#I showed her some of my drawings with minimal context and she said ‘he looks like a househusband’ and told me to draw him cooking 😂 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kylandara · 2 years

Text

Quora Time: Do you think GRRM is surprised at how bitter some fans are about Daenerys' end?

link: https://qr.ae/pGq4nV

Kelsey as usual.... bit of a long read, as I also add in two comments people leave and what was her response

Said it before, I’ll say it again: If Daenerys wasn’t incredibly popular, there’s no way that GRRM could use her as a vehicle to make this particular point. Where people erred was in relying on her popularity to guess her outcome — if she’s popular, she must get a happy ending, right? — and not seeing it for what it was — an attempt to answer a question I know probably everyone has asked: How do cult-of-personality despots gain such massive followings?

The bitterness is baked in. I’m sure plenty of dictator-admirers were bitter when their idols crumbled away or were overthrown or revealed for what they truly were or whatever. If people weren’t bitter, the experiment would have failed.

So no, I don’t think GRRM is surprised by the bitterness (and he’d also surely know that at least some bitterness is rooted in the storytelling quality and not the ending itself). What I think might surprise him — and hey, I’m not in his head — is people’s denial regarding Dany’s final intended trajectory and a refusal to look inward to see what it was about her that got them hooked. You might say he did his job with her a little too well. Instead of thoughtful introspection, the result is, “Nah nah nah I can’t hear you, it isn’t actually supposed to be like this, Dany’s actually gonna get a happy ending because I said so!” People use the show’s shitty quality as a crutch to avoid a rather unpleasant reality; that might surprise him, that people so adamantly refuse to believe that the ending (its overall tone and outcome, anyway, if not the process toward it) is actually the ending.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am also adding in two comments she replies to which are fascinating.

Comment 1: The first part is rather unfair. ‘Dictatorship’ in a pre-modern agricultural society is very different to what we suppose is a tyrant today. A king with supreme power did not exist within the same context as such a person in a fully nationalized society.

There is no historical favor done by comparing Louis XIII to Saddam Hussein. Both consolidated power and crushed the aristocracy for ultimate power, but they are not the same. Governing in a disconnected society with minimal ability to project power and where 90% of people live on a subsistence level does not garner the same cost.

Using contemporary associations of a “dictator” to color Daenerys as a tyrant for wanting ultimate power is simply a false assumption and does nothing to comment on the danger of Messianic figures. Augustus was considered divine, but how else does a leader entrench their support without mass media, broadcasting, or literature (most people are illiterate)? The Chinese emperors thought they had a divine mandate, that does not make them the same as Kim Jong-Un.

Daenerys having a hunger for power or wanting to crush the land-owners under her own authority is not Stalinism, we are considering a very different time with very different standards

ANSWER:

The setting may be in a pre-modern time, but the people reading the material are modern and have sensibilities to match. That’s why something like Dany abolishing slavery draws such support; would you argue that that should only be appraised in a purely historical context?

That’s the double standard I see people use quite often with Dany: When she does something moral in a mostly modern sense, it’s great and she should be commended. When she does something immoral in a mostly modern sense, she’s a product of her time and shouldn’t be judged for it in modern terms. I have no particular beef with the “Dany’s just doing what Augustus did, back off” argument, except that it isn’t applied consistently or evenly, in my experience. Mostly I see people use it as an excuse to mitigate her culpability or accountability or flaws. Nor do I see similar arguments used to excuse the brutality of more obviously villainous people like Tywin or Ramsay or Gregor. Gregor and the Brave Companions didn’t do much that the historical Free Companies didn’t or wouldn’t have, but I’ve never seen anyone make that point as a way to wave off criticism of their actions. (Nor do I think it’d play well if anyone did.)

I’d also argue that Dany as a character has quite a lot in common with generic 20th-century dictators in terms of her trajectory and methods, despite her being placed in a medieval setting. To me it’s a very basic concept of, “Don’t root for a tyrant just because you might agree with them politically or find them personally likable.” You may disagree; that’s your prerogative. But a story that has nothing to say to modern audiences about how they perceive morality, leadership, authoritarianism, etc., is … useless, isn’t it? Dany’s not a historical figure; she’s fictional. There’s no reason she can’t also be used as a morality play for a modern audience. If there’s nothing for modern audiences here in terms of analysis, what are we even doing?

(I also don’t see Augustus, the Yongle Emperor or Louis XIV defended with the frankly frightening at times intensity that Daenerys is. If the point is that she isn’t the focus of a cult of personality, insofar as it’s possible for a fictional character, then some of her fans never got that memo. If anyone’s ever gotten rape threats writing about Augustus on Quora, it’s news to me.)

“Augustus was considered divine”

Ah, but how many people actually believed that he was divine, and how many people went along with it for the cause of political expediency? (I’m noting the passive voice, here.) Caligula supposedly rewarded the guy who claimed to see Julia Drusilla ascending to heaven as a goddess — did the guy actually see this, or recognize an easy payday?

How much do we really know what Joe Pleb thought of Augustus? Or about Louis XIV, or Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and so on? Caesar’s campaign in Gaul may have killed and enslaved millions — did anyone ask those people what they thought of him? When making the “historical figures played by different rules” argument, aren’t we relying on historical analysis and documents that come down on the side of power, i.e. what the king/emperor and his retainers say and do will be recorded, not so much for everyone else? Wouldn’t that surviving documentation be more likely to put the autocrat in the best possible light (because it was written by people who worked for said autocrat, or the autocrat himself)? Is there that big of a difference between historical tyrants and more modern ones, or is it a matter of documentation, bias in the surviving record, and who does or doesn’t have newsreel footage? If Saddam Hussein lived in the 13th century and most of what you knew about him came from a history book based on Baghdad court documents and letters, would you evaluate him in the same way? You mention a lack of mass media, broadcasting, etc. — that goes both ways. Nor do I think that “Augustus could get away with it, Saddam couldn’t” makes any difference in the morality of what they did or whether we should or shouldn’t now approve of what they did. It means just that — one got away with it, the other didn’t — no more, no less (and I think a big part of the problem is the Great Men approach to history, but that’s for another day).

Comment 2:

If what you're saying is actually GRRM's intention, I'd hate him for it. Save yourself reminding me that George can write what he wants. I know that. And I can hate who and what I want.

Rather, the question was aimed at whether GRRM is surprised that some fans find a story in which Dany is the bad guy is completely unacceptable. That someone is only a fan of ASoIaF as long as Dany is the heroine. The character that exists in the mind of the reader is more real to them than what the author actually has in his mind. If the difference is too big, then at some point the reader realizes that the story he was a fan of actually doesn't exist and turns away bitterly.

GRRM's idol is Tolkien and his declared goal is to give the end of ASoIaF the same "tone" as LotR. Assuming GRRM intends what you say, my judgment is that he failed. Tolkien did not end any of his heroes as bitterly as Daenerys and therefore no reader of LotR is as unhappy as the Dany-focused readers of ASoiF.

Answer:

I think couching it in terms of “unacceptable” or not misses the point and is useless as far as discourse. There will ALWAYS be SOMEONE for whom the story was “unacceptable,” no matter how it ended. SOMEONE was always going to be disappointed, maybe severely so. You seem to be arguing that Daenerys fans have the monopoly — God knows why — on getting the ending that they want. To which I’d reply, bullshit, for multiple reasons. This isn’t fan service based on a character’s popularity, and Dany having a happy ending misses the point of her arc.

I also don’t see how it’s GRRM’s problem that certain people misled themselves into thinking or misinterpreted the story to mean that Daenerys was the sole center of gravity and ultimate final hero. You thought you were reading The Daenerys Targaryen Story, and you weren’t, and, what, that’s GRRM’s fault? He should have foreseen that a subset of fans would have a frankly unhealthy-as-fuck fixation on Dany, to the point where it affects their mental and emotional well-being (seriously, therapy), and thrown out his own road map just to keep them happy?

The sense of self-entitlement is mind-blowing. “Wah, give me the ending I want or I’ll toss my toys out of the pram!” Do you have any idea how you look with this? It’s embarrassing, or it should be.

And, yes, GRRM admires Tolkien. That doesn’t mean he set out to recreate LOTR from whole cloth or just update the same basic story to make it gritty. He’s been pretty open about his issues with it (e.g. Gandalf’s resurrection). One area of critique was the “Aragorn tax problem,” i.e. we don’t really know what Aragorn did on an administrative level as a ruler after he became king. That’s part of what ASOIAF is looking at — winning the throne is the easy part, and it’s the beginning, not the end. GRRM seems very interested in how people do as “bean counters,” doing the boring stuff, which is actually the bulk of what governing really is. It’s not glamorous or high-profile, and it’s boring, but that’s the work. And Dany sucks at it. It’s not just that she’s a tyrant; even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t be cut out, in terms of skill set, to actually govern a place in the long term after she’d conquered it. That’s also the point: Being a good conqueror doesn’t make you a good governor, and if you can’t govern, you’re not going to be queen.

Comment Again from same person

That's all well and good, but then George is lying to himself when he talks about trying to achieve the same "tone" as the LotR end. Because he can't do this and at the same time set his little trap with Dany. One excludes the other.

Answer:

Fair enough, but as you say, that’s your judgment, which is pertinent to you and only you. (For one thing, not everyone would agree that GRRM would miss LOTR’s tone entirely based on what he did with one single character.) And he might have set “his little trap,” but you walked into it all on your own. At some point, you maybe need to accept your own free will and accountability and stop blaming the author. He didn’t force you to root for Dany at knifepoint.

#anti daenerys

60 notes · View notes

ashesandhalefire · 3 years

Text

progress report: i am missing you to death

alex, michael, and a lot of unsaid things.

inspired by an entirely out of context teaser shot of alex and a desperate need for interaction that has yet to be satisfied by season 3 canon.

Deep Sky provides the coordinates and the time, so Alex shows up and waits.

While he stands in the cool night air, he scans the flat terrain that stretches out to one side and the gully where the highway sits. Other than the whizzing traffic, oblivious to his insignificance, everything is quiet.

After about twenty minutes of the vibrating stillness, Michael slinks out of the shadows with his hat tucked low over his face and leans against the back of the car beside Alex’s SUV.

Blood rushing in his ears, Alex does a second quick sweep of the lot’s perimeter. Nothing obvious has changed in the shadows since he crept through the bushes to check potential sight lines, but Alex isn’t stupid. He was in over his head when Project Shepherd turned out to be just his father’s backroom hobby. Deep Sky outclasses his expertise in a way he isn’t ready to reckon with. They could be anywhere—somewhere in the lot, somewhere down the road, somewhere miles away—and Michael has sauntered directly into their crosshairs.

He left about five feet between them when he stopped to hook one ankle over the other and stare out at the traffic, and the distance is enough for deniability. Alex tightens his hands into anxious fists and forces a long, deep breath through his nose.

“Hey,” Michael says with a casual nod of his head. They stand listening to the roar of tires chewing their ways along the desert highway, and Alex waits for a sign. He checks Michael’s chest for the red point of a laser sight just in case. Nothing happens. They stand a little longer, and then Michael leans over and asks, “You got a light?”

“No. You got a cigarette?”

The corner of Michael’s mouth twitches. It stirs up a fondness that Alex has carefully and surgically distanced himself from for the last few months, and he glances around the parking lot again. Being in love with Michael is too easy. He falls into it without needing to think about it or to try, and the laziness of trusting things to fate is probably why they’ve never gotten it right. He should probably consider himself lucky. Sinking back into those feelings now, fruitlessly, after so much time has passed, will make him sloppy in a way he can’t afford.

“You shouldn’t be here. They could see you.”

Michael tucks his hands into his jacket pockets and shrugs, easy and unbothered. Or, almost unbothered. The muscles in his jaw are tight and tense. “You don’t even know what they do or if they’re looking for me. I haven’t exactly been hiding for the last year.”

“That doesn’t mean you should paint a bullseye on your chest.”

“But you should?”

Michael spits barbs like an old man working his way through seeded melon, careless and precise in equal measure. He always finds soft flesh.

“This isn’t a game,” Alex grits out, face growing hot with frustration. He watches a tractor trailer speed by on the road below and shoot a piece of trash out from beneath its tires.

“So tell me what it is, then,” Michael says, mouth turning down and voice suddenly going sharp as a knife’s edge, “because I didn’t really wait around to hear the rest of the story after Valenti said you were joining a cult.”

Alex looks over, and Michael’s brow is pinched to match the irritated wrinkle of his nose. Anger and tension leak off him like heat shimmers off the pavement at midday. He holds his casual posture, ankles crossed and hands tucked, but his eyes are furious.

“It’s complicated.”

Michael scoffs. “You know what, I shouldn’t bother. I should just drag your ass home, no questions.”

And now Alex’s temper flares: “Try it.”

“You think I wouldn’t? To save you?” He laughs meanly. “I’d have you over my shoulder so fucking fast—”

“I don’t need to be saved.”

“Obviously, you do.” Michael pushes off the car. The brim of his hat catches the light from the lamppost and casts half his face in shadows. “We have enough problems on our hands right now. We don’t need to poke the bear.”

“This bear poked first,” Alex says, equally furious. He checks behind Michael before hissing through his teeth, “They kidnapped Mimi. They drugged Jenna Cameron. Turnabout is fair play.”

“This isn’t turnabout! This isn’t even revenge. You’re joining their club. You are flinging yourself into a pit, Alex. A big, dark, deep pit, and when you get far enough in, none of us are going to be able to get you out. We’re gonna lose you. For good. And for no fucking reason.”

“Not for no reason,” Alex says. A tingle of shame trickles up the back of his neck. He knows he’s unprepared, going in without an exit strategy. But he can’t sit on his hands and do nothing. It makes him nervous and paranoid to be idle. “They know things.”

“Who gives a shit? Who gives one fucking iota of a shit about what they know?”

Alex frowns. “You have always wanted to know more—”

“Not like this! Not at the risk of—” Michael puts a fist to his forehead. Then he pulls off his hat and takes another step closer. His voice is softer when he speaks. “Why are you so hellbent on doing this, huh? This isn’t just your dad anymore. This is bigger than that.”

“I know.”

“They are gonna swallow you whole, and what’s the point if you’re just gone?”

Alex draws another long inhale through his nose. The weight of the thick, ugly ring on his finger feels like an anchor dragging him down. The memories of Caulfield crumbling to pieces in a cloud of fire are heavier. “If there’s even a chance that they know something, what choice do I have? I’m not getting caught off guard again. I owe you that much.”

“Bullshit,” Michael says with a jerk of his chin. “Doing it is one thing, but don’t pretend you’re doing it for me.” A pair of low-riding sports cars scream down the highway behind him, bobbing and weaving through the minimal traffic with their engines blaring. One falters behind a gas tanker and then chases its companion off towards the horizon with an roar. “If you had any interest in doing something for me, you would stay.”

Cold uncertainty creeps into Alex’s chest, and no number of layers can keep it out. He wants to ask: would I be welcome? Because he hasn’t felt like he would be in a long time. He had showed up, again and again. Sometimes, he had been wanted, and sometimes, he hadn’t been. The haze of open mic night had cleared for an instant, and the future had been visible, tangible, workable, and then, just as quickly, had vanished into the air. He had been left with Isobel’s obvious, humiliating pity, her mouth turned down as she stood to listen through the last note. That door had been closed. And yet, he wants to ask: would I be welcome? Dignity be damned.

“Are— are you asking me to stay?”

There must be something in his voice when he says it, no matter how hard he tries to control the pathetic wavering and the sunken surprise on his face, that means something to Michael. His whole body eases forward as if carried by an invisible current before he catches himself and says, “I’m done asking people for more than they’re willing to give me.”

“But you would ask? If you thought—?” Alex pushes. “You would want to ask?”

The corners of Michael’s mouth turn down and his gaze narrows almost imperceptibly, but Alex is watching for it. The more Michael closes off, the more Alex feels himself splitting open. Something bright and electric stirs in his chest.

“Because I thought you wouldn’t,” he says, waiting for the moment when Michael’s eyes widen, just slightly, just enough to understand. It comes, exactly as expected, and Michael sways closer.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d ask. I’m not about to beg, but I’d ask.”

He’s gotten Michael to beg before, but never for something as serious as love. On his back or on his knees or in the bed of his truck, Alex has heard him plead and bargain for things he wants in the neediest, most desperate whispers, but that had been all carnal, base pleasure, and he had known Alex wouldn’t tell him no. Here, he’s talking about a different type of submission, the kind that humiliates someone like Michael, someone who has never been given enough. Michael won’t beg, and Alex needs to be asked, and a lot of time has been wasted between them thinking that one is the same as the other.

He can’t say he’ll stay. He’s too far in to back out. And, even if he could do it, staying doesn’t mean riding off into the sunset. It means more of the same: the secrets, the conspiracies, the mysteries, the agonies, the scraping open of old wounds in last-ditch efforts to heal them. But it also means Michael, so everything else is white noise.

Michael sees it all play out on his face. He sets his hat on the roof of Alex’s car and then turns to lean against the hatchback. He sighs, and Alex can tell that more weight than usual is resting on his shoulders. It’s not just Max dragging him under. His whole body sags with it, and the sharp focus that’s been in his eyes begins to recede as he drifts away towards the call of whatever nightmare is lurking at the back of his mind.

“It’ll be okay,” Alex says because he lacks for anything else to say, and Michael stares at his boots with a sad smile. His throat bobs as he swallows down whatever it is that’s too hard to talk about with so little time left to say it, and then he turns to look at Alex.

“Your dad was a piece of shit,” he says, like this is some sort of revelation, “and you’re you.”

The words, said like an accusation, should probably turn his stomach, but they’re also said with a reverence that pushes Alex’s heart up into his throat. Whatever is happening has rocked Michael to his core far beyond how Alex knows to help.

“Less of a piece of shit, I hope.”

Michael stares at him, flexing his hand, and then says, with a nod, “Significantly, yeah.”

“I guess that’s the best I can hope for.” Alex laughs, and then he tips his head back to look at the starless sky. “I’ll take being afraid of being like him over being proud of being like him any day. At least it means I’m going in the right direction.”

Jesse haunts Alex differently than he haunts Michael. To Michael, Jesse is another human face that did something terrible to him, just more proof that looking for another planet to run to is a good idea. Jesse is a more specific phantom for Alex, much harder to let blur into the background of the general awfulness of life. There are reminders of his father all around town: placards, photographs, the sign for the street they lived on, a six-foot statue in town square. Those can be faced much more easily than the hints of his father that Alex finds in the mirror: the deep-set wrinkles in his brows, the cut of his mouth when he frowns, the tone of his voice when he yells, the shape of his thumb. To be a little less like him every day is an exhausting but necessary struggle.

Michael smiles, and Alex, mystified, thinks maybe he managed to help after all.

“Your plan wasn’t really to drag me home over your shoulder, was it?” he asks to distract from how Michael carefully swipes a finger at the corner of one eye.

Michael huffs, and the car jostles. “I don’t know. Maybe. I just wasn’t about to let you go without—” He licks his lips and says, “I wasn’t about to let you just go.”

Alex scuffs his shoe against the loose gravel. “Couldn’t get Kyle’s hubcaps off this time?”

Guilt settles over him after he says it. Guilt and something else, something like the relief of setting down a heavy burden that’s been carried too long.

“I thought you were making a mistake back then, too.” Michael takes the comment in stride, accepts it, and reaches out to touch the ring on Alex’s hand. He pinches it carefully, Alex’s fingers curled into the heat of his palm, and rolls his thumb until the ring twists to expose the thinner underside of the band. He strokes, skin then metal then skin, over and over. “Flinging yourself into some dark pit that you’d never come out of again.”

Alex wants to tell him that this is different. He can’t.

“Do me a favor, okay?”

Hand slipping up over Alex’s wrist and into the soft corner of his elbow, Michael crosses the final inches of space between them and pulls Alex close. In the dim light of the parking lot, they might be mistaken for the sort of strangers who meet in shadowy corners for quick exchanges of misery with rough words and rougher touch. But then Michael, trembling, touches the lapel of Alex’s jacket and presses a long kiss to his cheek.

