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#paralleling your own work without direct copying ALL the way through is hard
lighthouseborn · 15 days
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If you could sum up your character with one sentence, what would it be?
Canon Questionnaire
Unpopular(?) opinion but I actually think this is an impossible task for any writer with any character — any character with even ankle deep depth, that isn't a function character, anyway.
Like you could describe function characters (the cabbage man from ATLA, Lt. Scarfield and the witch Shansa from DMTNT) with this method, because their identities are actually plot functions as far as the story being told is concerned. Sure they have names, sometimes, but even then they're likely to be there more to further something along than to have their inner worlds mapped out. (Pintel and Ragetti wobble on this line; they're almost one-sentence characters, but little bits poke through anyway). If a character is actually a part of things, has goals, gets to express nuance etc., I don't think it can be done. Or rather I think it can be done but it will always be an incomplete image. I know that's kind of the point, to cut to the 'most important' parts but I really think.. all the parts are important? Real people will have entire swathes of similarities and what makes them distinctly who they are is the little parts. I think people who lean on single-sentence type identifiers too hard end up losing sight of their characters anyway, in a different direction than what happens when they close their eyes to canon. Single sentencing too hard leads directly to flanderization. If they started flat to begin with, and don't need to be anything else, it's fine! If not, be careful.
With that in mind, I think the closest you can possibly get to a single-sentence for Henry is to simply take him at his own self evaluation (which the fact it was him who said it is in itself is an important part of things–), which is to say: “I'lll never stop, and if you throw me over, I'll come straight back.” This leaves a bunch of other things out but it does, also, cut to a really core drive of him, at any rate — a piece you couldn't remove without completely undoing the character. Arguably he doesn't have to be a storyteller, or even technically a pirate, but he does have to be confident, and persistent, and bold. And he has to be kind as well, and earnest; willing to listen, and to start causing problems if other people aren't listening, aren't paying attention. He has to be prepared to break things in order to fix them. (Running away to bring his family together; defying chain of command to (attempt to) prevent deaths.) He has to love so hard, all the way into it being a flaw. You take those and you've just... invented a different kid you're calling Henry. (Which, if you are just writing a different Henry, go ham! Do whatever! If you're calling him Henry though I feel like DMTNT should at least be on your radar a little bit though, and if you want to ignore it exists then maybe. Don't call him Henry. But that's a big fat fandom opinion on things that don't actually have any consequences or fallout s;dflkjg;wlrtkjg;sldkjfg) He cannot be resentful toward Will for his absence, I don't think. You'd have to be really really good at toeing a line for that one to work (and me personally I think that veers too far into just rehashing Will himself, which is boring. Parallels don't have to be carbon copies tyvm, let him love wildly and without anyone having had to 'earn' it.) And obviously I'm devolving into many many more than one sentence but I do think a lot of that that I just said can be, in some way, linked to his "I'll come straight back" which is why I think it's probably the closest a person can get to one-sentence'ing him. Or as close as I can get anyway, but I'm bad at it. (Kind of on purpose.)
For the ways I've written him I think the little epithets given at the top of the source material/divergences section of his bio page are also a good centering place? "Son of the Pirate King. Blood of a Turner, feathers of a Sparrow." It's more ... poetic? Ambiguous? Than a direct description, but nevertheless it tells you where I've focused him, what I'm pulling into it. Good short description only in that it evokes the entire complex history of three other characters that came before him in order to even get him on the page!
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boonbeenblade · 3 years
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Why Are You Doing This
Why are you doing this?
The one in the hood that was once lined with red thinks. He's doing this because chaos fueled the Badlands from the beginning. He's doing this because the Egg promises him everything, and more. He's doing this because he's gone too far down this road to turn back now. He's doing this for Skeppy.
The one in suspenders with the scarred eye thinks. He's doing this because Wilbur was right; words aren't power enough. He's doing this because he's tired of being left behind and forgotten. He's doing this because someone has to hurt, and this time, it won't be him. He's doing this for what he has left of a home.
The green one in the white mask thinks. He's doing this because he knows what's best for everyone, if they'd listen. He's doing this because power is more important than friendship or family. He's doing this because Tommy is such an interesting toy to play with. He's doing this for his own amusement.
In the end, they all say the same answer when they finally speak.
"Why am I doing this? To have control."
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mwolf0epsilon · 4 years
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First off, before everyone comes after my butt with their "No Fun Allowed" and "Cringe" signs, this is in no way something to be taken as gospel or insightful. It's not a prophetic enforcement of canon. It's literally a theory done for fun, and to try to piece the Bendy Crack up Comics into the general and messy lore of the BatIM franchise. 
Most of you get this and don't need a big wordy warning about fanon interpretation, but a lot of peculiar people tend to show up in my ask box hoping to start a fuss over my headcanons and AU ideas, so I thought to be nice and leave a polite and diplomatic "Kindly Fuck Off" sign at the door for them.
With that said, there will be mild spoilers, carry on of your own volition, down below under the cut that will definitely show up because Tumblr mobile is a functional app that's never given me trouble!!!
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[[MORE]]
The Bendy Franchise has an established issue with cohesion in its lore. We all know what I'm talking about, we all have reservations about canonical character discrepancies (game vs novel vs guidebook) and we all have been racking our brains with a few holes in the timeline, as well as how BatDR (which is neither prequel nor sequel) will fit into this, since it's connected to BatDS and that's an established prequel to BatIM.
Granted I myself am missing a lot of pieces, having to scrounge around for info since I can't really get any of the reading material myself and rely heavily on @british-hero (who owns the novel plus got her copy of the comics yesterday), a very incomplete wikie, and analysis and theories from SuperHorrorBro's Bendy videos.
Heck, I also rely on a lot of gameplay footage, because BatIM has a bit of subtle storytelling through visual design of its levels, and hints of how certain characters work through a few game mechanics.
Through this mishmash of collecting puzzle pieces for the greater picture I even have a few notes on my phone to piece together certain events in established dates, something which comes very in handy for this theory since it talks about two particular characters, the Projectionist and Brute Boris (and I guess Twisted Alice to some extent but it's more of a note on some interesting thoughts I have of her).
Without further ado, here's what this theory is all about: Why did Norman become the Projectionist, and why did Twisted Alice turn Buddy Boris into Brute Boris?
If you think about it, there's only two creatures in the studio that really seem out of place in the world of BatIM, and that's Prophet Sammy and the Projectionist. Neither are inherently similar to any of the cartoon characters, nor are they considered to be Lost Ones. They're certainly not Searchers, but while we know Sammy is unique because his method of transformation was different, we never got an explanation for Norman's. It could be that it's a process similar to BatDR's new enemy type that's larger and seems to have bits and bobs stuck to it, but then those big guys seem like the equivalent to Swollen Searchers for the Lost Ones. The Projectionist doesn't really fit the puzzle.
Or at least he didn't.
With the introduction of the Crack up Comics collection, we get three new characters that were definitely designed in the same manner that the Butcher Gang was. Beginning with a corrupt monster forms and then giving way to perfect and pristine rubberhose toon forms.
I'm talking about Miss Twisted, the Brute, and Cameraman.
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The villainous trio from the Souper Boris comic strip.
To us it's obvious the artists created them in parallel to Twisted Alice, Brute Boris and the Projectionist, but to the actual canon this actually has a bit of an impact on the Projectionist's existence.
Why, you ask? Because those characters were introduced between 1936 and 1940.
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Bendy Crack up Comics table of contents, showcasing the publishing dates of the strips.
For anyone who doesn't know (either from not paying attention to the Joey Drew Studios channel audio logs, or from not owning the books) the Ink Machine wasn't conceptualized or installed until 1942/1943. Putting that into perspective, the only other thing that happened in Joey Drew Studios in 1940, was the conceptualization of Bendyland (which is likely the origin of the idea for the Ink Machine itself).
This means that Cameraman existed well before the Projectionist ever came to be, and that made me think about another thing: The Ink's apparent sentience.
I'll be frank, the Ink is very hard nut to crack. I consider it a form of alchemized entity, others consider it pure black magic, and I'm pretty sure Joey Drew himself had no idea what he was dealing with when he began using it. The fact of the matter is that the Ink is alive and that it has its own agenda. One that coincides with Joey's, out of mutual interest.
In the novels it seems to want to be free, but it can't exactly do that as a formless liquid, so it tries to body-snatch people (ex: Sammy and Buddy's grandpa).
When Joey tries to use it to give life to Bendy through nothing more than using the Ink and a template (likely a character model sheet) the Ink tries to follow the model but immediately becomes a distorted humanoid version of it (which honestly rings so many fucking alarm bells on its own). Things… Escalate there on out, with Joey trying to perfect the method and only managing to succeed through Daniel Lewek (and many other nameless Boris Clones), Allison Pendle and Thomas Connor.
An important thing to take from this, however, is that by trying to perfect this method Joey not only taught the Ink to reshape things into viable referenced material, but that he had to have lost control of just how many souls were being pumped through the Ink Machine for him to monitor and keep up.
Sammy started killing people when he completely turned, and it didn't seem to take long for him to cut down people in likely both the music and art departments. At this point he had no self-restraint and was completely wrapped around inky fingers and Joey's lies. 
Norman is one such potential victim, and Dot and Buddy even passed by his ink-wrapped body while fleeing.
Now, the thing about trying to follow a specific guide and not having the actual means to make it exactly the same thing, is an easy enough notion to get (as shows like "Nailed It", and years of trying to perfect visual style mimicry, have taught me).
The Ink likely had the template it needed (maybe a printed copy of Souper Boris that got thrown around in the chaos), the insight of what Norman's role in the studio was, the amount of mass it needed to consume and transform his dead body, but not exactly the right sort of… Centerpiece for it...
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Cameraman using his lens to light up his path.
But what's a projector besides a bigger fancier camera? Both blink, both take film, same thing right? The ink doesn't see the difference and just stitches together this humanoid bootleg cameraman with the pieces it finds that are similar enough.
Mechanical blinky head? Check.
Strange round disc near the belly? There's a speaker. That's round! Check.
Film? There we go, a nice big round reel full of film in it, let's put it near the head, that's how it works right? Check.
Lastly, no Joey to actually direct this artistic recreation of a one-off character. The Ink did it all by itself while he was off getting his hand broken by a rightfully upset Buddy Boris.
If you look at it objectively it makes sense that being the projectionist tasked with not only recording and maintaining the projectors themselves, that the entity in the Ink would pick Cameraman as a template for Norman's transformed self.
It also makes sense that the Projectionist is so off-putting in the studio. He's almost perfect, but not quite because there just weren't the right materials. He's stuck in between Twisted Alice and the Butcher Gang clones as another failed recreation.
Moving on to the next question on why Twisted Alice turn Buddy Boris into Brute Boris, when she hadn't done the same to any of the other Boris Clones.
It's hard to say really, but I think it all comes down to who Twisted Alice really is. It's very likely that, as Susie Campbell, she would have knowledge of the comic strips. A few were most likely made into cartoon shorts even (which isn't an unusual assumption to make), and maybe Susie voiced a few background characters for said shorts.
Susie may have lost her role as Alice, but before Joey came to her with his proposition for the "special project" it's very likely that she remained in the studio, forced to do the voices of characters that weren't noteworthy or that she felt completely disconnected from (talking chairs and singing hens really don't become beloved fan-favourites) . Maybe if the Souper Boris story was made into a short, she might have voiced Miss Twisted (which honestly would be personally insulting considering she once had the role of the main heroine).
Point is, Susie knows her lore, and that translates to Twisted Alice's repertoire of insightful knowledge on the abominations lurking around the studio.
She never did turn other Boris clones into brutish lackeys because at the time she didn't need to. But it doesn't mean she hadn't considered it. Henry's disruptive behaviour is just what she needed to put that plan into motion.
There was already a "Cameraman" walking about, one that could easily rip apart anything it came across, so acquiring the means to recreate the "Brute" would have been benefiting from her point of view. The Projectionist doesn't take orders and can't be reasoned with, so if she could make something just as strong that took her orders she could, theoretically, be safe from most terrors in the studio. If that didn't work, she would still likely send others to their death by simply sending them down to Level 14, or maybe lure the Projectionist to them herself (just because he doesn't take orders doesn't mean she can't use him to achieve her end goals).
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Miss Twisted, the Brute and Cameraman in their evil swamp lair.
But why Buddy Boris specifically? Why couldn't she have used any of the bodies laying around? Freshness most likely. Rigor mortis is probably still a thing, even for living cartoons. Easier to work a fresh dead body than a bunch of stiff wolves.
That's at least why I think Brute Boris is a thing. Susie's knowledge of most Bendy cartoon/comic strip characters, taking inspiration from the Projectionist's presence, and honestly a very twisted sense of humor and irony. In her quest to become a Perfect Alice, the heroine of the show, she ended up becoming just as antagonistic (although more sadistic) as Miss Twisted, a Bendy comic strip villainess.
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what-a-treat-nz · 3 years
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World Book Challenge: China
Officially, the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.4 billion. It covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, and is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
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The areas in dark green are under direct Chinese control; the areas in light green (Tibet and Taiwan) are contested. For the purposes of this challenge, I’m treating China, Tibet and Taiwan as three separate countries. Because I can.
Number of Chinese people in New Zealand: As of the 2013 Census, there were 163,104 people of “Chinese (not further defined)” ethnicity in New Zealand - 10,008 of those were in Wellington City.
Have I been there? Yes! I visited Shanghai with my Dad in December 2011. I bought a really nice coat, had tea that tasted like warm Fanta (it was oddly addictive), and got hugged by Dave Grohl. So, the usual Chinese experiences, really.
I also had Peking Duck for the first time in my life, and holy hell I didn’t know what I was missing. I’ve tried to make up for it by eating copious amounts of it since.
The books
For “China” on my reading challenge, I read three fantasy novels - Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, and the final two books of the Poppy War trilogy (The Dragon Republic and The Burning God) by R. F. Kuang, a Chinese-American author.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (魔道祖师 / Mó Dào Zǔ Shī)
(Book 30 of 2021)
Given the fact that I have an entire subsection of my blog about how much I love the live-action TV show based on this book, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that I had Mó Dào Zǔ Shī at the top of my list of Chinese books to read.
Mó Dào Zǔ Shī tells the story of Wei Wuxian, a loathed cultivator of dark and demonic arts who resurrects 16 years after his tragic death. His return to the world brings him to reunite with the people in his first life, including his soulmate, the honored Lan Wangji (who mourned him for 16 years, during which he branded himself with the same mark as Wei Wuxian and kept his memory alive and I’m okay, I promise). Wei Wuxian then begins to remember his time before his demise 16 years ago, from his beginnings as a young cultivator to his descent to dark magic. Together, they solve a mystery linked to a dark tragedy from Wei Wuxian’s first life, then live happily ever after.
This novel was originally published on the Chinese web novel site JJWXC from October 31, 2015 - March 1, 2016, with additional side stories that continue to be released sporadically. The revised version of the main story was later published online until September 7, 2016. A paperback version was released on December 12, 2016, with a total of four volumes in traditional Chinese. The first of three planned volumes in simplified Chinese, titled Wuji, was released in 2018, but release of the following installments has stalled after the locking of the novel on JJWXC since January 2019.
Mó Dào Zǔ Shī isn’t officially available in English, and given that it depicts an explicit danmei relationship between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, I don’t think we’ll ever see an official version. Though there are official translations into Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Russian, Japanese, and Burmese, and the tour for the TV traveled to Toronto, Los Angeles and New York, so maybe one day there will be an official translation.
For now though, you can read the entire novel for free at Exiled Rebels Scanlations, where it has been translated in full by a then-highschooler called “K-san”. It’s hard to actually judge the merits of the writing of the original novel, given I was reading an unofficial translation, but that was actually half of the sweetness of it. It was kinda rough - K-san tweaked the terms they used as they gained more confidence with the translation, and I enjoyed reading the translator and editor notes that accompanied most chapters - especially notes such as “we’re translating as fast as we can, stop asking for faster updates!”. It felt really organic and friendly, and the story is good (though much gorier than the TV show and good god boys, learn what lube is, it’ll make your lives better I promise).
I read the book more as a companion to the TV show though, rather than a novel on it’s own merits, so I’m not sure I can judge it as a novel on it’s own merits. Though the book did teach me one very important piece of information: Lan Wangji canonically smells of sandalwood.
Would I read it again? If an official English translation comes out, I’d probably read that. I’m more likely to watch the TV show again, or dive into one of the sesquillion Untamed fanfics on AO3 ( Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn was the most popular ship on AO3 in 2020, with 12,878 new works about these characters being published that year).
The Dragon Republic and The Burning God
(Books 34 and 35 of 2021)
I read The Poppy War and The Dragon Republic back in September 2019 (when I wasn’t counting how many books I was reading, but I did have a record of them), and I decided to re-read The Dragon Republic because I couldn’t exactly remember where the story was up to.
And it’s a good thing I did, as something I thought happened at the end of The Dragon Republic actually happened at the end of The Poppy War, so oops?
The Poppy War trilogy is a grimdark fantasy novel set in fantasy China, with a Chinese protagonist and written by a Chinese-American author. It’s spectacular. The trilogy draws its plot and politics from mid-20th-century China, though it’s atmosphere is more inspired by the Song dynasty. The conflict in the first book is based on the Second Sino-Japanese War (though this time, it’s the Chinese empire against the Japanese empire), in the second on the start of the Chinese civil war (Chinese empire against nascent Republican movement), and in the third on the end of Chinese civil war (Republicans versus not-Republicans).
It’s a massive trilogy. It’s incredibly complex, with a huge scale and massive numbers of characters, though the fact it’s all seen through Rin’s eyes (with the occasional first and last chapter from the point of view of other characters) helps.
The story follows that of Fang Runin, better known as Rin, a poor war orphan in southern Nikara who trains in secret to test into the elite Sinegard Academy. Throughout the trilogy she deals with racism, sexism, elitism...most of the isms, really. Author R.F. Kuang said that Rin's life is meant to parallel the trajectory of Mao Zedong, and I had fun trying to match events in Chinese history to the events in the book (the easiest ones to spot are the Rape of Nanjing, the nuclear bombing of Japan and the Long March).
I don’t remember Mao Zedong having the power to call on a fire god, however. It’s probably a good thing that’s not something that happened in real life China, as Mao’s policies killed enough people without him literally being able to spit fire.
I described the first book as “If Kvothe from The Name of the Wind was female, Chinese, and allowed to say fuck.” Those two books felt really similar to me - they’re very much your “outsider is accepted to elite academy, winds up pissing off most of their classmates and chooses an obscure major to specialise in before being thrown into a conflict they are key to winning.” But honestly, I preferred the Poppy War trilogy, even if the final book did get super dark.
Rin is a really refreshing character, and the world seen through her eyes is a very different place to one I’m used to reading about. Kuang said that she "chose to write a fantasy reinterpretation of China's twentieth century, because that was the kind of story I wasn't finding on bookshelves", and I’m so glad she did. The world needs more books like this. I’m as pasty and as white as they come, and I loved reading a book where the heroine was authentically Chinese. This isn’t a pakeha author trying to fit themselves into someone else’s shoes - this is someone with a deep understanding of Chinese military history and collective trauma using that understanding and pain to build a new fantasy world.
I loved it, and if you can stomach war scenes, I recommend this trilogy.
Will I read the Poppy War trilogy again? I might do. It’s a bit darker and more desperate than I usually read - particularly The Burning God - but I did enjoy them. So that’s a firm “never say never”.
Bonus book! 
These Violent Delights
I read NZ-Chinese author Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights earlier this year (book number 20 of 2021), before I set myself this challenge, so it doesn’t technically count as an entry for “China” in my book challenge. But it is amazing, and I love it, so I wanted to give it a quick shout out here (because if we’re talking fantasy reimaginings of Chinese 20th century history by Chinese diaspora authors...).
These Violent Delights relocates the story of Romeo and Juliet to 1920s Shanghai, casting the two leads as the heirs to rival gangs. It’s brilliant, it’s beautiful, there were sentences that made me stop and gasp for the sheer delight of having read them, and there’s a monster made of bugs driving the citizens of Shanghai insane. The way Gong has woven the characters from the play into their 1920s counterparts is delightful (I say this as someone who’s never actually read the play, though I think I saw the Leonardo DiCaprio movie because it was difficult to be a tween in the late 90s and not be exposed to his films).
15/10, would definitely read it again, it’s been on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks for a very, very good reason. Stop reading this blog and go get a copy. Now.
The feast
I admit, using China as my first country may have been a bit of a cop out, given my familiarity with Chinese food - though, living in a Western country, I’ve probably eaten more Westernised Chinese food than authentic Chinese food.
Which is why I was chuffed to learn that spring rolls are, actually, authentic Chinese food. I always thought they were a Westernisation, like sweet and sour pork or fortune cookies.
