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in-my-feels-probably · 3 years

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INEFFABLE - Kaz Brekker

Chapter Two

If you would like to read this on Wattpad, it’s on there as well, my @ is in_my_feels_probably and there’s a few visuals and better descriptions and stuff on there. otherwise, enjoy, let me know what you think, and you can check out my masterlist for updates and more. don’t forget to read the prologue, it’s important to the story!

INEFFABLE – Kaz Brekker

ineffable (adj.) too great to be expressed in words, utterly indescribable; too sacred to speak of.

Chapter Two

An hour later, and the Crows were headed to Dreesen’s estate, a Heartrender in tow. If Pekka Rollins wasn’t already pissed off, he would be now, considering they took the only Heartrender available for the night. She was rather nice, well dressed and polite, not something often seen in the Barrel, but it was clear she was beginning to grind down Kaz’s patience.

“I really appreciate the new business, but you’ve only paid for an hour of my time, and I have to be back at the Orchid.”

“The Orchid isn’t safe tonight. Your life’s in danger with this job. Make yourself scarce for a few days afterwards.” Kaz continued walking, the Heartrender growing increasingly anxious.

“Mr. Brekker, really? Are you threatening me? Even if I’m nice, my boss will call the stadwatch on you.”

“It’s not me you’re in danger with, it’s Pekka Rollins.” Kaz had turned around and stopped to speak, nearing the gate to the estate.

“My boss would call the stadwatch on him as well.”

Elham laughed at that. “You really think if Rollins got to your boss that he’s still alive? Your boss is already dead, how naive can you be? I suggest you start paying attention, nobody’s going to be around to save you when the Barrel comes to swallow you up.”

They continued towards the gate, when a man yelled across the courtyard. “Who are you lot?”

Kaz stopped behind the gate. “We’re here to see Dreesen.”

“You’re not with Pekka’s crew.”

Elham pulled the counterfeit coin from the gambling tables earlier that night out of her pocket, tossing it to the guard. Kaz let the tiniest smirk set on his face, before speaking again. “And you’re not in Pekka’s pocket anymore if you don’t owe him.”

He gave Elham a slight nod, and they continued through the gate to the estate’s front entrance. Jesper sped up to catch up with Elham. “Hey, where did you get that coin?” She smirked, only to have it fall from her face, when the guard yelled across the courtyard once more.

“Hey! One of these has a hole in it!”

Shit. Elham put her hand on the back of Jesper’s jacket, pushing him along quicker, picking up her pace, nodding for the rest of the crew to follow. “Go! Go, go, go.”

“Saints, Elham!” Jesper let out a laugh, making a dash for the entrance.

“Just get inside!”

---

They were led through the house by a guard, all the way to Dreesen’s office. The guard opened the door, and Kaz stepped in first, Elham finding her spot next to him. Dreesen looked up from his desk and sighed. “One look and I can tell. Criminals. I’m not meeting anyone till midnight.”

Elham smirked at that. Criminals? Isn’t everyone in the Barrel a criminal? And is it that easy to tell?

Kaz seemed to hold in his usual look of annoyance. “We heard you needed a Heartrender.”

Dreesen stood from his desk, contemplating. “Hmm. Alright, she stays. The rest of you, out.”

The Heartrender smiled and started walking forward, only for Kaz’s cane to swiftly come up and block her from walking any further. Elham wondered if they had any idea who they were talking to. Kaz Brekker seems to always get what he wants, and this wasn’t going to be any different.

“She stays. And we have an exclusive on the job.”

“Mr. Brekker, no businessman worth his salt hires his first applicant.”

Elham was growing impatient. Barrel men. Not good men. She had had enough of Dreesen’s company, and she spoke up. “Mr. Dreesen, we understand your predicament. What would I possibly know about conducting a business? It goes right over my head. Of course, I would have to report you to the guild for kidnapping a prisoner. Seems a little bit like criminal business to me. And we would know, right? Doesn’t really seem like an ethical thing you did, does it?”

Her voice was laced with sarcasm, feigning innocence and naivety. She played with the hilt of her sword that was wrapped around her waist, acting as a belt. One of Dreesen’s guards pulled back his coat to reveal a pistol on his hip. She glanced back at Jesper, who smirked at her, revealing his pistols. She casually unsheathed her sword, flicking her wrist to extend it.

“So, Mr. Dreesen. How about that prisoner? I’m sure the guild would love to hear about it.” She said casually, wiping the end of her blade with her shirt, before wrapping it back around her waist and into place.

Dreesen seethed. “You wouldn't.”

Kaz spoke up this time. “It’s like you said. No businessman worth his salt bargains for what he can take.”

Dreesen hopped up from his desk, moving to stand directly in front of Kaz, staring him down. He glanced down at Elham, who’s gaze was piercing, almost as if she was challenging him. He let out a sigh. “Saint’s, Brekker. Chain up your attack dog before she gets herself in an unwanted position.”

Kaz’s jaw clenched at the threat, Elham suddenly standing rigid and alert. “My attack dog? You must be mistaken. That’s my Valkyrie. She doesn’t take very kindly to threats either.”

Dreesen’s eyes momentarily flashed with fear at the mention of the Valkyrie, a few guards even took a step back. The room was tense, and Elham’s hand had returned to the hilt of her sword.

The Heartrender broke the moment of silence, raising her hand. “Excuse me? I have to be back at the Orchid in an hour.”

Inej eyed the Heartrender, before turning her gaze to the staring match going on in front of her. Dreesen finally caved. “Alright, come on.”

Kaz let out a breath, eyeing Elham. She knew she was going to get a lecture for that little show she put on. Dreesen led them down to the basement of the estate, where the prisoner was tied to a chair, a bag over his head.

Kaz looked unimpressed. “Who’s this?”

“Oh, so you don’t know everything after all? This...is Alexei Stepanov.” He took the bag off the prisoner's head, revealing a young man, covered in cuts and bruises, hair and clothes disheveled. “Two weeks ago, young Alexei here, crossed through the Fold on foot. Alone.”

The Crows glanced around at each other. Inej stepped forward. “How?”

“They’re keeping it quiet, but allegedly, he was one of a few witnesses to...an event.”

Alexei was now eyeing the crows. “Water.” He croaked out. Inej glared at Dreesen, and moved to the pitcher on the table, pouring a glass, taking it over to Alexei and helping him drink.

“What kind of event?”

“I know an expedition was swarmed by volcra. Should’ve been a total loss. But something happened. Some device detonated. Obliterated the volcra, lit up the dark like a forest fire. I know it wasn’t a fire or else no one would have survived. This was some invention no one had seen before. He knows, but he doesn't seem to be able to articulate his account of events. Some form of traumatic lapse. So…”

Dreesen had gone and stood by the Heartrender, gesturing towards Alexei. Inej stepped out of the way as she approached Alexei, kneeling beside him and taking a hold of his wrist.

“You’re safe now.” She began lowering his pulse. “Now you can just speak, and I will just listen.”

Alexei’s hesitation was gone as he stared intently at the Heartrender. “All right.”

“Tell me what happened in the Fold. What saved you?”

“You won’t believe me, but...it was a Sun Summoner.”

Inej inhaled, gasping. Elham moved closer to her. She had never believed in Saints, never having a reason to. But a Sun Summoner, even she could have some belief in. She had to. With the Fold looming, and Baghra’s warnings to her about the General, she had to believe in something that would give her hope.

Dreesen put his glass down, kneeling in front of Alexei. “Who was it?”

“If I tell you, you’ll set me free?”

Elham’s heart broke for him. She knew any promise to freedom was a hollow one, that Alexei was a liability, they’d never let him go. She took a deep breath, swallowing her rage, before listening back in on the conversation.

“Her name is...Alina Starkov.”

“Good boy.” Dreesen stood up, walking back to one of his guards. “Show me the manifest.” He glanced over the papers handed to him. “Ah, perfect.”

“You’ll set me free now?” Alexei asked, still being comforted by the Heartrender.

“Thank you, of course.” Dreesen pulled a pistol from his waist, turning around, and lodging a bullet right in Alexei’s skull. The Heartrender screamed, jumping back, and Alexei’s body tipped back in the chair, falling to the ground. Blood seeped onto the floor.

Elham seethed, gripping Inej’s hand. Dreesen walked to stand over Alexei’s body, then turned to the Crows.

“Hmm. We are now the only people west of the Fold with this information. My ship sails for West Ravka at dawn. If you can prove that you have a way through the Fold and back, I’ll put you on that ship with an advance. If you don’t, I’m giving this job to Pekka Rollins.”

Kaz inhaled at the name. “Give me a day. I’ll have a plan.”

“You have until sunrise, then your ship will have sailed, Mr. Brekker. The prize is one million kruge. Now bring me Alina Starkov.” Dreesen headed back up the stairs, leaving the Crows standing there. They turned, facing Alexei’s body.

Elham turned, facing Kaz, getting his attention. “Well. Looks like we have quite the job to do. I vote we get out of this house before I walk up those stairs and lodge my sword in Dreesen’s back, and we get no kruge at all.”

Jesper let out a chuckle at that, turning to head up the stairs. “Ah, I love when the Valkyrie comes out. She scares the absolute hell out of me, but still, very entertaining.”

---

A/N - here's chapter two, i'm excited to get further into this story and make it more interesting than just setting out the beginning plot. i have a lot planned, and i'm very excited. thank you so much for the support, and feel free to comment or message with anything!

#wattpad #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker #grishaverse #shadow and bone #six of crows imagine #six of crows #x reader #oc #in my feels probably #ineffable

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veeranger · 3 years

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can you maybe talk about Va-11 Hall-A? you talking about it a little made me remember i had to play it so i did and I liked it a lot and would like to hear your opinions as I respect you

its only been a few days but i think ive reached all the conclusions about the game i need to. i think VA-11 HALL-A is a really good game and a great visual novel yes its a visual novel dont @ me im right. actually i think its funny the game tells you to curl up with a blanket and snacks like its gunna be a chill relaxing experience because like tonally speaking its kind of not. theres some heavy shit in the game especially near the end and its not the kind of light chatting simulator you might think it is. not saying i think its a stressful game or anything but i alwys thought that was funny.

anyway heres my real thoughts. im gunna put it under a readmore for spoilers after a certain point

oh also make sure you play the prologue chapter and the anna demo. those are extremely important despite being hidden behind a nondescript menu icon that the game makes no effort to tell you about. thats genuinely my only complaint about the game

there’s a quote by mike pondsmith, the creator of the cyberpunk ttrpg about how cyberpunk “...can not be about saving the world. You’re saving yourself or your community. The stakes have to be something that involves the player. You can’t just say, ‘The world is craptastic and you can’t do anything about it.’ No. You don’t have to save the world, but you need to be able to save your mother or the apartment you and your friends live in.”

and i think that ideology was, intentionally or otherwise, probably otherwise because im pretty sure pondsmith gave this quote a few years after VA-11 HALL-A came out, very clearly captured in this story. Jill and her friends live in this terrible shitty city in a terrible shitty world but thats just the setting yknow. glitch city is a backdrop to tell a series of small scale personal stories, not about “surviving in a hellish dystopian” but just...living in the real world. thats just real life for these people you know. every story told in the game is very personal. nobody is blowing up corporate buildings or igniting a revolution its just like, dorothy reconciling her anxieties about being close to her mother, alma’s family troubles, stella and sei’s mutuals traumas and their close relationship, Jill’s grappling with her own life choices. its nothing crazy its very pedestrian and lowkey, its not exactly something you’d expect from a game with CYBERPUNK stamped on the subtitle but it fits the genre extremely well.

if nothing else VA-11 HALL-A is extremely well grounded in the reality its set in, everything feels lived in and real, like glitch city is a real place you could go to or something. all those newspaper articles about big events right next to articles about some lilim idol or reruns of a nostalgic anime and the danger/u/ posts about weird conspiracies and arguments about stupid weeb shit it just creates a wholesale sense of realism. i once saw someone complain that in persona 5, you only ever hear other students and people in the streets of tokyo talk about whatever is currently happening in the story and at the time i dismissed it as nitpicking but after VA-11 HALL-A i understand that a little better, it creates a game world that only revolves around the player’s actions and story as opposed to a world that keeps turning on its own that your character just so happens to live in. the story of the game might be about Jill and her friends but the world itself is not centered on them, it doesn’t even know they exist. that’s just excellent worldbuilding imo.

now at this point i want to talk about Jill’s story and please if you haven’t played VA-11 HALL-A yet and are reading this and you have any thoughts about playing the game please stop here and go play it first I don’t want to spoil this really good story for you.

man i really liked Jill’s story. i had no idea it was coming so the whole thing sidelined me as much as it did Jill when she heard that Lenore died. the way every aspect of the story was handled was so good. i felt the same way Jill did when she lashed out at Gaby for lashing out at her, i felt the same regret she did after she calmed down and realized she screamed at a grieving little girl and i felt the same kind of anxiety she felt when she had a second chance to talk to Gaby and make things right. every note of the story hit for me and it was just good good good. i liked that Jill was able to come to terms with her own poor choices without hoisting all the blame on herself or absolving herself of any wrongdoing either, i liked that she was able to move on and free herself from feeling shackled to her past but was still able to say that she loved Lenore and still does. i liked that it was a gay story even if it was tragic, it was respectful and well written. i also just love love loved how she was able to reconcile with Gaby and start being her big sister again. obviously if you know me you know that’s something i love and so i was extremely pleased with how they were able to continue that relationship.

just yknow...its like pondsmith said. you cant save the world but you need to be able to save your mother or the apartment you and your friends live in. Jill is able to save herself, save Gaby, not from dying or anything but just like...just from pain yknow. she helps Dorothy save herself and commit to wanting to be with her mother and that in turn helps Anna. she helps Stella and Sei find closure for a traumatic experience in their lives. But even then she can’t save the bar, or save everyone she loves from living in a horrible world. VA-11 HALL-A still closes down in the end but hopefully if you mixed your drinks right everyone you love is able to move forward a little better than how you found them and i think thats pretty damn cool. VA-11 HALL-A is a really good story and its a neat little game.

oh also i loved Anna she was such a fun presence. make sure you play the Anna chapter after you beat the game!

#Anonymous #apple post

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violexides · 3 years

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fatigued bitch picks idv characters out of a hat and judges them blindly

violinist

likes romeo and juliet

laughs dubiously all the time

burned out gifted kid

horrible skin care routine this mf ok?

twinks like this one a lot but i think he’s also a twink so i’m not sure

fred, freddy, buddy, fucker, boy, whichever

the reason why your one estranged brother you haven’t seen since dinner in 2007 tells you that anxiety is a survival skill we got from rabbits trying to hide from the predator and how it’s all a metaphor for life and shit and also he admits he’s on psychedelics

he seems kind of boring but i’m sure he’s fine

martha? margaret? something 1800s

killed someone in the prologue of a visual novel and then feigned innocence for the rest of her life

owns at least 3 antique records

aspiring milf

i think i’d kiss her

emma woods the gardener

literally perfect

hopeless romantic (???)

has a fascination in something incredibly dark

lesbians love this one

mike “motherfucker” morton

nobody likes him

he isn’t even a real theatre kid

somehow straight

i hate this motherfucker somehow and i don’t know shit about him

isn’t mike that one guy from willy wonka’s book?

luca? lucas? red i’m so sorry

himbo with nuance

i actually know stuff about his character i just forgot it

see what i did there

wants a lobotomy so fucking bad

this is the komaeda kinnie

edgar

french painter

literal twink in the flesh

i accidentally fucked up really bad; i thought that this guy was an aromantic lesbian

arsonist??? maybe!

joseph

NO THIS IS THE FRENCH ONE SORRY

has really interesting lore probably

traumatized bitch copes by being a capitalist (i don’t know what i mean by that but i’m right)

“ohhhh look at me... so SUSCEPTIBLe to being STABBED right now... oh DEAR...”

bloody mary queen

stab me in the throat

if she was in like a linear story she’d die tragically but it’s not that tragic because she said something snotty just before doing it

she looks like she’d be hell to learn the play style of

fiona

probably right about something really portentous but nobody believes her about it

really skeptical but also doesn’t give a shit

has never handled an emotion well in her life

viola from skyrim and viola from soul calibur’s love child

aesop

oh the bisexuals LOVE this one i can tell

has probably never laughed once in his entire life

someone show this guy xanax it’d do wonders

#personal #dare i tag this idv #idv #thank you marsh for giving me characters #i only picked a couple but shrugs

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rusty-shadowclan-au · 3 years

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StarClan worldbuilding for the ShadowClan AU!

Prologue of book 2 would cover Flintstar's "9 lives" ceremony. It's in quotations because since Brokenstar still has a number of lives left (3 or 4), Flintstar is only able to recieve 5 or 6 lives. This is not because StarClan seems him unworthy or something, its because they literally do not have the power to grant another set of nine lives to a Clan leader while the previous leader still lives. Best they can do is grant the equivalent to the number of lives lost by the previous leader.

It's uncommon, but not unheard of for this to happen to new Clan leaders. A couple times in Clan history, an elderly leader has chosen to step down on their last life, and the following leader is given only eight lives as a result. This is a secret known only to medicine cats.

StarClan's powers are more clearly defined in this AU: they can watch and warn, and send glimpses of the future to medicine cats, but they do not have the power to directly interfere with the world of the living.

StarClan rarely interacts directly with cats. Direct communication is generally reserved for a leader's 9 lives ceremony or for Moonstone visits near the summer or winter solstice, when the two worlds are closest together.