He keeps his mouth there, breath hot and soft, and, before he gathers himself enough to continue, Alex says, “I’ll come back.”

Michael laughs, but it sounds like a gasp for air. “Not even gonna let me ask?”

Alex hums. “I’ll come back.”

“Yeah, you’ll come back,” Michael warns, “or I’ll come get you. And it won’t be fucking subtle.”

It sends a shiver down his spine to think of Michael storming a place as infinitely large as Deep Sky feels. If it comes to that, he’d be better off left behind. But as the thought comes, Michael’s grip shifts and the tentative press of their sides becomes a full-bodied hug that envelopes him like a warm breeze. His nose turns into the side of Michael’s neck: rain, crisp and fresh; gasoline, but faint; smoke, from his fire pit.

“I’m not really going anywhere. It’ll be fine.”

Michael squeezes, and Alex squeezes back. Everything else he wants to say is too big for this moment. And, selfishly, he wants to know that Michael will wait to hear it. He scolds himself for the thought, because they’ve each done their share of waiting miserably at the wayside, but then he lets it stand. Michael squeezes again, fingertips digging into separate points as he clings.

Alex cups a hand to the back of his head and touches his curls. He thinks about what it would mean to kiss Michael now, to kiss someone that he loves, who loves him, and imagines a tower of precariously stacked dominoes. Michael laughs wetly, and Alex lets go first, fingers lingering reluctantly.

#malex fic #malex #roswell new mexico #michael x alex #my fic #i read the jungle; the grapes of wrath; and another country in less than two weeks. idt my writing style even knows which way is up rn #but i had to Produce Something or i was going to go crazy so :/

114 notes · View notes

spiritualdirections · 3 years

Text

Communion in the Hand in the Early Church

My colleague Prof. Elizabeth Klein got a bee in her bonnet about certain traditionalist Catholics claiming that receiving communion in the hand is “an abomination”, and has never been practiced in the history of the Church. As a professor of patristics with a specialization in the history of liturgy, she was frustrated, since the historical record is clear. She typed up the following to make the evidence available.

TL;DR Early Christians definitely received communion in the hand for at least seven centuries. There is no historical question about this issue. The question of what we ought to do today is not the same question as what Christians did in the first seven centuries, but we must avoid sweeping generalizations about what counts as reverent.

Early Christians received communion in the hand at least up until the eighth century. The manner of reception is often described as cupped hands or hands in the form of a cross, and there is remarkable consistency in this detail. Attestations to this are widespread across time and geographical regions. The below represents a selection of these attestations in chronological order; it is by no means exhaustive.

Tertullian (North Africa; c. 155-220): Against Idolatry 7.1; Here Tertullian is chastising Christians who still participate in pagan sacrifices, lamenting that they use the same hands to touch the Eucharist as they do those sacrifices. He asks if they “should put their hands on the body of the Lord with which they have carried the bodies of demons.”

Cyril of Jerusalem (Jerusalem; c. 313-386)*: Mystagogical Catechesis 5.21; “Approaching, therefore, come not with your wrists extended or your fingers open, but make your left hand a throne for your right, which is on the eve of receiving the King. And having hollowed your palm, receive the body of Christ, saying after it amen. Then after you have with carefulness hallow your eyes by the touch of the Holy Body, partake of it, being careful lest you should lose any of it, for what you lose is a loss to you as if of your own members.”

*Note: Some have claimed that this passage is spurious. There is no reason to think so, but the mystagogical catechesis may be falsely attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem and are instead composed by his successor, John. For the purposes of evidence of what early Christians practiced, it makes no difference; the evidence would be from the same place, 50 years later.

Theodore of Mopsuestia (Syria; c. 350-428): Catechetical Homilies 6; “To receive the Sacrament which is given, a person stretches out his right hand, and under it he places the left hand. In this he shows a great fear, and since the hand that is stretched out holds a higher rank, it is the one that is extended for receiving the body of the King, and the other hand bears and brings its sister hand, while not thinking that it is playing the role of a servant, as it is equal with it in honour, on account of the bread of the King, which is also borne by it. When the priest gives it he says: ‘The body of Christ.’ He teaches you by this word not to look at that which is visible, but to picture in your mind the nature of this oblation, which, by the coming of the Holy Spirit, is the body of Christ. You should thus draw near with great awe and love, according to the greatness of that which is given: with awe, because of the greatness of (its) honour; and with love, because of (its) grace. This is the reason why you say after him: ‘Amen.’”

Augustine (North Africa; c. 354-430): In both quotations below, Augustine is pointing out that the Donatists also share the Eucharist with sinful priests (the Donatists argued that sinful priests could not offer valid sacraments).

Answer to the letters of Petillian 2.23.53; “Add to this the fact that I am referring to a man who lived with you, whose birthday festivities you used to frequent with great crowds, to whom you used to give the kiss of peace while celebrating the sacraments, in whose hands you used to place the Eucharist, to whom you in turn extended your hands when he was giving it to you.”

Answer to Parmenian 2.7.13; “Why, then, was he accustomed to offer gifts to God and were others accustomed to accept from him with joined hands what he, blemished and imperfect, had offered?”

Quinisext Council, AKA Council of Constantinople Trullo (Syria; 692): The canon is prohibiting the practice of receiving communion with a vessel rather than one’s hands.

Canon 101 “Wherefore, if anyone wishes to be a participator of the immaculate Body in the time of the Synaxis, and to offer himself for the communion, let him draw near, arranging his hands in the form of a cross, and so let him receive the communion of grace. But such as, instead of their hands, make vessels of gold or other materials for the reception of the divine gift, and by these receive the immaculate communion, we by no means allow to come, as preferring inanimate and inferior matter to the image of God.”

Venerable Bede (England; c. 672-735): In this passage, Bede is recounting the death scene of a certain brother was known for singing scripture verses. He foresees his death approaching although those around him do not.

Ecclesiastical History of England 4.24 “‘What need of the Eucharist? for you are not yet appointed to die, since you talk so merrily with us, as if you were in good health.’ ‘Nevertheless,’ said he, ‘bring me the Eucharist.’ Having received it into his hand, he asked, whether they were all in charity with him, and had no complaint against him, nor any quarrel or grudge.”

John Damascene (Syria; c. 675-749): On the Orthodox Faith 4.13; “Let us draw near to it with an ardent desire, and with our hands held in the form of the cross let us receive the body of the Crucified One: and let us apply our eyes and lips and brows and partake of the divine coal.”

Further questions and clarifications

Did early Christians receive while kneeling?

No. Kneeling on Sundays was forbidden at the Council of Nicaea (325) because at that time it was seen as being related to penance rather than reverence. The below image may help us visualize how early Christians received, although the details about the posture are not as widely attested.

The Rosanna Gospels (Italy; Sixth Century)

This image from a sixth century illuminated manuscript helps us to visualize how communion was received (at least by some) in the early Church. It depicts the Last Supper as a communion line. The disciple at the front of the line first offers thanks to God in prayer with hands raised, then bows and receives in cupped hands very close to his mouth. The other disciples in line tilt their heads in reverent prayer waiting their turn.

Was communion in the hand an exception in the early Church?

The plentiful evidence for communion in the hand means that it was not an exception, but normative. Taken out of context, sometimes certain passages from the Fathers (and later documents) seem to forbid communion in the hand, but they are usually referring to self-communion; i.e. taking the Eucharist oneself from the altar or at home by yourself from a reserve, and not receiving it from the hand of a minister. Self-communion was also allowed in the early Church, but Basil of Caesarea tells us that this practice is to be undertaken only under exceptional circumstances, such as a hermit, or in times of persecution when not everyone was readily able to attend the liturgy (Letter 93).

What about that weird eye thing?

Both Cyril of Jerusalem and John Damascene mention touching the Eucharist to one’s eyes before receiving. The posture in which the Eucharist was received in the hand may help explain this custom of reverence. As in the image above from the Rosanna gospels, the communicant is bowed with cupped hands to receive, and his hands are very close to his eyes. One could imagine passing these cupped hands over one’s eyes before receiving without physically touching the Eucharist.

However, we also have to keep in mind that reverence and understandings of reverence do change over time. Augustine, for example, mentions a miracle involving putting the Eucharist on someone’s eyes, which healed them (Unfinished Work Against Julian 3.162). He neither approves nor censures the mother who used the Eucharist in this way. Although we have no reason to think that this was a common practice, we would not consider that appropriate today nor seek to use the Eucharist for medicinal purposes. There is no golden age of the liturgy to which we should aim to return. Liturgical reforms, including signs of reverence, require sensitivity both to the tradition and to the needs of the modern church.

Did the Church totally reject this practice at some point?

Practices evolved in both East and West such that receiving directly on the tongue / into the mouth was normative. These changes are related to reverence, but the chief concern is the prevention of dropping or spilling – patens and unleavened bread in the West and spoons, drop cloths and tincture in the East both minimize Eucharistic mishaps. The prevention of spilling/dropping was also a chief concern of the Fathers in their recommendations, as mentioned in some of the citations above. However, the Church does not seem to have ever forgotten these earlier roots and practices of receiving communion. Take the following for an example.

In a vision recorded in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (North Africa; 3rd century), where Perpetua receives a piece of cheese from Jesus in paradise continued throughout the centuries to be identified as Eucharistic because of the way she received it, in cupped hands.

Pope Benedict XIV (Rome; 1748) interprets Perpetua’s reception of the cheese as a kind of miraculous reception of the Eucharist prior to martyrdom because it is called in Latin a buccella (morsel) and eaten reverently (On the beatification of the servants and canonization of the Blessed vol. 3, p. 180): “It is certain that in this vision one can discern a sketch of the Eucharist; in the morsel offered to Perpetua and in reverent accepting and eating of it and in the voices surrounding saying ‘Amen.’” (It should be noted that Pope Benedict specifically notes that “ipsa accepit junctis manibus”, that she received it with joined hands, which, as Dr. Klein notes, he describes as reverently receiving it.)

#Eucharist #liturgy #dr. elizabeth klein

46 notes · View notes

pink-imagines · 4 years

Text

not what she seems

part 2

request: single dad!eijiro who bumps into y/n and they have chemistry right from the beginning! maybe where he works and his kid runs off and when he finds his kid it’s y/n who’s been taking care of his kid?

a/n: i hope this is okay! this might become a longer series!

warnings: none except get ready for angst in future chapters

masterlist

part 1

Eijiro showed the badge to the nurse in the reception and she let him pass right through. Being a hero does have it’s perks. There are a lot of them, actually, but they’re hard to see at times. Right now Eijiro was definitely abusing these perks, he shouldn’t be visiting this villain in the hospital at all... but he just had to.

Y/N had put up a good fight, but eventually she was overpowered by the amount of heros that arrived. As soon as Eijiro had arrived something about the fight changed. She was suddenly holding back. She must’ve been holding back, there was no way someone who had just beaten up a pletera of heroes at the same time couldn’t fight Red Riot and his sidekick.

When Eijiro found the room he knocked on the door three times and waited for a response.

“Come in.”, a groggy, tired, voice answered.

Eijiro walked in carefully and closed the door softly behind him. Y/N sat on the edge of the bed, back faced against him. She was looking out the window, her shoulders wrapped in a knitted blanket.

“How are you feeling?”, he asked as kindly as he could. She looked so fragile, just sitting there, and it surprisingly hurt him. Eijiro didn’t want to feel bad, she was a villain afterall, but seeing how she acted towards his daughter... it gave some new context. Y/N turned around. Her teary eyes were filled with regret, he could even see it from where he was standing by the door.

“I’m good.”, she croaked out and let out a chuckle, “... I’m fucking great.”

“Y/N-”

“Don’t say my name like that.”, she looked back out of the window towards the starry night, “Don’t say my name like you know me.” How the fuck else was he going to say her name? Eijiro tried his best to keep calm. He had to. For her sake.

“Okay. Okay.”, he took a deep breath, “I’m just here to ask you a few questions.”

“Ask away.”, she got up from the bed and walked over to one of the chairs. There she sat down and wrapped her blanket tighter around her. She motioned for Eijiro to sit down in the chair in front of her.

“You’re awfully willing about this.”, he said as he sat down.

“It’s not like I wanted to do that. I didn’t sign up for that.”, she looked out the window again, as if she was looking for someone.

“Someone put you up to this? You’re not part of the league of villains?”, he was almost relieved, though it didn’t last long.

“No. I am.”, she looked back at him, “But I don’t want to be.” Eijiro’s heart sunk to his stomach when she looked at him with such hurt in her eyes. He wanted to do something. Maybe hug her? No that’s creepy.

“You’re stuck in it, aren’t you?”, he sighed.

“Why aren’t you in your hero costume?”, she asked suddenly.

“I’m not working.”

“So then why are you asking me these questions?” That was a very good question. Why was he doing this? He couldn’t really answer that himself. Was he really that desperate for answers? Or did he just have to see her before she was sent to jail?

“I wanted to see if you were innocent before I get you outta here.”, he spoke without thinking. What the fuck was he saying? Getting her out of here?

“You’re sneaking me out?”, her eyebrows raised in surprise, “Why?”

“Um... I owe you one? For looking after my daughter?”, Eijiro wasn’t even sure of his own statement.

“I looked after her in like 20 minutes, I didn’t really do much.”, she quirked her right eyebrow.

“Listen, I know you’re a good person.”, he sighed desperately, “I’ll convinse my agency that I’ll be looking after you- kind of like some sort of parol. You said you were forced to do this, so I can-”

“I don’t need you to save me. I can take care of myself.”, she interrupted.

“Please just let me do this. I can’t watch an innocent person go to jail!”, he pleaded.

“I’m not innocent! You saw what I did!”, she exclaimed.

“You were forced!” She stayed quiet. The look in her eyes said “help me” but her mouth was saying something else. Eijiro would just have to go off of a gut feeling.

“Y/N, please. I’ll talk to them in the morning and then I’ll stop by with a change of clothes so you can go out without being recognized.”, he whispered but it sounded like a scream in the dead silent room.

“Fine.”, she sighed.

The next day, like he thought, he was walking back to the hospital with a bag of clothes. He had just dropped Yoko off at the kindergarten before going to explain the situation to the agency.

“Then you have to be prepared to help her back into normal civilization, you do understand that your patrolling and hero work will be minimal if any?”

“Yes sir.”

When he got into the hospital room she was in the same chair as last night.

“You’re coming home with me.”, he smiled and held up the bag of clothes.

“You’re acting like you’re getting a puppy.”, she chuckled and took the bag of clothes, “Do you think these’ll fit?”

“If not, there’s a belt in there too.”, Eijiro assured her.

“Alright.”

“Alright.”, he repeated. They stared at each other for a while, Y/N gave Eijiro a weird look but still wore a smile on her face. It was really nice to see her smile, it looked good on her.

“Maybe you should get out if I’m gonna change.”, she chuckled.

“Oh shit, yeah, sorry!”, Eijiro excused himself and quickly walked out the room.

Y/N walked out only moments later and gave Eijiro a quick look before they started walking. He handed her a pair of sunglasses when they got closer to the exit.

“You have to wear these...”, he said quietly, “It’s for your own good.”

“Fine.”, she sighed and put them on, “Happy?” Eijiro let out a chuckle before opening the door for her and then walking out himself.

Eijiro’s apartment was extremely nice. Even though he had a kid it was pretty clean... actually the only sign that he had a kid was the toys and the drawings on the fridge. You approached them and looked at each of them carefully. His daughter was good at drawing.

“Yoko draws so much, I think I need to get a bigger fridge.”, Eijiro was suddenly behind you, which made you flinch and turn around. You hadn’t even heard him walk up.

“Sorry, sorry!”, he chuckled, “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” You just looked at him and didn’t say a word. He gave you a puzzled look, as if he was trying to figure out what you were thinking. Then again, were you really thinking of anything? There was a knock on the door, making you flinch once again.

“That’s gotta be the babysitter!”, when he started to walk away you felt a sense of panic overwhelm you.

“Wait-”, you grabbed his arm, as if your body tried to beg him to stay.

“Is something wrong?”, he asked, worry filled his eyes.

“I-... no. I was just wondering if I could... if I could have something to eat.”, you stuttered out.

“Um... sure. I’ll be making dinner soon, but feel free to grab something.”, he smiled, but it was an unsure smile. The only thing that teared his eyes away from yours was a second knock at the door. Then he left.

You grabbed an apple from the bowl of fruit on the kitchen island and studied the red fading into yellow and the small dots. As if that would help you ignore the horrible feeling of being watched. You were safe now. You had to be.

“Daddy, look!”, Yoko ran up to him with a book in her hands, “I found the next book of the story you read to me!”

“Oh, that’s great sweetheart!”, he grinned. He payed the babysitter who had gotten her back from kindergarden and then helped his daughter take off her shoes and jacket.

As soon as Y/N had seen Yoko she was back to the woman she looked like when he first saw her. Eijiro really wanted to know what happened to her, but it’d be too soon to pry. Something inside her had flipped a switch and she was suddenly carefree.

“Dad, can I help you with dinner?”, Yoko asked out of the blue.

“Oh, right! Dinner!”, he got up from the chair he was sitting on and started walking to the kitchen, “Yeah sure, come on.”

“You can help me cut the veggies, Y/N!”, Yoko exclaimed and took Y/N’s hand. Eijiro looked at the two... there was a glimt of nostalgia in Y/N’s eyes, something hopeful.

“Yeah. Sure.”

243 notes · View notes

popculturebuffet · 4 years

Text

Darkwing Duck Reviews: Darkly Dawns the Duck Pts 1 and 2

It’s a Darkwing Double Feature! Just in time for his ducktales special, I take a look at the introduction of everyone’s favorite Daring Duck of Mystery. In his daring debut we meet Darkwing Duck, an egositical and attention hungry superhero who soon finds himself having to look after a feisty orphan to keep her from getting nabbed by local kingpin of crime Taurus Bulba with the help of his biggest fan. Darkwing owns the night under the cut with decades old spoilers.

Let’s Get Dangerous.. is tommorow so with that in mind i’m doing a darkwing double feature to refresh myself before the big special. So i’ll be covering both the original series pilot “Darkly Dawns the Duck” and the ducktales reboot episode “The Duck Knight Returns”. Let’s Get Dangerous Itself because I was so wiped yesterday I didn’t get the other review done and unexpectly got acess to the new episode way earlier than usual so i’d rather focus on that. Got it? Good. Let’s continue past me.

As usual with a new show a breif bit about my history with it: I watched it years ago, as a friend of mine lent me the first two discs of the season 1 dvd and never found the third one nor asked for them back, nor cared I had them. I thoughtly enjoyed it, had a great time and then it took me a decade or so to actually watch the series again due to a combination of being too stubborn to just buy the season 1 dvd again, a very darkwing move of me in hindsight, and then when disney plus meant I had all episodes at my finger tips I.. sat on them till now.. though to be fair i’ve sat on a LOT of great shows on there including the mandalorian, gargoyles and boy meets world. I have a bad tendency to procastinate, the fact this is coming out so late in the day should be a giveaway. I did read about half of volume 1 of the comic and all of volume 2, so there’s that at least. Point is this new episode finally made me decide to get off my ass and watch darkwing once again, starting with the pilot and the episodes related to the fearsome four to be ready for tomorrow to see what the differences are (Thoguh I did remember bushroot vividly, so I had that at least). Something to note before I get started talking about the pilot itself though, is the episode order for Darkwing Duck is a Darkwing Clusterfuck. Now I do understand WHY they aired this way: While some episodes do logically take place after other episodes, you can reasonably pop on just about any darkwing and watch it and enjoy it with minimal need to know what happened in previous episodes, kinda like batman the animated series oddly enough. It was also aired between two networks so on some level I get disney’s confusion here.. but on the other hand it’d take ten minutes, they clearly can call up the creator easily as Tad Stones made a cameo in ducktales 2017 we’ll get to so they could easily get a better order from the creator himself, so they really don’t have an excuse for this, or for slapping the pilot in the middle of season 1. Then again both ducktales 2017 and x-men the animated series were sort of a mess order wise when first put up, so not giving a shit about where episodes are placed for re-watching clearly is a pastime of theirs.

