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moribundanchor · 4 years

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The Pelle/Dani Receipts, Post Ten: Plots

After the Ättestupa, stuff moves very, very quickly. Team Hårga ASSEMBLE. Dani has been broken down both by witnessing a gruesome senicide and being forced to look into Pelle’s earnest blue eyes and confront that not only does Christian not love her, but maybe, just maaaaaaybe, she might could love somebody else. Christian is being broken down both by contending with Josh for his mcguffin thesis and being seduced by a cute underage redhead (SO GROSS CHRISTIAN YOU HAVEN’T EVEN TALKED). Plus Simon and Connie, by virtue of completely flipping out and demanding to leave after the Ättestupa, have unwittingly nominated themselves to be off(er)ed first. Once newbloods start disappearing, they disappear at a pretty rapid clip.

Simon and Connie’s disappearances, and Christian’s shrugging indifference to both, trigger Dani big time, as she confronts both how self-absorbed Christian is and how little credit he gives Dani's thoughts. At lunch, after an upset Connie vanishes, Dani is, as usual, seated between Christian and Pelle. As the scene opens, Dani’s back is to Christian and we can’t even see her face because she is looking into Pelle’s smiling eyes. For several seconds. They’re not talking. Just...looking. Like you do. With your buddy what was holding you on your bed and telling you how you deserved better than Christian. And this is the first time we see them since Ari’s impish smash cut from Dani hesitating on the verge of something to Dan’s crushed head.

Dani does eventually ask after Connie, prompting Jarl to give her the super believable official story that she was driven to the train station. Sure, Jarl. And Dani is still having a hard time buying that Simon would just leave without Connie. Especially in the Director’s Cut, we see how Dani notices how devoted they are to each other. But Christian is dismissive, and Dani goes cold. “I could see you possibly doing that,” she says. YASSSS QUEEN. She’s looking straight ahead, jaw set and eyes flinty, as Christian asks her, “What that’s supposed to mean?” She doesn’t answer and Christian should be grateful because the energy is very FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT. As it is, we just see Pelle notice and quickly look away, hiding a spreading smile that is practically another hit of the sunshine motif. Meanwhile, Mark is lured away by Inga, a different kind of fool for love.

Simon, Connie, and Mark down; who’s next? Josh! Thesis Goggles strapped on tight, Josh sneaks into the temple to take pictures of the Rubi Radr and is summarily dispatched by an unknown Hårgan male. (2000 quatloos on Ingemar.) We do get a little gratuitous Pelle shirt changing the next morning (which Dani notices and quickly looks away from), and that’s important, but not as a hint that Pelle killed Josh. To begin with, there’s a bunch of reasons Pelle is unlikely to have killed Josh, not least of which our theory about why he isn’t sacrificed at the end: a) We see Pelle in bed when Josh sneaks out, b) even assuming there’s a secret door, Pelle really would have had to book it to get in there behind Josh and we see Josh make it to the temple without any indication of being followed, and c) assuming Pelle was involved in murdering or butchering Josh, we think he probably would have brought a spare shirt. Come on. He did the cake thing.

Pelle changing his shirt is not just eye candy/misdirection though. It’s actually a clever direction from Ari. If you notice, from this point until the Fire Temple ceremony, Pelle is wearing a different shirt with a different rune, Wunjo in black thread, NOT Fehu in blue. We will get more into this in Post Twelve, but Wunjo (”joy”) is an incredibly positive rune that represents everything we know Dani craves: joy, perfection, harmony, overcoming alienation, kinship and family. It literally describes positive, healthy wishes coming true. Pelle wearing this rune on the day Dani wins the dance competition and he kisses her is incredibly significant and indicates not just his intentions, but it shades the meanings of Dani’s runes as well. He is practically wearing a nametag that says, Hi, my name is Dani’s True Love.

At breakfast, Christian is icy about Josh, butthurt that Josh isn’t letting him steal his thesis with good humor, and Elder Sten announces the Rubi Radr is missing. Pelle, as usual, sneaks a look at Dani, presumably to see whether she’s buying it. The real Pelle/Dani content comes afterward, when Sten and Arne question them about Josh and Mark’s whereabouts and make insinuations about the missing Rubi Radr. (Everyone just step back and consider for a second this is all really for Dani’s benefit. While Christian's [sort of] consent clearly is important, they could have drugged him and gotten what they wanted from him at any point here. Dani is the one they want for keeps, and all these elaborate ruses only further isolate Dani from Christian and cushion her absorption into the family.) Everybody just...sort of assumes Mark is snuggling Inga still, I guess, but Christian cannot sell out Josh fast enough, and Dani and Pelle both look at him with undisguised revulsion. Meanwhile, Pelle does take responsibility for his missing friends and the missing holy text, and thus Odd magically appears (Pelle might be fidgeting his fingers or he might be affekting a secret message to Arne during this scene, too) and he’s given leave to go...look for them. [shifty eyes]

It’s much like the birthday plot. Pelle gives Christian an opportunity to basically be himself, which makes Pelle doing the right thing, even something as simple and baseline human as not immediately forsaking your friend, a total repudiation.

Speaking of Christian being himself, while we don't believe Pelle killed anyone, he's laser focused on helping Christian get himself sacrificed. He takes every chance to stoke Christian’s most selfish impulses from his very first line, and more than that, he really seems to enjoy Christian’s fall. Again, Ari Aster doesn’t make many things in this film simple and plain, but Pelle’s delight in Christian’s corruption is one of those things. We already talked about the smirking in the Director’s Cut version of the car scene and the birthday setup, but once the plots start spinning, we get so much more.

First, Pelle encourages Christian to think of Maja sexually by teasing him about her “taking a liking” to him and informing him she is of the age of consent. His affect is so permissive and tempting, as though Dani doesn't exist and Pelle is only being his wingman, and when Christian replies "Good for her" a little too grumpily, we know Pelle's aim was true. Pelle visibly savors Christian’s predicament. And he's aware of every bit of the spellcasting on Maja's end. When Christian eats and drinks the pie and beverage with (ahem) a little love story added by Maja, Pelle restrains a smile and a laugh. (This is the same lunch scene where Dani snipes at Christian, so he must have been high-fiving Ingemar behind the chicken coop afterward.) Later, Pelle smirks and watches from the corner of his eye as Ulla tempts Christian with special tea during the dance competition. This scene is particularly loaded in the Director's Cut, where Siv has made it explicit to Christian that Pelle showed Maja his picture prior to their arrival in Hårga. Yet when Christian takes a seat next to Pelle, he says nothing, knowing everything, and neither does Pelle. The masks are all but off. Christian knows what he’s going to do, and he’s ashamed; Pelle knows what Christian is going to do, and he’s triumphant.

And most sexily damningly, when Christian succumbs to a nice puff of paralysis powder courtesy of Father Odd, we see (and Christian sees) Pelle peep in through the chicken coop door. In the script, Pelle is described as looking away in shame, but that’s definitely not the Pelle we have on film. Film Pelle is HERE FOR IT. Film Pelle is gloating. And we think he really wants Christian to know it was him in the end, not out in front, but behind the scenes. While one could look at all of this as a refutation of Vilhelm Blomgren’s emphasis in interviews that Pelle is full of love or proof positive that Pelle is actually a (gasp) villain, consider that, flashes of annoyance at Mark aside, he doesn’t show that kind of animosity toward the others. Mark is willfully ignorant and gross; Josh is disrespectful in the sense that he wants to mine Hårga for his own gratification and ambition. But Christian is the only one he clearly delights in destroying, and that destruction is consonant with his love. Because of Dani. Soft, love-filled Hårgan boy loves Dani enough to hate someone for her sake, and that is a fucked-up wish fulfillment fantasy, make no mistake, but...it is still a very valid and common and powerful wish-fulfillment fantasy. That chicken coop smirk is, at its core, just as much an act of love as the birthday sketch. Dani is one of his family. He will lure his friends to their deaths for all of them, but he will scheme Christian to death just for her.

What? Just because it’s unhealthy doesn’t make it less true.

For more, click on The Pelle/Dani Receipts Masterpost

#the pelle/dani receipts #pelle/dani #pelle x dani #dani/pelle #dani x pelle #pellani #midsommar #the pelle dani receipts

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squadron-of-damned-writes · 3 years

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tagged by @thiswaycomessomethingwicked. Found this sitting in my drafts after third of a year later. No time like the present, right?

Rules are: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line.

(how convenient that AO3 shows 20 works per page by default!)

1. It most certainly is a morning and the doorbell rings. Like the beginning of a horror movie, Sam thinks as he makes his way from his room to the front door. (The Night In Gale, 2019-10-11, Good Omens x Supernatural)

2. The remnants of the stained glass creak and shatter under the heavy plate sabatons. The men clad in deep red robes watch the armoured figures walk through the raided monastery in careful silence. (Moon And Destiny, 2019-08-24, Les Misérables x Wizardry)

3. “Alright squad! Who are we doing this week?” (One Gay at a Time, 2019-08-31, Les Misérablex x Queer Eye for the Straight Guy)

4. Light. Everything is is spinning. Light, even behind closed eyelids. It’s omnipresent. Radiant, blinding, magnificent light. (Like A Teen Girl,[1] 2019-11-15, W.I.T.C.H.)

5. Witches have pricking in their thumbs, Varen had his stomach worms, and Lyris had her teeth. She could feel them vibrating in her gums. It usually went away with a couple of flagons of mead, but apparently not tonight. If anything, it made it worse. So here she was, Lyris called Titanborn, tipsy but not yet drunk, sitting by the campfire with the two of Companions and a growing feeling of dread as her teeth planned to run for the hills. It made her only more irritated. (Mind How She Goes, 2019-11-30, Elder Scrolls Online)

6. “Well, are you going to stand there the whole night?” (The Past, the Present, the Death, and the Devil, 2019-12-19, Les Misérables)

7. There is this thing they don’t tell you about dying – it gave you mother of all headaches. In all those tomes and epic sagas there could had been at least once mentioned that the brave heroes and mighty beings who returned from the Other side felt like a horse kicked thorough their head. This terrible pain was usually why your freshly resurrected dead scream in agony and want to destroy things. (The Many Deaths of Me,[2] 2017-04-30, World of Warcraft)

8. As strange as it was, Lyris finds an odd sort of peace here. It is not her old home – she doubts she could ever return there – but her cabin near Riften is a new home. At first it was a house, but she made it a home. It was a hard work to get there, and she is rightfully proud of it all. (To Be Found, 2019-12-09, Elder Scrolls Online)

9. Say what you want about the Tribunal and Vvardenfell, there is something that draws a good hero to the city of Vivec. That something might be a divine presence, but most likely it is simply the presence of a quarter with publicly accessible forges and looms in the close proximity to a bank and the drop site for commissioned works. (The Battlespire, 2020-05-09, Elder Scrolls Online)

10. “Your Majesty, a message for you.” The chamberlain presents the envelope on a silver tray with a gentle bow. Queen Ayrenn picks it up with her delicately manicured fingers, and the soft warm breeze of early autumn attempts to snatch the piece of creamy paper from her as it hurls large honey and amber coloured leaves before finally settling them on the ground. (War Ends, 2020-07-26, Elder Scrolls Online)

11. “Allow me to ask you again for clarification, Your Ex-” “Charles, dear brother. Simply and plainly Charles, for we all are equal in the eyes of the almighty God.” “- Charles: I have died.” (The Man Who Saved A World, 2020-08-12, Les Misérables)

12. So that’s it, you suppose. You are going to sit down on this chair, because someone has to. (The Tale of Two Fates, 2020-09-05, Death and Taxes)

13. There is a saying in Ferelden: When you think you’ve reached the bottom, the Maker shows up with a shovel. Like most farmer wisdom, even this one applies in Orlais. (Land Turned Red, 2020-12-29, Dragon Age)

14. So you come to the supermarket on Friday morning and in the ice-cream isle is a poorly paid and even poorerly shaven retail worker unloading boxes of frozen pizzas, eyeing them like man who’s missed out on breakfast and his contract doesn’t include lunch break. (Observations of an Unconcerned Bus Driver, 2021-03-07, Stardew Valley)

15. They are giving him that look. He knows it well and hasn’t seen it in a long long time. It is the look that says: “I can’t believe that out of all the people in Thedas, he was the one to save us.” (Fine Literature, 2021-03-14, Dragon Age)

16. A young woman stands in a garden. It is a beautiful garden, very lush in spite of all damnation raining from the sky lately, now that the Veil is gone and… And all that. (Houserite, 2021-03-29, Dragon Age x Homestuck)

17. If you asked Solas, it was the most predictable outcome, blatantly staring you in face, shoving middle finger into your nose and blowing a raspberry. However, nobody asked Solas and even less people cared for his issues with Sera’s behaviour, and thus when Dorian goes missing, almost everyone is surprised. (The Excellent Week of Dorian Pavus, 2021-04-09, Dragon Age x Doctor Who)

18. Talent. A short and complicated word. What is a talent? (Necromancer’s Virtues, 2021-05-06, Dragon Age)

19. Fucked.That’s what they are. Fucked. Completely and thoroughly. The Trade Tongue is a limited and insufficient language and lacks any imagination whatsoever when it comes to cusswords. (The Wolves Breach Through, 2021-05-29, Dragon Age)

20. There are a lot of ways to tell that you’ve woken up the wrong way in the morning, and I was pretty certain that I’ve hit three of them at least: Every fiber of me was aching, two men were looming over me with worried expressions, and the sky was dark. Especially the last bit was extremely worrisome, since I was fairly certain I fell asleep in my bed at home under a solid ceiling above which is mum’s room and after that is the attic and after that is a roof and only then you get to see the sky. (Real Feeling of Sharing,[3] 2021-01-10, Dragon Age)

Observations:

I use the opening lines of a story like most people use headlines; luring in the reader by making them think “Hold on, what’s going on?” and hoping it ignites strong enough curiosity for them to read further to figure it out. For that reason more often than not the opening lines are not exactly related to the story.

A surprising amount of mu openings also clearly say: “The story you know is over.”

Also very specific thing which is less about opening lines and more about the trope of my fics: A suspicious number of beginnings based on the fact that the person of focus is dead or implied to be, or implied to be really close to it.

I also don’t like long introductions to the story, so it’s either “Things are happening now, figure it out dear reader” or “This is a thing I am going to focus on because it’s my thing, deal with it, plot will come later.”

Favourite opening line is from The Wolves Breach Through, especially because it quickly evolves into a rant about langauges. The Night In Gale is a close second, because I love to take a piss on the source material. For this reason The Battlespire also comes close to the top, although the fic in itselfwas shit.

[1] Like A Teen Girl should get renamed, because the story evolved from “Parody of the Magic Highschool Girls premise” to “Drama With the Lads”, but I eh, who cares anyway, right?

[2] The Many Deaths of Me deserves to be rewritten by older and more experienced me. It could be a great fic.

[3] Probably going to get renamed to Original Real Feeling of Sharing, but only when I start the next story from the series.

tagging: @timesthatneverwere @thewronglong

#writing

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randomvarious · 4 years

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The Champs - “Tequila” Fetenhits: Oldies Song released in 1958. Compilation released in 1999. Frat Rock / Rock & Roll / Latin Rock

Though The Champs spawned a handful of hits in their improbable seven-year run, it was their first hit, the instrumental, “Tequila,” which was originally recorded as a throwaway b-side, that would make them an indispensable piece of both popular music and rock and roll history. But before getting into the band’s formation and the song itself, let’s do a little bit of scene setting.

From history-of-rock.com:

The year 1958 saw a dramatic increase in short-lived fad rock and roll instrumental combos. Not that Rock and roll instrumentals hadn't been around before or that they wouldn't be around later. It was just that the floodgates opened wide in 1958. A year earlier, the biggest selling instrumental was "Raunchy" by it's co-composer Bill Justis. By the end of 1959, there was Santo and Johnny, Johnny and the Hurricanes, Dave "Baby" Cortez, Duane Eddy, the Fireballs, the Virtues, the Wailers, Link Wray and His Ray Men, the Royaltones, the Rock-A-Teens, Sandy Nelson, Cozy Cole and Preston Epps. However the group that really created the demand was the Champs.

It’s The Champs, a loose collection of session musicians who officially formed as a band after “Tequila” was released, who are responsible for the most memorable rock and roll instrumental of all time. It’s not groups who dedicated themselves full-time to rock and roll instrumentals; it’s these guys, who, not long after they released their debut album and started to tour, became a revolving-door-band, and added people like Glen Campbell and the duo that would become Seals and Crofts to their ranks. A random session that was originally intended to be just a one-off to fill a b-side for a 45 ended up selling millions of records, rocketing up to #1 on the Billboard charts, and winning a Grammy. Go figure.

Now for the origin story of the band, with more from history-of-rock.com:

The story of the Champs began with Dave Burgess, who was born December 13, 1934, in Beverly Hills, CA. Burgess first recorded for Okeh Records, a subsidiary of Columbia that issued country, blues, and jazz records. Burgess was eighteen when he recorded his first two Okeh singles: "Don't Put A Dent In My Heart" and "Too Late For Tears." In 1955, he recorded two singles for Tampa Records "Don't Turn Your Back On Love" and "Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue." All were country and had no success.

In 1956, Burgess was recording for Top Records. Top would take unknown, but talented artists, have them cover the latest hits as closely as possible to the original, then issue them four-to-a-record for forty nine cents. Top's slogan was "twice the music at half the cost" and it was a bargain until the unsuspecting buyer got home and played the record. Burgess appeared on an unknown amount of records, but at least ten came out with his name in the credits.

Ethics aside, Burgess got a first hand education in recording and performing while at Top. In 1957, while working as a deejay in Lancaster, CA. to [pass] time he composed songs and sent them off to various music houses. Two became very successful that year" "I'm Available" in the "pop" field and "I'll Be There" in the country market. [The Champs would later record an instrumental version of “I’ll Be There” as a b-side for “Tequila” in 1958.]

His songwriting brought him to Challenge Records, a Los Angeles company founded in April, 1957 by Gene Autrey (sp.).. There he recorded as Dave Dupree, as well as under his own name. Four of Challenge's first singles were recorded by Burgess, who became a regular session guitarist for Challenge.

A couple days before Christmas in 1957, a session was arranged in Hollywood by Challenge to record Burgess’ next single, “Train to Nowhere,” due to be released in January, along with a b-side. Sitting in on the session with Burgess, who was on rhythm guitar, were, according to Wikipedia, “Cliff Hills on bass, the Flores Trio (Danny Flores on saxophone and keyboards, Gene Alden on drums, and lead guitarist Buddy Bruce), and Huelyn Duvall contributing backing vocals.” The group had recorded two other songs to consider for the b-side, “Night Beat” and “All Night Rock,” the latter of which has never been released. But at the tail-end of the session came an instrumental ditty.

history-of-rock.com has more:

With some studio time remaining, Burgess asked the other musicians to stay to help him come up with a B-side for a record he had previously recorded.One musician offered a Tex-Mex sax line, another a snappy guitar riff, the drummer played a backbeat on the bell of his cymbal and Burgess plucked the muted strings of his electric guitar.The song was called "Tequila" and was spoken after each bridge. In ten minutes they had a take.

And that was that. Sometimes a musician or a producer knows when they’ve got a hit on their hands...but this wasn’t one of those times. “Tequila” was a pure filler track. The seller was gonna be “Train to Nowhere”. Everyone at the session knew that. But then, sometime in January, some radio DJ in Cleveland got a hold of “Train to Nowhere” and decided he would spin the b-side instead. And three weeks later, “Tequila” was all of a sudden the #1 song in America. Wild.

“Tequila” is nothing without Danny Flores, the man who graces the track with his trademark “dirty” sax melodies and the intermittent gravelly murmur of the word “tequila.” At the time of the song’s recording, he was actually signed to another label, so he couldn’t use his actual name on the record. Instead, he went by Chuck Rio. It was because of “Tequila” though, that Flores was crowned as the godfather of Latin rock. And while that’s a really cool title to have bestowed upon yourself, one can’t help but think of all the money he missed out on from selling his American rights to the song for what’s been reported as a paltry amount of money. However, it wasn’t all bad. He still had the global rights to the song, which was said to have netted him about seventy grand a year up until his death in 2006. A lot more than probably any other 50s rocker can say they made in residuals off a single song.

“Tequila” has staying power, I think, because it pulls a bunch of different ideas from a bunch of different music styles. Its composition is simple, its melodies are catchy, and the fact that rock and roll instrumentals were popular at the time was definitely a contributing factor to its success, too. But this song also simultaneously carries that hip, 50s cocktail lounge kind of vibe with its cymbal taps and its mambo beat; it has hand claps and an upbeat rock and roll tempo for dancing and partying; its guitar strums are poppy; the chorus has a definite, escalatory big band jazz/swing feel to it; and Flores’ sax tone is very reminiscent of the jazz-brass-sleaze that had constantly complemented burlesque and striptease dance routines (it’s hard to imagine that strip joints used to have house bands, but they did) for years prior. In fact, something could even be said about how “Tequila” manages to combine an air of lounge-y sophistication with its beat, while supplying over-the-top, trashy amounts of sax melodies with its lead, representing a sort of convergence of two opposite styles of contemporaneous nightlife: artsy hipsterdom vs. raw, transparent transactionalism. It’s all in one track and all at the same time. A song by The Champs, made for both camps.

Without a doubt, “Tequila” is the most popular rock and roll instrumental ever recorded. Its success was totally unforeseen, so much so, that The Champs formed after the thought-to-be-a-one-off, just-before-Christmas recording session in 1957 that birthed the song. They weren’t even an official band; mostly just some session musicians recording a b-side and having a bit of innocent fun in the studio. But that fun was both evident and highly contagious, which ended up lending to the song’s overall immortality, landing it as a staple track for just about any classic party mix, and opening the door for an oncoming era of pre-garage-frat-rock behemoths like “Louie Louie,” “Surfin’ Bird” and “Shout”.