StarClan as we know it is mostly made up of cats who have passed within the last few generations. When the last living memory of a StarClan cat dies, that cat fades from StarClan and becomes part of silverpelt. Silverpelt is, for lack of a better term, kitty cat Nirvana. The spirits cease to exist as individuals, instead becoming part of a collective divine essence.

Signs and prophecies are distinct from one another and med cats are taught to distinguish between the two.

Signs are perceptible changes in the world of the living, easily missed by ordinary cats. They bring with them no deeper explanation, and are usually answers to questions or nudges in the right direction rather than predictions of the future. For example, the moth's wing sign from the og series, had it been real, would fit the bill perfectly.

Prophecies are mixed visual/auditory experiences that do not have a perceivable change on the physical world. They are experienced and perceived only by the medium receiving the prophecy, and carry a prediction of the future, usually regarding large scale threats to the Clans and vague information on what can overcome the threats.

Signs are more direct than prophecies, and require less interpretation on the part of the recipient.

Prophecies are not intentionally vague. Rather, the message of the Prophecy is diluted in its journey to the physical world. The best comparison would be pouring coffee through a strainer: the flavor and the essence of the substance passes through, but the dregs are left behind. In the same sense, with prophecies, the general idea of the message can reach the living, but detailed information and clear instructions cannot pass through completely.

So if the fire prophecy (in my rewrite) went through the "strainer" it would be something like this- StarClan's message: "A cat with a pelt the color of flames will come from away and drive away the darkness that stalks the Clans and threatens to consume them" -> The message that actually reaches the world of the living: "A flame from afar burns brightest in the dark."

The rule that medicine cats cannot have families still exists in this AU, but with a better explanation and some changes.

Medicine cats are not permitted to have families for two reasons: first, they must remain as untethered as possible to the world of the living so that they can best communicate with StarClan. The more things a cat has holding them to the physical world, the harder it is for them to connect with the realm of spirits. Second, as medicine cats act as a power check on Clan leaders and serve as the Clan's only link to their ancestors, if a medicine cat were to have a family, there would be nothing except good will stopping them from manipulating the system to put their kin in power. This is why medicine cats are asked to let go of their existing familial ties when they take their position- this is more of a formality than anything, nobody is going to police a med cat's relationship with their parents or siblings, but it will raise questions if the medicine cat starts recieving a lot of signs/prophecies that are beneficial to their kin.

If this happens, any senior member of the Clan can call for a council of the medicine cats, in which the medicine cats from all the other Clans review the med cat in question and their signs and prophecies, and pass judgement as to whether these signs were earnest or whether they were fabricated for the benefit of the med cat's kin. If found guilty of fabrication, the medicine cat will be permanently stripped of their position. Further punishment is at the discretion of Clan leaders and the other medicine cats.

Remember how I said there are some changes to the rules? The "med cats can't have families" rule only applies until the senior medicine cat fully trains an apprentice in the art of interpreting signs and receiving prophecies. At that point, the senior medicine cat may choose to retire from their spiritual duties by passing them on to their trained apprentice, and may dedicate themselves fully to the healing aspect of being a medicine cat. Once a medicine cat retires from their spiritual duties, they are welcome to take a mate and have kits, nobody will judge them for it

So Yellowfang's relationship with Raggedstar wasn't allowed because she was the junior medicine cat, the newest link in the spiritual chain. It was her duty to maintain a pure relationship with StarClan until she trained a successor, at which point having a mate and kits would have been fine.

Medicine cats that do break the code aren't like, exiled or anything; but their connection with StarClan weakens drastically, putting the Clan at risk of being potentially unable to receive prophecies. They are still equally capable of reading signs, since those are changes to the physical world, but they rarely, if ever, recieve prophecies

The prophecy Yellowfang receives about Rusty is the first she has received since taking Raggedstar as her mate, and the prophecy is a lot less clear than it might have been otherwise.

#shadowclan au #rusty joins shadowclan au #yellowfang #warriors au #warriors #warrior cats

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chacusha · 3 years

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DS9 Companion live-blogging (1/?)

I’m already loving this. From 1x01 "Emissary" to 1x11 "The Nagus":

There are little maps of parts of Bajor.

Having emotions over Ben and Jake’s relationship being the core of the show: “[Brandon] Tartikoff had mentioned the possibility of the new show being a kind of Rifleman in space — the concept being that if Star Trek was originally conceived of as a Wagon Train to the stars, then the new show would be The Rifleman, a man and his son living together in a frontier town.”

Loving all these details about how they did the lighting for a Cardassian space station.

They discuss how they changed the Trill look from what was established in TNG. I forgot about that! The TNG Trills looked different! Now I’m headcanoning there are different Trill races with slightly different appearances. (They said they based the new Trill look on the empath bride character in “The Perfect Mate” played by Famke Janssen who they wanted to cast as Jadzia.)

This is cute:

I’m already appreciating the notes about how Shimerman and Auberjonois’s existing chemistry/rapport influenced the Quark-Odo dynamic.

Also lmao at the writers addressing the continuity error/retcon regarding the circumstances under which Curzon Dax died (in the pilot, he is conscious when the symbiont is being transferred to Jadzia, but later (in “Let He Who Is Without Sin…”) it’s said he died while having sex (more like, the sex eventually caused his death but he had time to go back to Trill for surgery, the writer clarifies).

This is so cute too 😭

Nana on changing Kira’s hair from the pilot: “That was my doing,” admits Nana Visitor. “I pushed for it. I just didn’t feel that Major Kira would style her hair every day. She wouldn’t care! I wanted a hairstyle that looked like she just woke up in the morning looking like that.” She’s so right.

Love these notes on Garak’s character too: Co-producer Peter Allan Fields: “We needed a Cardassian who didn’t act like one, so I finally put him in a tailor shop, and nobody hit me so we kept him there.” (A throwback to The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) Director Winrich Kolbe: “He’s not what you expect of a Cardassian. They’re the Prussians of the universe, always ‘kill, kill, kill.’ And then there’s Garak, a little bit on the effeminate side, totally different from what you expect of a Cardassian” while retaining the stiffness of Cardassians. Andrew Robinson: “I could actually visualize the guy; he’s all subtext. If a smart guy like Garak says that he’s ‘plain and simple,’ you realize that he’s not plain and not simple. […] And his eyes and the tone of his voice say something different than the words he’s speaking.”

Shimerman on Quark’s personality, plus notes on the Quodo dynamic:

Reading this reminds me of how odd the early episodes of DS9 feel compared to the later ones, because the early ones rely heavily on TNG connections like a crutch which they later discard once DS9 finds its own footing. “Emissary” uses Picard/Locutus and events mentioned in TNG as character backstory, not to mention O’Brien and his existing relationships on the Enterprise. “Past Prologue” features the Klingon sisters; “Captive Pursuit” features a Prime Directive plot typical of a TNG episode; “Q-less” features Q and Vash as guest stars (it’s nice to get a followup on this story but it definitely hits different when these characters aren’t interacting with Picard); “Dax” is mostly its own thing but also fits a familiar trial drama plot that are familiar from TOS and TNG. It reminds me of Sandman and the odd DC cameos it has at the beginning that get more phased out into easter eggs as the comic gains confidence.

Interesting notes on the tender exes relationship between Enina Tandro and Jadzia in “Dax” that precursors “Rejoined” / builds on the general way of using Trills in Star Trek to sneak in gay relationships:

Apparently “The Nagus” is The Godfather in space. I did not realize this at all. They even mentioned there is a scene in that ep that is an homage to that film and I was like, “What?? Which one??” It totally went over my head.

#star trek ds9 #star trek: deep space nine #liveblogging #book liveblogging #ds9 companion liveblogging

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wewillwriteyou · 4 years

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Crazy Little Thing Called Love || Chapter 1

Prologue

➴Meet the characters [part 1]

A few elements from the main plot: A fine line falls between fiction and reality: what starts as a musical slowly becomes a game-changer. Tables will turn and it will get clear as the sun that the only unstoppable power in life ... is love.

Summary Chapter 1: Alexandra arrives at the campus, while Joe has already bumped into high gear for his drama’s course project but he knows he can count on Elizabeth and Denise’s help.

Word count: 3.5k+

Warnings: Some language here and there

A/N: The time has finally come and we couldn't be happier to share this first chapter with you! We do hope you’re all going to enjoy this story and don’t hesitate to let us know what you think about it! Love you, folks 🖤 xxx

Sunday, 29 September 2019

“Are you sure this will solve all my problems?” “Trust me, Princess: follow the East’s path and in the cave where the sun never sets you’ll find all the magic you’ll need”

Magic!

Freddie’s voice perfectly screamed in Alex’s headphones and she suddenly woke up. Her neck was hurting and she could feel pins and nibbles trespassing every bone of her spine.

She stretched her back and yawned, before turning off the music and checking the hour on her phone. She had been travelling on that damned bus for two hours and a half, but to her “out of whack body” it felt like an eternity.

Alex rubbed her eyes once or twice, before diverting her attention to the countryside outside the window: fields, fields and again, fields. She sighed and abandoned her back against the uncomfortable seat.

An hour. You can survive for an hour.

She repeated to herself, mostly to convince her tired body that sixty minutes more on that bus weren’t actually hell on earth.

All of a sudden, her phone rang and the name “MOM” appeared on the screen. Alex smiled and picked the call up.

“Sweetie! Where are you?” her mother’s voice was so loud that the two old people sat on the two seats in front of Alex turned around. She politely smiled and heard them mumble something, that made her roll her eyes.

“Hi. I’m probably lost somewhere in the East’s fields” she sighed, abandoning her head against the window of the bus.

“But you should be almost there, right?” her tone didn’t hide her preoccupation and that made the girl giggle a little.

“I guess I’ll arrive in less than an hour – she said, before looking around to make herself sure nobody could hear her – but let’s admit that traveling with this bus company surely wasn’t the best idea we have had” she then added, lowering her voice as much as she could.

Her mother chuckled and, after a few more recommendations, she said goodbye to her and Alex soon found herself alone again. Or at least, her only company was the thousands of thoughts that were clouding her mind.

Clouded as much as the sky above her head.

***

“Is he really going to do this?” Denise was laying on the bed, with her legs up against the wall and her head upside down, dangling from the mattress, and her braided hair nearly touching the floor.

Elizabeth nodded “He is… He’s even more convinced after Gwilym told him nobody had ever been able to impress Professor Cattleman. He has every intention of being the first one to do it…” she suffocated a chuckle “You know that when Joe fixates on something, there’s nothing and no one that can dissuade him”

Denise chuckled along, “I know, I know…” she picked up her phone from the nightstand and mindlessly scrolled through Instagram “Has he cast someone yet?”

The girl shook her head as she carefully browsed through the paper sheets she was trying to organize on her desk.

“The auditions are tomorrow, if you’re interested” she winked without turning around and Denise started to cackle.

“Thanks, but no thanks. Not my scene…”

“You don’t need to act if you don’t feel like it… You could always provide visual effects…” Elizabeth suggested and the other girl cackled again.

“Why do you want me so bad to participate?”

Elizabeth finally turned around, her auburn ponytail following the movement of her head and giving it all a sense of theatricality.

“You dare ask me why!? Because we can use all the help we can get!” she tried her best Joe impression and made the other girl laugh out loud and roll on her side.

Elizabeth grinned “It was good, wasn’t it?”

Denise nodded, still shaking from laugher “You’re getting better. If he writes a character based on him, I’ll make sure the part is yours”

Now it was the time for the redhead to laugh. She clapped her hands together and pretended to be surprised “Really?!? I’d be honored to play the illustrious Joseph Mazzello in a play”

“Did someone mention my name in vain?” the door opened in that instant and Joe made his entrance, a stack of paper under his arm and three hot coffees on a tray in the other hand.

“Speaking of the Devil…” Elizabeth uttered, making Denise chuckle again. She then turned to the boy next to her “We’re always talking about you. You’re a hot topic in our daily conversations”

He flipped her off, then proceeded to hand her a coffee and then sit on the bed next to Denise, who had rolled to sit up straight in the meanwhile. He handed her the coffee as well and started sipping his own.

“So Dennis,” Joe began, immediately regretting the two words that had just fallen out of his lips. Elizabeth facepalmed and Denise half laughed.

“Crap, I’m sorry,” he muttered, shutting his eyes and shaking his head in embarrassment.

Denise lightly patted him on the shoulder “That’s okay, Joe” she said, “everyone has a hard time getting used to it…”

Joe looked at her “Yeah, but they shouldn’t. I’m really sorry, I promise it won’t happen again.”

The girl gave him a little smile, “Thanks, but that really is okay… I know you didn’t do it on purpose.”

He nodded and sighed, “Changing subject from this awkward and want-to-bury-myself-in-the-ground moment,” he said “I had something to ask you, my friend”

He turned in her direction and Denise mirrored him, smiling widely. They were sitting so close her knee was almost touching his and she could feel electricity running through her spine. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt that. Even before the operation and the huge change in her life, Denise had always felt like melting into a puddle when Joe was around. And at that moment, even after the awkwardness that’d happened, he could have asked her to climb on top of the building and she probably would have done it.

She gestured him to continue as she sipped on her coffee. He did.

“I was wondering… you study Design and Visual Arts, right?”

“Well done Columbus, you’ve discovered America” Elizabeth said, still immersed in her papers and trying to lift off the tension Joe had – involuntarily – created.

“Oh fuck off, Liz, don’t you have a paper to read?” he said mindlessly, earning a – well deserved – middle finger from the girl.

He turned back to the girl sitting beside him, “Do you think you could provide me some unused panels? I was thinking of how to set up the scene on stage and I was wondering if you’re interested in taking care of that part…”

Denise cocked an eyebrow and glanced at Elizabeth, who was openly smirking and still reading.

“Did you two talk beforehand?” she asked.

Joe furrowed his eyebrows “About what? We’re together every minute of every day. We talk about lots of stuff…”

“About these visual effects…” she added.

Joe shook his head “No I thought about it while I was at the cafeteria… I came here to tell you guys” he moved his eyes from one to the other “Then I made a fool of myself by misgendering her, and then here we are”

The two girls laughed and Joe smiled lightly, happy to be getting back to normality.

Elizabeth was still smirking against her hand and Denise wondered how they did that… They were always on the same page, like they had one mind, and were often able to complete each other’s sentences. She wondered how could it be so easy for them to understand each other. They were not siblings, they weren’t dating, they were just great friends with this natural, effortless chemistry.

Whilst her huge crush for Joe barely allowed her to behave like a normal person around him.

“Why?” Joe asked.

She shook her head “No reason… I’d be glad to help you; I’ll see what I can do”

Joe’s face lit up and he bent over to hug her, making her heart jump in her chest “Thank you so much, Den, I’ll text you all the details later…” he got up to throw his empty cup in the trash can near Elizabeth’s desk and leaned on the table “Do you have something to do today?” he asked the redhead.

Elizabeth turned her head in his direction “Tons of things. What do you want?”

Joe tried out his best puppy eyes “Will you help me set up the stage for tomorrow?”

Liz rolled her eyes “I can’t Joe, I have to finish rating this for the Student’s Counsel and then my new roommate’s gonna come and I’ll have to show her around… I really can’t today”

Joe kneeled beside her, propping his elbows on the arm of her chair joining his hands. Elizabeth was trying to ignore him and focusing on her reading, a cheeky grin on her lips.

You won’t have it your way this time, Mazzello, she thought and yet she knew way too well how these things went. She had known him for way too long to not know exactly his moves. She just had fun teasing him.

Joe sighed heavily and theatrically and she snorted “Fine! I’ll see what I can do…”

“That’s my girl” Joe jumped up and Elizabeth turned around to smack him on the arm “Hey! What was that for?”

She scrolled her shoulders “Just felt like it… Now please let me finish this before the new girl arrives!”

She got up from her chair and gently pushed him towards the door, “Thanks for stopping by, now go…”

“So this is the treatment I receive after bringing you free coffee, huh?”

“Yeah yeah, thank you doofus, now piss off” Liz closed the door behind him and spun around to lean on it, closing her eyes and chuckling. He’s a helpless cause, she thought to herself, what would you do without me, Joseph?

Denise just smiled at her, a teeny tiny bit of jealousy stinging her heart.

***

“Yes, can you please be careful? It’s – Alex was saying to the bus driver, but the man completely ignored her words and almost threw her precious guitar on the ground – fragile” she mumbled.

With a loud, angry sigh, the girl bent down to recollect all her stuff that the gentleman had so patiently left on the grass near the big, iron gates of her new college. She reserved one last disappointed gaze to the bus that was now driving away, before turning on her heels ready to face a new life’s chapter.

Sure, walking with a big bag hanging from her shoulder, the guitar in her right hand, while she was dragging a heavy suitcase with the other one, wasn’t what Alex would have described as a beautiful experience. But it was definitely an experience.

The edifice was stately, looking like an old castle. The garden was green and, even if that autumnal morning it was full of brown leaves and little puddles then and there, Alex was ready to bet it looked fabulous during spring and summer.

After a few more struggling steps, she reached the entrance and, pushing the door with her back, she finally entered the building. The hall was exactly as she had imagined it: big, bright and full of students. It actually resembled one of those rich hotel’s halls, with a big counter in the front and a few armchairs in each angle of the room.

“Hi!” a friendly voice rang from behind Alex’s shoulder. She turned around to see a tall, skinny boy smiling at her. The girl was confused, to say the least, and she must have had a strange expression all over her face because the boy laughed a little bit as he approached her.

He had short, brown hair and a pair of crystalline eyes. A tiny bit of beard completed the look, well-matched with the college’s uniform he was wearing.

“Aren’t you Elizabeth’s new roommate?” he asked, pointing his index finger to her figure.

