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soramystic · 5 months

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The actual Plot of Kingdom Hearts

Okay so here’s something that’s been bothering me that I haven’t seen anyone talk about; the macro story of Kingdom Hearts. Because it’s easy to point and kind of laughingly go “what is the plot of Kingdom Hearts anyway”, and with all the talk of Darkness and Light and Keyblades and friendship and Hearts it’s easy to lose track of so okay. Let’s take a look at what we got. The overall, actual plot of Kingdom Hearts.

So let’s zoom out. Let’s zoom all the fucking way out. The biggest scale we can go to; the two fundamental forces of Light and Darkness.

Kingdom Hearts is, fundamentally, the story of Light persevering. Let me explain.

We start with the Chi-saga. It’s the Age of Fairy Tales, the realm of Light is thriving, and as someone once so succinctly put it, everyone and their grandma has a Keyblade. This is Light at its peak. I’d even go so far as to suggest that this is the only point in the story where Light and Darkness are fully balanced. The Master of Masters does mention a before-time where he and others waged war on Darkness, so maybe not a perfect balance, but the percentages are pretty much even.

But Darkness starts to creep in, do what it does best and corrupt from the inside out. Then Daybreak Town is gone and the Keyblade Wielders are greatly diminished. The ability becomes less common, and those who possess it are to be trained carefully. Missing Link isn’t out yet so we can’t assess the state of the Light during that period, but we don’t need to, because we have Dark Road.

Keyblade Wielders are pretty much entirely limited to Scala, Daybreak Town’s descendant. (…Theory that Daybreak Town/Scala Ad Caelum is a stronghold for the Light, but that’s for another time) From what we see in Dark Road, there are still enough people with the ability to justify setting up a school for, but by the end? Darkness has struck again, and Odin is no longer accepting students, leaving himself, Xehanort, and Eraqus as the last Keyblade Wielders (not counting Luxu and Yen Sid for obvious reasons.)

Which then leads us into Birth By Sleep. How many Keyblade Wielders do we have aside from Xehanort and Eraqus? Well, there’s the Wayfinder Trio, Vanitas, and Mickey. That’s five people. Five. From the thousands upon thousands that we started out with.

And they fall. Eraqus dies. Ventus is seized by sleep, taking Vanitas with him. Aqua seals herself in the Realm of Darkness. Terra is both literally and metaphorically ripped to shreds. They still live, but they are in no condition to protect the Realm of Light, and even if either Ansem or Xemnas had the ability to wield a Keyblade, they wouldn’t want to. Arguably we still have Mickey, but let’s count: that’s ONE. PERSON. One. One person against the Darkness that has broken and corrupted so many worlds, so many people. The Realm of Light is in danger. The Realm of Light is dying. The Light is dying.

So what does the Light do? One last-ditch attempt at saving itself – it takes its Keyblade, and finds a suitable Wielder. And it finds one. A child, bequeathed even, with the overwhelming desire to protect those he holds dear. And the Light thinks perfect.

But Riku chooses the Darkness. The Darkness could grant his wish, and due to the darkness already inside him – jealousy and arrogance, he accepted its offer. So where does this leave the Realm of Light? Any potentional Wielders have either abandoned the path of the Keyblade, or were taken off of it thru no fault of their own. The Realm of Light is done for.

Except it’s not.

Because you can argue that all of this came later, this giant macro story. All this history, this context was added by the later games. Right?

Except it wasn’t.

Because they say it. They tell you outright. They say it in the very first game: the story of Light fading, and how it survived in the hearts of children.

In the face of overwhelming darkness and despair, worlds crumbling and without his friends, without his weapon at one point even, Sora didn’t give up. Even traveling to the End of the World and seeing the shards of the worlds that already fell, that couldn’t hold out, he stared Ansem in the face and told him he was wrong. That the true nature of all things was not Darkness. That Kingdom Hearts is Light.

And so it was Light.

Light persevered in his heart - literally, even; he sheltered Kairi, a Princess of Heart. A heart of pure Light.

Light survives in the hearts of children.

And from there the tide turns. The Light is back, it has a foothold again, it has defenders.

Because that’s the thing. Kingdom Hearts wasn’t threatened by Ansem. If it were, Sora would likely have been given the X-Blade. But he got the Key of Light. Called the Kingdom Key, yes, but still the Keyblade for the Realm of Light. Because the Realm of Light needed his help, the Realm of Light was in danger.

So yeah, after that there are more Keyblade Wielders. Of course there are; the Light is finally able to fight back, once again trying to achieve a balanced state.

The fight against Darkness is never over, and it never will be. That’s how this universe works. But if this series has taught us anything, it’s that no one is ever wholly evil and no one is ever wholly good. Everyone has a little darkness, just as everyone has a little light. You simply choose for yourself which one to nourish.

The Light is not inherently good – we see this most prominently in Eraqus, who believes Darkness must be defeated and that if anyone possesses any darkness, they are evil. But the Darkness is not inherently evil either – as showcased by Riku.

Light and Darkness are two forces who need each other as much as they hate each other, and the power they grant is just that; power. Power is power, it’s just a tool. No morality attached.

The heart is a mess. Not fully good, not fully evil. Not fully light nor fully dark. One cannot exist without the other, and full dominance from either side is no good. The greater the light, the greater the shadow, right?

There must be balance. And balance takes hard work, and dedication, and no easy way out.

And the Hero of Light works harder than anyone else.

That’s why Sora is special. Not because he’s “the only one who can wield a Keyblade” (also who even said that? Riku? Literally what the fuck does he know he was being manipulated by Ansem and Maleficent), but because he was literally the least qualified person in the room and still made it work. Because of who he is. That’s why the Light chose him.

Light perseveres.

Sora perseveres.

That is the plot of Kingdom Hearts.

#hi I wrote this thesis literal ages ago and only recently decided to post it #after reading it again and deciding that I was right and should say it #also spurred on by annoyance at people going 'lol whats the plot' and 'lol why is Sora even the protagonist' like sit down and listen up #get some reading comprehension my god #this is not a vague nor a call-out this is me organizing my thoughts #kingdom hearts #the Sky Speaks #feel free to share your own thoughts as I'd love to hear them #tho if you're gonna be nasty you're getting blocked on sight

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hi-my-name-is-cosmopathy · 1 year

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IONC maybe?

Hello! In prior to this post (@dopiysworldsend was the only one who answered so I was rather disappointed—)

Here are characters I haven't made designs yet or fully fleshed out!

Lily

I can assure you this is not her official or final design because this is nothing looks nothing close to her actual occupation—

Lily was a character introduced in Victor Tanzig's “Stories Of Sodor” and died in “Stories Of War” in WW2. Here's her bio!

Lily, in this AU, was a war general. She came from the life of the destitute and died in an explosion during the war.

Due to dying in an explosion, her arms and turn into gun barrels.

Most said she was enthusiastic when she wasn't on duty. She liked telling people stories (and maybe gossip a lil). She also joked around often and seemed indifferent to the ways of life. She was rather boastful of herself and achievement-oriented, as she always bragged about her victories in life and wanted to pursue her dream of living a life of grandeur, like her other family members.

But no one knows why. Most aren't aware of her family background or where from the ashes she came from.

When she fought, however, she was rather ruthless. It seemed like she had no remorse for who she killed and was apathetic to the lives of the horrid soldiers she took, an ability most of the people in the military wished they had.

Even with such a successful life when she was alive, Lily expressed herself with having many regrets and grudges from the past (which is usually perceived as her being dramatic because of the way she expresses it).

Her biggest one was leaving the simple life she could've had with her old Scottish boyfriend, who is long dead by now.

Lily has a cousin, Adam, who is also currently a ghost with her.

The two seem awfully distant for relatives who were very close to each other when they were young.

Edwards Ghost Engine/Falaichte

This ghost is canon in the series, as they appeared in “Scaredy Engines" (was mentioned by Edward when he was telling a scary story about a ghost engine who looks for their whistle in the scrapyards).

They're a part of Donald and Douglas’ family line.

When they were alive, they were trying to rebuild an old Caledon Engine for their late brother.

Only to be murdered the night they were going to travel to Sodor to find the last thing they needed to complete his creation; it's whistle.

So know they escaped from above along with another character to get back their whistle, and they mainly look in the scrapyards to find it.

Ghosts have mogrification abilities, which means they can turn into an animals or maybe a vehicle.

Falaichte mainly turns into the old Caledonian engine they were building, which lead to the ghost story that Edward tells the others about them.

I haven't fleshed out how they died yet, but it probably had something to do their throat because they have a rather powerful seeing voice. Enough to hypnotize someone...

Very straightforward and only focused on their one goal. Doesn't like distractions or getting off course.

Often gives everyone the cold shoulder even to his allies...

Smudger/???

Yeah this little ×××× died in this AU. On the streets. Homeless. Freezing to death after being fired from his railway.

I have nothing else to say about him aside from how he later decides to accompany a young human working in a funeral train service in the Mainland.

Like Alfred, is also a little s—

Will annoy you to death for the fun of it.

Neil

The FIRST ghost on Sodor.

He either passed away to old age or died in an explosion.

Idk yet lol

Is friends with Timothy and is trying to form an alliance with Edward (accidentally spooked the old guy once at Brendam lol)

One of the only sane and fine ghosts on this island.

Is Timothy's emotional support father.

Afton

Mysteriously disappeared. Cause of death is unknown.

I haven’t planned out his powers yet lol

Is bounded to a person called Carietta (or Wanda).

Stuck and can't seperate from her.

Trescott/Thirteen

Remember how I said that Smudger decides to accompany a young man working in a funeral train service in the Mainland? Here he is!

Trescott is his real name, Thirteen is his nickname.

He was considered a misfortune among his family. They named him after the french word “Treize”, which means “Thirteen” (all too conveniently, he was born on January 13th)

They really exaggerated him being unlucky because they just left him on the streets and didn't even give him a name.

Was brought into an orphanage and named Trescott.

He got work as a cemetery groundskeeper because people told him that “you can't bring bad luck to the dead”.

He got tired but was luckily hired as a funeral train driver, where he finally met Smudger.

Is probably used to his so called “bad luck” (considering how indifferent he is now to it)

Hates how much people just judge him based on that and how it's the only thing people tend to associate him with.

The cemetery is his first choice to hang out.

Okie thas it lol there's more to come

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dumbfinntales · 1 year

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Yesterday I finished God of War: Ragnarök and I have some thoughts. I still have some side content to do, and honestly that’s pretty much the best part of this game. There will be spoilers so don’t read below if you haven’t finished the game. Also this might be a long one.

GOW Ragnarök is a frustrating game. I loved GOW 2018 and it was nearly a 10/10 title, but had some hiccups. I wanted Ragnarök to be the better version, the better game. What makes it frustrating is that it’s both better AND worse. I have never seen a game take so many steps forwards and backwards at the same time. But to start out positive I’ll say what I loved and what they improved upon.

Most obviously: the enemy variety and bosses. 2018 title had a severe lack of enemies and unique bosses, but Ragnarök delivers in spades. There are so many unique encounters and cool mythological beasts to fight. I do wish they didn’t use the Nightmare enemies so much in encounters, but eh, still. The bosses are really fun to fight and are spectacles to behold. I’m also happy to say that the final boss was actually really good this time around! You do battle a certain thunder god at the end, but you end the game with an encounter with the Allfather.

More weapons! Although we only got one new weapon it was still awesome. The Dreipnir spear was so much fun to use and now that Kratos has 3 unique weapons in his arsenal it made the combat feel so good and smooth. There were few new additions to the combat, but it felt as great as ever! I liked the new elemental system, it added a nice spice to the combat.

The exploration and side content are amazing once again and offer small story lines and wonderful character interactions. There’s just something absolutely comfy about going on an adventure to loot some ruins and solve some puzzles while the characters talk among themselves and tell tales. This might sound cheesy, but at times it almost feels like I’m there in the boat listening to their stories.

And of course the characters themselves! Most of them are so wonderfully written and I especially loved Sindri and Brok. I mean they were already great back in 2018, but they’re only better here. All the characters feel like people and some of their interactions are very humorous. Although I have to admit that at times their little “quips” become tedious to listen to. And some jokes are just plain awful, like Sindri trying to come up with a nickname for Atreus and audibly goes “Ugh that was such a bad nickname, sorry Lok’! Oh that one was bad too”.

It all seems fine and dandy, right? Well here comes the frustrating bit. For every good thing and improvement the game does there is something else to drag it down. Let me tell you this, God of War Ragnarök is not a 10/10. Not even a 9/10. There’s just too much shit that drags it down to deserve that, and I hope to GOD that it doesn’t win Game of the Year. I want Elden Ring to take that title because I want the gaming industry to see what kind of games we ought to get. It’s not the end of the world if GOW wins, but by god I’ll dread the future of triple A games.

My biggest gripe of all, this game is designed for idiots. I’m not being patronizing or joking, but the handholding is out of this world. Characters yell out the most obvious shit and constantly ruin puzzle by yelling out the answer for you. In the boss fight with Nidhogg Freya yells directions at you NON-STOP. “Do this” and “do that”, “avoid this attack”, “don’t stand there”, “shield up!” by Christ almighty shut the fuck up. Imagine having someone in real life backseat your every move and you can’t shut them up. That’s this game.

Many bosses are also trivialized since they drop so much HP (could be due to my difficulty as well, but dunno) and if you die you’ll start with full HP while the boss might be at half. There’s no punishment for dying. This game feels like its designed for a very specific kind of person who doesn’t play that many games and just wants to be along for the “ride”.

Another major gripe I have is just how slow this game is. There are more slow walking sections and they’re even longer. There are moments like climbing the Asgard wall or walking around with Odin that could just have been a cut-scene. The Atreus sections just suck. They’re far too long (fuck the forest level with Angrboda) and the combat as Atreus is so limited compared to Kratos. The first time you play as Atreus was perfect! It wasn’t too long and was a nice change of pace. Stretching that to 2 hours of gameplay is insane. Also is it just me, but is there a lot more of those climbing sections in this game? It feels no matter where I go I either have to crawl, climb on a wall or slowly creep through a narrow space which all halt the games pace to a crawl.

This is a personal gripe, but most of the Norse gods feel like wet noodles. The Greek gods had a presence, that of might and glory. Here they’re just some dudes. Odin wasn’t exactly what I expected and what the hell is Freyr even? Sure he’s amusing with his nonchalant party goer attitude, but he’s supposed be a god? Freya herself is also supposed to be a god, but honestly feels like just some lady that knows magic. I only really liked Thor and Heimdall. Thor had the power and presence of a god while also slightly humanized, and Heimdall had the arrogant bluster of a Greek god.

I also feel like the ending felt odd. The whole “ragnarök” thing came and went and didn’t feel as climactic as I expect from a literal apocalypse. I also don’t get Sindri at all. I understand being broken by your brothers death, but he now holds a grudge on Kratos and Atreus due to something no one saw coming. Sindri blames them for his brothers death, even though it was indirect. I don’t know, but it left a sour taste in my mouth. The ending is very open so maybe we’ll see some future GOW titles.

But yeah, this ended up being very long. But I had a lot to say. My final verdict is, it’s a fun game. But it has so much holding it back. Far more than the 2018 title. If you asked me which one I’d rather replay I’d say the previous game. It has its flaws, but they’re not as numerous as here. I was so hoping that Ragnarok was the better title, but alas. This game gets a MAYBE YOU SHOULD HIT THE GLOWING THING UP THERE TO SOLVE THE PUZZLE out of ten.

#god of war #god of war ragnarok #spoilers #a review type of deal

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libraford · 4 years

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The short version: We had a serial thief at the flower shop. She’s retired recently and I think that due to Covid she really means it this time.

The long version? hoooo boy, here we go.

This story, and others, are viewable on Tablo

There are rules and there are rules.

In dealing with shoplifting in retail, there are rules on how one engages with a thief. The handbook, if there were one, would consist of a single word.

Don't.

Don't pursue, don't interrogate, don't accuse. Let them take the merchandise, let them get away. Let them return the Cricut machine for an equivalent amount on a gift card to be exchanged once again for drugs.

Let them.

There is no handbook on how to handle Flower Thieves. Prior to working in a flower shop, I never thought that this was a problem.

Life is surprising.

I'm sure some of you have figured that out by now.

The Flower Thief is notorious, and she has a system. There are days when you simply know that she's going to be in.

"Break the heads off the flowers before you throw them away," Grandpa will say. "She's going to be here tonight, I think."

And sure enough, she would be. At 6:45, a quarter til we close- the Thief would announce her arrival. Loudly.

"Heeeeey, baaaaaaby!"

The very first time I encountered the Flower Thief, she came in through the back door.

"Oh Hiiiii, Darlin'- ain't seen your face around here: you must be NEW! I'm Wren, you know- like the bird? Well, Kyle and I have an agreement that I come and work for y'all sometimes. You should take out this trash, it stinks to high heaven. Anyways, nice talkin' to ya, see ya later."

I may only be a little bit psychic, but I've spent enough time around liars to know insincerity when I see it. Kyle, at the time, was the manager of our store and I have it on record that he's tried to throw her out of the building once or twice.

While I was taking out the trash, her pile of purchase became so tall it towered over her. I watched Clark massively undercharge her for the sake of getting her to go away.

She has a pattern.

She comes in during the design classes because she knows that when there's twenty people in the store, there's not enough people to watch her and make sure she's not stealing. "There's a class today," she asks as if it's not literally every Tuesday. "Don't worry I know you all wanna get out of here on time."

The Flower Thief announces her presence in a grand way and then makes her way to the back to grab a trash bag or an empty box and then proceeds to bury any spare parts she finds in the cooler in the trash bag, hiding them under the things that she's actually buying.

After that, she checks the garbage cans for things we might have thrown away that will last another three days and stuffs them underneath her other ill-gotten goods.

Just when you think she's finished, she'll go through her pile of flowers and say: "You know what? I don't need this eucalyptus." And she'll go back into the cooler with it, stuff it in her purse, and walk back to the register.

And when she's all done being sneaky, she asks one of us to come ring her out.

This is the part that no one wants to do. Because ringing out the Flower Thief means haggling with the Flower Thief.

"Oh baaby, you know I don't pay those prices."

"Oh baaaby, I only pay $19 for roses."

"Oh baaaaaaaaaby, those carnations were on special."

She'll talk you down to under $100 with a sob story:

"Oh baaaaby, you know I'm donating this spray to the family. It's for that woman you know- you know the one. She got herself murdered a couple nights ago? Two children and she was pregnant too! Pregnant! Can you believe it? Who murders someone with child? What's the world coming to? So I need a good discount to make sure we treat this family right because they got a looooong road ahead of them."