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izaswritings · 4 years

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all that’s left in the world | chapter six

Title: all that’s left in the world—

Synopsis: —is me.

Neku’s been shot and Shibuya is threatening to go the same way as Shinjuku, but just because the first Game is over doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten how to play.

Or: Neku deals with a nightmare city and his most annoying (and mathematical) partner yet; Shiki and Joshua commit an escalating number of illegal moves, Beat and Eri hunt down a stray Reaper, and Rhyme watches and waits for the counter-attack. Shibuya refuses to go down easy.

Fandom: The World Ends With You | TWEWY

Warnings: cursing, implied death/erasure via Inversion; mentions of gender dysphoria and a variation of body dysphoria/dissociation. Nothing very graphic, but be warned!

AO3 Link is here!

Previous chapters are here!

part six: rhyme

It’s funny, Rhyme thinks, how quickly life can change in a day.

There’s a saying about that, they’re sure of it— but it’s gone, at the moment, all the words and quips and sayings gone kind of quiet in their head. It’s hard to think positive at a time like this. Neku’s gone and Beat’s in the nightmare city (and shaking, Rhyme thinks, Beat was shaking and they’ve never seen—they’ve never—

Or have they? It’s like a dream, maybe, but they can almost recall it: their brother bowed over and trembling, fingers curled tight around their pin, his eyes red. They’d hated it. They’d hated all of it. Somewhere in the Noise and non-being, something in Rhyme had seen their brother cry and wanted to scream.)

But! That’s not important right now. Rhyme has their job, and Beat has his; besides, finding Neku is probably the quickest way to making him feel better, right? So this works. Beat gets to find Neku and beat (hah) the girl that did this, and Rhyme…

Rhyme has their own job to do.

They’re still in Shibuya, for the moment, elbowing their way through the streets, trying to get through the crowd. They left Beat behind maybe thirty minutes ago, and they’ve been running ever since. They always forget—and yet, also, are always aware—of just how big this city is. Shibuya is so much. There are so many people, and so many roads, and…

Patience is a virtue—Rhyme knows that better than anyone! But for the second time in the hour they find themself stalled by a crowd, and they slow, tapping their fingers in a restless beat against their leg, a tempo one-two-three. They’ve been to Mr. Hanekoma’s cafe a few times, enough to know the way by heart; they should have arrived by now. But the crowds are heavy, and all the roads on the way are full. Molco is a mess of people. Is someone having a sale?

Rhyme sighs, slumping a little. Beat could have skateboarded through; Neku shoved and Shiki slipped by… but Rhyme is too small, and some part of them is convinced they’re smaller still. A nearby stranger draws too close, and Rhyme skitters back before they can think better of it—then stops mid-retreat, makes a face, and sighs again.

They put a hand to their pocket, almost self-conscious, fingering at the pin. It’s smooth under their hands, warm. Soothing. Rhyme rubs their finger across the blank face and draws themself up tall. Okay. No crowds. Long way around it is.

Slow and steady wins the race, Rhyme reminds themself. What’s another way to the cafe… Center Street, the Scramble, then through the Department Store?

They track it in their head. It could work. They back away and turn to run.

It’s been ages since Rhyme was in a Game, since they’ve raced across a city with time ticking down around them—but this thrill is all the same, the fear and the rush of breath in their lungs helplessly familiar. Some things feel odd: the thud of their feet on the ground, the breathing, the being—but the more they run, the more settled they feel. Rhyme is still here. They are still them.

Center Street down, and turning into the Scramble—they take one look at the size of that crowd and edge around it. They keep having to rub at their arm to stay grounded. They miss Beat. It’s always easier to navigate crowds with their brother there, tall and loud and larger than life, leading the way through like there’s nothing to fear.

Without him, the crowd is crushing, and Rhyme feels small, displaced, settled wrong in their skin. Smaller than they should be. Distantly, they wonder: is this how Shiki felt, in the Game? Like her skin never fit quite right? Like every reminder of her reflection was a sickening surprise?

Rhyme is intimately aware of that feeling; Shiki is too, they know, even before that whole mess with Eri and the Game. But then… mm, well, maybe not. Shiki and Rhyme have a lot in common, especially with the gender thing, but on second thought this feeling isn’t quite the same at all. It’s more like floating away—like being elsewhere. Like the memory of being small and helpless is overlapping on this happy present, and Rhyme keeps forgetting which one they’re living through.

Rhyme bites their lip, hard, and reaches for the pin again. It’s grounding, to have it in their hand. The echoes all settle, quieter than before. They take another deep breath and push determinedly onward. Okay. Okay! They can do this.

Wildkat café, survivor, and then… something. Rhyme isn’t quite sure what they need to do when they find the girl, but that’s neither here nor there, and Rhyme puts it out of mind, slipping around the sidewalk and down towards the Department Store. After all, they haven’t even found the Shinjuku survivor yet! There’s no use getting in over their head.

Besides, all things considered, there’s probably not much Rhyme can do. Maybe call Mr. Hanekoma? Hopefully the survivor is okay; Rhyme doesn’t know much first aid. Everyone always says hindsight is 20/20. Hmm, though, Rhyme might still have some chocolate in their pockets to share, if that helps at all…

Something to think about.

They round the corner, heading up Cat Street and nearing the café, and slow a bit, leaning over their knees, breathing hard. Made it. There’s the café, all boarded up and closed, and there’s the street, leading on out…

Somewhere near here, right? Though, if she’s coming from Shinjuku… that’s a lot of ground to cover. Hmm.

Rhyme rocks on their heels and beelines for a bystander. A college teen with a brown bob cut and a piercing in his ear, Jupiter of the Monkey clothes. He reminds them of Neku, a little, and for that they give him their best smile. “Hi! Sorry to bother you, but…”

“Oh, um, it’s no problem.” He tilts his head. “What’s up, kid?”

“I’m meeting a friend from Shinjuku, and she said she’d meet me around here… but I don’t really know the area. Is there a way to Shinjuku from here by the streets? I’m hoping to run into her!”

The teen blinks. His brow furrows. “Like, Akihabara? That’s a bit far, you might need…”

“What?” Rhyme frowns. “No, Shinjuku!”

“Shin…”

“The Tokyo district.” Rhyme is starting to get alarmed, now. “It’s… it’s just up north?”

He’s quiet. Then he shakes his head. “Sorry, kid, I missed that. What did you say?”

“I…” Something has gone quiet in them. Rhyme steps back. “N-never mind. Sorry. Um, thanks for your help!”

“Wait, but—”

Rhyme backs off and scatters to the streets. The teen is lost behind them. They feel unsettled, shaky—small, again. So that was… okay. Okay. Mr. Hanekoma had said something bad had happened to Shinjuku; it makes sense, given UG logic, that that means Shinjuku is now a… non-thing. It makes sense.

But still. Rhyme swallows hard. All those people… the whole city… are they just—gone? From everyone’s memories, everyone’s lives? Rhyme has an aunt in Shinjuku. If they call their mom, and ask—is their aunt still…?

They are still asking themself this, still panicking, when they turn a corner on the Shibuya city limits and see a flicker of a black wing.

Something in Rhyme’s heart goes still.

They don’t mean to stop, or stare, but for a moment it all feels just so far away. The crowds and the talking and the city—and the wings, wavering and thin as gossamer, the finest flickers in the sunlight.

And then they realize someone’s staring back.

“Oh, hey. Skulls Jr, right?” The man is tall, lanky and thin and sharp in a way that makes Rhyme tilt up their head and take notice. He has a lollipop, bright red and shiny, in one hand; beside him a smaller woman looks down at Rhyme with a sullen expression, pink hair cut short and her shirt frilling like a skirt, kept neat by a corset. “Fancy seeing you around here.”

Rhyme tilts their head further, considering; their eyes widen. Oh. Oh! “You’re Reapers, right?” they check, bobbing their head. “Beat mentioned you. How you doing?”

Pause. The two exchange glances. They look a little surprised. Why? Did they think Rhyme wouldn’t know them? Or… that Rhyme would react differently, maybe?

Oh, well. Not much Rhyme can do about the expectations of others, as the saying goes.

“We’re doing just fine.” The man spins the lollipop through his fingers, head tilted, eyes watchful. “You sure seem in a hurry, though. Got somewhere to be?”

Hm.

Rhyme stops. They link their hands behind their back and look the two up and down, the man with his lazy grin and the woman with her narrow stare. They think about it. The stories their brother and Neku cobbled together—Kariya and Uzuki, right? —and who these two are and the things they did. They erased Rhyme, that first week. They tried to help Beat and Neku, sort of, in the last one. They tried to keep their word.

“Um, hello?” The woman—Uzuki, probably, definitely, right? —is saying, fingers snapping in front of Rhyme’s face. Rhyme blinks at her. Nods. Makes a choice.

“Neku got shot,” they say, seriously, and take note of the way both of the Reapers go still. Good reaction? Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. “A Reaper called Coco. Do you know her?”

“What!” Uzuki says, but it’s Kariya who Rhyme watches—he’s paused, recalibrated, and now he’s watching Rhyme back with sharp eyes.

“Coco, huh?” He sticks the lollypop in his mouth and shrugs. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Hmmmm. Rhyme sighs. “I don’t really know much beyond that. Sorry!”

“Oh?” His head tilts. “So what are you doing?”

“Trying to find the survivor of Shinjuku,” Rhyme explains, and when they both go stiff, blinks. “Oh. You didn’t know?”

“Survivor?” Kariya hisses, the first visible reaction that feels genuine. Uzuki’s eyes are wide. “What happened to Shinjuku?”

“That shockwave,” Uzuki mutters, from beside him. “Kariya, you don’t think…!”

“It happened only a bit ago,” Rhyme explains, watching them. “Um, well, I don’t know what happened, but… the person I’m trying to find, I think she’s involved. She’s somewhere between the Cat Street area and Shinjuku, but…” They trail off, gauging the looks on Kariya and Uzuki’s faces, and slump. “You don’t know anything, huh.”

“Sorry, kid. This is the first we’ve heard of it.” Kariya shakes his head. “Shinjuku. Shit. It’s gone?”

“Um, that’s what it sounded like, anyway.” Rhyme tilts their head. That teenager on the street, the way the words had just slid off him, like Shinjuku itself—its name, its reality—was being rejected by all the world. “I think it’s because of this thing called ‘Inversion?’”

Rhyme looks up. Uzuki is frowning, but Kariya has gone pale. “Oh. Is it that bad?”

“What?” Uzuki’s eyes snap to the side and then narrow. “Kariya?”

“…It’s impossible. It shouldn’t be—” He cuts himself off. “You’re sure?”

“Mm, pretty sure.” Rhyme bobs their head. “Why, what is it?”

“Bad news.” He bites at the lollypop stem and then shakes his head, laughing quietly. “Very bad news.”

Uzuki looks peeved. “Are you going to give an actual answer or just keep being cryptic?”

“Slow down, Uzuki. This isn’t exactly easy info. Pretty sure it’s classified six ways to Sunday, but hey, if it’s already happening…” He sighs, and when he speaks again, he’s addressing Rhyme directly. “It’s a distortion in the rules of the world. Something’s unbalanced the whole system and sent it crashing down. The city, everything it stands for, everyone who lives and breathes and beats with it…” His lips thin. He snaps his fingers.

“…the fuck?” Uzuki says, sounding stunned.

Rhyme stares off into the direction of the city, feeling hollowed. “That’s awful,” they whisper. “What could do something like that?”

“Inversions usually start in the UG. My guess is whatever happened, it started there. Then it just started bleeding over to everywhere else.”

Rhyme frowns a little at that. “In the UG… I wonder what it was.” It must have been big, to unstable the whole city. It must have been terrible. They wonder if Coco had a hand in that, too. It’s a little uncharitable to think, but…

Neku.

As Rhyme sits in silence, Kariya and Uzuki exchange looks. Uzuki grips her hair. “The hell is happening?” she says in a fierce whisper. “First the Games last month… and now this!? Argh, the brass never tells us anything!”

“Oh, I think that’s because the Composer left,” Rhyme admits, and watches with mild alarm when they both choke. “Are you okay?”

“The fuck do you mean, the Composer left?” Uzuki snaps, and then a weird look crosses her face. Her expression darkens. “And how do you know about it!? You aren’t even part of the UG! Ugh, this is a disgrace!”

Rhyme flaps a hand at them. “Sorry! I’m sure it’s not that… just, Mr. Hanekoma mentioned he couldn’t leave the city because Joshua’s gone, so I thought…” They trail off again. The words don’t seem to be computing. Rhyme pauses. “Um.”

Kariya has his hand up. “Are you saying—you know who the Composer is? His RG form?”

Uzuki looks like she might be dying inside. Rhyme feels kind of bad for them. It is a bad look, huh? “Eh… well… I think he tried to get Neku to shoot him. And Neku didn’t. And then told us. I, I haven’t met him personally, though…” They scratch at their cheek. “Sorry.”

“Phones did— nope, never mind, don’t want to know.” Kariya slashes his hand through the air. “Not important right now. The Composer’s gone?”

“A lot’s happening.” Rhyme considers them, then nods. “I’m looking for the Shinjuku survivor. Beat, he’s looking for this Reaper girl, Coco…” They chew on their lip. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about her?”

Uzuki and Kariya exchange looks again. “Later,” Kariya says, and at Uzuki’s nod, turns back to Rhyme. “No, but we can find out. Coco, was it? Leave it to us.”

Rhyme smiles. “Thanks!” They think about it. “Um, if you want to know more, though… Mr. Hanekoma, he runs the Wildkat café on this street. He’s not there right now, but maybe later? And he knows more about what’s going on than I do.” Rhyme offers the two Reapers a smile. “He’s trying to keep Shibuya safe too. He might know a place you can start.”

“More names I don’t know, hmm?” But Kariya is grinning. “Well. Better informed late than never, I guess. Sure, we’ll stick around. Might as well get some foot in the door here, given the stakes.”

“Ugh.” Uzuki looks away. “Honestly. Why are Reapers always the last to know?” She eyes Rhyme. “But I guess we know now.”

“What she means to say is, thanks for the info.”

“Like hell I did! Thanking even a former Player—ugh.”

Rhyme giggles, unable to help it. There’s so much character to them, it’s rather funny. It’s hard to believe these people erased Rhyme.

Maybe Rhyme should invite them along—ask for these Reapers’ help, their protection and their powers. But the fact remains they did erase Rhyme, and also if Beat found out he would freak, and… and its better this way, Rhyme thinks. They aren’t one to hold grudges. But though Rhyme might believe in forgetting the past, that’s not the same as forgiving it, is it?

This is okay. This is just fine.

So Rhyme nods at them one last time and turns away, ready to keep going. There’s no time to waste on pleasantries, so they don’t bother—but when Kariya holds out his hand, a twinge of power beckons, and bids them to stop. Reluctantly, Rhyme looks back.

He tilts his head at them, something knowing lingering wry in the curl of his lips. “Hey, Skulls Jr. One last thing.” He pauses. Rhyme waits. “Your eyes keep flickering. I don’t suppose you’re looking at our wings?”

Rhyme hesitates. “Is… is that a bad thing?”

Uzuki is still. But Kariya smiles. “…No.” His hand draws back, tosses forward—something glints in the air, and Rhyme catches it without thinking. Then they blink. “Just double-checking. Hey, it might be useless for you, but if not…” He shrugs. “Put it to good use, yeah?”

Rhyme studies it. It’s a pin—bright gold, with a skull and serrated edge like a key. “What is it?”

“A Keypin. Highest level, too. If you can see the wings, still… who knows if there’s walls about out there, but just in case, this baby should get you through.” He grins at Rhyme’s cautious look. “I like to cover all my bases. This survivor is important, right? Then it’s in my best interest that you find her.” He raises an eyebrow. “Just, ah… keep this loan on the downlow, you hear?”

Rhyme considers him. Then they smile back. “Sure, no problem.”

They tuck it away in their pocket, rocking on their heels, watching the city. The crowds, the murmur, the sunlight bright in the air. But it feels stranger, now. Like even Shibuya is starting to hold its breath.

Rhyme watches the sky for a long moment. It remains blank and blue. They smile, relieved and not sure why, and turn away, back to the road ahead. “Goodbye,” they call back. “And good luck!”

Kariya waves. Uzuki calls out, “Don’t die again, brat.”

It’s a rude thing to say, probably, but something about it makes Rhyme laugh, instead. Their heart feels a little lighter. They smile at the Reapers one last time, and then take off towards Shinjuku.

And for a moment—for an instant—in the echo of their footfalls and the rasp of their breaths—there is a ripple in the air. As they slip away from Cat Street into the unknown, Rhyme closes their eyes and hears a distant call, distorted and thin.

Pleas — hel — me—

“I’m coming,” Rhyme promises between breaths. “I’m coming for you. I promise!”

And they run.

#twewy #the world ends with you #raimu bito #rhyme twewy #fic: all that's left in the world #twewy fic #koki kariya #uzuki yashiro #iza fanfic

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angrylizardjacket · 4 years

Text

and everything that goes with it; i thank you all

A/N: So........ ash v. social media v. borhap cast i guess??? no-one asked for this, but i love them.

[aydtd]

It definitely starts as a joke.

“Hey, Ma Rocket?” Joe’s filming on his phone during a costume trial. With her arms crossed, Ash is partially hidden by Rami who’s spinning, the frills of his shirt fanning out around him. She’s frowning, thoughtful and pensive, but when Joe calls, she turns to him, eyebrows raised and expectant.

“Aye?” She’s not smiling, mind obviously still pondering over the fit of Rami’s costume, but it’s a clear enough acknowledgement that Joe’s response is clearly spoken through a smile.

“You responded; you’re the on-set mom now.” He declares. Ben laughs from somewhere off camera. “No takebacks.” Joe follows it up with, but Ash is already wearing a longsuffering look of resignation. The video cuts off before she can flip him off, but her movements are too deliberate to be misconstrued as anything else. The video is released almost a full year later, once the NDA has been lifted on the movie and Behind the Scenes pictures and videos start flooding out, but at that point the joke had moved beyond being just that.

Ash is not hard won; kindness and respect win her loyalty easily, it’s just that those traits are sometimes hard to come by in this industry, and she’s often dismissed because of her age, especially by younger performers. Bohemian Rhapsody is different, of course in part because they all know who she is by virtue of who they’re playing,

Joe’s not her favourite, not officially, and neither is Ben, much to his quiet disappointment; officially her favourite is Karen, and everyone else is tied second, but each of them holds a very special place in her heart and soon that begins to bleed into her social media, as well as some of theirs. Ash gets Instagram at Joe’s behest, only a month before the world premiere of Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s not as if she’s lived her life in obscurity, but come the turn of the millennium, her time at the edge of the spotlight had mostly come to an end, and she had been able to continue her work behind the curtain of pop culture for almost twenty years. This was all new, and unexpected, but she tried to take it in stride.

So she follows the cast, of course, follows Roger and Brian and the Official Queen page, as well as any of her friends or former clients she can find, and much to their horror, her children. Okay so her son isn’t horrified since he’s a public figure and he doesn’t use it for personal photos, but both her daughters have posted pictures of themselves in bikinis, and they thought they’d be safe since Roger followed them after the photos were posted, and at least he never went back and liked any of their old photos. Ash likes every single photoeach of her children has even posted, and all three are a little horrified.

That’s a cute one of us at Bonfire Night!! Is one of the many comments she leaves across the entire timeline of Astrid’s Instagram history, this particular one being from a 2014 photo, and so Astrid herself posts a screenshot of her mother blowing up her notification on her story.

@joemazzello what have you done

Joe subsequently posts a screenshot of a set of DMs between himself and Astrid on his own story.

Yesterday @ 3:47am

@astro_winnie: then tell him to change his oil

@astro_winnie: what a heathen

Today @ 1:21pm

@astro_winnie has mentioned you in her story

@joemazzello: What exactly are you accusing me of here?

@astro_winnie: mum didn’t have an Instagram yesterday 🤔🤔

@astro_winnie: I don’t know how but this is your fault

@joemazzello: she’s just having fun 😂😂

@astro_winnie: SHE LIKED MY BIKINI PIC FROM 2 YEARS AGO IM DYINg

The whole conversation is captioned ’Well anyways, go follow Ma Rocket @rockettaylor49’. The following picture on his story, posted ten minutes later, is a clarification that he isn’t actually Ash’s son, that it’s just a nickname. Even so, Ash’s actual son gets a photo with him at the premiere and caption it ‘brother from another mother (probably) @joemazzello’ and it goes viral on both Tumblr and Twitter.

Ash’s first official post is a picture of herself and Freddie, a Polaroid of the two of them aged beyond belief, taken in 1969. It’s the only photo she had when she was still in uni, and even she seems surprised to see it. Roger finds her staring at it, expression blank as she looks at where they keep it, pride of place, over the mantle. Without even asking, he understands, and he presses a kiss to her temple.

’@rockettaylor49: My favourite client helped me with this caption, he said I should remind you all that you can have more than one love of your life, and that that love isn’t necessarily romantic. To me, Freddie was family from the moment I met him, and I love and miss him every day. Freddie & Me. 1969.’

The post is flooded with love and support and more heart emojis than you can shake a stick at, and it’s not long before she’s amassed a large following. The only outlier in the initial comments comes from her second daughter, Cate.

@cate.astrophy: @rogertaylorofficial got upgraded to favourite client. nice.

The entire rest of the family, as well as a few random unknowns, like the comment.

Ash’s aesthetic is surprisingly clean; old photos from back in the day, old initial costume designs in sketchbooks, the paper gold with age and colours faded, but still with her initial notes scribbled neatly around the edges. The only modern things she posts are photos of shopping bags filled with fabric she’s just purchased, and photos of her friends and family.

There’s only one selfie on her page. Its Ash, poorly framed if only to keep Joe in focus behind her where he’s leaning against the door to a trailer and double over with laughter, with Ben glaring through the window at both of them.

