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moonlit-tulip · 10 months

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Tsukihime Remake Liveblog Archive, Part 2: Ciel Route

The newly-translated route! Which I finished last night. I had been thinking I'd wait a couple extra days before posting it, just in case I developed more to say, but on consideration… nah, I'm impatient, I'll just post it now. If I say additional things later I'll… I don't know, edit them onto the end and post a notice-of-something-having-been-added, or put them in a reblog, or something.

Below the cut: the Ciel-route segment of the liveblog, featuring spoilers for all of both the original Tsukihime and Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-.

June 17, 2023

[4:14 PM] Knowing that everyone’s memories of Ciel are fake, it’s very funny going through the opening segments of her being widely known as The Perfect Senpai So Good That Even The Teachers Rely On Her. Like, sure, useful cover, but also, that sure is a reputation to have given herself! (And to then, in proper Perfect Senpai fashion, deny when it’s mentioned to her face.)

[6:36 PM] The “dreaming of a story that has already passed” scene at the start of the second day has me wondering, now, whether this remake is yet another of the ‘remake’-as-stealth-sequel setups that seem to be popular nowadays. I somewhat hope not—I find that pattern somewhat frustrating—but it is a possibility I should maybe keep in mind, given that scene.

[6:59 PM] …especially, it now occurs to me, in the context of Day 2 being called ‘Day that Wasn’t’. That’s a name whose significance-to-the-local-narrative I was never able to figure out, last year; the only meaning I could ever get out of it was the “this day wasn’t in the original, only in the remake” meaning, and while that’s definitely part of the meaning I’d assumed it was just one half of a double-meaning. But, if the remake is doing the stealth-sequel thing, that assumption suddenly seems much less well-founded; it could, easily, just be the reference-to-this-being-different-from-the-original that I first read it as.

[7:04 PM] In other news… so, last time, I talked about how the mansion feels less isolated in the remake than in the original, with Saiki Gouto and Arach showing up early on. This remains true. But the flip side of this, which I didn’t consciously register last time, is: while the mansion itself is less isolated, Shiki is more isolated within it. There’s much more emphasis on his status as the Ill-Fitting Outsider, with Saiki’s “your getting injured and disowned about it was an Unvirtuous Desertion Of Family Obligations” monologue and then with Akiha’s generally-more-emphasized-in-the-remake degree of Pointedly Overbearing Demandingness towards Shiki. So it’s actually more of a change to the mansion’s tone than I’d realized; minus one thing and plus another, rather than just the minus.

[10:13 PM] Day 3 complete! I am now Solidly On Ciel's Route, I think. Or at the very least I've made it past the point which (a) was the final point-of-no-return for onboarding to Ciel's route in the original and (b) is where I ran into Japanese text when I found my way onto it under the old Arcueid-route-only patch-version. The "Ciel talks Shiki down from suicide-via-exposure and gets him into a state of thinking and engaging with the world again" scene was very good, as it was in the original, although it's been long enough since I've read the original that I can't easily do detailed comparison of content beyond "very good", or of fine details of how very-good they were relative to one another. And I look forward to seeing how things diverge from here! I strongly suspect that one of the things the remake is going to change is the degree to which Arcueid and Ciel's routes overlap one another, since that was one of the more awkward structural elements of the original; but I'm not sure how much earlier to expect the divergence this time. The one Arcueid-route Bad End with the investigation-of-Vlov's-lair, where Ciel-sensei strongly hints that that it'll be safer to do that in Ciel's route, could be interpreted as meaning that it'll still re-merge at least for the initial adventures-with-Arcueid section—especially in combination with the game UI suggesting we're still in common-route territory, with Day 4 having the same name even after the big heartfelt moment with Ciel and with the save still not being marked with any particular route—but also could be compatible, potentially, with "things continue diverging and the investigation-of-Vlov's-lair happens in some other different context". I look forward to finding out!

[10:39 PM] Also, off in the realm of Parallels Which Were There All Along But Which I’m Only Now Managing To Catch: it Sure Does Hit A Way, seeing Ciel give Shiki the “don’t just sit there and drown in suicidal guilt about the murder-you-did-while-not-yourself, instead figure out how to atone” speech given the knowledge of her own position having (a) done way more of those than he did and (b) being pretty suicidal about it. Giving him the maximally-optimistic form of advice which she refuses to accept in that form from herself. :(

June 18, 2023

[1:10 PM] …so Shiki was explicitly noted, during the stalking-Arcueid sequence, to have hidden away his jacket before breaking into the apartment building. But then, the next morning, Ciel implies that she’s washed it. This suggests that either (a) he had the presence-of-mind to retrieve it on exit even while in full barely-coherent-despair-and-guilt mode or (b) Ciel managed to figure out where he’d left it. (More likely (a), since he presumably retained his jacket in the non-Ciel branch too? I don’t specifically remember it, but I assume I’d remember if his school uniform had been incomplete the next day.) Both of these branches are Interesting, from an “implying things-not-otherwise-shown about characters’ mental stated” standpoint!

[1:13 PM] …or never mind that parenthetical! Since apparently they’ve got spare jackets at the Tohno household.

[2:59 PM] …huh. So this time I noticed: Arcueid gave the “only one vampire ever took in more than one beast as a familiar, and he’s already gone” line that makes Nrvnqsr’s nonexistence in the remake-timeline clear and that left me-a-year-ago Confused by the two dogs accompanying Vlov in his attack on the hotel. But then, on the whiteboard behind her, she’s written “Usually 1-3 animals”. So… only Nrvnqsr has taken in more than one kind of beast but others have taken in e.g. more than one dog? Or they can take in a single dog but then release multiple copies? It’s a bit unclear, but does make me lean towards “there’s something hard-to-translate in the thing Arcueid says there” as a more likely hypothesis over the “Vlov’s two dogs are an Actual Mystery” reading I’d taken last time.

June 19, 2023

[3:01 PM] …huh, apparently Vlov’s gang got a girl from Shiki’s school some time before they got Shiki. I wonder if, in the remake, Satsuki got vampirified by Vlov rather than by Roa? Relevance-to-Satsuki’s-route could certainly explain the otherwise-mysterious thing where the remake inserted Vlov in place of Nrvnqsr, if for whatever reason Nrvnqsr’s personality and habits would be incompatible with the route’s happenings. (Although also plausibly it was just some other not-Satsuki girl; after all, we already have had very strong implications of at least one non-Satsuki victim of Vlov’s gang from Souya High, namely the teacher who Noel replaced.)

[3:27 PM] …ah, nope, at least the most recent one they were talking about is Not Satsuki.

[4:49 PM] Ciel with a gun! :o

[5:50 PM] It's interesting how much worse Shiki's mental state is in Ciel's route, compared with in Arcueid's. During Day 5 he had two internal monologues with "well, the only thing I'm good for is Doing Murder" as a core component, compared with zero similar ones that I recall in the Arcueid branch. Apparently the combination of "be less in denial about having killed Arcueid" plus "encounter the Deeply Unpleasant Environment of Vlov's basement" was Not Good For Him!

[5:52 PM] (Or possibly just the former? I haven't yet checked what happens if, at the apparent point-of-no-return of "set out to attack Vlov in his lair during the day", I instead choose the other option of waiting for night, whether that merges into Arcueid's route or whether it leads to some sort of death instead. If the latter, then perhaps it's just the being-less-in-denial part which leads to the worse mental state.)

[6:14 PM] Also: Vlov has a grudge against Roa, apparently! There won't be much more chance to explore it from Vlov's perspective this route, given the thing where he's now dead, but I'm curious if we're going to get anything on it from Roa's perspective, once he starts leaking more into Shiki.

[6:37 PM] (I say 'leaking more', as opposed to just 'leaking', because, while popular interpretation of Shiki's big moment of Suddenly Stalking And Murdering Arcueid In A Fashion Laden With Blatant Sexual Overtones seems to be that it's just a Nanaya-family-instincts thing, I myself have always taken that moment to be at least partially leakage of Roa's influence. For one thing because that is very much in-character as a direction for Roa's influence to point—he is far more obsessed with Arcueid than with anyone else, it makes sense for him to reach through more strongly to Shiki about her than about anyone else—and for another thing because, as I recall (it having, admittedly, been a while since I last read Tsukihime), Shiki-running-on-Nanaya-instincts usually doesn't have those sorts of sexual overtones around killing, whereas Shiki-influenced-by-Roa consistently does.)

June 20, 2023

[1:49 PM] Well! Things sure did just diverge much harder than expected, the night of Day 6! Roa dead already thanks to Arcueid not burning as much energy against Vlov, and Arcueid herself possibly lining up to take over as Chief Antagonist, even before realizing that Roa has moved into Shiki Specifically, just for Difficultly Keeping Her Bloodlust Under Control Post-Being-Murdered reasons??? We’ve still got so many days left! Well, then. I guess it’s time for Lots Of New Things to happen!

[1:55 PM] (Notably, this feels like a much more… Fate/stay night-shaped way for the route-structuring to go. Less routes-hugging-one-another-closely-until-towards-the-end like in the original Tsukihime, more “okay, you’ve done the previous route, you’ve had all the exposition on who these people are and what they can do, now time to Elaborate and Explore New Ground From That Baseline Of Knowledge”. I hadn’t been sure, before, whether the Arcueid-and-then-Ciel route order would be enforced in the remake—it wasn’t enforced in the original, just recommended, and I didn’t think to test “try to get on Ciel’s route” in the remake last year before finishing Arcueid’s route, partially for “already knew that recommendation” reasons and partially for “it was untranslated so there wouldn’t be much point” reasons—but I now strongly suspect that we’re doing FSN-style route-order-enforcement here, because I don’t think the exposition-structures at play here would work otherwise.)

[1:57 PM] (Once I’ve finished the route and don’t need to worry about spoilers, I should go look this up and see whether this prediction actually holds up. :p)

[9:59 PM] > "I never said that Vlov was my target, did I?" Actually you did! I missed it in my run of your own route, but with more context I managed to catch it on this pass! You said the burning Dead in the alleyway had been created by your target. You were mistaken about that, but it still sure was a thing you said!

[10:03 PM] …also apparently Arcueid is running the same “bring Shiki in to hunt down Roa” maneuver this route as last route despite Roa already being dead! This is Suspicious, and I don’t think it’s being driven by Ciel-style suspicion-he’s-in-Shiki, I think it’s relatively pure “she likes Shiki and wants an excuse to spend time with him (plus bonus Growing Bloodlust Problems which seem noticeably less under-control this route compared with the last).

[10:06 PM] …ah, no, she is being open about having already killed Roa and is just bringing Shiki in for subsequent cleanup, never mind.

[10:42 PM] Arcueid is being So Worrying here, wow.

[10:47 PM] (Her reaction to Shiki’s headache-spike in the park. Not the hostility I’d expect if she’d realized Roa was working on possessing him, but she sure did realize Something. (Or maybe it was the Roa thing, just with bonus “aha, he’s not really in control yet and this is an Exploitable Opportunity of some sort”?))

[10:50 PM] …also. Wait a minute. Vlov has a grudge against Roa. Vlov stated his intention in town as being revenge, and expressed disgust for the overall state of the town. Arcueid doesn’t know what brought Vlov to the town in the first place. Did Vlov come by for purposes of launching some sort of attack on Roa?

June 21, 2023

[4:28 PM] Oh wow Noel has So Many Issues. That interlude was great. And I spent the first half of it wondering if she’s always like this by default or if this was the lingering-influence-from-Vlov’s-bite that Ciel and Mario had been discussing as a possibility, but after that second half… yeah, definitely some lingering (and escalating) influence. (Parallel with Shiki and his slowly-accumulating Roa-derived issues!) Although that doesn’t actually, on consideration, preclude that sort of vampire-mass-murder-with-bonus-torture having been among her habits even pre-Vlov! Since she sure did imply having pulled similar stunts previously in Europe, albeit to less effect.

[4:30 PM] Also: something happened thirteen years ago, apparently! It got mentioned once earlier, and again now this time. Roa’s pre-Ciel incarnation, maybe? But, mostly, Not Enough Information, for now. Something to keep an eye on as things continue developing.

[4:49 PM] ...hmm. Timeline. So. 1989, start of the Ciel-and-Roa flashback. Age 12, presumably 2001, the point where Roa-derived intrusive thoughts started hitting her. Age ???, the point where hiding in her room broke down as a strategy and Roa grabbed more substantial influence. Main story takes place... I'm not sure it's been stated directly, but probably 2020ish. Which would line up, given Ciel's outwardly-visible age, with that particular round of Roa-causing-trouble actually being the thirteen-years-ago one? Except in that case I'm not sure what would have happened seven years ago to set SHIKI off; Ciel had a Moment Of Horrified Realization about whatever-it-was, in the restaurant, but apparently in the remake it's not as simple as "Roa jumping into SHIKI set him off ~instantaneously upon Roa's arrival" the way I recall it was in the original, and I lack alternative hypotheses.

[4:52 PM] And apparently Roa has Plans To Make Arcueid His, beyond just "keep fighting her forever because he doesn't know how to deconflate lust from hatred" as in the original. I'm not sure what plans those might be, but whatever they are, they seem Worrying probably!

June 22, 2023

[5:25 PM] I am now re-confused! Ciel was 13 years old when she became an Executor? That doesn’t line up at all with Roa getting to her 13 years ago! And there’s a tempting alternate theory of “1989 was when Roa got to her, not her birth-year”, but in that case we run into the problem of why it would be the 13-years-ago incident that Noel is particularly traumatized about, as opposed to the ~31-years-ago one. My best guess is that the 13-years-old thing was just a cover story? Second-best guess is that the 13-years-ago Roa was somehow so bad that he managed to traumatize Noel even harder than the Roa who destroyed her hometown ~31 years ago? But I’ve got decently large piles of probability-mass on “neither of these, something weirder (or at least harder-for-me-to-predict) is going on”.

[6:38 PM] ...and Day 9 complete! That was very good. And now Ciel has said her goodbye. Which... if I'm remembering the trajectory of the original right, at that point she disappeared from everyone but Shiki's memories at school, and only reappeared to save Shiki from Roa. Which means it's time for the derailedness to progress still farther! What will drive Ciel to return this time, given the lack of external Roa to threaten Shiki? My best guess is Noel doing... something? Deciding to try to kill Shiki on the off-chance he's Roa? But low confidence in that, for now.

June 23, 2023

[5:35 PM] Well! Arach finally interacting with plot-significant events in a more substantial way than just "exist next to them"! I... expect that the references to her having eight legs were metaphorical, Nasu doing his usual animal-metaphors thing, rather than her being Literally Spider-Shaped? Given the lack of spideriness on her sprite that scene. But as for her actions... well. She claims that her 'helping' Noel is just charity; I find that I don't particularly believe her about that. Nor do I think it's likely to be as trivial as just "finally get to do a clinical trial of her Vampire Juice". She's up to something bigger. The question is whether we're going to actually learn anything about what that thing is, this route; I'm expecting her to be mostly involved in far-side events, even if she's unexpectedly poked her head into the near side—she was tied up with Makihisa, and is a regular at the mansion, and both of those are points far-side-ward—and as such it wouldn't shock me if she were to mostly just Not Involve Herself Farther in things for now.

