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messwriting · 3 years

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THE SMUT PILE SECRET SANTA

Golden Eyes

Demon!Kuroo Tetsurou x Female Reader

Rating: E for explicit | Don’t read this if under eighteen.

Note: HOE HOE HOE INDEED! HAHAHAHA

This is my secret santa gift for my dear elf Alisha -- @rivendell101! I do hope you enjoy, I just tried to channel all of Kuroo’s wicked energy into this and sprinkled it with our beloved monsterfucking. Sorry for all the questions, I just wanted to surprise you but also include only things you’d like. ;-; Hope you enjoy and MERRY SMUTMAS <3

Big thanks and lots of kisses to my dear Tay @deathcab4daddy who read this, betaed, and said it wasn't the train wreck I thought it was 😂🥺😘💕

Warnings: This is loosely inspired by the manhwa DEAR DOOR, by Pluto, from which the art above is also from (Satan is fucking hot)! Monsterfucking - Demon. Use of tongue and tail in a very uh naughty way. Magic makes you horny at some point (tho i don’t think is dub-con?), but just to be sure Magic Manipulation. Assplay with tongue and finger penetration. Denials, oh so many denials. Sprinkle of spanking. Soft pain play. Overstim. Oral sex. Rough sex. CHOKING. BITING. MARKING. Demon uhhhh lure? aijaisajisj He’s seducing you with his devilish powers. CORRUPTION. RELIGIOUS BLASPHEMY (sorry jesus).

Word count: ~7.4k. I can’t write anything short, why?!

“So… you’re a demon?” You ask, weirdly not completely panicking over the fact that this brick wall of a man showed up out of nowhere in the middle of your living room as if this were just another Sunday night. The stranger smiles your way with a lopsided grin and the shivers that run through your body seem to support his affirmation.

“Did the horns give it away?” The dark-haired demon asks, with a smile that could make him the single male model of some sin’s propaganda. Your eyes flick to his tail, long and thick, moving calmly in waves behind him, and come up to the unbelievably wide black wings sprouting from his back and threatening to blow a hole in your ceiling.

“Sure,” You say while your eyes come back to his face, taking a second look at the long, twisted black horns sprouting from his high forehead and mixing with his thick raven hair. “Let’s say it’s the horns.”

He snickers but his golden stare is very much sharp on you. Even before it pinned you in place you had found that your legs had begrudgingly refused to move in front of the massive presence in your living room.

“You’re an interesting little thing, aren’t you?” He muses out loud, his arms crossing in front of his body while one hand cradles his own face while he looks down at you. The gold irises glint in the dark like a beacon, the small crystal-like black pupil like that of a wild animal. “Normally people would have been screaming by now. Or passing out. Maybe running.” He doesn’t move from where he stands, but his sentient tail floats over to you, lightly caressing the side of your face as a child stroking their pet; it moves under your chin, over your jaw and cheekbone, pats your hair back, and comes to circle your throat.

It doesn’t squeeze -- but the threat is pretty much clear.

“I don’t think my legs can move.” You tell him in a breathless voice, panic eating away at the corners of your sanity the more you stare at the insanity in front of you. A monstrosity of man with a tail and wings to crown it swaying in your living room as if it’s all okay, as if this is real life. You shudder in place, a whole-body wave of dread that moves along your body and makes you tremble as all the hair on your being stands in place. He grins down at you, wicked and pretty, a cheshire air of mischief in the way his golden irises glint in the dark background of his eyes and mingle with the dim lit room to go with the roll of white pearls of sharp-looking teeth in his mouth.

“Am I dreaming?” Your thoughts escape from your lips in a breath as his tail grounds you to reality, burning hot and heavy around your neck. It contrasts awkwardly with the image in front of you, which your brain keeps trying to deny as true, but the weight of his tail pulls you from the edge of disbelief and pins you in place, your limbs turning cold as you feel unable to move. “Or am I going insane, somehow?”

“Do you think your brain is failing you, little one?”

“Well, seems like the logical reason why there’s a winged man in my living room. With horns and-- a tail.” Your voice stops and you gulp right before your eyes snap once again to his devilish black and golden eyes. “Wait. Are you a demon? Is… a demon in my living room?” The more you speak the least sense it makes. The thing in front of you seems to be very amused by the twinges of panic and disbelief coloring your voice and expression. “Why?”

He smirks and his wings do a fluttering thing before they curve inside his back, two massive black things even when they’re closed. “Must be your lucky day.”

You snort even through your scared haze. “Not exactly what one thinks when considering demons.”

“Ah, bad rep.” Kuroo says and he floats as if he’s sitting on a chair, his legs crossing as he supports an elbow on his thigh and his face on his hand. It’s both parts unnerving and enthralling, and you’re struck with the fact of how big he is once again. “God’s marketing team is hella good. We get the rep for everything going on now-- the crops died? Oh, the devil. Psycho kid? Demoniac. Fucked up government? Send from hell. Sex? Devilish.” He sighs, his pretty lips jutting in a pout as his beautiful face falls into a tired mask. “It’s tiresome to be the poster-boys to all things wicked.”

“Well, seems like you do the part just fine.” You hide yourself through some small sarcasm, as you grumble the remark.

“Hah.” His sharp teeth flash in the dark at the barked laugh, a gasped sound as if he truly found your remark funny. “We get used to it,” He nods your way and then shrugs, a never-leaving smirk on his lips. “And I like the style.”

“Sure,” you say, despite the clear unconvinced tone of your voice as your eyebrows shut up slowly, eating the distance from your hairline until you blink and tiptoe around your next words, “not to be rude, Mr. Demon--”

“Call me Kuroo.” He cuts you off charmingly, as one would in flirting; a playful arch in his brows as his smile spreads just that bit more over his face. You just now realize the appeasing traces of it, the sharp angle of his jaw, the high of his square cheekbones, and the elegant line of his nose; then your eyes fly over the protruding circles of his horns, and your eyes go round almost involuntarily.

“Okay…” It breaches your lips along with a puff of breath. You blink a few times before continuing, still doubting your own eyes as they thread over the massive monster in front of you. You wonder if he’d look better if he’s bent to your height, but then again that wouldn’t do much about those broad shoulders, engulfing your wall where he stands. “Not to be rude, Mr. Kuroo, but…” you steady yourself with a deep breath before continuing, your hand flying to press against your eyes before you can reopen then and see the exact same thing from before -- a demon in your house. “What the fuck you’re doing here, exactly?”

He smiles, pleased with your cussing, apparently. Then his eyes turn focused, predatory, and they’re locked on you.

“I’ve come to offer a deal, little one.”

“A deal?” You parrot, lost in the pull of those golden eyes.

“Yes,” Kuroo smirks, lips splitting unnaturally over sharp canines. He keeps floating in his position, face supported on a big, clawed, hand. “And a quite good one, too.”

“You… You’re at my home, to offer me a deal, right after the small rant on Devil’s bad marketing.” You list the things, doubt thick in your voice.

Kuroo smiles, but it looks wrong. “Yes, dear.”

“Okay,” You risk, though it comes out as a question. Kuroo seems pleased, though. “Go ahead, I guess?”

“I need something from you.”

“Oh shit, is this the soul thing?” Your eyes widened again, hands coming to stand protectively in front of you even as you doubt you could do much to fend him off if he wanted to do you harm. “I’ve seen Supernatural, I’m not selling my fucking soul okay?!”

“Chill, kitten, I don’t really mind your soul.” He’s rather nonchalant, golden eyes completing a circle along his eyeballs before they fall once again on you while Kuroo comes out from his floating position to pace calmly over to you. Then, his sharp teeth split his face wickedly in two, an alluring characteristic in the way his lips form an overconfident grin as he bends over you in your place on the couch. “It’s your body I’m interested in.”

“My… body?”

“Have you ever heard of hell portals?” His face engulfs your line of vision as his tail angles your head back to look up at him, a clawed finger gliding over your jawline at that.

“No? Should I? Who do you think I am to know about hell doors?” It happens again, your thoughts slipping through your lips at the same rate as you think them, the sarcastic tone of your mind also dripping out much as if that had been your intention all along.

He seems rather happy at that, too.You wonder if he’s prying the truth from you somehow. “Well, you’re one.”

“What?” You ask, stupidly, as his face gets further from you and he straightens back into his full height.

“A door, to hell.” Kuroo finishes, cheerfully. It looks, once again, wrong on his face, as if it's more of a threat than a joke.

The seconds pass by as falling rocks over metal, loud and rattling, a restless moment in which you keep staring at the monster --demon-- face and even as his horns stay in place and his curved wings twitch, it stills feels wholly detached from reality; an insane, out of this plane moment in which you doubt your whole being - your eyes and your ears and your brain and your skin, where the weight and warmth of his tail still surrounds your neck.

“Now I know I’m losing my mind.” You murmur to yourself as you can’t make peace between reality and, well, this reality.

“Ah, you humans are such disbelievers. I’m here in front of you, saying you’re a portal, and you still doubt your own eyes as if they’re the origin of your offense.” Kuroo mocks you, crossing his arms in front of his body and for a second your eyes linger on the blackness of his clawed hands, the weird way they’re shaped as if something is enveloping them, elongating claws on the point of his fingers with the color of a moonless night. Still, the acidic tone in his voice makes you perk up with infuriating annoyance, and it seeps from you at the same rate as it fills you.

“Well, sorry if it’s hard for me to believe I’m a fucking hell portal.” You sass him, fiery eyes closing on gold. It’s even more annoying that he smiles through your taunt. “Ten minutes ago I didn’t even believed in hell.”

“You can keep doubting if you want. Aren’t you doing so even when you see me here? All I need is passage and then you’ll be free to doubt once again,” his eyes glow brighter as he closes in on yours in a way that has you swaying in place, a vexatious air around him that’s unmistakable; but then again he is a demon, so maybe that’s just the norm. “That is… if you want.”

A shiver runs down your spine at the promise in his voice, and your own trembles when you ask, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That this can be a one-time thing -- or not.”

You blink, a bit lost.

“What’s this, exactly?” Your brain pulses in pain at the quantity of information it has to make sense and still try to understand. It’s too much and soon you’re pressing your hands on your face in frustration, “Dude, you’re not making sense.”

“It’s easy.” Kuroo says and suddenly you’re yanked up by thin air, floating in front of his fingers at his will as he twirls your body in the air as if you’re some sick kind of roulette. “Inside you, there’s a portal. I’ll activate it, and go to hell. In exchange, I’ll give you something.” As he speaks, clawed hands slowly and maliciously thread over the valley of your breasts and then down your middle, his golden eyes like a lighthouse to your wandering attention. “Something I know you desire, but you may not even know so. May not even accept yourself.” As his fingers approach the appex of your sex, you’re rounded in the air abruptly and set right on your feet in front of him, safe and sound and dizzy, feeling like prey to those eyes. “It may be this single time, or, if you accept my deal, it can be more.”

You breathe some big gulps of air before speaking in a wavering voice, “Something I wish? And you won’t tell me what that would be?”

“Essentially, you know. You just may be in… denial.” His eyes flash that golden glint once again, twirling molten pools of liquid sun on his face. Their constant, slow motion never-ending circles seeping inside your consciousness, making your mind blank, slowly flowing into a haze in which you feel lost but safe; warmth flowing from it over you as if you’re being dipped in melted honey, weighted down but comfortable, as moving against warm waves in a tropic beach.

It tips from your mouth as you’re swimming in the molten pools of gold, pulled out from your body as the warm breath from your lungs, heated and pliant. “Okay.”

The spell crashes as his grin spreads through his face, the self-satisfied smirk of a cat who got its prey. Just as you’re burning in embarrassment and ready to cancel whatever that was you just said yes to, a sudden wave of warmth spreads from your face to your feet, your hair undulating at the force it hits you, and travelling so quickly you can feel the way your toes curve while a buzz crosses them, a pleasant but foreign thrill settling in your bones. You send him a nasty glare.

“The fuck have you done to me?”

“Me? Nothing, kitten.” Kuroo tells you but everything from his expression, to his stance and the fucking satisfied smirk he sports tell you it’s a lie. Your glare turns worse. His lips are curved up in a telling manner but he concedes with a tilt of his head. “I just lowered your inhibitions, relax.”

“Why would you do that?” The questions zap from your mouth just as you think it, and in a fleeting thought you wonder if that isn’t exactly what he meant.

“I told you, I’m going to give you what you want.” Kuroo says as he stops in front of you, a sexy, powerful sway in the way he moves and towers over you that you can’t help but appreciate. “But I need you to accept your darker wishes,” It’s a murmur, raspy in his deep voice, and you breathe the words in as the indecent, luscious feeling swell inside your being and seems to find it’s home in your chest-- and drip from your sex. “And then embrace me.”

“I don’t want you.” You tell him, but it comes breathless, weak, and as Kuroo’s golden eyes pierce yours, you can feel as he pinpoints your lie.

“Then let’s change that, shall we?”

He wastes no time in maneuvering you into his arms, pulling you through thin air until his feral hands close around your middle and neck. Kuroo tilts your head back while grazing a single clawed finger over your pulse-point and up to your jawline, and then his breathing comes loud and misty against your bared skin.

“Wait--” You plead as your breath comes in long puffs and when you wet your lips before continuing, a freakishly long, wet and hot tongue comes to lick a big stripe of your skin and you yelp loudly, “-- the fuck!”

Kuroo, on the other hand, literally hums approvingly and brings his nose to glide over your skin, soft breathing as his hands pull you closer into his massive chest. You realize now, at the proximity, just how big and broad he is, somehow between terrifying and uncanningly acceptable.

His body runs hot, the temperature difference between yours quite clear when your skin feels so heated by his touch, clothes you found nice now feeling constricting the more of you that touches him.

The planes of his chest are hard and toned, lean muscle and strength as he moves you up without effort, your feet dangling way above the ground and still no hint of struggle as he supports your weight. As you get closer, those yellow irises centered in black globes seem to pry inside your mind, big and all encompassing; it makes something coil in your chest, much like panic but tame as agitation.

“Wait--” You breathe out and look down, shocked at the distance you found yourself from the ground. Something crawls from your chest as a distressed groan, “I--”

Kuroo tilts your head back and -- not without sending you a smirk -- delves down to close your lips together.

Whatever you were expecting, it wasn’t this -- you’re swept away by the kiss, amazed at how well your mouths work together, how perfectly plush and soft his thin lips feel on yours, how pleasing the motions of his tongue are against yours, how tasteful his movements are, and before long, you’re breaking the kiss but because you need to breathe, to pull some air inside yourself to battle the haze settling in your mind.

It does nothing to aid you though.

Your body feels achingly flushed, avid, weirdly pliant and it is with mild surprise that you feel yourself drooling inside your panties. Something tells you to be indignant, to kick him, to bite and claw, but instead you’re sighing the weakest of noises, spiralling back to his expert lips, falling deeper inside the slow seduction that this demon offers.

Kuroo moves you calmly, his big, searing hot hands threading across your body and working goosebumps in it’s trail even as all he does is touch you over your clothes. Your hands, previously abandoned by the side of your body start to move up his body, spreading your small palms over his chest, and instead of pushing him off, you’re pulling him closer, opening your mouth wider, your legs hiking over his side as if you’re begging for the moment he’ll pick you up.

“Hmm, what a nice little thing you are.” Kuroo murmurs over your lips, taking in the wrecked expression you sport with just a kiss. “So honest, too.” His claws glide over your thigh, hiked on his side. It doesn’t hurt, but the feeling of something sharp sliding against your skin makes your heart rate pick up and your panties grow wetter.

“You’ll like this too, kitten, don’t worry.” His syrupy voice enchants you as he hooks a razor-sharp claw on the side of your shorts, threads up slowly and precise until the ripping sound breaks through your haze. When you look down, your hooded eyes turn wide, taking in the fact he just ripped your shorts and how easily they slide to the ground once they’re free from your hiked leg. The panties stay, but they’re not exactly much.

“Hey!” You turn to look up at him, puffed cheeks in indignation, and one of his hands yanks your head back, angling your body in a arch as his other hand glides over your thigh to your lower belly, sharp thumb swiftly climbing up your body and with such, ripping your comfy t-shirt. The feeling of something scratching along your middle and the valley of your breasts make your breathing catch up on your lungs, too afraid it will press enough to hurt if you move. You never knew a menace could be this seductive.

Still, the anticipation coils inside you, pours from between your legs as your skin feels too small to hold all the feelings cursing to you, your breasts heavy and your lips falling open in a breath that Kuroo drinks from your lips, attentive and dedicated as his tongue comes out and slides over your lips.

His eyes glint in the dark, sharp and focused.

“You know what? I think I’ll like you.”

The air feels cold on your heated skin, especially when he holds you so close. Small trembles pass through your frame as you melt inside his kiss, falling deeper inside the pleasure he offers you and Kuroo barely started. Your nipples perk up without attention and when his rough palm rolls over them, their new-found sensitivity makes it impossible for you to not let out a sound. It’s something meek and surprised, but Kuroo seems proud of it and decided to pull more out of you.

Magically, you’re yanked up, floating until your middle is at the height of his neck.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Your head is millimeters from hitting the ceiling, your hands touching it as a way to protect yourself, you throw a nasty glare down at his face just for him to make a half-circle in the air and your upper body be launched behind.

“No!” You’re laying on thin air -- your heart beating so fast your blood pulses in your head as you look over your shoulder and notices just how impossible is the situation going on, where you’re levitating a few meters from the ground.

If he stops now, would you go down crashing? Would you die from such a fall? Questions swirl in your mind enough for you to forget whats going on - the way a sharp claw swiftly cuts the side of your panties - until something wet, firm and long prods on your dripping folds.

“What--” Your first action is to hitch your neck up so you can confirm that it is what you think it is, and, granted, Kuroo is slowly prying you open, his huge tongue threading on your most sensitive parts. As he laps a long stripe down your pussy, he looks up at you in flashing gold, seeming extremely pleased.

Kuroo winks at you, depraved.

Your blood is rushing through your veins at such a haste that you feel dizzy, and your whole body is fervent as something very loud breaks through your lips as Kuroo’s tongue moves and presses on your slit, circles your clit, and moves in serpentine movements along your puffy cunt.

You didn’t realize before how the texture of his tongue was a bit rugged but now you’re suffering the full extent of its benefits as he eats you out sloppily, enough that you’re dripping down on the carpet as his monstrously long and dexterous tongue plays with your cunt as if that’s his sole mission on earth. Kuroo hums against your clit, makes your whole body tremble with it, and at some point, he manages to press his tongue flat against your clit and still reach enough that it dips softly inside your entrance, slowly and deliciously prying the inner ring of your sex open, then broader.

You can’t help the noises falling from your lips and when one of his rough, clawed hands close around your breast, the pressure inside you peaks and you’re panicking at how close you are to your first orgasm, from his tongue alone, at an impossible long and sentient… demon tongue.

But he retreats just as your mouth falls open, your throat constricted by the scream that instead becomes an indignated gasp. “Fuck--! I was--”

“Hmmm, I know.” Kuroo answers you, his hands coming to hold your thighs open as you tremble from the effort. His thumb pulls your cunt lips apart and his golden eyes glint, fierce and pleased at the same time. “Aren’t you an interesting plaything? Skyrocketing into pleasure head first when I was just getting a taste.” He licks his lips, his canines making an appearance as his ridiculous long tongue cleans his face and chin where your juices have leaked to.

His grin should be illegal. “Delicious, by the way. But I’m not ready to end this so fast.”

“End this… fast?” You ask, still having difficulty in thinking straight when you’re floating up in the air with your legs spread open in front of his face, his thumbs spreading you open as if you’re his meal and he likes to play before eating.

“Maybe we should go somewhere more comfortable.” Kuroo muses out loud and before you can blink you’re falling, screaming in your surprise until you bounce on the comfortable cushion of your bed. The air is knocked out of you in a oof, but Kuroo just looks down at you happily, his smile still looking mischievous as if that’s his whole personality trait.

You know what, maybe it is.

“Warn a girl.” You tell him, and he winks your way, just as he pulls your naked body to the edge of the bed.

“Consider yourself warned: i’m about to eat you up.”

His massive hands engulf you and arch your body into his eager mouth, where his tongue lavish at your sex in a way that has you feeling as if they everywhere and at the same time. The muscle is thick and long, firm as it presses from your entrance to your clit, as it rounds your sensitive spot and slithers down through your pussy lips, slurping it with his lips as his wicked tongue never stops its prodding.

One of his hands circles your body, closes around your breast and tweeks your hard nipple between his thumb and forefinger, painfully, deliciously, something obscene curling inside you at the way the feelings mix, the pain and the bliss and it doesn’t help that Kuroo moves his mouth to the sensitive and fragile skin of your inner thighs and build a whole trail of bite marks and throbbing hickeys.

Something firm, large and hot slither up your body, circling a breast but finding it’s home at a circle around your neck -- his tail -- and the more vocal you become, the more it seems to close around your throat, your heart beating on your fingertips as they claw at anything of Kuroo’s you can reach, hazy and breathless at the way he discloses your wicked desires so plainly, the way his every move seems to discover layer after thick layer of temptations that you have hidden so deep with partners before.

“Such a pretty little thing you are,” Kuroo coos to you when he presses a thick finger past the tight ring of your cunt. “So honest and eager,” It moves, prods, another one joins and soon they’re scissoring against your walls, opening your tender flesh so he can sink himself in further.

The mere thought has you moaning out loud -- unbelievable and yet, you feel how your arousal drips from your cunt to your thighs.

“Ahhhh~” Kuroo exhales as his tongue laps a long stripe of your juices. “So pure.” He says against your pussy lips, kissing them and then letting his long tongue slide further until it prods between the cheeks of your ass, immediately falling into circular motions on the furl of muscle. You yelp but midway it becomes an embarrassing moan. “This just makes me wanna ruin you more.”

It’s too much -- he has to know it’s too much, and as Kuroo curves his fingers just right inside your sloppy cunt and his tongue breaches just the tiniest bit the resistance of your ass, your eyes are falling open in huge plates, a long moan of his name on your tongue as you’re so close to cumming you can practically taste the high already.

“No, not now.” Kuroo chastises you as he retreats his tongue and fingers from you, the arch of your body ready to snap curling in a tremble of a denied release.

“Too soon, kitten. I want to savor this.” His tone comes out between pleased and patronizing, and it makes your cunt clench, empty.

You heave, unfocused eyes blinking the wicked golden away. “What--” A deep breath. “What do you want from me?”

“Wrong question, kitten.” Kuroo tells you just as his massive frame bends over you, the wicked eyes seducing you in once again -- not that they ever stopped. “Now that I got a taste,” He murmurs practically against your lips, and you lick where his breath hits, captivated, “I want all of you.”

He lets you fall on the bed once again and maneuvers your body without difficulty until your ass is high in the air and your thighs are spread, his tail lighter around your throat, fondly slithering on your jaw. His knee presses on the mattress until it squeaks and his hands massage from your thighs to your ass, prying it open and kneading it with hard, powerful hands.

“Beautiful.” He praises you and you swear your pussy throbs and flutters hard enough to make a gushing noise. By the way Kuroo snickers, it may be true.

His tongue is the first thing you feel right after his laboured breathing on your cunt. It pries you open, thick muscle sliding inside you, big and wet and dexterous and you’re moaning against the mattress in seconds.

Kuroo seems pleased even though all he does is hum, his large hands press on your back and the other opens your cheeks wide for his assault. Something hot prods your asshole, and you’re surprised at how careful his fingers can be while maneuvering the wetness left by his tongue there. They move slowly but surely as he presses and retreats, opening you from two fronts and still seemingly not enough.

He decides to change, his tongue coming out of your sex and then sliding to your ass as his thumbs open your lips for him to watch as he dips two big fingers inside your cunt. The stretch, the massive pleasure of being assaulted by both ends make you clench and cream around his digits, once again climbing up the familiar euphoric road.

This time, however, Kuroo stops you differently.

His hard, heavy hand falls on your ass cheeks forcefully in what must be his intention of being light. You yelp loudly and groan, somehow caught between winding down and flying right over the edge.

