear on her shirt. However, eventually just one icon stays on her shirt. The WARDROBIFIER doesn’t get much use with her, though a later character has the same thing.

CHEL: Jade is also wearing COLORFUL REMINDERS on her fingers, and when the view pans out it’s revealed by the view from the window that her GARDEN ATRIUM is on a high floor. She plays the flute badly for a while in a Flash game; apparently it’s not her preferred instrument. Also fortunately for the pacing, we think, she knows how to use her sylladex, and prefers to set its retrieval function in the form of a memory game because you seem to have a knack for always guessing right on the first try! On checking her reminders, she remembers to wish John happy birthday, gathers some fruit, and heads upstairs by means of a teleporter.

Jade’s bedroom proves to be full of various disturbing-looking plushies, albeit not nearly as disturbing as the Smuppets, hanging baskets and potted plants, a bass guitar, and G-rated furry artwork, including a piece obviously drawn by Dave. Franchises depicted in her toy and poster collections include GREEN SLIME GHOST (the apparent copyright-friendly source of John’s T-shirt and pogo ride), MANTHRO CHAPS (mustachioed human faces on plush animal bodies), and SQUIDDLES (adorable octopi with magnets in their bellies which stick together as Tangle Buddies!). Her favoured weapons are rifles, though she would never shoot an animal, and she has various gadgets on a worktable, including a thing that looks like a disconnected window not unlike those shown in Rose’s book, which she apparently hasn’t been able to get to work.

FAILURE ARTIST: Manthro Chaps is a reference to Hussie’s particularly disturbing set of comics where he plays around with anthropomorphization. Like having an anthro chicken man lay anthro eggs.

CHEL: The comic in question, Humanimals, can be found here; warnings for extreme body horror and general grossness.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade is told by a forum prompter to Lose interest in fauna and never speak of it again. Jade refuses to in a beautiful little speech but she denies she’s a furry. Oh, if she only knew what was coming for her.

Jade looks out the window and we find out she lives somewhere next to a volcano.

CHEL: The very same one which appeared in the animation at the end of the last act, in fact.

Your grandfather is a WORLD RENOWNED EXPLORER-NATURALIST-TREASURE HUNTER-ARCHEOLOGIST-SCIENTIST-ADVENTURER-BIG GAME HUNTER-BILLIONAIRE EXTRAORDINAIRE. He has taught you everything you know.

Grandpa is heavily coded here and in his appearance a bit later as a Great White Hunter, an upper-class European guy who goes to faraway countries in order to shoot the animals there. Of course, non-white people can certainly do that, but white is what people will immediately picture upon seeing the trope. Also note we have another ridiculously wealthy family here. Since all four of the kids have now been introduced and we’ve had a lot of WSP points from their races and financial statuses already, here we get another HOW NOT TO point as well.

The Country Club Here every single character is white and middle-to-upper class. Unless your novel is taking place in rural Sweden, this will eventually give the reader the eerie feeling that some form of ethnic cleansing has taken place. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 14 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 7

One could argue that some form of ethnic cleansing is taking place, since these are the kids who are surviving the apocalypse, though that’s not actually fair because there are plenty of other SBurb sessions all across the world which might also succeed.

Jade opens her GADGET CHEST and produces several more items pertaining to her interests, including her computer, which she keeps in a Squiddles lunchbox. Several fortune-telling items are included among them, but according to Jade they are not the source of her abilities. The Magic 8-Ball is apparently usually wrong, responding to being asked whether it’s John’s birthday today with NOT EXACTLY, and the Magic Cue Ball is supposedly always right but is impossible to read, making it completely useless.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s another Problem Sleuth reference (or rather Problem Sooth) but what’s important is the Magic Cue Ball. Unlike her Magic 8-Ball, it has no window where one can read the prediction. If only Jade had a special vision. Perhaps an eightfold vision.

Jade goes to feed BEC. She has some sylladex trouble until she finally just takes a steak out of her fridge.

CHEL: Once again, the sylladex shenanigans waste several pages.

GET ON WITH IT!: 9

Bec’s identity is as yet unknown, but recall that Dave called him a “devilbeast” in an earlier conversation, and when he suggested shooting Bec Jade said she didn’t think she could if she tried. He also apparently eats nothing but steaks (lucky Grandpa’s a billionaire), so Jade is living on an island with apparently minimal supervision from her guardian and an allegedly dangerous carnivore running wild outside. Like Dave, at this point it seems to be very lucky she’s a cartoon character.

FAILURE ARTIST: Using a special oven she irradiates the steak. Umm, I think Bec can take that but I worry about Jade.

Jade finds and plays her elaborate bass and she’s much better at it than with the flute. During the flash, the camera pulls out and we find out where she lives: in a tower on a small volcanic island with a frog temple in the lagoon. An airplane goes by and drops a package.

Jade uses her super high-tech “lunchtop” to have a conversation with John. Nothing special about that but we see on her chumroll a bunch of unfamiliar handles. Hmm.

CHEL: The unfamiliar handles are listed in the “Trollslum”, which one presumes is a blocklist. I think you have to see just how hi-tech the lunchtop is:

"Jade: Get down to business." (Watch on YouTube)

Hussie’s really coming into his own with the animations by now.

FAILURE ARTIST: Dave has sent her some messages begging her to wake up and unfortunately one line has the f-slur in it.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 7

In the end, he decides she’ll probably forget what he says.

CHEL: Begging her to wake up” doesn’t exactly cover it.

TG: youre asleep again arent you TG: or do you even know if you are TG: i still dont know how that works TG: its like nothing means anything

Apparently Jade sometimes talks to him while she’s sleeping.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s a little flash where you can listen to some of Dave’s tunes. When you’re done with that, you can join her in looking at mspadventures.com. A crude John wearing a wizard hat is sitting on his lawn with the caption

It begins to dawn on you that everything you just did may have been a colossal waste of time.

What the hell is going on here? Is Jade reading what John is doing right now?

CHEL: I think it’s just a fourth wall joke, but it’s certainly accurate, considering our GET ON WITH IT count.

FAILURE ARTIST: Next, we get this flash called Midnight Crew: Act 1031. If you are watching it in 2019, the song playing is Dead Shuffle by Mark Hadley. However, the song was originally Nightlife by Bill Bolin. Unfortunately, Bolin had a dispute with Hussie over Hussie using music that Bolin considered WIP. Bolin blew up and called Hussie “unprofessional” and in a very professional move posted a photo of himself giving the double deuce. It’s a shame this happened since Nightlife is a jauntier and more appropriate tune.

CHEL: The Midnight Crew, to be specific, are gangsters with card-themed names who bear a striking resemblance to WV, living in a mysterious purple city full of towers, pitted against the Felt, another gang of odd-looking green fellows who wear bowler hats with numbers on them, in the colour schemes of a set of pool balls.

Hussie did make reference in the previous page to a “weird tangential intermission [which] clearly advanced the plot in no way whatsoever”, implying that it actually is relevant, and the purple city and its shiny black beady-eyed inhabitants look very familiar, but since as far as we know at this point the Midnight Crew is just a comic-within-a-comic, you know which counts get added to.

GET ON WITH IT!: 10 WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 2

Just for the record, the leader of the gang is named Spades Slick, and yes, we’re aware that “spade” is a slur against black people, which makes it slightly unfortunate to be applied as a name to a black-shelled alien creature. However, we’re not counting that as PROBLEMATYKKS because Hussie and the Crew’s original writer certainly did not intend that. It’s not that commonly used a term from what I’ve seen, the playing cards would be the more likely immediate association, and with the other characters being Clubs Deuce, Hearts Boxcars, and Diamonds Droog, it’s just an unfortunate coincidence. If he was a black human, then I’d object more strenuously.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade talks with Dave (I think the conversation is a repeat?)

CHEL: Yep.

GET ON WITH IT!: 11

FAILURE ARTIST: Finally, we get the flash we’ve been waiting for: Dave strifes with his mysterious guardian. Or rather, he strifes with Lil Cal while Bro is a speed blur.

BRIGHT: Unlike the other strifes up to this point, the reader can’t do anything other than watch, because Bro slices the command box in half right at the start.

TIER: In the world of Homestuck, the parental units are overall just really weird! Like dad Egbert severe overabundance of cakes and mom Lalonde's drunken dysfunction. It's overall all hilarious, fitting with the tone and humor of the story well!

But then we have our lovely outlier. The one, the hated, The. Bro “a huge bastard honestly” Strider! A.K.A basically the one guardian whose questionable parenting gets the Real Consequences treatment later on in this tale. Peculiar that.

CHEL: Now, under most circumstances, an adult man beating the hell out of a barely-teenage kid, on the precarious rooftop of a high-rise building no less, would be horrifying. However, Bro chooses to hit Dave with his puppet, which… is frankly hard to take seriously. Obviously it would still hurt if a real person did that, but it looks so stupid that the immediate assumption is that it’s a joke.

BRIGHT: Particularly when earlier strife moves like Rose’s ‘Empty Suicide Threat’ were intended to be humorous. This is about on the same level as that, in terms of severity!

TIER: Being smacked around by the flopping noodle limbs of a freaky puppet is honestly hard to take seriously. Hell, this entire sequence is chock full of outlandish “Rule of Cool” bullshit and I am Peeved that I was apparently supposed to look at this sequence of ridiculous events and go “OBVIOUSLY THIS IS FUCKED UP AND ABUSIVE”.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 7

CHEL: I could kinda see that with hindsight from the rest of the comic, but definitely not “OBVIOUSLY THIS IS A LOT MORE FUCKED UP AND ABUSIVE THAN THE OTHER AWFUL FAMILY CIRCUMSTANCES”, which is what was apparently intended. And we also get another HOW NOT TO point, which we’ll give now even though the official “reveal” comes much later.

A Novel Called It - wherein an abusive parent exists Bad parents are everywhere in unpublished fiction. Whole cities of abusive fathers and sneering mothers live in the pages of books that can’t be sold. While occasionally, and notably in the horror genre, this sort of material can be made good (Carrie, V. C. Andrews), most cruel parents in fiction are just as much fun as they are in real life. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 14

That damn puppet gets creepier every time, admittedly, more so now that Bro is moving so fast that the thing appears to be dancing on Dave’s head under its own power. Dave’s expressions look more annoyed than afraid or hurt, however, in my opinion.

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, we go back to Jade. Rose is pestering her.

TT: I require a font of frighteningly accurate yet infuriatingly nonspecific information. TT: Do you know where I can find a wellspring of this sort?

Very business-like, isn’t it? Rose and Jade’s relationship is a big missed opportunity in this comic. They’re more like friends-of-friends than friends.

CHEL: I don’t know, that sounds to me like how Rose talks to the boys too; facetiously formal. Still, they don’t converse nearly as much as the boys do with each other or them. Male writers in particular tend to do this, and it’s not entirely their faults. People are socialised to think women talk a lot more than they do, so he probably didn’t notice.

TIER: A real shame honestly, we were fucking robbed of some peak interactions between a sunshine flower child and a “dark and brooding” baby goth. Fucking. Robbed.

FAILURE ARTIST: We find out that Jade was the one who had the idea of playing Sburb. She had told Rose that the game would answer some of Rose’s unnamed questions. Rose wants more information on this Big Day. Jade says the game will not be what Rose thinks it is and will answer questions Rose hasn’t thought of yet. On that mysterious note, Jade says goodbye.

CHEL: We check in briefly with Rose in the present, confirming that she’s found the secret passage and is escaping the fire, bringing the corpse of her cat along with her, then to John, who is doing much worse. The ogres (the giant tusked imps) have cornered him, and while he flails frantically about with his Pogo Hammer it doesn’t do much good. They beat the snot out of him with the old Sassacre book and the tire swing, then send him flying into the abyss; fortunately, Nannasprite is able to catch him on his bed and provide healing, allowing him to flail uselessly at the ogres again and get beaten up again, ad infinitum.

Back in the desert, a giant worm-like creature emerges from PM’s bunker and chows down on the cart full of mailboxes. PM is displeased, and puts a hand on the hilt of an ornate black sword.

Cut back to the FAQ, which John has found time to edit with information about the punch card system. He doesn’t know if anyone is left alive to play the game, but Rose asked him to add to it, so he will. He’s figured out with his 133t h4x0r 5k1llz that the captcha code on the back of the cards is converted into a binary-based pattern on the cards, 0 being blank and 1 being a punched hole. Overlapping the cards functions like a bitwise AND operation, causing both to be enacted. The 48-hole card system allows for 300 trillion combinations, but John lampshades the fact that this couldn’t possibly cover every conceivable captchable item, and that various combinations of overlapping cards would just produce the same combination. This is just adding to my conviction that the system ought to be reworked; the totems alone would probably allow for a much wider range, if one gets down to the atomic level of their shape. Then again, those would be a lot harder to merge… Still, I’m sure there’s some way to work it.

BRIGHT: This section was kind of surprising to me because up to this point we haven’t had much if any description of John being into coding, so the section came out of left field somewhat. Not bad, necessarily, just jarring.

CHEL: Actually, he did mention in his intro that he likes to program, albeit not very well, he had some coding books on his shelves, and the icons on his computer are named in a way which implies they’re some of his attempts at coding. However, this interest never really comes up again later that I remember.

Meanwhile, the secret passage Rose followed led to her mother’s laboratory, which bears the logo “SN” with a stylised atom and a spirograph pattern in the loops of the S. It seems Mom Lalonde knows more than she’s letting on about the game. Inside the laboratory is an enormous HUBGRID of devices into which the laptop can be plugged.

FAILURE ARTIST: Rose uses that ol’ r-slur when she says she won’t go on the pad so that’s another point.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 8

CHEL: Jade uses the TRANSPORTALIZER to travel most of the way down to the ground floor, but not all the way down because the one on that floor is blocked. As she walks down the last couple of flights of stairs, we see Grandpa’s own collections of stuff; taxidermised animal heads, suits of armour, mummified corpses (made by pasting in photographs to the cartoon background, it’s creepy as hell), and his BLUE BEAUTIES, or the DAUGHTERS OF ECLECTICA; sun-bleached portrait photographs of beautiful women. On the final floor, we are confronted with the thing blocking the final portal; a gigantic preserved monster with a white head and green serpentine body. It took me till just now to figure it out but I think the white part is supposed to be a human torso on the snake tail; at first it just looked like a snake wearing a stocking mask. That’s what happens when the humans don’t have arms.

Jade thought she had logged off from Pesterchum, but suddenly it pings again, and here we are introduced to an entirely new section of the cast. We’re probably not spoiling anything by not being mysterious about them at this point in the fandom’s history, but just in case, we’ll stick to doing the reveals when the comic does. The person talking to Jade is one of the names from her TROLLSLUM, under the handle carcinoGeneticist; they gloat about being “BETTER AND SMARTER THAN YOU, FOREVER” when asked how they’re still contacting Jade after being blocked, and mock her about today being “FINALLY THE DAY YOU FUCK EVERYTHING UP”. Angry, Jade blocks them again.

FAILURE ARTIST: I had forgotten that “they” appeared so early.

CHEL: Well, “appear” is stretching it; the TROLLSLUM only make contact through Pesterchum for a while yet. And when they show up, we’ll have both plenty of skilfully-written points to pick out and plenty of counts to apply.

#Homespork #homestuck #literary critique #sporking #Let's read #let's read homestuck #homestuck let's read #homestuck review #homestuck meta #homestuck reread

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bumble-booty · 4 years

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Commissions Are Open! (New and Updated Version!)

Commissions are currently Open!

My writing background and preferences!

My Nickname is Bumble Booty or Baby Blue, feel free to use either! My specialty is dark/gore, body horror, psychological horror, and NSFW! However, I will absolutely do non-dark as well, so if light and fluffy is more your preference- I’m still interested in writing it!

I have a Bachelors Degree with a Double Major and a minor- Psychology (specialized in abnormal), Philosophy (integrative study with Psychology), and Criminology (minor and main focus being crime and homicide). As for other useful background, I actually work for a movie store (and one other place, but that one doesn’t give me plot bunnies)!

What that means for you is- don’t be shy with any prompt. I’ve probably been in contact with it before through my studies, personal research, or work-related exposure!

My specialty is Transformers, but I have recently fallen for the Hazbin Hotel fandom. However, I have not written for the latter as of yet. I will most likely get into Hazbin Hotel very soon though! If you want something outside of these fandoms, please expect a slight delay as I research the fandom. Please ask though, as I may still take it on with sufficient info!

Disclaimer: On most occasions, I typically stick to more canon-style fics. It is simply easier for me to work with plausible situations that can expand out from there- however, I might still do more crack-style if I feel confident enough. I will also do original works if I have enough information!

What I will Likely/Certainly Reject: These are subtypes I do not feel confident in/have had bad experiences with/ will not touch with a 10 foot pole.

Pedophilia.

While age-differences are perfectly okay, molesting a child isn’t. All characters in my work WILL be 18+ for NSFW fics, or you can politely take your business elsewhere.

Because sometimes this apparently needs to be said, Age Regression is not Pedophilia. If your preferred characters are of consensual age and this is a psychological fic where the boundaries are CLEARLY set, please feel free to message me. If your character is a child being abused as an adult, do not. I can tell the difference.

Farting/ Flatulence fics.

This is a strange one, but I have had strange experiences with this subtype and those that request it. I have no opinion on your kinks or likes, but I will no longer be accepting fics with this as a PRIMARY FOCUS.

If it happens to be something that might come up- for instance, an IBS coping fic, a period fic, an autopsy/drowning fic, etc- I will happily discuss this being an option as far as accurately describing the symptoms/struggles of those that suffer with these conditions/fates. Do not hesitate to discuss it with me, the worst you will be told is no.

Unusually Predatory/ Targeted Hate Fics.

I am well aware of the trend of shaming someone/ channeling a targeted threat through popular media, and I will not help damage someone’s psyche. If I have reason to believe you are using this fic to try to shame a previous significant other/ trying to use your fic and its exposure to target/mislead someone into what could be a psychologically damaging situation, I will not be working with you. Deciding this is my discretion, and if it is truly not your intent I apologize but stand by my decision. As mentioned prior, If it is not your intent go ahead and email me with your prompt anyway- the worst you will be told is no!

Any Other Fic for Personal Reasons.

I am a person with my own history, and I reserve the right to deny a fic if it strikes too close to home.

My Pricing, Payments, Refunds, and Alterations!

Pricing: I charge in USD on a rising scale for minimum word counts. 50 cents per 100 words, up to $4.50 for 999. After that, it's a flat $5 for 1,000-word increments. So: $5 for 1,000 words, $10 for 2,000 words, $15 for 3,000, etc. Final Pricing will be established before I start working, but I am very flexible! Should you want something changed/altered while I’m working on the draft, please contact me!

Payments: Payments are accepted through Venmo upon completion AND APPROVAL of your work.

Refunds: Refunds will not be served, as I usually don’t accept payment until after the work is completed and approved.