"Oh baaaaaaby, you know this one's for that car crash over on Cleveland Avenue? I hear he was taking care of his dying father himself, so it's such a shame for him to go first like that."

"Oh baaaaaaaaaaaaaaby, this is for that little boy that shot himself, isn't that sad?"

Thank you, Sister Mary Loquacious.

And you nod because you don't want to come off as an uncaring sociopath. And while you're nodding and adjusting the price for her sad, sad consequence and mulling over how good she is for donating to these people in their time of need, she steals some greens from the trash can and sticks them in her bag.

She hands you crisp $100 bills. You check them and she makes jokes about how she printed them this morning. They're legit. Counterfeiting isn't why she went to prison.

What she went to prison for was drug trafficking.

"Do you need some help," you ask, trying to be a good citizen.

"Oh no, I got it," she insists. "I'll make it in two trips. I'm stronger than I look!"

And don't you dare get caught looking to see what she put in the bag or she will give you one hell of a lecture.

By the time all of this has passed, the class will be over and there will two minutes left in the work day. She's spent thirty-seven minutes in the store. Your register is unbalanced because now you don't have enough small bills to balance it and only have one $100 bill to get you through tomorrow.

And that's why there are rules.

On occasion, a new person will break the rules not knowing that there's rules. One such occasion was when Clair decided to be helpful.

"You know what? I don't need this eucalyptus," Wren said.

"Oh! I'll put it back for you," Clair suggested. And before Wren could protest, it was out of Wren's hands and nowhere near her purse.

It was mentioned to Sage, who only worked for us one summer, that Wren had failed to pay for something and she immediately chased her out into the street.

Wren drives very fast.

If you cross her too many times, she'll make sure you never forget it. One day, she stomped her way in through the front door, angry.

"You ain't treated me better than a damn THIEF," screamed the Flower Thief.

Grandpa, who was helping Blue make a wedding bouquet at the time, departed from the desk. "Beg pardon?"

"A thief! You been treating me like a thief ever since they made you manager and I'm sick of it! I see you bringing in your henchmen, following me in the cooler, chasing me down the street. Treat me with some damn respect."

Words were exchanged. They were not kind. We thought we'd seen the end of her.

But she was back one week later, doing the same damn thing.

So now there are rules.

If you make something and there's an excess of flowers left over from the pack, you have to make something out of the leftovers or she'll pick through them and stuff them in her bag.

If you cannot make something out of them, you must throw them out.

If you throw them out, you must break the heads off first.

The trash cans must be emptied every night before 5:00.

We do not keep trash bags in plain sight.

Break down all empty boxes, or she will use them in place of trash bags.

Do not leave any food or drink where she can find it.

Do not leave any half-used rolls of floral tape where she can find it.

Do not let her know anything about you- lest she use it against you.

If you speak of a Thief, you summon a Thief- speak quietly, and never her name or you invite trouble.

The basic rules one makes when dealing with pests. Or fairy-folk.

There are rules and there are rules and there are rules.

If you want to keep a pest away, you make these sorts of rules. But if you want to get rid of a pest indefinitely, you have to remove their food source. And Wren's food source was her discount.

You start exercising your right to say 'no' to a customer in small ways.

She saw a bunch of carnations in the trash and said:

"Oh baby, these are still good! I'll take them off your hands for you!"

"They've been sitting without water for hours."

"They're still good!"

"They were out in the sun."

"Oh baby, I've been working with flowers for 40 years and I know that these will still be fine for a couple of days!" She picks a bunch of them out of the trash and shoves it in my face. "See, it's still stiff- it's still good!"

"Okay," I said. And before I could stop myself: "Full price."

Her eyes just about popped out of her skull. If it were just a little bit colder, I would have been able to see steam coming out of her ears.

We stared at each other for about a minute, waiting for the other to flinch. She took the bunch away from my face and threw them back into the trash. While she was in the cooler, I took the liberty of snapping the heads off of them and burying them further into the garbage.

And so began a war between the flower shop and the Flower Thief.

She came in: every single night. And each night, she got me.

Again.

"Oh no, baby! These carns are supposed to be 39 cents a stem. I can bring up the email."

"Sure." She brings up the email. "I see that they are 39 cents but... this was for Saturday."

"Yea, and I bought those carns on Saturday and you charged me full price!"

"Saturday."

"Yeah."

"You didn't buy these on Saturday. You bought them Friday."

"Well I didn't know that they'd be on sale, so I need them for that price because I didn't know they'd be on sale."

"The sales are one-day only. I can't adjust a sale from Friday to reflect Saturday's sale... on Sunday."

She made a noise that reminds me somewhat of a cement mixer.

And again.

"I got a bad banner last time, can you print me a new one?" She shows me the banner in question. It's white. The 't' and the 'h' in 'mother' ran together.

"Sure."

"Okay, I need it to say 'Beloved Mother' and I want it in pink."

"Sure."

I print it. I ring her up $5.

"Oh baaaaaaby, no, that one should be free."

"Grandpa said- banners start at $5."

"Oh, but you sold me a bad one last time."

"We haven't sold you a banner in three weeks. How long have y'all had that body sitting in your cooler?"

She grumbled, and paid.

And again.

"I swear you been workin' every night this week! You must be tired," she said, nerves plain in her voice. "When do you get a day off?"

"When the work is done."

"That ain't what I'm askin'. When's your next day off, baby?"

"I stop working when the work is done, Wren."

She narrows her eyes, which is a fun change from them bugging out of her skull like a fruit fly. "You don't ever get any days off?"

"When the work stops, I rest."

And again.

"I'll be in and out, I know y'all want to get out of here on time," she said- announcing her presence to the entire class. She piled her stuff across the register counter and Grandpa began ringing her up.

"Oh baby..."

"No. We're doing away with the discounts."

There are twenty people in the workshop for the class and Grandpa doesn't want to make a scene. She pulls her into the back, and I choose to make my instructions louder to mask the sound of them yelling.

"So you're going to take your hypericum berries and you're going to cut the stem to about ten inches-"

"How can you do this to me?"

"And you're going to slowly fill the vase with these berries to kind of set the shape of the arrangement."

"After all these years and this is how you treat me?"

"Fun fact- you might know hypericum berries as their more common name: St John's Wort! St. John's Wort has been used as a medication for depression prior to modern medicine." You see- I, too, have taken notes from the Chattering Order.

"You can't do this to me," Wren said, stamping her feet like a toddler.

"But I wouldn't recommend eating them. However, they do smell somewhat like baked brown sugar."

Stamp, stamp, stamp.

Wren threw herself into the cooler and began putting a bulk of her flowers back.

"This is robbery," I heard her say to Grandpa at the register.

"Is it now?"

And again.

She came in and immediately reached for a half-empty box of oasis bricks (the green sponge material that we use to hold flowers.) She said few words to me, few at all. She talked to Carrie about how she was going out to the country for awhile, to take care of her nephew's property. She needed to stock up. And oh- don't worry about it, she knows what she's doing. She's part of The Family.

She is in no manner of speaking, a member of The Family that owns this shop. Not even a third cousin.

I saw her beeline for a rose I'd set in the trash. I picked it up, opened my mouth, and bit the head off of it. She stood in the middle of the workshop, absolutely stunned.

Rose petals have the vague texture of arugula, by the way. Slightly sweeter, though. Tough to swallow in one go.

She ran back into the cooler and didn't talk to me.

I began taking down numbers.

27 bricks of oasis. One pack of roses. Ten calla lilies. 1/2 pack of assorted greens.

I punched the numbers in to the register. As if sensing something was amiss, she emerged from the cooler.

"$54? What do I have that's $54?"

"The oasis. They're $2 each."

"Oh no baaaaaby, they're $1."

"I can text Grandpa and ask her."

"... that won't be necessary. Why are you charging me $22.50 for roses? You know my prices by now!"

"22.50 is the price for a pack of roses."

"22.50 is everybody prices."

"Welcome to 'everybody.'"

"I ain't paid a price increase in 7 years!"

"The price of milk went up, Wren. So does everything else."

She was seeing red, I knew it. There's a vein in her forehead that pops out when she's angry and it's the same shape as the river that runs through my home town. She sized me up, as if wondering if she could take me.

I'm 256 pounds of 4H beef, and I have a knife. Try me.

"I'm gonna call Kyle on this."

"Do it." A lifetime of retail has made me immune to 'I'd like to speak to the manager.'

She grumbled and put things back. Carrie offered to watch her, I held up my hand.

"Can you do something for me on these carns? They're the last pack in there and they're lookin' kinda ratty."

"9.50."

"9.50's the regular price."

"Regular price is $14."

"No it ain't."

"Is today. You're taking our last pack and we need those for funerals."

She put them back.

She gave me a credit card. It seemed fake, but it ran. Every time I see here, she's got a different card. Did she print this one this morning, too? At least she stopped trying to sell me on Bitcoin. As you can see, it made her incredibly wealthy.

She gathered her things and left. "Guess I'm getting the rest of my flowers from KROGER!"

There are things you want to say. Like... I hope they enjoy your company just as much as we do. Or: Haven't graced them with your presence in awhile, huh? But at the time, it was better just to watch her leave with her minuscule bunch of flowers. I get a choice in where I loan my voice.

Not here.

Is it over? Nah. She'll be back for another round. But one day she'll finally retire in the way that she's always threatened to. And then? Then it can be as over as it ever will be.

It is shocking to come from a history of retail, where you're not allowed to even hint at the idea of a customer being wrong, where you have to override every single price change to get the scores up, where you have to just let them steal your things and pull the wool over your eyes...

... to flat-out telling someone 'no.'

"No."

It's such a great word.

There are rules and there are rules.

And there are thieves that the rules are made for.

And there are words like 'no.'

And all those things are magic in very human ways.

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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I’ve been seeing an uptick in “anti-RWDE” posts lately — which is a phenomenon I’d like to comment on at a later date — but for now one of them (quite unintentionally) made me realize something about the finale that I haven’t seen others discuss yet.

So RWBYJNOR saves everyone, right? Let’s just put aside the animation for a moment — which didn’t show any army members making it out — as well as the forgotten side characters — Maria, Pietro, Qrow’s group isn’t forgotten, but still left behind — and take things on good faith here. We’ll read the finale through the thematic intention: RWBYJNOR saved “everyone” in the Kingdom of Atlas in Volume 8, deliberately contrasting them with Ironwood who was willing to sacrifice a chunk of the Kingdom in Volume 7. Forget all the messiness and just accept that regardless of the consequences — like a destroyed Kingdom and a “dead” team — the heroes are heroic because they didn’t give into a “lesser evil” thinking and managed to save everyone.

Now, how was that possible?

Let’s go back to the beginning of the seventh episode of Volume 8, “War.” Salem’s grimm have just burrowed through Atlas’ defenses and taken them out. The shields are gone. She flies Monstra into the fields and releases an army of darkness that immediately heads for the city. What’s the very first thing Ironwood does?

Soldier: Yes, sir?

Ironwood: I am evacuating all citizens to the subway. Prepare Manta Squad Omega, and dispatch to every part of Atlas.

Soldier: But sir-

Ironwood: Now!

He evacuates the people, with “the people” meaning all the Atlesians and however many Mantle folk got to the city prior to Salem’s arrival. When this episode aired I mentioned being confused as to why the soldier was so hesitant. Why wouldn’t you want the people to get to safety when a grimm army is heading their way? Fans against Ironwood took the soldier’s side, claiming that Mountain Glenn proved that any underground evacuation is a death sentence and thus he obviously doesn’t really care about the peoples’ safety. Fans in support of/neutral towards Ironwood pointed out that this is a pretty big leap, no one is coming up with a better idea for what he should do instead, and that within these circumstances it reads like the soldiers is illogically against this idea simply because everyone is against Ironwood now. The show wants characters criticizing his decisions and making him out to look like a crazed dictator... even during moments when it doesn’t make any sense to be upset with him. Shooting the councilman yes, trying to keep the people safe no. Basically, this small exchange was a mess, but the rest of the volume proved that this was a sound call. The subway never collapsed and no grimm ever made it to that enclosed space to pick the civilians off like fish in an underground barrel.

So, why didn’t that happen? Well, one answer is because Oscar and Ozpin destroyed the whale. But how did they have time to do that? Without the people dying while they were being tortured, talking to Hazel, escaping with Emerald, fighting Salem, etc.? A lot happened between Salem starting her attack and Oscar ending it, so why wasn’t 2/3rds of the Kingdom’s population decimated during that time?

Because Ironwood sent his army out to keep the grimm occupied.

Outside of Ironwood’s cartoon villain actions — random murders and bomb threats — which get the most attention due to how deliberately, over-the-top horrific they are, these are the two actions that get the most negative attention from both the story and the fanbase. The soldier seems horrified by the order to evacuate. Marrow is devastated that young adults are fighting in this battle. The fandom is disgusted by both aspects of Ironwood’s character: giving orders that, as general, he expects to be obeyed and having an army that follows those orders. Putting side that cartoon villainy, this is what supposedly makes Ironwood the antagonist here. These are the qualities that have existed since Volume 2, resulting in a “he was always a bad guy” interpretation. These are the qualities that have resulted in anyone who likes his character being labeled as a “bootlicker.” We know these qualities make the fandom hate him because otherwise, more people would be confused as to why a presumably heroic character randomly shot Oscar. Orders, armies, and general military associations are at the heart of Ironwood’s presumed villainy.

So let’s remove them.

Ironwood has no evil army. Ironwood gives no evil orders. Power and control lies solely in the hands of our non-military heroes. Everything is better!

...well, no. Because we saw in Volume 8 precisely the choices our heroes made when the attack started: half of them focused on saving a single individual (Oscar) and the other half kept to the sidelines. At no point did our RWB group act after sending the message and prior to securing the Staff. AKA, during the attack of Salem’s army. We got a very explicit moment in which Ruby looked out the window at the battle going on and turned away from it, continuing to discuss ethics instead of joining the fight. The people of Atlas (which, again, includes many Mantle citizens) had no one but Ironwood and his army because a third of the group was trying to rescue Oscar (they never even had a plan to blow up Monstra — that was also Ironwood), a third of the group was up in Amity, and a third was sitting in the mansion. They did nothing to help the people of Atlas being attacked by grimm.

Thus, if you remove Ironwood’s actions, everything goes to hell. There is no longer an order to evacuate to the subway. Maybe some people go there anyway. Most probably don’t. They run in a panic wherever they can. Hide wherever they can. Go back home for some semblance of safety.

There’s no longer an army. Either it doesn’t exist because we’ve determined it’s simplistically bad despite RWBY’s grimm-specific context, or Ironwood likewise never gives the order to protect Atlas’ border. Salem’s army moves unimpeded through the city, killing countless people as it goes. How do we know? Because they’re civilians who can’t defend themselves and there’s literally no one else to help. Remember: Ironwood is not giving orders, there is no army, RWB is in the mansion, YJOR is in the whale, Penny is out of commission, the Happy Huntresses are in Mantle. Those in Atlas are entirely alone. In time, Oscar destroys the whale, but by then it’s too late. There’s no concrete way to theorize how many have died, but it’s inevitably a lot. Everyone else is scatted across the city, trying to survive.

So this scene

no longer exists.

When the group gets the Staff and creates portals for “everyone” to escape through, Mantle is ready to go. They’ve gotten everyone into the crater and can funnel them straight to Vacuo. Atlas, however, is in chaos. When Jaune enters the subway there’s only a few people there, many of which may be wounded or dying. He’s right back where he started, in Mantle at the beginning of Volume 8: needing to go door-to-door to find where people have hidden themselves, trying to convince them all to follow him (remember Oscar commenting to Ozpin about how difficult that was?). Except now, he and Nora are the only ones trying to get people to safey, the city is filled with far more grimm, a significant amount of time has passed for people to be killed or injured (making evacuating them even harder, both due to injuries and an unwillingness to leave hurt/dead/missing loved ones behind), he’s trying to convince these panicking people to go through magic portals, not just walk to a crater, and he’s aware that there’s a very short time limit for this task.

Jaune returns in a panic of his own, explaining how difficult it will be to get that 2/3rds of the Kingdom to Vacuo. How many are already dead. Barricaded. Missing. Closeup on Ruby looking horrified, but then she rallies. They can do it. Atlas is falling, but residual dust gives them just enough time to find, calm, and evacuate those people. They’re heroes after all. Beating the odds is what they do.

Then Cinder attacks.

Suddenly, the group can’t evacuate people because they’re trying to keep themselves safe from her. Maybe Cinder gets the powers because Jaune was off looking for civilians, leaving Penny without a mercy kill. Maybe Nora dies because she’s still trying to help people on the city that plows into the one below. Regardless of how details might change, they’re not getting a spread out, decimated population through those portals before Cinder changes the wish and makes them disappear.

In this version, the story starts with Ironwood wanting to sacrifice 1/3rd of the population to save 2/3rds and the future of the war. It ends with 2/3rds of the population dying instead.

This is what I mean when I say the majority of the fandom wants to view a very complex situation through a ridiculously simple lens. The fandom wants to denounce every bit of RWBY’s fictionalized military, the context issues of that aside. The story wants to paint RWBYJNOR as the only heroes, in part because they succeeded in saving everyone (“everyone”) in the Kingdom when Ironwood gave up.

But they only managed to save everyone because of Ironwood. Because he kept fighting for his people to the bitter end. This is why, though his horrific actions obviously exist in the story, they make no sense (he’ll threaten to kill his people so he can... save his people?) and mess up what little is working in the finale. The story wants us to celebrate the group for evacuating Mantle and Atlas, but the Atlas evacuation would not have happened if not for Ironwood’s actions — the actions that are ignored in favor of having Winter blame him for everything and then killing him off. The rescue of “everyone” was very much a joint effort. RWBYJNOR’s win is not actually a contrast to Ironwood’s intended sacrifice, for the simple reason that their win depended entirely on Ironwood’s actions.

If we’re going to celebrate the group getting everyone to safety, we should probably also celebrate the guy who got them all to an easy evacuation point and ensured they weren’t eaten before then. Does that mean Ironwood never did anything wrong? Of course not. As established, the story went out of its way to make him into a villain. Rather, it means that other parts of the story failed to maintain that black and white view, complicating the heroism of RWBYJNOR in the process. If we want Ironwood to be incapable of heroic action, always the bad guy, nothing good to say about him whatsoever... then we likewise need to accept that the group is rather unheroic in many regards too. That, on their own, they would have failed to save everyone, just as Ironwood’s plan failed to save everyone at the end of Volume 7. Because they chose their friend over a kingdom. Because they sat around in a mansion. Because by the time they took action again and tried to escape, without Ironwood’s help they would have lost a larger majority than they originally insisted be saved.