“Yes – Alex vaguely answered – and you are?”

“Oh, I’m Gwilym. Gwilym Lee, a friend of Liz. I’m in the welcoming committee for new students” he extended his long arm to shake Alex’s hand and, with a smile, she accepted his offer and let her fingers wrap themselves with his.

“I am Alexandra Piper, nice to meet you”

“The pleasure is mine. Do you need some help?” Gwilym giggled, indicating the bag, the guitar and the suitcase that surrounded Alex. She softly laughed and raised her eyebrows.

“I’m sure that is a great physical exercise, carry all these stuff all alone, but I won’t lie: a pair of other hands won’t be bad at all” she said, letting her elbow rest on the handle of the luggage.

“You’re funny – the boy commented with a smile, while with a fluid movement he put the bag on his shoulder – you and Elizabeth will surely get along very well”

Alex followed Gwilym through what it seemed an infinite number of corridors and she mentally thanked every god up above, because without his help, she would have never found the dormitory.

“Here we are – he announced, stopping himself in front of a door with the number eight-nine-six hung on it – now I have to go, but I’m sure Elizabeth is already inside waiting just for you” the boy proudly added leaving the bag on the floor.

“Thank you so much, Gwil. Can I call you Gwil right?” Alex cheekily asked, smirking a little. He couldn’t help but chuckle as he repeatedly nodded.

“Sure you can. And, I assume I can call you Alex” Gwilym curved the angle of his mouth, just enough to give the girl a flirtatious smile, while he started to walk down the hallway. Alex smiled to herself, and when she turned her head in his direction she saw he was already looking at her.

“Your assumptions are correct” she grinned back. Gwilym nodded one last time, before waving his hand in the air and disappearing behind the corner.

Alex smiled one last time, before taking a deep breath. She faced the door for some seconds more, before finally raising her arm and let her knuckles knock against the wooden surface.

Muffled voices and indistinct noises came from inside the room and sooner as Alex expected, two smiley girls appeared in front of her.

“Alexandra!” a reddish-haired girl jumped in her arms, hugging her tight.

“Don’t mind her, she’s crazy” the dark-skin girl commented, leaning her shoulder against the door’s frame. Alex chuckled and patted on what she understood being Elizabeth’s shoulder.

“Oh shut up, Didi. ‘m gonna quote the buzz kill behind me: don’t mind her, she’s boring – the redhead joked, breaking the hug and looking into Alex’s eyes – I’m Elizabeth, but you can call me Liz”

“Alex - the girl replied, extending her arm to shake her hand, then she pointed to the buzz kill – nice to meet you, too!”

“Denise. And the pleasure is mine”

“Love your hair, by the way” Alex immediately commented, indicating the long, purple braids that adorned Denise’s head. The proudest expression drew itself on the girl’s face, as she looked over Alex’s shoulders where an annoyed Elizabeth was puffing.

“Thank you! Finally, someone with taste has entered this old, close-minded place full of blind people – Denise theatrically said, walking closer to Elizabeth who was looking at her with raised eyebrows – good luck with this one, Alex. See you later, girls” she then added, walking down the hallway and waving her hand in the air.

“I can’t with her – Liz chuckled, before giving all her attention to Alex – I’m all yours now! Let me help you with your stuff!” she said, already lugging her suitcase inside the bedroom.

The room was pretty small, but all the furniture was well placed creating enough space for two people to comfortably live together. There was even a tiny, private bathroom and the window opened to the garden.

“Not bad” Alex commented, nodding to herself as she followed Liz inside, closing the door behind her back.

“I’m glad you lik- oh my God! Do you play guitar?” Elizabeth cut herself off when she noticed the instrument that Alex had just deposited on the floor. The brunette laughed, taking her beloved baby and putting it on the empty bed.

“Yes, I forgot to mention it in the mail of presentation – she said, opening the case finally revealing the wooden guitar to Liz’s adoring eyes – I attended music courses since I was very young, because my father is a conductor”

“Wow! Can I touch it? – Liz shyly questioned and didn’t hesitate to extend her hand after Alex had nodded – I mean, you told me you’re studying at the conservatory, but I couldn’t imagine you were also a guitarist”

Alex giggled and caressed the back of her neck.

“Well, actually, I can also play the piano, the bass and, even if at a beginner’s level, drums” she was visibly blushing, mostly because of the admired gaze Elizabeth was giving her.

“We should go, then! Can’t wait to show you the auditorium and the entire music section of our college!” the redhead announced, taking Alex’ hand to guide her outside and drag her down the corridor.

The two almost stumbled on the stairs and basically trampled an entire row of students who were waiting in line to buy something at the vending machines.

But Elizabeth was too excited to stop, even to care about it, and Alex soon found herself flooded with a literal sea of information about anything and everything. She was sure she would have not remembered half of the things she was being told, but Liz reassured her.

“The only really important places are the cafeteria and, well, for you, in particular, the auditorium, which is where we’re going now”

“You’re aware that your college is a bloody labyrinth, right?” Alex joked, following Elizabeth around and trying to imprint inside her mind some strategic points that could help her to re-find the way.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it sooner than you think. It’s not that difficult once you understand that, basically, ninety percent of the classrooms are unused or useless or too old and that teachers' fun is to watch us arrive late to class because they love putting a lesson here, in the music wing, and the other one in the science department”

Alex giggled and scrolled her shoulders, then thanked Liz who was keeping the door open for her.

“Wow – the brunette let out, as soon as they entered the auditorium – this is indeed bigger than the one we had in my old college!” she said in excitement, spied by Elizabeth proud and gloating eyes.

“Look! A piano!”

“No, there’s no way I’m going to play it right now” Alex immediately said, but Liz was already running towards the instrument. Once she had reached it, she started to make persuasive gestures that had all the intention to be an invitation.

Alex burst out laughing and shook her head, knowing she stood no chance. She sighed and walked in her direction.

“Move” she firmly said, but with amusement in her voice. Elizabeth giggled and clapped her hands before positioning herself on the other part of the piano, leaned against it with her elbows.

Her fingers were trembled in anticipation, as she let them slightly touch the black and white keys, ready to make them sing.

But, as her index finger was about to press a C –

“Liz! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” Joe shouted bursting into the auditorium, basically running to reach the two girls.

“I’ve had an amazing idea for the comedy. Hi – he nonchalantly said to Alex, but when he noticed she was new he stopped himself and snapped his head in her direction again – hi! Oh, nice to meet you! I’m Joseph, well for you Joe”

“Hi Joe, I’m Alexandra. For you Alex” she replied, raising her eyebrows.

“I like your humor – he winked at her and then pointed straight to Liz – idea. Big idea. The comedy becomes a musical. I just need a couple of students who can sing and play instruments and … “ he froze.

“And what? – Elizabeth asked while Alex’s eyes were jumping from one face to another as if she was witnessing a tennis game – you know I’m scared when you think too much” she added, putting a hand on her hip.

But Joe was still immersed inside his mind, until he slowly rotated towards Alex indicating her with his finger.

“Do you play the piano?” Joe scanned every single word as a light bulb was almost visible as it lighted itself up, above his head.

“Ehm … yes?” Alex answered, hesitant and confused.

“You’re in! – he snapped his fingers and headed to the exit again – ah, Liz, you were useless. As always” then smugly grinned, starting to walk away again.

“Oh fuck off, Joseph” Elizabeth talked back, but her tone was cracked by chuckles. When the door closed behind Joe’s back, Alex looked up at Liz, who couldn’t help but laugh in front of the question mark that was her face at that moment. She flipped her hand in the air and commented:

“Forget him, he’s a weirdo”

Chapters: next ⤑

A/N: Hi folks! We are so excited to share with you this first chapter! Here, you’ll get the chance to meet some of the main characters and we hope you’ll love them just as much as we do. Hope you’ll like it folks and if you do, please do not hesitate to tell us! Like, comment, reblog and share!

Cheers lovesies

Tag List: @littledarlingwellaway - @petriwhore - @bohemiandelilah - @misshystericalqueen - @loki-lover095 - @inthelapofthe39 - @starsoflovingness-wq - @minetticatinwonderland - @cairdes20 - @friendswillbefriendsblog - @o-holynight - @trash-record-collection - @please-stop-me-now - @theappleofmybri - @imgonnabeyourslave - @babygotblueeyes - @mi55chanandlerbong - @deaky-with-a-c - @luckytrashgooprebel - @thosequeenboys - @rogahs-drowse - @rogerismyfairyking - @killer-qu33n-of-disaster - @sunshine112 - @a19103 - @queenlover05 - @modymody99 - @bensrhapsody - @peterwandaparker - @sjeunhaelover

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commentaryvorg · 4 years

Text

So, okay, I am planning to get around to doing both a bonus ramble for chapter 6, and also finally doing that bonus ramble for chapter 5 that I mentioned back then. Buuut instead of working on those things yet, I found myself doing something a little different.

See, this whole commentary was all written in the same ridiculously long document. And there’s a search function that can tell me exactly how many instances of a given character’s name are in this document, which I can also break down to see how many times they’re mentioned within a single post’s worth of it. Which means that, other than a commentary for DRV3, what I’ve also unintentionally generated is a huge source of data on how I see this story, in terms of how relevant and interesting each character is being at each point in the narrative.

So, well, I don’t know if anyone else will be into this, but I found it fascinating to look into, so here’s me nerding out over some data. You want a visual representation of how I see the story of Danganronpa V3, with GRAPHS? Then look no further.

(Disclaimer: whenever I talk about a character’s “relevance” during this, obviously I am talking about their relevance according to me as measured by my commentary. Though it should have at least some relation to their objective relevance to the story, this is not necessarily a measure of that.)

The number of times a character is mentioned will include both the times I mentioned them in my own commentary and times they’re mentioned in quotes from the game, either as the tag for who’s speaking or being talked about by another character.

I should also note that for all of these upcoming graphs, Kaito and Kokichi’s counts have been adjusted to account for the fact that Exisal Kokichi is actually Kaito. I counted the number of mentions of specifically “Exisal Kokichi”, then subtracted that amount from Kokichi’s count and added it to Kaito’s. Similarly, Tsumugi’s count was adjusted to include all of her cosplays of DR1/2 characters in trial 6, since those were all just her speaking.

First, here’s the totals of how many times each character was mentioned throughout the entire commentary. (This is only main commentary posts; bonus chapter-end rambles and replies to asks are not included.) The characters are ordered along the X-axis by how long they were alive for, so that you can compare how relevant they should in theory have been based on that to how relevant they actually are to the story in my eyes.

Surprising absolutely no-one, Kaito is the character I talked about the most. He even managed to beat out Shuichi, the actual protagonist of the game who is alive for a whole chapter more than him, by a significant margin. In fact, I imagine that all of my talking about Kaito’s issues with regards to Shuichi contributed quite significantly to Shuichi’s count.

I’m personally a little sad that Kokichi managed to significantly beat out Maki for third place. But while I don’t know if my talking about his actual issues alone would outstrip Maki’s, he was also very relevant to the plot of both chapters 4 and 5, plus I spent a lot of time in general explaining why he was obviously wrong every time he kept insisting he was obviously right, so that does track. He’s still only mentioned slightly less than half as much as Kaito, though. That seems fair.

(I know a lot of people associate Kokichi with the colour purple, but I really feel like black-and-white represents him more. Besides, if I’d given him a somewhat darker, more bluer purple than Kaito’s, he’d be really difficult to distinguish from both Kaito and Shuichi in the upcoming line graphs.)

Gonta comes in fifth place! Partly this is that I did his FTEs out of personal preference even though they’re not obviously meant to be a canon part of the story like Kaito’s and Maki’s definitely are. It’s also probably because Gonta speaking about himself in third-person amplified his own count to a significant fraction more than it would have otherwise been if he didn’t talk that way. But even so, Gonta is important and good (and rather relevant to both Kaito and Kokichi in different ways) so he definitely deserves to be considered a relatively significant part of this story.

Then nobody else gets mentioned over a thousand times; the next highest are the basically-tied Kaede and Himiko. Kaede was relevant enough from the single chapter she was around to even beat out even the other two who made it to chapter 6, who have a higher count than the rest mostly due to gradually accumulating it throughout the whole game.

Everyone else is hovering at around 300 mentions or so. The least mentioned of all is Angie, which makes sense, because of the characters I don’t personally care for at all, she had the least relevance to the plot.

Next, let’s look at a general overview of how each character’s relevance shifts from chapter to chapter. To do this, I calculated the average number of times each character was mentioned per post in any given chapter. (This doesn’t include the prologue, since that’s only two posts, one of which has most of the characters not existing yet and one of which is me mostly talking about their overall predicted relevance to this commentary rather than their relevance at that particular point in the story, so that data wouldn’t mean much.)

(I should add that, were I being a Proper Scientist about this, I would have first normalised the character mentions to each post’s word count to account for the fact that posts have varying lengths. But since I tried to keep the post lengths fairly similar anyway, the raw number of character mentions should still be a reasonable universal measure of that character’s proportional relevance in any given post, and therefore in any given chapter once averaged. I’d rather not make things more confusing for any less-sciencey readers – if you have no idea what I just said here, don’t worry about it.)

As you’d imagine, everyone who dies peaks in relevance during the chapter they die in. The only exception to this is Kokichi, whom I found more interesting to talk about in chapter 4 than chapter 5. That is, after all, the chapter he commits murder in.

I’m a little surprised that Kaito’s chapter 5 average is so much higher than his chapter 4 average, since I consider both chapters 4 and 5 to be Extremely Good Kaito Chapters for different reasons. I suppose it’s because, while he’s got fun character stuff going on throughout both chapters, in chapter 5 Kaito is also significantly more relevant to the plot than he is in chapter 4. He does spend trial 5 being effectively both the victim and a major participant in the discussion of the case (in a way that culprits usually aren’t until they get accused because they’re trying to lay low), which is bound to have pushed up his average a lot.

Kaito manages to still be the third most relevant character in both chapters 1 and 6. In chapter 1 it’s partly helped by me doing his FTEs out of what was largely personal preference, but he also really is doing a lot more interesting things and having more of a character arc already in that chapter than basically anyone else except for the two protagonists. And in chapter 6, I went into it determined to find every possible opportunity to mention Kaito, but… I’m still impressed with myself that I managed to mention him more times in that chapter than even Maki, who is still having an actual character arc at that point.

Four of our five most relevant characters take a dip in relevance during chapter 3. That really does go to show that chapter 3 is kind of the black sheep of the story that doesn’t fit thematically with the rest of it nearly as much. Kaito gets nerfed in-universe for silly reasons, while the out-universe writers apparently just couldn’t think of anything interesting to do with Kokichi in this chapter. Even Shuichi is mentioned less despite being the protagonist, because this is in between him overcoming his own post-Kaede issues during chapter 2, and him becoming very very relevant to Kaito’s issues during chapters 4 and 5. Maki’s development really is the only big overarching story-related thing going on in this chapter.

…Nonetheless, I’m still impressed with how much I managed to mention Kaito during chapter 3, such that he’s still more relevant to me in it than anyone else. I went into that chapter thinking I wasn’t going to have much to say about him past the beginning part because he spends so much of it ill and offscreen, but I still ended up finding plenty to say about why he is ill and offscreen anyway.

It’s kind of interesting how, until Gonta dies, Gonta and Kokichi’s graphs look very similar to each other, with Kokichi’s just being a little bit higher. They are, tragically for Gonta, both relevant for similar reasons a lot of the time. In the same vein, but happier, Kaito and Shuichi’s graphs for chapters 2 to 4 also have a similar shape to each other, which makes sense since I’m often talking about them both together. In chapter 5, Kaito’s greater relevance to the plot and not just to his and Shuichi’s character arcs is bound to be why he has a much higher increase than Shuichi there.

While most characters barely get mentioned once they’ve been dead for more than a chapter (they tend to at least get mentioned a little in the chapter afterwards due to people reflecting on the previous case), Kaede’s baseline during chapters 3 to 5 is still slightly higher than most. She averages at nearly 2 mentions per post for those three chapters, which is very impressive for someone who’s been dead since chapter 1! She really does continue to have an influence throughout the whole game.

Now let’s break it down further into each individual post to see how everyone’s relevance changes within each chapter. I’m separating these into one graph per chapter so as not to overwhelm things with one ridiculously wide graph.

(Including lines dividing the different sections of a chapter to help people follow roughly where each post is at in the story. The posts which are only half Deadly Life are being fully counted as that for our purposes here – think of it as the lead-in to the body discovery as well as the investigation itself.)

Unsurprisingly, Kaede is almost always the most relevant character in any chapter 1 post – after all, she’s the protagonist, plus she’s being really interesting and relevant to the narrative the entire time in a way that Shuichi won’t always be once he becomes the protagonist. Kaito does somehow manage to be slightly more relevant than Kaede just for the first half of trial 1, probably because his strategy meeting was the topic of discussion a lot there, while Kaede’s character (aka the part where she murdered someone) was less in focus.

Kaito is still a clear third place here. While he doesn’t really come into explicit narrative focus until the end of chapter 1, he’s still having something of a character arc in the background and being way more interesting than any of the other non-Kaede-or-Shuichi characters, who are in this chapter mostly just background noise desperately trying to establish their basic character traits. Maki is one of the only ones who’s less background noise and more having a few moments of me talking about her issues in between her pointedly not drawing attention to herself at all. And while Kokichi is the fourth most relevant character in this chapter, we can see from this that it’s mainly due to his background noise being slightly noisier than everyone else’s (particularly in the trial, because trust issues), with the only thing of any real note he does in this chapter being discouraging everyone from the escape tunnel at the beginning.