Alterations: If we decide on an alternative prompt after or during the first draft, I will consider this the new commission and write with a new/altered price agreed on by both of us through DM/Email. I will mostly stick with my standard pricing, but any oddities will be discussed privately should something happen on my end to cause a delay.

Side note: I do not have a maximum word count, and if I go over it's ON ME. My Prices are for a minimum, not a maximum.

Request form!

When contacting me about a commission, please send me this general format for ease of keeping everything straight! If you do not, I will reply with this copied in so I know exactly what you want and can ask for more information wherever needed!

Characters: (This is who you want to see! If you want couples, please mark them in the x/x format, with non-couples listed singularly and separated by a comma.)

EX: Prowl/Jazz, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Unnamed Mecha.

Basic Plot: (SFW/NSFW, what you want to happen. This is the main idea I’m working with!)

EX: NSFW, Jazz returns from a mission in a dangerous head space. He is fairly violent to everyone, and is searching for Prowl due to his ability to calm his coding. Optimus and Bumblebee are helping Prowl contain the rouge Ops mech before he offlines half the base.

Sub-Plot: (Kinks/Small Details/ Triggers you want to see. If going into more detail on a particular thing, put a hyphen after the general descriptor and continue. End this with another hyphen, then continue listing if you have more!)

EX: Pinning, Biting, Clawing, Mild Body Horror- Maybe Optimus gets some tubing cut loose? Or a random, unnamed Mech meeting a foul end after startling Jazz? I just want it to be obvious how dangerous Jazz is in this state!- Feral Behavior, Aftercare, and Post-Recovery Apology.

Other: Things you DO NOT WANT TO SEE AT ALL. Please clarify in the same way you clarified in Sub-plot. This is especially important if you are requesting Gore/Trauma fics.

******Please be clear on this!!!! This can be as broad as "no gore" to as specific as the word "moist". Please understand that it is not necessary for you to explain why, nor do you have to give me any reasoning should I ask for you to expand/elaborate. I do, however, reserve the right to ask if similar words/situations would also be off-limits. As mentioned in the personal background, I have studied Psychology and I do not want to be the reason you expand a phobia or traumatic event. PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IS A SERVICE YOU ARE PAYING FOR, AND IT IS MY DUTY TO FILL THIS SERVICE IN A WAY THAT YOU ENJOY! Not put you in a bad head space or trigger you!******

EX: Gutting, Descriptive Bone/strut snapping, Overly Possessive Language- especially the word ‘pet’ or other dehumanizing possessive language along those lines- Unsanitary, and the word “Moist”- similar words such as ‘damp’ or ‘sweltering’ are acceptable (I just don’t like that word).

How To Reach Me!

Email: My work email is “[email protected]”- please put ‘commission’ somewhere in the subject line so I know to look ASAP. I usually respond pretty quick, but I do hold two jobs. Expect an answer within 24 hours. I will reply to the email you contact me with if I have further questions and clarification, or if I’m accepting/rejecting the commission right away!

If you do not receive an answer in 24 hours, feel free to email me again and explain you did not get an answer- it might be a filtering problem that I need to fix!

DM: Direct Messages are also acceptable here, but I will warn that I often forget to check! Email is more reliable for a faster reply, but I will do my best do accommodate those that don’t want to/ can’t email!

Please keep to the same format as you would for an email, but feel free to break it up into sizable portions since messages read a bit weird. I don’t mind the spam messages, I'm that kind of texter myself!

Priority/Timeframe, Rejecting, and Posting/Delivery!

Priority/Timeframe: Commissions will take top priority over other writing work, and if I happen to get two at once it will be by order of receiving. I strive to have 2,000 words and below done per a one week period, anything more than that I will discuss with you over email/pms due to job balancing.

Rejecting: I would like to mention that I still reserve my rights to reject commissions if I feel I am unable to complete them in a manner worthy of accepting payment, or if I feel I cannot give enough personal effort due to work/personal qualms.

Posting/Delivery: Upon completion of the first draft, I will send you the draft script in a downloaded document (usually .docx format) if you like the draft/bones, please respond with any alterations you would like to see! This is additions, subtractions, substitutes, or changes! You can do anything as small as a word, to as large as the entire fic as long as it is agreed upon.

After this is cleared, I will go back through the fic and add flourish and final details. After that is the proofreading phase, then I will send you the completed fic. If you are not happy with the final fic, please respond with what you would like changed and I will GLADLY fix the issues!

DISCLAIMER: I will not post your finished product without your permission if it is a payment-finalized product! This means that if you have paid for it, it is yours to keep. If I really liked the fic, I might ask your permission to post it to my AO3 Account with it either listed as a gift fic to your AO3 account, or with a notice placed in the notes at the top of the page that this was a commissioned piece, followed by your username/"anonymous" if you would not like it known that it was yours.

HOWEVER: I ask that you do not post these works as if they were your own! I work very hard on my commissions and put substantial research into each piece, and I am more than willing to signal boost you on the work as well for sponsoring it! If you have a private archive or something similar that you intend on posting it to, please mention it to me during the initial emails/dms and we can discuss it. (I highly doubt I will mind though, I can understand some organization quirks!)

Samples!

If you would like to read some samples of my works, Check me out on AO3!

http://archiveofourown.org/users/BumbleBooty

Here are some samples of my personal favorite works within my most popular word count brackets!

Less than 1K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/13413417

Thuck! E's Thuck! - Bumblebee/Grimlock, NSFW, Vore

1K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/13445199

Those Who Need Us The Most- Bumblebee/Grimlock, SFW, Comfort

2K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/13356138

The Sweetest Melody- Tarn/Pharma, NSFW, Body Horror

3K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/12662973

Detecting the Undetectable- Jazz/Prowl, NSFW, Heat Cycles

4K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/12275850

SCP 3262- Bumblebee, Original work, SCP Crossover

Just under 5K- http://archiveofourown.org/works/12199893

All For You- Jazz/Prowl, NSF, Candy Armour Vore Style

6K+- http://archiveofourown.org/works/13407669

Pretty Kitty-Prowl/Jazz/Smokescreen, NSFW, Neko/Werewolf Heatfic

#commission #commission me #commissions open #writing commissions #maccadam #hazbin hotel

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jedwashere · 5 years

Text

A Billion Years Away - Chapter One

Empty In The Valley Of Your Heart.

***

It’s empty in the valley of your heart,

The sun, it rises slowly as you walk,

Away from all the fears and all the faults you’ve left behind.

***

Stardate 2507.03.22

U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-I.

Whether deliberate or not on the part of several generations of Starfleet engineers, the Starships Enterprise almost all looked like ‘the’ Enterprise. There were design features that were common across the board: maybe not common to all ships, but there was always one of the key features present in every design. A saucer section, an elegant neck leading down into a sleek stardrive section, long nacelles swept back and extending out from the body of the ship. Oh, sure, a ship might miss out the long nacelles, or the swan neck might be shorter and more integrated, but there was never any mistaking the Enterprise when you saw her.

The U.S.S. Enterprise-I was the latest in that illustrious lineup of ships, and in many ways harked back to an older age. Starfleet, after a century of crises that had ranged from temporal manipulation to renewed hostility with Klingons to an invasion from outside the known universe (hadn’t that been a fun way to spend the 25th century?), had made a conscious effort (and not for the first time) to return to an age of exploration, hope, optimism. This was reflected in the classic lines of the I: her elegant swan neck leading from a round saucer to a cylindrical stardrive section, a glowing orange deflector array and thin, elegant pylons leading backwards to a pair of nacelles that were short, but stretched just far enough back to give the impression of length, movement, and speed.

This ship, Captain Alyn Jallistra had thought, when she first saw the Enterprise in drydock, was built for boldly going.

She had held onto that thought for the ten years she had commanded her, never letting it go. An unjoined Trill, Jallistra had always preferred the notion that life was short, to be lived, and then to be ended. Where all her colleagues and friends on Trill had been so eager to go and join with symbionts (or at least try to), she had been content to go to Earth, go through Starfleet Academy, and get her commission the old-fashioned way. Not that people still didn’t occasionally think she was a joined Trill.

It was an old irritant. Any time one of us is competent, or calm, or thoughtful, it’s never on our own merits, it’s because a symbiont’s doing it.

Still, she thought as she sat at her ready room desk, reading an old book. She had served as the Captain of this ship for a decade. Any old issues she might have had, she had long since gotten over.

The book was an older one, a prose adaptation of a holonovel: Captain Proton and the Dark Mirror. Written as an homage to science fiction books of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the late Tom Paris in the mid 25th century, it told of Captain Proton’s Encounter with an ‘evil universe’, and a gripping battle against dark forces.

It was all make-believe nonsense, of course. Real parallel universes, even the most extreme examples that Jallistra had read up on, were never so simplistic. Still, it was entertaining in its - what did they call it? ‘Campiness’?

Her computer beeped just as she reached a climactic moment where Proton had cornered his mirror self, the evil Captain Neutron (these names are ridiculous). Sighing, she marked her spot and put her PADD down, before tapping her computer's control panel.

“Authorisation Jallistra, Three Six Beta Upsilon,” she said with practiced ease.

A moment later, the image of a striking woman with brown eyes, greying hair, pale skin and the barest hint of a set of forehead ridges popped onto her screen, a soft smile upon her face.

“Captain Jallistra,” Admiral Kathryn Paris said evenly. “Good to see you,”

“Admiral Paris,” Jallistra replied evenly. “What can we do for you?”

“We’ve picked up something strange near your neck of the woods,” Paris replied. “It’s some kind of anomaly, originating in the Harlak system.”

“An anomaly?” Jallistra repeated. “What kind of anomaly?”

“We don’t know,” Paris replied quietly, “but it’s off the charts. You’re the nearest ship to the anomaly, so we’d like you to go take a look.”

Jallistra smiled. “Of course, Admiral. I’ll have us divert course immediately.”

“Good,” Paris said. She paused. “Be careful, Captain. If it turns out to be more than just a standard anomaly, I want you to pull out.”

Jallistra nodded. “I will take all the precautions I have to, ma’am.”

Paris smiled. “Good. Good luck, Captain. Paris out.”

Her image disappeared, to be replaced by the Federation’s symbol. After a moment, Jallistra let out a sigh, and tapped the intercom.

“Bridge, this is the Captain,” she said. “Please redirect our course to the Harlak system, warp six.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” the voice of Liam West, her alpha-shift Conn officer, said.

Well, there we go, Jallistra thought. Now we just have to see what happens next.

***

Erlös.

Lorca wasn’t used to comfortable beds, and so perhaps could be forgiven for making full use of it. He was lying down, the cover sprawled over his pyjama-clad body, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. The diffused light was brighter now, and he was forced to wince, but the light change was slower, so he accepted the pain.

He was lost in a flow of thoughts. One minute he was thinking of how he was going to pass off who he was - again - and the next he was remembering Michael Burnham, her eyes staring at him with…

… with what? Horror? Pity? Revulsion? All of the above?

I should never have gone back, the thought came, too quickly to be strangled in the crib. I should have stayed. Had medals pinned on me. Kept doing… what did they call it? Kept ‘boldly going’. Taken the hard jobs and won them for the Federation. I’d have been a damn legend.

And Burnham… Burnham with her gratitude, Burnham with her intellect, Burnham with that human heart that even a lifetime among Vulcans didn’t quell… she would have stayed with him. Been his officer. His protege. He’d have been able to leverage her commission, been able to win anything for her. In many ways, she was much easier than the Michael Burnham he had loved: his Michael had demanded an Empire, but all the Federation’s Burnham wanted was freedom, exploration, space.

All the things I love, Lorca thought. Or rather, all the things he had come to love. Perhaps it was the same thing.

There was a knock at his door, and before he could answer, a woman in more elaborate robes than Laurien’s entered the room. She was just as pale as Laurien, with white hair: despite this, however, she didn’t look a day over thirty. Lorca sat up.

“Captain Gabriel Lorca,” she said evenly. She looked around the room, before meeting his gaze. “I trust that the accommodation here has been sufficient for your needs. We have had few of your ilk here.”

Lorca gave another of his winning smiles. “Well, that bed’s certainly comfier than any starship billet I’ve ever been in. Any Starfleet Officer who doesn’t think that’s up to scratch probably needs a bit of a reality check.”

“I am glad,” the woman said. She smiled. “I am Eloise. I am the leader of the settlement here on Erlös.”

“Pleasure,” Lorca said. “I’m grateful you found me.”

“Perhaps you are,” Eloise said coyly. Before Lorca could ask what that meant, she continued. “Laurien reported that you say you command the starship Buran.”

“That’s right,” Lorca said, keeping his face neutral. Don’t give them an inch.

“Our people eschew technology,” Eloise said. “Dannik - did Laurien mention him?” At Lorca’s nod, Eloise continued. “Dannik is the one among us chosen to work with technology. I wanted to be sure of the details of who you are. And where you came from.”

Lorca found it was an effort not to frown, but he persisted. “Is there some confusion?”

“A little,” Eloise said. “When we found you, you had a stab wound that was quite severe, to the point where we had to have Dannik use our medical technologies on you.”

The way she said ‘technologies’ sounded like she was talking about magic. And yet she knew what Starfleet and the Federation was.

“You were also clad in clothing quite distinct from that which we are accustomed to Starfleet people wearing,” Eloise continued. “Much of it was burnt or otherwise damaged, but it was definitely not a Starfleet uniform.”

Not one you’d recognise, anyway, Lorca thought. Time to try out a story.

“That’s because it wasn’t one,” Lorca said grimly. “It was… it was the sort of attire my captors wore.”

“Your ‘captors’?” Eloise repeated.

“It’s… difficult to explain,” Lorca said. Gotta sell it, Gabe. “They were… it was…”

He shook his head, trying to give an impression of trauma. He’d certainly played that role before, thanks to his time playing Lorca of the Buran to Cornwell (damn her), Terral and just about anyone else.

“I understand,” Eloise said, apparently buying it. She smiled. “If you like, we can show you around while you’re waiting here for your people.”

Lorca nodded. “I’d be much obliged for a tour. Though, uh…” He motioned to his clothes. “Maybe if you’ve got a spare uniform lying around, I could swap into that? Walking around half naked doesn’t seem right to me.”

Eloise nodded. “Dannik will replicate a uniform appropriate to your rank, after he has sent the transmission. I will send Laurien with it shortly.”

“Thanks,” Lorca said, inclining his head. “I’m grateful.”

And despite himself, he was. These people had apparently patched him up: they didn’t have to, and if it had been his world, they wouldn’t have.

“And when we speak again,” Eloise continued, “we will speak of the means of your arrival.”

With that, she turned and exited the room, leaving Lorca to his thoughts.

‘Speak of the means of my arrival’, he mused. Be nice if I knew that myself.

***

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

#star trek discovery #fanfic #fan fiction #captain lorca #alternate universe #plot bunnies made me #not my fault lorca was awesome

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lobotomycorp-unofficialeventfan · 6 years

Text

Comments of submitted arts

I translated the judges ' evaluations. I am sorry that I am not good at English. But I did my best.

If I get a chance someday, I'll visit you in a more proficient way!

*********************Evaluation details************************

<<Lobotomy Corporation Unofficial Fan Art Contest Winners>> - Illustration

. . . 1st.

Wish the event will go smootley! [Leafy] https://goo.gl/m9Vg8y . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) . Objectively, this seems to be the best. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) . He has just given relief to the pain of one of his employees. Did the peace given to him lead to happiness in the staff? I'm not sure. We'll just have to mourn. Until he gives us eternal rest. . (Translate plz.) 솔직히, 더 이상 무슨 말씀을 드려야 될 지 모르겠습니다. 내 관점에서는 당신이 최고입니다. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) . The whole body was excited and it was really cool and to my taste. I think he(or she)'s winning my appetite. The realistic paintings and unique atmosphere fascinated me.

. ----------------------------------------- (Sponsor-1) . Looking at the picture, It was worth 150,000 won invested in the competition. I am happy to find such a good quality for 150,000 won. (150,000 won -> about $ 140) . ----------------------------------------- (Sponsor-2) . It was the foreign participant that made us realize that this was an international competition.

I got the mail and looked at the pictures in advance, but I don't think I have any problem getting the first prize.

Their expressions and techniques also had the perfect technology and the right filters for the atmosphere.

I think it suits the atmosphere of the game. I will give you the highest point in both quality and original interpretation.

. ----------------------------------------- .

. .

2nd.

Artworks for awesome mood in game [ N_9] https://goo.gl/wcAqMt . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) . +) The cuteness that covers the horror completely and separation. -) The dimple is so doll looking. If someone have only seen Pan Art, they don't think it's a horror game.

. ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) . The atmosphere of the old version of the game is fantastic. So why did you submit three? If you are a foreigner, but you are a Korean ... . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) . Admiration, Admiration, Admiration. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) . The atmosphere is fantastic and the employees of the previous game version. It is an adaptation of a scene from a legacy trailer. It is an old user's picture that

shows that he has played the game since the previous version. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) . It looks like a professional illustrator. The atmosphere is really good. I liked the idea of perfectly implementing a game picture like a book illustration. Its structure, lighting, and old atmosphere were all perfect.

However, only two pictures can be submitted. While agonizing over it, I examined the third painting except for it, and it was sadly well drawn.

Older versions of the game staff seem to be the norm. Clearly, previous versions of the staff were even more eerie as they were round and cute, compared to game settings. Once again it has been proven.

. ----------------------------------------

3rd.

Slime girl and the queen of hatred [moolon] https://goo.gl/pqQty5 . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) . +) A soft flowing Slime girl and a cute queen of hatred. -) But let's not meet in the game. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) . Ho Ho Ho, I love the Slimes girl. The Queen of Hatred is pretty. Ok, Hong, Hong, oh! . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) . It is a beautiful picture of " Molten Love. " Just like a slime, I want to add a little more clarity or shine. The Queen of Hatred is brighter than the Slimes. It doesn't matter, anyway. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) . I'd like to tell the writer that I used 3 packs of tissue. (It's still growing.) . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) . well implemented the glittery of the Slimes and the glitter of the Queen of Hatred. The Queen of Hatred could have become too colorful. But he painted it very cute, elaborate and without eye pain.

Slimes might have been nice to have a more shiny description. But the melting expression is very good.

The only regret is that I'm not a fan of both. So I could not give additional points. . -----------------------------------------

. . .

<<Lobotomy Corporation Unofficial Fan Art Contest Winners>> - Novel

. ***All the judges participated in the review.*** . . . 1st.

No one will be left [5boonmander] https://goo.gl/YqQsnY . The beginning the and end of a new recruit [5boonmander] https://goo.gl/FShVro . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) . The subject of the fog war. Clearness as well as clarity.

. The process of family members disappearing was impressive. I did not expect to do so with only the " setting of game " of the fog war.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) . Are you worried that there are no photobias, no blood, no trials, no stories? You can see Lobotomy's grim world view through any unnamed employee, sometimes perfect in writing except for a few paragraphs that have been too long for description. Personally, I like a rich description.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) . A good article feels the moment you see the first sentence. This article did. It is my favorite way to end the first and last sentences in the same form. The novel was a perfect beginning and ending, especially with its combination of writing power and plot. A story without a story or story that could not be used went off the rails.

