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c-is-for-circinate · 5 years

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An M9 major arc breakdown: part 1

Arc 1: Who the fuck are you? (I think we might be mercenaries??): episodes 1-25

I was going to do a nice gloss over what I see as the four major arcs of the Mighty Nein story so far in one post, and then I realized that I am (*ahem*) long-winded, we’ll say. And there’s a lot to be said!

Instead, a separate post for each arc, why not. [I will stick links to parts 2-4 here when they’re written and posted!]

So: arc 1. Covering 24 episodes and, according to critrole stats, about 35 in-game days, this arc manages to be both one of the longest and one of the shortest. It covers levels 2-5, and everything from the first meeting in Trostenwald all the way through leaving Hupperdook. It’s a lot! And I thought a lot about trying to split it up, but the more I looked for a breaking point in these episodes, the more every possible division felt really arbitrary, and reinforced the idea that this chunk of episodes has the same theme at the center all the way through.

The arc of these episodes is specifically the progression of the Mighty Nein from not being a thing at all to maybe, sort of, somehow being a thing. It’s full of great character moments, and lays the groundwork for, I suspect, pretty much every important thing to happen throughout the entire campaign, (with the possible exception of some of Caduceus’s stuff, but even then, I have suspicions), because Matt is Good At His Shit. It’s also super interesting in terms of the entire show, because even though it establishes everything, the unsteady conclusion it seems to reach about who the M9 might be or might become gets almost completely (seemingly) thrown out the window by the very next arc--but more about that in the next arc’s post.

In this arc I think we need to take just a moment to get meta in terms of players vs characters, because this is the one part of the story so far where that division is actually, actively important. There’s two big reasons for that. One, the players are still learning who their own characters are, even as the characters are learning each other. Two, there is one single, central, and encompassingly important fact that the players all know that the characters don’t, and resolving that disconnect shapes the tone of this entire arc.

The members of the Mighty Nein are going to be together for a very long and very epic journey. It’s a fact. Even if individual characters die or choose to leave, the group itself is destined for something big, because everybody at that table has every intention of playing straight through to level 20 all over again. What’s more, everybody at that table is already family in nearly every real-life way that matters. The audience knows that this group is going to be something special, expects them to become family in their own right before they’ve even met. The DM knows. The world itself probably knows, in-game--a group of strangers meet in Trostenwald and somewhere on her celestial plane, the Raven Queen is probably watching a bunch of fate-threads tangle together and make a mess of her pretty fate tapestry all over again. The only people who don’t know how meaningful this group is going to be, to the world or to its own members, are the characters themselves.

And that leads to a fascinating dynamic, where these characters run into each other in Trostenwald, and then stay together for reasons even they can’t necessarily fully explain. They never sit down and say, “okay, let’s be mercenaries together”--they get kicked out of Trostenwald and say, “I guess let’s go to Zadash together, maybe?”, and then they just...never break up. The number one question for the whole first chunk of this arc is, “Why am I even with these assholes?” Sure, the easy answer is, “because the players have decided the characters are going to be,” but that’s boring and kind of besides the point. Yes the players have decided that the characters are going to be together--and that creates a story where the characters and the players both have to figure out why as they go along.

The way this plays out is different for each character, but there are some commonalities:

Caleb and Nott both have long-term goals, and even though neither of them knows it at first, they both have the same long-term goal: somehow get back to the way the world used to be. The trouble is, this is a really distant goal for both of them, something that requires the kind of intense magic they don’t understand and barely even believe in. Their short-term goals are a much more basic ‘survive and also keep this other person alive long enough to figure out how to achieve that long-term goal’, and that’s what they say they’ve signed up with the rest of the group for. It’s a relatively simple answer that ends up getting ever more complicated in reality.

Caleb and Nott’s relationships with the group actually parallel each other a lot at this early stage, and it isn’t just because they come as a prepackaged duo. Both of their long-term goals have an undercurrent of desperate loneliness that they’ve each been living with since their lives fell apart. In theory, getting what they’re after will help fix that one way or another--but in the mean time, suddenly they’re surrounded by people, and they can’t help but care. They just also don’t trust the rest of the group, because how do you trust people at all, ever? Nobody’s been particularly kind to either of them since everything went to shit, and if the universe had any kindness to begin with it never would’ve happened in the first place. But there’s this undercurrent of...maybe, if they learned to love and trust this group, they’d find out they don’t need what they’re trying to get to begin with, because they’ve already got the secure love and acceptance they’re really craving. Maybe. Certainly neither of them have started to figure that out yet. They can barely admit to liking their compatriots at all.

What’s even more tricky is that neither of them actually have much of a plan for getting from their short-term survival goals towards their long-term goals. Nott literally doesn’t know how Caleb could turn her back into a halfling--she just has faith that he can, if he gets powerful enough, and it leads to things like the stolen letter for an academy Caleb would not set foot in again for all the love or money in the world. Caleb is so bad at bridging the gap between what’s in front of him in this world right now, and the big nebulous world-shattering Thing he wants to eventually achieve. After all, what’s in front of Caleb right now doesn’t matter, or it won’t once he twists the whole world into a new shape anyway--except that it is in front of him right now, and needs to be survived and dealt with, somehow, and that’s distracting in its own right. So the whole first arc is full of moments like Caleb trying to take the spell scroll and Nott trying to steal Fjord’s letter, where they’re grabbing at an apparent immediate step towards their long-term goals at the expense of the people around them, and maybe even to the detriment of those ultimate aims.

Basically, for Caleb and Nott, being with this group is supposed to be a means to an end--but they don’t really know how being with this group is going to help them achieve that end, they’re just...pretty sure it will. Somehow. They’re definitely eating better now, and maybe if Caleb gets into that library it’ll help, or something, maybe, he hopes. The unspoken question for Caleb and Nott both, as Arc 1 progresses, is--do they actually think being with the group is going to help them achieve those all-important goals, or do they just like being here? Nott will follow Caleb anywhere, because he’s her way out of this goblin life, but she doesn’t encourage him to leave to progress somewhere else. Caleb argues with himself when he’s alone, but he always stays in the end. Is it practicality? Is there a plan? Or did they just accidentally fall in with a group of people they actually like, and the group’s constant shenanigans are a useful distraction from having to admit what they're apparently willing to sacrifice for the sake of being here rather than alone?

Fjord and Jester, meanwhile, both claim to have long-term goals, but they sure don’t show any indication that they care about pursuing them. Which makes sense, because Jester and Fjord show up in Trostenwald with personal quests that are devoted to a very nebulous, hypothetical sort of belonging (contrast with Caleb and Nott, who want to belong in very specific ways, in places they once already lived). Their worlds have both fallen apart, too, but far more recently and a little less dramatically. They’re not looking to get back to what they once had, they’re looking to replace it.

Or, to be more specific: Fjord’s entire adult life thus far has been defined by his job. Being a sailor wasn’t just his profession, it was his identity. It’s what he did; it’s where he lived; it’s where he found the only person who ever really cared about him or called him family; it’s where he found his self-worth and his social worth, the first and only place he ever felt valuable to anyone else in the community or the world at large. Heading up to the Soltryce Academy to figure out what’s up with this sword is about finding a whole new self, with a new purpose, a new job, a new person who can tell him what he’s good at and good for and where he belongs now.

Jester’s entire life has been defined by her mom. Marion is her entire world. Jester literally doesn’t know anybody outside the Lavish Chateau, and aside from the Traveller, the few people who do know she exists at all are servants or coworkers of her mother. Jester’s world is tiny, with Marion at the center of it. If Fjord’s self-worth is caught up in his job and what he does, Jester’s is entirely determined by making people joyful and happy, and the only two people she’s ever really had the chance to please in that way are her mother and the Traveler. So she’s looking for her other parent, to replace the one thing she’s always had right there.

In many ways, the particulars of what Fjord and Jester are pursuing don’t actually matter that much. Fjord doesn’t need the Soltryce to give him a job or a purpose. He jumps headfirst into the mercenary business almost overnight; they’ve been in Zadash less than a week before he’s chatting with the Gentleman about professional networking like a man who’s about to pull out his company business cards. Jester doesn’t need a dad, she just needs people to love her and be delighted by her presence. It turns out that this team of people just so happens to address that core need for both of them, and that’s enough for Jester and Fjord. They’re in this head first.

The thing about Fjord and Jester is, though, neither of them are asking any questions about the long term either. Because rolling with the Mighty Nein is hitting all the right buttons to get at the root of what they need, they’re both super blase about letting certain details go without question. Why does Fjord have these new powers he’s now starting to understand? What kind of relationship does Jester actually want with a parent? And where does the rest of the group see this whole situation going in the next weeks, months, years? Jester and Fjord aren’t asking--and that makes sense too, because if they’re not asking, then they don’t have to face the answers. If Fjord doesn’t ever make it to Soltryce, nobody can tell him he’s not good enough, and if Jester never quite gets around to meeting her father, she doesn’t have to find out why he never came back. If they don’t ask questions about the group, maybe nobody will ever remember to leave.

Beau and Molly would be so pissed at being grouped together here, which is not actually why I did it, but is a nice additional nuance. (Part of why they hate each other so much is because they’ve got a lot in common deep down--they both care very deeply and project an image of not caring very much at all, and it pisses both of them off constantly.) The truth is, Beau and Molly are both with the Mighty Nein because they literally have nowhere else to go. Caleb and Nott are trying to regain their old lives; Fjord and Jester are trying to replace their old lives; but Molly and Beau don’t really have lives besides this, or at least not lives they’d admit to.

