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hermitcraftheadcanons · 3 years

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Hermitopia AU Conclusion

The last ask has been answered, the masterposts are complete, and (although art, writing, and Discord discussion are still accepted and encouraged) it is finally time to officially wrap up the Hermitopia AU! Because this was such a massive event - and no small thing to moderate - there will be a pause in blog activity for a day or so before the inbox will open for regular headcanons again. I apologize in advance for the wait!

In the mean time, I would just like to say: I am so, so thankful to everyone who participated in the AU. Your ideas and your creativity have made this blog a better place, whether you sent in one headcanon or dozens, and I am constantly in awe of the energy and enthusiasm of this community. Thank you, all of you, for making this universe we’ve created as vast and as interesting as it turned out to be.

Below are a collection of my own ideas, for those of you who like a satisfying (but still not entirely closed-ended) ending. These events take place as many days, months, or years into the future as you need them to make your own ideas work, and none of them are set in stone. You can take all of them, some of them, or none of them as truth if you want to...but either way, it has been an honour to build on a project like this one alongside you all.

And with that...the Hermitopia AU concludes! Finished, or barely begun, like so many good projects are. Have a great day everyone, and happy headcanoning!

- Mod Shade

"People of Hermitopia."

The man on the screen shifts, running a nervous hand across his bald head and squaring his shoulders. The broadcast quality is unstable, but it's more than enough for every citizen in the city to recognize who's speaking.

"This is your Concorp Branch Director, Cub. As I'm sure you are aware, I am the head of Project VEX in this city. You all know the VEX initiative as groundbreaking, life-saving, a shining success and a step towards a new era for humanity...and some of you may even see me as a hero for creating it.”

He closes his eyes, a brief look of pained remorse crossing his face. For a moment, he looks utterly defeated, almost small in the face of his impromptu audience of thousands...but finally, he fixes the camera with a steady gaze once more and begins the great unravelling.

“Maybe it was all those things, in the beginning. Maybe *I* was, once. But today, after far too long, I have some confessions to make...."

- For years, Cub had been desperately scrambling to hold the tatters of his life’s work together. Project VEX had started so well, and he had poured so much of himself into it, that when the failed experiments and rebellions became more and more frequent he was unable to accept a change of course. He covered up the project’s failings to maintain funding and public image, but mostly to maintain his own image to himself - that he was still the hero he’d set out to be and create at the project’s start. However, his denial was wearing on him heavily, and eventually he had a breakdown and decided to go public rather than keep drowning the city in lies.

- This breakdown was prompted by xB, who after his own moral breakthrough, confronted Cub and urged him to stop withholding knowledge and truth. xB also informed Cub of his own unknown truth - that the unintended power of his presence was the thing that was keeping the experiments successful when Cub was around. This was the final straw in breaking through Cub’s denial

- Along with Cub’s broadcasted speech, files were released to the media containing proof against most if not all of Concorp’s falsehoods. Many names were cleared of crimes that had been pinned on them, including Beef, Impulse, Doc, Cleo, and the majority of the other Unrestrained and Unaffiliated former VEX trainees that the company had tried to cast away

- Understandably, it took a very long time for the chaos to die down and all that information to be processed by society and the justice system. It may be years before the community can see some of their heroes in the proper light again, but at least they are now free to begin rebuilding their reputation without being labeled as villains and traitors.

- Those who actually did commit villainous acts are given a fair trial, with consideration for their motives and the new Concorp information as extra evidence

- The VEX program is withdrawn by Cub’s superiors and put under a strict review. It is reborn after a massive restructuring, with a new director, new limitations on what experiments can and cannot be attempted, and a greatly extended screening and training program to reduce the chances of graduates becoming villains. The new project will produce far fewer heroes with much subtler powers at first...but if that is the cost for the safety and stability of the city, then most people would agree that it is a small price to pay.

- Cub is not permitted to work on the new Project VEX in a management role, ever again. It’s a harsh blow for him, to have to watch his dream from the sidelines...but he knows he gave up the right to guide it when he abused the control that it gave him. At least his superiors allowed him something to do while he awaits trial: he is present (although guarded) at every new VEX trainee’s first experiment, lending his power to increase their chances of success.

- Mayor Scar resigned willingly. Nobody had enough evidence to accuse him of anything, and he didn’t plan on giving them a reason to look by trying to stay in office. Instead he chose to make his exit from both Concorp and government matters complete, at last. Or so he thinks. Who knows? Maybe he’ll learn what most of the people he’s helped to manipulate have already found out: that connections and old grudges don’t easily lose their grip.

- Scar is replaced by TFC, voted in by almost unanimous community support and funded by donations from all the people he’s saved over the years

- The greater Convex company offers a choice to the survivors of the old program: Come to work under their new, more honorable system, or take a generously large settlement and be free to build new lives

- Team ZIT declines the job offer, pooling their payment and using it to buy a shiny new base together for their independent hero venture. There are still a handful of real villains to fight, after all, and there are bound to be more once people start successfully copying Concorp technology. Now that Impulse is back at their side, they wouldn’t give up their roles saving the community for anything - but they’re done with being used by some guy behind a desk. From now on, justice and bravery will be their only guides!

- ...justice, bravery, and TFC, that is. He isn’t their boss by any means, but the more experienced hero does drop by often between his mayoral duties to make sure the youngsters stay out of trouble and in one piece.

- The nHo, according to all official records, took their settlements and split up, leaving Hermitopia far behind. However, Team ZIT suspects that the vigilante life hasn’t left them so easily. They’d be the last ones to report the odd sighting of a whipping vine or a distant masked figure, though - unregulated as they are, the nHo’s shady methods for a good cause prove useful from time to time. (And their base has really good tea. Okay, maybe it’s a little bit more than “the occasional sighting”...)

- Ren settles back into his meadow cabin, but after that massive release of info and a long, LONG period of processing, he now has Iskall, Stress, and Cleo as regular visitors. Every morning he wakes up and forgets for a moment that it’s real, that they’re really alive and with him again...but they are, and he is happier than he ever thought he would be again.

- Jevin and Mumbo visit the cabin occasionally. It took a while for Mumbo to get his memory back, but he now remembers all of his friendship with Iskall and Grian, and they come together for fun and shenanigans regularly with the rest of the cabin crew.

- Grian still spends his time looking for his clones, but honestly, he doesn’t mind. The adventure always did hold more meaning than the conclusion for him, and now, he has friends to help out!

- False disappears into thin air to wait out the fallout of Concorp’s information release. She snags herself a quiet job and a small apartment on the outskirts of town, fully intending to return to her mercenary work just as soon as the dust has settled...next week, maybe. Or the week after that. Or maybe, once the garden has been fully planted. She’s really enjoying having time for stuff like that now...but she’ll get back to work, really, she will! Soon.

- Joe and Cleo tearfully reunite through xB, and Joe becomes another frequent visitor to the cabin. Cleo also visits Joe’s base in the time exclusion zone, but she really prefers the cabin. Time skips are disorienting, and they make her want to sneeze.

- Keralis and Void come to an agreement. Xisuma isn’t entirely clear on what that agreement is - something to do with an allowance of cookies from Biffa’s bakery in exchange for not killing anyone - but he’s more than happy to be less sore and tired all the time.

Hermitopia is making progress. Real progress, this time - not just the breaking of humanity’s limitations, but breaking them with true heroic care, with the good of everyone in mind. There are some hurts that will never fully heal, mistakes that can be learned from but not undone, and yet...now there is a path, a way forward. It won’t be easy, but a kind and gentle future waits for them, welcome and well deserved. They will figure it out, together.

And together, they will step forward, into the new world that each of them has helped to create.

#hermitopia au #announcement #sort of #I know this is long; and not all of it is my best work; but I hope you'll find some of it worthy of canon #or at least inspiring to your own personal version of events #both hermitopia masterposts will be added to the masterpost of AUs in the normal pinned post #you'll still be able to access them #most importantly; I hope this event was fun for all of you #that's all there is to it; really. that's the point. :)#again; thank you

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noethicalconsumptionunderdisney · 3 years

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Hogwarts Sorting Profile: Max Russo

So, confession time: Initially, I wasn’t actually planning on writing one of these for him. I’m sorry! I love Max, but he’s often in the background of Wizards of Waverly Place and just has these really random plots thrown in his direction, rather than interesting character-exploration-type shit like the main sibs. (Which, to be fair, is probably why some of y’all might be curious what I’m going to say about him.)

But I was thinking about what makes Max so odd as a character, and specifically I was thinking about him in comparison to other characters of his archetype in the Disney Channel-verse. Because we’ve seen the messy, funny, underachieving brother character a lot, but they come in very different flavors. Part of that for Max is that he shares some of those traits with Alex in contrast to the overachieving, overly serious Justin, but part of that is… Max often seems to be in his own little world, incomprehensible to mortals and wizards alike, and generally takes in the “real-world” around him with a shrug. He still cares about the “real-world” when it suits him, but he’s often kind of divorced from it, and that discovery fascinated me. Furthermore, it made his Sorting “click.”

We’ll start off easy: what does Max do? The answer is… he’ll do pretty much anything. He’s not a Burned Secondary, though, he just doesn’t give a fuck. Max is every bit the Slytherin Secondary that Alex is, we just don’t usually notice because he spends most of his time in his Neutral State.

The Slytherin Secondary’s Neutral State is blunt, rough, and often unphased by stepping on people’s toes. It’s easy to mistake this for a Gryffindor Secondary’s honesty, but it comes from a different place: comfort, relaxation, and/or apathy. It doesn’t inspire or motivate so much as sit back and do as it pleases, and the Neutral State’s honesty is there for convenience rather than necessity— if a different tactic will work better, a Slytherin Secondary can ditch their honesty and change direction far more easily than a Gryffindor Secondary.

Max isn’t exactly shy about saying what’s on his mind, even if it’s usually dismissed as nonsense. He also does seem to charge into situations without a care sometimes, but that’s the thing: he’s able to charge into those situations because he doesn’t care. When he tests out the zombies’ No-Fear Ring, it doesn’t work on him because he’s already fearless. So while some Slytherin Secondaries are nervous about showing their honesty to others and only show their Neutral State when they’re home safe with people they’re comfortable with, Max lives in his honest Neutral State because he feels comfortable and safe most of the time… even in situations where he really, really shouldn’t.

Curiously, one situation where he doesn’t feel comfortable or safe has very little to do with actual danger, but about personal identity: when he’s turned into Maxine. And in Maxine’s body, he’s a lot more manipulative.

“You know, I can’t help it if people think I’m cute. Watch how I make it work for me.”

As Maxine, he uses his cuteness to get out of chores, to get revenge on Alex and Justin in karate, to guilt dishonest customers out of cheating his parents, and comes up with a plan to talk his “boy self” up to a girl he likes as Maxine so that she’ll like him when he changes back. Yeah, can’t imagine why Maxine reminded Jerry and Theresa so much of Alex…

But there are Slytherin Secondary indications from Max in his usual form as well.

He has no qualms about outright lying — inventing a fake illness to get out of P.E., pretending to be “Tom Sawyer” so he wouldn’t be embarrassed by/compared to his family — but he prefers obfuscation, aka confusing people with his “Max-ness.”

“How do you get your brother to say what’s really on his mind?”

“Oh, I use randomness.”

“What?”

“Well, I just say random things and while people are trying to figure it out, they say stuff that’s on their mind.”

One example of this tactic being employed successfully is with the Genie. While Alex fails to outsmart the Genie using her quick wits, as the Genie is every bit as cunning as her, Max figures out a way to piss off the Genie enough to blackmail her, then talks circles around her and confuses her until she reveals a way for them to undo her wishes. Alex calls it “outdumbing” her, but in any case, he succeeded where she failed, and showed that he’s more capable than often assumed.

We get another rare moment of clarity from Max during “Alex Tells The World.”

“Alex, you know you can’t reveal magic!”

“Oh, even I know that. That’s why I just make people think I’m dumb so if I slip up, ehh, they figure, the kid’s an idiot. And I slip up all the time, so. Who’s dumb now?”

Max’s admission that he “slips up all the time” isn’t exactly reassuring, but it is telling that he’s the only one who doesn’t reveal magic during both the Season 4 Premiere and the Season 3 Finale. Perhaps it was dumb luck that got him there, but I think there’s more to it than that. There’s a method to his madness. There’s a logic to it, even if Max’s logic often doesn’t follow all the way through.

Which leads me to his Primary— Ravenclaw. (LOOK I KNOW. HEAR ME OUT.)

Yes, Max is often seen as “the dumb one.” Yes, Ravenclaws are perceived as “the smart house.” And while I’ve just demonstrated that there’s a brain under all the Max weirdness, I’m not about to argue that he’s secretly a genius. He misses the mark more often than he hits it, and oftentimes when he hits it, it’s through coincidence or dumb luck or Insane Troll Logic that’s impossible for anyone but Max to follow. But I do believe he operates on logic, just his own wacky version of it.

The thing about Max is that he’s neither as dumb as most people think he is, nor is he as smart as he thinks he is. He’s somewhere in between, and the fact that people never quite know where exactly he falls on that scale is kind of the point.

In fact, part of the reason I struggled with Max was because I was trying to figure out where exactly he did fit in:

He can be selfish enough at times to argue Slytherin Primary, the stereotypically “selfish” House, but he’s missing Justin’s protective streak. He doesn’t feel that same sense of duty towards his family that Justin does; when Mason breaks Alex’s heart in “Wizards vs. Werewolves,” Justin turns on him instantly because he Hurt His Little Sister And Is Therefore Bad, while Max is the one most willing to give Mason a chance, because he has his own reasons for wanting Mason in his life. Yet, he still clearly cares enough about his family to rule out the possibility that they don’t factor into his morality at all, not to mention how easy it is for them to influence him.

His more humble ending of inheriting his father’s sub shop might make people think Hufflepuff Primary, but there’s even less justification for such a sorting upon scrutiny. As I’ve touched on above, the staunch loyalty to community isn’t all that important to him, and he’s also not all that into traditions. There’s no compulsion to help strangers, he doesn’t really make enemies but he kind of just ignores people he doesn’t like (or shatters them in a million pieces on accident), and let’s not forget that he unleashed countless monsters in New York City that killed all the Monster Hunters just to win the competition… even if he did do it when his Conscience was separate from the rest of him. Not exactly behavior you’d expect from the morality system of “a person’s a person no matter how small.”

Speaking of Conscience, it’s notable that he argues with it, rather than accepting his advice. I’m still a little unclear as to how much this matters (there’s definitely room to argue that most of his brain went into Conscience as well, and that whole plotline was… weird), but even with his Conscience inside his body, he seems to lack that moral drive Alex has. Gryffindor Primaries have this embedded sense of justice deep within their characters. Even when it’s hidden most of the time, like in Alex’s case, or when it becomes twisted into something dark and dangerous, or becomes Stripped of its certainty, there’s still this sense that there is Right and Wrong in this world, that trusting your gut should lead you to the right conclusion, and that it’s wrong to ignore it. I have a hard time remembering if there’s really any situation where Max gets that gut feeling of Something Being Wrong at all, much less acting on it with a Heroic Plan… at least, not without convincing.

But Max can be convinced, and that’s key. Alex often takes advantage of this to manipulate him for her own selfish ends, such as talking him into paying her for handing out fliers to her zombie prom, but more often it’s his parents that act as his voice of reason, whether it’s convincing him to go after the “deli robber,” convincing him to give his siblings a fair shot at the Wizard Competition, or convincing him to tell his girlfriend the truth… and then unconvincing him of that when he takes it too literally and tells her he’s a wizard.

Actually, Max is prone to misinterpreting advice in this way while trying to follow it to the letter— he does this when he tries to sell fountain water with a puppy, as well, because his mom told him to “add something to it.” I think he is, to an extent, aware of his own intellectual limits. He knows he misses the mark a lot of the time, so he’s often willing to trust other people’s judgment over his own, so long as they can get it through to him in a way that he thinks makes sense.

But beyond that, he’s often willing to question “common knowledge” in a way the other characters don’t. When Justin tries to tell him he can’t make life out of the stuff from his room, he simply replies, “Where’s it say that?” In season 4, when there’s a distinct possibility that he’ll win the competition, he expands the sub shop business by making the Wizard Portal into a Drive-Thru, which genuinely worked as a business plan until Jerry took it too far. Later that season, he saves his siblings by creating a black hole and then jumping through it to pull them to safety from the black hole in Alex’s apartment. Like, that was his idea. He came up with that. It was weird, it was risky, it was unconventional, it could’ve been incredibly stupid… and it worked.

And that’s what I keep coming back to with this Ravenclaw Primary sorting— that sense of ingenuity, curiosity, and the willingness to experiment. On one hand, you have your System Claws, who are dedicated to The Rules because they’ve been convinced that living by them is The Best Way To Live, and on the other hand, you have those that are willing to challenge conventional wisdom and try new things. It’s this willingness to question that I personally attribute to a Ravenclaw mentality, rather than inherent intellectual ability or a large knowledgebase. While Max may not have the latter, he has the former in spades, and that, more than anything, is really what told me that he truly belongs here.

Conclusion:

Max Russo is a Ravenclaw Primary and a Slytherin Secondary.

As a Slytherin Secondary, Max often likes to confuse and obfuscate to get what he wants, is flexible in his methods, and can even be manipulative when he wants to be. He’s also relatively comfortable with himself, thus he often lives in a Neutral State where he says whatever’s on his mind without thinking much about danger or whether he’ll be understood.

His Ravenclaw Primary is as curious as it is undefined, and operates on a logic that only Max truly understands. While this leads him astray more often than not, this also allows him to break from tradition and try new things, and this unconventional thinking can sometimes lead to better solutions than anyone else could’ve come up with. However, it also comes with a set of brakes in the form of taking input from others. It’s not always easy to get through to Max, but he can be reasoned with, which in his case, is probably for the best.

In this combination, we find a character who truly dances to the beat of his own drum. As the most flexible Secondary and Primary, respectively, Max is a conundrum to most who meet him, confusing even to those who know him best. That said, being the Russo who “goes with the flow” the most often, he’s also probably the Russo that has the most fun. He’s certainly more fun to write about than I was expecting him to be! I’m glad I did, and it’s good to be back.

#sortinghatchats #max russo #wizards of waverly place #house sorting #hogwarts houses #wowp analysis #character analysis #sorting profiles #this one's kinda long but i think it might actually be a little shorter than the alex one #so not too bad #might be about the same; not sure #in any case:#long post #(very very)#harry potter #(sorta)

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commentaryvorg · 5 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 5.14

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in trial 5 (trial 5!!), Kaito was incredibly confused about who the hell Junko was supposed to be, called Shuichi distrusting with his own mouth, apologised for lying and claimed he did it to help someone (two things Kokichi would never do), hated the way Kokichi pretended to enjoy this game and never told anyone anything, felt horrendously helpless watching Maki attack Shuichi about his supposed distrustfulness and eventually broke it up by saying something vaguely Kokichi-esque that really isn’t remotely what Kokichi would say if you think about it for two seconds. During all this, there was also an actual case being discussed, albeit rather a fillery part of it, involving Himiko being way too antsy about being suspected, Shuichi frustratingly not telling everyone she couldn’t have done it until the last moment, and Kaito being a dick to Himiko, but only just enough of a dick to keep up the charade and not a single bit more.

As Shuichi finally explains that Himiko shouldn’t have known how to use the crossbow, Maki is briefly hesitant to confirm that she didn’t teach her how.

Himiko: “Wh-What’s wrong? Are you… mad about before?”

Maki: “…”

Himiko: “S-Sorry… I thought they were gonna suspect me, so… I lied.”

Exisal Kokichi: “I really have to question your morals if you’re blaming Maki for your lie, Himiko!”

If Himiko really was doing that, then, phrasing and intonation aside, this actually wouldn’t be a sentiment that’s out of character for Kaito. If you’re apologising for having lied, then of course you shouldn’t try and push the responsibility for it onto anyone else – you’re the one who chose to lie, so you need to take responsibility for that. Questioning someone’s morals for pushing responsibility onto others is again not really something Kokichi would do, because he was constantly deflecting his own responsibility all over the place. …Though to be fair he did also deflect his deflection a lot, so maybe that isn’t completely far-fetched.

Himiko’s not actually blaming Maki at all, though – so the part where “Kokichi” has decided that’s totally what she did is definitely all from Kaito’s idea of the kind of thing Kokichi would do (he’d always assume the worst of everyone, of course), even if the line said in response to that idea is maybe more from Kaito himself.

Himiko: “I’m sorry, Maki… Please… can you tell them the truth?”

Maki: “Fine… I’m not going to lie.”

…Not about this, at any rate.

Keebo: “I do not think she would bring it at Kokichi’s request…”

Himiko: “Of course not! Why would I ever listen to Kokichi?”

Exisal Kokichi: “Cuz I know you like meeee.”

Himiko: “Nuh-uh! I hate you!”

Exisal Kokichi: “But I like you.”

Why. Why even.

As I mentioned when Kokichi once presumably-lied about liking Himiko way back in chapter 2, either he was attached enough to that stupid lie to put it in his script (this part could be scripted, as just a general “something to say if Himiko is hostile at you” thing), or Kaito heard that back then, happened to remember it, and figured it’d be another way to be believably Kokichi and technically kind of a dick without being especially cruel.