#rwby #rwde #mymetas

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thefirstknife · 3 years

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Iron Lord Saladin Forge

Season of the Lost dropped some major lore about Saladin and I love every piece of it so I will make a huge post detailing stuff about and what's important.

The lore is on Iron Banner armour which you can see in-game when you go to the armour section. The lore is the same on each class so it doesn't matter which one you read. It's in the order of how armour is set, so helmet -> arm piece -> chest piece -> leg piece -> class item. There's some extras on Iron banner weapons that I'll add as well.

The rest under the cut due to length and also spoilers!

I'll link to the Hunter gear because I'm a dirty Hunter main and I read it from there and that's what I have open because I couldn't remember the names for other two classes, but the lore is the same on all of them. The set is called Iron Forerunner.

We haven't really had any substantial Saladin lore in D2 besides few lore pieces from Chosen and Splicer. Not nearly enough I think, especially since he wasn't properly introduced in D2 at all and it was kinda assumed that everyone would know about him from the Rise of Iron expansion in D1. He had plenty of voice lines, but with no real context. His voice lines in Season of the Chosen were interesting, but also made a lot of people think he's a bad person and a warmongering coward who sat on his butt during the Red War and was then preaching action for action's sake.

The situation is obviously more complex, but I've always said that it's Bungie fault for not explaining more about him prior to his involvement in the Season of the Chosen. Well, now we got some really interesting information at last!

Anyway, helmet first!

Flavour text:

"Some know the legend. We threw ourselves on the blades of tyranny so others may live free." —Lord Saladin

This is referencing the Iron Lords' fight against the Warlords in the Dark Age. Saladin is heavily influenced by his time in the Dark Age. It seems like some really old Guardians never get over the trauma of living through that (Drifter is another example). Side note: this could also be referencing the battle against SIVA since Rasputin is also known as "The Tyrant." It's not fully relevant tho, as Saladin was equally affected by both periods in his life.

This first entry details something we don't really think about when it comes to Guardians: death. It's a temporary thing with them so it doesn't really matter. But Saladin recounts how he remembers his deaths and how each one felt. Despite the fact that he will be brought back, the pain and struggle of dying are very real. There is also the associated trauma of the realisation that you will go through this over and over and over:

He laughed when his Ghost reassembled him. Then, he cried.

It's not something mentioned often, and definitely wasn't a point raised with Saladin. It gives some context to how seriously he takes combat, training and the lives of his fellow Guardians.

Saladin remembers the day he stopped counting deaths. "Something about you is different," Jolder had said, and put her hand on his.

This explains that his worldview of the role of Lightbearers changed the moment he was invited to become an Iron Lord. It's also important to remember that he loved Lady Jolder very much (in whichever way you want to interpret it) and that watching her make the choice to die a final death has had a heavy impact on him.

Saladin remembers all this and more when he looks at the Crow. He feels rage form a hot pit in his belly when Osiris tells him about the young Lightbearer's suffering at the hands of his fellow Guardians. Osiris asks him if he can keep a secret.

"I don't like secrets," Saladin says, and that's the end of it.

Saladin doesn't really say this during Chosen and his interactions with Crow, but it's evident from this that he cares deeply about the young Light who suffered in ways Saladin only remembers people suffering during the Dark Age. It's also important to note that the Osiris he speaks to here is Savathun. Saladin seems to be uniquely unaffected by Savathun's schemes. This will repeat itself again later.

Second, arms piece.

Flavour text:

"Some know the legend. We were forged in the fires of a burning world." —Lord Saladin

Same thing as before. Referencing the post-Collapse Dark Age. The lore tab details a really tragic story of the Iron Lords burying bodies, including the implication of Saladin burying the body of a child. He recalls that these people were victims of Fallen Raiders.

"It's a vicious circle," Efrideet had said as she tied off a funeral shroud with great care. Saladin remembers the bundle being very small. "One day, I'm going to break it."

Saladin remembers how easily the body fit in his arms, how light it felt as he laid it in the grave. He remembers, with shame, pretending not to hear Efrideet's words so he wouldn't need to respond to them.

He remembers not having anything kind to say.

He obviously regrets not having a stronger stance on this in the past. Where Efrideet seems to have always been keen on ending the cycle of violence, he clearly thought differently and is now ashamed of it. This transitions into more about his relation to Crow:

Saladin remembers all this and more whenever the Crow talks back to him. Sometimes, he bites down on the inside of his cheek. Sometimes, he looks up to find his Ghost focused on him with a knowing look.

He doesn't say anything to his Ghost either.

Because Crow was saying things that reminded him of Efrideet. Breaking the cycles of violence, extending a friendly hand, not treating everyone like an enemy. It's evident that this turmoil is still inside of him as someone who spent most of his time fighting for survival, only to be told by those younger than him that there's a way out of that war. It's a very common struggle of people dealing with trauma and specifically PTSD to not be able to imagine and/or live in a world of peace and to outright reject the possibility of peace ever existing. Saladin is very clearly dealing with that and here, we see it from his own POV: despite sometimes being harsh to Crow, there were times when he chose to say nothing because deep down he knows that Crow is right. Accepting that is a long process though.

Third, chest piece.

Flavour text:

"Some know the legend. We rose from the ashes of a dying world to save humanity from itself." —Lord Saladin

Same again, but this is an interesting way to phrase it. He's talking about humanity being a danger to itself, not about any external threat. Ultimately, the Traveler's gift was the first thing that harmed humanity post-Collapse, despite later being the thing that saved it.

This leads into Saladin's thoughts on the Red War, something we've been sorely missing for a very long time.

Saladin remembers losing his connection to the Light. He remembers thinking that the Traveler must have discovered his most secret doubts; the darkest thoughts he shared with no one—not even his Ghost. He remembers the strange sense of relief that had washed over him until his radio crackled to life just moments later.

His deepest secret? Probably that Light is a burden. When he lost the connection to the Light, he specifically thought it had only happened to him and then felt relief. Freedom from the eternal war he has to keep waging. I'm sure he feels incredible shame for thinking it would be better to just lose the Light and die a final death, but alas, he is bound by duty. Especially a Titan's duty.

He stands there thinking about it for a while before finally deciding to embrace that duty. And now we know what he was doing during the Red War:

"Saladin," his Ghost said again, and Saladin remembers moving. He remembers clutching his radio and rallying survivors—those strong enough to make the journey—to the Iron Temple.

It's been abbreviated as him "sitting out" the Red War because he didn't fight. Of course it was strange that the last remaining active Iron Lord did not show up to the City to fight alongside all the others, both Guardians and ordinary humans. That Lord Saladin, someone who endured so many hardships and fought so many battles since the Dark Age, hasn't come to help humanity in its time of greatest need.

But now this hits different. He didn't fight, yes. He couldn't. Losing the Light wasn't just something that made him scared (like all Lightbearers): it was something that made him scared of how he might actually enjoy dying a glorious final death. To end the trauma and the memories of all the horrors he's been through. So instead of throwing himself into a reckless death, he chose to stay in the Iron Temple and protect survivors.

So yeah, he didn't fight, but he did something equally important. The Iron Temple is an extremely well protected fortress that's very difficult to reach and breach, so any survivor he gathered was perfectly safe there until the Red War ended. Sometimes "sitting out" is more noble than fighting.

Saladin remembers all this and more whenever the Crow challenges him on his cowardice during the Red War. He wants to break the young Guardian's back to teach him a lesson about what it's like to feel helpless, but something stops him.

He remembers hearing stories about the Crow's life on the Shore before he arrived at the Tower, and does not raise a hand against him.

The lore entry ends with telling us that Saladin was clearly very agitated about Crow's teasing. But in the end, he remembered what Crow has been through and realised that Crow already knows what it's like to feel helpless. He did not need a reminder and Saladin decided to take the teasing without a response. It truly frames some of those voice lines in a different light, knowing this background.

Fourth, leg piece!

Flavour text:

"Some know the legend. We crossed a burning world with sword in hand, bringing justice and blood." —Lord Saladin

Once more, we are told that Saladin was mostly forged (eheh) through his experience in the Dark Age.

The lore page details a bittersweet memory Saladin has of him with his fellow Iron Lords and friends enjoying some good time over a meal and song.

He remembers Radegast asking him to sing the song taught to them by the people of the blacksmith's village, but agreeing only when Jolder and Perun promised to join in. Their voices rose like wolves in the night and were so raw by morning that none of them could speak.

This is honestly heartbreaking. Saladin being this happy and free to sing and enjoy himself: compared to how he is now. But even with that, he has retained the need to do it again sometimes, if he ever finds people to be comfortable around.

Saladin remembers all this and more when Zavala tells him Amanda has taken the Crow out to drink in the City's streets. He wonders what song they'll sing, if it's anything like the one he's heard everyone humming lately—even though he hasn't tried it himself.

I love how he projects his past joy onto the two young people and wonders if they'll do the same as he did once. Here we also get another hint about Saladin apparently not being affected by Savathun's viral chant. It might be a point relevant in the future.

Finally, class item!

Flavour text:

"Some know the legend. We crushed the Warlords beneath our heel so that they may never rise again." —Lord Saladin

Nothing new here. Just Saladin recounting how hard they went against the Warlords.

The rest is a very poignant lore page that details the relationship between Saladin and Zavala. Zavala studied under Saladin who was his mentor and it's been repeated often that Saladin has retained a "soft spot" for him.

Saladin remembers the first time he met Zavala. He remembers thinking that the Awoken had regal bearing like the stags he once hunted on the Steppes. His shoulders were broad, and his chin held high. When he moved, he did so with the strength and purposeful deliberation of someone with the power to determine his own place in the world.

"You'll never have a son," his Ghost had said, "but it isn't too late for you to take an apprentice."

I love when non-Awoken describe Awoken, there's always something ethereal about it. But I'm mostly putting this part here because of what Saladin's Ghost says.

First, I am incredibly soft for older Guardians adopting younger ones as kids and teaching them. Easily my favourite dynamic ever. Saladin seeing Zavala as a son makes me cry a thousand tears.

And second, is this finally a full confirmation that Guardians cannot bear children? It's kind of a strange place to put it, but it seems to be the implication. It makes sense they wouldn't be able to, but it's also nice to have some direct lore information about it in case it pops up as a question. I'm sorry if this ruins anyone's fics.

Saladin remembers their sparring matches. He remembers how Zavala always got back on his feet, no matter how many times Saladin put him down. He remembers refusing to offer the younger Lightbearer a hand up. Until the day Zavala finally bested him in combat.

He remembers lying flat on his back, left shoulder dislocated and ribs shattered, a strange pressure on his chest that made it difficult to breathe.

"Finish it," Saladin had commanded because that was the way of things. His Ghost would revive him.

Saying nothing, Zavala hauled him to his feet instead.

I love how this is placed at the end, paralleling the beginning of Saladin remembering his deaths and the pain of dying. But instead of "finishing it," Zavala pulls him back up. It's definitely something Saladin hasn't experienced before, especially not before becoming an Iron Lord, when all of his deaths were just gruesome ends to a struggle. Then seconds after, he'd be back up. He took the revival for granted, until Zavala offered him the alternative. Again, an interesting perspective about something we don't usually think about much. I do wonder how Saladin healed afterwards though.

Saladin remembers all this and more when his former apprentice calls him into his office and tells him about the face behind the Crow's mask. Zavala says he knows that Saladin doesn't like secrets; that it's unfair to ask him to keep one of this magnitude, but there will come a time when the Crow needs someone—the way Zavala needed Saladin.

"You never needed anyone," Saladin insists.

Zavala only smiles.

This page ends with the two bonding again. Despite their differences and disagreements, there's mutual respect between the mentor and the apprentice. The father and the son.

And Saladin thinks Zavala never needed him, but that is obviously not true and Zavala tells him so. He also tells him that Crow, and implied Guardians like him, will need the same guidance.

It gives us a full circle back to Saladin's musings about his purpose as a Guardian and Lightbearer. He may have doubted his place in the world before, but seeing as he's still here with us and actively participating and helping; training us through Iron Banner, helping with the Eliksni, refusing to side against the Vanguard despite the difference in opinion, now serving as Zavala's ambassador for the Cabal and easily bonding with someone he would've considered an enemy not long ago...

I think Saladin knows his place. He's one of the strongest Lightbearers and most principled among them. He is not swayed by lies and deceptions, he does not abide by them and speaks plainly. He has deeply rooted beliefs in justice and he will not compromise himself, even if it means conceding his position to make peace with a former enemy when that enemy proves their worth, honesty and good intentions to him.

He is a Guardian.

He is an Iron Lord.

#destiny 2 #lord saladin #lore vibing #long post #more iron lord lore bungie please?#iron temple as a social space?#please?#anyway i love this new lore about him so much #i wish we had it before people formed some crude opinions about him #but hopefully this can retroactively clear certain things up

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thebrightsessions · 4 years

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Entertainment Spotlight: Ian McQuown

Ian is an LA based actor and producer known for the YouTube comedy group, Extremely Decent, as well as a voice actor in the popular audio dramas: The Bright Sessions, The AM Archives, StarTripper!! & Deck The Halls! His credits inclue American Housewife, Trial & Error, Better Things, and For All Mankind. Ian took the time to answer some questions for us. Check it out:

You’ve worked on multiple podcasts -- what drew you to the medium?

Well, to be honest, Lauren drew me to it because TBS was my first narrative podcast. We met at a Rocky Horror Picture Show show. Anna Lore is our mutual friend and I think Anna is just talented as all get out, so anything she’s involved I want to be in. And, I don’t know, it was just one of those lucky breaks you get where a door opens and takes you to all these cool places you never anticipated.

On podcasting though, I really appreciate how much more possible it is to tell engaging stories without the boundaries of having to afford a set and a camera and insurance and etc etc etc. Like, I grew up with Star Wars, The Matrix, Cowboy Bebop— so when I imagine the stories I like, I’m usually picturing other worlds, space ships, people with super powers and those types of stories used to have a lot higher barrier to entry to make than they do now, which is just awesome.

If you could give a character from The Bright Sessions a spinoff series, who would you choose and what would the series be called?

I mean, no surprises here, but I’d love to see Damien’s early years. And I’d be super clever and call it something like... Damien: The Early Years. I'm dying for that content a little bit actually: Damien, before he became such a bad guy. Maybe a love story that doesn’t work out and leaves him really scarred? Villains so bad they created a villain instead of a victim— that moment where we see the two roads Damien has to choose between and it totally shreds us when he makes the choice we all know he’s going to make, I mean, come ON you can see that, right? It’d be like the Star Wars prequels but without all the youngling killing and “NOOOOOOOO”’s and I want it.

Can you share a fun story or anecdote from the making of The Bright Sessions?

Haha, ok well it’s not really anything of note BUT: I remember Lauren had this area rug in her room, which as you probably know is where we would record, and it was this really nice, I think, red sort of floral rug that took up pretty much all the floor space because it was covering up the older apartment rug-floor underneath it. And it was, as I said, really cool, except it wasn’t a rug on a wood floor, right? It was a rug on a rug so it was a bit taller than the people who designed the room had planned for— the result of which was that you’d walk in and the room had this really awesome little vibe with this cute rug, and it was all very cozy, unless you looked directly behind you at the corner where the door had just spent ages scraping the surface of it, catching the corner, tearing little pieces out. And I may be getting apocryphal at this point, but I feel like by the time I had started coming around Lauren had straight up duct taped it to the floor, which really didn’t help the problem. And, I don’t know—again it’s not really anything momentous—but I just remember giving Lauren a particular amount of shit about it one day and us all having a really good laugh. And I really love that— there are jobs where you show up, keep your head down, do your work and leave, but then there are jobs like The Bright Sessions where you all get to become friends, and even if you don’t see each other for a while you sort of just get to pick up where you left off. And then those jobs turn into other jobs and you get to keep hanging out with your friends and peers and just making stuff you like— I’m a big fan of that.

If your life was a choose your own adventure, what decisions would viewers have to make on an average day?

OKAY, you wake up...

Water your garden before it gets to be 110 today, you cannot skip this step. You may however:

A) Stay out in the garden for longer if you get inspired and check if the tomatoes and peppers are ripe for picking.

Great! Now let’s make breakfast:

A) Make eggs, toast, fried tomatoes, and hash browns?

B) Make (A) But also with Bacon?

C) Make a smoothie?

D) There’s no time today, run to Whole Foods and get their incredibly priced $6 Egg, Bacon Cheese Breakfast burrito.

Awesome! You’ve eaten and now you can think. What work do you have to do?

A) Prep your audition, dummy! It’s due this afternoon, go fix your hair.

B) You have a zoom meeting with actor friends at 11 to play around with some new material, put on a hat.

C) There is nothing you have to work on so stare at your computer and wonder if there’s new project you could be working on. Try to find that project, leave your hair as it.

Wow! You really had a great (insert previous choice here), let’s get you a coffee and take a TV break. What should we watch?!

A) That new show you haven’t seen yet because you need to watch everything so you know how to work on it should you get an audition for it.

B) Harley Quinn (your favorite new cartoon).

C) Teenage Bounty Hunters.

D) Farscape.

E) Nope, you just got an audition for tomorrow, everything is off the table, start working on it (Level Complete).

Lunch Time!!!

A) Turkey sandwich with pickles from the garden?

B) Trader Joe’s Margherita Pizza with basil and peppers from the garden?

C) Are we going to start another loaf of sourdough you basic mf?

D) Yes we probably are, but also (A) and (B).

Cool! I’ve eaten lunch. Now what?

A) You haven’t finished that work from this morning. Riiiight.

B)…More Harley Quinn…?

C) Let’s make pasta from scratch!

D) Let’s make ribs! From…ribs!

F) You just got an audition for tomorrow, everything is off the table, start working on it. (Level Complete).

Bangarang! You probably chose to start cooking dinner immediately after eating lunch. You ate it (and it rocked), what now?

A) You just got an audition for tomorrow, everything is off the table, start working on it. (Level Complete)

B) DnD with squad.

C) Go on a run, dude— you’re getting a Jaba chin….

D) Bring on the chin! Let’s watch TV until 2am! Here are your options:

A) Harley Quinn (your new favorite cartoon)

B) Teenage Bounty Hunters

C) Farscape

D) Put The Office on in the background and clean your house.

Level Complete.

As you can see I’m a very food-focused person. Also, I’m going to be real, that is truly what most of my days look like and I’m low-key a little mortified that ’taking a shower’ wasn’t a game option...

Can you share your favorite piece of Bright Sessions / AM Archives fan art?

I love all the fan art that people make for my characters but this one from Franartz has always been really special to me. It’s so GQ, I just love it — and some of my favorite early AG moments are with Damien, who looks a little like he stepped out of a Gorrilaz album here— big fan. I’m a little obsessed with fan art actually, I save everything I come across— there’s a freckled red-headed series of Owen by TheFigureInTheCorner that makes me really happy. Seeing that my work has inspired someone else to make something of their own is really what’s up, you know? It makes me think about all the art and entertainment that has touched me over the years and I get a lot of joy from being a part of that cycle.

