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starshipsofstarlord · 3 years

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Vaping - Elizabeth Olsen x reader x JJ Maybank

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Summary; introducing your girlfriend to your best friend takes an interesting turn. Much evolves from a couple beers and a vape, JJ finally lets go

Warnings; mentions of nudes, vaping, underaged drinking, mentions of sex, some angst, swearing, mentions of cheating, angst, rejection, unreciprocated feelings

As the two of you kissed, a strong scent hit you, like a ton of breaks causing collateral as it fell from a building, though it smelled specifically of a pungent lemon scent. The pair of you pulled away, and there was a vaping blond stood above you, quirking his brow at the sight. It was no surprise that he had chosen to intervene with your casual date, you knew how he felt about your new relationship.

He was appalled to hear that you were committed to another, angry, jealous, he could go on about the emotions that were raging on inside of him. Time before you had even knew of Lizzie’s existence, you and JJ had a thing, more specifically, you had broken the pogue on pogue rule. The two of you would go at it with ample lust fuelling your every action, but the stick in the mud was, JJ had actually caught feelings.

When you had cut things off with him, claiming that you wanted to see other people, he was outraged, though he played it off as though it were no big deal. You remained close friends, and hardly noticed how he had been reading your messages to Elizabeth over your shoulder, nor how he frowned every time he heard of someone by that name. It pissed him off, she had his prized jewel, she didn’t have to fight for you like he had tried.

She was gifted your affection on a silver and clean platter, there was no dirty or guilt ridden scrubs that endured the profanity in your relationships, the two of you could be open with your turn of adoration for one another, but when JJ thought that he had you, it had to all be a secret. Even the pogues weren’t permitted an insight of your transactions, even if they had a keen eye for how the pair of you mysteriously tended to wander off together.

Kie, Pope and John B had been supportive when you told them that you had began to like someone, at first they thought it was JJ, which had gotten his hopes substantially up, but then it was revealed there was a girl in the picture. It didn’t matter if she was pretty, or kind, or out of the class laws of OBX, JJ resented her, even though he was a stranger to her and vice versa. But the one thing he liked about this unknown lover of yours had been how she made you happy, that was always his goal.

Without it being the matter that he was supposed to be concerned about, JJ thought hard about his own feelings. Yes, he tended to be a screw up, but he had an inkling that he was more than smitten with you. He was in love with you, and staring down at you with this new partner of yours, gave him great staking pain in his chest. “Why are you here Maybank?” In defends, JJ raised a cartridge of four beers to your view, the cock of your head being an invitation for him to take a seat.

He cleared his throat, as though that would be a primal factor in establishing his dominance, as he turned to your girlfriend. “How are you liking Outer Banks so far?” He handed her a beer, to which Lizzie willingly accepted with a thank you and a too kind to hate smile. “Most tourists think the views are nice.” He prompted to the conversation, watching a riddle spur in the brunette’s eyes.

“Oh, the views are more than fine.” She looked at you, running her green orbs down your form as she shamelessly checked you out in front of the boy. Lizzie cracked the lid from the bottle, weaving it off as she took a gulp from the liquor, draining her extraction of it like a champ. “I’m Elizabeth by the way.” Oh, he knew. A part of him wished that he in fact did not, the impartial knowledge of being aware of your exclusivity status had him crumbling from the inside out.

He had been getting into more fights with the kooks lately, taking his anger out on the prissy teens to establish some kind of reputation, even if that not carry the title of your boyfriend. “We get quite a few storms, like Agatha, she was a right bitch, didn’t hear from y/n for like a week. She was getting it on with Kelce, he’s from the other side of the island.”

“Figure Eight.” She noted, having recalled you mention it before. Your eyes widened, kicking him in the shin as you realised what he was doing. “How long ago was that, I know you said the power went out.” JJ realised what she was trying to do, it was her attempt at creating a time line of actions. She was building up a map of your entanglements with actions, and seeing if you could be held accountable for cheating.

“Just before the two of got together, which links to this funny story....” Oh no, no he wasn’t, was he? “We’d had our fun in the past, me and your girlfriend, and turns out when I heard about you two, we were still fucking.” Snatching the vape from him, you breathed it in, as though you were preparing for Lizzie’s reaction. She simply shrugged, taking the item from you and lulling in the acidic smoke that filled her lungs.

“That’s okay, we didn’t know each other too well then, and it seems there is quite the tight knit on the island.” God were you relieved, and endorsed in the sight of smoke blowing out of her nostrils as she took another swig of the liquidised joint. “I don’t have a problem with it as long as you don’t. What was your name again, I seem to have forgotten.” Forgotten on purpose it was more like, she wanted him out of the picture, he was simply a blockade in his way.

“Me?” He laughed lightly whilst pointing at himself. Yes him, the guy that was being an absolute dick and disrupting your supposed to be peaceful evening. “Oh, I’m JJ. I have no problem with you being here, in fact, I think it’s great. You’re just another hot chick that has caught y/n’s eye, when you go back to wherever the hell you came from, she’ll probably start hooking up with some random; wouldn’t be the first time, doubt it’d be the last.”

“I’m from California.” She stated unimpressed by JJ’s behaviour. You had mentioned him to her, filled her in on all valid details, but you didn’t say that he was this much of a dick. “And I don’t have to worry about that, I have my reasons.”

“Oh, because you trust her so much?” He laughed, taking a heavy slog of beer, hurriedly gulping it down as though it were some kind of coping mechanism. “She’s not trustworthy, she doesn’t give a fuck about any one’s feelings, she uses them for her own pleasure, and then makes things neutral between them.” Was he being over the top? Definitely. Were you astounded by the scene that he was causing? Sure as hell.

“J settle down.” You tried to coax him, but he swiftly stood, tears rimming the inclination of bud pain staked eyes. It was clear that he was not settling down; not in the slightest. He breathed in the vape once more, the lemony scent burning down through his chest for a moment, before he released the cloud out into the air, it swimming above like a wave out of the ocean.

“Don’t J me.” He mimicked you, rifling his destructive hands through his blond locks. “I don’t even know who you are, yet you took everything from me.” Lizzie felt a little bad for your friend, he was clearly experiencing symptoms of emotions towards you, it made her feel guilty for your shared secret.

“I’m moving JJ.” You revealed, his face becoming stoic with wide eyes. Lizzie squeezed your hand as you physically and mentally stood up to your best friend and past friend with benefits, causing him brash surprise that burned through his lungs. “To California.” You finished.

“With her?” He asked astounded, taking a step back as he dropped the glass bottle, allowing it to drop upon the dock, causing both you and Lizzie to jump from the smash. “I can’t believe you.” He breathed from his vape, turning away with a shake of his head.

“J.” You tried to call out for him, but he nevertheless continued on his path away. “Come on, don’t be ridiculous.” Him, being ridiculous? What a stupid annotation, he was allowed to be hurt. Yet it seemed that you wanted him to feel nothing, be a mute to emotions.

“I’m ridiculous?” He huffed, spinning around so that your noses touched, forcing you to throw your head back in shock. “You’re the one that ditched me, for some girl, that doesn’t know that you have a peeve of people not putting their ankle through the loop when they surf because otherwise it just hangs there, and how it makes you absolutely crazy when Kie dresses like a kook. Wait a moment, did you tell her that you were a kook?”

He laughed, noticing how a frown formed upon Lizzie’s face. “That’s truly amusing, lying about your wealth to attract the attention of a pretty girl, when you have a guy that absolutely adores you for who and what you are. He’s pogue and proud, and currently speaking in third person because he’s scared to openly admit that he’s in love with you.”

It was an unexpected reveal, that statement of how he truly felt, it unfortunately was not just a crush. “She didn’t tell me that she was a kook, you just want there to be issues between me and y/n, which there isn’t. So I suggest you continue walking, she is not interested in you, or your fucking feelings. We are dating, and she is moving with me, so grow up and deal with it.”

“Wait-“ your words ended as he continued walking. You knew he would take the news terribly, but you never guessed it would be him walking away, rather than the other way around. You were going to be 43 hours away from your home to spend time with the one that you were coiled in a relationship with. It was not how you wanted things to end, instead you wanted him to breathe his vape into your face and be like normal.

#elizabeth olsen x reader #jj maybank x reader #elizabeth olsen oneshot #outer banks imagine #jj maybank oneshot #crossover imagine #jj maybank angst #Elizabeth Olsen angst #Elizabeth Olsen fanfiction #jj maybank fanfiction

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bananaofswifts · 3 years

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Your guide to the singer-songwriter’s surprise follow-up to Folklore.

CARL WILSON

When everything’s clicking for Taylor Swift, the risk is that she’s going to push it too far and overtax the public appetite. On “Mirrorball” from Folklore, she sings, with admirable self-knowledge, “I’ve never been a natural/ All I do is try, try, try.” So when I woke up yesterday to the news that at midnight she was going to repeat the trick she pulled off with Folklore in July—surprise-releasing an album of moody pop-folk songs remote-recorded in quarantine with Aaron Dessner of the National as well as her longtime producer Jack Antonoff—I was apprehensive. Would she trip back into the pattern of overexposure and backlash that happened between 1989 and Reputation?

Listening to the new Evermore, though, that doesn’t feel like such a threat. A better parallel might be to the “Side B” albums that Carly Rae Jepsen put out after both Emotion and Dedicated, springing simply out of the artist’s and her fans’ mutual enthusiasm. Or, closer to Swift’s own impulses here, publishing an author’s book of short stories soon after a successful novel. Lockdown has been a huge challenge for musicians in general, but it liberated Swift from the near-perpetual touring and publicity grind she’s been on since she was a teen, and from her sense of obligation to turn out music that revs up stadium crowds and radio programmers. Swift has always seemed most herself as the precociously talented songwriter; the pop-star side is where her try-hard, A-student awkwardness surfaces most. Quarantine came as a stretch of time to focus mainly on her maturing craft (she turns 31 on Sunday), to workshop and to woodshed. When Evermore was announced, she said that she and her collaborators—clearly mostly Dessner, who co-writes and/or co-produces all but one of these 15 songs—simply didn’t want to stop writing after Folklore.

This record further emphasizes her leap away from autobiography into songs that are either pure fictions or else lyrically symbolic in ways that don’t act as romans à clef. On Folklore, that came with the thrill of a breakthrough. Here, she fine-tunes the approach, with the result that Evermore feels like an anthology, with less of an integrated emotional throughline. But that it doesn’t feel as significant as Folklore is also its virtue. Lowered stakes offer permission to play around, to joke, to give fewer fucks—and this album definitely has the best swearing in Swift’s entire oeuvre.

Because it’s nearly all Dessner overseeing production and arrangements, there isn’t the stylistic variety that Antonoff’s greater presence brought to Folklore. However, Swift and Dessner seem to have realized that the maximalist-minimalism that dominated Folklore, with layers upon layers of restrained instrumental lines for the sake of atmosphere, was too much of a good thing. There are more breaks in the ambience on Evermore, the way there was with Folklore’s “Betty,” the countryish song that was among many listener’s favorites. But there are still moments that hazard misty lugubriousness, and perhaps with reduced reward.

Overall, people who loved Folklore will at least like Evermore too, and the minority of Swift appreciators who disapproved may even warm up to more of the sounds here. I considered doing a track-by-track comparison between the two albums, but that seemed a smidgen pathological. Instead, here is a blatantly premature Day 1 rundown of the new songs as I hear them.

A pleasant yet forgettable starting place, “Willow” has mild “tropical house” accents that recall Ed Sheeran songs of yesteryear, as well as the prolix mixed metaphors Swift can be prone to when she’s not telling a linear story. But not too severely. I like the invitation to a prospective lover to “wreck my plans.” I’m less sure why “I come back stronger than a ’90s trend” belongs in this particular song, though it’s witty. “Willow” is more fun as a video (a direct sequel to Folklore’s “Cardigan” video) than as a lead track, but I’m not mad at it here either.

Written with “William Bowery”—the pseudonym of Swift’s boyfriend Joe Alwyn, as she’s recently confirmed—this is the first of the full story songs on Evermore, in this case a woman describing having walked away from her partner on the night he planned to propose. The music is a little floaty and non-propulsive, but the tale is well painted, with Swift’s protagonist willingly taking the blame for her beau’s heartbreak and shrugging off the fury of his family and friends—“she would have made such a lovely bride/ too bad she’s fucked in the head.” Swift sticks to her most habitual vocal cadences, but not much here goes to waste. Except, that is, for the title phrase, which doesn’t feel like it adds anything substantial. (Unless the protagonist was drunk?) I do love the little throwaway piano filigree Dessner plays as a tag on the end.

This is the sole track Antonoff co-wrote and produced, and it’s where a subdued take on the spirit of 1989-style pop resurges with necessary energy. Swift is singing about having a crush on someone who’s too attractive, too in-demand, and relishing the fantasy but also enjoying passing it up. It includes some prime Swiftian details, like, “With my Eagles t-shirt hanging from your door,” or, “At dinner parties I call you out on your contrarian shit.” The line about this thirst trap’s “hair falling into place like dominos” I find much harder to picture.

This is where I really snapped to attention. After a few earlier attempts, Swift has finally written her great Christmas song, one to stand alongside “New Year’s Day” in her holiday canon. And it’s especially a great one for 2020, full of things none of us ought to do this year—go home to visit our parents, hook up with an ex, spend the weekend in their bedroom and their truck, then break their hearts again when we leave. But it’s done with sincere yuletide affection to “the only soul who can tell which smiles I’m faking,” and “the warmest bed I’ve ever known.” All the better, we get to revisit these characters later on the album.

On first listen, I found this one of the draggiest Dressner compositions on the record. Swift locates a specific emotional state recognizably and poignantly in this song about a woman trapped (or, she wonders, maybe not trapped?) in a relationship with an emotionally withholding, unappreciative man. But the static keyboard chord patterns and the wandering melody that might be meant to evoke a sense of disappointment and numbness risk yielding numbing and disappointing music. Still, it’s growing on me.

Featuring two members of Haim—and featuring a character named after one of them, Este—“No Body, No Crime” is a straight-up contemporary country song, specifically a twist on and tribute to the wronged-woman vengeance songs that were so popular more than a decade ago, and even more specifically “Before He Cheats,” the 2006 smash by Carrie Underwood, of which it’s a near musical clone, just downshifted a few gears. Swift’s intricate variation on the model is that the singer of the song isn’t wreaking revenge on her own husband, but on her best friend’s husband, and framing the husband’s mistress for the murder. It’s delicious, except that Swift commits the capital offence of underusing the Haim sisters purely as background singers, aside from one spoken interjection from Danielle.

This one has some of the same issues as “Tolerate It,” in that it lags too much for too long, but I did find more to focus on musically here. Lyrically and vocally, it gets the mixed emotions of a relatively amicable divorce awfully damned right, if I may speak from painfully direct experience.

This is the song sung from the POV of the small-town lover that the ambitious L.A. actress from “Tis the Damn Season”—Dorothea, it turns out—has left behind in, it turns out, Tupelo. Probably some years past that Xmas tryst, when the old flame finally has made it. “A tiny screen’s the only place I see you now,” he sings, but adds that she’s welcome back anytime: “If you’re ever tired of being known/ For who you know/ You know that you’ll always know me.” It’s produced and arranged with a welcome lack of fuss. Swift hauls out her old high-school-romance-songs vocal tone to reminisce about “skipping the prom/ just to piss off your mom,” very much in the vein of Folklore’s teen-love-triangle trilogy.

A duet with Dessner’s baritone-voiced bandmate in the National, Matt Berninger, “Coney Island” suffers from the most convoluted lyrics on Evermore (which, I wonder unkindly, might be what brought Berninger to mind?). The refrain “I’m on a beach on Coney Island, wondering where did my baby go” is a terrific tribute to classic pop, but then Swift rhymes it with “the bright lights, the merry go,” as if that’s a serviceable shorthand for merry-go-round, and says “sorry for not making you my centerfold,” as if that’s somehow a desirable relationship outcome. The comparison of the bygone affair to “the mall before the internet/ It was the one place to be” is clever but not exactly moving, and Berninger’s lines are worse. Dessner’s droning arrangement does not come to the rescue.

This song is also overrun with metaphors but mostly in an enticing, thematically fitting way, full of good Swiftian dark-fairytale grist. It’s fun to puzzle out gradually the secret that all the images are concealing—an engaged woman being drawn into a clandestine affair. And there are several very good “goddamns.”

The lyrical conceit here is great, about two gold-digging con artists whose lives of scamming are undone by their falling in love. It reminded me of the 1931 pre-Code rom-com Blonde Crazy, in which James Cagney and Joan Blondell act out a very similar storyline. And I mostly like the song, but I can’t help thinking it would come alive more if the music sounded anything like what these self-declared “cowboys” and “villains” might sing. It’s massively melancholy for the story, and Swift needs a far more winningly roguish duet partner than the snoozy Marcus Mumford. It does draw a charge from a couple of fine guitar solos, which I think are played by Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver, who will return shortly).

The drum machine comes as a refreshing novelty at this point. And while this song is mostly standard Taylor Swift torrents of romantic-conflict wordplay (full of golden gates and pedestals and dropping her swords and breaking her high heel, etc.), the pleasure comes in hearing her look back at all that and shrugging, “Long story short, it was a bad ti-i-ime,” “long story short, it was the wrong guy-uy-uy,” and finally, “long story short, I survived.” She passes along some counsel I’m sure she wishes she’d had back in the days of Reputation: “I wanna tell you not to get lost in these petty things/ Your nemeses will defeat themselves.” It’s a fairly slight song but an earned valedictory address.

Swift fan lore has it that she always sequences the real emotional bombshell as Track 5, but here it is at 13, her lucky number. It’s sung to her grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, who died when Swift was in her early teens, and it manages to be utterly personal—down to the sample of Marjorie singing opera on the outro—and simultaneously utterly evocative to anyone who’s been through such grief. The bridge, full of vivid memories and fierce regrets, is the clincher.

This electroacoustic kiss-off song, loaded up with at least a fistful of gecs if not a full 100 by Dessner and co-producers BJ Burton and James McAlister, seems to be, lyrically, one of Swift’s somewhat tedious public airings of some music-industry grudge (on which, in case you don’t get it, she does not want “closure”), but, sonically, it’s a real ear-cleaner at this point on Evermore. Why she seems to shift into a quasi-British accent for fragments of it is anyone’s guess. But I’m tickled by the line, “I’m fine with my spite and my tears and my beers and my candles.”