[5:36 PM] Plus bonus "turns out Noel wasn't turning into a Dead Apostle to begin with, prior to Arach's intervention" irony!

[5:41 PM] ...and, for all her talk about how it's better to die than to become a vampire, it's kind of striking how definitively Noel chooses to live even when this entails turning-into-a-vampire. When she gave that die-rather-than-being-a-vampire speech to Shiki, I'd assumed this was her projecting, that her plan was to kill Shiki-who-she-Gettiered-herself-into-'know'ing-was-possessed-by-Roa and then to kill herself before her transformation was done. But then not only did she not do that but she also deliberately avoided letting the church find out about her transformation-in-progress, thus ensuring that they wouldn't kill her and she would (on her world-model) become a vampire. (And thus, because Cruel Irony, losing her chance to discover that she was Not Actually Becoming A Vampire before Arach got her.)

[5:51 PM] Also: Yet More Timeline Confusion! Ciel has affirmed the 'joined the church at age twelve' story, and apparently has been an Executor for six years. Which doesn't fit any of my projected timelines! If Ciel snapped quicker-than-I-initially-thought under pressure from Roa, got fully possessed and destroyed her hometown and got killed and joined the church at age 12, became an Executor at age 13, and has been at it for six years, then... well, that does line up with SHIKI's incident seven years ago, but then in that case what's going on with 1989 and with 13-years-ago? (Which aren't the same year, because this version of Tsukihime is set in The Era Of Smartphones and that era started post-2002.) Let's see. Suppose Ciel was born 1989, Roa possessed her in 2001, and now it's 2008. That's... unlikely, unless smartphones reached fixation a few years earlier in Japan than in the US? But the first iPhone was only 2007, so I doubt it. Overall, I continue to not see any plausible timeline in which Noel-and-now-Ciel's claims around Ciel's age-at-which-she-got-tied-up-with-the-church line up.

[11:17 PM] ...am I wrong about when the present day is? Is it actually 2014, rather than 2020ish? If the present is 2014, then smartphones are plausibly already reasonably at-fixation in a way they wouldn't have been in 2008, and that lines up with the 13-years-ago number. But then that doesn't line up with her supposed 7-year timeline in the church, and so yet again I'm forced to conclude that that has to be some sort of lie unless there's something weird going on that I'm failing to consider.

June 24, 2023

[1:09 PM] !!! Satsuki is here at school on Day 11! Alive, to all appearances! I’d thought she was one of the unnamed-at-the-time missing students who got mentioned on Day 3, but apparently not!

[1:14 PM] …or, no, apparently she was out for a few days for reasons related to the serial killings, she’s just back now! I’m not sure what to make of that, but it’s definitely Interesting! Either she’s been vampirized but found some very-exceptionally-effective way of hiding it and avoiding sun-related problems and continuing to act like herself-as-she-was-pre-turning, or her run-in with the serial killer in this route somehow got derailed such that she didn’t end up vampirized by it! Interesting either way; I’m curious to see how her thread gets developed, when the far side comes around!

[2:43 PM] Huh, interesting that Shiki still pulls the “escape to the park” maneuver after The Incident With Kohaku, despite this involving running through a residential area a ways and despite the largeness of the Tohno mansion-grounds-forest! I suppose distance-from-the-targets-he’s-been-most-fixated-on was a higher priority for him, in his escape-panic, than more general distance-from-the-nearest-people. (Or perhaps the park is bigger than I’m envisioning it as being from the art, enough to beat out even the 40-acre-if-I’m-remembering-right Tohno forest. Or perhaps he’s thinking strategically enough to realize that he’s more likely to be successfully chased after in the Tohno forest than in the public park. There are lots of options, just all of those options Imply Things Not (Yet?) Stated Directly.)

[6:49 PM] Day 13 complete! Wow that was A Lot.

[6:53 PM] So, the timeline-mystery is now resolved, via a six-year gap in which it was in fact very reasonable to count her as not-aging, because she was dead throughout that time. (Placing us, then, in 2014.) Meaning that Ciel is actually substantially younger in the remake, 19 rather than ~25! And also meaning that she Just So Happened to wake up the same year that Roa got to SHIKI, which seems like very much Not A Coincidence, even if it's not quite as direct a connection as the original's "SHIKI inverted ~immediately upon Roa!Ciel's death" one. Something something world didn't consider Roa to be alive until he was back re-active something something, maybe, and thus didn't see the need to enforce aliveness on 'Roa'-who-was-actually-Ciel?

[6:56 PM] (I don't recall any explanation from the original, and am somewhat unclear in the remake too, regarding why it is that Ciel alone seems to have immortality-for-as-long-as-Roa-lives, from among his many castoffs over the centuries. Presumably the same bug-in-the-world with her soul being bound to his also applied to everyone else's? I suppose possibly there are, in fact, a bunch of other immortal Roa-castoffs running around, and they just lack the rest of Ciel's exceptional ability-set and as such aren't Doing Big Things with their immortality the way Ciel is. (After all, someone at the Church needed to have enough idea what was going on to give Ciel the authentication-error metaphor.))

[7:02 PM] The remake version of the Ciel-versus-Shiki showdown was, as the original was, Thoroughly Excellent. Even with my faded-at-this-point memories of the original, I feel reasonably confident this time in proclaiming that the remake version is at least comparable in quality, if not better. Because it successfully brought me near-to-crying, towards the end, and crying is a rare-and-prized thing for me which I would remember had I done it during the original Tsukihime; thus I infer that, while the original plausibly brought me near-to-crying too (the memory is fuzzy enough that I'm not confident it did, but it's at least plausible), it didn't bring me to Actual Crying, meaning plausibly-comparable quality but probably-not-substantially-higher quality.

[7:06 PM] (I am somewhat unclear on where Ciel's information-source is, as far as backtracing the Shiki-Adoption Switcheroo goes. Records-investigation could get her as far as learning of the existence of two Shikis, if the records were erased sloppily, but at the time when she found Roa's coffin she'd gotten that investigation done and inferred SHIKI, rather than Shiki, to have been the adopted one, and I'm not sure what additional records she could have found to make her realize that she had it backwards. But this is the sort of minor thing which will plausibly not be returned to; the details aren't hugely plot-essential, even if I happen to be idly curious about them.)

[7:08 PM] (And I don't think she was lying, at the coffin scene, about getting it backwards, because it wouldn't really have... helped? It wasn't like exactly which of the Shikis was which particularly factored into her cover-story for continuing to hang around him, or anything. I think she just... got additional information, somehow, afterwards?)

[7:24 PM] Then we had the Noel showdown. Which was... not nearly as intensely good as the Ciel showdown? But it was still interesting; it felt much less out-of-place than e.g. the Ciel-versus-random-monster-of-Roa's fight in the finale of Arcueid's route, much more like it was actually about the characters rather than just a new fight scene for its own sake. Overall, I like Noel a lot as a villain! I'm not sure where I'm ultimately going to fall on whether her finale taking the form it did was to the benefit or the detriment of the remake, relative to the original—it involved... a lot of Flashy Fighting With Less Emotional Baggage Than The Fight It Immediately Followed?, where I found Noel at her most interesting during the earlier sections of the route where she was less about the Direct Fair-Ish Combat (which she was, after all, not hugely good at) and more about the Preying Upon Those Weaker Than Her—but it was, at the very least, Interesting.

[7:29 PM] And, as a subcomponent of the Noel showdown, we got the big flashback to Roa!Ciel! Which was both effective-in-its-own-right, as an establishment-of-how-horrible-Roa-can-get and as a contextualization for Noel and why she's a mess in some of the specific ways that she is, and also interesting from a standpoint of there sure did seem to be some familiar figures there. There was the spidery one who was monologuing in a very recognizably Arach-like manner, and there was also, I'm pretty sure, Vlov's silhouette! Which, coupled with the mention of an unexpected sixth person showing up and throwing off Roa's plans, has me very much suspecting that this isn't the last we're going to see of this particular event, that it's going to be unveiled still farther either over the remaining day(-or-maybe-days-if-the-remake-adds-an-extra) or somewhere in the Far Side. (More likely the latter, for previously-mentioned "Arach seems Far Side-flavored" reasons.)

[7:32 PM] (And also: Vlov seemed to really hate Roa, during his fight with Shiki and Ciel, to the point of there being some implication that he'd come to town specifically in order to get some sort of revenge on him. Vlov's silhouette seemed, in Noel's flashback, to be not actively attacking. So what happened, to flip Vlov's opinions on Roa as hard into antagonism as they ultimately got flipped? This also points in the direction that probably Vlov will have more revealed about him in the Far Side, that he won't be relegated to Offscreen Irrelevance the way Nrvnqsr did in the original Far Side.)

[7:37 PM] And then Ciel made her very interesting comment, that since Shiki and Roa are merging into one Shiki would be able to remember anything Roa had done, and thus definitely hadn't killed anyone. Which leads to the question: where, then, did Shiki's two days of missing memories disappear to? He jumped straight from Friday to Sunday. At first I'd been leaning towards mostly Roa with some outside chance that it had been Ciel doing her memory-wiping thing repeatedly, but at this point if Ciel had done it she'd have admitted it, and apparently it can't have been Roa either. So who can it have been? It seems like not-Arcueid's-style, so I'm leaning towards not-her; and, while it seems like it might have served Mario's goals somehow (...not that I've got the best read on what his goals are, even now), it doesn't seem like it's within his capabilities, relative to my current model of them. So I'm not sure! One more Lingering Mystery for the collection.

[7:41 PM] One place where I find the remake to suffer a bit relative to the original, here: it loses the feeling of Repeated Finale-Fakeouts. In the original, Roa is killed, and this initially appears like, okay, the protagonists have won, now we've just got Happy Epilogue to go! And then he starts possessing Shiki. And then Shiki and Ciel have their big showdown, and at the end of it they're closer to one another than ever and have a plausible-sounding plan for his defeat, and this initially appears like, okay, the protagonists have won, now we've just got the Happy Epilogue to go! And then Roa is stronger-than-planned and takes Shiki outside and Arcueid is there waiting, and only then does the true finale happen. Whereas, here, Roa's death happens early enough to be very clearly a start-of-tension-building rather than a finale, and then the narrative pointedly brings back all its hooks of Future Antagonists after the Shiki-and-Ciel showdown rather than doing any sort of fakeout, with Noel showing up immediately and then with Arcueid getting her interlude-to-remind-everyone-that-she's-still-active before the Shiki-and-Ciel-in-Ciel's-apartment scene. And I liked the original's finale-fakeouts, so I feel a bit sad about their absence in the remake.

[7:49 PM] Also I was somewhat surprised at how non-awful Roa!Shiki's attack on Kohaku ended up being, in this version. Still bad, certainly—and presumably worse, in the Bad End branch I have yet to explore—but much less specifically hitting her right in the yet-to-be-revealed Deep Backstory Traumas, compared to how it went in the original. Which... probably wouldn't have been surprising to me if Arcueid's route were different, but since Arcueid's route did still keep the sexual elements of Shiki's attack on her in the alleyway the one night (albeit in toned-down form), I was kind of expecting something similar here? But instead the thing of Roa-instilled aggression taking on a specifically-sexual shape is mostly left very understated, mostly only visible (at least so far) in Shiki's somewhat-more-active flirtation in the days before things come to a head and in Flashback!Roa!Ciel's state of nudity. Which is interesting! I wonder what led Nasu to tone that down as far as he did in the rewrite, while still leaving the Arcueid-route bit relatively un-toned-down; in my mind, the two had seemed more of-a-kind with one another, more "probably either both go or neither goes"-shaped.

June 25, 2023

[11:22 AM] Well! Normal end get! Which is not the true end, because apparently the endings have been rearranged this time around! :o

[3:40 PM] ...and true end get! In unexpectedly-actionized form!

[3:46 PM] This is much more the sort of thing I was semi-expecting back in Arcueid's route, after the Vlov fight proved Unexpectedly Escalatory relative to anything in the original. But was nonetheless unexpected here, because after the way Arcueid's route was in fact not ever re-actionized to that degree of intensity post-Vlov I expected the same to hold of Ciel's route. But nope! Big Apocalyptic Setpiece-Battle Finale! Which it's going to take me a while to settle my feelings on, probably; but it does definitely drive me in the direction of more substantially internally differentiating the remake from the original, thinking of it more as a different story which happens to contain many overlapping components from the original, rather than as the-original-but-with-extra-budget. (Much moreso than e.g. Noel did; Noel felt like she was still basically running on standard Tsukihime-ish narrative stakes and standard-for-the-remake-ish power scales, being an extra wrinkle in the plot and character arcs but being mostly tonally in-line with the original; whereas the Big Arcueid Fight was very dramatically outside of the tone-space covered at any point in the original.)

[3:48 PM] (I remain confused about what That One Monster Of Roa's was doing, in the finale. Like, it felt like much less of a tonal/pacing hiccup this time around, a much briefer fight which did some work in showing Ciel's mental state in a route where her mental state is a core focus in a way it wasn't nearly as much in Arcueid's route; but it's still weird, from an "I don't understand why Nasu included it at all" standpoint. Given its spideriness, maybe it's going to be related somehow to whatever-is-going-on-with-Arach, once the far side comes around, and so it's here for purposes of Early Foreshadowing?)

[4:05 PM] ...I feel like Nasu's action-scene-writing has grown increasingly extravagant over time in a not-unambiguously-positive way. Like, the original Tsukihime's action scenes were generally pretty lightweight; Fate/stay night's were a lot more intense, but were still mostly pretty grounded scale-wise, even despite all the overpowered abilities being thrown around; but then Mahoyo had [rot13 for Mahoyo spoilers]gur ovt nzhfrzrag-cnex frdhrapr[/rot13] which dwarfed even the biggest Fate/stay night fights scale-wise, and the Tsukihime remake escalated still farther from there, with both Vlov and Arcueid escalating to attacks which straight-up would have destroyed the whole city had they not been stopped. And, like, the scenes are cool? But I feel like they're also... tipping increasingly in the direction of feeling out-of-place relative to their surrounding works, over time, tonally, in some way that's hard to articulate. Or... no, not quite that. Shaping the tone of their surrounding works, let's say. It's very hard to hold onto an original-Tsukihime-ish relatively-small-scale-storytelling mood amid a Big Fight Scene Where The City Is At Risk Of Being Casually Squished As A Side-Casualty; that those sorts of big fights happen anyway is one of the key elements tonally differentiating the remake from the original. And that's fine as long as one is aiming to write stories with the sort of tone that those fight scenes bring about; but it seems like a... loss of versatility? It reduces his ability to do other sorts of tone. I'm not sure that the modern-day Nasu would be capable of writing the sorts of relatively-smaller-scale stories that he started his career with, with Kara no Kyoukai and with the original Tsukihime, and that seems kind of sad, because I liked those stories. And, like, I like his more recent stuff too! But there's still something sad in the feeling that he couldn't go back to doing things-like-the-older-stuff even if he tried.

[4:11 PM] Anyway! Big Action Setpiece. Cool novel way of killing off Roa, which I found very elegant. And then a nice epilogue, mostly pretty similar to the original Ciel true-end epilogue as far as I'm managing to recall it. (...although it felt a bit more repetitive after the normal-end epilogue, here, since they covered a lot of the same ground as one another.) I didn't find the epilogue this time around to be as emotionally-impactful as I recall having found the Arcueid true-end epilogue—the big moments of emotional impact this route were mostly earlier, the various Big Moments Of Catharsis between Shiki and Ciel and between Shiki and Arcueid—but it still closed things off well enough in its own right, and was generally enjoyable.