(Featuring characters who are dead from the beginning of the chapter becoming dotted lines, to help unclutter things and also make it noticeable at a glance whenever a peak is a character managing to be relevant after they’re dead.)

And now, while Shuichi has become the protagonist and is having plenty of interesting character arc this chapter, Kaito has also fully come into narrative focus and so is going to be outstripping even Shuichi in relevance most of the time from now on. The one time this chapter that Shuichi does manage to be more relevant than Kaito is in the latter part of the trial as he faces the truth and accuses Kirumi, first with Kaito’s encouragement but then seemingly without needing Kaito at all towards the end, which feels… appropriate.

You can see the peaks of Kaito’s free time events and then him training Shuichi during the Daily Life. The patterns for a character in Daily Life will often oscillate like this, as Daily Lifes tend to alternate between character development stuff and plot stuff. Those Kokichi peaks in Daily Life, for example, are all him reacting to (or causing) plot stuff. The Gonta ones are partly his free time events incidentally happening to land in the same post as plot stuff, but also the Insect Meet-and-Greet.

Maki starts to become more relevant during the investigation and trial, featuring a big peak in the part where Kaito believes in her and is Good. You can also notice Himiko being brainwashed by Angie, doing her magic show, and being suspected during the trial, with vague smaller peaks of Angie and/or Tenko at the same time. A lot more characters are beginning to make themselves noticed above the background noise by now, even aside from this chapter’s victim and culprit.

Kaito is super relevant during his free time event and first training session with Maki, and then fluctuates wildly between being ill and trying very hard not to be ill for the rest of the non-trial posts. (Not that I don’t still find stuff to say about him even when he is, but it is harder when he spends most of the post offscreen.) That first Deadly Life post is far less about the murder and more just me talking about Kaito’s phobia for practically the whole post, which is why nobody else except for him and his sidekicks are all that relevant there. A bunch of the other characters shoot up for the second Deadly Life post compared to the first as there’s a lot more plot going on there.

Maki’s relevance steadily increases during Daily Life except for the post which is half plot and half Gonta’s FTEs. You can also notice the part where Tenko tries to stop Angie’s ritual and get through to Himiko.

Kokichi isn’t doing much of anything during the Daily Life and his only significant peaks are discussing his trust issues in the trial (in conjunction with Himiko wanting to believe in Tenko, featuring even more of Kaito being good) and then him accidentally being nice to Himiko in the trial conclusion.

Practically every interesting character (except Shuichi, who’s just doing his detective thing) drops in relevance between the first half of the trial and the second, because there really isn’t nearly as much interesting character stuff going on in the second half of the trial and it’s just Kiyo being terrible.

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(I split up the Daily Life and Deadly Life a little differently in this one, since while the whole Virtual World trip is nominally “Daily Life”, it’s basically the murder already in progress and has a very different tone from the rest of Daily Life up until the end of free time. Now also featuring splits for the trial because my coverage of trials from this point on is so damn long.)

Man, I love how starkly clear it is that there are really only four characters who are relevant to this case and trial. Even Maki isn’t – she gets her moment to shine during the Daily Life and some brief bits of being good during the investigation, but the trial is not about her at all. Similarly, Himiko has a bit during the Daily Life focusing on her post-Tenko development (featuring Gonta) and then basically nothing after that.

Any big peak of Shuichi in this chapter can be assumed to almost certainly be about Kaito’s issues regarding him; Kaito has peaks in similar places to Shuichi most of the time. The only times he doesn’t are Maki’s training, which is of course about Kaito helping her, and then the first post of the trial, which has a good bit of Kaito’s principles clashing with Kokichi. But for the entire rest of the trial, Kaito’s relevance does not remotely correlate with Kokichi’s, or even Gonta’s, because Kaito’s issues in this trial are really almost entirely about Shuichi.

You can very clearly see the point at which Gonta gets accused in the trial – that is, just after the post in which Kokichi made everything about himself for ages and then threw a tantrum when Shuichi wasn’t having any of it. Kokichi’s pattern for the rest of the trial until the execution then looks a lot more similar to Gonta’s pattern than it does to Kaito’s. Guess who’s the real source of Kokichi’s issues here.

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(Splitting up the Daily Life here as well between the end of free time and the beginning of Kaito’s brilliant heroic plan, since the first half is a lot more character development and the second half is a lot more plot.)

For the Daily Life, there’s kiiind of that same pattern of Kaito and Shuichi having similar peaks, since Kaito’s issues are still extremely about Shuichi at this point. That doesn’t show up so well during free time in which Kaito is not available, even though I kind of am still talking about Kaito’s issues a good bit, because I’m mostly doing so through the metaphor of Himiko’s FTEs without directly mentioning Kaito’s name as much. The one in which Kaito and Shuichi’s patterns match the least is the post with Kaito’s plan, which is about him realising he needs to actually be a hero instead of focusing on looking like one just to prove himself to Shuichi, so that seems appropriate. And after the last part of the Daily Life in which they make up and have their adorable window conversation, Kaito is more or less over his issues regarding Shuichi – or at least isn’t letting them affect him any more – so their patterns don’t match up as much as they used to once we get to the case and trial. The Shuichi peaks during the investigation and trial are then a lot more focused on Shuichi himself, in terms of how he’s dealing with Kaito being apparently dead.

It’s pretty abundantly clear that this chapter is basically just about the training trio, plus Kokichi who facilitates those character dynamics by driving the plot. Himiko’s free time events are noticeable, as is the bit in the trial where she’s a suspect, but she doesn’t do much the rest of the time. Meanwhile Tsumugi and Keebo are still contributing practically fuck all to the narrative, just like they’ve been doing for the past four chapters as well. You can tell which post is mostly me talking about the Hope’s Peak plot because none of the characters get talked about in it to a particularly great extent – and Kaito still manages to be the third most relevant character in that post even though he’s offscreen for the whole thing.

As he should be, Kaito is always the most relevant character for the entire trial, even more so than Kokichi! Remember that I adjusted the data to account for the fact that Exisal Kokichi is actually Kaito – without that, Kokichi does get more mentions than Kaito in a few trial posts, but that isn’t a fair representation of who is actually being talked about and having lines. Heck, I imagine that about half of Kokichi’s mentions in the trial are just me talking about how he would usually act in order to explain why Kaito’s really not quite acting like the real Kokichi at all.

The biggest Kokichi peak in the trial proper is the only one that has a lot of me talking about him for his own sake, as I discuss the logistics of his plan and explain how he ruined it all by posthumously gloating. You can also see his plan being discussed in the trial conclusion, and then him ceasing to be relevant as everything becomes about Kaito and his friends.

This trial does have less obvious trends than trial 4 – I split it up at the intermission again, but there’s not much of a meaningful narrative difference between the first half and the second. There’s so much discussion of the logistics of the case and everything Exisal Kokichi is saying that the actual character progression that Maki and Shuichi have here gets a little bit lost amongst that noise (and Kaito himself isn’t precisely having much of an actual arc during this trial even as he is being the best and most relevant). You can at least see the post which is almost entirely flashback, featuring a lot more Maki and much less Shuichi, then also the part where Maki is adorable as she realises Kaito’s still alive and then can’t bear to accept he’s the culprit. You can also kind of see Shuichi forcing himself to accept Kaito’s death in the Debate Scrum earlier on, and then believing in Kaito towards the end.

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(There wasn’t an official intermission to split the trial at, but I decided to split it at the point where the audience shows up, since there’s a very big shift in topic and tone from then on. The first half is a lot longer in-game than it might seem based on how comparatively long I spent on it, because most of it was straightforward deductions and exposition that I didn’t have much to say about.)

The overall counts for characters in general during this chapter are a lot lower, which reflects the fact that there’s less interesting character arc stuff going on here and I’m talking a lot more about the plot instead.

Kokichi has a big posthumous peak when we’re investigating his lab and his room, some decent relevance throughout the rest of the investigation for plot reasons (the Bugvac, etc), another small peak in the trial as we confirm he wasn’t a Remnant of Despair… and then he basically just stops being relevant once we move onto the fiction stuff and start thinking more about the influence the deceased characters had on those who are still here. Kaito has much steadier posthumous relevance throughout, partly out of how much he means to his sidekicks (that biggest peak is when Tsumugi uses that to make Shuichi and Maki despair over their fictionality), and partly because I just can’t stop finding reasons to mention him even though he’s gone.

Kaede and Rantaro are of course quite relevant during their retrial, and a little bit during some other plot parts – Rantaro’s lab, the stupid Kaede twin red herring during the investigation, Shuichi realising why Rantaro did the killing game again. Other than these plotty parts, Kaede’s pattern kiiiinda matches Kaito’s here and there, since they did both have such an influence on Shuichi. The parts where Kaito has more of a peak than Kaede are a lot more specific to him, such as the flashbacks in the investigation that were relevant to his issues, and the impossible being possible near the end of the trial.

You can see Tsumugi being found out as the mastermind… and then only being the most relevant character for a grand total of two posts. Keebo’s brief stint as protagonist is also pretty clear here, and he’s the most relevant for exactly one post. But this chapter is really the most about Shuichi. Tsumugi’s relevance as the mastermind drops right off in the same post that Shuichi’s shoots back up as he realises what’s going on with this hope nonsense and stands against it, which is very satisfying. Even Kaito becomes more relevant than Tsumugi towards the end of the trial!

Bonus fun facts about all the post-by-post graphs taken together:

While Kaito is alive, there are only two posts in which he is not among the top three most relevant characters. In both cases he’s a pretty close fourth, and in one of those cases he’s a lot more the topic of my commentary than you’d think from the number of times I mention his name, so he probably isn’t really only the fourth most relevant at all there.

There are only nine posts in which Kokichi is more relevant than Kaito, and three of those are only by a pretty small margin.

The character who has the single highest number of mentions in any one post is actually not Kaito – it’s Gonta. While Kaito is extremely relevant in many many posts, there seems to be a maximum to that. After all, there is a maximum post length that I tried to adhere to, and so even in a post with the highest possible concentration of talking about Kaito, there’s basically a hypothetical limit to the number of times he can be mentioned. But Gonta’s thing of amplifying his own count because he talks about himself in third-person means that, for the one post which is almost entirely about him (the first half of trial 4’s conclusion), he outstrips that hypothetical per-post limit in a way that other characters wouldn’t be able to do no matter how relevant they are.

This was really fun to look at! I always had an instinctive feeling for how I felt about each character’s relevance at each point in the story, but it’s cool to see a visual representation of it using actual data. It really does feel very accurate. Kaito’s frequent high counts may sometimes be an exaggeration of his objective relevance on the surface, but that genuinely is how I see those parts of the story. Even if it’s subtle, there’s so much going on in Kaito’s head beneath the surface, and that’s the biggest thing that draws me to any given part of the story.

And what I love so much about this story, as these graphs so wonderfully show, is how relevant Kaito always is. Even if Kaito hadn’t been one of the most important characters in this story, he’d still have been my favourite anyway just because he’s the kind of character I tend to enjoy in a lot of different ways. So it’s just so great to me that, no matter where I’m at in the story (unless it’s chapter 6), it’s never too far away from some part in which Kaito is being at least a little bit interesting and fun in some way – and usually a hell of a lot more than just a little.

(Have I ever mentioned how incredibly happy I am that the writers really did thoroughly care about Kaito’s story and didn’t gratuitously kill him off earlier than he deserved like they’d been making it seem like they would.)

#danganronpa v3 #bonus ramble #(basically like a bonus ramble for the entire thing in one?)#(right?)

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oops-prow-did-it-again · 4 years

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Pokémon Black: The Novel (Chapter 3 - An Enigma)

Find the prologue and more info about this series here

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Find it on AO3 and FFN

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Traveling Route One alone with just Noodle was a strange experience. Before, he had always had to stop and wait for a gym trainer from Striaton to deal with any adventurous wild pokémon that wished to make their acquaintance. Left to his own devices, Hil found the trek to be much more difficult than he could have anticipated. Noodle had Tackle and a threatening glare known as Leer at its disposal and… that was it. The wild pokémon that attacked them only consisted of Lillipup and Patrat thankfully, but Noodle wasn’t exactly grand at taking hits just yet. Despite how short the grassy road was, he found himself scurrying past a Lillipup bolting after them to avoid it for fear of how Noodle would hold up against another attacker.

Upon arriving in Accumula Town, he noticed a large group of people gathering about the patio park to the left of the Pokémon Center, but he paid them no heed as he headed for the orange building. It would be his first time healing his own pokémon at one of these and not just lazing about at the customary café with a Striaton trainer. He rubbed Noodle’s head gently as he stepped into the automatic doors. “I’ve gotta put you in the Poké Ball for a minute, buddy,” he whispered as he raised the device in his right hand over Noodle’s head. The Snivy nodded curtly and Hil gingerly tapped the button of the Poké Ball to Noodle’s nose. It opened and siphoned Noodle away in a flash of red light.

He then padded over to the U-shaped, tangerine front desk, where a pristine white laptop sat opened in front of a pink-haired woman. She had big loops in her long hair and dark green eyes. She regarded Hil warmly as he approached. “Hil!” she beamed. “I see you’ve got a little one of your own now!”

“Yeah,” Hil smiled slightly as he handed her the Poké Ball. “That’s, uh, my Snivy. Noodle.” He laughed nervously. I sound like such an idiot telling anyone that out of context, he realized with a familiar bolt of shame. He had heard much worse names given to pokémon before, half the time as a joke, so he wasn’t sure why telling Nurse Joy suddenly shook him to his core, but oh well. He gritted his teeth and pushed through that unpleasant feeling.

Nurse Joy took no notice of his apparent discomfort and snatched up the Poké Ball easily. She nodded and jumped up from a computer chair behind the counter with a bounce in her step and loped over to a machine on a cart pressed to the wall behind her. It had a clear cover encasing six round slots that made the surface of the machine look almost like an egg flat. She slipped the Poké Ball into one of those crevices upon lifting the cover, and closed it swiftly again. The bright digital display above the machine then came to life and a stock image of a Snivy displayed. The screen pulsated with a blue light a few times before the machine dinged to signal its completion. Nurse Joy nodded in approval and retrieved the Poké Ball, tossing it to Hil with a knowing wink. Hil spastically waved his hands to catch it and wound up splayed halfway across the counter. His face flushed red and he scrambled back to an upright position, shoving Noodle’s Poké Ball into his pocket.

“Th-thanks, Nurse Joy,” he spluttered. Why was he stuttering? He was such a mess…

“Don’t mention it, kiddo,” she grinned. “Come back any ti—what’s going on out there?” Her attention snapped to the café on the right side of the Pokémon Center. There were only a couple of people over there, but both, as well as the shopkeeper, were looking out of a tiny window in the wall and muttering to each other. Nurse Joy frowned. “Ugh, it’s probably those Team Plasma nutjobs again…”

Piqued, Hil cocked his head at where everyone was looking out the window. “Team Plasma?” he echoed.

“Yeah. They’ve showed up a lot here recently. It’s always the same song and dance. Don’t pay them any mind,” Nurse Joy muttered. “I wish nobody would. Then they might have died out long time ago.”

Hil nodded slowly. “I thought they were, uh… criminals or something. My mother always freaked out about them that I believed they were…”

“Nobody really knows,” Nurse Joy explained with a shrug and vague wave of her hand. She leaned on the orange counter with her elbow on its surface and her hand holding up her chin. “It’s a whole controversy. Some people claim they’re horrible criminals, terrorists even, because a few people wearing their getup have stolen pokémon and threatened people. Others say that people are framing them, and that Team Plasma is a peaceful organization and they cite all their speeches as their only efforts. Regardless of what they are… they’re loony. That’s for sure.”

Hil thanked her distractedly and decided to step outside and see for himself. He nearly bumped nose-first into Cheren, managing to anchor his foot back just in time to keep from running into him, and Cheren also staggered backward. Bianca was at his side and she clapped her hands excitedly when she saw Hil. Hil glanced to his right and saw the gathered crowd of people he had noticed before going into the Pokémon Center had grown tenfold.

“Nurse Joy says something with Team Plasma’s going down over there,” Hil explained as he gestured to the crowd.

“Yeah, that’s what we were coming to get you for,” Cheren nodded. He motioned for Hil to follow as he and Bianca headed for the throng of people.

They managed to push and finesse their way to the front thanks to being rather small in comparison to most of the adults and older teens gathered. Upon the raised patio, a neat line of people dressed in silver robes stood perfectly still, to the point Hil thought it looked like they were straining. A black X-shape was situated on the center of the top of their hoods. It was creepy, if he was honest. Two others had not gathered in the line and rather were setting up flags on either side of the line of robed people. The flags were black and white with a blue ‘P’ situated in the center, a jagged, blue zigzag line running across the flag. The vertically oriented flags fluttered in the wind as the two men held them in place by lightly stepping on their bases. Hil then became keenly aware that everyone in the silver robes bore the same insignia on the center of their chests, on a white fabric that hung over the main part of the robes, tied to their forms by a black belt fastened to their waists.

From behind the line of robed people stepped an elderly man with thick, long cloak, dappled dark blue and dull yellow. A heavy golden piece looped around his neck. To Hil, it reminded him of a mantle, but it was shaped almost like a crown and the way it gleamed in the sunlight told him it was a solid metal of some sort. It did not bounce or give any leeway as the old man moved. Plastered to the front of that intimidating golden collar was yet another insignia for Team Plasma. Despite how heavy and burdening the piece looked, the old man seemed completely unbothered by it, despite limping to the forefront of the Team Plasma agents to address the crowd.