I’m torn about the vague imagery and vague music of the first few verses of the album’s final, title track. But when Vernon, in full multitracked upper-register Bon Iver mode, kicks in for the duet in the middle, there’s a jolt of urgency that lands the redemptive ending—whether it’s about a crisis in love or the collective crisis of the pandemic or perhaps a bit of both—and satisfyingly rounds off the album.

#taylor-swift #pop #rock #country-music

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otakween · 3 years

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I'm Standing on a Million Lives - Volume 4

This volume covered the Jiffon Island arc. This quest is feeling a lot longer than the last one and the goal feels more obvious (defeat the orcs basically). I think it's because of that simplicity that I'm enjoying it a little more. I also like the "Jiffonian's" lol, even though they're just fantasy Japanese people which feels a little lazy.

Ch. 15

-I liked that they criticized the dude with the buster sword for being impractical instead of treating him like a badass. (It did end up working out for him anyway though).

-I felt bad for the orc queen when she lost her son :'(

-Honestly, the career system is a pretty clever way to keep things exciting. When they revealed that blacksmiths can make weapons for their party members I was kinda shook. (Maybe Hakozaki will be less useless now?)

Ch. 16

-This chapter was mostly blacksmithing and battle strategy with a little bit of ethics thrown in there for some added spice. I enjoyed the edutainment about forging vs. casting.

-Yusuke being called out for his eugenics-like ideas literally felt like twitter discourse lol. I don't recall every seeing eugenics brought up in anime or manga so I was a little taken aback.

-They're playing up Yusuke's misanthropic qualities a lot. He flat out says he doesn't prioritize having a social life and isn't interested in romancing anyone. I guess I rather that than the usual lecherous or wimpy anime MC, but he's still really unpleasant lol.

-The weapon Yusuke "invents" (the mega stake) was really derpy and I don't full understand how it would work. I'd also like to know how the heck he made a gun? Like how do you make gunpowder? Hopefully we get more detail in the next chapter.

-The other party members continue to be sidelined and not developed at all. I swear Yuka barely exists at this point.

Ch. 17

-This chapter was all action. Honestly? I think battles might be this author's strong suit. This was pretty well choreographed. Since they're fighting big, giant orcs, a lot of the fighting style reminded me of Attack on Titan, especially with all the back of the neck shots.

-Although it's a little cheesy when they try to make us mourn the side characters, it's better they give us some emotional deaths than just have everyone but the main characters be faceless fodder. It definitely helps it feel like there are real stakes here.

-They kept using "bullets" and "bolts" interchangeably which I think was a translation error...

-That cliff hanger tho...

Ch. 18

-This chapter was purely about natural disasters and disaster preparedness in Japan. It almost felt like a PSA. You can tell the author wanted to treat the fictional situation with the appropriate amount of gravity, which I can appreciate. Some of the stats in the author's note at the end were terrifying wtf...

-The callback to the vaikedaam's song was clever. I hope they actually sing in the anime...

-More "Yusuke's an emotionless badass" schtick. The other party members continue to basically not exist lol.

-We get a plot twist that some creepy bald dude was behind everything this whole time? Lol wut. I guess he's maybe working for the demon lord? IDK.

-They keep making Final Fantasy references: buster sword, Bahamut, etc. I wonder if those are still understandable to young people? (I mean, I guess the FFVII remake like just came out so -shrug-)

#i'm standing on a million lives #100 man no inochi no ue ni ore wa tatteiru #manga

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guiltysecretpasttime · 4 years

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The Airbender’s Wife (Chapter 3)

Note: Here’s the next chapter 😊 I have a rough outline of the rest of the story; all is left to actually put it all into writing. As you may have noticed, the plot more or less happens on the outskirts of what we see on season 1 of LoK with a Linzin AU focus. Let me know what you think 😊

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The next few training days were not any better.

In between training one-on-one with Tenzin and having sessions with the air acolytes, Korra felt she had not progressed as much as she should have. She was disappointed at herself – she had been able to grasp most of the other bending forms quite easily. Aligned with the worry of her other bending masters, she was adept in comprehending the physical aspect of her training but lacked connection with the spiritual side. Everyone knew that Air was the most spiritual among all the elements. This was also why she was training with Mr. Spiritual himself. There was no hint of disapproval from Tenzin, which made it worse.

The Avatar quickly fell into the routine.

Each morning would begin with meditation with Tenzin. The rest of the day would depend on the Airbending master’s schedule.

Korra would either have a training session or asked to join the Air Acolytes’ classes to learn more about the Air Nomad culture. On days that Tenzin was needed at city hall, Korra would be left to her own devices. On other days, Tenzin was able to work remotely from his home office and so is able to supervise training at the island.

One of the first things that she did back in Republic City was to request to go to the library, which pleased Tenzin a lot.

The teenager decided to brush up on the recent history, taking time to take seriously the reading lists that the White Lotus gave her years ago. She had also gone to the archives to just catch on what the press had been saying about the previous Avatar and his family, and by extension the currently last Airbender and his wife.

Aside from satisfying her curiosity, she felt she owed it as much to learn about her hosts to ensure she does not say anything offensive or taboo. Not that the airbender or the metalbender seemed to care a lot anyway.

Chief Beifong, meanwhile, as her husband mentioned previously, did not have regular hours. Korra cannot recall the last time she had seen the woman at the island aside from night of the Pro-bending match. At most, she would see Tenzin having short calls at night (“Yes dear, I understand.” A pause. “Mhmm, take care, okay? Yes, Korra’s here safe. What? Why would she need to blend in the crowd?” Another pause. “That makes sense, yes, the public knows that Avatar is from the Water Tribe.” A sigh. “Yes, dear. Stay safe.”).

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Korra had reached the top step of Republic City Hall, having come from exploring the city after spending an hour at the library. It was almost time for Tenzin’s office hours to be over. She was surprised to see the airbender standing in the foyer already.

“Ah, there you are, Korra.” Tenzin strode towards her. “Let’s go.”

“You’re done for today?” The councilman usually waited until the last minute before packing up. Then again, Korra did observe that Tenzin seemed to be disquieted by something in the past days.

“Yes.” He replied brusquely as he quickly exited the building, robes billowing in his wake.

“Uh – the ferry is that way?” Korra stopped and pointed to the opposite direction which Tenzin was heading towards.

“We’re dropping by somewhere first.”

Korra jogged beside him to keep up until they found themselves entering the police headquarters.

“Ah, Councilman Tenzin, Avatar.” The Deputy Chief greeted them as they entered arrived at the floor of the Chief of Police’s office, hands behind his back. “I wasn’t aware that you had an appointment today.”

“We don’t,” Tenzin responded still in that somber tone. “I’m here as Lin’s husband. Would you know where she is?”

Saikhan cracked a smile, barely perceptible but it was there. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

Korra fidgeted by the balls of her feet. The last time she was in the presence of the deputy chief was when she was in the interrogation room more than a week ago. She figured that it might be a regular occurrence for Tenzin to drop by, judging by his reaction.

Tenzin released a heavy sigh. “How long has she been in?”

“She’s been here for close to four days,” The metalbender consulted his watch. “Four days entering the fifth day in a few minutes actually.”

“Four days?!” The teenager blurted out in shock. “That’s how many working hours?” She knew she had not seen the police chief recently, but she thought she just did not see the woman’s comings and goings from the island.

“Too many.” The grim airbender crossed his arms. “Didn’t she leave headquarters at all?” Korra remembered that the couple also owned property in the city; she supposed that Lin could have gone home there instead of Air Temple Island.

“She’s been out from time to time on case-related activities,” Saikhan responded with a frown. “But no, Chief spent the rest of the time here.” Chief’s husband tsked quietly at hearing this. “Right now, she’s finishing the last training class of officers and detectives.”

“I didn’t know it was time for the refresher exercises?” Tenzin looked towards the end of one of the corridors, which was connected to the stairwell of the training rooms.

“It’s not. The Chief decided to have mixed group sessions specifically for non-bending forms and techniques.”

“Oh?”

Both Tenzin and Korra were curious; after all, the police department was initially established with the elite metalbenders as the main members.

“With the rising anti-bending sentiment on the streets, the force needs to further assure the public that we are a non-biased organization who is out to serve both benders and non-benders alike.” Saikhan said tightly. “The chief saw it fit to equip all divisions with working knowledge of non-bending: both defensive and offensive. Generally, she instructed benders to use bending as a last resort when encountering non-benders in skirmishes. Maximum tolerance and all that – there’s no point in escalating the tension.”

That makes sense, Korra thought.

“I take it there has been some resistance?” Tenzin tugged at his beard, a mannerism that the Avatar was starting to recognize. He was either agitated or pensive. Korra voted for agitation this time.

“Of course,” Saikhan exhaled. “Good thing this happened now though; if it were a couple of years back, when there were just benders on the force or further back when it was all metalbenders, it would have been chaotic.”

Korra recalled reading that the current Chief Beifong had opened the police academy to non-benders early in her term as chief of police.

The airbender agreed. “It would have been more challenging to placate the public if that were the case.”

“If I may speak candidly, Councilman?” The deputy chief asked. Upon Tenzin’s nod, he continued. “Here’s hoping that the city council pass more…progressive laws for Republic City. There’s only so much that we can do to keep peace and order when enforcing some of your more pedantic laws.”

Any reply Councilman Tenzin might have given was cut-off as footsteps were heard coming from the stairwell. A group of sweaty, disgruntled yet subdued looking officers and detectives came rushing towards the showers, murmurs and shouts littering the air.

At the tail of the group was the Chief of Police in her non-metalbender uniform, wet hair stuck to her forehead and nape, towel on her arm, and a water bottle in hand. Both Tenzin and Saikhan noticed her at the same time and set about to approach her when she was intercepted by another uniformed officer.

“Chief, they’re ready for you in the briefing room.”

Lin nodded and strode purposely the room; Saikhan hurrying after her.

Tenzin was used to this occurrence, Korra figured, as he went inside what she supposed to be the Chief’s office.

The Avatar was surprised at the state of the room.

While the paperwork was arranged neatly on the desk (complete with folders, binders, and impressively cascading tabs), other areas of the room was in disarray – obviously, the owner of the office practically lived there.

The side table had several pots of beverages, (Korra sniffed at it – one was tea, two were coffee, and three were probably coffee at some point. She lifted a pot and tried to swirl it – it looked like toxic sludge, then again she would not put it past Lin to be capable to subsisting on bitter sludge just because she can), one empty cup, multiple bowls of partially eaten food (normal pantry food consisting of bread, noodles, some stir-fry and rice), and a metal tray (“Lin being Lin,” Tenzin dipped his head, smiling at his wife’s stubbornness. “She prefers to clean up herself, didn’t want the staff waiting on her.”).

The couch in the room was a little bit better; a folded blanket was placed on top of two pillows at the end (“She didn’t even bother to rest at the sleeping quarters.”).

Tenzin snuck a couple of packets of biscuits (which the teenager puzzled where he got them from) into the Chief’s desk drawers then he began clearing the side table.

As Korra helped him out, she realized that the airbending master has been worried about his wife not being home all this time.

She stopped to peek through the blinds that faced the rest of the floor.

She saw the police chief patiently listening to one of the officers gesturing towards a diagram on the board where several photos and a map were posted. Lin wiped the sweat off her face and took a long drink of water, eyes not wavering from the officer speaking in front. If that look of determination was anything to come by, the Avatar did not think that whatever the Chief was working on that week was not easily solved.

---

“Go home, Chief.” Saikhan attempted to get the folder from Lin’s hands after the briefing for the stake-out ended.

“No, the stake-out –.”

“Can be handled by myself and the rest of the team.” At the Chief of Police’s skeptical face, the Deputy Chief opened his hands imploringly. “Chief, we’ve worked together for a lot of years now. I know our protocols by heart.” He eyed her massaging a part of her left shoulder. “And, how many has it been? Eight?”

Anyone who has worked with Lin Beifong knew her philosophy of leaving all the confrontation on the mats. Having personal issues and altercations with fellow policemen on field or while on the beat may pose security concerns. It could also be a matter of the operation’s success or failure. She had then allowed sparring (regulated sparring, that is) at headquarters to get them to let off their steam.

With her recent focus on the integration of non-bending techniques, there have been a couple of people on the force (both detectives and uniformed officers) who were a tad too miffed (and that’s putting it lightly) at this development. At the start of each training session, she opened the floor to anyone who wanted to challenge her. To prove her point, she did not use earth or metalbending while her opponent can use either.

The last time Saikhan checked, there had been less than ten challengers so far.

“Fifteen is the final count.”

“Fifteen!” He was stunned. “So, seven more in the last session?”

Lin shrugged, testing her sore shoulder. “I saved the most difficult group for last.” She has managed to win each of the fifteen matches (Lin idly wondered if that was how her mother felt when she won her Earth Rumble championships back in the day).

“Well, either way, you need to rest up, Chief – you’ll be no good to us if you’re not in tiptop shape.” He half-jested, knowing fully well that his boss can still take anyone down even at her current state. The man received a punch to his forearm in retaliation. “Don’t worry about it, all that is left is the waiting game and paperwork. We can manage.” He waved towards the office, grinning. “And, if anything, I also do not want to be at the receiving end of the last airbender’s tirade should I not be able to convince you to get some rest. Your husband and the Avatar are waiting in your office.”

Saikhan did have a point and she did trust that the man was highly capable in her absence. He also knew very well that when Tenzin drops by as Lin’s husband, Chief Beifong has overstayed at work.

Lin thrusted two files under her arm to him. “Fine but call me as soon as you hear anything.” The man had the audacity to salute her as he shooed her away (“Get some rest, Chief!”).

The past days have been hectic.

The triads were taking advantage of the pockets of gatherings supporting the non-bending movement. Legally, there was not anything the police can do about it. The citizens do have the right of freedom of assembly. There has been no incident that would equate to any law-breaking; all the force can do is wait and observe.

Patrolling schedules were revamped to ensure mix of benders and non-benders per location. Both sensitivity training and non-bending techniques training were quickly delivered to the force. It was short-notice and the timing was tight but Lin believed that it would be better to be prepared than to be caught off guard.

The triads were not making it any better as they were, more often than not, composed of benders preying on establishments owned by non-benders. She had allotted more metalbenders as plainclothesmen in the vicinity to allay their fears. It did stave off crime.

For now, she thought pessimistically. The city never did seem to rest; by extension, neither did she.

Just today, she had given a go signal for stakeout made up of the mostly junior detectives and officers. There was a severe lack of progress in the intelligence reports provided by the seasoned officers. She figured that if this junior team produces more results, the other team would be challenged to step up and shape up.

Tenure was not enough to secure promotions in the force, after all. Spirits know she knew that very well.

She tilted her water bottle back, finishing the rest of her drink. An empty stomach and a sore body never did not make for a happy chief of police.

Another day at headquarters, another day to remind herself why she had to keep going.

As Lin approached her office, she could sense Tenzin pacing inside.

Well, there’s my number one reason.

The metalbender shook her head to clear maudlin thoughts (wouldn’t want to get distracted while on the job, wouldn’t we?) before turning the doorknob.

“Tenzin, Korra – to what do I owe this pleasure of a visit?” She entered the room, shutting the door behind her, correctly assuming that her husband was about to berate her.

“Visit?” Lin could hear the strain in Tenzin’s voice. “This isn’t a visit, Lin. It’s almost a week since you last went home. You’ve practically camped in your office.” The airbender’s robes flowed as he waved indicating the room. “This can’t be healthy, Lin.”

A blast of air escaped as he huffed, causing several paperwork to flutter from her desk.

“Don’t worry, I was just riling you.” Lin could vaguely see the Avatar cautiously watching the exchange from the couch, inching towards the desk to pick up the fallen sheets of paper. “I’m leaving headquarters with you.” She placed a hand on his arm, gripping it and trying to reassure him. “I’ve arranged it all with Saikhan. I’ll just have a quick shower.”

---

The next hour found the three of them in an alcove of a popular (albeit expensive) restaurant in the city. Tenzin selected this one as he was sure that they would be granted privacy (that and he knew that the service was quick). Soon their table was silent except for the clatter of utensils and bowls as they dug into their ordered food.

“Are you part Fire Nation?” Korra tilted her head, her face scrunching in disbelief at the amount of spicy on Lin’s plate. She had been unable to resist asking as she watched the metalbender scoop more chili garlic.

“Wouldn’t we all like to know,” Lin mumbled through a mouthful of said spicy noodles, not looking up from her plate.

Tenzin shot a warning look at the Avatar, silently communicating that she does not push the woman. Her heritage was a prohibited topic.

Lin’s nickname before she made chief was Captain Crankypants (though if he were a betting man - which he isn’t, mind you– he would bet that her detectives and officers still called her that away from her earshot). He knew her long enough to know the trick to this was to let her eat first. She was the very embodiment of hangry. It was for this particular reason that he always made sure to have some biscuits on his person. His robes, after all, were voluminous enough to hide a pack or two.

Korra had her mouth form an “O” in curiosity. Lin glared at her to stop her from probing further.

Tenzin thanked the spirits that the usually impulsive Avatar held her tongue.

He could see that other patrons of the restaurant were starting to notice their presence as dinner time approached. It was not like they were particularly inconspicuous – he with his Air Nomad robes, Lin in her particularly striking green attire and of course, Korra’s Water Tribe outfit. He realized that this was what Lin had called about a few days ago – for Korra’s protection, for her to ideally wear something less distinguishable that would mark her as the Avatar.

He tossed a side glance at his wife, knowing that she would probably have noticed the same attention that they were drawing but at the same time wishing that she would not chew him out just yet.

Instead, he discreetly pushed the fried salt and pepper squid to her.

Airbender through and through… redirect, diffuse the situation…

Lin stabbed two pieces of squid and that was that.

Tenzin knew Lin’s moods. He could feel the tension on her shoulders, coiled and ready to pounce at a single trigger. She was too amped-up to be coped in Air Temple Island. He would probably lose her to the earthbending training grounds if he insisted that they go home.

“Where do you want to go after dinner, Lin?”

The woman just continued to chew her food for a couple of moments; Tenzin started to doubt if she heard him.

“What day is it today?” Lin finally asked, chin resting on her hand.

Korra answered for him.

The earthbender turned to him. “There’s a pro-bending match today at the arena.”

Tenzin could feel the heat behind his ears as the Avatar also turned her attention to him. “You want to go to the arena?”

“Yes, why not?” Lin leaned to the back of her seat, where Tenzin’s arm waited, and crossed her arms. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen a live match.”

On any other day, he would have tried to dissuade his wife from supporting a spectacle.

