#this. actually ties into a bit about my views on the champions and how. confusing it is but i digress

[1tsjusty0u]

now i remember the question ive been meaning to ask. does link have any friends outside of the champions? any training buddies etc? what do other knights think of him

OUGJ ALRIGHT SO. sort of!!

ive seen fanfics where like. the knights bully him to hell and back, or they just straight up hate him for no reason, however i am not doing that. to be clear they dont idolize or love him either hes just Some Kid. like i feel like all of the knights and guards and soliders would all be older than link because of a minimum age and skill requirement to apply to the hyrulean army, so even at 16 he’s still like. 2-3 years younger than the other youngest member. and also it depends on if link is above the ranks enough to be like a commander and command armies. he was the royal guard captain at one point so he probably did it at least once (some guards probably being a bit miffed over a 15 year old telling them what to do, but compared to other commanders he was probably more lenient. and unexperienced but thats another thing). when guarding zelda he doesnt really command anyone but before that?? grey area. so hm

either way he has people he more or less hangs out with, a friendly guard just straight up chatting with him and/or being one of the guards link doesnt passively hate. they probably chat from time to time but theyre less friends and more acquaintances . it also doesnt help that even if people links age Were in the army he would just passively hate more guards than he already does. like the older he got the more he did Not like people in his age group, especially because they were teenagers. it depends on the person as always and he would probably be able to make friends easier, but yeah he would hate it more than he already does . guard twins who tease him but greet him from time to time

in hateno and castle town he probably has some old friends. hateno especially, though with him in castle town and also getting more and more haunted by everything things have gotten strained as per usual. castle town some people are nice to him and he does his best to be nice back. the bakery owner and their kid mostly. hes also made a couple friends at stables, due to horse loving and also the fact he can see them more often because of traveling. a traveling painter he would get along with, like pikango. thats probably the only real friends too because traveling people would, too, be weird. also the bazz brigade- distant however the gang believes theyre all friends including link, and rivan likes to swim with him and mipha when they can.

training buddies he mostly doesnt have save for the 1 friendly guard guy mentioned earlier. and that guard is always the one to initiate, because honestly i dont think wreath would train at all. he served his time damnit hes done enough training!! plus it doesnt really affect anything because he has to fight monsters close to daily at points so. yeah.

as for what the knights and guards generally think of him? it ranges from ‘HAH i can do better than That loser’, to ‘wh. why is there a kid in here hello?? its not take your kid to work day’, to ‘ah Just Some Guy’ to ‘the quiet kid in the back of class except its in the back of the shared training hall’ to ‘kind of creepy. stop staring at me with those ole eyes’ to ‘of course the captain has a son goddamnit’ to ‘oh im so stealing how he swings his sword’ to ‘that One Guy. you know the one’. not universally bullied and hated (most who Would hate him are too cocky about themselves and break rules when they shouldnt punishing them and everyone else), but not universally loved. its basically “if youre going to Be In the Army then your going to be in the army god damnit. your going to Train and Follow The Rules like the rest of us”. they know him but have him suffer in a way because they All Suffer. though honestly earlier i did consider him to have knight friends but i remembered the age thing. even then he hasnt found anyone who likes the same things he does (though he never admits what he likes to others and at times doubts what he used to like because it feels like he feels no joy anymore. and hes hobbyless which doesnt help). its like. he feels like hes specifically engineered to where having friends is something he just cant have because hes Like This.

and to be clear the champions arent nessecarily better friends than anyone mentioned here (revali Has been making attempts though, mipha being dragged in). its actually hard to tell because feelings on champions differ from each champion including link. but the champions Do Care about link . toriel and asgore loving their kids, but it not being enough to save them from death if that makes sense. love without understanding

#wreath of the bild #HELLO. this may be contradictory? #revali being a friend to link is an idea i like a lot. However #also by the way daruks descendants will come soon i just. need to draw Without a cat on my lap #i. need to flesh out these guys #this. actually ties into a bit about my views on the champions and how. confusing it is but i digress

[ginneke]

for the fanfic end of the year asks, number 3!

(Fanfic end of the year asks available here: link)

Oh, thank you for the ask! And there’s really one passage that stands out to me as a favourite of 2023, which hails from Corrigendum – the self-indulgent, entirely unnecessary third part of my series Keepsakes.

But first, as single lines go, it has to be this:

"Why," says Revali, his voice lifting in shrill distress, "do you never pay the slightest bit of attention to me?"

(from A Study In Patience. Part 2 coming soon!)

(…What, did you think it would be that line from the end of A Seed of Song chapter 4? While that is certainly a favourite line, it was technically my favourite line of 2022 – it was already written all the way back in Feb ‘22, even though it was another 16 months before you would see it.)

—

Anyway. Corrigendum. Chosen passage and a brief recap/rationale below, under a cut for length and for varying degrees of spoilers for, somehow, all three of Keepsakes, Pinesong, and Moonlight:

Keepsakes was originally a two-part meditation on the piece of cloth Revali tied to the Great Eagle Bow, which always remains on it no matter how many times you break it and have it rebuilt, and the following line of Harth’s in the first Keepsakes story, Memento: “Where things are kept, what they are kept with, that has a meaning.”

Memento and Lacuna were both set within the boundaries of canon, focusing on Link’s possession of the Great Eagle Bow and more than a small dose of headcanon about the Paraglider; Corrigendum, meanwhile, played on the famous amnesia plotline of @ghirahimbo’s Pinesong, with a little of my and @heleentje’s answer to the Alive!Champions scenario in our Moonlight series baked in: if there were stasis chambers in the Divine Beasts, just like how the Shrine of Resurrection was revealed to be part of a Divine Beast in the Champions’ Ballad DLC, then was it not possible that the revived Champions might suffer a similar level of memory loss as Link did: i.e., total?

That’s the context with which the following scene between Revali and Zelda needs to be read. (A small section relating to Zelda’s personal feelings of guilt and regret has been cut for length.)

There was one person she hadn't mentioned, of course. Revali wondered whether she would comment on it of her own accord, but she seemed willing to speak only of others. If he had to pry the words from her, so be it. "I cannot help but notice someone missing from your account, pri- Zelda," he said, correcting himself at the last second. It felt strange to address her without titles: a hundred years and his memory removed from such formality, and yet it still seemed like an overstep. Next to him, Zelda went very tense. "What do you mean?" Honestly. Must he spell it out for her? "You," he said, as though it should be obvious. To him it was: it seemed its own sort of hellishness, to have so many memories that nobody else shared. "How are you faring?" Her look of surprise – had he truly shown so little concern for her in the past, that she was taken aback by his questioning now? – faded into something more sombre. "I... cannot complain," she said at last, which seemed to be all she was willing to say on the subject. [...] Zelda inhaled a steadying breath. "...About Li–" Her words lodged like ice. Revali cut her off: "Don't." He couldn't bear to speak of Link. Not now. Perhaps not ever. Certainly not while he was so incapable of reconciling the words in his diary with the roiling confusion left in their wake. Even thinking of that knight brought a wave of weariness over him. Though Zelda had done nothing wrong, Revali no longer had any wish to continue the conversation.

Revali and Zelda come into this conversation from incredibly disparate positions, and they're on completely different pages. Firstly, Zelda has the advantage of memory, but in some ways Revali has a clearer view of what their relationship from 100 years ago was actually like, thanks to his diary (the contents of which are alluded to or outright paraphrased in the opening part of this scene). Secondly, Zelda has full knowledge of what happened to Link -- at least up until he disappeared after the thought of re-boarding Vah Ruta (as Zelda wanted to do in the 'true ending' of BOTW) proved too much for the Keepsakes version of Link. (Yes, Link’s disappearing act is another small nod to Pinesong.) 

But Revali does not.

From Zelda’s point of view, Revali’s comment about ‘some[body] missing from [her] account’ sounds like a not-so-subtle dig at the missing Link. I actually tried to thread this idea through even in his narration: 'she seemed willing to speak only of others', is meant to tread that thin boundary line of which person he's actually talking about, Zelda or Link. 

Her reaction is therefore wary: she wonders how much Revali now remembers, and how much of his comment is a continuation of his century-old dislike of Link. — After all, she wasn’t privy to the scene in Lacuna’s flashback; and despite that interlude, Revali and Link’s relationship didn’t change all as much as they might have hoped. (Or as much as Link wants to believe, by the end of Memento/Lacuna—the true backstory there was one of might-have-beens instead of let’s-do-betters.)

She’s surprised, then, by Revali’s question being not about Link, but about herself. And this is something that I would have loved to delve into a little, but the nature of the story kept me bound tightly to Revali’s perspective: Zelda is doing well only in that she’s throwing herself into distractions, trying to adjust to the circumstances of being a hundred years displaced from the world she’s familiar with.

(Sidenote: I toyed with that dichotomy of the post-Calamity world being utterly uncanny to her – at once familiar and yet also somehow alien – in another story I wrote this year, catharsis, which had Zelda finally reuniting with Impa after a century.)