For my Chinese feast, I turned to The Woks of Life, a delightful Chinese cooking blog that I can’t open without being inspired to cook like 9 million things.
When I started this project, I originally was only going to cook one dish from each country. I figured I’d go easy on myself for China, and make 花生酥 (hua sheng su), a traditional sesame peanut brittle.
It’s something I’ve made before - I make little bags of it for my colleagues each lunar new year.
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I don’t follow the Woks of Life recipe exactly - for example, I’ve never once roasted and shelled my own peanuts. I tend to use a mix of blanched and pre-roasted peanuts in my 花生酥, and I think it comes out okay. Next time I’m going to increase the amount of sugar I use - I find that 270g of rock sugar is not quite enough to cover the peanuts totally. Which is a pain. Next time I think I’ll use 300g, and turn the heating on in my kitchen so it’s warmer, to stop the brittle from hardening before I can properly get it into the tray to cool.
But then I changed my mind, and decided to throw a full on feast.
For the feast I threw, I made two more dishes from the Woks of Life - Easy Peking Duck with Mandarin Pancakes, and 年糕 (nian gao), or stir-fried rice cakes (though I did them with chicken, not pork, as that’s what I had in my freezer). I also cooked up some spring rolls, as I had them leftover in my freezer from my housewarming (for which I over catered, because I cannot do anything but over cater any event I throw). I should have marinated the duck longer. That one was on me.
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I also made some 核桃酥 (he tao su), walnut cookies, which were delicious and I definitely want to make again. I think I’ll add some hazelnuts in as well for additional crunch, and make them slightly smaller - they were 12 very big cookies.
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But delicious cookies.
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Kisu was most distressed that we did not feed her anything from this feast.
The Playlist
I ended up finding this “Chinese Indie & Rock” playlist on Spotify, which I really enjoyed. I could understand none of the songs, but I enjoyed the heck out of a lot of them. I’ll probably keep listening to this playlist - they were definitely my sort of jams.
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dragons-bones · 3 years
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FFXIV Write Entry #28: Humiliations Galore
Prompt: irenic | Master Post | On AO3
This fill is partially in response to @ahlis-xiv‘s fill for ultracrepidarian, which you can read HERE! (And it goes without saying you should read her other fills and assorted writing, too!) The Ahlis mentioned herein, of course, belongs to her. \o/
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Synnove felt her face twist into something foul and ugly and absolutely capable of curdling milk as she stared down at the letter on her desk. Halulu took one look at her and immediately fled back to the relative safety of her own office one floor down.
The envelope was fine vellum, waxed to protect its contents, tied with twine and the tie further sealed with wax. It was unremarkable, really, and appeared no different from any other important missive that Mealvaan’s Gate might receive from near and far.
Save for the seal of the University of Radz-at-Han pressed into the wax.
Synnove’s lip curled up in a sneer.
Mama, just open it, Galette sighed from her usual perch draped around her shoulders.
Synnove grimaced, but reached for the envelope and slid it closer to herself on the desk. She wedged her thumbnail beneath the wax seal and wiggled back and forth until it popped off, then slid the vellum from the twine and opened the flap. Reaching in, she pulled out two letters, folded over and individually sealed with different wax and stamps, at which she frowned.
And then raised her eyebrows as she noticed the thicker letter of the two, the one closed by deep red wax with a plain stamp, had writing in a very familiar hand on the outside.
READ THE OTHER ONE FIRST.
Now, what in the six hells was Thaisie Valeroyant up to?
Synnove stared with narrow, suspicious eyes at the letter from the Chair of the Department of Arcanima from the University of Radz-at-Han’s College of Mathematics, drumming her fingers on her desk for long moments as she mentally flicked through a list of possibilities. Finally, she let out a heavy sigh and scowled, snatching up the other letter, popping the wax seal, and unfolding it.
My dearest Mistress Greywolfe—
Synnove dropped the parchment, recoiling with a disgusted shriek. Galette HISSED, rising to a crouch as she bared her teeth and bristled her fur, tails lashing.
She knew that handwriting, knew that deep blue ink, knew that absolutely repulsive cologne that wafted into her face.
The first letter was in her hand in an instant, wax seal ripped off and parchment unfolded.
I promise, Synnove, the other letter is worth soiling your fingers and eyes.
Synnove ground her teeth, rage roiling through her, but she took a deep breath through her nose for a five count. Held it for another five count. Let it out with a final five count.
“Thaisie, you are going to owe me so much alcohol,” she muttered under her breath. She set down Thaisie’s letter and reached up to pet Galette, soothing them both for a few moments. Then, she picked up one of the half-sticks of graphite from the pile in the corner of her desk, and used it to poke the other letter flat, sneering as she did. Once that was done, she threw the graphite into her trash bin.
Finally, with a grimace, she leaned over her desk to read the letter from Bahram Zarir.
Synnove sat back after the first flowery paragraph and exchanged a confused look with Galette. “Did he actually…?”
I think so? Galette chittered, ears flat against her head.
They leaned forward again to read the next paragraph.
“…Ah. Never mind. He still, in fact, has his head shoved up his ass so far that the apple on his throat is actually his nose. Good gods, how as he gone this long without developing critical thinking skills, or the ability to remember what he wrote in a previous paragraph?”
She continued reading, occasionally muttering comments such as, “My gods, you absolutely disgusting piece of worm-ridden filth,” to which Galette snickered. Finally, she reached the end of the letter, and slid back into her chair.
And started giggling.
It evolved into a full body guffaw, rising from deep in her belly, and Synnove bent over as she howled with laughter, for so hard and so long it became silent heaving that shook her whole body. Galette sighed and rolled her eyes, holding on as her perch pitched to and fro. As Synnove finally calmed again, she brushed tears from her eyes.
“Oh, my gods, that was hilarious,” she wheezed. “Gods, I only hope I’m there on the day his hubris gets his sorry plagiarizing ass killed so I can laugh him all the way to the Hell of Water. What a cunt.”
Still chortling and catching her breath, Synnove carefully picked up Bahram Zarir’s letter with the very tip of her thumb and forefinger, and dumped it in the trash.
“Please remind me to get Ivar to burn that later,” she said, wiping her hand on her pants.
Yes, Mama!
Then, finally, she picked up Thaisie’s letter to read.
He really is such a prick, isn’t he? It’s a wonder he hasn’t become a victim of Thavnairian politics, but then he’s probably too thick to be a credible threat to any of his relatives or their myriad enemies. Just a shame we got stuck with him. I’m fairly certain the dean was dreaming about defenestrating him and a few other of the legacy children during the last open thesis read.
In any event, I thought you might enjoy the attached to make up for the toad’s sorry attempt at civility: a copy of the abstract for Master Zarir’s latest article. It’s still technically in peer review, but you’re a peer, as dirty as that no doubt makes you feel. Do what you will with this.
Also, yes, I know, I owe you alcohol. I already have a nice bottle of arak picked out for the next time Thubyrgeim allows you off your leash, or I’m able to attend a Lominsan conference.
Kisses!
Thaisie
“You’re such an asshole, Thaisie,” Synnove said fondly, shuffling the parchment to the second page. Zarir’s greatest weakness as a researcher was that frequently, he did have original ideas…but was frankly terrible at the execution and he outright stole others’ work in bits and pieces and tried to make a whole from it that fell apart if one breathed on it too hard. So, what trash was he on about now?
She read the abstract once. Blinked. Read it again, slower this time, than gave it a third pass.
Synnove set the parchment down flat on her desk, mind racing.
Zarir’s article was in peer review, and therefore it wasn’t public knowledge or in open circulation; the only individuals with copies would be Zarir, the reviewers, and Thaisie. He wouldn’t be able to add anything, with how the University handled its legacies’ attempts at academia, the peer review was mostly for show and the article would be published in the latest issue of their mathematics journal. There would be no turnaround time for Zarir.
And there was no way for anyone else to possibly know what he was publishing. Further, it was incredibly common for academics to hit on similar ideas and develop them in parallel without knowing until the other was published.
Zarir’s idea was similar to that of someone else’s here at the Gate. Oh, not hugely similar, but enough for the mainstays in the field to have a solid guess of which articles either had been reading and drawing inspiration from. But Ahlis had gone off in a completely different direction and what was more, her math was sound, the research actually done rather than theorized, and with a high chance of her succeeding and creating a new breakthrough in arcanima. And Ahlis’s work was ready for presentation at the upcoming research symposium. At which a few of the Hannish—not Zarir, if only because the dean didn’t want to deal with the political fallout of letting him set foot in Limsa Lominsa and the resulting murder—from the University would be attending.
Synnove smiled, slow and deliberate and sharklike, a dark chuckle rising in her throat, as she reached for a piece of fresh parchment and a graphite stick. She was quite thankful now that she hadn’t replied to Ahlis’s note just yet.
Ahlis,
I think you are more than ready! You’ve done your due diligence, even surpassed it, in laying your foundation. I still cannot find flaws in the theorems and equations you’ve laid out—your mathematics might need the occasional proofing, but your grasp of the principles is superb, and we’ve all needed a second set of eyes on our work when we’ve looked at the numbers for too long.
You are an excellent arcanist, Ahlis. As intimidating as it is to present research, the symposium presents a wonderful opportunity to receive feedback and collaborate on further avenues to explore your hypothesis. And, if word on the grapevine is true, I have no doubt your work will be leaving certain members of our community absolutely green with envy.
Give ‘em hell!
-Synnove
She signed with a flourish and folded the letter into neat thirds, wrote Ahlis’s name on it, and bound it with some of the leftover twine from Thaisie’s packet. “Amandina, Roksana,” she called out as she tied off the string, “would you like to run an errand for me?”
The twins poked their heads over the edge of their basket, the picture book they had been carefully pawing through forgotten. Their ears stood straight up, noses twitching in excitement—and then they were tumbling out of the basket and darting right for Synnove’s desk. Oh oh oh yes yes yes! they peeped excitedly. Errand errand errand we can do it!
The carbunclets skidded to a halt at their mama’s feet and looked up at her with huge eyes, their mass of tails shaking with excitement. Galette huffed, exasperated as always with their endless amounts of energy, but didn’t otherwise say anything as Synnove leaned over with the letter in hand.
“Do you remember where the Gate’s mailroom is?” she said, solemn.
Yeah!
The arcanist held out the letter, and Amandina very carefully accepted it, clamping down with her teeth to hold it firmly.
“Bring this down to the mailroom,” Synnove said, “and give it to Coster, and only Coster. He’ll make sure it’s delivered to its intended recipient! And then, once you’re done, come right back here, all right?”
Okay, Mommy! warbled Amandina, a determined set to her face.
We’ll be right back! said Roksana with a peppy chirp.
Then, rather than turn and trundle towards the door to her office, as Synnove thought they would, Roksana took one of Amandina’s ears into her mouth, and with a pop! of displaced air they were…gone.
Dead silence, as arcanist and carbuncle both stared, jaws hanging open, at the space the twins had been in just a few moments before.
“When did they learn to do that?” Synnove said, faint and bewildered.
I dunno. Galette tilted her head. Can I learn how to do that?
“Absolutely not, you’ll use it to break into the coldbox for my pies.”
Galette slumped into a full body sulk.
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luxlightly · 4 years
Text
Ok I was originally not going to post this because it's A Lot of headcanon for an improv video game comedy series and just send it to one person but they never responded and I'm attention starved. So here's my huge, Bubby centric, monster of a headcanon that ties the whole series together. Mostly under a cut because it's A Lot. (written in one sitting on my phone so excuse the multiple changes in tense and typos)
So the big sort of thing is that Bubby caused the resonance cascade. He sabotaged the computers. He just meant for it to be a distraction to escape black mesa but Benry's involvement and the chaotic element of the Player Character interacting with him caused everything to go to hell fast. Also Benry and Bubby are sort of brothers.
Going backwards to explain:
So some of this really stretches the canon because it's mixing a "it's a real world" au and "it's still a video game" au kind of ideas. 
Basically the world of the video game exists sort of as a parallel dimension within the game's code. The G-man exists kind of outside of the rules, able to control more or less the code or console. He's kind of the Mastermind behind black Mesa as a whole who exists outside the game's code to a sort of in between layer (in those time stop moments) where he can only be seen by those who are also in some way connected to the Real World through either direct connection to the Player or sufficient connection to the console code. His reach is in ways limited because of this and he cannot easily interact with the game world characters. He uses Black Mesa as a way to use the science of their word to try to create new things from the code or otherwise more precisely control it.
Which is where Bubby comes in. Basically, black Mesa took the basic code for the security officer Barney and tried to create new copies with connections to the code they could use. However it was pretty much a complete failure. Only two of the attempts even survived to maturity with any kind of personally intact, but they weren't right. Trying to connect them with the code like that broke them in certain ways. On creation, the scientists asked them their names to try to get them to access their own files to find the name, but neither could, it came out garbled. So instead they went by the names they more or less gave themselves. 
Bubby is able to connect to the console commands specifically to set objects and characters on fire(among some others in small amounts that are far less well controlled), but he can't understand that's what it is. It's just psychokinesis to him. And he's not good at controlling it, especially when he was younger. He's also scrawny, has several phobias, and is overall much more suited to academic pursuits than being any kind of soldier for them. It also causes him to glitch at times('here i come, Gordon! Here I come, Gordon! Here I come, Gordon!). His code is more or less like a badly implemented mod that tried to unlock god admin mode but failed and now doesn't quite fit back in with the original code right.
They kept him as a scientist at black Mesa mostly to keep him under surveillance. He knows this. He doesn't know anything about the code or anything, but he knows he was made there etc etc. He spent most of his time just keeping the other scientists afraid of him and his spontaneous combustion and studying as much as he could. He'd never been outside. He wasn't allowed to leave. He'd never really cared to. 
Until (and this was largely inspired by the '30 something Coomer and Bubby when Coomer first joined black Mesa by @inkwellstars) a new scientist was hired. Bubby largely ignored him except for trying to scare him away from any annoying attempts and friendship with some showy (if poorly controlled) pyrotechnics. But Coomer was just fascinated and made a terrible pun about his new coworker being 'a real hothead'. Which infuriated Bubby into taking an interest in him. Coomer remained the only person who was unfazed enough by the fire and the shark teeth to not just still hang around, but even tease him, no matter how hard Bubby tried to intimidate him out of it. Eventually, Bubby realized it was the last thing he actually wanted. That this man was the first person who he'd ever had treat him… Like a human being. And for the first time, he considers a world outside black Mesa. And it's somewhere he wants to go. He wants to follow this man when he walks out the sliding lab doors back to a world he'd never been a part of. 
Not that he's pining or anything!! Coomer was a married man, after all!(no way no sir not that). 
 Bubby has a lot of unmanaged anger because he just catches on fire if he gets too frustrated. After a discussion of Coomer's past boxing ambitions, they set up the underground boxing league mostly just as the two of them, letting Bubby actually let off some steam in a metaphorical instead of literal way. He gets his ass handed to him every time but it's nice to not be treated like either the boss' fragile, expensive toy or a living Molotov cocktail. Bubby learns a bit of fighting along the way,to boot. He gets much better at controlling his fire. Coomer picks him up in a "lift off the ground and spin around" bear hug when he manages to set something aflame without setting any part of himself alight first. Bubby somehow feels that was more important to him than the accomplishment itself. Eventually word gets out about the quite literal underground rings they've started up and it becomes a whole league and Bubby takes a more spectator role, contented to play coach to Coomer.
However, Coomer's impressive strength and fortitude aren't only noticed by an admiring(and sightly love struck) Bubby. Black Mesa decides to try, instead of using code to try to create a new entities with connection to the code, to use an existing character, enhance them, and then create copies of them. Coomer became that existing character.
At first it seemed to work perfectly. They had a character able to alter the world at their will(sending Gordon back and forth through time/creating portals), access a super human, nearly godlike state of power(super player feature) and alter the code in a multitude of other ways. They implemented a system of authorization to stop him from accessing these powers without permission from a handler. These PlayCoins could only be gained and used by someone directly connected to the console code or real world. Someone connected to that liminal space between code and reality the g-man exists in. However, trying to create duplicates didn't create a new, equally powerful entity, it just split the power of the original. From there, Coomer's spirit was still too powerful to be completely controlled, so they split him into dozens of clones, dividing up that power until he was within a range they could control. The effect on his psyche was devastating, however. It trapped him into the code of 'tutorial npc' but his response triggers got completely broken so he responds to the wrong things. Before the scripted events of the game in which those triggers are, it didn't affect his day to day behavior, but it did leave him with an inescapable partial awareness of the game itself. As split as he is, he can't understand or remember anything about what it means, it's just a constant disconnect between him and the game's reality. It causes his marriage to fall apart. 
Bubby doesn't know about what happened to Coomer. A lot of his own memories are controlled and tampered with as well. But he feels as though his getting close to Coomer caused his suffering and they end up drifting apart for a long time and Bubby's longing to see the world outside his laboratory home fades alongside their once strong bond.
Until. The other failed test tube character made from the mangled and stripped code of the security officer Barney who was torn out of the code to be twisted to the g man's whims comes to Bubby with an idea. The man who is not a man. Who has no parents and named himself : Benry.
Benry seemed like he should have been perfect. He kept the most physical resemblance to the original Barney, he seemed physically stable. As far as anyone could tell, he was completely connected to the console code. He should be able to control whatever he wanted, but besides the sweet voice and an unnatural fortitude, he seemed to have no remarkable qualities. Also he was all but totally incoherent. Memory, temporal and spacial awareness,and speech function were severely impaired. He often forgot where and when he was('... What happened to your arm?'), got his own memories confused with the memories of the now non-existent Barney ('you and me we used to be friends do you remember i don't know what happened'). Along with an erratic and unpredictable personality. He was considered another of countless failures and given a menial security job, like with Bubby, mostly just to keep an eye on him. Benry and Bubby, despite being practically siblings, aren't close, but do trust each other insomuch as they know the other probably won't outright kill them. 
But Benry was not as unremarkable as he seemed.
And the introduction of a new element would throw everything into chaos: The Player. And, by extension, The Game.
The Player, in this instance, refers to the assumed person who is playing the game in which the characters exist. They are a discrete, unseen, and unmentioned character, who is neither Wayne nor Gordon Freeman. Wayne is the actor playing both Gordon and, in ways The Player, in the same way that Holly is playing the character of Coomer. Gordon is the AI character who exists within the game world. He believes he is in control of his actions and that what he experiences is real. He exists on the same layer of fiction as the other AI such as the character of Coomer.  The Player is whomever, within the fiction of the series, is physically playing The Game.
The Game is the actual scripted, programmed events that were programmed in the "real world" (the Player's real world in which they live and are playing the Game). It represents the events that happen from the time the Player begins the game and when they complete it. The Game represents the overlap between the reality in which the AI exist and The Player's world. Presumably a copy of the original game Half Life. 
As the events of The Game draw nearer, it makes every charterer with a connection to the code antsy. Bubby starts thinking, for the first time in years, about the world outside black Mesa's walls. Thought becomes longing. Longing becomes desperation. A need to escape from here by any means necessary.
Benry approaches him with an idea. They'll sabotage the big test that Dr.Freeman is running. The whole thing will likely explode, causing enough destruction and distraction for them to slip away in the chaos (with Coomer in tow if Bubby could help it). Freeman would almost certainly die but that was a necessary casualty for their freedom. Bubby never liked him anyway. There was just something...off about him. Like a weird double vision he couldn't shake around the man. Like something was both there that shouldn't be and missing that should be. Bubby avoided him. He didn't think he'd ever had a single conversation with him. He agrees.
Benry stops Gordon at the entrance and tries to stall him as long as possible with bogus requests to give Bubby as much time to sabotage the test as possible (which he does by crawling inside the computers, claiming he's fixing a problem). 
However,Gordon is not connected to the console code, but directly to the real world through being controlled by The Player. As the Player triggers the scripted events of The Game, the holes and mangled code the g man and black Mesa have been tampering with start going haywire. Especially as Benry interacts with him directly. His latent connection to the console code starts activating, giving him ability to control himself and the game more and more, but his memory issues and temporal confusion makes him unable to determine what is and isn't real so his code powers start just making it real, beginning to actively break the Game from within. The bogus excuse about a passport (he forgot the word for ID and had to roll with the lie) became a reality and a powerful one. He starts teleporting and clipping through the walls.
Bubby starts the test, unaware of the change. He played along with the passport thing to not blow Benry's story. But by the time he reaches the chamber, it's already a real thing everyone else there had and should have. 
When the cascade starts, though, Bubby is caught off guard. It was just supposed to explode. It wasn't supposed to bridge dimensions and cause this rift. He assumes Gordon did something to cause it to fail so catastrophically. He phases through the window of the observation room (something he didn't even know he could do and likely didn't even realize he was doing and forgot afterwards since he was immediately knocked out) but it's too late to stop it.