However, it wasn’t any other day. He has not seen his wife out of work for almost a week and he was not about start an argument during her first night out in a while.

“Pro-bending match it is.” He said resignedly as he tightened his grip on her shoulder, feeling at least a small amount of tension leave her posture.

I’d count that as a win, he thought, kissing the top of Lin’s head.

---

“Where is Korra? I would think she would be back by now.”

“She’ll be fine. There’s probably a long line at the loo.”

“But still – ouch - did you just punch me?”

“Tenzin, she’s the Avatar. She knows three elements; she can defend herself.”

Grumbling. Grumbling.

“Fine. Move – remove your arm around me, I need to stand up and concentrate– yes. That’s it.” Stomp. “She’s at the players’ platform.”

“She’s WHERE?”

Her hand clung to his robes, keeping Tenzin at his seat. It was all she can do to prevent him from storming down to where she detected Korra was through seismic sense.

“Tenzin,” She hissed as they both sat back down. “People are starting to look at us. Keep it down.”

Lin had selected these particular set of seats so as to not draw any attention to them (well, as minimal attention they could get with a tall bald tattooed airbender clothed in the colors of the sun as they could get). She truly did enjoy pro-bending and she knew her husband was just humoring her tonight. Nonetheless, she was quite contented to sit through his griping throughout the match (“What kind of move was that? That waterbender had the worst form I’ve ever seen.”).

A loud cheer erupted from the crowd as the bell rang, proclaiming the Golden Temple Tigerdillos as the winner of the first round.

As the match went on, the earthbender felt her husband become more receptive to the sport as he started to lean forward in his seat (“That waterbender of the red team is an idiot. Why are they keeping him?”). She laughed at his indignant face (“Where did they even find him; why don’t they kick him out??” “Tenzin, it doesn’t work that way.”); she found his reddening head endearing as he worked himself up on a sport he said was a mockery.

She gave his hand a squeeze.

The airbender looked down at her, seeing a smile on her tired face, the smile reflected by the crinkling at the corners of her eyes.

He returned her smile and he tugged her closer to him.

Maybe, just for now at least, Lin can pretend that they were just an ordinary couple on an evening out rather than the chief of police and the last airbender.

----

“Here they are – the Fire Ferrets.”

“Thanks, Toza.”

“Any time, Chief Beifong. Councilman Tenzin.” The burly man lumbered off, muttering a congratulations to the bending brothers.

“Chief, Tenzin!” Korra burst forth, placing herself ahead of the two Fire Ferrets in attendance. “I’m so sorry, I got distracted and I -.”

Tenzin turned to his wife, who had her hands on her hips defensively. “I told you this was a distraction, Lin!”

“What are you talking about? We’re all off duty tonight, aren’t we?” The Chief of Police responded sardonically, gesturing to her overcoat, reminding the airbender that her armor was on the sky bison’s saddle (“I’m calling Oogi tonight – leave your armor there Lin, I’m sure you’ve seen enough of your armor this week.”).

She tuned out the teenaged Avatar’s exuberant storytelling and continued to scan the room with interest.

Even as a follower of pro-bending who occasionally watched matches in the arena, Lin has never been to the player holding room. She noted the brothers – the earthbender, with wide eyes, was pulling at his brother’s sleeve, clearly trying to draw his attention to Lin. She caught the eye of the firebender, recognition dawning on both of them at the same time.

She felt the agitation come in waves from the firebender as indicated by his increased heartbeat. The Chief of Police glanced at Tenzin and Korra, both engrossed in their discussion, then approached the pro-benders.

“So, this is where you both ended up.”

“Yes, Chief Beifong.” The earthbender squeaked out, shifting his eyes between his brother and the policewoman.

The firebender, the older brother, if Lin’s memory served her correctly, inclined his head in as he added. “We’ve been trying to make ends meet – within the law, this time.”

“Good to hear, kid.” She could not resist the slight upturn of her lip. Juvenile delinquents who manage to turn around their lives were quite close to her heart (not that she’d admit it though it was fairly obvious to Suyin for obvious reasons). “You’ve been making quite a stir this season, good job.” It was the most that she could give as a compliment.

“You-you-you’re following pro-bending?” The green-eyed earthbender stammered. “You’ve followed the Fire Ferrets?” He was practically bouncing with excitement. “Mako, Mako! Chief Beifong knows who the Fire Ferrets are!” He stage-whispered to the firebender, Mako.

Mako rolled his eyes while he took off the arm guards. “Well technically, she did know us even before we became the Fire Ferrets.” He moved to clean his helmet.

Isn’t he just a ray of sunshine, Lin thought. He just might grow on me.

“Okay, fine!” A gust of wind got their attention as the airbending master had apparently bowed out to the Avatar and allowed her to spend some time training with the pro-benders in her spare time.

Lin decided that she did not give the kid enough credit. There might be the makings of the diplomat (or politician?) within her just yet if she was able to wrangle this agreement with the airbending master.

“Oof!” A blue blur hit her at the chest.

“Thank you- thank you -thank you -thank you!” Korra held the metalbender in a tight embrace.

Over the Avatar’s head, Lin threw a Tenzin a look, asking for help. The man had the gall to grin widely at her, signaling her to return the hug.

“I didn’t do anything, kid.” Lin gasped out as she awkwardly patted the teenager’s shoulder.

“Is she allowed to do that?” The younger Fire Ferret brother whispered loudly, hand partially covering his mouth, other hand pointing at the waterbender.

Mako looked disinterested while Tenzin shrugged, grin still plastered on his face.

The metalbender narrowed her eyes at him, thinking of ways to retaliate later at home.

------------------

Note: Hmm. So there. Tossed in some thoughts based on headcanons for me like Lin actually liking pro-bending, because, well, she was raised (or minimally raised) by an Earth Rumble champion. And of course, I did not take Tarrlok’s comment about the Chief of Police’s track record sarcastically so I wanted to include bits on how she would have worked on the Equalist issue in the background (because she probably wasn't just a glorified body guard? 🤷🏽 Idk haha). Lemme know as well if you have specific HCs that you have in mind; quite curious too. :)

===

My related posts:

Prologue (Contentment) | 1 | 2 | x | 4

#linzin #linzin fanfic #lin beifong #tenzin #legend of korra #cross-posted on ao3 #toccatina's fanfics #toccatina wip #toccatina airbender

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indestinatus · 4 years

Text

Something Blue (part 4/15)

Please read it in AO3, this fic has soundtracks.

Summary: Now that Ziva is safe and can return to her family… Tony doesn’t waste any time. She’ll need to have something blue to go along with a white wedding gown.

“Have we died and reached paradise or am I dreaming?” asked Nick looking up to the clear blue sky.

The team stood assembled at the bridge that connected the sea to the island, every single one of them laughing after dancing non-stop to the songs from the boat. Their tongues tasted of bubbly champagne and citric fruit, the wind playing with their hair and the hats that scaped occasionally from their heads. The early afternoon sun was reflected on the slow waves of the pier, seagulls a constant subject of the light blue sky, following the passengers from the boat to the coconut trees. White painted every surface, from the large circular domes to the infinite steep stairs of restaurants and balconies, mixed between wide, ancient stone walls separating the many houses.

Bright yellow flowers colored the wooden stakes of the bridge, intertwined with olive branches and other herbs. At the end of it, a small wooden sign was placed on the sand, an arrow pointing northeast to one side of the beach, next to a message in elegant handwriting.

Welcome to our beginning. Please, have lots of fun. - love, T and Z.

Little bare feet came running towards the group, raising sand on its way as the summer air filled with giggles.

She clung to Gibbs’ leg and looked up, a few strands of hair coming loose from her braid which was swinging in the wind. She wore a little white dress with a floral pattern. A big gap-toothed smile framed her face as he raised her to his arms, receiving a sweet kiss on the cheek on return.

“Hey, Tali,” he said softly as the other members of the team greeted her as well, making her shy for a moment when she hid her face on the crook of his neck, “where’s your father?”

“On your six, boss,” a familiar voice greeted them.

Gibbs had never seen Tony look so happy. He was tanned, small freckles painting his cheekbones and a wide grin displayed on his lips. Like his daughter, he was also barefoot, a Hawaiian shirt complimenting his look along with black sunglasses which he put on his front pocket.

“Finally you’ve arrived, I was starting to doubt if my specialist on weddings would come to support my own,” he added with a smile, squeezing Gibbs’ shoulder, “I promise it’ll only be one though, I don’t have your kind of vigor, boss.”

He received a head slap in return.

“Nothing changed, uh?”

“It never will, DiNozzo.”

Gibbs put Tali down for a moment to give a proper hug on his former agent, patting his back firmly.

“You’ve done well, son,” he whispered in his ear.

“Don’t you dare me make emotional right now, I have a feeling my eyes will sweat a lot during the weekend,” Tony replied with a smile.

They let go and Tony surveyed the team, clasping his hands together.

“Now to presentations,” he continued, “my fondest, warmest, kindest welcomes, everyone, it is a pleasure to have you here. I see old faces and new faces,” he glanced at Torres and Kasie and smiled, “and me and Tali here are glad that you came all the way from DC to witness this miracle. And where is the Rapunzel of the story? Well, funny you should ask, she’s currently going mad about the color of the table cloths and if we should put lights on or off in a wedding set at sundown. Who knew crazy Israeli ninja was so fond of this kind of stuff?”

“We all knew, Tony,” said Palmer.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s why I’m marrying her,” he replied with a warm smirk, “so… she told me she’d meet you up the hill, where you’ll be staying, with lots of food and drinks as an apology. Go easy on her, she still has a wedding to attend tomorrow and I’m quite scared she’ll go entirely Daenerys before it happens. Then I’ll have to marry McGroom and fulfill his lifetime secret dream.”

“Oh, give me a break, will you,” McGee huffed a laugh, his lips turning upwards instantly.

“You’ll never have a break from me, McDad. Never. I will hunt you when we both become ghosts, chasing you around the cemetery as I scream McBoooo,” he lifted Tali in the air, tickling her sides before putting her back down on the ground.

“How long have you been holding this joke?”

“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you, Probie, now that you’re a dad of these little monsters, you’ve been quite busy, uh?” he winked to Delilah, “two of them running around the house-”

“Just you wait,” McGee replied with a grin.

“How indiscreet, McGoo, what are you-”

Abby coughed loudly, gesturing to the wooden sign with wide eyes.

“Oh, let’s get out of the sun immediately,” said Tony gratefully, “Ziva made a whole schedule we have to follow and, to be fair, it’s quite good. She should think about working with that instead of being a trained assassin.”

“Ladies, with me!” exclaimed Abby, a hand raised in the air, “I’ll be your greek tour guide for the weekend! Yaaay! We’ll go up the hill by van so we can appreciate our surroundings,” she winked to Delilah, who nodded thankfully from her wheelchair, “I’ll be the best guide there is, you’re lucky you didn’t end up with Tony.”

“Hey!” Tony complained with a smile, “no one knows how to have fun better than I do. Okay, guys and little monsters, with me! Apparently, Tali has everything already under control.”

“Mermaids!” was all Tali said, running towards Victoria next to Jimmy.

The group dispersed, going to different directions. Tony approached Ellie, who was standing next to the one of the faces he didn’t know. The guy wore a white tank top and a Panama hat, his arms sculped and a knowing smile on his lips.

“You must be the wuss,” said Tony holding his hand out.

“News fly,” Nick faltered for a moment and glanced at Ellie, cheeks a bit red.

“Wuss…?” she asked confused.

“Ziva told me you let her win a fight,” Tony intercepted with a knowing look at Bishop, “I’m impressed, rumors are she killed Houdini.”

“Houdini? As in the magician?” asked Ellie.

“She doesn’t recall all the names, she said,” answered Tony with a smile, twinkling eyes directed to Torres, “if you excuse us gentlemen, agent Bishop,” he kissed her hand, “we got to get to some donkeys.”

“DONKEYS?” asked Nick startled, a laugh escaping his lips.

“A big greek wedding, my friend, donkeys are a must.”

Tony wrapped an arm around the man’s shoulders, directing him towards the right path.

“Just so you know,” he muttered in a tone only Nick could hear, “I made my own personal mission to make you tell her how you feel by the end of this weekend.”

Nick glanced to Tony, who was casting him a mischievous smile.

“Then where’s the alcohol, bro?”

“I like you already.”

°°°

“One… two… three!” Tali placed her little legs on top of Tony’s shoulders, his hands firmly gripping her ankles from below, “push the button,” he said as he held his index finger high for Tali.

She pushed it slightly with her finger, just as her father yelled “HERE WE GO!” and started to swing his body from side to side. A moment later, a loud splash could be heard across the waves, the white seafoam coloring the crystal blue water. Tony emerged with Tali wrapped around his torso, happy giggles echoing all around on a sunny afternoon.

“Uncle Tim, Uncle Tim!” exclaimed Victoria, wearing bright pink arm floats and a little floral cap, as she pointed at something underwater, “there, I can see it!”

“Where?” he looked at the place she was showing, Morgan in his arms with wet pigtails, “oh, I see it. You’ve found a big one, good job!”

He let his daughter float at the slow waves as he dived down to grab something at the bottom of the ocean.

“Ooooh,” said Victoria out loud, hands on her cheeks, “can I touch it?”

“Yes, just do it slowly, it’s a little gooey,” said McGee as he held the shining orange starfish at the girls’ direction.

Vitoria’s little finger touched it softly, but she backed away as soon as she got to know its texture.

“No, no, I don’t wanna touch it,” said Morgan as she gripped her father’s arm hard.

“It’s okay, Morgan, let’s just put it back where it belongs then, uh?”

He dived again to put the starfish at the sand bottom and surfaced a moment later, Victoria already swimming to another location to search for a new sea creature.

“First you turn your hands into a vessel, like this,” Jimmy laid one hand atop of each other, “close it tight, like you’re gonna catch water, and then blow steady between your knuckles, like this.”

A loud high pitch whistle reverberated across the rocks they were sitting when Jimmy blew inside his hand, similar to the sound of a clear flute.

“Whoah, do it again!” exclaimed Johnny, trying to mimic his hands.

“Just like the Cherokee Indians,” Jimmy repeated the whistle, now changing the notes and creating a soft melodic pattern.

The coconut trees swayed with the wind, the rays of sunshine kissing their skin and marking their cheeks with soft freckles as it descended on the horizon. Minutes stretched into hours, and time turned fake in the children’s hands. It seemed infinite. The afternoon could go on forever.

It was paradise.

A loud whistle blew from the sand, revealing Senior calling the group with an energetic wave. He walked towards Gibbs, who was sitting in the shade carving up something out of a piece of wood.

“Can’t they stay like this forever?” asked Senior, a sad note in his voice.

“No,” Gibbs replied, looking to the horizon, eyes hard and sad, “no, they cannot.”

The children came running towards the plates of strawberries and pineapple, screaming with delight and raising clouds of sand in their wake. They threw themselves on the colorful pillows scattered on the sand floor, wet bodies splashing drops of seawater all around them. Their fathers came close behind, Tony shaking his body like a wet dog making everybody laugh.

“Palmer, can I talk to you for a sec?” he asked softly, after drying Tali’s wet hair with a towel.

“Yeah, of course,” Jimmy passed the coconut to McGee and got up, going with Tony towards the sea again.

Once their feet touched the waves, Tony turned to him, arms crossed and face furrowed in concern.

“Did you have the chance to bring it? I know I shouldn’t ask you that, it’s just, I think she would-”

Jimmy opened up a smile.

“What are you talking about? Of course I did, they don’t call me a man of honor for nothing,” he replied, squeezing Tony’s shoulders slightly, “don’t worry, my friend, everything’s gonna be fine. Great, even, you’ll see.”

“I’m not worried.”

Tony raised his clear eyes to Palmer, but the harsh laugh that escaped his lips revealed otherwise. The men laughed together, patting each other in the back and walking towards the children.

“Have you ever been closer to paradise than this place?” asked Torres, sitting on the slackline he had just proudly crossed, with sunkissed skin and eyes facing where the sky met the sea.

“Did you know the definition of ‘paradise’ ultimately comes from an Iranian word that the Greeks modified into paradeisos, meaning ‘enclosed park’,” answered Ducky, a bottle of cold water in his hand, “in Hellenistic Greek, “paradeisos” was also used in the Septuagint - an early Greek translation of Jewish scriptures - in reference to the Garden of Eden. So we are staying where the word came from.“

"I’m gonna take that as a no,” Nick replied laughing.

“I’ve arrived a little bit later than I’ve expected and I didn’t have the chance to see young Eleanor,” Ducky sent an amused look to Torres, “is she well?”

“You too, Ducky? Can’t no one give me a break?”

“Oh, I’m only asking, Nicholas, you seemed rather close,” but Ducky’s eyes were not so clueless.

“I’m sorry, yeah, yeah, she’s great,” Nick replied shrugging.

Ducky let out a charming laugh, looking up to the clear sky, “I think this is the worst-case scenario for someone to give you a break, Nick. We are at the wedding of another office couple, after all.”

“Another…?”

Nick pointed his index finger to Ducky and then put it on his lips, asking for silence, “please don’t go spreading out this idea to the others, Doctor Mallard.”

He stood up and with a surfboard under his arm, Nick raced towards the ocean. The wind was perfect for surfing at the calm waves.

Ducky reclined himself on his sun lounger, taking a sip of his cold water, “oh, I think they already know, kid,” he laughed to the sky.

°°°

“To your left. No, your other left. Yeah, up a little bit. A little bit more-”

A loud crash sounded when the glass jar shattered at the tiles, flowers and candles scattering everywhere. Ziva cursed in a foreign language, already bending down to the clean the mess on the floor.

“I’m sorry, Ziv,” said a younger cousin of her, who came along with her family from Tel Aviv to eat and dance for free, as well as try to help her with the numerous decorations. She was hanging the lights up in the olive trees, but there were so many of them to coordinate with the flowers and pieces of cloth, even Ziva was a bit confused with where to put them.

“It’s okay, Sorsha, I’ll handle it later,” she replied with a smile to the young girl standing up at the ladder, a guilty expression on her face.

“We still have to set the tables and wrap the gifts and talk to the band,” proceeded Ziva exasperated, sighing tiredly with the back of her hand rubbing her forehead.

“And test the lights,” added Sorsha, who now ticked things out of a small paper list, “and see if the cake turned out okay.”

“That Odette is taking care of, you can cross it out.”

“And welcome the guests.”

Ziva stopped where she stood and turned around as soon as she recognized that voice.

“Breena,” Ziva opened a wide grin to her old friend, who came running to hug her tightly, “I’m so glad you’re all here!”