And she has ample distractions with the other Champions, who – as her recounting of events implies – she’s spent rather a lot of time around, and considerably more time than she has with Revali. She wouldn’t even be at Rito Village now if it wasn’t the home of Kass, the only person she thought might be able to find Link. 

Perhaps, if she had taken a little more care to visit him, Zelda would be aware of the narrative Revali has been constructing, piece by piece, while he’s been left to fend for himself…

To an extent, Revali's own diary was held against him. His words are taken as a primary source of insight into his character, rather than at least part of his writing being a continuation of his attempts to define and shape his future legacy (his 'legend', as the diary's forepage none-too-subtly declares). 

Yes, Harth did come to the conclusion of something existing between the Rito and Hylian Champions of a century ago (incidentally, that's why he makes the offer of showing Revali the same sheaf of papers he shared with Link in Memento – providing an alternative source of information), but Teba has a different focus. Harth is interested in the truth of the story; Teba is protective of the people involved, and with only circumstantial evidence to suggest that Champion Revali had at least some positive feeling towards that knight, and significantly more evidence to suggest Revali didn't care at all for Link, he deflects and puts it off for now. 

Nobody expected Link to be AWOL for months.

And that brings us back to this passage, the first real opportunity for the truth to come out; and so Zelda takes the initiative, trying to bring up Link. 'If you want to know how we're all doing,' she's thinking, 'then I should tell you about him as well.'

But Revali is of the belief – entirely logically, based on the facts he knows! – that Link is long dead. Whether 100 years ago, or at some point in the decades since. Hylian lifespans just aren't long enough for him to still be around. We only need to look at the oldest Hylians living in Hateno, who weren't born until after the Calamity during the Era of Burning Fields, to know that 80-90 seems to be the Hylian limit.

—

Here's another thing: In the time since writing Corrigendum, I saw a post here on tumblr suggest that grief is a topic that's fairly impossible to write about, because grief doesn't end as long as you remember it, and it's the sort of thing that hits you, over and over, in often mundane ways that look bizarre to the outsider. Yet -- not to put too high a declaration of quality on my writing, but I honestly do believe that I achieved that in Corrigendum, while staying true to the character in question. 

Yes, it was deliberately under-written, circled around instead of facing it head-on -- even the early use of the word 'grief' was shied away from, declaring it only 'something like grief'. That felt far more 'Revali' than giving in to sentiment. So far, most of this emotion has been in the gaps where he's confronted with knowledge of the past, of something missing, of something more to Link; he's seeing Link better in this patchwork recollection, able at last to look beyond '[the] sword that drew the eye and distracted from the man that bore it'. And it's in these moments that his true feelings linger, even if he can't (or won't) give voice to them.

—

Link has always been a touchy subject. Once, they might have been on a similar page regarding that (their mutual complicated feelings about a boy around their age to whom things seemed to come so easily).

In reality, they still are — and it's a different page to the one they shared before, of resentment and frustration and trying to figure out their own place. Link has long become a person to them—Zelda openly, as seen throughout the original game; Revali less obviously, but still apparent through his post-Blight dialogue and particularly in the DLC content, as well as the additional background and memory/ies I created for Memento/Lacuna.

But this Revali – a Revali who still has only a partial sense of his own identity, who doesn't necessarily like the person he'd been even if he can't figure out who else he could be – this version of Revali can't yet acknowledge or confront the truth of what he's experiencing.

What I wanted was to challenge Revali to say it out loud and admit to it — "I am grieving." This, here, is the closest Revali can currently get... Ice. Roiling confusion. Something unbearable. Weariness. Within his narration, the raw, aching wound of grief is clear, but aloud, the only thing he can think to do is to cut Zelda off and prevent her from saying what he cannot yet confront. 

"Don't." Don't bring him up. Don't make me hear this. Don't make it real. 

Characters frantically back-scrabbling away from open and frank communication, in the interests of protecting their own fragile hearts, is something that can be so delightful.

—

Zelda, who isn't privy to the struggle Revali is going through, can only hear this rejection at face-value and back off, assuming that things are as they were 100 years ago. This is something that can only be repaired by finding Link himself – and so she'll continue with her original plan, enlisting Kass to help track the wayward swordsman down.

(And Revali will finally give voice to what he's been feeling… when a certain someone arrives in Rito Village :3 )

#fanfic asks #fanfic ask meme #fic series: keepsakes #fic: corrigendum #ginnefic #(about) my writing #an anon appears #thank you for the ask!

[so-i-dont-forget-again]

So I Don’t Forget Again: A Breath of The Wild fanfiction

Entry 151: Zora’s Domain

 After training and lunch Sidon and I went searching for history again. We would have brought Bossa Nova, but he had wandered off during training.

We went searching around Ruto Mountain. It reminded me of when we were just walking around the cliffs that faced the Akkala region. Just walking around and chatting. He did give me a scare though when he accidentally slipped on some rocks and slid down a shallow cliff. Thankfully it was not a long drop and he found some more history.

It’s rarer, but Sidon got embarrassed. He’s rather cute when sheepish, he has this little habit of scratching his cheek, even if he tries to hide being flustered, that gives him away. He apologized for worrying me, saying a prince ought to have more awareness of his surroundings.

It was about Mipha, her trident. When she was born the trident was made for her. From the start she was loved by everyone, she was even skilled in spearmenship, easily mastering the Zora’s form. After she died, everyone was devastated, it was like they all lost the most lovable, precious, strong person in the world. They tried sending her trident down the river as a funeral of sorts, but it began to glow, and they heard Mipha speak. She told them her and her trident were one, and to keep going on happily, to remember the past with fondness, it happened and not grief that it was over and to not cry. Since then, on the anniversary of the Calamity striking, they honor the trident as a holiday.

So, when I was given her trident, when I was told that with it she would be protecting me like she wanted, it wasn’t hyperbole or a metaphor, or whatever, they literally meant it. Mipha is literally with me.

Sidon asked me if I was alright. I told him I was the one who should be asking him that. The gesture of being given this trident, what had become my main weapon, the one I almost always go to for battle, something that is considered to be Mipha, it just means a lot. I can understand gifting me the armor she wanted to give me, but her trident, it almost feels to be too much. I just wish I could remember more about her. I want to know what our relationship was, and if she really was as great as everyone says. She honestly almost doesn’t sound real. Just perfect in every way. But then again, Sidon is here, so a person like that isn’t too far of a stretch. Sidon said he wasn’t perfect, but he strives to be, to be like his sister.

I asked Sidon if he was pressured to be like his sister. He admitted that at times, yes. Sometimes he felt he wasn’t good enough and couldn’t live up to her legacy, how when he was younger he would be compared to her often but that just meant he had to create his own legacy and be the kind of person everyone could love, but in a way different from Mipha. He said it’s like what I’ve done. I… didn’t understand. He seemed confused and asked to read through my memories, of the ones of my current time here. He told me there was something I hadn’t noticed.

It seems so blaringly obvious now.

I’m not being compared to the Hylian Champion from a hundred years ago. We are separate people. There’s the old, or I guess younger me, the me who fought with the champions, the one who Mipha loved, and the one who died. Then there’s me, a new champion. One who is more expressive than the one from long ago, one who’s made a reputation for being a troublemaker with an exceedingly kind heart. The new champion who gleefully plays with the children and help them with their pranks. The new champion who had such a big heart he searched across Hyrule’s waters for one single person. The new champion who fought along side their Prince to save them all, a person who rose from death itself just to help people. Someone who even when injured still wants to help by becoming a teacher. They see the old champion and the new champion as separate people now.

They haven’t talked about the past much being here this time, the old me. The old me exists, and is remembered, but I’m not him.

At times, it feels the Zoras speak of nothing of the past, but they live for so long, it only makes sense, it’s not history to them, they all remember it all, yet… Mipha and Sidon are both loved, but differently, and I, though the same person, am thought of differently, and now even treated differently.

That must be why it feels different this time, not as suffocating or sad. Its… like the feeling I have for Hateno, but different, like the love for Sidon and Mipha.

It’s nice.

We kept exploring around the cliffs.

We got a clear view of Mount Lanayru. There seemed to be this bluish-purpleish glow at some places. It’s not like the Luminous stones in the Domain, it’s something else. It’s odd. I never looked around there before. Maybe there’s some shrines to be found, maybe I could get some new equipment, hopefully something to keep warm in the snow since I’ll be going to Rito Village.

We had to do a bit of rock climbing and Sidon carried me the whole way. He slipped a few times but did very well.

We also walked along very tally, grassy areas and found a forest. I insisted we search around it. No matter how small or inconspicuous, I’m going to search every forest for the Master Sword. Sidon asked if this was what traveling was like. Sometimes, it really depended on the area and if I’m following roads or not. Sidon said he’d like to travel someday. It would be fun to have him and Yunobo tag along. Maybe I should visit him soon and see how Death Mountain is doing. Maybe he’d feel safe enough to travel now.

We found more history in the forest.

It was about a princesses Zora who fought alongside the princess of Hyrule and the legendary hero against a man who wanted to rule the world. The Divine Beast was named after her and it was believed to be fate for another princesses Zora to have been chosen to pilot it.