’@rockettaylor49: Trixie gave me a selfie stick and Ben tried to confiscate it when he heard me say 'selfie’ so he was locked out. Usually I was with Roger on the other side of the door back when Deaky was locking us out of places… What a terrible influence he was!! But anyways here you all go, my first selfie. Me & Trixie featuring My Disrespectful Boy, Ben. 2018.’

The way the cast call her ‘Ma’ definitely started out as a joke, mostly between Joe, Ben, and Ash, but it slowly spreads to the others.

“Where’s The Golden Boy?” Ash calls on set, holding a cap for Rami, who was warming up. It’s rather endearing, the way he jogs to her wearing a smile.

“Here, Ma, what do you need from me?”

“Hat.” Is all she says, presenting it to him. They’ve always had a soft spot for each other, having worked together on Night At the Museum and it’s sequels for several years. He was one of the last to pick up the habit of calling her ‘ma’, after spending so long calling her Rocket, but he’s grown into it, they all have. Even some of the crew have taken to using the nickname, or some variation.

And maybe she leans into it, leans into her age and her wisdom, and they know they’re sort of telling her story too, but there’s a disconnect when they look at her, at her greying hair and the deep laugh lines around her mouth, and they forget who exactly she is. Though sometimes, rarely, they’re given sharp reminders.

There’s a video on Gwil’s phone that he later puts on Instagram once he has her permission, and the NDA has come to an end, of Ash on the set of Live Aid. She’s sitting on the edge of the stage, legs hanging over the edge, and Roger’s in front of her, at the perfect height to rest his chin on her knees.

“Do you think you can still do that impression of yours?” Roger’s voice is barely audible, but he’s grinning, and Ash cards a hand through his short, white hair.

“Which- oh, the Freddie- oh Christ,” she laughs, “this’d be the place for it, aye?” And she starts clearing her throat, about the time that Roger spots Gwil and his curious camera.

“Sorry, was just trying to catch a video of the empty stadium,” Gwil’s voice can be heard, and Roger laughs, which causes Ash to turn. Seeing Gwil, she smiles, and nods at the camera.

“You’re gonna wanna get a video of this,” Roger grins, nudging Ash’s knee, and she turns an amusing shade of pink, struggling to her feet. Gwil rushes forward to help her up, but Ash brushes him off.

“I used to do this with Freds to help him warm up, and whenever I was side of stage,” she says, a strangely fond smile on her face as she reminisces, “I’m no singer, never have been, this is probably as close as I’ll get,” she warned, looking straight at the camera.

Taking a deep breath, she clears her throat, and belts out ‘ay-oh’. As if being summoned by a siren, everyone who can hear her, responds in kind. Smiling, pleased, she continues with the bit, as does everyone else, slowly gathering around her. It sounds uncannily like Freddie, and she holds an arm out to Rami to join her in leading the gathered crowd, which he agrees to with a bright grin, which ends with him yelling ‘hey, hey, hey, Hammer to Fall!’ and Ash, as well as the rest of the crew, bursts out into laughter.

The video’s posted with the caption ‘Ash Mercury in her prime’. All three of Ash and Roger’s kids comment about how they hadn’t heard her do that in so long, and not for the first time, Gwilym finds himself marveling at what it would be like to have Ash and Roger as actual parents.

Once the camera’s off, Ash talks quietly about how she and Freddie used to practice it, because he couldn’t teach Ash to sing to save his life, but he’d be damned if he couldn’t teach her this.

“He was like, an actual brother to her,” Ben says quietly when he and the other three boys are gathered together, checking in before they finally started filming.

“Yeah, it’s crazy to think some times; she took his last name for a full fifteen years," Rami muses, and there’s something that warms in his heart whenever he catches Ash’s wistful gaze as she watches them perform, quietly grateful.

There’s a few videos here and there from set from Ash, little moments she finds endearing, usually set to music;

She catches her son, Barney, and his partner dancing to Seaside Rendezvous alone in the makeup truck, joyful and bright, they sway together to the beat as her son sings along, and his partner laughs fondly, pressing their smile against his chest as he tries to make kazoo noises.

When Cate, her middle daughter, comes to set, she takes a seat by the piano and plays the opening for Seven Seas of Rhye.

“That’s the one he wrote for you, isn’t it?” She turns, beaming, and Ash sits beside her. Again, Cate plays the opening, and Ash hums along, out of key, and Cate swallows her own gentle laughter, instead singing along.

Karen Gillan has a perm in order to play Ash, but unlike Joe, she appears to have no trouble in it, actually takes great pride in it. Ash has caught the rest of the cast, on several different occasions, using it to take photos of themselves with a stunning, ginger beard, which amuses her to no end, as it was something Roger was want to do on occasion when he got bored back in the day.

On the night of the Oscars, at the afterparty, Ash uploads two videos in the same post, one from set, and one from that night. They’re simply captioned ‘Me & The Champions. 2018/19′.

The video from on set is from the final day; Ash’s hands are shaking the camera slightly, but her voice is loud and clear, ringing throughout the set;

“Where are my kids?” And like clockwork, Ben, Gwilym, Rami, and Joe all come out from various places, followed by Lucy and Karen, all giving her fond looks.

“Oh man, I’m gonna miss my set-mom,” Joe looks like the thought genuinely pains his heart, and as the realization dawns on the others, there’s a fond and faintly forlorn expression mirrored on all their faces. Joe’s the first to go in for the hug, despite Ash’s faint ‘oh Jesus Christ, Trixie’, but they all soon join.

The second video is from right after the Oscars awards ceremony, when most of the cast and crew who’d been attending are doing photo opportunities, and while Brian and Roger are already with them, Ash had hung back.

“It’s so good to see all my kids in the one place!” She calls, and Joe’s expression lights up as he hears her voice.

“Ma, we won!” Rami holds up his Oscar with delight, already a little tipsy, as were the rest of them as they crowd Ash, all wrapping her up in a group hug. Someone’s humming We Are The Champions. Ash suspects Joe. But she takes delight in the moment anyways, pride flaring bright in her chest.

#roger taylor #BoRhap #BoRhap cast #borhap imagine #joe mazzello #ben hardy #gwilym lee #rami malek #Lucy Boynton #karen gillan #borhap cast imagine #Queen #queen imagine #Brian May #roger taylor imagine #roger taylor x oc #the angry lizard writes

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clansayeed · 4 years

Text

Bound by Destiny ― Chapter 14: The Echoes

PAIRING: Kamilah Sayeed x MC (Nadya Al Jamil) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Destiny ⥽

Nadya Al Jamil (MC) has been struggling from the day she moved to Manhattan, but her new job as assistant to the mysterious CEO of Raines Corp was supposed to turn her luck around. Until she finds herself caught in the middle of a war involving the Council of Vampires who secretly run the city. An evil from the birth of Vampire-kind stirs beneath, feeding on the conflict, and finds Nadya bound to a destiny she never asked for.

Bound by Destiny and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series and spin-off, Nightbound. Find out more [HERE].

*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Destiny tag list!

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

With Adrian and Kamilah’s fates unknown, Nadya finds unlikely allies in the Clanless. Learning how Lily is adjusting to vampire life would be a lot easier without terrifying dreams, though.

note: This chapter, like the previous, implies past Gaius/Kamilah through dream sequences lived through Nadya's eyes.

[READ IT ON AO3]

She hastily scrubs the stinging soap from her eyes. They’re still puffy; swollen from all the crying she’s done in the last day or so. Where she should be exhausted and ready to collapse while standing, though, Nadya only feels a burning itch to move; to run.

Though maybe that’s the borrowed homeless vampire boots she’s wearing.

“Here you go. I felt so bad when I found them in my stuff, but didn’t want to risk returning them and running into you.”

Nadya takes the folded pair of glasses Lily offers with something akin to reverence.

“Well I’m glad you didn’t.” She slides them on and gives an audible sigh of relief. “So much better.”

They leave the bathroom together — Nadya follows Lily’s lead to wherever they should be going without much question.

She’s doing well for herself. It took some coaxing for Lily to admit she still struggles with her hunger but that was a problem she had as a human, too, so Nadya isn’t that surprised. “I was already way more productive at night,” she explains cheerily, “so that wasn’t a big change either. The hardest part is probably just not knowing my own strength — and making sure to stay under the Council’s radar.”

That was something Lily was still working on forgiving her for: all the secrets. Adrian, Maricruz, the Council and the Clans… And she knows Lily has a right to be frustrated about it all but given the situation they’re currently in she’s one snarky quip away from asking Lil’ to cut her some slack.

“I was trying to keep you safe.”

“Yeah, well, that worked out so well, huh?”

Maricruz and Jax share a sort of ‘corner’ underground that they’ve made their own. Everyone has somewhere to rest their heads come dawn but due to space most of it ends up being communal living. The leaders of the Clanless, however, need a place where they can talk strategy without being overheard.

Well, the leader of the Clanless, his deputy, and the deputy’s girlfriend.

“Mari and I have been great honestly, better than ever,” Lily continues, “for a few weeks there all the secrets and rushing away before the sun was up was really frustrating, obvs, but now that I get it there’s no secrets between us at all. Don’t think I gotta tell you how refreshing that is.”

They come upon the others in the entryway-slash-kitchen-slash-den-slash-gym. In the corner Jax fusses with extension cords connecting to a small portable stovetop while muttering under his breath. At a small folding table in the middle of the room Mari and Brandon hold hands over the top; Greer rubs his partner’s back softly.

Lily abandons her — “he’ll shock himself again, dumbass,” — to help Jax but before Nadya can make herself useless by standing in a corner Greer smiles tiredly and beckons her over.

They’ve changed into surprisingly regular clothes — surprising only because Greer had been very vocal at the cellar party about his flashy wardrobe and the influence his eccentric fashion had had on Brandon over the years. But their jeans are worn and washed at the knees and the only bright thing outside of a tan trench coat is Greer’s hair.

She notices bags at their feet.

“I thought your flight wasn’t for a few days.”

“Mari got us a cargo plane,” Greer explains with a thankful smile the vampire’s way, “not my preferred way of travel but it’ll get us to Wales and we can take a train from there.”

Brandon rubs his eye tiredly. “Staying is just too hard.”

“I get it.”

“We know.” They each take Nadya’s hand and squeeze. “I hope your friends made it out okay.”

You and me both, Nadya thinks; doesn’t say it. She knows they’re only being optimistic for her sake — it feels wrong to take it with grace when they’ve lost someone so important to them.

“Thanks, guys. You’ll get in touch when you’re settled, right?”

“Once it’s safe.”

“‘Safe?’” she parrots. Brandon nods.

“It’s complicated — we won’t be staying in London is all. That’s a story for a different day.”

Behind them comes Lily’s victory cheer followed by the smell of something smoky. Jax turns the knob on low and together they join the crowd at the table with another chair and a rusty barstool that sets him a couple heads higher than the rest.

Jax surveys the three humans with narrowed eyes — now that she’s not wearing old contacts he’s in clearer focus now and every little flicker and blink makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“Food will be ready soon,” he grunts, and finally fixates on Brandon, “so let’s get into what happened.”

Mari reaches around Lily to try and swat her companion. “Not now. They’re tired!”

“Yeah, we are,” agrees Greer grimly, “but I don’t want to risk whatever happened up there happening here.” He rubs Brandon’s arm — who stays silent.

“I — I didn’t see what happened before, but…” Nadya starts — falls quiet as Greer shakes his head.

“No, you didn’t. It’s all right, lass. I’ve got this one.”

After Nadya was swept from their revelry by Kamilah, Adrian had stayed for the remainder of the song before mentioning his thirst. Megan offered to accompany him by one of the select feeding parlors and that was the last Greer and Brandon saw of her for more than an hour. Upon spotting Adrian heading towards the upper castle Brandon had stopped him — asked him where Megan had run off to.

“She had her fill before I finished,” Adrian had said, “I think she mentioned something about meeting a friend in the Moon House.”

The Moon House would be called the Sun House in any other estate — one not catered to vampires. It was a conservatory on the farthest part of the East Wing and hosted Marcel’s collection of rare night-blooming flora; a hobby of his since moving overseas.

“She loved visiting the Royal Botanical Gardens at night…” Brandon’s wistful tone hangs heavy on them all. Greer gives his temple a kiss before carrying on.

When they found Megan she was the only one in the Moon House. She admitted to sneaking into some smaller enclave room even though the area was roped off — “It’s been nearly twenty years since I last saw these beauties, can you blame me?” — and since it seemed like no one was going to kick them out of the Ball for being there they all stayed to take in the display.

He pauses — collects himself with a steady breath. “That’s when we noticed a bite mark near her neck.”

They were drunk, maybe a little high — life was good and they didn’t want the party to end so soon. Megan didn’t remember how she had gotten it; vampires will be vampires, she had said, and laughed it off as something she didn’t have to worry about by virtue of being undead already.

“If she wasn’t gonna be worried about it then why would we?” He looks around the table as if genuinely seeking an answer. But it isn’t theirs to give. Judging by the haunted look in his eyes Brandon has already answered it for himself.

“We closed up the place behind us and went to head back to the ballroom,” Greer continues, “only Megan said she was hungry again and kept scratching the bite. We encouraged her, you know. She always feels better on a full stomach and… and feeding can heal you guys, you know?”

Lily shakes her head but judging by the reactions of the older vampires on either side of her yes, they’re very well aware of the benefits of a good feed.

“So we went back for drinks, Megan headed off, and the next time we saw her she was having a fuckin’ seizure in the middle of the party and no one tried to do a damn thing. Not one person. Whole room full of all those years and all that knowledge and… and…”

“Once you’ve been infected by a Feral there’s no going back.” Mari picks at an unseen part of Lily’s skirt underneath the table — can’t meet their eyes. “All you can do is run and hope to fuck you won’t Turn, too.”

“They didn’t even try.” Brandon glares at Nadya though it’s lacking in real malice. “That whole Council of yours, right there, and they just watched.”

“They had their Clans to think of.” She bites out in their defense. Jax scoffs.

“More like their status and power.”

“Okay guys, come on,” Lily looks ready to jump atop the table if it mediates, “there’s no fingers to point. Or, well, no one here deserves to be pointed at. Obviously this girl got bit by a Feral before you ran into her. If we can find out how that happened…”

“The last person she was with was Raines.” Nadya doesn’t miss the look Mari throws her way. It makes her blood boil.

“I know where you’re going and I’m gonna need you to not. Adrian’s been working his butt off to solve the Feral problem, not make it worse.”

“Working his ass off, huh?” Jax doesn’t try to hide his distaste, “if that’s his best then I’d hate to see his worst; the world might actually end.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No — I know what I see. And what I see is a problem that isn’t getting solved no matter how hard you say your owner is working!”

Jax leaps off the stool but is stopped by Lily throwing her arm over his front.

“Jax, man, I respect the hell out of you. But don’t talk to her like that — ever.” There’s a growl at the tip of Lily’s tongue that Nadya is grateful for even if it’s strange to see her behave that way. But it doesn’t do a thing to make Nadya feel better about what Jax says.

Nadya raises her chin and speaks with confidence. “Adrian told me a Feral isn’t like a vampire — it’s a creature that only cares about hunger and blood. If all it takes is one bite then even so much as one Feral at the Ball put everyone at risk; human and vampire. Adrian included.”

While the Clanless leader takes back up his stool Mari diverts the conversation back to Greer.

“What happened after that? Your text said there was a ‘massacre.’”

In the silence that follows everyone just sort of looks around at one another — trying to understand, trying to coax out answers. Nadya remembers — God, she remembers — but she sort of hopes they’ll keep telling the story so she doesn’t have to hear herself say it all out loud.

She gets lucky.

“They focused on the crowd instead,” Greer says; and if Nadya closes her eyes she can still see Lester, Adrian, Vega barking out orders to get the newly Turned and the humans out of the ballroom, “and it seemed like they could handle it, you know? Like they knew what to do. But then… then there was another scream.”

Through the tide of those trying to leave bodies pushed forward. Screaming of monsters, of Ferals coming out of nowhere like they’d been hiding in the suits of armor the whole night just waiting to strike. Suddenly it wasn’t just one Feral to deal with, it was the one Feral in the ballroom and even that didn’t last long.

Maybe Megan wasn’t even the first to Turn. Maybe Megan was just the poor soul who got an audience.

Jax tugs at loose strands of his hair. “How many, on estimate?”

“Maybe a couple dozen we could see?”

Nadya swallows down her heart to keep it from staining the tabletop. “Adrian — they, the Council — they tried to keep order. Tried to get everyone out fast and as safe as they could. But no one was listening. It was chaos.”

“Not gonna lie; it was hard to figure out friend from foe when everyone was in a stampede.”

Nadya agrees with a nod; fiddles with the pendant on her wrist until the metal is warm from her touch. Over and over the scene plays behind her eyelids; a videotape stuck in a loop. The Council shouting orders to one another, older vampires taking up arms and pushing away the vulnerable. The spray of gore when Valdas sent three attackers flying across the room in a dozen pieces.

“You pretty much know the rest from there.”

“We’re glad you got out alive.” Mari insists towards Brandon. He doesn’t respond — like he doesn’t know if he shares the sentiment. “She would be glad you got out alive.”

If Jax has more questions he’s grown a brain-to-mouth filter and chooses not to ask them. He and Lily grab cheap plastic trays from a cabinet and return with the stovetop spoils of hot dogs right on the verge of being better kindling than food. Eating doesn’t fill the void inside like it should but she’s never inhaled such mediocre food with such gusto.

When they finish Mari not-so-casually mentions their time limit. Greer and Brandon give her their sincerest thanks — Jax too though the tension behind their goodbye is obvious.

Finally Brandon turns to her and Nadya finds herself crushing Brandon in a hug that makes him hunch and hold his breath. They don’t have anything else to say to one another. Words never seem to be enough, anyway.

She makes Greer reaffirm his promise to reach out. Wants to go with them if only to make sure they make the journey home without falling to pieces together but judging by the look on Maricruz’s face the three of them need privacy to mourn in their own way.

Lily snakes her arm around Nadya’s middle when the door closes.

“How about a nap?” She asks; keeps her tone lighthearted but Nadya can tell she’s not making a suggestion. “Come on, girlie, you look like the walking dead. And that’s saying something coming from the literal walking dead.”

Nadya just nods and follows.

They curl up together like they used to; face-to-face with legs tangled together because they had the same favorite throw blanket but it wasn’t big enough to span the bed. The mattress is like a brick with sheets and Lily no longer exudes the same warmth she used to but if Nadya closes her eyes and pretends with all her might… it’s like nothing has changed at all.

She keeps her distance while Lily talks with the scantily-dressed woman near the stage. Not because she’s interrupting some sort of ‘moment’ but she refuses to take off the pendant — literally refuses and that makes Jax livid as all get out — on her wrist and anyone who so much has an inkling of who or what the Clans are would be ready to pick a fight at the mere sight of it.

Distance can be good though. It gives Nadya time to really look at Lily. To see how she’s doing.

Being a part of their generation means identity crises and existential episodes are pretty much a given. But she’s never seen her best friend look so comfortable in her own skin.

It helps ease the knot in her gut about not giving Lily the chance to decide her own fate.

Lily raises a small black remote in hand and on command a spotlight from above flickers to life. The other vampire, Liv, hops up and marvels in absolute delight as the light follows her around the stage in several paces.

“This is just — just the best! You’re the best!” Liv scoops Lily up standing to hug her and Nadya watches fondly as she returns the hug with her own.

“Give me some time and I can make you a mix that’s one whole track with the right fade in and intro tunes, too.”

“I don’t know what I’d so without you sugar. You’re a whiz at this stuff.”

“Hey, I don’t do anything for free.”

Liv pulls back and gives Lily a wry grin. The sudden flustered look under Lily’s thick specs doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Don’t I know it. How’s tomorrow afternoon sound?”

“Perfect.”

Liv kisses Lily’s cheeks and heads back behind thick red curtains. When Lily catches the look in Nadya’s eyes she tries not to look so utterly taken. Doesn’t mean Nadya isn’t going to tease her anyway.

“Wanna tell me what that was about, huh?” She nudges Lily repeatedly. “Huh huh huh?”

Together they leave the unofficial ‘Arts District’ of the Shadow Den; take their leave of Liv’s little clubhouse and head back towards the main plaza. Lily grins sheepishly.

“You’re so nosy! God, Liv just promised to… give me a few lessons in burlesque. See if she can cure my two left feet thing. That’s all.”

“Ah… yes, that’s all. Well I think Mari will love it.”

Lily huffs, almost lets it go before casting an embarrassed smile at Nadya. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

“Shut up.”

“No, you shut up.”

“No you shut up!”

They dissolve into light teasing shoves this way and that — their laughter mingling in with the Den’s normal chatter.

“Thanks for getting me away for a bit,” Nadya says as she loops her arm in with Lily’s, “from you-know-who. Talk about one-track mind.”

Her ‘nap’ had turned into a full on twelve hour coma. The moment she awoke the leader of the Clanless was on her; question after question that she still couldn’t remember fully from the haze of sleep. She could vaguely recall Lily’s raised voice and the sound of a door slamming — then being pulled along by her best friend’s newfound strength.

Beside her Lily shrugs; tries to play it off. “You looked like you didn’t sleep well, so I get it. I hate being bothered when I’m still tired.”

“Wait — what?”

“You were tossing and turning the whole time,” Lily grabs a dull yellow apple from a nearby cart and tosses it Nadya’s way. “I tried to wake you up from you’d just give me this weird, glassy stare and then go back to sleep. That a new thing? Or some freaky nightmare?”

If she thinks about it… no, Nadya can’t remember. The last dream she could recall with detail was the nightmare on the train from the Ball but it was like she’d turned her brain off those last hours.

She only knew that when she woke everything was foggy and thick — and her body had the weight of ages she didn’t quite understand holding her down.

“Anyway,” Lily shrugs, “his head’s in the right place.”

“Whose head?”