“Oh, hoho~” Sounds from his voice and he descends his hand once again on your ass, heavy and startling. It sounds so loud and so lewd in the empty room, your whole being burns in place, trembling from the effort of holding yourself in all fours and the pure elation growing inside you, spreading from your fingertips to the depraved center of your being.

As the sting settles in your senses, it winds down your orgasm but makes a renewed wave drip from your cunt and down your thigh. You’re surprised at how it excites you, the pain, but fuck it still stings. His hand falls on your ass a couple more times but then his hot palms knead the stinging flesh, an exquisite feeling spreading over you as it throbs and burns and you melt.

“Ugh! Fuck!” You groan, biting the mattress, unable to tell him to stop and too embarrassed to tell him to keep going.

“You really are a nice plaything, aren’t you?” Kuroo asks but it seems as if it's more for himself, his digits collecting your wetness as he dips once again inside your cunt, spreading his fingers apart and sliding a third inside just as his thumb circles your clit lightly and you howl, sensitive and wanton, too eager into tasting bliss.

This time, at least you’re half-conscious he’s not letting you cum. Kuroo stops, leaving you clenching for something, anything and gives you nothing. His immoral smirk seems to sound in the air, much as the way his tail leaves your throat to circle your hair and yank you back, stuffing your open mouth with the fingers that were just inside you. You lap obediently at them and he groans in your ear, teeth nibbling at your skin. It’s almost as if he’s tempted.

“We’re almost ready, kitten.” He tells you with a hoarse voice, all sin and flames, “Hold on.”

“Ready?” You question poorly with a mouth stuffed of fingers, but he understands and nods your way, his tongue licking the spit that starts dripping from the corner of your mouth at how broad his fingers open it.

You don’t see if Kuroo undress or if he just magically gets naked behind you, the startling thing being the incredible feeling of his hot skin on yours, the dazzling feeling of his hard planes of muscle on your back, the sublime sight of his skin marked by faint scars; When you feel the scalding, throbbing thick member at the side of your thigh, however, you have to look back.

“Oh my God,” You murmur at the sight of his cock. It’s proportional to his form, but that just means it’s ridiculously big, a veiny, swollen thing that seems looming as it stands close to you, and it clicks in your slow mind just what he meant by almost ready.

“Nope, I’m on the other team here.” Kuroo grins at you as he turns you with your back on the bed, spreads you on the cushion until your thighs hurt from the effort. His tail sways behind him as if to paint a scene, and you realize his wings are nowhere to be seen now, “Though I do think it’s some kind of poetic justice to have you screaming and blaspheming jesus while I fuck you silly.”

The higher part of your cheekbones alights with flames at the implication and you gasp back the words you planned on speaking when Kuroo’s hand pivots your lower back up to his mouth and closes his efforts on your neglected clit as his freak thick tongue enters you in one go.

You cannot explain the sensation of such a soft muscle invading your walls, or the way in which it seems to focus so expertly on your weak spots, but you’re too wound up not to fall head first into rapture.

When he stops this time, you actually curse him, in the most wrecked sound that has ever left your lips.

“Ughhhhhhh--Fuck you!”

The bastard laughs, debauched, then deposits a kiss over your pussy as his golden eyes fix on you. “Now you’re ready.”

Kuroo adjusts until you’re both at the bed, pulling you up on his powerful thighs until his cock bounces over your navel and reaches way too high for you to actually be calm. But then he retreats his hips, bent over you so his lips can steal the air from your lungs just as his large hand palms at your breasts and his tail slither by your side.

“Try not to cum too fast, kitten.”

“Easier said than done,” you grumble back against his lips and let yourself fall into the ruthless ecstasy of being spread open on his cock. His lips thread on the side of your jaw, under your neck, biting and sucking on your skin as his hands divide themselves between holding you up and pawing at every bit of you they can reach.

Everything feels so good, as if he knows your inner thoughts by hint alone -- your toes curl at each newfound area that receives his onslaught, you’re contorting at how good his mouth feels on your pulsepoint as he slowly starts to sink his cock inside you. It’s a weird feeling, to feel so full and yet still so eager, but you’re welcoming him at each torturous inch he manages to squeeze inside your tight walls. Your body trembles from the effort, Kuroo’s tongue slides from your neck to your nipple as his hand climbs up and settles around your throat, his fingers enveloping your neck.

Your heart picks up enough that you feel it beating on your ears as you search for his eyes and finally you’re pinned in place under the sharp gold and their twisted intent.

“Scream for god if you want me to stop.” Is the warning he gives you before his fingers start constricting around your neck, your airways blocked as your chest starts to heave. And in between the small twinge of anxiousness and alarm, you realize just how much that entices you, how much it makes you burn and crave. Somehow you feel corrupted, falling into desires that threaten to peel you apart and leave you exposed.

Kuroo’s cock keeps slowly stretching your insides and his tongue twirls your nipple, your lungs burning for air and your eyes rolling inside your skull as you skyrocket into blissful free-fall.

“Oh, hell yes.” You listen but don’t register as your body seems to be crushed under the massive pressure of your climax, burning and bright, sound ringing in your head that you come to find out it’s from your hoarse moan, your breathing laboured as Kuroo allows you to suck in air during your peak.

It dawns on you as you’re coming back to your body that theres a twinge of soft pain indicating Kuroo has bottomed out, his muscular thighs pressing flush against yours, the feeling incredible but fuck so much right now.

As Kuroo nestles himself entirely inside of you, you feel as if your focus shifts, the task to not concentrate all of your attention on the massive hot cock spliting you in two is difficult. Your body feels tight, and not just from your fluttering walls that are constricting around him.

Kuroo sends you a big smile above your head, twinkling eyes in the dark. “Now, hold on.”

You do your best to do so, your arms latching onto him with all the strength you can muster as his hips retreat and then slam back inside you. You’re jolted at each push and pull, the sensual motions so depraved as the noises echo in the room, and you’re dragged into the ferocious pleasure that threatens to overwhelm you, and despite the fact you’ve cum just few moments before, as his tail slides between your bodies and circles and pats at your clit, you’re screaming and, quite unbelievably, cumming again.

“Now we’re very ready.” Kuroo says in a grunt above you, shameless grin as his eyes do their golden thing once again. He lets you stop trembling, peppering small kisses along your collarbone until you’re breathing normally again, but something tells you you’re just being fooled.

“What?” You tiredly question, the feeling of dread confirming your suspicion.

“We have the whole night ahead of us, little one.” Kuroo nudges at the side of your face, bites softly at the junction of your jaw. “Or we could have more. All you need to do is say yes and i’ll mark you nice and easy here--” His teeth softly nibble on your pulsepoint, “and you’ll be mine.”

“Oh, god.”

“Haha, wrong again.” His eyes pierce yours, swirling gold as molten honey dripping over your body and weighting your mind down. “Go ahead, tell me what you want.”

It tips out, softly and raw, and you have to close your eyes to hide your emotion. “To belong.”

“Oh, my little thing.” Kuroo softly murmurs on your ear, “Belong to me, then.”

You’re swaying despite lying down, something big and heavy coiling inside your chest as you blink, “I don’t want to belong to someone who isn’t mine.”

It’s a big truth to leave out -- the need for companionship, but a mutual one, a lasting one, a trusting one. You don’t want to be alone, but you also don’t want to have someone who doesn’t belong to you, too.

Kuroo just smiles, golden eyes on yours, melting you from the fierceness alone. “Exactly,” he speaks against your lips, the taste of his breath on your tongue and you eagerly gulp it down, wickedly licking at his lips. “But i’ll be yours, too.”

In your hazed state, that’s all you need to hear, so you just shyly nod -- and Kuroo growls, angles your head to the side, and sears a marking bite on your neck -- deep, and painful. You mewl, body arching into his touch, and his tongue laps at the fresh wound, making it nice and numb.

“Now, let’s go to the main course.” Kuroo gives you no rest, retreating his hips and slamming back inside. “Don’t forget to breathe!” He teases between your moans.

Once the fucking starts, it’s a frantic mess, and it goes on forever until the mere feeling of Kuroo’s cock leaving your heat is enough to make you whimper at the loss. The feeling of him inside your walls, a thing that mingles with your being, seares your memory until you cannot remember the feeling of not being split open on his thick cock. As you melt away from the overstimulation of having no rest while Kuroo contently and incessantly keeps pistoning inside you, your painful pleasure mixes until you’re climbing into something that feels weirdly uncanny, your mind -- or is it your body? -- twirls inside itself as if there’s something more than just sweet release ready to burst out.

Kuroo has made you both teeter on the edge of pleasure and fall into it so many times you can’t differentiate the feelings that come now, this sensation of something being pulled out of you like the many orgasms he caused.

“Hmmm… Yes, my time is coming.” Kuroo groans, his hips movements turning sloppy, apparently displeased with his fucking being cut short while you very much suck a thankful breath at being able to rest. Kuroo’s teeth descend on your neck once again, his hot tongue over the pulsating mark of his bite and you feel him shudder and groan your name as he finally - finally - peaks, the feeling of hot spurts spreading inside you.

As he cums, Kuroo brings a finger to rub over your abused clit softly and between your oversensitivity and the fact he angles his fat cockhead to softly pound over your sweet spot as he sails his own climax, there’s very little you can do but be ripped apart in bliss, once again, by him. This time is weird. Even as pleasure keeps swirling inside you and building up with the eerie sensation, you can do very little but hold on and wait until the waves crash and pass and you can blissfully surrender into the darkness of exhaustion.

However, the freakish sensation twirling inside yourself builds and builds until you’re light-headed from the feeling and you just then realize how you’re shining, and how Kuroo has disappeared.

You don’t even have it in yourself to panic. Your body feels heavy and used, spent in the best way possible, but still completely unused to such a frantic session as every muscle in your being throbs, and your eyelids weigh the world as they fall closed and you’re engulfed by darkness.

[bonus scene]

When you wake up in the morning, you are engulfed in a nice blanket, dressed in some mismatched set of pajamas, feeling as if you just had the best sleep of your life - and a weird vivid dream to go with it. You’re blinking up to your ceiling, stretching on your bed and satisfied with how the knots break in small noises as you sit up, when you feel just how sore you are, how your body is heavy despite satisfied, how your thighs burn and your sex throbs.

Everything crashes up on your mind way too fast, and you’re suddenly torn between passing out and bolting up, but as you try to get up your body falters and a big, hard, hot hand plants itself over your middle and pulls you right back at the bed.

Of course, you scream.

“Shh, kitten, there’s people trying to sleep here, y’know?”

“What--How--What are you doing here?” You shriek, looking at what is definitely the demon you thought you dreamed, but in a way more humanized version if the absence of his horns, claws and massive wings are anything to go by. The golden eyes are sharp as ever, but no black background to them, and you can infer by that much that his sinful tail probably isn't around too.

The grin he sends your way gives you war flashbacks that make your skin prickle with goosebumps.

“Well, yesterday was quite nice.” He tells you and you can feel your whole face burn from his tone alone. “So I decided that hell can wait a bit more while I have more fun with you.” His eyes flash with a weird energy, and Kuroo brings his fingers to glide over his bite mark at your neck. The throbbing mark you had forgotten about until now. “After all, you’re mine now.”

“Oh, fuck.”

You’re doomed.

#kuroo tetsuro x reader #kuroo tetsurou x reader smut #kuroo smut #tw monsterfucking #haikyuu smut

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rwbyvein · 3 years

Text

Firen Lhain: Chapter 805: King: Part I / III

Winter finished her report to General Ironwood, whom was visibly afraid. "Can't they see I'm doing this for the good of Atlas?!" he asked.

"I'm afraid not, James." Oscar / Ozpin stated. "The hearts and minds of the people has never been your strong suit."

"But I'm!.." Ironwood shouted.

"That is not what they see." Oscar / Ozpin stated. "All they see is a tin despot, shuttering an entire contient.

"You know that's not why I!.."

"I know, Specialist Schnee knows, along with her sister, and... family..." Oscar / Ozpin stated, "but what about the people. What do they know?"

"It can't exactly tell them what's going on." Ironwood said to him.

"Of course not, but what can you tell them?" Oscar / Ozpin asked.

"That members of the military are not following my orders?" Ironwood asked, and Oscar / Ozpin shook his head. He then looked to Winter.

"Your loyalty is commendable, but right now what he needs is the truth." Oscar / Ozpin said to her. She briefly glanced at him before looking straight while standing at attention. "Tell me, Specialist Schnee, what would the people do if they saw General Ironwood purging his military?" She developed a determined look. "Not what they should believe, but what would they believe?" he asked.

"If they already did not trust him," Winter nervously voiced, "they would look at it like a... tyrant... removing the disloyal."

"Precisely." Oscar / Ozpin stated.

"So, what can I do?" a nearly panicked Ironwood asked.

"Well, right now the conspirators are trying to exaggerate your overreach of power." Oscar / Ozpin stated, "They are using your chain of command to twart you." Ironwood looked at him questioningly. "Then simply don't use it."

"What?" Ironwood asked.

"Simple, James, you speak directly to the people of Remnant. They need to understand why the borders were closed, and even more importantly, that they are open."

"We can't tell them about..." Ironwood tried to say.

"You tell that that the borders were closed because of the Fall of Beacon, and the fear the same would happen to Haven. Lying has never been your strong suit, James, but as both a politician and a conspirator to save Remnant, you might want to learn to do so at least passably well.."

"You want me to lie?" a nervous and offended Ironwood asked.

"I want you to tell the truth, but selectively so." Oscar / Opzin stated, and Ironwood still looked nervous. "You are a General, declassify parts of it, and tell people that. But most importantly, tell them that the borders are open."

"And Lieutenant-General Hartman?" Ironwood asked.

Oscar / Ozpin relaxed and spun his cane, turning towards the window. He then looked back at Ironwood. "Oh?, find her some prestigious promotion that completely neutralizes her." He then looked out the window, and heard Ironwood voice his uncertainty. "Right now she is adjustant to General's seat on the Atlas Council. She needs something she can do on her own."

"She betrays me, and you want to give him more power?" Ironwood asked.

"More and less." Oscar / Ozpin stated, "Right now her power comes from your office. If you gave her her own command?.."

"You want me to reward her for committing treason?" an irate Ironwood asked.

"Anything she does at the moment falls onto your head." Oscar / Ozpin stated, "If she had her own command, she would be accountable for her own actions."

"Even if we did that, we'd have to give her a corps." Ironwood stated. "We couldn't give her Atlas command, and if we gave her one of the further corps, we would risk civil war."

"Civil war is a risk everyone faces when they build an army." Ozpin stated. "There's a reason why I choose to rely on Choice."

"Without Creation, Choice meaningless." Ironwood firmly stated.

"Without Destruction and Creation, Choice is powerless." Oscar / Ozpin replied. "Without Choice, Creation and Destruction are meaningless. Without Knowledge, a proper choice cannot be made." He then sighed, "Unfortunately, for the common man, choice is simply the way they feel. And how do they feel about you, James, who has kept them in the dark?"

"I don't need to be loved..." Ironwood voiced.

"Unfortunately, you do." Oscar / Ozpin stated. "The people of Atlas are ready to revolt against you. I'm sure you must have felt it."

"WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!" Ironwood asked.

"Have your great army provide them tangible benefits." Oscar / Ozpin stated.

"But, if we spread out the army, we make them vulnerable to attack?!" Ironwood asked.

"No." Oscar / Ozpin stated, "You trade one form of attack for another. Your solders made a choice, did they not?"

"You're saying I should let them die?!" Ironwood replied, "How could you?.."

"Who would your soldiers rather face, an army pointing their weapons at them, or corrosion from within? Grimm are a far more tangible foe than an eroding faith in the system they are fighting for. It is commendable to think of the lives of your soldiers. It is foolhardy to only think of the lives of your soldiers."

Ironwood was lost in thought for a few moments. "Then what do I do about Lieutenant-General Hartman? If she is the one undermining my orders, wouldn't she see this promotion for what it is?"

"Give her a lavish ceremony." Oscar / Ozpin stated, "I know you consider such things a waste, but you think soldiers will only do as they are told. They have choice, whether you want it or not. The only thing you can do is recognize the choice, and give it a bit of a push when needed."

"Choice is not exactly my strong suit." Ironwood voiced.

"Well, good thing you have me." Oscar / Ozpin said with a bright smile. "And to think that young Oscar will soon rise to become headmaster at Beacon Academy at such a young age? Truly marvelous."

"So?" Ironwood asked him, "You want to go back to the way things were before?"

"If it is at all possible, yes." Oscar / Ozpin stated.

* * *

Jaune and RWBY were in their suite's bathroom when they heard noise from all of their scrolls. "Ruby, if you could?" Weiss asked. Ruby Petal Burst out of the room, leaving a cloud of moisture to fall to the ground, and quickly Petal Burst back. "General Ironwood?!" Ruby asked.

"This is General James Ironwood." he stated, "You are hearing this because the Cross-Continental-Transmit System has been fully restored. I would like to take a moment to thank Glynda Goodwitch and her team for restoring the tower lost at Beacon academy. Without her abilities, this likely would have taken years to restore. I would also like to thank our team of engineers for working around the clock to restore service as quickly as possible. I have a couple of announcements. First, considering the crises in Beacon and Haven academies are finally over, will be fully be reopening the borders. We won't expect this to work overnight, so we will be setting up a council in Argus to expedite entry permits until the borders are fully opened again. Second, Lieutenant-General Janice Hartman has for far too long lived under my shadow, and it was time for her to have her own command. She will be given command of the First Atlasian Roboticized Brigade Group. Atlas has long tried to ensure the safety of our soldiers, and the First Atlasian Roboticized Brigade Group will be an attempt to use Knights as the primary combatants, rather then in a support capacity. She will be given the majority of current Paladins, and will be one of the first to test the next generation of Atlasian Great Knights. I want to thank everyone for their patience during trying times, and a reminder that the Atlasian Military will provide assistance to our friends in the other kingdoms. This has been General James Ironwood, and thank you for your time and patience."

"Well, that's a thing." Yang said as she dried herself off.

"He's obviously responding to the propaganda they were trying to use against him." Blake added as she picked up a towel. She paused to give those behind her a good look at her posterior.

"I never expected the General to be so flexible." Weiss quipped.

* * *

Taiyang jumped up and walked towards the cell. Neo turned to look at him, while he just held out his hand. Neo glared and turned her back to him. "You can get your scroll back when you decide to become less stabby." Taiyang said to her. She turned around to glare at him. "Considering you just tried to kill all of my kids-in-law, and their friends..."

"And their enemy." Raven added.

"And their enemy." Taiyang stated, "They have shown you an extreme amount of patience. Do you know what they could have done to you?"

"Do you really think they have it in them?" Raven asked.

"They could have turned your over to General Ironwood." Taiayng simply stated. "Jaune felt you could be reformed, and at least made to stab less people. Is turning over your scroll without a fight really that much to ask?"

Neo turned to glare at him.

"Or, you could look at it this way?" Raven asked, and Neo gave her a distrutful gaze. "We could always take it from you, and likely destroy what little you have left to do so." Neo gave her a look as if she didn't believe it. "Oh?" Raven asked, "You think I won't?" She gave Neo a deathly glare, and in reply Neo reluctanctly handed over her scroll.

* * *

Oscar's aunt looked at her scroll, for the first time in months gaining hope.

#rwby #firen lhain #faunus au #pollinated knight

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shiny-procrastinates · 3 years

Text

(re)Watching Magia Record S1 - part 1

Hello and welcome everyone to the first post on this watch-along commentary of the first season of Magia Record! Whether you are just now watching it for the first time, or are re-watching in preparation for the second season, or have only played the game and are curious about the anime (in which case I'd be surprised you even exist) I hope you can have some fun reading these ramblings as I try to put my thoughts into words (actually turned more into narrating the show) throughout all 12 13 episodes.

Before we can get to it, though, I have a few warnings to give:

1 - As much as I'd love to be able to memory swipe so I can watch this fresh all over again, such an ability is sadly still beyond my grasp. In other words, this isn't my first time watching (or second, for that matter; more like the sixth… or seventh…). That being the case I can't claim that these are my first impressions and it's very likely this commentary will be somewhat biased by my previous knowledge. However, I can guarantee one thing: I will do my best to keep this spoiler-free, so you don't have to worry if this is your first time watching.

(I will, however, be assuming that you have watched the OG series and Rebellion, so beware of that).

2 - Please don't come into this expecting it to be Madoka 2

Also no, this is not a continuation of the OG, it’s an alternate universe spin-off.

This one's for first-time viewers.

Well, ok, this sounds like vague tweeting and I'm kind of whining here, but I have seen a number of peeps on the internet saying that Magia Record is bad only for their argument to boil down to "because it isn't OG Madoka!"

Yeah it isn't. I'm pretty sure there's "Side Story" written somewhere in the title too.

Leaving aside the matter of nostalgia glasses and whether the original series was that much of a masterpiece or not (it's been over five years since I last watched it, so I can't say anything either way.) it seems kind of weird to me that someone would bash a spinoff on the grounds of how close it is to the original. Because here's the thing: to me, the whole point of spinoffs is taking an already existing scenario and putting a spin on it to make something new. That's exactly what makes them fun!

MagiReco didn't need to be a Madoka clone or to try hard and beat the original. That would probably have made it bad, actually. What it did need to do was to create an interesting story using the world set up by the OG Madoka and the other spinoffs, and that, in my opinion, it did, so I hope people can give it a chance and judge it on its own merits rather than only compared to the original. I'm not saying you can't hate it, either, I myself have my own problems with it, it's just that I want to see more reasonable reasons than "it's not the OG so it's bad".

3 - As you can probably already tell from these warnings, these posts are bound to get looong, so I'd recommend setting aside a fair amount of time and getting real comfy if you're gonna read it all. I also don't mind if you just skip ahead and only read the interesting parts, I'm not the internet police.

3.5 - I don't want to use it as an excuse, but I think I should make it clear that English is not my native language, so I apologize in advance for any mistakes and awkward/stilted text. It's hard to tell by myself, so feel free to correct me if you find something.

SO, with that out of the way let’s get down to what’s really important:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story: Magia Record Episode 1

Whew, now that’s a mouthful.

You know, in my mind I always thought a “side story” was something that happened alongside a “main story”, like another POV, so I’m not sure that’s the most appropriate title, but who am I to judge?

So here we go, we’re off with some beautiful futuristic scenery already, that’s the Madoka series I know.

As the classic Sis Puella Magi plays in the background, two unseen narrators tell us the tale of the so called “magical girls” as we are shown the reality of being one, meeting our first witch for this series.

Risking your life to save a cat doesn’t seem like the smartest of things. Rather, witches eat cats? That’s mean.

No, you really, really don’t. This narration definitely seems made to make everyone who saw the original say this, particularly with how silly are the wishes these girls suggest.

And hey, look, even this girl who supposedly had her wish granted doesn’t seem very happy.

Hang in there, this is only the first episode.

Man, this scenery really is pretty though.

After an exciting fight with a witch in the train, our girl here silently goes home to find

Whatever the heck this is.

So, our girl here seems to be having strange visions whenever she enters her room, that is very very suspiciously cut exactly in half. Protagonist, you sure have an unique sense of interior decoration.

She goes on with her day, makes two lunchboxes and… oh, it seems she’s all alone.

Is this something you should be telling your own daughter?

Long story short, Iroha’s parents are abroad right now (as is suspiciously the case with many a anime protagonist parents). I actually love the parallel this scene draws with OG Madoka: whereas Madoka’s parents seem responsible and Madoka even looks up to her mom and they’re a happy united family, Iroha comes off as being the responsible one in her family and her parents are gone from the get-go. This way, the lonely atmosphere of the previous scene also starts making sense.

So, it seems like there’s something Iroha wants to do here, and that’s why she decided to stay behind.

Perhaps. Did you wish to save a black cat?

Wow, this teacher is speaking fast. Calm down lady, we’re not here to speedrun the content, geez. Though I guess we should be happy she’s at least giving a proper class, unlike a certain other teacher…

Oh great, it's this guy.