His idly smoothed back part of his green hair with his left hand and then raised it to the residents of Accumula Town beneath him. As he started to speak, Hil noticed something was… off about the way this man moved and spoke. His right arm did not move at all, but his left arm waved about animatedly. An angular, silver eyepiece with red plastic across the center prevented his right eye from being seen, and the right side of his lips failed to articulate his words. Hil also picked up that his limp was from his right leg struggling to pick up and place itself. “My name is Ghetsis. I am here representing Team Plasma,” the old man said in a gruff, deep voice.

The crowd of people around Hil, Cheren, and Bianca began to mutter and muse to one another loudly. Hil noted that Cheren was silent and eyeing the Team Plasma members tensely. Bianca, on the other hand, had found another younger woman to whisper to excitedly. Hil bit his lower lip a little as he watched.

“Today, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to talk to you about pokémon liberation. I'm sure most of you believe that we humans and pokémon are partners that have come to live together because we want and need each other. However, is that really the truth? Have you ever considered that perhaps we humans... only assume that this is the truth?” Ghetsis prattled away as he limped from one of the flags set up to the other, pausing to let his words sink in here and there. He’d always then regard the crowd with an expressionless stare. His voice was heavily punctuated and nuanced, but his face was so devoid of meaning… It unsettled Hil and made him clutch Noodle’s Poké Ball in his hand tightly, as if asking him for strength.

“Pokémon are subject to the selfish commands of trainers... They get pushed around when they are our ‘partners’ at work... Can anyone say with confidence that there is no truth in what I'm saying?” Ghetsis continued. He stopped at the end of that statement and then shakily raised his right hand, weakly throwing the cloak off from where it covered it. Only his forearm was then visible, but it was enough to get the message across. The flesh was scarred with horizontal lines down the inside, and the skin significantly darker than the rest of his body. The musculature was thinner as well, giving it a gaunt appearance. The crowd collectively gasped and Hil himself had to whip his head away from the visual. He clasped his left hand to his right arm’s interior, and then touched his finger to the Poké Ball in his hand’s center. He really wanted his new friend at his side now…

Noodle unfurled on the pavement below, and without prompting jumped onto Hil’s right arm and used it as leverage to curl around his shoulders again. It trilled happily and Hil swallowed hard, smiling nervously. Ghetsis then spoke again and pulled his attention back.

“This, ladies and gentlemen… is the result of a pokémon pushed beyond its breaking point,” Ghetsis explained with his voice barely above a whisper. “A pokémon so abused and broken by people that it turned on someone trying to help it. I have done my best to change its mind, but… well… the damage speaks for itself.” Ghetsis seemed to be scanning the crowd for reactions.

Hil couldn’t really pick out any one specific comment, but he heard plenty of hushed whispers of worry and shock. A couple people had given audible cries at the look of his arm and whimpered at his story. Hil and Cheren exchanged a look.

“What a bother,” Cheren growled, “all we have is his word to go off. Why are people believing him so easily? How do they know he’s not just making it up?”

Hil shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s just… very convincing, I guess.”

“Bianca?” Cheren asked, turning his attention to her. She had stopped talking to her friend and instead was watching Ghetsis closely. Hil had never seen her focus so intently on something before. She was flighty and indecisive as they came and her sudden focus alarmed Hil. Cheren waved a hand in front of her and she shook her head.

“Stop, Cheren, I’m listening to him,” she complained and gently pushed his hand away.

Cheren sighed and turned his attention back to Ghetsis as well.

“Now, ladies and gentlmen, pokémon are different from humans. They are living beings that contain unknown potential. They are living beings from whom we humans have much to learn. Tell me, what is our responsibility toward these wonderful beings called Pokémon? That's right! We must liberate the pokémon! Then, and only then, will humans and pokémon truly be equals!” Ghetsis stopped at the center of his makeshift stage and raised his left arm high into the air at his last statement. The rest of the Team Plasma members behind him and holding the flags down dipped their chins and mumbled something under their breath.

“Long live Team Plasma,” Cheren said offhandedly to Hil. “That’s what they said, the people in the silver getup.”

Ghetsis lowered his arm and cleared his throat. “Everyone, I end my words here today by imploring you to consider the relationship between people and pokémon... and the correct way to proceed. We sincerely appreciate your attention.” With that, he bent his head and shoulders forward slightly, as if in an attempt at a bow, but his hips wouldn’t allow it. He breathed in deeply as he stood back to his full height and then turned his back to Accumula Town. The people in the silver robes behind him broke their formation at last and split into groups of threes. Ghetsis stepped in between them all, and three people flanked him on either side. The two flag holders picked up the flags and one took a place in front of Ghetsis, and the other behind him. As if creating a protective circle around him.

Hil narrowed his eyes suspiciously at that. If he was so peaceful, then why did he have to have an eight or nine-strong guard follow him around? As he pondered that, Ghetsis and his group of followers dispersed, walking in that tight formation through the roads of Accumula Town. It seemed as if they were headed for Route Two.

“Liberate pokémon?” a man in the crowd scoffed. “That’s not even possible! What a load of Bouffalant—”

“Now, young man, I’m not quite so sure about that,” an elderly voice chimed in. “About that speech… well, I’m just not sure what we should do if he is right.”

The crowd quickly scattered as people fell back into their cliques and began to excitedly murmur about the speech. Within a few minutes, it was just Hil, Cheren, Bianca, and a tall, lanky man still standing there. Hil turned his attention to Cheren and Bianca.

Bianca was staring after where Ghetsis and his friends had left. Cheren snapped his fingers in her face. “Earth to Bianca,” Cheren hissed. She jumped and blinked fervently at him.

“Oh, s-sorry!” she apologized rapidly. “I just, um…”

“You don’t actually believe a word they said, do you?” Cheren asked in half-hearted chuckle. Hil could hear the tinge of nervousness in his friend’s tone and that only further fueled Hil’s own uncertainty. Cheren was the rock of the group, grounding the rest of them. If he was nervous, what did that mean? Hil finally took his left hand away from his right arm and brought up a hand to pet Noodle’s head. He felt the Snivy tuck itself into his hood.

“Well, I mean—eek, Hil—!” Bianca’s eyes widened and she pointed behind Hil.

“Your Snivy, just now, it was saying…”

Hil yelled something incoherent and nearly jumped out of his skin as the voice came from behind him, and at Bianca’s panic. He nearly bucked Noodle off his shoulders in the process. Heart thrumming in his chest and breath caught in his throat, Hil regarded the lanky, green-haired man that had wandered over to them with a frightened glare. Hil’s hands now shook and trembled thanks to that.

Cheren had also jumped a little, but his nerves hadn’t melted nearly like Hil’s had. “Slow down,” Cheren told the newcomer, “you talk too fast. And… what’s this about pokémon… talking…? That’s an odd thing to say…”

“Yes, they’re talking…”

Hil could tell Cheren was choosing his words carefully. He was so much more meticulous than Hil could have ever hoped to be. In this particular instance, he was also being a lot nicer than Hil wanted to be. Why did this guy feel the need to sneak up on him like that?! Hil glowered at the newcomer in annoyance, but quickly found himself distracted by his appearance. It was… strange, to put it lightly. Although his clothes weren’t anything extraordinary—a dark, long-sleeved shirt hidden mostly by a white sweater, a black ballcap with a white front sitting atop long, pale green hair, long tan pants—he wore several accessories that looked unlike any watch or bracelets he’d ever seen before. A silver necklace dangled a planetary symbol from his neck, a round figurine with two sets of rings perpendicular to one another; from his belt, a chain with an intricately patterned cube hung, throwing golden glints from the sunlight with every move of his hips. On his right wrist, a black bracelet clung to his skin tightly, silver bands running vertically across its surface, and on his left, three square, golden bracelets sat, only staying on his thin frame by the bony protrusion from his wrist.

He almost looked otherworldly in that moment, but soft and inviting at the same time.

Noodle hissed as he hauled himself back properly onto Hil, this time deciding to take a seat on Hil’s head. He accidentally yanked on some of Hil’s hair as he did and Hil winced.

The newcomer looked Cheren over with thoughtful gray eyes. They turned up slightly as he spoke again, this time clearly making a concentrated effort to try and speak slower… not that it worked that well. Hil still felt like his mind reeled trying to keep up. “Oh… Then, you two can't hear it, either. How sad…” He shook his head and that saddened expression vanished. “My name is N.”

Cheren waved his hand in front of Hil in a gesture that seemed to be trying to pull Hil behind him. Bianca already was clinging to Cheren’s left shoulder tightly. Hil took a step back to appease Cheren. “My name’s Cheren,” he told N tersely, “and these are my two friends, Bianca and Hil.”

“We were given a Pokédex by Professor Juniper and we just left to start our journey to help fill that out!” Bianca blurted. Cheren groaned at her readily giving information about them to a perfect stranger.

N’s expression still didn’t change, but he did cross his arms and raise a hand to touch his chin. Hil swore he saw his lips twitch before he started speaking. “The Pokédex, huh? So... you're going to confine many, many pokémon in Poké Balls for that, then.”

“I… guess so?” Bianca answered before Cheren had a chance to stop her.

“You make it sound like a bad thing,” Hil interjected finally. “Why?” Hil had no intentions of being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative. Even with his otherworldly look, N had an air of calm and compassion that Hil felt almost drawn to. He found himself just… wanting to know more.

N nodded at Hil’s question but didn’t seem to accurately answer it. “I'm a trainer, too, but I can't help wondering... are pokémon really happy that way?” His hands lowered and he pressed them to his sides. He looked away from Hil and his friends for a moment, at the Pokémon Center across the way, and then looked back at them with a newfound seriousness that surprised Hil. His lips were drawn tightly over his teeth and his stormy eyes were narrowed fiercely. The air of compassion had all but blown away with the wind, it seemed. “Pokémon are my friends. The world as it sits now is broken for them. If I am to change the world, I must understand them better, fight for it. You,” N pointed a finger at Hil, “let me hear Snivy’s voice again!”

“M-me?” Hil squeaked. “You want to battle… me?”

N grunted and lifted a Poké Ball as his only response. He tossed the Poké Ball and a sleek, violet Purrloin landed neatly on all four paws in front of him. It mewed and rubbed against his legs lovingly, but looked at Hil, Cheren, and Bianca with apprehensive emerald eyes, pausing its ministrations. Its ears fell flat against its head. N leaned over and patted its side gently, and although Hil could tell he had said something, he couldn’t make it out at all. It sounded almost inhuman. N glanced back up at Hil with that same piercing gaze. N didn’t speak but he didn’t need to. Hil nervously stammered for Noodle to get off his head and battle, and Noodle gracefully leapt to the ground in one fluid motion.

Cheren and Bianca stepped to the side, seeming too bewildered to assist.

“N-Noodle… uh… Tackle…?”

“Purrloin, Fake Out, please.”

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in-my-feels-probably · 3 years

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INEFFABLE - Kaz Brekker

Chapter One - Now

don’t forget to read the prologue, it’s important to the story!

INEFFABLE – Kaz Brekker

ineffable (adj.) too great to be expressed in words, utterly indescribable; too sacred to speak of.

Chapter One - Now

Elham gazed up from her book, sitting at the bar, to the sound of a gunshot at one of the card tables. Sighing, she got up from her seat, sliding her book to Rotty to take back to her room. And to think she was finally going to get a quiet night in the Slat, the previous night being not so quiet.

She began making her way over to the table, where Jesper was sitting leaning back, a knowing smirk on his face, his pistol smoking in its holster. Before she could reach the table, the familiar sound of a cane clicking on the ground was getting closer and closer to her. A light grin on her face, she slowed her pace, allowing Kaz to catch up, nod in her direction, and pass her.

“No loud noises at the table, Jesper. You’ll scare off the pigeons.”

Elham barely paid attention to the two boys' conversation, instead pocketing the counterfeit Zemeni coin left on the table, as well as a few Ravkan bills. Kaz was well aware she had slipped the money in her pocket, but he chose not to say anything, watching Jesper make his way to guard the door. She had been a big help in the previous night's heist, and arguing with her wasn’t worth the slew of sarcastic comments she would send his way. If there was a next time, he’d reprimand her. At least that’s how he justified it to himself. Elham knew his threats were hollow, to her they always were.

Elham trailed behind Kaz as Rotty had returned to talk to him about a missing Dekappel painting. He rambled on about how hard it must have been to steal it from the merchant, how advanced the security system was, locked down to the nines, complete with a Fabrikator made lock. She smirked to herself, eyes pointed towards the floor, trying not to laugh.

Kaz tapped the back of her leg with his cane, signaling her to go before she made Rotty suspicious, and she turned making her way up the stairs to Kaz’s office. She went straight for her chair, the one spot in the room she felt comfortable being in. This was Kaz’s space, and despite the two growing close over the years, and her constantly in his office or room, she still felt the need to confide herself to the space he had given her.

He had put that chair in by the window after he noticed how uncomfortable she looked on the window ledge when she came into his office to read, or chat about a heist. And plus, the window’s ledge was Inej’s spot, occupied by her as she came and went, feeding the crows and returning to the rooftops. Elham made herself comfortable in the chair, glancing around the room, eyes landing on the Dekappel hung on the wall.

Lifting the painting hadn’t been the easiest job. She wasn’t sure why Kaz had even decided to steal it in the first place. Nobody knew it was them who had taken it. Perhaps he did it for his own satisfaction, to prove he couldn’t be bested by some “advanced” security system. Or secretly, he had a taste for the finer things in life, and was too embarrassed to be caught shopping for a piece of art himself, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to ask Elham to get something for him. He’d never hear the end of it.

She’d like to think his reason was the latter.

Elham grinned to herself, reaching to pick up one of the books scattered across Kaz’s desk, when he walked into the room, latching the door behind him. He said nothing, only slightly scoffing at her position, curled up in the chair by the window in what looked like the most uncomfortable way she could possibly be. He could feel his own leg aching at the idea of contorting it the way she currently had hers, but she only smirked up at him, like this was the most comfortable she had been all day.

Sometimes, he thought to himself that everything Elham did was to spite him, or to try and get some sort of visible reaction. As the years passed by, his mask became harder and harder to read, and she made multiple attempts to slip through the cracks and see what was underneath. Unfortunately, this attempt was futile, and he made his way through the archway into his room, heading for the bathroom sink.

Elham, who had been shuffling her feet waiting for Kaz to finish, stood as she felt a draft hit her. She slowly made her way around the corner, only to meet his eyes already looking at her in the mirror, and then glancing towards the open window behind him. He faced forward again as he watched Elham’s lips turn up into a smile as she looked at the window.

“Hello, Inej. What information do you have for me?”

“A lead on a job. A big one. Enough money to change lives.”

Elham smirked to herself as she gave Inej a quick hug. “I don’t think it’ll take much to change someone’s life in the Barrel. I mean, look at us.”

“A million kruge?” Inej asked, smirking. Elham whipped her head towards her at that, then turned to meet Kaz’s eyes in the mirror. He gave her a nod, and she took that as her que to leave.

As the unofficial mother of the group, it was her job to round up the Crows and inform the Dregs, to make sure they were ready for a heist. Mostly, her job was to round up Jesper, make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. Jesper, of course, was at one of the gambling tables, leaned back in his chair, staring intently at his cards.

“Jesper!” He looked up from his hand and glanced around the room till his eyes fell on her. She motioned for him to follow, and he met her by the staircase leading to Kaz’s office. “We have a job. I don’t know the details yet, but just be prepared for me to come find you or Kaz to give you an order. Oh and Jesper, love, pick another game. How many hands am I gonna have to watch you play before you run out of bills? Really, it’s getting hard to watch at this point.”

She quickly took off back up the stairs before his swat could meet her arm, only to nearly run into Inej on the way up.

“Inej? What’s wrong?” Elham asked, catching Inej’s hand and giving it a squeeze.

“He infuriates me sometimes. I honestly don’t know how you deal with him.” She gave Elham a light smile before continuing down the stairs, heading in Jesper’s direction. Elham climbed the stairs once more and made her way back into Kaz’s office.

---

“You’re serious? The Fold? You know how to get across the Fold?” She gave Kaz an exasperated look. In all her years of knowing him, this might have been the most idiotic idea he’s had yet. But, with a million kruge on the table, she knew there was nothing stopping him.

“No, I don't know how to get across. But I may know a few people who do. Come on, go and find Jesper, tell him the plan. We’re meeting with Dreesen at midnight. I’ll meet you all in the alley in half an hour.”

She nodded, turning to head towards the door. “Kaz...does Pekka know about this job?”

His eyes darkened at the mention of the name, his grip on his cane’s head becoming tighter. He shook his head with uncertainty, face set with a hardened look. Elham nodded, jaw clenching at the thought. Dealing with Pekka Rollins certainly wasn’t on her to do list, and in all honesty, she was hoping to never meet the man.

Throughout the years, Kaz had told her bits and pieces about what Pekka had done to him, and she had learned for herself what kind of a monster he and his men could be. His Dime Lion’s were the reason she started killing in the first place. Pekka Rollins could count his days. With Dirtyhands and the Valkyrie after him, he was certainly doomed.

Seeing her eyes drift, her thoughts cloud, he sighed, tapping her ankle with the end of his cane, and her eyes met his. “Go on, Valkyrie. And think about losing the murderous look on your face before you scare the pigeons.” His tone was laced with sarcasm, a tactic she normally used on him.

“I’ll think about it.”

---

A few hours later, the Crows had interrogated the slew of people Kaz and Jesper knew that claimed they knew a way across the Fold. Of course, none of them had a safe way, and Elham began pondering if the million kruge was worth the imminent death. They were back in the Crow Club, sitting in a booth. Inej was twirling her knife, Elham was sharpening her sword, and Kaz was glancing around with his usual look of annoyance. Jesper finally broke the silence.

