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tnmeem · 2 months

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Avatar The Last Airbender Live Action: Is It Actually Good?

So I actually haven't finished my review of this show yet because I haven't finished the entire season yet. But I'm excited about it so here's a little excerpt from what I'm working on right now.

Character Changes

I’m going to try really hard not to let nostalgia ruin my enjoyment of this show. Because so far, it’s honestly not bad. Sure, I keep comparing it to the original every two seconds but if I had no knowledge of the cartoon, I think I could reasonably enjoy this show. And so in that vein, let’s talk about some of the character changes that happened. Some of it I like, some of it I don’t.

Give Me Back Sokka’s Misogyny

Listen, as much as I despise misogynistic teenage boys, there’s such a thing called character development. It’s a very important part of compelling storytelling. And Sokka’s getting the misogyny beaten out of him was a compelling storyline. Yes, it’s a character flaw. But of course a traumatised teenage boy who has never left his tiny town, who had been forced into a leadership role would have some kooky ideas. All it took for him to grow and accept reality was to come out of the narrow town he lived in.

But in the live action, he’s just sexist in a subtler way. Don’t think I don’t see the way he speaks to Katara. He may not be telling her she’s better of sewing and cooking because of her gender, but he definitely doesn’t treat her as an equal. Or what about how he acts around Suki at the start. You’re telling me this boy doesn’t have any misogynistic ideas? Then why is he working under the assumption that he could take down a seasoned warrior with absolutely no formal training?

His actions don’t make sense if you take away his original characterisation. Sokka started off as a misogynistic twat! That’s why he treated Katara the way he did. That’s why he got his arse kicked by Suki. Otherwise, his actions don’t make sense.

I’m Not Gonna Lie: Suki’s Hilarious!

I know that cartoon Suki was a smooth talker but I honestly love the idea of a version of her who’s been isolated for most of her life, finds a boy she likes and figures the best way to impress him is to beat the shit out of him. It’s honestly adorable. And I like the fact that she has an active, involved mother. She’s a teenage girl! Why was there no parental figure around?

Sure, it’s a kids cartoon. There are going to be things that don’t make sense. But Suki deserves a mum! It validates her as a child: which is what she is. She’s still learning and growing. Sure, she’s an elite warrior but she’s also a teenage girl: a line that is unfortunately missing from the live action. Suki is unapologetically a girl who is still finding her way in the world. And she’s navigating the complexities of a war. Of course she’s not going to be the most functional teen.

But I still wish she got to beat the misogyny out of Sokka.

Let Aang Be A Child

One of my favourite parts about Aang was his childishness. He cared for humanity, he was its protector, he was the bridge between the human and spirit yaddy yaddy yadda. But he was also a 12 year old boy. He was a 12 year old boy who enjoyed tricking and lying to people. He was fun!

In his place, we now have a serious child who never lets loose. And it’s honestly messing with the story. The writers are having to create extra plot to justify certain scenes: ie the gang sliding down the mail delivery system. It doesn’t make sense. Aang isn’t a serious character 90% of the time. But that means that when he is serious, when the fun is gone, we know something is about to go down. We’re at the edge of our seats. The tension is palpable.

But this version of him is all work and no play. That’s not our Aang. It also means they had to give an entirely new reason for him getting stuck in the ice. Aang’s regret over running away is a huge part of his characterisation. There are entire episodes dedicated to his guilt. In this version, where he tried to come back, it doesn’t have as much impact.

Also, the fight scenes with him are kind of boring this way. I adored watching this 12 year old boy take on grown adults plus a few whingy teenagers all while driving them mental. He’s not meant to be someone who just gives a dramatic speech before every fight. He’s someone who winds his opponent up and uses their own force against them.

Give Me Back Zuko’s Honour Talk

Seriously! I’m at like episode 4 or 5 right now and this boy hasn’t mentioned his honour once! That’s just not right. The boy should be mentioning his honour at least once an episode. Otherwise it’s just not Zuko. Come on, this is an angsty teenager. Where is his angst?

Katara Deserves To Be Angry

I’m not going to lie, I preferred cartoon Katara. Sure, she could be irritating at times. But she’s a product of her environment. She’s fiercely loyal and quick to trust but once you break her trust, she is your worst nightmare. She would sooner drown you than forgive you. That’s why Zuko’s redemption had such an impact in the end. He had to earn forgiveness and prove, again and again, that he had truly changed.

This version is so repressed. She should be bringing up the trauma of losing her mother constantly. Instead, she’s gone several episodes before we even truly understand what she went through. And the fights she has with Sokka are just lame. All she does is yell “I’m not a little girl anymore!” Cartoon Katara would never. Cartoon Katara broke an iceberg in half over anger she felt at Sokka’s sexist comments. Cartoon Katara challenged a master water bender. She just comes across as someone who is all talk and no action.

She doesn’t have the rage that she needs. Sure, Katara is one of the kindest people in the show but she’s also incredibly maternal. And to be maternal isn’t just to be loving and trusting, it is also to be a fighter. Katara was willing to fight not just for her friends, but also for herself. This is a shadow of who she was originally.

Kyoshi’s Increased Involvement Is Always A Positive

I LOVE the Kyoshi novels. So it’s great to get Kyoshi’s backstory within the main storyline. And especially when she overtakes Aang’s body and takes on Zhao and his men? Amazing! Give her more scenes please! Actually, no, get Ozai to come into one of her shrines and get her to overtake Aang’s body, guarantee the war would be over in seconds.

#avatar the last airbender #avatar the last airbender live action #zuko #sokka #aang #suki #kyoshi #katara #cartoon #overanalysing cartoons #review

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gracehosborn · 10 months

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Find The Word Tag

Thank you to the amazing @kaylinalexanderbooks for the tag!!

Rules: I give you five words to find in your WIPs and you share excerpts containing them! Then tag people with five words of your own.

My words: news, bare, dry, offer, take

Your words: present, run, fire, book, history

Tagging: @blind-the-winds @therevwriter @sunset-a-story and anyone else who wants to play along.

My excerpts will be under the cut.

News

From Ink of Destruction:

“Now, I hate to worry you but, I’m afraid you are temporarily paralyzed from the waist down,” Ella continued, glancing towards the door as she spoke. “But we do have treatments and therapy in place to get you up again in the next week or so—it won’t be perfect but you will be able to at least stand after we’re done.” Paralyzed. The word seeped through my mind, causing my nervous system to flicker awake as I looked towards the edge of the bed, seeing the tips of my toes pushing upwards against the bedsheet, creating two hill-like shapes on the bed. Slowly, I became aware of a sticky substance, almost like glue, that was attached to my stomach and the lower portion of my spinal region. Bandages, I realized. Bandages to cover the entry wound that now permanently was engraved into my flesh; that had caused my legs to feel faintly numb. It was as though someone had cut a circuit, turning off a part of my wavering simulation, causing only numbness to fill the broken void of my thighs and cafes. I noted how bizarre it was to know that a sphere of metal could cause the human body such stunting damage, but the body of a homo sapien was quite a complicated structure, so much so that its own kind, even after thousands of years, still didn’t fully understand it. “…And before I forget, Doctor Stevenson will be here in a bit. Is there anything I can do for you?” Turning my gaze back towards Ella, having forgotten she was there, I smiled kindly, gesturing with my head towards the monitors as I responded, feeling curiosity slither inside my mind. “Could you turn on a news station?” “Yes, of course!” As she responded, she turned back around to turn on the second monitor, which was already set to a news station from what I could only assume was the last visitor’s request. Thanking her, I watched as Ella made her way out of the room, closing the door in her wake.

Bare

From The American Icarus: Volume I:

Within a moment, the bedsheets flew forward with a large gust, and my feet found the cold wooden flooring of the dormroom with equal force. My breath caught upon the sudden action, causing my arm to reach behind myself in steadying my limbs which were compelled to sway slightly under the pull of exhaustion. Out of the confines of the bed, the reminders faded, but not with such force that they were completely ceased. Staring downward, I watched as the dim light by way of the candle made strange, long shadows upon the equally lengthy boards underneath my feet, the light moving with a calming slowness. The chilled air brushed against my bare feet such that I made the attempt to adjust my posture. Rubbing my eyes with a slowness, I turned my attention upon Troup once more, watching as he did such likewise yet with a calmer manner. Quietly placing the calendar upon the desk, he turned towards me fully with an expression of sympathy. “Do you want me to give you a knock with one of these books?” A playful smile crept upon my friend’s expression as his voice still held a touch of sympathy. Of the knowledge that he was simply attempting to ease me, I chuckled, taking a step forward towards the desk to his side. “No, no—the last instance someone tried to help that way I received a black eye.” In reaction, Troup’s eyes widened as he lowered his hand which had been upon the desk to his side. “What did they pick?” “Uhm… a copy of The Iliad, I think. I should be fine—I just….” Whatever it was that I intended to say, such failed to be realized, pushing a sigh of annoyance to escape me. It seemed however that Troup understood, for he began to move away from the desk with slow movements. Crossing my path in returning to the bed, my friend attempted to quiet a yawn as he spoke. “Do not stay up too late—whatever you do.”

Dry

From Ink of Destruction:

I waited just a second and then started to walk down the steps. The rain came down on me like an avalanche, soaking my hair and jeans. Angered, I spun around, attempting to dash back up to dry safety, but it completely backfired. Aiden was now on the step right behind me, leaving me to assume he had attempted to follow me. A frightened expression coated his features as I jerked to a stop, tripping over his foot. My legs gave out, and we both fell backwards down the steps with a huge thud. Once my hand touched the pavement, I scanned my now upside-down surroundings. Lenna was turning in the drive, Aiden was a few feet to my right, coughing on his knees, and all the contents of my purse were rolling across the parking lot. How beautiful. Adrenaline surged through me as I watched all my pens and pencils roll away into the parking lot, making a stop at least 10 feet away. Rolling over and pushing myself to my feet, I started to run for the pens, but it was too late. Lenna’s car came rolling up, crushing the wood, ink, and plastic under its front wheels. Looking down, I finally realized that I had forgotten to zip the bag after I had taken my phone out. Lowering my gaze, I sighed in frustration, not caring that Lenna’s horn was honking at me. The only thing that still sat in the bag that I truly cared about was my black journal. I pulled it out and held it in my shaking hands. The wind ruffled the pages and I let go, allowing the wind take hold and open the journal. It landed on a blank page.

Offer

From The American Icarus: Volume I:

With perfect timing, the front door of the building opened, and Hugh Mulligan stepped out in greeting. My driver, unditured, rushed down from his seat, turning to face me once more as he held out his hand in wishing to assist me down. At the offer, a strong, yet not consuming, sensation of hesitation took to some place within me. Nothing wrong has been done by him, but that does not excuse a chance…. Glancing between the driver still with his hand outstretched and the road a few feet beneath me, I felt my feet shuffle upon the wood, steadying in my preparing to jump down myself. I am not going to be a helpless fool any longer, lest I were to appear as such. Inhaling, I allotted gravity to pull me towards the earth with the crunching of pebbles and other stones as my shoes touched the road at the finishing of my jump. ‘Twas not that I did not appreciate the help offered me, rather that I simply felt that I could not be sure to accept it. Indicating this with a small smile of gratitude, I turned away from the man, making my path towards the open door of the Mulligan residence. Seemingly ignorant of the small scene which had occurred before him, Hugh ushered me into his home. “Hercules should be here soon, and Papa is out and about, but you are welcome to head up the stairs with your things.” “Thank you.” Loosening my tight grip upon the tightly sewn handles of my bags at the warm feeling of my palms, I headed towards the staircase in time Hugh shut the door and watched from afar.

Take

From Ink of Destruction:

Placing my hands on the edge of the counter, I waited as Mr. Employee pulled out a glass tray from inside the old tabletop. Shutting the glass panel, he slid the tray across the counter allowing me to look at all the pens that rested inside of it. Just like the rest of the carefully organized store, the pens were all lined up in a row with even spacing between each. The overhead warehouse style lights shined on the plastic and metal making each pen seem special in a sense. Placing my left hand above them, I slowly scanned the row, looking for the right one. Towards the middle of the tray, I spotted a gold aluminum retractable pen with a shiny finish. Picking it up, I slowly twirled it in my hand examining the shiny surface of the pen’s body. Smiling, I placed it back down and looked back at Mr. Employee who was fondly watching from his end of the counter. “I’ll take this one,” I said, pulling out my wallet as he typed the serial number into the register. “That will be $5.25,” he said, watching me hastily search through my old, dying wallet. All I had was a ten. How beautiful. Sighing, I pulled out the bill face up, placing the Hamilton on the counter. Taking the bill, Mr. Employee examined it for a second, then, as though nothing had occurred, he placed it inside the register with no thought. “Here is your change… $4.75.” As he spoke, I watched his hands glide across the depths of the register at a jaguar’s pace, as though finding the denomination of a piece of currency were second nature. His light eyes darted between the coins and bills not making direct contact with anything, but rather calculating everything in sight. Exactly three seconds after he finished his sentence, I found a handful of bills and coins being outstretched towards me.

#tag games #find the word #ink of destruction #IOD #the american icarus #TAI #writing excerpts #writers on tumblr #writing community

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curioussubjects · 2 years

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fic rec time!

There was this fic I wanted to read, but hadn't yet because it was a wip and, generally speaking, I don't read wips (adhd reeeally doesn't like it). That said, the concept of the fic was really good, and I'm a little obsessed with the other pilotfic the author has written, so I decided to take a peek at the last posted chapter to make sure it didn't end on a cliffhanger from hell -- it didn't. So, this week, I finally relented.

Y'all. Y'all. This fic....this gd fic...I'm on the floor. I read it in a little over a day because life keeps happening (rude), and I haven't stopped thinking about it yet. Probably won't for a while !!

Anyway, it's a good ol' bsg finale fix-it (and we sure love those yes we do). I found the author's solution to be compelling and completely cohesive with the other themes of the story. Unfortunately, while what is posted of the fic is enough that you can kinda fill in the rest, I still can't help but wonder what the rest of the journey would've been. I can imagine multiple endings, as things are, but all, ultimately, hopeful if not happy (or as happy as you can be after genocide and war).

At its core this is a story about breaking the cycle of violence, but not only against the Other. Crucially, it's about ending the cycle of violence against the Self, too. This theme sprawls over not only the human/cylon conflict, but all the interpersonal relationships we'd followed throughout the show. It's achingly and beautifully done with Lee and Kara, in particular.

Speaking of pilots, the author takes some liberty with what happened pre-mini, though they do follow the flashbacks. I have to say that while I don't fully share their interpretation of key points in Kara and Lee's relationship (UB flashback being the real point of contention for me), their take is entirely cohesive within the story and feels true to Lee and Kara just the same.

I don't want to say more because spoilers, but feel free to insert an image of me crying screaming taking a walk to calm down because oh pilots. I know I always want to hug them, but I super need to hug them. Just. Make believe, pears and jail (iykyk). I am severely unwell and emotionally compromised.

Y'all go read it and then come back here and sit with me.

pennyante, idk if you're still out there or if you ever think about this fic, but...if you ever want to finish this fic and you need a hype person hmu.

Here are the specs:

Title: In the Whole World Author: pennyante Rating: Mature Pairings & Characters: pilots (duh), but it's an ensemble fic so canon pairings and many familiar faces Chapters: 23/? (last updated in Sept 2013 /sad) Summary:

The Cylons aren't quite human, and the humans haven't quite forgiven them. Political stability is less certain than ever now that the war is over: Lee Adama finds himself up for re-election, where being defeated will mean a Gemenese theocracy puppeteered by Leoben Conoy. Meanwhile, Kara Thrace has nothing but questions about her death and destiny. The only answers available come in the form of the vision of a temple, and from her hybrid/comatose husband's cryptic ramblings about a sister artifact to the Arrow of Apollo.

There's violence in the air. Civil war looms. Can Lee and Kara save each other, and keep the fledgling colony whole?

Read on LJ Read on FFN (with extras!)

Excerpt:

She had seen the leash he kept on his self-control, had seen it slacken and tauten. But he never dropped it altogether. She heard, faintly, the sound of an elemental yell erupting over a dark hillside on New Caprica, welling up from a deep pocket of her memory. Almost never.

Testing his control had long since become a favorite pasttime, because where Lee couldn't let anyone see him want, Kara couldn't let anyone see her care. Naturally: forcing him to let on that he wanted her had been the perfect way of showing she didn't care. It was so tempting—all of the pleasure, none of the guilt. The temptation of temptation—to be in his proximity, to draw deeply on the pleasure of goading him, but to not give in to it. She could feel the blood pounding in her throat and wrists, suddenly. Suddenly, she felt alive again.

Lee.