Ziva greeted every one of them with a kiss on the cheek, bending down to talk to Delilah.

“You must be the one who finally stole Tim’s lion heart,” she said with a knowing glance.

“I know, I’m still shocked from time to time,” Delilah replied with a smile.

Ziva gave her a thankful nod, and no words were needed.

“Okay. Food. You must be starving,” she came back to her worried self, tying her hair into a knot, “I just need to check a few things.”

“Hey, are you okay?” asked Jack, her professional voice taking over, “Ziva, I think you need to relax for a bit. You’re the bride, remember? How can we help?”

“Take her out of here,” declared Odette, who was guiding two people with a large flower vase nearby, hands on her hips and a meaningful smile at Ellie, “or I will myself prohibit her getting any closer.”

“I’m- I’m sorry. I think I bit more than I can screw,” said Ziva, trying to recompose herself.

“What…?” asked Kasie, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“We called it Zivaisms,” answered Abby, grabbing Ziva’s arm and leading her towards the accommodations, not caring about any response, “when Tony is not around to correct her, we just ignore the weird and move on.”

“I tend to do a lot of ignoring the weird and moving on down at that lab,” remarked Kasie.

Abby looked at her with a wide grin, then started to jump up and down, not being able to contain her excitement. She let go of Ziva to run towards Kasie and hug her tightly, while the bride just burst out laughing with the scene, finally letting herself relax.

“We have so much to talk about,” said Abby, arm wrapped around Kasie’s shoulders, “what kind of music you play there now?”

“Uh-”

“It doesn’t matter, I’m so excited there’s finally someone who understands. YAAAY!”

They walked together until they arrived at the lodgings, stationed just above the sea, the white stone balconies disappearing among the many similar others along the coast. The air smelled of sea salt, dried herbs, and the feeling of freedom of a new vacation about to start. Ziva entered the bridal room, making everyone cheer when she showed the sign of “Future Mrs.” placed at her door. A smooth wooden table filled with plates of fruit, various types of seeds and pastries greeted them, along with bottles of cold champagne and rosé wine. Across the hall, a white bed was stationed in front of a large floor to ceiling open window, the big beige curtains flying with the ocean wind.

The view was magnificent.

It was close to the sea so it was possible to discern the silhouettes of the villagers, but far enough to have some privacy. The sound of the waves could be heard all over the room as they hit the cliffs, the constant splashing a calming tune. A small dressing table was placed near the windows, seashells covering the whole surface around the mirror.

Only three objects were set on top of it.

A photograph of Rivka and Eli David, arms wrapped around each other when they were incredibly young, the Jordan mountaintops behind them. Its frame was made of pearls.

A photograph of Ziva holding her sister Tali’s hand, her brother Ari at her other side, all laughing, their bicycles laid on the ground. Its frame was made of buttons.

And a photograph of a man pointing to the camera, his eyes looking towards a little girl whose face was dirty with the chocolate ice cream she held in her hands. Tali was smiling, her baby teeth appearing through her mouth in a wide grin, dark brown eyes twinkling. Tony was also beaming, as if it was the first time he made her truly laugh.

That one she didn’t frame on purpose, the paper almost damaged with time and constant folding to pocket size. It was the most precious to her.

“Whoah, that’s a hell of a view,” said Kasie, eyebrows raised and mouth opened in an oval shape.

“Perfect, wouldn’t you say?” Abby replied, sending Ziva a naughty grin and wiggling her brows.

“Abby,” Ziva huffed a nervous laugh, her cheeks reddening in a rare moment, “this isn’t where we are going to stay for the honeymoon.”

“Why not?! It’s the perfect place, with a great view of the stars, and the sea-”

“Abby,” Ziva stopped her, “he did not want to tell me about it.”

Every woman looked at Ziva, all casting disbelieving glances at each other.

“Really?” asked Jack, “is he that good?”

Ziva smiled shyly, looking down to her feet.

“Yeah,” she answered, “yeah, he is.”

Giggles filled her room, and for the first time in her life, Ziva David was grateful to have such a great female company.

“I’m so glad that you’re here, ladies. I was getting suffocated with all the planning and the last minute decorations. At least Tony is taking care of Tali, or else she would’ve wanted to opine on everything,” she smiled with the thought.

“So, Ziva, tell us the news! How did Tony propose?” asked Ellie, sitting down at a nearby chair after Abby popped open a bottle of champagne, “we didn’t hear anything about you until the invitations arrived.”

“That… that’s a very long and funny story, but we have something more important to discuss first.”

Ziva grabbed a grape and threw it in her mouth, chewing slowly while studying Ellie, who seemed a bit nervous with the sudden turn in the conversation.

“Eleanor, will I need to give you the bouquet directly or are you already aware that Nicholas is fond of you?”

Ellie froze. Her cheeks blushed until the redness reached her ears, and she huffed a laugh while putting a loose strand of her hair behind her ear.

“What? No. Nick? Puff, no way. He’s… he’s just… he’s my partner. We’re coworkers, nothing will happen.”

Everyone glanced at her with a bemused look.

“You do realize what we’re doing here this weekend, don’t you, Ellie?” asked Sloane carefully, placing her hand on top of Bishop’s.

“A wedding?” Abby giggled, “Of… coworkers…?” she added.

Ellie opened up a shy smile when the women started to shake her shoulders and cheer, her cheeks turning even redder than she thought it was possible.

“Don’t worry, uh?” Ziva cast her an honest look, “just have fun and I promise you, time will tell.”

°°°

“HEY TATER TOTS,” called Nick from the water, four kids giggling behind him on the low waves, “HEY, BISHOP!”

Ellie startled where she was lying down on a sun lounger, back facing the sun and wearing a high waisted bikini set. The warmth made her head dizzy with sleep, and she was so tired from the long journey, she didn’t even notice when the back massage Ziva arranged for her ended and when she started to only sunbathe.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT, BRUSSELS SPROUTS?”

“I have a dare for you.”

She startled once again when she realized he was standing just next to her, drops of water wetting her shoulder when he bent down to whisper in her ear.

“What… what dare?” she turned around carefully, hands shading the sun from her eyes as her skin started to tingle with the sight of Nick’s silhouette against the sun.

“I dare you to do a better handstand than those kids.”

“What?” That was unexpected.

“The one with the higher score is Tali. For now. Johnny said that it was because she was older, so I told him you’re older than any of them and doesn’t know how to do a proper handstand.”

Ellie snorted a derisive laugh, taking Nick’s hand to help her stand up, “do you think Eleanor Bishop doesn’t know how to do the most simple summer thing such as a handstand?”

“You’re talking in third person, creep,” he repeated her words from hours before, racing with her towards the kids. Sounds of constant laughter and waves crashing echoed all around.

Abby had taken every one to show a little cave she found with clear hot springs inside, near the cliffs on the other side of the beach. Gibbs and Jack had gone to the opposite direction, walking in the sand until they weren’t visible anymore around the bend.

Meanwhile, Ziva had arranged back massages for her and Ellie to enjoy the little spare time she had before the big event.

She now was lying down at a recliner chair, knots on her back coming undone by the amazing hands of the venue massagist. Her maroon bikini top was untied and she rested at the shade, palm trees swaying with the wind next to her. Her mouth tasted of cold sparkling wine, the sensation of bubbles exploding on her tongue still lingering. All she could hear was the wind, the birds and the sea nearby.

“Hmmm,” she moaned as the massagist touched a particularly painful spot. Her vertebrae cracked carefully under his fingers and the muscles started to slowly relax.

It was heaven.

“Hmmm, just like that, yeah.”

“Miss?” asked the young massagist in a polite tone.

“Hmmm…?” was all she could muster.

Ziva heard the loud sound of children laughing far away, followed by one “I win!” muffled by the powerful wind. She didn’t have a clue what that might be, but she smiled softly with the thought.

The massagist’s hands left her back from a moment, the wind caressing her skin and making her shiver.

“Uhh,” he said, a nervous note distinguishable in his voice, “are you the one getting married, miss?”

His hands returned, massaging her shoulders and the back of her neck as she moaned out loud with the sensation. She was alone and didn’t care about anything or anyone, to be honest. Tony was showing the surroundings to the guests with Abby and Tali was playing in the sand with the other kids. This was her moment, and hers alone.

“Yes, yes I am.”

“And… and who is the groom?” the young man asked politely, voice now steadier once she stopped with the moaning.

“He…” Ziva did it again just to feel him stiffen, biting her lower lip as a loud sound escaped her throat, “his name is Tony. Tall guy. Talks a lot.”

This is still too easy.

It was few the moments in her life Ziva David had truly felt like a woman, only when her job demanded and when her guilty desire asked her to. Now, she had a little girl who asked her about princess’ stories and glittery clothes, a good man at her side whose eyes always landed on her filled with need and a wedding party about to happen.

With a white gown and something blue included.

It all seemed like a dream, after years running away and hiding from Sahar, she was now in this beautiful place with all her family to cherish her wedding.

The girl who ran all her life had finally found herself.

“Is he… is he here?” asked the massagist, hands trailing down her lower back with care.

“Yes, he is. Well, not now, but you know, I do hope he is at the wedding, at least.”

“Of course.”

He changed the position of his hands to press down at her calves and Ziva purred in delight. She felt him bending down to massage the back of her knee, so she moaned once again just to play with him, her sassiness on overdrive.

“Is he, you know, strong? Knows how to fight?”

Ziva’s mind filled with images of Tony with shoulder holsters and sweaty skin, and she had to bite her lip again to prevent her from muttering anything too inappropriate. Gosh, the waiting for this honeymoon would make her explode with greed until there.

“Yeah, I’m afraid he’s pretty good at it.”

The massagist hands trailed the back of her thigh, making a skip from her hips to her lower back again.

“Is he… good looking?”

“Oh,” she smiled with the sight of him in formal attire tomorrow, “oh yeah-”

Her voice abandoned her as she felt the young man bending down atop of her and doing a fast lick at the shell of her ear.

“HEY, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

She quickly grasped her bikini top to turn around and stand up, wanting to punch him right away, but his body pressed her down at the chair, laying on top of her back.

He was too heavy, and for a second she couldn’t move from the position she was lying down.

She had to think fast.

She had to found a quick way out of here.

“I could ask you the same thing, Dah-veed.”

Tony’s raspy voice caressed the back of her ear just as he came closer to place a lingering kiss on the crook of her neck.

“You have no self-respect moaning like that, do you?” he grabbed her hair to position her neck how he liked, placing wet kisses from her shoulder to her earlobe, “you have no respect for the groom also, uh? You do know he’s obeying your wishes to wait until the honeymoon, don’t you?”

He kissed her neck, again and again, and again, making her dizzy and hot and sweaty. Her skin began to prickle wherever he touched and she could feel a tingling sensation starting to grow strong at the base of her belly.

“You do know,” another kiss, “that you’re driving him crazy,” another kiss, “with your bikini like that?”

She started to shiver and couldn’t take it anymore as one of his hands trailed down to grab her firmly at the waist.

“Tony, I-” a loud moan escaped her lips as he pressed his whole body hard on her back.

“He can’t. Wait. For tomorrow. Sweetcheeks,” he said slowly, the syllables leaving his lips just as he placed kiss after kiss on her neck, again and again, making her want to scream, her heart threatening to explode.

Tony planted a wet smooch on her ear, making a loud 'pop’ as he moved away, letting her turn around. An amused smirk danced on his lips as his green eyes gave an appreciate gaze down her body, waiting for her as she tied her bikini. The young massagist was nowhere to be found.

“It was you all along?”

He opened up a boyish smile, eyes growing dark as his gaze lingered on her lips a moment too long.

“Did you really think a massage that good could be done by a shaky little guy in training?”

Ziva chuckled, licking her lips as she watched Tony’s eyes carefully trace her tongue with hard focus.

“How much did you give him to ask that stuff?”

“Your habilities are faltering, Israeli, once upon a time you could sense me in your sleep just by my marvelous natural musk,” his eyes darted from her lips to her chocolate eyes, the color almost invisible as it became two completely black orbs.

The air between them was filled with electricity, the tension almost unbearable with Ziva licking her lips and Tony tracing her tongue with his eyes.

“Just kiss me already, will you?”

She opened up her mouth to welcome him, his wet tongue crashing into hers with obvious need, smooth and tasting of cold tequila. He moved closer to her, wrapping his arm around her waist, the other lifting to her hair as he intensified the kiss.

Ziva couldn’t think straight, she felt like she had drunk at least a whole bottle of wine, mind blank with all the senses taking over her. The warmth in her belly was spreading across her body, through her veins, and, judging by the way he was groaning into her mouth, she guessed he felt the same.

They were sweating as the lust and desire for each other scrambled on the surface and the body heat between them could cause a fire. It seemed that neither of them wanted to stop the kiss.

But it was necessary to inhale, so Tony drank in her lips for one last long moment and then released them with a soft moan. He opened his eyes and licked his lips, tasting her on them as he looked at him and saw the effect of the kiss. She banged her head once lightly against the chair, feeling completely dumbfounded and, with closed eyes, took a deep breath.

“Why did we wait so long again?” Ziva asked, voice quavering and raspy.

“I ask that myself every day,” Tony answered with a wide smile, “so do you think, HEY-”

A pair of steady hands gripped him at his shoulders and lifted him from the chair, just as another held his ankles and he started to be carried away from her.

“Not now, pal,” said Nick, holding his ankles and moving towards the other side of the beach, “you got somewhere else to be.”

"No, no, no, guys, put me down."

“A bachelor party, I think,” added Jimmy from behind, hands under Tony’s arms.

"PUT ME DOWN," exclaimed Tony, tossing in his friends' arms.

“For the one and only Anthony DiNozzo,” said McGee, winking at Ziva as she chuckled, “YOU CAN HAVE HER TOMORROW,” Tim put his hands in a shell shape, his voice echoing across the beach.

“SHE’S MINE EVERY DAY,” Tony yelled back, trying to turn his head towards Ziva but the guys didn’t let him.

“Is he drunk?” she asked, crossing her arms and eyes twinkling.

“No, he’s not,” replied McGee, a knowing smirk on his lips as he nodded towards Tony, “I think he’s just in love.”

#ncis #tiva #ellick #slibbs #tiva fanfiction #ellick fanfiction #ncis fanfiction #something blue fic #my fics #PLEASE READ IT ON AO3!!!#there is music there #very beach vibes #dads and their kids #then it gets a little hotter whoof #and I can't wait to write the next chapter #it's called 'the bachelor'

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shadowthrone-ammanas · 4 years

Note

I saw your art of mustache girl making fun of snatcher, and boy could hear the insults flying back and forth and then I thought of a prompt, so heres the request: Snacther is trying to force mustache girl to drink an ex potion for his death wish however mustache girl isn’t having any of it even after he threatens to take her soul, instead she immediately starts name calling him things like dork, weakling, noodle, etc. just for needing help to kill hat kid.

Thank you for the request!

Weak Noodle

“You seriously need help killing Hat Kid?” Mu said as she looked up from the contract. She glared up at Snatcher, still seemingly unafraid even though she had to know what was at stake by now. “You came all the way out here to the island and found my cave for that? Really?”

“I don’t need help killing her, I just want to kill her in a creative way. It’s more fun that way.” He did his best evil grin that normally made people nervous if not scared. It didn’t seem to work on her though.

“Yeah, right. You tried to kill her on your own and failed, just like everyone else. And now you’re trying this stupid EX potion thing to do it instead. I doubt it’ll even work.”

Snatcher didn’t have time for this. He was trying to get the fight started now. He even had Hat Kid waiting for it, too eager for her own good. “Just sign the contract and drink the potion, it’s not hard.”

“And what if I refuse?”

“I’ll eat your soul.”

“I don’t think you would. You need me because you want me to do the thing with Hat Kid. You’re a weak-ass noodle who can’t even beat an umbrella wielding child in combat. I’ve seen real pasta that’s more intimidating than you.”

Snatcher’s eye twitched. He was half tempted to blast Mu into bits, splatter her insides all of the walls of her stupid cave home. If he didn’t need her for something, he might’ve very well done so regardless of the fact she was a kid. So, she was right, he needed her for the thing with Hat Kid and she was fortunate for that.

“If I recall correctly, you couldn’t beat her either,” he said instead. “You hit her maybe what twice on your own? Pathetic!”

“Yeah, but I’m just a kid too. You’re supposed to be a big bad unstoppable monster. People tell horror stories about you and your dumb cliché forest all the time. So you should’ve been able to kill a child. But you can’t because you’re too weak and soft. Face it, you’re pathetic. You can’t do anything right, you’re just a worthless noodle with a…”

With an annoyed snarl, Snatcher swooped down to grab her by the cape and yank up into air. No one got away with saying that kind of thing to him. He had power, tons of it. He was no longer weak, pathetic, or worthless and he refused to tolerate being called such.

“You’re not going hurt me, I’m not scared you,” Mu said with a huff as she crossed her arms. She was scared though; he could hear it in her voice underneath the false bravado. “Bloody dumb noodle ghost. I’m more intimated by Casper the Friendly…”

Snatcher summoned the EX potion he’d brewed a few hours ago to float in front of Mu’s face. He then forced the flask’s opening into her mouth, shutting her up at last. He titled it, forcing her to either drink the rainbow-hued EX potion or choke on it. Which it was, he really didn’t care anymore.

She sputtered and pawed at the flask, trying to push it away. It was a vain effort though and he just pushed it deeper in her mouth as far as it could go without hurting her. She whimpered but she seemed to be drinking it. When it was all gone, he finally let her push the flask away.

Breathing heavy, she gave him a hate filled look. “I hate you.”

“Good because you should. Let’s go to the arena now, shall we?”

By the time, he had a recreated version of her throne room inside his pocket dimension, her mind was gone. She hung limp now but that would soon change. He quickly placed her on throne and left to get Hat Kid. This would be a fun fight to watch and for once, he might even root for Hat Kid.

For this request event.

#My Writing #ahit #A hat in time #Snatcher #mustache girl #Death Wish #Snatcher is a jerk

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sokaiweek · 5 years

Text

Recovery (Aka Training together) Sokai Week Day 2

(Day 2)

Sora hissed as he sat up in bed.

Looking down at his arm, the bandages were still secure from his elbow up to his wrist. It had been a solid week since he escaped from Shibuya with Riku, and only four days since he woke up from the ensuing coma he succumb to after him, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy had fought him off. Fought him off, more like got bored with. he thought dryly as he cradled his still healing arm. When he finally woke up to Kairi sleeping in a chair next to him in Radiant Garden, where he had found out just how serious in injuries were. The cut on his wrist was deep but thankfully hadn’t been infected with anything, he had two broken ribs which were tapped, a concussion that hopefully was gone by now, the tendons in his legs were twisted, there were burns on his back and bruises littering his body, and he had trouble hearing out of his left ear.