Thanks for taking the time, Ian! Give I Can Die When I'm Done a relisten right here.

#entertainment spotlight #the bright sessions #the am archives #Ian mcquown

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shadowfae · 3 years

Note

We’re all pretty aware that the tumblr otherkin community is at a huge decline; I was wondering if you have any theories as to why that is?

American Protestantism, the decline of queer oppression in North America and the AIDS crisis, helicopter parenting, web 3.0, morality politics, and Tumblr’s porn ban; roughly in that order and rolled up into one bombshell that was a few years in the coming but nobody really saw it and understood it until it was far too late.

That was a mouthful and probably only made sense if you follow current cyberpolitical theory. For some of you reading this, as with every other hot take I have this has a chance of being passed around, that alone is enough. But for others who had no idea what I just said and need the ELI5 version, let me explain that. Buckle up, this’ll be a long one, and will go into fandom history a bit as well because it is actually relevant.

As we know, tumblr is a very American-centric platform. Twitter is also this way, but less so, but tumblr has it bad. Now, I’m ‘lucky’ in the fact that I’m Canadian and a twenty minute drive from the American border, so that puts me in the ‘privileged’ majority. (I say privileged because I’m not really sure what else to call it. Most of the information going around about politics either directly affects me or indirectly affects me approximately one or two links of contact away. Someone who’s only influenced by American politics because it makes their sister’s online friends sad is not going to be privileged in that way.)

This means that American politics and their social climate overwhelmingly affects tumblr’s social climate. This also bleeds through into other fandom spaces, on twitter, instagram, and Pixiv to name a few places; but here’s where I spend the majority of my time so here’s what I’ve witnessed.

America’s main religion, as far as I understand (from the raised agnostic and currently neopagan view I have), is some weirdass capitalistic-Protestantism that is so many miles from what the actual Bible says that if I were a betting man and knew more about cults than I did, I’d say it’s some weird fucking cult and never set foot in the country again for any reason that isn’t gaming free shipping through a PO box. If you have no idea what I just said but are at least vaguely familiar with Christianity, this graphic explains it pretty well. So we can see there’s some glaring issues with that ideal.

The decline of queer oppression and the rise of queer rights in North America, which is to tenderly include my own country but we all know when people say ‘in NA’ they mean ‘America, and Canada where it applies because the right-wing Republicans are really good in the propaganda department to convince everyone that Mexico is a drug-lords-and-anarchy wasteland to the point where even I don’t actually know what’s down there other than bad drivers and heat’; means two things. One, it’s a good thing by a long shot and do not mistake this as me thinking queer oppression being lessened is a bad thing. But two, it means that thanks to the AIDS crisis, queer folks lost a lot of first-person sources as history.

The queer elders in NA who survived are typically either a) bitter anarchists who are often POC, probably still dirt poor and do recreational drugs or b) university-tenured TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists). Category A are the people who Republicans have deemed worthless in every way, because racism, queerphobia, ableism, and all the other ways to be wrong and different and Evil that they can’t handle, because Jeezus would never want them to actually learn to love someone who wasn’t just like them, and they don’t have the compassion to do better. Category B are the people who want to be different in just a teensie little bit, typically with TERFs they want to be lesbians, but they don’t want to challenge the status quo. They’re fine with the way things work, they just want to be on top oppressing others over ripping the whole damn thing down and building a more forgiving system.

Now, due to all those ‘isms and the cheerfully malicious aid of the Republicans, pun not intended but drives home the cruelty of it all, we also see the rise of helicopter parenting. The invention of the internet did not really help this. Basically what you’ve got is a whole bunch of parents who saw the civil rights movement, just got access to the internet and things going viral, know the world is changing, and like all parents, they’re scared for their children. Now instead of parents knowing one or two people in their classes who just went missing one day and everyone assumed they ran away, they hear about eight homicides in the city of kids going to parks at night and dying. The Satanic Panic was another event around this time that contributed to that, but I’ll let you research that one.

This means that all of these parents, instead of doing what their parents typically did and let their kids wander off for the day so long as they’re back by sundown, they can’t let their children out of their sight. There might be a freak accident where their child is decapitated on the playground swing! Their baby might get murdered by an evil Satanist walking home from school! Their dearest darling might go online and tell their address to someone who’s got a 100% chance of being a pedophile who will show up and kidnap them in the night!

…You get the idea.

Combine those three things I just established, what we’ve got is a lot of queer kids who have a lot of internalized shame for being different and wrong, because they’re queer, and they can’t find spaces offline to be themselves, because all of the elders who would do that are dead and/or inaccessible and their parents won’t let them go to any clubs that aren’t school-related, which they’ll never find a GSA or queer club because Republicans, ‘isms, propaganda, and the war on Category A queer adults have all done their best to ensure that those spaces don’t exist.

So you have a generation of kids who I am the youngest of. The first generation on the internet. The late Web 1.0 (usenets and Geocities) and early Web 2.0 (livejournal was the big one, ff.net too, also 4chan but fuck those guys) generation. What we were taught was: trust nobody on the internet with your real info no matter how much you like them, this is a wilderness and any crimes that happen won’t be punished or seen so don’t put yourself in a position where you’re going to be the victim of one, and everything you put online is never getting taken down so don’t put anything up that you’re not willing to have on the front page of your local newspaper.

This worked out pretty well, actually! You had kids who knew that if they got in trouble, there was no backup coming to save them. Because the form that backup might take - parents and police - wasn’t going to help. Best case, they’d be banned from their friends and online support groups for being queer. Worst case, they’d be jailed and put in juvie and conversion therapy and turn to drugs and become evil Satanists just like everyone says they secretly are already. So they learned very quickly to take care of themselves. Nobody was going to save them, so they learned to not need saving.

And then, well, Web 2.0 shifted to Web 3.0. Livejournal died because parents - the Warriors for Innocence was the big name - went “gasp how horrible my children are being exposed to the evil pedos and homosexuals they’re going to do drugs and die of AIDS!”. Which is uh. It’s filled with a lot of bigotry, and I’m not excusing them - absolutely I am not - but you can kind of see where they’re coming from, if you tilt your head and squint.

Either way, LJ died, tumblr took its place, Facebook was fast taking off, and the fandom folks who had seen mailing lists go inactive, web admins take their fanfic sites down due to copyright, entire fandoms burnt to the ground in flame wars, said ‘fuck that we’re making our own place’ and that’s how AO3 got made.

That’s important. A lot of folks move to AO3, because well, the rules let them. The rules say ‘you can throw literally anything up here so long as it’s fan content and is not literally illegal, so we don’t get taken down’. It’s a swing for the first generation internet users, those kids who know this place is a wilderness and are carving out our own sanctuary.

But. The children under us. The children for whom AIDS is a nightmarish fairy tale, for whom the ghost stories are conversion therapy, for whom know they can’t really talk to their parents about being queer but can trust they probably won’t get kicked out over it. The children who haven’t spent ten seconds without supervision except online, and their reaction isn’t ‘oh thank god I’m finally free to express myself’ but ‘if I get in trouble, who will protect me?’.

And there’s nobody there. Because we went in knowing there was no backup. And that was fine. But now, the actual adults have figured out that hey uh, maybe we should make cyber laws? Maybe we should make revenge porn and grooming children over the internet crimes? And they grew up with that. They grew up learning that no, even if your parents are suffocating and controlling, they’re always be there for you! Some adult will always be there to protect you!

That isn’t the case. It’s not. But they expect it, because it’s always been done for them. They don’t really want to change the status quo, because that means doing it themselves. They can’t do that, because they don’t know how, they’ve been controlled for every single part of their lives thanks to helicopter parenting and without that control, they don’t know how to keep their lives together, and they demand someone come and control it for them, without restraining them.

Effectively, they want someone to ensure they never face the consequences of their actions. Helicopter parents will rescue you from whatever you did, because you’re their precious baby and it doesn’t matter if you punched a kid, you can do no wrong and the other kid clearly started it.

But being queer is doing wrong. Being queer is something Jeezus doesn’t approve of. So they want to make it something he could approve of! But if it’s too off what they consider to be okay, if it’s too different and weird and wrong and evil, that can’t do, that’s still bad, and they’re precious angels, and children, and minors, why are we the adults not protecting them and letting them see it? Why aren’t we being just like their parents but queer-friendly, why aren’t we protecting the children?

The adults who taught us were the children of those who died as a result of AIDS. The eldest of my generation knew some of them personally. My therapist’s younger brother died at 20 of AIDS, and she told me what it was like. But they don’t have that. These kids of web 3.0, they don’t have that. What they have is over-controlling parents, and the expectation that someone will always be there to protect them but hopefully in ways that don’t hurt them this time, no real understanding of why Category A queer elders are the way they are, and so much internalized shame that they have to do some pretty fancy logic-leaping to keep them from collapsing entirely.

They can’t turn into Category A queer youngsters, because they don’t know how to unravel the system around them, because they’ve never had to actually make choices in their lives and live with the consequences, because they don’t have the example of how to do it. They can’t unravel their internalized shame because again, that’s hard and they don’t have their parents to take away the consequences and pain. It doesn’t come easy to them, so it may as well not come at all.

But, you ask, if Category A queer elders aren’t around to teach the kids, then how are they learning anything positive at all? Well, Category B, our university-tenured TERFs, who don’t want to change the status quo but want to just be at the top of it instead.

For a lot of kids who don’t know how to make hard choices but want to be queer, this is an extremely attractive option. But when they go online to queer spaces, a lot of them say fuck terfs, we don’t support your hate, and they go ‘yeah okay that makes sense’. They can say fuck terfs without ever actually questioning why terfs are bad. They’re Bad and Evil, just like drug addicts, just like fairytale nazis, just like the evil homophobes.

And we saw them say ‘yeah fuck terfs’ and we were like, ‘aight you got it’ and we never questioned if they actually understood us. They didn’t. They didn’t, and we didn’t do enough to fix it, because not enough of us realized the problem. So terfs got a little sneaky. They hid behind dogwhistles and easy little comments, hiding their rhetoric in queer theory that you’ll absolutely miss if you just memorize it and never actually question it and understand why that point is being made.

This goes back to America sucking, because their school system is far more focused on rote memorization over actual logic and understanding of the text. They’re engaging with queer theory the way they’ve been taught, which is memorize and don’t think, don’t question. Besides, questioning and understanding is hard. Being shown different points of view and asked what they think is not only hard but requires them to go against all of the conditioning that says to just listen and agree and never question it, which goes back to tearing the system and internalized shame down, and we’ve established they can’t do that so naturally they don’t do that.

This begets, then, the rise of exclusionary politics. They’re turning into Category B queer youngsters, because we told them ‘hey that’s a terf talking point what are you doing’ and they never questioned why. They learned you can do all sorts of things, just don’t say X, Y, or Z, because they never thought deeply about it.

The children who have grown on Web 3.0 do not want to do any heavy lifting to make things easier for themselves long-run. They want to do as little as possible and have things get better for them. There isn’t enough of us left in Category A, because Category B terfs are very good at recruiting young folks and Cat. A is overwhelming poor, dead, and easily dismissed in the system as evil and bad, so we can’t exactly convince the young folks to listen. If all of the young kids could agree to tear down the system, a lot more older folks might listen. Change always starts with the young, and there’s a reason for that.

But Republicans have figured out, if you get people fighting, they never put together a force that can actually stop you. TERFs, who want the exact same thing as Republicans but with themselves on top, are doing this to queer youth, and Cat. A elders can’t fight back because there isn’t enough of them and the odds are against them, and the young folk like me who follow their lead.

People can kinda handle gay people. It’s not so far from the acceptable normal that it’s impassable. But you want them to handle kinky people? Gay people of colour? Kinky gay people of colour? Trans people? Those are bridges too far to step across. The original idea was to get the foot in the door with marriage equality and inch our way through with racial equality, sex positivity, dismantling ableism and perisexism (forgive me if that isn’t the word for anti-intersex ‘ism), and see if we can’t patch up the system instead of inciting a civil war over this and have to tear down the system entirely.

Well, we might’ve managed that if not for AIDS being the perfect ‘Jeezus is killing all the evil gay people for being sinners’ propaganda machine. As it stands now, not a chance in hell. So long as Republicans and terfs keep everyone fighting, nobody has the power to dismantle their empire, and they stay in power.

So then, you ask me, “Lu what the fuck does that have to do with the decline of otherkinity on tumblr???” and now that you’ve got all that background knowledge, here is your answer.

Those children who want their experiences curated for them and the evil icky content they don’t like to be gone because it disgusts them and anything that disgusts them is clearly sinful problematic and should be destroyed, are what we call ‘antishippers’, or anti for short.

They like being progressive. Sort of. They learned what Republicans and terfs have honed to a fine talent: keep people fighting, hold them to a bar they have to constantly make or risk being ostracized, and harass the people who don’t play along into getting out of your sight forever. Sound familiar?

They learned of otherkinity, and particularly fictionkind, because web 3.0 means if something goes viral on one site, it doesn’t just go viral on that site, it makes it to worldwide newspapers and twitter and nobody ever, ever fucking forgets it. They realized the following: “Hey wait, if I’m this character for realsies, not only does it help me deal with the internalized shame I’ve done nothing to actually fix because that takes work, I can also tell these people who draw gross content I don’t like they’re hurting me personally, and that actually sounds credible, and I can shame them into stopping”.

If this is your first time here and that sounds sickening, it damn well should, and I am so, so sorry that any of us had to witness this, and I am more sorry I and everyone else who personally witnessed this didn’t realize what was going on and put a stop to it. I answer asks and browse the tags and clear up misinformation and it isn’t just a genuine desire to help. It’s damage control, and my own way of trying to deal with the guilt of not stopping this. I’m well aware I couldn’t have seen it coming, I was a teenager myself still learning and no one person has that much power. I still feel like I should have done more, and I’ll do what I can to fix what’s within my power to fix.

So back to the story. This all culminates around 2016 or so. Trump wins the election, and every queer person ever knows they’re fucked, and the younger generation’s only ever heard horror stories, never seen actual oppression that this could bring. We’re all scared. We all don’t know what to do. Nobody has any answers or any control over the situation.

So they lash out. They attack others for drawing things they don’t like, for challenging them in literally any way, for asking them to reconsider the vile shit they just said, for so much as defending themselves from the harassment they just got. And when challenged, they yell “But I’m a minor! A literal child! How dare you attack me, clearly you get off on this, you evil pedophile!” and they sling around every insult in the book until one sticks. Pedophile is a pretty good one, so is abuser, and sometimes zoophile works out too. Freak is great, everyone gets right pissed off about it.

The fact that Category A queer elders were called pedophiles and freaks is not a fact they know or care about. The fact that they are quickly making every fandom community super toxic is also not a fact they care about. The fact that the ‘kin community has words and terminology and they actually mean shit, and the fact that they’re spreading misinformation faster than we can keep up with, are not facts they care about.

So they come in, take our terms, make it impossible for us to find new folks. They realize our anger is easily a power trip, because we’re already made fun of, so they get off on the little power they can find and make fun of us too, and then when we get rightfully annoyed and pissed off, they can hide behind being minors.

Then tumblr implements their porn ban, because nobody’s stopping them, because it isn’t profitable to have porn on here. Considering most of the otherkin community, and most fandom communities, are full of adults who do occasionally talk about NSFW things, and the fact that they’re just banning everyone who so much as breathes wrong, this begins the start of a mass exodus, scattering already fragile communities to twitter, pillowfort, dreamwidth, and a few other places. Largely, twitter, where you can’t make a post longer than a snappy comeback and where the algorithm is literally designed to piss you off as much as possible.

So community elders have largely left, because they can’t stand the drama and the pain of what’s happened, and that’s if they didn’t get banned for being kinky furries who do talk about how their kintypes merge with their sexuality. Most community members have also left or stopped talking about being ‘kin, because they get associated with antishippers and toxicity and it’s just not worth it. Those of us who are left get drowned out by misinformation and trolls and wishkin and antishippers who appropriate our terminology because it supports them getting a power trip, and whenever we argue, we get called pedophiles and freaks and worse.

And now there isn’t much left. I hope we get to find a better place. Othercon was a good place to talk about it, I did a whole panel (it’s on Youtube!) about what we want to do about it. But I don’t really have any answers.

But to sum it all up... America’s political climate ultimately culminated in destroying queer spaces, and we survived, and then people who wanted to destroy smaller communities to get on top showed up and we were all but defenseless against something we had never, ever dealt with before on this scale.

One of my twitter mutuals mentioned how kinning and otherkin are now completely separate communities. It’s really the best I can do to keep hoping that continues, until nobody realizes the words are at all connected to each other. It’s the best anyone can hope for, now. I hate it. I hate every part of this. But maybe we can salvage what’s left.

#luteia laments #otherkin #fictionkin #alth #alterhuman #asks #anonymous #long post //#discussions #on community history #on politics #on public relations #commentors feel free to add your own thoughts!#Anonymous

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peachyteez · 3 years

Text

angel nurse ≫ DAY THREE, LEAP OF FAITH

this fox hybrid was brought into the recovery facility covered in scratches, whip marks, blood, and every other injury you could imagine. due to this, yeosang has trouble trusting humans, as he was afraid they could just hurt him all over again. until he meets jiyu, his “angel nurse”.

PART OF THE HEAVEN SERIES.

✧ taglist: @defsoul15, @jaeminpeachy, @joongiebug, @sunsethw4, @t-tbinnie, @chanyeolol, @danibookmarks, @hello-its-ya-boi, @murralyn, @alienmashup, @panini, @moon8894, @koasworld, @taetae123094, @luv3rxcha, @treasure-hwa, @etherealbyeol, @hwaseongzzz, @lovely-sanie, @orbitiiny, @pirate-of-the-dark-seas, @babydolljo, @ms-starlight, @everrrlasting, @bls-luv-me, @atzgiggle, @arohabyeol, @rainbowmagicpixecorn, @soverystupid, @ayetothezee, @kingalls00, @sanstreasure0305, @sparklingmallow, @peachseok

✧ notes: seojin is a made up character! refer to the following to maybe play a little game? ⬇️

if you can guess who i visualized seojin as, there may or may not be a little surprise :)

hint: i visualized him off a webtoon character!

hint: said webtoon has to do with vampires

there’s also a small description of him in the story 👀

back。| next。

yeonjun pinched his nose bridge as he tried processing his dear best friend’s words. “so how do you plan on helping him recover if...you’re not going to see him in person?” he asked.

jiyu bit the inside of her cheek in thought. “i haven’t figured that out yet. but i don’t think it’s a good idea for him to be exposed to human interactions yet. he seemed so closed off and unwilling to cooperate when i came in yesterday.” she said.

