theAJway

New Release: Princess Chronicles [-Oriental Warlord-] Ouji Military Lolita Cape, Pants, Blouse and Accessories

Hyrule as a country has many problems, such as:

Demise

Vaati

Ganon

Null

Ganondorf

Ganon (Again)

Ganon (Again Again)

Etc.

But, one issue that has remained unaddressed throughout the entirety of the LOZ canon and apocrypha is the lack of a royal mint.

i wrote this while working in a program for new writers. on wednesdays, two of the teachers would be contractually obligated to read our writing aloud to the group of 300+ teens. i had never read my work in public before. i had something like 6k poems and was panicking about it. none of them are good enough. sometimes the train is howling. it is hard, actually, sometimes, even as an adult.

and then i thought - what is one thing i wish i could tell all of them. each of these 300 kids. what did i need to hear, at 16?

i wanted to tell them about the day you wake up, and the sun feels warm finally. i wanted to tell them about carving a life out of soapstone, your hands turning bloody. i wanted to tell them that sometimes yes - it actually does feel easy. i wanted to tell them about weddings and cookie dough and long road trips. about albums of new music and old friends laughing and the sound of snow falling.

you will learn the pattern of the train. you will learn to close your eyes when you hear the engine rumbling. you will learn to let yourself have the grey days in their lily-soft numbness. sometimes it will feel like life is wet paint, and god has smeared your canvas across a sewer grate. sometimes it will be so boring it isn’t even pronounceable - the tenacious, soundless blankness. survival isn’t just ugly nights and wild mornings. it is also the steady, unimportant moments. it is just driving with your seatbelt on. it is calling a friend on the way home. it is burying your face into the fur of your dog.

when i had finished reading this poem aloud, the auditorium was silent for a solid minute. someone stood up to take a picture of where it had been projected onto a screen, and then three more people followed the action, and then - like a bad internet story, people remembered they were supposed to be clapping. kids came up to me after it - thank you for writing that. i think i hear a train coming.

i would write this differently now, i think, but it has been 7 years. i still live by the tracks. i also haven’t picked up a blade in over 10 years. the scars are still there, but these days i only pick up scissors to cut my hair. i know why you can’t tell your mom about it. i know how the numbness slips over everything, a restless horrible cotton. i know how when you dropped the dish, you weren’t crying about the broken glass. i know about feeling like all the roads have closed their exits, that you aren’t supposed to still-be-here - and yet.

i am still here, and still yours, and i haven’t forgotten. what i’m saying is if any hope is calling to you - i know it’s hard, but you have to listen. i’m saying keep driving, but slow down the car. sit down in the shower, i’m not judging you. we can stay in the dark with the good hot water and do nothing but stare. notice the stab wound. make it through another tuesday.

i know what it is like to miss yourself. do what you need to. come home to me. i am writing to you, my past self, from the future. i’ll be waiting for you.

He wasn't even a born nepo baby. He was adopted by the billionaire CEO because he was such a prodigy. His dad was abusive as hell and eventually he challenged him to a game of chess going "if I win you have to hand over your company" and his dad accepted and got his ass beat so bad he killed himself immediately. Leaving this 15 year old with billions of dollars and no supervision.

He proceeds to take those billions of dollars of weapons dealer money and invest all of it in card games and video games and theme parks. He doesn't even gut the old company to start a new one, he just stops making weapons and starts making games. He doesn't change the company name. He doesn't even change the logo. Honestly the wildest power move to just totally overpower the fucker's legacy, damn, okay!

Literary analysis isn’t about the book

It’s not even about being right

It’s about performing an investigation and presenting your case to the jury

It doesn’t matter if your defendant killed that guy or not. If you can convince the jury he didn’t, you’ve won

My regular teacher was out for the day, so the “this guy works here but nobody quite knows what he’s supposed to do” substitute was in for her. His name was Mr. Moony. I suspect, knowing more now, that Mr. Moony was the special education coordinator for gifted and talented students. But that’s all besides the point.

The only thing that mattered about Mr. Moony for this story is that every student knew you never learned anything when he was in, because he was always batshit insane. He would completely disregard plans, throw them away, and tell us to do something different.

When he came in, we had just finished reading Waiting for Godot. We were well on our way to an AP Lit exam, tired and worried, and we had a practice essay coming up based on this play. And he said, “you’re all burnt the hell out, so I’m going to write an essay for you.” We all cheered because, hell yes, a lecture day. We didn’t have to do shit. We could all tune out and stop caring.

And then he started going.

We were enraptured. This man deconstructed the two act play into a masterpiece, quoting ancient literature on theology and God, as well as personal details about the author, to reveal to us all that, actually, Waiting for Godot was the author’s roundabout way to show the anguish behind the politics of the pro-life/anti-choice movements, and the author’s criticisms of abortion.

He went on for a half hour, writing faster than we could really keep up with. By the end of his rant, we were all nodding along. At the end, he slammed his hand on the board and shouted “ABORTION” to really make his point.

“So, do you all think that’s what this story is about?”