[4:12 PM] ...and now all that's left is branch-exploration! And then the final accounting of my thoughts and of whatever lingering mysteries-from-this-route have yet to be resolved.

[4:17 PM] (Also I don't 100% understand the divergence between the normal-end branch and the true-end branch. Or, like, I get that Shiki trying harder to let Arcueid down gently in the true-end branch leads her to have more brainpower to spare on continuing to think while being All-Consumingly Mad At Him, thus leading her to invoke Serious Large-Scale Reality-Warping against him rather than simpler-and-more-direct "regenerate and then apply Large Quantities Of Violence"-shaped actions like she uses in the normal-end branch; but I don't get the divergence on Ciel's end, why normal-end!Ciel has the Seventh Scripture but true-end!Ciel delays getting it and instead rushes to grab Shiki first. It seems like they diverge even before the reality-warping comes out, based on some other factor I have yet to discern?)

[10:51 PM] 100% completion done! At least to the best of my ability to discern via lack of non-viewed flowchart-entries, via lack of non-unlocked music-player tracks, and in general based on gallery-completion. 44 hours logged total for Ciel's-route-counting-branch-exploration, apparently. I'd be curious to see how that compares with my time on Arcueid's route, but unfortunately I didn't have game-time-logging set up for my Switch emulator last year the way I do now, so I suppose that will remain forever a mystery.

[11:02 PM] Thoughts from branch-exploration: - The "Shiki-under-Roa's-influence kills everyone in the mansion" bad-end-branch was High-Quality Horror. Very effective slow unveiling. Also I am very curious what Kohaku was thinking, in that one, with her continuing to pretend everything was normal even after both Akiha and Hisui were dead. I mean, presumably she was thinking "it would be undollish to have feelings about this, so I'm going to Not"; but it's still somewhat surprising to me that she was so blase about Hisui's death specifically, as opposed to e.g. adding Shiki more unambiguously to her revenge-target-pile and then being more cautious around him. I suppose possibly she intended to lace his food with Interesting Substances next time she fed him, and was foiled only by his un-accounted-for change of diet, or something? - Meanwhile, in the branch where everything isn't quite as terrible, we've got a very interesting interaction between Kohaku and Hisui around carrying Shiki up to his room, wherein Kohaku asks Hisui to do it (despite knowing about Hisui's issues around physical-contact-with-men), Hisui objects, and then Kohaku proceeds to formally give Hisui permission to make an exception to her usual patterns, after which Hisui does it without further objection (albeit while still pretty clearly feeling uncomfortable about it.) This is interesting. This is a wrinkle in the Kohaku-Hisui dynamic that I don't recall seeing in the original; in the original, as I recall, Hisui's issue-pile is more purely her own, influenced by her knowledge of Kohaku's history but never indicated as far as I recall to be a product of any sort of, like, explicit understanding between the two of them, as opposed to just Hisui reacting in her own way to the knowledge of what Kohaku went through for her sake. But apparently there's more to it, in the remake! - ...and then we had the Big Moment in the other side of red garden trailer, with Satsuki. The trailer as a whole was Very Pretty, but also more specifically I am so interested to see what's going on with the Satsuki route, and that single few-second patch of trailer is probably the biggest indicator I've seen to date of its likely shape.

[11:17 PM] Lingering mysteries: - Whence the missing memories? I would think Roa even more, now, after the everyone-in-the-mansion-dies branch, except once again that contradicts Ciel's statement that, if one does a thing under Roa's influence, one will remember that. And, indeed, even when Shiki is temporarily forgetting / not turning his mind towards Roa's activities, as in the scene with Mario and Shiki's lack of thinking-about-it-afterwards, it's pretty consistently the case that those moments are still followed by the eye of the narrative, indicating at least some degree of theoretical accessibility-to-Shiki probably. Whereas for the two missing days there's just nothing. So I'm not sure what's going on there. - Speaking of which: Mario! What's his deal? After this route we've got probably-close-to-everything-we're-going-to-get on Noel—she seemed like she had a pretty complete arc, here, and while I expect her to still feature in the far side I don't specifically expect her to be a big player in it—and I've updated towards Mario's two less-in-focus minions (Karius and the other one) being probably Actually Genuinely Unimportant Side Characters, but Mario himself has taken a big step up in Mysteriousness, similarly to Arach albeit less immediately plot-affectingly. It sure does seem like there's some sort of hivemind or body-transference or something along those lines going on, in the Laurentis family, and apparently they-via-Mario are looking for the secrets of immortality, but we've got very little in the way of detail, so far. Little enough that I find myself wondering if we're going to get more church-focus in The Other Side of Red Garden than we did in the original Far Side, to go more into this. - What's up with the variable stopping power of Shiki's eyes? The story specifically makes a point of noting that even just tracing a line, on one of Vlov's dogs, is enough to stop it in its tracks and render it sufficiently definitively Dead that it can't even take purely-reflexive final actions like Bite Down Harder On Shiki; and yet, in the Roa!Shiki-and-Ciel-kill-each-other ending, Ciel manages to remain functional enough to stab through Roa!Shiki even after he stabs a point on her, which naively I'd expect to have even more stopping power than tracing a line. (And I half-recall that Roa similarly managed Action In His Final Moments in Arcueid's route, even if it's been long enough that I no longer remember the precise details.) Something something Lifescale something something, higher Lifescale leads to increased ability to continue acting after getting got with Mystic Eyes of Death Perception? (This would also line up with Arcueid being able to straight-up keep on fighting him, when he slashes her lines in the normal-end branch, only being somewhat slowed down rather than anything more serious.) - ...plus everything already discussed earlier, Vlov's feelings towards Roa and Arach's deal and so forth.

[11:18 PM] ...oh, also, the bit in the Black Key exposition-branch where Ciel starts out trying to replace all references to magecraft with prayer only to give up midway through was Very Funny. One of my favorite comedic moments in the whole VN, I think.

[11:20 PM] And that's everything, I think! It's been fun. I look forward to The Other Side of Red Garden coming out, whenever it does that.

[11:23 PM] (It sounds, from Ciel-sensei's lesson with the Other Side of Red Garden trailer, like plausibly it'll be less action-y; it was described there as being more mystery-shaped instead. I'm curious to see whether that means the Fights With Apocalyptically Powerful Abilities Being Thrown Around Endangering Everyone are less present in the far side than in the near side; my current guess is no, that we'll see similar sorts of stakes-escalation around e.g. the big Akiha fight, plausibly whatever is going on with Arach, et cetera, because as mentioned earlier I'm not convinced Nasu is really capable any more of not doing that sort of thing.)

[11:30 PM] ...also I wonder if Satsuki's route is going to end up being sort of a bridge between the near side and the far side. Because we keep getting all these hints of far-side-content hooking back in with Roa's schemes, with the person-who-sounded-like-Arach in Noel's flashback (and, for that matter, more generally with the nature of whatever Roa was trying to do against Arcueid in that incarnation being repeatedly teased-but-not-revealed), and with whatever is going on between Roa and Vlov that hasn't been discussed much yet, and so forth; and, in the Other Side of Red Garden trailer, Satsuki was the one character to be shown against the backdrop of the broader city rather than specifically of the Tohno mansion; and, of course, Satsuki herself has a connection with Roa, on account of his being the one who turns her. So... possibly that route is going to be some sort of grand-finale blend-of-the-two-halves'-respective-tones-and-casts, or something? And if the remake were following original-Tsukihime-tone then I'd expect not-that, because the near-side/far-side split in the original is pretty sharp and never really gets blended like that; but the remake has at this point established itself as fully willing to handle tonal things differently, compared with the original, so I'm less confident in that and as such this seems a lot more plausible.

[11:34 PM] ...oh, also another lingering mystery I forgot to list earlier: what's up with Satsuki's apparent survival, in Ciel's route? Being attacked and then making it through well enough to be able to attend school in daylight, which is even more mysterious than if she'd just been butterflied into not-being-attacked. I have very little idea, right now, what to make of that, but it's definitely Interesting and something to keep an eye on.

#Archive #Tsukihime #Tsukihime Remake Liveblog Archive

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ofthecrowsandcranes · 4 months

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thoughts of the week

i went into this intending to write a reflection on the grimoire challenge for this week but ended up thinking more about general reflections of my practice instead, so, thoughts:

like i said in this reblog, i'm using this challenge (and a bunch of other stuff) as frameworks, because i haven't really written down much of my practice. most of it lives in my head. i have (2) partial grimoires, one that's evolved into just a notetaking notebook and another that was digital that i don't really use because even though digitization makes it easier to organise, there's something about paper that i really, really like.

so my goal/intention for this challenge is to practice consistency. attempting the prompts that make sense to me, even if for some of them i know they're going to be a rough draft of what my practice ends up being. for the spellwriting 101 one, i haven't even done enough spellwork to know what process works best for me (consequences of being more pagan than witch for the past few years), so i took notes from @breelandwalker's how to write spells post since her process is concise and feels like a good checklist of "did i consider this aspect? am i being specific enough or not?" obviously my methods may change as i do more practical work but having a good starting point is what matters the most

one of my general goals for 2024 was to just Do things, and worry less about the finished product and more about the process. so some of my pages are messy and i don't have a specific order for things. i'm filling in the index/table of contents last so i can use it as a "where did i put this" list instead of a "this will go here" list. in the future, i'll probably use a binder or something with easily insertable pages/entries as a formal grimoire, but for now, i'm recording and practicing and that's what matters most for me, since i haven't done that before. despite four years of doing stuff on and off.

i'm gonna put a cut here because otherwise this post will be Massive but i'm gonna go into more detail about some of the pages/things that i did for reference.

monday

name your book: done! i just called it my spiritual lab notebook, since that's what it is.

definitions (ritual and spell): done! very UPG, but to me a ritual and a spell differ because a ritual is to affect the Now and a spell is to affect the Later. also rituals have more broad intentions vs a spell which has very specific intentions

Study herb: bay laurel! i did a bay leaf wish ritual on new year's day with my family and my mom asked why bay leaves, and i was like "hm, i don't know the specifics of why they're associated with wishmaking" so i added them to my herbs list so i could find out, and then learned it's because they're fucking bay laurel. i feel extremely stupid for not making that connection but! now i know!

tuesday:

outline: done! it's blank, i won't fill it in until the notebook is full

study gem: not done, still trying to decide how to substitute this. i might do tarot spreads instead.

spellwriting 101: done! discussed above

wednesday:

common tools: done! i really only put three things for now, but i'll probably go back and add things as i remember/find new tools. so far i've got tarot cards, embroidery thread, and candles, but in writing this i've remembered bells and jars and beads also

year outline/calendar: done! added the Big 4 (solstices & equinoxes), samhain, lughnasadh, and christmas (since my family celebrates it). will definitely be adding more as i go, but that's what i want to celebrate (or do celebrate) for now

Practical (tool usage): done! did a 3 card pull with my elemental power tarot, since i want to use it more as a reflective tool.

thursday:

altar design/workspace: done! sketched a layout of my current altar + wrote some wishes/dreams for when i have a different space.

practical (cleansing): not done yet—around this part of the week my chronic illness stuff started to flare up, and since cleansing involves actual cleaning for me, i couldn't really do it while resting. it's on my backburner for later.

friday:

personal practices: done! did a quick journal entry in DayOne

and that's all! if i can get to cleansing today i'll do it, but i have many other things to do also, so i'll get to it eventually.

#he speaks #2024 grimoire challenge #grimoire challenge: thoughts & reflections #thoughts of the week

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horizonandstar · 2 years

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HEY. I read your fic and I wanted to ramble about how much I enjoyed it if that's alright. Normally I'd do it in a reblog, but I couldn't find a suitable post to do it on, so inbox it is then

I just read your fic The Horizon and the Little Star all in one go and had an absolute BLAST. I adored it so much, it was an INCREDIBLE read 💓💕💖💗💝💞💟 you have no idea how obsessed I am with fics containing foreign planet worldbuilding or anything like that, just. Facts about different planets, you know? So it was in the middle of one chapter that I just grinned and kicked my legs in the utter delight of "yes!! This is a good fic, I am reading a good fic right now!" ALSO CRASH-LAND PLANET SURVIVAL. YES!!!

AND SUN AND MOON'S WHISTLING AND CHIRPING, I LOVE THAT. I adored the detail of you explaining the pitch of the whistles, I like that a lot. It's great knowing exactly what sounds I'm meant to imagine, very engaging. Also I'm a huge language nerd and me getting to learn words from a made-up language in the middle of a fic gets me so excited

Also it's so funny hearing the reader say a word Moon would absolutely say and going, "oh Moon is SO mimicking that later."

Your writing is so good, I had such an amazing time reading. You've done an incredible job and made a highly enjoyable fic, I see why I've been directly recommended it twice (but seen three recommendations total). BRAVO, CLAPCLAPCLAP. Take care of yourself, you have a wonderful fic. Have a great day

i was in the middle of eating when i saw this and then i reread it multiple times and had no idea what to say. and then i took a nap and i just woke up so hello! hi! im here now

thanks for reading and enjoying!!!! i will not lie i did not actually expect to see you here so this was a really pleasant surprise

BUT YEAH!!!!! i love worldbuilding. love making my own and love looking at what other people made like give me that ill eat the words. i think the people who go really indepth with their worldbuilding is really really cool even if that level of indepth would personally tire me out if i tried. like i am.LOOKING and its cool

yeaj!!!!!! glad you liked the detail where its a specific sort of whistle that carries a specific meaning. so far every word that the reader has learned has all been in whistles because those are the noises that i can easily recreate. so what i do is that i actually whistle out what it sounds like and then try my best to describe the sound i just made. AND GLAD u like learning the silly lil made up words and sounds because theres going to be more. this language learning is going BOTH WAYS

YEAH moon is like "hehe words :] gonna use them" and through the power of y/n's current word choices he has not said something absolutely stupid yet. if y/n stopped to think about it a little they couldve had him yelling toothpaste ads or smth and he would be none the wiser

THANK u thank u i am bowing and taking my leave. gonna go back to sleep now. taking this gold star and putting it on my head like fruit sticker

#ask #pillowspace

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talisidekick · 2 years

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Discovering I have ADHD, and Plurality, and getting a confirmed diagnosis lead me to go searching. Upped my bullet journal game, began task logging on stickey-notes at work, set one-off alarms based on my work queue to stay on track. Began talking to my alters, setting their needs and wants as priorities, and made a few posts about it here, liked a few neurodivergent posts that spoke to me, reblogged one or two, maybe added something in the tags beyond "reblog".

And now ... now my "for you" and discovery feed is just FILLED with neurodivergent posts, and you know, it was nice. Found a few things I related to ... and then made the "mistake" of reading the original tags later. And now ... now this dungeon adventure has become much deeper. I found the secret hidden door of: I likely DON'T just have ADHD Inattentive Type. And this ... scares me. Because now it's not just hyperfixation, time loss, difficulty remembering details, getting easily distracted, trouble focussing, etc. There's ... more.