Now i’ve got that out of my system we can dive into the episode itself and a breif plot synopsis. Darkwing Duck is the superhero protector of St. Canard, a masked vigiliante who takes out crime but wishes he actually got fame and credit for his work. Kind of like Booster Gold but without taking endorsments or as far as we know coming from the future. He also has nothing else as shown by the fact he fights crime, does a training regimine to prepare his breakfast that’s a delight to watch then prepares to sleep. It’s an intresting concept, a hero who HAD a civlian identity once, as the rest of the series would play out, he just no longer needs it. And it’s also ahead of it’s time as batman would explore this idea both seriously with bruce wayne murderer and comedically and seriously with the lego batman movie LONG after this series aired, meaning the writers here figured out what many probably knew about batman and put it into their parody version: Batman is the real identity and Bruce is the mask. Batman only keeps his old self because the bruce id is useful to him: It keeps people away from his company, puts up a playboy facade that draws attention away from him being batman, and allows him to do various charities and what not and help honor his parents in a way that dosen’t involve swooping in and kicking people in the throat. And as seen with bruce wayne murderer when the option to throw bruce away for good came up Batman gladly took it. This is the same idea: Drake Mallard ONLY cares about crime fighting, has no friends no family, we never do find out jack about his family hopefully if there’s a full reboot series Frank and Matt fix it for their version. He has nothing, and is fine with that. He hasn’t really had a reason to care about anything else than his own glory and works alone not because it’s less efficent but because his oversized ego means he dosen’t want to share credit. IT’s an intresting start and his ego would be a defining bit of who he is and used intrestingly int he reboot but we’ll get to that there.

His life changes forever though when local crime boss Taurus Bulba unleashes his latest scheme: To steal the Ramrod, a gravity manipulating device created by the late Dr. Quackmeyer.. late because Bulba’s men killed him and were dumb enough not to get the arming code for the ramrod first a year ago. Bulba is also behind bars but in one of my faviorite gags of the episode despite the warden’s constnat gloating, Bulba has taken the “Supervillian makes jail into a base” Or “Jail is nothing to a supervillian who can easily get out trope” to ludcrious machines. He has whole meetings with his minions, keeps the ramrod once he gets his hands on it in the laundry and has a ship SHAPED LIKE HIS FACE built into his cellblock. I’ts just so over the top it’s glorious. But yeah since Bulba can’t go after it at first he sends his three goofy minons, one played by eddie “Mandark” deezen in.. love that guy.

THey do end up stealing the ramrod thanks to the help of bulba’s cool, non-anthromporhic condor who he uses as his right hand man and as his link to his minons via a small tv aroudn it’s neck. That.. is awesome. Darkwing spots the condor but fails to stop the three stooges or the condor and gets unknowingly blamed for the robbery..and stopped to get glamor shots not realizing the guy thought he was a criminla which.. fair enough. It is a shadowy disguise after all.

Darkwing ends up grabbing onto the vulture sonic 3 style, but ends up falling off him into a hangar where we meet the original version of Launchpad McQuack, whose apparently quit working for scrooge and has his own hangar now though it wouldn’t be a stretch that scrooge bought it for him.. he does , stingy as he is, appricate hard work and launchpad wanting to start his own buisness and while hte planes were probably all on launchpad, Scrooge would gladly buy a run down buliding for a loyal friend who wants to put in some hard honest work. Plus it’s a free place to store any vehicles he has in the st canard area.. I mean it’s still scrooge. And yes I know the whole “Tad stones said they aren’t the same universe” non sense. I do have the utmost respect for the guy and he seems really, nice but I don’ tlike that, no one likes that and both the comics and the current duckverse with the ducktales reboot entirely ignore that for good reason.While the two shows are diffrent in tone they stil lfit and it’s not a stretch for launchpad to want to spread his wings or failing that scrooge to help push him out of the nest and give him his own buisness or one of scrooge’s to run.

But while Launchpad does help DW with a propeller plane they fail and while launchpad offers to be his sidekick, DW gives him the old I work alone bit. However him being alone won’t last for long as Bulba still needs that arming code and since his only lead is Waddlemeyer’s grandaughter who grew up in his lab, he sends his buffonish minons to go get him. Why he never sends his lone female minon with them is because it’s funnier if she dosen’t I guess. Which it is so fair enough. So thus we enter Goslyn, who the head of the orphanage is fed up with due to her antics. Goslyn is played as most of you knwo by christine cavanagh.. I honestly forgot and it still throws me off a bit she’s using what would later be her chucky finster voice for a character so completely diffrent. Granted it’s not unusual in voice acting, just weird here and only for me personally having grown up with rugrats but not darkwing. The orphanage head is a bit less jarring as she’s played by Marcia Wallace, aka Edna Krabable from the simpsons but A) that show was already running at this point and B), the character is basically a nicer version of edna versus chuckies voice coming out of a tiny if immensly fun to watch hellion. I do like goslyn, sh’es a fun character even in her shadier moments, it’s just something i’d forgotten about i’ll need to get used to is all.

Bulba’s hired goons come in claming ot be friends of her grandpas and we actually get some really heartwrenching context for Gos’ behavior: While she does act out she actually LIKES THE orphanage.. ti’s just her friends keep getting adopted while no one wants someone “full of spirit”. It’s heartwrecnhing to hear.. and only gets worse when the goons try and kidnap her. Thankfully Darkwing.. also kidnaps her, but he kindaps her from kidnappers and while Goslyn naturally takes a second to realize he’s the good guy them shooting at him clues her in. Darkwing, in a rare for the series as a whole moment of reason and not wanting to just power though something himself TRIES to do the responsible thing and leave gos with the police where she’ll be protected.. but given they think he’s a wanted criminal they shoot at him.. and the small child in his motorcycle. Yup that’s the police alright.

So with no other options Darkwing takes gos home, hyjinks insue including her activintg the breakfast thing. But the two genuinely start to bond. While Darkwing dosen’t WANT to keep her around, the whole not wanting connections thing, it’s clear he’s growing fond of the little snot as she holds her own with his trianing course, they have a tickle fight and in the sweetest moment of the episode the two sing little girl blue, a song her grandfather used to sing her to sleep that she teaches darkwing. It’s an utterly heartmelting bit and Cummings and Cavanagh really sell the hell out of it. It also however turns out ot be plot relevant: Turns out just in case Dr. Waddlemeyer hid the code for the ramrod in the song, and when Darkwing sees a photo Goslyn got from bulba’s goons, he realizes this and realizes that depsite thinking she didn’t know it Goslyn had it all along.. and that as long as h’es around she won’t know. Bulba is naturally livid at his minons failure and decides now’s the time to take this into his own hands and while he actually liked the prison hq setup, as it did make sense as it was the perfect cover and the warden was too full of himself to realize Bulba was still active and too convinced the bull was beaten down when he clearly wasn’t, but instead as mentioned above awesomely converts his cellblock into a flying ship in the shape of his own head. Bulba.. is a great villian and I only think the show didn’t use him more because he’s a dead serious, deadly dangerous villian in an otherwise goofy but fun superhero parody show. The show later gained Negaduck, so they had a more dangerous threat for darkwing that fit the show’s tone better while still being utterly terrifying, and likely simply didn’t need him till the idea for the steerminator came up. But I love the guy: he reminds me a lot of the kingpin, a threatning villian who uses his sheer size to beat our hero down, is cool and suave and is an utter mastermind at planning. He also wears a nice suit. And naturlaly he has a plan to take out darkwing since despite the two never having met, as Darkwing disparages when Goslyn assumes their lifelong mortal enmies like in the comics, they know of each other.. and thus bulba knows exactly what trap to spring to get him out of the way and goslyn into his ship: He flashes a message in morris code that he wants to surrender to Darkwing while stroking his ego a LOT. And it works... while i’ts an obvious trap Darkwing’s so full of himself he goes despite Goslyn telling him it’s very obviously a trap. Naturally everything goes pear shaped as a result: Bulba shows up, revealing gos not only to be right but easily pummling Darkwing. Which makes sense: While Darkwing is a vetran crime fighter and secret agent, Bulba’s been at being a villian longer clearly as he’s built up enough of a rep both for Darkwing to know him out of hand and for the warden to be proud capturing him. Given what univese this is, it probably isn’t Bulba’s first round with a superhero and given at this stage St Canard only has one.. yeah Darkwing is outclasssed and the police grab him while Bulba scarpers. And while Gos puts up a good fight using the trianing course, Bulba’s vulture gets her. Bulba has everything he needs. Darkwing meanwhile actually bemoans what a dick he’s been, that the first person he’s cared about besides himself in possibly ever is now in the hands of a murderous mastermind, and that he’s stuck in jail with no one to call on for help. Thankfully.. help arrives.. and by help I mean launchpad backing the ratcatcher, Darkwing’s bike, into the prisoin. He DID come just to bail DW out despite his earlier jerkishness, but backed in and Darkwing not beliving superheroes have time for paperwork, decides to just bust out. And to be ifair int his case he’s probably right as you know, a ten year old might die if they don’t get there in time. So off they go.. but with Bulba in the air they need something with wings to catch him. ANd luckily as Launchpad mentioned earlier he’s been working on something special for darkwing. It’s with this we enter the thunderquack, which is DW”S awesome headshaped plane. It’s just cool it’s got a nice design, goofy enough tof it the universe but cool enoguh to still be fun to watch. Darkwing has really damn cool vehicles, as the ratcatcher is also awesomely iconic. But yeah the thunderquack impresses darkwing and rightfully so and he decides to make LP his sidekick afterall. So now our heroes fly into the danger zone and attack bulba’s airship with Darkwing landing on the bow and a scuffle insues with darkwing and hte minons.. who use actual guns which for a 90′s kids show is a suprise, especially one this intentioanlly goofy, but boy is it nice. However Bulba, being awesomely evil, isn’t dumb and instead of fighting darkwing, which he could win but would win him nothing and having gotten nothing out of goslyn, figures the hero might know the code.. and while Darkwing lies and says he dosen’t, Bulba points out .. he’s right.. but he’s always been a gambling man and has his condor drop goslyn to lure drake into telling him , with DW putting in the code and bulba testing it with a bank robbery.. before predictably having his condor drop the girl because he no longer needs her. Thankfully launchpad catches her in time and then they get revenge on the condor with the thunderquack BITING IT.. which is awesome. Hopefully the reboot version does that.

Darkwing meanwhile saves the day, his new daughter and the city by simply sneaking over to the ramrod and mashign the keys till it overloads, silly, but undeniably awesome and effective. Bulba TRIES to finish off darkwing this time for foiling his plan.. btu the ramrod explodes and while bulba’s minons and goslyn and launchpad are safe... bulba and darkwing are apparently dead and it’s effective. A few weeks later Goslyn’s back at the orphanage utterly distraught and broken at being basically orphaned again. Naturally though Darkwing’s alive, having taken his old identnity back since now he has something worth using it for and adopts her, hinting at who he is so she goes with him. And Drake has changed.. sure he’ll still be as egostical and impuslive as he was here.. but he’s no longer just darkwing.. he’s drake again as he has someone worth fighting for.. two someones in fact. He has a friend, a loyal partner to help him fight cime. And more importantly.. he has a loving daughter. And both needed each other: Goslyn needed someone who understood her despite her manic energy, and Drake needed someone who needed him and not darkwing, a reason to be a person outside the cape and cowl and outside the attention again. He needed a reason to live again... and he’s got it. And it’s going to be great.

Final Thoughts: This pilot is excellent. Well paced, plenty of laughs, tense action and great introductions for everyone involved as well as a hell of a vilian> This is how you do a first episode: it introduces the main themes of the show, both comedically and dramatically, introduces the cast and gives us a one off , or rather two off it’d turn out, villian whose compelling and intresting. IT’s really damn good stuff and I can’t wait ot see what frank does with a simlar story tommorow. Until then, stay safe, and happy hallowen. We’ll be back shortly for The Duck Knight returns and then Let’s Get Dangerous tommorow.

#darkwing duck #reviews #ducktales #darkly dawns the duck #drake mallard #goslyn mallard #launchpad mcquack #tarus bulba #the disney afternoon #the 90's

24 notes · View notes

beautifulterriblequeen · 4 years

Text

I know that sound

Remember when the issue of Runaan and Rayla vs a dragon was super briefly brought up and immediately abandoned with zero context in a TDP interview? Me either, but that totally happened. (thanks to @ladyandherbooks for a great conversation on the topic!)

Is it going to be in the future or has it already happened? I think it’s already happened because of this comment Rayla makes in S2E7 when Pyrrah roars in the distance.

My favorite angsty headcanon as to exactly when Rayla and Runaan faced off with a dragon is that it was when a raging, mourning Zubeia came looking for Runaan--and for Rayla--after her egg vanished and her mate was killed.

TDP has a beautiful habit of adding backstory behind dramatic events that changes the perspective of those events. We started watching this show knowing that the humans slayed Thunder. Then we learned it was in vengeance for Sarai’s death. Then we learned that she died trying to save her people from a famine. Those kinds of layers.

So I’m wondering if this moonfam vs dragon is just such an event, which will change our perspective on Rayla and Runaan’s relationship, and on why she ended up on his mission in the first place.

I don’t know whether a Storm archdragon has enough magical power to see through the Silvergrove’s enchantments, but I want the answer to be no. Because then, see, Zubeia’s got to fly around roaring and raging and shouting above the village and freaking out all the Moonshadow elves. Like, “holy crap the Dragon Queen has lost her mind, uhhh guys what to we do??” Because see, they don’t know yet. They don’t know about Harrow and Viren and Avizandum and the egg. This moment, this exchange, this is how they learn what happened.

So the elves stare skyward as Zubeia roars and zaps her way over the forest, maybe even crying Runaan’s name. Or worse, Rayla’s. There’s no way he’d let Rayla approach an enraged dragon. But he’s the leader of the assassins. This is his village, and Rayla is the daughter of his heart. Defending literally everyone who’s currently in danger is exactly Runaan’s jam. So he leaves the village and draws Zubeia’s attention a ways away, where she can’t hurt anyone, hoping to let her say her piece in um, peace.

I don’t think it went well, for several reasons. And the first of those reasons is that Rayla sneaked out after him.

The first things Zubeia would want Runaan to know are that his friends were cowards and that her egg and mate are dead. If Rayla overheard the bit about her parents, I can see her throwing caution to the wind and darting right out to say Zubeia’s totally wrong. Runaan would be intensely concerned for her safety, but he’s got to keep a hold on the situation despite his own shock and horror. A mother who’s just lost her baby could do anything she wanted, especially if she’s got teeth that are six feet long and extremely pointy. He’s just lost his two best friends, but he can’t do anything that puts Rayla’s life in more danger than it’s already in.

And maybe it is in danger. Zubeia blames all of her Dragonguard for fleeing. But Moonshadows don’t run. Maybe she already hunted down the others, and here she is, unable to find Lain and Tiadrin anywhere, desperate for revenge, and turning to their daughter. Zubeia did lose a child. How fitting, she might decide, that her traitorous guards lose theirs in return.

Runaan’s definitely not having that, though. He’d say or do just about anything to protect Rayla. And conveniently, it’s his actual job to hunt down horrible people. Maybe he offered his services to Zubeia to keep her from killing Rayla. Tried his best to direct the distraught dragon from wild revenge to a balanced justice. Maybe Runaan agreed to take Ezran’s life so he wouldn’t have to lose Rayla’s.

Rayla would be sickened, angry, horrified, and maybe just a little lost in all these horrible details, but once she heard Runaan talking about an assassination mission, she’d pick up immediately that she could find redemption by going with him. Not just in Zubeia’s eyes, but in everyone else’s. And it would placate the Dragon Queen to see Rayla acting furious and intent on fixing her parents’ mistake.

Maybe Runaan never intended for Rayla to grow up to be an assassin at all, despite her admiration for him and his honorable position in the Silvergrove. But in such a moment, with Rayla glaring up at him and Zubeia staring down at him, he felt the strings of fate pull so tightly that he had no choice but to say yes. His job is to lead and train assassins. If anyone can get a determined young Moonshadow elf ready for an assassination mission in a short period of time, it’s Runaan.

Is this why the mission took so long to start after the event that triggered it? Avizandum died at Winter’s Turn, which is like New Year’s, but Runaan’s mission set out in May. He and Rayla might’ve spent those intervening months training like crazy. But eventually, Runaan had to make the call--Zubeia’s been waiting on him, and he’s got to decide at some point that Rayla’s ready enough.

Runaan may have negotiated with Zubeia to take Rayla with him, but only when he deemed her ready. Zubeia might not have cared much whether Rayla lived or died on the mission. But better to give Rayla a fighting chance, and a chance to redeem her family’s honor, than to refuse and risk Zubeia lashing out at her right there and then.

It’s an impossible situation, but Runaan seems to have a knack for getting into those and making hard calls. He absolutely won’t let Rayla die today, but his other options are to kill an innocent prince and to endanger his daughter while doing it. And he goes with that. He says he’ll do it, and then, because of his honor, he actually plans to do exactly that.

Harrow would be much easier to agree to take. Harrow is the one who actually killed Avizandum. But why Ezran? That’s a demand made out of rage and grief. If Rayla’s life hadn’t been under threat at the time of Zubeia’s and Runaan’s negotiation, would Runaan have agreed to take Ezran’s life?

Maybe he would. It is a balanced solution, in a very dark and terrible way. But for a guy with his own child, it feels like a really, really dark move to agree to. Maybe he didn’t make it willingly.

If Runaan felt pressured into taking Rayla on his mission to spare her life, that adds new dimension to his theme of protecting her. He basically sacrificed himself and his whole team to save her when the mission went pear-shaped. What a ride it would be if her life was actually in danger much earlier than that.

I know this doesn’t have much connection with canon. Zubeia seemed oddly thrilled with all the humans and elves around her when she woke up. But maybe we’re missing something in her character arc as well. She got Runaan to accept the mission to take Harrow and Ezran. And then she had to wait. And wait. And her rage died out, leaving her with only her sorrow. Her broken heart was all she had left, and it began to kill her. Ibis said that she’d slipped into a coma ten days earlier, which was around the time that S3 started. That was most likely after she received Runaan’s shadowhawk, telling her that Harrow was dead, but not Ezran.

Did she think Runaan had gone back on his word? Did she tell anyone at all what his message said? That he’d failed to do what he promised?

Rrgh, was Runaan worried when he shot that shadowhawk off that Zubeia might still try to exact revenge on Rayla because he hadn’t taken Ezran? Maybe he didn’t want Rayla taking the egg back to Xadia because she’d be running directly to the dragon that threatened her, and Runaan was trying to minimize the risk to her life, again, by taking it himself.

Why did he demand the egg like he did? Is he really just that dramatic? Or was he trying to keep Rayla and Zubeia apart because Rayla had to hear what a raging dragon sounds like once, and he never wanted her to hear that sound again?

The irony will be enormous if Runaan was trying to protect Rayla from a threat that nearly died from grief between the time he left on his mission and the time Rayla reached Xadia without him. Because if his mission had gone off without a hitch, he and Rayla would’ve been home and dry before Zubeia fell into her coma. Rayla might be safe in that scenario, but Zym would be lost, and Ezran would be dead.

why are there never any clear answers i love this show

#runaan #rayla #zubeia #tdp speculation #tdp headcanons #tdp

94 notes · View notes

very-grownup · 3 years

Text

THE YEAR IS 2020 AND I WATCHED NEON GENESIS EVANGELION FOR THE FIRST TIME, PART 13

Episode 25.

I spend twenty minutes after the episode ends trying to articulate what I think happened to my friends, gesticulating wildly.

The episode starts with a condensed version of the last upsetting bits of the previous episode and thus sets the ground for my difficulty in expressing my thoughts on it because of the imperfect intersection of linear narrative and metaphorical examination of selfhood. I've been trying to follow the show as a narrative, even as things dissolve, but here everything just goes STOP NO CONTEXT JUST IDEA AND INTERNAL INTERROGATION which I think I follow but I have difficulty following WHILE ALSO thinking about giant robots.