“but do you really think he’ll warm up to people when he’s in there by himself?” yeonjun asked. “it’s not like he'll magically—”

“i know, i know,” she groaned before running her hand through her hair. for once, she was stumped on what to do. she didn’t want to force him to break his walls down, but she didn’t want to leave him alone for too long.

“maybe i can ask taehyun to talk to him?” yeonjun offered. “he told me they’re friends.”

she shook her head. “i don’t want to make it look like we’re using his friends to have him cooperate. if anything, it could push him further into his shell.”

yeonjun quietly chuckled before ruffling her hair. “well, seojin checked up on him earlier and he looked to be okay. physically, he looked to be recovering from his injuries, but he looked to have a lot on his mind, according to seojin anyways.”

seojin was one of the hybrid assistants that the facility employs to help patients settle into their new, temporary living space. jiyu remembered him; he used to be one of her former patients before getting adopted by a new family. after settling in, he decided to return to the facility as a caretaker assistant. coincidentally, he was assigned as jiu’s hybrid assistant. small world.

“is that so...?” she mused. “where’s seojin? i might ask him a few questions.”

“last time i saw him, he was in the break room.”

making a beeline for the break room, she saw the familiar tabby hybrid sitting and sipping at his milk carton.

“oh? miss jiyu! it’s been a while,” seojin greeted as jiyu took the seat across from him. jiyu did a double take at how much he had changed compared to the last time she saw him. he was no longer a small, frail tabby cat hybrid; he now looked to be thriving, buff might she even add. he even dyed his hair red, although a bit darker than mingi’s.

“why does no one ever listen to me when i tell them to drop the ‘miss’?” she playfully groaned.

“sorry, force of habit,” he chuckled, referring to his time spent under her care. “but what’s up?”

“you checked on the new fox hybrid this morning, right?” she asked.

one of seojin’s ears twitched as he tilted his head. “the grumpy one? then yes, i did.”

“you say that as if you weren’t grumpy yourself,” she wryly commented with a chuckle. “i had enough scratches to tell.”

he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “anyways, yeah, i checked up on him this morning. poor guy seemed lost in his own thoughts. he spent most of the time looking out the window with this distant look in his eyes,” he recounted. “i managed to get his name, though. it’s yeosang.”

“yeosang...” she said to herself. the name sounded so smooth as it rolled off her tongue. “is he...better?”

seojin pursed his lips. “i asked him if he was willing to let people here help him, but he seemed to shut down at the thought. but i gave him a small pep talk, too so there's maybe a slim chance that his mind cracked a little.”

she thoughtfully nodded. “i can understand here he comes from though. being abandoned by people you love into a harsher reality is never fun. nor will it be easy to forgive,” she mindlessly commented. “but i need to check up on him sooner or later, i can’t just leave him in there by himself for who knows how long. i just...don’t know how to approach him,” she said, wracking her brain for any new ideas.

“maybe you just need to show him like how you did with that tiger hybrid. hongjoong, i believe was his name? during my visits with him, i saw how he changed after each day,” he said. “coming from a hybrid that was treated here, we all come in a little skeptic and hesitant about accepting help from humans, when they were sometimes the root of our problems and why we ended up here in the first place. but you all never gave up on us, and still treated us with care and kindness. it may be part of your job description but we all still appreciate your efforts since we never received much prior to being here.”

jiyu was touched by his words, and also found solace in them. she was glad that majority of the hybrids found comfort and love here. after all, that was the primary goal of their recovery process: to accept a helping hand from their caretakers, form a trust connection with them. “...i’m glad to hear that.”

a small grin was plastered on seojin’s face. “what i’m trying to say is, yeosang might be a little bit more closed off than the others, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t yearn for love and kindness like the rest of us.” finishing his milk, he stood up to throw the carton away and leave. he bent down and booped his head with her’s, giving it the smallest of nuzzles. “i’m sure your hybrids won’t appreciate my scent on you, so take this small nuzzle and good luck!” he childishly grinned before leaving the break room.

watching the tabby cat hybrid leave the room, she chuckled as she watched his tail sway back and forth before she was left alone with her own thoughts. “in a way, i guess he's right...she mused to herself. “alright then, i’ll pay him a visit tomorrow,” she promised herself, the plants by the windowsill being her only witnesses. with the promise, she left the break room to return to the office. as she passed by yeosang’s room, she resolved her promise again.

in his room, yeosang was curled up in the hospital bed as he replayed the conversation he had with seojin a few hours before.

“will you be willing to allow the people here to help?” seojin asked as he joined yeosang by the window, looking out at the different hybrids wandering around with their caretakers.

yeosang was silent. he still didn’t know if he could take another potential betrayal. how would he end up? where would he end up? looking back down outside at the various hybrids, although he would never admit, he was envious of them. envious at how they were able to open up so easily to others, envious at how they were able to smile freely without a care in the world, and envious at how they managed to form a connection with other humans.

seojin observed yeosang’s expressions and slightly smiled before returning his gaze back outside. “i was here once, too,” he admitted, earning yeosang’s attention. “and i had jiyu as my caretaker, too.”

yeosang remembered the female that came in the previous day and inwardly cringed at how awkward they regarded each other.

“and i was like you, too. got hurt pretty bad by my old owners, not to mention other people when i became a stray. and not to mention i gave jiyu enough scratches for a lifetime,” he chuckled. “but she never gave up on me. she always came back at the same time, whether it be for medical checkups or just for a casual hello—”

“why are you telling me this?” yeosang quietly interrupted before feeling a sharp pain on his side. grimacing, he clutched onto his side and slightly bent over from the unexpected pain.

seojin immediately helped him to sit back on the bed before checking his wound and changing the bandages. while preparing the cotton ball and tweezers for the ointment, seojin gently smiled. “i told you because i thought maybe it’d help you relax a little bit while being here,” he said before spreading ointment on yeosang’s gash. “maybe if you heard some personal experiences, maybe i can help you open up a little.”

after changing yeosang’s bandages, seojin started preparing to leave. “maybe give jiyu a chance. i can guarantee she won’t harm you. actually, she’s more prone to accidentally hurting herself rather than others,” he laughed. “see you tomorrow!”

and with that, the door slid shut behind seojin.

yeosang sighed, staring up at the rectangles on the ceiling. it was a constant game of tug-of-war in his mind. ‘yes, maybe she’s different and you can open up’ but also, ‘no, you’ve been through too much to risk it all again’. it wasn’t like he wasn’t taking seojin’s personal experience into consideration, it was just...opening up again was hard.

how did others do it? how did they find it in themselves to be open and friendly with humans again, when humans were the reasons majority of them were there in the first place?

either they have guts of steel, or i’m just a coward. he thought. but the scars and marks on his body were constant reminders of his old life. a life full of pain, anger, distress. fear. he never wanted to feel as much fear as he did ever again.

but he realized that he would never be able to escape his bubble of uncertainity if he just wallowed in it. if he continued to stay how he was, he would never break the cycle of doubts.

taking a deep breath at his revelation, he closed his eyes and steeled his nerves, making a promise to himself.

i’ll take the leap of faith. whether or not it turns out well, that’ll be fate's decision.

#9th member of ateez #ateez imagines #ateez scenarios #kang yeosang #kang yeosang imagines #yeosang imagines #yeosang scenarios #ateez yeosang #hybrid au #kpop hybrid au #hybrid!ateez #ateez hybrid #ateez au

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goldenkamuyhunting · 3 years

Text

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 276 “Fried shrimp”

New chapter before the break in which we get to meet…

…yeah, Hanazawa’s sacrificial sheep, Yuusaku. The poor guy seems to believe he shares his father’s beliefs on how he (Yuusaku, sadly not Hanazawa) has to die for the well being of the country… as if he were the antichrist or something like that.

So we’ve left Sugimoto showing, in his hurry to eat the fried shrimp, that he has not the slightest idea how to use western cutlery, realizing he has messed up and thinking, in panic, he’ll have to signal to Kikuta already about his failure.

I mean, Sugimoto, if you’ve no idea what to do just let Kaeko start eating first and then copy what she does.

Anyway, luckily for him, Kaeko thinks she’s making a joke and Sugimoto takes advantage of it, saying he did it to lighten the tension.

She then observes he’s still wearing his cap, asking him if that too is due to him being tense. Sugimoto removes it, then claims at the academy they eat in Japanese style so he’s not used to this.

Kaeko notices there’s a difference between him and the photo but she’s pleased by his look anyway and continues not to suspect anything.

Anyway Kaeko gives him tips on how to eat the food, which, as usual, pleases Sugimoto greatly. He asks her if she comes there often and it turns out she does, as well as visiting other expensive places. Sugimoto thinks at how he, instead, after his father died, was in such a poor situation he resorted to steal the food that was given to cats.

We get a one page image with Sugimoto, in his dark uniform seated in this white and luxurious place, as if he were a dark spot clearly out of place in all that white luxury, his gaze downcast as he looks at the food in front of himself and is forced to take conscience of the huge divide between his world and Kaeko’s.

Later he’s with Kikuta again and claims since he kept silent, he should have felt like a boring guy, which should have displeased Kaeko. Kikuta is predictably happy and tells him since marriage interviews involve more than one meeting he’ll be counting on Sugimoto again.

Sadly for him, Sugimoto is seriously mistaken in regard to Kaeko’s reaction to his behaviour.

In fact Kaeko is delighted with ‘Yuusaku’, thinking he was just a quiet man, who kept on nodding at whatever she said without disagreeing with her and who had an awesome look.

In a way this is interesting because it’s clear Sugimoto thinks to impress a girl he should be vivacious and talkative, strong and assuring, when this isn’t necessarily what girls search in men.

Toraji never beat Sugimoto and was even prone to cry and yet Umeko loved him because he would do everything for her.

Tanigaki is quiet and grumpy as a bear yet Inkarmat ended up liking him because he was actually gentle with her.

Shinpei is a coward, yet Chiyoko wants him because, again, he is willing to leave his life for her.

Girls aren’t all made with the same mould, Sugi, they are different one from the other. Not everyone likes the loud type and it’s kind of relevant how, ultimately, the girl in GK ultimately chose men who just cared for them.

Kaeko assumed Yuusaku did her the kindness to let her speak without him disagreeing, that he tried to make her relax with a joke, in short that he was kind with her, though clearly Sugimoto’s look also played a part in this.

Anyway Kaeko’s maid warns her about how she cares too much for the look of men, which is why she lost many chances to get married so yes, Sugimoto’s good looks played a huge part in why Kaeko liked him.

Back to Sugimoto he complains he can’t believe how someone would marry someone else only after meeting them a few times. Kikuta explains him that’s how it works among the upper classes and Sugimoto ends up on talking with him about Toraji and Umeko… and this is relevant because instead he kept for a really long time the matter for himself when with Asirpa and Shiraishi and was reluctant to talk about it.

Sugimoto concludes his tale pointing out how Toraji told him he was still Umeko’s number one yet she married Toraji so he wonders if this sort of things happen as well.

Kikuta gets angry, asking him if he’s wondering if Umeko is happy after marrying Toraji and what does he understand about women.

Kikuta views his words as arrogance, as Sugimoto thinking he’ll always stay number one in her heart, she always pining after him and never being happy with Toraji… and yes, this is what in a way Sugimoto hopes, because he’s unhappy without her and thinks it’s not fair how Toraji took her from him and a side of him probably would like to hope she’ll jump Toraji for him in the future.

Kikuta points out how this is rude toward Umeko and Toraji, how women are capable to move on from a failed love story and start another, without remaining dependant on the man they had lost and how Sugimoto should apologize to them both.

Sugimoto doesn’t get why Kikuta got so mad and wonders if he’s just being pathetic because he can’t let go of things. Kikuta’s mood changes radically and he assures him it’s absolutely normal for men to be pitiful creatures who can’t let go of the woman they love.

I wonder if part of Kikuta’s reaction is due to him living an experience similar to Sugimoto. Did he too pined for a woman who ultimately chose another? Or was he the replacement for such a man?

Anyway Kikuta tells him that, as a man, he should understand Toraji and leave the whole thing behind himself, firmly and completely. So hum, yes, I tend to think Kikuta lived through something similar as Sugimoto.

Anyway Kikuta’s support brightens Sugimoto up, who smiles and agrees to do so.

I think Sugimoto is starting to see Kikuta as some sort of father figure, who feeds him and scolds him and accept him. He’s a replacement family in a way.

I wonder if it’s due to his discussion with Kikuta that Sugimoto became reserved on the topic, for fear to look pathetic… or it’s just due to Toraji’s death. He feels guilty because deep inside himself he had hoped for Toraji to get out of the picture and when it happened in such way, it broke him.

Anyway Kaeko’s maid is giving her tips on how to seduce ‘Yuusaku’, get him into the right mood and then wrap her legs around him. Kaeko is determined to get ‘Yuusaku’ and her maid is very encouraging about this.

Kaeko comments that since men who chose brides from her school do so for her pedigree and looks, there’s no problems if she does the same. ‘Yuusaku’ is good looking and of a high social ranking so he’s perfect for her.

As she thinks so she realizes her cousin might chide her for focusing too much on appearance but he also picked up a country girl with curly unruly hair merely due to her look and now he seems to be really happy… and so now we know what had happened to Igogusa/Harumi Chiyo.

She really left her hometown because she married the son of a manager from Mitsubishi, which is to say Kaeko’s cousin. Well, in a way it’s a relief. I’m glad to know she’s alive and I hope she’s also happy.

In short Tsurumi was honest the first time, when he said how a man from Mitsubishi wanted her as a wife for his son, and Tsurumi only tricked Tsukishima with the story Tsukishima was told in Mudken, in which he made Tsukishima first believe she was killed by his father, then that Tsurumi merely made things look like that, so he could make Tsukishima feel indebted to him even more.

Also this means Tsukishima really killed his father over nothing, as the man might have many faults but didn’t cause Chiyo to die.

Kikuta and Sugimoto are out eating in a poor restaurant, Sugimoto thinking at the fried shrimps and feeling angry and jealous at how upper class people can eat them. Kikuta reminds him that’s how it works in Tokyo.

Sugimoto then wonders if Yuusaku wants to be a flag bearer. Kikuta says his job is only to protect Yuusaku’s virginity and have the lady rejected as gently as possible. Sugimoto insists Yuusaku might want to eat fried shrimp instead than joining the army. I mean Sugi, in the past chapter you considered joining the army so as to get food… I get your situation is desperate because you were literally starving but food serves little when you’re sent out to fight and die in a war… and you realize this only when you think Yuusaku, instead than dying in a war, might want to eat fried shrimp?

Kikuta insists Sugimoto shouldn’t worry about Yuusaku… but those are wasted words.

Sugimoto dresses up in Kikuta’s uniform and goes to meet Yuusaku, telling him he’d heard his father wants him to become the regimental flag bearer. Yuusaku is confused but points out this will be only if he gets chosen for the position…

...which makes him pretty naïve because of course his father can hugely influence the choice if he’s already set on having him in that role.

Have I mentioned in this ramblings how Hanazawa senior is a jerk? No, I think I haven’t yet so here it is, Hanazawa senior is a jerk.

Sugimoto asks him why his father would want such a role for him, wondering if it’s maybe Hanazawa thinks there won’t be a war.

Yuusaku ‘reassures’ him it’s quite the opposite, his father believes there will be a war soon and what a better chance than to make use of his son for his honour by putting him in the riskiest position with the highest death rate? Because what’s a son if not cannon fodder meant to be used for his father’s honour?

Hanazawa is a disgusting person.

Sugimoto asks Yuusaku if he wants to be a flag bearer and Yuusaku… circles around the subject, saying if he’s chosen he’ll feel pride. Yeah, because who doesn’t want to die as a sacrificial lamb for his father’s social standing?

Sugimoto asks him if he’s merely trying to met his father’s expectations.

Yuusaku sweats and denies it, asking him what does he wants.

Sugimoto says he just wants to know how he feels.

Yuusaku explains Hanazawa (at this point, as Alessandro Manzoni would have said “I have not the hear to call that guy ‘his father’”) told him about how his life can be used for the good of Japan so Yuusaku believes using his life for the good of Japan is the right thing to do.

Dear God, this man really viewed his sons as pawns to use and dispose when they weren’t useful anymore. Is he ever human? Or there’s only duty and honour running in his veins?

Sugimoto, who has no idea Yuusaku is the kind who’s stubborn as hell and would have refused anyway, thinks Yuusaku’s problem is merely he thinks he only have one path open, but wouldn’t think so if he were to know there’s another path, one they’re hiding from him.

No Sugimoto, the problem is actually Hanazawa completely brainwashed his son, to turn him into a noble and righteous icon without even knowing well why except that daddy thinks that’s the best way for him to live his life.

Hanazawa is a jerk.

On a sidenote I hate this situation even more exactly because Yuusaku is basically brainwashed. Each time he has to explains his position he uses as argument what his father told him, yes, he says he came to believe it too, but it doesn’t seem like it’s something he came up on his own, or something he gave deep thought about, but something that was merely put into his mind by all of Hanazawa’s talk.

Maybe it’s just me but Yuusaku always feel more like not thinking for himself but merely reporting what his father told him to think. Whatever, let’s go on.

Meanwhile Yuusaku proves he can be observant, as he notices Sugimoto is wearing Kikuta’s cap due to it being stitched in a little area due to a hole made when Kikuta has been nearly killed by an officer candidate during shooting training. Sugimoto tries to cover up the thing by claiming he got the hat from Kikuta, but this is even more suspicious as that cap belonged to Kikuta’s little brother who died of illness during the war with China.

This is probably why Kikuta is adopting young men… but at the same time, although he should know Yuusaku since Yuusaku knows him so well, he has little to no sympathy for his fate and will show complete disinterest for Koito as well. I do wonder if Kikuta has issues with people from the upper classes.

He trains officer candidates but this might have exposed him even more to the differences between classes and made him think low of them. We’ll see.

On another side I wonder if Yuusaku will do something out of this information there’s someone wearing Kikuta’s cap and who’s asking him if he’s okay with being the flag bearer.

This little exchange proved Yuusaku can be observant and connect the dots so now if only he were to think a little more he could prove himself to be more than just his father’s puppet.

Anyway as Sugimoto walks for the city, holding his cap in his hands he gets careless and slams against someone… this someone turns out to be the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse…

...pardon, I mean Tsukishima, who’s with Usami, Ogata and Tsurumi (please notice how the light shines on them as if they were some sort of saviours or angels from above), the four of them all enjoying a trip to Tokyo prior to the start of the apocalypse… Tsurumi’s plan, I mean… because really, it would feel to absurd to have those 4 in Tokyo just for a touristic trip, so they had to be there to pursue Tsurumi’s plan.