Then the events of the Game are in full swing and all the broken code of every character crumbles and results in the "look Gordon! Ropes!" Glitched tutorial Coomer, a Bubby whose setting himself on fire on accident for the first time in years, and a Benry who transcends beyond the confines of his code into an extradimemsional Chimera of sorts who can pass in and out of the liminal G space, become and summon skeleton minions who also can be or not be in that space, able to be seen by anyone or just by someone able to perceive that plane of existence, such as Gordon.
As Coomer destroys his clones, he gets pieces of his power and fragments of memory back. Enough to know that they are clones and that killing them returns his powers to him. Bubby and he quickly rekindle their bond, with the memory tapering being undone.
Bubby is still desperate to leave, trying to get Gordon to go faster by guilting him and saying he wants to go home (though black Mesa is his actual home). However everything just seems to get more and more drawn out and they can never really make progress.
Benry convinces Bubby that Gordon is the reason that they can't leave. Bubby can sense that something is different about Gordon so he believes it. Benry may or may not believe it himself. He may have realized that leading the Player to the end would only end the Game and tried to subvert that path. Or the programmed event of Gordon's ambush might have just pushed them both to it. Impossible to say. 
In any case, Bubby is quickly also detained and put back in his tube.
With enough clones killed, and having accidentally jumped out of the play box and seen that there's nothing physically beyond black Mesa, Coomer becomes aware of and connected to the console code and aware of the "real world". He tries to use Gordon's connection to the Player to get to the real world, though at this point he can only understand it as the world of Gordon's "dreams". When Tommy kills all of the clones, then knocks out Coomer, it causes a full reset and Coomer becomes his full,unshattered self again. He still is limited by his need for authorization through PlayCoins, but he's much more coherent and quickly becomes completely aware of his situation within the Game and starts talking directly to the Player through Gordon at times. 
The rest is history. 
As for some other non directly related things: Tommy is g man's attempt at a more biological connection between the code and the game universe. Tommy is his son and has all the abilities of a g-man but is largely unable to use them and unaware of them due to his young age (comparatively to the immortal g man, 36 is still a child) and his innocence. He is also completely integrated with the game universe with no glitches from the union. Tommy is not aware he's the Gman's son. He thinks it's just some guy who bought him Vin Diesel and the minions. Tommy tends to use his powers entirely accidentally when he does, with the exception of creating Sunkist. In doing so he also surpassed his father's ultimate limit: creating a completely new element to the game without having to gut other code. He created the perfect dog out of completely new content he willed into existence. Unfortunately for G-Man, Tommy is far too pure and goodhearted to be used to any nefarious ends. 
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fire-the-headcanons · 4 years
Text
Follow the Beacon Summer—What Happened
[Link to Masterpost]
The school slowly broke down into organized insanity as exams approached. Students worked through meals or fell asleep in the library as teachers gave more and more coursework for review. Teachers encouraged team leaders to make sure their comrades were ready.
Raven was being exactly as cooperative as usual.
"No." She almost growled, pulling the blanket over her head. "It's a stupid assignment. We already learned that."
"Which is why it's called review," Summer argued. "Come on. Our team could be top of our year! Just look over your notes again—"
"Go to sleep."
She raised an eyebrow. "It's only eight."
"Sun's down."
A badly-suppressed noise wafted past her ear, and she turned to scowl at Tai and Qrow. "What are you two snickering at?"
"Oh, nothing." Tai buried his face in his textbook. "What's a Goliath?"
Qrow didn't bother to look up. "Elephant Grimm."
"Oh, charming." He flipped to the index with a scowl. "Come on, Summer, let's just head to the library without her."
She scowled at the simmering lump of blankets. "Nope. We're going to study right here ." The quilt growled, a low rumble with enough snarl to make her hair stand on end. Raven could make a Beowolf jealous, in the right mood.
"Any chance they're smaller than the real thing?"
"Um… no."
"...Common in midwestern Sanus. Why haven't I heard of them?"
"Because they're smart enough to stay away from Vale," Qrow said, holding up his own textbook. A photograph took up most of the page, and the Grimm took up most of the photograph. The unlucky Huntress that had taken the picture had nearly been standing underneath it, and the edges were blurred like they'd been running. As always, the tender spots were identified with thin red arrows. The Goliath had one. Right under its chin, past the trunk. And the tusks. He set the book in his lap, continuing. "They're not very common in Anima, but if you ever see one in the wild, run in the opposite direction."
"No kidding," she muttered, leaning forward to look again. "That thing could flatten a bullhead."
"Size just makes them a bigger target. The real problem is they're one of the weird ones."
A shiver ran down Summer's back at the dark in his tone. "Weird—"
"—ones?" Tai squeaked.
"They can trumpet like regular elephants, except that when you hear it you're struck with paralyzing terror. Big cities use androids to fight 'em, and smaller towns pay the big cities to take care of it if one shows up. If they can afford it."
"...Have you ever seen one?" Summer asked.
A shadow fell over his face. "Once."
Tai swallowed. "...What happened?"
Qrow didn't meet either of their eyes. "People died." With the aura of someone trying to change the subject, he continued on with forced nonchalance. "Its trumpet won't affect you if you're drunk enough, but it makes it kind of hard to fight. …Don't put that on the test."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Summer said, tracing an X over her heart as she copied it down in her notes. Raven pulled her blanket down just enough to give him a scathing glare before disappearing again.
He glanced down at his notes, searching for another way to change the subject. "Uh, the collapse of Vacuo's government, was, um…"
"Well, if you ask some people the Dust companies were behind the whole thing," Tai said, still flipping through pages of tracks to be identified. "But Lionheart's probably looking for something more along the lines of 'Vacuo's people trusted Shade more than their council and it fell apart.'"
Qrow frowned at his notes. "What actually happened?"
"Depends who you ask."
"…But what actually happened?" he asked again, transferring his stare to Tai.
Tai just shrugged.
Qrow sighed, dumping the book back on his desk before getting up to rifle through his closet. "I've been going for hours, I'm gonna take a break. …Raven, where's the shampoo?"
"I used the last of it this morning. Sorry."
"Guess we're going into Vale tomorrow."
Summer leaned back on the hind legs of her chair, biting back a smile as she swiped her shampoo out of the closet. "Here, you can use mine tonight." The cap opened with a soft click and she sniffed at it. "If it's not too flowery."
He took it and gave it a shake. "Are you sure? You're almost out too."
"Yeah, how about I give you some Lien and you can pick mine up for me to pay me back? Tai and I still have to study for our history midterm too, we were going to do the reviews this weekend."
"Yeah, no problem. Thanks."
"Ehh, let's take a break too." He tossed his notes onto the bed and stood up, stretching. "Maybe the dragon will fall asleep while we're gone if we go on a walk."
"Takes one to know one, Xiao Long ."
"Goodnight, Raven," he said in an exaggerated whisper, gesturing for Summer to go through the door before him. Qrow pulled away, headed for the men's room, and Tai turned in the opposite direction.
"Wait, you're serious?" Summer asked as he started toward the stairs. "It's freezing out there."
"Use a little aura," he said, the humor gone from his voice. "We need to talk."
"...W-what…"
Tai shook his head, gesturing for her to follow, and as they stepped into the dark a shiver ran down her back that had nothing to do with the weather. A few flurries caught the light of a lamppost. First snow of the year, in the middle of exams. It figured.
"Qrow asked me not to talk about this," Tai muttered, and Summer snapped back to the moment. He rubbed his eyes. "I just…"
"What?"
"I walked in on him changing the other day…"
"Awkward. ...More awkward since you're telling me about it."
Tai shook his head, still not making eye contact. "That's not it. S… someone cut him."
Summer gritted her teeth. "He's hiding another injury? How low is his aura this ti—"
"No—not injuries. Scars. ...I've never seen anything like it," he mumbled, nausea stealing over his face. "Not in the first aid textbooks. None of the lines were parallel, they couldn't have been made by teeth or claws."
Summer's stomach turned over.
"I can't be sure but they looked recent."
"How recent?" she demanded, surprising herself with her voice's high pitch.
"I don't know. I asked him about it but he won't talk to me. All he said was that Raven didn't do it, but she couldn't know that I knew." His hands tightened on a book Summer hadn't noticed him holding as he held it up to glare at the cover. "...I've been reading about human trafficking."
"You don't think—"
"I don't know." Tai's hand dropped back to his side. "All I know for sure is, wherever they came from, they can't go back."
She nodded, wishing her stomach would untie itself or at least stop moving.
"Just… try to stay close to him, y'know? He's… he's terrified of me. He swears the skirt thing didn't bother him, but I can't think of any other reason for it—"
The knot in her gut tightened painfully. "Oh, fuck."
* * *
"Hey, Summer? Is your hair that color because of your soap?" Qrow asked, holding up the empty shampoo bottle. "City dwellers." He scraped a lock of hair between his nails and completely failed to remove the color. Slightly lighter than hers, now, but a similar deep red. "How the hell can anyone make soap complicated?"
"I put hydrogen peroxide in as a prank," Summer said, forcing a smile and fighting to keep her voice steady.
Comprehension dawned on his face. "Oh!"
"I'll get you some Lien for black dye so you can put it back to normal tomorrow."
"I dunno, I kinda like it," he said, examining his reflection in the mirror on the inside of his closet door. "…And I can spend the next few months telling everyone you're my twin."
"You can have him," Raven said instantly.
Qrow grabbed his pillow and casually tossed it on her face, ignoring the half-hearted squawk of protest. "Whatever. Let's get back to work."
Who could hurt him? He was kind to everyone—even Dan , for gods' sakes, with how unpleasant he'd been.
" ...Hey, this stuff isn't going to stain my pillow, is it?"
"It removes color from your hair, actually."
"Weird."
[A bit rushed, but it exists.]
Next Chapter: Qrow—Kill Me Yourself
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oddityofstars · 4 years
Text
Sanders Sides are the Seven Deadly Sins
Okay, trust me, I’m not going crazy.
As I was planning a new fic for Virgil after DWIT, I needed a set of different worlds like Bill Cipher’s Weirdmageddon that weren’t a carbon copy, so I decided to base them all off of the seven deadly sins so Virgil can go through his arc smoothly. That’s besides the point. I soon began to realize that each side identified with a certain sin, and it was all downhill from there.
I wanted to share this, because it coincides with the rainbow theory: seven sides, seven colors, only now added to the picture, seven sins.
I’ll start at the top of the rainbow, and go down the line per color.
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1: Red: Roman: PRIDE
So, I feel like this is a given. It was even said itself in the series that Roman is Thomas’ pride, honor, hopes, dreams, and creativity. Not to mention, he is based off of Romulus, from the lore of the creation of the city of Rome, and the twin brother of Remus (Yes, in both the creation of Rome in Roman mythology and in SS). Romulus ends up killing Remus, but what’s interesting is how Remus in DWIT compares himself and Roman to Cain and Abel around the 14-15 minute mark (I believe). 
Remus says “Roman and I, are Cain and Abel, and that cane up your butt...” But I would like to point out Remus’ gestures while he says this. He points to the ground as he says “Roman,” to himself when he says “Remus,” then points to himself again as he says “Cain,” and then goes down to Roman when he says “Abel,” which symbolizes the internal pain having to do with Roman and his pride currently in the series (as we all know, his needs are being ignored by mainly Patton but I won’t cover that entire thing today)
ANYWAY, in Christianity (basing it off of that because Thomas is catholic, and so there would be a weight on the correlation between definitions) Pride is basically when someone believes that they are above or superior to others (Or God, again, religiously.) 
We continue to see Roman have selfish behavior, even though Thomas is inherently selfless in his own way, so it evens out t can extent. But Roman talks about himself profusely throughout the entire series, and it is especially shown in SVS when Deceit knows he is ignoring his purpose, and considering Roman has a lot more pressure to be “Good creativity” because of the new awareness of his brother, AND through him rigging the vote in SA: ATHD, he owns pride, in Thomas and as a representation of the sin.
Also, when Logan is listing off the 5 deadly sins that are committed in your head during DWIT, he pointes towards Roman’s direction as he says Pride. (Just a little detail I noticed)
2: Orange: ???: SLOTH:
We don’t know the orange side, or if there is one. But considering my choices for the other sides, Sloth is the only one left, and it makes sense.
If we are going off of the logic that every side has a counterpart BESIDES Virgil because he is the neutral antihero type of the bunch, Sloth would be a great antagonist to either Logan or Patton. Patton, because he cares a lot and Sloth has a lack of care. Or Logan (because we don’t really know Deceit’s true opposite yet) who has a large work ethic, and sloth is defined as extreme laziness.
That’s all I really have until we have more clarity on the orange color.
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3: Yellow: Deceit (404 Error: No Name Found): GREED
This should really go without saying.
Greed, again, according to religious understanding, is one’s obsessive desire to obtain more than they need. Like pride, it can lead to all evil, and considering Deceit’s depiction as an antagonist when he really isn’t, it would make sense. 
Oh, and also, in SVS, he rigs the court scenario so he would win, wants Thomas to not be disadvantaged in a world where he has to abide by rules that are made “in the name of a lie” (Paraphrasing the snake’s own words).
Also, he is symbolized by a snake, who are sly. 
ALSO, IS DRESSED LIKE BILL CIPHER IN SVS FOR FUDGE SAKE
The triangle that wanted to rule an entire universe just because he wanted to considered a God and because he was obsessed with power? Some overarching symbolism that makes a lot of sense when dug deeper? I think greed works out best for him. 
And, in CLBG, he impersonates Patton, who in my opinion, is the side who is one of the easiest to get what he wants (Shown by wanting to be the Director at the beginning)
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4: Green: Remus: ENVY
Out of all of them, I wasn’t expecting Remus to be the hardest.
Continuing the story of Cain and Abel and how Cain kills Abel, and how Remus pointed himself out as Cain, Cain’s motivation for killing his brother was envy. 
Not to mention, Remus consistently compares himself to Roman, and being better than him and more misunderstood in order to be seen as his equal or better than him because of how he thinks, etc. There’s a lot of trash talking Roman from Remus. A Lot. 
He seems to be envious of Roman’s favorability, even if Roman is one of the least favorite sides (I say paired with Logan, but who am I to know the fandom’s accurate statistics) in the fandom. And if Remus is favored more, he will gain the satisfaction he needs. 
Also from being the “unloved brother from the genesis,” I say there is a lot of self worth issues that connect to envy with Remus. This would also parallel Roman’s own self worth issues but with his pride, making sense for why Remus has such an affect on him.
Also, envy is classified as insatiable desire, and usually characterized with sad or resentful covetousness towards the possession of or someone else.
I say it fits the bill pretty clearly for our stinky boi.
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5: Light Blue: Patton: LUST
Again, this is pretty self explanatory.
Even though lust is considered intense longing (usually for romantic or sexual desire), this makes sense for Patton.
He is Thomas’ heart, and recently while wanting Thomas to be good person, and being strict with his need for this, and his banishing of bag thoughts, repression as a defense mechanism when something doesn’t go his way, etc. Lust seems to be the perfect fit.
At this point, Logan is the only one who can knock down Patton’s walls of hope and lust when it comes to what he wants and expects instinctually from Thomas (as seen HEAVILY in DWIT).
The lust cause him to be reckless and ignorant at times, and in the new video, I think we will see that come into play HEAVILY.
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6: Dark Blue/Indigo: Logan: GLUTTONY
Okay I know it’s ironic that this is about gluttony and Logan is highkey checking out Patton in this GIF but it’s not what I’m trying to prove.
Logan’s obsession with learning and absorbing new information and teaching it and having this never ending cycle of learning that he’s obsessed with (especially after Thomas is done with school) mirrors the appetite of that of a glutton, only this is for knowledge.
Gluttony is also relative to people who believe that they are above others, as to why they eat so much. Logan has said in LNTAO that he is the most important side.
 That’s all I have, this one is again, self explanitory.
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7: Purple: Virgil: WRATH
This one was also a hard one to pinpoint until I figured it out.
Wrath is defined as uncontrolled feelings of rage, anger, or hatred, often having to do with vengeance, and is only considered a sin when it is ensued against an innocent person. 
Think of Virgil’s hatred of Deceit. Not Remus, he actually seems somewhat okay with Remus at the end of DWIT after learning how to tolerate him once more. But Deceit, he hates every word that comes out of his mouth, dismisses him, hisses at him, does all he can to ignore or get rid of him because of his past with hime (likely, Deceit hurting him and therefore him not wanting Deceit to hurt Thomas when he isn’t but that’s again, for another day)
Deceit tells us in the Halloween episode that Virgil may be-rid them all one day. That sounds like something that needs motive of wrath to occur.
Also, I’d like to mention that Deceit is afraid of Virgil, and sees him as a threat, and the only reason I could think of would be his power from his irritability/anger (A symptom of anxiety for those who don’t know) which would count as wrath. It could asl one taken out against Patton and his irrational expectations or whatever may come next episode. Maybe it’s time for Virgil to side with Roman or something. 
Anyway, wrath seems to fit the bill. And I think we will see it play out HEAVILY in the new episode.
Catch you on the flip side fanders. Hope you enjoyed this little rant.
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hellopvaport · 3 years
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turtlepated · 4 years
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The Ghost and the She-wolf
Part 6
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This one is looooong. It might be the longest yet. I’m also dumping in some lore, some backstory, and a whole bunch of angst so brace yourselves!
Zhuk, pirate or otherwise, and the Mafia!Beejs brought to you by @monsterlovinghours 
[TW: Mentions of torture, nothing descriptive but proceed with caution.]
Tag list: @beetlejuicebeadoll , @do-ya-hear-that-sound , @dilfyjuice , @nikkivfx , @insomni-snacc , @young-erstill
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In a daze, you allowed Zhuk to steer you aft. Being submerged had put out the few remaining fires licking at the ship, and the crewmen had already unlashed themselves and begun to get to work clearing the deck of the blackened and burnt mainsail. Your head was full to bursting with questions, so much so that you couldn’t even decide which to ask first. So you held your silence as the two of you passed through the doorway into the narrow corridor. He paused and you kept going, stilling when you felt his hand part company with your lower back and turning to see where he’d gone. He had managed to squeeze his large frame into one of the small cabins that lined the hall, emerging moments later with folded clothing held in his hand. “Here,” he said softly, offering it to you. “Feel free to use my cabin to change.” You swallowed down a fluttering feeling in your chest, turning and walking ahead of him as he gestured you onward with a sweep of his arm. Zhuk shut the door behind him as you crossed awkwardly to the center of the room, looking around uncertainly as if waiting for his permission. “Ladies first,” he said with a smile, motioning to the privacy screen in the corner. You gulped again, perturbed by the jittery sensations bubbling from deep inside as you padded meekly behind the screen. You tugged the end a little closer to the wall for good measure. 
It was more difficult getting the dress off than it had been to put it on, but that was probably more due to your trembling fingers and the uncooperative nature of heavy wet fabric adhering to your damp and chilled skin. After struggling for a few moments you managed to shimmy your way out of the ruined and sodden layers of skirts, pooling on the floor around your feet. The sound of movement from outside your private little nook drew your attention and you stood on tiptoe to peek over the screen. Zhuk stood by his bunk facing away from you, shucking his own drenched jacket and tossing it across the arms of the chair behind his desk. His equally drenched tunic clung to his broad back, showing off the fine musculature between his shoulder blades. Your eyes watched them work as he reached back with both hands and began to peel the soggy shirt off over his head. You were shocked at yourself when you realized your cheeks were warming, torn between looking away to give him the privacy he had considerately given to you and indulging in the chance to see him in a state of semi-undress. 
The thing that made you make up your mind, however, wasn’t his admittedly impressive physique that was revealed when his tunic was removed. Your eyes widened as you took in the vast collection of scars that marred the Russian captain’s skin. Two in particular, thick, ropey, and pearly white, ran parallel down either side of his spine and you wondered what could have possibly caused them. You could only imagine the pain he must have endured to receive such ghastly marks. “I suppose you have questions, volchitsa,” he called to you over his bare shoulder and you choked on your own breath, ducking back down before he could see you peeping at him. You cleared your throat, buying time to make sure your voice was at its normal register when you spoke. “Several, yes,” you admitted, busying yourself with getting dressed quickly and angrily steering your wandering thoughts away from visualizing him changing out of his tight, wet breeches. You huffed in mortification as warmth flooded through you from the top of your head to your toes, forcing yourself to focus on your own clothing. It was a simple tunic and breeches, clearly a man’s cut, so not terribly well fitting on your own body. But it was nice to be in pants again and out of the troublesome skirts. “I suppose the first and most pressing is where are we headed? I’ve never heard of Nav.” You jumped slightly as he knocked on the wooden frame of the screen, smiling inscrutably as you tucked the hem of your overlarge shirt into the loose waistband of your breeches. You willed yourself not to squirm as his gaze swept down your body, nodding approvingly. “You look much more like yourself,” he said with a chuckle. “Nav is an island in the North Atlantic.” 