"Mmm. I don't think you're gonna like renting from me, Apollo. First month's rent is three years continuous service on a battlestar."

A raised eyebrow, as if he were saying, What's your game, Starbuck?, and damn if that wasn't good for a heart she hadn't realized was lonely for it. "Paid it," he offered.

"Perfect. Security deposit's a daily hot oil massage for your landlady." Reckless grin never faltering, she watched him, watched the quick gleam flicker across his eyes before he smothered it, felt her first flash of electric heat in weeks. "Garbage pickup is never. Oh, yeah, and heat and electricity are definitely not included."

He didn't crack a smile, this time, which, predictably, made her laugh. God, what was it about him? When was the last time she'd laughed? "On the flip side, the place is an absolute steal; I have a feeling property value around here is about to skyrocket."

Lee lowered himself heavily to the cot, and she noticed, as he did, just how tired he seemed. Had he just come from speaking fruitlessly with his father, coming up against the Old Man's utter withdrawal? From meeting with the ship captains, whose talk of scattering was already sweeping the camp? From looking at the sky and remembering when the arrow of Apollo had let them see earth from Kobol and they'd dreamed of days like this—days they hadn't known would be like this—wordlessly, uncertainly, together?

Was he realizing that life on Earth, like everything else they'd ever shared, had turned out to be both more and less than the prospect of it had been?

When he spoke, it was a riddle—or perhaps it only seemed that way to her, because she was so used to hearing the riddes underlying the things he said to her. They had had their own code for far too long.

This was one she was terrified to decipher.

"Kara. I'm staying with you. Until I can't anymore."

The laughter died in her eyes. Oh, gods, what did I let slip? What did he see?

And then she finally took the time to think about what it meant that he had brought his pack with him, had rolled out his sleeping bag. About whether she wanted him to stay. The answer—the potency of it—jolted her. I should make him go, she thought. Anything else is selfish.

#starpollo #pilots #kara thrace #lee adama #battlestar galactica #fic recs #fanfiction #the hold this gd fic has on my brain rn #unreal tbh

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arlessia-blessed-eye · 1 year

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Prowling the streets ; Dreams

I made a new post on my twitter yesterday! : https://twitter.com/DreifusMontauc/status/1594423735830085633

I really enjoy writing dream sequences towards my WoL, if you can’t tell ^-^ I find it a rather interesting tool to reference things to come. And oh....the things to come. Anyways, this post is contains some bloodshed, a good deal of underboob (lol) & some themes one might find unsettling, so if that turns you off, I understand & hope your day is going well! c:

Here is the usual shots from the post itself! I’ll try putting excerpts from the main post in to add some flavor alongside my commentary, but I might just start transcribing the post in it’s entirety here...but that’s a lot more work than I expected.

Before getting some rest in anticipation of the search for Gosetsu & Yugiri, Arlessia says a prayer to Rhalgr, but is compelled to meditate upon her scar. After some flaring pain & shattered memories flash by, she opens her eyes to a different place.

Bacchus. After they clashed for control, Arlessia was forced to partake in a ritual that ended up nearly killing her...but it also nearly destroyed the malicious entity as well, scarring & burning his form beyond immediate recognition. The only thing that allowed her to recognize him was the eye of violet.

He took it personally.

Enter Nemesis. She explains to Bacchus that what he wants, to take control of Arlessia’s body & turn all she hold dear to ash before killing himself...to end his existence, is out of reach. Whatever he does to her will rebound onto him. He can’t exist without her. He then speaks of the ‘before’ (whatever that might be)...begrudgingly of course.

Arlessia & Nemesis speak candidly as Bacchus ‘leaves’ in a flare of violet flames.

“Who are the women in white I keep seeing?”

“You’re not alone in seeing the women in white.” Was her only reply before Arlessia found herself back in her room in Kugane, barely a minute passing.

Archiving the entirety of the interactions in her mind, she then lays down with Sama, calming her partner gently from a nightmare of her past as they slumber for 5 hours.

‘Morning’ Excercises to get limber & talking to Sama about the fugue state interactions with Bacchus & Nemesis-

But something is still bothering her.

"You okay, my love? Is it what we talked about this afternoon?" I asked, her countenance worrying me.

"I...yes. Sorry, it's just this ever present stain...being here. So close to home, but so far from inner peace."

Holding my hands out towards her melancholy became my only focus, I sighed. "It's okay. We do what we can, just so long as we're able to keep moving. I knew from a glance what kind of place this is. Let me ease your doubts, my love." Hesitating to take my hands, she breathed out.

"If the Domans aren't what we expect...if they're a broken people...what will we do?" She asked, looking up at me.

"Then we remind them what it's like to live. To refuse to bow to any master other than one of one's own choosing. What it's like to have culture...music...love."

"Although I know it doesn't help when I say this, this fight is inevitable. We can but have faith that our brothers & sisters in Yanxia haven't lost all faith in their fellow man yet. But if that takes us to the Azim steppe...you will have closure, at the very least." I finished-her closing her eyes.

Taking a deep breath as she thought, when she turned her gaze back up to me before taking my hands lovingly, a smile come back across her face. "And it comforts me knowing you'll be there every step. Come, let's get prepared." As she rose, I giggled & hugged her. "I love you."

"I love you too, Arlessia." She said, her skin quickly getting flush as we quickly worked to get kitted in our combat gear. "Akavi & I are to watch the streets whilst you & Lyse ask around, right?" She asked, me nodding while pulling my coat on. "Aye. Call us if you see them."

TFW you get paired together with one of your best friends for a group project~

My main motivation for writing & posing this conversation at the Shiokaze Holstery was based around this: Kotokaze obviously knows what the information is worth. Arlessia obviously knows how things work in the underbelly of any city she might find herself in.

It’s like a circling standoff that ends with a deal being struck & the two parties shaking hands. I love that.

"What's with the booze? Don't tell me it's to 'celebrate' once we find them?"

"No, actually. I plan on their 'laws of hospitality' for that!" I said, laughing heartily before casting a look around. "It's insurance. I'll handle half of these names, you handle the rest, hm? How's that strike you, Lyse?" I asked honestly after a moment. Smirking she nodded.

"I'm fine with it. Meet you back at the Holstery? Good luck...and keep safe." She said, clasping my arm in a sisterly way before running off after giving the names & a sketch. Walking towards the southern docks where I would find the captains on my list, I glanced over. I noticed the woman who had been watching our conversation with Hancock walk out the Shiokaze before turning suddenly to the teahouse. I would have to watch my step. Continuing to the south again, I found the first captain on my list outside the boat launch. A man of Thavnair.

F#ck this guy lmao

"Passengers? No. We no longer offer that service. Too much trouble. We only transport goods. I told this to the samurai and sent him on his way."

"Did he mention anything about any other options to cross? What of the other?"

"The woman? Pah." He began, his eyes shined hungrily as he looked at my chest. "If it is women you seek, the pleasure houses have plenty. You may even find employment. Looking at him whilst my anger flared, I kept my daggers sheathed. Sighing, I settled on spitting in the bay.

"That explains everything, being as there is no way in hell you'd find yourself lucky with me, never mind keeping your balls 'twixt your legs, short-stop. Piss off." I seethed, turning & walking away as he recoiled at my venom. Making my way through the market streets, I fumed.

What’s this?

A surprise reunion with another of her besties? I figured this is a nice tool to loop in the 60-70 rogues questline further into the story. Obviously I’ll need to lead with the Scion storyline, but occasionally returning to this could be fun.

"We've yet to hear anything from the preening fool! I can't take this anymore!" Jacke yelled below the walkway I was walking on. Turning with a throw of his arms, he groaned in clear frustration. "The mort's got V'kebbe, Underfoot, & Miss Yuki in his clutches...& we're waiting on a letter?!"

Oboro sighed at the outburst. "Guildmaster, master yourself! There is no use raving against what we yet cannot change! We need to conscript Arlessia's skills! There is no way to protect the mudra of summoning & our comrades without her blades!" He said, trying to calm my friend.

"Oboro is right, Jacke. We NEED her help." Tsubame said gently, which made him sigh sadly.

"Yet, last we spat wids with her, she was going to mill for her home's freedom...with the news of the slaughter of Rhalgr's Reach...s-she may be..." He began as I sat upon the crate.

"Jacke...I-" Tsubame began, the words dying in her throat as I walked silently between her & Oboro, who nearly pulled steel as I shushed him quiet.

"Nay, it's me. I'm a ol' fool worried about 'is friend. Forget I spat anything. We need to pick apart the crow's wids to free 'em."

Planting my hands heavily unto his shoulders, I spoke slowly but with the utmost care. "You're worried about who, now? Captain Jacke Swallow, Head of the Dutiful sisters? You're such a sap!" I said with a cocky smile as he freezed the moment my hands squeezed his shoulders.

After a moment he spun, ripping his shoulders out of my hands as he stuttered. "A-Arlessia!? What're ye doin here in Kugane!? I-I..." He began, at which I crossed my arms with a chuckle.

"I heard it all, you big softie. I'm touched you were worried so for my safety, brother."

"Ach...ye got me. What happened? I heard-" He began, at which I simply placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Yes, the Reach. It's true. The Garleans came down hard. I barely scraped by with my life, thanks to my fellow Scions." I said, taking a couple steps away before turning back.

"As for why I'm here, me, Sama & a number of Scions have volunteered to come in the hopes of finding some associates of ours. Our efforts in Gyr Abania have all but stalled...so this is our only option. To divide the attention of the XIIth legion."

"Divide & conquer. Bene plan."

As Jacke said that, he brought his hand to his chin. "But, what is yer plan from here? As ye heard, we could use yer damber stabbers to free our morts."

"Yeah, that is partly why I volunteered, because of the Karasu problem...but we're actually bound for Doma. To free her."

Saying this, Oboro & Tsubame's jaws dropped in shock.

"Free...Doma!? To help our people?" He sputtered.

"Aye. The associates of ours we're looking for are Yugiri Mistwalker & a Gosetsu-"

“Daito. Gosetsu Daito, retainer to Lord Kaien...general of the rebellion. We know him."

"Have you seen them?" I asked, which Oboro shook his head before looking to Tsubame.

"Nay, I haven't. I'd heard tell of a Roegadyn Samurai, but I mistook it for one of Karasu's new henchmen. Warriors of the 'Garnet League'-disgraced samurai who fled the XIIth's wrath." She said.

"Well, that is a shame. What of your efforts? How did the others get involved & captured?" I asked.

"Well...to begin we needed assistance with regaining the scroll once we arrived & found out the Garnet League's involvement. We did end up getting it back with your friend's help." As he said this, Oboro produced it from his kimono's sleeve. As I looked upon it, the markings were reminiscent of Karasu's summoning mudras.

"Is that...?" I began, eliciting a nod from him.

"The mudra of summoning. Karasu seeks it for a Hingan master...thus the abduction." Placing it back inside the sleeve, Jack & Tsubame both stepped forwards.

"Jacke believed it belongs with the privateers that 'cloyed' it from the Garnet League to begin with, Oboro & I said it belongs in Doma. We...argued. In that span, Yuki, V'kebbe & Underfoot were taken."

Nodding, Jack looked apologetically. "Aye. Then the mad, grinnin' fool came here to boast before saying he'd 'be in touch'. We're waitin' in the darkmans now." Sighing, I was quiet for a moment before I looked up.

"I want to help. Though matters here in Kugane are time limited."

As I said this, Oboro chuckled, which was really out of character for him. "But nevertheless, I will be there." I turned, pointing. "See that building? That's the East Aldenard Trading Company. We are working alongside the merchant Hancock. Send a missive to him. He will notify me when you need me."

"East Aldenard, eh? Lolorito has an interest in your success?"

"I only assume so. Hancock has been notified to spare no measure to assist us." Looking back to my shinobi mentors, I smiled. "But that being said, my duty to my mentors & friends is important to me. I'll be there."

Turning, I cast a glance back to Jacke. "Try not to get into too much trouble Jacke...the rogues can't afford to lose you. Plus, I'd kick your ass back to life if you croaked it." I said, him laughing at my banter.

"Ye know me better than that, sister." He said, clasping my arm in a familial way.

"Arlessia, wait-" Oboro then said as I took a step. He placed a hand on my shoulder. "Thank you. For going to war for my people. To dare...to hope. If you are victorious, every Doman true to their homeland will be indebted to you. This fool among them. Make me proud, my student."

"This isn't goodbye...but I will try to do your faith justice, Master. Now, I must away. Inform me when Karasu has sent his challenge. He won't expect it." I said, shaking his hand. Taking up the bundled jar of sake, I walked out of the alley into the main road by the aetheryte.

Keeping my gaze down to the cobbles as I lowered my presence as much as possible, I glanced right as I neared the teahouse. That woman, again. My heart beating faster as I felt her gaze upon me, I readied myself...but I kept from acting just yet. I had expected this.

Approaching the stairs, I saw a stumbling drunk in the distance. He would be the patsy. Walking steadily towards him, I knew the woman had begun to follow me. Her intent was readable from my echo, an aching feeling of murderous calm rebuffing off my mind. Not long now.

"'Scuse me." I said, garnering the man's fractured attention.

"Yesh? Wha...Wha ish it?" He slurred, his rose tinted cheeks sluggish as he stumbled on the spot.

"Nothing much. I have a job for you, if you desire. I'll give you this FULL bottle of Sake for your troubles..." Looking past me to the bottle slung behind me, he then looked back to my eyes, all four of them.

"Alright...I-I'll do it. What do you...need?" He then asked. Smiling at his malleability, I chuckled.

"I need you to distract the woman following me. Green Kimono. Cause a scene."

"Yesh ma'am! Now gimme that sweet, sweet Sake..." He slurred, reaching for it. Handing it over, I nodded.

"It's all yours." I said, jumping into a sprint as he disposed of his empty bottle, slung his new one & began stumbling towards the spectacled woman as she gave chase.

"Oi-You doin' anything later, lovely? I'd love to see you out of that beautiful getup & on your back, gah heh heh!" He laughed, stopping her directly.

"Out of the way, idiot!" She yelled as I ran to the Shiokaze whilst weaving a stealth incantation. Disappearing before entry.

"Lyse! Come on! We leave out the second floor!" I said, catching her off guard as I brought her into my veil.

"Wha?! What's happen-" She began, but seeing the look in my eyes, she then nodded. "Got it. Just...make it quick." Moments later, the woman charged into the Shiokaze. Whipping her head around, she scanned the first floor for a moment before sprinting up the stairs, pulling a dagger from her sleeve before she reached the first seating area up the stairway. Waiting for the moment, she ran right past me.

Snarling out a breath, I then grabbed her.

Shocked that she was being grabbed by nothing, her dagger grip loosened enough for me to disarm her & plunge her own shiv into her right breast three times down to the hilt with measured precision. With the third strike, I left the dagger in her chest before snapping her neck.

Sure to set the body up by shoving it neck first into the railing, I rifled through her pockets as she fumbled around with her hands. They eventually found the blade in her chest as I took a small badge & sprinted away, the last sight of this agent being her sclera bleeding red.

Making my escape as patrons ran down & up to assist the dying woman, I made for the bridge exit upon the second floor. Running through the door, I released my veil as I sat against the railing next to Lyse. "Now, tell me-what happened?!" She asked, at which I produced the badge.

Emblazoned with the sigil of the Garlean Empire, I spat in disgust before throwing it over my shoulder into the canal. Looking to her, I took a few more deep breaths. "Garlean agent-No doubt instructed to kill either you or me. I made it look like an accident as much as I could. Did your questioning work out? I have nothing save that Gosetsu asked around alone." I said, at which she smiled.

"Well, I found a talking catfish by the name of Gyodo that claims he saw both Gosetsu & Yugiri before taking them across the Ruby Sea!" She said. "A...catfish?" As I said this, I took a final breath with my eyes closed before rising to a stand. "If he tells the truth, it could be a break...but are you certain he speaks true?" I then asked Lyse, who looked forth uncertainly.

"I...uh...no. But what other choice to do we have?" She replied. Nodding, I placed a hand upon her shoulder, seeing she wasn't expecting my doubt.

"No-I understand. We're flying blind. But we go into this with eyes open, aye? Let's go tell the others." I said, looking across the bridge. "Act natural. We leave through the Shiokaze." I directed.

Nodding to me, we then walked back through the doors, descending down towards the situation below. Approaching the huddle, I acted surprised at the scene.

"What happened to her?" I asked one of the men preparing to move her.

"She ran in here after being accosted by a drunk." Draping a red blanket over her, he looked up to me with a grim look. "Was in so much of a hurry that she tripped, breaking her neck & falling onto her dagger. What a tradgedy, hm?"He finished, looking back.