I should really look into this more, but I really need someone to hold my hand as I go through this too. Not a psychologist or therapist ... just someone unjudging. My insurance also doesn't cover the gender affirming therapists in my area. I don't have an extended family I can rely on, I burned those bridges when I came out as transgender. On mine and my spouses side, I have no one. I'm alone. I have friends, but they're either too far away in different timezones and our schedules don't match up, and/or are neurodivergent like me and asking them to help would very likely send us both into a spiral. So ... I'm alone ... again ... in investigating not only what my texture triggers are, but how I can get better at dealing with what happens when I am triggered, and what this is exactly. I ... know I have OCD, didn't get the diagnosis but was 'not enough to classify it as a clinical disorder but close enough online self-help resources might help'.

I know the big trigger is gelatin, jello, or slime-like textures. I used to get angry or vomit, but that was my stress response, now ... since I started taking HRT, and stopped repressing myself, it's become panic attacks and still vomiting and nausea. I usually find a corner somewhere, suffer through not being able to breath and feeling ill, etc. Last time I broke my favourite choker because it suddenly felt like it was literally choking me and I couldn't get the clip to open so ... I ripped it off. I love that choker.

I'm scared, I'm alone, I hate this. I hate not knowing and simultaneously fearing the answer. I hate that there's more.

#neurodivergent #minor meltdown #transgender #trans #just me venting I guess?

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disabled-tolkien · 2 years

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The Silmarillion fandom seems to just not do image descriptions, and it’s exhausting.

Image descriptions are an absolute necessity for many disabled fans.

Not having them isolates disabled people and drives us out of the fandom, furthering the cycle where a fandom doesn’t care about disabled people because there aren’t many disabled people within it, and then not many disabled people being in the fandom because it doesn’t care about us and is in certain ways actively hostile.*

For a lot of other posts on tumblr, if they’ve got enough notes then you can often just scroll back through and find an image description to copy and paste. But that’s not the case in the Silm fandom because so few people bother.

Adding them to every post that you reblog can be exhausting, and at the moment that burden falls disproportionately on disabled fans. But content creators should add image descriptions to their images when they upload them. Writing image descriptions should just be a part of the process of making art.

(Edit: of course there are valid reasons that some people might struggle with writing Image descriptions, especially disabled people and non-English speakers. It's always okay to ask for help!)

If you’re screenshotting and reposting a twitter thread or something similar, copying and pasting the text takes less than a minute.

*There obviously are disabled Tolkien fans on tumblr. But ableism and structural barriers (like a lack of image descriptions!) affects which disabled people get to participate in fandom. There are a fair few neurodiverse fans and people with mental illness or similar disabilities. That’s a really positive thing; neurodiverse people are valuable and important members of this fandom who create so much content and do wonderful things. And I’m not trying to say that we aren't marginalized or that we don’t face ableism and accessibility barriers. But ableism & inaccessibility on tumblr affect some disabilities more than others, and skew which disabled people stay in the fandom.

I get why some people are scared or unsure how to write image descriptions, I really do. Here’s a basic briefer.

How to Write Image Descriptions

You don’t need to use flowery language or have a “good writing style”. Anyone can write an ID.

Start with the basics. What are the main features of the image? For example: "two people holding hands" or "a painting of the sea".

Make sure you describe what the author/artist was basically trying to get across. Is it a joke? Is there a focus or an important feature?

You don’t need to go into detail. If you do, that’s great, but if you’ve got the basics and any fundamental “point” that the image is trying to get across, you don’t need to stress yourself out by describing every detail. You can if you want to, but it's not essential.

Here's an example of a simple image description

Here's one with more detail

Here's an example for a moodboard

Keep it above the cut. If someone has to click multiple times to get to the image description, it’s not really accessible. If an image description is below a post cut it also means that people won’t be able to get to it if you later change your url or delete your blog.

Skin colour: it's not always necessary to describe skin colour, but if you're going to describe skin colour for one person then do it for everyone. Don't just single out PoC as though white is the default. And don't describe brown skin by comparing it to food- again, image descriptions don't need to be flowery, you can just say black skin or brown skin. I personally describe skin colour as pale, light brown, mid brown, dark brown, or black.

You can check the notes to see if someone has already written a description. It can save you time, and don’t be afraid to copy paste!

Feel free to ask others for help or feedback

If you can’t write an ID because of a lack of spoons etc, or you’re planning to come back to it later, don’t be afraid to say that.

If you want to get advice about image descriptions for more complex posts, this post goes into more depth

It's not as scary or difficult as people seem to think it is. Don't be afraid to practice; writing an image description gets easier each time. No one is going to jump down your throat for doing it wrong.

Shout out to everyone who does write image descriptions, I see you and I love you.

#tolkien #silmarillion #disability in fandom #long post #disability 101

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themagnuswriters · 4 years

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Writing a Muslim Character

The Mods of the Magnus Writers discord server and community are putting together a variety of resources for Magnus Archives fan creators; these have been collated from articles on the topics, our own experiences, and the experiences of the members of the Magnus Writers discord. These are definitely not comprehensive or the only viewpoints out there, and are by no means meant as a way to police fanworks, but as a way to support and inspire fan creators in creating thoughtful and diverse works. Please note that external links will be added in a reblog to outsmart tumblr’s terrible tagging system, so make sure to check those out as well!

This resource in particular was put together by Mod Jasmine: hi, all!

While there are no canonically Muslim characters in TMA, Muslim headcanons are common in fanworks—particularly for Basira, and sometimes Jon (which I love to see!). I have cobbled together this post from my own experiences to help support and inform fans in these areas, and as part of my diabolical plan to get more Muslim!Basira and Muslim!Jon fics to shove into my brain.

First, two gigantic caveats:

I was raised Sunni Muslim in Egypt, which is a majority Sunni Muslim country, and still live there. This means my experience will be very different from someone raised in a majority Christian country like the UK, and different again if they are not Sunni and not Arab.

I am currently ex-Muslim. This does not mean I bear any ill will towards Islam or Muslims, just that it wasn’t for me, and I felt it was important to be upfront about that. I’ll be linking to resources by practicing Muslims in the reblog to this post, whether to add to my opinions and experiences or provide you with a different opinion. I am not here to put my voice over that of Muslims, just to do some of the work so they don’t have to. Obviously, if any Muslims have any additions or suggestions for this post, I’m happy to accommodate them.

Alright. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started with the basics of writing a Muslim character.

(Warning: this is absurdly, absurdly long)

Basics:

Muslims follow two main sources of religious instruction: Quran and Hadith.

The Quran is the holy book, considered to be dictated by the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Mohammed, who then relayed what he was told to his followers. It is composed of surahs, or chapters, which have individual ayat, or verses. There are no varying versions of the Quran, later additions, or anything considered lost in translation. Any Arabic Quran is considered to be the same text that the Prophet Mohammed relayed, unchanged. As a result, while Muslims can debate interpretations of the Quran (although that’s often still left to the scholars), none debate the actual words of the text.

Hadith, meanwhile, are the sayings or teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. Their validity can be disputed, as they were written by his followers after his death, and mainly depend on having several witnesses for a specific saying or situation. The more witnesses there were, the more valid the hadith is considered to be.

When in doubt or should there be any contradiction between the Quran and Hadith, Muslims will always refer to the Quran first and foremost.

Denominations:

The bigggest (but not only!) divisions of Islam are Sunni and Shia, and both of those have separate madhabs, which are the separate thoughts and stances of specific Imams. When writing a Muslim character, a good first step would be to decide where your character’s family might have come from, as that could help inform which denomination your character might belong to. This will in turn inform things like the beliefs they grew up with, how they pray, their holy holidays, and so on. Obviously, all denominations fall under the bigger umbrella of Muslim, but can vary in practice.

Background:

The intersection of culture and religion affects a character beyond which denomination they likely belong to, such as whether they call prayer salah or namaz, the foods they might associate with Ramadan or Eid, and their community’s stance on things like hijab and alcohol.

One thing to keep in mind is that being Muslim is not synonymous with being Arab and vice versa. Not all Arabs are Muslim, not all Muslims are Arab or even Middle Eastern. In fact, the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia. That said, depending on your character’s race and backround, there is the potential they may have faced Arab elitism or other strands of racism within Muslim circles. Please see the reblog of this post for an article about one Black British Muslim woman’s experience with racism.

And, of course, your character and their family do not need to have been immigrants at all. They or their family may have been converts instead. According to most Muslim schools of thought, all that’s required for a person to be Muslim is stating the shahada in Arabic, honestly and with intent. It goes, “Ashhadu an la ilah illa Allah, wa an Mohammadan rasul Allah,” which translates as “I bear witness that there is no god but God, and that Mohammed is His prophet.” Shia Muslims, I believe, have an additional section, but otherwise that’s it. Recite that in front of witnesses with sincere belief and that’s all you need to be Muslim.

Pillars of Islam:

These are the duties or cornerstones of a Muslim’s faith and considered to be acts every Muslim should strive for. What the pillars are can, I think, differ between denominations, with Shia Muslims having additional ancillaries as well (any Shia readers, please feel free to correct me!) but both denominations agree that the following are important:

Salah—prayer

Sawm—fasting during Ramadan

Zakat—giving a certain percentage of income to charity or the community

Hajj—pilgrimage to Mecca

In all cases, these are considered mandatory only for those who are able. A person who cannot perform hajj, whether due to not being physically able to or lacking the funds to travel, is under no obligation.

Prayer:

Prayer is performed five times a day while facing the Qibla, which is the direction of Mecca. Prayer is formed of units, called rak’at, which consists of a set of actions done in a specific order. The “How to Pray Salah, Step by Step” article linked in the reblog of this post provides fairly good prayer instructions for beginners, so check it out for details! These include bowing, prostrating, and reciting some surahs.

Each of the five daily prayers has a different number of rak’at, as well as its own name and allotted time of day, as follows:

Fajr, which means Dawn and can be performed at any point until the sun rises (two rak’at).

Dhuhr, which means Noon (four rak’at)

Asr, performed in the afternoon (four rak’at)

Maghreb, which means sunset and can be performed at any point until it’s dark (three rak’at)

Isha, performed at night and can be done at any point until dawn (four rak’at)

The specific time of prayer will differ day to day and place to place, according to the sun, but those are the rough timeframes for each. It’s generally preferred that a Muslim does their prayer on time, but in practice some Muslims find it difficult to wake up for Fajr, for instance, and just try to make sure they get a morning prayer in before noon.

On Friday, there is a congregational Friday prayer at Dhuhr in a mosque called the Jumu’a prayer (which, fun fact, literally means gathering and is also the Arabic name for Friday!). Only men are required to take part in the congregation, however.

In Muslim majority countries, the time for prayer is announced by the adhaan, the call to prayer, from mosques and in media. This won’t be the case in the UK, and the character will likely have to rely on an adhaan app or looking up what time prayer should be.

There are various requirements for a prayer to be correct, chief of which is facing the Qibla and purity. Before performing prayer, a Muslim must purify themself by performing wudu, or ablutions, which basically involves washing the hands, arms, nostrils, face, head, and feet a specific number of times using clean water. The way I was taught these must be performed in a certain order, and the person shouldn’t speak during or after until their prayer is finished. This may be different for others.

Wudu is considered valid until nullified by bodily functions such as urinating, defecating, vomiting, flatulence, or any sexual activity. For Sunni Muslims, it’s also invalidated by going to sleep. If none of these have happened, a Muslim can perform more than one prayer using the same wudu.

Notably, a Muslim cannot pray if they’re on their period, as they’re considered in a state of impurity.

Another important requirement is that a Muslim be dressed modestly for prayer. The general guideline is that Muslim men should cover the area between their navel and knees with loose, non-revealing clothing, and that during prayer it’s preferred that they cover their chests as well Muslim women should cover everything except their face, hands, and feet. This means that a woman who isn’t hijabi would still wrap a hijab for prayer. For nonbinary Muslims, I don’t think there are specific guidelines yet, although please feel free to correct me.

If praying at home, a family may choose to pray together. In this case, the male head of the household usually stands at the front and acts as Imam, leading the prayer. Other men will tend to be in front of or beside women, as generally women should not pray in front of a man. This is the case even, especially, if he is not praying.

Children aren’t required to pray, as they’re considered innocent and have no obligations, but may want to take part early on or may be encouraged to practice.

Praying is one area you’ll find denominational differences. For example, while Sunnis fold their arms in prayer, Shia keep their arms to their side, and while Shia Muslims make sure their foreheads touch a piece of clay or earth when they prostrate, Sunnis do not. If you write your character praying, keep these details in mind.

Fasting:

During the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from Fajr (dawn) until Maghreb (sunset) every day. This means they abstain from consuming anything—yes, even water, cigarettes, and medicine. They should also abstain from sexual activities and cursing. Most importantly, they must have the intention to be fasting. This means that not eating and drinking because they were asleep for that entire period of time or just lost track and forgot does not count as fasting.

Generally, the idea is more to try to be more pious and avoid sin throughout the month. It’s thought that the shaytan (or devil) is chained up during Ramadan, so any temptation or sinning is a person’s own doing. The way I was raised, I was taught that sawm/fasting is invalidated by sexual thoughts and raising your voice as well. Many people also try to dress more modestly during Ramadan, with some women opting for looser clothing or a headscarf. Many Muslims will try to read the whole Quran during Ramadan.

After Maghreb, Muslims break their fast with Iftar (which means breakfast, hah) and have a late night meal called Suhour. Since the Muslim calendar is a lunar calendar, Ramadan is 11 days earlier every year. Depending on when Ramadan falls in the year, there can be barely any time between iftar and suhour in certain parts of the world, as the sun is up for so much of the day.

Given the length of time and difficulty involved, there are exceptions and allowances for fasting. A person is not required to fast if they are:

A child (up to puberty)

Ill or has a medical condition such as diabetes

Pregnant

Travelling

On their period

In fact, if they are on their period it will not be counted, even if they do fast. That said, sometimes people choose to fast while travelling anyway, as travel is less strenuous now than it used to be. If they’re crossing time zones they will have to consider which time zone they’re breaking their fast to. As far as I remember, it’s based on the time zone of the place they just left or started their fast in.

If an obstacle to fasting is temporary, such as their period, they’re expected to make those days up with additional fasting before next Ramadan. Otherwise, they are allowed to make up for the lost fast in another way, such as by donating money or feeding fasting people. Whether due to societal pressure (which is formidable in Muslim-majority countries) or out of consideration for others who are fasting, those who are not fasting for whatever reason may often choose to hide this and only eat in secret.

If a person forgets they were fasting or accidentally consumes something, it does not invalidate the fast , and as soon as they remember or realise the mistake they can have the intention to fast again and continue with their day.

While children are exempt, many families will start them off by fasting for half a day so they can build up to a full day when they hit puberty.

Ramadan traditions vary wildly from country to country and culture to culture, but generally it’s a time for family gathering and celebration. Often there are special Ramadan-specific food, drink, and decorations, and it ends with Eid ul-Fitr which has its own specific foods and celebrations. Basically, imagine if Christmas lasted a month. That’s how big a deal Ramadan is.