These two are the closest thing to Professional Criminals in the group when it all gets started--Nott and Caleb might steal and con to survive, but for Beau and Molly it’s been an actual job, with coworkers and workplace etiquette, and bigger heists with full crews arguably similar to the M9 in the past. The circus was Molly’s everything and it got smashed to bits within the first four episodes, but the core Mollymauk of it all means that his life fundamentally doesn’t change with its loss. He is still on the road skipping from place to place, living out of bedrolls and carts and inns if there’s good luck; he’s still slinging bullshit and the odd con, doing a good turn when he can and keeping an eye out for coin; he’s still messing around with a couple of swords, trying not to get beat up or thrown in jail or run out of town, killing a bit when necessary; he’s still embedded in the middle of a group of walking disaster weirdos full of Issues and interpersonal conflict who somehow have to live together and rely on each other with all their broken bits and strangeness. Beau played local contact for every reasonably-sized crew of criminals to come through Kamordah, and not a one of them ever kept her around for the long haul, but she knows seedy underbellies and she knows how to punch people for pay and she knows about honor among thieves and she knows how to trust fundamentally untrustworthy people just exactly as far as she can throw them.

So just the basic everyday operation of being part of the Mighty Nein, the important job skills and general lifestyle, is more in line with what Beau and Molly have already been doing than it is for anyone else in the group. There’s also less conflict with their overarching long-term life goals. Neither of them have any, besides ‘keep doing this as long as I can’. I don’t think either Molly or Beau have any real vision of what a future even looks like, Beau because she’s young and too busy rebelling against to think about building towards, Molly because with no real past he barely even has a concept of change or becoming anything other than what he is. The most either of them can really picture would be a life they don’t want: the Proper Lionett Daughter or Lucien Whoever-The-Fuck. Those are nightmare scenario lives that belong to other people, and Beau and Molly will run from them literally as far and as fast as they can.

While Caleb and Nott are avoiding the question of “is this group really going to help me get what I want?” (because the answer might mean they should leave, and they want to stay); and Fjord and Jester are avoiding the question of “should I actually try to find the thing I came looking for in the first place?” (because real answers are so much scarier than unsolved questions); Beau and Molly are determinedly avoiding the high school guidance counselor question question of “where do you see yourself in five years?”. They have no long-term plans, and neither of them want any. What they’ve got going on right here is good. They don’t have to be alone (which Beau has been all her life, and Molly has never been once, and they both want so badly to avoid). They get to stay in constant motion, running and fighting and drinking and earning money and occasionally experimenting with illegal ethereal-plane-enhancing substances, and that’s just fine.

Yasha doesn’t quite fit in with anyone else because Yasha is gone so damn much, but also because she doesn’t quite match any of the categories. Her whole life fell apart, just like practically everyone else’s, but she’s not trying to get it back, and she’s not trying to replace it. And Yasha does have somewhere else to be, a path she thinks maybe she ought to be following if she could just figure out where it is. She keeps coming back because Molly is the closest thing she has to family; she keeps coming back because fate keeps bumping her into the group and saying she should; she keeps coming back because it’s good coin and easy killing-things work and they’ll have her; she keeps coming back because she likes them, because Caleb is awkward with people but lends her his cat, because Jester is bright and smiling and also loves flowers, because Beau fights next to her and Fjord respects her and Nott gave her flowers once, and that matters.

As Arc 1 progresses, as the players get to know their characters better and the characters get to know each other, they begin to collectively answer “Why am I with this group?” with another question: “Just what is this group, anyway?”. It’s a little out of order and a little bit of a mess, just like the party itself, just like life, but the truth is that the members of the Nein find themselves more or less attached to this merry little band before they’ve even really defined what said band is. The characters become a group by accident, by fate, by will of the players, because they’re all desperate for things and avoiding things and because why not. Many decisions about what kind of group they become, though, are a lot more deliberate.

‘Mercenary’ is the first thing they pick up, and they specifically don’t choose it for themselves. (It’s also the first thing they lose when the next arc starts, or maybe at the very end of this one.) They roll into Allfield in the middle of a gnoll attack, and Bryce offers cash for gnoll ears before they can even ask ‘what’s in it for us?’. They already had weapons in hand to deal with the threat--it’s impossible to say what the team would’ve done without that offer, and they were all broke as fuck and badly in need of money anyway--but they didn’t present themselves as swords-for-hire until someone was already asking to hire them.

Allfield teaches them that they can be mercenaries (and gives them an excuse to stay as a group), while Zadash begins to teach them what kind of mercenaries they want to be. It becomes very clear very quickly that this group does not like institutions of power (something I’ve already written about at length). They do a single job for the crownsguard and then immediately turn around and start working with back-tavern insurgents and underground smugglers. While their individual opinions may vary, collectively they do Not Like The Empire.

They also establish themselves as a group that does not trust in general, either the outside world or each other--and furthermore, a group that will push and investigate and uncover answers every time a mystery pops up. They don’t take the Knights of Requital at face value, they investigate around the back end; they track down the Gentleman just because he’s there. They demand answers from each other, from Molly baiting a trap to catch Nott stealing from Fjord to the whole group teaming up to demand ‘Lucien’ explain himself. Caleb doesn’t trust Callie, and Beau doesn’t trust Caleb, and nobody trusts Fjord’s stone-swallowing, and there’s no resolution, only more questions.

Likewise, they are not trustworthy. While they take jobs and generally deliver on what they pay for, they also ad-lib and change direction for their own benefit, and their loyalty to their employers is debatable at best. The argument over the spell scrolls in the High Richter’s house is a major division at the time, but by the time they’re clearing out necromancy for the Gentleman, nobody really sides against stealing the journal or Yasha’s sword. They just come up with a plan together to cheat the Gentleman effectively. When they clear out the merrow in his safehouse in the swamp, they have no problem taking as much of his stuff as they can. They are out for themselves, and the jobs they take are a means to their own ends, not particularly important in and of themselves.

The M9 feel very small, as a group, in the face of a world that’s very big, and we see that tie back in with the past two points over and over again. So much of the Zadash part of the arc involves the stirrings and edges of the war with Xhorhas, and the Nein’s almost instant response of, okay, we want to stay as FAR FROM THAT AS POSSIBLE. The major powers of the world are big enough to crush them, and they are afraid of that--but, the attitude seems to go, the major powers of the world are also big enough to miss noticing them, and that matters too. They steal the dodecahedron and disappear off into the shadows because they know it means something huge, and that’s scary, and therefore grabbing this piece of it might somehow protect them or the world in the long run. They’re able to do it because they’re small, because in this clash of international titans they’re still nobody.

Lastly, this group desperately wants to be doing something moral, they just don’t necessarily know how. They debate over whether the Knights of Requital are good guys, over whether they should help the crown, over the right thing to do with the Krynn assassin. They are so much more comfortable working for the Gentleman, who’s a criminal right there on the surface but doesn’t appear to be actively hurting anybody, than assisting the local law. Even when it’s not a job, or maybe even more when it’s not a job, they find themselves going out of their way to be good people: rescuing Kiri, helping Callie, finding ways to help Horace and Dolan after the attack on the spire explodes everything. For a group of self-proclaimed mercenaries, there’s a constant undercurrent of...should we be doing this? Is this the right thing to do? Should we totally betray our employers because that’s the right thing to do? They’re not loyal to anybody in particular, except maybe each other, but they’re struggling to find some kind of ideal or guiding principle to be loyal to.

All of this culminates in Hupperdook. The group is finally unbending a little, coming to trust each other that little bit more. Beau talks about her childhood, and Caleb says Astrid’s name, and Nott says Yeza’s, and Fjord talks about the orphanage where he grew up. They go down into a prison to fight a whirling death-robot, and it’s sort of because Rissa’s dad promised them a reward but also sort of because Rissa is Theirs Now, and more than anything it’s to save the parents of a bunch of penniless near-orphans. It’s a way to say fuck you! to the Imperial system; it’s a way to combine two jobs at once for their own purposes. It is above all a very new-feeling exploration of the idea that, small or not, they can in fact actually make a meaningful difference in the world. They have power, and that power can be used for good.

It’s by far the least mercenary-like job they’ve taken. Between the bail money they pay for the Schuesters and the additional cash they leave with them to take care of Kiri, they probably spend half as much on the whole endeavor as that new fancy crossbow was worth to begin with. They did something good, and it feels better and more right than all their fumbling maybes.

Aside from Trostenwald, where crisis came to them and the whole story was about getting themselves out of trouble, Allfield and Hupperdook very much bookend this arc, and that makes a lot of sense, because there’s a very similar feeling to both jobs. They’ve done something dangerous, and saved lives, and helped people--regular, good people who hadn’t hurt anyone to get into the situations they were in. They made some profit doing it. Those things are not mutually exclusive, and maybe, maybe they can build something of a career path out of finding the places where they intersect.

This first arc doesn’t exactly conclude--because with an ongoing show like this, nothing ever quite concludes--so much as it reaches a point where many of its primary themes and issues begin to look as though they could, in theory, someday be resolved. There’s a visible path ahead that combines altruism and self-interest. The group members are talking to each other, slowly and carefully. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about who everyone is and what they want, but it seems like the group might just be heading in a direction towards those questions at least eventually getting asked.

It’s maybe the most optimistic place the group’s been in so far, which is of course why this is the point where everything in the whole world comes crashing down--but that’s for the next arc.

#critical role #driveby meta attack #mighty nein #campaign 2 spoilers #mostly only for the first block of episodes

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ninthfeather · 5 years

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You have been offered an exorbitant sum of money to (somehow) remake Detective Conan as a mecha series. What Do You Do?

Firstof all, I would take that money.

Theadaptation would be a compressed one, because in general mecha shows do not runfor quite as long as Detective Conan. I would be focusing on including thecast, the most important themes, and the most enjoyable tropes from theoriginal show.

This post is a monster so I’m adding a readmore.

Iactually thought about this over the course of the week, and I think I have aworkable concept. The setting is Tokyo circa 30XX A.D., and most people haveone or more robots, which are not sentient, but can be controlled via neuraluplink technology. Robots are registered to individual users, so in an idealsituation, everyone is only using their own robots. But the truth is that it’srelatively easy to find and access methods of briefly taking control of a robotthat doesn’t belong to you– these methods are how people loan out theirtechnology and they also get used for pranks pretty frequently. Of course,commandeering a robot is also the most common method of committing crimes.After all, why bother committing a crime in person when you can use a metal exoskeletonwith no fingerprints and inhuman strength?