Shuichi: (But to think that Kaito asked Himiko to do that… Maybe Kaito is trying to keep the promise we made yesterday…)

Of course he was! He just needed a little time to actually think of a “plan”, but asking for a crossbow was absolutely part of the doing something about it that he was totally going to successfully do because he has totally always been successful in such endeavours in the past.

Also, I see your pointed use of present tense there, Shuichi. Which is massive amounts of wishful thinking, but also not wrong! Kaito is still trying his hardest to keep that promise, right now!

Himiko: “Well, Kaito… sorta asked me to keep it a secret…”

I wonder why exactly Kaito wanted it to be a secret anyway. Maybe he was just hoping to surprise everyone when he showed up in front of them the next morning having heroically escaped all by himself (if he even survived for that long). Or maybe he knew that if they heard he was about to do something that haphazard and reckless on his own then they’d try and stop him. Or maybe he just didn’t want to get their hopes up for his early escape if the plan failed and he ended up with nothing to show for it. …Probably a bit of all three.

Himiko: “Then Kaito died and… I got scared. I thought I was gonna be next.”

Exisal Kokichi: “You’re the worst for trying to pin the blame on Maki just for that reason! Maki, teach this dumb monkey the true terror of human beings!”

This time he’s not wrong, because while Himiko didn’t blame Maki for her lie, she did try and push the culprit-blame onto Maki while she was being accused. It is still of course a dick move for him to have a go at Himiko for that… but it is a dick move which is on Maki’s side. Kokichi was never on Maki’s side. Kokichi would have been joining Himiko in pinning the blame on Maki.

Kaito is at least trying to make Maki sound scary and dangerous while being on her side, but… it’s a bit of a half-hearted attempt.

Himiko: “So I took a walk near the hangar, and that’s when Kaito called out to me.”

Kaito, who had thought up his brilliant, elaborate plan of “uhhh threaten him with a crossbow I guess” but took long enough to do so that Shuichi was long gone and he was looking at spending the entire night pointlessly crossbowless if nobody else came along, must have been really glad that Himiko just happened to show up.

Tsumugi: “So if Kaito asked for a crossbow, does that mean he was going to kill Kokichi?”

Himiko: “No, he said it was to disable Kokichi. I wouldn’t have helped him otherwise. I trusted Kaito and took a crossbow from Maki’s lab.”

This really is a testament to how trustworthy Kaito is. The request to have a weapon delivered, when the only potential target of that weapon is the supposed evil mastermind, is super suspect even if the requester is claiming they’re not planning to kill with it. But she trusted that Kaito really didn’t want to kill anyone, not even Kokichi! Kaito might have asked for only one arrow partly as a way to show good faith, that he really did mean it about only wanting to injure and not kill. (Even though you totally could kill with a single arrow, but.)

As soon as they start discussing what happened once Kaito had the crossbow, Shuichi very quickly and confidently asserts that Kokichi was shot too. Where was this certainty about that back when we were claiming the culprit totally shot Kaito through the bathroom window, hm?

Tsumugi: “Then it was Kaito who shot him, right?”

Exisal Kokichi: “Hmmm, I’m not suuure. I don’t remember anything like thaaat.”

None of this crossbow stuff was in the script, so Kaito genuinely Is Not Sure how he should be responding to this and who he should be claiming shot Kokichi to best achieve the goal. So he just works that unsureness into his act and figures that’ll do, hopefully? (Shuichi’ll figure it out in the end anyway.)

Maki is very insistent that it doesn’t matter exactly how the fight played out because obviously Kokichi killed Kaito somehow as a result, end of story.

Maki: “Then, let’s hurry up and vote—”

Shuichi: “No, it’s too soon. There are still mysteries—”

Maki: “Who cares about that? We already know who the culprit is.”

Monokuma: “You sure about that?”

But of course, Monokuma also very much doesn’t want to do the voting yet.

Monokuma: “As the one running this trial, it bothers me when anyone says mysteries don’t matter. It affects the overall entertainment value, so I encourage you to reaaaally think about things.”

This is a plausible reason why he’s bothered, and it is part of it – it’d be a disappointing trial if it just went to the vote right here, before they’d actually figured out the whole story of what happened (and Monokuma knows there’s a lot more to the story than what they’ve figured out so far, because he knows everything that Maki did). But of course, it’s really because Monokuma himself doesn’t have a clue who did it yet and doesn’t want the vote to happen until he’s become sure of it.

Monokuma: “After all, there should be some mysteries that still matter… For example, is Kokichi really inside that Exisal? Stuff like that…”

And this is pretty telling as to the real reason why Monokuma interrupted. If he was only annoyed because they’re giving up without fully explaining the mysteries, then he should want them to focus on the mysteries they were busy talking about: exactly how the crossbow fight played out and who shot who. If they talked about that enough, that should get Himiko to mention that she only brought one arrow and let them unravel things further from there.

But that’s not really what’s bothering Monokuma the most. He’s probably been super antsy during this whole discussion of the boring bits involving the crossbow that he already knows about, when the real question on his mind is who is even dead, and he was really hoping that Shuichi would turn his Ultimate Detective skills towards that topic a bit more.

Exisal Kokichi: “…”

Awkward silence. He might be afraid Monokuma already knows and the plan is pointless. Or perhaps he’s just realising that the conversation is about to move back to things that are in the script and is frantically trying to find the right page.

(Or he’s having an inconveniently-timed coughing fit and couldn’t respond to this even if he knew how to.)

Himiko: “His voice is even coming from the Exisal and everything.”

Come on, Himiko, you heard Kaito’s voice, too! The reason Kaito started out as himself may well even have been specifically so you guys wouldn’t write things off this easily!

Monokuma: “But we heard it speak in Kaito’s voice earlier, didn’t we?”

I wonder, if Kaito hadn’t started out as himself, whether this would be the moment in which Monokuma would have told everyone anyway that the Exisals have a voice changer. He’s allowed to give them information that’s necessary to solve the case, after all! If Kokichi had wanted Kaito to be him the whole time in order to hide the voice changer, it really wouldn’t have helped the plan at all.

Exisal Kaito: “Yeah, don’t rely on that. After all, this Exisal has a voice changer.”

Kaito is probably very happy that this discussion has given him an excuse to be himself again, even if it’s only for a short while. I also wonder if this switch is scripted or not. I suppose it’s more likely that Kokichi might have scripted one for after it gets revealed that there’s a voice changer, just to demonstrate it while still messing with them.

Also, can we talk about the Exisal’s voice changer? Obviously it’s really there from an out-universe perspective simply because it’s utterly vital to this case’s premise. But I still couldn’t help but think about why an Exisal would even have something like this, which can apparently perfectly impersonate the voices of… all sixteen students here? When none of the students were ever meant to even get inside an Exisal? It’s a bit much.

What would be slightly less much (albeit admittedly still a lot) would be if the voice changers weren’t already programmed with all sixteen students’ voices, and instead they just could be programmed with anyone’s voice if someone spent the time to do so. Meaning that Kokichi had to spend several hours in the hangar talking into the Exisal until it learned to emulate his voice patterns perfectly, such that currently the only voice it can do is Kokichi’s, not Kaito’s.

…I had a point to this thought when I planned to say it, probably something about how this could mean that Kokichi had to have Kaito pretend to be him and not the other way around. Except I just now realised that, if all this were true, it’d mean that Monokuma would know about this and would have seen only Kokichi talking into it to program it, which would mean that he’d know the truth the moment he heard Kaito’s voice come out of the Exisal. So never mind, scratch that. I guess the Exisal really does just have all sixteen students’ voices for some reason even though that makes very little sense and is Team Danganronpa shooting itself in the foot again.

So yeah, in the end: it is a pretty big stretch to believe that the Exisal just randomly happens to have a voice changer like this. But it having one is absolutely vital for the premise of this case, and the premise of this case is so good that I do not remotely care what narrative contrivances were necessary to make it possible in the first place.

Shuichi: (…It what?)

Shuichi! You heard it speak in both voices, too! Did that really not occur to you as a possibility, when it’s one that leaves open the chance that Kaito could be alive?

Exisal Kaito: “Hah! Cuz of that, nobody realizes I’m pretending to be Kokichi!”

Heeee! That’s precisely the truth! Kaito must be delighted to just get to be honest for a moment. And sure, it’s something that he intends for everyone to eventually conclude was a lie, which is why he’s able to safely say it, but in this moment, he is not making himself sound insincere. That’s got to be so refreshing.

Exisal Kaito: “But no more! Sorry for the wait, guys!”

[the Exisal leaps over into Kaito’s spot]

Exisal Kaito: “The Luminary of the Stars has arrived! This time for real!”

He’s being such a dork and so himself. Of course the hero should have a dramatic entrance, right?

…And he’s still technically lying slightly, because he doesn’t intend this to be “for real”. He knows this is most likely going to be very temporary. But still.

Exisal Kaito: “I told you, I’m Kaito. I was just pretending to be Kokichi is all. There’s a bit of a situation going on, so I didn’t really have a choice…”

Technically not an incorrect reason why he was pretending. Just a really, really vague one. He obviously can’t tell them the full truth about why he was doing it, but he also doesn’t want to outright lie here.

Although, he says he didn’t really have a choice, but he absolutely had a choice in whether or not to participate in this plan. It’s just that this is the only choice Kaito would ever have made. One might think that’s why he says he didn’t really have a choice… but no, it’s not, because framing things that way would make it sound like his actions aren’t his responsibility. Even if he knows he’d never have chosen anything else, Kaito would never shy away from the fact that this was his decision. So that bit’s just part of the lie.

Exisal Kaito: “Sorry about tricking you guys like that. My bad!”

He really is sorry for tricking them! And yet, this apology still comes off as insincere, because he doesn’t sound like he feels bad about it. He appears to be apologising for something he was doing until half a minute ago and apparently just stopped doing on a whim. Kaito would definitely also disapprove of apologising when you don’t really feel sorry at all, making people think you’ve learned from your mistakes when you actually haven’t, which is how he’s making himself sound right now. But, of course, that’s because he’s still pretending to be Kokichi pretending to be him – if he made himself sound truly sincere and showed genuine pain over having deceived them, it’d make it too clear that he’s the real deal.

Maki: “How many times are you going to be tricked by him? That’s Kokichi pretending to be Kaito.”

Last time Kaito spoke as himself, Maki believed it for a brief, shining moment. But that was because she hadn’t heard both voices. Now that she knows about the voice changer, she is certain this has to be Kokichi pretending, because Kaito is definitely dead.

Exisal Kaito: “Hey now, Maki Roll. Don’t you believe me?”

Maki: “Don’t… *ever*… call me that!”

Exisal Kaito: “Whoa there! Chill! You really think I’m Kokichi?”

Unfortunately, Kaito can’t not call her that, because it’s very definitely what Kokichi would do while pretending to be him, especially since doing so would hurt her. He absolutely does not want to cause Maki any more pain than he already has… but in this situation, he had basically no way to avoid it.

Unless Kaito just didn’t even realise how much hearing that would hurt her. It’s possible he was still hoping she might not be completely convinced that he’s Kokichi and might be able to start believing he could be alive after all, especially if he acts like his usual self and calls her Maki Roll. He’s optimistic enough that that’s absolutely what he’d do in her shoes, so he might not realise she definitely wouldn’t.

Or maybe it’s that Kaito just doesn’t realise how much that nickname has come to mean to her and therefore that hearing it from “Kokichi” would even hurt her at all. Maki hasn’t done a lot to properly show how much Kaito means to her at this point, and Kaito does after all have a tendency to be An Idiot when it comes to realising how important he is to his sidekicks.

Exisal Kaito: “I mean, I guess I understand. Sorry I can’t really get outta this thing right now.”

It’s also very not-Kaito of him that he just shrugs it off when she clearly doesn’t think it’s him. The real Kaito, if he was truly only being himself, would desperately want them to know that it’s him and would do whatever it took to convince them, even assuming he literally couldn’t open the Exisal cockpit to show them. There would be plenty of ways to prove it’s him, too! He could offer that Shuichi and/or Maki ask him something only the real Kaito would know the answer to – stuff they talked about while training! His favourite spaceship!

Even though Kaito isn’t offering, this could also be something Shuichi could challenge him with to try and prove or disprove his identity. But even if he did that, it wouldn’t actually work, because Kaito is pretending to be Kokichi pretending to be him, so he’d deliberately get the questions wrong.

Exisal Kaito: “I can’t move because of the injury I got from Kokichi… It’s so bad I can’t even stand. That’s why I’m in this Exisal.”

Ah, yes, that incredibly vaguely-defined “injury” that, wherever it is, really shouldn’t be preventing him from standing since he was standing up to have that window conversation with Shuichi yesterday and it shouldn’t have gotten any worse since then.

And even if it’s true that he can’t stand, he could still open the cockpit to show them it’s him, since if it really is him then Maki won’t be trying to murder him! It’s a little awkward that nobody points that out, but not a huge deal since they’re soon going to be concluding that he really is Kokichi after all.

Exisal Kaito: “But if you guys don’t believe me, then we can’t move on…”

The way Kaito talks about “moving on” here is interesting. The ultimate outcome of this whole being-Kaito-for-a-bit escapade is that Shuichi is going to finally conclude and accept that he’s really Kokichi and Kaito is dead. This line suggests that this is what Kaito’s trying to achieve here – to get Shuichi to settle on who the victim is once and for all so that he can continue the trial with a firmer premise in mind. It’s most likely also what Kokichi intended for this, if he did indeed script Kaito switching to his own voice once the voice changer was mentioned; he’d want to remove that ambiguity as soon as it appears and convince everyone that even though the voice doesn’t prove anything, he’s still definitely Kokichi anyway.

Exisal Kaito: “So, you’re up, Shuichi!”

Shuichi: “What!? Me!?”

Exisal Kaito: “Explain to everyone how I wasn’t the one that died!”

Kaito is encouraging Shuichi to explain his deductions, just like old times!

Despite what I just said about how the point of this is to make Shuichi accept that Kaito’s dead, I think Kaito could also genuinely believe that Shuichi might be able to prove he’s alive. Kaito has unending faith in Shuichi’s awesomeness and knows for certain that he’ll reach that truth eventually – but he has also been known to overestimate Shuichi’s abilities in terms of how much he’s figured out, so he might think it’s possible that Shuichi can prove it already. The usual problem, as far as Kaito sees it, is less Shuichi not having figured things out, and more him simply not having the confidence to be sure about what he’s figured out and explain it.

So I wonder if Kaito could be doing this while thinking that if Shuichi has already figured it out, then he really might as well reveal the whole truth right now. If that happens, then it’s not a huge loss, since Shuichi was almost certainly going to reach that point eventually anyway, and at least having it happen sooner rather than later will save everyone an hour or two of painful deception.

(However, there are a couple of specific things Kaito is aiming for, things that he will eventually achieve, that require the trial not to end so soon. So even if he thinks it’s possible, he shouldn’t be hoping for this too strongly.)

Shuichi: (Kaito is alive after all… No… maybe… that’s just what I want to believe. Is it really true?)

It seems like having spent a while sort of more or less entertaining the idea that Kaito is dead (even if still not acknowledging it completely), Shuichi is able to catch his wishful thinking a little more now that he’s being shown this glimmer of hope again.

Shuichi: (What story does the evidence tell?)

It might also be because “Kaito” is here, encouraging him to use his detective skills like always, that Shuichi is finally able to accept that he needs to look at things objectively with those skills of his, even if they end up proving that the Kaito encouraging him to use them isn’t really Kaito at all.

Shuichi: (Does that story end with Kaito or Kokichi being the victim?)

I really love how he describes it as a “story” here, and in particular, the way he talks about the story’s “end”. It draws attention to the fact that, despite how things might seem like they could go either way right now, this story has already been written and the end has already been set in stone.

Which one would be the better story? There’s only one correct answer to that. But Shuichi can’t use that as an argument, because that’s a narrative argument.

And if you’re a first time viewer of this story who has only shaky faith in Spike Chunsoft’s writing skills because the writing in previous Danganronpa games has disappointed you before (not always, but sometimes)… you can’t use that argument either. I so, so desperately wanted to be watching a story where Kaito wasn’t the victim, because that was so obviously the best possible story to tell about him here, but I just couldn’t trust that that would be the case. Especially not when they’d also been spending this game building up the impression that Kaito was expendable and liable to get himself pointlessly killed off and that they didn’t really care about his story.

(As it turns out, they very much do care about it, so much – but all of the indications of that are fairly subtle and not something I picked up on first time around.)

Shuichi: (I need to give a well-reasoned answer to that question, and soon. …I can’t look away from the truth.)

Shuichi is so clearly trying to talk himself into facing Kaito’s death here. The whole time, he’s really known deep down that that has to be what the truth is because it’s where all the evidence points. This is him finally telling himself he needs to stop running away and face that already, partly because it’s hard to make deductions when you haven’t even properly established the premise of who the victim is, but mostly just because it’s the truth.

Shuichi hasn’t been explicitly objecting to the idea of Kaito’s death for a while, but he only actually acknowledged the concept out loud once, and very indirectly at that. While they were discussing the crossbow, Shuichi was only ever talking about it in terms of “who shot Kaito”, as a convenient excuse to stop him from thinking about how the real question is “who killed Kaito”. This is the moment when he finally forces himself to accept it.

Shuichi: (I’m trying, I really am, but I can’t think of anyone other than Kaito…)

This is a really awkward way of him phrasing it here, most likely due to the localisation. This was never a question of “who other than Kaito could be the victim?” – obviously the only other option is Kokichi; that’s not the problem. His line should be something more like “I can’t think of any way it couldn’t be Kaito”.

Exisal Kaito: “Hey, what’s the matter, Shuichi? Just hurry up and tell everyone why I’m not dead! Should be easy!”

…As much as I like to think Kaito might believe it’s possible Shuichi could prove he’s alive already, I doubt he thinks it’d be easy. So even if part of him was hoping for something less painful than this, what this mostly is on the surface is Kaito trying to push Shuichi into accepting that he’s dead, if he really doesn’t have any way to prove otherwise. And he does that not while being a dick as Kokichi, but while being himself. That has to hurt.

Shuichi: “No… I won’t. Because you’re not Kaito.”

He doesn’t say “I can’t”, even though that’s true. He says “I won’t”, as if he thinks that Kokichi was tempting him with false hope into continuing to try to deny Kaito’s death, and he’s choosing not to fall for it. (When actually that’s completely the opposite of what Kaito was trying to do.)

Shuichi: “Kaito is already dead!”

And he’s finally, directly accepted it. Right in front of Kaito being Kaito at him. That’s got to be the most painful way this could have been done, for both of them. And yet, something like this was probably necessary to get Shuichi to even accept it at all.

Monokuma: “Puhuhuhu! Good, good! This is already more entertaining!”

I mean, it is – you just got some quality despair right there as Shuichi finally put the lid on his baseless hope – but entertainment value isn’t really why you did this, is it, Monokuma?

And then suddenly Monokuma jumps into a Debate Scrum, even though there is no obvious split opinion at all. Himiko, Keebo and Tsumugi are about to get put on the “Kaito is alive” side, when their only reactions to Exisal Kaito here have been vague confusion, and not “welp I guess Kaito really is alive after all, awesome”.

The opening cutscene for the Scrum is technically incorrect, because the Exisal is shown standing in Kokichi’s spot when it should currently be in Kaito’s. Apparently they made this cutscene while the script of exactly how this would go down still hadn’t been finalised and they didn’t know Kaito was going to be being himself during this moment. Or they did know, but the person making this scene didn’t get the memo.

Monokuma’s decisions of which death portrait to put on which side of each Debate Scrum are usually pretty arbitrary. But of note this time is that he put Kaito’s portrait on the “Kokichi is dead” side, and Kokichi’s portrait on the “Kaito is dead” side. I guess he was thinking of that in terms of “this is what they’d think if they were alive”, rather than “this is where they should be if they really were death portraits”.

Joke’s on you, Monokuma. In reality, they’d both be on the “Kaito is dead” side.

Monokuma doesn’t try and make the Exisal participate in the debate either, partly because the morphenomenal trial grounds don’t work for something that huge, of course… but also partly because Monokuma doesn’t have a goddamn clue which side he should be on anyway.

So, on the one hand, I really enjoy that they highlighted the importance of this moment of Shuichi forcing himself to accept Kaito’s death by making it the subject of a narrative-driven trial minigame. But it awkwardly doesn’t quite work as a Debate Scrum, which are supposed to be about the entire class being unable to agree on something. Right now, the only one whose opinion is relevant to the narrative is Shuichi, and to some extent Maki. The other three are getting forced by the writing into acting like they firmly believe Kaito is alive just so Shuichi and Maki can have opponents, even though that’s not how those three really feel.

What this moment is really, meaningfully a split opinion between is the two sides of Shuichi. His Ultimate Detective side has finally outwardly admitted that all of the evidence says Kaito is dead, but Shuichi Saihara who just doesn’t want to lose his best friend would still be fervently fighting against that. It would be really cool if the writers had decided to make this moment truly about that by throwing out all preconceptions of how a Debate Scrum should usually, physically work and just getting incredibly metaphysical, forcing you to play as the Ultimate Detective side of Shuichi as he faces the truth by shooting down his own desperate, flimsy protests as to why Kaito totally isn’t dead. It wouldn’t make much sense in terms of how that’s actually happening, but it would be such good storytelling for this moment that I wouldn’t care.