In my experience, the first few days are usually the hardest. Water is what I tended to miss the most, even if I managed to stay up long enough or set an alarm to wake up to drink just before fajr, followed closely by swearing. Anyone who drinks caffeine or smokes cigarettes will likely find abstaining from those more difficult than water. By the end of the month, though, it gets much easier and I often got to the point where I barely noticed. I will say, however, that the longest I’ve had to fast has been maybe 16 hours. A summer Ramadan in the UK would be more difficult due to the much later sunsets.

Halal and Haram:

Halal means “permissible,” while haram means “forbidden.” You might have heard these words in passing before, such as halal food, but they are used for many areas of life.

Things that are considered haram include:

Consuming, serving, or trading in intoxicants, such as alcohol

Consuming improperly slaughtered meat or meat from forbidden animals, such as pork

Extramarital sex

Tattoos

Gambling

Men wearing silk or gold

A Muslim woman marrying a non-Muslim man (although it’s fine for a Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman)

Being immodest

Modesty is expected of all genders, including men. If you’ll recall from the section on prayer, the general guideline for male modesty is that they should cover the area between their navel and knees with loose, non-revealing clothing. Note that for women, modesty does not necessarily involve wearing a hijab. There is actually a ton of controversy as to whether the hijab is a fard (requirement) or not, as described in the following section.

The Hijab:

To be hijabi takes more than just throwing on a headscarf. As a word, hijab means “barrier” or “veil,” and a hijabi person would be expected to cover everything except their face and the palms of their hands, and to ensure that their clothes are loose and non-revealing. It all comes from an interpretation of two verses in the Quran that many scholars nowadays agree to mean the hijab is required, and that some say actually call for a face covering as well, which is called a niqab.

This wasn’t always the case, however, and these days there is still the occasional controversial scholar (I remember a few kerfuffles coming out of Egypt’s Al-Azhar mosque recently) saying it isn’t and has never been required at all. At least in the Arab world, this is largely due to the wave of Wahhabism (which is a specifically fundamentalist interpretation of Islam) that’s taken over the region in the past half a century. Before that, the idea of a hijab being a religious requirement was less widespread.

I’m not here to argue who’s right or wrong, just to make you aware that the hijab as we know it today hasn’t always been considered a requirement for a Muslim woman. Most of the women of my family never wore any form of head covering, but more and more they are an exception rather than the norm.

The choice of whether to wear a hijab can mean very different things, depending on the surrounding culture. For instance, my grandmother, the strictest woman I have ever known, got married in a very cute sleeveless dress that went just under the knees, and when she grew older she wore a head-covering more as a cultural indication of age rather than any religious reason. In my generation, in a country with a Muslim majority, lack of visible signs of devoutness have become almost a class marker, with some upper-class women using their lack of head-covering as a sign that they are “more Westernized” or “modern.” And again, I want to emphasize that this is the case for my country only.

This will be completely different for Muslim minorities, where the hijab can become a symbol of pride and unity.

I will say that it’s very rare for women to be forced into getting veiled, whether in Muslim minority or majority countries. I’m not saying it never happens, just that it’s not the “oppressive tool of the patriarchy” outsiders sometimes think it is. Women may face some societal pressure, but by and large it is considered a choice and often an empowering one. In fact, I have friends whose families discouraged them from wearing a hijab too young and emphasized only taking the decision when they were sure they wanted to. If writing a Muslim character when you’re non-Muslim, I strongly suggest not trying to tackle the story of someone forced into a hijab, as there’s a lot of nuance there and it’s very easy to fall into harmful stereotypes. The hijabi woman who gets “liberated” and takes off her hijab is also overdone and harmful. Please don’t.

Everyday Life:

Muslims are not a monolithic entity, and some will be more devout or religious than others. There are those who will pray their five a day and others who only pray during Ramadan or Eid, some who don’t drink and some who do, hijabis who dress only in loose clothing and those who wear tight trousers or show some of their hair, some who have tattoos, and some who may date or even have sex before marriage. However, this isn’t a carte-blanche not to do research when writing a Muslim character, because even if they break a rule of Islam, they will be conscious of it, may be concerned about their community’s response to it, and in any case will be affected by it.

For instance, I know many Muslims who drink alcohol. Some interpret the text differently, saying that since the sin is getting drunk then they won’t drink enough to get drunk, just buzzed. Some only do it on special occasions or on vacation, saying they know it’s a sin but it’s fine on occasion and they’ll repent later. All of them would probably dive under a table if they thought their family was nearby.

For more opinions on Muslims and dealing with alcohol, take a look at the “Islam and Alcohol” article linked in the reblog of this post.

Here are things that a character who is a practicing Muslim might do or be concerned about in their day to day life:

Checking ingredients to make sure they’re all halal. This goes for things like food, drink, medicine, anything consumable. Things like gelatine capsules are only halal if the source of the gelatine is itself halal, for instance.

Keeping up with their prayers. With five prayers a day, some will inevitably happen while they’re out of the house. Some Muslims prefer to just group their prayers when they get home, but since it’s preferable to do prayers on time, others may try to pray while out and about This means considering the following:

Finding a bathroom for wudu. Part of wudu involves washing feet and the head, which isn’t feasible in a public location or if the person is hijabi and doesn’t want to unwrap and rewrap their hijab. In that case, they can generally wipe a wet hand over their socks and top of their head covering.

They may carry a prayer carpet or have one stashed in a convenient location, but it’s not a must.

Finding a clean and secluded place to pray. Generally, it’s not done to pray in a place where someone will pass in front of you, and a woman must also take care to pray away from men’s eyes.

Figuring out where the Qibla is. Luckily, there are apps for that.

If a woman is not hijabi, she would have to carry a veil and, depending on her clothes, something to cover up so she can pray.

If they’re hijabi, they’ll probably have to adjust or re-wrap their hijab throughout the day, depending on the material and their activities. This would typically happen in bathrooms or any other space that doesn’t include men, as they can’t reveal themselves to any men who aren’t of their immediate family. For more on the hijab, and the day to day realities of wearing and wrapping one, take a look at the links provided in the reblog of this post.

A Muslim woman may choose not to accept handshakes from men who aren’t family. She has probably considered how to deal with that potential awkwardness.

If they’re fasting, they might carry some dates or biscuits or something in case they need to break their fast while on the go.

If making plans, they might say, “Insha’allah” which means “God willing.” I was always admonished to do so to acknowledge the future is entirely within God’s hands.

If asked how they are, they might reply with “Alhamdullilah” which means “Thanks be to God.”

When starting to eat, they may say, “Bismillah,” which means “In the name of God” and when done eating may say “Alhamdullilah.” These can also be invoked silently.

As you might have noticed, Allah’s name is invoked pretty often. While it’s not preferable to swear using God’s name just to make a point (“Wallahi”), there’s nothing against it, really.

Fundamentally, an important thing to remember is that Islam is a religion of ease and not hardship. This is an actual Quranic quote. What this means is, it may seem like there are a lot of rules to keep in mind, but there are also a ton of allowances for when those rules aren’t feasible, just like the case for fasting above. Other allowances include how an elderly or disabled person who may not be able to perform the motions of prayer can pray while sitting in a chair or even lying in bed. If there isn’t any clean water to purify before prayer or if using the water would mean lack of drinking water, a Muslim can use dust or sand to purify, and if no dust or sand is available then they don’t need to purify at all and can simply pray.

This means that, say, if your Muslim Jon wants to pray while kidnapped by the circus, he can, even without being able to perform wudu, even without knowing where the Qibla is, even without being able to move or say anything at all.

For more day-to-day tidbits, check out the “More on writing Muslim characters” link in the reblog of this post.

LGBTQ Muslims:

Needless to say, Queer Muslims absolutely do exist, and their being Muslim doesn’t cancel out their queerness or vice versa. While there are Quranic verses that have been interpreted as condemning homosexuality, there are also other interpretations, and queerness has existed in Muslim societies for ages. There was a ton of homoerotic imagery among Abbasid poets during the Golden Age of Islam, for example.

However, modern-day attitudes can be difficult to get around, and queer Muslims may have difficulty finding their place in both Muslim spaces and queer spaces, the latter which often expect them to reject religiosity.

Although I am queer myself, I don’t feel it’s my place to speak for queer Muslims and their relationships with their communities beyond this, so I’ll let some queer practicing Muslims speak for themselves. Please see the reblog of this post for valuable contributions from queer Muslims about their experiences.

Miscellaneous:

This is mostly for all the random tidbits I thought up while writing this that didn’t fit anywhere else and also because I don’t know when to quit apparently, SO!

Allah is just Arabic for God. Muslims can and do use these terms interchangeably, such as saying “God willing,” instead of “Inshallah,” even in an Arabic-speaking country.

Also, God has 99 names! Just a fun fact for you there.

The Devil in Islam is pretty different from his Christian counterpart. Referred to as Iblis or Shaytan, among other names, he is not a fallen angel and there is no great revolt story, nor is he considered a root of all evil. Instead, he is a djinn made of smokeless flame who refused to bow down to Adam, as he felt he was made of superior stuff and not about to bow to a creature made of mud. His disdain for humanity is what has caused him and other shayateen/demons to try and tempt humans.

A person’s right hand is considered purer than their left, so it’s encouraged to always eat with your right hand. Unfortunately, this does mean left-handed people face something of a stigma—or at least that’s the case here in Egypt. My cousins, both lefties, both eat with their right hand, though they do everything else with their left.

Similarly, it is considered better to enter spaces with your right foot, though only the most devout are likely to think of this all the time. This is especially considered for entering a mosque or new home.

A Muslim might say or write “Peace be Upon Him” whenever the Prophet Mohammed is mentioned, written as (PBUH), and “Subhanuh wa Taala” when mentioning Allah, written as (SWT).

The Evil Eye is mentioned in the Quran as “hasad,” and considered to be a very real thing. This jealous or envious energy is considered able to ruin good things in your life, even if the jealous person didn’t intend to. There are some surahs that are considered good to ward against it, as well as incense, the colour blue, the number five, and the symbols of the nazar (which is a round, blue-ringed eye) and the khamsa (an open five-fingered palm, also known as the Hand of Fatima). The nazar, khamsa, and belief in the evil eye aren’t unique to Islam at all. What is unique to Islam is that a Muslim might preface a compliment with “Masha’allah” which means “As God wills it,” to ward off their own evil eye.

Much of the Quran in Arabic rhymes and is very poetic, which can make surahs easy to memorise by rhythm. It can also make recitations by a skilled reader very lovely.

#the magnus archives #tma #writing resources #muslim characters

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 3 years

Text

From Eden: Three

Warnings: noncon sexual acts, mentions of mental illness, grieving, trauma, panic attack; tags to be added throughout series

This is dark!Bucky. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: The mc suffers from agoraphobia. After a new neighbour moves in across the street, her home becomes even more of a prison.

Note: I know it’s been a while...

Thank you so much for your patience! And support!!

As always, if you are so inclined, please like, reblog, and comment. <3

Transcript:

Sunday

When Dr. Tisha and Lorena left last night, they were still angry with me. I didn’t care much as both of them lectured me again over that man. I told them the same things I had before. I don’t want to know him.

They suggested at least that I save the money I made for a day out. Lorena said it would be good for me to try to go into town and do some shopping myself, for myself. The thought made me choke but I just smiled and said, “we’ll see.”

Now I’m awake, early again. I keep hearing things in the yard. I tell myself it’s a raccoon or something else, maybe even a bat! One got in the house last year and I locked myself in the bathroom until I was brave enough to grab the broom and chase it out. Looking back, it’s sort of funny.

I looked out the window but I just saw shadows that made me nervous. The bird bath was eerie in the dark and the shed looked decrepit. I thought I saw something move along the wall but I’m sure it’s only me being tired.

I did try to go back to sleep but then I started thinking about things I haven’t thought of in a long time. About the things I told Tisha I never want to think or talk about ever again.

Then I thought about grandma and mama. Why did they have to leave me?

Later

I was in the garden when it started to rain. It started with a big crack of thunder and I almost screamed at how scary it was. It came so fast I barely got inside before I was soaked through. Then I giggled at myself as I stripped out of my muddy jeans and wet tee shirt.

When I was a kid, I used to love to dance out in the rain, or just stand and let it wash over me. When my mother died, it stormed and I sat in the downpour until I got sick. The drops hid my tears and numbed the pain of that lonely ten-year-old. I’m older now but sometimes I still feel like a kid.

I watched the sky darken through the window and the smell of the rain in the dirt was comforting. I made tea and kept watching. The sky would flash, a cacophony of awe, and I felt as if I was living in an old Hitchcockian shot. I liked to think there was a camera there to catch the perfectly framed scene, the frightening and frantic swell of the storm that reflected the suspense of the human catastrophe about to take place.

Then the horror was no longer just in my mind. I cleaned my cup and turned. As I passed through the dark hall I saw a shadow flash at the window of the door. I gasped and rushed forward to check the latch but the figure was gone. I peeked out and there was nothing.

Now I’m still awake and I think I just got carried away with my imagination. I’m watching The Wizard of Oz but the colours aren’t as bright as they used to be. At least, they don’t seem like it.

🖊

Monday

I don’t remember falling asleep. It must’ve been late, or early depending how you look at it. I woke up to the blue screen as the VCR had stopped and rewound the tape. It was still dark, the sky hungover from the wild night.

I made blueberry tea. It was too sweet after I let it steep for too long. I watched the morning birds bask in the full bird bath and slowly the sun began to shine down. It’s brighter now and I’m going to try to fix the shed window.

🖊

Tuesday

I couldn’t write anymore yesterday. Not after what happened.

I can’t.

🖊

Wednesday

On Monday, I

He was here.

I was hammering the board back into place and I hit my finger into the nail. The metal left a painful blister and my knuckle split and bled. I cried out and dropped the hammer as I held my hand and tried not to tear up.

“You alright?” he asked and I looked at him, afraid.

He was at the gate. Had he been there, watching me? I nodded and wrinkled my nose in pain. I couldn’t bend the top of my finger. I hid my hand and left the mess on the ground as I rushed to the front door to hide inside.

“Hey,” he called as I whimpered, dumbly trying to turn the handle with my hurt hand, “you’re hurt. I can help.”

I shook my head as my finger throbbed. I looked at it and cringed. It was really bad.

“I just want to help.”

“Why are you here?” I watched the door creak open and didn’t look back at him, “why are you bugging me?”

“I was just walking by and I heard you,” he said, “I know how to set your finger… or I can take you to the hospital.”

I didn’t want to go to a hospital. The thought makes my stomach hurt. I hate hospitals.

“I can deal with it.”

“You’re bleeding a lot,” he insisted and I was getting really annoyed.

“What do you care?” I don’t understand him or why he kept bothering me and hanging around my gate!

“Well, I won’t lie to you, your friend, Tisha, she told me to keep an eye on you,” he said through the bars, “so yes, I was watching you.”

“She’s not… not my friend,” I was so angry. Why would she do that!? She doesn’t even know him, I don’t know him, “she’s my doctor.”

“Can I help you with your finger? I’ll stop watching but you need to get it set and soon.”

“I don’t care. I got nine others.” I was mean and didn't care.

“Then I can call your doctor? She gave me her number in case--”

“No, no,” he couldn’t call her. She’d be mad at you and she’d make you go to the hospital, “don’t call her, please. Just… stay here.”