Okay, I know, maybe the apocalypse was safer than what Tsurumi’s plan will turn out.

Anyway, some random observations on them.

From the 27 on Ogata and Usami’s shoulders we can see they’re already in the 7th division.

From the stripe on Ogata’s sleeve we can see he’s a second class superior private, meaning he has just enrolled in the army since, second class privates should have been automatically promoted to first class after 6 months (at least from the info I have who’re dated past GK so it might be things were different that early on). It’s 1901 so he should be 19. It means he enrolled in the army earlier as although one could join the army from when he was 17, the norm was they would be examined for fitness at 20 and, if judged fit then they would join the army for a 2 years period of training.

Considering Noda said Ogata studied Russian with Tsukishima and Tsukishima went in Russia with Tsurumi much earlier on, it seems that Tsurumi recruited Ogata prior to him being able to enrol in the army.

Usami should be a year older, so he’s still pretty young. Did they join together or Usami also joined much earlier than planned? We’ll see.

Anyway the 4 of them are having a trip to Tokyo… and I can’t help but think if Tsurumi went in Tokyo with 3 of his soldiers whom he has twisted with ‘love’, things are likely going to turn troublesome.

LOL, now let’s only hope Sugimoto won’t introduce himself as Yuusaku… though if he were it could be that Tsurumi would spot the lie immediately and that’s why Ogata knows passing for an officer is a dumb plan.

On another side... this might be the moment in which Yuusaku and Ogata first met. I’m honestly scared.

Oh well, we’ll see.

Overall this chapter provided us some info and was nice but not that emotionally compelling, it merely seemed to plan to set up things for the next developments.

Anyway next week there’s a break so we’re in for a long wait.

#Golden Kamuy #Sugimoto Saichi #Kaneko Kaeko #Yamamura Hamako #Kikuta Mokutarou #Hanazawa Yuusaku #Hanazawa Koujirou #Ogata Hyakunosuke #Tsurumi Tokushirou #Usami Tokishige #Tsukishima Hajime #Kenmochi Umeko #Kenmochi Toraji #Golden Kamuy Ramblings and Theories

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ladykissingfish · 3 years

Text

Under the Mistletoe with the Akatsuki // Part Eight // Kakuzu

What is with this group and wasting their free time doing such inane and pointless things? The old guy can think of at least 50 other activities (the majority of which involve making money) that everyone could be doing, rather than lining up to kiss each under a little green plant. When it’s his turn in the spotlight, he tries as hard as he can to back out of his “obligation” ... but Pein (and Kakuzu’s own persistent partner, Hidan) insist that Kakuzu participate. Kakuzu sighs and nods; he’s smart enough to know when he’s been defeated. However, Pein should know that Kakuzu will be adding a little extra money to his paycheck that week, for “hazard pay”.

Pein

Nagato was more interested in Kakuzu joining his group than any of the others. Immortality, money-sense, expertise and wisdom ... this is the man who survived the wars of the past. This is the man who survived the mighty Hashirama, God of all shinobi. Still, Nagato is no fool; he realizes that Kakuzu’s number one priority in life isn’t the Akatsuki, but money. Kakuzu would probably (and had likely thought about) betray them all in exchange for a tidy sum. So Nagato (as Pein) works to keep Kakuzu content enough to remain loyal, including making him the group’s treasurer and giving him complete control over everyone’s finances. And Kakuzu remains highly useful; strategizing, completing missions twice as fast (and ten times as efficient) as his younger teammates. Pein approaches Kakuzu and gives him a light kiss on the forehead, before returning to his room. He reminds himself to speak to Kakuzu later; he has some ideas about weapons he’d like to procure for the group, and needs to see if it would be financially feasible to do so.

Konan

Kakuzu genuinely likes Konan, and appreciates her company. Many men of Kakuzu’s generation were raised on the belief system that women were solely meant to be wives, child-bearers, and home-makers; to call a female a ninja was deemed unthinkable. But Kakuzu was a rarity in that he never saw this as being the case; man or woman, one’s inner strength was all that mattered in regards to being a shinobi. He’s spoken with Konan at length about her childhood, and the trauma she endured, and he knows that this little blue-haired lady is a sight tougher than a LOT of people (and Kakuzu’s met quite a few in his long life). Konan walks up to him and he smiles; it’s rare for Kakuzu to smile, but Konan brings it out of him. “Good evening, Kakuzu-san. I think it’s my turn.” He nods, and slips off his mask so that his lips are exposed. He leans down and very, very gently kisses her cheek. Her blushing skin is soft and her smile is beautiful as she thanks him and steps away, to let the next person go.

Kisame

Nobody knows this about Kakuzu (and he fears he would be mocked if they did), but the old guy puts a lot of emphasis on the idea of exercise. Five hearts is a lot of responsibility, and staying healthy is how Kakuzu intends to keep living forever. So every night, when the others are asleep and after he’s done with his reading, he’ll spend some time in his room exercising. One night Kisame passed by his open door and saw him using a pair of heavy books as make-shift weights. The next evening Kisame came to Kakuzu’s room with a set of real barbells , which he casually gave to Kakuzu with the admonition not to overdo it. Kakuzu greatly appreciated the gesture (and the unspoken support), and the two have been good friends ever since. But ... a kiss between them would just be too strange, so Kisame comes up with a better option: an arm-wrestling match, Kisame grabs the kitchen table and two chairs and sets them up under the mistletoe. Of course the rest of the Akatsuki gathers to watch, hooting and hollering and placing bets on who will win. Kisame and Kakuzu are both fairly evenly matched, so that challenge goes on for a while. Finally, with a final grunt of exertion, Kakuzu is able to slam Kisame’s hand into the table. Everyone claps, and Kisame laughs and tells Kakuzu that he’s “one tough son of a bitch”; high compliment coming from a man who was half-shark.

Itachi

Out of all the members of the Akatsuki, Itachi was by far the least problematic of the younger ones. Quiet, thoughtful, quick and efficient in completing missions. And polite; always forthcoming with “please” and “thank you”, and never failing to use honorifics with the others, even though some of them (ie Deidara and Hidan) don’t show him that same respect back. One time Kakuzu had caught a cold that stubbornly hung on for several days. Itachi came to his room every day with a cup of congestion-easing tea, something that Kakuzu didn’t ask for, but greatly appreciated nonetheless. Itachi comes up to him and nods. “Kakuzu-san.” “Itachi-san.” Itachi leans up and gives him a light kiss to the cheek, and Kakuzu is struck by a particular urge — to hug this kid. Something about him, perhaps everything about him, seems like a cry for parental love and affection. Kakuzu resists this odd impulse, but Itachi seems to sense that it’s something he wanted, because he leans over again and very briefly puts his arms around the older man. “Thank you,” he murmurs, before walking away. Kakuzu watches him go, slightly shaking his head.

Tobi

Tobi gives Kakuzu an uneasy feeling deep within his heart(s). Running around, speaking loudly, eating nothing but candy and sweets, acting like a complete fool — it’s an act. Kakuzu has never been more convinced of anything in his life. The only question is, why is Tobi putting on this act? To deceive them all into a false sense of security, before striking? Kakuzu has hunted bounties a good deal of his life, and a lot of the more difficult ones to catch have acted EXACTLY the way Tobi does, in order to throw off potential bounty hunters. Kakuzu learned to see through them, the same way he sees through Tobi. But to tip one’s hand and give away what you know is unthinkable in the chase and capture game, so Kakuzu never lets on what he actually believes. “Oh boy Kakuzu-san; does Tobi get a kissy now?!” Kakuzu nods, and Tobi slides his mask halfway off (Kakuzu notes the lines on the side of his face; accident, most likely. Possibly a disfiguring one) and the strange glint of his eye. Before Tobi can act, Kakuzu puts a hand on his face and kisses his forehead. “There. Now go.” Tobi slides the mask back on and hurries away with his usual chatter and giggling, and Kakuzu reminds himself to loom through the bingo book later for bounties with visible scarring on the left side of the face.

Zetsu

Five hearts means more blood needed to sustain said hearts. More blood means a stronger scent. A stronger scent means ... Kakuzu smells delicious to someone like Zetsu. Zetsu approaches him and looks around quickly; the two are alone. His brain runs through every possible scenario in which he could successfully kill and eat Kakuzu. He’s victorious in a few ... but most end with him mutilated by the man’s tentacles, and having to face the wrath of Pein on top of everything else. So he simply sighs, flicks out his tongue to taste the saltiness of Kakuzu’s cheek, and walks away again. Just that one taste was almost enough to make zetsu throw restraint to the wind and eat his fill, so he leaves before he can do anything he’ll regret. Kakuzu wipes off his cheek in mild disgust ... in a group full of freaks, Zetsu certainly seemed to take the cake.

Deidara

Kakuzu still remembers the day they brought this kid into the group. And that’s exactly what he was; a kid. Barely 15 years old, with a powerful “gift”, and full of anger at a village he felt betrayed him in not trying to understand his unique sense of ‘art’. Fast forward several years later and Deidara had changed, and most of that change was the better. Kakuzu could only surmise that the kid matured due to the constant council and guidance of his older and wiser partner Sasori; Kakuzu feels mildly jealous that Sasori was able to reign some measure of improvement over HIS young partner, but Kakuzu couldn’t do a thing with Hidan. Still, though, even Sasori hadn’t been able to completely tame the kid, as evidenced by Deidara managing to get BOTH arms blown off in a tussle with some Konoha nin. Kakuzu had been tasked with sewing his new arms back on, but to the kids credit, despite his painful the procedure had been, he didn’t utter a sound. Had even thanked Kakuzu, twice, afterwards. Deidara walks up to him and looks almost shy; 19 years old now and still with the face of a child. Kakuzu leans down and kisses the kid’s forehead, again noting his soft and smooth — and LONG — his hair was. It sways as Deidara walks away, and Kakuzu wonders how much he could get for those luscious locks, from the right buyer.

Sasori

Respect. Out of all the words that Kakuzu could use to describe how he felt about Sasori, Respect was at the top of the list. And the funny thing was, Kakuzu hadn’t even met the REAL Sasori until almost a year of being in the Akatsuki. The two had been sent on a mission, and at night, near the campfire, a soft metal sound made Kakuzu turn his head. It was a small, slender redhead, emerging from the being that Kakuzu had THOUGHT was a real person. The two had looked at each other for a while, and then started a game of cards as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As time went on, the two became closer. They both shared an interest in/knowledge of medical jutsu and procedures, and would often come to one another with questions or with articles on different medicines. Kakuzu nods at him as he walks up, and Sasori does the same. He thinks about it, bends down and kisses Sasori’s left cheek, and Sasori smiles at him, bidding him a quiet Good Evening before going back to his room.

Hidan

“Hey old fuck; you’ve been dying to get your hands on my sexy body all day, haven’t ya, pervert?” Kakuzu would roll his eyes at Hidan’s comment, but at this point, he’s ridiculously used to the things his partner says and does. As he looks at Hidan’s face, he wonders, and not for the first time, whether this is a punishment of sorts. Gaining five hearts and creating a kind of immortality only came for Kakuzu at the end of a long and bloody road, one paved with the unwilling sacrifices of other people. Was it Fate, that the Gods had put THIS man, this loud, overbearing, foul-mouthed heathen, into his path? And as the one person who just might be immortal, too? Hidan often joked about “When all these other assholes bite the big one, me and you might as well get married, bastard.” But what in the world was he saying? Surely he was joking; why would someone as young and attractive as Hidan want to be with Kakuzu? Kakuzu who was heaven knows how many times Hidan’s age, and — “So we gonna slobber each other or what?” “You’ve got a big mouth, brat. Learn to shut up once in a while.” “MAKE me shut up, fuck-face.” So Kakuzu grabs Hidan around the waist, tilts him back, and sinks into his lips. Kakuzu’s mouth is rough and scarred but Hidan’s is smooth and soft, and the contrast creates a dizzying effect for both men. Hidan grasps Kakuzu’s shoulders tighter, leaving slight nail-prints in Kakuzu’s flesh. Their lips are touching but in this moment it feels like everything is touching, even their very souls (if either of them still had one, that is). When Kakuzu finally breaks the kiss and pulls Hidan back up, the white-haired immortal seems fairly disorientated ... but that doesn’t stop his mouth. “You’re an even bigger pervert than I thought, old fuck. Who the hell said you could stick your tongue in my mouth?? And why —” Kakuzu suddenly reaches out and grabs Hidan’s face with both hands, this time pulling him forward into a very soft, closed-mouth kiss. “Better?” Instead of a smartass answer, Hidan simply nods; and now he’s smiling as he walks away. If he were to turn around at any point, he’d surely gasp; because Kakuzu’s smile was even bigger than Hidan’s own. “Stupid kid,” Kakuzu mutters to himself, still smiling as he makes his way back to his room.

#the akatsuki #under the mistletoe #kissing #kakuzu #hidan #konan #pein #tobi #deidara #sasori #kisame #itachi uchiha #zetsu

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autisticcassandracain · 3 years

Text

it’s nearly 3:30 AM and I have an appointment tomorrow but instead of sleeping I’m busy feeling annoyed about Jason and I feel like I gotta get this out of my system before going to bed so. I feel like Jason would be an infinitely more interesting character if, instead of challenging Batman on his no kill rule, he challenged Bruce on the existence of the Batman to begin with.

What I mean is this: it’s not a particularly novel concept to challenge Batman on the no kill rule. Like, at all. Everyone and their mom has done it, with varying levels of complexity and success. Jason’s moral system isn’t fresh or unique by any stretch of the imagination. The only thing that sets Jason apart from all the other villains/anti-heroes who have challenged Batman on the no kill rule over the years is that Jason is Bruce’s adopted son, and that Jason has actually come back from the dead, so he offers a unique perspective as the victim telling Batman his methods aren’t good enough. Which isn’t terrible, I suppose, but I still have... issues with it.

I’m not a Jason buff by any means, and I haven’t re-read a lot of the comics related to him in a few years, so take my analysis on him with a grain of salt obviously, but it’s always bothered me that Jason is so willing to kill not just top criminals and supervillains, but also the average mook, if they get in his way. Jason’s poor background is often pointed to as a reason for why he has the moral system he does, and it’s always fallen flat for me, since Jason should know better than to kill the average mook precisely because he was poor. Likewise, he should know better than to think killing criminals, even the ones that deserve it, will actually solve anything in the long run.

The cause of the majority of crime is socio-economic inequality. People often turn to crime because they are poor and have very little other options. The illegal drug trade also exists due to socio-economic inequality. Jason, having been poor himself, and having had a criminal as a father and an addict as a mother, should know this. So why does he think shooting drug lords and their mooks is going to solve anything? Even if he manages to control the whole drug trade and has killed everyone else, he might be able to make things a little saver, but it’s not a long-term solution by any means. It doesn’t address the root cause of why crime flourishes in Gotham.

The criticism most often labelled at Batman out-of-universe is ‘Bruce Wayne could do a lot more if he used his money to fix the socio-economic inequality than he ever could as Batman’, which is a criticism I find unfair for a variety of reasons (I think it makes more sense to criticize the trend of making rich people superheroes than to single out one particular superhero for falling into this trend), but nevertheless, it’s not wrong. Bruce Wayne has long been established as a philanthropist in comics, but it’s relatively rare for a comic to really delve into the ways he materially helps people as Bruce Wayne, not Batman. And of course, running a company like he does means that he will inevitably fuck over some group of people, which as also been shown in comics. Charity by millionaires is, in no way, going to fix socio-economic inequality in the long term, but Batman needs to maintain his fortune in order to be able to continue his operations as Batman efficiently.

I think Jason could’ve been a way more interesting character if that was the angle with which he challenged Bruce. A Jason who, after dying a violent death, comes back to see that absolutely nothing has changed; Batman is still there, Robin is still there, the Joker is still there, nobody stays in jail due to the inherent corruption in the system, and Gotham is as poor as ever. And he becomes disillusioned with superheroism, doubting that it could ever do any material good at all. So he goes the other way, and tries to fight crime by establishing grassroots initiatives and activist communities to fight socio-economic inequality.

And when Bruce inevitably finds out he’s alive, Jason challenges him on the effectiveness of Batman, pointing out that despite his best efforts, he’s managed to make no headway at all in his war for crime; if anything, you could argue he’s made it worse, both in that Batman attracts weirdo supervillains like the Joker, and in that Wayne Enterprises as a gigantic corporation will, inevitably, fuck people over in some, way, shape, or form.

Like idk could just be me but while it’d probably be less exciting in that it involves less punching, I think a Jason who challenges the very idea of superheroism as an effective tool to fight crime and challenges Bruce’s morality as a millionaire is infinitely more interesting than Jason as yet another villain who thinks Batman’s no kill rule is ineffective.

#my posts #it's also maintain the rich vs poor angle but in a way that doesn't make jason look like a gigantic shithead #bc i DO know poor ppl who think criminals deserve to die and they're all shitheads. every last one of them.#i don't. want this to end in the tags #but i need to tag this for my own administration #hnnnnnnnnnnnnng #ok here goes #jason todd #bruce wayne #infodumping #i feel like this post is either going to get 0-2 notes #OR i just swung my bat into a hornet's nest and I'm going to get a lot of replies to this I don't want to read

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scxrlettwxtches · 4 years

Text

[3:30p.m.] kiss in vehicle + hurt feelings | hwang hyunjin

warnings: mentions of break up, heavy angst

requested: yes!

a/n: why do y’all always make me write such sad things about hyunjin. first it was the bet and now this x_x anyways, i really hope you enjoy, love! this fic was highkey inspired by skz “ex,” which i’ve had on repeat these last few days hehe

You were walking out of your last class of the day, excited to go back to your apartment and finish up your laundry, make a nice dinner--you know--normal people chores, when you got a text from someone you haven’t heard from in three years. Someone you never wanted to hear from ever again.

hi, it’s me. could we talk?? i’m outside the literature building.

The message stared at you, and you stared back at it, feeling an old and unwanted twist of your heart just at the familiar contact name. It must’ve been a moment of weakness from you back then when you decided not to block him completely. Without replying, you stuffed your phone in your back pocket and walked out of the building.

You stepped out the door, and there he stood, looking just as dashing and just as heartbreakingly beautiful as the day he took your own, very fragile heart and stepped on it until there was nothing left but the cold, pathetic remains of your former self.

“I’m breaking up with you,” Hyunjin spoke, his hands in his pockets and his expression impassive as he looked anywhere but your eyes.