Tsumugi: “Is is possible that Kokichi got crushed instead of Kaito?”

…

Keebo: “But there was an arrow hole on Kokichi’s shirt.”

…

Himiko: “I want to believe Kaito is still alive and defeated the mastermind, but…”

All of these lines are arguments that Shuichi tried to make himself at some point earlier while trying to deny Kaito’s death. (Even the last one; that was the promise Kaito made to Shuichi in which he totally already had a plan, right?) Just imagine if this Debate Scrum really was Shuichi versus himself, pushing back that desperately hopeful side of him and forcing himself to face the truth. It would work!

Keebo wins the arbitrary honour of being the only character who has been on the correct side of every single Debate Scrum, since this is the one time Shuichi is not. For this one, though, it’s definitely more by luck than judgement (and by being awkwardly forced by the writing into acting adamant that Kaito is alive even though he really wasn’t so sure).

Shuichi: (Damn that Exisal… Why would he confuse us like this?)

It’s ironic that Shuichi phrases this as being about the person in the Exisal, even though he specifically means Kokichi – because phrased this way, it also applies to the person who’s really inside the Exisal. That person definitely is being infuriating and confusing them a lot, isn’t he.

Shuichi: “I don’t… want to believe it… In a way… I still can’t…”

Of course he can’t! Accepting it on an intellectual level is one thing, but it’s going to take much longer than that for it to properly sink in that his best friend is gone. With all the other victims, there was at least a bit of time after the body discovery to just sort of process the fact that they were dead and grieve a little before having to focus on the investigation. But here, Shuichi has only allowed himself to acknowledge that fact right now, and yet he’s now got to immediately press on with the trial without any time to deal with it. And that’s bad enough without the fact that Kaito was closer to him than anyone else who’s died before, even Kaede. Just… ouch. They were friends. (Are friends.)

Shuichi: “I hate it… I hate it so much, but it’s the truth.”

I know you hate it, Shuichi. Of course you do.

(It’s still not actually the truth, but he’s now completely certain that it is and aaaagh.)

This whole thing of having had a Debate Scrum to determine this is also a very importantly misleading narrative trick. Shuichi’s side of a Scrum has always been correct before, so this makes first time players more likely to assume that apparently Kaito being dead really is the truth after all, even if they’d been doubting it up until now. It also seems reasonable, narratively, that the point of keeping things ambiguous for so long could purely be for the sake of emphasising Shuichi’s struggle to accept the painful truth because of how strong his friendship with Kaito is, an arc that focuses on two things that have been very prominent themes throughout the whole story. First-time-me was completely taken in by this, specifically because there was a Debate Scrum about it. I lost all hope for a while from this point on, just like Shuichi has.

Exisal Kaito: “…”

Oh, hey, look at the camera panning to Kaito saying nothing. On a first time, this would seem like it’s Kokichi thinking “welp, you got me”. But no. It’s Kaito, doing what he’s usually doing when the narrative makes a point of the fact that he’s saying nothing. How must he be feeling to hear the pain Shuichi is in right now because of him. (“Because of him” in two very different meanings of the phrase at the same time. Because of how much he means to Shuichi; because of what he’s doing to Shuichi.)

It’s also relevant to note that from where the Exisal is standing right now, in Kaito’s spot, Shuichi is most likely too close to be in the angle of the Exisal’s camera if it points straight forward, meaning Kaito can’t see Shuichi’s face. He’s… probably kind of glad about that, really.

Tsumugi: “Then the one here is…”

Exisal Kaito: “Heh, looks like I messed around too much.”

This line here is my main reason for the idea I presented earlier that part of Kaito was hoping Shuichi could already prove he was alive. Out of all the things he could have said as the last word as himself before switching back to Kokichi, it’s this. Admittedly, this is probably intended to be spoken as Kokichi already, before turning the voice changer back on, but even so, this sounds ad-libbed – I’m sure the real Kokichi would have said something more dickishly flippant, rather than thinking he messed with them too much. This isn’t just, welp, everything according to plan, had some fun being Kaito for a while, convinced everyone he’s dead, now let’s get on with the rest. If it’s an ad-lib, it’s still partly drawing from how Kaito’s feeling right now – and it sounds almost… disappointed. Like Kaito was hoping to have achieved more with this, and he realises now that he was “messing around” (being a little too optimistic about Shuichi’s abilities) to have thought he could do so.

Exisal Kokichi: “Soooorry! That was just a little joke!”

And look who’s apologising for (supposedly) lying to them, again. Also evidently not scripted.

Maki: “You’re still an asshole…”

Maki only ever uses language this strong towards Kokichi, and only during this case. Pretending to be Kaito just to toy with their emotions sure is an asshole move, and the person who did that asshole move definitely knows it.

Shuichi: “True, and I can’t forgive him… but we still need to stay calm, be rational. Because we need to get to the truth of Kaito’s death.”

Monokuma: “Y-Y-Y-Yeah! Just keep calm and carry on!”

Monokuma was really, really hoping that this whole endeavour he prompted would have actually unravelled the mystery, like, at all. All it did was get them right back where they started, still without any more proof of it than Monokuma’s already seen. He still isn’t sure that’s the real truth of the matter, but he’s not going to find out more about that if Shuichi isn’t thinking about it any longer. He’d love to tell them to keep thinking even more about if Kaito really is dead, maybe poke them to look at the video more closely, but that’d make his intentions too obvious at this point.

It seems that despite wanting to know who the culprit is, Monokuma is also trying not to let them realise that he needs to know who the culprit is. He does not want them to figure out there’s an audience, does he.

---

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#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 5 #class trial #commentary

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currebunz · 5 years

Text

You Can Touch Stars Ch 3

AO3 Link

It was rare to see you without Noctis and Prompto. Over time, you three became a tight trio of smiles and laughter. School days passed by smoothly with the two as your friends. Noctis would seek you or Prompto out, but play it off like he wasn't. Prompto always expressed joy in seeing either of you. In a matter of minutes, the last of your group would be hunted down and you'd talk about the day. However, after school, the dream was over.

Noctis had his duties, studying and training, so he would leave as you walked home. Prompto expressed his interest in walking you home, but you told him you had training to do. "Training? What are you training for?" he asked both excited and concerned. "I'll tell you and Noct later" you reassured him. The time you would tell them would come long after you graduated.

The walk was always long, even from the media center of the city where the boys had parted from you. The path you took was a straight shot, to the slums. Fumes from the machines hung like clouds in the area. Lights hung around streets and shops, being the only source of illumination. People passed by quickly, most likely preparing for the end of the day. Like them, you make your way to a familiar apartment. Opening the door, you jumped back as the build of a taller man stood in the doorway.

"There you are [Name], I was lookin' for you," the man said in an amused tone. He was dressed in a simple athletic shirt and jeans, a reminder for your "training". "Where else would I be Nyx?" you sighed pushing past him. You shrugged your bag off and dropped it on the table. "Hey, don't sass me" Nyx shot back in an annoyed tone. "You're in my care, I have to keep a close eye on you" he continued. You couldn't help but smile hearing him complain. At first, you thought you were a bother to him. After a while, you realized his complaints were to cover up his care. "C'mon! get changed, after training Crowe and Libertus want to pick on you some" Nyx yelled as you went to your room. "'Kay!" you called back before shutting the door.

Your room wasn't much to look at. It was small, but enough space for you to have furniture. There were pictures on your desk, mostly of the rest of the glaive. Some were pictures of nature that had caught your eye. These simple pictures always picked up your day. As you changed into athletic clothing, you reflected.

You were training to be a Kingsglaivemen, under one of the most heroic Kingsglaivemen, who also acted as your guardian. To you, Nyx was a cool-headed hero you were happy to have as a mentor. But, he could also be a pain in the ass. Nyx took his role as guardian as serious as being a Kingsglaivemen. He never failed to nag you about something or spout wise words of knowledge. Even so, you and he had tender moments where he would joke around and relax.

"Alright, I'm ready" you announced walking back out to the living room. Nyx was checking his watch and looked up at you. "Good, let's jog there and then we'll do stretches" his smile didn't make you feel happy about it.

Your lungs felt like they were on fire. Your legs burned and your head was dizzy from lack of oxygen. You crouched over and gasped for air, sweat covered your face and your skin felt hot. "That was better than last time, drink up" Nyx praised you as he handed you a bottle of water. You didn't respond but gulped down the water. Once it was empty, you tossed it away. Nyx began stretching and gave you a look.

With an exhausted sigh, you began stretching as well. Even though you trained with the Glaive, you didn't participate in missions. Only physical training and a bit of combat training. You knew well that you weren't qualified for the field, but a little more faith wouldn't have hurt.

"Alright, I want you to come at me" Nyx switched into a defensive position. You focused on his movements, where is muscles tensed and where they relaxed. You launched yourself to attack him, only to feel pressure in your lower abdomen and be lifted from your feet. You back collided with the ground behind Nyx as he successfully flipped you.

"Damn..." you sighed rolling over on your side. "Try again, this time don't be so obvious with your movements" Nyx went back into position again. You pushed yourself up and shook off the tension in your body. This time you circled him and charged at him. You stepped back when he reached for you and elbowed his back. Nyx let out a grunt and stumbled forward. You put distance between you and him and smiled.

"Okay, better" Nyx cocked a brow at you and shook himself. "Let's run the obstacle course a few times then we'll get something to eat," he said pointing to the archway leading to the open space. The area held structures for climbing, jumping, swinging, and dodging. You were familiar with the course but that didn't make it any easier. You took a deep breath before charging away at the course. Your hands burned as you climbed ropes and wooden structures. Your legs became sore from booking it, all you wanted was to rest.

Once you finally stumbled to the end, Nyx caught you and hauled you onto his back. "Don't go dead on me yet" he laughed fixing you onto his back. You didn't say anything but relished in not having to move anymore. Your head rested against his back and your arms clutched his shirt. "I'm...so....tired..." you grumbled against his neck. "Yeah I know, but your showing progress and I am proud of you" Nyx's words made you smile weakly.

"You could be a little easier on the kid" Crowe's voice echoed into your head. "The Imperials won't go easy on anyone, especially kids" Libertus argued back. "Okay, but there isn't any rush for [Name] to be a glaive" Crowe's voice was lower this time, causing worry to rise in you. With a groan, you shifted in your seat and opened your eyes slowly. Crowe and Libertus turned to you and shared grins. "Back to the world of the living eh?" Libertus chuckled patting your shoulder vigorously. You bounced in your chair with each push.

"Knock it off!" Crowe shouted shoving Libertus away. She cupped your face and gave you a sincere smile. "You feeling alright? dizzy? nauseous?" she pressed her forehead to yours briefly. "I'm fine" you looked away in embarrassment. You were the youngest and they always treated you as such. "See? conscious again and not sick so get off my ass" Nyx said, catching your attention. "Bet you're hungry, but all we get is crap" Libertus complaints didn't go unheard as an angry shout came from the cook.

"Food is food so don't complain" Crowe shot back grabbing you a plate and a cup. "Here, eat up and rest okay?" she placed the contents in front of you before helping herself. "She's right, it's better than starving" Nyx agreed as he began eating.

Even if the slums were run down, dark, noisy, and packed with people. You couldn't help but find a sense of security here. This was your home and you couldn't ask for much more.

#nyx ulric #ffxv #final fantasy xv #final fantasy 15 #crowe altius #libertus ostium #kingsglaive #reader-insert #sfw

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invisibleanonymousmonsters · 6 years

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Heritage - Part 4

/Description: Steve Rogers wakes up in the 21st century to learn that he missed more than he could ever realize.

Pairing: Steve Rogers & Y/N [Platonic]; Bucky x Reader … eventually

Word Count: 2,388

Previously On...

Y/N stared at Nick Fury’s fake grave as she waited for the rest to arrive.

She was discharged from the hospital just a couple of days ago. There was still bruising on her face and she was told that the gunshot wound in her shoulder would leave a nasty scar, even with the super-soldier serum in her blood.

Y/N heard Steve and Sam walking up behind her.

“How you doing?” Sam asked as he looked at the bandages on her shoulder and the minor cuts that were still healing.

“I’ve had worse.” Y/N shrugged with a smirk.

But Steve didn’t seem as amused with her casualness as Sam was.

Before he could scold her or give a speech, Nick showed up. He’d lost the eye-patch and replaced it with sunglasses and a hoodie.

“We’ve been data mining Hydra’s files. Looks like a lot of rats didn’t go down with the ship.” Fury explained.

Y/N watched Steve’s face. She couldn’t imagine what he was going through.

“I’m headed to Europe tonight.” Nick continued. “Wanted to ask if you’d come.”

Y/N held her breath, truly not knowing how he would respond.

But Steve clenched his jaw, “There’s something I gotta do first.”

“How about you, Wilson? I could use a man with your abilities.”

But Sam was studying Steve. “I’m more of a soldier than a spy.”

Finally, Fury moved his attention to her. “Y/N?” It was the first time he’d called her by her first name.

Her eyes flickered to Steve’s before she shrugged and tilted her head dramatically. “I’ve decided that I don’t really believe in institutionalized heroics anymore. I don’t think I can trust working for anyone other than myself.”

“Not even me?” Fury badgered.

“It’s hard to trust someone who won’t ever fully trust you in return.” Y/N teased.

She swore she caught a slight smirk from Fury.

“Well, alright then.” He finished before shaking all of their hands.

It was then that Nat interrupted and Fury took his leave.

Y/N saw the folder in her hand and knew she had successfully found all the files on Bucky.

“Will you do me a favor?” Y/N overheard Nat asking Steve. “Call that nurse.”

Y/N’s body stiffened.

“She’s not a nurse.” Steve smirked.

“And you’re not a SHIELD agent.” Nat countered.

“What was her name again?”

Y/N cringed.

“Sharon.” Nat told him. “She’s nice.”

Y/N couldn’t help but let out a giant laugh. Sam looked at her funny. “Oh, this is going to be so hilarious.” Y/N told him as she failed to contain her laughter.

She watched as Nat said her goodbyes and surprisingly gave Steve a kiss on the cheek.

Steve turned around and narrowed his eyes at Y/N. “What’s so funny?”

“I have something to tell you.” Y/N laughed lightly. “I’ve would’ve said it sooner, but the whole Hydra still being alive and trying to destroy the world thing happened and I was a little preoccupied.”

Steve and Sam waited.

“Sharon is my cousin.” Y/N just blurted it out. There was really no other way. “Peggy is her great aunt.”

Sam, who had yet to meet Sharon or know anything about her, didn’t catch on.

“Did you know she was assigned to monitor me?” Steve asked.

“I didn’t even know she was in the states. Last time I heard from her, she claimed she was in London. But hey, she’s not blood related to you. So go for it.” Y/N giggled and shook her head at the ludicrousness of it all. “God, this family gets more and more ridiculous.”

Steve playfully glared at her.

But Y/N’s entertainment came to a quick halt when she caught the folder in Steve’s hand and was reminded of their other problems.

“You’re going after him, aren’t you.” She muttered softly.

“You two don’t have to come with me.” Steve looked at the ground as he said it.

Y/N had the audacity to scoff at him. Sam smirked at her reaction because he agreed.

“Sam already said it: you are soldiers, not spies. You need all the help you can get. You two aren’t trained for this; I am.” Y/N explained to the two men.

Steve put his hands on his hips. “You almost died, Y/N.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, so did you. So did all of us.”

“I told Peggy and Grant that I’d look after you. And what did I do? I almost got you killed.”

“Get over yourself, Steve.” Y/N snapped. It caused Sam to raise his eyebrows in surprise. “Even if you hadn’t been there, I would’ve risked my life to take down Hydra. I joined SHIELD for the same reasons you did. With you or not, I would’ve died protecting the world.”

Sam cleared his throat awkwardly. “She’s got a point…”

“I don’t have SHIELD anymore.” Y/N continued. “And to be honest, I think I need a break from taking orders.” But then her whole face softened. “I know what Bucky means to you, Steve. How could you ever expect me to let you do this alone?”

Steve gave her a sad smile. Sometimes he didn’t think he deserved Y/N. She was more than just his granddaughter, she was slowly becoming his best friend.

“So…” Sam stopped the silence. “When do we start?”

-----

ONE YEAR LATER

Y/N was blending in as she weaved through the crowd. Before joining SHIELD’s STRIKE team, she had mostly worked alone. Nat, Clint, and Fury had taught her everything she knew: working on recon, using sexpionage, and making quick work of highly sensitive missions . The strength and intelligence she inherited from Steve was such a small part of Y/N’s capabilities.

Her work had gained her connections all over the world, ones that were now supplying her, Steve, and Sam with the majority of their leads they got for finding Bucky.

She’d found another that brought her to Denmark.

Meanwhile, Sam was in Germany, following a different lead.

The Avengers had reassembled after Hydra came crawling back out of the darkness. Tony Stark realized there were bases all around the world and Loki’s scepter was in their possession. It caused such a panic that even Thor returned to Earth to help hunt it down. Therefore Steve had to step away from their hunt for Bucky.

Y/N wore a leather trench coat that made the passing men wonder if she had anything on underneath. Her walk was joined with a clicking of her pointed stiletto heels. Yes, her outfit helped her blend in. But her beauty and aura made her stick out to the opposite gender no matter what.

But it was all necessary for fitting in at the high-end bar where she was meeting an old friend. They had eyes all over the city. When Y/N informed her network that she was looking for the Winter Soldier, her friends responded.

Y/N’s eyes raced around the fancy bar, looking for her friend and also scoping out the new environment like she had been trained to do. There was mostly rich men, wearing suits and checking out women who were much too young for them.

“You’ve grown into a beautiful woman, Y/N.” Someone said behind her.

Y/N smirked and twisted to find her old friend, Noah. They had met when she was still in training as a teenager barely out of high school.

“And you haven’t changed a bit, Noah.”

He led them to a secluded booth in the corner of the bar. The lighting was low so it could obscure them slightly. The music was loud enough to stop others from eavesdropping. There was a reason he asked her to meet there.

Noah ordered them both a cocktail and as soon as he allowed Y/N a few sips, he slid a folder onto the table discreetly. Y/N kept her expression in check as she flipped it open to see various security photos from the area. Many were obscure, but she’d learned to recognize Bucky’s silhouette and movements.

He was always wearing a hat or had a hood up. But Y/N knew it was really him.

“These were taken a few days ago.” Noah explained. “But this one,” his finger tapped on the very first photo, “was taken only yesterday.”

Y/N tried not to get too excited. She’d been this close to Bucky before. But he always seemed to be at least half a step ahead of her. He knew he was being tracked and he also knew how to stay hidden. It wasn’t just Steve looking for him. Whatever was left of Hydra... They wanted their weapon back too. Countless governments were after him as well.

“Thank you, Noah. I owe you one.” Y/N finished the rest of her cocktail.

“Still all work and no play, I see.” Noah commented with a flirtatious smirk.

Y/N would’ve said something witty and sarcastic back, but she suddenly felt someone watching her. She kept her attention on it, but pretended to be engaged with Noah still.

“And you still won’t give it a rest.” She countered with a forced, flirtatious smile. “With a woman as beautiful as you? Never.”

Y/N leaned forward and gave him a lingering kiss on the cheek. “There is someone watching us, but they’re after me. Call your guards. I’ll lead them away.”

Noah pulled away with a tight smile, but she saw the newfound focus in his eyes.

“Always a pleasure, Noah.”

Y/N sauntered out of the bar and thought back on the map she’d memorized before meeting Noah. There was an alley system around the corner. If she was quick enough, she could lead them there and make her move.

While Y/N was wearing a trench coat to blend in, hidden underneath was half a dozen knives and two guns holstered to both of her upper thighs. And even with her stilettos, she could still do the same damage to whoever dared attack her.

Y/N could tell the person had followed them out of the bar and into the alleyways.

She made a quick turn and hid herself, waiting to hear their footsteps approach at the precise moment.

With a burst of adrenaline, Y/N shoved her follower against the opposite wall of the alley. They were wearing a baseball cap and had a hoodie pulled over it.

But they weren’t giving up that easily. They shoved her back and Y/N was caught off guard by how strong they were. With Steve’s serum in her genetics, Y/N was stronger than the average man.

With the flick of her wrist, Y/N extended the hidden knife under her sleeve. She whipped it across their chest, but they were quick in pulling back and dodging it. Except, Y/N was already going for her second swipe and managed to cut their cheekbone, barely missing their eye.

But then Y/N heard the whirring as they moved their arm and the streetlights reflected off the little bit of space between their sleeve and leather glove.

“Bucky?” Y/N gasped as she immediately stopped. He lifted his head high enough that light finally hit his face.

Bucky took advantage of Y/N’s momentary surrender and pushed her roughly against the wall. Y/N couldn’t help but notice how it wasn’t hard enough to hurt her.

“Who do you work for?” He growled.

“I - I don’t work for anyone.” Y/N was so caught off guard by him actually standing right there in front of her that she was struggling to form a sentence.

“Don’t lie to me.” He said surprisingly calm. “You work for SHIELD.”

Y/N glared at his assumption. “SHIELD is dead.”

“Then why have you been following me? You’re not Hydra.”