In particular, it is a story from Lobotomy Corporation " Outside. " But it wasn't awkward at all. It is a novel that mixes elements of the world view that did not appear in the game.

. It was a novel about how the staff who worked at Lobotomy worked. It was a perfect way to boost tension and finish it. The spelling is also correct. We give you the highest marks in the quality of the novel and the original interpretation.

. ----------------------------------------- . . . 2nd.

Eternal Meal [Carania] https://goo.gl/ZPyThF . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) If it was in the form of " recording, " the script format was not bad. But at the end, the character himself said, " This is not a recording. " So I had to re-evaluate the assessment. It has been a long time since I took the introduction speech of the previous version of midnight.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) It was an interesting story that was created by linking the text from this book. It was a great victory. It was so cool.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) It is very similar to the story of " Ppodae. " Are you a prophet? So I gave him extra points. It is also ironic that the main character was chosen as a safety team. Nezach cries... overly descriptions and dialogue between overly agreeable characters were a bit annoying. But this is a good novel.

. ----------------------------------------- . . . 3rd. [*spoiler*] A person standing by [Hwatottbool] https://goo.gl/GvzYgg . . (Gallery sub director) Angela's mind was revealing well. The sight of me made me feel lonely. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) I remember that it was a novel that was just before the Ending Update. it was a prophecy. It has a pretty style and description. Character interpretation worked well. But this is not a novel. This is a memoir of a person. I was bored because there was no incident.

Since this contest is a novel contest, it was judged on the basis of novels. . -----------------------------------------

. ******************************** Additional Lists *********************************

<<Lobotomy Corporation Unofficial Fan Art Contest>> - Inspection details for Foreign participants

Hello! [bakaiju]

https://goo.gl/A7Zizy . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) A work of high quality and full of hard work But I am sorry that letitia's eyes are only pretty. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) . Nice judge. Many abnomarlity. And, thank you for your participation. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) The image of the referee bird and the employee who died next to him was so good and great. If you had paid more attention to detail, I would have given you the high marks.

But the second picture felt strange. I find the Queen of Hatred strange. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) It places significance on the first foreign participation. The background and quality are unfortunate. The first picture seems to be done by hand and the second picture by computer. The Queen of Hatred and Latitia are a bit sad.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) It was thought that foreigners should participate in the event, so I went around foreign sites for three days. And I was worried if no one attended. However, this arts immediately gave an impression. I was personally impressed.

So I gave him extra points. The quality is also good. Thanks to this work, I gained confidence that it is okay to put effort into promoting this contest.

However, quality did not give the highest point for some details. Thank you. . ----------------------------------------- .

. . I hope this… [7-Tek]

https://goo.gl/1PiiCm . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) A solemn yet colorful butterfly -) Nothing. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) butterfly is the best. NA. BI. ZO. AH. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) GOOD! Neat light and shade, proper background, and beautiful work. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) It is a fairly good painting, " The funeral of dead butterflies. " It was neat and well-colored. The flying butterflies keep the background from getting bored. He worked hard at expressing the back of his coffin. But it's just a " funeral of dead butterflies. " lol

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) High quality is the " funeral for dead butterflies ". This is a work which really

excited me. Color selection and line description are outstanding. The dark clothing, which can become a lump in the face, is described wisely with lights and dividing lines.

It faithfully depicts butterfly men and has a serious quality. But it's simply that I don't have any additional points because I don't like the guy. Haha...

. ----------------------------------------- .

. . Good day [Mushroomliang]

https://goo.gl/9BN7Qy . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) Well represented the characteristics of each upper layers sepiroth. -) I saw a beer on the table, but this is not a beer place. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Netzach's bedtime is impressive. but Yesod's clothes are preety bad. How many penalty points? . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) A painting with a beautiful, calm, water-coloured expression and a sense of calm that is rarely seen in the Lobotomy corporaton.

I can feel another emotion from the mess of Nezach. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) You must love your Jacques. Me too ... It's not good, but I'd like to have a beer with him.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) Looking at the picture of Nezach lying upside down, I thought I should let him in. Thank you for accepting the invitation.

I was glad to see that the picture was submitted. The eye of art has no borders. Without digital work, they painted only manually. The book gave the original interpretation the highest point in that it revealed the character's individuality through proper setting, not just by expressing characters.

However, I could not feel my preference in the characters submitted. Failure with additional points.

. ----------------------------------------- .

. . art contest [Midson Vonjungle]

https://goo.gl/t4am7B . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) His "noting there" is good. -) His final form of evolution requires holes in the ship. I was embarrassed. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) So simple message. So simple art. I love simple. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) I liked the scary and wonderful " Nothing " that " Goodbye. " However, I want to feel more Gore. I think it is enough to be expressed by hand.

For " Dream of the Black swan, " I'm sorry. Honestly, I didn't like it. When I first saw it, I didn't understand what it was, so I thought it over. If you had painted each characteristic alive, I would have given a much higher score.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) It is regrettable that the lines are neatly aligned and uncoloured. If you had painted the color, I would give high scored the picture .

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) "Nothing there", waving an ax, shouting " Goodbye. " "Black swan's dream"s brother, who looks like he is screaming at his sister, " Get some

money. " It is also a mysterious work that although it is a simple, creased painting, everything

is expressed. However, they did not get high scores in terms of quality as they did not have any painting and had no other explanation besides drawing.

If you had submitted it more carefully, it would have been at least middle class. When the artist painted this painting, it is regrettable that the painting might have been painted roughly due to his impulsivism.

. -----------------------------------------

. I like Snow White’s apple [JeeJee]

https://goo.gl/ME21Ly . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) Painted apples like a cruel fairy tale -) It is regrettable that the wings of "White night" are not sharp but round. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer)

The end of the story is that " Finally, she was happy with another prince." Stop resisting. I am cure you. Pretty art. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) It was nice to reinterpret the story of the apple. Let's wish her happiness. The grandeur and beauty of the white night was a little trim. It would have been even cooler if you had put in a clock unique to the white night instead of the Magic Circle behind you and instead worked more carefully on the description of the wings.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) Our apples can't be that good. The paintings are neat and reveal the author's personal desires. Applelover!

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) Snow White's apple can be cute, and white night can be dignified with the SD ratio. I like hard work in background, excellent lighting, and SD ratio and structure. However, Deporme is so severe that the detailed description of characters is regrettable that it does not give the highest quality score.

This drawing style is similar to the Lobotomy Corporation game. With a little attention, it is likely to be able to produce an impact no less than the original.

. ----------------------------------------- . . . owo TwT [Michin]

https://goo.gl/4oyWgV . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) It's amazing and amazing that Malkuth's right hair got longer when she broke up. -) Nothing. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) It's a pretty cool mood. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) I gave the highest marks in the original interpretation part. I was impressed by the neat and clear portrayal of each character's bad side. It's like a party for all the people. A picture that seems to reveal each other's character in a warm and warm manner.

I wish it had actually ended this way. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) The contrast between the first painting, which is quite dark, and the second painting,

which displays the characters, is impressive. But i think hod is not good. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) I think, most foreign fans prefer the upper layers to the middle layers, cuz they are more important the psychological description.

This fan also seems to draw a lot of upper class fan art. I was impressed by her emphasis on the double personality of ** in the upper tier factoid.

I also liked the way the upper layers were destroyed. So i give that the best score about original interpretation part. . ----------------------------------------- . . . Daily work [白華]

https://goo.gl/gKCKVy . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) It's like a old-Maker game. If the main character of the game was an employee, this game's style would have appeared this way.

-) What the h...er character?

. ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Deep Dark Lobotomy's daily work. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) The highest-quality piece of dot art that has appeared on this contest. It felt like a game script with a graphic like a classic game. Just after a friend dies, he joked, " Who's going to get rid of this?" I felt another strange feeling.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) Management, log-like, simulation - > Maker Game Event Personally, that sounds like a pretty good challenge. Overall, the quality is good. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) Pan-Art turned Lobotomy corporation into an old game atmosphere by mixing dot art and scripts properly.

She laughs at her fellow body and says she won the bet. It shows the broken minds of Lobotomy's employees.

The quality of the object expressed in dots and the detailed Easter egg implementation are very good. It gave him the highest point in the original translation.

It was a piece that showed how the mental state of employees who say they miss the smell of blood was felt by foreigners alike.

. ----------------------------------------- .

. . Fan Art Contest(Angela :x) [清川淀武]

https://goo.gl/Fg7n2M . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) Angela hides huge greed and tries to punish bad people. -) Grow up, my hair! . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) I thought I would write it in English, but I think I'd better put it in Korean. Whose hand is Angela holding? And what does the background mean? Does that punitive bird go to punish Angela? Or did they just follow up?

I don't know the purpose, but it seems possible to interpret in many ways. Is it Angela who has just been made and hasn't gone through the TT2 protocol? . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) Beautiful and dreamlike. Originally, the punishing bird is not matched about this atmosphere. However, I liked the unique atmosphere as a point.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) The background resembles the king of greed's pattern . I hope that the king of greed will eat Engela hard. [Censored]

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) It depicts Angela and a punishing bird with elaborate backgrounds reminiscent of the king of greed.

Angela seems to have expressed her desire for what Ending showed her. Using an accurate but distinct description and depth, the background reflects slightly beyond Angela's clothes, creating a mysterious atmosphere.

I thought :X was just a facial expression, but now I think the main character in Angela's hand is X.

. ----------------------------------------- . . . Lobotomy corp. illustration for Contest [noyuki]

https://goo.gl/a1JY5H . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) Same teenagers, different feeling. -) Just inevitable beauty of Letitia's eyes. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Letitia shot my emotion with a pretty. The magical girl is as cheerful as her profile is. Very good. But why is Letitia's eye normal?

Were you Japanese? I give up on English. I am sorry. Let's understand because we are from the same East Asian country.

(= I'll bother Sponsor-2.) . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) Letitia's cute features, appropriate backgrounds, detailed effects and fine hades. The Queen of Hatred suits the background, which looks like an American comic book. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) I'd like to tell the writer that I used five tissue boxes. The picture of Queen of Hatred seemed to shake a little, so I thought it was moving at first. So i've been watching.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) The detailed description and color were so harmonious that they gave the highest marks in quality.

A picture of a magic girl hurts her eyes. I like the fact that while using strong colors, the colors do not play separately and melt into one piece.

The character interpretation was also well implemented without any differences, but the original interpretation part score is not the best.

. -----------------------------------------

Lobotomy_corporation FAN ART [秋津]

https://goo.gl/iJL1eU . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) Clean style. -) But something is missing. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Good placement and not bad background for the same department location. It seems to be a good description of the upper layers. And Angela, who suggests in the front that things will go his way. I like it. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) Pictures drawn about upper layers.The painting is a neat and well-relieved picture. However, although some of the paintings were omitted, this painting simply listed characters. So i failed to give a high score.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) Nezach is turning back hair beside his ear. Why? It is Angela and upper layers, which is in line with the position of the upper division. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) The positioning of the characters is also the same as the location of the department in the game with Angela.

It was clean pastel version of description and color, but the problem was only lined, which lacked the another impact.

Perhaps the picture just submitted was more so as it was compared with the one in brilliant colors and styles. The painting itself was good, but the timing of submission was not good.

. -----------------------------------------

Submit arts for FanArt Contest [BleryKey]

https://goo.gl/D8XXCe . . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) A different atmosphere about abnormalities. -) Nothing. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Strong red hood. She will be kill wolf. Knight of dispair was drown fairy tale style. what a cool style. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) It was a painting that made the touch rough so that the life of a red mercenaries could be felt. But I felt somewhat awkward.

I like realistic things, but the face of the article of despair has become so realistic, So i felt awkward... a little too much.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) The article of despair is of good quality, but not of mercenaries. I prefer mercenaries

to knights of despair, what does this mean? certainly a contrast between red and blue. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) would draw a red mercenary or marksman of magic bullet. he(or she) also sent in mercenaries. to be nice The manual drawing of a foreign artist using strong texture and penmanship was so impressive that it gave the original analysis the best point.

The painting of "knight of despair" seems to be boring as the painting is a bit lackluster in coloring after using detailed descriptions.

Therefore, it does not give the highest point in quality. . -----------------------------------------

Art contest submissions [K-108] https://goo.gl/o7XkdQ

. ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) The woodcutter was well described. -) I don't like the wings of white nights because they are not sharp, it's just round. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) Simple. Simple symbol. Cute Whitenight, And Fooooooooooooooooookin Axe guy. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) Only the woodcutter looked very good because the background of the hungry heart, the axe, and the rusty face caused synergy.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) It looks like white night is pissed. The painting shows the color, expression, and

lumberjack's aspirations. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) It is a picture that is decorated like an abstract sentence.I didn't think about white night, but the lumberjack was so cool.

The expression of the rusty helmet and cross axe in his keyword, " Heart, " was very good. He also had a good brush effect.

It seems to be an example of a good result in a simple drawing style. However, the white night seems to shoot the beam from the eye. I am really sorry for not scoring well because of laughing.

lol... loool... looooooooooooool........ sorry!

. -----------------------------------------

. [FAN ART Contest] [siriu]

https://goo.gl/C8f133 . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery director) +) A work of great detail -) But no one uses weapons as well as Geburah. . ----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer) It's the last time you'll be attending. If you had come a little later, you would have been buried. You were really lucky. They all wear suits and only carry EGO weapons. He must be a competent manager. It's gonna hurt a lot. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) A dynamic painting that came up just before the closing time. It has a solid background, and EGO's expression that each of them is holding, and the

fine detail of the staff is all good. For a balanced evaluation, a demerit was made from the fact that the EGO clothes were not worn. I am truly sorry.

. ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-1) The manager made only weapons but didn't build a defense equipment!! How did he make a weapon in full dress? . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) I didn't expect a foreigner to turn in his work six minutes before the deadline. If I had not opened the mailbox... Everything is perfect, including situations, character locations, weapons presentations,

detailed descriptions, and the identity of the game. The color is also well matched, so that it is visible without anyone being buried. I think it would have been okay if the outline of characters was a little thicker, but this was excellent.

. ----------------------------------------- .

A Day of My Agent [Mr.Deleted]

https://goo.gl/TsdW1s

----------------------------------------- . (contest organizer)

Thank you for your novel. . ----------------------------------------- . (Gallery sub director) Don't sweat it. The translation went well. The sentence was of moderate length. The confusion, fear and anger of the description and character were well felt. . ----------------------------------------- . (Sponsor-2) It was crazy to translate a foreign language that I didn't even know based on Papago translation. I'm afraid things that I thought might have been double-tracked while I was translating it to make it really readable didn't go away cool afterwards. Sorry. I am happy to introduce a game novel written by foreigners. The description I saw was excellent. What a crusade!

. -----------------------------------------

#lobotomy corporation #lobotomy corp #lobotomycorporation #Fanart #fan art #contest #papago

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calmdowncolb · 6 years

Text

I wrote a very dumb little short Seth/Finn story that I am calling a “A New York Christmas” and it is dedicated to and also a present for @artemidi who is my favorite human.

this is 2071 words of pure indulgent Christmas goodness.

“Babe, come onnnnn.” Seth gently headbutted against Finn’s shoulder for the third time.

“Hey! You almost made me mess up the window frame!”

Finn was on a roll again.

He was sat at the dining room table, shoulders hunched and eyes intently staring at the gingerbread house before him. He held a bag of icing carefully, like a grand paint brush, as he decorated the side of the house with delicate loops. He had bowls of four different colored icings surrounding him, each with a butterknife stuck inside. A white plastic tray with different compartments held all sorts of colorful candies. Besides that was a box of toothpicks that Finn used for, in his words, “detailing”.

This was the third gingerbread house he had created that week.

Finn was inventive and creative all year-round, from the Lego masterpieces he could effortlessly create or the elaborate drawings he’d whip up when he had spare time.

Seth could watch him all day, if even just for the faces he made while applying details.

Today, however, Seth had a plan. A very important plan, at that! But it was never going to work out if Finn didn’t take a break from his work and pay attention to him.

“Where’s that foundation brush?” Finn asked, mumbling. He was only able to take a breath after he completed the row of delicate piping.

“The what?” Seth made a face.

“I bought like, a makeup brush so I could apply the edible glitter. You didn’t see it? I left it somewhere... “

“Baby, I wanna go pick out a tree.” Seth reminded him. Again. “Come on, you promised.”

Finn still didn’t look at his pouty partner. He was considering something… Perhaps changing the color scheme of the gumdrops on the roof or the placement of the candy reindeer on the cotton-candy front lawn.

“I know, baby, gimme ten minutes.” He said absently.

“I did! Thirty minutes ago!” Seth groaned and let his body fall into the chair next to Finn with a thud.

Finn finally shot him a glance, but only because of the way the table shook from impact. However, once he saw the pure despair painted all over the puppy-faced boy, he couldn’t help but giggle.

“I’m sorry, hon.” Finn took Seth’s chin in hand. “You wanna go get ready?”

“I’ve been ready.” Seth gestured to himself. He was dressed cozy in a black sweater; his jeans ruffled slightly at his ankles to reveal the warm socks Finn had knitted him before starting his gingerbread craze.

Finn let out a sigh; more loving now.

“Alright, baby.” He, albeit reluctantly, gave his creation another look-over before pushing himself away from the table and padding back to their bedroom.

Apartments in New York City were known to be small, sometimes even cramped, but that didn’t bother the couple. Their bedroom was mostly just that… a room with a bed. The queen mattress took up the entire room, leaving only space for a walkway to the closet where their clothes hung.

A few garments of Seth’s were strewn over the comforter and floor. Finn, on his way to the closet, picked up one of the many black tee shirts and brought it to his nose to inhale the sweet residual smell of Seth’s skin.

In the dining room, Seth pounced on his opportunity.

He hadn’t been able to get enough privacy within their small space to pull his peacoat on and slip the box inside his pocket. It was slightly bigger than his fist and threatened to not fit at all, but with quiet and gentle perseverance, he tucked it in and snapped the pocket button closed. As if on cue, Finn came back out, now with a light grey sweater pulled over his muscled frame.

Cartoon-like, he walked past the table where his obsession sat, only to then walk backwards and re-examine it. With a look of horror, he snatched up a toothpick and went back to work, correcting some frosting or crunchy candy bit.

Seth’s hands fell flat to his sides from pure frustration.

“BABY.”

“Sorry, let’s go!”

Finn was already vaguely familiar with New York City after having visited a few times as a child. He had told Seth time and again the story of his first trip to Rockefeller Center and how he had been so entranced by the beauty of the magnificent Christmas tree there.

He knew the location of a local Christmas tree nursery after determination to make his own perfect tree lead to intensive research.

Seth’s new fascination with picking out a tree was an unexpected one. Being on the high-maintenance side, maybe even bratty sometimes, Finn didn’t think his boyfriend would want to seek out a freshly cut real tree. It would have to sit and relax in the apartment for a few days before they could even decorate it. Branches would have to be cut and reorganized, then sap would leak everywhere…

It just wasn’t Seth’s style.