"Aye what a shame. I saw her earlier today...what a beautiful creature." Gesturing to Lyse to continue down, a pair of Sekiseigumi rushed past.

"Well done." She said as we watched them run up to the scene.

"Thanks. Come, let's not tarry. The Garleans will know she's dead by morning." I said, the two of us walking back to where our allies waited us.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

#FFXIV #OC #ffxiv gpose #FFXIVScreenshots #Stormblood #Arlessia Sharpe #Arlessia Blessed-Eye #Sama Kaisuri #lyse hext #Kugane #Bacchus & Nemesis are specters that I refer to as 'Entities'- They are differing personalities tethered to Arlessia's subconscious.#That's as much context I give without giving away future plot points...but know that Arlessia's relationship with them is 'strained'#Bacchus at one point took advantage of Arlessia being poisoned to try & permanently wrest control from her to press his nihility on others.#Nemesis on the other hand was introduced with a burning desire for those Arlessia faced to be brought to their knees in retribution & judged #There are two more to speak of that weren't present in this post that she's tethered to.#Alke- A courageous & boisterous Entity. She & Arlessia have a almost friendly relationship. Alke empowered Arlessia during Nidhogg's fall.#The woman with the golden eyes- Mysterious & Vague...whatever she says tends to spur Arlessia to seeing prophetic visions & omens.#That's a lot of lore lmao

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guzhuangheaven · 3 years

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Guzhuang Appreciation Month: badass dialogues

(but in the novel)

legend of ruyi :: ep 5 // ep 78

This drama is so amazing, demonstrated by these two scenes. Here you have Ruyi and Hongli watching the same play at two different stages in their lives. In episode 5, they are still clearly in love and are happy watching the play together, leaning lovingly against each other and moving in unison as one. They are also being watched fondly by Aruo, who has yet to have ideas of betraying Ruyi. Many years later, in episode 78, we have Ruyi and Hongli watching the same play, but they are physically far apart and their emotional distance from each other is also clear on their faces. They are literally being divided by the presence of Ling Yunche standing between them.

I find the parallel between the closeups of Aruo and Ling Yunche the most heartbreaking, because Aruo, despite how happy she looks for them in ep 5, would eventually try to break Ruyi and Hongli apart. And yet for all her efforts, she never succeeds because Hongli never actually believes her. On the other hand, Ling Yunche never tries to get in between Ruyi and Hongli, but just the mere presence of him is enough for Hongli to drive a wedge between himself and Ruyi. The presence of Aruo and Ling Yunche in this scene drives home the stark contrast in how the relationship has deteriorated between Ruyi and Hongli, and how Hongli went from trusting Ruyi despite all evidence against her to believing the worst of her despite no real evidence.

What is even more heartbreaking is the play they are watching. It’s not made very clear in the drama, but the plot of the play has great significance in the novel. The play they are watching is called 墙头马上 / Over the Wall and Atop a Horse. The play is based on the poem 井底引银瓶 Silver Vase at the Bottom of the Well by Bai Juyi.

The poem by Bai Juyi, writes of a broken relationship/friendship where two people once lived happily in harmony, then one person wronged the other, causing the other person to leave and never come back; the relationship is thus severed.

When the poem was adapted into the play 墙头马上 / Over the Wall and Atop a Horse, the play tells the story of Pei Shaojun falling in love at first sight with Li Qianjin when she was standing by a wall and he was on a horse riding by her house. The two then eloped, and lived together for seven years, having two children together, before they were discovered by Pei Shaojun’s father. Upon the discovery, Li Qianjin was condemned for getting into a clandestine relationship and Pei Shaojun caved to parental pressure and divorced her. She went back to her hometown. Many years later, after having achieved political success, Pei Shaojun went looking for Li Qianjin again, and just happened to discover that the two of them were actually engaged as children. In the play, they then reunited, got remarried and lived happily ever after.

There is however a plot point in the Ruyi novel, where Qingying does not like the ending of the play, feeling that the happy ending was forced. In the novel, Hongli and Qingying only know each other in passing at first. Then on the day that Hongli chooses his wives, Qingying is made to attend by her aunt. Before the selection ceremony, everyone is invited to watch a play, and Hongli chooses Over the Wall and Atop a Horse. Qingying, because she dislikes the happy ending, asks the theatre troupe to change the ending of the play so that in the end, Li Qianjin does not actually get back together with Pei Shaojun but stays firm in her resolve to end the relationship between them. After the play ends, Qingying leaves before the selection, but Hongli becomes intrigued by her changed ending and chases after her. This conversation below ensues, in which you can see clearly how Qingying’s belief on the matter stayed constant with her through the years. In fact, she practically predicts her own fate later with her changed ending.

~*~

Qingying stepped lightly ahead, her gown fluttering in the breeze like a white butterfly in flight. Aruo’s face was robbed of all colour and she was crying in despair. “Gege, what is wrong with you? Everything was well, why did you change the ending of the play? If Huang Hou Niang Niang hears about it, what will you do?”

Qingying shrugged. “At most, Aunt will just scold me a little. I just don’t like that ending. Today, I finally got to see how it should be played out. I’m so happy!”

“Gege might be happy,” Aruo said miserably, “but today is the consort selection. If Gege you are not chosen, then what would we do?”

Qingying’s aunt had already intended her to be the Third Prince’s bride, and now that was not successful, she should be pushed to the Fourth Prince instead? If they needed this one forced marriage to prolong their family’s glory, would that mean all women of the Ulanara clan were little better than slaves? It would be better this way. Regardless of whether she succeeded at being chosen to be a prince’s consort or not, she got to see things done her way, for once.

She only managed a few steps more when suddenly a voice called behind her. “Qingying Meimei!”

No one had ever called her that before. Everyone in the palace simply called her “Qingying Gege”. Curious, she turned her head to find that Hongli was chasing after her.

Thinking that he must wish to reprimand her, Qingying made herself as small as possible.

Hongli only laughed. “I chased after you to comfort you. Xiyue Gege was rude in speech, I feared that you would be offended.”

“Offended? About what?” Qingying asked in a low voice. “Fourth Prince, do you mean to mention the fact that I was rejected by the Third Prince?”

Hongli nodded, frowning. “I only fear such talk will destroy your reputation.”

Qingying laughed, all her teeth showing, against all rules of decorum, which seemed to astonish Hongli.

“I don’t care!” she declared. “There are many things that women can’t necessarily decide for themselves, such as marriage, or family. But at least, I can decide whether to mind those mocking talks, whether to care about them and let them hurt me.”

Hongli looked sad for a moment, whispering, “Your family…” But then he trailed off. Then, with a humourless smile, he said, “Over the Wall and Atop a Horse is the play I chose myself, why did you not like the ending and asked them to change it? I pick a plum blossom, lean against the wall. / You ride off among the bending poplars*. Is that not a lovely image?”

“Yes, it is very nice, it’s just…” Qingying thought a moment then said, “Over the wall and atop a horse we gaze at each other. / I know you, too, must be heartbroken*. From this beginning, the play is full of conflicts, ups and downs, all very compelling, yet in the end, there is a forced happy ending, everyone is forced to be happy, I really don’t like it at all.”

[* excerpts from the poem by Bai Juyi]

Hongli looked displeased, asking, “To be able to mend a broken mirror, husband and wife reunited and at peace again, is that not good?”

“When Li Qianjin was being insulted by Pei Shaojun’s parents, he did not protect her. He watched her leave in humiliation and did not stop her, as if all the love and years they shared did not matter. Such a heartless and weak man who dares not protect his woman, why would Li Qianjin want to get back together with him?”

Her voice was soft, but also full of conviction. Even though it went against Hongli’s beliefs, he wanted to keep her talking.

“To be reunited and together in harmony is the wishes of all families on earth. If Pei Shaojun is willing to start over, why would Li Qianjin not forgive him?”

“Why must a woman always forgive a man for his failings? Wouldn’t that teach the man that it doesn’t matter what hurt he causes? I don’t care, if he hurt her, she shouldn’t forgive him.”

“Women must be soft and gentle, and give into her husband. If she sacrifices a little, bears a little hurt feeling, they can be reunited, isn’t that happiness?”

“If she must be hurt, must sacrifice herself for this forced reunion, then it is already not a good marriage,” Qingying said stubbornly. “In my eyes, Li Qianjin is a woman who is willing to walk away, to severe the relationship, because all trust is gone.”

“If she walks away, wouldn’t that mean she spends the rest of her life alone? Everyone has their own difficult moments, if Li Qianjin is so stubborn, Pei Shaojun is put in a difficult position too.”

“Who isn’t in a difficult position?” Qingying asked. “If the woman can understand the man’s difficulties, can a man not understand a woman’s pain of being cast aside and humiliated?”

Hongli thought for a moment then laughed. “Qingying Meimei, you are much too unbending.”

Qingying merely nodded. “It’s better to live the rest of your life alone, rather than live to old age with someone who already betrayed you once. So it might be harmonious today, but if a conflict arises, what is to say Pei Shaojun will not just forsake Li Qianjin again? It is easy to change mountains**, that is the principle here.”

[** there is a Chinese saying that it is easier to change the course of rivers and shapes of mountains than to change the character of a person… aka old habits die hard but with more stakes.]

Hongli still did not agree with her logic. “Women should place obedience before all and be pliable. If she does not restrain herself and be more accepting for the greater good, then she would just suffer.”

“If one must accept being humiliated for a so-called happy ending, then I don’t want that kind of happy ending,” Qingying repeated.

“Then is Over the wall and atop a horse we gaze at each other so easily forgotten?” Hongli asked, astonished.

Qingyin turned and stared at Hongli. “If it is not easily forgotten, then why didn’t Pei Shaojun protect Li Qianjin? Hasn’t he too forgotten how they once loved each other when he cast her aside?”

Hongli could not argue against her, and finally admitted defeat. “Meimei, you really are something, I don’t know what else to say.”

Qingying laughed in delight.

“Meimei,” Hongli said, stepping closer to her, “you argued so animatedly, you must love Over the Wall and Atop a Horse. Why don’t we go back and hear the play again?”

Qingying hesitated, thinking that it would be a great loss of face if she were to return now. But Hongli was looking at her so earnestly, she found it hard to immediately refuse.

“I’ll go back first, and prepare good tea to wait for you.”

He said ‘wait’, as if he would not move the day along if she did not come. Her heart softened, and she suddenly stopped in her path.

…

[And then of course Qingying comes back to attend the selection. Hongli, who had originally intended to choose Langhua, changes his mind and chose Qingying to be his di fujin, but then Yongzheng interfered and put a stop to it… But the play is one massive foreshadowing plot device that doesn’t get explained much in the drama, but packs a punch when you read this scene.] -h

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soracities · 3 years

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Hi there <3 how are you? I hope you're alright. I see you get asks like this often and I've also been looking for an excerpt, I think it's from a letter from Franz Kafka to Milena. I'm not sure but I checked and I cant seem to find it. He was telling her how he couldn't continue their correspondence ( honestly i don't even remember what it was) because he'd pull her down along with him? I can't even paraphrase it, I don't remember. Sorry my English isn't very good it's not my first language. Also sorry this probably wasn't as clear as it should be.

is there a chance this might be one (or several, to be fair) of his letters to felice instead because that certainly rings a bell for me -- there are quite a few but an example:

Fraulein Felice!

I am now going to ask you a favor which sounds quite crazy, and which I should regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well, this is it:

Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on Sunday—for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable of enduring them. For instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough. But for this very reason I don’t want to know what you are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal with life; and that’s why I don’t want to know that you are fond of me. If I did, how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you? Oh, there is a sad, sad reason for not doing so. To make it short: My health is only just good enough for myself alone, not good enough for marriage, let alone fatherhood. Yet when I read your letter, I feel I could overlook even what cannot possibly be overlooked.

If only I had your answer now! And how horribly I torment you, and how I compel you, in the stillness of your room, to read this letter, as nasty a letter as has ever lain on your desk! Honestly, it strikes me sometimes that I prey like a specter on your felicitous name! If only I had mailed Saturday’s letter, in which I implored you never to write to me again, and in which I gave a similar promise . . . But is a peaceful solution possible now? Would it help if we write to each other only once a week? No, if my suffering could be cured by such means it would not be serious. And already I foresee that I shan’t be able to endure even the Sunday letters. And so, to compensate for Saturday’s lost opportunity, I ask you with what energy remains to me at the end of this letter: If we value our lives, let us abandon it all.

Did I think of signing myself Dein [Yours]? No, nothing could be more false. No, I am forever fettered to myself, that’s what I am, and that’s what I must try to live with.

Franz

#i vaguely recall something like what you mentioned and im p sure its to felice because he's telling her he cant match her energy or her #wants from life - like children etc #but i might be wrong so if anyone knows the exact excerpt please send it in ty <3 #ask #anonymous

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my-bated-breath · 4 years

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Do you think Aang and Katara would still end up together if Katara killed her mother’s killer? How would that affect their relationship?

Hey anon! Sorry it took me a while to answer your question, but the truth is that there is no clear trajectory regarding Kata/ang in this situation, especially when we take into account that Kata/ang in the show canon was abrupt and significantly underdeveloped. More specifically on Kata/ang, both Katara and Aang’s arcs were twisted to accommodate for their endgame romance, but while Katara’s arc reaches its culmination by the end of the Final Agni Kai, Aang’s character had become inconsistent in its direction throughout all of season 3.

As such, two conflicting outcomes can result from this hypothetical scenario — one outcome which upholds Aang’s flaws and stagnated growth, or another outcome which forces Aang into growing, accepting, and understanding, as was the original intent behind his character.

From a broader context, Aang’s entire journey since he woke up in the iceberg has been about him reconciling his airbender and Avatar identity, and by the end of season 2 when he is with the guru, Aang is on the cusp of fully accepting his Avatar responsibilities, of letting go of his selfish attachments (or in other words, his blinding biases).

Except Aang cannot let go as he hoped he would be able to. Because his attachment to Katara is selfish, but beyond that his attachment to Katara is a replacement for his attachment to the Air Nomads — and it draws him away from his duties as the Avatar, causing him to embrace an ideal he does not comprehend. After all, the Air Nomads were not perfectly pacifistic either.

Still, just as Aang refuses to recognize the complexity in the Air Nomads’ legacies, dismissing what he may deem as an act of violence, Aang refuses to recognize the complexity to Katara’s rage and compassion, to her violent and protective nature. In my meta “On Ideals and Idealization,” I elaborate on Aang’s idealization of Katara:

Aang loves Katara, yes, but he is in love with an idealized version of her. In his mind, he holds close the idea of a gentle Katara, a smiling Katara, a compassionate and all-loving Katara. Even though he has seen her darkest moments when she bloodbends Hama - arms bent in disjointed angles, fingers curled as if manipulating puppet strings - it does not tarnish his image of her because, at this moment, she is not the persecutor, but the persecuted.

After her experience with Hama, Aang is there to comfort her and help her come to terms with the terrifying power she now possesses. With her face streaked with tears and eyes widened with horror, it is clear that this is a power that Katara does not want, that it has been thrust onto her against her own will.

The conclusion that Aang draws from this is that Katara’s inner darkness is a separate entity from her inner light, and he perceives this acquired part of her as a blemish on her inherent goodness. As such, in “the Southern Raiders,” when he witnesses how Katara’s anger and grief drive her to hunt down her mother’s killer, he equates Katara seeking closure to Katara succumbing to darkness, tainting her purity and compassion in the process.

Thus, given Aang’s reaction to Katara’s bloodbending, he may be inclined to love her in a piteous, nearly-obligatory manner. He’ll love her as the victim who lost sight and control and he’ll love her as a being of compassion and pacificity, but nothing more. Just like in the Southern Raiders, he may magnanimously grant Katara his forgiveness and his continued love even when she never asked for it. And in the end, Aang and Katara will kiss on the balcony of Iroh’s tea shop, only this time it’s not only “the hero winning the girl,” but “the bright and cheerful boy fixing the broken girl” as well.

This is the ending where Aang clings onto idealization even when it renders him a hypocrite, in the same way he is a hypocrite for shouting at his friends for pushing him to kill Ozai when it is implied he killed thousands at sea in the Siege at the North Pole.

This is the ending where he does not grow.

Note: Aang retreating into a ball of earth as a narrative parallel to the beginning of the series when he was encased in a ball of ice would have been much more powerful if only Aang entered the Avatar State through character growth rather than by the power of the Pointy Rock of Destiny (TM).

Now, let’s consider an ending where Aang’s perspective broadens rather than narrows and where Aang unroots himself from the past, pulling free from stagnance. Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario in which Aang finds out Katara killed Yon Rha. How may he react?