Something bad happened after the events of the last episode and maybe in the overall narrative structure that's all that matters? I guess this episode is about the question of what the end goals of all the barely understood players are vis-à-vis humanity through Shinji et al.

How can we be our fullest self? What and who informs who that self is? The passive approach, as seen in Shinji, isn't it. You cannot only do what you are directly told to do and you can't intuit what other people want you to do as unspoken directions.

The isolationist approach, as seen in Asuka, isn't it, either. Trying to act and live above and without human connections or direction has made her sense of self the most fragile. She's just a shell projecting an ideal around a core of hatred.

Misato is there as, perhaps, the end result of trying to live life like Shinji into adulthood (the result of Asuka's approach is evident because she's shattered), a projected false self created to fulfill the outside expectations of others while the inner self gets lost.

Rei I feel is the one who is closest to having it 'right' insomuch as there can be a right way to be a human being (and perhaps part of what Evangelion and its characters are grappling with is that there isn't or if there is, it's not a simple thing). She recognizes that who Rei is is shaped by Rei's interactions with other people and the passage of time and I think that Rei 3's apparent rejection or turn on Gendo's influence is because she knows that's not the entirety of it. Everyone is confronted to some degree by the fact that the version of themselves seen by other people is flawed but in Rei's case she's able to know it in a profound way because she is aware of the previous Reis and their memories but also of herself as distinct from them. So Shinji knows her but he doesn't Know Her and much of what Rei knows of others is removed, the Rei deaths and recreations putting a barrier between a direct human connection. The human connection is key but perhaps the degree to which so much of it is abstracted in Rei is why she isn't fully emotionally engaged as a person, even when her understanding of personhood is so much fuller than the others. No human connection leads to Asuka: fragile and quickly destroyed. Shinji recognizes the importance of the human connection, maybe, but fails to enact the how and in its place he has the projections of what he thinks other people want guiding him.

The people in our hearts aren't real people but just manifestations of our self speaking through puppets that look like people we know and can't substitute for human connection and create a similarly false self for the benefit of the false people projections (Misato).

Shinji's fear of being hurt by human connections results in his inability to make human connections and his holding himself up to the standards of imagined human connections which are unsatisfying and disappointing to everyone, including him.

Gendo's Human Instrumentality Project seems to be about recognizing the need for human connections, specifically individuals filling needs for each other that cannot be filled by the individual alone, both for the pursuit of fulfilling the need to find the true self but also taking humanity beyond humanity. I think it's because Gendo has sublimated his grief and sense of loss with respect to his wife into viewing the ability of individuals to obtain fulfillment and then lose it as a weakness that can be overcome.

If all of humanity loses its individuality and turns into the orange tang all humans are always complete and cannot be made incomplete by losing part of themselves. This is too much connection and gross, indistinguishable. What is the point of this if there is no individual?

Right now it looks like all approaches are imperfect and lead to failure, certainly in the context of Evangelion and these characters.

Visually everything is very cool in this episode even though the budget limitations are obvious. The work arounds are creative and inform the substance of what's being said, I think? There's distortion and dissolving and isolated figures on foldout chairs under spotlights.

My favourite thing is how the false characters, the characters talking to the real characters in the chair, are clearly drawn differently, badly, off model. Something is done to indicate their lack of realness, especially the false Shinji in Misato's heart.

I'm sorry if this commentary has become increasingly boring, I'm sorry if I'm doing or talking about Evangelion wrong or badly or pointlessly. I've really enjoyed it. This concludes my report on the penultimate episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The final episode behind the cut.

Episode 26.

I appreciate the honesty of opening the episode with text that basically announces "look we don't have the time to explain everything so we're just going to explain it as it pertains to this microcosm called Shinji". It's a very clever/honest sort of meta acknowledgement of MAN THE BUDGET OOPS but I feel it's also in a way of framing the psychological aspect of the narrative as something that is not unique to Shinji but Shinji is merely the lens through which something more universal is viewed.

The episode seems to be divided into four distinct sections. The first bit is a ramped up version of the meditative internal discussions that have become increasingly frequent during the series. Interrogation by on screen text asking questions like are you happy, why aren't you happy, what do you want, why do you want this, why do you do that ... some of them very basic therapy sort of questions, others being refinements of that, questions meant to prompt you to look inward for an answer only you have.

But although we're told that this is an examination of Shinji sometimes Asuka is answering, sometimes Rei is answering. Sometimes they're asking the questions. Sometimes other characters are asking or elaborating, unseen.

Previously I've talked about feeling like narrative-wise things have been dissolving, when I try to recall a sequence of events, but here what's dissolving is the distinction between the characters because the experiences are unique but the feelings are inherently universal.

There's a lot of different things going on here, visually. Still portraits, reused footage from previous episodes, repeated shots of a rotary phone with the cable cut really sticks in my mind for some reason, what seem to be actual black and white photos of contemporary Japan. There's a universal quality and it's also how everything around you, all the people and experiences, make up the you that you are, shown with an outline of Shinji that's filled with rapidly flashing poorly imposed images of others that don't fit in his outline. It's cool.

That's when the episode transitions to its second bit which is, like, I don't know. It's a bit student film, it's a bit like that Loony Toons bit where Daffy Duck is talking directly to the animator who can erase and redraw him at will. It's barely animated in parts.

I had this understanding that Evangelion ran out of money near the end and that the last episode was barely animated at all and I think I assumed it would be like how I understand the second disc of Xenogears to be, just ... text because we can't do assets? But it's not. It's unpolished and sketchy and minimal, in spots just pencil drawings or roughly coloured in with markers, at one point it's just wave forms? But it was sad and weirdly beautiful and it felt like an extension of Shinji's internal struggle for meaning and understanding. Maybe because the lack of budget gives it an aesthetic similar to a student or art school film, it informs the material with a sincerity that I feel would be lacking in a more polished, traditional product. The fewer hands that can be felt in something the more /authentic/ it feels.

I, at least, have a greater patience and a great appreciation for something when I feel an authentic quality from it, even though that's only my perception. Form and substance compliment each other here, even if it's just because of budget constraints.

There's a really good part where it's just Shinji in a white void and it's, you know, about how that's the safest because there's nothing constraining him because he's the only thing, but it feels empty because how do we know what we are if we have no references. So a horizontal line is drawn and that's the ground in this white void and Shinji is then standing on the ground and it's reassuring, it's a reality that simultaneously limits your options but in limiting them defines what they are. It's just ... good.

Once things have been completely broken down it's time to I think reassemble them and that's the third part of the episode where Shinji wakes up in an otoge game where everything is good and normal and Asuka's his childhood friend, his mother is alive (but still faceless) and his father ... also exists and is not being actively cruel but hidden behind a newspaper, similarly faceless, existing but known (he's at the table, Yui is in the kitchen with her back always to the camera), Misato's his hot teacher, Rei is the new transfer student ... There's running to school with toast in mouth (from otoge Rei). Shinji's just a Normal Teen (but the normalcy is false, this weird artificial hyper normalcy that contrasts with the sad, raw realness of Shinji's life in Tokyo 3).

That's on the stage that Shinji is watching from his stool in the empty gymnasium with Misato and it goes dark and it's like ... this is another reality but I don't think it's meant to be a quantum thing but an example of the potential of, like, /imagine/ a you who is happy. So this is the fourth part of the episode and it's characters, every single character, interrogating Shinji, pointing out Shinji's flaws, and giving him ... advice? Guidance? A lot of it is ... bad. The characters recognize real problems Shinji has, that Shinji knows he has and then they tell him things which are presented as, for lack of a better term, 'solutions' to his problems of self. But a lot of them are not actionable. Some of them are little more than 'you hate yourself but have you considered ... not hating yourself?'

Much like when Shinji gets praised, once, by his father for what he did in the robot and that is assumed to be good because it's good in comparison to the nothing he's received, the words Shinji gets here are presumed good because they're actual acknowledgement of his problems.

The result is Shinji standing on the earth, surrounded by the other characters, announcing that he is determined to care for himself, and they all applaud and congratulate him and it's weird. It's presented as happy but there's no emotion. No emotion in this climax of a series that has so effectively evoked so much emotion, raw and powerful and real and relatable. It's not happy. It's not sad, either. It's just an absence of sadness. It's this orange tang safety in muted absence of loneliness or danger. I think because Shinji is given good conclusions for his problems (self-worth and love have to come from within, you need to allow yourself to care for yourself or you'll never believe completely that others can care for you) but he's not shown a good path to get there. What people tell Shinji gives him an understanding of what the goal is (happiness) but none of the tools to get him to happiness, something he has no real personal experience with, so the ending he arrives at isn't authentic. It's a false construct, like the otoge realty.

It's not a good ending but I think it wants there to be a good ending and the viewer to recognize when a 'good' ending isn't really good. It's a lot to think about. This concludes my report on the final episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

#neon genesis evangelion report

4 notes · View notes

rwby-redux · 4 years

Text

Deconstruction

Worldbuilding: Semblances II

Last time in Part I, we analyzed the failings of Semblances from a meta perspective. Now we’re going to look at them within the context of the actual show. Before we begin, let’s revisit that list of basic traits that are universally shared by Semblances.

A Semblance draws upon Aura as its source of power. When this fuel is depleted, a person can no longer use their Semblance, and must wait for their Aura to regenerate before it can be used again.

The specific ability or nature of one’s Semblance is alleged to be an expression of the user’s personality/character/soul.

Overuse of a Semblance can adversely affect a person and cause physical side effects, such as fatigue, headaches, or fainting.

Semblances can interact with Dust in such a way that their skills are augmented, resulting in the temporary acquisition of new subskills or secondary characteristics.

Through training and regular usage, Semblances can gradually become stronger or more advanced.

The intensity of certain emotions, such as stress, panic, despair, or rage, can cause a person to subconsciously activate their Semblance.

This refresher will be important as we go more in-depth. At the very least, it’ll save you the hassle of having to jump back and forth between tabs.

Limitations of Semblances

Recall point one. If your first instinct is to say, surely having a limited amount of Aura is a good limitation for Semblances, then you’d be forgiven for thinking that. In theory, it makes sense: a power based on a finite energy source does seem like a pretty significant drawback. My main issue with this being a credible limitation for Semblances is that we, the audience, have no way to gauge Aura depletion over time. And by extension, neither do our characters. In the first three Volumes, students used specialized monitors (usually on their scrolls) to keep tabs on Aura over the course of a sparring match. Not only do I like this because it’s a clever visual aid for relaying information to the audience, but also because it conveys clear worldbuilding information: characters don’t seem to have a way of innately sensing when their Aura is low. This idea seems to be reinforced again in V7.E3 - “Ace Operatives.” In the opening scene, Clover reminds RWBY and JN_R that their scrolls have been upgraded with Atlas tech, and they shouldn’t forget to use them. That line of dialogue is accompanied by Blake consulting her scroll for her teammates’ Aura levels. To my knowledge, there’s nothing in the canon that suggests characters can sense or feel when their Aura level drops, or how far away it is from depletion.

Having to rely on scrolls to monitor their Aura would be an excellent limitation to impose on an otherwise limitless superpower. Not only would it require the characters to constantly monitor their Aura, but it could introduce realistic problems. Like what would happen if a character’s scroll was lost, or destroyed, or its batteries died? How would that affect the character’s behavior in regards to Aura-related tasks? Great idea, right?

Now here comes the kicker: we don’t see any evidence of this in the show. When Team RNJR was traveling through Anima, none of them discussed having to find a village to recharge their scrolls. It’s not as if the trees have outlets that they can conveniently plug their scrolls into. Similarly, none of the characters from Volume 3 onward consult their scroll during fights to see where their Aura levels are at. You don’t see characters changing fighting styles midway through a fight in order to conserve what little Aura they have left. You don’t see characters minimizing the use of their Semblance in favor of more efficient tactics.

That’s why limited Aura doesn’t seem like a believable limitation for Semblances—not for a lack of possibility, but for a lack of execution. If characters made more of a fuss about it on-screen, I could buy it. But apart from one or two throw-away lines, characters don’t seem to pay attention to how Aura depletion affects Semblance usage, and by extension, they don’t adjust or change their tactics during combat to compensate for it.

Bear in mind that this discussion has only touched upon general limitations. We haven’t even addressed Semblance-specific limitations yet. Can Marcus Black only steal one Semblance at a time? Can Sun only make a certain number of clones at once? If Yang doesn’t eventually release the energy that she’s stored up, does it backfire on her? Is Pyrrha limited to only one type of magnetism, like ferromagnetism, or can she use more than one type? If Robyn uses her Semblance on someone who’s stating an incorrect fact, but they believe that fact to be true, then does it indicate that the person is lying? Does Hazel’s Semblance allow him to bypass/negate his Aura’s healing factor in order to stab Dust into his body?

And on and on it goes. A combination of vague or poorly-established mechanics for Semblances, coupled with the wide variety of Semblances, makes it impossible to predict what could be a hindrance for our characters down the road. This in turn creates a lack of stakes—how can we, the audience, be invested in the dangers that the cast faces, when we don’t know if those dangers are credible in the first place?

Active versus Passive Semblances

Usually when a character reveals information, it’s meant to answer questions, not create more of them. Such was the case when Qrow revealed his Semblance to Team RNJR for the first time—he brings misfortune, or rather, causes people (and objects in the nearby vicinity) to be blighted by bad luck via the manipulation of probability. Qrow is our introduction to passive Semblances, a term which, if I’m being honest, I’m not even entirely sure is canon. Someone’ll need to correct me on that, but for now “passive Semblance” will do. Because we have precious little information on the topic, I’m going to be relying on direct quotes.

Qrow: My Semblance isn't like most—it's not exactly something I do. It's always there, whether I like it or not. I bring misfortune. [1]

This passage tells us two different things: (1) passive Semblances are always active, and (2) passive Semblances can’t be controlled.

You can already see the problems with introducing a new concept this late in the game, because this new information clashes with what (few) previously-established rules we already have: Do passive Semblances require Aura? If Qrow’s Aura is depleted, will his Semblance continue to run, or will it become unusable like everyone else’s?

This ambiguity becomes even more frustrating when we acquire more information a little over a year later:

“It's not necessarily constantly running, it's more that it randomly spikes to cause unfortunate situations. If he chooses to amplify it in a fight, then yes, it does cost him.” [2]

Now we’re being told that that his Semblance isn’t “always there,” that Qrow can control it to an extent, and that his Semblance only depletes his Aura when he chooses to amplify it. Here we have an example of the character in the show being directly contradicted by one of the show’s creators. This implies that either they didn’t do a good enough job explaining passive Semblances the first time around, or they changed things after the episode aired. It isn’t just a he said/she said issue, either—Semblances requiring Aura is one of RWBY’s core mechanics for its pseudo-magic system, and by having a character whose Semblance breaks that cardinal rule, it makes the writing more difficult to believe or trust in terms of what’s canon versus what’s a retcon; what’s a subplot versus what’s a plothole. It doesn’t help when we get even more contradictory information from later episodes:

Qrow: I wouldn’t thank me. My Semblance brings misfortune. Sometimes I can’t keep it under control. [3]

I’m sorry, I thought we just established that Qrow can only amplify his Semblance. Now you’re telling us that he can partially suppress it too? Either he can’t control it at all, he can amplify it, or he can sometimes suppress its effects. Make up your damn mind.

The effects of his Semblance can be as minor as a coffee spill or as dire as a collapsing building… [4]

No! Stop it! Knocking over a Starbucks latte is not the same thing as demolishing a fucking building.

How is Qrow’s Semblance able to do something as insanely energy-demanding as toppling infrastructure without expending any Aura? How does his Semblance locate or prioritize variables in the environment to exploit/sabotage? Like, if there’s a mouse hanging out near some sort of Dust-powered generator in the building, does his Semblance send out subliminal messaging that convinces the mouse to chew through an electrical wire and cause the generator to explode?

Look, I refuse to believe that spilling a cup of coffee is somehow equal to setting off a stick of TNT or taking a wrecking ball to the side of a skyscraper. It doesn’t make any sense, which means that you have to provide a proper explanation for how it works. Because otherwise you’re going to be left with an audience that assumes Qrow’s Semblance is powered by (a) plot convenience, or (b) rats.

This—all of this, right here—is my issue with passive Semblances. (And don’t even get me started on Clover’s.)

Semblance Discovery, Auratic Plasticity

Did you notice the fancy scientific-sounding term in the heading?

Ooh. Auratic plasticity. That sounds official. You’re probably wondering where that term came from. A scene from Volume 5 you haven’t re-watched in a while (not that I can blame you). A World of Remnant episode, perhaps? Maybe it’s from one of the comics, or the director’s commentary on a DVD, or even an AMA on Reddit?

To answer your question: it didn’t come from any of those. Auratic plasticity is a term I coined exclusively for the Redux. Specifically, for talking about what goes behind discovering a person’s Semblance, and what factors are at play when that Semblance takes on its unique form.

Before we can talk about Auratic plasticity, however, we need to talk about all the ways someone discovers their Semblance. It can vary wildly from person to person. For some, their Semblance unlocks randomly while doing everyday run-of-the-mill things. As alluded to by Taiyang in V4.E9 - “Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back,” Yang’s Semblance activated while she was getting a haircut. For others, it can be the byproduct of training, extreme stress, or an otherwise fatal encounter. [5] In rare instances, Semblances can be hereditary, thus removing any ambiguity of what that person’s Semblance will be when it first activates.

The reason why I bring any of this up is because RWBY’s official stance is that Semblances “generally reflect the wielder’s personality.” [6] If Semblances were generally tied to the personality of the wielder, then it would fail to account for the correlation between the circumstance that triggered the Semblance to manifest, and the resulting Semblance expression.

Let me give you a few examples.

Adaptive Semblance: Nora’s Semblance was unlocked when she was struck by lightning. Consider the fact that her Semblance allows her to absorb electricity without taking any damage from the electric current. Rather than her Semblance being tied to her personality, Nora’s is likely a case of an adaptive Semblance—as in, her circumstances required a very specific Semblance in order to survive the 10,000 amperes running through her body. Instead of her soul generating a Semblance tied to her personality, it prioritized generating a Semblance that would help her survive an immediate and life-threatening scenario.

Innate Semblance: Ruby’s Semblance was discovered one day while training. If we’re to assume that there weren’t any dangerous circumstances factoring into that training session, it’s likely that her soul generated a Semblance that was in fact tied to an aspect of her personality. In this case, her superspeed is a projection of her enthusiasm and hyperactive zeal, and her tendency to prioritize others’ wellbeing over her own, trying to figuratively (and in this case, literally) reach them before they’re harmed.

Hereditary Semblance: Weiss and Winter, and (presumably) Whitley, Willow, and Nicholas all share the glyph-based Semblance unique to the Schnee lineage. The confirmation of their Semblance being explicitly hereditary contradicts the idea that Semblances are an expression of one’s personality. If we go by that logic, it implies that—what, their personalities are all the same? They have no individuality? I’m sorry, but that’s just dumb.

This is why Semblance discovery is important, and why the canon should have paid more attention to developing it. There’s pretty compelling evidence for a person’s Semblance being tied to multiple factors apart from their “personality.” I know that I’m digressing here a bit, but the main reason why I bring up this correlation isn’t just because it clarifies inconsistencies with the canon. It also presents an opportunity to enrich the lore of the show.

In the Redux, Auratic plasticity is the ability of the soul to generate a Semblance based on either an immutable personality trait (innate), a scenario-specific survival method (adaptive), or a “genetic” trait that’s repeatedly selected for due to its inherent fitness (inherited). These three categories are determined by a value called hierarchical prioritization—basically, it’s the soul’s ability to decide what Semblance-trigger gets precedence. I’ll get into more detail when I start the Amendment, but it felt important to clarify my intentions early, so I could justify writing 700 words on why Semblance discovery is important.

Adverse Effects of Using Semblances

Unlike Limitations, which focuses on what a Semblance can or can’t do, Adverse Effects deals with the negative repercussions/consequences of using a Semblance.

Or in RWBY’s case, a lack thereof.

