harder than you think
i. When the Narnians stole Edmund away from beneath the Witch's blade, they told him he was safe. This wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either.
ii. They brought him to the Stone Table. It was night. Edmund doubted very much that he would find safety there, for he still recoiled at the name of Aslan. He slept fitfully and woke the next morning before the sun was up.
iii. A sliver of gold just beyond the tent flap captured his attention, there in the dark. Unaccountably, Edmund felt the urge to rise and go towards it.
iv. And there was Aslan, who was supposed to be fearsome, supposed to be dangerous, supposed to be powerful, and he was he was he was. Dimly, Edmund felt himself hitting the ground.
v. But then Aslan said, “Come, Son of Adam. Let us walk a while, and reason together.”
vi. And as they walked together, in the cool dewy grass of early morning, the Lion told Edmund everything that he had ever done.
vii. They were standing in front of the Table when the conversation turned. Aslan spoke a riddle of a house blasted into rubble which he would piece back together overnight. He spoke of flesh being pierced, blood being shed, and of rejected stones being used for new foundations. He spoke about water welling up forever, washing you clean of everything you ever did wrong, all the blood that you ever thought of shedding, everything you ever tried to steal, and a river that carries you home when you can't walk anymore and spits you out brand new when it reaches the sea.
viii. Edmund's head swam. Silently, he yearned for the wisdom to understand what he was being told; or, failing that, at least to remember it for as long as it took him to puzzle it out.
ix. And then, the Witch. Then, the battle. The thrones. A year passed, and winter came. In its time, it melted back to glorious spring.
x. “Edmund,” said Lucy one day. “There's something we need to tell you.” She and Susan were cloaked in springtime gossamer, like fairy queens in poems he only half remembered. They sat on the window seat in his study, holding hands white-knuckled: his two beloved sisters.
xi. “It's about Aslan,” Susan said. “And the White Witch, and how he made her renounce her claim on your blood. The night before Beruna, he went back to the Stone Table.”
xii. “He let her kill him,” Lucy cut in. “Instead of you. And then, because he hadn't done anything wrong, the Emperor's Deeper Magic brought him back to life.”
xiii. “We've been arguing all year about how much to tell you,” said Susan wryly. Then, a little gentler, “We don't want to hurt you, but we feel you ought to be told what he did for you.”
xiv. And Edmund, who had never forgotten what Aslan told him on that cool, dewy morning before the sun came up, shut his eyes and whispered, “I know.”
xv. I know, he said. I know that he died. I know that he did it for me. I know he lived again because I saw him the next day, and the next, and the next. I think I know what it means - or at least, I know the shape of it.
xvi. “Oh,” said Lucy. “We should have realized that he would have told you himself.”
xvii. “Yes. But please, tell me the story all the same.”
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every time i try to use my ipad for anything other than playing video games it's such an exercise in frustration i'm astonished all over again that there are people who live like this.
i try to change my home screen so it doesn't look like shit and all the advice is like "download this app, it's the best one!" so i download the free app and it turns out you can't actually use the free app unless you pay a $5 monthly subscription fee. it changes your wallpaper and adds some widgets that do nothing but open a weird shortcut window before opening the actual app, in a way that makes it look like i accidentally clicked a virus. the widgets are just some pictures.
there's controls that are unintuitive so i try to change the unintuitive controls but it turns out there's no option for that and if you try to look for a way to enable that option you find nothing but people falling all over themselves to tell you why having options is actually bad.
then i think of an app i use on my phone that would be nice to have on a bigger screen and everyone says, "we don't have that app, we have this other app, which does the same thing but better" so i install it but then i can't use it without paying a $5 monthly subscription fee.
i accept the free trial because i might as well and it turns out the app looks like shit. i look for the settings to make the app look like the good app that was free on my phone but i can't find the settings. i do a search to see where the settings are hiding and find a thread where someone is asking where the setting is and the devs tell them that there isn't a setting and actually having options is bad and once they use the app for a while they'll realize that not having options is better. i cancel my free trial and uninstall the app and continue to read on my phone instead of the big fancy tablet.