The sun was beginning to set, we should have gone back, but we decided to go searching for a little longer.

The Domain at night is beautiful. It reminded me of Death Mountain. I tried describing the gorgeous sight of that bright, hot lava against the stark darkness. Sidon said that usually if the Gorons and Zora wish to speak, the Gorons come to them, but perhaps, I could be his escort, take him up the mountain, and he could use a lot of potions to protect himself there. The Gorons respect strength so a Zora, a being who needs a cool moist climate, to go to their land, surely they’d respect that and make the ties between them stronger! Sidon wants his people to have good relations with everyone, working together would make everyone stronger than they are alone. The Hylians used to be more so the force that tied the Zora, Goron, Gerudo and Rito together, but with our power fallen, everyone has somewhat separated and Sidon wants to get everyone back together to be able to better help one another and fight against any more disasters like the Calamity. The visit could serve two purposes! If he was going to go there anyway with me, he might as well as get to know the Gorons. He spoke of it like it was certain we were going to visit one day. He told me that if he had the power, he’d do anything for me. He said that with all my travels, I’ve seen so many places, so if I specifically am fond of one area, it must be something more beautiful and unlike any other, he trusts my judgement.

We’ve been taking the river when traveling, but this time we just walked on the trail. Traveling by river and riding on his back is much faster than walking. We found another one. It was about his father and how he had defeated a guardian single handedly and saved the domain.

On the way back we found some blue nightshade flowers. He tucked them behind my ear and just said ‘adorable’, and then I was especially so when I blush and he did it with that toothy grin and why must he make my heart race so effortlessly! He’s doing it again even now just remembering it! AGAIN!

We found one last history piece one the way back, it was right by the road like the last one. Unlike the others, it was notably worn, decayed and uncared for. It was just barley legible, unlike the others. It’s close by town too, it’s almost impossible to miss it when coming and going from town via the trail. The others, some are nowhere near trails or water and were difficult to get to or to find yet were perfectly kept up. It was about me, when I defeated the lynel and earned the Zora helm.

Sidon just stared at it for a while. I couldn’t quite read his expression.

After a while he took my arm and lead me back to the medical bay. Before leaving me in my room, he kneeled down and just hugged me. He told me I am an amazing and sweet person. That I’m strong and courageous beyond belief. He told me I am such a marvel, how hard working I am is astounding. He was grateful he could call me his friend, and I deserved only the best the world had to offer. He asked if I knew I was loved. That people truly care about me and want nothing more than for me to be able to be happy and safe.

If no one else, I at least know without a doubt he cares.

Bossa Nova was asleep on the bed when I got to my room. He looked so comfortable I didn’t want to wake and move him.

Sidon asked if I thought I’d go to sleep. I’m too wide awake, I have too many things on my mind.

Sidon asked me to follow him.

He took me to the reservoir where Vah Ruta was attacking from. We were able to climb up it with a staircase. At the top there are several docks that line the top. Before the dock we were on there is this big, I think it’s called a gazebo? It has a roof and the framing for walls, but no actual walls. Along the frames there’s this counter that connects everything except for the entrance gap. On it are some trays, chalices, a jug and some tall thin glasses full of drinks. There are also a few seats by the counters. The back doesn’t have any pillars, not far beyond it though is the large wall we had to scale to get here. It’s a little taller than the reservoir itself. On the frames are the softly glowing stones, everything else is crystals. There’s also a large bed at the back. Sidon says it’s a water bed. The bed frame is like a cradle that holds this giant bag of water that’s the mattress. Because it’s water the mattress moves and readjusts when you’re on it. It’s so comfortable, and warm, the heat readjusts too.

Sidon told me we was not sure why this was here, maybe it was for entertaining the Hylian royalty when they came to visit the reservoir. Whatever the reason for it, he found it to be a nice spot. From here there’s a gorgeous view of the town and the surrounding nature. You can even see distant mountains and cliffs. It feels like it close to town, but also detached. Just me and Sidon, no one else. The night sky here seems endless. It’s a strange feeling being here.  Almost feel a little nervous being here with Sidon. Sidon is usually so calming which makes this even stranger. It’s not a bad kind of nervous though.

Its more windy here than it is in the canyon, more chilly too. Sidon and I hid in the bed, and it was so warm. Like standing in the morning sunshine in Gerudo desert.

Sidon loosely draped his arms around me and made sure he wasn’t touching my injured arm.

He wondered aloud if I could have my splint taken off for a while so I could take a bath, it might be relaxing if it wouldn’t hurt me. He wondered if we should visit Death Mountain before or after I face the Calamity.  He wondered if I’d take him everywhere across Hyrule, just go anywhere I wanted. He wondered aloud about us resting under the stars. He spoke very sweetly, just about us being together. Sidon kept talking, trying to stay awake, but he soon fell asleep. He’s hugging me in his sleep. Even when he’s not awake his touch is so strong and secure.

Bossa Nova can get food, and I’m sure Sidon will be able to wake me up, so maybe I’ll try to fall asleep tonight. No one can get hurt if I rest for now. The Rito need help, but I can’t go till this infection in me is gone, the doctors won’t allow me to go till I’m healed, so since I can’t help them anyway maybe I can rest for the night. Maybe it’d be okay, but I’m not sure if I even can.

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#loz #botw #loz botw #legend of zelda #breath of the wild #legend of zelda breath of the wild #link #wild link #botw link #breath of the wild link #sidon #botw sidon #breath of the wild sidon #prince sidon #botw prince sidon #breath of the wild prince sidon #fanfic #fanfiction #botw fanfic #botw fanfiction #loz botw fanfiction #loz botw fanfic #breath of the wild fanfic #breath of the wild fanfiction #sidfa #so i don't forget again #soidon'tforgetagain #link x sidon #sidon x link #sidlink

[botwstoriesandsuch]

An Enjoyable Evening Part 3 of 3 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild Revali x Reader

Hello! This is actually my first time requesting on Tumblr May I request a Revali x Reader? I really liked the last one you did and I was wondering if you could do a continuation of that oneshot. I'm curious of how the party will turn out. Will the other Champions be suprised that Revali bought a "date?" :0 

Here’s the final part to the series! Sorry if the ending is rushed, enjoy!

Also yes, this was reposted, because I was trying to edit a typo on my phone and I accidentally deleted the entire thing...good job me!

It was around 9pm when the two of you landed at the castle grounds. The towering stone walls of the castle were in stark contrast with the tranquil view of nature you had witnessed in the sky not an hour earlier. Revali was leading you through a stone path. Ahead you could see a silver gazebo, with cream colored lanterns illuminated the surroundings, basking nobles and servants alike with light. Figures of blue, gold, black, and red drifted and danced through grass. While most seemed to be Hylian, there were also Zora, Sheikah, and other races in the mix. The night air was now cool, winds only strong enough to barely sway the lanterns. You walked behind the Rito as a guard approached the two of you.

“Ah, Master Revali. We thank you for your presence tonight.” He gave a polite bow. His deep blue outfit, adorned with silver trimming and gold tassels, gave an aura of authority.  “The Princess and the other Champions are here, shall I show you to them?”

“No, I don’t need an escort, thank you. I have the gift of sight so I’m sure I’ll manage fine.”

“Alright then, how about you lover here?”

“My wha-”

You both suddenly tensed. Revali’s feathers poofed up. You shuffled to the side and put some distance between you and Revali. The two of you started speaking rapidly over each other.

“Oh no, he’s not my— ”

“Uh, no. That’s not. they didn’t actually want to be here—”

“He’s incredibly annoying, and we hate each oth—” 

“I mean, me, with a Hylian, *cough* obviously I w—”

“Well I don’t hate him, I’m just not, er—”

“Who would surround themselves with such a rude, and intelligent, b-but mostly rude—”

“—um, the point it”

“We’re just friends.” You both finally sputtered out in unison. When you went to look at Revali, your eyes met, and you both quickly turned away. Your cheeks were on fire. WHY? Why were they on fire???? The guard stood there with a raised eyebrow, staring at you both blankly.

“…OK then.” An awkward silence. “So, do you want me to—”

“We’ll just be on our way then!”

Revali quickly grabbed your hand before pulling you away towards the courtyard. You moved past the guard with steps, wanting to leave behind the embarrassing scene as fast as possible. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to take your mind off it as when you approached the rest of the party, delicious smells filling the air. 

You stopped in your tracks, taking in the full picture. Tables were lined up on the side, cloaked in white cloth. On them, sat plates and plates and plates of food, more than you had ever seen in your life! There was meat and sauce and fish and steamed vegetables. Cakes and sweets and stews and rice. And in the center of it all sat a tower of exotic fruits, filled to the brim with apples, berries, hydromelons, bananas, and palm fruit. Sweet and savory aromas filled the air, not clashing, but blending into indescribable sensations that allowed you to taste everything before you could even touch it. 

You then noticed Revali staring, how long had he been observing you?.

“What?”

“Why are you smiling so much? I thought the sight of such a large gathering might intimidate you.”