He may not be able to at first, too torn between his belief that Katara only uses violence as a last resort and the reality that Katara uses violence as a means of agency as well. Revenge corrupts; it is a stain that cannot be washed away. There is no reconciling Katara’s previous compassionate and loving nature with this dark path she has now chosen.

Except this is Katara he’s talking about, Katara who he loves and gave up the Avatar State for. Surely there’s a way to save her, right? Yes, just as Aang told Katara before she left, forgiveness is the answer. And while Katara may not have chosen forgiveness in the end, Aang can guide her by example.

The next day, he approaches her with the offer to exempt her from her wrongdoings.

Katara, tired and mournful, looks down at Aang.

“What was so wrong about what I did?”

Inside she is hurting. There is truth to what Aang said, that revenge is poisonous both to the victim and the perpetrator, but it is not poisonous for the reasons he thinks it is. As George Orwell writes in his essay, “revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also” (Revenge is Sour). There’s no doubt that Yon Rha was despicable, and there’s only a little doubt in saying that his punishment should fit his crime — the only regret Katara may have here is that killing Yon Rha is a meaningless act, for she has already gained power over him in every meaning of the word. Revenge is only a gateway to senseless violence and hatred; it is not a slope from which there is no recovery, and given Katara’s emotional intelligence, she likely has or will recognize this. Although she may feel regret, she needs no one’s forgiveness.

Aang is shocked. “But violence is never the answer,” he stands by, he pleads by. His voice grows quieter. “You know that… you knew that, didn’t you?”

Katara answers him, but it’s all a blur. She says something about agency, protection, and justice. He remembers something about that too, about the fury that burned in her eyes when she declared, “I will never, ever, turn my back on the people who need me!” Then there was the hostility simmering in her glare towards Zuko, the way she muttered that she didn’t trust him, not when he could still hurt them — hurt Aang — again.

Because Katara’s anger and compassion do not simply split themselves into two identities. Instead, they coexist and coalesce into one. They drive each other; they feed into each other; they are two sides of the same coin.

Excerpt from my meta Rage, Compassion, and the Bridge in Between

The beloved ideal of Katara — the one that he thought was on the verge of being tainted, the one that never existed — shatters. But just because it’s broken doesn’t mean Aang doesn’t want to fix it. So in the days leading up to Sozin’s Comet, he tries to pick up the fragments to the Katara-he-knew and piece them together again, all the while avoiding Katara’s mournful (yet resolved) stare. He ignores the way Zuko and Katara share glances with a heaviness as if they were the only two people in the world, full of some significance he cannot grasp. Still, it haunts him like the way Zuko’s touch lingers on Katara’s shoulder or Katara’s hand brushes Zuko’s briefly whenever they don’t think anyone’s looking, reflecting a togetherness escaping loneliness.

But there’s no answer that arrives quick enough to save Aang from his doubt and confusion. All too soon, Sozin’s Comet is upon them, and Aang wanders to another world on the lion turtle's back — but this time when he listens to the past Avatars’ advice, his perspective undergoes a paradigm shift.

They are right. The Air Nomads that he prioritized, that blinded him to his duties — they do not exist. Their love is still there, pure and human but not all-encompassing, tucked in the corner of his heart. And Katara was the same. She was and is not all-loving or all-compassionate or all-anything, really, because she is more human than that.

This time Katara’s image shatters again. But Aang does not follow the falling pieces to the ground, desperate to find them and force them together again. No, he sees past the remains and sees Katara for who she is. For who she wants to be. For who she can be (around someone else), when she’s not compelled to take on the caretaker role just for him.

(And he thought he was so generous, offering to forgive him. But it was never his forgiveness to give in the first place.)

Aang lets go of his last attachment.

The last airbender lives on, but so does the Avatar.

#atla #atla meta #anti kataang #anti kataang meta #zutara #aang #katara #anti aang #of sorts?#my bated breath's posts #my bated breath analyzes #i kind of rewrote aang's arc in the finale in my mind and a little bit of that slipped through #anon you asked a hard question so i gave you a 1.5k+ meta in response #i hope it's everything you ever hoped it could be #anonymous ask #ask #is tumblr hiding this post from the tags again?

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a-flickering-soul · 3 years

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WELL @diningwiththeasquiths tripped and fell headfirst into my incredibly vague Kylux parallels trap-post so now I do see fit to inflict some literary analysis on the Kylux Tumblr community, a whole five years late. I’m not joking when I say this is Literary Analysis--it’s about 1000 words of solid conjecture, so buckle up.

I was rereading the The Force Awakens novelization (written by my nemesis Alan Dean Foster, 2015) after skimming through the novelizations of all three sequel trilogy movies (I own and have read the previous trilogies novelizations, sadly) with my Kylux Blinders™ on, as one does when they have brain rot, and stumbled upon an interesting little passage.

[Transcript, with bold for emphasis: “Turning to run in the other direction, she caught herself just in time as a shuttle touched down nearby. Without the slightest hesitation, the cloaked figure of Kylo Ren emerged and strode forward to join the battle. A stunned Rey could only track him with her eyes. She had seen this man before, in a daydream. In a nightmare.”]

Now I, with the aforementioned Kylux Blinders™ still very much in play, was immediately reminded of what else but the infamous ‘beautiful’ scene from the The Rise of Skywalker novelization (written by my best friend Rae Carson, 2020).

[Transcript, with bold for emphasis: “Hux refused to gratify that with a response, because true beauty came from discipline, from order. So it was almost against his will that he found himself mesmerized as Ren met a barbarian’s charge head-on, cloak flowing, mist swirling around him. The glow of his lightsaber occasionally snagged on his cheek scar, making it appear as though a crack of glowing lava slashed his face. It was like something out of a dream, or maybe a nightmare, as the Supreme Leader plunged his fiery crossguard into his attacker’s abdomen, lifted him from the ground, and sent him toppling onto his back. Kylo Ren did not spare his fallen foe a single glance, simply rushed forward into the woods seeking his next kill.”]

Aside from this being the Kylux equivalent of “In vain have I struggled. It will not do” (sorry, Ms. Austen) and just overall being incredibly, shockingly homoerotic, the parallels are clear. The dream/nightmare parallels could be explained away as an author’s quirk, were it not for the fact that the novelizations were written by two different authors. I’m not saying Carson purposefully echoed Foster’s words, but it’s without a doubt a compelling similarity.

Both of these scenes encapsulate and bookend Kylo Ren’s character in an astonishing way, in that both of them view Ren through his two literary foils’ views (granted, I personally think Ren can be foiled by pretty much all of the Resistance Trio, but for the sake of this argument we are, by necessity, focusing on Rey and Hux).

The similarities are there; that is, both quotes are from Ren’s literary foils, both of them refer to him as both a dreamlike and nightmarish figure, and both of them see him in his element on the battlefield wreaking havoc. The differences, however, perfectly display the differences between these two different character dynamics.

In the TFA excerpt from Rey’s point of view, she sees him as something monstrous, not entirely from this reality. She alludes to him mainly in terms of the Force vision she had grasping Luke’s saber, something nightmarish, to be terrified of. She can see the humanity in him, but right now that serves only to make his actions that much more monstrous.

This is the root of their dynamic--the centering around taming the beast, the narrative that one may find redemption at the hand of the other, that that redemption is the responsibility of the other if they truly care enough. Their dynamic is that of a monster becoming human through the work of another, and here Ren’s beauty comes from the act of becoming human rather than a nightmare.

Which is fine! Not yucking anyone’s yums! But I, personally, am tired of redemption arcs and do blame JKR, the rise of purity culture, and the quest for more and more sanitized, palatable media and simply do not think a murdering fascist being redeemed through a girl’s emotional work and love is is very sexy or poggers at all.

Let’s turn to the TROS excerpt from Hux’s point of view.

Like the excerpt from Rey’s point of view, Hux sees Ren in the middle of the battlefield, doing what he is best at and mowing down enemies like a loose cannon. If anything, it’s more terrifying than what Rey catches a glimpse of, i.e. Ren at the beginning of the battle, striding forward to engage. This is a man completely divested of humanity, cutting down people with no regard for who they are or were. And crucially--crucially--this is the one time where Hux, despite himself, in true romance novel fashion, finds him beautiful.

The Kylux dynamic is not one that seeks redemption. It is not one that seeks to make itself palatable to a widespread audience--in fact, the sheer nature of it is abhorrent to most well-adjusted people. The Kylux dynamic is that of two people who do what they can to shed as much of their humanity as possible for utter monstrousness. Hux finds Ren beautiful at his most monstrous, not in spite of it. Kylux is, at its core, a mutual violent tenderness for that which makes the two of them terrible, awful people--it says, “Yes, I have seen the worst parts of you, and they are ugly and terrible and cruel, but I am like that too and yet I love you.” They are foils, opposites, in every single way but their mutual striving to lose all humanity. They are awful in a very similar way and that is what drives their pull towards each other. The ugliest parts of each other are what orchestrate their mutual respect.

How do two monsters love each other? Irredeemably, violently, tenderly, in a mockery of love, but I daresay it is love nonetheless.

This got away from me. I meant to just draw some parallels, but it ended up being a very loose draft of my own personal Kylux manifesto. Either way, to conclude, the clear parallels between the Rey/Kylo-centric excerpt from The Force Awakens and the Hux/Kylo-centric excerpt from The Rise of Skywalker paint an admirably clear image of the two interpretations a viewer could take of Kylo Ren’s character as a whole, as well as explain crucial parts of the dynamics between Kylo Ren and two of his character foils.

The difference between a monster becoming human for love, and two monsters finding their own idea of tenderness, I leave to the reader’s discretion.

#kylux #star wars #huxposting #flickerthoughts #man idek when mr. b taught us abt literary foils using the two homoerotic friend-rivals from david copperfield that was all foreshadowing #im taking the high i got from high school english class and running with it #go nuts gang this is going to get like 3 notes tops but fuck i havent' written analysis in like 2 years feels good feels organic #i wrote this while near-looping 'danse macabre' and ren's theme so uh. yeah.#should i tag this as anti-reylo? idk you guys let me know #i'm not going to explain why rey and ren and hux and ren are foils but also i will do that in a separate post if asked lmao #this is not coping!!! this is not coping #flicker wrote this #flicker's meta

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dahlia-coccinea · 3 years

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Wuthering Heights - Chapter 3

This is a somewhat difficult chapter to discuss fully in a single post. It introduces so many important themes and has the first glimpse of the story of the earlier inhabitants of the Heights. Sorry if this is too long - I've tried to keep my comments concise. It is difficult for me to not mention every tiny detail I like lol

We learn that Zillah has worked at the house a year or two and is aware that Catherine’s old room is off-limits but seems to know little else. It shows that despite the emotional unloading that Heathcliff does to Nelly he is very reserved about all that has happened in the past.

It seems the house has been ruled by chaos for years and there is an instinctual need for the inhabits to defend themselves against it. We see this when Lockwood first climbs into the box bed and closes the doors he says he “felt secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff, and every one else.” The need to shut out the world and crawling into small spaces is repeated later in this chapter with Catherine's diary details how, with Heathcliff, in an attempt to avoid the cruelty of Hindley and Frances “made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser,” and closed off the world by fastening their pinafores together.

We get some other interesting glimpses of Catherine and Heathcliff early friendship. It is quite popular to say that Heathcliff is Catherine’s whip and he is a blank slate for her, but I think this diary entry is another example of their oddly egalitarian relationship. First, we have this scene of Catherine lashing out against their ill-treatment:

I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book. Heathcliff kicked his to the same place. Then there was a hubbub!

That Heathcliff swiftly follows her lead certainly shows a reciprocation of the other’s attitude and worldview - or simply that if one is going to get in trouble then the other will follow suit. Still, I do hold that he doesn’t just mimic her or do as she wishes. We get a number of examples that show neither play a clear leader in their antics with one happening shortly after this incident. Catherine's diary continues:

I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairywoman’s cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter. A pleasant suggestion—and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his prophecy verified—we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here.

Here Heathcliff takes the lead in coming up with more plans to get further into trouble and it seems Catherine is more than pleased to go along with it.

There are other, now iconic, details of Catherine’s character in this chapter. Such as this description of the box bed from Lockwood:

The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in one corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small—Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton.

And later:

Catherine’s library was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to have been well used, though not altogether for a legitimate purpose: scarcely one chapter had escaped a pen-and-ink commentary—at least the appearance of one—covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left. Some were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. At the top of an extra page (quite a treasure, probably, when first lighted on) I was greatly amused to behold an excellent caricature of my friend Joseph,—rudely, yet powerfully sketched. An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began forthwith to decipher her faded hieroglyphics.

Catherine holed up in the box bed and writing on every spare bit of paper she can get her hands on and scratching her name in the paint, tell of someone who has no one to talk to. She’s alone and is compelled to at least make sense of herself with ink and paper. Nelly does say later on that “there was not a soul else that she might fashion into an adviser” beside Nelly herself. Which is a poor adviser, considering how Nelly disliked her throughout her childhood.

Adding to Catherine’s loneliness is the endless abuse of Heathcliff and herself, at the hands of seemingly everyone in the house. In this short excerpt from her diary, we are told Hindley’s treatment of Heathcliff is “atrocious,” and that now he is the new master they are no longer allowed to play, and “a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners.” Heathcliff has his hair pulled by Frances, Catherine’s ears are boxed by Joseph and they’re both berated and verbally punished by him. Finally Hindley “seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the back-kitchen” where she says that outside on the moors “cannot be damper, or colder.” Upon their return and proceeding punishment she says she’s cried until her head ached. Consistent with what we later hear her tell Nelly, that Heathcliff’s miseries are her own, it is not her punishment or ill-treatment that makes her so upset but the casting out of Heathcliff. She writes:

“Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won’t let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more; and, he says, he and I must not play together, and threatens to turn him out of the house if we break his orders. He has been blaming our father (how dared he?) for treating H. too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to his right place—”

Critics that suggest Catherine is glassy-eyed and naive idealist really gloss over these excerpts in my opinion. There is a constant downplaying of her abuse compared to the other characters among those that seemingly think she’s the only character with moral agency and therefore the cause of all problems in the story.

I love how strange the encounter that Lockwood has with the book “Seventy Times Seven, and the First of the Seventy-First,” and the following dream is when first reading Wuthering Heights. Hardly anything in WH is superfluous and when rereading it this makes much more sense. This is quite an interesting segue into meeting Catherine’s ghost, and later learning more of her life. Forgiveness is such an important aspect in the book and will come up many times. Notably, while on her deathbed, Catherine tells Heathcliff she has forgiven him and that he should forgive her.

I think it is amusing and also very interesting how in Lockwood’s dream he’s walking with Joseph (in itself is very metaphorical) and Joseph tells him he should have brought a “pilgrim’s staff” and that Joseph’s staff is really just a “heavy-headed cudgel.”

It’s unsurprising the appearance of Catherine’s ghost is so iconic. It’s impossible to discern if it is merely Lockwood’s dream or him actually encountering her spirit. There are details about her that Lockwood, at this point, does not yet know. Still, he does make many attempts to logically explain what happens. Either way, the imagery of the scene is both frightening and tragic.

We get some really interesting glimpses of Heathcliff’s character in this scene. Normally he is very collected and if his emotions are out of control they tend towards anger, but here we see him truly terrified and unable to maintain composure after finding Lockwood in the room.

Heathcliff stood near the entrance, in his shirt and trousers; with a candle dripping over his fingers, and his face as white as the wall behind him. The first creak of the oak startled him like an electric shock: the light leaped from his hold to a distance of some feet, and his agitation was so extreme, that he could hardly pick it up.

Even after Lockwood identifies himself Heathcliff is said to have found it “impossible to hold it [the candle] steady” and was “crushing his nails into his palms, and grinding his teeth to subdue the maxillary convulsions.” It is interesting that Heathcliff doesn’t become so angry that he throws Lockwood out. It’s another oddly humanizing moment for him. An overly dramatic author would likely have him behave like a complete monster, but he instead tells him to finish the night there and not to scream like that again. This is a scene that I wish we could have some perspective from Heathcliff. Not only is he startled by a noise coming from Catherine’s old room but then Lockwood adds to his distress by rambling about Catherine saying:

And that minx, Catherine Linton, or Earnshaw, or however she was called—she must have been a changeling—wicked little soul! She told me she had been walking the earth these twenty years: a just punishment for her mortal transgressions, I’ve no doubt!

This and Lockwood’s further talk which makes it apparent he has snooped and glimpsed a little bit of Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s past, does set Heathcliff off:

“What can you mean by talking in this way to me!” thundered Heathcliff with savage vehemence. “How—how dare you, under my roof?—God! he’s mad to speak so!” And he struck his forehead with rage.