Despite that, Finn was never one to complain. He knew without being told that Seth was probably only daring to leave his comfort zone for his own sake. Admittedly, it was cute.

With any other destination in mind, they could take an Uber, giving them the chance to make out in the backseat and make any local driver despise them. But since the tree would have to be escorted home, it was Seth’s turn to drive.

Finn, who must have had energy pent up from sitting and focusing on his gingerbread house for so long, incessantly poked and tickled at Seth’s ribs while he drove, earning playful scolds until finally his offending hand was captured and held for the remainder of the drive.

The nursery was a little out of the way from their tiny apartment, and finding parking was a nightmare, but Seth knew it would all be worth it in the end.

They stepped inside, hand-in-hand, after complimenting the white and gold lights that adorned the outside.

Inside, the lobby had four massive trees set up in each corner. They were decorated in different color schemes: silver and gold, red and green, blue and silver and rainbow. Classic Christmas tunes played over a speaker system.

Finn immediately gravitated to the blue and silver tree, ooh’ing and ahh’ing at the incredible sparkling lights and shiny orbs hanging from the branches.

Seth joined him in observation, but merely pretended to look while his hand made its way to inside his pocket to stroke at the hidden box inside.

The trees for sale were kept in a side room, accessed by a long hallway.

Inside, the smell of fresh pine instantly hit whoever entered like a smack.

The trees were set up in columns, each with their own stand, all held together by a metal fence. Little price tags were stuck to one branch of each tree.

A small station was set up in the center of the room, with an employee greeting and helping customers. At her table was mix to make hot cocoa and a plate of sugar cookies for anyone to grab. Seth and Finn shared a cookie and a few extra-sweet kisses as they shopped.

Being tender-hearted as always, Finn was instantly attached to a delicate looking tree. It was smaller than the rest and had a few bare spots from missing or twisted branches.

Seth, on the other hand, chose the tallest and strongest looking tree, not concerned with how it towered over his own body.

After an hour of playful bickering and teasing, and <i>several</i> laps around the entire room, they found and selected a beautiful happy medium- a 6 foot tall Fraser Fir, plump and gorgeous emerald green.

They informed the attendant of their selection and she happily called an assistant over to bag and carry the tree for the boys. They were told to head back to the lobby to pay and they raced each other there.

Instead of getting in line at the checkout desk, Finn returned to the silver and blue tree.

“Baby, pick out an ornament!” Seth suggested when he noticed.

“Really?” Finn looked back with a smile bright enough to envy the tree itself.

“Yeah! Somethin’ you can remember today with…”

Without another word, Finn grinned again and began fluttering around the tree, carefully considering and examining each ornament.

Seth now felt the weight of the box in his pocket, as if it were a hundred pounds. He pretended to look around the ornaments with his boyfriend, feeling his pores break a slight sweat as he waited for the perfect time.

“I like this one… and this one… Seth, they’re all wonderful, I dunno how I could ever choose…”

“Maybe there’s one over on the other trees you’d like more?” Seth heard his voice crack as his nerves seeped in. He quickly cleared his throat and for once, was thankful that Finn’s attention was not directed at him.

“Mmm… Maybe…” Finn drifted away, in the direction of the equally stunning rainbow tree in the opposite end of the room.

This was it. Seth’s chance had made itself known.

Hastily but carefully, he whipped the box from his pocket, looking frantically over his shoulder every five seconds or so. He opened the box, took the plastic ball out- an ornament of his own- and searched for an unoccupied branch to hang it on.

As if on cue, Finn returned a second later, muttering something about how he just liked this tree better.

Seth could feel every nerve in his body dancing about his skin. His stomach was performing somersaults as Finn went back to his searching. He pretended to hum along to Rob Thomas’ “A New York Christmas” until he couldn’t stand the suspense any longer.

“Baby… Wha-What about this one?” Seth stuttered.

“Which?” Finn perked up.

“Right here…” Seth pointed to what he had just planted on the tree.

Finn’s eyes followed the direction of his finger and when he noticed what had not been there a mere minute before, his jaw dropped open.

What was once a simple plastic ornament had been messily decorated with one of Finn’s own glitter glue pens from his many art projects.

In a brilliant blue glitter, nearly the same color as Finn’s own eyes, Seth had drawn on the ornament:

Finn, Will you marry me?

“Oh… my... “ Finn brought his hands up to cover his agape mouth.

“Do you… like that one?” Seth offered, feeling the urge to cry or vomit or perhaps even both growing with each excruciating second that passed.

In a flash, Finn was on him.

Seth felt strong legs wrap around his waist as his face was assaulted with wet kisses.

Wet, both from the patternless frenzy Finn’s lips made and from the tears that spilled from his eyes, down his cheeks, and all over Seth.

“Yes, yes! Of course, yes!” Finn cried into Seth’s ear. His words were interrupted both by hiccups and giggles as he continued his loving attack.

“I love you, I love you…” Seth repeated like a holy mantra as he patted and rubbed Finn’s back.

The other customers in the lobby must have caught on to what had happened, as a chorus of ‘aww’ sounded. A few people even applauded.

Seth and Finn heard them but could not stop to acknowledge. They were much too busy exchanging kisses and I love you’s over and over until their lips and voices were sore.

Finn reached over Seth’s shoulder to pluck the homemade ornament from its branch. He stared at it, sloppy handwriting and glitter smudges included, as if it was made of pure gold- like nothing in the world was more precious.

“This is the most beautiful ornament I’ve ever seen…” He whispered so only Seth could hear.

“For the most beautiful guy I’ve ever seen.” Seth said, grinning against Finn’s ear before giving it a bite.

Finn, not seeming as if he was even considering climbing down from Seth’s chest, squeezed his shoulders a little tighter.

He brought the still-plain side of the ornament to his lips to kiss it before nuzzling his head under Seth’s neck.

No matter if the gingerbread house at home was still a work in progress- their plans for the night would now be dedicated to celebrating what would surely be the most blissful marriage and the happiest Christmas they had ever experienced.

#sethfinn #ballins #my fanfic #freddie #artemidi

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uptightcitizensbrigade · 7 years

Link

Annie Clark is not where she’s supposed to be. At the last minute, the artist known as St. Vincent decided that instead of trekking to a country store as planned, she wanted to stick closer to her studio in the hills of Los Angeles’s Laurel Canyon. When I arrive at our new meeting spot, breathless from a steep climb, the first thing I notice is that neither of us is dressed appropriately for a rendezvous in the domesticated wilderness. Of course, in Clark’s case, this means looking pretty damn cool, in a sky-blue duster, gray sweatshirt, and leopard-print shorts, her trademark curly dark hair (which took a silvery lavender turn last album cycle) pin-straight and tucked under a Duran Duran cap. We make our way to a picnic table in the middle of a hiking trail that apparently enjoys more use as a bird lavatory. “Is this OK?” she asks, straddling the bench and setting down her mug of Yogi tea. It is. Anything to stop moving vertically.

“Up,” however, is a fitting direction for the 34-year-old Clark. Over the past decade, she has evolved from a clever multi-instrumentalist to critical darling to indie icon—her last record, 2014’s St. Vincent, took home the Grammy for Best Alternative Album. She’s a road warrior (with the bed bug stories to prove it), having toured for much of her life, beginning as a teenager when she was the tour manager for her uncle’s jazz duo, Tuck & Patti. And her latest album, MASSEDUCTION, is most definitely a career summit. It’s her Lemonade, her OK Computer—whatever reference conveys the urgency with which it demands to be listened to when it drops on October 13. “This one’s better,” she says of her fifth solo effort, nodding. “I was focused on writing the best songs I’d ever written.”

That goal comes at a cost, or so Clark’s body language seems to say on this late-August evening. She stifles a yawn, and cradles her tea. For the last couple of months, she’s been celibate and sober. Some of the monasticism she favors during recording stuck: An illness last March prompted her to quit alcohol altogether. “I loved my white wine,” she says. “But I just can’t stand the smell anymore.”

She is also insanely busy, still recuperating from yesterday’s flight home from Australia for press, not to mention the whirlwind trip to Tokyo that preceded it, where she performed at Summer Sonic (and shot this cover). And while it’s been three and a half years since she released an album, Clark’s been working on it all the while. “I’ve just been collecting things, bowerbird-style, and making elaborate plumage,” she says. Meanwhile, she’s been flexing her creative muscles: A week ago, Lionsgate announced that the Dallas native would be helming its female-led adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. (Clark made her directorial debut earlier this year with a short called “The Birthday Party” for the female-driven horror anthology XX.)

She’s also spent a good part of the last year getting over her breakup from 25-year-old British supermodel and actress Cara Delevingne. The pair dated for 18 months, thrusting Clark into a tabloid existence she’d never known before. You won’t find her in any formal pictures from (the old) Taylor Swift’s last Fourth of July bonanza in 2016, but she and her soon-to-be ex were captured by paparazzi in a private embrace. “It was really bizarre,” she says. “No joke, I’ve been in high-speed chases in London with at least five cars and six motorcycles following me and Cara. You’re going to kill someone, and for what? A photo of a sweet girl?”

The last thing she wants to talk about is how much of this album was informed by that relationship. She’s baffled by such inquiries—she only just recently admitted that 2011’s Strange Mercy was partly about her father being sent to prison for investment fraud. “I never think, ‘If I only knew who Kate Bush was singing about in “Running Up That Hill,” I could enjoy the song,’” she says, shooing a mosquito off my shirt. “I do not wonder who or what songs are about. And the Texan in me is like, ‘It’s none of your goddamned business.’” I ask whether she cleared the disclosure of her dad’s incarceration with him beforehand. “Is it OK with me that he’s in prison?” she responds dryly, but quickly adds, “I’ve only ever spoken highly of my father.”

Clark is a vivid storyteller whose knack for relating tales of dirty policemen or down-on-their-luck friends would make her the most popular guest at a dinner party. On MASSEDUCTION’s first single, “New York,” which debuted last June, she sings along to a plangent piano about “the only motherfucker in the city who can handle me.” While the song’s grief over lost heroes could easily apply to David Bowie or Prince, as Clark has suggested, it’s the identity of the “motherfucker” that piqued curiosity. “I totally understand it, I do,” she says, and frowns thoughtfully. “But the point is for the song to mean whatever it means to somebody else. Some people have a real hang-up about being misunderstood. I don’t care.” She stops to clarify this point: “I would be concerned if someone was like, ‘Wow, she seems like a Holocaust denier.’ But racism, sexism, or homophobia aside? I’m happy to be misunderstood.”

In the past, Clark’s music was more often respected than adored, like Love This Giant, her 2012 album with Talking Heads savant David Byrne. She is a masterful guitarist, a performance artist unafraid of experimentation. Artificial sounds, brass sections, unhurried choruses? All play a part in her eclectic repertoire, and she rarely stays monogamous to any one genre or rhythm.

“A lot of people are skilled at bending notes, but I think she actually bends the parameters of what guitar is,” says longtime friend Carrie Brownstein, whose prowess on the same instrument helped usher Sleater-Kinney to stardom. “She doesn’t approach it in a traditionally worshipful way. While she’s playing guitar, she seems to be destroying the very concept of it, which I think is very exciting.”

The opening track of her last album famously depicted Clark running naked from a rattlesnake. MASSEDUCTION (pronounced “mass seduction” on the title track) somehow finds her even more exposed. Clark says “New York” was the first time she ever wrote something and thought, “This could be somebody’s favorite song.” The same could be said of many tracks on the album, which, taken as a whole, sounds like Clark violating her own sense of privacy in order to grant access to her vulnerability. “I’m not eschewing any of the work I’ve done in the past,” says Clark. “But I was less concerned [here] about doing a lot of musical tricks that to me are intellectually interesting. The point of the record was to go, like, mainline to the heart.”

For this, Clark enlisted co-producer Jack Antonoff. Through his work with Lorde and Taylor Swift, as well as his own band Bleachers, Antonoff has developed a reputation for channeling ideas and emotions into their most approximate, frequently synth-driven expressions. “Jack changed my life for the better,” says Clark. “He makes you feel like anything is possible. We were merciless, trying to push all these songs past the finish line to accept the gold medal.”

None of which is to suggest that Clark has sacrificed any virtuosity or ambition. Several of the best songs break off into their own compelling codas. “How could anybody have you and lose you and not lose their mind, too?” moans Clark on “Los Ageless,” backed by an aggressive beat that would not be out of place at an adults-only club, before dissolving, like a film melt, into a series of bleary synths and barely audible whispers.

The theme of Clark’s last record was “near-future cult leader.” Here, having traded in those wild lavender-platinum curls for an austere black bob, “It’s dominatrix at the mental institution,” she says. “I knew I needed to write about power—the fiction of power and the power of fiction.” The concept is at its most powerful on the more adrenalized songs, like “Pills,” whose opening lines function like a Valley of the Dolls reboot: “Pills to wake/ Pills to sleep/ Pills, pills, pills every day of the week.” The words are delivered by Delevingne in a demented, cheerfully vacant chant.

“You mean Kid Monkey, obscure DJ,” says Clark, gamely referencing her ex’s pseudonym. “It needed to be a posh British voice. I was like, ‘Cara, wake up. I need you to sing on this song.’ And she’s kind of grumpy. And I’m like, ‘Please. It sounds so good. One more time.’” That song, too, starts with a blinking alertness but finishes drowsily, like Pink Floyd at the planetarium. Clark says the inspiration came to her after popping a sleeping pill on tour, and speaks to larger issues of opioid addiction that have affected people she cares about.

But the song that’s most likely to be picked over lyrically, for obvious reasons, is “Young Lover.” It’s set in Paris, where gossip rags once reported that Delevingne, proposed to Clark. The relationship described in the song suffers as a result of the titular subject’s hard-partying ways. “Did I have experiences that emotionally resonated in the way they do for that character? Abso-fucking-lutely,” says Clark, who’s also been linked briefly to Kristen Stewart. “But did that exact scenario happen? No!” She makes a dismissive face.

Clark didn’t grow up feasting on the sordid details of celebrity coupledom, though she admits to a fascination with Kate Moss, Shalom Harlow, and the early-’90s supermodel set. (The musician has recently done some modeling herself as one of the new faces of Tiffany & Co.) Her parents divorced young, and Clark lived with her social worker mother and two older sisters. “I was free to be a wild card, because the other roles were spoken for,” she says. A breeze kicks up and she rubs her legs as they prickle with goosebumps.

A tiny part of her early musical education includes a crate of CDs that fell off a truck in front of their house. “It was good taste for someone in the suburbs of Dallas,” she says, citing Nine Inch Nails and Pet Shop Boys. Clark started playing guitar at 12, and was encouraged by her maternal uncle, who hired her as a tour manager for his jazz duo when she was a teenager.

Eventually, her family swelled to include eight siblings, with whom she is close. A younger brother now works as her assistant. “We grew up hearing my dad talk business on the phone, and it was ‘motherfucker’ this and ‘fucking cocksucker’ that,” she says, laughing. In part, this informed her curse word of choice on “New York.” “If people don’t curse at all, I always think they’re hiding something,” she says.

The next day, Clark is filming a video for MASSEDUCTION’s as-yet-unannounced second single at a soundstage in Hollywood. She spends more time on the West Coast now that she has built a studio here, but still keeps properties in New York and Texas. She hesitates to use the word bicoastal, which feels “kind of douchey,” she says.

The video set changes from a Pepto-Bismol pink beauty salon, where the pedicure tubs are filled with green slime, to a yoga studio. Clark is dressed in a cheetah-print leotard with an open-face hood. She’s been bending over for 15 minutes straight in order for director Willo Perron to get a dolly shot of her face hanging between her legs. I marvel at her stamina. “Are you really asking me how I’m good at bending over?” she says, wryly. She rests between takes, curling up on the yoga mat like a cat in a sunbeam.

Clark wasn’t involved with the concept for the video. Back in Laurel Canyon, she admitted to being preoccupied with Dorian Gray, working with Elle screenwriter David Birke and rereading the book for the first time since high school. “I jumped at the chance to explore themes of transgression, narcissism, youth, beauty, queerness, but through a female protagonist,” says Clark, who’s currently considering a cast for the project. She’s new to this milieu, but credits Tuck & Patti with teaching her the rigors of knowing her shit. “They really were the coach in Rocky,” she says of her uncle’s duo. “I learned how to be professional. It’s not as if I need to be a camera expert in order to direct something, but you have to have the respect of the crew. This is not a vanity project. This is something I want to do for the rest of my life.”

Melanie Lynskey, who starred in Clark’s XX short, was pleasantly surprised by the musician’s command of the set. “It was like working with someone who had been doing it a very long time,” she says. “She’s so smart and she had such a clear idea of what she wanted, but gave me all the room in the world to come up with ideas and collaborate.”

In the meantime, Clark is also preparing for this fall’s Fear the Future Tour. As we slowly make our way down the hill, clutching at branches to steady ourselves, she says there won’t be as much postmodern dancing this time around. “The record is full of sorrow, but the visual aspect of it is really absurd,” she says. “I take the piss out of myself. The last tour I sat atop a pink throne, looking very imperious.” She kindly helps me down the last step. “This one will let people see that I have a sense of humor.”