“Jax.”

Nadya blinks in surprise. “Wait — you’re defending him?”

“He’s a hard-ass but he has to be. We all have to be, Nadi’. That’s how we survive in hiding.”

We. Hearing Lily lump herself in with the rest of them fills her with unease.

“It’s not fair.”

“No,” she agrees, “it isn’t. But until the stupid Council pulls their heads out of their asses nothing’s gonna change.”

They round a corner and Nadya stops — has to wait for Lily to realize she’s not following and turn around before she feels like she can talk.

“I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure I do. Just like I know what would have happened to me if Mari and Jax hadn’t gotten me out of Raines Corp. in time.” Lily backtracks and takes Nadya’s hand. Brushes her fingers over her knuckles. “I’m not mad at you — please don’t think that. But even if Turning me saved me then it wouldn’t have done me a whole lot of good if the Council decided to ax me.

“And judging from everything I’ve heard about them, they would have just to spite Adrian it sounds like. You just weren’t thinking about the long-term.”

Nadya pulls her hand back.

“Okay… now I know you don’t know what happened.” She tries — and fails — to keep the low-key insulted tone out of her voice. Lily’s nose scrunches up slightly.

“Tell me if I have it right then, because maybe I didn’t get the full story.” Nadya nods silently. “So something attacked me at our old place and left me to bleed out, right?”

“Right.”

“And you strong-armed Adrian into Turning me into a vampire, right? — Kudos, by the way. I wish I could’ve seen it because you’re scary when you get mad.”

Nadya ignores the compliment. “Right.”

The tension between them builds. “And he’s not only a member of some stupid Council that runs the vampires in the city, he’s a leader of one of their groups.”

“He’s the leader of Clan Raines. And he was working on getting you the next spot in his clan when Jax and Mari kidnapped you.”

Lily’s scoff brings a tick to Nadya’s brow.

“Okay so sure, he was ‘working on it,’ but what if whatever he tried to do failed? They would have killed me, right? Since I technically wouldn’t be part of one of their stupid Clans? No brand, no tether for my soul — all the chance and risk of becoming Feral and a danger to their stupid little quota? Right?”

What she’s saying isn’t wrong but it’s not right either.

“He wouldn’t have failed. I wouldn’t let him.”

“Yeah, like a bunch of rich vampire assholes would have listened to you?”

“You’re lumping Adrian in with one of ‘those assholes,’ you know.”

A beat. “Yeah, I know.”

It makes Nadya step back — disgusted. Why wouldn’t she be? It’s like this is Lily but also… not. “What have Maricruz and Jax been telling you?” What lies have they been feeding you?

“They just showed me how the world works here, Nadya. Not just for vampires but for the way they divide us. Liv — you know, Liv, that sweetheart? Yeah, some creep from the Baron’s Clan was obsessed with her. When she turned him down like the skeezebag he was he Turned her and left her to die or go Feral so no one else could have her! Now she can’t ever perform up top again.

“And Mari — my Mari — she was Turned so she would become Feral. That’s why she cares so freakin’ much about that stupid party! She was supposed to be some… some living weapon and when they were done with her they were gonna put her down like a rabid animal. But she was stronger than that — she’s still stronger than that. She’s worth more than any Clan vampire and then some.”

The injustice of it all makes Nadya feel dirty and heavy — things she knew on the surface but didn’t understand the full horror of until she puts faces to the tales. But the real knife in her side is the way Lily spits her words in her direction. Like she’s just another awful anonymous commenter who needs to be reminded that people are still people even if they’re different.

Lily doesn’t give her time to muster up words. She’s on a roll.

“Say you’re right. Say Adrian Raines is one of the good guys. He’s still benefited and continues to benefit off of a broken system that his cohorts continue to manipulate and bastardize for their own selfish gains.”

“Lily you need to calm down.”

“No way!”

“Well… Well he knew the risks and Turned you anyway!” Fine, if she was going to be shouted at then she would shout, too.

“Even though I still would have died! And he wouldn’t have gotten more than a slap on the wrist!”

“You don’t know that!”

“Oh you bet your butt I do!”

They’re screaming at one another now. Nadya’s red in the face — rest and time replenishing the tears what well up at the corners of her eyes. Lily’s fists are balled at her sides and she’s not seen her this mad since possibly ever.

“When will you stop blindly trusting the people in power?! You’re better than that!”

“You’re comparing two issues that are way different!”

“Different?! I’m a queer black woman in America, girl! That’s the Clanless of humanity!”

Behind them comes the sound of hurried shoes on concrete. Lily shakes her fist, slams it into the wall and the structure fractures slightly under the pressure. Nadya can’t help but stare at it in horror. Is left to imagine the difference between the strong rock and her fragile bones.

The fight drains out of her like it leeches from the crack in the wall. Makes her take a hesitant step back because she’s not just fighting with her friend and roommate any more. She’s fighting with someone—some thing—much stronger than she.

“Lil’ — I-I’m sorry.”

“This is just another label to tack onto my chest! Just another thing that might get me killed! Again!”

“Lily —”

“I mean, for fucks’ sakes Nadi’, did you even think about what I was going through while you were sipping champagne and wearing stupid designer dresses?!”

Before she can say another word the footsteps grow louder and Maricruz whips around the corner. She looks ready for a fight — a baseball bat in hand — but lowers it when she sees Lily and Nadya alone. Her eyes fall on the cracked wall and she stiffens.

“What’s going on here?”

Nadya makes the mistake of blinking; lets a tear fall down her cheek. Lily seethes and flashes red eyes.

“Don’t even try to make me pity you right now. At least you still had our place. At least you knew what was going on! I woke up in a fucking coffin!”

Maricruz steps in while Nadya chokes on her words. Holds one hand out warily like she’s keeping a creature at bay and stretches the other out in offering.

“Lil’, mi amor, remember what I said about letting your emotions get the best of you? You’re doing it again. When was the last time you fed, baby?”

“I’m fine Mari! Jesus — you didn’t — you weren’t here when this started!”

“No baby; I wasn’t. But come on… you’re not acting like yourself.”

“W-What’s happening? What’s wrong with her?” Nadya hisses. The look Mari throws her isn’t sympathetic in the slightest.

“It’s a newborn thing. Aggression, sensitivity, violent outbursts… triggered by things that we held inside during our mortal lives.”

It makes Nadya’s heart break all over again.

She watches as Mari steps forward; inches her way through the divide until she can grasp Lily in a hug meant to both comfort and restrain. Lily heaves breaths she doesn’t need until they start to fade but when they lock eyes over the older vampire’s shoulder Nadya knows there’s no regret in the things Lily’s said. Or in how she said them.

“I didn’t know,” she begins — and Mari has to renew her hold when Lily looks ready to fight Nadya over her ignorance, “wait—wait! I didn’t know… and maybe I didn’t want to know. And that was my fault. Because even if I didn’t know that didn’t mean you weren’t still hurting.

“I’m so sorry, Lil’. That doesn’t make it better — or make it go away — but… I am.”

She can’t hear the whispers Mari kisses into Lily’s ear but whatever they are, coupled with the soft strokes of her hand on Lily’s cheek — it calms her down. Makes her eyes fade and when she bites her bottom lip it’s with blunted teeth.

“I don’t…” Lily struggles through her desire to shout and keeps her voice even, “I don’t know if I can forgive you just yet.” It’s against everything she said when they reunited but deep down Nadya gets it.

She wouldn’t forgive herself either.

Mari throws her a look; concern and exasperation. “How about you go find somewhere else to be, chica?”

“I — yeah.” Just before she takes the turn back to the plaza she looks back, though. Tortures herself with it — with the sight of Lily and Mari in a searing kiss.

She doesn’t look back a second time.

There’s an abandoned tunnel the Shadow Den doesn’t use for any big projects somewhere South of the whole complex. Lily made sure to include it in the tour because of their mutual love for internet docuseries that explore such places. And, admittedly, it is very cool.

It’s the place Nadya seeks out when she needs some alone time — the Lily incident now behind them both with a promise to be more open about how they were really feeling in the future — when she catches the date on Mari’s evening edition of the paper to find out it’s been three days since the Ball.

Only instead of the soothing calm of a gaping amount of nothing she runs into Jax.

Well not so much runs into him as catches sight of him and ducks back around a half-broken pillar. Debates turning back and just asking Lily if she could have the room they’re sharing to herself for a hot minute or two while she tries to deal with her feelings.

Tries to work out whether she should still have hope or carry some grief in her heart so soon.

“You know I can hear your heartbeat, right?” Jax calls out; doesn’t seem to mind if his voice distorts and warps with every echo in the chain along the stone.

She sighs and slips out of her hiding place.

At first she wants to get into it with him about being shirtless and likely cold this far below the surface but, lucky her, she remembers he’s a vampire before she says anything stupid.

His almost trademark sword rests on a sideways column to the far of the space. At his feet there’s a similar one; wood by the looks of it.

He wipes sweat from his brow with a rag that’s actually his shirt. “Do they need something back at the Den?”

“No?” Her brow crinkles, confused.

“Then why are you here?”

Nadya hops up on a pile of rocks just high enough that she can swing her legs. Feels her grip tighten on the rolled-up paper she accidentally took with her when she ran out.

She shrugs. “Same as you I guess.”

“Somehow exercise doesn’t really seem like your thing.”

While Jax looks her up and down with judgment clear in his eyes Nadya huffs and chucks the paper at him. He catches it swiftly — she tries not to make a comparison (even mental) to ninjas.

“You can exercise anywhere, can’t you,” she quips, “but you come here to do it alone.”

“That was the intention; sure.” Jax unfurls the paper and glances at the headline — something about the stock market, Nadya recalls, and watches him scan over the print for his answers.

Eventually she takes pity on him; gestures to the date up top. He nods. “Still no word about your masters, then. I see.”

By now Nadya knows he keeps calling them that to get a rise out of her. And with her heart in the sour place it is; somewhere in the murky waters at the bottom of a well, she just doesn’t have the energy to fall into it with him (yet again).

“Big-wigs can’t just vanish, not in New York of all places.”

He huffs; probably the closest thing to a chuckle he’s had since he was turned. Nadya’s surprised there isn’t dust lingering in his funny bone.

“On the contrary; they do all the time.”

“Not these. A mobster and a skeeze like Lester — maybe. But Adrian? Kamilah? Vega’s a senator.”

“This is what life is like for us. This is what happens when something needs covering up.”

Nadya glares at his back while Jax picks up his wooden sword. “All right Mister Has-All-the-Answers, tell me this. When the Council is the one who does all the covering up then who covers up the Council itself?”

He opens his mouth but falters; even in his stance — left foot sliding slightly out of place while he thinks it over.

It’s back just as quickly and the swing of the fake blade is near-perfect. Or — that’s what she assumes, knowing nothing about sword-fighting.

“Fair point.”

It’s a temporary victory but a victory regardless. Nadya’s not had enough of those lately so she takes it — holds on tight as something to remember. And her point is a good one.

If they’re the most powerful vampires in New York then who has the power enough to do something like this?

“Well good riddance I say,” Jax continues, “maybe now we can finally work towards dismantling the Clan system and coming out of the shadows.”

She swallows down her anger like bile. “Sure — until someone else steps in.”

The warrior stops in the middle of his sequence; halts the whistle of the wooden blade through the stale underground air and when he rounds on Nadya his eyes flash with intensity and passion. Not the color of his vampiric hunger but rather bright and bold. Ready to take on anything standing in his way.

“That sounds like a threat.”

Nadya snorts. “Yeah; that’s me. Tiny human Nadya stepping in to rule the Council with an iron fist and her coffee mug in a cozy.” When his stern stare doesn’t abate Nadya rolls her eyes. “I’m just saying that’s how it works in all the history books — films too. Ask Lily — that’s pretty much the arc of the first two Modern Combat games.”

“And who is to say we’re not the ones to ‘step in’ and make things better?”

“Because.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

Nadya wrings her hands in her lap. He’s not backing down — so if he wants an answer she’ll give him one.

“Because… that kind of thinking implies something I can’t really accept right now.” I have to hope. If I don’t who will?

Whatever they talk about — the city, the vampires, Mari and Lily, probably even the weather — Nadya knows they’ll get into an argument over. Oh, she totally gives kudos to his passion. He’s the type who looks like he could make real change regardless of whether or not his asymmetrical eyebrows make her want to punch his nose.

But she knows the type. Knows that type doesn’t really brush well against the type she is.

So when he goes from impassioned stances to silent training Nadya doesn’t try to fill the empty space between them with more things for them to disagree on.

She came here for silence after all.

When the clouds part and reveal the light of the full moon her hands are soaked with blood.

Nadya stares numbly at them; wiggles them slightly and feels how they stick together as the blood begins to dry.

When she peels back her fear there’s joy — pride. The foreign desire — need — to relish her victory and the red fruit born from it. She doesn’t know what victory that is but it’s a heavy one. It weighs not just on her shoulders but inside her soul.

As her fingertips tremble in her own reverence Nadya brings them to her lips and tastes. Feels something like Persephone must have felt when tasting the fruit of Hell for the first time. The flavor of the blood washes along her tongue and the way it arouses her senses is nothing short of divine.

She closes her eyes to better explore the sensations — lips closed around her fingertips and sucking them clean; taking the sin within her without hesitation or fear.

Behind her arms heavy and cold wrap her in an embrace. A soft breath tickles the shell of her ear and the tongue that follows makes her shudder in a whole other kind of ecstasy.

With hazy eyes Nadya looks down — sees the smear of fresh blood along her naked body as those hands caress nonsensical paths along her curves. Long nails dripping the blood of their enemies thumb over her nipples, curl and tangle in the hair at the apex of her thighs. Seek solace lower, lower, lower until she throws her head back with a cry of delight that isn’t her voice at all.

Nadya turns to look into Kamilah’s bright red eyes and feels herself smile at the sight of blood brushed along her dark skin like an artist’s final work. An artist could very well have been one of their victims — she couldn’t care less.

When they kiss it’s not soft or kind. It’s primal; two forces meeting across the world where they should never touch and bringing reality down with it.

Together they fall upon the fur-lined mattress. The lumps displease her but Kamilah shushes her protests with another breath-stealing kiss. Lays her back down on woolen pillows so she can watch her lover with reverence.

And revere her she does — doesn’t even let herself blink for worry that she might miss one second of Kamilah’s glowing beauty and majesty. Majesty that her Queen showers upon her with adoration and devotion.

This is the way the world should always be. Never a lack of prey — the thrill of the hunt followed by all the things that make immortality worthwhile. And with Kamilah at her side they might just very well see it done.

“Come, my love.” Nadya purrs; reaches out and takes Kamilah’s hand in hers to pull the woman up to her lips. Scrapes her fangs along Kamilah’s lower lip and strokes bloody smears over the swell of her curved cheeks.

She sighs in contentment; the calm before the storm. “Together we will see it done.”

“See what done, my love?”

She brushes the hair out of her beloved’s face and this time her kiss is sweet; chaste. A promise of what will never be. — Of what only one woman was capable of ever taking from her.

No, not a woman. A goddess.

But for now… Kamilah will suffice.

“Our vision for a perfect world.”

Kamilah’s smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes then. But it’s a small gesture, could be caused by so many millions of little things that Nadya pays no mind to it; instead sets her Queen free to continue the worship of her body.

“With you by my side,” Nadya continues, “everything is not only possible… but attainable. Just within our grasp.” She rests back upon the bed properly; settles in for the coming dawn that will put an end to their fun only for a brief time. Lets her eyes close as she delights in her Queen’s affections.

Kamilah’s breath is a warm sigh against her inner thighs.

“Yes, my King.”

Nadya opens her eyes to the polished sheen of the looking glass mounted above them. Stares into her own blood-red eyes and the wicked, all-knowing curl of her fanged lips. Kamilah’s head bobs rhythmically between her legs and yet she takes a moment to admire her eternal beauty and power.

When she speaks again she watches her words on Gaius’ tongue. Strokes her fingers through Gaius’ hair down a path along Gaius’ blood-soaked nakedness. And she feels Gaius’ darkness bubbling inside; the storm unleashed.

“And nothing — nothing — will stop us.”

Snap. Snap snap.

“Hello? Ground control to Major Al Jamil, are you with me Al Jamil?”

Snap.

There’s nothing above Lily’s bed but shadowed concrete but Nadya can’t unsee it. Even when she blinks and rubs her eyes until there are little spots of colors without names flashing in her vision there, too, is Gaius.

He knows he’s there. He’s grinning at her. Teeth stained red and face stained red and body stained red and soul stained an utterly pitch dark black that she doesn’t think it counts as a color anymore.

Snap snap snap! “Nadya!”

The panic in Lily’s voice makes sense when Nadya realizes her heart is racing like she’s just run a marathon.

She looks at her friend slowly; has to blink away the bright spots until Lily’s concerned face comes into clarity.

“You were asleep when I left and when I came back you just…” Lily’s voice wavers, “It was like you were in a trance. You kept staring up but when I looked over you it was like you were looking through me, girl.” She looks on the edge of a joke but it fades fast when Nadya feels her stomach do a somersault.

She bursts out of the bed, trips over boots and a small stack of computer whats-its that sting her bare feet; rushes to the bathroom and just barely makes it to the shower floor drain before she vomits.

Lily’s there holding her hair back like any best friend would. Petting her shoulders and offering soothing nothings like “it’s okay” and “just let it out” like they’re coming back from a night out of fun or something.

Definitely not fun.

At some point there’s nothing but water and bile left in her stomach to hurl and her body knows it — stops making her feel that lurching pain of wanting to dispel a poison from her insides and leaves nothing but sore exhaustion.

Lily coaxes her onto the rusty workout bench that serves as a casual place to sit — probably taken from some garbage route or another. Offers her a lukewarm ginger ale that’s more about the intention than the action. But it’s better at nixing the taste than water would be.

All of Lily’s questions push themselves closer and closer to the tip of her tongue with every silent minute; repeatedly opening and closing her mouth when she thinks better of marring whatever Nadya needs to do to recover.

When she finishes the soda she stands, wants nothing more than just to crawl back into bed and hope for the sweet release of unconsciousness. Lily holds her back with a gentle grasp.

“I’ll talk about it later, Lil’. Please.” She mumbles wearily.

Lily nods. “Hey, you do what you gotta do — I’m not gonna push it. But this isn’t about, uh, that.” She gestures back to the bathroom with a grimace. “Jax was doing his walk of the plaza and caught two strangers — vampires he’d never seen before, a man and a woman — talking about that Ball.”

Nadya foolishly lets her heart skip a beat. Could it be them?

Lily continues, wary; “He cornered them about it, obvs. Then they, uh… they mentioned you by name, Nadi’.”

Judging by the look Lily gives her when their eyes meet that’s not a good thing. Makes her heart stink into her vacant stomach because no, it’s not them… why did you trick yourself into hoping?

But if it wasn’t Kamilah and Adrian then who was it?

She doesn’t waste time to dress; pulls on her hoodie from college that Lily accidentally stole and follows her out to the main room.

Only the table hasn’t been set out and the chairs are still stacked in the corner. Mari and Jax pause mid-word and look over the shoulders of the strange vampires to where she lingers with Lily in the doorway.

Whatever was left inside of her that could be considered hopeful withers and hardens into sour fear. Makes her watch, frozen against her will, as Valdas turns with Isseya on his arm and a grim-set frown.

“Miss Nadya,” Valdas greets, “a pleasure to see you unscathed. You have been ordered to make a testimonial at the trial of one Adrian Raines.”

#bloodbound #choices fanfiction #kamilah x mc #jax matsuo #lily spencer #bloodbound mc #mc: nadya al jamil #oc: maricruz espinoza #oblv: bound by destiny #oblv: new chapter #; my fics

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

Text

When Harry Met Enid

by Dan H

Wednesday, 20 December 2006

In which Dan dismisses Harry Potter as a jolly hockey-sticks boarding school romp.~

My childhood was almost embarrassingly suburban. We lived in a semi-detached house with privet hedges. I spent my evenings doing my homework, watching Children's BBC or reading. To fully round out the picture of cosy BBC normalcy, I should add that my preferred reading material, as a child, was a mixture of Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton.

I always preferred Dahl. His stories were strange, macabre, often surreal. His worlds were familiar yet peculiar, whimsical and disturbing. They were nice places to visit, but you most certainly wouldn't want to live there. It is perhaps interesting to note that, Great Glass Elevator aside, Dahl never went back to his worlds once the book had finished. His stories were self contained, they began at the beginning, and stopped at the end.

Blyton, of course, created a very different world. Teams of children with solid dependable names like Dick and Anne had very proper adventures while drinking lashings and lashings of ginger beer. Unlike Dahl, Blyton did write long-running series, the St Clare's and Malory Towers books followed the same cast of characters through their stint at boarding school, and of course the Famous Five and Secret Seven had endless adventures. Unlike Dahl, Blyton's world was ultimately a safe place, and gender aside I would have been quite happy to spend a summer term at St Clare's. I was and still am guiltily fond of Enid Blyton's 1950s utopia: it's nice sometimes to forget about the troubles of the real world, and escape to one where hardened criminals get their comeuppance at the hands of a gang of plucky twelve year olds.

A lot of people (JK Rowling first amongst them) like to talk about how much more there is to Harry Potter than to other children's books. They talk about the real danger that Harry faces, about how terribly, terribly dark Rowling's world is, and about how it's all very serious and mature. One Times reviewer, comparing Potter to the Worst Witch series writes:

But though Mildred, the Worst Witch, like Harry Potter, gets into scrapes with bullies and teachers, there is never a twinge of real terror in Murphy's imaginary world. Harry Potter experiences not only the ordinary trials and triumphs of the boarding-school genre, but repeated attempts to murder him.