You frowned, squeezing between him and the screen when he seemed uninterested in standing aside to let you pass. Heat spiked in your face again, but you studiously ignored it and the low rumble of him chuckling to himself. You went to his desk, where charts and maps and documents were arranged in orderly stacks, flipping carefully through them until in search of one particular sheaf. Finding it, you withdrew a large navigational chart of the North Atlantic and spread it out on top of the desk as Zhuk moved to stand beside you. You could feel his eyes on you, but you concentrated on scanning the map. “Where precisely is this island?” you asked, frowning when you were unable to spot it anywhere. “You will not find the island of Nav on that map or any other, moye sokrovishche. It has never been plotted and it never will be because only the dead can reach it.” At that you jerked upright, nearly headbutting him in the chest because he stood so close. “The dead?” you repeated incredulously. Zhuk nodded sagely in affirmative. “Nav is not it’s true name, it is simply what I call it. The island itself has no name, but given that its purpose is as a gathering place for the souls of the departed, I chose to call it Nav: the name the ancient Slavs used for the land of the dead.” 
Zhuk spoke with such surety and confidence, as though he were not spouting nonsense born from myths and fairy tales. But when you considered all that you’d seen since coming aboard his ship: the sea monsters, the waves seemingly obeying his commands, his own startling transformation, you had to question whether or not he really was telling the truth. “If this Nav is an island of the dead that only they can find, how is it that you know how to get there?” Zhuk’s easy smile slipped from his face and a somber, sorrowful expression took its place. “That,” he began with a heavy sigh, propping himself upright with one arm braced against the desk. “Is a story I will tell you another time. For now, tell me what you and Renard talked about when you paid him a visit.” You surprised yourself with how forthcoming you were in answering his inquiry. When exactly had you come to trust him so easily? He hummed pensively as you explained Renard’s plan, revealing that he had been vaguely acquainted with the man during his pirating days. “He was always a cunning and vicious bastard,” Zhuk said with a mirthless scoff. “It’s no surprise to find out that the Navy endorses his methods.” You scowled distastefully. “Not all the Navy,” you insisted. “He’s a monster, and I’ve long thought that by the time the Lord High Admiral realizes that he’s loosed a mad dog on the seas it will be too late to stop him.” 
The Perperuna was made ready to sail before sundown and Zhuk, with his mysterious power to compel the tides and winds to do his bidding, was able to set her on her course at top speed. You accompanied him at the helm, a little awestruck by how he seemed to know instinctively which direction to go without need to consult the charts, any sort of tools or even a simple compass.  As the ship sailed further north, the temperature dropped considerably. Zhuk had taken one look at you with your arms pressed hard against your middle, breathing into your cupped hands to warm your fingers before he swept off his own greatcoat and draped it around you. It swallowed you, but you were grateful for the gesture and for the warmth. When you asked what he would do when he got cold himself, he only chuckled in that damnable enigmatic way he had. On the second night of sailing north you came up on deck to find a dense fog swirling out over the sea, so thick it was as if the clouds had settled just above the gentle lapping of the waves. The sea was smooth as glass, the ever-present wind dwindled down to almost nothing, yet the Perperuna cruised steadily forward into the fog bank. You padded to the forecastle rail and leaned against it, staring hard into the fog until it felt as if you’d gone blind but you could see nothing. This far north, without breakwater at the bases to give them away, there was always the risk of icebergs. Coupled with this blasted fog and the threat only compounded. What was Zhuk thinking, steering through this mess? The ship had only just managed to stay afloat after Renard’s assault and then being swallowed by a whirlpool. 
You didn’t even realize you had company until he settled himself at the rail beside you, copying your posture and gazing out past the bow. You jumped and gasped, startled. How could such a big man move so silently? Predictably, Zhuk chuckled at your little start. “Keeping watch?” he asked, the easy smile you’d grown so accustomed to on his lips. Despite yourself, you flashed a smirk back, not willing to let him think he’d got the better of you. “Someone should,” you retorted with no real venom. “Especially in this.” Zhuk shifted, turning to face you and propping himself against the rail on his elbow. “After all you’ve seen, you still think this ship can be foundered by the elements?” he teased, his eyes glittering despite the low light. You frowned, privately seeing his point but again refusing to concede. Now that you had a moment with the captain, there was a question you had been wanting to ask but had not been sure how to broach. “If you would rather not say, I understand,” you began gently, thinking that it might be too unpleasant a memory to revisit. “But I saw the… the marks on your back…” You trailed off, certain that the shrewd man beside you would know exactly what you were asking. 
Zhuk hummed, the sound rumbling from deep in his chest. “Yes, I know you did. And I did promise to explain,” he admitted while you ducked your head away, hoping he wouldn’t see the blush rise to your face at the realization that you had been caught spying on him. With a sigh, Zhuk told his tale. 
“I was not always a pirate, volchitsa. I had a family once, a village. A home. It was a hard life, but it was a good one. Fighting was never something that I enjoyed, it was a necessary evil to protect those I cared for. Though I did have a talent for it, I must admit. I took that talent and, with many others, joined the ranks of men to fight against the Crimeans to preserve our homeland. I thought I had seen violence and bloodshed before, but this was no battle… This was a massacre. I was the only one to survive, but I was captured before I could even think to escape.” He paused and breathed deeply, letting it out in a long exhale and turning to you. “I do not wish to upset you, volchista,” he murmured. “It is not a pretty story.” You stepped closer to him, pressing your arm flush against his, wishing to impart some sort of comfort. “Tell me anyway? Please?” you entreated. Zhuk nodded and continued. “My captors used the opportunity I presented to test an execution method used by the Nords, to make an example of me. I was stripped of my shirt, my wrists bound together and suspended over my head. They cut me, as you saw, opened my back and pulled my lungs through the wounds.” You made a shuddering sound of revulsion at his description of their cruelty, unconsciously leaning further into him, pressing your head against his shoulder. “Barbarians,” you seethed, furious at the men you would never meet for what they had done to him. “How did you survive such brutality?” Zhuk sighed through his nose, pressing his face against the top of your head and whispering into your hair: “I did not.” 
You gasped, stunned, but did not move away. Some part of you had known, deep down, that this was no ordinary man you had devoted yourself to pursuing. Now you knew the truth, once and for all. You could sense him beside you, so still, waiting to see how you would respond to his admission; if you would fear him, recoil from him, the dead man who had saved your life. “What happened?” you asked, feeling the tension leaving him as he sighed again, his breath gusting through your hair. “I was dead, but then I was not. I was brought back and given a task: to gather wayward souls and shepherd them to the other side.” Your brow furrowed, not understanding. “Brought back? How? By who?” “A woman I pray you will never meet, moye sokrovishche. But that is enough for now. We are here.” 
As suddenly as it had appeared, the Perperuna exited the impenetrable mire of fog and you could see an island in the distance. Monolithic sea stacks rose up on either side of the ship like the fingers of a giant, standing guard to the mouth of a bay. You could already see that the dark shape of the island was dotted in flickering lights, so it must be inhabited. But Zhuk had said only the dead could find it… Perperuna docked at a wharf in the bay, the crew bustling around making final preparations to disembark while you stood at the gunwale and surveyed what lay around you. It looked like a settlement of some kind, there were buildings that could have been shops or houses, roads clearly laid out, but not a soul to be seen. All the lights you had glimpsed from further out in the bay had vanished, as though thousands of candles were all snuffed out at once. Zhuk called for you as the gangway was lowered to the dock, waiting for you and directing you ahead of himself. It was the first time your feet had been on solid ground in months, and it felt odd to be standing without the constant motion of a boat beneath you.
All around you the crew began to disperse, save for the loyal bosun who was once again conversing with the captain in quiet Russian. As they conducted their business you ventured off to have a look around this island of the dead. So far it was rather demure, apparently abandoned. You meandered from the docks toward the vacant town square, where there was a stone fountain with no water. While studying the statue of some sort of strange serpentine creature that dominated the center, a soft voice behind you made you turn. “Captain?” There was a man standing just at your back. You had not heard him approach and you were certain he had not been there when you went to the fountain. You also knew the man, a midshipman still clad in his blackened and tattered Naval uniform, to be dead. “Captain, it is you!” he said, his voice drifting as if from a great distance. “We wondered where you were, what had taken you so long.” A hard mass was forming in your throat as other forms began to materialize around him, starting out as vaguely blurry shapes like heat mirages that coalesced into the visages of your own crew. They greeted you heartily, relieved to see that you’d finally made your way to the island. When they all fell silent at the same time, all glowering hard at something behind you, you looked back to see Zhuk standing a short ways away, watching somberly.
“Captain… did he bring you here?” asked the midshipman who first recognized you. “You’re with him? After everything we went through?” The man stepped closer, studying you, and you couldn’t help flinching guiltily as understanding dawned in his eyes. “You’re alive,” he said, creating a ripple of murmuring in the ghosts gathered behind him. “You led us all to our deaths, and here you are now with the pirate responsible.” “That’s enough, Brown,” came another voice, and all eyes turned to an officer as he made his way through the assembly. Your own lieutenant, Jonathan Mathers; steadfast and loyal as any person ever could be, smiled warmly when he saw you. “Glad to see you’ve finally arrived, Captain,” said Mathers. The warm rush of fondness and gratitude gave way to guilt, clawing at your insides. “Mathers, I…” you tried to say around the lump in your throat. “I’m so sorry, I never meant any of this to happen.” Mathers’ smile turned sad and vacant, and you realized that he and the midshipman and the other crew were losing their definition, dissolving at the edges as though evaporating like water vapor. “I know, Captain. And I know how you must be feeling. Don’t fret, we are dead, our troubles are now over.”
His gaze cut over your shoulder, at Zhuk, and he stepped in closer, leaning toward you so that you could feel the chill of death curling off him. “But you are alive, and I fear your troubles are only just beginning.” With that they were gone, dissipated like fog and leaving only a faint snap of cold and an ache deep in your chest that stretched up your throat, throbbing in the roots of your teeth and burning your eyes. You felt a heavy hand curl gently, protectively around your shoulder as Zhuk stepped up behind you. “I am sorry, volchitsa,” he said sadly. “I should have warned you.” You wiped at the moisture threatening to spill from your eyes, taking a deep breath. “I got them killed,” you said, your voice hollow and raw but certain. “Oh, now, don’t take it so hard.” Your eyes snapped up, glancing around for the source of the sultry, amused voice that had come echoing from somewhere in the shadows. Gradually you heard footsteps, as well as the soft metallic clacking as of a walking stick meeting the pavement. “The dead do so love to deliver their cryptic warnings,” the newcomer went on, now a discernible shape in the gloom as they came closer. “It makes them feel so mysterious, you see. A bit of free advice, ma cherie?” You could see him now. He was shorter than Zhuk and nowhere near as broad, but there were certain traits that piqued your interest. The pale skin, the greenish tint to his hair. And his striking eyes, one green, the other startlingly purple.
His grin as he watched you taking in his appearance was vaguely predatory, but you felt no fear as he chuckled and delivered on his promised words of wisdom. “Don’t dwell on dead words. Worse than riddles, more often than not, and far less entertaining.” His mismatched eyes drifted past you to the Russian captain. “Zhuk, you old pirate, it’s been a long time.” Zhuk was chuckling as he stepped up next to you, reaching offering a hand. “That is has, Scarabee. I did not expect anyone to be here already.” Scarabee grinned again, a faint sort of glow to his eyes as he shook Zhuk’s hand with glittering jeweled rings clinking on his fingers. “You know I have my ways, mon amie. But why don’t you introduce me properly to your lovely friend?” Zhuk dutifully reported your name and rank to his associate, whose cat-like smile widened as he held out a hand to you in invitation. Swallowing, you laid your hand in his and he bent forward, pressing a kiss to your knuckles. “Well, ma jolie, welcome to Carrefour.” 
-----
[Translation: moye sokrovishche – “my treasure” ] 
Introducing: Captain Scarabee! It’s my first time writing him and I’m kinda nervous about getting him right.
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to be tagged in the next bit, say the word!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
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randaccidents · 4 years
Text
Good Night
*crawls out of cave* I live! School did not kill me or my writing juices! And I come with an offering of extreme fluff with a side of angst!
For this fic, we’re going back in time! That’s right, this is before Abandoned Shadows happens! Timeline wise, it comes after Fractured (click the title for fic)
Shadow People AU by the magnificent @mine-sara-sp
TW: nightmares
Sleepover party!!!
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Knock knock.
Groaning, Wels dragged his feet over to the front door. Who was it this time? He just wanted to rest without sleeping, was that so hard to ask?
He could hear the knocking grow louder and more intense the longer he took to get the door, someone else's voice weaving through trying to get the knocker to calm down. Oh, he knew exactly who was behind that door. Listening out for a longer pause in between the knocks, Wels pulled the door open, stepping to the side as he did so.
Good thing too, as Biffa’s leg came up to kick the spot where the door was and where he was standing just a second ago. Reaching out, he quickly grabbed ahold of the foot, lifting it up above his head and causing Biffa to land on his back with an ‘oof’, much to the gleeful amusement of Jevin. Grinning at the antics of his friends, heart already feeling lighter, he stood over the downed robot. He let his arms hang at a slightly raised angle. “So, what brings you to my humble abode?”
Biffa narrowed his eyes at him. “Do not do what I think you’re about to do.”
A chuckle made Wels look up, locking eyes with Jevin’s devious gaze. The slime-man slowly raised his arms to stand at a 45° angle to the floor. Wels grinned, raising his arms further to copy the action. “Don’t do what Biffa?” Jevin asked innocently.
Biffa’s eyes flitted between the two hermits above him. “You know what I mean. Don’t do it, or I will stab you.”
The two hermits looked at each other, mischief dancing in their eyes. In sync, they brought their arms up parallel to the floor, looking down upon the downed hermit. “So,” Wels began in a conversational tone. “What are you going to do now Biffa?”
Biffa groaned, defeated, covering his face with his hands. “I hate you guys so much,” he mumbled out, the impact ruined by the laughter that cut into his sentence midway through.
Openly laughing, Wels joined Jevin in hauling Biffa to his feet, giving them both a big hug. It felt like he hasn't laughed like that in weeks. Gently pushing himself out of the sticky hug, Wels asked the question he's been trying to get answered since he opened the door. "What are you two doing here? It's almost night!"
Jevin pulled his head free from Wels' arm to look at him, excitement sparkling in his eyes. "We're having a sleepover party! The whole server's coming. Surprise!"
Wels stared back in shock. "For me? But why?"
He could see Biffa frantically gesturing at Jevin to cut it out do not say anything and raised an eyebrow. Obliviously, Jevin continued talking anyway. “We noticed that you weren’t feeling too well, so we got the whole server together to throw a fun sleepover party for you!”
Wels glanced at Biffa, who was heaving a sigh of relief, and briefly considered calling them out. Then he decided, ah heck, he was having a bad day and a sleepover party with the whole server sounded like the perfect break. He grinned widely at them. “Then what are we still standing around for? Come in!” Grabbing them by the hands, Wels dragged his two friends into his mansion, practically pulling them down onto the couch.
After a bit of laughter, the trio finally untangled their limbs, sitting squashed together on the couch, talking about everything and nothing. Biffa jokingly teased Wels, who responded by squeezing himself against the armrest and boxing himself in with two couch cushions. “Don’t talk to me, I’m mad at you now.” Wels yelled over their combined laughter, trying and failing to actually sound angry. Suddenly, Jevin jumped off the couch, literally bouncing in place. “Oh oh, that gives me an idea! We should build a pillow fort! Using the couch mattress! And pillows! It can be our own empire!”
A pillow thrown in his face silences Jevin, who goes down silently. Biffa stands from the couch, stretching, face obscured from Wels’ view. “Well, I’m not sure how much of a good idea that is, but…”
And all of a sudden there was nothing but air beneath Wels, sending him tumbling onto the hardwood frame of the couch, clutching his two pillows tight. Biffa stood triumphantly over him, couch mattress held aloft. “We need a good base if we’re going to be building anything!” he said proudly, turning to lay down the mattress at the other side of the room. Jevin, already back on his feet, bounced after Biffa.
Wels watched as Jevin grabbed Biffa by the shoulder, pulling him into a whispered conversation. Cautiously, he got to his feet, both pillows still hugged close to his chest. They were planning something, and he wasn’t sure he was going to like what they had in mind. His worries were confirmed when they turned to face him with mechanical synchronisation, wide mischievous grins on their faces.
“You know Biffa, a fort needs something to protect, don’t you think?”
“You're right Jevin. I think I have the perfect candidate in mind.”
Two pillows met their faces with a phoomph, obscuring their view for a few precious seconds. “You’ll have to catch me first!” came the call of their target, already halfway down the corridor. Glancing at each other, the two hermits’ grins grew as they sprinted in pursuit of their quarry.
It was a few rounds about the house afterwards, with multiple close shaves, before they managed to capture Wels, Biffa having thrown Jevin at him. Quickly catching up to the downed hermit before he could scramble out from under Jevin, Biffa lifted him in a bridal carry, prompting a squeak from Wels. Laughing, he triumphantly paraded Wels down the hallway back to the main room, Jevin yelling "All hail his highness!" the whole time. Wels hid his face in his hands, embarrassed yet laughing.
Returning to the main room, Biffa set down Wels on the mattress, quickly taking a knee. Jevin bowed low to Wels. "All hail his royal majesty, King Wels of Pillowfortopia! May his reign last long and bouncy!"
Giving in to the roleplay, Wels lounged back on the nearest pillow. "Thank you, thank you! But this isn't a kingdom without proper walls! For my first order as king, the fort must be finished!"
Saluting with a laugh, Jevin and Biffa set to work on the pillow fort, building up the walls. Wels continued to lounge about, pointing out where to improve the walls and where to add details, as a true king should.
("Jevin if you slime up those pillows you will be banished."
"A little late for that."
"You're on laundry duty tomorrow."
":(" )
They were almost done with the walls when someone began knocking at the door. Wels looked up from his seat, glancing at the door. A wicked plan formed in his mind. “Oh Jevin~” he said in a sing-song voice, prompting the slime to look up from where he knelt near the foundations. Wels couldn’t hold back a grin as he continued imperiously, “There is someone at the door. Go invite them into this humble abode.”
Jevin’s eyes flicked back to his work. “I’m working on the foundations, send Biffa!” 
Wels had to hide a snicker behind his hand as he watched Biffa’s face cycle through the five stages of grief, his chest monitor blinking frantically from one emotion to another. Eyes flicking between his two friends, Biffa could tell there was no convincing them to switch with him. With as much indignance he could muster, Biffa stood. “I put you on that throne, and this is how you repay me? Should I not have a better reward Your Highness?” he pleaded, still trying to weasel his way out of his new chore. Wels simply waved his hand at Biffa. "Exactly. You put a tyrant on the throne, you pay the consequences. Now go, it is your duty."
With no way out, Biffa gave a small hmph as he finally left to invite the new arrivals in. A beat, then two beats of silence. Jevin looked up at Wels, who met his gaze.
Then the spell was broken and they dissolved into laughter, giggling like teenagers.
"Did you see his face! It was priceless!" Wels gasped, bent over double in laughter.
"I wish I did when you say that! You're acting was so perfect, I could hear him struggling not to laugh!"
They were only just beginning to recover from their laughing fit when a distinct robotic voice drifted down the hallway. "We've been building a pillow fort, and Wels is bullying me! I did all the hard work, and he sends me off to be messenger? Unfathomable!" The offended tone of voice sent them spiralling into laughter yet again, Jevin having to pull away from the walls and lay down before he knocked something over.
And so it was that when Zedaph, Impulse and Tango entered the room, they were greeted by two hermits dying of laughter in their various positions. Biffa gave a loud sigh as he looked over his idiots. "You see? I have to do all the hard work around here, while they goof around!"
Gasping for air, Wels shouted in their general direction. "Hey! You put me on this throne, what did you expect? To be treated like royalty?"
"Maybe?" came the meek reply, sending not just Wels and Jevin but the ZIT into a manic laughing fit. Biffa huffed at the lack of support from his friends, mock-angrily stomping his way over to the fort. Gently shoving a giggling Jevin aside, he began to roughly build up the wall, his wide grin betraying his true feelings.
Impulse was the first to recover, slinging his arms over the shoulders of his fellow ZIT. “Well boys, if they have a pillow fort, then we just have to make the best blanket fort this world has ever seen!”
Zedaph’s eyes lit up, the sheep man’s tail wagging frantically in sudden excitement. “Oh oh oh can we make it look like a sheep? Please?”