I went inside and with one hand, I searched under the counter for the dinged old white chest. I pulled it out by the thin metal handle and went back outside. The way he watched me made me nervous even though he was so calm.

“If I let you in, you have to leave right after,” I said as fearsomely as I could, “and this is the only time you’re ever coming in.”

“You’re shaking really bad, that must hurt,” he looked at my hand and ignored my warning.

“Do you get it!? You have to promise to leave after.”

“Sure, just let me help,” he nodded.

unlocked the gate and slowly opened it for him. We sat at the patio table as he searched through the old box of first aid gear. He took out gauze and found two straight sticks from the garden. He tested their strength and sat back down.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

I reluctantly put my hand on the table and hissed at the pain in my finger. He cleaned it carefully and I looked away as he went about his task. It hurt less not seeing it. When he finished wrapping it up, I pulled away and stood.

“Good, now go,” I pointed to the gate.

“That won’t be good for more than a day,” he stood, “I have some real splints at my house. I could come back-”

“I told you, no,” you jabbed your hand towards the gate, “out.”

He was quiet and he looked around. His jaw set as he considered the thick garden and his eyes narrowed.

“The flowers are doing good,” he said.

“Please, leave,” I begged, he was making me nervous.

I was still shaking but not from the pain. I remembered that night, it wasn’t just one, it was several, and they laughed as they stood over me. They were smaller than him, just teenagers, like me, but they still hurt me.

“Go!” I shouted, “go! Go! Go!”

He grabbed my shoulders as I began to hyperventilate. I hadn’t been so worked up in a long time and I could stop as the fit began. I chanted the word over and over as my body shook so violently and my voice became only deep and painful breaths. My chest burned so bad.

I didn’t remember what happened after that. I only remember him in my house. I was on the couch and Dr. Tisha was there too.

When I could speak again, I asked her to make him go. She ignored me and said that he helped me, that he had kept me safe by calling her.

But I saw his smile and how he looks at me. I saw the way he paced around the house and noted every inch of it. I watched him as Tisha fed me chamomile tea.

She didn’t want to leave me alone, she said. She thought I should go to the hospital for my finger and for a mental evaluation. I sucked up the panic in my chest and told her I was okay, that I remembered the exercises and it wouldn’t happen again. I could tell she didn’t really believe me.

“I’ll stay with her,” Bucky offered and my eyes rounded.

“I’ll be fine,” I told Tisha before she could respond.

“You’re not fine,” she said, “in good conscience, if you won’t go to the hospital, I need someone here to monitor you.”

“Lorena--”

“She’s off-the-clock. I can’t expect her to come here right now, she has other clients.”

I frowned and crossed my arms and crushed my injured finger, “why can’t you stay?”

“Well, I left a session for this and I have others waiting on me. I would stay if it was an option. Listen,” she sat and spoke to me like I was a child, “this man is a public servant. He is a good man, in fact, I think he’s a lot like you. Now it would be wrong of me to go into detail about his experiences but I have it on good authority that he knows better than even me what you’re going through.”

I shook my head and pouted, “I won’t hurt myself. Not again.”

“I wish I could believe you,” she said, “but recently you’ve shown some serious regression. If you keep arguing with me, I will be obligated to have you escorted to the hospital and kept for seventy-two hours...

Or Bucky can stay until Lorena comes by tomorrow and I can return.”

“I didn’t do anything. I got nervous.”

“I won’t ask again.”

“Fine, fine, he can stay,” I gave up. The thought of another hold at the hospital was enough to make me give in. I couldn’t do that again.

So Bucky stayed and I didn’t sleep. Again.

And I didn’t write and I can’t anymore. I don’t feel good.

🖊

Thursday

There’s a lot to catch up on but I don’t want to write about it. I never want to think about it again.

Bucky’s gone, Lorena and Tisha made their visit on Tuesday, and I’m fine.

I’m fine.

🖊

Friday

feel him still. He’s watching me. I know he is!

He was in my house, he slept on my couch, he walked through my halls. I smell him still and it makes me sick.

I see him through the gate, he doesn’t try to hide anymore. I called Tisha for my daily check-ins. I’m back to those again. I told her he was watching and she told me he was only concerned. She said I was exaggerating. She thinks I’m crazy!

The walls used to protect me. I used to hide behind them but now I just feel trapped.

He’s watching again. I see him through the window. He’s at the gate, his metal hand on the bar as he searches for me. I’m going away before he sees me. I’m turning out all the lights and locking the doors.

🖊

Saturday

The gate is broken again. The face of the lock fell off and one of the bars is bent through several others.

The lower hinge is busted and I found footprints in the dirt. There are tulips missing from the garden, the pink ones. I got those bulbs from grandma, her last gift to me. I’m sad.

The doors are still locked and all the curtains are closed. I can’t even turn on the TV.

Later

He was in the house! I know he was! The window to my bedroom was open and the blankets on my bed were all messed up. I woke up on the couch as I usually do. I feel asleep reading a book with only a candle. The candle was out and the pages of the book were bent.

I got up to go to the bathroom. I felt weird. My shorts were damp with sweat. The house is so hot with the windows shut. I stopped when I noticed my bedroom was open, I always closed the door.

It’s really hard to write because I’m still shaking. It wasn’t just the window or the blankets. There were pink tulips on my pillow.

I know it’s him. He’s playing a game with me, a game I don’t like.

I’m scared and I hear someone in the garden. I can’t remember if I locked my bedroom window. I was so afraid, I can’t remember.

I can’t remember.

I can’t~~

#bucky barnes #dark bucky barnes #dark!bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #series #from eden #fic #dark fic #dark!fic #mcu #marvel #winter soldier #captain america #agoraphobia

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todoscript · 4 years

Text

Syndicate — [ 3 ]

parts: one | two | three

SUMMARY: The four of you arrive at Hatsume’s workshop, hoping to find some leads about the mysterious bullet you discovered in the aftermath of the scuffle against the Shie Hassaikai yakuza group.

genre: mafia au. pairing(s): mafiabosses!todobakudeku x fem!reader word count: 2.1k+ warnings: mature themes. mafia talk. crude language/cursing. future adult and violent scenes. polyamorous relationship. characters are aged-up. taglist: in reblogs. please ask if you would like to be included in the taglist for updates on future parts.

author’s note: oh my god, i am so sorry for the very long wait everyone! trying to crank this part out was a bit of a struggle with everything going on, but i’m glad it’s finally done! i initially planned to make this chapter a bit longer and continue on with some of the next section, but it made more sense to end it off here so the next part could be flushed out more on its own

Nothing but the grating sound of machinery sparking against each other fills the room the moment you walk into Hatsume’s workshop, located in the more uneventful parts of Tokyo, and away from the seeing eyes of the public. Your ears recoil at the noise; however, it is a cacophony of sounds you are used to, considering this is far from your first time here. Thus, it’s not so much a surprise, being greeted this way, though still jarring nonetheless.

Mei Hatsume is a woman who usually busies herself with work. Whenever she wasn’t occupied filling out a client’s order, such as creating the gadgets they requested necessary for certain heists, she was always active in coming up with new inventions—other gizmos to win people over. In turn, she managed to catch the three pairs of eyes that are responsible for overseeing the infamous Yuuei mafia. Before long, the syndicate had become one of her most frequent and loyal clients due to her high-quality skills and work ethic.

Your three men are in tow behind you when you enter, following in not only your steps but your strained expression over the racket.

“Hatsume!” you shout out to try and capture the girl’s attention, being that her eyes are covered in her dense, protective goggles to even see the four of you coming.

Far too engrossed in her work, her nonchalant hums in between her buzzing equipment indicate that she isn’t going to notice you anytime soon. Knowing this, Bakugou grits his teeth out of annoyance and marches past you.

“Hey Goggle-Head!!”

Unsurprisingly, his yell is garishly loud and is enough to cut through the jarring grinding of the machines and reach Hatsume’s ear. Bakugou does prefer to take a strident approach to things after all. And today especially, he isn’t in the mood to wait around.

“Bakugou. That was unnecessary,” Todoroki says, side-eyeing his partner for his boisterous attitude.

“It was totally necessary, Icy-Hot,” the blonde retorts.

Hatsume soon stops what she’s doing and finally brings the noise to a halt. Lifting her bulky steampunk goggles from her eyes, she properly greets her guests.

“Well, well, if it isn’t my favorite clients!” Her tone is welcoming and chipper, despite the somewhat rude awakening courtesy of the blonde. “What can I help the four of you with today? Perhaps in need of some more firepower for your men? Hmm?” Hatsume wiggles her brows—a crafty gesture she usually gives to entice her customers while flaunting some incredibly elaborate contraption of hers in her arms. Midoriya declines with a shake of his head, waving a hand out.

“No, we’re fine with all the equipment you’ve provided our group with so far, Hatsume. They’ve been working wonders for us,” he says kindly.

“Especially that earring from the other night.” You join in the praises, and Hatsume readily eats them up as her yellow eyes begin to sparkle.

“Ah, the teardrop earring, I presume? As expected, I knew that particular item would perform excellently, what with its compact size and design to elude suspicion, along with its vast set of features—”

“Come on, quit yapping already! We’re here for business, not to give our fucking reviews,” Bakugou dispels the girl’s incessant ramblings with his ill-tempered tone.

Todoroki steps forward, following in the blonde’s approach. “He’s right. Excuse us, Hatsume, but we wanted to ask you about something we encountered last night,” he explains, hand digging into his coat pocket to procure the ziploc bag containing their item of inquiry—the bullet.

Your hands glow magenta; your quirk lifts the bullet from the plastic and into the air to prevent Hatsume from needing to touch it directly for examination. As it hovers in front of her, Hatsume’s eyes start to gleam a brighter amber yellow inactivation of her quirk, allowing her to scrupulously inspect every detail down to even smidgen of a scratch.

A few hums leave her lips the more she tilts her head at the object, index finger steady beneath her chin.

“Well?” you ask, a tad impatient for answers as are the other three. Hatsume gives the bullet one last look before turning to you, a somewhat uncertain look on her face.

“Just who did you retrieve this bullet from?”

“A henchman from the Shie Hassaikai yakuza fired this at us last night while we were in a scuffle with them,” Todoroki answers with Midoriya continuing.

“We managed to avoid getting hit by it thanks to a comrade of ours.”

“Hah, as if those jokers could pose even a threat to us with flimsy weapons like these.” Bakugou punctuates with his arrogant poise, and you playfully roll your eyes at his comment before returning to the situation at hand.

“Still, for us to not recognize something as ordinary as a bullet like this is concerning, adding onto the fact they were willing to use this instead of facing them head-on with their quirks,” you add. There’s a silence lingering in the air at your words, but it eventually isn’t long until Hatsume says her piece.

“Well, after seeing this, I suppose the talk going around the crime groups is true after all.”

The four of you exchange peculiar looks, inquisitive at the mention of such “talks”.

“What ‘talk’?” Midoriya asks, voice dipping low for his standards.

Taking a seat at her workbench while facing her four guests, Hatsume’s expression grows unusually serious.

“Some of my clients have spoken about some shady business going on in the underground recently.”

“Shady business?” Bakugou repeats vehemently, eyebrow quirked.

“This is the first I’ve heard of this,” Todoroki comments, growing wary at the shift in the situation.

“We practically have total control of the black market on the east side of Japan. What shit could be going on under our fucking radar?” The blonde’s eyes flare a menacing red over the news.

“To begin,” Hatsume continues, “my clients have spoken about a new weapon being spread around amongst many criminal gangs. It’s no surprise you haven’t heard of it actually. The ones producing them have made sure to evade the gaze of your mafia group by offering them to those in the west, and have only recently moved to the east.”

“They didn’t want us to intervene and mess with their steady business on the black market, I’m assuming,” you add, and Hatsume nods at your conjecture.

“Likely. Anyways, this weapon didn’t seem like a big deal at first. Just some talk about a bullet similar to the one here.” Hatsume gestures to the transparent bag. “But a bit of prodding later, I learned that the contents inside the bullet actually contain a drug created by a scientist, which was forcibly taken by the Shie Hassaikai yakuza.”

Midoriya, Bakugou, and Todoroki are immediately attentive at the name, their expressions soon altering into revulsion as if a vile stench had suddenly wafted into the air, turning the atmosphere sour.

“So the yakuza made out with some stolen research and are mass producing these bullets onto the black market behind our backs, correct?” Todoroki relays the info with malice prevalent in his timbre.

“Those fuckers. Thinking they can do whatever the fuck they want, huh?” Bakugou’s teeth grit at every word uttered under his breath, fists clenching together. “They’re asking for it now.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Kacchan. We’ll make sure each and every one of them is delivered the punishment they deserve.” Midoriya joins his fellow mafia bosses in the menacing pressure exuding from them. His smile is far from genuine—two-faced with intense animosity emanating from just a simple glance.

Having been by their side through situations similar to this level of tension, you’re very much used to witnessing these expressions painted on each of their faces—such as a time when their shipment of goods came far delayed due to a few lackeys’ miscalculations. In turn, Yuuei had lost a bit of time in their well thought out schedule, which was something Deku, Ground Zero, and Mercury were not at all happy about as they thrived on pure efficiency. To make the story short, those henchmen had received a rather brutal ending for their errors when the three were done with them.

Since then, the trio have let it become a lesson learned not to rely on a bunch of simpletons to carry out such important tasks. As a result, the mafia group had become more efficient from then on out, now centering around your smaller group of elites in the aftermath of the events.

You have to admit, seeing the three so riled up is quite attractive in your eyes. They were already charismatic on their own—being in their presence gave you a very tasteful glance of their domineering aura. But in action, that charisma somehow manifested many times stronger, and when in pursuit with such determination in hand, it felt like they could do just about anything they set their minds to.

However, there are times when you knew you needed to step forward and become their sense of reasoning, lest they walk through fog with no sense of direction. Now is one of those times.

“Well, to start, we need some leads.” You join in, and the three turn to you, ready for what their right-hand woman has to say. “Hatsume, do you know what the drug does?”

The girl shakes her head, much to your dismay, but offers a hunch. “I can only assume it must disrupt the body in some way on contact.”

“It’s a good thing Kacchan didn’t get hit by it then,” Midoriya comments.

“Shut up, Deku.” Bakugou harshly jabs his elbow into the young man’s sides, annoyed.

“Now’s not the fucking time.”

“Right, right… My apologies…” Midoriya replies, holding no ill will at his partner, despite his rough demeanor. The trivial exchange between the two quickly ceases. You decide to resume your questions directed at the craftswoman.

“Alright then… How about the scientist that created the drug? Do you have any info on them?”

Musing in thought, Hatsume’s eyes draw to the ceiling as she rummages through her head to recollect her memories.

“Hmm… What I have heard is that the yakuza had infiltrated a place located in the corner of Kamino Ward in Yokohama to obtain the drug.”

“So that must be where this scientist’s laboratory or base of operations must be then. Kamino Ward.” Todoroki guesses and the girl gives him a brief nod.

“Then that’s where we’re going next. We’re gonna find this scientist and get the info we need, even if we need to beat it out of them!” Bakugou exclaims, voice thundering throughout the workshop as his palm emits a small, concentrated burst of fire while coming in contact with his fist. “Not a single one of those half-rate yakuza asswipes are getting away, pulling this shit on us.”