Withmost crime being carried out via robots, most crime-fighting is carried out thesame way. Police officers and detectives still exist, but they’ve largely beensupplanted by a robot-piloting Robot Crimes Department (RCD) in charge ofintervening in robot crimes when they happen, and a squad of computer andneural uplink experts tasked with tracking the digital aspects of the crimes.The police come to the crime scene last, and no one really expects them to domuch.

Shinichiand Ran were in training for the RCD together until the day Shinichi ran off atthe amusement park. Being a child in this setting presents differentchallenges. Technically, he still has access to neural uplink technology, butit hasn’t been tested on children of his physical age, and he generallyexperiences adverse physical symptoms (exhaustion, dizziness, pain) if he usesit for an extended period of time. Additionally, he still has difficultygetting most people to take them seriously.

Exceptfor the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, which is underfunded, floundering,and will at this point take help from anyone, including a small, bored geniuswho is definitely not a normal child. Thus begins Shinichi’s apprenticeship inold-fashioned crime solving. Or, at least, somewhat old-fashioned crimesolving, since the crimes are still being committed using robots.

TheTokyo Metropolitan Police Department is staffed by canon’s Division 1 and a fewother canon cops. Their personalities are also similar, although the fact thattheir skills and contributions are constantly disrespected by the RCD has madeall of them a little bit pricklier, in particular Satou and Megure. Kuroda andMatsumoto are both members of the RCD. Naeko Miike and Yumi Miyamoto both workon the technology support division associated with the RCD.

Ranis an RCD trainee who specializes in karate. Since I am adapting, I am makingthe rules, and Ran knows. She finds out early on, during the adaptation of oneof the canonical suspicion arcs, and the tension in their relationship switchesfrom the canonical reasons to tension over the fact that the two of them wereclose to possibly moving forward into some sort of romance when Shinichi gothimself de-aged, and now things are back to being awkward and unspoken.

Ratherthan being a veteran police officer, Kogoro is an ex-member of the RCD who usedto work closely with Megure. His abrupt departure signaled a downturn in howthe MPD was treated by the RCD and Megure has never really forgiven him.

Mostof Ran and Shinichi’s classmates aren’t named characters, but Hakuba Saguru is attendinganother RCD training program in Ekoda. Hondou Eisuke will eventually transfer in.

Sonokowent to middle school with Ran, but currently attends a prestigious high schoolalong with Kuroba Kaito. She meets up with Ran after school and on weekends.

TheDetective Boys are students at Conan’s school who also start hanging out aroundthe MPD.

Haibarais basically the same as canon, but she also knows a fair amount about neuraluplinks and can provide computer support when necessary.

Agasais responsible for building several different custom mecha for Shinichi, all ofthem tailored to different situations that he might encounter as Conan during acrime.

HattoriHeiji is training for the Osaka equivalent of the RCD.

TheBlack Organization… Honestly, I don’t feel like I have to make a lot of changesthere. We don’t really know what they want in canon, other than to do crimes,and in this setting, they would still want to do crimes, just using differentmethods. Some of their tech would probably be different – like, Gin wouldprobably be a really great pilot with a custom gunner unit instead of a sniper,and Vermouth would use things like holographic masks in her disguises– butthey would basically be the same characters.

WhatI would really want to change is, starting a little bit before Eisuke’s introductionin the timeline, I would wrap up whatever season the show was on, give the nextseason a nifty subtitle, and do everything from the Clash of Red and Black tothe Scarlet Arc primarily from the perspective of the FBI. Imagine Raiha Passwith mechs instead of cars. Imagine the Scarlet Arc version of Raiha pass withmechs instead of cars! It would be a really good way to further establish theworldbuilding by showing the FBI characters, who are older and have moreexperience with using robots as weapons. As the season(s) progressed, thisfocus would expand to Masumi and Amuro as well, further expanding the audience’sview beyond Conan’s limited perspective. It would also be a way to move theplot forward at a bit of a faster clip.

Akaiis the ace pilot (naturally), but Jodie pilots too and Camel’s better atmaneuvering (while Akai’s better overall in a fight). Hidemi’s a decent pilotbut a better infiltrator. Amuro is also an ace pilot because he’s Amuro.Masumi probably joins the RCD training program.

Someof the really notable cases from that period of time that have no connection tothe FBI characters could also be included as OVAs. (If I could get the budgetfor KID OVAs featuring him stealing stuff with his dad’s decade-old custom mech,I’d do it.)

Afterthose seasons focused on the FBI/the general spy shenanigans end, the perspective can return to Conan, (probably with a newsubtitle after the title) and show the effect of the accelerating plot on him,his allies, and the city in general. Depending on when I hypotheticallyreceived this money and what Gosho’s plans are, this arc might carry us up tothe end of the series, or I might get to write my own ending.

Pleasenote that if I get to write my own ending for this kind of DC adaptation, itwill involve Shinichi fighting half of an epic robot battle over a piece ofdefining evidence as Conan, doing himself permanent injury, and then getting atemporary antidote just in time to make it out with the evidence while all ofhis more-skilled friends cover his retreat. The last episode would be about everyone’s lives afterward and would be decidedly bittersweet.

Asmuch as I’d love a Real War, Gundam-style series with Conan characters in it,it wouldn’t be anything like an adaptation. This at least preserves the mysteryelements while adding mecha elements. In practice, it’s probably more similarto Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex than anything. But I still like theconcept.

(drabblesmay eventually happen in this ‘verse)

#mirrorfalls #detective conan #detective conan spoilers #mecha #not-fic #long post #makin' it mecha

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feynites · 7 years

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Tagging @selenelavellan for more Concert AU shenanigans!

NSFW again! <3

Deceit’s grandmother ends up visiting for about a week.

Fear gets home, and barely checks their text messages in time to avoid being surprised by Gran-Gran accosting them with hugs at the front door of the apartment. As it stands, they have some forewarning, and so they are ready for having their face pat and their person scrutinized, and the inevitable worried clucking over how ‘tired’ they look.

Near as Fear can tell, they have looked ‘too tired’ since highschool.

But Gran-Gran does not actually make that comment, this time. Instead she says they look ‘healthy’, which is a pleasant surprise. She still makes them sit down and eat half a mango cake, but that is not actually something Fear objects to. Des and Selene are home, and both look faintly mowed over; and Deceit is wearing an expression that says that the baby photo album came out.

Fear sighs, inwardly. That means their school photos were likely to be included. Eighth grade, when they tended to starch their shirts. And ninth grade, when they decided to use an eyebrow pencil to try and give themselves sideburns.

Their goth phase was not quite so embarrassing, all things considered.

“What are you and Nona fighting about?” Fear asks, while Gran-Gran sits with them in the kitchen, and nosily asks Selene about her cooking practices. Selene seems a little defensive, at first; just until she realizes that Gran-Gran’s not actually disapproving of anything. Then she relaxes, somewhat.

Gran-Gran sniffs.

“We don’t fight,” she claims, of course.

“Hypothetically,” Fear counters. “If you were to fight…”

The little old woman sighs, and then reaches over and pats the back of their hand.

“Hypothetically, Enfanim, that would be nothing for you to worry about,” she insists. “You worry enough. Now, where is Dirthamen? Is he still at work? Should we send someone to go and get him?”

“He should be home soon,” Fear assures her.

“Good. Don’t let that boy work himself silly, it’s not healthy,” Gran-Gran insists.

They fall into relatively pleasant silence for a moment, then. Until Deceit comes, and the conversation starts up again. By the time Dirthamen gets home, Gran-Gran’s energy is flagging; but as ever it seems to come rearing back up at the arrival of a person she likes, and she spends several solid minutes patting Dirthamen down, asking about his health and complimenting his new hair style, and telling him that he’s a good boy and she’s happy to see him.

She’s always very firm on those points, with Dirthamen. Fear thinks it must be good for him.

They give Gran-Gran their room for her stay. It’s the cleanest one, and contains the least amount of ‘contraband’. Des and Selene go back to their apartment for the night, so Fear climbs into bed with Deceit.

They love Gran-Gran. They really do. She’s a kind woman, exuberant, and it’s good to see her. She and Nona were always very welcoming to Fear. And to Deceit, too, for that matter; he doesn’t talk about it a lot, but Fear knows that his mother wasn’t the couple’s biological child. She worked for them, when she was a teenager, and then fell on hard times. Got sick, and the medical bills stacked up. Her own parents disowned her after she had Deceit. So Gran-Gran and Nona stepped in, and took her in, and treated her like their own. They helped raise Deceit – Harel – and became his legal guardians after she died. And when Fear’s own parents would lock them out of the house at night, Fear could go over to their house and they would always be welcomed in.

But that’s the thing, they suppose. Whenever they see Gran-Gran or Nona after it’s been a while, it drags them back. Makes them think about being a skinny fourteen-year-old, with bruises on their knees, overwhelmed by practically everything, it seemed, and living off of vending machine food and halves of Deceit’s lunches, bleeding through five pairs of jeans before Nona started stocking extra pads in their bathroom, and took Fear aside and told them to take as many as they needed. Shame and gratitude burning in their cheeks, like a fire lit on the hunger gnawing at their gut. Gran-Gran and Nona fed them, too, but Fear couldn’t always make it to their house. It depended on the day.

Climbing into bed with Deceit reminds them of the first time they did it. Back when their skin had always felt like it was trying to crawl off, and they’d been so nervous. Was their breath okay? What if they kicked him? What if they rolled over onto him? What if they were doing it wrong?

Deceit glances over at them, and without a word, snakes his arm around their shoulders, and pulls them to his chest.

Fear sighs.