Ok, Iroha doesn’t remember what she wished for and Kyuubei doesn’t know either, although he knows she used her wish for the sake of someone. Kyuubei theorizes that the reason she doesn’t remember might be that not remembering was part of her wish, but Iroha doesn’t think she’d wish for that. I don’t think you’d ever think to wish for something like that until you had to wish for something like that though.

She’s got a fair point. After all, wishing in this universe is basica— the heck is going on in the background there?! O-kaaay…

Iroha was having a weird think-spot mental conversation with Kyuubei there, and missed speedrun teacher’s lecture entirely. Being meguca is suffering.

We get some school motto propaganda, and now we’re on the roof. Oh? Where did all the friendship stuff from the propaganda go? Seems like Iroha’s not following the school spirit. Unless she considers the white weasel a friend, so that’s why she gave him her extra… wait, Kyuubei can EAT? I thought he was some alien machine-like being. H-Huh...

Classmate A: Tamaki-san, maji tenshi!

She’s probably just shy. According to her classmates, Iroha used to be busy doing something or the other, but no one can remember what that is.

Cute.

But maybe don’t do that somewhere someone could easily walk in on you, Iroha.

Iroha gets a call by the girl from the combat scene from before, whose name is Kuroe. I couldn’t tell from their conversation if they’ve known each other for a while or if they just met each other for the first time in the fight before.

On the train, although she’s the one who called her over, Kuroe remains silent. Iroha, clearly uncomfortable, tries her best to make conversation. Poor Iroha, I know the feeling.

We learn from her that the number of witches around has been decreasing. She comments that being unable to get Grief Seeds is troubling, but it’s better than having witches causing trouble. Poor girl has no way to know just how much of a bad news it is running out of Grief Seeds.

What’s with pink-haired girls and lacking self-esteem? Iroha, are you sure you didn’t wish to save a black and forget that you did? You did save a white one just before.

Kuroe finally decides to talk, and she tells us this:

If you go to Kamihama, you’ll be saved. To anyone that saw the OG, the first thought that comes to mind is that they’ll be saved from their destiny of turning into witches, but it seems Kuroe doesn’t know the truth yet. She just doesn’t want to fight witches anymore. I think.

The train lights up, and…

...this is extremely unsettling considering the truth about witches and the conversation they’re having right now. There’s a lot of this, but this just hits different having watched the original.

Iroha’s not inclined to believe what Kuroe’s saying. Of course, despite not remembering her wish, she’s the type that’s happy with fighting witches if she can save someone, and Kuroe’s not being very convincing either. The whole thing is apparently a rumor spread by some girls who saw a dream that told them that.

Except that Kuroe actually had the dream too.

Like most magical girls, Kuroe made a short-sighted wish, and regrets it. She now wants to be saved, so she’s going to Kamihama.

...or she was, but before that, they’ll have to defeat the witch they let escape the other day, ‘cos she’s back for more.

I actually have so many questions about this scene. Weren’t Labyrinths pocket dimensions? How come this one’s moving in physical space? We know witches themselves move and their Labyrinth goes with that, but I thought it was more, like, the entrance to the Labyrinth moves. Then how come witches can escape if magical girls get carried with their Labyrinth when they move…? Just... just... what?

The answer to all of that is probably “magic”.

Like that, Express Witch Labyrinth crashes right into what seems to be a train station. Labyrinths don’t have brakes, confirmed.

Brutal.

Looks like it’s not only magical girls who have territorial disputes going on. Although it’s nice that they won’t have to fight two witches at the same time, this is not exactly a relief when you consider these two were already struggling with the previous one, and this one just ripped it apart like crab.

As expected, Iroha’s arrows do no damage at all. When all seems lost…

A wild singing mini Kyuubei appears! Is this a shiny?

The singing Kyuubei distracts the witch and jumps towards Iroha, who uses her pro white cat catching skills to grab it, and… something happens. Whatever this Kyuubei did, Iroha’s having some flashbacks now. Sadly, the middle of a battle isn’t the best time to be having a BSOD and, despite Kuroe’s attempts to snap her out of it, they’re sitting ducks right now, a black and a white one.

Thankfully for them, though, they’re not alone in this barrier. This mystery blue haired girl spams flying spears and makes short work of the witch Iroha’s arrows didn’t even scratch earlier. She’s clearly at a whole ‘nother level.

Also, chibi Kyuubei’s gone. Totally not suspicious. Nope. Not at all.

So, from this OP miss get-the-heck-out-of-my-territory, who didn’t even bother saying her name, we learn that not only there is no salvation in Kamihama, there are more, stronger witches, and there are currently no Kyuubei. She gives them the Grief Seeds from the two witches before, and passes on a warning to them. Not the friendliest of magical girls. Though if you consider what happens when you run out of Grief Seeds, one could understand why it’d be undesirable having too many magical girls in the same place.

With this, Iroha and Kuroe take the train back to their town and things are totally awkward again.

Welp, seems like Kuroe doesn’t want to chat anymore, so we’ll have a dream sequence instead.

Forgive my lack of words, but this scene doesn’t need them. This is just… you couldn’t ask for a better representation of what being a magical girl wishing for salvation is like. Everyone has their own reasons, but in the end, having known despair, these girls are desperately clinging to this last hope called Kamihama. It’s almost a pilgrimage.

“Let’s go to Kamihama. We’ll be saved there”

And in the midst of all that is the mysterious girl from Iroha’s dreams.

(the track here, Paradero de Memoria, is also great btw)

Now, with various wishes written all over in the background, we get Kyuubei’s spiel about magical girls. I think this is word-by-word the same from the original too.

We now get to finally know what our protagonist’s wish was.

So Iroha wished to cure her younger sister’s illness, but the sister in question is now nowhere to be found. Worse: everything related to her is gone. Even Iroha, who made a wish for her sake, didn’t remember her existence until now. Oh man, that’s no normal disappearance. What happened? Guess that’s what Iroha will have to find out now.

With that, we conclude the first episode of Magia Record(’s s1)!

This is a really strong first episode in my opinion. It decently introduces our protagonist, sets up the mysteries we will be dealing with from here on and also manages to trace connections with the original, while using the viewer’s previous knowledge to give a whole different impression to some scenes. You wouldn’t be like “hell no” at the rumor there at the start if you didn’t know the truth about magical girls, and I doubt that final scene would hit that hard either. It’s just really good at this and it’ll continue doing that from now on. I love it.

Speaking of the final scene, me having watched the original over five years ago might also be part of it but that is really my favorite scene in Madoka overall. I just really really love that scene. (Seriously, I’ve watched this scene so many times I know it by heart now. Help.)

Alas, I lied, the episode’s not over yet, we still have our classic anime first episode ending-opening to watch. So let’s listen, to Gomakashi:

This logo’s real pretty.

So yeah, pretty standard anime opening. If you pay attention, there are some references to Connect too, what with the selfcest and whatnot. Although I managed to mistake this when I first watched, this one’s actually sung by the trio TrySail rather than ClariS. That’s the VAs for Iroha, Asakura Momo; Yachiyo (the get-out-of-my-territory girl), Amamiya Sora and Natsukawa Shiina, whose character we’ve yet to meet. TrySail has a lot of cool songs, so do check them out if you haven’t already. (free ad)

This time, in fact, the episode is over! Whew, I did say this was going to be long, but not even I thought it’d be this long. By the time this is posted I should have a backlog of these, so my plan is to post one everyday until we are done. I hope you had fun reading this here rant and I’ll be looking forward to meeting you guys again tomorrow, same place, maybe same hour, so we can go on and watch episode 2 together!

(P.S.: I am considering doing a series of posts at a later date comparing the anime to the game, but we’ll see. The first few chapters are fine, but the game is stupidly long, so I feel it’d take a lot of motivation and stamina I’m not sure I have at the moment. There’s also the possibility watching the first arc again would bring back my yt copy-apocalipse grief back and that’d suck, definitely don’t wanna go through that again.)

#magia record #puella magi madoka magica #pmmm magia record #this post apologizes for existing

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naerwenia · 3 years

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Face of the Empire

So, here's a fic I wrote one night after getting an idea, where Eshka is recruited by Thrawn to work for COMPNOR, to be a face for alien acceptance in the Empire. This was supposed to be a longer story, but I realized I don't actually have a plan for the plot, so this is all for now. Maybe I complete this one day. For now, it's just an unfinished idea without a point, about Grand Admiral Thrawn and my OC/Star Wars rpg character Eshka Kith'lya (who's actually full Bothan rather than just half like in this fic). I tried to smooth out some weird sentences, but I am just a human. When she thought about her future, she didn’t see herself as someone who would ever work for the Empire. She was an anarchist, educated, and more importantly, alien, a half-Bothan to be exact. Not someone who would ever look to work for the Empire, yet here she was, smiling for a picture as the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order crafted the next poster to be spread around, with Eshka as the face of lies.

University of Bar’leth was not the Hutt's first choice for Eshka. He wanted her to continue her studies in Coruscant but new policies prevented that. Credits would have solved that but what good would forcing an alien into an all-human university do? All the politics working in that situation would undermine the core education she was there to get. Her major was medicine, not political science. All social skills and charm were to be learnt on the side while maneuvering in the social circles of university life. Even Eshka knew she wasn’t there to just learn, she had to gather life-long connections, knowledge, and make sure her name would be known. Even if she didn’t have to do all that, her loyalty to the Hutt meant she had to obey his every word. If she didn’t, there was no reason for him to keep her around, she just cost him credits and sometimes gave him a headache, but soon she would take her place in the high society and get to pay back the Hutt’s kindness.

It really was kindness that made him take her under his wing, if any Hutt ever happened to have such quality. He had promised her parents that the girl would get an education and everything she needed, but she’d have to pay back in the end. No amount of credits would pay back the life Eshka was given, but information and favours might, and she was sure if need be, she would be shipped to a foreign lord to secure an alliance. Eshka had her own life until she didn’t, and she was aware of it. This deal, however unbalanced, didn’t come without positives though. Her freedom had been exchanged for fancy dances, extravagant gowns, education, and a name she could drop to get herself out of trouble: Marlo, Leader of the Hutt Council. There was, however, an acknowledgement that if she used that name frivolously, she tied her own name to him even more, and being known as one of the Hutt’s women was not what she wanted. Eshka was a doctor, a half-Bothan, taken care of monetarily by Marlo. That was the lie Eshka told herself, and got most to believe.

That was the first sentence Eshka learnt to tell without it sounding like a lie. She learnt to twist words, to make up the truth she wanted. The way she told everyone what she wanted them to hear, what she wanted them to know, just choosing not to tell the whole truth, just the words that the audience needed to hear. This was the lesson Eshka had learnt from Hutts. If nothing else, she knew how to speak and find her way up the social ladder. Each and every word had such a weight to it, and Eshka hated it. No matter how good she was with the words, she didn’t know how to express her feelings, to give words true meaning. It probably had something to do with the fact she never had a chance to do so. She had friends, caretakers, people to look up to, but also a distant Hutt as the closest thing to a twisted father-figure, so she learnt to keep her distance, to give people what they needed to keep them indebted to her, to have their trust, yet not show what she truly wanted, because she didn’t know that herself.

Not a sound escaped from the lips of the debutantes, the ballroom just stood in silence after Eshka’s impromptu speech. Her voice shook, as the weight of the words shattered any mask she might have been wearing that night. This was not the place she was supposed to be in. This was not her place. She had just told a hall full of young Imperial officers and privileged university students that the only way to peace is through understanding and encouraging societies to govern themselves democratically through local governments, that the Empire may overlook the small, the helpless, less fortunate who were also looked over by the majority, the Emperor is not omnipotent and governing from this ballroom full of gold and crystals is madness, we don’t even know what happens underground at Coruscant, even one floor below, not to mention at the Outer Rim. Too much, she had said too much and at the wrong place. Soon the guards would take her away, she may have been under the protection of a Hutt but spreading rebellious propaganda was a crime. She was an alien, they would take her away, she would lose everything, and these words were her last action, not to be remembered by anyone. An act of resistance in the ivory tower, tears drowned in rain, not even a ripple to be seen in the great ocean of consequences.

“And the only way to prevent this ignorance and lack of oversight is through you, Officers. You are the hands and ears of the Empire, through you, there is peace in the Galaxy”, said a male voice next to Eshka, turning her resistance into Imperial propaganda with just a few words. Eshka knew that voice. It was made of the same weight as hers usually was, one to omit words to tell the truth they wanted in a way that furthered their ideals. Calculated, thought through, precise. They knew what they wanted and Eshka’s sudden outburst only furthered their goals in attending this god-forsaken ball. She was left deciding if she wanted to embarrass herself even more or go with this new narrative. But there was no choice to make as applause arose from the audience, cheering, as the poignant and uncomfortable truth was turned to a morale boost of the century, only assuring the Imperial cadets of their own importance. Only when her hand was taken by the man next to her did she realize that she had just stared blankly at the crowd, and quickly turned her head to see who had taken her hand, the one to lead her out of the trouble she had created for herself. A man in a white suit, red eyes smiling at her. No, she thought, wanting to cry out and run. No, she yelled in her mind as he guided her down the stairs to the dancefloor. No, she screamed yet no words could escape her dry lips. There was no air to fill her lungs so she could express the abject horror she was feeling in the arms of Grand Admiral Thrawn. His grip was tight around her waist, his skin warm against her back, his hand in her hand even hotter, his eyes burning. This is my end, she thought, making peace with herself that she would die in the hands of her enemy, being whisked away after a dance for the greatness of the Empire. Ironic.

As the music stopped, he bowed but did not let go of her hand. “My lady, you look awfully pale. May I offer you some refreshments, and maybe let you sit down?” he said, leading her to the back. He could smell my fear, Eshka said to herself in a haze. He led her to a small room with a chaise lounge, made her sit there and ordered a maid to bring drinks for “my lady”. Eshka wanted to throw up, but only closed her eyes to help herself to gather her own thoughts somewhere else. At least the Grand Admiral gave her the time to catch her breath, then water. Just then she realized, embarrassment crept to her; she, a common student, was keeping Grand Admiral waiting. As soon as the moment really hit her, Eshka had a choice to be made: mask or truth. This time, she decided to let the man talk before she wanted to make her decision, but she had a feeling the Chiss might be already scheming.

“I am terribly sorry for my outburst, Grand Admiral, I may have, no, I stepped over my line, and embarrassed everyone. You saved me as my nerves got to me, and I couldn’t get a word out. You even saved my pride, danced with me, like I hadn’t just fallen into the back of my…” Eshka rambled, but Thrawn silenced her with one look and a hand movement. Nothing got past him. He knew.

“After your insolent speech and blatant propaganda in front of the finest of the Empire…”

“You don’t believe that”.

A smirk on both of their faces.

“But you could make it true”.

That caught Eshka off-guard. What on the Galaxy did he talk about?

“You clearly have a way with words, and know how to make your speech heartfelt, even if misguided for now. So I propose an offer in exchange for me sweeping any accusation that may arise from tonight, you join the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order. You have a human face, which humans find the most appealing, but have features of an alien. The posters…” the Grand Admiral says, looking for the word.

“Propaganda” Eshka suggested, still not exactly knowing what he was going for.

“Propaganda, or information war, needs to appeal to aliens too. You are both. Human and alien, delightfully both.”

Eshka didn’t quite understand, and the word “delightfully” was used so casually she wanted to question him even more. Delightful? She took a deep breath before answering, looking at the floor.

“I’m sorry to inform you that I am not in a position to accept your offer. I am in debt to Marlo the Hutt, who has decided in his great wisdom that I must study medicine and serve him..”

Thrawn seems slightly confused, seeming not to quite catch the meaning of your words though he understood the meaning of each word, so Eshka tried to extrapolate.

“He has given me a life, I am in debt with my life”, she added, and he nodded, understanding the depth of the issue.

“In that case, I still have an upper hand. Either he lets you go to prison, have you disgraced, or lets you join. Then you have the same choice.”

“I… Have a choice?” Eshka asked, not quite believing it, but was put back down immediately.

“No”, Thrawn snapped, his eyes watching her breathing stop and demeanor withdraw back to one of a cornered animal. Interesting. Delightful.

“Then my life is in your hands, Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo”, she said in Sy Bisti, with the final chance to plead and beg, and to get one last word in the conversation. The situation was bad, but it could be worse. He might not care at all about her and just liked to play some holochess with her mind, maybe thinking there’s others that shared her beliefs and she was a way to get to them, or he just wanted to save the face of the ball. Probably that, and some sadistic pleasure he got from making her submit. Submit.

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

“Do you wish to know your value?” Thrawn asked as he escorted Eshka to the Lambda shuttle, ready to leave Bar’leth and move back to Coruscant, this time in service of the Empire rather than a Hutt.

“If it is in credits, no”, she answered, a bit annoyed, thinking it wasn’t worth knowing she was worthless, especially to a Hutt or to her new employer. However, Thrawn just smiled to himself.

“You underestimate yourself, miss”, he said, “You are worth much more than a chip with numbers, in fact, you have proved useful already, so I must thank you on behalf of the Empire”.

She shuddered. Empire. Useful to the Empire.

“You understand loyalty, so you will learn soon enough.”

“Is this a way for you to play mind games or rid out resistance before it has been born? Because either way, I am only here to enlist my help to the Commission and pay my debt to you the best way I can. No matter what you say, I do not think I will change my mind about the Empire”, Eshka retorted back, letting the Stormtroopers carry her luggage to the back of the shuttle, and sat on an isolated seat, yet when Admiral took the seat next to her, it felt cramped. And only four troopers were with them. The flight wasn’t long, at least it wasn't supposed to be.

“So, I believe you have questions. May I inquire what you are thinking?” Thrawn asked, with a voice that sounded almost soft for him. Eshka took note of that, replaying the sound of his voice to remember it, as she hadn’t heard him talk enough to make an educated guess about his thoughts that made him say those words.

“I was hoping you would have clear instructions for me, and what is my relationship with you, if any, “ Eshka said looking down, then raising her gaze to Thrawn, who, both surprisingly and unsurprisingly, looked relaxed, yet his gaze met Eshka with piercing intensity. Shuddering, fear striked right into Eshka. Death was no longer an option. This was the gaze of a man who knew the outcome of this battle, and used this moment only to understand the advantage they had better. Lowering her gaze, she submitted, and this gesture didn’t go unnoticed by the expert tactician.

“You submit to your faith, I see.”

“I have no battle here, so I can not be defeated”, she said, slightly smiling.

“You choose your battles well.”

“Thank you, Admiral”.

A sigh from the Chiss was unexpected, yet a weirdly humanizing touch. “You may address me as ‘sir’ from now on. Unless you are in a formal setting, then Grand Admiral Thrawn. If you wish to call me by my full name, you may, but I assume you know the right situations for that.” Sentimental reasons, he keeps me close, too close, Eshka thought.

“You have been given a position in the Commission as an alien relations specialist, you will serve as the face and spokesperson in that area. Your position will include information influencing campaigns, which will have you attending balls and giving speeches. You will be an exemplary Imperial civilian to others like us, someone to look up to.

“You are just an insolent child, privileged and rich, a teenager who is trying to rebel and does not understand what troubles their parents went through to secure your position in a society that has nothing but contempt for you. So what I am giving you is an opportunity to change the system from the inside, just like your parents did, but with more support. The success of a system is not on the shoulders of the leader as much as it is on the ones who serve. The lead gives the command, but the success depends on the ones who carry out the order.” Silence filled the room between the two of them like a thick fog, clouding the true intentions of Thrawn.

“I didn’t think you would care that much about politics”

“I do not, but some changes are inevitable for the system to work better in the future. I do not care for politics, pleasing others is not in my nature, but this is something that has to be done in order for the Empire to win this war”.

“The Empire values the needs of the many over the needs of the few, how does propaganda help my kind?”

“You misunderstand. The majority is the only one who may give betterment to the minority, but if the minority rebels against the majority, there will be no acceptance, and no moving forward. At the moment, species other than humans see their options as joining the Empire, which does not care for them, or active resistance with the Rebellion. But there is a third option. Compliance. You will be the face of compliance and order. Comply to the orders and you shall be rewarded.

“With basic rights?”

“At the moment, yes. But isn’t it better to comply with one unfair order so that you may live to the next day and then receive what you deserve?

“Or your oppressor takes your compliance as a sign that the order is not unreasonable, and continues with that.

“Could be, but do you not want to see what you could do to change that sentiment?”

“I could never side with the Empire”

“But would you join me, Chiss?”

“You work for the Empire, you line your ideals with the Empire.”

“My goals line with the Empire, and my loyalty is towards the Empire. But I am a Chiss, I serve my people too. Even after they exiled me, I will see that they are safe in the Galaxy.”

“I admire your loyalty, sir” Eshka responded, with soft fondness for the Admiral at that moment, as she had to face the fact that she was not really part of any group. Not human, not Bothan, not a Hutt, definitely not part of the cartels or any organization. Any place she ever lived in was not her home planet, she never really had a home. There was no sentimentality, there was only logic governing her life, she understood that, but now, as an alien soldier who

“So, who are you?”

“I’m sorry, what?” The question caught Eshka off-guard.

“You want so many things for those around you, yet don’t talk about anything related to who you are. So tell me, who is the Eshka sitting next to me?”

Who am I? “I’m… Eshka, I’m … “ and silence filled with anticipation on behalf of Eshka, who was trying to find anything to answer with. Yes, she studied to be a doctor, but that was not on the table anymore. Saying half-human, half-Bothan sounded weird. “A girl?” she continued, looking at Thrawn, expecting him to tell her if this was the right answer.

“No no, you have to know that for yourself. Now, you may continue, or do you wish to keep me waiting until you realize yourself?” he said snidely. Embarrassment coursed through Eshka’s veins, infecting her cheeks and tongue, making her unable to respond in any other way than just saying “I’m sorry, sir”.

---------

Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo watched the sad and small woman lie in her recliner, sleeping soundly in the vastness of space. A canvas for a different kind of art found lost in the galaxy. Emotional to the point of being a flaw, yet unaware of her self. Chaotic, yet logical and smart. Lonely, but altruistic. She needed guidance, and he needed someone to be a force for acceptance. No matter how well Thrawn did in the military and kept to himself, the world he was fighting for was not always kind to him. Order and peace were what he was fighting for, but if Eshka could soften the Imperium’s people’s attitudes towards both of them, his position might not be questioned so often and he would be able to focus on fighting the rebellion. Humans liked cute things like Porgs and doves, and Eshka seemed to fit the idea of cute, but had some visible Bothan features like nose, eyes, and ears. Otherwise her body reminded him of paintings from Togruta: colourful, sweet, vibrant.

Eshka tossed and turned, clearly distressed in her dreams now. Thrawn sat up and got on his feet, taking one step towards the sleeping lady, only to kneel next to her and putting his warm hand on her shoulder. Simple trick to calm humanoids, and it worked on Eshka. Her breathing calmed and her shoulders relaxed. A moment later Thrawn turned back to his chair. Maybe he should catch sleep too, even if his metabolism didn’t really need it. What he needed was a clear idea of what he wanted Eshka to be. The lack of self-awareness she had played into his hand, and the way she was trained by Hutts was good; always ready to please, understanding of her own lack of agency, loyalty to the contract, but it also made Thrawn angry, the way she was denied any closeness and made to grow up without a strong sense of self. No culture, no customs, nothing but humans of Coruscant and Bar’leth who ostracized her and made her build herself to fit in wherever she went. She was a blank slate, and Thrawn would build her to a perfect woman who would no longer submit to anyone but him. She was not a slave, but he wanted her to wear chains of diamonds. What a weird thought, Thrawn stopped. Maybe it was related to the conversation he had had with Marlo the Hutt. It had been the first time Thrawn had to interact with a Hutt, and he surely hoped it would be the last. Arrogant and cunning, almost catching Thrawn's intentions, yet not useful in the long run, as he got a crash course in the politics within the cartel and now knew to limit any contact with them unless absolutely necessary. It was funny how well the Hutt knew the value in Eshka, yet could keep the knowledge so out of her reach. Just telling Marlo Eshka was going to be executed for treason didn’t sway him, he even laughed straight at Thrawn’s face, telling him no one could touch her for such a small thing, and why would such a high-ranking officer come there just to inform him? No, it had to be more personal, and if Thrawn wanted the girl, he had to give more than credits, in fact, credits were useless in this matter. Frustrating, but fruitful conversation ensued. The puppet changed owners, and there were new plans on the works.