“Here’s what I don’t get.”

“We’re going to be here all night.” Inej commented. Elham let out a laugh at that, patting Jesper on the shoulder.

“Rude.”

“I’m going to have to get a drink for this conversation. Anyone want one?” Elham asked, heading for the bar. She returned to the table with shots in hand, to hear Jesper mention General Kirigan. She stopped in her tracks, setting the drinks on the table, before taking a step back.

“Are you alright, El?” Jesper asked, but she didn’t hear. Her mind raced back to her days at the Little Palace, to the warnings from Baghra about the General. Her thoughts continued tangling together, and she was unaware of Jesper and Inej’s attempts to get her attention.

“Elham.”

She glanced up at the voice. Kaz’s voice. Elham cleared her throat.

“Sorry, I’m fine. Just got sidetracked. Sorry to miss what I’m sure were your very intelligent remarks, Jesper.” She quickly changed the subject, missing how Kaz’s eyes lingered on her. She slid back into the booth, throwing back a shot. They continued their conversation, Elham quieter than before. Kaz didn’t miss that either.

“Well, as I was saying. This whole job sounds like a trap, anyways.” Jesper said, before sipping one of the drinks Elham had brought over.

“A trap would sound easy. This is something else.” Kaz remarked.

“Boss, boss. We intercepted a note from Dreesen. It’s from the Orchid. Say’s they require the services of a Heartrender. Tonight. Doesn’t say why, just that they need it before midnight.” One of the Dregs who had come running over explained.

Elham smirked. “Oh we are absolutely not letting this job go.”

“You don’t bring in a Heartrender unless you need an answer out of someone who isn’t willing to talk. That’s how we get this job before anyone else. Bring Dreeson a Heartrender.”

“Boss, just one problem. Pekka Rollins knows.”

Kaz glanced at Elham, who only looked more determined. Elham downed another shot, before standing up.

“Well. I’m feeling particularly vengeful tonight. Let’s go get a Heartrender.”

---

A/N - hi everyone, sorry it took so long to get this chapter out. i've been busy and didn't have much motivation to write, but I'm ready to go again. let me know what you think so far, and thank you for the support!

#wattpad #in my feels probably #ineffable #kaz brekker #kaz brekker x reader #six of crows #six of crows imagine #shadow and bone #oc #series #chapterone #grishaverse

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cupidoargiades · 5 years

Text

love u, hate u.

chapter three: who do u love - monsta x

a chaptered fanfic about a love-hate relationship between you and monsta x's changkyun. each chapter is based on some of my favourite summer songs! to be fair with y'all, i hate this chapter. it's rushed, it's cliché, it's unrealistic yada yada. i didn't really enjoy reading it over before queueing it but it's been a while since the last update and i still have some unexplainable anger bottled up inside of me, so... enjoy, i suppose ?

links to previous chapters:

prologue: strawberries and cigarettes - troye sivan

chapter one: back to you - selena gomez

chapter two: blood - day6

tw: foul language, angst

"choose one, changkyun. it's me or her."

those seven words ringed into his head, creating a static-like noise. the words that had just rolled over your lips so easily, when in fact, they were extremely difficult to process.

you had never told him those exact words, however, he knew you were going to use them eventually. it was inevitable; he knew you'd discover his secrets, but whatever the concequences were, he kept on meeting up with that girl. it was the adrenaline that prevented him from stopping. he loved the rush of nerves he got when you came home, when he knew he just did things to someone he should've only done to you.

yet, now that you told him to choose, he froze. now that the words were said out loud, he didn't know what to do. in hindsight, he should have made an end to it when he started to get those adrenaline rushes, but it was addictive.

"come on, changkyun, answer me..! who do you love, is it her or me? i- if you can't say that i'm the one for sure, i'm walking out of the door." you simply stated, knowing nothing could get in your way.

"i-.." he managed to mumble.

"you know what- it's fine.. if you have to think before picking a long time partner over a side slut, i don't need you" you said, shaking your head before turning away to walk towards the exit of the starship building.

he didn't stop you.

he didn't have the energy and conciousness to do so.

he knew he had lost you, whether it was for a few days or the rest of his life.

i've made my own bed, now lie in it.

the visual of him and that girl became the elephant in the room that nobody wanted to adress.

you didn't want to see his face.

you didn't need to see his face.

only his presence started to make your blood boil, so you decided you needed a break, whether it took a day or a year.

the worst part about living together with your partner, is when you fight. those kinds of fights that make you despise the other, and those kinds of fights that afterwards you can only look at them with pure disgust in the eyes. taking a break from eachother has never been harder when you live in the same house, so you decided to knock on your best friend jooheon's door.

knocking on joo's door was like knocking on the gates of heaven. though his house was a mess, it felt somehow more like home than your own house. he always had some of your favourite snacks for when you came over, and he always had a spare bed for you to sleep in when you didn't have a place to stay.

even though it was 4am on a tuesday night, he opened the door for you.

even though it was 4am on a tuesday night, he sat down with you and let you cry on his shoulder.

even though it was 4am on a tuesday night, he made you feel worthy, like he always did.

"joo..?" you quietly sobbed as you looked up from his shoulder. "no hetero, but if you weren't into dudes we would've dated big time.." you said, bringing out a slight chuckle. "i love you.." he answered, placing a gentle kiss on your forehead.

"i love you too.." you said with a smile, taking a deep, shaky breath as you sat up. "thanks for being there for me.." you mumbled, flashing another smile at him. "i'm not as good as a friend as you think, though," he started. "i could've prevented this heartbreak from happening!" you tilted your head and frowned. "no- joo.. not at all..! you're the best friend ever, i don't know what you're talking about..!"

"i could've stayed with you at that party i dragged you to. if i weren't slobbering all over wonho and shownu, i could've prevented he-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken-of from talking to you. i could've prevented you almost getting pregnant from that gross hookup and i also could've prevented you from finding out he had a side bitch."

"you know, when you say it like that- you are a bad friend.." you said sarcastically, watching him scoff and roll his eyes with a grin. "i hate you" he said. "me too"

"stay here, i think the tea is ready" he said, patting your head before walking to the kitchen and coming back with two hot cups of fruity tea.

"this is happy tea, it's a fruit tea with summer fruits and it somehow encourages your body to create dopamine which is - obviously - the happy hormon-"

the doorbell rang, interrupting his sweet but nerdy explanation of how the tea would supposedly cheer you up.

"that might be he-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken-of.. god that is a mouthful.." he whispered, helping you stand up. "hide, he might barge in to try and find you.." he quietly added before walking to the door and carefully opening it with a yawn.

"hello..? who are you?" he mumbled.

"changkyun? y/n's boyfriend. is she here? she wasn't in bed when i woke up so i figured this is where she'd be." he said, loud and clear.

"changkyun..? i don't recognise you, i'm not wearing my glasses and-" he tried to buy you time, but changkyun wasn't having it. he simply pushed jooheon aside to look around his apartment, hoping to find you.

"two cups of tea.. she's here, huh?" he said, grabbing jooheon by the collar of his white, wrinkly t-shirt. "tell me where she is and i'll save you a black eye"

you could tell changkyun was putting up that tough and intimidating wall, but you saw through it and noticed how nervous he actually sounded. what's he doing..?

"i said i didn't want to see you.." you said softly, coming out of your hiding spot.

he let go of jooheon rather roughly and rushed to you, opening his arms for a hug but soon letting them fall to his sides when he saw you frown.

"i told you yesterday that you disgust me. i need a break, i don't want to be around you anymore"

"y/n- please, i need you to come back home with me" he said, almost begging, as if he really needed you to go with him.

jooheon looked at you from over changkyun's shoulder, looking at you with a proud smile. he nodded at you, as if he was saying 'you can do it'.

"changkyun, i need you to leave me alone for a while. i need space.., time to think. i'm staying with jooheon for as long as i need to, and if you contact me, i'll inform the police." you said clearly, looking at jooheon and watching him create a shiny glow of pure pride.

"that's right. and if you contact me, i'm gonna inform the police, too!" jooheon added, grabbing changkyun's wrist and pulling him towards the door.

"now leave, we don't want to see your petty, nasty, cheating little ratface anymore" jooheon grinned, closing the door in changkyun's face.

you sighed, sitting down on the sofa and grabbing the cup of tea. "y/n, one rule if you want to stay here: i can take guys home and you're not going to look funny at me for doing so" he said.

"gotcha" you chuckled, shaking your head as you held up your hand for a high-five. "i'm glad you're my best friend" you said before sipping on your drink.

"me too"

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elyvorg · 5 years

Note

Its the ficwriting corner of the celeste fandom, there are like 3 of us and i just made one of the others post the woman with calculus meme over the fact that celeste mountain is on an island

…wait, it is on an island, but it’s also in Canada. Does Canada have islands that are just a mountain and nothing else? And even if it does, how did Madeline drive there? Huhhhh.

(Hello, multiple asks in fairly short succession! I’m pretty sure now that this is all the same anon, heh. Gonna put them all in the same post to avoid clogging things up.)

Anonymous said:

personally my headcanon is that either a, the Bird is the Avatar of the Mountain, or b, there are two Birds and one is Part of Granny and one is the Avatar of the Mountain and the Granny one was just like, im gonna permanently cosplay the Avatar of the Mountain, and Granny was just like okay that works! (stopping time and giving other people superpowers seems a little overpowered for a Shadow but perfectly within the skillset of the avian avatar of an eldritch mountain god)

Huh, I never considered the angle of it being an avatar of the Mountain, but that makes a lot of sense. Madeline does only gain the ability to dash once the bird tells her how to. I always kind of assumed that the dash ability was just something that automatically happens to everyone once they get close enough to the Mountain and that point in the prologue was when she was close enough to activate the power, but it could have been the bird giving it to her, hm. (Though trying too hard to work the platforming mechanics into the story makes things pretty awkward. Is Madeline actually experiencing dying and respawning all those times? And if she is, then that means she’s going through a tough challenge, sure, but it also means that she’s in literally no danger because she cannot possibly die here.)

If the bird really is solely the avatar of the Mountain and not Granny’s Shadow at all, then that means that Granny just up and befriended the Mountain itself, which… yes, I can definitely see her doing that without a care in the world.

Anonymous said:

i like how ch9 revealed that maddy is trans, incidentally turning all the transitional cutscenes in the Summit into terrible visual puns (the sunrise colours used are specifically the trans flag colours)

It is really cool that they put in a couple of details suggesting Madeline is most likely trans! (hello I’ve been kind of wanting an excuse to talk about this so I hope you don’t mind if I use this as one)

I say “most likely” because it still isn’t completely confirmed, unless the creators have made some kind of official statement on it that I’m unaware of. People have been saying Madeline is canonically trans, which is teeeeechnically not true, although I do understand the desire to jump on this and phrase it that way when there’s practically no canon trans characters anywhere in anything remotely mainstream. Outright confirmation in canon would be some kind of direct mention of it in the dialogue, but as it is, the details in her room still have some vague deniability to them. Although her being trans is definitely the more likely explanation for these details, it is possible Madeline just supports gay and trans people because everyone should and wants to show her support despite not necessarily being either, and it’s possible she just happened to have short hair when she was little even if she didn’t think she was a boy back then. (Honestly the photo clinches it for me more than the flag does because at that kind of age she probably wasn’t deciding her own hairstyle and her mom was probably just cutting her hair based on the gender she thought her child was.)

But it is still super, super cool that those details are there and very strongly indicating that she probably is trans even if the writers didn’t want to explicitly confirm it in the story (because after all that’s not really what the story is about anyway). With this, the creators have made it clear that they’re very happy with the idea of Madeline being trans and have given fans a solid reason to see her that way, which is a lot more than most characters ever get. Anyone can say she’s trans now and nobody is going to be able to turn around and argue “but there isn’t any reason to think that”, because yo there sure is. Not that headcanoning a character as anything is ever wrong even if there’s no evidence for it, that’s the point of headcanons, but it’s much nicer and more fun to be able to do that when there is evidence and it feels more likely to really be the “truth” about this character.

My own personal opinion on whether Madeline is trans is basically an “ehh, yeah, probably I guess?” but not quite coming fully down on one side, because in my personal view on the story, being most interested in Madeline in terms of her mental health issues and her Shadow and her emotional journey, this isn’t that relevant to it and so I’m not as invested in this part of her. (I totally understand why trans people would be very invested and excited about this and happy to be able to see that aspect of themselves in her, though!) Assuming Madeline is trans, it doesn’t seem to be too strongly connected to her issues, because if she wasn’t completely confident in her identity as a woman then her Shadow would probably have mentioned things that could be read as having to do with that, and people would have been able to theorise that she was trans way before chapter 9 all but said so. So I can only assume that Madeline must have figured it out when she was quite young and has been fully transitioned for a while. It certainly seems that her mom is completely supportive with it, calling her Madeline and very clearly loving her daughter for who she is, which probably helps Madeline a lot on that front. It could still be slightly connected to some things in her issues, though - I mentioned in my original big Celeste post that it seems Madeline has some level of trust issues, although the details are kept vague, so that could potentially have to do with people having found out that she’s trans and being really shitty about it.

(I do like to think, if Madeline is trans, that at some point over the apparently years she’s been friends with Theo by now, she’d have come to trust him enough to tell him about it. You know he’d be totally cool with it.)

Anonymous said:

if given the opportunity PoM would totally make wavedash dot powerpoint esque powerpoint presentations for maddy but on topics like “we might have a crush” or “cats: should we pet them more” or “maddy you forgot to take your meds today” or “should we buy milk” and madeline would find them absolutely hilarious

Bwahaha. That would be glorious. Maybe we can pretend Madeline sometimes has dreams like that after chapter 9. (I’m pretty sure there’s a thing in Jungian psychology about how your Shadow can influence your dreams, which explains why Madeline was able to talk to her in chapter 9 despite not being on the Mountain, even if the wavedashing powerpoint was clearly her and not her Shadow that time.)

#celeste #celeste game #celeste spoilers #celeste chapter 9 #madeline #shadow madeline #ramble #transphobia mention #'cats: should we pet them more?' is the best presentation topic #(the answer is yes)#thanks for all the excuses to ramble about stuff anon!#Anonymous

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lunarmoonflowyr · 4 years

Text

Because I’m bored I’m going to write down a bunch of my passive thoughts on a new game I started playing and because once I start making streaming/youtube content related to viddy game I might make a video on this

Vambrace: Cold Soul Initial Impressions

Vambrace: Cold Soul is a game by Devespresso Games, an independent game developer based out of Seoul, South Korea who’s other notable titles seem to be a series of horror adventure games titled “The Coma”.

Vambrace however, is a game far more akin to something like Darkest Dungeon in visual style and gameplay design however the Steam store page description has it claiming to be inspired by “the gothic fantasy of Castlevania, the deep lore of a series like The Elder Scrolls, the replayability of roguelites like FTL: Faster Than Light, and the sweeping, character-driven epics of our favorite JRPGs.”

This is going to be a small writeup of my initial impressions after 2 hours of the game.

THE STORY SO FAR

We are a woman named Evelia Lyric, although she just goes by Lyric most of the time so that’s what I’ll be referring to her as throughout the rest of this writeup. Lyric immediately begins showing tell-tale signs of “JRPG Protagonist Syndrome”, as she:

1. Survives being passed out in a freezing arctic-like environment while wearing what could maybe be called clothing for a slightly harsh winter in New England, and comes out of it with barely any complications to speak of

2. Has an (allegedly) famous father who leaves her a Mysterious Book That No One Can Read, and the titular Vambrace, which is now apparently fused to her arm, that lets her pass through what the game refers to as the “Frostfell”, a massive magical ice barrier surrounding the city of “Icenaire” that apparently kills anyone who touches it. Apparently she can also one-shot evil ghosts with it, but only in the narrative. She did it in a cutscene once, and so far that hasn’t translated to gameplay.

3. Has so-far-unmentioned heterochromia

4. Gets a high-ranking soldier to trust her almost immediately when only one brief conversation ago he had a suspicion that she was a spy for “The Green Flame”, apparently some rival faction that’s very, very Not Good.

Getting confused by all the random names yet? Trust me, it doesn’t really get much better. This game’s story shows a lot of the very painful signs of an over-written, over-developed fantasy world that someone very obviously put a lot of time and love into, but didn’t really know where to stop.

Names, places, and concepts are thrown at you non-stop with a new one being introduced almost every dialogue sequence if you spend time talking to the locals of Icenaire once you convince the guard captain to let you go wandering the streets. You can also find random lore pages strewn around the place that add even more lore on top of everything else.

It all gets to be so dense and confusing you almost completely lose track of what the actual, present-day story is. The game has no trouble throwing random scraps of lore at you, full of names that mean nothing, but when it comes to actually explaining what the hell is going on right now, it falls a bit short. Here’s my understanding so far.

Lyric’s father has either died or mysteriously disappeared, I can’t remember which, and she’s been left a letter, a book, and the titular Vambrace. The book is referred to in the game mechanics as “The Codex” and is referred to by NPCs as a “book that nobody can read”, because apparently foreign languages don’t exist in this world, yet so far I’ve counted 6 or 7 distinct fantasy races that apparently all speak the exact same language all the time.