“Cuddler,” they accuse.

“You’re warm,” he says. Which is a bold lie; Fear runs cold. They’re skinny and sharp and icy, their feet are almost always freezing compared to anybody else’s. But after a moment they just sigh, and rest their head against their oldest friend’s shoulder. Recollecting the fights they used to get into. Fear was not a kindly child, over-critical, paranoid, and anxious, prone to panic attacks and wild accusations, and Deceit was a chronic liar. He once spent a year trying to convince half the school that his father was a billionaire from Orlais. He would tell people his mother was still alive, and just ‘on business’. He spent a summer working as a counsellor at one of the seasonal camps just outside town, and when he got back, he told everyone he’d been abducted by aliens.

They’d both been so insufferable, no one else could stand them. It was how their friendship was born.

“What do you think Gran-Gran and Nona are fighting about?” Deceit asks them, quietly, after a minute.

Fear shrugs.

“Not sure. Possibly Nona started smoking again. Or Gran-Gran is trying to get her to sell the market stand again. Or they might just have gotten bored.”

They feel Deceit frown, more than they see it.

“I hope Nona didn’t start smoking again,” he mutters.

“So do I,” they admit.

They fall into silence. Fear waits until Deceit’s breathing has started to even out before they roll away a bit, putting enough distance between them so that they can fall asleep, too; lulled by the rhythm of Deceit’s breaths, but not distracted so much by the press of skin against skin.

They wake up the next morning with their head wedged between six pillows, and two extra blankets thrown over them. Deceit is already up, it seems. Fear blinks, and stares at the clock. Six am, but Gran-Gran’s an early riser, and they can smell something delicious frying in the kitchen.

Fear sits up, and feels a moment of earl-morning disorientation. Their skin feels too-heavy on their own muscles. Everything a little bit askew, warmed from sleep, but itching unpleasantly, too. Old bruises ache a bit. They have to take a moment to look around the room, and remind themselves that this is a space they belong in. That the nebulous, purposeless apprehension suddenly fishing through their mind, looking for something to drag them over the coals about, is unfounded.

You slept in.

You didn’t check on Gran-Gran in the night.

You didn’t go to that meeting yourself.

You didn’t properly check in with Des about his doctor’s appointment.

You barely spoke to Selene last night.

You didn’t text Nona to tell her where Gran-Gran is and see how she’s doing.

Worthless, worthless, empty sack of bones…

Fear pushes it aside. Not helpful, not true, they remind themselves. It’s not always something they believe, but they murmur it aloud, in turn, and that makes it stick a little more. They feel… no. He. He’ll be a ‘he’ today, he thinks. He feels rested, at least. And after a few more minutes, the unease abates, and his heart stops trying to claw its way out through his throat. He gets up. Makes the bed. Heads into the bathroom, to comb his hair, and brush his teeth, and contemplates a shower, before deciding against it. Fear triple-checks his breath, and decides some eyeliner is order.

Maybe a little lipstick, too. He feels better when the scar on his bottom lip is completely invisible.

No reason for it to feel better. He just does.

He finishes getting dressed before he emerges into the kitchen. Last up for a change, it seems. Deceit is in his striped shorts and black raven shirt, polishing off a plate of eggs. Dirthamen in his robe, sitting beside him, and he and Gran-Gran both look over as Fear approaches.

“Masculine pronouns today, if you please,” Fear requests, checking the stove, before sliding onto one of the barstools.

Dirthamen nods, and so does Gran-Gran.

“Neutral for me,” Deceit requests.

Ah.

They’ve been reverted to the highschool standard, then.

Fear checks his phone, while Gran-Gran plates up too much food for him, and then settles into the seat beside him. He leans over and kisses her cheek.

“You did not have to go to the trouble,” he says.

She waves him off.

“I like to,” she insists. “Harel helped with the chopping, so don’t fret. They found me a good stool, too.”

Fear glances over, and confirms it to be the one from the hall closet – purchased specifically for these sorts of occasions – before nodding, and tucking in. Nothing calamitous seems to have happened overnight, at least. He fires off a pair of ‘good morning’ texts to Selene and Des, and mentally reviews the day’s plans. Ignores the voice that tells him he’s probably just going to make a disaster out of all of them, and that he should stuff himself into a closet somewhere and just sit in the dark until the day is done.

Someone would just come and get him, anyway. And then worry. And besides, the compulsion isn’t all that strong.

“You look tense,” Dirthamen informs him.

Deceit shakes their head a little, though, and he immediately changes the subject; and Fear is glad, because they are not good at explaining these things. Not even to Dirthamen, who understands better than Deceit does, sometimes.

Dirthamen is a good person. Better than many. Better than most.

And you cannot even figure out how to keep his wretched brother from ruining his life.

He should probably take his medication today, he supposes. His prescription is on an as-needed basis, which can get a little tricky because, in addition to numerous other factors, his paranoia likes to insist that he’s medicating himself too much and that his drugs have been tampered with. Even when he knows better.

Halfway through breakfast he gets too nauseated to keep eating, though, and he knows that’s a sign. He excuses himself, heading back into the bathroom, and when he gets back, Gran-Gran only asks if he’s finished and if he would like her to keep the leftovers. Fear gratefully asks her to, checks the time, and then sets out. He has a meeting with their accountant today. Their official accountant, anyway. Fear and Dirthamen both keep track of the financials themselves. Too many stories about successful musicians who lost every cent they ever made are cluttered in both of their minds; and the money they make from their music exists independent of Dirthamen’s family.

Dirthamen catches him before he leaves, though.

“I transferred some funds to my brother the day before yesterday,” he admits.

Fear purses his lips.

Dirthamen’s funds are his own. They all have their own money. Much of it gets withdrawn in thirds automatically to pay their various expenses, but they all have checking accounts and saving accounts. Fear keeps track of them, though. At the end every month, Dirthamen’s personal accounts hemorrhage funds – usually because his father has started getting Falon’Din’s bills, and subsequently started roaring about how he’s not paying for this or that or anything else, and Falon’Din gets cut off and goes and bullies his brother into making up the difference.

“You should not give him money,” Fear says. He always says that.

Dirthamen lets out a breath.

“It is my money to give,” he says, which is also what he always says.

Fear’s on edge, though, and it’s a bad time for this. He levels a finger at Dirthamen’s chest.

“You need to start thinking ahead more,” he tells him. “I know you love your brother. But he is not the only person who needs you. Who might depend on you. One day we might all get into terrible trouble. What will you do if you have given everything to Falon’Din, then, and have nothing left to help the rest of us?”

Dirthamen’s brows furrow.

Fear regrets his sharpness, almost immediately. That’s not fair, he knows. It isn’t even a very good argument. Dirthamen should stop giving into his brother’s demands for his own sake; not for the sake of Fear’s dark anticipations. Whether they are reasonable or not. On days like these, it is hard for Fear to tell what is pragmatism and what is paranoia.

“Apologies,” he murmurs, immediately.

“I…” Dirthamen begins, and then hesitates. Fear reaches over, and clasps his shoulder.

“No. I apologize, that was unfair,” he insists. “I dislike you giving him money. He doesn’t deserve it. I will barely concede that he deserves oxygen, and even then, mostly just because you’re attached to him. But you are right; it is your money, and if you think he deserves it, then that is all that needs to be said.”

Dirthamen manages a hesitant nod.

“I know you dislike it,” he confirms. “I would not give him more than I thought I could spare. Even accounting for emergencies.”

“Good,” Fear agrees, and leaves it at that.

He will have to be careful, he thinks, in getting through the day. Avoid major decisions, and be as mindful as he can manage. And make sure his boundaries are respected. No going to the coffee shop on third street, he thinks. They make good lattes but the barista there is very chatty, and tends to take opportunities to touch him without his permission.

He takes the stairs down and out of the building, and sets off, banishing old memories that surface like sunken wrecks from the back of his mind. Ghost ships.

By midday, though, his mind is much less cluttered, and his steps are lighter. He handles his business e-mails, gets through his meetings, works on some compositions and updates the band’s website, and their twitter feed. He gets a few texts from Gran-Gran, which are about dinner plans and advice for spots to visit in the city; and he gets a few sexts from Des, and some questions from Selene, who wants to know what kind of food Gran-Gran likes and if she’s allergic to anything.

Gran-Gran is partial to a lot of baked goods.

Fear opts not to mention that.

He doesn’t intend to, but he ends up getting back home later than he planned. Traffic is a mess. There’s an accident on his usual route, and a train crossing through his detour. He listens to some of the band’s latest practice sessions, scrutinizing them beneath the rumble of the passing train. He taps the steering wheel with both of his index fingers. Restlessness is a common side-effect of his medications, but it’s also something that’s apt to come over him during the evenings.

He manages to school himself into a semblance of calm and collectedness by the time he gets home, however.

The apartment smells like Selene’s cooking. Some Dalish spices, that she never seems to use in over-abundance, but that always have very particular fragrances. Fear is ashamed at the momentary relief he feels; scents have a way of drawing the mind back to certain times and places, and he doesn’t think today would be a good day to be jolted back to highschool by the scent of Gran-Gran’s cooking.

Tomorrow, maybe, will be better.

He doesn’t begrudge himself the happiness he feels when he walks into the apartment and finds everyone there, though. Whole and well, with Gran-Gran in the sitting room, and Dirthamen cleaning up something for Selene while she moves around the stove, and Deceit working intently on something with their laptop.

Gran-Gran gets up to give him his ‘welcome home’ hug, and Des moves in after she does, grinning slyly as he claims a hug, too.

“Babycakes!” Des greets.

“Hi, Fear!” Selene calls. Dirthamen turns and smiles at him. and Deceit offers a vague wave, not taking their eyes off of their laptop.

Fear pats the back of Des’ shoulder, and then peels him off.

“There. Now shoo,” he instructs.

“You see?” Des says, gesturing towards him. “I told you. So cruel with my affections!”