This critic, I think, misses two important points. Firstly, while I admit that my memory of The Worst Witch is a little hazy, I am fairly certain that there actually is a villain in TWW who actually does have a plan to kill everybody in the school. Secondly, the repeated attempts to "murder" Harry are carried out by the most ineffectual, bungling, non-threatening group of incompetents ever to grace the pages of a children's book. Harry Potter's encounters with the Death Eaters are no more frightening than the Secret Seven's frequent run-ins with thieves and smugglers, and they represent no greater physical danger.

Now, I don't think this is a weakness in itself. When Harry and Ron confront the troll in Philosopher's Stone it's a genuinely exciting scene. We understand that Harry and Ron are willing to risk their lives for their friend thereby displaying the cardinal virtues of Courage and Friendship and Pluckyness. This scene is in no way marred by the fact that I do not on a rational level actually expect Harry, Ron, or Hermione to be killed. However, I do not think that the troll-fighting scene involves any more danger or sacrifice, or has any greater merit than (for example) the bit in The Naughtiest Girl in the School where Elizabeth risks detention in order to buy a birthday present for her less wealthy best friend. Both sequences involve the protagonist choosing to place themselves in danger (either physical danger in the case of Harry, or social danger in the case of the Naughtiest Girl) in order to help a friend. It doesn't matter whether the risk is of death or of detention, the point is the decision that the character makes, and the consequences that follow from it.

Thinking about it, it's this fixation on the physical events of the series (Harry Gets Attacked, Harry Goes Into The Dark Forest, Harry Fights Death Eaters), rather than the narrative points behind those events, which is responsible for most of the utter tosh that gets written about Harry Potter. The fans say "Harry Potter is placed in real, physical danger, this means that the Harry Potter series is Dark and therefore Good" the detractors say "Harry Potter is not placed in real, physical danger, this means that the Harry Potter series is Not Really Dark and therefore Not Really Good." Both of these groups of people completely miss the point. Harry Potter is a children's series about the importance of friendship and courage. Whether it chooses to illustrate those points with midnight feasts and ginger beer or with trolls and dragons and the occasional deaths of significant characters is completely beside the point. It is what it is, a children's adventure story set in a boarding school, with some wizards in it.

And that should be the end of it, and it would have been had something peculiar not happened to the series around about book four.

Harry Potter books 1-3 are excellent children's books. They combine exciting adventure with boarding school cosiness to produce thoroughly engaging stories about wizards and magic and the importance of friendship and courage. Books four to six (and I strongly suspect book seven will follow suit) are sub-par fantasy about Wizards and Magic.

Normally, this wouldn't annoy me as much as it does. It'd be a shame, but I'd cope. However I actually think that the course taken by the Potter books has actually had a detrimental effect on Children's Fiction as a whole.

It is absolutely right and correct to say that books for children are in no way inferior to books for adults. It is absolutely true that children are capable of dealing with issues far more complicated than adults give them credit for. Unfortunately this leads some people to the conclusion that there should be literally no difference between children's books and books for adults or, worse, that the merits of a children's book should be weighed according to how similar it is to a book for adults.

So many of the things which the later Harry Potter books are praised for the richness of the world, the complexity of the overarching plot are attributes which belong to adult, not children's fiction. That is not to say that children's fiction cannot be complex, but that its complexities should lie in areas other than the intricacies of the backplot and the precise functioning of Horcruxes.

To put it another way: Snape in the first book is complex in precisely the right way for a children's book. We start out thinking that he is Bad, but it turns out that he is Good. This is a nice twist, and children are smart enough to appreciate the moral complexity of it. Snape is horrible, but he is a good person. Snape in the later books is "complex" in precisely the wrong way for a children's book. He is a tangle of conflicting motivations, which may or may not actually make very much sense. He's probably going to wind up having been in love with Lily Potter, and blame himself for her death and blah blah blah.

Now I'm not saying that children are incapable of understanding characters with complex motivations. I'm saying that children won't gain anything by being asked to understand characters with complex motivations (particularly when said motivations are spurious and rather cliched). When you hear children talk about the Potter books, they always talk about how much they love the wizards and the broomsticks, you hear remarkably few people saying "well I'm really interested in the formative childhood experiences of Severus Snape."

Just look at the great classics of children's literature (particularly fantastic children's literature). We aren't asked to analyse the motivations of the Mock Turtle, or wonder whether the Queen of Hearts is really as bad as she seems. Nobody expects us to be interested in the political climate of Oz (well ... Gregory Maguire does). Children's books shouldn't be preoccupied with the same petty minutiae which fill up so much adult literature (particularly fantasy literature). In pandering to the fans' desire to speculate about the inner workings of her magical world (guess what folks, it doesn't have any, it's completely nonsensical) Rowling is breeding a generation of "book lovers" accustomed to the worst excesses of the fantasy genre.

Dahl, Carroll, Baum and the others may not have had the "moral" heart of the Harry Potter books (at least, that's Miss Rowling's analysis), but they had an imagination which far exceeds the few simple ideas which JK spins out over the Potter series. They may not have had long running plots, or complex character arcs (like the "Lupin shacks up with Tonks" arc or the "Harry goes out with Ginny for all of five minutes" arc), but for pity's sake children get enough of that sort of thing watching Eastenders.

JK Rowling is raising a generation of children to value world above plot, plot above meaning, and volume of written material above everything.Themes:

J.K. Rowling

Books

Young Adult / Children

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Rami

at 14:07 on 2006-12-20I don't read Harry Potter, but I agree with your points about Children's Fiction As A Whole - it *shouldn't* just be adult fiction with shorter words and more colorful packaging!

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Wardog

at 13:04 on 2007-01-01And Harry Potter, of course, has its range of "adult" covers, as if to further distance itself from the rest of children's fiction. As I shall surely write in an article of my very own, JK seems to be no longer writing books for children, she's writing books for Harry Potter fans which is actually a completely different thing.

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TheMerryMustelid

at 17:59 on 2012-04-21"Snape He's probably going to wind up having been in love with Lily Potter, and blame himself for her death and blah blah blah..."

Wow! You're a prophetic genius! How _do_ you do that? ;)

You hate JK Rowling as much as I hate Dan Brown. Let's get together and do coffee! :) Though I actually enjoyed the Potter series *ducks* I recognize it for the big magic soap opera it is. I have no illusions that it's great literature, but I think fellow fantasy writers like Terry Pratchett are just a _mite_ jealous that she captured the youth market before they did.

Whatever you may think of Rowling, you gotta give her credit for getting young kids around the world excited about

reading

. That's no small feat. Sorry if the visual image of a 5 year old hugging the latest Harry Potter tome to their elated breast gives you the vapors, but I find it inspiring. :P

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Dan H

at 22:32 on 2012-04-21

Whatever you may think of Rowling, you gotta give her credit for getting young kids around the world excited about reading.

Obviously getting kids to read is good, but I'm genuinely not convinced JKR actually increased the amount of books read by children - I strongly suspect that the sorts of kids who read Harry Potter are the sorts of kids who would have been reading anyway. I think the anecdotal evidence gets skewed here in the sense that for kids-who-read, there is likely to be a particular author who you remember as being the author who got you into reading (for me it was Dahl with a side order of Pratchett) and while I think there's a generation of kids for whom that author was Rowling, I don't think that's quite the same as Rowling getting kids to read. It's like the Yoko Factor in reverse, the kids got themselves to read, Rowling was just there at the time.

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Arthur B

at 00:31 on 2012-04-22Plus: getting lots of kids to read is benign enough. Getting lots of kids to

all read the same stuff

brings me out in chills.

As a young person the most valuable books I read were the ones which were strictly speaking not actually intended for people my age.

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Sister Magpie

at 06:03 on 2012-04-22I could swear I remember reading some actual research about this idea with HP. The basic result was, unsurprisingly, that while HP did certainly get kids interested in reading those books (just as Star Wars got kids interested in seeing Star Wars), the number of readers (meaning kids who read for pleasure) was basically the same.

So essentially the same idea--there are now a lot of adult readers whose first amazing books were HP, but the generation that were kids when HP came out don't have a higher percentage of readers as a result.

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James D

at 06:56 on 2012-04-22Man, that's kind of depressing. There must also be kids out there whose 'first amazing books' were the Twilight series.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 15:17 on 2012-04-22Yeah, some kids are just readers. They'll read whatever's in front of them, whether it's Harry Potter or the cereal box. Kids who don't like to read because reading is hard or boring will just wait to see the movies, as always.

I'm honestly impressed with Rowling for tapping exactly the right cultural vein at the right time. I mean, the woman literally wrote books that managed to appeal to *every kind of person everywhere*. Even people who hated the books enjoyed hating them, and often for very different reasons. She tried to give everyone everything and failed spectacularly, but she did manage to give everyone something. And she did it just by being herself and writing the kind of books she would want to read.

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TheMerryMustelid

at 16:22 on 2012-04-22I'd like to see those statistics about how the number of kids reading Potter were "reading kids" anyway. I'm writing from the states and let me tell you, seeing American kids

under

7 years old _pack_ bookstores (and I'm talking the

big

chains here) just to read a story was a new phenomena to me. Kids that young usually are not into reading as a rule.

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Arthur B

at 16:25 on 2012-04-22

I'd like to see those statistics about how the number of kids reading Potter were "reading kids" anyway. I'm writing from the states and let me tell you, seeing American kids under 7 years old _pack_ bookstores (and I'm talking the bigchains here) just to read a story was a new phenomena to me. Kids that young usually are not into reading as a rule.

Were they packing the bookstores year-round or just around the Potter release dates? Because if it's the latter, that might just be a side effect of them all being keen to read the same books by the same author rather than being particularly more keen to read than their forebears.

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TheMerryMustelid

at 16:28 on 2012-04-22

James D: Man, that's kind of depressing. There must also be kids out there whose 'first amazing books' were the Twilight series.

I see what you did there. :P

God, that would be even

depressing, wouldn't it?

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Sister Magpie

at 17:17 on 2012-04-22

I don't have the actual statistics, but the upshot of what I read was the opposite. It wasn't that the books were read by kids who were readers anyway. They were also read by non-readers because they were a huge thing everyone wanted to read. But they didn't get kids interested in reading so much as interested in Harry Potter. So it didn't create readers, it created HP fans who read that.

Though in my experience having worked at a kids' bookstore there are plenty of kids who would pack a bookstore to hear a story. There just aren't huge events where a specific book coming out brings in the crowd all at once--which of course was true for adult readers with HP too.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 17:21 on 2012-04-22I think if the goal was to get kids to start reading Harry Potter and then graduate them to actual good books, it didn't work. There are kids who read Harry Potter and nothing else, which doesn't quite make them "readers."

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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

at 20:09 on 2012-04-22

I have no illusions that it's great literature, but I think fellow fantasy writers like Terry Pratchett are just a _mite_ jealous that she captured the youth market before they did.

That was never the problem- Pratchett, at least, was annoyed at the way she was presented in the news as if she was the first person ever to put MAGIC in books for CHILDREN, etc, in pieces obviously written by people who do not read fantasy (and yet think they know what's what in the genre).

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http://lonewolf-eburg.livejournal.com/

at 21:07 on 2012-04-22The main problem with Harry Potter isn't that the books stop being "children's books" halfway though. "These books are no longer for children" is a statement that implies something that is nor positive, nor negative.

The problem is that in the later books, "childlike" elements inherited from earlier ones uncomfortably mesh with the new "adult stuff". I'd argue that in HBP and DH this is particularly noticeable, though two previous books suffer from that as well. As a result, both the series and every particular post-PoA book taken in itself have a hard time realizing who the hell is their primary audience. That results in a lot of dissonant Mood Whiplashes, aborted storylines and themes as the narrative merrily goes from "childlike" to "adult" and back again, and inconsistent characterization.

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TheMerryMustelid

at 21:19 on 2012-04-22TheMerryMustelid:

I have no illusions that it's great literature, but I think fellow fantasy writers like Terry Pratchett are just a _mite_ jealous that she captured the youth market before they did.

http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

Didn't Pratchett also take Rowling to task for effectively saying her books

weren't

fantasy? Like she was trying to distance her series from the "taint" of the genre or something. If she did say something as bone-headed as that, I don't blame him for jumping down her throat.

I love Pratchett and am happy to see him finally getting a wider audience in the States. For many years it seemed he was almost the American fantasy geek's best kept secret. I used to sneer at Terry Brooks readers while I clutched the latest then-hard-to-find Pratchett tome. But that was way back and Pratchett has had good american distribution for at least a decade now.

Ogg is my Co-pilot. :D

To get back on topic, if it's statistically true that Rowling didn't inspire more kids to read beyond her series, that is too bad, but is it necessarily her fault? One of my little pet theories is that fantasy in general has benefitted from the Harry Potter frenzy, because during the waits between Potter books & after the series ended, readers needed something to fill the void. So in effect, Rowling did help other fantasy writers by making fantasy more popular than ever before, even mainstream.

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Sister Magpie

at 00:04 on 2012-04-23I don't think anybody would say it was her fault. It came up, I think, because there were a lot of people crediting her with single-handedly boosting literacy rates etc. That idea has gotten repeated a lot, so it just gets corrected. Blaming her for not performing that feat is like blaming her for not actually being able to fly a broomstick--I don't think anybody could do it!

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Dan H

at 09:37 on 2012-04-23

The main problem with Harry Potter isn't that the books stop being "children's books" halfway though. "These books are no longer for children" is a statement that implies something that is nor positive, nor negative.

I think I disagree, but only margainally. I think "these books are no longer for children" does in fact imply something negative, simply because it implies - well - all of the stuff you mention later.

The reason I would suggest that it was bad for a series of children's books to become a series of books for adults is simply that it is inevitable that the "for kids" stuff doesn't fit with the "for adults" stuff. Part of the problem here is that people seem to forget that you can have a dark, serious story in which bad things happen to people which is still fundamentally a children's story, or a lighthearted wacky romp which is still for grownups.

Rowling's error - essentially - was that she mistakenly believed that the only way to engage with the "serious" themes she wanted to engage with in her children's stories was for her to stop writing children's books.

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http://lonewolf-eburg.livejournal.com/

at 15:16 on 2012-04-23I agree that JKR's OMGADULT!change was always going to have some problems, but I also think that she could've done more to alleviate the problem of thematic discordance. She didn't seem to be aware that she has a problem that needs fixing at all.

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Frank

at 17:04 on 2012-04-23I, too, recall reading that HP did not increase readers. My understanding is that the series may have increased literacy within age groups. Increasing one's ability to read books does not necessarily make one a reader of books.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 17:24 on 2012-04-23I agree that after about book three Rowling was no longer clear which market she was targeting, and it didn't matter because she was solidly hitting all of them. I can imagine her and her publishers having their minds blown by their success and wanting more of it, without really being sure what was working and shouldn't be changed and where they had room to let her go crazy and do what she liked. There may not have been a conscious choice to turn the books "adult," but an organic growth in that direction, which no editor ever bothered to sit down and take a good look at and realize just how fucked up it was.

Basically, I think Rowling was a decently talented newbie who was deeply injured by her early success, and it'll be interesting to see whether she ever recovers from it as a writer.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 17:34 on 2012-04-23

She didn't seem to be aware that she has a problem that needs fixing at all.

I think closer to the end, her only thought was "finish these fucking books so I can get the fuck on with my life." It's probably more that she simply didn't care what she wrote anymore as long as she got words on paper, and her editors cared even less.

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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/

at 20:06 on 2012-04-23

She didn't seem to be aware that she has a problem that needs fixing at all.

Given that her next book seems to be a satire on the State of the Nation, I'd say she does at least realise that a work primarily for adults will allow her more room to engage with the ideas she wants to in the manner which she would like. As Dan and others have noted, the social commentary in HP was hampered by the fact that it was ultimately a story about the Chosen One defeating the Dark Lord.

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http://lonewolf-eburg.livejournal.com/

at 20:29 on 2012-04-23I think that Scipio is correct here. To make her later books truly "grow" and be consistent at least in themselves (even if we disregard the earlier ones), JKR needed her books to change from "ultimately a story about the Chosen One defeating the Dark Lord". But while some fanfiction writers could do that (with varying degrees of success), Rowling, understandably, couldn't afford it.

That's why GoF and OotP weren't as bad as DH. In then, JKR could allow herself to deviate a little. HBP, IMO, is just plain badly written.

"I'd say she does at least realise that a work primarily for adults will allow her more room to engage with the ideas she wants to in the manner which she would like"

To be fair, sometimes fantasy can be a good vessel for real-world commentary. But then, see the previous points made on the thread.

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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/

at 19:05 on 2012-04-24

To be fair, sometimes fantasy can be a good vessel for real-world commentary. But then, see the previous points made on the thread.

Oh, definitely. One of my favourite fantasies of the moment is Shadows of the Apt, which tries very hard to engage with race, privilege and the nature of prejudice and discrimination in general. I just think that a series for children is perhaps not the best medium for that sort of thing.

#Ferretbrain #Harry Potter #Roald Dahl #Enid Blyton #J.K. Rowling #Dan H

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duhragonball · 5 years

Text

Variations on a Theme

My fanfic is long enough that I start to worry that I may be repeating myself in places. In particular, I feel like the villains sort of run together, although that’s arguably true for any long-running story. Lots of people get the Joker and the Riddler mixed up, for example. Your standard Batman villains are all going to play off the same themes: fear, chaos, power, dual-identity, genius, etc. Some of them are bound to overlap eventually.

I thought about how this works with Dragon Ball’s villains. In general, I feel like the major bad guys manage to be pretty distinct from each other, even though they’re basically all doing the same things. I guess I should make a list. Note that I don’t really have a firm definition of “major bad guy,” so if your fave didn’t make the cut, I wouldn’t read too much into that.

Emperor Pilaf: Wants to use the Dragon Balls to wish for world domination. He seems kind of lazy and unfocused at first glance, but when you think about it, he puts a lot of time and effort into his goals. It’s like he thinks Dragon Ball hunting is the quickest, easiest way to get what he wants, but it never actually works out that way, and he never seems to notice.

Red Ribbon Army: I’m sort of lumping General Blue and the other RR officers into this one. They’re all cruel and ruthless in their search for the Dragon Balls, but they’re only doing it in service to a larger cause. For most of the Red Ribbon Saga, it’s assumed that the Army wants to wish for world domination, just like Pilaf, because what else could they possibly want? But you have to figure that a guy like General White wouldn’t be much better off before or after that kind of a wish. He’d still be assigned to some Red Ribbon outpost, carrying out the will of his superiors. He’d probably be richer and more powerful in a world ruled by the Red Ribbon Army, but in the end he’s doing it all for espirit de corps.

Mercenary Tao: He’s just in it for the money, and I suspect the money is really just a way for him to keep score, since his rates are so high that he’s he’s probably already a rich man. Besides, he never pays for anything, so what does he need with money anyway? Tao’s the first bad guy who’s so strong that he can just do whatever he wants. He’s like a one-man Red Ribbon Army in that sense. As an individual, he doesn’t have to worry about angry superiors or unruly subordinates. I suppose his only real overriding motivation is his pride, as he refuses to accept defeat at the hands of Goku, even though he has no particular reason to keep fighting him.

Commander Red: The big twist of the Red Ribbon arc is when Staff Officer Black finds out that Red only wanted the Dragon Balls to become taller. You’d think he’d rather have his right eye healed, but nope. This is where we find out all the RR guys have been fighting for a completely meaningless objective. The Army is already rich and powerful, and one could argue that they practically rule the world anyway, since they can more or less do as they please. I think Red’s quest to become taller demonstrates that they’ve already peaked as a world power. With nothing else to accomplish, Red’s applying his accumulated power on selfish desires.

Tien Shinhan: Essentially, he’s just a patsy for the Crane Hermit, who in turn is out to avenge the death of Mercenary Tao, who in fact isn’t even dead. I suppose Tien’s character arc in the 22nd Budokai is really just him waking up to the fact that his whole life is pointless. He’s just stealing and killing for other people’s benefit, not unlike Tao’s mercenary career. His power was impressive, but his victories over Yamcha and Jackie Chun were empty, and his victory over Goku would have been empty as well if he hadn’t repudiated the Crane school during the fight.

King Piccolo/Piccolo Junior: I guess the big difference with King Piccolo is that he already ruled the world fifty years ago, and now that he’s been unsealed, he’s going to pick up where he left off. Also, we eventually learn that he’s the evil side of Kami, and if one dies the other will cease to exist. That puts an interesting spin on his villainy, since his greatest enemy can never truly be defeated. Not unlike the Biblical Satan, his plan is to just to defile creation as much as he can until his inevitable end. Like Tien, there’s a certain pointlessness to his brand of evil, which probably contributed to his reform. I like to think that when Piccolo Junior became a martial artist, he began to appreciate the discipline and sportsmanship of it, to the point where he began to think of Goku an company as peers to be respected, instead of enemies to be destroyed. And, as Kami observed, training Gohan was a way for Piccolo to leave a legacy behind, something he could never do as a Demon King.

Raditz: Really, Raditz only came to Earth to recruit Goku for a battle on some other planet. What sets the DBZ villains apart is that they don’t even care about the Earth at all, and only see it as a stepping stone to some larger goal. Upon learning about the Dragon Balls, he believed that his comrades would use them to bring him back to life.

Nappa: Not unlike Raditz, in the sense that he probably would have used the Dragon Balls to wish him back to life. Nappa’s thought of breeding a race of Saiyan-Earthling hybrids suggests that he had some lofty dreams of his own for the future, but he was happy to put them aside when Vegeta suggested something more selfish.

Vegeta: The first guy to think of wishing for immortality. The key difference between Vegeta and past villains is that he’s not just looking for a way to conquer a particular empire, or to kill lots of people. He’s thinking ahead to battles he wants to fight in the future (i.e. Frieza), and he wants to keep conquering and killing forever. I don’t think Vegeta ever truly wanted to be immortal for its own sake, but he saw it as a way to hedge his bets, in case he ever bit off more than he could chew.