“Steve. Steve Rogers sent me. We’ve been looking for you. Ever since the Battle of Washington DC, we’ve been looking for you.”

Bucky finally let go of her.

“I don’t want to be found.” He mumbled.

“We can help you.” Y/N told him softly.

“No, you can’t.”

Suddenly there were sounds of people running towards them.

Bucky instantly turned and put himself between them and Y/N.

She blinked at the protectiveness of it. But she quickly snapped out of it and realized it was Noah and his men.

“On your knees!” They yelled at Bucky in Danish with their guns raised.

Y/N stepped in front of Bucky. “It’s okay! He’s a friend. Stand down.”

Upon seeing an unhurt and calm Y/N, Noah ordered his men to put their guns down. Y/N walked to him.

“You have to get out of town. Others have found out he’s here. They’ll come looking.” Noah informed her evenly.

Y/N nodded, knowing he was right.

“Take care of yourself, Y/N. I hope you know what you’ve got yourself into.” Noah told her gently before him and his men left the ally.

But when Y/N turned around, Bucky had disappeared.

She ran her fingers through her hair in distress, “Fuck.”

Little did she know, Bucky was watching her from the shadows. ------

The next morning, Y/n had the phone in her hand. She was ready to call Steve and tell him that she’d talked to Bucky.

So why was her thumb hovering over the call button?

She thought about how scared Bucky had looked. He wasn’t the Winter Soldier. The man could’ve killed her in an instant, but he didn’t. He also knew that she’d been tracking him around the world, yet hadn’t made himself known or tried to hurt her.

“I don’t want to be found.” He almost sounded desperate when he had said it.

Y/N put her phone away.

There was something in his eyes that made her realize she couldn’t go against the man’s wishes.

Yes, Steve wanted Bucky back... wanted to help him. But Y/N had been so preoccupied with finding him that she never even imagined Steve could be someone he was running from as well.

Y/N decided then and there she would follow Bucky until he let her help him. She wouldn’t tell Steve where he was until Bucky wanted it. The man had already been through enough. It was the least she could do for him.

Part Five

So I really, really love when people comment and react to my writing. It makes me really sad when they don’t. Because what’s the point of writing on here if people don’t? lol

Also, I don’t do tag lists. Please please please don’t ask.

#heritage fic #bucky barnes x reader #steve rogers fic #bucky barnes fic #marvel reader insert #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky x y/n #steve roger's granddaughter #steve rogers family #steve rogers x platonic!reader #steve rogers x granddaughter!reader

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travllingbunny · 5 years

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The 100 rewatch: 2x13 Resurrection

This is one of my favorite episodes of season 2. It feels like the second part of a two-parter, continuing right where Rubicon left, and dealing with the fallout, both in the physical and emotional sense. The episode is very focused, and features just two storylines in two locations: the aftermath of the bombing of Tondc, and inside Mount Weather itself, where the Delinquents and Bellamy are continuing to fight and even finding new allies. Both storylines build up tension towards the apparently inevitable final showdown between the Grounder/Arker army and the Mount Weather leadership. But the storyline about the Delinquents is in Mount Weather is simpler, more straightforwardly heroic (as is Bellamy’s role in most of season 2), while the storyline centered around Clarke and the bombing of Tondc feels very dark and morally ambiguous. Some of the crucial quotes relevant to the themes of season 2 and the show as a whole are from this episode.

Rating: 10/10

The aftermath of the bombing of Tondc and the devastation are strongly portrayed, especially in the opening scene: Clarke seesa horse on fire and a woman holding her own arm that was ripped out, before collapsing. Clarke spends most of the episode obviously feeling horrible about what happened and about herself and her decisions (not even remotely the last time she’ll feel that way!) and trying to find a way to deal with her feelings of guilt and shame.

One of her early reactions, the easiest one, is anger at the Mountain Men and desire for revenge. “I want the Mountain Men dead. All of them.” I can see what you’re doing show: Bellamy and Monty have also said similar things in anger– Monty after seeing the Harvest chamber in 2x06 (Maya: “Look, without the treatments, we die. What were we supposed to do?” Monty: “Die”), Bellamy in the cage, after being tortured, in 2x11 (“I’m gonna kill everyone in this mountain”) –these things were said in anger and not literally meant which now feels like foreshadowing to what they will actually end up doing in the season finale, out of the lack of options, and which they will be very unhappy about, to put it mildly.

But after that, she becomes determined to find and kill the sniper, who is killing the survivors and making it impossible for anyone to engage in rescue missions. All she can do is try to something good to make up for what she failed to do. Lexa is meanwhile following her around, observing her with her apparently cool demeanor, and telling her that everything will be fine when they fight and beat the Mountain Men, and telling Clarke to focus on the future instead of dwelling on guilt about past actions, which seems to be Lexa’s MO in general. She says platitudes like “Victory stands on the back of sacrifice” and tries to give Clarke more of her leadership lessons, but Clarke is at this point pretty fed up with them (I can relate) and tells her to shut up.

Meanwhile, Abby and Nyko (working together), Octavia and Lincoln are all trying to save at least some of the wounded people, while Kane is trapped under the rubble - one of the several “Kane in danger” plotlines in the show. Abby tries to help him, but gets trapped herself as well, resulting on one of the longest and deepest Kabby conversations, and brings those two even closer together. Abby tells Kane the truth about Clarke, which she finds shocking. But Kane points out that they didn’t exactly give her great examples growing up on the Ark, with all the terrible things they did. He mentions the culling – which obviously still haunts him – and executions of people for “crimes” like stealing food or medicine, and Abby agrees with him and mentions herself betraying her husband. It’s the first time she describes it as “killing the man you love”. Back in season 1, when they still hated each other, Kane was saying he would do anything for the humanity to survive, and Abby insisted that she cared that they “deserved to survive”. Their current views are much more similar:

Kane: “We all have to answer for our sins.”

Abby: “After everything we’ve done, do we even deserve to survive?”

Lincoln decides to kill the sniper, but gets caught by him, and Clarke finally gets to save Lincoln and kill the sniper, Whitman, making it possible for the rescue mission to proceed. This is a really good scene – when Whitman uses Lincoln as a human shield, and Lincoln tells Clarke to kill him if necessary just to take out Whitman, so she could save her people, Clarke replies “You are my people”, making a point that what someone’s “people” are is not determined by origin or tribalism. This episode has several great lines.

But when Lexa asks her “Did that make you feel better”, Clarke replies “No”. Whatever good thing you go on to do, it doesn’t wash out the bad thing you did – it will always remain and you cannot undo it.

Indra gets a bit of character development throughout the episode and becomes less prejudiced: she was constantly shunning Lincoln and calling him a Reaper, and apparently that was the treatment he was getting from a lot of Grounders, but at the of the episode, she recognizes his help and heroism and hugs him.

On the less interesting (for me, at least) side, there’s also a mini-arc about Octavia, who’s now Indra’s chief second, managing to gain respect from the other seconds, who were all Grounders and were first not very happy to take orders from her. Which is not surprising – why would they, when she joined them a few days ago, and their mentor already gives her a higher position than them! That has to be annoying. But, as usual, because this is The 100, Grounder characters give stupid reasons instead of reasonable ones, and it’s usually something about like hating Sky people : one of the guys says they are “bringers of death”. Really? Because I was under the impression that the Grounders had been constantly at war and killing each other and that the Mountain Men have been killing them mercilessly.

Anyway, he probably changed his mind when a group of Sky people, including Sinclair and Jackson, arrived from Camp Jaha to the survivors, helping rescue Kane and Abby and others.

Clarke is very relieved to see Octavia alive, but their nice greeting is the last time they get along this season, because Octavia will figure out the truth and be very anti-Clarke in the next episode.

Lexa proves again that she has no problems using the deaths for propaganda, when her people start shouting “Heda” and she gives a rousing speech about getting revenge against Mount Weather for the dead. Clarke is standing silent and probably embarrassed, but Abby is so disgusted that she yells for everyone “That’s enough!” (I’ve never liked her more than in this moment), explaining that they have to focus on saving the other survivors.

While Lexa seems pumped up about winning the war (“With our two people together, we will win this war” – she’ll change that tune in 2x15), Clarke doesn’t seem happy at all. But her priority is the same – saving her friends from Mount Weather, which is why she refuses her mother’s suggestion to stay to help the wounded, and goes with the army to war with Mount Weather.. She’s realized that the treatment work, because the sniper wasn’t wearing a hazmat suit, and what this means “They are going to kill all of my friends”. While her relationship with Bellamy is in a *cough* special category, at t this point in season 2, if not before, I felt that Clarke’s feelings for the Delinquents were almost as if she was their mother figure, in spite of being about the same age. It’s that feeling of being responsible for protecting someone, which both she and Bellamy feel about the Delinquents.

Abby, concerned with Clarke’s apparent new acceptance of ‘ends justify the means’ methods, “Don’t forget we’re the good guys” – a line that will be referenced in the season finale.

I love the last scene of this episode – it has one of the best uses of a song on the show (“Couldn’t Stop Caring” by The Spiritual Machines), and it feels really epic, as we watch the army start its march towards Mount Weather – Lexa, Octavia, Indra etc. and with the close-up of Clarke, close-up of concerned Abby staying behind, and again Clarke’s solemn face, to the chorus of “It’s all for you/Take it to depths they never knew/I couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop caring” – which would be a fitting theme song for season 2.

……………

In Mount Weather, things start in a very dark way, as we see dead bodies of two drilled Delinquents that are still lying around. Since Monty is watching through the security camera, the Delinquents learn that the treatments are working, by seeing that some guards have no hazmat suits. The Delinquents have barricaded themselves in their form in Level 5, and are, for the time being, able to successfully defend themselves – which is made easier by the fact that the guards are not allowed to kill them – in order not to waste the bone marrow (as Tsing explained in one of the previous episodes, the window for bone extraction after death is quite short). However, the guards manage to take Fox, which devastates Jasper, because he promised her she would be fine (he is now playing the leader role that is usually reserved for Clarke and Bellamy), and reacts by killing a wounded guard – the second time in consecutive episodes that we see dark, vengeful, angry Jasper. The show had to put in danger one of the named Delinquents we kind of know, to try to raise the emotional stakes a little bit. Fox lives (for now – she still gets killed in the finale of season 2!), because Bellamy, still dressed as a guard, saves her. The reunions between the Delinquents and Bellamy are very sweet to see (before this, he only revealed himself to Jasper briefly to smuggle him the gun) – Fox recognizes him and happily hugs him.

Maya takes Fox to her father, Vincent, to hide her, and we find out that Maya’s mother refused treatments out of ethical reasons, and died as a result, when Maya was just 5. Her father shares the same beliefs, but, as he tells her, he needed to be alive so she would have at least one parent.

Cage finds a new bargaining chip – threatening Maya’s life to force Jasper and others to surrender (probably thinking all he needs is to make Jasper decide to do so), but instead Monty tries to find a way to save her. In the end, thanks to Bellamy, they manage to save her and all of them get away from the dorm through the trash chute, duping Cage and Emerson. The reunion between Bellamy and Jasper is marked by another hug, but also a rather awkward moment when Bellamy tells Jasper about Clarke coming with an army of Grounders, which leads to Jasper asking if Finn finally got his peace talks, with Bellamy replying “…Something like that”, as it’s obviously not the time to tell them that story.

Most importantly, Delinquents get help from other rebels, those of the Mount Weather residents who are secretly against Cage’s plan of killing them to get their bone marrow, and who are going to hide them at their homes. Bellamy tells them: “Stay alive and be ready to fight. War is coming.”

This all feels so hopeful and idealistic. This is a huge thing, the fact that, here in Mount Weather of all places, where we find the worst villains and the most evil society in the show, there are real rebels and revolutionaries ready to fight for what is right at the cost of their lives, rather than doing everything for their own survival, or caring only about their own “people”, even if their own are in the wrong and doing awful things to others. Maya tells Bellamy that she’s not a natural born revolutionaries as he calls her, she’s just trying to do the right thing, but this is what makes her one. She reminds me of Lincoln, who helped the Delinquents in season 1 so they wouldn’t be slaughtered by a Trikru army, explaining that he’s doing it because “what my people are doing to your people is wrong”.

But it’s all so sad to watch now, knowing how things will turn out, and that the cost of victory will be the deaths of Maya and all the other rebels who helped the Delinquents, which is one of the things that hurt the most, together with the deaths of children.

Timeline: This episode starts in Tondc pretty much immediately after 2x12, on the same night, right after the attack, and lasts about a day (since most of it takes place the day after, and the last scene is again at night).

Body count:

After the deaths of about 250 people (Grounders and Arkers) from the missile, a number of people are killed by Whitman by a sniper.

Whitman himself is eventually killed by Clarke

12 Mount Weather guards (10 killed by the Delinquents, 2 shot and killed by Bellamy while saving Fox). This means that 13 Mountain Men died in this episode, and 352 are still alive.

#the 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 season 2 #the 100 2x13 #resurrection #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #jasper jordan #monty green #maya vie #vincent vie #lincoln kom trikru #abby griffin #marcus kane #indra

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peysidiots · 5 years

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ambush / chandler’s events

Among all of the chaos that was about to happen at headquarters, the real threat they were facing was at Quantico. Chandler and a crew of some of the best were headed there-- many of them unsure if the mission would be successful or if they would even make it out of there alive. But Chandler knew that he could trust April and if she thought sending him there was going to be the best thing, then that’s exactly what Chandler would do.

He had done this hundreds of times. Nothing quite to this scale because a national terroristic threat didn’t happen everyday, but Agent Wyatt was well equipped for situations like this. Chandler on the other hand, he wasn’t equipped for dealing with feelings, especially not at the height of what could possibly turn into the biggest terrorist attack of the decade. He couldn’t allow himself to think about all of that now, if he got too in his head about Cora, he would fail and right now was the worst time to fail.

The plane over there was quick, what would’ve been a 45 minute drive, they cut that time in half. On the ride over, Chandler had been receiving intel from Director Chu as she was getting it. There were a few identified agents stationed at Quantico that were shown to have been linked to the former Agent Kantor-- the suspected terrorist leading this attack. A lot of easily swayed low level agents were mixed in with the list of names, but it was the higher ranks that concerned Chandler and the rest of his team. Some of the names listed were people that many of them had gone to the academy with-- and were even friends with. But Chandler knew Kantor, he knew just how persuasive he could be, especially to those agents that were turned. Kantor would have offered them things they craved since they had started at the academy. Committing a terror attack at the DC base and Quantico just to make a statement would only end in two ways-- his arrest or the mark of the beginning of something terrible. Chandler hoped that it wouldn’t end up being the latter.

They arrived at the base, according to the director before Agent Kantor had arrived, but the signal had been going in and out the whole time, so Chandler wasn’t sure if something was jamming the signal or if it was just a poor connection. Once Chandler and his guys made it into the building things were quiet. It was almost as if no one was around, that everyone had evacuated and the building was empty. But Chandler was sure that wasn’t the case, giving his men the signal to be at the ready at any sign of movement.

His men carefully moved forward, keeping eyes on each other. Before Chandler had the chance to take a step, one of his men tripped a bomb causing everyone to lose balance by being thrown onto the floor from the explosion. The only thing Chandler remembers is hearing the trigger and seeing the explosion.

When he finally came to he had been moved to a different room. Hands behind his back, legs tied together with a rope. Stripped of all of his weapons and all of the armor he had come into the building with. He were surrounded by eight men-- ones he could only assume were Agent Kantor’s.

“Michaels, they’re starting to wake up,” one agent said to the other and Chandler could hear them getting their guns at the ready.

“I’m obviously not a threat to you guys, you stripped me clean of my weapons you can put your guns down unless you’re really afraid of some guy tied up,” Chandler responded to them as he used his core strength to sit himself up.

“Shut up, Wyatt,” a familiar voice chimed in as Chandler fell from a kick to his stomach that knocked him back down. It was Agent Jacobson, who he had gone to Quantico with. Unsurprisingly on the wrong side of the fight again.

“Feeling all proud that you can finally get a hit on me, Jacobson,” Chandler spat back at the agent, “only had to get me tied up and unarmed to do it. Looks like Kantor taught you well,” he could barely get his remark out before he felt another blow to his side, this time more in his rib area.

“Jacobson, enough,” Chandler’s head perked up as the voice entered the small room. It was Kyle and Chandler only hoped that Kyle being there meant that he had been playing the double agent card on his undercover mission or if he had just been converted to this side. He looked around, then men seemed to be at ease with Kyle, even waiting for his commands. “Kantor wants to see Agent Wyatt himself in control, I can take it from here,” Kyle walked over to Chandler untying his legs so that he could walk on his own. He stood Chandler up and pulled out a knife holding it against his back making him walk forward. “Let’s go, Wyatt,” Chandler could tell from his voice that he was on his side and thanked April for sending him in as the head of the operation.

In one swift move as their guards were down, Kyle swung the knife down cutting apart the ties that were restricting Chandler and tossed him a gun from his own holster. It took a second for Chandler to readjust, but he was quick to fire at the agents surrounding the two of them, taking down all of the men in non-lethal ways aiming for legs mostly so they couldn’t run. Whatever signal was jamming Chandler from HQ was also jamming their coms so they couldn’t call for help. After it seemed like everyone was down, Chandler and Kyle left the room, but not without a few cuts from bullets that had just grazed his skin. He’d have to worry about that later though.

“MIA for seven months and Halstead still manages to get Wyatt out of every jam he’s in,” Chandler tried his best to joke with his friend, despite his throbbing head that he must’ve hit from the explosion earlier. Kyle just shook his head.

“Kantor really thinks he’s got this place on lock, but we have agents on the inside too, like you said for the past seven months. Don’t worry about your men, they’re with people I can trust. Our top priority right now is getting to Kantor before he successfully hacks into the system at Quantico to release his virus he’s been working on. It’s why the signals are still jammed. I’m dropping you off here, but stay outside of the room”

“You want me to just wait idly while Kantor is in there sending out a mass virus?” Chandler asked.

“While I go retrieve your men from around the entire building, yes,” he stated it so simply. Kyle was always like that though. It didn’t take them long for them to arrive at the room. “I just need you to stand guard, Wyatt. Don’t do anything heroic,” he handed him another gun. “I’ll be back in five minutes with more men,” he nodded to Chandler and took off in another direction. Was it incredibly stupid to leave Chandler by himself with the end goal of the mission right there? Yes. Did he have absolutely no idea what was awaiting in there, also yes. But if he had a chance of stopping this whole thing, it was going to happen. He looked down at his watch keeping note of the time knowing that he only had to distract and disarm Kantor for five minutes so he could stop the signal from getting out. Chandler carefully pushed open the door to reveal Kantor sitting behind his computer, but he was being covered by three men, who of course saw Chandler.

“Fuck,” was all Chandler could say as the men aimed their guns at him. He dove for cover, reaching his arm out too far and jamming his pinky hard into it’s socket against a metal door frame. The amount of adrenaline pumping through his veins would make him forget about the small injury for now. He crouched up behind the boxes and fired his gun at one of the guys hands taking out his weapon. He aimed for another’s back of his knee, hitting it in the first time. The scream the guy made on his way down was actually horrifying. As soon as Chandler thought he had the upper hand on Kantor’s men, he made his way to them so he could fight them hand to hand. It was less lethal to punch them anyways.

As he was running, one of them threw a knife at him, and he couldn’t dodge it on time, sending the blade right into his shoulder. “Who brings a knife to a fist fight?” he asked pulling it out of his shoulder and throwing it to the side as he took down the first guy in two hits and the other with a quick dodge an uppercut, and a kick into the satellite that seemed to have been jamming the signal. Chandler stood over the guy making sure he was down before he felt a sharp blade insert his right side in his back just between some ribs then the same blade into the spot just above his anterior right hip and yank back basically slicing his side open as he spun around from the force of the knife.

He immediately fell to the ground, his hand going to his hip to stop the bleeding that was happening. He crawled back as Kantor stood over him.

“Chandler Bennett, do you think that just because your father is the president means you’re invincible? You should know better than that,” he said condescendingly. At this point Chandler had just hoped the comms had come back on so that anyone was hearing his interaction. He looked down at his watch, successfully wasting four and a half minutes just waiting for those next thirty seconds to come.

“No, I think it just makes me a more distracting target than anyone else, you just couldn’t wait to sink your blade into me that you left your computer unguarded.” his voice was weak and his head was throbbing now. The rate at which he was losing blood was a lot faster than he had anticipated.

“What does it matter, you’re the only one in here with me. Once you’re dead I go back to uploading the virus and I get two wins in one day. You can be so dense sometimes, Agent,” Kantor scoffed and it was almost on queue that Kyle showed up with Chandler’s team, surrounding Kantor and taking him down in Chandler’s final moments of consciousness before the lightness he was feeling in his head made it heavy and everything went dark.

#ch: chandler #chandler: cora #wyatt: logan #nxcvntrol

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littlebigkaiju · 6 years

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Turns out I had a lot to say about Pacific Rim: Uprising

Opening statement: It’s now VERY clear why Guillermo Del Toro has had nothing at all to say about this movie on Twitter. Has it ruined Pacific Rim for me? Nothing could. Has it destroyed the future of this franchise? Almost certainly. No real spoilers in the list of good points, but BEWARE OF SPOILERS IN THE BAD POINTS.