Lockwood doesn’t quite understand this reaction saying:

I did not know whether to resent this language or pursue my explanation; but he seemed so powerfully affected that I took pity and proceeded with my dreams; affirming I had never heard the appellation of “Catherine Linton” before, but reading it often over produced an impression which personified itself when I had no longer my imagination under control. Heathcliff gradually fell back into the shelter of the bed, as I spoke; finally sitting down almost concealed behind it. I guessed, however, by his irregular and intercepted breathing, that he struggled to vanquish an excess of violent emotion.

And later when watching Heathcliff call for Cathy through the window:

There was such anguish in the gush of grief that accompanied this raving, that my compassion made me overlook its folly, and I drew off, half angry to have listened at all, and vexed at having related my ridiculous nightmare, since it produced that agony; though why was beyond my comprehension.

At one point Lockwood also believes Heathcliff to be “dashing a tear from his eyes” during their conversation. Of course, he is confused because he doesn’t know that one of Heathcliff’s few fixations has been looking for signs of Catherine for the last 17ish years.

I’ve mentioned this before, but something that doesn’t happen in the book because Heathcliff never narrates it, but I think if someone retold the story or made a film adaptation it could be interesting to explore, is how Heathcliff came to find Catherine’s writing on the wall. She must have written it shortly before she talks to Nelly since she’s already considering marrying Linton, and Heathcliff must still be living at the Heights since his name is there also. When Heathcliff returns three years later we know that he takes over Catherine’s old room so really he should have discovered it the first night there, probably after having visited the Grange.

@astrangechoiceoffavourites has mentioned this in one their posts, but another great aspect of the book is the background happenings that are very realistic for the time and particularly farm life. Cats and dogs roam about, Heathcliff mentions that the house goes to bed at “nine in winter, and rise at four,” and there are mentions of chores, etc. The details create a realistic backdrop and ground the characters in reality. I feel like the novel is never overly sentimental because of this and it really strengthens it.

After Heathcliff comes down to the kitchen where the household is starting their day, we are instantly reminded how terrible Heathcliff can be when he swears at and threatens to hit Cathy for not making herself useful and working for her keep. Ironically, he tells her, “You shall pay me for the plague of having you eternally in my sight,” when, as I’ve mentioned before he has her sit at the dining table with everyone else. He also could just send her away if he despises her so much.

I see a lot of similarity between the glimpse we get of Catherine Earnshaw from her diary and the current situation Cathy Heathcliff is in. Their situations are certainly different but both are in a similar state of abuse and neglect and both are quite self-possessed and antagonistic towards those that try to control them. They also are associated with books (Catherine filling them up with writing and Cathy reading) and have an affinity for animals. In this chapter it is mentioned that while Cathy is reading she has “to push away a dog, now and then, that snoozled its nose overforwardly into her face.” There are other similar encounters, such as when the dogs at the Heights come to greet Catherine Earnshaw upon her return from the Lintons.

I’m sure I’m forgetting points I want to make in these posts. I’ll probably to a larger summary after I complete the book and try to tie together some of the ideas I’ve mentioned. Its also difficult because I keep wanting to bring up things that happen later in the book and I want to make a note of it now - but I’m also trying to reread as impartially as possible. Which is really an impossible task lol.

@astrangechoiceoffavourites

#wuthering heights #wh reread 2021 #wh reread #emily brontë #chapter 3 #tw abuse #omg i did it

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reidubujpg · 3 years

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withering and growing - cove x mc

summary: in which a person overflowing with insecurities encounters a zealous boy in their dreams.

tags: our life beginning and always, gender neutral mc, step 3 cove

song Inspo: suneater by leanne firestone

TW: talks on self worth, deprication

A/N: SORRY THIS IS A VERY UNEDITED STORY and hi! this is a very poetic one shot that I made about mc and their insecurities and mc realizing that cove is a beacon in their life. you could tell throughout reading the story that there are many analogies to physical things I mention to insecurities of self and trusting others :D I hope you can spot them!

having woken up from your slumber in the middle of the night by a knock at the door, you couldn’t see anything around you as you walked downstairs to the front door. the place was dark as every piece of furniture and rooms that belonged to lizzie and your moms had disappeared. from what you knew, you weren’t sure who was standing at the door in front of you -- all you saw was a figure standing there, having opened the door as you looked at them in question.

confusion and awkwardness filled the air as the dim light from the front of your home had casted over onto half of the figure’s face. you grimaced, eyeing them up and down as you stared at their skin texture and the way they stared at you was deeply disturbing, though, deep within you, you couldn’t look away.

was this another nightmare you were having? who was this hideous monster standing before you? you couldn’t pinpoint who or what it was, but a part of you could read them like a book.

the figure shifted a bit in place, suddenly their chest opening up like a book. thousands upon thousands of pages of paper flipped through their opened chest like a book before stopping on an excerpt,

‘I am a selfish human being, I hold no care for others and no one should ever care for me. I am a horrible human being that deserves nothing but the worst. no matter how hard I try, I will never be better. I will never be remembered, no one will remember you.’

you couldn’t help but back away from the disfigured person as fear stroke every part of your being. you quickly turned around as your feet began to move faster and faster as you ran away. though, each waking minute that passed by, it was as almost if you never left the room in the first place.

it was just you and the towering figure.

you fell to the ground, continuously and desperately trying to back away from the figure that was now simply walking towards you with each large step it took.

your eyes had widened and your throat tightened up, not able to expel any screams of terror that you needed to let out. this thing was going to kill you.. and all you had to do was accept it.

your eyes closed, immediately realizing that death was near until..

you felt something warm.

it was a sensation that could only make you feel nothing but serotonin. it was a rush of brightness that you couldn’t comprehend. you were so used to the blackened out room that seeing such shine had made you almost feel.. uncomfortable.

you didn’t want to open your eyes as you had felt scared to look at what was so bright. though, you felt something within you compel you to slowly open them. your heavy lidded eyes stared up at a pale-greened male. your eyes widened when you realized who it was.

“cove..?” you let out in disbelief, completely confused by how he ended up here. it was a world that you had grown so used to and yet, this was a change that you weren’t able to comprehend.

cove being in your very presence in your accustomed dark room was weird.

you backed away, still on the floor as you shook in fear. you didn’t know if he was the monster. how could you know if you could trust this person? what if he was the monster? looking around, you couldn’t find where the figure was. it was just about to attack you and after closing your eyes, it is suddenly gone?

you watched as cove noticed your discomfort before nodding quietly and stepping aside. you narrowed your eyebrows before turning your head to where the figure stood.

instead of the disfigured person standing there, it was..

you?

the person that you were scared of.. was your own self?

your stomach knotted itself as your brain tried to comprehend the information that cove had exposed to you through his actions. what the hell was going on?

“there’s nothing to be afraid of y/n.” he said softly to you, “running away from yourself and your insecurities of yourself will only make you fear yourself more.. when there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

the once disproportionate features that you saw on the figure.. the skin texture and the terrifying looking face, it had disappeared -- all into a normal person.. the normal person that was yourself.

“how could this be..? how could I be afraid of myself? and.. how could I know if I can trust you that this monster won’t hurt me anymore..?” you asked him desperately, not knowing if you could trust him.

it was odd asking him these questions as if he was the all knowing person. all you needed to do was to just trust yourself and that was all.

at least that is what you constantly repeat to yourself.

just trust yourself.

“I can’t make you trust me y/n.” cove said as he lent out a hand for you to grab, “it’s up to you if you want to, but you won’t know until you try. sometimes you can’t recognize yourself and having a helping hand show them that...”

he helped you up before guiding you towards the figure that had shifted into you as he placed your hand gently into the figure’s, “..their reflection doesn’t have to be something you’re afraid of -- it’s what we make them ought to be.”

your eyes widened as you let out a sigh filled with.. relief?

the figure smiled softly at you.

for the first time in your life, the figure that you saw every night..

that struck fear into your soul..

was genuinely.. beautiful.

the figure was beautiful.

you are beautiful.

#our life beginnings & always #cove holden

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jafreitag · 3 years

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Grateful Dead Monthly: Gaelic Park – New York, NY 8/26/71

Fifty years ago today, on Thursday, August 26, 1971, the Grateful Dead played a concert at Gaelic Park in New York City.

Gaelic Park is located at West 240th Street and Broadway, five miles north and east of Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. In 1926, the Gaelic Athletic Association purchased it to host the Gaelic Games. What are Gaelic Games? I’m a sliver Irish (just learned that a few years ago from a cousin who did some DNA stuff), but I didn’t know about such games until I asked the Google machine. Here you go, from the Wiki:

“Gaelic games (Irish: Cluichí Gaelacha) are sports played in Ireland under the auspices of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They include Gaelic football, hurling, Gaelic handball and rounders. Women’s versions of hurling and football are also played: camogie, organised by the Camogie Association of Ireland, and ladies’ Gaelic football, organised by the Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association. While women’s versions are not organised by the GAA (with the exception of handball, where men’s and women’s handball competitions are both organised by the GAA Handball organisation), they are closely associated with it.”

Some to unpack there. What’s Gaelic football? It’s basically rugby. (The rules are probably way different, but this is a music blog, so don’t judge.) And hurling? Rugby with a small ball and sticks that look like sporty pizza paddles. (Again, don’t judge.) Gaelic handball? Racquetball, except you use your hands and you’re outside, not in some bougie health club from the ’80s. Finally, rounders? It’s actually alot like baseball. Pretty cool.

Why were the Dead there? A 9/2/71 piece in the Village Voice by Carman Moore, now archived on the Grateful Dead Sources blog, said that Gotham promoter Howard Stein, a Bill Graham competitor who booked the Dead to play at the Cap Theater in Port Chester, NY and the Academy of Music in NYC, had turned “the drab little Riverdale soccer field … into a summer rock mini-festival.” (Check out the poster above.) Moore’s writing has an early-70s sizzle, and he refers to his colleague, now-legendary rock scribe Robert Christgau. Here’s an excerpt:

“Last week’s Grateful Dead concert up at Gaelic Park was a usual Dead session, meaning that the band-to-fan-to-band electro-chemical process for which rock music is famed was on like high mass at Easter. Although I think I know most of the time what they are doing musically (Christgau will like this notion); I don’t quite understand them electro-chemically. Like the New York Knicks of two seasons ago, they can do excellent things together though they are not a group of deathless superstars. Garcia gets his songs across, but he can’t sing, and Bob Weir’s voice rises to about average…maybe better when he gets to screaming and the music sweeps him along. I still find it difficult to recognize the Dead songs that aren’t “Truckin'” or “St. Stephen” one from the other. I am not one of their fans, but seem to be one of their admirers. Their music speaks in a special language to their live listeners, and that language has the vocabulary of everybody else, but a convoluted syntax all its own. The note sequences are not completely dependent upon musical factors but are also dictated by how involved the band feels and also upon what kind of heat the audience is giving off. I’m trying to get to some essences of this thing.

The drama of a Dead concert revolves around the fact that wherever the band plays they know that a certain number (several tons) of their partisans will be there and that their crowd knows the Dead potential to excite them, but they also know that the Dead may not get into gear until the crowd begins to apply some heat, and so forth. Both parties also know that the concert will be long enough and informal enough for anything to happen on either side of the footlights, and so audiences improvise (smoke, go to the hot dog stand, kiss and snuggle, cheer, dance, listen like star-struck fools) just like their musician friends on stage (who play light and funny for awhile, retire backstage awhile, stand around, or get lost in a piece and turn on the heavy jets). Like good lovers, the Grateful Dead know the secrets of good foreplay, taking your time, surprising the partner for awhile, and then just reacting for a spell.”

The timing of the show seems odd. The band was on the East Coast in July, but began August back in Cali – LA, SD, Berkeley – before a three-night run at Chicago’s historic Auditorium Theater. Then they trekked back to NYC. Our resident Deaditor ECM explains that aspect: “This show was supposed to be played the day before the Yale Bowl concert on July 30, but some issues with the equipment trucks and/or weather prevented it from happening from the scheduled date. There are a few stories on the web about people who didn’t get the message (no twitter back then!) and dropped some acid only to show up to an empty stadium. Haha!”

Moore said that the show reminded him of “a high school stadium I used to know – low stands, unfulfilled infield grass, mud holes here and there, beer sold at one end in some quantity.” He continued:

“The formal shape of the concert was a general crescendo, light at the beginning and heavy-groovy at the end – not a shooting-star, call-the-law finale, just a heightened physical-emotional climate…the goods delivered as promised…sort of like good preaching in a church known to be a happy place. I did not enjoy their country-westernish opening tunes; maybe they didn’t either, because the pieces were awfully short. But by the three-quarter mark they had involved themselves, the crowd, and me too.

First they got the rhythm engaged and finally, courtesy of Jerry Garcia’s lead and interplays with Lesh and Weir, they went into the soloing and jamming which are the real magic music territory of this band. Much is made of the Dead soloists, but it became clear to me by last Thursday that bassist Phil Lesh plus those two drummers create the atmosphere that makes the Dead thing possible. The drummers were exceptionally understated, but Lesh kept bopping and thrumming away, heavily at all times, until his patterns were consistently getting the other players off. In the middle of “St. Stephen” there was a special coming together: Lesh had found a nice ambiguous but compelling set of licks; Garcia eased into a solo; Weir strummed a cross-time lick over all of it; it built; it quieted; Garcia started to play strange classical kind of lines; the drums dropped out; the audience got quiet; nothing at all could be predicted for a minute or so; then Lesh began to grope his way out with two chords and rhythms which began to regularize; audience began to jump and then to clap; guitars began to straighten out; the band came home to the cheers of the fans. Good music-making. The listener goes home without a little tune to whistle, but he hears music. As if they were finishing off some personal solos based over the last riffs heard, the fans went out of Gaelic Park without a thousand encores and without a lot of fuss on the streets outside.

It’s all very interesting, surprising, and I guess mystifying as before. All I know is that the Dead, or their fans, or the combination of both lure you into planning to return when they’re all assembled and back in town again.”

Apparently, there was some grief about bootlegs at this show. The GD Sources blog has a post that archives a 10/6/71 piece by the excellently-handled Basho Katzenjammer (Basho, the 17th Century Japanese haiku master; Katzenjammer, the German word for hangover) that gripes about an army of 200# “muscle freaks” at the direction of tour manager Sam Cutler liberating a handful of tapes from 100# weakling Johnny Lee. It’s a truly fun read. An excerpt:

“The biggest piece of shit spewing from Cutler’s mouth is about the reasons the Dead have for being so pissed off: they don’t like the quality (remember Garcia’s line in “I Got No Chance of Losin”? He says, “I’m only in it for the gold.” Yeah, music has a way of being more honest than the artist intends it to be at times…) The “quality”? Anyone who has bought a bootleg recently will know and agree that the bootleg stereo album called “Grateful Dead” is one of the best underground products yet. The tape was taken from a concert the group did at Winterland, on the coast a few months back. Yeah, Garcia fucks up a bit on “Casey Jones,” and Pigpen’s ego may have been deflated a bit by his voice coming over poorly on “Good Loving” but that was a concert. You do a concert and you stand by your performance, good or bad. That’s show business.

This effete artistic bullshit doesn’t matter anyway … When you’re out to get all the money you can out of your gigs, like the Dead seem to be (like all the groups seem to be) you might be accused of being a bit piggish; when you use strong-arm shit to insure that you get every last penny that you deserve — by making Amerikan standards — you are a Pig. Jerry Garcia, is that you?

Nobody buys that anti-bootleg shit about the artistic integrity of the artist in saying what goes out. One, you stand by your performance; two, even if you don’t want to, Jerry, somewhat, and say “all your private property is fair game for your brothers (especially when they sell records of concerts that don’t compete with coming releases) and your brother (who’s gonna continue to dig you as we live off your comets we’re gonna keep ripping you off because it is possible. As simple as that.” If you and Cutler and Stein continue your shit, though, we’ll just have to sing the song the same old way, you guys being put in the position of being the same old reactionary establishment that we’re all ripping off. It’s all around. You break your back playing gigs for ten years and suddenly success is staring you in the face. Bread: lots and lots of bread. You turn your back on your poor, ripping ’em off roots and start to tighten up. You’re in the biggest rip-off industry around, but no one cares as long as they’re having fun.

Money. That’s the whole story, isn’t it? If these were other times, in another land under a different set of rules maybe you could justifiably complain about the people who want to give your recorded performances out free because you didn’t screen them and pick out the sections you didn’t like and do them over for the cat, ’cause no one charges for their music, and because the means of production belong to the people, and they can turn out all the good sounds they can, and you have a natural right to screen all releases. But we’re here. Now. You guys are making millions — or soon will be. Money is power, especially as the concept of money is crumbling nation-wide and power freaks like Stein are cornering the market on it. The channels that the green-power the Dead bring in travel aren’t the healthiest for the generations of revolution to come. Stein is one of these hopeful images of a freak with a chance to change things positively gone sour, who uses all his power to consolidate his power; who’ll go to any extremes to insure the natural expansion of that power. Fuck him. Fuck you.”