“Though I have to warn you,” Hatsume interrupts forebodingly as a shadow casts over her features, “there have been rumors of people disappearing around those parts.”

You lift a brow, suspicious at the meaning behind those claims.

“Disappearing?”

“That’s right. Anyone that so much as approaches that area ends up poofing out of existence.” She emphasizes this notion by springing her arms outward.

“Oh? Sounds a bit… far-fetched.” you reason, adamant on the idea that no such thing could happen without natural causes. After all, quirks are biological phenomena. Nothing as supernatural as disappearing from existence should be occurring, right?

“No, Angel Face, it sounds more than just far-fetched. It’s more like a load of bullshit to me,” Bakugou chimes in, bolstering your doubt against it.

“Probably something stirred up to keep people off this scientist’s back,” Midoriya speculates. “He’s already had his research stolen from him. I’m sure he wouldn’t want a repeat of that.”

As he appears behind you, Todoroki lays a hand on your shoulder reassuringly. “Even if something like that is true, I doubt it could truly pose a threat against us, considering who we are.” His hand dips down to find yours before lifting it above your shoulder to lay a quick kiss on your fingertips. You smile at both his words and his touching gestures.

Ignoring the affectionate display, the girl only shrugs. “That’s what I’ve been hearing is all, but I suppose you could take it with a grain of salt.”

Despite the ominous admonition, Midoriya gives Hatsume a grin before reaching into the pocket of his coat. “Thank you for the warning, Hatsume,” he sets a wad of cash down on the workbench in front of her, “along with the valuable set of information. We’ll be sure to put everything you told us to good use.”

She returns the smile, fingers curling around the stack furtively. “Well, a pleasure doing business with you, Yuuei. And remember, my services will always be available to you when you need it.”

“Dutifully noted.”

#bnha x reader #todoroki x reader #bakugou x reader #midoriya x reader #mha x reader #todoroki shouto x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #midoriya izuku x reader #bnha imagine #bakugou imagine #todoroki imagine #midoriya imagine #bakugo x reader #shouto x reader #izuku x reader

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pinksparklelps · 3 years

Text

WELCOME TO MY BLOG !!!

I am your beloved host Sparky and im nonbinary and use she/they/it/dusk pronouns :) i am also lesbian and demisexual!

I have autism, and am diagnosed with depression and anxiety so please be patient ^^ (tone indicators are VERY welcome!)

My interests are:

Stray, Cattails, Warrior Cats, Wings of Fire, Inscryption, Hollow Knight, Subnautica, Stardew Valley, Sky: Cotl, Cookie Run, Jsab, Fnaf, hfjone, Bfb/Tpot, Raft, Nitw, Wolfquest, Portal, Journey, Oneshot, Acnh, Will You Snail?, PCE, ect

Fun facts about me!

My favorite animals are birds, foxes, and stoats

I’ve memorized all of Citizen Soldier’s songs

I have 4 guinea pigs and 2 birds

I am a cyborg (half deaf, so i have an implant)

I absolutely fuckin love the stars and moon

Go check out my favorite people!! (Dont wanna actually actually @ so)

@/healerelowen

@/icyangelsblog

@/iron-galliant

@/bones-of-a-rabbit

@/itzme-thefaust

@/dreaming-aylun

@/carnivoreofthesea

@/drakothedragon55

I have some sideblogs!

@just-flowers-and-crystals (jsab au)

@/twilight-aquarium (run by multiple people)

@keeper-of-the-maps (twilight aquarium rp blog)

@clementine-the-outsider (stray rp blog)

@butterscotch-cookie (indefinite hiatus crk x reader blog)

@jsab-au-remix (au of my jsab au)

Check out some things!

Artfight: https://artfight.net/~PinkSparkleLps

Cattails Wildwood Story Info: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i7D1nzdGD2DKsiZF-AvFQPUvMclhglHWCPk_R5CXhP4/edit

Sparky’s Multiverse Info: https://docs.google.com/document/d/175zNPE-cpJWMXtMZ-vlg-GT752jTdkIQu2Q7yTMAYnQ/edit

-More added later-

❌DNI UNDER THE CUT❌

DNI:

Ableist

Proshipper

Are associated with the users @/fluffnstuffq, @/gigycrem

Lgbtphobe

Bigot

Racist

Antisemite

NS/FW accounts

Triggers & Squicks:

Bugs

Anxiety-inducing posts like ‘reblog or this will happen’

Real blood/open wounds

Needles

Loud noises/earrape

Talk of politics and covid

Horror/creepypasta

Talk of abuse

Gore/extremely detailed death

Bright colors

Extremely fast movements directed toward me

Calling me pet names or sexy/hot (im in a relationship only my partners get to call me cute things)

Ill add more if needed

#pinned post #dni

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yourfinalbow · 3 years

Note

hi lol this is totally random but based on a harry potter post you just reblogged and you can completely ignore me if you want, but do you think snape deserved better, or are you a quote unquote "snape apologist"? I'm genuinely curious cuz I've come across a lot of different opinions on severus. Again, feel free to ignore :)

This ended up way longer than it needed to be, and I apologize for that lmao.

Hi! Hmmm I have many mixed opinions on this. First we have to talk about which Snape. Book!Snape is actually kind of an asshole, and not in the fun way. (Way more than I remembered.) But but but Alan Rickman!Snape I like a lot.

And no I'm not mentioning Snape from TCC. That was not Snape and that world was not Harry Potter.

Snape is an interesting character because of how flawed and layered he is.

(Putting a cut because it's so long, and tw for non-detailed mentions/reference to abuse, as well as both trauma and death.)

He wasn't born in a very good household, which I can definitely see as being a reason for why he is who he is. (A reason, not an excuse. Those are two extremely different things.) You look at Sirius, who also came from a horrible household, yet he managed to dig himself out of the mud and make his own path for himself. (Though I have many angsty headcanons for the thoughts he has and being afraid of what he will do and in turn his own mind. WolfStar solidarity. Neither one of them know what they are truly capable of, and both are completely afraid to find out.

Ahem sorry I got a little distracted there.

During the Marauder's era, Snape wasn't a good person in general, but he tried to be nice to Lily. (One of the only exceptions he made.) That being said, (sorry, going on a tangent again), it does not excuse what the Marauders did. As much as they are, in my humble opinion, JK's greatest creation, they should be held accountable for both the prank, and dangling Snape upside down. (Though Remus does make a few good points in their defense later, it's still not an excuse.) Two wrongs never make a right.

Snape doesn't deny Lily's claims at him wanting to join a supremacy group, nor does he say he isn't friends with Death Eaters.

It's clear through the flashbacks we're given that Snape is apathetic in the face of innocent people dying, but once again Lily is the exception.

Dumbledore defends Snape by saying it wasn't his fault that Harry's parents are dead. I actually semi-agree with this. On one hand, he was directly at fault, but on the other hand he had no way of knowing. As a severe Loki apologist, I do not blame Loki for Frigga's death. He may have led the dark elves to her, but he didn't know it was her she was sending them to. That's the comparison I make in my mind, and so I don't completely blame him like other people do. (One could also make the argument that Sirius is to blame. Sirius, who is 100% my favorite character in the entire franchise, gave the secret keeper job to Peter, thinking it would be safer with him. However, he had no ill will or malicious intentions towards Lily, James, and Harry, so I don't blame him.)

All that being said, Snape not only would have been fine with random people dying, he also didn't care whether or not James and Harry lived.

For context:

(Dumbledore is speaking, right after Snape comes to him for help.)

"You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child?" They can die, as long as you have what you want?"

Snape said nothing, but merely looked up at Dumbledore.

He has a strange relationship with Lily. He obviously loves her, but not enough to want to stop Voldemort from killing the two things that bring her the most amount of happiness. It's clear he doesn't care about anyone except for Lily. Which on some level, I can understand why. When people have traumatic childhoods, they tend to hold on to a person that was there for them. Sometimes it can be the hands of the person who caused them pain in the first place, but other times it is another person who was there for him. He holds Lily's opinions of himself higher than anybody else, and he holds Lily above anybody else, and I think this can be attributed to some sort of trauma response, which is why his love for her is so unusual. That doesn't mean I think he should be fine with killing innocent people.

On the topic of trauma, I think joining the Death Eaters was another response to this, as well as a result of what kind of family he had.

Similar to both Harry and Voldemort, Snape much preferred Hogwarts to where he lived, and such the castle became his home more than his house ever was.

The Death Eaters could offer him something he had never been offered before. He belonged to something. In his own, twisted, traumatic mindset, he might have even almost seen the Death Eaters as a family. Not consciously of course, but there was definitely a feeling of belonging they gave him.

And there's something to be said about the fact that many serial killers in real life come from an abusive family. I don't pretend to understand the minds of someone who can do something so vile, but I have watched enough Criminal Minds episodes to know what they long for is control.

So being apart of this supremacy group, even though he was a half-blood himself and undoubtedly didn't entirely share Voldermort's racist beliefs, gave him both control and something he belonged to.

It's not an excuse, but it's a reason.

Alternatively, you can look at it through a quote from the most recent episode of Loki.

"It's part of the illusion. It's a cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear."

So it's also possible that when he was a kid, he thought being a villain was the only way to prevent others from being one to him.

Ok sorry, back on the chronological track.

So he agrees to change sides and work with Dumbledore. (Who must see just how distraught Snape was over Lily's death, to trust him immediately.)

Snape spends most of Harry's time at Hogwarts humiliating his own students. He particularly calls out Harry and his friends a lot, but I can definitely see this being a defence mechanism. He assumes Harry is James and reverts back to what we talked about earlier. (Becoming the villain so nobody else has a chance.)

But but but, he does a lot of good throughout the books. Snape mutters the countercurse, saving Harry from Quirrell during the Quidditch match. He then actually referees at the next match, preventing anything from happening altogether.

In retrospective, we see that he spends most of the first book helping Dumbledore by protecting the stone, and helping Lily by protecting Harry.

Now I could go through and list the goods and the bads of Snape throughout the entire series, but I have neither the time nor the patience, and I think you get the point.

(Except I would like the mention that Snape becomes a double agent for Dumbledore in book four, and risks his life every single day by constantly betraying Voldermort, and never once does he use this as a way to double cross Dumbledore. This was actually probably really hard on him. You can assume that having to pretend to be a Death Eater means he had to do some despicable things just so he didn't blow his cover. If he really has changed by this time, which I would like to think he has, is a lot of added guilt to live with.)

(I would also mention that he tried to save Sirius in book five, but... *falls on floor dramatically* I don't want to think about it.)

Severus Snape's time comes to the end in book seven. At the hands of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, his death is a valiant act of sacrifice. Protecting the living and defending the honour of the fallen.

So, he has done a lot of bad in his lifetime, but by the time we as readers get to know him, his fundamental set of beliefs have begun to change. Through the eyes of what started as an eleven year old boy, you can definitely see that even after this he wasn't necessarily a good person.

And that's because his good is behind the scenes. He's good on a larger scale. He's chosen the light over darkness, but in his everyday life he's still the scared, traumatized little kid he's always been.

And him being this way has reasons, but these reasons are not excuses.

Sorry anon, this kind of turned into a long winded review of the entire character. I know that's not really what you asked, so I'll sum it up in a final few sentences sentence.

Yes. I wish Snape had gotten to live. Not because I'm necessarily a "Snape apologist", but because I find his character interesting, and seeing his reaction to his sacrifice could have been a really good read. Also Harry coming up and thanking him would have been really touching, and as a cherry on top maybe we could have gotten to read Harry apologizing for his father. Maybe even Snape sharing memories of Lily?! (Sorry that might have gotten a little to fanfic-y.)

That being said, his death being a final sacrifice towards the good of everyone, and a final testimony to his change of heart, was -- and I'll give JK credit just this once -- good storytelling, and a good way to end it.

Also I like movie!Snape because fuck yeah he's just so awesome.

If anyone has anything to add/take away, or they just want to discuss the wonder that was Alan Rickman, let me know! (Ask/Comment/Reblog/Etc.)

#ESPECIALLY you anon #I never get HP asks so this was a treat #Harry Potter #Severus Snape #Character analysis #Maybe?!#Lampswered #*Spongebob Imagination Rainbow

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quicksilversquared · 3 years

Text

The Wavering Peahen: Chapter 5

When Nathalie started feeling oddly ill again, both she and Gabriel were worried that the Peacock Miraculous might somehow (impossibly) be to blame again.

So naturally, they pick someone else to be the Peacock for a bit. You know, as a test subject. Except the new Peacock… doesn’t exactly know that.

links in the reblog

"Oh my god, you guys, you'll never guess what my mom did for me!" Lila announced as she arrived at the picnic just a little bit on the late side and, other than her phone and a hastily-made Thermos of tea, completely empty-handed. If anyone asked, she would just claim that she had meant to make something, but she had overslept and not been able to start early enough to pull off what she had intended. "It was so sweet of her!"

Heads turned her way, and several of the other girls stepped closer like they were being drawn by a string. Rose was the first to speak up.

"What did she do, Lila?"

"She brought my old phone to a specialist so they could recover some of my old photos off of it- it got destroyed during one of my mission trips to South America and I lost all sorts of data!" Lila practically wilted at the 'memory'. "Thankfully my contacts were backed up in the cloud, but I lost all of my photos! All of those memories, gone! I thought that there was no way to get them back!"

Rose gasped in excitement. "But she got them recovered! That's so great!"

"Some were lost for good- most of them, actually. But I got some back and now they're on my phone and on the cloud, just in case." Lila glanced around. "I don't know if- would anyone like to see them, maybe?"

Rose nodded at once, practically teleporting to Lila's side in her eagerness to see. Alya wasn't far behind, and then Mylène and Nino came behind her. Lila beamed, pulling out her phone and swiping to open up her photos. She had stuck in some landscape photos that she had snagged online to mix it up so that not all of her photos were shots of her and famous people, but obviously the celeb shots were the star of the show.

"Oh, that's Prince Ali!" Rose said happily, half-hanging over Lila's arm to see the phone screen better. "You two definitely look close!"

"Yes, well, we've worked with each other several times," Lila told her. "So of course we're close! I took this picture maybe a year and a half ago? I was at his castle for two weeks while discussing all of the different types of charity work we were doing and ideas for going forward. It was lovely there, really. The beds were so comfortable, and the food was amazing!"

There was a chorus of 'that's so cool!'s and 'you're so lucky!'s. Lila beamed, happy with the attention, and dove into her prepared story, tying in a few of the few of stories that she had told before. More of their classmates gathered around, trying to get a glimpse of her phone. Lila held it up to show the photos off as she went, ever-thoughtful. One story turned into two, then ten, then a dozen as she flipped through the photos. It was a lot- normally she just did one story at a time, peppering them in where they were relevant- but she had been too sick to come up with many stories recently and of course the photos provided a perfect opportunity do a bit of talking.

(Maybe it was a bit too much talking, considering that she was still recovering from her illness and her throat was already sore and she was still feeling a bit faint every so often, but she was on a roll and needed to press her advantage while she had it. These photos were gold, and she needed to milk them for all they were worth.)