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

Eshka put her hand on the glass, watching the view in front of her, city lights dancing in her eyes. When taking the job, she thought she was going to be living somewhere underground, with low-class officers if she was lucky, but here she was, in the same building with high-ranking officers. She could see the sky, star destroyer’s lights, the roofs of smaller buildings. It was beautiful, but the loneliness grew in her. There was a whole sky to share, yet here she was, alone above everyone.

Perfect, she was perfect. A gown made of stars, extravagant to many but tasteful for Coruscant. Lights reflecting from the velvety fabric made it look like the whole galaxy was moving as she moved and danced. Eshka, however, felt weird. It wasn’t the first time someone else chose a dress for her, but she didn’t think the Grand Admiral would be the one to do so. Yet his love for control was enough to explain this, but not why she was invited to a banquet for Imperial Officers and socialites of the city. When moving, Eshka had sold her formal dresses to get some money for savings, as she wasn’t sure how much she would be compensated for her work, and she thought there was no need for formal attire, or at least hoped she could hide from the public eye as she was working in her position, but she should have known better. Thrawn wanted her to change the perception humans had of aliens and be the face of the Empire, so why would it not include actual face-to-face meetings or larger events too. She only knew Thrawn and the director of COMPNOR there, maybe some officer she had brushed by at other social gatherings, but if most were military personnel, she had no idea what she could talk with them about. Small talk, flirt? Those should be enough for this time, just feel the atmosphere and plan for the next event. Lose a battle to win the war, and so on. Even if she didn’t like what she was doing in relation to her employer, she had to admit not everyone had the same opportunities to choose sides in the Galaxy, and if she could change some views in the higher ups, she had done something right.

A deep breath, name said aloud, and Eshka stepped in a tall room with chandeliers illuminating the glass cage high above the city. Curious looks were exchanged between guests as Eshka moved inside the room, looking around for a good guest she might be able to introduce herself to. She kept a soft smile on her face, bowed her head as she maneuvered around people already deep in conversations, not letting a single one of the guests to think for a moment she was intimidated. She didn’t know anything about the military, she would say to herself, she was there only to have fun and drink the Corellian wine people spoke so highly of.

An officer with six blue and red taps, probably an admiral or a marshal, was standing by himself with a whiskey in his hand by a window looking a bit uncomfortable in such an open space with people other than military troops. A good start, Eshka thought to herself and joined the gentleman. Starting the conversation with a quip about whiskey seemed to work in Eshka’s favour, just like a light-hearted joke about not taking alcohol well opened the older man to Eshka, and she was just happy it was working. Marshal Kof’ral was surprisingly sweet, considering he was one who had dedicated his life to the military, nowadays commanding his own ground fleet. With whiskey in one hand and Eshka’s hand in the other, he took her to the bar to tell her more about the whiskeys. Few younger officers joined them, clearly new to the setting, but the Marshal knew them and invited them to join the lesson on whiskeys around the galaxy. The officers, however, weren’t too enamored by Eshka, in fact, they seemed to enjoy the jokes they could make at her expense than the whiskey, but let their hands wander down her back. Marshall just laughed with them, so Eshka did too even when it hurt a bit. This wasn’t the place to confront them, this was just to introduce herself to the high society. Thankfully, the dinner was to start soon, so Eshka got the chance to excuse herself from the situation, telling the men she needed to add some face powder before the dinner.

Just a few more hours, I can make it, she told herself, looking at the mirror in the bathroom. Maybe there’s no need to have a conversation with the one next to me, whoever they may be. A racist who hates me, they wouldn’t talk to me, or someone nice, it’s going to be just fine.

When she finally stepped back to the hall, she was escorted to the dining room and seated. Next to Grand Admiral Thrawn. Both relieved and nervous, she didn’t know how to react. There was a lady next to him on his left side and Eshka thought it might be his date. Before Thrawn could even say a word to Eshka, a council member was seated next to her, taking her attention with a flirty greeting. Bail Carivus, a politician from a long family line of legislators and senators, and him talking to Eshka with such empty praises was infuriating to Thrawn, yet Eshka didn’t seem to mind, only blushing and giggling.

“And who is this serious man you are next to?” Carivus asked, flashing a condescending smile to Thrawn, and pure hate flashed in Thrawn’s eyes before Eshka could see it.

“Oh, he is Grand Admiral Thrawn, the captain of Chimaera”, Eshka said, glee in her voice, like she was proud to introduce the two of them, the opposites of each other. Tension between them just grew with the realization they were from very different worlds.

“It is very nice to meet you, Admiral”, Carivus said, clearly disregarding military ranks, yet offered his hand to Thrawn for a shake. Thrawn took it, if only to not embarrass Eshka.

“As it is to meet you”, Thrawn replied, coldly.

Before the tension grew too much or the silence between them stayed longer than appropriate, the first course was served.

Few times during the dinner Thrawn caught Carivus’ hand laying on Eshka’s thigh, his eyes wandering down her chest, hand “accidentally” brushing her neck, ass, ears. Sleazy, infuriating, with a lack of taste in art, Thrawn thought, trying to keep his cool, but as Eshka got more and more uncomfortable, Thrawn wasn’t sure he liked this part of his plan. As the dinner came to a close, Eshka excused herself, and as soon as she was out of the room, Carivus leaned over to Thrawn with a grin, ready to ask something, but another Admiral came to talk to Thrawn before he could hear the trashy words the sleazebag was trying to say. For a moment, Thrawn forgot that the politician existed. But when the Admirals shook hands, he took notice that Eshka hadn’t returned and Carivus was not there either.

Thrawn didn’t know where Eshka might be, but he had to find her soon, before that poor excuse for a human touched her. He would not tolerate that. A new rule for Eshka to follow was now in order, as soon as she was away from Carivus’ hands; no one was allowed to touch her, no one, there was no social climbing with her body, no matter how beneficial it might be. She may fight and be defeated, but her submission was reserved for Thrawn.

#thrawn #mitt'raw'nuruodo #star wars fanfiction #star wars oc #sw oc #thrawn x oc #unfinished #fanfic #star wars #Eshka Kith'lya #grand admiral thrawn

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sassaetcie · 3 years

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The Molten Charcoal (Idia x Silver fic) : Chapter 2

Enjoy this second chapter :) Please reblog if you like, or comment, I love to see your comments,,,

I... went outside my room. The corridors were pretty chilly... I guess I should really go outside, huh. What if I spread the curse here, though? If some ice were to be born here, to be blossoming peacefully, or furiously, no melting would even be bestowed upon them. Only my flames would remain. Only I will remain... somehow. The darkness were soothing, though. They don't burn, after all. I should ask someone to use dark magic to boost my computers, lol. Nevermind. I didn't meet anyone, of course. All of Ignihyde's students aren't giving a shit, anyway. If we were to come across each other, we would both stare at the void and walk as if no one was there. My legs hurt a bit, tho. Less than in PE and after PE and the day after but still... I walked for a few minutes at least. Maybe I was just hungry... I was so stressed I couldn't tell lmao. But the corridors were so quiet and chilly... I'm just annoyed our colors are black (tho it's not really a color) and blue... Can't blue just fucking disappear. Hmm... if blue were to "fucking disappear", Ortho would as well kflgldlnf,. I'm stupid. He even called me some... time ago, I think? I should check the hour from time to time... What if I miss some event???

My "date" with Silver is in 6 days, probably. Why would he call it a date if he doesn't know I'm in love, though... I guess Ortho really saw through me and wasn't joking with my Prince Ideal?! Is he going to shoot Truth Bullet in my face and make me the only victim of this love trial?! Six days, tho... I'll have to see Silver... I've already met him so it won't be as awkward as the first time but... Do I even have the right to love him, anyway? I probably have, but I can't fulfill my lovey dovey dream, LOL. Even if he were to love me... Even if he is a Prince... That's the way I should behave as the future Shroud Family Head. I should wed someone of my "rank". But if I do, how many responsibilities will be pushed upon our shoulders? I can not just marry him, that's right. But he is still a "prince". I won't ever wed a fucking prince. Wouldn't that mean fulfilling my kin's wish? I don't. fucking. want. to. I don't want to be a Shroud. I am just... Idia... I am just Idia... And if the prince's ideal was just something I started to wish after what happened back then? What if I don't really love Silver but just love his aura? That's it, right... Sorry, Ortho, I really can't be in love with Silver, huh. There's no way I truly love. That's just another delusion. I'm just a stupid kid. I'm just a stupid adult. Whatever. This delusion is sweet, huh? That will last some time. And it'll vanish. I can't love a prince since it would be a Shroud's fate. I want to love the Prince Charming since I want to be saved. Couldn't I just love the sweet and caring senpai ideal?! Guess I went the hardcore mode because I'm rich and used to opulence, lol. I still got six days... I guess Ortho will knock my door like hell when the time shall come, anyway. That makes me going outside at least five times to be prepared... Welp, I'll just play some games and read the lessons's content Ortho has sent me. Lol.

[Started Recording at : 11 am : Second??? Day]

[May contain fragments and shattered data]

[The user has deemed preferable to let them be.]

-LET'S FUCKIIIING GOOOOO

-What do you mean, dude? ... trying my best. No... really.... serious!

The room next to Ortho was definitely reflective of Idia's moods. His shouting and screaming and screeching and howling were as reversed as his flame hair. He was not a bother when he let his voice ramble... He was not annoying either.

-I'm... best DPS! Y'all can't outrun my skiiiiiiiiills!

He was just acting so happily. His little brother sat on the bed he had been offered by the school, in the room the school had offered him, in the world he had been offered. The covered by some shades of blue, very likely azure, bed, was probably soft.

-GOOD GAME y'ALLLLL! I'm... play... See y'all!

-Huh? If I want to stay in the... channel? Sure~! What do... wanna talk about, though?

He did not need to go outside to seek happiness. They knew about that. His flames barely had enough sense in existing, and could erase all of the logic they were looking for. This story did not make any sense. Should this story make sense? He was a half, after all. This should make sense. But why?

-Yeah, WyverneCastel? I.... yeah... need... later. If you can, ... course!

The next lesson would soon begin. It was better to stop Recording right now.

[Ended Recording at 11:30 am : Second??? Day]

Tbh, I only had good games so far. No Internet problems (of course, since I usually fix them, NRC is so fucking slow when it comes to administration and solving problems LOL), no Internet problems for my team, no server crash... I kind of like to solve little stuff like that, to be fair... Like, I didn't really use to when I was younger. Well, until a certain incident, of course... Maids and butlers would just bring sweets, cupcakes, forêt noire, macaron, lemon pie, millefeuille, sachertorte, éclair, tropézienne, chou à la crème, mochi, dango, baklava, Turkish delight, praline pie, crepes, waffles... No matter how dark and clean their suits and dresses were, none of them were exactly identical. I guess that's why I could recognize them, especially when I was small... I guess my parents just wanted to show off by telling others their servants could have a slightly customized outfit, or some kind of shit like that. It would probably cost a bit more than regular outfits they could just ordered at the same moment... Just because they had money, the "bit" was staying a "bit". I don't want to see them again... Their blue burning hair, like mine... I fucking hate it. I can't even dye it. I can't dye it. I can't dye it. I can't dye... I can't change them... I can't change... I'm a cursed heir in love with someone who could be a prince but isn't at the same time. This story cannot end in a way or another. This doesn't make any sense, yet it does. Can it just be absolutely absurd? Give me some powers that don't make any sense. I want them. I don't want to be a Shroud. Welp, guess I'll go and check what Ortho did for the lessons. I'll probably go and take a "walk" after (that is, earning outside-resisting exp points to lvl up my skill).

Okay, so the "recordings" go as "The Seventh's history may seem simple at first, but do not forget that History is made by winners. They were the ones to win and if their people are living in, for the most, good conditions, it is yet to be proven that the means were as glorious as the results. If someone says something when speaking of History, try thinking about the opposite. It may end up interesting, although I cannot deny some FACTS exist in History itself, since an enormous sample of people were made to make sure that it was a "fact" and therefore, not a "speculation". Well, these facts could be denied since propaganda exists in our world, alas. But doubting everything will spread discord, and even lying can be used by leaders to prevent peoples from collapsing or killing each other."

Up to this point, I cannot say it's difficult. I mean, it's just almost a Civilization creative game, huh. I guess this is just the introduction or something like that, and that the "hard" part will come right after...

"The Queen of Hearts has made an abnormal lots of rules, for instance. Yet, her peoples did not dethrone her. Does that mean they like her? Well, this could be interpreted as "respect" from our point of view. But from someone else, they could actually fear her and fear the fact she has sent people to death. She held trials to judge them before sentencing them to death or other punishments, that is true. Yet, were that true trials or actually fake trials only meant to look like trials and fair justice? We do not have enough clues about whether she actually listened to mitigating factors or... . To keep going with this idea, ... also was judged when ... came to Wonderland. The trial was ... and yet almost ... ."

I'm not gonna lie, why the hell are there blanks? Ortho is always serious and meticulous. There's no way he can miss a single word. His ears are among the best of the world. I'm pretty sure he can fucking outrun all of Savanaclaw when it comes to earing (well, actually, he probably can outrun ANYONE since he's great). So if there are blanks... there are but a few reasons for that. Either he needs an urgent update, but this has NEVER occurred before since I've spent months to create a perfect calendar to never let him suffer the most insignificant flaw. Thus it can't be that. He could have been beaten up but that wouldn't make any goddamn sense. Who would even try to hurt him when I'm so neutral to anyone? I legit don't give a shit about what's going on in NRC. I'm not even sure I met the new student (if they're that new since I dunno when they have arrived lol)... This left me with two solutions.

Either Ortho was infected by a Virus, but nobody here has my hacking skills so it's very unlikely or... he has started recording more than expected and it's making its components slow down. I guess I won't have any choice but upgrade his memory next time we update him. The thing is... what the fuck is Ortho recording outside of our notes? He's probably doing something for my sake or...?! No, he wouldn't do something that twisted... He wouldn't!!! He wouldn't seek intel on Silver for my sake?! Go back Ortho! GO BAAAACK! You're a pure-hearted shota character, you shouldn't seek to change your condition or you may end in a fucking violent time loop! I don't think he's actually doing this... It would be weird for Ortho to act on this own on shady stuff like this. I guess he is trying to help me in a way... But what the fuck can he be recording... I'll think about it after checking the other days recordings. Maybe there weree already some parasite noises or something like that?

So, I've listened to the whole yesterday recordings, and even the one before yesterday (I just sped up his voice since I just wanted to be sure there were no vocal errors). I am.. pretty sure of it, now. Ortho did not have troubles until yesterday night at least. It seems it has begun during the second part of Trein's class, so it wouldn't be stupid to think that his memory is being more and more filled by "something else". I guess I will just ask him to only pick the key information and understand by himself what the teachers told him... It will take faaaar less room. I'm going to get out now, that's probably night. I hope it will be another chilly travel.

OKAY THIS DIDN'T GO AS PLANNED AT ALL. NOT AT ALL, NOT AT ALL, NOT AT ALL. I thought I'd take a stroll towards in the refectory since no one is supposed to be there at that time but I FUCKING FORGOT THAT NO ONE GIVES A FUCKING SHIT IN THIS FUCKING SCHOOL?! I even thought of taking some food if there were some leftovers so that I could award myself from getting out of my room (cause honestly walking is boring as fuck, I'd rather walk in Skyrim, at least I can hear my leather boots on the ground, lol)... Of course people would have been there. But when I got out of my room, the chilly ascension kept on telling me to move forward. Everything was covered in darkness, to the point I thought my flames would become that of a raven, finally. I took several steps, no matter what the light piercing my skull did. The gleam may try to bath the corridor of their blue burning halo, there were too much potential icicles ready to kill it. I just wanted the chill atmosphere to let me walk, and somehow it ended up this way. For now, my flames were too weak to even absorb the ice before absorbing their waters. I wish for it to weaken to the point my sparks die. I want to walk on that silver lake too... I don't want to fly above. I don't want to sink beneath. I want... to walk on it. To swim through it.

Basically, by the time I got to the refectory (always fucking heavily decorated, like what the hell, luxurious chandeliers????), I realized I made a mistake. There were at least two potential people going there at least once a week. From the moment I heard their voices, this was too fucking late. Trey and Jamil were arguing, somehow? I didn't even think it was possible for these two to argue... I mean, Trey is the cool glasses trope and Jamil is obviously the tortured-but-actually-cunning-and-not-that-bad one. How could they even argue? Well, not that I knew if it had happened before. Cater could post a lot of stuff on Magicam (and yet that wasn't even shitpost...), lol. But I don't remember seeing stuff on Trey badmouthing Jamil or the other way round... Trey was the kind to avoid troubles at all cost, especially since he was under Riddle's influence... I would behave the same, tho I would never have been vice-dorm-leader lmao (well im already dorm head and it's already a fucking pain in the ass, thanks)... I tried to escape but it was too late... I guess that's what I get for playing with my burning curse. They asked me what was I doing there, though they probably were not surprised of my walking "hours". They seemed so suspicious of myself that it was not an ordinary situation. Usually, they would maybe have greeted me... That's all. They began asking me if I was the one stealing the food. Even if my answer was clear, even shaky, none of them would accept it. I was... after all... fire. Fire and water never meddled. Even if I pushed my body to repeating the same answer under different shapes since I may have had a bad locution... They wouldn't listen to me. At some point, I even told them I would find the criminal later and that I would just record some little things they would say to me before going back to my dorm, but they wouldn't even let me go.

-Well, you see, Shroud, there were supposed to be some yakitori, curry portions and blanquette de veau left. All of them disappeared. Although I think it would be hard for you to eat all of this, your health habit seems bad enough to let you eat nothing for several days then compensate suddenly by a huge chunk of food. Am I wrong?

Jamil wasn't especially agressive toward myself, though I know he probably doesn't like me. Who likes me in this ocean, anyway. They were not fishes like Octacreepnelle, but more of... water elementals, I guess. Or maybe barely humans able to seize water and flowing into rivers. They could merge into this part I couldn't access. Of course I would be forever different and... hated as such. Very likely.

-I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr Viper, but I don't think Shroud is the responsible. I know for sure he has a sweet tooth, and yet, most of the sweets are actually there. Except some of the biggest cakes, everything is more or less there.

I would have rather prefered Trey not to reveal my weakness to the enemy, but he was also trying to protect me in a way. Trey is probably actually more of the hero in disguise trope...! Just kidding. But up to this point, they had so many proofs and yet were clueless and even daring to choose me as the culprit...

-The culprit isn't me, isn't Trey and isn't Jamil...

-Heh?

-How can you be so sure about that, Shroud?

-E-eh... You suddenly rely on me so much... Guess I'm good as long as I can be useful, huh... But you won't let me go if I don't spit the truth so... Basically, all of the sweets, which are tiny and not good for health, are left. Then, we can conclude it's neither of you because you would have picked up ingredients, not food itself, or at least not Trey since he probably values a lot baking and improving.

-T-That's true...

-Then, that could be Jamil... But why would he come again if he already has stolen that much? And from what I know, Jamil prefers to cook because of some dark poison stories, right?

-Y-yes, I cannot deny that...

-Then, it is neither Trey nor Jamil. About myself, I try to stay in my room as much as I can, and I'm pretty sure Ortho only go to the refectory during the authorized hours since he is much more reliable than I am. But why would anyone steal so much food in the first place? If it were for one person, one or two dishes would have been sufficient. Moreover, let's say it again, the sweets were not stolen. So the person who stole... didn't pick up what they wanted by love of good food! They stole it because they needed it.

-Hmm... I wouldn't disagree with you, Shroud but.. I am pretty sure I got a letter from Jamil telling me I had to get here at 10 pm...

-Excuse me, Clover? Aren't you the one who sent the letter?

-And that solves the mystery. There is someone who planned on stealing food, knew that you were the only two going for sure in the refectory during night and set you up.

-Wait, who dares to do such a personnal attack against Scarabia?

-It is very likely that the culprit is... Ruggie Bucchi from Savanaclaw.

-Wait.. that would actually make sense...?!

-Especially since he didn't get a lunch earlier... I guess he planned on pleading for hunger if someone was to catch him during the act. And so he sets us up by delivering letters on different hours, and not by his own hands... Wait this level of intellect is almost that of Azul... Ruggie Bucchie is really cunning and... worthy of praise in a sense.

-Hm, that would definitely make sense since he is always the one to get the leftovers in the refectory before the holidays to help the people of his town. I did not expect you to be that useful, Shroud.

-Heh, you're talking to the one who solved Hinamizawa and Rokkenjima's mysteries on the second parts of each, of course I can do such petty investigation.

-Well... thanks... on the behalf of... Scarabia. I am going.

Jamil just left, but tbh I don't really know why. I guess he wanted some time alone before going back to Kalim. At a certain point of my childhood, I had tried to ask less and less to maids and butlers since they all worked so hard. They probably wanted some freedom too. And... I wanted to learn things for myself, too.

-Oh, Shroud, since you've helped us a lot... And... you've thought of how hard I work on my cakes... I want to make you one as an award. And it must have been hard for you to speak to us. Ask me anything and I'll bring you a cake, my best cake, when you want me to give it to you.

-H-h-h-h-huh? I mm-m-m—mean it's really nice b-b-b-but I...

-That's okay, take your time, I won't scream or shout on you just because you're different from others.

-I... I... thanks... Thanks... But... Shouldn't y-y-y-y-you be paid for that...? I mean, you're a kind of artist, and artists should be p-p-p-paid, r-r-r-ight?

His face certainly moved. But why? Was it on its own, or an order, a semi-order, even? I couldn't tell whether his mouth was smiling or if he was smirking, or the other way around. His limbs were linked like any of the sea-universe kin. So, if he were to makes any action, it should be on purpose... but that would be far too easy and stupid.

-Yeah, sure, but you paid me by solving a big trouble. Of course, depending on what you ask, the fees could overcome the wish I had, and thus you would have to pay a supplement.

I had already asked him about the fees and talked about artist respect. I couldn't possibly go beyond what he would offer me since I, for once, had gathered experience on this one, right...

-Please... Can I have a... I hope it won't sound weird... grey and blue cake? With some hard candies on the top...

-Wow! That's an original idea, I like it! Sure, I'll make it. Blueberries and hmm... I guess some white chocolate, maybe some Turkish Delight if I'm in for it... I'll try to make something unique for you! When should I give it to you?

-I-in... five days, if it's fine with you... I really don't want to bother you, you're already so nice and patient with me...

-That's okay, I'll bring it in five days to the Ignihyde Dorm! But the hard candies and the Turkish Delight may make the cake harder to make... Since you're a Dorm Leader and I don't want Riddle to have troubles with you, could attend at least one PE class? That would make up for it.

-Y-y-y-y-y—yeah, sure.

#twst #twst fanfic #twisted wonderland fanfiction #twisted wonderland #idia x silver

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emberbent · 4 years

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Book 2: Air | Chapter 2: The Truth

Shinza’s airbending training began inauspiciously. For two months, she rose with Lo Sang at sunrise each morning, and they practiced yoga on a mountain peak. Where firebending had taught her decisiveness and power, yoga made her flexible, both mentally and physically. Her afternoons were spent in silent meditation, guided by her young teacher. In the evenings, she tended the greenhouse and the bakery with the others. She ate simple meals - rice, green tea, and fresh vegetables she’d helped grow and harvest herself. Before bed each night, she spent some time alone in her room, reflecting. Meditating more. Clearing her head. Airbending is an act of freedom, Lo Sang taught her. Freedom from earthly tethers. Freedom from your own mind. Clear your thoughts, cleanse your spirit, and make room for the air to flow through you.