The majority of us nodded, myself included. And this man looked at us, scrunched his face like Kermit the Fucking Frog, and went, “no the fuck it’s not. I made all that up.”

There was a beat of everyone feeling like their time was wasted. Some students very frustrated because they were trying to take notes and just realized it all was fabricated. One or two who were angry about being woken up to him shouting abortion.

And then he looked at us. “How many of you only believe it’s about abortion because that’s what I just told you to think?”

Quite a few raised their hands.

“Then I did English good.”

The rest of the time of class was spent with him teaching us various styles of analysis, though sadly my amnesia has claimed most of this part from me. I remember my belief in English being entirely shaken at this point. But at the same time, I also got what he was saying, and it opened my eyes to new things.

There is no right answer in literary analysis. There’s just answers people want to hear, or answers that are compelling, or answers that aren’t those things. The answer that Waiting for Godot was about abortion was not something all of us wanted to hear, but he made the answer sound compelling — and so we were riveted.

My next essay I wrote for that class was about the setting of the play, and how the entirety of Waiting for Godot centers on the anxieties of losing the modern family — and even modern life as we know it — to technology, and via that idea, the climate crisis.

I got a 100%. My teacher highlighted my (thankfully anonymous to the class) essay, particularly because the first sentence was “compelling,” due to my absence of proper grammar rules; I’d started it off by just saying, “trees.”

A.K.A. Everyone who's not Merlin, Morgan le Fay or Ninianne/Vivien/Nimue. 'Cuz they're oversaturated

Taliesin the Bard (Welsh Mythology)

Ambrosius Aurelianus (Historia Brittonum)

Uther Pendragon (The Welsh Triads)

Menw ap Teirgwaedd (Welsh Mythology)

King Arthur (?) (Welsh Mythology)

The Nine Witches of Ystawingun (Pa Gur)

The Nine Witches of Caer Lloyw (Peredur)

Orddu the Witch (Culhwch and Olwen)

The Nine Sisters of Avalon (sans Morgan) (Vita Merlini)

Queen Ganieda (Vita Merlini)

Queen Guinevere (De Ortu Waluuanii/Enfances Gauvain)

King Melwas (Welsh Mythology)

King Valerin (Lanzelet)

Malduc (Lanzelet)

Sir Tristan (The Welsh Triads)

Iseult the Elder (and possibly Iseult the Fair herself) (Tristan and Isolde)

Thessala (Cliges)

Eliavres (Perceval, 1st continuation)

The Maiden of the White Hands (Le Bel Inconnu)

Mabon the Enchanter/Mabon ap Modron (Le Bel Inconnu, Prose Tristan, Post Vulgate)

Evraine (Le Bel Inconnu)

Lady Tryamour (Lanval/Launfal)

Klingsor (Parzival)

Kundry (Parzival)

Giramphiel (Diu Crone)

Gansguoter (Diu Crone)

Enfeidas (Diu Crone)

Fairy L'Orgueilleux (L'Atre Perilleux)

Queen Morgause of Orkney (L'Atre Perilleux)

King Celidoine (Vulgate Estoire de Graal)

Guinebal (Vulgate Merlin)

Master Elias of Toulouse and his fellow clerks (?) (Vulgate Lancelot)

Vortigern's Clerks (Vulgate Merlin)

Lady Gamille (Vulgate Lancelot)

Lady Brisen (Vulgate Lancelot, Le Morte D'Arthur)

Lady Sebile (Vulgate Lancelot, Le Propheties de Merlin)

The Queen of Northgallis (Le Propheties de Merlin, Le Morte D'Arthur)

The Queen of Sorestan (Vulgate Lancelot)

The Queen of Eastland (Le Morte D'Arthur)

The Queen of the Out Islands (Le Morte D'Arthur)

The Lady of Avalon (Le Propheties de Merlin)

Queen Crisea (Post Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal)

Tanabos the Enchanter (Post Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal)

Darnant the Enchanter (Perceforest)

Hellawes (Le Morte D'Arthur)

Annowre/Elergia (Le Morte D'Arthur, La Tavola Ritonda)

Lady Lynette (and possibly Lyonesse) (Le Morte D'Arthur)

Pulzella Gaia (Pulzella Gaia)

Sir Fellone (La Tavola Ritonda)

The Green Knight (Bredbeddle ver.) (King Arthur and King Cornwall)

King Cornwall (King Arthur and King Cornwall)

Archimago (The Faerie Queene)

Acrasia (The Faerie Queene)

Busirane (The Faerie Queene)

Duessa (The Faerie Queene)

Telorique (Memorial das Proezas da Segunda Tavola Redonda)

Notes:

This list is tentative and subject to change.

The list discounts Saints and other Christian Holy Persons (such as Galahad). It also discounts characters with "superpowers" (such as Kay and Gawain). In general, the focus is on "Spellcasters"/Magic as an art or skill (Admittedly, the line is very murky).

Arthur is included on this list due to a combination of his various accounts of wonder-working in folk stories and his status as a bard in the Welsh literature. However, it is open to interpretation, hence the question mark.