And that was just the physical damage, his magic reserved where bone dry and would take at least a month or so until they were replenished. The abilities that he learned where still there thankfully, unlike after his failed Mark of Mastery exam, but due to his physical limitations he couldn’t use them or maintain proper training. His stamina also took a major hit, his days in and out of consciousness had left him weak, he felt like a Shadow could take him out again.

It was one thing when he had been depowered before, the mark of mastery was a trap that no one saw coming, and from what he understood his year long slumber was so he would remember all his friends again. But this time…..it felt different, it wasn’t something beyond his control this time. Shaking those thoughts aside, Sora lifted his legs over the side of the bed, he tried putting his weight forward but his ribs spiked with pain. “Angh!” he grunted out covering his ribs with his good arm. He heard a muffled sound out his ear, but he paid it no mind and focused on nursing his ribs.

He wished a high powered Curaga would take care of these injuries but apparently all that did was alleviate his pain for a while. Arieth told him that his injuries would take time to heal, that magic can only do so much. The spikey haired brunette let out a tired sigh, he was improving but it was terribly slow going. A muffled voice made his head snap over to the door to his temporary room, in the doorway stood Kairi looking at him with concern, “Are you ok?” she asked, her voice less muffled now that Sora was aware of her.

He looked down at his feet, he wasn’t ok, he was far from ok. “I’m…” he pursed his lips together, unable to find the right words. Kairi didn’t need to hear them, she carried herself over to his bed and sat herself down beside him carefully, her hand reached out to his and interlocked their fingers together. The action instantly calming Sora’s frustration, “I’m sorry if I woke you up.” he apologized, daring to look over at her.

Yet Kairi smiled at him, she smiled in a way that made Sora’s chest ache in the best way, “Don’t be sorry…..and you didn’t wake me up. I couldn’t sleep.” she explained, her other hand reaching over and clasping her other hand over the one she held.

Sora took notice of her apparel, she was still wearing her evening clothes, a pair of grey sweatpants and a violet tee shirt. It was…..odd seeing her in something so casual, so normal. “I got used to getting up early. When Donald, Goofy and I were looking for you, I would wake up as soon as I can, rag them out of bed too, and get searching…..but all we ended up doing was-“

“That wasn’t your fault.” Sora interrupted calmly, “We’ve all just been…..pawns in a game. We didn’t realize it.” he said sagely, surprising the redhead with his somber tone. Sora had always been a constant ball of positive energy, the biggest optimist she’s ever known……but after Shibuya, or whatever the world’s name that Riku had told her, that bright ball had lessened it’s glow.

Her smile faltered from his empty voice, her hand left his hand reached up to the side of his face, gently turning his face to her’s. A year ago she wouldn’t be so bold as to even think of doing such a gesture, back then it might have been a little too intimate for two friends…..but that was then. That was before she realized the stakes, before she had offered to share a paopu fruit with him and seal their destinies together forever, before the Keyblade war. Before they all lost him……before she lost her Sora for six months.

Her eyes stared into his, he glanced over at her hand and his lip curved downward before reaching his wounded arm up to touch her’s but only making it halfway before the pain made him hiss out and drop it. The act made her heart clench, Sora was the strongest person she had ever met, perhaps not in the literal sense but he always seemed so……powerful to her. He was the deciding factor in the Keybalde War, if not for him then they would have lost a dozen times over. It was a fact, something that the others seemed to share.

Even when he came back, battered and beaten he fought alongside her like the wounds where nothing. But now he seemed so…..frail.

And he didn’t like it, she could see that.

“You’ll be ok Sora.” she assured, his eyes snapping back into her’s. She smiled as she recalled hearing from Merlin about his progress during her training, even after being sapped of his powers he came back stronger than ever. “It might take a while but…..I have no doubt that you’ll be back to your old self before you know it.” she guaranteed.

Sora briefly smiled, moved by how she believed in him…..but it quickly faltered, “Kairi….I can’t even hold my Keyblade right now.” he said, looking down at his bandaged arm. He hadn’t healed enough to regain his full range of motion for it, and even then he could barely hold a half glass of water without straining. “I know you believe in me…….and that means so much to me.” he enforced. “But…..I’m useless….”

Kairi looked at Sora in utter disbelief. Him? Useless!?!?!

“You are not useless.” she stated firmly, “Sora look at everything you’ve done! You’ve saved the worlds how many times? You beat every single Organization member almost by yourself, we won because of you-“

“And everyone died……including you.” he interrupted harshly, his look of anger retreated back and was immediately replaced with regret, “I-I’m sorry I didn’t-“

Kairi shook her head slowly, “No….Sora it’s ok….” she said softly, the fearful look in Sora’s eyes making it click for her. Sora had suffered physically from their battle from the Master of Masters, but not once had any of them considered what the mental toll on him had been from the Keyblade war. He saw each and every one of them die right in front of him, even though she herself hadn’t faded during the Demon Wave, Sora watched her be struck down right before his eyes…..and wasn’t able to do anything.

Her hands reached for his, “Sora…..do you want to go for a walk?” she asked.

The teen looked down at his legs, he wasn’t crippled by any means but he only started taking steps on his own two days ago. And he couldn’t go very fast, or very far. “I…..I don’t want to slow you down.” he answered bashfully.

Kairi smiled at him, “I don’t care…..I just want to spend some time with you.” she replied truthfully. Her smile only broadened when she saw the way his face turned red, she was forward about her feelings now, after spending so long dancing around them with him and nearly losing him? She refused to skirt around her feelings for him.

“I….um….might need….help…getting up.” he embarrassingly admitted. Kairi stood from the bed and walked in front of him, with a powerful pull he didn’t expect from her he was on his feet with no trouble. “Oh….ok.”

She smirked up at him, “Swinging a Keyblade around is good for the arms.” she explained, holding her arm out and flexing it proudly, Sora could make out a defined shape in her skin. Taking his hand in her’s, she let Sora take the lead and set their pace. One foot in front of the other, their speed was admittedly a snail’s pace through the house of the Restoration Committee, by the time they made it out the front door, Sora’s legs were aching. Kairi could tell as much from how his hand was squeezing her’s, “Here’s a nice spot.” she offered, gesturing to the bench right outside the house.

Reluctantly, Sora sat down in a huff. Kairi took her seat next to him as Sora looked down at his feet in disappointment. “I’m sorry.” he apologized. “I’m just….” he was about to say useless again but remembering Kairi’s reaction from earlier, he stopped himself.

She shook her head, “Sora, it’s ok to be frustrated.” she assured, the brunette looking at her with surprise as she looked down at her own hand. “When you disappeared…..I blamed everyone….I blamed Riku for letting you go after me, but that didn’t last long. He missed you just as much as I did…..and I can never stay mad at him.” she added with a smirk. “I blamed King Micky for the same reason, I…..I still blame Yen Sid for not telling you more about the Power of Waking. And…..other things.” she said bitterly, surprising Sora. “But out of everyone…..I blamed myself the most….I thought that if I had been better, if I had been stronger, then you never would have been put in that position in the first place.” she explained.

The logic was sound to her at first, if she hadn’t been captured she wouldn’t have been killed, she wouldn’t have been killed, Sora would still be there……except for one simple fact. “But I realized….it didn’t matter, if it wasn’t me that fell then it would have been someone else…..and I know you would have gone to save them as much as you would me.” she said knowingly. She glanced over at Sora, the teen had a look of guilt over his face, “That’s not a bad thing!” she quickly added, “That’s one of the best things about you Sora, you care for everyone.”

The island boy smiled at her praise, “I mean yeah, they’re all my friends…..but your……your special Kairi.” he admitted unashamed.

Kairi felt her face warm up, “My point is…I was in a bad mindset for a while…..but the way I got out of it was just…..taking a small step forward each day.” she said, her hand gesturing to him. “You couldn’t get out of bed five days ago, today you made it all the way through the house out here!” she said enthusiastically. Her hand rested on his knee, “It’s going to take some time…..but you’ll be ok Sora….I know it.”

Her faith in him was unwavering, and Sora honestly didn’t think he deserved it but she still gave it too him. One step forward….he could do that. “Kairi…..thank you.” he said gratefully, the redhead beaming back at him as she scooted herself closer to his side, her head gently laid down on his shoulder as not to hurt him. “I…..I missed you…..so much….”

“I missed you too.” she replied dreamily, shutting her eyes and listening to his breathing soothingly. Looking down at her resting form, Sora’s throat dried at how beautiful she looked. There was a long time that he wouldn’t use that word to describe her, not that he thought she wasn’t pretty before but now he could think it without being embarrassed. Lifting his bandaged arm, he wrapped it around her hack, making her eyes open as he embraced her with his one arm. Looking over she smiled softly at him, her face leaned in close to his, her soft lips pressing against his wounded cheek.

Pulling away she nearly laughed when she slowly saw Sora’s face turn crimson, One step at a time. Physically, Mentally, and…..romantically.

#sokaiweek2019 #sokaiweek #sokai #fanfiction #day 1 #avatarconner #long post #submission

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pettyelves · 5 years

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becoming an’diel

Wheel of Fortune, the harbor’s gambling house and a pillar of their local economy. But, for all the greed between Kurel and Eilithe-- the four walls that made up the gambling house wasn’t about the money.

It was a monument to them. Not just the beginning, though the fire had started in several small embers scattered throughout. No, every line crossed, every deal made, every surrender or gain, lust and pain and rage and love, all laid in the stone and wood.

“Feel free to help yourself, Arbiter.” He said it to her in such a way it made the moment a game. They’d spent the evening recalling all the moments they felt something both now referred to as ‘it’-- but could be more corporeally described as passion.

She played along with him-- made him wait as she always had over the years.

"Originally, we buil' our deal with a series of guidelines. Two weeks ago, we both admitted we broke those. You... verbally. Awarded me full ownership of The Wheel of Fortune." Kurel briefly unhooked his fingers to make a gesture with his hands outwards, then returned them. " I don't think you did i' in soun' mind an' there are no witnesses excep'...." Kurel tapped a ring on his finger.. "I do have proof."

The grin he gave her twisted her up inside, the arrogance was always part of it. He continued. "I can't run this place alone. Too much other shi' on my agenda. So I'm willin' to come to an arrangemen' of offerin' you a portion. A station... A somethin'. Bu' you've to make i' worth my while."

She had always viewed their exchanges as a trade of moves-- a game were either one of them was equally equipped to back the other into a corner. "If you cannot run this place alone, and we've both very busy schedules, then who should sweeten whose pot? You have something in mind that you want-- so what is it?" Her voice was uniquely sinister when she spoke to him, a rasp which only rumbled when she spoke quite low.

"I wan' to demolish The Wheel of Fortune an' The Empress. Then join them an' rebuil' them both under a single room. As one. I control the games. You control the women. We control the crowds."

The negotiations were just as intense as they always had been--nitpicking, finding loopholes, exploiting them. At the end of it the deal was simple: The Empress would be reopened as a bathhouse. The Wheel, and all the pain and beginnings would be demolished. A new building, would be erected further inland to draw business to new parts of the city. A new beginning to their empire.

One item was left on Eilithe’s agenda, and it had been bouncing around in her mind for a long while-- then it had left-- then it’d become more gnawing than ever before. Eilithe An’Diel suited her fancy, it suited the names of her children, it suited them both from the standpoint of presenting as one single, unstoppable force. She had presented it, vaguely as: "And we legally split it all."

"We can figure ou' legal as we go. This place wouldn't be wasted rubble. We level it an' then buil' our new enterprise ontop of where it was." He hadn’t gotten it on the first go.

"Legality, sooner rather than later. Papers and names. Nothing more." She hid her second attempt in a sea of other details.

"Fine. Paper an' names. Nothin' more." But he hadn’t really grasped it. As petty, and as sneaky as she could be-- she couldn’t trick him into this. “Do you know what I meant?” He answered that what she’d meant-- "Is no contingencies. No, 'I ge' Eilonwys' an' 'You forefi' your enter stakes here' stipulations. Jus' names on paper."

"You already forfeit your stakes here-- for new ones, better ones. Stakes that run out deep into these jungles and out onto the sand." A hand on his arm crept along for his hand. "And you've had Eilonwy, I think one day you'll even have Threshad. But you have her, and you have for a long while."

"I'm talking about my name next to yours. Our name."

"Why are you so obsessed with this." His voice was barely above a whisper. His tone somewhat dangerously calm for the subject and he leaned in just close enough to her that the point of his nose softly dragged across her cheek and she could feel his words splash across her skin. "So prou' to be a Duskbringer. We argued an' compared an' we measured the worth an' the power of our names agains' each other. Why do you wan' i' so badly?" She answered him with a story. One of Endessa Lu’Cerne, who had cast off her name and status because she believed in something. "I will, in some way, always be a Duskbringer. But I believe in something and that's us. And I believe in someone, and that’s you."

But the desert didn’t marry twice. "Sometimes. Telling you no really does excite me. So listen. Very carefully." Those last few words were still quiet, but they were hard. In the familiar way he had in the past prepared her for disappointment. "Righ' now is not the time. It would cas' a shadow across the announcemen' of your brother an' your friend. An' when the masses woul' show, they woul' not show for them, bu' for us. An' tha' woul' breed resentmen' an' dissension.

"So no. You will continue to have to wade in your suffrage as a Duskbringer."

And he was, in part right--which was the purpose for simple names and papers. But had she not been listening very carefully she might’ve missed it. Kurel An’Diel did not give hope when there wasn’t any, and he didn’t say things to make someone feel better.

It made the ‘no’ easier to swallow, and he was, at least-- apologetic in the ways he touched her after. “Alright,” she answered, just as hard as she ever was. More logistics came after, carried on like nothing had happened. And that-- that was refreshing.

The night ended with her back pressed against the table across which was a massive map of Dead Sun and the island she was attached to. With torturous kisses placed across her collar, she asked him-- because she knew there was always more.

"Anything else, anything more that you planned?" She did not spare him a glance, for she knew well the grin that was carved into it.

"Command of the Dead Sun Fleet."

[ @kurel-andiel @deadsunharbor ]

#We Take It All #The Arbiter and the Admiral

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garden-ghoul · 5 years

Link

it’s Jingo! a book about xenophobia, racism, imperialism, and how being a cop makes you immune to the rules. here’s the article I reference at the end, about the 1914 Christmas Truce.

transcript under the cut.

Hello and WELCOME to episode 3 of my newly named podcast, It’s Critical Analysis All The Way Down. This time I pulled the number 21, so we’re reading Jingo. The title is a reference to ‘jingoism,’ which is sort of patriotic bullying on the national scale. I’ll go ahead and sing you the chorus of the 1877 pop song it came from, which is actually directly referenced verbatim in the book:

We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true The Russians shall not have Constantinople.

Anyway, I don’t remember this book very well because I never liked it much. As I recall it has a lot of tongue-in-cheek racism that’s still… well, it’s still racist. So if you’re not interested in hearing a LOT about racism, this isn’t the book for you! But let’s take a look.

Before we start, I’ll briefly explain Ankh-Morpork, which is sort of a cross between 1800s London and New York City, but rather than being the capital of anywhere it’s just a citystate. They own a lot of people’s debts. Then there’s Klatch, which seems to be an entire continent loosely representing the Middle East, originally named for a joke about coffee klatches, so the name is a German word weirdly enough. There’s also a place called Klatchistan, and I don’t know what that’s about.

We start off in the classic Pratchett style with a bit of a mystery. This one involves squid. We have a squid fisher and his son having a bad time in the sea precisely halfway between Klatch and Ankh-Morpork because it feels like a storm is coming though there’s not a cloud in the sky. Then that damned foreign bastard shows up, who we gather is a functionally identical squid fisher from Klatch. Note that although they’re equally mean to each other, we are solidly in the point of view of the white guy. Anyway the lost island of Atlantis rises up out of the sea and the two fishermen immediately start trying to claim it for their respective citystates. Their two sons would like to de-escalate, and seem to regard this as normal embarrassing dad behavior (?!) but their fathers aren’t listening. They both want to be the first back to land to declare to everyone that they own an island.

Now it’s time for a bunch of jump cuts that introduce our main cast.

First: back to Ankh-Morpork, where we find our protagonist, Sam Vimes, commander of the city Watch, striking a match on one of his sergeants. Yeah, his introduction is him being lowkey racist to a troll, although Sergeant Detritus makes nothing of it because it really isn’t worth the effort it would be to try to change his commander’s mind. Vimes and Detritus are listening to a ship captain yelling about how Klatchian pirates made off with his cargo (which he’s clearly lying about). Vimes knows everything and everyone in the city, so he quickly demolishes the guy’s argument, and he slinks off in embarrassment having been revealed as a liar. But this doesn’t change the fact that everyone on the street wanted to believe him. As Vimes and Detritus walk they see a lot more people doing street harangues about the same thing.

Second, the city Patrician, Vetinari, is having a meeting with some heads of guild, which Vimes drops in on ‘cos I guess the Watch is also a sort of guild. They’re all having a good old being racist party, except Vetinari is being ironic about it. Vetinari patiently explains that Ankh-Morpork’s history of slaughter and imperialism means they don’t really have any foreign allies and thus it would be pretty stupid to go to war. Also they don’t have a standing army. And absolutely none of the rich pay their taxes so the entire citystate is bankrupt. ‘We’ve got no ships, we’ve got no men, we’ve got no money too,’ Vetinari says. He can’t prevent the peerage from forming private militias, but his official stance it that he’s going to rely on diplomacy.

Third, Captain Carrot of the Watch playing some wholesome street football with a couple of urchin gangs who despise each other, in a clear metaphor for Klatch and Ankh-Morpork that foreshadows the finale. And under Carrot’s watchful eye they get along! Carrot’s brand of diplomacy relies on supernatural earnestness and narrative armor that causes people not to want to disappoint him. We follow him to a hostage situation that seems only to have the purpose of introducing Corporal Angua, who is a werewolf (both of them are foreign, in case you were interested, although the story doesn’t treat them as such because they’re assumed to be white).

Fourth, we have Vimes and Carrot skulking around in the rain at 3AM when they hear screaming and find that a Klatchian family’s house has been firebombed. Vimes reflects on the fact that he’s picked up quite a bit of dwarf and troll language but zero Klatchian and knows Mr. Goriff’s family only as food service people. In fact, in gratitude for saving them Goriff brings a bunch of food to the Watch, which is RIGHT nice of him, and someone does the old “oh no they’re the good sort of Klatchians” thing.