Speak, Basho! Quaint that the beef about bootlegs back then was sound quality, rather than copyright. Stuff got figured out at some point, I think. Like when Bobby shut down the LMA, lmao.

Ed featured part of this show in the 2016 edition of his epcot 31 Days of Dead project. Here are his listening notes, which are typically spot-on (and better than than the not-quite-on-the-bus commentary from Mr. Moore):

“Less than three weeks after Pigpen’s definitive performance of Hard To Handle at the Hollywood Palladium (8/6/71), the Grateful Dead play the final date of their summer tour in 1971 at Gaelic Park in the Bronx. It will be Pig’s last show until December and the last time the band will ever perform in their original quintet configuration of Jerry, Phil, Pig, Billy and Bobby. By September, Keith will be rehearsing with the band to assume a full-time role on the keys. Perhaps anticipating his absence, Pigpen leads the band through 6 of his songs including the rarely-played Empty Pages and the last Hard To Handle. It is also one of the last performances of Saint Stephen, until the band revived it in 1976 with a major facelift, never to be played the same way again. When you consider these historical milestones along with the departure of Mickey Hart and the closings of the legendary Fillmore East and West earlier in the year it makes you realize that this concert carried a little more weight than anyone could have ever foreseen at the time. It truly was the end of a chapter in the life of the Grateful Dead. As you listen to each song you can’t help but feel a certain degree of nostalgia.

For me, the hidden gem of the show is the outstanding version of Uncle Johns Band. Jerry’s first guitar solo is an absolute joy to hear. His notes sing with irresistible melody and happy sunshine which perfectly capture the nostalgia of those carefree early years. If you listen closely you can hear Pigpen playing the wood claves.”

Speaking of Pig, this show features the second and final performance of Empty Pages. The NYS Music blog, which has a nice write-up of this show, describes it as a McKernan original that “pairs his traditional crooning style with a slow blues jam that’s nicely peppered with fiery guitar licks from Garcia. It’s a true rarity and a shame that the band wouldn’t be able to further develop this one.”

youtube

I feel like this was a try-hard post. It might be tl;dr, idk. Here’s the true goodness…

Transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the soundboard recording HERE.

More soon.

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homogrimoire-archive · 3 years

Text

Lu Vresha Eend Howyethnsch

[Excerpt] Long after the lives of the lovers had past, the kingdom fell to ruin, stuck by a great disaster out of anyone's control. Another kingdom would rise, and fall, in its place, just as others had in the past. It would face problems like its predecessors once did, and would be given hope by the few glorious souls that rallied the masses and dared to fight for their values. Yes, the kingdom they fought for would fall too. Yes their hardship would essentially equate to nothing in the ultimate infinity of the universe. But, in their short existences, they tried and did their best to make a difference in their time. They made a difference to those around them. They made a difference in the course of history They made a difference in each other’s lives. And in their end, they had love. What other end could be more joyous than to die in love?

[Ana and Jack rejoin Overwatch. Jack finds himself becoming closer and closer to Reinhardt, who had been pining for years.]

AO3 Link

Long ago, there existed a kingdom in a forest. It was breathing the breaths of life in it's newfound status and growth. It was prosperous, stable. At some point in its history, it began a cruel conquest, fueled by the memories of it's suffering from a recent war. It feared that suffering, and sought to ensure that it would never suffer again.

Reinhard stood at the resting place of his master. He remembers his sacrifice. An honorable death. A death that perhaps could have been avoided if he wasn't so cocky and such a honor hungry glutton. That bit of guilt always resided in him. This is part of the reason he fulfilled his master's last duty. It was the least he could do.

It is bittersweet, but his master's unfortunate death allowed him to become a better person. It was this passed down, sacred duty given to him from his felled master that led to him experiencing and learning so much. It allowed him to meet many great people who he would never forget. It was for the gift of those memories that he would always honor his duty and answer the call. He would keep the memory of his master alive. He would not let it be forgotten.

The scans were completed a while ago, so all that was left to do was pay his respects. He left the medallion entrusted to him all those years ago on the armrest. A piece of those memories for his old friend to hold onto, memories that perhaps could have been his.

Long ago, there existed a forest kingdom. It was ruled by a king favored by many. He brought forth a new era. He was spurred by the memories of old stories he heard in his youth, among them, stories of a grand and prosperous kingdom. He desired to bring those stories to life as much as he could, and he did.

Jack stared at the photo, an old thing that managed to withstand the passage of time and preserve distant memories. So many memories, all filled with so many emotions, many of them never to be felt again, forever just a memory. Yet, it was the memories incited by that photo that spurned him in a seemingly distant past. Even in the present, they still provoked him to fight on.

Ana understood this well, perhaps even more so. Her husband, her daughter, available to her only in memories. Yet, they compelled her to continue the fight more than anything. She never needed to ask why he stared at it in silence for so long, caressing the worn edges. She knew that despite wanting more, they were still content enough with their current lives. He had kept tabs on Vincent, and learned that moved on, and was living a good happy life. She had kept tabs on Fareeha and Sam, and saw that they had come to do just fine.

All was well in the end. The ghosts who were kept alive by memories were accepting of their afterlife in the physical realm. That was, until their shared ghost had come back to life to haunt them. A recall was issued for Overwatch, and suddenly, there was an opportunity to face the present and future, to no longer be bound by the past. At least, that’s how Ana saw it. She wanted to see her daughter, even if she was doing what she had never hoped the girl would do. But, what child always listens to their parents?

She expressed her desire to Jack, just to learn that the stubborn fool desired differently. She honestly expected as much. Their time as ghosts were over. The Shrike and Soldier: 76 had to cease their existence, even if just for a moment, so that Ana Amari and Jack Morrison could face the present: the reality where their dreams were long gone, replaced by the truth, cold and hard it may be at first. Cold and hard it may even always be, but it is the truth.

She decided that she would leave, with or without him. She wanted to face reality so that she could have a decent future, what would remain of it, at least. She wasn’t getting any younger, and she knew it. Still, she tried to convince him one last time. She was his friend, and only wanted the best for him, be it a whack to the back of his head, or a hug.

“Overwatch was our home, Jack. It still is. It is our family. Are you really going to abandon it now that you have this second chance?” she questioned.

“You know as well as I do it was a lot more than just that.” he replied. There was Blackwatch, for starters. And Overwatch was an international organization with the power to help and hinder many, for better or worse. Eventually, it toppled under the weight it carried. When it fell, it was evident it was something the world no longer needed. Talon and its adversaries had bested the organization as well, proving to Jack that it could not be dealt with in the light. Yet…

“Even so, we have a chance to live, to help others learn from the mistakes we made. Will you even abandon that duty just so you can mope all day and beat someone up now and then? The dead can only affect the living so much, Jack. There will come a day when you will truly die. Will you be content to die as someone forgotten, content to die a miserable, delusional old man? You know when I’ll be leaving. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, and know that you’ll be missed, again.”

With that, she left him to think. He had been alone for so long, it hardly seemed to matter anymore. But, she had a point. Was he really alright with dying alone. In the crisis, he had his fellow soldiers to live and die with. He was fortunate enough to be among the survivors. In Overwatch, he did not enter the battlefield much anymore. It was indeed lonely at the top, being pulled away from his friends, family, and love. For what? He wasn’t sure anymore. Even so, he was never truly alone. Gabe and Ana were still with him, more often for work related reasons than not, but still. Vincent, the understanding man he was, still loved him despite how often he was away. Jack loved him too, still did, in a way different than before, but it was love all the same.

He considered that she was perhaps right, calling him miserable and delusional. His time as a ghost among mortals was miserable. Even as Strike Commander, working seemingly endless hours, he was able to find moments of repose. A calm night with Vincent, a huge dinner with Ana and Gabe and their families, a simple thank-you letter handed to him from a promising trainee. There was none of that as a ghost.

He missed that, more than he wanted to admit. Did he really think this was how he wanted to live? Even if he wouldn't have any of that if he returned to the living, there were other things life had to offer. He feared he could lose even that too. But, he had to try, didn’t he? That was what he had always done. There was no reason to stop now, especially not in the name of fear. What kind of soldier would he be otherwise? A dead one, that’s what.

The kingdom went across the lands, conquering and destroying any who opposed it. Soon, their conquest had ended. They gained a vast amount of land, inhabited by an array of peoples. These people were now people of the kingdom, and the people of the kingdom did not suffer. The people of the forest forgot this.

Reinhardt and Brigitte were the first, aside from Lena, to respond to the call. After their short flight, they were at their new base, the base of the new Overwatch. Reinhardt had been there at Gibraltar before, though not often. He remembered it as mostly uneventful, but great for his tan. There, he and Brigitte met up with Winston and Lena. By all definitions, this was the gorilla’s home, and a second home to Lena. It was great to see some familiar faces. Being the only ones to have currently “officially” rejoined Overwatch, Winston and Lena were excited to give them a tour of the new base of operations. It was a work in progress, one knight and his squire would be happy to help complete.

That night, over dinner, they discussed who they thought would answer the call and show up. Winston noted that Angela and Genji were likely candidates, and Mei was en route after a trek through the Antarctic and traveling across the world. They also imagined Torbjorn would be joining, and Ana’s daughter if she caught wind of the revival. Aside from them, it was anyone’s bet as to who would answer the call. It may not be a lot of people, but it was a start, and that was all they would need. Their first mission was already set for a few months time, leaving plenty of time for people to answer, and to work on the base.

Torbjorn was the next to arrive, to the great joy of Brig and Rein. His engineering expertise was invaluable. After that, came Mei. Only Torbjorn and Winston knew her beforehand. Tracer, Brig, and Rein had found her very agreeable, very clearly a wonderful woman who would fit right in. She became incorporated into their friend group in no time. After her, to everyone’s surprise, was Echo, renowned creation of Mina Liao and overall a great companion.

Before they knew it, their first mission came and went, a stunning success. It was no surprise that Fareeha showed up at their doorstep soon after. Rein remembered her very well. She was an adorable little one who loved heroism, and grew into a fine,strong woman. He would play with her with Mcree every now and then.

While he was glad she was among them, fulfilling her lifelong dream, he could not help but feel that he was a bit alone. Among brilliant minds and an advanced AI, he stood out. Fareeha was similar to him, just a simple soldier, but much younger than him, so not as relatable. He was very close to Torbjorn and Brig as well, but he still could not help but feel that something was missing. He realized what it was when Torbjorn had bought it up one night, when it was just them sharing a few drinks. Or rather, Torb had directly said what it was.

Ana, Gabriel, Jack. Things were just not the same without them. Even as things got rough towards the end, they were still family. As Torb had put it, they were as core to Overwatch as “a nano-thermal heat sink was to a intra-dynamic processor module.” Reinhardt could only assume the man was correct. His knowledge of technology and such was minimal, just enough to keep up his armor and hammer by himself. Even then, he trusted Brig to take care of it better than himself. He was just a soldier after all. A Crusader, yes, but a simple soldier all the same. He was only taught what was necessary for battle, same as his long dead companions.

Yet, they still stood out among even the best. Rein supposed he was much the same though. By all means, he was an accomplished man. He could have retired and lived the rest of his life as a distinguished soldier during the Omnic Crisis and honorably discharged member of Overwatch. No. He decided to continue fighting on, to eventually die a warrior’s death, as Balderich had, as Jack, Ana, and Gabriel had. He imagined they would have done the same, except for maybe Ana. In all fairness, she did not have super soldier juice in her, and had a family. Rein certainly wouldn't have blamed her.

That night, as he lay in his bed, he remembered back to the days and nights they all shared together. The revelry of a victory, the woe of loss, the small moments that are difficult to remember, but the feelings they contain never forgotten. Eventually, his mind wandered to the first time he met them, there in Gibraltar.

It was a great honor to be working with them to aid in the creation of a better world for all. They all responded accordingly, in their own way of course. It was when Jack greeted him did Reinhardt swear he fell in love. He did not realize it at first, but he would realize it soon enough. He knew it was a bad idea to fall for your superior, but he did nonetheless. There was something about his smile and the way he spoke.

Hearing that the man had a boyfriend both gave him hope, and crushed him a little. On one hand, he wouldn't be pining after a straight guy, on the other, Jack was taken. Rein might wield a smashing hammer, but he was no homewrecker. Over the years, he would only fall for the Strike Commander more and more.

Yet, for all his bravery, he never told another soul. It is the simple things that time takes away: small yet warm memories, the first time he ever kissed another some time while a soldier, the voice of a friend from his youth. However, his love for Jack was not simple. Thus, it persisted.

The king, fueled by the memories of stories, forgot he resided in the present, in reality. His enemies knew where they resided. By the time he realized he could not attain the greatness he desired, he was fine. He had learned how to deal with reality, and did his best to bring what he could of those stories into reality. It was not easy, but with the memories of his people, he did what he could, and created new memories in the process.

When Jack and Ana had arrived at the Watchpoint, it was well on its way to sliding into the ocean. Smoke bellowed in places as agents, many of them familiar faces, fought off what were obviously Talon forces. Ana rolled her eye, always sure the organization would have collapsed without her. It did fall after she was “killed,” so she might have been onto something.

Without hesitation, they joined the fray as unknown, masked combatants, proving who they sided with very quickly. They eventually found themselves split from each other, nothing concerning in the slightest. Ana found herself working alongside her daughter, the memorable cowboy, and an omnic she recognized as reminiscent of an OR-15 model. She made sure to keep her children healthy in between getting acquainted with the omnic and sleeping any fools who dared get close.

Meanwhile, Jack found himself fighting alongside the Crusader, an ancient bastion unit, and one very talented, very short, engineer. The giant crusader tried to make small talk with him, but Jack repeatedly responded with a noncommittal grunt or with something basic and unrevealing. Despite this, the German remained as friendly as ever, just as Jack had remembered. He had found the man to be loud, but never really minded so long as he wasn’t having a bad day. If it was one of those days, which were frequent towards the end, he would kindly lower his voice, which honestly wasn’t particularly quiet. Regardless, it was a greatly appreciated gesture when he felt so underappreciated himself.

Eventually, the battle reached its conclusion. Talon robots lay defeated, their remains would later reveal useful information. A few enemy ships were making their escape, Tracer chasing after them in hopes of being able to land a tracker on at least one of them. And to top it all off, Widowmaker had been captured. However, the one known as the Reaper had escaped, as they would learn in a hastily thrown together meeting with some refreshments. It was then that The Shrike and Soldier: 76 spoke up.

“The Reaper is a strong foe, though a dumb one.” the Shrike spoke. “Dumb fool…”

“We also know him as Gabriel Reyes, former head of Blackwatch.” 76 revealed. He was immediately bombarded with questions of how he could say such a thing without any evidence. Not only that, Gabriel had been long dead after all.

“You’d be surprised at how hard it is to kill an old soldier.” she responded, taking off her mask to reveal her face. Of course, her daughter was the first to recognize her.

“… Mom?” Fareeha asked. “You’re… alive.” Her mother nodded her head. A wide variety of emotions covered Fareeha’s face as she stormed out the room. Ana sighed.

“Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have to deal with this. I’m sure you all understand.” she said with the nonchalant wave of a hand as she went after her daughter. A moment of silence followed, all eyes eventually shifting to the masked man who arrived with her.

“You… I know who you are then! You’re Jack!” Reinhardt shouted, pointing a large finger at the man.

“…”

“Ahh! Your silence isn’t hiding anything old friend!” he bellowed, moving a few steps to give him a heavy pat on the back, making the smaller man slightly off balanced for a moment. “It is great to have you back.” he said more softly with a warm smile. Somehow, it made Jack soften up a little.

“It…” he began, taking off his mask before continuing. “It’s nice to see you too Reinhardt.”

It was not until they saw their memories played out by the people they conquered, who were now people of the kingdom, that they remembered this. The conquered lands were given an option, they could receive reparations and sever their ties to the kingdom, or receive one half of the reparations and join the forest kingdom in a coalition. They would form a single kingdom, each land in the kingdom equal in power. Many refused. They survived just fine. Those that joined experienced the mixing and melding of their memories that, as a result, birthed new memories reminiscent of their old ones

In the following months, things began to return to normal. The base was quickly rebuilt thanks to the help of friends around the world. More recruits, of faces old and new, had joined as well. Sojourn, Genji and the cyborg's brother were now a part of Overwatch. Other new faces included a friend of Winston’s from the moon, a freedom fighter who utilized the power of music and sonic technology, and a combat medic who was once a part of Talon. Meanwhile, Angela was making progress towards reverse engineering the brainwashing process so she could help Amile.