All of Frieza’s henchmen: In a nutshell, they serve Frieza because they see that as the only way forward in a universe where Frieza is the strongest mortal in it. There’s no freedom from Frieza, only freedom through Frieza, and your Zarbons and Captain Ginyus thrive in the organization by doing their jobs very well. They think the universe is an extremely simple equation because of this, and they’re always shocked and horrified to learn that they’re mistaken.

Frieza: Basically all of the previous bad guys rolled into one. He already rules the universe, by virtue of being the strongest guy in it, so he’s a lot like Red, Tao, and Piccolo on Earth. He seeks immortality like Vegeta, but it almost feels like Red’s wish to become taller. Frieza doesn’t really have anything else to wish for, you know? He also planned to destroy Namek after getting his wish, just as Piccolo did when he got his youth restored, and he became a revenge-obsessed cyborg like Tao.

Garlic Junior: Okay, he’s filler, but I still think he’s cool. Garlic sort of doubled down on the whole “evil-for-evil’s-sake” gimmick that King Piccolo represented. Unlike Piccolo, he’s not the evil half of anybody, and he’s not just looking to torment everyone on Earth. Instead, his plan is to convert everyone on Earth to his cause, using the Black Water Mist. I get the sense that none of this was really headed anywhere specific. He spoke of resurrecting his dead father, but I have no idea what the purpose of that would be when he had already conquered the Earth and overthrown his enemies. He reminds me a lot of Pilaf, and I almost wonder if Garlic is supposed to represent what Pilaf could have become if he’d tried a little harder, or stooped a little lower.

Dr. Gero: Revenge personified. Akira Toriyama later established that Gero lost his son in the destruction of the Red Ribbon HQ, and that’s why he wanted revenge on Goku so badly, and that’s fine and all, though I liked the original implication that he just really, really liked the Red Ribbon Army as a concept, like a middle-aged wrestling fan who really misses WCW. You could argue that Gero is the most nihilistic villain of the set, as his revenge plot involves multiple long term schemes, some of them arranged beyond his expected lifespan, and none of them were particularly concerned about the fate of the Earth.

Androids 17, 18, and 19: I’m assuming that 19 had some semblance of free will here. None of these three had any stake in Gero’s plot, but they didn’t really have anything else going for them either. I’m pretty sure 19 stuck with Gero because he wanted to be on the winning side, and maybe because Gero was the more powerful of the two. By contrast, 17 and 18 turned on him at the first opportunity, and wandered around for a while before turning good. Their counterparts in the Future Trunks timeline never reformed, which I always assumed was they were driven mad by boredom. Of course, they were always designed to be fodder for Cell, so in a sense they were trapped in Gero’s vendetta whether they wanted to be or not.

Cell (The Best Villain): He’s a lot like Frieza if he had actually wished for immortality. What would Frieza have done next? Well, he’d probably sip wine and gloat for another hundred million years, so maybe this analogy doesn’t hold up. The point is that Cell was designed to fulfil a very specific set of objectives, making him stronger than everyone, and then he just sort of had nothing else to do. It’s very similar to Tien and Mercenary Tao’s lack of purpose, but since Cell is an inhuman monster, there’s no guarantee that he’d eventually get sick of killing and destroying everything.

Babidi: He’s a lot like Commander Red, Frieza, Garlic, and Dr. Gero, in that he relies on others to do his dirty work. You know, that’s actually a pretty long list. All five of these dudes use different forms of manipulation to control their underlings. Babidi uses mind control, and I suppose Garlic does too, though the Black Water Mist isn’t quite so well-defined. Gero seems to be able to program his cyborgs to varying degrees of complaince. Frieza uses on intimidation and cult of personality, and Commander Red seems to rely on military hierarchy and a sense of “we’re all in this together”. Babidi is more direct about it. If he wants someone on his team, he just uses his magic and makes them join his team, whether they would have shared his objectives or not. He also wants revenge like Dr. Gero, and he has dreams of ruling the universe like several other past villains, but all of that seems to take a back seat to reviving Majin Buu. That seems to be what makes him stand out. Mind control is a bit cliche, but the real hook to Babidi is what he’s trying to use it to accomplish. Each guy he brings to his side is just cannon fodder for winning the next guy, until he can finally get Buu on his team. I’m pretty sure he could conquer the universe and kill the Supreme Kai with Dabura and Vegeta alone, but he can’t stand the thought of not having Buu on his team. Except Majin Buu’s the one bad guy he can’t control. If he had just left that one go, he would have been unstoppable. Instead, he pushed too far and lost it all.

Majin Buu: This guy gets a lot of criticism for being short on personality, but I think that’s the point. He’s a weapon, like Cell, and he’s even more devoid of purpose than the Crane School guys, King Piccolo, or the Androids. He’s basically a walking natural disaster, practically begging the universe to stop him. I never really thought about it before, but he’s a lot like Tien’s run as a villain. Like, Tien met Majin Buu in the middle of that arc, and you’d never make that connection during that encounter, but it really is a similar kind of situation. They both needed somebody to slap some sense into ‘em.

I thought about moving on to the villains from GT and Super, but this is pretty long already, so I’ll just call it here. I think I’ve seen what I needed to see anyway. A lot of these guys have similar power-sets and motivations. Babidi and Dr. Gero are very similar in the sense that their revenge plans end up summoning an unstoppable weapon and unleashing it upon a defenseless Earth.

But the difference lies in the details. For Gero, Perfect Cell was Plan C or D, a failsafe he never expected to live long enough to see in action. Plan A was to tackle Goku in person by becoming an android himself, and everything else that happened was because of his initial failure to accomplish this. Majin Buu, on the other hand, was Babidi’s first and only goal. As much as he wanted to get revenge on the Surpreme Kai, he seemed much more fixated on Buu. Killing the Kai was just a way to clear a path to Buu, or a fun thing to do with Buu once he got him.

This also puts some parallels in stark contrast. When 17 kills Dr. Gero, it’s superficially similar to Buu killing Babidi. The difference, though, is that Gero never trusted 17, and he was only activating him out of desperation. Babidi really thought he had Buu figured out, and then he lowered his guard for just a moment and paid the ultimate price. Which is ironic when you think about it, because we don’t usually think of Buu as being treacherous or sneaky. 17 comes across that way sometimes, but he’s pretty up front about his intentions. Gero wasn’t exactly surprised when 17 turned on him.

And this is why I get pissed off when people who don’t watch the show try to dismiss it as the same thing over and over. It’s not the same thing over and over, but the only way to be convinced of that is to take the time to sit down and experience Dragon Ball in depth. I don’t like football, but I’m not gonna buy into the tired old joke of it being a bunch of guys running around in tight pants. I have no idea how football works, but I’m not gonna pretend that there isn’t some deeper appeal, or that there’s no tactical or athletic contest going on, simply because I don’t like it. A lot of people enjoy it, so there must be something to it, even if it’s not for me. I just haven’t taken the time to study it.

Anyway, I’m concluding from this that I should probably take the time to study my own work, and maybe that would help me to shake some of these confidence issues. I can talk myself into believing that my writing is better than I think it is, but maybe I need to analyze that in detail, and actually write the analysis down instead of letting it swirl around endlessly in my head. I’ve always resisted this sort of thing because it feels like an ego trip, but maybe it’s been the opposite all along...

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soyosauce · 5 years

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On Using Culture As Language In Last Tango In Cyberspace

“THIS REVOLUTION IS FOR DISPLAY PURPOSES ONLY.”

Last Tango in Cyberspace makes culture a character to be explored in equal measure as the main character. Lion, an empathy-tracker, or em-tracker for short—uses his unique talent to consume curated content provided by clients and extrapolate a future; not at an individual level, mind you, rather as a glimpse at the cultural significance regarding the content in the future. It’s an amalgamation of genetic drifts which hardwires an em-trackers’ pattern recognition. Hacking their intuition to do a sort of cultural prognostication.

“A small robot standing on a busy city street corner, looking around. I SEE HUMANS BUT NO HUMANITY.”

Em-trackers methods vary with the person and there are very few known trackers, at least in so far as ones operating in the same capacity of Lion, doing this very niche work for a living. A very good living at that.

Lion, in particular, is rigged to make these deductions from words and logos, though it’s gestured that each tracker would be completely different. He processes the content he’s given, reacts, and tells the client if he sees a future or not. It’s usually a binary answer; a “yes” or a “no.”

“His journalism days are behind him. No longer does he get paid for the plot. Now, he’s paid for saying yes or no—the sum total of his contractual obligations. His work in the world reduced to one-word responses. When, he wonders, did his life get so small?”

Superficially, this book is about Lion being contracted by a major corporate entity to take a look at a crime scene and apply his talents… but this is a very unorthodox application of his gifts and one which ends up taking him down a rabbit hole. Ostensibly it’s a murder mystery wrapped up in noir trappings, something people might expect from cyberpunk. This is where the clear iterations from the sub-culture come into play, however. Within the tropes of a pleasurable whodunit, there’s much more to be consumed.

“You can’t scrub everything,” says Lorenzo. “Information gets what it wants, and it wants to be free.”

A specific trope that follows noir elements in cyberpunk, the investigator in over their head, is a unique vernacular used. There is typically a colloquial dialect that is foreign to the reader and makes them feel a fish out of water. The reader interprets what these cultural elements are in the future with the remix of certain words or the use of completely fictional words, from time to time. Interestingly, the dialect used in this novel is pop culture itself. Not in the very limited sense of Ready Player One, where games, gamers, and gaming is the language—but in landmark moments in cinema and literature that is reasonably absorbed into the general intellect of society. The most common being the novel Dune. Lion carries it with him all the time and is the cornerstone for the explanation of Lion’s gifts and poly-tribalism, a central component to the way Lion looks at culture in the story. People are intersectional beings with complex identities. Tracing the identity back to its origin is possible with technology these days. Appealing to particular facets of the identity can be a predictor for if something is to be successful and thrive or be consumed by another identity that dominates it.

'“Shifting culture requires a confluence of inciting incidents. Something directional that leads to a tribal fracturing and reknitting. Often shows up in language first. In music. Fashion. It can feel a little like hope.” He points at the images. “This doesn’t feel like hope.”

I think this approach both hinders and helps Last Tango in Cyberspace. For one, it’s an interesting use of the trope which proved satisfying to read for me, personally. I had never read Dune but it is explained as needed. I never felt lost. However, I could see some people who had read the book and disagree with the cultural impacts asserted in the text having a problem with most of the book, as it draws from it heavily at a personal level for Lion, as well as a fundamental shorthand for what is happening in the plot; ingrained in the theme and a permanent fixture.

“Words are just bits of information, but language is the full code. It’s wired into every stage of meaning-making, from basic emotions all the way up to abstract thought. Once you can speak a language, you can feel in that language. It’s automatic. It creates empathy.”

The frenetic pacing that accompanies cyberpunk literature is replaced with a sort of artificial acceleration with the structure of the book. Lots of very short chapters, in other words. This allows for expounding on the cultural aspects that are conveyed during the text. You notice what Lion notices. These details becoming foundational to the extrapolations he draws on later. What this means though, is the pacing is somewhat sacrificed in order to get the reader to do the same types of pattern recognition Lion does during the book. It’s clever, but a slow burn.

”Hybridization, he figures, is destined to become one of the ways this generation out-rebels the last generation. How we went from long-haired hippie freaks to pierced punk rockers to transsexual teenagers taking hormones.”

For me, the slower pace made it feel reminiscent of Takeshi Kovach in Altered Carbon. Envoys in that novel “soak up” culture in order to fit in and navigate foreign cultures. Lion’s talent feels like it takes that idea and explores it more thoroughly, engaging with it more, and this method allows you to soak up the information as well. If it were frenetic some of the details would be lost, I feel.

“Lion glances back at the pigeons. Sees a flicker he didn’t notice before. Remembers that the de-extinction program was a failed effort, realizes he’s looking at a light-vert. An AR projection of an almost. The bad dreams of a society disguised as a good time.”

A concept continually being reiterated in the novel is “living the questions.” Something that also subverts first wave cyberpunk, the characters of which are generally on the spectrum somewhere, unlikeable and/or anti-social, and live on the fringes of society in a sub-culture of some kind.

Lion, however, is an embodiment of empathy. He is in stark contrast to those protagonists, relating to most everyone and so can assume their point of view. To the extent, in fact, he resolves to not use his talents on other people.

“We ache for this feeling, but it’s everywhere. Booze, drugs, sex, sport, art, prayer, music, meditation, virtual reality. Kids, hyperventilating, spinning in circles, feel oneness. Why William James called it the basic lesson of expanded consciousness—just tweak a few knobs and levers in the brain and bam. So the drop, the comedown, it’s not that we miss oneness once it’s gone; it’s that we suddenly can’t feel what we actually know is there. Phantom limb syndrome for the soul.”

Last Tango in Cyberspace feels like a love letter to cyberpunk while updating it. In Neuromancer, for example, Gibson’s Rastafarians were a source of major critique. They are also featured in this novel but the author instead traces the cultural aspects and importance of Rastafarian influences on western mainstream culture. It felt as though it was making a point to correct the caricature found in the original source material. Whether or not it succeeds I leave up to someone who’s more educated on that and can speak to it—but the intent is clear.

“the failure of language.” “It’s a creative destruction. Out of that failure comes culture. Out of culture comes desire. Out of desire come products.”

This led me to the only thing I didn’t like about the novel and a personal pet peeve of mine: authors phonetically using foreign language in dialogue. It’s usually done as a form of cultural appreciation and authenticity, I’m sure… but it results in the author needing to clarify what is being said regardless and it just feels uncomfortable. It’s pretty much always from a Western perspective on a minority culture and usually is the default assumption of what the culture sounds like. Lion is able to converse with them for plausible reasons, often not the case when this is encountered, but it’s always left me feeling squeamish. Just tell me they have an accent, placing them in whatever area if that is relevant.

“…what is genuine emotion and what is business strategy. The modern condition.”

As Lion navigates the mystery and ping-pongs about the globe consuming the clues surrounding the mysterious death the reader, too, is engaging in this meta-language. Both in terms of how it subverts or remixes cyberpunk tropes, as well as the cultural context and information Lion imparts as his process. All of which is given weight. Hooking the plot into these details down the line as it comes together.

Most interestingly of all perhaps, the author goes out of their way to state that all of the technology exists in the world today, or is in a lab somewhere being worked on, at the very least.

“The car sees emotions. Signals have been pre-programmed, down to the basement level, below Ekman’s micro-expressions, getting to the core biophysical: heart rate variability, blood oxygen levels. And all from pointing a laser at a tiny vein in the human forehead. The car sees emotions, yet feels nothing. So morality too has to be pre-scripted into the code. Aim for garbage cans and not pedestrians; aim for solitary pedestrians rather than large groups. Empathy programmer, he’s heard it called, someone’s job now.”

This makes the future we are presented with prescient in the same way Neuromancer did with the advent of the Internet and the rise of technology in the ’90s. But where technophobia is firmly rooted in first wave cyberpunk. Last Tango in Cyberspace is making a virtue of humanities peculiarities, some of which we barely grasp. While the Internet is not something we may understand, so too are we learning the same of our own minds. Empathy, after all, is not something we gained from modernity.

“Rilke knew what was up. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, one distant day, live right into the answer. What’s truer than that?”

And empathy seems to be the thing we desperately need right now, rather than the consensual hallucination that allows us to connect to others while, at the same time, enabling us to dehumanize each other.

“Last tango in cyberspace…the end of something radically new. Copy that.”

“Pitch black again. Like someone extinguished an angel.”

#post-cyberpunk #Steven Kotler #poly tribalism #neuromancer #altered carbon #Dune #Herbert

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highglossfinish · 6 years

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Maurice

Maurice was a celluloid stasis cable, but please take a moment to appreciate the only character who mattered.

Welcome to the 'highglossfinish' room. thenightetc: Hello! thenightetc: ...Oh dear Knock Out: Oh yes. Knock Out: And hello! thenightetc: Creeping things. Knock Out: Is this how sex education usually works on your planet? thenightetc: Er Knock Out: Are the captions bothering anyone? thenightetc: Not at all Knock Out: Just checking! thenightetc: I like captions; very helpful when I can't make out someone's accent or zone out for a second thenightetc: Ha! Knock Out: Layers and layers of unremitting stuffiness thinly stretched over a torrent of sexual tension...I miss Vos. thenightetc: This is one wild party. Knock Out: They're breaking out the apples and everything. thenightetc: Not to mention the tea! Knock Out: They're attracted to each other by virtue of being the only two humans with personalities. thebes: Hello! My, such stilted reading Knock Out: Hello, Thebes human! Knock Out: You're just in time for apple eating and sitting quietly. thenightetc: You know... tax evasion. Knock Out: That punting was getting a little too wild. Time to take it down a notch with church. thenightetc: Ouch. thenightetc: Ouch again. Knock Out: Very ouch. thenightetc: "Be even later to your class! I demand it!" Knock Out: They're going to stir up a bull snake. Knock Out: Ouch. thenightetc: Wooooow. thenightetc: I despise people like that. thenightetc: The dean or whoever thenightetc: Throw the wine on him! Knock Out: Breakdown's confused as to why I'm cackling. Knock Out: Best character. thenightetc: Sure, just entrust your letters to random strangers Knock Out: What could possibly go wrong? thebes: This is just going to go 100% according to plan Knock Out: Your planet is awful. Just a reminder. thenightetc: Ohhhh dear Knock Out: Why is the light haired one aging and the other one isn't? thenightetc: Maybe they couldn't make it work for him. Knock Out: Ow. Again. thenightetc: Yeah. thenightetc: Wow. Knock Out: Mmmhmm. Knock Out: Just prod at it. thenightetc: *sigh* thebes: aaaaaaaangst thenightetc: dogs! thebes: good dogs~ Knock Out: New best characters. Knock Out: You know, I picked this movie because no one dies, it might be more interesting if someone did. thenightetc: Eh, that's alright. thenightetc: I mean, the pickings are pretty thin on the ground Knock Out: Entertaining and tragic or this. thebes: period pieces set in this era are practically 80% wheel-spinning anyway thebes: it's part of the genre at this point Knock Out: Are the moustaches that mysteriously come and go also part of the genre? Knock Out: Ew. thenightetc: What...? thenightetc: This sure seems legit Knock Out: This human makes *me* want to go home to my mother. Knock Out: And my "mother" is a hole in the core. Knock Out: Oh please, stop showing us this human's face. thenightetc: This can only end well Knock Out: Oh Unicron, the ominous music! thenightetc: Riveting. Knock Out: Thrilling. thenightetc: Ominous music again thebes: Just absolutely enthralling thenightetc: Eh? Knock Out: If anyone has a more interesting suggestion, feel free to throw it out there. thenightetc: I do want to see how it ends! Knock Out: Likewise, I admit. thenightetc: I just think they didn't need a cricket match. Knock Out: It's an interesting movie when it's not as dull as wet nickel. thebes: And, as movies go, it has only a sub-par amount of nothing happening vs. things happening. I have seen movies where that ratio is through the floor. thenightetc: I know, right thenightetc: He said, like a liar Knock Out: Hah! thenightetc: Well, that got ugl...ier Knock Out: It's a series of increasingly ugly events. Knock Out: Pouncing and Angsting: The Movie. Knock Out: And that would be a human spike. thenightetc: How awkward thenightetc: Ohhhhhh *** off Starscreamapillar: What is all this then? thenightetc: Oh, you missed all kinds of excitement Starscreamapillar: Pity. thenightetc: Even a cricket match Starscreamapillar: The sport, or the insects? thenightetc: The sport. Starscreamapillar: One can never be sure without asking, given the sorts of movies Knock Out has played previously. thenightetc: In all seriousness, it's been all about people's relationships Knock Out: Relationships, angst, and speaking in an even tone. Starscreamapillar: Three terrible things. thebes: Most of this film is empty space they attempt to fill up with banter Knock Out: There's a fascinating story here and a fascinating way to tell it, and we got a cricket match. thenightetc: And a leaky roof thebes: and people we want to smack thenightetc: With exciting piano-moving action Starscreamapillar: I might care more about these people if I had been here the whole time, but your descriptions make me think otherwise. Starscreamapillar: I am waiting for someone to get stabbed, with this score. thenightetc: Wait, that's it? Starscreamapillar: Apparently. Knock Out: Well, that was a whole mess of nothing! thenightetc: Well, we tried Starscreamapillar: I cannot say I am sorry I missed most of it. Knock Out: If anyone's got any interesting videos they'd like to watch for the sake of going out on a lively note, I'm open to them. Starscreamapillar: I can think of nothing offhand... thenightetc: Short notice, buuuuut... here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVNO6I47G3g thebes: All I've got are horrible nature videos thenightetc: It's, you know, amusing thenightetc: And short...ish thebes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y4DbZivHCY and I have this thebes: whoa, wait, nvm, that one might be too horrible a nature video Knock Out: Sea pig it is! thenightetc: "oooooooh" Starscreamapillar: Earth is home to so many awful creatures. thebes: Yeah, no kidding thenightetc: *leans back* thebes: Yeah, I impulsively picked the worst anmal possible. thebes: That may have been a mistake Knock Out: Well, this has been an enlightening night all around. Starscreamapillar: That is a word for it. thenightetc: That was educational. Knock Out: Thank you for showing us that awful thing. thebes: To be fair pretty much anything in the ocean is going to be awful Knock Out: True. True. Starscreamapillar: True. Megatron was shedding weird organisms for months after his stint as a reef. thebes: and that's just the weird stuff, not the aggressively awful stuff thebes: the deep sea hatchetfish has the face of nightmares thenightetc: Ha! thenightetc: A face made for radio. thebes: oh yeah, size is a factor sometimes too. Like, all the videos about how awful the anglerfish is gloss over that it's eight feet long thenightetc: I may regret this but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-skKMQiBDA thenightetc: Isn't nature amazing? thebes: clipping wolves are one of nature's glories thenightetc: Majestic. Knock Out: I think that's a decent place to wrap things up for the night. Starscreamapillar: That was weird, as always. Thank you for hosting. Until next time. thenightetc: It probably is. thenightetc: Thanks! It was a good time, despite the best efforts of the director. thebes: indeed it was Knock Out: Always glad to hear it! Knock Out: Good night, everybody! thenightetc: Goodnight thebes: good night!