And finally, Vimes has got to go to a big fancy do the wizards are throwing and meet the Klatchian ambassador. The ambassador is Prince Khufurah, who is in the way of all ambassadors ready to play some mind games. He’s experienced quite enough racism already since he arrived in Ankh-Morpork and keeps pretending to try to buy people’s wives. I’m not sure it’s really a good joke if no-one else gets it. He also has a bodyguard named 71-hour Ahmed who is JUST a gross Arab murderer stereotype, but we find out later that this is a façade he likes to project to put people off.

And then we have the wizard parade, where the wizards remind everyone that they COULD turn them all into clams if they wanted, but don’t. The wizards basically have their own private enclave in the city, don’t pay taxes, and do absolutely whatever they want, and it’s yet another in the long list of parallels this book has for international politics.

During the parade someone is seen in an off-limits zone trying to snipe the Prince and Vimes has to go chase them because of course he does, he is rightly referred to as a terrier throughout the book. And when they get there they find a single clove, such as 71-hour Ahmed likes to chew. At this point in the book I didn’t actually remember the resolution of this plotline but I assumed someone was using racial stereotypes to try to frame him. But in fact we later find out that this is an intentional clue Ahmed has left to keep Vimes interested in him. No, I don’t know why he needed that. Maybe he’s just having fun.

But then they discover a Morporkian bowman who is being framed for taking Klatchian bribes to kill the Klatchian ambassador so Klatch has an excuse to go to war with Ankh-Morpork.

Meanwhile there’s a mob, supposedly because Klatchians have been killing people. Someone did get hurt, because Mr. Goriff’s family are really paranoid after the attack. Vimes escorts them to the watchhouse for their own safety, which is a little bit like arresting them. Some people come round to the watchhouse demanding the family’s release but it turns out Klatch is enormous and the rescuers are a different ethnic group and they get into a huge blazing row. In summary, everything continues to be extremely complicated and political.

SPEAKING of complicated and political, the Patrician has resigned and Ankh-Morpork is officially under military law. The entire command of the Watch quits because they don’t want to have to act as soldiers under the idiot aristocrats like Lord Rust who are forming private militias. And we get a little war gossip from Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs, who apparently very much enjoyed being soldiers in the low-stakes wars of Western Europe—I mean the Sto Plains.

I think it’s interesting that both of them seem to have served in multiple wars—they aren’t that old, probably not too much over forty, which means that the peace we see in Ankh-Morpork in the Watch books is VERY recent. Overall there are constant mentions of other wars in this book; Vimes’ wife Sybil also talks about how her aristocratic ancestors made sure to ALWAYS be fighting someone. And yet this is the only book where we see Ankh-Morpork actually at war, presumably because Sir Terry wasn’t as interested in writing about it as he was in writing about civic development.

This book also wants to emphasize that the peerage would rather most of their soldiers get killed, and that fighting is mostly carried out to engender patriotism. I don’t know that in real life commanders want their people to die, but I certainly agree with the second part.

And I want to read this good bit about Vimes thinking like a cop to avoid having a bad opinion of humanity, which is one of the main themes of the book:

Someone's behind this. Someone wants to see a war. Someone paid to have Ossie and Snowy killed. Someone wanted the Prince dead. I've got to remember that. This isn't a war. This is a crime. And then he realized he was wondering if the attack on Goriffs shop had been organized by the same people, and whether those same people had set fire to the embassy. And then he realized why he was thinking like this. It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people.

There’s a subplot where Angua does some inadvisable spying and gets stuck on a ship headed for Klatch, which I mostly mention because I want to tell Vimes off for stealing someone’s fucking boat to follow her. He is, really, SUCH a cop all the time. He tells the guy “oh the city’s under martial law and I have a militia so I can do whatever I like.” Yeah he threatens to drum up a mob and stone this boat captain to death if he doesn’t donate his ship and the weapons he was shipping. Sorry SIR what happened to serve and protect? Yes, he throws ALL of the captain’s cargo overboard and completely destroys his ship in a storm because he refuses to take precautions. I am really starting to dislike Commander Sam “Copaganda” Vimes!!

Due to a bunch of shenanigans he and his men end up being taken as prisoners-slash-guests by some D’regs, an ethnic group that is violently opposed to the idea of a united Klatch. And we get some fun Klatchian politics, which is all I have really been craving.

The D’regs release Vimes to the care of 71-hour Ahmed, who is famous for violating the three-day hospitality rule one hour before time to execute a person who poisoned an entire village, and turns out to have been educated at the Ankh-Morpork Assassins’ Guild. He and Vimes have kind of a cool conversation about being officers of justice:

Your beat is a city you can walk across in half an hour. Mine is two million square miles of desert and mountain. Oh, the towns and cities have their guards, of a sort. They are uncomplicated thinkers. But it is my job to go into the waste places and chase bandits and murderers, five hundred miles from anyone who would be on my side, so I must inspire dread and strike the first blow because I will not have a chance to strike a second one.

And Ahmed reveals that Prince Khufurah’s brother is the one who tried to have him killed: there is nothing that unites people like having a common enemy, and he thinks it will be easier than trying to ‘pacify’ outlying areas of Klatch. Vimes is being a bit of a hypocrite here about how awful it is to kill people as an officer of justice, just because he personally doesn’t have the stomach for it—he beats a lot of people up and threatens to kill people all the time.

Let’s take stock of how things stand, because this book has actually been extraordinarily complicated and I’ve been leaving out a lot of what seemed at the time to be fragmentary comic relief.

Lord Rust saw that Vimes was launching an expeditionary force and he has established an extremely ill-advised beachhead. His soldiers are about to start fighting a Klatchian force six times their number. Lord Rust is sure songs will be written about this. What? Everyone will die? But we shall have songs, so who cares!

Vimes is now allied with a small company of Ankh-Morpork soldiers led by his butler and a company of D’regs who are friendly with 71-hour Ahmed. For some reason this is presented as Carrot being in command of the D’regs through force of charisma, even though the books makes fun of “they’re fine men as long as they have a white commander.”

The Patrician (who has stepped down to make way for military rule of Ankh-Morpork) asked some of the more incompetent watchmen to help him get to Klatch for diplomatic reasons, and they have been posing as street performers. The Patrician is a very good juggler.

And so we’re up to date. Prince Khufurah’s murderous politicking brother is having a polite breakfast with Lord Rust before he totally destroys his forces, when up come Ahmed and Vimes to arrest the Prince. Vimes decides to round it out by declaring his intent to arrest the entire Morporkian army for behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace. VERY cute of Sir Terry to be so glib about the fact that in any reasonable legal system war is one of the worst possible crimes. I aaaalmost had some respect for him and then he turned right around and said that if he killed the Prince it wouldn’t be murder because their countries are at war. The sheer HYPOCRISY.

Captain Carrot goes outside to read the arrested armies their rights and, yes, in a lovely little callback he starts a football match. I think this is also pretty clearly a reference to the possibly apocryphal Christmas football match between German and British soldiers during WWI.

Anyway at this point the Patrician shows up with a treaty of surrender and sends Vimes outside to the kids’ table while the grownups commit complicated legal crimes. Vimes sulks and Ahmed gives him a bit of a pat on the shoulder as they commiserate about their inability to stop the government from committing crimes.

Lord Rust apparently considers the Patrician’s surrender to Klatch a crime as well, because when everyone gets back to Ankh-Morpork he’s apparently to be tried for treason. At the trial, however, it comes out that the Prince traded a valuable military installation for Atlantis, which has since sunk under the sea again. This is portrayed as something the Patrician arranged specifically to effect a coup against the Prince rather than something that will bring Ankh-Morpork future military advantage for some baffling reason. Anyway, now central Klatch has a leader the Patrician is happier to deal with. Sorry, what? Deposing heads of government in desert countries to install governments we prefer is one of the most classic imperialist tactics?

And that’s the plot. Now, because this podcast isn’t just ‘I tell you the plot of a Discworld book and you go oh good that saves me the trouble of reading it,’ I have another thing I want to discuss here, which is the Nobby-has-to-disguise-himself-as-a-woman subplot. It’s intended to be nothing but comic relief: Nobby is so ugly people always add a caveat that they’re not sure he’s human, and throughout the book we hear about him trying to figure out why girls aren’t into him. The moment he experiences gendered ill-treatment he begins to fully inhabit the role of a woman, going so far as to say that men can’t understand what he’s going through. He hangs out with a bunch of Klatchian women who like him a lot, mostly because his being foreign allows him to express opinions they’re too polite to express. I find it difficult to interpret this as the transmisogynistic joke it is probably intended to be, only because I so earnestly like the idea of Nobby as trans, relating to women as a woman. We see Nobby’s male perspective bundled into the foreignness of being from another country: this willingness to speak your mind and attack men in defense of other women. I’ll always be wistfully thinking, what if Nobby just hung out with the ladies forever instead of going back to being a watchman? Probably be more likely to finally get a girlfriend, too.

SO. Themes of Jingo.

Nationalism is bad. I can agree with this one.

Racism is bad… but ooooonly racism against humans. Sir Terry definitely does have certain kinds of racism he considers acceptable.

Brown people aren’t stupid, they have their own politics, and they’re just as capable as anyone else of being real fucked up bastards.

BUT… if the right circumstances present themselves, people of very different cultural backgrounds can get along.

I actually want to go on one last little diversion because I was just reading a very cute article on the 1914 Christmas Truce, which I’ll link in the notes. According to this article, the high command of both the German and British armies was desperate to keep the fighting going on Christmas because they were aware that men from two Christian nations would find common ground in their most important holiday and they did NOT want soldiers to start to think of the opposite side as human. So that declaring a truce on that day was actually an act of insubordination. There’s an account in the article of one location where Germans started singing Christmas songs to signal that they didn’t want to fight, and then met the British in no-man’s land to offer to give them some beer as a gift. The Brits reciprocated with plum pudding. No, I have no idea why they had plum pudding in the trenches. But what this story illustrates is the contrived nature of animosity in war, and the fact that putting in the effort to see all humans as people is a radical act when jingoism is king.

That’s all I have for you tonight. Be well, and remember to consider the humanity of your neighbor. Bye.

#is the telegraph 'a trustworthy source'?#well whatev #discworld #audio #it's yelling all the way down

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thefreshfinds · 5 years

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TOSO:

While TOSO's conscious ways are deemed as priceless, one can expect his overrall sound to be cheaper by the dozen! His range of topics (if measured) are off the scale. Nevertheless, he's fresh to death goddamnit!

In an instant the MC could be speaking on how we're robots in our modern society, "From the fact since I was young, I was raised to be a slave/Go to school, study math, beatings if my grades were bad. When all I really want to do is play some ball or write some raps../Hoping I can talk some real sh-t into all these little kids/What you're learning is from within. F-ck the system that was built. 'Cause real authority only comes after someones just been killed/True will is all it takes, turn yourself into a great." (Cant Stop Me). Then, TOSO can speak on how he's got varieties when it comes to his kush & women, "Have sex with b-tches in all 50 states/High everytime & it all feels the same/Yeah it's insane, rollin' them plain/ Quarter with me everywhere I go." (Fish Scale) or "When I do shows, f-ck h-es/Get checks (So Outstanding). However, it all comes down to the cadence he decides to use.

With this in mind, he says "The combination of meaning, cadence, flow & word choice is what makes for a good verse. A perfect verse will roll off your tongue perfectly without loosing breath. People should be able to understand your words & the flow you choose. Essentially your voice should be like another instrument on the beat." And so TOSO does his diligence to make a song for every mood.

On the other hand — the flow he chooses is stopped short. Simply, to keep a listener hung up on his choice of rhyme schemes. Yet TOSO's pride runs deep on creating #1 hits.  "I love thinking about & creating new songs. But I love recording them even more." TOSO adds "Recording a song is like game-time to me. When I’m in the booth I know that all my practice has come down to that moment. I know whatever I do from that point on will be on record forever." All these components help TOSO to reach all audiences. At most, it's really unbiased.

Griginally from the suburbs of Lincoln, Rhode Island — TOSO is an independent hip hop artist who now resides in Los Angeles, California. Fond of his hometown's cheap rates, TOSO loves the fact that all of his friends & family are back there. But maybe (just maybe) they'll move to The Golden State? "Ever since moving to L.A I’ve realized how much more expensive things are in the West compared to the East Coast." he goes on to say "I’m sure if any of them had a chance to move to California they would in a heart beat."

Raised by parents who are migrants from Nigeria, he also has 1 older sister. In his earliest years, TOSO was involved in sports. However at 6 years old, he was involved a life threatening car accident that left him with a huge scar above his right eye. By college TOSO was playing Division 1 college basketball. Then he began taking music seriously & put his basketball career on halt to pursue it further.

Throughout the years he's loved writing. He would even write essays & create stories from his imagination. But TOSO took it further in middle school with song lyrics in middle school (which came naturally). He recalls his first time rapping in front of people in the 5th grade. It then followed with a couple of his friends asking him to freestyle for them. By high school TOSO was writing song lyrics to instrumentals. Then the MC found out quickly that he had a talent for making music; but was still serious about playing basketball & going to the NBA. So he decided to keep music as a hobby. Fast forward to TOSO's sophomore year of college when he had an apartment with some friends & basketball teammates. Suddenly TOSO had an ephiphany. For the long haul, TOSO wanted to start making music. "My teammates, Parris Massey, was also into making music & had a microphone set up in his room. Soon after moving in together, I would hang out with him whenever he recorded songs. During that summer Wiz Khalifa dropped “Kush & Orange Juice”, which had a huge influence on my life. I went from being a serious athlete to becoming a pot head musician. Most people saw this as a bad turn in my life, but I knew that If I worked hard I could turn my situation into a positive one." says TOSO.

Since then TOSO has been perfecting his craft & working on becoming the greatest rapper that’s ever lived. Ultimately his love for making music & hearing himself drove him to take it seriously. "I loved the reaction I got out of people when they heard my music. I loved the adrenaline that I felt after getting off stage at my first performance. I love the satisfaction of perfecting a song that I’ve heard in my head." A carefree being, TOSO keeps in mind that time is his to own! While he follows his intuition, he strays away from unneccesary drama. "In my music my message is that there’s no right or wrong way to live life." says TOSO "Enjoy your time as much as you can while you are here, effect the world the way you want to effect the world & let everything else play it’s part."

Likewise his music allows him to be honest & show people it’s ok to feel all sorts of emotions. It's very unpredictable. "Sometimes I’ll go through 500 beats in a day & only find 6 that I like. But usually out of those 6 I’ll be able to make a couple hit records." adds TOSO "After finding the beats comes the fun part. Writing song lyrics makes me feel as good as I use to feel when I played basketball. Coming up with a catchy metaphor is like hitting a nice jump-shot. Sometimes I’ll write a clever lines and get so excited about it that I scream out in joy. I love thinking about & creating new songs, and I love recording them even more." TOSO even says that writing lyrical verses & harmonizing are his biggest strengths. For him, writing lyrics & harmoninzing are like solving math equations. Harmonizing comes from his soul & he usually has no control over what harmony he uses because the different instrumentals dictate them. "Staking different melodies & harmonies are my favorite."

As artist, TOSO believes that they've got it all wrong. When it comes down to it, he says that in today's generation encouraging words, likes, shares, & attendance to shows are considered support. However artists expect their family & friends to do these things without hesitation. Honestly though, they are not required to. "Support comes from true fans who like you & your music. Make better music & present yourself a better way. The support will come." In addition TOSO wishes the current era would start a union that gathered all their fans & moved them in a positive direction. Fans need to get educated on the laws of their state & about banks. It's best to start a credit union.

For all the upcoming artist — TOSO advises you to make clear-cut music & videos. Along with this, he encourages you to perform at any show they can & to network. Yet the most important piece is to know your worth.

Expect the interchangable MC to drop an album real soon. In his words, he's been working on his debut album titled “The Prophecy”for the past 3 years. It consist of his best work yet & has been the most difficult project he's ever worked on. "I feel like Jay-Z or J-Cole when they dropped their first album. Although I’m releasing it fully independent." TOSO goes on to say "I believe the music speaks for itself. Each song has a different vibe but the cohesive unit sounds like one sound. The best parts of the album are the instrumentals & the lyrics."

Moreover it took him 2 years to pick the beats on this album. "Each day I would go through over 100 beats & probably only wrote to 4 of them. Then after I had 20 songs written I would narrow it down to 3. I would repeat that until I had 15 songs. In the end I narrowed it down to 13 songs for the album. These are all my best songs and probably better than most the songs you hear on the radio. I plan to release this album this summer, but the date is still pending."

Before the album TOSO will be releasing a single from the album called “The Best”. He says that this song is very uplifting & melodic. It's guaranteed to give everyone a good vibe. TOSO will also be releasing some tracks that didn’t make it on the album. "Even though they are not good enough to be on the album, I think they are still worthy enough to share with my fans." he says. The first release is titled “Can’t Stop Me” and can be heard HERE: https://song.link/i/1460102483w

By: Natalee Gilbert

LINK(s):

1. SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/therealtoso

2. Instagram: @therealtoso

3. YouTube: www.youtube.com/TheRealToso

4. Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheRealToso

#soundcloud #freshfinds #music #musicblog #rap #listen #banger #musicians #hip hop #follow #nojumper #hot97whosnext #unsignedrapper #complex

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zdbztumble · 5 years

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But What About Kairi, Or: Today’s KH Ramble, Part II (KH III Spoilers)

Meanwhile...

My play-through of KH III has taken me through the last of the Disney worlds, Big Hero 6. Besides reminding me of why I’m not the biggest fan of that movie, its day/night options make for a fun mechanic, and the layout of San Fransokyo is great. Baymax has some cute battle dialogue, and Donald’s reaction to “Keyblade Hero 3” was a good laugh. Of all the non-Pixar worlds, it’s also probably the best-integrated into the main plot. The reappearance of the Replica Riku, and the revelation of yet another plot, this time a burgeoning rebellion inside the real Organization XIII, nearly made my head explode, but on balance, it’s a solid level. The unorthodox beginning to the last Gummi zone was a pleasant surprise too, though I’d say that the Gummi ship sequences were at their best in KH II.

But then we come to the Badlands of the Keyblade Graveyard, and...ooh boy.