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I can get why yutus so afraid of azul. He's heard a hundred stories about a suave, smug, but clingy octopus and then he meets him and hes this possessive little swinderler who's trying to get him to sell his soul to him and fuck his parent lmao
referencing the tags on this ask about this au
Tako Yutu didn't have the easiest time as a kid.
He was a chubby little thing raised by a single parent who didn't have the clearest memories of his father, or of their past at all really. I wrote Yuu and Yutu as being a sort of outcasts in the community because people thought they were strange, and were skeptical of Yuu's amnesia. Azul! Yutu was really bothered by that, much like his dad he got bullied and sought solace in books, but unlike him Yuu decided to enroll Yutu in some martial arts classes and hey. He was pretty good at those, his submission holds are real bad news, even won him some competitions. But he's not some muscle head even if he sort of looks like one (he didn't really drop his baby weight so much as he did bulk up) so when he gets his first real look at his father... everything in him is screaming that this guy is sketchy. He knows that Azul and the twins are watching him even if he can't see it outright and to make matters worse, when he asks his parent about him they make a face. A face Yutu knows well that he thought was reserved for the annoying nosy couple who lived next door to you and not his father. His father who Yuu's few memories had made sound wonderful; his father who was supposedly talented and hard working, smart and proud of it, but so desperately in love with his parent they still longed for him with broken memories in a completely different world. His father who Yuu had said he was so much like.
"He's not a bad guy." Yuu says and Grim huffs.
"Don't listen to them Henchuman 2." Yutu has no idea how he feels about Grim calling him that. "Azul's reeeeeeeal bad news. If he's interested in ya' it can only mean one thing, he's after your tuna and he's after your magic."
"That's two things." A smooth voice says at the same time he does and for once, Yutu sees surprise on Azul's face when he tries to make eye contact and not carefully calculated confidence.
"Well they do say great minds think alike." His father says and extends a hand. "But I must say you didn't strike me as the shy type, it is Yutu right?" The way he says it, the way he shakes his hand, Yutu knows he at least suspects him. So he smiles and makes sure to make his handshake just a touch too firm when he responds.
"That's right." Yutu is impressed that Azul doesn't flinch even slightly when he pulls back his hand, if anything his little action makes his smile wider. "And not so much shy as just curious and knowing better than to poke my nose where it doesn't belong."
"Not until you've asked anyway." Azul really isn't content with letting him remain ambiguous, he thinks nervously glancing back to Yuu. "But still there really is no need to bother the prefect over such trivial things, if you have questions about me you can just pay me a visit at the Mostro Lounge. My door is always open to poor unfortunate souls such as yourself." Azul smiles at him and adjusts his glasses and Yutu is... impressed even if the thought of being alone with this man terrifies him. But he's going to have to be eventually, Azul really wants to talk to him for some reason and Yutu finds himself wondering if he's going to find it possible to lie, or just what price he will be expected to pay to have the privilege of keeping his secrets.
But when he looks at the way Azul talks to Yuu... he isn't sure if he likes it but he does find it funny. Azul is so horrendously down bad and Yuu is so unaware of it (there's a part of him that thinks Azul might be a little bit jealous of him which he finds really funny). And Yutu understands why Yuu likes Azul so much. He is everything they remembered him being: smart, ambitious, and motivated. It makes him a little more secure in his existence even if he doubts that Azul will like having a son like him. But that's ok too because a son like him is exactly what's needed to make sure his parents get to stay together in this timeline.
now if only he can convince him to stop bugging him for his real name
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Ya’ll I used to jokingly consider this, but nah, there is enough evidence in the book to suggest:
Henry ruins Dorian out of spite and jealousy towards Basil for moving on from him.
Let’s get right into this.
I went back into the book because I wanted to review the post I made about Henry and misogyny earlier. Besides the usual annoyance at Henry’s dumb stupid rant, I noticed this line:
“I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.”
And then it hit me that Henry’s worst rants about women only come after the topic of marriage, but more specifically, commitment. Which then led to an even more interesting idea: I’m pretty sure Henry mostly uses ‘women’ as cover to complain about Basil and Basil’s ‘lack of commitment to him.’