Lo Sang admitted she was surprised by Shinza’s patience and diligence; Even for Lo Sang, being patient through the foundational steps had been challenging, despite the fact that she’d had the advantage of not having to fish years’ worth of detritus out of her mind before starting. But Shinza had longed for a chance for stillness; now that she had it, she wouldn’t waste a second. This, she realized one morning, planting her palms on the earth and balancing her knees on her elbows in crow pose, was the most peaceful she’d ever felt.

Lo Sang took notice. “Wonderful,” she said serenely to her student. Shinza unfolded herself and came to a cross-legged position, mirroring Lo Sang, who studied her with a little smile. “How do you feel?”

Shinza inhaled and gazed out over the rockface, watching Xia’s distant silhouette weave and ribbon through the clouds. “Calm.”

“Good,” said Lo Sang. “Normally, it takes at least a year to ready oneself for airbending - sometimes several years. But Jinora says we don’t have the luxury of time, and I think you’re ready. Do you feel ready?”

Shinza froze in place, remembering her first shot at firebending and how that first day had been a harbinger for the difficulty her training would bring. “I’ll try, if you think I’m ready, Sifu.”

Lo Sang regarded her. “You hesitated. What’s wrong?”

“Eh, it’s kind of a whole story,” Shinza replied, waving her hand through the air between them as if to dispel the issue altogether. “Firebending was really hard for me, and I guess I’m worried airbending will be more of the same.”

“That’s understandable,” Lo Sang replied sagely. “But look how easily the first steps came to you. Just remember to clear your mind of everything but the task at hand, and you’ll do fine.”

Shinza believed her. Or at least, she wanted to. She recalled what Jinora had said to her when she’d first arrived at the temple: I believe you’ll excel at airbending.

“Okay, then. Let’s do it.”

Lo Sang puffed herself to her feet, pausing for a moment. “Actually, can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

“I never thought I’d get to train the Avatar,” Lo Sang confided. “Sometimes I think about how important the job is, and how important it is that I do well, and...”

Shinza stood, dusting off her tunic, and centered herself in front of her teacher, ready for instructions. “If you’re worried, don’t be. You’re an excellent teacher, and I promise to be a good student. Even though I’m old as dirt.”

“Thanks, grandma,” Lo Sang giggled. “Okay. We’re going to start with something very simple first.”

She drew her arms out wide, arced them gracefully, and pulled them inward, swirling them around some invisible sphere. A wind surrounded them, bringing with it a slurry of red and yellow leaves. Lo Sang caught one between her hands with a precise measure of air, keeping it steady and displaying it to Shinza.

“Hold the leaf like this,” she instructed. “Focus like you do during meditation. Breathe like you do during yoga. Summon your energy and bend the air around the leaf to hold it steady. Okay?”

Shinza held her palms open as she was shown. Lo Sang transferred the leaf to her waiting palms. Finding the focus she had honed during meditation, and summoning a current of energy, Shinza kept the leaf hovering between her hands.

“I’m doing it,” she whispered, not daring to break her concentration. “I’m holding the leaf.”

Lo Sang bit her lip to temper her elated grin. “Perfect! I’m impressed.”

Shinza’s eyes glittered. After a beat, she let the leaf go and beamed, “Really?”

“Yes,” Lo Sang replied. “In fact, I think we can try something a little more advanced.”

Shinza watched Lo Sang walk a tight circle on her nimble feet with her arms poised. She funneled a hard, precise puff of air through her hands and directed it at a passing flurry of leaves, sending them scattering.

“Airbending is about being light on your feet, ready to change your stance at a moment’s notice,” Lo Sang explained. “If another second had passed, I would have had to adjust my stance to target the leaves. Understand?”

Shinza nodded, scrunching her brows together in concentration as she settled herself into a position that looked like Lo Sang’s. The young one came around to correct her stance before stepping back. “Go ahead when you’re ready. Remember to focus.”

Shinza mimicked the movements and paced in a circle, summoning the same energy as before. A wire crossed in her mind, and instead of keeping her arms limber, she locked her elbows like she’d been taught to do in firebending. Air arced like a blowtorch from her palms, the force of which sent Shinza flying backward into the cliffside. The back of her head met the rockface with a sickening crack.

She’s small and standing in the living room in the old apartment. The unlit lantern hangs from its hook, and Shinza wants to light it. Her mother is studying in the spare bedroom; she knows not to disturb her mother, so she tries to light it herself. With swift movements that nearly match her father’s, she summons a flame. Carefully, she tiptoes close to the lantern, but she isn’t quite tall enough to reach it. So she extinguishes the flame. Steps back. Punches the air. The resulting flame catches on the paper lantern.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Shinza squeaks, knowing instantly the kind of trouble she’s in. She has to put the fire out before her mother knows. But she can’t reach the lantern, and there’s nothing nearby to step on. A thought occurs to her out of desperation, but she tries it anyway. She concentrates hard and does a little twirl, emitting, to her shock, a gust of air. It knocks the lantern off its hook and onto the floor, and the carpet quickly catches fire.

Shinza gets onto her knees, panicking, crying, trying her best to tamp down the fire with her bare hands before it spreads too far. The flames sear her flesh; if she works faster, she thinks, and ignores the pain, she can put it out. But her little palms aren’t big enough. The flames grow until she’s surrounded. Her hands are alight. “MAMA!”

___

She wails on her mother’s lap. Her mother holds her tightly so she doesn’t squirm as a doctor summons a wobbling sphere of water over to Shinza and instructs her to place her hands inside. “It hurts,” she sobs, but the doctor urges her to move quickly. Her hands tremble inside the water. The doctor works. He tells them the third-degree burns over her hands and forearms will take months to heal, and that they’ll need to return for regular sessions. Her mother asks about scarring. The doctor says he’ll do his best, but there’s nothing he can do to prevent it.

___

She’s at another place - a different doctor, her father tells her. Shinza is weak from crying and from the pain medication. He asks her how the accident happened. “I tried to light the lantern, but it caught fire. I tried to airbend it out, but I made too much wind.”

He looks at her strangely. A woman comes in, places Shinza in an uncomfortable chair, and buckles a strap across her forehead. Her cheeks sting. The woman only speaks to her once to say, “Repeat what I say: ‘I am a good, quiet girl. I am not a bender.’” Shinza repeats after the doctor, over and over again. A light revolves around her head.

___

The woman drives her knuckles into Shinza’s spine.

A white, blinding light emanated from behind Shinza’s eyes and from her open mouth, flickering like a surging bulb. A powerful gale swirled violently around them, kicking up dust and rocks. Lo Sang shielded her eyes with one hand and her body with her own counter-gust as Shinza struggled against the light. Then, exhausted, Shinza finally overcame it; slowly, the fog of the memories lifted, and her vision cleared. She sat slumped like a ragdoll against the rockface, and Lo Sang watched from a safe distance away, eyes wide with concern and terror, white hair disheveled.

“Shinza?” she mewed. “Are you okay?”

Dry-mouthed, she brought her hands in front of her and studied them. Traced the familiar purple scars. The implication of what she’d just uncovered wasn’t clear to her yet, but the weight of it was immense. She couldn’t bring herself to look elsewhere.

“You hit your head and went into the Avatar state. Are you okay?” Lo Sang pressed. “What happened?”

“Did anyone tell you why the Avatar you’d be training was twenty-eight and not sixteen?” Shinza asked. Her dizziness was dissipating, giving way to a cold, black bitterness.

“No… no, they didn’t.”

“Because they didn’t know why,” Shinza replied. Her voice was hollow. “My parents knew I was the Avatar, and they had my bending and my memories blocked. The Fire Sages searched for me for years; they just thought I was hard to locate, but I was right under their noses the whole time.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Lo Sang murmured sadly, helplessly. She regarded Shinza like a startled horse who might rear up again at any moment.

“I’m twelve years late,” Shinza continued vehemently. “When I think of all that’s happened in the world in that time, all the trouble…”

She thought of Amrit standing on the shore, telling her about swallowing stones of grief. She thought of the propaganda flyers that littered the streets of Republic City. She thought of her little cousins, her teacher’s age, repeating horrific rumors spread by The Org. “I could have done so much.”

“Maybe your parents had a purpose,” Lo Sang reasoned. “Maybe they wanted to protect you from The Organization.”

“The Avatar belongs to the world, not to their parents,” Shinza argued. “As soon as they knew, they had a responsibility to send me off.” Wearily, she hoisted herself into a standing position. What little color there was drained from her freckled face, and she leaned with one hand against the rock to steady herself. “I’ve lost a lot of time. Let’s keep going.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Lo Sang protested. “Look at you. You’re weak and angry. Which is understandable. I think you should take some time off and work through this, Shinza. If you try to force it, you’ll undo all your progress and waste even more time.”

Shinza gazed down at her sifu, whose pale gray eyes flashed back and forth as they scanned her student’s face. She didn’t have the strength to put up a fight. “Fine.”

Lo Sang slipped her arm around Shinza’s waist to help keep her steady as they made their way along the side of the mountain. There was a silence between them as Shinza ruminated on the young one’s disheveled hair and the fear in her eyes. The thought that Shinza had so little control over the Avatar state that she’d put them both in danger made her nauseous.

“Hey,” Lo Sang sounded, as if reading her mind. “It’s okay. I’m not hurt. You’re not hurt, are you? You hit your head really hard.”

“I don’t think so,” she replied dryly. Her room seemed like it was miles away, but she trudged onward.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“What?”

“What does the Avatar State feel like?”

Shinza snorted. “Well, I’ve never been electrocuted, but I imagine that’s what it feels like.”

Lo Sang took in that information quietly and squeezed Shinza’s waist affectionately. When they arrived at Shinza’s door, Lo Sang paused.

“I’m sorry you learned something really hurtful today,” she said sincerely. “But I’m glad it’s over now, and I hope you can move past it. I want to help you, if you need help.”

Shinza found herself sinking to her knees and wrapping her arms around Lo Sang, who, she realized, was the little sister she never knew she needed. “Thank you, Sifu. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Alone, Shinza fell into bed fully clothed, dust falling onto her sheets, and stared at the stone ceiling. Processing. Her parents’ faces had already started to fade from her mind before she’d left the Island of the Sun Warriors. But now, when she tried to picture them, all she saw was the sepia-tone family picture that sat in a frame on the mantle of the old apartment. Right next to the lantern.

___

@chromecutie @my-remedy-is-euphoria @hetapeep41 @jaymzbush

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somedaywithflyingcolors · 4 years

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Tymee Thoughts Tuesday #1

February 25, 2020

1. EDSA Revolution and Imelda Marcos

Today, the Filipino people celebrates the 34th year that we were able to overthrow a dictator, Ferdinand Marcos through collective action. And this was not a single dictatorship, it was conjugal. Ferdinand Marcos ruled hand in hand with her wife, Imelda Romualdez Marcos. The “beautiful” and extravagant Imelda.

Under the Marcos Regime, they were able to stay in power for as long as 21 years. They declared Martial Law which lasted a good eight years with the excuse of extinguishing rising communist threats (exaggerated to extend and increase their power). During the regime, 70,000 were jailed as political prisoners. 35,000 were tortured. Almost 3,000 were killed. Human rights were violated.

Luckily, this week, I have had the chance to watch two documentaries featuring the iconic First Lady. Ramona Diaz’ Imelda (2003) and Lauren Greenfield’s The Kingmaker (2019).

While Ferdinand Marcos seems to be very predictable and lawyerly-like, Imelda, with her beauty, wits, and charm, is very spontaneous. The narcissistic woman and her edifice complex seems to make her appear someone not to be taken seriously. This was all part of the act. The 3,000 pairs of shoes, the lavish dresses, the terno, the hair, it was part of her brand. She wants to appear as someone laughable but she does that with the intent to manipulate us.

In the Ramona Diaz documentary, she goes on explaining her absurd theories of life from apple to apple and here obsession with beauty as part of the Circle of Life -- how beauty is love applied. It was funny at first and would make you believe that she needs psychological help (fun fact: in the kingmaker it was revealed that she was actually brought in a psychological hospital in New York where the doctor aid that she’s okay, she just could not take politics, so Ferdinand said that he will give up politics for her, which obviously didn’t happen, but after that incident, Imelda is a new person). Afterwards, it starts becoming horrifying.

This quote from the documentary reveals how out of touch Imelda was with the reality of the situation. Truly, the best villains in a story are those that think they're the hero.

Let’s now jump to the Kingmaker!!! This one talks more about the rise authoritarianism, how the Marcoses are going back power. It acknowledges that Imelda is an unreliable narrator but is a very instinctive and powerful political animal.

A great point that hits home is when a footage jumped on the kids in a high school asking what their thoughts were on martial law. All they said were positive (but untrue) accounts of the Marcos regime. The history was revised. The memory of tortured heroes, forgotten. The children had a Utopian view of the Martial Law Era, seeing it as a time of economic progress and discipline, when it fact it is very far from the truth.

That said, it show the importance of writing our histories, sharing them with the world, because with the rise of authoritarianism, the strong-man narrative of Rodrigo Duterte (our current president), one the only ways that we do not fall to the same mistakes of history is to study it, remember it, and learn from it. It is scary to imagine another Martial Law, but seeing the political climate now, the future is not very far. We need to educate more, be vigilant. Hold our line and contribute in our nation-building. Contribute in defending our freedom.

Another feature of the film that I didn’t know before was how Imelda displaced 254 families, a community in Calauit, an inhabited island, just to house the animals coming from Kenya. Now, the safari and its animals, with no budget, no veterinarians, are suffering. The community in there were suffering as well. This is a metaphor for the Regime’s way of using their power as well as their priorities once in power.

Some key takeaways:

- The EDSA Revolution was not bloodless. The revolution began 14 years ago. Saying that it is peaceful and bloodless disregards the unsung heroes that were killed in the process.

- The Filipinos are very forgiving. What we Filipinos should learn is that while we can forgive, it is also important that we hold those that wronged us accountable. It is almost unthinkable how a family of someone that plundered an estimate of half a trillion peso can still return to power.

- As much we can, we must also continue to speak of the people that were against this dictatorship as someone to emulate. One person from the panel said that for every time we are angry and mention the Marcoses name, we must spread the names of the people who toppled the dictatorship ten times so as to have someone to emulate and be known. People like Edgar Jopson, Archimedes Trajano, Primitivo Mijares, Pete Lacaba, Emmanuel Lacaba, Lorena Barros. They are the heroes that need to be broadcasted more in this narrative. Less of the narcissism of Imelda and more of the injustice and violations of democracies during that time.

-Duterte and Marcos are experts of the Filipino Psychology. While we academics tend to be very rational and logical, these politicians know how to tickle the minds of the Filipinos to allure them into believing that they are someone that they could trust. Now, they not only use the media. They also use weaponize the Internet in a way that would benefit their narrative. Their propaganda continues with all the lies and the fake news.

Sorry this was mostly me talking about Imelda and their injustices during their time in power. I still have so many words and I really can’t help but be outraged. It was just so outrageous to think that (1) they are slowly going back in power, (2) they have no remorse nor guilt over what they did, (3) they have single (double??)handedly affected the influenced major key factors of today’s time, mostly relating to the economic status of the country.

ANYWAY, here are some of the other thoughts that have passed through and plagued my mind through the week!!

2. Valentines Day Podcasts

Because it is still February, go on and check some of the cool podcasts about it!

Here’s Usapang Econ Podcast that discusses the economics of love and valentines!! (In Filipino, sorry international audience :( )

And this episode of Debatable by Nina and Kyle that discussed some debate motions about love and valentines. I really enjoyed their chaotic energy there. I ship the two too, so that’s a plus! (Seriously Kyle, why would you leave Nina hanging on your Valentines Dinner for a Bumble Date??)

3. You will be judged not by what you do but by what you did not do. Some musing on where best to spend my time.

I have been thinking about the organizations that I need to join and the things I need to do to be able to land a good job once I graduate. I want to do an internship. In the my course, an internship is voluntary. In the Philippines, unlike in the US or other Western Countries, becoming an Intern just because you want exposure on something is not the fad. Internships are a mandatory thing needed before you graduate. However, I don’t want to just go with the flow. I want to gain real life experience on real things, especially on the work that I am most interested in. This was triggered by this Rappler Article regarding internship, wherein, apparently, aside from a CV, I also need to pin a portfolio of a work that I’ve done. I am beginning to become convinced that for me to land a good job someday, I need to begin looking for connections related to the job that I want to do. A thick CV won’t cut it. I want to maximize my skills and opportunities here in college while I still can.

Tomorrow, I will be awarded as one of the University Scholars of my University. It can be assumed that I am a good student, I get good grades, pass my work on time. But am I really limited just by the grades that I earned inside the classroom? Should I rush into looking for a workplace or should I just continue doing the things that I’m currently doing (because it seems to be working). Should I dare to be more than what I am now?

Because that entails sacrifice. It may mean less time for family, less sleep, less time for myself. God knows how much I value my time alone. But God also knows how much time I waste for resting and sanity breaks (a little bit too much break tbh). Another fear that I have is going against the harmonious relationship that I think I have now with my family. Saying that I want to do an Internship, which is not included in the curriculum, may raise some eyebrows from the people in my family. I think I need more courage to explain to them the value of doing such things. I remember a saying that I don’t know where I remember from (maybe in the Bible, but I can’t find it): You are judged not by the good that you do, but by the good that you choose not to do. What am I not doing? How can I be better?

#EDSA34 #NeverAgain #NeverForget #EDSARevolution #MartialLaw #TheKingmaker #ValentinesDay #Valentines #Tymee #Thoughts #Filipino #imelda marcos

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haleviyah · 4 years

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Well this happened...

So, I recall posting a while back about our state’s governor going too far with the quarantine. Turns out - get this - the story is in fact fabricated. Why am I not surprised?

Now, I’m not gonna lie I may feel sheepish, but in all honesty I am more relieved than totally embarrassed from the truth of the scenario coming out finally.

So... Check this out. You want to know why our governor didn’t say anything during that first week people were freakinn our over the lockdown? Because it turns out the governor of our state was working - just like other state governors - ‘round the clock making phone calls as soon as POTUS gave the green light to do quarantine. He shut down highways leading to New York, limited crossings into neighbouring states and all that other essential protocol goals. So, that’s good.

I do humbly repent of getting on this odd case without giving time to research more. Regardless, on the positive note I do applaud the public for keeping on guard if the story was true and sticking to their rights as citizens. Also, I do applaud the governor for being professional during this difficult time. I mean... Let’s be honest, we were all stressed, uncertain and frankly stupid is bound to happen when those nasty ingredients come together. We’ve all been in similar situations... But we learned. What’s encouraging of this weird experience is that we saw both ends - government and the governed - doing their jobs beautifully. That’s the positive note in this tale.

HOWEVER!

With that being said now we have someone else facing the meat grinder: THE MEDIA.

If it were not for the media spreading such a lie just to get money from - mind you - stressed and panicking people, my community wouldn’t have pounced on our governor like that. And might I add, they’re LUCKY things haven’t blown too out of proportion or worse, chaotic.

On a side note: Historically speaking, the big name news outlets are acting no different from what the Nazi’s did with their propaganda and do employ the same techniques they did, if you look at this from a media student’s perspective. So it is no surprise why their influence could cause such a ruckus like that. But, I understand others have their own take on this picture, and I want to hear from them this time around so we can piece the puzzle together more.

So what do you guys think?

Is the media (news outlets especially) taking way too much advantage of their freedom of press?

Do you think it’s right of them to make money off of spreading gossip, starting drama, and basically causing people to go more crazy especially now in a time we don’t need anymore stress than there already is?

Is the news really really caring or helping like they should as the fourth branch of government? Or are they doing more harm than good? If it is more of the latter, why are we even bothering to give them views (which generates their revenue/income) if all they do is cause strife and panick?

What are other ways you could suggest of how we can stop their gossip from spreading and shut them down aside from the simple tasks of shutting off the tv or unsubscribing from their channels?

I’m not starting this discussion for the sakes of “fake news” or starting another fight or what not. I’m just sincerely asking as I am taking a step back to see the whole picture here.🤔

#updates #government #media #fake news #gossip #are they helping?#are they pushing it?#what do you think?#news #news outlets #headlines #reality television #reality tv #drama #stress #just a thought #public #any thoughts?#well well well

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jackmfvegas777 · 5 years

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What Being Trans Is Like; A Guide For Allies

Hello, let me introduce myself. My name is Atom Yorke. I am a 16-year-old transgender and pansexual man, and you should probably get some popcorn ready because I've got a lot to say.

I'll split this up into categories so you can go page by page.

DEFINITION Now to begin this, if you're not sure what transgender means, transgender people are people whose brain does not match their body in gender. For example, I am a man. However I was born in a body most would call "female". I am a transgender man. This may be a radically new concept for some of you, but the truth is that we've been around since the dawn of humanity. Our history has been heavily modified and erased. In fact, any history that's not white, christian, heterosexual & cisgender has been shoved down to the darkest confines of information, where people have to look to find it. The truth is even ancient cultures have records of trans people, of nonbinary people, and of other LGBTQ concepts. This was one of the things they most heavily tried to erase during the ruthless colonization of Christianity.

You may be surprised to learn that yes, you yourself have met a trans person! Chances are you've met a lot of them, actually.

The reason why we're never seen is because until a little ways back, we would be imprisoned, killed or worse just for being out. Now that we finally have a voice, we're speaking loud. But still, some trans people do not wish to be that way, and they will stay quiet their whole lives and blend in with the rest of society. Because of many people living in hiding, surveys are skewed and we have no real way to quantify just how many transgender people there are in the world. But there are a lot. And we matter, just like you.

MISCONCEPTIONS First off, there are a LOT, and I mean A LOT of misconceptions about transgender people. And it's not an accident. The lack of information and the stereotypes that have been given have been due to not only ignorance, but intentional covering up of the truth of who we are, and blatant propaganda against us. Many people think trans people are "out to get them" like they're some kind of "cross-dressing predators looking to peep in on the other gender". I can assure you, we are nothing of the sort. This falsehood would be laughable, if it didn't hurt so many people. Nearly 60% of trans people in America are outright TERRIFIED to go to the bathroom, (or go anywhere, really) due to them being harassed, assaulted, and worse inside. We are the ones being attacked in bathrooms, not you. We are the ones being attacked out in the streets, not you. We are not predators, we are quite literally the prey for the real predators. And this has to change. And the way it changes is through spread of information, and actual facts.

A trans woman is a woman. She is not a "man in a dress". A trans man is a man. He is not a "woman in disguise". A trans person is a person. They are not "confused".

There have been multiple scientific studies done on transgender people's brains, and they have revealed, every time, that your brain will match your gender, even if your genitalia does not. The reason for this is due to how you develop in the womb. In utero, the brains form one way, and the genitalia develops another way. Most of the time they match, creating what is known as a cisgender person, aka a person who is not trans. Occasionally, the brain will develop in one gender and the sexual organs will develop in a different way due to an influx of different hormones during pregnancy, causing a trans person to be born.

To restate that; A trans person's brain matches their gender, not their genitalia. It has been scientifically proven. To argue that trans people "do not exist", are "confused", are "pretending" or anything else of the sort is foolish, and a rejection of science and reason altogether.

TERMINOLOGY Also, before you say "Well, if they existed forever, where are all these new terms coming from and why are we only now seeing trans people?" The reason being is you have seen trans people. You haven't seen these words because they are helpful labels we have only created recently for concepts that are ancient. The reason for all this new influx in trans activity is due to the internet and the spread of its information, which causes so many people to feel much safer and begin to come out. Now, let's take a look at the vocabulary of trans people, so you have an easier time understanding the lingo!

LGBTQ - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer. Refers to the community. FTM - Female to Male. A trans man. MTF - Male to Female. A trans woman. T - Testosterone E - Estrogen HRT - Hormone Replacement Therapy. The medical procedure of hormone replacement to look more like your actual gender. Binder - A form of undergarment that is like a very tight sports bra that binds the chest of trans men & sometimes nonbinary people so they can appear flat-chested. Packer - A fake penis (or sometimes a rolled up sock, etc.) used to make trans men look like they have a bulge. Tucking - A technique trans women use to make them look like they have no bulge. Top surgery - Surgery on your chest to correct it to your gender. Bottom surgery - Surgery on your genitalia to correct them to your gender. Coming out of the closet - Telling the world and everyone openly that you are LGBTQ, or in this case transgender. Stealth - A term referring to trans people who go completely "undercover", and keep the fact that they're trans hidden so they can just enjoy a normal life. Gender dysphoria - A feeling of heartwrenching, guttwisting wrongness in a trans person's soul when someone calls them by the gender they are not, or sometimes when reminded of their body. Gender euphoria - A feeling of either complete contentedness, or giddy joyful excitement when their gender is affirmed.