THE GOOD:

Dr Hermann Gottlieb gets arguably the best deal out of all the returning cast. His position in the PPDC at this point is unclear, (research and development?), but he plays a fun, engaging part with a surprising amount of screen time. It’s great for him to have such an important role in this movie despite his separation from Newt, and I honestly loved him.

Liwen Shao. Definitely a character with more depth than I had expected. I really came to like her and her role in the movie.

The new Kaiju designs are GREAT. They’re suitably different than those of the original movie without being a complete departure (there are definitely some familiar themes in Raijin and Shrikethorn).

The Mega Kaiju is terribly underutilised, but he’s wonderful. He turns the tide of battle very quickly and really feels like an unstoppable force.

I WAS RIGHT ABOUT MOUNT FUJI, and this turned out to be an interesting revelation about the Precursors’ plan of action. Very cool, although by the end of the movie I was wishing their plan had succeeded.

THE BAD (SPOILERS EVERYWHERE):

Let’s get this one out of the way: Uprising is a massive “fuck you” to the character development of its returning cast. Pacific Rim holds the distinction of having had an alternative to the Bechdel Test created after it. (It’s called the Mako Mori test – At least one female character who gets her own narrative arc that is not about supporting a man’s story.) Almost unbelievably, Uprising manages to destroy this. The vision and portrayal of Mako in the original Pacific Rim is fantastic. Her motivation is driven by tragedy, as her family was killed during Onibaba’s attack on Tokyo, but she’s incredibly smart (the head of the MK-3 Jaeger restoration project, in fact) and a talented Jaeger pilot in training with a simulation drop to kill score of 51 to 51, something that makes even veteran pilots turn their heads. Not only was Mako in charge of restoring Gipsy Danger to her full glory and installing the chain sword that would become her trademark weapon, she became instrumental in defeating the most powerful Kaiju ever seen, avenging her family and ultimately saving the world. Despite this, she’s a humble and strongly emotional character; a brilliant example of what a strong female character should be. (Strength doesn’t preclude emotion or empathy, but movies like to tell us it should.) I really can’t emphasise enough how important she to this franchise. In Uprising, Mako has become the secretary general of the PPDC – So far, so good. Unfortunately, that’s where the ‘good’ ends for Mako. She’s briefly in contact with her estranged adoptive brother Jake Pentecost to create the impression that they’re making up after some longstanding disagreement, just enough to indicate to the audience that we should care about their relationship. Because the next time we see Mako, she dies in a helicopter crash purely so Jake can have some angst and a reason to take his position in the PPDC more seriously. This REALLY pisses me off. Mako Mori, arguably the most important character in Pacific Rim, is given a screen time of around 5-10 minutes and reduced to nothing more than the victim of the infamous fridge trope in its sequel. Mako deserved better. If she was going to die in this movie she should have been in a Jaeger, fighting to save the world once more. What a travesty of a decision this was.

Though John Boyega plays a good part, it’s painfully, painfully obvious that the character of Jake Pentecost was invented solely for him to have a larger role in the movie, one with a direct link to some of the most heroic figures in the Pacific Rim universe. Given that John became a producer for Uprising, it’s hard not to feel like his ego is the primary factor driving this decision (and, ultimately, the death of Mako Mori, since she’s the only other relative of Stacker Pentecost and the only original pilot to return in this movie). Jake’s manufactured existence causes the audience to question what we know of Stacker, the strict but doting adoptive father of Mako Mori. Given the appropriate time and care, this could have had the potential to be a plot point that would add more depth to Stacker, Jake, and Mako as a family, but as with all the character development in Uprising, it’s rushed. Jake’s relationship with Mako and their father is barely mentioned at all, such that I only know that Jake was inducted into the Jaeger Academy like Mako, but was kicked out of the program for attempting to pilot a Jaeger alone. Jake was either disowned or simply ran away. There’s no more discussion than that, giving us the impression that Stacker Pentecost couldn’t care less that his son was living rough and stealing Jaeger technology to make ends meet while he continued with his duties as a PPDC marshal. None of this adds anything of value to these characters. It simply conflicts with the way Stacker was portrayed in the original movie, tarnishing the legendary reputation that Uprising is otherwise so fond of bringing up.

The characterisation “fuck you” continues with some very poor handling of a villainous Newt. (Oh Newt, buddy, how they’ve wronged you.) It’s not news to most fans that Guillermo Del Toro was toying around with the idea of taking Newt in a villainous direction for the sequel after his repeated exposure to the Kaiju hivemind in the Drift. Ghost Drifting is a known quantity in the Pacific Rim universe; essentially a residual connection outside of the Drift that results in shared thoughts and behaviours. The idea of this being an opening for the Precursors to hijack Newt and use him for their own gain is REALLY interesting and something I was legitimately excited about, but the execution of it here is just plain bad. The reveal of Alice is appropriately creepy, but is left unexplored beyond a singular, unsavoury scene. The implication of it ends up feeling more like Newt betrays all of humanity for the sake of some virtual reality Kaiju sex, rather than because he is being used as a literal puppet by the Precursors, and that’s a pretty awful thing to do to a fandom-beloved character who had more than a small part in saving the world the first time around. He gets a couple of nice scenes with Dr Gottlieb and a small moment with his monstrous Mega Kaiju creation (which smacks of Leatherback’s curiosity about Striker Eureka, minus the personality), and that’s… it. For the rest, he’s treated like shit.

Uprising is also a massive “fuck you” to the world building of the original movie. In Pacific Rim, it was established that the highly pollutant nature of Kaiju Blue meant that Jaeger pilots had to avoid using weapons like swords that would cause bleeding while fighting Kaiju in populated areas. Apparently, no-one gives a shit about this 10 years into the future, despite the fact that we’ve discovered Kaiju Blue is also incredibly explosive. Nope, we’ve got a mace coated in knives, massive machine guns, and chain swords abound. There’s Kaiju Blue everywhere, but who cares?

On the above note, watch Gipsy Danger carefully during the Battle of Hong Kong in the original movie. Her pilots, Mako and Raleigh, take great care not to damage the buildings around them where possible, even stepping over a bridge instead of simply walking through it. Not so in Uprising – Apparently Tokyo’s shiny new skyscrapers (which are only around 10 years old) are all fair game. Jake Pentecost uses Gipsy Avenger’s gravity sling to intentionally pull down a good four or five skyscrapers onto Raijin, for all the good that does, while the pilots of Saber Athena casually drag the Jaeger’s twin swords through the buildings at either side of her for no particular reason.

Likewise, drifting is important… except when it’s not. This movie pushes the idea that it’s easier to form bonds (and thus be Drift compatible) at a younger age, which is why all the new cadets in training are in their teens. They’re not actually meant to be deployed until they’re older – Fine, I’ll buy that. Amara repeatedly fails to successfully drift with anyone in training, making her a very weak contender in the Jaeger Program, but then magically drifts with a total of three other pilots for the battle in Tokyo because… Well, because the plot required it to happen.

As previously mentioned, the character development in this movie is almost non-existent. This hits the new Jaeger pilots especially hard because we get almost no information about their backstories, their training history, etc. so seeing them in action becomes an unknown quantity with little impact. There is a pilot called Jules and I know nothing about her, because Jules is a character who exists to be nothing more than an object for two men to compete and drool over. This is the sequel to the movie that prompted the creation of the alternative to the Bechdel test, everybody. Good job.

Uprising tries very hard to be its own thing, (much to the detriment of the returning cast and the world building of the original), but it just can’t help but lean on the legacy of its predecessor. References to the original movie appear in the form of bargain basement scene reshoots instead of clever nods. There are many, but here’s the worst: Amara lost her family to a Kaiju known as Insurrector, just like Mako Mori, who lost hers to Onibaba when it made landfall in Tokyo. We see this in a flashback when she attempts to drift with Jake, just like when Mako drifts with Raleigh for the first time. And just like Mako, she gets hold of the memory and can’t let go, so the pair of them are thrown out of neural alignment while Jake appears in her memory and pleads for her to stop. At this point we’re not really referencing the original movie so much as remaking it shot-for-shot.

True to the genre, Pacific Rim’s Kaiju had powerful abilities – Flight, electrical discharges, acid spit; things sometimes a step removed from reality but certainly inspired by real creatures. But the Kaiju in Uprising are magic. They can do some very bizarre things that are never given any kind of explanation, like absorbing energy from attacks to send it right back to their Jaeger aggressors. Even more bizarrely, when succumbing to the influence of the Precursors, the drone Jaegers suddenly sprout Kaiju flesh and appendages like glowing Kudzu on speed. We’ve never seen Precursor tech with any level of regenerative capacity, let alone the ability to flash-grow an entire Kaiju from an old sample of a brain, yet this happens and then it’s never referenced again. None of the other Kaiju exhibit abilities like this, so not only is it out of place but it feels like a missed opportunity because it could have been used to great effect for the false scare with the shattered Mega Kaiju at the end of the movie.

The individual designs of the Kaiju are great, but they’re given frustratingly little time to shine on their own and have absolutely no personality to speak of. Raijin gets some nice screen time, but Hakuja and Shrikethorn are barely visible and never really get to feel like a threat despite being Category IV Kaiju (the same as Leatherback and Otachi, who REALLY fuck shit up in Pacific Rim). This is especially disappointing given that they appear only in the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. Even the Mega Kaiju, who is quite magnificent to behold, only shows up for about 5 minutes and gets nothing in the way of special moves or tricks hidden up his sleeve; certainly nothing we didn’t see in trailers. Seriously, if you’ve seen the trailers for this movie, you’ve seen all the Kaiju action.

Both the Kaiju and the Jaegers are weightless. They move far too quickly and unfortunately so does the camera, meaning that fights quickly descend into a sort of mild chaos in which it can be quite difficult to focus on what’s happening. This is in stark contrast to the original, which took great pains to express the sheer weight and volume of Jaegers and their Kaiju foes, and carefully choreographed and framed the action for maximum impact. When Gipsy Danger prepares to fire the rocket on her elbow, the process takes a good few seconds – The moving of armour plating, the ignition of the rocket, the lowering of air brakes and then the swing of the punch. In Uprising, Avenger does all of this in about half a second. There’s no anticipation; blink and you’ll miss it. Likewise, Uprising misses these beats with its Kaiju. There’s a brilliant moment where Bracer Phoenix launches its mace into the side of the Mega Kaiju’s head, (to hilariously underwhelming effect), only for the Kaiju to whip around and shred the Jaeger in a matter of seconds. Had this been a shot in Pacific Rim, the Mega Kaiju would have taken a moment to shake its head, express its displeasure with a roar, and then clamp its jaws around the offending Jaeger. Sadly, this injection of personality and humour is skipped.

Under the persistent control of the Precursors, Newt designs a swarm of small creatures called Rippers who deconstruct Raijin, Hakuja, and Shrikethorn to recombine them into the unnamed Mega Kaiju. There’s no indication of whether the Kaiju are prepared for this, or, like the abused living weapons they truly are, whether they’re actually distressed by having something happen to them that they don’t understand. All we’d need here is for them to fall weirdly still and assume a formation, or to show signs of distress or aggression, and we could get the idea either way. Unfortunately, what we get is somewhere in the middle, so I suppose we can just assume they don’t care. How blank and characterless.

There are plot holes and lost threads all over the place in this movie. Here’s one of my favourites: Hermann requests help from Kaiju biology specialist Newt as he tries to figure out a way to combine Kaiju blood and rare earth metals to create a propellant more powerful than rocket fuel. Newt declines, Hermann despairs… and then somehow figures it out anyway off screen, just in time for the fuel to be used in a Jaeger launch. What?

Similarly, we find out why Obsidian Fury is a rogue Jaeger, but we never get an explanation for who’s responsible for its existence. The inference is that it’s meant to be Newt, but the idea that he somehow used Shao Industries’ automated factories to construct an entire uncommissioned Jaeger without anyone ever noticing is a stretch, to say the least. The same goes for the Rippers.

Ghost Drifting, Part II? This is very minor, but as much as I enjoyed him there’s something odd about Hermann’s characterisation in this movie. He’s not just a mathematician but a really goddamn passionate one, (“Numbers are as close as we get to the handwriting of god.”), but that job just doesn’t exist for him in Uprising. The closest we get is him talking about using a ‘fractal algorithm’ to decode some damaged data. Instead, Hermann seems to be spending his time messing around with Kaiju biology, having discovered that Kaiju blood reacts violently with rare earth metals. I assume we’re meant to be seeing the residual effects of the Drift, but even despite that, taking up the dissection of Kaiju samples just seems like something Hermann would never do, given his sheer distaste for Kaiju biology. (“No Kaiju entrails on my side of the room,” per the first movie; “…when we drifted with that disgusting Kaiju brain,” per the second.)

Tone. Pacing. Both of these are awful. The movie opens with a vague recap of the original, complete with footage lifted directly from it. This is otherwise known as Really Shitty Exposition.

There’s a terrible and wholly unnecessary montage scene with an equally terrible rendition of the Pacific Rim theme as remixed by Patrick Stump… because of reasons. I threw up in my mouth a little.

The movie contains a whole lot of forced Marvel-style humour. Everywhere. That’s not an inherently bad thing but never once does it feel fitting here. In addition to this, a dead meme is shoehorned in because apparently Steven De Knight is a cheap asshole who’d rather fall back on a meme to try for laughs instead of committing to a serious tone for more than 5 seconds at a time. Out of nowhere, one of the cadets is playing the Russian Trololol song on one of the Jaeger’s internal screens during their deployment. What the ever-loving fuck does that have to do with anything? Except for utterly destroying the moment the movie was trying to build?

I really could go on, but I think I’d rather forget the existence of this movie.

#Pacific Rim Uprising Spoilers #PRU Spoilers #Pacific Rim Uprising #I'm gonna have to go ahead and pretend this movie never existed #Strifespeak

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red-5 · 7 years

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Luck’s Got Nothing To Do With It (Pt. 2)

Summary: Poe deals with the aftermath of leaving her behind, the Resistance makes plans to get her back.

Pairings: Poe x OC/reader

“I’m sorry about your girlfriend.”

The simple sentiment managed to cut through the hissing of the landing gear, the beeping of the airlock signaling the all-clear, the persistent howling in Poe’s ears that he pretended was aftershock of the jump to lightspeed in an unfamiliar craft. His head snapped to his left, and the smaller man shrunk away from the wild look in his wide, bloodshot eyes. Poe searched his face for a moment, blinking away his thoughts before finding his voice.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he managed, flinging the straps of his harness over the back of the pilot’s chair, and clamoring to his feet. “And don’t be. As soon as I pass you off I’m going to get her.”

He felt eyes watching him as he released the lock on the door, willing the fatigue from his muscles as he heaved the metal latch open. He brushed off the obnoxious feeling, the questions he saw swimming in his eyes. Faces blurred past him as he pushed his way through the crowd that flooded the small craft, ignoring the questions and prodding looks they gave him as his boots thudded across the tarmac to a familiar sleek, black X-wing.

The Y-wing he had flown into Cloud City was probably still parked on the small landing pad near the rear entrance to the city, but she had sacrificed any chance at slipping passed the TIE fighters when she gave him the precious few seconds he needed to take-off. The flight back to D’Qar had been torture, the last few minutes before he took off without her had been playing out in his head, on repeat, since the moment the landing gear left solid ground. He was a man obsessed, positive there was something, anything, he could have done besides leave her in a floating, First Order infested hive. He picked apart each second, dissecting the scene for his failure and becoming increasingly agitated as he came up with nothing. Sooner or later, they would find her, then it would be a question of how long it took them to discover she wasn’t a materials inspector for a hyperdrive coolant development company.

He refused to think about what came next, only that he couldn’t let it get to that point.

His feet tripped and tumbled over BB-8’s feeble attempt to stop him by weaving through his legs to frantic beeps and howls.

“Not now buddy, we’ve gotta go.”

He yelped at the droid’s escalated maneuver of simply ramming into his shins with renewed vigor and a fresh string of angry, high-pitched binary. His own rant was roughly cut off before it began by the small hand that gripped his bicep with surprising strength, jerking him to face a furious, tight-lipped scowl.

“Black. Leader.” The General annunciated, eyes flashing through the mask of long-practiced patience for hot-shot pilots. He hadn’t heard anyone call for him, but the bewildered looks they were receiving was evidence enough.

“General, I’m sorry I have to- I- I can’t just leave her- “

“Poe.” It was sharp, cutting, but soft with understanding, and the jumble of words died in his throat as he sighed a shuttering breath. His blood ran cold with an unfamiliar sensation that he recognized immediately.

Helplessness.

“We’re going to get her, we will. But let’s do this the right way. Flying back in there mad and single-handed isn’t going to do her any favors.” Her eyes held no room for questioning, and he allowed himself to be led from the flight line by the firm grip on his arm.

He gave himself over to the numbness that overtook his limbs as he moved robotically to the briefing room, vision swimming with the exhaustion he had been repressing. This was the part where she would give him a sly grin and one last crushing hug before ducking into the dark room, muscles still spasming with post-flight adrenaline that wouldn’t wear off until well into the night. Now it felt as if his boots were filled with concrete, as if she were some kind of drug and he was overdue for his next hit.

Shapes and voices flowed around him as he was shoved into a seat, Snap’s face passed in front of his, he was saying something, but Poe couldn’t quite make out his words. The lights dimmed, but the rapid ebb, and flow of moving bodies didn’t falter, data-pads transferring hands, voices whispering in ears, the General addressing the group that had gathered next to a trembling intel-specialist Bonavan? Donovan? It was information he already had, everything he already knew, the First Order’s interest in Cloud City to feed their ever-expanding need for hyperdrive coolant, Baron-Administrator Calrissian’s role as a double agent, playing nice with the Admirals and troopers that came prodding while covering the Resistance’s presence in his halls. A presence that had been compromised. Sour irritation bubbled in his chest, his skin crawling beneath the muted-grey of the itchy material he kept forgetting he still wore. He could be halfway back to the city by now.

Everything suddenly felt so wrong. He missed the feminine voice next to him, making inappropriate jokes and comments earning them a stern glare from General Organa. The cantina would be next, take-away boxes smeared with grime and left to go cold on the tarmac as they came down from their adrenaline highs in the clean night air. He had no idea he had become so dependent on their routine, on her very presence, but now, in the absence of his addiction, he felt the pang of withdrawal.

“Lieutenant Divon, is Green Squadron ready?”

As if his body recognized there were plans being made, he snapped to attention, eyes seeking out the blonde in question.

“The Ghosts are scrambled and awaiting your orders, General,” the lithe man responded briskly.

“Good,” she responded tightly, eyes skipping around the room. “You will take point in Green Leader’s place. Gold and Red squadrons, you will follow Green and engage when given the order. Keep it tight, keep it clean. Our intel states it’s little more than a scout detachment, but given the circumstances that will change, and quickly. Black squadron, you’re on clean-up and emergency back-up only, that means you too, Black Leader.”

Her eyes found Poe’s from across the room.

“No heroics. I want Green-3 in a Y-wing and standing by for extraction. Get our girl and get out, is that understood?”

A chorus of affirmations rang around the room, but her eyes never left his. He felt them burning in the back of his skull as he leapt to his feet and beat the mob to the door.

“Poe!” Snap called after him, pushing his way out of the room to chase him down.

“Poe! Poe stop!” His fingers gripped his arm, fisting into the material and reminding him, once again, he wasn’t wearing his flight suit.

“Let me go, Snap,” Poe ground through clenched teeth, grunting in irritation at a failed attempt to wrench his arm free.

“Just wait a second, you’re gonna get yourself killed.”

“Yeah, well, it’ll be a long time coming.” He tried, again, and failed, again, to pull himself free, instead conceding with a withering glare at his friend who stared back at him slack-jawed.

“What the hell has gotten into you?”

“She needs me Snap, I just left her there- “

“And you don’t get to be leader of the best stealth squadron in the Resistance without taking a few hits.” Snap almost shouted, raising his voice over Poe’s frantic rambling.

“But I left her there.” Poe insisted, eyes begging him to understand, to loosen his grip and let him go before he exploded. “I left her there. I told her I’d never leave her behind.”

“And she’s a tough girl,” Snap responded gently as if reassuring a wounded animal. “She knew what she signed up for. You did what you had to do, she knows we’re coming for her and she’ll do what she has to do.”

Poe stared back at him for a long moment, fighting down the irritation he felt at how calm Snap was and trying instead to let it soothe his frayed nerves. Finally, he gave a sharp nod, sucking in a deep breath to combat the tightness building in his chest. Snap hesitantly let him go, giving him time to compose himself as he tugged and pulled at his clothes, dragged his fingers through his tousled hair, pressed the heels of his hands into his strained eyes.

“How long?”

Bloodshot brown eyes flew open, hands pulling away from his face as he looked at Snap with a blank expression, mouth gaping open ever so slightly.

“I…I- I don’t… “ He stuttered, blinking rapidly as he sorted through his jumbled thoughts. “I’m not… She’s…she’s just… “

“Yeah alright, whatever you say, look,” Snap interrupted his pathetic excuse for a response. “You got 20 minutes till gear up. Change, splash some water on your face, pull yourself together and get to the flight line. We’re on back-up- “ He held up a halting hand at Poe’s protests. “General’s orders, you’re lucky she’s even letting you go. You’re way outside your safety window and should be resting. Don’t make her change her mind. Now go.”