I want to note that there’s a lot of interesting things in regards to Henry and his relationship with women that I’d love to go into, but this will focus solely on him and Basil.
Here’s what Henry says in his misogynistic ass rant after Sibyl dies. (This is from the 1891 ver):
“But [Sibyl] would have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her. And when a woman finds that out about her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman’s husband has to pay for.”
Basil is often considered ‘unfashionable’/‘dowdy’ by Henry’s standards. This is only further proven in what he says about Basil’s disappearance:
“Why should he have been murdered? He was not clever enough to have enemies. Of course, he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a man can paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible. Basil was really rather dull. He only interested me once, and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you and that you were the dominant motive of his art.”
But that isn’t all. The last part of that quote matches one to one to Henry’s claim about women (or Sibyl, specifically). Basil was not only ‘dull’, but his only ‘fashionable’ attribute, his art, grew ‘dowdy’ once he discovered Dorian’s indifference to him.
Henry also says this about women:
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil.”
And later:
“But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art.”
Guess who makes resolutions regarding goodness? Basil, who refuses to believe that Dorian is nothing but a good, pure man.
“[Basil] could not bear the idea of reproaching [Dorian] any more. After all, his indifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away. There was so much in him that was good, so much in him that was noble.”
Basil’s arc traditionally should have ended once Dorian rejects him. Between that chapter and the chapter where Basil dies, there is no mention of Basil in any form. By all means, Basil’s role in the story is over—and then he demands the ‘sixth act’ to confront Dorian.
And finally:
“Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. Yes; there is really no end to the consolations that women find in modern life. Indeed, I have not mentioned the most important one.”
“What is that, Harry?” said the lad listlessly.
“Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking some one else’s admirer when one loses one’s own.”
Now before I point out the obvious irony of Henry literally 'taking someone else's admirer' (henry actually has a lot in common with his 'criticisms' of women), I want to bring your attention to a key part we don’t discuss enough about in the book.
““Life has always poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger. I once wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic mourning for a romance that would not die. Ultimately, however, it did die. I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity. Well—would you believe it?—a week ago, at Lady Hampshire’s, I found myself seated at dinner next the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole thing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the future. I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.”
So I’m gonna make an educated guess and say Henry is lying his ass off here. He did not have a ‘romance’ with a woman. He certainly did not get an emotional, romantic attachment with a ‘woman’. I feel comfortable saying this because 1) his general distaste for women literally points to this being bullshit and 2) a significant change that was made from the 1890 version of the book to the 1891 version.
This is the quote in 1890:
“I once wore nothing but violets all through one season, as mourning for a romance that would not die.”
This is 1891:
“I once wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic mourning for a romance that would not die.”
Well, well, well, who is the arti—It’s Basil. He’s literally talking about Basil here. AND GUESS WHAT VIOLETS MEAN IN VICTORIAN FLOWER LANGUAGE?
A couple of things actually, but the top three are:
‘Faithfulness, Modesty, and Love.’
Henry emotionally had been faithful to Basil. While I doubt he was monogamous in anyway, Basil held a special place that no else would ever have. Not even Dorian.
And this brings me back to the quote that originally sent me down this rabbit hole:
“I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.”
In the 1890 version, it says:
“I had buried my romance in a bed of poppies.”
Poppies are known to mean death and would have fit perfectly if Henry was saying he felt nothing for the relationship, but what does asphodel mean?
‘Love Beyond The Grave’, ‘Remembered Beyond The Tomb’ and sometimes, ‘My regrets follow you to the grave’.
(NOTE: please keep in mind floriography could mean certain things based on the color and the type of flowers. That being said, considering Wilde described the shit out of every setting he wrote, the lack of detail about the flowers suggest the most broad meaning is meant to be taken.)
Henry isn't over Basil. He couldn't kill the love, so he buried it and took Dorian as a consolation and revenge. He will never be able to get over Basil until Basil or himself dies.
BOY DO I HAVE GOOD NEWS FOR HENRY/s
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