“Oh it does, but the food! Can you smell all that?? The food! It smells so good here…”

“Yes, well you see at parties, typically people attempt to enjoy themselves by eating edible foods, rather than five-day-old honeyed candies that you store away in a desk for when you stay up all night.”

You ignored his comment. “I’m going to the buffet.”

“Woah-woah, wait. We had a deal didn’t we? I’m sure you’ll still have ti—”

“A-shh-shh-shh-shh-shh!” You held a finger up to his face. “Hold your beak giant cucco, it’ll be just for a minute. I’ll come back if some boring noble attempts to bend your ear. Besides,” You gestured towards a Goron, Gerudo, and Zora, all adorned with bright blue garments. They were looking at Revali with curious expressions, seemingly wanting to approach . “It seems there are people here who have made the mistake of wanting to talk with you. I wouldn’t want to intrude on such a rare occurrence.”

Before he had a chance to object, you raced off towards the buffet.

… . .

“So, who was that?”

Revali sighed. “Just some scientist that desperately wanted to attend this event. So I did them a favor, considering I am known for my boundless generosity. It really doesn’t concern you, Urbosa.” 

“OH-HO! You have a DATE, Revali?!?” Daruk slapped him across the back, playfully. Revali stumbled forward, nearly tripping over himself.

“AGH! Would you— ugh, first off,” he turned to face Urbosa, Daruk, and Mipha, “their name is [Name], and as I just stated, they’re not a date. If anything, we’re enemies, I don’t like them, we hate each other.” Mipha tilted her head askew. Urbosa cocked an eyebrow. “Secondly, [she’s/he’s] incredibly boring. Don’t bother asking them questions about me, or them, or how they got here, or how we met, anything that might cause unnecessary embarrassment between the two of you. As I said, they’re not that interesting, so I’ll be taking the burden of speaking with them throughout the night. Understand?

“Thirdly,” Revali glared at Daruk, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t bellow out things like that in the future. I’m sure [Name] wouldn’t appreciate you acting out so brashly during the night.”

“Aw,” Urbosa cooed, “Is Revali afraid we’ll scare away his date?”

Daruk gave out a mighty laugh, accompanied by Mipha’s giggling. Revali then shot daggers at Urbosa.

“Ha-ha. Very funny.”

“Yes I know, that’s why we laughed.” Urbosa gave out a smirk. Mipha started to snicker.

“Look little Rito,” Daruk moved closer, attempting to give a more gentle pat on his back. “I’m sure your buddy there is really great.”

“Did you say, little?”

“It’s nice to see you making new friends! Better than you being cooped up at the flight range every day, right? None of us are judging you here, we’re happy for you! I’m sure [Name] is a great, poised, confident, and respectable Hylian.”

CRASH!

The four Champions, along with the other startled guests, suddenly turned towards the buffet table where the noise originated from. The once towering fruit pile now sat collapsed in the dirt. The table it rested on was now a mess of colorful juices and littered utensils. Beside the scene, stood you, arms full of exotic fruits. Revali sighed, then chuckled to himself.

“Well, you never fail to make things more interesting, huh?”

He stared at the scene as he watched servants come rushing in to attend to the situation. “Definitely more exciting than spending anymore time praising that pesky knight.”  After a moment, Revali turned back to the others. His eyes narrowed.

“Where is Link anyway?”

… . .

You were shuffling between the servants, desperately trying to apologize for the mess you made.

“I am so, so sorry! I was just trying to move a random durian, and the whole thing just fell, I’m so sorry. The structure of the tower was off anyway, maybe you should add a frame behind it or something…without any infrastructure it was bound to fall sooner or later, it’s as tall as a Vah Naboris…n-not that I’m trying to blame this on you! It’s my fault, obviously, just, you know, it could have been prevented if the fancy lords and ladies put a bit more effort into public safety rather than grandiose gestures…but again, I’m really, really sorry.”

The servant waved you off bluntly, as if to say “it’s fine.” You attempted to spout out more words, in your ever expanding internal conflict of apologizing sincerely, but not sucking up to the noble guests who were eyeing you with distaste. However, you comically slipped on a banana peel.

“Wha—OH SH-”

The world tilted, as just as you were sure you were able to eat dirt, someone caught you. You staggered onto your feet and turned around.

“That was close. Thank you so much…” your eyes suddenly widened, “Master Link?”

Link shook his head and waved his arms. It’s not a problem, he seemed to say. You stood there blankly. You had heard about the Champion Link. Supposedly he rarely spoke, only in instances when it was necessary, or if he couldn’t communicate with his body language. He was wearing his bright blue tunic, the same shade as Revali’s scarf, and it was outlined with pearl white designs, spiraling down his chest in the shape of the Master Sword.

He then started moving his hands, around. His fingers danced through the air, leaving you a bit confused, before it hit you. Oh! He’s using Hylian sign-language. Really committed to keeping silent, then. You asked him to repeat the motions before you understood.

Can you understand?

“Yeah, I learned Hylian sign in college.”

That’s good. Not many know it now-a-days. Are you all right?

“Nearly fell flat on my butt, but I’m fine now, thanks to you.”

Is your name [Name]?

“…yes, how did you know?”

Revali used to talk about you a lot.

You gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Oh really? That’s…nice.” You moved your fingers through your hair in an attempt to give your hands something to do. “Master Link is rather blunt, isn’t he?” You thought.

You know, in Rito culture, they typically trade their feathers to show affection. 

“What?”

“AH! Would you look who it is, the knight of the hour!”

Revali appeared behind you, but was looking at Link with a stern expression. 

“Happy anniversary of pulling out the Master Sword. I hope you’re enjoying yourself, considering the King and Princess insisted on celebrating with all the useless pomp and grandeur, we could muster.” 

Link just started blankly. Then, after a moment he just gave a thumbs-up.

“Well, there’s no need to irk [Name] or I with your presence any longer. I’m sure there are a variety of other guests that would trip over themselves for a word or two with you. No point in talking any further with [Name], so why don’t you start intruding on the other guests’ conversations.”

The knight looked between the two of you, still standing quietly, a confused expression just barely creeping onto his face. Then, he snuck a quick smirk your way, whatever that meant.

“Flap to it then!”

Link moved his shoulders up and down, shrugging. He waved to you before moving back towards the crowds. You glanced at Revali. 

“The hell was that?”

“Come with me, I’ll help get you cleaned up.”

… . .

You stood in the gazebo, its marble structure glistening around you, as if it brought the stars themselves down to sit on the grass. 

“And here I thought I was special”

“What?”

“Back there with Link? Well, it’s nice to know I’m not the only person in your life that you’re so rude too.”

He scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself, you’re the one who startled the guests and tainted the party’s entire mood by wreaking havoc on these innocent fruits.” He picked off a piece of apple out of your hair. “Now your whole look is ruined.”

You shrugged. “Can’t go anywhere but up from here, right? Look on the bright side, the conversation tonight might start focusing on the clumsy, idiot scientist rather than the ‘little knight’ or the other Champions.” 

Revali shook his head, a typical smirk on his face. “Shut up so I can actually make you look presentable. Here.”

He took something out of the pouch by his side. A cleaned, silver quill, more specifically, your quill. Before you had the chance to question him. He plucked a few of the loose feathers on his wing. He then wrapped them around the quill and presented it to you.

��Deep, navy blue, like a setting starry sky, pairs well with the silver, no?”

“Right. And I should care…because?”

He sighed. “Well, a crimson tunic wouldn’t be my first choice of pairing,” Revali set the weave of feathers behind your ear and through your hair, “but it looks good enough on you.”

You brushed the feathers behind your ear. They were soft, the edges bending ever so slightly in the calm breeze. Suddenly, the realization hit you as you remembered Link’s words, or hand gestures. Immediately, your face suddenly became flustered, cheeks starting to pink from blushing.

“Uh, so Revali?”

“Yes?”

“About my quills, uh,” your voice was resigned, almost meek, “my quills, they’re probably the closest thing I have to feathers, right?”

“Well, I suppose—”

“Kinda funny how we’ve been trading them around, huh?”

Now it was Revali’s turn to get flustered. His feathers were poofing up, once again. The gazebo was silent was silent for a few moments as you both looked into each other’s eyes.

“So, you know? When did you find out about the tradition?”

“Like 15 minutes ago.”

“Huh.”

The air was still once more. For an eternity, you watched the sky. The same sky that Revali had flown through, as he showed off his grand entrances and moves, the same sky that you had seen as as you drifted above the world. And now, it was the same sky, that you both looked at together. At just the right angle, you could look past the stone walls and gaze at the fields of Hyrule. Looking towards the eastern most part, you could see crimson hues just starting to rise. It was late, or perhaps it was very early? It didn’t matter, because despite this, the stars continued to wink in the west. They were perched on a canopy of ink, strokes of indigo were painted underneath as the stars glistened above both you and Revali’s reach. Finally, he broke the silence.