He wasn’t certain when that had become a trend in his life, but he found himself turning away from his squad-mate and following BB-8 to the familiar path to his room. No matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to move fast enough. He felt like he was in a dream, arms and legs tangling in the bed sheets whenever he tried to move with any sense of urgency. He let out a throat-tearing scream as his fingers failed a third time to punch in the pass code to his door, repressing the urge to put his fist to the metal instead as he pressed his forehead to the wall. The cold bite of the metal cut through the haze in his mind and let him draw in the first, true breath he had taken in hours.

Breathe in.

She’s fine.

Breathe out.

You’re going to get her back, she’ll be home by dinner.

With a head as clear as it was going to get, he pushed away from the wall, steadying his hands before successfully punching in his code and striding through the threshold. He was on autopilot, snatching the familiar orange flight suit from where it hung by the door, kicking off his boots and shedding the thick material of his disguise. Hands groped for the familiar holes as he shrugged it on, stepping into his boots on the way to the fresher. His breath faltered and sputtered as the ice-cold liquid hit his face, shocking his senses, and clearing away the remnants of the fog that clung to the edges of his mind.

He met his own eyes in the mirror, barely recognizing the face that stared back at him. Tanned skin turned ashen, brown eyes sunken into his skull, wild curls jutting up from his head haphazardly. When did he start needing her so much? He felt like he was coming apart at the seams, and the only thing that kept him together wasn’t there. They should be at the cantina right now, scooping slop into small white boxes and smiling apologetically at Miss Lyra for the mess they left behind. This wasn’t the first time he had to leave someone behind, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last. But he was certain it was the only time he felt as if he left himself behind as well, the only time he felt as if nothing would ever be right again.

BB-8 rolled in behind him, whistling quietly as he gently nudged Poe’s leg in apology.

“I know, buddy.”

He turned to look at his companion, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“You ready?”

His mouth stretched into a tight smile at the enthusiastic beeps and whoops he got in response. He grasped the zipper on the front of his suit with his fingers, pulling the tab up to his neck and squaring his shoulders.

“Let’s go get her.”

@umbrellabrass you must have ESP, I got your tag request as I posted this.

#star wars #star wars fanfiction #poe dameron #poe dameron fanfiction #poe dameron x oc #poe dameron x ofc #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron x you

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valmaior-blog · 4 years

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Asymptotically tending...

Saturday 13/07/2019. A momentous day. I took a shower! Showering in itself is not that unusual, I shower every month, whether I need it or not;-) This was a momentous day because it was my first shower in my as yet incomplete new bathroom, and by new, I mean new. New concrete floor, new drains, new plumbing, rebuilt walls, new floor and wall tiles, new toilet-bidet-sink, new mirror, new electrics, new ceiling, new doorway, new window, and incomplete because the last 4 items are not yet installed.

Funny thing about the bathroom mirror, it is of the “blue touch” type. It has a permanently illuminated blue circle – very useful at night, which can be touched to turn the built in lights on, or off and cycle through the lighting options. Made in China. On the box, it proclaimed blue tooth – silly Chinese. Obviously never heard of Blue Touch, so I assume it was an error and had been helpfully corrected by the packaging printers for the manufacturer, except that after it was installed, I discovered that my phone can connect to it and play music. (apologies China) Also, when the lights are on, a heating element demists the central part of the mirror. Neither of these functions were on my list of essential features for a mirror.

The main problem has been the size of the house – 188 square meters – over 2000 square feet, and apart from the kitchen, (and now the main bathroom) the ceilings are over 3.5 meters (12 feet) high. Actually, the real problem has been underestimating the amount of work required, overestimating my skill and ability, and working around the lack of specialised tools.

So, it is now 2020. Time for an update. Progress has been slow. It is 1 year and 11 months since we bought the house. My initial estimate of 2 months to make it habitable is just a vague memory. The deeper I dig, the more I find that needs fixing. The termite damage that I though was confined to skirting boards proved to be more extensive. In places all the wood has been destroyed leaving just the paint! The schist stone construction is great for plants and small animals. It is like a dry stone wall, but the inside spaces are packed with soil. Where I replace termite terminated wood, I use concrete if possible.

In October, I visited the local health centre. I needed a medical to apply for a Portuguese driving license. I had been registered there for 3 years, but this was my first visit. While I was there, I was interrogated about my medical history, got measured, got a flu jab in one arm, and a tetanus jab in the other. Gluteus maximus, was untroubled. I have no idea if this is now the norm, or another Portuguese idiosyncrasy. Passed the driving test bit with no problems, amazingly, my eyesight was classed as perfect, but blood pressure was ridiculously high, looks like I will be on medication for a while. I was sent for chest X-rays, blood tests, I wore a heart monitor for 24 hours, and later, a blood pressure sampler for 24 hours. That machine squeezed my left bicep every 20 minute during the day, then allegedly every 30 minutes at night, but I don’t know for sure, because it didn’t wake me up. On my last visit to the Doc, I was told that heart and lungs were fine. My blood test results went missing somewhere, so I had to go to the lab and get them printed again. Steamed open the envelope that I have to deliver to the doctor, and checked. Cholesterol 188?? I should be dead. Checked the units – seems that EU and US have a different set of units to those in the UK, so divide by 40ish gives 4.7. He lives – again! Seems weird that the US uses the same metric units as the EU, but UK doesn’t.

The flu jab seems to have been a waste of time though. I was stuck down with a severe case of man flu over Christmas and New Year.

Only those who have lived through man flu can appreciate the heroic efforts I must have made to cook a full Christmas dinner, including Christmas pud. I didn’t get round to making mince pies until New Years day though. That did give the mincemeat a little extra maturing time – 800% extra.

Highlights of 2019?

1) Transporting a new double bed and mattress and wife to the house completely inside a Fiat Punto – just the normal hatchback version, with all widows and doors closed!

2) Successfully gluing 8 pieces of broken granite counter top (kitchen worktop) back into 1 piece. (there was no way I would have been able to match the colour)

Spanish windlass in action.

So, we now have a basic but working bedroom, and have stayed over a few nights, we have a fully functioning kitchen and bathroom, but still lots of very dusty jobs to do before we can take up residence.

I received my Portuguese “Carta de Condução” a few days before Christmas. It took just under 2 months to arrive, which is very fast compared to times reported by the expats in the Algarve. It does involve Portuguese IMT communicating with UK DVLA to cancel my UK licence before a Portuguese version can be issued.

This was something I had to do, for two reasons.

1) To legally hold a UK licence, I must have a UK address.

2) To legally drive in Portugal for longer than 3 months, I need either an EU licence which has to be registered with the Portuguese Authorities every 2 years, or a Portuguese licence.

As it was looking increasingly as though my UK EU licence would cease to be an EU licence, I jumped before I was pushed. Exchanging a non-EU licence for a Portuguese licence generally involves retaking a driving test, which is only conducted in Portuguese.

I also renewed my passport online at the same time, which was processed very quickly. Perhaps because I waited 1 month to send my old passport back. However, DHL failed to deliver it on 3 occasions. I guess the driver just looked at the street name and thought “I know where that is” and went to the wrong street in the wrong town. I used the house address for the passport, because I had no idea how long it would take. I had to use the apartment address for the driving licence, because that is my registered address at IMT.

During the height of summer, we were surrounded by forest fires – not close enough to be scary, and we are far enough from the trees to satisfy our insurance company. There are, I think, about 12 water bombing planes in Portugal, and 4 of them were doing circuits and dumps (anyone?) loudly over our house for a few days.

There were some local road and expressway closures, and when reopened, evidence of major conflagrations on both sides, but as far as I am aware, locally, damage was restricted to vegetation.

Portugal is an odd country in many ways. Soon after we moved into the apartment, we found that there was a LIDL closer to us that the store that we had been visiting. So, we made that our local. Cheddar cheese from there is acceptable quality, and half the price of cheddar from the supermarkets. Man cannot live without cheese on toast! Also, IMHO, their croissants are superior to those purchased from E. LeClerk or Auchan. Anyway, I digress. Travelling to and from LIDL, we used to often pass a woman who appeared to be living in a Ford Transit (or similar) she seemed to spend most of her time sitting in a camping chair watching the traffic. I guessed this was the result of a breakup or a death. She was a fairly ordinary middle age specimen, somewhat overweight, and not well dressed.

When we drove to the beach though, we would sometimes pass aged grannies sitting on plastics stools, presumably abandoned by their families, who considered them too doddery to trudge through the pine forest collecting cones, firewood, mushrooms and stuff. This seemed to be common. It wasn’t until we traveled further afield, along roads more used by truckers, that the ladies sitting at the sides of the roads became younger, more provocatively dressed, and all seemed to have orange skin, like Donald Trump, or like original James T. Kirk Star Trek aliens. Then the Euro cent dropped. Not sure about the grannies, however, we often pass an orange skinned granny, though it seems that she is only there when there is no competition. Holidays, Sundays – bad weather etc.

Pet Peeves.

1)Expressways!

There is not much wrong with the expressways as such, but the sliproads (on/off ramps) seem to have been added as an afterthought, or without any thought at all.

As an example, here are two junctions I use frequently.

The north/south expressway is the A1, the main (and only practical) route to drive between Lisbon and Porto. The east/west A25 expressway heads across the border, towards Madrid.

I approach this junction from the top right on a sharpish right hand bend, which prevents me from reaching a safe joining speed. The trees on my left prevent me from seeing approaching traffic, and the slip road is only 65m long, and even that requires use of the shoulder.

What makes it worse, is that 80m further on is the exit slip to join the A1 in both directions, so vehicles intending to take that route are unwilling to move into the adjacent lane to give joining traffic some space.

The next example is in the centre of Porto. Again, I approach from the top right. A 2 lane slip road, which becomes 1 lane. This section is always busy, that is at the time I use it. The slip road is from the A28 expressway which runs north from Porto, and I am joining the A1 again, which here forms part of the Porto inner ring. I have usually queued on the A28 for 20 minutes to get here. With bad timing, that can be much longer.

I am trying to match the speed of the traffic on the A1, while watching for cars merging from the right. The evil designers plan here, was to make this entry slip road also function as an exit slip road. So some vehicles on the A1 are slowing down to try to move onto the slip road, and other vehicles on the slip road have no intention of joining the A1, but are heading for the exit.

The final example is just stupidity. Again the A1. This pic has been rotated 90 degrees, so north is on the right. So, heading south on a 3 lane expressway, you arrive at a junction. Conventional exit, 3 lanes continue. Just before the southbound traffic from the junction tries to join, the 3 lanes are reduced to 2, then the joining traffic has to squeeze onto an expressway which is suddenly 50% busier, and drivers who found themselves suddenly without a lane are trying to settle into their new spot and not worrying about joining traffic. Sometimes vehicles unable to find a gap are forced off the expressway and onto the slip road. The problem is not the reduction to two lanes, but where the reduction is located.

Finally, the cost. Almost all expressways have tolls. The quickest route from apartment to house (according to google) incurs a cost of €3.1 That is €31 per week if we go there and back on 5 days, and that is in the cheapest car class. When I rented a van to collect the kitchen, I racked up tolls of almost €200 over a weekend.

Pet Peeve 2 – Import duties.

Before we moved to Portugal, I bought a UK registered Left hand drive Freelander, thinking that I could just switch the registration to Portuguese when I arrived. Yes I could, but I would have to pay taxes of €12000. Used cars incur the same tax as new cars. Portugal has been told by the EU that this is illegal, but refuses to change. The cost of cars in Portugal is astronomical, so old cars are still valuable and are still kept running. If Portugal was forced to change, the price of used cars would collapse. Imports of goods from outside the EU have severe problems getting through Portuguese customs. They are frequently held up for months and incur significant charges, such that many people just refuse to pay.

I have just informed our landlord that we will leave in 2 months time, so that is how long we have to get everything ready. When we move in, there will still be a lot to do. I have a plan to fix the sagging wall (see blog). I found a problem with the river that runs through it (see blog) the stream exits the house though a tunnel in the wall. One day after heavy rain the previous day, the stream was insignificant, but the water was deep in the tunnel. I had no idea where the water goes when it flows out of the building, the exit is below ground level. I poked the hole with a sharp stick, and hit fairly solid stuff. Another job for the to do list. A few days later, heavy rain again, I wandered out to inspect it. Our tarmac driveway is on the other side of the wall, and there, a spring had sprung. Water was bubbling up through the tarmac driveway. I dug down to the stream where it exited the tunnel, and the was no indication of any other route that the water could take. There is no immediately obvious solution to this problem, so a bout of pondering is required. Sump and pump would probably be the easiest. If the water is raised by 1m I could pipe it to a drain, but I would much rather have a non-electromechanical solution if one can be found. I would never trust my boat to an automatic bilge pump. Though the house won’t sink, it could be damaged if a pumping system fails to operate.

The house has no heating yet, although we do have 3 portable electric heaters, and 2 portable gas heaters. I am flip flopping over systems – burning wood or pellets, oil, LPG, air conditioners, heat pump, …

Underfloor heating is not an option, the house has a mix of solid and wooden floors. I realise that in itself would not preclude underfloor heating, but it would complicate installation.

Wall insulation is not an option. The house is externally tiled, the walls are 60cm thick (that’s 2ft in old money), there is no cavity, and internal insulation would require drastic remodeling.

Double glazing is not an option, it would not suit the house. All the windows are 2m high, and 1m wide. Our internal shutters should achieve the same goal, if they can be made to seal effectively. However we did survive winter living on the boat in Preston with no effective heating – any attempt at heating resulted in torrents of condensation. However, the internal temperature never went below +3.

The last two years have been intense. I didn’t realise what the effect had been on me until I compared two virtually identical before and after photographs of myself.

Before...

And after.

I have similar pics showing the effects on Ping, but I doubt I would survive the consequences of including them here.

One theoretical benefit of the location of the house is the proximity of the only ski resort in Portugal – 2 hours drive. At virtually 2000m above sea level, snow should be guaranteed.

This is what it should look like.

And this is a live webcam feed.

We have only ventured up the mountain once – about 3 years ago, in late spring, and there was still deep snow in places sheltered from the sun.

I had marmalade on toast for breakfast this morning – homemade organic marmalade, made from homegrown oranges :-). Organic, because we have ignored the garden, not because I have strong pro-organics sentiment. This was just a trial run – our oranges are not traditional sevilles, much smaller and sweeter, I had to tweak the recipe – drastically reduced sugar, so just one test jar. Not quite Golden Shred, but better than acceptable. Not bad for my first attempt.

We have a local railway station - 2.6km from the house, but I could not find a timetable for the trains, because there are none. The route is interesting, because it follows the ground contours, even in the hilliest parts of the route. No deep straight cuttings, viaducts, bridges or embankments, though there are a couple of tunnels. It seems that a few years ago, some bad weather damaged part of the track, causing the company to impose a 30km/h speed limit. More bad weather dropped the speed limit to 10km/h, then to 0. The middle third of the line is closed, and that section includes our local station.

The eagle eyed amongst you might notice a red light on the right of the picture. We have on 3 occasions seen a train on the closed section of track. I guess there is only one maintenance depot. The exceptionally eagle eyed might notice that the track looks a little odd. That is because it is meter guage, 1.0m width. Normal tracks are 1.435m. Consequently, our line does not join with the national network. Our trains don’t fit on normal tracks, and normal trains don’t fit on our tracks. I believe that the railway company is unwilling to spend much money on repairs, and unfortunately the trains are not pretty - 2 car diesel electric, decorated in unimpressive graffiti, bought used for not much money from an East European country (Poland?) that had no further use for them.

As the Portuguese crow flies, it is 40km between the two extremities of the line, both coastal, but the track does head inland, and meanders from village to village, so the track length is much greater, almost 100km.

We tried the train once, from Aveiro to Sernada do Vouga, a little over 1 hour an 18 stations, followed by a stroll through the hills and forest to the house, a lot over 1 hour. We went back to Aveiro by bus.

It is January here - like everywhere else. We have bunches of narcissus and lilies in flower.

Grass hasn’t stopped growing, the oak trees still have leaves, the peach trees have new buds. No time to rest.

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shinneth · 5 years

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Gem Ascension Tropes (Peridot-specific: P - Q)

Reference:

Primary Peri Post ▼ Primary General Post ▼ Full Article

Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: Justified, as Peridot and Steven are 13 and 14 respectively (until It’s a Birthday, Yes It Is; then they’re 14 and 15) and haven’t been an Official Couple for very long. However, Steven’s hormones (fully in effect since his Plot-Relevant Age-Up) and Peridot’s devotion to him make them both self-aware that they’re moving along faster than they should and really can’t help themselves. This is addressed as early on as Chapter 5 of Act III, but that brings up another factor that the Dawn of a New Era brought about by the events of GA are forcing them both to grow up too fast with crushing levels of responsibility hanging over them both. Just under a week removed from GA confirms the pair have gone as far as second base and are eager to go past that in This is Who I Am. Then it completely goes off the rails in It’s a Birthday, Yes It Is (3-4 months removed from GA) where they’re not only well into third base, but are desperate to go all the way. They ultimately succumb to that in Chapter 2… sort of.

Pensieve Flashback: Chapter 1 of Act III features three flashbacks of Peridot’s Homeworld days – all of which she is forced to watch by White Diamond, who surrounds all sides of her with screens of these memories that were ripped directly from her mind. Present-day Peridot has to discuss her past with White Diamond as she watches these moments against her will.

Photographic Memory: An ability Peridot gains post-ascension. Often paired with her Mental Picture Projector power to provide exposition.

Phrase Catcher: Although it’s technically not a catchphrase (and technically Lapis is the one who came up with the term originally), Peridot often refers to Steven as her “center of gravity” as a Term of Endearment across the GA continuity. Once Peridot adopts the term, she’s the only one who uses it… until Chapter 5 of Act III, when Steven refers to her as this for him. This moves Peridot so much that she actually needs alone time with him despite already having some not that long ago. Much later, in Plans Change, Garnet also uses the term to reference the importance of Steven in Peridot’s life even in regards to her leadership abilities, though this only serves to embarrass both Steven and Peridot. The latter insists that the term just sounds awful coming out of anyone other than Steven or herself.

Physical, Mystical, Technological: The Technological to Lapis’ Mystical and Bismuth’s Physical.

Platonic Life-Partners: With Amethyst, and formerly Lapis.

Please Wake Up: The moments leading up to, and the actual moment Pumpkin dies in Chapter 8 of Act III have Peridot invoking this trope, though she almost entirely loses her ability to speak coherently once Pumpkin dies. She speaks incomplete and fragmented statements while she’s internally processing the reality of what just happened. Following that is an Angst Nuke.

Plucky Comic Relief: Per canon, she’s still this. Granted, it’s notably downplayed given the circumstances, as Peridot pretty much has to become more serious and professional as an authoritative figure (the central theme of this story is Peridot starting as this trope and transitioning to Hero Protagonist, after all). However, she still has a good number of moments, and her pluckiness serves to get her team motivated and optimistic in a mission they can very easily screw up and fail.

Poisonous Friend: After her actions in Chapter 6 of Act III that ended up getting Steven willingly involved in a very violent, sadistic method of In-Universe Catharsis (aka hack at White Diamond’s neck in hopes of snapping it clean off her body), Peridot not only sees herself as this to Steven after coming to her senses, but White Diamond blatantly accuses her of being this as well. This plays into White’s goal of crushing Peridot’s ego to make her submissive again so she can be more easily coerced into fusion. Later in Chapter 8, Steven (as Pink Diamond 2.0) adamantly tells Peridot (as Chartreuse Diamond) that she isn’t a toxic influence on him at all, and that his actions are his own.

Power Crystal: Emerged with the components of one that was made whole by White Diamond’s manipulation. A broken splinter of Yellow Diamond combined with White Diamond’s diamond dust embedded in Peridot’s gemstone forms a brand new diamond. In full bloom, it merges with said gemstone and rests directly in the middle of it; this is a permanent change and marks Peridot’s ascension from a low-caste worker gem to a Diamond. Peridot effectively becomes two gems simultaneously and gains a great deal of power (though capped unless she shifts into Chartreuse Diamond) while doubling as being her lifeline just as much as her mundane gemstone.

Power Floats: Can do this post-ascension, though Peridot still prefers to use a metal platform when she takes to the sky.

Power Incontinence: By far the biggest case of this for Peridot was her inability to fuse, even with Steven. It’s heavily implied that despite her ascension, Peridot wouldn’t be able to fuse with anyone else due to being an Era 2 gem – as well as a kind of gem that logically should never have any reason to fuse, given that Peridots are not meant for combat of any kind (and fusion on Homeworld was solely done for combat purposes). While she was finally able to fuse as Chartreuse Diamond in Chapter 8 of Act III, there was a lingering concern she would only be able to fuse in that form. However, Steven’s Epiphany Therapy proved to work on Peridot just as it did for Chartreuse; once Peridot was able to forgive herself for her many past crimes and accept that she did deserve to experience fusion, she and Steven finally fused successfully and became Sphalerite in the final scene of Act III.