(For the moment, let’s set aside the magic/not magic discourse and acknowledge that yes, in the traditional sense, Aura, Semblances, and Dust are part of RWBY’s magic system, the same way bending is part of A:TLA’s.)

When designing a magic system, you’ve got to balance it. Otherwise, the system contains powers that are vaguely-defined, OP, and bereft of any costs.

One way to implement a system of checks and balances is by giving that system a cost for using it. In RWBY’s case, the only “cost” experienced by characters is physical fatigue whenever they overextend themselves. But in the grand scheme of things it’s not really a detrimental consequence, in part because of how infrequently exhaustion is viewed as a legitimate threat. Seriously. When was the last time you saw the main cast fail because they overdid it while using their Semblances? It just doesn’t happen.

One way you could implement a cost is by tying Semblance usage to a physical demand. According an article by Julia Belluz, Winter Olympic athletes consume anywhere between 1,300 - 2,500 and 4,000 - 7,000 calories on average per day.

It wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to apply this to RWBY. Given the high-intensity acrobatics the characters perform on the regular, it would make sense that strenuous physical activity, coupled with Semblance usage, would create costs in the form of caloric needs. Maybe that’s an issue Team RNJR needs to deal with while backpacking across Anima. Is food a top priority for them? Do they have to restrict Semblance usage when running low on rations? Does the group ever have to hunt or forage for food to meet the energy demands of fighting Grimm?

Not only does this balance out Semblances, but it opens the door for potential worldbuilding. Is “Huntsman” ever used as a euphemism for “glutton”? Do all-you-can-eat buffets ban Huntsmen from their establishments? Do Huntsmen have a reputation for being less picky about food options? In places that use trade-and-barter systems, are Huntsmen willing to accept food as payment instead of lien?

I think that’s more or less everything I wanted to say about Semblances. I have a few unrelated nitpicks, but I can save those for another time. This post is already longer than I intended it to be.

[1] Volume 4, Episode 8: “A Much Needed Talk.”

[2] Shawcross, Kerry. “CRWBY AMA.” Reddit interview. February 12, 2018. [https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/7x3w4s/crwby_ama_w_miles_luna_kerry_shawcross_and_paula/du5bpdm/?context=3]

[3] Volume 7, Episode 3: “Ace Operatives.”

[4] Wallace, Daniel. The World of RWBY: The Official Companion. VIZ Media LLC, 2019, page 94.

[5] Volume 5, Episode 4: “Lighting the Fire.”

[6] Wallace, Daniel. The World of RWBY: The Official Companion. VIZ Media LLC, 2019, page 39.

#deconstruction #worldbuilding #writing #semblances

14 notes · View notes

dustedmagazine · 5 years

Text

Dust Volume Five, Number 10

The Hammered Hulls

Time again for a load of short, mostly positive reviews of records that caught our attention at least for a little while. This edition is typically wide ranging with free jazz, teen garage pop, piano experiments, acoustic guitar picking and goth-y post punk all jockeying for your ear. It’s not just obscurities this time around either, as Ian Mathers looks for the solid core of the National’s over-long latest, while Jen Kelly makes peace with the Futureheads. Participants besides these two include Bill Meyer, Andrew Forell, Nate Knaebel and Justin Cober-Lake.

CP Unit—Riding Photon Time (Eleatic Records)

Riding Photon Time by CP Unit

CP Unit, an evolving ensemble formed around saxophonist Chris Pitsiokis, exhilarates live, the sound anchored by antic, twitching, faster-than-advisable-but-nailed-anyway bass, complicated patterns of percussion and abstract slashes of guitar. Live, the music is colored rather than dominated, by the urgent, chaotic energy of the proprietor on horn. A late summer set at the Root Cellar in Greenfield, MA left me gasping. Riding Photon Time captures the same band I saw—Pitsiokis, Sam Lisabeth on guitar, Henry Fraser on bass and Jason Nazary on drums (which is different from the line-up Derek Taylor reviewed here )— in two fiery 2018 live settings. The first half of the disc was recorded at the Moers Festival in Germany in May, the second at the Unlimited Music Festival in November. “Once Upon a Time Called Now,” from the earlier set, captures the spare, rippling tension between Pitsiokis’ free-ranging inquiries and Nazary’s intricate but grounded rhythms; they duel for a couple of minutes before the rest of the band enters. The cut also foregrounds Fraser’s restless, rampaging bass work, carving a headlong through line in the squall and storm. “Seasick,” from the November show, gives space to Lisabeth’s guitar, lyrical in a tilted, offkilter way, the tones bouncing off Pitsiokis’ sax melody in loose conjunction and counterpoint. My only complaint is that the mix favors melody, zooming in on the sax and obscuring, somewhat, the fascinating interplay between drum and bass. In most bands, that’d be fine, but in this case, the rhythm is just too good to hide.

Jennifer Kelly

Eluvium — Pianoworks (Temporary Residence Ltd)

youtube

Matthew Cooper has done enough things under his Eluvium moniker that even those only mildly acquainted with his work might not be surprised that he’s put out an album of solo piano compositions; they might, however, be surprised to find out that Pianoworks is the second such Eluvium album, after 2004’s An Accidental Memory in Case of Death. That record, coming after the striking (and often noisy) debut effort Lambent Material served to establish that Cooper wasn’t going to be restrained by genre, form or instrument. Here, having accomplished an awful lot over the past 15+ years it’s fitting that Cooper appears to be in a more contemplative, even melancholy mood. Whether it’s the gently rippling “Underwater Dream” or the brightly rounded runs of “Carrier 32”, Pianoworks serves as a reminder that Cooper can stop you in your tracks with the simplest of setups, if he chooses. (And for those really a fan of his piano work, the deluxe version features an extra disc of new versions of practically all the previous Eluvium piano pieces as well.)

Ian Mathers

Frieda’s Roses — Jessica Triangle (Mika)

The three women of Frieda’s Roses—that’s Greta Fannin, Ava Miller and Poppy Lang—aren’t even in high school yet; their ages range from 13 to 15. And yet, this debut album, Jessica Triangle, is a marvel of minor key garage pop, raucous and wistful at the same time. Its bristly onslaught of guitars guards a tender center. You also realize, about halfway through the album, that teen girl pop has changed since the last time you looked, and the subject matter here is rather empowered. In a very strong middle section, “Isadora Giving” chides a girl for being too accommodative (“She’s kind in the way of giving things away”), while the stand-out “Lucy Poe” celebrates the complexity and intelligence of a young woman (“She’s happy and not/at the same time.”) “Forever Defend Her Story” recounts the ordinariness of sexual assault and the way women are blamed for it. The songs are bright and dark simultaneously laying in the pretty vocals of, say, Grass Widow, atop a raucous, acerbic foundation. There’s no way you’d know, without reading the coverage, how young this band is. They sound like they’ve been doing it forever.

Jennifer Kelly

The Futureheads — Powers (Nul)

youtube

Back at the old Dusted, I wrote perhaps my most vicious review ever about the Futureheads’ second album, News and Tributes. It was disappointment speaking — I’d genuinely liked their taut, fizzy debut — when I said, “Now, with News and Tributes, the sad truth emerges. The Futureheads were lean from hunger, not discipline. With opportunity, they tend toward the flabbiest sort of excess.” Well, 13 years have passed, and I no longer expect anything from the Futureheads. I’d forgotten they existed, to be honest, but their latest album, Powers, is kind of fun. Much of what made the debut such a pleasure—the tightly wound guitars, the unexpectedly complicated vocal counterparts, the exuberant avowal of depressing ideas—is here, too. “Electric Shock” trips all the wires (ahem) by itself, with its zingy guitar and drum cadence, its densely harmonized vocals and its celebration of an extreme form of mental health therapy (“When I got my electric shock/it knocked me off my feet”). “Jekyll” punches, stings and tantalizes, its hoarse, wracked northern lead pillowed by giddy oohs and ohs. “Can you control your transformations?” asks the singer Barry Hyde, and then the song itself transforms itself, turning into a popcorning cacophony of closely aligned vocals. Even the willfully positive, good time anthem, “Good Night Out” ripples with existential angst; it’s only a feel good song if you don’t listen too closely. And yet, there’s a great deal of joy in these tight, complicated songs. They burst into flames as you listen, leaving spots in your eyes from the brightness and the bitter taste of ash.

Jennifer Kelly

Hammered Hulls — S/T (Dischord)

S/T by Hammered Hulls

Perhaps it's a bit lazy to toss out the old "super group" appellation; but, come on, if you're even a moderate follower of that thing we call indie rock, you have to recognize the extraordinary line-up of Hammered Hulls for what it is. With DC hardcore royalty Alec MacKaye on vocals, newly minted arena rocker Mary Timony on bass, Chris Wilson of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists fame (among other outfits) on drums, and Des Demona/Pink Monkey Bird Chris Cisneros on guitar, Hammered Hulls represents an undeniably impressive assemblage of rockers. If any individual band member's musical history comes to the fore here, though, it's probably MacKaye's, as the band trades in a brawny yet cunningly complex punk that recalls the musical revelations delivered by Dischord's first blasts of post-hardcore creativity. And while this is clearly a team effort, each sonic component is worthy of the listeners attention as much as the superlative whole. Though two of the three tracks clock in at just over a minute, indicating that at least in spirit the band isn't denying its past, the practically byzantine by comparison (coming in at almost four minutes) "Written Words" hints at the potential Hammered Hulls has to be more than just a spirited one-off by some friends with impressive resumes. This single should leave everyone desperate for more.

Nate Knaebel

HTRK — Venus In Leo (Ghostly International)

youtube

Australian duo HTRK’s latest Venus In Leo is a collection of electro-acoustic minimalism characterized by a woozy shimmer reminiscent of Mark Nelson’s work as Pan American. Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang have stripped their music to the bare bones. A heartbeat throb, sparse percussion, occasional washes of synth and Yang’s simple guitar strums underpin Standish’s voice mixed to the fore on nine songs redolent with damaged longing. There is a rawness of emotion and acute observation of small domestic moments recorded with an intimacy that draws the listener close. Influenced by dub’s use of space, echo and silence Yang and Standish achieve a feeling of momentum to evoke quiet turmoil. Their miniaturization of Missy Elliott’s “Hit ‘Em Wit Da Hee” takes repeated lyrical snippets from the original and turns the song into a ghostly waltz. “What's up star? /We know who you are/Shit, no shit I thought you hadn't noticed.” Venus In Leo’s unadorned modesty is at times devastating.

Andrew Forell

Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster — Take Heart, Take Care (Big Legal Mess)

youtube

Songwriter Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster frames his new album Take Heart, Take Care as the result of an artistic problem. He'd become used to writing dark songs, until he found he was content and had mostly good things to say. It's a false dilemma, of course. Any number of artists have built not only albums but careers on encouragement (see the War and Treaty as an example of a current act doing it really, really well). The real trap for Kinkel-Schuster was to avoid get treacly in his new mood, and he successfully avoids that snare.

His performances rely on his patience — he's content, remember, but not exuberant. He builds his songs comfortably within his context, but he doesn't jump on them. When he sings, “There's plenty of wonder in this world still to be found,” on the opener, his ease prevents it from sounding like a naïve epiphany. Kinkel-Schuster's Americana-influenced indie-rock comes carefully constructed, but only to make space for that heart to come through. It's a songwriter's record, easy melodies supported by well-balanced guitars. It's the singer not the guitars who have done their processing. The record and its bright sound create a warm space and sit down in it. Kinkel-Schuster may have found his ease, but his desire to share it quickly becomes apparent.

Justin Cober-Lake

Longriver—Of Seasons (Hullaballou)

Of Seasons by Longriver

David Longoria of Longriver picks nimbly at his guitar, plucking out porch blues-y tunes that are steeped in tradition but freshly imagined. Not quite spare, his tunes are abetted by a crew of Texas regulars, songwriters Sarah LaPuerta of Strange Paradise and Lindsey Verrill of Little Mazarn, Evan Joyce and Colin Gilmore, as well as composer/percussionist Thor Harris. Though mostly acoustic guitar and voice, his sound is filled out with harmonica, soft percussion and twining communal harmonies. His songs run at a mid-temperature folky pace, so soft spoken and unassuming enough to elide one into the other, and honestly, don’t quite catch fire until late in the album when ghostly, lovely “Texas Doesn’t Care” comes along. This one uses all the tools, an aching pedal steel guitar, some silvery electric keyboards, punchy drums and fiddle. It also contains the prettiest melody of the disc, fluttered out in a high, not quite falsetto quaver. A few more like this and Texas might sit up and take notice.

Jennifer Kelly

Lunaires — If All the Ice Melted (Shades of Sound/Wave Records)

IF ALL THE ICE MELTED by Lunaires

If All the Ice Melted is a highly polished blend of cold wave, goth and stadium synthpop. This first outing from Milan post-punk Jeunesse d’Ivoire veterans Patrizia Tranchina (vocals) and Danilo Carnevale (guitars, programming, synths) evokes the heyday of 4AD bands such as The Cocteau Twins, Xmal Deutschland and Dead Can Dance. Here, Tranchina ruminates on loss, mortality and nature’s power as Carnevale constructs dreamy electronic soundscapes with sparklingly clean guitar lines twinkling above. The results are lovely but polite. The edges have been sandpapered to nothing and the dust swept away. “Mirror Trancefix” stands out precisely because it has that grit — the drum programming a little ragged, the bass dirty, the guitars cutting. Otherwise the gloss creates an emotional distance, which may be the point but discourages complete engagement with Tranchina’s often affecting vocals. If All the Ice Melts sounds good, and if it never quite breaks out there’s enough here to enjoy and look forward to what Lunaires could do with a little less restraint.

Andrew Forell

Bill Nace & Chik White—Eel (all parts) / Wild Wire (Open Mouth)

The news that Bill Nace (Body / Head, Vampire Belt) has picked up an acoustic guitar and sat down to jam with a jaw harpist might give some cause for pause. Is he going American Primitive, or maybe going skiffle? Spoiler alert — the ghosts of John Fahey and Lonnie Donegan will not hear their names called when you play this record. But play it you will, and for only the best of reasons. First of all, it’s a seven-inch, black vinyl single, and no one buys such things anymore unless they really, really love them. But this one does more to earn your affection than merely exist. On the a-side, White’s orally organized vibrations and Nace’s persistent smacks on prepared strings stir up a constellation of buzzing sounds that’ll reliably destabilize your equilibrium without getting you fired when the Feds drop by to drop everyone on the work floor. The flip combines broad feedback ribbons with intermittent glottal eruptions to create a sonic sweat lodge experience so deep that you’ll be unloading all your Scientology machines on e-bay, all issues resolved.

Bill Meyer

The National — I Am Easy to Find (4AD)

youtube

The National have been getting expansive recently (with the instrumentation and their runtimes, among other things), and who can blame them? Having attained the kind of big-venue prominence that means either you start lapsing into the version of yourself the hecklers always claimed you were (an especially slippery potential slope for a band like this one, so precisely emotionally calibrated and so close to being the bad kind of dad rock) or you start just going for it. The latter approach served them mostly well on Sleep Well Beast a few years ago, but this time finally feels like the kind of record that the National needed to make for their own progress more than one that’s necessarily fully successful. One absolutely successful move is the series of accompanying singers (“backing” seems almost disrespectful for what Gail Ann Dorsey and Lisa Hannigan, among others, bring to these songs), and the expanded studio palette first highlighted on Beast is still mostly working for them. There’s even a quick comparison in the form of old fan favorite “Rylan,” which still sounds great here. Ultimately what doesn’t quite settle right is just the sheer length, bulk, and discursiveness of the album, complete with accompanying film, brief interludes by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, interpolating a Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 song into a track that was already too long and feeling that somewhere within these 63 minutes is a really killer 40 minute or so album just waiting to be carved out. Eight albums in, things could be a lot worse.

Ian Mathers

Reduction Plan — (Ae)Maeth (Redscroll Records / Dune Altar)

(Ae) Maeth by Reduction Plan

Reduction Plan swells to epic size in this sixth full-length, turning the darkwave, synth-heavy aesthetic laid out in the five previous albums into an enveloping, shimmering, near-post-metal overload. Daniel Manning, the band’s single member, worked with Swans/Walkman producer Kevin McMahon this time, a move which transformed his Cure-circa-Disintegration gloom into a weighted, gleaming edifice. “An Act of Self Immolation” sets the tone with giant masses of guitar sound that tower and lumber. Unencumbered by vocals, it’s more like Pelican than gothy-post-punk. “The River” hews closer to new wave, with its clean, chiming synth tones, gate-reverbed drums and echoey vocals — there’s a nice smouldery sax solo in this one, too — but still looms and glowers with a palpable heaviness. “Ae Maeth,” at the end, brings on Jae Matthews from Boy Harsher for added vocals, a kindred spirit in reviving music at the intersection of dance, goth and industrial; the album’s longest cut slows the thump of dance floor into a desolate cadence that can’t and won’t stave off destruction.

Jennifer Kelly

Rosenau & Sanborn — Bluebird (Psychic Hotline)

Bluebird by Rosenau & Sanborn

The house on the cover of this LP is surrounded by fallen leaves. But even though it depicts the location of this recording, and that recording took place in October, and they recorded with the windows open, the sounds inside are not particularly autumnal. Chris Rosenau’s (Collections of Colonies of Bees, Volcano Choir) is too quick and eager, Nick Sanborn’s (Sylvan Esso, Megafaun) electronics too effervescent. This music feels like the sun hitting your brow, refracted by heavy air. It feels like the first awareness of escape when you turn off the work phone and start a vacation. Or maybe it just feels like Indian summer. Put it on, put the speakers out the window, and go kick some leaves.

Bill Meyer

We Melt Chocolate — We Melt Chocolate (Annibale Records)

we melt chocolate by we melt chocolate

The reanimation of shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Ride has brought renewed attention to the genre’s flourishing across Europe, the US, and Japan during their absence. Italian band We Melt Chocolate — that’s Vanessa Billi (voice and synth), Lorenzo Sbisa (guitar), Enrico Baroncelli (guitar), Marco Crowley Corvitto (bass) and Francesco Lopes (drums) — hit all the classic marks on their latest, excellently produced self-titled album. Ethereal vocals, banks of effects laden neo-psychedelic guitar, washes of synth, and a thick bottom end are all present and correct. Taking Loveless as their template, We Melt Chocolate strive for the epic and on tracks like “wishful” and “orange sky” reach it with elegance rather than sheer volume, although turning it up never hurts. We Melt Chocolate probably won’t convert non-believers, but fans of shoegaze and dream pop will find a lot to like here.

Andrew Forell

5 notes · View notes

keyofjetwolf · 5 years

Text

Elisabeth: Child or Not

There’s not a lot to compare and contrast with this one, as it’s not in the Takarazuka at all. NEVER FEAR I STILL HAVE WORDS. We’ll have a look at the scene and what it’s doing, both as itself and how it folds into the rest of the Essen musical, and how its absence impacts (or doesn’t) the Takarazuka version.

It falls, in the Essen version, between the scene at the cafe we just looked at, and Franz Joseph at Elisabeth’s door where she doubles down on regaining control of her kids. Her kids -- Rudolf, anyway -- is at the heart of it, in fact, so it provides some context for her demands to Franz Joseph to come in the next song. Not that I think the next scene wants for that context in the Takarazuka; we learn Sophie has control and Rudolf is suffering, and that seems reason enough. Where this song helps most, really, is in building the set pieces for what’s to come.

But first, let’s take a look at the scene itself. A lady-in-waiting is bringing Rudolf to his mother when Sophie appears and demands to know where he’s going.

It might shock you to learn that Sophie is less than sympathetic toward everyone’s fee-fees.

“I care why?” Sophie said, but in German.

Sophie continues to be on her shit, trying to turn soft men into hardened rulers. That he’s like, eight, and just needs a goddamn hug is, of course, irrelevant. PUT ON THIS MILITARY JACKET AND REPRESS YOUR FEELINGS.

This scene is extremely minimal, with only a few lights to show you what you need to see, and it’s really all it needs. Anything else would be a distraction, and the things we need to note are very slight.