HOW IT FEELS; A WATERED DOWN VERSION Now that we got all that out of the way, I wrote a short summary of what it feels like to be trans, from my perspective.

Imagine you're in the womb. It's a clean slate, nothing but peace. Then from the moment you're born, you're immediately categorized by your sexual organs and colour-coded. "It's a girl!" They say. They wrap you in a pink blanket. Your whole life you're told to be a girl, and so that's what you are. It was the first thing someone decided that you are. But the whole time you live in this fake life you feel... empty. Every time you use the girl's bathroom, there's a gnawing part of you that says you shouldn't be there. When kids around you are playing on a bouncy slide, playing a game of boys vs. girls, you always feel like you belong on the other side, for some nagging reason. Your grandmother keeps buying you skirts, bras, dresses, because you ask for them. You think that's what it takes for you to feel normal. You never wear them. "Maybe I'm not girly enough." So you try to be even more of what you are not. And every time, you feel this pit, this twisting gnawing void that aches and only aches more as you grow older. You don't know what it is. It gets worse every time someone says the word "She". "Girl." "Have a nice day, ladies." You tear through your room, looking for anything that doesn't look like the dresses your grandmother buys you. You cry and cry like you've never cried before, and you don't know why you're crying. What is it that's wrong with me? And after a while you decide you want your hair cut. Maybe that's what it is. Then you think, "Maybe it's because I eat a lot. Girls are supposed to be self-conscious of their weight, right?" So you blame your weight. Until you realize that's not the issue at all. Because one day you wake up. It hits you. And you put the pieces together. I'm not what they forced me to be all my life. There was a reason I was always uncomfortable. I'm not a girl... That was an option? That was even an option? I'm not forced to stay in this cell? There's actually NOT something wrong with me?

All I felt was profound relief at first, but soon enough the relief turned to paralyzing fear. This was the beginning, and also the end of my life, and I was only thirteen. But some people don't find out until they're adults, sometimes even until they're in their old age. It doesn't make anyone any less who they are. But man, does it uproot your whole life to fix things. If you realize at a young age it's easier because then you don't have as much paperwork to deal with, but you still no matter what have to deal with it, and people make it as hard as they possibly can for you, because of petty ignorance. I've had multiple cases of people straight-up refusing to give me my legal documents back (such as my insurance card which I need for my literally life-saving medication) because of ignorance or malicious transphobia. I had to actually argue with people to put my insurance card through, something that was common sense, that I had all the legal documentation for, that could be typed in at the push of a button, and costs nothing for them. But they had "never came across this situation before" so they argued with me for a good while about doing it until they finally gave in.

I've had cases of family members, family friends turning on me and calling me "tranny", a "confused girl", I've been told that there was "no masculinity in my eyes" when they looked at me. I was yelled at, screamed at in front of family and friends that I would never be a man. I've been insulted in front of people, I've been ridiculed and humiliated. But I will stand tall. You know why? Because it is A MILLION times better dealing with all this than dealing with not being who I truly am. I'm myself, and if anyone's got a problem with that, they can take it up with me.

The sad truth is, if you're trans, you unfortunately are going to experience horrible, horrible things like this. It's an inescapable reality. But that does not mean it's without hope. Every person can be educated, even if it may not seem so at first. Don't give up hope, because there is so much more beauty than you're seeing right now, and wouldn't you like to get to see it?

If you're an ally, you're here to make sure this feeling they have happens less. So, here is how to treat a trans person, written from the perspective of a trans person.

HOW TO HELP TRANSGENDER PEOPLE (from the perspective of a trans person)

1. Treat them with basic human respect. Aka refer to them how they want to be referred, you know, by their ACTUAL name and pronouns, not the ones you're clinging to desperately. You may think "What's the big deal?" about being misgendered, because as a cis person you've never been forced to live in a body that's not your own. You have ZERO frame of reference for how a trans person feels, or experiences their life, and so the very least you could do, even if you may not understand, is treat them with basic human decency. It literally costs you nothing to just be a civil human being.

2. Ask questions! (to a point. Don't be creepy or disrespectful.) If you are concerned you are not treating a trans person completely right due to not knowing, or you have something you're curious about, or you just don't understand us at all--ask! Please ask! We love it when you consider our needs, it makes us feel more appreciated. And asking questions opens important communication pathways, that lead to higher understanding, empathy, and acceptance of each other, which can only lead to higher growth for everyone involved. However, if you start getting really nosy about it by asking us weird questions when you barely know us like "Have you had the surgery yet? What do your genitalia look like?" Or the much dreaded "What's your original name?" Then you know you've gone too far. I mean, come on, you wouldn't ask a regular person that question, so why would you ask us?!

3. Speak up for them when they have no voice. This is probably by far the most huge thing you can do for a transgender person. A minor example; If they're in a very uncomfortable situation, like say for example they are getting misgendered by the cashier over and over at the grocery store and you can see they're too nervous to correct them, or even if they have corrected them themselves multiple times but the person will not give them that basic respect, the best thing you can do in that moment is step in and correct them for them. I've had someone do it for me, and it makes me feel euphoric that someone actually stood up for me. Just back us up when we need back up, cause we very rarely have that support. A lot of trans people have no support whatsoever. Any support you can show a transgender person will help them exponentially more than you know. Some allies will post LGBTQ positive things on their social media pages, meanwhile some others take this to extremes by becoming huge supporters of LGBTQ communities, and standing up and giving a voice everywhere for them through words, art, many different forms of media, pride parades & riots.

4. Physical Support If you are very close to a trans person yourself, such as one of your children, your spouse, etc. or even if you just want to go above and beyond by supporting trans people everywhere, giving a roof over their heads, a warm meal, and some kind words would change people's lives. Consider donating to a charity (a charity you research before donating into, a lot of them are fake and will collect the money) that goes towards help for transgender people, or LGBTQ people in general! We really need it, especially in the days of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named as our president.

5. Don't out them if they're not ready! This goes for all LGBTQ people, but please, if someone is closeted due to safety reasons or even just because they're not ready, do not under any circumstance out them for who they are. This could potentially throw them into massive danger, or it could just throw a massive wrench into their lives in some way. Please ask first.

6. Give positive, gender-affirming actions toward them! I absolutely LOVE IT when people do this. I have a friend who not only does bro-fistbumps with me, the two-pat hug thing, highfives me, but also always uses gender-affirming language such as calling me "man", "dude", "bro", etc. and it just always makes me feel so good to be around him! It creates a pleasant, safe space for us to be ourselves when you treat us for who we are, and it honestly makes us more happy than you know. So next time you see a really fabulous trans woman, tell her she looks lovely and classy today! When you see a trans man on top of his game, mention that he's handsome. And mention the things you know they feel insecure about in a positive way! It gives us majour gender euphoria. I know I've always been so ashamed of my round baby face due to it being the main reason I don't pass, but my friends on a call once had started all ooh-ing and ah-ing about how nice my cheekbones and jawline were and all that day I was ecstatic! A simple compliment that you might not even remember giving could change someone's life. And that goes for all people, not just trans people.

Now, you might have heard a lot of negative things that happened to me because of my being transgender, but I'm here to tell you there is so much hope. Cut forward to 2019. I've been out and proud for three years, and by God, I am so, SO SO much happier than I was. I am proud to say I was lucky, I have an amazing support system in my mom, dad, siblings & grandmother that have helped me so much through this. I'm about to start T soon, and I am so unbelievably excited. The person who had yelled at me in front of family members? They are now supportive, and make an effort around me. The person who called me a tranny? They apologized profusely and learnt from that experience.

So to fellow trans people out there--Things do get better. And they get better soon. You just have to hold out for a little while longer.

And for the allies who want to do better by trans and LGBTQ people everywhere, thank you. Thank you for showing your support, and thank you for your willingness to learn about those different from you. That shows extreme emotional maturity. On behalf of all LGBTQ people, thank you.

- Atom T. L. Yorke

Atom T. L. Yorke is a visual artist, cosplayer, writer, musician, and comedian that has also dedicated his life to helping LGBTQ people in need, especially the transgender community.

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palestinianliberator · 7 years

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As I've said before, it can be exhausting being a Palestinian.

So as I was walking in the mall and distracted on my phone, I noticed two people staring at me out of the corner of my eye. I ignored it and kept walking, until I got closer and realized they were still staring. I looked up, and sure enough, they were glaring right at me, and started speaking loudly in Hebrew. As I got closer, the Hebrew got louder, and I instantly realized that the at least one of the two people [one man and one woman] must've been a former Israeli soldier [after dealing with so many of them, it's easy to discern their posture and presence]. They singled me out because I was wearing a shirt that read "Palestinian Defense Forces" and was carrying my laptop that has a sticker that reads "Free Palestine, end Israeli Apartheid" and “there is no occupation!”.

I mostly ignored them and remained on my way [and was super sad to find that they'd closed Tommy's Burgers in the food court]. On my way back, I passed the two again, and sure enough they were still staring. This time, the man I'd figured was an Israeli soldier begins jeering at me "Palestine? That's next to Narnia right? Neither of them exist!" and he asks me for a selfie while jeering. Against my very nature, I say nothing and keep walking. Sure enough, he begins following me, asking me to stop and talk to him while berating me with taunts of how "you don't understand apartheid, it is Israelis who are under apartheid. Palestine doesn't exist, you don't know what you're talking about!".

Against my better judgement, I respond to him as he continuously asks me to stop walking and talk to him, and I say "we're not in the West Bank, you have no control over me here". He tells me again that there's no Palestine, and that I'm a liar who "must be getting paid well" [funny, considering the Israeli government has a program that pays people to spread Israeli propaganda around the globe]. He accuses me of "not knowing what it's really like over there, because you've never been". Again, against my better judgement, I respond to him as I continue making my way towards the exit, telling him that I've actually just returned from Palestine and have spent a significant portion of my life there. He confirms my suspicions by telling me that he was in the Israeli Defense Forces, and therefore knows the "truth" about what's happening. He asks me how I knew he was in the IDF, and I tell him that they're easy to spot after being surrounded by them for so long & his posture gives it away. He responds by telling me he can tell from my posture that I'm a "liar".

He immediately asks me what village I'm from, what my name is, and where I'm going to university here. To the average person, this would be freaky enough. Take into account that the Israeli government, through the help of Zionists & Israelis here in the US, catalogue Palestinians in the US and do everything in their power to intimidate and shut us down for any speech or actions we take critical of Israel, exemplified in my recent post of the David Horowitz and how he spreads racist flyers targeting Palestinian students around the US. And here I am - a Palestinian who has been previously hounded by the Israeli government being followed by an Israeli soldier in freaking central California, half a world away from the brutal military occupation I've just recently returned from, with a soldier who has the audacity to treat me as if we're at a checkpoint in Palestine and he has any authority over me here demanding my information.

All the while, he has his phone out and I catch that he has a note open and is typing. He continues to goad me as he follows me out of the mall, trying to get under my skin and trip me up. One of his questions was "If your parents are Palestinian and born in Palestine, what are you doing here? Why did they come here?" to which I responded "If you're an Israeli soldier, what are YOU doing here?"

Whatever few things I'd say in response to his incessant barrage, he'd simply ignore and call "lies against Israel", while he continued to lob fantasies of his own, from "there is no occupation", to "there is no Palestine", to "Israelis are the only ones truly oppressed", to "You're not even from there, you're just being paid by someone to spread lies about Israel", etc.

In Palestine, we can't even leave our homes without the approval of the Israeli military, have frequent curfews and roadblocks preventing us from even leaving our towns, and are barred from visiting friends and family in neighboring villages simply because the "soldiers" at the checkpoints don't feel like letting you through, and these are just a tiny sample of what life under Israeli occupation is like [ignoring the violence, the terrorist Israeli settlers that are protected by the Israeli military (IDF), or their frequent harassment and random detainments, control of our water and electricity, and just their general control of our entire lives.

Here I am, a world away from Palestine in Central freaking California, minding my own business at the mall before class starts, and sure enough, I'm still hounded by an Israeli soldier who follows me as I'm leaving the freaking mall attempting to exert his control over me & dehumanize me, all while trying to get my info and calling me "paranoid" as I ignored his requests [which, as people who know me personally and know the BS I've been through with this stuff, will know how hilarious that is].

It's funny how bothered this grown man, this ~former soldier~, was by my mere open existence as a Palestinian. I didn't goad him to start this, I didn't pass by him waving a Palestinian flag in his face, and I didn't stand around to jeer at him when I figured he was a former Israeli soldier. I kept walking, leaving the mall, as HE followed ME and continuously asked me to stop walking. Further, he kept asking "to have a discussion", and yet whatever few things I said to him were immediately dismissed as "lies", while he'd berate me as claiming to be from a place that doesn't exist.

When people ask us as Palestinian why we don't "engage" with Zionists or Israelis or the like, this is precisely why. How are you meant to "engage" with people who, for starters, serve in the very force that continues to terrorize your people, or who absolutely refuse to even recognize that you exist. The funny thing is that my parents were born in Palestine, which apparently doesn't exist to these people. So if Palestine doesn't exist, where are we from? They won't say Israel, because as Palestinians we're legally barred from entering Israel. So we're not Palestinian, and we're not Israeli, and it's this dilemma that frightens Zionists so much. Our mere existence, let alone our proud embrace of our culture and nationality, threaten the narrative that they've so carefully weaved, threatens them to the point where they'll stalk and harass a Palestinian halfway across the world for having the audacity to openly embrace their Palestinian identity.

It's for this very reason that I fly the Palestinian flag from my car. There was a period where in Palestine & Israel, it was a criminal activity to fly the Palestinian flag or simply show its colors [red, black, white, and green], punishable by beatings carried out by Israeli soldiers, arrests, or being shot and killed. Civilians were killed for the mere act of waving our flag, because again, our very existence is threatening to Israel and Israelis. This ban lasted for nearly 30 years, and also punished those who'd create artwork featuring those colors.

As such, I continue to fly the Palestinian flag wherever I go, in defiance of these Zionists who still refuse to acknowledge the basic fact of our existence.

#A more coherent post than yesterday's #Palestine #Israel

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magzoso-tech · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/the-silicon-six-spread-propaganda-its-time-to-regulate-social-media-sites/

The 'Silicon Six' Spread Propaganda. It's Time to Regulate Social Media Sites.

I get it: I’m one of the last people you’d expect to hear warning about the danger of conspiracies and lies. I’ve built a career on pushing the limits of propriety and good taste. I portrayed Borat, the first fake news journalist, along with satirical characters such as Ali G, a wannabe gangster, and Bruno, a gay fashion reporter from Austria. Some critics have said my comedy risks reinforcing old racial and religious stereotypes.

I admit that most of my comedy over the years has been pretty juvenile. However, when Borat was able to get an entire bar in Arizona to sing “throw the Jew down the well,” it revealed people’s indifference to anti-Semitism. When, as Bruno, I started kissing a man in a cage fight in Arkansas and nearly started a riot, it showed the violent potential of homophobia. And when, disguised as an ultra-woke developer, I proposed building a mosque in one rural community, prompting a resident to proudly admit, “I am racist, against Muslims,” it showed a wide acceptance of Islamophobia.

The ugliness my jokes help reveal is why I’m so worried about our pluralistic democracies. Demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream, fueled in part by President Donald Trump, who has spread such paranoid lies more than 1,700 times to his 67 million Twitter followers. It’s as if the Age of Reason – the era of evidential argument – is ending, and now knowledge is delegitimised and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which thrives on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities.

All this hate and violence actually has something in common: It’s being facilitated by a handful of Internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media platforms reach billions of people. The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify content that keeps users engaged – stories that appeal to our baser instincts and trigger outrage and fear. That’s why fake news outperforms real news on social media; studies show that lies spread faster than truth.

On the Internet, everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart resembles the BBC, and the rantings of a lunatic seem as credible as the findings of a Nobel Prize winner. We have lost a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democracy depends.

When I, as Ali G, asked the astronaut Buzz Aldrin, “What woz it like to walk on de sun?” the joke worked, because we, the audience, shared the same facts. If you believe the moon landing was a hoax, the joke was not funny.

When Borat got that bar in Arizona to agree that “Jews control everybody’s money and never give it back,” the joke worked because the rest of us knew that the depiction of Jews as miserly is a conspiracy theory originating in the Middle Ages.

Social media platforms make it easier for people who share the same false premises to find one another, and then the technology acts as an accelerant for toxic thinking. When conspiracies take hold, it’s easier for hate groups to recruit, easier for foreign intelligence agencies to interfere in our elections and easier for a country like Myanmar to commit genocide against the Rohingya.

Yes, social media companies have taken some steps to reduce hate and conspiracies on their platforms. Yet these steps have been mostly superficial, and the next 12 months could be pivotal: British voters will go to the polls next month while online conspiracists promote the despicable theory of “great replacement” that white Christians are being deliberately replaced by Muslim immigrants. Americans will vote for president while trolls and bots perpetuate the disgusting lie of a “Hispanic invasion.” And after years of YouTube videos calling climate change a “hoax,” the United States is on track, a year from now, to formally withdraw from the Paris agreement.

Unfortunately, the executive of these platforms don’t appear interested in a close look at how they’re spreading hate, conspiracies and lies. Look at the speech Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg delivered last month that warned against new laws and regulations on companies like his.

Zuckerberg tried to portray the issue as one involving “choices” around “free expression.” But freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Facebook alone already counts about a third of the world’s population among its users. Social media platforms should not give bigots and paedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target victims.

Zuckerberg claimed that new limits on social media would “pull back on free expression.” This is utter nonsense. The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law” abridging freedom of speech, but this does not apply to private businesses. If a neo-Nazi comes goose-stepping into a restaurant and starts threatening other customers and saying he wants to kill Jews, would the restaurant owner be required to serve him an elegant eight-course meal? Of course not. The restaurant owner has every legal right, and, indeed, a moral obligation, to kick the Nazi out. So do Internet companies.

Zuckerberg seemed to equate regulation of companies like his to the actions of “the most repressive societies.” This, from one of the six people who run the companies that decide what information so much of the world sees: Zuckerberg at Facebook; Sundar Pichai at Google; Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google’s parent company, Alphabet; Brin’s ex-sister-in-law, Susan Wojcicki, at YouTube; and Jack Dorsey at Twitter. These super-rich “Silicon Six” care more about boosting their share price than about protecting democracy. This is ideological imperialism – six unelected individuals in Silicon Valley imposing their vision on the rest of the world, unaccountable to any government and acting like they’re above the reach of law. Surely, instead of letting the Silicon Six decide the fate of the world order, our democratically elected representatives should have at least some say.

Zuckerberg speaks of welcoming a “diversity of ideas,” and last year, he gave us an example. He said he found posts denying the Holocaust “deeply offensive,” but he didn’t think Facebook should take them down “because I think there are things that different people get wrong.” This is madness. The Holocaust is a historical fact, and those who deny it aim to encourage another one. There’s no benefit in pretending that “the Holocaust is a hoax” is simply a “thing” that “different people get wrong.” Zuckerberg says that “people should decide what is credible, not tech companies.” But two-thirds of millennials say they haven’t even heard of Auschwitz. How are they supposed to know what’s “credible”? How are they supposed to know that the lie is a lie?

When it comes to removing content, Zuckerberg asked, “where do you draw the line?” Yes, that can be difficult, but here’s what he’s really saying: Removing lies and conspiracies is just too expensive.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter are unthinkably rich, and they have the best engineers in the world. They could fix these problems if they wanted to. Twitter could deploy an algorithm to remove more white supremacist hate speech, but they reportedly haven’t because it would eject some very prominent politicians. Facebook could hire enough monitors to actually monitor, work closely with groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP and purge deliberate lies from their platforms.

But they won’t, because their entire business model relies on generating more engagement, and nothing generates more engagement than lies, fear and outrage.

These companies pretend they’re something bigger, or nobler, but what they really are is the largest publishers in history – after all, they make their money on advertising, just like other publishers. They should abide by basic standards and practices just like the ones that apply to newspapers, magazines, television and movies. I’ve had scenes in my movies cut or truncated to abide by those standards. Surely companies that publish material to billions of people should have to abide by basic standards just like film and television studios do.

Zuckerberg said social media companies should “live up to their responsibilities,” but he’s totally silent about what should happen when they don’t. By now, it’s pretty clear that they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves. In other industries, you can be sued for the harm you cause: Publishers can be sued for libel; people can be sued for defamation. I’ve been sued many times. But social media companies are almost completely protected from liability for the content their users post – no matter how indecent – by Section 230 of, get ready for it, the Communications Decency Act.

That immunity has warped their whole worldview. Take political ads. Fortunately, Twitter finally banned them, and Google says it will make changes, too. But if you pay Facebook, it will run any “political” ad you want, even if it’s a lie. It’ll even help you micro-target those lies to users for maximum effect. Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Adolf Hitler to post 30-second ads on his “solution” to the “Jewish problem.” Here’s a good way for Facebook to “live up to” its responsibilities: Start fact-checking political ads before running them, stop micro-targeted lies immediately, and when ads are false, don’t publish them.

Section 230 was amended last year so that tech companies can be held responsible for paedophiles who use their sites to target children. Let’s also hold them responsible for users who advocate for the mass murder of children because of their race or religion. And maybe fines are not enough. Maybe it’s time for Congress to tell Zuckerberg and his fellow CEOs: You already allowed one foreign power to interfere in US elections; you already facilitated one genocide; do it again and you go to prison.

In the end, we have to decide what kind of world we want. Zuckerberg claims his main goal is to “uphold as wide a definition of freedom of expression as possible.” Yet our freedoms are not only an end in themselves, but they’re also a means to another end – to our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And today these rights are threatened by hate, conspiracies and lies.

A pluralistic democratic society should make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray. If we do that – if we prioritize truth over lies, tolerance over prejudice, empathy over indifference and experts over ignoramuses – maybe we have a chance of stopping the greatest propaganda machine in history. We can save democracy. We can still have a place for free speech and free expression.

And, most important, my jokes will still work.

#Miscellaneous

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sampletext · 5 years

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Canadian Elections, and Spreading Falsehoods.