#Annie Clark #St Vincent #Fear the Future #MASSEDUCTION #interview

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akashathekitty · 7 years

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Rules: list the first lines of your last 20 stories. See if there are any patterns. Then tag your 10 favourite authors. I’ve been tagged by @flightglow32 and @ariel-riddle 20 stories is like... most of my stories. But okay, let's see... I'll try to do them from oldest to newest. (And if anyone has You Change My Mind backed up, could you send it to me? I just realised I don't have that one in my files.) 1. Hermione was walking fast, almost running. She was late and curfew had set in, but she had been unable to resist going to the library to look up a minor detail that had been nagging her, and then, as usual, she had lost trac of time. Muttering under her breath, she rushed along the corridors, doing her best to remember everything she read, word by word. “Pickled Murtlap will help resistance to curses, while—“ She walked headfirst into a body that seemed to be appearing out of nowhere. “Ow! Watch where you’re going, Malfoy!” she said crossly, while she unsuccessfully tried to walk around him to be on her way. - Silencio 2. Hermione struggled against her bonds. ”No, please!” she begged, making the dark robed figures laugh. Death Eaters, bringing her to her fate. The last weeks had been Hell. They had been ambushed, betrayed by someone who should have been trustworthy. They had all fought as best they could. Hermione had been captured, but she had no idea what had happened to her friends. She didn’t know who had lived and who had died. - Master 3. Hermione was hurrying along the street on her way to work, when she saw it. She stopped up and stared at it. No way, they didn't. But it appeared that they had. It was a poster and the two painted people in the poster were flirting unabashedly, the man winking at the woman who blushed and looked at him adoringly. Hermione groaned. "Do you like it?" A grinning form materialized next to her. Where did he come from? "I think you know the answer to that one, Malfoy," she replied. - Taste of your Kiss 4. The seventh years were having Charms. Most subjects saw a dwindling in the amount of students taking them in the sixth year, and even more so, as a few realized they had taken on too much and dropped it in seventh year. That wasn’t exactly the case here. Twenty-five students from all four houses had chosen to stick with this particular subject, which actually made the class larger than in previous years. It was the last class of the day and it was Friday, so most students were feeling restless. Most, but not all. - The Bracelet 5. Hermione took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down. No reason to be upset. So there were a few minor setbacks. She had known there would be when she had refused the preferential treatment offered her after the war as one of the heroes. She had known she would have to work her way up from a nobody to a somebody and she had predicted that it might mean working a lot of nights and having to prove herself to people who didn’t believe she was really the Brightest Witch of Their Age. She hadn’t quite predicted that it would mean answering to the Biggest Git of Their Age. - The Nymph Hunt 6. Hermione nervously smoothed down her skirt as she was standing in front of the inconspicuous entrance. It had seemed like a good skirt to wear earlier, but now it seemed too short. Or maybe it wasn't that it was short; maybe it was that it looked a lot tighter when she stood still and it clung to her legs. Or maybe both of those things didn't matter, considering that it was so ... thin. - One Wild Night 7. Hermione was a bit tipsy. This was definitely against the norm as she didn’t usually drink – it was against school rules after all – but tonight was different. Luna had invited them up to Ravenclaw’s common room for a very unusual thing – a party thrown by one of the houses for, well, not all of the houses, but at least for invitees from other houses. - In the Darkness All Cats are Grey 8. It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge. – Voltaire Hermione stared at the letter before her, her face feeling like it was made of stone. She had a feeling she should be upset, but she wasn't. Not really. Rather, she felt absolutely nothing. Her insides had gone numb. This couldn't be true. It couldn't be happening. It must be some big, awful joke. Sometimes Ron had a rather horrible sense of humour. Yes, that must be it. It had only been a few months since they broke up, after all. And she'd even seen him during the Christmas holidays, only a couple of weeks ago. - The Virgin Conundrum 9. Draco slowly let his gaze slide over the serious faces in front of him, trying to figure out if this was some sort of elaborate prank. 'You're kidding, right?' he finally asked when nobody volunteered any further information. 'You have no idea how much we wish we were.' Potter did that extremely annoying thing where he ran his hand through his hair, making it all stand on end. 'We're out of options here.' Draco leant back in his seat and let his gaze rest on Weasley. He looked put off, but then again, he always looked put off around Draco. Weasley didn't really seem to have much to add today, though, which was new. He usually loved to make inane digs whenever Draco was forced to check in at the Ministry. Right now, however, he was just determinedly staring at his own hands, placed on the large, simple wooden desk before him. - Till Death Do Us Part 10. 'Zabini, could you focus?' Malfoy snapped his fingers in front of Blaise's face in the most annoying way. Blaise flashed his teeth in a hostile snarl. He didn't like this colourless git—never had and never bloody would. - Pure Depravity (Blaise/Pansy) 11. As far as cousins went, Rose mused, Al was actually pretty ok. He had been one of her best friends before they went to Hogwarts, and even after they had started there, the familiar connection had been present. It was just that with them being sorted into different houses and all, they didn't actually see each other a lot. That didn't mean that when they did see each other, he should be allowed to be such a git, though. - Playing Games (Rose/Scorpius) 12. When Hermione accidentally knocked over her inkpot, she did something that was completely uncharacteristic of her. She swore. The words coming from her lips were neither very loud nor very inventive, but they were heartfelt. Every single syllable pronounced with such loving care that one could have been led to think that something far worse than a soggy piece of parchment and a stained desk was behind it. One might have been right. - Flickering Flames 13. Hermione smoothed her new formal robes down over her stomach and turned sideways, scrutinising her own mirror image. Damn it. She’d kept accumulating weight this past year from sitting—and eating—far too much and exercising far too little. Damn the Ministry’s canteen for having such delicious cake. Usually, she wasn’t really one for sweets, but that cake... She needed to start bringing her own lunch, otherwise she’d balloon into something she wouldn’t be able to change. - Cake and Other Curses 14. Hermione yawned as she made her way to her cubicle. Maybe it would be a slow day and she could take a nap. She missed naps. There should be more naps in the world. She never truly appreciated naps when she was younger, but these days she just couldn't pull an all-nighter like she used to. Harry appeared in the doorway to his office. The lucky bugger. She wanted to be Head of Office too so that she could have her own office. It would make for nice, uninterrupted naps. - The Complexity of Carnal Knowledge 15. It was eerie. Almost like déjà vu. It had been eleven years since she'd last done this. It seemed like a lifetime. It had been a lifetime. Everything had changed so much since then. There had been a war. She had grown up. - Secrets 16. At the initiative of Hermione Granger, there was to be a Christmas play at Hogwarts this year. It was hardly because she was passionate about performance art, but in the midst of all the recent horror of war, people seemed to have forgotten how to have fun and feel good. - True Colours 17. Looking out over the cold, barren winter landscape, not even a hint of snow could be seen. The heavy clouds that were coming in and threatening to overtake the pitiful sun once more were promising nothing but more of the dreary drizzle of the past few days. Hermione raised her face to the rays of the sun, trying to catch a little of its warmth before it was swallowed whole again. - Out of the Woods 18. The soft, subtle notes of a Christmas carol playing in the background, was being viciously punctuated by some of the foulest swear words Hermione had heard in a while. In the spirit of the season, she attempted to ignore it and instead immerse herself in the cosy feeling of sitting in her warm office doing what she loved best, with the darkness and the calm falling over the land. A particularly nasty outburst yanked her back to reality, and she had to resign herself to interacting with the fount of holiday cheer that was currently decorating her office under severe protest. - A Time of Beauty 19. It was odd, Hermione thought to herself, how everyone could act like this was such an ordinary day and such an ordinary thing to do, when it was anything but. She didn't consider herself the dramatic sort, but in a sense this was the end of life as she knew it. Yet all around her people were talking, laughing, frowning at their watches... acting like there was life beyond the next half hour. - unfinished, unpublished D/Hr WIP 20. Once upon a time in an age long past and a day yet to come, there existed the loveliest of kingdoms with rolling green hills, crystal clear lakes and cosy little villages. Near the edges of the kingdom were thick forests and looming mountains, and they provided just the perfect amount of drama to the backdrop of the impressive castle. - an original fairy tale Okay, I don't know who to tag here, but let's all do it, huh? @RZZMG @CountessOfAbe @LadyLeanaM @PierreJ92 @DesBratty and... I don't know, I'm awful at remembering who's who around here. Just doooo ittttt :D

#meme #writing #fanfic #Dramione

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calemor · 7 years

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Chase

The Heroes of Fannen-Dar, Chapter 1 The town center marketplace erupted into a bamboozled commotion as a stall was overturned and six bodies sprinted down the streets and rocketed into shoppers.

The overturner in question was a massive-muscled half-orc, though judging by the size of his tusks he might have been closer to a three-quarters-orc. He took up the rear of the chase, following close behind three scarred and burly thugs. They all wore expressions of anger and concentration, but none were more concentrated than their leader. His brow was clenched with fury, his fists scrunched up with an intense desire to inflict bludgeoning pain, and his feet hit the cobblestones like felled trees.

The focus of their rage was the panicked woman who had just tried to steal from one of the most powerful gangs in town. This woman was Robin.

Robin shoved passersby aside in a futile effort to increase the distance between herself and her bloodthirsty pursuers. The people on the street didn't see the need to move out of the way of a person who resembled a twig, no matter how much she flailed her arms and widened her eyes. On the other hand, everyone jumped to the side, hands over their heads, trying to find cover behind a stall, when the beefy thugs rumbled towards them. And that was just the reaction before they saw the anger on their faces.

Robin was having mixed feelings about her current situation. First was the feeling of pure terror that kept her feet moving despite the onset of a cramp and the popping of one hundred blisters. Secondly, though, she was ecstatic, because this was the first time she had actually gotten as far as acquiring the object she was trying to steal. Robin was a thief; it was her calling, and she would even say she had been one since her childhood. Others would say that you can't call yourself a thief if you've never actually thieved anything, but now they would have to eat their words because Robin held in her thin fingers the coin purse of Broos Bellinger. Her first, and likely her last, heist.

Broos was the leader of the goons chasing her down (if you recall, the one with the face so scrunched up with anger that it looked like a pug had eaten one too many lemons). He was the self-proclaimed master of the bloodroot trade. It didn't take much to grow bloodroot, but the stuff was so illegal that money flowed into the pockets of whoever could grow the most. That person was Broos, and he cultured his entire gang on the concept of preventing anyone else from providing the townsfolk with their muscle-enhancing drugs.

The chase led into the alleys among the workshops. Robin's dark brown hair streamed behind her like an old and dirty flag of surrender. She tried turning corners at every possible chance to make the thugs lose sight of her, but all they needed to do was follow the sound of her heavy wheezing. Robin wasn't the kind of thief who often got into chases. She was the kind of thief who often ate garbage because it was easier to steal stuff that people had already thrown out.

She turned another corner to find a tall brick wall. If ends could be dead, this one was stabbed, poisoned, hanged, and shot full of arrows before being thrown in the well and sinking from its own limp, lifeless weight. The footsteps were catching up behind her. Robin thought of tossing the coin purse at them to appease them, but somehow she felt they'd want to beat her up anyway. Her next thought was then to swallow the gold and feign innocence. She was getting a little panicked.

Robin didn't have time for another thought, though, because just before Broos and his cronies turned the corner, a rough and massive hand wrapped around her mouth and dragged her backwards into a doorway that, from her brief scan of the area a second ago, she hadn't seen before. A thick finger like a sausage of ogre proportions was covering her eyes, but she heard a sound like granite on bone and the edge of her vision grew dark.

The hand moved away, and Robin found herself in a pitch black room. With a faint hum, a yellow light glowed on behind her. Robin feared the worst; either the Bloodroots had found her, or she had just been grabbed through an interdimensional portal into a realm of tentacled horrors. She turned around, and saw something much more awful.

Lounging on a golden throne in the middle of the room, lit by a pulsing yellow cold-torch, sat the leader of the most feared gang in Fannen-Dar...King Dominaurus.

There would normally be a detailed description of the elaborate hideout scene, but Robin's brain had become too overwhelmed with a combination of terror, idolatry, and enervation to pay attention to anything besides King Dom's knowing smirk. That, and the glisten of gold from all around.

After a few seconds, she managed to open her mouth and speak.

"Hurng."

She heard shuffling to her right, and the hunched figure of an enormous half-ogre came into view. All half-ogres are enormous (not as enormous as ogres themselves, of course), but using the word enormous to describe this half-ogre was still necessary, as he had to crouch to stand in a room in which Robin would have to jump to touch the ceiling, and only then with the tips of her fingers. He was the one that had grabbed Robin through the secret doorway. His hands were the size of shovels.

Robin looked back at King Dom, realizing she had her mouth open and was staring at a henchman's hands. King Dom was known for his mastery of subtlety, and the look on his face managed to appear both amused and condescending. Robin mentally slapped her tongue to get it to start working. It sort of worked.

"I...You're...I was..."

"Cornered?" King Dom said. By simply uttering that single word, he was able to simultaneously taunt, demoralize, and soothe Robin. The smile on his face radiated waves of intelligence, and Robin knew just by looking that he was already seven steps ahead of her, which was even more impressive because Robin hadn't known they were competing at anything.

Since Robin still couldn't find many words, King Dom continued. The poetry that came out of his mouth almost had a physical form, wrapping itself around Robin's throat. "You are the girl who reaches, but never grabs, yes?" King Dom said.

Robin stuttered, but finally managed to verbalize an affirmative. "Yugh."King Dom looked at the purse still clutched in Robin's hand. "It seems to me that you have finally broken that unfortunate quality of yours. You have thieved."

Robin dumbly followed his gaze to the pouch. "Mhm," she said.

"You know," King Dom said, and his elbow shifted on the arm of his golden throne. The movement itself said, I am better than you. I am using you. I can help you. I know you know, and I want you to know, but I know more. Do not resist. King Dom continued, pretending to ignore the message his elbow sent, "this town is no place for a thief on her own. Unless, of course, you belong to a gang. To which gang do you belong?"

Robin shuffled from foot to foot. A while ago, she had managed to piece together a leather outfit from scraps and handouts, and she had always been proud of how cool it made her look. Now, however, under the scrutinizing and benevolent gaze of King Dom, she realized it made her look like a five-year-old in a school play. "That depends on what you mean by 'belong,'" she said.

King Dom gave her a hard look. It had never occured to Robin before that looks could have callosity, but his crystal blue eyes were giving her one as impenetrable as a diamond. He said, "I mean what it means. Nothing more, nothing less," but of course he meant much more, and Robin knew this, and she knew that he knew this, and that he knew she knew he knew...Her head began to spin.

"Uh...then, I'm pretty gangless, I guess," she mumbled.

"Then you are at a severe disadvantage. You have no team to organize large heists. You have no scouts to keep watch while you're concentrating. You have no allies to support you when you get into a mess like this."

"But...you're helping me. Right?" Robin said.

King Dom smiled. It was a smile he had been holding behind his back, knowing exactly when he would need it. "That I am, but you are not part of my gang. Dominaurus is exclusive. Elite, even. Someone of your...talents...does not quite fit. Therefore, my help comes at a price."

Robin looked at the bag in her hand. "Would about fifty silver cover it?" she ventured.

"For starters," King Dom said. He nodded to the half-ogre, who held out one of his continents expectantly. Robin dropped the pouch into it. It made a bright clink that sounded like a happy farewell. Even money didn't want to be on her side. King Dom continued, "However, that will not nearly be enough. You owe me, thief."

"Robin," she muttered.

King Dom laughed. "A robber called Robin! I'll have to remember that one. And you will have to remember your debt. If the time comes that I beckon you and you do not come, you won't have time to feel guilty." Robin audibly gulped.

A knock came from the left, and Robin realized that the room had a door. King Dom nodded and the half-ogre opened it, revealing a slimy wood elf. He wasn't just symbolically slimy, with thin slits for eyes and hands that looked like they'd steal your socks while you thanked him, but also literally slimy, as sweat was pouring down his high forehead.

"Got a guest, y'do," the elf said, looking rapidly from left to right and back to King Dom. "Broos Bellinger, it is. Wants to talk 'bout a certain loss he thinks you might have 'quired."

King Dom raised his eyebrows. "That man is smarter than I thought," he said in a way that assured everyone he had known how smart the man was all along. "Let him in, please. And Robin," he said to the woman who was frantically running her hands along the brick wall, "it's best you stay for this."

Robin was very sure it was not best for her at all, but she was pretty positive she had no choice. The wood elf left for a moment before returning with Broos Bellinger swaggering behind him. His face was still set in a frown, but some of his rage had subsided. He now looked merely livid.

"I knew it," he said when he saw Robin cowering in the corner. The half-ogre was standing somewhat near her, so he hesitated before simply charging and punching her in the face. Instead, he turned to King Dom. "You always have a hand in everyone's pockets. What do you want this time?"

"This thief is under my protection," King Dom replied. "I want you nor any member of your gang to harm her, or else our current peace will be broken." He smiled. "It's as simple as that."

Broos could barely contain his fury, and he waved his hands over his head. "Why?! What use could you possibly have for a..." His hands continued waving, more vaguely now. "...useless person!" he finished.

King Dom waggled a finger. "That's not part of this deal."

"What deal? You're just making a threat!"

"I wish," King Dom said after a heavy sigh, "that you wouldn't point out the obvious ulterior meaning of my words. It's quite a waste of everyone's time."

Broos growled to himself, but then said, "Fine. She stays safe, your boys stay the hell away from my work, and we go on as usual. But before I go, she at least owes me the coin she stole."

Robin looked up to the half-ogre. He held up the purse with his thumb and forefinger. It looked like a hedgehog dangling from an elephant's belly. Without a word, the half-ogre spread the rest of his fingers on that hand, wrapped them around the purse, and squeezed.

Broos's face went ashen as the half-ogre poured the bent and twisted silver into his open palm. Robin also let out an involuntary whimper at the sight of perfectly good money gone to waste.

"Fine," Broos said again. "You made your message, as usual." He shoved the wood elf aside, opened the door, and stormed out.

Robin cleared her throat. "I suppose I'd best be off too," she tried to say in her most casual voice. It came out sounding like a kitten stuck under a blanket. She stepped towards the door. The half-ogre moved into her way.

"It certainly is time for you to leave," King Dom said, "but not through the front door."

Robin was used to being thrown out of places, usually after attempting to pilfer something right under the owner's nose. She had been kicked to the curb, thrown on her back, chucked into dumpsters, and shoved off more times than she could count. This, however, was the first time she could ever remember being blindfolded, tied up, forced into a sack, and dumped in a sewage drain. She had to admit, the king had style.

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#Calemor #Tales of Calemor #The Heroes of Fannen-Dar #Heroes of Fannen-Dar #Fannen-Dar #fantasy #fantasy writing

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dire-kumori · 7 years

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The Long Road: Chapter 1

Through the Looking Glass

Rated: T

Pairing(s): hijack

Story summary: When a distress call from Father Time turns out to be a trap set by Pitch, Jack ends up lost in a time before the Guardians with only Baby Tooth at his side. The two immortals are lucky enough to be found by a group of (somewhat) sympathetic teenagers whom they quickly befriend, including the awkward and funny leader of Berk's Dragon Academy. Before long Jack finds himself assimilating into Berk's culture and way of life. Even though he is effectively stuck, with new friends by his side Jack finds he doesn't mind taking the long road back to the present.

((We need seventy-four more gallons of paint on the floor, pronto!))

((Project four-hundred and sixty-three finished! Next group!))

((Get out of the way you little pests!))

((The model's melting! The model is melting!))

Ice blue eyes glanced up from time-worn pages as deep, guttural voices rang through the air spouting out orders and complaints as surprisingly dexterous hands quickly and efficiently assembled hundreds of delicate moving parts with skill that the modern world's most technologically advanced automated factories would never be able to match. Hundreds of thousands of toys, both simple and complex and each one bearing a touch of the workshop's magic were being assembled by the hairy hands of the bestial yetis even now, a mere month after Christmas had ended. The workshop was a wonder, polished red wood and wrought iron and gold hold seven floors of furious activity, magic and technology blended seamlessly into a sprawling atelier, the heart of which was the massive Globe of Belief.

The Globe itself was a work of art; cobalt seas parted gold wrought continents shimmering with millions of tiny, brilliant lights. It stood at the dead center of the workshop, visible on all levels including the high balcony where Jack Frost was perched, one leg swinging over the railing and shepherd's crook leaning against the wall within arm's reach. In his lap he held a large, leather-bound tome with an ornately stitched cover and yellow pages that smelled of herbs and ink. Every so often his eyes would flicker from the delicately penned script towards the Globe and the magically formed aurora borealis radiating from the gilded spire at its top.