He asked: "Oh, was she the only son or something before *waves hand*?" and I was like, warily, no she has two brothers. And he responded with a great deal of confusion: "Then what's their problem?!?!"

When he found and married my mom, he was nearly 45 and they had so much trouble conceiving that he went to a Guanyin temple supposedly "magical" for praying for children. When I was born (not a son, also an only child until now), my mom said, "when you prayed at the temple did you ask for a son?" He said, "Aiya, everyone is asking for sons, so I said any gender is okay. If I asked for a son, maybe we wouldn't have gotten a child because Guanyin's son quota is already used up. Do you want that to happen?" My mom laughed for days about "son quota" and continues to tell people about it today, but her honest answer was: "Any child is okay."

Jokes on them. They didn't specify a gender, so Guanyin Ma gave them a non-binary child!

More seriously: my dad doesn't care about sons. When I told my parents that I wouldn't marry or have children, I thought he might be disappointed, but he wasn't. Then again, maybe I should have expected that, given he tried to become a monk at 18 🤪 I think he said the thing about sons to poke fun at people who care too much about sons because he frankly thinks it's all a bit ridiculous. In his eyes, a child is a child, so what's the point in caring about gender? If the child "changes" gender, does it make a difference?

A quick overview of Fiammetta Arknights: she’s an angry phoenix and an Artilleryman sniper. That means at E2, she costs a billion DP to deploy, has a dummy thick attack stat, 5 rows of range, and her attacks do physical AOE damage. Her first talent causes her to constantly lose health – she is literally burning up – but when her health is over half full she gets a 25% attack boost, and at 80% health and above, she gets a 50% attack boost. This means she will often need a babysitter; while she cannot die to her own self-immolation, it leaves her with 1hp, so she will obviously die if an enemy sneezes on her at that point. Her second talent gives her a small attack speed boost when she isn’t using a skill, which only really synergises with S2, and is rather negligible in such a slow-attacking unit anyway.

Firstly, I really adore her kit from a gameplay perspective because it leans very heavily into the traits of her Artilleryman archetype, both in its strengths and its weaknesses: a huge attack stat (that can get even bigger), a huge range (that can get even bigger), and splash damage (that can get even bigger), all offset by a hefty deployment cost (which also gets even bigger if you consider how you need to deploy a healer to keep her healthy) and slow attack speed. This in contrast to operators like Mountain, who “fixed” the brawler archetype by just… becoming a centurion. It makes for a strictly weaker but more interesting unit, IMO.

Secondly, I am constantly thinking about how interestingly her gameplay ties into her character and narrative. She’s very notable for being able to attack when there are no enemies in her range – an extremely unusual trait in AK. You can activate her S2 even when there’s nobody there, when most nuke skills (e.g. Cutter) require a target to be in range, and her S3 famously just pew pew pews forever. She isn’t strictly unique in this regard but it’s rare enough to be of note. This has the gameplay advantage of extending her range through her splash damage, but I’ve always thought it also really fits her personality as someone who is driven, single-minded, somewhat ruthless, and uncaring of collateral damage. “I don’t care if it’s irrational, meaningless, or futile - when I make up my mind to do something, I do it!”

I’ve also been thinking about this artwork a lot and firstly, it’s just a good fanart that goes really fucking hard and more people should look at it. Secondly, it made me realise that all three of her skills extend her range. S1 outright states that it gives her an extra row, but S2 and S3 can also hit the same distance because they both give her increased splash damage. It’s as though since that night in Kazdel, she’s constantly tried to reach further and further forward, as though desperate to close a gap. Some smart alecs will be like “lol just use S1” – but all of her skills are offensive recovery. No matter how hard she tried, she would still have been out of time. She cannot get anywhere by waiting; she has to be doing – with nothing to shoot, she’s helpless. In contrast with almost every other artilleryman, she has no utility or crowd-control in her kit at all - with nobody to aim at, and no vengeance to exact, she’s useless. Isn’t that why she’s still so wrapped up in her vengeance and anger?

At the same time, she’s just about the only one left who still holds blame in her heart for that incident – both toward herself and toward Andoain. She can’t let go of her guilt and resentment even after the people she’s avenging have found a way to do so. It’s to the point where her S3, the one that can most easily be interpreted to be showing her obsession and her borderline desperation, gives her a literal blind spot. She’s so consumed by vengeance that she will shoot at ghosts, exert herself when there are no enemies, and barely sees the ones closest to her.

She is hardly the only character whose gameplay and story integrate like this; AK does this all the time. Lee’s operator overview is one of the funniest pages on Gamepress. Shiny Nearl’s s2 uniquely bypassing the deploy limit perfectly reflects her role as the Radiant Knight – to arrive even when all other hope is lost, to be a beacon in the dark. But Fiammetta really is one of the most interesting and flavourful units in the game to me, from a variety of perspectives (including the shallowest but arguably most important ones of loving her artwork and theme song), and part of that is exactly due to the fact that she has so many flaws as a character and drawbacks as a unit.

what in the