“[Name],” Revali stood up, pacing around the gazebo, “look, I think you’re incredibly smart and sharp tongued and attractive and charming, and an all around brilliant person. Sometimes, I’d be annoyed by you’re stupidly blunt comments, and other times I can’t get enough of our idiotic banter. For the longest time, I couldn’t fathom why I was always looking forward to our next meeting. It took me a humiliating amount of time to come to the simple conclusion that…I enjoyed spending time with you.” He paused and turned his head back at you. “And I want to do it more often…”

You sat there, smiling. Look at feather face over here, pouring his heart out. You couldn’t hide the blushing on your cheeks. Your fingers continued to graze the feathers in your hair. However, Revali seemed to take your silence the wrong way

“U-unless of course you don’t feel the same way!” Revali started sputtering out nonsense. “Wait, wait, this was a joke! My acting skills are quite convincing, I know. Obviously, you prefer to keep stay friends, right? I mean, platonic friendships are just as strong. Anyone would be lucky to simple be good friends with me anyway, It—”

“Ok, now’s the part where you shut up.”

“—and I would, wait what?”

You got up, and pecked a kiss on the tip of Revali’s beak.

“I said, now’s the part where you shut up”

#botw #loz botw #breath of the wild #revali #revali botw #revali x reader #x reader #urbosa botw #urbosa #daruk botw #botw daruk #mipha botw #mipha #link botw #link #zelda

[starcunning]

9. Hesitate

Daisies spring from damnèd seeds

For @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast‘s FFXIVWrite 2019. [Title] [AO3 mirror]

When she came in, Urianger was halfway through his cup of tea. He set it before him and smiled at her, and she could not help but mirror the gesture. “I had it on good authority you hated that stuff,” Shasi said, setting her pack beside the door. “Thou wouldst put store by pixie authority?” he asked. There was a gentle amusement in his tone. “Of course not,” she said, stooping to scoop up a few apples that had fallen to the floor, scattered some distance from the bowl that ought to have held them. “I’m beginning to think that of all the courses of study in Sharlayan, ‘organization’ was absent the list.” His chair scraped the floor as he stood, crossing the anteroom to aid her in her hopeless effort at tidying up. “Alas,” he said, “we Archons of Louisoix’s party were consumed by more pressing concerns. Thou art one to give a lecture in any case, my lady.” She flicked an ear in annoyance that was perhaps more genuine than he’d meant. “How would you know?” she asked. “It’s not as though you’ve seen how I’ve been living for …” “Three years,” he finished for her. “They seem to have agreed with you,” she told him, but she could not make it as cheerful as she ought.

It was true—he seemed lighter, somehow, though given the circumstances perhaps that was a charged word. It was not all down to the change in his garb, either, glad though she was to see him give up his hood and goggles. Not that such things had ever served to obscure him from her in the ways that mattered; they made themselves understood to one another. Still, it seemed he had found some ease here, though that only put him in starker contrast to those that had not.

“Another of the peculiarities of Sharlayan is the cooking,” he said, placing a gentle hand at her elbow to shepherd her from the door. “’Tis very bland, and thus I find such sweets as are common here overbearing. Yet the demands of politesse dictate I refuse not a fae’s gift, and thus am I burdened with their consumption. Perhaps thou wouldst do me the kindness of sharing this burden?” Shasi let him lead her to the table, and sat opposite him. She contemplated the time since she had done so last—some few moons, she knew, but most of the days that comprised them were lost to her. It might have been a sennight ago. It might have been five years. The disorientation of such darkness as had plagued her on the Source had given way to the oppressive light of the First, which made days no easier to number. Still, however she counted, he had endured far longer. She doubted if he remembered sitting in a room with her, each of them ignoring the other in favor of the ghosts she had conjured. Shasi regarded the plate between them. It was stacked with cookies—she herself had put them there to appease her pixie taskmasters hours before. “You do realize I actually don’t care for dessert,” she reminded him. “Then be thou not obligated to accept mine offer,” he said. “Wilt thou take tea, at least?” “That much I can do,” Shasi said, nodding.

He went to pick through the vessels and dishware that cluttered a set of shelves against one wall, and Shasi watched him putter about a bit before she cast her gaze over the rest of the room. It was hard to imagine it as a hunting lodge—three years of the detritus of Urianger’s residency had all but obliterated any sign of its original purpose. The only tell was the stuffed head mounted in the cupola, which looked rather well-preserved given its presumed age. He was settling in well here, and the thought tore her heart. It felt, she decided, just like the same terrible shock that had come when she had absorbed the Lightwarden’s essence.

She was stirred from her reverie by the sound of him setting a cup before her, and she turned her face back toward him and smiled. “Full glad am I to see you, my lady,” he said. She did not know what to say to that, so she scalded her tongue with too-hot tea instead. After a moment of panting, wincing at her own recklessness, she had it. Or at least she had something. “Were I not to arrive,” she said, “it would fall to Minfilia to avert your prophecy, wouldn’t it.” He visibly winced. “Thou art correct,” he said at length. “On that matter we were not all agreed, but Master Thancred ever endeavored to convince us.” “He is different too,” she said absently, though it made her no gladder to note than had the change in Urianger—and he, at least, seemed happy. “Well,” she said, clearing her throat. “I am come, and the work already begun. So there’s that to be glad of, at least.” Urianger regarded her a long moment, setting his cookie back down on the plate before him. “As thou sayest,” he replied. There was a glumness in his tone which matched his dispirited expression. Perhaps he had gotten too used to the shield of his obscurity, to wear his emotions so openly. “My lady,” he said after a moment, and there was something tentative about it. “What is it, Urianger?” she asked. She could not afford to bear her reactions so openly, and so she did her best to keep the weariness from her tone. It was not Urianger’s fault she had been called to this world, after all—though she did not doubt but that he blamed himself, after all that had transpired with Elidibus. “I am glad to see thee,” he said, “foremost because thou art my friend. The loss of Eorzea’s champions I have weathered ere now—my mentor and my friend; I count too among these tragedies thy peer, a loss so complete that even now I cannot speak that absent hero’s name. While I would do all within my power to save thee for the realm’s sake, I would count myself glad to spare thee such misfortune for nothing more than the sake of thy place in my regard.”

It was not merely his face and arms that he had stripped bare, then. He seemed altogether too naked then, though nothing of his physical aspect had changed. She could not hold his gaze then, though to tear her attention from his golden eyes was to turn it upon this house which belonged to him so utterly that it was written in every ilm of it.

She wanted to flee into the night—but first she would have to restore the night to this place to manage it. So she stood, and drank the rest of her tea in one too-long pull. “Thank you, Urianger.” The words were stilted in her throat, but if he made any reply she did not stay long enough to hear it.

For a mercy, he did not pursue her, and when she closed the door behind herself she was shut too of him, and of that terrible, comfortable place. She fixed her eyes upon the blazing sky above, and realized her breathing had grown shallow, as though the few yalms she had sprinted to the door were malms instead.

“There you are!” came a voice, and a pixie flitted into view. “You are Feo Ul’s pactmate, aren’t you?” Shasi regarded the pixie with cold eyes. She imagined the pranks to come, and found her mood blacker than ever. Still, should worse come to worst, she could invoke that bond. Shasi nodded. “Can you swim?” they wondered. “There is a particular plant that grows in the water. We trade with the Fuath for it, usually, but maybe you could harvest some?” She considered the question. A refusal rose to the tip of her tongue—Fray’s answer, like as not; she had yet to decide on her own. She would rather work than think, and she still needed the pixies’ gratitude if she thought to enter Lyhe Ghiah. “What plant? What does it look like?” she asked. “It’s very pretty,” they said. “It has big fronds and grows flowers when it reaches the surface. The Fuath call it whirlweed. I need the whole plant, even the bulb.” “Fine,” Shasi said, and made for the lake.

It was dim and cool in the water, and there was a strange relief in letting it flood her lungs. But then she was alone with the work, and with her thoughts. And with Fray, too, who said nothing, but she could feel him stirring in her heart as he often did when her emotions had run high.

She walked among the weeds, in the sparkling water, and if the Fuath watched, she did not see them. She thought of Thancred, and of Minfilia—the young Minfilia, the one who resided in this world and who looked at her with the same clouded crystal eyes as the Antecedent. There would be no passing this cup to her—not even something so small as what she did now. After all, Shasi doubted she could breathe underwater.

The whirlweed grew almost as tall as Shasi herself, its central stalk buoyed upward toward the surface by translucent pods. There were buds at the end of its stalk, small and not ready to open, but she imagined that when they reached the surface they would unfurl. Its long fronds wrapped around her arms as she uprooted it, pulling it easily from the silty bottom of the lake. She collected a half-dozen and decided that was more than enough.

The plants went limp in her arms as she surfaced, and she carried them awkwardly, like one might a sleeping child. Water dripped from her, blurring her vision, but she kept an eye out for her pixie taskmaster. She found them back by the Bookman’s Shelves, though she approached on timorous feet.

“Don’t worry,” they said. “Urianger is out. Now we can prank him!” She was in little mood for that, though, so instead she said only, “What do you want with these?” The pixie flitted closer, stretching out one little hand. “I’ll enchant the bulbs,” they said, and a moment later the plants seemed to change in her arms, growing more rigid. Better suited for land. “While you were getting them, I dug up some of the earth. We’re going to plant these, and he’ll be so confused when he sees water plants growing in front of his house!”