For one, I love the dressing up of Rudolf in a child-size military uniform. He’s all but forced into it, and throughout Sophie’s lecture on duty, the General next to him is making him stand up straight, bapping him in the head when he doesn’t salute, stuff like that. Rudolf is going through a pageantry of sorts, right now, and to his credit, he pulls it off pretty well. But that’s literally all it is. The moment their attention’s off him, everything drops away, and he returns to the lady-in-waiting.

“Because it sucks to be you, Rudolf,” nobody replied but everybody thought.

Before we move forward, let’s look at what we have so far. We’re building Rudolf’s character here, laying down something for us to build on for later. The Takarazuka version, as you all doubtless recall, doesn’t bring Rudolf in until much later, when we really only emerge with one significant feeling about him.

IT’S A ROUGH STARTING POINT

The Takarazuka version does a great job in building our investment in Rudolf quickly enough later, but I think most of that could be attributed to a VERY good actress. In lesser hands, it might have already been too late, and without sympathy for Rudolf, I’d say most of the second act collapses. Keeping this scene would have gone a long way to building Takarazuka Rudolf, I feel, but then (at least as performed in the Essen version), it might have brought in another element it didn’t really want to deal with.

Elisabeth? If you please?

While the general is retrieving Rudolf, Elisabeth rushes on-stage, clearly wondering what’s keeping L-in-W and Rudy. She’s in the background, and unnoticed by the other characters, but she sees them and is here for all of what comes next. Sophie tells Rudolf that he’s going to be a soldier, that’s that, and, in a truly inspiring display of no self-awareness, says that those chosen by destiny to rule can’t be mama’s boys. Rudolf, clearly crushed and miserable, slinks away, but first tries one last appeal.

I cap that exchange, because it’s vital to note ELISABETH IS STILL RIGHT THERE. She sees everything. Sophie’s firm hand, Rudolf’s despair, the lot. After this, Rudolf goes off, and so, too, does Elisabeth, at a fairly casual walk as the light comes down on her. This, too, is important to note for what the scene is trying to tell us. For all intents and purposes right now, it’s done. Elisabeth has been removed from this scene and is no longer part of it.

BUT WAIT

Once Sophie says this, the light comes up on Elisabeth again. She THOUGHT she was done here, but then she heard this, and now she’s anything BUT done. Sophie’s dismissed her from even this, AND is pulling rank to make Elisabeth’s own lady-in-waiting fall in line. The light stays on Elisabeth now, even after Sophie and L-i-W have left. No longer casually strolling, she RUNS now to her room, where she begins writing the letter with her demands that we’ll see her hand to Franz Joseph in the next song.

SO MY POINT, and one of the primary things I feel the Takarazuka version lost by excluding this scene.

Elisabeth, very specifically, is shown to be present for all of this, including her own son’s final, defeated plea to be allowed to see her. SHE DOES NOTHING. Elisabeth walks away. She leaves Rudolf to whatever horrible shit he has to face today, she leave Sophie with full control over him, she leaves her lady-in-waiting to suffer Sophie’s wrath. Elisabeth cares about any of this to the tune of precisely fuck all.

THEN SHE’S CHALLENGED. It’s only when Sophie dismisses her outright and orders Elisabeth’s personal attendant to listen to her over Elisabeth, that Elisabeth is now spurred to action. This is when a fire lights under her, this is when she draws her line in the sand and forces Franz Joseph to make a choice. It’s not about Rudolf. It was never about Rudolf. It’s about her and Sophie and power.

AND THIS MAKES SO MUCH MORE FUCKING SENSE. Elisabeth’s push to get Rudolf, who she then thoroughly ignores. Her struggle with her own despair and dark thoughts (in the form of Death). The song she sings, convincing herself once again that her freedom is certain. It all seemed so contradictory to me while watching the Takarazuka version, wondering why she’d finally found the will to fight for Rudolf but then struggle so immediately with giving up, or why she’d pull up such strength that had nothing whatsoever to do with reclaiming her child.

Because it literally has NOTHING to do with reclaiming her child. Rudolf is a pawn, if not to literally everyone around him, then at least to his mother, and “Child or Not” (I see the extra meaning there, show, I SEE YOU) makes that absolutely clear.

It’s not a remarkable song by any stretch. It’s barely a song at all. But in terms of characterization and relationships, it’s surprisingly vital. Getting to see it in context cleared up so much that I found inconsistent and frustrating without it. It may strip Elisabeth of a layer or two of sheen, but in return it aligns her motivations and our expectations, and simultaneously grants us greater understanding.

#jet wolf watches elisabeth #a novel by jet wolf

13 notes · View notes

aer-in-wanderland · 6 years

Photo

JBL | Character Analysis - Ha Moon Soo

The following started out as part of a post on the way in which grief and loss are dealt with in the drama at large, but it got so long that I’ve decided to section Kang Doo’s and Moon Soo’s off as separate posts. What follows is an analysis of Moon Soo, particularly in terms of how she reacts to her tragedy and her emotional journey over the course of the story.

Even if we’re family we can’t feel the same emotions. It’s just…I can only imagine that, more than my sadness at having lost my younger sister, mom’s sadness at having lost her child must be greater.

I’m not a good kid. I have a huge plate on the back of my head. You couldn’t tell earlier, huh? They say I was hurt when the accident happened, but I don’t remember. All I remember is…that I left my sister there alone…that because of me, there was yet another person who never returned. But here I am living normally and well all by myself. I was bad, wasn’t I?

When we first meet Moon Soo, she appears well-adjusted, self-contained, and mature. This is no accident - it’s something that she consciously works at. In the aftermath of the collapse, Moon Soo’s parents’ marriage fell apart as each blamed the other for Yeon Soo’s death. When the fighting got too severe, her father left the house, leaving Moon Soo alone to assume responsibility for her mother, who had turned to alcohol to drown her pain.

Moon Soo is strong because she needed to be strong. She is also uncommonly kind. As in the above quote, Moon Soo feels that her mother’s pain must somehow be greater than her own. While it’s true that no two people experience the same tragedy the same way, that doesn’t mean that one person’s pain is more or less valid - they’re simply different. But Moon Soo minimizes her own pain by comparing it to her mother’s, thereby dismissing her own grief as comparatively less. ‘If I’m sad, it will only make things harder for mom.’ So she hides her pain, even from herself. As it says in her character profile:

Moon Soo is also sad and in pain. It’s simply that she’s lost the chance to be sad. But instead of showing her true feelings, Moon Soo bravely continues about her daily life. That was Moon Soo’s method of coping with her sadness.

Moon Soo also struggles with self-loathing and survivor’s guilt. She blames herself for leaving her sister behind, and for calling Sung Jae to the accident site that day. Perhaps even more than Yeon Soo, Moon Soo feels responsible for Sung Jae’s death, because if it weren’t for her, he would never have been there in the first place. Later on in the story, when she learns of her past with Kang Doo, she blames herself for what happened to him as well. This is all due to a combination of her personality and the way she’s processed the accident.

Why on earth did the accident happen on that day, at that time, at that place? No matter how she thought about it she couldn’t understand, so it was easier to shift the blame to herself. Why on earth was ‘I’ at that place, on that day?

In the aftermath of a tragedy, people try to make sense of things, to find reason in the random, when often there is none. We look for a cause, for someone to blame, for something to point to and say ‘if not for that.’ Moon Soo’s parents blamed each other. Moon Soo blamed herself. As a result, she lived her life in self-imposed penance. One way this manifests is in her work. Moon Soo became an architect out of guilt. It was only later that she came to genuinely like her profession. She had other dreams, but she gave them up.

Moon Soo remembers that afternoon. The wind that blew and the rattling glass, the building that collapsed in an instant, she remembers them. After the accident Moon Soo came to a decision. In exchange for having survived, to not be greedy, to not be swayed by trivial emotions. She simply wished for time to pass, for her to live according to her lot in life, without being noticed.

This is the context in which she meets (or is reunited with) Kang Doo, and at first, he’s an uncomfortable existence for her. At first glance, he is her exact opposite: he’s reckless, he does as he pleases, and he talks as if he cares for no one but himself. It takes time before Moon Soo comes to realize that, in fact, he seems to care for everyone but himself (I’ll do a separate analysis for Kang Doo next). But as much as he bothers her, she also recognizes some part of herself in him. Though she can’t remember, they were in the same accident together, and she senses the same sadness from him. What’s more, he keeps seeing her at her worst and drawing out her true emotions that she’s worked so hard to suppress. Though she initially finds this dynamic awkward and unsettling, it soon becomes a breath of fresh air for her, and the two fall into an easy and genuine friendship. As they grow closer, Kang Doo teaches her to express her emotions instead of always keeping everything bottled up inside.

Moon Soo’s character arc, then, is in some respects the reverse of Kang Doo’s, because, for her, the first step towards healing is to admit that she’s not okay. She may appear to start out well-balanced and then devolve in response to certain incidents and revelations, but it’s mostly that she’s finally learning to face everything she’s not allowed herself to feel for the past 12 years.

So when Moon Soo gets into an explosive fight with her mother, I can’t help but feel that the timing is no coincidence. Yes, part of it is that Moon Soo’s mother discovers that she’s been working at the accident site and feels betrayed, but what’s significant is that, for the first time, Moon Soo fights back. Up until this point, Moon Soo has always held back, suffering in silence, hiding her hurt all the while. What I find most painful about Moon Soo’s relationship with her mother is that, essentially, she’s emotional collateral. Not only is she unable to express her own grief and sorrow, she has to bear up under her mother’s resentment of her father, her apparent favoritism towards Yeon Soo, and the fact that her mother perceives Moon Soo’s stoicism as callousness. And Moon Soo lets her, in order to protect her from the added pain of Moon Soo’s own hurt.

Moon Soo was 15 at the time of the accident. What she needed most was a mother to comfort her and tell her ‘it’s okay.’ Instead, she had no choice but to assume that role, and in doing so, she not only lost a parent, she was also now responsible for another person who was dependent on her being the ‘strong one.’ With her father emotionally and physically absent, and her mother emotionally volatile, Moon Soo bravely assumed the role of caretaker, and part of that meant that she had to be ‘okay’ for them both. It would have been so easy to become resentful, but she isn’t. After yelling at her mother, Moon Soo feels apologetic, like she’s gone too far, said too much. Because she loves her mother and sympathizes with her pain, and because in between the rough spots, she’s still the same loving mother that she always has been.

Which brings me back to the timing of the fight. To my sense, the reason Moon Soo finally finds her voice when she does is that, for the first time, she has someone to whom she can fall apart and take comfort in - Kang Doo. It’s only after she begins her relationship with Kang Doo that Moon Soo allows herself to fall apart, to fight back, and to confront her fears and guilt by asking him to come with her to see Sung Jae’s mom. Kang Doo becomes her safe place, and it’s through his help and his love that she begins to truly be okay, instead of just appearing so on the outside. Kang Doo accepts her as she is. He tells her it’s not her fault, that she’s not a bad person for being the only one to survive. He understands her sadness because he shares it, and he knows how important it is for her to confront her pain in order for her to heal. It’s why he asks Joo Won to leave the memorial project in her hands, and it’s why he insists on seeing it through with her to the very end, even as he’s sick and in danger of dying.

One of the many wonderful things about Kang Doo is how he shows Moon Soo, in word and in deed, again and again, that she’s a good person, that she’s smart, and capable, and pretty, when she thinks of herself as somehow ‘less’ in comparison to Yeon Soo, and not a good person. He never holds back, partly because he’s a very straightforward person, and partly because he senses how important it is for her to hear it. When Moon Soo tells him that she’s ‘bad,’ he doesn’t answer reflexively. True to character, he thinks it over until it’s true in his heart, and when he tells her ‘no,’ he means it. When she confesses that she hates herself, he tells her, ‘Then I’ll just have to like you more.’ When she worries she was out of line with her mother, he reassures her that it’s okay to throw a fuss every once in a while - that her feelings are valid and important.

In terms of Moon Soo’s emotional journey, if there was one thing I would have liked to see, it was Moon Soo overcoming her guilt and self-loathing and choosing to stay by Kang Doo’s side not because he was dying, but because she had come to understand that what happened truly wasn’t her fault. There’s a big difference between knowing something logically and believing it in your heart, but accepting that logic is an important first step. I’d like to think that that’s what she spent that night in the hospital struggling with as she waited for him to wake up after collapsing in front of her house.

We may not have gotten to see that resolution, and Moon Soo may not yet believe it in her heart, but we do see her resolve in the wake of it. Though she’s devastated for Kang Doo, she doesn’t give in to that devastation, choosing instead to live each day with him to the fullest while they still can. They complete the memorial, date, and spend the night together. She stays by his side up until what may well have been the end. Ten months pass.

When we catch up with Moon Soo the following winter, we see her visiting her mother in rehab, exchanging messages with her father, and eating ice cream (hee ^ ^). It’s true that their family will never be the same again. The loss of Yeon Soo broke something fundamental, but they still have and love each other. That healing process will take a while yet, and it will never be complete, but the drama gives us hope that they’re headed in the right direction.

What’s more, we get a visual callback to the first time we saw her out front of San Ho Jang in episode 1, and this time, she smiles. The final sequence, with her and Kang Doo together on the roof, is so important because it leaves us with the sense that they’re happy, and that they’ll have the rest of their lives together in which they can enjoy ‘nothing-special’ moments. That doesn’t mean that their grief is magically erased and that all the wounds of the past are healed, but it does mean that, when that grief finds them again, they’ll each have the other to help them through it. As Halmeom tells Kang Doo:

Sad and painful things are always with us. You have to accept them. Instead, meet even better people and live even more fully. You can do that. Don’t worry.

And they do.

#just between lovers #ha moon soo #character analysis #thoughts #그냥 사랑하는 사이 #하문수 #그사이 #jbl #kdrama

30 notes · View notes

dramaplustautology · 6 years

Text

Tariche

General Description

Tariche, which is an inversion and corruption of Ishtar, is a short young man who will say he’s sixty-nine years old if anyone asks. They eyes he’s got are pretty gold with literal sparkles shining in the iris (like Kirby’s new eyes in Star Allies) which resemble a starry vista. His hair’s black but he dyes it pretty hard, veering into platinum blond, and since he keeps it short, he’s got his roots showing more often than not. Refusing to use magic to dye it in solidarity with his buddies (which sounds like nothing but he can’t apply it to most other things considering the kind of creature he is), Tariche stinks of chemicals. Like his workplace, he sprays himself down with perfumes to keep the stink at bay, is what he’ll say but he finds that the mix of flowers, copper, and bitter chemicals puts people on edge.

Dr. Tariche’s mom was a true Hero and so was his older sister, according to him. He’s got a few moves of his own but Tariche preferred to put his talents to medicine and genuinely wanted to help others. The heroes in his family were his idols and as many heroes do, stuffed as many people as they could into their hearts. Tariche started practicing with good intentions, aiming to be like his mother and sister in his own way.

He’s a sharp boy, in mind and in action. With the complexities of social life and ethics though, it was black and white for far too long of a time. That’s why it hit him pretty hard when his sister let herself get cut to pieces after doing something that crashed him smack into some gray area.

Since then, Tariche hasn’t seen his sister at all. Where he’s gone, the only thing she can do is send her little brother gifts. Never letters.

The sudden isolation was sobering since Tariche has a particular power. If someone with a functioning mind knows something, Tariche will know it too. For now, it’s limited to people he’s seen face to face but slowly he’s been able to steal information from reading their writing or looking at their photos. But, it’s only information.

The emotion that gives context to the hard numbers and words are lost to him even when he’s told outright. Tariche can’t understand the minute complexities that can be pinned to the endless stream of information flowing into his head.

Take the gifts his brother sends him from who knows where. They’re apologies for not being around because he’s too dangerous to be around. He’d be a bad influence. Tariche understands the apology, that’s easy, but the hard facts say that his brother poses an extremely minimal threat to him. He doesn’t really get that his brother would know this but feel much different.

Same with his mother, who he hadn’t met until he was fresh out of childhood. Due to certain circumstances, his mother had to give her kids up. She could have kept them of course but “if you had been around, your life wouldn’t have been happy. Even worse, I’m afraid my life would have been much better.”

‘You don’t know for sure,’ is what Tariche thought. There was no way to know if that was true. Either way, there could be no comparison. Not knowing frustrated Tariche and gave him an aching empty feeling he tried to fill as much as possible.

But learning from his family, a heart can’t hold that much. Not without exploding and he knew with the way he was, that kind of mess wasn’t something he could walk away from. So, the rule became four close people and as adrenaline pumping, violent emotions to properly understand and keep him full. It can’t be irritation, it has to be rage. Never melancholy, there has to be unrelenting misery. Those are way easier to understand and he’ll put his back into wringing them out from anyone who can give it to him.

Anything else is irrelevant.

Instead of worrying about the little things, Tariche set out to stimulate himself to avoid having to be alone with his own thoughts. Knowing everything other people did was really boring so he tries to see everything exciting first-hand; an awful way of doing things with medical knowledge and an unhealthy curiosity to go with it.

Though he does pursue situations that are risky with no sure vision of the outcome, Tariche isn’t that reckless. He’s careful to be able to have an out so he can go on to discover more and more. That being said, he’s a huge masochist. Gives him a rush and anyone that can give him that rush easy as breathing, he’ll be all over them, self-preservation be damned.

So what’s he doing with the Thorn, having killed and replaced one of the doctors willing (read: blackmailed into) working with them? It’s very risky and Tariche has no idea what’s going to happen if he gets found out. Plus, there’s a lot of things going on in their everyday dealings to squeeze that sweet sweet adrenaline out of his abused kidneys.

Or maybe, he’s hoping that the Rose can find his mother while they’re sweeping Lore for anything with a hint of magic. Tariche doesn’t know why he wants that or for what reason. Who knows how his mother is going to react either. But that’s the best part.

Despite all that nasty stuff though, he has four chambers in his heart and it takes hard work and diligence to keep them healthy. At least with love, he knows that it’s something you work hard for.

Freely given? Definitely can’t make sense of that.

True Form/Past Life Notes

With how Tariche knows what people ‘think’ to be fact kind of steps too close to just straight up mind reading but I wanted it to be like books, y’know? Yeah there’s data in them but frequent tests, context, and it being widely agreed upon is what makes it information. So no matter what you read, you gotta practice critical thinking (which tariche is too lazy to do sometimes) I was thinking maybe instead of his past deity self being representative of all knowledge, he could be human knowledge. But then i thought it over more and well, that’s redundant. And like it’s kinda dumb that there might be another guy out there, who’s just the Snake Knowledge. How to swallow rats whole.

Tariche looks like a bundle of every living thing’s knowledge. But it’s much less intense than what Ty looks like, if that what Tariche chooses to do. It’s kind of like a book, he can present himself as something that children can understand or can become so complicated that your eyes burn looking at him. Even worse is if he decides to bring to the surface that whole “What Man Shouldn’t Know” kind of information. The stuff that horror literature makes such big stuff about. The stuff that makes people go insane looking at.

But it doesn’t have to be that way cause Tariche could bury it under a mountain of more mundane things. So instead of a witness going insane from the revelation, they could leave knowing waaaaay too much about cooking. Like, now they know 45 different ways to make a pie. Putting it that way can make it sound like he could help so many people out by being a good teacher but he’s lazy and dislikes spending time on strangers. “Do I look like a charity?”

If he were to draw it out, he’d just make a ball of squiggles with a pen to make it easier to understand but really, what he looks like is what learning feels like. Think of an epiphany or the moment where you finally get a math problem right.

Yeah, it sounds really complicated and annoying to present himself in a way that’s understandable to friends. Which sucks cause he feels most comfortable in this form and that makes him super jealous of his older sister.

History/Very Rough Draft

Tariche's history from start to somewhere in the present?