Gran-Gran pats Des on the arm.

“He let you touch him. He probably loves you,” she opines, which Fear supposes is true enough.

“A man can dream,” Des permits, with excessive dramatics. Fear actually manages to get his coat off, at least, and he’s surprised to find that he’s less impatient with Des’ over-enthusiasm than usual. He still makes his way over to Deceit, though, and promptly commandeers the square of couch beside them; wordlessly invoking their long-standing agreement where Deceit will sometimes act as a barricade between Fear and everything else.

When Des sidles over, Deceit dutifully sighs, and puts away the laptop - they’re playing a game, Fear notes – and captures Des against his side, opposite Fear.

“It’s Fear’s personal space time, Des,” Deceit declares.

“Whoever invented the concept of personal space should be shot,” Des grumbles. But he doesn’t actually make a point of trying to get to Fear after that, either. There are plenty of other people to cuddle with instead, and Des makes full use of the opening Deceit has given him, and sprawls across his lap like a bored cat asking for attention.

Des is entirely the sort of person who needs four lovers, Fear thinks, if only to give him the sheer amount of affection he seems to need.

Eventually Deceit’s attention starts to turn a little romantic. One of their hands slips up under Des’ shirt, and they press some kisses to his forehead, and then once to his lips. But Gran-Gran, though never condemning of such things, is still Deceit’s grandmother, and grandparents tend to be a major deterrent towards feeling up one’s lovers. When Des’ own touch starts fumbling with Deceit’s belt, Deceit halts him.

It’s a herald of things to come, in the end.

The second night of Gran-Gran’s visit winds up filled with more stories. Fear excuses himself from it fairly early in, and retreats to his room and his computer. The night ends with Gran-Gran in his bed, and Des and Selene going home, and Fear sleeping with Dirthamen instead of Deceit, in order to try and avoid dragging himself back in time again.

Sex isn’t really on the table for most of them, for a variety of reasons. And it stays that way for most of the week.

The third night of Gran-Gran’s visit, Deceit and Des take her out on the town, and Dirthamen ends up having to attend a dinner function with his mother, and so Fear and Selene end up spending most of that time making him text them every fifteen minutes, and worrying. They put in a movie to distract them. It is not a very successful method of distraction, but eventually everyone gets home, again. Selene and Des stay over that night. Crowded into Dirthamen’s bed, too quiet to be fooling around very much.

Work and Gran-Gran eat up most of the rest of the week. And it is, barring some bumps at the start, a good week. Fear and Deceit fail to uncover the reason for Gran-Gran and Nona’s fight. But seven days in, there is a phone call, and Gran-Gran goes and takes it out on the balcony. And when she comes back inside she seems satisfied about something. She leaves in as much of a whirlwind as she arrived in, though she makes Selene and Des both promise to come and visit in Rivain when they can, and to meet Nona, who is apparently green with envy that Gran-Gran got to meet them first.

Her flight departs in the late afternoon.

Fear gets back from dropping her off at the airport. He gets inside, and veritably sags into his usual chair. The apartment feels normal again. All pleasantness of seeing Gran-Gran again aside, he appreciates that. There are unspoken rules to the division of space in the apartment that are inherently understood by the five of them. Gran-Gran, through no fault of her own, had upset that equilibrium. Fear is glad to have it restored.

And there are other benefits to not having a beloved, elderly relative sleeping in his room, too.

Benefits that become clear once the five of them are alone together in the apartment for the first time in a week.

Des – instigator that he is – seizes upon the opportunity at once.

“I want to be the filling in a sandwich,” he declares.

Selene makes a pained sound, and her unruly associate levels a finger at her.

“Selene wants to be the filling in a sandwich too,” he insists.

“Des!” Selene objects.

She also, conspicuously, doesn’t deny it, as Des just looks at her in that unrepentant ‘well you do’ manner, and causes her to drop her face into her hands.

“Do I have the energy to be the bun in two different sandwiches?” Deceit asks the ceiling, from where they’re slumped across the arm of the sofa. They narrow their eyes, intently contemplative, and then nod to themselves. “I don’t know for certain. But I know I have the energy to try.”

Dirthamen raises a hand.

“I do not think I could manage more than one sandwich,” he admits. “Provided we are using ‘sandwich’ as a euphemism for three-way intercourse.”

“We are,” Des confirms.

Dirthamen nods, and then after another, internally contemplative moment, four sets of eyes turn questioningly towards Fear.

…Ah.

He considers the matter himself. But the prospect doesn’t seem unpleasant. Maybe even welcome, in fact. Contact could help with reaffirming their bonds, and he is confident that the encounter will end if and when he needs it to.

“I can be a bun,” he permits.

“Dibs!” Des shouts, sitting bolt upright from where he’d been lounging against Selene in a shocking hurry. “Dibs, dibs, dibs!”

Selene looks at Fear.

Fear inclines his head.

“Alright, alright, you get Fear,” she allows. “Stop yelling ‘dibs’, he’s not a pudding cup.”

“He can be my pudding cup anytime,” Des declares.

There’s a pause.

“…That sounded much filthier than I expected,” Des concludes. He seems pleased about it.

“I am rethinking this idea,” Fear announces, which at least puts an end to the terrible jokes. He isn’t really, though. Or at least, not sincerely. After a moment he gets up to go and fetch everything they require. Condoms, lubricant, and a few other items which may or may not be needed. He asks Selene if she wants her strap-on, but she answers in the negative. He considers taking his own out of the box in the bottom of the closet, but then gives it some more thought, and leaves it be.

“Who is going first?” he asks.

“Des,” Selene immediately declares. “It’s his idea. If Deceit gets too tired to keep going, I’m pretty sure I’ll be less broken up about it.”

Dirthamen nods in sage agreement, while Des looks momentarily conflicted. But then Fear deposits their supplies onto the living room coffee table, and he seems to get over whatever internal debate he was having in favour of stripping out of his clothes.

Fear and Deceit follow suit.

“Ground rules,” Fear announces, handing Des a packet of condoms. “Frottage is acceptable. If you want to penetrate me, you will help prepare me, and it will be anal penetration only. I know you know what you are doing there, so I will not give you my usual lectures on the subject, or warnings about what will happen if you violate my consent in this regard and try to penetrate me anywhere else.”

Des blinks, and Fear looks him in the eye.

“I trust you not to injure me,” he admits.

Des brows furrow, just a little.

“I won’t,” he agrees, with a surprising lack of his usual slyness or innuendo. Fear nods, and then nudges him towards Deceit. The two of them start getting into things, and for a while, it’s not that different from their usual scenario. Dirthamen and Selene stay to watch, hands roaming slowly and gently over one another, as Deceit pulls Des into their lap, and starts stroking him.

Fear watches for a few minutes, before sliding a lubricated condom onto his fingers. He passes the packet over to Deceit, and take up a position in front of Des.

“So,” he says. “In or out?”

Des laughs, just a little breathlessly. His cheeks are flushed, and there is a definite gleam in his eye.

“You choose,” he decides. “I’ll enjoy it either way.”

Fear inclines his head, and after a moment more of contemplation, makes sure the lubricant is close at hand. Then he spreads his legs, and starts working the already-slicked condom down and down, between his cheeks. Des’ breath catches, and his cock twitches; and Deceit watches them both, before moving back a bit, to start opening Des up in turn.

It always feels odd, to begin something like this, Fear thinks. Sliding his fingers into himself is not precisely sexy. He doesn’t get a whole lot of sensation, in fact; when he does it right, the goal is more to make sure he is relaxed and liable to stay that way, stretching the muscles open, keeping everything as loose and slick as possible. Anal tearing is not good. Any part of the body which, by necessity of its designed function, comes into contact with fecal matter, is not a good place to injure. And these are not terribly sexy thoughts; though Fear thinks they are important ones, because a few minutes of passion isn’t really worth the subsequent agony that might come from forgetting.

But then Des slides a condom onto his own digits, and starts to help. And that makes it a little better. Des has very pretty eyelashes. Very nice hair. He runs hot, like Selene, and his gaze is intent, and his touch is careful. The feel of someone else’s fingers running over such delicate, sensitive areas is both perilous and stimulating. Fear knows he can’t handle it all the time. But… he actually does trust Des. He trusts him with Dirthamen and Deceit, and that is only the smallest step removed from trusting him completely, and Fear would worry more about him making comments about this for ages after the fact, than doing it wrong and putting Fear in the hospital.

And he knows how to angle his touch, to stimulate Fear from the inside. He has access to a better angle for it, too.

As Deceit works him over from behind, though, Des’ touch falters a little. His breaths turn ragged, and his hips shift more, and he gets a little less coordinated. A little more wanton. It’s a good look on him, though. Fear tilts his face closer, and kisses his forehead, and takes over again for a bit. Slow and steady. Deceit knows the right pace to set, and does a good job holding off, even as their cock starts to look painfully hard. Des’ too, for that matter. Fear guides Des’ hand to his own arousal, pushing more lube towards him. More is always better, in that regard.

“Touch yourself,” Fear instructs.

Des grins, just a little.

“Always so bossy,” he says.

Fear kisses his cheek, pressing close enough to whisper in his ear.

“Yes. Because I am in charge, here.”

Des shivers.

Deceit just hums in agreement, and starts to push their way into Des.

Synchronicity is important in this kind of activity. So is positioning. Des wants to be a sandwich, so, the three of them end up shifting around quite a bit, before getting everyone lined up. Luckily, Deceit is strong, and Fear is stronger; and Des is very fit. But it quickly becomes apparent that the best idea is for Fear to lie on his stomach, and Des to go behind him, and Deceit to go behind Des.

It’s a little more stressful, Fear finds, when he can’t see Des pushing into him. He takes a few deep breaths, focusing on the odd, heavy stretch, and the breaths brushing the backs of his ears. And he reaches back, and presses a hand to Des’ thigh, as Des kisses the tip of one of his ears.