Living in Alberta I don’t see much of the political spectrum. 90% of Facebook, and ads, and the people are blue to the bone hardcore if you don’t bleed blue you should go and die Conservatives. Which from what I understand is completely opposite of how it is in Central Canada when it comes to Federal policies (Though that might be different now). They say that the Vocal Minority are the ones you hear, and that reigns true here. But the Minority is literally the entire province screaming at the rest of Canada in unison with “WE ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT!“ I’m hopefully being extremely hyperbolic here, but being surrounded by it, and seemingly part of the minority that hold a Centrist/ Liberalish political view the Conservative propaganda train is loud and clear here. And as much as I would love to say there is a Liberal Propaganda train to deconstruct and break down, there really isn’t as strong of one here. But that won’t stop most extreme right Conservatives from saying there is one. Which brings me to this blog post. For some reason a lot of Conservative supporters seem to be spreading falsehoods and out right lies about a lot of subjects from climate change to the nationality of one of the runners for Prime Minister. Its gotten to the point that the falsehoods drown out the truth. Its almost dystopian how fast the lies are labelled as “Absolutely true because I believe it to be true” by a lot of people here. So I’ve decided to just go into some of the arguments I’ve seen more than a handful of times on Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, and in person. Some of which sound pretty true, until you look at it. Before I start, I will point out I am not an economist nor am I a accountant. I am your average bare bones Canadian. So if anyone happens to actually read this and have real world actual degrees in any of these subjects please feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] and correct any errors I have made. Lets get into this. - “Canada spends BILLIONS of Dollars on foreign aid, when they could save the money and lower income taxes” Or any variation of “When they could -do something else with it-.” This is True. Canada is 2018 spent approximately $6.1 Billion on aiding foreign countries. Which sounds like a lot. Until you break it down. Canada’s Population is a hair over 37 million people, with about 26 million people paying some sort of income tax. I’m using income tax payers because Income tax is something people moan about the most here it seems. So that 6.1 billion is shared collectively between at least 26 million people. So each person pays about $235, rounded up, into foreign aid. The number becomes even smaller if you consider that not all that money comes from Income tax, or from just those 26 Million people. In the long run, its not as much money per person as they would want you to believe. Its barely enough to qualify for a good tax refund. Most get this back in GST rebates a year alone. (Sources: http://cidpnsi.ca/canadas-foreign-aid-2012-2/ , https://www.taxpayer.com/news-releases/ctf-study--who-pays-canada-s-income-tax-bill- ) - “The Conservatives are going to lower income tax, and other taxes so there is more money in our pocket.” Okay sure, they (The Conservatives) propose a gradual Income Tax decrease of 1.25% in 4 years. Which is great. That is on average $300 a year we don’t have to pay. That is actually good. Unless you realize that is about $300 less per person per year the government gets for services we as taxpayers use. That is a loss of about $7.8 Billion a year. So what would they cut to make up that money? But on the other hand only those who make $50,000 a year minimum would save that much. Making less means you will save less. So this tax decrease benefits people who make a fair bit higher than a lot of Canadians. Global News places amount of Canadians that would be able to claim the full reduction at ~10 million people. So just over quarter of Canadians would get the full amount refunded. (Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/5981369/canada-election-2019-tax-cuts-hikes/ ) - (This one is my favorite) “Alberta money supports Ontario and Quebec with the Equalization Payments! If we stopped paying them they wouldn’t have money!”

The Equalization payments are a thing. They are something paid from provinces that make money to provinces that don’t make as much money. Researching this is hard because there a lot of opinion pieces. What one can find though is that Quebec’s Revenue is made up of about 10% equalization payments, and Ontario revenue is 1% equalization payments. So it really doesn’t seem like Alberta is supporting Ontario. Maybe Quebec a bit, but not 100% of that money comes from Alberta.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments_in_Canada )

- “Canada only has money because of Alberta!” The Energy Sector consists of 11% of Canada’s Total GDP, or about $230 Billion a year. Alberta alone provides $71 Billion, so roughly 30% of the Energy sector is Alberta, or roughly 3% of Canada’s total GDP. Those numbers speak for themselves. (Source: https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy-and-economy/20062 ) - “Jagmeet Singh is not a Canadian.”

He was born and raised in the Toronto area... That makes him 100% Canadian. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagmeet_Singh ) - “Climate Change is Liberal Propaganda!” There are thousands of research papers that disagree and provide actually evidence to say otherwise. Climate Change is real, that is a fact. If you don’t believe it please go read one of the thousands of papers on the subject. (Source: Too many to list) I Will be adding more arguments and rebuttals below as I come across them, and research them a bit more. This post has already gotten pretty long and the ones I have listed here now are the main ones I have seen the past few days. I listed the main easy to find sources. These are all easily google able, literally the first few links of Google if you look up the questions and facts. Feel free to debate in the comments if you want. Be sure to be able to back up your claims with facts and sources please.

#Canada Politics #Canada election 2019 #Canada Conservative Party #Liberal #Canada #Alberta #Alberta Election #Election Debate #Election 2019 #Equalization Payments #Economy #Economics

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cecilspeaks · 7 years

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Ghost Stories: Bonus Tracks

You can purchase Ghost Stories here.

Transcript of the main tracks here.

16. CARLOS

The finale of my ghost story coming up.

But first. A lot of people don’t believe in ghosts, which is kinda weird, because we have an entire city full of them one town over in Pine Cliffs. But people just refuse to believe that there could be any presence of a spirit after a person dies. And I figured that there is only one way to really investigate the truth of the paranormal. And that is to ask a scientist.

So I invited my boyfriend Carlos to the radio station. Hi, Carlos!

Carlos: Hey, Cecil!

Cecil: So Carlos, what scientific evidence, if any, supports the existence of ghosts?

Carlos: Oh there is lots of valid research done on ghosts, like that famous story where Ben Franklin tied a kite to a gravestone, you know? Ghosts are 100 % scientifically real. In fact, I have a story about a project I worked on that proved that ghosts were real.

Cecil: Ooh.

Carlos: So, I was working late one night, and it was exactly midnight, OK? And there was a full moon, and I was alone in my laboratory. So context: right next door lab is a graveyard filled with former scientists who all failed to have OSHA standard eye wash stations. It’s very scary, OK?

So some of, like, the great minds of our field are buried there. Marie Curie, George Washington Carver, David Blaine, OK? But David Blaine, he comes in and he comes out, right, you got that.

But so… Back to the story, so I was pouring green bubbling liquid from one flask into a beaker full of orange steaming liquid, when I heard a noise, OK? Footsteps. [breathes heavily] I thought it was Winchell, one of my assistants, who lives in the crawl space above the lab. The footsteps were coming closer. I could hear the wind howling outside and I could see an owl on an angular branch just outside the window, it was staring back at me but... [whew] just a normal government surveillance owl!

And then the room, it grew so cold that I began to shiver. And the footsteps stopped suddenly, their sound coming from just behind me and I couldn’t look!

Cecil: Because you were frozen in fear!

Carlos: No, OK so like I said, I was pretty sure that it was just Winchell coming down the stairs..

Cecil: Oh, OK..

Carlos: Yeah so yeah, just stay with the story. So you know, thought he was getting a snack and then I was trying to finish my experiment by logging the results of what happened when I mixed the two liquids. Um ahem (quote), “the new mixture turned brownish”, I wrote in my science journal, satisfied at my productivity. But after that, I turned around to see that it wasn’t Winchell at all, it was an apparition, a hazy silvery form of a person and his hair was curly and wite, and he wore an 18th century cravat and long coat with like really ornate buttons like little flor de lis, you know, carved out it was so delightful. And anyway, he hovered a few inches off the ground and before I could say anything, the ghost opened its contorted wrinkled maw like this! [long pause, audience laughs]

Cecil: So this is the radio, Carlos.

Carlos: Then, stil making that ghastly face, he groaned. [groans] Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrr… [coughs, gasps]

Cecil: Oh.

Carlos: Anyway, he reached out his cloudy hand toward me, still moaning, and the wind outside roared, and I could hear the owl flapping quickly away. And he stepped forward and I heard the booming clop of his buckled shoe on the hardwood floor, and I jumped back and I shouted…

Cecil: Whoa Carlos, this is too scary.

Carlos: [high-pitched] No, how interesting!

Cecil: Wait, what?

Carlos: That is what I shouted, I said “how interesting!” This ghost with no real tangible form still made noise when he walked.

Cecil: Oh.

Carlos: And I asked the ghost, “how are you making that noise,” and he continued toward me still groaning. [groans] Right, ok. Still groaning and I backed away from him making notes the whole time! I had to circle backwards around the lab several times as he continued following me and I asked him more questions like, “so how did you die” and “where did you get those stunning thights, your calves look fantastic?” But he didn’t answesr. He simply maintained his slow pursuit. I ended up writing down some calculations and observations, but it was getting late so I backed on out of the lab. The ghost didn’t seem to want me to go. He wailed as I stepped out of the front and he made an even more horrible facial expression than before. Like this. [long pause, audience laughs]

Cecil: Radio.

Carlos: And while he made that facial expression, he made one final terrible sound, OK? Like this: eeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.. [gasps] I felt bad, so I told him, “I’ll be back Wednesday night, I want to learn more about you physically..”

Cecil: What?

Carlos: And then I said – oh god, no no no no. I said no no, that came out weird like I want to study your body and then I said aaah, wait wait I just mean I wanna experiment with you, you know? Agh, nevermind, I’ll see you Wednesday!

Cecil: Ohhh. That was a harrowing encounter!

Carlos: Yeah.

Cecil: So did you learn how the ghost makes sounds when he walks?

Carlos: Oh you know what, so it turns out he doesn’t.

Cecil: No.

Carlos. Yeah. That was Winchell just walking aroud the the kitchen, making a little snack. Just coincidentally exactly timed with the ghost. Also, really cool, I learned that the ghost was actually the ghost of Winchell’s like great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, visiting from early colonial Canada.

Cecil: Whoa! I’ve actually never heard of Canada. Where is that?

Carlos: I’m a scientist Cecil, not a map maker! [chuckles] It’s in Boston.

Cecil: Oh, OK. Whoa! Thank you for sharing your story, Carlos.

Carlos: Sure. You know I love it when [flirtily] science and radio overlap.

Cecil: [flirtily] I do too. [chuckles] Love you!

Carlos: Love you too.

Cecil: Thank you, Carlos.

17. DANA CARDINAL

So. Because the ghost stories competition is such an important event in our town, Night Vale’s Mayor, Dana Cardinal, has sent herself, Dana Cardinal. And she is here at the station to deliver her own press conference, so please welcome Mayor Dana Cardinal!

Hello there, Mayor Cardinal!

Dana: Hello to you, Cecil.

Cecil: Now you sent Pamela earlier to speak on your behalf.

Dana: And let me guess, she just told you this story about that rock she ate?

Cecil: Wellll…

Dana: There weren’t even any ghosts in her story, were there?

Cecil: Aaaah not explicitly, but her argument was that she we-

Dana: Cecil! Today it is I who speaks for myself. Not Pamela. Not hollow-eyed messenger children, or the City Council, or community radio, or that power all city officials have to completely take over anyone’s personality and body and use them to spread propaganda.

Cecil: Wait what, you can do that?

Dana: Today I am going to speak for myself. I want to tell a ghost story. It sounds like fun, and frankly being mayor of Night Vale is a lonely and tedious position. I could use some fun.

Cecil: Well great, let’s hear it!

Dana: [clears throat] This is a true story. Or as true as any story is, which is to say that it’s entirely made up. And it is about my great uncle Herbert. Now my great uncle Herbert owned the old mansion on the hill. You know, the one with walls continuing upright bricks meeting neatly doors sensibly shut, silence laying steadily against the wood and stone, and whatever walks there walks alone?

Cecil: Oh sure, yeah. I saw that real estate listing.

Dana: Right. Well, old Herbert died a few years back. His passing was sad, but not unexpected. Our family had long seen it coming because the day, time, and detailed description of the exact farm equipment he would be found scattered beneath were written in detail at his birth by the doctor on the birth certificate under “expiration date”. Also, he had cut off all contact many years earlier with his family, relying only on his silent glowering manservant, Sherfwood, to see to his affairs. Which is how it came to be that Sherfwood was at the door of my family’s house one morning with a message from my late great uncle. Whosoever could spend the night on the old mansion on the hill would inherit it, along with the rest of Herbert’s property.

Cecil: Whoa.

Dana: Mm hm, yeah. You know, you’d think a weirdo like that would have done something strange, like make everyone in my family uncomfortable by naming one specific person the owner and leaving the rest of us feeling left out. No, but instead he followed normal procedures for will settlement. So we all went to the old mansion on the hill and were shown to our rooms. We were nervous but excited, confident that sleeping inside a house couldn’t be that hard.

Cecil: Well, I do it almost every day.

Dana: Mm hm. But none of us made it through the night.

Cecil: Oh no! Dana, what happened?

Dana: Well it was the house. The house was full of truly hideous things, horrible things!

Cecil: Oh like monsters and ghosts?

Dana: No. Glass-topped tables!

Cecil: [gasps]

Dana: Lacker-veneered dressers.

Cecil: Ooh.

Dana: High-pile rugs. Wallpaper. Wallpaper, Cecil!

Cecil: No, eww. Just eww!

Dana: It was all so badly thought through. Everything clashed with everything else, the design was a disaster! All the cups in the kitchen were covered in a garish star design. We tried to ignore it, to grit our teeth and wait for dawn, hoping to find just a hint of Danish modern or even something made of driftwood. But even my cousin Denise, who’s a ghost, couldn’t stand it. She said that she did not want to waft transparently through any of those ecru walls.

Cecil: OK, now I am going to be sick.

Dana: Plus, what ghost wants to drift through walls anymore? Had Herbert never heard of an open concept floor plan? I mean, it provides more room for ghostly activities, like dragging chains and wailing! In the end, the only one willing to stay was Sherfwood, who had been in charge of designing the place, and so was the only one able to withstand the outdated décor.

Cecil: Ughh. Well, I don’t know if I would call that a ghost story, but at least it did have one ghost in it.

Dana: Don’t you see, Cecil? In this story, the house itself is the ghost.

Cecil: [long beat] Really?

Dana: No, that was a joke.

Cecil: Ah! Oh haha, ahahaa-hahaa, I totally get it now, that’s hilarious!

Dana: [long beat] [clears throat] You know Cecil, I love civic events like this. Serving your town, giving it every hour of your working day, can paradoxically make you distant from your town and from the people in it. You no longer are among them but over them. The dynamic shifts. I miss hanging out with you.

Cecil: Yeah, I miss hanging out with you too, Dana.

Dana: Well then let’s hang out sometime. How about anywhere but the old mansion on the hill?

Cecil: That sounds great.

Dana: OK.

Cecil: Thank you so much, Dana!

18. EARL HARLAN

So this Thursday afternoon, Night Vale’s hottest restaurant, Tourniquet, will be hosting a chefs master class, taught by executive chief LeShawn Mason and sous-chef Earl Harlan. Now, Earl has agreed to come up to the studio and talk about this educational culinary event. So please welcome Earl Harlan!

Earl: Hi Cecil! I am so excited to promote this class.

Cecil: Oh I can tell! I mean, you have your index fingers pulling back the corners of your mouth to expose your teeth.

Earl: Yeah, people say my smile really gives me away.

Cecil: Mm hmm.

Earl: Now, with so many popular cooking shows like Top Chef, The Great British Baking Show, Chopped, America’s Next Top Self-Surgeon and Who’s in the Slow Cooker?... culinary classes are in high demand. Chef Mason and I will be teaching amateur chefs some important cooking techniques. Things like knife skills, knifing skills, descaling a fish, chicken manipulation, using industrial strength lye to dissolve a corpse, how to peel an orange, and what that strange humming closet at the end of the counter is for.

Cecil: Oh yeah! Carlos and I have one of those humming closets, and when I open it up, there’s a light inside and cool air washes over me and I’m just like – what is this thing?

Earl: Well, that’s just your refrigerator, Cecil.

Cecil: Wait, that’s a refrigerator?!

Earl: What have you been using as a fridge?

Cecil: [beat] So tell us more about this master class um, Earl.

Earl: Well, Cecil, since this is the ghost story competition day, I had a ghost story I wanted to share with you, one I heard back when you and I were in the boy scouts. So I need to set the spooky campfire mood a little bit, so just hang on.

Cecil: OK. Um oh listeners, Earl is now stacking some wood on the floor, oh aand he is pouring gasoline over it…?

Earl: Oh haha no no no no, no I wouldn’t pour gasoline on your studio floor, Cecil! This is just a fancy bourbon that’s sold in five-gallon gasoline canisters.

Cecil: And listeners, he is now lighting a fire, um, [chuckling] there is a large fire in the studio, listeners!

Earl: No no, like I said it’s just bourbon! Right, here’s a stick with a marshmallow on it.

Cecil: Oh, thank you.

Earl: Here’s another one with a hot dog…

Cecil: Thank you.

Earl: And here’s another one with a live rabbit.

Cecil: Oooh! Cute and delicious! [creepy chuckle]

Earl: So the story goes, as our old scout leader Ron Veal used to tell it. one summer, a troupe of scouts went camping. They didn’t know how to use a compass yet, so they followed the North Star. But it turns out that what they thought was the North Star was just a firefly, and they were soon lost. It was getting dark. They were alone and afraid. It had been over an hour, so they had to rely on their special survival training. So they drew straws, and the scout who drew the short straw was eaten by the others.

Cecil: Uh, I never actually completed that activity, so I never got my survivalist badge.

Earl: Aww. I did.

Cecil: Oh, cool.

Earl: [clears throat] So. By early that evening, the boys had painted their faces, removed their scout uniforms, donned animal pelts, and developed their own language, government, and currency. They sharpened sticks and invented war chants. Then, just as the sun went down, they heard a voice close by. The voice called, [cheerfully] “Dinnertime, boys!” It was one of the boys’ mothers, calling from the porch of the back yard they were camping in. But they had been away from civilization for so many hours, they did not understand English anymore. Her voice was gibberish. They silenced their chants and paused building the bonfire, and the voice called again. “Enough horsing around, kids! Come inside!” Now they understood her welcoming gesture, so they went inside and they had dinner. The voice called out again, this time from across the dining room table. “Where’s Richie?” But they said nothing. They only ate the food ravenously with their bare hands. “Do you boys know where Richie went?” the voice called again, the boys’ eyes darting guiltily to one another. [high-pitched] “Richieee!” came the voice one final time, but the scouts only shifted in their chairs, pretending not to understand her refined, civilized rhetoric.

[creepy voice] To this day, it is said that if you stand in a backyard at dusk, you can hear the sound of wind rustling through trees, and birds chirping, and you can watch the bright dot in the sky turn orange and sink into the horizon.

Cecil: So that must be the ghost of Richie, right?

Earl: No, that’s just the wind and the birds and a sunset.

Cecil: Oh?

Earl: [creepy voice] But Richie’s ghost did rejoin the troupe later that night, and they all played board games.

Cecil: Ooh.

Earl: He got his apparition badge, and all of the other boys eventually got theirs, too!

Cecil: Oh wow! Gosh, it just feels like centuries since we were boy scouts together!

Earl: Yeah that’s because it has been, Cecil. How have we lived so long? And forgotten so much?

Cecil: [long silence]

These last lines are in the next track for some reason.

Cecil: Well, thank you so much coming on Earl.

Earl: You bet.

19. INTERN JEFFREY CRANOR

I’ve asked my station intern, Felix, to prepare a ghost story of his very own. You see, Felix has been such a hard worker with a great attitude, and I wanted to reward him with some practical broadcasting experience. So Felix, come on over to the microphone, and tell Night Vale your story!

…You’re not Felix.

Intern Jeffrey Cranor: No, Felix couldn’t… [sighs] [softly] make it.

Cecil: So who are you?

IJC: Oh I’m your new intern, I’m Jeffrey Cranor.

Cecil: Oh, intern. Intern Jeffrey, alright um, hey what happened to Felix?

IJC: It’s difficult to say.

Cecil: Aww. Because you don’t know what happened?

IJC: No I know, it’s just emotionally difficult to say it out loud. You know the fridge in the break room?

Cecil: Yes.

IJC: And you know how it makes that mechanical grinding noise whenever you open it, that krrrrr?

Cecil: Oh, yeah yeah.

IJC: Well it stopped making that noise. But you know how blood pours of it now when you open it?

Cecil: No?

IJC: Oh oh oh, heh, well okay let me back up then. You know how near the break room there’s that hole in the wall? Cecil: Oh yeah, I’ve been asking operations to fix that for weeks now.

IJC: Right and you know how that hole is like three feet wide and these weird noises and shouts can be heard from it? and you know how Felix was always talking to those voices?

Cecil: Oh yeah, like all the time!

IJC: Right, like (blablabla).. So you know how when you die, your soul drifts through all of time mostly simultaneously, it’s not really as a ghost although some people manifest as such, but most of us fill the void with our decimated consciousness, all of the pain of life melts away as we pass into the beyond, and the sweet relief is immediately replaced by the crushing pain of knowledge, of eternity and the vastness of a universe that has no fences and no borders, but in death we can see what lies beyond, and you know how it is awful and beautiful and inspiring and ultimately boring because of the whole forever thing, you know?

Cecil: I mean, I’ve never died.

IJC: [laughs] OK, Cecil. Anyway. You know the hunger, the hunger we feel during mortality? You know, that insatiable urge to fill our temporary bodies with comfort, sustenance, something to momentarily destruct us from the immense pain of it all, yada yada yada? Felix had that hunger. He had that hunger, and he went to the fridge in the break room. Because he remembered the potato salad he brought to work last December but didn’t finish. And the fridge made that noise, that krrrrrr! Felix went to open the door but that was, he had forgotten what the voice in the hole in the wall had just been telling him, and that was unfortunate because it turns out that that voice in the hole in the wall was him, it was Felix’s immortal soul across all of time attempting to warn Felix that there was an active jet engine from an Airbus 8320 inside the fridge door. Which Amy in sales left there yesterday after lunch. Krrrrrrrrrrrshhhhhhhhhhup! [long beat] I mean. And Felix was just… [sighs] Um, HR made Amy take the jet engine home but the – oh man, the insides of that fridge is still covered in uh… memories of Felix.

Cecil: [whispers] That’s terrible! Well… [normal voice] To the family of intern Felix… He was a really good intern.

IJC: He was.

Cecil: And he will be missed.

IJC: Yeeeah, I guess. I mean, he’s still in the wall over there, you can go talk to him through that hole right over there.

Cecil: Oh, well that’s good, well could you ask him to finish up his filing by the end of the day please?

IJC: [chuckles]You got it, boss!

Cecil: Alright. Oh hey, Jeffrey Jeffrey Jeffrey. You seem to know like a lot about the afterlife. Are you – dead? I mean I mean I mean are you – like a ghost?

IJC: Oh.. It’s um, difficult to say.

Cecil: Oh, because you you don’t wanna talk about it?

IJC: No it’s just difficult because I’m eating this peanut butter stuffed pretzel. [chews]

Cecil: OK.

IJC: [mumbles through chewing]

Cecil: Oh.

IJC: [chews for a long time] But no, I’m not.

Cecil: Alright, well welcome to the station!

IJC: Thanks boss!

Cecil: Alright, thank you Jeffrey!

20. LOUIE BLASKO

Cecil: It is time for one of our favorite segments: Louie Blasko’s music moment!

Louie Blasko: No.

Cecil: No?

LB: No I don’t wanna do music, I’m trying to get out of the whole… music thing. I, I’d like to tell a ghost story.

Cecil: But but you’ve got a ukulele and a music stand?

LB: I don’t think so.

Cecil: OK. So listeners, it is now time for Louie Blasko’s – ghost story moment!

LB: Thank you Cecil. Now my horror story is about a haunted locker room at Night Vale High.

Cecil: Mm.

LB: Now there have always been strange sounds heard in there, you know footsteps, the cawing of crows. Distant warped voices singing the Night Vale High fight song.

Cecil: Wait wait wait, Night Vale High has a fight song?

LB: Oh yeah, you know, it’s that song they sing before every football game to remind us that no matter who wins, everyone involved will eventually perish.

Cecil: It’s not really ringing a bell.

LB: No no no, it’s uh, [tone-deaf] “You didn’t have to do that to him, uh he had nothing to do with any of this…”?

Cecil: No…

LB: You know it’s like uh, “I-I was gonna get you the money, I just needed like” um…

Cecil: I dunno, maybe, I…

LB: OK OK. W-w- uh [clears throat]. [plays ukulele, sings] “When doing business with spiideers, I advice that you always honor your debts. I have it on the very good authority of the most reliable insiiiider, that though they seem harmless, even dare I say kind, on the day of the deal when the contract is signed, and though, [out of breath] I cannot stress enough that you must bear in mind that they do not forgive and they will not forget…

[high-pitched] “Ooo-ooo, ooo-oooo, o-o-o-a ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-oo…

[speaks] And you can tell yourself: What have I possibly got to lose? But even a humble music teacher, who has never known the warm breath of love, whose cold heart has no room in it for friendship, companionship, partnership or any manner of ship whatsoever. They will find, who long ago traded his soul for a can of trombone grease, and a very rare limited edition Chet Baker LP. No, even a man such as this is not immune, for somehow they know [whispers] the architecture of his heart even better than he knows it himself. And they will find that one thing or person that he cherishes above all else in this world, that single creature whose presence gives him just a little rush of joy. We’ll use just for example, [sings] a boy.