#Stream chats

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my-hero-aaron · 6 years

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Summer Camp

Time for another long journey through the adventurous life of Aaron and K! This time they’re training their quirks to the max!

We’d been hearing rumors about it for weeks, but it was proved to be true just yesterday: we really were going on a field trip! I was excited to actually get to spend some time with K, I’d been cooped up cramming for finals for a good while there. My room had morphed into even more of a disaster area in the process, with a clear nest of loose paper, hurriedly scrawled notes, and a large assortment of meal replacement bars having built up around my desk. I drew in a deep breath and sighed heavily at the arduous task that lay before me in sorting all that out. The wrappers in particular fluttered a bit at my exhalation, and I raised an eyebrow. Why in the world would I pick this up by hand, I’ve got a perfectly good quirk to help me out! I smirked slightly and flicked my eyes shut, breathing in the cold in the room around me to push out into the detritus that had piled at my feet, then paused mid-breath. If I blast frost onto all this paper, it’ll wreck my notes. I grumbled slightly at my realization, and begrudgingly started to pack things away normally.

Before I knew it, the short few days between our last final and the day of the trip had flew by, and as I stepped out of the bus that UA had chartered for our travels, I smiled back at my two best pals. However, my kodak moment didn’t last long, as when I looked around a bit closer at my surroundings, the true purpose of the trip hit me like a ton of bricks. This was no pleasure cruise, but instead a training camp to whip us into shape. Unfortunately, the teachers made clear that my deduction just happened to hit the nail straight on the head. “This trip is focused on you all developing your quirks. Just like any other muscle your body can use, your quirks get stronger and more efficient through repeated application of stressors. This would be the perfect time to work on any weaknesses you’ve spotted in your capabilities, or perhaps develop a new technique you’ve been curious about. As you can see, we’re rather isolated, so letting yourself really let loose won’t be any kind of issue, as it may have been for some of you who have a more... forceful limits to your abilities.”

“Weaknesses to my quirk, huh? I mean, there’s the obvious one I could work on, I have such dreadful trouble working in high-heat environments.” I mumbled to myself, my brain already whirring at any techniques that I had been waiting to put into use. Beside me, Oliver was practically beaming at the colossal expanse of trees that filled the area around the clearing we were in.

“Golly gosh, look at all these pals! I bet some of these cuties have been here for a long while!”

“You’d be surprised, Oliver, some of these trees are younger than they look!” Kailey prattled off in response as she restrained herself from continuing, something our green-minded pal had said clearly setting off a little ping of historical knowledge from her stores.

I smiled slightly at K’s restraint. It seemed like she was already working on improving her quirk. However, she clearly wasn’t the only one, as a hot gust of humid air blasted me in the face. Across the way from us, there was quite a chaotic display occurring, with quite a few of 1-A’s students pushing their quirks to a new high. After a moment’s observation, it became clear to me just where that blast of air had come from: a large pot that was situated over a roaring fire. Huh, I wonder why they’re preparing a stew right in the middle of what’s clearly the training field- My thoughts ground to a halt as I saw just what-or rather, who- was in the pot, and they had my mouth watering for an entirely different reason. It was that kid who had half my quirk and twice my power, and it looked like he had been at his training for a while, the sweat of his exertion mixing with the steam of the water and tracing lines along his gritted jawline. The next thing I knew, Kailey was elbowing me in the ribs (I must have been staring again) and gesturing with her head to follow her.

“Uh... Kailey? What did I miss while I was... uh... zoning out there?”

“We’re on our way to another clearing where they’ll give us space to work on our own quirk training like 1-A are right now. They said if we didn’t have ideas, that the teachers would have something set up to just push our quirks to be just that much more strong.”

“Oh JEEZ, I already do enough of that, I better come up with something quick!” I could practically hear the gears grinding in my head, but I smiled as I could practically feel the pieces clicking into place behind my eyes. That heat wave had reminded me of how thermals worked, huge columns of hot air wavering high into the air beneath the wings of birds as they floated without effort over the ocean. Then that lead me to my fascination with flight. Even in the pre-quirk world, one of the most common superhero powers that someone would say they’d like best. After all, soaring through the air without a care in the world did look like a great time. I’d been looking for an elegant way of flight without the obvious dusting of frost that’d leave me moist and underwhelmed after my jaunt into the skies, and I think Todoroki’s heat had provided me with an option, finally. Thankfully, Kailey had kept me from slamming face first into the ground in front of me as I walked, practically on autopilot, letting the tetrominoes of my thought process slam into the perfect tetris of an idea.

“You look like you’re onto something, Aaron. Care to share with the class?”

“So y’know how hot air rises, right?”

“...Yeah, but you’re going to have to give me more than that, dude. I know everything, doesn’t mean I can find everything.”

“Well, if hot air rises, why can’t I?”

“Aaron, normally when I say you’re dense it’s because you’re not getting my hints, but this time I mean it’s because you’re literally too dense.”

“Nonono, trust me, I’ve got a plan and everything!”

“Okay birdman, let me know what Vlad thinks of your idea.”

“Hey Oliver, have you got any ideas for your training?”

“W-well I do have all these trees, I’m sure there’s something I can do there!”

“DUDE WHAT IF YOU MADE LIKE A GIANT TREE MECH?”

It wasn’t clear if Oliver’s wince was at my sudden loudness or at the sheer cheesiness of my idea, but I never got to find out, because we’d reached our portion of the training grounds. I was going over the way I’d have to look at the air around me, and it didn’t help that the idea I had in mind focused on the way heat moved to cause the phenomena I had in mind, so inverting things to actually work in a way that I could actually produce the impetus of my desired current was, in a word, mind-bending. I’d clearly zoned off deep into my own mind for a bit tinkering with the fluid dynamics problems, as I nearly jumped out of my skin when Kailey’s elbow once again found itself buried in my side. Our teacher, rather begrudgingly, called my name off the list, asking me to come forward for my assignment of initial exercises. I felt my face flush a deep red as I walked up to our teacher, as usual mumbling an apology for my absent mindedness.

“Vlad, before you let me know what you have in mind, I think I’ve got a particular technique I’d like to learn. Granted, it’s fairly theoretical at the moment, but I’m pretty sure it’s at least somewhat possible.”

“Go ahead, Frigius, just know that the whole design of this camp is about strengthening your raw power.”

“Well you know how some heroes can fly even though their quirks kinda have nothing to do with flight? I think I’ve got an idea so I can do something like that, y’see-”

“We don’t have all day, get to the point!” Apparently my carrying on had gotten loud, since one of my classmates cut me off midsentence with a shout.

“To make a long story short I think I can fly if I make the air change temperature in just the right way.”

“Interesting concept. I’ve got a set of drills to help you work on your current limitations, but you can work on your idea for the second half of the day, might help your perception issues.”

“Drills? But Vlad, I already do drills practically every da-”

“Frigius, I’m already humoring you with this flight idea. You’ll do your drills, just like your classmates.”

I (rather begrudgingly) gave a slight bow to my instructor, and hurried back to my friends, my mind already spinning once again on the problem I’d handed myself.

“Hoshihime, you’re up next.”

By the time I managed to come out of my calculatory fog, everyone in the class had gotten their training setups assigned, and Kailey had managed to lead my half-conscious self to the dinner table.

“Earth to Aaron! Have you come down yet?” Kailey’s smirk made it clear that the look on my face alone clued her in to just how busy I’d been considering the angles of my new problem.

“How long was I out? What’d I miss?”

“Well, they assigned everyone what amounts to sets of drills to either make us able to use our quirks more forcefully, or use them more precisely. Apparently the teachers think that since I can control space, I could change what things are made out of, so that’s what my drills are focusing on. You wanna tell him what you got, Oliver?”

“Oh, well, I, y’see, I get to spend time with all these trees!”

“Okay, but do they have anything in mind for you to do with the trees, or...” I raised an eyebrow as I trailed off, hoping to get a bit more information from my green pal.

“My quirk doesn’t work as well without sunlight, s-so the teachers suggested I go deep into the forest and train there!”

“Woah, really? I mean, that’s not what I would have gone with, but I suppose the teachers know what they’re on about... Speaking of, how do ya think they choose stuff like this? Is it like, something they hold a panel on, or maybe they ask our parents? Any ideas, Kails?”

“I’d assume they notice little holes in our technique just from the virtue of our training at school, and build our training regimens around that, in order to keep us from simply exercising our bad habits into huge exploitable weaknesses. Then again, in my case, they simply had a piece of conjecture about my ability guide their decision, so that’s clearly not a hard and fast rule. Considering this camp is mostly about building our quirks stamina wise, though, maybe they just simply take into account what makes it harder to actually use our quirks and expose us to that? Kinda like exposure therapy I suppose? I’m surprised they didn’t flat out hand you something to do with fire, Aaron, given your difficulties with-”

Thankfully, someone announcing that our allotted time to eat was almost over cut off K before she blithered out my major weakness to just about anyone who could hear. A little while later, and we got rushed off to bed.

#my hero academia #mha #boku no hero academia #bnha #my hero academia oc #my hero academy oc #Aaron #Quirk: cryokinesis #Kailey #Quirk: Spacetime Manipulation #Oliver #Quirk: Green Thumb #Mod Glacier #This is gonna be a long adventure #it's almost as long if not longer than overclock

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umanta · 7 years

Text

Sleeping Beauty : retold

many thanks to @shanastoryteller and her AMAZING retold series for inspiring me

So Princess Aurora. She's cursed. She'll prick her finger on a spinning needle and fall into a forever sleep by sixteen. She knows, of course. Those fairies are even worse at keeping secrets than they are at child-rearing, and that's saying something. So little Briar Rose grows up knowing that these three ladies have isolated her from her real family, that her parents would rather have her locked up somewhere with no life than experience everything. She's grown up in a fucking forest. She knows about life and death. She's decided that if she's going to die at sixteen, she wants to be *missed*. She wants hordes of people mourning for her, she wants to be remembered. And she's okay with only living for maybe one fifth of her natural life, as long as she gets to experience everything. So at seven years old Princess Aurora runs away from the cottage in the woods where she learned to cook and clean and dance and sing. And the first thing she does, once she's overcome her awe at the sheer masses of people, is find a kindly seamstress and learn how to use a needle. The seamstress is struggling to keep up with her orders - the whole industry is, really. The ban on spinning wheels means they have to import cloth from neighbouring countries, which is more expensive. This lady is pleased to have another pair of working hands, and they'll only cost some training, so she gladly agrees. Her hands are small, pudgy and untrained. She's never held a quill or a needle in her life, and she's unused to finer work. On her first day, she pricks her finger so much that a little drop of blood actually stains her needle a coppery red. The seamstress tuts, smiles at Aurora (who goes by Rose now), and shows her how to use a thimble. She lives beneath a tree at the edge of the forest, and the animals bring her berries, and she washed in the stream, and everyday on her way to work she passes by a blacksmith's forge.

The clanging and hissing of metal, the glowing in different colours - this is the most wonderful thing she's ever seen, and eventually the blacksmith, a kindly old man with a greying beard and soot-stained skin, notices seven year old Rose the runaway watching him with awe in her eyes. He has two sons already, which is good for his business, but the wife always did want a girl, so he eventually befriends little Rose, showing her the most basic of metalworking. Meanwhile, the king and queen are going crazy, scouring the kingdom for their princess. Prince phillip is about twelve years old, and his parents are always helping find Princess Aurora, they don't really spend much time with him, so he wanders off to the village and makes friends with a boy called Robert. Robert is pretty good at using a sword, and he doesn't laugh at Phillip for not knowing things like where the market is, or how many copper pieces to a silver, so they tend to spend a lot of time together. A year later, and people are pretty certain that their princess is long dead - the witch has fulfilled her curse early. Meanwhile, Rose has become fast friends with the blacksmith's younger son, Rob. When he realizes that she doesn't really have a house for the winter or the rain, he invites her over to live with them. Of course, the blacksmith and his wife agree. like i said, they always wanted a daughter. So Rose gains some /actual/ foster parents. She goes on these grand adventures with her foster brother and his friend, Phillip. Phillip is a little weird, according to Robert, but she knows what its like to not have the same frame of reference as everyone else, and the two sort of click. The trio explore the woods surrounding their village (never going deep enough to get to the fairies' cottage), and even venture towards the Cursed lands, where a wicked witch is said to live. Rose is eight, and she's fairly strong, so the blacksmith has her working for him when she's not sewing. She does some of the more delicate work like fitting parts together with screws that are too small for the blacksmith's failing eyes. And every christmas, she gets a thimble as a present, and she cherishes them. Skip five years. Rose is thirteen. Phillip and Robert are eighteen, and they see each other less and less. Rose is thinking about her death. She has three more years to live, but she wants /more/. She has friends now, people who will miss her. She's experienced a lot. But she doesn't want to die. She thinks of the blacksmith and his wife, one elder son already lost to the war against the witch - a war which is being fought because of *her* - and she thinks of robert, who cried for three days when she fell from a tree and broke her ankle. She thinks of the seamstress who now relies on Rose's embroidery to buy medicine from the fae for her aching joints. No, Rose doesn't want to die. So aurora stitches herself a glove that has all the thimbles that her family has ever gifted her sewn into the fingertips, thinking to herself, 'try pricking my finger now, bitch' The birds have chirped stories to her, that curses can be broken when the curser is defeated, and there are already so many people setting out to fight the witch, what's one more joining the ranks? A group of knights ride into town with some prince, and the way their armour clanks inspires her. If she can use her sewing skills to make an armour that will protect her from the witch AND allow her to sneak up on her... That afternoon, Phillip is back in town, and she asks him to teach her to fight. So now Aurora is learning to swordfight from Phillip, and naturally Robert is right beside her because he'll be damned if he lets another sibling die fighting the witch.

As the seasons pass and her /dead/line grows closer, she's made herself and robert outfits with metal as cloth, with light but sturdy chains of metal linked together to make flexible and silent armour. She wants to make some for phillip too, but there's no time and he's assured her that he can get his own armour. She's ready to fight this witch.

The three fairies haven't given up on their search, but Rose is nothing like their fragile, delicate Aurora. Rose is grubby and muscular. She has burns on her arms and calloused palms and a million pricks on her fingers from when she was first learning to sew, and they look right past this girl, because their Aurora is /elegance/ itself. They dont realize that Rose's elegance manifests in her fighting, the way her feet twist in a parry of phillip's blade, how she twists her brother's arm behind his back till he's paralyzed. The fairies summon phillip. He is fated to be the princess's true love - he will save her from the curse. But phillip wants nothing to do with this princess, he's sick of his father trying to make him marry this random girl he doesn't know, and /maybe, just maybe/, he's fallen in love with his best friend's sister? But the fairies hear nothing of it, and they give him the Sword of Virtue and the Shield of Truth, and tell the prince that he *will* rescue Aurora, because he who holds these mighty artifacts will save her. it is almost the princess's birthday - if she has somehow managed to avoid succumbing to the curse so far, she won't for much longer.

Phillip is adamant about marrying who he wants - besides, he already has a sword and a shield. He decides to give these to Rose, who really needs them if she's going to insist on coming with them to fight the witch.

So the three of them journey through the barren lands, and its a hard journey. Robert almost loses his hand. Rose gets a large scar across her back. phillip is poisoned by a stinging plant. But finally they make it, and the witch has her back to them when they sneak in, and rose has the sword in her hand. But she can't do it. Instead, she knocks the evil faerie to the ground and holds her at swordpoint and asks 'Why?' She is thinking, 'Because of you, i have never met my real parents. I grew up homeless. I am cursed to die soon.' And the witch, maleficient, knows who this young child is with that one question, and is so surprised because this is /nothing/ like the pampered, naive princess she was expecting. And maybe, just maybe, she is feeling a little bit guilty, because sixteen years is a long time to brood alone over how she has cursed a child. Really, she should have cursed her parents. So maleficient decides that this princess can determine her own fate. With a flash, she has escaped from under Rose's knee, and she has her poisonous daggers to both men's throats. 'You can save your friends,' she says, 'by spinning all that fibre into thread.' And she points to a spinning wheel. Rose is fuming, but she won't let them die, so she makes the witch give her word, and the witch smiles. This princess is a better person than her parents were. Rose isn't sure how to use this, this strange wheel thing that she's never seen before, but she grew up in a blacksmiths shop, she can figure it out as she goes. She sits down to start, laying her armour and sword and shield aside, then pauses. This will kill her. If she does this, she will die. She looks up at the two men she practically grew up with. 'I love you,' she says, and starts spinning. Her thimble-glove, the one she's been wearing for the past three years or so, only protects one hand, and fate runs its course. Her finger is pricked, the ring finger on her left hand, and she slumps onto her side. Maleficient, somehow, is disappointed. She wanted the girl to live, and maybe this child didn't deserve to pay for her parents sins? She sends them all back to the blacksmith's house, Rose's house, and by now Phillip and Robert have figured it out, and neither can hold back their tears at her pale, lifeless body. The story spreads around the village, and people come to mourn her. People cry for Rose, the blacksmith's daughter, whose sparkling eyes and mischievous laughter had brightened their days, and Rose gets the sendoff she wanted. They line up to bid her farewell. The seamstress, joints creaking, kisses her forehead. She doesn't cry, she's seen too much death already, but her head is bowed and her soul is heavy. Rose's family sobs. Her parents kiss her foreheads and cheeks and refuse to let go of her hand, but eventually they sink to their knees beside her body and cry quieter. Robert and Phillip are holding each others hands. They both blame themselves, and they will not - cannot - let go of Rose. 'We love you too,' they say, tears splattering on Rose's skin, and they kiss her cheek and help their parents up off of the ground. The mourners are gathered in group, clinging at each other for consolation, when Rose sits up. 'Why is my face wet?' she asks, and the funeral becomes a celebration. Maleficient feels her curse break and smiles, because the princess really did make her own fate.

Later, phillip takes her aside and tells her who he really is, that they were betrothed when she was born. He waits with bated breath - what will she do? Rose frowns. 'I won't marry you just because my birth parents made an agreement with yours,' and phillip's heart sinks, but then rose smiles up at him and says, 'I just might marry you because you ask, Prince Phillip,' The wedding causes a scandal, because this is a prince who marries a lowly blacksmiths daughter. The few people in the know say nothing. It is held in the fall, in the open air, and the seamstress with the aching joints uses the Sword of Valour to cut the cloth for Rose's wedding dress. Robert melts the Shield down to make a set of thimble-themed goblets. He gives it to Rose on their wedding day. 'Philip doesn't get a gift for stealing my sister,' says robert 'I love you too,' laughs phillip The kingdom, without a ruler, is in shambles, and when, at their reception, phillip's new commoner queen quietly suggests a competition, the king and queen actually consider it. A blacksmith's child wins the contest, and is adopted by the king and queen to be trained as a ruler. But when they die, Rob reclaims his father's name, and the dynasty of Aurora's parents is over, swallowed by the golden age that a commoner ruler brings. Revenge and irony make maleficient smile wider than she ever has before.

[find more of my writing here ]

#lame ending but ye #sleeping beauty #retold fairytales #my writing #feedback is always appreciated

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mothmanwearstiaras-blog · 7 years

Text

At Virtue’s End: Chapter Four

SUMMARY: “If we had been following Negan from the beginning, we would be rooting for him.”

MASTERLIST When we find Negan in the series, he and The Saviors are well established and going strong... this is the story of what happened before all of that.

[AU with some canon thrown in for good measure. Begins shortly before the outbreak and will follow through to where we are in the series.] Negan x OC.

Author's Note: This is where the fun really begins... it’s definitely my favorite so far. :)

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Chapter Four:

There was a lot to be said about the comfort and familiarity of a childhood home. Something about waking up in the same bed and being surrounded by the same four walls as when you were ten years old and your biggest worry was if Anthony Flynn merely liked you or if her 'liked you' liked you had the tendency to put her mind at ease. The pale green wallpaper was still the same as it had always been and the large four poster bed was a beautiful antique that she had been all too happy to accept as an eighth birthday present. The entire house always smelled of one delicious pastry or another and when the large bay windows at the front were open the sunshine poured in and lit the entire place up like something out of a dream.

Early April had the tendency to be a wild card as far as the weather went, one day it was bright and warm while the next could be downright cold. Today was going to be gorgeous and Samantha's grandmother had decided to spend the morning tending to her garden. They had eaten breakfast together and Samantha felt that the least she could do was tidy up and do the dishes. She refused to let her mind wander back to the night before and what had happened between her and Negan... at least for now. She had switched shifts with Candice and gotten herself an unexpected day off, she was not about to waste it wallowing away in self pity about her love life.

The sound of the front door squeaking as it was pushed open pulled Samantha out of her thoughts and back in to reality. She could just make out her grandmother's footsteps as she walked down the hallway leading towards the kitchen.

"That was quick!" Samantha called out as she grabbed a couple of paper towels from the roll by the sink and used them to dry her hands. "Hey, I was thinking about heading in to town," she called as she tossed the paper towels in to the trash can, "you should come with me! We could do some shopping and grab lunch, a good old-fashioned girl's day! What do you think?"

A sudden, strange choking sound reached her ears and Samantha was rushing towards the hallway in an instant. The sight of her grandmother had her skidding to a stop just past the doorjamb, her socked feet sliding against the hardwood floor. The first thing that caught her eye was the large wound bleeding profusely from her grandmother's left shoulder. The blood oozing out of it had covered the front of her pale yellow dress from collar to hemline and dirt from the garden was caked all over her body. Her eyes had all but lost their bright blue coloring and a dull, milky white had replaced it. Her hair had fallen from the clip she had tucked it in to earlier and was strewn wildly about her head and face.