The battle that opens this level is fun, and a worthy successor to the battle with a thousand Heartless in KH II. I may have been a bit over-leveled for it, but it was still a good time. The cutscenes that followed, on the other hand, had me sputtering in disbelief. To begin with, the fact that all of that was a cutscene is baffling. All seven Keyblade Wielders facing down Terranort doesn’t sound like a good boss battle to anyone? Or hell, just Terra and Aqua? They’ve got the real stake in that fight. And Donald’s surprise spell, which I gather was a big Final Fantasy Easter egg, made for a cool moment that would have been much cooler as something that appeared in the course of battle. But that cutscene was also baffling on a story level. The Demon Tower becoming a Demon Tornado certainly made it bigger, but all the characters reacting to it with such despair was hard to follow when the distinction between the two isn’t all that great. Sora’s total collapse was especially out-of-character. The staging of this cutscene, it’s choice of camera angles, action, and pacing, all failed to sell the supposed magnitude of this threat. Coming off of a single battle, massive though it was, didn’t help.

And then...there’s Kairi.

I’m struggling to think of another series where a character supposedly of the main cast has been so consistently mishandled the way Kairi has since the end of KH II. The writing for her has been absolutely abysmal. And it’s in abysmal in a way that, rather than souring me on the character (which has happened in other series), I’m increasingly sympathetic towards her in a critical sense looking at Kingdom Hearts as a story.

That sympathy doesn’t come from Kairi being a favorite of mine. I don’t see how Kairi could be considered a favorite character, because I don’t consider her a complete character. The best way to describe Kairi IMO is as a potential character. She has tremendous potential to do great things in this series. Her wholesome, “girl next door” personality gives her a charming if rather conventional starting point, and the fact that she’s a freakin’ princess - one of the Princesses of Light, no less - who can’t recall her past offers a wonderful hook into stories. I said before that I’d revisit the idea of a KH prequel game, and IMO, the best choice for a prequel story is to explore Kairi’s past. Imagine that; a BbS, or equivalent game, that explored her life as a princess in Radiant Garden, how she came to lose her memories and end up on Destiny Islands, and why she could wield a Keyblade at the end of KH II. Was her personality still the same before she lost her memories? Could the confederation of Disney villains been aware of her and the other Princesses even then? If the prequel must expand on the Xehanort saga, then could Kairi have had anything to do with Ansem the Wise’s research, and could that explain her amnesia?

KH III has, so far, suggested that’s going to deal with at least some of this. Eventually. Maybe. If it gets around to it. But the point still stands that fleshing out one of the main characters of the series instead of inventing three new ones and pulling a third twist with the villain seems like the much more sound storytelling choice to me. A prequel game that focused on Kairi could also contain a hook that, combined with Maleficent’s unresolved fate at the end of KH II, would’ve provided a much more organic segue into a KH III story than pulling all sorts of stunts to re-open the Xehanort saga.

But that didn’t happen, and we’re left with the reality that Kairi’s backstory has barely been touched upon since the first game. Kairi herself is barely present for Coded, BbS, or DDD. In the latter case, that being a game primarily focused on the Destiny Islands gang sans Disney battle partners, Kairi’s absence seems a terrible wasted opportunity. That could be made up for if the revelation that she was training as a Keyblade Wielder had a payoff, but so far, KH III has yet to provide. She’s had two cutscenes with Axel, neither of which actually show any training, and then what little you see of her in the Badlands (more on that later.)

Once again, this feels a wasted opportunity, because this series has a precedent that would allow for Kairi to have more of a role early on in the game. Remember the Roxas segment at the beginning of KH II that served as an extended tutorial? Why not have Kairi’s training be the tutorial of KH III? It would make sense story-wise for her to be the player character as you learn or review basic controls, there would have been opportunities for cutscenes to flesh out her character (and Axel’s, much as I hate to admit it), and a clever bit of writing could’ve passed the torch on to Sora right on time for the story to begin in earnest. And why not turn the swarm of enemies battle that opens the Badlands into a multi-party affair? Start off playing as Sora with Donald and Goofy, switch after a certain stage to playing as Riku with Mickey, then to Ven with Aqua, and then to Kairi with Axel. You could go back to Sora for the finale, but this way, everyone gets included, and the character in most need of material gets to shine for a moment.

Instead, Kairi is probably the least-featured member of the party in all those cutscenes. In the moment when Aqua directs her, Mickey, and Goofy to get the wounded to safety, Kairi isn’t even in the shot. Pretty much the only time she’s in frame in that cutscene is when she’s either being saved or reaching out to Sora.

And here’s where we come to a tricky part of the issue, because I’ve seen some rather strange commentary on Sora and Kairi’s relationship. One school of thought seems to hold that Kairi becoming Sora’s love interest is what costs her any opportunity to stand as a character unto herself. I can’t follow this line of thought, for several reasons. The first being that Kairi can’t exactly “become” a love interest when it’s clear from the start of the first game that Sora has a thing for her. Being a love interest and a solid character in your own right aren’t mutually exclusive either. But I also don’t understand this argument because Sora and Kairi’s relationship has been neglected just as Kairi herself has, and that’s a real problem given its importance to the series.

In KH I, Kairi serves as the stakes and as the prime motive for both Sora and Riku. While she herself doesn’t have much to do, she is pivotal to the story, and her bond with Sora being so strong that her heart takes refuge in his, that she can restore him from a Heartless, and that they somehow find a way to promise to see each other again even as they’re separated in the finale, is the reason why. Kairi indirectly serves as the prime motive in CoM too, with Sora’s memories reworked to replace Kairi with Namine. And while she shares the role of motivation with Riku in KH II, Sora is still mindful of her throughout the game, even slipping into romantic thoughts at least twice.

Now, lest you think I have nothing but praise for the early games in the series: in those games as in the later ones, Kairi is still underdeveloped as a character. She is basically there as the love interest and little more. Being a lifelong huge sucker for first love/young love subplots in fiction, I’ve been taken by Sora and Kairi’s relationship since my first playthrough, but it works as well as it does almost entirely because of Sora. Sora is developed as a character throughout the games, as well as being the protagonist and the player character. Because he is such a charming and likable character, and because he cares so much about Kairi, that carries over to the audience, or at least this member of it. It would be a stronger relationship if Kairi were more developed as a character, which is all the more reason to do so.

But even if you accept their relationship remaining on the level of “hero and love interest,” there’s been a terrible case of neglect since KH II. It wouldn’t be a factor in BbS, naturally, but by leaving Kairi out of nearly all of Coded and DDD, the relationship drops out of the story. Cut to KH III, which does want to present that relationship as being as important as it’s ever been, and the long dry spell is felt. It doesn’t help that KH III is so densely packed with other material, much of it devoted to Organization XIII either taunting Sora or sniping at each other. Several of the Disney films selected offer parallels to Sora and Kairi’s relationship that aren’t noted, even as previous games did so and this one draws parallels in other relationships.

Which brings us back to the cutscene in the Badlands. Sora’s desperation to save Kairi is evident, and an earlier cutscene where they finally share paopu fruits was adorable, but neither has the same impact as they would have had if Kairi had remained prominent as a character, and if her relationship with Sora had remained relevant in previous games. It speaks to how well that relationship was presented in the first three games that it can still exert some sway over the heartstrings despite that, but there has been real damage done to one of the central bonds of the series by the neglect, and nowhere is that damage more apparent than when the story stresses Kairi more than anyone else when the Demon Tornado swallows up the party.

Now, I left off just as Sora emerged in Olympus after literally putting himself together, so perhaps some of this will be addressed by the end of the game. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. And in the meantime...that whole Final World sequence was trippy as all hell and those Soras damn hard to catch, but I loved it. Absolutely no idea what that cat thing is supposed to be though.

#critique #commentary #kingdom hearts #kairi #kingdom hearts 3 #disney #sokai #z's crits

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candi-girl · 5 years

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KH3: Hollower Than Any Toy Review **Minor Spoilers**

I just beat KH3 yesterday. I came out of it feeling a bit disappointed. The game is beautiful and the mechanics are still fun but everything from the story to the boss fights felt a bit lackluster. The last boss fights were extremely easy and did not feel as epic to me as KH2's last boss fights. In fact, I liked KH2's ending way more. I haven't played KH2 in years and I still remember exactly how it goes and how I felt after beating it. After what felt like an eternity of reflecting and deflecting light beams back at Xemnas, Sora and a badly wounded Riku sit hopelessly on the shores of the Realm of Darkness. Suddenly a letter in a bottle with a familiar seal emerges from the dark sea. A light shines, a slowed down piano version of "Sanctuary" plays and we are back in the welcoming and colorful world of Destiny Islands. Donald and Goofy lovingly embrace Sora. His eyes then lock-on to Kairi's, Roxas and Namine's eyes follow suit. This felt wayyyy more emotional than KH3's ending which I struggle to remember even though I beat it today.

Before I go any further, I feel I must preface this especially for a post about KH. No, I haven’t played all the spin-off games but I AM A PASSIONATE FAN of the main games in the series. I played the first one for PS2 at 11 when it came out and I was absolutely blown away and in love. I played KH2 at about 14 and got sucked in all over again. In college, I would play Birth By Sleep in between classes. I played 1.5 for PS3 sometime in college as well. Most recently at 27, I played 0.2 from the "The Story So Far" bundle for PS4. I have tried playing Chain of Memories numerous times on an emulator but couldn't stand the Card System and never got very far or finished it. I've also tried 358/2 on an emulator and I've even tried watching it but never got far with it either. I have skipped Re-coded altogether and as soon as I saw the Dream Eaters Link mechanic in DDD I stopped playing that too. I have played a little bit of the mobile KH game but not for long. Suffice it to say, I'm not into mobile games or games for portable devices. The only 2 games I can recall that I have beaten on a portable device (besides Pokemon games on Gameboy) are Birth By Sleep and FFVII: Crisis Core (both PSP). Generally, I get more immersed in games on a TV screen.

Okay so background out of the way, here is what bothers me about KH3 and probably why KH3's ending didn't make me feel as much as KH2's ending. And let me just say, I know this might not be a problem for others who have played all the games, read all the news and external books, probably follow Nomura on Twitter but I don't do that. When it comes to gaming, here is my process: I see a cool game, I want it, I buy it, I play it, I judge whether I like it based on the content in the game, nothing external. I don't follow any gaming news or actively pursue it. If I happen to have the time I’ll watch E3 and hear about things here and there but mostly, when I pick-up a game, I'm hoping it can be self-contained. So, knowing that about me, you can see why I absolutely loathe that if you haven't played KH DDD, KH Recoded, KH 358/2 Days, KH X (the Foretellers lore stuff) you're missing out on like 3/4 of the story.

Chain of Memories being between KH1 and KH2 irked me but I forgave it because the characters and story were still basically the same. Lock keyholes to protect various worlds from being consumed by darkness, help characters in those various worlds with their problem, stop main baddy from opening up Kingdom Hearts, and don't forget that friends are your strength and light. Nothing is wrong with keeping a story “Simple and Clean” and in fact, I think if a story is simple you can focus on making stronger character arcs and make the game super character driven so that the dangerous stuff that happens to characters IS actually scary and emotional! (Side Note: I also believe that because of the association with Disney, the KH franchise feels like it cannot tackle more mature themes like actual death of loved ones, failure, betrayal, etc. which really holds back what a game about the Heart could explore in a more serious, sophisticated manner. However, games like “Ni No Kuni” still find ways to talk about death, depression and grief in ways that are appropriate for younger audiences so it’s possible to do it, KH!)

And I know that KH3 pokes fun at itself for having so many different titles in the franchise and I know it tries to get you up to speed but it cheapens the experience when SO MUCH of the story-telling and lore heavily relies on externalities and not the self-contained game. It seriously becomes a hindrance and emotional barrier when #1 I don't know know what's going on (or don’t understand/feel the extent and impact of something that's supposed to be dangerous), #2 don't know characters well enough to care about them and #3 there are no real stakes in the KH world because every game you fight the same goddamn enemies. I don't know all the Organization members like the back of my hand so their deaths don't do anything for me plus you fight them at least twice throughout the series (maybe even more) so that shows that they can always come back. The rules and logic in KH are very fast and loose. It's like playing a game with a child and when they are losing they make something up. And all this "I think I should know this character but I don't remember" dialogue is so cheap. Stop with the amnesia story-lines! Games like Chain of Memories and Re-Coded, that are made for portable devices are made to hold fans over until the big main game comes out. Let’s be real, KH: Re-Coded might as well be called “KH: Re-Sell” because it’s KH one all over again but on the DS. Now there’s nothing wrong with a company re-branding and re-selling a product if they know fully-well that there is a market for it (in the words of Cutler Beckett, “it’s just good business”) but for the love of all things good, DO NOT PLACE INTEGRAL plot points in them that the main games will gloss over. And don't expect me to read Jiminy’s Journal!

Who is this game for? It plays like a casual game but feels like beginning a story at it’s falling action point. I can’t imagine being a newcomer to this series and playing this game and understanding it. I played the game super slowly, exploring each Disney world thoroughly, trying to take it all in but there is so little KH story given throughout the game. Once I moved on to the Badlands, the actual main KH plot began to unfold. When I first started playing KH3, my gf (who has only played a few hours of the first KH) asked me "so why are you going to other worlds if you're not locking keyholes?" I stumbled on my words to give her an answer. I replied "Sora needs to regain his strength and get the power of waking." She nodded but I knew it sounded kind of stupid. "He looks pretty powerful already!" She said as she watched me defeat hordes of enemies in the first world, Olympus. And that was another thing. I felt super overpowered from the beginning all the way up until the end. When fighting Xehanort all I could think was "that's it?" The game is all about Sora regaining his lost powers and learning the power of waking but you start off super powerful anyway.

This may be a bit of a tangent but in Final Fantasy X, Yuna started off as the weakest, most feeble, docile character in personality and combat as she is just a white mage. I avoided using her at all costs. I had Lulu for black magic and switched Yuna in only when I really needed Protective magic or healing. However, by the end of the game, Yuna with her fully decked out Nirvana staff, third tier white and black magic, double-cast, and ultima became my most valuable and dangerous character. Not only does she literally become stronger in combat, but her (dare I say it) heart becomes stronger too. She becomes bolder and braver. She starts questioning her religion and the society and world she grew up in. She grows in every sense of the word. Yuna’s character trajectory is one of the most poetic I’ve ever seen and experienced in a game and I absolutely love that it’s FELT both in the combat of the game AND the story. I guess the point I’m trying to make is there should be growth in the character’s development but also growth in the game mechanics and combat. FFX is a game that intertwined both forms of growth organically and I think KH3 really should’ve done that as well. Starting off weak and THEN becoming powerful enough to take on the big baddy in the ending rewards the players for their efforts and also feels way more satisfying. Also, a certain character that begins with “K” and ends with “airi” could’ve EASILY been the Yuna of this game. But once again KH3 repeats the same old ideas over and over again. Also, speaking of Final Fantasy, where are my Final Fantasy characters in KH3??

I know this sounds like a negative review but overall, I actually did enjoy playing KH3 and it was great to see all my favs and like I always say, it always feels like home. I'm definitely not done yet (gotta synthesize ultima, collect all treasures and lucky emblems, reach level 99, and maybe play some mini-games). But ultimately it did not have that emotional impact on me like the first 2 KH's. Maybe I AM too old and broken. Maybe when I replay it one day I'll feel differently. Anyway, see you in 2040 when KH4 comes out!

#kh spoilers #kh3 spoilers #kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 3 #kh3 #kh3 review #personal

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burkedeboer · 6 years

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North to the Abyss

2 F, 1 M.

During the gold rush, a woman travels to the coastal Alaskan town from which her husband sent his last letter. She intends to track him down, but instead finds greater mystery in the nature of his disappearance.

A note on the text: though only her opening monologue is in verse, you may notice that all of Rachel’s dialogue is timed to iambic pentameter. She is the only character that does so, and should help to distinguish her class from the other characters.

This 10 Minute Play was written in spring of 2018. The full text is below the break.

At center stage - RACHEL VASSALL. A well-to-do young woman, educated in turn of the century universities. She reads from a letter.

RACHEL “My dearest Rachel, the light of my life, Our time apart has only just begun And already I long for my return. I remind myself of what’s to be had: How better we shall live with these riches, That is, should this journey north prove fruitful. Yet, though I am confident in myself As I now have arrived in Alaska And look to the next steps of my travels, I would that my feet could now beat southward.

Every night I spend in a lonely bed And awake beside an empty pillow Is another sunset and rise wasted. I know we shall be together quite soon - As soon as the springtime, I’ll come to you. And yet it is not nearly soon enough.

I curse what this world requires of us, That it should require us be apart. But we shall overcome this great distance, As distance only is measured on maps, And there’s no mortal measure for our love. I am yours eternal. All my love, Claude.”

This was the first letter from Alaska. He said he would write whenever he could. I have a letter too from Seattle, where he waited ashore all of one night, a night he spent writing his love to me. That was Claude’s way; he always kept his word. So how, I wonder, did it come to pass that this letter should also be his last?

(Exits)

(A post office in a coastal Alaskan town. The 20th century has barely just begun; this is the sort of town that barely knows it, and won’t catch up with new century for some time. It is minded by the lone clerk and postmaster, BILL SAYER, an older man who stands behind a desk. He groans loudly as RACHEL enters. She looks at him alarmed.)

SAYER Sorry, miss, sorry to growl at ya, it’s just my back. I got them floating kidneys, y’know. Makes the lower back hurt something fierce. I got a balm for it though. But that’s talk for the apothecary not the post office. What can I do for you?

RACHEL What does the name Claude Vassall mean to you?

SAYER Both a lot and not much. From the look about you, I’d say he means more to you.

RACHEL I’d certainly hope so - he’s my husband.

SAYER Is that so? Well. It’s nice to meet you. Though it could have been under nicer circumstances.

RACHEL What do you mean? I haven’t heard from him; not hide nor hair nor whisper since the fall. I’ve no idea or notion how he is.

SAYER Yes, that’s right.

RACHEL Excuse me?

SAYER I’m terribly, awfully sorry, Mrs. Vassall. I didn’t realize, I-... Well. Easiest way to put it is that I know as much as you. Or as little, as it were. Nobody else has seen him either, not in this town. Not on this realm.

RACHEL What do you mean by “realm?” When did he leave?

SAYER In the fall.

RACHEL When he arrived? I have his last letter. I’ve kept it by my heart these last few months.

SAYER I’m sorry. We tried to warn him against staking that claim.

RACHEL Yes-- his claim, on some island in your bay.

SAYER Not just some island. Abaddon Island. That’s what the Russians called it anyway, and we may have changed a lot with this territory but that’s one thing we kept our hands off of. It’s better that way.