So like, he remembers everything really well, even being in his mom's womb, and why he likes eating cucumbers. (Ty thought she was getting fat or something so she tried to diet)

His knowledge powers were there when he was omg...gestating....

but it didn't bother him as much cause they were just words that didn't make sense to him until he was born. He was just happy to be warm and listen to the voices outside

(don't quote me on this)

so he hears a lot of voices including his mom and his sister, and a few others that pop up a lot of times, many of them sound kind, others sound like nightmares

but somewhere in the middle, Ty realized she wasn't fat and ran off somewhere to be with brhandy and tariche quietly. Tariche doesn't get like, hard facts yet but he feels the absolute fear and exhaustion his mom goes through. And floating upside down not being able to do anything drives him nuts drives him even more nuts when he's born cause now he has a solid world to put facts too, but he's a baby. he can't even control when he cries and pees himself. I imagine having an adult brain and not being able to control basic body functions is the worst.

So like, He knows tons and tons of things that could be helpful but his stupid baby hands and baby mouth can't form words. his arms are too weak to even lift a pen, and brhandy or ty keep picking him up whenever he tries to draw things in like, dirt or flour. But he's cool even tho he can't properly communicate cause Ty and Brhandy take care of him.

Then Ty has to leave cause of something, like problems with people needing a hero again. it's bad this time. She doesn't want to put Brhandy and Tariche through hardships or put them in danger, and since most people don't know they exist, she has to leave them behind in a nice orphanage.

now, Tariche knows how ty can get out of this, or how to solve the problem quickly but he's a baby, he can't say anything. it just sounds like slurred kicking and crying while Bhrandy holds him as they watch Ty disappear.

skip to like, a few years later and the siblings aren't adopted yet (they never will) but brhandy's old enough to take care of them both, do odd jobs, and train to be a knight.

Tariche is a lot quieter when he's a kid, and doesn't want to tell Brhandy about his powers cause he's afraid she'll hate him if he know how to keep their mom around does like, some bad things like drink and smoke cause he knows that'll keep his head clear even for little bits at a time, at age five.

but it's like not hardcore bad, brhandy is happy and the other kids at the orphanage are nice, even visit sometimes when they get adopted.

hey make a lot of friends, and when one of them is about to go to a happy home, they get trampled by a horse or something breaks their leg real bad and it gets infected.

Tariche knows how to fix this, he knows how to do the surgery, and what kind of medicine to give them, but his stupid kid hands shake too much to be able to help them, and makes it worse when he snuck in to try surgery.

Brhandy hides it from everyone that he may have helped their friend die faster but they also would have died anyways. She's more worried that tariche is gonna beat himself up for this

And he totally fucking does but it actually motivates him to train and practice so his body can catch up to his mind. So maybe next time, he can actually do stuff right for once.

He actually does great, becomes an amazing doctor and follows brhandy to a richer place where she can serve the nobility there

He's happier, has dropped the smoking just in time cause he's started to cough a lot, and also does stuff as a vet cause he really likes dogs

And then the stuff happens with brhandy where she accidentally finds out about what her powers are like, and it had rained too much in a place in the sandsea, and a lot of people caught disease from the bacteria that rose up from the ground, and killed a lot of people. (She like, can make it rain a lot. But only if she breathes. If she holds her breath, it won't rain but it's uncomfortable to painful for her)

Brhandy comes home and takes the hit for the horrible crime

Tariche knows that this isn't her fault and someone in the nobility had noticed, and tricked her into getting rid of an enemy in the chaos of the rainfall, but Brhandy is really guilty, and decides to stay in prison until her execution. And Tariche knows how to break her out, which route to take in, and how to escape, but he's a spindly nerd.

When he tries to break in to get his sis, he gets beat up real bad, and and watches brhandy get drawn and quartered.

Tariche is pretty upset, understatement. And manages to find her body parts and found them to be still alive, just in pieces and unconscious. Ty wasn't human and they aren't either. You can't kill them like that normally, but it sucks to not have a body. He gets manic, tries to put her back together but can't manage it cause he doesn't know how to, and this is his first time not knowing something cause the knowledge doesn't exist.

But since he is "knowledge" he can just conjure it up. He actually does it accidentally, and then lost the ability to cry. He can create knowledge but doing that is like an action that accepts that he isn't human, and takes away a human function.

And the way to get her back together is very difficult, and he can't do it in a way that would fit Brhandy's morals. he would need to practice a lot, cause one shot is gonna bring her back but if he fails, it's over forever.

He wants to practice but he'd only be able to do it on other humans, and that'll kill them, but humans killed bhrandy after they used her, and her morals was what got her dismembered in the first place. so actually fuck it. he wasn't good enough to help her or themselves, so he'll just be bad

he starts learning a lot, gets sneaky, always smells a little like blood so he goes nuts on bath and body works kind of things. it's also stuff that brhandy was into so maybe that'll comfort her even tho she's sleeping.

Then he like, finds that he's not getting enough subjects on his own, and he's not getting any better at the procedure, gets worried that he really is a shitty person and isn't trying hard enough cause he actually doesn't love his sister.

He has to turn to sponsors or an employer for help.

and his reputation has apparently proceeded him cause he's promised a high standing right away, and a meeting with the big boss.

Then tariche recognizes the man's voice.

And he's so mad

he's super pissed when he looks at his father cause, this is why he's like this right?

Scum of the earth that only uses his family as an excuse for his sadism

But that's ok, as long as he gets Brhandy put back together, it's good. He's started on a job and he hates leaving things unfinished

so maybe when Brhandy has her head back on, minus all the things that got her killed in the first place, Tariche can take his head off, and finally rest.

Misc Details:

He’s a huge masochist sure, but no needles. Dr. Tariche hates needles and will close his eyes when he’s administering vaccines.

On the subject of needles, the good doctor found a way to both control a person’s movements, change the way a person thinks, and what they think about. Tariche can only do a few at a time but somehow, he can skip all that conditioning stuff by himself but for someone else to do it, they have to use tools. Tariche could teach them if he didn’t black out from looking at the needles.

Why he figured out the needle method in the first place has to do with being able to control people in the first place. If he practices this over anyone, he loses a bodily function. If he continues to use it, it’ll reduce him to having to be on a life support system but stop short of halting his heart. He’s used it all of once and lost the ability to cry when he’s sad.

If there’s an equivalent of Body and Bath Works around, count Tariche as their number shitty customer.

Of course he’ll wash his hands but you need to beat him over the head to make him wear gloves.

Throat punching is his favorite move for some reason. Maybe he wants to get rid of that pesky adam’s apple keeping him away.

No more doctor related things but he’s creeped out by dolls. Tariche can’t throw away the ones his brother sends him but he wishes they could have been cool rocks or whatever.

Tariche has corset piercings on his back. Why? Why.

No one’s sure if he calls tools primitive because he’s from the future or if it’s cause he sucks.

In DF at least, he's the illegitimate son of the main hero character and theano

#Tariche (Info)#Definitely not going to stay the same #The more I think about things the more they change #it's more about his feelings rn

2 notes · View notes

savvylark · 6 years

Text

Not Your Mama’s Hallmark Christmas part 7

This is where the story ends.

You can catch up with Part 1 here - Part 2 here - Part 3 here - Part 4 here - Part 5 here - Part 6 here or read it all on Ao3 here

This chapter is rated M for sexual content. Reader be advised.

Katniss tends to be cynical about materialism, love, and marriage. Her friends have replaced the family she lost. So when Peeta needs help, her friends don’t need more than a strong arm to convince her. Katniss finds herself having a very different Christmas this year with the Mellark family, posing as Peeta’s girlfriend. What will change when this starts to look like a strange Hallmark movie?

Thank you to the amazing @javistg being my beta and encouraging. Thank you @peetabreadgirl for your ideas and support. @everlarkingjoshifer made this banner for me. Isn’t it lovely? Its been a fun ride I hope you enjoy the ending!

With a tired, weary look on his face, Peeta hands me a bouquet of wildflowers and a paper bag. “Hi, can we talk?”

I bite my lip and nod.

Annie and Joanna mumble something about being hungry and they head out quickly.

I try to keep my nerves from showing, but I don’t want to scowl either so I decide a distraction might be best.

I place the flowers in a vase.

Out of the bag, Peeta pulls out wine and cookies for us. I pour each of us a glass of wine and place them on the coffee table.

I can’t help the smile the spreads on my face.

Peeta brought over things that are just “us.”

Finally we’re seated for a conversation.

“How’s your dad?” I ask.

“Better. Much better, he’s at home. His wrist is in a cast, knee surgery is scheduled for next week. I’ll go back home for that.” Peeta says, his eyes won’t meet mine.

I nod and force a smile. “I’m happy to hear he’s doing so much better.”

He pauses and takes a nervous breath before asking, “Katniss, why did you leave early?”

I make eye contact with Peeta then, looking at my glass, I down the whole thing and pour myself another.

Okay, now I’m ready for this conversation.

“It was real for me, Peeta, and you rejected me. I just needed a little time to bounce back. Don’t look at me like that, you don’t need to soften the blow okay?” I take another sip.

“WHAT?!” Peeta looks confused.

“I don’t know when it happened, but it became real for me. I wasn’t pretending. I thought it was changing for you too. Christmas was just. Wow.” I sigh, then shake my head to clear my thoughts.

“It hurt to be rejected. Why are you surprised by this?” I ask, drawing even more confusion between us.

He reaches for my hand and pulls me closer. I flinch, but I can’t escape his gaze, or that look in his eyes. It’s mesmerizing.

“When I hear your phone call, I thought… Well, I heard you say we were ‘just friends, that’s it.’ I didn’t really listen to anything else after that.” He’s looking down now, sorrowful.

I remember saying that to Johanna, out of context that sounds cold.

His hand clasps mine tighter.

“So, when I said ‘I want to be with you?” I ask, sceptical.

“It didn’t even register. God, Katniss, when you left, I just felt a hole in my heart. Then my dad told me what he heard. Your whole phone call. I didn’t realize… I just didn’t…” Peeta rubs his face and tries to organize his thoughts.

“First of all, you met my parents? I didn’t have the greatest example of a fulfilling relationship growing up. I didn’t know it could be that great. Dating you, having you as mine, even just for pretend was the greatest relationship I’ve ever had. You’re smart, funny, sexy as hell, and we work so well together. I didn’t think I deserved you. I didn’t think I could have such a great match for me. Rye talked some sense into me. He explained that it was us together that made this amazing. That we’re two pieces of a puzzle that fit together.” Peeta explains.

I’m listening very intently with every word, until he mentions puzzle pieces and my thoughts turn less innocent. Focus.

He smirks and leans in to whisper. “That I was an idiot, and I was denying both of us something amazing, but being stubborn and wounded wasn’t doing either of us any good.”

I just stare, unable to speak.

Peeta brushes some hair out of my eyes and smiles. “I think I knew after our very first kiss. I was scared to fall so hard, tried to bury my feelings. I thought you were better off with someone else. I didn’t know what it meant for you. When I saw you in college at Gale’s party I thought maybe that was my second chance, you know? After the pictures of us were floating around, I saw the look on your face, embarrassment. I thought I really screwed up, so I gave you space. Being your friend was safer.”

Peeta pulls me closer with a serious look on his face. “But now,” he continues with a lower raspy voice, “I can’t let this, us, go. Not this time. I think I’m in love with you, Katniss Everdeen,” Peeta whispers.

Then, as if he can’t hold back any longer, he leans in to take my breath away in a fiery kiss.

I lean in for another.

Peeta pulls away and looks scared. He rubs the back of his neck nervously. “I want always, Katniss. I want a future with you. You’re it for me. If you don’t think… If you don’t feel the same… It might destroy me.” He looks down and sighs.

The past week flashes in my mind. The look in his eyes while we were ice skating. Hugging shirtless Peeta after the cocoa spilled. The longing for his kiss I felt after our snowball fight. Peeta’s hand in mine as he gripped it for strength at the party. The way he held me after I broke down crying after missing my father. All our laughter. All the games. The antics. The longing I felt for Peeta Mellark when I thought I had lost him.

Rye’s words echo “I love her, I want her, and I need her. For the rest of my life. Always.” And “It’s in all the little things you aren’t saying.”

Am I already there?

“Take some time to think about it?” He asks.

I nod.

Peeta stands and walks away.

For one heartbreaking instant, I think he’s going to leave, but instead he walks to the brown bag he brought.

“In the meantime, grab your swimsuit, Everdeen.” Peeta gives me a mischievous look, before pulling two super soakers and swim trunks out of the bag.

“I checked, the pool is open. We’re going swimming!” He grins and pushes me to the bedroom, and heads to my bathroom to change.

In my head, I replay every teenage fantasy of Peeta I ever had as I rifle through my clothes.

“There it is!” I say to myself.

I step out of my bedroom wearing my hunter green bikini, a different one than what I wore in my youth, but the sentiment remains. I barely have the door shut before Peeta pins me to the door and kisses me with such intensity that I’m dizzy.

Then, he hands me a super soaker and links our hands as if he didn’t just blow my mind.

The grin on my face can’t be contained.

As we walk through the hall to the pool, towels and his own super soaker in his other hand, Peeta asks “So would this be our second or third date?” Smiling at me, eyes twinkling.

I try minimize the blush on my face.

“Well, if ice skating was our first date, then would the party be our second date?” I ask, squinting at him.

“Hmm, seems lousy. What about Christmas, was that a date?” He says, kind of proud of himself.

“Well, with how the evening went, it kind of felt like a date.” I wink at him with a grin.

“So, this could be considered our third date then? Interesting.” Peeta says wiggling his raised eyebrows, as he playfully bumps my hip. We’ve reached the pool yet Peeta’s eyes rove up and down my suit.

I can’t hold back my laughter.

“Cool it lover boy.” I turn my water gun on him and squirt him square in the chest.

Peeta unleashes his own super soaker and it’s war. We laugh and chase, and dodge. I drop the water gun and attempt to wrestle Peeta into the pool, but he’s a worthy opponent. Peeta has me wet in under a minute.

When we come up for air, my arms are wrapped around his neck. I can’t take my eyes off this beautiful man.

I rest my forehead on his. Peeta plays with the end of my braid as we wade in the shallow end.

I’m brought back to the first time we found each other like this; dazed teenagers in Madge’s pool.

“You might think I’m pushing this too fast, but we’ve known each other since we were kids. I think I fell for you that summer before College. Imagining my future without you, Katniss, is devastating.”

He paused thoughtfully, stroking my back gently. “You’re going to see that a long term committed relationship is exactly what you want, and that we’re better together. Once you realize that, I’m never letting you go and I’m going to marry the shi–,” I cover his mouth with my fingers.

“Shhhh. Peeta, I think I’m already there.” I stop Peeta’s rambling. He nips at my fingers playfully, then his eyes widen and his jaw drops.

“It was Rye, actually. Hell, we need to give him a gift basket or something… Anyway, I was talking to your favorite brother and he told me about his own decision to marry Lila. How the look on my face said everything. He was right. Peeta, I’m in love with you. I-I never thought I wanted those things, but I want always with you.” I look at him seriously cupping his cheeks in my hands.

Peeta just stares back in disbelief, smiling as if I’ve given him the very sun.

When he kisses me I hope he never stops.

Somehow, we’ve made it to my bedroom. I’m dizzy with the hum of my body’s response to Peeta’s kisses.

“When I first saw you in a swimsuit I wanted to touch you like this,” I murmur my confession.

I can’t keep my hands from roving over every inch of his broad chest, muscular sculpted back, rippling abs. This gorgeous man is in a swimsuit in my bedroom.

“You have no idea how many fantasies I had of you like this in that bikini in my bed,” Peeta pants in my ear. The low husky tone his voice has taken does delicious things below my swimsuit bottoms. His hands are exploring me also, but some of it doesn’t register.

I’m so excited by every inch of Peeta I can see. My fingers inch their way down his rippling abs, past the V of is torso to the waistband of his swimsuit and I tease the sensitive skin just inside while I suck Peeta’s neck. I’m following this happy trail.

Hearing him sigh and pant in anticipation drives me wild.

I find his lips because I just crave his mouth on mine. Tongues collide and dance.

Peeta turns us over and his kisses trail down my neck and collarbone. I’m so delirious with the sensation I don’t realize my top being untied until I feel lips trailing to suck my nipple.

“Ah, they’re perfect, Katniss!” Peeta whispers against my skin.

The panting and moaning that follow the sensation are so involuntary they don’t even sound like me. I didn’t know I could make such a guttural noise. I am deliciously turned on and aware of every movement of Peeta’s body on mine. My legs wrap around his waist in search of friction, more of… something.

I can’t get enough of Peeta. I’m starving for him.

My hands find his muscular round legs and wander upward. He’s so manly and chiseled.

Normally, I’m much more vulnerable and self conscious with my body, but I’m so overcome with wanting Peeta that it doesn’t even concern me.

Finally, I can’t handle how much I want him. I rip down his swim trunks. Little peeta springs fourth and he is glorious. The sight of Peeta naked takes my breath away. Clearly I had been drinking too much on Christmas to appreciate this masterpiece before me. My mouth waters.

I think I startle him with my aggression, because he’s looking at me with raised eyebrows, jaw hanging, as I rid him of his suit.

I tease and kiss a trail up each thigh until I just can’t take the anticipation of making Peeta moan. With the first swip of my tongue all the way up, Peeta’s breath hitches. I make eye contact as I continue to lick and suck. His eyes wide and dilated. Deep blue pools of desire. This man is SO sexy. I speed up my ministrations.

Peeta is panting and moaning something like my name. He pulls one of my legs, spinning me in a circle. I squeak and readjust. I realize the purpose of this when I feel Peeta’s magical hands trailing up my legs to my hot core, rubbing my slick folds and teasing me until hot kisses roam up my legs.

I stop my movements to catch my breath only to have it stolen away by Peeta’s tongue lapping up my folds before plunging into my center. I moan and hum deep in my throat, my mouth waters, I suck and bob, teasing and “giggling his bells.”

Continuing my mission of blowing Peeta’s… mind.

“Ooooooh, Katniss!” Might be the sweetest words of pleasure, stirring me to the very core. I’m shaking.

This isn’t going to take much longer for either or us. The pressure Peeta adds, along with his moaning, sends me over the edge, reeling with waves of pleasure. I swallow as Peeta shouts. With the stars behind my eyelids, Peeta’s blinding smile and blue eyes flash. Tears come to my eyes as I sing Peeta’s name.

He lifts me into his arms and holds me tight while I catch my breath. Gentle kisses on my neck are accompanied with words of affection and adoration.

Our eyes meet, and I see the most intense look of love reflected in Peeta’s eyes. As if to confirm that what I’m reading in his eyes is true, he kisses me passionately, pouring out the love he feels with a pressure and intensity that leave me dizzy.

His hands and eyes continue to explore and study my every curve and dip.

“God, I didn’t know I could feel like this. Katniss, you’re amazing!” Peeta whispers.

“Takes two to tango. Do you know how sexy you are?” My voice comes out more raspy then I expected. I smile and play with his hair.

He shakes his head and grins, eyes twinkling, like a boy who just opened his Christmas presents.

His hands are wondering between my legs again. When my breath hitches, he studies my face. Asking permission. “We can stop here if you want.” he whispers, trailing kisses down my neck.

I smile and shake my had no, I don’t want to stop. With a mischievous look, I do my best imitation of his own smirk, I tell Peeta “The only sleigh I’ll be riding is–,”

I’m cut off by his lips. We’re laughing between kisses.

A brief contraception conversation settles it.

Our other encounters have been rushed and lustful. This is more meaningful and vulnerable. I bite my lower lip, our eyes connect and say all the little things we mean to each other without words. This is love.

Peeta leans up to capture my lips. Electric surges through my whole body from where our lips connect. His eyes widen. He felt it too. I settle myself over him and spread my legs. Peeta gets that smoldering look. The crackle in the air is electric. Anticipation.

As if something has snapped, Peeta is all over me. Igniting me. With every touch, every caress, it’s as if sparks fly. A smoldering fire builds. I fist Peeta, aline us and slink down. With our first connection my breath is taken away. Peeta’s deep voice moaning my name sends a buzz through me that makes me dizzy. Our movements build. It’s a blur of rhythmic rocking, waves of ecstasy, moans and sighs. I can’t even focus on just one sensation.

The things Peeta’s body can do!