Power Limiter: A natural variant in Peridot’s limitations of her base form. While she is vastly more powerful and versatile compared to her abilities pre-ascension, and Peridot might be able to share most of the same abilities as Chartreuse, the range of effectiveness is greatly limited while performing as Peridot… simply because she’s in a form that can’t channel the kind of power a Diamond can. If Peridot pushes herself too hard, she can risk harming herself in the process.

The Power of Love: This is what kept Peridot from falling apart on Day 1 of the rescue mission. Her boundless love for Steven kept pushing her to follow through on her vows, even when she wanted to give up and go home. It’s pointed out several times In-Universe how Peridot made something that’s usually a point of vulnerability into a power source. That is, until White Diamond finds a way to make it a weakness in Act III. Still, Peridot’s love for Steven shines through and helps way more often than it hurts. Somewhat subverted as Peridot and Steven have trouble fusing – love alone isn’t enough to make them compatible. Steven had to dig deeper to get to the root of Peridot’s problems to make Iridescent Diamond a reality, but love is still in play as Steven’s efforts just further prove to Peridot how he’s a beacon of light in her life and can only make sense of things she doesn’t understand with him around. When Steven helps Peridot finally move on from the guilt of the past weighing her down, she can’t help but fall even further in love with him.

The second point happens early in Chapter 8 after Pumpkin dies. It’s mixed in with the Heroic BSoD, but this trope is largely what fuels the Angst Nuke.

Power Perversion Potential: Peridot has an idea to use just a small bit of willpower to make Steven unable to ejaculate for a while with the intent of building towards a stronger orgasm in the long run, which Steven consents to. And… it definitely had the intended result when Peridot dispelled him.

Pragmatic Hero: Contrasts with Steven’s All-Loving Hero; while Peridot has changed so much to the point that who she is now is a vast departure from her Pre-Earth Manipulative Bastard persona, she still remains an objectivist who knows better than to love everything and everyone unconditionally. Most times she attempts to adopt this attitude ends up blowing up in her face (see also: Lapis). Since she is fiercely protective of the ones she loves, Peridot has no qualms whatsoever about doing immoral things if it’s literally the only way she can assure the safety of others. She has more than once butted heads with Steven over this, and while those were ultimately minor spats, This is Who I Am Chapter 5 proves there is a part of Peridot that has more than some lingering contempt for Steven for making light of not only her embodiment of this trope, but others who share her ideology…

5XG: “You hate murderers. Anyone who takes the life of another, you hate on principle. The cause or circumstance is of no concern to you and never has been.

The Bismuth told me how events played out when you first met her. After knowing by this point how the Diamond Authority were responsible for committing multiple acts of global genocide, how this very planet was on that list, and were prone to shattering members of their own court on a misdemeanor or even on a whim. You were aware of all of this.

Yet you admonished the Bismuth for daring to create weapons made for wiping out an enemy with lethal force; legitimate ways to justifiably defend yourself against an enemy you know would not hesitate to take your life if they had an opening. You stood there, and you actually labeled her as one who is completely indistinguishable from White, Blue, or Yellow Diamond. A loyal ally of your maternal unit whose focus was always on doing her best to defend her friends and loved ones, who only fought when forced to by the Homeworld gems… to her face, you belittled her convictions and you said there was no difference between her and the maniacal, genocidal dictators that you yourself were defending against along with your loved ones – just as the Bismuth herself.

I honestly don’t blame her for trying to kill you that day. You should have died.”

Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Shown in Chapter 1 of It’s a Birthday, Yes It Is when Peridot’s exhaustion (both mentally and physically) makes her unable to concentrate her willpower, even for a simple task like cleaning a minor mess. To a lesser extent, it was also present in This is Who I Am Chapter 2 when she Forgot About Her Powers from the shock of getting ambushed by an alligator. During the previous chapter of the aforementioned story, Steven heavily implies this trope was why Peridot was unable to fuse with him during the main GA series until she learned to forgive herself towards the end of Act III.

Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: The slew of derogatory words Peridot has for Steven after first reuniting with him are delivered like this, with a weak punch to his shoulder after every name she calls him.

Punctuated Pounding: The moment Steven and Peridot reunite in Chapter 5 of Act I, Peridot unleashes this on Steven while crying into his chest; punctuating every name she calls him with a punch. However, being that she’s severely injured at this point, Peridot’s blows don’t hurt Steven in the least, and he just takes it in stride.

Quiet Cry for Help: The narrative in Chapter 4 of Act I notes there is a brief, vulnerable look in Peridot’s eyes as she turns to face Bismuth and Lapis, who just screamed at her to not shatter the helpless poofed gems in her workstation, which Peridot was “teasing” and looked ready to follow through with it until her friends intervened. She’s described as looking lost, confused, on the verge of breaking down, and silently crying for help. That expression only lasts a moment before Peridot slips back into Heroic Safe Mode and mocks her friends for thinking she was really going to do it.

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briangroth27 · 5 years

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Joker Review

I was not excited to see Joker based on the trailers that seemed determined to excuse and justify Joker’s (Joaquin Phoenix) madness and motives with a sympathetic light. While it is well-shot and well-acted—and if you enjoyed it, I’m glad you got something positive out of the experience—I thought the movie confirmed my impression of the trailers and I wasn’t a fan.

Full Spoilers…

Arthur Fleck is a sad, lonely man with vague mental illnesses who can’t catch a break in life or love. His life does suck and he does get dealt several bad and unfair hands, but nothing this movie did convinced me to feel sorry for him because I know the monster he’s going to become. It’s the same way I don’t care about real-world rapists’ “bright futures” being put in jeopardy by being held accountable for their crimes and have no sympathy for mass shooters’ sad histories of being turned down for dates. In the end, society is a problem, but how Arthur reacts to it is all on him and what he becomes is reprehensible, so I found it impossible to connect to him even before the villainy. Maybe if he were an original character—or even a Batman villain who does have a spark of good intentions and true tragedy to them, like Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, or Two-Face—I would’ve cared about him, but the Joker has far too much baggage to be painted as a tragic figure, and drawing this character so close to being an anti-hero who’s right to act like he does is gross. Even if the adoration he gets from the rioting crowds after the car accident is his imagination (much like he imagined Sophie (Zazie Beetz) thought stalking her was charming at the beginning of their “relationship”), he still felt that hero-worship throughout the movie from the protesters adopting his clown persona so I don’t think it makes a big difference if that one post-accident scene was real or not.

I didn’t like the choice to make most of his laughter part of his illness either, as that took a huge part of the character’s outlook/personality and sense of “humor” away by making it something uncontrollable. It’s also an antiquated and harmful view of mental illness in a time when we’re fully aware that mentally ill people are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. Continuing to draw mentally ill people as violent criminals is something that needs to be addressed and updated in the larger Batman canon too. Like so many other choices here, explaining his laughter takes away the scariness the character previously had. I have no problem knowing who Joker used to be, but knowing why he does what he does (even just trying to convince us that he’s an “agent of chaos”) is too much information in my opinion. My preferred Joker is one who’s unpredictable and incomprehensible, where trying to puzzle out his motives either leaves you dead or drives you insane (like it did Harley Quinn). I also want more variety in his crimes, not just a series of revenge killings for personal slights and abuses. Give me everything from trying to patent Joker Fish to deadly laughing gas attacks to just wanting to pie Batman in the face for Christmas. During his big debut on TV in this film, I was wishing we could see a classic caper instead (even though yes, hijacking a TV show is something Joker would do). Confining Joker’s victims to people who personally attacked him also takes away from the threat he poses: if you treated him well, you’re totally fine here.

While escalation to more indiscriminate victims is possible, as one of my sisters pointed out, the movie works really hard to justify everything he does with grounded motives in what feels like an attempt to say “see, anyone really could be pushed to this breaking point!” It’s not enough that Arthur’s co-workers don’t like him, one of them (Glenn Fleshler) has to essentially trick him into getting fired. Arthur’s obsessive love of TV personality Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) turning dark can’t just be a result of Arthur being a stalker who dreams of being a comedian even though he’s not funny, Murray also has to personally insult Arthur in front of the city/nation. It’s not bad enough that Arthur’s mom (Frances Conroy) abused and lied to him his whole life, but his secret “father” Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) also has to be a horrible rich person. I totally get that Thomas would be furious about Arthur touching Bruce (Dante Pereira-Olson) and I’d be enraged too, but Thomas’ anti-poor sentiments set him against Arthur’s social situation and in the end it felt like we weren’t supposed to see his and Martha’s (Carrie Louise Putrello) deaths as a tragedy, but as a reaction to the way they treated the lower classes (since the riot is so closely tied to the way Arthur reacts). On a side note, Martha really just isn’t ever going to speak or contribute to a story at all beyond being a victim, is she? Anyway, my reading of Joker’s “you wouldn’t get the joke” line at the end of the movie was that the Arkham interview scene occurs after Batman had appeared and everyone’s favorite “badass” hero grew up to protect the system (the “care to explain the joke?” question is intercut with scenes of the Wayne murders). This Bruce would totally embody the “Batman’s a wealthy guy who beats up poor people” take that’s been going around for the past few years (just imagine how this Thomas was raising Bruce, instead of the good man that Thomas usually is), particularly since it was apparently someone protesting for fair wages and equality that murdered his parents. The clothing styles do look the same in that interview scene as in the rest of the film, rather than being 90s styles or later, but arresting some fashions and technology even as time moves on is hardly a new design choice for a Batman movie/animated series. Even if that’s not the joke that Arthur means in that final scene, I fully believe that’s the Batman that would come out of these events, and who wants that?

If the joke that Arthur references is that the world put all this meaning on him that he didn’t intend, it’s not a very good joke because he has a whole speech explaining that on TV. I believe Joker when he says he’s not political—he’ll take revenge on anyone, rich and poor alike—but having the protesters adopt his ideology and imagery is a really weird choice given who he is in the comics. Even though he doesn’t have anything to do with the protests themselves (though he does egg on the riots during his speech, as what he says about his own mistreatment by society is also what they’re feeling about theirs), the filmmakers saddling “his” movement with the language of the real-life left (like "resist") is extremely questionable: why are the filmmakers trying to make this monster a heroic inspiration (even if misunderstood) for what would be the social justice side? In The Killing Joke, Joker argues that one bad day will drive anyone insane, which seems to be what this movie wants to say too (with “insanity” framed as a “reasonable” reaction to a broken system). However, the end of The Killing Joke reaffirms that the world isn’t like Joker and one bad day won’t push most people to villainy, since he fails to break Gordon, Barbara, and (once it became an in-continuity tale) Batman. Joker has no one to make that argument, and instead has Joker give a speech on TV about how it’s totally justifiable to go on a murder spree in reaction to being mistreated because “this is what you get.” No thanks.

If the “joke” is that none of this happened at all, well then…why are we here watching his self-indulgent delusions of persecution and oppression?

If they wanted to make a movie about a sympathetic man turned bad by a cold system that hurts people who do nothing but get sick, they should’ve made a Mr. Freeze movie. A film about someone who goes to increasingly extreme lengths to change the world for the better while being labeled as crazy by society? Get a Poison Ivy film into production. Want to explore a villain with good intentions and a society divided between the rich and poor, with how you’re treated by people, the law, and the world left up to chance on how you were born? Then this should’ve been a Two-Face movie. There’s merit to saying that there are problems with our social system and that it fails people who have no other support network, for sure. And lots of bad guys have been successfully drawn with some core good idea that they take off the rails into full-blown villainy as they commit increasingly evil acts. The Joker is not one of those villains. He doesn’t have a logical point and shouldn’t be painted as right in any way.

Again, on a technical and performance level Joker is a well-made movie and I’m glad if you found something worthwhile here, but I vehemently disagree with its entire premise of making the Joker understandable and especially with trying to paint him as something of an anti-hero with a twisted point who’s justified in acting the way he does. I was bored and couldn’t get past the knowledge of what Joker becomes. This is just not for me. Oh well; on to the next movie!

Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

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chameleonspell · 7 years

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191: heal

[Under a cut for injury description, including broken bones and blood.]