The vambrace has fused itself to Lyrics arm, and her fathers letter tells her to go to Icenaire (I have no fucking clue what that name is supposed to mean by the way, and it sounds really fucking awkward to say so it has to mean -something-. The “ice” part is pretty self-explanatory if a little on the nose, the entire game takes place in what appears to be an apocalypse along the lines of if you took the events of “Frozen” and turned it up to 11, but the only insight I could get on the “naire” part is that it’s from the Irish Gaelic word “náire” which means something along the lines of “ashamed” or “to have shame”. So this city is basically named “ice-ashamed”, which I have no clue what that’s supposed to mean, and it’s bothering me enough that I’ve gone on an entire run-on paragraph to rant about it because it sounds stupid to say and exactly like a city name I would’ve come up with for my crappy fantasy stories that I wrote when I was fourteen.)

Where was I again?

Right, okay, so Lyrics father instructs her to go to Icenaire (blech) and find some dude named “Zaquard Ventrue”. That name also means nothing, except as far as I can tell, “Zaquard” is the pseudonym of one of the people at Devespresso, and the first thing that comes to mind for Ventrue is Vampire: The Masquerade, and I’m not sure it really means anything there either.

The naming system in this game seems really off, it has no consistency and a lot of it is really self-indulgent, because you find out that this Zaquard fellow (in the game) is the big head honcho of what apparently is some kind of resistance movement of the oppressive organization called “The Green Flame”.

So Lyric goes through the “Frostfell” (the magical ice barrier thing around the city that allegedly is the cause of this whole Frozenpocalypse deal) by using the power of the mysterious Vambrace, and...passes out because of it, only to be found by a scavenging party in a tutorial section where the game teaches you how to play it using said scavenging party.

More on that later.

Lyrics unconscious body is dragged back to the city, she somehow hasn’t contracted hypothermia, and the next scene we’re given is an interrogation from some guy who’s last name is Esquire.

I don’t think the writers of this game knew what the word “Esquire” meant, because despite traditionally appearing after a person’s name, it is not a surname, it is a title. So the strange and unconventional naming choices continue.

Anyway, Captain Generic Man, Esq., interrogates Lyric for all of five minutes before believing her at face value that she has a magical super-gauntlet that lets her pass through this extremely lethal magical barrier, when he has all the reason in the world to believe that she’s some kind of spy sent by the people his resistance faction is supposedly fighting against.

And instead of keeping her under close watch until she’s at least somewhat established some trust that she’s not a mole or a spy or an assassin, he just...lets her roam free, around the city. Completely by herself. With no supervision, whatsoever.

As you can probably tell, I already have several problems with this games pacing and general overall writing quality, and we’re not even past the prologue section yet.

Oh, yeah, and Captain Generic gives Lyric some free money for her troubles, because the player needs to know how the market system works and how to buy healing items, and we can’t be assed to have them come across money in a non-contrived manner.

And the currency is really weirdly specific? Its this stuff called “Hellion”, which in real-person-language is a word for a malicious troublemaker or nuisance. But in the same setting where a city is named “Ice Shame”, “Hellion” is apparently some kind of magical incense that the fox people burn to appease their gods.

Oh yeah there’s a race of fox people in this game. They run the markets. They’re less full on furries and more like regular humanoids, but with fox ears, a tail, and pointy teeth, so like that weird halfway “haha guys look I’m totally not a furry” deal thats basically just “catgirls but with a different animal”.

Anyway.

You’re given a fat stack of cash and told to go buy yourself some food from the market, because we need to give you a tutorial on how to buy shit.

So you go to the market and are taught by a smooth-talking fox-man-person-thing how to buy things at a market, after which you are immediately spotted by the only guard in the city with an ounce of sense who instantly goes “Hey holy shit isn’t that the person that literally nobody recognizes in this city that’s been cut off from the outside world for presumably several years at this point and the only other known faction that has the resources to keep a human alive is one we’re actively at war with?” and throws your ass right back in jail.

By the way, the things you can choose to buy at the market are all pretty typical JRPG items that heal stat debuffs, or are basically different flavors of health potion that restore different amounts of health, and for any seasoned JRPG veteran it’s pretty easy to guess what items do what and how they function (sort of) but there’s plenty of unique-to-this-game stat conditions and the way the health mechanic works is kinda wonky, and the game asks you to buy your healing items before it even explains to you how the hell that part of the game actually works.

I’ll go more in-depth to the gameplay once I finish this story synopsis but I just felt like pointing out that at this point you’ve been walked through some of the basic mechanics of the game and some of the combat, but the part of the game that deals with debuffs and HP and how you deal with those things hasn’t been explained yet.

This game is very weird.

Anyway, during the attempt to throw your ass back in jail, some shit is going down in the room that has the elevator to the surface (yeah apparently this city is like, underground. They don’t actually explain why, or how, or if it was like that before the Frozenpocalypse or if the Frozenpocalypse buried it, and if it was buried, how the hell did it get excavated so cleanly like this and why are all the buildings intact? Whatever, apparently the game doesn’t consider this important, which is weird considering all the random lore tidbits it does deem important, so we’re moving on now.)

OH hold on let me backtrack a bit. While you’re being let out of your jail cell because Captain Generic just felt like it apparently, you walk up to this other jail cell with a goth chick inside it and you’re told she’s an Extremely Powerful Bad Guy, Do Not Fuck With Her.

So, as you arrive at the elevator to the surface, guess who just made an escape and caused a spooky ghost person to invade the city and injure two people! That’s right, Spooky Not-So-Jailed-Anymore Goth Chick! Who’s name is Isabel Salazar, and it’s really saying something that that’s the most normal name we’ve encountered so far in this god forsaken game.

So you’re now face-to-face with a spooky ghost. You think you’re about to get into a combat section, you’ve been taught how to do combat, but nope! Lyric just waltzes up to the fucker and smacks him in the face with her Vambrace hand and it...melts...him? Just, with absolutely zero fanfare?

Uh. Sure. Alright. Weird, do we get some kind of special attack that hurts ghosts? Guess we’ll find out.

So the guard who was trying to arrest you, a redhead with pointy ears who’s very obviously an elf but hasn’t directly been called an elf in-game yet so I’m not sure if we’re using that word but fuck it she’s an elf, who’s name is Celest. That’s all, I don’t remember if she’s given a last name.

Celest is reprimanded by Captain Generic, Esq. for trying to re-arrest the possible spy who was let go with literally no actual forethought put into it, and she’s understandably miffed, and Captain Generic tells you to come meet him in the war room because “someone is very interested in meeting you.”

This leads nicely into the scene where our protagonist meets the leader of this massive underground (literally) resistance movement, who, upon hearing our surname and being told we’re the daughter of Some Random Guy, immediately trusts us to go after Isabel and lead an expedition all on our lonesome with a party of random soldiers we get to pick from a “help wanted” board instead of, I dunno, maybe sending some actual soldiers with us.

This leader is the previously mentioned Zaquard Vampire Clan Man, who looks exactly how you’d expect a self-insert resistance leader to look, a young white-haired anime boy looking dude who’s bangs cover his eyes and we can’t see them. And he has earrings.

Farquaad here apparently knew about our dad, and our dad was apparently the lead researcher about Archons (?) and the Vambrace is an Archonian (???) artifact (also they spell it “artefact” in the game and I hate it, they also say “magick” and it makes me want to find whoever was in charge of writing this and punch them) so that’s why he trusts us now, apparently.

We are then tasked with a mission to go retrieve Evil Goth Chick, who apparently is going to go tell these Green Flame fellows the location of our massive underground city secret base, which is somehow super duper secret despite being huge.

Keep in mind that this entire game’s setting is allegedly one massive city, it’s not like Eragon where the big inside-the-mountain Dwarf city was kept secret from Galbatorix, because that at least had the justification of being halfway across the entire fucking continent from the Empire as well as being on the other side of a massive fucking desert.

This is all apparently one huge city! And the “secret underground base” is kinda big itself! It doesn’t make sense that its some big secret!

Ugh, whatever, if I keep harping on about every bit of the narrative that doesn’t make any fucking sense when you think about it for more than ten seconds I’m going to give myself a stroke so now that I’ve caught you up to where I am in the story, let’s move onto the gameplay.

THE GAMEPLAY

If you’re at all familiar with Darkest Dungeon (a much better game) the gameplay is most similar in style to that. You have a party of 4 adventurers, you walk through room after room of a connected “dungeon” except in this case its neighborhood streets and buildings, find treasure, manage the balance of treasure in your inventory vs healing and utility items, and you have combat.

Let’s talk about the combat first, because its the part I like most about this game and the reason I’m probably going to keep playing it.

Vambrace takes a similar approach to Darkest Dungeon in that each character has a certain number of skills at their disposal, being limited in use by where the character is standing in the party order and what position slots in the opposing party they can target.

When you get into combat, the party orders will look like this, with your party on the left and the opposing party on the right.

4-3-2-1-1-2-3-4

The skills are divided into three range categories.

- Short or melee range skills can only be used in position 1 and 2 and can only target positions 1 and 2 on the opposing side unless those two positions are empty, in which case they can target 3 and 4.

- Medium range skills can be used from any position, but can only target positions 1 and 2.

- Long range skills can be used from any position and can target any position.

Some skills also take flourish points to use, and characters build up flourish points throughout encounters by using their basic skill.

Different characters have different classes, which determine different skills they’re able to use.

This is a basically solid combat system, as proven by Darkest Dungeon, however Vambrace falls short of DD in two ways:

The first is Darkest Dungeon’s position system, and its supplementary corpse system, work slightly differently. Position order is the same, however, there can be no empty spaces breaking the line. If the line would be broken, units that are furthest back move forward to close the line.

So say you encounter 4 enemies, so positions 1-2-3-4 are all fully occupied. If you kill the enemy in position 2, the enemies in positions 3 and 4 will move forward to fill in the blank space, so now only positions 1-2-3 are occupied.

This is mitigated in Darkest Dungeon by the corpse system, when you kill an enemy it leaves a corpse behind, which fills up the space and prevents the backline from moving forward. However there are several skills in DD that remove corpses as part of the effect.

This opens up different paths to take in terms of strategy. In both Vambrace and Darkest Dungeon, the 3 and 4 positions are usually filled by the more deadly foes, the enemies that take those positions usually cause debuffs to your party or have a higher damage output.

However, in Darkest Dungeon, you can either run a strong backline of your own and try to eliminate the opposing backline quickly, or you can run a strong frontline and a more supportive backline to try and take out the frontline, and then wipe out the corpses, pushing the backline units to the front and making all their skills basically useless, since most enemies that stick to the back in DD have maybe one attack that they can use in position 1 or 2, and it’s usually not a very good attack.

There are also attacks in DD that you can use to force the enemy to shuffle positions, bringing the backline to the front and crippling them without even touching the tanky frontline.

However, in Vambrace, positions are static on the enemy side. When you kill enemies in front, the backline enemies stay in the backline. This leads to a much more limited strategy, where you pretty much only want to focus the backline first, and the frontline afterwards.

There’s also the matter of turn order. Characters with a higher Awareness stat (more on stats in a second) get a bonus on their initiative and can go higher in the turn order, beyond that I’m not actually sure what factors are involved in determining this. However, the turn order itself is transparently displayed in the bottom center of the screen during combat, telling you very clearly which position on which side gets the next move, which helps out a lot with planning out your encounters.

Once you get the hang of it though, Vambrace’s combat is still enjoyable, and I’d say the aesthetic and environment around it makes it different enough from Darkest Dungeon that I can enjoy playing both for different reasons. Vambrace far more embraces certain JRPG aspects, for instance.

Speaking of which, lets talk stats.

Before I do though I want to talk about one of my biggest gripes with the game so far, and that’s the fact that its interface is terrible. This game doesn’t have a menu for keybinds, it doesn’t let you re-bind things, and its control scheme is a little awkward to say the least.

It also hides a lot of information to be only accessible in the tutorial pages, which you can access at any time in the pause menu, but it makes things tedious because this game has a lot of smaller things to keep track of.

Each character has 5 stats. Combat, Sleight, Merchantry, Awareness, and Overwatch, and each one has a different impact on the game.

Combat is fairly self explanatory, it determines how good your character is at fighting.

Sleight determines how good the character is at scavenging, and it affects the quality of loot you find in containers.

Merchantry affects buying and selling, the higher the merchantry, the cheaper stuff is to buy and the more people pay for your junk.

Awareness determines how well you can avoid traps

And Overwatch determines how good your character is at managing the party during camping.

Your stats can also affect the outcomes of certain random events that can trigger throughout the dungeons, although I’ve only encountered a handful of them so far.

Speaking of camping, one of the most under-explained mechanics in this game is the camping mechanic, and my first and only death so far has been because of a failure to properly explain said mechanic, causing me to fuck it up 3 times before I did it right, and because camping is actually extremely vital to success in this game, it caused me to die and fail the mission.

Any healing items in your inventory cannot be used on the fly, they are only usable during a camping session. You can initiate a camping session upon finding a suitable spot for one, which you can either randomly find in the generated rooms of a “dungeon”, or in between the “dungeons” on a mission in shelters where you get sort of a mini-camp session.

A full camping session involves you selecting the character with the highest Overwatch skill to manage said session. You need to do three specific things to maximize your sessions effectiveness, and these things are not properly tutorialized and are easy to misunderstand or miss out altogether. When the camping session starts, the character you’ve chosen to manage the whole thing starts out by standing in front of the campfire, with an “interact” icon hovering above it.

Do not interact with the campfire. It will end the camping session immediately and you cannot redo it, you will have to find a new campsite.

Instead, you need to find the interact icon for sleep and the icon for music. The first one will restore the HP of your whole party equal to your session leader’s Overwatch skill provided it goes without incident, and the second one will restore the Vigor of your whole party equal to the session leader’s Overwatch skill.

Oh. Right, Vigor.

Vambrace has 2 health bars essentially. There’s your Hit Points (HP), and then there’s Vigor. HP works how you think it does, you take damage in combat or from poison or traps and if you hit 0 you die.

Vigor is basically a worse version of the Stress mechanic from Darkest Dungeon, but instead of ticking up as your characters get more and more stressed out, their Vigor essentially goes down as you walk through the various dungeon rooms, and certain debuffs and traps can reduce it as well.

Once you’ve done both a sleep and a music session, you then need to open up your inventory and use the appropriate healing items to cover up whatever those two things didn’t get. If one character was particularly badly hurt and needs extra patching up after a nap, do it with healing items now. You cannot use healing items outside of a camping session, so do it now.

You can also only use status healing items here too, and status ailments don’t go away with a nap.

Only once you have done those three things should you interact with the campfire again, ending the camping session and continuing on with the dungeon.

The Other Stuff

The other reason besides the gameplay being interesting enough that I plan on continuing to play this game is that the art direction and the sound design are actually very, very well done, with a feeeeew small exceptions.

Let’s start with the art direction.

Visually, the game looks fantastic. It’s as if you took the visual style of Darkest Dungeon but made it more anime-esque and less horrifying, more pleasant to look at. It’s really pretty and well stylized, and is a style that will hold up visually even when graphical advancements outpace it.

The character designs are also all fairly unique, if a little over-designed sometimes. You can pick out all the named characters on sight alone, they’re all visually distinct from each other and are easily recognizable.

The sound design is also, for the most part, really really good. The ambient noise is a good quality, the audio is well balanced and none of it really grates on my ears, and some of it is actually pretty nice to listen to.

The music in the game so far is also good, and while I haven’t come across any tracks that made me want to just sit there and listen to it on loop for a few minutes, I also haven’t found any tracks that made me go “oh god oh god make it stop”

The only part of the audio I have a problem with is...the voice acting. It’s only shown up in a few very small cutscene bits so far, mostly the initial opening scene, but I can’t really put my finger on what’s wrong with it. The only character who’s spoken so far is Lyric, and I really am finding it hard to say exactly why her voice-acted dialogue bothers me, but it really grated on my ears and I was glad when the cutscene ended.

I think it was a mixture of the quality of the audio, it didn’t sound professionally recorded although I’ll grant it that it wasn’t “Skyrim mod voice acted by the modder” level of terrible, but it still left a lot to be desired. The other part that got to me was just the style with which the actress was talking, however I can’t really pinpoint if it was just the stilted dialogue she was stuck with, if the direction was bad, or if she just didn’t really have much of an idea what she was doing.

She had a very monotonous voice throughout, and while she wasn’t speaking flatly or like she was bored, it was moreso that kind of voice people give characters like Sasuke in fandubs, where they’re overly mopey and Serious™ which kinda takes the oomph out of lines that should have had the more somber tone.

Overall Thoughts and Opinions

Keep in mind this is all based on the first 2 hours of gameplay, and that I’ll probably post a more detailed version of this (or make a video) once I’m either a lot further into the game or I beat it.

I don’t hate the game. I think the writing is completely overdone and obnoxious, and has way, way too much lore and way too many things going on without focusing on the more narrow plotline, and I have a huge problem with the very very inconsistent naming scheme, but aside from those two specific criticisms, I’ve definitely seen worse writing.

And it’s not like the characters aren’t endearing in that “this character 1000% slots into a very specific JRPG trope but I’m here for it” sort of way. I did enjoy what I got to see of Lyric and the other named characters, even though they were completely stereotypical and Lyric comes off as a bit of a Mary Sue.

So far the writing is very flawed, but in a tolerable way. I’d much more rather play a game written with love and care and have the flaws come from human error rather than a game that was written by committee to be as bland and appealing to as wide an audience as possible without offending anyone.

The gameplay definitely isn’t as deep as it could be, but the out-of-combat mechanics actually do require a lot of forethought and planning once you actually understand them.

That’s probably my biggest criticism of the game outside of the writing, the game has a pretty decent tutorial that tries to explain everything, but the UI design and how the game presents its information outside of the tutorial works against that and forces you to memorize things and constantly refer back to the tutorial pages.