One look from Tango and Impulse was enough to send Zedaph running off squealing, a big happy grin on his face. Wels giggled as he watched them split up to look for supplies to begin their wooly project. “Search the upper rooms! I have blankets up there!” he yelled down the corridor, the response coming back echoed and distorted with a happy note.
Biffa looked up at him, big dopey grin still in place. “I put a sign in front of the doors, so anyone else coming will know to just come straight in.”
Wels gave him a quick thumbs up, sagging backwards into his seat with a yawn. The past - how long has it been now? He assumed its been half an hour, the sun barely casting its rays into the room - half an hour, while it had been fun, drained his small reserve of energy, leaving him boneless in his seat. He sighed. He really wanted to hang out with his friends, but a nap, no matter how scary sleep was right now, sounded like an increasingly good idea.
...but they went through all the trouble of arranging a sleepover party, the least he could do was to humour them. Weakly, he began to push himself up into a sitting position when a curtain of darkness was thrown over him. Flailing disorientedly, he pulled his head out from under the constricting item, staring down at what he recognised as a blanket.
What?
Looking up, he found Impulse hovering above him, soft concern clashing with the mischief in their eyes. "You don't have to stay awake if you feel tired, you know." Impulse said, moving to lie down next to Wels, a blanket in his hands. "Everyone needs rest sometimes. We can join them again when we wake up."
Wels could tell that Impulse wasn't remotely tired, with his fingers fidgeting with the blanket over him. It should feel like pity, make him feel bad.
Instead, it just makes him feel warm inside, knowing that they didn't want him to feel left out. He shakes his head lightly. "Alright mum, I'm gonna sleep now."
Letting the resulting giggles of his friends wash over him, Wels pulled the blanket up around his shoulders and lay back down, snuggling up against Impulse without any hesitation. He felt an arm wrap around him and pull him in snugly, solid and firm. He breathed in, smelt the unique mix of redstone iron dirt that was Impulse, letting it soothe him as he drifted off to sleep.
-----------
Blue laughter questions bells sparks lights smiling crashing ringing all-consuming mind-numbing-
-tin knight?
Wels jolted awake with a gasp, clutching his hands close to his chest. Dimly, he recognised that he was only wearing cloth and leather, not quite sleepwear, not quite his normal wear. There was something rubbing between his hands, and he shifted his attention as fully as he could onto it.
Rubbing it between his covered fingers, he zeroed in on its features, picking out threads. Fabric, he was holding something fabric. Memories trickled in slowly, as they always did after an event like that. He quickly brushed aside any memories of his nightmare, shuddering as he did so. Never a good thing to remember those.
What was he doing earlier? He remembered laughter, and friends, and…
Head snapping up, Wels looked around to see if anyone had witnessed his awakening. He didn’t want anyone to know that he had nightmares, much less what kind of nightmares they were.
He found himself surrounded in a hollow made of pillows, with no one around. He supposed that Impulse must have gotten up at some point while he rested. That was fine. Muffled noises filtered in through the walls, louder and more chaotic than he remembered falling asleep to. Nightmare forgotten, blanket wrapped tight around him, Wels crawled out of the small cave to meet the chaos he could hear outside.
Four small pillow walls met him as he exited, Jevin and Biffa shouting excitedly across the room over them. There were two other people he could see standing on the walls, a red shirt and torn lab coat each. Ren and Doc, when did they come?
“Well, look who finally woke up?”
Jolting at the sudden voice, Wels looked around, trying to find who spoke.
The voice chuckled. “Behind and below you Wels.”
Oh. Oops. Embarrassed, Wels turned his attention away from the walls before him. In a corner of the fort, he saw TFC sitting with his back against the wall next to the hole he just crawled out of, two blanket lumps snuggled against him. Smiling, the old hermit waved Wels over. Obeying the unspoken request, Wels sat down cross-legged before TFC. “Hi TFC, mind telling me what I missed out on while asleep?”
TFC chortled, his laughter a balm on Wels’ still shaken world. One of the blanket lumps grumbled at the movement of its pillow, shifting to drag its blanket further over its head. Wels caught a glimpse of green plated armour before TFC began to speak, capturing his attention.
“I can’t tell you exactly what happened before I arrived, but the Sahara boys took over what remained of the couch, those ZIT boys managed to create a standing sheep out of blankets, and your friends over there made this pillow fort. I don’t know what’s happening now, Python and I were trying to get Xisuma to rest and now I’m trapped under two sleepy hermits.” He shook his head. “You boys don’t know how to take a break. You either won’t sleep or you start a war.”
That comment threw Wels for a loop. “Wait, a war?”
“W E L S”
The sudden shout was accompanied by a weight on his back, with only a singular arm around his chest keeping him from falling forward. He blinked down at the red-and-yellow arm around him and sighed, a small smile playing at his lips. “Hi Biffa.”
A weight dropped onto his head, heavy but familiar. “Hey. Finally wake up sleeping beauty?”
“Yes, but whatever have you two been up to while I slept!” Wels exclaimed, twisting around to face Biffa. Or, more accurately, Biffa’s chest, since Biffa still had his head set firmly on his own. The arm now at his back tugged him in firmly, and he didn’t resist the impromptu hug even as he kept talking. “Mmph, TFC said there was a war? What did you guys do?”
“Oh, that wasn’t us this time!” Biffa exclaimed, releasing his hold on Wels to gesture wildly. Wels whined at the loss of touch, prompting Biffa to slide an arm around his waist and pull him to his side. “You see, when the Architects arrived, they claimed what remained of the couch and dubbed it Woodlandia. In an attempt to acquire more resources for their build, they attacked us and Sheepent (that’s what ZIT built by the way). We only just managed to call a truce cause no one wanted to make Zed cry and TFC insisted on making our base into a bedroom, but tensions are rising once more. We must prepare to defend our homeland my liege, for when they come they will be swift and unforgiving.”
Wels pulled a face. “Another war? Can’t we just be friends?”
Biffa huffed, pulling himself and Wels to their feet. “Tell that to everyone else. They’re bloodthirsty. Nothing could possibly dampen their hunger!”
Wels’ response was interrupted by the slam of a door. Sharing a glance, the two scrambled to peak over the nearest wall. All around the room, hermits had fallen silent in various positions, all focus on the footsteps coming down the hallway. The question was in the air, who would join them in this fight for comfortable sleeping rights?
Scar stepped into the room, mouth open in preparation to speak. 
And stumbled over his words, flustered and clearly not expecting everyone in the room to be looking at him. Clearing his throat, he tried again. "Hello, uh, everyone who is here! Concorp has arrived and we bring the feast with us!"
A towering stack of shulkers wobbled out from behind Scar. The room was so quiet that one could hear Scar whispering to Cub. "Are you sure you don't need help? I ca-"
"No no I'm fine. Just let me-"
Slowly, the tower inched forward, hermits moving out of the way yet keeping an eye on the shaking tower, instinctively aware that something was going to happen. Reaching the coffee table at the center, Cub finally put down the shulkers with a plop. Dusting his hands off, Cub stepped out of the immediate danger zone and spread his arms wide. "Let them eat cake!"
And with that, everyone burst into motion, scrabbling to get food. Wels looked out over the sea of children, observing how each hermit tried to grab dinner for themselves. Beside him, Biffa laughed at the mess below.
"What's this, the Hunger Games?" Came Doc's voice from his other side. The wall dipped slightly, and Wels looked up to see that Ren had clambered up to stand at the top. Arms held dramatically high, he shouted "May the odds be ever in your favour!", sending Doc roaring with laughter. Wels watched a still-laughing Doc push Ren off the wall, and a lightbulb went off in his mind. Subtly moving away from the wall, Wels gathered all his strength and gave Biffa an almighty push, sending the hermit over the wall, hands cartwheeling frantically. Barely holding back his own laughter, Wels shouted over the wall at Biffa. "Go get me some food!"
"You're sending me into this carnage? Your best friend?" Came the indignant reply.
“Yes.” Wels answered, completely deadpan. TFC's voice came over the racket, cutting off Biffa’s answer. "Grab some for these two too!"
Biffa instantly spun on his heel, sending one last comment over his shoulder as he entered the fray. "Alright I'm going, but only because grandpa asked!"
Giggling, Wels cast his gaze back to the crowd. There was an oddly empty split in the mess where only one person walked. Looking closer, he saw False, face set in a deadly scowl, stalking down the empty aisle. Yeah, nope, no one would willingly mess with that. He could see Iskall sitting on Grian's shoulders screaming, their combined height less intimidating when you consider their combined lack of height. A presence at his side alerted him to Jevin's arrival. Wordlessly, he slung an arm over Jevin, pulling him in close and silently watching the insanity unfold.
Hollering from his left, “Fire in the hole!”, and a trident went flying over the masses, Ren clinging to it. Hermits ducked instinctively as the trident flew its course, Iskall yelping and barely avoiding both the trident and falling off of Grian. The trident embedded itself into the top shulker with a thunk! Ren climbed up on top of the tower, laughing triumphantly, as the trident’s loyalty enchantment sent it flying back to Doc’s hand, the german creeper’s cackles mingling with Ren’s. “I claim everything in the top shulker for the RenDoc! Viva la Stock Exchange!” Ren screamed, laying down flat on the untouched top shulker. Wels watched the crowd shift. “Oh no, this is going to be hilarious.” Jevin whispered into his shoulder.
“Down with the Dog!” came a yell from within the crowd that sounded like a certain B-double-O. Like a wave, the hermits all moved to shake the shulker tower. Ren clung stubbornly to the top, unwilling to let go. Funnily enough, there was still a berth of empty space around False as she calmly collected two plates of food and headed back to Stress.
Movement before the fort caught Wels’ attention. With some light struggle, Biffa’s red and yellow armour could be seen moving towards them, a plate laden with food held proudly in the air above him. Biffa stepped over the wall under Wels’ eager gaze, only to sweep past him and present the dish to TFC, much to Jevin’s amused laughter. His laughter only increased when Biffa sauntered over and produced another plate for Jevin, a large shit-eating grin on his face.
Huffing, Wels crossed his arms, looking away in fake insult. His friends’ laughter peaked, then calmed down. A tug on his shoulder brought Wels’ attention back to them, to which Biffa offered him a third plate. “For you, m’lady.” he smirked, knee bent.
Wels’ cheeks puffed out in an attempt to reign in his laughter. Biffa quickly continued, weaving a story of the many perils he had to pass through to obtain such legendary meals for ‘his lady’. He got as far as being stared down by the angered False-dragon before Wels couldn’t take anymore, laughing uproariously as he accepted his dues. Biffa flopped against Wels’ right side, sliding into the gap that was made for him as they began to dig into their dinner.
The noises outside the fort suddenly gained a panicked edge, calling the three friends to attention. They peeked over the walls just in time to witness the shulker tower collapsing, boxes landing on multiple hermits. They could see Iskall finally being knocked off of Grian’s shoulders by a falling box, landing on top of poor Tango, another box bouncing off of Joe’s upheld book, still more bouncing about the crowd as some of the more excited hermits began a game of Pass the Shulker. Ren was lost among the crowd for a minute before bursting out from underfoot, shulker miraculously staying on his back as he ran on all fours and leapt over the wall into Doc’s arms, laughing breathlessly at their successful heist.
Giggling at the sudden hijinks, the trio settled into comfortable positions to watch and eat, Wels pulling the blanket off his shoulders to drape across all three of them in a warm bundle.
Gradually, as each hermit grabbed their dinner, the noise and chaos died down, replaced by happy chatter. The room was surprisingly clean after the chaos earlier, allowing Wels to put his worries of cleaning up the next day to rest. He basked in the warm environment around him. It made all his tired problems seem so far away and insignificant in the face of this overwhelming sense of belonging.
The front door opened and closed yet again, footsteps strutting down the hallway and coming to a stop at the entrance to the room they were in. The new entrant flipped her crimson hair over her shoulder, sighing dramatically. “Sorry I’m late guys, Karen the drowned and Lucielle the husk wanted me to deal with their little family drama.”
Joe practically popped to his feet, flinging himself at the person. “Cleo! You have finally arrived, after all the chaos of hunger has left us cold with nothing but the warmth of camaraderie to keep us up.”
Cleo chuckled, catching Joe and spinning him gently. “Hey Joe. Sorry I missed so much. Sounds like you guys had fun?”
Immediately, everyone was clamouring to answer her, voices overlapping in a disconcerting way. Wels flinched slightly, covering his ears with his hands. He could feel the concerned gazes of Biffa and Jevin on him, but he could care less at the moment. The multitude of voices was too much for him to handle.
“Quiet! Calm down you guys!”
And as suddenly as it started, the noise stopped. Wels slowly pulled his hands away from his ears, opening eyes he hadn’t realised he had closed. Looking up at Biffa and Jevin’s concerned gazes, he waved them off. It was only a minor thing, no need to worry anyone. Cleo huffed. “Jeez, you guys are like school children.”
Everyone in the room shuffled in embarrassment under Cleo’s stern gaze. She seemed to remember something, gaze turning even harsher than before, arms akimbo and looking like an angry mother. “Speaking of which, who hasn’t been sleeping? There are, like, 60 phantoms outside. There is no way twenty one of you could have summoned that many, especially since I know that only four of you are chronic sleepers. So, who is it.”
The room was silent, no one wanting to expose themselves or their friends. Cleo pinched her nose lightly. “Alright, fine, don’t spill the beans, but you guys have to go to sleep. The moon’s almost at its peak. Wels, which room can fit all these idiots in it?” Cleo said, her attention suddenly on Wels.
Luckily, Wels had just the room in mind. “The library on the second floor. It’s big and has a large window, can’t miss it.”
Cleo clapped her hands together. “Alright, let’s get up there and go to sleep. I don’t want to see any phantoms tomorrow, that many together results in so much gossip that I want to burn down a building.”
Slowly, reluctantly, the hermits picked up the various bedding and pillows lying around and headed upstairs. ZIT could be seen petting Sheepent goodbye as they dismantled it in seconds, the Architects rushing past them to claim a spot upstairs first. Wels felt a soft, questioning pet on his back, a request. Smiling softly, he nodded, letting Biffa lift him in a bridal carry similar to earlier. From his new vantage point, he could see Jevin collecting a pile of pillows, stacking enough for six people. Behind him, TFC was cradling Xisuma to his chest, Python hanging off his back. Shifting his focus in front, he could see Cleo hefting Joe over her shoulder, the poet holding his arms up in triumph as Cleo sighed a smile. Keralis had picked up Bdubs in a bridal hold similar to what Biffa had done to Wels, both hermits giggling giddily. Doc could be seen preparing yet again to throw a whooping Ren using his trident, aiming for the staircase. Scar and Cub were leaning against each other, shoulders pushing as they chattered.
Looking around with a content smile, Wels buried his face into Biffa’s chest, sighing happily. The steady footsteps of Biffa lulled Wels into a hazy state between the waking and sleeping world, the ambient noise of chatter fading into a distant hum. He barely noticed when Biffa laid him down, squishing him between friends and covering him with a blanket.
“Good night Jevin, Wels.”
“Night Biffa, Wels.”
Wels valiantly pulled himself out of the embrace of sleep, murmuring, “‘ight Biffa, Jevin.”
Two sets of arms hugged tight around his waist, Wels drifted off to the steady rise and fall of his friend’s breaths and the background drone of hermits finding places to sleep and wishing each other good night.
--------------------
A loud scream pierced the night, startling everyone awake. Scar sat up quickly in concern, lifting his hat out of his face. The scream had petered out to faint, heaving sobs that were loud in the silent room. He could feel Cub push himself upright next to him, worry palpable. Whoever had screamed was still sobbing, but they couldn’t see anything in the dark of the room. Someone was trying to comfort them, their shushing noises audible. There was a familiar tingle in the air, Vex magic, a call, one that Scar brushed aside. That wasn’t important right now, they could wait until later.
Then, there was light. Blinking spots from his eyes, Scar quickly began looking around the room for whoever was in danger, eyes flicking briefly to Ren and the torch he held. Identifying the source of the disturbance, Scar felt his heart sink, scrambling to his feet.
In the far corner of the room, Biffa and Jevin supported a sobbing Wels between them, gently trying to calm him down. The knight was wide-eyed, tears streaming down his face as his hands gripped painfully tight to Biffa’s arm. Scar recognised that look, he’d seen it before in Cub’s face on rough nights.
Nightmare. And a bad one.
Stress got there before him, hands moving to hold Wels’ gently. She shot Scar a look, a hundred words passing between them. Whirling around, he held his arms out to block the other hermits. “Let’s give him some space to calm down guys. We don’t want to overwhelm him so soon.”
A smattering of agreement, the rest of the hermits automatically moving to sit in a circle. Everyone looked concerned, whispering among themselves. Cub grasped Scar’s shoulder, both hermits sinking to the floor to wait for Wels.
After a few tense minutes of listening to Wels’ gut-wrenching sobs, Stress sank onto the blanketed floor beside Scar, catching everyone’s attention. She gestured for them to remain quiet. “I think we all can tell that he’s had a nightmare, a right bad one. Turns out, he’s been having them for the past few weeks, ever since that incident.”
Scar and Cub winced in unison. They remembered that incident better than most. All anyone else knew was that the Vex were involved. But they knew better.
Stress continued, “He’s been too scared to tell anyone, didn’t want ta be a burden. So don’t coddle him, ya hear?”
A round of nods. Satisfied, Stress stood and returned to the group huddled in the corner, whispering softly to them. Some shifting, and Wels finally spoke, his voice shaky with fresh tears. “S-sorry to make you worry, everyone.”
Scar joined in on the chorus of it’s ok and as long as you're alright that circled around the room. Wels shifted slightly, and Scar’s attention was drawn to how Wels fiddled with the gauntlets and bracers on his arms. Did he not take them off? Maybe he felt safer wearing armour to sleep, if this had been going on for a while. Second-hand guilt rose in his gut. Cub’s hand squeezed his shoulder, letting him know that he was being too obvious. He swallowed his guilt. This was about Wels, he could deal with himself later.
“Could, uhm-” Wels stumbled over his words, uncertain of what he was asking. Jevin reached over to hold Wels’ hand, which appeared to give Wels the courage he needed to get his request out. “Could we all sleep, a little closer tonight? I don’t want to be alone.” The last part was whispered, yet echoed so much louder than anything he had said previously.
Scar wasn’t going to say no. Without hesitation, he stood, grabbing a random blanket and moving forward slowly. He offered Wels a gentle smile. “Of course, anything for a fellow hermit.”
The smile Wels returned was so fragile and shaky that it almost broke his heart. He found a spot between Biffa and Wels’ feet, sliding in to fit himself against them. “Is this good?”
Wels’ answer, while no less shaken, contained a small, uplifted smile in his tone. “Yes, this is good.”
Someone settled in next to him. Scar turned his head and found himself face to face with Cub, who gave him a small smile. Around him, hermits found spaces to pile in, some laying on top of each other. When the noise of movement had died down, he could hear Stress ask, “Is this good Wels?”
A moment of consideration. “Yes, thank you.”
A soft hum. “Good night Wels.” Jevin’s voice said. “Sleep well.”
The sentiment rolled around the room, every hermit offering their own good nights before settling back into sleep.
Just before Scar drifted off fully, he heard Wels softly whisper, “Good night, everyone. And thank you.”
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maevelin · 5 years
Note
That is what i find so frustrating about TO. You have to be on another level of crap storywriting, if you have all the characters you need there in front of you on a plate yet instead of using your creativity and working with what you have you conjure up a baby plot revolving around a character no one even asked for. The whole reason we wanted TO as a show was to see more of TO family. These are supernatural creatures that have lived 1000 years yet theyre reduced to soap opera storylines. 1/2
I was really slow to pick up on the fact that TO wasnt going to be the show we all asked for. I wasnt really an active part of the fandom on social media then so didnt know what was going on so when TO was announced i stupidly thought this is going to be amazing, a plot about the original family. By that point i was sick of damon and most of TVD characters and was rooting for klaus to kill them all lol. It wasn't till the scene where Rebekah's driving away from NOLA in her car i (2/3)
Realised that she's actually leaving for good. I still thought in my head that this is just part of the plot but then i found out Claire left and i realised that this baby plot is actually what the show is, and not the show i was expecting so i stopped watching for a long time. Maybe i was just stupid because the pilot did make it clear it was about a baby plot and not TO family. Also weird how elijah was barely in TVD, rebekah was in it more yet Elijah was more prominent in TO. (3/3)
--- 
I honestly believe that JP never cared or wanted to write for vampires. She doesn’t have the knack or the talent for that genre. She does not grasp it. She does not care for it. I think she was there to fill in the blanks for Kevin and together they made a decent team. Kevin had the genre down up to a point and was good with the plot and the characterization and Julie could sprinkle some soap to the ships and the emotional drama and that combination actually fit. 