Ana had slowly been warming up to Fareeha, who was rightfully angry at her mother for deciding to leave. It saddened Ana, but was sure things would be alright in time. In the meantime, Overwatch provided her with a decent amount of work, be it missions, training, or catching up. It was decidedly better than being a ghost, but Hawai'i seemed much more tempting at times. However, she did find much joy in sharing what she had learned over the years to the younger ones, and had definitely missed gossiping at a base over tea. Vishkar representative Satya and former yakuza prince Hanzo proved to be good company in such a pastime.

Jack, on the other hand, was well in his element. He was no longer the Strike Commander, back to being a regular old soldier. Though, his insight from his past experience proved valuable of course. He soon found himself being happier with a smile on his face more often than not. He had Reinhardt to frequently thank for that. They seemed to bond over being two stubborn old soldiers. It was something Jack wished he had the time for back then, but, he had the present to do that now.

Rein was funnier than he remembered. There was also something about him that made Jack want to spend more time with the Crusader. Perhaps it was his hearty laughs that captured the attention of all, or the frequent nights they would spend together sharing a friendly drink, talking about the good and bad of their pasts, ultimately finding comfort in each other through the virtue that they weren’t so alone anymore. Perhaps it was because the man was an inspiration, a glorious sight to those who wished for hope. Jack had been one such person for a long time.

It was during these times did the great king reign. During all this, he was aided by many people who cared for him dearly. His mission of dreams and reality left little room for love in his life, even refusing beneficial marriages as he did not want to be an absent husband. Yet, after many years, he came to realize that there was in fact someone he loved: a knight of great renown who hailed from a conquered kingdom that joined the coalition. However, the king did not confess his love. It was only when the knight lay near death did he reveal his feelings. Perhaps it was that admission that spurned the knight to fight off death. Perhaps he would have lived regardless. What is known is that they kept their taboo love a secret.

This mission was supposed to be an easy one. Both soldiers should have known better than to expect things to be easy, but they were so confident in their teammates, and each other. They had been separated from the group, fighting their way to the drop point to escape. Comms went down after the order was issued to retreat and the coordinates were given. Hacked. Hopefully, the ship they were using to escape wouldn't be hacked.

The Talon machines were typically weak things, but plentiful. The sheer volume of them was what made things difficult. Jack could shoot all day, Reinhardt would hold his shield for as long as it could, and turn machines to scrap when it came to it. It was when his shield was down did his friend get hurt. A bullet to the chest, another to the leg with lots of blood flowing from it. He immediately rushed to the man, scooping him up, holding him close as he ignored the enemies and charged for the escape point. Rein didn’t know if he himself would make it.

“You know… you’re a good man, Rein.”

“Save your breath. I’ll get you to the doctors soon.” he assured.

“Heh. I think… this is fate. A warrior’s death… Honorable, and all that.”

Reinhardt remained silent. A warrior’s death was indeed honorable, but also sad, so very sad. But, at least Jack’s would not be lonely. No. There was no room for such thoughts. He steeled his resolve.

“No. You won’t be dying today! I love you too much to let you die like this!” he announced. I don’t want to lose you!

Just then, the machines froze, as if by command, their glows shifting from red to purple. Rein did not care why. If they were down, they were down. That’s all that mattered. He eventually arrived at the ship, Baptiste and Angela already there. Quickly, they shifted their attention to Jack. Fareeha was already patched up, leaving her to check Rein for any major wounds, thankfully none. His armor had served its purpose. Winston had suffered only minor injuries, and could patch himself up.

Rein could only pray and watch as the two doctors worked their gruesome yet incredible magic. Hearing that he would need a blood transfusion was concerning, but he had faith in the doctors, and hope. He could not bear the alternatives. He did not want to have to actually bury his friend again so soon like this.

It was fortunate that he and Jack shared the same blood type. He did not hesitate to offer his blood. He would never hesitate to sacrifice his blood for those he loved and wished to protect. All he could do was somberly wait, his eyes fixated on the man pale as a ghost.

They arrived back at the base where he was given more thorough treatment. Rein hated that he had to be pulled away from his fellow soldier, but he needed to be examined too, and they couldn’t risk his blood levels getting too low. They had all they needed at the base. All he could do was wait once more.

When he returned to Jack, he was still asleep on the bed in the medical ward. That night, he stood by Jack’s side, falling asleep in a chair was just barely a bit too small. He had the oddest dream that night, one of an ancient king and his lover, a knight.

When he awoke, Jack was still asleep, machines methodically beeping and droning quietly. But, Jack was still alive, and some color had returned to his face. Throughout the day, many came to visit, Brigitte and Torbjorn bringing breakfast, Ana, Winston and Lena drinking lunch, and Fareeha and Mcree bringing dinner. They all recalled old memories and stories, wishing for the best when they left.

It was a few hours after Fareeha and Mcree had left when Rein noticed that he began to stir. He shouted for one of the medics as he quickly returned to focus on Jack. Baptiste was the one to show up.

“What…”, Jack groaned, “Where... am I?”

“Safe and sound, that’s where. You took some pretty nasty hits back there. Let’s see…” the combat medic said as he pulled up the patient notes. “Major blood loss, damage to a major artery, punctured lung. Yup. Pretty nasty. Thanks to our friend here, you’ll live. Hmm, and thanks to some super soldier serum, apparently.” he noted. “Well, you should be good as new by the morning. Rest until then, and take it easy after. We’ll go over it tomorrow.”

“Right. Thanks doc.” he said as Bap began to walk away.

“Finally!” he gasped. “Someone thanked me! You’re welcome. Oh, and maybe get some actual food in you. Holler if you need anything, One of us will answer.” he finished with a wave goodbye.

Once the doctor left the vicinity, Rein practically jumped to pull Jack into a killer hug.

“Ah, thank goodness you will be well!” he rejoiced.

“Ack! They just fixed me!” he shouted.

“Right, sorry.” he sheepishly apologized. Jack let out a light huff.

“It’s alright. It’s nice to see you though.” he said with a friendly slap to the tank’s back. “So, uh, thanks. For helping me out back there.”

“Bah. Think nothing of it. It is what comrades do for one another. But, you are welcome.”

When he left Jack to get him some food, which ended up being warmed up leftover burgers and fries from the night before, Rein got to thinking. He wondered how much Jack remembered. Did he remember getting wounded? The declarations of love? The robots being hacked? How he held him tightly in his arms? Or even what happened in the ship? Rein hoped that he at least remembered the declaration of love. He didn’t think he'd ever get the courage to do it again, even after knowing Jack had moved on from Vincent.

When he came back, he noticed that Jack seemed lost in thought. But, he seemed to snap out of it once he noticed Reinhardt, thanking him for the food.

“It seemed as if there was something on your mind.” he said.

“Yeah… I need your opinion on something.” Jack requested. Rein was eager to give it. “I’ve been thinking, maybe I am getting a bit too old for this.”

“You know, I had been thinking of retirement as well.”

“You have?” Jack asked, shocked. Rein gave a lighthearted laugh.

“Yes, I have. A warrior’s death is honorable, but it would be missing something I want.” he replied.

“It’s love, isn’t it?” Jack questioned. So he did remember. Rein sheepishly turned away.

“Yes. It is love.”

“I think… I love you too, Reinhardt. Sorry, if I read things wrong, I─”

“No! You didn’t!” Rein quickly responded. Jack laughed, his bright smile the apple of Reinhardt’s eye.

“I’m glad then. I’d be honored to spend the rest of my life with you, if… that’s alright with you.”

“There would be no greater honor, than to spend the rest of my life with the man I love.” he said, placing his hand gently on top of Jack’s. They softly smiled at each other, gazing warmly at the man they loved.

Long after the lives of the lovers had passed, the kingdom fell to ruin, stuck by a great disaster out of anyone's control. Another kingdom would rise, and fall, in its place, just as others had in the past. It would face problems like its predecessors once did, and would be given hope by the few glorious souls that rallied the masses and dared to fight for their values. Yes, the kingdom they fought for would fall too. Yes their hardship would essentially equate to nothing in the ultimate infinity of the universe. But, in their short existences, they tried and did their best to make a difference in their time. They made a difference to those around them. They made a difference in the course of history. They made a difference in each other’s lives. And in their end, they had love. What other end could be more joyous than to die in love?

The honorable beings, who time and time again would arise to help their world, were fueled by the memories of others. And in turn, they fueled the memories of others as well. In a never ending cycle of despair. But, this is where hope and love are reborn, time, and time, again.

#reinhardt76 #soldier 76 #reinhardt wilhelm #jack morrison #overdads #rein76 #reinhardt overwatch #overwatch #I realized I never posted this on here #so here it is #I should write more rein 76 someday #it is very underrated #then again I just like rarepairs #also the title doesn't have any real meaning

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pressedinthepages · 4 years

Text

Vorfreude (Part 4)

Fandom: The Witcher

Pairing: Jaskier/Reader

Word Count: 2438

Rating: M

Series Masterlist

a/n: Oh my goodness, this little series has gotten to be so much more than what I thought it would be! So many of you sent me wonderful ideas for this chapter, and I hope that I tied it all together with my own little twist nicely :) Also, the song/poem that Jaskier sings is an excerpt from "On the Beach at Night" by Walt Whitman.

(There is a link on my page where you can be added to my taglist :D)

Warnings: fluff, childbirth, oh shit we have a kid, eskel is a BAMF

As the end of a long pregnancy nears, a few new faces find their way to your home.

“Oh, dear Gods…” you groan quietly, running your hands over your belly. Everything is swollen and sensitive; your stomach, your ankles, your fingers, hells, even your elbows don’t feel quite right. You are laying on the bed, one pillow shoved between your legs and another under your back, trying to finagle a way to get comfortable. You may have finally found it, settling down gently into the comfort of your bed and letting your eyelids drift slowly closed.

And then...the baby hiccups.

Your eyes shoot open, suddenly wide awake once more as your stomach jumps and churns. You sigh, sitting up and propping the pillows against the headboard behind you. “Hmm, you poor thing,” you hum, rubbing little circles over your belly in an attempt to soothe the child. You call quietly for your husband and he comes bounding into the room, his chemise hanging off his shoulder and hair all disheveled.

“Everything all right, my dear?” Jaskier’s eyes, previously filled with worry and unhinged anxiety, visibly calm at the sight of you, relatively comfortable and healthy.

“Baby has the hiccups, love.”

Jaskier hums sympathetically, moving to sit next to you at the edge of the bed. His hand joins yours on your stomach, resting lightly over where the baby jumps. “Is there anything I can get to help?”

You shake your head with a sigh, resigned to spending the rest of your days as a human punching bag. “We’ll be alright, but would you stay and lay with me?”

Jaskier smiles, still as vibrant and bright as the sun, shifting to rest at your side. You lay back down as well, Jaskier’s head resting on your chest. He begins to sing softly, shocking no one, his hand resuming the careful circles over your belly. You let his voice soothe you as well, but you recognize the song as the one that he has been working on for your child.

On the beach at night,

Stands a child with her father,

Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,

Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,

And nigh at hand, only a very little above,

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades…

The baby has settled, allowing you to finally do the same. As Jaskier finishes singing his hand drifts further down, kissing your tender breast as he moves.

“You know,” his hand trails up the inside of your thigh, “I’ve heard of a way that we might be able to speed things along…”

“If you touch me right now Jaskier, so help me Gods you will not live to see the morning.”

“Fair enough.”

***

The leaves have turned vibrant shades of red and orange, the eyes of the multiple Witchers around you blending right in. Apparently, Ciri had begun to turn a bit stir-crazy being stuck in Kaer Morhen for the past year, driving all of them more than a little mad. Finally, Geralt had relented to her ceaseless pestering for a change of scenery-on one condition. Yennefer, Eskel, and Lambert would join them.

They had all shown up at your little cottage a few days ago, having sent a letter with Yennefer’s familiar the evening prior. Upon your acceptance of their visit, Yennefer had opened a portal in the woods nearby and a veritable stream of mountainous men stormed through, followed by the palpable energy that both Ciri and Yennefer exude in their very bones.

“Oh, you are just going to adore them, my love. These men, no no, these magnificent heroes, they are just so wonderful and inspiring! Well, Lambert can be a bit of an ass, but can’t we all sometimes?” Jaskier wrapped his arm around your waist as he prattled on, the two of you having perched yourselves right outside of your little home.

All at once, you saw a blur of bright color and shiny silver hair burst from the treeline and sprint towards you. Jaskier laughed, stepping forward to catch the young woman in his arms. Ciri squealed in delight as Jaskier picked her up and swung her around as if she weighed little more than a toddler. “Jaskier, oh how I’ve missed you!”

You watched the rest of her entourage emerge from the cover of the forest, curious of these people that have claimed this young woman as their family. Geralt stepped out first, a stunning woman with dark black hair at his side. He looked infinitely more at ease than you had seen him in some time, and the woman moved with such grace and confidence that you had found yourself almost compelled to follow her every word.

As introductions were made for Yennefer you crooked an eyebrow at Geralt, wordlessly inquiring about the others. He grumbled, turning back to look where the gaps in the trees were swallowed by darkness. “They said that they didn’t want to intrude.”

You scoffed, walking (more like waddling, in your extremely pregnant state,) to the very edge of the woods. “You would not offend a woman so much as to refuse her hospitality, would you?”

You heard some brief scuffling, followed by the sound of someone getting cuffed on the back of the head. “Shut the hell up, if you want to stay out here in the fucking woods that’s your business, I’m gonna go get warm.”

A figure stepped out from the darkness, imposing with a cocksure swagger to his stride. He had a broad chest and a trim waist with the telltale pair of swords peeking out from behind his shoulder. His hair was dark and slicked back, his eyes the color of a light golden ale. A long, sharp scar cut through his right eye and down onto his cheek, two shorter ones accompanying it on either side.

“No, Lambert, wait, we shouldn’t-” Another man burst from the darkness, taller and broader than the other. He was large, about the same build as Geralt. He too had double swords strewn across his back, and his armor was dotted with studs and other pointy things that you had no doubt had protected him numerous times. His hair, lighter than Lambert’s, was floppy and hung just below his ears, and his eyes shone with a dark amber that was amplified in the light from the rising sun. He grimaced as he approached Lambert, a nasty scar over the expanse of his cheek pulling the corner of his lip in a gruesome fashion.

You knew that these two men could be very frightening to the wrong kinds of people, and would fiercely protect those that they love. Geralt had been easy enough to read, you just had to show him that you weren’t scared of him and wouldn’t walk on eggshells around him. You figured these two would be the same.

As they approached you had stood your ground, putting your hands on your hips and taking up as much room in the atmosphere as you could. Your belly jutted out, very obviously with child, and the two men looked you up and down before the second man moved to pull Lambert back into the cover of the forest.

“Ah, ah, no.” Your voice rang through the silence, both men freezing and looking back at you. “This is my home, I get to say whether or not my guests are intruding. I will not have you out here, freezing your bollocks off in the woods behind my home just because you would be so stubborn. Come.”

You turned and strode (again, waddled,) back to the house without a second glance behind you. You knew that they were following though, Jaskier nodding triumphantly before beckoning you all inside to a warm breakfast and a rest by the fire.

Now, as you sit and sort through the various herbs and other plants for the evening’s meal that you have all been in the forest collecting, you cannot ignore the feeling of something...off in your belly. However, you’ve been feeling some form or another of off for the past nine months, so you chalk it up to just another twinge of your pregnancy.

Ciri comes to sit at your side, passing you a generous handful of creeping thyme. “Thank you, Princess.”

“You know,” she murmurs, only barely loud enough for the Witchers to hear from where they are spread nearby, “you and Jaskier are the only people left who call me that.”

Her voice still has that strong, regal ring to it, but now it is tinged with an air of sadness and your heart breaks for her. You wrap your arm around her and pull her close, holding her against your shoulder. You would be more than happy to just sit and stay here for a while, letting yourself bask in the warm afternoon sun that peeks through the treetops.

Your baby, though, apparently has other plans.

Suddenly, you feel a warm wetness spread from your core. Just as that registers in your brain your body is wracked with pain as the most intense cramping you’ve ever felt burns through your entire abdomen and around your back. You cannot help the gasp that escapes your lips, gritting your teeth and pinching your eyes shut in an effort to quell the pain.

Ciri shoots up, calling out for help. Everyone comes running, all of the Witchers with a sword drawn, Yennefer with energy crackling from her fingertips, and Jaskier (bless him) with his precious lute brandished like a club. You try to bring your knees up to your chest to curl away from the intensity, but nothing helps. Jaskier is immediately at your side, his hands everywhere as he tries to figure out how to help you.