There’s a lot of quality-of-life things that are missing that shouldn’t be. The ability to rebind keys, the ability to even check a simple menu solely dedicated to the keybinds instead of sifting back through the tutorials trying to figure out what fucking key you need to press for things is.

There’s no hover-over information, on anything. The mouse does literally nothing, you could control the whole game with the keyboard. This is especially problematic when dealing with stat buffs and debuffs, because while you can open up your character stat menu in combat to check exactly what their debuffs do, you can’t open up an enemy stat page and are completely reliant on having memorized what icon corresponds to what debuff and what that debuff actually does.

But if you can look past the cripplingly bad UI and inability to rebind keys, along with the weird writing, the game is actually fairly charming and does have a lot to offer, so I’d definitely recommend checking it out! I bought it on sale for about $16 USD, and if the game keeps up the current quality for a decent chunk of playtime, I’d say it’s worth it around that price. Probably not at full price though.

#moonspeak #Alyss plays games #idk #i was bored

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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Ranking All 49 One Piece Anime Arcs (Yes, Even The Filler)

On July 7th, the long-awaited Wano arc of One Piece begins, and because we're about to jump into an arc that's been building up for eleven years, I think it's as good a time as any to rank all 49 of the arcs that we have already. And I'm going to include the filler arcs, too, because even though many of them can't really hold a candle to the main narrative, I think a few of them are quite underrated.

49. Buggy's Crew Adventures

This isn't really an arc so much as a sigh of relief after the runaway train of emotion of the last few episodes of Arlong Park. You can laugh at Buggy for a bit after watching Nami's soul get ripped apart (and then put back together again).

48. Post Alabasta

You know video game sidequests that are basically around to level up your specific partner characters so that they don't get immediately wiped out in boss fights? This is the anime filler arc version of that. It's fun, though.

47. Foxy's Return

I loooooove Foxy and I looooove the Davy Back Fight arc. But Foxy's Return doesn't quite hit home. It might be because we last saw Foxy six episodes ago, but it truly speaks to Foxy's character that he'd try to make a grand, dramatic return after he got the crap kicked out of him so recently.

46. Spa Island

Foxy returns again in Spa Island, though this filler arc is mostly notable for the fact that Luffy uses Gear Third to split an artificial island in half. That alone wins this arc points.

45. Warship Island

Warship Island isn't a bad filler arc, just a victim of poor placement. It comes right after Loguetown and right after the Straw Hats have each declared their dreams. So it becomes a pit stop arc, like the Straw Hat crew getting gas and snacks before they head out on the Grand Line.

44. Little East Blue

I like to think of Little East Blue as a celebration of pre time skip One Piece, where the Straw Hats get (deservedly) celebrated for a bit. It's cute and it's a nice prologue to the Strong World movie.

43. Z's Ambition

The filler arcs that precede the movies are an odd bunch, as they tend to end with the main villain of the movie showing up in the last five minutes and declaring their plans. So it's hard to enjoy them on their own. That said, Z's Ambition has enough action that even if you don't watch Film Z (but you should, as it's great), you won't really mind the cliffhanger finale.

42. Straw Hat Separation

After Kuma wiped out the crew, this batch of episodes shows where they all ended up. And it's mainly a montage of Straw Hats being confused. And don't get me wrong—the Straw Hats do confusion like nobody's business. But you get more out of their separation in the Post War arc when they finally get around to business.

41. Diary of Koby-Meppo

Koby is a character that has always deserved more time, so getting a few episodes devoted to him and Helmeppo training to be Marines is welcome. Also, my dude Garp shows up for the first time, which means that I've rewatched these two episodes FAR more than I should.

40. Goat Island

Goat Island doesn't feel as "classic" as G-8, nor is it as entertaining as Ocean's Dream. In fact, it's about as fluffy as the goats that appear in it. But a three episode arc where Chopper talks to goats and Luffy doesn't beat up a villain but rather causes him to get shipwrecked? I'm FOR it.

39. Chopper Man Special

Chopper Man has Chopper in a cape. It's worth it for that. Please @ me. Chopper Man, you're my hero, and I hope you one day get a Chopper Man & Sogeking Save The Grand Line special.

38. Romance Dawn

Romance Dawn establishes a lot of things that will become classic tropes in One Piece: Going to a new island, meeting new crew members, helping out little kids, taking out a power hungry warlord, etc. It's a blueprint arc, and it works well as that. Sadly, the anime would not continue the "introduce a Straw Hat character with rad guitar" idea like they do with Zoro here.

37. Orange Town

The East Blue saga only gets better as it goes along, and Orange Town provides a nice counter to Romance Dawn. For example, if Axe-Hand Morgan represented the seriousness of the Marine threat in the last arc, then Buggy represents the other side of the villains that the Straw Hat Crew will encounter: cartoonish, loud, and beaten in a really fun way.

36. Ruluka Island

Ruluka Island feels like condensed One Piece, like you'd just add some water to turn this four episode arc into a twenty episode one. It's a nice arc to stretch your legs in before you go to the big themes of Jaya.

35. Ice Hunter

Ice Hunter is neat because it gives every member of the Straw Hat crew a little time to shine in a story that is action-packed and intriguing. If you miss pre timeskip One Piece and haven't watched the Ice Hunter arc, give it a shot.

34. Marine Rookie

I know that we're all eager to see the Straw Hats reunite in Wano, but if you want to see more of Whole Cake's Sanji Retrieval Team, the Marine Rookie arc makes for a solid bonus round. Also, the only reason it starts is because Luffy eats all of the Straw Hats' supplies, which, logically, should be the beginning of waaaaay more One Piece arcs.

33. Silver Mine

If you didn't get enough Bartolomeo in Dressrosa, then surprise! They made a filler arc just for you.

32. Boss Luffy Specials

You know when you fall asleep watching a show, and then you wake back up and, in your grogginess, suddenly whatever is on TV looks insane? That's what happened to me with Boss Luffy. I had just finished watching Ace's fight with Blackbeard and then, boom. I was out. Then I wake up and see the Straw Hats in 19th century Japan. The Boss Luffy stuff is fun, but I think it's best viewed when you're in a delirious half sleep. That's just my personal preference, though.

31. Caesar Retrieval

Caesar made for a fine antagonist on Punk Hazard, but he's even better as shreiking deadweight that the Straw Hat Crew and Company have to keep alive.

30. Little Garden

Little Garden isn't as cool as Whisky Peak, nor does it provide the emotional gut punch of Drum Island. Instead, it's mainly here to further the theme of what it means to be a true warrior and introduce giants (and dinosaurs!) in the One Piece universe. It gives Usopp some of the character development that he needs and Zoro almost cuts off his own feet in an effort to keep fighting. Any arc that illustrates how hard Zoro goes gets at least one thumb up from me.

29. Loguetown

Loguetown is a fun arc when you consider just how much it expands the scope of the world. Smoker and Tashigi truly begin the Navy's quest to stop the Straw Hats, Dragon gets introduced in a big, mysterious way, and Luffy takes a massive step in establishing himself in the realm of pirating. However, the Straw Hat side stories in the middle (aside from Zoro's awesome bit in the sword shop) slow it down a little.

28. Zou

Zou might be one of the most visually rich arcs in the series. From the massive elephant to the Mink tribe to the terror of Jack to more lessons about the poneglyphs, there's a lot shoved into this short span. And between the intense epics of Dressrosa and Whole Cake Island, it's fits nicely as 10 cc's of wonder and fantasy injected into the New World.

27. Fishman Island

Fishman Island occupies a weird spot. It's thematically heavy, but also serves as the action-packed Straw Hat Crew comeback tour. It needs to stand on its own, but it also caps off with a declaration of war against Big Mom, a villain that won't be encountered for years. In all, I feel that the importance of the Fishman Island arc is yet to be truly realized.

26. Ocean's Dream

One of the final two filler arcs on this list, Ocean's Dream seems like One Piece fan fiction in the best way. If you were dissatisfied with Luffy's fight with Zoro on Whisky Peak, you get another round of it here while Zoro is being mind controlled.

25. Syrup Village

If Romance Dawn and Orange Town were warm up laps, Syrup Village is when One Piece begins to break out in a sprint. The introduction of Usopp and the Going Merry make for some great moments and it's this arc that got me hooked on One Piece when I first started watching it.

24. Dressrosa

Dressrosa, for better (and sometimes for worse) is massive. Doflamingo is a threat that had been popping up since the Jaya arc, but because of Dressrosa's scope, his defeat can feel a little lackluster, especially when you consider that he's a pitstop on the road to Kaido. But Dressrosa introduces the endlessly cool Fujitora and the Straw Hats' big pirate alliance, and also gives us the dual backstories to Law and Doflamingo, neither of which disappoint. Also, Doflamingo's abilities lead to some of the coolest action scenes in the series.

23. Return to Sabaody

The post-timeskip starts with a bang, as the Return to Sabaody arc is both hilarious and thrilling. The Straw Hats get to show off their newfound strength as they do what they definitely couldn't do in the first Sabaody arc (easily knock out a Pacifista). And we also get to meet the Fake Straw Hat crew, which does a nice job of illuminating just how much the legend of the Straw Hats has grown since they were last together.

22. Reverse Mountain

One of the major strengths of One Piece is that it can accomplish three kinds of storytelling at once—giving us a narrative that is immediately satisying, giving us a narrative that will be satisfying in the near future, and giving us a narrative that will be satisfying in the long term. In the Reverse Mountain arc, we not only get a nice story about Laboon, but we also get introduced to Baroque Works (who will be the main antagonists of the saga), and also, we get hints that will only pay off when Brook is introduced years later. Reverse Mountain is short, but it also displays Eiichiro Oda's wonderful talent as a writer.

21. Long Ring Long Land

I've seen people on the internet say stuff like "WHEN I REACHED THE DAVY BACK FIGHT ARC, I NEARLY STOPPED READING!" and man, why? Quitting a series that you love because it slightly diverts from the hero fighting god-like enemies in order to participate in some fun games? Everyone has their own opinions, but your opinion of what fiction should be is wrong. That said, this arc is hilarious and great.

20. Whisky Peak

Whisky Peak is so cool. It's an anime arc with swagger, the kind that steps into a bar and buys everyone a round. I want to be friends with Whisky Peak but I know, deep down, that Whisky Peak is far too rad to be friends with me.

19. Reverie

The best thing about the Reverie arc is that it makes the world of One Piece a little more conveniently manageable (Oh neat. All of the major side characters get to hang out for a while), while also opening a can of worms (What's with the giant straw hat? WHAT'S WITH THE GIANT STRAW HAT?). Because this is the most recent arc, I don't know if we've seen the ripples that it will create across the One Piece world, but I sure am excited to.

18. Post Enies Lobby

This isn't the first time the Straw Hats have been forced to flee a place. However, this is the first time that it's felt like they'd be wiped out if they didn't. The return of Garp (and the spectre of the Yonko) throw the Straw Hats into all new territory, one where maybe being the plucky underdog team isn't enough to save them from the threats that come. Also, goofy Franky joins the team, which provides a nice counter-balance to the hints of oblivion.

17. Punk Hazard

Punk Hazard is home to one of my top 10 One Piece fights (Vergo vs Law & Smoker), features one of my favorite locations (an island that is half fire/magma and half ice/snow and home to an evil science base), and introduces a character that has only grown on me with time (Here's a hint on who he is: He laughs like "SHERURURURURURU SHERURURURURURU). It's kind of a prequel to Dressrosa, but in that spot, does a great job at furthering the menace of Doflamingo.

16. Post War

The introduction of Sabo aka Steampunk Ace aka I'm Just Kidding Sabo Is Kinda Cool and Luffy realizing that he has his crew to keep him going make the Post-War arc into a short but powerful cap to the pre-timeskip era.

15. Amazon Lily

Boa Hancock is a supremely underrated One Piece character, with a terribly sad backstory, amazing powers, and a hilarious crush on Luffy. And Amazon Lily helps further the major trend that will reach fever pitch in Dressrosa of Luffy amassing supporters because he's just such a dang ol' nice guy. Hopefully Hancock will one day meet Bartolomeo and together they will start a Luffy fan club and then argue over who gets to be President.

14. Jaya

If you were in the dark as to what the themes of One Piece are, here comes Jaya with a flashlight. This is basically a montage of the things that are important to the Straw Hat crew, and it introduces Blackbeard, a guy that will go from "Oh he seems interesting" to "OH I HATE HIM" over the next few hundred chapters. Luffy saying "Do I know how to throw a punch, you ask?" before absolutely walloping Bellamy still gives me goose bumps.

13. Thriller Bark

There's so much good to Thriller Bark—the spooky atmosphere, the introduction of Brook, the underrated Gekko Moriah, the Binks' Sake song, the Straw Hats teaming up to face a giant zombie, etc. And just when you think it can't get any better, Kuma shows up and rocks the One Piece world.

12. Impel Down

Hey! It's Buggy! And Mr. 3! And Mr. 2! And Crocodile! And our new best boy Jinbe! And Ivankov! As both a launching point for new protagonists and a comeback for old foes (along with introducing Magellan, one of the best villains in the series, and Shiryu, one of the scariest villains in the series), Impel Down succeeds. I love it more and more with time.

11. Drum Island

I've written an entire article about why the arc where we first meet Tony Tony Chopper makes me weep, so I'll try to be brief here. Drum Island is beautiful. It's the story of a little deer guy that couldn't find a place in the world and the loud rubber bro that gave him one. It's an arc about the price of dreams and the power of having someone stand up for you when you need it most. It's about love and respect and kindess. And now I'm about to cry again. THANKS A LOT, ONE PIECE.

10. Baratie

The Baratie arc is the first hint that we'll get about how hectic the One Piece world is. We meet Sanji, we meet Don Krieg, and we meet Mihawk (and is stronger than the whole cast of the show combined at this point). Syrup Village is about leaving your comfort zones and Baratie is about finding a home in the chaos that follows.

9. G-8

The best One Piece filler arc and the One Piece arc that I most revisit (it's only 11 episodes, can you blame me?), G-8 is a One Piece Greatest Hits collection and possibly the first thing you should show someone if they want to get into One Piece but don't have long to do so.

8. Alabasta

Are the Straw Hats ready for the Grand Line? Are they ready to topple evil villains and protect those that need help? That's what Alabasta asks and the answer is "Oh yeah." Luffy punching Crocodile up through the center of the city is an iconic moment, showing us that the Straw Hats, whether they mean to be or not, are forces of good in the world.

7. Marineford

Marineford is loud and chaotic and powerful, forcing Luffy into a situation where he is simply an especially energetic pawn on the chessboard of battle. It's just as much of a rescue mission as it is a quest for survival for him, but in the midst of Whitebeard and the three admirals and the Shichibukai, Luffy makes his mark. However, he doesn't do it through displays of awe-inspiring force, but through his willpower. Aokiji is right when he says that Luffy isn't "ready for this stage yet," but the thing that scares the Navy most is that one day, he will be.

6. Sabaody Archipelago

This is not a happy arc. It's a satisfying one (Luffy punching the Celestial Dragon will never get old), and it's an illuminating one (Silver Rayleigh, y'all!), but it's not one that will end with cheering. Kizaru shows up to put an entire generation of pirates in their place and Kuma wipes out the Straw Hats. That said, even if it concludes with the most uncertain moment in the series, it's still a fun ride.

5. Arlong Park

Nami is the soul of the Straw Hat Crew, and learning what she's been through at the hands of the despicable Arlong is heart-breaking. But Luffy doesn't need to know every detail to know that he needs to help and the Straw Hats walking to Arlong Park is another one of those "One Piece is literally the best thing ever" moments. And by the end, every Straw Hat bro gets a victory, Luffy gets a bounty, and Nami gets her freedom. And what does she do with this freedom? She joins a ship full of dummies as their navigator. And I'm so happy about that.

4. Enies Lobby

For many, Enies Lobby is THE arc and I'm not disagreeing with them. It's such a display of raw emotion and exciting battles, a nonstop rollercoaster of everything that makes One Piece great. And it ends with a Viking funeral for the Going Merry, a scene that reveals Oda's true power as a writer: He makes you sob about a ship.

3. Whole Cake Island

If Enies Lobby is about being a hero, then Whole Cake Island is about letting that idea go. The Straw Hats can't beat Big Mom or her crew and will have to settle with getting Sanji and getting out. And Katakuri, the protective brother of the Charlotte family, learns that he doesn't have to be perfect all the time. It's a beautiful arc that shows that Oda is willing to play around with some of the pre-established ideas of One Piece.

2. Water 7

Robin leaves. Usopp defects, Luffy is forced to do things that no captain wants to, and a villainous team shows up that seems unstoppable. Water 7 may be the first half of a story that continues with Enies Lobby, but I find it to be the better one (though not by much). It's an arc that constantly leaves you saying "Well, what else could go wrong?" and then something else does. And it's just so good.

1. Skypiea

This is it. Everything good about One Piece, from the powerful villain (with a great weakness), to the touching themes, to enchanting locations, to the gripping adventures, is wrapped up in Skypiea. And while I have no problems with arcs being connected, there's just something about the standalone nature of Skypiea that leads me to regularly revisit it. It's an arc that makes me glad that I started this nearly 900 episode adventure in the first place. And that's the highest compliment that I can give.

Want to make your own ranking? Then watch One Piece on Crunchyroll! It's literally the only way.

What is your favorite One Piece arc? How do you feel about this ranking? Let us know in the comments!

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Daniel Dockery is a writer and editor for Crunchyroll. He has a Twitter, where you can disagree with him.

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