RACHEL I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mister-...?

SAYER Oh, of course, where are my manners. Sayer, ma’am. Bill Sayer. I’m the postmaster here. When your husband came and dropped off the letter, I didn’t realize who he was or where he was going or I would have talked to him myself. Maybe I should have gone out of my way to find him afterwards. After I heard from Eliza - she’s the lady what runs the inn he stayed at, and I heard from her that he had the Abaddon claim. And he planned to stake it. Then he was gone.

RACHEL Please don’t say it like that, Mr. Sayer. “Gone,” it just sounds so terribly final.

SAYER I’m sorry Mrs. Vassall, I know he was your husband. But let me-- I’m sorry. There’s something you need to know.

RACHEL I only need to know where to find him.

SAYER No-- I-- Listen. If I may: The man that sold him that claim sold it to him in California.

RACHEL I recall; I did share a house with him.

SAYER I only bring it up because the man who sold it was some sort of swindler.

RACHEL Was he so ignoble? Was the claim false?

SAYER No, the claim was true.

RACHEL Then tell me how my husband was “swindled?”

SAYER It’s just a matter of the fact being that no one around here would sell or advise the sale-of the claim on Abaddon Island. It was first staked back in the day when all the claims around here were getting staked. The old boy who took it up never came back. Things were in such a boom in those days, the town was just starting to spring up, not even platted yet, people coming and going every which way and nobody thought much of anything when a year passed and the claim wasn’t renewed so it defaulted back to the office. They figured he must’ve just left town, like so many others. Sold it again. But this time it was sold to a man who staked the Klondike and the Fortymile and had had himself a whole bunch of success. And he had struck gold outside of town here again, and folks in town knew him, so when spring turned to summer and we hadn’t seen him a search party got rounded up. Then these Chugach came to town, they got some villages down the coast both ways, been here for longer than any white folks, this is their land and their culture. They come out to sell their wares. So the posse asked them about that island, if they had any advice. And they told those men the same thing I’m gonna tell you: stay away.

RACHEL Is there some Native folklore about it?

SAYER Yes ma’am. It’s a forbidden land, in their eyes. I guess way back when the Russians were here, fur trapping expeditions sent attachments there, and it’s the same story. Same story as what happened to the posse too. Same story way back a thousand years. It’s been told too many times and I hate to tell it again. This time about your poor husband. I’m just afraid that when it comes to Abaddon Island, that’s the only way the story gets told.

RACHEL Then how did the rights to such an island, home to only warnings and precautions, come to be in the Lower Forty-Eight? Traded from a swindler to my husband?

SAYER Couldn’t tell ya. Don’t know. After the rights expired for the second time, a man named Chuch Buckford bought it. By that time I was working here. But I wasn’t postmaster yet, or else I would’ve refused to sell it to him. He went on and on about how all of this was only superstition. About how he was a man of reason, and a positivist, and how he would prove to us that there was nothing to fear. He had some sort of plan about it, or so he said. And he said it a lot. But he never went. After Chuch, I don’t know exactly how it changed hands, other than through poker games and maybe barters of some other sort. The state of things came to be that if a man put up a gold claim as part of a bet, then his opponent would demand to read it over and make double sure it wasn’t The Island. Or, if the opponent was a fresh-faced greenhorn, then everyone else around the table would intervene on his behalf and inspect the claim themselves. See, that’s why I say when Mr. Vassall arrived so keen to take on Abaddon Island I knew for a fact that it had been sold to him elsewhere. Every year, through the years, a different face would come into the office and renew the claim before it expired. A different man, every year, with all sorts of plans and ideas about how to get in and get out. One boy said he was gonna just row out there at dawn and back before dusk each day. I don’t know if he did it. It carried on this way for some time.

RACHEL And so it did, ‘til my husband arrived.

SAYER Yes ma’am, so it did.

(Enter RUTH, carrying a hefty bag of postage.)

RUTH Good fuckin’ shit, Bill, they must be thawing out up north, look at this load of postage! Snowbanks still up past your tits though, but looks like them logging camps finally got their shit down here. Good Lord, I’ve packed bears out of the backcountry that were lighter than this. (She slams the bag down. Beat) Who is this, why’s she crying?

RACHEL Oh am I really? Please, I don’t mean to.

SAYER No, there’s no reason to be embarrassed. I apologize for my courier. Ruth.

RUTH Yes Bill?

SAYER I’d like you to meet Mrs. Vassall.

RUTH ...Vassall? That’s not--

SAYER That is.

RUTH Oh hon.

RACHEL There’s been plenty of pity for me now, I’d appreciate it if you spared it.

RUTH Well alright. So Bill gave you the low-down then?

RACHEL He did.

RUTH I’m sorry, Mrs. Vassall. We tried to warn him.

RACHEL And tried to warn me, but I’m undeterred. I intend to travel to your island, and I intend to see it for myself.

SAYER Ma’am-- Nobody’s seen The Island for theirselves and came back to talk about it.

RACHEL I understand.

SAYER Nobody knows what happened to your husband, specifically, but let me tell you, everyone knows the general notion.

RACHEL I cannot believe that unless I see.

RUTH I’d go after my fella if he pulled a similar stunt.

SAYER Ruth… Ma’am, please, have a good think about this idea. Even if it wasn’t Abaddon Island. No offense, but you seem very well educated.

RACHEL I fail to see how that could bring offense.

SAYER It’s just I’m inclined to think you might not have a whole lot of experience in the woods. In the woods, alone, tracking a man. Would I be right?

RACHEL Yes.

SAYER Just consider what this whole undertaking would mean for you.

RACHEL Of course I have already, before I left. I took a ship up from San Francisco; I would not have made this trip hastily, but only after a winter of thought.

RUTH What you’ll wanna do, if you’re gonna head on out there, is pick yourself up a hired gun here in town.

SAYER Don’t tell her that.

RUTH Well she needs some sort of somebody helping her out. And I don’t rightly know, could be you go get a trapper or a mountaineer or some sort of timber fella. Someone that knows the wilderness real well and how to survive in it.

SAYER Nobody knows what The Island holds.

RUTH See, that’s what I’m thinking. Which is why I think of all the burly young bucks wasting their time in our taverns that would be raring to go. Remember that night when Joey Stokes walked down main street with his cap and ball Colt and shot out all the street lights one by one? Sheriff didn’t even arrest him on account of the fact that he was so impressed with Joey popping bulbs from a count of sixty paces.

SAYER Don’t ask her to talk to Joey Stokes.

RUTH Why not? It’s a heroic hunt, I’m sure he’d jump at the invitation.

SAYER Yes he would. And I like Joey Stokes. What you’re suggesting is instead of Mrs. Vassall dying alone, that Joey goes and dies with her.

(Silence)

RACHEL I trust it’s not as dire as all that. If it so worries you, Mr. Sayer, then I resolve to leave on my lonesome. I did not come to our Final Frontier with intent to rob you of your neighbors.

SAYER Much obliged. Much as I can oblige it.

RACHEL But your advice, much as I value it, can not be followed to its last letter. I did not sail north to turn south at port. I only want my husband home and safe, or, failing that, have him home and buried. Whichever fate the good Lord wills it be.

RUTH One way or another you’ll meet again.

RACHEL Yes. And meet in this world; I will find him.

RUTH I believe you when you say it. I just don’t believe me when I think it. Maybe since it’s springtime it’ll be easier. I wish you luck, ma’am.

RACHEL And you as well.

(RUTH exits. SAYER sighs, produces a box from under the desk.)

SAYER You’re set on it then?

RACHEL Yes, Mr. Sayer, I am resolute. In both my decision and intentions.

SAYER (He produces a revolver from the box.) Now I know this isn’t much. It’s just the post office pistol, issued to us should we need to defend ourselves. It’s a Peacemaker. They call it the gun that won the west, and The Island is west of here, technically. Cartographically. It would ease my mind if you had some sort of protection. (He produces a box of ammunition, sets it next to the gun on the table.) Now, legally, I’m not allowed to give this to you. Unless I deputized you a post carrier, I suppose. Not sure I’m allowed to do that either. But what I can do is leave it on the table here and step into the back. And if it was gone by the time I came back, I wouldn’t have a clue who took it. My own fault. Doubt anyone from the government would come checking on it anyway.

RACHEL I appreciate the offer-

SAYER No, now this one I’m firm on. All right, that’s my ultimatum. Either don’t go or take the gun. And I am the postmaster, I carry words and my words carry. Now it was nice meeting you, Mrs. Vassall. You are a determined sort, and that is respectable.

RACHEL And nice to meet you too, Mr. Sayer.

SAYER I just gotta pop into the back real quick. Hope to see you around.

SAYER exits to the back. There is a long silence as RACHEL considers. She then takes the gun and the ammo. She exits.

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pollyestergivens · 6 years

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Part 2: Nancy Drew & The Case of the Missing Realism

Balancing Immersion with Puzzles

A wall of text series on how Nancy Drew games largely lost their charm.

A question every game developer must answer is, “How aware should the player be that they are playing a game?”

Games that focus on scoring points, gaining achievements, new & innovative game mechanics, etc. don’t always try to immerse the player in the way story-based games often do--indeed, some narrative based games these days are called “walking simulators” because of the almost complete lack of game mechanics.

What has always been special about the Nancy Drew series is the balance the games often achieve between game play mechanics and storytelling. Interviewing suspects, exploring locations, solving puzzles and collecting clues give the player an active role in unraveling the mystery.

In the early games, largely due to budget and hardware limitations, characters and locations were not exactly photo-realistic, but once they moved onto full-3D characters in the second title, I never felt it was significantly distracting or lessened my ability to get into the game (with the one glaring exception being their almost obsessive desire to slap the HER logo or Nancy’s name on every day objects in the game world, particularly in the earliest titles).

However, the irony is that as HER improved their ability to produce realistic graphics with each title (and moved on to slapping Krolmeister on everything), the content of the games seemed to be increasingly unrealistic, causing the very thing they should have avoided at all costs: breaking immersion.

Mini-Games

Mini-games showed up early in the series, but they were exceedingly rare in the first ten or so titles. Instead, the games were full of largely realistic, detective-style tasks such as dusting for fingerprints, code-breaking, finding and using passwords and locker combinations, etc., alongside important suspect dialogues and general snooping, which made for a pretty balanced-feeling game. Jump ahead to the last ten or so titles, and you’ll find a completely different scenario.

Take the last (and hopefully not final) game, Sea of Darkness. SEA is very nearly nothing but a barrage of mini-games. Whether you’re helping out at the pub “filling orders” or earning money by matching vocabulary words (though very fun for nerds like me), you’re painfully aware that you are playing a game. Many of the various contraptions on the ship (the wheel puzzle) and in the lighthouse (the 2048 clone) also scream “VIDEO GAME.”

Rather than methodically solving a mystery, Nancy is essentially going from mini-game to mini-game, with finding a clue or talking to someone as window dressing. It gives the player the feeling that the point of the game is not so much to feel like a detective or to care about the story, but rather to get a minor dopamine rush from finishing all the puzzles--much like the point of most hidden object games, which rarely take the time to produce a decent story since that’s not what the player is typically there for.

However, I would venture to say that Nancy Drew game players are there for the story and certainly there for the feeling of being a detective. By constantly being made to play mini-games like Aggregation, 2048, nonograms, sudokus, renograms, etc. ad nauseam, I find myself feeling less like a detective and more like I’ve just played a series of unrelated iOS games.

That isn’t to say that these mini-games aren’t fun--I found Aggregation and the wires puzzle from Trail of the Twister to be quite addicting. Nor do I think there were no great story lines in the later games (Shadow at the Water’s Edge and Ghost of Thornton Hall both shined bright in this area).

Rather, they simply break immersion, which gives the game a distinctly different feel from others that focus more on things like snooping through someone’s computer or sending Morse code messages to smugglers.

Sure, you’re usually doing the mini-game while being sleuthy--getting into Gray’s computer in The Deadly Device or getting into the safe in Shadow at the Water’s Edge--but it takes away the realism factor to, in my opinion, an unacceptable degree.

When mini-games are used sparingly, as they once were in the earlier titles, they can bring a fun-factor that only a video game could bring, adding a little variety to the typical adventure game puzzles like “find the key for the lock.”

Implausible Contraptions

However, mini-games are not the only culprit in The Case of the Missing Realism. Many of the games suffer from implausible contraptions made by dead people--sometimes for no apparent reason.

Again, look to Sea of Darkness for some egregious examples. Part of a skeleton holding a box within a secret area of an old ship that has been thoroughly restored yet somehow was not found??? The ship’s wheel has a fucking slider-type puzzle on it???

Was the captain an amazing engineer? No.

Did he hire an amazing engineer? No.

Similar issues abound with Tomb of the Lost Queen. Personally, I found this game and its numerous puzzles (some mini-games, some not) to be fun, but it didn’t feel like a “true” Nancy Drew mystery. The ancient Egyptians obviously were great engineers, but moving columns??? Really??? I found there was an almost mystical feel to the game, which runs quite contrary to the game worlds of previous games.

However, the absolute worst offender is Labyrinth of Lies. While the game designers no doubt had the time of their lives creating all those beautiful set locations, the stage system and all the sundry puzzles it contained made about as much sense as the entirety of The Shattered Medallion: absolutely none.

That coupled with suspects literally spelling out how to solve their own puzzles or find where they hid something made LIE a thoroughly unimmersive game.

We’re asked as players to suspend our disbelief in these sort of situations for the sake of an entertaining game, but again I ask: is simply being entertained really, at core, what Nancy Drew gamers want?

I say no.

I think what drew us in and what we kept hoping to find again as each additional title was released was the feeling of really being a detective. But the more we’re reminded that this is just a game and realism is sacrificed in favor of shoving in as many puzzles as possible, the less we get that feeling.

Perhaps making all the contraptions realistic can pose a creative struggle for the game designers, but past games have proven that an abundance of interesting and challenging puzzles can be included without sacrificing a feeling of awe or simply being interesting.

A few good examples:

Benjamin Hawkins’ hideout in Danger on Deception Island

The monolith in Secret of the Scarlet Hand

Almost all the secret areas in Treasure in the Royal Tower

The elevator shaft puzzle is a particularly clever example

The reveal of each of these places felt exciting and made me feel like secret rooms and hidden chambers can be real--like each of these places could actually exist in the real world. Part of what made them feel real was also that the mechanism which revealed them to us was not outlandish. Stone and jade artifacts were used to open the monolith, not a sudoku puzzle followed by the monolith rocketing off into space or some such feat of implausible engineering (though I won’t defend the bizarre, poetic speech given by the cast when Nancy escapes).

None of this is to say that every bit of the old games was 100% realistic--a little bit of suspension of disbelief is okay. But there is a balance that should be maintained, and sadly it became more and more unbalanced with later releases.

Character Personalities

There is no doubt that the Nancy Drew series contains some amazing and memorable characters. From the older games, we got Professor Hotchkiss, Brady & Simone, the wrong amnesiac, Red Knott, and Ethel, to name a few. And the newer games gave us Big Island Mike, Henry Bolet, Colin Baxter, Yumi & Rentaro, Deirdre, Jamila, and Harper Thornton, among others.

Aside from some “hip” dialogue that missed the mark in Warnings at Waverly Academy and questionable accents in several games, characters generally felt genuine and unique--only occasionally would they say something odd or out of character. But a trend started to appear towards the end: so many of the characters began to sound the same--they were almost all suddenly witty.

Aside from the ever evolving personalities of George, Bess and the Hardy Boys, Yumi and Rentaro were the first exceptionally witty characters I noticed, and at the time it felt quite novel and like a genuine portrayal of funny, young people. But then came Lukas, Marcus, and Karl in The Captive Curse. Then Ryan in The Deadly Device. Then Bridget in the The Silent Spy. Then the entire cast of The Shattered Medallion. Then Niobe in Labyrinth of Lies. Not to mention all the random, out-of-character injections of wit coming from countless others in almost all the last ten games.

I remember loling at some of the quotes from Rentaro and Miwako, and I think their wit and humor lightened up an otherwise dark and grim story line--similar to Harper’s role in Ghost of Thornton Hall. But increasingly in the newest ten titles, it seemed like the humor often fell flat or simply didn’t fit with the character. It started to feel like you weren’t talking to suspects in a mystery, but rather characters all written by the same author.

Sadly, not everyone is a master of wit in the real world, and the overuse of these type of characters can feel jarring. Again: immersion broken.

The Big, Glaring Exception

HER always ends the game with a final culprit-stopping puzzle. They usually involve quick thinking, recalling previous game knowledge and/or high-stakes puzzle solving--and they usually range from implausible to impossible. Sometimes dreadfully combining implausible contraptions with a mini-game, these doozies have been rearing their ugly heads since that alarm sequence at the end of Stay Tuned for Danger.

The famous “fight” in Danger by Design and the Poe-inspired showdown in Warnings at Waverly Academy raised more than a few eyebrows--even on the HER official message boards, where criticism of any game is often tantamount to sin. But they’re far from alone in their bewilderment. From magical platforms in Tomb of the Lost Queen and The Creature of Kapu Cave to a well-trained whale in Danger on Deception Island and the mini-game-to-end-all-mini-games in Labyrinth of Lies, the ending has never quite been the peak of any Nancy Drew game.

Why It Matters

Some evolution of the Nancy Drew game series was perhaps inevitable, given the sheer volume of titles released. In an effort to keep interest up and stay relevant, HER took risks by adding mechanics and trying out new writers and designers over the years. The trouble is, the feel of the games evolved too.

Rather than finding ways to maintain that sense of mystery and realism (and perhaps improve their endgames), they began to drift towards a much more “gamey” feel. Collectible phone charms began to be placed in game scenes (why are there cellphone charms in an ancient Egyptian tomb??? The real mystery of that game). Powering on a lighthouse went from logically deducing the correct light bulb to a round of 2048.

Was it wrong of HER to move in this direction? Of course not. It’s all down to matter of opinion whether these changes made the game more or less fun, and I freely admit that I thoroughly enjoyed many of the newest titles.

But did they feel like “true” Nancy Drew games? Not really.

With Pointless Tasks, mini-games, and unrealistic characters and scenarios around every corner, immersion was constantly being shattered, and I increasingly walked away dissatisfied with the newest installments.

But another culprit shares the blame as well--the topic of Part 3: Nancy Drew & The Vanishing Set Designer.

Read Part 1: Nancy Drew & The Curse of the Pointless Task

#clue crew #nancy drew #her #her interactive #opinions

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