They laughed, but Shasi only staggered toward one of the little beds the pixie had dug. She set the whirlweeds aside, and they stood tall, swaying gently in the breeze. Shasi looked at the tilled soil, and the plants, and the house, and refused to call it by its name. If she had learned anything from the fae it was that there was far too much power in names.

“Just drop them in,” the pixie urged. Shasi closed a hand about the base of one plant, but found she could move no further. It was no enchantment that had her spellbound, nor had the fronds of the weed wrapped about her limbs again, she simply could not bear the thought of planting this yard. Hot tears joined the cold water already on her cheeks, and she felt the stirring of the air as the pixie drew near. “Does going in the water make your eyes leak like that?” they wondered. “You mortals are so strange! Next time I’ll just ask the Fuath!”

Shasi had no retort for that. Minfilia had likened the pixies to children not long after their arrival, and how could Shasi explain that she wept? Moreover, how could she give voice to the reasons why? She shook her head. To plant these flowers was to give this dwelling another name—a name she did not wish it to have. It was to make this place Urianger’s home, and to assume that he would be there to see these plants bloom. If she knelt to plant flowers for him anywhere, it should have been before the Waking Sands, though she would have been gladder still if he had adjourned to the Stones with the rest of them.

But she had her work, and that was far more important than her feelings, so she mounded soil around the fragile plants, and watered them with her tears.

#ff14 #FFXIVWrite2019 #urianger augurelt #x'shasi #original content #starcunning writes #x'shasi ♦ urianger #this wasn't quite what i set out to write but i'm fond of it just the same #shadowbringers spoilers

[consilium-games]

A New Offering

It has been entirely too long since my last post, and likewise, since my last title, so let me rectify that right . . . now!

In The Queen Smiles, I played with a new mechanical embellishment, on top of my usual Ghost/Echo-inspired framework. The 'One Red' system gave me a surprising amount of interesting design space to play around in, and as I said in the previous post, I found enough to make a fair supplement!

That supplement is here: One Red explores a wide range of different mechanical conceits and additions and minigames and subsystems, all intended to make even the most routine roll of two six-sided dice into as much of a workhorse as your group could want. You can put mechanics onto "unnatural mental effects on your main character", or "terrifying (or beneficent) being sharing your character's body", or even "procedurally generate the world or play an NPC no one should directly control". You can even play around with time itself, telling a story out of order, and zooming in or flashing back (or forward) to the causal connections between the key moments of a story. Whether you use this for Rashomon-style conflicting events, or creation-myth exploration of a people's defining tale, or even use it as a meta-narrative device, in which some mysterious sequence of events requires investigation, you can do things few other games can survive trying.

That's Great, But Why?

Mostly, I like exploring design-space in RPGs. While no one could ever hope to exhaustively do this, it has always fascinated me just how much you can get even a simple system to do, especially when that system really does the intended work. By that, I mean that while a game like Dread really does lend itself to feelings of dread . . . it doesn't lend itself to anything else in particular. It's not a system, it's a mechanic--like "roll two or more dice, one determines success or failure, all others determine complications or costs". And systems allow all the cool interesting exploration.

In particular, I had fun seeing just how detailed, or how abstract, one could be in figuring out the Queen's values, priorities, sensibilities, and attitude. One minute, She Smiles on you putting one of her emissaries in your rear-view and flooring it, and narrowly escaping. The next, She Smiles your getting pulled over and taken to jail. Why send that emissary after you if She likes that you escaped? If She likes that you escaped, why should She approve of you going to jail? These contradictions require some kind of resolution, whether it comes from the Queen having elliptical, corkscrew logic, or some simple, clear, but unexpected priority. Perhaps the Queen sends emissaries to provoke you to drastic action, and whether you succeed or fail, She wants you to become a champion, hardening through hardship. Or, maybe you carry some kind of contagion, and She never intended her emissary to kill you, because then you can't spread the lilting melody from Arcadia--but you can certainly spread it in a jailhouse.

But as I quickly saw, I'd created a mechanic and then built a system around it. So I began to ask, what else could I do with this mechanic now that I had it, and what other systems could I make with it? And that was before realizing, I'd actually made two mechanics, and only used one in The Queen Smiles. Clearly, I had to remedy this.

The first mechanic in the 'One Red' elaboration is the one that The Queen Smiles actually uses: adding a special significance to one of the dice in the roll, without changing its mechanical meaning. The rules don't care what you tack onto the Goal or Danger holding the Red Die, only that you tack on something. And given that in all of my Succession-derived games, the dice you roll have a hard and tangible link to the narrative, this means that the One Red die projects a narrative meaning on top of an existing narrative meaning.

But the other mechanic I realized I'd made, as ideas started to congeal and extrude, is adding a special value to one of the dice, layering a mechanic on top of a mechanic. This shows up more One Red, perhaps more than the former. In this approach, the story or narrative may not directly notice or care which facet of a roll you assign your Red die to. But the rules themselves, the ones that say when to roll, and how to interpret the dice, directly care about the added layer of value on one of your dice.

The former gives us things like "portraying a character that no one should directly control", whether that be an incomprehensible being from beyond, or a collective entity that players would have incentive to bias, or even a character that should seem unpredictable and unstable, at all times. You're using the same machinery for creating stories, but you've done something a bit complicated in tying the story back to the machinery.

The latter gives us things like prompts to cut forward or backward in time, defining parts or features of the world around you as you move through it, even nominally very mechanics-heavy things like a form of wild magic you only barely control at all--but that you still do, yourself. The same machinery, but tied to itself in a complicated feedback loop.

So What to Use This For?

As far as One Red goes, most of its verbiage relates it to Succession, rather than The Queen Smiles, for a few reasons I want to get into here.

First, amazing as the scope of Cool New Mechanics might be with One Red, the nature of One Red makes it more difficult, if not impossible, to sensibly use the Red die for more than one thing. The Queen Smiles, as a game, really can't also use most of the ideas in One Red--while one or two could work, it invites confusion and doesn't directly aid the game's core intent.

Second, since publishing Succession, I've had a few readers describe the book as anything from "hard to read" up to "impossible to understand". I also have had readers describe it as a really great game, and say that its unique style and approach adds a lot to what kind of game it plays, and what way to tell its stories. I knew during writing that I wanted to try for the latter, and if I got it then it would come at the expense of the former.

But, I've also gotten better at writing rulebooks for public consumption--funny how repeatedly doing something can make you better at it, right? And while I still consider Succession a fine game, maybe better than anything I've made since, that 'expense' above is steep. Steeper than I want to pay again. So Chamber+Circle has its blunter, more direct, rule-focused style, and The Queen Smiles prattles on for a decadent twenty pages when its source material is literally "take Horror and Fairytales from Book of Sand, and rub in a novel mechanic".

So in making this latest supplement, by addressing the rules directly to Succession as a starting frame of reference, I hope to make Succession, retroactively, a bit better and more valuable. The book still has the same cryptic, sphinxian delivery as ever, because the book hasn't changed. But, someone getting Succession, or who already got it, has one more supplement that immediately speaks to making this cryptically-written game into something even more unique, and without any obfuscatory delivery. That's definitely not to say that One Red can't enhance Chamber+Circle, or indeed any Succession-related Ghost/Echo-inspired game. Just put a Red die among the ones you were already rolling, and see what you can do with that distinction within rules! But artistically, I wanted to tip the scales more for Succession, as the darling I made that has the most objections.

And as for future offerings, I have a book very much in mind. I haven't seen a lot of RPGs that deal at all with romance. It's almost a taboo topic, judging by the reception of Monsterhearts (now with a second edition!) And while Monsterhearts is a fine game for what it wants to do, it has some rough patches, and even if you sand those off, it wants to do some very specific things. If you don't, Monsterhearts has a lot for you to navigate around. So my next title will present my take on heartwarming, sincere, passionate romance stories, focusing on madness, tragedy, and personal loss. It's gonna be a fun one and I look forward to publishing it this year!

#one red #game design #self promotion #books #succession

[filmnovelizations]

Rocky IV

Rocky was impervious to it all. He and Drago were toe-to-toe, silently assaulting each other with psychological weapons. If looks could kill...

This book is bad. I’ve never been terribly familiar with the Rocky movies. I watched Rocky IV for the first time right before I started reading this masterpiece. The film is a somewhat baffling mess, and some of that mess is weirdly fixed by this book. There are so many minor and major differences between the book and film, it’s hard to believe Sylvester Stallone wrote them both. On the other hand, I haven’t found evidence of a ghost writer, so why not?

So, having finally watched the film, the first thing I wanted from the book was any small attempt to make sense of the fucking robot. There is none.

A robot walked through the door. It was about five feet tall and rolled on wheels. In its outstretched arms it held the flaming birthday cake. A perpetual “Have a nice day” smile was painted around the microphone box on its face. A pink ribbon was tied decoratively around its square head.