It had been a fortunate coincidence that Jack had already been inside the workshop - Tome of the Guardians in hand - when North had sent the signal, though the old Cossack had yet to inform the youngest of their fold of the nature of the summons. The flurry of activity in the workshop never ceased, and as the rest of the Guardians had yet to arrive Jack had decided to finish reading the chapter he had been in the midst of when North had come bursting out of his office, cursing in Russian and activating the Northern Lights.

((Wrong, wrong, wrong! You got the wiring all mixed up! What will the boss say when he sees this, eh?))

That proved easier said than done, however. In the three years he had been a Guardian of Childhood Jack had grown used to the constant noise of the workshop. What he had yet to get used to was hearing the yetis' guttural language being translated directly into his head.

((Love? Jackie?))

Again, Jack's pale blue eyes left the tome in his lap, this time to meet the mismatched eyes of the tiny, humanoid creature perched comfortably atop his shoulder. Donned in sapphire blue feathers, the creature, much like Jack himself, radiated an aura of cold. Tiny crystals of ice decorated her already beautiful down and clung to her long, needle thin beak. A single white plume adorned the creature's forehead, complemented by thin, opalescent wings like those of a dragonfly.

((You haven't turned the page in a while.))

"Oh." Jack's eyes scanned the page. Ten minutes had passed since he had finished reading the text, yet none of it stuck. "Sorry Baby Tooth. It's kinda hard to concentrate with all the," he paused, making a vague gesture with his free hand towards the workshop floors below, "noise."

Nuzzling his cheek, the snow-fairy dubbed Baby Tooth assured Jack, ((You'll learn to tune it out eventually, Love.))

This earned a smile from the frost spirit and he stroked his companion's silver feather with his forefinger, much to her delight. Just as he was about to return to his reading, however, the main doors to the workshop burst in, a flurry of ice and snow flying in along with a blur of grey and white fur. A pair of yetis rushed to close the doors even as the seven-foot-tall humanoid rabbit - Pooka, Jack corrected himself - raced up the spiraling ramps towards the balcony where Jack made his perch, and the large fireplace that made up the larges part of the far wall.

"Hey Cottontail!" Jack called out, a playful smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, "Nice weather, huh?"

The Pooka, one E. Aster Bunnymund, sent Jack a withering glare as he came to a stop before the fireplace. Standing on one great paw, he held the other to the warm flames, massaging it gently but frantically in an effort to drive away the biting numbness. "Oh stuff it, Frostbite."

The twittering of wings announced a second arrival. Baby Tooth perked up as her mother, the fairy queen Toothiana, arrived with three mini-fairies in tow. The mini-fairies immediately rushed to Jack's side, chirping in greeting, fawning over his teeth, and exchanging hugs with their frost-imbued sister. Their feathers, emerald and gold where Baby Tooth's were sapphire and silver, sparkled under the brilliant glow of the Globe of Belief making them appear as though they had been draped in gemstones.

"Oh Jack! You're early!" Toothiana cried as she descended through the roof. She was at Jack's side in an instant, throwing her arms around his slender shoulders in a warm embrace, mindful though of the mini-fairies. Toothiana, as opposed to the fairy armies she commanded, stood no smaller than a human woman, though her body was draped in the same jewelescent feathers as her girls. Her eyes sparkled like a pair of amethysts and her head was crowned in blue and gold and green feathers.

"Eh, I was already hanging around," Jack replied with a halfhearted shrug. "Any idea what's going on?"

Toothiana replied with a mere shrug while behind her Bunny began to rant under his breath. Jack could only make out a few words, those few being 'blowhard,' 'freezing,' and 'belly,' along with several words a Guardian of Childhood had no business repeating.

"Whoa Bunny! You don't hang around kids with that mouth, do ya?"

"Rack off."

"Make me."

"Boys, enough!" Toothiana hovered between the two of them, never mind the fact that neither of the pair had moved from their spots on opposite ends of the balcony. Bunnymund rolled his verdant eyes and settled down before the fire, back turned quite deliberately to the youngest Guardian. Jack, similarly, turned his eyes away from the Pooka, returning his attention to the tome in his lap. He was unable, however, to stop his lips from curling into a wicked smirk as his eyes swept across the page.

"Hey, Bunny."

Bunnymund's ear twitched, but he otherwise gave no indication that he'd heard Jack.

"Did you really look like this way back when?"

Suddenly the Easter Bunny was alert, leaping to his large feet with his ears rigid and spinning to face Jack. His eyes widened in horror as he took in the sight of Jack holding the Tome of the Guardians open to a very detailed sketch of Bunnymund draped in a thick, ornate lab coat with spider-like optical lenses strapped to his head.

"Oi!" With an indignant cry the Easter Bunny launched himself at Jack, though the snow sprite had been expecting such a reaction. With a playful laugh Jack snatched his staff from its resting place before propelling himself over the edge of the balcony, tome tucked safely under his arm. The Wind caught him before gravity could and carried him just out of Bunnymund's reach. Jack laughed again Bunnymund slammed his stomach against the rail in his frantic attempt to capture Jack and retrieve the tome. "Can ya go five minutes without being a bloody nuisance ya gumby?"

"I'm the Guardian of Fun. You do know what fun is, don'tcha Bun Bun?"

"Enough, you two!" Toothiana's wings beat furiously as she hovered between the pair of bickering Guardians, silencing both Jack's laughter and Bunny's grumbling. Fixing the former with a pointed glare Toothiana held out one delicate hand. "Now Jack, if you aren't going to settle down and read..."

With a sigh Jack handed her the tome, much to Bunnymund's visible relief.

"And Bunny!" His ears snapped up as he went stiff once again. "Cursing in front of a child? Shame on you," Toothiana scolded before flying off to return the tome to North's library. She remained unaware as Jack smirked at Bunnymund behind her back, mouthing the words 'shame on you' in parallel.

The Easter Bunny seethed in silence, turning his back once again to Jack Frost and the snickering fairy perched atop his shoulder.

The Sandman was the last of their fold to arrive. Like Toothiana he had traveled to the workshop via air, descending into North's realm in a massive hot air balloon crafted of golden dream-sand. The construct dissipated as the Guardian of Dreams touched down on the balcony alongside Bunnymund, Toothiana and Jack, each of whom welcomed him eagerly. The humanoid star answered each of them with a beaming smile and shifting shapes above his head written in his sand; a box topped with an elaborate ribbon, a long, smooth rod, and a question mark.

((North-pole-why?))

Jack struggled to keep his face neutral, though with everyone's attention on the fallen star not a one would have noticed his discomfort anyway. The voice resounding in his head sounded far less human than the bestial noises the yetis made, and in truth did not so much resemble words at all, but rather wordless thoughts filled with impressions of meaning. The sign representing North had carried with it the echo of a jolly laugh, the memory of wide, bright eyes sparkling with Wonder, and the faint scent of chocolate and pine needles that always wafted from his scarlet robe. The sensation was far from unpleasant and in fact brought a sense of comfort and warmth to Jack's otherwise cold body, but the Sandman's wordless voice was so alien that hearing it sent a rush of dizziness straight to the spirit's head and he was forced to lean most of his weight on the gnarled shepherd's crook in his hand.

The jingling of bells accompanied by the heavy fall of large boots interrupted whatever response Tooth or Bunny had prepared for the Sandman and announced the arrival of their host and a booming voice wrapped in a thick Russian accent boomed out, "Ah, good. You are all here."

The leader of the Guardians, Nicholas St. North, only resembled his alias in passing, his title of 'Father Christmas' suiting him far better than 'Santa Claus'. A former Cossack bandit, North was both tall and wide, able to meet the willowy Pooka at eye level whenever their altogether too common arguments about Christmas and Easter broke out. His snow-white beard hung down to his large belly and his electric blue eyes peered out at his comrades from beneath bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows. North appeared to have already dressed for travel. Even under the red, fur-lined robe he wore Jack could see the hilts of two sabers tied to the sash around his waist.

The silly, clumsy, bell-wearing elves parted as North approached the rest of the Guardians, pointy hats and lolling tongues flopping in time with their bouncing steps. As he grew closer Bunnymund rose to his full height, ears slowly rising while Toothiana's wings went still and she lowered herself to her feet.

"North, what's wrong?" the fairy queen asked as she noted the shadow on her old friend's features. "Has something happened?"

Sandy created a question mark above his head and Jack was bombarded with: ((Concern-worry-desire to know-desire to help.))

Meeting Toothiana's eyes with a solemn stare North replied, "It is my mentor. He has seen signs of Pitch."

"Black sand and shadows?" Bunny said, attempting and failing to make light of the situation. "He normally takes centuries to recover. It hasn't even been a decade."

"I am aware, but I also trust my mentor's judgement. If Ombric says Pitch is making a move then I believe he is making a move."

Not one of the elder Guardians doubted Ombric. At the same time, none of them wanted to accept that Pitch had recovered so quickly either.

Fixing her normally peaceful features into the regal countenance of the Queen of Fairies, Toothiana asked, "What exactly did he see North?"

"Traces of black sand in his machines, shadows falling where they should not. Fearlings may be at work."

"Any clues to what Pitch's up to?" Bunny asked.

"Not so far but-"

As the elder Guardians became more absorbed in their conversation Jack took a few silent steps back. He let the Wind lift him silently to the railing where he knelt, watching passively and toying with the idea of sending a gust of cold air to douse the fire. Baby Tooth shifted on her perch, plucking at the crystals of frost that clung to Jack's sky-blue hoodie with fingers the width of a sewing needle.

Love, she whispered into his mind, followed by us-together-you-me-we-Love. Jack smiled, comforted as always by her presence and her unequivocal love for him. Unlike the Sandman's alien words, hearing Baby Tooth's real voice echo in his mind felt natural. It was no different to him from hearing his own thoughts; her feelings were his and vice versa.

((Jack-friend-lonely-come?))

Speaking of the Sandman...

The bombardment of star-speak nearly caught Jack off guard and he looked up just in time to see the last of the Sandman's signs fade. Even so the fallen star was beaming at him, gesturing for him to join the group even as the other three continued to literally talk over his head.

A small smile gracing his lips, Jack stood and hopped down from the railing. The movement caught the rest of the Guardians' attention and the conversation came to a slow, clumsy halt. Baby Tooth took to the air as she followed Jack as he stopped beside her mother-self who placed a consoling hand on Jack's shoulder.

"Sorry Jack," she offered. "We didn't mean to exclude you we just-"

"Forgot I was here?"

There was no bitterness in his voice, but Toothiana flinched anyway. Out of the corner of his eye Jack was aware of Bunnymund's ears flattening against his skull even as the stubborn Pooka carefully monitored the rest of his stance to keep it neutral. No one tried to insult him by denying what he fully knew to be true, but it was Jack who was regretting his words. It was hardly their fault, after all, that they had fallen into what had been routine for them for six hundred years.

"I was just kidding, it's no big deal," the snow spirit laughed, waving his hand as though to scatter his biting words like smoke. "So what's the plan? We charge in and send 'em running?"

"Nyet, first, we go to Big Root-" Nobody missed how Jack's face lit up. "-Then we investigate." North turned on his heel and began to march towards the giant, acorn-shaped elevator that connected the levels of the workshop. "Everyone, to the sleigh!"

Jack bounced on his heel, childish and eager. "Can I drive?"

Toothiana and Bunnymund shouted in unison. "NO!"

North occasionally reminded Jack of James Bond, only with better toys. The sleigh itself was incredible, a mesh between a snowmobile and an F-14 jet fighter, propelled by a combination of shag-furred, wild reindeer and a powerful rocket engine. Even more amazing, in Jack's opinion, were the colorful snow globes North kept in his coat. A single shake could create an extremely detailed model of whatever destination the user whispered to the glass out of thousands of swirling flakes of colored snow. This was what North did once his sleigh was airborne, and Jack only just caught a fleeting glimpse of a massive, gnarled tree inside the orb before North pitched it into the air ahead of them. The snow globe exploded into a swirl of color and light and the reindeer drove the sleigh through without so much as a pause.

The scene before them - the snowy peaks jutting up from the snow and ice against the backdrop of sparkling stars and radiant lights - melted away, replaced by brilliant blue skies and rich greenery. Jack slid out of his seat and made himself comfortable on the wing, much to Bunnymund's dismay. Jack ignored the Pooka's panicked order for him to climb back inside the vehicle in favor of taking in the sights below.

Miles of forest stood between the bracken barrier and the Guardians' destination. Amidst the trees Jack caught a fleeting glimpse of a bear, larger than any he had seen in his three hundred years of wanderings. As Big Root grew closer Jack also caught the eye of a woman standing in the dead center of a garden of ugly statues. The woman's green eyes glittered up at him, even over the distance and when Jack waved at her she waved back, spilling gold coins from her palms as she did.

"Uh, hey North," Jack shouted over the Wind, "Why does that woman have statues of your elves?"

North threw only a passing glance at the woman. "Ah, is Spirit of Forest. Statues are not statues. Statues are intruders."

"Whoa."

The massive, resplendent oak tree dubbed Big Root by the Guardians stood at the heart of the forest. Its trunk rose miles into the air and was so thick around that Jack guessed one hundred people standing hand in hand would not be able to wrap themselves all the way around. The lush foliage nearly blocked out the sun, yet light still poured from glittering golden windows that appeared to have grown straight out of the wood of the trunk.

Bunnymund was first out of North's sleigh when they touched down in front of Big Root. Jack laughed at the Pooka as he very nearly hugged the ground before remembering himself and straightening his stance, sending Jack a withering glare for good measure. As the last of them climbed out of the sleigh the massive, curling roots of Big Root unfurled themselves from the base of the trunk, revealing a wide archway out of which stepped an old man draped in silver robes that were decorated with cogs and clockwork. He had a beard as long as his body, thick, bushy eyebrows that looked like clouds that had been plucked from the sky and glued to his forehead and leaned his weight on a smooth, moon-colored staff with an old, victorian clock for its head..

"Nicholas!" the old man cried out, arms sweeping out in a grand motion as he welcomed his guests.

"Ah, Ombric! My old friend!"

North swept up the frail old man in a hug and Jack winced as he swore he heard something snap in the old man's body. But North settled the man back down and he appeared to be no worse for the wear.

((It has been far too long my apprentice. Tell me, how have you fared? And your workshop? I have heard wonderful things about it,)) the old man gibbered on Old Atlantian.

A merry laugh rumbled from North's belly which he patted on for emphasis. ((Am doing well with yetis' cooking. You should come to workshop sometime, have some cocoa.))

It was strange to hear a language so completely foreign that Jack was not even sure if he could replicate all of its sounds spoken with North's very obvious accent. North spoke Atlantian a just bit more clumsily than he did English.

((Ah, and who is this?))

Jack stood just a bit straighter as the old man's eyes fell on him. North instantly beamed at Jack, placing a burly hand on Jack's shoulder and giving him a light nudge in the old man's direction.

"This is our newest Guardian," North said with the tone of a father showing off his favorite son. "Jack, this is-"

"Ombric Shalazar," Jack cut North off, breath slightly short from excitement. He held out his free hand to North's mentor. "I read about you in the Tome of Guardians."

((Ah! You speak Atlantian very well!)) Ombric exclaimed as he shook Jack's hand. ((Perhaps you should work with my apprentice on that, eh? Between you and I, he sounds a bit out of practice.))

Jack laughed, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly as North parroted his mentor's words under his breath. "Actually, ah, no. I don't." A small weight shifted in Jack's hood and a moment later Baby Tooth was settling on his shoulder. Ombric's eyes went wide in amazement.

"Jack Named her," Toothiana explained as Ombric took in the sight of the silver-blue fairy with swirls of frost not unlike the ones clinging to Jack's clothing and staff. The wizard stroked his beard with twig-like fingers in a manner that reminded Jack very much of Merlin from the animated Sword and the Stone.

((Ah, I see. The fairy received Winter Magic, and you in turn received the Gift of Tongues,)) he mused, more to himself than anyone else. ((This is quite fascinating. I honestly cannot remember the last time I have seen a bond like this formed. You must be a very special young man.))

Biting the urge to point out that he was well over three-hundred years old, Jack nodded and said, "Thank you."

((Now come! All of you!)) Ombric made a grand sweeping motion with his hands and gestured for the Guardians to enter the archway in the base of Big Root. ((Please, come in and make yourselves comfortable. There is much to discuss, not all of it good.))

As large as the trunk looked from the outside, it seemed infinitely larger on the inside. A small part of Jack had expected the inside of Big Root to resemble the tree house from the Keebler Elves cookie commercials. Indeed, much of the furniture appeared to have been grown rather than made, the wood jutting from the floor and walls to create natural shelves, tables and chairs. But there was a mechanical quality to it too, brass work cogs and gears serving as decorations and clocks of every size, shape and style covering the walls and shelves. The ticking of thousands of clocks merged with the hum of insects - all of which rang in Jack's head as a million whispering voices scrambling to be heard over one another. The result was a constant drone that had little to no meaning to the Winter spirit aside from an overall sense of panic.

Ombric led the Guardians up, up, and up a winding staircase, high above where the clouds hung in the sky. The three airborne Guardians faced little difficulty with the steep climb, nor did the surprisingly hardy Father of Time. Bunnymund grumbled a bit, but the aeons-old rabbit had the stamina and musculature to withstand the brutal climb.

"Bah!" North huffed as the group ascended to the seventy-third level. "Too many stairs! Is time you invested in elevator!" The Guardian of Wonder's face had gone red and his breath came out in heavy pants.

((Son, if you would just lay off of the Christmas cookies you would not be having this problem.))

"There is no problem with Christmas cookies!" North protested. "I am fit as an ox! Am just needing there to be fewer stairs."

((This is what you get for spoiling yourself with those gadgets you fancy.)) Ombric paused as they reached the end of the staircase, beneath a gilded star-sand window. With a wave of his hand Ombric unlatched the window and climbed through, leading the Guardians after him.

Amidst the highest branches of Big Root stood a massive observatory, bronze plates worked almost organically around the branches that had grown naturally into the domed roof. The cavernous space was lit by eight torches posted evenly along the wall and alight with cold, blue flame. Four massive clockwork telescopes made of polished brass and moonstone were arranged around the room so that each pointed in a different Cardinal direction through the weaves of branches which grew around the lengths of the scopes. The centerpiece of the room was a machine the likes of which Jack had never seen, resembling somewhat an enormous teapot in passing only. Levers and gears jutted out from the mass of curling metal almost at random. Nine mirrors were suspended on a dial which freely rotated around a large glass container shaped like a flower bud.

"Wow," Jack breathed, immediately flying ahead of the group to get a closer look at the bizarre contraption. Upon closer inspection he found that the mirrors were not mirrors at all, or at least they did not show what a mirror was meant to show. In the glossy surface of one he saw a tiny girl with a mane of wild red hair and holding a toy bow follow a trail of wisps into the shadows of a forest. Another showed a woman wearing a lavender gown with impossibly long golden hair running barefoot through a grassy field while a dour-looking man watched. In another he saw two young sisters playing in a grand ballroom... filled with snow. Baby Tooth seemed to especially like the last one, floating from Jack's shoulder to get a better look as the elder sister transformed the floor into a skating rink.