“You feel so good,” Des tells him.

His hips rock, and then stutter, as Deceit enters him again in turn.

They keep going slow. It sounds like it’s driving Des a little insane, but in a way he enjoys. Fear takes deep breaths, that gradually turn more and more ragged. He gently cants his hips backwards, before long, as his perineum starts to respond pleasantly to the stimulus of Des’ thrusting. Once the warmth and pleasant slide has begun to settle into an easy rhythm, Fear slips a hand down between himself and the floor, and starts circling his clit, too. His vaginal muscles spasm, but with nothing inside, the sensation isn’t painful. Not like it would be with even a finger in there. Fear discovered the full scope of his vaginismus the hard way.

Des thrusts into him a little more firmly, at the same time Deceit does the same to him in turn, and Fear feels their shoulder drag across the carpet. He moves his hand away from Des’ leg in favour of propping himself up a little better. That’s probably going to leave some rug burn. But overall, the sensations are pleasant enough that he isn’t perturbed about it. He keeps on touching himself, imagining the picture Des and Deceit must make behind him. One he’s seen the likes of many times by now. It works more effectively on him than even the feel of Des’ thrusts, and before long, he comes, clenching down a little and wringing a gasp from the elf inside of him.

Deceit goes next. And when Des follows suit, he presses flush to Fear’s back; and Deceit obligingly clings to Des, in turn, and Fear just sighs, squished to the floor by the weight of two warm bodies. Des presses a lazy, sloppy kiss to his shoulder, and murmurs something completely unintelligible; squirming a little, still inside of Fear.

For a few minutes, Fear lets that stand.

Then he starts to sit up again, nudging Des off of his back. The man has gone limp. But Deceit helps shift him, and lets Fear up. Fear checks himself over. Rug burn, certainly, and his ass is a little sore. But not to a concerning degree. It was probably the weight of having two bodies pressing into him, aided by gravity, than anything else. He grabs up some wet wipes, and starts cleaning up before they can make a complete mess of the carpet. Handling Des, too, as Deceit draws in a few deep breaths, and then glances over to where Dirthamen and Selene are touching one another. Watching the three of them, still.

Selene’s face is dark, and her lips are slightly parted; and Dirthamen’s hand is thoroughly buried in her pants.

Fear is not at all surprised when Deceit grabs up the box of condoms again. He tosses some of the sanitary wipes at them, too.

“Clean up properly before you start again,” Fear insists.

Deceit just nods, and duly sets about that task, while Des lounges into Fear’s lap with increasing bonelessness.

“You’re okay?” Des asks him, after a minute.

Fear looks down, and resumes cleaning him up.

“Yes,” he confirms. “You did well.”

Des smiles. Fear imagines he’ll be insufferable about this for months, but he anticipated that going into this. The only two real possibilities were that Des would do well, and therefore be smug, or that he would do poorly, and Fear would end up in the emergency room, and their relationship and Fear’s assessment of it would require some serious review.

This is the good ending.

Fear lets Des cuddle his waist, and sprawl out, and even ventures a few fingers into the strands of his hair.

Meanwhile, Deceit busily sets themselves to the task of helping Selene and Dirthamen to finish undressing. The three of them decide to use the couch to their advantage. Prudent, Fear thinks. He will have to keep that in mind for next time. Selene bends over, as Dirthamen and Deceit prepare her. Fear keeps an eye on her face for signs of discomfort, and after a moment, realizes that Des is doing the same. But their lovers know what they’re doing. Dirthamen’s hands are gentle at her rear, and Deceit pulls back a little to engage in their usual practice of kissing and cuddling, caressing her cheeks and letting their hands wander to her breasts, before the three of them shift their positions around; and Selene settles slowly into Dirthamen’s lap, taking him into her rear by gradual increments.

Deceit takes up position in front of them, and uses their mouth on her, at first. Stimulating her while she adjusts to having Dirthamen inside of her, and Dirthamen, in turn, kisses the back of her neck, and wraps his arms around her. Murmuring things which Fear can’t quite make out.

Des starts touching himself again, as he watches them. His grip firm on his bare flesh, as Deceit checks their condom, and then moves upwards to start pressing into Selene, in turn. Selene gasps as she is filled from both ends; but the position on the couch doesn’t allow for a great deal of freedom of movement. Dirthamen cannot shift around very much, and Deceit has to prop their hands on the backrest. So Selene is pressed between them, the three of them shifting their hips in small increments, as Deceit’s recent activities keep them from mustering up their usual athleticism.

It is very pleasant to look at, though. Selene’s legs wrap around Deceit’s waist, and Dirthamen buries his nose behind her ear, and all three of them let out the occasional breathless, low moan when their movements start to align better, and Dirthamen slouches a little on the couch and shifts the angle, rolling his hips as best he can.

They are at it for a surprisingly long while.

Des strokes himself, and nuzzles his face against Fear’s stomach, and watches with half-lidded eyes.

The highlight, Fear thinks, is when Deceit starts to recover a little more of their usual verve, and begins lifting Selene’s hips up. Dirthamen starts helping with that, and between the two of them, they manage to move her up off Dirthamen’s cock when Deceit thrusts into her, and then back down onto it while Deceit pulls out. Selene starts making some very loud noises, at that point. Her hands searching for purchase, moving from the armrest next to her, to Deceit’s shoulders, to Dirthamen’s thighs. The muscles of her legs start to tremble, and Deceit starts calling her name, and Dirthamen begins to murmur his own pleas.

Des starts stroking himself more intently. Fear reaches down after a moment, though, and stalls his grip.

“Wait,” he advises.

Des licks his lips.

“What for?”

Fear runs his thumb over the back of Des’ hand, and the other man shivers, a little.

“Come when Selene does,” he advises. “Imagine you can feel what she feels.”

The idea seems to go over well. Des glances back towards the trio, and dutifully slows his strokes – just a bit. Toying with himself, trying to build up his arousal, without crossing the line. So that he can crest over it when Selene does. It’s nearly perfect, in the end. Selene stiffens, and cries out in a familiar way; and a moment later, Fear brushes a hand down Des’ chest, and Des pumps himself, and comes onto his stomach.

Fear gives him a moment more in his lap, before he goes and gets more wipes.

He keeps one eye on the continued activities of the others, though, so that he can see when Deceit and Dirthamen follow Selene’s example. Dirthamen takes the longest; but Selene grinds down intently against him, and whispers something in his ear, and he comes with a soft oath.

Fear contemplates the messiness of them all.

He’s probably going to have to help Deceit shower, if the state of them is any indication.

But it was… pleasant, he decides. Worth it. His own skin is tingling, and this will provide the fodder for many evenings where the only touch he is comfortable with is his own. He nods to himself in satisfaction, and then sets about helping with the final rounds of cleanup, and making sure no one injured anything unawares.

He sleeps in his own bed that night, and he sleeps very well.

It’s about a month after Gran-Gran’s visit, and Fear is feeling more safely neutral and less reflective over many things again, when Des approaches them about the matter of his and Selene’s lease.

Fear hates Selene and Des’ apartment. This is not a secret. The building defies numerous health and safety code violations. It will not hold up well to earthquakes, the basement frequently floods – which contributes to severe mold problems – Fear is concerned about issues such as asbestos and lead paint, there is no air conditioning, the heating is terrible, security is a joke, and the wallpaper is eye-searing to behold. Fear would not feel entirely comfortable letting wild animals nest in that place; they absolutely object to Des and Selene living there.

But it is not their decision to make.

Even if the amount of money the two are paying for the privilege of ‘nearly dying from black mold spores’ is obscene.

Fear contemplates the matter carefully, after Des has left. They review the lease, and give further considerations to their plan for finding a suitable new home for all five of them. Deceit and Dirthamen have never been terribly particular about where they all live, just so long as it’s within relative driving distance of the studio, and isn’t next door to Dirthamen’s family (which Fear would object to themselves anyway). Dirthamen is, frankly, the kind of person who could survive in a Harry Potter-esque ‘cupboard-under-the-stairs’ situation if needed. Deceit, though more prone to enjoying certain luxuries and complaining about their absence, is very bad at the procurement end of things. ‘Get some place nice, Fear’ is the usual extent of his involvement on that end.

And Fear will get someplace ‘nice’, of course, because they are not letting them all live in squalor and danger, barely shielded from the elements. Fear did that for eighteen years. It was unpleasant.

They start looking for brightly-lit neighbourhoods, with reputable school districts, that would not demand heinous commutes of either Des or the band. They do a careful assessment of the financials involved, but also of the psychology involved. Selene is reluctant to move in with them. Reluctance is common of Selene. Fear understands caution, though they don’t always understand why she prefers some risks to others.

Manipulation is inferior to open communication.

Fear considers it anyway. They could easily file a report and actually push to get Selene and Des’ building inspected, and shut down for its violations. It would then only be reasonable to have Selene and Des stay with them while they looked for a new place. Or waited for their old building to come back up to code. That would make it much easier, Fear thinks, to convince Selene to make the move permanent. But… it would also be dishonest, and it would endanger the other occupants of the building, who live there mostly because they cannot afford to live anywhere else. Fear would not be able to find sufficient room and board for all of them.

They put the idea aside.

But they keep looking for houses.

The problem, they soon discover, is that most residences in neighbourhoods that are acceptable, have yards. None of them are the ‘yard work’ type, and hired help could pose a security risk. Fear supposes that they could repurpose some of the yards into low-maintenance rock gardens, or something along those lines, but that would depreciate the value of the property. They do not wish to pay for a yard they will only end up tearing out.

But most of the townhomes are insufficiently secured, and not big enough anyway. Fear is aware that most of them, should they live together, will end up sharing beds the majority of evenings. But everyone should have their own room and space, should they need it, as well. Retreats are mandatory. Des might complain, but he will not actually be deprived of affection or bed partners just because it isn’t a requirement of limited space – Fear hopes he learns this better as things go on.