His neck was broken. Or his back, Iriel wasn't sure. He knew only that something in Julan's spine had twisted and crumpled, when they hit the rock, and now the angles of his head and shoulders were all wrong. He was more certain about the ribs. He had felt those go beneath him, on impact. At least three, Ire thought. One on the left side of his chest had pierced the lung, judging by Julan's raw, laboured breathing, and the bloody foam collecting on his lips. A collarbone, too, most likely. Skull fracture, perhaps. There might have been leg injuries, but Iriel's examination hadn't got that far. The light was poor, and by then, he couldn't see much for tears. The details made no difference. Julan's injuries were clearly fatal, they were hundreds of feet deeper than help or Intervention, and there was nothing at all he could do. He'd tried every spell he could think of, and watched each one fail. A murder of ghosts churned in vortex above them, seething with impotent fury. Every so often, one would arc out to skim closer, and Iriel would glare at it until it returned to the cloud. "Idiot," he told Julan. "Fucking... idiot. You're the healer! Why couldn’t you... just..." Wiping his eyes, Ire smeared more blood across his cheek. None of it was his. He wasn't sure if Julan could hear anything. His eyes were closed, but sometimes a muscle in his face would contract, or a limb spasm, briefly. His gasps of air, fast and erratic at first, had begun, almost imperceptibly, to slow. Iriel knelt in the dim, red light, wondering how long it would be until they stopped. Julan's eyes flickered open, blank with pain. He drew a sharp breath that became a moan, quickly crushed into a whimper, followed by shallow, whistling mouthfuls of air through gritted teeth. Ire bent over him, catching his twitching hand and cradling it. "Shhh, love, lie still. I know it hurts, I'm so sorry. You... you don't have to be brave about it. Your ma's not here, no one's here but me." Julan's hand clenched fitfully around his, and Ire squeezed it until Julan's breathing was softer, and his grip fell slack. "Why do parents always say that?" Ire demanded of no one, when the quiet became more than he could stand. "Tell you not to cry, try to convince you being brave means pretending things don't hurt. They don't do it to ease your suffering, they do it to ease theirs. They can't bear to see your pain, so they make you hide it." He sighed. "I can't ease your pain, love, but I promise, I can bear seeing it." For some time, Iriel remained bent over their clasped hands, trying not to jolt Julan whenever a breath shook into a sob. Then he raised his head. "No," he hissed. "Fuck just bearing witness." Slipping his hands free, he forced himself to trace the lines of Julan’s body again. Tried to sense the mangled bones, tried to extend his consciousness past his own frantic respiration and circulation, and open himself to another's. He almost... something... but at the first trickle of awareness, panic overtook him, and he sat back with a ragged gasp. "Healing is fucking terrifying, you know? No... you don't know, do you? You were never afraid of trying to change things. Of taking responsibility for something, making it your problem, and facing the consequences if you're wrong. Me, I... never had hands safe enough for that. Not for myself, so how for anyone else? Healing can be so painful, more painful than the original injury, sometimes, breaking and resetting, and what if you’re making things worse? When should you give up, when are you no longer doing it for their benefit? When to let broken things rest? "And... gods, I'm so bad with pain. My own was bad enough, but other people's? I numbed myself to it for so long that when I stopped, it was paralysing. Because what can you ever do about it? Changing a perception is one thing. Changing a physical law is another. But people? You can't change people, I thought, not permanently. They’re too complex for those easy answers, for heroic rescues and happy endings." He sighed, shook out his hands, and laid them just below the hollow at the base of Julan's throat. He had the briefest impression of a crystalline stillness. Of frozen energy, held just beneath the surface. Like an enchantment, if he could only find the pattern of it, the key. But when he tried to focus on it, his attention was drawn to Julan's face instead, warped and made foreign by pain, but still his face, distracting Ire's fingers into tenderness, touching and stroking. "I love you so fucking much. I think... hope... you know that already, but I'm sorry I was so terrible at saying it. Giving someone my love never felt like any kind of favour. Not a gift, but a fireball. A pit I was dragging them into. I was... ashamed." He brushed the hair from Julan's forehead, caressed him from cheek to ear to jaw. "It seemed so cruel and ridiculous to say you couldn't love someone until you loved yourself. I mean... I felt things, of course I did! And it was so tempting to believe that wringing some kind of... longing for contact, some quantity of desire and affection out of my wreck of a heart meant that I was successfully loving someone. And... I'm not saying I didn't love you, but... I was so terribly bad at loving you, while I believed I had nothing to offer you. While I couldn't believe myself worthy of love, while I was so full of shame and self-hatred that instead of giving you my love, I gave you that, instead. "I still have imperial fucktons of shame. It's not going anywhere, but I know where it lives, now. I'm better at telling when I'm close to the edge, better at dodging, when things try and drag me in. I have ways to defend myself, weapons you gave me.” A sudden breath, that hid the shadow of a laugh. “So... even if my love is accidentally shaped like a spear, it's still yours. Yours to hold and use, if I can keep myself from giving it to you point-first. I think... it’s worth something. It's stronger than I thought." It blossomed in his chest. Warm as hearthfire, light as thistledown, flowing down his arm and into the hand he'd left resting on Julan's neck. A blue glimmer melted into grey skin, and suddenly Julan's chest spasmed, sucking in air, agonised pulse thudding frantically against Ire's fingers. His own heart seizing, Iriel snatched back his hand, all else lost in a useless wave of nausea and fear. He rocked back and forth on his heels, wringing his hands and muttering curses. "Not just ashamed.” His voice came thin and brittle, now, words decaying as they met the air. “I was scared. So fucking scared. Because... I mean... it's like healing, isn't it? Once I realised how alone and vulnerable you were, the thought of taking responsibility for you was terrifying. I was... angry, even. How dare you be so weak, so guilt-inducing, who gave you permission to be such a fucking mess? That's my job!” He forced a mirthless grin, but couldn’t sustain it, and his head dropped. "I thought I knew what I was doing, at first. I thought you were trapped, and I just needed to free you, but I was cutting so blindly I only gave you more wounds. Next, I tried weaving safety nets, rescues you didn't ask for. Tying you to things, people, places, guilds, tribes... anyone but me. Because anyone could hold you safer than I could. For some strange, unfathomable reason... you still kept wanting me. I started telling myself I was bad for you, holding you back, that it would be selfish to pretend otherwise. I was afraid. Of trying to do something I'd only fail at." His shoulders hunched, then fell limp. "I'm still so scared, but... I'm not nearly as scared of failing as I'm scared I won't get to try any more." He closed his eyes, heartrate evening out, hands knotted against his breast. He'd long since taken off the Moon-and-Star, but as his fingers rubbed against each other, his right hand found the place on his left, where the metal had lacerated his palm. He opened his hand and pressed his thumb against the wound, watching the broken line of Julan's chest flutter and dip. "I mean... we're all weak, aren't we? All vulnerable. Everything in this realm is so fragile and ephemeral. Of course it's terrifying, it should be. And we're just stupid, short-lived mortals, so of course every single one of us is going to be a fuck up, to some degree or other. Not even in nice neat ways, that we can fix by clinging to someone else, matching perfectly aligned jagged halves into something faultless and whole. It's messy, and it always will be. There's no place in this world for perfection. Not in either of us, and not in our love. And yet, between love and perfection, I know which I'd rather have. "You are fragile and imperfect, and I love you. I am fragile and imperfect, and I can let you love me. I can let you see me as I am, however messy that might be, and... I hope that instead of thinking less of you, for loving me anyway, I can think better of myself. I’m sure I'll still fail at it, sometimes, but... it’s all right, because just as I can bear your pain, I know you're strong enough to bear mine." His hand ached; he was gripping it too hard. He stared at it. You've been getting it wrong this whole time. Overcomplicating everything, as usual. Kindness isn't about whether you deserve it. It's just... kindness, the alleviation of pain. It was such a simple thing, to let his own energy circulate. Not forcing it, but releasing it, opening a secret door he'd always thought a solid wall. Letting it flow from right hand to left, speeding the knitting of the flesh until he could barely tell he'd been hurt at all. He thought Julan had fallen unconscious again, but when Iriel turned back to him, his eyelids had parted a red fraction, and his lips were struggling to shape words. "I... fell..." Ire leaned forwards, taking his hand again, pressing it between his. "We both did, love. Try not to move." "No, I... fell. Failed. False." "You didn't fail!" Iriel's eyes were bright, his tears reflecting sharp points of light from the corners. Limpid, perhaps. Crystalline, even. The rest of his face held less potential for lyrical description, but real pain rarely does. "If you fell, it's only because you were pushed. And not false. Never false." "Many fall, but..." "No--" "...one remains. That's... you." "The FUCK it is!" Ire glared into the slivers of Julan's eyes, daring him to close them again. "YOU remain! Yes, you fell, but you can still get up again. You're still here, still something. No, you're not who you thought, but who the fuck is? You think I care about that? I don't want Nerevar! I want you, failed and false, fallen and fucked up, same as me." Jaw set, Ire huffed air through the gap in his teeth. “You’re not going anywhere.” Leaving the other clasping Julan's, Iriel inched his right hand towards Julan's collar and moved the cloth aside. "There, now, it's all right. It's going to be fine," he muttered, chanting it like a prophecy. As he touched the skin, Julan flinched, and Ire tightened his grip on his hand. "Don't worry. You're going to be all right. I know it doesn't feel like it now, but you are. Stop comparing yourself to legendary heroes, that was always going to crush you. Not because you failed, because they’re not real, and you are. You are allowed to be hurt, and you are allowed to be weak. You are allowed to be angry, and scared, and sad. You are allowed to make mistakes, even if they hurt me. You... you are allowed to have your own needs and desires! I know you've always had to break and twist yourself to be who you think everyone else needs you to be, but just be you. Please. Just you." He curled his hand behind Julan's neck. Found the crooked place, at the back, where the vertebrae jutted oddly, sharp beneath the skin. Ire took a long breath. "I'm not afraid of any part of you." Now that he looked, it was obvious. There were the bones, their symmetry misaligned, but legible. There was the spinal cord, wrenched out of place. but intact. The body knew how it wanted to be, he only had to listen, and follow instructions. Provide support, do the heavy lifting. "Keep very still, love. This will probably hurt, but it's going to be all right." Perhaps it was Alteration he used to move the bones, Mysticism to maintain his awareness, Illusion to mitigate the pain. Perhaps it was all Restoration. It was magic, he didn't try to label it any more. It was energy, creativity, love. The ribs were even easier. He had laid his hands here a thousand times, knew how the landscape of Julan's chest should feel. He drew the shattered pieces carefully towards him, easing the shard out of the lung, uniting and moulding them into place. When he'd done all he could, he was drained and lightheaded, but the taut agony had begun to drain from Julan's face, his posture looser, his breathing soft and smooth. "I think," Ire whispered, "my mistake was in believing I had to take that kind of responsibility for anyone in the first place. That I was committing to providing a perfect and complete future for them, together with all the guilt and blame if it failed to come to pass. Of course I recoiled from that, it's impossible. You can't ever promise that to somebody. But... you don't have to. You only have to support them in the moment, commit to that moment. Give them the strength to do the rest on their own. If that's rescuing people, then... I can believe in that." He lay down beside Julan, wincing as he straightened his cramped knees, but settling into an almost-comfortable position, nestled against the slow rise and fall of Julan's chest, the flicker of his pulse, all the familiar rhythms of his body. "Perhaps it's being so fragile that makes people so incredibly resilient. I don't know if you can change them, but I do know they can change. They'll always keep growing and healing, if the cells have the simple things they need in order to multiply. But... providing that means embracing the chaos and uncertainty of it. The knowledge that people might change in unexpected ways, grow differently... or apart. The possibilities are endless, and terrifying. But... life is possibilities." He gasped out a laugh. "Terrifying possibilities. So... while there is life, I will do what I can to preserve those possibilities intact." He buried his nose in Julan's neck, closed his eyes against the heat of his skin. "I know you're still falling, wherever you are, but I will wait here as long as it takes. Holding out my tattered blanket to catch you, praying it's enough." Later, when he twitched from his uneasy doze, the dead were still swirling angrily overhead. Iriel couldn't be bothered to care. In the half-light, he saw that Julan's eyes were open, that he was trying, weakly, to smile. Ire kissed him with as much restraint as he could manage, balanced on a tender knife-edge between caution and relief. "I'm afraid," Iriel said, when he could avoid such things no longer, "that I have no idea how we can get out of here. I can't see any exits from this part of the cavern that don't require far more levitation than I could safely risk. The last thing I want to do is let you fall again." "I can't leave yet." Julan's voice was weak, but insistent. "I have to... find where my father died. We're almost beneath the Ghostfence, but his body must be past it. That's why... they could never call his soul back with the rites, it was trapped. If I could just get a little further, I could... find out what really happened, and--" "Don't be ridiculous! You shouldn't move at all, until your bones are properly set. Anyway, does any of that matter, now?" Julan flicked a finger upwards. "It does to them. I need to know if Moth... if she really did it. They won't leave me be until I kill her, but..." "They don't care!" Iriel was gently incredulous. "Didn't you hear them? They know she didn't kill him, but they don't care! They want someone to blame, blood to sate... whatever they think it will fucking sate, because it won't make anything better!" "Then what can I do? He was my father, but I never knew him, she never told me! I knew the rumours, but there were rumours my father was every man in the tribe! He... used to watch me, in the camp. I thought he was making sure I didn't steal anything! That voice I heard, on Red Mountain, that I assumed was Dagoth Ur. I think maybe... it was him. Trying to stop me... getting myself killed." Tears slid from his eyes as Iriel desperately tried to calm him, fearful a sob might shake his ribs apart again. "I wasted my whole life, Iya. It was all a lie." "You didn't waste it! And only some things were lies, not everything. Sweetheart, I know you'll make the right choice, and I'll support you in whatever it is. But right now, you need to lie still. You need to heal." Julan closed his eyes, resigned. Suppressed a cough. "I'm so thirsty," he muttered. Ire grimaced. "I don't have any water, I'm afraid. I barely brought anything, like a fool. Let me go and look around, perhaps I can--" "No, stay here. If I have to lie here without moving, you need to talk to me, or I'll go mad." "I'm sorry," Ire said, after a moment. "I don't know what I should say. All I keep thinking is that we might still die in here. That even if we get back up to the tunnels, I can't remember the way out. So unless you want to hear about that--" "Uh... no. Sing to me?" Ire exhaled shakily, laughter verging on tears. "I can't. They're all too sad, my songs. I've had enough of that, today." "Thought you said you found them comforting." "Not now, not... not like this." Julan didn't move, except to grin. "Then at least... I get to be right about something, for once... can die happy now..." "Don't you dare, you trashbag." Julan yawned. "...'k. But only 'cause I love you." "I love you, too, now shhh. Try to rest, and I'll look for water." As Iriel stood, there was a commotion from the ghosts above him, a great hissing and turbulence. "Leave us alone, you unwashed dishrags," he snapped. "Don't you have other descendants to bother?" But the dead weren't facing his way. They were clustering around something high in the darkness that he couldn't see. Iriel was about to ignore them, when he heard a distant voice. "Urshi assarnibibi, za'erureth ye'el dran?" Ire squinted upwards. "Hello?" he called, then, abandoning reserve: "HEY! IS SOMEONE THERE? WE NEED HELP!" "Zanna? Obi... ob'areth?" He could see the Velothi woman now, levitating down through the ghosts as they parted meekly around her. At first, all he could tell was that she was wearing a voluminous brown robe, because when she saw Iriel, she bent awkwardly, and gathered the hem in one hand, to stop it ballooning indecorously around her waist as she descended. Closer now, he saw her beltful of pouches and her charm-strung neck. Her red, tasselled shoulderbag, and her black hair, bluntly cropped into a style even shorter and less flattering than his own. Finally, as she landed, he saw her face. Barely older than he was, but marked with rows of dots along her chin and beneath her eyes. Eyes that quickly took him in, scanning for detail, carrying both assurance of judgement, and a darting tension. Her knuckles were white against her bag-strap. She was afraid, he realised, afraid but determined to be brave. A furrow appeared in her brow. "I know you." Her eyes went wide. "You are Shani's Altmer!" She stared at him, apparently able to do nothing useful with this realisation. Then she looked past him. "Is that... Julan?!" He offered her an awkward wave, from the ground. "Hi, Min." Unwilling to remain Shani's property, in her worldview, Iriel tried, in a vague sort of way, to introduce himself. She, kneeling on the ground and rummaging in her scrib-silk bag, was more confident in her identity. "I am Minabibi Assardarainat," she said, "assintashiran, alchemist and apprentice to Sinnammu Mirpal, wise woman of the Ahemmusa." Ire was trying to help Julan drink one of her healing potions without either spilling it, or moving his neck. It was a losing battle, but some of it was going down his throat. "What was that thing you said? Before alchemist." "I don't know the eramuri... the Aldmeris word," she said, scowling. "It means I serve the dead. I give offerings to them. I bring messages to them, and receive their answer. I am trained to sense their presence and their needs. That is why I could track them to this place." "Alone?" Her scowl deepened. "It was my responsibility to care for them. I do not know how it happened, but when I opened the kausagursha today, I could call nothing through it. They were gone. They should not have been able to do this! My bone charms were good, and yet..." With tense movements, she pulled a small, wooden box from her bag, inlaid with ebony and shimmering purple-blue bugshell. She placed it on the ground before her. "I must draw them back, and return before Sintushpi Sinnammu finds out. Already, she talks of replacing me as her apprentice. I cannot give her more reasons to doubt." "Can you do that? Get rid of them? They're here for Julan, and they don't want to leave." "I know. I hear them. But that is a matter for Sintushpi Sinnammu, not for me. My duty is to the dead, and they should not be here like this. It is dangerous for them to remain in Mundus too long. They are angry and wild, but I will try to calm them." She opened the box. From inside, she took a small pinch of ash, and tossed it into the air. Before it could fall, she began to hum a single note, high and keening. The ash hung above her, suspended. Then, as she shifted the note still higher, it began to rise, moving in a lazy spiral towards the mass of ancestors. He couldn't see the ash any more, but Iriel could see the spirits reaction to it. They came pouring downwards, a slow-twisting tornado of souls, moaning in their low, colourless drone. When the first ones grew close, Minabibi took a hasty gulp of air and opened her mouth. Eyes screwed shut, she produced another sound, throbbing and resonating from the depths of her throat, vibrating with an ineffable sadness. One by one, the dead modulated their tone to hers in eerie chorus, until the whole cavern echoed with their shared song. To Iriel, it felt like the music of separation and loss, of mourning and lamentation. Sadder than any of his mother's folk tunes, because it had no end and no beginning, no words to define and limit it. It seemed to broaden and swell into the sound of all sorrow. Until Minabibi changed her tune again, introducing a new note. The dead were clouded around her, now, yearning and writhing. The note she extended to them was a candle in the darkness, a caress, a whispered consolation. Iriel was overcome by the conviction that the hands of everyone he'd ever loved and lost were inches away, longing for him, all differences forgotten, if he would only draw closer, shed his pride and reach out, touch-- Minabibi closed the box with a snap. The air was silent and empty, and the dead had disappeared. next: 192: living previous: 190: weight beginning: 1: numb Minabibi's ghost-herding owes much to Sunderlorn's headcanons about Ashlander ancestor magic and ritual. ~*~please read Ghostline for more soft necromancy~*~

#howtodisappearcompletely

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donegeonsndragons · 7 years

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Narratuary: Session 9 Highlights

High socializing is done, traps and puzzles are figured out, and my plans never go as I expect them.

This session was so much fun that I had the outline of this post done right after it finished and I’m writing this only a day after! I got to try something a little different this time around (more puzzles with a split party) which was challenging for both me and the players but we all enjoyed it!

Premise: having prepared for the ball and going in with no plan on how to retrieve the next item, the gauntlet, before the Serpent gets to it, the party arrives at Councillor Galanodel’s estate on the outskirts of Keltar...

All of them have separately arrived there, with everyone pretending to not know each other (minus Innchie and Carlin who are partnered up)

The sun has gone down, and these beautiful white and blue flowers are blooming in the moonlight

There are a lot of guards, both inside guarding the stairs going up and down, as well as outside patrolling the perimeter

Igtbtgh has already been there for half a day, getting his assignment as a High Council guard and starting his patrol

Baldwin, knowing he can’t do stealth, decides to spend his time socializing and gathering information

He gets to know Captain of the Guard Kima Athura, and he introduces himself as someone who is aligned with the law and order willing to help

He gets Captain Athura to introduce him to Councillor Galanodel, and they chat for a bit

He learns that there’s been some infighting within the High Council, particularly the younger members against the older members

Councillor Galanodel says that the younger ones want to repeat a mistake that happened in the past, something he wishes to prevent as times of peace (like now) are so rare and precious

When pressed, he reveals that the mistake in the past was the use of the Fist of Iron to maintain power and peace

Baldwin tries to think about what the Fist of Iron was, and he’s able to remember stories of them as a death squad affiliated with the High Council, but he doesn’t know details about who they were, how long they were around, when they were active, or what they did

At this point, Councillor Astorio interrupts (pretending to not know the party) and pulls Councillor Galanodel to talk with him privately

Aurora, who is also socializing and getting info, alongside Corrick listen in on the conversation

They hear snippets of the conversation

Councillor Astorio: I’m surprised you have so few guards, you know I could’ve helped provide reinforcements Councillor Galanodel: I don’t need them, and nobody should

Meanwhile, Innchie goes off exploring for unguarded stairs or entrances to the second floor

She enters the library, and finds drag marks around the bookshelf

She tries to the old trick of triggering a secret door by pulling on books

She just ends up with a bunch of books on the floor and nothing opening

Carlin is socializing with the more middle-class folk, asking around about the Serpent

To the common folk, the Serpent is seen as a heroic figure, like a Robin Hood kind of thief, or as a folk tale

During this conversation, Carlin had grabbed a lot of pastries off of the table and is munching on a butter tart

Meanwhile, Igtbtgh has gotten a snack, gotten distracted by flowers, and hasn’t seen anyone suspicious

He comes to the conclusion that if there’s no one outside, the Serpent must already be inside

He goes inside and talks about that with one of the guards at the stairs, who instructs him to take her place while she goes finds Captain Athura

Baldwin is still roaming, and I’m starting to panic about having more NPCs

So I’ve been wanting to do more backstory involvement, and I jumped on the chance

Baldwin bumps into his dad

They have a very awkward conversation about how each of them have been doing, and about Baldwin’s mom (the elven side of his heritage)

He finds out that Baldwin’s mom hasn’t been doing well health-wise, and that Baldwin should get in contact with her

Innchie, knowing that she won’t be able to figure out this secret door on her own, wanders to the ballroom and telepathically calls for Carlin to meet her in the library

The two meet in the library, where Carlin now realizes that the butter tart has a magical effect of changing his voice to be high-pitched and squeaky

Innchie and Carlin investigate the library to no avail

They walk out and see that Igtbtgh is now standing guard at the stairs

Carlin gets very excited and tries calling him over

Igtbtgh sees an opportunity to get rid of the guard

Igtbtgh: I think there’s a drunk person over there looking for a bathroom Guard: ....he’s literally standing right next to a bathroom

However, the guard goes and investigates

Carlin and Innchie play along, with Carlin performing a convincing drunk and telling the guard that Innchie needs a washroom

They push the guard into the bathroom, shut it with rope, and write a “Do Not Use” sign

Igtbtgh fakes a confrontation with Carlin and Innchie, and successfully lies to the guard that he’s arrested them and is getting help soon

The three of them head upstairs

Aurora dances and dazzles, but is then one-upped by Baldwin having an intellectual discussion with a large group of people

The band is also listening in, but one of their members is missing

Aurora then dances and attempts to flirt with Councillor Galanodel, opening him up

When she’s rejected, she attempts to ask why he says that he’s already tried love but it hasn’t worked using a fake story about her losing someone she’s loved

However, he sees through her lie, and bids her goodbye

Aurora then disguises herself as a guard from another city, and takes the empty post at the stairs

Upstairs, Carlin, Innchie, and Igtbtgh start sneaking through the gallery, which contains portraits and 4 sets of armour

And when I say “start sneaking” I mean “spend 10 minutes crouching silently step by step to make sure nothing happens”

Carlin OOC: I poke my head in... Me: nothing happens Carlin OOC: I put my toe in... Me: ...nothing happens Carlin OOC: I put my whole foot in! Me: nothing happens!

Not setting anything off, they head into the next room, the second library

As Carlin and Innchie investigate, Igtbtgh stays in the doorway, and is almost pushed out of the room by the door slamming shut

He manages to stick his foot in there

Innchie, through the sheer force of willpower, uses her noodle arms to help creak the door open so that there’s a big enough gap for someone to slip through

Igtbtgh uses 1 of his 10 daggers to stab the floor and try to use it as a doorstopper

Unfortunately, as soon as he’s inside and the door is released, it slams shut and snaps the dagger in half

Innchie attempts to see if there’s any magic in the room

At this point, a glowing magical circle starts to glow in the middle of the room

With a nat20 dexterity saving throw, Innchie feels an instinct to just jump into the circle, avoiding a cloud of green mist coming from the top of the bookshelves

Igtbtgh and Carlin alongside any of their leather or cotton clothes are dyed a bright neon green

Carlin instinctively licks his hand to see if the dye will come off, he almost throws up from the taste

The door opens, and Igtbtgh crit fails to determine whether there’s someone outside, and is now convinced that there’s been someone following them who opened the door

He goes outside to stand vigilant watch as Carlin and Innchie press forward

Innchie sends a telepathic message to Aurora to go explore the basement

Aurora finds the armoury and storage room, which has some weapons (she steals a rapier) and armour with the High Council emblem and colours, a crate with 10 health potions (which she pockets), and a crate of unused weapons and armour (all with the symbol of a fist)

Carlin opens the door to the next room, which is revealed as the master bedroom

Unfortunately, he accidentally sets off the trip wire, which causes a literally blinding bright light and an alarm to go off

Now this is where things take a different turn then I thought they would

Instead of trying to disarm the alarm, Innchie grabs a blind Carlin, runs out of the library, grabs Igtbtgh, and runs down the gallery

The eyes of the portraits glow as the armour activate, starting to move towards them

However, they’re already out the door

Aurora, hearing the alarm, runs up the stairs and gets to the second floor

She sees the rest of her party, reassures them that it’s her in disguise, and uses rope trick to hide everyone

However, Innchie decides to stay out and deal with the incoming guards

She declares herself as Princess Ruminarch from “the country across the sea,” and manages to convince all of them

She also says that she saw a handsome “lean green machine” of a man go up another flight of stairs (to the roof)

She’s escorted downstairs by one guard as the rest of the guards, Captain Athura, and Councillor Galanodel scatter to find the intruder

Once downstairs, Innchie casts suggestion on the escort, telling him to go help the others, before heading back upstairs

Baldwin, having heard the alarm and seeing the commotion, offers his help to find the intruder

He finds Galanodel in a woman’s bedroom which appears to have been unused for a very long time, the only striking thing being the moons, stars, and planets painted on the wall

Galanodel thanks him for his help, and suggests that Baldwin checks the other spare bedroom

Now originally, I had the Serpent following the group and grabbing the key to the puzzle to the secret treasure room when the alarm goes off, but Igtbtgh was standing outside of the library door so that wasn’t possible...

In the spare bedroom, Corrick spots a small figure on the ceiling who bolts, but not before he calls out that he found the intruder and casts Hunter’s Mark

Aurora at this point has dropped down out of the pocket dimension, no longer in disguise

She sees a feminine figure running along the ceiling very very quickly

Surprise, it’s the Serpent!

However, the Serpent throws down two smoke bombs, obscuring vision

With Hunter’s Mark, Baldwin knows where the Serpent is, and he casts a spell that prevents her from moving

Aurora tries dispelling the cloud of fog-like smoke, however she’s not sure how to do so other than trying to make a strong enough wind with her dress

It takes a couple of tries, but Baldwin grabs the Serpent and yanks her down (probably dislocating her shoulders)

He pins her down and punches her until she surrenders

She’s very nonchalant, impressed that they caught her

Taking off the Serpent’s mask and goggles, Aurora recognizes her as the missing band member downstairs

She’s hauled away by the guards with ease in chains

Meanwhile, Innchie is sneaking into the woman’s bedroom that Galanodel had come from, trying to guess if there’s a secret room she can open

Sensing some form of barrier magic from the paintings, she just guesses and presses a hand on the large painting of earth

A magical door opens up, and she steps inside

Immediately upon entering, she’s tackled and pinned by a iron mechanical bear

An elven man with unnaturally white hair and small glasses perched on his nose (which the people in the pocket dimension had briefly seen) yells loudly that he’s finally caught her

Innchie says (truthfully for once) that she isn’t who he’s looking for, and says that the person involved may be getting away

He’s suspicious, but gets the bear to let her go

He says that he’ll check it out and if he’s right he owes her one, but Urso will take care of her if she’s lying

The bear, who is named Urso, sits down and just monitors the room

As Innchie looks around the treasure room, she sees the gauntlet

She summons Rupert and tells him to wait a minute after she leaves, then to grab the gauntlet and fly out the window in the bedroom next door

It works perfectly, and Rupert snatches the gauntlet and escapes before Urso can even react

The elven man goes outside and sees that the Serpent had been caught

He apologizes to Innchie, who had already caught up to him outside

He introduces himself as Karn, artificer and traps specialist, and that she can find him in the library at Salv where he works if she ever needs him

He bustles off to disarm the traps while Councillor Galanodel, Aurora, and Baldwin continue talking

Aurora: what were you trying to protect? Councillor Galanodel: something very precious to me Aurora: ....well...I hope it’s still there....

Igtbtgh, this entire time, is trying to figure out how to get out of the pocket dimension and the estate without calling attention to the fact that he’s guiltily dyed green alongside Carlin

He constructs a burqa-like covering, puts it on, straps Carlin to his chest underneath to look like a pregnant woman, then shimmies down the rope out of the pocket dimension

Unfortunately, he slips and falls the last little bit

Seeing that he caught Councillor Galanodel’s attention, he throws down one of his own smoke bombs and books it

Innchie OOC: you’re like a weird Islamic ninja

It was 1 am and I could not stop laughing

Baldwin offers to chase after what he thinks is a suspicious individual, with Aurora offering to help this “stranger”

They head out, and Innchie goes and finds Rupert who is holding the gauntlet, pocketing the item

They all escape back to the main part of Keltar, successfully getting the gauntlet!

#charisma and bs #Donegeons and Dragons #dnd #d&d

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