Our loving making is passionate and consuming. Evoking deeper feelings of love I didn’t know I had buried within me. Peeta rocks my world again, buried deep inside me. The connection felt something like introducing my other half. Feeling a wholeness I can’t even describe, leaving me enlightened. The world as I know it has changed.

“I love you.” Peeta whispers in my ear.

After 3 rounds of the best sex of my life, maybe the best the world has ever seen? Peeta and I are emotionally and physically drained. We curl into each other’s arms and fall fast asleep.

“Woah, Katniss. Are you doing this in your sleep?” Peeta whispers, amazed and amused.

I open my eyes to find I’ve been dry humping the man in my bed. Emulating the dream I was having of making love to Peeta.

“Uh, yeah.” I answer, embarrassed as I pull into a more innocent cuddle in Peeta’s arms, trying to keep the heat flowing through my body under control.

Peeta seems thrilled. He kisses my cheek and sighs. “Oh no, don’t be embarrassed! You’re a wild one, Everdeen. I thought I was dreaming.”

We slip back into a blissful sleep.

I wasn’t ready to elope like Peeta wanted to, but I understand after everything he went through with Cashmere, and our fake relationship, why Peeta wanted a long term commitment.

On New Year’s Eve, Peeta took me for hot chocolate in town, and we strolled through the displays of ice sculptures carved by local artists. I stopped at a more plain looking one. It was a question, written in cursive on an ice block. Four words.

I smiled. “Peeta look! Someone’s going to…”

I turn and find my blue-eyed Peeta, down on one knee, holding his grandmother’s pearl ring meant for a very important finger.

With tears in his eyes, he poured out his heart out to me, beautiful words of love, memories and laughter together, words of a future, of always.

I realized he probably already had my heart. From our very first kiss, I was a goner for Peeta Mellark.

Words are Peeta’s thing, not mine so, as he waxed poetic, my answer was: “You had me at cookies and super soakers.”

He looked confused, then laughed.

“Is that your way of saying yes?” Peeta’s words are teasing but his eyes are full of hope and apprehension.

I ruined his sweet romantic moment, I had better bring it back. I sigh and pull back the mask of humor I wear as armor.

“I want forever with you Peeta,” I answer surprising myself.

We embraced and kissed passionately.

As Peeta placed the ring on my finger, the crowd I didn’t realize had gathered around us started cheering. I tried to ignore a few flashes of cameras –one turned out to be Peeta’s that he had Thresh take.

I turn to face the crowd and I’m met with familiar faces. Thresh, Rue and Prim’s smiles first as they were in on the plan. Then my best friend and his beaming new fiance, standing next to my roommate, elbowing Annie who’s wiping tears out of her eyes while Peeta’s best friend gives a thumbs up with a mile wide grin.

My family is all here to celebrate. We all agree to go to the Hob down the street for soup and sandwiches.

Peeta laces our fingers together and strokes the pearl with the thumb of his other hand. Then, he looks up at me with a smile that makes me go weak in the knees.

The entire world fades away as I’m taken captive by his blue eyes that speak depths of love and years of adventures ahead.

The End. Happy Holidays!

#not your mamas hallmark christmas #everlark #everlark christmas #everlark holiday #holiday fic #smut #this is the end #happy holidays

107 notes · View notes

phoenix-k-scriven-fiction · 6 years

Text

Mermaids, Macking, and a Little Thing Called Murder

At the age of twenty-three, Ana has all the freedom of youth, and a goal to match: she wants to chronicle the facts and fictions of unsolved crimes that happen to be surrounded by rumors of something beyond the natural. Whether kidnappings mired in faerie tales or property destruction explained away as ghosts, there’s always both a mundane story and a magical one behind every mystery, and splicing the two together spoke to the local culture in a way that made Ana downright giddy.

Unfortunately for Ana, the research trip to Grandmarch Bay unveils something entirely unexpected: an actual mermaid. Even as her research into a death from over twenty years ago starts to turn up startling elements that just don’t fit, she finds herself circling closer and closer to the girl with the gorgeous laugh.

Ana’s still unraveling the story for her book, but those eyes and that voice and that pretty, pretty face may prove to be more of a distraction than she can afford.

Welcome to the first chapter of my original story and the first publicly-available installment of my “Fae Horizons” universe. Chapters will be released to tumblr a week after Patreon for those who can’t afford to pledge. For early access, become a patron now!

Chapter One

Ana lifted a hand to her head to keep her hat in place, squinting against the wind that tore down the coast. It didn’t take more than a moment’s thought to decide that the temperature was low enough to warrant her bomber jacket. She ducked back inside, pulled on the brown leather, and left. A glance at the skies as she stepped out of the Bed and Breakfast showed her only pale clouds and a handful of seagulls.

At least it wasn’t raining.

Sturdy heels thudded quietly against the cobblestone of the side road, just as grey and mottled as the sky. The scuffed brown toes of her boots peeked out from under swishing blue skirts with every step, and she felt a tiny bit of tension bleed out from her shoulders as she made it to the flatter asphalt of the main road. Cobblestone was nice, of course, but it was so much easier to trip on than a flat surface.

Ana aimed for the bakery, a small part of her perking up like a child when she heard the bell over the door tinkle as she stepped through. The small building was warm, and the smells that drifted over from the display case were comforting. There wasn’t anyone in sight, so she tucked her hands behind her back and strode up and down past the glass for a few minutes, taking the time to make her decision for breakfast.

“Oh!”

Ana looked up and saw a woman stepping out of the backroom and into the store proper. Early thirties, maybe, probably Latina, and clearly one of the bakers, if the flour she was wiping off of her hands and forearms was any sign. Ana smiled and gave the woman a small wave. “Hi.”

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in,” the woman said. “I’m Janice. What can I get for you?”

“Can I get a chocolate croissant and two squares of the banana bread?”

“Coming right up!”

Ana waited at the cash register, credit card in hand. She passed it over when Janice came.

“Sorry, but I’m going to need ID if you want to use a card,” Janice said, giving her an apologetic smile. “I know everyone here by name, so I don’t need an ID most of the time, but for strangers like yourself…”

“Not a problem,” Ana said, digging out her license. “By the way, I don’t suppose you could tell me where I could go about getting information on the town’s recent history and urban legends, could you?”

“The library might be a good place to start. Or, well, the librarian, I guess,” Janice said. “I’d also give the pub a shot, in the evening. Some of the retired fishermen have a whole host of stories, you know?”

“I figured, yeah,” Ana said, smiling in what she hoped was a flattering manner. “So… can I have my card back?”

“Sure, Miss Ga…” Janice’s smile fell as she tried to read the name. “Um. Ga—”

“Ljiljana Gavrilović,” Ana cut her off, holding back a sigh. Every time. Wasn’t Janice’s fault, though, so she didn’t really deserve the bitching. “Don’t bother trying to say it; American ears can’t pick up some of the sounds properly. Call me Ana.”

“Can’t say I’ve seen a name like that in a while,” Janice said, handing the license over and moving to swipe the credit card through. “Russian?”

“Serbian,” Ana said, pulling the smile back up. “Still Slavic, but further south.”

“Serbia…” Janice made a face like she was trying to remember something. “Like the whole Kosovo thing?”

“…yeah,” Ana said, her voice almost as flat as her expression. “Like the whole Kosovo thing. Where’s the library?”

“Down the street and take a left into Hudson Court,” Janice said, passing over the card and bag of baked goods. “Are you o—”

“Thanks,” Ana said, turning and heading for the door as she slipped the card back into her purse. It swung open with a tinkle of bells that Ana did her best to ignore as she stepped back out onto the street and headed in the direction of the library.

Of course the one thing the woman knew about Serbia was the freaking Kosovo conflict. Of course it was. Why had she expected anything else?

She slowed down after a few buildings and took a deep breath, closing her eyes. The woman hadn’t known how much of a pet peeve this was. She hadn’t deserved the rudeness. And—

Ana looked down at her hands and, with conscious effort, unclenched the one that didn’t have a paper bag of goodies hanging from it. Her nails, short as they were, had dug into her skin and left deep indentations. There wasn’t any blood or ripped skin, though, so it didn’t seem like she’d damaged herself, at least.

She took another deep breath and turned, heading for the library.

o.o.o.o.o

“The Higgins drowning?”

“Yeah,” Ana said, leaning forward and trying on a smile. “I’m a journalist, but recently I’ve been trying to do a book on deaths that had supernatural stories attached to them. Gathering basic facts on the case is first, then local legends for context, and then the actual story.”

“Hm…” the woman tapped her pen against her lips. “I can help you find the newspapers, though they’ll be on microfiche. We’ve only got the last twelve years digitized, and this was… twenty-three years ago? It’ll be hardcopy, and I can’t let you take it out of the building since you don’t have a card with us.”

“I can work with that,” Ana said.

“You might be able to get some information from the police, if you drop by,” she continued. “There’s only about two dozen people there, and they don’t get much activity in a town this small. They’ll probably have time for you.”

“Only?” Ana asked.

“We’re not quite that small,” the librarian said with a wry smile. She shifted just enough for Ana to see the nametag on her chest. Laura. Huh. “But yes, I think I can make this work. You may want to stop by the pub on the waterfront. The retirees like to talk about this sort of thing, so you’ll be able to get the local legends out of them, for your background research.”

“I figured,” Ana said with a nod. “Are there any other possibilities, or can I start with the papers immediately?”

“I think that’s a good base for now,” Laura said, getting up. “I’ll show you the newspapers you’ll want, and once you’re done with those, I can point you in the right direction for the rest.”

“Thank you.”

“Adam! Come take over the desk for a minute!”

The microfiches weren’t in the best condition, but they were still more than workable. They gave Ana minimal information, but enough that she’d be able to turn what she’d found into the bulk of the introduction for the chapter on the Higgins drowning. She jotted down the names of the people involved, from the officers to the reporters, and made a note to stop by the newspaper’s main office and see if they had some more information.

As the clock struck noon, she reluctantly finished up what she could and moved back to her computer. Much as she loved working on the book, she did still have a day job, and while she was allowed to choose her own hours, to work from home, and to travel as she wished… she nonetheless did need to actually work. She did still have articles to write for the site.

Right. So. Today’s assignment was… compiling opinions on some new brand of lipstick. It had been out for two days already, and was from a popular enough company that there were probably reviews from makeup vloggers and on the company’s own site already.

Shouldn’t be too hard, she thought, and got to work.

o.o.o.o.o

On a sunny day in late August, 1995, twenty-seven-year-old William Higgins was found dead on the beach by a family out to enjoy the weather.1 Just a few hundred feet beyond the town limits of Grandmarch Bay, the death fell into the town’s jurisdiction, and was investigated by a detective from the local police department.2 The body was severely bruised, in a manner that suggested there had been a struggle with an attacker, and covered in scratches that forensics suggested occurred around the time of death. The scratches occurred in patterns that appeared to be made by either human or animal, rather than being caused by the rocks underwater after the drowning occurred.3

Higgins’ family and friends had related to the police and reporters that he had been drawing away from them recently, and visiting a set of caves north of the town. His truck was found near the caves, but the only prints found in the area matched his shoes. The case was declared a murder, but never solved, and all suspects were released due to a lack of motive and evidence.

o.o.o.o.o

“Hey.”

Ana looked up from her computer, though it took a few moments for the last wisps of ‘chemical compositions liable to cause allergic reactions in those with peanut sensitivities’ to clear from the front of her mind. She blinked at the man in front of her. “Er… hi?”

“I’m Adam,” he said, leaning over the table and holding out one hand.

“Ana,” she said, reaching out to shake the hand. “What’s up?”

“I’m one of the librarians here,” he told her. “It’s a bit slow here right now, so I have some free time and figured I’d check in on how you were handling the microfiches. I was wondering if you needed some help with that project you were telling Laura about?”

“Not at the moment,” Ana said. “I shifted into doing some articles for my day job a few hours ago, so right now I’m working on that. I can come find you once I go back to the research project, if you’re still game to help.”

“Ah. Any idea when that’ll be?” Adam asked.

Ana looked down at her computer and tried to gauge the word count. “Hour and a half, maybe?”

“My shift’s over in two hours, so if you still need help and I’m still around then, feel free to call me over,” Adam said, nodding. “You’re not the first person to come through looking for information on that case, but I think you’re the first that’s trying to put together both the mundane facts and the stories.”

“I like fusing the two,” Ana said. “There’s a level of intrigue there, I think. Why twist the facts when presenting them as they are and then showing the stories alongside is just as interesting? It’s… I’d say it’s more of a cultural study than anything. I’m not trying to solve the mysteries, or declare that there were supernatural forces involved. I just want to know what the stories were.”

“Seems interesting.”

“It is, but I really do have to get back to work, so…” Ana gestured at her computer again, and smiled as Adam excused himself.

Ana went back to reading the health report.

o.o.o.o.o

And here I was, Ana thought as she jumped around the video from one of the beauty vloggers and tried to find the quote she’d wanted to pull, doing her best to make sure she had it word-for-word, Almost forgetting how incredibly gay I am.

It really wasn’t a good idea to get distracted by how cute the vloggers were when she was supposed to be working. That was one of the job hazards, though. Obviously.

She dropped her head onto her arms and groaned.

Holy shit, I am so gay.

“Miss?”

Ana raised her head, and met the eyes of a little girl who couldn’t have been more than nine. “Hi?”

“Are you okay?” the little girl asked.

“I’m fine,” Ana said. “I’m just a little tired. My job is taking a while to do.”

“Okay!” The little girl said, waving as she left.

Ana pushed herself up straight and tilted her head to work out the kinks. Her neck crackled, an ugly sound that was loud enough to draw the attention of the girl from earlier, but Ana put a finger to her lips and winked at the girl, who covered her own mouth with her hands and ran off, giggling. Ana hunkered down and focused as best she could, finally finding the quote and finishing off her article. With a few minutes taken to make sure her links and references were in order, she sent it off to the editor.

Leaning back in her chair, Ana stretched and groaned. Her head fell back with a heavy sigh, and she tried to reorient her mindset towards the case she’d been researching. One glance at the microfiches was enough to have her sighing yet again, and she pulled the reader towards herself to hook it up to her computer again, and moved to reo—

Her stomach growled.

Oh. She’d skipped lunch, hadn’t she? Damn. It was almost three o’clock, and the library closed at seven…

Ana sent another look at the microfiches, biting her lip. She had the time… but she didn’t really want to put lunch off any longer, now that she’d remembered to be hungry, and she didn’t want to bother Laura to get it out again later, and she didn’t always want to rely on just the PDFs she’d saved…

Biting her lip, she got to her feet and headed for the front desk. Her things were visible from there, so it wasn’t much of a risk to leave them there for a moment or two.

“Well, hello there!” Adam said as she approached, grinning. “Something come up?”

“I was wondering if you guys had a printer on hand? I need to go to lunch, but I’m not done with the microfiches, and I don’t want to bother you for them again later. I’d like hardcopies to look over later anyway, so getting them printed would be best,” Ana explained.

“I have about fifteen minutes left,” Adam said, “Which should be just enough to help you out with that. Laura! I’m gonna go help the outta-stater!”

Laura, in the middle of checking out a book for a middle-aged man, lifted a hand in acknowledgement, but didn’t look over.

“So,” Adam said as he led the way over to the printers. “Where are you headed after your lunch?”

“Newspaper office, then police station, depending on how long the first takes,” Ana said. “After that, probably tomorrow… I’ll see about visiting people of interest, especially if the officers or reporters aren’t employed anymore, and then I’ll go down to the tavern that’s apparently on the waterfront to see if any of the older fellas have the mermaid stories I came here to find in the first place.”

“Organized,” Adam said. “Do you have those microfiche files saved anywhere?”

“I got them as PDFs on my computer,” Ana confirmed. “Can I print from there?”

“No, sorry. It needs to be from a library computer, so I was hoping for a USB,” Adam admitted. “Well, I guess we can bring the microfiches and the reader over and go from there.”

“You’re the specialist here, so sure,” Ana said.

Printing out the paper copies did indeed take the full fifteen minutes, and Ana packed away her bag with a sense of satisfaction. She’d actually gotten a lot done today.

“So.”

Ana yelped, scrambling not to drop her bag and turning around.

Adam stared at her, wide-eyed. “Uh. I promise I wasn’t trying to scare you?”

Ana put a hand to her chest, willing her heart to slow down. “Holy smokes. Okay. Hi. I kinda thought you left already.”

“Sorry,” Adam said, rubbing the back of his neck. “But I figured that if you’re from out of town, then you probably don’t know any of the good places to eat. If you’re okay with eating with a stranger, I could show you someplace before you head for the police station.”

Ana squinted at him. “Like… a date?”

“Uh, no.”

“Oh, thank god,” she muttered.

“…should I be offended?” Adam asked.

“Dating while on a research trip is just a level of complicated that I really don’t feel like navigating right now,” Ana admitted. “Also… lesbian.”

“Ah.” Adam nodded for a few moments, and then said, “Trans.”

“I didn’t want to assume.”

“I’ve been on T for long enough that I don’t think most people realize it,” he said. “So…”

“I hang out in a lot of queer circles back in New York, and after a while there’s just a feel for who happens to be which shade of the rainbow,” Ana said.

“So what you’re saying is that you’ve got gaydar?” Adam said with a grin.

“And I saw the trans flag pin on your shoulder strap,” Ana admitted, nodding at Adam’s bag and laughing when she saw his mouth open and close in surprise. “So… lunch?”

“How do you feel about clam chowder?”

o.o.o.o.o

“So... small town, trans kid. It’s safe here?” Ana asked as they walked down the street, hands hanging off the strap to her messenger bag.

“Well,” Adam hedged, drawing the word out. “I grew up here, so there wasn’t really much of a choice in both being myself and being in the closet. Either I didn’t transition, or I got out of the closet. Or left, but I do like it here, so...”

“I think I can get that,” Ana said, nodding. “So everyone’s okay with it?”

“I think they just got used to it, honestly,” Adam admitted. “I left town for a few years when I was getting my degree, and I looked different enough when I got back that I just... I don’t know. College was good to me. Going away for that long means that I went through the in-between stages of transitioning in a safer environment.”

“But home is home?” Ana guessed.

“Yeah.”

Ana bit her lip, mulling over what the best question to ask now would be. “So... what did you study?’

“Informational sciences,” Adam said. “You?”

“Double major in journalism and anthropology,” Ana said. “I like writing and I like studying culture, so... yeah. Minors?”

“Hebrew, believe it or not,” Adam said, and then grinned when Ana raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“As someone who knows another language due to growing up with it,” Ana said. “I’m always weirdly impressed by people who learn one later in life.”

“I mean, I did know some growing up. Learned some from my parents and at the synagogue. This was just refining and expanding it and whatnot,” Adam said. “You?”

“Serbian.”

“No, no,” Adam laughed. “I mean, like, your minors.”

“Oh! Uh, didn’t have any room in my schedule since I was double-majoring, honestly,” Ana admitted. “I did do volleyball, though? Club, instead of division, but it was definitely enough to keep me in shape.”

“You could probably bench me, huh?”

Ana snorted. “Hardly. I could probably bench a kid, but not most adults.”

“Most?”

“Some people are smaller or skinnier than others, and I’ve got shoulder muscles for days,” Ana said, stopping to turn to Adam and flex, holding the pose for just long enough that the joke of her jacket blocking the actual view managed to soak in. She chuckled and dropped her arms, setting back off down the sidewalk. “You?”

“Track,” Adam confirmed, and then slowed down and veered to the side, holding open the door of a restaurant off to the side. “After you, milady.”

Ana blinked at him. “Really.”

“Can’t have a little fun playing with the idea of old-fashioned chivalry?’ Adam asked.

“We’re not exactly at a Ren Faire,” Ana said, but gave a shallow curtsy anyway, skirt swishing as she lifted it. She walked past him and through the open door. “Now show me this clam chowder you claimed is the best in town.”

“Damn straight I will,” Adam said with a grin, following her in.

#Queer #Lesbian #Trans #Mermaids #Mystery #Murder #Modern Fantasy #Fae Horizons #Mermaids Macking and a Little Thing Called Murder #Phoenix Files

82 notes · View notes