It is no wonder that once Kevin was out everything became a shipping soup and by the end of it everyone seemed to have one goal. To be human. To act human. To get the white fence, the babies, the normal life. Which would be find for a drama soap or show concerning humans but was catastrophic for the kind of genre show TVD was and what TO was meant to be but never was. I mean how many vampires were even left in the end? Not just those that died but those that turned...human. Come on now. JP wanted to have her cake and eat it too. She didn’t care for TO in the way a genre writer should and would. She wanted to get her baby soap and that was the only chance she actually had to go through with it. Everything else of hers that didn’t belong to the TVD franchise was getting cancelled in their pilots or before their first seasons even finished airing. And in general as a writer she writers for the telenovela kind of soap and she can’t separate in her mind church from state in the way that she couldn’t divide what she wanted as a fan from what she should write as a professional. She believed it to be one and the same and when it would not work she would throw everyone else under the bus so to avoid responsibility and then she would try to make it work anyway. Well... newsflash Felicia!
I on the other hand however was not in the same boat you were where TO was concerned. 
By the time S4 of TVD had reached its middle I was seeing things I hated. When they killed Kol while they were planning for the spin-off my mind was on red alert. I knew by that time how JP operated. It was obvious. I already knew her ways with the fans from Kyle XY too. Then I heard Phoebe had signed first. BEFORE Joseph while they had killed off Kol so Nate wouldn’t be part of the show. I saw where that Klayley trainwreck was leading. I already knew JP’s lack of talent and her inability to actually create intellectual plots and twists. So I was suspicious. I wanted this to actually work. I was an Original groupie first. I was rooting for the Original to get their own show but not in that way. It was like I watching a crash happening and I could not avert my eyes while everyone else was not seeing it.  I was voicing my concerns back then and I remember that the fandom kind of saw me like the crazy lady in the lot but when the backdoor pilot aired I was 100% sure of what TO was going to be. Rebekah was regressed to a supporting cameo ffs! Kol was dead. Klaus was OOC crying in the streets next to his lunch that was obviously by the promotional interviews and the way they framed it in the backdoor pilot meant to be his love interest with what I saw from the gifs later (since I had never finished the backdoor pilot because when they threw the twilight scene I was out) was a copy of a KC scene with the whole art but meant to be more ‘deep’. The whole episode had some cinematic moments that were okay and I remember liking that they had used the Lafayette cemetery from Interview with the Vampire. The soundtrack seemed awesome. Marcel actually seemed interesting. And then...the baby crap and I was out. Back then before the backdoor pilot had even aired Joseph Morgan had said in an interview that if he was in charge some things may have been differently done. But then I remember thinking...oh crap...and then the episode actually aired and OH CRAP.
I never bothered with TO. 
I dropped TVD like a bad habit when S4 ended and saw the ridiculousness with the doppelganger nonsense. At that point given everything JP was doing I found it really hard to understand how people could hold on to hope when it came to her and her writing. I was trying to warn people from the fandom left and right. Because I had honestly gotten truly attached not only with the ship but with the fandom too and I didn’t want people to get their hopes up and get treated as I was seeing them get treated. I was seeing it, I was speaking about it and understandably most people believed me to be irrational. I remember even people that I was close with and still am to give me the sideeye and be okaaay then.
By the time the official pilot aired along with TO’s first season I was 100% they would cut out the KC phonecall scene that was only meant to be a hook to get the green light for the backdoor pilot rather than anything else. The seen was cut of course.
But then I remember thinking that any responsible writer would aim to get a crossover as soon as possible and get Caroline there even to create a closure small arc to span in the two shows slowly (as they did with BTVS and ATS) but then they were all about saying how logistics were not working and the universes were going to be separated and I was still unable to understand how people actually had hope when the people in charge had no talent to do the basics and were so reluctant. The warning bells were there. Kudos to the DCTV universe for actually going for the crossovers in parallel back then so to show to everyone how the excuses the TO writers and producers were using were just that...excuses.
I was out for sure but I remember that I still kept an eye out to what blogs I followed reblogged and I remember when I realized how sloppy TO actually was. I remember seeing a gifset from a flashback of Klaus that aimed to be a visual parallel to Lestat from Interview with the Vampire only in the lore of the TVD franchise it was from before he broke his curse and he was shown with double fangs and golden eyes that were Hybrid traits. They actually didn’t bother to keep the basics of their main lead consistent for crying out loud. I don’t remember from which episode that gifset actually was. Only that it was from the first episodes and I was like...come on!
I remember I basically muted and unfollowed many blogs back then so to get my dash clean from that mess.
Anyhow I then returned for the 100th episode of TVD. When 5x11 of TVD was meant to air and the promos were out I was insisting that anything else that a kiss would be bad news for KC. I didn’t want to ruin everyone’s excitement but I was just getting a bad feeling about it especially after knowing JP’s track record. It was just too obvious to my eyes and it would be a regression in the development KC had up to that point. You DON’T narratively speaking -from a writing perspective- go from one cheek to the kiss to the whole sex when the characters are in different shows forming different attachment and ships if you don’t meant to wrap up the story. Which would mean leaving fans high and dry after leading them along. By that time TO was doing well in the ratings and I knew JP only cared for that and the KC fandom was not needed in her mind. I had made posts about it warning people again before 5x11 had aired. I remember I had even gotten some aggressive asks from KC fans about spoiling their fun and being negative without an actual reason. Then 5x11 airs, the sex scene is there (all sloppy to just get it out of the way...bad directing, not bothering with a song, giving the bare minimum) and JP goes all out and gives the interview about the KC closure minutes after the episode airs so to ruin everyone’s parade. Then there was the bomb with Claire’s exit which in my eyes was pending anyway ever since I had heard Claire had wanted to stay in TVD but was given an ultimatum only for her to be barely there in the backdoor pilot.
So generally speaking when it came to TO I was never hopeful. Not when JP was in charge. Not when they hired Carina out of all people for their writing team. Carina that hated Klaus and the KC fans. Not when they were disrespecting KCers from day one. Not when they were disrespecting the Kol fans. Not when Daniel was out there saying that once we would meet the new girl we would forget all about KC (which was said before TO’s first season aired so it was obvious that everyone was lying about Klaus not having a love interest). Not when the cast was mocking a whole fandom. Not when the conflicting interviews kept coming. Not when they had hired the gossip girl writers and producers and no one bothered with the actual genre. Not when...not when...not when...the list kept going. 
I kept my criticism and my predictions going and I remember being patient because most people believed me to be crazy (which I am generally but not when it came to that so I could understand the confusion) 
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....and flash forward and here we are. 
Although, admittedly, certain things did surprise me on a real life level, at first anyway, because fictional stuff aside I could never believe that certain people could act in the way they did (losing flights? getting into twitter fights, picking out fans, and even calling them assholes in podcasts? on and on), but otherwise I never had any expectations to begin with so most things didn’t surprise me and yes I did earn the right to go ‘I told you so’...which I tried to tone it down many times but sometimes it was just too fun to resist. 
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boonbeenblade · 3 years
Text
And Steps
Sometimes, the wound isn't what it seems, or the cure isn't perfect. But the path, twisted and winding, still leads forward.
Technoblade doesn't see himself as hurt. He did what he had to do, to right the wrongs, to send his message. Yet there is a moment there, before and after his death stared him in the face, where Technoblade sees himself. Alone, in a cage, the one ally he had hurt for the simple crime of defending him. When the rage of vengeance and betrayal of Doomsday leaves him, he wonders if that is really enough for him anymore. The Syndicate is far from a therapy group. Their goal is function, and their relationships to each other are... strange and tenuous. Sometimes he even wonders if they will ever make a move towards their goal of spreading anarchy. But he has friends now. Philza is still by his side, and now he has Steve, and Niki, and Ranboo. People to fight alongside. People to fight for. Perhaps he does not have to be the Blade. Perhaps they just want him to be Techno.
A step in the right direction.
Ranboo is walking along the shore of the land upon which the Dream SMP stands, and he spies a familiar piece of unnatural stone in the water. The entrance to a room of memories. His lowest points run through his mind, threatening to swallow him once more, but one shaking hand clenches. The soft digging of a ring into his skin starts the breathing he didn't realized he'd stopped. He is not what the voice said he was. He's figuring out the enderwalk, step by step. Tommy defends him, to Wilbur even. Technoblade trusts him. Tubbo loves him. Ranboo keeps walking, passing the stone and not looking back. He does not need a room to panic in anymore.
A step in the right direction.
Eret faces out from the castle, staring across the path as sunrise casts through her windows to light the world in stains of color. Her path to healing is different than the others. To heal herself, she must first find a way to heal the things she has done to others. She takes the path to the museum, grabbing another blank map. Another walk to commemorate the history around them all. To prevent others from making the same mistakes that she did. Someday soon, the bridges will finally be rebuilt. Eret keeps her hand outstretched, offered. Someone will take it.
A step in the right direction.
Ponk still sees Sam occasionally, though mostly out of the corner of his eye. It is hard for them to face each other, after how tangled the thread has grown between them. But he can manage. He is not alone now. The Egg may be dormant, under Sam's watch, but the members of its old empire still hold each other close. And forgiveness, even in pieces, helps. Foolish treasures the fridge built to him in apology, and their banter aches his heart for times he never thought he'd feel again. Even broken hearts can love, in a thousand ways, as they are mending.
The server moves, slow yet unending, towards healing.
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ryderreturns · 5 years
Text
Certainly Not I
When: Wednesday night, October 24th 
Where: His bedroom and his mind
Why: On the night of the Hunters Moon, Ryder meets his shadow self for the first time. 
What: Trigger warnings for violence, blood, drugs, guns, and mention of anxiety, trauma, murder, suicide, animal cruelty
“I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.” Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
As his eyes opened, he was no longer chained to the wall in his room. His skin wasn’t gray and stretched taut across a body that wasn’t his own. Ryder recognized where he was in an instant. Lynn’s Emporium and Oddities was as well known to him as the three freckles that form a triangle on his arm. Dark maroon walls over a hardwood floor. Shelves lining the middle of the back room where the real magic was sold. Two large grandfather clocks ticked just out of sync, loud enough to be heard in the empty room. 
Breathing in the air brought with it the dust and musk of a store full of wonders both magical and useless. He began to walk along the nearest aisle, noticing something was off about the stock on the shelves. Everything was still labeled in Grunkle John’s scrawling script, but the items were different. Whereas the shelves were normally full of bottled potions, leather-wrapped books, and all sorts of crystals, there was instead an assortment of snow globes, picture frames, and carved wooden animals. Ryder paused, reaching a hand out to pick up one of the snow globes. Inside, trapped in water with pieces of glitter on the bottom, was a memory. He recognized the wet forest, saw himself as a child standing before a crocodile and trying to talk to it. Carefully, he set it back down.
Before he could pick up another item, movement at the end of the aisle caught his eye. Standing at the end, knuckles reaching the floor and back as hunched as if the creature was bowing, was the Werewolf. Yellow eyes staring back with recognition. Pointed ears that twitched and swerved to follow each tiny sound. Elongated snout ending in a wet, black nose. Gray skin that looked paper thin stretched over an emaciated body.
“Is that what he looks like?” he thought. He’d only been able to see from the neck down. Though when he’d been free in Siberia, he’d caught a few reflections of himself. Memories he’d blocked out. 
No chains held the beast back. Ryder took a step away - and watched the werewolf step forward. He stepped back again, catching the werewolf mirroring his movement again. The creature’s breathing was slow, calm. 
Hand reaching out, he grabbed the nearest item off the shelf and hurled it at the werewolf’s head. The cheap plastic swimmer’s trophy broke against the beast’s forehead, but Ryder was the one who felt a trickle of blood creep down his skin. 
“Is this an illusion? A curse?” he barked at the creature. “Santana, is this you? I want out! I’m not fucking around!” He looked up but only saw the roof of the shop. 
The last he remembered, he’d been chained up in his room. Sure, that memory was a bit blurry, but the combination of downers he took was enough to make the transformation and his anxiety over locking himself into magical chains bearable. The drugs had never caused a reaction like this before. Still, he wouldn’t have been able to create the illusion himself. Even if he had, he wouldn’t get pieces of the Emporium wrong. So where was he really? 
A creak overhead caught Ryder’s ear, making the Werewolf’s ear jerk and swivel in the direction of the noise. “Stay here,” he commanded in a voice that quaked, turning to start up the stairs to where he and Grunkle John lived. (It was a voice he’d never use on a dog.) He ignored the sound of steps behind him. Even with the beast at his back, Ryder felt strangely alone. The Emporium never felt alone. It was always bustling with customers, and then when the hours ended for the day and the CLOSED sign was turned, Grunkle John was there to lead the way upstairs for dinner. 
It was a narrow hallway, a few framed photos lined the wall. There wasn’t a theme to them, besides Pictures Grunkle John Likes. The door to the left of the top of the stairs was a door Ryder had been told to stay away from for years. Grunkle John had disappeared behind it regularly with customers. A few instances, Ryder had seen the customer leave with a brown paper wrapped package quickly being stowed away. 
When he came home from NYADA to take care of Grunkle John, he’d finally been given the spell to unlock the door for himself. Ryder tried it now as he faced the door, but as the words left his mouth, his magic circle didn’t appear. Not even a spark of its light glimmered. “Fucking full moon.” 
So he took the common’s way and tried to open the door by its handle. Locked. Still, on the other side of the door, he could hear someone or something moving around. “Grunkle John?” he called, knocking on the door. “It’s Ryder. Let me in.” 
‘Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin,’ a voice whispered, raising the hair on the back of his neck. It was not the voice of his Great Uncle. 
“Who’s there?” Bracing his shoulder against the door, he tried jiggling the knob with more force. A grunt escaped him as he knocked against it with his shoulder, only hurting himself in the process. 
“Screw it,” he muttered, standing back a bit. Ryder lifted up his foot and kicked above the door knob, splintering the wood. With another kick to the same spot, the door flew open. 
All of Lynn’s Emporium and Oddities fell away, leaving Ryder standing in the middle of a fast-moving stream of water. On one side, forest as lush and green and inviting as any he’d stood in. Not just one type of forest, but all of them meshed together with spruces and vines and ferns and moss blending seamlessly. Every inch was covered in warm sunlight, a soft breeze flowing between the leaves and mixing the smells together. He could even hear the calls and movement of animals not far off, living their lives without finding him a threat. 
Across from the forest, on the other side of the stream, a full moon shone bright over a barren white landscape and a long line of prison cells. In the first cell, the Werewolf stood held back against the wall by chains. In the second, Shadow!Ryder waited, smiling back at Ryder. While they looked similar, one of Shadow!Ryder’s eyes was the same yellow as the Werewolf. His hair was longer, almost reaching his shoulders. A 5 o’clock shadow covered his jaw and chin. He wore simples clothes: dark jeans, a green t-shirt, worn brown boots.
The other man slid the door of the a cell open and walked out. ‘So hard to keep me locked away,’ he mused, stepping onto the fresh snow and leaving behind a deep red footprint. ‘I’ve been waiting to meet me. There are some things we need to talk about.’ His accent was decidedly New Yorker.
Ryder stepped out of the stream and onto the side of the forest. “Where am I?” His eyes looked on to the next cell where he saw his father first holding up a bible, then his mother in the one beyond with a cross in hand. In the fifth cell, Grunkle John laid in a hospital bed, hooked up to more machines that seemed possible to fit in the space. The cells went on, but Ryder looked back to the other man, not wanting to see any more. 
‘Come on, Ryder. We’re not as dumb as you make us look,’ the other man sighed. ‘If it’s not an illusion, and it’s not reality-’ 
“Then it’s a dream,” he finished. But usually in his dreams, he could use his magic. Ryder continued to walk parallel along the stream, his counterpart following suit. What was that trick to realizing you were in a dream? Counting your fingers? He looked down to his hands, but he counted off ten without any problem. 
‘That won’t work,’ the Shadow said. ‘Now onto the big question: who are you?’ 
A projector appeared out of thin air, landing on a stand and lighting up to show a diagram of Ryder on a white screen. The Shadow pulled out a long, metal pointer and whacked it against the image. ‘This is Ryder. SLIDE.’ The next picture showed Ryder in high school, sitting on a bench during lunch time and surrounded by pigeons. ‘Weak animal magician who talks when he could rule. SLIDE.’ Each time the slide changed, it sounded like a gun shot. 
A small clip played next, showing Ryder using his water magic in the Socius Pactum tournament before the scene cut ahead to them losing. ‘Weak water affinity. SLIDE.’ A number of images showed in quick succession: each is a picture of him beaten, bruised, and/or bloodied, with the most recent picture showing him after Pagan Pride Parade. ‘You know, putting this together was pretty easy. I just Google image searched “Ryder Fighting Without Planning or Thinking”. I think you get the picture.’
‘SLIDE.’ The next clip that showed on screen only had flashes of movement of gray against a black background. The noise has Ryder closing his eyes, bringing up his hands to cover his ears. ‘Your first transformation. Do you remember the freezer? It was just big enough for you to lay down in. A coffin Grunkle John locked you in.’ A growl sent his body into convulsions. ‘He kept apologizing.’ 
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he said through gritted teeth, tensing with each wave of shivers that wracked his body. 
The projector, the screen, and the pointer disappeared with a POOF. Ryder opened his eyes and jumped back when he saw the other man standing just before him. 
‘Do you know what we could be? What we could do?’ he asked, tilting his head as he started to walk around Ryder in a circle. A copy of Lineage appeared in Ryder’s hands, lighting from the bottom in fire and burning it all to a crisp. A scoreboard appeared next with the Lineage scoreboard list of notable Bloodline families: Anderson, Clarington, Fabray. Each name was struck off with the snap of the shadow’s fingers. New names begin to write themselves across the board: Lynn, Gilbert, Rutherford, Rose, Karofsky.  
To say he didn’t understand would be a lie. The strange, imperfect mirror of himself was being as clear as day. But Ryder didn’t know why this was happening. “What is this?” 
‘Call it a rude awakening,’ the man chuckled. ‘Or a kick to the balls. You’ve forgotten your potential, Ryder. You’ve been pushing yourself down, trying to fit all the round pegs into square holes. Sure, someone else gave you the chains, but who locks you inside them?’ Crossing the stream, the other man went for the first cell. He smiled as he opened the cell door, pushing the metal aside. 
“Wait, wait, no!” Ryder shouted, crossing the stream into the tundra. “No, you can’t go near him!” He didn’t notice the absence of footprints beneath his feet.
The other man didn’t even flinch as he approached the Werewolf attempting to gnaw at his chains, only to bloody his jaws and ruin his teeth for a time. ‘Ryder, you know as well as I do what happens to a caged animal.’ 
“...it dies,” he said, attempting to brace himself as he watched the Shadow take one of the locks in his hand and break it open. That wolf was going to kill him.
‘You cried the first time Grunkle John took you to a zoo. Every animal looked so sad, so bored. You punched the little kid that threw popcorn at the sleeping crocodiles,’ he mused, tugging at long strands of chains that dropped from the hulking beast. 
This werewolf was different from Ryder’s. The hair was thicker in places, but the most noticeable difference was the sheer size of him. While the werewolf from the shop had looked emaciated and poorly cared for, the werewolf currently shaking chains off its body was all muscle. A huff of breath left the beast as it stepped out of its chains. Its head fell back and a piercing howl filled the air, which made the moon glow brighter in the sky. 
Ryder’s eyes darted around to find something to protect himself with. A gun waited in the snow with a single, silver bullet beside it. He didn’t hesitate. Picking up the gun, he pulled back the bolt and slid in the bullet as the werewolf left behind its cell. Lifting the weapon, he raised his eyes but found the werewolf wasn’t alone. 
Animals from every type of habitat stood surrounding the werewolf. The prison cells had disappeared leaving only open tundra lit by the moon. The animals didn’t cower away from the predator. Most of them stood in defensive positions, with a few looking ready to pounce Ryder. They were protecting the werewolf. 
The Shadow stood beside Ryder. He reached a hand up to touch the gun, turning it to snow that trickled down to the ground. ‘Does anyone else know you would kill the werewolf if you could?’ he wondered. ‘That you would tear your soul in half to root out what scares you?’ 
His hand gestured to the gathering of animals. ‘This is what it could be like, Ryder. If you weren’t locked away by Bloodlines, by witches afraid of you, like you’re afraid of him. Imagine it: a world where you don’t have to chain yourself, or anesthetize yourself just to function.’ He took a step to stand in front of Ryder. ‘You don’t have to be afraid of yourself. Sader isn’t afraid of himself. Poe isn’t either. They’ve embraced what they are instead of trying to cage it away in the back of their heads.’ 
