breakneckcalidity asked you: Might I bother you for a title interpretation? I'm a Mage of Hope :3

Mages are hard to pin down, just because they don’t have much canonical evidence behind them.  My personal belief is that Mages use their knowledge of their aspect for their own benefit, making them the opposing side of a Seer.  For Sollux, being the Mage of Doom gave him the ability to hear the voices of the dead, and because of that he was able to find and rebuild the game itself for the trolls.  This, Mage is an Active class, benefiting from an innate information source and using that to gain for themselves.

Hope is about moral, either personal or among peers/enemies.  The element itself has it’s own power - if a player has hope, then they can motivate and drive themselves on to perform actions they might not have been able to before.  Like Eridan and his White Science, Hope players give themselves a boost simply by believing in something.  The biggest danger for Hope players is to put their faith into something that can fall apart in their game.  If a Hope players were to, say, believe in the friendship of a fellow player and then be betrayed, they would find their power levels suddenly dropping harshly.  On the other hand, if a Hope player’s faith is validated (in the same example, that teammate turns around and supports them and rewards their hope), then they get a boost of power.  

Therefore, a Mage of Hope would benefit from the knowledge of Hope.  Once again, this is a very personal power, and would mean something different to anyone with the aspect.  But a Mage could either find themselves understanding the hopes and motivations of their fellow players/enemies, which would give them the chance to use that to their advantage, or they could find themselves with knowledge of the idea that gives them hope.  In the example above, a Mage of Hope who places their faith in the friend would suddenly have a wealth of information about the friend.  This can be extremely helpful to the player, since they would be able to understand the source of their power, and thus be able to predict them, and therefore manipulate circumstances so that their hope is validated at opportune times.  This interpretation can be a double edged sword, however, because there’s a point at which it’s no longer faith and simply fact, at which point it wouldn’t be a boon to the player at all.

Kyoko and Sayaka get an ice cream to share. And then, it gets dropped. Sayaka says she'll go buy another, but it is too late. A single tear rolls down Kyoko's cheek. The ice cream man is gone.

kyoko would probably break up with sayaka then and there how dare she ruin the ice cream or she’d run after the ice cream truck she wouldn’t let this happen i tell you

Touhou Project - Sakuya/Meiling - Ficlet

for breakneckcalidity

(this one ends kind of abruptly sorry aaah)

Not a lot of youkai celebrate birthdays. Not every human does either, and Sakuya herself hasn’t celebrated her own for years now. But after Flandre’s birthday celebration leaves Meiling incapacitated for over a week, Sakuya decides to do something nice for her. So she chooses a day to designate as as Hong Meiling’s birthday, and goes up to the room where she’s recovering.

Meiling is sitting up in bed when Sakuya opens the door, reading one of her action comics. The bandages around her chest are less than before, which is a good sign, Sakuya thinks. She closes the door behind her and Meiling looks up.

“Oh,” she says. “Hey, Sakuya!”

Sakuya smiles and sits down beside her. “I came to tell you that your birthday is in a few days.”

Meiling’s eyes widen. “Oh no, not another one!”

She laughs. “Don’t worry, it’s your birthday this time. You get to choose what to do.”

“Okay. That’s good.” Meiling leans back and frowns. “I didn’t know I had a birthday, though.”

Sakuya kisses her forehead. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a reason to celebrate, after all.”