You can hear Ciri using her regal voice, commanding with just her tone. “She is in childbirth, we need to get her back to the cottage. Yennefer, can you make a portal back there?”

The mage nods, walking a few steps away and thrusting her arms open, a circle of energy opening in the air and leaving a void in the center. Geralt groans, sheathing his sword and running his hand down his face.

The pain subsides as quickly as it came, leaving you breathless in relief. You moan, tight and pinched as you think of what is to come. “Can you stand, my love?” Jaskier asks, his bright blue eyes shining with anxiety.

You nod, moving to push yourself off the ground. Geralt moves to your side, fitting himself under one of your arms as Jaskier does the same. The two of them support you as you approach the portal, bracing yourself for the yanking force of the magic.

***

Your screams ring through the darkness, only broken by the latent crackling of the fire. Your body quakes with the near constant cramping, only a brief reprieve every few minutes. Jaskier sits at your side, your hand in his, and Ciri rests at the foot of the bed, somewhat unsure of how to help. Apparently, the healer has ironically fallen ill, leaving you all to your own devices. As another wave of pain washes away for a moment, Eskel peeks his head through the doorway.

“I uh-everything going alright in here?”

You swear, falling back into the pillows as Jaskier dabs your forehead with a towel damp with cool water. Ciri tells him that while she can tell that you’re well on your way to delivery, she has no veritable idea of what to do to help you. Eskel nods, coming into the room to kneel at your side. He looks up at you, something intense and forlorn behind those striking irises.

“I can-I may be able to help.” You blink at him, your chest heaving with every breath that you take. “I’ve assisted with the animals when they would have babies back at Kaer Morhen, and I was actually with a healer when she helped a woman in childbirth too. It’s been a while, but it’s better than nothing…”

You nod, taking his hand in yours and gripping tightly. “Thank you, Eskel. That would be greatly appreciated.”

Fire licks along your skin as a new surge of pain burns through you. Eskel moves to kneel on the bed, resting his hand on your leg before Jaskier speaks up at your side.

“Are you sure, love? I mean, he’s going to see everything…” His voice trails off as you glare at him with the cool intensity of a thousand suns. “No, no you’re right, I’m sorry.”

Eskel’s voice is low and strangely soothing as he gives direction without a waver of room for debate, “Jask, go sit behind her and support her weight. Ciri, could you please grab a fresh bowl of warm water from the fireplace?”

You can feel Jaskier’s heart beating frantically against his chest where he sits at your back, his arms wrapping around your chest in a sweet embrace as his nose finds the crook of your neck. You sag into him, falling limp with exhaustion before the next bout of pain breaks through you.

***

The next few hours pass by in a blur, filled with sweat and tears and screams. Jaskier croons lightly in your ear, helping you drink water and doing everything that he can to assist. Eskel is a welcome presence in the room, a sanctuary of rational thought in the whirlwind of chaos that your mind threatens to spill.

Pressure in your abdomen builds and builds as Eskel instructs you to push, every muscle in your body tight and straining with each passing moment. Your nails dig into Jaskier’s thighs as you give one final shout, a sudden release of pressure following. You close your eyes as Jaskier holds you tight to his chest, neither of you daring to breath and break the fragile silence in the room.

And then, the baby cries. They cry, and you sigh and sob in the same breath. You can feel Jaskier’s tears on your shoulder as Eskel wraps a clean cloth around the child, bringing them up to lay atop your stomach.

Eskel smiles, the scar along his cheek endearing with the gentle expression. “Welcome to the world, young lady.”

You know that there is still much to be done to care for your newborn daughter, but you are content to stay in this moment for a while longer, with Jaskier’s arms around you and your daughter resting against your body.

#jaskier x reader #fluff #pregnancy #childbirth #softe

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canonicallyanxious · 3 years

Note

12, 23, 34 and 35. pls answer as long as u need to!

thank you for the permission to ramble anon skjfnsknfs you genuinely have no idea how much i appreciate it

12. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about.

sndfkjsdnfksd what wips... really though i’m finishing up my one actual wip [davenzi star wars au scream] today and once that’s done i’ll have basically no wips to speak of, wowowow! i can provide a small list of au ideas for kieutou i’m excited to tackle, though. ABSOLUTELY NO PROMISES any of these will ever see the light of day or that i’ll even get around to starting the drafting process for them but right now in the brainstorming phase they do live in my brain rent free

summer fling/romance au

high fantasy au - kieu my as a half-elf, fatou as a human bard

korrasami au

modern persuasion au

also my friend suggested doing some druck new gen spin-offs of the star wars au which, like, i’m not NOT thinking about tbqh

23. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas?

Honestly i struggle with prompts/challenges in a major way, idk it’s just a lot easier to motivate my writing brain with intrinsic motivation [e.g being really excited about an idea i came up with myself] than extrinsic motivation [e.g deadlines/prompts]. i am trying to be better about taking prompts, though! often the issue i have is with being excited about an idea that i didn’t come up with but if i can find a way to make the idea my own then i feel like that’s good practice anyway, especially for times when i don’t really have the energy for coming up with my own ideas but i still wanna write!

[as far as challenges go tho i mean i’ve tried a few in my time and all i have to say on the matter is: never again]

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm bold of you to assume i remember anything i have ever written skjdnfskdjnfsdkj anyway here’s a little bit from the most recent thing i posted bc i actually really like this bit of dialogue:

Fatou reaches into the pile of nail polish and pulls out a bottle filled to the brim with a deep crimson red.

“The color of your heart,” she says.

Kieu My looks up at her. “You think so?”

“Yeah,” Fatou says. “You picked the color of mine.”

Kieu My reaches out and closes Fatou’s fingers around the bottle, warmth of her palm resting lightly against her knuckles.

“You say such pretty things,” she says.

Fatou meets Kieu My’s eyes. “I only say things that are true.”

“Yeah,” Kieu My says, and smiles. “Same thing.”

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!

I HAD A TIME DECIDING WHAT TO RAMBLE ABOUT in fact i legit couldn’t decide skjnfskdjfsnd so i had @boxesfullofthoughts give me a prompt and this is what they said I should talk about: “the use of themes in your work and what themes you feel resonate most with you and your audience.” So i guess i’m gonna ramble about that now!

So one big reason why i gravitate toward fic is because i think it’s a really great avenue for exploring relationship dynamics and development. obviously in a romantic context yes, but what especially interests me is the blurring of lines between friendship and romance, as those have always been pretty nebulous concepts for me personally. like how do you even define those things? where do you draw the line? what happens when that line grows blurry and indistinct? idk i find it kind of hard to explain but for me intimacy in romance is oftentimes very rooted in intimacy of friendship and that’s what i like to explore [i think a lot about a little life by hanya yanagihara which imo does an excellent job of delving into this concept, the romance of friendships; it’s definitely a story i draw a lot of inspiration from, which i think probably says a lot about who i am as a person lol]

and a very big part of love imo is well-encapsulated by that meme quote “if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known”. which yes i know the original article is about someone judgmental attitude toward the writer’s goats or something but ALSO as i am the kind of person to take something very silly and make it incredibly serious i legitimately think this quote captures the heart of what i find so compelling about love stories! to be truly loved by someone is to be truly known by them - all the deepest, darkest, ugliest parts of you alongside the good. and that’s fucking hard! it’s hard work to allow someone to know you like that - to be that vulnerable, to really expose yourself to another human being. but also ultimately after all that difficult work what is more rewarding, what is more comforting than existing in the presence of someone you don’t have to explain yourself to because they already understand you wholly and completely, in a romantic or platonic context or otherwise? it’s something i love to unpack in my writing, like really there’s nothing i find more cathartic than really peeling back the layers and figuring out how two characters get to that point.

Another thing i think a lot about is a quote from a random tumblr post i no longer have the link for, which goes something like “tenderness is softness in the face of pain and shame”. and that is really IT, isn’t it? that’s exactly the kind of vibe i strive to capture in my writing always. particularly in the context of queer stories, when our community has had a long history of pain and suffering and repression and shame and yet despite all of that we still find ways to love each other, to take care of each other, to be ourselves and help each other be themselves too. that’s the kind of shit that drives me fucking insane! and it’s the kind of shit i love to write about. that’s all i can really say.

[is this still fic related? probably only tangentially. but this is the kind of shit i usually end up writing about on some level across all my fics so i think it still counts lol.]

q’s for fanfiction writers!

#Anonymous #answers

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seafleece · 4 years

Text

sand plucked from the sea, or: five times the divine belgard considered her place in the universe and one time she did not

“I wish I had known. What it was. I should have known.”

“Would you have said yes?”

Belgard does not whisper. Can’t. There’s no cause for it, no medium.

“I don't know,” Belgard whispers.

The empty body of Empyrean stands, wings dropped. Head fierce and tall against the awful light and dark of Volition.

Belgard is quiet. There’s this faint, but repeated pull at her, like the tide— she wants Signet to return. Wants to think about anything other than that she looked like this, once.

“Can you carry them?”

—

ii.

“Can you open the Exuvia?”

It’s a bad day. The latest in a series. Belgard’s cables lace over her suit instead of where it ends, where the sleeves of it don’t quite meet her shoes. It’s too much to touch, to feel, to be felt.

She opens an eye. It’s crawling along the floor, miles away. On days where her hands would be wrapped proper in the sashes, she’d let herself drop, fall and fall until the cold panels of the bottom of Belgard rushed to meet her and catch firm, swaying. Reach down a hand and snag it, and ascend again, like something arboreal.

But the swing she’s cradled in isn’t fashioned from her own twisting, it’s Belgard knotting herself together under Signet, holding her aloft. She doesn’t even rock.

She tugs, downward, and Belgard lowers her.

The Exuvia goes still in her hands, like it knows crawling would make her drop it again.

“Here,” Belgard tilts Signet in her swing until she’s mostly horizontal, still curled in on herself like an oyster around grit, no pearl in sight.

“I don’t— I don’t know how to tell you about them yet.”

“I know. I thought I would read to you instead.”

The wings of the Exuvia flare out and close again.

—

iii.

“Signet,” Belgard says, “Signet, Signet.” She sounds like she’s smiling, but she should be crying.

Signet scrabbles at the straps around her wrists. “No.”

“You know it already.”

“Don’t.” She can’t say it. In the air, even between them, it will exist, and the truth of it is so compelling and awful she can’t bear it.

“Such a beautiful passage. My favorite, I think.”

The Assemblage is so long that a favorite passage is meaningless. She knows it, and Belgard knows it. To pick one and hold it above the rest is like emerging with a single grain from the ocean floor. Beautiful, maybe, in the sunlight, but what makes it separate from the others is only that it happens to be in your palm. That, rather than sweeping your hands through the rest of the ocean, you’d leave that one there instead. To make it yours, and give it you. To forgo.

A Divine is for people. Not a person. Belgard telling her that she is Signet’s is saying the worst thing there is to say. That she’s done.

There's a plate on Belgard’s wing that’s shaking loose. Big enough to enclose her, carry her to safety.

“Please.” She reaches out, desperate, buries her hands in two straps, then four, ten, like gathering up a kelp forest. All of them wind around her, enclosing her.

Belgard’s entire body rattles with the force of another explosion, but in the open space of her cockpit she keeps Signet still. Screens open in the corners of Signet’s vision like compound eyes— first, who it is that needs healing, then their middle name, their favorite color. All of the things they can continue to be, if Belgard stops being.

Belgard holds her for a second, and another, and another.

Then, she lets go.

—

iv.

“Hello, Belgard.”

“On the shore the seas gathered themselves like gifts, folded lines like petals unfurling under newest light. How are you?”

They laugh. It sounds like crumpling paper.

“Not so bad. Did you get to meet them?”

“They were busy with rites, the keeper told me. I think they are nervous to see me.”

Shore waves a hand, drawn with age and shaking. “Don’t worry. They’re a good egg. They just want to get it right the first time.”

Belgard doesn’t have eyes to close. Instead she simply tries to picture fewer things, and sticks on the roll in Shore’s shoulders as they laugh quietly. “They’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“That if things were right the first time, we would not be part of the fleet. Yes.” She lights up her panels to prove she gets the joke, even if Shore can’t see them.

She can tell when they look at her again, a fierce and fixing thing unmitigated by their position. She wants to spread her wings and unpin herself from it, feel her Excerpt weaving the two of them out and away from Thyrsus. But Shore is here, and dying, and so she has nowhere to go.

“You’re going to be okay.”

She says nothing.

“Belgard.”

“On the shore the seas gathered themselves like gifts, folded lines like petals unfurling under newest light.”

It’s a beautiful passage. She wonders if Shore can tell she is afraid of when she can no longer say it.

“You talk through it, okay? When it feels like the world should have stopped with you. You explain why you can’t do the things you need to, and one day you find you can.”

“Shore.”

“They’re going to pick Meadow, at the ceremony. They asked me what passage was your favorite and I didn't tell them it was mine. Because it isn’t. Don’t let it be.”

“Shore.” Belgard has no function resembling tears. Her panels, unseen, flare with frustration instead.

“You have to love them, too. Not because they’re the next me, but because they’re someone else.”

She’s a large being, enough to cover Shore a hundred times over. The love for them feels like it spills out of her already.

—

She feels the moment Signet starts to go slack. The Exuvia clips its shell into a single golden dome again.

Belgard has never written for the Assemblage. The few left to tell stories had no time to read them, and then there were none.

She thinks about breaking rocks into sand and scattering them into the sea. Her hands are shaped like hands by coincidence more than anything else— they’re erosion incarnate, even so.

The singular grain that is Signet goes fully limp in her cables and Belgard wants to be smaller so she can press against her contours.

She carried Empyrean’s body home after they fled it. Signet brought the unrecognizable threads of them to her and they wanted her to inhabit her shell again for the shell’s sake, not the ocean. They begged her to keep the sand in her fists, and Signet is safe, quiet and asleep and here, because she held on. First to Signet, and then to herself.

In the dark, the Divine Belgard holds her grain of sand and thinks on becoming an oyster instead.

—

“They marked scars of light in pitch; born in fiercest purpose, and beheld as the signet sealed upon our pact. You look so beautiful like this.”

Belgard flares all around her and grows dim again in a moment— laughter, surprise, captured as a reflex. The cables around Signet’s arms, her waist, slacken and tighten. Not unsure, but aware.

Signet is content to let that thought sit with her— like she had leaving Polyphony’s city. Something to turn over and over again in her mind like a stone, worried smooth over time and trips across the system and to Thyrsus, to ask for someone who liked to sing.

It is such a different thing, to be alone with them again. They must know, she thinks. Must have felt it from her when they met again, that something they had given her had been so rattling as to stay with her. She looks down at them from where she’s suspended— thinks, actively, about what the places where she and Belgard meet must look like in other eyes— and flushes.

It’s Belgard who speaks instead. “Are you afraid?”

Polyphony laughs. Properly.

“No. I don’t believe it will hurt me.”

Belgard says something else to Polyphony, something about bravery, but Signet doesn’t hear it. A cable curls along her wrist and she wraps her fingers around it.

You are beautiful like this, Signet. If only they could see you when you are even more beautiful, when—

Startled, she falls a bit in the cables and Belgard holds her fast.

Below, Polyphony looks curiously on as Belgard’s panels flare again, another show of mirth.

Belgard’s alive with this infectious sort of curiosity today, buzzing where they meet. She pulls on the cable in her fingers, questioning.

I am interested in who it is that would make you ask to be sung to, Signet. I think I get it, now.

Below, Polyphony gathers their skirts under them and accepts the second swing Belgard offers. The weight sends connected cables bouncing for a moment with momentum, moving Signet about.

Belgard moves every single part of herself with purpose. If cables move towards Polyphony that, at another junction, find Signet, Belgard wants her to feel Polyphony in them.

She grips the strap in her fist and presses her smile to another one, captivated by the quiet brazenness of it all. Belgard hums and they sway again together, lazy and thrilling.

Jealous? she teases.

A single panel lights near Signet’s face. A restrained laugh.

You are a different kind of beautiful when they are near. Call it comparison.

Things grow quiet and tense again as they near Volition, and Belgard doesn’t tease her when she returns alone with Polyphony’s lipstick blooming wistful and faded blue at the corner of her mouth. She merely offers the little cable, unconnected to any controls and empty of data, and Signet holds it fast and presses her mouth there, shaking with things unsaid and trusting she will be held in kind.

#friends at the table #twilight mirage #belgard #signet #...signet...#they marked scars of light in pitch; born in fiercest purpose and beheld as the signet sealed upon our pact #my writing #in which i TOE THE LINE that janine never crossed with signet the whole season #you know the one

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