‘Maybe if you had a clear head,’ he said, tapping a finger to Ryder’s temple, ‘You’d protect yourself better. Protect others better. Be a better leader, a better person that doesn’t take the shit heaped upon him.’ 
Josh Coleman appeared before them, knelt on the ground. Ryder barred his teeth, grinding them together. 
‘What if you pointed that gun out at the people who deserved it?’ 
54 materialized beside Josh. 
“No,” he said, shaking his head, swallowing back the sick taste in his mouth like warm pennies. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” 
‘But that’s not true,’ the Shadow said, shifting to stand behind Ryder with his hands on his shoulders. ‘You can’t lie to me.’ 
“I’m not a killer,” he spat, shaking off the other man and turning to walk away from the display. He just wanted to reach the other side of the stream, but his steps didn’t bring him any closer. “I just want to go back.” 
‘Back to your chains? Back to your jail cell?’ A loud snap accompanied the dream atmosphere changing again so they were standing in a replica of Ryder’s dorm room. ‘It’s easier to lock this all away. To pretend we’ve never had the thought. Ryder would never want to kill someone. He could never want to kill his werewolf, not a member of the LNSA. Gasp!” 
“How do I get back?” he asked, searching around his room for something to help him. What - this had happened to a friend before. She, fuck, what was her name, the kind one, she had gone away into her mind. How could he be forgetting something so important?
The voice grew darker, “No, he doesn’t want to tear and rip the Bloodlines from their high horses and government thrones. Ryder wanting to fuck something other than his hand? God forbid. And he never wonders what would happen if someone took his chains away.’ 
Pieces of the room began fading away. Posters on the wall, books on his desk, the covers on his bed. But as they dissipated, the wall of chains loomed closer. 
He closed his eyes, picturing a face. The word stuck on the edge of his tongue broke free: “Quinn!” Tethers. He needed a tether. Blocking out the voice behind him, Ryder walked to his desk and picked up a picture frame. Santana, Marley, Blaine, Quinn, Tina, Rachel, Elliott, and on. As he began speaking out the names of his friends, the voice calling to him grew more and more faint. 
Ryder gripped the frame in his hands, speaking out names like prayers that could protect him from himself. 
From his window, the light of the moon shone brighter with each name he spoke until it filled the room completely with blinding white. 
As he woke, the eyes that he looked out of were sharper. The smells of the room were more pronounced. His arms felt heavy, pulling on the manacles around his wrists. 
The moon was still shining outside and he had a long night yet ahead of him. 
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clairen45 · 6 years
Text
The Millenium Falcon: That’s My Ship!
My thoughtful Anon sent me one last long ask before coming out of anonymity. So I’m calling you out @lightaroundthecorner, and bid you an official welcome into the community. Wishing you all the best! This is how it went... I thought it was funny you assumed the “CocoReylo” moniker for a while. This was actually a pun for my French-speaking Reylos, since Cocorico is the rooster’s cry in French (and roosters are the emblem of France). It is a good one though, especially since you brought up Coco, the movie, the first time you reached out to me.
Hey Clairen, it’s the Coco Reylo Anon lol. Thx for the reply insight and analysis ♡(´ ▽`).。! I’m also debating if I am glad or not I am a 2nd waver, but in the end I am just glad I did jump on the ship 3 months ago! It might sound odd but all the meta’s I’ve been reading really make my day and help me grow and better understand a story I love so much. It is a wonderful fandom! After what you wrote about creating a Tumblr account I am seriously considering it! I’ll let you know when I create. I’m also not a grand fan of the new BatB film and have my fair share of issues with it, but having watched it after hearing a great amount of comments I decided to go to the movie and see if I could make sense of the plot emotionally speaking and I’m glad it worked! It is crazy how these plots end up having so much in common (they are so organic / happen to naturally parallel). I never thought about the book / mirror and rose parallels but I loved what you brought! I remember wayward Jedi mentioning that a wilted flower represents lack of love. Rey’s parents are not coming back and Beast could only be saved if he loved someone and that person loved him back. The Heroine journey is truly about intimacy and belonging (Ben and Rey need each other’s magic). Now what hit me hard was the MF parallel!!! Never thought of that, although I admit I have this canon in my head that after Ben comes back he will feel he can’t stay with everyone and act like nothing happened. So, in a  way like his father, he would feel the need to travel with no destination in mind (a need to see the galaxy and try to see things from a different perspective, as well as time to center himself and heal), but he wouldn’t think about getting the MF, for obvious reasons. Rey would sense/know it (I just love how much they understand each other without really saying everything) and when he is decided to leave she would convince him they should get the MF and without saying a “proper goodbye” they would go. I also think that Finn, Rose and Leia would understand an indirect “see you soon”, because they will see everyone again. In my canon I am not sure if Chewie would go with them or not, but I still think he would be with them again. So that Reylo can be associated with Persephone and Hades and MF 3 brains with Cerberus is just really crazy! Especially when we consider the fact that MF is the home he makes amends to (it was Han, Chewie, Luke and Leia’s home, and to go back to it means comeback to his family like you said, being accepted and loved). MF has also been compared to the Chariots of Gods that protected the Skywalker siblings from the Emperor and Vader. The fact that Rey goes to Luke in the MF, later to Kylo and later to save the Resistance, all seems to hint this is where Ben/Kylo should be. The anger he has for the “piece of junk” equals the anger and longing for his family, and it’s always with him. Ok, this got long again o.o’’’. See you soon!                                                                      
So, dear Anon who is no longer anon but now @lightaroundthecorner, sorry I took so long to answer. As I was telling other fellow bloggers, real life caught up a bit with me lately. Nothing but good things, but I haven’t been able to properly monitor my account for a while, besides the reblogs and short comments. Sorry, because I am late in my meta projects (sigh), and also I am late in my asks (I have not forgotten you, nice people who send me great questions, do not worry! I promise I will answer shortly!).  (Gif found on @reylo-hill)
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I am just adding on and expanding from your previous comments. Yep, the MF is probably the core of the ST. Everything revolves around it, and they have distilled so many clues about it, its role, and what it represents for every character, and how they come to interact with it. It is not just the nostalgia and the old jokes about Han’s piece of garbage. The MF, for some reason, though it comes from Han’s side, has come to stand for something important in the Skywalker’s family: their future, something that is, if you think about it, rather paradoxical. This piece is an antique, a thing of the past. But no, in the ST, the MF is really the future. Because something about the MF points to Ben Solo all the time, and Ben is, after all, the only future left for the Skywalker family. Of course the Skywalkers would look to the MF as a place of nostalgia: this is where Luke’s big adventure began, what saved him in ANH and ESB, where Leia and Han fell in love and first kissed. Han and his ship seem as inseparable as Han and Chewie. Funny thing, though, is that at the end of ROTJ, Han had -very reluctantly- moved on from the MF, lending it back to Lando (even if just temporarily), as if he was symbolically ready to grow up and start a new life with Leia. And it would have made sense to see him start something like that.
But in TFA they decided to bring back the MF, and despite the usual critiques on TFA about the fact that the movie was just a rehash for the nostalgic of the OT, I think the choice to pull out the MF out of retirement meant something important. It was there, as a matter of fact, on the Vanity Fair cover that was bringing us the new characters and the old, the common thread between them all, what creates the connection.
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They did not JUST use the MF to make us feel fuzzy inside. Nope, the MF has a story to tell. The first obvious thing is the path to HOME.
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And who needs to go back home? Not Han... Han does not really pine for home... He is a roamer, always been. But Ben... The MF is and will be the HEART of the ST, because the ST is about the fight for Ben’s HEART. if the MF has always been Han’s pride and joy, what about little Ben? Of course he was his father’s pride and joy. Check out that cutesy promotion for Empire’s End:
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And just read the few lines at the end of Aftermath’s Empire’s End when Han talks to his baby boy... Heart wrenching....
Hey. It’s you and me, kid. Whole damn galaxy against us but we’ll make it through okay. I’m not always gonna be the best dad- c’mon, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I can barely take care of myself. But I’ll always keep us pointed in the right direction...even if we zig and zag a little to get there. There’s your first lesson. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t mean following a straight line.
This zig and zag is a bit like the MF itself... And when Han promises his newborn son to point him in the right direction, the MF also plays that part, pointing him to Rey.
Just the way they bring back the MF says something... The MF, just like Ben, has been lost to Han for a while. It has suffered years of neglect and tampering with. It has been abandoned and considered lost for good. Ben chose to assume a distinctive archaic look (medieval by our own standards), with the cowl, crossguard, robe. And what about his saber, which, just like the MF is archaic, poorly constructed, rugged. And the MF, surrounded with the relics and the wreckage of the Empire, is also pretty much like Ben, surrounded with other relics of the Empire (the Vader mask, the First Order as the copy of the Empire, the decrepit Snoke).
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Also consider the information given by The Visual Dictionary: Unkar Plutt has refused to let the scavengers plunder it because it “can still fly and he has big plans for her”. Just like Snoke has big plans for Ben.. And look at the Breakdown part and the words used:
An energy flux in the motivator bleeds back (...) causing a surge (...). Liquid metal fuel overflows (...) overheating components and rupturing a jucture. The liquid fuel sublimates into a poisonous gas that fills the freighter.
“Bleeding” is the word used by the Sith to turn the kyber crystal of their saber into a fiery red, knowing that, in Ben’s case, he probably bled his own Jedi saber, and not another Jedi’s, as is the Sith custom. “Surge”, “overheating”, “overflow” are all words that evoke, unequivocally, Kylo’s fiery bouts of rage in TFA.
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And the term “poisonous” can equally apply to the way Kylo has been, for years, filled with Snoke/snake ‘s poisons, and his own dangerosity. Note that Rey is fully able to circumvent the potential danger posed by the MF.... But all this time, think about it, it was SO close to Rey. It was with her all the time, owned by Unkar Plutt, the very bane of Rey’s existence, which creates yet another invisible thread between them. What about Rey’s epidermic reaction to it: “This is garbage”. That goes, when faced with no other choice to “The garbage will do”. And then, the magic: she can handle it. She knows how to handle it. She understands it instinctively and knows how it clicks. She can figure it out, find what is wrong with it and repair it. She can fix it.
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And she also admires it when she realizes what it is: 
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Remember Han? He never really could figure it out or repair it for good. She can. Obviously, major outcry about Rey being a Mary Sue! How could she? How dare she? Pilot and fix the MF? But people failed to understand (because it took the ST as a whole, as a perspective) that the MF was a metaphor all along. What Rey’s SPECIAL relationship to the MF was supposed to do is FORETELL us all along what her special relationship to Kylo/Ben Solo would be.
Just like the MF, she first reacts strongly against it. But then she gathers that she will have to deal with it anyways (that is what the Force bonds mean). And eventually, she realizes that she is, indeed,the only one who understands him. Who knows how he functions. Who can handle him. She also comes to respect him. Possibly help fixing him?
What about all these details about the MF that they brought us in the novelization. The hilarious idea that there are three brains in the MF constantly bickering... Just like in Ben Solo’s little head there were probably all these voices bickering and fighting all the time. I will exclude Snoke because he is an alien voice, coming from outside as a parasite to bug and hijack Ben Solo. But the three brains that have been fighting in Ben’s head, couldn’t they be Han, Leia, and Luke, who were respectively supposed to have one movie of the ST centered around them? As if, one by one, the fighting heads would get shut up, and forgiven, to finally find peace.... So yea, the anger he is directing towards the MF can be explained by the anger he is still directing towards his family...
Which is why Kylo has still to remain banned from the MF. In order to get back in, he needs to accept being Ben again. He needs to make peace with Ben Solo, with this part of himself. When I first heard of the deleted scene on TFA where Kylo gets to step inside the MF on Starkiller, I initially thought “Oh, what a shame!”.
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  How stupid of me! I know truly believe cutting it was a brilliant move, very coherent on a symbolic and narrative level. Of course, they would and should NOT let Kylo back aboard the MF at this point of the ST... His whole journey is about going back home. And obviously a “home” he can share with Rey (nesting porgs, I already made that point here). We are supposed to see them together aboard the MF on IX. That’s all. Twice, at the end, Rey goes alone aboard the MF and turns back to look behind, turning to look back at HIM, who never makes it to the MF. Rule of 3 applying, he has to make it to the MF eventually. She has to usher him there.
And from Ben, the MF has even come to stand for the relationship between him and Rey. It’s a nest, it’s a home, it’s a future together. I am pretty sure that RJ had his own little wink wink moment at the anti Reylo with the “Blow that piece of junk out of the sky” and “They really hate that ship” on the battle of Crait. If you hate Reylo, pretty much, you should hate the MF and all it stands for at this point.
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And what about the new Han Solo movie? Of course they would do a Solo movie. I think they are trying to tie up all the loose strings here and there into a tight story. The MF is the core of the ST. So, in the Solo movie, we will get something about the MF. Remember the emphasis on the dice (and their part in TLJ) in the trailer, this eerily familiar new villain that is reminiscent of Kylo’s mask, and the mad theory I have been cooking with fellow blogger  @antbee17 about the possibility of ...maybe... possibly... pretty please... finger crossing... getting a Harrison Ford voice over at the end narrating the story to an entranced little Ben...
Maybe I am projecting a lot into this (for sure into the Solo movie), but, about the MF and its connection to Ben and Rey, nah, I am pretty sure!
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blackcatblog-blog · 5 years
Text
PAF TUTORIAL 1
Question 1
What is the difference between declarative and imperative programming paradigms?
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The term programming paradigm refers to the style or way of thinking and addressing problems. Simply, it's a programming style. There may be more than one type programming paradigm...   
Never use the phrase “programming language paradigm.”
A paradigm is a way of doing something (like programming), not a concrete thing (like a language). Now, it’s true that if a programming language L happens to make a particular programming paradigm P easy to express, then we often say “L is a P language” (e.g. “Haskell is a functional programming language”) but that does not mean there is any such thing as a “functional language paradigm”.
Some Common Paradigms
Following are few examples for programming paradigms.
Imperative: Programming with an explicit sequence of commands that update state.
Declarative: Programming by specifying the result you want, not how to get it.
Structured: Programming with clean, goto-free, nested control structures.
Procedural: Imperative programming with procedure calls.
Functional (Applicative): Programming with function calls that avoid any global state.
Function-Level (Combinator): Programming with no variables at all.
Object-Oriented: Programming by defining objects that send messages to each other. Objects have their own internal (encapsulated) state and public interfaces. Object orientation can be.
In this article we are not going to discuss about above all. Here we are going to talk about declarative programming and imperative programming. declarative programming and imperative programming are two different approaches that offer a different way of working on a given project or application. But what is the difference between declarative and imperative programming? And when should you use one over the other?
What is imperative programming?
Let's start with imperative programming first. It's the form and style of programming in which we care about how we get a response, step by step. We want the same result at the end of the day, but we ask the registrant to do things in a certain way in order to get the right answer we are looking for.
Your code focuses on creating statements that change program states by creating algorithms that tell the computer how to do things. It closely relates to how hardware works. Typically your code will make use of conditinal statements, loops and class inheritence.
Procedural and object-oriented programming belongs to the imperative paradigm that you know about languages ​​such as C, C ++, C #, PHP, Java and of course Assembly.
Problems with an Imperative Approach
You may already be seeing some issues with the imperative approach. First, our code is pretty messy. The script does a bunch of things, and we don’t know which part of the script is dedicated to which functionality. Second, it’s not easily reusable. If we try to do another analysis, we’ll be changing variables or copy and pasting code, which violates the programming principle of DRY—don’t repeat yourself. Third, if we need to change the program, there are many parts that are dependent on other parts, which means that one change is likely to require a bunch of other changes to accommodate it.
Advantage:
Very simple to implement
It contains loops, variables etc.
Disadvantage:
Complex problem cannot be solved
Less efficient and less productive
Parallel programming is not possible
What is declarative programming?
Next, let’s take a look at declarative programming This is the form or style of programming where we are most concerned with what we want as the answer, or what would be returned. Here, we as developers are not concerned with how we get there, simply concerned with the answer that is received.
Control flow in declarative programming is implicit: the programmer states only what the result should look like,not how to obtain it. 
No loops, no assignments, etc. Whatever engine that interprets this code is just supposed go get the desired information, and can use whatever approach it wants. (The logic and constraint paradigms are generally declarative as well.)
 In computer science the declarative programming is a style of building programs that expresses logic of computation without talking about its control flow. It often considers programs as theories of some logic.It may simplify writing parallel programs. The focus is on what needs to be done rather how it should be done basically emphasize on what code code is actually doing. It just declare the result we want rather how it has be produced. This is the only difference between imperative (how to do) and declarative (what to do) programming paradigms. Getting into deeper we would see logic, functional and database. 
Imperative: C, C++, Java Declarative: SQL, HTML (Can Be) Mix: JavaScript, C#, Python
Think about your typical SQL or HTML example,
SELECT * FROM Users WHERE Country=’Mexico’;
<article>  <header>    <h1>Declarative Programming</h1>    <p>Sprinkle Declarative in your verbiage to sound smart</p>  </header> </article>
By glancing at both examples, you have a very clear understanding of what is going on. They’re both declarative. They’re concerned with WHAT you want done, rather than HOW you want it done.
commonly listed advantages of declarative programming?
Reuse: it is easier to create code that can be used for different purposes; something that’s notoriously hard when using imperative constructs.
Idempotence: you can work with end states and let the program figure it out for you. For example, through an upsert operation, you can either insert a row if it is not there, or modify it if it is already there, instead of writing code to deal with both cases.
Error recovery: it is easy to specify a construct that will stop at the first error instead of having to add error listeners for every possible error. (If you’ve ever written three nested callbacks in node.js, you know what I mean.)
Commutativity: the possibility of expressing an end state without having to specify the actual order in which it will be implemented.
Disadvantages of declarative programming?
Thre is not much but as a user of a declarative language, you have limited or no control over how your inputs are dealt with and therefore have no option but to mitigate the impact of any imperfections/bugs in the underlying language and rely on the providers of the declarative language to address the issues.
Summary
Declarative programming is when you say what you want
Imperative language is when you say how to get what you want.
A simple example in Python:
Declarative
small_nums = [x for x in range(20) if x < 5]
Imperative
small_nums = [] for i in range(20):    if i < 5:        small_nums.append(i)
The first example is declarative because we do not specify any "implementation details" of building the list.you aren't saying how to obtain what you want; you are only saying what you want. 
So finally I hope that you got an idea about what is  declarative and Imperative programming. 
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References
Images
https://bit.ly/2UWZO5r
https://bit.ly/2IcV7TO
 Other
https://bit.ly/2DLHl4O
https://bit.ly/2k405RO
https://bit.ly/2SSNfHV
https://bit.ly/2NI8QmQ
https://bit.ly/2DGDQN9
https://bit.ly/2TAZold
Question2
What is the difference between procedural programming and functional programming.
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In a previous letter we have talked about  imperative and  declarative progamming. So now we are going to discuss about the difference between procedural programming and functional programming.
Functional Programming Paradigm
A functional language (ideally) allows you to write a mathematical function, i.e. a function that takes “n” arguments and returns a value. If the program is executed, this function is logically evaluated as needed.
The functional programming paradigms has its roots in mathematics and it is language independent. The key principal of this paradigms is the execution of series of mathematical functions. The central model for the abstraction is the function which are meant for some specific computation and not the data structure. Data are loosely coupled to functions.The function hide their implementation. Function can be replaced with their values without changing the meaning of the program. Some of the languages like perl, javascript mostly uses this paradigm.
Functional Programming is,
Often recursive.
Always returns the same output for a given input.
Order of evaluation is usually undefined.
Must be stateless. i.e. No operation can have side effects.
Good fit for parallel execution
Tends to emphasize a divide and conquer approach.
May have the feature of Lazy Evaluation.  
Examples of Functional programming paradigm:
JavaScript : developed by Brendan Eich Haskwell : developed by Lennart Augustsson, Dave Barton
Scala : developed by Martin Odersky
Erlang : developed by Joe Armstrong, Robert Virding
Lisp : developed by John Mccarthy
ML : developed by Robin Milner Clojure : developed by Rich Hickey
Procedural Programming Paradigm
A procedural language performs a series of sequential steps. (There’s a way of transforming sequential logic into functional logic called continuation passing style.)     This paradigm emphasizes on procedure in terms of under lying machine model. There is no difference in between procedural and imperative approach. It has the ability to reuse the code and it was boon at that time when it was in use because of its reusability.
Procedural Programming is,
The output of a routine does not always have a direct correlation with the input.
Everything is done in a specific order.
Execution of a routine may have side effects.
Tends to emphasize implementing solutions in a linear fashion.