Samantha's first reaction was to go to her, to help her in any way that she could, but something in her gut was telling her to keep her distance. If her grandmother's appearance wasn't enough of a clue that something was wrong the way she was moving would definitely do it. Her feet were shuffling awkwardly across the floor and her wounded shoulder was sagging in a way that made Samantha question if she was even able to move it.

"Gran..." Samantha whispered as her hands rose to a protective position in front of her. "Grandma, can you hear me?"

The old woman cocked her head to the side and let out a snarl as she continued shuffling forward. Samantha matched her step for step in the opposite direction. She racked her brain for any sort of explanation as to what was happening. Was she having some sort of a stroke? That wouldn't explain the wound on her shoulder... Had she been attacked? But what of her other symptoms?

"Grandma it's me. It's Samantha." Her heart skipped a beat as her heels met with the stairs to the second floor. "Gran..."

Her grandmother's pace quickened and the sudden change in her gait had Samantha fleeing up the stairs before her mind had even had a chance to process her movement. Samantha reached the second floor landing and paused for a moment, bending over the stairway's railing to look down at the scene below. She was horrified to see the woman crawling up the stairs on all fours after her. Her grandmother's shoulder sagged beneath her weight every time that she attempted to use it and her head was still cocked to the side in that wholly unnatural manner.

Samantha was trapped and the only thing she could think to do was run straight for her bedroom. She flew through the hallway as fast as her feet could carry her and slammed the door shut behind her. She fastened the lock and quickly wedged her vanity's chair beneath the handle before rushing to her nightstand and grabbing her cell phone. She dialed 911 and felt her heart sink further in to her chest as the busy signal rang loudly in her ear.

"Shit!"

She could hear the horrible, guttural sounds coming from the hallway and she knew that her grandmother would soon make it to her door. She grabbed her boots from the side of her bed and pulled them on to her feet as fast as she could. Not knowing what else to do, she opened the window and climbed out on to the roof of the porch outside of it.

Samantha crawled on her hands and knees over to the side of the house before lowering her feet to the rose terrace that covered the brick walls beneath her. Her heart skipped a beat when one of the old wooden pieces gave way under her weight but her foot quickly found purchase on the sturdier rung beneath it.

She climbed down the side of the house and hit the grass below her with a quiet thud. The moment her feet touched the ground she knew that she was not alone. Crouching down as low as she could, Samantha crept slowly along the side of the house and carefully poked her head around the corner. There were two men in the front yard and a woman on the porch; all three of them were moving in much the same way that her grandmother had been inside and had the same strange film covering their eyes. The two in the yard seemed to be meandering about with no real direction while the one on the porch was staring intently through the windows by the front door.

Samantha turned on her heel and moved towards the back of the house as quickly as she could. After peeking around the corner to make sure that it was clear she took off running through the back yard and in to the thicket of trees that lead towards the main road.

The acres of woods that surrounded her grandmother's house were dense and easy to get lost in. It had been years since she had explored them and she panicked for a moment when she realized how little she recalled of the twists and turns of their natural labyrinth. Despite her fear, she moved onward but the further she got from the house the more turned around she became.

The sight of the brook ahead of her caught her attention and she knew immediately that she was in trouble. She was headed in the complete opposite direction of where she needed to go and she fought the urge to cry out in her frustration. Her anger quickly turned to fear when she caught sight of another one of those things coming towards her from the other side of the stream. He hadn't seemed to notice her yet but she felt her panic grow nonetheless.

Samantha took cover behind a large tree and sunk down against its trunk. Her head was spinning as she looked around her for a rock, a large stick, an abandoned tool... anything she could use to defend herself if any of the creatures came too close. She found nothing and her heart began to race even faster. She was going to have to run and she knew it would draw more attention to her. If the thing across the brook didn’t realize that she was there already then he would soon enough.

She took a deep breath and bolted to her left. The man beyond the brook took notice immediately and changed his course to follow her trail. In her attempt to keep the man within her line of sight, she completely missed the large fallen tree until her foot trapped itself beneath it and sent her soaring face first over top of it. Her hands rose on their own accord to break her fall but it was too late, her ankle give way with a sharp twist and she knew that she had only gotten herself in to more trouble.

She pushed herself to her feet and cried out as her ankle sagged beneath her weight. Blinding pain shot up her leg from every damaged nerve and she immediately fell back to her knees. She began to crawl as quickly as she could but she knew that the man was steadily gaining on her. She saw the loose gravel of the driveway cutting through the trees up ahead and she knew that reaching it was her only chance at survival.

Samantha forced herself back to her feet. The pain was almost unbearable and it only seemed to get worse with each passing step. Tears were streaming down her face and she let out a loud scream when she felt hands wrap around her shoulders from behind. She fell back to the ground with a sickening thud as a large weight crushed down upon her back. Running on nothing but pure impulse, she braced her hands against the ground and pushed against the creature behind her. The spur of the moment maneuver managed to earn her just enough space from her attacker for her to turn and face him.

He was on her again in an instant. His teeth chomped down and smashed together in front of her face and each snarl became louder than the one before it. She pushed against his chest with all of her might but she was no match for his full, unbridled weight bearing down on her from above. With every last bit of strength she had she pushed the man abruptly to the left. By some small miracle, he lost his balance and rolled off of her giving her one last chance to break free.

Her booted feet worked vigorously against the pain shooting up her leg. She grabbed blindly at the trees around her and used them to propel herself further along her intended path before throwing herself down in to the center of the roadway.

Tires skid to a stop and she could smell burnt rubber as the truck that had been barreling down the driveway came to a screeching halt on the gravel. She looked up just in time to see Negan jump from driver's side of the vehicle and move past her with force. A baseball bat was held firmly in his hands and he pulled it back over his shoulder as he moved steadily towards the thing in the woods behind her. She rolled on to her back as quickly as she could and watched in abject horror as he swung on the thing with all of his might.

The sound of wood breaking through bone was unmistakable and Samantha couldn't stop the scream that escaped her lips. She watched in a frozen state of shock as the man's body fell limply to the ground and settled in a bloody heap upon the grass.

The woods went silent. There were no more snarls or hurried footsteps. The only noise she heard was the sound of Negan's labored breath as turned to face her. His eyes roamed her form from top to bottom and the expression she saw on his face was a mixture of anger and determination that was wholly unfamiliar to her. She didn't dare move a muscle, she wasn't even sure if she was breathing.

"Say something." His voice was low and gruff as he reaffirmed his hold on the bat. His gaze locked with hers and her mind fought to form words. His eyes widened when she didn't respond and she saw a quick trace of fear flicker across his face; it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. "Say my fucking name, Sam!"

"Negan." Her voice was no more than a whisper but she saw the immediate relief that flooded his features.

"Fuck, doll." His words came out in a hurried exhale as he lowered the bat to his side and ran a hand through his hair in obvious relief. "I thought for sure-" Whatever he was about to say died in his throat as another piercing shriek tore through the calm and a young woman emerged from the woods across from them.

Negan turned on his heel and the bat was once again raised to the ready. "Get in the truck!" He called as he moved towards the woman.

"Negan!"

"Get in the fucking truck!"

Samantha jumped to her feet and limped towards the passenger side of the vehicle. She climbed inside with as much speed as she could muster and pulled the door shut behind her just as the sickening crack of bat to bone filled the air around her. She covered her ears and screwed her eyes shut and only opened them again when she felt the weight of the truck shift as Negan climbed inside.

"We gotta move." He said as his hand found the gear shift and swiftly put it in drive.

"You just..."

"It was them or you, Sam. I sure as shit wasn't about to let it be you." His voice cut through hers and his tone left no room for discussion. His foot hit the gas pedal and the truck momentarily peeled wheels before taking off once more in the direction of her grandmother's house.

“No!” Samantha exclaimed the moment she realized his plan.

“Your grandmother-“

“Don’t go back there! She’s…” Samantha didn’t know how to finish that sentence but the look she saw on Negan’s face as he glanced her way told her that he knew what she was saying. "She's like them."

“Fuck.” He muttered softly. "Sam... baby-"

"Don't." She said sternly, her gaze rising towards the roof of the truck in an attempt to fight the tears that were forming within her eyes. This was not the time for crying. "Just... just get us out of here."

Negan didn't need to be told twice. Without another word he eased the truck to a stop before turning the wheel and taking off in the opposite direction towards town. He took the long winding road at a speed that only someone familiar with it could but as soon as they hit the main road it was time to put the pedal to the metal.

The tension in the truck was thick and they sat in silence as he drove. Samantha kept her eyes trained outside the window and tried her hardest to gather some sort of a clue as to what was happening around them. It had started off slow with one or two of those… people… wandering around the side streets but the closer they got to town the worse things proved to be.

Everywhere she looked was carnage and bloodshed, people running, their neighbors dying, and folks she had known her entire life screaming for help. Samantha turned away as she saw a woman being taken down by a small group of the monsters outside of the bakery but the view she got of three people tearing in to a man’s stomach by the farmer’s market was even worse.

"What the hell is going on?" She asked quietly, her voice nothing but a whisper against the roar of the engine.

"Fuck if I know." Negan answered bluntly. "Fuck if anyone knows." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think! Hearing from all of you makes it feel a lot less like I’m just screaming in to the Tumblr void lol.

#negan #negan fanfiction #negan fanfic #negan x oc #negans thirst squad #@negans-network #negans-network

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omginstantpaperbouquetblr · 7 years

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By Yves Smith. This article was first published on Naked Capitalism.

On every conceivable front, the Democrats double downing down on the strategy that led them to hemorrhage losses in representation, meaning power, at every level of government. In keeping, more and more voters are leaving the party.

The latest repeat of a failed strategy is to try to smear Sanders in a cack-handed effort to win over his base. This is as likely to succeed as calling Trump voters “deplorables” did.

The reality is that the Democratic party leders have no strategy. Instead, they are taking the playbook of a mad scientist in a kitschy horror movie, frantically spinning dials and flipping switches as his invention has gone out of control. His control, needless to say.

The Democrats’ actions made clear they were fixated on the Federal government patronage and revolving door goodies that control of the Executive branch conferred. Beyond the state-that-is-almost-a-country of California, the lucre isn’t large enough for them to deviate from their stance of being party of the 10% and trying to hold onto their traditional base by being marginally less God-awful than Republicans. Reader johnnygl flagged this section of a Washington Post story on how the post-election strategy of Russiaphobia plus Trump bashing plus yet more identity politics isn’t working with voters:

Democrats have lost considerable ground on this front. The 28 percent who say the party is in touch with concerns of most Americans is down from 48 percent in 2014 and the biggest drop is among self-identified Democrats, from 83 percent saying they are in touch to just 52 percent today. That is a reminder that whatever challenges Trump is having, Democrats, for all the energy apparent at the grass roots, have their own problems.

Let’s put this more bluntly: even with Trump turning out, whether by virtue of capture, inclination or not caring, backing solidly Republican positions, with his impulsive foreign policy shows of manhood as an added huge negative, Democrats are becoming more and more immune to lesser-evilism. The party has tried to fool voters too many times with hope and change and other pro-worker cant while delivering the goods only to their wealthy patrons. The defectors aren’t coming back until the party starts to deliver for them.

The Unity campaign is revealing how desperately the Democrats are clinging to their self-delusion. They seem to believe that they can kick Sanders and his voters and yet still get them to turn out at the polls for them. By contrast, Sanders, who knows what moves his base isn’t him personally but his policies, has only upside from participating in this charade. He gets a platform to keep selling his message, while the Democrats kid themselves that they can peel away his supporters without making concessions.

One proof that the operatives recognize the Unity campaign is backfiring is the upsurge in attacks on Sanders via the most loyal Democratic party mouthpieces, the Washington Post and the New York Times. With the election proving that the establishment media doesn’t have much sway with great swathes of the public, these hit pieces are tantamount to throwing water balloons at Sanders from the Acela: they may make gratifying splashes but they don’t do real damage. But they demonstrate yet again how committed the party remains to losing if winning requires giving more to ordinary citizens.

The first smear masquerading as reporting, Bernie Sanders’s strange behavior, ran last week in the Washington Post. It was so obtuse, presumably by design, that I remarked then: “This is either a candidate for ‘Most clueless political piece every written,’ as in ‘What about ‘power struggle’ don’t you understand?’ or Democratic party authoritarianism in action. The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.”

The article, by Aaron Blake, is intellectually dishonest from the get-go. This is its first paragraph:

Bernie Sanders has embarked on a “Come Together and Fight Back” tour with with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez. But he’s not really helping on that first part.

Really? Sanders launched a Unity Tour and Perez and the Democratic Party establishment decided to come along? This sort of “unity” charade is a Democratic party fixture.

Let us not forget why this exercise is even seen as necessary. The Democrats are trying to win over Sanders voters who correctly saw the selection of Perez as DNC head over Sanders’ pick Keith Ellison as a big fat middle finger to them. This “Unity Tour” is the 2017 analogy of the many efforts to “reintroduce” Hillary Clinton to voters, as if after decades of overexposure, they were somehow in the dark as to what she was about. They presume that if Perez hits the road with Sanders, they’ll come to like the new DNC, even though it is just the same as the old DNC.

The benefit to Sanders is that this is so patently foolish is that all he has to do is play along. He gets to go around the US and keep pitching his preferred policies.

But as Perez is getting boos at virtually ever whistlestop, someone must be at fault! And it can’t possibly be that the Democrats are trying to get the dogs to eat dog food that they’ve already rejected. No, it must be Sanders’ doing. The article proceeds from the straw man that it is Sanders’ job to create Democratic party unity, when the onus is on the party to find a way to reach his voters.

Put it another way: the Post, presumably reflecting the views of the Democratic elite, sees voters as chattel. They actually seem to believe that Sanders is like an old Tammany hall boss, or a union leader, who can deliver a block on his say so. So look at the things the Post views as offenses:

He said that he still isn’t actually a Democrat

He repeated his line that President Trump “did not win the election; the Democrats lost the election” — drawing some angry responses from Hillary Clinton supporters who see this as either a shot at her or as something that Sanders’s primary campaign contributed to (or both)

Sanders’s message has differed from Perez’s in a couple key ways

The big hissy fit, however, that Sanders hadn’t endorsed Ossoff yet, stating yet another obvious fact that Democrats don’t want the children to hear: “Some Democrats are progressive, and some Democrats are not,” and saying he didn’t know enough either way to decide.

Sanders did relent and endorse Ossoff. While purists are unhappy over that move, the reality is that his support will make perilous little difference either way in an affluent district in the South. And as reader Marina Bart pointed out in comments, the tisk-tiskers are missing the real play:

If the entire corporate media is aimed against you, it is very hard to fight back. Six corporations control something like 90% of media distribution in this country, and they deliver the messaging their plutocratic owners desire. Now add Silicon Valley’s corporate-controlled social media platforms, which have the same masters, same agenda, and same willingness to manipulation what information their users can access. Activists alone cannot win national elections. We need some sizable chunk of the millions who don’t really like or want to think about any of this, whether because they’re comfortable or despairing. They want the same policies we want. They just don’t want to work hard to get it, or grapple psychologically with the real situation we’re facing, because it’s upsetting. To reach those voters, we need some media coverage that isn’t aggressively hostile or deceitful. That’s why the Unity Tour was a brilliant thing for Bernie to do, even if it means getting prodded into sort of endorsing a hack like Ossoff.

Bernie is trying a strategy to take over the party from within. To do that means things like “Okay, sure, I’ll “endorse” Ossoff. He’d be better than a Republican. But he’s no progressive, and we need a progressive movement.” And then the Dems scream at him again, and try to squeeze better compliance out of him, but the damage TO THEM is done — lots of discussions of Ossoff’s positions, which means more people find out that he’s opposed to universal health care. I saw people all over the place in the last few days saying they had given Ossoff money and now they were sorry. Next time, maybe they’ll do a better job of vetting the candidates the neoliberal Dems are pushing.

And Bernie trundles on, saying things the corporate media has been hiding: how the Democratic Party lost seats all over the country during Obama’s term, just how bad that is. He’s shown the DNC Chair to be a boor and a boob.

He’s making it much harder for the Democrats to run the play they’re trying to run. He’s slowing down their ability to promulgate numerous false stories about who they are, how popular they are, what policies are popular, where their money goes — all of this is really helpful to any real change, no matter what comes next.

The effort to beat Sanders into line became more obviously two-faced with another hack job, this one in the New York Times, At a ‘Unity’ Stop in Nebraska, Democrats Find Anything But.

The cause celebre is that Sanders has backed a young progressive, Heath Mello, who is running for mayor of Omaha. Per the fixation of the Democrats with the top of the ticket, since when have they cared about a mayoral campaign, particularly in flyover?

Mello’s offense is that he is being depicted as anti-abortion. But that is a trumped up charge. Mello is Catholic. He’s adopted the formula that many Catholic campaigners have so as not to offend fellow Catholics who might be inclined to vote for him: to say he’s personally pro-life but politically supports abortion rights.

So what is his sin that has gotten the attack dogs after him, when anyone with an operating brain cell knows the real issue is his economic positions? This is apparently the only real dirt:

Mr. Mello, a practicing Catholic, supported a Nebraska State Senate bill requiring that women be informed of their right to request a fetal ultrasound before an abortion.

Let us contrast that with the actions of Democratic party vice presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, who also took the position that he is personally pro-life but politically supports the right to abortionsper Politico:

He pledged in his 2005 gubernatorial campaign to reduce the number of terminated pregnancies in the state by promoting adoption and abstinence-focused education. That cycle, the state NARAL chapter ripped Kaine’s GOP opponent, Jerry Kilgore, as “an extremely anti-choice candidate” but still withheld its endorsement of Kaine because he “embraces many of the restrictions on a woman’s right to choose.”

In a 2007 NARAL scorecard, Kaine was described as a “mixed-choice” governor and his state got an F grade thanks in part to a number of laws and other policies restricting access to abortions. Two years later, Kaine upset both local and national reproductive rights groups by signing a law that authorized the sale of customized “Choose Life” license plates. Kaine argued he was supporting free speech, but his critics complained that the law would fund pro-life organizations and didn’t square with another very important hat that he was wearing at the time: Obama’s personally picked head of the Democratic National Committee.

And proving how captured groups will go to bat for Team Dem, the validators for the attack on Mello and Sanders are the heads of the American Federation of Teachers and the pro-abortion group NARAL. But did either of them object to Tim Kaine’s clearly dodgy record? From the same Politico story quoted above:

Tarina Keene, president of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, declined to comment specifically on Kaine’s stance on abortion. Instead, she issued a statement focused on her group’s reasons for endorsing Clinton.

Oh, and what about the sainted Obama, who doesn’t have the vexing problem of having been raised Catholic? Or the Clintons?

In fact. both are official backers of the policy devised by Richard Nixon: of having abortions be legal but keeping them scarce by not having the government pay for them. That of course is not problem to the affluent 10% that is the Democratic party’s true base. The Hyde Amendment, the legislative embodiment of the “no Federal funding of abortions except to save the mother’s life or in cases of incest or rape, became law in 1976. The law was made more restrictive in the 1980s. The only change under the Clinton Administration was to allow for Medicaid to cover abortions for rape and incest.

Recall that Hillary Clinton said that in 2008 abortions should be “safe, legal and rare, and by rare, I mean rare.” categories that are not mutually compatible. And that is consistent with an earlier statement, reflecting her Methodist roots, that she saw abortion as “morally wrong”.

From an Atlantic story in 2016:

For the most part, Clinton’s stance matches the official stance of the United Methodist Church, or UMC—the tradition in which she was raised and remains a faithful member….To understand Clinton, according to her husband, “you should look first at her Methodist faith.” Her youth pastor and lifelong mentor, the Reverend Donald Jones, said she views “the world through a Methodist lens.”….

Clinton has made efforts to reach out to pro-life advocates and, The New York Times reports, she shows sincere respect for those whose stance is motivated by religious belief. It is not clear, however, that the public understands Clinton’s piety or the depth of her attachment to the Methodist tradition.

Needless to say, that resulted in Clinton in having a “nuanced” position on abortion that might look a tad too equivocal. Again from the Atlantic:

One of Clinton’s greatest challenges in the run-up to November will be to persuade the Millennials—people aged 18 to 35—who supported Bernie Sanders to go to the polls. Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum argued recently that young voters appreciated Sanders’ simple and clear rejection of limits on abortion: “He’s for X, full stop. He’s against Y, end of story. Millennials want a decisive answer, Drum said; otherwise it doesn’t “sound like the truth.” Because Clinton is open to regulations on abortion, progressive Millennials may see her as “another tired establishment pol who never gives a straight answer about anything.”

And Obama, the 11th dimensional chess player whose religion has never seemed to impinge on his politics? Obama issued Executive Order 13535, which extended the Hyde Amendment to Obamacare.

But you’d never know that reading the howls of the loyal camp followers, like Lauren Rankin in Allure, who followed close on the heels of the New York Times hit piece with Bernie Sanders’ Actions Show He Values Votes More Than Women. It apparently does not occur to her that a $15 hour minimum wage and other worker protections will give women a much greater ability to get abortions because more women who are now middle or lower income would be able to pay for them themselves.

And this is yet another demonstration of the Democrats embracing failure. Women’s fashion magazines were virtually ordering their readers to support Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Similarly, a female friend described Alternet’s pre-election editorial stance as “How to have better orgasms while voting for Clinton.”

Yet recent polls show that female tribalism didn’t work very well. Sanders has more support among women than men. It appears that women are more acutely aware of the precariousness of their financial position that fashion magazine writers and editors are.

In other words, the attacks on Mello and Sanders are rank hypocrisy. If you are card-carrying neoliberal, you are permitted to have “nuanced” positions on abortion. Bona fide progressives need not apply.

But as much as the mainstream media and orthodox Democrats try to have it both ways, savage Sanders yet win over his base, the more they will prove that he should proceed apace with his bottoms-up takeover campaign.

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