So, the description is a little different from the actual robot, but that’s the least of my concerns. They give the pathetic, lonely, alcoholic Paulie a robot as a joke because he doesn’t have any friends. At first he’s annoyed, then he uses the skills he must have learned at the slaughterhouse to reprogram the robot to talk with a breathy female voice while on a constant mission to supply him beer. In Las Vegas, he’s sad he didn’t bring the robot. After he loses all his money on slot machines and blackjack, he talks to a prostitute but laments losing all his money gambling, and he’s sad he didn’t bring the fucking robot. You can just go ahead and assume he’s jamming his dick into some part of that robot. 

While Paulie is losing all his prostitute money gambling, Stallone supplies a perfect example of the kind of bad writing that loads up this short book.

A chair opened up at the table. Paulie decided that a change of games would help his luck. He sat down and bought twenty dollars’ worth of chips. If you’re gonna do it, might as well splurge. He put a two-dollar chip in front of him. The dealer drew the cards out of the shoe. Paulie got a ten and a king.

What table? Yes, I suppose a change of games would at least make a more interesting time than cheap slot machines. Is twenty dollars splurging? How broke is Paulie? Wait, how does he make money? If you’re gonna do it, you might as well cliche. A two dollar bet is not a splurge. Oh, it’s a blackjack game. You could have called it a blackjack table in the first sentence instead of “the table.” This is a major casino in Las Vegas, not an illegal casino in the basement of a bar.

And so Sylvester Stallone’s writing is filled with paragraphs like this. Sometimes pronouns are not clearly defined, because they’ll switch who they refer to or they just won’t clearly refer to anyone. There are so many cliches I should have kept count.

A few hookers loitered in front of the bar, but Rocky didn’t recognize any of them.

So, after the robot nonsense, the next most obvious thing I wanted from this book was the book version of the montage. This film is notorious for its use of montage. I timed the montages. There are four montages in the film. After fighting with Adrian, Rocky has a driving montage. There are two separate montages when Rocky is training in Russia. And then there’s the montage to skip twelve rounds of boxing in the Rocky-Drago fight. I think people might think of the James Brown music video in their estimation that this movie is overloaded with montage, but it’s really not a montage. It’s a music video.

Anyway, the four official montages amount to fifteen minutes and seventeen seconds. The end credits roll at eighty-four minutes. If you take out or just severely reduce the length of the montages, the movie is just less than seventy minutes long. If you want to argue that the James Brown music video counts because it is unnecessarily inflating the film’s runtime the same as the montages, go ahead and cut off another two minutes and forty seconds. Either way, this film is short enough without discarding fifteen-eighteen minutes. In the book, James Brown is absent. Apollo Creed’s entrance is a normal paragraph.

Suddenly the band started playing again. It was a lively, raucous tune. A side door to the ballroom opened and a troupe of scantily dressed chorus girls holding small American flags entered. They were followed by Apollo with Rocky at his side. Behind them were Duke and Paulie. Apollo was dressed as Uncle Sam in a red, white, and blue suit complete with a top hat. The ballroom thundered with applause. Well-wishers tried to swamp the group as they made their way to the ring, but the polite, yet firm security men kept them at bay. Their job was made harder by Apollo. He kept reaching out to shake hands. When he reached the bandstand he jumped up and down in time to the music. The applause became so loud that the band itself was drowned out. Rocky shook his head in wonder. Who says you can’t go home again? Apollo was doing it.

After that, the driving montage is completely replaced with actual story. Rocky doesn’t drive around thinking about the shit that happened in the first three films. He tries to convince the United Boxing Federation to allow him to fight Drago, and forfeits his title when they refuse. Paulie wrecks Rocky’s car. The mayor of Philadelphia pays to restores Goldmill’s Gym so Rocky can train somewhere familiar. Two officials from the State Department try to convince Rocky to cancel the fight. They have statistics that prove he can’t win. Shitty Paulie tries to convince Rocky to hit Adrian regularly so she’ll learn some respect. It’s not all good story, but it’s so much better than the driving montage.

The only montage that really makes it into the book in a way that feels like a montage is the training-in-Russia montage. The film breaks it into two by having a short scene when Adrian joins him. The montage just eats up most of the penultimate chapter and it looks like this:

This is the book version of a montage. Even with Stallone’s basic writing, it works.

Rocky turned into the camera’s glare. “Get that light off him!” Duke grabbed the man by the belt and jerked him away from Rocky and Apollo. Rocky cradled Apollo’s head in his arms. “Hold on. You can do it. I know you can. Just hold on.” But Apollo let loose and flowed into legend.

I am still so very confused by some of the differences between the film and the novel. The first thing I need to address is a bit tricky. In the film, which as I said rolls credits at about 84 minutes, Apollo Creed dies at about 32 minutes. The novel is 156 pages long, and Apollo dies on page 101. This means that 2/3 of the story in the novel is contained in the first 1/3 of the film. This would almost explain the abundance of montage in the remainder of the film if it weren’t for all the story Stallone left out of the film but still put in that part of the novel. The novel tells a far more even story and I would sincerely like to know what went wrong when Stallone filmed the damn thing. He clearly thought about the gaps in the story and filled them in with the novel. Even accounting for the montages after Apollo’s death, how did he get more runtime out of the last 1/3 of the novel with objectively less story?

Would you like to know more about Ivan Drago? It’s in the book. Read up on his background and how he started boxing. However, there’s also something in the book that would probably have him in jail. In the film, Apollo’s death doesn’t look like deliberate murder. When the fight is technically over, Drago stops punching and starts reciting the English he’s been told to recite. It’s sort of chaos. The book, however...

Rocky grabbed the towel and quickly threw it in the ring. Drago was still punching. Apollo rocked savagely with each blow. It was amazing that he could still stand. “The ex-champion is out on his feet. He’s being pounded without mercy. Balboa has just thrown in the towel!” White yelled gratefully. As soon as he saw the towel the referee stepped in and tried to separate the fighters. Drago paused again to look at his corner. Rimsky nodded grimly. Drago pushed the referee aside and delivered a final blow that could be heard over the din of the crowd.

Murderer. The fight is over and he pauses to look at his handler before punching Apollo one last time. It would be hard to argue that Drago wasn’t ordered to kill Apollo, what with all the cameras around. The rest of the story would be quite different then.

I want to address one last thing that I think gets lost in the James Brown and montages and Ivan Drago, and that is Rocky Jr. Unlike Die Hard, no one thinks of this film as a Christmas movie. You should add it to your Christmas viewing, honestly. The final fight takes place on Christmas Day. That’s enough. But what about Rocky Jr.? Think about the story from his perspective. For his entire life, Apollo was Rocky’s best friend. He probably called him Uncle. He watched Uncle Apollo get murdered. Then his dad is going to Russia to train to fight the same person that murdered Uncle Apollo. And that fight is going to happen on Christmas Day. Then his mom left to join his dad in Russia. Who’s taking care of him? It’s the housekeeper you barely see in the movie, not that either film or novel mentions it. Stallone didn’t think to address the fact that Rocky and Adrian abandon Rocky Jr. at Christmas. In the film, you see a few shots of him watching the fight with a couple friends and Paulie’s robot. The novel at least has the housekeeper instead of the robot. This is, by far, my favorite Christmas story now. Who are the friends that watch the fight with Rocky Jr.? How did that get set up? “Hey, I know it’s Christmas and your parents probably want to spend it with you but do you want to come over and maybe watch my dad get murdered by a 7 foot tall Russian?” In the novel, Rocky doesn’t even say “merry Christmas” to Rocky Jr. at the end of his speech.

Rocky Junior couldn’t take his eyes off the television set. Was this really happening to his dad? Was this what boxing was about? It was horrible. He wanted it to end. He wanted his mother and father home. “Your dad’s getting smashed,” a friend said quietly. Rocky Junior blinked, but the picture didn’t go away. It was real, not a nightmare.

Yeah. This book is bad and you should absolutely read it.

Also, Adrian is pregnant in the book, and Rocky tells Paulie this right after Paulie tells him to hit her to teach her respect. Her pregnancy is entirely forgotten after that though, and it is not an issue when she travels to Russia to watch her husband possibly get murdered. It just isn’t mentioned again. Just something to think about. What a Christmas story. Buy paintings so I can buy more paint to paint more paintings

#rocky iv #rocky balboa #sylvester stallone #paulie #robot #ivan drago #merry christmas rocky junior #boxing #carl weathers #apollo creed #james brown #eye of the tiger

[sulietsexual]

Oh, okay! I mostly wanted to hear what you thought of the Connor scenes (in PO) since they're so vital to his arc in s4. And I agree with you on Beauty and the Beasts, the way abuse victims are treated in the Buffyverse is so genuinely appalling, it's undescribable. Disrespecting them so awfully is one thing, but continuing to shove the actual abuse under the rug and show the abusers in a positive light is so gross and gives such harmful messages. Anyways - how about Redefinition? Or Lullaby?

Sorry I couldn’t offer any Connor meta re Peace Out, but I’ve written you some nice, long meta for both Redefinition and Lullaby, so hopefully this makes up for it!