Examples of Procedural programming paradigm:
C : developed by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson
C++ : developed by Bjarne Stroustrup
Java : developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems
ColdFusion : developed by J J Allaire
Pascal : developed by Niklaus Wirth
Summary
More simply  the difference between these two is like this,
Functional programming focuses on expressions
Procedural programming focuses on statements
Expressions have values. A functional program is an expression who’s value is a sequence of instructions for the computer to carry out.
Statements don’t have values and instead modify the state of some conceptual machine.
In a purely functional language there would be no statements, in the sense that there’s no way to manipulate state (they might still have a syntactic construct named “statement”, but unless it manipulates state I wouldn’t call it a statement in this sense). In a purely procedural language there would be no expressions, everything would be an instruction which manipulates the state of the machine.
Haskell would be an example of a purely functional language because there is no way to manipulate state. Machine code would be an example of a purely procedural language because everything in a program is a statement which manipulates the state of the registers and memory of the machine.
The confusing part is that the vast majority of programming languages contain both expressions and statements, allowing you to mix paradigms. Languages can be classified as more functional or more procedural based on how much they encourage the use of statements vs expressions
In procedural, I’d ask:
Go to the kitchen.
Open the fridge.
Look for beer.
If you find beer, grab it.
Close the fridge.
Walk back here.
In functional, I’d tell you:
Here’s how to walk.
Here’s how to access the fridge.
Here’s how to look for something.
Here’s how to grab something.  
That’s all about the difference between procedural programming and functional programming. I hope now you have an idea about the difference.
References
Images
https://bit.ly/2Eb7Dip
Other
https://bit.ly/2X2vd8m
https://bit.ly/2SzoF2y
https://bit.ly/2SSNfHV
Question 3
Lambda calculus and Lambda expressions in functional programming.
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Alonzo Church (1903–1995 ) Professor at Princeton (1929–1967) and UCLA (1967–1990) Invented the Lambda Calculus. It was developed to  to study computations with functions.
Imperative programming concerned with “how.” Functional programming concerned with “what.”    
Based on the mathematics of the lambda calculus (Church as opposed to Turing). “Programming without variables” It is elegant and a difficult setting in which to create subtle bugs. It’s a cult: once you catch the functional bug, you never escape.
The lambda calculus has three basic components, or lambda terms: expressions, variables and abstractions. The word expression refers to a superset of all those things: an expression that can be a variable name, an abstraction or a combination of those things.
An abstraction is a function. It is a lambda term that has a head and a body and is applied to an argument. An argument is an input value. The head of a function is a 𝜆(lambda) followed by a variable name.The body of the function is another expression. So a simple function might look like: 𝜆x.x . It’s an identity function because it just return the argument passed to it. In the previous example of f(x) = x + 1 we were talking about a function called f, but the lambda abstraction 𝜆x.x has no name. It’s an anonymous function (we all are familiar with this term, because it’s a very powerful idea and almost all imperative languages have some sort of implementation of it too). In the definition the dot separates the parameters of the lambda function from the body.
earlier Functional programming languages are based on Lambda Calculus, as we have learned a bit more about lambdas we can relate more about how they are connected. We might have heard the phrase Functions are first class citizens in functional languages. Lets explain that a bit. Imperative languages usually treat functions differently than other values(variables, objects and other inhabitants of a program) in the program though that is changing with omnipresence of lambdas(anonymous) function everywhere.
But in functional languages functions are just like any other value. You can toss function around, return another function from a function body, compose functions to build complex functionalities from simple functions and all sorts of cool things.
And if the function is a pure( like mathematical one) which always return the same output for the same input you don’t even need to care where the function is being evaluated, be it in another core of the same machine or in the cloud because you don’t need to care. All you want is the result of applying the function to an input.
Building Software is a complex task and Composability is a(or is the) way to handle complexity. You start with simple building blocks and compose them to build complex program to solve complex problems. Pure functions are such building blocks.
In a way, programs in functional languages are like reducing expressions(remember beta reduction from last paragraph). The compilers continue evaluating expressions until it reaches a point when it can’t reduce the expression anymore and the execution is complete.
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x -(Variable)
A character or string representing a parameter or mathematical/logical value
(λx.M) -(AbstractionFunction)
 definition (M is a lambda term). The variable x becomes bound in the expression.
(M N) -(ApplicationApplying)
 a function to an argument. M and N are lambda terms.
References
Images
https://bit.ly/2UU9AVY
https://bit.ly/2ByXvhK
Other
https://bit.ly/2EdUSE1
https://bit.ly/1TsPkGn 
https://bit.ly/2Szi3RP
Question 4
What is meant by “no side-effects” and “referential transparency” in functional programming?
Referential Transparency
Referential transparency is a property of a specific part of a program or a programming language, especially functional programming languages like Haskell and R. An expression in a program is said to be referentially transparent if it can be replaced with its value and the resulting behavior is the same as before the change. This means that the program's behavior is not changed whether the input used is a reference or an actual value that the reference is pointing to.
As programs are composed of subprograms, which are programs themselves, it applies to those subprograms, too. Subprograms may be represented, among other things, by methods. That means method can be referentially transparent, which is the case if a call to this method may be replaced by its return value:
int add(int a, int b) {    return a + b } int mult(int a, int b) {    return a * b; } int x = add(2, mult(3, 4));
In this example, the mult method is referentially transparent because any call to it may be replaced with the corresponding return value. This may be observed by replacing mult(3, 4) with 12:
int x = add(2, 12)
In the same way, add(2, 12) may be replaced with the corresponding return value, 14:
int x = 14;
None of these replacements will change the result of the program, whatever it does. 
side effect
Functional programming is based on the simple premise that your functions should not have side effects; they are considered evil in this paradigm. If a function has side effects we call it a procedure, so functions do not have side effects. We consider that a function has a side effect if it modifies a mutable data structure or variable, uses IO, throws an exception or halts an error; all of these things are considered side effects. The reason why side effects are bad is because, if you had them, a function can be unpredictable depending on the state of the system; when a function has no side effects we can execute it anytime, it will always return the same result, given the same input. 
Simply side effect refers simply to the modification of some kind of state - for instance:
Changing the value of a variable;
Writing some data to disk;
Enabling or disabling a button in the User Interface.
References
https://bit.ly/2GsOFGv
https://bit.ly/2X5qYsP
https://bit.ly/2UYMLR9
https://bit.ly/2BA9Li4
https://bit.ly/2nG5zHG
Question 5
Key features of Object Oriented Programming
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Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of “objects”, which may contain data, in the form of fields, often known as attributes; and code, in the form of procedures, often known as methods. A feature of objects is that an object’s procedures can access and often modify the data fields of the object with which they are associated (objects have a notion of “this” or “self”). In OOP, computer programs are designed by making them out of objects that interact with one another.[1][2]There is significant diversity of OOP languages, but the most popular ones are class-based, meaning that objects are instances of classes, which typically also determine their type.
Many of the most widely used programming languages (such as C++, Object Pascal, Java, Python etc.) are multi-paradigm programming languages that support object-oriented programming to a greater or lesser degree, typically in combination with imperative, procedural programming. Significant object-oriented languages include Java, C++, C#, Python, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Perl, Object Pascal, Objective-C, Dart, Swift, Scala, Common Lisp, and Smalltalk.
OOP Characteristics:
Objects
Classes
Data Abstraction
Encapsulation
Inheritance
Polymorphism
Objects:
In other words object is an instance of a class.
Classes:
These contain data and functions bundled together under a unit. In other words class is a collection of similar objects. When we define a class it just creates template or Skelton. So no memory is created when class is created. Memory is occupied only by object. In other words classes acts as data types for objects.
Data Hiding:
This concept is the main heart of an Object oriented programming. The data is hidden inside the class by declaring it as private inside the class. When data or functions are defined as private it can be accessed only by the class in which it is defined. When data or functions are defined as public then it can be accessed anywhere outside the class. Object Oriented programming gives importance to protecting data which in any system. This is done by declaring data as private and making it accessible only to the class in which it is defined. This concept is called data hiding. But one can keep member functions as public.
Encapsulation:
The technical term for combining data and functions together as a bundle is encapsulation.
Inheritance:
Inheritance as the name suggests is the concept of inheriting or deriving properties of an exiting class to get new class or classes. In other words we may have common features or characteristics that may be needed by number of classes. So those features can be placed in a common tree class called base class and the other classes which have these charaterisics can take the tree class and define only the new things that they have on their own in their classes. These classes are called derived class. The main advantage of using this concept of inheritance in Object oriented programming is it helps in reducing the code size since the common characteristic is placed separately called as base class and it is just referred in the derived class. This provide the users the important usage of terminology called as reusability
Polymorphism and Overloading:
Poly refers many. So Polymorphism as the name suggests is a certain item appearing in different forms or ways. That is making a function or operator to act in different forms depending on the place they are present is called Polymorphism.
And due to this all future object oriented programming language like c++, java are more popular in use .
References
Images
https://bit.ly/2tpi5g9
Other
https://bit.ly/2zV49xn
https://bit.ly/20Rx76M
Question 6
How the event-driven programming is different from other programming paradigms?
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Event-driven programming is a programming paradigm in which the flow of program execution is determined by events - for example a user action such as a mouse click, key press, or a message from the operating system or another program. An event-driven application is designed to detect events as they occur, and then deal with them using an appropriate event-handling procedure. The idea is an extension of interrupt-driven programming of the kind found in early command-line environments such as DOS, and in embedded systems (where the application is implemented as firmware). 
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References
https://bit.ly/2X60aJ5
https://che.gg/2SSmxCj
https://bit.ly/2ylqy6S
Question 7
 Compiled languages, Scripting languages, and Markup languages.
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Programming Languages
A programming language is simply a set of rules that tells a computer system what to do and how to do it. It gives the computer instructions for performing a particular task. A programming language consists of a series of well-defined steps which the computer must strictly follow in order to produce the desired output. Failure to follow the steps as it has been defined will result in an error and sometimes the computer system won’t perform as intended.These instructions are usually written by programmers who have an in-depth knowledge about a particular programming language. They are not only knowledgeable about the syntax of that language but also they have mastered the data structures and algorithms used for that language. This is because the basic function of a programming language is to translate the input data into meaningful output.
Markup languages
From the name, we can easily tell that a markup language is all about visuals and looks. Basically, this is the primary role of markup languages. They are used for the presentation of data. They determine the final outlook or appearance of the data that needs to be displayed on the software. Two of the most powerful markup languages are HTML and XML. If you have used both of these two languages, you should be aware of the impact that they can have on a website in terms of the aesthetics.
A properly utilized HTML with the help of CSS will result in a beautiful or stunning website. Markup languages are characterized by tags which are used for defining elements in the document. They are human-readable because they contain normal texts.
There are different types of markup languages and each one of them is designed to perform a specific role. For instance, the primary role of HTML is to give a structure to the website and its component. On the other hand, XML was designed to store and transport structured data. If you are planning to be a front-end developer, consider sharpening your knowledge on markup languages.
Scripting language
A scripting language is a type of language that is designed to integrate and communicate with other programming languages. Examples of commonly used scripting languages include JavaScript, VBScript, PHP among others. There are mostly used in conjunction with other languages, either programming or markup languages. For example, PHP which is a scripting language is mostly used in conjunction with HTML. It is safe to say that all scripting languages are programming languages, but not all programming languages are scripting languages.
One of the differences between scripting languages and programming languages is in terms of compilation. While it is a must for a programming to be compiled, scripting languages are interpreted without being compiled. It is important to note that scripting languages are interpreted directly from the source code.
Due to the absence of the compilation process, scripting languages are a bit faster than the programming languages. In recent years, we have seen a widespread use of scripting languages in developing the client side of web applications.
References
Images
https://bit.ly/2V1FGiM
Other
https://bit.ly/2V1FGiM
Question 8
Role of the virtual runtime machines.
A runtime system, also called run-time system, runtime environment or run-time environment, primarily implements portions of an execution model. This is not to be confused with the runtime lifecycle phase of a program, during which the runtime system is in operation. Most languages have some form of runtime system that provides an environment in which programs run. This environment may address a number of issues including the layout of application memory, how the program accesses variables, mechanisms for passing parameters between procedures, interfacing with the operating system, and otherwise. The compiler makes assumptions depending on the specific runtime system to generate correct code. Typically the runtime system will have some responsibility for setting up and managing the stack and heap, and may include features such as garbage collection, threads or other dynamic features built into the language.
Example:  Java virtual machine
A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describes what is required of a JVM implementation. Having a specification ensures interoperability of Java programs across different implementations so that program authors using the Java Development Kit (JDK) need not worry about idiosyncrasies of the underlying hardware platform.
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References
https://bit.ly/2TLEH61
https://bit.ly/2V2lkpz
Question 9
How the JS code is executed  (What is the runtime? where do you find the interpreter?)
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What is JavaScript? JavaScript is primarily a client-side language. JavaScript started at Netscape, a web browser developed in the 1990s. A webpage can contain embedded JavaScript, which executes when a user visits the page. The language was created to allow web developers to embed executable code on their webpages, so that they could make their webpages interactive, or perform simple tasks. Today, browser scripting remains the main use-case of JavaScript.
The runtime environment provides the built-in libraries that are available to the program at runtime (during execution). So, if you're going to use the Window object or the DOM API in the browser, those would be included in the browser's JS runtime environment. A Node.js runtime includes different libraries, say, the Cluster and FileSystem APIs. Both runtimes include the built-in data types and common facilities such as the Console object.
Chrome and Node.js therefore share the same engine (Google's V8), but they have different runtime (execution) environments.
In a way, the runtime is to the engine what the linker is to the compiler in a traditional compiled language.
Unlike C and other compiled languages, Javascript runs in a container - a program that reads your js codes and runs them. This program must do two things
parse your code and convert it to runnable commands
provide some objects to javascript so that it can interact with the outside world.
The first part is called Engine and the second is Runtime.
For example, the Chrome Browser and node.js use the same Engine - V8, but their Runtimes are different: in Chrome you have the window, DOM objects etc, while node gives you require, Buffers and processes.
A JavaScript  interpreter is a program or an engine which executes JavaScript code. A JavaScript engine can be implemented as a standard interpreter, or just-in-time compiler that compiles JavaScript to bytecode in some form. 
JavaScript is an interpreted language, not a compiled language. A program such as C++ or Java needs to be compiled before it is run. The source code is passed through a program called a compiler, which translates it into bytecode that the machine understands and can execute. In contrast, JavaScript has no compilation step. Instead, an interpreter in the browser reads over the JavaScript code, interprets each line, and runs it. More modern browsers use a technology known as Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation, which compiles JavaScript to executable bytecode just as it is about to run.
References
https://bit.ly/2SH1eR1
https://bit.ly/2SS7g4n
https://bit.ly/2UVp9g0
https://bit.ly/2wqRanM
https://stanford.io/2J5Rev1
Question 10
How the output of an HTML document is rendered, indicating the tools used to display the output.
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A web browser is a piece of software that loads files from a remote server (or perhaps a local disk) and displays them to you — allowing for user interaction.
However, within a browser there exists a piece of software called the browser engine.
Within different browsers, there’s a part of the browser that figures out what to display to you based on the files it receives. This is called the browser engine.
The browser engine is a core software component of every major browser, and different browser manufacturers call their engines by different names.
The browser engine for Firefox is called Gecko, and that of Chrome is called Blink, which happens to be a fork of Webkit. Don’t let the names confuse you. They are just names. Nothing serious.
 Browser engine is the key software responsible for what we’re discussing.
Sending & receiving information
This is not supposed to be a computer science networks class, but you may remember that data is sent over the internet as “packets” sized in bytes.
The point I’m trying to make is that when you write some HTML, CSS and JS, and attempt to open the HTML file in your browser, the browser reads the raw bytes of HTML from your hard disk (or network).
 The browser reads the raw bytes of data, and not the actual characters of code you have written.
The browser receives the bytes of data but it can’t really do anything with it.
The raw bytes of data must be converted to a form it understands.
This is the first step.
From raw bytes of HTML to DOM
What the browser object needs to work with is a Document Object Model (DOM) object.
So, how is the DOM object derived?
Well, pretty simple.
Firstly, the raw bytes of data are converted into characters.
You may see this with the characters of code you have written. This conversion is done based on the character encoding of the html file.
At this point, the browser’s gone from raw bytes of data to the actual characters in the file.
Characters are great, but they aren’t the final result.
These characters are further parsed into something called tokens.
So, what are these tokens?
A bunch of characters in a text file does not do the browser engine a lot of good.
Without this tokenization process, the bunch of characters will just result in a bunch of meaningless text i.e html code — that doesn’t produce an actual website.
When you save a file with the .html extension, you signal to the browser engine to interpret the file as an html document. The way the browser “interprets” this file is by first parsing it.
In the parsing process, and particularly during tokenization, every start and end html tags in the file are accounted for.
The parser understands each string in angle brackets e.g "<html>", "<p>", and understands the set of rules that apply to each of them. For example, a token that represents an anchor tag will have different properties from one that represents a paragraph token.
Conceptually, you may see a token as some sort of data structure that contains information about a certain html tag. Essentially, an html file is broken down into small units of parsing called tokens. This is how the browser begins to understand what you’ve written.
Tokens are great, but they are also not our final result.
After the tokenization is done, the tokens are then converted into nodes.
You may think of nodes as distinct objects with specific properties. In fact, a better way to explain this is to see a node as a separate entity within the document object tree.
Nodes are great, but they still aren’t the final results.
Now, here’s the final bit.
Upon creating these nodes, the nodes are then linked in a tree data structure known as the DOM.
The DOM establishes the parent-child relationships, adjacent sibling relationships etc.
The relationship between every node is established in this DOM object.
Now, this is something we can work with.
If you remember from web design 101, you don’t open the CSS or JS file in the browser to view a webpage. No. You open the HTML file, most times in the form index.html
This is exactly why you do so: the browser must go through transforming the raw bytes of html data into the DOM before anything can happen.
Depending on how large the html file is, the DOM construction process may take some time. No matter how small, it does take some time (no matter how minute) regardless of the file size.
References
https://bit.ly/2E4iehe
Question 11
Different types of CASE tools, Workbenches, and Environments for different types of software systems (web-based systems, mobile systems, IoT systems, etc.)
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Types of CASE tools
Classic CASE tools - established software development support tools (e.g. interactive debuggers, compilers, etc.)
Real CASE tools - can be separated into three different categories, depending on where in the development process they are most involved in:
Upper - support analysis and design phases
Lower - support coding phase
Integrated - also known as I-CASE support analysis, design and coding phases
Upper and lower CASE tools are named as such because of where the phases they support are in the Waterfall Model (see below)
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References
https://fla.st/2N98YsT
https://bit.ly/2tmwXvF
Question 12
Difference between framework, library, and plugin, giving some examples.
Library vs framework
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The key difference between a library and a framework is "Inversion of Control". When you call a method from a library, you are in control. But with a framework, the control is inverted: the framework calls you.
A library is just a collection of class definitions. The reason behind is simply code reuse, i.e. get the code that has already been written by other developers. The classes and methods normally define specific operations in a domain specific area. For example, there are some libraries of mathematics which can let developer just call the function without redo the implementation of how an algorithm works.
In framework, all the control flow is already there, and there's a bunch of predefined white spots that you should fill out with your code. A framework is normally more complex. It defines a skeleton where the application defines its own features to fill out the skeleton. In this way, your code will be called by the framework when appropriately. The benefit is that developers do not need to worry about if a design is good or not, but just about implementing domain specific functions.
Frameworks  vs  plugins
Frameworks provide functionality, which programs must be written to use; plugins extend something else's functionality, usually in a way that doesn't require rewriting existing programs to use. You may well use both, with a framework that provides a basic interface and plugins that add functionality to the interface.
Library vs  plugins
The main difference between plugin and library is that a plugin is an extension that improves the capabilities of an application while a library is a collection of classes and functions that helps to develop a software.
EXAMPLES:
Framework.
Popular examples include ActiveX and .NET for Windows development, Cocoa for Mac OS X, Cocoa Touch for iOS, and the Android Application Framework forAndroid. Software development kits (SDKs) are available for each of these frameworks and include programming tools designed specifically for the corresponding framework.
Plugins
Web browsers have historically allowed executables as plug-ins, though they are now mostly deprecated. (These are a different type of software module than browser extensions.) Two plug-in examples are the Adobe Flash Player for playing videos and a Java virtual machine for running applets.
library
library is a collection of non-volatile resources used by computer programs, often for software development. These may include configuration data, documentation, help data, message templates, pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications. In IBM's OS/360 and its successors they are referred to as partitioned data sets.
 References
https://bit.ly/2eL9dI8
https://bit.ly/2TLVFkG
https://bit.ly/2BF8LJo
https://bit.ly/2GGkACF
https://bit.ly/2X6AQlW
https://bit.ly/2T07G9f
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