[talks] A pudgy, awkward little boy. We’ll just call him Harold. Ignored and abused by his schoolmates, spectacularly unmemorable in almost every respect. But with a certain promise on the clarinet and not without a charming – lack of fashion sense.

[high-pitched] Oooo-ooo, ooo-oo-oo, o-o-o-o-a-oooo-ooo-oooo. [yells] Everybody! [Cecil and audience chime in] Ooo-ooo, o-o-o-a- ooo-oo-ooo…

[yells] They act with speed, great precision, and professional care. Leaving just a small smudge of blood and a little bit of hair. And an endlessly echoing scream through the halls! [speaks] As if to intimate that his horrible suffering has still not ended yet, [screams] at aaaall!

[speaks] And I know that the terms of the contract were abundantly [high-pitched] cleeear! The language concise, and the interest rates [falsetto] faaaaiiiir! But as much as one pleads and as much as one begs, to their eight empty eyes and their long furry legs… [quietly] He wasn’t coming back. He really isn’t coming back. Ooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhh…

[yells] You didn’t have to do that to him! He had nothing to do with any of this! I was going to get you the money, I told you that! Ooooooo-oooo, oooo-oo-o-ooo…

Four, three, two, one! [Cecil joins in] Night Vale High is number one! Zero, negative one, negative two, if we go down then so will you!!”

LB: [yells] I’m so sorry, Harold! I am so so sorry!

Cecil: OK, yes, I do remember that song now. Great, great. So OK, um, let’s get on with the story then.

LB: What? Oh oh oh oh yeah uh, that was the story. Uh, Night Vale High’s locker room, it’s haunted. Uh.. the end?

Cecil: OK.

LB: Well, thanks for having me. Oh and if anyone wants to learn the basics of bluegrass, just head down to the burned down site where Louie’s Music Shop used to sit, and just hang out there in the ruins til it gets dark. And then, wait until you are taken gently by the hand. And then, bluegrass lessons! Or something else - will happen.

Cecil: Thank you, Louie!

21. MELONY PENNINGTON

So listeners, I have to admit something. Um, I had some computer difficulties earlier and I had to call technology support. And actually I was pleasantly surprised when Night Vale’s top computer programmer and creator of the local numbers station, WZZZ, showed up to fix my computer. So please welcome Melony Pennington!

Melony, welcome to the radio station!

Melony Pennington: I’m in a radio station? You just said that. I mean, you say a lot of things. How many things do you say that you mean? How many things do you mean to say? What are some mean things you’ve said? Maybe radio station is a joke. Like maybe it’s your house, and you’ve just left some headphones and microphones lying around and you’re like, this is totally my radio station. L.O.L!

Cecil: Well I never joke when it comes to the radio.

MP: I didn’t catch your name. Did you know saying LOL out loud takes just as long as saying the words they stand for? Loss Of Lungs.

Cecil: Oh.

MP: But somehow it feels shorter saying the initials, LOL.

Cecil: You’ve such an active mind, Melony! Oh, thank you by the way for helping me with my computer earlier. Um, I’m so embarrassed that the problem turned out to be, it wasn’t even plugged into the wall.

MP: You would be surprised at how often tht happens, even with computer professionals. Just the other day, I was trying to debug the software the City Council uses to control earthquakes. I brought my laptop, like usual, but then I realized I completely forgot to bring a basic (-) [0:01:41] Ethernet cable to plug into the network. Thankfully, it turns out the device that controls earthquakes wasn’t even running Windows (-X). It’s a glowing red gem inside the hollowed-out skull of some land mammal. Horse, I guess? So I didn’t even need cables, those things run on wi-fi. And you can connect to any wi-fi network with chanting and a little blood.

Cecil: Wow!

MP: Got that software all patched up.

Cecil: Wow! It’s hard to believe that we can control earthquakes with a glowing red gem!

MP: Oh, you can control anything with one of those. I have one that I use to make birds attack my enemies.

Cecil: Oh.

MP: Yeah. I also have it set to move the stars around into coded messages, plus it runs Bluetooth audio from my record player. They’re really handy! [chuckles] I’m tired of talking about that subject. I have a ghost story for the ghost story contest. I’m going to tell it now.

Cecil: Oh excellent, I would love to hear it!

MP: OK, so I got a brand new computer. It was night and I was home alone, or I thought I was alone. When I turned the computer on, the blinking cursor on the screen started moving, without me touching the keys. The cursor began typing out a message. “Help,” the screen said. “I have been murdered and my killer programmed me into this computer.” “Oh, like a literal ghost in the machine!” I exclaimed. Then, there was a long, long silence. I watched the cursor closely, but it just blinked in place. Just when I thought I couldn’t wait any longer, it moved again and began to write out a message.

Cecil: What did it say?

MP: It wrote, “you have to type it out for me to know what you’re saying. I can’t hear you speak.”

Cecil: Mm hm.

MP: So I wrote back, and he told me he used to work in a computer factory, which is how he ended up inside this computer, and that his killer is an evil supergenius programmer.

Cecil: Whoa, whoa, but if the ghost was a computer program that the killer wrote, then the KILLER must have been the one sending the messages. [very fast] Oh my gosh this is so exciting, a cat and mouse chase between two brilliant programmers, so you must have had to decipher clues from the program but then had to consider whether the killer was one step ahead of you, and how do you determine the truth, how do you know what’s important and what’s a red herring, oh my gosh I live murder mysteries so much! What happened next Melony, what happened?

MP: Oh, I formatted the drive.

Cecil: [disappointed] Oh.

MP: [chuckles] It was a new computer, and these box store manufacturers preprogram so much bulky chunk on there. Do I need a cloud-based calendar solution and a pinball game and the ghost victim of an evil programmer? No I don’t. So I formatted and installed my own operating system.

Cecil: Wow, that was pretty easy then.

MP: Mm hm. I’ve got a load of memory now for gaming though. [excited] Hey, hey look, the birds are gathering! Oh I think something cool is about to go down. I should go.

Cecil: Well bye Melony.

MP: Bye, whoever you are. Nice house.

Cecil: Oh, thank you. Thank you, Melony.

22. MICHELLE NGUYEN

A quick update on next Saturday’s open mic night at Dark Owl Records. For more on that, let’s talk with Dark Owl owner, Michelle Nguyen!

Michelle, thanks for coming in.

Michelle Nguyen: Thanks, Cecil. This is Dark Owl Records’ first ever open mic night. We are encouraging everyone in Night Vale who has a song to sing, a standup comedy set, or a thing on their back they want a doctor to look at to come down to Dark Owl Records.

Cecil: OK, so attendees will sign up for a slot to get up on stage, sing their song, do their comedy, or get their back looked at.

MN: Oh, god no. I don’t wanna hear any of that. An open mic isn’t an invitation to just walk up it and start yammering like you’re a real artist. Eww. No.

Cecil: Oh.

MN: An open mic is a live microphone and an empty stage at the front of the room. Attendees will sit quietly and stare at it.

Cecil: But you said that people who have a song, a comedy set, or a diagnosis needed should come.

MN: Of course. I only want people who think of themselves as performers to come. But I want them to pay attention to the only real true performing art. Silence and nothingness. If we were to just stop all of that for a moment and listen to that silence, we would understand what art is. A void.

Cecil: Oh. That’s actually quite beautiful.

MN: Oh no, it is.

Cecil: Yeah. I mean this sounds like a lovely event and inviting and welcoming night for everyone to experience art together. So thank you for sharing your space with Night Vale.

MN: On second thought, I’d rather just hear people read their awful poems and struggle through another (Churches) cover. Everyone come on down to open mic night next Saturday and kill us all slowly with your desperate need for attention.

Cecil: OK! Oh, while you’re here, do you have a ghost story you wanna share?

MN: Yes. I was making myself a mix tape one night. I recorded myself chewing on some tin foil, as well as the sounds of distant coyotes. Coyotes are dope. Also I was wearing a leather wristband, knee-high red socks, and armored chest plate because – it was fashion week.

Cecil: Ah! Mm, I wore my new antlers and rubber hip waiters because it was fashion week. [chuckles]

MN: Antlers and hip waiters? Was it fashion week 2008?

Cecil: [long beat] [through clenched teeth] Go on with your story, Michelle.

MN: So when I played the tape later, it wasn’t what I recorded at all. What I heard was not the chewing or the coyote howls. It was something much much worse. What I heard chilled me to my bones.

Cecil: What was it?

MN: It was a hiss, like a single unbroken breath. A gentle… shhhhhhhh, for like 30 minutes on both sides of the tape. I wept from fright. I was terrified, I couldn’t turn it off! Shhhhhhh.. It must be a curse, a haunted sound that once heard cause you to die exactly one year later. Now that I think about it, that would be pretty exciting. No one in the music industry is doing anything like that anymore. I mean, Madonna popularized audio death curses in the 80’s, but that was like 30 years ago, so it’s like it never happened.

Cecil: OK Michelle, that shhhh sound across both sides of the tape, I’m pretty sure that the recording just failed, and you were listening to a blank cassette. So you’re not gonna die in a year.

MN: [long beat] [sadly] Oh.

Cecil: Are you OK?

MN: [sadly] Nothing fun ever happens to me.

Cecil: Oh well, well that’s not true! I mean, you have a great record store, you have good friends, and you host fantastic events. You’re an important part of our town, Michelle!

MN: [softly] Thanks Cecil. That means a lot. [angrily] I guess!

Cecil: Oh OK, well I’ll see you soon.

MN: [angrily] Don’t tell anyone I accepted your compliment!

Cecil: Alright, I won’t, I won’t. Thank you Michelle! [long beat] She likes me.

23. SHERIFF SAM #1

Oh but first, listeners, my red phone is ringing. And that means it’s time to pick up the beige phone and hear which of the six other ringing phones I should be picking up, so let’s see here. Orange. Oh, that means it’s the sheriff, oh – standing right next to me in the studio!

Sheriff Sam: It is a simple system.

Cecil: Oh, hello Sheriff Sam! You know, you could always just knock and say hello.

SS: But we already spent the money on this coded phone stuff. The taxpayers deserve to get what they paid for, even if it makes everyone’s lives harder. That’s democracy. Or maybe it isn’t. I don’t know or care what democracy is.

Cecil: So how has this day of ghost stories gone for you, Sam?

SS: Look, I want to tell a ghost story but uh, I’ll be honest Cecil..

Cecil: Please.

SS: I’m afraid.

Cecil: You’re afraid of ghosts?

SS: Of ghosts? Well of course. But also – pine trees. They’re just so tall and pointy, you know? And I’m also afraid of the tiny scampering feet of mice I can hear in the ceiling running back and forth, and in addition, I’m afraid that while I sleep an earthquake will happen, or a flood, or a sunspot. I’m afraid of the night time because I can’t see anything and – I’m afraid of the daytime because I can see everything.

Cecil: Oh.

SS: I’m afraid of action and interaction. I’m afraid of contradictions, I’m afraid of food poisoning. But do you know what I’m really afraid of? San dunes, terrible things, like indecisive mountains. Are you a hill or a heap? Make up your mind, sand dune! And I’m afraid of being afraid. I’m afraid that if I’m afraid for too long, then that’s all there will be to me.

Cecil: Well, maybe it’s time you faced your fears.

SS: Ooh... No. I’m quite afraid of faces. The only person I’m not afraid of is the Faceless Old Woman who Secretly Lives in My Home. Or I wouldn’t be, except that I’m also afraid of the elderly.

Cecil: Now I gotta say this doesn’t seem like you, I mean you’re always so authoritative and shouty.

SS: Well what I seem like and what I am is not the same! [chuckling] Except I am very shouty. I mean not now obviously but then [shouts] suddenly, at any moment I am shouting and I cannot hear my fears!

Cecil: Aww, there’s the sheriff I know.

SS: But then I’m not shouting and I’m afraid again. Cecil, one day I will look you right in the eye, and I will tell you a ghost story. I promise you that.

Cecil: Well great!

SS: Until then, Cecil – uh oh, it appears your silver phone is ringing, and you know what that means.

Cecil: Uhh, actually I don’t. What does the silver phone mean? Oh.. Now they’re gone. Now I’m gonna be worried about this.

24. SHERIFF SAM #2 This is the same story told by Dana above

Oh, listeners, it appears that Sheraiff Sam has something to add to their previous statement as… they are currently breaking down my door with a battering ram and have thrown several smoke canisters into the room. [coughs] Sheriff, what is this emergency?

SS: Cecil, I’m ready. Even though I’m still afraid, I want to tell a ghost story of my own. It’s my legal right, says so in the law. Don’t try to censor me.

Cecil: I won’t. You know, you could have just asked, I mean you don’t need to break down the door.

SS: Oh no, the door broke itself.

Cecil: Oh.

SS: We were trying to stop it. Anyway. This is a true story. Or as true as any other story is, which is to say that it is entirely made up. And it’s about my great uncle Herbert. Now, my great uncle Herbert owned the old mansion on the hill. You know, the one with walls continuing upright, bricks meeting neatly, doors sensibly shut, silence laying steadily against the wood and stone, and whatever walks there walks alone?

Cecil: Yeah, sure. I saw that real estate listing.

SS: Right. Well, old Herbert died a few years back. His passing was sad, but not unexpected. Our family had long seen it coming because the day, time, and detailed description of the exact farm equipment he would be found scattered beneath were written in detail at his birth by the doctor on the birth certificate under “expiration date”. Also, he had cut off all contact many years earlier with his family, relying only on his silent glowering manservant, Sherfwood, to see to his affairs. Which is how it came to be that Sherfwood was at the door of my family’s house one morning with a message from my late great uncle. Whosoever could spend the night on the old mansion on the hill would inherit it, along with the rest of Herbert’s property.

Cecil: Oo, wow.

SS: Yes. You know, you’d think a weirdo like that would have done something strange, like make everyone in my family uncomfortable by naming one specific person the owner and leaving the rest of us feeling left out. But instead he followed normal procedures for a state settlement. We all went to the old mansion on the hill and were shown to our rooms. We were nervous but excited, confident that sleeping inside a house couldn’t be that hard.

Cecil: I mean, I do it almost every day.

SS: But none of us made it through the night.

Cecil: Oh no! Sheriff, what happened?

SS: It was the house. [sighs] The house was full of truly hideous things, horrible things!

Cecil: Monsters, ghosts?

SS: No. Glass-topped tables!

Cecil: [gasps]

SS: Lacker-veneered dressers.

Cecil: Ohh.

SS: High-pile rugs. Wallpaper. Wallpaper, Cecil!

Cecil: Oh god!

SS: It was all so badly thought through. Everything clashed with everything else, the design was a disaster! All the cups in the kitchen were covered in a garish star design. We tried to ignore it, to grit our teeth and wait for dawn, hoping to find just a hint of Danish modern or something made of driftwood. But even my cousin Denise, who’s a ghost, couldn’t stand it. She said she did not want to waft transparently through any of those ecru walls.

Cecil: Oh god, ecru? I’m gonna be sick!

SS: In the end, the only one willing to stay was Sherfwood, who had been in charge of designing the place, and so was the only one able to withstand the outdated décor.

Cecil: Ughh. Well, I don’t know if I would call that a ghost story, but at least it did have a ghost in it.

SS: But I told it, didn’t I? I’m proud of myself. Thank you. But uh, but I am sorry about your door, heh. I’m sorry about a lot of things. I find that scaring someone else does help alleviate my own fears, so I had to break down your door, I’m sorry.

Cecil: That’s OK, Sheriff. You know, a true apology is changing how you act in the future.

SS: Mmm.. that sounds difficult. I-I’m not sorry enough for that. I said some words and that should make up for anything I’ve ever done or ever will do. Until next time, Cecil!

Cecil: Alright, until next time She- oh, and… [long beat] And they broke my window on their way out. [sighs]

#welcome to night vale #wtnv transcripts #live shows #ghost stories #sorry it took me a few days #but i was really swamped at work

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roland-terrasold-blog · 7 years

Text

Journal 54

I apologize for abruptly ending my last entry. Just thinking about Cardinal Zalbrag and his take on Sarenrae’s teachings sickens me. I’m up late tonight in hopes that I can finally catch up this journal to the present, I’m still behind by a day or so. It’s not like I’d be sleeping well tonight anyways.

I left off after talking to Mayor Zalag of Sandpoint, who kindly offered to throw a parade in our honor where we could try to clear Elkin’s name. And then I ran into Zalbrag, who I could tell was a total snake after only a brief conversation. My anger at the church’s treatment of Elkin likely didn’t help to color him in the kindest light, but his actions later have cemented my feelings on the man.

Linda must have picked up on how I was feeling, because she offered to come with me when I meet with Zalbrag. I told Linda that I appreciated the gesture, and I really sincerely did, but this was something I had to do myself. I told her if I felt I needed to bring someone, I would ask Nel to come with me. The problem was stemming from the church whose creed I follow, so I feel it’s my responsibility to clear Elkin’s name and undo the harm the church has done. Linda didn’t push the issue, which I also appreciate, although she made it clear the offer would still be open if I changed my mind.

After Zalbrag left we were approached by another man, Bulba of the Pathfinder Society. THE Pathfinder Society. If I’d been in a better state of mind, I likely would have been deeply honored and eager to meet with him. After all, back in my mercenary days Ashton and I sometimes dreamed of someday being skilled enough adventurers to join the Pathfinders. I doubt they ever would have accepted us given our track record, but we hardly had the self awareness to know that back then.

We went to the Rusty Dragon to drink and hear Bulba’s proposal. We were happy to see Betsy still owned the tavern in Ameiko’s place. Sarenrae bless her, Betsy is such a sweet woman. She noted that Elkin wasn’t with us and lamented how the town has been depicting him, and when she saw that I was in a poor mood she insisted on bring out food for us. I deeply appreciate her kindness. She helped to remind me why we keep protecting Sandpoint. It’s because no matter how bad things look, there’s always people like her, Mayor Zalag, and Father Zantas.

The others spoke with Bulba, I listened enough to know what job we were being offered. Essentially the Pathfinders knew we were heading to Xin’Shalast soon, and seeing as no one from the Pathfinder Society had ever gotten inside before they wanted us to gather any ancient technology we found. They offered to pay handsomely for anything of use we could bring back.

We didn’t get to talk to him much after he detailed the job, as he had his own mission he was going on. Two of his companions showed up and they all left. Something about a rebellion in Hell, apparently we weren’t the only group facing down a power evil right now.

The rest of us stayed behind in the tavern for some time. After a while Ichibod showed up and made a bit of a commotion at the front of the tavern, before we steered him to our table. He kept trying to pay people in Blackwellian money, which is made of paper rather than being on coins. Which makes it all of worthless here, but he doesn’t seem to quite grasp that.

Betsy kindly gave him some mead, feeling that he needed it with how he was acting. This may have been a terrible mistake. That man holds his alcohol as poorly as Ashton did. He was embarrassingly drunk.

Before he had drunk himself under the table, however, his son Timmy appeared. Apparently Clyde and Mary had left Timmy at the Rusty Dragon knowing that our group was likely to stop by our old stomping grounds. The young boy only seemed a little concerned about his father’s drastic change in appearance, and mostly seemed happy to finally be with his family again. He’s a pretty young kid but he was extremely well spoken, he seems smart for his age. Ichibod seems very proud of him. I’m glad we came across him. Regardless of what Mary’s reason for working with Clyde may be, abandoning her son in an unfamiliar place was unbelievably cruel.

After a while, we left the tavern to head back to the ship. Unae had gotten some of Betsy’s cooking to go to give to Elkin. We knew we would need to tell Elkin about the state of the town before he ended up wandering into Sandpoint on his own.

We were too late on that front. We ran into Elkin on the way back. He was standing in front of one of the many murals which depicted the four of us. The look on his face was heart wrenching. I can only imagine how he might have felt…

Unae gave Elkin the food she got him and we walked with him back to the ship. Whispers and stares followed us, and this time it felt pointedly different than the reverence myself, Linda, and Unae had gotten from the people that morning.

Ichibod tried to help cheer Elkin up by buying a toy Elkin for Timmy at the shop. Timmy, cute kid that he is, scribbled a happy face over the toy Elkin’s demonic looking mask. Elkin was still in an understandably sour mood, but I do hope the gesture helped a little.

Back at the ship, I swore to Elkin that I would do everything in my power to fix this. Elkin told us not to rock the boat, since the town likes the rest of us just fine. I couldn’t accept that answer, however. Elkin was miserable and in a way I was to blame. Nel keeps trying to tell me this isn’t the case, but it really is. If I weren’t with the group the church wouldn’t have taken an interest in them. There would still be some prejudice against Elkin. That’s unfortunately inevitable at this point. But it wouldn’t have grown into this monstrous lie that the church made it into, and the lie likely wouldn’t be as universally accepted as the truth without their backing.

As such, I had every intention of rocking the boat.

While I tried to clear my head, I ended up chatting with Ichibod for a bit. He was drunk enough I question how much he remembers of our conversation, or how much of what he said is actually accurate. He told me that he had been kidnapped by Blackwell as a kid and placed on the moon, and that he met his real mother and she’s a hag (I don’t know how literal he was being. Given his powers, I could believe it. But I was under the impression that changelings were generally women.) He was uncertain about the future, for good reason given how much our group has uprooted his life. He told me he really doesn’t understand what our group is actually doing. I decided against trying to explain the entire story to him while he was this drunk, but I did tell him that our next step would be another ancient Thassilonian ruin. He seemed to sober up slightly at the mention of Xin’Shalast, his interest piqued by the idea of finding ancient Thassilonian technology. I’m sure when he’s sober Ichibod will be happy to know that’s exactly what Bulba asked us to do there. Eventually Ichibod fell into a drunken sleep, and I managed to pry myself away to meditate on my next move.

Some time later, I remembered that Unae had been talking about her concern at where we would take the children to keep them safe while we handled Xin’Shalast. Linda didn’t intend on leaving her charges with anyone else, and I doubted that Ichibod would be willing to leave Timmy behind in this unfamiliar world. Nor would I encourage it, if something happened to Ichibod he might spend the rest of his life thinking his father abandoned him as well…

In part because of this and in part because I wanted to get my mind off of what was happening in Sandpoint, I decided to work on ‘customizing’ my demiplane, so to speak. It took a number of hours to finish. By the time I returned to the ship, Unae had returned from what she called ‘spreading propaganda’. Basically she’d been gently correcting people on their view of Elkin by acting shocked whenever they said anything bad about him, and told them that his title is ‘the Protector’. (Did I mention that we all apparently have titles in town? Unae is the Serene Huntress. Linda is the Titan’s Arm Legionnaire. Mine is the Transcendent Sinner. We’re trying to get a new title to stick for Elkin, be it Protector or something else. The one the town uses for Elkin is cruel, and I’d rather not acknowledge it here.)

Unae had also commissioned an artist to make a more accurate representation of Elkin, but he needed Elkin to come be a model if he was going to do so. Elkin was understandably scared to go alone, and asked that the rest of us come as well. We gladly agreed.

In the meantime I showed them around our new hideaway. I tried to make it a place that everyone would feel comfortable and at home, although I may have gone overboard. I needed a distraction, and designing the perfect safe haven was actually rather relaxing. Elkin admitted to having peeked into the demiplane with Unae while I was working, and according to them it was a bit terrifying in progress. To each their own I suppose.

If it hadn’t been for the issues with the church and Sandpoint, I suspect I would have slept well that night. I am obviously fond of my new room, seeing as I designed it.

The next day we went to meet the artist who would Unae had commissioned. We stayed there for quite a few hours while he sketched Elkin…and then sketched Ichibod for good measure, deciding to make a mural for him as well. Linda and I spent much of that time reading, while the others browsed the various sketches that littered the house. Unae especially waited with the patience of a saint, at least Linda and I had reading material, and Ichibod kept himself busy digging through sketches and exploring the house.

I just heard footsteps in the hall. There was no one there, and no sound of the door or magic I could sense. I think I’ve been up too late if my mind is beginning to play with me like that. I have no choice but to finish this entry tomorrow.

#Journal Entry #pathfinder #Rise of the Runelords

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