They expand their searches to apartments, but most of the ones which meet all of their requirements are expensive enough to actually press their finances past the point of comfort. That makes them ‘high risk’, Fear thinks, because if they actually run into trouble, Dirthamen might do something stupid like go to his family.

Finally, though, their search turns up a good candidate. A two-story house with a finished basement, in a quiet neighbourhood. High, sturdy stone fencing, but very little in the way of yard; there are a few ornamental trees in front, but most of the landscaping has been taken over by a large garage, which could easily be repurposed as an at-home studio. Six bedrooms, three and a half baths… the kitchen is dated, but that is easy enough to rectify, and most of the failures are cosmetic.

It is well within budget, too.

Fear goes to inspect the property by themselves, for the first time. There is a security system installed, but it needs upgrading. There is no basement door, which is good, and the windows are too narrow for most grown burglars to fit through, even if they were broken or left open. Some of the windows on the second story are a little too large, but only in a way that makes Fear nebulously uncomfortable. The main window in their apartment’s sitting room does that sometimes, too. The building will require many modifications and a professional inspection, but Fear does a thorough tour before deciding that it may be suitable.

For the second visit, they bring Selene.

Convincing her to come is easy. Fear says “would you mind running an errand with me?” and Selene says “sure”, and then gets distracted talking about her part-time work up until the point where they are pulling into the driveway, with the real estate agent already waiting for them.

Selene blinks.

“Where are we?” she asks.

“A property,” Fear informs her, which earns them a wry look, until they elaborate. “I have been looking into purchasing an investment home. The market in this area is promising, and it would be more economically sound than continuing to pay rent.” There is a benefit to the concept of rent, of course, but Fear honestly would prefer investing their pay into equity over monthly bills that essentially vanish in terms of their finances.

Selene looks suspicious. But then the real estate agent approaches them, and the presence of the unfamiliar vashoth woman has her biting back whatever comment she had been on the verge of making.

As they go through the house, in fact, Selene becomes more and more interested in the building, and what Fear intends to change about it, and what the real estate agent is saying. Her eye for numbers make it easy to get her onto the track of considering the financial information and projections which Fear quietly hands to her, as they go along, and she seems very interested in the fact that renovating certain rooms – like the kitchen, and one of the bathrooms – will allow Fear to essentially customize the space.

And she likes the trees.

“I think it’s a good house,” she declares, once they are through.

Fear inclines their head.

“Yes, it’s the most promising one so far,” they agree.

There is a moment of silence. Selene shifts in the passenger seat.

“It’ll be more expensive for the three of you, though,” she reasons.

“We can cover it,” Fear counters. “And it may be much more worthwhile, in the long term.”

Selene nods, and glances at them. And then she shifts around some more.

“Des and I are renewing our lease,” she declares.

“On your deathtrap?” Fear mutters, signalling their next turn. Selene gives them a reproachful look.

“It’s not a deathtrap,” she insists.

“I disagree.”

“Well, it’s not your call,” Selene counters. “It’s ours. And it’s not that… it’s just that… look, there are some things that are… it’s…”

Fear waits.

After a moment, Selene lets out a gusty breath.

“You don’t want to live with us,” Fear surmises.

“No!” Selene says. And then shakes her head. “Yes! I mean… it’s complicated. Please don’t ask me why. It’s not you guys, it’s just… at the very least, we shouldn’t be rushing into things, right? I mean. Big decisions, and all.”

Fear glances at her, and finds her look away from them. Out the window, and towards the road.

They sigh.

“If you want to continue paying for the privilege of your deathtrap, I will not interfere,” they say. “But I cannot think of a single good reason not to allocate one of the rooms in that house to you. You spend enough time with us that it’s only practical. I wouldn’t expect you to visit any less just because we moved, the house isn’t even much further from your current domicile than our apartment is. And I would feel better if you worked from somewhere that is not rampant with toxic spores, and actually has a suitable work surface, so I would consider it a personal favour if you spent a good deal of time there, even if you would rather put your money towards your lyrium-dealer-adjacent-‘loft’.”

Selene blinks at them, and stills.

“What?” she asks.

Fear is a little taken aback by the sharpness in her tone.

“I… only meant that I would not stop you from keeping the apartment, either way…” they offer.

“No, at the end,” Selene says. “What the hell makes you think there are lyrium dealers in our building?”

Fear blinks.

“The fact that there are?” they offer. “The green patterning on the edges of your kitchen tiles? That is typically caused by chemicals that are used to reduce lyrium potency, reacting with the grout. It sometimes shows up in medical or scientific research buildings, too, but somehow I doubt that your downstairs neighbours are just really enthusiastic about the local science fairs.”

Selene looks more intensely disquieted than Fear expected.

“I didn’t think the carta operated out of this city,” she says.

Fear considers her for a moment, before they have to focus on the road again.

“They do not. Or, not as far as I know. Mostly because the criminal activities in this city are under the purview of elven organized crime families. They are responsible for the majority of bribes in the city, meaning the police tend to arrest carta members on sight, but somehow never seem to notice the lyrium dens or meth labs located in alienages.”

Some of the sudden tensing of Selene’s shoulders relaxes.

But only a little.

“Is something wrong?” they ask, after a few minutes of awkward silence.

Selene lets out a breath, and shakes her head.

“I just… didn’t think something that would be so close,” she murmurs.

Fear nods in understanding.

“This is one of the reasons why I think your building is unsafe,” they point out. But not harshly. Selene isn’t naïve, they know. The world is often replete with nasty surprises that none of them, on their own, are wholly capable of anticipating.

The rest of the drive back is quiet, though.

Selene doesn’t bring up the subject of leases and houses again. Fear takes Dirthamen and Deceit and Des to see the new place. Des, predictably, thinks there are more rooms than they need, and doesn’t like all the things that Fear has already decided to change. Deceit is much the same, but also claims one of the bedrooms and starts poking through catalogues, expressing opinions on refrigerators and bathroom flooring. And Dirthamen simply deems it all ‘acceptable’.

Selene and Des start staying over at the apartment more.

There is a fight between them, Fear thinks. Or… possibly not a fight. But an intensely emotional discussion. They are not present for it, but they can detect signs of the aftermath. Des goes looking for affection and reassurance, and Selene veers off, becoming more detached, more hesitant. Trying to gain some distance, perhaps.

Fear can understand that.

She still helps them make dinner in the evening, and sits with them for while on the balcony afterwards.

They contemplate matters.

“When I was a child,” they begin. “My parents were intensely unpredictable people. Their demeanours tended to shift depending on the state of our finances. When I was younger, they were more generous. Affectionate. Forgiving. But when I was around ten, my father lost his job – and never managed to find a new one in the bottom of all the bottles he checked. There were windfalls, and things got better when there were. But that happened less and less often, the older I became. Deceit’s grandmothers let me stay over, a lot, which was good. When I was fourteen they offered to let me move in. But I declined.”

Selene looks over at them, and hugs her arms around herself a little tighter.

“I’m sorry,” she offers.

Fear shrugs.

“It wasn’t as bad as some,” they allow. “The point is, every year, Gran-Gran and Nona offered to just take me in. After a while, I could hardly even pretend that my parents would try and stop them. That wasn’t why I hesitated, anyway. I think I always had a predilection towards neurosis, but. Finances are a difficult thing for a child to predict. I would have had better luck if my parents’ mood swings depended on lunar cycles or star charts. Those, I could have learned. Not knowing if I would go home and find a warm welcome, decent food, and off-colour jokes, or a locked door with a passive-aggressive note on it, or shouting and fists, made obsessing over everything that might negatively impact my living situation perilously easy.”

Selene puts a hand on their arm. When they do not brush it off, she leans into them a little. Pleasantly warm. Fear shifts her grip down just enough to lace their fingers together.

“I was afraid that if I lived with Deceit, and his grandmothers, that… one day I would go home to them, and they would just start screaming at me. Or lock the door. Turn me away. And then what would I do?”

They go quiet. Letting the admission linger. Trying not to remember the first time they had come home from school to find the house dark, and all the doors sealed, and that note pinned to the front one. If you’re not going to come home on time, don’t bother coming home at all. They had tried so hard to never be late, after that. It had taken them two years to figure out that the pattern wasn’t determined by the time Fear got home, but rather, by whether or not their parents wanted to stay out all night.

They preferred locking Fear out to leaving the doors unsealed, and risking someone sneaking in and robbing them.

“It is alright, if you are afraid,” they venture at last, to Selene. “I understand.”

Selene turns her face in towards their shoulder.

She doesn’t really answer them. She just cries on them a while. That’s alright, too, though. Fear was planning to do laundry tomorrow anyway. Eventually it gets too cold to keep lingering poetically on balconies, though, and so they nudge Selene back inside. She hugs them, says something utterly unintelligible into their chest, and then goes to find Des.

The two of them stay the night.

Fear is unsure what they will decide. Or. Well. What Selene will decide.

They buy the house, regardless.

#filled prompt #concert au #band au #dirthalene #i did the last part after i read your latest #in a flurry of activity #citrus

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davantagedenuit · 7 years

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Black Thoughts

So, sometimes, I think thoughts and I will put them here in case they are entertaining, or may rouse thoughts in others, or happen to be cool, or kittens.

So, also, I watched Black Sails. (And Hannibal is still the flaming spear in my heart, please don’t you all worry.) I read meta about the historical setting and the characters’ deep thoughts and deep feels, and the GAYtude. And, in response to all this greatness, I decided I would have some arid narratology-centric thoughts. (They turn out to be cool, though.)

So. Question: Who is the narrator in Black Sails?

Ah. Not as easy as it seems, right?

I have two answers.