((Ah, you like that do you?)) the Atlantian sorcerer asked as he approached Jack. ((This is my pride and joy. With this I am able to watch unfold as they have in ages past, or as they will in ages yet to come.))

"So it's a time machine?" Jack asked without removing his eyes from the image.

((Yes, and also I fear the Pitch's target in my home. It is here that I have seen the unusual shadows, and sometimes I will return to find the settings have been changed overnight, without my overseeing them.)) A solemn silence fell over the room and Baby Tooth retreated back into Jack's hood, remembering sourly her last encounter with the King of Nightmares. In the mirror Jack watched as the sisters' game took a similar dark turn, the elder accidentally striking the younger with a blast of ice in a moment of panic.

"How did Pitch even get in?" Toothiana asked. "Why didn't the star sand-glass keep him out?"

((I do not know that it has not,)) Ombric admitted. ((All I have seen thus far are shadows, and only at night. Still, I did not wish to take chances.))

Over on the other side of the room from where Jack and Ombric stood Bunnymund gave an approving nod. "Good call mate." The Pooka's eyes were fixed on something on the floor, and as North approached he saw Bunny scraping something off of the wood with his nails. Black sand. "When was the last time you saw Pitch?"

((The Nightmare King himself? Six hundred years ago. His minions? I believe this morning, just before the sun rose.)) Ombric stroked his beard. ((That is, assuming it was a Fearling and not a silly moth playing near the torches.))

"And what exactly did you see?"

((At first, nothing. I came up here because of a moth complaining that there was something wrong with the lights. I thought she just meant they were going low, but when I got up here they were burning as strongly as ever, flickering and dancing as flames are wont to do. The shadows, however, did not move an inch. It was as though they were frozen in time.))

Signs flashed above the Sandman's head; the silhouette of the boogeyman, two streams of sand that shot out of his ears like smoke, a boxing-glove striking the silhouette, and two hands with their pinky fingers intertwined. ((Pitch-anger-defeat-promise.))

Jack and Baby Tooth exchanged looks before turning their eyes to the floor and their own shadows. Shifting so that he was standing in front of the torch sconce, Jack observed the way his shadow flickered and spun in time with the cold flame. Vaguely, he remembered being trapped inside Pitch Black's realm with the Nightmare King himself slinking through the shadows, taunting him. Jack was proud of himself for suppressing the shudder that threatened to work its way up his spine.

"And you have seen other such things?" North asked, bushy brows furrowed.

((Many times over the past few days,)) Ombric replied gravely. ((I have tried everything I could to banish them, but not even the brightest light seems to have any effect.))

"Then we'll take a crack at it," Jack said, flashing the old wizard a playful grin. "C'mon, how hard could it be?"

This earned a chuckle from Ombric. ((Very, but I like your enthusiasm.)) Again, Ombric made a grand sweeping gesture with his arms. He seemed rather fond of grand sweeping gestures, Jack thought. ((Come, let us all rest. Out enemy is most active at night and so we must also be thus!))

Once upon a time Big Root had been a center of learning open to any and all who had an honest desire to study under Ombric Shalazar's guidance. Time had seen that period of Big Root's history ended. Had it just been a matter of belief dying out, Ombric's teachings might have nonetheless survived, if not flourished, but the witch trials had seen Big Root's doors barred forever to the mortal world, Father Time taking a more indirect approach in the guiding and teaching of children.

As such, the sleeping quarters that had once been occupied by Ombric's wards now stood empty, ready for the Guardians to lay their heads. The wooden frames of the bunk beds - as the rest of the furniture inside of Big Root - appeared to have been grown into their current shapes rather than made. The mattresses were stuffed with giant snow-goose feathers and the sheets made from spun glowworm-silk. The eldest four Guardians laid down in the offered beds appreciatively, Toothiana directing her three accompanying fairies to take over operations in her stead and the ever-present streams of dream-sand rising from Sandy's sleeping form. Sleep took them almost immediately despite the fact that each of them - save for Sandy - was used to getting by on very little sleep. Only Jack hung back from the offered respite.

((You will be needing your rest,)) Ombric insisted, urging him forward.

"I know, but..." Jack trailed off, not quite sure how to explain it without coming across as incredibly pathetic.

((Are these rooms not to your liking?)) the old wizard offered. ((I have other rooms with equally comfortable beds, if you are uncomfortable with the company.))

"It's not that," Jack insisted while Baby Tooth shot him a pitying look from his shoulder. From anyone else, he would have been offended. "I just, uh... I'm not really used to sleeping in beds."

Jack braced himself for the 'oh, poor Jack' routine. He had received it from the other Guardians, Toothiana especially. Only Sandy seemed understanding, and while Jack was comfortable enough dozing off in the fallen star's cloud of dream-sand from time to time the other three had yet to give up their plans of forcing him to sleep in a bed like a civilized human being.

((Oh, well in that case...)) Ombric clapped his hands. Before Jack could ask the obvious question he heard a sound like the stretching of taffy and a bulging shape sprouted from the otherwise smooth wall above them. The shape stretched, lengthened, grew more spindly appendages, and then began to sprout pale green wisps of leaves.

Jack stared at the newly grown tree branch, mouth agape, while Ombric turned on his heel and slipped out the door. ((Sleep well, Jack.))

Ombric woke the Guardians just after sunset. Where the never ending tick-tock-tick-tock had been irritating by daylight - Jack had been prematurely woken by it three times already - it was downright creepy in the dark of night. The clamoring of the insects did little to lessen the effect; the overall atmosphere was eerie and Jack found himself wondering if this was really the same place he had read about in the Tome of the Guardians.

Only the blue-green glow of the magically lit torches kept the darkness at bay, though watching the shadows dancing in the unnatural light was far from reassuring. Still, Jack supposed, better that the shadows were moving rather than lying in wait ready to pounce as Ombric had described. Baby Tooth whispered similar sentiments into his ear.

The observatory looked much the same as it had when they had seen it in the daylight, save that inky black shadows clung to the walls. Jack was not sure whether or not to be relieved to find the shadows were behaving as shadows normally did, flicking and jumping in sync with the dancing torchlight.

((It may be hours yet before the Fearlings or strange shadows appear,)) Ombric pointed out. ((It was just before sunrise the last I saw them myself.))

"We're used to pulling all-nighters, mate," Bunnymund pointed out. To emphasize his point he gestured to Sandy who even then was directing his streams of dream-sand which passed through the star-sand windows as though they were no more than air.

Even so, the hours passed slowly. Tsar Lunar made his ascent into the night sky, though he went unseen by the Guardians. At some point Toothiana had begun muttering to herself, rattling off a never ending list of teeth to be retrieved and gifts to be left, never mind the fact that her faeries were overseeing themselves for the time being. Bunnymund took a single unpainted egg from one of the leather pouches strapped to his furry chest, a paintbrush and some small vials of paint from another, and began to painstakingly decorate the blank shell. Still, his nose never ceased twitching and his ears swiveled this way and that, ever alert even with his intense focus.

Jack was finding it far more difficult to keep himself occupied. He paced the room, frosted the windows, poked and prodded Bunnymund until the Pooka snapped at him, played a rousing game of 'eye spy' with Baby Tooth (made redundant by their shared thoughts) and eventually settled on watching the scenes in the dials of the time machine.

Ombric was in and out of the observatory all night. He walked the entirety of his home, he said, just in case the Fearlings took note of the Guardians' presence and made their rest elsewhere in Big Root. Every so often the old wizard returned to check on the observatory, not appearing to be in the slightest bit reassured when nothing changed. Once when he checked up on them he brought with him a tray holding several mugs of tea and cocoa - tea for the adult Guardians and, he insisted, North, and cocoa for Jack and for Baby Tooth to whom he served the drink in the cap of an acorn.

"Thank you," Jack said as he and his fairy accepted their drinks. The crackling sound of frost climbing over the mug filled the air the moment Jacks' fingers touched the ceramic, and slowly the curling tail of steam that rose from the brown liquid faded from view. Ombric watched intently as Jack took his first sip of the now cool liquid, eyes slightly wide. Jack did not have to try hard to pretend he did not notice; the moment the drink hit his tongue he nearly forgot that the elder was there at all.

The chocolate was rich and smooth, and tasted like wintergreen and snow-filled air. The flavor brought to mind images of snowball fights and frosted windows and icicles sparkling in pale morning sunlight. Jack's nostrils stung with the same crisp coldness that Winter air brought, a sensation he found far from unpleasant. "This is amazing!" he cried, unable to put to words quite how amazing it was. Ombric chuckled, obviously pleased by the inarticulate praise.

((From the looks of things, it seems your tiny companion quite agrees.)) Indeed, Baby Tooth had drained her cup completely and was holding the ice-rimmed acorn cap out to Ombric as though to say 'seconds please.' Jack plucked the acorn cap from her fingers and refilled it from his own drink as Ombric went on. ((I acquired the recipe from my dear friend Bunnymund, though I admit to experimenting with it a bit.))

Without looking up from his egg Bunnymund huffed. Something along the lines of 'humans, always trying to improve what nature has already perfected,' if Jack heard correctly.

((I had assumed that it would be better hot, but you seem to like it just fine as it is, eh?))

"I've never had anything more delicious," Jack admitted. Then, looking over his shoulder to the Guardian of Wonder, he added, "No offense North."

North ignored him in favor of grumbling over his tea.

Jack turned back to the image in the time machine's dial, continuing to sip his cocoa as he did. The image this time showed a boy, short and thin with a light dusting of freckles across his face and a shaggy mess of brown hair. The boy in the image was falling through the air, wind rippling his hair and green woolen tunic as he plummeted towards the ocean miles below, though the look on his face was one of pure elation. Mere moments before the boy would have hit the rocky waves a streak of black cut through the air and the boy was rising again, now seated in a streamlined saddle strapped to the back of a creature both feline and reptilian in appearance.

((It is rather fascinating, is it not? How much of history the world has forgotten?)) Ombric murmured. ((Nobody today knows of the dragon-riders among the viking tribes, and yet here we see them, plain as day.))

The boy in the mirror joined a group of other teens, each of whom also rode a dragon, though not a one rode the same species unless you counted the lanky, blond-haired brother and sister who each rode atop a head of the same two-headed reptile. "I thought vikings didn't actually wear horned helmets?" Jack's statement came across as more of a question. Of the teens shown in the image, only two did not wear helmets, and those that did had very prominent horns worked into the metal.

((The vast majority did not, it is true,)) Ombric explained. ((But in a tribe of dragon riders? Of course they would include as much draconic imagery in their dress and their crafts as possible.))

"Do you watch them a lot?" Jack asked without taking his eyes off of the screen. A second boy, much burlier than the first with darker hair, attempted to imitate the first boy's stunt with little success; Jack forced himself to stifle a laugh as the rust-colored, serpentine dragon with the dark, crooked horns and massive wings continued to fly, not noticing its riders absence.

((Oh yes. As much as I adore books, they can only teach me so much, and most of the information contained within is not first hand. It is much better to watch history unfold myself, and, I must admit, a great deal more entertaining.))

Jack nodded in agreement and took another sip of his cocoa.

Another hour passed. By the time Jack had finished his drink he had grown bored even of watching the images in the time machine's mirrors. In fact, he found himself not caring to do much of anything at all, except to sit cross-legged on the floor and listen to the insects' prattle.

A similar lethargy seemed to fall over the other Guardians. From Sandy it was almost expected, and not altogether a problem as the little dream weaver could work even in his sleep. From the others, it was a bit funny. Already North was snoring loudly enough that he almost entirely blocked out the never ending drivel of the insects. Toothiana was leaning against him, using his large belly as a pillow. Only Bunnymund remained semi-conscious, though his half-painted egg lay abandoned on the floor and his head was constantly bobbing, jolting upright every few minutes as he struggled to stay awake.

'I should wake them up,' Jack thought, yet he made no move to do so. He had told himself several times already that he would, yet he simply found himself unable to muster up the motivation to do much of anything.

((I want some more,)) Baby Tooth whined for the umpteenth time.

"Mm-hmm," Jack replied, not really listening.

((It was really tasty.))

"Yeah."

((I bet the bugs would like some too.))

"Probably."

((Where do you think they are?))

Jack blinked. He sat up a little straighter, clutching his staff tighter in his grip as he did. Glancing around the room, he once again took in the sight of the sleeping and half-sleeping Guardians. This time, the sight set off warning bells.

"Where are the insects?" he murmured aloud. From the Tome of the Guardians he had expected the lunar moths and glowworms and spiders to be prominent within Big Root. Only now did it seem strange to him that while he had heard their voices whispering and hissing at him from the walls, he had not seen a one. "Where is Ombric?"

Baby Tooth blinked at him sluggishly, as though he were speaking gibberish. This was wrong; her mind and his both felt sluggish, and linked as they were the effect was doubly crippling. Baby Tooth's thoughts swam with yum-good-warm-sleep-do-obey-sleep-obey-obey...

The warning bells ringing in Jack's head suddenly turned into a siren. Clumsily he reached for Baby Tooth who hardly reacted when he plucked her up from her seat on the floor next to him, though Jack was sure he was holding her a bit too tightly, and whose head lolled as he tried to place her in his hood as gently as possible with his fingers feeling like lead.

"Bunny? Hey, Bunny?"

The Pooka did not react. Jack stood, a bit too quickly if the way the room seemed to spin was any indication, and made his way unsteadily towards the only other conscious Guardian.

"Hey, Cottontail, get up. I think something's wrong..." Jack trailed off as he neared the Guardian of Hope. Bunnymund's eyes were open, but they seemed wrong. Distant. His head was bowed, no longer bobbing and his ears and nose were still. Tentatively, Jack reached out to shake his friend's shoulder. The moment he had touched the Pooka, however, Bunnymund slumped over, hitting the ground with a loud thump and staying there, dead asleep.

"Whaaat's goin' on?" Jack mumbled. His tongue felt like it had been carved of wood and his lips like they were made of rubber. "Bayee Toof?"

He received no response from the frost fairy nestled in his hood.

The drone of the invisible insects increased in volume, thousands of tiny voices screeching at him in hundreds of languages - moth, worm, beetle, ant, spider, gnat... Jack held his head, trying to stop the room from spinning.

((BadbadverybadwhispermumbleshoutrunhidefleeescapewhisperwhisperhissBlackherehissmumblewhispergogogo!))

"Jack?"

A single voice cut through the din, old and familiar. Jack blinked a bit stupidly, trying to focus and realizing only when he felt a spindly hand on his shoulder that he was still staring at the unconscious form of Bunnymund.

"Jack, is everything well?"

"Nnnnnnhhnn..." Jack's reply trailed off into a slurred whine. Ombric wrapped his other hand around Jack's shoulders, assisting the young immortal in turning to face him as Jack found his limbs refusing to work as they should.

"Oh, you poor boy," Ombric purred, and there was some thing wrong and familiar about his voice but whatever it was stayed just firmly out of reach. Jack allowed himself to be lead from Bunnymund's side, even as his instincts were screaming at him to react, that there was something wrong with this whole thing, that there was something familiar about the spider-like hand resting on his back...

"Here, you look absolutely exhausted," Ombric was saying, though his voice sounded hollow. "Why don't you sit down and rest a bit?"

Jack nodded in spite of the wrongness because sitting seemed like a very good thing and standing made his head hurt...

((RunbadgetoutbadshushwhispermurmermumbleBlackPitchBlackPitchBlackPitchBlack...))

"Zzzzuggz?"

Ombric ignored Jack's incoherently slurred inquiry and continued to lead him to the... something. Jack blinked. Was that a giant teapot? When had that gotten there?

Dimly Jack was aware of something tugging at his staff. Even in his lethargic state Jack tensed, fingers digging into the frost-rimmed wood out of habit. A faint sigh tickled his ear and the tugging stopped, though Jack's grip remained fast. Suddenly Jack heard a mechanical hiss and an intense white light blossomed in the near-darkness. He snapped his eyelids shut, tears streaming from their corners as Ombric continued to lead him forwards.

((PitchBlackPitchBlackPitchBlackPitchBlackPitchBlackPitchBlack...))

Jack heard the insects' cry now, clear as day, but the words simply did not register. They were meaningless. Cautiously he peeked his eyes open, snapping them shut almost instantly as he realized that the intense white light was now surrounding him on all sides. Somewhere through the haze of his mind Jack was aware of someone talking to him, the voice confident, pleased. The voice was... reassuring him? Promising to come back for him? Jack was unsure. He offered the invisible voice a smile and a vague nod.

Then the white disappeared and he was falling.

#fanfiction #my writing #The Long Road #hijack #frostcup #jaccup

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gizedcom · 4 years

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The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of ‘The Last of Us Part II’

The real horror in zombie fiction is usually not the legions of undead, but the frailties and cruelties that they expose in the living. The differences between stories in the genre come from the specific fears and frustrations that they render into their metaphors. The Last of Us Part II fits perfectly within these genre conventions, but what’s different here is its sources of inspiration.

The Last of Us Part II focuses on what has been broadly defined by some of its creators as a “cycle of violence.” While some zombie fiction shows human depravity in response to fear or scarcity in the immediate aftermath of an outbreak, The Last of Us Part II takes place in a more stabilized post apocalypse, decades after societal collapse, where individuals and communities choose to hurt each other as opposed to taking heinous actions out of desperation.

More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.

The game’s co-director and co-writer Neil Druckmann, an Israeli who was born and raised in the West Bank before his family moved to the U.S., told the Washington Post that the game’s themes of revenge can be traced back to the 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob in Ramallah. Some of the gruesome details of the incident were captured on video, which Druckmann viewed. In his interview, he recounted the anger and desire for vengeance he felt when he saw the video—and how he later reconsidered and regretted those impulses, saying they made him feel “gross and guilty.” But it gave him the kernel of a story.

“I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”

Druckmann drew parallels between The Last of Us and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict again on the official The Last of Us podcast. When discussing the first time Joel kills another man to protect his daughter and the extraordinary measures people will take to protect the ones they love, Druckmann said he follows “a lot of Israeli politics,” and compared the incident to Israel’s release of hundreds of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. He said that his father thought that the exchange was overall bad for Israel, but that his father would release every prisoner in every prison to free his own son.

“That’s what this story is about, do the ends justify the means, and it’s so much about perspective. If it was to save a strange kid maybe Joel would have made a very different decision, but when it was his tribe, his daughter, there was no question about what he was going to do,” Druckmann said.

Naughty Dog and PlayStation have presented Druckmann as The Last of Us Part II‘s creative lead and public face. Game development is a highly collaborative practice that demands the backbreaking labor of literally hundreds of programmers, testers, writers, and artists, all of whom make creative contributions and without whom a game of this size and scope would not exist. So while it’s impossible to pin a big budget video game’s themes and inspirations to one person, parallels between The Last of Us Part II and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict manifest in the final product, not just in what Druckmann has said in interviews.