This wasn’t how you wanted the day to go at all. You had been elated when Hyunjin had called you out to go on a date. The small bouquet of roses in your hands now felt embarrassing, utterly humiliating, as you stood before him, the bright and cheerful sparkle in your eyes dying out in that very moment.

“W-what?” you stammered, and your heart pounded in your chest, not in the way it did when Hyunjin had unexpectedly confessed to you, but in a way that it genuinely hurt, the mix of shock and fear that made you want to throw up, “What are you talking about, H-Hyunjin? Everything was fine--we were fine, right?”

“Sure, I’m just not really feeling this relationship anymore,” Hyunjin replied, finally glancing at you, “I think I just fell out of love with you, and there’s no point in pretending.”

A slap in the face, a knife in your heart would’ve hurt less than the words that were tumbling out of his lips, the lips that you had grown so vulnerable to, the lips that would caress your skin with a delicate gentleness that you didn’t know anyone possessed, that would whisper loving words to you in the dead of night.

“How long?” You whispered, tightening your grip on the pathetic little bouquet of flowers still in your hand, “How long have you been pretending to love me?”

Hyunjin’s jaw clenched and he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, “It doesn’t matter,” he said dully, “Thanks for the good times, Y/N.”

You were left at the park, feeling like the biggest fool in the universe as the rain began to pour, masking your tears from the world that only seemed to laugh at your misery.

Ever since that day, the flowers had ceased to look as beautiful to you as they once did.

Hyunjin, whose eyes were drifting around as he waited, caught sight of you the moment you walked out of the building. Immediately, he stood to attention, straightening his posture as you saw him visibly gulp. You kept your gaze impassive, tried to hide the clenching of your jaw as you walked towards him slowly.

“What’s up? Did you suddenly realize after three years that you forgot something at my apartment?” You asked, and Hyunjin shivered at how such a casual question falling from your lips could feel so cold, devoid of any affection.

“Ah, n-no,” Hyunjin fumbled over his words, completely forgetting the plan he’d conjured up in his head after mulling this meeting over for months. To be honest, he never thought he’d even get this far. What comes after again…? Text, meeting, saying hello--well, he can’t exactly say hello now--flowers…

“Oh!” The boy brought his attention to the bouquet of lilies in his hands, “I--um--got you these.”

You glanced down at the flowers with apparent boredom, and it scared Hyunjin more than ever. He’d been prepared for your wrath, your anger, as you had always been an expressive, emotional person. Now, all he could sense was boredom, annoyance, and it felt so much worse.

Looking down at the flowers, you were silent for a long moment before answering, “No thanks,” your voice was flat as you crossed your arms, leaning your weight to one leg and letting out a tired sigh, “What are you here for, Hyunjin? I have things to do.”

“I know you do!” Hyunjin stammered out quickly, feeling his heart ache as he let the bouquet fall to his side, reeling at the agonizingly blunt rejection, “That’s why I was thinking that I could drive you home?”

Momentarily stunned by his offer, you took a quick moment to maintain your impassive expression, “I’m not going home yet,” you lied, fiddling with your bag strap hanging on your right shoulder.

Hyunjin blinked, “But it’s Monday” he pointed out hesitantly, “You always go home after class to do your laundry and prep your meals for the week.”

It was at this moment that you cursed just how well ingrained your schedule was in Hyunjin’s mind, and how you felt the walls around your heart weaken ever so slightly at this confession. Looking at the pure, uncontrollably earnest expression on his face, you decided to cave, just this once.

“Fine,” you spoke coldly.

Hyunjin’s entire face lit up as if the love of his life had agreed to marry him, and he nodded with bright eyes, “Great! Let’s get going!” He practically tripped over his own feet rushing to the driver’s side after opening the passenger seat door for you, ever the gentleman.

The trip was mostly a silent one, due to no small part because of you. You kept your gaze fixed to outside the window as Hyunjin drove, despite you being very painfully aware of the the way he turned to glance at you every ten seconds, as if waiting for you to say something. Unfortunately for the both of you, you don’t have anything left to say anymore.

Finally, it seemed that Hyunjin could handle the silence no longer, and he opened his mouth, “Y/N, about that time--”

“You know where my apartment is, right?” You interrupted him, knowing perfectly well what time he was referring to and also knowing perfectly well that you didn’t want to think or speak about it for even a moment.

“Huh? Yeah, of course I know,” Hyunjin answered your question almost through habit before remembering that he was trying to tell you something, “B-but, Y/N--really, back than I was--”

“Do you really need me to spell it out, or can you take a hint and realize that I don’t care about what happened back then?” You spat coldly, finally turning to glare at Hyunjin. It made his heart chill to the bone, as he could no longer see those soft eyes of yours that were always so gentle, so unbelievably soothing on his bad days.

Hyunjin’s expression filled with hurt, “You don’t mean that, do you?” he asked softly, “That you don’t care.”

“I used to care, but I’ve moved on just like you,” you spoke, nonchalance clear in your tone as you crossed your legs.

Like him? Oh, no no, that can’t be possible, because Hyunjin has never once moved on. From the very night he’d ended things so coldly with you, Hyunjin had beat himself up for his words, his attitude, his utter stupidity for letting you go. You were the best thing that happened to him, and your love was something he didn’t realize he needed until he realized he was actually starving for it again.

“What if I haven’t moved on?” he let his mental walls down as he glanced, desperately wanting you to come back to him, to let him in again, because god knows how faraway you were keeping him right now.

Damn him. Damn Hwang Hyunjin and his stupidly innocent words. Damn his puppy dog eyes, damn the way his lips curled into that adorable pout. Your resolve wavered more than ever, but you controlled yourself with a clench of your jaw. You weren’t ever going to let him hurt you again.

“Then, I’m sorry, but I don’t really know what you expect me to do about it.”

The blasé tone of your scathing words hurt Hyunjin more than he could even begin to explain, but in his heart, he knew he deserved it. He deserved every spiteful remark, every cold shoulder, every hurtful comment that would come out of your mouth, because he knew none of them would equal the amount of pain he caused you.

“Maybe you can give me another chance? Please?” Hyunjin knew how pathetic he sounded, crawling back to you on his knees when he was the one that threw you away when you needed him most. But he’d do it, he’d do anything to get you back, to bring everything back to the way it was before he fucked it up.

Inside, your heart and your mind were at war, screaming and kicking at each other as you felt your mouth grow dry at Hyunjin’s words. He wanted you back. Hyunjin, the only person you’d ever loved even after he took your heart and crushed it right when you were the most vulnerable, wanted you back, and the most twisted part was that you wanted--more than anything--to go running back into his arms and pretend that things had returned back to the way they were before.

But despite that, your fear, your fear of getting hurt held you back from his love. You were never going to let anyone have power over you like that, even if it meant being alone for the rest of your life.

“I’m sorry.”

Hyunjin’s heart sank to his feet. The two simplest words, and yet they felt like the strongest, most brutal slap to the face. He would much rather you scream, hit him, yell at him, because at least he wouldn’t feel this growing, bottomless pit of guilt in his stomach.

He pulled up to the front of your apartment complex like he would do almost every day back when you were dating. He could almost see the mirage of you and him, your fingers intertwined as you went up to your room with him, kissing and cuddling the night away. He could almost feel your fingers gently carding through his hair as he lay his head in your lap.

The moment the car pulled to a stop, you were ready for a hasty exit. Manually unlocking the door yourself, your hand had already pulled the handle when you felt a hand wrapping around your wrist, gripping it tightly. Turning around, you saw Hyunjin's panicked, almost manic expression, and his hold on your wrist tightened ever so slightly.

“Please don't leave just yet,” he begged, his voice weak.

You raised a questioning eyebrow, glancing down at the way your hands were connected, “Wasn't the point of you driving me this whole time being to take me home?”

“Not yet,” Hyunjin pleaded.

“Why?”

The man swallowed nervously, and now that you finally got a good look at his face up close, you realized that his lips were chapped, as if he'd bitten it out of anxiety to the point of breaking skin.

“If I let you go now,” he whispered, “would I ever get a chance to see you again?”

You sighed, tired of him trying so hard when your heart had already closed off entirely, “There isn’t any reason to,” you said, and you moved to open the door again when you suddenly felt a sharp tug on your arm. Thrown off, you fell over to Hyunjin’s side, giving him perfect access to tilt his head and smash his lips against yours.

Gasping, your grip tightened around the sleeves of his shirt as you tried to pull him away, but now that Hyunjin tasted your lips again, he had no intention of pulling away. He missed you, he missed you so so much. He missed everything about you, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until you were safe in his arms again.

You let Hyunjin move his lips against yours as your resolve weakened, and your resisting hands fell to your sides. At this moment you knew it would no longer be possible. You and Hyunjin were no longer possible. You didn’t feel the butterflies in your stomach. You didn’t feel the light flush on your cheek that always appeared whenever Hyunjin so much as pecked your forehead. All you feel was a lingering pain, a permanent crack in your heart that would never be healed.

Hyunjin must’ve felt your lack of enthusiasm, must’ve noticed that you didn’t make any moves to deepen the kiss, and he pulled his lips away from yours, keeping them only inches apart. Unlike you, his heart was pounding against his chest at the knowledge that he finally had you in his arms again. His cheeks were flushed from finally being able to kiss you again, to see your lips wet and swollen because of him, because you couldn’t stop craving him.

But he could see that none of his emotions reflected in your eyes, sparkling with unshed tears.

“Do you not feel the same anymore?” he asked softly, his arm which had wrapped around your waist slowly loosening.

You looked at him, your expression unreadable when you began to speak, “I’ll never stop loving you, Hyunjin. I think you deserve to know this.”

Hyunjin, desperate and clinging onto the false hope that you’d come back to him, felt his expression brighten almost immediately, only for that hope to be shut down as fast as you get it to him, “But I’ll never stop reliving the day you ended things so coldly, so painfully and devoid without any emotion. Even if I did agree to try again, I will never forget the hurt I felt that day, and that is my fault.”

Your voice was gentle as you finished, “There’s no reason to get back into a relationship knowing that I’ll never be able to get over the past.”

“N-no,” Hyunjin trembled, grabbing your hand as a few tears began to roll down his cheeks and he babbled, “Please don’t leave me, Y/N, I’ll die if I don’t have you--I’ll right all my wrongs, I’ll be a saint, Y/N please…”

Pitying him, but knowing that your pity shouldn’t force you back into his arms, you reached your hand up to stroke his hair, brushing a strand away from his face as you forced a small smile on your face, “I don’t need you to do any of that. I just need you to live your life to the fullest, and to be happy. I’ll do the same.”

Hyunjin wanted to cry and scream, to put up a big fuss just to get you to understand that he couldn’t live a full life without you, but he looked at the expression on your face, the remnants of the pain and hurt that you tried to cover, and he knew. He knew that he had to let you go, even if it killed him to do so. He would do anything to make sure you were happy, even if that meant sacrificing his. It was comeuppance, he supposed.

“I love you,” he murmured, and his head fell forward, letting him lean down and rest his head on her shoulder.

You only hummed softly, reaching up to card a hand through his hair, “Thank you for showing me what love is, Hyunjin,” you said, and his grip tightened around your waist. He didn’t want this, he didn’t want you to leave again, “I’ll never forget it.”

Pulling away, you give him a sad smile, booping his nose like you used to do before grabbing your bag and getting out of the car. Only when you had shut the car door and were safely inside did Hyunjin let the rest of his tears to fall, opening the floodgates as he let his head rest against the steering wheel as he cried loud, bitter tears. He felt like such a fool, such an idiot to let someone like you slip through his fingers.

You were prepared to give him all of you when he too scared to do the same. Once he was ready and utterly willing to give up his whole sense of being to stay by your side, the door to your heart had already shut him out forever, too hurt by his young and immature words to ever give him a second chance.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the bouquet of lilies sitting in the backseat of his car, and ever since that day, the flowers ceased to look as beautiful to him as they once did.

a/n: hehe im sorry :)

#inkidz #districtninewriters #stray kids scenarios #stray kids drabbles #stray kids reactions #stray kids imagines #stray kids blurbs #skz oneshots #skz scenarios #skz imagines #skz blurbs #stray kids x reader #stray kids x y/n #skz x reader #skz x y/n #hwang hyunjin imagine #hwang hyunjin scenarios #hwang hyunjin blurbs #my fics

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butwhatifidothis · 3 years

Text

3H and Bleach: Where the Fuck am I

So, I’m finally hunkering down and trying to write out this post lmao. I’ve mentioned here and there how my personal experience with the 3H’s fandom is similar to my experience with the Bleach fandom’s in more than one way, and - look. Like, I get there’s definitely a semi-universal thing that goes on across all fandoms. I don’t mean for this to say that this only happens within these two fandoms, because duh, of course they don’t. But!! This post is partly me wanting to air years long annoyance towards the Bleach fandom that just so happens to coincide with my feelings towards the 3H fandom, sooo... yeah lmao

I’ll probably be skimming over some bits about 3H, since most people who come across this will already be familiar with what I’d be talking about in that regard vs Bleach, so just a heads up

Note: This is gonna talk about Bleach which will spoiler territory (writing this off the cuff so not sure where this is goin’ yet lmao but I know that much), so if you don’t wanna see that then don’t read this post lol, I know for sure I’ll be spoiling something ahhhh... noticeable, lol

Ableism against the mentally ill

Now, most people reading this post will be familiar with the blog and how this very, very much applies to 3H, but for the sake of this post I’ll lay it out anyway with a brief summary

Dimitri and Rhea are both characters within 3H that suffer from severe trauma that heavily impacts their mental state. Both are the sole survivors of a horrific slaughter, with that slaughter redefining who they are and leaving a permanent marker within their minds in some way (Dimitri with having auditory and visual hallucinations, Rhea with having obsessive tendencies towards bringing her mother back from the dead). Specifically in CF, both characters are set up in the plot as antagonists, with both characters having to relive their trauma in some way due to the actions Byleth and Edelgard take against them (for Dimitri, having his home be razed to the ground and everyone he cares for dying around him, for Rhea having someone use her mother’s mutilated remains be used to end her and her race) and express extreme anger towards Byleth and Edelgard before they are killed to progress/end the story

Now, uh, sad shit right? Not exactly fuckin’ happy sunshine rainbows. These two characters are put through the wringer and are then murdered. They are rightfully not the fuckin’ happiest because of what happened to them before and what happens to them within the present story. But we’ve heard it all before: “They were crazy!” “They couldn’t be reasoned with!” “They had to be put down out of mercy because they were too ~far gone~ to live happily!” “They needed to be killed for the good of everyone!” It’s an extremely ableist rhetoric that gets passed around the fandom as though it’s totally fine to directly state that mentally ill people should be put down if they’re deemed a “lost cause.” Especially worrying because. You know. If they are a “”””lost cause”””” then it’s directly and specifically because of actions Byleth and Edelgard take against them.

But how does this remind me of Bleach? What kind of similar extreme, worrying ableism exists there? Well, let me introduce to best girl a certain character with... a reputation, to say the least:

Meet Momo Hinamori.

Holy shit it’s so weird writing this out because I’ve been wanting to for years but have never worked up the nerve to do it lol

It should be noted, in the Bleach verse there’s two worlds out of three - Soul Society and Hueco Mundo, though I’ll only be talking of the former - that deal with “souls” (the essence within a living human). Souls age far more slowly than human bodies do in terms of body, not necessarily the mind (so a teenage soul will likely behave as such for a long while) so keep in mind that I’m going to be using numbers that may seem weird to someone who hasn’t seen Bleach lol. With that out of the way, here’s a similar, if longer for context to those who haven’t seen Bleach, summary for Momo’s character as it relevant to this post:

Momo is a character in Bleach that grows a deep admiration towards Sosuke Aizen, a respected captain of the military force called the Gotei 13. She comes to views him as the most important person in her world due to him both noticing and paying direct attention to her as well as saving her and her friends’ lives during a training mission gone wrong while she was younger. Note that “younger” here means 40 years ago from the start of the story. Aizen would praise her all the time, allow her to sleep over in his quarters, would drape his cloaks over her when she looked cold, and would overall treat Momo as though he was his daughter for most of the time we see them interact in the beginning portions of the show. Note that none of this is sexual in nature, nor is it ever implied to be seen as such. That’ll be important later in this post

To make a long story short, Aizen comes to betray her. He stabs her through the chest and shows and tells her that she never meant anything to him, throughout the 40 years they’ve known each other (which, mind, for a soul Momo’s approximate age 40 years is still a noticeable amount of time), and he was only using her to help bolster his image as a loveable captain so that he can hide his plan from everybody that much easier. He did horrible things to Momo - from setting her alarm clock back to a later time so that she would more likely come across his pinned, bloody fake corpse. to framing her childhood friend for the apparent murder and tricking her into fighting that friend, to far later in the series tricking that friend into stabbing her (hypnosis shit, to sum that up) for literally no stated reason - that ended up mentally breaking her. She couldn’t believe that the last four decades were all nothing but lies and she fell into a deep denial about Aizen’s true nature - someone else made him do everything he did, she must have missed something that would have warned her about Captain Aizen’s unfortunate situation that forced Captain Aizen to hurt her and everyone else. This denial would take the majority of Bleach’s entire runtime for her to get over completely, with her having hiccups in her recovery even as she works up the nerve to fight him.

Now, uh, also not the fuckin’ funnest of times to be had here. The deep, long-running mental and psychological manipulation of what approximates as a teenage girl from a trusted older figure is something that is very clearly horrific and bad of the older figure, right? Like, we’re on the same page here on that?

This wouldn’t be in this post if that was the case. No, Momo was the one constantly on fire for what happened to her. She was one of the most hated characters in the western audience, and there were endless jokes about “lol look at Momo, the pincushion!” “Crazy bitch Momo, better watch out!” making fun of her and her trauma relentlessly. If you managed to find a Momo fan in the early 2000′s you should have also bought a lotto ticket because holy fuck, everyone hated her. She acted in a startlingly real if deeply uncomfortable way in regards to years long manipulation and she was lambasted for it. She didn’t immediately get over decades long psychological abuse and she was called useless, weak, a horrible representation of female characters, stupid - you name it, she was likely called it. To this day I still tense up when I hear that someone likes Bleach and they mention Momo at all because I’m always thinking “does this person think this abuse victim is dumb for being abused?”

Dimitri, Rhea, and Momo are all victim-blamed to a disgusting degree in the 3H and Bleach fandoms. Dimitri and Rhea are always hit with “well if Dimitri hadn’t have fought back against Edelgard/Rhea caused the “”tyranical systems” in the first place, nothing would have happened to them!” and Momo was constantly hit with” well, it’s not Aizen’s fault Momo was so clingy to him, what could he have done!” and I get so fuckin’ mad dude.