Answer 1: A part of me thinks this whole thing is in fact the story of Eleanor Guthrie trying to narrate the hypothetical story in which she is the only protagonist. (For simplicity and future reference: the narrator is someone who (1) produces the tale, while not necessarily being a character in it, (2) controls or influences, in some way, the events in them, (3) knows more than the characters of the story.) Eleanor wants this. She would like to have a say and the mechanics and the OCCASION to tell the tale. She would like to control SOME EVENTS about her life, SOME OF THE TIME. She also desperately, soul-eatingly would like to know more than the main protagonists of the Pirate Show AND she would like to know more than herself, possibly to tell herself, on at least SOME occasions, ‘This dude will screw you. All these dudes have always screwed you.’ But, she says it herself, there are “Too many fucking men on this island.”

Answer 2: If we want to focus on the Pirate Show rather than on the peripherical storylines, we need to go season by season. (And season 4 is special, because season 4 is war, and some characters think they are narrators, are self-aware narrators, and blood and slicing ensues.)

Season 1: Hal Gates. Yes. Take a moment to think about it. He is Flint’s Friend (the only one for a while that Flint calls by his first name, Silver does not get that, but Silver is special (aka he’s the friend who’s aware of the Friends of Flint Curse - but still WANTS the friendship)), he knows about some (all?) of Flint’s past, he does (preemptive - Billy’s FACE when Gates asks him to restrain Flint) damage control with the Richard Guthrie meeting at the very beginning, he removes his trust in Flint (because he knows more than Flint about what’s coming), he dies. - In short, Silver may have memorized one page of the book, Gates has read it, knows it by heart, made it a best-seller. (Did anyone, at any point, ship Flint/Gates? No, because Gates is, eh, not as aesthetically pleasant as someone else? But I go astray.)

Season 2: Miranda Barlow-Hamilton. This is subtle, and beautiful, and perfect, and by 2x02 I knew where it was going, but the Kiss Reveal was still fantastic in 2x05. Season 2 starts off with us thinking that Mrs. Barlow IS Flint’s origin story. It turns out that she is not (Thomas Hamilton is), but she is the narrator of it. This was, admittedly, foreshadowed by 1x04′s AWKWARDEST casually not-that-sexual sex scene (and for a moment, I swear, when I watched it, I thought I was watching some independent 80′s European film, and not Shiny New TV), later mirrored with Anne and Jack. She knows more than Flint about, well, so much everything, it’s a wonder he seems to know anything. She knows about what happened with Thomas, she knows about his feelings BETTER THAN HE DOES (because he’s all busy feeeeeeeling them), she knows about Abigail Ashe, she comes up with the Magic Peaceful Solution/Final Plotpoint that will turn to be her Tragic Violent Death. The Magic Peaceful Solution becomes the Tragic Violent Death when she realizes someone knew things that she didn’t know. (At which point ABIGAIL ASHE becomes ‘Acting Miranda’ because she writes all the good things in her journal.) -- During the first half of the season, she even seems to direct the flashbacks, casting them onto the viewer from her little house inland (aka heart of heart of Flint) like the witch she is supposed to be.

Then we get the Great Split of seasons 1-2 v. seasons 3-4. Flint loses his loves. Silver loses his leg. Given that Black Sails asks the ever-lasting Reform or Revolution question, seasons 1 and 2 are clear candidates for the reform-minded solution. (Recall Flint, in season one, walking in Eleanor’s office saying he would settle for “a friendly British governor and some universal pardons shenanigans”.) (Also flashforward to Mr Oglethorpe being described as the reform-minded man.) Seasons 3 and 4 are the revolution. Tempest, torture at maroon island, all for the cause and nothing but the cause, ”Madi, would I be enough for you?”, Long John Silver’s propaganda, culminating with the Berringer Terreur. (Another one of my crazy ideas is to try and fit Black Sails in the historiographic/quasi-mythical frame of the French Revolution. One more argument for this: the French revolution abolished the monarchy in favor of a (short-lived) constitutional democracy, which was followed by the Terror, then returned to an Emperor. Similarly, the seasons 3 and 4 are about Kings and Queens coexisting with some (short-lived) democratic pirate alliances.)

Which gives us:

Season 3: John Silver. YES. So. He is on his way to becoming Flint’s Friend, but not there yet. He still focuses on Speaking For the Men, with the downside being that speaking is now the only thing he can do. He is, and somewhat remains in season 4, the Official Oracle of what’s going on in Flint’s head. Season 3 is the story of him trying to get BETTER at his narrative. Early season 3 has him revealing to Flint how much more than him he knows (about the Urca gold) in order to assert his power as narrator. But he still knows, he realizes, relatively little about Flint himself and, unlike the other narrators, he does not already possess that knowledge but he WANTS IT. To acquire that knowledge and become full-blown narrator, he will have to, well, become so close to his character that they will become indistinguishable IN THE WOODS AT NIGHT AROUND A BOTTLE OF RUM AND A CACHE OF GEMS. He organizes the events, he produces the tale. But the tale has changed - it is not a story about a series of events any longer (Chronicles of a Revolution), but a story about a character (Tragic Idealist Biopic). At the point where it becomes obvious that this is not the story of the Pirate revolution of Nassau, but the story of Captain Flint (in the woods, with the rum and the cache), Silver stops being the narrator. He (PSEUDO) dies at the end of the season and his fate is left unknown. And, in the land of narratologic explosion that is season 4, he becomes the CHARACTER OF THE NARRATOR IN-STORY (aka Long). Come on. This is magnificient.

Season 4: Yep. Yep. My first thoughts about season 4 were that it was all over the place, that the writers were stuck trying to tie together the twelve millions storylines they had going, that everyone was changing side because The Plot demanded it. My later thoughts were that it became an artful study in fragmentation. The storylines that seemed peripherical at first became central (the Max/Anne/Jack trio fills in for the Miranda/Flint/Thomas trio, commerce (and reform) fills in for idealism). The cause exploded. The Island of Pirates has no leader and is locally managed by some, picking the pieces. So there are many narrator candidates. It can’t be Silver: he’s become the character of the narrator in-story (written in exactly this way by Billy Bones who KNOWS what Flint may not explicitly know - that the narrator is more powerful than the main protagonist, indeed that he is the only one with ANY POWER over the story). It can’t be Billy: he does have some knowledge, but it’s local and brief, and with Silver as a character of narrator, he’s got competition. (Billy is probably the postmodern salty writer who thinks he’s smart as all hell writing the writer in his own story. And turns out he’s not that smart.)

I wanted it to be Eleanor, but she’s at her most powerless, and cruelly self-aware. I wanted it to be Madi, and I think she IS the narrator of the Series of Events that hopefully leads to a revolution (but have at that point already begun to fail). But, concerning Flint’s story, the only one with the modicum of distance required to have both power over the events, more knowledge than the characters (through Weirdly Prophetic Insight) and who is not involved in the tale enough so that he’s able to tell it - is Israel Hands, CHRONICLER OF ALL-HAS-GONE-TO-HELL. He correctly identifies Silver as Long John Silver after his quasi-death. (Silver’s quasi-death, in the transformative narrative, being the threshold after which he is Long John Silver.) He sits right between him and Flint, and, big happy bear of a meta-narrative device that he is, keeps reminding Silver that the narrator is not the character, that John isn’t Long and vice versa. (He also reminds reminds Silver that Silver isn’t Flint, and Silver has a problem with that more than he has a problem not being Long.) As a bonus, he can tell the story properly because he doesn’t like the story much. (The story being Flint.) (He’s probably the grumpy editor being snarky at repetitive plotting. ‘He’s turned you around again’.)

Conclusion things: (1) Flint is not a narrator in this story. He’s a character, who has a dim awareness that his tale will be told by others, and who, at some point, chooses purposefully to surround himself with people who will tell it. (I think Flint didn’t choose Silver as a friend, he chose him as a narrator for his Glorious Fight (ALL THE ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIES WHERE GREAT KINGS HAVE SECRETARIES WITH THEM ON THE BATTLEFIELD SO THEIR TRIUMPHS CAN BE TOLD FOREVER). Silver, because he wanted accurate documentation, became very close to the main protagonist of the tale. And Flint was, once more, possibly the first time since Thomas, SURPRISED BY FRIENDSHIP/LOVE he hadn’t seen coming. Conversely, Silver paints such a feared character that he realizes, he’ll be the only one liking him. Recall the woods/rum/cache nightly conversation, and Silver being like ‘To be feared is ok, but to be feared and liked is cooler (so everyone will fear you, Captain, via my tale, while I will like you’) and Flint being like ‘*the trademark wolfish grin of death* Sounds awesome’.) -- This strengthens my idea of the Flint/Eleanor parallel. Eleanor is trying to tell her story. Flint is trying, subtle difference, but also subtle similitude, to have his story told.

(2) If Flint is a character whose origin story is Thomas, Silver is NARRATING to Madi that he IN-STORY returned the character to his origin story (the “anterior state of being” - there is a WHOLE another post for the creeping use of abstract vocabulary in this show - I think these occurrences are meta-narrative remarks, but well).

(3) The narrator is always more powerful than the character. Flint knows that (eventually). Which is why seeking out Silver as a narrator is really his first, but not last move as Deathwish Flint.

(4) I started watching Black Sails like ‘oh, a ‘historically accurate’ show with 18th century pirates who have bleached-white teeth and well-toned abs and incorrect period swearing, and, oh look, an explicit lesbian sex scene waving wildly at an intended male audience’ and I finished like ‘GAY HAPPY ENDING IN THE LAND OF NARRATOLOGIC WONDERS’ and ‘YES, JAMES, WE SHOULD ILLUMINATE OUR DARKNESSES’, and ‘ALL THE THINGS WE WRITE IN BOOKS AND THE CAPTAIN LIKES HIS BOOKS’.

(5) Re: feelings about the ending and the thwarting of revolutions. This ending is a happy ending, by all means, for Flint and Thomas and for Silver and Madi, but it’s not a good ending (unless you are, like Mr Oglethorpe, reform-minded).

#black sails meta #I'm sorry about all the capitals this has never happened before

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