Besides the familiar zombie fiction aesthetics of an overgrown and decomposing metropolis, The Last of Us Part II‘s main setting of Seattle is visually and functionally defined by a series of checkpoints, security walls, and barriers. There are many ways to build and depict structures that separate and keep people out. Just Google “U.S.-Mexico border wall” to see the variety of structures on the southern border of the United States alone. The Last of Us Part II‘s Seattle doesn’t look like any of these. Instead, it looks almost exactly like the tall, precast concrete barriers and watch towers Israel started building through the West Bank in 2000.

The history and power dynamics of The Last of Us Part II‘s Seattle map to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well, if viewed from an Israeli perspective.

The main faction in Seattle is the Washington Liberation Front (WLF), known as the Wolves. The broad strokes are that after the outbreak, FEDRA, an emergency militaristic government agency, took over the city. With food shortages, constant fear of infection, and FEDRA’s increasingly brutal measures of keeping order, an insurgency rose: the Wolves. They were outmatched, but prevailed with a series of hit-and-run attacks, assassinations of FEDRA officers, and other guerilla tactics. Eventually, FEDRA abandoned the city and ceded control to the Wolves, who in turn implemented an equally harsh (or harsher) regime.

In one in-game note, a FEDRA commander in Seattle writes to Central Command to explain that he has lost the city the Wolves, which he describes as terrorists. Here, there are parallels to early Zionist organisations that fought British rule in the region. These organizations were also described as terrorists, and leaders of those organizations later became leaders in Israel, much like how Isaac, the leader of the Wolves, came to control Seattle. Other in-game notes, scenes of urban ambushes, and the bodies of executed FEDRA officers laboriously walk the player through the cliche “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

Once Isaac and the Wolves seized control of Seattle by violent means, however, the same means were used against them by another group—one that uncomfortably matches Israeli caricatures of Palestinians.

Most of the Wolves regime’s restrictions are directed at a post-apocalyptic religious sect called the Seraphites (the Wolves call them “Scars” after the ritualistic scarring of their faces). These Scars vexed FEDRA as well when it was in control. The dynamic in the city when the game begins is one of conflict, escalation, and a broken truce. The Wolves, like FEDRA, leverage more resources and raw power, while the Scars rely on surprise strikes against Wolf patrols, and a zealous willingness to die for the cause.

To run through just a few key ways in which the Scars uncomfortably reflect some Israeli stereotypes about Palestinians:

The same note from the Seattle FEDRA commander that bitterly says the Wolves are in charge explains that it’s now their responsibility to not only feed and shelter the people of Seattle, but deal with the “religious fanatics,” referring to the Scars.

Later in the game, Ellie finds a location called “Martyr Gate,” where the Scars’ spiritual leader apparently died, indicating a religious significance of a specific and disputed location, and emphasizing the notion of martyrdom as central to their culture.

The Scars are able to get around Wolf patrols and various barriers around the city via an elaborate, secret system of bridges between skyscrapers. These function as a kind of flipped version of the underground tunnels Palestinians use to bypass Israeli blockades and other means of limiting free movement in order to get supplies and carry out attacks on Israel.

The Last of Us Part II goes to great pains to impress that it sees no innocent players in this conflict. It’s not just that Isaac and the Wolves seized control of the city by vicious (but necessary) means—the society they’ve built, prosperous and protected by the walls of Seattle’s CenturyLink Field, is buttressed by fascisim and cruelty to an outgroup. The Wolves’ bountiful crops exist to feed an army that ventures far beyond its territory to punish the Scars. Its kennels of adorable dogs are just disposable weapons. Isaac leads from a forward operating base that sits atop torture chambers. After a truce fails, the only way he can imagine peace is through the total annihilation of his enemies.

It is not a peaceful or just society, or even a sustainable one in the long run, despite its perseverance and resourcefulness. It is one that is doomed to collapse because of an inability, or unwillingness, to resolve a perfectly resolvable conflict.

This conflict comes to a head when Isaac decides to push deep into the Scars’ land to finish them once and for all. We don’t get to see how the battle ends or who comes out on top, but we see Isaac die in the fighting, and get the sense that the battle is so brutal and bloody, whatever survives is not worth keeping.

Rather than step back, cooperate, and seek truth and reconciliation, the Wolves and Scars keep seeking revenge for past grievances in a cycle of violence that eventually ends them both in literal fires sparked by hate. The game’s message seems to be: “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,” another cliche that The Last of Us Part II indulges in by taking away Tommy’s eye at the end of the game for seeking revenge for his brother Joel.

A “cycle of violence” is a tempting way to interpret this conflict, or any conflict, because it signals careful nuance while quietly squashing more difficult conversations. By suggesting that since both Wolves and Scars are equally implicated and equally in pain, we are free to stop thinking about the problem. All parties include both good and bad actors. We’re all human. Both sides.

This common, centrist position on violent conflict, while better than absolute dehumanization, is not coincidentally a world view that allows conflicts to drag on forever. Suggesting moral equivalence and a symmetry in ability between sides also invites us to throw up our hands and give up on better solutions because of implied and unexamined perceptions about “human nature.” Indeed, the game is unrelentingly cynical, and this cynicism animates most of the 30-odd hour experience. Whereas Abby and Ellie find interpersonal resolution at the end, the game seems content to leave the question of community-scale cycles of violence as a regrettable fact of human existence. Even if the Wolves and Scars meet their mutual end, the game leaves us with the knowledge that a resistance group from the first game, the Fireflies, and other groups, are regrouping and gaining strength. The cycle continues.

Despite the lengths it goes to, The Last of Us Part II can’t help but reveal that its perspective is firmly rooted in one side and not the other.

Seattle is so clearly inspired by Israel and Palestine without naming either, but it does notably spend time presenting Jewish identity. One of the first things Ellie and Dina do when they arrive in Seattle is explore a former synagogue. It’s a short scene, maybe 20 minutes out of a 30-plus hour game, and it serves as a kind of a Jewish experience amusement park ride, bombarding the player with references and history as Dina and Ellie walk around a bimah, find a Torah, and so on. Almost the entirety of this section is spent explaining Jewish identity as that of survivors in the face of other groups that want to destroy them. In the span of those 20 minutes, there are three separate references to the Holocaust.

Survival in the face of persecution is a pillar of Jewish identity for good reason, and has been since before the Holocaust. It’s also one that is relevant to the characters in the game, all of whom are survivors of a zombie apocalypse. But this is only one aspect of Jewish identity. The Last of Us Part II doesn’t spend any time exploring, for example, Talmudic traditions which define so much of Jewish notions of justice and scholarship. Instead, in a non-optional section of the game, it spends a significant amount of time telling the player that Jews are always persecuted and fighting for survival. This is not wrong, but it is serving a specific purpose in the ham-fisted allegory about Israel and Palestine that is The Last of Us Part II, much like the Holocaust is cynically leveraged by some to justify Israel’s actions.

This sermon is notably delivered by Dina, who is Jewish and serves as the game’s moral compass. Dina is pregnant, dreams of a life of peace, and tries to turn Ellie back from her murderous quest. When Ellie chooses to pursue it anyway, the heaviest price she pays is that Dina leaves her.

The more moral characters in The Last of Us Part II all want to escape cycles of violence rather than reckon with them. Lev and Yara want to escape their cult. Owen and Mel want to get on a boat and sail away from Seattle. Dina wants to walk away from the mess and live on a farm secluded from the rest of society. Even our main characters, Ellie and Abby, after far too much suffering, essentially end their emotional journey when they decide to walk away from revenge.

It’s certainly true that individual lives get wrapped up in larger conflicts in horrible ways. Cycles of violence exist in practice as escalations and retributions. A defining feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the macabre bargaining over which violence is worse. Images of exploded public buses are presented next to collapsed buildings and children being pulled from the rubble. Armed factions swear to deliver retaliation over specific incidents, and do.

But “cycles of violence” are a poor way to understand a conflict in a meaningful way, especially if one is interested in finding a solution. The United States, for example, hasn’t been at war in Afghanistan for almost 20 years because it’s trapped in a “cycle of violence” with the Taliban. It is deliberately choosing to engage with a problem in a way that perpetuates a conflict. Just as the fantasy of escaping violence by simply walking away from it is one that only those with the means to do so can entertain, the myth of the “cycle of violence” is one that benefits the side that can survive the status quo.

In The Last of Us Part II‘s Seattle, Scars and Wolves hurt each other terribly, and the same can be said about Israel and Palestine. The difference is that when flashes of violence abate and the smoke clears, one side continues to live freely and prosper, while the other goes back to a life of occupation and humiliation. One side continues to expand while the other continues to lose the land it needs to live. Imagining this process as some kind of symmetric cycle benefits one side more than the other, and allows it to continue.

As a result, The Last of Us Part II never quite justifies its fatalism. As Rob Zacny wrote in his review and again in his closer examination of The Last of Us Part II‘s ending, at the end of the day Ellie’s journey of revenge seems especially cruel, even idiotic, because we are never given a good reason for why she keeps recommitting to it. Acts of cruelty along the way, like Ellie’s torturing another character to get information, are presented as inevitable. This seems to be The Last of Us Part II‘s thesis: humans experience a kind of “intense hate that is universal,” as Druckmann told The Post, which keep us trapped in these cycles.

But is intense hate really a universal feeling? It’s certainly not one that I share. I, too, have seen the video of the 2000 mob killing of the Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, and it’s horrific. Yet, my immediate response wasn’t “Oh, man, if I could just push a button and kill all these people that committed this horrible act, I would make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people,” as Druckmann said.

This is not a universal feeling as much as it’s a learned way of seeing the world. There are many other ways to react to that video: compassion for the victims, compassion for the killers, questioning why these soldiers had to drive into the West Bank in the first place, questioning what would drive a mob to this kind of violence. Revenge and hate is just one option.

The Last of Us Part II is an incredible journey that provides not only one of the most mesmerizing spectacles that we’ve seen from big budget video games, but one that manages to ask difficult questions along the way. It’s clearly coming from an emotionally authentic and self-examining place. The trouble with it, and the reason that Ellie’s journey ultimately feels nonsensical, is that it begins from a place that accepts “intense hate that is universal” as a fact of life, rather than examining where and why this behavior is learned.

Critically, by not asking these questions, and by masking its point of view as being evenhanded, it perpetuates the very cycles of violence it’s supposedly so troubled by.

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tokyototokyo · 5 years

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Day 5, 31st March, Imabari

Wonderful day today in and around Hiroshima. Breakfast was first with the sun rising over the water.

Our hotel was on the harbour so lovely to be able to walk along the foreshore.

Hiroshima, like a lot of Japanese cities, was fairly non descript for the most part. Not a lot of colour or trees in among the buildings.

Golf driving range.

There are a lot of water ways throughout the city.

Cherry blossoms along the waterfront.

Rain was predicted today so when the Japanese want the day to be fine they make paper boys and as many as they can for good weather.

We were catching a ferry to the island of Miyajimacho. Next to the ferry terminal was a boat racing course. Gambling is illegal in Japan but there are four types of gambling the Japanese government allows. Horse racing, cycling, motor cycles and boat racing.

Boat racing is fairly popular but mostly for the men. The boats are only small. A bit like a go cart size.

The Japanese queue to get on transport so we were being good lining up for the ferry.

Kymie buying the ferry tickets.

Leaving port.

The Ferries leave often and it takes about 15 minutes to get to Miyajima Island which has a World Heritage listing.

From the ferry we walked along the foreshore. We had caught the ferry early to beat the crowds which certainly increased as the day progressed.

Looking back across the harbour to a fairly new All Religion Church. There are a number of these in Japan and encompass Buddhism, Islam, Christianity etc.

The sun had come out so a lovely sight looking towards the O-Tori’s Gate. Miyajima has been worshipped as a divine island since ancient times. This is why the shrine was built on the seashore where the tide ebbs and flows. The contrast of the blue sea, green hills and vivid vermilion-lacquered shrine is breathtakingly beautiful.

In front the gate to the Shrine. A female and male temple dog guarded the entrance. The female is the one with her mouth open as the guys pointed out it was because females talk so much.

The O- Tori’s Gate

The Itsukushima Shrine was first built in 593, then rebuilt in 1168 on the same scale as today. The Shrine has never been affected by earthquakes or typhoons.

A corridor of some 280 metres spans more than twenty buildings

People giving thanks.

Looking out to the O-Tori’s Gate.

Three lovely ladies.

Sake barrels

This bridge is so steep humans couldn’t walk over it. It’s designed for the Gods to use.

Shopping street

Beautiful couple

Elaborate detail of back of the kimono.

Cherry blossom

Daiganji Temple

Cherry blossoms and me. There were deers in the canal.

You can never get enough of the cherry blossoms.

Five storied pagoda

Rickshaw

Blossom tree

Another shopping street

There were a lot of stalls selling oysters.

This was a pastry in the shape of a maple leaf filled with custard, apple or choclate. Very yummy.

Heading back on the ferry. The ferry was virtually empty going back but big lines waiting on the other side.

This building is now known as the A bomb Dome but was orginally the Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall which was a distinctive landmark with its green dome. It was built in 1915.

At 8.15am on Aug 6 th 1945 an American B29 bomber carried out the world’s first atomic bombing. The bomb explosed approx 600 m above the building ripping through and killing everyone instantly. Because the blast was almost directly above the building some of the centre walls remained.

Initially opinion was divided about the dome but when other affected buildings were demolished it was decided to leave this building as a memorial to the bombing.

This is the children’s memorial which is also at the Hypocentre of the bombing. The city was hit by heat rays of 3,000 to 4,000 degree C along with a blast wind and radiation.

Near this area are shopping streets which are covered. We all enjoyed a wander and some lunch.

Eating Okonomiyaki a local dish.

Looking across to the Hiroshima Peace Park

It was a Sunday so lots of people out enjoying a picnic.

A young girl called Sadako was exposed to the radiation from the atomic bomb. Ten years later she developed leukaemia and died. Her classmates called for a monument to all children to be built. With donations from 3,200 schools and nine countries the Children’s Peace Monument was unveiled in 1958.

The story goes that Sadako wanted to make 1000 cranes to help her get well. Her classmates and family helped her. However she only got to make 620 cranes before she past away. The paper crane is now found at many memorials in all colours with some forming pictures. Behind the monument are glass boxes full of the cranes.

A Japanese family enjoying the day out. Even though the events that lead to the park being made are very somber its such a lovely area that on a beautiful day people are out to enjoy themselves. Except for a few westerners you don’t see many other nationalities around. Japan doesn’t really allow immigration and takes only a handful of refugees.

The

Peace Memorial Park. The park was started in 1950 and completed in 1954 it was built to comfort the souls of the victims and to pray for everlasting world peace. 145,000 people lost their lives in the bombing. Many instantly.

Looking towards the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The museum collects and displays belongings left by the victims, photos and other material that conveys the horror of the event.

Looking back to the A dome. President Obama visited Japan in 2016, layed a wreath here and gave a speech after visiting the museum.

When the bomb landed.

Ruins.

Map of the bombed area.

A poignant poem about the desperate need for water by the survivors.

This bicycle was buried, after the bomb, with the owners and discovered recently when the family were doing some building work. The skeletons of the children were found and they were holding hands. It’s usual for bodies to be cremated in Japan so the skeletons were cremated and the bicycle donated to the museum.

Survivors

Leaving Hiroshima we travelled on a 60 km long toll road that connects Japan’s main island of Honshu to the island of Shikoku passing over six small islands in the Seto Inland Sea. It is also known as the Nishiseto Expressway. The road was opened in 1999.

Each bridge has a different design.

Lots of lovely scenery along the way.

Each bridge was very impressive.

There was a lot of evidence of ship building in many settlements.

The bridges are all big structures.

Settlement along the coast.

The bus wound up the mountain to the Kirosan Panorama Park. It was a pity it was getting late in the day. Below was the last bridge we had to cross.

The guys taking the girls photo.

All the girls minus two.

Looking south.

Hotel foyer, very nice. The Japanese are so efficient with check in. Our keys are waiting for us so we can walk-in and go straight to our rooms.

Lovely lounge

Looking down on the city of Imabari. The last bridge can just be seem in the distance.

Sunset from our 19th floor hotel room. This was probably the nicest hotel so far but they do all blend into each other.

Another interesting meal. So many different pretty dishes. Washing up would be a nightmare.

Sukiyaki The meat was cooked at the table. It was very nice.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum made me slightly angry. You can’t get away from the horrific destruction and huge loss of life and the continuing after affects but you look at the mostly Japanese people in the museum and wonder what they think. There was about six lines describing the start of the war and then the rest basically made no mention of Japan’s part In the war.

We have asked Kymie about what is taught in the school and the whole period of World War Two is not taught at all so people really don’t understand why the bombs were dropped. Children wonder why American would do this to them. Apparently, even today, the Japanese government doesn’t want to take any responsibility for what happened. Kymie has said on a number of occasions Japan got into the war because of one bad general and that’s the full story. Access to the internet has allowed the Japanese to know more.

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calemor · 7 years

Text

Chase

The Heroes of Fannen-Dar, Chapter 1 The town center marketplace erupted into a bamboozled commotion as a stall was overturned and six bodies sprinted down the streets and rocketed into shoppers.

The focus of their rage was the panicked woman who had just tried to steal from one of the most powerful gangs in town. This woman was Robin.

Lounging on a golden throne in the middle of the room, lit by a pulsing yellow cold-torch, sat the leader of the most feared gang in Fannen-Dar...King Dominaurus.

After a few seconds, she managed to open her mouth and speak.

"Hurng."

"I...You're...I was..."

Robin dumbly followed his gaze to the pouch. "Mhm," she said.

"Uh...then, I'm pretty gangless, I guess," she mumbled.

"But...you're helping me. Right?" Robin said.

Robin looked at the bag in her hand. "Would about fifty silver cover it?" she ventured.

"Robin," she muttered.

"Got a guest, y'do," the elf said, looking rapidly from left to right and back to King Dom. "Broos Bellinger, it is. Wants to talk 'bout a certain loss he thinks you might have 'quired."

"This thief is under my protection," King Dom replied. "I want you nor any member of your gang to harm her, or else our current peace will be broken." He smiled. "It's as simple as that."

King Dom waggled a finger. "That's not part of this deal."

"What deal? You're just making a threat!"

"I wish," King Dom said after a heavy sigh, "that you wouldn't point out the obvious ulterior meaning of my words. It's quite a waste of everyone's time."

Broos growled to himself, but then said, "Fine. She stays safe, your boys stay the hell away from my work, and we go on as usual. But before I go, she at least owes me the coin she stole."

Broos's face went ashen as the half-ogre poured the bent and twisted silver into his open palm. Robin also let out an involuntary whimper at the sight of perfectly good money gone to waste.

"Fine," Broos said again. "You made your message, as usual." He shoved the wood elf aside, opened the door, and stormed out.

"It certainly is time for you to leave," King Dom said, "but not through the front door."

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#Calemor #Tales of Calemor #The Heroes of Fannen-Dar #Heroes of Fannen-Dar #Fannen-Dar #fantasy #fantasy writing #Robin #Broos Bellinger #King Dom

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