Redefinition

ShortOpinion: Asomewhat erratic, but ultimately satisfying ep

LongOpinion: Redefinitionis really the final episode in the initial Darla arc (when Darla resurfaceslater, it is to set up her next arc on the show, with little to do with thisinitial storyline). I find this episode to be a bit all over the place, as itmoves between Angel preparing to take out Darla and Drusilla, to Wes, Gunn and Cordydrinking and singing at Caritas, to Darla and Drusilla’s plans for power andterror. The transitions between scenes are not as smooth as they could be, andthe episode doesn’t really feel that cohesive, instead coming across as threestorylines presented separately, with nothing really sewing them together untilthe end of the ep. That being said, the three storylines presented make forvery interesting viewing.

Angel continues down his path ofdarkness, his narration essentially confirming that he is going dark in orderto kill Darla, because he’s currently too close to her. He’s smelled her scent,felt her heartbeat, witnessed her with a soul, and now the only way he canmurder her is to access the darker parts of his personality, to cut himself offfrom all humanity so that he doesn’t feel the guilt and loss associated withkilling someone whom he loves.

What’s more interesting thanAngel’s plot and motivations is Darla’s storyline and the motivationsbehind it. After devouring the W&H lawyers, Darla and Drusilla pay a visitto Lindsey and Lilah at their offices, in a darkly amusing scene. They informLindsey and Lilah that the two of them have been spared so that Darla and Druhave a liaison to the Senior Partners, a access-window to the senior partners.Darla has obviously chosen Lindsey due to his easily-manipulated feelings forher, and my personal theory is that Lilah was Drusilla’s pick (Drusillaoutright states that she “likes the girl” because “she’s wicked”).

What’s interesting is Darla (andby extension Drusilla) pursuing this kind of power. Darla, much likeAngelus, has always been presented as an agent of chaos, even under theMaster’s rule. She has never much cared for organised or structured power,preferring instead to indulge in murder, blood, mayhem and terror on anuncharted scale, never much caring for ultimate power. My theory is thatDarla’s pursuit of power is once again tied to her being human so recently, notto mention W&H’s manipulations of her (again, this is seemingly confirmedwith Darla’s speech to Lilah and Lindsey about loathing being W&H’spuppet). But more than W&H using her, Darla hated being helpless full stop.Having memories of being so recently human, remembering the feeling of havingto rely on others, of being dependent and weak (physically and emotionally) iswhat pushes Darla in this new pursuit of power. Just as she tries to ridherself of the remnants of emotion she has left towards Angel, Darla is alsotrying to rid herself of any and all perceived weakness, making sure thateveryone in her way knows that she is no longer that same helpless creature whoneeded Angel to rescue her.

That being said, it is clearlyshown that Angel is still on her mind and in her heart, more so than henormally would be, again because she has so recently been human. Darla was avampire for four hundred years, she pretty much forgot what it was liketo be human, to have a soul, to be vulnerable and to care for someonewith real, true, deep emotions. Now, being a newly born vampire so close tothese emotions, completely throws her off her game. She can remember caring forAngel in a way she never did without a soul. The remnants of her feelings forhim are still within her being, and when he appears in the crowd and Drusillasenses him, Darla’s feelings for him come rushing to the surface, and sheclearly falters, confused and disoriented by the leftover emotions from hersoul.

The climax of this episode feelslike it was supposed to set up a new storyline, but didn’t. Angel sets Darlaand Drusilla on fire (in a fairly horrifying scene, Drusilla’s cries for helpare particularly jarring) and as Darla sits on the sidewalk in the aftermath,she says “That wasn’t Angelus. That wasn’t Angel either. Who was that?” whichto me indicated that maybe the writers were intending to explore this darknessto Angel further than they did, but abandoned that storyline in favour ofsending Angel after W&H.

The B storyline to this episodedoesn’t quite mesh well with the A storyline, but does provide most of thehumour, as well as a turning point for the other three main characters. Despondentand unsure of their futures in the wake of Angel firing them, Cordy, Wes andGunn find themselves at Caritas, searching for direction. Cordy and Wes’ appearanceat Caritas is hardly a surprise, both are characters who have found their pathsand stuck to them, so the sudden upheaval in their lives would naturally leavethem quite disoriented and searching for guidance. Gunn, however, is a bit of asurprise, as up until this point he had kept himself apart from AngelInvestigations, unclear as to his path. This episode shows that he’s obviouslybeen thinking more about his future and that he’s searching for somewhere to belong(and probably has been since Allana’s death). This episode, this arc really, isa turning point for Gunn, as he transitions from an outsider on the fringes ofAI, to a fully-fledged member whom Wes would take a bullet for.

The scenes with Cordy, Wes andGunn getting drunk and passing the blame around are hilarious and fullof classic lines (“My ass is not pansy!”) and of course there is that gloriousrendition of We Are The Champions. But beyond this, Redefinition marks newdirection for all three characters, as Cordelia gets a vision and, withoutAngel’s help, they take down a demon and save an innocent girl. This episodeproves to the three that they can and should continue on without Angel, andtheir friendship is bonded through this and the subsequent episodes where theyestablish their new business and grow closer in Angel’s absence.

As said before, Redefinition is asomewhat shaky episode, with the scenes not really flowing all that well andthe storylines feeling separate instead of interconnected, but it does containsome great meta and some terrific characterisation. Ultimately, despite its’messiness, Redefinition is an entertaining and endearing episode, whichsatisfies the viewer and closes the first part of Darla’s arc nicely.

Lullaby

Shortopinion: PoorDarla.

Longopinion: Lullabyis one of my favourite AtS episodes, bringing Darla’s character arc tocompletion and opening up Holtz’ revenge storyline nicely. This episode ischock-full of emotional moments which I love, but I also find myselfincreasingly angry every time I watch this episode, due to everything Darlaendures, and the way her agency is taken away via her mystical pregnancy.

Darla’s pregnancy is, quitefrankly, horrifying. First, there’s the fact that it’s not something she everwanted. Then there’s the fact that once she realises that she’s pregnant,she is unable to get rid of it. Darla mentions trying everything to terminatethe pregnancy, to which Fred reacts with mild horror, but it’s understandablethat Darla would do everything in her power to avoid carrying and birthing ababy she never asked for. The fact that mystical forces are literallypreventing her from aborting or killing the baby is actually quite horrifying,as Darla is forced to endure nine months of hell, her body changing andundergoing a physical toll which as a vampire she can withstand, but as a womanshe never wanted (I feel like there’s some sort of anti-abortion allegory goingon here).

As if this wasn’t bad enough,Darla is then forced to experience feelings and emotions she, once again, neverasked for and was not prepared for. As sweet as the scene with Angel on theroof is, with Darla talking about how much she loves her unborn child, it’sactually somewhat a case of fridge horror, given that these feelings aren’t hers.She doesn’t love her child because she’s bonded with it, or fallen in love overthe course of her pregnancy, or had a sudden realisation of love. She lovesConnor because she’s being forced to, through the soul which resideswithin her. Darla even acknowledges this, as she heartbreakingly cries abouthow she doesn’t want to birth Connor, because it will mean that the soul willbe gone and she will no longer love him once that happens. Darla is not onlyforced to carry a pregnancy she never wanted, she is forced to shoulder andfeel emotions that are not actually hers. Her mind, as well as her body, isinvaded and violated by this pregnancy.

Darla’s pregnancy was the secondof a mystical nature on the show, and when watching the first time around, doesnot come across as a fridged woman trope, due to the fact that Darla stakingherself to save Connor plays out as a natural conclusion to her arc. Watchingit in retrospect and with the deaths or Fred and Cordy in mind, it actually comesacross as horrifying, violating and the first of many fridged women on AtS.Despite it being my favourite show, I truly hate the way AtS treats its’ femalecharacters, and Darla was the first one thrown under a bus. She, as with everyfemale on this show, deserved better.

Ignoring these unfortunateimplications, Lullaby is a great episode. Angel finally comes face-to-face withHoltz, discovering who’s been chasing him for the past few episodes. I havealways loved Angel’s attitude regarding Holtz – he never begrudges him for hispursuit of revenge, never blames Holtz and fully acknowledges that Holtz isdeserving of his vengeance (compare this with Spike’s self-righteous and grossattitude towards Wood in Lies My Parents Told Me). Darla too, courtesy of Connor’ssoul, realises that Holtz has a right to his revenge, that what they did to himwas too terrible to ever atone for. The flashbacks showing the horror thatAngelus and Darla put Holtz through only compounds this.

Of course the most heartbreakingand beautiful part of this episode is Connor’s birth, as Darla tearfully tellsAngel that they can’t atone for their horrifying crimes, can’t make up foranything they did, but that through Connor they might have finally donesomething right. Angel’s tenderness towards Darla in this scene is sobittersweet to watch, as he kisses her fingers with more affection than he’sprobably ever shown her before. Her eventual staking and Connor’s appearancewas a heart wrenching twist, and the final shot of Holtz ominously watchingAngel walk away with baby Connor in his arms promises more to come, leavingthis episode with a shadow hanging over it. All up, just a beautiful 

#answered #Anonymous #angel the series #ats meta #angel #meta