But for Dimitri and Momo specifically, there’s one thing in particular that caught my attention:

The “Rejection Theories”

This had my head spinnin’ a bit when I first heard it, cuz I had managed to avoid the theory for a while in the 3H’s fandom, but apparently a sizeable amount of people seem to believe that Dimitri wasn’t just mad at Edelgard in the Holy Tomb because of... you know *waves hand* fuckin’ everything, but that the primary reason for his anger was that Edelgard... rejected his advances to her? And that the dagger he gave to her when they were 13 was a phallic symbol of baby Mitri’s want to have sex with Edelgard? And. Like. What in the fuck are you talking about.

But like?? Bleach did this shit too with Momo?? It was also a sizeable amount of people - not everyone, but a noticeable amount - that believed that Momo was just mad that Aizen wouldn’t sleep with her? You’d see it pop up in fics so often, that Momo would want Aizen to fuck her and she’d “go crazy” when he denied her and Momo was actually just this shallow bitch who wanted a good fuck like... what.

Like, when I first heard the Phallic Dagger take the first thing that came to mind is “wait Momo was also accused of just wanting to have sex with the person who traumatized her wtf”

“Actually it was the perpetrators that should be forgiven because lonely and also some shit about ruling better”

Those in the 3H fandom know how often the “Edelgard was lonely!” line gets thrown by just about every one of her stans. Edelgard was lonely and couldn’t trust anyone, so of course she did what she did! If she had someone near her she could trust she wouldn’t have acted like she does in the rest of the game! Nevermind that she “gets” this in CF in the form of Byleth and still acts just as shittily as she does in the other routes, or how being a little lonely doesn’t fuckin’ mean you get to start war. But anyway, we also hear that Edelgard was justified in doing what she did because her ruling Fodlan would have lead to more peace in the end, once she got rid of the power structures in place now (except that doesn’t happen but whatev I guess lmao)

Aizen? He was lonely too! He was far too strong for anyone to truly be able to understand him, and so he tragically fell down a dark path. If he had known someone who could be considered an equal to him he would have never done all the horrible things he did. And the Soul Society is unjust! It needs to be reformed! So him slaughtering hundreds of thousands of souls at the minimum to harvest all of their power to use as his own is justified because it’ll be used to create a more just society under his rule!

Like. Y’all. Lowkey? I’m so fuckin’ glad Edelgard proved herself to be just as fuckin’ awful with Byleth as without because this shit drove me up the fuckin’ wall back in the day. There was 0 ways to prove that Aizen would damn sure be just as fuckin’ bad if he had an “”equal”” to stand by him than if he didn’t, and I get to kinda be right because without fundamentally changing these characters’ backstories they would not give two flying shits about whether or not they had someone “equal to them” (which is still kinda degrading to think about anyway).

Now, this is where I move away to a different topic lol

A split in the narrative cause divides in the fandom

With 3H houses this is really fuckin’ easy to point at: there’s 4 routes, three consistent stories and one radically different story, and that difference in story causes heavy contention within the fandom. It’s very obvious so I won’t go over it much.

But how in the fuck is there a divide in Bleach? It’s not a fuckin’ Choose Your Own Adventure manga, it’s an anime and manga showing off the characters of Bleach’s stories and interactions (with, you know, plot and shit thrown in).

Well. It’s more accurate to say the anime told a story about the characters, and the manga told... the story about the characters.

In terms of plot, the anime didn’t change much from the manga, but hoo fuckin’ boy, did they change shit about some of the characters. Specifically, they changed a shit ton about three characters: the two main protagonists, Ichigo and Rukia, and another main character, Orihime.

Orihime. Got. Fucked.

The anime would make her far more ditzy and clumsy, her crush (turned growing love later on in the story) for Ichigo during more deeper moments that showcases her feelings for him were downplayed if not removed entirely in exchange for talking or thinking about food, key moments she has with Ichigo early in the manga were cut or deadass changed to something else in the anime, some key moments with her relationship with Rukia were cut, her backstory was watered down - so much of Orihime was fucked with in the anime (her fuckin’ introduction was changed drastically). Meanwhile Ichigo and Rukia were given moments that didn’t exist in the manga, they have filler arcs (remember those lmao) that would be stuffed with shit ton of moments for them that have no basis in the manga, other characters would change their behavior from the manga to reflect a sort of “thing” going on between Ichigo and Rukia.

Look, guys, the anime fucked up so bad the fucking mangaka, Tite Kubo, has said he gets stomach aches watching the early anime because it was that awful. And this divide between the anime and manga’s portrayal of these three character helped spawn the ship war of Bleach: Ichiruki vs Ichihime (oh but more on that in a bit). It tanked Orihime’s popularity because people thought she was the stupid dumbass that would stumble ass first into situations when that wasn’t her character at all. And because the majority of anime watchers only watch the anime... yeah, you can see where this went. So just like in 3H in Bleach you have these radically different tellings of the same characters that drove a big-ass wedge in the fandom

Marketing

Imma be transparent, like I’ve said before I managed to avoid nearly every marketing tactic for 3H so it’s a tad hard for me to speak personally, but from what I’ve been told Edelgard was heavily marketed towards the player base pre-release. She was the poster child of 3H, she got the figma, she was in the spotlight - unless you cleansed your board of 3H content you knew exactly who she was. On top of that, it doesn’t stop in-game - loading screen messages would assume you picked BE, Adrestia is the first option to pick when you want to impress one of the lords in the prologue, the BE class is the first option to pick in choosing which route to play, every character has some moment in the game post ts where they express sympathy with the woman who waged war on them for five years (even characters with no business doing so, like Seteth entertaining the idea that maybe Edelgard isn’t that bad during Myrddin). With all of that good PR for Edelgard in and out of the game it heavily impacted how people saw her, and much of it is used by stans to justify her being a good guy (mostly in the game marketing) despite everything else in the game clearly showing that Edelgard is the bad guy

With Bleach in that regard... you have Ichiruki

holy shit it’s so weird talking about Ichiruki i’m still lowkey nervous about talking about them lmao

With Ichiruki stans, they would cling onto outside material that promoted Ichigo and Rukia together as proof that their ship was going to be canon. Spreadsheets, calendars, poems (some of which didn’t even apply to Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship but they insisted they did anyway), novels - outside material that either wasn’t canon or didn’t pertain to Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship. They would shove it in the face of Ichihime shippers that “see, we have all this stuff for us! We ain’t starving tonight!” when the canon (note: in the manga particularly) would clearly show Ichigo and Orihime’s relationship being the one that leans romantic in multiple significant ways. They would latch onto irrelevant shit that ain’t had nothin’ to do with anything and wave around as a paragon of romance when it literally wasn’t even canon

Just fuckin’ ignoring the creators deadass

Creators and developers of 3H: Edelgard is the typical Red Emperor the only difference is Girl

Stans: that’s just a headcanon

Kubo: Ichigo and Rukia have a platonic relationship and I’ve publicly said this since 2008

Stans, now, to this day: Ichigo and Rukia were robbed

Making people reject what they’re stanning for

I’ve seen a few people express that the more they interact with the fandom and see what her stans are doing, the more they grow to dislike Edelgard despite (some) initially liking or even loving her. To put it simply, the same thing happened with Ichiruki - hell, this happened with me with Ichiruki. I can’t fuckin’ stand the ship anymore because every time I think about it I’m reminded of the absolutely rancid, disgusting things Ichiruki stans have to done to others in the fandom, and even after nearly five years after Bleach has ended I still tense up when someone says they like Ichiruki over Ichihime precisely because of the behavior of the stans, just like I side-eye people who say Edelgard is the best lord. Do they like them because they simply prefer them over the other(s) and they’re not totally fuckin’ bonkers, or are they totally fuckin’ bonkers.

And, like, that’s not fair! I know that! But I can’t help but think that when such a loud amount of people act in such deplorable ways just because someone didn’t like a bunch of lines on paper/pixels on a screen.

To all the nice Ichiruki and Edelgard fans, hope y’all are havin’ a nice day.

Long, crazy ass explanations as to why X =/= X (and if anything actually means Y)

Teacher theory for 3H. How Edelgard totally didn’t hire Kostas to kill Dimitri and Claude and was only thwarted because Claude booked it, but how she definitely actually meant to simply scare away the teacher that was with them so that Jeritza could be pulled from his already existing position in Garreg Mach to teach one class so that Edelgard can kinda keep a sorta closer eye on exactly one of the other classes (and just do shit all about the other one I guess), because Jertiza’d be able to gleam so much from teaching a class for a few hours a day I promise

But for Bleach, you also have one particularly infamous theory positing shit that don’t real, with enough renown to be known by a specific name, and that’s the Lust Arc = Fail essay

To explain what the essay is about, I have to set the scene up a bit. Imagine, you, with your tiny little monkey brain, are watching Bleach, and you get to the part where Main Boyo is fighting against Villain to save Girly. Other Guy is there too - this is important. Main Boyo tries his hardest to fight Villain, but is ultimately shot through the fucking chest with a laser from Villain and dies. Like, for bit actually dies. Girly breaks down, has a straight up mental breakdown because she always “knew” that Main Boyo could do anything, and now he’s been killed and is dead in front of her. She screams out Main Boyo’s name, hysterically begging him to save her and protect her because holy shit the love of her life has been brutally murdered in front of her what the fuck. But Main Boyo, from literally beyond the line of death, hears her pleas and snaps back to life as a monster, with the sentence “I MUST PROTECT” repeatedly running through his head and being the only sentence he ever says while in this form, with him fucking destroying Villain and even going so far as to directly hurt Other Guy when Other Guy tries to stop Main Boyo from utterly stomping on Villain. Girly is the only person Main Boyo does not directly hurt, and when Villain is damn sure gonna fuckin’ kick the bucket that is when Main Boyo reverts back human. Everyone is more than a little shocked at what happened, but it’s clear from how relieved Girly is when Main Boyo comes back safe and sound that while this event fundamentally will change their relationship (and it does), it is still one that is extremely strong and they won’t let it get between them (and they don’t).

Now, when looking at the summary, you, with your absolutely miniscule peanut of a brain, might come away thinking, “Hm, Main Boyo might kinda care for Girly given that he literally rose from the dead to protect her and only her and went back to normal once she was safe” and you poor fool would be oh so wrong, because actually, this is all proof that Mian Boyo doesn’t care for Girly and that Villain actually cared more for Girly than Main Boyo ever could.

Without diving too deeply into the absolute lunacy of the Lust Arc = Fail essay, that was its main premise. That Ichigo, after rising from the literal dead directly after Orihime begged and pleaded that he protect and save her and then going on to protect and save specifically her (as Uryu - Other Guy - is also a friend of Ichigo’s and got his fucking arm cut off by Monster!Ichigo), is proof against Ichihime being romantic in any way and was not, in fact, a fuckin’ giant neon flashing sign that read THESE TWO ARE GONNA GET TOGETHER. It was the dumbest shit ever, but Ichiruki stans, much like Edelstans with Teacher Theory, clung to it like white on rice. It didn’t matter how much it was utterly debunked, it didn’t matter how the base premise was stupid as fuck, they point to it as the pinnacle of meta for their respective fandoms in their respective spaces.

And all of this leads me to um... the one I’m kinda the most worried about?

Stan Behavior

Edelstans are their own unique brand of awful in that that the shit they spew is particularly... worrying (”genocide isn’t bad if they aren’t human and also they kinda deserved it” “imperialism isn’t that bad really” the mentally ill should be put down if they’re deemed ~too far gone~” among other... wonderful takes...), and their behavior is also quite shitty, harassing content creators that go against the Approved Opinions (Ghast) or forcing people to take down fanart and in general infecting nearly every Rhea space with all kinds of disparaging comments no one asked for. They actively make the fandom a worse space, and when they flare up it’s almost always noticeable (again, Ghast)

Bleach?

Oh boy.

Guys. If you weren’t there for the Canonization of Ichihime (2016). You dodged a fucking bullet.

The outrage was out-fuckin’-rageous. Their behavior was some of the worst reactions anyone has ever seen come from the canonization of a ship in a shounen. This includes, but is not limited to:

Someone tearing apart all 70+ volumes of Bleach and burning it in their bathroom

In fact, multiple people tearing up Bleach and burning it, while keeping the Ichiruki moments and taping it to their walls

A Rukia cosplayer, in Rukia cosplay, printing out the final color spread of the end-game couples and their friends lounging about - with colored ink and all - and burning it, while filming herself doing so

Ichiruki porn being sent to Tite Kubo

Tite Kubo being accused of grooming a 15 Orihime cosplayer with no proof

Tite Kubo being accused of lying about his various health issues

Ichigo and Rukia being drawn cheating on their spouses with each other - and some of that also being sent to Tite Kubo

Tite Kubo being chased off Twitter by Ichiruki stans... again

Ichihime shippers getting sent death threats

Ichihime shippers getting called delusional for thinking their ship had a chance before the endgame couples were revealed, and then being called delusional for thinking their ship had any real basis and wasn’t pulled “out of nowhere”

Tite Kubo being accused of hating women because of Orihime being shown in an apron in the last chapter and Ichiruki stans jumping to the conclusion she became a housewife, and then Tite Kubo being accused of hating women because when it was revealed that Orihime has a job in a bakery to pay for college later they insisted what Kubo should have done was have Uryu, who’s a doctor at that point, pay for Orihime’s college instead of having Orihime pay for it with her own money

And mind you, this is only the stuff I’ve personally seen and experienced

I am hoping and praying that Edelstans never get as bad as Ichiruki stans did in 2016, but with how otherwise similar they are my hopes are dwindling more and more. I guess I can take solace in the fact that they aren’t quite... that bad yet? In terms of actions, at least? Their sentiments though are infinitely worse, so like... cool

#what the hell do I even tag this #i guess like #fandom observations #fandom critical #fandom criticism #yeah shit got BAD in the Bleach fandom in 2016 #and I fear what the return of the anime is gonna have in store #things already don't look good in the 3H fandom so like... yeah #wanted to get the Bleach rant off my chest for a long ass while now lol so glad I could do that #again wanna reiterate that this isn't exclusive to Bleach and 3H this is just my experience with them

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daimonhalos · 3 years

Text

The Inbetween may be lying to or tricking Karl

Before we dive in I want you to know that this is purely theorizing and that I might be completely wrong, still I thought that thinking about this in a different lens might actually become pretty intriguing, if we look at the various twists in the plot that the DSMP lore has been having lately.

First off, I also want to warn you all there will be Kingdom Hearts lore spoilers in this argument, so if you were planning onto watching/playing the game, I don’t recommend reading this. In the same way, if you don’t know anything about the games, no worries, I will explain everything the easiest way I can!

This got long, so I’m leaving a read more right under this.

So, I’m sure you’ve all been left aghast at the sight of the Inbetween’s building and, like me, some of you may have recognized the first room Karl was in. For this one room in particular, he got inspired by Castle Oblivion, which is introduced to us in Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories if I’m not wrong.

Here’s the KH version:

And here’s the Tales of the SMP version:

Now I really really like the fact that, of all things, Karl chose to get inspiration from Castle Oblivion. In the KH game, the protagonist, Sora, ventures into this Castle with his two sidekicks and friends, Donald and Goofy. The peculiar thing about this one place, though, something you might as well figure out by the name, is that the deeper they go into the Castle, the more memories they lose, to the point of forgetting the most important people in their hearts.

Now you may be wondering, but Purp what’s wrong in all this and what does it have to do with the Inbetween? Didn’t it say Karl will be getting a hold onto his memories?

Well, this is where it gets really interesting: you see, in Chain of Memories there is a main antagonist, it’s called Organization XIII and it’s a group of people who are trying to get a hold on Sora so they can control him etc, not too important for our argument as of now. The thing is this group is using a particular girl, her name is Naminé and she can manipulate others’ memories and replace them with fake ones.

So here’s my question: who is talking to Karl through the books in the Inbetween? Who says it’s telling the complete and utter truth? Surely it seems like Karl will be able to manage his powers better and perhaps even his memories (up to debate as in “what if he loses control of them?”). But still, what if there’s someone who’s plotting something behind this? What if they just softened the truth of his powers to him? What if it didn’t tell him everything? For example, I’m sure it tasted sour when it said Karl cannot decide when to time travel. What if this being is the one who does, what if it starts keeping Karl from making history right? What if it starts messing with him as it tries to teach him? Should he really trust it? Well, he doesn’t have any other option now, does he?

Cc!Karl has confirmed he’s made Kingdom Hearts references in the Tales of SMP series in the past and one of them was blatant, i.e. the Village that Never Was, a direct quote to The World that Never Was.

Coincidentially enough, the World that Never Was is the World where the Organization XIII resides (in KH there’s many different scattered Worlds that were once all united). Their headquarters is actually a white castle as well, it’s called the Castle that Never Was, but I do believe it doesn’t have much to do appearence wise to the Inbetween, not as much as it does concept wise to Castle Oblivion. It’s a cool coincidence and sometimes I do like to believe some small things are actually done on purpose.

Now there’s actually another thing that came into my mind thinking about the Inbetween that is linked to Kingdom Hearts.

In one of the latest games, Kingdom Hearts III, a new world has been introduced: The Final World. Sora ends up there because he seems to have died, but it is said that people who end up there continue to persist due to something (or someone) holding them from death. So you could say that this is a sort of Inbetween as well, right? Furthermore, in this place Sora is able to speak to others who ended up there and they tell him their stories. This calls me back to the Lost City of Mizu, where we got to know more about the current members through their descendants, as wrong as they may have been. Or just the new pieces of information Karl is getting, like the existence of the Egg centuries and centuries earlier.

Want to know what happens next in the game? Sora time travels. He time travels to make things right, because right before the moment he died, he had lost all his friends in the War that had just taken place, so he time travels to make things right.

Foreshadowing, anyone?

There’s also complicated and very strict laws of time travel in the KH lore, some laws I still haven’t been able to comprehend as I’ve only recently caught up, but one coincidence is that usually you shouldn’t be able to choose when you time travel, you need very specific conditions.

These conditions are also strictly detailed for the KH lore which is a part of it that has nothing to do with DSMP (for all who know about the game, it's about the whole Heartless, Nobody, soul and/or heart dying at different times, all that stuff) so I won't go further than this.

I really wanted to put this out there because finding these coincidences is super interesting and it may even lead to something in the future, who knows! Maybe just some more easter eggs placed by Karl, I honestly am absolutely loving what he’s doing with the series and I can’t wait for more lore.

Tell me what you guys think in case! Again I pointed this out just for fun.

#karl jacobs #tales of the smp #dream smp #time travel #kingdom hearts #tales from the smp #dsmp #mcyt #mcytblr #dream smp theory #tftsmp #dream smp spoilers #long post #lost city of mizu #tftsmp masquerade

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