"Oh, those shots of you and Ladybug are great!" Alya exclaimed once Lila swiped to the first of the Ladybug pictures. Even though it was just a Ladybug look-alike, Lila had found herself gritting her teeth as she forced herself to cozy up to the sentimonster's side. She hadn't given in to the urge to punch the sentimonster in the face, just as a bit of stress relief, but that had less to do with being nice and more to do with her being worried that she was going to lose control of the sentimonster and have it turn on her. "Those must have been pretty recent, right? Were they on your old phone, too?"

"Ah- no, those were just from yesterday afternoon," Lila fibbed quickly, trying not to cringe. She probably should have held off of putting the Ladybug pictures on her phone- those would always be relevant, she could show them off some other time if she ever hit a lull in attention- but it was too late for that now. Maybe she could get a couple more posters and do another sentimonster session before Hawkmoth took the Miraculous back so that she would have more photo evidence in the future. "She was out on a run and saw me when I was on a walk to try to brainstorm ideas to help the global anti-pollution initiative with Prince Ali. Since we're friends, she decided to drop down and say hi! It was so nice of her."

"She must have been keeping a low profile," Alya commented, leaning in closer. "I didn't get any reports of superhero spottings yesterday, but I know they've been out before without people noticing! Did she help come up with any ideas?"

"No, she wanted to get going again before she got noticed and mobbed," Lila told her. "Which is understandable! She said she would think it over and get back to me if she came up with anything."

Alya nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. I'm sure she'll come up with something, though! Considering how creative she is with Lucky Charms, I bet that she'll think up something cool."

Lila tried not to let her smile get too strained as she faked her enthusiasm. "Yeah! I mean, if it's anything too out there, it might be hard to get people on board, but some out of the box ideas might just be what the world needs!"

"Would you mind sharing those photos on the Ladyblog?" Alya asked eagerly. "I always love adding good pictures of the superheroes, and those are fantastic."

Trying not to smile too obviously, Lila nodded. "Of course! That's fine." Honestly, the more people who saw it, the better. That way, if Ladybug decided to be a brat again and tried to call Lila out, it would be far easier for Lila to claim that they had had a falling out and Ladybug was being an asshole about it and for that to actually be believed. "I'll send the photos to you right away, actually, before I forget."

Alya grinned, whipping out her phone eagerly. "Great! Lemme just- ah, I should probably think of an actual article or something to go along with the photos, huh? Uh- maybe something about how Ladybug isn't just saving the world from evil, but also from pollution? Obviously I'd say that you're the one doing most of the pollution work," she added hastily to Lila. "Or two superheroines- one saving the world from supervillains, the other saving the world from pollution? I like that better! And then I'll just mention the crossover, her helping you come up with ideas and you helping her behind the scenes with akuma attacks sometimes!"

Lila nodded, attaching the photos to an email and sending it off to Alya. "That sounds good! And if you want any more details, just ask!"

"I will, trust me!"

Ten minutes later, Lila's audience started getting restless, clearly done with story time. She wrapped up quickly, claiming that she didn't want to take up everyone's time and monopolize the attention and promising to show off the remainder of the photos at school. Some people stuck around to ask a few questions, but others wandered off. Lila wasn't bothered. After all, the stories would get around eventually.

Eventually, Lila got to step away to peruse the picnic table. She didn't pick anything up since she still wasn't feeling 100% after her earlier dizzy spell, and getting nauseous and barfing would bring her a sort of attention that she didn't want, but it was a nice break from remembering all of her stories and playing her part.

The food spread looked pretty good- though Lila wrinkled her nose at an array of baked goods that had clearly come from Marinette's family's bakery- and she made a note of a few things that she wanted to try later, when she felt better. With one more glance around, Lila stepped away from the table and back towards the rest of her classmates. As she did, she nearly bumped into Marinette. The other girl's eyes narrowed at her but she didn't say anything, opting to simply walk past Lila instead.

Well. That wouldn't do.

"You missed out on seeing my pictures earlier," Lila said, raising her voice just enough that Marinette wouldn't be able to miss it. "Which is a pity, really. There were some really nice ones that my mom recovered off of my old phone. If you wanted, I could still show you a couple."

Marinette snorted. "So you've taken up Photoshop as a hobby, I take it?" she asked dryly. "And I think I'll pass on looking at the photos. If I wanted to see something that wasn't real, I'd go watch an action hero movie. That would at least be enjoyable."

Lila sniffed. "You're just so certain that they're doctored. Do you know how jealous that makes you sound? It's not a very attractive look on you at all."

"Puh-leeze. There was a photo of me and Jagged Stone on the cover of Metal Lord not even a year ago, and I've got actual selfies of me and Clara Nightingale on my phone from when she was doing her music video. I don't need Photoshop." Marinette rolled her eyes, stepping further away from Lila. "Some of us actually have the connections that you pretend to have. If anyone is jealous, it's you."

With that, she turned and left, heading across the park to join Alya and Nino and Adrien. Alya was still hunched over her phone- no doubt hastily getting a rough draft of her article done- but the others were just chatting and relaxing. The fact that Adrien was still clearly on Marinette's side was really annoying, but soon enough he wouldn't be. Not once Lila took some video of the senti-Marinette being a brat. Because it would take video to persuade him, she knew that. Photos wouldn't be enough, not when he was already suspicious of her. She would probably have to wait a week or so to actually show anyone the video, space things out to make them more believable-

Lila's breath caught in her throat as another dizzy spell washed over her. All of a sudden, she wasn't so positive that it was a good idea to come out today. She had just been recovering from a decently long sickness, and then she got up super early and had been pushing herself all day. Yeah, it had been nice to show off her photos right away, but maybe it would have been smarter to wait until Monday. Lila could have ridden out her dizzy spells at home, both the major ones and the smaller ones that had been plaguing her while she showed off her photos.

...maybe she could just sit down and she would be fine?

"Lila! Over here!" Rose called, almost as though she was reading Lila's mind. She waved and patted the bench next to her. "Max was about to start telling us about the changes he made to his game!"

Lila nearly groaned at the thought. Listening to Max meant listening to stats and graphics and coding nonsense that she really couldn't care less about. She avoided it when she could. But it also meant that she wouldn't have to talk, and if she tuned out and missed something and got asked about it, she could just claim that she had gotten lost on all of the technical details.

So really, it was practically perfect.

"What kinds of changes?" Lila asked, walking over and sitting on the fee bit of bench. "New villains?"

Max nodded, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. "That is some of it, yes. Having an ever-expanding cast of characters keeps it interesting and a challenge for those who have already played a lot and know how to defeat their opponents. There were some complaints that there were then too many rounds between the start and the boss villain, so I now have an option for people to select the number of akumas that they want to battle and which akumas they get is randomized. I also have added difficulty levels, for those wanting to deviate from the standard game. After examining the akuma stats, I have identified some that are more or less challenging than average and so the non-normal difficulty selections have a more limited pool of opponents to choose from. I also added Mayura to the game. I considered putting in Pavona, too, but..."

"She could be the boss villain for easy mode," Rose suggested. "Since she's not as good of a fighter as Hawkmoth!"

Max considered that, nodding absently. "Yes, I could see that. I have different coding for different fight levels already, so I could use the one I developed for the lowest akumas."

"The lowest akumas?" Lila asked, incredulous. "She- surely she's better than the lowest akumas, right? When she was out, she wasn't exactly just getting tossed to the side."

There was a long pause. Lila blinked, looking around.

Surely everyone could admit that Pavona wasn't completely useless on the battlefield, right? They had eyes, even if they were ridiculously biased towards the superheroes. There had been times when Pavona had been more than holding her own.

(Well. Times when she hadn't been failing spectacularly, at least, and mostly because the heroes were outnumbered, but she was choosing to ignore that.)

"I mean, I guess she's a better fighter than that giant baby," Alix offered after a long moment. "Not that that's hard, exactly. But as far as game context goes, it doesn't really make sense for the final boss to be as easy or easier than the akumas that came before it."

Max nodded, jotting that down. "That's a good point! I might make her a slight bit more of a threat than she actually is in real life, just for the game's sake. Though she does have the sentimonster thing going for her- maybe I can keep her fight level the same, but just have a couple different sentimonsters that she'll get paired with. That'll be the bit making the boss battle harder."

"That was a good point about how Pavona shouldn't be easier than the akumas in the game, Lila!" Rose chirped, beaming at her. "That'll definitely help improve the game!"

"Yeah, no problem," Lila managed, hoping that she didn't sound like she was talking through gritted teeth. She steadied herself against the table as her vision blurred out again for a moment, her mind going dizzy with it. "I'm always happy to help!"

"I think the problem that I'm facing then is coding so that Pavona and the sentimonster work together," Max said, tapping his pencil against the spine of his notebook. "And the same for the challenge mode, I think. It would have Hawkmoth and Mayura as the final boss, and they would work together. For that, some of the later levels could have randomized akuma-sentimonster pairings!"

"Ooh, good idea!"

"Nice!"

Lila tuned out as the conversation wandered off into more details of the game, improvements that could be made to the akuma powers to make them more flexible and not so fixed. Max eventually wandered off into a discussion- or a monologue, really, even while checked out Lila couldn't help but note that no one else was contributing much anything to the discussion- about coding specifics, and Lila tried not to sigh.

Boring. Boring, boring, boring.

Even after sitting and relaxing for nearly half an hour, Lila still had absolutely no appetite. In fact, the mere thought of eating much anything was making her feel a bit ill, which was a bit concerning.

And yet she found herself staring down at a full plate of food in her lap.

To her own credit, she had tried to get out of eating anything, claiming that she had woken up late and eaten breakfast late and therefore didn't have an appetite, and besides her mom hadn't remembered to buy the things she needed to make something to bring and she would feel bad about taking food when she hadn't brought any. But her classmates had insisted that it was fine, that no one blamed her for not being able to bring anything, and that really, couldn't she eat just a little? So Lila had been pretty much forced to relent and load up her plate.

Maybe she could have let on that she had a bit of lingering nausea from her illness, but she had (for once) not wanted any more attention on her. She had been completely in charge of the narrative earlier, keeping the focus and gossip on what she wanted her classmates to pay attention to, and having the talk about her turn from her celebrity connections to her mysterious illness would be not exactly ideal. An illness could push the focus on her proof to the backs of their minds, easily forgotten about given some time, and she was not about to let a little cold do that.

Lila was made of stronger stuff than that, she knew she was. After all, she was a supervillain. Things weren't going to be easy.

But it was still frustrating that the challenge was coming from something as everyday as a stupid cold.

(She should have just left it at I ate breakfast late and so I'm not very hungry and then maybe she could have gotten away with just taking a little fruit and nothing else. The comment about not having brought anything, in retrospect, made the breakfast thing sound like a flimsy excuse for not eating.)

Hopefully she would feel better again soon. It was just so stupid that she had been feeling so great, and then all of a sudden, she was feeling worse than she had before. Sure, she had been able to milk her cold for all it was worth as far as homework went, but much longer and the teachers wouldn't turn a blind eye to that anymore. And sure, she had gotten out of actually doing anything in gym while she was sick, but she could do that just as easily with a claim that her arthritis was acting up or that she had rolled her ankle the previous day.

(There was also the issue of what she could possibly do if someone brought concerns to their teachers and they insisted on calling Lila's mom. She couldn't let that happen, or else all of her hard work would be for nothing.

Maybe she could spread the lie that her mom was already on top of it and taking her in to the doctor's office for a checkup. If the teachers knew that Mrs. Rossi was already aware of Lila's health problem, then perhaps they would be less inclined to reach out as well.)

"Aren't you hungry, Lila?" Rose asked anxiously, and Lila startled out of her thoughts. She had been staring at her plate without eating anything for too long, clearly. "You've just been pushing your food around and not eating anything."

"Ah, well, I did have a late breakfast," Lila managed, doing her best to make her excuses sound confident, even as another wave of dizziness passed over her. Was it just her imagination, or were they getting more frequent? "I must have eaten more than I thought then, so I'm not very hungry yet. I- maybe I'll just set my plate away to eat later. I just couldn't resist taking some food, it all looked so good."

"Oh, okay," Rose agreed after a moment's pause. "It's too bad we don't have a heating lamp or something to keep the food warm and fresh for you! Some of it won't be as good cold."

Lila flashed her a smile. "Thanks for the concern, but I'm sure it will still be good! And if not- well, the next time we have a picnic, I'll be sure to wake up earlier or not eat as much breakfast."

"We'll have to do this again soon, then!"

Lila smiled and nodded. "That sounds fun! It'll be a good way to keep up with everyone over the summer- well, at least if I'm still in the country and not traveling. I don't know what my mom's plans are yet."

Everyone nodded, letting out little murmurs of understanding.

"Hopefully you'll get to go some cool places!" Mylène piped up. "I mean, I hope you'll be around for part of the summer so that you can go on all of the group activities like picnics and pool trips, but I know how important it is for you to get to travel and meet people who can help out with your charities and environmental work and everything!"

Lila forced another smile in the direction where- well, she could mostly see Mylène between the spots that had momentarily taken over her vision. She blinked, and her vision cleared. "Yeah, it would be nice to get to hang out and be a normal kid for a bit, but I also want to see some of my friends from other places in person again! I've been keeping in touch by email and video call, of course, but it's just not the same."

"The downside to traveling," Mylène agreed. "I've made friends while traveling before- average people, not princes and whatnot- but I never end up staying in touch with them for that long once I leave. Our emails just end up tapering off."

Several of the others nodded in agreement. Lila almost did, too- after all, she always let communications with her former classmates taper off and end after a few months after she had to move or switch schools- before she caught herself.

Right. No talking about her real life experiences, or else people would start picking up on the inconsistencies and the ways that Lila's real life didn't line up with the other stories that she had told.

The conversation slowly turned to the kinds of friendships other people had made while on vacation with their families and how long they kept communicating once they had left, and Lila tuned it out in favor of trying to force down a few bites of food. There were a couple things that weren't overly sweet or spicy that didn't make her stomach want to completely turn itself inside out, so Lila nibbled on them while she pretended to listen to her classmates blather on about completely non-impressive people who they had met.

"Lila, if you aren't hungry yet, you don't have to eat," Rose said suddenly, cutting herself off mid-sentence. She glanced over at the picnic table, then perked up. "Hey, the container I brought my salad in is empty! You could just put your food in that and bring it home to eat later if you wanted!"

"That's so kind of you, Rose!" Lila managed. Ugh, forcing herself to eat anything had clearly been a bad choice. She had thought that she would be able to handle a few bites, but she was feeling more nauseous than ever. She didn't want to let that on, though. She wouldn't. She couldn't distract from her own stories and photos by being ill. "That sounds like a great idea. I don't want the food I took to have to go to waste. I-" she cut herself off as her stomach rolled again.

Maybe talking right now wasn't the best idea.

"Let's go get it, then!" Rose chirped, popping up out of her seat. "And you can grab anything you want to eat later from the table, too, while we're doing that. I know no one's going to mind if you take stuff to go!"

Lila pushed herself to her feet to follow Rose, doing her best to act as though everything was normal as she swung her legs over the bench and started walking. Her vision had almost completely fuzzed out as soon as she got up, but she couldn't let that stop her. It would clear up soon enough, after all. It always had before.

She took one step, then another, then a third, forcing them even and casual. On the fourth, Lila felt herself wobble, suddenly both dizzy and weak.

And on the fifth step, everything went black.

#Miraculous Ladybug #My writing #The Wavering Peahen

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